Mmm, Hello, it is Tuesday. Remember twenty fourth. I had to
think about it for a second third twenty fifteen. Which day of the week
is it? I don't know. Turkey Day, No, no, son,
not an official day of the week. I'm I guess, I don't
know. Okay, there's one other t I can't think of it though.
You might be Turkey. Let's go with Turkey. Okay, Turkey Day all
a Turkey's eve? Okay? Yeah, sas you get to dress up in
your okay, you put your put your hand down on a piece of paper,
you trace around it. Ye, I'm doing that right, fingers extended.
When you draw the little hanggy thing under the thumb, put some feathers
on thet A turkey, that is it? Yes, that's a goblet.
Okay, this is a giant bomb cast and that's a goblet. Thanks for
listening. It's pronounced next week. Thank you Insta God. Stay tuned for
Hello, Hi, Hey, what's going to podcast? I'll have no idea.
We're trying to do some live in studio fully work right before this.
Yeah, Jason's got a real Jason found and then you's got a creaky,
creaky microphone stand and I don't know if any of it is picking up.
Maybe if we are talking at the same time, that'll break the gate on
our Yeah, because it was getting gate it out here, I think it
might be anyway. I think it rattled all of our brains before this.
Yeah, you have to stop doing that. No, you have to stop
doing that. You have to stop doing that. I gotta bring it to
my No, you have to do good. I think I'm wait. Okay,
you made the fan on this computer, so even louder it was fan
kicked up all the canceling out of whatever. Creaking. Oh my god,
I'm Brad Shoemaker. Jay'son. Ay Striker is the man with the creaky that's
me Creak, the man from Creaky Creek. You're scandal at the end of
the table. Yes, you know what, this might be our last time
recording. That's true. Your mouth, isn't that right, Jeffers. I'll
believe it when I said, Okay, yep, yes, we may or
may not record another podcast in the studio, I don't know that. Sure
guess and say we will. Oh you know what, we'll probably do the
next one in here, right, So well, wait, maybe not?
I mean, because we're gonna have dudes in depending on what we do with
extra bodies. Yeah, we might not be able to fit in here next
week. There there's a section of our floor right now with eight around a
table. It looks like into one mixer. It looks like an unholy assembly
line of like robotic arms that have like like welding implements on them or whatever.
That's a scary looking table. Uh. Maybe we'll have such a couple
of extra people belly up to that thing next week for for this Yeah.
Possibly, or it might not work at all. Yeah, maybe we'll be
That's where my money's going. I hope it'll be fine for the sake of
for the sake of all of our collective sanity. Next week, I hope
things go smoothly. I like to shoot low. Okay, yes, keep
your expectations low. It's hard to be disappointed. That's Giant bomb dot Com
colon aim low. How goes the movie? I can launch your splash damage
video games. That's right, that's right. Just shooting near the feet,
just just the aim in the general vicinity, because I'm probably it'll get on
them. It'll be fine. Did you guys happen to walk by the studio
when you came up here, I know, not for a lot of way
different since this morning. I can see the couches from the control room.
There's dancing room. Oh what since dance since the meeting we had in there
this morning? Yes, oh, I gotta go see that. No more
TVs? Oh wow, no more cameras, dude, it's like it's no
more lights. It's finally. Yeah, just a laptop and productions now with
a live studio audience. I mean that's all you need a internet, You
just need a couch pariscope for a lot. It would be like the Grateful
Dead. We'll just have to rely on our fans to bootleg everything. Yeah,
just pass VHS tapes around and in the taping pit. Here's a quarter
inch jack, go for it. Yeah. So yeah, it's uh,
what is a t minus two weeks until we got to be off that floor
completely? Uh yeah, until the flamethrower has come through everything. Yes,
the purge begins. Anything left on that floor, but really reduced to senders.
Really it's Monday, like this coming Monday is when we are starting to
move down there, because dudes will come and move our stuff. Yeah,
but that's at the end. Of the week. Yeah, anything we want
down there and usable we have to move ourselves, sure and and like for
for sure in one piece. Yeah right. Also that are we going against
the union? Are we the scabs? No? I don't think it's I
don't think it's a union thing. Oh it's not like look so we can
move verse. It's not like an E three where you get yelled at if
you'd move anything. So it is not like E three where if you have
anything on wheels, some SYS standing there cracking his knuckles and give you the
stairs. Let's to know. Yeah, yeah, I know that that should
be fine. Yeah, it's I you know, I've I've been through some
moves from one office to another before, hell of times actually now and this
one normally they've sent out an email by now that says here's how to here's
the number you should write on your box to make sure it goes to the
right place. And I've seen none of that. And now it's just like
all right, well, okay, all right, well I guess we're they
say we're moving. That's that's the only like, you know, people were
packing stuff up to move to all new, all better space, uh,
freshly renovated I mean there are desks down there. There are desks. I
don't know if there's power or internet or whatever, but there's place to put
things. Yeah. Last time when I was when when did you take me
down? There was a two weeks ago something like there was no power as
of two weeks ago. Yeah, there were desks though, and carpet.
We'll be on the first floor. Yeah, as opposed to this is like
midpoint through the building here, which I don't don't know how I feel about
that. Yeah, I don't know. Ground level thing, okay with it?
Yeah, not having to deal with elevator and stairs all the time.
Well, so I come, I come in through the basement, so I
will always have some sort of a journey. That's fair. Yeah, No,
that's that's why I belong strictly from the pack him up at the end
of the night, and yeah I'm pack them in the morning. It's gonna
be really weird not having games stuff on three here after the last fifteen years
plus of having all the game stuff on three. Damn. Yeah, it's
there's a lot of you were here even before I was for that stuff.
I was, I moved into this building. We were we were the first
tenants into the building here onto the third floor. And yeah, before that,
we were on Townsend Street, which was where Sega was and where Zinga
I think still is now, or on the third floor there too. I
think we were the fourth. Actually we were definitely on the fourth because I
found some business cards over the weekend. I had my hands on some old
business cards that were throwing away from video games dot com those heady days.
Yeah, yeah, and uh yeah it was fourth floor over there, game
Spot if it wasn't clear. It's also coming with us on the first floor.
Yeah, yeah, they're moving down there too, into their own space.
Pretty much the entire contents of the third floor coming coming with us.
Yeah. And chow dot Com. Yeah. The food people are the people.
Yeah, we'll have ready access to a kitchen. Maybe not. Yeah,
I don't know what. I don't know. I don't know what that
means. Let us in there on a regular basis. But why aren't they
just making us food all? I know? Yeah, aren't they like trying
recipes and stuff? They give us the botched ones. Sure, that's see,
see, that's like you're you're having fun. But when the food people
come by and oh don't you guys just have video games to give away all
the time. Be a real fucking bummer. Yeah, you immediately just reframed
that in the right contest. Yeah, you'd be like, absolutely not.
We don't get enough to cover our own needs most of the time. In
fact. Yeah, yeah, So I don't know that'll be fun, It's
yeah, I would be something new for yes, and and hopefully I think
you know, the rooms, you know, let's least some potentially exciting developments
in the world of this podcast in twenty sixteen, for the new room we're
getting and all that sort of stuff, So positive stuff down there. Yeah,
and for me personally, it'll be nice to not be on this floor
anymore. Just fresh, clean, break, yep, clean start. Absolutely
too much weird shit happened on this floor, that's for sure, over the
over the years. So yeah, I don't know, torch it man,
fucking burn it down right, Let's get the hell out of here. It's
same fucking cubicles and the same dumb offices. Actually, I can think offices
down there are just as shitty and dumb as there. But we don't have
offices the hell out of here. We don't need them. Let Apple have
it. It's their problem now. Yeah, I'll never find what we hit,
never find those burgers. Yeah, oh man, well yeah, geez.
Keeping up with all that stuff, especially for you guys in the studio,
but you know, even us down there too, packing up desks and
stuff. Yeah, it's a lot. It's almost like we've a massed a
mountain of total bullshit over the past few years down by our desks that you
know has to be dealt with. Yeah, it's a lot of yah.
Yeah, it's a lot of wrangle. And keep up with you guys packing
up those shelves. I'm not touching that. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if everything on those shelves needs to go with us, but
I don't know. So we started like picking through that stuff and and you
know, at first glance, it's like do we really need that? And
then as soon as you hold it in your hand, you're like, yeah,
we should probably do you Do you really need a strategy guide for C
and c red alert too. So I haven't I haven't been making those decisions
yet. I've just been saying, like, this is where all the books
are going, right the drive Bombo Library. Yeah, these are all books.
These are all movies. Uh, and then demo discs I'm putting into
a separate box because I know we need those. It's pretty big. That's
the I need a second box, yeah, for de discs, for de
disks. We have a lot of a lot, a lot of demo discs.
I found some demo discs over the weekend. We not content to pack
up around the office. And also probably because I'm home four to five large
boxes of things to store at home of my things that have gotten here and
various other shit like that. I spent my entire Saturday in the garage and
in the room full of games, kind of just like moving shit, moving
mood. Yeah, I saw some of the photos you were posting. Yeah,
there was some ancient stuff in there. It's on my Instagram, yes,
exactly, on the Graham, which is my full name. It's out
there on the grand Do you find like you just like reminisce as you're going
through that stuff, Like does a lot of moving or organization actually occur or
is it like open up a box and it's like oh yeah, oh yeah,
you just want to play with all the toys. So yeah, there
was there was definitely there was definitely like lost time. So the thing I
was trying to accomplish. So I have an area to the right of my
NBA jam machine that is just full of cardboard boxes, full of just bullshit.
And I wasn't even sure what it was. It was stuff that's like
it got thrown in there when I moved in, hastily packed, not really
sure where everything was, what everything was, but it was like contents of
a bookshelf and a bunch of weird game stuff and all types of crazy shit.
And and so I needed to put the the I've been been taking these
game storage containers and putting all my Xbox games, Dreamcast ps one, like
all these old physical discs into these storage containers. And I wanted to get
those from a room inside my house out into the garage, but they needed
to go in that space where all that bullshit was. It was like,
okay, I need to pull all this stuff out of the corner, and
and well, well it's got it's gotta move. So I need to pull
all that out, put neatly place all of these like nice, relatively new
storage containers in a sound location there, and then put the bullshit next to
it, and it hopefully, hopefully find a way to make that bullshit take
up left space. So I finally dug through it all and through away a
ton of stuff, I said, a bunch of rat magazines, which I
thought I had thrown away most of my rat magazines, but I found just
like there was just like here's another cash. We found a new vein of
you know, nineties rat mags. But that's fun to go back to.
Like some old game magazines. Yeah, sometimes yeah, it's like I saved
some of them depending on what was on the cover. You know. It
was just like, there's the issue of the Source with Mace and a tiger
and he's got tiger eyes and it says Mace has I saw that photo was
terrifying, and I threw that one away because I don't need uh. And
you know, it's like, hey, master p on the cover, don't
need that. But like some other you know, the there's the issue of
I believe it's the issue of the Source with doctor Dre right after he left
NWA to start Death Row, and it's it's him with a pistol up to
his head, and I hung on to that one. I have a sealed
copy of the issue of Rolling Stone with naked Jennifer Anniston on it. Because
I'm a weirdo, I don't remember them. Yeah, I remember it was
Rolling Stone, the one that had the infamous Janet Jackson photo. Yeah,
okay, yeah, yeah. In the pantheon of Rolling Stone covers featuring nudity,
that's the one that comes to mind. Yeah, I know, I
don't know how I ended up with that, I it's but it's there.
So yeah. So it was it was a matter of like going through a
lot of the stuff and go like, Okay, I don't need I don't
need all this shit, and I don't need like composite cables for a PlayStation
one, you know, a lot of stuff like that. But what if
you run out. I'm not I'll tell you right now. I'm not going
to run out of composite PS one cable, right. Uh. That's that's
damn near guaranteed. So yeah, it was a lot of stuff like that
of just like getting rid of just total garbage and then just like consolidating because
it was like a lot of half full boxes and just weird stuff like that
where it's like this could be packed more tightly and more efficiently. So so
I did that work and in the process found a box that like, I
just wasn't even you know, I'd been missing this stuff for years, but
I found my two cdxes. You did, I did awesome. I bought
three cdxes. Yeah, those those are They're intact. They were like inbox
though, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
second and sell them in a box. I bought them from the Sega fire
sale. Wait. Yeah, holy shit that they had at Townsend. Yeah
no, but wait it was all loose. Yeah, holy, oh my
god, they were selling loose cdxes here I am finding out twelve years later,
Like I've rude that day all this time that I wasn't there for that,
and now I find out. None of it was like new in box.
So a lot of a lot of the software was new in box,
and all the Dreamcast era stuff was new in box. But yeah, the
cdxes were just loose. I did not loose consoles with power I think,
maybe not even power, but it was you know, there were twenty bucks,
it worth a bit more than probably would have still bought one. And
my Jaguar was in there as well, with a couple of controllers and stuff
like that. So it's like I was finally finding some of the stuff that
I knew I had but just hadn't looked through a lot of these boxes in
you know, in ten years or more. Where were those boxes my garage?
Did you hook any of that stuff up? No? See how it
is like is it is that a remotely temperature controlled and virol? Like is
it safe to store? Would be fine? Okay? All that stuff should
be fun, okay. And it was surrounded by papers and all kinds of
other crap too, so it was relatively insulated from whatever, so it does
not get that damp out there at all, So they should be fun.
Yeah. So those were kind of the big fines I think was finally finding
that box full of stuff. But it was just like this weird like here's
all this paperwork from two thousand and one when I went to Space World.
Uh, and it was like here's like the Nintendo GameCube guide from you know,
that year of Space World, and like this Smash Brothers fan and you
know, just like all types of weird stuff from that. That was actually
a really weird year because I went to that was you know, back when
there was a Space World, and I think that was the year that there
were there were still two TGSS. So I think I went to Japan three
times that year, and then that was also the year that I went to
ECTS. So I found and I had no explanation for this, but I
found a burger King receipt from that September ninth, two thousand and one.
There like little time when I was in London buying burger King. Wow.
Uh. And then flew back either that day or the t So you were
back by the time, Yes, I was back. I was. I
was home for nine to eleven and then was home for less than a month
and then turned around and went back to Japan. Had a very different airport
experience. I'm sure absolutely. Man. Yeah, Well, it's funny because
I remember I remember specifically that trip to London like there was a weird like
it felt like, you know, there were no garbage cans anywhere in Heathrow
because they because people kept putting bombs in garbage cans or that was the fear
anyway, I guess. And you know they were asking all these questions like,
hey, did you have any electronics service to while you were here,
because apparently they were worried that people would insert bombs into your broken clock radio
and fly back with it, so like that was a question. And I
remember flying out going like, man, the rest of the world is crazy
with the terrorism. Huh good old US of Oh wait yeah, And so
like when when nine to eleven happened, there was definitely like this feeling of
like, Okay, now you know, the concerns of the rest of the
world have finally hit here and and yeah it was a really weird but the
end. Yeah. Then like less than a month later, I was,
you know, back on a plane flying internationally and stuff like that, Like
it wasn't they hadn't instituted a lot of the stuff that still like holds true
to this day. That wasn't your airsoft year, was it? No?
No, No, that was no I was there for problem. No.
I well after I guess, I don't know if it was the same year.
You might baby, you had multiple, multiple years bringing airsoft guns back
into the US. Wiley had one of those years, but it was in
two thousand and three, and flying out of Japan was not a probable In
Japan. They were just like whatever I had that, bring your toy guns
wherever had that that It wasn't all that all black forty five with a silencer.
This is this the solid snake. It's your solid gun. Yeah.
Did they just have premium like you know, airsoft stuff over there? Yes,
okay, yeah, Tokyo mouse. It's where it's where most of it
comes from. It's just when you get it here. They've painted the barrels
orange and like this this was indistinguishable from the real thing. And like they
took it out of the suitcase as I was leaving Japan's about the best.
It's like they just like took it out and looked at it and stuck it
right back in and just waved me on like yeah. All the other Americans
in line are like, uh yeah, that was That was my experience.
If like, you know, they're pulling an M four or an MP five
out of luggage and holding it up, looking at it and putting it back
in and then turning around and seeing like all these people behind just going like,
oh what the fuck? Was just the best? It was just the
best. And then yeah, I don't know, like I don't know what
we were, you know, they're they're just cool. I don't know.
We used them as prop guns and a couple of dumb videos we shot.
Actually, I think there's one. There is one giant bomb video, exactly
one Giant bomb video that features one of those Airsoft comes. At this point,
I would be afraid to leave the house with that thing. I can
see that. It's I mean, they're it's a very real looking. Yeah,
I bought. I bought a Desert Eagle. I got two two nine
millimeters. I wanted matching ones so I could do you know some Max Payne
John Wue business. Did they have the same kind of like weight and haf
No, not quite. That's that's you get up bottom. You can tell.
You know, they're ye plastic. You know there's metal parts, but
you know you can still you can get metal ones. But yeah, yeah,
they definitely, Yeah they're those get way more expensive. But it's really
just the lack of coloration on them that makes them so scary. And they
are licensed replicas, you know, they are replica weapons. You know,
it's not just like, hey, this thing sort of looks like a Desert
Eagles, Like, no, if you look at it, it's Desert Eagles.
It's Israel right there on it. Yeah, so it's yeah, they're
you know, they're making MP five s D fours with the Navy trigger and
all that, you know, all this other dumb ships. It's full on
like gun fetishism, yeah type stuff, and they can you bring those too,
like an air soft range then in that case or would it have to
have like the orange tip. I don't know. In the US people might
be weird about it. I don't know, like different places are probably have
different rules about how you shoot that stuff whatever. I was never clear what
you're supposed to do with their soft like what like you people can say like
paintball, okay, And in Japan there's definitely like his we went to that
one store and they have like tack vests and just like all this stuff that's
just like it might as well be real stuff because you're fitting real sized reponry
into them. Like it's all just I don't know, it's military cosplay.
And then and then then my understanding is that you know, they they play
it like it was paintball, only there's no paint, so it's I guess
it's more about even about the ones though even more on. Yeah, yeah,
I'm even more honor bound than paintball because there's nothing to wipe off if
you want to fake. It's it's always weird thing to me because like they
don't really pellets don't really have the velocity to be useful in a range setting,
you know, right, But yeah, yeah, I mean I guess
you could get targets that they would work on, but like it just it
doesn't seem like something you would ever actually want to shoot really, Like it
was just kind of fun to look at. They're really fun to shoot because
like that that MP five I got, it's full auto, so you just
load it full and let's go, and you're just like shooting. I bought
a tracer kit for it. It's a replacement, so it's two it's two
parts. It's a it's it's pellets that are I guess a radiate not a
radiate luminescent. Oh are they glowing the dark? Yeah, they're glowing the
dark pellets. And then a silencer attachment that has a UV flash whenever anything
passes through, so as the pellets passed through, the barrel flashes it,
which is enough to get it to glow. So at night you see the
tracer. Wow. Is this the fucking coolest shit? The mod Wow?
But yeah, I don't know. There was that that year that we discovered
that airsoft guns existed because we didn't even know, Like we were at TGS.
It was like me an ike and a mirror and Ryan McDonald. I
think that may might have just been us. We were over there for I
want to say, an arcade show or something like that and whatever we were
there for. Next to the convention center, there was another convention hall that
was having like a toy xpok and we went in there and it was just
like it was all this like cool you know, remote control this and that
and near some transformers near this, and then you turn around like there's a
shooting range and they have CDs hanging from as targets and they're sitting there shooting
these guns and breaking CDs with it. And we shot a few there and
took some pictures of us brandishing fake firearms. They're looking real cool. And
then immediately we're like, wait, they just sell they just sell this.
