M M. March twenty nine, twenty sixteen is upon us, and so
is another edition of the Giant Bomb cast on Brad Shoemaker. We're here with
me as always, Hud Jeff Kersman, the Final Frontier hundred Scandlin Hi Havan
record. Hello, Hello, we made it. Yes, we're here on
the edge, We're here on the other side. Yep, we made it.
We made it through. Yes, what did we make it through?
We made it through the launch of virtual reality. Yeah, it's on the
market now for the people who paid for it three or to five years ago.
Yeah, yeah, if you back that Kickstarter and twenty I guess yeah,
other people are. I guess it's gonna probably start to get theirs this
week because we are the pre order people getting it now, like order,
they're starting to ship now. What it sound What it sounded like was the
people who got it yesterday, which was technically launched day, were the people
who backed that kick Starter. Did you get that jet? You got here?
Okay, but but I didn't see anybody who got in on the pre
orders. When when the pre orders having January? Oh god, I don't
know, it's all a blur. It's been a few weeks ago, and
I saw any time before the launch of virtual reality. It's insignificantly true.
Yes, it's it's it's it's basically the time period referred to as BVR.
Yeah, we're all wearing the rift right now. We are. We are
on day one a VR ant. Uh. Yeah. I saw numerous people
who got in on the origin or the initial wave of pre orders back in
like January or whatever. It was very sad yesterday that they had not gotten
their rift. Yeah. They they hand delivered one to the first person who
pre ordered over the weekend. Yeah. Uh, they flew Palmer out to
Palmer Lucky Vaculus. They they flew him to Alaska to hand deliver it and
then apparently didn't give the guy the software needed to actually use it ahead of
release, which is funny. You got it, you can put it on.
Made for a good photo op. Yeah, get all the wires done,
all that stuff. Save some time. No, well, so the
setup process, the software installer is actually the thing that walks you through wind
to plug in the wires and stuff up. So like you could just plug
it in, but I would maybe recommend against it. Uh yeah, how
long did that take? Not long? No, Okay, that's good to
know. Should do anything with it. Yeah, like so yeah, even
hours in the office. For those of you who didn't see it. On
Monday, we spent eleven hours something like that, twelve eleven and a half
yeah, yeah, hours live streaming the entire Oculus launch lineup, because that's
you know, it's a system launch more or less. Yeah, basically like
thirty thirty ish games. It was like, okay, let's let's actually run
through this stuff and see what the hell it is everything from a normal system
launch, new games. Games that reports experiences, h huh yeah, sure,
things that. Yeah, we're barely games fight tech tilst I was on
a boat and the Grand Canyon. It's true. Yeah, it's an experience,
that's true. It's like you were there. I could change the speed
of the boat. So I guess that's a game technically. Yeah, I
mean, yes, it's interactive. It's interactive. Yeah. Yeah. So
it's yeah that that we did all that stuff and we've come out the other
end. My throat is a little just like my voice is not great from
yelling our way through VR all day yesterday. But whatever that that's uh,
that's going up on the side or it's up on there's archives out there on
it's on the internet, giant bomb dot com if you want to see that
stuff. And yeah, so, uh so I left and and kind of
figured that the Occulus rift that I had gotten by backing this kickstarter years ago
would be waiting for me when I got home, and sure enough it was.
Uh And initially I was like, well, there's no way I'm gonna
hook that thing up, because like, I just got done doing this stuff
and I don't know that I think any of these games are that great.
And then I got home. As I was thinking about all the way home,
I was like, you know, I really want to see what this
thing does, because I have a so we have a PC here that Oculus
sent over that meets meets there like a minimum spec. Yeah, it was
interesting that they didn't send like a five thousand dollars monster like you would expect.
Yeah. Usually when when tech companies do hardware stuff and they want to
send stuff out, they tend to over deliver respects front. So you go
like, man, this is great. I was expecting like some water cooled
monstrosity with three titans. And well, that's the scary part is that that
that would actually be beneficial to some of the performance on some of the Oculus
games if you had something like that. So they sent over something that had
a nine seventy in it, which is no slouch of a video card,
but that is their minimum, and like a current five. Yeah, but
I thought that was kind of cool though actually it was like here, here
is a more more more realist. Yeah, more reasonable depends on your perspective.
I guess that's to see that. Yeah, I mean that machine is
attainable for more everyday people. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So at home,
I have a nine eighty, but I have an I five t K
in that thing. And so I was curious if I was over delivering on
GPU but under delivering on CPU, what does that mean? Uh? So
I got home and I was like, fuck, all right, it turns
out my my CPU is already overclocked to about four point two gig hurts.
I did that a while ago and forgot. Uh it didn't make them look
a difference when I did it back now. Yeah, No, that's all
stock cooling. It never it never actually does. So I hooked all this
stuff up at home and like the first thing. So first thing is as
soon as it detects all your stuff. There's a big blue bar at the
top of their store, uh the outside of VR store that says, Hey,
your your PC. It's not up to par. You might have problems
with experiences in VR, or or the the VR experience could be poor,
the the exact verbage whatever. That also shows in VR every time you're in
like their front end, like anytime you hit the home button in a game
to pop up like their menu or their store. It's always at the top
just X that I don't know. There's no way to close it. It's
constantly reminding you that you don't have a PC that's good enough. No,
don't show me this again. No almost, which I which I totally get
because like, the specs for this thing are so weird or or are so
are pretty lofty. Yeah, that like, and the the negative effects of
an underpowered PC and VR are such that they don't want to take the blame
for it. They want to remind you every step of the way. Hey,
we we are telling you this PC is not the thing to do this
with. And as it turns out, my PC is not the thing to
do this. Really was it worse than what we had to hear way like
like, so, so it depends on the game. Darknet runs fine very
you know, you know, you know, it's it's it's a puzzle game.
It's not it's not super deep. The Oculus dream Deck stuff that comes
out of the installation process where it's like, oh, here's a dinosaur walking
over. That was fine. VR video was great. Eve Valkyrie not playable
in any way like lowest settings. Yeah no, it's it's like four frames
a second type stuff like turn the settings up. So by default, so
our PC here, uh, everything defaulted to medium with Eve Valkyrie at home,
everything defaulted to high because it detected the GPU and went like, oh
yeah, cool, let's go. And then I loaded the game and the
menus were fine. And then as soon as I got into space and was
flying around, it was like, oh wait, no, sorry, fuck
you, we were wrong. Uh so I said everything got to medium,
no better, like no better. And if you didn't see parts of the
stream where we were, we were having frame rate issues. Frame rate issues
in VR much bigger deal. Yeah, And these were so intense and extreme
that it was just like it creates you can't play that game. You cannot
play that game. It's like drew playing Subnatica. Yeah, did you get
sick? There were some problems with Subnatica. Also, it's it's that that
that game is in early access. Yes, so uh so, yeah,
not not playable on that machine. So the CPU on the one they sent
is more powerful than yours but four generations. But my GPU at home it's
more powerful okay than the one here. Not by much in the grand scheme
of things, but yeah, so just not doable. And that machine is
overclocked about as far as I can probably take it without getting into water cooling
and spending money on that sort of episode waste of which is not you know,
but like there are people that swear by that twenty five, like,
oh, it's the best CPU. You can just keep over clogging into everything's
perfect, you don't need to upgrade at all. I'm like, no,
this is actually If that's what those people are saying, they're crazy. Like
for it's been good enough. For it's been great. It's been great,
cud Yeah, but also, like you know, I'm encoding more video at
home. It's only been good enough because nothing is requiring the heavy lifting better
CPU would would would bring. So yeah, I didn't necessarily like go through
and like tests to make sure that the bottleneck was the CPU and all of
those stuff. I mean, you know, I kind of rebooted the machine
and hey, this is all installed on SSD and I've got plenty of RAM.
Not that that would be a huge factor there, but but yeah,
that game for as not great as it looks like texture wise and some of
that other stuff. Like if this was if e Valkrie was rendered on a
two D plane, you'd be like, this is okay looking. This is
like a decent looking space shim. Not playable on that machine at home?
Did you even get through like a single hole session? No, No,
I was. I loaded it up for like thirty forty seconds, went like
just to see like is this gonna Are all these textures gonna eventually load in
and I'll be fine, Like, no, this is fucked, This is
not this is not a video game. This was this the thing It's gonna
get you apart probably been putting new energy. Well. I had already been
thinking about it before this, simply because like I wanted some faster video and
coding speeds and stuff like that, and it's just you know, I don't
know, it's just it feels like it's time for an upgrade. That's the
that is the part that is lasted me the longest is the well parts,
I guess I should say, because this is at this point, this will
be a CPU motherboard and RAM right. Yeah. Yeah, So so I
started looking last night, and you know, it's one of those things where
everyone's always like, oh, don't get it right now, it's wait a
month, wait two months, Hey, guess what what? Get it right?
Oh? Yeah, I might good time. Yeah, And I know
that there's like there actually literally is some stuff right around the corner this time.
So so there may be some merit in waiting a little bit. But
I don't know, I think of the CPU. You're good, is there's
some broadwell something or other coming all right? Well, you know anyway,
so yeah, I don't know, listen to a PC hardware podcast, but
so yes, I might just go get some I seven sixty seven hundred gay
or so whatever it is. And you know, I was looking looking at
prices on new Egg and it was like, that's let's see us like three
hundred and something that seems reasonable. It's yeah, or or I don't know,
like my my perception of PC hardware pricing is was skewed by how much
everything used to cost. So like when I think about a new CPU and
they say three I'm like, cool, great, Yeah, that's not a
grand, that's not eight hundred bucks. Okay, cool, let's let's go.
For first time I upgraded RAM in a computer, it was fifty dollars
a megabyte. Yeah, two hundred dollars for four megabytes of extra memory.
Well I don't even I don't even mean like comparing those numbers. I more
mean just like, yeah, there are four sticks of RAM, and that
used to be hundreds of dollars and now it's not a top top of light.
CPUs used to be like six hundred two thousand, So you know,
like I've made those spends in the past. So when you tell me,
like, hey, I can get motherboard, RAM and CPU for maybe like
eight hundred bucks or are probably way less les, I'm like, fucking up
dope, let's go yeah, uh, because I'm used to that stuff.
You know, Like my first PC I bought in ninety three was I was
it was a gateway, came in the cowbox, all that sort of stuff.
That thing was like three grand. Yes, you know, yes,
uh for a fourty six sixty six. No, I'm sorry. That might
may have been the d X four one hundred in ninety three dollars. Yes,
in nineteen ninety three dollars. Yeah, yeah, when Yeah, I
don't know, computers was king very expensive. Also a world uh yeah something
like that. And also yeah, and PCs have gotten so much easier to
build and manipulating all that other stuff. The only thing I'm actually so if
I do this upgrade, and the only thing I would have ever be concerned
about is thermal paste. That is the one thing I've never done. So
it's one of those things that like I'd go like, oh that that seems
like it could be. That's something I've never done. That's all. It
doesn't mean you can look on the line and see different people's techniques. Ye,
just goop it and slap the fan on too much, okay, Like
this has become most common mistake is putting too much. I just want you
don't want it to you don't want lathering. No, no, you want
like a little dollarp in the middle because it'll spread out because the tension is
huge, like you're fan onto it. And yeah, if there's any excess.
It's gonna squeeze out of it spreads out. It's like a it's like
a panini. Yeah that's bad news. Uh. Anyway, I don't want
to I don't want to kick the VR horse too much here because we've done
a lot of Yeah exactly, we've got a video will be up on the
side. It is up on the side, but we you know, I
had to say the one thing that may be worth talking about quickly is just
like some overall impress based on our times. I feel like by the time
we were done with that stream that many hours in, it was like,
all right, that's the last of it, thanks for watching, and see
you later. Yeah. I think it seems like the consensus was like the
hardware is good, like it works those advertised Yeah, the games are simplistic
and work, but you know, there's not a lot of depth there.
Yeah, there's there's no day to be expected totally. There's no day one
game that I look at and go like, you gotta play this. It's
like, if you have access to a rift, I would recommend playing some
games, but there's nothing in that lineup that I go like, man,
you gotta like I don't go on eBay and pay the thirteen hundred dollars some
people are selling there. Oh really yeah, oh geez, there's a bit
of markup. Oh no out there. I should have known. Yeah,
totally right. Yeah, so yeah, there's nothing out there that I would
recommend, like, hey, you need to go buy a rift, you
need to go pay the six hundred for it right now based on these games.
But I think it'll get there. You know, it's totally where it's
the thing where this is, this is happening. The technology works and it's
and it's it's super cool. It's super cool still, just you know,
it just takes time. Game design is iterative. People are going to come
up with, you know, a couple of good ideas here and there,
and other developments to see those and build on that. It's like it's it's
been funny seeing better and more interesting. It's seeing some of the reaction to
some of these games from people out there and people going like, man,
the ViBe's gonna kick this thing's ass, Like I mean yet, no,
yeah, yeah, what are the games on the Vibe that are gonna I
mean, I mean, you know, the room scale is gonna totally It's
like, no, well, room scale is neat, but like keep in
mind, it's like, if you want to break it down in its simple
form the way some people are breaking down some of this oculus stuff, you're
just adding a wee remote to the proceedings, which you know at some point
the controllers are significant on the vibe. I think, ye and get its
own version. Room scale VR is super significant. I think we came out
of the those valve demos at GDC and and I was like, okay,
Like the difference is clear even without the room stuff. I think just having
the hand it's huge. It's the controllers that make the difference for me.
I think that the room scale thing is like what tiny percentage of people are
going to have room for that? Like I know everybody's like, I'll clear
out some space, but like you don't understand and how many games are going
to utilize that, right, Like you don't understand how restricting it actually is
when you don't really have the room to walk around. Like it's a huge
bummer, you know, to be in this like giant virtual room. Yeah,
but if you take three steps, you're right, you hit that fake
wall. You know. It's just yeah, that's that is a bummer.
So yeah, it's I think that you know, everyone will get there.
That's the thing too, is that you know Alas has its version of the
you know, it's it's touch controllers, and you know Valve has chosen to
launch with them, and it'll all kind of end up in the same place
eventually. So seeing some people break into camps and start to like they're doing
the dumb console thing of like listing games as part of their argument, and
you're just like, fuck you people, like what are you doing with yoursel
Come on? Yeah, it's like three sixty and p s three and people
put yeah, well it's got the six axis. It's like be smarter than
that. Like this is all going in the exact same direction. Yeah,
if you're making a decision today. Yeah, But like Oclas HAS you were
saying at GDC, I wasn't aware of this, but Iklas HAS is like
bigger sensors for something closer to the room scale stuff right that aren't out yet.
I mean like when we did the Oculus Touch demo stuff back at E
three, there were things on the wall. Okay, that was all prototype
stuff. So I don't know what they'll end up shipping when they do put
these controllers out well, and the thing is like you've still got positional awareness
yeah with the yea yeah, it's still I guess it's not technically room scale,
but it's like a bigger box than what your body is in. I
mean, I think there was room scale stuff when we did that demo with
the Oculus Touch, that thing I talked about right on the BombCast where like
you know, Palmer was there with the other headset on everything, Like I
could walk around that table that was that was that Yeah, totally, Yeah,
we had the room sensors. It really seems like, you know,
a year from now, those two headsets are basically going to be a parody
feature wise. Yeah, they just you know, the Oculus chose to focus
on and I'm guessing that some of it is, you know, just like
getting the things built, but also like I wonder if there's any kind of
marketing or pricing thing and involved, and like oh well let's just sell the
headset because we can do it for this amount. And then you know,
the first valve came like yeah, yeah, well yeah, and then then
Valve came along like whatnot not that long after after going like we're launching in
early April, and ours come was with the stuff already. Uh, you
know, it's just it seems like two different approaches to the exact same situation.
So I don't know like that. It's not to say there are zero
differences between those pieces of hardware, but I think in terms of like rough
capabilities, it's all going in the same place, and it seems like eventually
they're both going to run all the same stuff, right, I have no
idea getting there, and it seems a little dodgy so far. Like the
Star doesn't detect an oculus headset. Steam just had that update recently, right,
Like I just floated Steam last night and said, like Steam VR,
they've been doing a munch of Steam VR updates constantly. It doesn't didn't,
but you still can't play any game on Steam with no that's not true.
But you can't use Steam VR with an oculus which which is which is their
front end. It's like Big Picture mode for VR. Okay, so that's
not required to launch the VR enabled games on So when I try to launch
Elite Dangerous, it has like three different little radio button options that will say
like play Elite Dangerous, play Elite Dangerous Frontiers and then play Elite Dangerous in
Steam VR mode and if you pick Steam VR mode, it pops up the
Steam VR launcher and says, you don't have a vibe. What the fuck
are you doing? That's a shape So I but but we played Elite Dangerous
on the Oculus out of the Oculus Store yesterday, and it seems like that
even that was a clunky, fucked up mess of like you had to launch
it in two D go into the menu, find the spot where it says
HMD select that. So you may just be able to do that with Elite
Dangerous on Steam and it'll detect the Oculus and there. So it's not systemwide
support for the Oculus Rift through Steam VR, but game by game it seems
like there will be some stuff that we will do. We like maybe a
Drift is another good example, Like do we know if the Steam version of
a Drift will do VR on an Oculus. I haven't trust but I believe
it does. I believe it will, but I don't know because this whole
time we just assumed, like you know, they were going to be like
pretty egalitarian about like okay, everyone's been saying together, guy, like all
the messaging has been like, yeah, we we know that this is a
hard sell to the public. It's in everybody's best interests if like their software
works on our headset and ours works on theirs and all this stuff. Yeah,
you're right, but but it's not actually coming to pass so far.
