Totally Rad
79 days until the vernal equinox
If Bill and Ted made a video game, it would be one of the Bill and Ted games. If Bill and Ben from Seiken Densetsu III designed a video game, it would be Ren and Stimpy: Time Warp because they want you to suffer.
Our protagonist, who is now named Jake, even looks like Keanu Reeves.
Japan’s Magic John had a generic plot about magic or whatever. Then the translators were all like “dude, I am like totally going to change this game to Bill and Ted! Radical! Gnarly! Dude! Sweet!” Wait, that’s a different movie. And, no, I am not going to to write this in surfer slang. If you so desire, there must be a Dude Where’s My Car website dialectizer out there.
I think what happened is that there was a focus group and they we’re like “we need to be down with the kids. Can we surferify it by 10% and put everything in more of a hip-hop context? And make him more proactive. We’re talking about a totally outrageous paradigm” and then the people actually working on the game decided to go all out to the point of parody.
To use magical powers, select them from the menu (if you did this, it will make a sound) and press up and B.
Invincibility and time stopper don’t last long enough to be worth it.
I didn’t realize until well after I beat the game that the full screen spells change appearance as you advance in the game but it’s all just appearance. At the beginning, they're mostly just screen flashes like this.
A few bubbles here and there for the water spell.
A few whirlwinds for the wind spell.
And boulders for the earth spell. Yes, magic is situational but they all do something. Even if the attack spells are all the same and really just come down to personal preference.
You also get transformation spells. Lionman here has a close range attack.
And he can whirl around when he jumps.
And Bird-Man can fly indefinitely but some of the later levels will try to stymie that.
Fish-Man can swim.
In Japan, Master Chief, along with many other enemies, only does one point of damage.
Your main weapon works like Mega Man’s, that is to say, you can shoot and even do a charge shot. This game predates Mega Man 4, by the way. You can’t charge and jump at the same time. Bogus!
Jabba the Kong throws barrels at you.
Metools are invincible while they're bouncing.
But they're vulnerable when on the ground.
They also shoot at you.
It wouldn't be an NES game without a kidnapping.
The music here is a weird version of Entry of the Gladiators, which is actually a military march but makes sense because the Austro-Hungarian Army were a bunch of clowns in real life. This is far from the first game that does that.
The clowns will hang there.
And then drop down and rush at you.
I don’t know if the Popcorn Man is wearing way too tight jeans or if he has bionic legs. When you hit him in that fuck-me light, he’ll toss popcorn at you.
You can only replenish magic power by beating a level. No powerups or anything.
The drill guys will jump over you as long as you're standing still.
Because Keanu moves slightly faster in the European version to compensate for PAL framerates, there’s all sorts of jank including enemies and even bosses that simply don’t appear. Like this guy, for instance.
The obligatory sewer level, featuring fountains that hurt you.
You get your health back when you beat a boss or when you beat certain minibosses. Not all of them, I learned that the hard way in this level.
This guy fires missiles in a zigzag pattern.
bees wil fire off a projectile when they die so be prepared (uh, sorry). They also speed up when you’re on the same horizontal level as them.
You have to hit the leg at first.
In Japan, if you die at a boss, you restart at the boss. In Totally Rad, you have to get through the previous stage as well. You also get finite continues. And here I thought American players aren’t hardcore enough to handle difficulty and that’s why we didn’t get Super Mario Bros 2 until the SNES era.
You also stay in your transformation after beating a boss so it's a good way to save a few magic points.
You can see where they kind of tried but failed to remove John’s hand from Allison’s shoulder and now she looks like she’s wearing a wire.
The huh?
Coconuts fall down and then bounce forward.
The fish guy is the only guy who can swim.
The enemy fish here are just eyeballs with fins.
This game loves to reuse minibosses.
You can hit anywhere on the fish.
Zeb looks like one of those portraits that you flip upside down to reveal a different face.
Zebediah is the name of a minor figure in the Book of Chronicles, and is a name that sounds both old-fashioned and kinda whimsical, especially when you start adding other names like Obadiah Zedekiah Zephaniah Jedediah Euchariah.
I didn’t realize until well after I beat the game that the full screen spells change appearances as you advance in the game but it’s all just appearance.
The sparkly crystals that look like background objects are actually spikes, so touching them with one foot hurts you.
It's more obvious when they glow like that.
It launches its neck vertebrae at you.
You can hit this guy when the big Lovecraftian Audrey II mouth is open.
The alligators jump up but they're easier than you'd expect because they don't do anything else and you can stand in the water.
With the bird form, you can dodge all the bullets and rupees he tosses at you.
The stuff about the Houdini routine was added by the translators.
And we're in Bright Man's stage.
Master Chief still opposes you.
This robot will start out by launching a few drills at you. I swear this game came out before Mega Man 4.
