Speaker 1: Hey, Ty, You've got me for about twenty minutes before
Speaker 1: I bail, and then you've got to do the rest
Speaker 1: of the podcast with a random host you've never heard
Speaker 1: about and don't give a shit about. Oh uh, are
Speaker 1: they cool? Bill? Maybe? But their name will rhyme with mine,
Speaker 1: so at least that will make things easier. You've got
Speaker 1: fun Factor. To all gamers reviewing old video game magazine reviews.
Speaker 1: I'm Ty Shelter, He's Aiden Moher, and we're two professional
Speaker 1: writers who grew up loving the video games and video
Speaker 1: game magazines of the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties, and two thousands.
Speaker 1: Every episode we take a critical look back on the
Speaker 1: games media that, for better and for worse, inspired us
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Speaker 1: Factor Pod. Okay, so tye. Over the course of the
Speaker 1: show's first season, we've discussed a lot of great games,
Speaker 1: some bangers, personal favorites, Alzheimer's. But this week I want
Speaker 1: us to look at something a little different. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be looking at a magazine issue that highlights some of
Speaker 1: the worst games of all time. So I want to
Speaker 1: hear from you, like, what is the worst game that
Speaker 1: you bought and did you finish it? Ah? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this is tough for me if you helped me out
Speaker 1: with this, and I'm glad you did, because guess what,
Speaker 1: as a subscriber to video game magazines and being obsessed
Speaker 1: with like review and critique and stuff. From literally the
Speaker 1: beginning of my video game I didn't really buy any
Speaker 1: bad games, right, Like I would sit and make like
Speaker 1: pro and con charts and like decision matrices and stuff like, oh,
Speaker 1: I only have X money. You know. The first game
Speaker 1: I bought with my own money was Mega Man two
Speaker 1: for fifty five dollars of actual money of mine would
Speaker 1: would be like one hundred and like forty dollars in
Speaker 1: today's money, so you know, it was a lot. So
Speaker 1: I guess I would say. Then I had this thing
Speaker 1: where I went back, you know, as an adult we
Speaker 1: started getting into retrogaming, right, and I like went and
Speaker 1: dug out my SNS collection. Oh right, when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I traded in a bunch of my games
Speaker 1: that I had played one hundred million times for other games,
Speaker 1: just to see what they were like or whatever. And
Speaker 1: so the worst game that I've played extensively and owned
Speaker 1: and tried to beat was Golgo thirteen for the NES
Speaker 1: because it was like a point and click adventure with
Speaker 1: like item inventory and pixel hunts, but it was also
Speaker 1: a side scrolling action game. Sort of. This sounds sick, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it looks sick. It's very stylish, but it's a
Speaker 1: lot of I don't know what's happening combined with I
Speaker 1: don't know how to control it. Combined with I'd never
Speaker 1: played a like, you know, inventory get e flask style game,
Speaker 1: and I was doing it on the nes and like
Speaker 1: it like nothing, and there was then it goes to
Speaker 1: a shooter level, like you get to a certain point,
Speaker 1: it's like almost a diehard situation. You're fighting up an
Speaker 1: office building, right, and then you get on a helicopter
Speaker 1: and then there's the side scrolling horizontal shooter where you're
Speaker 1: in a helicopter and there's this enemy I found in
Speaker 1: the instruction book called role Thunder, and it's just like
Speaker 1: a wave of apparently invincible energy balls that fills the
Speaker 1: whole screen and I have energy is invincible, So yeah,
Speaker 1: so I had I have no it would just destroy
Speaker 1: me like so. And I was even lucky enough to
Speaker 1: get there. And then like I saw I don't know,
Speaker 1: I saw like something on an online or whatever, and
Speaker 1: I know I was missing huge key mechanics and like
Speaker 1: you know, it's totally I did not know how to
Speaker 1: play the game, but it was absolutely indecipherable for me. Also,
Speaker 1: it was goal goal thirteen, so it was like a
Speaker 1: very like this is for the Sickos made in Japan
Speaker 1: game and I had never heard of it. I didn't
Speaker 1: know the anime, I didn't know the show. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything right, so like desperately needed clues from knowing
Speaker 1: the fiction that I simply did not have. Amazing. I
Speaker 1: think you bring up a good point that as you know,
Speaker 1: kids who were reading a lot of game magazines, and
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I got a couple
Speaker 1: of games a year right like birthday. Yes, I was
Speaker 1: able to save up some money or whatever, but I
Speaker 1: was very studious about the games that I that I
Speaker 1: bought as a young teenager. Once I hit my twenties
Speaker 1: and had a job, I started buying a lot of games.
Speaker 1: I'd hunt through video stores like video rental stores, because
Speaker 1: they constantly we had Rogers Video here in Canada, and
Speaker 1: they would constantly be just you know, cycling out anything
Speaker 1: that wasn't being rented out. And so I got like
Speaker 1: Pokemon Part gold in Box complete with the Pokewalker like everything,
Speaker 1: for twenty bucks. You know. I got a Resident Evil
Speaker 1: Gay on GameCube for like probably fifteen, like you know,
Speaker 1: so I would just like go through. But those are
Speaker 1: good games. Yeah. I think like the absolute worst for
Speaker 1: me is when you have some like emotional attachment to
Speaker 1: a game and it's a big letdown. And that's where
Speaker 1: I get. You know, some of the worst games that
Speaker 1: I've bought and played through is where I was really
Speaker 1: excited for it bad. You know, you were kind of
Speaker 1: getting at this last week with your memories about being
Speaker 1: wrong with the Xbox or whatever, but in reverse where
Speaker 1: you think something's really great and then it turns out
Speaker 1: bad instead of thinking, oh, Xbox is never gonna make it.
Speaker 1: I've been disappointed by sequels like Sweek It in four
Speaker 1: because I was so invested in the series and it
Speaker 1: just turned out to be like mid It wasn't awful,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't great after three terrific games in that series.
Speaker 1: The most gut wrenching bad game I ever bought and
Speaker 1: finished is easily Lunar Dragon Song on the Nintendo DS. Like, oh, no, okay, ty,
Speaker 1: I don't even like admitting this game exists. It's that bad. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: It's pretty well known. I'm a big Lunar fan, and
Speaker 1: the two PlayStation releases are like some of my favorite
Speaker 1: games of all time. So like a third game in
Speaker 1: that series coming out on the Nintendo DS, No Last,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite consoles of all Time
Speaker 1: was just one of my most anticipated games ever. It
Speaker 1: didn't matter that it wasn't you know, Studio Alex and
Speaker 1: it wasn't working designs, and it wasn't you know game
Speaker 1: arts who made it. I don't even know who made it,
Speaker 1: but I was just excited And the end result is
Speaker 1: like one of the most aggravating games I've ever played
Speaker 1: with like none of the charisma, none of the charm
Speaker 1: of the originals, but like I won't go too deep,
Speaker 1: but like Tye, you lose health when you use the
Speaker 1: run button in dungeons what, which is just like basic
Speaker 1: RPG functionality. So if you want to run instead of
Speaker 1: just walking through the dungeon or wherever, you lose health.
Speaker 1: That's ludicrous. And ty you can't get experience and loot
Speaker 1: and gold in combat at the same time. You have
Speaker 1: to choose. You can either get experience or you can
Speaker 1: get loot and gold. That's horrible. It's just like an
Speaker 1: avalanche of bad game design ideas from a series, like
Speaker 1: in a series that like leaned into just being as
Speaker 1: straightforward as you can be, like Lunar just takes all
Speaker 1: the good ideas and does them well right. And Lunar
Speaker 1: Dragon Song just threw all that out the window in
Speaker 1: such like avoidable ways. It I'm just now I'm mad. TI. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's terrible. I actually had thought of I got my
Speaker 1: own Super Nintendo right like my mom had given me
Speaker 1: an allowance. And then I also it was just before
Speaker 1: I started mowing lawns and maybe when I started mowing lawns
Speaker 1: that I got the Super Nintendo, because I got the
Speaker 1: Nintendo a little late, like it had been out for
Speaker 1: like a couple three years, and then I got it
Speaker 1: for Christmas, and so then the Super Nintendo also had
Speaker 1: come out and been out for like a year or
Speaker 1: two before I got it, and I got it with
Speaker 1: Maximum Carnage Spider Man and Venom Maximum Carnage or Spider
Speaker 1: Man and Venom team up to beat Carnage. And I
Speaker 1: was huge into comics. I was a huge Venom specifically fan.
Speaker 1: That's just like, oh my gosh, I get to play
Speaker 1: his Venom And it was a side scrolling beat him up,
Speaker 1: you know, final fight style, and it had a like
Speaker 1: the art was actually really good. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of great presentation stuff. There was a soundtrack by the
Speaker 1: metal band Green Jello, which I think then had to
Speaker 1: be changed to green Jelly. This was a real Mandela
Speaker 1: effect because I knew of friends who were into metal
Speaker 1: and somebody had a green Jello shirt and I think
Speaker 1: they got sued and had to change it to green
Speaker 1: Jelly because it said green Jelly on the cartridge and
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, So anyway, so it's like the
Speaker 1: super raw like sixteen pit digitized metal soundtrack, and the
Speaker 1: story was cool and it had all these like layover
Speaker 1: comic book effects. All the letters were in like comic
Speaker 1: book lettering, and like the combat was just like Super
Speaker 1: mid to Ad and like I beat it, you know,
Speaker 1: and I had fun with it. And it was obviously
Speaker 1: a Super Nintendo game and not a Nintendo game, but
Speaker 1: like I was definitely like coping and grinding and beyond.
Speaker 1: I love this so much. It's so great through a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. And oh also the cartridge was read.
Speaker 1: It was a limited edition side cartridge said one Super
Speaker 1: Nintendo game, and it was read and it was cool
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, this is so cool, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't. I'm playing this is not it's
Speaker 1: not great. It's not great. I also, you like, was
Speaker 1: just didn't know bad games for a long time. I
Speaker 1: kind of had what I had, you know, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yes as a kid. That's why you know a
Speaker 1: lot of as soon as you get twenty three, twenty
Speaker 1: four to twenty five, you start writing it's time for
Speaker 1: a critical re evaluation of whatever I played when I
Speaker 1: was nine, And I'm like, I mean, is it okay?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And sometimes it is like we've we've seen in these
Speaker 1: magazines right where twenty three, twenty four to twenty five
Speaker 1: year old you know, guys putting in and I want
Speaker 1: to be inclusive, you know, people of all genders, but
Speaker 1: primarily by and four and it's somewhat exclusionarily of twenty two,
Speaker 1: twenty three, twenty four year old guys are playing games
Speaker 1: that were great games and going this is terrible because
Speaker 1: it's not edgy and dark like I want. I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, sucks to be you, but like this Curby
Speaker 1: game is good. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Well,
Speaker 1: we have got to get to our issue. I guess
Speaker 1: at this point we haven't brought it up. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about some bad games. We're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: some good games. We're gonna talk about games and game magazines,
Speaker 1: just like we always do. Stick around through the break.
Speaker 1: If you are not paying for ad free episodes being
Speaker 1: a fun Factor Ultra, remember then you will have to
Speaker 1: listen to a little bit of as we'll pay a
Speaker 1: couple of bills. We will come back. Just sit tight, well,
Speaker 1: do what we do right here on fun Factor. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to fun Factor. We're two old gamers review old
Speaker 1: video game magazine reviews. Of course we want you to
Speaker 1: review us. Do we get a full five point zero
Speaker 1: in fun Factor? Leave us a review on Apple podcasts
Speaker 1: and we'll read the best, funniest, kindest, and most entertaining
Speaker 1: ones on the air. Okay, Aiden, what's the deal of EGM?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: So today we are looking at EGM number one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty from January two thousand and two, which might
Speaker 1: ring a bell if you listened to last episode. It
Speaker 1: has two hundred and forty six pages. It's a big boy.
