@@ReinEngel Lol yeah. I rented this as a kid and got it home and when the Ghostbusters logo popped up I was super pissed until the Stooges walked on screen. Classic troll indeed.
This game was always a strange enigma. The graphics and digitized voices are actually really good for an NES game and it shows a lot of love for the Stooges shorts. There’s just not much to it in the gameplay department.
I never noticed that the image of the banker on the box art for the game was a picture of Ted Healy. That is a really cool Easter egg. You're correct about the Stooges relationship with Healy. Healy was an alcoholic with a bad temper who paid the Stooges peanuts. Ironically, if not for Shemp leaving the act due to Healy, Curly wouldn't have joined the act.
I used to play this on the Commodore 64 back around ‘87 or ‘88. The Ghostbusters 2 image was the animated intro to “Defender of the Crown” instead which was Cinemaware’s other big game at the time. I thought they packed the wrong disks in the box. They got me too. lol
I rented this game as a kid in the late 80s, forgot everything about it, and then all the great memories came flooding back when I heard “Hey fellas - we’re in the wrong game!”
I've never watched any Stooges media in my life, but your channel makes me really want to get into them! This game was one of my only reference points for them when the AVGN did a video on it a few years ago
The minigame where you hit the other stooges was about changing the speed the hand moved when selecting a minigame. If you successfully hit them enough, you'd slow it down.
I remember renting this game with my friend, and it made for a fun evening. It was less frustrating than Who Framed Roger Rabbit for the NES, and we kept trying to get the slap fights even though you don’t gain money from it.
It is gratifying to see a review of the Three Stooges Games after all these years. I created the audio for the Amiga version which was the first game platform that could do justice to this license. Incredible Technologies (the developer of the Amiga, PC and C64 versions of the game) got the award in 1986 for best game audio. It was tough. I was working from VHS tapes and digitizing on a PC was just barely possible. Still, I'm proud of the result on the Amiga (your mileage on other platforms will vary). All those days in the "Stooge Mines" paid off and I am glad that we had a chance to work on this 'evergreen' license.
Thought you were a little harsh on it. I loved this game on the NES and played it repeatedly when I was 15 until I got the best ending. I always thought it was a blast (though I was always baffled as to why Curly suddenly looked more like Shemp during the pie fight level). I even tracked down a copy recently so I could play it again.
My brother bought this game used in the late days of GameStop still carrying older systems. We had trouble getting it to work on our old and finnicky NES, and thought it was actually a mislabelled game for a bit because of the Ghostbusters 2 logo. We were willing to try that too, but eventually got it to work and learned the joke.
That Ghostbusters 2 thing was only on NES which was 1990. The original game was 87 so that predated Ghostbusters2 which was 89. It was Defender of the Crown on Amiga.
There's another Three Stooges game for PC called The Three Stooges in Treasure Hunt Hijinks. I never played it myself, but from the few images I've seen, it looks like a find the hidden object game similar to the I Spy series.
I had this on NES as a kid as well, also super surprised to find as my Dad and I were both huge Stooge fans. The game made no sense! fortunately came with a manual which kinda explained how the game was working. just a series of random mini games basically. my favorite was the hospital, and throwing pies. but the game was SUPER hard and went by extremely quickly. it kinda had a creepy quality to it.
None of them are quite the multimedia feast of the Cinemaware Stooges game, But I always enjoyed the Stooges Arcade game, "Brides is Brides" (Featuring a Billy Gilbert-esq Opera Singer bonus stage), and the Laurel and Hardy Commodore 64 game (Which probably should have been called Laurel Vs. Hardy since it's a two player slapstick war). There's also a Honeymooners PC game (where you have to drive the bus as Ralph, and navigate the sewers as Norton). I guess what I'm hinting at, is I really enjoyed your take on the Stooges NES game, and would love to hear your take on other slapstick inspired games, as well!