You can just go to a store and buy Well, we should probably find
a place and like immediately thinking like oh, there's no way we're gonna be
able to find a place that sells these, and then just like oh,
third floor of the Yodobashi Camera, you know, or whatever. Toy store
or something like that. It's like, oh, it's the gun floor,
and then we bought guns and then packed them for the rest of the trip
like in our waistbands, like like just totally fucking idiots. Yeah, weird,
yes, wow, walking around strapped. It was stupid. It was
real stupid, but it was Japan, so like you know, they you
know, we ran around a public park shooting those guns at each other,
and people walking by didn't look and go, oh, no guns. They
looked at them, went oh airsoft idiots and kept moving. So you know,
it was just, you know, it was just such a different thing
here for simpler times. Yeah, yeah, a lot simpler. I mean
now, like you know, you could any one of those guns I bought.
You could easily rob a liquor store with it. Sure, you could
rob all kinds of stuff with you. Could you could die because of I
mean whatever. I mean. Plenty of guns that look way worse than those
have led to insanely tragic scenarios. These things are like movie prop worthy,
Like the I saw it with Norm Chan from test It was saying that you
can see that the blaster that Han Solo has on the new Star Wars poster
has like air soft gas hole on the bottom show that like you know,
so like these are good. Yeah, these are like really good replica.
Well like you know, the ones I was getting, they were gas powered
and had gas blowbacks, so the slide moves back when you pull the trigger,
and it's they're real cool, but they're real fucked up. They're real
fucked up. It was a couple hundred bucks for a a good like a
high like a for those gas blowback pistols and are like a really good rifle.
But you could go way more expensive than that. And and this is
those things started showing up at TGS because Capcom would always Capcom would make replicas
of the Devilment cry guns and resideval and stuff like that. So you would
see those behind glass at their booth where you know, because like they sell
a bunch of shit at TGS, so they're like their goods booth would have
those guns. They're just on display. Yeah, So so those would turn
up at TGS as well. And and yeah, we went through a few
years of going of like right before the trip, right before TGS came around,
looking at catalogs, trying to figure out what was new and going like
oh, we need to get one of those. There. There was one
store in Achaiabra that was like up the street and around the corner, like
we knew exactly where it was. It was like it just devoted to just
strictly air Soft. Was it was the one kind of down at the far
ends left and it's up the street a little bit, and it's across the
street from the g front yes, uh yeah. And and they had not
only all the guns, but also all the tack vests and all the like
the gear to go with it, helmets and just like full on military fetish
costplay, all the weird shit you want for that stuff. I assume that's
Tier one. Yeah, exactly want to be a Tier one, a Tier
one Airsoft operative that's in the store. You gotta grow your own beard though,
yeah, I know they don't sell the beards unfortunately. Man video games
whatever, starting Airsoft your site for Airsoft. No. I got way into
reading about Airsoft guns on the internet for like a good long time after that,
I'm sure it's out there, and then just more the more and more
stuff I read about it, it was like it was like, you know,
these people are taking it to a level that I'm not interested in It's
just like they want to dress up and run around and take pictures of themselves,
and I was like, I just think they look cool. I could
see it very quickly wrapping back around to being super ridiculous and like maybe a
little embarrassing depending on how serious leads. I guess, yeah, yeah it
was. It was the costplay was like the it was the like wearing gear.
That's where I dropped drew. The line was like, oh, these
are weird, realistic looking guns that you could really hurt somebody with. I
live with someone, and she pulled it on someone, uh and shot him
a bunch of times. Also he had been harassing her. Oh anyway,
so it was pretty funny. Super fucked up, yeah, but pretty funny.
Sure you ever hear of a real action marker. It's like a paintball
gun that looks like oh yeah four yes, yeah, like smaller caliber paintballs,
right, they're not quite the BB size of Arosoft that like in between
somewhere, so you can like load a magazine of paintballs and shoot it out
of a thing that looks like an M four because most paintball guns look nothing
like actual firearms. Right, Yeah, like they just look like a bunch
of weird looks like can fall out pipe rife totally a bunch of tubing machine
together or whatever. Yeah, for painting cows. Yeah sounds fun. Well
what were we here to talk about? Oh? I don't know. Yeah,
that's yeah, I don't know. I didn't fake shooting. Sure video
games could class Okay, yeah, fair, I'll take that. That's a
decent segue. Yeah, from fake guns to faker guns, let's talk about
video games. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that was making me crazy
because I knew I bought them, and I knew I think I bought three
of them and then sold one at cost to a friend of mine. And
then so I was like, I know I have two of these somewhere.
Someone fucking steal them. Someone would have stole them, would I mean,
they're small enough to steal, yeah, exactly, And those things walk away
For people who don't know, the CDX is just a genesis and sake a
CD in one, right, yeah, And it's like it's not much bigger
than a portable CD player, so it's you know, it's pretty small,
but it didn't have any other stuff, right, like two built in no
extra. In fact, they told they tell you to not hook a three
d X up to it. You can, you totally can. Why but
it was one of those things where like you know, the the FCC regulations
about interviews and shielding or such that they had to say, oh, no,
use Also you couldn't the lid of the CD player would not open all
the way if you had a thirty two X plugged into that thing. But
you could totally do it. Yeah. I don't know what I do with
them, but I found him that's nice. Look at them. Yeah,
I look at them both and went fucking finely and then set them in a
different box every couple of years, take about a look at him for five
minutes and put back Yeah. Basically, yeah, yeah I did that.
I you know, like so it was so that let me get these two
very tall stacks of all my original Xbox, all my PS two GameCube,
we most of my PS one, most of my Dreamcast stuff, and a
couple of boxes Xbox three sixty games out into the garage, freeing up more
space in that room. Uh you know, just kind of like in this
processors just like cleaning up, getting things cataloged, and so you know,
doing what I did with by reorganizing all those boxes helps me kind of stave
off the process of actually sorting that stuff and getting it neatly packed for you
know, another chunk of time. But yeah, I've got a lot of
stuff, a lot of really weird stuff that'll happen. Yeah, best kind
of stuff. Yeah. I saw that Acarina of Time press release that you
tweeted the photo of it. Look that piece of paper looked as crisp as
the day it was printed. Yeah, it was. It was surprised that
there's an almost a twenty year old press. Yeah, it's so. It's
it was a little binder that says no you know, legend of zelt Active
Time that a bomb says November nineteen ninety eight, and then you open it
up. It asked like three press releases about Zelda in it, and then
just like a blank, like uh, stack of paper that just says Zelda
Explorations at the top, and it's got this little, you know, kind
of the notes section. Yeah, it's basically like a place for you.
It's like a it's a whole big notepad. It's like fifty sheets of paper.
And then I'll say Zelda explorations at the top, like super cheesy,
slap together looking thing. It's not like it doesn't have a picture of link
on it or anything. It's like this, you know, they went to
Kinkos and got this thing made because it's Nintendo of America or something. Draw
your map. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I assume that that must
have been sent out alongside review copies of the game. I don't know for
sure, but but that's that's my guess. I also found Yeah, so
I found like a bunch of like Space World two thousand and one, uh,
like pamphlets and stuff that from stuff that was there, I found a
PlayStation one launch press kit, like put the Polygon man on the front and
press releases in there saying like the launch of the PlayStation blah blah blah and
all this other stuff. That's kind of cool. They should bring back Polygon
many Yeah, was he not in PlayStation All Stars? I think he might.
It wasn't even like a boss was he was he the final boss of
PlayStation All Stars? Like, I that was a good call. I definitely
played that game. But yeah, same here. I don't boy, maybe
not the best venue for that guy to appear, but I mean nothing about
game was for anything. Somebody was thinking about him. Yeah, uh yeah,
yeah they should. I still have the T shirt that they gave out
that year with Polygon Man on the front of it somewhere. Man, it
feels like a long time ago. It kind of was. Yeah, I
mean that was ninety five. Yeah, but then again, last week feels
like a long time ago. Yeah. What have you guys been playing since
then? Since last week? Same stuff? Yeah? Still, yeah,
I had I had a nice two hour long session of about five minutes,
you know, burst at a time. Okay, so it's like five minutes
a tomb rater, I have to pause for baby, the child, have
five minutes a baby, five more minutes of tom right. So so I
don't know where the hell I am like in the story exactly. I don't.
I can't like really speak about the pacing of that game because I'm breaking
it up into really small chunks but little too disjointed for that. Yeah,
but I talked to you a little bit earlier today, and it seems like
I'm getting pretty close. I have already forgotten where you said you were.
Yes, okay, you are getting there. Yeah you're an EPCOT Yeah,
yeah, I went to your game. Can you try all the different sodas
of the world. That game goes some weird places. So in Atlanta there's
a there's a coke museum, and they've got various coke products, and there's
one like and I forgot the name of it, but is it is the
worst fucking thing that you've ever taken? Yeah, it's because that's they have
that at Epcot. Also, I I've heard people talk about discuss what you're
talking about. So I love taking people there and it's like, oh,
yeah, yeah, here try this and like German or something, the German
coke or if anybody knows, just yourself, Yeah, don't, don't,
don't, don't warrant anyone. Where the hell was I tumb ratert playing tub
Raters? Well, yeah, a little bit. Yeah, Yeah, I
haven't played much more than the intro okay, first hour or so. Yeah,
I had some I like it. Yeah, I had some real real
badass like set piece moments. You know, there's there's times when you're in
the open world stuff and you're just like, Okay, this is awesome.
I have I've got all these cool things to do, but you know,
I need a little more action sometimes and and I was starting to get that
little fatigue. I'm like, all right, something's got to happen, and
then it and now I'm like, okay, I'm back in. I am
loving tumb Rader. Yeah a lot. It's a great game. Yeah,
you're right, it's very good about the rising and falling in the action.
You know. Sure, it's like I want to just go dick around and
do some challenges for the next hour. Yeah, and like that open world
stuff is like compelling. Yeah, it's like I actually want to go out
and do all this totally. I I it's maybe an unpopular opinion, but
I hope they go further with that stuff in the next one. Yeah,
aybe differentiate it. Yes, you know, it seems like they've struck a
pretty good balance. Yeah. Yeah, and you know next iteration will just
be even better. Probably. Also try it out Soma finally really yeah,
just like an hour or something like that. I'm really liking that game.
You and I both started Soma randomly at the same time. I bought it
this weekend. Well, I played that. I think I played the first
like twenty minutes of it at packs. It was really intrigued. Did you
do the present day stuff. No, okay, that game starts in the
present day. Okay, so maybe I was jumped for Is that game a
first person horror game like a streaming on YouTube and face Cam's not like that.
Yeah, there's absolutely not jump scared type stuff. It's almost more stealthy,
like you see the enemies, you need to avoid them, you need
to make sure they don't see you. Like, it's not like it's not
like there are a bunch of dangers that you don't see coming or something like
if you hear you can hear the enemies like stomping their way down the hall
from Yeah, it's yeah, I would say it's more first person adventure game
than anything like. It is definitely not a Five Nights of Freddie's style,
like you know, Webcam in the corner freak out every time something jump scares
you. It's it's definitely more cerebral than that cool atmosphere. Yeah, yeah,
did you have deepened? I don't know how much you want to say,
really, Like, I played like maybe an hour, so I got
the through the real world stuff and then you know, the underwater stuff happens.
Okay, so I got there and a few rooms in that Okay,
Yeah, yeah, you're yeah, I'm okay. Did you get out in
the water at all? No, Okay, I'm a little further than you.
Then. I barely know what's going on in that game. I'm just
starting to like sort of start guessing at what I think the twists are going
to be and stuff like that. But you know you asked Alex about it.
Yeah, yes, so I yeah, I mentioned Alex what I thought
the twist was going to be, which seems super obvious, and he was
like, yeah, that's not really the thing, or like they'd go like
they kind of wrap that up, but then they go places with that idea
that you don't expect or something like that. So, like the stuff I'm
seeing so far is that, like there there's some weird uh kind of ruminations
on, like what identity might mean in a world where like human consciousness could
be embedded in a robot. Yeah, but then the consciousness might not be
aware of that fact. Okay, if that makes sense. Sure, I
guess what if what if they put your brain in a robot but you didn't
know you were a robot. I'm seeing nothing. I don't know. I'm
awesome, I'm seeing some some little hints of that here and there, which
seems super cool, but I didn't get super deep into that either. So
what are you guys playing on PC? Yeah? Okay, yeah, how's
it run? It's mostly fine. I've been having some pretty ugly stuttering when
I'm moving like new areas for a good minute or two as I kind of
walk around like it's loading everything in and then it smooths out. It's out
on PS four as well. Sounds right, Yeah, the PC here as
well. Yeah, I've got some weird So I'm playing it on like you
know, big Boy TV, the living room TV, and I've got some
weird like frame tearing, and I would notice I would like metal gear solid
as well, Like I wonder if I need to switch my TV to like
straight up fifty nine hurts or something, or like the video card output to
like fifty nine hurts. I don't know, check your check your gin locket.
Yeah, it's it's driving me. Is it different from the hitching that
we're getting in metal gear scaling? Yeah definitely, okay, Yeah, this
is just like it. It seems like frame tearing, like you know,
almost like a v sync type thing, but not quite you know, where
this that's like a straight line. This is kind of like a blocky line
that almost like a scan line type thing that kind of goes from the bottom
to the top. Weird. If anybody knows, let me know. It'll
gar scan lines. Yeah, it's waiting for somebody to make that joke.
Didn't think it'd be you. Hey that patch came out for Metal Yeah wait,
oh is it out yet? I don't know. I've heard about him
just five Yeah, because there's a there's a you know, you lose a
buddy at some point, right, yes, okay, yes, that was
I think that was a couple of weeks ago. Actually is that out?
Yes, okay, I gotta do that. Yes, there is a way
to get back the buddy that you lose in that game. Yeah, I
won't say anymore. You'll see, you'll get there. D Walker becomes sentientin
that's true. He doesn't know he he doesn't know he's robot. Goes have
to start his out do it. That's that's how that works. You can
bring d Walker back. Okay, don't worry, are you? Are you
guys just in like full on kind of game of the year preparation mode unless
at this point just like touch every game that you possibly can for some period
of time. Yeah, I've got a few. I've got Dana Soma,
Tales from the Borderlandes I want to touch. Yes, people leaving about I
think those are the three main ones, and then just get through as much
of the Wincher as possible. I've touched the class concentration for the Commodo sixty
four over the weekend, so important. I'm prepped on that will be a
hot topic next week. I'm sure. I'm hoping you're going to be the
voice of that one. We really need a chance. Yeah, I've fully
intend to go to bat for the entire share data line of game show games
on sixty four really is the best new the best debut of the year,
I think, the best original game of the year. Yeah, absolutely,
and best game based on a game show also a contentious category. Oh huge,
this you're looking to be Yeah, yeah, I've been been playing stuff
here and there. I've not gotten into the tumb rater yet, but I
really want to start it give a shot. So I'm kind of concerned because
you you weren't real hot on the first one, right, disliked it straight?
I liked it straight? Up. Yeah, this is a lot more
of that game a little bit. I think it's cut better. It's like,
yeah, the balance is way better. Like so, I will say
the first like ten fifteen minutes of it are very much like push up on
the stick and hit the X button at the right times where you die kind
of stuff. But like I feel like that's just there to wow you real
fast, like kind of get it out of the way, and it's like,
yeah, of course you got to have your big spectacle, sure at
the beginning of the game, but like it goes away very quickly. Yeah,
if you get through that intro in like ten minutes and then like you're
just raiding tombs after that, right, yeah, but in those Yeah,
but the tombs themselves, they're kind of touch and go. I don't really
I think so because someone more it's super easy. Well yeah, you're expecting
a little bit more, but it's like it's one puzzle and it's like,
Okay, you get your one and you're out. They're pretty quick, they're
they're fairly bite size. But I feel like the game strikes a really good
balance. But yeah, I don't know. I installed Assassin's Creeds. I
I didn't get into it yet, but I'm just like part of me,
just like, Okay, I'm gonna like get some of this stuff ready for
the Thanksgiving break, Yeah, to get through some some chunks of that,
and I play some assassins, Yeah, play some tomb right, do a
little more witching. Yeah, you guys doing any Halo in I reviewed Halo
so yeah, yeah, oh no, okay, that's curious. I'd like
to play more of the multiplayer. It's just kind of it's it's a very
low priority with like eight other games I need to trial. They put out
their first pack, the Big Team Battle. I think that's yeah really,
and they've added maps to go along with that. Okay, that's my favorite
mode. Yeah, so that is in there. It's it's I believe it's
eight on eight, which is that smaller than Big Team Battle used to be,
That's what I thought. Yeah, it's still twice the size of the
standard battles in Halo five, though smaller than war Zone I guess. Yeah.
And they've added new wreck cards and armor and stuff along with this as
well. Yeah. I have not played in the wild Halo multiplayer yet.
It's a bunch of pre released stuff, so yeah, yeah, I kind
of need to get in there. Yeah, so I saw they put that
stuff out, but I'm you know, it's I don't have a I don't
have a multiplayer shooter this year at all. Really like I like Halo five,
but it's not in something that I feel like drawn to kind of return
to Black Ops three and Black Ops three I think is just you know whatever.
Uh. I tried going back to Black Ops three a couple of times.
It was just like, I'm not doing it. No, Wow,
it's man, just the map design, the way that unlocks, structured,
the yeah, just top to bottom, just kind of boring. I gotta
clear out space on your schedule for Battlefront. I am all the way done
with battle Front. Man, that was quick, Jeff. Why you're done
with battle Front? It's I don't I'm not enjoying it, Okay, that's
that's a reason. It's a big part of it. Yea, it's fine.
Uh. And and you know, like there's like the shooting is all
right, you know, I think it looks great and all this stuff,
but I just the action feels so shallow to me, uh that I just
don't want to keep playing it. I'm not invested enough in the setting.
Yeah, I think that that has to be a key part of it.
And a lot of the larger modes are just not things that I want to
play. So for me, it's like the smaller modes of the ones I'm
going to gravitate towards, and those are just kind of boring. And then
on top of all that, the progression, like the unlocked stuff is not
compelling, so like that there's no like carried on a stick in the progression
end of it, but also just like the core of it is not much
fun either. Yeah, I mean in terms of like the stuff like new
new gear rolls out too slowly or the new gear it's not is not especially
interesting from from what I've played of it. And then and seeing you know,
Dan had leveled up higher and unlocked some more of that stuff. There
was some more stuff that they had in the beta, and all that sort
of stuff, like it's just the core shooting in map design and all that
sort of stuff is just not good enough for me to want to stick with
it. And I don't care enough about Star Wars for that to like help.
But I think that has to carry like a good portion of that game.
I think for what I've seen. That's that's I think that, you
know, that would go a long way with the right kind of person.
I guess I've been playing a little bit here and there, and like I
won't a lot like this. I feel embarrassed to even admit this, but
like the first couple of hours, I've very much flashed back to like the
night that I downloaded the Dark Forces demo from some bbs and like just fetishized
the act of like raising that blaster and shooting it at things, you know,
like like like forget what I'm shooting it at, or like what the
challenges are that I'm facing, or what any of these other mechanics are.
