Mmm, hello everyone. It is Tuesday, July the seventh, twenty fifteen.
Jason Strikers shaking his head over there, and I'm excited. I'm configuration.
Yeah, like the music of your voice. Seven seven seven seven seventy
seven Scotch and seven Spirit of seventy what don't make scotch? Why? Because
people told me that I'm not supposed to mix scotch with anything? Who told
you that? I don't know the internet like all of them? Well,
what's the seven and seven? Then? Yeah, it's it's scotch and seven
scott sodas. Yeah, yeah, like people do that and I thought that
was okay, but I guess not. Anyway, the more you pay for
your scotch, the less you should mix it. That's it's just called scotch
and soda. They don't they don't specify what the soda is. Seven and
seven up? Okay, right? Is that a Scotch? Sea grooms?
Uh? Remember the sea Grooms of wine coolers? Remember the song It's no
Bartles and James Golden wine Cooler. You don't know where we're going with You're
losing me. Sorry, I do remember now that you started singing, and
I'm like, yes, I do remember that. Yeah, good, I'm
with you. Jeffersman is a wine cooler historian. It's true. Tell me
everything's special. Brew, while not quite a wine cooler, is a flavored
fruit, flavored malt beverage that was big in the mid nineties pop quiz.
What's the abv uh? It's probably yeah, I really, I don't say
it's in six what range? That sounds like a waste of time, sixty
eight something like that. Tell me everything you know about it's meant for underage
kids. We can buy those in like actual two leader bottles. Yeah,
it's it's like a you know, a fruity malt beverage my first hangover.
Yeah, it's like it's more than a wine cooler, but still legally allowed
adolescent level of something like okay, yeah, tell me everything you know about
Boone's farm. It's you could do it. You could do worse. The
come in a box. No, No, it's farms bottled. They do
a fuzzy navel that I've had a couple of times. It's the sort of
thing where it's low enough that you could really just kind of chug the whole
bottle. Yeah, like the sickly sweetness of it is what's going to get
you before any of the alcohol does, just get it over your system.
These are high school drinks for kids that don't know any better, that shouldn't
be drinking in the first place. On Mad Dog twenty twenty. Yeah,
so that's like a harsh version of I guess the Boone's farm is that we're
gonna special brew. That's that's a that's a fortified wine getting into malt territory,
right, I believe is what they call it. Yeah, Mad Dog
and Cisco are kind of in the same boat in terms of paint thinnerest,
thinnerness lovely, like you could strip some fucking paint off shit with a bottle
of Cisco, buff out some scratches in your car. Yep. Yeah,
strew scandal and coming straight out the Eurozone. That's right, I'm over here,
you plane gyros plankababs. You can revert back to your native currency anytime
soon. Yeah, okay, head into the dong Zone. I'm Brad Shreemaker.
Hello Happy seventh. You said it all right, I know, I
know, I'm just saying Airport seventy seven's good movie. Yeah, yeah,
the airport movies or what airplane was parading, parading, Yeah, and there
were so many of them they started just putting the year at the end.
I think Airport seventy seven was where the plane crashed underwater but stayed intact.
Okay, that makes sense, the turn into a turn into a coral reef.
Maybe I don't remember if they got off or not after decades. There
was actually in that movie there was a in the plane. It was like
a luxury plane and there was a cocktail pong cabinet on the plane. On
the plane mane, Yeah, for sure, absolutely, Yeah, we all
survived, I guess. Yeah, although h field that I should point out
that Dan Reicherts or whereabouts are on account four. Yeah, we have no
idea because of now on a plane underwater. He kept texting me with photos
like updates. It's like, oh, man, you would liked it here
and they had like a street Fighter two Rkade having it at the cabin and
I'm like fuck and then the text message is mysteriously stopped. Yeah, thank
god. So we cannot say that our collective Fourth of July was safe and
saying no, mine was very much not safe. Oh yeah, yeah,
it would like we had a pretty chill day, just kind of sat on
the couch, like I watched a lot of like in a Jaws for whatever
reason, because that was what was on TV. I got. I got
Sling by the way, Oh okay, how that is that working out better
than PlayStation view? Yeah? Way work it. Sling is the one on
xbox box Okay. Yeah, so that's like twenty bucks a month. We
get a thirty day trial anyway, So yeah, chill to watch Jaws.
Jaws is a summer movie. Yeah it is. Yeah, great, one
is super good. Jos never seen it. I couldn't tell you. Is
that the one with Shamo I forget? I think it's the third one.
Yeah, that's three three D and they had those like you a post production
three D shows too. It's pretty much just the same thing as Jaws,
okay, except there are two t Rexes. Yeah excellence. Uh so yeah,
did July fourth? What do we do? Jaws had dinner with Rory
and then we're like, we're super tired. We're just gonna go home.
H not gonna see any fireworks. We've seen him before. They don't really
change that much. Yeah they know, but as soon as we got back
to our I don't know man, you see one of those ones that it
explodes in it's a happy face. No, yeah, where do they have
those? Yeah? I got those hot class back in the seventies. Yeah
exactly, but no, there were four fireworks shows at each corner of our
fucking apartment building. Like these are all like completely illegal fire to say,
it's not so much a fireworks shows, it is people with some shit,
yes, like big time stuff in our building is like, you know,
shaped like an L so all the sound like echoes throughout that chamber, right,
and it sets off all of the car alarms so like on each corner
of the buildings like a musical companyment. It was. It was really annoying
after a while. Lisa was just losing her her mind, though she thought
it was hilarious. But yeah, after about forty five minutes of just car
alarms and explosions, it's like a right, the novel two war off here
we are in oak in Oakland. Yeahkly for you, Jeff, what did
you get out to? Nothing? I don't know, absolutely nothing, No,
not really. It was a pretty overcast up north, so you know,
not a great aerial fireworks display sort of weather scenario. And uh,
Spedaloma have its own show, like officially sanctioned shows. I actually looked it
up this year for the first time because it had been at Lucassey Park,
which is where the tennis courts are. Uh. And then at some point
they moved it over to the fair grounds. Uh. And then I looked
it up. In the fairgrounds were like they were like charging admission. It
was like you could go sit in the stands where they do the demolition derby,
or you could just watch the fire or stand somewhere else. You're sitting
your car across the street. Yeah, yeah, and and watch them from
there if you want. I guess you know it's and and it's some bands
played, and they had some like local breweries here with some beers. But
you know, uh yeah, no, fog Hat fog Hat played. No.
I I don't. I did not recognize. Oh the Killer Queen's played
Girl Queen Cover. I believe, And you know, no, I mean,
if you want, you know, if you want to see the acts,
if you want to see nationally touring acts, you have to go to
the fair where Tanya Tucker played The Beach Boys, all right, and the
Tower of Power. You know, you if you want to see Tower Power,
here's a fucking tip for you. Come to the Pedal of Affair because
they're gonna fucking be there. If you want to see tower Power play,
they're gonna be every fucking year without fail. Any night Ranger, No,
no night Ranger. This year the fair I went to Berlin was playing that
nice blue oyster cole the show up. Not this year. I saw a
dog star deep purple at the pedalum Affair Star. That's Keanu Reeves band.
Yes, wow, I was. I was desperately trying to figure out if
that was Kiana Reeves band or Jared Leto's band or Bruce Willis and it was
an actor's band. It was just like Saturday afternoon. It wasn't like a
marquee thing. It was just like, there's this stage over to the side
and then this band's gonna play that you've never heard of. And that was
the entrance we took to get into where the demolition derby was and you got
to have that moment of looking at going huh, Keihana Reeves will see there?
He was there? Crazy? What does he plays guitar? I guess
I would have thought he played bass. Sure, I don't know why No,
and you look and see the well, that's totally that guy from the
Matrix, Speed two looking down out of the crowd, Speed one and two,
Speed one and two. You returned for the sequel, and then then
we went and saw The Demolition Derby, which was way more interesting than those
are always fun best Keyati Reves movie. I like Speed a lot. I
think the Matrix was okay the first one. You know, where are we
staying with Point Break? I've never seen It's all right, man, I
was. I was kind of problems with Point Break, but I don't I
don't have a love for it the way a lot. Yeah. I was
kind of shocked when the trailer came out for that remake, like the amount
of reverence people were just playing for the original. I was like, wait,
really, like where were you guys. It's a dumb it's a dumb
fucking movie. Like but it's but parts of it are kind of fantastic.
Uh. It seems like most people have met like just love or hate it,
just opposite ends of the see. I'm just I'm kind of like whatever,
Like I'm like, yeah, it's it's okay. I like Bill and
Ted's excellent adventure quite a bit. Yes, what about the second one?
No, yeah, I'm not a fan. No, I have thought Focus
Journey was too much. It was it was not? Nope, not,
but that ends all right. Eighties time travel movies Bill, Ted or Back
to the Future Time cop I mean Man dark Horse answer the Terminator. That's
I mean, I don't really think that time like a Terminator time travel movie,
Time Bandits for me, Time Bandits. That's probably eighties time Chasers,
Mystery science theater. Mkay. I like Bill and Ted a lot. Yeah,
that is super good. It's a good movie. I think Back to
the Future. I think those are like better movies, but there may be
a little less fun. They don't count, all right. Peanut gallery is
spoken. I don't know done. I could take it or leave it whatever.
All right? True? What did you do this weekend? I barbecue?
Got a shared deck? Yeah, spent some time in the sun,
shared barbecue. No very nice? Yeah, so do you just have a
like a I got your classic Weeber? Okay, but the deck, Yeah,
you said that's a shared deck? Is a ground level? Uh No,
it's elevated up off the street away from the river. Nice. That
was like a balcony almost. Yeah, so back in Georgia, we could
not do that. You could not put a little grill out on your deck
if it was elevated. Yeah, you had to have it like in a
thirty feet away from a building or something like that. Mine's right next to
it. That's amazing and I'm super jealous about. I don't know if it's
legal, probably not. But hey, how does the deck sharing work?
Because like, like the deck mom gets the deck most of the time,
but then every other weekend you're out there, right. I think it's just
first come, first serve, or like you walk out there and oh you're
here too. I guess we'll just be next to each other. Does that
lead to any weird mingling of social situations? Hi? You want to beer?
You got Oh you're got your own cooler? Okay, all right?
Well see and do you have like it is it like a sliding glass door
that leads out onto the deck. It's just a dori yah. Yeah.
Yeah. But it's a small enough building. There's only like eight units,
so yeah. And there's a lot of families too, so it's not like
everyone's always out there on the deck. Do you have a lot of people
over occasionally. Yeah, do the do the neighbors think that you're the weird
quiet one. I don't think that you're the new weird quiet one. I'm
just I'm just curious, like like the people upstairs or people upstairs are the
weird quiet ones. But they're also not really because I never see them.
But there has to be like eight of them in the apartment because I think
constantly make noise. That's it's like or there's like a gazelle just loose up
there. Because there's there's always those weird people in the apartment building. Oh
yeah, I'm not saying that you're you're you're a weird one, but oh
I'm a weird one. You are kind of a weird one. I was
not the weird one. I was walking outside as I do at night sometimes
to do things, and there was a neighbor out there and he recognized me
by my foot and steps. He said, I could tell it was you
by the sound of your walk. Oh, you're the tall guy. I
mean, I don't know how to feel about that. Well, there is
that consideration because you are tall. You know, your legs are longer.
Sure, you may have a auditorially distinct gait. Is it that different than
because now I'm super self conscious about it. Now I start weird. You
should start skitching around the apartment. I should. Oh he knows you from
your walk because he lives below you. No, oh, he does not
know he I've met him before. It's actually the same guy that sold me
the scooter. God damn him. Are you sure this guy's in stalking you?
That's what his wife said. And you know, I try to play
it off like, oh wow, is he coming? Oh hark, I
hear Jason, And but now it was it was really weird. Gotta get
out of the building. I think so. But yeah, he's he's the
weird one. He's the weird quick one in our building. I don't.
I don't tell people I know their walks. Okay, good, okay.
I did also go to the fair, and there's a fair in Alameda.
Alameda County Fair is in Pleasanton look confusing. But they had deep fried shrimp
breaded with captain crunch with a sweet saracha shrimp crunch. I told, nope,
those sound like three things I don't want to eat. You I ate
all of it. Yeah, it was Would you do it again? Shrimp
and the sauce. Sure, but I tell you the one thing I have
to get at the fair that was a deep Fred Snickers bar. Yes,
oh god, yes, you haven't tried that. I don't know that.
I well know, I have had it like once. It is like it
was never. That was never. That was the only place you could get
though. Yeah, that was never a part of the fair experience, a
revelatory experience, like the chocolate on the outside of the bar sort of diffuses
out into the dough, right, yeah, as it as it melts.
Yes, good stuff, sounds great, highly recommended. Yeah, I love
fair food. Now. We used to go to the fair for corn dogs.
That's about it food wise. More corn dogs. Let's get some more
goddamn corn dogs. Live a little man. That was. That was when
like you couldn't just fucking go get corn dogs, man. Well really,
yeah, it was the time old argue, you know, you just could.
There were like Costco didn't really exist around there. Nobody, nobody was
making dog so I have no fucking idea they were everywhere. This would be
in the mid eighties. This sounds crazy, But until like the Schwan's Man
started servicing our neighborhood. But you couldn't get you know, like I had
never seen a corn dog outside of the fair. Who's the schwans Man?
Schwans Man? What Schwan's is a truck service frozen foods, much like a
milkman or would or like an icecream like an ice cream man for meats,
and they ordered off. Yeah, it's it was yeah, it was like
you would. You would say, here's what we want, and then they
would come back the next week with their ship or something like the menu on
the side of the Yeah, they weren't like playing like the meat music.
And you'd run out there and go like, we need more corn dogs and
more of these like a cup of gold ice cream bars or whatever the hell
there. So you got a corn dog subscription, is what you're saying.
Something like that. Man, that's all right. And then there were always
corn dogs once once that started happening, there were never not corn dogs.
I found one at the fair. I had a bite of a It was
a corn dog, but instead of like hot dog, inside of the casing
within the corn dog, it was lobster. That's not okay. It was
not okay. Strange wait, it wasn't good. No, it was like,
well, it may have been a little bit of lobster, but I
think the rest of it was full of like imitation crab or whatever. It's
just like this weird gelatinous pink seafood that doesn't sound done. Yeah, that
actually sounds terrible. Would not reckon? Well, do they do cheese on
a stick at the at the hot dog on a stick? You can get
You couldn't find it like fried cheese, could not find it's fried cheese.
Yeah, it's it's it's a they'll do pepperjack or like a cheddar, and
they'll bread it in the corn dog breading and dip it in just like that.
And those are cheese curds. Yeah, I'm more or less. Yeah,
I'm not a stick. But they're I mean they're not quite curt.
They're not quite They're a little more goopy. Okay, they're not nugget size.
No, no, no, no, they're corn. It's a corn.
It's on a stick. Oh sure, Okay. I always find it
weird when things get batter than fried that are prone to melting quickly, you
know, like cheese, like ice cream, like you hear about deep fried.
This is weird. Does the batter just like hold it together long enough
to sort of form a shape, I guess. So the batter hardens just
fast enough to keep the cheese from getting out unless something fucks up, and
then you got cheese in your in your oil. Then you've got a containment
breech. Yeah you react or critical, Yeah, pretty much. You see
you off main engineering, you fucking roll into the door closing before that cheese
gets everywhere. So I had a slice of deep fried pineapple. That sounds
like it's probably great. It was tremendous. Yeah, that sounds good.
Yeah, but I think like the cheese, it's probably made to order because
it did not last for very long after I was holding it, Okay,
yeah, because it would just you know, the breading would just kind of
slide off, so you had to really eat it hurry. Had deep frined
Peb and j at the State Fair. They were very well known for their
weird concoctions over there, and uh, I miss it, I really do.
But yeah, that Pebe and jep fried super good. Not good.
We've talked off and on about getting a friar in here. You know,
you got to replace the boil like everything everything about it. Having so that's
you know, who's gonna take care of that? Like, you know,
there was the it was the cash twenty two of having like a freezer full
of corn dogs is that you were microwaving them so they were rubbery and it
was not there. It was not the fair corn dog of your you were
getting. It was just like here you go. I mean it's technically a
corn dog. I'm technically gonna eat this entire box, but I'm not gonna
like it hypothetically, So you know, you kind of gotta take what you
can get. Sure, as with most things, yep, as with video
games, I mean sure, I'm not what are you gonna do? You
can go out there and make your own yes, oh yeah, okay,
and then five years later, I'm gonna do an indiego go, that's right,
and then release that baby to get finished. Jeff, did you make
any time for video games? Yeah? You know, but like there's yeah,
I did. There's this hot game called trek Mania two Stadium that I've
been playing. Yes, we finished off last week with just such a game.
We did, Yeah, and I kind of spent some more time over
the weekend playing it. And it's still a great game. I think people
are still making tracks for that thing changed in the drive home. Nope,
No, I still had that itch watching you play it. Yeah, like
I want to. I want to be playing this right now. Ten bucks,
I got a new itch and I bought it. Yeah. I played
a little this weekend as well. Had you played any track Mania before?
I had not. Aren't you coming in on the tail end of like the
Mania planet regime though? I guess so? So I did some reading.
Man, holy shit, catch this up, Jeff. So. Track Mania
Turbo is due out later this year. It's coming for PS four and PC
and other stuff. It's kind of Morpha support and it's from the d Yeah,
it's it's it's a new game coming out. They've got they they've got
a track maker that'll make its own tracks for you in that game. It's
what they showed at E three. Yeah. So there's an interview or you
know, there's like kind of an update from like the guy at Nadeo is
the development studio responsible for all of track Mania that is now owned by Ubisoft.
And like his description of Turbo and like how it fits into everything is
like crazy because I look at it and go like, oh man, finally
a new track Mania, everyone will move to that one, and then that'll
solve the problem of all the weird Mania Planet stuff. Because Mania Planet is
like a front end for four different games that are sold separately and on Steam.
There's a thing where you know, like you know, it has to
quit all the way out and launch the new one. Like the Mania Planet
stuff is not seamless there if you buy it directly from them, it's a
little bit of a cleaner experience. But also it served to split the user
base in four different games. Yeah, because it wasn't just like TrackMania and
shoot Mania. It was like three differentia and one shoot Mania, and it's
you know, and so track MANI has always had its different environments, you
know, the canyon, valley, all that stuff kind of existed in TrackMania
one terms as well, and track Mania two kind of held to that more
or less, and but in a way that like you know, like in
the track Madia one times, Stadium rose to the top because it was free
and it was ad supported. There were always ampm ads on the start and
finish blocks saying like hey man, the hot dogs are on sale. Yeah
yeah, and I would look at it and go like I could go for
some mot dogs. Are there ampms around here? Yes, I know where
one is. I've only ever seen an AMPM in Japan. Oh okay,
really, I see them in northern California most Yeah. Yeah, I used
to live close to one as well. And anyway, Madia plan it is
kind of a mess because, yeah, they would release these different environments and
people would move from game to game, but it would be like the old
games, would we get abandoned? And you know, it's a game that
thrives on uh you know, users creating tracks for them on a consistent basis
and when you move from game to game. And then originally they didn't have
a way to kind of combine the environments onto one server. Yeah, they
do so that that maybe makes it a little bit easier if you own all
the segments. But once upon a time, those like mods, those community
you know, created things where they compatible with other No, because the handling
and stuff is locked to the game itself. Canyon handles different than stadium because
stadium is a is a like an F one car can a bit more drifty.
I'm slowly getting this. And so no matter what car model you use,
if you're modding in car like they all hand identically, because that's the
whole point of track Maniaser is that it's all the cars are identical stock stock
cars. So yeah, you don't really make some match along those lines.
It's kind of a pure time trial sort of thing where everyone has the exact
same thing, even if your car happens to look like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Right, but you know you can kind of do that, especially especially if
your car looks like Sonic the Hedgehog. So you know, they split the
user base into all this stuff, and the whole thing was just clunky and
not not the easiest thing in the world to understand. Now, I would
actually recommend, like just go spend the ten dollars on Stadium or download it
for free because there's a free demo that lasts through the end of September or
something, uh, and play that because Stadium is the environment that anyone can
hairs about. Because it was the free one last time around, it still
free. You can go play original track Mania Nations or whatever for free,
I think, and you know it's the environment that people care about. So
track Mania Turbo coming along if you're like, oh, this will be like
one unified product it's gonna have multiple environments in it, but shipping is one
product. Hopefully it'll kind of solve all these problems. It'll make something that's
very easy for people to get into and not split it and do all this
weird front end nonsense and all this other stuff. That's the dream. Yeah,
that's the dream. I look at it and go like, okay,
everyone will move to this. Mania Planet will be written off as like a
dismal like like if someone had a brilliant idea that didn't didn't work in modern
times because steam exists and all this other stuff, it just doesn't it's not
needed. But this interview is like, you know, there's like a Q
and A with like the producer and he's like, you know, TRACKMANI Turbo
is going to be the thing we use to kind of take it to the
next step, take it to the world, but Mania Planet will always be
for us, like implying like all the existing track Mania fans like, yeah,
yes, will build here, And I was like, you fucking lunatics,
what are you? Oh my god? So I don't know, man,
It's it's a weird situation because like track Mania has come to consoles before
others that DS game came out on the wheels and it's terrible, Like it's
it's not the game you want at all. So I'm actually not really convinced
that the PS four version of a track Mania game will matter because you need
to be able to install a bunch of server mods. You need to be
able to, like, if the game can't feed me shitty dubstep and like
the most lunaceous user created tracks in the world, then I'm not interested.
