M hmmm. Sounds like news is coming in. That's thought off the wires,
breaking news sound here on this April nineteen, twenty sixteen edition of the
Giant BombCast, we have ourselves an old fashioned scoop around here. Yeah,
it's yes, tell Type I get that working. Yep. Yeah, part
of the new studio. We got the tell Type machine in here. Came
hot over the trans Atlantic cable. Keep it right next to the game tapes
machines. Yeah. Wait, well, don't do that because it'll eat all
the cables, just like all the tapes keep getting eaten. Attention, stop,
stop press. The new PlayStation four is codenamed Neo Stop Yeah. We
uh Austin Walker, Yeah, Austin scoops Walker. Sure, yeah, it's
inherited. That has Uh yeah, I got a hold of like man,
this this came in hot and heavy. Yeah, we got we got hold
some informations internal Sony documentation about the new PlayStation four. Yeah, which is
this is uh, that's just rumor in speculation this time. Yeah, it
was like right, this popped up back at GDC. Uh, some developers
talking where reporter could overhear them. Led to some other stuff and here we
are is that really how the first one happened. Well, I think that
was additional confirmation. It was it was a handful of things coming together.
I guess. I think like, like you know, reporters like Patrick Klapper
was the one who broke this original story, but like you know, the
reporters talk to trusted sources, but then also like standing in line for things
at GDC, they just overheard some stuff but that information was was verified.
But but yeah, Austin got us some specs. Yeah, the whole bunch
of internal policies exactly how this thing's gonna work. Yeah, A lot of
this seems like it's kind of aimed at like developers in terms of like answering
questions about how the upgraded PlayStation four hardware will work with the existing unit and
existing PSN, what they can and can't do when making games, what they
are expected to do, some best practices for how to take advantage of the
hardware. Yeah, so I think that is that is the bigger story here
than than like you know, the upgraded specs are what they are, but
more hearing about what their policies are going to be about not splitting this user
base. How do you not disenfranchise the what thirty five million people they're they're
like, they're walking over type rope tightrope here, because if they if they
put out a console and upgraded console that goes too far and then let people
do whatever with it, then you know, you'll have games that will don't
work on the old PlayStation four and you will anger that existing user base.
But at the same time, with some of the decisions they seem to be
making right now around what you can and can't you when making games for the
new hardware, uh, it seems like they're kind of putting some shackles on
what you can do with the new hardware. That then means it might not
be that big of a deal. Yeah, or as big of a deal
as it could be. And this is stuff that probably could change years from
now as these requirements change, as as the makeup of of which consoles are
out there in the marketplace starts to shift in favor of the upgraded hardware,
maybe they loosen some of this stuff. But right now today, I mean,
just go to giant bomb dot com if you want to see the actual
specs. Yeah, you know, we're not gonna necessarily talk those numbers here
because those those are in the story. And yeah, two point three x
flops on the GPU, one point three x CPU and uh one point two
four x on the memory bandwidth. They'll also be freeing up some uh it's
it's it's still eight gigs around, but they're freeing up some more of that
space. Yeah, like they're like, so games running in neo mode can
use an extra half a gig for some weird reasons. Well, now,
how substantial is that for, like, you know, not for someone that's
not super technically minded. Yeah, from a computer standard, how much more
powerful? This is not a nine eight? Oh the well actually actually so
the learned analysis that I have read is that the GPU is actually pretty massively
upgraded, like more than they expected. But since the memory and CPU are
not that much more upgraded, like, it's kind of going to be bottlenecked
pretty hard. Is it enough to make the difference from like thirty to sixty
was not necessary? Will? It will depend on the game, that's you
know, and so that that's kind of the other like without that bit of
information, it's kind of hard to know because different games are going to be
made in different ways, with different bottlenecks, in different places. So if
these games do get patched, and existing games can get patched, they won't
automatically take advantage of the new hardware just buy its presence. They will have
to be patched. You know, That'll depend from from game to game,
So Sony's not necessarily hard and fast on that stuff. The one thing they
are hard on is that, uh, you can't have a worse frame rate
when running in neo mode. They talk a lot about base mode and neomode
and a lot of this stuff. So if you're if you're running in the
new neomode, you cannot have a lesser frame rate than your base mode.
So I guess that would only come up if they like try to improve the
fidelity to a point where so much its way better, but the frame rate
has taken like that. They are not allowing that that would be there.
They are probably smart to put that in place, though you would want to
think the developers would not do that anyway. But the other the other end
of that is the thing people were worried about. It is like the High
Rule Warriors on three DS scenario of like, technically it runs like garbage.
Technically it comes out for both, but it it's borderline unplayable on the old
hardware. Yeah, which that I don't know that they're necessarily dissuaded, like
that could still happen. It totally c like it seems like somebody's gonna have
to practice some pretty strict quality control to make sure that, yeah, games
are good. If they come back and say, hey, your your base
mode like version is garbage, Yeah, I mean you can't do this.
It is not that great of an upgrade. So the thinking, I don't
know, would hopefully be that if there was a disparity, it wouldn't be
that vast. But I suppose yeah, I think it'll it'll it'll depend.
So so let's get into it. Uh, this unit will support four K.
Yeah, though I mean I think, as we've said before, that
doesn't necessarily mean that the console is powerful enough to push native four K video
games. It sounds like general that's going to be possible. Yeah, so
that's where it gets into K Yeah. Yeah, so like they'll have scalers
that can scale things to four K and signal coming out, Yeah, your
TV will say, yes, this is four K. But you know,
as we've seen with games not actually natively rendering at ten eighty this will kind
of continue to be the case, and and so there they're actually that's where
it gets into some of the best practices stuff of trying to recommend different ways
for developers to kind of do that or get to a point where, hey,
they can render it ten eighty for base mode and still have this thing
for neomode and and a lot of that stuff. So they've got some other
things like, oh well, hey, maybe you've got one display buffer that
runs at ten eighty when an HDTV connected, but when it detects a four
K TV, it'll say go to thirty eight twenty one sixty, right,
and very very developer oriented documents. Yes, yeah, And then they've they've
got some other additional things like, oh well, maybe instead you are just
rendering at the higher resolution and scaling it down to ten eighty uh when a
TV that cannot support anything higher than that is connected or you know. So
that they're kind of trying to convey a handful of different strategies for how to
kind of address that sort of stuff. And again, I think's one of
those things that like different games will uh, will work in different ways whatever
what makes sense for for their game. But when it comes down to stuff
like you know, release date, release timing and all that sort of stuff.
That's a little hazy as well, but hard to interpret from this.
But the thing we can interpret is that they are saying that as of October,
games that hit the streets in October will need to support both the original
PlayStation four and the Neo R. Would that imply maybe a holiday ish release?
Maybe it could. And also like games that will hit in September will
need to have day one patches in place. They are also saying that they
are okay with these titles launching before the upgraded PlayStation four hits. Yeah,
so like it would make sense to frontload a good library of stuff that takes
advantage of the sure, but also it means that we probably won't see it
before October, But it also doesn't necessarily mean that it hits day and date
with the PlayStation VR. Could you conceivably see like a big game like Uncharted
four is coming out? What may may could that get patched advantage games that
are late September. Games that are hitting in late September, we'll have to
have a day one patch for neomod okay, prior to that. It is
at the developers discretion if they choose to patch in support for this upgraded hardware.
I would be shocked if Sony didn't go back and at least pick like
the Last of the Marquee Charted maybe not Last of Us, but the rematched
one that would look as I mean, it already runs a sixty like it's
that's that's ship sale. But like blood Borne and Uncharted and I don't know,
well, I think games that would like maintain popularity and also show well.
I think Uncharted is your Uncharted Seats is to me the E three game.
That's the game of Like, hey, you've all played Uncharted four because
it came out in May. Now look at this, like, I fully
expect that there is a sixty frames per second. Sure, you know Ratchet
looks great, but that runs at thirty. I can imagine that running at
sixty looking incredible. So that could be one of them. Yeah maybe,
but that's that cames out now, and by the time that this all happens,
no one will care about Ratchett. Instead, we're talking about Horizon,
We're talking about Last Guardian, you know, we're talking about Final Fantasy fifteen,
you know. But Uncharted I think is the one game that would make
sense as like, you know, you know what this game looks like because
it was popular and you all played it now here it is like like that
to me, sounds like an E three stage segment, though I might,
well, maybe maybe addressing it this way would actually shine a brighter light on
the deficiencies of it. But fall Out four would be the game I would
actually I could totally be, I would actually do. But then at some
point you're kind of throwing Bethesda under the bus, and hey, remember when
this say, remember when this ran like trash? Look at this runs somewhat
better. So I was I was, actually I was thinking about the fall
Out for example, this morning, and the nightmare scenario that popped into my
head was what if Bethesda and I'm not trying to single them out here or
whatever, this is just a you know, thought experiment or whatever, but
what if they shipped a Game of the Year version of Fallout four and only
that version was the one that got the work to make it run better on
the Neon. I think that would be a really messed up thing to do.
I agree, I totally agree, But it's in time. You could
potentially see a developer maybe doing something like ioware Sony h and I had hold
over approvals on stuff like that, I would actually say no, yeah,
yeah, that would be the right thing to do. Yeah, I would
say you cannot unless you if you if you also patch this into your existing
version of the game, then hey, obviously let's go. Absolutely that would
be the right thing to do. But to but they if they fork fall
Out for on PlayStation consoles, specifically to sell it again with a neo add
on, that I think is I would want to think that Sony would be
smart enough to not let them do that. Again, I'm not I'm not
saying that individually is likely to do something like that. It's just the example
I thought. But yeah, like other games could be certainly yeah, or
if they sold another blood Born or something like that, right, but then
that seems to be that that seems to be unlikely. But yeah, I
don't otherwise looking at this stuff like they are going out of their way not
to split the user base, not to alienate any segment of the customer base.
Right, everybody will be able to play every game, just at different
quality levels. Yeah, is there anything that states like, you know,
with the old expansion pack, with sixty four, Like some games would be
like, well, you can only do multiplayer if you had that they that
is they have that's like accounted for that. That's specifically you cannot do that.
So every mode is available on the one example, the one example they've
given, and and this is only an example, So depending on what game
you're making, you might have a different method for this. So online you
can't segregate your user base into a Neo bucket and a base bucket, So
you couldn't do a thing like, oh, the player count is higher if
everyone has a Neo. You can't do that for online modes. Any any
case where the two consoles would be mingling together has to be the same experience,
although you could vet the flip side of that is you can see an
argument where like, people with a higher frame rate have an advantage potentially potentially,
yeah, but but the mode needs to be the same. Yeah.
Yeah. The one example they did give though, is if you had say
an offline model like a split screen or something like that, that was you
could you could have it be four player on base, eight player on Neo,
but not but not online only, and the mode has to exist in
both locations. You can't have an exclusive mode, so you wouldn't be able
to do like, hey, it's got a level editor only for the Neo.
Okay, So like if Basse mode is not powerful enough to run local
split screen, you can't enable that for Neo mode. But if you do
have like maybe two players split screen that works like a border Lands or something,
you could do you know, four player. Okay, Yeah, so
that seems to be the one. The one exception to that, to having
like a different experience between the two consoles is for something that is offline but
also must exist on the base model. Same goes for the same goes for
VR. It's not like you can do a VR only on Neo sort of
thing. It's like, hey, you need to do VR on both.
But obviously the more power of the Neo would give you a better potentially a
better frame rate and some other boots, and the Original still has to have
that like baseline frame rate for VR. Yeah. Yeah, because that's because
that'll just make you sick. I mean, at some point, that's that's
not a TRC, you know, that's not like a limitation of the approvals
process. At some point, that's just common sense. Like you can't make
a shitty VR game because everyone will get sick. It'll be bad. Yeah,
so it's you know, like you can't have DLC that's exclusive save data
transfers back and forth between the two. So if you have a base and
a upgraded in your in your home, you can play on either. Now,
what about it if I've installed a bigger hard drive in my PS four,
Like, because I'm probably gonna buy this new one, can I take
that out and put it in? I mean, I highly doubt it,
because you can't do that with the existing model. You can't. You could
format, you could format it, you would have to. Oh, but
I can't just keep it. You can't just keep it even the same.
I think you can't do that between even you can't plug it into another PS
four and have it work. It won't recognize it properly. But but they
do have that to that, Like, yeah, I think you have to
like format or do a system restore or something. Yeah. They so they
added like a few firm words ago, they added that local like you back
up to a USB hard drive and move stuff over. Yeah, And if
I'm reading this fact correctly, that means you can transfer PT to wouldn't you.
Yeah, yeah, so you can do that transfer process to move games
from an existing PS four two and go and back. I guess I'll have
to do that, So so that process would work. I wonder if you'll
see things like certain bugs only happening in the Neo version. That's kind of
my concerned as well, because I mean, like, if you're on a
neo system, right, you're locked into the Neo version. If there are
bugs with that, you can't just like switch to them to the base right.
Well that's yeah, that's just on developers to yeah, to troubleshooting.
Yeah, I know. And also you know, like at some point this
is not going to be one to one identical hardware to the baseline PS four,
So older games that are not getting patched or anything like that, could
there potentially be problems there, Like we don't know. I mean, it
is it's the same parts running at different clock speeds generally, so it should
be pretty safe. But it should be, but I guess ultimately we don't
know. Let's see here. You know, some of these questions are you
know, like just kind of the stuff that developers would probably need to know
because some of this gets integrated into games. But yeah, like themes and
avatars from the original PS four will come over, your account will will come
over. Patches are unified. It's not like here's your neo content patch versus
your your PS four patch discs will Well here's actually can a disc be sold
only on the original PS four but then supported on the neo by means of
a patch? Okay? Yeah, no, that's okay this so yes,
previously previously released titles can get patched, but new titles will have to have
it out of the gate. We talked about that before. But you can't
go the other way with it. You can't sell a disc as a neo
only game and then patch in base PS four support to it. That is
not allowed. They seem like, like I was super pessimistic when this news
came to light back at GDC about the way this fragments the market, but
like they seem to be making the best of it. They seem to be
doing everything they can to make sure that people with the old system who aren't
going to upgrade don't feel to completely left out in the cold at the risk
of you know, like not fully utilizing you know this new hardware. Right.
Yeah, they're going way out of their way to make sure that.
And but again, like we all know for sure, like the policies are
in place, but we don't know until the rubber meets the road. Are
we going to get a bunch of twenty frames per second base mode games at
this point because nobody cares? But like probably not, because like there are
millions of those things out there. They would be creating themselves in the foot
They would be insane to ship poorly made games on that. But over time,
but two years in what changes you know? So, uh, you
know there's some stuff in here about controllers, like, yes, those will
work across the board. Can special game peripherals be used on the Neo as
they are? Yes, so fight sticks you would presume would come over controllers
come right over there. They're paired and there's no difference. There, No
racing wheels, that's one thing they're taking out all racing that kind of like
what you mentioned though, like like how is the customer base going to evolve
over time? You know? So like this thing at at the earliest is
going to hit three years after the original one came on. And like we
were talking yesterday and Vinnie was saying like, oh, maybe I shouldn't get
this one because I should wait for next years or whatever. But like it
raises the question, like what's their tempo going to be as these things?
Yes? Like does this become the new normal? Like does what does this
thing launch as? Does it launch as the PS four K? Does it
launch as just the PlayStation four? Or do they take this opportunity to just
call it the PlayStation the new PlayStation four and or the new PlayStation and then
from there it's this rolling cycle instead of a PlayStation five if I Yeah,
Well, there's are so many questions about this stuff, but I think a
lot of it speaks to the changing nature of what video games and consoles and
platforms are right now, with VR, with phones, with with everything happening
right now at different speeds in different places. You know, everyone is making
their own weird moves, right. I mean Microsoft seems to be leaning into
the PC with some success. Right, maybe they're, but they're also you
know, they've been talking doing this exact same thing as well. Yeah,
and like whatever work am D is doing for Sony, could you know that
type of thing can also be applied back to neck a new Xbox. Yeah,
it seems you know, but there's other stuff like here rendering like it
seems like they won't allow it as play buffer lower than ten eighty on in
neo mode. So these cases of games under ten eighty getting scaled up seems
like that will only be a base mode thing. If I had to put
money on it, I would bet this is the only update to the PlayStation
four that it gets made, and then they make the PlayStation five, and
three or four years after this is a PlayStation five and it's still backwards compatible
with all the old stuff. Well that's the thing, is like it you
know now that everyone's kind of on this architecture that is very PC like and
stuff like, developers really like it. It seems effective for making games.
It's powerful enough. It's you know, like, uh, they're not making
custom cell processors and investing a zillion dollars in R and D the way they
had to before. Like, there are not a lot of good reasons to
get off of this totally totally. So at some point, what is a
PlayStation f I've other than this, but another half step forward or with a
full step forward, I think the opportunity that you get with a PlayStation five
is to then shut out the people with the original PlayStation four. That's the
point at which you say, Okay, all of your old games will work
on this new system, but the games made for this new system do not
work on the old hardware. Sure, okay, like this is our this
is our cutoff. This is where you need to buy the new thing to
play the new stuff, but all your old stuff will still work. Okay,
I could I could that that That seems sensible. It almost just like
how you how you market a thing. Yeah, it almost seems like the
Intel TikTok thing, right of like of like here's here's the big new thing,
and then a few a couple of years later or whatever, here is
the refined version of that new thing, and then as that that's how Apple,
that's how Yeah? Uh? Yes? That that that seems sensible.
That seems sensible. Yeah. I don't know. It's it's it's weird,
and it it upends a lot of what we consider to be how the console
business has always worked, you know. I mean the new Nintendo three DS
was kind of an indicator in this direction. Nintendos did the game Boy Color
that they have the DSi right, they've like they've been doing it for a
while. They just never like justify it. They's never they never show why
they actually bought dwar Well, look, i mean Gameboy to game Boy color
is huge, that's true. Okay, Yeah, you're right that case,
like that case that was actually that's actually that was actually a big deal.
D S to DSi, Like, yeah, you're right, Like who cares,
Like it's mostly form and in that case, like the DS Light whatever
that was, that was a better piece of hardware in terms of like dsiwear
was not really a factor. No, not at all. Yeah, I'm
I'm on the verge of talking me out of my league here, but I
think from what I've read, like it actually gets more expensive to make older
hardware the longe that you get out from release. Yeah, like like keeping
those that fabrication up for something that people don't need anymore. So yeah,
and and you know, traditionally consoles undergo several internal revisions over the years,
So in some sense, this almost seems like they got to the point where
they were going to make their more efficient, cheaper to build a version of
their console and then just reinvested, like, oh well, this also affords
us the ability to raise the power on it. Let's do that too,
and then we can sell it at at at a higher price instead of the
keeping the person it is. And so there's no indicator on price in here.
There's there's only loose indicators about timing and you know, release windows and
stuff like that. But again, most of this is developer focused. For
like, you know, when did they get in dev kits? The answer
is some of them. Some developers will probably already have dev kits right now,
but they don't look like the actual hardware will look. So we don't
know if this will just look like a PlayStation four or if they will take
the time to do a visual refresh of the unit there. Maybe maybe I'll
put some real buttons in it. Oh, got it? Well, the
I guess the current's true. You have the PS four with the real clicky
button on it? Or is you still capacity? I fucking hate passive buttons.
Yeah, I think mine's capacitive. Maybe it's both. I don't think
does it click in when you heard it on? No? I think I
just brush it and it turns on. Okay, you got the old one.
I always use my controller, so I can't really Yeah, mine just
turns on whether I brush it, you've you've got you've got that awful hardware
bug with like those things. I have it propped up by PS one cases
of Tony Hawks, pro Skater and Symphony at the Night. So that's the
bottom eject button doesn't rub against So I've taken the rubber thing out. It
still turns out all the time. There's some stuff in here about and this
again, this is more developer focused. But it's like, if a bug
is present in the neo version of a title, can the users still play
the game in base mode? No, So if you have a Neo you
will not be able to shut off neo mode and force base. Yeah,
if a bug's found in the neo version, can original PlayStation four only support
be released first? No? So fix all your bugs. So it seems
like they're trying to hold developers to a standard with this stuff. It just
again though, it doesn't sound like the neo games are going to be that
ambitious over the base stuff, right, It's just gonna like better frame rates
orders in a world where like most of these games are coming to the PC.
