Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's Tuesday. I'm your host Jeff Grove for
the Giant BombCast here on giant bomb dot Com. I
am standing in for our boy Jan Ochoa, who is
busy in a living email. Joined by a new co
captain of the ship. Let's see, I'm gonna pick who
Am I gonna pick? Sean Turbo Sean McDowell, how are
you doing?
Speaker 2: I was really worried you were gonna pick someone who
isn't actually running the show today.
Speaker 3: I will be very upset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, someone actually running the ship with me. Yeah, Sean
is streaming because we're It's a well run operation over here.
But thank you so much Sean for handling the levers,
the ones and the twos. I appreciate it. Also joined
by Mike Manatti. Mike, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: Hi? It's me. It's Mike Manatti.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, yeah, I'm good, warming up a little bit
out here.
Speaker 3: I'm able to go outside and not feel pain all
the time, so that's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm right there with you. I was like, I
am going to go on a walk today, feeling pretty good,
feeling chipper, looking chipper. Dan Reichert, how's it going in Minneapolis?
Speaker 5: I'm also going to be walking today because it is
above freezing for the first time in a long time.
Speaker 3: Little snow's melting ice.
Speaker 5: The ice that was in my cooler that I threw
out after my New Year's party is starting to melt
on the deck.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, yep, the frozen tundry. I'm like beginning to
see like a little bit of ground again. So that's
it's nice out there. Yeah, we're gonna talk about video
games at some point on this show. But how's everyone doing?
What's everyone been up to?
Speaker 3: I finally saw Wicked?
Speaker 6: Yes, what's going on with you?
Speaker 3: I need Jan here for this one.
Speaker 1: I watched half of Wicked.
Speaker 6: I want to hear about it on your phone or
you're checking your phone during.
Speaker 1: I was checking my phone of course. Yeah, we can
talk about that too if you want it. Like I
knew you watched Wicked because before we started you were
singing Wicked, yeah, NonStop?
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, man, Wicked should have been my whole personality
like fifteen years ago.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I've never could see this thing before.
Is that anything?
Speaker 1: No one morens than Michid No, not your best work.
Speaker 3: I kind of like it.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I mean lost.
Speaker 2: It's not terrible, but I remember it before the show
that you've gotten good improvde I take.
Speaker 3: It all back.
Speaker 1: No, that's fairly.
Speaker 4: When you say you saw half of it, you mean
that you saw half a part? What do you just
saw part one?
Speaker 1: Very good, very good point. I should clarify. I've seen
half of part one. I started watching with the family
and then we got busy, as we do, and uh,
I'll we paused it and we'll go back to it at.
Speaker 3: Something my nieces are obsessed with.
Speaker 4: They're nine good, like yeah, like they like watched The
Wizard of Oz the other day because they're so into
liquid right now.
Speaker 1: So that's how I do. Wonder how do they feel
about the Wizard of Oz? My brother says they liked
it right. I would like to check. Maybe they were
on their phones the whole time to like it for sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, do you know I'm so vindicated about this phone
conversation when I did the Next Landern thing and Vinnie
Caravella beloved Vinnie caravellas. I will go further than you, Dan.
If I'm watching a movie and my wife falls out
her phone, I will pause the movie and just look
at her and then when she puts the phone away,
he'll be like, Okay, are you good for me to
start again?
Speaker 4: Like that sounds like I love Vinnie. I would slap
somebody if they did that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, not the conversation, which is how I knew.
Speaker 5: You know, this is one where you guys are all
misrepresenting a conversation.
Speaker 1: Now literally here's how it literally happened. You were saying,
I'm doing this new thing where I watch a movie
and then I don't look at anything about the movie afterward,
and I'm like, oh, I say that.
Speaker 5: Wait what I did not say that. I do look
up the movie afterwards. I do keep a running roller
decks in my head of like, oh, this is gonna
drive me nuts. I got to look this up after
the movie. Who was that guy?
Speaker 3: I always I letterbox the movie. I look it up.
Speaker 5: Somebody else was saying the thing, maybe that was Backler
or something. I always look up the movie out.
Speaker 1: Okay. So someone said that and I'm like okay, and
I was like, yeah, I'll just look up during the movie.
I will just look up who. Like if we have
a conversation with my wife, I wonder who that is.
We'll just look it up. Real quick, and you're like,
you're like during the movie, and you were, and I'm like, yeah,
everyone does that. It's really normal. And so when I
asked ninety five percent of people okay, it was like
ninety two point five perf. I don't remember where I
put that.
Speaker 5: No, because that is reasonable, Like I don't look up
stuff about the movie during the movie. But if you're
just trying to see like who's this actor or when
did this come out or who directed this something, I
would not have taken a hard stance on that. It's
It's literally general argument was are you on your phone?
Are you checking your phone during you?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: You get turned it into that right, But that was
in two different conversations because I was there and I
edited the show. You two were having two entirely different conversations.
Speaker 1: You you imagine a scenario and got mad at that. Dan, Yes,
that is.
Speaker 5: Correct, and I was saying, I'm hardline on that, like
airplane mode, throw the phone off the deck, you know,
like nowhere near me.
Speaker 1: And I think that's I would love to do that.
That's commendable. We just you know, I usually when we
sit down to watch a movie these days, it is
like me and my wife are like, this is still
a time when we're also talking because we don't get
a lot of time to do that.
Speaker 5: Oh no, but Bunk and I have. We used to
do a whole podcast where we talk about movies after
we watch movie. Now we're just in the movie. The
credits are rolling. Then we talked talk about it for
a while. Then we letter Box said, so, yeah, we
do talk about him stuff, but like, oh no, you're
focused during the movie, you know. Yeah, No, I just, uh,
we don't have that kind of time. So it's like,
I want to spend this time with you, and that's
more important than the people in the box on the TV.
Speaker 3: All right, So he just loves his wife more than
you did.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 4: Every week I think I can't give my opinion on
this because I'm going to like, I'm gonna lose a
lot of my likability if I start going.
Speaker 6: On, please do, He'll turn, He'll turn.
Speaker 4: All I'm gonna say is like some people like like
there's a lot of comments, like people are addicted to screens.
Speaker 3: They have to look at their phone during movie. The
movie is also on a screen.
Speaker 6: Just dedicating your attention to one thing for an hour
and a half is not that.
Speaker 2: Crazy, Mike, your brothers are on the record saying it's
a problem how to your phone.
Speaker 3: I believe that it is a problem because they're jealous
of my life.
Speaker 6: No, every time I see a comment about Mike Banati,
I strolled out two inches and I see a response
from Mike Manatti everything said about him on the internet,
I believe.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna shift. We were having a conversation about
whatever before the show today, and uh, there was Mike.
You made some reference to the three bes of Dwight
and you spelled beats B E, A T s now.