Well, I mean, and on top of that, Oculus went and like
built their own publishing division, right, you know, and they are publishing
games. Will those games come to Steam? Will Oculus publish games on Steam?
I would assume, will you need to? Or I guess maybe in
the other option is will the Oculus store work with a vibe? Right?
That's that's the real which I guess is another potential because at that point they
don't care, right because they're still selling your software. Like the headsets themselves
can't be big money makers with all the tech in them and stuff, right,
you're going to make all the money on software. And that's the thing
is, you know, and and that's why we're probably just about done talking
about this time today, is is that there's still a lot of stuff that
we just don't know, and we won't know until there are two headsets on
the market, and we kind of see like Okay, day one of having
multiple headsets on the market, how is the competition shaping up between them?
Or how what works where? How's the compatibility picture playing out? And then
I feel like we're right back to where we are right now, like the
day after the Vive comes out, like we'll blow through whatever like tech demo
turned launch experiences that they put out. I want the job simulator right,
stuff on the stuff like fantastic contraption sounds cool, like there's like the lab
is cool from what we've seen of it, like there's some there's some good
valve magic in there. But and half five three of course, yes,
of course launch right, yeah, yeah, we're like, what three weeks
away though it could be great, not even three weeks. It's that thing's
out next week. But then it's gonna be a whole bunch of just like
wait for more cool stuff to come out, right, I guess the day
after that thing comes out, it's just gonna be like, well, they're
both out now. Now developers need to like put their heads down and actually
make some really good stuff. I kind of sure they need to assess the
scene and go like is it worth it for us to do that work?
You know, and that's something that the larger publishers have kind of said,
you know, like is EA going to make Mirror's Edge of the R game?
Like in one hand, you're like, of course they would do that,
and then like, well, it may become easier to do that after
you see demonstrations of how certain problems are solved, yes, like camera stuff,
Like maybe EA, for example, is waiting to see like Okay,
what's the best way to do this or what's the best way to do Yeah,
I'm sure that in that direction rather than doing their own vrr and right,
Like that's what that's what I mean about the iterative stuff, you know,
like it's still people are still just figuring out, like what's the design
language of making games for a thing strapped your face that tracks your head movie?
And I think, you know, I could probably like say, with
some certainty, I have to imagine that EA has a think tank internally,
that is, I'm sure fucking around with all these VR headsets and and trying
to make decisions about it. Uh. You know, they heard stories about
how they did that with the connect and just like you know, before any
studio is necessarily making a game, there were smart people somewhere deep in a
fucking bunk or an EA fucking round with that thing, going like, well
you could do this, I don't know, this is something that might work,
and then passing those learnings onto the out to the teams. But you
know, different studios work different ways. It's yeah, I don't know,
we'll see, we'll see how it goes, We'll see. I think the
biggest revelation for me, having played Project Cars and Elite Dangerous, both games
that are already out, was I sort of assumed going into VR time that
if a game was on VR, well, that's the way I'm going to
play it, because you are playing the game and you're in VR. But
I think personally, I am going to have to make a decision per game
what is important to me about this game, and then do I want to
do this make it better? And that's example. Project Car is probably not
because the resolution. Personally I have a hard time with the racing games and
the fidelity there. But something like Elite Dangerous is a little more slower paced
U and you can it's base trucking, right, you can sort of flyer
and like there's combat, but for the most part you're just looking at menus
and flying slowly through space. That can benefit from an immersive experience, and
it doesn't necessarily have to have super high fidelity. Yeah, Like I'm I'm
really really reluctant to adopt a peripheral or like anything like that just simply in
the name of immersion if it makes me worse at the game. Yes,
and so that's actually what keeps me away from that. That is the crux
of my racing wheel argument is that, like I would be far better on
a game pad than I would ever on a racing wheel. Yeah, but
certain things like like Eve Valkyrie seems like it is better through VR, Like
if they had that control it better. The other problems with Eve Valkyrie,
though, are like I don't think that's a particularly good game. Game only
works because it's in VR, right, or it's only interesting, you know,
Yes, it's otherwise it's eight on eight deathmatch dog fights, you know,
like the control mode, Like sure, all right, that's you know,
yeah, you said something like it would be you know, ten years
ago in XBLA or whatever, like fifteen dollars, and no one ever talked
about it. Yeah, exactly, So it's it's Yes, I think yesterday
really changed my tune because I'm sure they're old bomb cast where I was like,
I'm probably gonna buy all three of them. I'd spend fifteen hundred dollars
for him. I remember, I was like the big cheerleader, like I
don't care how much, you know. But I wound up not pre ordering
it, and I was like, I'll just, you know, buy one
at retail when it comes out and now that I've seen, which was like
saying there was no indication that retail was going to be about. Yeah,
I don't know what the hell I was thinking there, but yeah, I
still really like the Tech a lot. But all these things were like all
these games that we played yesterday would have blown me away two years ago at
an E three tech demo or something like, holy shit, this is amazing.
It's like you're really there, but that exact same experience now that it's
out, having the actual thing that this does, It's like all those games
and experiences and short films or whatever really underwhelm me to where you know,
I'm not writing it off. I will get one of these headsets at some
point when it makes sense. But I don't see what game like nothing everything
demos super well, and then the minute you have unfettered access to it,
and it becomes do I am I Am I going to play this? Yeah?
Do I want to? Even if because we've we've had a rift for
about a week now. Yeah uh, and that thing was not in use
for that full week. It was like I would go in there and funk
around with it for a while, like you guys didn't, so you know,
it was it was one of the things where like, yeah, like
this is cool, and but it seems like the more time you spend with
it, like I've definitely sated. About midweek, I was like, all
right, no, I get I get what this stuff is. And sure,
I think I'm gonna I'm gonna sit down in there at one point after
hours or whatever and play through a drift just to say that I've played through
a whole game in Vry, just to see how I feel about it out
I'm coming out the other side of it. But that's more of an experiment
than anything. I went in there a few times and played several different games,
and like every single one of them, even the better ones, I'd
play for like five minutes and be like, all right, yeah, I'm
good. I don't need to do another match of v Valcrie. I get
it. I got kind of I found myself going like I should, I
should go back in there and play some more E Valkyrie just to make sure
I should, And I said so yeah. It was like I went back
in there, like am I missing something? It was it was that feeling
of like I'm gonna play two more matches of Eve and see if the magic
is unlocked, and it's just like no, no, this is like the
tech is rad that those the headset is bad fucking ass. I can't wait
for the game that makes me want to pay totally right. Yeah, it's
period. It's a weird that like every trade show I've gone to for the
last three years, my first priority has been like, oh I just want
a chance to play a VR game again. I can't wait. And like
you said, we've had unfettered access for a week and I've gone in there
a few times. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, it's you know,
and that's the thing like we're we talked about it last week of like the
time for tech demos is done, like that Star Wars tech demos seemed like
way out of place. Yeah, it's you know, it's just like every
console launch it needs its killer app, and it doesn't have one yet.
Yeah, Eve's as probably as close as it gets just in terms of like
checking boxes, in terms of like well this is the immersion is the thing.
But then it's just like the game is not that fun. Yeah,
but but I'm not saying for a minute that that means they failed or anything.
You know, like they delivered the hardware and it works. You know,
it's like rare is the console that has a game at launched that's like,
oh I have to have that console to play that, Like when when
was the last time that happened? Like Halo one. I mean like we
Sports was a huge I played We Sports ten times more than I want to
play anything on this launch line app there. Well, but that's a nintend
Like Nintendo is is kind of a cut above in terms of making good games
here. And also like that that was like that was a very social thing.
That was like you know, like We Sports is a fine game,
but it is definitely, you know, exponentially better when you were around up
it's very much let's get some beers and play bowling exactly like this doesn't have
this is the exact opposite. Yeah, here's this solitary thing. If you
want to have robot men talking to you like vrs for you, like air
meck, is fucking awesome for that. That That was the most eye opening
moment of that whole thing yesterday, was trying to just trying to do matchmaking
in that thing, having those two guys match in there with their robot avatars
and realizing that as they were talking, the head movements of their robots were
what their real heads were actually doing as they were talking. Even in multiplayer,
you're doing this like battle bots thing where the guys are on the other
side of the arena with their little remote controls and their heads are moving,
and I can I can ask their real person heads are, Like I can
I can tell which part of the map Pulver is concentrating on because that's where
his robot guy is looking. You know, Like that was a super cool
moment. But but that's's kind of few and far between right now. Yeah,
there are there are neat things in some of the software, for sure,
but yeah, I don't know anyway, VR VR it's here, I'm
gonna let's let's stop. Let's talk about regular video games Street Fight or five,
that's not a video game. Well they pashacked back again on Thursday,
yeah, or is it tomorrow? It is, uh that the the second
half of this week's patching half is tomorrow. You're right. They put in
the don't tell the challenge mode. Yeah, the eight player lobbies. Uh
huh, which I've not tried. Jason relayed word that it was not I've
heard the server run fire yesterday after the patch came out. Well, and
that's like fits the tone of Street Fight or four. If six weeks,
seven weeks after your game comes out, you can't handle the load of people
coming back because of a patch, there is cause for concern. I'm surprised
there were that many people to come back. What was the other thing,
challenge mode lobbies, and there was one other thing? Uh, I can't
I know there was something else. I don't know. I launched it on
PC and looked at the Well, the part of the challenge mode has the
demonstrations which are kind of the meant to be the tutorial. Maybe that was
it, and it's like almost completely noninteractive. It's like the exact opposite of
what it like like it's it's the most like checkboxy kind of way to put
a tutorial into the game where it's all happening in engine, but they might
as well be fucking videos because it's just it's text on a screen that says
you can jump diagonally if you want, and then you jumps diagonally for a
while, and oh wow everything and then there, I mean, it gets
down to characters specific stuff, to where it's talking more about things than the
game did previously, but in the most uninspiring way. It's just fucking lame.
Well, tomorrow the shop will be patched. Yeah, so you can
finally buy some of those amazing dealc costumes that people have been data mining out
of the game, Right, is there any way to spend your fight money
before now tomorrow tomorrow money? In fact, the Zeni version of the store
is not launching as scheduled, so they're making they're making Alex is gonna be
free, free, while it's just gonna be free until they put in the
real Buddy currency that you can then buy him with. Yeah, unless you
bought the season pass, in which case you know, obviously you've already spent
money on him and that stuff works. But the whole process of like buying
premium currency and then turning that into a character that's not going to be ready.
So hey, free access to Alex for a while, and they're giving
away some skins as like a thank you to players. Okay, wait,
is Alex free? As in you can download him and have him forever,
or you can just plays because if you play him until they patched the city
support, because he will still be in the game even if you don't have
access to him, because you will fight other players who did pay for accents,
so you'll always be in sync with all the DLC and all the costumes
and everything. This all seems par for the course for Street Fight or five
so far, I guess. So the way this is rolling out, Yeah,
and it was like a six gig patch on top of that. Yeah,
like what the fuck was in? And I just had. My favorite
part is that they put in half of it yesterday and half of it will
be put in tomorrow. But I bet I bet that half of it that
comes tomorrow will not actually be a download. It will beat them. Yeah,
them flipping the Alex switch. That makes sense, I's not or something
or flip. Maybe they'll be a small patch to get the story and by
small patch, maybe it only be five gigs. I don't know. They
made March. They made March to their patch, they you know, so
it was a March update. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, else is going
on track Mania Turbo. Yeah, we talked about some of that last week,
I think, but it's yeah, I'm coming around on that game,
uh, in a different way than I have on any other track Mania game,
because the single player campaign is mattering more to me. It's got a
trials like ghosts racing system for people on your friends list, which the track
leadia ever had a campaign before. Yeah, it's always had a campaign.
I thought it was just hey, jump out a server or drive. Yeah.
No, no, that's just the multiplayer side of it. So there's
always like a race against the clock kind of gold medal stuff. That's been
the campaign. And it's had this before, and it's had like ghosts leaderboard
stuff before. In fact, it's had it in a more advanced way before,
but just by virtue of being on a console where I am maintaining something
of a friends list, as opposed to Mania Planet, where I'm the only
person I know playing it and none of my friends are, you know,
would even ever touch the campaign in that game. This is a different brand
of funk. That game is real two steps forward and then two steps back
in a lot of ways, because like the campaign and track Mania to actually
let you go to the leader board and download any ghost from the leader board,
whereas this one is just your friends, and this one's got the awful
way of categorizing userbait tracks that you talked about. But Driving is great.
It's an amazing looking game. It looks nice. It's it's well amazing looking,
maybe a bit much. It is a great looking game. I think
it's better than drack Media has definitely sure. Yeah, and it handles well.
It's it's a lot of fun. The soundtracks fantastic. He told me
about a cool feature it has, driving by Committee. Yes, the double
driver mode that is new. Uh. Yeah. They put in a lot
of like you know, same like like local multiplayer modes in this game,
which is kind of driving one car. Yes, it's two people driving turns.
Yeah. Specific rim so Yeah, it's a specific rim So. Dan
and I drifted literally and figuratively in the Quinnett Click look, uh to get
around the track. It's all the same tracks you know from the from the
single player stuff. You just you both have to try to control the car.
It worked pretty well, Yeah, like we did. Okay, it
got me thinking that, like what if you hacked like two Bluetooth radios to
one controller and then just played it that way. Then you're just playing the
single player right, Yeah, but you're like the leaderboards destroying the leaderboard.
That's true. Yeah, I'd like to see that with like seven people.
Yeah. Uh yeah, that's a lot of fun. That. That's pretty
much all all that I've been playing. Yeah. Uh well, I played
through Quantum Break and we will talk about that soon ish. I could,
you know, I could tell you about Act two, Chapter one, this
cut scene, but until we've got up until this licensed song starts playing,
and then I have to stop talking about preview information and then they have a
bunch of restrictions on you know, we've got we've got the most of Act
one is on our site exactly video fom at this point. That's the season
Quantum Break. That is what that game is. I'm still looking forward to
playing that game. But yeah, we've got quite a bit of material out
there. We'll have a review soon already, all right, good snow,
Yeah, I've been I've been picking my way through the day of the Technical
Rebastard. It's a great game, which is does it hold up? You?
Are you enjoying it? So I never played it back in the day.
I was, in fact, I was like fully like not intentionally,
but I was by default on the Sierra divide of the great adventure game wards
of the nineties, rough rough Spot. I mean, it's just like,
you know, you've got we got our first computer relatively late in the lifespan
of adventure games, like okay, let's say three to four years before they
died. If you want to say, Grim Fandango was kind of like the
end cap. Yeah, I guess so I might. I might say that
wasn't that well yeah, probably whatever. I don't know, Yeah, that's
probably dismissive of the smaller studios that have been making good adventure games, like
like since time and some wanted Watchet Eyes like right, you've been there the
whole time, or you know, like Germany, right, but the nation
they have been. But that was like the you know, that was the
last big LucasArts adventure game, and that was right around the time that Sierra
went three D with King's Quest and tried to make it like a weird actual
game hybrid and then it just the classic Like the standard bearers of the genre
pretty much went down the tubes. Leisure Suit Larry on Xbox three sixty was
like that weird like almost totally forgot about that. All that was after like
FINDI got their hands on all those ideas. But anyway, for whatever reason,
I was only exposed to Sierra stuff through the people I knew that played
that stuff. I never played Lucky Island, mean I Mansion, like Sam
Max any of that stuff. Yeah, which seems like what the cool kids
were playing. Yeah, those were much better games. There's like very much
this attitude that like people who played Lucas Arts games were cool. Yes,
we play where games were square. When I was a sophomore in high school,
I tried to get a job at Lucas Arts. Wow, they had
a testing position open and I but they said send a resume and I wrote
like, a here's why I want you to hire me, and hey,
I didn't hear back, so probably for the best. So there's someone here
who worked in QA for Lucas at one point. That's sounds like a fucking
nightmare. Yeah, talking to him about that was very eye opening and yeah,
fun to hear about, but probably not fun to live and work through
the idea of like testing PC compatibility, like like in those days, here's
like a room full of video cards. Now slot them in and make sure
this works. So here's here's all. Here's all the sound cards on the
market, because they are like six competing sound standards. Right, but this
Disney sound source, let's go. When I was in Get This Gus,
yeah, I was testing on a console and I knew some people who were
on the SIMS PC team. Yeah, which if you think about the SIMS
and reproducing a bug in the SIMS when it's so open, I did not
envy those guys. That sounds crazy anyway, you can swing balls. But
yeah, the Luke Start's Adventure, I mean whatever. There are valid reasons
for the Sierra game. So some of them were earlier and fascinating in their
own way. Right, Police Quest is a really crazy thing. Yeah,
in fact that they got fucking Daryl kaid sate. They remember that, just
like when that's like, man, fuck you, what the fuck? Uh?
But yeah, I mean there's there's obviously when Max Hit the Road is
an incredible game, Like there's there's a lot of wit and like really accomplished
like comedy in those games that the Sierra games did not have. Yes,
yeah, yeah, the closest I think Sierra ever got to comedy. And
I've not played all those games, but it was like it was leisure Suit
Larry, which I was never that funny. Yeah. I was just twelve,
Yes, yes, indeed, and I was like, man, are
they are they gonna show? They're gonna show it? Are they are they
gonna show it? Didn't want to see it? Did they? No?
No? Never really? So your voice when you're twelve, never once.
So that's his voice. Now he's still playing it, still looking, he's
still waiting. I've moved on. I downloaded a copy of Dead or a
Live Extreme three. Okay, I want to know if they're going to show
it. Oh man, well I want to ask about that desperately. No
idult. They said that they weren't going to release the game in this country.