The robot won’t do anything while the eye is bouncing around, so use that time to damage the robot. If you destroy the eye, he'll grow a new eye and then rocket jump and try to land on top of you and it's hard to dodge, so, yeah, just avoid the eye.
The background just looks really cool here.
It cycles through colors.
More of these Wolverine guys. If you fly into the ceiling, you'll take damage. But I'm staying in Bird-Man form for reasons.
It’s one of those patience bosses because the only way to not get hit is to stand on the other end of the pit (NOT on the ledge) and duck and the only way to hit him is to hit his head and if you jump to his head, you’ll get hit. Tanking is not viable. Unless you want to get hit and I remind you that minibosses don’t have health bars, you can only hit him once at a time and not even that if you’re too slow. I like the music in this game but this stage theme just sets the mood of “boring slog.”
Wait, I can hit him in the belly??!
It’d have probably taken fifteen to twenty more minutes. Anyway, what you’re really supposed to do is run to the other side of the pit (NOT on the ledges), duck under the first shot, and then attack him with boomerangs and then repeat until he dies.
Nintendo Games Secrets is even worse; it suggests that the best way to beat this guy is to spam attack magic until you run out.
No, I have not yet found volume four. All I know is that King's Quest V and Mega Man IV are in it and I know this because I saw a copy at Waldenbooks back in the day but bought the first volume instead because Maniac Mansion. I did find a picture of the cover but promptly lost it because all that exists out there is images on Ebay. Even the Goodreads image is just a generic placeholder.
"traiter"
When Edogy lowers his sword, hit him in the face.
Edogy has two phases, each with its own health bar, but it's still not that difficult.
This is the 'most powerful' form of the magic.
Water. The weird thing is in the second stage, water summons some kind of elemental but now it's just fountains.
Wind in its final form now summons George Jefferson.
And earth is four gopher heads.
This here plot twist might explain why Zeb is unchanged from the Japanese version. He has a P on his hat because his Japanese name is Master Pong. I suppose I’d have known that if my eyes didn’t glaze over whenever I try to read the manual. I do know that Jake was Magic John and Allison was Yuu. I like her hair design more in Japan but her face has shading and normal eyes in the English version. Also she has Bashar al-Assad’s big ears.
Now, if my eyes didn’t glaze over while reading the manual, I’d also know Zeb’s backstory already except the manual told me I wasn’t supposed to know that.
burning question: Excuse me, but “proactive” and “paradigm?” Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I’m accusing you of anything like that.
If Bill and Ted made a video game, it would be one of the Bill and Ted games. If Bill and Ben from Seiken Densetsu III designed a video game, it would be Ren and Stimpy: Time Warp because they want you to suffer.
Our protagonist, who is now named Jake, even looks like Keanu Reeves.
Japan’s Magic John had a generic plot about magic or whatever. Then the translators were all like “dude, I am like totally going to change this game to Bill and Ted! Radical! Gnarly! Dude! Sweet!” Wait, that’s a different movie. And, no, I am not going to to write this in surfer slang. If you so desire, there must be a Dude Where’s My Car website dialectizer out there.
I think what happened is that there was a focus group and they we’re like “we need to be down with the kids. Can we surferify it by 10% and put everything in more of a hip-hop context? And make him more proactive. We’re talking about a totally outrageous paradigm” and then the people actually working on the game decided to go all out to the point of parody.
To use magical powers, select them from the menu (if you did this, it will make a sound) and press up and B.
Invincibility and time stopper don’t last long enough to be worth it.
I didn’t realize until well after I beat the game that the full screen spells change appearance as you advance in the game but it’s all just appearance. At the beginning, they're mostly just screen flashes like this.
A few bubbles here and there for the water spell.
A few whirlwinds for the wind spell.
And boulders for the earth spell. Yes, magic is situational but they all do something. Even if the attack spells are all the same and really just come down to personal preference.
You also get transformation spells. Lionman here has a close range attack.
And he can whirl around when he jumps.
And Bird-Man can fly indefinitely but some of the later levels will try to stymie that.
Fish-Man can swim.
In Japan, Master Chief, along with many other enemies, only does one point of damage.
Your main weapon works like Mega Man’s, that is to say, you can shoot and even do a charge shot. This game predates Mega Man 4, by the way. You can’t charge and jump at the same time. Bogus!
Jabba the Kong throws barrels at you.
Metools are invincible while they're bouncing.
But they're vulnerable when on the ground.
They also shoot at you.
It wouldn't be an NES game without a kidnapping.
The music here is a weird version of Entry of the Gladiators, which is actually a military march but makes sense because the Austro-Hungarian Army were a bunch of clowns in real life. This is far from the first game that does that.
The clowns will hang there.
And then drop down and rush at you.
I don’t know if the Popcorn Man is wearing way too tight jeans or if he has bionic legs. When you hit him in that fuck-me light, he’ll toss popcorn at you.