Like literally just the look and feel of shooting that gun is enough for me
to be happy about this. Yeah, but I would also say, you
know, I mean obviously, like you know, times have changed and standards
have changed, blah, but Dark Forces is a better game the battle yeah,
because I mean it has a campaign. Yeah, that's that's the thing.
It's like, you know, the actual control and you know they've made
the act of firing those weapons fun enough and that sort of stuff. But
you know it's it's yeah, if if they had actually built a full on
campaign. I think that would have done well for you know, it did
have a campaign. What's that Star Wars battle Front? Yeah, so I
yes, from the x Box Yeah, you're out, Jeff on Friday.
But Drew played original battle Front on upf on Friday, and I had never
seen that game up close before, and I was sitting there watching you play
that and just going like, why didn't they just do this? Yes,
like why didn't they just put because correct me if I'm wrong, Like that
campaign and in that game is just a bunch of multiplayer matches with AI,
right, Yeah, when you're on it, when you're on the ground shooting
it stuff, it's it's the same as what you would be doing online.
Right there was like yeah, but basically a thin strategic film layered over multiplayer
maps. But at least it's something because because there's that, because yeah,
like you're and they've got they've got like one player and two player like co
op versus AI modes in the new battle he's talking about is like in and
you know, you can elaborate on this, but like there's like an aspect
of like taking planets. There's like territory control in Battlefront where you're like,
like you you go down to fight a couple missions in the interest of claiming
that planet for your for your faction, right, and then that that planet
will then give you bonuses in your next battle that you to choose from like
a map of the Solar System. Yeah, Like while we were while you
were playing at somebody in chat was saying, like, it's possible to blow
up planets in that strategic mode and yeah, stuff like that. Like like
even like that, even something like that would have added a whole lot of
like I hate to use the word value because it sounds so like nineties video
game review, but like it would have it would have fleshed that package out.
Yeah, and in a way that it needs. That maybe would have
been enough because it's like they have some amount of bot Ai in there,
right and that sort of stuff. I mean, you know they could have.
I mean, they could have done a lot of things right, but
they didn't. They chose to focus on you know what they chose to focus
on, and I think that's a really thin game. And I just you
know, I got I got a few hours in and was just like,
you know, this is well made, but I just I have I have
no desire to play any more matches of any of these modes. Yeah,
I would generally agree with that and got out of it. You know,
it's been thin as the word because you're right, like what it does play
really well? Yeah, I feel like like pointing and shooting it stuff like
I kind of I don't understand why they didn't feel like they could just like
animate the gun coming up to your face when you aimed on the sites though,
Like, I don't know why they have to go to that weird dissolve
into zoom in mode. Is that is that a throwback to old Battlefront or
I don't know, is there some reason that you can't No, not even
the crosshair isn't like a fix to the top of the screen. But was
that about a weird choice for sure? But yeah, I don't know.
If I didn't know, if there was like some weird reason that you can't
show a Star Wars character aiming down the sites of their weapon or something.
Yeah, I don't I don't really know, but yeah, it's that that
game is weird, like it tries to straddle both you know, like wrangle
in like casual players and then you know, also hardcore battlefield dudes, and
I'd sit somewhere in the middle, and I don't think either. I think
that, you know, it's it's one of those things where it's like there
are elements of it that should be cooler than they are. Like I feel
like the hero control stuff should be a lot cooler than it is. Okay,
you know, it's like because it's like, oh, luke Skywalker now
and I can sort of block lasers and with this, and I'm just this
kind of overpowered unit and I can killed Boba Fett with my lightsaber. Bay.
That sounds awesome on paper, that whole game sounds awesome, But yeah,
like the actual act, I think, you know, the movement with
a lot of the hero units and stuff like the Emperor with his weird he's
a floaty ghost jumps and just like all that stuff just looks fucking corny,
and it's yeah, I think that stuff just seems like like kind of it
feels like a mod It feels like someone said, like, man, they
should put they should put fucking Looke Skywalker in this, and then they modit
it in and it's kind of jankie and you go like, well, at
least they tried uh. And then the vehicle stuff. I think all the
A wings and tie fighters all that, I think they just fucking controlled terribly,
Like the cameras just it's weird. You just can't see the ground well
enough. So it's like unless you're in an air to air combat situation where
you're locking onto other targets and stuff like that. Like it's just not fun
as as like a standalone game, that's what you're saying, Yeah, as
as like as like a bonus or it is like compared to like battle field
vehicles, yeah, which you feel like you have more control over what you're
doing in them and stuff like that. These just feel like they're all over
the place, a little too fast for the size of the map, Like
you're just cruising over shit before you get a chance to really, like,
you know, try to dive bomb anyone or anything like that. You know,
obviously, you know you get better as time goes on, but that
stuff just didn't. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good at all.
So it's like stuff that should be these like big moments of like oh
man, I've got an X wing, Oh shit, I'm in a tie
fighter. I'm hey, I'm Darth Vader, Like these things that should be
these like amazing moments instead feel like they came out of you know, and
instead of feel like, you know, they're they're not done yet, uh
and and they are still need some some time to smooth those things out.
It's like, oh, the core of it, you know, you stormtrooper
versus generic rebelman firing into each other is fond and one another. But everything
else just feels like not fully cooked the same. Yeah, Like a lot
of the criticism I've seen about that game is like, especially as it was
about to come out, like people kind of smidily saying like, oh,
it's just a Star Wars skin for Battlefield, but like it's not. It's
not even that. No, It's like as I play more stripped down.
Yeah, Like as I play it, I think I think to myself,
like, if they had actually just done that, yeah, that could be
amazing conquest, right, yeah, because I think Battlefield fans would be really
turned off by how simple this game, right, so absolutely, like like
the like you know, like you were saying, they trying to treat the
vehicles just like a power up scenario. It's opposed to like having the vehicles
physically exist in the map and being something you can run up to and interact
with. It's messed up because there are literally X wings on some of the
maps you can walk up to and look at. Yeah, but you can't,
you know, but you can't get in, right. But I mean,
if they if they use the literal battlefield template of just like spawning vehicles
in like have them everywhere, just like these massive battles with like all this
freedom, that would have been way more complicated for the type of person they're
trying to reach. Like they're not trying to speak to the battlefield audience because
those people, you know, are are a little, let's say a little
more hardcore than you would want to pitch to. With this big mass market
that's fair, Like they made a big mass market Star Wars game. That's
just like, you know, they wanted it to be super easy that anyone
could get into. The aim Assist is an incredibly generous like they wanted to
make a game that was made more accessible than than even a Call of Duty
is Yeah, I think it feels like it's sliding into that kind of slot
though, right, like just the loop of like the kind of the feel
of like everything from the respawn time or to how fast people go down when
you shoot them and stuff like, like it all feels Call of Duty esque
to me a little bit. Yeah, I think so. But it's it's
you know, not quite it's it's it's still I think, even a little
more kind of generous generous, Like it's it's a design. I feel like
they were trying to make it accessible, and I feel like at some point
they made a game that doesn't actually appeal to fans of shooters. You know.
It's like, I think the the ideal fan for that is someone who
just wants to see Star Wars stuff and doesn't really care about the cannon of
said Star Wars stuff. They're just like, look that stormtrooper. Oh man,
that's Han Solo. Look at that guy. I just want to shoot
a blaster. Yeah, totally, Like if if you know, you just
want to hear the blaster noises and then occasionally go like, oh man,
I was Darth Vader and you're not like super picky about what you want out
of shooters and games, then yeah, totally battle run us for you,
which is fate praise yes, right, Like you know, like I said,
once in a while, those elements are enough to like totally make you
feel sort of takes a while those things come together in a way that even
me, you know, not being a big Star Wars fan, I'm like,
that's fucking cool. Here. There are things that happened. You're like,
shit, man, yeah, you hear stories about people are just like,
oh, I was Luke Skywalker and I jumped up and cut a fucking
tie Fighter and it blew up. But there was that, all right,
that's cool. There was that vine floating around like the day before. It
came out of like force, pushing a stormtrooper off the side of a hill
right into the path of the oncoming tie Fighter and they both explode. Yeah,
and you saw that and you were just like, oh my god,
this could be incredible. But moments like that are very few few and far
between. Yeah. Generally, it's like, especially on the larger maps,
it's just like, well, it's like you're doing the battlefield thing of like
I'm running halfway across this map to where the action is and oh shit,
I shot some people and then I got shot. Now I'm gonna respond and
run halfway across this map again, and oh shit. You know, it's
like it's just that over and over again and a lot in some of the
modes, and that's not great. Yeah, it can be fun, but
yeah, it doesn't have a lot of staying power man. Yeah, yeah,
it definitely. It seems like a game that should have been better.
Yeah. Well they've got like four expansion packs scheduled because you can like look
at those on the menu already. Wonder the way that that gets promoted in
game. It's like a top level menu item like season pass. Yeah,
it's like kind of funky like like right below the fine mash button. Essentially
is the is the kind of link to the call to action to go by
the season right, and you know they're adding heroes and maps and stuff like
that, but like I, you know, I don't think heroes and maps
actually brought in the palette. Yeah. Yeah, it's not what that game
needs. It doesn't need more content, It needs more like design work,
like, yeah, it needs it needs more and more. Yeah. Well,
I think it has a ton of modes it just needs it just needs
tuning or something. The feel of it is just wrong in a lot of
cases. For as speaking of someone who plays a lot of console shooters,
Uh, it's it just doesn't appeal to its more depth, you know,
yeah, yeah, I guess yeah. I'm really curious to see how that
sells it quite well. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe maybe word of
mouth would would have an impact there. I feel like that's been mixed.
I mean, you definitely see people that are just like, oh man,
this is everything I ever wanted Star Wars, Star Wars, star Wars.
And then you see people that are like this is a lame shooter. They're
like, oh right, done with it. Yeah, well not not all,
not all of us have the social media reach for that to make such
an impact, that's true. But the breaking talking yeah, yes, yeah,
I didn't. Eves did something on Instagram of a Broken Battlefront said he
tried to pay me to say this game was good, but they ruined Star
Wars. Blaha, should because like it was this weird, like take a
stand thing from this band. I didn't even realize is that a dude or
a band? I I haven't. I don't even so. The guy's name
I think is Benjamin okay, and I believe the band name is so Yes.
There was just all I know is there was a Broken Battlefront disc all
over my Twitter feat is Yeah, that happened at some point over the weekend.
But and yeah, I mean the only reason I know that name is
because they were on the Halo two soundtracks. Oh okay, yeah, oh
wow, we've been around for a while. Yeah yeah, yeah. Uh
Like and that's why I say, like I was surprised that they were still
together. It is because that's they seem like they're of that era or something.
But yeah, there were some stories about that that were saying like,
yeah, he's trying to pay people to say the game is good. It's
like, guess what most video game publishers and makers of products have been doing
with celebrities on Twitter four years and years and years. Yeah, Like,
what what do you think Nicole Ritchie was doing with Lego Dimensions? Yeah?
You know, what do you think like Melissa Joan Hard is doing when she's
tweeting about liking the WWE. Apparently she's a legitimately fan. I'm like,
what do you think when when they have the Charlie Sheen is the guest host
of WWE Monday Night Raw and he's gonna be Lie I tweeting it all day?
What do you think they're trying to do there? Like this is not
widespread. This is the way of things. The scarier thing is that EA
was so like all over the totem pole on that thing. They're like,
yeah, the lead singer of Breaking Benjamin, he's a guy, he's a
tastemaker. We want to get out there and spread the message of Star Wars
Battlefront. They're just they're hitting it at all levels. Yeah, Like that's
maybe the crazier thing. Well, yeah, it's like a Jerry from Penny
Arcade. Like it reminded me like, yeah, they're price lists of that
stuff out there. You can find celebrities and the amount of money it requires
for them to tweet about your item, and there are FTC regulations that are
now in place. These are real regulations, I think, not just like
you know guidelines that say you're supposed to disclose them, and you know it's
like hashtag ad there, you know, like like make it clear that these
are ads and all that sort of stuff, But you know a lot of
people don't, and it's you know, that's the world that we live in
and it has been for that time. So for people to go like,
oh, we're blowing the lid off this EA controversy, it's like no,
they're mark team is doing what all marketing teams do now, and like that's
sleazy and fucking weird but hardly new. Yeah uh yeah, but whatever,
I don't know that who cares. Indeed, Battlefront Is doesn't need help one
way or the other. It kind of exists as this middling thing on its
own. It'll probably be fine the only And they're already talking about a sequel
to this game. Yeah jeez, oh yeah, we're good. We're good.
Back at this bad on this one. Well, I mean, like
it's not the worst foundation to work from, totally. The Frostbite engine is
it looks at the game looks fucking incredible, doesn't Yeah, yeah, it
looks. It really does staggering and they've got you know, they've got people
there that have made quality shooters. Yeah, you know they could, they
could build on this for sure. Yeah, but like this, this for
me is no more than like like I'm gonna squeeze off a couple of rounds
when I get home before I have to make dinner or whatever, you know,
like just real casual. I thought that I thought that it was going
to fill that void for me for some chunk of time, but that chunk
of time ended up to be an eve jeez. Okay. So yeah,
So, like I said, I just I just don't have a shooter.
Uh. I'm at a point where I'm kind of trying to I'm thinking about
maybe seeing if people are still playing Advanced Warfare. Wow, huh, I
might be one of those people that is playing the not latest duty game.
That's how you know you're old, which is a weird place to be in.
Or maybe I'm just gett into Battlefield hard Line. Yeah. Sure,
that came out this year. That still counts that. That counts out this
year, out in March. Yeah, it was like a March release,
but a long year, right right? Yeah? After the Order god yeah
yeah, man, we're gonna have to go back and look back on the
full year of games at some point, order and have a whole bunch of
moments like that, just going like that came out this year. Wow,
let's talk about Oh my god, the yeah, the Order. Just take
your life off one game release at a time. Yeah, uh, anybody
I was playing anything Crazy. I got a couple of things I tried link
did you? Oh yeah, yeah, I think I might get one of
those for myself. Really did it work out. I've heard very mixed things
about people's experience. I mean people have very mixed network settings. Yeah,
I plugged so my Steam link was plugged into my router with a cable.
Okay, as they recommend. My PC was connected to my wireless network with
a dongle. It is an n router doing five giga hurts. Okay,
Okay, it seemed to work. Okay. I tried playing fall Out four
with the Steam Controller and I couldn't figure out where the problem was. But
it was registering double inputs. Yeah. Have you had that issue as well?
Yeah, I haven't falled out. Yeah, I haven't had a fixed
for it yet. Okay, it'll start you off like it's it thinks that
it's a keyboard mouse, but it's not continuing Steam controller. So you can
select stuff. You can use that right cursor to like hover over stuff,
but there's no way to like select in it. Yes, I had that
problem too, weird. Uh However, I tried it again with a three
sixty controller and uh dirt rally and even when it was like so I messed
up, or I messed with my computer recently and had to had to like
re initialize dirt Rally. Uh, and like a Windows pop up came up,
you know, on my television and I was able to like mouse over
it with the Xbox three sixty controller and press the A button to click.
Okay, weir and that was magical. I didn't think you'd be able to
do that with like not the Steam controller, but I was able to Dirt
Rally itself. Was kind of hard to play because of the there is lag.
Maybe there wouldn't be if I was or there would be less if I
was plugged in like my computer was also plugged in the same router. But
I couldn't really play dirt Rally. But I could play a Metro twenty thirty
three, okay, like like a slower paced shooter. I think was was
fine. Maybe it's because I'm used to like multiplayer lag, but it was
okay. How did it look like? When did you tell any It looks
pretty good? Different? Yeah, Like the frame rate Fate holds up pretty
well tinnity p. Yeah, I get pretty consistent frame rate with that.
I mean, you know, the game is really going to determine what kind
of artifacting, you're gonna get s I messed around with the in home streaming
stuff. When they launched it with a surface or surface pro, Oh sure,
I just Steam installed on that and had that hooked up to a TV,
and it just the video quality was enough, was like low enough that
I was just like, I don't I don't want to do it. Blugs
the ship up and that's that was another wired to wireless situation with the surface
hooked up over Wi Fi and the latency was not too But also like,
you know, I think, you know, they rolled out that feature of
like play Xbox One games on your PC monitor, and you know, I
thought that was not good enough either. Like at some point, it's just
like I'm not in a situation where like I need to make those sacrifices,
So it's not why would I. You know, It's just one of those
things where it's like I guess if you were in some weird situation where you're
like, oh, the the TV's in use and we only have one of
these TVs and someone's watching television. But that's never that's not my household.
So if I want to turn on the TV and do things with it,
I can. So it's just like I don't know, I have zero use
case for anty of that stuff playing it on my TV. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, I think that, you know, and you can you can
note like it's it's noticeable that it's not like perfect video quality, like there's
some I mean it's just lower barring or right, but like yeah, uh,
I think it looks fine. Yeah, there's still there's still not like
a perfect solution for that problem long as Yeah, so I was gonna say,
like, yeah, still PC plugged into your television. I've been,
I've been. I've been swallowing my pride for a good five years now running
that thirty foot htm I cable down the hall. Yeah, which is you
know you're gonna get the best like image quality and stuff. But yeah,
but also you've got a giant cable running down your hall. So that is
kind of a yeah ass. But you know a lot of people don't want
to have a full sized PC next to their TV, you know, because
it takes up a lot of room and I diverse though, if you had
your computer plugged into your TV out in your living room and then in your
den or whatever at your desk, then you had the monitor there like that
doesn't need could work. I guess another problem for me is I have a
bunch of joysticks and wheels and pedals and stuff that I can't put in front
of Yeah, sure that I can't put in front of a TV, so
I need and that stuff needs to be lag free. Yeah, so that
that stays at the desk. Yes, that makes sense. So this also
doesn't like, you know, just straight up screen marrying mirroring as well.
So if you exit out of like the Steam app, when you have the
Steam link displayed, it'll just display what's currently on your your Okay, oh
I thought it would just do gamespo exit out of that and yeah, I
just pulled up my desktop and I was able to navigate everything just fine,
kind of cool. I still had to go back and forth a couple of
times to like click something or minimize something, to relaunch something. Yeah,
like the Windows ten like security thing came up and I had to do that.
So it's not like it's not plug and play exactly, but it was
pretty easy to set up. It's neat that it's at least this far.
Yeah, even if they're compromises, it's still like, it's cool that it's
that it's at this point. Yeah, Yeah, I tried, So I
took on that Steam controller that you bought and played exactly one round of Counterstrike
with it. That go bad. Uh, it's a track ball. Yeah,
it's totally a track ball. Wait, there's no actual mechanical anything.
Right, No, it's technically a touch pad, but momentum like a track
really in practice, in effect, it is like you are using the right
thing and it keeps going weird. That's not what I expected. And you
know, it has a zillion different settings, so you know, for different
games, it has different profiles and user made profiles and official profiles and all
this other profiles, profiles, profiles that you can get into and fuck around
with, so you know, it has a ton of options. And also
for even just like the force feedback and stuff like that, like on the
right trigger which is the fire button and counter Strike by default, it had
a bit of a vibration there that it didn't have on the other buttons.
You know, so it seems like you can kind of turn on like where
do you want it to shake? Where do you want to do this?
And that's right. I didn't really dig into that part of it. I
don't know. It's it's an interesting controller, it's but again it's one of
those cases where like if I if it's a game that cannot be played with
a standard console style controller, I want to use a mouse and keyboard.