The buck bumble theme. Yeah, and and uh, that's what the PC
version has in spades. So unless they're building that game to connect to the
same servers, because all that stuffs downloaded on the flaw, you don't go
install mods generally speaking, unless they're they're planning on the console versions to be
kind of directly compatible with all that server stuff. Nope, we just put
it on a USB stick and then pop it in before UT three on the
PS three was perfect. Yeah, hboard, but all that stuff is run
by the server and then transmitted to the players directly when they connect, so
it could theoretically work that way. But whatever. I mean, the game's
coming out for PC, so who cares. But the idea that they're not
like going like, hey, everybody, we're moving forward. Track Mania Turbo
is gonna take everything to the next level for every track Mania player that they're
like sitting near, like trying to go like, yeah, man, Mania
Planet, motherfucker's this is where the fucking real shit happens. I can't articulate
exactly why, but track Mania Turbo seems like the Trial's fusion of track Mania
to me, Yeah, okay, does that make sense? Does that analogy
play? I guess, I don't know, but where it's just like,
you know, they came under the ub soft umbrella. Yeah, like they
clearly have sort of struggled to figure out exactly what the hell to do with
Nadeo. Uh, and then Fusion felt like the first Trials to me,
where it was just like, all right, well, they had to put
out another Trials because now they're part of the company, so they just have
to keep making these things because they sell, right, maybe maybe in any
sense at all, that we have to make a new one. I played
a little bit of track Mania Turbo at E three, and the main change
is that it's like it looks nicer, like they put in a lot of
work to kind of the visual like their menus and a lot of the kind
of overall style I think looks nice, uh, in a way that it
hasn't looked before. It's always been like like it runs in a high resolution.
You know, the car models look good and stuff like that, but
a lot of the edges are very kind of janky and busted looking. This
looks like they're cleaning up that stuff and you know, maybe they got some
visual designers in there. Uh. That's kind of how I felt about Fusion.
Yeah, you know, like it was definitely the best presented of those
games, but like it kind of lost some of the sort of the jankie
charm that it used to have. Maybe. Yeah, and yes, I
yes, I agree with you that Fusion lost like all of its charm.
Like I like Fusion, but it's not it's a good game. It's not.
For sure, it's not as good, but some of it is just
you know, diminishing returns after like the fourth game has come out or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I'm curious to see what
this thing ends up actually being and when it when it comes out, because
you know, when I looked at it, like I think they were showing
it running on a PS four, But like I saw some stuff in there
that looked like the PC spectator controls and some of the other stuff that like
looks like old track Mania like kind of still in there. And they even
they even kind of like I'm in the rest of this Q and A.
They kind of make it sound like it's just the same framework with some stuff
slept and they're pretty it up. Yeah, that's fine, Like you don't
need to fucking do anything to track Mania other than you know, unleash it
upon more unsuspecting pools, uh for it to be great. But uh,
yeah, I don't know. I'm really curious. Apparently existing track Mania two
does have some kind of like cobbled together oculus support already, so god,
there are theoretically already people playing track Mania and VR do that. Yeah,
I mean it'll have morphias support on PS four, So yes, I do
want to do that because I want to know where the line is. Yeah,
we talked, we talked about this that you want to go measuring stick
like you already know you're not supposed to go that far, but it's like
we need some hard evidence you want it. You want to enter the incontinent
Valley. Yes, I want to know what happens when things go all the
way south the Chuck Yeager pants pooping. Have they said anything about whether this
game is coming out at retail? Where is this a download? I don't
actually know, because I love the idea of a track Menia game sitting on
a shelf in like a Walmart or somewhere. We've done it before some unsuspecting
consumer walks up like DS yeah, exactly, yes, totally too much,
get it unleashed on. But also, like, you know, it's one
of those things where like they showed it running on PS four and they were
like showing like some single player stuff, and you's like, that's I mean,
like okay in terms of like seeing how the cars look and seeing how
these blocks fit to other, like cool, But at no point do I
want to play any of the single player offering of any track Mania game,
Like, it's not why you're there. So it's sometimes I wonder if the
people that make track Mania truly understand what they're doing or what they have the
magic that they have to the true magic of what they have at this point,
they have to know because like there's a weird esports community around that thing,
like there are legitimate tournaments and like money changing hands, Like there's ESL
stuff for fucking track Media two and I think that's fucking ridiculous and bullshit,
but whatever, who cares? Like fine, Like I can still drive on
the tracks that are made for those things and go These tracks are maybe a
little not not as crazy as I like, but they're still all right,
They're still well made. But I feel like that the people you know that
there's a lack of understanding sometimes I don't know. I would love to talk
to those developers and get a sense for like, yeah, and I have
talked to them before track Mania two came out, like they were at a
Ubisoft Pree three events. Kind I'm sure some of the core guys like they
know, they understand their audience. There was a bit of a there was
a bit of a language barrier. They're French, so it wasn't I couldn't
just go like, your game's fucking crazy. And that's the best part about
it is that you are out of your minds, or at least the people
who play it are right, are you with me? And they're just like,
yeah, what, I don't know, we make a driving game,
thank you? Like no you don't get it, you're out of your fucking
month. They would be the last to know, wouldn't. Yeah. I
mean, I guess that's the beautiful thing, right if they were fully self
aware. Yeah, you can't ruin it all. But I don't know,
man, Yeah, yeah, I got what cut two three more months,
we'll find out. Yeah, yeah, we'll find out something that far away
fall. It's like I keep forgetting. They're just like, like you say,
a game coming out and fall, and like that might as well be
next year, but nope, no, it's almost here. It's coming at
you. Yeah. So I don't know. I played some of that and
then I don't know. I just kind of messed around with a bunch of
older something finmus I don't know. You tell me if you fall into this.
So I start games of Super Mario World maybe two or three times a
year from the beginning, and play the first few levels of it, and
then say, man, I should really play through all of super Mario World
again, and then never do drop it, and then come back like six
or eight months later and go, man, I should play through all of
super Mario World. I kind of do the same thing with a Symphony of
the night, but I finish it, like yeah, once every like two
years or so, I like I'll pop it in. It's like, all
right, here's my play through, and then like you know, the next
weekend, I'm done with it. Yeah. I can't think of anything where
you just kind of started up. I feel that little bit of nostalgia and
then it's like, shit, I'm hungry, I gotta eat something. It's
it's a lot of that. It's like, well, you get to the
first switch Palace and you're like, well, it told me I could save
I guess I could always That means I could come back to it later,
yeah, or you know beat the first like world or whatever. They're like,
I guess I could just come back to this. And then the first
time you get into that loop where you've got to find the sea exit level
yeah, and then first like ghost house or whatever. Yeah, and then
I forget how to do that, and so that's it, and by then
I've gotten minused out to fix, right. So sure it's hard to like
push yourself to complete it. Where's the first red level? World two?
The first level two? First level? Okay? Uh, But it's good
that you don't overdo it because you might like overdose on it. You'd be
like wow, like that can't be possible. Do you think that's what it
is? Where they're like deep down you're like, I don't want to get
mad at this game because I love it so much. I don't know if
playing now, I'm sorry, Like I feel like, you know, sometimes
it's the ready accessibility of the game and then the changing state of the emulation
around it. Okay, it's like it's always like there's always a new emulator
to test out. Wait ah, what do you mean it's like measuring stuff?
Yeah, okay, and you find yourself like going through the first few
levels and it's like, I don't you know, like I'm going to keep
the save ram files somewhere in some directory or something like that. Are you
talking about, like like the the accuracy you have different emulators changing, like
you know, like I mean because because you can't ends different ways to scan
things into your collection, because you can't do better than perfect. Right,
It's true, you can't have they not. Isn't simulation just like a solved
thing at this point? Pretty much? Yeah, but there's always there's always
that. So like retro Arch one point two came out over the weekend,
and like they've got a whole new, like XMB looking front end for it.
Like it's slick and a really interesting way. It's not quite where it
needs to be, but it's getting there. And like in terms of like
ease of use, like you think about emulators as a super arcane, fucking
ridiculous thing. They're building this very easy front end that's making it all very
accessible and like it'll start to identify we know what this game is when you
when you go to load it up or when you go to scan it end,
or you don't have to set a bunch of game specific things. Yeah,
well you wouldn't have to do that with it too much, like anyway,
but yeah, what is it? What is the lineage for retro Arch?
Did that come from any other projects? No, I'm there's been so
much stuff going on with and it's a core base emulator. So basically like
retro Arch is a front end for something called lib retro, and it's that's
just a like they're just making fat dlll files that are emulators open source,
taking other open source emulators and porting them to lib retro so that they work
in this kind of unified system and then that gets pumped out to plenty of
like Android systems. Oh, you know, like all the different Raspberry pile,
like a lot of different platforms. Like you know, they're sitting there
going like, oh, you know, you could technically run this on an
iPhone or an Xbox three sixty, Like we we build for that. You
just have to do weird even weirder ship to make it run. And that
guy retro arch right here on my phone. Yeah, you have an Android
phone, so yeah, you can just do whatever the fuck you want.
You have the jail break to run on an iPhone. Uh, And it's
just it's fascinating stuff like as it's just fascinating to watch that stuff like move
along and and become like user friendly, you know what. Like people are
starting to build more and more front ends that are just like s meant to
run on a TV instead of just like you know, now I need to
make this full screen, I need to do this and load this and fire
request this, and like, you know, they're getting into the ease of
use era of emulation and it's weirdly fascinated. And yeah, so there's there's
always something new to play. Super Mario World on this basically where I'm saying.
I see, I see where you're coming from now. Yeah, and
so it's it's weird. There are people out there that make achievements for old
games and what is that system called retro achievements. Yeah, that stuff seems
kind of amazing. Yeah, yeah, there are people doing amazing things amazing.
Let's you know, the quasi legal things around old video games. Who
among us does not own Super Mario World? Yeah, come on, I
mean I it's actually at least I have at least two I have dumped my
own copy of it. Yeah, you know, because I what you're playing.
Yeah, you percent legit. Yeah. I bought one of the retroads
with the Nest dapter and it is not an adapter. It just dumps directly.
And that's yeah, that's right. Yeah. I was meaning to back
up all I like RPG saves from Supernaos games through that thing. I bring
in what it if you want, I should just do that on upf this
week, bringing bring in, bringing my chrono trigger in my fun Fantasy three
and see if there are still saves on there, bringing my flashback prototype and
dump it. What do you think? Twenty to twenty twenty to twenty two
years. Let's say for that range of games, I think there's any data
left. Yeah, probably, I don't know, a lot of my games
from that era still have perfectly working bad cups, and I haven't done ship
or I didn't replace the batteries or anything, like I always thought it was
like fifteen twenty years you were starting to get pretty sketchy batteries still going.
Yeah, I've been those things. That stuff still seems to work. I
don't know. Yeah, it's just I don't know. That stuff has always
fascinated me, so like I've always dabbled in those sorts of things over the
years. I'll see like a link, see like a progress report on certain
emulators, like, oh, now they'd release this, I should load it
up and give it a shot. Yeah, Dolphin, I check that out,
and a lot of that stuff will boot right, you know, real
regular discs in a lot of cases too, So you know, depending on
you know, how you feel about bio stumps and stuff like that, I
guess. But you know, like you can run Virtue of four Fight or
four Evolution on a PC with a PS two disc in the drive and then
raise the resolution such that it still looks pretty fucking nice. Yeah, seriously,
man, this actually looks pretty good. Four it was a good one,
right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Three is the one. Three
is the one that I mean, they're playing people that do like three.
I do not like three, all right. I totally know what you mean,
though, Like just the kind of you'd load up your ram, gets
your ten minute nostalgia fix, yeah, and then you're like, I'm gonna
do something else. Yeah, I can't explain. It's almost like the easy
accessibility of some of that stuff makes it. Yeah, it trivializes like yeah,
absolute, yeah, yeah, but you can't. It sort of makes
you feel less tached to it in some way. I totally yeah, if
I had to hook up a console and go through all that arduous process,
then I'd probably more likely go, well, I went through all this fucking
shit, you damn right them and like I have an original Xbox hooked up
right now. Gets even worse when you can just like enable cheats on stuff,
you know. Oh sure, like if you're just plowing through something invincible.
But that's you know, like I think that there's something to be said
for kind of like going back and looking at a lot of that stuff,
And that's why we started doing the old games show is just to kind of
look at like some of the later levels of these games, you know,
just like let's just plow through all of thunder Fource three and just like look
at some of this stuff, Like look at this fucking fire. How cool
this fire looks? Listen to the rad music from Thunderfource three. Sure,
also a format like that kind of locks you in and said, you know,
we're not gonna play this until we get bored. We're gonna play this
until like we see it, yeah, or at least like have a holistic
view of it. Sure, Yeah, I got a plan, man,
Yeah, sticking to it. There's an archival quality to that. Show's got
a document of the stuff someone asked to after the bombs fall. After the
bomb's fall, who else is going to have an entire play through of thunder
Fource three. Well after the bomb's fall, someone's gonna have to generate it
themselves off to piece together computer from parts and find a USB stick that has
every Genesis game ever made on it, because it's all that's gonna survive is
that it's all be bad dumps. Yes, No, what you find out
when the file is unsealed, Drew, did you cram any video games or
this weekend? Uh? Yeah, a little bit. I started playing Mario
and Puzzle and Dragons Yes, what is that thing called Dragons Z? And
then Puzzle on Dragons, Super Mario Brother or something sever games. Yeah,
I'm playing the Mario, the Mario half good I had played. Uh,
I had played the iPhone version just a free game. Yeah, yeah,
but there's there's a lot going on there, you guys, not the best,
but the kind of it's an actual like free to play games, so
there's like you a paid gates. There's those hooks in there, and they
like they tell you everything, like how it all works, but uh,
it's at a big dump up front, and then you don't really understand how
you're supposed to use any of that, like the fusing and feeding other guys
to other guys and leveling up skills and stuff. Uh. Nintendo does what
I had hoped they would do when I heard this project was announced, which
she's like yeah, and like lay that stuff out and here's why you would
want to do this. And so far it's been great. I've played it
for a few hours and I'm loving it. Yeah. That game's yeah,
super great, And yeah, Dan was super into it as well, and
I continue to play it. It's a lot of fun, and I just
I love the Nintendo like aesthetic about it. Yeah, it tickles. Men't
burnt out on it yet. I thought Dan was saying that. He thought
like, even though it's not actually a free to play game with micro transactions,
he was still hitting those humps where or those like giant difficult spikes.
Sounds like it gets like hard where where it like it feels like reires you
to grind. I think, yeah, he made it sound like you hit
points where it feels like you're supposed to buy your way through it, even
though you can't actually do that. I can I can see where the grinding
thing would come in because you do have to use like you go through the
battle and you acquire allies, uh like little guys to join your team,
and you only acquire a few of them if you do it all per level.
And then when you use those allies to feed them into your other teammates,
you expend them, so they're gone and those go pretty quickly, or
they're going pretty quickly for me now. Yeah, and sometimes you'll need like
items in order to fuse them properly with other dudes to tell them their items
are the right way. I guess yeah, but they're like, I don't
know that I could. I could. I haven't reached the point where that
is happening yet, but I hope that there's a good balance between like,
yes, you have to grind a little bit, but it's you know,
by by earning these items to stuff and buffing your guy up in the way
that you want, you feel a little more attachment to them, and it's
it's satisfactory. But I would feel those humps a lot more if I had
like dug in and I was going head first and just playing hour after hour.
But the way that I play it is, you know, a little
bit before bed. You know, it's perfect for that. Yeah, like
five ten minutes, little chunks on the bus bus game, I'm down,
that's game and on the go. Yeah. I also dipped into the free
trial of the Early Act or preview preview on Xbox one of Elite Dangerous.
Yeah. So I actually didn't think to ask you on the show, but
were you showing on upf the like whatever the demo that was the trial.
That's not the full thing I had. I have not purchased anything, okay
on the Xbox now, so you can you can right now, you can
go. I don't even know where it is in the menu. I just
searched for it in the Xbox Games Store. Yeah, that store is kind
of well, and it's weird because it's like an early access thing. So
Microsoft now has this early I forgot. They call it's preview something Xbox game
preview. I think. Yeah. I think it's just elite dangerous in the
long dark. Right, did they launch anything else yet? Oh? Yeah,
nothing yet. Anyway, you can download it and you have to create
a free Frontier log, which is the company that makes it. I don't
know, it's weird anyway. You can play for like an hour and a
half or something, and then you can also buy it for thirty one dollars
or something. It seems to be the full game. Uh, not dumbed
down for console. I mean they've had controller support for the PC version for
a long time, so they've they've really smartly mapped the controls to the Xbox
controller. Yeah, it looked slick watching you play it. Yeah, it
runs fairly well. Look around the cockpit with the stick and all that stuff.
There's some hitchiness here and there, but contingent with my experience on the
PC. I don't know that game's cool. I mean, you can go
watch the quick look Jeff and I did of it a few months ago.
You know, are they at parody feature wise? Yes, I don't think
there's cross talk or that maybe planned. It's not an mml H. You
are segmented off into your own server with like you know, it's probably like
one hundred people or something. I don't know the exact number, but I
don't know. It's a fun it's a fun little game. I keep meaning
to check that out. I just don't know. Yeah, yeah, it
seems like they've been supporting it well, plus got all the things that I
like, space such as we have space is cool, diverting powered systems like
maybe you want to go faster and you don't need your shields, so you
yeah, trap your shields a third or something. I don't know, engines.
For whatever reason, I just like haven't committed myself to sitting down and
going through the tutorial here. I actually downloaded the PC version and haven't launched
it yet. The training, the training, uh little missions they have are
are decent. Some YouTube videos. It's weird. Like in the it's very
clearly just a straight up port from the PC to the Xbox is. When
you load it up, you can there are links, uh next to the
training missions like in the in the the briefing that just if you click on
them. In the Xbox version, it just opens Internet Explorer to a YouTube
page about the PC like with a video of the PC version. That's good
stuff. Uh. I don't know that game. The game is wild.
I just finished reading the the novella that came with the original Elite It is
free online posted by the author. How old is that? Nineteen eighty four?
Who's the Who's the Elite guy? David Braben? I think that's yes,
I think that's right, Yeah, mister dangerous. Game's got some lineage,
Yeah, totally for sure. It's been around. And also there's a
ton more Elite books, which I meant there's a lot. You and Vinnie
can split them up. Yeah, maybe right one. When you're done there
you go your own space adventures. I read them in the original Polish,
of course, all the way to read them. Oh, Jason, yo,
how's your Witcher going? Halted? Yeah? We are halted? Yeah,
since before E three, I've been halted, okay, and I'm getting
the itch ye, But yeah, there's been a think that that's good,
Yes, the itch getting up on you. I wanted to ask because I
came perilously close this weekend to feeling like I could not return to that game.
I've been that way with the previous two games. Yeah, yeah,
where there was like an extended break and then I fell off of it and
then I had to like restart it much much later on, like the whole
game. Yes, it does it have been that long? Is it because
of a story thing like I forget where I'm in this quest? Or is
it like that? How do I play this game? Is it just like
mechanically you're just like I don't I just don't want to do this anymore.
Yes, there was something more nebulous about putting a game down for all.
And it's been a solid month, Like I looked at my safe file,
you know, we had E three, We had a bunch of other stuff
going on, like it just wasn't able to play the game for a month.
But it's not so much the story as just like having to relearn mechanics
that you forgot about, you know, it's a lot easier this one.
Like in previous games you had to like remember the combinations, you know,
to make potions and stuff like that. So it's a little more stream It's
relatively streamlined, but a lot of it was like having just binged through Batman
and then coming back to this where like in Batman, the like the character
movement, the combat, all that stuff is just kind of like super precise.
Like it's very well too. Did you see that they are in fact
patching the game again with another movement change, So yeah, like some kind
of optional quickly so quickly yes, yes, so so to hurry through my
riveting tail, I try to play The Witch or three again, did not
love it, gave it a day, got back into it, and it's
like, all right now I'm in came into work this morning. Here is
another patch seemingly fixing all of the remaining complaints I have about the game.
Yeah, so now I want to wait another few days until that patch comes
out. Yeah. When that patch hits, I am going to try their
alternate movement option if that like makes it feel any better. Form it's weird
because they tuned to the movement a little bit with one of those previous patches,
but it's still not great. Like I said, like Batman, the
character movement is sublime, right, like controls exactly like you wanted to.