The vegetable is not spelled that way, and I just
thought that was very on brand for you to misspell
the vegetable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But as I was doing it, I'm like, I
think this is wrong.
Speaker 4: I think I'm getting I think I'm having a Beatles
problem here, or or the beats from.
Speaker 1: Doug, the beats from Dog right. Yes, look, I'm.
Speaker 3: I'm not thinking about beats very much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm a big I'm turning into
a veggie guy here.
Speaker 3: And beads not really on those shortlists.
Speaker 1: Beats are the ones that are like, uh, they're like
asparagus where they can change your out it like your
waist and it's like a scary thing when you when
it happens the first time, you're like, why is it
that color? And you're like, oh, okay, I had beats.
You have to learn that one the hard way. But yeah,
how how are the vegetables going? Dan? Great?
Speaker 5: Having every day? I had some bone list skinless chicken, breast,
and brussels. I had like a pound of Brussels sprouts
last night. That was good as hell. What about your injury?
Oh yeah, that's actually a hell. And I mean none
of the cuts were deep. I mean the worst is
there's the one on the.
Speaker 1: What happened that aren't paying attention to your social media feeds?
Speaker 3: Okay, so I was chopped. No, I wasn't even chopping.
Speaker 5: I thought I was gonna chop onions, but then I
looked up, like because I like Caesar salads and know
they're very basic, but like I do like the taste,
and so I got an onion out and I got
the veggie slicer out. It's one of those like waffle
you know, like grid things for trunk to chunk, you know,
like I.
Speaker 4: Have to say It's almost comical how much like protective
plastic shielding is on the face.
Speaker 3: But that's the thing.
Speaker 5: I cut it in a weird way, Like I've used
that a million times and it's not hard to just
don't don't do it safely. But I thought I was
gonna need it and I didn't, and so I was
like just cleaning it basically, and I had the top
part and I didn't take the blades out, even though
you can easily remove that square blade thing. I was like, ah,
I'm just running some water over, getting the like onion
bits off it or whatever. And then I like, I
must have it all happened very quickly. I dropped it
and I must have gone to grab it and my
right hand went in between and then it fell on
the counter and like slammed shut. And I felt the
pain immediately, and I was like oh. And then I
looked at my hand and all that like from five
different cuts down my hand. I just saw blood like plot.
I was like, ah, it's at this point in that
moment your brain doesn't know if, like did I cut
to the bone, Like that hurts really bad, and I'm
seeing a lot of blood and I just turned to
like back, and then she comes running in and she
told me she's like she has walked into many rooms
while I've just been bleeding profusely, and so she never
knows what to expect. So she said she walked into
the kitchen and thinking like this could be anything, this.
Speaker 3: Could be the big one.
Speaker 5: She's walked into the basement and seen me laying on
the ground with blood pouring out of my head. She
is the exact same scenario in the kitchen. So yeah,
she just went and got a bunch of like alcohol
and cleaners and bandages and bandaged me up and everything.
And yeah, it's been healing quickly. None of the cuts
were super deep. The only one to see, the one
on the knuckle is like every time I bend it,
it like opens up more.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's a problem, Yeah, but you feel better. I
was getting annoyed because the same time you're doing this,
I was just making a stew and like I made
it with red wine, and I drink the red wine.
Speaker 3: It hit me.
Speaker 4: Expect herd So I did like a drunk sweet and
all of a sudden, you do that. Everyone's like, man,
nobody a giant ball can be trusted to cook It's
like me in with them profusely.
Speaker 3: Mike is just slightly buzzed rays over here.
Speaker 2: It's like, sure me grow like our fast food, but
we also can cook, like.
Speaker 3: I'm getting.
Speaker 1: I do like pitting Mike and Jan against one another
in the cooking thing and like only acknowledging one of
them being able to cook at one time, because it
does deeply bother each of them. When you do that.
Speaker 4: Jan is definitely a much more impressive and better cook
than I am.
Speaker 3: I don't want to.
Speaker 4: I don't need to put a chance level. I just
don't want to. No Fitstan be put on the level
of the guy who just waffle iron cut his hand.
There was a freak accent. I had nothing to do
with cooking, all.
Speaker 1: Right, and anyone else have anything else going on? Uh?
I know, Sean, we talked about your TV a little,
but you got your settle bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all this retro stuff that we're doing in general,
especially some this.
Speaker 1: Is this is your family CRT.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's what makes it so cool is that this is
this literally the CRT I played games on as a kid,
and so I kind of forgot that. We never actually
end up taking it to a recycling center. It was
just in storage, my mom's storage closet for like what
a decade and a half, and I took it out
and it's dusty, it's dingy, it's dirty. I cleaned it up.
I unfortunately took a little bit of the paint off
and doing so. But you know that can that can
be fixed later. No, this is it's just a sanyo,
you know, just when we got Walmart back in the day. Yeah,
I didn't realize, like it has really good connections and everything.
So it has a composite component andn S video.
Speaker 1: The picture surprisingly rare because when I go to like
look for a good CRT on Facebook marketplace, most of
the time like, okay, this looks pretty solid. Let me
see the connect and it's just coax. That's nuts to me,
of course. Yeah, even the relatively modern ones only have
rf co x. Yeah, so that's awesome they had to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very late CRT. We bought it to
replace our TV that was dying. This is from two
thousand and five. So yeah, oh wow, I guess the
rand scheme of thing you didn't see that much use
because what we did get in HDTV late, but it
was still like twenty thirteen ish, so yeah, this is
it's pretty gently used. The only thing is because it's
a late one, there's some quirts there, Like it's a
flat screen, so I can't use light guns on and stuff,
which not a huge deal. But yeah, it's awesome. Right now,
I got my modded. We hooked up to it, so
I just got that loaded up with games video viewers
can see. I got MARTU sixty four playing track mode
back there, and.
Speaker 6: I always like that, like we have one on cam.
Speaker 5: It's so nice to just like, oh, I can just
pick something thematically appropriate or something I'm meant to right now,
Like I love having that shure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Like the r day I was thinking, I was thinking
about putting Ninja Guide in on in the background, and
I'm like, oh, that attract mode is like one cutscene
and that's kind of out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of the rabbit hole I'm going
down now. You know, Grub has his handheld Dan Gondola
as well. But I'm getting more and more retro systems.
I did get my Xbox three sixty I'm getting that
modded in time here because I want to just have.
Speaker 3: All original hardware.
Speaker 2: This is My thing is I love having original hardware
and then combining it with like a flash cart or
a mod or something like that. You just play all
all the classic games but the old hardware. And yeah,
it's it's super cheap to do. So I got a
three sixty with the power cable with the controller in
the box for eighty bucks on eBay.
Speaker 3: Like nice, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Sorted that sweet spot there. If you don't want super
rare stuff, you kind of just want older stuff, it's
a good time to do it right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the three SIXTYPS three wei era is very cheap
right now, even like original Xbox, you can't find too
much of a super expensive right now.
