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Episode 604: The Hunt for Red October (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-05 13:38:18
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Jeremy: For some reason, this week appears to be all about Communism, at least for my work. Between this episode and my latest NES Works video, we're partying like it's 1989 and the party takes place in a bare unheated room lit by a single lightbulb in the back side of a brutalist concrete apartment block the size of an airport. And other such clichés.

No theming was intended, though! It's just one of those things. And this particular thing came into being because The Hunt for Red October has a weirdly huge place in video game history—not so much to do with the property itself (which made more of a splash, as it were, in its book and film forms) but because of the way it propelled author Tom Clancy into the limelight, which eventually resulted in an entire franchise of military shooters and stealth games. This episode is not about Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell, however, except in passing. It's more about Clancy's beginnings, the textbook-perfect Hollywood adaptation, and the incredible difficulty several developers had in translating a film about a submarine very explicitly not dealing in naval combat into a fun action game for consoles.

Edits by Greg Leahy; art by John Pading

10:35 - Motion Picture OST: Hymn to Red October

18:43 - Motion Picture OST: Hymn to Red October (cont.)

25:43 - Motion Picture OST: Nuclear Scam

34:39 - Motion Picture OST: Two Wives

46:05 - Motion Picture OST: Chopper

56:38 - Motion Picture OST: Torpedo, Bullets and The Cook

1:04:35 - Motion Picture OST: Red Route I | Amiga (1990) OST: Title

1:12:39 - NES OST: Briefing

1:18:24 - NES OST: Submarine Stage

1:23:59 - Game Boy OST: Level 1

1:30:34 - SNES OST: Staff Roll

Closing - Motion Picture OST: End Title

Files

Comments

Ben Fraser

That was a fun discussion, always nice to have Ray back on the show. I just watched The Hunt for Red October for the first time a few weeks ago, since the Blank Check podcast is covering John McTiernan, so good timing, retronauts!

littleterr0r

The first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this episode is the way that Chief Wiggum's wife pronounces "Clancy" but the second thing that I thought of is how I've been on the sub from the movie because it's permanently docked at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry here in Portland. Go on it if you'd like to spend the day smelling like diesel fumes.

Wood Duck [Legacy Edition]

At PAX Australia 2016 there was a panel "Bad Boys and Brawlers" featuring Andrew Davie discussing the early days of games development in Australia and his time at Beam Software. Amongst the stories were why the terrible NES Power Glove port of Bad Street Brawler exists and of Beam backwards engineering a Japanese NES, making their own dev kit and essentially being bribed by Nintendo to NOT sell it commercially. Andrew also briefly discussed making movie tie-in games, and specifically referenced THFRO. Sadly that part of the panel isn't in the one video online I could find but from memory he said they were usually given only a plot outline and some artwork or even a full script if they were lucky. Then the programmers and artists would just spitball ideas into something workable. It was a bloody beaut panel reflecting on the days of a nascent industry and Andrew seemed to get a lot off his shoulders by being able to explain the context surrounding his programming one of the "worst games of all time". Part of the panel filmed is here for those interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh1drqSLzPM

Jonathon

Just had to chime in that I have The Hunt For Red October board game but have yet to play it. My wife and I inherited it from her parents, along with a bunch of other seemingly very convoluted board games from the late 80s and early 90s. I'll have to dig it out and give it a go now.

TheLupineOne

Some number of years back I spent Christmas at my grandparents, and me and my extended family stayed at a guest house at a nearby farm. I slept close to one of its well stocked bookshelves, and one volume that caught my eye was "Rainbow Six" by Tom Clancy. Of course, I knew those names from video gaming, but not from literature! But the book was thick, dense, unnappraochable. What I also remember that Christmas was our evenings spent playing Risk, a much more approachable way of experiencing and understanding the endless futility of war.

Gabriel Schray

I like how slap-happy Diamond got here about these dreadful games

CapNChris

Thank you for the episode, but I'm going to have to come to the defense of this film from sacred-cow beating Retronauts (who also mercilessly assaulted Blade Runner not too long ago). This is a great movie, which I was inspired to watch last week, and it still holds up much better than its contemporaries. Eerily, it made me nostalgic for the moral simplicity of the Cold War (at least my own personal view). I thought that describing Tom Clancy as anti-war in a similar vein as Hideo Kojima was an intriguing and plausible assertion. However, a cursory internet search of Tom Clancy's background (which I did immediately after the episode) may have defeated that argument. But please let the Tom Clancy enthusiasts tell me otherwise if I'm wrong following my 30 seconds of effort. I can't say I've ever actually read a Tom Clancy novel, but if anyone likes spy novels of this kind, I have to recommend Frederick Forsyth, especially his older books.

Astrogamer

One thing I'd like to mention is that the Jack Ryan is based on the Jack Ryan series of books, the sequel series starring Jack Ryan's son. I'm not well versed in the books since I read one of them like 15 years ago but I think the plot gets to where the original Jack Ryan becomes president.