You can only replenish magic power by beating a level. No powerups or anything.
The drill guys will jump over you as long as you're standing still.
Because Keanu moves slightly faster in the European version to compensate for PAL framerates, there’s all sorts of jank including enemies and even bosses that simply don’t appear. Like this guy, for instance.
The obligatory sewer level, featuring fountains that hurt you.
You get your health back when you beat a boss or when you beat certain minibosses. Not all of them, I learned that the hard way in this level.
This guy fires missiles in a zigzag pattern.
bees wil fire off a projectile when they die so be prepared (uh, sorry). They also speed up when you’re on the same horizontal level as them.
You have to hit the leg at first.
In Japan, if you die at a boss, you restart at the boss. In Totally Rad, you have to get through the previous stage as well. You also get finite continues. And here I thought American players aren’t hardcore enough to handle difficulty and that’s why we didn’t get Super Mario Bros 2 until the SNES era.
You also stay in your transformation after beating a boss so it's a good way to save a few magic points.
You can see where they kind of tried but failed to remove John’s hand from Allison’s shoulder and now she looks like she’s wearing a wire.
The huh?
Coconuts fall down and then bounce forward.
The fish guy is the only guy who can swim.
The enemy fish here are just eyeballs with fins.
This game loves to reuse minibosses.
You can hit anywhere on the fish.
Zeb looks like one of those portraits that you flip upside down to reveal a different face.
Zebediah is the name of a minor figure in the Book of Chronicles, and is a name that sounds both old-fashioned and kinda whimsical, especially when you start adding other names like Obadiah Zedekiah Zephaniah Jedediah Euchariah.
I didn’t realize until well after I beat the game that the full screen spells change appearances as you advance in the game but it’s all just appearance.
The sparkly crystals that look like background objects are actually spikes, so touching them with one foot hurts you.
It's more obvious when they glow like that.
It launches its neck vertebrae at you.
You can hit this guy when the big Lovecraftian Audrey II mouth is open.
The alligators jump up but they're easier than you'd expect because they don't do anything else and you can stand in the water.
With the bird form, you can dodge all the bullets and rupees he tosses at you.
The stuff about the Houdini routine was added by the translators.
And we're in Bright Man's stage.
Master Chief still opposes you.
This robot will start out by launching a few drills at you. I swear this game came out before Mega Man 4.
The robot won’t do anything while the eye is bouncing around, so use that time to damage the robot. If you destroy the eye, he'll grow a new eye and then rocket jump and try to land on top of you and it's hard to dodge, so, yeah, just avoid the eye.
The background just looks really cool here.
It cycles through colors.
More of these Wolverine guys. If you fly into the ceiling, you'll take damage. But I'm staying in Bird-Man form for reasons.
It’s one of those patience bosses because the only way to not get hit is to stand on the other end of the pit (NOT on the ledge) and duck and the only way to hit him is to hit his head and if you jump to his head, you’ll get hit. Tanking is not viable. Unless you want to get hit and I remind you that minibosses don’t have health bars, you can only hit him once at a time and not even that if you’re too slow. I like the music in this game but this stage theme just sets the mood of “boring slog.”
Wait, I can hit him in the belly??!
It’d have probably taken fifteen to twenty more minutes. Anyway, what you’re really supposed to do is run to the other side of the pit (NOT on the ledges), duck under the first shot, and then attack him with boomerangs and then repeat until he dies.
Nintendo Games Secrets is even worse; it suggests that the best way to beat this guy is to spam attack magic until you run out.
No, I have not yet found volume four. All I know is that King's Quest V and Mega Man IV are in it and I know this because I saw a copy at Waldenbooks back in the day but bought the first volume instead because Maniac Mansion. I did find a picture of the cover but promptly lost it because all that exists out there is images on Ebay. Even the Goodreads image is just a generic placeholder.
"traiter"
When Edogy lowers his sword, hit him in the face.
Edogy has two phases, each with its own health bar, but it's still not that difficult.
This is the 'most powerful' form of the magic.
Water. The weird thing is in the second stage, water summons some kind of elemental but now it's just fountains.
Wind in its final form now summons George Jefferson.
And earth is four gopher heads.
This here plot twist might explain why Zeb is unchanged from the Japanese version. He has a P on his hat because his Japanese name is Master Pong. I suppose I’d have known that if my eyes didn’t glaze over whenever I try to read the manual. I do know that Jake was Magic John and Allison was Yuu. I like her hair design more in Japan but her face has shading and normal eyes in the English version. Also she has Bashar al-Assad’s big ears.
Now, if my eyes didn’t glaze over while reading the manual, I’d also know Zeb’s backstory already except the manual told me I wasn’t supposed to know that.
burning question: Excuse me, but “proactive” and “paradigm?” Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I’m accusing you of anything like that.