Speaker 3: But that's how I started the two.
Speaker 5: It was just like I got all the actual consoles
and I just got ever drives for everything.
Speaker 6: And then you move on to misters. We wanted the
handhelds and all that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing over the weekend talking. You don't
put out his mister slash.
Speaker 1: P s one here.
Speaker 3: Transparent blue?
Speaker 1: I did. I did transparent blue as well. I got
the gron right, I think I'm gonna be jealous of
you guys. What's my blue one rive? Well, that's the
funny thing that was grass always greener.
Speaker 2: The one that I wanted was the only one that
they're not doing as Founders dish. I want the white
because it's mild after the PS one slimy.
Speaker 1: So yes, right, yes, I have then I should get
that out and see what I can do.
Speaker 3: I've got that too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, if you find something, let me know, because I
just sitting on the shelf.
Speaker 1: Okay, I bet there's like an om sort of drive replacement.
Speaker 3: Oh I would love that. Yeah, say what the superst
always say what the superstation is?
Speaker 4: You know what's funny is Like I was trying to
talk myself out of it, like why am I getting this?
Speaker 3: I have original places you want? I have a retro
tap up.
Speaker 4: What really got me was the idea of I don't
have a mister at all, and also the idea of
loading up the Saturn core on that thing.
Speaker 3: That sounds nice. There's so many Saturn games I want
to play lately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if anybody doesn't have the full details yet because
we've lost over Yeah, I'm talking you done. Who's been
putting on, like, you know, more and more retro stuff
under his company Retro remake they did the Mister pie,
which is, you know, like a mister clone that's way
cheaper this new one that they're pointing out. It was
basically a simple but pre configured basically a mister It's
designed to do PS one stuff first and foremost as
PS one controller reports, PS one memory card ports, uh,
and those are configured using snack if people know what
that is. So yeah, it kind of just works out
of the boxes, kind of like analog. The company like
analog pocket and all that, kind of like their consoles.
But also it can just load up every mister course,
so you can just play retro cap retro consoles with
a hardware accurate emulation. It's very very cool stuff.
Speaker 6: Speaking of the analog like that. Sixty four has got
to be soon, right, I prefer that one one, I thought, so, yes,
me too, skew one. Yeah, yeah, that'd be nice if
I just showed up one day. I'm very excited about that.
Speaker 1: Even though I did get this and sixty four up
and run and I'll put another and sixty four upstairs
on HDTV and then.
Speaker 3: I'll have it.
Speaker 6: I'm going to keep that on the HGTV for sure.
Speaker 1: And sixty four on every floor is kind.
Speaker 2: Of I was really thinking about getting Atomic Purple, just
to like follow you guys down that rabbit hole. But
I'm like, nah, Like when I get that, the superstation
is like six months out potentially because they have to
manufacture it and and chips from China, but that'll run
the N sixty four, mister Corel, I'll be fine with that.
I do want to get coming out pretty soon here though.
The new version of the Retro Tank four K I
do a lot that literally bring everything together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna get.
What is it? Do you remember what it's missing? Sean
from the more expensive.
Speaker 2: Version, Extremely specific stuff that most people extremely.
Speaker 1: Like I will almost never use it.
Speaker 2: It's like image rotation on the retro Tank itself, so
like for arcade stuff. But you know that's the kind
of thing you can do it on whatever you're playing
on a lot of time. Yeah, just turn the TV sideways. Yeah,
but yeah, it's usually obscure things like that. A more
recent one is Jeff, you and I talked about this
on Game US Mornings. The new black frame insertion that
Blurbusters came up with to simulate a CRT that's complex
enough that it can't actually run on the new like
lower power retro tank, so it's like but it's also
like two thirds of the price.
Speaker 6: So yeah, yeah, I'm probably gonna end up getting on
because I know that stuff is stuff I'm going to use.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's that's out of there.
Speaker 2: That's like the end goal for my journey here is
to get all these you know, retro consoles and mud
and stuff, use the retro tank to output to both
the flat screen O CRT, and then yeah, I'll have
my nice gaming set up the way I want it,
the way I've always wanted.
Speaker 5: It's when I was doing like quackshot speed runs. The
Mister is great at like you know, HDMI out to
capture and then the I think I had yeah component
out to the TV, which is nice, and the CRT
reminds me my first the one I had all through
my teen years was when I worked at Funko Land.
We had six Kiosks, we had an he asked Genesis,
super PlayStation, Dreamcast, and sixty four, and then while I
was there, they made the decision game stop, was like,
we're not selling anything before PlayStation one.
Speaker 3: And so that's when like.
Speaker 5: All of this, all the cartridges, all that shit went out. Basically,
they took all that down. They had three nineteen inch
just like nothing fancy, but three nineteen inch monitors and
they're like, you know, five of us worked there, and
they're like, oh, you guys want this, And so that
was the one I used all through my teen years.
Speaker 1: Is the main nice. I mean that thing must have
been turned on NonStop. He did how long did it last?
You did it last year until you were done with all.
Speaker 3: Of high school? For me?
Speaker 6: And I know what I think I took I took
it to college.
Speaker 5: I don't think I bought a new TV until like
my first HTTV around like mid two thousands, like The
Dead Rising was.
Speaker 3: I remember the first game I said those things soon, Yeah,
see your TV. I still have it.
Speaker 4: It's like the one I like grew up with, Like
I had it since, like I don't know, middle school,
And it's great. It has the VHS player built into
a bit of classicate a little bit. It's it's it's old.
I use it forever.
Speaker 3: I played so many things on that, but.
Speaker 4: It's still like just having it in the room, knowing
that there's a GameCube hooked up to it.
Speaker 3: It just feels right.
Speaker 1: I think in like CRTs can like break in away
that gives them more character, or they can break it
away where it's like you can't look at it and
it's kind of roll of the dice. I you know,
CRTs for a long time, people were expected to just
keep those for like thirty years. So the ones I
grew up in my house were from the seventies and
things like that, the ones that wasn't like the main
TV that my dad would use every day he got
from home from work. And so I have a lot
of love for kind of fuzzy CRTs. I don't.
Speaker 4: People have told me before why it won't happen, But
I still hope that there's going to be, like you
know those people making retro consoles, somebody just makes new CRTs.
Speaker 2: Well funny you say that that's Taki's company, that their
final product is going to be a PVM like replicated
using March.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's like they're not going to be using
a proton gun, right, or like it's not.
Speaker 2: Going to be a new CRT. It's going to be,
but it's going to be an LCD that basically has
like so we talked about the retro tanks and that
like has cr really complex CRT shaders built in. It's
presumably going to be that, but like on like a
little LCD, you can take a round with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gotcha CRT emulation, gotcha. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Breaking news here, our own Janet Choa is not here
because he was hosting a big all hands meeting this
morning and he told us beforehand that he was going
to try to sneak in yadada mean into.