Yeah, and that thing is not a good enough mouse and keyboard. It's
it's one of those compromised experience things that like, what's the scenario where you're
like, well, I have to play this game right now, and boy,
I can't play with a mouse and keyboard. I guess I'm gonna have
to use this thing, And well, I guess it's good enough for now,
and boy, I can't wait till I get back to the computer or
play it for real z's or you know, like there' that's I'm not in
that situation, and it's hard to envision playing through an entire game with one
of those in a situation where you're like, this doesn't feel quite as good
as the real thing. Sure, but I mean, how do you like,
really successfully replicate the mouse keyboard combination on your couch what I'm saying,
you don't, You do not, You can't. I think this is close.
Yeah, I think this is a good good step, But only that
would would with like you know, the customizable profiles and everything. We were
talking a little bit about the sports, like what does this control you need
to to help, you know, make that bridge that gap, I guess,
and maybe maybe like you know, a different kind of touch pad or
something like that, but it doesn't have the I think you you know right
now, it's something you could use to play an adventure game or you know,
a strategy game something like that where you know, yeah, where you
know, it's not an action game. It's not you know, actively requiring
you to be quick and accurate with with what you're doing, you know,
And I think it's it's fine for for that sort of stuff. But yeah,
I mean, I I guess you probably could use this thing for a
really long time and get really good with it. But why why would anyone
do that in this day and age? Like I wonder if you know,
ultimately he'd get better control, you know, using the touchpad type thing as
opposed to it just like a right stick. Yeah, so yeah, I
could see it, you know, like, yes, if you were,
if you were totally dedicated to I'm going to play this on the couch,
there is no other way than yeah, but yeah, you could already be
using a mouse and keyboard and people have been doing that for decades just fine.
And and you know this doesn't seem better than that. I guess that's
my thing. It's like, you know, the two options that are widely
available of console style GamePad and mouse and keyboard cover one percent of the situations.
Yep. The thing is for me, like I if I had my
computer plugged into my TV, I would not be able to do things I
need to do with only the Steam Controller, Like I would always want to
have a wireless keyboard and mouse. They're just in case yep, Like we're
not at the level yet that even if that was a dedicated gaming PC,
I couldn't just have the Steam controller there. Yeah right now, Yeah,
that the thing seems like a promising start, but just to start and yeah,
it's it's one of tho things where it's like is it you know,
is it something that gets built on and continues or to people just go like,
oh, well, here's another weird controller in the pantheon of weird controllers
they had there with the Fantom Lap, Like hey, they were onto something
there. Anyway, I've got this. They never made a little shock for
hooked up now and that's way but you know or whatever, Yeah, I
guess I just you know, I feel like Valves hardware efforts thus far have
like for as much like kind of fury as some of those things were announced
with. Now that stuff's coming out, you're like, oh, yeah,
are you guys even actually still serious about Steam machines? Yea, all the
fanfare around Steam machines and then there's kind of like what, Yeah, well
I'm still not clear who what who should buy one of those things, you
know, Steam machine? Yeah, Like, yeah, I don't know.
There's just so many weird aspects to it. You know. It's like like
does your game run on Linux at all? And like if it does,
is it going to be compromised in performance? Like those benchmarks for showing a
couple of weeks ago and get does the answer then become like buy a Steam
machine and then install Windows on it? Right? Go buy a copy of
Windows Tend to put on there so you can actually play the games you want
to play. It is like is the horse power you're getting for the money
actually worth the premium? Right? Who? Should you have built that machine
yourself and just tried to build a quiet desktop PC and hook that up to
your TV, Like like the idea of the Steam Machine is like a pre
made like an all in one console replacement, doesn't seem to have been born
out. Yeah sot. And the developer support is not there either. Yeah,
you know that was something that it seemed like that they were going to
have to get in front of people, and they had you know, and
their Steam Dev Days and like, hey, we're here's more panels about how
to get your games running on Linux guys, and everyone showed up and took
notes and then got back and said like, oh, yeah, we're not
gonna do that. We have a game to ship. We don't have time
for that, right, I mean, I'll admit to being fairly impressed with
the number of games they do have, sure, yeah, absolutely, Like
they have more than I gave him credit for. You, Like, I
figured it would be like indie games, right, and they do have a
number of big games on that platform, but but not enough to be like,
you know, hey, this is this is gonna be the main way
you play computer games. Like that's not that's not gonna happen. Yeah.
Indeed, consoles still have their place absolutely for now, such as when you
want to play the New Blood Born deal see oh yeah, oh, which
I have been playing. It's called the Old Hunters Jason. You watch me
play, yeah, a little bit. We got a quickly on the site
right now, the first hour or so up to the first boss kind of,
and you played a little bit since then. Yeah, I'm pretty deep
into it. I'm it sounds like there's like five bosses in this thing,
and I've beaten three of them. I like that that number. Okay,
Yeah, yeah, this thing's twenty dollars. That's not a bad deal.
You feel like five new five new bosses, but new weapons. I would
say, like, you know, if you think about a typical like Souls
a game or blood Born like kind of the amount of stuff you have in
between each boss feels pretty similar to what's here. Okay, So if you
kind of imagine like, okay, I'm gonna have an hour to ninety minutes
of exploring and dying over and over and et cetera, et cetera, and
then gonna find a boss, like, that's what I've been seeing here,
right. So, but I'm saying, like, you know, this thing's
twenty bucks, So is that enough? Do you think? I? You
know, it sounds fine to me just based on what I've seen, so
far and what you've been telling me about you know what's after that. Yeah,
I thought twenty dollars it's pretty good. Okay, Yeah, I haven't
seen the end of it yet. I I you know, we said in
the quick look like Eric from from GameSpot had finished it and said he's he's
like, yeah, there's a ton more that he was thinking like eight hours
or something for it. Okay, but you know that kind of includes like
dying on bosses over and over and stuff. Yeah, it's just it's a
weird thing because they announced it. I actually thought it was weird at the
time that they announced this thing, that they came out and said, hey,
we were going to do two different DL season. Then we decided to
make them one and here it is like like it it's it felt weird to
me that they actually, you know, went to the links of saying like,
you know, this is what we were planning on, but that was
this other thing, like I don't really know what their intent was, and
in the marketing sense at that time, saying that there was going to be
two behind behind saying like yeah, we cramped two deal season to one here.
I don't know twenty twenty dollars feel like it's kind of on the high
end for an add on in general to me. But maybe it was just
like this is it, this is your only DLC. But that's exactly what
it is. It's straight up said, hey, yeah, we're just gonna
do the one and this is it, and here you go. Here's here
is the expansion for Blood Born. But like it, it's it's really good
so far generally from what I've seen. Uh, like that that area you
start in, you know, it's just it's cathedral ward with a bunch of
ship layered on top of it. Yeah, it was like immediately recognizable,
but then it's just like nightmare as you call it. Yeah, like all
over that. I think they did a really good job of repurposing that city
area. But also also I didn't want people to get the impression from that
quick it's just like that. No, it's like after the first thirty minutes,
it's entirely new stuff. Like it's it's very different type of stuff.
But the level design has been really impressive so far. Is it just kind
of the same type of stuff is there? Like I mean the new enemies
change things dramatically or no, they're you know, they have different attacks,
different patterns. You know, like there's definitely some unexpected stuff in there,
but like you know, it plays like a blood Born place that's like an
abundance of you know, the Hunters. Yes, yes, so like early
on you fight a whole lot of the Hunters who are like the they're basically
NPC player characters and that they have the same move set and the same weapons
and all that stuff. Player so far has been my least favorite part of
the blood Borne that I have played. You might not be a huge fan
of the steel se then, because there's a whole lot of those guys to
fight. A lot of them are a lot of them, I would say
are actually easier than stuff the stuff from the main game. Maybe because there
are so many of them, they dialed it down on it, But a
couple of them have been like as hard as anything that I remember from the
from the original game. That boss is gross looking. Yeah, that's a
creepy looking boss. That yeah, I mean, you know, their monster
design has always been incredible, Yeah, but that one in particular, they
really straddle the line between like horrible and grotesque but still like human looking in
the face. That that stuffs really impressive what about the weapons they added weapons?
Right, Yeah, Like the weapons they have in there are like the
designs are pretty amazing. Like one of them hammers. Yeah, there's just
thing called the boom hammer. It's just a giant hammer that you can ignite
and then it like explodes every time you hit someone with it. But it's
cool because it doesn't transform at all. It's just every time you hit the
transform button, it's basically like cocking an explosive on it, and then when
you hit something, it goes off and then you have to like, does
he like strike his pistols flint against it that ignites it? Is that what's
happening? Yeah, that might actually be exactly what's going on. Uh.
Yeah, Like the weapons, the weapons seems super cool, but they're not
like overpowered though, well it's not like you know post game no, I
mean yeah, like completely the opposite. Like you get them all at like
a weapon level one, you know, and to be fair that you seem
to get a lot of upgrade materials in this, so you could probably take
they're saying there's like ten new weapons in here between mainhand, which are melee
and offhand, which typically are guns. Right, Uh, you could probably
take any one of those up to like plus nine if you wanted to,
but like I haven't. I got one plus ten item the entire run through
the first game. Yeah, and I use it on the weapon that I
like, and have that weapon at plus ten now. So unless I find
another one of those things to upgrade one of these new weapons, like,
they're never going to be as useful as the weapon I already have. Is
that item that takes you to plus ten kind of guaranteed to drop every time
you play through, So it's like new game plus you'd be able to take
another weapon to plus ten, and I think you can get one per run
through the game. And I heard there. I think there might be one
of those in the CLC, so you could probably get to probably get a
weapon to two until plus ten, so you'd get to be able to like
try out the new weapons absolutely, man, I want this to be my
totally powered up weapon. You can absolutely get them close yesh yeah yeah,
yeah, sure, I heard Mouster Hunter. You just shake my head over
here. Yeah, I don't know. It's weird, like you're already super
used to the animation set on the weapon you like and have leveled up like,
it's very tempting to just stick with that because it makes the game easier.
Uh. They do something really cool with a weapon in that thing,
and I don't know if I want to say what it is, but I
I want to say what it is. Don't do it, I could.
It's I mean, it's a mechanical thing. It's not like it. Okay,
if you don't want to know anything about the old Hunters, stop listening
five minutes ago. Yes, exactly. They give you a shield, like
an honest to god functional real shield. I think they said that. Had
they said that thing, I think I knew that. Okay, I hadn't
read about the thing before it came out, so like everything has been in
fact, actually, uh, they kind of futs around with the purpose of
the off hand quite a bit in this, because you know, the off
hand was pretty much nothing but guns. Yeah, I got like brass knuckles.
Basically. We showed that in the Quick Look, which I still haven't
figured out if you can parry with that or not. I would think that
that would be the main combinator that I would assume you can. But I
was a little bit. Yeah, I wasn't able to pull it off,
but uh yeah, Like it's just kind of cool too. Instead of having
a gun in that hand, you can just straight up punch things. But
then it's weird because they give you that goofy ass wooden shield in the main
game, remember that thing, which, like even the description on that thing
is like implying like, hey, if you need to use this, maybe
you shouldn't be playing this game. But then they actually just give you a
full proper functional shield in this weird that works like a shield and dark souls,
Like it doesn't block one hundred percent of damage. You still take a
little bit, but like it definitely helps. They're fucking with us, like
it. You can definitely use that thing as a crutch if you want to.
There's something really bad with that ship. Maybe tell maybe you'll find out,
like if you beat the game with that shield, they erase or saving
yeah something like I don't, I don't know. It just it feels like
a weird reversal game. Yeah, exactly. It just feels like a weird
reversal of their philosophy. You know that this game was supposed to be faster
and more action oriented and more about like dodging and evading and not just like
tanking with a shield and then they just give you one. I don't know,
it's strange. I mean it's you would have had to work your way
up there through playing the entire so you can know you can actually get into
this DLC very quickly. Uh. In fact, I imagine not many people
you're gonna like replay the game. Yeah. Well, I mean if you
if you knew where the DLC was and it was your first time through,
you could get into the DLC in like four or five hours. Point is
like, no Bloodborne neubes are gonna go like, well, I want to
play it. This shield, I'm gonna get that and go there. They
probably wouldn't stumble into it. But yeah, I mean you're you're right,
people playing this game aren't gonna need it, but it is there. So
it's kind of a weird thing to give you after they seem to be taking
such a stance against it previously. But everything I've seen there is is good,
like the you know, I can think it's some you know, the
areas where I stopped playing that game, the boss fights I was in.
I don't know that a shield would really help me that much in those situations,
you know, it wasn't really about that. It's hard to say.
I haven't used that much of it, but but it definitely seems to work
as advertised. Uh, it's weird, like the difficulty has been a little
up and down. Like that first boss that we fought in the quick look
is but easily one of the hardest like souls bosses I have ever fought.
But then the two after that I just blew through, like with no effort
at all. So really it's been kind of up and down. Are over
leveled for it? I don't know, I'm on Sony said like, oh,
you know, maybe be about level sixty five to get in. Well,
I'm on New Game Plus yeah, so and it does scale, so
I am like a level one hundred and thirty. Yeah, but also I
am on like the second play through, so everything should be scaling accordingly.
But it's those bosses are more about just like they were easy to dodge their
stuff, hit them and just get hits in without really taking a lot of
damage. Do you think this changes much in you know, in terms of
of the lore. They get into some new stuff, Okay, but it's
it's it's it's some really weird still, like it's not like necessarily postgame stuff,
right, Yeah, So it's like it's like an offshoot, like it's
sort of a little bit I'm piecing together. I mean, you know,
I'll I'll invariably come back in a month and watch like some exhaustive YouTube video
explaining it's actually going on in this thing, like they did with the first
one. But it seems like they're maybe exploring like the origins of one of
the other factions of people that are referenced in the main game, like the
powder Kegs. I think, all right, I've seen mentioned if you remember
them, they were like a different faction of hunters that made like, yeah,
they made like uh kind of unapproved weaponry, like experimental weaponry something like
that. I don't don't know anyway, it's a lot of nebulous, crazy,
weird. There's some kind of new co op thing, yeah, New
Covenant, and they just turned the servers on on Friday, So I haven't
actually seen any of that stuff yet, but my understanding is it makes it
easier, or at least it kind of formalizes the process of getting into other
people's games to help them, and there's like leaderboards attached to that in some
way. But I have no idea how they track stats or what that that
was. Every every time I tried to get someone else into my game,
it just never happened. It happened once when I there was one boss where
I was like just having some probably like let's at least try this feature.
I've never even tried it before, and you know, got it going a
few times. It just never had anyone, huh, jump in. It's
kind of weird that they would add it this late in the cycle for this
thing. I mean, you know, obviously there's gonna be a huge resurgence
and interest in this game around this. Yeah, but this doesn't sound super
long, so I don't know how long people will actually still be actively in
Blood Born. I wonder if it makes use of that there are people still
playing Blood Born in the way that, like, you know, you see
people having their souls games, doing like the level one run this and doing
that, you know, playing the game different ways, Like I haven't necessarily
heard a lot about Blood Born in the same way. I don't think Blood
Born inspires that kind of repeat play through sort of behavior, Like it's that
game to me is very much about finding the two weap like the main and
offhand weapons that you like and just going yeah and then kind of being done,
like like you can't do all magic builds, or you can't do just
ranged builds, you know, or your sword and shield build, like you
couldn't you know, dark Souls you could play like pretty much however the hell
you want from the outset. Yeah, yeah, uh and this is this
is a lot more rigid. Yeah, but but the content and this seems
really good so far, like the really nice looking areas, like creepy shit,
that game is nailed. It's atmosphere, man, yes, for sure,
just some clever stuff like I just got through this area, which is
a bunch of this just like criss crossing stairways. They're like the like multiple
staircat staircases sort of overlapping each other to the point that it's almost hard to
see where they go, and like a couple of them kind of lead to
literally nothing. But then as you get deeper into it, you find ways
to start manipulating that and then like wow, things sort of lock into place.
And then once you go back through at the second time and you're like,
oh, now I see where the stairs are supposed to go, you
know, just like some ending of Labyrinth. Yes, exactly, Okay,
Yes, it's like a really good super Mariot Maker level. And then and
then you fight David Bowie at the end. Good dude, and it's yep,
good they got him. Yeah, that thing seems good. I hope
that it justifies it's twenty dollars price. But but it's certainly very well put
together so far. That seems like a fair price to me. Yeah,
I think. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you want more
blood Borne, there's only one place to get it. Where uh and blood
Born? Oh oh the old os. Wait until next March when another Dark
Souls comes up. Yeah, all right, one last order of business.
What you get? I finished that StarCraft expansion, Like I say, the
void, Well, I mean, don't just spill the ending, but give
me, give me a vibe, man, talk to me about the end
of StarCraft. Okay, holdout? Really talking first? The good news,
Yes, which I actually forgot to mention last week. I was just getting
into this last week, and now I have seen it fully come to bear.
John Delancy is in this game, and he's fucking amazing. I completely
forgot to bring that up last week. He is like he's like kind of
a bad guy that you have to like grudgingly form an alliance with to get
things done, you know. Yep, and he just choose scenery like a
motherfucker in this game. Like, oh my god, he is really good.
But what's well maybe this is a spoiler, but can you tell me
what sort of being he is? A protos Okay, yeah, so he's
got all that weird like what did you call it in the quick look,
like kind of the reverse verse reverb, Like just a real real like echoe
throaty psionic kind of I'm going to talk before I talk, yes, kind
of. But he's but he also just gets way down in his register and
it's just kind of growling a lot of his lines. But he's also there's
a little bit of that glee, like that kind of impish glee of of
Q and his voice as well, you know, like he's just having a
lot of fun with it. It's really good. Uh. Then you finish
that thing, and man that goes places full anime pretty much? Okay,
yeah, pretty much? Uh yeah, I don't really it's hard to talk
around without just saying what happens at it, but man, it's stupid.
Okay, yeah, it's really stupid. The thing that I read about what
that was didn't sound real dumb the whole time, because I knew that you
were sitting on like some piece of information that you had heard about and I
didn't know what it was. But as soon as I well, so for
one thing, like I kind of half guessed what was going to happen like
halfway through in terms of that one specific event, But as soon as it
happens, You're just like, what really that that's how you're gonna do that?
And then they totally do it. So in your estimation, is it
a? Is it a worthy conclusion to StarCraft two? Not really? Actually?
Yeah, Like if you're talking about what it is, this is the
this is the final expansion. I mean not only that, like they actually
frame it like the the events are of such an importance that it's basically the
conclusion to StarCraft. WHOA, Like they kind of put a bow on everything
to the point that like you could never make another StarCraft game and nobody would
feel unfulfilled in terms of like the story reaching its conclusion. You know,
wow, I'm not saying you couldn't make another StarCraft game, but if they
never made another. Aren't they they're doing that StarCraft Adventure or whatever the there's
the thing they said at blizz Con. Yeah, Nova or whatever. I
have not clear. Yeah, like the Nova covert Ops I think is the
name of that first one. Like they're gonna do these little bit stick shooting
for the iPads. No, they're bringing back StarCraft ghosts. Those are just
gonna be a little sets of missions they're gonna put out for this and who
knows where those are set. I have no idea what those are gonna be
about, and like if they're gonna be I assume charging for them. They
didn't really go into detail, but uh yeah, like you go all the
way back to when they announced StarCraft two, and then when they announced that
it was going to be split into three, and then even the fact that
the first one of those came out over five years ago, Like you think
about all the time that's passed as the story has slowly played out, and
like did you guys, you guys played through the first one, right,
Yeah? Do you remember just like the the ancient prophecies and like the like
enormous like apocalyptic visions that the characters were having, and just like these kind
of like like galaxy spanning conflicts that were promised. It all seemed very serious.