This was my first NES game that I ever got, I loved it so much. NOTE: The point of the slapping mini-game is to slow down Moe's hand in the job selection screen. You land hits, hand goes slower. You get hit or your attacks are thwarted, hand goes faster.
I remember seeing an article about this in Nintendo Power as a kid. Didn’t know much about the Three Stooges back then though. I knew of them but not very well. Quite some time later I got it for my brother who loves the Three Stooges and enjoys this game. Didn’t know there were so many ports and remakes though. Wow.
Someone somewhere really had faith this game would eventually make it big with an audience. Damn thing got more ports and re-releases than most of the classics
Ah, no way! I was actually gonna ask if you'd do a video about this, but here it already is! This game has a weird history, as noted here. They sure did like remaking and re-releasing this thing all over the place at seemingly random times. It's a pretty fun game and arguably, the NES version is the best one. (Since it has the _Ghostbusters II_ reference.)
I remember a very different Three stooges video game on PC where they're basically in a barn the entire time and the game is just a finite game where you find random items and objects that they point out on a chart on the left side of the screen and you have to find them inside this Barn within a certain time limit or you fail and it doesn't really end it just keeps going and I give you more items. I think when you find items they slap each other or make a noise or something but I'm not sure. I played it when I was like 4 years old.
On the Tandy version of this game, the hospital level had the stooges in little cars which was more accurate to “Men In Black”, the episode it was based on.
I dont think I’ve ever seen the three stooges shorts or movies, but your way of presenting the history of them is so interesting that I cant stop watching your videos! Keep up the good work
Don't worry, I'm sure the inevitable Switch port will improve things :P Seriously though, I actually first played this on Amiga in the early 90s and it was my first exposure to the Stooges, so I do thank this game for opening that door for me.
I actually looked for this review on your channel and didn't find it so I knew it had to be on its way. My brother and I played this as an NES rom like 20 years ago and couldn't get past how weird and unnecessary it was. We actually watched Three Stooges as kids so that just made the game even worse Edit: I forgot about the title card. That was pretty good.
A video game based off the Three Stooges sounds like a very good idea. Getting into situations where slapstick antics ensue while you play as any of the stooges. Levels based on some well known shorts, really the idea has a good amount of potential if done right. Unfortunately, the executioner the idea was quite poorly.
The Slap fight actually does do something. The better the snack down you lay the slower the the selection hand moves. If you take the brunt of the beating the hand speeds up.
I never knew there were versions of the game that had a Ghostbusters 2 fake-out intro. I remember it as being Defender of the Crown (another Cinemaware game).
I know this has nothing to do with the video (great video, btw. Didn't know about those games xD), but have you ever seen Garth Marenghi's Darkplace? It's one of the most obscure comedy shows that I personaly have ever seen (besides the Swedish shows we got here). You should definatly give it a shot, at least for Halloween since it's an absurdist spoof of Stephen King esque horror. It really sucks that not more people know about it since it's one of the most unique comedy shows ever made.
I kinda hope that you end up reviewing the Gilligan's Island video game on NES, because that's another weird game that tried to renew interest to an already old/dead franchise that wouldn't have made a good video game to begin with.
Slap fight: the purpose of that mini game was to slow down Moe’s hand. Every turn, Moe’s hand moves a bit faster. The slap fight allows you to slow down Moe’s hand. Every time Moe gets hit, it goes faster; and every time Moe hits Larry or Curly, his hand slows down. Banker: if you never picked up a safe or free money, the banker V Ketchum just sends a nasty note. But if you did find free money or the sage, V Ketchum asks you to pay him back that money you found (which he says was his to begin with).
I remember buying it years ago for the C64 long before playing it on the Nintendo. It was MUCH better on the C64, though (probably because of the music, mostly).