Speaker 3: The thing, and he did.
Speaker 5: He did first thing, and then I sent him a
message during the all hands meeting saying like, if you
can sneak in and I love you solo, I will
venmo you ten dollars right now. And he just popped
into our chat and said, did you hear me say
I love you solo in the meeting?
Speaker 3: I think he's getting a video.
Speaker 5: I am one button press away from sending him ten
dollars out of my pocket.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: If he can send the proof, I will send it immediately.
I trust jan though, I believe him.
Speaker 1: I believe and I believe that we have already been
talking about video games for a minute, but that can't
stop us from talking about more video games.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, Jane's gonna give me any other thing. I'm
sending him money right now.
Speaker 1: Oh you guys, not here music.
Speaker 2: I hear that thing.
Speaker 1: I can. I think I can think it'll be on
the recording. I did though, Okay, well that'll work. It'll
work next time, so but it will be on the recording.
All right. Let's see here, let's start with Dan. Will
work our way from the past the future, super Mario
Land Dan tell us more about that.
Speaker 3: I don't know where this came from.
Speaker 5: It's just like, you know, sometimes like you got games
you're working on, like I've been working on Red Dead
two and stuff like games that are like, okay, I
need time to like sit down and sink into this game.
And sometimes it's like, ah, you know, you're gonna be
tired within thirty minutes and go to bed. I just
want to pick something up easy and just play something
real quick. I don't know what got me to randomly
do this, but I just picked up the analog pocket.
Speaker 6: I loaded up Mario Land one. You know, I beat
him a couple of times.
Speaker 5: I did mary Land one and two on stream, like
four or five years ago, just in one sitting, but
I don't really remember it. And goddamn. Like I beat
one and two and had a lot of thoughts on him. It's, uh,
there is a massive leap between one and two. It's insane.
One is what's a game?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, And it made me think playing them that,
like I think as a kid because I never owned
them as a kid, but I would play like my
friends or whatever if they brought them to school or something,
and all I remember was like a Sphinx boss And
so I must have only played one back in the
day because like playing two now, it's like, holy shit,
this is like this is a real ass Mario game.
This is like, in some ways more interesting than a
lot of the ones that like Nys and Superintendent. I'm
not saying they're better, but like the zones and stuff.
He goes to fucking space, Like there's six zones. There's
space Zone, Tree Zone, Turtle Zone, Macrozone, which I'm a
huge mark for big small worlds.
Speaker 3: Mario Zone where you're going through a Mario mech and
a Pumpkin zone.
Speaker 5: Like you know, if there's one criticism I think you
can levy against the Mario series is like a lot
of them. Lean on, here's the Lava World here's the
ice world, here's the air world, whatever. Every fucking world
I went into here is like Turtle Zone. What this
is an old Turtle zone? Turtles God. And there are
so many just weird little things like enemies and stuff
like there's one level in the Macro Zone in the
Attic where you get a question mark block and a
heart comes out and.
Speaker 6: Some motherfucker just shows up and steals it and runs away.
It's just this guy that shows up in one level.
I've never seen this motherfucker in any Mario game. And
I'm looking this up and it's some guy named the
Collector that just shows up and steals the ship from
you in one level. And then there's mass like Jason Mass,
guys with knives in their heads and shit.
Speaker 3: Yep like that Jason Goomba's yes, and great, Oh my god.
Speaker 6: I just fucking loved it.
Speaker 5: Like it's a two is a tremendous, tremendous mariagain that
stands right up there with NES and Superintendo Mark.
Speaker 4: It was always one of my favorites. And you're right,
like the leap from one to two is incredible. It's
it's not one of those things like you know, like
one's age. Everybody always thought Super Mario Land one was
kind of weird.
Speaker 1: They just hadn't figured out how to do Mario physics
on a game Boy at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sprite size, you know, because they wanted to
have the same screen, like the viewport basically that NIS had,
and you just can't do that on that smaller, lower
resolution screen. That's why two was a lot smarter about
having bigger sprite for everything. So I think it was
just more legible.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's ushrooms and the coins and stuff in the
first one or the goomba, they just yeah, looks like
a t I eighty three, you know. And then you
played two and it's like that's the Mario I know
from Mario World, you know.
Speaker 4: And I left just like it's just so ridiculous. The
story is that Mario has a castle. I Princess Peas
castles Mario's castle in Marios steals it, He's get it back.
Speaker 1: It's like, what the extited universe decided to give Darth
Vader a castle on the planet where he got like
murdered by Hobie Want It's like, what the fuck are
we doing here? The same idea? I love it.
Speaker 5: Oh, and at the end of when you kill Warrio
and it turns into weird little bald kid Mario.
Speaker 3: Warrio, I was like, what the fuck is that? Oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, this morning I started Warrio Land is so good.
Speaker 1: Have you ever played it?
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever really played it. I've probably
played it.
Speaker 5: I probably played a couple levels, and I think it
was just it so turns the Mario stuff on his head.
Speaker 3: Words.
Speaker 5: It's still a side scrolling platformer, but it's like, wait, okay,
so I'm charging things and I can pick things up
like it just it was so different. But I need
to get that out of my head because I love
Mario too, even though that's very different and also involves
picking things up. So I think I am going to
play through Warrio Land now. But yeah, when you are
not Super Warrior or whatever, it's that that fucking weird
little bald guy.
Speaker 1: Who is that?
Speaker 3: Who is that little kid?
Speaker 2: Have you played the other Warrior Land games before?
Speaker 6: The only ones I really played were once I started.
Speaker 5: I started reviewing in five, so anything that came out
five or later, so like shake It. I think there
was maybe a GBA when I reviewed back in the
day two or three I played Master.
Speaker 2: Guys played, yeah, because Warrio Land four was very early
on in the game Boy Advance. All all of the
game Boy Slash game Boy Advanced Warrior Lands are very good,
I think, and interesting. Yeah, they're notably better on alternating ones.
I think. I think it's like two and four because
four is phenomenal for is an incredible game. I think
two is the best of the game Boy trilogy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think three recently and liked it a lot.
Speaker 1: I think they're all good. They're all good good, it's
not bad good, it's good. And then oh this was.
Speaker 3: And then yeah exceptional.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he sent two or three where the
whole thing is like, well, Warrior is a bad guy,
so bad guys don't hurt him. They like sort of
transfer their.
Speaker 2: Remember it's one that's not that's one.
Speaker 4: One is a pretty traditional two D platform, where two
and three are both like that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Two and three, Yes, okay, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4: Virtual Boy Warrio Land is the one that's actually more
of a direct sequal to Warrio Land one.
Speaker 3: It's that same place. Also a very good, very game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you have a modern three ds are just
soft moding, just fire up that Virtual Boy emulator on there,
and it's actually a really good time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean for a virtual Boy emulator on
the in the Medoquest three, same thing, very good, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah good in appreciation for this.