It's like Batman, It's like you're Batman, Yes, you are the Batman.
Yeah. So going back to this, it was just like, oh
god, this feels like shit. So I'm really curious to hear what this
alternate movement scheme is. But but it's this Patrick is way beyond that,
like these inventorial zone levels of fucking yeah, like not quite backpaling, man,
I guess so. But like I was like, all right, we're
putting it an optional thing for some A lot of people like it. How
it is, right, some of you. We want to listen to all
some of you fucking people. I mean, maybe they feel strongly about the
way that the character movement is, but so what you know, it'd be
it would be easier to condemn them if they didn't have such a history of
doing this and just yeah, this is great that they're doing it is,
yes, it is, but but some of the things they're fixing are just
things that it should have shipped with, you know, like the inventory is
still a disaster in that game. It's terrible. Like there's a ton of
inventory changes coming in this patch, like sorting, like they're adding additional pages
that that further kind of categorize stuff because like as it is right now,
everything you've ever picked up that you can read is just mixed in with all
the things you can use, and they're in like a randomized order. It's
so I've literally got thirty or forty books and notes like cluttered among like potions
I can use and stuff like it's gonna be great noctout, Yes, absolutely,
like by then, like maybe there'd be one more patch. I too,
was right, it was like you know, you wait a good year
until they put the tutorial in and you know, then you'll see some mysterious
ship. Yeah, until then. That's totally the trajectory that this seems to
be following. Like yeah, Drew, if you're actually interested in this game
but are kind of holding off, like yeah, I think you're almost think,
I mean I am going to play it for like game of the Year
consider Yeah for sure. Yeah, So I just it's up there like it
is like if it weren't for all these like nagging issues with it, Like
it's easily a Game of the Year contender, But like I was getting to
that point where like when I got back into it, I was no longer
super invested in the story, you know. So at that point all I
was really contending with where like this feels like shit, I can't find the
thing I needed my inventory like that, Oh it just crashed. Yeah,
like that stuff like a low point in the story right now. So it's
like I gotta go find dandelion. Okay, you're you're you're further in than
I am. But yeah, like it it seems like more changes are coming
that I game needs. It's good. It's it's like it's good and it's
bad. Yeah, you know, it's it's one of those things where these
are like gameplay tweaks and just like refinements to a system, Like a lot
of that stuff isn't like broken, I mean yeah. But also it's the
third Witcher game, and it's like and last time they did, they made
a ton of major changes to the Witcher two. Over time. They're like,
on one hand, you go like, oh, it's great that they're
supporting their game, yes, but then it's like, oh, you know
what, like maybe just get it right next time instead of like going through
this whole cycle again. Do you think it's just like they had to have
played a lot of this game before it came out. Do you think it's
just like you know, when you're writing an essay in school and you read
over the same type of open over maybe yeah, and you just get used
to it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, in their defense, they
had way bigger ambitions with this one than they have in the past. Sure,
yeah, maybe that's just like tertiary on their list, like movement question
mark and then all these A class bugs, right, you know, and
it's that they had just never made an open world in this series before,
like the just the scope of this game is so much bigger, too open,
right, not not at all in the same way like which or two
is more like mass effect a year or whatever. Right, Well, I
think like the there is no open world. It's like small contained areas that
you load in and out of this kind of thing. Like it's nothing like
the expanse in this one. But yeah, that's said, like, yeah,
I don't know how a bunch of people played it and signed off on
the way it controls and just like had no complaint. They probably just like
got used to it, it's like oh yeah, maybe yeah, and again,
like you know, it's something you get used to after a few hours
and if you don't have other games to compare it to you right away,
Like it's not that bad. But I'm glad they're still supporting the year.
Yeah, me too. I still want to finish. Yeah, the the
alternative of put it out and do nothing to it right and then have it
crashed during the Guent tutorial Like that's no good, you know I's talking about.
Yeah, I'm I'm glad they're cleaning it up, even if you know
it's this kind of two months two months or when did it come out?
Yeah, I guess it's been about two months now, right since it came
out almost that sounds right, get close, glad that's happening. But uh
so you're just gonna you're just gonna wait for that patch at this point only
days away, so I don't I don't know. We'll see the other the
week goes. That's yeah, I'm eager to get back into it, all
right. That's good to hear. Be happy for some people on the staff
to finish that game. I probably start over from I'm not that far,
but yeah, you might as well probably just start fresh once that new new
patch comes out. Yeah, uh, what else have you been playing?
Uh? Stupid Japanese stuff? Uh huh, real dumb? Go on?
Jay Stars? What is that? Jay Stars? Victory Versus Plus that showed
up in the office and you were very excited. I've been excited about this
for for quite a while. So, like I'm a fan of the Gundam
Versus series. I don't know if you're familiar with that t V two like
arena based combat, so it's not exactly a fighting game. It is kind
of sort of a more three D so like power Stone. Is it like
virtual on Robopitch? Sure kind of thing. Sure, a little bit.
And are you guys familiar with like the the cyber Connects fighting games and like
the Narudas. Yeah, yeah, yes, so a little like that.
That seems like half of it is. Scenes like special News are just like
thirty secon god. Yeah yeah, Okay, it gets pretty ridiculous. This
is a way a different developer, so I didn't have so I like,
I like those cyber Connected games, like I think they're pretty fun, but
this this one gets old super quick. The combat is a little too all
over the place. You know, you're supposed to be doing melee for the
most parts, but you can't block behind you, so as soon as you
get in the thick of stuff, you're probably gonna get hit by something else.
So uh and as you mentioned before, like some of those attacks are
just like, you know, big like twenty second long, freaking you know,
animation. So I'm still warming up to it. Put it that way.
We're gonna do it quick. Look later this week, We'll see how
it goes. But yeah, I got old pretty quick. Who are the
jstars? I would recognize the rest of your hair Metal, dragon ball Z
and Jason Okay, So like showing and jump over in Japan, long ass
publication, you know, publish those commics. So it's it's a missions match
of So who's whose dudes? Yeah, pretty much of Mangatow. Yeah,
that's got some Georgio in it. Yeah, and their bizarre adventures deo there.
I don't know. I don't think so no doo no sale. Yeah,
I don't think you guys in it. Bell Also more Japanese stuff,
Yatsu Gasu Attack, Faver, Cataclysm, over On, attack on cast Inside,
Cataclysm about get fully cataclized. This is a This was a so yeah,
three former SNK dudes got together. They're like, we need to make
something that we've made before. We're gonna We're gonna make a fan made version
of the games that were I don't know that you would say that they're just
fan made when they are excess and K developers. It's tracially knowing. It's
like I'm not just a developer, I'm also a fan, all right.
So yeah, it was a dogon for a long time, so that typically
meets like fan made or whatever. But uh uh, yeah, they put
on big boyd riches and and started an indiego go and that got funded and
stuff, and you know, the project like split at some point and they
called this new one attack on Cataclyst and they said to add a bunch of
new characters and modes and junks. So that is finally out and yeah it
it totally feels like in an old school s n K even some like Street
Fighter three, uh kind of two D fighting. Yeah, those old school
retro spights man, and they are at a very set resolution and there are
no graphic options. So that game, which is when you full screen it,
the steam pop up in the lower right cornum and you launch its fucking
oh just because it's a super low resolution. Yeah, it's like it's not
quite that low. But yeah, but they, you know, they I
want to like this game, I really I do too, say they put
a lot of heart into it. Yeah, the heart. The heart is
in the mechanics. I guess, like the game is for me. It's
fun to play because it's you know, it's it's very reminiscent of you know,
the that era. Unfortunately, like the UI is something that was barely
touched when that project forked. It's rough. It's really really rough the first
time you booted, Like most of many's in Japanese, you've got to switch
it to English. But also it's not it's like in on on an English
Windows system. It just shows up as gibberish, just like askied garbage Texas
like all over the place. You've got the right I have the language pack
install. It wasn't didn't work, so I have no idea. Huh,
how much is this? This is fifteen dollars okay, I mean, well
not a huge huge buy in at least. Yeah. At the same time,
like you know, they're promising, like you know, GGPO I don't
know which is not there yet and apparently not pay stuff. Seems the first
window that you launch is where you can put in your IP address and can
figure your ports. This is the first thing that you see. Shouldn't they
be able to just pull your IP yellows? I mean, look, how
bad do you want to play this game? They're they're not that bad as
it turns out, like not not actually that bad. Like I think,
I'm with you. I think it's really cool, Like there's some design stuff
about it. I think it's fun. It's well, yeah, that's really
keeping me like away from it, like the UI stuff. But yeah,
yeah, these groups that I've got jumped through just to just to get to
even try the online Yeah it's crazy and and yeah, I don't know,
man, what do you talk about? SMK Fighters? All right, here's
my perception of that fandom. Okay, Like to me, from what I
can tell from the outside, it looks like there's King of Fighters and there's
everything else. Is that accurate? I would? Yeah, King of Fighters
I think is the big There's King of Fighters, there's Samurai show Down,
well everything else. I almost feel like Samurai show Down as its own beast
in a way. Yeah, if that makes sense, sure, Yeah,
Whereas like like it seems like King of Fighters is descended from like Fatal Fury
and World Heroes and blah blah blah, right, whereas Samurai show Down existed
as its own kind of like yeah, the thing off to the side,
like people that love sam Show or wait into that ship regardless of how they
feel about the other stuff really distinguished, like you know, regular martial arts
stuff and like weapon based right, uh, fighting games. So yeah,
they've been kind of segmented, I guess a little bit. But also like
I don't think Last Blade is something that you would like if you like Samurai
show Down, like not immediately anyway, Like it's it's its own different,
weird thing. So they and like each of those like in a series,
have like really evolved over time. Like if you look at like original Fatal
Furies, like they had you know, weird plane based yeah, like the
jumping in and out. Yeah stuff. I guess that's my real questions stuff
kept me away from those games. Yeah, I didn't like that, That's
that's what I mean. Like, do people look back at those kind of
the early SMK franchises with like reverence, Like do they still play them competitively
or is it just like so much It's like you're in the Samurai show Down,
You're in the King of Fighters. That's it. I would just say,
just King justly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay,
I think the later Samurai show Down games kind of killed a lot of interest.
So it's just one and two mostly two as far as I'm concerned to
Yeah, okay, like one's good, but two's better, and and that's
it. All that Slash Bust shit sucked. So yeah, this, dude,
like really speaks to me, and I really really want to get into
it, but that fucking you, I dude. Is it being sold as
early access? No? Really, no it was, so it's just being
sold as a final game, even though it's missing major features that they're promising
later. It's missing some features, some characters, yes, yeah, some
characters that were on the Indie Go Go page right right, how do you
promised? How do you not categorize that as early access when it's missing characters.
I don't know, maybe they're unlockable. It's crazy, but I mean
there's not a lot of information, you know. The only tutorials that I've
seen are actually you know from people that have been playing it in early access,
like there's something you yeah, if you was it contribute to the Indie
Go Go, like you might have got this game like a really long time.
Well yeah, yeah, Indie Go Go. It was like twenty thirteen.
They promised like twenty fourteen for release, and you know, here we
are. I remember when we saw it. It was like it packs like
Collis was gonna was showing it right like they were. It was. It
was that in thousand one. Yes, I remember there, and then they'd
have nothing to do with this. Yeah anymore. I totally remember that now,
yeah, back in the corner of the Indie Mega Yeah yeah, and
I'm I don't know what happened there, but like, yeah, it just
seems like three dudes, Is it not true? Do you know if they
did the animation. I'm sure that like at some point, like they brought
in different people to do the music, and obviously a cast of thousands for
the commentary. What So, you can add commentators to your match, like
each person can choose the commentator, and the commentators are made up of like
you know, voice samples from inside the game, from the characters. You
know that are actually fighters and then prominent members of like you know, the
Street Fighter three community, also like of the American commentary fighting game scenes.
Did they get uh no, they got tokydo all right? Murder face uh
like James Chen, Ultra David, also Maximilian. So you can add use
them as commentation, which is like a really weird, like novel kind of
cool thing that they're included in this game. But holy shit, like the
performances are fucking rough. They're terrible. They're really really like a lot of
more Japanese and like I can't speak to whether those are delivered with verve or
not. Holy shit, the mix is real bad. They look real JANKI
when they show up, they just pop in from the screen when like you
know, you do some converse and it's just like a still image. Nice
job or whatever, meaty hit man. You excuse me, Prince. I
cannot believe they got him to read. Man, it's really bad. I'm
sure this was a labor of love. You can turn that off. You
can't turn enough. But why at this point it's like embrace it, right,
It's so dumb. It's so stupid, you know, I guess In
twenty fifteen, if you want a sprite based King of Fighter will like your
options are pretty limited. Kind of take what you can get, right,
Yeah? Yeah, I mean, you know, there's the recent King of
Fighter games, which are fantastic. One would expect, one would suspect that
they would eventually make another one of those. I would, I would hope.
So hasn't been that long since the last one? Thirteen was the last
one, right, and that was I was it fourth? Oh god,
I can't remember. I was trying to blank. But twelve and thirteen?
Yeah, I think you're right. Aren't those games getting more and more three
D though? Over time? Like Polygonal three D the backgrounds that was that
it. I think we're still doing sprites. Those are still, like I
thought, there's there's like three D elements some of the attacks. It's fun
to watch high level like modern King of Fighters play. They're so good.
But I don't want anything to do with that franchise anymore. I'm too old.
You weren't just want to play ninety eight, Okay, I just want
to play because I didn't think you were a big fan ever, Uh not
huge. I like ninety eight, I like like two thousand, two thousand
and two. Yeah, but no, like like past that, it just
got crazy. Yeah, it's weird. They got it away from like the
team based stuff and which I really liked. But I liked that. I
was there, but I never used it. I was I was like,
I always thought it was cool there was three on three, but then when
it came down to actually playing it, I kind of just wanted to be
Terry. Terry pick your character and go yeah, put on that ball cap,
yeah, and do it. I want to throw that jacket up in
the air. Yep. Fuck the hat. All right, you're the lonely
Wolf. That's me. That's a good anime, by the way, fatal
for your anime. Yeah, yeah, that's a tangent. I think I
saw that. But tell the Tale of the Bogard Brothers. Yeah, all
right, good to know. Play anything else. Finally beats You Must Build
a Boat. Yeah, like beat it, beat it like credits rolled,
you build a boat. I built a boat. You built v boat?
Is that it? Yep? And I sailed through this guys. Yeah,
you build a boat and it's it. So you know, well you go
back in and then you're given the options. You say, well, okay,
you can go back and like, replay this at a harder difficulty.
It's like a new game plus. And I'm like, boats, sign me
up, really, sign me up. And then it's it sends you back
to the very beginning of the game. No money, no nothing thing.
They even just put you back into toorial met It was not even a new
game plus. It's just it's just here's a new game. Play it again.
I guess it's supposed to be harder. Now you have to grind even
more to get through it. What the fuck? Yeah, so I can't
just go back in. And I'd purposely not like beat the game for for
quite a while because I was really enjoying it, you know, and I
didn't I didn't want it to end. And now I didn't want to go
through that tutorial stuff again. So I think I'm done with it. Yeah,
thanks a lot. I've gotten pretty cynical about ten million as I have
been close to finishing it. Yeah, Like I'm I'm at like five million
points. I've you know, I've maxed out the sword in the scepter,
pretty close to finishing all the other upgrades, and you know, like the
point modifiers are so high that I have to imagine I'll hit a ten million
in another like hour or something. It's just kind of the same shit over
over, except I think it's a solid puzzle game. And the hooks around
it are just hooky and oh it's it's like it DIDs a very carrot on
a stick, you know, like they definitely like the first day I started
playing it, I was like every spare minute I had, I was whipping
it out to like do another run or two, to try to get some
more upgrades. Tell me more. What's I can't talk about that on the
air FCC. Yep, they just started governing podcast right now, yep today
in fact, roll Officer or something something. Uh. But you know,
it's like it's the same matching three. It's the same types of enemies.
They just have more hit points and hit Yeah sometimes sometimes you match five man.
Yeah, sure, that's fine. That's always nice. If you could
just drag that gym anywhere you wanted switch, use it to switch gyms and
set up that would be nice. Actually, because it was there, I
got okay, all right, maybe I'll maybe I should maybe check that game
out there. Have you not played that at all? No? I never
played any P and D of any kind but cool. Actually that That's kind
of another thing I'm not super huge on in this is their style of matching
three is kind of it's not full on like original puzzle Quest but jeweled where
you can only go one space. But it's also not like puzzles and dragons
drag it anywhere on the board. It's like, you know, you can
go in columns and rows all the way up down, like getting used to.
Yeah, and I still feel like I might be playing it wrong because
I sort of just sit there and wait to try to use the right thing
at the right time. When I get the sense that I actually should just
be matching everything, that always seems to work out a lot better. But
yeah, you know, it's just it's just all you're doing is increasing your
numbers to try to beat their increasing numbers over and over. Oh, yes,
million, I thought we were talking about destiny, all right, No,
well, yes, all of the above. I don't know. It's
fun, it's certainly, you know, for the prices, it's fun.
Yeah, it's ten million, three bucks. Which side is a boat?
The same thing? I think? So as five right around there, I
think, yeah, I just yeah, I don't I couldn't see myself rushing
to play that right after this because I don't know back to back and it
like that might be much. That's a little rope. I think I'm ready
for it to be over. I can see that, So yeah, what's
about it for me? Though? Yeah? Yeah, I thinks right,
Okay, Uh, I guess I don't know. I'm spending a lot of
time on the phone. I guess it's like trickle down for me three weeks,
you know, when you're out of town until you got But I got
stuck back into Fallout Shelter this weekend. I uninstalled Fallout Shelter this weekend.
You might have made the right choice. I dragged everyone into the waste land,
set them free, and then let them go. Yeah, so out
there, I let them walk away, and I'm like, all right,
let them out, let them out to pursue their dreams. Let them free,
and then deleted the vault. Yeah, okay, that's beautiful. It
sounds about one night seven is closed forever. So something really insidio has happened
with that thing. And the more I think about it, the angrier I
am at myself for continuing to play it. Wait, you mean they're completely
free game? That they launched. This is pretty bad, Okay, let's
hear it. So it's got notifications and the loop in the game is like
three to five minutes long, right, where like you have to you know,
your rooms produced resources, but you have to actually tap them when they're
completed to collect the resources and start them on their timers again. So it's
constantly prodding you. Every time you put the phone down, like three minutes
later you get a notifications like what if your room is ready to go?
Ohly? So I had gotten over that part of it, Like the compulsion
to keep up with the rooms was gone. If you don't keep up with
the rooms, does everyone eventually die because they run out of ship so eventually
freeze and be like all right, we're gonna not I'm not one hundred percent
clear on it. If you let it go for like a day without touching
it, you'll come back and all your resources will be at zero. Yeah,
they'll have used everything, but nobody's dead. Okay. Yeah, that's
what it was for me, because I would like every five days, I
go like, oh right, this fucking thing, and I'll watch it and
tap the rooms and go all right, yeah, likes it. And then
give me the notification, I'll be like, oh fuck you, like you'll
be out of resources, Like You're happiness level will probably be pretty low.
Yeah, but people aren't dead or anything like they're you know that, it's
you can get back into it. But it's good, yeah, I but
I my happiness have been super low, which I didn't realize at the time.
It radiates your people, which like cuts their health in half. Sadness
sadness equals of radiation. Also, they don't heal automatically when they're not happy.
So everybody was a super low health But since it doesn't always show health
bars, I wasn't paying attention to. That's the upshot of this is that
I had one random rad roach outbreak that murdered half of my population. I
went from like mid forties to about twenty people and had no money. That
was the last last week sometime, and I was like, well, fuck
this game, and I put it down, never to return. But and
then Sunday morning, oh no, I got a notification saying one of your
survivors has returned from the wasteland what they get? And I was like,
what's weird? Did everybody go? Well? No, because I was like
that's weird because I never sent anybody out. Yeah, cute spooky music,
right, Like, I went back in and there was nobody there waiting to
get back in. Wow. Like, I think they just fucking hit you
with that notification if you don't play for long, tricking you into thinking,
well, maybe I did send a guy out because they collecting a lot of
stuff out there, you know. Yeah, like I at one point,
I sent my highest level guy out with a bunch of stimpacks so he would
be survivable. And I came back the next morning and he had like twelve
weapons that he had picked up, you know, like they get a lot
of stuff. Yeah, it's when I saw that, I was like,
I should get in there and see what he's got there. There was no
there, And that was that was when I realized that they had a sixty
six percent off sale for fourth of July. And then I spent five dollars
in a lunchbox. God damn it. Brand Now I'm now I am fucking
obsessively playing that stupid game again, even though I don't think it's all that
good. Boy. Apparently there's no endgame, Yeah, you can, doesn't
seem like there would be, so you can eventually hit a popular Yeah,
you hit the population cap has two hundred and apparently you hit the two hundred
and then it's just kind of like, hey, you can kind of manage
everybody's happiness and resources if you want, but there's nothing else to do.