Speaker 1: Number of games reviewed forty eight, which is very similar
Speaker 1: to last episode in Next Generation where they I think
Speaker 1: it was forty nine. Yeah, but in you know, less
Speaker 1: than half one hundred and three pages. Yeah, a number
Speaker 1: of systems review for six. We've got the game Boy
Speaker 1: advanced PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox PS two and Gamecubecast. Is interesting
Speaker 1: because this is also an issue where EGM dives heavily
Speaker 1: into Sega going multi console. As you noted, like last episode,
Speaker 1: Next Generation was barely over one hundred pages, very little editorial,
Speaker 1: as we're going to see in the flip through, like
Speaker 1: this is not that it's a big one cool cool,
Speaker 1: cool cool. Let's start with the cover of EGM number
Speaker 1: one fifty, which is a very special issue. We did
Speaker 1: EGM one hundred last season, so we're already like up
Speaker 1: to one fifty. Uh, tell me what you see on
Speaker 1: the cover here? Ty too many games? It's too many games,
Speaker 1: A many games, you know if for as intentionally busy
Speaker 1: as the cover is, it's you know, too many games,
Speaker 1: big yellow diagonal across the screen to a bunch of
Speaker 1: overlapped screen shots and then it says over on top
Speaker 1: of that GameCube, Xbox PST game by advance, start through
Speaker 1: the mess with our buyer's guy. Twenty seven pages reviews,
Speaker 1: two thousand and two previews, plus hundred best games ever
Speaker 1: and twenty of the worst, like try to gaming a monthly,
Speaker 1: So like it's intentionally very busy, write all this text,
Speaker 1: all these screenshots, but like magazines have evolved to the
Speaker 1: point like they've gotten cleaner and more professional, where like
Speaker 1: this doesn't really look any busier than a lot of
Speaker 1: the magazines we looked at in our first season, right, No,
Speaker 1: and it looks good. You know, this stuff appeals to me,
Speaker 1: and I am taking inspiration from like the flat color
Speaker 1: like big all caps Sarah font for a lot of
Speaker 1: the design for the season, because to me, I think,
Speaker 1: like EGM like really nailed that look and feel of
Speaker 1: what like that sure that early aughts gaming mag looks
Speaker 1: like and should look like it's clean, but still has personality,
Speaker 1: I think, which is like the you know, like we
Speaker 1: criticized Next Generation for just looking like the most generic
Speaker 1: video game magazine out there, but I think we, you know,
Speaker 1: we're getting something a little with a little bit more
Speaker 1: personality here. So we are going to skip past these
Speaker 1: ads and they get to the masthead. A lot of ads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we have the masthead at the front of
Speaker 1: the magazine. Editor in chief Dan Hue, longtime EGM Alum
Speaker 1: kicks things off with an editorial. But what I really
Speaker 1: want to look at is the masthead over to the right, there.
Speaker 1: It's a big, juicy Masthead tie. Like there are twelve
Speaker 1: editors and about as many contributing writers as well. That's big,
Speaker 1: Like even for this time period, that's a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially for right this is this is something that again
Speaker 1: when we've got next the last issue the same month,
Speaker 1: Next Generation's last issue is getting held together with spit
Speaker 1: baling wire and like eleven freelancersancers to ship it off
Speaker 1: and kick it off the side of the cliff. Look
Speaker 1: at all these staffers. This is incredible And I got
Speaker 1: to say, like, looking at this Masthead feels like a
Speaker 1: high school reunion for me, like from Dan Shue, who
Speaker 1: you know, helmed a lot of like the most influential
Speaker 1: gaming games media for me through many years in the
Speaker 1: the oughts to executive editor Mark McDonald, West Coast editor
Speaker 1: James Milky, contributing writers like John Richardi, Shane Bettenhausen and
Speaker 1: friend of the show Greg Sewart, who is in chat
Speaker 1: right now watching us record this episode. Hi Greg, Hi, Greg,
Speaker 1: I step away and come back to find you covering
Speaker 1: one of the greatest magazines ever. So Stewie, Yes, amazing.
Speaker 1: It's stat like top to bottom with the like games
Speaker 1: journalists who inspired me to love games media. Sean Baby,
Speaker 1: Sean Baby's in here. Hell yeah, we will get into
Speaker 1: Sean Baby. Okay, Greg, Oh yeah we will get into you. Worry.
Speaker 1: This list, of course, is also just like who's who
Speaker 1: of writers and games journalists games media personalities who went
Speaker 1: on to just make impressive careers like making games after
Speaker 1: their time in the press. You know, John ritch YARDI
Speaker 1: and Mark McDonald helped create and build eight four into
Speaker 1: a huge Japanese English localization company. Now Mark McDonald is
Speaker 1: senior vice president of Business Development and Production at Enhance Games.
Speaker 1: James Milky's founder BitSummit, a big Kyoto based video games conference.
Speaker 1: He's co founder of Tiger Tron Games, and is currently
Speaker 1: working on a book about the career of Nobu Uimatsu,
Speaker 1: which I am immensely interested in reading. After bouncing around
Speaker 1: various publications, including a brief Stint, sorry, a brief return
Speaker 1: to the two thousand and nine revival of EGM, Dan
Speaker 1: Shu left games Media in twenty fourteen and worked at
Speaker 1: places like Blizzard and Riot, and is now doing freelance
Speaker 1: games consulting and like, honestly, you go down the list.
Speaker 1: Evan Einhorn has worked on like a billion Sonic games. So,
Speaker 1: like you know, we've been talking about bad games, and
Speaker 1: one of the guys here is responsible for making many
Speaker 1: of the bad games in the world. Stewie and Jack
Speaker 1: Greg Sewart, Senior project manager of Red Space, Inc. Ch
Speaker 1: chu As a senior global brand and marketing lead at Tencent,
Speaker 1: where he moved after being an Xbox and working on
Speaker 1: Fortsa for a long time. Just like a wildly impressive
Speaker 1: group of people. Awesome, Well, I think we have to
Speaker 1: get to Stewie saying this is one of the best
Speaker 1: issues that they produced while he was working there. I
Speaker 1: think we got to get to the flip through. Unfortunately, Ty,
Speaker 1: we're gonna kick the flip through off with the most
Speaker 1: two thousand era thing I can possibly imagine. It's a
Speaker 1: close up of Kid Rock grabbing this junk amazing in
Speaker 1: an ad for his album Cocky and notably not a
Speaker 1: video game, not kid Racks new audio game. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of reach that EGM has at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a jump scare. It's a big jump scare. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna move on. We're gonna skim past the letters
Speaker 1: section here because there is a ton I want to
Speaker 1: talk about in this issue. So page thirty six kicks
Speaker 1: off EGM's news section, and it opens with a big
Speaker 1: spread about Tokyo Game Show and Sega's two thousand and
Speaker 1: two lineup as they sort of move away from being
Speaker 1: a console manufacturer into like a multi platform developer. Page forty,
Speaker 1: as we kind of continue to scroll through, has a
Speaker 1: half page look at Sony's one hundred and twenty four
Speaker 1: million dollar investment in Square, trying to suss out like
Speaker 1: what that means for multi platform development. And I think
Speaker 1: this is interesting because Square says in the interview, whereas
Speaker 1: the quote there is, Square president Hisashi Suzuki says, quote,
Speaker 1: we are not necessarily obligated to Sony because of this deal,
Speaker 1: but we can gauge the situation in the future and
Speaker 1: offer software to the best selling hardware maker, and at
Speaker 1: this time, there's no doubt that Sony is the best.
Speaker 1: They go on to kind of ask about portable systems
Speaker 1: and the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo stuff, and of
Speaker 1: course they went on not long after this to announce
Speaker 1: a return to Nintendo consoles, GameCube with stuff like Crystal Chronicles,
Speaker 1: and of course the Game Boy advance with stuff like
Speaker 1: sort of on on FOLLOWANCI Tactics advance. We are going
Speaker 1: to move on to page forty four and forty five.
Speaker 1: I said the kid Rock ad was maybe the most
Speaker 1: two thousand and two coded thing I'd ever seen until
Speaker 1: I got to this page. Can you tell me what
Speaker 1: we're looking at? Paint a word picture here for our listeners. Tie, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's Nintendo throws Cube party and let's get the
Speaker 1: full spread here, right, So to be young and hip
Speaker 1: and cool with the teens, we have Jason Big Star
Speaker 1: of American Pie and American Pie two, says the caption
Speaker 1: here Local Maniac hangs with Shannon Elizabeth Center and Shane West.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, Tara Reid from The Big Lebowski and a
Speaker 1: bunch of crappy teen movies. Not worth mentioning, I said
Speaker 1: Van Wilder. I'm not going to say that it holds up,
Speaker 1: but that was it was funny. Ryan Reynolds, you know
Speaker 1: in American Pie also, yes, yeah, so like Jason Biggs,
Speaker 1: they're willing to name American Pie. But you know what
Speaker 1: Big Lebowski is, Yeah, a genuine classic. So good for
Speaker 1: terror re singer Mandy Moore. It's very funny because even
Speaker 1: in this era Mandy Moore, I remember watching her like
Speaker 1: Dave you pop video and they're trying to stuff her
Speaker 1: into the like Britney Christina Bucket and I was watching
Speaker 1: on MTV and I was like, this is not this
Speaker 1: is not her. You guys are screwing up. And like
Speaker 1: they showed some interview and I was like, she is
Speaker 1: clearly super talented, but not at this you guys are
Speaker 1: like miscasting her as like just another pop star. She like,
Speaker 1: I mean, like most recently she was on This is
Speaker 1: Us as like the Grandma, and I feel like she
Speaker 1: always sort of had like grandma vibes a little bit
Speaker 1: a little bit, but like, you know, she had a
Speaker 1: to voice, act, get stuff. You know, she's the yes Yeah,
Speaker 1: because she's Rapunzel actually Entangled, Yes Entangled as well. Good
Speaker 1: call Stewie says big Lebowski was a big thing around
Speaker 1: the e GM offices. I think CJ. Trid to fitted
Speaker 1: references wherever you could. So anyway, uh again, Now, Tara
Speaker 1: Reid also bops over to the Sony Show, and so
Speaker 1: also Jason Biggs. Here's Jessica Bielee from Heavin Tera. Reid
Speaker 1: dressed up as that girl from SSX. Okay cool, Sean
Speaker 1: William Scott Stiffler Okay, Oh dude, where's my car? Reference? Okay, awesome.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, though Ty, the fashion here is doing
Speaker 1: it for me. These guys are looking good, like has
Speaker 1: Jason Biggs ever looked better? No? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And it's very funny because you know, my kids are
Speaker 1: all like late teens, early twenties now, and my youngest
Speaker 1: as a senior, and the high schoolers have speed ramdy
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties through y two k fashion like just bringing
Speaker 1: it off back. So funny. I know, same thing here.
Speaker 1: I drive by the high school, like my old high
Speaker 1: school regularly and the kids acrossing the street and it's
Speaker 1: just like, I'm like, man, did they raid our closet
Speaker 1: from when we were in high school? It's crazy. Following
Speaker 1: this news section, we have a feature area that I
Speaker 1: always really liked called Afterthoughts. And you know, because of
Speaker 1: the lead time of magazines being printed, having the like
Speaker 1: exist on store shelves for thirty days or whatever depending
Speaker 1: on their print schedule, they focused a lot about what's next,
Speaker 1: what's coming news, what have we seen that you guys
Speaker 1: want to know about? Where are we ahead of the curve?