Speaker 5: And again as much shit as I talk on the
game Boy, it's like the pocket is so good and
I got the trim uy, so it's like I've been
very into just like you know, and I also like
the sp you know, grub you told me to put.
Speaker 6: Like the menu I or whatever on it.
Speaker 5: Something just really deep in that like portable fucking round
mode right now, and so I'm playing them now. It's like, shit, Okay,
Mario Land two I would have fucking loved. But then again,
back in the day, I hated the game Boy because
I had to sit next to a wall outlet because
I never had batteries, So sure I probably wouldn't have
liked it anyway, you know that that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess for me, it was like the game
Boy was okay. My parents got it for me because
it was cheap, and then because of that, they're like,
I guess we have to keep good him batteries when
he needs it, So they kind of always always provided
me battery.
Speaker 5: I think my grandma got me the game Boy for Christmas,
and so it stayed at my dad's house because it
was his mom they got it for me. My dad
was batteries, right, My dad wouldn't be buying batteries, so
I did. I think I personally bought an ACA adapter
so I could play it. But it's like, I've got
my nes right here. Why why would I sit next
to this wall and play Mario Land.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually kind of sad, Dan, I'm sorry, all right,
Uh let's see here, Okay, Dan, what is grun?
Speaker 3: Grun?
Speaker 5: I was very impressed by that. Where the fuck did
I hear about it? I saw someone I think it
was Jane Garcia. I think Jane Garcia. I saw post
some flu Sky about it and she just said like
like a comparison to Outer Wilds, and I was like,
all right. She said she was liking it, and then
she compared it to Outer Wilds. Is like that's all
I need to hear. And if you've played outter wild
you know, the less you know the better. So I
just loaded it up on stream over the weekend and yeah,
it's like if Outer Wilds was like, look, up some
images on Google Imagery. It's very kind of like early
three D and it's textureless, yeah, textureless gardening focus outer wilds,
where it's like you show up at this house and
you need to just kind of clean up the place
by the weekend. There's like different zones and you kind
of like trim the hedges, cut the grass, water the flowers,
make it presentable. But it's super fucking weird too, like
in that outer wilds, like you're not going to space
or anything, but you're finding like weird items and you're like,
what the fuck is this going to do? Or why
did this happen? Or who is that fucking thing that
just showed up? And I've never seen them before? And
there is that kind of like time limit element of
it because like I think you show up on like
a Friday, and then you have to have everything done
by Sunday night, I want to say, so like I
think that's when the narratively, I think the owners come
back or something, and you have to have the house
ready to show. So every time that loop starts, basically
you learn more and more every time you play it,
where it's like the first time you're just like okay,
I guess I gotta find shears and a watering can,
and I guess I'll just chop these things. But you
discover more and more each time, and then you start
kind of optimizing your run or the loop, where it's like, Okay,
I know I need to go here, and I know
that guy leaves that toilet stall at eleven o'clock on
the first day, so I need to get that shit
to him so I can get the blue coin, and
I put the blue coin in the I don't want
to say specific things because like you will have these
big moments of realization where it's like, oh shit, all
that stuff I was doing, all that busy work. I
did this one thing, and now that took care of that,
so now I can have all this time freed up
to do all this other stuff. If there was a
frustration I have with it because I haven't beaten it.
Because every time you start the loop, you do need
to do a lot of busy work stuff where it's like,
all right, I got to get the shears and cut
all this grass every time, and like there's all these
zones where it's like here's the church zone, here's the
park zone, here's the garden, and I don't know, Outer
Wilds didn't have a lot of that, like I need
to do this repetitive thing every time, like kind of
once you know the path, you could just go the path.
This one it's like, all right, I'm kind of tired
of cutting this grass, but still very worth checking out.
I think, very unique, and it's yeah, one of one
of the few games since Outer While.
Speaker 3: It's given me that similar feeling, you know, And.
Speaker 1: It's overwhelmingly overwhelmingly positive on Steam. And it came out
in October, so I feel like I heard the name
and then never actually looked into it. So yeah, looking
at it now, I liked. I always like the low
fidelity vibe of it. But yeah, that looks that sounds
very interesting. I'm gonna check this out. Is is it
like a similar sort of length in terms of like
the how long before it resets like you said, like
three three ish days or something like.
Speaker 5: That day in terms of just cheer like minutes, you know,
It's it's probably similar, like you know, And there are
like eleven endings and I think I unlocked like six
of them, and I think there's probably like one good
ending and the other ones are like oh a dog
attacked me, you know, or like, oh, some weirdo showed
up in a hallway and now I'm dead, you know,
like and you don't even know really what happened. So
I never felt too frustrated when I had to go back.
It was just the like, right, I gotta cut the
grass again now, you know, Okay, it sounds pretty good.
It is fun once you optimize, though, because then it's
just like I'm flying through this, you know.
Speaker 1: Yes, totally, all right, let's bounce around here. Sean. You've
been playing some fighting games. How's that going?
Speaker 3: Well? So far?
Speaker 2: A little rocky maybe, but yeah, I've been playing Virtual
Fighter five Revo, which came out yesterday, and Virtual Fighter
is okay. So this is gonna be an interesting journey
for me because I mentioned around this time last year
actually when techn eight was you know, weird leaning up
to that, I'm kind of new to three D fighting
games in general.
Speaker 3: It's nuts on.
Speaker 2: I really grew up with much outside of Soul Caliber,
like I dabbled with. I had Virtual Fighter four, I
played a little bit of Tech and three at friend's houses.
It's the first time I'm really like taking them seriously.
With Tech and eight, and now I want to get
good at Virtue a Fighter five, and so fame one
does know. Revo is Virtual Fighter five Ultimate Showdown that
came on the PS four a while back, that it
has now been ported to PC and then it's getting
a balance It has a balance update that also is
getting like backpwards to the PS four game.
Speaker 3: And it's bond like.
Speaker 2: Virtue a Fighter has always been kind of the epitome
of easy learn, hard to master because it's it's a
three bun fighting game. Either it's just a punch, kick
and block and you can do you know, combinations of
those buns will do things like punch and guard is
throw stuff like that. But because the game is very simple,
very pure, it's all about your positioning with you and
your opponent, your positioning on the stage, like you know, putting,
trying to get your opponents back to the wall so
you can That's how you do combos in the long run,
is trying to like force them against the wall and
be able to whale on them a little bit more,
knock them down so and get a follow up hit.
There's no supers, there's no like meters to spend. You
don't get worried about any of that stuff. It's like
very straightforward and right now. That's very appealing to me,
especially with Tech and eight going a bit too far
with some of the like really flashy stuff. That also
kind of like makes it a little imbalanced way that's
not fun. It is cool to go back to this
version of fighting games that is a little more back
to basics. It does feel like going back to an
older age, in part because this game is its core form,
like twenty years old at this point. Virtue of Fire
five is an early PS three game, So yeah, it's cool.