I don't know, you have some issues. I want to like that game.
I wanted to like it. It's yeah, like it's it's cute,
yeah, but like ten twenty minutes. Yeah right, the problem. The
problem is just that it demands your attention for a way longer than that if
you want to actually keep going with it. Yeah. Yeah, I love
the I love the presentation of it. You know, a little shoe box
looking diorrama thing is just really cool. I think it's really cool that it
exists. Yeah, yeah, it's coolable. Yeah, that was a great
moment, you know, But I just I don't know, there's just something
like myself just doesn't seem to hold up. The interface has got some it's
lacking in a few places that make it kind of a chore to do things
that dragging people around sucked. Yes, that's like especially when you zoom all
the way it's super tiny. Yeah, it's it's tough to get the right
person sometimes and stuff like that. Suckers. Yeah, a little hard to
play in the five. Yes, oh yeah, I could definitely see that.
It's even on the regular six. It's kind of a chore. Also,
I felt super creepy because I basically just set out like my population had
been cut in half. So it basically set up a breeding mill. Oh
my god, where you know the breeding stat is charisma naturally, Okay,
So I found like the most charismatic dude. I found my three most charismatic
dudes, uh, and basically appointed them as studs and put them in the
living quarters and then just cycled like this is horrible. Then I cycled women
in and out until everybody was pregnant, because there's no other way to recover
your population. They were just thinking about half the people in my thing were
dead, and I had no money, so I couldn't bring any of the
Also corpses go away after a while and can't even resurrect them. You're thinking
about the species as a hole, like, I guess I saw you.
That's that's smart thinking. I guess it felt it felt weird. Your heart
was in the right place. And then then it leads to a bunch of
situations where you're trying to mate parent and child without realizing it that's gonna happen.
I guess, man, you played Viva Pinata. It's true. You
know how it goes. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I strapped it
out into like pinata and like candy animals. Though it's a little it was
a little easier to grapple with fun incests and they look like fucking people.
You're like, no, no, really unpleasant? No, uh why did
it all look like pit boy in the first place? Don't answer the question,
Like the fact that I was mating the same three guys with every woman
in the vault was purely out of like convenience, because like you said,
it's such a pain, and the asked to move those little people around.
It was like, I just I don't know, man, I'm just all
that thing. I should. It's a bad game. I should. I
haven't even opened all the lunch boxes I bought yet, God damn it,
I've still got four to go. How did you not just them all at
once? I don't know. I figured i'd save a few from when you're
feeling low. Oh, I know what, I'll open one. Right now,
we say, okay, yes, let's let's get into this. Open
the lunch box. Let's see what I get out of this stupid lunch box.
My happiness is eighty three percent. That's a good thing, right,
as long as you're your happiness or the game's happiness, their happiness solvent adders
now boa, whoa, all right? What have we got? One rat
away? That's shit, hunter caps care handy man jumpsuit, that's plus three
to a Jilly Movie fan outfit. Yeah, that was all bullshit. Whatever,
I should stop playing this game. So you paid for that? Yeah,
you paid for that. It was five bucks, but it normally would
have been fifteen. Oh yeah, Oh it's like they're paying me. Yeah,
I mean that's that's ten dollars. You could then use to buy some
Red Bull takeet some destiny. Did you see that stuff? Should do that?
How bad that all went? The wait? Like, is there more?
Is there in a dendum? Since last week? Whatever? All of
the Red Bull can codes just have the numbers three, four, and seven
in them. You can just fucking like it's you know, here's the key
gen for you. Pump it full of three four seven series and then wait
to find something that comes back and return something. Oh wait, nothing does
because people have fucking spammed that form full of fucking shit and now nothing works.
Oh so people were out there using codes that exist in cans out there
somewhere. I guess I don't know. So you can't even go buy a
can and assume the code will work anymore. I have not bought a can
and tried it. All I did is go to the site and punch in
numbers and have it go. That code has already been used a few times
before. I was like, all right, fuck you ever got one?
No? Man, that's fucked up. I wonder what. I wonder what
they're gonna do about that? Do you need one? Brand? You got
one? I bought two Red Bull can. I mean, if you're not
one for you not thoughtful? Yeah, I'll give it a shot. Although
there now it sounds like there's no guarantee the work. But are you're saying
you go into it and thin you're going to get something, but then you
don't. So yeah, that's weird. Gee, man, video games are
horrible. Some people were aller than Some people reported having codes that worked on
the Red Bull site, but then the Bungee code it spit out had been
used already, so you know, like I spent like twenty minutes reading up
on this, so I could be I could be a mistaken on how it
works, but it does seem like yeah, like basically I used it enough
times to where it finally came back and said, you're you've been your connection
has been rate limited due to suspected abuse. All right, Yeah, that's
fair enough. That's why. It's why all the sites that are like talking
about the ships, they're like, hey, man, use a proxy.
Great, great, god damn it. Tell you know the Destiny community means
business. Yeah, I'll tell you about what I did when that game came
out, And they were like a zillion codes floating up, but they weren't
single use though. That was the difference. You know, I did that
too. That was amazing. That was the best shitty code like like tertiary
code entering experience of my life. Yeah. They were like they were like
twenty something codes out there for like shaders and emblems and all kinds of bullshit
in that game that you got from like different shitty snack food and stuff.
People just collected them and like built a little JavaScript thing that you could pay,
like you'd go to the code entry site and just paste the JavaScript into
your developer console and hit enter and go through and enter every code for you,
all in one button press. It was all best. It was awesome.
It was so good. I had shaders. I can't argue with that.
I too have those shaders. Damn it was beautifuls they're all they're all
shit. Yeah, I don't really don't care. They're mostly shiit cheese,
it colored. None of them were the Blacksmith, none of the none of
them are the VIP shader that's coming. That's how much you pay for that.
Never mind, I don't want to bring it up again. All right,
I played Destiny long enough to look at the Blacksmith shader. Since we
came back from ME three, that's it. I feel good. I reinstalled
that game. Yeah, I'm waiting for the day that it's like ready for
me to play. Let's let's chat. In September of twenty sixteen, what
Destiny two comes in? Destiny two comes out with another full discs worth of
content. Oh god, if Destiny two comes out and oh, what what
do you mean? If what are you talking about? I don't that is
gonna happen. Fuck, we're talking about destiny. No, good job,
we don't have to good job. We can move No. All I was
gonna say is I don't trust them to do what needs to be done in
only two years. Yep, I'm not saying that. I don't know who's
going to be some awesome game. I think they need way more than two
years to make that into what it needs to be. Well, they've got
a ten year plan and around year eight it's gonna get awesome. All right,
Well, moving on, yes, moving on. All that needs to
be said. Right now. You should see the VIP shader that comes if
you have bought every collector's edition and then it comes out in year eight,
the one the v like the the long lasting Founder package that's gonna be out
there in twenty. They're doing some weird stuff shaders. I have to say,
we're moving on. I managed to get glow Who from the last time
I ran Croda. What have you seen glow Who? That's no, I
have not. It glows. It's a glowing shader. Cool. Let's take
a break. Yeah, we'll come back with some news after this break.
We are back and it's time for news of the world. Yes, the
world news. I'm starting with the only story that matters this week, the
euro Zone. Yes, talk about Greek austerity. No, let's talk about
the Nintendo PlayStation. Yeah, yeah, that was a that was the almost
thing. What well, yes, you're right in a in a broad business
sense, You're right, it was almost a thing. But there was anole
thing or made in a literal physical sense, it got made, and one
has been unearthed. Sure you seem perplexed, little history list. I've never
seen you this confused. So before Sony got into the PlayStation business, proper
got into the video game business on its own. It did a deal with
Nintendo. They were like, hey, we can make you a disc based
to do a CD ROM based add on for the Supernintendo. Not unlike the
segment. It was basically, yes, I've heard this legend us and they
were to call it the PlayStation and the Nintendo PlayStation. Well, no,
it would have been. It was the the Sony PlayStation Super disc all right.
So I was not even aware of these plans, but yeah, you
so, Jeff was in this morning, like, I guess there were plans
for both and at all it could have existed in two forms. There would
have been Sony's hardware. That would have been a combo unit sort of like
the JBC x I is for the on the Genesis. Basically just a superno
that Sony would produce and would bear kind of these PlayStation branding things, and
then there would be an ad on unit produced that would connect to existing super
fan coms uh and and be sold you know. Sure enough. It had
that feature connector on the bottom of it, Yeah, that they used for
the satel of You, which was which got things from a satellite sure so
to play video satellite video games, I remember correctly, like way before the
PlayStation itself happened, like when all this deal stuff was going on, like
magazines and stuff were reporting on it, right like it was not about it
because you know, it's like you know, Sega had, you know,
kind of played its hand the turbographics. The PC engine was out there with
similar technology. It was the sort of thing you looked at and so like,
well, naturally they're gonna they've got this connector on the bottom, like
this is where everyone's going, They'll have to do this. So just kind
of in the context of history, this isn't something where years later everybody heard
about this deal that fell through, and they're like, oh, that would
have been crazy if that had happened, Like people were expecting it at the
time to come out. Yeah, you would start to see like artist rendition
of this such as us thing. Then the everything got a little muddy around
the time because like what had happened is like they were doing a deal with
Sony, they ended up doing a deal with Phillips that also didn't produce anything.
Uh, And then that deal with Phillips is what then allowed Phillips,
who produced went on to produce the CDI, to then use some of Nintendo's
characters in those fucking awful CDI games. Oh right, yes, like link
stuff, Yeah, the wand of gamble On and with the Hands of Fate
or whatever it is, that fucking Hotel Mario. Like there was some real
fucked up things. Yeah. So I guess, because what is it really,
I guess the story is I think I have this in the right order.
That relations between Nintendo and Sony soured, so Nintendo went to Phillips,
and then that ended up not making any sense either because at that point they're
probably too late in this nest cycled for them to even produce anything in a
timely fashion. Kind of probably just a historical curiosity at this point. But
Sony and Phillips were the two companies that had invented the CD, yeah,
the compact disc. Like, they were the two companies, so you can
kind of see one incident. It would be like, oh, let's go
with one or the other that made this thing. Yeah, I guess I
take it for granted now that the Sony PlayStation is a thing, But like
back then, Sony and Phillips were kind of direct competitors, and it could
very easily have been like when both of them got shut out from Nintendo,
Phillips made their CDI and Sony made their PlayStation. Yeah, there's no reason
to think that. You know, we could be talking about the Phillips CDI
right four now. Like it was like thinking back to that era, like
it was really weird to think about Sony making a video game console because they
were they were the people that made VCRs. As weird as Microsoft making one,
Yeah, totally, Like it was like, no, they make the
Walkman, they don't make video games, right, And it was at the
time, like so you know, this was when multi media was happening.
This is when mist was the biggest game in the world and in Carta and
Carda was the biggest game in the world. Uh, you know, you
had the three d O, you had like these expensive CD based systems,
like the CDI getting out there, the CDTV, which was like an Amiga
just consolized, and the CD thirty two, which was also another version of
that kind of and so like it made sense in a way when you started
like so I started hearing like a Sony is getting into the video game business,
like for real. I was working in a magazine at the time,
and someone who worked there was was like, Hey, so Sony's getting in
with something. Do you want to meet with them? Like maybe we could
figure something out, Like they aren't. They aren't meeting with press, Like
that's it's they they're not quite sure what they're doing yet, but they're doing
something. Like I could probably hook you up with the guy over there who
was like their game guy. And I was like absolutely, But then we
all got laid off in the magazine shutdown before any of that stuff got set
up. Damn. But at the time, like you heard about that,
and I was like, yeah, I guess man, the fucking three dos
A shit show Phillips is making garbage over here, Like it's you know,
like all this shit sucks. Like the idea of Sony making a console,
You're like, that's gonna be fucking trapped. Yeah, yeah, because you
figured it would basically be a VCR or you know, like that quality of
propect, it would be really good at playing like this the CD based systems
of the era we're pumping out ship. Nobody had done good video games on
CDs at the time. Well, I mean they were different types of games.
Well they were. They were more FMV based, they were more multimedia.
It was like, you know, here's a shitty point and click adventure
game that has these kind of video transitions from thing to the next. Like
I felt about Missed. The way some of these assholes feel about Gone Home
now is that mist was so super popular and such a fucked up thing that
I could look at it and go like, that's that's if that's the direction
the video games are going in, Like that's fuck because these games are bad
and it ended up being fine, as it will this time as well.
But uh, at the time, you you look at it and go like,
man, this is like this is all these things are shit, why
all these you know, you saw it as non video game companies encroaching on
video game territory with garbage. You're like, okay, well that's that's not
we could do that. Yeah, I got it xaty Cam Yeah totally.
Uh. And so there was no reason to believe that Sony would have anything
that was worth the fuck at all. Yeah. Also, my impression was
always that, like there was a fair amount of peak on Sony's part when
that whole thing fell through, and that was kind of why they threw as
much muscle behind their effort as they did. They have been making software like
Sony Image Software, Systed prior to that, Like, they had been making
games right for a little bit, and it was just like this thing fell
apart because pull the plug, right, I think they did. They letn
Yeah right, so like it I think I feel like I remember reading that,
like people at Sony were very displeased about that, and they were like,
well, fuck you, we're doing ourselves then, yeah, exactly.
Uh. That that's that is my understanding of it as well. And so
it kind of led to them developing the PlayStation, yes, and and you
know, making very different choices than Sega was making with a Saturn at the
time, but you know, like making a system that was competitive in that
race and that didn't fall into that kind of broader multimedia category, like you
weren't looking at like I have a I have a CD TV disc that is
you'd love, It's awesome. It's called Advanced Military Systems. It's just a
fucking encyclopedia where it's like stock music and a guy talking to you about fucking
missile systems on aircraft carriers. It's the toolest. It is exactly that,
uh, you know, and it was stuff like that. You're just like
like half assed, like visual encyclopedias and then games that weren't much better than
the visual encyclopedias, and then you occasionally you get something that resembled a real
game, like a platform or something like that, but then you realize,
like, oh, this controller is terrible. Yeah, I'm getting the three
D it upside down right, understand the three D O falls into that camp
too. Yeah, but you know, like the to Sony's credit and like
ken Kuaggi's credit, they rightly saw that the future video games with three D
graphics. It wasn't CD ROM you know, It's like they had a CD
ROM because you had two at the time. But like they were storage but
they were forward thinking enough. Like the whole you know, the whole story
about the Saturn is they built it around two D and then when they realized
what they were up against, they were like, oh fuck, what are
we gonna do? And they like doubled the CPUs in there or whatever,
but that didn't help very much. Yeah, yeah, whereas like like behind,
like you know, I remember the first time I walked into a circuit
City and saw that t Rex demo running on, like the demo PlayStation unit
there, and I was just like, holy fuck, this is the future.
It was the the you know, whatever the E three it was or
whatever, the CS it was. That like the PlayStation was out in Japan
or just about out in Japan, and then like Sega was showing the Saturn
real big. But then there was some third party controller manufacturer that had a
fucking PlayStation off to the side, and we just sat there and played toshndon
for three days straight. It's crazy looking at the coolest game in the world,
right, And like looking back, like the FS one has not aged
super well visually, no, but at the time, like it was just
like you fucking couldn't believe what you were seeing on a TV. Yeah,
the idea that it was a console that was coming out, and you looked
at it and then looked at the stuff on the Saturn. You were just
like, man, the Saturn, like even right then and there before any
of it, any of it was in stores, or maybe that was actually
the might have been the year of the Saturn and hit stores. I don't
know, it's all hazy. The years get hazy for me. Sorry,
but you definitely looked at that ship and said, fucking Sega is fucked,
Like none of this ship's even out in this country yet and they are fucked,
which made it really interesting. And it's it's where I mean, we
talked about it a bit last week, but it's where the Sega fans got
fucking rough, you know, once the Saturn came out, and you were
like, Okay, these games are not as good, Like technically the two
D stuff is better, and that's great. I like fighting games too,
but let's not kid ourselves. And you had these people that were living in
this alternate world where they were like, no, fuck you. The Saturn
is the system about a game called nights. Yeah, exactly. That is
a perfect example, like people that would fucking go to bat for fucking nights.
Yeah. Uh, that controller was pretty good as the first like analog.
Yeah yeah, I know is for for what it was. The controller
was not the problem with Knights, I know. All of this is to
say that as much as we thought that that Nintendo Sony thing was just like
kind of an artifact of history, somebody found one. What what? A
Nintendo PlayStation has been discovered one of the rooms off to the side of Tuton
Commons Tomb basically like basically was found in the guy's attic more or less wow,
common attic. Hang on, pull up the guy's name here real fast,
Dan and Diebold or de Bold. He was the guy who found it,
but it was actually his father, Terry, who was in possession of
it. Oh these names sounds super familiar. Yeah yeah, keep talking.
Well, wait to make a very long story short, Terry Diebold had worked
as a maintenance guy at a company that Sorry, I'm trying to parse the
history here. He worked as a maintenance guy at a company, the president
of which used to be the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Way back when
it is. Absolutely. He's also a physicist and best selling novelist in addition
to those other things. But but yeah, that was like Sony Interactive Entertainment
was like the precursor to Sony Computer Entertainment. Yeah, that's how I understand
it. So he would have been around when all that prototyping and nincendo stuff
is going on, and best as I can tell, a bunch of junk
made it from sie over to this new company that'll off all off some yeah,
founded or left there. Yeah. Uh. And then when that company
went bankrupt in two thousand and nine, Terry Diebold was told to clean out
a bunch of stuff and throw a bunch of things away and found a box
in like the basement or a storage area of this company that had this thing
in it. Yeah, and just decided to grab it instead of throwing it
out. And then his son found it and posted a photo on Reddit over
the weekend, and everybody lost their mind. Wow, I'm looking at it
right now. Yeah, isn't it crazy? He's posted some video of it
since that makes it seem like it is legit. Yeah, it seems if
it's fake, it's super elaborate, really good fake. Yeah, that that
that controller, which is literally just a super Famicom controller, but it has
a PlayStation logo on it is so crazy, Like it blows my mind that
they got to the point of having the logo designed and everything. It's not
even it's not the it's not quite the exact font. Yeah, it's yeah,
there are some differences, but they close. Like yeah, it's not
like you know, it's not like prototype zero zero one or something that's like
here is the more or less a PlayStation Alowe, it's it's it's white plastic
like the Super Inteescent. It has yellowed in just the same Sony PlayStation on
it. Yep, this is wild. Yeah, it's insane. He doesn't
happen. He does not have a power adapter for it, but he says
he's so he says he's looking into getting one, although that scares me.
He basically just says, like I'm gonna go try to buy a power adapter.
No, man, you need to talk like an electrical engineers, like
I don't want to blow this thing up, Like, do not try to
power that thing on without Steve Lynn present, Lease, what do you think
this thing is worth? I mean, it's it's a one of a con
you know, like the numbers of these were probably destroyed. The story I
was reading said that they had two hundred prototypes produced and that Sony ordered them
all destroyed. So some presumably some of them survived. Yeah, this may
not be the only one in the world, but it's probably close. Yeah,
more than that, probably, Yeah, uh, because I mean and
rare cartridges go for tens of thousands. Yeah. Right, so he's got
he's got one cartridge and one CD that we're with it, and he doesn't
know what are on them obviously because he has booted the thing up. Yet
there could be like test software to become the end of et Like Steve Lynn
in a radiation students it's coming there with an electrical engineer and one of those
like you know the tanks with the gloves that are medically sealed. Yep,
take it into a clean room. Dustin Hoffman. Yeah, it's a crazy
find. Like, whoever thought that they would see one of these things?
Nobody? Yeah, it's there's something there's something like almost mythological to me about
consoles that never came out. Yeah, like them two them two, the
three do successor has always been the thing to me it was like that thing
almost came to market, but not quite like they made it, but it
never got sold. There was the and people have those like Steve Steve.
Yeah, two dev kids got out there, and you know, just like
this is technically a dev kid right right, it's just form just way more
rare and more legendary. Yeah, there's other stuff out there like that.
Did the Phantom ever come out? The machine didn't like the board, Yeah,
but the fan was just kind of a PC anyway. It technically wasn't
anything on its own. But but I think for me, the thing,
the thing layered on top of everything else about this is just the sort of
you know, the baller status of these two companies, you know Joe,
like two of the biggest names in the history video games. It got together
and almost made a thing, and it actually exists. I've seen so many
different like prototype mock ups of that, like actual illustrations of what this is
going to be like, and to find out that it actually exists, I
mean, I knew that there had to be something, but you know,
I assumed it was just going to be like in a you know, big
black box, right that was not like something not something that looks more or
less like what they would have sold. Yeah, I mean, there's other
stuff out there that never came out. Was, oh, the Conics Multi
System, That's what I was thinking of. It's like it was a British
produced console that I think it was supposed to be around the PS one era.