Yes, it was very grandiose, you know, like it just sort
of ends like that stuff plays out, but in like a really underwhelming,
kind of perfunctory way. At the end of this thing, like a lot
of the major of not all, but a lot of the major events that
form the conclusion of this thing take place like in the game engine. Like
I don't even mean cut scenes rendered it like in real time. I mean
like that style. I mean like the literal overhead battlefield camera, like the
like the actual RTS view with mineral counts yess right, Like major character is
being dealt with in that view like from the RTS. I want to say,
didn't that happen in StarCraft one? Oh yeah totally. And they didn't
have a lot of choice then, yeah, like they did. They had
their CG cut scenes, and they had whatever budget they had to make X
minutes of those or whatever. But I wonder, I wonder how much of
this was like them going like, well, that's how we did it in
StarCraft, and how much of this is with them going, well, it
costs a lot per minute to make CG even though we are blizzards. You
know, this is still just StarCraft two now that ain't what it used to
be. So how about you have it play out in a mission. I
can't guess that they're intent, but I will say that none of it comes
off as like a deliberate throwback, okay, Like it just comes off as
like kind of bland, you know, and even even like the setting aside
how it's presented, just like the nature of the events are just so predictable.
Yeah, and like you know, like you know, it's it's it's
kind of the whole problem with building this big arc around like this kind of
ancient, big bad you know, like just like, oh, everybody's got
a unite against the formless ancient evil existential evil, and like I gotta slam
these keystones and deal with the evil that makes it go down a little smoother.
Uh Yeah. Like the story is just super predictable and kind of flat,
and it's a shame because like individual moments in that campaign or a ton
of fun you know, where characters clash with each other or just like crazy
big space battles happen, or a gameplay wise, there's a lot of uh
yeah, the campaign's super fun. Like it's really well put together. You
know, it's it's as good as those campaigns have been so far. Cool,
but it's definitely more of that, So you're not really gonna see anything
radically new, but it's a lot of fun to play through. But yeah,
like I was getting super into it again. You know, it was
like going for every achievement and every mission and like just I was like,
man, StarCraft is back, and then the last handful of missions you go
through and I just kind of it took a lot of the wind out of
my sales to the point that I don't think I want to go about moth
up anymore of those achievements. They also it kind of had hesitate to say
it has two endings, but the way it's parceled out, you may you
may have seen, like this is not some huge spoiler. It's right there
on the menu when you start the campaign. But there's like an epilogue campaign
at the end, which is three missions. So it's like the pro dost
campaign ends and it has a conclusion, but then you mediately turn around and
do that epilogue campaign and then like more things happen, you know, Yeah,
like it's just paste really weirdly, you know, it doesn't feel like
like the epilogue is supposed to be where all the truly climactic, like world
changing events take place. But it's like I feel like I just finished the
game and now I'm like not done, you know, like it did you
know what I mean? It tacked on in a way, like it's just
a weird way to split things up. I think they wanted to use that
as their excuse to like, you know, here's a MISSI where you plays
the Terrans before it's over, and right, here's a mission where you get
to play as the Zerg again. But you know, like they kind of
wanted to throw everything it was the book on these guests, Yes, exactly,
and they do for sure. Jimmy James Rainer one last time, Man,
Rainer, only shit, I know you don't care. I kind of
want to just tell you something after this podcast is over. Yeah, totally.
I will hear everything you say about just to see what you think the
dumb final moments of StarCraft. Man, it's weird though, Like it's just
weird because like the last arts they did was, you know, a game
that was basically made in service of setting up an mmo, you know,
like Warcraft three of nothing else, just like kicks off a bunch of new
conflicts and sets the stage for this game that they've been building on for ten
years or whatever, and like this game just like I'd never considered that.
Do you think that Warcraft three was built with wow in mind? Was that?
I was that something they've said? I they haven't said it, but
like it absolutely introducing the introduction, introduction of hero characters and all that sort
of stuff like puts a face on Warcraft, the hero stuff, but also
the fact that they added so many new factions. I mean, of course
you're going to add more factions in your new arts or whatever, but like,
I just remember thinking they added so much lore and so many different personalities,
and like because you know, it was it used to be just humans
versus orcs, and that that's a big part of what pushed me away from
Warcraft three. You know, I know people love that game, but I
just you know, the hero characters, the hero units and then all that.
Yeah, that kind of stuff was just I was like, man,
you guys really lost the plot on this one. Warcraft two was a fucking
badass game. Warcraft two is really so good. I might say Warcraft two
is one of the best games ever made. You might, uh, but
you know, like they added they added night elves and undead and that thing,
neither of which had, like it really ever been seen in that lore
before. You know, like they just added so many different places and concepts,
and like it very much felt like, Hey, we need to build
up a fiction that can support this massive MMO that we're going to run for
a decade or whatever, and StarCraft is the exact opposite. Like, you
know, they made very much another StarCraft game with the same factions, the
same characters, and then just kind of wrap it all up very tightly.
There was a part of me at one point I had wished that they had
made a StarCraft MMMO instead. Yeah. Yeah, the way this thing closes
out, it does not feel like another StarCraft product is forthcoming soon, if
ever, it makes sense. But that's not a bad it's not necessarily bad
thing. It's just kind of the way that you know, I wisht and
drama yep, man, I do wish they had executed the ending a little
more gracefully and with a little more depth. But it has an ending,
that's for sure. Yeah, So there you have that I needed. I
need to mess with some more of that multiplayer stuff I need. I need
to know, yes exactly. Uh. You guys, got any other games
you want to talk about? You want to, No, I come through.
I've been messing with things, little things here and there, and then
also getting through games for like kind of game of the year check which I
don't I don't want to talk about those because then that's just us having game
of the year conversations early. That'll come soon enough. And I've been continuing
to fiddle with Super Mario Maker, yes, which is a grand game.
So I hear Overwatch's grabbing my attention. Oh did you know? I didn't
get invited? But we didn't. Man, I keep seeing streams and people
playing it. I'm like, fun, Yeah, that game looks great and
I'm not really that anty for his person Shooters was a big team shooter guy.
Yeah. I like the you know, I like the theory behind.
It's very it's very well stuff. Yeah. After watching that quick look,
I'm like, yeah, I could get into this, Yes, it could
be fun. But got game of the year stuff, yes, worry about
right now? That is a game of next year. Yep. Although not
that far off. Yeah, like what else? What else is going on?
Just cause I mean that's just Zeno Blade yea god, I want to
play that man. Yeah, And I like did not have the time for
that game, so we sent it to Austin. I remember going in the
envelope and shed a tear. Yes, and Rainbow six Rabo six Siege.
And there's like a new Kung Fu Panda game. Oh yeah, I think
there's a new movie. Probably think you're making another Kung Fu Panda. I
saw some stills made money. Oh yeah, so probably sure. I don't
know. Yeah, what's the Idagaki game coming out? That is still coming
out? Isn't holy crap? Yeah, eleventh, I think that is.
We should probably push back our deliberation. Oh, you're right, yes,
it's just we you exclusive, right, yet it's also coming to PC.
Really at the same time, I don't think we you and PC like that's
weird. Pardo what huh? This is Resign They are publishing it here.
There was talk for a while that they weren't, and then they kind of
reiterated like no, this is US. I don't know, no one else
would pick it up. We should probably cover that. Yeah, Oh,
yeah, we need to see what that is. I've heard because out in
some territories now. Really, I want to say it's out in Japan or
something. But I feel like there's been nothing but negative reaction to that thing.
But I feel like it's all based on speculation though, like nobody's actually
had any firsthand experience with it. I feel like it's out somewhere right now?
Is it? Is it a character action? It could be wrong.
I have no idea. Yeah, there's gonna there's a multiplayer mode that I
believe is only on the PC or something like that. I've not been following
that game closely at all, so I could be wildly wrong. But it's
been a while that. Definitely it's been Austin that dude has shipped a game.
Yes, absolutely, God. I can't even think what the last one
would have bet. I mean, it would have been a dead or alive
game at this point, right Anderson, it would have been it would have
been Techmo release, right, Yeah. But anything he didn't he wasn't there
for ninuting three, wasn't like the latest DA. I don't think it's part
of either. Man. Man, I don't know what he's been up to
him. Yeah, there's code Chrono. No, he's canceled d again.
All right, well for video games this week, let's talk about some news.
Okay, there's not a whole lot of news. Big surprise in fact,
that there's exactly like one story that actually kind of matters. U slay
it upon me. All right, buckle up, click, I'm in.
How would you like Okay, how would you like to play PlayStation two games
on your PlayStation four? I would like that quite a bit. Act.
All right, Well, Sony's got good news for you. Really. Yeah,
they've confirmed two wired that they are in fact working on PS two emulation
for the PS four. But like, the whole way that this came out
was really strange because it seemed like a people leaping to some pretty generous conclusions
kind of or at least like assuming making assumptions about things. Because the Star
Wars Battlefront console bundle comes with the Star Wars games, one of which is
a new version of Superstar Wars, a new port of Superstar Wars. Yeah,
and that got trophies and it's got trophy eater boards. And then three
PS two Star Wars games re released and those still have all their PS two
button prompts and a lot of resolution stuff up as type stuff that you look
at it and go like, this looks like emulation. It turns out that
it was is and they've put trophies into it. They had a pat in
a while back they talked about trophies. Four old games. PS two games
have trophies as well. Yeah. Oh but if you go if you look
at the trophy lists for those Four Star Wars games, the one for Superstar
Wars are more in depth, which you would get you would be able to
get a little more easily if you were coding a new version of that game.
Okay, if you were an emulator on the outside looking into a game
and going like, well, what data can we extract from this running code?
Yeah? What what we you know? Then it's like, okay,
well you finished level one, we know that because this number changed to this,
and you know, like those sorts of things, like the trophies for
those PS two games are a little more generic, like you think about it,
like the Arcade Archive series that Hamster does. Uh, those are maybe
on at the extreme end of things of being like super generic trophies because it's
stuff like your score hit this number, or you know, you you looked
at the menu or you you checking out the option. Yeah, like they
build up this much memory. So yeah, it's it's the sort of thing
that like you could very easily do with an emulated game. And and so
the the PS two games, those trophy lists look a lot more basic than
than many other trophy losks. Is it like the were you talking about one
time about people doing achievements for old games. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
a lot like that, okay, where like but even those are starting to
get like people are starting to get better, and now they're spending more time
with like emulated old games and coding new achievements for those games and emulators that
then support this network. Yeah, it's stuff like you know, you know,
beat this level of Super Mario World, or like, hey, finish
this level of Super Mario Brothers while the timer is you know, like it's
based like a speed run through a level. Things where they can look at
numbers and know like this is the number, this is the when the level
says this. If they finished the level and the time says this, then
give them this like those sorts of equations or the sorts of things they're doing.
And yeah, they these PS two trophy lists look like those in some
cases either way, I'm yeah, Landboard. It seemed like this all started
on Digital Foundry, Like they ran an article saying like looking at those games,
going like, hey, they do this and this, which like other
normally games are not allowed to do in this environment, and I don't know
what the kind of the order of events was. From there. That led
to Sony finally coming out and confirming it was weird because there were a lot
of stories that were just like hands on. Even the Digital Foundry thing was
like hands on with the PS four's PS two emulator, and it led to
a lot of people being really confused of being like, wait, I can
wait, what it's out? I can play PS two? Wait what it's
like, No, it's just these Star Wars games that are being sold.
Is this one off thing? It's not like, hey, put a PS
two disc in and here you go and probably will never be Yeah, yeah,
that's why not because they could sell those games again. They went and
rate a bunch of PS two games, like an Apiscape game and some other
older games that have been re rated by a ratings board, oh rat rated
that seemed likely to appear in this format at some point. But if they're
doing that work, I feel like that means they intend to sell these things.
You're probably right. I'll go ahead and read the quote that Sony gave
to Wired about this. We are working on utilizing PS two emulation technology to
bring PS two games forward to the current generation. We have nothing further to
comment at this point in time. God damn it. Yeah, so that's
all they had to say. PSX is coming up. This is That is
the exact I was talking to Austin about this, like not that long ago
and kind of putting our heads together and say, like, you know what,
this is the exact right level of announcement where it is like a big
thing for people that like Sony and like the PlayStation, but wouldn't necessarily headline
an E three level event, wouldn't be a Paris Games Week sort of thing.
So this seems like something that they would very clearly save for the PlayStation.
Think this was just that getting outed totally that this is people, This
is people getting to that conclusion because those Star Wars games had to ship alongside
Battlefront and then Sony actually in rare form saying like oh yeah, yeah,
yeah. So that's the weird part to me is that they didn't just go
what check in later yea or whatever. So but I you know, my
guess is that this would be something they would hold more details. Yes,
so yeah, you would hope now that the info is the basic info was
out there, they would bring some some actual meat, yeah, to the
event in terms of like what the business model is going to be and what
you'll be able to do, what you won't be able to do. Put
discs in your thing. I want to pop a disc in. Man,
that would be so great. That would be so great. I would love
it. I would I totally love it. Yeah, that would be nice.
I just I just don't see them going that route with that. I
see them doing some amount of work, whether it's trophy work, figuring out
like what the okay, we can upscale this game to this resolution before it
gets weird, so we're gonna lock it here, you know, doing that
level of kind of custom work, which is you know, not as big
as re engineering a whole game, but you know, is still work.
Yeah. My guess is that that's that's how they'll do this if they're if
they're providing better graphics and like even going as far as to add trophies I
can, I'll kind of see the case for charging for that stuff. It's
not necessarily better graphics. I mean they're upressing, they're filtering, you know
it say it's things that like a an existing PS two emulator will PC already
does sure, and so you know, I don't know, you could see
it when maybe they're gonna get extra generous and go fuck it, put your
disk in and you'll still be able to get trophies off them or something like
that. I just don't see that being likely. I wonder if it makes
more business sense, Like I'm thinking if how many PS two games I would
buy, Like, does it make more sense to charge you like a subscription,
like the subscription for the ability to play your PS two games emulated.
I don't know. I think that gets weird because they have their PlayStation now
streaming stuff that does some of that already, so I think it muddies the
waters with their existing subscription services. Was that I can't remember it was now
just PS three games? Had they ever Yeah, I think it's just PS
three, but that was the case, right. I think they looked at
doing PS two at some point, but haven't necessarily added those so that this
would explain why they held back the older games. Then if they had a
different So if they if they're you know, if they're weird, you know,
rack mounted PS three stuff might not be able to run PS two stuff.
You know, there's sure there's a lot of technical reasons that that might
be challenging to launch PS three's in those racks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
the other OS functional was missing, right because they couldn't get in their
in code. Plus, you know, it's kind of have to hire a
lot of people to walk all those discs back and forth because PS three every
time somebody wants to play one. Yeah, you know, that's all the
scud missiles you could launch. Yeah, it's true. I wonder how that
PlayStation now stuff is doing. I don't know. I you know, I
didn't even hear people talking about it when it launched. It was like one
of the things where when it entered beta you heard people talking about the performance
and some of that stuff, and then it has just been silent. I
don't hear like people out there in like the community saying like I'm loving playing
these PS three games. Well, this is a huge game. Library,
Like, I just I haven't heard that it's a legacy service. You know,
they're not gonna have a bunch of new games coming out all the time.
It's kind of generate, not going to generate a lot of buzz,
I suppose, but but yeah, I don't know. It's I maybe I'm
being overly pessimistic and thinking that they would they would take this opportunity to sell
ups two games again, But I feel like that's where the industry is at
these days. I think you're probably right. You probably are right. It's
kind of a weird look next to the three sixty backwards compatibility having just launched,
and like, granted that doesn't cover a ton of games yet, but
like the ones that does cover, you just them in and go. Do
you think Microsoft will come out with the video it says, here's how to
play backwards compatible games on your Xbox one, slide into tray well and PS
two would be lined up with the original Xbox which Microsoft had to come out
like I think the last week or something like it was. Quotes from Spencerson
like that's hard. Yeah, you know, getting original Xbox games emulated,
Ye, not easy. So even for the people who made the console.
Yeah. I think they're like, we would love to do it, but
yeah, that's not really necessarily and it took them two years to get the
three sixty right stuff going. Yeah, that'd be great. I would.
I would love to see original Xbox games become more playable than they are right
now. That is the that's that's a black hole. Imagine worked on it
too. It'd be awesome. Man, that'd be crazy. Yeah yeah,
yeah yeah, man. Fuck, Like, what is what is your best
bet for playing online games? CBS two. I guess it's just like going
fucking spy tunnel black market. Yeah, you're you're screwed tunnel it. Yeah.
If it's got land play, yeah, more than likely. I've never
tried. I've never tried outside of g GPO probably runs that shit. Actually
maybe not because that's a Naomi game, right, So I don't. I
don't. There are emulators. There are emulators that run Naomi and Dreamcast stuff
pretty well, but getting network code slapped on top of that might not be
the easiest. I don't know. Uh, that sounds like a fun project
for me just to research it. Not that Yeah, promote emulation at all?
I would Yeah, I don't know. I'll be interested to see what
they end up doing with this PS two stuff long term. I would love
it, man, Like I'm games. Yeah, I own a ton of
PS two games that I would love to play, and the games that they
would put on their list to resell, assuming that they if they, or
even if it would, I had to be like a game by game approval
of like whether your old discs can run because they have to do verification work
or whatever, is never going to cover the PS two games that I would
want to play. Yeah, uh Like it's you know, I'm gonna dig
deep into weird dumb all the Sega ages games right, came out of Japan
on all that shit? You know, just the the Yoshanoia game. Yes,
god, yeah game? Yeah, what is it? We played that
on our Friday broadcast at some point some one Friday broadcast for another It's like
diner dash okay, yeah, you serve food, You hit buttons to serve
food, and you have to do it fast. Got it. It's not
bad. How much as Yoshanoia games go? Yeah? Yes, how much
would you guys pay for let's just say, like an EPs two game?
Shit? Yeah? What about ten? Nope? No too much? And
is that Is that equation worse if you already own the game, Yes,
it's gonna be tough if they're if they're curated and they have, like you,
a top shelf titles. Might pay ten dollars for stuff. But if
it's just like you know, like at a huge library where they've got a
ton of stuff available, please no more than five. If it's So Calm
too with functional online servers, I would pay them ten dollars, okay,
just to see how many people actually put their money where their mouth is on
that one. Because anytime any of this stuff comes up, someone comes out
of the world. We're going the So Calm fan base has been starved too
long? Why won't you do this? And they always talk about it like
there's a million of them out there waiting, and don't there are don't I
mean maybe, like, don't get me wrong, I think So Calm two
is fucking awesome, but I also think it was very much of a specific
era, and that game today by today's multiplayer standards, I don't I don't
know that you wouldn't necessarily sure find the support that that some of those guys
think that they've got right. Method man would show up. Okay, he's
a socm fand uh yeah again. For me, it just it would come
down to how much kind of extra work they were doing around the edges of
those things. Why trophy support would go a long way. I don't know
that I'm interested in enough in trophies to like replay a PS two games.
