R.C. Pro-Am and T&C Surf Designs retrospective: Grody to the NES Max | NES Works  

It's Alf! He's back! In NES Works form!

That was a very harsh and terse description of T&C Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage. I'll grant that the surfing mode is, to put it mildly, rough around the edges, but the skateboarding mode is actually a lot of fun. The game is an arcade-y score chaser that's a genuinely good time (assuming you take a moment to look up the controls), especially if you have someone interested in competing with you for the high score. T&C gets hard very quickly whether you're playing surf, skate, or the surf and skate mode, which means that you will quickly find yourself challenged, and hit a game over fairly quickly. This makes the game a great choice to return to for a short play session, as apposed to many other "better" NES games that increase in difficulty much more gradually, and would ask hours of your time rather than minutes.

I just want to say that I'm glad these episodes are so rewatchable Perfect to eat food to

The skating on T and C is something I still come back and play over 30 years later.

I clicked saying "I love both those". And I stand by that. Good rental nights in the 90s.

If anyone else is curious, I found this definition: An oblique sketch puts more focus on the face or front of an object while an isometric sketch puts more focus on the edge of an object. To achieve this, oblique sketches are usually drawn using a 45 degree angle to render the 3rd dimension while isometric sketches are drawn using a 30 degree angle

I vividly remember RC Pro-Am being a distinct watershed moment -- you could definitely _feel it_ at the time. :) T&C is interesting. I remember playing it a lot, but being frustrated with it. The cool surf/skate vibe played a big part. The art, too. It was like there was a *promise* of a really great game hidden away in there (at least on the skateboard side of the cart) if you could just _master_ the damned thing. Which, of course, is an absurd waste of time. 😎🏄‍♀️

Hearing you reference "Gag me with a spoon" makes me happy in a way I can't explain. And this episode is a mix of a game that sounded pretty terrible until I saw someone playing it, and a game that sounded alright until I saw someone playing it.

I love T&C surf designs. That game is simple but it gave me the most fun as a surf/skate game compared to more teen focused games of the time. I actually love the music too. It is probably the only LJN game I have memories of enjoying in my childhood.

T & C will always have a special place in my heart. I used to play that all the time with my cousin. I hated the surfing part. I could never figure it out. The skating segment more than made up for it. Yeah, there isn't much content, but it was still fun to a 5 year old me.

Aw man, I really liked T&C Surf Design. Sure, compared to other games that came out at the time, it wasn't great. But that's not how I experience it. To me it was one of the games in my grandmother's small collection that she kept around for when I visited. I guess that's why I look at it so fondly.

Dude I LOVED that skateboarding! But I get it. The surfing was a joke.

Rare were obsessed with isometric games in the '80s, weren't they? I mean they pretty much invented the look, but it even went over to what people think is shovelware, like WWF Wrestlemania Challenge.

My cousin had T&C Surf Design when we were kids, and I sorta feel like I always wanted it to be better than it was so I kept playing it hoping something would click and I'd figure out what I was missing and it would become a great game. It never happened. This feeling may have been exacerbated by the fact that it was featured in one volume of How to Score More Points in Nintendo Games, featuring Skip Rogers WORLD VIDEO GAME CHAMPION (which I owned. And watched more than once.)

I always wonder, between weekly Works videos and the Limited Run Complete Run series, if Jeremy will run out of wonderful puns and witticisms, but no, as usual, he's in Rare form ;D

R.C. Pro-Am looks like the ancestor of rock and roll racing and I love it! :D

Merry Christmas, Jeremy. NES Works is a gift to us all

I vividly remember getting a thumb blister from over-playing RC Pro Am. That game was ridiculously fun.

T&C Surf is a guilty pleasure of mine. I won't defend that statement one bit. RC Pro Am, on the other hand, is downright nostalgic fun for me.

I look forward to every video you release. Your dry humor is exactly on-point for me and I enjoy your deep and critical analyses of all-games retro. You've a fan in me.

I dunno, I look forward to the "bad game" episodes more than the "good game" ones.

Thank you for all you’ve done in 2020 Jeremy. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

One interesting mechanic that wasn't touched on in the video is that, at a certain point (usually track 8) the AI cars will randomly decide to speed up to an IMPOSSIBLY fast speed, basically a permanent speed boost for the rest of that race. My family always called it "going berserk". The only way you can stop them is with your missiles or bombs, before they pass you. By the time you reach track 24 (the last track), all 3 AI cars will always decide to go berserk. But here's the cool thing... If you get all the upgrades in every track, you will be fully powered up by track 24. At that point, you will basically be just as fast as the berserk AI cars, meaning that you will be flying around the tracks SO fast it's insane. So at the end of the game, it will be you who's gone berserk.