Well, but that got some coverage but never came out. Nothing that
so encapsulates like or is so pivotal in the modern right or the history of
videos, like if if that deal had gone through physical object like this,
like if that thing had come out, like who could say what the game
landscape would look like? These exactly if if Nintendo had embraced CD technology early
on and it had been successful enough that they built it into their future consoles
like you would have had like Final Fantasy seven would have stayed assisted on a
Nintendo would have remained a Nintendo franchise, wouldn't have been three D though.
I mean that's probably because that's what Square wanted to do, like they remember,
like the remember Square was doing tests on like SGI derived like in sixty
four stuff before they moved over the PlayStation. They clearly wanted to go in
that direction. But not only that, but Nintendo would have been working with
like Kutaragi and those other minds that Sony that made the PlayStation to happen,
you know, like right, like it could have just remained an intento versus
saga thing if if Sony had liked that partnership and kept going with it.
Yeah, and then you know, like the Sony's success like had to at
least if played a role in Microsoft getting in. Like looking at it,
go like, well, you know, if someone someone has entered this space
recently enough that we feel we can make a dent too. And it's not
to say that they would have never gotten in if Sony hadn't. You know,
it's it's not overstate things, but like certainly all of these things would
play some kind of Yeah, it's definitely one of those like it's it's you
could not predict it. Yeah, you could not predict what video games would
look like if if this stuff had gone had come to pass, Yeah,
totally. So Yeah, that's that's why this thing is so exciting. Uh
and I hope they successfully managed to turn it on at some point. Yeah,
I would love to just see the boot up sequence, Like what what
the fucks that thing look like? What does it do? Yeh, God,
there's some some something on there, something that looks like a video game
just that far along, like design wise, because you know, like the
Sagas, he bolted extra computing stuff onto this Genesis. You know, it
had scaling and rotation and stuff. It wasn't just a CD ROM. It
made it a more powerful system. So if they had done something similar to
the super nes like who knows what that thing could have done? Eight graphics,
yeah, modate, modate man. Oh yeah, it's it's crazy to
think about that thing. Yeah, showing up, It's it's really cool.
There's not a lot else to say, Like, you know, he says,
he's, like I said, he's gonna try to get some power for
it. He's got like a friend in somewhere that's got a retro game shop.
He's gonna get to look at it. He said something about his dad's
selling it. Who knows where this thing is gonna go? Or I suspect
that, you know, if he can, he should. He should actually
not do anything with that ship and just sell it. I think so to
someone who could seriously and appreciate it and take care of it. Send that
thing in, get it grated, right, Yeah, get that CD in
cased in plastic. Yeah, yeah, it's he just takes it to Vegas,
just sets it on black. Yeah, it's cool. It's super cool.
Yeah, I'm really excited to see something else hopefully come out of that.
Yeah. Yeah, it'd be nice to know like who had those kits,
like who was working with it, Like had it gone out to any
third parties in a meaningful way, like you would assume those are the ones
that probably got returned you you would think, yeah, totally, totally,
But you would think that like the software end of that stuff would have like
people would talk about it a little more freely now like they have Well you
know, this was in development here and this is what it looked like,
and obviously it never came to pass. But here's you know, you would
think some footage of a game or something like that. We're definitely getting the
point where that stuff has been long enough ago that era of games that people
feel a lot more at liberty to Like did I did I tell you about
that story Gret Kirko told on his Twitter about Diddy Kong Racing being an RC
pro am game. Yeah, like you could go find his tweets. This
was only a week or two ago, but he went into very specific detail
about they were doing what was it. I think they were doing Bajoca Zoie
at the time, and it was like, you know, it was a
big thing for Nintendo and they showed it at D three and they had met
with Howard Lincoln who said, this game fucking has to come out by Christmas,
and they knew there was absolutely no way that was going to happen.
Yeah, so this RC pro Am game that was being worked on got a
bunch of Donkey Kong stuff slapped into it like existing assets, just like if
we could finish it. Well this I don't know where the models and stuff
came from, but they basically turned in rcpro Am game into Diddy Kong Racing
so they would have that game for holiday because Banjo was not gonna make it.
Oh because okay, Like they basically did that to get a get a
sort of franchised like character game out for the holiday because they didn't have Banjo,
like you can. You know. He obviously goes into more detail on
his Twitter if you go back and find those tweets, but it's just it's
awesome that people and Curb Hope tweet of the week. It's it's just whatever.
There's books, you know, there's books about the console Wars and stuff
from that era also out at this point, like movies on the way people
are really yeah, they're making two movies about the console war book really yeah,
one when a documentary, one a fictionalize like huh, who's who's gonna
play Tom Kleinski, Tom Klenski will, Yeah, that'd be the best.
Yeah, It's it's super cool to see stories and hardware and all kinds of
ship coming out of that era. Yeah, because that was kind of that
was kind of when everything changed. Yeah, definitely onto somewhat more pedestrian news.
Minecraft Windows ten Edition, Yeah, I have one question. Okay,
why because they can h So this this is something that so I yeah,
I read through this when they announced it. It's it's a it'll launch in
beta alongside Windows ten so end of this month. Uh, and it's gonna
be like Minecraft Pocket Edition is or like the console versions or something like that
where kind of will connect to its own stuff and be it's not meant as
a replaced meant for the existing So this does not interface with the Java version
like that there. Don't think it will, Okay, but I don't know.
I don't know, because that's the thing. All the the mods,
all the crazy stuff is written for yeah. Yeah, and and the other
editions are a little more closed, you know, obviously, you know,
a console version of Minecraft. These you know, pocket edition versions of Minecraft
are gonna be a little little a little more close. So this will connect
to Pocket Edition, which I guess exists on like Windows Phone and some other
stuff. It'll add touch support for you're playing on the surface or something like
that, you know, taking advantage of Windows ten. It will have Xbox
Live support to will let eight players collect together that way for like that kind
of matchmaking type stuff. And I don't know if that means it will have
limitations, you know, you think about like I think Pocket Edition would traditionally
work in a smaller than even the console Minecraft games would work in a smaller
version of the world than regular Minecraft, which is theoretically you just go and
uh yeah, I mean, it just seems like a thing that they are
making to have a version of Minecraft in the Windows Store, which is how
you'll get it, And if you if you own existing PC Minecraft, you'll
get this free Okay, Like I can see the touch screen control, you
know, being like a major factor for you know, them bringing the pocket
version. I guess yeah. Other than that, I don't I don't understand
why. Well yeah, I guess yeah, I don't really. I mean,
you know, freeing themselves from Java probably would make help them make something
a little more robust if they if they got away from that a little bit.
But at the same time, like so now I have to imagine that
like the Hollow Lens Minecraft thing I was playing, probably was that this version
of the game. Yeah, because Hollow Lens is a Windows ten device,
and yeah, it's it's strange, there's so many versions of that game out
there. I saw some I saw some Minecraft fans that were pretty frustrated by
this news in a in a very like of course Microsoft would do this sort
of way. Why because it is kind of a close platform. It's one
of those things where like the announcement didn't come with much in the way of
here's what we're doing to actual real Minecraft, and so the fear is that
you know, eventually, yeah, eventually they just phase that thing out and
then here's this closed off, actually technically less capable Minecraft game. That we're
now happy to sell you. Well, that was you know that, like
the fury over that stuff was a big part of why not. She said,
he sold the damn company like he's you know, he said the final
straw was like that that issue where he stopped paid mods from happening and got
so much like hatred over it that he was just like, I'm I can't
deal with this anymore. Yeah, and that's when he got He straight up
said that was the point that I got serious about selling the company. Uh,
people like their Minecraft. They have strong opinions about their mindcraft. Yeah,
it's at some point that Hassle's just not worth it. Yeah, well
it actually apparently it's worth it quite a lot. But who knows what Microsoft's
long term plans are for that property? Though? Something shady? I'll bet
think I crow Craft? I mean I would who knows? Man, Like,
you know, what do they come back with like smaller blocks so you
can make more refined stuff? Is it just like vauxhall Craft at some point?
Okay? Maybe I don't know, But do you ever make a sequel
to Minecraft? Sure? I mean, like what if this had been Minecraft
too? I think it like, well that that would be disappointing because this
is like it's just less you know, you know, but I think there's
probably something to be said for like, Okay, here's what people like to
do in Minecraft. Here are the limitations we're facing due to decisions that were
made about Minecraft years ago. How do we free ourselves from those decisions to
enable the game to go on to greater heights? Sure, Like, that's
why you make That's why you refactory. That's why you make a sequel to
that thing, is because at some point you have to go like, okay,
like we can't do much more with it, so we have to make
some major changes under the hood in order to get this thing, you know,
moving forward again. Guess so, I guess I've I've come to think
of Minecraft as or like I've raced that Minecraft as digital Lego analogy. Yeah,
yeah, so thoroughly at this point that like like you would never have
Lego two, you know, like there are all kinds of weird permutations on
Lego. Lego is just Lego, that's true, you know what I mean,
Like, you don't iterate a sequel on the Minecraft. You just do
a bunch of weird, random offshoot stuff with it. Totally. Yeah,
but at some point, like if you want to keep core Minecraft moving forward,
like I just wonder, you know, and I'm no fucking programmer,
Like I couldn't tell you, like, you know what what struggles they face
by having that thing to be based in Java? But that thing is kind
of a they think could be more efficient. I think that's the the impression
I get Java is very efficient, Jeff as a former programmer. Yeah,
no, it's not. I feel like I see nothing but complaints about the
javaness of that client. Yeah. So if they were able to expense reports
software runs in jobs, yes, and it's a piece of fucking shit about
Minecraft. Uh yeah, man, you know, at some point it probably
makes sense, like if you really want to move forward, it's it's it's
even it's not even necessarily about I mean, of course it is about,
you know, hey, let's come up with another product to sell by if
you were to make a sequel to Minecraft or another another Minecraft. But I
think they're they're probably also some real benefits to that approach that would free them
from that lego. But if you wanted to make a sequel to a game
as humongous as Minecraft, you would want to give new architecture and programming and
software a shot on something a little like this. First. Yeah, maybe,
I mean, you know, they've they've i mean, Minecraft has been
produced and reproduced in a zillion different environments, not in job you know,
console versions, phone versions, all this other stuff. So uh, they've
definitely gotten used to putting that stuff other places. Yeah. I don't know,
it's it's like to me, it's like frustrating because it's just like this
legacy that Microsoft has of launching OSS with fucking games that only run on that
OS. Yep. I just think that sucks. Yep, it's just a
shitty look every time, you're just like, you don't. I mean,
what was the most endfamous one was like Halo two and Vista, right,
yeah, yeah, No, it won't run on course not It's impossible except
for like fucking two days afterwards when they fucking cobble that ship together and made
it ran and ran just fine on older versions of Windows. And they do
that with direct x every time. Yeah, yeah, as well, you
know, and this is something that will be a Windows Store app. I
don't even necessarily think that there's anything in the architecture that would prevent it from
running on older versions of Windows. It's just that older versions of Windows won't
connect to the Windows ten store right right, So yeah, they'll make for
a hell of a thumbnail on their store. I guess, I guess,
Payne. What are they calling those? I don't know, and I don't
know, but you know, the thing I say is like, at least
it's free to existing owners, like they didn't necessarily have to do that because
those Windows for that point. Sure, for that matter, it's I like
Windows ten. Yeah, looking forward to trying it. It's almost out.
Yep, it's later to the month, three weeks away. I mean,
you could just install it right now if you want. Not ready, No,
not ready yet? Yeah I am. It means a new computer wipe
and I like doing that. Yeah yeah, yeah, I'd not wipe mine.
Yeah. I hear the actual what do they call it? Like an
in place upgrade? Is it? Yeah? Terminology? Like I hear,
the upgrade process to ten is a little smoother. It's not quite as shitty
as it used to be. Install I mean, you good excuse for me
to kind of but you're right clean. I did it months ago, so
you know, who knows how it's changed since then, but yeah, it's
been It was smooth then, Yeah, And it was the first time that
they said. I think they because when they did Windows eight betas and stuff,
it was very much like, hey, you're not gonna be able to
upgrade the final from this, you will have to wipe Uh well that's right.
Yeah, And then they're always like registry hacks and fucked up shit you
could do to actually do an in place upgrade, and then doing that broke
a bunch of fucking apps and a bunch of other weird stuff along the way,
like the camera app doesn't work anymore. But I'd never use that shit
anyways, so who cares? Uh, same deal for eight point one,
it was like they didn't want you to upgrade, but I did it.
Uh, And actually installing the Windows ten stuff actually fixed all the weird problems
I was once. So uh yeah that that OS has been fine. Good.
So I don't know it's the all the video card well, I don't
know. In video drivers have been. They've been at least for Windows.
Yeah, drivers are a little spotty until right up, Well they're not at
leased. The thing is, they're not anymore like they're releasing their in sync
with the existing uh, all other versions of Windows Drivers like that. It's
all just coming out. They even even on the videos side, they just
have the in the drop down now Windows ten so you can just go pick
them and get them. Cool. But it's been it's been fine. It's
good to hear. Uh. That's that Minecraft news came out of mind con
more like mine con am I right? Damn yeah? Yeah that happened in
London, wasn't it. Yeah, I think over the weekend, says fourth
of July. I quite like going to London for mine, I guess.
So. Telltale also announced their Minecraft Adventure game there. They had already announced
it. This is just this well they anounced they were doing trailer. Yeah.
I don't think they had Minecraft Story. Yeah. I don't think they'd
put the name out or anything. Yeah, the name of okay, I
have the name was new to me, but the name showed up somewhere.
Okay they called Minecraft Story made. Yeah, that's the name of That was
the first I had heard of that. Wow. Yeah, same here.
I mostly pulled this story because of the cast. They got Patton Oswalt excellent,
they got Pee Wee Herman, they got Stimpy Billy West real Stimpy,
Brian Possane, isn't it Sonoma's own Brian Possan, Yeah, Scott Porter,
okay, yeah, Jason Street of Friday Night Lights. I actually don't know
who that is. I have Corey Feldman, anyone, Yeah, the surviving
Corey what is He's been doing a lot of voice work. Yeah, it's
a tell tale adventure, guest, It's a tell tale venture, like the
trailers says right there, like make your own story, like your decide I
would go, you know, like it's it's one of those It looks cool,
like I there's something to the the idea of like these characters animating and
talking and doing stuff in that Minecraft framework. Are there characters? There are?
Now? For He's Orange, but you don't even play as Steve the
Minecraft Guy. But I have to imagine you will run into him at some
point. You play Jesse the Minecraft Guy. Uh? Did you play Jesse?
Voiced my pat and Oswald member of the legendary Order of the Stone.
I don't know the Order of the very best of what they do warrior,
Redstone, engineer, griefer, and architect. I assume those are roles that
mean something to Minecraft players. I mean, no, they're just kind of
pretty standard. Redstone Okay, red Stone is the one the red Stone engineer,
I mean not either. The Redstone is the kind of mechanically reactive stuff
in Minecraft. Right, Yeah, I don't know. That's cool. Like
I've always wanted them to have kind of a blank slate, you know,
like a completely open canvas to work with. We'll see, I thought it.
I do like the idea that one of the players is just or one
of the characters is a griefer, though that that implies that you will have
the decision just like do you want to go burn this other players ship down
and what? Sure? And the answer is always yes, that sounds fun,
and then player will remember what you've chosen. Uh, just you know,
seeing the animation play out in the trailer, it kind of reminded me
of that World of Warcraft South Park episode where they did a bunch of custom
animation with World of Warcraft models, you know, animated their mouths and do
stuff like there's there's something novel about seeing like video game characters like with this
kind of bespoke animation that they tell a story with. I don't know that's
been every other Telltale game that they've done thought character. Yeah, but you
know it's it's a little different when they take it from an existing thing,
sure and make them do stuff they kind of weren't designed to do. Anyway,
that's happening seventy eighth Telltale project. Yeah, they're working out there.
She's really getting it done. Uh you know what else is happening? Another
concept Kickstarter? But she didn't see that one coming, only only like what
they're fourth third? Well there's mighty number nine. What else is there were
two for Mighty number nine? Remember what was the second one? They sought
additional funding sometime last year for like voice work and stuff. Remember. Okay,
that's this is starting to sound familiar again. They are doing they just
so. They just launched another Kickstarter on I think it was on Friday for
a game called red ash Ash, which is Mega Man Legends. Yea,
oh I did see this. Yeah, they kept using like legends and yes,
like okay. Also they've got several like notable names from the MegaMan Legends
team. Okay doing this thing. It's like there's an anime studio involved.
Also, isn't there something Yes, some kind of hot collabo. Yes,
so I believe they're yes, they are separate kickstarters. Actually, so there's
a Kickstarter for this game, red Ash, there is a separate kickstarter running
concurrently for an animated film or series or something. Okay, oh wait,
I'm sorry. That second kickstarter is for a five minute animated episode for which
they are seeking one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a five minute Yes,
episode of a thing for a fucking that will is basically an ad for But
so they actually have they have built in stretch goals for that one. If
they make it to two point four eight million dollars, they will make it
into a full length animated movie. But their initial goal one hundred fifty thousand
dollars will get you a five minute short like an intro to the game.
Sure, that's I haven't even I haven't even run down the actual game kickstarter
yet, what the fuck? Which is not even for a full game.
It's eight hundred thousand dollars to produce a basically a play bowl prologue. No,
no, no, that's that's not how all all this just sounds like,
let's set our goal super low to make sure we get some money,
because if we set it really high and don't hit it, we get nothing.
And then the higher goes, the more games, we should probably be
honest with what we can actually make with it. Okay, so this prologue
shit at all? Yeah. For so for that, for that eight hundred
grand work for ground Zeros, I know it did. Yeah, but that
was Konami's money, not the audience's money. True. Uh. Yeah,
for that eight hundred grand they will make they will make this playable prelude called
the Calcannon Incident. Uh. And then they talk about and they say,
they say, uh that weather through additional funding, revenue from the sales of
that thing, or teaming up with the publisher. They have a story they
want to tell, etc. Legends. Yes, they have a story.
They'd need to finish because they left things hanging. And there there's a bunch
of crossover between this and Mighty number nine and terms of characters and etcetera,
etcetera, making their own universe. Okay, So Mighty number nine is MegaMan,
yes, and this is and Red ashes Mega Man Legends. How does
MegaMan Legend is different from MegaMan? It's a behind the back three D game.
It's got RPG ish, right. I never played those games. Yeah,
there's some RPG elements show, but yeah three D like over the shoulder
and symmetric person type stuff. Are you still shooting a little domed characters that
run around the ceiling. Yeah, Like, yeah, they do run around
the ceilings. Sometimes they're underwater, tron Bond, that's where she's from.
Also, this is kind of peripheral to this whole thing, but i'd also
remind you of that concept. Just announced a new Xbox One exclusive at three
Yeah, Recorps, which bitterally looks and sounds super cool. But also that
concept is not like a heavy lifting dev student. Yeah, like that's armature
is doing. Yeah, so actual video games that I wasn't clear on that
because I don't I don't know how big armature or concept are that, So
I don't know who is doing more on that thing. Maybe arms are staffed
up, maybe so leave that would be more like well staffing. If it's
a Microsoft published exclusive, then Microsoft dumping money into it so they could up
to make it if that's the case. But like comcept seems like the sort
of crew that comes up with your concept and then fucking passes it off to
someone else who makes it. So they're like a video game think tank.
Sure, that's that's how. That's how it's always made sense to me.
Like, I don't know, like eighty number nine, it's probably a different
sort of thing. But though they're not making mighty number nine, right,
I mean they're they partnered with someone for that too, even did they think
maybe right, I can't keep the stuff straight. Nope, I just think
I wonder why, like every everything that the co commcept name has been on
and it's been like stuff I look at like, no, thanks, I
don't know about that, Like like that was a Soul the Vita game.
That's not Monster Hunter. Oh so Soul Sacrifice, Yeah, that's the game
with the fucking book. Yes, yes, you tap it and it falls
over. Did not like the game? Yeah, I mean you know them
all four Capcom's big names out there and doing other stuff. But yeah,
but I just like this stuff that this this is the stuff that he is
pursuing. Well, setting aside whether you're personally interested in the game or not.
Like the way that they've kind of handled some of the Kickstarter stuff is
a little dodgy as opposed to fucking prologue hid No I feeling it finished the
ship. It's like the kickstarter stuff has been like especially with these kind of
like that had these like very passionate fan communities, like that stuff is getting
ugly, Like Mighty Number nine turned in a really weird way with a fan
base and some perceived slights, Like there was a petition out there for Shenmu
where they're like, you need to take there's this company got Awesome Japan that
is affiliated with the shen MoU kickstarter and they've done some other external stuff,
I guess, and be like, you need to remove these guys from the
project because they're not taking it seriously enough. It was like they were doing
a live stream Q and A or something with you Suzuki, and I didn't
see it, but I saw the petition to fucking remove them from the product.