Speaker 1: After thoughts was a cool opportunity for the writers and
Speaker 1: editors at EGM to go back and do kind of
Speaker 1: post mort interviews with game developers looking back at some
Speaker 1: of the kind of popular games of the year. And
Speaker 1: then this issue we get interviews about Ace Combat four
Speaker 1: and Star Wars, Rogue Squadron two, Rogue Leader two, games
Speaker 1: that I don't personally care too much about, I have
Speaker 1: no real attachment to. But getting that sort of reflective
Speaker 1: look at a game rather than like a promo mode
Speaker 1: look at a game from a developer is pretty neat,
Speaker 1: and I think it's something that EGM was doing that
Speaker 1: helped define kind of their their desire to like be
Speaker 1: more holistic about how we talk about video games. Aiden
Speaker 1: I have in our notes here you put oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and next to that an absolutely unhinged anthropomorphized frog cargo shorts.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about Obi wan Kenobi? I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about Obi Wan okay? Oh hello, oh dear, Oh no, okay,
Speaker 1: I see now that's it's an ad for Frogger. It
Speaker 1: says Frogger, and then a registered trademark logo, then an
Speaker 1: apostrophe as Frogger's back, and it's pretty funny because it
Speaker 1: has then a little tiny Froger and it says also
Speaker 1: available and convenient travel size. And it's an ad for
Speaker 1: a PlayStation uh Frogger release and a game Boy Advanced
Speaker 1: Frogger release. I can almost guarantee you, without having played
Speaker 1: either of these, that the Game Boy Advance one is
Speaker 1: probably better three D one full three D gameplay on
Speaker 1: PlayStation two. Yeah, this is not not good. This is
Speaker 1: what I would think. They're both asked, says Drew By. Yeah, yeah, okay, Andrew,
Speaker 1: and Chad says they're both bad. Fair enough. We're gonna
Speaker 1: move on to page sixty five here. This kind of
Speaker 1: gets into what you were talking about with the Pentathlon earlier.
Speaker 1: There's a piece called quote US Army attacks video game Industry,
Speaker 1: and well, ty, it's can you just read it for me?
Speaker 1: But it's not just training for modern situations. The Army
Speaker 1: is after The Army wanted a game that not only
Speaker 1: represented the soldier of two thousand and one, says Matt Norton,
Speaker 1: Pandemics producer on Sea Force, but also the soldier of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Thus, the game will feature logical evolutions of
Speaker 1: existing technology like new weaponry and remote piloted surveillance vehicles,
Speaker 1: whether or not that would include plasma rifles BFG nine
Speaker 1: thousands and railguns. Norton wouldn't say. And then there's a
Speaker 1: caption of some under some concept art and it says, quote, Nope,
Speaker 1: it's not unreal tournament. This concept art is what the
Speaker 1: Army imagines their soldiers might look like come twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I think is like kind of astute.
Speaker 1: Is that, like, honestly, quote, remote pilot and surveillance vehicles
Speaker 1: is a pretty spot on prediction of what we're seeing
Speaker 1: from warfare in twenty two. Well, right, and what this
Speaker 1: either presages or doesn't it's hard for them to see.
Speaker 1: It's like, is the feedback loop, right? Yeah? Is that
Speaker 1: the kids who grew up playing this and did go
Speaker 1: into the army and stayed and became officers or whatever
Speaker 1: they're recruiting via these methods, right, And there's that feedback
Speaker 1: loop of I want to feel like I'm playing call
Speaker 1: of duty when I'm in the army, Right, I want
Speaker 1: to feel like I'm an operator.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And we see this more and obviously with ice and stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, they're recruiting all these people who are not
Speaker 1: career soldiers or whatever. They're just guys who want to
Speaker 1: get dressed up in all the tactical stuff. And then
Speaker 1: the tactical stuff is represented in the video games, and
Speaker 1: then the video games reflect the real life and the
Speaker 1: real life. So like this feedback loop, I think is
Speaker 1: something that we weren't really imagining that they would have
Speaker 1: together to be kind of the same thing. Yeah. Interesting,
Speaker 1: We're gonna keep going. If you flip forward to Wage
Speaker 1: seventy seven, I need you to read the ad tagline.
Speaker 1: Oh no, Connecticut. Ah, G String meets G Force, it's
Speaker 1: your boy. Oh no, Connecticut Now, oh the first one.
Speaker 1: Now I will say I'll give this ad. This looks
Speaker 1: way more plausible as an action, does it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can at least sort of see. But this looks
Speaker 1: like you're rollerblading and you happen to have wheels. Again,
Speaker 1: this is so ridiculous, dude, It's so ridiculous. It's it's
Speaker 1: what they're wearing in the fast lane. Slip into a
Speaker 1: kinetic suit and feel the intense competition. Scale walls, cling
Speaker 1: the ceilings, pull off ground that areal stunts. On twelve
Speaker 1: futuristic man a machine are United pure speed never looked
Speaker 1: so and dude, again, this is like, show me the
Speaker 1: X ray, show me the skeleton, here's the hip, here's
Speaker 1: the like is the butt cheeks the leg from needing it? Like,
Speaker 1: what are we doing here? This is terrible? And I
Speaker 1: do want to give a shout out to the video
Speaker 1: edition of Fun Factor. If you listen to this on audio,
Speaker 1: do check out the YouTube version because I cut in
Speaker 1: some Connecticut documentary like making no documentary to the last
Speaker 1: episode when we covered I didn't even connect at And
Speaker 1: it's so funny seeing them try to like sell the
Speaker 1: game seriously as like an competitor or whatever, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, their noble intentions to make something that's just
Speaker 1: really fast and fun, when really it's just g G
Speaker 1: string thes G force. They even they trot out a
Speaker 1: you know, a woman who works as a producer or whatever,
Speaker 1: and she's trying to like say nice things about the game.
Speaker 1: You can tell she's just dying inside. Okay, well I
Speaker 1: miss that. I'm gonna go back and watch that because
Speaker 1: I would love to get a retelling of it, you know,
Speaker 1: give me an oral history of this, an article about this,
Speaker 1: another go back and remake this because I like, are
Speaker 1: you the guy that they interview in it too? Is
Speaker 1: like the most like guy who made Connecticut Guy ever?
Speaker 1: Of course, Yeah, that's very good, But let's get down
Speaker 1: to brass tacks, like enough of this. Let's get to
Speaker 1: page eighty three because this is a huge issue and
Speaker 1: we're running late. This episode is going to be long.
Speaker 1: A preview start on page eighty three, kicking off with
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy X. You know, I can talk a lot
Speaker 1: about Final Fantasy tens, and I'm sure we'll review the
Speaker 1: review when we get there, but what I really wanted
Speaker 1: to look at just before we move on is at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the first page of the preview. You
Speaker 1: have some screenshots of the characters, and they look distinctly
Speaker 1: more Asian than they do in the finest, especially Una
Speaker 1: and tied us status, which I think is a is
Speaker 1: disappointing that that we moved away from that, like the
Speaker 1: the remasters from what twenty fourteen or whenever they came
Speaker 1: out Ye criticized for like whitewashing the character faces even more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I love these shots and I wish we had
Speaker 1: seen maybe more of this. That's fascinating and yes, bad,
Speaker 1: to be clear, but it is fascinating. Yeah, page ninety six,
Speaker 1: we have a preview for a game called a Curra
Speaker 1: Psycho Ball, which looks like a pinball game. But that
Speaker 1: is just like, that's a sick name for a video game. Yes,
Speaker 1: I want to pause on page ninety eight, ninety nine
Speaker 1: and appreciate this amazing advertisement for Eco. Can you paint
Speaker 1: us a word picture of this ego? Holy cow? Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is a gigantic labyrinth maze type thing. You've
Speaker 1: got to start and Eco logo, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: over to pages and it's hundreds and hundreds of twists
Speaker 1: and turns and not kind of celtic not but randomized
Speaker 1: and then their screech right, and so you can follow
Speaker 1: these paths and then there's arrows. There's some words in
Speaker 1: some spots. We got a little bit of a tagline here.
Speaker 1: Enter a world of enchantment, Your Eco mysterious boy on
Speaker 1: a quest. Expelled from your village to an isolated castle.
Speaker 1: You have eerie dreams. D Da da da da da. Eco,
Speaker 1: solve the puzzles, join the Tormented words forever, or join
Speaker 1: the torment words forever. Yeah, so very cool, very cool.
Speaker 1: I like how the screenshots are sort of scattered through
Speaker 1: as though like you're seeing moments as they traverse the
Speaker 1: map and that's what's happening in that area of the
Speaker 1: map or whatever. Just very evocative, very like representative of
Speaker 1: what I think why I think human created art is
Speaker 1: just so important even in like you know, capitalist marketing campaigns.
Speaker 1: Somebody spent way too much time making this actually navigable,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I know, can
Speaker 1: like can you actually finish that, Matt like that mays
Speaker 1: I can't do it without a firm without trying, But
Speaker 1: it reads as though it is finishable, right, And there's
Speaker 1: little even arrows helping you guide at every intersection. This
Speaker 1: is this, that is that to make sure you know
Speaker 1: what path you're still on. That's just an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of work. Oh my god, Yeah, very cool. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go past the rest of the previews. I would love
Speaker 1: to start for previews as Xenosaga, Resident Evil remake, Koshigami,
Speaker 1: and even Project Ego, which would go on to become Fable,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite games of that generation.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna go instead to page one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty four, where the issues Huge feature starts. Oh that's
Speaker 1: the one hundred best games ever. Unfortunately, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: spend the whole episode talking about another EGM Top one
Speaker 1: hundred Games of All Time list? What nine mainline episodes?
Speaker 1: After we did the first, yeah, so is, we did
Speaker 1: issue one hundred and that was if you remember Season
Speaker 1: one episode nineteen a fun Factor, we went over Issue
Speaker 1: one hundred and did their their top one hundred games list.
Speaker 1: I could talk about this list four days, but what
Speaker 1: I do want to do is point out some of
Speaker 1: the new editions, maybe games that came out between the
Speaker 1: two lists. I also want to point out that they
Speaker 1: have Final Fantasy seven at number ninety one, and I
Speaker 1: do think that sort of reflects the way Fohonnacy seven
Speaker 1: kind of always has this like up and down sort
Speaker 1: of reputation. But Resident Eva one at number ninety f zero,
Speaker 1: Exit eighty five get dunk down. Yeah, it's wild. What else? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Anything else stand out to you kind of at the
Speaker 1: top of the list here, Yeah, of course. And I'm granted,
Speaker 1: like anything on here is still impressive, right, it's still
Speaker 1: top one hundred list nine. But if I'm Fantasy nine
Speaker 1: fifty seven, yeah, I'm scrolling up. So you've got You've
Speaker 1: got the top ten already. Okay, wait wait, where's twenty six?
Speaker 1: It was twenty seven and last okay, so the most positive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a few things I want to point out here. New
Speaker 1: stuff on the list Skys of Arcadia at number eighty.
Speaker 1: We know friends of the show Retrograde Amnesia are starting
Speaker 1: a season about Skies of Arcadia. Check them out. Amazing
Speaker 1: podcast about old video or old RPGs, Advance Wars at
Speaker 1: seventy two. Happy to see that on their nice paper,
Speaker 1: Mario at number forty eight. We also have Funasay nine
Speaker 1: at fifty seven. Like you said, Link's Awakening is criminally
Speaker 1: low at fifty five, and Chronocross number thirty six. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: which I can get on board with just ten spots
Speaker 1: behind it severely underranked older sibling. Yes, so, Stewie and
Speaker 1: chat goes. Be sure to check out Mark McDonald's personal
Speaker 1: list at the bottom of one of the pages. And
Speaker 1: Mark McDonald has magician Lauro Nam nineteen seventy five for
Speaker 1: Neo Gio. Both of those are Geo Geo games. Secret
Speaker 1: of Mana supers Sonic is overrated, you know it's true.
Speaker 1: Vashio Blade PlayStation and einhander. Okay, thank you, Mark the crowd.
Speaker 1: I gotta say like as a long time eight four
Speaker 1: play listener as well. Mark McDonald's one of the hosts there.
Speaker 1: I love that he has and they all have nicknames
Speaker 1: even way back then. But carrying on, we weren't gonna
Speaker 1: spend too much time on this. Let's run down the
Speaker 1: top ten. We have super Mario World number nine, Final
Speaker 1: Fantasy three which final Panty six now, oh great enough
Speaker 1: time in Majora's Mask, back to back at eight and seven,
Speaker 1: Soul Caliber at six, number five, Super Mario sixty four,
Speaker 1: number four, Symphony of the Night number three linked to
Speaker 1: the past, number two, Tetris number one, super Metroid. What
Speaker 1: do you think, ty, Yeah, this is fascinating. I want
Speaker 1: to go back and see. Do you know where super
Speaker 1: Metroid was on their prest I can't remember off the
Speaker 1: top of my head. I think it was top ten. Okay,
Speaker 1: because you and I had this discussion where you totally
Speaker 1: owned me about Tetris being number one, and how like
Speaker 1: it kind of it almost has to be number one, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's the perfect game. It's for every platform. It's
Speaker 1: so universal, every person can play it. Many people can
Speaker 1: play it, well, it's traditional gamers, non traditional gamers. It's
Speaker 1: it's immediate, it's addictive, it's it's just the gamiest possible game.
