Welcome once again to 8-Bit Blockbusters, the column where I look at a blockbuster movie release and its 8-Bit counterpart. This time out I found myself with a bit of self doubt. I’ve been doing these blog posts for a few months now and got to thinking… Is this how I want to represent myself and the podcast, which you can listen to right here on Geekade.com, is this quality content, is this good enough? (see what I did there) And I told myself Martha, since that’s what I call myself, you are good enough. And you know who else is good enough? The Goonies, the Goonies are good enough. Submitted for your approval this is 8-Bit Blockbusters: The Goonies.

Released forty years ago this month (1985), I know I hate it too, The Goonies might just be the quintessential 80’s flick. The film contains the perfect storm of a story idea by Steven Spielberg, a script from Chris Columbus, and direction from Richard Donner along with a stellar cast including Josh Brolin, Sean Astin, Corey Feldman, Ke Huy Quan, Anne Ramsey and Martha Plimpton among others. It hits the 80’s film trope of “kids in danger” square on the nose and delivers, in my opinion, one of the finest adventure films ever made. It’s a search for pirate treasure through an underground series of caves and booby traps in Astoria, Oregon while being pursued by a dysfunctional crime family, The Fratellis, and helped by their neglected, deformed son. Oh and the reason the kids are pursuing said treasure is to stop their homes from being bulldozed to make room for a country club expansion. And the soundtrack’s lead single is from Cyndi Lauper who starred in the over seven minute music video with the cast of the film and professional wrestlers Rowdy Roddy Piper, Captain Lou Albano, Nikolai Volkof, The Fabulous Moolah, Freddy Blasie, and The Iron Sheik. (those might be the three most 80’s sentences ever written that don’t include the words radical or bodacious in them.) The overall plot is simple enough but the set-pieces and performances really shine. Jake, the singing Fratelli brother, is creepy and sadistic in a wholly unnerving way. Mama, the Fratellis boss and matriarch, is terrifying in her unyielding quest to catch and hurt the kids. Sloth, the deformed Fratelli son, is a sympathetic and lovable anti-hero who is as much a Goonie as the kids themselves. And the sets? Practical and breathtaking. The crew even went as far as revealing One Eyed Willy’s pirate ship to the actors for the first time as they were filming to get their genuine reactions.

What really makes The Goonies stand out though is the earnestness in which it presents its story. Those of us who grew up in the 80’s can instantly, and maybe even uniquely, identify with the characters we see on the screen. We are the latchkey generation, the left home alone before we should have been generation, the come back when the street lights come on generation, the first and last generation to be really on our own. And that’s not hyperbole. As a parent now of two teenagers I cannot even imagine letting them do half of the things I did at that age. But when I see The Goonies, I see my group of friends. I see the kids in my neighborhood who would suggest we go on adventures, okay usually it was me, that involved places we shouldn’t be, things we shouldn’t see, and adults who were very, VERY angry about us disturbing them. And I know I’m not alone. That group of friends represented my first real experience with a found family. Those kids laid the groundwork for my generation to split from their toxic relatives, get out and see the world, stand up for ourselves and what we believe in, and to call out and fight back against injustice. 

To their credit, the filmmakers never make the mistake of making fun of the kids. Sure some of the jokes the kids make to each other haven’t aged particularly well, namely the Chunk and Sloth stuff. But the kids are always treated as real, actual heroes. So many modern kids movies make fun of the kids in the stories for… the adults? The other kids? I’m not really sure and have never really understood why it happens. 80’s movies though, The Goonies in particular, simply didn’t do that. There is really very little difference between something like The Goonies and Indiana Jones. Both are played straight, with heroes that get into and out of insane situations in clever, sometimes hilarious ways. And both are done with respect and love. It’s what ultimately sets this generation of films, and kids apart. We never say die and we are damn sure good enough.

The Goonies, released for the Famicom in Japan in 1986 and the disk system in 1988, is an interesting if aged platformer. I remember being really confused in 1987 when I played The Goonies 2 on my NES. I wasn’t sure if I was playing a sequel to the movie, or to a game I had never seen, or something else entirely. I loved it though, obtuse as it was, and talked about it with Kris as a part of our Summer Series on the podcast a few years back. But the original was a game that never crossed my path until I was much older. Neither the Famicom nor Disk System versions of the game ever got ported to the US for a retail release and were only available on the VS System, a Nintendo arcade machine focusing on two player gameplay with heavily modified releases, or as part of a PlayChoice-10 machine, a multi-title arcade machine that allowed players to play NES games on an arcade cabinet for a set amount of time. In fact The Goonies is the only PlayChoice-10 title, out of a total of fifty three, to never be released in the US outside of the PlayChoice-10 machine. Thankfully there are some really easy ways to get and play this game now, many of those available right here, on the Stone Age Gamer ;)  

So what exactly do you get when you sit down with a copy of The Goonies? You get a fairly straightforward action platformer that does a decent job of telling the movie’s story with nice graphics, minus the sparse backgrounds, solid controls, tons of secrets, and a kick ass chiptune rendition of The Goonies Are Good Enough. Players control Mikey, not named but obviously him, as you make your way through six levels underneath The Fratelli's hideout. As you make your way deeper underground the levels become more complex. In order to progress to the next section you must unlock a gate with three keys found behind stone doors. In order to get to the items behind these doors you need to blow them up. Naturally you pick up bombs dropped by mice you have either kicked in the face or shot with a slingshot. (just like real life AND the movie) Sometimes the doors contain keys, sometimes health, sometimes slingshots, and sometimes kidnapped Goonies. (who unfortunately all look the same minus the final stage) Rescuing each Goonie is important as you cannot get to the final stage, Willy’s Pirate Ship, without having found each one.

In addition to kicking mice in the face, you must also avoid bats, flying skeletons, octopi, environmental hazards, and the Fratelli Brothers, Jake and Francis, who cannot be killed, only slowed down. The brothers attack by shooting or singing at you! That’s right, Jake sings opera notes at you and it hurts. (again, just like real life AND the movie) Thankfully there are tons of secret items to find which protect you from these environmental and auditory hazards. They are one of the main flaws with the game however as their placement and activation requirements are never even hinted at through gameplay and require dumb luck, or a guide/YouTube video, to acquire. They are not necessary to complete the game though and encourage repeated playthroughs to craft a nigh indestructible Mikey.

That’s really the gist of the game. It’s short, able to be completed in under an hour if you’ve never played before and around twenty five to thirty minutes if you’re experienced. What is here though is quite fun and absolutely worth a go. In fact, the movie and game make for a great double feature. But I want to know what you think. Join the Stone Age Gamer discord, or you can find me on Bluesky to let me know your thoughts. See you in two weeks.