Mar 022016
Jackie Chan took the US by storm with 1996’s Rumble in the Bronx, but NES and TurboGrafx players likely already knew him as the star of this cute, delightful platformer. More importantly, both versions of the soundtrack are immensely enjoyable and way better than most celebrity games have any right to be.
SHOW NOTES
00:00 – Stage 1 Area 1
08:51 – Stage 1 Area 2
13:32 – Stage 2 Area 1
15:22 – Stage 2 Area 2
24:35 – Stage 3 Area 2
26:26 – Final Boss
33:32 – Ending and Credits
What’s the deal with the formatting on Brett’s podcast? With both VGMpire and 30,20,10, whenever I’m listening to them in iTunes and I scroll to the end of the podcast, it doesn’t stop at the end of the progress bar. It goes for like another minute or so past the end.
None of the other podcasts do this, just these two.
It must be you, bro; it doesn’t happen when I listen.
That’s an iTunes problem. It happens to me sometimes with multiple podcasts. I just delete them and re-download.
What a fun, sexy time! Really glad to hear this mini. As a long-time Jackie Chan fan, I was happy to see this game get its due. Henry was a great guy to have on this episode, too. His knowledge of Jackie Chan films came in handy; I look forward to checking out that top 7 most dangerous flubs. Lessee, quick thoughts: First, I’d say Supercop is the best film to show people who aren’t familiar with Jackie Chan movies. The plot is serious enough not to turn off people who’d need a little easing into Jackie Chan’s comedy style, and the action is some of his best.
Personally, Supercop and Drunken Master II are my favorite JC films of that era(DMII being one of the 3 or 4 best Kung Fu films ever), but I also really like the early 80’s films he did. It was before his crew started saying, “Jackie, you probably shouldn’t do that”, and he was young and elastic. I remember in Police story 1 or 2 where the bad guys throw him over the railing of the second floor of a mall, he flips and lands on his back, and then gets up and starts running. The camera is panned back and they show it all. Middle-aged Jackie couldn’t pull that stuff off(nor any other mortal man).
One more thing: Stereo NES tracks are really cool but they don’t belong in a fine show such as yours. I feel that shows which curate classic music of any sort should really play the tracks as the composer presented them. All the NES tracks on this ep were in stereo(the NES is a mono system), which I think is partly why they sounded a little better than the TG-16 tracks(a system which DOES do stereo, but in this game only used it in the drum fills). I’d be interested in hearing what others think about this.
There’s a guy named Ed on the FF shrine that started making stereo versions of NES tracks, and it kind of blew up and became this popular thing. He now has a VGM podcast, and insists on playing these stereo versions of NES tracks on the podcast. Again, the tracks sound great, but he’s not introducing the listener to the original music, he’s introducing the listener to his version of it. I’ve also heard podcasts where guys will put reverb effects over Mega Drive music because they don’t like how immediate MD music sounds. Anyway, this might be much ado about nothing, but I just wanted to bring it up because I think it’s worth talking about.
Again, love the show, and love the episode. Thank you for putting this stuff out there, sir!
I pulled these files myself but I did notice they were stereo… didn’t think it would make much of a difference but I’ll keep it mind for future episodes. Thanks for the Jackie thoughts!
Is it just me, or is the lead melody in the NES versions really quiet? Is it that way in the game?
So, that happens to me sometimes too, usually when listening through headphones. It sounds fine on one machine but not on another. No idea why it does that sometimes. May be an NSF thing, dunno. Does it do it on another machine or when playing through reg speakers?
On iPhone earbuds, played on an iPhone using the podcast app, the melodies’ volumes sounded fine.
The stream for this game also motivated me to beat it, so thanks for the courage! The music from these latter-day NES action-platformers is too good. Might I suggest Low-G-Man as one worth looking into for the future?
Do Little Samson!
Man, I never would’ve expected a game like this to have awesome music. While the NES melodies are wonderful I think the Turbografx-16 versions are even better thanks to their instrumentation.
Also I was totally making the “Who Am I?” joke in the beginning of the podcast in my mind just before Brett said it 😛
Wow, Brett! While I thought the NES and Turbo Grafx versions were serviceable on their own, hearing them fade into each other was magical! If you put the “Brelston Mix” versions of these songs on LT’s bandcamp page, I’ll snatch ’em up immediately.
I d never seen this game played before, so thanks for that. It s hilarious that you guys can slide into Starfox dialogue and then start speaking normally as if nothing happened! Thanks, guys!