Speaker 1: Didn't make a movie about Super Metroid. No, but it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me though, because it's like, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to go, look like, you can tell stories,
Speaker 1: there's you know, technology advances, there's things you can do.
Speaker 1: Like I don't think the art of video game starts
Speaker 1: and stops with Tetris, but I didn't have a really
Speaker 1: great argument for that. And now this is fascinating because
Speaker 1: Super Metroid is now somehow bubbled up over it, maybe
Speaker 1: as we're starting to get towards because Castlevania Sympathy and
Speaker 1: Night is four, right, so like we are presaging the
Speaker 1: metroid Vania of Wow. If you can combine the kind
Speaker 1: of storytelling and progression that only video games can do
Speaker 1: with interactivity and with actual telling of stories, right, your
Speaker 1: characters are progressing literally in terms of strength and power,
Speaker 1: and they're also progressing metaphorically through character arcs at the
Speaker 1: same time. That's a powerful form of storytelling, power, powerful
Speaker 1: you know, realization of the art form. However, there's also
Speaker 1: you know, they're trying to combine new hotness and you know,
Speaker 1: nostalgia and balance them against each other. You know the
Speaker 1: fact that Chrono Trigger was I think twenty seven and
Speaker 1: moved up one spot to twenty six is fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: Why hasn't that bubble up started yet? You know, we've
Speaker 1: talked about it a million times. You know, chrona Trigger
Speaker 1: being gradually bumped up through history and now it's it's
Speaker 1: definitely going to be in many people's top twenty of
Speaker 1: all time, top ten of all time, maybe even number
Speaker 1: one of all time, even though there's thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: you know, there's twenty more years of gas released after this.
Speaker 1: Stuie and Chat just throws out, hey, can I offer
Speaker 1: a theory? EGM started as a group of primarily hardcore
Speaker 1: arcade gamers, and by this era it was primarily folks
Speaker 1: who've grown up playing console games. The staff were nes
Speaker 1: Genesis SNS kids as opposed to arcade kids. So it's
Speaker 1: the generational change over who was staffing the magazine that
Speaker 1: that helped shift their staff picks around a little bit.
Speaker 1: Which that's fascinating as well, And that's probably why I
Speaker 1: find this list less objectionable, Like I can it fits
Speaker 1: my tastes more closely than the list in the issue
Speaker 1: one hundred personally, And like I can go and think
Speaker 1: of a lot of games I can argue should be
Speaker 1: in the top ten, but like for me personally, the
Speaker 1: only ones that stand out are Soul Caliber and the
Speaker 1: two Zelda games as games that I wouldn't at least
Speaker 1: consider from my own personal put link to the past
Speaker 1: anywhere in year three. Uh, wouldn't be it my one
Speaker 1: hundred probably TI, it's not that great if I'm taking
Speaker 1: ten Zelda games, it's not making it. Ah, Okay, now
Speaker 1: I'm just now I'm mad again. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Like people are like, oh, this is what they no,
Speaker 1: But that's what I mean. That's what's fascinating, Like jokes aside,
Speaker 1: that's what's fascinating about these lists. And I'm sure you
Speaker 1: know Greg and Chat can speak to the arguments, right
Speaker 1: like one person's top ten game, like lots of people
Speaker 1: would put Okareen in a Time is a top ten
Speaker 1: game of all time. I think it won a top
Speaker 1: ten list in EGM at one point, surprise me or somewhere,
Speaker 1: But it just it isn't a Zelda game that I
Speaker 1: like and I wouldn't put it in my top ten
Speaker 1: Zelda games. I'm just not much of a fan of
Speaker 1: evoke rain of time. But trying to find like an
Speaker 1: objective order for a group of people like you and
Speaker 1: I would have to sit here and argument. I'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: link to the Past should be in the top ten.
Speaker 1: You go, I don't even want it on top hundred list.
Speaker 1: How do you reconcile that and then put forward something
Speaker 1: that is like, you know, representative of the communal? Like,
Speaker 1: I know how you do it because min Max does
Speaker 1: this every year the two tens, and they record like
Speaker 1: sixteen hours of content as like five to seven people
Speaker 1: go through just of their yeah oh yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 1: to come up with a toy and it's it's, oh
Speaker 1: my god, the circular dibate giant bomb. I think that's
Speaker 1: something similar where they have like a six hour like
Speaker 1: podcast where they debate all of this stuff for Game
Speaker 1: of the Year, which is fabulous, and like, you know what,
Speaker 1: you also do it because you have editors who go, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put this in at this point, and
Speaker 1: so you know, for this show, you edit the audio
Speaker 1: version of the podcast, I edit the video version and
Speaker 1: we'd probably just end up with different top tens depending
Speaker 1: on which FORMA yeah, but it is, you know, it
Speaker 1: is cool. There's some great additions, and top one hundred
Speaker 1: lists are just fabulous because it's awesome to talk about games,
Speaker 1: and it's awesome to make, you know, like to make
Speaker 1: your arguments for your favorites. What I really want to
Speaker 1: talk about, though, and this gets back to our opening
Speaker 1: conversation is Sean Babies EGM's Craps Dravaganza twenty Worst Games Ever.
Speaker 1: So this follows the top one hundred game. Anyone who's
Speaker 1: familiar with Sean Baby knows that he was mildly obsessed
Speaker 1: with bad video games, a pretty funny guy, and so
Speaker 1: here he has a pretty long feature about like the
Speaker 1: worst games ever. So we're gonna run through some of
Speaker 1: this stuff. But first, each game is accompanied by scores
Speaker 1: for graphics, fun, and then a third unique metric that
Speaker 1: the that's you know, specific to that game. They're also
Speaker 1: given an icon so you can easily spot, like what
Speaker 1: kind of crap they are? Can you break down the
Speaker 1: quote iconocrap system for us time Iconocrap? Want to enjoy
Speaker 1: our article but don't know how to read? Watch for
Speaker 1: these icons to get an at a gland scander at
Speaker 1: what makes each game so very, very not special. We
Speaker 1: have an upside down Sheep for series Black Sheep, a
Speaker 1: guy with money eyes for Born in a marketing meeting
Speaker 1: full motion video ahead. So we have the drama masks,
Speaker 1: but instead of smiling and crying, they're both crying. Licensed
Speaker 1: shlock with a pile of dung with a barcode on it.
Speaker 1: The Naked Lady silhouette leaves you feeling dirty, the Space
Speaker 1: and Space Invader sprite with a halo, vaguely wholesome, overwrought
Speaker 1: mall store, Ninja Star called Ninja Kidnap the President, and
Speaker 1: then a unicorn mythic bad Graphics and so the cover
Speaker 1: image of this feature is a like seventies porn star
Speaker 1: guy with like a open collar shirt, baby pink shirt,
Speaker 1: big glossy necklace with the this is logo. I would
Speaker 1: wear this. This is very nice, like the twenty is
Speaker 1: as a dragon. It's pretty, it's pretty sick. I can
Speaker 1: only assume that this model in the photograph is Greg
Speaker 1: Zewart from the show and Chat as well. It's It's
Speaker 1: gonna be We're gonna kick things off tie with number twenty,
Speaker 1: speaking of the Mandela effect extreme sports. Wait, no, not
Speaker 1: the Mandela, Yes, Mandela fan extreme sports with the Berenstein Bears.
Speaker 1: This one is spelt with just ease. But it's it's
Speaker 1: yeah that it's yeah. It's even wrong for the thing
Speaker 1: that people thought it was right? Is it? People think
Speaker 1: it's I don't know. It gets a one out of
Speaker 1: ten and graphics, a zero out of ten in fun,
Speaker 1: and a zero out of ten in extremeness. Extremeness, Oh,
Speaker 1: Greg says the uh. The photograph was Dan Paluso, who
Speaker 1: was wasn't having managing editor Davis special incredible. That is
Speaker 1: like that is a thick uh like shag rush outstanding
Speaker 1: of a chest. It's labeled with born in a marketing meeting, licensed,
Speaker 1: schlock and vaguely wholesome. Have you played extreme sports? I
Speaker 1: have not. This is Game Boy Color only. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a Game Boy Color, and I didn't I would
Speaker 1: not have bought this or or played this even if
Speaker 1: it had been available to me. Okay, with a six
Speaker 1: in graphics, a one in fun, and an eight out
Speaker 1: of ten in Jesus Power. Number nineteen goes to Bible Adventures.
Speaker 1: Have you played Bible Adventures? Tie, and if so, is
Speaker 1: it an accurate representation of scripts? Not only have I
Speaker 1: played Bible Adventures, wow, now thy lore. My mom and
Speaker 1: dad divorced when I was one, and my dad remarried
Speaker 1: quite quickly, and then he and my stepmom became evangelical
Speaker 1: Christians when I was like six, and so I got
Speaker 1: whiplashed very hard into like, wait, what what are we
Speaker 1: reorganizing our life around? And my mom was like an
Speaker 1: old hippie and lapsed Catholic who was getting really into
Speaker 1: like woo stuff. So it was like literally my mom
Speaker 1: was like going to see an astrologer, and then I
Speaker 1: would go to my like evangelical Yeah, mom and dad,
Speaker 1: So this is great. So my siblings we had Bible Adventures,
Speaker 1: we had all the Wisdom Tree terrible games. And also
Speaker 1: Sean Baby has rewritten and republished over the years on
Speaker 1: his own website some of his takedowns of games. And
Speaker 1: I've read various versions of his takedowns of Bible Adventures,
Speaker 1: and this is very true because there's so mini games here.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna read this bit because it is absolutely right.
Speaker 1: In Baby Moses, your job is to haul Baby Moses
Speaker 1: through a desert filled with spiders who want to eat
Speaker 1: Baby Moses. And it doesn't take more than a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes for the game to degenerate it to you
Speaker 1: just throwing Baby Moses into a river and watching him sink,
Speaker 1: then pretending it was an accident. If you make it
Speaker 1: to the end of a level without Baby Moses, your
Speaker 1: only reprimand is good work. But you forgot Baby Moses.
Speaker 1: So even if you kill Baby Moses, you still feel
Speaker 1: good about yourself. And isn't that exactly what would be
Speaker 1: important to Baby Moses at least sitting on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the river being eaten by spiders. And Sean Baby
Speaker 1: was an early master of just the like super super
Speaker 1: turbose snarky style that would be coming to power in
Speaker 1: this era of online slash print at the same time,
Speaker 1: and Stue said in the chat, Crispin Boyer contracted Sean
Speaker 1: Baby for this list. After he read it, editor in
Speaker 1: chief Dance Shoe immediately put Sean on a retainer so
Speaker 1: you can keep them as a regular contributor, and I
Speaker 1: assume keep him out of competitor mags. Yeah, because Sean
Speaker 1: Baby has been dining out on making fun of this
Speaker 1: stuff for twenty years. I actually just looked him up
Speaker 1: a couple weeks ago. He still has a podcast and stuff.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of stuff carrying on. A number eighteen.
Speaker 1: We have Crisscross make my video. It gets a one
Speaker 1: in graphics, a zero in fun, and an eight in
Speaker 1: evil incantations. Have you played criss Cross make?
Speaker 3: I have not.