Hearing Jeremy say "da boys" was all worth it.

I will always remember R.C. Pro-Am as being the first video game that I ever rented from a video rental store back in the day. And it was amazing.

RC ProAm is the only racing game I’ll ever love. And that NES Max was my favorite controller- for every genre! The dedicated turbo buttons were perfect for shooters.

Rented T&C a lot, and had RC pro am. Loved RC a lot. Could never get all the trophies though.

T&C Surf Designs was one of the games available at my babysitter's place when I was very young. I remember that I really liked the idea of playing as a monkey with sunglasses (perhaps given the coverage of Rare in this video, an inspiration for Funky Kong?....or perhaps not), and I liked the idea of a skateboarding game collecting coins. The fact that there was a surfing game in there too was icing on the cake. So I remember choosing to pop this cart in the NES with fair frequency, as it's a game I deeply wanted to like. And I therefore also have the memory of ejecting that cart from the NES after five minutes of inevitable frustration, every single time. All these years I've wondered in the back of my mind whether the game was actually that bad or if it was just the thorough incompetence of very young children that soured the experience. Now, thanks to this video, I've learned it was both!

Your humorous deadpan delivery is legendary.

Wow, the Racing Destruction Set call out was so spot on. I cut my teeth on RDS on the C64 as far as racers go. I spent so many hours as a little guy building tracks that my older brother would humor me by trying later.

RC Pro Am was great. Only flaw, that a race was over as soon as the first car crossed the finishing line. Glad this wasn't the case in the Gameboy version, which was great fun playing with a friend via link cable...

Great episode for my memories. I had RC Pro-Am and loved it and poured so much time into that game. I think I received it sometime in 1988 too. I also have a lot of memories of the surf culture and T&C Surf Designs and the NES game. I had a couple surf themed t-shirts along with a several shirts featuring Lamborghinis and neon colors.

I really like the case this makes for Pro-Am’s degree of influence. Playing a significant role in the development of the isometric racer AND the kart racer is pretty massive.

RC Pro Am was my first game. Ahh 1988.

Loved T and C. Then again I was living in Florida one block from the beach. Lotta surfing and skating in 88

I remember back in 4th grade trading Castlevania to my neighbor and best friend for RC Pro Am. As awesome as Castlevania is, I don't regret it. I had a blast playing the hell out of RC Pro Am and mastering all the tracks. Also, I re-aquired Castlevania later anyway.

I still have fond memories of T&C2: Thrilla's Surfari even though I know its terrible too.

Way to bring up the "Racing Destruction Set", my brother and I loved that game as a kid. Definitely made the connection in my kid brain between the two of them back in the day.

Thank you for everything once again! I am amazed at how good NES games look on your videos. They look like I have never seen then even on the original system! Wow

"For kids in 1988, the controls took a bit of mental adjustment"... Can confirm! My brother bought me this for my 8th birthday and holy smokes, I simply could not deal with the controls at first. Much frustration though thankfully it was short lived.

I sure didn't expect to learn that there's a movie called "Surf Nazis Must Die" when I started watching this episode.

One of my best ever NES moves back in the late 80s was swapping a kid my T&C Surf for a Legend of Zelda gold cart. I came out way ahead on that deal 🙂

"It's in-house propaganda magazine" lol Indeed. Thanks Jeremy. This series makes me happy. (Edit: in those days I liked using the NES MAX above the Advantage which was pimped up by the US National Video Game Team)

My dad was really good at R.C. PRO-AM on the Genesis. I could never beat it back when I was a kid, and sadly still can't. 😅

6:55 I've always said that RC Pro AM is the precursor to Super Mario Kart. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way

The best version of RC Pro Am, eventually, was Rock 'n Roll Racing for the SNES. Just my opinion. Love the sweater, Jeremy. I only wish I had known about it a month ago; I would have ordered one for holiday merriment. (Which in 2020 is mostly solo, with the cats. They probably wouldn't care about the sweater as much as I would.)

This is the most chill AVGN episode I've ever seen.

Oh, so THAT'S where the skater enemy from the first level of Abobo's Big Adventure hails from!

Cool stuff as ever. An easier way to describe the steering in RC Pro Am, Micro Machines etc is to say right turns the car clockwise, left anti clockwise.

I played the hell out of RC Pro-Am back in the day. But there always came a point where the computer opponents just became unbeatable. They would cheat, waiting until the last lap, and then suddenly racing perfectly and at super fast speeds that were impossible to keep up with. The only possible way to move on was to hold onto some missiles and then try to shoot them as they zoomed by...

i love that club nintendo photoset! i have it too, but i love the way you framed them.