That means they must show it didn't just go out like three or four
days ago or something like that. So I have not I launched it to
make sure that it launched, and have not actually played it yet. Well,
I was thinking that that would be something we would just go into fresh
and try to play. You guys should record that before Dan goes to wrestle
media. Yeah, yeah, probably Dandy used to be in on that.
Let's do that today. Yeah, I don't think I want to sit it
on that anyway. Let's talk about I want to see him show it.
I want to I want to go to zach Island. I have to finish.
Let's talk about data centicorder fast. Then we can move on. Can
you put Bernard in a bikini and day the Tentacle remastered? Could you and
the no? Did they remaster it so they show it? The no?
I mean I know you know this because you play some of it. It's
it's it's it's interesting and weird because like they literally just redrew all the art
assets in I res but map them over the original game. Yeah, like
like zero additional frames of animation from the looks of it, right, just
you know, which which I feel like emulating at that point. Uh,
I don't know how they did it exactly. You know, like you can
tap the touch pad on PS four and toggle between original and I mean,
it's it's I assume it's poorted. You know, it's not you're not like
emulating hardware, but but you know, like scum VM has been out there
for years and years, Like all those look starts games used to common Common
scripting interface, Common engine. You know that they just recreated with scum VM.
So in fact, there's a video of Tim Schaefer playing the original games
on their YouTube channel and he's running them all in scome viam. Yeah,
why wouldn't you like, you know, to run him on a modern machine,
like that is the way, But I feel like from a preservation standpoint,
like that's probably the right way to do it, right, Yeah,
Like you don't want to you don't want to make too many modifications, or
you're kind of getting beyond the scope of what the game was at the time,
right. Yeah, So like the you know, the low number of
like animation frames and stuff doesn't bother me. Like it's like, Okay,
this is how it was back then, and it's a lot clearer and it
fills the entire TV screen now, but it's still like you're basically still getting
that experience. Yeah. Well, I don't know, I think that there
there would be room for a full remake of that game. Yeah, but
I don't. I don't necessarily need that. I don't either. But also
for fifteen dollars, I don't think that's reasonable to expect. I guess you're
I don't know, that's all they're charging for it, So yeah, I
guess. Yeah. But but more to the point, I feel like I
just I just feel like game preservation has become a hotter topic as time has
gone on, and more and more stuff is getting lost or harder to find,
and we're losing people to right, that's the other thing. Yeah,
Like there's they've been doing some really good work on their YouTube channel. There's
like a twelve fifteen minute video but of remastering this. There's a little mini
documentary on their on their channel that I highly recommend it because like, a,
you're talking to Tim Schaeffer, and they brought Dave Grossman in as well
to talk to and like and so you're getting like stories that only exist in
these people's minds, right because they were there. Like no books were ever
written about this stuff. Yeah, Like no, no interviews were really conducted.
They weren't doing special features back then. Like the only way you're going
to play games media was not you know, pursuing that sort of stuff right
in that way, and it's still not really it's there's an amazing moment in
that video actually where they talked to one of the younger like a junior programmer
at Double Fine who was helping remaster this thing. And first of all,
it's kind of depressing because he says that the code base for that game is
as old as he is, so he's like his early twenties or whatever.
Yeah, but he's going through some of the stuff he was doing to port
the game and digging into the old source code, and like Tim Shaffer apparently
did some of the coding on the game, and he found a bit in
the credits, the intra credits for the game where because it says like written
and directed by Tim Shaffer and Dave Grossman. Yeah, there's there's scripting in
there that randomizes the order that their names represented down, so like, I
guess, you know, make it fair so nobody gets top billing every time.
Yeah, But like the variable names, there's like comments and variable names
in there where like like the variable and he used for that was age before
Beauty, So it's like if age before Beauty was one, like just weird
little personality quirks of the people who made these games coming out in like the
freaking source code. Yes, like like that stuff is never gonna come to
light unless people dig in there and document that stuff, you know. Yeah,
Like there's there's footage of them going up to Skywalker Ranch where all the
original concept art that game has been in a like a filing cabinet for the
last twenty years. They dug it all out and scanned it and put it
in there. They recovered all the DAT tapes from all their like all the
original recordings, so like that's why that was the thing I was originally worried
about a little bit because I was like, oh, I wonder if the
sound quality will be low because this was you know, even as a CD
game, it was still like the it was not CD quality audio coming out
of Super Compressed. They do a side by side in that video of like
here's what it sounded like back in the day. It's like, awfully like
low qualities. A lot of hiss drew. You'll appreciate this, Uh,
just from a production and an archiving standpoint. They I think they went and
like contracted one of the guys who helped with the original recordings because they're all
on old school DAT tapes and stuff, you know, so they have to
like dig out the equipment to capture that stuff. But like none of the
tapes were labeled, oh god, with the like the actor or character names
at all. There are different takes for different lines for different characters, all
mixed together on different tapes. Like it is so like they're talking. Here's
another junior guy at Double Find who had to spend like hours and hours and
hours just categorizing all these takes the like this is the take they got used
and like listen side by side. There were no production notes, so he
had to buy ear listen to the takes and figure out which is the one
that actually got picked for the game and match that one in It's I would
have loved to an alternate mode that actually just randomly chose different tapes. That
would be awesome, you know, you know. But and like there's there's
a little bit where they're skyping with one of those the guy they brought in
to help with the dat tape stuff, and they have the tapes stacked up
like flaying flat horizontally, and the guy was like, don't do that.
Like they have to let rest like vertically, because gravity will push the tape
down and destroy the control track on the tape over time if you don't,
and those tapes will be ruined after a period of years. Like just crazy
little old game development like kind of preservation need archival stuff in there, Like
it's gone through these game tapes. There's I've discovered a nice labeling system that
categorizes each capture by year. Yeah, And as I was going through that,
I was like, man, I would really love to thank whoever did
right, And then rich Gallup was in for GDC and he's like, oh
yeah, I still got my labels on there. Thank you, So fall
at his feet and kiss his shoe. Yes. Yeah. I remember like
when we started the site, like Vinnie was so hardcore about archiving everything in
its original format on hard drives, and I was like, that's a lot
of money to spend on hard drives. Is that really necessary? Yeah,
it's already on the internet, right, It's probably fine, And I yeah,
I don't know. I was always like into it. I was like,
yeah, because we never know where we're going to use this stuff.
Right. At the same time, it was one of those things where it's
like well, you know, the original reason you would save everything at original
rez was like, well, if it needs to be on TV, we
need an uncompressed version of it, right, And now that's like well,
I mean for us, that was never really a goal and it was one
of the things where it's like that would be dumb if we were on TV
and TV like like as as the years went on since we started this site,
it was like, yeah, like a TV. But yeah, we've
we've been saving that stuff all so it's archive too. That Synology full of
hard drives, right, we still last few years. We still don't buy
a ton of hard drives, do we? We do every year okay,
yeah, we buy uh oh twelve bays right, I think they're twelve bays
of four terabytes each one drive for bay. Yeah, and then you just
yank them out and label them twenty fifteen and throw them somewhere. Now we
take the whole Synology and just unplug it and bill every year. Yeah,
that way, if we ever wanted to go back to like twenty fourteen,
you just plug in Pology. I feel there there's like some kind of incompany
Blu ray burning solution really somewhere in here that I wonder if we should just
like put it into that in case one of these synologies gets blown up or
something like this. The type of ray that we use is a little bit
redundant. Yeah, so okay, yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
yeah, we've we've always yeah, we did the rooms full of hard drives
at the point we shipped a bunch of Canada yuh right to put on a
cdner that for when we were moving the site from one hosting service to another.
I think we had a male hard drive, I forget. Yeah,
there's lives a lot of I vaguely remember that, but yeah, like just
between playing this game and watching that video, like it makes you really thankful
that somebody held onto those dat tapes and pieces, like the concept art stuff
even is amazing because like they talked to Peter cham the guy who did all
this stuff, like all the art for that game, and like he did
Monkey Island, and was saying like, well, because he's like a classical
illustrator, you know, he's got chops and all kinds of different styles,
and he did like a super highly detailed painted style for Monkey Island. The
then got utterly fucking destroyed by like the EGA or VGA of the Day,
you know. Yeah, so then he was like, well for Day the
Tentacle, It's like, well I did. It's super low detail, high
color, high contrast thing that would work in in that like what we have.
But that was an awesome looking game right in its day. And when
you and when you flip back in real time to the real the original version,
you're like, holy shit, like this is seems like so far ahead
of its tunny when you compare it to like the original Maniac Mansion, which
which is in the game on the C sixty four. Yes, yeah,
I played a little bit of it, and it's like, holy shit,
like that was made on an original IBMPC right because it has like no sound
effects I think was made on the Common or sixty four. Yeah. Yeah,
Like it's just it is super fucking rudimentary, like it can't even scroll
the screen smoothly as you walk and stuff like that. But yeah, like
like they literally took the original concept art and reproduced that as the new backgrounds,
Like the new backgrounds in the game basically are the concept art for the
original game. That's cool because they have the fidelity to reproduce that stuff now,
you know, it's just like it's an amazing archival effort. Yeah,
like setting aside the quality of the game, and they've they've redone, like
the a lot of the navigation and stuff like that, especially to like account
for like console controllers, like you know, well whatever, Like I played
that game with a joystick, you know, like not even not even a
mouse. I don't think that game supported a mouse on Commodore. It was
you know, you you moved the joystick down to pull right, and then
you moved to the fucking doormat and hit the fucking button and it exposed the
key. Then you moved down to hit pick up and then move back up
and hit it and pick it up the key. I think they had the
hot keys on the keyboard that would kind of default to like pull pick ups
you kind of like get your verbs out faster. Was just still got some
of that stuff in there. Yeah, but yeah, it's good. It's
like I playing it now, I'm like, man, I would have my
fucking lid for this game if I had played it back when the adventure games
were new and hot and I cared about this stuff. Like it's it's so
well written and funny. Yeah, and just like, I mean, you
know, like I came at it from the perspective of like really loving Maniac
Mansion and then really liking Zach McCracken, which came afterwards and had a similar
look to Maniac Mansion, but on a larger scale. No, people people
didn't. People don't remember that game. Fond it doesn't you go to Mars.
I don't know. That's I like, I like Zack McCracken. It's
fucking weird, It's it's big. Anyway, when Day the Tentacle came out,
it was like it was fucking crazy, Like how much better that looked
and how much you know, how much more there was to it, which
which I guess, No, I guess that was. I did play Day
the Tentical with the mouse on a PC. Now that I think about it,
that's crazy. That was not a C sixty four game. But yeah,
but I played the original Maniac on on a C sixty four. And
the problem I had is, so they issue that game on discs, on
floppies and on CD, and on floppies there was no speech, uh,
And so I had the CD version. But that was in the days of
IRQ conflicts and all sorts of fucked up shit where I had to choose whether
I wanted CD ROM support or some digital audio, so I would get like
the the synth audio, so basically I could play the floppy version of the
game right off of CD. And then one day I finally fucking figured it
out, like resolved the IR two conflict. Like, okay, if I
moved the sound card to seven and the CD ROM drive to eleven, this
seems to work. Even though there was no conflicts before with the way it
was configured, it still wouldn't both work. Like finally got there and it
was like, fucking holy shit, that's less nestment all. Yeah, totally
the stuff on the disc. I didn't know it was there. Yeah,
that's that's a that's a badass fucking game. Yeah. It holds up pretty
well. I mean, like there's parts of it they're kind of slow and
there's a lot of backtracking. Yeah yeah, I mean it's a time travel
game, so you know there's there's a lot of like, oh I need
to well it's also it's an adventure game, so I need to come back
here with the left handed hammer, so I could do this, But that's
what it's kind of neat. You know, they're aspects of like, oh,
I gotta do this thing in the past to effect a thing in the
future. Like that stuffs cool and you can switch between the characters. Yeah,
Brad, you're playing this for the first time. But you had a
history with adventure games. Yeah. Yeah, I never you know, had
a PC back and they never like I rented Maniac Mansion for any ass,
but I had no idea what was going on shit version yeah, and that
was different going on. Yeah, so I'm curious about it now, Yeah,
you know, being more open minded about the genre and stuff, Right
would it be? Do you think I would like it going in completely blind?
Like did you play Broken Age? No? Uh? Do you haven't
play anything? No? Even I think in the classic like I'm sure you
played some of the tell Tale stuff, right, yeah, I hate it,
But I hated Walking Dead. I I really hate tells. You might
but what about the the pre Walking Dead tell Tale games when they were more
like these type of adventures like the back of the Back of the Future stuff.
I didn't which But what didn't you like about it was the writing because
the Back of the Future games were not great. I always thought the writing
was fine. I just something something about the gameplay. I just feel like,
I don't you want I don't think you would like this. I don't
even I mean that style of your gaming does not hold up these days.
Like, okay, mechanically, like the episodic Salmon Max games should have been
like, and I like the first season that quite a bit when tell Tale
did that. But at some point, even when they were making very faithful
like Lucas style adventure games in an episodic fashion, yea, at some point
even with that, I was like, dude, I'm good. Yeah it
was walking Dead came out changed everything with the further way they make their games,
and now they make them all like that, and I extra don't like
those, so yeah, like, the biggest, the biggest weakness of the
second half of Broken Age is that they listened to the people who complained that
the first half was not enough like those old games, so they made it
more like those old games that made it worse. The one in the genre
I do remember liking is when I was working at funk O Land, I
just tossed in like some Monkey Island on PlayStation one, and I remember thinking
like, this is really funny, Like I don't. I don't necessarily remember
the gameplay grabbing me, but I really thought it was funny. I want
to say, by the time they got to like by the time they were
putting those games out on PlayStation, that was a different thing. Yeah.
I don't think that's an original bokey. Yeah. I did not do a
remake of it. They did much later they did, Uh what was it
called Monkey Island Special Edition? Yeah, but that was like that was like
twenty ten, would have been like early two thousands. Like I want to
say, Monkey Island on PlayStation, like may have just been like a direct
control you're walking around doing stuff, not a point and click game, right,
I think I was walking. That's that's that's a different thing, huh.
I Mean the stereotype about this type of game, and it is a
deserved stereotype, is that, like it's a bunch of tedious trial and error
and guesswork of like you pick up a bunch of stuff in the environment,
you like whatever qualifies as an inventory object that you can pick up, right,
and then once you're stuck, you run around using every object you have
on everything you see until something works, you know, like it's it's yeah,
see I guess I haven't done a lot of the point and click stuff,
but you know, I tried to Start Walking Dead several times because do
you remember when that came out, like everyone is freaking out it, Yeah,
like they won all these awards and everything, and I really want to
guests too. Looked like Escape from Monkey Island came to maybe that's PC,
and then in two thousand and one came to PST. That would have been
when I was working at so yeah, that's probably the one. But yeah,
I tried to Start Walking Dead several times, and I just fucking hate
I was trying so hard to figure out what people liked about it, and
I hated everything about I mean, those games are one hundred percent about storytelling,
so if you're not in, I didn't like the story. I didn't
like the gameplay. I didn't like any part. I mean the smartest thing
Telltale, dude, was throw out the old puzzle solving and just replace it
with a bunch of character moments. You know, it's it's yeah, the
digue and all that sort of stuff, like it's you know that that's cool.
Yeah, But I just mean I thought that stuff worked better, and
something like Heavy Rain even you know, I liked Heavy Rain a lot,
and we probably wouldn't classify that as an adventure game, would you. Yeah,
i'd say, yeah, I'd say that's absolutely a modern take on action
adventure. Maybe yeah, yeah, a little bit. I did like that
one. It's it's more adventure game than anything. Absolutely, Okay, all
right, I haven't so I've gotten to the point in Day of the Tonicle
yet where I'm stuck, and I'm sure was like, it's stuck. I
will come back with a very different story. Yeah, I'm trying to.
I just it's been so long since I played through it. There was a
while there that I was using scum them to play that somewhat not more regularly
than most want to say, but but yeah there I don't remember if there
are any solutions in that game that are so fucking whacked out that you're just
gonna come back like this is everything I hate about, like attach the fucking
rubber chicken to the point, like like all those sorts of bullshit solutions,
there's there's definitely a point. Uh. I want to say, it's HOGI
right now that I have like eight things in my inventory and I haven't had
to use any of them yet, and I'm dreading the point where I where
I don't know what else to do, and I'm just like, well,
I'm gonna have to start using all of these on everything, and a lot
of those items end up being used in different times also, So it's like
the case where you're like, you need to flush items back and forth between
the characters and all this other stuff. So I didn't know you could do
that, and you might not be able to yet depending on where you are.
I don't remember. But so it's you can pass items too through to
other characters. Well, you know, regardless of how well individual aspects of
it hold up. Like just I think the effort they put into yeah,
preserving this thing and just you know, bring it up to modern standards in
an AV sense is really admirable. I just want to play car Bomb and
Salmon Max hit the Road in VR. Can we do that? It's it's
just horrible, it is Uh, it's just battleship, okay, fo Sure
it's just battleship with cars instead of ships and you drop boxes on the board.
Sure, battleship VR sounds foot. I I have to imagine they're going
to go straight full throttle after this, right, I don't know. Yeah,
I guess the games that come up and get talked about it it seems
like it's full throttle and grim like. But they did Grim Pago okay about
a year ago in the data Tentacles, So it's just it's just a matter
of getting the rights right stuff. Yeah. I just I admire all the
efforts they put into the stuff. I wish other studios had the capacity to
do it as well. And I guess like it's at some point, like
you know, it's tempting to lump all those games together as like the Lucas
Arts games, and then you would think like, oh, well, they'll
eventually get to all of them, but it's like, okay, which ones
were actually to Shafer games? That's the you know, the games that he
would have would have done something with that would then want to go on to
to remake and all that sort of stuff. It's because that's not the case
with all of them for sure, definitely, and he didn't work on all
those games. But it's it's cool to see all these names coming up in
different Like Tim Shafer obviously made a huge name for himself, but like,
yeah, Ron Gilbert and uh Gary Wick one of the other maniate mat like
they're making them bleweed Park now right. I think Grossman was a big guy
at tell Tale. I believe that he was part of that stuff. Yeah,
so like yeah, like that he's the other half of that stuff.