Uh, you know, work at a higher resolution is already happening,
So I don't know enough to speak to like if this creates a real hassle
for developers to have to support two models of PlayStation, or if this is
something that kind of comes almost automatically unless they want to do something more ambitious
with it. So I don't really know, but yeah, we ran We
ran a report. A Digital Foundry then ran a longer thing kind of corroborating
what we had reported and kind of walking through some of that stuff. Yeah,
they've got some more analysis in there about like what to expect performance wise.
They interestingly, they mentioned that like supply chain might delay the release of
this thing because like I guess everybody is moving to fourteen nan nanometer fabrication chips
this year, like like across the board, like cell phones, Like everything
is going to be right in demand for that stuff. So huh, who
knows if that will have an effect on when this thing comes out. Yeah,
yeah, it's and and there's nothing in here about VR in terms of
like some of the stuff we kind of speculated about was the PlayStation VR comes
with that breakout box. It's not necessarily a processor, but it's got you
know, passed through for HDMI and kind of you know, it's it's how
you connect the VR headset to the PlayStation. One would expect that that would
be the sort of thing that they would just build right into the hardware.
That's like the connect with the LAM and like that had that extra little,
yeah, external power if you had the old three sixty, but new three
sixties just had the like power appropriate for for connect on it immediately. Yeah,
So I could envision something like that happening, but I don't. We
don't know for sure how that'll go. The thing I'm actually the most curious
about that's not mentioned in these documents is what kind of Blu ray drive is
going to be in it, because because like UHD like four K Blu ray
players just hit the market like a couple of months ago. So this like,
if this thing had that in it, that's like an amazing opportunity to
save four hundred bucks and just get the new PS four that you're out putting
it four kve not doing movies, you're not doing games, and would you
Yeah, And and Sony Pictures, Okay, Sony Pictures already has a bunch
of UHD Blu rays on the market. You know, like like it seems
like a good opportunity for them to get that out there, and it seems
like that's something that they were you know, you have to imagine and that
they would put that Blu ray drive in this thing, you would think,
because but it doesn't mention that anyway, and it may not mention it because
perhaps they're not allowing developers to ship games on like hundred gigabyte discs though that
might start to answer the question about like how big are these games going to
be if they have to then include assets for base and Neo download this eighty
gigabyte patch, right, and if they're bundling them all together and not and
there are other things in here that indicate that you're not going to be able
to just have users download only the Neo version of the assets or only the
base version of the assets. It's all one package, so the same file
size no matter what, or it seems like it. But it may be
the case where like they are just shipping assets at one level and scaling them
differently depending on the resolution. You know that that might not. I don't
know enough to tell you if that is. You couldn't ship a game on
UHD because that would go against their backwards compatibility stuff. You're right, You're
right, Yeah, yes, that's true. Yeah, I was thinking more
just as a movie player, and maybe I'm a weird outlier who still cares
about discs, but yeah, that's yeah, you could. I guess Netflix
supports four ks. They're getting together, getting there, but like the bit
rates on four K streams are so shitty compared to what you can get on
a disc, Like if you really wanted to look amazing this moment, I'm
just trying to find a reason why it outputs it four K. Yeah,
because because four KTVs are getting cheaper, Because because more and more people are
going to find themselves owning a four K TV, whether they wanted one or
not. Because it's it's kind of hitting that that level that three dtvs did
where no one really wanted a three D TV, but the good ten AD
TVs also supported three D and the price wasn't really different. It seems like
four K is getting there. It seems to be moving to the so at
some point you you'll you'll have a four KTV. Okay, buy a four
KTV. No as one who is just researching. Yeah, like a lot
of TVs like on the cheap, like four K really wasn't that much more
expensive then. But they support ten eighty. Yeah, they totally do,
but it's sometimes it'll down scale. I don't know. I don't think they're
the best for gaming, to be honest, but this might change that.
And yeah, and it seems like that maybe some of the latency stuff with
four K has been worked out. There are screens that that are not a
problem on that front. The Neo will be able to work better with remote
play. You'll get a better resolution out of the neo. Yeah, they
mentioned a bunch of little improvements, like you'll be able to record at ten
eighty sixty for your game DVR type stuff. PlayStation view No no indication for
KTV on PlayStation view. No indication of about PlayStation view. I mean,
if they're pushing it as like we've seen, you know, if they're pushing
it as a here's you're all in one four K media device, then they
fucking better. I guess. Well, if you has made up of,
like you know, cable channels, obviously the channel the channels have to support
it to you obviously made up of like duct tape and popsicle sticks. Oh
yeah, like view, Who's who's into this. Who's down from this?
I'll buy it? Yeah, well, I mean I will. Obviously,
we all will because we kind of have to. I'm in zero rush.
I mean I already have two play states and fours, and that's dumb.
I bought one. I bought one of the white ones when destiny hit because
I knew I was going to build a home office and I was like,
well, at that point, I need to have a PlayStation in the bedroom
and then one over there. And then it turns out like I don't actually
play games in the bedroom that much anymore, so I don't. It turns
out I didn't necessarily need two PS fours, but at the same time,
having now purchased too, yeah that one is white, having purchased multiple PS
fours already, this well whatever, I mean, Yes, on some level,
you're right that we will need to evaluate these things and use them and
and all that sort of stuff. It actually creates, now that I think
about it, like it creates a weird review situation for us. Wheah,
we suddenly need to like try the games on both versions see how they work.
Yeah, you're right, And if some of the stuff is like a
day one patch that'll enable the mode in September or what that, Well,
we won't We won't know until they announce a date, and I expect that
I'll come at out at E three, whether they originally intended that to be
the announcement date or not. They've kind of between GDC and now this stuff
getting out there like they kind of have to. And I'm surprised on some
level that they haven't just kind of started talking about this stuff, because it's
out there without them kind of explaining their case, and you know, we're
reading this stuff and interpreting it in in the way that we see it.
I would be curious to hear them put together their pitch of like why this
is a good thing and why this doesn't alienate the millions of people that own
a PlayStation before already, while also walking that tight rope and saying, but
it's really awesome and here's why you need one. Uh, like that they're
they're entering some they are entering some uncharted territory. Yeah, consumers are in
a holding pattern right now because it's like, yeah, like the more than
when we get more info, why should we buy? The more you see
people in forums going like why I'm not buying a fucking PS four. People
just going like, well, if I sell it right now and get to
twenty for it be better to do that than a trade in program. But
no way is that going to happen. Yeah. The more the more I
think about, the more I think you're right, game Stop have no oh
you game Stop put some some things in place when the new three DS came
out and the okay, a third party, because the third party could totally
do that, but I bet Sony will. But yeah, like you know,
he is Sony incentivized to provide an upgrade path for people, like you
know, kind of get an Ambassador's Program certificate, Yeah, installed on my
PS four. That's what I look at, Like what Will Smith was mentioning
that on Twitter yesterday you could see them giving out a couple free games or
or or you know, yeah like a year or something, yeah or something.
Everyone gets neck congratulations. Finally you've been asking for it. Yeah,
I don't know I did. And and this just this really got me thinking
about kind of where we're at this and there and there's a Wired story this
morning about Magic Leap oh wow, the A the calling it MR Mixed Reality
and like hearing like like reading more about that and kind of as the technology
gets to a point where maybe we don't need screens anymore, because these companies
are about a year away from replacing monitors with their own headsets, because the
resolutions will be at a point where that is something they can actually do that
I would love to see it. I just want to sit at a desk
wearing a thing on your face all day. Is the leap like the hollow
lens where all the ship is in the headsets, so you don't so I
don't know about that. That's they've they've not shown form factor or anything about
that. That's they're just showing their photonic lenses, which sound fucking crazy.
That thing sounds like the real deal. I don't know if talking to people
that have have used it over the past couple of years here, that thing
sounds like the thing you actually want out of all this headset people. People
talk in a world of hype about the magical Leap. Yeah, well they've
raised enough money. But anyway, like with that happening, you know in
the background, and and VR being here and this kind of starting to up
end what we think of as the traditional console business, and Microsoft is doing
what it's doing with the PC again, but but seemingly more serious, and
also being in a position where they are not dominant to where that seems like
a more vital move for their continued kind of growth. Everything is fucking crazy
right now, and it makes sense. You know, It's like the next
five years are going to be nuts, but like the next one year is
going to be nuts with with some of this stuff, with with where we're
at with consoles, And this is all happening against the backdrop of like,
isn't in Video announcing in May? Yes, yes, you know are saying,
yeah that they that the new video GPUs and then AD apparently got some
pretty hot stuff coming later this year. Yeah, So what good is a
half step on a PS four in a market where the PC like still gets
the vast majority of these games? And also, you know, obviously there's
there's convenience, and there's there's tradition associated with consoles for a lot of people.
But I don't think that that's gonna last. I don't know, It's
it's hard to know. We're so all over the place right now with all
of this shit. It's fucking really exciting and really crazy, and I will
say, like just reading forums in our comments and the story and stuff like.
Even even as diplomatic as all these moves seem to be in terms of
like, you know, we're not going to shut out existing customers and stuff
like, the tone of the response to this is still pretty negative thing.
And that's that's why a lot of people going like, I will fuck you.
I'm just gonna get a better PC. Yeah, which, so you
know, that's the thing is if you, if you, if you really
really really care about power and graphical fidelity and stuff like that, if that's
if that's the thing that drives you into video games, then yeah, like
an upgraded PlayStation four only takes you so far. At some point you're going
like, well, it's not that much more expensive in the grand scheme of
yeah, you know, there's still a convenience factor there though. Yes,
definitely, people just want to sit down on a couch and put a disk
in and just go yeah, and there's absolute value in that. And but
at that point, like, are those the people that are going to buy
an upgraded PlayStation four or they are? Is the convenience such that well I
already bought one, so I'm good. Yeah, you know, from Sony's
perspective, they probably don't care because those people will continue to buy games,
right, and sometime games are most of the money. I guess, I
guess. I just don't know, like four K game is going to be
like a really big bullet point, especially during like the holiday season, if
they do release for that. You know, I can I can already hear
there's not there's not a ton of four K content out there. It's now
starting to those burets are coming out now. But I don't think they can
get out there and say, hey, here's your new four K gaming machine.
Right, this thing is not going to run. But they can say
that well yeah, just like it just won't be just actually true, just
like they they screamed ten ADP from the rooftops about the PS three. Yeah,
nothing was TENDP, Superstar Dust, Yeah, you know a couple of
indie games here, Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know, I don't
know, like it's it's And that's why I say, like they should probably
start talking about this stuff, because without without their messaging, without them explaining
their case to the people directly, you see people start to spin out of
control on this stuff and go like wait, a minute. This is fucked,
Like why I just bought a PS four? This? How? How?
How does this impact me? Like there's a lot of confusion out there
and in the marketplace because you know, again like you know, we don't
have the whole story. We don't know when it's out, we don't know
how much it'll cost, we don't know what they're calling it. You know
that like that, like what this actually means in what the complete picture of
this is? Uh is important and I guess it's important to remember that.
Yeah, we we have some developer focused documents that indicates that this thing is
happening and the specs of the thing, but in terms of how they'll actually
handle it, like that's important and them not out there doing it seems kind
of nuts. E three is going to be real, Yeah, I mean
yes, absolutely, between this Nintendo, Like what is Microsoft's next move?
See if there's gonna be some actual VR games coming out? Yeah? Yeah,
But also like will will the companies that are bringing that have already shipped
headsets, will they care about E three? That's true? Yeah, you
know, is that their place for their accens or do they do their own
little events? Yeah? You know, they like you're out there out there
talking, like I think they said for PlayStation VR THO, they're planning a
bunch of retail kiosks and stuff like that to help get that out there,
you know, partnering with the game stop with there are vibes out there.
Now, that's some game stops, Like, that's a case they have to
take to the people. Like everyone at E three will have tried one of
those headsets by now, Like, those are not the people you need to
convert. Those are not the people you need to like get the goggles on
and say no, look at this shit. They need to get it out
there in a much wider capacity targets and best buys and yeah, totally so
like E three, Like for the headset manufacturers, it just doesn't. I
don't think it matters. For the soft people make software for those things,
it does matter because you've got pressed there, You've got people there. But
remember when finding out what the hell the NX is was like the only exciting
thing about E three this year. Uh that that is probably still the most
exciting things from from a yeah, I guess from a future of video games.
Yes, but I mean this is interesting in a business, yes,
Like like watching Microsoft kind of figure things out. Uh, and and what
it does with the PC is it tries to you know, figure out Windows
ten. Like. That's all very interesting and very exciting, but in a
totally different way from Nintendo plopping something down and saying, here, play some
new games, right Like, that's exciting, Sure, PlayStations like a few
months before release, that's exciting. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to
see how like all these other companies kind of positioned themselves around this right here.
So yeah, Sony will come out and do you think they'll confirm before
E three? They should, right, I don't think they will the existence
of this thing. Yeah, they've they've come this far. Yeah, pretty
close. They may do that, but they won't like show it. It
looks like sure, yeah yeah, maybe they announce that it's happening different,
We'll have more to say and then aim it, show it whatever, show
like you said, show like I'm charted running on it or something. Yeah.
But that just you know, speeds up Microsoft and yeah, yeah it's
gonna be fun. Business got competitive down in a totally weird ways. Were
overflowing with Sony brand four KT and Sony has a bunch of four K movies
they would like you to buy. Yeah, you could easily see other parts
of Sony, like again, the PlayStation brand is hot all over again.
You have a lot of other parts of Sony that would love to glom onto
that in a different way. Absolutely, some different ways like that could be
a factor as well. I feel like this is just as much about like,
you know, four K movies and and selling four KTVs than it is
about providing that four K gaming experience. Maybe my Sony fridge with the cell
processor inside. Finally, yeah, yeah, those games that have been aging
in that digital locker for the past decade, get them out, because they're
about to fucking blow your mind. And you know, because the PlayStation brands
so huge already, and you know, obviously there's a thirty billion plus know
that are already in homes, you don't want to segregate them. So I
think they're they're taking really good steps to make sure that you know, those
people are fine, you know, gonna be okay. It seems it seems
like the most customer friendly way you could do this and still do this,
yeah at all. But that's still going to be too much for some people
and doesn't cut the reasons why you would want to get one. Yeah,
because why wouldn't you want to just go all the way? Yeah? Like
there, you know, there's there's no shortage of people in comments like the
story going like I just bought my PS four last month, like thanks,
But like to the people that buy one of the new ones, are they
then going to be mad because they'll feel like their games are being held back
by having to support this now dated hardware. You can see some of that
too, like this this gets ugly on all. This is just like haves
versus have not. The situation could potentially be kind of great. You thought,
like forum weirdos getting all Sony versus Microsoft was weird. What happens when
it's so? I am not ready for like platform fanboys to be fighting each
other. They're going to destroy themselves. It will be beautiful. All wars
or civil wars filthy the law between the skews. I mean they have to
keep selling the original right like as part of the product line up. It's
not there. They don't have to. I mean, well, they like
out of the gate. Out of the gate, you would expect that they
would clear out, that they would drop the price on it. Maybe they
get the base model out there for two fifty or something, because I mean,
you know, like that's the traditional console cycle is always like start moving
into the one ninety nine territory and then the ninety nine dollars territory, which
actually like the three sixty hasn't still hasn't done yet. Yeah, but like
remember how it was like it was big, like press conference worthy news when
the PS two dropped to ninety nine dollars, right, because all of a
sudden you're tapping like a whole new market with that stuff. Did the PS
one launch at ninety nine the awesome like little mint this one? I think
it did. I think it might have the QT little the tweet the one
day they had the little screen that would be well that was an ad on,
it was, yeah, it was, but yeah it couldn't do that.
But yeah, I think you're right. I think that was a ninety
I remember being kind of tempted, being like, man, I know PS
one aren't really the thing right now, but that thing looks fucking awesome.
I got one, I got the screen. It's awesome. Yeah, yeah,
it's a really cool little console. Not mind definitely display it and it
just to me, it makes sense to keep a cheaper version of the machine
on the market for people who are more price conscious. Yeah, and for
at least for I mean you know, yeah, yes, like if assuming
this thing comes out of three nine at nine or whatever, like, that's
that's a pretty limited Yeah, some people who are gonna but you'll probably have
a bunch of used consoles in the market at that points from people that went
to upgrade. You'll have you know, they probably have a warehouse with quite
a few baseline PS fours in it right now that they could move out,
you know, I mean, but they could be making like a classic PS
four slim at the same time, you know, sure, cheaper of the
old PS four. Yeah, that could be out at that price point.
What do you got? What do you guys do with your old PS fours?
I'll sell it, you can sell it, yeah, yeah, what's
the best way to sell it? Craigslist? Craigslist, something like eBay.
You gotta deal with shipping and all that shit. You know, expensive electronics
you don't really want to ship, so just risk being murdered for a second.
Yeah, it was to say, where where do you go meet?
How much? What have you sold on Craigslist, couches, lamps, tables,
action figures. Have you been murdered yet? Not one? Have you
thought that you were about to be murdered? I sold I think a bunch
of Curb your Enthusiasm DVDs. Two guy in a pickup truck, and I
think he had a bunch of pentagram tattoos, like on his neck or something,
And I thought he seemed capable of murder, But he didn't murder me,
like I, you know, like Satan, I jokingly say like,
oh, I'm gonna get murder whatever. But like the other thing is,
you see all these stories of people saying like, oh, they showed up
with only like eighty percent of what they said they would pay. That happened
sometimes and they're like, oh, we'll take it or leave it, and
it's just a giant waste your time. I've had that happen. Yeah,
alright, it's probably gonna be a decent number of secondhand ps fours out there
come into the year next year. Yeah, see how that stuff goes down
anyway, exciting times. Yeah, in the video game hardware business, it's
gonna be weird. It's already weird. All right, let's move on.
To the slightly less explosive goings on in the world. I don't know,
some of this stuff seems explosive, just in a less in a way that
maybe doesn't impact people or business or something, or maybe that's not true either.
There is a certain tabloid aspect to the next story here. Yeah.
Remember in January when president of rock Star North Leslie Benzi's departed. I do
rock Star like he went on a lengthy sabbatical at some point. Yeah,
it just seemed like there was like a hey, being not here is cool.
Yeah, you're jealous of his eighteen months off exactly. Yeah, I
want a sabbatical, like a paid sabbatical months there with their drama surrounding that
at the time, he's going on vacation at the time, the departure was
depicted as amicable. Okay, say this company used to have a forced paid
sabbatical. If you were at a at the company for five years, you
got like a forced four week sabbatical, just like, hey, you've deserved
this going vacation thing. Yeah yeah, okay. And then we got bob
by s It was a zd Net thing. Oh we got bought by this
company. Hasn't this company is own. Yes, this was this was two
corporate acquisitions ago. Yeah, okay, all right, because I was a
scene Joe Fielder got to go on his sabbatical and by the time I got
eligible for sabatic sabbatical, we got bought and I didn't want to do it.
Yeah. I also did over five years a se net nothing doing.
All right. Well, uh, this, this whole situation has gotten way
more complicated now that Leslie Benzi's has filed a one hundred and fifty million dollars
lawsuit against Take two. Yeah. That's unpaid royalties, chunk of money.
That's less than amicable. Yeah, and it's like I want to continue this
sabbatical and then it needs some more money to do so. Vacations are expensive
for us. I must be a hell of a sbbatical. Uh yeah.
He you know, he's contending that he was just kind of dismissed unfairly.