The NES popularity meant that everyone was throwing their hat into the ring, even when they had no right to.

In elementary school, I grew up playing the NES primarily using the NES Max controller. Like many (most?) people, I never actually used the sliding red disc, but instead pressed the black outline for my directional controls. Turbo came in handy sometimes. Going "back" to the regular NES controller always felt a bit weird to me.

My eyes strained every time it cut to Jeremy. I was trying in vain to figure out what Holiday sweater you were wearing. The straight line of “KO” makes me think Mike Tyson’s Pun-Out!! I require assistance.

I think it would have been pertinent to mention that RC Pro Am started life with out the “RC”, and was likely modified by suggestion from Nintendo due to the assumption that shooting and blowing up rival cars would be murder.

Man, the NES Max was one of my biggest disappointments as a kid. I loved the idea of the free-floating thumbpad but when I got it and realized how it actually worked, I was just crushed. It really was useless for most games. I'm not even sure why Nintendo thought it was a good idea, especially side-by-side with the amazing Advantage joystick. (At least they finally implemented a good thumbpad *over twenty years later* on the 3DS...)

T & C was so cool!!! I loved the surfing cat!!!

I remember a friend gave me this game back in 95' I was late but I totally loved and the sequel tooo

It's also worth noting that Diddy Kong Racing for the N64 was previously going to be Pro-Am 64, with no Diddy Kong or connection to Donkey Kong whatsoever, so clearly Rare knew they had a good one on their hands with this classic. Also I find it interesting that Rare and Atlus both worked with LJN at some point and are now doing bigger and better things

I believe it is called Dimetric projection. Where a perfect cube would be shown at such an angle so as to show the same amount of two sides and a different amount of a third side. In the case of RC Pro AM, the front left and right sides of the theoretical cube would be equal in apparent display size. The top of the cube would be smaller in apparent display size. Side note... I also owned the NES Max controller back then... once I got used to it, it was my favorite controller... much easier on the thumb. I also liked T&C Surf Design game... mostly the wood event... surfing was too tricky for me.

This and Sprint...classics.

I guess I never considered that RC Pro-Am would have some influence on Super Mario Kart but now that seems somewhat obvious. I hope Rare Replay comes to Switch so I can replay Rare's 8-bit classics without having to buy something like an NT Mini or something. As for, T&C Surf Designs: yeah, I played that too. Certainly not the worst LJN published work, just mediocre and sparse. Well, Goku in edited form next time on NES Works. At least some of those edits make the game better.

Nintendo has officially retired their Black Box trade dress. Even the silver ones. R.C. Pro-Am comes in a colorful painted box, whose main tip-off to its first party nature is the use of a bold titled Helvetica Black font for its title.

Shoutouts to the Street Fighter Christmas sweater.

I played R.C. on Gameboy, it was addictive somehow

Honestly, it's the "wade through crap" titles that I'm here for the most. I bought Kwirk because of Gameboy Works

Ah, I had Racing Destruction Set back in the day! Oh for the days when EA, back then "Electronic Arts," was generally a force for good in software publishing. There is a ton of interesting things about RC Pro-Am, its "Rare Coin-In" presentation that pretends to be an arcade game (and was probably done for easy possible conversion to a Vs. system arcade release that never happened), the emphasis on score and the interstitial screens that detail your progress through the game with a collection of trophies, the collecting of upgrades and Nintendo letters, and most infuriating, the "screw mode" the game activates if you play too well, where one of the opposing cars gets super speed, zooming down the track as if it had warp drive. God I hated that. The biggest problem with R.C. Pro-Am, IMO, is the view. It's not as bad as some games (such as the inexorable arcade game "Blomby Car"), but sometimes it feels like the game is zoomed in a little too close to the track. Any game where you have to react to the upcoming track coming in from off the edge of the screen at high speed amounts to a user interface screw. Fortunately RCPM has a map, but it requires taking your eyes off the track. Micro Machines also falls victim to this. Of course, both games' sensation of speed is what makes them so exciting to play, and that's connected to the scroll rate. If the car and track were depicted a bit smaller (and fairer) the terrain wouldn't whiz by so quickly, and might not be as fun to play. It's a fundamental tradeoff of the 2D racing genre.

As a kid I was cursed with T & C as one of the few carts I owned.

The funny thing about R.C. Pro-Am is that I knew plenty of people who rented it(myself included). I did not actually know anyone who owned it. Owners of the game certainly did exist, but I had never met them.