I'm not based on that. Man. It's like I would do it just
for the trophies, but it would be a nice little like if you're going
to charge for games that people likely already own, it would be a nice
gesture. So I don't want to. I don't want that to be the
reason for no. I'm just saying, like, like, find some ways
to dress up these games that you were very possibly asking people to buy for
a second time. Yeah, you know, what about like a static border
on the side? Okay, yeah, what about actually CRT filter? Now
that I use a plasma, I can't use those borders. I have to
turn them off. Oh right, because that just it retains that ship.
I have the fucking Xbox logo in the upper right corner screen like permanently.
Yeah. I when win games like when you walk out of the Vault and
fall Out four, nice and everything turns white. Yeah, yeah, any
any kind of like solid flat color. So I'm like, oh, look
at that Xbox logo. Shit, yep, I've got I've had the ABC
seven logo for a while. Uh, and I've got the Destiny gun display.
That one hasn't gone away yet. It finally went away from last year's
Destiny run, like from the one hundred and fifty hours of Destiny I've played
last year, it had finally faded, and then I played another hundred.
We'll see if that Xbox logo ever goes away, because it's not there anymore
really current x Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it probably should.
I think that that stuff does. It could take a few weeks or months.
But street Fighter monitor with like the data east font insert coin credit zero
burning, I don't think that's gonna go away, but yeah, I wouldn't
want of course. Also that monitor is completely broken, so it doesn't really
matter anyway. Uh, hose it down, Yes, that's how you clean
it off. It needs to be rewound. What I don't I've I was
talking to someone. I might have been Steve Lynn, probably was hand cranking
something some time ago about like kind of getting CRTs rejuvenating CRTs, rewinding the
wire or something about recoiling, coiling those things that like little bombs. Yeah,
Like, isn't that last time I was talking to anyone about it?
It was like there was one guy in the area and he knew exactly how
to do it because his skills were in demand. Super risky to open one
of those things up right, for multiple reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean you could discharge the capacitor and it's not gonna But if you
screw that up, man, ifinny did it, you just lay the screwdriver
across the terminals or whatever and just it makes a pop noise, then you're
fine and yeah, or otherwise in beds the screwdriver in the wall, well
yeah, all right, well got speed. No, I'm not touching that
fucking thing. It's been a plug for long enough that I would think it
would have discharged. But I dude, I don't know. That was it
for like actual real news. We've got to We've got a pair of birthdays.
Oh you might want to know about. On Sunday the twenty second,
the Xbox three sixty turned ten. Fuck yeah, no, right, do
you think that's bad shit? The day before that, Saturday, the twenty
first, check my dates and make yup Saturday twenty first, the super Famicom.
Granted, this is the Japanese release twenty five, okay that I believe
it's the ten years on the three sixty them, Like, that's actually worse
recent because I have one of those hooked up in my house, right.
I still remember Elijah Wood pulling that out of his backpack. Oh man,
I remember sitting at G four when pre orders for the Xboy, when pricing
got announced for the three sixty, because I was down there hosting, co
hosting the attack of the show. Is that when that was Kevin Pereira.
Is that the week that you guys went down there and did like Cinema Tech.
That was a different week. I went down there on my own separately,
Okay, I believe after the Cinema Tech stuff. Oh wow, that
was all pre three sixty. That was pre yeah, late two thousand and
five. Yeah, yeah, And I was down there when they started taking
pre orders and then it was out relatively soon after that that that fall or
whatever. Yeah, November twenty second. You just filled me with the uncontrollable
desire for us to sit down and watch that fucking MTV special and stream it
or something like, I haven't seen that since it came out, since it
was new. Yeah, like I want to see how embarrassing that thing might
we We've talked about it enough, but why don't we should? We should
get into that next year, if not earlier, probably next year At this
point we got a lot of Game of the Year stuff to prep. But
like the the watching of old press conferences, yeah, because I haven't gone
back to watch any of that stuff in its entirety. So yeah, going
back to Jay Allard sitting on the stage, going back to that that PS
three press conference. Man, I never actually saw that PS three when it
was in middle three and I was busy, like I don't know. I
was there typing up notes on my fucking T mobile sidekick, like the at
the press conference you were in there? Oh shit, I was in the
booth. I think I was doing write ups or something. Yeah, I
was sitting there and everyone kind of looking at each other going like, fucking
did you just say what? Really? Wow? Like no applause for that?
Really? No shit? Well that's how I remember it. We should
go back and watch it was for it was for the price, right,
that that's the moment, right, that's when they just dropped like a stone.
I remember sitting in there for ten or fifteen minutes after the press conference,
continuing to type notes because there was an instant messenger it was it would
connect to all instant messenger. So I think I was just like connected to
tour, right, and I was just like tour thors and not yet or
not not the deep wet our news guy. I was listing PS three fucking
boomerang controllers on Silk Road Tour who was running news, yeah, and kind
of just like getting notes back to him. Yeah, I mean that was
pre ubiqual to smartphones, pre like data plan everywhere, like getting like you
had a data plan. But that was a pretty rare thing back then.
Getting information live out of that thing to our news guy was like not a
trivial process. No, it required me to buy that phone, yeah,
which was a pretty fucking awesome phone. H T Mobile hamstrung it though.
It could have done customer ring tones, but they limitated because they wanted to
sell ring tones. Fuck that fucker's fuck that. Uh. Did you guys
see the article the game Spot ran over the weekend about the three sixty launch,
like the heat, Like they talked to I forget the who the author
is, but they talked to Robbie Bach, they talked to I don't think
they talked to Allard directly. They talked to Boyd Malterer, who was kind
of the head engineer on all three xboxes. Although I didn't realize he just
left Microsoft in the last year. He's out of there, but he was
like he was the first person ever logged into Xbox Live, Like he architected
Xbox Live, the consoles, X and A like fucking everything they ever did
for those things. Anyway, Like they got a lot of really good quotes
out of those guys, like just kind of talking about the run up too.
They talk about the actually the original console and then the three sixty and
like kind of you know what they learned first time, and yeah, the
plans they had and like they talk about that moment at the PS three things,
you know, where they they heard the price live as it was announced
and like said that they like it sounded like they were basically doing car whee,
you know, like that they were coming in two hundred dollars cheaper than
the competition. Who they were like like religiously bent like hell bent on defeating
You know, it sounds like it was a really interesting article and it sounds
like just a crazy time for that competition. Is it called how Xbox three
sixty dominated a decade? Yes, that's the article by Rob Crossley. Okay,
yeah, it's that thing is definitely worth a read if you're if you're
into just like the crazy like competitive stuff that goes on behind console launches and
like the way they get designed and implemented and stuff. That thing is super
interesting. I still remember like being backstage at like some launch party for that
they had Addie add E three or was like their E three party or something
where they were kind of getting ready to launch, and I'm seeing those guys
like the brain Trust backstage fucking champagne up bottled up the Yeah. Yeah,
like we were filming something in there. I forget what it was. I
don't know. We were run around backstage of that thing to shoot stuff or
something, and yeah, those guys were there. I mean, they made
a fucking amazing console for the time, and think about how many standards that
things set. Yeah, there was a lot of like really smart, forward
looking things that the three sixty did like there was a quote in there about
and I like it's been so long that I don't even think in these terms
anymore. But like basically that they came up with the idea that you wouldn't
go online to play a game with this console. You would just be online
at all times. Yeah, and like that seems like such a no brainer
these days, you know, but like at a time, like think about
what you had to do on like the PS two or even the original Xbox
to get online. Yeah, I was stupid. Like it was like practically
putting in like DNS settings for each game individually, and like you only connected
up whenever you were actually logging in to play a game, and then you
would quit out, you know. And like the idea that this thing just
connected to a service at the console level, right, and then you never
touched it again. Like that was huge, you know. You know,
some of their some of their decisions I think hamstrung them a little bit.
I mean it may have been something that helped them be successful from sales perspective,
but like the removable hard drive thing really sucked. Yeah, totally forcing
developers to account for systems that didn't have a hard drive was was pretty shitty.
I mean obviously, like the Red Ring stuff was a fucking nightmare.
Yes, they get into that in the article. Definitely in terms of like,
yeah, fu man. You know, even in spite of that stuff,
for that console to have been, you know, as big a deal
as it was, yeah, it forced Sony to make a lot of big
changes. Yes, going into the PS four. Yes, absolutely, you
say Sony learned a lot from Microsoft. Microsoft learned nothing from itself. It's
exactly what I would say, one hundred percent that would be my assessment.
I mean, I stood to this day think that the PS four is the
PS four is best in all the ways that it's just emulating a three sixty
in terms of like easily getting you in the parties and game invites and all
that shit. You know, it's just like it does what a console should
do. Yeah, the stuff where they went like, oh, we really
fucked this up last time. Yeah, let's just build it like they built
it right. And then Microsoft they didn't build it like they Bill duck Shop
was so fucking left on their fucking media empire. Yep, yep. Do
you think that the where do you think where they're at now that they have
like completely unfucked that stuff that the new Xbox One experience is not. Yeah,
they completely unfucked. They don't feel like they're there yet either, like
they're they're getting there. That thing is definitely better than it was, Yes,
I would. I would agree with that for sure. During the hesitate
process on the new Xbox One, stuff like the new Dash I thought was
clunky in a lot of way. Sure, yeah, like spending a little
more time with it and also it just being faster I think is good.
Yes, I don't hesitate to like recommend it anymore. Yeah, Like even
like game savvy friends of mine, I'm like, oh, man, I
don't know if you want to buy an Xbox One. Now I think it's
okay because like before it was just like the party stuff is just insane.
Yeah, and just all the friends and stuff snapping, Like that stuff still
there and it's still annoying. But like the first iteration of that was just
terrible. Just engineers, you know, right before that thing it's launch date,
I was in there going like, man, I wish I could just
never snap anything ever, And they seemed like taken aback, Like I assume
they must have data that people fucking love snap or something, or they are
way behind it because I was just like, man, snap and sucks.
I wish I could never snap anything ever, and they were just like what,
so, yeah, I don't know many I feel like some of that
is maybe just like they just must just have usage data that backs up these
things that I think still get in the way. Yeah, it used to.
It used to feel like a chore to do most things on an Xbox
One. And I still still, even post this update, run into situations
where it's like the the my game snaps section of that thing did not get
any updates and it still sucks. Yeah, I would like to see that
thing get better, just because it was just like it doesn't feel like it
patches like it. You know. It's like there are times when I like
go to launch game and it says, oh, there's a patch, when
the whole thing is it's supposed to be doing that in the background. I'll
go check and see that that patch has been available for two days or something.
I just haven't played the game, like it hasn't taken it automatically,
like there their philosophical goal of making all that stuff transparent to the user is
noble, you know, like if you never had to think about when patches
happened or saves we're sayinked or any of that shit, it would be amazing.
But like, it doesn't always work, you know, yep, And
when it doesn't work, it makes you feel helpless because it's like, well,
is there a patch for this? How do I get it? Right?
What do I do? Like the PS four might beat you over the
head with that stuff a little more, but at least you know what it's
doing at all times, except when you put a disk in that fucking thing
or a downloading a game for the first time and that bar fills up,
but it is still secretly installed, Like there is still shadow fucking darkness on
the fucking PS four of like what are you doing? Yeah? Like when
I when I took a look and went, oh, the Battlefront patch finished
downloading, and that bar is filled. I guess I can play the game
now, and then it's like, hey, run around is Darth Vader while
the game finishes installing, like oh fucking really, or like or like fall
Out did the GTA five thing of like it? Like it? It becomes
bootable in about five seconds, but all that does is take you to an
install screen Like that just feels like them work around the console requirements of that
early boot thing in like the worst like way possible for consumers. Like,
that's just not it's not cool. Yeah, that's what Alien did. And
just like let you go into a broken game. I would rather just wait.
I'd rather just like say, like, don't let me go into a
broken game. Don't let me go into anything. Walk around the ship and
oh it's gone. Just make the bar reel. Yeah, the bar that
shows on that thing prevent me from launching the game until it's done. Yeah,
until you can actually early launch thing on Xbox One and NPS four,
I think has just been a fucking waste. Yeah, not not a lot
of games that use it. Well, I don't believe it anymore. I
don't want it. Also play a game until it's one that. Did that
really happen in Alien? Yeah? What it? Yeah? You could play
it and it just like couldn't load stuff in. Yeah. I was walking
around like I was. I would walk from one room of the ship to
the other, but into space and back into the ship. Oh wow,
because the room didn't exist. Yeah, and you had started a new game.
You were in the game proper this wasn't some pre install like special mode
or something. No, yeah, that's could say ready to start, and
I did, and like the scripting didn't work, Like I watched this lady
and she looked at me. Metal Gear doesn't say fan of pain. I
died in the hospital sequence at the beginning, a fan of pain. And
it just goes like it would fade out and go oh like it would to
like reload my checkpoint. It would say installing, and it would say this
is gonna take three hundred seconds or thirty seconds or ninety seconds or whatever,
and the numbers would never go down. I just had to quit the game
and then manually sit there and listen to see if the disc was still spinning
in there, and then when it finally stopped, then I could play metal
Gear. Like that stuff's just shitty. That's that's still that is still ongoing.
Ye. Some of some of the new features in these new machines have
been pretty cool, like the inst and on stuff I had pretty good luck
with. But that one that the specifically the play before it's installed stuff is
just like it seems like a failed experiment. I don't even use any of
the instant on stuff really, I so my PS four goes like both systems
I have powered down to the quick on state, but I manually quit Xbox
one games when I'm done with him, I hit start, I got down
to quit and quit man because I never trust that shit. I've had to
go bad too many times and I'd never come back where It'll just open it
up and I'll be like, you're not on the server, quit the menu.
You're right. Any any game, any game that's got persistent online stuff,
like like blood Borne handled it really badly. I remember when because that
pet that feature was patched in like right around the time Bloodborne came out.
There are some other examples, but yeah, any game that tries to keep
you connected to a server, say like, oh, you're logging status has
change and the profile change happened, We're going to kick it back to the
menu. It's like, well, if you're kicking me back to the menu,
then like, why am I? I can't trust this to keep my
save? Have you guys tried to suspend with tumb Rader because because I was
This was both before tumb rator was out and I was on the an Xoe
preview, so I couldn't trust any of what was happening, But tumb rater
failed to suspend. Every single time I would turn it back on, it
would pop me back to the title screen, which was a super frustrating thing.
But like, yeah, I've had a couple I'm trying to think,
like I obsessively quit apps, yet I can understand it is it is shoddy
enough in some cases, Like I said, anything that's got any online stuff,
I'll do that too. But like I want to say it was I
think it was when I was reviewing since I'd Overdrive last year, Like I
played through I think like most of that game from the first time that I
ever booted it, you know, just every time I was I wanted to
stop playing it, I just put it in suspend and then came back to
it. To the point that I got through like two thirds or more of
that game from the first time I had hit the title screen and started a
new game, and it was it felt awesome, Like I was like,
this is how this is supposed to work. It's a neat idea. I
just it's gone wrong enough times that I will probably never trust I understand that
spend the rest of this generation quitting game. Yeah, I understand that there.
That's right, that's right, yep, mister Rossetti coming for me.
It's true. Never know with those guys. Uh. I also pulled the
story about the new Vacaria chronicles, but I don't know that anybody here.
Actually I love those games, cares. This is this is really interesting that
you know, it's not necessarily a tactical, it's more JRPG. Yes,
saying yes does that change your interest level a little bit? A little bit?
And I think the sales might be better because of this, But the
hardcore Valkyria fans, I don't know. Man, We're in a post xcom
world. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. But this is
but this is less x com right, I know. Wait, I don't
understand. I don't I don't understand why they're going more JRPG. Oh I'm
sorry. I thought you were defending we're living in a post I'm sorry.
I thought you were defending their choice to get away from the strategy stuff.
Uh. Yeah, because that's exactly what they're doing. Well, keep in
mind that Xcom two is not coming to consoles right off the bat because it
did not sell particularly well. So that's that's true. The post xcom World
didn't necessarily happen to that many people. Yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, this is a real time action RPG, says Austin's story. I
like, yeah, like that world man. Yeah it was. It was
a cool but I love the play just so much. So yeah, we'll
see what people think. A little skeptical. Yeah, well, anyway,
that is happening for the people who were interested, I'm surprised. I'm surprised.
Oh you know when they put it back out on Steam and it did
really well. Yeah, I bought two copies of that. Well, like,
I need to make sure that no jeeze man. Oh all right,
uh well, thanks for doing your part. I'm doing what I can.
All right, let's read a few emails before we get the hell out of
Yeah, I do too. Bomb Cast at giant bomb dot com. We
had a last week's email segment with a cliffhanger. Remember I had that.
I teased a second email about the illicit narcotics pharmaceuticals with bootlegs video game characters
on them, and then I forgot to bring the the picture with me.
Well I have the picture. Now we're gonna pop it up. I just
ears right now, I just have to load it first. I will put
this. I will put this in the show notes on the site for this
if you want to see this. Wait, I think it is the same
one. Yes, it's the one I showed you last week and you said
you would let me just read it. Okay, I'm gonna put this in
the show notes. Okay, should I not snot a family friendly website?
That's true. Okay, that picture is. Yeah, it's kind of fucked
up. It's pretty messed up. Jesse from Rhode Island, subject lines street
fighter being used for boner pills. Yeah, question mark, exclamation mark.
I was in a Chinese market with my family over the weekend, as one
does in a Chinese family, and out of curiosity, I went over to
the herbal medication section. The section is always a great source of amusement to
me because there are always tons of Chinese male enhancement supplements with goofy ass pictures
and poorly translated information on the box. While I was looking around there,
I found one that had a picture of an angry Reu U and Chun Lee
Pat the passion passionate. Yeah, I'm like slightly censoring the language and female
These particular pills were called the Stree Overlord. Yeah, and they promised to
make it big, long lasting, and increasing sperms. Oh. I'm now
wondering how long this male enhancement company has gotten away with stealing capcom characters because
I'm assuming they didn't license them. Well, it's not only that they're like
stealing the Capcom characters, Like it looks like Reu is just straight up assaulting
Chune. Yeah, it's it's fucking crazy. It's it's this picture is really
it just looked like angry, passionate love making. Yes, the I pulled
it on explicit though. I also also it looks like fan art. Yes,
like it it has to be pulled this off of deviant Art and just
screened it onto the front of theirs to be fan art. Uh, you're
right. What's weird you're saying it's not official Capcom because I remember that part
of the canon where Reu. Yeah right, let me see this picture again,
because I'm picturing something that's pretty damn explicit. Stre Overlord exceed Viagra mc
alice. Uh. I don't know if you can see it from over the
table here that's cropped. Oh yeah, you can't see the whole picture there.
Also, it's it's a little weird because chen Lee appears to be clothed
and Reu is completely naked. Right, Hello, we can't see the entire
cover here, so I've I've purchased these before. I'm sorry. Well,
yeah, that Atlanta, I was running like a like a fighting game tournament
and I found these. Okay, you found some Street Overlo, found some
Street Overlord and immediately bought them out and use it as like you know prize.
Okay, a tournament. It wasn't. It wasn't just the pharmaceuticals though,
right. And you say you found say that they were condoms Okay,
same brand though, yeah, like Street Overlord and with that image, I
mean accept no substitute. So it's a name you contrast. So the image
that Brad's gonna put in the show notes iss from like from us lower half
down. But yeah, I definitely remembered seeing yeah, full frontal stuff.
Okay, all right, yeah, yeah they were connected. I forget what
the other product was we talked about last week. Are you saying they made
the Beast with two backs? Yes, two became one because yes, yes,
as the Spice girls would say something like that, they were doing.