We're wrongfully terminated or whatever you want. He says that he came back from
the sabbatical and tried to go back to work and he was locked out of
the building and asked to leave. Yeah. That's uh. They're like,
it's been great with this sabbatical is going on. That's always the fear.
That's why you never take a vacation, right, because you always everyone else
will find out that yeah they can, they could do without you, figure
out how to make it work without you. There, look at my slide
deck. Al right, here's why you never take a vacation. And Dan
learned how to use the mixing board over the weekend that Drew's sweating it.
Yeah, successfully recorded the podcast Don't Take My Job? Ok. Yeah,
I mean this thing is a tangled web of like you know, contracts signed
in two thousand and nine that Dinzi's then wanted to retroactively amend and like people
saying, oh, he was in breach of contract, right, yeah,
they have countersued him. Sure. Uh. And now all kinds of dirty
laundry, it seems, are coming out of this thing. Yeah, this
is this has become a real well, it's it's a mess with like a
lot of different things that you know, came out of this. The lawsuit
of like the inner workings of rock star, yeah, which is the stuff
of legends in a sense. You know, it's like everyone has their their
own little rock star story, the tattoos sometimes yeah, yeah, I mean,
yes, some of the people work there, absolutely sure, But yes,
some everyone that has come into contact with rock Star over the years,
I feel has at least one thing and they could say like I remember that
time this fucking crazy thing happened, or or hey I heard I heard from
someone who worked there about this and keycard access this and holy water that,
and you know, just like all this stuff over the years. That's just
like fucking what. None of that stuff is necessarily in this filing, but
there's plenty in here too. I wish it was the catchphrase of the season.
Oh yeah, it's just it's take it from the top. It's I
need depends right there. That's I'm gonna start you get you guys are I'm
every email ascend is now going to have that in there. Yeah. So
it's a lot of the stuff. Brendan Sinclair from from Games Industry Dot Bizz
has been picking this this stuff apart. I meant biz. Yeah, he's
the course voice of Candida of course will know exactly. So he's been picking
this stuff apart and actually think some screen captures of some of the crazier stuff
to Twitter, which has been for me, that's been the most fun way
to follow this stuff. But there's a lot of stuff where like I guess,
uh, the Housers, Sam and Dan, the Howser brothers, they're
kind of the heads of rock Star kind of seen as like the creative force
behind Yeah, that they had kind of taken the lead on Red Dead Redemption,
and that Leslie Benzi's is the head of rock Star North was not on
this project because it was done out of Rocks or San Diego Angel Studios before
the former Angel Studios, and that at some point in an October O nine
email from Sam Houser to Leslie Benzi's kind of urgently reaching out as a as
Sinclair puts it, that that the game kind of was in a bad spot
and they needed they needed the Bens to come in and clean it up.
Please help me slash us get r DR into shape. I'm a jabbering wreck
right now. I need the Benz. I thought it was Geronimo's job to
be like the cleaner that comes in and fixes everything up. Yeah closer,
I don't Yeah, And I don't really know. Maybe they need maybe they
need to close their own both coasts, Okay, Yeah, I don't know,
and needs to bring Yeah, because I remember hearing that that he had
kind of come in to that studio in a couple of spots as well.
Already was really good at that, like coming in late and fixing things up.
And yeah, I don't know, I mean even at the time you
were hearing about Trouble on Red Dead. Oh yeah, back sure, back
when it came out. It's known to be like a trouble project. Isn't
that the one where like all the the wife females came out afterwards saying like,
oh, it's ninety hour work days and all this stuff. I think
it was that rock star San Diego things. So yeah, now that this
is ridiculous, like we don't get to see our husband's anymore. Yeah,
it was like an a spouse. Yeah yeah, those were both kind of
back to back, right, Yeah that seems right, yeah yeah yeah yeah.
And then La Noir was its own separate set of weirdness, right,
that was a that was a different brand, that's true. Yes, And
also Max Pain three you had a bunch of weirdness too, oh sure,
sure. Yeah. Turned out there's a lot of weirdness. Yeah, but
it turns out weirdness just tends to follow these projects. Around. I may
just be an impartial observer here, but I feel like if he rated a
name like the Bens, he's probably pretty indispensable to their operation. Yeah.
I mean, if they're calling if they're calling him in in a Seal da
Vita like closer capacity to come in and close this game out and get it
run and right, it seems like that he probably had a pretty good track
record of doing that on some other projects. I guess, right, Uh,
yeah, that's that. The so this is all part of the lawsuit
filing says Once mister Benzi's intervened, the game was finished within a few months,
complete and ready for presentation to external publishers such as Sony and Microsoft.
Yeah, so this seems like that they the three of them, were looking
to kind of spin out of Take two and be able to use Take two's
IP and like all these other business arrangements that were basically like, you know,
like, if the three of them are kind of the principles of this
thing and are deemed key employees, at some point, they're going to try
and get as much as they can from Take two and stuff like that.
So it seemed like they were maybe trying to set themselves up to, uh
you know, take advantage of that situation or be rightfully paid for their work.
I mean, you know, whatever the track record however they got there,
which might be a real wreck. Uh you know, there's quite a
track record for rock Star in terms of most of the games they've shipped and
their popularity and all that other stuff. So you can pin at least some
of that on the Housers and leslie Benz. Yeah, some some interesting figure
it's not all of it coming, you know, I don't know, it's
it's a big teams, right, big team. Yes, Yes, some
interesting figures coming out of some of the stuff. Like they were citing that
read they're not read. A GTA online has has generated like five hundred million
dollars in revenue Jez for example. It was one of the one of his
claims, is that still really active? You know? I tend to see
a lot of like videos of that, like these ten planes together and somebody
jumped across all of them. Like people seem to like that a lot.
Yeah, But I wonder if it's just like a small essentiliz that's super into
it. That was one of his claims that he don't know that he totally
spearheaded development of the online mode, and that the Housers were not interested in
the multiplayer stuff, and so basically he is responsible for that revenue and stuff
like that. It's it's a mess. Yeah. So this is something that
was supposed to go to mediation and all this other stuff, and it seems
like the lawsuit came out of like a failed attempt a mediation or something to
that effect, and that's where the countersuit comes out of. I think we're
by not accepting the mediation and then proceeding to sue that then it becomes a
breach. I don't know that that stuff is perhaps beyond me. You need
some contract lawyers. Yeah, part that stuff, yeah for sure, But
I wonder, I wonder how this affects their operation going forward. Yeah,
I got the bens bens. I mean, if if he is as important
as this lawsuit alleges, then then that would be devastating. But you know,
I suspect the truth is always somewhere in the middle of this stuff,
right, They're gonna He's gonna follow the file, the lawsuit and trying to
make it look as good as as he can for his position. The Housers
will do the same but the other way and try to say that who is
Leslie Benzi's who's that? Yeah, I don't know. We showed him the
door because he just disappeared. I don't know. GTA Online, yeah,
I guess it made a lot of money. I don't know if you like
bad online games, like something that the Housers and I could probably agree upon
at some point that Grand Theft Auto Online is actually a bad product. So
so no information about like upcoming projects has come out of this stuff, right,
Uh? No, I guess not, because like the Red Dead like
prequel stuff was a separate thing. Yeah, there's been some supposed leaks about
that stuff floating around recently, but you know, yeah, as with all
leaks, some grain assault required. Is there anything more than just that map
image? That's all I've seen? Yeah, right, Like there's the map
image, and then people saying like, well, you know this fit lines
up with a potential prequel also because like you know, some of the train
tracks and stuff that would have been in the previous game there yet implying that
maybe it takes place beforehand. Well, especially given what that game was about,
right, yes, it would kind of have to be Uh well,
I mean the first Red Dead had a totally different protagonists and totally separate story.
I mean, you know, there's no reasons why they couldn't just go
like here's another Cowboy story, like it was grand theft Auto, Like the
ties don't have to be hard and fast. I think it's probably better that
they're not, right. I mean, the prequel tales of John Marston,
Like, that's cool, but it's not key to making a Red Dead definitely
not. Uh, I need the Bends. Who's our bends? Ours?
Drew? Drew's our bends? Yeah, I need the Drew. You got
me. If you ever hear me screaming I need the d that's only because
I need Drew. And I'm like, okay, all right, that's the
pocket phrase. I thought I thought it was something else entirely. How do
I sit down the stream? I need the date. I thought you were
just a big fan of Sonny Delight. Yeah, yeah, I know,
I know. Yeah, you know. We'll see how the stuff shapes up.
Yeah, I'll be curious to see, like if this thing goes all
the way, if there ends up being further disclosures about some of the stuff
happening within because there's some other like more nefarious sounding stuff about like compromising photos.
Yeah, yeah, you know there's some stuff, some allegations thrown in
the Houser's direction here that sound real, yeah, real nasty. So I
don't know, I don't know if that will end up having a bearing on
any of the stuff, or if it was just one of those things where
it's like, hey, we've got to make this lawsuit look good, and
to do that, we have to make these other guys look as bad as
we can. So let it all out. Yeah. Also, you know,
like kind of makes you wonder what his fate will be if he chooses
to stay in games, right, you know, like the guy who ran
Rockstar North for like twenty years or whatever. I mean, I would imagine
that's like a pretty good thing I have on your resume. Sure, yeah,
I mean you would think that that guy writes his own ticket. But
I have I have no actual knowledge of like how Leslie Benzi's is viewed,
you know, by the industry at large. I mean other than like you
know, his name has been on these like monumentally large and popular games just
in terms of like, oh, what's it like to work with them?
What's it like to do, Like I have no knowledge of that secondhand,
third hand whatever from you know, nothing Like if he wanted to start his
own studio, I would suspect that someone would go, Yes, we would
like to work with you on that once you get free and clear of all
this Take two stuff and all this lawsuit stuff. Let's talk. I'm assuming
is what the situation would be with that stuff. But agreed, we will
keep an eye on this. It sounds sortid, yes, and some saus
slimy a little bit, just a bit, a little bit. Uh.
The only other story I have, Well, it's one more thing. Maybe
the most haunting thing about some of the stuff is that none of it seems
surprising. Yeah, and that's from years and years of hearing just kind of
like different things about the company and stuff like you read it over goo.
Yeah that probably. Yeah, that seems believable. It just it puts some
details to like a general sort of tone that you had from people who had
worked there are still worked there, just like like the there's a real yes,
a general tune to it of like yeah, I had to leave there.
Do those stories go back to like the first couple of GTAs or is
this like once three Blue up and got huge, everyone got big heads and
like, because I've heard all the stories going back, like the PS two
entries and stuff, but I don't know if this was so. I think
some of it was. Look, they named the studio rock Star, and
from day one they kind of acted the part, uh like they they definitely
were trying, and you know how much of it was posturing and how much
of it was like you know, like this is just who those people were
or the position that they had or something like that. But I distinctly remember
like when the rock Star brand kind of got established and they were taking you
know, they were should bringing games around and showing them off and stuff like
that, Like there was this general like we're hot shit they were Yeah,
yes, yes, there was like a real hot shit vibe. I got
out of that, and like in a lot of cases, the gamesaved up
to it. Yeah, most in some of those early days, like not
you know, PREGTA three, Like look, I really like GTA two.
Yeah it's a good one, but kept at three different gangs. The clown
Car game, Yeah, it's like weird future game, like they put shooting
out of the car in it, but not not necessarily. So that was
always my question when when they would bring the game around, was like,
you got drive bys in here or what? And the answer it was always
Liken GTA nineteen sixty nine, so sorry, the mission pack does not have
drive bys, And I was like, you need drive bys, And then
finally there was like, Jeff, the day came, finally we got drive
byes. Fucking yeah. And then you realize like, okay, well in
GTA two they weren't quite the way like you could upgrade the car and it
would shoot out the front of the car or something like that. You're like
the auto shop couldn't get two guns on the front. Yeah, yeah,
So it wasn't quite drive byes. But three you could just straight up L
two and circle right and like the left side or our and it was like
impossible to hit anything. It was Saint It was the first Saint Row that
got that down right. We're a radical that you aim and like a bumper.
But I don't think that's really right either though, because I think it's
better than just the L two R two. I think that's a super hard
problem to solve because you end up with like either yeah, you're just like
blind firing out the side, which is terrible, or you're attempting to move
a radical while still steering the car, which sucks but is probably truer to
the drive by experience. I haven't had one that faithfully recreated the drive by
experience in real life. I mean, if you did VR first person,
one hand could be on the wheel and the other one could be the gun,
and then player two is wearing another headset and they just have a gun,
and then Lucky and Wild VR. Okay, let's just do that.
Give me the bens. I need the Bens and Wild. We're starting a
game development studio with Leslie Benz right proud to announce where we've acquired the IP
rights Lucky and Wild. Yes. I was actually surprised to find out,
Like, since you're talking about the founding of rock Star or whatever, like
his history with the studio actually goes back to pre rock Star. Yeah.
He was there at when it was DMA. Yeah, when it was DMA,
and when it was when ASC Games was publishing most of the what would
be the rock Star lineup for console, like GTA one. I think it
was published by ASC, right, but I thought like he worked on the
games that they did before the rock Star acquisition. I believe did you like
a Limmings game at some point? You like the in sixty four games,
like didn't like Space Station yeah and stuff like that. Yeah, but he
believe you were right. You've been around at the studio for a very long
time. Yeah, uh yes, I'm I'm pretty sure that's correct. I
could look it up. Am I imagining them working on a Limings game at
some point? Like obviously not the original one didn't, but it was they
Did every studio in the UK do a Limits game at one time? Yeah?
No, but by law DMA, I think I'm thinking of just DMA
now, which which was rock Star North, Like did DMA design became Rocks?
Was there were like a PlayStation one Limings that had a rock Star logo
on it. I feel like I remember seeing that. Maybe you know that's
that seems unlikely, but like wild Metal was a rock Star game, wasn't
it? Like so? And later on he had like Ony and Smugglers Run
kind of that early PS two stuff, right, which was very much a
rock Star game. OI felt a little weird when he was Bungee and Rocks.
I went to a laser tag arena in Phoenix to play one. All
right, that's that right, that's that's a weird mix of stuff. But
okay, that's that's where rock Star had their events, and they were when
they were showing off only in the preview players every took everybody to a laser
tag arena in while it was only one event. Uh And and yeah,
they showed that and the other stuff that they had coming out around that time
when with the rock Star marketing swag was for Lemmings, so I I just
have a giant. It was just it was weird. I don't know,
it was just another coke mirror. I was holding my State of Emergency nightstick
not twenty four hours ago while pondering this. Yeah, no, yes,
Uh. Benzi's is credited on Space Station, Silken Valley and then like GTA
three, Vice City, Man huntres Good have been around stuff like that,
for sure. I'm sure that we will hear about any subsequent developments in the
story as time moves along. I suspect it'll be one of those like this
is probably gonna be really quiet for a long time because they've made their filings
and and that's the stuff that kind of has to be public and now after
this is when it we probably don't hear anything for a long time unless it
goes to trial and all this other stuff. Yes, but yeah, DMA
design was that was like David Jones, you know, like right right,
yeah, and then so when when he got out of there, and then
then it became like that's right, they didn't even create like the Houser didn't
even create GTA did they Like that was him? Right, Yeah, it's
I believe that's because that when when it's because when they were bringing crack down
around, like the whole line around that thing was right, we got the
guy, we got well you know, of course they're gonna try to spend
it that way. But you know, at the end of the day,
all that stuff is a collaboration, right, it's it's indeed, you know
there's there's a lot of that. Sure enough, all right, I have
one more story, unirasers, man, Yeah, what's DMA really? DMA
really? What is that a super FFX chip? Yes? That was Wasn't
it enough that that is that? Maybe? No, it's gonna say that
maybe the greatest game that that studio has ever produced. That's a good game.
I love Unirasers looks real good. We need the Benz. I know
you didn't work on unirasors. Maybe you didn't work on unirasors, but we're
making unirasors too. We're not gonna get sued this time. Finally, let's
do it. Final the subtitle Unirasers too. We're not gonna We're not gonna
get sued this time. Finally, and then in prences, at least not
by the people that sued over Unirasers. Right, he finally cast off the
yoke of rock Star and now he can follow his dreams with new Unirasers.
Sure, all right, one more story. People are starting to get Oculus
Rifts titles working on the Vibe. Huh like Oculus Storefront Tests. Yes,
uh. The two games are Lucky's Tail and then Oculus dream Deck. Actually
is that even a game or is it? No, that's that's more of
like here's a bunch of experiences you can do, like or just hey,
watch this stuff. Hey it's a dinosaur aliens looking at you now you're standing
on a roof and stuff like that. So that's the process for this That
stuff is that stuff is enabled buy something called libra Vry, which is an
alpha thing it is quote a proof of concept compatibility layer between the Oculus SDK
and open VR, which I had not VR is based on some of the
open VRR spect and some of that stuff, I believe. But OvR is
like open VR is like another well there's there there's another headset that is kind
of like in like dev kate form that is like presented as like here's like
a reference model open VR headset, and anyone can make one. I don't
know, like it's just you know, it's like an open thing, the
VR equivalent of mecassault. Yeah, kind of where you can just subvert whatever
weird stuff Oculus has to use your valve headset and build your own mech Yeah.
But yeah, the open VR is is not too far from like a
DK one or something like that. And some people are three D printing parts
of them too. Many different future texts lining up together. We are in
the future, that's right. Razors Razors Razors one of the partners on the
OSVR. They're just gonna be like eighteen competing headsets at some point. I
don't know, I really don't know. You could see like a Razor or
somebody coming out with the headset in a year, right, I need a
video game expert to sort it out. Too bad, those are shortly around
here. We need get of it here. Uh So I wasn't aware of
this, but I guess like anything that runs on the Vibe pretty much runs
on the Oculus as well. It sounds like that's that's what this Kataka story
where I got this news from anything that runs on the like through this rapper
you mean or hang on on me find that line. And I mean the
story is literally starts by saying any game you play on the HC vive,
I'll hang on. Did I misunderstand that? Uh? Yes, yes,
this is yeah, this is straight up saying all five games work on the
rifts just out of the box. Okay, well obviously the rift without the
yeah, but but they like they run, there's nothing, there's something they're
arbitrarily stopping the right conceivably like once the touch controllers would never come out right,
which is that might take work though, and and and you know,
there are differences in the way that the oculus stuff is going to be tracked
compared to how the Vibe stuff is tracked, So it's not I don't think
it'll be a simple like out of the box. This works sort of sitch
but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, people are people are doing that
work to get get riffed exclusive games up on the vive. Yeah. So
I've been messing around with the Oculus Rift at home here and there, and
yeah, like it's there's a well you know there are Yeah, there are
plenty of games that, like the Steam has a flag for developers says like
supports Oculus Rift or supports HDC vive or Steam VR or whatever it is.
And then from there it's like standing or sitting or room scale, Like they
have all these flags in there. So if you're saying anything runs, and
that would mean anything that is sitting or standing and doesn't require the motion controllers
should work on the Rift, which I actually so I actually managed to get
into a game of Descent Underground for the first time, biggest news of this
podcast, and and it actually booted up and worked, which the four times
we've tried it on live shows and other stuff like, it just won't connect
it. Even PREVR kind of just was not connecting to servers and a running
theme that Disent Underground never works. Yeah. Right, So, so I
managed to get into one game of that and what is it. It's Descent.