There's this release of the game. You don't get a
ton in the base version, but the Deluxe edition adds
all these costumes in. There's Yakuza series costumes for everyone.
You get the you guys have probably seen this. I
think be like Virtue Fighter one models that you can
put on everyone that yeah, just below poly but in
a really high res environment. Is very funny. Uh there's I.
Speaker 3: Saw what I saw on Steam.
Speaker 4: It's like got mixed reviews of Farm trying to figure
out why it seems like it is about the customers.
Speaker 3: So here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's a very bare bones package. If you just get
the base level, Like yeah, you don't get what people
are saying. You give zero customization options at all. If
you just buy the base version and you have to.
Speaker 1: Make the twenty dollars version, that's just kind of the
right going here.
Speaker 2: That's the important thing here because like people are mad
about that. But the entry level to get in here
is twenty bucks. Like, this is a brand new port
that's being released, and it's not sixty, it's not forty,
it's notinven thirty, it's twenty dollars base. There's a first
week sixteen dollars on sale, first week discount for sixteen.
All the key sellers like Fanatical, GMG, they're all selling
it for.
Speaker 3: Like thirteen bucks.
Speaker 2: Like, I think that's okay to not get a ton
of content, not get a ton costumes, but have it
be very cheap to get in there. And you know
it's they put rollback neck code in there now so
you can have a good online experience. Apparently the matchmaking
has been kind of funky to start out here, which
hopefully they get that sort but it's I think it's
a reasonable entry point. And then if you want all
these different costumes and stuff. The Dog's Edition you can
get for about like thirty four. I think I got
it for at Fanatical, so it's like.
Speaker 4: It's forty seme right now with the twenty dollars kind
of you know, entry fee of the promotion right now.
So yeah, yeah, not crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that's reasonable to get. You know,
they have options there for people. But the yahhy scheme,
the mixed reviews, and yeah, I'm having fun learning it
so far. I played some games online that code seems solid.
I heard that. I heard some people say that it
was a little rough, but I haven't been having any
issues as long as like the people's ping isn't too high.
It seems to be holding up. And I'm having fun
cowt just learning characters. And there's even the one last
thing I was gonna say about customization. There's a tech
and seven pack that they did back on the PS
four version that's now here, and you can just put
tech in costumes like they it's tech in skins, like
I can make a character look like Lily and have
like one of my favorite tech in songs that's a song,
and I don't know, it's it's fun. I'm just having
a really fun time with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah I didn't.
Speaker 5: I was like a ton of respect for Virtual a
Fighter more than like I actually played it, because I
remember for Evolution was the one on PS two, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's the one I remember that was.
Speaker 5: That was the one I box I remember reviewed very well,
and I remember just that three buttons set up was
so interesting to me in the era of like, you know,
teching numerous seconds at that point, because what in the
thing like the timing instead of like a traditional like
Perry thing. I don't know if it was a block
button or a grab button, but if you see something
coming at you, don't you hit back and a button
to kind of like Judo flip them or to kind
of counter in.
Speaker 1: That sounds similiar to me.
Speaker 2: I think doing that, remember that, because I I know
dead or Alive actually leans into that even more.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's okay, thank you, but okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this this one's like something I mean, I remember
the evolution was.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I just remember like playing VIA four Evolution and being like,
you know, my friends and I in the dorms were
just mash buttons and hit each other. But you dig
into the tutorial a little bit and it's like, oh,
this could be a very high level fighting game if
you have to be I.
Speaker 2: I often think about soccer I when I think Smash
four was coming out and he was talking about competitive
Smash or maybe it is one of his like a
YouTube videos where he was like, but why would people
want to play Smash competitively? If you want to play
a competitive fighting game, go play virtual a fighter too.
Speaker 5: Is true that they put the tripping? Did they put
the tripping in Brawl? Like to Spike competitive players? Mike
man that's so fucking funny, and I respect so much.
Speaker 4: Not funny fun to ruin your game out of Spike for.
Speaker 2: Relision, it's hysterical that Mike Manatti thinks Super Smash Bars
Brawl is a bad video game four ten because of tripping.
Speaker 3: I did not, Okay, I never says the fourth, but
nobody said.
Speaker 2: You've said bad so many times.
Speaker 4: It's bad in that I don't know why I would
ever play it when I just play all the good.
Speaker 2: Smash change in history here saying.
Speaker 1: This one is not good?
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, stupid prettypid. I gave it a nine
point nine as it's a phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, was that a spite. Would you have
given it a ten?
Speaker 3: If I know that? Maybe a ten?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's also float here and there's so many other problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, are you it's a fucking Foh you
can never say a game is floating ever after gave
me you can use that word.
Speaker 3: That's my word to floaty.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Go too Ku is doing this remaster
as well as as the next Virtual Fighters. This is
like them cutting their teeth. Does that give you?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that's what they originally did and why
they're working on the new one. They did Ultimate Showdown.
Speaker 1: Oh, they did Ultimate. I thought that that was a change. Okay,
very cool? All right, Well so I mean then I
guess still the question stands, are you playing this excited
about their next foray into Virtue Fighters?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm so excited for the next Virtue Fire. Yeah,
and that's that's why they released this one on PC.
And that's why I'm playing now. Is like I wanna
I want to learn it. I want to get good.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Combo Breaker is gonna be hosting as one of the games.
I'm gonna like enter the tournament there, probably gonna do bad,
but I'm gonna have fun. Time, and I'm yeah, we're
gearing up for the next Virtue Fighter. It's I'm excited
to say.
Speaker 3: You're like, you know, you've been try kicks, you have
a mania? Not yet.
Speaker 2: I I've been checking out Pie again because she has
the Lily COSTI if I want to pick it up.
I've been checking out Vanessa was who I played back
in the day and when I did dabble with it,
so I tried playing her as well. And uh, yeah,
I've kind of just been bouncing around to a bunch
of different characters and yeah, it's it's been fun to
experiment because I don't really know what I'm doing, hearing,
kind of just learning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am so mad about Super Special.
Speaker 6: I might make it the best Smash Brothers.
Speaker 4: You're such a Smash brother snowflake, Mike. I didn't know this,
this Virtual Fighter five thing came out. I didn't realize
that happened so.
Speaker 3: Yet it me neither.
Speaker 1: Actually, I just picked it up, so I'll be playing.
I love virtually look.
Speaker 3: At that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we could throw that on the website this week.
That'd be fine. I this week have been playing Sniper
Elite Resistance. I have not had a long history with
the Sniper Elite franchise. It is mostly just streaming it
a couple of times. Dan, I think we did it
that one time.
Speaker 3: You're still credit. You exploded Hitler's balls.
Speaker 1: And then I exploded Hitler's ball. You're about seven and
a half feet away.