Speaker 1: Something like Crisscross doesn't happen without the help of evil wizards,
Speaker 1: So we reckon. The miggity miggity miggity Mac Daddy and
Speaker 1: the diggity Diggity Diggity Daddy Mac must be time traveling
Speaker 1: magicians from the future who use their advanced knowledge of
Speaker 1: how to wear things backward to infiltrate the music biz,
Speaker 1: which means by the time you read this will probably
Speaker 1: be toads. Not that I expect there are many of you,
Speaker 1: but if you are young enough to not know who
Speaker 1: Chriss Cross are, they were rappers where they brothers, and
Speaker 1: they wore their clothes backwards for some reason. They would
Speaker 1: make you jump jump uh huh. Number seventeen twenty games
Speaker 1: bubbsy three d Oh God Bad Street Brawler, not to
Speaker 1: be confused with Good Street Brawler. No. At Number sixteen
Speaker 1: total recall takes the fifteenth spot. Have you played bubbsy
Speaker 1: three D, Bad Street Brawler or Total Recall tigh No,
Speaker 1: I haven't though Bad Street Brawler looks very much like
Speaker 1: a straight ripoff of River City. Yeah, and it looks
Speaker 1: much worse, which is a good street brawl. It's a
Speaker 1: good street brawler. Yeah, we have we're coming in and
Speaker 1: we're coming up on the you know, like of the
Speaker 1: midway point here of the list, as we get closer
Speaker 1: to the top ten. We have Aircars at fourteen, Rap
Speaker 1: Jam Volume one at thirteen everyone knows Rap Jam got
Speaker 1: good with volume two, and night Trap at twelve oh
Speaker 1: boy oh and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Heroes of the
Speaker 1: Lamps and number eleven. Have you played Aircars, Rap Jam
Speaker 1: Volume one, Night Trap or Advance Dungeons and Dragons Heroes
Speaker 1: of the Lamb. I haven't to. Night Trap is the only, like,
Speaker 1: you know, memorable one. I think you know that I
Speaker 1: might have played. I know people who played it, you know,
Speaker 1: gone back and played it. Obviously it was a huge
Speaker 1: cultural phenomenon, mostly negatively and positively. I think this is
Speaker 1: just the anti full motion video. Yeah, the night Trap
Speaker 1: is a classic fire This shod baby guy. You know
Speaker 1: FMV at the time that it just wasn't there, right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the thing that people wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: It wasn't interactive. It was technically possible, but not great,
Speaker 1: So I get why people love to hate it, and then,
Speaker 1: especially when it brought a bunch of heat on the industry,
Speaker 1: also people love to hate that. Kicking off the top
Speaker 1: ten worst games of all time is Revolution X, which
Speaker 1: I believe is an Arrowsmith themed light gun game. Yeah
Speaker 1: gets it. Two in graphics, a zero in fun, and
Speaker 1: a zero in basic concept. Have you ever played Revolution
Speaker 1: X time? I have not because this was reviewed very
Speaker 1: poorly at the time. Zero in fun. You'll be in
Speaker 1: some rooms shooting unflinching identical men for ten minutes, while
Speaker 1: the same four seconds of an Aerosmith too loop indefinitely.
Speaker 1: That's not a game. That's a Nazi experiment to see
Speaker 1: how much takes for a human head to pop. Good
Speaker 1: lucktopping Revolution X satan uh huh who. Number nine is
Speaker 1: a regrettable game called Custers Oven where Colonel Custard Is
Speaker 1: that what his name is? General Custer? Yes, I'm not
Speaker 1: up on my American history. I'm sorry, General Custer tries
Speaker 1: to cross the desert and sexually assault Indigenous women. His
Speaker 1: boner is made from several pixel Wow. Yeah, it gets
Speaker 1: a three in graphics, a one in fun, and an
Speaker 1: eight or is that an historical accuracy? Uh? Wow? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I Q this is astonishing. Yeah, you didn't know about
Speaker 1: this game? No, I did not. This game is not
Speaker 1: not good. This is this is horrifying. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: thank you Sean historical accuracy gets nine. Although General Custer
Speaker 1: didn't sexually assault any of them and was in fact
Speaker 1: instead killed by Native Americans, the rest of this game's
Speaker 1: premise is actually correct. Besides adding true to history details
Speaker 1: like Custer's magnificent pink scarf and blue cowboy hat, the
Speaker 1: creators did exhaustive research on cowboys having sex. Oh my gosh, okay,
Speaker 1: so like, like, I don't even have words to describe
Speaker 1: how horrible this is also Custer's revenge, And here here's
Speaker 1: your history. Prime Custer got freaking owned. He was a
Speaker 1: dumb guy who got absolutely routed, and then they tried
Speaker 1: to make a hero out of him by being like
Speaker 1: and this was the guy who got at the bottom
Speaker 1: of a hill and had like four different tribes calm
Speaker 1: down the hill and kill all his people. Terrible good gravy. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's move on. That's Oh did you play Custer's Revenge?
Speaker 1: Don't say no? Okay, Ty, would you like to do
Speaker 1: the honors of introducing game numbers? Why?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Would?
Speaker 1: Oh? Man? We reviewed? Uh? Was it Next Generations review?
Speaker 1: May it was Game Pro because they had the sports editor.
Speaker 1: It was a Game Pro's review of White Men Can't
Speaker 1: Don't Jump? For the Atari Jaguar Woo for the game
Speaker 1: version of White Men Can't Jump. We were expecting to
Speaker 1: fight our way through the Kingdom of the Swamp people
Speaker 1: with fire, basketball throwing atomic Wesley snipes, it's amazing that
Speaker 1: they actually made the game about basketball. And I remember,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, hold on, Okay, I'm scanning this article.
Speaker 1: I note because here's the thing. The reason I know
Speaker 1: these is that Sean Baby put on his website expanded
Speaker 1: versions of all of these amazing and so I think
Speaker 1: I actually came to somebody linked me to his website
Speaker 1: where he has expanded versions of all of these, and
Speaker 1: he complained about the premise the title being like reverse racist.
Speaker 1: So he's like, oh, white men Can't Jump. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: what if I made a movie called Asian Women Drive
Speaker 1: like Tiny Maniacs? You wouldn't like that? Oh boy? So
Speaker 1: I think Sean Baby maybe was best with an editor
Speaker 1: because leaning into the edgy humor didn't age nearly as
Speaker 1: well when we stuck with you know, the more clever takedowns.
Speaker 1: And like I said, that line stuck in my head.
Speaker 1: But yeah, thanks to sloppy graphics and insane camera work,
Speaker 1: the hoop looks like a distant chunk of grape nuts.
Speaker 1: You can never tell when you make a basket. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: basketball phrases appear on screen when anything happens. What's funny
Speaker 1: is he kicks it off saying, quote for a game
Speaker 1: version of White Man Can Jump, we were expecting to
Speaker 1: fight our way through the Kingdom of the swamp people
Speaker 1: with a fire, basketball throwing atomic Wesley Snipes. But on
Speaker 1: the previous page he lists go down Yeah, top five
Speaker 1: worst game concepts ever shak fu number one, A basketball
Speaker 1: player in a fighting game sounds like a third degree
Speaker 1: black mountain crap. Huh, which is it? Do you want
Speaker 1: to play as a basketball player eh in an action game?
Speaker 1: Or do you come on? Shong baby number Did you
Speaker 1: ever play?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: White Man. Can No, I don't think I've even played.
Speaker 1: I haven't played a Jaguar. I haven't played a Jaguar game.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever seen it. Number seven,
Speaker 1: can you use the trend of bad media IP tie
Speaker 1: ins with Superman sixty four, which even at the time
Speaker 1: was like lambastard for being super bad? It gets a
Speaker 1: score of one in graphics, which is too high, a
Speaker 1: zero in fun, and a nine in realism. Number six
Speaker 1: is Gilligan's Island, which scored a one in graphics, a
Speaker 1: zero in fun, and a one in craftsmanship. Did you
Speaker 1: ever play Superman sixty four or Gilligan's Island? No, no,
Speaker 1: I cannot play any of these. I also have gilligans
Speaker 1: Island kind of looks like a metal gear solid ripo. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. Okay yeah. Virtue Woso cracks open our top five,
Speaker 1: scoring a zero in graphics, a zero in fun, and
Speaker 1: a zero in realistic portrayal of a megastar lifestyle for
Speaker 1: an average rating of zero. How is that not the
Speaker 1: number one worst game? In question? Good question? Have you
Speaker 1: played Virtuoso tie?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Neither have I played Captain Novelle in so at number four,
Speaker 1: I see to teach children about diabetes, a game I'm
Speaker 1: certain doesn't actually exist. It got a one in graphics,
Speaker 1: is zero in fun, and a zero in ability to
Speaker 1: save lives. Number three is another game I don't think
Speaker 1: actually exists, called Fight for Life, which got a one
Speaker 1: in graphics, a one in fun, and a one in
Speaker 1: contribution to failure. I know you didn't play Captain Virtual
Speaker 1: or Captain Noble, Captain Virtuo. So Captain Noblean, did you
Speaker 1: play Fight for Life? No? Again, Jaguar game. Didn't play it,
Speaker 1: but this got brutal reviews in every magazine. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine what consoles fail for subtle reasons like bad marketing
Speaker 1: or sun spots. But there's bad games that killed the Jaguar,
Speaker 1: which really didn't fail hard enough. If any of the
Speaker 1: people responsible for the Jaguar still have their homes, there
Speaker 1: is no justice in the World runner up. We have
Speaker 1: a three way tie between the CD I Zelda games. Sure,
Speaker 1: did you ever play the CDI Zelda games? Tye? Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen a CDI in real life? Definitely not
Speaker 1: seen a CDI in real life. No. I would love
Speaker 1: for Nintendo to somehow figure out how to get these
Speaker 1: on uh Nintendo Switch online. So good?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: Taking top spot is e t with a zero graphics,
Speaker 1: a zero in fun, and a ten in a Little
Speaker 1: Boy's Love, for an average score of about three point
Speaker 1: three three. I gotta say this feels more like a
Speaker 1: meme pick than anything. Did you play, yeah, tye, yes?
Speaker 1: If so? Did you dig it out of a Mexico landfilm?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I did not dix it out of the get Out
Speaker 1: of any Mexico landfill. I had you know, friends, babysitters,
Speaker 1: et cetera that had atari's and this game it's so
Speaker 1: it's so like inscrutable, like you don't even really understand
Speaker 1: what's happening, and like is he it says most of
Speaker 1: the actual gameplay here, as you trying to escape from
Speaker 1: scientists and jumping into pits to find parts of your telephone.
Speaker 1: I like, we thought you were not supposed to fall
Speaker 1: in the pits. We thought you were supposed to be
Speaker 1: trying to avoid the pits, which you couldn't typically game
Speaker 1: you couldn't do You're trying to avoid exactly, and so
Speaker 1: like you would constantly fall into the pits and then
Speaker 1: just be like I can't get out, and like we
Speaker 1: didn't know how to make them get out. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's absolutely terrible game and famously notoriously terrible game.
Speaker 1: And also famously and notoriously yes, they took all of
Speaker 1: their excess backstock millions and millions and millions of backstock
Speaker 1: cartridges and just sorry, there's been hundreds of thousands probably
Speaker 1: and put them in a landfill, which they then vigorously
Speaker 1: denied until people went and found several years ago Et
Speaker 1: cartridges in that landfill. It did happen. Graphics have got
Speaker 1: a zero, and they need to read this quote quote.
Speaker 1: Et has never looked worse, which is a pretty amazing
Speaker 1: accomplishment since he started out looking like a slimy little
Speaker 1: space penis. And I think that is a fabulous way
Speaker 1: to wrap up Sean Babies. Yes, top twenty worst games
Speaker 1: of all time. Wow, compelling podcasting. But sadly, I've played
Speaker 1: exactly zero of those games in my life. You've played
Speaker 1: a few, yes, which I'm impressed by. And we just
Speaker 1: spent way too long on that section. I love that
Speaker 1: you put that in the script, and then we spent
Speaker 1: even much longer than I bet you thought we would.
Speaker 1: Incredible stuff. I had a feeling I had a feeling
Speaker 1: we are unfortunately going to skip past this buyer's guide,
Speaker 1: which has some incredible unique art. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: like the cover of a soul hip hop album, like
Speaker 1: way back in the day. Beautiful stuff. Okay, but you
Speaker 1: know we're running late. We're running, we're running fast. We
Speaker 1: haven't even got to our review yet, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: skip this holiday gift buyer's guide and get to the review.
Speaker 1: That's right, so before we do that. No matter how
Speaker 1: great the writing is in these classic game magazines, our
Speaker 1: favorite writing is yours. When we come back from the
Speaker 1: sad break, we read your reviews of our reviews of
Speaker 1: classic video game magazine reviews right here on fun.