It's multiplayer only Descent. It's a multiplayer Descent game. There's room for
a campaign, but it's not in there yet because it's early access, and
it didn't look particularly great. And yeah, it's just like a death match
yeah game, Okay, Yeah, that's that's what I got into. Anyway,
Maybe there are other modes and stuff like that, but that's what I
got into. And yeah, that was that. But but that lists Oculus
as a supported platform or supported peripheral, so I don't I guess, yeah,
I don't know. That stuff's been weird. It's stuff like a virtual
desktop on Steam comes with a CD key that is actually an Oculus Store key,
so you can go, if you buy it on Steam, you get
a key for the Oculus Store version. I don't even think it's for sale
on the Oculus Store, like I think that's the only way to buy it,
and you end up with like multiple versions of it as results. Does
it pop up in the Steam interface the that like games Rolling does live keys
used to yep, weird? Oh wow yeah, And I'm like, this
doesn't appear to actually need this key, And then I went and read their
page I'm like, this is an Oculus store key that you'll get, and
I was like, oh, okay, that's actually kind of cool because the
Oculus storefront, if you have a rift, is somehow even easier to launch
than Steam because you just put the damn headside on launch it and it just
knows because it just keeps that service running in the background all the time and
all that stuff. So it's like that was actually a more convenient way to
use something like that. That stuff is all over the place and it's really
weird, but like stuff seems to work. Like they're definitely like games that
are not in the Oculus store that are on Steam that I've gotten working.
I got the Steam VR like grid to appear, not the the not the
chaperone, not the chaperone, but the the the empty space that you live
in where the Steam interface appears. I've gotten that show up in a rift
headset, which that's just you just click Steam VR and it works with an
Oculus Rift. Now, before before the Vibe was out, it did not,
so they've they've sensed updated with whatever they need to update with to make
that go. It's just weird because anytime you do anything, so I downloaded
the Virtual Boy emulator with Oculus Rift support. Oh shit, I want to
which if you want to finally head tracking with Mario ten So it'll it'll,
it'll. It has two view modes. One is like just standard like head
tracking does nothing. Yeah, and then there's another mode that maps it into
space so you can it's just a flat surface like it's like screen and space
that you can you can look around. You don't want to do that,
or you can just like put it on a tripod and do it like an
actual virtual boy. Yeah, I mean, yeah you could. I want
them to make a virtual virtual boy in the VR headset that you have to
move, walk and put your face up to and then it sucks somehow.
Yeah. Now, so I did that, and you know, like that's
cool. But it still pops up the Oculus interface and all this other stuff
like along the way. So even when you're running Steam, it still throws
up the Oculus store on your desktop every time you put it on, and
you still go through the like push a to continue process of the Oculus storefront
before it launches into the game. So it's it's like one of those things
where there's just like too many different things running at once and you're like,
there maybe one too many menus, but you can do it all, so
can up all those CPU cycles? God, we're a far cry from that
glorious just like no, far cry doesn't work. That's a shame. But
you know, just like that that future we all envisioned, like any VR
thing works on any headset. Like that's not quite, No, it depends,
not quite as of yet. Yeah, but it's way further along than
I thought it would be based on where it was when we first got the
Rift and it was like, oh, none of this stuff works, Like
what hang on? That's this seems like questionable? Yeah? Uh so yeah,
it's it's a lot of that work seems to I'm be curious to see
if you go the other way. Well, I guess that was that this
this rapper does, right, You're using the Vibe on the Oculus stuff,
yes, Quoculus software on the Vibe right, Yes, okay with with this
rapper, like you shouldn't need a wrapper that stuff. I agree. Uh.
And then this taking story does point out the Palmer, like he said
back in December quote, if customers buy a game from US, I don't
care if they mought it. To run on whatever they want. So that's
making they're making money on the software sale, right, It's exactly. It's
just one of those things where it's like you would hope that they wouldn't have
to mode. Yeah, it's a shame that but these extra steps are required.
But maybe that's something that now that both headsets are out, more developers
will just like put the functionality in there out of the gate and it won't
need who knows, who knows where this all goes, what happens when StarVR
comes out? StarVR will never Oh man, that's rough. Jeff, what's
your what's your good too? For Virtual Boy? The first one you loaded
up red Alarm. Yeah. I was gonna ask, like, name a
game that's worth playing on the Virtual Boy. Oh no, there isn't.
There isn't name, okay, but yeah, probably red Alar. That's that's
probably the one. I ended up loading up the Warrior game first because that
was like the pack end Tennis one tennis. Yeah that's right, Yeah,
but yeah, I don't know. I loaded up a Warrior the like the
Warrior game, played a little bit of that, and I played Teleroboxer and
then realized that for the controls didn't see seemed to be mapped correctly, because
I don't know if you know this, The Virtual Boy controller is a fucking
nightmare, right yeah, yeah, tepads it was, or it was ahead
of its time, how about that? Okay, just on in all the
weirdest ways. What a thing? What a thing? The Virtual Boy was
how many games? Off the top of your head, do you know how
many they made? Lap and they just retire for six months? No,
no, it died fast. But they didn't launch with twenty games. They
also were like three or something. I don't know. Yikes, that golf
game. Indeed, all right, that's the news of the day. Someone
apparently made a pretty good Street Fighter two for Virtual Boy, recently sold it
or or we're sending out copies. I forget what it was, but I'm
interested in this. Yeah. What did the carts look like for that thing?
Were they like kind of game? They were bigger, they were a
little they were more like game gear carts, I remember, right size,
Yeah, they could be. I don't know. We had a demo unit
a Blockbuster when I worked there. It's like that was pretty exciting for an
hour, yea, for the thirty seconds it took you to approach it.
Yeah, and then you put your face in it, You're like, oh,
this kind of sucks. All right, Oh all right, that's the
news. Thank you, Brad, Thank you for being here to talk about
video games. Always a pleasure. Let's move on to what we haven't been
playing. Who's been playing? Well? Man? I started Dark Dark Souls
three and yeah, talked about plenty of your five hours in doing PC looks
yeah, real, real good, like a lot. You know. Last
week I talked about Ratchet, and it's been a long time since I've done
this. Like I beat the game and then over the weekend, I was
like, man, that was a lot of fun, and there's a new
game plus and you can like level up your weapons from maximum five to maximum
ten with all these new upgrades and everything, and I just beat the game
again over the weekend. She's and now I'm like a few trophies away from
the Platinum, and it's like, I'm just gonna go for that. I
guess. Yeah, it's just super fun. Yeah. I have not seen
like a negative word uttered about that game, Like, I mean, everybody
seems way into it. The only thing I can say is that, like
if you're a big Ratchet fan and you were looking forward like, Okay,
what's the next thing, and Somniak's going to do with Ratchet and Clank,
what's the next step forward? It's like, well, this is an old
story and it's just taking a bunch of like the best weapons and systems from
the game. Like it's a like the greatest hits of all the features of
the game. Who who would have thought remaking the first game would be the
thing that would bring everybody back. Yeah, like a movie tie in.
Yeah, it's it's really really good. Like, as a Ratchet fan,
I loved it. We did a quick look on the site and the video
that we have like really does not do the game justice as far as gorgeous.
Yeah, how good it looks? Yeah yeah, man, Yeah,
I was blown away. I said in the review that it's kind of perfect
no matter who you are, Like, if you're a longtime Ratchet fan,
it is a great look back at the world's that first one with all the
cool gameplay stuff and modern mechanics of a new game. If you're a kid
that just saw the movie and you like the characters, it's like, well,
okay, here's an awesome game with those characters and actual scenes from the
movie, and if you've never played a Raction Clank game, it's like,
well, this, here's everything that's awesome about Ratchet and Clank games. Have
at it, like it's it seems like a really good starting point for them
to make more Ratchet and Client games. Yeah, so this can be the
MK nine of Ratchet and Clan. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah,
it's forty bucks, like, yeah, awesome. I heard some stuff about
that movie though I did too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard
it was not great, which, you know, the storytelling in the game
is not like amazing, it's it's got funny, Like the writing is good,
like the little dialogue and stuff like that, and all the characters are
funny and everything, but how do the actual plot itself is just yeah,
well, yeah, it's a ration Clank game. Like all the cut scenes
in the previous games have been you know, well written, they're actually pretty
funny and stuff. But I'd wondered how like they would stretch that out for
an entire like feature length. Yeah. I was excited about maybe seeing the
movie, but after the early words have been here and maybe not so much.
But then one other thing I did this weekend. That's kind of game
related. Is I did one of those real life like puzzle room escape.
Yeah, it's super fun, crazy elaborate. Yeah it was. It's like
being inside the Witness. It was like it was pretty fun. It sounds
so good. Yeah, here in the city. Yeah, we had like
a team of eleven people go into this thing in Japan Town and way more
elaborate than I expected. It's like this whole like kind of saw set up
or whatever, where there's this guy with a mask called the Fox who like
the straps explosives to all your arms and with the you know, padlocks and
stuff, and you have to get individual keep you at all with the way
you controller. Yeah. Yeah, you have to take off all your individual
bomb bracelets and then you also have to get a key to exit the room.
All within an hour. And yeah, lots of just really really difficult
puzzles and and there's different ones where it's like this one has an escape rate
of four percent, this one has eighteen percent, and it's it's fucking hard.
We did We got very very close, but then we ran out of
time at the end. But that's why I want my money back. I
was banking on him No, that was super funny if you get a chance
to do it. Like I've heard that the quality of those things varies dramatically
based on like who's puts them together. I think the company that did this
one was like named Scrap or something. They do a ton of them in
like La and San Francisco. But yeah, I would love to do more
of those. I guess the same people that did do like Escape from at
and T Park thing recently that was a big popular thing where they did at
the ballpark. Huh So yeah, I don't know, I'm first I've heard
of that. Yeah, first time I've done that. It was super fun.
Yeah, so excellent. Yeah live action gaming. Wow, that's crazy.
So you were laughing Yeah yeah, OK, yeah, and you're comfortable
with this and John Vaniaki, Yeah, there's a there's something that I believe
it's mostly on the West Coast, but it's like a horror movie kind of
live action experience, like a camping thing and you camp out in a tense
well I believe you'd like start off like telling ghost stories around a campfire,
but at some point you gotta go night night time and the tents and then
like an hour or two later you'll start hearing like murders happening, people shaking
your tent, and you can sign up for like different levels of whatever they
can chase after me or some shit like that. That that sounds kind of
somebody just made like a real life Blair Witch. It's something. I don't
know if this is true or not, and I would love to hear some
emails to confirm or deny this. Growing up, I always heard from a
million different people that's somewhere in Kansas, and like a rural area of Kansas
there was a haunted house, which I thought this was every city. Kansas
City every Halloween has like a billion haunted houses, like super elaborate, you
know, just crazy high budget things. And it's really like bad part of
town where they take all these abandoned warehouses and turn them into these insane haunted
houses. But I heard there was one if you go like closer to central
Kansas where it was like a six story building or something and if you get
to the top one, if you get to the top floor, kill you
for real. Yeah. No, it's like I don't remember. You get
some kind of prize or you get like put on some Hall of fame.
Or get your money back or something about this in a lot of cities.
Yeah, and that's why I wonder if it's a big thing. And they
said, like, oh, the sixth floor, Like no, only we
got up to the fifth floor and it's just filled with snakes because live snakes
everywhere. You have to like sign your life away before you go into this
thing. And so I don't know if that's a real thing or not.
So I'd love to hear if that's it's probably super illegal if it is,
I was like snopes dot com, Yeah, okay, uh, to see
if there is anything on there about that. But I feel like i've I've
heard of that and multiple Citi isn't always the top floor that it's like you'll
either you know, be faced with death or something or I don't know,
but operates one in the area, so I can I can ask him if
anyone operates like one of these death houses or just like a normal hunted out.
I would think that it's a normal on it okay, you know,
it's it's pretty good. I would think that just about everyone would make it
to the top of that because you would you would approach it from the perspective
of like well, they're not going to kill anyone, but there's probably likes
that are actually dangerous. They wouldn't be able to do this, like a
lot of people. Even if it was really darter snakes or something, it'd
be like that, I don't want to go through that dark room full fill
of snakes. What if you think they're just really incompetent. I also think
that, like if it was a really dark room filled with snakes and they
were in such a way that you could step on them, that would also
be illegal. Oh yeah, yeah, so like just yes, yeah,
I I freaked out in a hunt of house and Grade ones in Kansas City
is a boy scout trip, and at one point I was so scared already
and this dude jumps out with like a chainsaw, like without the you know
blade obviously, like right in my face, and I freaked out and I
was like, I need to get out of here, Get me out of
here. And the guy had to take me into emergency exit take off his
mask, and I think he might have carried me through the rest of the
thing. And so I saw everyone with their like makeup and stuff in the
back, like smoking and stuff. This is just super fucking weird. Is
that more saunting stuff than I remember being interested by That was a little claustrophobic
and everything in the house. I've had some friends that have worked at them.
Yeah, well, yeah, it's it's a really cool. Yeah,
I've friends that have like run them or like put one on or something for
that seems like so much fun, Except for the one that I went to.
I was probably like eighteen or something, so I was living in like
wasa Wisconsin. On the radio, they were advertising this nightmare that's super fucking
scary and like Marshfield, Wisconsin or something like that. So a bunch of
buddies and I got together drove to Marshfield and turns out it was at a
church. Is it one of the easy? It is one of us.
So you're walking through there and there's like mothers like with their aborted babies,
and there's Jesus strung up and he's crying and pleading with the stops. Usually
Yeah, yeah, it was not advertised as such. I gotta learns that
was kind of disappointing. But yeah, that I think about it, I
don't think it was fifth grade because then I'd be like twelve, and that's
way more embarrassing. I think I was like seven when I had to get
carried out of the Haunt of the House. Sure, for the record,
Jason mag your how's your dark Souls going? Going? Uh? Here and
there and everywhere? I'm cold on it, Like, Yeah, I got
confounded by a specific thing. I'm gonna try very hard to not do any
spoilers, boss. No, not specifically, but I found out that I'm
apparently going to get the bad ending in the game. Okay, so what
did you find out? No, just like reading of regular like not item
description, but just like a volcanic of sorts. It's like, what is
this do? And I had no idea, and I really wanted to look
it up, so I looked up you know that entry and it's like,
okay, if this happens, then you know you're you're gonna get the bad
ending. I've been I'll try to speak vaguely here too. I've been doing
something over and over to get souls. It is very easy, and I
wonder that since I keep doing this, if I'm going to get some kind
of bad ending. I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about.
Now. I'm super it's very early on I can probably. I don't
think it's it's not a story thing at all. You're gonna get to the
end of the game and there's gonna be a bunch of people asking to pray
with you, and you're gonna turn it out that it was a hell house.
Man. It's just like there are all those like innocent like ghouls or
whatever. I murder them constantly to get like it's like thirty sous'll fight back.
But yeah, that's not that much, Okay. I just wondered though,
if like, since I'm constantly murdering them, thinks it's like they're a
bad person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But regardless, I mean,
the thing is like, oh shit, I can't come back from this.
I know I'm not going to get the ending that I really want. I
don't know if I'm gonna go through a new game plus or anything like that.
It's kind of deflay. Just I've tried to find new goals, so
I'm taking like just a lot of alternate routes, fighting as many bosses as
like as I can. Very hard not to look up like what they give
me, because sometimes it's like shit they gave me that I'm not going to
use that, but yeah, I've been I've been going back in like kind
of scouring old areas and find it. Like there's just been a couple of
cases. There was a lot of fun, like, oh, there was
a whole huge area off to the side of this area that I didn't even
know it was there until I went back and did a thing. But it's
not like you know, weird branching pockets. They're like stuff that kind of
circles back. They were like alternate routes, I guess, you know,
so it's I don't know, it's it's branching, but it's still connect.
It's strange. It's strange. Did you fight that? I want to ask
if you fought a certain boss yet I did, But people will get mad
if I even say this boss's name. Yeah, I don't say the name,
but I thought, Yeah, a few different bosses this weekend, and
one I was actually stuck on for like a few days, okay, because
I'm really trying to optimize my build right now, because I was going very
very hybrid, and as it turns out, like my damage out but it
was just too low. So I found out that there's a way to like
respect and I guess I went and I did that, and yeah, I've
retoolt some stuff and things are going a lot better. So it's yeah,
considerably more fun. Yeah, but I'm continually impressed by the environments in that
game. It looks it looks amazing. There's fantastic, really thoughtful level design
in there. There's some uh, there's some interesting subversions of like things that
you expect to happen in terms of boss fights and other things that happen.
Well, I've been seeing the things that you mentioned too, of like this
weird overtness from Dark Souls where it's like, hey, remember this thing,
Yeah, that thing that has only intensified as I've gotten close to the end
of the game. Wow, it just gets more and more, Like some
of the stuff is an Austin's review, but it is fucking weirdly callback eto
like every from software game, and not just in like it don't description,
but every everyone that everyone Mack, did you fight that basically yes, no,
but I mean everyone that you could consider a Soul's game, like,
like Austin mentioned that in his review that like there's even things you could look
at in this that seem like Blood Born callbacks. Oh yeah, there's some
models that were blood Born though. Yeah, I've seen in this. I
want you to give it a shot. Like, really, I download it,
I didn't run it, downloaded it. I mean you got kind of
far in blood Born, you know, and maybe with that behind you and
that in your blood a little bit and you might approach this one a little
bit differently. Granted, this is this is the Soul's game through through.
It is not ye not blood Born. I mean the aesthetic, you know,
obviously it's the same. And you have the video card that can rely
out reliably. Yeah, run the game. Have they fixed that yet?
Yeah? Wait? What crash bug about seven hundred one? Yeah? Not
sure about that, man, I don't think yeah that's there. You know
there is a new patch rolling out like never might have fixed it. Is
that the one point one that's supposed to fix the frame rate issues on like
lower end machines. I don't know, because there's a major frame rate issues
and lower end stuff. Yeah, I ever read that. It seems like
they should call in some kind of video game expert to help you. I
don't know fully there were an international they need so from software needs the bends,
give them the bends. We need the bens. Yeah, we need
the bens. Yeah. Overall, I'm still yeah, super digging the game.
Yeah, I'll see. It's great for streat. I'm looking forward to
seeing the rest of it. But there's there's times when I just get super
frustrated when when things are not I know you've said that, like item descriptions
and like their explanations. They've done a great job with that, but there's
still those like weird interpersonal relationships. It's like, oh, you talk to
so and so, Well, I'm not gonna talk to you anymore. Who's
each other? It's like being at fucking middle school again. I don't understand
what the hell? Yeah, I pissed somebody off, and all of a
sudden they're like showing up in the mat wanting to kill me. I'm like,
what the fuck did I do? Another semester at Fire Lake High?
All right? All right? Yeah, all the quest lines are super obscure
for sure. Yeah, And that pisses me out because it's like locked me
out of specific I. I have the same conflict of like, well,
I don't want to I'm afraid to join this covenant because like, joining some
covenants will make other Apaci refuse to talk to you. But I don't want
to go just look up a fact and like you know, wikip my way
through the game, because that's no fun either. I do like the new
that FP system. I like how because I'm a pyromancherich, so I like
it's more right forward then like the weird stuff in the first Dark Souls where
it was like you have a limited eighth and then when I go fire,
I get more. But I like how you can allocate, like, well
I went two and two instead of three and one, We're gonna have four
health ones and no blue point ones or whatever. Like I'm I was talking
to a friend who's playing a sorcerer and he's he's going, he's going all
blue ESTs flasks FU because he has a healing spell. Oh he's a cool
sorcery something. He's like he's fully specked into end and faith and stuff.
Okay, so he just uses those to recharge FP because he has his healing
spell that he calls to heal himself. So yeah, on all up to
you different ways to like you know, like we were saying before, like
they they went all the way in the other direction from blood Borne where they're
like eight different ways to play the game, Like there's a bazillion play styles
possible in this Uh he kind of fails chasing even playing nasty fighting real quick,
like a drunken battle lounge at like midnights over the weekend. That it
was fun. Just had a bunch of people come in, ran smoothly.
Yeah that's that's That's all that I really need is that you fucking mettle lounge.