Speaker 4: I can't believe you guys did political content. There were
a couple of fire brands, you know, right.
Speaker 1: Rather than having a conversation with the man, I just
shoot him in the balls. That is one of my
moral failings, of course, I am. I'm really enjoying this game.
That is clearly a middle of the road game. It's
just one of those again, yet I have not played
a lot of them, so and I bet there are
a lot of people who are in that boat where
like it's one of those b games. I've never like
send my money on that. I think that if you
are someone who likes the idea of a diet hit Man,
a but hey, here's a world where you're supposed to
do accomplish a few things. You have some freedom how
to accomplish those goals. There's not a lot of like
world interactions in the way that the hit Man works.
But still it's the same basic concept. If that sounds
enticing to you. And then in World War Two, you're
a sniper. You can blow shit up. You can rig
up bodies with grenades so that when you do shoot
someone and that their friends come not even go check
on them, they just run past them. It explodes. Excuse me.
And then no matter where you are in the map,
if that happens, the game cuts away to show you
that show you them exploding. I mean to me, that's
this is all good stuff. This is all real, solid,
fun video game ass video game stuff.
Speaker 6: Do you turn up all the frequency of the goals?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that way of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You mentioned being like Diet Hitman, and I think there
is a perfect version of this game that I would
want where it's like I love the slow moo kills.
Speaker 6: I want that every single time. That is what that
series is to me.
Speaker 5: I don't necessarily love the sneaking around stealth elements of it.
I just even if I crank everything down, it's just
like I'm just constantly getting caught and it's not fun
for me.
Speaker 1: Or are here like running into stuff like because you
can at this point you can just shoot your way
through this game.
Speaker 5: I think, Oh, I always wind up getting caught in
the just like you know, machine gunning, grubering everyone but
hit Man. If you remember, was it Absolution that had
that pre order bonus where you're just kind of like
sitting on like a rooftop and there's a party of
bad guys on another rooftop and it's almost like a
Where's Waldo thing where it's like you're not even moving around,
you're stationary sniping bad guys and getting like bonuses. It
was just a pre order thing. I played way more
of that than I did Absolution. Just give me a
Sniper Elite like that.
Speaker 6: I don't need to move, just set me up somewhere,
put somewhere, and then have every.
Speaker 5: Fucking shot be matrix out game. What was that called silence?
I want X ray head exploding stuff.
Speaker 2: God, Soundscope was so much fun I got. I always
say that galloping and it's just a cool tech on
that one.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: Yep, is there screen in the scope?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, That's why the home points were never quite as good,
because you're like, you know you scope screen?
Speaker 1: Yeah this so yes? Silent or yes. The Sniper Elite
Resistance is coming to game Pass this week. I think
it's on the in two days, so you can pick
it up then. And I think a perfect little game.
If you already have game pass, or if you are
someone who's like had some interest in this, you think
that sounds like a good time. Like, honestly, if there
were still rental stores, this is an easy go rent
this game, have fun. Uh, but you know, as it is,
I think that if you can have a lot of
fun with this game, as long as you're not worn
out from the formula, because it is one hundred percent
just that form formula. Again. It's you know, you're gonna
go to cut scenes, and the cut scenes are gonna
look pretty cheap, and but it's it's funks. The guys
doing is like English accent, the hardest anyone's ever done
an English accent, and just talking about I don't know
what kind of what a badass he is, and these oh,
I'm with these, the French Resistance fighters and all these frenchies.
I'm gonna go work with them. It is what it is,
and I am enjoying it. So yeah, I would recommend
it as long as you keep those caveats in mind.
All right, let's check in with Sean and Indiana Jones
how's that going. What's Indiana Jones and the Fantastic Circle?
Excuse me?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, So I wanted to bring it up because
I finally finished the game, and so now I think
we've all finished it, right, Oh you beat it?
Speaker 3: No? Did you drop it?
Speaker 1: Because you got an instant kill with the thing underwater?
Speaker 5: Not just one, but it happened to it was underwater
and it was instant killed. Still, it's like two things
I fucking hate. And I died like twenty times at
that and I was like, I'm good.
Speaker 2: Okay times I'm still platforms finish the Bowser's hurry. So
I'm curious, can you say, broadly speaking, where you were, like,
are you talking about the big I.
Speaker 6: Was underwater and there was a big sit getting a pyramid.
Speaker 5: I even got into the pyramid. I went and I
watched the rest of the game. I was at like
the last snake related thing. The only thing I had
to do was like kill it basically okay, but then
I watched the rest. So but you know what, I
enjoyed this game. I don't want to deal with this
fucking snake shit way.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of thing I want to talk
about here because now that I finished in we can
all talk about a little bit more, you know, no spoilers, obviously.
I think this game is really good most of the
time when it when it's good because okay, I don't
like the open sections at all. That's why I realize
once you get further into the game and they sort
of dial that back a little, I like it a
lot more when it's a little more guided and it's
a little more when it's focusing more on the tomb
raider of it all rather than the uncharted and I
realized the irony of comparing it to those two. But
when it is more focused on indie exploring, I love
those elements. I love those segments when you're exploring the
tombs and the cac hombs and everything like that. I
think that's a lot of fun. And even like the
platforming I think can be really fun, Like you know,
the one area where you need to throw a spear
and then whip grapple onto the spear, that entire sequence
is very fun. I think presentationally, like it looks gorgeous.
This game is like one of the new benchmarks for gaming,
and the performances are fantastic. Is it is Troy Baker,
Who does Indy Troy Baker. Yep, great, he just he
nails it. He just sounds like Harrison Ford. You forget
that someone else doing the voce. It's fantastic. But yeah,
there's so many little things that bug me. Because when
you have like the Himalayas through Shanghai, is it like that, dear,
you know, a couple hours there some of the best
I've ever played gaming is.
Speaker 1: The moment of the year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, phenomenal, But then you have like so many like
I had a lot of bugs. It's weird how buggy
this game is and how I think unpolished in general.
It is it It struck me considering how good the
presentation is, Like I wasn't expecting to have it where
like Indy would be hanging out a ledge it's an
escape sequence. I need to get out, and he won't
climb the ledge. I'm like looking around, Okay, am I
missing something? Am I supposed to be going over here instead?
And no, I dropped off the ledge climb back up,
which took me a second, and he just went And
so like all these little bugs like that start adding up.
Speaker 3: Combined with you.
Speaker 4: Get a lot of audio bugs. That was my thing
was like a lot of two hours later, like Indy
would say, repeat a line.
Speaker 1: So you'd have a conversation with someone who wasn't there.
Speaker 2: Dan talking about the snake reminded was what instantly made
me think about the bugs is because during the entire
uh like pyramid sequence, they were repeating one line over
and over and over through checkpoint resets, over and over.