Wow. I actually did not realize that RC pro am was such an early title. I mean, I guess I knew since that was when I was playing it, but I never contextualized it that way in my mind.

I'd say T&C was at least half good in the context of mid-00s nes collecting when everything was worthless and you could get all time classics for nothing, but yeah in late 80s and modern terms your money and time are better spent elsewhere.

I remember a kid that was UNBEATABLE at a birthday party at Ice Hockey with a Nes Max.

Excellent sweater choice, Jeremy

I always sort of enjoyed T&C back in the day. Not for extended periods of time, but for short bursts, it's not all that bad.

Cobra triangle same engine as the EXCELLENT Cobra Triangle! but to enjoy cobra triangle to the fullest, u wil NEED rapid fire controler.

I played those two games when I was a kid and R.C. PRO-AM is the best that I played. 😀👍🎮

RC Pro-Am is an awesome time killer

Just here to stick up for T & C. It's very fun and the music rocks... It's all good Jeremy, don't hold back on your opinions.

Played a lot of RC Pro-Am as a kid, so when Rock n’ Roll Racing came out, I was right at home.

Surf Nazi’s Must Die was... a movie. A great final ten-twenty minutes for sure.

Multidirectional scrolling with no attribute glitches!

If you think about what were the other skating & surfing games available at the time, T&C was a lot of fun, might be why I have nostalgia for it but I like arcade gaming more then simulations. Controls weren't homogenized yet so I appreciate the experimentation of the trailblazers

T&C was a solid rental that every kid played so it was fun in that sense. Thrilla's Safari was just some straight refuse though.

Thank god I never bought T&C. I came so close as a kid, that mascot almost got me.

Like every other kid my age who lived near the beach, T&C Surf Designs clothes were a must-have. Then I got the game and was extremely frustrated and disappointed.

Ahhh yes the grand daddy cart racer. It is why my first game for the Super Nintendo was Mario Cart. RC Pro Am was great but hard. Also Rock N' Roll racing was also good. Also I don't know about other people but there where some games you got as a kid that looked dumb because of the simple gfx (effect of playing in the arcades allot). RC Pro-Am was one of those. So much fun. Also Balloon Fight was the same, even better in vs. mode

Man to think Atlus nowadays is known for their RPGs.

Me: "You wanna play some R.C. Pro-Am?" My bud: "Cool! Sure!" Me: "You wanna play T&C Surf Designs?" My bud: "What the hell'd I ever do to you!?"

What a game

I knew R.C. Pro-Am was the good one. They made at least 1 sequel and were also going to make one for N64 that eventually became Diddy Kong Racing.

"Remoterans so punch your price for flight"? What?

Glad Atlus got their shit together, that's for sure.

So the shovelware tidal wave is about to hit us, eh? The timing seems about right. Shovelware only gets churned out to capitalize on successful software platforms. If a platform isn't expected to become a hit then there is a delay before the wave hits as shovelware publishers need time to both realize that this is something to make games for and to develop the games. The NES didn't get full retail distribution until 1986. 1987 is when it would have been established as a hit so that's when the greenlight would have come on for shovelware development and naturally the bulk of that work would be completed for release in 1988.

I will die on the hill that the NES Max is the best official Nintendo-made controller, but I actually-literally have never & will never use whatever the heck that thumbstick is. My thumb can (just barely) cover two opposite cardinal directions of the black circle, and the availabilty of turbo simply by using the middle joint of my right thumb has frequently proved a godsend. That may sound like hyperbole, but it's specifically great for things like Mega Man where your default weapon can only have a fixed number of projectiles on screen at a time (3 in MM's case). There's plenty of NES-based situations where you'd benefit from alternating between turbo & normal firing without having to mindfully enable/disable turbo to do so, and there's nothing better than the Max for that.

...huh. So, I'm guessing the Arkanoid controller won't work with RC Pro-Am, right? If it did, it wouldn't be that effective, I guess.

Any Tamiya or Kyosho fans from the same era as RC Pro-Am? Between those two and videogames themselves it trully was a great time for cool hobbies.

I got the NES max so I could play 1943 better and loved it. It became my default controller. I was never any good with a joystick even on the atari.

Hoo boy Dragon Power

I favor Galaxy 5000 myself, but it's pretty clearly based on RC Pro Am.

What about that yellow car though? It got unfairly fast a number of races into the game. On my cartridge, the blue car always lost, but I swear on my cousin’s cartridge it was the blue car that got fast later in the game. That difference makes me wonder if there were variants of the game.