A lot of those big names from that era of look starts are out there
doing their thing. Yeah, and that's cool. Where's where's the x Wing
and tie Fight? Where's Larry Larry Holland? I don't know where's my man?
My man Larry Hall is the last I heard. I think it was
making making moo. It sounds something like that, all right, somebody making
new tie Fighter. God damn it? All right? Star Wars is back
and big? Why is it true? God damn? But it's for kids,
that's the other thing is like, But then, you know, I
don't know, like kids should learn how to wear a keyboard, but it's
not too far off from being a kid. And x Wing came out,
Yeah I was, you know, that was like thirteen or something when x
Wing came out. I would have been like sixteen, seventeen some like that.
So yeah, they should make more of those, Yes they should in
virtual reality? Why not? Yes? Yes, make a tie fighter in
virtual reality all by that fucking headset day won Dad, you've been playing anything
of note, I'm I think I'm getting very close to claiming my life back
from starting. That's actually kind of sad to hear. For some reason.
I don't think it's permanent because I keep adding stuff to it. But is
there an end to the game? Anybody? Does it ever stop? I
don't think it ever stops. You can keep I think you can keep farming
forever. I think there's stuff sprinkled throughout the years as you go on or
whatever. But the big goals, it seems, are finishing this community center,
which I'm one item away. As soon as one of my fucking rabbits
drops a foot, I'm done. Like I have a bunch of rabbits to
my coops, that's fucking morbid. Yeah it drops a foot. Yeah,
you give them like it's gonna fall off. I guess I need to put
a rabbit's foot into the community center and then I'm done with it. That's
the only There's two ways to get one. It's through or by killing serpents
and the skull cavern. Sometimes they will drop a rabbit's foot and got to
go deep into the cavern, find leprosy, bring it back right to the
rabbit. Yeah right, okay, yeah, yeah, so that is it
seems like one of the biggest overarching goals of the whole game. And then
also getting married, and although I'm also one item away from getting married,
but it's winter, and to get the marriage item, it has to be
raining. And there's some shady guy that hangs out on the beach in the
rain, and you have to go down to him and he'll sell you a
mermaid's pendant which you can give to propose to Abigail in this case. And
then I'm already at ten hearts with her. I already gave her the bouquet.
We're dating, we're serious, but I need the mermaids pendant otherwise I
can't get married. Oh and it can't rain because it's winter, because it'll
yeah it snows. It does be able to maintain her interest. Felt well,
I think. So we're hanging out. We play co op Journey of
the Prairie King or whatever every once in a while. But yeah, I'm
two items away, one from marriage, one from the community center. I
do want to have kids in the game. I don't know exactly how long
that takes or what spurs that on. But other than that, I think
I need to visit the ghost of my dead grandpa on New Year's Day of
the thirty years. But once those three things are done, which I think
I'm pretty close to, I think I've pretty much done the big goals of
that game. Okay, I've done a lot of things in that game.
Your hour count seventy five. Now, it's respectable. It's it's just tremendously.
And the thing is, I'm kind of sad, I guess because I
am still loving it. I don't feel like this is still a grind,
Like I want more reasons. Like if I heard that year three was sprinkled
with all this other stuff you could do, I would one go for all
that. So if he keeps adding stuff to it, I will keep playing
it for sure, because I adore that game. Sounds like he is in
a position to do that. The way it's been selling, I imagine he's
got, yes, got the capital to keep going for quite some times.
Oh yes, yes, So what a freaking like phenomenon that thing has become
with With good reason, it's uh man, it's one of my favorite games
in years. Yeah, that's cool. It's really really something special. It's
crazy to hear. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote a review went up on
the site, you know, the easiest five stars I could ever given.
I mean, it's a very few complaints about that game, and you know,
I saw lots of people, you know, I mentioned a few times
in the review about how like this was a one man effort and stuff,
and you know there's some arguments like, oh you should you mentioned that in
the review, and it's I if this was made by the Assassin's Creed team
of like five hundred people, I would still love it just as much.
But I mean, I think it's definitely worth giving credit, you know,
credits to do here, Like, it's an amazing accomplishment this guy did.
Also, it's your review. You could linchen whatever you see exactly. Yeah,
but but yeah, the point is it's amazing whether it was a giant
team or one guy. Yea, but yeah, it's uh, I mean,
the quality the game is. The quality of the game, you know,
just the circumstances of its creation just make it that looch more impressive.
Yeah, yeah, it's I can't I can't rave about that game enough.
It's really really incredible. But yeah, I'll be done with that soon.
Other than that, it's a lot of clash and how's your flashing going?
I have a goal there, okay, Uh my goal there is to beat
Cesarro one on one, which Clash or we're talking about and Royale that's the
main one I like playing. Yeah, uh, Clash of Clans, I
still have to keep up, but I'm still so low on the totem pool
in the Nikki clan. So you think definitively that Royal is better, is
a better game than Clans? Oh my god? Yeah? I want to
play Royale like that is super fun, even like when my chest slots are
all filled up and everything, like, I want to play to get better
at that game. Uh. And you know the free to play elements and
stuff. Yeah, it's it is annoying waiting for the for the chest open
and stuff like that. But I think it's way worse in Clash of Clans
because I'm at the point now where it's pretty low bar. Yeah I know,
I know, but like like all these upgrades I'm trying to buy,
it's like, okay, wait three days and I see people in our chat
saying like God damn. It takes like two weeks for all my upgrades now,
and that sucks. And yeah, you can spend the gyms or buy
gyms to make that go faster. That fucking sucks. It's not great.
So yeah, I am playing Clash of Plans for you know, the greater
cause. But Clash Royale I play for fun. That's where your heart lies.
Uh, Clash Royal yea, I played constantly. I really like that
game, and I think I'm like actually getting good at it, Like,
yeah, you really you can be good at that game. Absolutely, there's
a there's like a high skill ceiling in that game. Like that's something that
people look at that they're like they you know, thumb their nose at free
play stuff, or they like wrongly call it a skinner box, which is
ridiculous. You know what I've seen, Like there's depth to it, for
sure? Is that a refer is that BF skinner the psychology I'm not I've
never actually done the reading, but I'm guessing that's the case. Is that
the whole thing, like the rats that would press the thing and they Okay,
I kind of assume that's what I meant, But this is this is
not that at all. Like the value the value in this game is not
like pressing a button and getting a trinket out of it, Like that's the
argument level that destiny or like you know, loot games, but like this
is a strategy game with like the high amount of like a pretty significant amount
of depth to it. Like, yeah, the excitement of the game and
doing well at it is the value here. Like, yeah, it's nice
to open a chest, but the fun of it is when like you know,
you're king cowries down to thirty six hit points and you just fight off
an attack and you get you know, you do some crazy bullshit right at
the end and win. Yeah, Like it is fun as a video totally,
like deploying some like like clutch off the cuff combo of units that repels
what they're doing and like ekes out a win. Like that's that's why the
game is. That's sports. Yeah, No, I think it's a great
I mean they are you know, they totally run tournaments in this you can
expect. Yeah, it basically is an esport. Yeah, so then when
ESPN two is broadcasting Clash Royale, then come talk to Yeah. Until then,
that's my bar. That's my bar. For is it real or not?
Best best goblin barrel in a son. I got a goblin barrel.
I got the fucking goblin barrel. My deck is now like six epics.
Okay, yeah, yeah, that's pretty good the way it's got a goblin
barrel. Okay. Uh got the skeleton army yeah, oh man, I
want the skeleton things great, damn it, the rights, I don't Okay,
Okay, I don't, it'll feel so bad. I think I think
hog Rider. I think hog Rider is better than Prince. Really, yeah,
I think so. Every time a Prince comes after me just takes out
a whole damn take. Prince is too easily countered though. Any skeleton arm
is like a riff machine. He can plays right, get me wrong,
it's right, but Prince is fucking Prince. That's true. Actually, now
that you put it that way, it's it's it's a better game than it
should be because I wish I could stop playing it. Yeah, And there
is that weird attitude people have towards like mobile games or free to play games.
But you know, when it comes down to it, it's a good
game. I mean, there are legitimate criticisms of this game's business model,
but like just just dismissing it out of hand as a mobile game is just
asimine. Yeah, and you know what, they got ten bucks out of
me, and I kind of want to spend another ten bucks. So I
mean, right, it is smart. Yeah, it's smart from a business
perspective on their end, and it's fun as a gamer on my end.
So I mean, I have no complaints about that game. Indeed, yep,
So that's a that's mainly it like star To pretty much every night.
That'll be done once I get to spring Y. Indeed, Drew, what's
been on your plate? I've been playing a little Dirt Rally on PS four
yea, yeah, game's good. Yeah, yeah, it's a good version
of that. Is it just a dirt sequel? Like? Did did they
just stop numbering the dirt games? Yes? But is this effectively dirt for
they had to call it Dirt Rally because they sort of fractured the dirt.
That's That's what I was asking if there was something about this that made it
more than or different than just a dirt sequel. It's basically a sequel to
Dirt one because that was all rally focused, Okay, whereas Dirt two got
into more like stadium stuff where you were going around in circles with a bunch
of people. Yes, this is all I point to point okay up in
you know, Italy or wherever, Scandinavia. Uh, And I like that.
It's a nice return to form. It runs great, it looks great.
It's pretty hard, but you can you can dial down the settings.
Okay, I think that series is tremendous and this is a faithful Probably,
I really, I don't know where i'd I'd probably put it up. I
probably put it above Dirt one. Yeah. How do the menus look?
Normal menus like the cool Dirt two manus. Yeah, that's some of the
best menus still some seeds. Yeah, but aside from that, I canceled
my cable, went hole hog into PlayStation. Oh wow, that got cheaper,
right, it got cheaper. It is now forty dollars if you it's
thirty outside of any of the big cities. So if you're in a big
city and there's a list of them on the website, against like you know,
New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, those things,
Denver, Miami. They include local channels. If you're in one of those
big cities. If you're outside of one of those big cities, they don't
include your local channels, so it's cheaper. It's thirty dollars rather than forty.
But I canceled my TV and saved ninety dollars a month. Wow,
that's it's not bad. That's definitely enough to offset the cost of view.
Yeah, it was still working well, ninety bucks at all, told,
like after after the cost of yeah, I mean yeah, with what I
was playing for a direct TV, it would have ended up being like so
I was like that I was paying for the stupid tier of Comcast because I
had to get NBC Sports Network because I watched watched Formula One. But that
comes with the base tier of That's that's a heck of a deal. Then
that's cool. Yeah. Uh. The interface of PlayStation views pretty weird and
occasionally buggy ve something to be desired. Yeah. When I was using and
trying to watch wrestling, it was I'll do it. When I was trying
to record wrestling with PlayStation view, it just didn't work. Yeah, like
it just I think I was trying to do you a favor. Yeah,
I guess. As it turns out, it's been it's been great, turned
out to be better off. It's been great not watching wrestling. The cool
part is if you have an app for some channel, like so for NBC
Sports Network, they have their own app, but usually have to log in
using your TV credentials like your Comcast account of whatever. You can log in
with PlayStation Yeah, you still have to do all. You still have to
exit out to the app to use it or no. This is on phones
on phones, but there is also a PlayStation View app where you can watch
stuff that you've flagged, but that is a per show licensing. So for
example, I can't watch Formula One using the PlayStation View app, but I
can using the NBC Sports app. That sounds confusing. It's cheap television licensing
is a fucking night. Yeah yeah, as long as it's cheaper, I
guess. Yeah, buddy, so excited. Cool? Did you get the
did you get the remote for the PS four? You just use a control
okay, yeah, it's good stuff that come with functionality, So it's not
a DVR. They actually you just say I you flag a show basically,
and then after it airs or even when it's airing, it'll just show up
in your my show's tab and then when you click on it to play,
it streams that show from PlayStation services. You're just you're just you're just watching
an on debated version. You never record anything to your hard drivel functionally though,
it is. I mean you can access shows after you can rewind fast
forward. Does that Does that stuff expire? Is it like, oh,
like two weeks after an episode airs, you can't watch for days or something.
I think that. I think episodes of a show will expire, Okay
at some point, I guess I don't know that much worse than a DVR.
Yeah. Also, like if you replay a show that aired on multiple
channels, you can pick which channel you watch it on, what do you
get all the cops with it and stuff? Yeah, that was one of
my problems with wrestling because one of the higher tiers had a different version of
wrestling. There was like the two hour cut or something like that, and
it would show that instead. Sometimes it's just weird. It was very inconsistent.
Yeah, there, their data is perhaps not great on the channel or
like on the scheduling side, this episode the same as this episode, is
this fresh air? Is this is this is airing new? Or is this
a rerun like like some of that. It's like in a very an obscure
show, like some weird uh form of race. It'll just say like racing,
yeah, and that can get looped in with other stuff and it may
not line up correctly. But it sounds like it's getting there though. It's
getting there. Just took it nationwide like last week. So hopefully that means
I'll stick around for a while, because I'm quite enjoying not paying you cut
the you're a cord cutter? I did, but like I still have a
lot of TV channels, yeah, yeah, too many to watch? All
right, the games we've been playing. Why don't we move into the headlines
of the week. Let's yes, I'll see all those inex controller photos did
little football. There's quite a world win there? Yes, where it sure
was? The tree was the same tree, yeah, the first one.
The first one was dubious. But the first one you look at and go
like no way, yeah, and like my reasons for saying there's no way,
we're we're pretty sound. Uh. And then when those second ones hit,
I was like, well, wait a minute, yeah, because like,
well it was less certain at that point. Yeah, totally okay,
Well, wait, and then then it became like, well, wait,
if this first one is getting debunked is fake, what does that say about
this second one? Maybe it wasn't fake to begin with. Well guess what
they were all thorofic. Let's just say that up front. But it's still
worth talking about because we're not that far out from that thing presumably getting actually
unvias. Yeah, it looks like, you know, it looks like two
separate people or groups or I don't know who we got track back to,
but you know, like they just kind of looked at Nintendo's patent filing of
like this kind of handheld device, uh, and made one of those like
physically yeah, shopped one out, de printed. Whatever they did didn't even
really change it from what the patent. Yes, Yeah, that's that's the
most telling. Yes, And that's the thing you look at and go like,
well, this is fake because they don't file patents based on one exactly
what they're doing. They just cover all the bases of the thing they're making
and then have a different form factor so you don't get a look at what
they're actually making. I loved all the people saying like, you know,
there there's stuff like like, oh, it's got let's sticker on it.
This says confidential property made with a label maker, or of course it's fake.
It's like, dude, I have seen a label maker labels on that.
Because yeah, because like all that hardware shows up as a studio and
then one person checks it all in and and marks it up and tethers it
to tables or whatever they end up doing. And as part of that process,
literally these builds are like CDRs with sharpie right, yeah, yeah,
yeah, it's like that. That that was not a red flag. But
but the fact, yeah, the fact that it literally was just a reproduction
of the patent millis that was the thing. It was like, there's no
way this can be real. But then when there were more pictures, I
was like, well, wait, they wouldn't be that stupid like that.
That was the other thing, was like Nintendo couldn't possibly be that stupid,
could they? And then by the time I kind of finished rolling that around
in my head and came out that that one was fake too, I was
like, all right, okay, all right, it was a pretty good
fake. Yeah. Well so, I mean the most eye opening thing about
the whole shebaying for me was that it was a physical object. Yeah,
like it was. He printed that, Yeah, like put the video out
about how he made it. It's like, it's cool. It's pretty easy
to make a realistic looking fake when it's a real object that you made took
a photo of for sure. And you know people have been doing that with
iPhones and stuff like that as as like iPhone case specs start to leak somewhere
eventually like tries to like manufacture. Yeah, well you get a lot of
renders of iPhones and stuff. But like seeing a thing on a table that
looks fully believable as a photograph of a real object is like pretty like up
until now, like up until this incident, it was like, well that
must probably actually be real, but nope. Now you can't trust anything on
the internet at all ever. Anyway, Yeah, I know, did you
see the video of like them like being able to manipulate recorded footage of mouth
movement and stuff? Like what's that thing called I forget? But we're there
somebody somebody put it in slack last week. There's uh, it's like a
university research project. Yeah. It's like if they're using a basic webcam to
look at your face and you move your mouth and it moves the mouth of
a prerecorded like you know, they were they were using you know, presidential
candidates and stuff like the video of Donald Trump on there, but like they
literally are building the person's face in three D and just mapping the image of
their face onto it and then it tracks your facial movements to that three D
face stuff. Personally, first person basically taking this footage of Donald Trump talking,
sitting in a chair talking and completely reanimating what his face is doing and
saying throughout this entire video, like and it was with his voice like change
that would that would be you know, be a good impressionist or something like
that. For now, that's probably the only thing that's going to keep this
from from being passed off as real. But it was very much like a
scary Minority Minority Report future moment of like you're not gonna be able to trust
footage of people talking for much longer, for like maybe another year or two
before like everything is in quarry out there with images and everything out you know,
it's it's like the one two punch of that that that YouTube stuff and
the innex controller. It was a real dark moment of really interesting period,
because then it'll just be back to I was in that room and he said
this, yeah, and then it's like you don't have you don't have Wow,
you don't have that anymore. Yeah the footage, Yeah, like,
how do you authenticate any of that stuff? And there will have I'm sure
b ways, but nothing is true. Everything is permitted exactly. Yes,
uh yeah. So the thing about the n X stuff is like I get
the impression that a lot of that stuff will end up being stuff that we
eventually see as part of the NX rollout, you know, like some of
that stuff I think checks out, but at the same time not in that
form factor not a football not yet, not a not a weird oval thing.
