Clone highs: Battle Vader / New Baseball / PakPak Monster | NES Works Gaiden: Epoch-03

Not two but three—THREE!—games this episode. This might be exciting if not for the fact that one of those amounts to a barely tweaked version of a game we've seen before, which originally debuted years before Cassette Vision existed. Props to Epoch for scraping as much content out of that one bit of program code as possible, I suppose.

Far more exciting are the non-baseball titles here, Battle Vader and PakPak Monster. While both blatantly rip off popular arcade games, both also demonstrate that distinctive Epoch quirkiness, compensating for the console's lack of horsepower by introducing some unconventional gameplay tweaks. Both games also have deep roots in Epoch's own pre-Cassette Vision history. Well, maybe not "deep," exactly. But notable.

Production notes:

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Cassette Vision footage recorded from original hardware, modded for S-Video output by Christa Lee of Sound Retro Co. Super Cassette Vision footage recorded from original hardware via legacy RGB cable. NES/Famicom footage captured from ‪@analogueinc‬ Nt Mini; SG-1000 footage recorded from Analogue Mega Sg Video upscaled to 720 with Micomsoft's xRGB Mini Framemeister; arcade footage captured from MiSTer when possible, with thanks to ‪@MiSTerAddons‬.