The flip side of Midway's U.S.-oriented releases comes with one of the most unique games ever released for Nintendo 64 in Japan: Givro and Enix's Wonder Project J2. A simulation game of sorts, Wonder Project J2 tasks you with helping to rear a naïve robot girl named Josette, teaching her to become self-sufficient—and to integrate naturally into human society, while also helping to undermine the schemes of a military empire. That's a lot to ask for one waif, and her success is entirely up to you. Anyone who followed the N64 around the time of its launch remembers seeing this game plastered all over English-language magazines and websites, making it one of the best-known N64 titles to remain stranded in Japan.

Special thanks to "Ryu", whose excellent fan translation made this video possible! Check it out for yourself at https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1074/

Video Works is funded through Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (http://www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.

A little bit of a sidebar between the genre's foundational works (that is, Castlevania and Metroid) and the major works ahead in 1987. These games are not critical contributors to the genre, but the ideas seen here speak to some solid instincts. We'll see more refined takes on these concepts further along, but for now, here are some noble efforts that don't quite nail it.

Video Works is funded through Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (http://www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.

N64 Works shifts into third gear—third-party gear, that is—with a pair of games that I am wholly unsuited to break down. So instead, this episode dives into the history surrounding them: The so-called N64 Dream Team, the checkered relationship between Nintendo and Mortal Kombat, and what this version of Trilogy says about the N64 when held side-by-side against the PlayStation release.

Video Works is funded through Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (http://www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.

Finally! The Metroidvania Works series arrives at the games that lent the genre its name... or at least early entries in those games' franchises. Metroid brings us the first real taste of the exploratory action platformer, with a complex world that players unlock and explore by upgrading their hero(ine). Meanwhile, Vampire Killer on MSX adapts the NES classic Castlevania to a PC-style framework with (temporary) item collection and intra-stage exploration. And finally, Milon's Secret Castle applies the "search everywhere for invisible items" philosophy of mid ’80s action games to a contiguous, freely traveled world containing multiple self-contained stages. None of these are quite metroidvania games yet... but we're getting there.

Video Works is funded through Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (http://www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.

The metroidvania journey continues with a look at three more games from the mid ’80s that helped pave the way for the genre—none of which, notably, hail from U.S. developers. While the American games industry was reinventing itself in the wake of the Atari crash, British and Japanese developers steamed ahead full throttle with games that combined action, adventure, and exploration all at once, beginning with UK-based Ultimate Play-the-Game's influential isometric classic and ending with a gold-clad game that should require no further introduction to viewers of this channel...

Video Works is funded through Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (http://www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.

Nintendo publishes a football game, and an arcade hit comes to Game Boy after being filtered through the soupy green monochrome of the Amstrad CPC. They're not great! This is not fulfilling video game content! Let's hurry through and get along to the next. OK, thank you, please drive through.

Video Works is funded through Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (http://www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.