NOCLIP Pocket E80 - If He Had Wheels - Rascal

Take out the reptile, first of all. Welcome back to the podcast!
For our first Mystery May title for Pocket, we managed to roll a
critical miss, forcing us to do an epilogue episode on Rascal,
probably the worst game we’ve covered for the podcast. What started
as a joke episode based on a history with the game became probably
the podcast’s most enduring reference point for things being done
badly and given how old the episode is, it probably was high time
we took another stab at it. This episode isn’t overly long, and
features far fewer hosts, but hopefully this is a good introduction
to the game and why we keep talking about it, even after five
years. Rascal itself is a 3D platformer for the PS1 that pretty
much behaves in every way contrary to how a platformer should. You
have tank-esque controls, a camera that will absolutely not do what
you want it to do, and a terrible gun that you use to fight
infinitely respawning enemies that appear offscreen and kill you.
It’s a nightmare, but at least it’s a funny nightmare. The game so
confidently thrusts you into its meat grinder of ill conceived
challenges that you can’t help but laugh at your own poor fortune.
We’re going to be talking about the outdated design philosophy that
is expected of games of this era, the baffling design philosophy
that makes up the rest of the game and we talk about all the games
that were definitely inspired by Rascal’s secret genius. Thank you
for listening this week, or at least I hope you listened to make
playing this game again worth it. We are actually happy to
resurrect this particular meme, though, because we’ve referenced
the game already this year, possibly multiple times. This is as
close to a signature game as we have on this podcast, so hopefully
this can be the last word, unless we roll a critical miss again at
some point in the future… But did you play Rascal? Why? Was it out
of a call of the void style curiosity because you saw the game
lying around? Were you given this game as a gift, either by someone
who didn’t know better, or more likely, as a gag? Let us know over
on our Discord server or in the comments below! Next time, the dice
deigned we talk about Octodad: Dadliest Catch, closing out an
extremely weird chapter in NOCLIP Pocket history, so we hope you’ll
join us for that. Also, massive credit to this frankly incredible
guide, that we reference multiple times in both this and the
original Rascal episode:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/198413-rascal/faqs/37867