Jeremy Parish

NES Works #066: Kid Niki and Gotcha! The Sport (Patreon)

Published:

2020-03-04 14:59:59

Imported:

2024-04

Tags:

LJN data east nes works nintendo

Content

This episode did not go the way I expected. I figured Kid Niki would be the main course, with Gotcha! as the brief side dish. But the more I read up on Gotcha! and dug into its history, the more interesting it was. Not the game, mind you... just the history and culture around it. By no means is it a great game, but sometimes it's the strange middling games that have the meatiest origin stories.

Files

Kid Niki & Gotcha! The Sport retrospective: Paintball densetsu | NES Works #66

Data East (finally) serves up a pretty solid game in the form of Irem's Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, but the real story here is Gotcha!: The Sport. Not only is it the debut release from one of the NES's most questionable publishers, it also very much represents a specific moment in popular and political culture. Gotcha! was based on a movie and a toy line, and its publisher's fortunes were impacted by poor toy sales right as the national conversation began to focus on some unfortunate results from America's gun culture and the early days of the the police's move toward militarization. That's quite a lot to tie to a simple NES Zapper game... Thanks to Steve Lin for lending the Kid Niki packaging to this endeavor! 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.