I'd like to see you cover Snow White And The Three Stooges. I know many Stooges fans dismiss it for its lack of slapstick, but as a good kids' movie and an adaptation of the fairy tale, it's...kind of nice? Great production values, nice music, great direction from Walter Lang, who helmed The King And I. And it has one up on the Disney version by actually giving a bigger role to the prince (which Disney was planning to do, but eventually cut his longer scenes). I know the Stooges weren't too pleased with having sad scenes in one of their movies, but they actually pulled them off quite nicely and touchingly. Maybe it's just that I have a soft spot for the kind of old kids' movies they'd show on UHF channels, but I think it's a rather nice visualization of the fairy tale.
I rented it a few times on NES back in the day, it was one of the few games my dad, as a Stooge fan, was interested in. BTW, the slapping game can be used to slow down Moe's hand on the job select screen.
It's weird that we both came out with the same type video on the same day, a little weird that your gameplay is dimmed a bit, but you had more time to explain the game and its other ports, I only had 2 minutes and 30 seconds to talk about the NES title!
wasn't this game featured in Lethal Weapon 3. when Riggs visits Lorna's house after a chase? I think it was installed on Lorna's Apple II computer that Martin wakes it up by messing with the keyboard.
It's unfortunate that you did not really understand that the mini-game where you have "maybe 6 moves" to assault the other stooges actually hslpe to SLOW THE HAND DOWN for the "selection" screens shortly thereafter. The more times you land an attack on Curly or Larry in the time allotted, the slower the hand will be on the selection screen.
I still own my original NES and this game. The worst job in my opinion was the boxing level, there was no way to get through it easily. For me the easiest was the Hospital.
The original Amiga version is the superior version. The reason the game had limited mini-games seems to be because of memory limitation of the time. The game came out on 2 or 3 720K discs. To play a new mini-game, if you didn't have a second disc drive, you had to swap disks every time. The graphics on the Amiga looked great and ahead of their time over PC and Mac, which ate up most of the 512K of RAM.
Nice I always enjoy The Three Stooges Video Game I recently played the GBA version and the NES version as well not to mention the Computer game in Lethal Weapon 3
'The Curly Shuffle' had little or nothing to do with the game getting made. The head of Cinemaware and my then boss, Robert Jacob, was a huge Stooges fan going back to his 50/60s childhood. The big problem the company kept running into was that platforms like the Amiga greatly increased what could be done in terms of graphics and sound but the storage was still severely limited and painfully slow. CD-ROM was regarded as where the company's future lay but it was too far off from becoming mainstream by the better part of a decade. Cinemaware, in partnership with the UK Mirrorsoft did have one of the first CD-ROM PC games to ship, a version of 'defender of the Crown' with Red Book audio but otherwise the same as the floppy disk version. CD-ROM by itself provided, for the time, immense storage but was still really slow. About 150KB/s read speed for first generation drives operating at the same rates used for audio. Hard drive installs weren't widely supported for most games then and RAM was another big limiter. The amount an Amiga would reliably offer was 512K. Larger amounts of RAM were supported and later games did try to make use of it by caching a lot of stuff up front for one long delay rather than a load delay after every level completed or failed. The games that worked best were those that pretty much the same thing from start to finish, such as scrolling shooters, and if they needed to do an occasional disc load it was for different tile sets or BGM, while the bulk of the code and data remained unchanged after the initial load. A game with highly varied mechanics and imagery was hard to pull off effectively. The one button joystick was another limiter that had greatly overstayed its usefulness.
Sweet Fuckin' Jumpin' Jesus, someone else knows this game exists!! I had this as a kid on floppy disk, and was as disappointed and mystified by it as the Ghostbusters one where you spend most of the time trying to buy basic Ghostbusters gear.
The slower/faster mini game broke the whole game for me as a kid since you could slow down the draws for the rest of the game and maximize the money output.
I would absolutely love if you did more video game reviews. I know it isn’t necessarily fitting with the channel but you also have Addams family video games and I’m sure there’s some others that would tie into your content