Yeah, but I mean the big thing everybody flip their shit over,
and who knows if this will actually come to past or not, is like
this idea of a thing that's just a screen in a couple of sticks,
like no buttons. Yeah. I guess we talking about that stuff before.
It was the implication there. The from what I saw, like anecdotally,
people reregistered their objections to the idea of a thing with no buttons. Buttons
are good, you know. Yeah, Like and if you think about this
device is something that you know would theoretically be a console, uh, and
have to run on a television. Then you get into a point where you
need to be able to use the device without looking at it, and buttons
are the way you do that. So you know, people can fucking shout
over and over again about haptic feedback and how great it is all this stuff,
it's not I mean, if it's not the thing if you're playing on
a TV, though, couldn't they easily say, like, here's the pro
controller for the NX and so this is the one for when you're playing at
home. But then you're looking at it, like, I like the idea
I don't want on screen see we'll see, you know, it's it's it's
hard. I mean the notion, but the notion of this even being a
hybrid device, that that is a console and a handheld, like that's not
even something we can we don't really, you know, it's it's hard to
really know until they until they come right out and say it, But you
know, it's I'd have to imagine they're smart enough to know that. Like,
look at any iPhone or iPad game where it's you know, an analog
stick on the screen and it sucks. Look at any iPhone game that is
raking in millions of dollars a day with zero controls and realize that, like,
maybe that's a direction that the younger audience is heading in, and think
about, you know, maybe Nintendo is interested in making different types of games
now don't require a bunch of dots and stuff. You know, it's like
you're you're, you're making the assumption that Nintendo is going to continue to make
like Mario, Yeah, exact games and stuff like that where you know,
direct control, like games that where you directly control a character with a bunch
of complicated controls. I mean, it's not what the touch market is.
Yeah, that's that's what brought them to the dance, and I think there's
still a lot of money to be made there. But you know, there's
nothing wrong with them trying to maybe have it both ways. I think you're
starting to see that with the DNA stuff and me Telmo and yeah for sure,
and they're out there experimenting now, so who knows where this stuff ends
up, but you know it's you might be right, like this thing could
be like all one handheld everybody in visions but also there's like a pro controller
style right straight up just control or in the box that you play the TV
version of the games with. If if that's how it all like the real
you can say at this point, yeah, yes, but yeah it's so
yeah, you know, it's one of those things that E three is going
to be extremely interesting across the board with a lot of this stuff, you
know, with this, with you know whatever updated PlayStation, updated Xbox,
potential stuff that that may come to pass down the line, Like how does
that manifest the E three? Like it's see what VR games are announced?
Yeah? Sure, I think Yeah, it's gonna be a really weird E
three. Yeah. Yeah, Like this E three got crazy exciting for announcements
all of a sudden, Like we're action packed at least, right, just
a lot of stuff to anticipate. Uh, if nothing else, people are
super hot to learn about the AX apparently, yeah, like whatever whatever kind
of failure you want to call the WU, Like, people are very interested
in Nintendo's x console, so at least they got that going for But you
know, I like how many millions of the you know, how much of
that is like people on the internet and that are interested in anything that happens
in video games, and how much of that is like a larger audience like,
yeah, that's the thing is. I think the larger audience will go
like, oh, they made a new this is the thing after the Wei
Wow. Great, Wow it only took up ten years. Yeah, we
you too. But depending on how deep they go into touchscreen buttons and all
the other stuff, you will eventually have you know, if you go too
far down that road, you'll have a mainstream audience that just goes like,
so this isn't a phone, Yeah my phone? That yeah, that totally
seems like the danger selling to people who already have a phone, Like who
wants to carry two devices? Right? Sure? Uh? But who can
say? Uh? So, this news about the NXU was part and parcel
kind of with this other story that came out of the Japanese newspaper the Nick.
Yeah that Nintendo is supposedly, according to them, ending production of the
Wi You this year, that they will not make any more units right at
twenty sixteen. But then Nintendo fairly quickly came out and said nah, but
I feel like their statement was very much about like, we will will continue
making them in this quarter and additional quarters. Yeah, but like the if
you go fiscal versus calendar and like like starts to break that stuff down.
Like I don't know, I didn't follow the story far enough, but it
seems one of those things where they didn't necessarily just say no. The wording
here's the wording of Nintendo's response is, this isn't an announcement from our company
from the next quarter and thereafter as well, production of the WEU a schedule
to continue. All right, okay, yeah, what games you're coming out
for it though? Yeah, well you know E three's coming, so yeah,
I'm not expecting many WEU announcements at three. Yeah, totally. And
also the Kataker story where I got this quote from points out that Nick has
a good track record definitely do like behind the scenes info that turns out to
be accurate, So you know this This then plays into in does the NX
launch uh and and all that sort of stuff as well. Uh yeah,
and all because if they they're stopping manufacturing, you know, that could be
very well because they have a fucking warehouse full of these things, right,
you know, and and when they'll have supply for some time, they may
not need to make more I forget, I forget what it was. But
I bought my Wi You like two years after it came out, a year
and a half, and I forget what it was. But there were signs
that what I got was I launched un oh right, like I bought.
I granted it was the Nintendo Land bundle. They're like the I think the
wind Waker Bundle was out at that time too, but I wanted the original.
But but I'd forget what it was. But there was something that made
me think, this is a unit that was on shelves or had been made
for launch, or was I one of the launch bundles or something. Why
did you want Nintendo Land ever? Wind Waker? Oh? I had Windwaker
from from the office. Also also could not stand that dumb ask gold trim
on the week controller. Oh right, and they filled up. Not a
fan of that. Looks gross, But uh, yeah, they might have
a ton of them sitting around that they will continue to sell or who does.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's not this is not like end of life
for the console necessarily, but you know, but I can't imagine like if
they're if they're really going to lean into the launch of a new platform.
It's not like they have teams kicking around like what's gonna be our next WU
game, here's the big Mario game. It turns out, turns out three
D World was your big Mario game for this generation, or you know it
is one. It's like, hey, we're announcing it right now and it's
out in three months, right, But I mean the land is coming to
the other thing as well. The people, the people looking for the traditional
three D Mario like falling in the Galaxy footsteps, are not going to get
one on the wu Yeah. Probably it's safe to say. You know,
you wouldn't sit here and say the book on the WIU is closed, but
it is closing. Yes, So the idea of like announcing a bunch of
new development for the wu AY three seems somewhat preposterous, even three DS to
a certain extent. Yeah, if they really are going to lean into what
nx uh seems to maybe be three D five years old. It just it
just turned five. Yeah, I'm guess, man, it's crazy that that
devices ended up being okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's good.
Had good moments. Well, you know, I actually as say I've
had good moments with them now that I'm like trying to think, like,
what were the games. Link between Worlds play that it's good. Yeah,
yeah, that's good. Yeah, it's really good. Three D Land,
Yeah, those are two of the best games. And Leave Yeah that was
another, but that was another Animal Crossing Yeah, great one. Yeah,
they're all great steel divers. They should make Steel Diver, that's of course.
Yeah, I think I think I think three D Land and like Between
Worlds are the two for me. Those are probably my top TWA. Those
are two good games, but they're not games that I like feel any passion
for right now, you know, they're they're like if I'm looking back at
the platform, like I'm trying to think about moments, they're like, oh
man, yeah, like i'd take Link between Worlds is definitely my number one.
Yeah, street Fighter four and three D big moment and it like half
the half frame rate and three D yeah, I got I think. I
I pulled the email for this, we'll get back to it. But I
heard some heard some pretty gross stuff about High Rule Warriors in that oh in
that respect. Oh yeah, I'll save that. I'll save that for the
email. Yes, uh, Nintendo stuff to come in in the coming months.
Yes, all right, Yeah, they announced the date for the US
date. Yeah, that's out this week first Thursday here, yeahs Thursday here.
I'm stay first sad about that. I mean, we could have all
just made Japanese accounts and guy, I was just worried that that would lead
to some fuckery down the line where I would not be able to get something
or she. I was like, I'm just gonna play here and wait,
what is it? Do it? Legit? You could? You could have
made a Japanese App Store account or an Apple account and gotten me Tomo like
two weeks ago, I think it was. It's Nintendo's too, is their
first first it's you make a me, and then it talks to other people
who have made me's, and it tells other people things about you that you
have told your me. I don't think it's a game, it's yeah,
it's it's more like understanding social communicator. But I saw John Riccardi posted a
photo or a screenshot of his like he's wearing like a Zeno's Zeno Blade costume
or something you can get costumes for your me, So it seems to be
very full of that, like Nintendo brand of weirdness, which I'm way into,
so like that, like, yeah, right, that could be cool.
The thing that it's it's the thing where this breaks for me is I
still think me's look fucking dumb that I don't know, I'm fine with it.
I think they should redesign their fake characters because I think that someone looks
stupid as someone who now has all three me amibos, the brawler, the
sword fighter, and the gunner. I'm a fan. I think I think
the me, the appearance of the style of the me, like the style
Bible of the me, is to embedded in the consciousness of the mainstream.
Like all those people that bought We's that don't really buy video games, like
they would still recognize what to me looks like, right. I like that.
I think stuff is probably too mainstream to change it up. At this
point, Microsoft Avatar still exists anywhere they just brought them back. There still
Xbox one up tape, Like there's nobody shows an Avatar store on the Xbox
One. Yeah, for all those places that they surface your avatar Xbox ward,
I don't know where do you even see that? No idea, don't
know like that, like in the Avatar creator. Yeah, like, I
think they're on the website too, and the Windows ten app. I think
I might show Yeah, yes they do. I'm there too. Weird Okay,
it's it's weird. It's like, oh, right, at some point,
I got an Optimus Prime head. Okay, I have a Beatles Rock
I got. I was like, oh, I could change that or not.
I think I've still got my Beatles Rock band shirt and my debit af
chan right, Like, I got way more into avatars than it these because
of all the ridiculous marketing shit that they create. I'm I'm way more excited
that it's on some level somewhere. My Xbox accounts still has the fucking Pringles
logo right as it's icon Right, I've got, I've got. The icons
were always cooler than the avatar. I still got Will Smith from Been in
Black three as my Gabor piz Like this is so dub like I was using
like we all had burger keying icons for so long. It was. It
was. It was so bad because because we love brands as a millennium,
I believe you mean hashtag brands as a hashtag MILLENNI the all, y,
well, let's hashtag move on. To the mix hashtag story. Uh,
let's see Sony shut down Evolution Studios, makers of motor Storm, something else.
I'm trying to remember World Rally Championship, and then most recently Drive Club.
Yeah, which is weird because they're out there showing Drive Club in VR.
So I maybe maybe work on that is done and that's that. Maybe
someone else did somebody else, I wonder. Yeah, I mean obviously Drive
Club was kind of yeah, that was that was you know, almost used
the word disaster. I don't know if that's quite I wouldn't. I might
hear it fiasco fiasco, Okay in terms of it's suff you know, you
could say what you will about the quality of the game post launched. They're
bottles. There were apparently some people that did like that game. Yeah,
totally, I don't think. I don't think it was a good game.
They're totally people that like Drive Club. But like, even if you like
it, like the launch was was a mass rocky, a mess of like
delays and all this other stuff that like it became a fire that Sony had
to put out at some point. But but with that stuff actually for way
longer than it should have, like kind of like weeks of working that Ontoline
stuff that didn't work, and there was like when was the free for PlayStation
plus members everything going to launch? Like the saga of Drive Clubs rollout is
the is the bigger story here as opposed to like the actual quality of the
final product, Right, So I guess I guess in that light it's not
that surprising necessarily, but it's still like, you know, like motor Storm
is kind of like a I feel like motor Storm was well liked and it
has a cycle of sequels and I almost called it like a hallowed name.
Maybe that's gonna be a little too much credit, but like people definitely look
back fondly on the absolutely they look great at the time. There was Yeah,
I was never, honestly like never a huge fan of the motor Storm
games, but I respected them from a safe distance. Sure, So you
know, in that sense, it's kind of sad to see the studio go
away. But yeah, yeah, such as the cutthroat nature of the video
game business, I suppose, and you know, Sony has so many first
party games coming out, you know, they just don't need the studio.
That's that's the real kicker here, is like what the fuck are they making?
Yeah? E three? Man, wait till E three would be a
wild ride. Get on board. I don't know how newsworthy this is.
It is worth talking about this weird you can play Dark Souls three now an
English thing? Yeah, I guess. I don't know what I feel like.
It got it got to the it got to the point where both Microsoft
and Namco came out and issued statements on it. So I guess it's worth
Yeah, look at the Xbox One version. Yes, it's yeah, well
yeah, so I maybe more generally, like, we got a bunch of
emails about this too, about like it's basically Dark Souls three launched like three
weeks early in Japan. Yeah, three weeks before he's coming out here,
right right, Hey, A lot of people are super upset about that because
they want to play Dark Souls okay in English? All right? Uh,
but be it revealed this trick, and I don't know if it's gonna work
with other Xbox games. One weird trick to play Dark Souls three. Microsoft
hates it literally enough that they put out a statement about it. But also,
like how often the games come out in Japan that much earlier? It's
not that frequently. It is very rare. It's like an outlier at this
point, but it's quite frequently or quite earlier. Yes, three weeks.
It's a It's a good spread, especially for something that people desperately want to
get their hands on, like Dark Souls. Uh So, basically, if
you went through all the legwork of buying the Japanese version on the surface,
right, created a Japanese Xbox Live accounts and purchased it there, got got
you could then play it with your domestic account. Well yeah, but it
was more than it was very specific order of steps because if you bought the
Japanese version by getting the credit on the Japanese version of the store, you
had to then uh signed back into your US account and set your region back
to English before you download the game. My understanding was if you downloaded the
game and then reset your region, you would still be playing in Japanese.
Okay, you had to have the regions set proper English, so you're like
actually getting a different build of the game, wow, depending on what region
you have set at the time of download. Right. Uh So, anyway,
people, yeah, people used that initially. You know, people were
pre ordering the PS four version because assuming in which it does you know a
little better and stuff, but that one is locked in Japanese regardless. But
right the Xbox you could just straight up play the English localized version of our
Souls three, which, of course three weeks before release, that version is
going to be done too. It's not like like, oh, we need
the three weeks to make it English. Although, but you know, Namco
came out and said like, hey, yes it's out in Japan, and
you know, we're happy that people are just stoked about playing the game.
But it does not have the day one patch, which I understand is still
actually a day three week patch for people in Japan, I'm guessing. And
also and also the online stuff is not enabled, which is a huge part
of the Souls games. Is that not enabled in just this English build?
Like across the board, Well, what the fuck? I have no idea.
What the fuck are people in Japan even do? Right? So at
that point, it's it's it's it's that's not like an early access launch,
right, it's you live in Japan and bought the Japanese version of the game,
you still don't have Yeah, that is my understanding. What Yeah,
on just the Xbox or across the board. That's that's what the that is
insane. So yeah, I pull up I could pull at the email.
Yeah, we got an email from them that was kind of saying like,
hey, maybe don't review it because up yet. Well, I mean fuck
that. I could go if I can go buy it, do whatever the
fuck I want. While you're talking about don't review the one that you can
buy, I don't know if I don't want to say. The statement was
more like, hey, this this version. It was it was part of
them saying they're like, there's still a Day one patch coming. That there
was very much like I got it up here, and and it was one
of those things where like, yes, you could do that, but also
correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think they sent the Xbox One version
out for review. A lot of people got PS four debug builds, and
then we got PC codes, which was a totally different story of broken,
bucked upness. There are some issues there too, but yeah, like if
people are asking why did this not come out here now, like that patch
isn't out a certain yet, the online stuff is not working, and that
PC build we got has some significant crashing issues. Yeah, so those are
probably the reasons that it's not out in the US yet. I guess,
yeah, I don't know, man, I still got still got the that's
time of this recording. The still got two weeks to clean that stuff up
before it actually comes out here. Dark Souls three International Version Update BANDI Namco
Entertainment America, Inc. Is very thankful to see so much interest for Dark
Souls three on the week of its Japanese launch. We are aware that some
fans in Western countries are currently able to download the international version of the game.
We would like to take this opportunity to inform Dark Souls three fans that
any gameplay they may make may experience prior to the official April twelfth release date
for the game will not be complete. The international version of the game currently
does not have its multi multiplayer capabilities activated, nor does it include the contents
of a planned Day one patch that will deliver further optimization of the game.