Speaker 2: Fact, we've got mail.
Speaker 1: As promised, we always review the best, funniest, kindness, and
Speaker 1: most entertaining. Five star Apple podcast reviews on the air.
Speaker 1: Bonus points if you say who your favorite host is
Speaker 1: and why. Double bonus points if it's paid all right
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. Five stars from Random Underscore Guitar. This
Speaker 1: is a podcast I didn't know I needed in my life,
Speaker 1: but now I'm obsessed. I don't typically re listen to
Speaker 1: podcasts multiple times, but this one may have inspired me
Speaker 1: to do so. One thing I like about fun factor
Speaker 1: is I can listen to nostalgic game content without worrying
Speaker 1: about spoiling games I haven't played yet. Oh it's great.
Speaker 1: This pot is simply fun to listen to. It is
Speaker 1: very well produced and the music's a great touch as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you Random guitar. That is super cool to read.
Speaker 1: Love the review, love the rating. It helps us a
Speaker 1: ton aid. And you said you've got some Discord comments
Speaker 1: you wanted to share. Yeah, so we touched base with
Speaker 1: our ultra readers or ultra review crew in the exclusive
Speaker 1: Discord channel to ask about their experiences with like the
Speaker 1: worst games they ever bought, and we got some great
Speaker 1: responses here. So Quabi Lay said, Mega Man Network Transmission,
Speaker 1: it's so sluggish and trying to bring that game back
Speaker 1: into three D from the cool RPG car An Act
Speaker 1: of Grid Combat was a mistake. The GBA games, those
Speaker 1: MegaMan GBA like RPGs were cool. I never played a
Speaker 1: network transmission, but it is it's tough, like to make
Speaker 1: that jump from kind of one genre to the other,
Speaker 1: one medium to another. To pay in Discord, says does
Speaker 1: switch to Welcome to her account. I like switch to
Speaker 1: Welcome to Her.
Speaker 3: Y'all.
Speaker 1: You did have to buy it, though, so fair. I
Speaker 1: think it counts. I thought it was worth a few
Speaker 1: ten bucks or whatever. Lord Drew be Andrew Blewett in
Speaker 1: chat says Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, which I expect would
Speaker 1: make a lot of people's lists at launch, it's a
Speaker 1: lot better now, Andrew says quote. I was told it
Speaker 1: would have player agency and choices like an immersive sim.
Speaker 1: Then it wouldn't let me opt out of my character
Speaker 1: getting a cybernetic implant. I don't want hackers or corporations
Speaker 1: getting a hold of my body through an implant kind
Speaker 1: of player choices at refunded it shortly after. That is
Speaker 1: interesting because that does kind of get to the I
Speaker 1: haven't played Cyberpunk, but I assume the main theme is, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the intersection between technology and humanity, what makes
Speaker 1: a human? All that kind of stuff, and that seems
Speaker 1: like it would be a big consequential choice in a
Speaker 1: game like that. James Halliday says Starfox zero. Never has
Speaker 1: a game looked so good but absolutely missed the mark
Speaker 1: so bad. Star Fox sixty four was one of the
Speaker 1: best games developed and instead of following that formula, Nintendo
Speaker 1: has consistently attempted to innovate the series with half cooked ideas,
Speaker 1: and Starfox zero is just the latest blunder. Instead of
Speaker 1: smooth gameplay with a charismatic cast of characters and multiple
Speaker 1: roots for replay ability, the game broke the flow with
Speaker 1: mini robot sections and repetitive bosses. I just wanted a
Speaker 1: star Fox game, Yeah right, please just want just do
Speaker 1: the thing. Just make good games. Yeah, just like make
Speaker 1: a good Starfox game. You got a template. So fabulous stuff.
Speaker 1: In their study also said he also wanted to like Cyberpunk,
Speaker 1: but now he's getting that fixed with replaced. So if
Speaker 1: you votes for Cyberpunk, which is fair. I bought it
Speaker 1: for cheap because I wanted to check it out and
Speaker 1: switch to but I have not played it yet. So
Speaker 1: fabulous stuff. On the fun Factor Discord, if you're not
Speaker 1: already a member, you can join the discord for free.
Speaker 1: We have a active, passionate, knowledgeable kind community, and if
Speaker 1: you're an ultra member you get access to the Altered Lounge,
Speaker 1: where we do stuff like pull our listeners on the
Speaker 1: worst games they've ever bought, drop secret links to the
Speaker 1: recording sessions like this episode right now, So get on
Speaker 1: over there. It's a lot of fun, awesome stuff. Thank
Speaker 1: you all so much for your ratings, your reviews, your comments,
Speaker 1: your input. We love reading your stuff, We love interacting
Speaker 1: with you guys. Please continue to share and rate and
Speaker 1: review on Apple podcasts. Put comments in YouTube if you're
Speaker 1: watching on the YouTube version right because that just helps
Speaker 1: the computers, the great gods that decide who gets to
Speaker 1: see what to keep making what. I know that they
Speaker 1: hate people like what we're doing and are interactive with this,
Speaker 1: go do that. We'll read the best, kindest, funniest and
Speaker 1: most insightful ones on the air. Sit tight for one
Speaker 1: more break. We will come back, do what we do
Speaker 1: and review a GM's review of metal Gear Solid Tune.
Speaker 1: We're having five stars out of five stars worth fun
Speaker 1: today and folks, if you are to leave a rating
Speaker 1: and review on Apple podcast, as I just said, we
Speaker 1: will read the best, finest, best funniest, guyness and most
Speaker 1: entertaining ones on the air. But now it's time we
Speaker 1: review the review. The thing that we do aiden take
Speaker 1: it away. Have you recovered from the last section? I
Speaker 1: maybe because I have, sure, But fortunately we're pretty familiar
Speaker 1: with EGM's review format. At this point issue one fifty,
Speaker 1: they're still using their long standing review crew set up,
Speaker 1: with most games getting three capsule reviews, some of them
Speaker 1: get one capsule review, some of the smaller releases, some
Speaker 1: of them, like the big releases, and there are many
Speaker 1: this month, get capsule reviews and like a full length,
Speaker 1: multi page feature review. They use a ten point scale
Speaker 1: with half points, so it's like a twenty point scale,
Speaker 1: I guess. And according to their rubric, a ten is
Speaker 1: quote one of the best games ever made, a revolutionary title,
Speaker 1: A zero is a game you want to avoid at
Speaker 1: all costs, and a five is average. Platinum, Gold, and
Speaker 1: Silver awards are given out for average scores of ten
Speaker 1: nine plus and between eight and nine, respectively. This issue
Speaker 1: is packed with genuine classics like not just like you know,
Speaker 1: memorable games like genuine classics Pickman, which we just covered
Speaker 1: in the last episode when we looked at Issue an
Speaker 1: eighty five next Generation. This issue is also from January
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, Like I said, and it has
Speaker 1: I just couldn't skip this, I think. Actually we talked
Speaker 1: off air about the fact that we might stick to
Speaker 1: January two thousand and two for a few episodes. Because
Speaker 1: this issue has reviews of Halo, it has a review
Speaker 1: of Grand Theft Auto three, it has reviews of Burnout,
Speaker 1: Jack and Daxter, Golden Sun, and just a enormous number
Speaker 1: of like legitimate bangers Warriorland for and of course the
Speaker 1: best three D fighting game of all time Doender Live three,
Speaker 1: of course. And so we're going to stick around in
Speaker 1: January two thousand and two for at least this episode,
Speaker 1: maybe more. It's a jam packed month. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out we're going to talk about it. We
Speaker 1: was drinking here, looks like mountain, dem It's clearly mountain.
Speaker 1: But like cheers, I think, I don't think read those before.
Speaker 1: Code red? Code is code red? Okay, Wow, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize code red. Uh, I forgot it was that long ago.
Speaker 1: That's a code red. Incredible that that we have this steward,
Speaker 1: a time capsule, all right, twenty five cents in the
Speaker 1: office vending machine for a cant of code red. So
Speaker 1: today you know, with games, what did I say, Pickman, Burnout,
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto three, Jack and Daxter, Dead Our Live three,
Speaker 1: Halo project, Gotham Racing, which was a source of debate
Speaker 1: in the Fun Factor discord recently. Yes, it was Shrek,
Speaker 1: Golden Sun, Warrio Lan four. What we're going to review,
Speaker 1: None of those, None of those bangers. We're going to
Speaker 1: review drum Roll Doom for the Devoid bands. No we're
Speaker 1: not Doom. No we're not. We're gonna stop on page
Speaker 1: two twelve for e GM's three page view of metal
Speaker 1: Gear Solid two. It's your experience with metal Gear Solid two. Ty,
Speaker 1: what about the like metal Gear Solid series as a whole?
Speaker 1: Absolutely zero? Oh boy, absolutely zero. I have metal Gear
Speaker 1: Solid at all. I don't know, and I think I
Speaker 1: very very briefly mentioned it on one episode. It was
Speaker 1: just one of those like even though I read all
Speaker 1: these magazines and stuff, like, word of mouth was still huge.
Speaker 1: I had a very you know, tight knit friend group,
Speaker 1: and one of my friends got it and I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: now this kind of sucks actually, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh okay. And then when metal Gear Solid two came out,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh man, I really it looks like
Speaker 1: I really really needed to have played one in order
Speaker 1: to play too. And so then, like many things in
Speaker 1: my life, my instinct for completionism meant that I just
Speaker 1: never did it, ever, I never played any of them.
Speaker 1: It's funny because, like we'll kind of get into it,
Speaker 1: but skipping metal Gear Solid one maybe would have improved
Speaker 1: initial impressions of Metal Gear Solid two because there was
Speaker 1: a lot of debate about some of the choices it
Speaker 1: made the I played a lot of Metal Gear Solid two.
Speaker 1: I was a big fan. I didn't even mind the
Speaker 1: fake out, which we'll touch on in a second. But
Speaker 1: metal Gear Solo on the PlayStation was, you know, a
Speaker 1: popular game among me and my friend groups I have.
Speaker 1: I think I told this story on the podcast before,
Speaker 1: but fond memories of like I was home sick from
Speaker 1: school one day and just playing through metal Gear Solid
Speaker 1: in one sitting. So when two came out, I was stoked,
Speaker 1: very excited. I don't think I had my own PlayStation yet,
Speaker 1: so I must have played a friend's house, but very exciting.
Speaker 1: The main part of this feature is uncredited, but it's big,
Speaker 1: and it digs deep into the game, using a voice
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily feel like it's trying to stick to
Speaker 1: the banal house style, like it still feels like you're
Speaker 1: sitting down with a specific person, even if it's unnamed. Notably,
Speaker 1: it kicks off with this statement, which I thought was interesting. Quote.
Speaker 1: First things first, don't read this review if you're worried
Speaker 1: about it ruining any part of Metal Gear Solid two story.
Speaker 1: It will. We do have some complaints, but you still
Speaker 1: must play the game, and you should do that knowing
Speaker 1: as little as possible. For maximum enjoyment, just skip ahead
Speaker 1: to the spoiler free reviews on page two fourteen, then
Speaker 1: go play the game. So a lot of this is
Speaker 1: referencing the fact that for the first two hours you
Speaker 1: play a Solid Snake, the hero, the main character from
Speaker 1: the earlier games in the series, and Metal Gear Solid
Speaker 1: one you have the Tanker episode. It's fabulous. It's this
Speaker 1: little closed box of like perfect Metal Gear Solid gameplay,
Speaker 1: probably like the best Metal Gear Solid gameplay there is.
Speaker 1: Then you beat the Tanker and then there's a fake
Speaker 1: out Snake disappears and you start playing as a new
Speaker 1: guy named Ryding or Raiden. I guess it doesn't really
Speaker 1: rhyme with my name, right, and Rayden Rayden, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so that's where a lot of the like consternation comes in.
Speaker 1: This rug pole was widely talked about famously. Infamously, it
Speaker 1: changed the perception of Metal Gear Solid completely. But what
Speaker 1: I think is interesting here is how the review immediately
Speaker 1: presents itself as like a piece of criticism rather than
Speaker 1: like a buyer's guide style. Should I buy this review?