You could see in you Suzuki's eyes that he was not This was not
how he wanted Move three DVD represented. It's like, fucking fuck off,
Wow, just put the money in or don't put the money in. People
wonder why we get tired of hearing about shin move it because of bullshit like
this. Yeah, man, it's all you're right. They there have been
some things around Mighty Number nine and elsewhere that is borderline creepy, really off
putting from those communities. I have no problems with Kickstarter as a thing.
It should exist, Like it's the thing that we always said that, like,
you know, people should be able to put their money where their mouth
is. But like the implication is that you put your money where the mouth
would go, so you could shut the fuck up. There's not there's not
an invitation to further exercise a developer on the project. But I'm in the
credits. Man, shit, he's got us there. Uh yeah. Kickstarter
should be great, and in a lot of cases I think it still is.
But like this stuff like the yeah, the launch kick starting a prologue,
that's a new one. It's not actually that new because even with Shenmu,
I think there was like this thing. I was like, well,
you know, we're only gonna get to get to make the game we want
to make if we hit ten million. No, like yeah, m it's
not enough that there's so many like episodic games. Yeah, you know,
it's like based on sales, maybe we'll finish this up at some point.
Well again, I I take this just to mean they weren't confident they could
actually hit the budget for a full game on this, so they set the
bar low, sure, yeah, to make sure they hit something. Maybe
that's better than saying like, we'll make the game and but it you know,
and then saying like, well it was only eight hundred grand, so
yeah, of course it's missing this stuff. Fuck you. You know.
Maybe maybe it's good then that they're being upfront and saying like, we'll make
a prologue for this much in a full game for this. Yeah, but
it seems like one of those things that like, you know, maybe Kickstarter
needs to like think about its policies some more for these kind of scaling products,
uh and and just have a cleaner way of surfacing. And that's I'm
not Yeah, I don't know. Well, I mean Kickstarter is very happy
to take a super hands off approach to all of this stuff, you know.
Well, I mean they have to be hands on at some level,
Like you know, they couldn't launch the shin move Kickstarter, Like this still
goes through some kind of process, but in terms of like culpability or whatever
when things fall through, they don't seem to give a shit. That's that's
all right there in the legal ease and stuff, And I think it has
to be that way. Yeah, but yeah, it shouldn't move up to
four point four worth eleven days to go. So I guess that's Wait,
what did blood Stained hit? I don't know right around there. I think
right four and a half might have hit five. It was so, I
mean, blood Stained was the highest earning video game Kickstarter, but it seems
like shin Move, especially when it gets you know, every Kickstarter gets a
big push at the end, Shin Move will definitely top then every one of
those things where it's like the people that think that, you know, them
putting more money into it is gonna result that game being better, They're like
they'll be like going back and going, well, we need to I need
to put more money into it. Yeah, to make sure. I stabbed
a guy stole some money off of him, and I'm doing it for the
game. As of as of Monday afternoon, Uh, red ashes At did
you look at it, Drew? I look at it before we came up
here, and it was I think it was a little over two hundred thousand,
like two twenty or something like that. So, and that's after early
four days, so not not exactly flying off shelves. Five point five million,
four blood stained. Okay, so Shinto has got a way to go,
But I would I would expect it to beat that. Yeah, I
would. I would think so. But we'll see what happens with this red
ash stuff, because it's not Oh wow, okay, that's that's gone up
a fair amount since we came up here. La On launched on the fourth,
Yes, like good day on the third, so like the entire United
States was off work basically that day, out outside and stuff. By the
end of the podcast, we might have a prologue, Jena, Okay,
sure, that's cool. I don't I can't tell if I would feel differently
about this if I, like had any stake in Mega Man Legends one way
or the other. But I consider myself a fan. But I want this
project to just be done and out. I don't want a little piece of
it. I don't know. I'm just I am long past like clamoring for
the things I loved as a kid to be resurrected in any way. Show
me some new stuff. Yeah, yeah, I guess. I guess you're
sort of right. And there's definitely some stuff that I would be interested in
seeing more of and and all that, But I think. I don't know.
I like to think I keep my expectations in check for that stuff.
Like that Transformers thing. Yeah, like that's the Oh, those are the
only Transformers. It's the only generation of Transformers I'm ever interested in seeing in
any form ever. That is terrible. But in terms of video game pedigree,
that thing is just a one off, you know. It's not like
there was some long history of great Transformers games in the past and now the
people who made those are coming back with Hadden handed Transformers. But it's like
it's gobots, Like this is just a character action game leader one, you
know. Talking about the Platinum game, Yes, yeah, Devastation. Also,
I am more than expecting that game to not be great. Also,
yes, probably, I'm keeping my expectations in check. I'm gonna play that
game for like an hour and go like, man, this looks amazing and
it's kind of whatever. They did such a great job of their last license
product. I have I hope that they're gonna some things which the best game
they've ever worked on so could have been. At the same time, like
you know, mad props to Platinum for making it happen. They're putting down
over there Oh yeah, sure, what have Platinum is making games? They
are getting work and they have turned to kickstarters zero times yet yet Yeah,
that's coming. No one buys any of these games both sides. Story,
it's gonna be like, you know, we have a lot of stories to
tell in the robot man with a sword genre that we haven't been able to
tell as of yet. And we've got some ideas. What if instead of
a sword, the robot man had a tractor trailer. Okay, strical,
instead of hitting people with the sword, he hit people with the tractor trailer.
No, I'm only interested in a robot man with a sword that fights
giant walking nuclear tanks. All right, Well that's that's where our interests diverge.
I'm kickstarter is rising this fall. Fuck. But in that case they
couldn't even get the property exactly. No, I mean like every other kickstart
I guess, yeah, just make it in everything but name Yeah, that's
all these things are. Oh man, video games got grim. Let's talk
about the Nizano PlayStation some more. Video games are beautiful, it's the business
that's always been grim. Speaking of the business video games, would you like
to hear more about some of those most recent shareholder call. Sure, yes,
this this ended up There was some stuff in this that was kind of
interesting. Yes, I do. I assume all public companies do this.
They post like the minutes of their shareholders stuff, because it's sometimes they'll just
post the audio. It's not necessarily like hey, here's the Q and A.
Right, but because they had they posted it translated into English. Yes,
they did post an English translation, but some of this stuff ends up
maybe getting a little lost in translating. So sure, I think some of
some of the Like, reading through that Q and A some parts of it,
you're like, so did okay, so did you look over the whole
thing, because I've just got Austin's story here in front of it. He
pulled out what he thought were the most salient passages. Yes, were they
just they kind of commented on, you know, whatever shareholders brought up as
concerns, uh, such as the future of well not the future of Randy
Johnson. Is a number getting retired? Okay? It literally addressed waiting this.
Yes, does he played for the maritors like well yeah, okay,
Well you know, like this was like its rose number in Japan, So
are you sure it's a good it was like, it is fucking crazy.
Maybe I should go read the full Q and A. That's amazing. Uh,
you know Club Nintendo was shutting down any day now, I think it
might actually has it actually happened, I think it might have happened. If
it hasn't happened already, it's like literally like a matter of hours or days
before it's gone. But they did talk about a kind of the sort of
successor to that. Wata made a comment, uh on what might follow that
up, and I'm just gonna read it. We understand the consume Oh you
know this has also followed from so basically the question was about Ninteno kind of
failing to discount digital games over time and stuff, you know, kind of
continuing to sell their games a full price in perpetuity. And they do that
for their on shelf games. Yes, they kind of price protect the ship.
They Yes, they sell their goods at a premium price. Iwata said,
we understand the consumers who buy many download versions may not be fully convinced
if all of these products cost more than the packaged versions. In the new
membership service that we are now developing to replace Club Nintendo, we're thinking about
providing a system where Nincano can give individual offers to each consumer. I'd like
to explain the details when we have everything in place for the new membership service,
which is targeted to launch this autumn. So that's not as far off
as I would have thought I would have assumed. I mean, this makes
it basically sound like a kind of a you know, a new customer loyalty
program. Yeah. Yeah, not that he kind of sidestep the question about
their broader pricing or their products, did really address that at all so much
as so much as making it sound like they would give discounts to people who
like buy a lot of stuff basically is how I read that. Yeah,
yeah, I mean I don't think they need to, Like, you know,
it'd be great if they did. But I think Nintendo keeps their games
up at full price for as long as they can for a reason, you
know, and that's that those games are typically of equality, they are of
a desirability, and they're not annualized in such a way that they get completely
obsoletized by a future game. So, like I this is kind of a
tangent, but I found myself on the digital foundry analysis for Super Mario three
D World over the weekend. Yeah, and they were just talk talking like
top to bottom about just like the fit and finish of the graphical treatment of
this game is just like unparalleled in the video game industry, Like they have
got an eye for quality and consistency that nobody else has and that and that
game hasn't been replaced by something else on the WU. So if you went
out and bottle WU right now, that is still one of the best is
still one of the best games for it. And so Nintendo is probably smart
to say, like, no, you're gonna pay us what we want for
it. I mean, they're the Disney of video games, right, like
they throw stuff back in the vault. There's way less competition on that platform
as well, because it's not like anyone else's shipping games. So yeah,
I think that they're they're right to do that. Yes, though maybe they
could benefit for some occasional sales, sure, but yeah, totally like a
loyalty program that like let's see you say, like, hey, you have
purchased the last five of these games, so we're gonna give you this one
for two dollars less. Yeah, right, I mean that's that's the downside.
At what point did they and just like, look, you know you'll
pay it. Any guys gonna miss those the goofy like the Nintendo rewards,
No, I stopped putting them in. I stopped even keeping up of that
ship. I got really good at entering them and then never picking anything because
I would look at it and you're like, oh, that was the other
thing. The rewards such a turn were terrible. Yeah. The only stuff
that was worth getting was the secret rewards that you would get at the end
of the year if you were like Gold status or or however those stuff works,
you know, like the little statuettes that they would make for people who
were in the top tier. But the stuff you could actually catch the coins
in for four was just like it's like, oh, hand towels, but
you can't get that or anywhere else. Original Ds cart holders. Yeah,
it's like fucking what stationary? I got a Mario calendar or something. Never
took it out of the packet and I was like, oh, right,
this fucking thing I got my girlfriend in the tote bag one year that she
loved, like that was the best, the last and best thing that I
got. And they did start giving away some like virtual console type games later
on, and that it was cool. The thing for me was that I
would put the codes in, but I would never go do the surveys they
wanted you to do to actually get all the coins. That was where it
broke down for me. Yeah, having to do that same survey over and
over. Let's see what else happened in this thing. Investors were really putting
it to them. They were turning the screws on them, wanting to do
Yeah, I give you money, bro. From from Austin's story here,
one investor began a question by stating that they quote have the impression that the
launches of the two systems and to know three d S and we you were
consecutive failures. Yeah, that's not I mean, that's just blunt. Yes,
yeah, basically if you're coming off the Wii, yeah right, yes,
although to be fair, like just about anything would look like a failure
after the Wei totally. But those things were failure coming at it from like
a logical kind of like, well that was an anomaly and so and so
they're coming at it from like this is my fucking money. But I mean,
I you know, the WUS is a failure by any objective standard.
Sure, Like that thing has sold like nine million units or something in three
years. I got fucking crazy. It's not a lot. No, the
PS four has done well over twice that in half the time. It's bad.
Yeah, But they raised this question in the context of the NX,
since this thing has been talked about publicly, and basically, you know,
straight up said that, hey, we hope you guys have a plan for
not letting that happen to the NX. Uh, And they kind of dodged
that question. I didn't really think that the answer they gave was especially relevant
to that. Like they emphasize that, you know, the fact that they
did turn the three DS around eventually. Yeah, like it's doing pretty well
now, but you know, it had a pretty bad launch. Remember the
ambassador program, Oh right, yeah, ten three games, the the like
very rapid certificate installed totally. Also the very rapid and permanent price drop on
that thing. Yeah, they dropped that price on the thing by like what
eighty bucks in the first year or something. That's huge. But you know
they talked about to be fair, like, you know, the we got
out to such an absurd number of people who had never even played video games
before that, they were able to you know, they were able to move
stuff like brain age and in ten dogs. Yeah, in quantities that were
just kind of unprecedented. Yeah. Yeah. Still like you would hope that
by expanding Nintendo's reach into that many households, you would have some trickle down
effect with your new comps, right right, Like yeah, it's it's it's
not fair to compare the We to the Wi you, but you would expect
a little bit. But I think, you know, the factor that I
think people forget is like the WE cycle, Like by the end of that,
no one was still pumped about their Wei. True, Yeah, you
know, like they all bought them and then didn't buy any games for them,
Like third parties that were like looking at the Nintendo's selling all these units
were going like, fuck man, this money to be made, and for
a while there was, and then all of a sudden, there very much
was not. And you know, no one was selling any units, not
a third parties, and they just they all abandoned the system immediately. Yeah,
and I think a lot of consumers did too. You know, you
saw that when the sales dropped off, people just calling like okay, like
I don't want to buy all this cheap motion crap, like the bolding is
good, Like that was it? You bought it, and you're like,
the boulding is good. Yeah, it's like the thing that they packed in
when the system was so good and a lot of people didn't feel the need
to get anything else. Yeah, And you know, there's a lot of
there's a lot of points of failure you can point to with the launch of
the WU Like I arguably sticking with the Wii name was bad because there was
a lot of sort of consumer confusion out there about what that thing even was.
You know, a lot of people thought the tablet was just an add
on for the Wii. Yeah, you could make which in an environment where
people were tired of the weed, they would be like, well, no,
yeah, nobody wanted to go buy a new thing for their Wii if
that's what they thought it was. But and you know, like you could,
I I would argue that, like they've done so little to justify that
tablet controller that like that thing in itself feels like a misstep to me,
Like even most of their games don't do a whole hell of a lot with
that second screen, Like it's great if you need to stream games off the
TV onto the tablet. Yeah, but you know that's not that's not enough
of a reason to base like so much of your R and D and your
manufacturing costs on that, on that gimmick. But whatever they're they're out there
talking about the successor to that thing, so they've clearly like in their minds,
they've already moved on. They're moving out. Well. Yeah, and
the stuff they say about the NX and this thing is is kind of interesting
because like some of it they get into kind of they get into that weird
old third pillar talk they used to have about the DS where they'd say like,
oh, like the DS was coming out and people would be like,
well, you know, it was just replacing the Game Boy Advance and we'll
know the GameCube. And then they'd be like, no, this is you
know, no, no, the Game Boy Advance is huge. We're putting
this thing out, it's totally its own thing. Well, of course we'll
support the GBA, and like that meant like, you know, yeah,
it'd be like another year of GBA games and then fucking whatever, and that's
got to be what they kind of bean here. Yeah, do you want
me to read this wat a quote. Yeah, I'm with Austin and I
don't fully understand this quote either. It's it's there's some pretty good this is
excuse me, this is I believe egg. Try and find the citation.
It has to be a water huddle, see it. Yes here, Yes,
I will not share details on NX today, but with regard to the
launch of the Nis three DS and we you not necessarily having progressed well and
not acquiring sufficient support from software publishers, we intend to offer NX through a
Nintendo like solution. Thank you for understanding that we are making various considerations and
preparations in order to avoid what happened with the previous generations, like the Nintendo
like solution is the problem with previous generations? Right? Yeah? You know,
yeah, I mean I think the question was kind of about, like,
hey, you have no third party support, like what the fuck?
Jeff, please understand. Yes, thank you for understanding, and yeah,
like you know, unless this thing, like the realities of that stuff,
It's always going to come down to, is this console on par with these
other platforms so that I can make one game and poured it multiple places.
And if the answer is not, yes, then they're the outlier and no
one cares. It's not worth it, especially given Nintendo's track record for supporting
third parties. Yeah, and and all that sort of stuff, like it's
just it's just not worth it. You had plenty of developers out there saying
like, oh, yeah, we're sending our fucking wi you gets back.
And that was like around the launch of the WU Yeah, he was like,
hey, we shipped some launch games. I think we're done here,
or like what was it, Epic wrap it up? Like Epic was out
there saying they wouldn't work on and WEU version of Unreal four right, and
stuff like That's just the interest wasn't there, you know, and then the
hard work, you know, the Parker wasn't necessarily there. What was it
like during the week for me to remember, like third party support that Gigantic
game, we made a ton of money, Like two K made a bunch
of money with like their mini game collection, their motion collection, and there
was kind of a boom period around some of that stuff. So you had
a there were there were a lot of third party games and kind of the
front half of the life cycle and then it's kind of all tapered off.
To be fair, there was a nearnest effort to make some original games.
It wasn't all just blocks came out, but there's stuff, there's third there
are a third party. Was that game where you played a spider Dangerous Creatures?
Yeah, Deadly Creatures? Yeah, Deadly Creatures like that? You know,
there were there were a few original games, but yeah, that stuff
you read steel like, there was stuff that that came along. Yeah,
but that that stuff dried up very quickly. Yeah, And and there were
people that were able to turn a profit. There were publishers. They were
able to turn a profit on we software for a pretty specific period of time.
But then yeah, like as that kind of mainstream audience that all bought
the Wii started to move on when they realized like this is not bowling,
Like, all the third parties went away too. At the same time,
there were like three to five first party Nintendo games on the Wii that sold
like fucking unthinkable numbers of copies. So it was like, I think Mario
Kart was a seven is the one on the Wii? Yeah, whatever,
the Mario Kart was on the Wei sold something like thirty or thirty five million
copies, like it's fucking unthinkable. Yeah, so that's bigger than still ended
up being an incredibly lucrative thing for them. Yeah, but nobody else could
nobody else could ride that ride that Wave seven was on the DS. I
think yeah, you're right, Yeah, you're right. I think it was
just mart Kart. Yeah yeah, yeah, you're right, that is true.
Yeah, so I think you're right. Like it may come down to
ease of development. Like, forget your sales numbers, Nintendo, I don't
care what this thing does if you don't make your system easy to develop on
and for me to port my other steps and I'm already making for the PS
four. Yeah, Like no one has the resources to make exclusive games for
a Nintendo platform anymore, and like the return is not there, or even
making a unique version that is, like you know, if that thing was
less powerful or whatever, Right, Like nobody, nobody was willing to do
even the work to bust down their assets and like reduce the scale of their
games to get them on the weekend. You're still games coming to the three
sixty and p s three. They're not coming to the WU, even though
they're kind of in the same wheelhouse, right, you know, like Wrestling
will come out this year on old platform. So does it seem like it
seem like a safe assumption? Do you guys that the n X will be
roughly on par with the other two consoles, like Horsepower Wise, it has
to be right, I don't think so. God, what what else would
it be? They would have to be there. I think those things are
not even that far ahead of the WEIU to the point that it's true,
But it doesn't matter. That's the thing. I think the Nintendo like solution
is to make a great place to play Nintendo's games and fuck everything else.
They can give lip service all day long about a third party support and all
the other ship and like you know, it'll make sense for like Skylanders to
come over because we there we Skewed does really well. There's still I think
new Skylanders. I think it is actually still coming out on the fucking Wei
as well as the Wu y. That's impressive. I could be wrong,
but I'm pretty sure that they everywhere they've got that Amibo deal. They're clearly
invested in that platform. But that's not that's what that's WEU. That's not
WEE anyway, Like it just doesn't Nintendo. If Nintendo cared about this stuff,
they would have solved it by now. They would have made strides,
they would have tried to do something differently. But all they need to do
is to make a great place, a great like reasonably affordable place to play
Nintendo's games done, and that will bring enough people in for them to keep
the lights on and keep going. If they if they care so much about
this other stuff that they need to get into the market in a bigger way
and increase their market share and all other stuff, which you know that's a
business concern and all that sort of stuff, then yeah, then at that
point it's like, Okay, it makes sense to have an architecture that's similar
to the other platforms so that it can be easy to put games everywhere,
and then they'll have their unique hook that hopefully someone will take advantage of,
but no one ever will even Nintendo probably won't sure take great you know,
make great use of some of that stuff. I think it makes more sense
for the NX to be a total side step of the console business as it
stands today and be something totally different, just like control wise or just experience
probably, you know, I think that like you know, the notion of
like, hey, what if this thing was the next hand held and the
next console, you know, and was powered appropriately to make sense. You
know, yeah, if it was like okay, well you know, hey,
it's a it's a it's a handheld that you can dock and play these
games here too, maybe you know, potentially has hooks into the noble stuff
they're doing with DNA. Yeah, you know it could. I mean DNA
is developing the next kind of Nintendo Network kind of replacement stuff too, So
there's you know, of course that stuff will come into play somewhere along the
line. But you know, like, yeah, what what is the NX
Like maybe maybe it could just be this hybrid. I think a lot of
people keep coming back to that because I think it makes sense for them.