Players will be able to download the Day one patch on April twelve, the
official international release date for Dark Souls three, and if you have any questions,
feel free to contact me. Yeah, so that is the statement I
got see that doesn't address reviews at all. That that's just addressed to like
so, but I think the subtext there is like, hey, this is
not like hey we held you to an April twelfth embargo, please don't fucking
download this one and run a review earlier. That to me is the subtext
of that which you know at some point you're like, well, okay hearing
that, Like the multiplayer stuff is straight up not turned on across any version
of the game. Uh, it might be working in the PC version,
Vini, Vinny and Austin have those codes. I don't, I don't know,
but it's the PC version now in Japan. No, that's not then
that's not a factor. Yeah, yeah, I'm saying like, like the
notion that there are people buying this game in any territory and like not having
multiplayer work at all is like what the It really makes you wonder why they
launched it when they did it. They're supposed to not just waiting until the
twelfth of April for all territories or thereabouts. Like that's that's one of those
things, like you know, and and there's been a lot of you know,
talk about like like reviewing those games is difficult in under a lot of
different circumstances because of the nature of those games. But it's one of those
things where I think reviewing those games based on versions that are not online and
like the stuff they sent out for review is not something we would consider for
review, right because it's like it's a debug build that doesn't connect to the
retail servers and all other stuff. Like you want to know with the nature
of that kind of invasion gameplay and stuff like that, you want to know
how that is for real. So the idea like playing some pre released build
for review seems preposterous, like blood Board, So I think they did have
some kind of sandbox provisions for like sort of recreating that environment. But you're,
like you said, like that there's not a real player base out there
right now, right Like blood Board was the same problem, Like there was
a patch that enabled all the online stuff like three four days before it came
out or something like. You're you know, that's not the actual experience,
even though it is largely a single player game. You still want to know
there are profound There are profound They might seem as significant to an outsider,
but they are pretty profound elements of the game. You know, even the
messaging system and stuff is pretty crucial unless it's in the wild to like real
people, right and you know, the actual public, then you'll you'll never
know, so yeah, yeah, and then you're seeing more and more,
you know, outlets are holding off on our views, you know, like
the embargo will lift and it's like, oh, you know, here's the
status of our yea and some publishers with depending on games, like they're holding
people out of the game until launch day like that. That's how the Division
was for Better for Wars and and the Division is largely a single player game,
which is actually kind of fucking insane that it is so server based because
it's it's a you know, it's it's a co op game. It's not
some big mmo. I spent ten minutes the other day over the weekend trying
to match make into a hard version of one of the story missions. Really
nobody huh, nothing on what platform. P four like just gave up.
Huh. Like it was like, well, but it might just be the
people who are just playing the dailies. Well, that's the thing. I
think. I haven't had a lot of time to play. It's right behind
the leveling curve. Everybody's ahead of me or whatever pace. It turned out
most people I know actually ended up playing on PC. Yeah, which this
was a mistake on my part. Yeah, I mean I would, yes,
if if they had not sent if Basically, if if I would have
had a choice, I would have definitely played on the PC. But I've
made snaps four copy and those servers were alive, and I was like,
okay, let's get I made that determination looking at like your friends list and
then my friends list on launch day and it was like, oh, there
were six or eight people playing it right. I was like, oh,
this must be where everybody's going to play it. And then it turns out
I can't find anybody to play it with, Like everybody I know is still
playing it on the PC. Yeah, actively, And then yes, like
I'm at a point now where like I would love to get some level thirty
friends together and do like Dark Zone stuff in the division, but everyone played
on PC. Yeah, so I could go make some new friends, but
I'm even less likely to do that at this point. Sure, anyway,
it's a weird situation with Dark Souls, but yeah, it sounds like maybe
you're not missing as much as you think by not having it here. Yet
that sounds like a mess, because that sounds like a fucking mess, doesn't
say, well, like every aspect of it, of like the international version
being downloadable at all, to like if people are buying the game without on
like review that version and say, hey, it's not online at all.
This is broken. Congratulations Namco. You know, like like what is that?
Yeah, yuck, It's it's a weird situation, but you know,
there's there's no reason to believe it's not going to be what it is purporting
to be. Sure the twelfth in April, Yeah, I mean it's it
seems like that's the like the jet I get the impression that The Dark Souls
is maybe not at its biggest in Japan anyway, Right, it's it is
that international audience that made it. I think that's right, so big to
begin with. Yeah, I think you might be right. I recommend so
congratulations on participating in the Dark Souls three bad tests in Japan. Sure.
Uh. If you're dying to play Dark Souls three, I recommend go getting
going and getting Saltan Sanctuary because that is a Yeah, it's a fantastic stand
in for that style of gameplay. If you want to keep yourself busy should
play that game instead. It seems neat we're not instead, But until right
I don't. I don't know how much more Saltan Sanctuary I will play.
I keep coming back to it. It's really good. Uh, it seems
it seems really cool, you know. I mean, if you know it's
it is that kind of game in two D. But if you're trying to
scratch that itch until Dark Souls three comes out anyway, Uh, that's pretty
much it for like big old game industry news. But did you watch this
guy writing Flappy Bird in the Super Mario World. I heard about it.
Yeah, yeah, into actual Mario World Mario injection a cartridge and an actual
legit Mario World cartridge running it a real Supernintendo really yeah, because did you
see the people that, like during the last speed Run thing that they made
a Mario Maker style level editor in Super Mario World that ran on real hardware
without modifying the cartridge on an original SMS. Yeah what Yeah, No,
I have not seen that this guy. So they've been you know, last
year they made a pawn game that ran in Super Mario World. Yeah.
Uh, this mother stuff like the cartridge or the SMS neither neither. You're
they are. It's hard to explain advanced code. It's hard to explain what
are they writing the code into. It's the superimender, those controller ports memory.
Yeah, they're going through just controller inputs into memory. They are,
but it's controller inputs at like thousands per second. Yeah. So here's as
I understand it. Hopefully I have the details straight. Uh, people found
an exploited Mario World that allows you to write uh, right memory addresses right,
like right stuff into the Superness's memory. And what they're writing in there
are low level, like machine level processor instructions for like this processor in the
super using what like input method like a Superintendo control. Yeah essentially, yes,
but they're using not real controllers, Okay, they're using using some Arduino
thing that is hooked up to the controller ports. Then does this precise so
there's not like the second level of Mario World where you fucking get on the
Yoshi and jump around and like spit out stuff and pick it back up,
and it's all very framed specific to manipulate the game memories stuff. Yes,
yes, like that, to manipulate the game into a state where it overflows
more or less and starts accepting code from RAMA instead of the normal protos.
And so what they put in, like I said, what they put in
ram our instructions that the hardware the superds can can execute at a very low
level. It's like assembly code. It's not unlike the sorts of exploits that
are used to like, you know, ho, we installed custom firmware on
a PSP because we found this exploit, or hey, here's how we jail
break an iPhone because we found one. You know, hey, you load
the web browser up and go to this web page. We've coded something that
causes it to overflow in just such a way that gives us an opening to
fill it full of fucking dark shit. So the guy who did this fair
flap, yes, the darkest. So the guy who did this did not
write the code for the flap, so it's not even actual Flappy Bird.
It uses Mario World assets, so it's it's it's little Mario doing the swimming
animation with the pipes being the obstacles. I was hoping it would be one
of those cool dolphins with goggles. That would have been pretty good too,
but sadly they went with the Mario spright. My understanding I might be wrong,
is that this guy did not use like an RD we know or thing.
He actually did it with the controller because it took him because so it
took him like over an hour to put all the inputs in and then like
there's video out there. I watched the stream lives. There's video out there.
You can look up where he's like he basically hits the last button that
it's like you could just like see the relief on his He's like super relieved
that it actually worked. Yeah, because even made one mistake, probably be
fucked. Like the source code was only three hundred and thirty one bites for
this game, so I don't know. M So, like do you access
it by like do you have to go to a star road and go to
tubular and then some glitches out, you know, like yeah, glitches out
and then so there's a moment where everything kind of when you watch some of
the stuff they've done for the speed Run stuff with a tool Assistant ship,
when they open the hole, they show on screen the controller inputs that are
being flashed too through to the thing in a lot of cases, and you
just start to see all of a sudden just the controllers just start lighting up
all over the place as it's just it's rapidly inputting code that then gets executed
and everything kind of flips out. And do you have a jail break an
iPhone anything like that? Oh no, all right, Well you just get
to a point where it's like it just suddenly suddenly you're looking at a Linux
fucking bootscreen scrolling across your phone and you're like worried in you know. It's
basically like that moment with Super Mario World. Yeah, it's just it's just
a goofy little historical novelty that this is still possible or that people figure this
out. But it's so I mean, it's technically could have been done in
like ninety two if somebody had figured out how to do it. Yeah,
totally. But it's one of the things that but only through game preservation style
efforts of like thoroughly dissecting these games. It's like the half a button press
thing for for Mario sixty four, where there's like figuring out insane low level
things about the very nature of the game that they can then exploit to do
weird things. Uh, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, that's that's cool.
It's pretty cool. That video two is incredible. Yes, gonna watch that.
Yeah, the Mario sixty four half press, I've changed my mind.
The internet is cool again. The half press is real, The half press
does exist. Everything's gonna be okay. You can push a button half a
time. Yes, it is physically possible and even recommended. All right,
let's take the sucker home with some emails. What do you say? All
right? Sure, BombCast at giant bomb dot com. Emails, emails,
But those feels like it's full of sawdust? Is that an improvement? I
don't know anymore. Got us smells good? Yeah, I don't. It's
hard to breathe through though. Damn. First email comes in mysteriously from Coma
one three eight. It says your VR coverage made me feel sick. Frowny
face. What do you have to say in response? I heard I did
a lot of head bobbing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you were kind
of all over the place. It's it's hard because, you know, and
when you're wearing the headset, your eyes move around, so that movement doesn't
seem nearly as harsh as it does when you're just viewing the head tilt stuff
Outside of VR So that's one of those things that I wonder if they,
when they finally get to a point where they're including eye tracking as part of
the head sets, if they then follow the eye and then put that at
the center of the exposed kind of external image. I hadn't kind of smooth
things out. Yeah, I wonder. I had not at all thought about
eye tracking until you mentioned during the stream yesterday. But yeah, that does
seem like like an obvious at least for them to go. They can also
do like level of detail stuff based off of where your eyes looking, Yeah,
kind of you can you can totally dous our focus as well. Yeah
wow, yeah, that's that sounds awesome. I think. Also, we
were excited about looking at all the VR stuff, so our heads are probably
like, oh yeah, yeah, I was just kind of checking everything out.
Yeah, the VR Karts music was pretty catchy, so I kept my
head. Is that a good uh you know what for a little gimmicky thing,
like it makes me want to play Mario Kart and VR. I don't
know if that's going to be happening, but it was a little card game.
I don't know about that, at least not officially. Yeah, wait,
I do know about that. I'm just not gonna say what I think.
Uh, there's an email from Darren. We were actually kind of talking
about this recently, as in like thirty minutes ago. Watching the last Mario
Maker stream and the recent X rumors got me thinking. Between Galaxy and Mario
Maker taking both two D and three games in the traditional style as far as
they can go mechanically, would it even be possible to release a Mario game
in twenty seventeen? What would they need to do to get you excited to
play another traditional quote authored Mario game. Just just give me another three D
Mario game. That's all I need. I mean, you know that's your
opinion that you're welcome to it, But I don't know. Man, give
me another two D Mario game in an all new style and then build the
level editor tools right into it new graphical style. Yes, wipe away all
of their three D bullshit with new Super Mario Brothers. Start over, new
new Super Mario Brothers, extreme a Mario Cross for the Nintendo Cross. How
about the Yoshi's Island art style that was very different? No, I a
good art style to look like Wait, okay, I got I got a
problem that art style. Yeah, okay, I know you don't like a
game. Yeah, I think it looks like fucking shot. No, no,
it looks so good, giant like Mario, just like all the characters
look like fucking trap. The bosses that warp and get big when Camick sprinkles
on it. It looks bade father playing far enough in to even see a
boss in that game. Sake did that guy and tell his pants fall off?
I'll beat you in the middle. I think the art style is Finally,
I just don't thank you still like the game. I think the game
and the art style are both delightful. Yarn, that's good too, been
done, Yeah twice, it's two different things. Well, so, I
mean this guy's whole premise is like, hey, two D and three D
Mario both like pretty well established at this point. Yeah, totally, Like
I can't. I mean, whatever, we're not we're not, we're not
world famous game designers. But but oh wow, yeah, but like what
if Mario could stop time? I don't know what, I'm just asking questions
over here. What if he had a backpack with like a vacuum at it,
borrow or water? I have the answer to that question. Yeah,
nah, Okay, I'm saying if he was a time sweeper of some sort.
Okay, now I'm back in. Okay, I don't know. I
don't have a good answer for this guy's question. I do kind of agree
that, like if they just made another two D Mario or another three D
Mario, it's kind of I mean, yeah, I'm with you, Yes,
I don't want actually on the three D Mario front, I don't want
another two D Mario in the like a new lineage type stuff because like by
the time, like New Super Mario Brothers two, it's like, okay,
that is that is fucking played out. Yeah, those games were cool at
the time and all that stuff. I think the first one was really good,
and maybe that first we won with the novelty of the four players stuff
is cool. But man, I know, a full scale like a follow
up to sixty four Sunshine Galaxy Galaxy two, the next one in that lineup,
what is that though? Another just one of those, Just give me
one of those. They're they're all great, and three D World was great
too, but I want like a single player they made they made those,
I mean, Galaxy put it on a sphere, right, you could continue
doing it could come up with the gibing because it was on a sick Trapezo
would but I feel like it's a lot like with Zelda, Like it's diminishing
returns every time another Mario sixty fourth style games. I think may Mario Galaxy
two is the best three D Mario, Like the last one was the best,
but let's get doing it. But again, when you only when you
only iterate with small increments, like it's inherently less impressive every time, but
still super duper impressive. Like Mario Galaxy two is one of the best games
I've ever played, Give me another one of those. I would say Galaxy
two is like a very good game, like a very great game, but
it's not like impressive in the way that I think you're saying. Yeah,
Like the quality of it is very quality of it is very high. Yeah,
Like it's it's another one of those games. It might be like there's
kind of like I'm sure it's a it's a great showcase on like on an
individual level for like interesting mechanics and level design, but it's still just another
it is a very well made three D Mario game, Yeah, which is
more than enough for me. Okay, then then that's fine. Maybe I
maybe I'm a love on this, but they kept making awesome three D Mario
games until I died. I would love the ship out of everyone. I
don't know that I would play another three D Mario game, regardless quality.
Yeah, if it, if it was in that exact blueprint, like like
they get Stars have World, it has to be like a more dramatic shift
to get me back with you did were you big on three D World?
Yeah? That three World is It's three D World is a is a really
good fusion of the two styles. Like it's that's the perfect like the blend
of of the two D and three D Mario games. See, I thought
that was a great game. But I am sad that we have not had
a But yeah, I see this attitude a lot that like that didn't count
as the big Mario game for this console. That was its own kind of
weird thing. It was awesome, which loved it, which is just baffling
to me because it's like a it's an exceptional Mario game and you know,
yeah it does some some neat news. Yeah yeah like that, Like but
I still see people saying kind of what you're saying that like it's like it
never got their thing that it's not real. See it as kind of like
I think as much as I like three D Land and three D World,
I want the big open like you know, the there were four of them,
sixty four Sunshine and the two galaxies. There are four. I think
I think it's crazy that you include Sunshine in that list because of how different
it is to the other three games because he has a jet pack because it's
bullshit, uh and he has a jet pack. Well whatever, it's like
that stuff such poorly implemented, like it's it's like, yeah, I don't
know, I feel like that game is different enough to where yeah, because
of one item, Like I mean, it's a it is the item.
It is the reason game, except for in those super sweet things where they
take it away, where Shadow Mario takes it away and then you have the
awesome platforming section. What a shame that they like. Even when they take
it away and try to make it like a little bit more like the classic
Mario game that came before it, they fucked that up too. The best
parts of the game. Oh, you're fucking so wrong, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, Like Sunshine doesn't belong in that lineage to me. One you look
at and go like, oh, man, I wish they would just just
have made like more Mario sixty four, because this thing's fucked. It is
more Mario sixty four on a fun island. No man introducing garbage, this
garbage literally fucking cleaning up fucking garbage. But you know what, you can't
clean up the real garbage because the real garbage is burned onto the disc.
I can't. I can't get in the middle of your weird game grudge matches.
But it's you know, the stellar game. Mario Sunshine is is not
a great game, and uh does not belong in the same sentence as Mario
sixty four. They're a galaxy. They're all elite three D platforms, all
four of those games. It's among the best ever made, Like Mario Sunshine
feels like it belongs like, oh, put it over with Luke with Luigi's
mansion, weird things we did with Mario characters. Luigi's Mansion is charming,
but it's not a great You're right, Mario Sunshine has no charm. But
like Luigi's Mansion, Mario Sunshine is not a great game. To wrap this
all the way, back around to like the beginning of the podcast, I
would almost say Luigi Mansioned is an adventure game. Yeah, maybe that's why
I didn't really like playing Luigi's Mass that much. It's kind of one take
on what that genre is. I guess Mario with portals, Mario what with
portals? Like that would be cool and they would do some amazing stuff with
it. But again, that's just like one more gimmick to layer into what
is it already a very familiar framework work somewhere. You're like, man,
if someone's made a really great three D platform or like what, I don't
know, Man, let's go there the best three we could be out there,
fired up crock, go'll play Lucky's Tale. Man. They're like,
let's see how it was pretty cool to see how UK Lately does when it
comes out. Yeah, Lucky's Tale, I think is maybe the best game
I played on that so far. I don't play more of it, but
uh, you know what, I'm gonna skip the email had after that and
go straight to another Nintendo email. Okay, it's about Yoshi. It's from
go On. As everyone knows, Yoshi wears shoes. When Yoshi hatches from
his egg though he's already wearing shoes. Yeah, he's not wearing shoes.
He just has shoes. So I guess my question like shoes, Yeah,
so I guess my question is what the fuck is going on with Yoshi's feet?