Speaker 1: Which is what we were used to at the time, right,
Speaker 1: And I like that EGM was saying, Hey, we want
Speaker 1: to talk about this game, and it's like legacy or
Speaker 1: what it's shaped, like, how it how it shapes the
Speaker 1: game's industry and the series and all that. What do
Speaker 1: you think of this tie this approach? Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: like this, especially we've got this spoiler free review versus
Speaker 1: not version, right, like having that jump that's cool. I
Speaker 1: like that a lot. And of course people playing Metal
Speaker 1: Gear Solid are interested in Get Solid too, are going
Speaker 1: to want, you know, a spoiler free experience as much
Speaker 1: as they can probably, right, Like, giving people that choice
Speaker 1: is very cool. And so you still get your multiple
Speaker 1: named like kind of capsule reviews along with this. This
Speaker 1: is a huge amount of real estate. Obviously you've got
Speaker 1: so many screenshots. You've also got your strategy tips, which, like,
Speaker 1: I never need strategy tips in a review, right, Like
Speaker 1: I never am, Like, oh what I really love is that.
Speaker 1: But also a lot of the best reviews have them,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of shows a level of care.
Speaker 1: I think you know that. It shows the reviewer has
Speaker 1: played through the game and thought a lot about it
Speaker 1: and going oh, hey, by the way, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: get stuck here. Make sure you do this right, like
Speaker 1: like trust yeah, between the reader and the crew. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and so again, it just shows the reviewers played through
Speaker 1: this game, thought about this game, is thinking about the
Speaker 1: audience while playing the game, is thinking about the review
Speaker 1: didn't just play through it and they go, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: here are my thoughts. You know, it was created as
Speaker 1: you go, stop and get these screenshots. The screenshots are
Speaker 1: cool and relevant, not just ones that were like, you know,
Speaker 1: sent in so that and like this pull out here
Speaker 1: Solid Snake's Funniest home videos. Now, our studio audience will
Speaker 1: vote on which of the following scenes sent to us
Speaker 1: by people just like you and me, they'd like to
Speaker 1: see you win our ten thousand dollars fries. Will it
Speaker 1: be naked man in tunnel sent in by Scott Dolph
Speaker 1: of Treeport, Maryland and clapping? Why is this rain yellow?
Speaker 1: Sent in by terrorist Number seventy two from unknown? Or
Speaker 1: how about bird craps on super agent's face from d Snake.
Speaker 1: Aw this scene only available on at A your Solid
Speaker 1: two too hot for TV Snake Gone wild you So yeah,
Speaker 1: like just a lot of creativity and then also a
Speaker 1: lot of serious critique and content. Very cool, yeah, very cool. Now.
Speaker 1: In chat, Greg Sewart says he's pretty sure Mark McDonald
Speaker 1: wrote the main part of the review, which makes d
Speaker 1: Greg's also reached out on Discord and says he has
Speaker 1: a quick story about this review if we want to
Speaker 1: bring him on to the podcast as a oh well, heck, surprise, guys.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I can do that. Hold on, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: let's do guest. Yes, copy link here we go is live?
Speaker 1: Is incredible. Look at us live radio you've sent, We've said,
Speaker 1: stewing the link on Discord. Oh, hello, we have a
Speaker 1: surprise guest. Great. Hey, this is Greg Sewart e gm alum,
Speaker 1: who has a special story for us about this review. Greg,
Speaker 1: of course, was on staff with EGM at the time
Speaker 1: this was written. Thanks for joining us, Greg. Oh, I
Speaker 1: can't hear you.
Speaker 3: I'll on my microphone and that'll be easier.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I know you guys are running late and I
Speaker 4: don't want to take up too much of your time.
Speaker 4: I won't stick around for this whole thing, but I
Speaker 4: do have a story about this this review in particular.
Speaker 3: You had previously mentioned.
Speaker 4: How obviously there was a big rug pull with middle
Speaker 4: Gear Solid two and Konami had spent well over a
Speaker 4: year really promoting this game. For all we knew it
Speaker 4: was going to be Solid Snake doing his thing in
Speaker 4: his first PlayStation two game. So because of the secrecy
Speaker 4: around this, the people who reviewed this game, which I
Speaker 4: believe is Mark and I'm not sure who else it was,
Speaker 4: maybe Jonathan and Craig, they were actually Chay, I almost
Speaker 4: remembered it all. They were actually flown out to Konami
Speaker 4: to review this game. This game was not sent to
Speaker 4: two media outlets to review. They had to go review
Speaker 4: it basically in secret because of the big rug pull.
Speaker 3: They didn't want people. They didn't want that leaking.
Speaker 4: But the fun part for me about this is I
Speaker 4: was a huge Metal Gear Solid fan, could not wait
Speaker 4: for Metal Gear Solid two, so excited for it. Part
Speaker 4: of my job at the time working at this magazine
Speaker 4: was I was one of.
Speaker 3: The proofreaders for all the copies.
Speaker 4: So I shouldn't say that for the previews, I was
Speaker 4: the previews editor, but for reviews, I proofread all the
Speaker 4: copy before it went to I think Mark McDonald and
Speaker 4: then to Dan Schue and got approved. So I had
Speaker 4: to proofread this thing and I had the rug pull
Speaker 4: completely ruined for me before I ever got a chance
Speaker 4: to play the game. And I remember yelling at Mark
Speaker 4: across the office because he did write this where there's
Speaker 4: that big spoiler intro, and I was like, oh god,
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know, it can't be that bad,
Speaker 4: right this, It can't be that bad. And then you
Speaker 4: read it's like, oh yeah, you play ninety percent of
Speaker 4: the game, is this completely unknown character. It's just the
Speaker 4: entire point of the game. And it was completely ruined
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh no, oh boy. The perils working in
Speaker 1: the game.
Speaker 3: That's right. See we bled for our art, that's all.
Speaker 1: I'm sabulous, Yes, yes, yes, amazing stuff. Getting flown out
Speaker 1: her review is still wild to me, Like I have
Speaker 1: to like fight with pr just to get a code.
Speaker 3: Oh we live in a much different time now.
Speaker 1: Yeah sure cool. Anyway, thank you so much. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: won't keep you guys having your feed. Like your perspective
Speaker 1: on this is so fabulous, So thanks, thanks.
Speaker 4: For sure, thanks for covering this issue. This is, like
Speaker 4: I mentioned, one of my favorite issues. I this is
Speaker 4: one of the best issues we ever produced during my
Speaker 4: time there.
Speaker 1: So it's awesome. We could spend four hours on this issue.
Speaker 1: It's it's wild. So thanks thanks for the working and
Speaker 1: everyone else they're doing all right. Thank you guys, Thank you,
Speaker 1: see ya all right. Wow, Stewie Gregs he's joining us
Speaker 1: for this. It's incredible. You know, the overlap. This is
Speaker 1: something that we've you know, treaded lightly from the beginning
Speaker 1: where we go, okay, well, like we're tagging some of
Speaker 1: these people who are involved on social media, like, oh man,
Speaker 1: how is it going to change our relationship to this stuff?
Speaker 1: You know. But hey, to have people who are literally
Speaker 1: involved in the publication of the thing that we're looking
Speaker 1: at and they're just as excited about it as we are,
Speaker 1: it's super super cool. Absolutely. Moving to the capsule reviews,
Speaker 1: mal You're Solid two received nine point fives across the
Speaker 1: board from Mark McDonald, Jonathan Dudlock, and j Chaw and
Speaker 1: a in viduals nine in sound and eight in ingenuity,
Speaker 1: which seems crazy to me, and then eight in replay. Ty,
Speaker 1: can you read the opening of Mark McDonald's Capsule review,
Speaker 1: who we now also know wrote the feature review. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and wow, I ate an ingenuity? Like what else do
Speaker 1: you want? I mean, I guess just because it's the sequel.
Speaker 1: But that's why the ice cubes melted? What crazy? You
Speaker 1: could shoot like a glass like a drink. Oh, and
Speaker 1: then the ice cubes would fall like fall out, like
Speaker 1: physics based, and then they would like slowly crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: I know there was like butt, there's naked butt in
Speaker 1: a video ingenuity, that's what ye. Despite what you might assume,
Speaker 1: this is not an easy game to review. The overall
Speaker 1: quality is unquestionably high, some of the best graphics on
Speaker 1: a home game, yet ridiculously detailed environments packed with secrets,
Speaker 1: tiny jokes and optional extras, replay bolstered by collectibles and
Speaker 1: harder difficulties and controls you can truly master. But the story,
Speaker 1: how can I put this? Sucks ass? Kochuma like is
Speaker 1: known for his absolutely like batshit stories right, and I
Speaker 1: think that most people would agree now that the increasingly
Speaker 1: absurd storyline in the Metal Gear Solid series went from
Speaker 1: like a strength where it felt unpredictable and like sort
Speaker 1: of like an espionage thriller undergirded by like science fiction
Speaker 1: e elements, comic bookie elements, and that all started to
Speaker 1: kind of like take over in later games. A Metal
Speaker 1: Gear Solid two was the first sign that, like, not
Speaker 1: all of Kojuma's risks were going to be popular. Then
Speaker 1: he kind of went back in Metal Gearsolo three was
Speaker 1: a little more traditional, and it's one of the best
Speaker 1: in the series because of that. But four five and
Speaker 1: the Phantom Pain and all that sort of sort of
Speaker 1: really doubled down on some of Kojuma's worst tendencies, and
Speaker 1: I think Ryding is maybe the first sign of those
Speaker 1: cracks starting to show. Yeah, and again I haven't played
Speaker 1: the series, but I remember a story going around about
Speaker 1: one of the sequels, was it five, where he decided
Speaker 1: he was he was going to go to the absolute
Speaker 1: mat for uh, perma death and not just perma death,
Speaker 1: but perma game over, like once you die, once the
Speaker 1: game is over and you can't play it anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he was like, no, I am going I can't
Speaker 1: play it anywhere your lines Yeah, yeah, like the game
Speaker 1: just like won't play anymore. And he like, no, I
Speaker 1: am going to the mat for this. This is going
Speaker 1: to be what this game is. You get one life
Speaker 1: and if you die, you die. And Kanami was like,
Speaker 1: we will not publish a game like and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I really won't make the game unless you do that.
Speaker 1: And they were like, we really will not publish the
Speaker 1: game if you do that, and like I remember, hey,
Speaker 1: like that's a phenomenal thought exercise, right, that's a phenomenal
Speaker 1: thing to think about, Like how would you play, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were playing a survival horror type situation, you know,
Speaker 1: like if you're once I die, I really really die,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be as careful as I would be
Speaker 1: actually in real life, if dying means dying for real,
Speaker 1: for real. Yeah, and it is. It's interesting. But you
Speaker 1: can't spend like eighteen months or two years with a
Speaker 1: triple A budget on a game that people are going
Speaker 1: to spend fifty sixty seventy dollars for and then they
Speaker 1: play for two minutes and die and it's over. Like
Speaker 1: you can't you can't do that to people. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting is that where sort of the
Speaker 1: prohibitive cost of video games sort of interferes with its
Speaker 1: ability to explore sort of the furthest reachis and what
Speaker 1: can make art interesting because like, you know, exploring human
Speaker 1: experience like that is compelling, but it's also like people
Speaker 1: aren't going to pay seventy dollars for that, you know,
Speaker 1: like when I play a lot of Magic Arena online
Speaker 1: and I'll do a draft and a draft costs me
Speaker 1: like ten bucks, and then I draft and I go
Speaker 1: ohn three and then the draft is over and I'm like,
Speaker 1: well that was ten dollars. I'm never getting back. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine doing that, you know, Like sometimes I'm just
Speaker 1: not paying attention and I, you know, walk off a
Speaker 1: cliff or whatever, spacey and so like. But that is interesting,
Speaker 1: It is interesting to put people in that situation, but
Speaker 1: you can't spend two hundred million dollars doing that. And so, like,
Speaker 1: you know, how do video games experiment outside of the
Speaker 1: commercial requirements of the medium That don't necessarily apply to music,
Speaker 1: don't necessarily apply to art, don't necessarily apply to writing.