I need homies to play with, and I need a good connection,
and I had all of that. Oh yeah, and that goes without saying
all right, excellent screenshots of Guile out there now, Yeah, looking good,
man, Look at God? Look like they said they said, gentlemen,
gentleman. Wait what yeah? Really yeah? What's looking good? I
gotta see that. Have they said anything about, like I know, Nash
is not just a Guile clone, but he's kind done at all kind of
well yeah, at anything about how Guyle is going to play They know each
other guys to be very similar. Yeah so yeah. Still sonic boom Yeah
flash kick like an actual one, but like his a V skill looks to
power up his sonic booms, Like he'll get like sonic Boom bracelets or something
like that, and it'll give like armor to his projectile so they can like
blast through their stuff a head, he's got handcuffs. Was gonna say,
just a reference man Invisible throws and magic throw. Yeah, they should put
that in there, but yeah, I'm not positive. You know, we
haven't seen any game play, just on some screenshots and I just briefly looked
over the article. I think that's how that stuff's gonna work. What are
the costumes coming out? I don't plays angy, but I need I need
to buy that Macho Man costume. That's really good. It's pretty good.
But yeah, Guyl is supposedly coming out sometime this month, but they're gonna
give away with like one of the costumes for free and until does any store
opens, because that's still not going to be open in this update. How
many free characters do you think they give out before they get that up?
And right, I don't know, let them keep coming. Yeah, yeah,
it's hard to argue with it. Oh, they're gonna have a DLC
stage too. That's kind of cool because it's a recreation of Guyle's original stage,
but all in three D. It's like it's kind of pricey. Though
it's like seventy thousand fight points. Yeah, the character is what a hundred?
The characters one hundred. Yeah, so kind of stages are seventy,
costumes are forty, and then colors range. Gotta get that fight money.
Yeah. Yeah, they gotta give us challenges and ship to do, like
the daily ones. They still haven't initiated those yet. Ran Yeah, fucking
whatever. I don't give a shit. I just want to fight people.
Yeah, you'll be happy, I jeff. Yeah, what's been going on?
Oh, realm of video games? Oh man, in the realm of
video game? Really talk about it. I went, I've been playing the
Division a lot more lately. They put out that most recent update to add
the Incursion, Yeah, which is not not a raid, not a raid,
not really a raid, but it is a difficult mission. This is
the Bank level stuff, the Dark level stuff. Yeah no, this is
not part of the Dark Zone. This is this is just a mission they
added to the game that is meant to be endgame content. Oh and you
can run it multiple times to get you know, like a high end gear.
They have gear sets in there now, and they've added gear Score,
which is their kind of version of Destiny's light level yea. And so that's
been a weird system to interact with because now any level thirty gear just has
a number assigned to it that is a gear score. So you'll see drops
that say like it's eighty nine, but they're all like in they're all there.
It's like one of like five different numbers or something like that. It's
like, it is eighty nine, it is not eighty eight. It is
not ninety. It is a nine. It is one thirty one, not
one thirty is one thirty one, there's two oh four, okay, you
know. So it is like there's there's just specific numbers and they don't necessarily
so your gear score is an average of the gear you have equipped at a
given time. And it's it's not like light where like just adding one point
makes you more powerful across the board. It is just an indication of what
you have equipped. So I have found gear. So so there are roles
within you know that like Diablo or anything like that, Like you can get
a shitty version of an item or a you know, if it's got a
higher roll, like it's like, oh, this has eleven percent of you
know, fire resistance, this one only has six and they're both the exact
same item, but they both are one thirty ones, so the gear score
doesn't take that into account exactly. So which sucks. I'm gonna say,
is that a lot of work to like drill down and like eyeball all that
stuff. Kind of Well, Also, I mean I haven't necessarily played enough
to where like I'm min maxing or trying to like really get the most out
of every single item, right, because my overall gear scores to like one
fifty two and they recommend one sixty for the incursion. But there's been gear
that I've gotten that's been like a higher gear score that has been worse than
another weapon that I have. Like I got a long I got an LMG
uh that had a higher gear score than this sweet ak forty seven that because
it had one more mod point on it, I could attach one more thing
to it that gave it a higher DPS than than that higher gear scored LMG.
So there's a lot of weird elements like that where it just feels like
the gear score stuff just feels like poorly implemented misleading. And yeah, definitely
definitely definitely misleading, And a lot of it depends on what kind of build
you're doing. Like, I got gloves that are part of a gear set,
but it's the skill gear set as opposed to the DPS or the like
tank gear sets, and I don't have any other skill stuff, so equipping
it raises my gear score because it's a it's a high end item. It's
it's all this other stuff, but it's the last thing I would want to
equip for the rest of my built. Are they trying to like with those
sets, are they trying to encourage people to specialize as Like yes, Like,
oh, I'm trying to special respecting as a healer because this is like
that set is all skill focused on. So if you have that whole set,
then your skill points are off the chart and you get additional bonuses to
your skill and all this other stuff. And they have different gear sets for
you know, for people that want to have most of their points in firearms
and do more damage and all that other stuff. My naturally, the next
question is like, are there situations where those roles are actually required? But
I guess you can't play the incursion yet. So I've tried a few times,
Oh can you actually I can go in and one for there you can
go in one not recommended one sixties and it also I don't so it's it's
tough, I am. And people are exploiting the shit out of it,
and youb soft is out there saying, hey, because so people are exploiting
it to get like full two sets of two of four's like out of that
thing, like by running it over and over again, and like you you
quit at the right moment and join you know, it's like this shit you
do. It's like a lot of exploits in that game. So if they're
out there saying that, they are looking for ways to punish people that are
doing that, and I imagine that needs they'll strip the gear from people that
that did it. But because it seems like people aren't supposed to be able
to have full sets of two a four gear yet, but that's what people
are seemed to be grinding out of it. But yeah, it seems like
a sort of thing where you know, there's there's kind of a way to
beat the APC. There's a way to beat this like fifteen wave confrontation as
you try to blow up this APC. But if you're in there with random
people and no one's talking so far, I've gotten to do about wave three
of fifteen uh and four once uh and then ever then eventually someone quits and
then you're like, well fucked. How many players four? Okay, And
so it's basically just a survival mode. It's a mission that has it's a
mission, yeah, I mean totally. It's a mission that has an like
an open space with an APC in the middle of it. That's kind of
a boss fight, but it's a boss fight that is fifteen waves of you
surviving this boss fight. When I said, move around, like, are
you going through a level? Or go through a level and then get there
and I don't know what's passed there. I don't know if that's the end
of it or if that's like a midpoint. I think that might be the
end of it. I think you blow up the ABC and it's it's not
literally just a big arena. No, no, you you shoot the people
on your way to the arena, and then it seems like it's a big
arena. Okay. Yeah, that's a little less ambitious than what it had
been. Yeah, it's maybe not great, but it's at the same time,
it is the thing to do to get that gear unless you're high rank
in the Dark Zone and have a bunch of currency to spend. That way,
you can get blueprints that are pretty well well geared that way too.
Anyway, I don't know. I just I enjoy that game. So I've
been going in the Dark Zone and doing stuff, and I've finally killed another
player in there, a rogue. A guy shot me. I said,
fuck that and gunned him down and then hit him with my gun and got
a trophy. So stuff, yes, and then I took his ship and
flew it out of there, and I said, that's what I think,
you man. Uh yeah, So I don't know that that stuff. I
think it's fun. This the yeah, the the Incursion maybe isn't awesome,
but I still do want to at least finish at once and get a sense
of how it fits in with everything else and all that. But I don't
know. So, yeah, I don't know. I've been I've I've spent
a good chunk of the weekend playing that kind of just coming back to it
for an hour here hour there. I tried the Incursion a couple of times,
but you know, I was mainly running around the Dark Zone and running
the daily missions for Phoenix credits, so I could buy another blueprint and get
better a better backpack. That's pretty telling though you spent the better part of
a weekend just kind of run it through the loop and stuff. It feels
pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, I like the way that game feels.
It's it's it's interesting and it's fun. So that's cool. Do you have
do you have like a group that you know? No? No, solo
man, No. I mean it has matchmaking every at every h at every
mission. So when I'm going into the missions, I'm teaming up with random
people and usually that works fine, accepting the incursion where it doesn't work at
all. Uh. And then in the dark Zone, I am running out
alone. That's right. If they laid out any kind of roadmap for what's
coming after, yeah, they have their whole season pass laid out. There's
another incursion up by Times Square that shows on the map now as coming soon
in a free update, so they've got one more of those planned. There's
a New York stuff, right, yeah, all of it. But then
they've got like they've before the game even came out, they kind of detailed
what their season past stuff was. I don't actually remember what it is but
right, but yeah, they have they have some stuff laid out there.
And then I also played Pire. Ah yeah, yeah, which is the
new game from Super Giant Games that is coming out next year. P y
R E Yes, p y R E Pire. They're gonna be showing that
off at Packs East, which is this weekend. And I got a chance
to look at at that. It's third game. Yeah, the third Yeah,
super Giant three game three. Yeah, it's it's cool. It's a
it's different from their previous game, which was different from their previous game,
but you still see that connective tissue of like there's a certain sense of writing,
the certain style of writing, is a certain art style to it that
like it reads as like, oh, this is the next game from Super
Giant. There is a certain logan. The voice acting I can't really speak
to too much. I don't know that I heard him in there. But
some of the speech is not in a language that can be spoken. Uh,
there's there's some kind of like the there is English that is spoken at
you. There's actual voice acting, but then there's some voice acting that is
like a jibberish language. Well maybe it's not jibbish. I don't know.
English. Maybe it's just Spanish. I don't know. I don't remember most
of my Spanish. I said it was a similar art style. Is that
same kind of perspective that? No, no, no, no, this
is a this is a pretty different type of game. It's it's it's a
it's a role playing game. So there's it has that kind of in common
with some of the past stuff where there's that kind of that stuff going on.
But it's uh like kind of you have a set number of turns that
you take before you get to kind of the the action part of it,
the combat part of it, if you will. So it's kind of so
give me the setting for all right, So you are you are thrown out
of civilization. You're cast out into the waists. More of a fantasy to
the post apocalyptic god. It's a caravan happens upon you and three masked figures
get out mad Max type stuff. No, it's not like cars and it's
it's like a caravan rolls up. It's driven by imps. Okay, like
it's it's drawn, it's pulled by imps. Okay. More of a fantasy,
yeah, kind of more of a fantasy thing, but not just like
it's not direct like, hey, here's a coalball day, here's you know.
Sure, it seems like it's it's kind of going for its own take
on on this waste land. So you're kind of cast out of whatever the
civilization is, into the waists, left there to die. You get found
by this caravan. They pull you in and they ask you, hey,
do you know how to read? Because people don't know how to read.
Generally speaking, there are not many readers in this in this universe. That's
an important skill to have, and you can. So you then learn a
way out of the waste land, and that is to perform the rights.
And so the game becomes you on this caravan full of characters going from one
place to the next to kind of perform the rights. And the rights,
as it turned out, is a competitive three on three. Uh uh,
it's kind of a sport. There's kind of a sport thing going on in
a floating sphere of water. Yeah no, no, no, no,
no, are you a car No? You are you? So you are?
You are the reader? You you are are kind of pulled back from
this thing, but also you're kind of controlling the city. The reads then
the rights. Yeah, okay, yeah, you're reading the rights and then
you take care of businesses. So yeah, it's so you you kind of
along the way. You can choose how to spend your time, whether you're
like invest like looking for more gear, or talking to the characters that will
be on this team when you get to the combat thing, so you might
make them their stats better for the next kind of fight, the next the
next encounter. And then when you get there, it is a sport like
thing where there is there is a ball in the center, a sphere.
It's all storyline, it's you know, it's a sphere, it's the Pire,
it's all this other stuff, but you know it's a ball. There
are goals on either side that are the Pire the pirates ten points, and
you need to get you need to jump into the Pire, and you have
three characters. You can switch between them by either passing the ball or kind
of passing control from one to the next. And then from there you have
kind of a an aura that you can blast off of your character that will
basically eliminate one of the other players for a few seconds, which will then
cause them to give up the ball, give up the orb its call steal
it and move forward. It's all like direct control, actual direct control real
times. Yeah, it's all yeah, and you're you're controlling one character at
a time, So the other two kind of stand there while you're doing this
other stuff. Do they just take complete Is it like tag mode? And
they stay completely still. They're not controlled by AI or anything like that.
They're they're not moving, so you're kind of moving towards their pire, and
you can so if you get close to another character, they have an aura
around them. If you step in their aura, you die, which then
causes you to respond back at your goal. If you're kidding the ball,
it's gone. All that sort of stuff. You approach a teammate inside an
enemy, okay, you can fire your aura off at them, which was
the attack I talked about. And you can also jump, so you can
jump over their aura. So if they're between you and the goal, the
jump is pretty long, so if you time it just right, you can
jump over their aura, land on the pire, and then depending on which
character you are, you do a different level of damage to their pire.
It has like ten points if you get the big slow character and there it
does three points of damage if you get the small fast one. In there
it does one, the medium does two, and so it's it's kind of
on you to get to take out their pire before they take out yours.
Whenever you score, your character is eliminated for a while, So there's kind
of a three on two situation for a chunk of time play. Yeah,
and then that a character will eventually respond whenever you get taken out, you
know, that character will vanish from play and respond after after a little while
there. And that's that's some of the stuff that like, oh they come
back faster because you went this route on your way to the next battle.
You talk to them and gave them hope or you gave them you know that
sort of thing. It's really interesting is it presented at like in World as
a sport, Like is this in a colosseum with the crowd? These are
these are the rights from I mean they actually have kind of group names,
team names and stuff like that. But then no, there's no crowd,
there's no scoreboard. That's sort of the time. Maybe it eventually gets there.
But like in this demo, which was just kind of one of those
two of like a tutorial and then and then one proper uh round, No,
it's like you're going to a place, like you look up at the
stars and it tells you where to go, and then you set off on
this course and you need to get there in three days because that's when the
rights will commence, and so you have to you have to get there in
time. Uh and and partake and it's so it is. It is kind
of viewed as the way out of the wasteland. So there are plenty of
people that are trying to get out of the wasteland and they have formed their
their crew as well. How do you getting out of the wasteland? Like
do you win money in this? And knows you perform the rights successfully?
I mean, I don't know, that's the end of the game. I
imagine, I don't know. Super interesting. I'm having trouble picturing this,
like I'm really gonna yeah. Yeah, they will have put out some screenshots
and I assume a trailer by by the time this podcast can be heard that
will probably make it all make complete sense. But yeah, it sounds super
intrigued, and they're kind of they're pitching it as a single player thing.
I think I think it would work on a mother player sense really well.
I think it would if they could get the online working, I think that
would be really cool. But you know, there is a big story.
It'd be one on. I think it would be one on because you control
three on three would be a very different thing. Can imagine that would be
like a separate mode, right, not like tied into the story, because
it sounds like this is a narrative driven RPG, right, yeah, so
I'm guessing it wouldn't be like this like street Fighter Arcade request mode thing where
it's like, oh, I'm playing against a real guy instead of an AI.
Right, Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I could
be a separate like versus mode from the main menu, I'm assuming right,
if they did, I think that's something that they could integrate into the story
if they chose, and you know, to spending on how they did it,
you know, it's maybe not a fight request vote or something like that.
Any multiplayer. I'm not really sure what they're what they're really talking about
with that stuff. So but it seemed like they were very much focusing on
it as a single player thing, which I take to mean they're not talking
about the multiplayer just yet. But who knows. It's a good thing to
not do when you're early on, right, Yeah, the game is not
out until twenty seventeen, so talk about the multiplayer later. Yeah, but
I think that like it. It's it's engaging enough to where I think it
would work in a competitive setting. Uh So, so yeah, it's like
a weird and unexpected direction for them. Yeah. Yeah, but but I
also I probably I guess I would have said that about Transistor, like the
way the way the gameplay was. Yeah, you know, like like you
could say a lot of things about the wrapping around it. Again, I
think it's one of those things you look at it and go like, yeah,
no, this is a natural progression for Super Giant in terms of kind
of the winding was setting and all that stuff. But obviously like the but
it certainly was not just like a refined Bastion genre of game is totally different.
So this this, I think you could look at as that again of
like there are there are elements of it you look at and go, this
is clearly a game from Super Giant. This sounds like a game from Super
Giant. It's kind of like like the difference between steam World Heist and Steam
World steam World Day, where it plays totally different, but like looking at
it, like, yeah, this is a Steam World game. Yeah,
I mean not. That's not saying that they're set in the same universe or
anything like that, but I think that they've they've established a tone. You
could tell by looking at screen chats and a trailer like, oh, this
sounds like it's super Jet when you yeah, the way the writing, there's
there's a weight to it that I think made those previous games stand out,
you know, I think that there's that in there too. You actually have
kind of like it's almost like an adventure game. So I went into this
not knowing what it was. So for like the first five minutes of like
moving a cursor around a menu and hitting advance on text and kind of looking
around this caravan and stuff, I was like, are they making a point
and click adventure game? And then it just unfolded into this larger kind of
you know, the to the right, So I'm like, oh, fucking
crazy, it's like a sports There's a really interesting thing they do with context
sensitive text, where you know, like Nintendo games will light up text and
all the other stuff. With this, if you when you take the cursor
and put it over that text, it actually pops up and tells you,
like if it's character's name, it'll tell you who that character is in relation
to you and the world and stuff, like a biotype thing. Yeah,
okay, well it's like a sentence or two. You know, it's it's
not like some some huge thing. But it like it was neat. It
was one of the things where like that's actually like a cool move for like
an adventure game, like keep the context coming at you. And then it
totally wasn't even an adventure and I was like, man, this is nuts.
Yeah, so they're gonna be demo me out of packs, letting people
come up and play it. It's uh, it's fascinating. I'm very eager
to see this. Yeah, see what it is and how it works.
Yeah you could almost. Yeah, I don't know. Like the Sports thing
is weird because it's like, especially in like a single player sports in the
sense of it it is purely a fantasy game. It's it's not yeah,
it's not like fucking Reggie Jackson or Doda or you know, the two extremes
of Sports, Doda Reggie Jackson. But you know, there's a storyline and
a universe created around it. But when you see it, you're like,
Okay, this is actually kind of is playing out like there's a goal or
it fits. Yeah, okay, yeah it's neat cool. Yeah, I
will follow him anywhere after Bastion. So I'm I'm super excited to see that.
I was ready to love Transistor. Yeah, I really liked it,
but I played it at packs before it came out, and like, I
loved it. I wrote this glowing preview of it. I love the combat
system and everything, and I think that killed. The thing that killed it
for me is I remember the upgrade system being really confusing, like as you
got those like different like chips or why, it was just a different things.
Yeah, it's so flexible though. There were so many different ways to
modify the skills with other skills. Yeah, I thought that was amazing.
Like I remember playing that game and granted, like we know those guys,
but I remember playing that game and going like this very much feels like a
game that people who have made RTSs would make, totally like it was a
very given word with right, Yeah yeah, with having that many options though
it was it was. Yeah, it was overwhelming, but then you sometimes
find like the best build and you kind of stick with that, did you
guys get that impression on? Well? Kind of? But then and I
also experiment too much. Well, so I did experiment as much as I
could, because they actually, if you remember, they tied a bunch of
the storytelling to upgrading or using the different abilities. Sure like you've got a
bunch of more flavor texts the more of the abilities you used. So I
constantly was switching around just to like try to learn more of the story.
Couldn't nodes get like burnt out or overloaded or something, and then they were
unavailable for a set period of time or something like I'd love to go back
and give that another show because I've got a few hours. And I was
just like, you didn't you didn't finish it. No, I was like,
this is just a lot. I just I stopped. I love I
think that. Yeah, there were things about that upgrade system like you're you're
both right, like it's a super crazy cool system but also can be really
overwhelming. Yeah sure, yeah yeah, and it's like they try to go
out of your way. I mean, I think the start to that game
ends up being a little slower than maybe I would normally like because it has
to kind of yay, so much on you. I think that's where it
lost me. Yeah, yeah, totally, I didn't. I did not
finish that game either. Yeah, I think I played. I started playing
it. I want to say. There was other stuff coming out around that
time that was just like, oh, I get back to Transistor and then
just kind of never did. Yeah. Well, luckily you can play it
on like eighteen different platforms now. Yeah, I can play it in your
browser right now if you want it to. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Yeah, I'll be curious to see what people think. Uh, coming
out of packs excellent, it's neat. I hope there's a trailer that I
can go watch soon. Yeah. Yeah, I need to see it in
action. Yeah. Yeah, and that's I don't know. I haven't really
been playing too much else, Like I know, I'm still fiddling around with
track Mania Turbo and I tried playing a little bit Stevens Sausage would for whatnot.