Do the shoes develop inside the egg with him? Is someone putting shoes
inside the egg before it hatches? If you pull off the shoes, does
he have huboid feet with toes? Those are just will you literally be ripping
off a part of it? Those are just his feet. I can't stop
just about this. Wait, since I know you're all huge Yoshi fans,
I thought you would develop as a reaction to you know, like the spiky
like it's just an evolutionary change. It's proof of evolution. Evolved. Shoes
on humans have not evolved. And that's why Yoshi can fucking jump on spikes.
Another weird ship that's Mario's can't. But baby Yoshi's baby yoshees do not
have shoes. They don't have legs either, right, different, that's just
from a different point in the timeline. A little evolved or baby Yoshi's a
little amorphous. Yeah, you got to eat five things and then they turn
into a full sized Yoshi. It's part of puberty. It's their their feet
just kind of change into this weird things they laces. No, they're just
a little like brown things. Okay, they should put that in Mario make
I don't know, yo babies. Art is garbage. All art is garbage.
All of it changes on a whim because no one thinks it through.
Everything sucks. There's if you want the actual fucking dark answer, like there
you go. No one thinks the consistency is not as interesting as people sometimes
make it out. To me, there's a very special but tumultuous time and
every yo Yoshi's life when their body starts to change. Wait, that's a
weird thing though, because like imagine the first level of Mario World. Well,
I guess one two is when you first get Yoshi. Egg comes up
and then the full sized Yoshi comes out of the egg. Straight out of
the egg. But we've fully baby Yoshies that you have to pay. Yoshes
are probably a different species that then when when you feed them, they evolve,
which is a Yoshi's are pokemon, is what I'm saying, or maybe
which is why it's so expendable, because you're just having them fight for you,
or maybe it's a caterpillar butterfly thing to where like at a certain point
more life they go into ways of puberty. Yeah, that's the egg happens.
Okay, she was developed. All right, that's Cannon. You know,
no prize for you, You've notne but what one for Dan? Dan
gets no prize? I like that? All right, mis resolved. Uh,
let's see another one with no name on it. Radical Derringer is the
name in the field in the from field rad for short. Well, that's
appropriate because this email is about sun Soft back in the day. They developed
some of my favorite games on the INDs. In my mind, the Blastermaster,
Gimmick Euphoria, and even those weird ass Batman games are up there with
something some of the heaviest. Tip Dude, Batman for the NS is pretty
good. That's that's a really hard one, right Batan. They also sound
soft. I believe that. Yeah he was purple and yeah, yeah,
I enjoyed that game quite a bit. Second that game, he says.
Those are some of the heaviest hitters from the era. However, by the
time that the Genesis and SNST came around, their quality had dipped. Immensely,
and they ended up handling everything along with restructuring in nineteen ninety five.
Waku Waku seven and Galaxy Fight came out after this, and we're neat,
but they were the last things of note that Sunsoft put out. I know
the director of Gimmick, Tomomi Saka, left Sunsoft to form Electric Cheap Company
Limited after finishing Gimmick in nineteen ninety two. I can't find any solid or
complete information in English about what that company has done since and who left Sunsoft
to work there. Yeah, I don't know. Is this exodus the reason
for the precipitous drop in the quality of their games? Information from this era
is so hard to come by. I was curious if you'd heard anything.
No, I don't actually know anything about this situation period. Yeah, so
it's yeah, I mean, Sunsoft kind of became a different thing, but
you know, that's one of the things where the Japanese game market became a
very different thing at some point here. But not in the nineties really,
right, No, I guess not, like it was more in the two
thousands where you had this situation where, like you know, Sunsoft, if
you go to Sunsoft games dot Com now, it. Really, it's just
like it's ads for we Virtual Console for we Foia or the Acrobat one and
two. So there's still somebody there. Master there was, at least up
to a few years ago, there was somebody there with the lights on.
But this this could be a holding company at this point, the same way
like Colico was. It's like they own the brand and they technically own all
these ips, put them physically in the old office or something, but like
somebody is doing something with those properties. There's there's a straight up blaster bastard
logo on this web page. Yeah, but yeah, you know, like
in two thousand and nine here Sunsoft acquired the U the Nihon Tellanet Library,
which was another developer over there telling it they did. Are they like thunder
Forced stuff? Anyway? You know, Vic Ireland is mentioned in this pros.
That's how you know it's legit guyin works and stuff like that. I
think he assisted to bring some of these games over. That Gremlins game was
pretty goods to the New Batch. I don't think I played though, That's
all right, Wait, didn't they made Chameleon Twist? Didn't you say you
hadn't seen Gribbles too? Oh, I've seen Grimlins too many times, including
like three weeks. Maybe Jeff is the one who hasn't seen Gribbins too.
I haven't seen it. It's a fantastic film, I know. I know
we've talked about Grimblins too at some point. It's the recent past but very
very good movie. Yeah, like Sounds Off made some fucking great games,
lots of looning tune stuff. It looks like I didn't know about that.
Yeah, like Platoon for any s boy, like Blaster Maaster is fucked hard,
but it was. It was great. It was such a cool idea.
The in car, out of Car a different game where you could get
out of the vehicle and run around and then get back in the vehicle and
you were tiny and then yeah, you know, you could be real big
too. But like then there was the there was the the overhead sequences where
you were up close you. I thought the overhead stuff was just kind of
like at the time, it was like revolutionary and nuts. They were like,
man, this fucking badass side scroller and then then I'm doing this like
Legend of Zelda type shit. But like, in practice, I don't know
that I think that any of that top down stuff is any good? Yeah,
it's it's and you did a lot of the boss fights from that perspective
too. Also. I also like the premise of what is it following your
pet to another dimension and finding the fucking most rippingest badass vehicle ever. The
way the wheels come together with Ye, that thing is so fucking awesome.
Yeah, that fucking thing jumps. It is a four wheel ATV with the
giant cannon on it that jumps. What a great Yes. I was about
to say somebody should make any Blastermaster, but that would probably just end in
disappointment. They've made them. They made them over the years where there was
like there's like a Blastermaster returns like PS one or something like that. That
was kind of not great and I think that's what it was called. Anyway.
Yes, they did attempt to revisit Blastermaster with limited but some success.
If I remember right, like, those games weren't terrible thing. It was
not a terrible game. Yeah, it's not quite the original though. Uh.
Let's see a follow up email from Jesse last week. All right,
last week, Jesse, that's what they call Jesse. I'm the idiot who
thought or who said that KI was developed by Double Helix can't really defend this.
I googled got double Helix instead of Iron Galaxy and thought that the former
must be the thing what the tall angry may and is in charge of.
Close enough, Yeah, it doesn't seem angry. I just love that deck.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a great description of Daily because he always seems
very joyous about being a Yeah can be. There's a glee to his anger
every time. I seem like there's gonna be the best night of our lives,
the best night of our lives. But there's a fury behind it.
Dark. There is a dark undertone. There is a rage that drives that
quest. I believe I haven't seen it. Maybe he's just happy when he's
around me. That's the vibe I'm getting. Uh, let's see quite a
few of the emails that we have or that I have selected here we have
covered previously in the show. I'll read this one about street Fighter anyway.
It's from Colette Uh. As of the twenty fifth of March, Capcom finally
announced details about the Street Fight or five March update when it would drop what
it would contain, et cetera. Something that caught my eye was the fact
that Zenny, the in game digital currency, would not be included in the
update, as in his quote, not ready to launch just yet. We
talked about that we did earlier. And then she talks about Anny Youngman.
That's good stuff. She mentions in here that you know that they're making Alex
free. Yep, until there's any shop actually goes live. Yes, anyway,
her her her actual question. By their wording, it could possibly emphasis
possibly be months before premium currency is added to Street Fighter five. Is it
that difficult to incorporate in game currency or is this just yet another blunder to
add to the list of Capcom's nightmarish launch of the game. Yeah, this,
this seems like something that you think it's maybe specifics. You think it's
a street Fighter issue, not in in game digital currency issue. Probably,
I don't know. I don't know that that's a that Yes, this is
ridiculous. Could you imagine the scenario where Alex is just free for who knows
how long? I thought it would be a matter of like days, I
mean like maybe next week, does any shop will go in? Yeah,
maybe a week after or maybe never. You know. It's well, I
gotta you know, you gotta keep making money on it somehow the way they're
describing it as an ongoing platform. But you know, both of the platforms
they are selling this game on have storefronts already. The idea that they needed
some kind of like custom because it only makes sense for them to have that
storefront if they are linking accounts together across platform So like your purchases display on
both PC and PS four, which is not the case. Which is not
the case. So they could just sell they they could just sell fight money
in the PS four store for dollars and not have any of this Zenny ship
if they wanted to, or they could just sell you the stuff you want.
You could just sell you Alex directly for money, right, yes,
and and sidestep a lot of this stuff. Like I don't understand, like,
like what the way that they have constructed it. I don't see a
good reason for them to have Zenny at all. Right, when they could
just be like, hey give us ten dollars, We'll give you a million
fight money, uh, because it's not like you lose fight money. That
was something they eventually got into, like betting fight money or something like that.
Then that would be a different story. But h and you can't take
fight money back out right exactly. So it's yeah, I wonder if they
will just eliminate Zenny at some point and just say, like a fuck it,
go to the PS four store and buy fight money there, or buy
all the costumes that way, and we'll just sell it directly. I mean
at the same time, like Dan and I are as we speak in raptured
by a game that has two types of currency in one of which you buy
with real money and then can be turned into the other type of currency,
which you can only get in game. Yeah, and I mean that's what
E Valkyrie has as well. Really, it's got you buy gold and you
can you can turn gold into silver. And then on top of that,
there are some high high end on high end like they're cosmetic items whatever.
But some of the items at the end of the structure are only for sale
in gold. Weren't you just have to pay money? Will so? And
aren't you just renting some of that stuff some of that stuff. Yeah,
but those things you pay silver for, which is the grindable earnable currency.
But then you can turn real money into the grindable currency if you like.
So they hit you on every angle. Maybe that was Capcom's intent, was
to have every eventuality covered for that sort of stuff things, so like,
hey, here's some stuff you can earn, or you can get it easily
with fight with with with Zenny. But maybe they can just say maybe you
can get it easily by going to the PlayStation store or the Steam DLC a
section like I don't maybe they just fucking who knows many Maybe this is a
whole over from the days of Microsoft Points. But I always assume when a
when layers of currency abstraction are in place there it's only there to disguise how
much money you're actually spending on stuff or or not make like take basically remove
the sticker shock sticker shock, right. Maybe yeah, it's just like,
oh, well, I don't actually see five dollars tag on this, so
I don't remember it. I'm spending five dollars. It's just fake funny money.
Yeah, who knows? It's three Fight five? That yes, who
knows the Street Fighter five story. It's a weird game. My book coming
in twenty twenty six. I think it'll get there eventually, but it's a
weird rocky road. Paul from Kate Breton wrote in about All Dressed Chips CDP.
What's that Kate Breton? Paul, Yeah, do you know where that
is? I don't either. Yeah, I would also guess Canada. It's
about all dressed chips. Hey, he starts his yeah, as a Canadian,
all right, I can safely say that all dressed chips are the Dynasty
Warriors of chips. Someone must be buying them, not me. Okay,
they're okay, but they're not that special. Don't buy all dressed chips.
This is where he loses me. Buy Ketchup chips. Ketchup chips are the
best. Ketchup chips are quite good. Really, I've tried both of them
once from a mail bag, and I remember thinking Ketchup chips weren't horrible,
but all dress was pretty good. Say say that again, what the chips
were talking about? Oh I've heard people say the ketchup ketchup chips. Yes,
okay, yeah, I know it's what is it? It's cats up,
it's cats up. No, it's not even cats up like whatever there
is. I just want to make sure And how do you say it?
Ketch up catch up? Well, now you're now you're veering toward. I
didn't hear the wrong right first, I'm saying mustard and catch up. Okay,
now you're back. Yeah, you're saying an a instead of an e
sound, and they were saying cat tee. But you're saying catch up basically
instead of pretty much the same. It's fine. We knew what you were
talking about, so it doesn't matter though, none of none of this math.
I'm just yeah, I'm not a huge fan of ketchup chips myself.
Same here. They seem kind of gross. I like catch just one French
fries. Yes, that's the one place to catch up belongs and on hand
one and only put on a handburger. I don't like it on hamburgers,
French fries, and I love it on a hot dog. I put everything
on everything. Yeah. Yeah, Also Little Warriors. People who like all
dress chips love it and want to tell you about how much they Yeah,
fish chips. Yeah, Dynasty Warriors fans really like Dynasty. That's true.
My old roommate in college, my sister. Yeah, through what else do
you put ketchup on? I'll put it on a hot dog, put it
on burger, I'll put it on fries. Uh. Cyria no, so
not every eggs. No, I don't put it on everything, but when
there are things to put things on, I put everything on. I know
people to put ketchup on eggs, and then I've had I've saw some ketchup
on like it can't be just scrambled eggs or something like that. I think
that's gross. But there have been situations where I've had ketchup near eggs and
it's been okay. But I'm trying to think. I can't remember the specific
example. It's too sweet, and I'll put ketchup on it. I'll put
eggs on a hamburger. Yeah. Do you ever put peanut butter and a
hamburgers? Good? Yeah, Fridays on hamburger? Sure? H hash browns
for sure. Yeah. I guess I still would. I would keep it
on there so it's like a paste and then throw some mask going there to
each to each his or her own I guess. All right. Here's here's
that email from Scott in Rochester, New York about High Rule Warriors Legends that
I was talking about, which, well, I'll just read it. I
picked up High Roul Warriors Legends yesterday. This is a game that easily should
have been a New three S exclusive since you can't use three D on the
older three DS when playing this game, and the frame rate is almost unplayable.
Reviews are even differentiating scores for each system. While you guys were talking
about the future with PS four K, I began wondering if this release is
telling of the future for launch PS four and Xbox One owners, or if
this is just some Nintendo and technically co a techmo wackiness. What do you
guys think we'll see? I think that you know that that is a potential
outcome. They run that risk. This was the egregious example of how it
could go wrong. I mean that happened with the expansion pack on sixty four,
Like you could play Perfect Dark without it, but it was one mode
or something a multiplayer it was fairly like super Super compromised that sucks, or
I think there might have even parts of multiplayer. Yeah, exactly, That's
what I'm saying. Yeah, there were modes and stuff things you couldn't do.
Like this sounds like the worst example of like just leaving the old user
based behind, you know, but a game that technically works, but it's
basically a garbage experience like that's even worse than saying, hey, you can't
play this at all, maybe because then you're selling people a shitty, subpar
product, you know. Yeah, I guess there's something to what you're saying.
I was. I don't know if I'm quite ready to say that that's
worse than not selling games for the old platform, and ideally you sell for
both that they are both adequate. Yeah, at a minimum, But I
think it's I think it's worse to sell a game to somebody and then they
find out it's absolute garbage, right that it is, to just not make
it available for the platform. Yeah yeah, yeah, A new three DS
is such a weird thing. Yeah, yeah, I forget that there's any
difference at all sometimes, but if you look at the right, the CPU
of that thing is like eight times faster. It has like it's one of
those things that I thought was only going to make a difference for it was.
Yeah, it was one of the things where it's like, okay,
they've they've done some they've made some changes here, but like no game will
support it, right, and it's like a huge difference in horsepower and nobody,
yeah except apparently this game, Nobody except for people installing fucking weird firmware
on their units and having much better emulator times on the new three DS as
they are on the regular three DS. Yeah. Uh, that was the
that that would until this. That was the largest example I could think of
of differences between those two platforms. Yeah, and it was like this super
weird edge case for crazy people. Did you guys play any of that?
I've played, like a mission. It's it's the same game, I think.
Yeah, it's runs worse. Yeah me linkol. Oh even on the
new three DS it doesn't run great. No oh wow, jeez. Yeah,
maybe this just shouldn't have been made. Yeah, now you're talking,
yeah, fewer games. Wait though, Uh, let's see. Okay,
let's grab a couple more emails here. There's one from we only need one
game a year. Yeah, you know, it needs to be the best
game. It just needs to be the best game. It needs to be
all things to all people. John Madden Football, That's the only game that
matters. Okay. Ben from Los Angeles. Uh. Last week's bodcast,
the discussion briefly turned to getting apps on the Japanese or New Zealand app store.
I'd like to highly recommend going to the New Zealand app store for one
reason. Tap My Katamari, Yeah, oh, tap My Katamari was released
in New Zealand late last year and seems to have come to the EU recently,
but it's hard to tell if it'll come to the US or not.
I've been playing it for a few months now and it's great by one reservation.
The one critic of clicker games I trust hasn't weighed in. Yeah,
so's I'm actually interesting. It's it's it's interesting to hear. No, no,
tak jeeves on college. All right, I don't I don't like this.
It's the best. I don't like this one bit. I would just
I don't like these really completely accurate accents like I'd like I'd like to keep
some Australian or New Zealand or Kiwi people on retater to just say Jeff to
me whenever I want jeef ah Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm actually I'm excited
to hear someone say that they had a positive experience with that game, because
everything I've heard up until this point was that it was not good. So,
okay, you haven't played it yourself. I have not. No,
I did not create the store. Yeah then that's there's that Match three w
w E game is also out in New Zealand right now too. I think
yeah, you mentioned it's like a puzzle quest. That seems like it's like
a puzzle quest style. It's try that. Yeah, that's uh that weird
plans versus zombies like Hearth stowed Ish game is out in New Zealand as well.