Speaker 1: Because artists can paignt to picture right and it doesn't
Speaker 1: cost them anything other than supplies. They can write a
Speaker 1: story and experiment within a story. If it doesn't sell,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sell music you can write music and you
Speaker 1: can go bust on the street, you know, you get
Speaker 1: book a little bar shows. You know, there's always opportunity
Speaker 1: for that. But video games you just can't really do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you can do that. But the commercial last week
Speaker 1: it's a game jam game. It can't be a tria
Speaker 1: a release. Yeah. Yes, that's a good point. And that's
Speaker 1: you know where you know Kojuma playing doing game jams
Speaker 1: man like that stuff would sing And there's that sort
Speaker 1: of anachronistic relationship between his big ideas and the commercial
Speaker 1: needs of video games. And I think it was really
Speaker 1: interesting and this review touches on that, you know, nicely.
Speaker 1: Mark McDonald wraps up his Capsure review saying this quote,
Speaker 1: it's infinitely more polished, more playable, more replayable, better looking,
Speaker 1: and just playing fun to run around and play than
Speaker 1: almost anything else out there. I didn't hesitate for one
Speaker 1: second when I finished it the first time, starting up
Speaker 1: another game immediately to hunt for the ton of stuff
Speaker 1: I knew I missed. Even as I write this, I
Speaker 1: can't wait to play it more. And I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: despite the gaping hole where the cool plot should be,
Speaker 1: you'll feel the same and I think what hurts is
Speaker 1: too was trying to make the plot cool, right, he
Speaker 1: was trying to, like any he just kind of went overboard. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think that's what makes his games compelling is that
Speaker 1: he takes these risks. They're weird, they don't always work,
Speaker 1: but few creators have that license to take those risks,
Speaker 1: even if he can't make you know, a perma death
Speaker 1: game the way you're describing. But and it's all worth
Speaker 1: it for the you know, flawed, rough brilliance that we
Speaker 1: get out out of his work. I think games and
Speaker 1: media and art is better for his presence, even when
Speaker 1: he makes bad choices. Yes, absolutely, what do you think
Speaker 1: Ty did EGM, Mark McDonald, Donathan Dudlick che Chaw? Did
Speaker 1: they do justice to medal Gear? Solidude? What are we
Speaker 1: giving this review? Yeah? And I want to be clear
Speaker 1: here right, like our access journalism here on this one,
Speaker 1: where we have a primary source joining the show mid stream,
Speaker 1: you know, not just in the live chat, but joins
Speaker 1: us us to actually talk about the actual production process
Speaker 1: of this and give us the insights and talk about
Speaker 1: how you know, Like that's really cool and like I
Speaker 1: also know everyone involved has grown ups. I know Stewie
Speaker 1: is not going to stop listening to the show or
Speaker 1: stop being in the discord if I slammed this, So
Speaker 1: I just want to be clear our journalistic integrity is
Speaker 1: intact here. I think this is as good a review
Speaker 1: of this game. I wish I'd played the game, because
Speaker 1: I'd feel better about giving it like boom, this is
Speaker 1: my review because I know exactly how well they did
Speaker 1: with this game. But to me, this is a ten
Speaker 1: out of ten. This is you know, we use like
Speaker 1: even in this magazine that is just absolutely jam packed
Speaker 1: with classics, legends, bangers. There's also a separate review section
Speaker 1: just for Sega right, tons of great previews as an
Speaker 1: almost two hundred and fifty page issue, and yet they
Speaker 1: dedicated four pages to this. They broke outler and unspoilered sections.
Speaker 1: We have multiple reviewers, so we get three perspectives and
Speaker 1: dealing with you know, here's all this stuff I think
Speaker 1: they're very clear about. Mark does a great job pointing
Speaker 1: out here the warts and flaws of this game. Here's
Speaker 1: all the incredible stuff. There's so many, like I said,
Speaker 1: great screenshots and and pullouts and strategy tips and just
Speaker 1: funny bits. We're just doing bits, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think you get a really great sense of the game,
Speaker 1: really great sense of the highs and lows, really great
Speaker 1: sense of the reason to play it, and a really
Speaker 1: good warning on Hey, here's what I don't like. I
Speaker 1: just think this touches all the bases. It looks great,
Speaker 1: and getting multiple perspectives that all agree, you know, they
Speaker 1: pretty much all degree and yeah. So yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: this is a ten, honestly, and I wish I play
Speaker 1: the game. I know stuff better. Uh that's ten rug
Speaker 1: pulls out of ten. Yeah, ten, ten rubber docues out
Speaker 1: of ten. Cool, Yeah, I mean agree with everything you say.
Speaker 1: I think this is a fabulous example of like early
Speaker 1: aughts games media that was pushing the idea of games
Speaker 1: criticism forward. I love the way that it is willing
Speaker 1: to engage with spoilers in the game at the expense
Speaker 1: of necessarily being like a buyer's guide. They have the
Speaker 1: capsule reviews. That's great, but I want to see more
Speaker 1: criticism of this. I love reviews that allow me to
Speaker 1: go back and read them after I've done the like
Speaker 1: experience the game, and engage with that review as a
Speaker 1: piece of criticism, which I think this does fabulously recognizing
Speaker 1: the game's flaws but also balancing that against its brilliant aspects,
Speaker 1: which metal Gear Solid two is an extremely brilliant game,
Speaker 1: and it's an extremely flawed game, and they've presented that
Speaker 1: here along with gorgeous screenshots like three pages with a
Speaker 1: big feature review, good capsule reviews like this is this
Speaker 1: is as good as it gets. I think this is
Speaker 1: a ten as well. Awesome. Yeah, ten ten rubber duckies
Speaker 1: out of ten. That is our review of e GM's
Speaker 1: review of metal Gear Soliditude. Did we get it right?
Speaker 1: Leave our review a review at Apple Podcasts, post it
Speaker 1: as a comment on YouTube. We will read the best
Speaker 1: ones on the air. Hey, go ahead and pass this
Speaker 1: show around to all your friends like it's third grade
Speaker 1: and we're on the playground. Shout us out on Blue
Speaker 1: Sky at funfactor pod dot com and everywhere else at
Speaker 1: fun Factor Pod Special thanks to Millennium Felt for all
Speaker 1: our amazing original music. Check out his work and its
Speaker 1: incredible Windows ninety five style website at Millennium A F
Speaker 1: A lck dot com. Unlike these old magazines, you won't
Speaker 1: have to wait a whole month for your next installment.
Speaker 1: We've dropped new episodes every two weeks. So go to
Speaker 1: Funfactor pod dot com, follow our show on your podcast
Speaker 1: your choice, and please insider becoming a member of fun
Speaker 1: Factor Ultra our premium tier, go on a every episodes
Speaker 1: bonus episode and the members only channels of our discord.
Speaker 1: Just go to Funfactor pod dot com and I promise
Speaker 1: you will not miss the sign up widget on our homepagage.
Speaker 1: If you do, you and we will have a maximum
Speaker 1: score in fun Factor. So, I guess you know what.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the cover. I will bring that open, chodh,
Speaker 1: where is my magazine?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Permissions? Can you guys see that? Yes? There we go. Okay,
Speaker 1: we have a big one and it's got a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff to do with. I'm sorry, yes, if you're
Speaker 1: not paying for ad free episodes. Oh dear, okay, so
Speaker 1: I've got issue Aiden Moher's recording failed. Aiden dropped. Okay,
Speaker 1: Aiden dropped? Okay? Uh yeah, it told me you dropped? Sorry?
Speaker 1: Can you hear me? Now? I can hear you. I
Speaker 1: can see you and you can see me. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: a it's still showing a gray box of old you though.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So I don't know if you I might
Speaker 1: think ghost You is still in if you if you left?
Speaker 1: Did you leave and come back? No, it kicked me out.
Speaker 1: I said something else was using my camera. There you go,
Speaker 1: ghost You is gone? Okay, it's this one for the game. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I said, hey, let's make some b roll chat like
Speaker 1: what are we up to?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 1: Tell last mission? Okay, the Unholy Trinity? Is that what
Speaker 1: we're looking at? Atari twenty six hundred style horror game
Speaker 1: is a sick concept because every Atari twenty six hundred
Speaker 1: style game is a horror game. If you try and
Speaker 1: play it, that's cool. Okay. No, I believe Daves' is
Speaker 1: like it's a great game. Like, No, I believe it's
Speaker 1: a great o. It looks cool. Yeah, it looks looks
Speaker 1: very cool. Okay, let's let's get back to the A roll.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I kind of lost my train of thought here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was wondering. Hear like, you look like you were
Speaker 1: trying to look something up. Yeah, okay, Tie is frozen okay,
Speaker 1: uh oh just oh oh boy, Ty just uh today
Speaker 1: was just not meant to be guys. Ty just messaged
Speaker 1: me on discord to say his power just went out,
Speaker 1: which is that? Okay, I guess we just weren't meant
Speaker 1: to record today. Uh Ty says, it's back up. But
Speaker 1: some good news. We're making b roll. Uh See right
Speaker 1: now I'm looking at Chat green Chat. Can't see my
Speaker 1: eyes look it but bow. But I bought, I splurged.
Speaker 1: I had some writy money come in and I bought
Speaker 1: a prompter, and so I'm going to set that up
Speaker 1: and look at when I read Chat, it's going to
Speaker 1: be like this. See you guys, whoa, whoa. When I
Speaker 1: read my script, wow like that, it's going to be
Speaker 1: pretty good. But we've had a bunch of flooding here
Speaker 1: in Michigan. There's some some dams we're on. Oh god,
Speaker 1: what if this damn fails? Watch over the last few
Speaker 1: weeks making national news. Yeah, last night they've said our
Speaker 1: power company said, hey, yeah, we're going to be like
Speaker 1: cycling some people off and on as we do stuff
Speaker 1: to try and rebalance some load and whatever to make
Speaker 1: sure that like flooded areas are you know, supported or whatever.
Speaker 1: Last night this happened. They flicked our power like three
Speaker 1: or four times. And my youngest is running sound for
Speaker 1: their high school is doing Mister Burns, which is a
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic play up a theater troop that re enacts
Speaker 1: Simpsons episodes, right a post electric play, says Drew Bie immediately. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so the power also went out at the high school,
Speaker 1: so they're doing this post apocalyptic and then like boom,
Speaker 1: power goes out, right, so amazing, that's amazing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so the same thing just happened. Now they flicked our
Speaker 1: power like three times, so like down for a few
Speaker 1: seconds each time, which then made it take that much
Speaker 1: longer for my router to come back up and everything else.
Speaker 1: So anyway, hello, I'm back. Hello, And now we're like
Speaker 1: an hour into recording and have done. Like I was saying,
Speaker 1: as you're gone, this is the most cursed recording. Uh
Speaker 1: we've done. It's not meant to be, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: power through. Page ninety six has a preview of a
Speaker 1: game called a Cira Psycho Ball. Okay, sorry I was
Speaker 1: then I just want you're still stuck together. There's some
Speaker 1: tweaks I think visible there too. Yeah, oh good lord, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean if we want to stick the phone,
Speaker 1: no no, no, no, no, that's okay. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: to get. Where's a curious cycle ball? Okay, there as promised,
Speaker 1: we always review the best, funniest, kindest, and most entertaining.
Speaker 1: Hold on a minute, I'm gonna stop sharing. Wow, we
Speaker 1: do this, and then can we get back to just
Speaker 1: the two of us. I'll like edit around all Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair, because I got just raw video with so
Speaker 1: it's not all right, we've got mail, all right, well
Speaker 1: we I'm sorry that I started to read the Return
Speaker 1: from Break. Yeah, okay, O good Platinum, gold, and silver
Speaker 1: awards are given out. Rah, We're gonna I want to
Speaker 1: read all of that stuff at once, So let's wait
Speaker 1: until Okay, we do the stewy stuff and then I
Speaker 1: can patch them in like it's a codec on the video. Okay,
Speaker 1: that'll be fun. I also don't this is Algreaty gone
Speaker 1: way way past our recording window, and so I don't
Speaker 1: want it to be too much longer. But yeah, we're
Speaker 1: pretty that Mark McDonald like capsture review stuff is