It's the Nintendo experience, Yeah, because they've done well in the handheld space,
and then the consoles. You know, the WU kind of floundered,
like at some point, does it make sense for them to have two separate
platforms, split the development resources accordingly, and just have these like relatively confusing
experiences because like you look at the WU, it is a big three DS.
You know, it's a dual screen thing with touch screen. Yeah,
it's it is that, but no one cares. If you could suddenly play
all the three DS games on it, that'd be pretty awesome, absolutely,
But that's you know, and all the DS games all this other stuff that
you know, like if to have the software library and not have to squint
over handheld or something like that, I think that would be pretty rad.
It's also it's worth pointing out the three DS is significantly longer in the tooth
than the WEU at this point, and they haven't said anything about a successor
to that, right, so if it's all embodied in this one product,
that would kind of make sense. Yeah, I think it's it's the right
time for them to unify all of their resources behind one thing and say this
is the thing. If you want to play Nintendo's games, this is the
place to do it. And you know, ideally it would be something that
would solve, you know, for kind of their handheld market, and I'd
be in the TV market. The only they'll move away from that cheered format
though, well the only the only place where this diverges from their typical business
strategy is if they've always sold through the DS, Like all the handheld stuff
going all the way back to the Game Boy has been cheap and rugged,
you know, right, Like like look at the two DS. You know,
it's just a cheaper It's a cheaper that you could run over with a
car and it would still goa like it would go through the washing machine practically.
Like, So if they're bundling all this stuff in the one product,
it makes me wonder how they sell to that market of like parents that want
to get like a cheaper thing. You've got this great unit called the three
D. We have a system for you. It's called the right Yeah.
I mean it could be that thing is a rugged handheld that has a TV
out on it or a docking station that gives it some additional power to better
power the larger screen. Right. I just I feel like there's a certain
price point that a lot of parents are looking forward when they just want to
buy the thing that their kid can play the Pokemon on. Right. You
know, I don't know how that stuff shakes out. Maybe you can buy
it separately without the ducts. It's possible. Maybe there is some kind of
compartmentalized approach, and you know whatever, we're just speculating it. There's there's
nothing to say that that that's what it will be. But you know,
I think that like if you think about things in that way, a lot
of what they're saying starts to like fall in line with that sort of thinking.
Yeah, and you know, not to say it's the only way that
it makes sense, but I just think it's it's it's probably the smartest move
they could make right now. And when you start to think about you know,
like maybe these got debunked by now, but like the talk about uh,
you know, like hey it's an android thing, or hey it's arm
or you know, hey, it's like you know that stuff starts to make
sense. It doesn't, it does. What they're making doesn't need to be
a huge graphical powerhouse for them. And then the way you proves that,
yeah, stuff looks amazing, Like for the types of games that Nintendo makes,
they don't need they they're not really good at, but they're really good
at making things that look kind of timeless on the hardware they have totally.
So you know, if you I'm confident that like whatever they come up with,
like the software end of things, they'll be able to figure it out.
Trust Nintendo. That's what you're saying maybe, I mean, but also
the Nintendo in the grander scheme of like, you know, when we think
about the console business, like they just don't matter in the same way because
they've carved out their own thing. They're doing their own thing, and that's
totally fine. They're going for the call of duty mass audience. Yeah,
and there. You know, I think that the games they make people want
to play them, and like for convenience his sake, it would be really
great if like those games just to insisted on fucking PS four and an Xbox
one and a PC, you know, and and a table an iPad,
you know, like just give people those games on other platforms. I feel
so weird for a while at least. Yeah, sure, I mean granted,
it felt the same way when Saka stop making consoles. Like that's the
thing. It's like, on some level, I don't care about where those
games end up. Like, you know, Nintendo doesn't need to stay in
the hardware business to be relevant, you know, because it's the games that
matter, and they've said as much. It is still funny though, like
like also elsewhere in that thing, I don't know if you've got it there,
but there's like fucking like Miyamoto talking shit about E three. Yes,
that was the other quote that's in this article was basically, somebody asked them
about their kind of poor showing or you know, there's kind of a reaction
for the audience that they did not bring it at E three. The solution
for eyes they did, but their response to that was that they decided to
focus on games that you would be playing in the near future, as opposed
to their competitors who showed a lot of videos in their booth drop Mike,
Yeah, which actually I feel is totally not the case. Like, if
you win into those booths, there were a lot of fucking games. Yeah,
I know, you're right. I'd played games and Sony and myersofts a
lot of games. There were a lot of games there. Like certainly they
announced games and did not show them in a widely playable form. Yeah,
Like, I bet you know. It's stake to their point though, I
bet you know, if Nintendo had cobbled together trailers for the games they have
coming too in three years from now, it would have been a very different
showing for them. Also, if they have another platform in the works,
they don't have videos they can show for games two and three. Well,
that's what I'm saying. Like that. They you know, they could have
theoretically done what Microsoft and Sony did and showed or announced games that are a
long way off and coming on the next platform, and it would have made
a much bigger impact. But they did not do that. Yeah, they
stuff that, you know, they stuff to work with what they got.
They can't totally bury the WU and three DS right now. They still have
to go through more holiday seasons with those things before the NX is out,
so theoretically still ship as Elda game on we use. I still have to
play High Rule Heroes. Yeah, I think probably you're probably good. No,
you're probably probably I play that game is good. I think you're fine.
It's good. I think you're fine. Yeah, you probably don't need
to play that. I like it. God damn it you Okay watch oh
man, this news segment is running super LONGA uh, this happened a while
ago, but we didn't talk about it last week. The Star Citizen first
person shooter module has been delayed. And definitely what indefinitely do they mean the
Dictionary definition of indefinitely? Well, okay, when I've never she got phantom
dusted I have seen a bunch of debate about the use of the word indefinitely,
and to me that when you say and definitely, it means until further
notice. Yes, that would be my dictionary define. Yes, that's what
it means. If you look at this game. If you look at something
when it says definitely and think that means forever, you're wrong, because but
what if in this case it does in fact mean for well, in that
case, that means that they're lying. Yeah, but also eighty five million
dollars they better fucking get that thing done? What is done? But who
knows. But like, if you think delayed and definitely means delayed forever,
there's a more concise word for that, and it's canceled. But that means
bad press. Yeah sure, but uh, the FS module had been farmed
out, correct, that's understand Sitizen editor, not that. Thank you for
being here. I'm glad you could bring your your fount of knowledge about ten
thousands of you put into only a couple yea. And are you clear yet
or my fathans are diminishing? Right? Uh? Yeah, it's been I
don't know. I guess it's kind of whatever. Man, I don't like
the Crisis eension. I've never liked how the Crisis games felt. Same with
Battlefield, like they just as first person shoot. I don't like the way
they I know what you mean. There's like some imperceptible lag for me,
and you can feel that when you're walking around that hangar looking at your beautiful
ship. However, in space game feels pretty good, totally good. Yeah,
I'm sorry, we really need to do a video that we will.
Yeah, we probably should. You're probably right. I mean, it sounds
like the in space stuff is what people really want, right, I'm sure.
I'm sure. It's fine that you can board ships and run around and
shoot stuff on foot, but like flying and like tweaking out people like your
ship is what people are really things Stars and citizens Okay, sounds like they
got the stars bit. Okay, yeah, all right, But where do
I go to vote from your ship? Okay? Service guarantee citizenship? All
right, man. It's been kind of a weird week for Star Citizen.
In addition to this delay, they've had a couple of relatively high profile producers
depart the project, which didn't seem to make like enormous way of in that
community. But I saw it posted on their forums. They had a senior
producer and an executive producer leaf for other gigs. Maybe they were on the
FPS team maybe, I don't know. Like they've also just opened a new
office in Frankfurt though, like they're all over the world. It's hard to
keep track of what this thing is doing because they're in so many places and
doing so many things. Uh yeah, I mean that game is trying to
be everything. Yeah, all things, all people, yep, and I
think pull it off, it'll be amazing, space sim first person shooter,
a bitcoin minor and a spreadsheet Yeah, full productivity suite. There's not Eve
Online. There's started as an update. No, it's a playable as that's
what they're shooting for it. As always, I will say, I sure
hope they'd hit what they're talking about, because it sounds amazing. Yeah.
Yeah, what they have, while you know, not very substantial, seems
solid. Is it like an encouraging proof of concept? See you do?
I fucking are there catmen that fly ships and I blow them up? And
Tom F. Wilson says that I did well so far not yet, No
FMB, because that's all I actually was. Ginger Allen up to these days.
Yeah, we're's Mark Camil, Malcolm McDowell down, man, get him
out of mothballs. He'll show up for anything, McDowell. I got to
spend a day on the set of one of those games. He's fucking kidding
me. Really, are you fucking kidding me? How long have I known
you? And you never told me this? I met Tom ff Wilson.
It must have been four right, yeah, I think Okay, I've meant
Tom if Wilson on the set of Wing Commander fucking joking. Was he cool?
Yeah? He was a nice guy. Yeah. About Malcolm mcdwell,
I didn't. I didn't talk to somebody else, okay, just him.
Yeah, that's the only one you really wanted. He's the one I wanted
to talk to him, like the rest of them, like, oh,
yeah, I guess Mark Camil there, he was not there that day.
Okay. How's the set? Did it seem like it looked like set,
like a well budgeted production? Yeah, well enough, I mean yeah,
I don't know. I had not been on a lot of this, okay,
alright, did anything up to that point? Did they have craft services?
I did not see any. I didn't tell you. Yeah, all
right man, anything else you can recall. I don't want to let this
go. Thoma Wilson was was it was great to al right, Okay,
we talked a little bit about his stand up act. Wait really yeah,
Oh he's yeah, he's comedian. Really. Oh, I gotta go find
that. Yes, it's his song. Is is his song about like he
gets out of guitar and sings a little song about what it's like to meet
I gotta go hit YouTube, all right, one last story real quick,
and then we'll get out of news and read a couple of emails. The
Criterion Games account Yeah posted the following tweet today Criterion Games Tweet of the Week.
Yes, we are talking to Microsoft about making Xbox three sixty Burnout Paradise
available on Xbox One via backwards compatibility. More news soon. Okay, that's
pretty good. We should have led with that. That was way better than
unless the news ends up being like nope, sorry. We talked to them.
They said all we had to do was say yes, and then we
went in NaSTA and they said what no. Yep, thanks to A.
So I'm just gonna add this to this story and I'm not gonna tell you
to go do anything with you your money, because you know this is not
a confirmed thing. But Burnout Paradise for the three sixty is for sale on
games on Demand right now with three dollars and seventy four. That's still on
I just bought it to Okay. I saw that and I was like,
well, that's super cheap, but I have it on disc and I'll probably
never play it again, so whatever. But knowing that it might this might
happen, three dollars four cents, I'm gonna go buy that right after this,
just to have it without having to worry about the disk and just in
case, just in case this comes to pass, because if that happened,
they'd probably keep the servers up right, one would hope. Then we could
play some more Burnout Paradise. Fuck, it's a really good game. Yes
I'm not even a big driving game guy, and that game fucking rules.
Oh it's so good. It's so good. It really is game of generation.
I wouldn't Paradise best game to come out on that set of console.
I would give you top five for sure. Well, yeah, I guess
it is a pretty tight fight between that and Rock Band three. But yeah,
that's that's weird. I've bought other three sixty games at that price.
I don't know what it is about that price, in particular five pounds.
Maybe maybe, I don't know. That's a good question, all right,
Let sit for news emails, thread some electronic mails, BombCast a Giant Bob
dot com. Well, good, because I've got some emails prove it.
Okay, fine. This one comes in from Michael uh about That Island two
being a no show at E three. Over the course of the Steam Summer
Sale, I picked up Dying Light and I am loving it. I've been
playing a NonStop for about three weeks now and it's everything I wanted out of
Techland's original zombie game, Dead Island. The end game is fantastic. It
has you running, jumping, and grappling around the city like no one's business.
Overall, it is a very polished experience. In my opinion, I
agree with everything he says. This got me thinking during E three we did
not see Dead Island two. The mobility in Dying Light makes the game,
and not having it in excuse me in the Dead Island two would be tragic.
Also, going back and looking at the Dead Island two gameplay from E
three twenty fourteen, the game looks dated and lack luster. Could the developers
of Dead Island two have gone back to the drawing board after seeing Dying Light.
I don't know if it's after seeing Dying Light, but they definitely like
that. That was a pretty bad showing for Dead Island two at E three
light. Yeah, that thing looks super rough. It was very kind of
ramshackle and like they aimless. They got out in front of it and said,
like, this build is very old, Like this is not the current
build of the game, but it's the like kind of most recent stable one
we have, and we're just going to show you some stuff. But it
was very very early. Uh, and then it didn't show up this year.
So I don't know, I think it In fact, I got it
was supposed to ship at some point. It's it's been pushed off, right,
That's right. It was supposed to be out like first half of this
year. Yeah, So so I want to say they just kind of skirted
it to a different release time frame. Yeah, and haven't really shown it,
but yeah, they very they very well could be reworking that in some
way. So it was deep silver. Even Addie three not sure actually you
got me. Yeah. Uh. Diga Light is a fucking great game,
though you haven't played it. Play it great game? Do you like it?
Great? No, it's really joyable. It's really good game. There's
there's some stuff deeper into that game that will come up at the Game of
the year time that is not evident from playing it at first. I've been
meaning to get to that one. I recommend that you finish it. That's
a good endorsement. Okay, I'm not a I'm not necessarily talking about the
main storyline either, but some of the kind of we'll talk more about it
later. Okay. Email in Helsinki, Finland. His name is email.
It's you're gonna spell it, yeah, e M I l E mail.
Yeah, yeah Meal, that's what I would have thought, but the two
ease I thought it might be a long E. I don't know, eat
M email. There you go, let's go with that. Uh. Last
summer I bought my Vita in a bundle that had PlayStation All Stars Battle roy
Al as one of the games, and tried it out for the first time
last week. Cool, that's the email. No, even though I didn't
real excuse me, even though I didn't really feel anything. While playing it,
the game made me one really great way to that's I feel nothing.
That's yes, that sums up, that's got. That's kind of harsh.
But the game made me wonder what kind of roster would this type of game
have on the Xbox. Would it consist only of Master Chief and Marcus Phoenix
shooting each other, or would they also add a Fable Guy and Minecraft Dude
as mandatory melee characters? What does this Xbox Melee Smash Battle Royal Superstar Let's
Fighting Love Games roster look like to you? What blinks the time? Cata
I don't even know, Cameo and all her elements, Lizard Guy from Brute
Force, Fudge Hog, Yeah, Fudge from Blood Wake, all right,
big big steel Ball from Fusion Frenzy, Bill Gates, oh man, no
jailer, it's okay, yeah, all right, okay, yeah, it's
it's for as much as like, you know, this is what you have?
A car yeah, not not unheard of a car? Yes on their
roster? Yeah yeah. For like as strong as I feel like Microsoft's first
party stuff has been over time, I don't feel like there's this giant roster
of like amazing characters to point two. No, and it was stretching it
with PlayStation as well. Yeah, you know, yeah, you're right.
Even they had some some Yeah, I mean the thing is like the PS
one launched in an era when that was still relevant. It's just that they
don't have the rights to scrash Bandicoot anymore that the other cool stuff. Yeah,
but yeah, I mean they did with Microsoft's like the Xbox came of
age in an era when you were making realistic seeming games about fucking dudes.
Yeah, I mean about fucking dude about dudes, hot stuff direct x XX.
Was I talking about good events, Yeah, I mean the original X
Yeah, they they had their time with some mascotty sort of characters, but
like they're very much not about that. It's like, here's some fucking realistic
shit. Here's here's some characters that can hold guns. One of these guns
as a chainsaw on it. Yeah, it's like it's telling that some of
the best characters that they would have access to started out as a Nintendo characters
they came along with rare here stuff. But I mean, yeah, yes,
Pierce Broson, that's pretty good. But even in that case, like,
how many would you put into a game like that Banjo and Kazoo.
Yeah, okay, Conquer Stubbs. That's not them? Is it publish that?
That was originally a pot It was, but you know it wasn't necessarily
theirs. I mean they would have to go lean on third parties like they
always have, you know, yea third party exclusive. That's true. There
was a time when they could have done that successfully, but not so much
anymore. All those third parties are doing it on PS four now. Anyway.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think that game could or should
exist. Cool spot, there's your answer. Uh. Laurie, also in
Finland, writes in about new input methods. I'm Alan Wake. You should
see my specials. I throw fucking batteries at you. Something something going on
in Night Springs? No, quarter circle forward? Not so much into okay
fine. When this generation of consoles was unveiled, both had some new ways
to supplement the basic controller input. On PS four, the touchpad was supposed
to open up a whole new world of swiping and pinching. Oh yeah no.
On the Xbox One, the connect could be used to lean around corners
or give voice commands to your troops. Hell. Yes, but since the
release, there has been very little talk of either, and I'm wondering to
developers even bother. Is the touchpad just an additional button to even first party
games like Fortsa or the upcoming Halo support any of the connect stuff. It's
not even an additional button. It's just the select button. Yes, you
know, because the share button is dedicated to its own. Shit. Yes,
they renamed start the options, and when you pushing the touch pad,
it's a select button. I fucking wish that it had a select button.
Sure that share button bums me out. You could have easily embedded that share
functionality in the OS somehow. This is like a long button impress or something.
Remember anything, Remember when we first heard that that was a dedicated button,
that thing, it was like like nobody wanted to believe it. It
was like a month before they get who we were talking to, and someone
was like, yeah, I think you're able to stream out of the fucking
thing, right, I remember both consoles right out of the fun I'm like,
what, yep, that's fucking insane with a like a physical button dedicated
to that. Really, Like, who cares? Why would well? I
think I like the functionality I use. Yeah, if they buried it,
no one would ever use it to be a button, I guess, but
Bay check it out select button. Just touched the fucking touchpad in like who
cares, Like it's fine, Well, but that brings me you're using the
touchpad for anything else? Well, but that's the Yeah, that's the tragedy
that brings me to the answer to this guy's question, and which is,
yeah, they're not using nothing for ship because it's not good. Well,
you're right, it's a bad touchpad. Like you don't, like have you
tried it on a PC? Like with the the tools, like the drivers
that let you use that thing as makes basically a mouse cursor like pointing device
on PC. It's fucking infuriating to try it navigate windows with that thing.
It's inferiing to try to navigate a PS four with that fucking thing, right,
you know. Like, but I will say, like the witcher uses
the touchpad in some some creative ways, and like they're pretty much undocumented,
so I found out about them on like forums. But like me, that's
right, you did tell me about some of those. Yes, you're totally
yes, you told them that. Jason posted to a forum. It's right.
Jason came in like the week the game came out and said, like,
yeah, do you know if you swipe up on the touch pad and
goes straight to the map, like there are shortcuts on that thing and the
witcher that like, because otherwise you're buttoning through like three layers of menus to
get to things like map in inventory. But in that game, it's like
swipe up goes to the map. If you hold the touchpad in it goes
straight to inventory. Like they use it creatively in some cool ways there,
whereas yes, most games are just using it as a giant button and that's
a bummer. And the connect stuff, it's like, fucking that thing is
as dead as a as a boxed in peripheral kid. Get well, yeah,
because it's optional, you have to write it off now, it is
right, You're right. Now, you can't rely on it for anything because
it doesn't preclude them putting in optional control schemes with it. But who wants
that. It's like, you know, it would like to think about just
the oppor the cost there. It's like, you know, devote someone to
add and connect ship to a game that is only going to exist on one
version of the game that it has to be custom for Xbox One, and
that then not even for exclusive games. Can you count on it being there?
Right? And then you know, like why do the work? Like
we like, take that person, put them on something else. Ye like,
how about instead of that, you make this game not crash? Okay,
you know what, I like controllers with buttons. There's nothing wrong with
buttons. Yeah, they get the job done. And analog sticks yep,
triggers. Yeah, that all these things are serviceable. They are the workhorses
of video game and put and they work great for the vast majority of the
games. And I think, you know, as VR catches on again and
you know, we start to have these kind of motion gaming conversations like you
know, maybe we'll get back into move controllers real big sure, or these
these half moon things that Occulus is sell. I'll say again that that unnamed
first person shooter demo thing they had from Orpheus was cool. Cool. Who
knew the move controller was so capable? Well, I mean until I turned
around and suddenly the camera couldn't see it anymore. Yeah, kind of broke.
Yes, Well, that's probably where stuff like the Oculus controllers comes in.
That is a lot more capable than that. Next email comes from David
and Santa Clara. It's to Drew, what's up? Excited for Metal Gear
Scandal in four? And just sat through the sixteen minute teaser trailer, just
wondering was that one take? Or was there clever editing involved? If if
it took many takes? I uh sorry the typo. If it took many
takes? How long were you guys filming to make it happen? How many
red vines were consumed? I thought about reading through the comments on the video
to find an answer, but they were at six hundred comments and growing by
the time I discovered it. Do you really think I would have eaten an
entire box of red vines more than one time? Yeah? That was one
take, One fucking takes. That does not sound like something that would have
a good outcome eating that many red vines. No, the boy knocked it
out, man, he didn't laugh. Oh my god. Was Dan in
the shot or did he get dropped in later? He was, No,
he was there. He was actually directing me off camera. I just kept
saying shit, like, uh, so you had an eyeline had something?