They need to you know, it's they will launch there or because the
time zone works out, so sometimes things will launch first there so that they
release that all that makes sense sense to me when it's like coming out like
later that day, right another territory, but like so months later. For
a lot of free to play games, you'll have larger publishers soft launched their
game in specific territories as like a beta tech type of things. Like you
know, EA has launched games in Canada before because that time zone lines up
with their development studio better than New Zealand does. Smaller market. Yeah,
okay, so congratulations Canada. So yeah, there's definitely been multiple cases of
different territories getting iOS games way earlier just as part of like a like hey,
we need to kick kick the tires on these servers. Make sure that
our stuff is not going to fucking catch on fire. So let's put it
out in Canada for a month first and then see out does and then But
yeah, New Zealand is typically I always thought that New Zealand just because that
was the first time zone where things would roll out, that you know,
fourteen hours later, however long, you would be playing it here. But
that's not always the case. Yeah, I was shocked to hear that Catemory
had been out there for ages. Yeah it's still not here, yep.
So it's just a clicker. Yeah, it's the Catemari themed clicker or some
sort of My understanding is that it's Adam theme clicker. So that's that's probably.
That's probably great. Sounds good on paper, that sounds good. Let's
see a couple more. Roddy from Milwaukee. After watching the end of the
latest episode of Game Tapes, I canna help, but wonder well some future
news segment of niche entertainers capture themselves on the latest form of media, sitting
down to watch an old video game website, watch an even older game tape
of an ancient conference known as E three, and talk over it. I
mean, people watched us watch old Electric Playground episodes where they talked about Yes,
if someone were to sit down and commentate that episode of UPF where we
watched the first season or the first the debut episode of Electric Playground, I
would say that would be the truest form of making it. It's making something.
Yeah, that's how you know that you did you did it. Yeah,
I don't know. It's twenty years from now. People are digging shit
up and yeah, I don't know. That's a weird thing. Yeah,
I don't know. Like sometimes I think like, oh, we should go
back and watch some old video reviews we did or something like that. Sometimes
we do end up dipping into that at random. I don't know. Uh,
in all seriousnessnow, I don't think anybody's gonna do that. But weirder
things have happened on the internet. Yeah, no, no, that would
be the weird. Watch the videos of young bearded Brad looking into the camera
telling us, spilling his heart about these videos. I could have no support
whatsoever or like any kind of training or advice, and it's just like I
write a script and go shoot it. I tried to. There was a
time where I was trying to give some feedback to some people, but I
don't you might not have been there, I don't think. So. There
was a whole lot of figuring it out yourself totally going on there. It
is not a natural thing, as it turns out. Yeah, yeah,
it's on some level. It's maybe bad to be good at its hard.
First time I did it, I uh, I think it was Game of
the Year or maybe an I'll have mondays or something that I read from a
teleprompter, and I just watched Ryan Davis do it. Took notes, sure.
Yeah. My advice for for him and for a lot of the people
in those early days of game spot was literally watch a bunch of MTV.
Oh you know what, Actually what it was was when I was first doing
it, it was before we started writing scripts. We were at a living
in front of the camera at that point. That was that was a nightmare.
That's hard. Yes, we didn't have a script to read. It
was literally just like sit there in front of the camera and stare at it
and gather your thoughts and say some stuff like rough stuff. I enjoyed doing
it that way. Yeah, I mean some people just some people have a
but it was it was a knack for it. But yeah, not everybody.
It was way more scat I'm sure on the editing side it was a
fucking nightmare. It's like, I don't know, here's twenty minutes of me
fucking rambling. We would luck. I mean that's how I'm doing Giant Bomb
video. Yeah, that's I remember. That's how you were doing video reviews
at first. Yeah. Here, but they took way too long and get
it. Yeah, so then we started, you guys want to banging out
of script and it was way cleaner. Ye. Reading a tele prompter like
a human yeah is tough. Yeah, well, like some people, like
you know, there's a cadence and sound to television that people still recognize as
human even though it's totally Yeah, I would say, it's actually, uh,
it's not at all the way you want to talk like they're they're counterintuitive
things like oh, you need to actually speak a lot more slowly than you
would in a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, Like when I was doing that
fake sixty minutes thing for Game of the Year like two or three years ago,
it was like to realize, like you're literally speaking at like half the
speed you would want to say, right, So I just that stuff is
he busy. Yes, that stuff I do for for CBS Radio is like
I'd slow it way. Yeah. It's a new twist on an old habit
and it's getting some kids dunked for life. Like it's just weird little pauses
and stuff like it's yeah, and it's the inflection and all that stuff,
Like it sounds like TV. Some people like when when you give nine tenths
of that presentation but don't have the voice that like are the cadence that fits
it, it breaks the whole thing totally. So you slip into an announcer
voice. Yeah, because it makes everyone a little bit more comfortable. Yeah,
except for now that no one has television anymore because we're all cutting the
cord. It's only going to get weirder from here on out. And also
everything is like real supposedly now, except authenticity is king fake authenticity. I'm
gonna scream at this trailer on the internet for you right now, man,
Yeah, Like that's the that is just new newscaster voice. New newscaster voice
is like you know, twenty something screaming at YouTube, Yeah, at at
webcam, Like that is that's the new newscaster. That's the way it was
And a lot of a lot of March twenty nine, a lot of YouTube,
even even edited YouTube videos. The narration is super fast, like they're
trying to cram in totally fast, Like I don't know if that's just like
I'm afraid. I'm afraid my audience of adolescents have short attention spans and they're
gonna like get bored if I don't just keep pouring it on or like what
that is cutting out any breath, your taste. But it is the complete
polar opposite of like that old style newscast, and there's like it's it's wild.
It's like I know some people find it really grating and frustrating, but
there's something about that YouTube style of just the constant cuts without covering the cuts
with footage or just like the very visible like I'm gonna talk in this sentence
and then now we're over here like like that. I fucking love it.
Really. Yeah, it's fine, it's fine as a style, but I
hate that it's the default style, Like I don't. Yeah, yes,
I wish to wish it wasn't getting you know, I don't, And I
think it's like increasingly not the style. Yeah, Like there's definitely people leaning
into it. You know. Then they're definitely leaning into it in a way
that I think is like too much, you know. But but there's something
about the language of it. There's something about the flow of it. It
like interrupting itself with itself, Like it makes it this very like fast paced,
manic thing. Good though. I think it's I like the way it
sounds. It's is it the best way for conveying information? Like like ideas
and stuff don't have any time to breathe. Yeah, I'm welcome to the
entirety of the Internet. Like what the fuck? Like, you know,
you talk about ideas not having room to breathe, Like everyone is fucking it's
hot, take Central fucking twenty four hours a day, and it's like it's
like what Twitter is and and you know, it's like it's like, you
know, it's it's becoming And this makes me sound super old, but increasingly
a society of like, you know, you you can't sit idle for thirty
seconds before your hand just goes to your phone, you know, like yeah
people and people don't just sit like out the window anymore, you know.
I mean it's very much like like mindfully like so I don't say that as
like a you damn kids kind of thing. It's like it's like very much
like my feeling my own uh like desperation to keep information flowing in, you
know. Yeah, like like I have flowing out, like I guess,
so yeah, but like I just I start getting antsy if I'm not like
consuming constantly. You know. I've started very like you know, because I
think we do this thing once a week, you know. So it's like
there's like there's a certain airing of grievances that can happen, what so,
like we have this outlet and that I've tried to be a little more mindful
of that and like hold back a little bit, you know, or not
even necessarily hold back, because there are other cases where it's just like I've
realized I don't give a shit about the thing that everyone is fucking talking about
today. And I don't even need to get out there and say, hey,
I don't give a shit about this, because we've been through that too.
Yeah. It's like too busy over here not giving a shit to let
you know that I don't get Yeah, it's whatever, and it's like this
for us, like and it's like I'm not gonna come out and say,
oh, I think that new Batman movie looks stupid, because but there's this
like knee jerk feeling to just like I should really weigh another. And you
know, it's at a point now where, like you know, having built
audiences and stuff like that, like like there are some people that are like,
hey, what do you think about the latest Batman versus like they're trying
to like goad me into having that thing, and I just don't even give
it to him because I just don't fucking care. Uh. And it's like
you see more and more people out there that are like in the personality game
that are out there like that is still their bread and butter, and that's
they're they're just like, well, we gotta we gotta make money on this
thing today. I have an extreme opinion on whatever the trending hashtag or whatever
it is or yeah, and it's like that's you know, like like I've
been there to a certain extent and I just I don't like it. I
just don't like it. And if that means that like there will be some
element of heat that can pass us by because we're not there in everyone's face
with an opinion on every single thing, like I'll fucking live or maybe I
won't. I don't know. Maybe maybe maybe we'll all be out on the
street. You faded into irrelevance because you didn't have anything snarky to say about
Zack Snyder the other day. Gosh shit, If that's actually the case,
then I want out. I'm fine with that. I will quietly go find
another place for myself if that's what it takes. But it's one of the
things where it's like I do have thoughts about it, I just don't care
enough to express them anymore with or especially if your thoughts are that you don't
care. What is adding fucking whatever to the conversation. You're not you're not
critically appraising something. You know, Yeah, it's not. There's not much
of merit. I don't need to get out there, especially if people have
been like following us for a length of time. I don't need to get
out there and say, hey, here's another movie I'm not going to see.
Right, they probably thinks, probably here's another movie I was never going
to see. Like it's it can be left unsaid, even though I just
said it all. That's the fucking horrible, fucking snake like existence. I
I have embraced less as more as a maximum across just about every respect of
this thing. I guess. Keep keep them coming, you know, keep
asking for more. Don't give them too much, I guess, I don't
know. Keep him guessing. Two hours forty five minutes, all right,
Well, if we don't hit three hours, then someone complains, So keep
the emails coming in, all right, batman, let's talk about it.
That I didn't even like. Three hundred was like some kind of bullshit drunk
man's for dream. Wait, aren't you serious? What about three hundred?
Yeah? I hated three hundred. That seems like that movie seems like it's
made for you. Sucks ass, Wow, I think that crazy to hear?
Which one is that? I thought? I understood this is Sparta and
all this? Okay, sucks ass. I never saw it. Yeah,
you didn't miss out? All right, it's stupid. It's trying way too
fucking hard. I liked it. I hated it. I don't remember anything
about it. That's a SlowMo and screaming. And you see those abs though,
No, I didn't check this out. All right, all right,
so many abs emails ahead. I guess I could read another one. Sure,
I don't know. I guess we just kind of like we flow into
it at random at times, like what was the was that demo Derby where
we ended up talking about how fucking dumb Superman is? For Oh yeah,
I love that. Sometimes you just got to talk about how dumb Superman is.
Its Superman is the fucking dumbest ships stupid character. It was very relevant.
Yeah, it was, Yeah, we're playing a Superman game, or
yeah, the spider Man game. Maybe maybe you're right, maybe we were,
we were we played spider Man two naturally started talking about how Superman sucks,
sucks, such as your hat shard for Superman, he's the fucking worst.
Yeah, it was just like he's a boring character. What I could,
Well, I could read through the list of villains again, it would
be just as much of a scream as it was the last time, because
what a fucking list of dumb fucking things. I mean, I I even
I know Superman obsessives who will admit, like what a problem that character is
to like write like drama around. So anybody who was actually defending Superman in
that context, is this one person that I think is allowed to defend Superman.
That Shaquille O'Neil. Yeah, because he got that tattoo. It's true.
Yes, so he came back. What about Nicholas Cage. I would't
think he would hate Superman that down he named he named his child. He
was thinking about the failed Superman movie where he was going to be a supermight
but he was going to be in it because he is a complete fucking lutic
for Superman. Forgot that part of it. Yeah, also just a complete
he's the ghostwriter. That was the best he could get Johnny Blaze at the
time, the iron lung. It's not quite the same. No, I
don't know what castor Troy. Yeah, now you're talking, I'll talk about
superheroes. Yeah, it's not castor Troy. It's Pollocks Troy. Yeah,
yes, no, what this guy's even worse stand good speed? Oh hero?
What are you talking about? He said it's Mason Sniper. Was gonna
have good speed if Mason didn't come back. Hey, they're both got vapor
eyes. They're both heroes. Bodies can do that. Yeah, ypers Yeah,
alright. Last email, it's from Liz. Do any of you get
clammy hands when holding a control my hands get way sweaty, and my significant
other teases me about it whenever he catches me wiping my palms off on the
couch or on my pants. Would you ever feel weird passing a controller to
someone after you've been holding it with clammy hands? And how would you combat
this? Never? I don't know why. Yeah, I don't. I
don't have sweaty thank god, because it's gross. Do you remember the controllers
are like two era that had the like fucking air into it. Yeah,
little vents and they would cool your hands and it was yeah, just a
third party, dumb night just like one of these nightmare companies. It'll happen
once in a while, a like e three year oppress event or something,
when you go up and play something after somebody. It's gross. Controller is
like slightly slimy. Yeah, I don't really swam Welcome to the wonderful world
of VR. Oh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I think I
think that there's more likely to be grossed up ring sets as much as we
joke about it at trade events and stuff like. I don't know, I
guess so going out of their eyes. But that's the things like the oil
on your face but the thing around the ring, the that you know presses
into your face because you accidentally wore it too tight. Uh, like that
absorbs, you know that that can be slightly absorbent. That's that's a foam
layer. Yeah, I don't know what's made out of. It's true.
I put that thing on before and it's been wet. Yeah, the one
in the studio, I can't remember if that one was gross. I've definitely
seen some people sweating on VR headsets that like packs some stuff. Yeah,
yeah, you know your head's warm, yeah, exactly, that's your your
forehead is you know, that's where sweat lives. Concerned that I never really
sweat, even like when I'm working out and stuff. I don't really Yeah,
and like even with like anxiety and stuff like you know, you always
hear about like people I drink a lot of soda and what's your what's your
resting heart rate? Actually, right now it's sitting around seventy two seventy one.
That's pretty good. That's right now, that's pretty good. Yeah yeah,
yeah, okay, you might you might just be an extremely good cardiovascular
shape. I don't know. The only thing that does it is stationary bikes
my whole back will be wet after stationary bike. But I can run like
eight or ten miles and not be sweaty. She's really it's crazy. It's
a superpower. It's not really useful. I guess not. I guess not.
I was thinking the other day, if I had a superpower, I
would want it to be I can look at somebody and find out what the
last ten Wikipedia pages they read were. It's pretty good find out a lot
about a person that way. I don't know that it would tell you that
much. It would tell you, like, because everyone's gonna be the same
fucking dark weird ship. Well, actually, but I guess there's actually there's.
Wikipedia is cleaned up enough that you wouldn't see the darkest things because they
have to go elsewhere for the darkest stuff. The last ten Urban Dictionary.
Okay, that's not bad, that's not well, yeah, but anybody that
has to go to Urban Dictionary is implicitly admitting they're not cool because they don't
just know, right, So what if you saw their lookups for yeah,
I guess so cool people. Yeah, okay, sure, it's like,
wow, you didn't know that. And you walk by one guy and he
doesn't have any My favorite or my my all time favorite though, would still
be the power to know who got me sick, who was the person who
was the vector who passed it along, whose hands you sneezed in my vicinity?
Now, the best one would be the like T one thousand things where
you could look like someone else and then just go do a bunch of bullshit
and then everyone would blame the person that you look like. See. I'd
rather be able to stop time and move around so I could do all that
bullshit and no one would ever know. Yeah, but isn't it funnier if,
like, like if I could make myself look like John Drake or something
and then go around and just be a total dickhead everyone, and then everyone
thinks John Drakeson. No, it would be way funnier to be a ghost
of like time stop and start powers, because then you could stand in front
of somebody start and like stop start time stop it again immediately then walk away
and they would think they saw you, and they'd be thinking, yeah,
yeah, that'd be pretty good fight club thing of splicing a single frame,
Yeah exactly. Yeah, all right, that's way more than your favorite superpowers
and your most desired superpower to BombCast at bomb dot com. Yeah, sure,
I want to know, but like not the not the easy shit.
Yeah, that's boring. Step it up a notch. Get creative. All
right, let's gonna do it. Let's get out of here. Yeah,
this is uh these day of recordings tibly Yeah, but hectic, right,
I get this thing out. I'm sorry, I feel like still a little
out of it. Yeah, yesterday might so that longs I forgot. I
forgot to mention my fucking neck hurts on top of my neck, base of
my skull, like when I turned my head. It is unpleasant, weird.
No, I don't have that oculitis. People, that's pretty good.
I was gonna say VR neck, but I think you're just better. Yeah,
I'm sure Oculus would not be thrilled here that this may say more about
VR arthritis. Yes, okay, that's pretty good. That's pretty good.
I still have anything else I'm trying to I try to stop the arthropedic shoes.
All right, we have to go. Somebody made that pinball machine thing?
But to go? Oh yeah I saw, Yeah, I have to
go to Dallas. Wow, really tomorrow Dallas? Okay for a week.
Yeah, you're out of here. It sounds like you're going on Friday.
Yeah, I got some stuff I go do. Some stuff will happen though.
Things will pop off on the website as you Yes, all right,
we got that Bikini Party game. Have fun with that. Enjoy. Oh
yeah, I would actually rather sit and edit this podcast. I want to
see if it go there and we'll get do anything with the street Fighter patch.
Probably not, Oh no, maybe, I don't know. Jason said
that the the Lobby stuff is now support it now it supports more than two
players, but is also kind of fucked up crazy. It does not work
as well as you wanted to, So I don't know. We'll see.
There's there's some stuff out here. The Killer Instinct season three, Yeah,
that's yeah, that's out with that. That that weird StarCraft two. Oh
the thing is out this week. Yeah. Yeah, I want to take
a look at that, figure out what the hell that is. Yeah.
Sure, stuff will happen, yes on the website jabab dot com, where
you will also fund and another edition of the Giant BombCast next week. Seven