Uh, it's it's pretty disturbing. Yeah, I just play street Fighter too,
become an overlord. Oh of course I don't need pills. Yes,
right, definitely not keeping yourself. You just you play street Fighter two increasing
sperms, right, all right? That only works if you put the joystick
in your lap, right of course. Okay, if you put it on
a table, the effects are reduced. Yes, that does make sense.
Uh, Anthony writes in and just asks if any of us are Mystery Science
Theater fans and if we think the revival will stay true to the series.
Was that funny? I'm a big fan. Okay, have an old story.
Yeah, but what does true to the What does that mean? I
don't know. It's weird. I never I've never seen it. I don't
I don't know, I don't have I don't have a basis. Damn.
Yeah, I don't know how I made it this far. That was a
big part of my growing up. Like I could name some of the characters
just through cultural osmosis, but I haven't actually sat down and watched so M
Street three K got me laid one time. I was a big feel like
you've tied. Yeah, this this came up in a Yeah, Jeff and
I recorded something. I don't know if it ever aired, but it was
just kind of us bullshitting of my street fighter in his car. This this
came up. Oh right, that's where that came up. Yeah, yeah,
okay, and uh yeah. I had started dating this girl, right.
She was like, you know, living down in her parents basement and
everything. And I got all dressed up and and and stuff, and I
needed like an undershirt and all that I really had at the time was like
my MST three K shirt. But you know, I put a nice button
up shirt on and stuff, you know, because it was a first date.
Anyway, we ended up down in her room and we're just we're talking
shop stuff. It's like, oh wow, why do you into what kind
of TV shows? And she's like, do you like MST three K?
And I said, well, I just my shirt and like pulled it open
like Superman style and showed it my m MST three K. Sure. Yeah,
yeah, we totally did this. Rest was she just kept going from
there. We just kept going. Man, yeah, smooth yet, I
that's a it's a really great show. Yeah, yep, very formative.
Yeah, what was what was that like? Late nineties early nineties. Really,
yeah, I was watching it. I started watching it when I was
like a junior in high school. Wow, like two, I didn't know
it was that old. I wasn't all the Minneapolis things, I want to
say, like those old like old old Minneapolis only episodes for like eighty nine
or something like that. So that show was around for a very long time.
Yeah, I remember it vividly. I love it. I love I
love Joel. That's a host. I think he's my favorite. Me too.
Mike's really good too. Yeah. So, like you know, in
the post Mistry through K years, you know, they kind of split off
and uh, you know, doing rift tracks and Cinematic Titanic and stuff like
that, and and they've kind of traded cast a little bit here and there.
But yeah, they're they're I think MST three case off is now finally
available like on the riff track site. So really yeah, so they're finally
kind of coming together, it seems that. But this reboot, I don't
know a ton about it. It seems to me it's like Jonah Ray is
the new dude in space, like Felicia Day is one of the new mad
scientists. Weird, Okay, and like they're they're still happen to get to
announce he's a he's a stand up. Okay, it's a funny dude,
one of those funny mens. So I yeah, any idea why the original
people are not just in it again? Their their story is to you know,
is that they want to like kind of they don't want to recreate the
old thing. They want to try to continue to push it forward, and
they'll be involved in you know, like I think Joel is involved in like
a writing capacity, but not necessarily in a starring in it capacity, which
I see why one would do that. But that was at the point where
I was like, Okay, that's cool that you're making this. I'm like
way less interested in it because they were like, you know the last few
seasons of the Mic years where I was just like totally checked out, like
kind of once the whole Mad Scientist crew had rotated, I was just like,
yeah, like I was kind of not I was done at that point,
So like, this doesn't necessarily hold a ton of appeal. Also,
they changed culture so much that there is zero shortage of people talking over things.
I mean, it's literally, yes, a big part of what we
do indeed, so like bringing it back, it doesn't necessarily Yeah, it's
it's you know, it's not entering a unique space. It's a space where
there are tons of people doing that. I mean, like riff tracks allows
you to upload your own stuff there and like sell it, you know,
like fan overdubs that you know, everybody's really doing their own thing. I
didn't know that. Wow. Yeah, like they've kind of democratized yeah,
you know, movie commentary, riffing on movies, you know. So it's
it's such a different world now for that stuff that like my only interesting yeah,
my only interest in it is one of nostalgia. So and I already
have a lot of those old episodes, like I can go watch Mitchell over
and over again. I bought a VHS copy of Actual Mitchell Wow, because
I wanted to see the parts that got cut out in the episode of the
show. Mitchell's a fucking badass man. But that's a just a movie,
I take it. Yes, yeah, it is the final Joel episode of
the show, starring Joe Don big Sky. All Right, Monos The Hands
of Fate was always the one I heard about back in the day. Yeah,
I started watching it. It was the season when they were doing tons
and tons of Sandy Frank stuff. So it was a lot of like it
was all the gammera movie and like Fugitive Alien and uh, the first episode
I ever saw was pod people like that anyway, teenagers from Mars, I
think. But yeah, it's that's just such a huge thing, and you
know, I I don't need it brought back, especially in the form that
they see the direction they seem to be heading in. I look at and
go like, you should totally do that. And that's that's cool that that
people want to go to bat for this and do it and and we'll see
how it goes and maybe it'll be great. They're asking a lot. Yeah,
it's like two point two million. They hit it already, really,
I think, so this is a crowdfunding thing. Yeah, yeah, that's
they launched the kickstarter. That's crazy. So I will be curious to see
what the general opinion of that is. But also, like I totally didn't
follow any of the riff tracks or cinematic Titanic stuff, like it's something yeah
a little bit, you know, just because you know it's a big Joel
fan. Yeah. Yeah, at some point I was just kind of felt
like I was like I had had my fill of that kind of format and
riff tracks is amazing though. Yeah, yeah, I love that their their
format. It's just the way that they you know, sell the audio track
and kind of watch along and stuff like that, and they'd have a bunch
of shorts and stuff and it's just a commentary track, right. Yeah,
that's how they got away from having to go license the movies. They're just
selling the audio to go over it, which is a smart innovation. Yeah,
that's a good way to adapt, and it lets them do movies they
would never be able to afford. So they still our idea from filming forties.
Of course. You know, I like Cheap Seats, which is the
Sklar Brothers, twin brothers stand up comedians. They have a podcast Country the
Uh. They did a show for ESPN Classic that was them going into ESPN's
tape library and watching super old stuff and doing mystery science theater stuff a while.
Uh did they have spelling bees and such. They didn't do the little
they did not do out thing they would. They would kind of do cutaways
and stuff like that. Was almost gonna say, we're gonna have to do
that for old press conferences at this right now that that I thought that was
a really that was a killer take on the basic concept. They actually had
one episode that had mystery science theater show up at the bottom of their episode.
Was actually pretty funny. It's pretty good people that like cybersleuthink might be
able to find something about me on the Cinematic Titanic website. Oh yeah,
yeah, okay, I have him look around. All right, Die has
been cast. Yeah, go for it. Next email comes in from Reagan.
Jeff, I feel like you may be able to help here the Gipper.
No, not that one, I don't think. Well, no,
that's all right. Hi guys. I am a relatively new convert to the
show, but my gentleman friend is a long time listener, and he suggested
I write to you to help me remember a game from my youth that,
for the life of me, I cannot recall. It was a Sega Genesis
game that I played as part of the Sega channel that consisted of driving what
I think was a tiny ship across the screen to trap alien monsters. Once
the ship crossed the screen, the screen space was reduced to that new size,
the goal being to reduce the space to such a small size that the
creature was no longer able to maneuver, so you could move on to the
next level. The more of the screen you had rendered obsolete, the higher
your score would be. The monster would move faster as the screen got smaller,
and might even shrink, thereby forcing you to work even faster at reducing
space. Anyway, it was a really great game, and no one seems
to remember it, and my googling attempts have been fruitless. If anyone can
help, it's you, please put me out of my misery. I don't
think i've played it. I think it was exclusive too. Probably was it
sounds like Kicks? Yeah, it's it sounds like a Kicks derivative. Is
that what kicks? Those effectively kicks qi X Yeah, but this is not
probably not Kicks, but also like a zillion Kicks derivatives came out in arcades
and most of them were porn. Okay, I feel like that would have
been a key piece information here. So but that's yeah, I mean this
is on if this is on Sega channel, it's not. Yeah, uh,
it's not going to be that Jason is pulling up his phone. I'm
popping up on my laptop. I'm gonna give it one Google search that might
that might be the missing piece of information. Saga Channel, Genesis Kicks like
like kicks Clone might be enough to narrow it down because there might not have
been that many of those on the Saga channel. SACA channel was magical for
me. Did you use it? I had it back in the day.
Yeah. Was it you could download demos for games? Yeah, that's crazy.
Was that that was the one from a coax cable? That was the
one over cable cable TV? Okay, so you paid the cable company for
that? Is that right? Yeah, they provided you with the hardware.
I always get Saga Channel mixed up with like sell aviue stuff. Yeah,
it's different delivery. But yeah, you stuck you jack this thing into your
Genesis and then you plugged a coax cable into it, and that was nuts.
Did the coax plug into a thing that plugged into the cartridge slot?
Yeah? Wow, that's super weird. Yeah, man, And you turn
it on, it would just it would present you with a list of games.
Wow. Did you have to pay by time? You paid by the
month and then you could just play anything on there? Yeah? Wow?
And it was you know, we've talked about it before, but it's such
a weird thing because the you know, basically that thing just had RAM in
it. The cartridge you know, so would download games into the RAM,
and the RAM was limited. There were Genesis cartridges that were bigger than the
Sega Channel RAM. So Mortal Kombat three came out, and it was it
would show up on the Sega Channel in two parts, weird, and it
would be like different characters would be available depending on which part you download it,
because it just couldn't fit all that stuff into memory. I'm looking at
a list of Sega Channel exclusive games that someone tried to put together in twenty
twelve, and nothing on here. Sounds like Sonic Eracer. M Sonic Eracer
might actually be the game. Wait, it's like Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic.
I'm gonna get no, no, no, it's yes, but that that
is probably not actually the game. No, Sonic Eracer is like a Match
three kind of thing. I don't know. I was an ex band guy.
Yeah, given up search. Well, if it's Kicks Clone, maybe
that's enough to narrow it down. Yeah, bare Minium, go play some
Kicks that'll probably scratch the same at least, sorry Reagan, which ride.
Uh, I feel like we got a reasonably good track record of figuring out
games based on people's kind of you know, checkered descriptions. Yeah. I
mean a game called Ultimate Kicks came out for the Genesis, who might not
have been if it was not an exclusive game. That's I mean. They
had demos on there. Yeah. Yeah, and they had full retail games,
you know, not not Dan Date or anything, but you know,
those certainly showed up as well. So I think that's where I first played
two Jam and Earl. How long were the downloads? Did you a long
time? Being very long? Yeah? I don't think they were that long
either. Yeah. All right, Well we gave it our best shot.
All right, yea check the podcast comments. Maybe some yeah, intrepid listener,
Yes, absolutely could help out. Somebody might be able to figure that
out. Uh. Greg from Romstein Air the air Force base is an air
force base or it just says air base. I'm sorry in Germany rights in
and says says do hosts, Yes, go on, that's all I got.
Okay, all right, Greg says, With Sunday having been the tenth
anniversary of the three sixties, North American launched. I'm wondering how many three
sixties you each went through, as well as if you've ever had any other
piece of hardware that broke through new no fault of your own, well before
it would have been reasonable for it stopped working. Personally, I had a
three sixty bought in spring two thousand and seven that red ringed. After a
few months, I was able to send it in and get a refurbished one.
I later had the refurbished one to have the disk drive start to fail
about a year later. Let's see, sorry, he goes through, He
goes through the full litany of his Xbox three sixties, let's say, and
finally he says, I'm happy that my Elite is still working. Fine,
six plus years later, my first Elite red ringed. But that's it.
Really, My launched three sixty works, but the first black one I bought
broke. FU launched three sixty that still works, And I thought that was
like unheard of. You are in the minority. I thought, it's partially
because I replaced it with an Elite. Oh would just stop using it?
Yeah, okay, okay, So like when it was how long has it
been since you like regularly turned it on and used no idea. Okay,
nine years, okay years okay, So all right, So because I always
thought the whole thing with the launch ones or that first design was that like
they were almost guaranteed. They were pretty much all like one hundred percent failure
rate over enough time. I mean, granted everything dies eventually, but like
those things were accelerated. You know. Ultimate Kicks came out originally as vole
Feed huh, which maybe it could have shown up there as vol Feed before
it, but it was eventually released as Ultimate Kicks in the US. I
like that, You're not abandoning the search. That's all I got. I
think I bought a red ring, tried to fix it. Well, I
get super cheap, you know, it's like fifty bucks or something, probably
less than that. Yeah, and then it's worked kind of yeh. Tried
that as well. It worked for like a week or two. But I
feel like I remember hearing stories of like people putting theirs in the oven for
a minute, just weird, Like I've heard that is like the number of
like apocryphal stories about how to fix a red ring, three sixty was amazing.
The heat, Yeah, the towel one was done on the stuff.
Yeah that was. There was some ridiculous shit going on with that. But
yeah, no, I bought one shortly, a brand new one shortly afterwards.
Uh. I forgot what model it was. Uh, but yeah,
that's still running strong, and I've got an Elite as well, still still
running. The original Elite, the black one. Wow, Okay, I
guess that was the first one that had like some degree of redesign internal.
To try to get better about that, I want to say that there was
one before the black version. Okay, what I mean there was like a
Jasper revision. I forget what that was Jasper. I think if I remember,
the first revision was the same board and they were just like putting an
extra layer of epoxy around the ship to trying to keep it from popping off.
I remember, yeah, like reading about that online. I forgot the
name of the board, but you could like, you know, scope out
what what modeled you? Right, you were gonna gets getting Jaspers. God,
yeah, I been. I remember the fucking terrifying uncertainty of those days,
like trying to make sure you got to go. So the first Elite
was just black, and it came with a bigger hard drive, right,
but it wasn't redesign. Yeah. The first redesign was the one the Hdmi
am I run? No, no, no no, the original Elite had
HT the first yeah, okay, yep, the one, the one that
was it was black, but the same design, the same dest I bought
that I bought a lot. I had my launched three pre launched three sixty
technically I think it was one of the ones that Microsoft sent, uh.
And then the one I bought went to fucking check out game yep. Uh.
And then yeah, I bought an Elite when they came out, just
for the Hdmi and the bigger hard drive. Yeah. And then the the
redesigned it was the S is that is that what they called the Xbox three
sixty. And then the most recent redesign is the E E that Jeff I
bought an E when they came out. That it's kind of redesigned to look
a little bit like the one. Interesting. Yeah, I've I've still got
that s the launch s from whenever? Was that two thousand and nine?
I think that's the one I used mostly Did you get the seat filler s
yes, Yeah, that's the one I had. Yeah, two of my
three sixties problems. Yes, I went through. I had three an original
Yeah, I had three original Model three sixties red ring on me. But
we we were, you know, like you said, we were in the
position where Microsoft would replace those. Yeah, they had a hot line,
yes, because the last thing they wanted was anyone complaining any they wanted.
They did not want press complaining loudly about broken three sixties, So they would
be like, oh, hey, if you want any problems, just emails
here and what's say, Well, you go around the standard repair procedures.
I never I never had to engage with that because we just had a supply
of extras in the office from that. Yeah, we ended up with well,
they ended up sending quite a few over over the years. Yeah,
just for coverage purposes. So it wasn't really a problem. But I ended
up running one through the standard because I remember like thinking that was pretty fucked
up that they just had this like fast pass line press. I ended up
sending one through regularly and it was a fine process, actually was. Yeah.
I never I never saw a lot of I've seen like countless accounts on
forums and stuff with people getting those things swapped out. I only had the
one yeah, I don't seem like it was relatively so I'm sorry I had
too. I had another one go bad in my fucking worst achievement days.
I had one go out on me while I was playing fucking It's a Shitty
Bear game. It was a movie opens open Season. Yeah. I got
a copy of Open Season from fucking game Fly and wanted to get all the
achievements. And it was a super hot day, like a hundred degrees outside,
and I was hot and the Xbox was hot, and eventually the Xbox
just said fuck it gave up the ghost. Yeah, And I took that
as a sign that was that was a real moment for me of like,
I don't think I'm gonna play any more games like this. This is not
a bad use, a good use of anyone's time. Yeah. Yeah,
so I had those two go bad. I've plenty of people that have had
more than a handful. Yeah, that was the thing. Like even as
people were saying like, yeah, the process to get a new one is
pretty painless, Like you would see these outlier stories on forms and stuff of
people who were on there like their twelfth Xbox or something. Right, Yeah,
I've seen several grave yess here, Giot has got an incredible graveyard of
original model three sixties. There must be like fifteen or twenty of them stacked
up. We've got our two red ring debugs. Yes, yes, we
have old debugs that don't work anymore, which is a real shame. But
what are you gonna do? I leave him in that box? I don't
know. Yeah, anybody buys us anymore, do they? Yeah, well,
we couldn't sell our bugs. Oh shit, you're right, that's probably
not cool. We had signed paperwork for those and stuff. I'm sure there's
someone that still has that paperwork somewhere at Microsoft maybe whatever. There's no one
even Yeah, that's never gonna happen. Yeah, Like I said, there's
any little bit in that game Spot story from the other day about like Robbie
Box said all the executives gathered in his basement when they had to like make
the call about what to do about the red ring situation, and and yeah,
like once they said we gotta do this, we gotta actually do this,
Like they had to take it before the board of Microsoft, you know,
right, because this was like a billion dollars loss that they were rejecting.
Sounded like pretty pretty dark days. Uh, it's whatever else you want
to say about those new consoles. They worked pretty well. That eject bug
on that PS four, Yeah that sucks. Yes, you're right, I'm
not the only one that has that. But that's a pretty widespread problem.
But I mean, like relative to like widespread, like fucking almost guaranteed failure
of the console. Most things work better than that. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah, like you know, every mass produced piece of consumer electronic is gonna
have some problems here and there. Yeah, I think I've had the two
PS three damn. Yeah. Really, I ended up buying a second PS
three because my launch you and it was so loud. I couldn't deal with
it anymore. Like I just said, fuck this thing. And yeah,
I never had a PS three go bad. Really, it still works,
but it was like a fucking jet engine, like it was a sixty gig.
It wasn't from launch side down. Yeah, obviously, no, you
couldn't because it was round on the top of wab No. No, no,
I'm sorry. You turn it on upside down from a vertical Oh oh
yeah, that was that was supposed to like make the fans crazy, to
blow the dust out or whatever it was. But It's just I tried that.
Yeah, I definitely tried that. It was just it was a lost
cause. All right, how about another email? Brendan writes in with an
email and says, my question is simple. Of the mini iconic announcers and
video games, which would you have shout cast your life events? Oh?
My god? Personally, I'd want the Unreal Tournament announcer, as I find
the idea of hearing first blood during your morning bowel movement rather humorous. You
want to see a doctor from the Street Fighter Alpha two announcer probably everything in
my life? Alpha two? Yeah, go for broke, Yeah like that
guy. Enough of three? No? Wait are they not? Are they
not the same? Shit? No, I don't remember now? Oh god,
do I mean the Alpha three? I think I think you mean the
Alpha three? Okay, all right, I'll accept that. Yeah, I'd
have to go with Mortal Kombat too announcer, the best announcer in anything that
ever got announced in video game ever. And Tim kits Row, the nbajam
is that his name? No, No, the Mortal Combat two guy,
I was saying, I would go, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Okay. With NBA Jamin, Yeah, so he's he's on fire.