Yeah? So well, No, he he was he was off he was
outside my eyeline because I had to look around. Because Snake is looking around,
it's not focused on one spot. But Dan would like make sure I
wasn't focusing one spot too too long. And then when I so in the
in the original loading screen, the camera pans down to Snake when he's grabbing
a cigarette. Jason didn't wouldn't know when I was going to go for one.
Uh. So when I finished a red vine, Dan would cue both
me and Jason for me to pick another one, and then Jason would note
a pan down and pan oup uh. And then Dan went off on vacation
that Friday, which is when I did the majority of the editing work.
Uh. And he had written about ten of those little tool tips uh.
And then I spaced them out in the timeline and over seventeen minutes that they
come up way too infrequently, so I had to write like twenty more.
Uh. Yeah, that turned out a good, dumb and fun little project.
It originally was going to be just like an animated gift. Yeah.
We were just gonna actually we were just gonna mock up an image of me
standing there with the red with the red vine. But we were like,
you know that initial install for that game was like around fifteen minutes, and
so we should we should make a fifteen minute video. Yeah. Yeah,
so we did it. I believe it. Didn't they do something in that
game at some point where they made that. Yeah, so wait, actually,
if they've patched it so you can install the whole thing, yeah,
let me well, let me walk back. So yeah, what was it
like you basically had to install each act as you got to it. Yeah.
Yeah, and then if you went back to a previous act and you
have to install it again. Yes, what so fucking to minimize the impact
on the hard drive. It's only command at the time. Yeah. Wow,
So I I just went over there and installed it and to capture like
how it all, what it all looks like so I could recreate it.
Uh. And so the install is about sixteen mats for the whole game,
for the whole game, okay. Uh. And apparently when you get to
those points, it just skips over him. Okay, so there are like,
uh, we actually had the a loop of snake on YouTube. Someone
had captured the like one of the mid game installs, and he has the
eye patch on for the mid game install. Uh. And then we we
basically played that in the studio on loop to set the tone right, because
then the music was playing. I actually just found a music track that sounded
like metal gear on on Audio Network. Are royalty for up good match.
But yeah, in the original in the initial install screen, he does not
have the ipatch M correct. Yeah, MGS four. I've always thought about
going back to that since they passed in trophies and made the install better and
stuff. But also as soon as you finished the install and hit the button,
he says, kept you waiting, huh, And then so I put
that. I put my voice saying that in there too. Great, that's
good stuff, all right. Attention to detail for the stupidest things. Yes,
that's where it matters the most, you know. I gotta I gotta
get it in where it counts. Rob from Los Angeles. I'll tell you,
sup. Why do games locked frame rates? I could be wrong,
but my understanding is the locked frame rates set an absolute upper limit, that's
true, preventing your hardware from achieving better performance. I grew up on PC
gaming, and building a machine that could achieve the fastest frame rate possible was
the top priority for me. But recently talk of console games with locked frame
rates seems to run counter to that. Why would developers want to hamstring the
raw performance of a system so we don't have forty frames a second, sixty
frames, oh, seventy five and then twenty yeah yeah, yeah, give
me, give me a smooth the swing. The swing between twenty five and
thirty is way less jarring than the swing between twenty five and forty five.
I say, that looks real ugly, Like I would. I would take
a lock thirty, like a super locked, super perfect lock thirty over like
a swing in between, like say forty and sixty a day fourteen sixty Yeah,
like that. That difference is so jarring that I would rather have something
steady and reliable. There's definitely something to be said for a consistent frame right,
yes, yes, I would, you know, and a lot of
the most single player games, like single player story driven stuff, it's totally
fine, you know, fighters, driving games like you know, there there
is a category of games that needs to be sixty, a steady sixty,
but or a consistent, anticipatable Yeah. Well, a lot of people would
argue they wouldn't want to play a driving game or a fighting game or something
at less than sixty. I certainly wouldn't, but if you had to.
But if it's even battle Arena to Shinton in three so much better, it's
so much better. That is an option you can you can toggle it between
thirty and sixty eight and it turns off graphics. It's awesome. It turns
off like the texture maps first one, three, three, Okay, okay,
I mean it's the first time in the list of the best fighting games
of all time as far as the ranking of fighters is concerned, it is
the greatest fighting game of all time. Yeah, but something like like you
know, the Duke Batman on PS four is a nice steady thirty, and
that's totally fine for a game like that. If that's the best you can
do, that's that's good. Uh, only speed through some of these.
I should add, if you haven't seen The Sight in a while, we
did do a trailer or a teaser for Middle Year Scanaling four. It is
coming out the first episode Tuesday, July fourteenth. We are committed now,
Yep, I haven't recorded any yet. Yep. That's that's no one was
around when I put that date in there, Like I'm just I'm gonna pick
this date. I hope it's okay for Dan and Jason. It'll work out.
Well, yeah, we'll work it out. People thought I think that
we've recorded some alrighty, and because they saw like I played through like the
first chapter I first act like a week or two ago. Oh really,
so they see your eve been through your shophees, We haven't recorded any we
have it yet, Sorry suckers. All right. Michael writes it in about
weak ass pinball Yeah, Jeff, huh. A pinball bar called the Racket
just opened up in my town with a bunch of pinball machines upstairs. Obviously
they have classics like Medieval Madness and Tails from the Crypt, but their next
generation machine doesn't work. What kind of low rent establishment would call themselves a
pinball bar without a working T and G table? Can anything be done about
this? Injustice? So that's where it went. Yeah, the one,
the one that was here in bris. Yes, we did be Half the
reason I pulled this email is because we had a non functional T and G
tablefice in this office until like what two three weeks ago or something, I
don't know when it disappeared. It disappeared out of the lounge. I don't
go in the kitchen, out of the kitchen. Recently, the accountants have
been periodically swiping stuff from that room. They took the arcade countant for us,
and I'm guessing they took that pinball table as well. What to another
floor? Yes? What? Yes? Uh? It ain't right man,
those things come out of our budget. I don't know they've been re Do
we scour do any of the policy? Well not ours? You'd be able
to hide that accountants. God right, I'm gonna perfect crime. I'm gonna
deploy the robot scour the building see if I can find that fucking next generation
table. Did anybody log in over the weekend? I thought about it,
but you know there's nobody here. What are you gonna look at? You
turn on all the lights, true freak out security. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. Do you have an answer for this guy? There's really
no answer for the place of the ground, right, I don't know.
Medieval madness. It's a it's a great table. Yeah, it's not one
of my favorites, but it's really cool. Do you want to hear more
about we roll it back. Let's talk about VR for a minute. First
roll back, and then we'll move on okay. Jim from Sterling Heights,
Michigan, Okay, VR the asshole conundrum, Dear co workers of Dan Reichord
as a man living with a wife and three kids, all of whom think
they are hilarious pranksters. How do I safely use any VR headset without being
left vulnerable to any number of practical jokes? Lock yourself in a room,
trapdoors okay, snares? Oh yeah, pungee sticks, Yeah, dig a
tiger trap. Yeah that sounds good. Yeah. Sprinkle a thin line of
cinnamon and a circle around your chair. They'll be free to approach. Uh.
Yeah, you pretty much are. Just expose be fully nude also,
okay, just to like further, it's probably good and off putting. Yeah,
don't shower I'm writing, okay, Yeah, I keep going, keep
going, just to actually just give up personal hygiene altogether. Yeah that should
help. That's it works for me, I guess. Yeahs electrify yourself so
if they touch you, they'll get chucked. All good suggestions, All good
suggestions. Mitchell from Memphis. Here's another more serious email about VR hey podcast.
I was wondering if you could see VR tech being used in ways other
than gaming and learning. We've obviously seen VR games and people have spoken about
applying this tech for learning purposes. But I have an idea that I haven't
heard. I was thinking about the possibility of using VR to help cure people's
phobias. No psychologists, but I've always been under the impression that the best
way to get over fear is to face it using software that maybe creates a
certain environment for certain phobias, like the ocean for people for the ocean tower
for those afraid of heights, et cetera. Or even more everyday fear is
like public speaking, people with a gorphobia, people with a fear of rejection,
et cetera. I think there is a very interesting future for VR.
Can you guys see VR being used for phobias? Are there any other real
world applications you could see for the technology? Yeah? Sure, like sculpting
and manufacturing and that sort of stuff like prototyping. Yeah, you know,
I could see it being useful in architecture if you're able to walk around in
a building that you've designed. Yeah, like that sort of stuff for sure.
A lot of medical applications, it sounds like, yeah, but the
phobias thing, man, holy Yeah, that's I don't know that. I
read a weird sidebar in Discovery the other day about they've seen positive effect on
arachnophobia by showing people pictures of spider like objects, not spiders themselves, but
things like tripods, Like I forget, I forget what some of the other
the examples were, but you know, they're like everyday objects that look like
they have a bunch of legs or whatever. Yeah, I mean the point
of something like that is to desensitize the person to it. I mean they
actually do this with sufferers of PTSD. Uh. They'll they have video game
simulations that you know, people just view on a monitor, but they're really
like low res and like terrible textures and everything, because you don't want it
to be too real, like you want to be able to separate it.
But then as far as I understand it at least, and then they can
like turn on better graphics and stuff and make it more real, start playing,
start like seeing people in the world, start playing sound effects and stuff,
and I think VR would be good on that. Yeah as well.
It's like, you know, it seems like potentially has a lot of like
just straight up life changing applications. You know, it could be like a
lot of crazy cases, the use cases that nobody's even thought of yet.
It could be everywhere. Yeah, bring on the porn. I'm sure that.
I'm sure that will not take long fad to guess. This one came
in from someone who requested their name be withheld. Great, I'll read it
anyway. It's totally benign. Hey, guys, a long time listen your
first time emailer. Lately, for some odd reason, I have been thinking
about what constitution my generation of gamer? As the industry moves forward and evolves
and more people are being introduced to video games, what generation would I fit
into? I'm twenty three years old and grew up with game systems such as
the Game Boy Color and Tendo sixty four. The only generations I hear about
are people like you guys who grew up with arcades and to No take a
Genesis Combore sixty four, etcetera. And the current generation of gamers who are
growing up with games like Minecraft and shitty survival games. I never hear about
the in between. Is there a category for this generation? Lost generation?
Generation lost to fucking fog and awful horrible draw in. Yeah, swimming vertices
on your polygon is the best shit ever made? People who like Final Fantasy
seventh, Yeah, I mean this this person is like right for that at
some point. Right, that's kind of where I am because I have I
have a younger brother and sister, and so when we like the Tendo sixty
four was great for that because it was you know, four player, so
I played a lot of that. I have a genness has grown up.
You came out of that era liking good games somehow true. That's not to
say that this guy doesn't. No, no, you're no I am what
do they call it taking the piss? Uh? I don't know. It's
a weird in between. It's kind of like what we were saying earlier.
That's right around the time that everything got different. I don't know. But
what do we have names for generations of video game fans? No? Not
really no. But the more I think about it, like that you think
about like classic rock, and like the idea that like there's like classic rock
is always classic rock, like you could introduce like some classic rock stations play
Pearl Jam. I think that's fucking just wrong, agreed, uh. And
And there's it just that there's a second era of old rock music that has
to be broken out and played separately. Okay, satellite radio actually, so
like classical or classic rock is not a category that you age into. It's
like a fixed period of time, fixed period of time. Yeah, but
what happens to the people who grew up with the Stones and Zeppelin or even
like the decade before, Like, they probably wouldn't call that classic rock,
right, that's it's classic rock, no matter what. Like it, it's
it's it doesn't matter. I guess arguably that's kind of the formative era of
rock. Like, if you're building as a radio station and your format is
classic rock, like that means something. Okay, I think I think you're
making a different argument than I thought, which is that classic rock has a
phrase or as a term, has been defined in popular media for a very
long time. And also absolutely by that. Satellite radio actually kind of handles
this by having two stations. They have one that is like from the it's
it's It's classic Vinyl, which is your classic rock station the way you imagine
it should be, and then there's Classic rewind Okay, so tapes, so
okay, def Leppard Okay, you know, like like you have that,
and it's like they'll kind of like, yeah, from the second general class
rock And I think that's like gaming is getting into that. I think that
you could think of games in a very similar way, except that it's a
very hard cut in the nineties between like two D and three D, so
like retrop retro polygon y yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, Like mid
nineties is kind of the inflection point for me for sure. Yeah, I
think that that's you know, like if you how much of how much of
that stuff you saw in its element, how much of that two D stuff
you saw when it was current, versus how much of it do you view
as just like this is the old shit, you know. I think that's
that's pretty formative. And yeah, kind of like how much of that polygonal
shit you played then too, I think as a factor as well. At
some point, I think everyone's gonna have like their era that they look at.
There's a podcast somewhere on this website of me talking to Paul Barnett about
this notion of a golden Golden age and everyone having the games they played when
they were of a specific age, the formative experiences that they played, and
that that mattering most of all to them. You know, That's how you
end up with people that are like, you know, and and I guess,
like the question it becomes like does that doesn't matter? Like you can
have people that say, like, Halo is the greatest first person shooter ever
made and it's the most important one ever, and I'll be like, that's
quaint, but no, and here's what you know, Like there's you know,
there's Quake, there's Doom, there's you know, you go all the
way back, let me tell you about these other games. But at some
point, none of that fucking matters, because if they go back, they're
gonna be like, yeah, exactly, that's not it's not the thing they
grew up with. It's not and they'll look at it and go like this
is old bullshit. Yeah you know, or you know, some of them
will get they weren't very sort of appreciation for that stuff. This is all
in service of Halo, yes, exactly. Uh, you know, it
all built up to this. I would argue the Doom is still one of
the best first person cheers ever made. Yeah, yeah, you would,
Yeah, but I don't. I don't want to play Doom anymore. I
do. I feel like I'm done playing Doom. I want to play It's
been rereleased so many times, like like I'll happily play E one M one
no matter what, like for the rest of my life, I'll probably encounter
that thing every couple of years. That was I don't know that was.
This is an outlier, but that was the thing that doing getting all the
achievements in those XPLA rereleases of Doom made me realize, it's like this fucking
still holds up as a challenging experience, like there's this is interesting. It's
a challenging experience for sure, but it's like I although in that case it
was basically like, hey, I never played this the real way, I'm
gonna do it now as opposed to use in the cheek codes, but whatever,
I don't have a reverence for Doom anymore or in a real in a
real like hands on sort of way, Like I've come to respect Doom for
what it did, and I very much enjoyed it in its moment, But
I don't want to play Doom. I don't want to get on on a
big tangent about that game. I think it holds up extremely well, but
so as this, yeah, you know, the formative experiences that you grew
up with are going to be very close to your heart for reasons that are
kind of divorced from how good they actually are, you know, which is
why I like, like I care about Bemini Run and right. You know,
it's a bit terrible game. But you know, this is kind of
like when I look at the fervor around something like the Final Fantasy seven remake,
like it makes me wonder how much of that is people actually wanting to
play that game again, and how much they're just chasing the feeling they had
when they were a kids, like same source stuff. And it's like at
a certain point, you well, you know, like a big budget like
paint job on the thing isn't necessarily going to recapture that, yeah, because
some of that stuff has just lost a time. Yep. But what do
we know? Everything ask us anything? Okay, this podcast is still doing
ask us anything? Uh yeah, so we are. That's where these emails
come from. How about one more email? Last email? A man,
it's about hot peppers. Luca from Chicago, A note on peppers. Tuning
into this week's bodcast, I couldn't help but notice the talk of hot peppers
and new hot peppers every two to three months. This was true for a
few years and has now calmed down. Are you are you a pepperficionado?
No, No, I'm just you know, I'd figured at some point it's
just a call in response coming on here. The Ghost Pepper and the boot
Jealo Kia are the same pepper, and the current hottest pepper is known only
as the Carolina Reaper, made by some dude in South Carolina, which is
a crossbreed of the Ghost Pepper and a red hob and narrow. Can't just
make a vegetable, Apparently he's Apparently there's some dude playing god in South Carolina
making demos are killing us all one pepper at a time, I guess.
So apparently this Carolina Reaper is two point two million scoville units reefer a Reaper
Reaper. Carolina Reaper two point two million scoville units, making it two times
hotter than the Ghost Pepper. For a period of time, there were a
bunch of peppers named stuff like H thirteen QF tests that were technically a few
hundred or a thousand scovills hotter than each other. But for now, the
Carolina Reaper is the hottest pepper whatever. This is soul just theoretical, right,
I guess, well, what do you mean? At some point?
It's well, there is there is There is a like a literal maximum to
this stuff, because you can buy like crystallized pure capsaison, which is I
looked it up before this. I want to say it's something like sixteen million
scovels. Apparently, put that in your tongue and die. Apparently Apparently it
is like not are you making chili for a battalion? Is that one all
good idea to put that stuff in your mouth? Uh? Having eaten a
whole dried ghost pepper, I can tell you right now it's not fun stuff.
I think of a shrapmil grenade going off next to you. Technically all
of you hurts. I've had that happen a lot, but certain parts hurt
more than others. Now, imagine that in your mouth. My roommates and
I bought thirteen of them off of Amazon for seven dollars and roped a bunch
of people into doing it. Half of them ended up throwing up, including
myself. Cool. It's a funny story now, but for the entire day
I was an agony with a weird pain in my chest. In short,
practice safe Peppers. I mostly love the idea of code name laboratory hot peppers.
That's pretty great, man. That's a weird that's a weird thing.
I've never quite understood if you can actually physically damage yourself with that stuff or
not. I don't know. I don't know. Like I think you can
have a you can have a reaction. Yeah, I think you're right.
I think like it could maybe bring on some kind of cardiac event or but
my understanding is that it's just reacting with your nerves, right. That's yeah,
me too. It is not actually hot, yes, it's just it's
a short cut to paint, right, exactly Like I'd never understood if like
something super hot could actually damage like the tissue in your mouth, or if
it just makes it feel horrible and then it goes away, you know,
I don't know. Yeah, I imagine like he must. He may still
be able to taste and stuff after eating that thing. Yeah I would,
I would. Oh yeah, like it didn't burn the taste buds off or
something like that. One incident, I should hope not right. Sense,
as he says, though, practice safe packs, New York sour h one
thirteen. Also, how the fuck did I go until last week saying hop
and Yarrow? In my whole life? It is, in fact Hobb and
Arrow. Really, there's no there. I've seen yas. Yeah, Like
it's apparently a super common error. It's so common that every time I saw
Hobb and Arrow, I assumed that that was the error. I guess,
well, Lapino, Yes, excuse yes, I think it's yes, something
like that BombCast a giant bomb dot com. I'm Drew Scanlon, Yes,
scan L, and that's where emails go. Podcast gambo, let's send this
podcast. Okay, it's been a long one. I don't want to eat
I don't want to eat a ghost pepper. No, no, what was
your brand was? It was a Hobban Arrow. It was relatively light,
and it was not It did not kill me. It's not fun though,
but yeah, was like, hey, this is a good time. That's
the worst I've eaten in pepper turn. It was more like, oh,
maybe this would be a dumb thing to do on camera. Yeah, again,
it's not Please don't send us anything. My understanding is the ghost pepper
or the chia is way worse than that now. Apparently this Carolina Reaper is
fucking no thank you, no thank you. I want to say Habanaro is
like several hundred thousand scobles. I might be wrong. I don't think it
hits a million, and this reaper is two point two million. So do
the math. We're a dolt to yourself, all right, that's what they
call me. Yeah. Uh so that met of your stuff is next week,
not this week? Correct? Yeah? Next week? Yeah, next
week. There's some stuff happening on the website though, Yes, old game
show on Wednesday, Yes, Bradbourne, Yes, beginning back to blood shortly
after this goes up? Are you sure that's gonna happen? Like what the
podcast and stuff? I think it'll be an easy one this week. Okay,
got the disc in my bag? All right, we're gonna the upcoming
save is in the cloud. See no impediment to this happening, all right?
Uh, small stuff will happen. I don't know what. Yes,
y work will do some stuff. They're done, some stuff, all right.
Content, it's coming to a website near you. A lot of websites,
well, yes, but you should only go to giant Bond dot com.
Yes, all you need forget all those other websites I already have.
Okay, good who dot? What does that even mean? Yeah? Who's
serious? That's all I think of when you I'm very serious when I hear
when I got who serious bought Tumbler? What he's the CEO? Dell?
I guess it's gonna turn that plays around. Uh, this is more porn
weirdly enough, Yep, it's the only thing that'll save it all right.
This has been another addition of the Giant Bodcast. Stay tuned. Come back
next week There will be another one.