Did you fall off the PS four version in favor of track Mania?
Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's just because I I've already got
most of my records and stuff on the four version, so it's kind of
and and also the PC version I could be playing a different better track Mania
game Better Slash Worse. I don't know. That's it's a toss up.
But I could be playing Stadium there, uh and and playing on crazier tracks
and all the music, and yeah, that traditional track Mania experience that that
I crave. So I have that installed too. So sometimes I go back
and forth, Like sometimes I'll play some Turbo and go it's just not doing
it for me the way I need it, and then have to go play
Stadium for a while and let's shake up your kinks sometimes exactly keep it fresh,
Yeah for sure. Yeah, I got Otherwise you're like this just this
is exactly the same as it always. It's just not doing it form.
I bought Basses Loaded for the PlayStation four. Does it still have that weird
perspective? Yeah? Yeah, but it's sixteen by nine. It's like an
ANYS game running at native sixteen nine. It looks fucking crazy. It's fucking
crazy. I always felt wrong pitching or like it didn't feel good for pitching
or hitting on in an Yeah. I was never a big baseload of fan
either. But I want to RBI baseball or Griffy Juniors thing where pitcher up
top the way to do it. Who was a Jellico Yeah, yeah,
so there's there's like a team that has like the city connection car. There's
like a Jellico team in this game. In this version of the game was
SNK Baseball Stars. Yeah, I love Baseball staff which one the first one
specifically, Yeah, that's played the ship out of the game. That's Namco
technically, okay, Yeah, with those weird black cartridges. There were a
lot of baseball games on the NS. Yeah, they were good. Baseball
was was great. Baseball was America's sport for a good long time. And
then Barry Bonds ruined it. Thanks Bonds us, Mark McGuire maybe too,
and I can Saco got in and got out and then like all his stuff
came to light later, like the bombs money off it. Yeah, the
Bonds stuff was way more in the moment. I mean maybe the Bonds it's
sewed from living here. Yeah. But like when the Bond stuff happened and
he was still playing the game, You're like, man, fuck this,
fuck him still all this he was still playing and like breaking the record.
The thing it was the McGuire and Sosa thing. It's like we were all
just like Oh, this is great. And then it was like oh they
were that was that was the death of the dream right there, like he
was setting the record, and then it was like, oh, that record
is not legitimate at all. Fuck that yeah, fuck baseball. It turns
out, like said the Bonds thing, that would have been like twenty eleven,
twenty twelve. Really no, no that Yeah, the all time to
Hank Aaron record. Yeah, like way before that wasn't it. I feel
like I was in Minnesota, so it wouldn't have been any earlier than oh
nine, I don't think. Man, the McGuire Soca stuff, that stuff
just seems like ancient chosen. Yeah, m was Pete rose up to these
days getting Tombstone by Kane. Yeah, he's somewhere just taking it from Kane
and then having like great political view. Boys, Oh that sounds like a
barrel of monkey's. I'm gonna have to lift that up later. Yeah,
need need some lights, right and celebrity Wait? Wait? Really, yes,
he's in that Hall of Fame. Yes they call season one. Yeah,
yeah, they put him in that one right right, yep. They
call Kane the Big Red Machine like they called the Reds the Big Red Machine.
Wait Is that the joke? Yes, that is why that that.
I thought it was just hilarious because it was random, like why is fucking
r Kane? Pete Rose saying no, we're the Big Red Machine? Who
the fuck are you? And then Kane they never said that a person,
because he was in was wrestling being subtle all those years. It really got
It went right over my head. Man. I just thought it was funny,
like, oh, Pete Rose in a chicken suit trying to get the
better of Kane. I'm gonna regret asking this, but why is Pete Rose
involved with wrestling? Because fourteen? Because they because they referred to Kane as
the Big Red Machine, and because he played for the Reds and they referred
to themselves as the Big Red Machine. And so I guess I guess what
I was so because it was a good celebrity thing to put him in their
Hall of fame as a publicity thing, to say, oh, you won't
let him in your hall of fame, we'll put our movies. What I
should have said was like did he wrestle? Like did he just got he
got beat up? He was dress up like a like a chicken and try
to like sneak up on Kane and attack him or whatever. But he had
an undertaker, and Paul BarreR has an undertakeer Snumbers nineteen ninety nine. Stop
no, okay, good lord man. It was like a Thanksgiving tradition,
wasn't that wrest of Anything? Fourteen and either twenty or seventeen x seven?
Sorry? Yeah, I just remember him coming out multiple times. Yeah,
and it wasn't great the first time, and you're like, man, why
Pete Rose just sneezed the money? Did he ever make it into a video
game before his star fell? He must have, I can't remember. I
don't know. He was definitely never like the cover guy or anything. No,
No, it wasn't his time a bit before, like maybe a thing
maybe probably just remembering, I was thinking he was like lab He isn't like
micro League Baseball or something like that. I thought all that shit went down
in like the late eighties. No, I want to say that was earlier.
They that was earlier. I think I want to say early eighties.
Okay, yeah, maybe baseball history. Maybe Pete Rose Pennant Fever all right
came out and it appears to be eighty eight for the twenty six hundred okay,
and the seventies, Yeah, twenty six hundred games were being released,
dude. Yeah, like Double Dragon came out way late, like the twenty
Dragon for twenty one. Oh yeah, it's like a blue block and a
red block and they, oh, we should play that. That sounds bad.
It's something else, man. It makes the NES version look fucking incredible,
like an abstract interpretive version of Double Dragon. You can't actually see who
anybody is. What does a bobo look like? That's just a big,
bigger, bigger. Yeah, it's a peach colored Yeah, the blob.
I don't think the twenty six hundred did peach, but it wasn't that,
it wasn't in the limited color palet. Man. I found myself on Saturday
morning sitting on my couch and this is going no watching on my television.
Oh don't Yeah, a Clash Royal Tournament. What they had a hell of
a set and if did you watch? I saw something? Oh yes,
that makes me so happy. Really good production of really good producround. You
know, they're making millions of dollars a day their production call. They ought
to be pretty good. I got something for me. Wait a second,
what kind of television. Well, this was on Twitch. Okay, it's
not on actual television. It was on l end. She was hosting the
tournaments and she's a huge fan. Yeah but no, I just streamed it
on the Xbox. But was that in uh Finland? Did they say?
Oh, I assume it was. I didn't watch. I didn't. I
didn't see the beginning of it. I don't know where they were holding it.
But it didn't look like a huge venue like every time they would pay
into the crowd, like it seemed like half the audience were the guys who
had gotten eliminated from the tournament. Like it was not a giant well the
stadium or anything. The actual set up, the stage setup was great,
like the two screens into two like thrones or whatever. Yeah, they had
on the giant screen zoomed in on these players and they're just looking at their
phones. They had to be fair, they I know, but yeah,
they had. They had. Wasn't hell Sinki? Was it? Okay?
They had they had. The players were sitting on these like giant like leather
thrown look an easy chair cut type things like they need those little tiny kids.
When do you see the big crown they gave them too. It's just
the crown, giant plastic crown. Yeah, they gave they gave out fucking
signs of the like the king emots to the crowd, like the crying.
Like there are people like holding up signs of the crying, the lapping ones.
The lapping ones worst. Yeah, because at the end when you lose,
somebody just hit the lapping one like twenty times in a row, and
it just makes me want to throw my phone. Yeah, stop sucking so
bad, you should throw your phone. I don't see that one. You
know. What I've started running into is, you know there are people a
little taunt you as they think they are winning. Yeah, like they'll they'll
take a tower, or they'll push a little and the game and they'll laugh
at you or whatever. Yeah, And I've been running into this. But
people, people that do that and then end up losing, will always throw
out like a good game or a well played at the trying to make good.
It's like, oh, well I lost, you dude, a good
game, But no, I'm just fucking hammer on the crime game when that
happens. Fucking dicks. There are some awful people playing Clash Royal. Holy
shit, have you spent any money on it. Nope, I know I
keep doing it because of the way they act during matches like that. You
keep doing it, you keep spending money on it. Is that what she's
said? Is that? What you just said? How much have you put
into it? I know you've bought at least something that was present you.
Yeah, I know you gotta roll with your homies. You told me the
other day of the gem. I believe, I believe. I believe you
said that. It quote feels. There have been a couple of times I
had some drinks at a comedy show on Saturday and I was like, you
know what, I'll be happy I did this in the morning and just buy
some gems And must have been a tell of a comedy show if you're playing
Clash Royal and I had the thing like on the uber bag or whatever.
Yeah, never turns out to be true. What saying I'm going to be
happy about this in the mond I actually I have been happy about it because
he blacked out. I can sing it, and then he woke up in
the more he's like, wow, what's what's your number? What's your number?
It's probably it's it's not that crazy. It's probably fifty or sixty.
Okay, that's not crazy, all right, Okay, I've heard tales of
people spending much more unclash related games, so I'm keeping it low. So
like they they actually just put out like a I could pull it up right
now, like passion notes in the app, they are tweaking the progression stuff
like chests are going to give more cards. I think, really you have
to spend more gold in order to upgrade new stuff. It was no,
it sounded like jams, little friendly stuff. Now I'm watching the app,
but here's a shitload more cards. Great, just stop. Actually, what
it is is the Crown Chest, which is the thing you can earn once
a day by playing, is going to give way more rewards than it was.
Okay, so you're actually just straight up going to progress faster by playing
that. But you only really really progressive if you pay for those upgrades,
and that cost gold. That's I just spent two thousand upgrade my can into
level eight. Well, but you get a bunch of gold out of chests
like that, you know, I've never really a bunch of gold like all
this that I've got an upgrade now is like a thousand each. I want.
I want to point out the three fifths of this room now is way
into Clash Royale. I'm not progress Wait, yeah, I do play it.
I'm on my way out of that fucking game though. It's nasty.
So yeah, get out, Jason. If you know im, you can't.
I'm done. If you wanted any indication that this game is here and
is a thing, they had a tournament and then they also put out a
thing today that they are banning a bunch of people for using bots. Yeah,
like third party cells bots. No that that went out on Clash of
Clans and Clash Royal. Do you have any idea of what they do?
Like, I don't even have no idea, how idea? How are their
Android versions of Yeah, they're so. The maker of cheat Engine actually recently
released cheat Engine for Android. Oh wow. Oh so it could be just
people like tweaking their units to make them so. But but that's not the
first case of people like modifying a game on on Android or or even on
iOS. You know when you jail break your phone. No, bets are
off right. It's weird because they handle seemingly all of this game server side,
right like you if you you can close the app and reopen it immediately
and it will put you right back in your match. Like they're keeping track
of all that stuff on the end. Yeah, but they may not have
done anti cheat. They may have tried to offload some stuff to the client
that they shouldn't, or you know, something like that, other stuff like
blue stacks, like an Android emulator or something like that, and that's rough.
Yeah, that's no good. Yeah yeah that game. No, it's
a good game. It's real good. For a little while, for a
little while, I thought about at one point, uh, jail breaking an
iOS device, uh, specifically to try to cheat at games and just to
see what it was like just I was just you know, I got a
curiosity like or is this stuff well protected? Or this was a long time
ago. This was like when Mafia Wars was the big thing. Oh yeah,
Uh, I was like, I should my phone's jail broken. I
bet I could find where the money is kept and just give me more of
it. Man, Mafia Wars history, yep, But that's that's straight up,
like people play games on phone owns territory. That was like that was
so time and a lot of Facebook that that was like that was like the
very first game that I ever remember anybody playing on a phone and talking about
snake. Wow. Man, well you know we were talking about plants,
snake. I guess this was like post post iPhone. Sure, yeah,
it's h A tournament was fun. They were basically projecting the level onto the
stage. Did you see that stuff? Like when they were on the builders
level, the gears were turning on the stage and later they're like rivers of
lava flowing between the chairs. And it was I like it it looked really
nice really to watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like because I totally
picked up viable strategies from Wow, it was like, you know, it's
a competitive game that it's actually kind of easy to follow. It's you're right,
it is. And they had they had their straight up esports shout casters
like screaming a mile a minute at what was going on. But they've got
they've they've come up with like like rigid tournament rules now for like like here's
what a tournament in this game is, you know, like all time they
camp level. Yeah, like because you know, the joke is like,
oh, like, oh, was the guy who spent fifteen thousand dollars going
to win the tournament on matically but yeah, you're not bringing uh, micro
transactions into the tournament. So is every is it just like a maximum level
for fort I would have to pull it up. But they published, they
published what tournament rules are, Like, okay, I think the day of
the tournament, actually it was like because it's it's like, you know,
everybody's towers are X level, Like everybody's cards are capped at certain levels or
they're all you know, it's it's a level playing fields the point like and
at that point, it's just like a pure strategy game, you know,
like actually a good strategy game. Do you ever get that balloon? Yeah?
I accidentally bought the balloon without meeting to balloon and many and hord I
thought you accidentally buy it. I was finger was like hovering over the button
and I was thinking about it, and then I accidentally is like oh okay,
how much gold was that? Now I have that's probably two thousand.
How do you get two thousand golds? Just just like normally I always have
like two thousand plus gold? Like oh shit, no, no, no,
I if that's not a it's just like you get gold from opening chests,
like I just gold. I get like forty goals from gold, just
build up the silver once chests or anything. Every once in a while.
I come in like like if you if you get your daily crown chest and
free chests and you always have chests unlocking, like I just have gold constantly.
I don't know you're buying stuff. I think you're buying stuff. I'm
gonna open this free chest. I do wonder how you got the three gold?
Well? Do you upgrade everything? How much I have grade everything to
get those blue things? Are you guys upgrading? Literally everything is upgrade I
have or I have probably holding up his phone as if to show like everything
is upgraded. Look at my phone. There's no green numbers cards, No,
dude, I have, hang on, I have. I have currently
have nine cards that could be upgraded that I haven't upgraded. That's why I
have because okay, wept your overall level. That's why I have so much
gold, because I save it for the cards. I actually want to upgrade.
But I like to change up my deck everything often, and really to
remain competitive, you've got to keep these up upgraded, I think. And
yeah, I've got like sixteen hundred gold. I've got my normal chests that
I open I've got the grown chest that I open as well, and then
I'm always unlocking, well not always, but I also have sixteen hundred gold
as of right now. So that's that's about right. That's in line.
But I've got like one thing that I can enough. I fucked this.
It's a lot of this game. And then when i go go up to
the next arena, I've got a whole new set of cards and I've got
to collect upgrade and you get to collect you are you are privileged to collected
upgrade? So yeah, I just spent all that time upgrading my Arena two
stuff. Now when I hit Arena three, I gotta start that whole treadmill
all over again. Fun to play with. So I'm putting money into it,
and I'm upgrading my current stuff that go up to the next level.
No, no, wait until you get the Ice Wizards. I'm not don't
have that yet. Oh it's so good, legendary, right, So it
is, isn't it? Yes? That is way undervalued for what it does.
Get that this is dumb. It's a really good game. It's good.
I hate this is a really unhealthy thing that we're we need the bends
to stop this. I will not defend Clash of Clans as a video game.
That is just something I'm doing. But Clash Royale I think is a
good video game. It totally is. Do you think it's a good video
game? Dragged down by its business models? If it across the board everyone
spends ten dollars and you all have access to the same cards and everything.
I could if I could buy a ten dollars version of this game where everybody
was on the same it seems like this tournament was that also, which is
like the most tragic thing is the tournament is they're rolling those tournament features into
the game so people can do that, Okay, but that's not how you're
going to do matchmaking or whatever. Also, I'm kind of glad in a
weird way that it has that because it keeps me from playing this game all
the fucking time, because like that's the only thing that that doesn't even stop
me. Like once all the chests are filled up and it'll warn you like,
hey man, you can't get for this, Like they actually warned.
They're like you should maybe stop playing this because you're not earning any progress,
and you're like nope, because it's just fun. I do the exact same
thing. It is super addictive. I mean the matches are so short,
three minutes of match. Yeah. I've done the thing a couple of times
where I'm waiting for the train in the station at Montgomery Station and then I'll
have like thirty seconds left on a thing and my train will pull up.
Yeah, and I'll be like, I'm gonna lose reception if I step on
that train, so I'll just catch the next I want to finish this.
Wow. Wow, that's commitment. I usually just eat the loss. Whatever.
You gotta be careful with that stuff. My wife had an intervention with
me. I was apparently ignoring her on the car ride home one day because
I was playing Clash Royale and yeah, she yeah, she was pretty upset.
It's a good game, it is. There were, from what I
could see, pretty good between twitch and YouTube, roughly one hundred and twenty
thousand people watching that tournament, more out of just like curiosity, Oh yeah,
sure, oh you know what actually saw? It suggested on a forum
that I think they actually like popped up if you were in the app when
the tournament started, they popped up a notifications of ship, like, hey,
there's a tournament. Do you want to watch it? You can get
people. You could hit a button then just go straight to the tournaments.
Yeah, it was fun. It was It was cool to see high level
clash Royal play. The future is weird. Uh, all right, that's
it for video games. Most anybody's got anything else? I've been playing.
Yeah, battle Zone ninety eight redo. Oh yeah, that thing just dropped
out of nowhere, right, yeah, cool on Steam you can go play
battle Zone now. You're the good Battles. You say you're a big fan
of this original battle Zone. I'm sorry, this original remake reboot or this
is this isn't even the one fan of the sequel of the reboot battle Zone
two. I've never actually played the original battle zones. This has actually been
kind of fun. The original battle Zone, the original RTS battle Zone,
not the original Battles Rebellion, published by the other like remake of the Arcade
battle Zone game that is like a PlayStation VR game is also by Rebellion,
based on the movie, based on the game. Yes, so yeah,
they went out and they went out and picked up that's why they just called
it Battles exactly. Yeah, they went and picked up the all the rights
to the battle Zone across the board, and they they made this, and
then they're also making this PlayStation VR thing that is a more straightforward shooter.
Huh uh yeah weird. So was it like all new graphics and all new
stuff. I thought it was like remastered, but I know what's resident.
Yeah, they've got uh. It's It's been fun doing this one because I
get to see now what what is consistent throughout the trilogy, such as terrible
voiceovers. Uh, there's like in between missions, there's a loading screen,
and this guy is way too dramatic about being on the moon fighting the Soviets.
But that's just great if you've never played it before. It is an
art It is an rt a third person RTS. So you're driving a tank
around, but you can jump out and hop into another tank and then command
units from like a ground perspective. Yeah, okay, which a number of
games have tried, uh subsequently, but I don't think anyone who's really nailed
it, like battle Zone, and that's why I like that game. So
if you want to play that, it works. I'm right now stuck on
a mission though, m so I'm gonna have to maybe look up I don't
think I've played that game since it was brand new, so I barely remember
anything about it at this point. Yeah, it's cool, it's it sounds
sale right now for sixteen Okay. Yeah. I also played a few hours
of Twilight Struggle, which is an adaptation. Yeah, Austin Record admended it
to me, as did a few people people on Twitter. It's basically really
complex risk. Okay, you gotta you got a map of the world.
I clicked through that on Steam and saw a board game, and I was
like, back away from this. But if you put it that way,
that's cool. That sounds like Brad, I got a board game, we
can play what's that? And video game for him? What's that? There's
there's many of them. We need to do the sixth one? No,
yeah, I don't think I'm good. You're good, Okay, all right,
Actually i'd like I'd like to play that sixth One'm good? What are
you talking about? I'll talk after the show. I don't want to talk
after that. I'm talking. I'm talking about Marrow. Trust me, you
don't what's up? You don't don't enable him? Sounds fun anyway. It's
the US and the USSR during the Cold War. That is the theme of
this board game, and then each each country. So, uh, if
you remember risk, you can just decide to attack a country and roll dice.