Sure kind of guy. Okay, I like the Halo guy. Yeah,
it's not a bad one. Yeah, they're all iconic, Like he said,
kill him a jaro. Yeah right, cheaking out the garbage man.
Okay, so it sounds like you played a lot of Hell Go into the
bathroom. Yeah, exactly, whooping. Yeah, I wonder how old that
guy is. He's a radio guy, is he? No? No,
that master Chief is radio guy? Is he? Are you serious? He's
like no shit? Yeah. I always wondered why you never heard that voice
in any other game like that I know of. I mean, I don't
know if they've just got him on contract where he can't yeh Steve Downs is
that his name. I always just assumed like, oh, maybe Microsoft like
has him locked up, like contractually he can't go act another stuff or something.
But like that doesn't seem like something they could get away with. So
he just moonlights his master Chief and then goes back to the radio. Uh.
I don't know, hard to say, huh, Yeah, yeah he
was. He was mourning doing mornings in Chicago on ninety seven one w DRV
The Drive. But that's I don't know that he's necessarily on I know he's
he is. He is retired from radio as of this year. Wow.
Okay, yeah, that Halo money. Well, hopefully he'll be around to
do Halo for the foreseeable future. Which game is it where the guy says
this battle it's about to explode? This battle is But that's that's Alpha three,
face it straight triumph for dot That's that's Alpha three. Yeah. I
remember being so blown away by Alpha and the fact that they said things other
than just like round one fight. Yeah, like the fact that they put
little flavor text in there. I was like, man, that's crazy.
These games are totally absurd. Uh. And the multiplayer announcer is and Halo
it is Jeff's nights are according to this what's his day job? Mm hmmm,
I don't know. Halo. Let's uh keep googling here live We're going.
How about the EA sports guy narrating my life? Did he ever say
anything besides a recurring role as Art Zimmerman on The Fugitive and he has been
on episodes of Law and Order. Oh wow, I know, weird,
right, He auditioned for the role of Master Chief according to this Halo wiki.
It's like, you're not quite right. For the part, but we
sort of like you, so don't you try saying slayer and see how it
sounds. Yeah. Tim from Dubai wrote in a little tip based on our
Fallout chat last week. We didn't talk about Fallout today it's going on.
Yeah, I've I have not had time to get back to fall Out yet.
I need to do that, all right, Tim says, I felt
your pain when you mentioned about organizing settlers in Sanctuary. This is when we
were talking about how it's basically impossible to tell like who's assigned to what task
in that game. Easy fix, just equip different hats to people who are
assigned to different jobs. My store guys, yeah, totally. My store
guys are now all in faded suits and trilbies, guards and army helmets,
and the farmers are in long John's with fur hats and shotguns. Whenever I
go back, I just ring the bell and can see who's new or unassigned
by who's not wearing a hat. That's a great tip. That is an
incredible use of game mechanics to get around their own lack of foresight. Can
you give someone a hat that is a train? Oh? I don't know.
That would be good. They should make a small hat that's just a
railway car in that game. There's well, no, never mind, yeah
no, I'm not gonna all right, kind of spoilery stuff, okay,
fair enough. Emails, emails, emails, there's a bunch of them trying
to decide when I want to get to the spice part. Spice must flow.
I guess you're right, maybe we should just go all right, yeah,
fine whatever. After her talk about synthetic weed last week, holy shit,
we got some emails, man, A lot of them came in,
and a lot of them from like people in interesting lines of work. So
I'm gonna read talk about here man, drugs mostly yeah, pretty much drugs
and AK forty sevens. Yeah. Uh. This email is signed clean Dan.
It's been a lot of crime talking. Yeah, excuse me man,
all right, clean Dan says in my roughly two years is it? Excuse
me? Goodness, I can scratch you here and my roughly two years is
a criminal defense attorney, Okay. I have represented clients who were allegedly involved
with spice or synthetic marijuana to varying degrees. The crimes ranged from simple possession
to conspiracy, production and distribution. If there's anything fun about being a lawyer,
it's that different cases require you to become reasonably knowledgeable about weird topics,
and you learn some crazy shit along the way. Number one Spice is a
blanket term that typically refers to dried leafy matter, usually inert on its own,
sprayed with chemicals that are supposed to target the same brain receptors as THHC.
The chemicals have exciting names like JWH zero one, eight AM twenty two
O one, and alpha PvP. These chemicals have been scheduled alpha PvP sun
yeah. These chemicals have been scheduled or provisionally scheduled as controlled substances, and
as such are obviously less attractive two producers. To avoid criminal charges, people
employ quote underground chemists, though this usually means a lab in India or China
to alter the chemicals by a few molecules. This generates a new, untested
substance which gets around the DA for a few months. When the DA inevitably
catches on, it schedules the substance, and the cycle starts again. This
means that spice could contain one of many different substances, most of which are
poorly tested. Some versions are extremely potent at low doses, so any uncertainty
with respect to which kind of spice you're using could be dangerous, if not
fatal. Drunk Dan was smart to toss it out too. The legal consequences
of being caught with spice chemicals are severe. Relatively small amounts can get you
ten years or more from the Feds. What's worse is that the government can
charge you even if the chemical you have isn't a schedule substance. If it's
similar enough in structure and effect to a substance that is scheduled, they consider
it a controlled substance analog and will charge you. Yeah, they change the
laws to cover analogs. While back, because there were so many people I
think, I want to say, it was like it was other synthetics.
It was just like whether it was like people just doing like MDMA derivatives or
whatever. It was right, there's like a lot of people getting into that
stuff. Yeah, yeah, I had no idea about that at all.
But yeah, it's just like some of the research chemicals when we're talking about
last week, it was some of that similar stuke. It's like here's this
kind of pilsty derivative that they haven't thought to schedule yet, but they can
through that law kind of cover in the periphery. Yeah, he straight up
says. He says, what is similar enough? You may wonder the law
says substantially similar in quotes. What does a subjective term like substantially similar mean
in the context of an empirical science like chemistry. It means you better have
saved some of that spice money for a good lawyer because your ass is getting
charged. Stay away from it. That stuff sounds terrifying. Yeah, and
just buy real weed because that's against the law. Okay, I don't know,
because because apparently like spice also like hits you in a totally different way.
The effects are completely like separate, completely difficle are having addiction problems with
it and stuff you know that wouldn't normally come from the real thing. Yeah,
I'm so old. I've been out of the drug game for a long
time. Well, I've got sporting emails for you. Then here's one from
a paramedic named Josh Hey fellaw his listeners since the beginning first time writing.
In listening to this week's emails, I heard the discussion about synthetic weed or
flacca as Jeff called it. Working as a paramedic for six and a half
years in Louis Louisiana. Excuse me. I have had my fair share of
these calls, and I assure you the media is not hyping up the effects.
The stuff is legitimately scary. There is no tolerance to it, and
all it takes is one time taking it to kill. I've had people who
didn't know that. I've had people who didn't know who they were try to
bite me, and some that had seizures that couldn't be stopped. Well,
we've all been there. Yeah, yeah, almost all had to be sedated
and intubated because they stopped breathing at the er. Some people call it legal
weed, but I assure you nothing about it is legal. Stay away from
this stuff and nothing nothing about it sounds like weed either, yeah, total
anything. This just starts to sound more and more like angel dust, yes,
or bath salts. I guess here is uh an email from an NYPD
officer. I guess, I don't. I don't. I never knew if
bath salts were real or not. Yeah, that was something that was kind
of still not at all. It seemed like that was a similar thing.
It was like they were selling it in head shops and it was the same
type deal of like the packages say like, hey, don't consume this,
but people are like, I'm gonna get this. We consume it. But
that's that's one of the things they you know, to try to get away.
Yeah, here, we want to sell you this, but the usually
is fucking spice packages and all that stuff. Say they also don't for human
consumptions, like is there any pretense at all under which they're selling it?
So it's even even was it like the you see magazines years ago, don't
even if they still sell it. But it was like a synthetic. It
was called like it was a catman do temple gift too, and they were
selling it like half the time. It was like it's an incense, you
know, putting your room and just burn it and you know just about that
way, it's like an incense thing. Hey, these are bath salts way
quake, you know, Like that was the whole always the whole thing.
It was like they were selling it for one labeled purpose. But people were
like, hey, if you put this in your body fun times you ever
play mark, Oh my god, you could become mister dumpster. Man,
you know, there's where is Bucky and what has he had? There's there's
definitely room for there's kind of a sliding scale on like opinions on different control
substances, but this one seems like one to just stay the fuck away from.
Yeah, based on some of this stuff. This, uh, like
I said, this is from a New York cop. I just want to
say thanks for putting out the word about synthetic weed. Over here in NYC.
We call it K two and it is no joke. Jeff described it
to a t when he said, PCP nightmare. It makes people go batshit
and do really horrible stuff to themselves and others. Out of all the things
I've seen people put in their bodies, K two is by far the worst
to deal with on a person to person level because of the complete disregard for
safety it seems to bring out in people. Goddamn, it's like the happening
totally. It's like it just seems like people are just getting that illy rage
and fuck man, oh my god, it's really Yeah. I also it's
time for a remake of Disco Godfather. We've got to attack the web,
guess. So I've got one other email here from a paramedic, which straight
up says in the subject line might be a bit much, and it's about
a guy dying. And I don't actually know if I want to read it
or not. Maybe I shouldn't. Is can you sum it up? Is
it gruesome? Not super gruesome, but it's it's really shitty. It's a
bad way to go. I'm hey, this stuff sounds really shitty. Yeah,
you sound like you want to hear it. I kind of want to
hear it. Hi bomb cast, I'm a paramedic in Melbourne, Australia.
Well, I mean there you go. Ye drop bears smoking synthetic weed.
You never know what they're gonna do. Yeah. Uh. I'll start by
saying I have trouble judging these days if my stories are too much or not.
But having run into lots of patients and dire trouble after smoking this stuff,
I thought a quick cautionary tale might be good. I hope that we're
like preaching with the choir hero. We're not actually having to instruct people not
to use this stuff. There's someone rolling one up right now, going huh
wait what bomb casting k two time man every every Tuesday once stop shop for
cautionary tales. A workmate from my station recently went to a guy that,
after smoking synthetic, had gotten let's say, a little crazy, ranting at
his friends, and then vomiting all over the place. He was popped into
the bathroom where he couldn't make too much mess, and left to sleep it
off. Unfortunately, he must have woken shortly after desperate. Sorry, Unfortunately,
he must have woken shortly after and been desperately thirsty. When he was
later checked on, it became obvious that he had started drinking from the handbasin
tap in his greatly altered state. It seems he wasn't satisfied with the volume
of water he was getting, and he apparently worked his way up the spouts
so far into his mouth that it became caught in his throat with the tap
still on at full flow. Needless to say, he quickly drowned, stuck
to the tap filling him with water, unable or unwilling to free himself.
He goes into some other huh, grizzly details that is not how I thought
that story was going to go. Yeah, yeah, And he goes into
some details about trying to remove the guy. Yeah, maybe not maybe the
way, maybe we don't need those parts I can I'll stop the uh anyway
in summaries, stay the funk away from that ship. Normal weed got it
will struggle to do you any harm in the short term. But that synthetic
shit is mad. That's the crazy. I mean, like, well whatever,
what I feel like one of the craziest parts about this stuff is that
it is like is that people are referring to it as like synthetic airwana,
which may be technically true from like a chemical perspective or something like so fucking
different. Yeah, like that's the scariest part because it's like, you know,
it's like, say what you will about weed, Yeah it is.
It is like unequivocally the most benign soft drugs. Yes, it is the
most benign controlled substance you can possibly imagine. Like, yeah, it's not
going to do that to you. It's probably not going to do that to
you. Yeah, you might eat too much pizza or sometime, you know,
or yeah, he might get in a car and fucking crash it.
I mean, you know, like there are dangers there. It's not a
zero danger. Well, yeah, you're still intoxicated, but it's dude,
this stuff sounds just like a fucking just doesn't. You know, Like the
labeling on the calling it synthetic weed is like maybe even the scariest part,
because you get people that like, go, oh well, weed's cool.
Well that sounds like exactly, we don't have any of that, so we
got some of this, let's get into this. It sounds like exactly what
happened to Dan or that was his exact train of thought, right, yeah,
yeah, oh I heard this might help me. Maybe I'll try this
stuff. But no, that's not that was so many years ago that I
bet whatever he was buying was not this. Okay, you're probably right because
the I feel like this level of stuff is maybe a little more recent in
the grand scheme of thinks people. And you know, there's been synthetic you
know, league cheap legal highs for years and years and years, and like
I said, when we went to that up and smoke toury, and you
know, there are people trying to sell stuff like that there. But I
imagine that was a very different thing then. I guess. I don't know,
it depends on your perspective. I think like standard marijuana these days is
a very different thing than what it was in the seventh totally now that it's
being fucking crossbred, and and you know, groaning labs and people all have
their favorite fucking strains that just sound like fucking blends of coffee. You're fucking
micro group beers drum into the white winter this and you know tried that new
girl Scout cookies. Yeah X twenty one whatever, Sure, well, just
that that first email talking I see sour dieselus Brosow Mellows diesel. It's like,
it's the way that that first email made it sound like like where it
comes from. It's just a it's a roll of the chemical dice. Totally
like it's crazy the chemical dice. Yeah yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe
not. What is this? Nobody? This was made in the lab and
nobody knows what it's gonna do to you. Maybe a bad idea. All
right, well, dare roll the dice, keep to keep kids off.
Okay, Actually, what you're daring me to smoke weird fake drugs? Like
what? No? I thought this was the whole point of this was no,
no, all right, Uh, well, now that that's out of
the way, let's read one more email. And I do appreciate the breadth
of giant bomb listeners. Yeah, that's half the reason, half the reason
I've included all those emails. It's like, dude, it's a defense attorney,
NYPD cop and paramedic from Australia. Like, holy shit, let's hear
from the other side of this next week. Though. There's gotta be an
upside to this stuff, right No? Oh boy? All right, well
no, like we got our we got that one like pro slightly pro meth
email that one time, right right, Yes, it was like, oh
you know what's better counterstrike? Oh man? All right, last email it
was only signed a user name Terrace Cassi. Shit, oh boy, steel
hand itself. Yeah. I've never played Animal crossing before, but after watching
your videos, I've realized that a dude named Tom Nook pretty much controls everything.
Is Tom Nooks some kind of gangster? I mean, you know,
he's not necessarily out there breaking legs himself. He's got all He's got other
people to do it for him. It's Harded and Timmy and Tommy the criminal
king pin of get out there and do business. Now, if you if
you dig deep enough into the Tomnook story, I think if you get far
enough in some animal Crossing game. You can actually kind of hang out with
Tom Nook in a way that he kind of says like, Hey, you
know, I'm just I'm just doing my thing. I don't know why people,
huh, I feel like grooming you to take over the family business.
I don't know it's making you as capo. I assume that's real and not
just photoshop ship. But I think you get to you get a little bit
of tomnook backstory, Okay. And it's just that it's sure there's a wiki.
I mean it's Nintendo. They're very earnest about stuff. I guess.
I'm sure they play that super straight. Yeah, it's like if if if
they actually played into the common lore about yeah, he's a motherfucker turned on
Animal cross My fiance has been playing Animal Crossing, and so I turned on
mine to, you know, so she could get some some different fruit and
that sort of stuff. So I've been playing that a little bit of that
again lately. Three y yeah, Yeah, and I can owe that motherfucker
four nine eight thousand bells yea, and Tom Nook will have his bells.
And my house is not that much bigger man, I was have enough room
for the gyroids. I got, Tom, I can't go to the island
and just catch bugs. I mean I could, but I'm I don't want
to do that either. Uh does that do you build up interest over time
if you let it sit? Okay, absolutely no, that would be great.
Yeah, that would be uncontrolled Tom. And he fronts you the upgrades.
Okay, Like keep in mind, like you know, from the beginning
of that game, he says, you can have a house. Now you
owe me this much money. Fuck you pay me. Yeah, So then
you pay him the money and he goes, okay, great, Now what
kind of house upgrade do you want? Then you get the house upgrade,
and then you're in the hole again. Okay, so it's you know,
he's at least fronting you the upgrade. So I haven't paid him for an
upgrade. I already have, man, but you can't get I'm assuming you
can't get an advance on another upgrade until you pay it off, right,
Yeah, that's he's the man has limits. And then you know, you're
the mayor of this town you're trying to raise money for like you know,
I want to build a wishing well. I want to build a fucking coffee
place. I want to you know, I don't have shit in my town.
And then all that stuff is like, oh, we're taking up donations
from all the residents to maybe build this thing, but I'm the only fucking
resident, right And I think if you, like, if you check back
every day, like it goes down by like twenty bells, like you know,
maybe some you know, maybe the bear that lives in my town is
walking by and kicking him five bells or something like that. But that's jack
shit. I'm paying for all that stuff. The entirety of your income is
going into the public works. Yeah, man, that game is like this
game is a nice, good, quiet, fun thing and it's a very
relaxing time. But the minute you start to like treat it like the treadmill
that it is actually built as of like, well I need the money to
get these upgrades, it becomes the most soulless fucking thing ever, because it's
just you going to the island over and over again, catching the expensive bugs
and going back and and thanks. Once you reveal that that is the actual
way to play that game, or you know, like get crazy on the
fucking turn up thing, which is another good way to earn a ship a
ton of money. It's like that game kind of becomes a bummer. Yeah,
they haven't made a proper animal crossing for we you have? They just
the weird offshoots board game bullshit, And then Happy Home Designer came out on
three DS. But like, no, actually, okay, bullshit, what
are you talking about? The game? Amibo Festival thing is the most distressing
thing. Well, let's not talk about that. God, let's get out
of here instead. How is that legal? That's an analog I could put
the schedule that. I mean, really, yeah, Amibo Festival really is
just a Mario Party with a few molecules changed exactly. And Mario Party has
been illegal. They scheduled that years and it's true. And you know,
Amibo Festival is just untested as fuck. Yeah, I have no idea that's
gonna go order research chemicals out of catalog. They send you a fucking thing
of white powder, and you're like, I don't even know how much of
this to take or what to do. I just put the amibos on this,
and then the the powder disappears. BombCast a joball dot com. That's
all I have to say. Okay, we should get out of here.
All right, let's go with that short week. Man, We're short week
in any case, but especially since the studio is now being turned into pieces
and boxes. Yeah, good lord, short week, fair amount manual labor.
Yes, uh. And then I don't know, we'll figure some stuff
out. We'll have content go out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, We've
got some stuff going up throughout the week. Some of it might be a
little unconventional. Yeah, that's uh. And some stuff coming out of New
York. They still they still are static, that's true. Yeah, they'll
but they'll be here for they have an operable studio, but they're coming out
of here. We're getting ready to start producing Game of the Year. Yes,
it'll it'll happen. Just imagine a big flashing under construction sign on our
website. We should just put one on there. Yeah, what do you
say? No, well, what some stuff? Can we get one in
the header? No, just make it the time loot for the next two
weeks. Let's make it say giant bomb beta. Right, if we get
a page account. Now I have to go, No, I definitely have
to go. All right, well, hang around. We'll have some stuff.
I don't know what, but it'll be on the website. Yep,
yes, yes, that's a great idea. All right, let's get that
all out of here. See you next week.