In this one, you can decide to cause a coup or to assert
your influence in the country. There are a bunch of different like manipulative things
that you can do to detract your enemy's presence in that country, and you
can also play cards that will help you in that endeavor. But everything about
the thing about the cards is that there's a card game in the board game.
Yeah, oh my god. Each card has something that benefits the other
person. So if you're going to play that, you have to make sure
you played at the right time because there's no there's basically it's you know,
it's an analog of the Cold War, so nothing is binary. It's either
it's it's all fuzzy. But did a really good job of making that into
a game. I also finished middle of your solid five, right, congratulations,
So you did. How'd that go? Good? Better than expect it?
Yeah? People were would you think it? Really? Were sick of
that jeep ride? Huh oh? Yeah, that was a while ago.
Yeah, that was a while ago. Before the first, Well, when
I played it, it wasn't that it was all kind of ran together and
all that other stuff wasn't like a week apart, and yeah, we had
different videos and stuff. Yeah. When I created the deck for that,
I put part one of the finale fully expecting that this was going to go
like probably ninety episodes because the Quiet mission. Yeah, people were really thinking
in the chat that that quiet mission was going to take him dozens of times.
But four it only took like one dozen. Yeah, thank something like
that. But no, he knocked it out in that stream. Yeah,
that mission is so bad. Blocked you guys up like one pm. We
wrapped up. I had to believe because I had to go take care of
a baby. So probably like six hours later, I think I ate about
three full packages of red vines. Yeah, comedy versus fast Breaks? Did
you have numerous? Numerous great? Thank you very much for those. Yeah,
I know I really appreciate those. Thank you. Yeah, Yeah,
it was great. Dan stole a lot of my candy. Whenever I paid,
I ran into the control room while he was distracted and stole a fast
break from his pack. Yeah, I didn't do anything to that candy.
By the way, thank you or those chips thank you MS five with some
video game huh yeah. Yeah to Liz, I'm I'm glad to be done,
but you're not done. But I'm also glad to just I don't know,
it's been a really good experience. I got out of it what I
wanted to get out of it with this, with this endeavor. Yeah,
and those games are really good. Did you end up picking a favorite of
the French? Actually? Yeah? Three? Oh, so you picked the
wrong one? Then are you you're a two guy? Right? I'd be
a two guy. Yeah, I'd be a five guy. Okay. I
think there's an argument for any of them. That's the thing, Like,
there's like this is not a me saying three is the best. It's just
like three really resonates with me. Then I remember it, Well, you're
always wearing a cameo around the office and hid stuff and really like you really
like to dig through menus. Yeah, every time you change anything, he
likes to he likes to keep his cameo index above eighty. Yeah. Yeah,
throwing frogs around. So what's next? Twin snakes is next, right
of course, and then we're doing revengeance ghost babble. Yeah, I've got
three for a said two I think. Yeah, they're Canami skateboarding game with
snake in it, digital graphic novel on PSP. Oh yeah, yeah,
yeah, there we go. Yeah and then with the metal or Solid Snakes
sorry right right, yeah, but no no plans to do Metal Gear Rising
with your revengeance Metal Gear Scanlin is complete. Yes, m we ran a
pole in the chat right towards the end of that stream about people's favorite metal
gears and three one by a pretty healthy marginally no kid. I was a
little surprised by that, but also kind of not big big love of the
first one. But it was a pretty good spread that's mostly nostalgic, and
like I was gonna say, like one's probably it's pretty hard to go back
to these days. Yeah, to play, but like I think story wise
and like, that collection of Bosses is definitely the best. Yes, it's
the best. Yes, it's the best collection of boss I agree with that,
and also like like and as such, I think Twins Snakes is actually
a pretty good I mean, just watch that twenty seven minute trail they put
out, which is insane, but that shows all the crazy anime cut scenes.
If you want to see the weird bullish that game does. And yeah,
meddal Gear is like anime, so just like yeah, but yeah it
is. But twenty Snakes is like, hey, this is just straight up
anime now, like now we're just doing gods the people that make that and
and had them make some for us. That's the thing, Denis Dyak,
mister anime. It's a matter of preference. But the first game struck the
balance that I wanted between like military intrigue and like you may absurdity, and
then they went full anime after that. Yeah, but they did it so
good, and like the fact that it was all wrapped with this like kind
of realistic like military like realistic, you know, but like a real world
locations set and kind of modern takes. It's a weird contract. Then yeah,
fucking vampires and fat guys and rolls. It really made Yeah, the
fat guy and vampire is more realistic by having it in a realistic setting.
You're you're definitely right about ghosts. It's like they asked, They finally asked
and answered the question, what if vampires were real? Man, what would
they mean? Like, it's not a vampire though, it's Nanto machines it's
based on science. But that's also I mean, vampires aren't really so you'd
have to like, how would you make a vampire really nano machines? So
it was like bram Stokers Dracula was nana machines too. No, I'm saying
this is the it's the only real vampire ever. All other vampires are bullshit.
Okay, it's a vamp's going reale based in reality. Yeah, yeah,
rooted grounded. Yeah, science. He jumped off the George Washington Bridge.
That's a real bridge. Can't make that up. No, that's exactly
the stay shells that exists. Solid snake simulation selection for societal Sanity is that
in the game. Originally the S three plan was the solid snake simulation,
but that was all a ruse because it was really a Patriots plot for the
selection of societal sanity to see how much they could control the flow of information.
Right. Simulation was a cover story told Ryding. So when the and
I think we'll see a metal gear scale in six, If there's another metal
gear solid, there's not gonna be another. If there's a middle gear SEL
six, there's certainly gonna be another metal solid. It will be there.
Will be a metal gar solid, but it's gonna be a pachinko machine,
so you're gonna have to go. Then I'll finish that pachinko machine, I
guess. I mean, if they make that pachinko machine, we I think
we're obligated to get that shipped here and do that, yeah, or ship
ourselves out there. Yeah okay, yeah, also a really good idea.
No, we should just get a pachinko machine. Actually, isn't it's probably
illegal? Isn't have But also isn't having one in your Like? Isn't that
worthless? Like isn't gambling gambling? Gambling with your own money? Just like
the value of It's like buying a slot machine simulator for your game console and
just pushing like the button over and over, agatinting, go oh, I
want that time. It's like pachinco machines that really give out money. They
give out like they give out ball. Yeah, keep telling you. So,
how would it be illegal? I don't understand it'd be illegal to own
a gambling machine. And you're, well, yeah, I guess it's like
you can buy slot machines and have them in your house, so they have
to be older than a certain year. As an owner of a slot machine,
lay tell you that they have to be prior to a certain year.
You can't own newer slot machines because then then you could be hacking them and
learning how to work and then going casinos. Yeah, don't fucking say that.
Please waiting outside the podcasting right now. Like ski Ball, you know,
I mean that's skill based for the most part, that dispensed tickets.
Yeah, you could. I think, Oh you get a fucking laffy taffy
for those tickets. This bullshit. There's some really high quality prices you you
could probably get, like if you have like twenty thousand, let's start in
an adult ski ball situation where you turn those tickets into pornographic films and cigarettes.
Okay, yeah, it'll be millionaires probably probably. This is a business
plan with legs. I really want a Chinko machine. Now, I'm just
saying, do you fact could be arranged. The thing is is most of
these machines are technically patchy slot machines. There's like a potico and is kind
of a screen in there with a weird video game component to all kinds of
weird che can he guys out there listening. Stop sending Dan so many fucking
ambos and just send us one of these sea mebo slot machine where you win
at ambo. How gross? Nobody wins? Gross, buddy? All right,
let's move into the emails. I have one here that will be relevant
to your interests. Bobcast at chinantbomb dot com. It's my interest Heather in
Montreal. It's about metal Gear. Okay, nah, we have an expert.
How far in advance do you think coojima plans of the Metal Gear games?
I cannot believe that he had the twist from MGS five planned when he
created the first Metal Gear game? Totally, But but did he know what
would happen in MGS four when he made one? Does he have some kind
of crazy long term plan? This isn't you know? This is written in
the present tense, which obviously he will never make another metre game. We're
gonna ask the expert here and so yeah, how much? How much was
he just making this ship up as he went along? That? Yep?
Yeah, yeah, all right, the right answer. You pass the test.
He really did play they're wrestling, they're like writing the show up to
the moment. Ragos live. Yeah, yeah, James and Guerrilla m I
mean he had he had a mixed movies. He had a big thread to
work off of because he just pulled out all of his high school notes,
his journal. Yeah, whenever he got angsty. This girl broke up with
me because I didn't have enough posters on my wall right after we watched King
Kong six times. There is a thread. I mean, considering that every
Metal Gear game is basically made as if it's the last Metal Gear game,
Like that's kind of you know, it's kind of obvious that he's making it
up. I mean it worked out in the end. There is there is
a narratable book sense, all right, there's a narrative that goes there's no
one big thing that you can't explain in those games throughout the history of it.
You same big thing like the overall story arc the Patriots and Zero and
Big Boss and Snake and stuff, like, all those threads are explained.
Yeah no, I mean yeah, but explain not realistically. I mean it's
not. It's a fictional cobble together some bullshit that at least fits with the
timeline that they're working with. Like that's I think the most generous you could
be it makes sense from a fictional narrative standpoint, no judgment to quality an
organization of facts. Yes, yeah, I'm not saying it could act like
humans. Yeah, but I'm not saying it could happen. Metal gear can't
happen. Yeah, yeah, because it already did. But it makes sense.
But what what doesn't make sense? Let's move on. Nope, let's
move on. Next email, I'm getting hit the ship in the bud Drew
from Los Angeles writes in other drew Hey Fellows. The other day, I
found myself in a richer game store here in Los Angeles, paying one hundred
dollars for a near mint copy of Zelda wand of gamble On for the CDI
I'm widely regarded as one of the worst games ever made. It as you
do, it is now proudly displayed in my home, proudly. Even more
recently, I dropped I nearly dropped hundreds of dollars on eBay on a boxed
copy of Centipede for the Atari twenty six hundred that had been found in the
Alama Gordo landfill et hunt. It came with a certificate of authenticity from the
City for Garbage, A literal piece of garbage that sat beside other less nostalgic
pieces of garbage for decades. However, I'll probably still buy it or a
boxed three d O or some other crazy expensive piece of historical trash because I
know that it's a part of the shared history we all have with video games.
If you can't tell, I'm still coming to terms with the impact this
is having in my wallet. That being said, it got me wondering what
is the most expensive piece of video game trash you've ever bought for either it's
perceived historical or nostalgic value. Helped me feel better about this dark peth I've
set myself on. I can't. I bought a Mortal Kombat to our cade
cabinet that wasn't working from a pizza plays but then I got it working,
so then it was super not trash. I had it for two hundred jews.
Work on it or did you get somebody in there to met? I
just dinked around with it, and I didn't know anything, so I was
just googling, like you know, dip switches and just all this stuff,
and like, don't touch that box because that's gonna kill me. And you
know, wow, that's impressive. Yeah. Well, I mean they told
me that at the pizza place. It was Gumby's Pizza and Lawrence, Kansas,
And I was like, hey, are you guys selling that? And
it was like, well, it would sell it to you because like it
was working. And then we moved it across the room and then it stopped
working and were thinking like this, something just must have got jostled or something.
And so I was like, yeah, two hundred bucks here you go,
have my friends coming to the pickup truck. Took it back. I
just worked on it for a couple of days, just moving stuff around,
unplugging and replugging stuff. Just tap the chips at some point you just like
just like just with that Warlord's cabinet, the cocktail I have, like sometimes
you just need to like tap the chips on the board. Oh God,
that stuff gets so weird. Remember that's remember the Wizard of War machine that
Joe Fielder had. Yeah, like one of the ROMs got corrupt, so
like there were walls in the maze that weren't supposed to be there. It
was gibberish on the screen that would block would actually block bullets, like it
introduced. It introduced graphical corruption that became like like it had collision on it
so you couldn't move through it. Stuff. It was the weirdest thing,
those game bugs. It's the best. Yeah, congratulations on buying the correct
arcade cabinet. Yeah, that is the one to own. It's it's raiding
on the side of the l Yeah sounds. Yeah, it was great.
This is not a huge amount of money. They all make that. That's
the only one I had, though, So that's first time I heard it's
special. I spent my Blitz cabinet. Makes that noise. I spent fifty
dollars on the board for that game that I've never taken out of the box
I've had in my closet for the last twelve years. I found I don't
know, Yeah, I found my Pit Fighter board that I think I bought
not too much before you bought that one. Oh, that's right. There
was just that period where a game spot where people just we just started buying
our key boards and we knew jack about making them work. Like Greg bought
a super Gun and a street Fighter board and that worked. So we were
like, well, fuck it, let's buy some more arcade boards. Not
realizing like, oh, Pitt Fighters a medium rez game, so it won't
run at all on the Supergun only runs of the standard RESU games. And
yeah, I bought NBA Jam, which is also a medium resume. It's
just a fucking nightmare. And holy shit, that's why you gotta get Jerry
in there. Jerry the Arcade Doctor fixed stuff up for you. I'm talking
just bad game decisions or old game decisions, both either or about the Gears
of War Lancer. Wow, yeah, you regret that tattoo, that the
Gears logo that you've got a oh, the one on the inside of my
cheek. Yeah, conspicuous location. A few people are ever going to see
that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I bought a three
D o in Japan for two hundred bucks. Maybe it wasn't even that much.
I don't know. That's that's that's a normal press. But they spent
thousands of Yeah, I mean stick well, I mean not a single stick.
But that Mark of the Wolves cartridge is probably like that game is the
opposite of garbage, but just justice the one. Yeah, it's it's a
it's a Japanese home cart It's not an Arcades on an MBS cart and it's
a home I think I have an MVS cart Runners somewhere too, But it
was just like eleven hundred dollars, twelve hundred dollars something like that. I
just laid it out because because I had already turned my money into the end
at that point, it's all fake money anyway. Yeah, yeah, there's
like it's a fun color and what's all that add up? I gotta get
rid of this somehow. And I was like, well, I've already purchased
all of the cheap Neo Geo cartridges. I already have three copies of Samurai
Show Down one. They were like a dollar, So I figured like,
well, if those are a dollar, then really I'm getting over So I
might as well spend eleven hundred dollars on a Mark of the Wolves. You
want to, you gotta pay. The three sixty version is now available,
Like the Xbox one, that was a cool, cool thing, but a
cool thing totally doesn't devalue union sas so it doesn't. Actually there was a
time well there there was well I don't know, it depends on what people
will actually pay, but there was a time where all of the home versions
of Mark of the Wolves coming out for like Dreamcast and Real Bad and you
know, like Mame just existing and emulating the neo geo so well, like
the it seemed like the market for those cartridges fucking tanked. And I checked
recently and Mark of the Wolves was back up to around what I paid for,
So I figured, if I hold out long enough, hobby grade carts
are a growth market. There's a couple good postscripts on this email that I'm
going to read real quick before we move on. My working Attari six switch
wood grained twenty six hundred, Yeah, was bought with four controllers to each
of paddle and joystick, all wires, and ten games on a local thrift
store for twenty dollars from someone who clearly didn't know what he had pps.
That same Atari twenty six hundred was accidentally dropped seven feet onto the street by
Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys. Percent true and guess what, it still
works. They don't make them like they used to know. This works better
now Carter drop. Yeah, it's been blessed now for sure. Uh.
Yes, I just had a flooded nostalgia. Actually, I think I edited
a podcast that Nick Carter was on for the one company that I worked for.
Like, what was the podcast about? It was about dropping twenty times.
Shit, yeah, I don't remember that. It's a personal passion of
his. That's weird. Okay. I bought a game Boy on micro and
I'm very happy. Oh yeah, cool. I was holding my game Boy
micro's yesterday, Jeff, Jeff and I bought bought Japan game Boy micros the
cool packaging. Yeah, I have one of those, and I have a
black one, which is the US one that they sent out when they when
they came out here, they sent a black one's eyes. I was moving
some stuff around yesterday and held both of them in my hands. Man,
I was unreasonably angry when they put out that Famcom Micro here me too.
I was so pissed. I was like, fucking I paid Japan prices for
that to cool thing and then you fuckers. I almost bought that one in
Super Potato because it was like the only one I could find, And then
I walked around another hour and a half and found another one. Yeah,
they were they were in short supply. I remember, actually I remember,
Yeah, we were there when they were coming out in Japan and we were
going around a supermarkets are going around the convenience stores and just wherever we could
think of it would have them. And I remember I got mine at some
department store that was like behind the train station in where where the Macarim essay
is, where where TGS is held. It was somewhere over there, uh
where Normally we don't shop around there when we when we go to town,
but right, but we were so desperate we found and that was like the
last one they had, the last two with what they had or whatever.
Totally awesome. Yeah, bad screens, too small, bad decision making.
Yeah, I think is still cool. Though it's still super cool. Carson
from Maryland writes in with a short sweet email. Would you ever do an
outdoors episode of Unprofessional Friday, as in you recorded outside? That sounds like
a dumb thing worth doing? Totally Yeah, I'm down. Have no idea
what that would be. Now that we're on the first floor, is that
technically easier longer cable to just run it out front or something close to the
garage technically? Yeah? Yeah, I mean if we could do it with
sdis if we you know what, the easiest thing would probably be to do
a fiber run of the program feed. I mean, this is what we
were going to do, right. Can we do it in the back of
a moving semi trailer, standing on the back of a flatbed truck like when
NWA was on your MTV raps? Can we do that? I think that
have to be on pairs over periscope or something at that point. I've got
the technology for that. Okay, yeah, I would love to do that.
All right, what do we do it outside? Like here? Just
on that those chairs out front, the patio area, the courtyard thing.
Yeah, yeah, that's dumb enough. Okay, stay tuned. Ryan from
Gray's Lake, Illinois rights in about fanny packs finally, two weeks in a
run. I'm sure you got a ton of emails about this, but in
certain parts of the country, mostly outside of California in New York, fanny
packs having a bit of a renaissance. Really, if you don't want to
wear a fishing vest or an oversized Hawaiian shirt, and I don't, the
fanny pack really is the only option to conceal a firearm? How about all
three? So to the email or last week who was thinking about getting a
fanny pack, you should know that many people will assume you have a gun.
Wow. Always packing, always be packing. I got heavy. Hmm.
I was not aware. They're practical as hell. Man. It's true.
If you can get a real nice neutral color, you know, they're
not too outlandish, you can start a lot of stuff. Put snub Dose
thirty eight in there. I had a gay. Yeah. I kept my
game Boy, my original game Boy, and it had like it was a
game Boy branded and you know, like had room for the cartridges and all
that other stuff, like an ac adapter slot. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
you can kind of keep all the stuff in there. I had like
a suitcase for my game beer, but I never ever wore it as a
fanny pack Do you like sling it over a shoulder it? Yeah, I
would do that, or I would just carry it. I would snap the
ends of it together and just carry it, or just put the whole thing
in a backpacker something. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would wear
mine all the time. I can't. I loved it. Keep on my
smoking for other things like off the sod or up front. Now you keep
it, yeah in the back. You know. Fanny Fanny that means something
completely. I was gonna say British Fanny or Fanny fanny because that's how you
can keep it up front around back. What if I needed to smoke manure,
just slinging around the front, open it up, grab my stuff,
sling around. But I think what I would use. Its probably just a
bunch of starburst. I think, yeah, that'd be you could finish.
Yeah, a few packs in there, I'm sure. Yeah, get like
a fanny pack organizer and like, you know, divide it into different colors.
Is anybody making it like stylish like upscale fanny packs, yeah, weather
fanny packing those. Yeah, I don't know if I mentioned it before,
but yeah, I'll like get emails that there's a fanny fanny pack manufacturer that
puts like a boom box okay in there. Okay, so you could just
have sound rocking tunes coming on. But I love rocking tunes and butts,
but yes they're rocking. Jared and Charlotte, North Carolina. I recently got
a dog. I haven't played nothinger Solid five, but I find find myself
saying do it and my best Jeff Gersmen solid snake voice. Whenever my dog
poops, I'm now hoping that I can train him to poop on command.
They teach that thanks, and just horses. I mean, d dog can't
do it? Command? No, you can, well, he the dog
doesn't poop. He he does it, but not. You can't tell him
to do it. You can tell the horse, tell him to do it,
but what it is is not. You can say do it tod dog,
Yeah, and then he yeah, and he does kill him? Or
sure that's the command. Yeah, I don't think it's do it. I
think it's killed. I'm sure you can say yeah. The commands are all
pretty they had a keefer for a day. Yeah, oh so do it.
Yeah. I think I want to say yeah, says something different,
but but I think the voice says do it. That's the confusion there.
The tech says kill, I think, and maybe he says do it.
A great thing about do it. It works in any situation. Yeah,
yeah, do it. That's why Nike got so far. That's fair Nate
from Tacoma, Washington. It's more and more NX info arrives from decently plausible
sources. It's almost certain that Nintendo's new console will be arriving later this year.
With that on the horizon, I'm interested to see what the Bombcrat bomb
cast crew thinks of Nintendo's redheaded stepchild that he we you as the console approaches
the end of its run. If it does end its run this year,
it will have gone on with a four year lifespan, the shortest of any
Nintendo console unless we're counting the Virtual Boy. We should looking at my own
collection for the system, I have less than ten games, including two Zelda
remakes, and I feel like I've seen the best the system has to offer.
While the selection of games is limited, I feel like the good titles
that the system did have were phenomenal, such as an awesome new ip in
Splatoon as well as Super Mario Maker. So, now that we're approaching the
end and the only really notable upcoming release left for the system is Zelda,
how would you rate the WEIU? Does it still qualify as a good console
in your eyes? Or are its shortcomings too serious? Too over? I
mean, it's it's the best way to play a mass EVECT three bad.
Don't joke, it's actually good. The second screen right there in your hands,
man, is the game Dark Siders too? Second on? You actually
has additional modes that yeah, some of the others on Jen's pants or something.
But I know we're joking. I really love Yeah, I would say
I think it was a very good console. I just wish I had not
spent three hundred and fifty dollars on and when it first came out. I
love Super Mario Maker. I love the other fantastic gaity world that didn't necessarily
need to be on the WU. Yeah, Pickman three, Like, I
don't think any game except Mario Maker really delivered on the whole idea of absolutely
not like that game one. Nope, that's the one and only game that
just fise that fucking game pad. Yeah, Like I love s Platoon,
but like you could superduce Platoon without that game pad. But yeah, Mario
Maker like kind of alone makes me think like, okay, well this thing
makes sense. Yeah. I was just I was. I was holding my
WU over the weekend. Yeah, playing for your weekends holding different video games
paraphernalia. You're walking around you have like a log again, held gun con
for forty eight seconds, felt forlorn, put it back down, war Sega
Activator twenty three PM. I use the game pad as like a TV,
like you watch like Hulu and stuff on it or what you're talking about.
No, because you don't actually have to have it hooked up, have the
we you hooked up to a TV, you can play everything, well not
everything in the bad or something. Yeah, that's fine, So I don't
Yeah, like I play Mario Maker on the on the game pad screen.
I don't ever turn on TV to play that. It's I would not have
thought that. It's not completely devoid of function. It's hooked up to a
TV for whatever reason, just in case. But yeah, the way you
gave us a better version of wind Waker, and for that I am grateful,
Yes, much better version. And Mario three D World. I don't
think it's talked about enough. That was a great Mario game cart. Oh
yeah, great Mario Kart, great Mad Brothers. Yeah, like they're totally
good. It's good. It's a good system. But yeah, virtually all
the big series had good entries on it, outside of Zelda. I mean,
Zella had the Remax at least, but just third party support man.
But yeah, it makes sense that they are moving away from it sooner than
yeah, you know, yeah, I mean and they and they should launch
The next one was Zelda. They're full on, they're full on xboxing it.
Yeah, four years to put it in the ground, but it seems
I don't know. I don't get the impression that they're xboxing it for the
same reason that the Xbox xbox Oh yeah, well I don't think they're xboxing
it to suddenly be like, oh yeah, now we're more powerful than PS
four and Xbox one. Like it's it's not they're not. It's because it
wasn't selling. Yeah, I mean like they just they need but they're they're
never They're not gonna enter that competitive right, Like I feel like people that
are out there, I just oh, yeah, it's gonna beat the No.
No, no, I just I just meant there retiring it like earlier
than you might have expected. Yeah, to begin with uh, Dalton has
a question when did video game become one word? I was watching Sudden Impact
and it was weird hearing Duvall pronounce it as two words. I don't know
what video game is two words. I don't know what he's talking about.
Yeah, video games two words? Fuck are you talking about? Wait?
How do you pronounced it differently? Though? Also also yes, how do
you pronounce a different way? Video game? Video game? Are you playing
a video game? Video game? Video game? Are you playing video game?
Occasionally? See it hyphenated, and that's the that's even worse. That
is even worse that camel case. No, no one's no one's that bad.
It's two words. End of story. James and La has a question.
You need some advice. I go to Starbucks across the street from my
apartment every morning to buy coffee. I have been doing this for the last
year. One of the barristas thinks my name is Ryan. My name isn't
Ryan. My name is James. Pretty sure. She's been calling me Ryan
for at least six months at this point. Correcting her would be very uncomfortable.
What should I do? I don't want money, but I don't want
to be called Ryan anymore. Change his name to Ryan. Yeah, it's
the only sensible solutions. Make it ride, Just move on into your life.
Yeah, fix this thing. You would probably embarrass her to the point
of like a lot of free coffee. So maybe maybe correct her and it
would be funny. You guys would get a laugh. Yea, yeah,
there you go. Yes, all right, there's your advice. Let's two
a couple more emails real fast, Sam from Portland. I've been San Francisco
for the first time. It just spent an afternoon speaking to a guy from
Pedaluma, he says, there is a big mini horse farm up there.
Jeff, can you confirm? Yeah, it's I don't know where, but
yeah, I think there is. Wait, No, the horses are many,
or it's just a small horse farm. I think both. I don't
know. The little of the little dog's eyes. Yeah, those little ones.
I saw a couple of those when I went to and got pumpkins for
Halloween. There was a there were some tiny horses. Or there's a tiny
horse. There's also a real not I mean real is normal, so full
a horse of regular size, it's probably sure. Go on, they had
a pig too. Okay, it's not a hog fuck. I don't know
what's the difference. I don't do either. All right. It's a butter
next town, Butter next day parade coming up. I'd here, but I
believe it's while we're out at packs. So butter and eggs, butter next
day. Your heart, your heart is breaking. I'm sure, what's this?
It's a parade? Is it just about butter and eggs? Do you
like butter? Yeah? Do you like eggs? Yeah? Pedaloon is a
place for you. Well, I mean so so they get a Pedalouma is
a big chicken town, Like there are a lot of hatcheries and stuff.
Not so much anymore. But you know, originally my parents business, I
think was originally a hatchery. They found all kinds of documents. They're like,
open the attic about hatchery shit, like there's just yeah, there's just
it's it's as its roots in chicken. Billy Hatcher, Yeah, Billy Hatcher
and the giant eggs, the whole the whole time. They didn't just like
it wasn't just like my cousin is named Billy Hatcher was named after that.
I would give you shit, except I was the guy that took forever for
ash Ketchum and Miles Prower. Everybody. Everybody has their everybody has their phoenix
down moment. It happens to all of us. Yeah, buttern next Day
parade, if from what I remember of it, it's about getting drunk at
eleven am. Most parades, Yeah, okay, yeah, but they they
really cracked down on just drinking in the streets a few years ago and started
sitting up like beer gardens and they're like, you have to go here and
buy beer from these beer gardens, and like, what fun is that?
I mean, are there a bunch of eggs at this thing too? No,
I don't know. It's it's a parade. I mean there's an antique
fair the following day. It's I don't know, because eggs. Wait,
why do they call it butter and eggs? Because they're celebrating, because they're
also a bunch of dairies in the air. But there's not just a bunch
of stands selling like, hey, we've got the best eggs here. No,
because you can just go to any store and get eggs. You know,
you can go to farmer's market and get eggs. Yeah, they're just
celebrating all this. It's just like, hey, we make butter and we
make eggs. Here we'll celebrate that. Get on this Get on the back
of this truck and play this saxophone. Kid, And then I say,
all right, I'm in junior high, but to here we are? I
think butter and eggs are we're celebrating. That's the other thing I remember from
butter and eggs days, being on the back of a flatbread truck and playing
the saxophone. You know how to play the saxophone. Not so much anymore.
Okay, but at a time I did. Then the day drinking happened.
Well, now in sixth grade, forgot everything. Uh yeah, I
don't know. I have not been. I've not been since they tracked down
on the day drinking wherever you want respect of it. But it was it
was rough man because the bars are all open because they know, they know
why you're there, and then around two pm it's all over, and it's
two pm and you're just fucking wasted, and all the bars closed for like
four or five hours before they open again for the night. And then some
of them don't even open, like if things go bad, the bar might
just stay closed for the rest of the days the worst, because there's nothing
worse than the same day hangover. Yeah, yeah, yep, that's why
I don't like day drinking and general experience hangover without having slept before it.
Yeah, it's just, oh god, it's richet. Like you experienced the
transition from like everything's great. It sucks. You feel yourself drying out.
Yeah, the head starts hurting and just like, yeah, I don't drink
so much anymore and I don't miss it really Yeah, but it turns up
you feel better when you don't drink, I know, right, yeah,
like a lot weird how that works way better? Yeah, yeah, sleep
better. I just kind of got man, I didn't even stop for that
reason. I kind of just stopped because I got bored of it there too.
Yeah, it was just like, you know, I have a super
high tolerance, so I have to drink a lot for it to go anywhere,
for anything to happen, quote unquote, and then once it does,
it's kind of like, well, now this is happening. Now tomorrow is
gonna suck. I don't know, And I never really was. I never
really hangovers that that bad. Okay. I think I probably stopped right m
in the time that I would have probably started feeling more hangovers. All the
stuff they say about as you get older and that's a hitting harder, but
that's very true. Like every year is hard with that stuff. Ye usually
usually kind of late late twenties, around thirty is when it starts catching up
with you. I'm thirty one, and oh I feel like I didn't.
It didn't really start hitting me until I was probably like thirty six or so.
Thirties, Yeah, mid mid to late even for me, But it's
hit me so yeah, I got a temper of my stuff with butter and
Adville, but I really good hangovers. I don't know, well, I
feel like it's like it's like right up to like twenty eight twenty nine,
you're just infencible, you know, like it doesn't even phaze you. And
that's when it starts kicking in a little bit. But then yeah, mid
thirties, it's like you're weighing the cost benefit. Ye. Well, I
would just fucking hate myself tomorrow. I would just have like when I would
get a hangover, it would just be like, well, this whole day
has gone. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like, well, I'm gonna
walk I'm gonna shuffle around this house really slowly, like I'm not in a
lot of pain. I'm just dried out and dumb. I'm just walking on
going yep. Or we're so pissed once because me and Tim Terry and Ben
Hans went to Japan for this metal gear trip and we're up all night doing
this Japanese karaoke thing and just kept bringing tray after tray of drinks left.
It was like light outside and we all wake up super hungover and none of
us could do anything like the closest food was a Japanese Hooters next door,
which we're in Japan eating like shitty Hooters wings, and then we just spend
the entire day in bed and it's just like, well, we're in fucking
Japan. This is amazing the whole day and we are doing absolutely nothing with
her. It's terrible. Oh it's the worst. Yeah, that's super terrible.
I have not it's only really I've never I never went to Rapungi and
did any of like the nightlife Japan stuff, like we would get big beers
and drinking in the hotel room while we wrote stories, yeah, and then
shipped them back to America for proofreading. My I only went to a punky
once, and my memory of that was we were walking along the street and
some guy who spoke English. It was like, hey, you guys,
you guys like girls. We're like yeah, it's like, oh, come
a club tit, club tit, and like what it's not called club tit?
And he walks us up the stairs this thing and it just says club
tit on its phone. We didn't go in, but it existed. It's
truth in advertising. Yeah, good to know, all right. Two more
emails. I swear to God, you have two minutes to address this email,
and that is fucking it. I'm gonna read it. It's from Hamza
in Winnipeg. I'm kind of curious as to why so many video game people
are into or formerly were into wrestling. Multiple video game related podcasts that I
listened to you recently brought up and talked about the WrestleMania event that Dan went
to, not to mention Paxomania itself being a wrestling event held in what is
generally considered to be a video game convention. Is it by happenstance that I
listened to people who like wrestling or is they particular? Is there a particular
link between the video games and wrestling that I'm missing? There's the Peter Pan
syndrome where no one ever grows up ever, and we've become completely fucking infantile
idiots really want all right. My theory on it is ability to let go
of things you grew up with totally. It's just like video games and comic
books have a big link, right. A lot of fans are fans of
both, sure, and when when I look at it, like I never
got really into comic books, but I think wrestling was a similar thing.
It's these big dramatic good versus evil storylines, these over the top characters,
very flashy catchphrases, all this shit. So I mean tons of people like
both. I know a lot of people are like comics. Yeah, I
just video used to almost feel like a one or one of three choices.
You went down one road and you can only one it was the wrestling road,
the anime road, or the comics road. I mean, I think
there are tons of people that are into all that stuff like now and you
know nowadays, Yeah, what if you if you didn't go down any of
them, then you played and you're an adult fuck Like for me it was
it's in Enger movies. Yeah, I mean I had that too, that
Ben diagram over lab for sure. I still love him. Yeah, yeah,
let's watch command I don't want to watch Commando. Command is a good
movie. It's a great That lighthouse blows up a lot m It does the
same lighthouse from different angles. It's six times all right, last email with
a claymore mine of course, front toward Lighthouse. Peter in Pittsburgh writes in
says this, after hearing you guys read the email on the last bodcast from
the woman who was looking for a list of five Nintendo games to get her
started. I got to thinking about the other side of that coin of five
Sega games. Whereas it's obvious yes, whereas it's obvious that Mario and Zelda
should definitely appear, perhaps more than once on a Nintendo list, many Saga
franchises deserve acknowledgment. So after some pondering, I came up with out Run
Arcade Full Cabinet Preferable, one of the finest arcade games ever, Iconic fun
and cool, Sonic three, Slash, Sonic, and Knuckles. Damn gotta
have one Sonic title, right, So we're not choose the one that was
so big they had to split it into two cartridges. Better. It's the
grandest, the most fun, and yeah, it's also an excuse to talk
about Michael Jackson Fantasy Star four, the best Genesis RPG, one of Sega's
and the industry's finest Virtual A Fighter two. Arcade VA five is probably a
more refined, better game, but damn VF two is so good and to
oh that soundtrack, uh, and Yaka's a five while I've barely touched the
series. This is definitely the best representation of Sega today, A fun,
open world, holy Japanese adventure. I feel bad leaving the likes of jet
Set, Radio, Panzer, Alex Kidd, Daytona, Echo, Pso,
et cetera off the list. What you Gotta Do, What you Got to
Do? Yeah, I think it's it's hard. It's that it gets into
that question of like, are any of these games actually relevant in a modern
context or are you trying to pick five games that represent what you feel like
Sega was, especially because Sega now is so Yeah, nothing like picking five
games is hard because you're picking games from across Like like Sega had eras,
right, I mean, Sega had its arcade era where you had like,
uh, like Sega Ninja or like Ninja Princess or whatever it was. You
had like like all these kind of Sega games from the eighties. Uh,
and then you know you'd skip a lot of the Master System stuff. I
think, but you know you have the Genesis where you got like Revenge of
Shinobi. You've got talked about hang On that way. I mean no,
I mean hang On His vital is an arcade game, but also out Run
is better and sort of similar. So yeah to me. And then you
have the Dreamcast era. You know, it really defines Sega. What what
Sega does is ten don't Oh yeah, okay, I'm gonna put it that
way. So if you pick those five games are Chamelion, Rice Star,
there's a Seaman five times, Dynamite, Yeah, Dynamite heady hmmm. My
favorite era of Sega is like Genesis into Model two territory. Like I feel
like that was these good times. I know, I know, I know
people like the Saturn and Dreamcast have their super fans picked. Yeah, I
actually like she a lot. I'd put my five. I've been thinking about
Samba Day Amigo a lot. Really that game is great and it really that
soundtrack is fan It's right. Both of those games you play with the moroccas
or what you can play with the controller, all right, I wouldn't play
with controller, I'm not. I've mainly played with controller. Why would you
do that? I can't remember. If it was just used it was cheaper
at game stop if you got it without the moroccas, like I would play
it at work at Funk or game stop with the moroccas. But then I
had the home version without him, so we would I mean that was when
we were covering TGS a lot, so we would go to arcades and play
that version there in Japan, and then when it was coming out here,
it was finally like, oh my god, I bought that Chicato tambourine game
with like Mini Mooney, you like them? No idea? What you're talking?
Are you into mini money? What's Mini Mooney? They're girl group more
of a Morning Mussum. Well there's they're they're a Morning mussa may spin off?
Oh really? So yeah, okay, in arcades, the Tambourine game
was not a minimoney game. It was when they brought it home for PS
one that they decided to slap it full of J pop. We have a
different brand like that Hackemony Miso. Yeah, like absolutely, these are my
favorites. Of these are real people favorite How co many misos? Remember the
girl? It's just this mommy just like yeah, yeah, the best?
Uh yeah, isn't morning us may like ANUDOS situation. I think graduated cycle
cycle in there. There have been dozens of them. They're like nine thousand
numbers currently. And then Minimony is like the minor leagues. So I don't
know if anyone to still exists. I don't know. I don't know if
Morning mus May still exist j pop Farm. I remember like Morning Muss May
had their TV show and there was that one episode where the one girl goes
like like they're trying to teach English and so it's this the girl holding up
an orange and going orange, and that was really funny to me. We
found that really funny around these parts. What's Tommy February six up two these
days? I don't know if Brilliant Green is putting out an album next or
what the deal is, but I think it Tommy Tommy Heavenly album. They
have come out, okay last year. She kind of switches back and forth,
right Yeah. Yeah. As as the situation, of course, as
the need the pendulum pendulum of pop versus Smashing Pumpkins esque rock, It's the
true, the true Yin and Yang February versus Heavenly. Yeah. I think
one of the releases was literally called that Wow Step. That could be wrong.
I'm probably wrong. Bombcasttgenibomb dot com. That is it for emails and
thus the podcast. It's quite a weef stuff that happened. Yeah, things
have popped off. Yeah, let's getting real. It's hell of a show.
Talks about lart, bang and J pop and yeah, kin all our
favorite things. Yes, indeed, you guys are going to packs this week.
Yeah, yeah, have fun. Three of the five in the room,
that's right, Yes, yeah's going. Who's on the panel here,
it's uh, Jason and Brad and Rory are running the panel, okay,
yeah, and then the rest of us are not going. No, it's
the opposite, that's what it was. Yeah, we're gonna go out there
and we'll do our panel Friday night, and then there's a bunch of other
dumb stuff popping off around there. So indeed, never know. Yeah,
keep eyes on the back of your gotta keep your head on swivel, because
you never know. We'll be around. What's gonna happen next? Come stay
high, that's not sinister at all. Come say hello. Uh, we'll
be here finding something to do. Yeah, streams on streams, do some
stuff. We'll put video on the internet in some capacity. Yeah, I've
got some ideas. Yeah, that's kind of have an idea. Yeah,
we'll see how things go, see if it works. Stuff will happen,
all right, Well, then let's get the hell out of here. Thank
you for listening. This has been the Giant BombCast. We will see you
back here, same time next week.