I just had to listen. After like half an hour
to an hour, it drove me up the wall. And
there's also things like okay, so in the open sections,
it's not open world, but does feel little generic a
lot of time. And so there's this area where you
have to like get a breathing device and you have
to buy it so that you can go underwater, and
so naturally they if you don't have enough mighty send
you over here to a camp to like, you know,
sneak in get some money. There's a puzzle in there
where unless I'm missing something, the instructions are wrong, and
so I was like staring at this puzzle for like
twenty minutes, like okay, tell me do this thing basically
play like a checker slash chess style game, and it's
telling me to capture all the pieces. I can't capture
all the pieces, and I look up the solution online.
It's like, yeah, this is the solution. And then again,
unless I'm missing something that's just not correct, but that's
the solution to the puzzle.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's so many little things that kind of just bugged
me throughout the game. So I really thought it.
Speaker 1: Was like unpiled. Yeah, yeah, it's it's like unpolished in
some ways. And then I'll clearly visually it's the presentation
that you said very polished, which I think, you know, ultimately,
the way this game was received seemed to be the
right move, where it's like, let's make this game look
and feel really nice, and most people will overlook the rest,
and it's like, I think I ended up overlooking the rest,
even though it definitely happened to be throughout the game
bugs where you know, for the first two hours, I'm like, man,
this game is one of the worst animated games I've
ever seen, because every character had stiff arms. And then
I realized, oh, it was just broken for the first
two hours.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, jew like snap into their animations and everything.
Speaker 3: It was a little odd. Yeah, yeah, but it's.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I think they found the balance where
they ended up with a game that is still very
easy to recommend, very good. It just is not like
an unassailable masterpiece in any way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I remember thinking, like when we were talking about it
at Game of the Year, I think most of us
were like working through it at that point, and oh man,
that's so excited and talking about this. I can't wait
to get back and play more of this shit. I
wish I could have played it earlier, because it probably
my ten lists this year, you know, now that I've
mostly beat it.
Speaker 6: Uh it uh, I don't think it would have made
my top ten.
Speaker 3: I like it. I think they did a great job
with it.
Speaker 5: I still agree with you know what I said about
it's one of the best taking an ip and making
a game that's faithful to the tone and feeling of that.
But yeah, I think if I were to review it,
it probably would have been like an eight. You know,
it's like good.
Speaker 1: You know, like your your brother's a huge Indiana Jones fan.
Speaker 3: I just have sisters.
Speaker 1: I'm Mike, I'm talking about I'm sorry. Yeah, CJ loves
Indiana Jones. I Clark, Yeah, Clark ended up? Did he
really like it. He loved it.
Speaker 4: He loves Indiana Jones. He's the one who like made
me go see Crystal Skull a second time.
Speaker 3: What's funny. It was like he had the biggest bug
I ever heard about. Though. We're like, he just skipped
the climax of Vacts one, like that whole point part
where like, you know, the Nazi finds the artifact and
breaks it in and then the Giant shows up and
you fight the giant like that just skipped to watch
it on a YouTube lader.
Speaker 1: He likes id.
Speaker 3: He had just so much.
Speaker 4: He was very forgiving of that. But I was like, man,
that's wild. That's a pretty bad bu.
Speaker 1: I think that's the dial though, because for me, it's
like it did end up on my top ten because
I just love Indiana Jones and this is so Indiana
Jones that, like, you know, like with the Star Wars,
the Ubisoft game, very easy for me to overlook the
stuff I didn't like because they're giving me so much
stuff that was like in my wheelhouse. So I think
it's like, you know, if you enjoy Indiana Jones, we
could take it or leave it and there's still a
good game here. An eight out of ten. I think
it's Dan said, yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's right, and yeah, the Indiana Jones in this,
and I also do like India Jones a lot, so
that just, yeah, it helps, especially since it's been so
long since I've gotten an Indiana Jones something that I
really like, right, like doubt this and he was like
generously fine and then obviously a bunch of other worst things.
I do constantly think, Jeff about that Star War or
out Lost comparison, right.
Speaker 3: Because a lot of plays.
Speaker 4: I feel like these games are of a similar quality
and one just got like very right, it got it
got treated. I don't say it got treated unfairly, but
you know, people like very critical of it, and it
maybe deserved it. I don't wost I'm not saying any
of it just got a free pass and it says, but
there was a different earned.
Speaker 2: Earned difference of expectations is sort of what hurts Star
Wars there, because you know, we hear Ubisoft Star Wars
game and people have lower expectations because they're down on Ubisoft.
But then we hear Machine Games Indiana Jones and we're like, oh,
that's a perfect fit, and like this studio does like
really good stuff looking forward to it. And you know, ironically,
like the things I like about machine games as games
aren't really in this game. It doesn't really feel like them,
actually like them Last Gripe.
Speaker 1: Other than the cut scenes, like the cut scenes very right.
Speaker 2: Exactly it had done fighting enemies in this game. I
think just in general doesn't feel good, but that leans
into Indy isn't much of a fighter, Like, sure he
gets into shootouts and stuff, super Yeah, he's not Nathan
Drake just mass murdering people. No, you are supposed to
be a little more cerebral cerebral about it, and I
think that's where maybe being faithful is what is going
to make you a little divisive for some people like myself,
who I didn't think like, y'all, if I shoot someone
in the face of video game, they need to die.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had a pistol point blank to a Nazi's head
shot him. He just reeled backwards like, no, let me
have this. So yeah, it was a bunch of little things.
But I think that in general it's a very interesting
and fun indie experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think for while you and I Sean
didn't love the beginning of Indy, most people seem to
like be like on board with it pretty quick. Star
Wars Outlaws does have a much rougher introduction, and it's
like it turns into a very good game later, but
it it does not start out as well. All right,
let's see here, Mike Tokyo Extreme Racer. Both you and
I played some of this. I played a little bit
on stream, kind of not enough to get fully grasped
what it's going for. It is in early access. Have
you played enough to like kind of get the idea
of the structure of the game, or just kind of
took a taste of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I played an hour of it.
Speaker 4: Like you said, it's early access, and I talk a
lot about liking arcade racers and wishing we'd have more
of them, and you know, like this is not Ridge
Racer right in structure in a lot of ways. The
one way it maybe is that the vibes are very
good here. The whole sort of nighttime Tokyo City highway
driving thing, going through all these tunnels and all these
lights in the distance and these kind of you know,
melodic beats happening. All of that is great. There's also
like a little bit of a story here. And it's
not much, but it's very funny. It's always like a
woman approaches you and she's sexy and wearing a leather
jacket and she's like, why do you race?
Speaker 3: A reason why?
Speaker 1: You're like, why do.
Speaker 3: Real deep stuff? The structure of it like that.
Speaker 4: I was kind of hoping for it to open up
a bit more, because it really was I'm doing a
loop around this highway and then you flash your lights
at like somebody and you do a one on one
race with them.
Speaker 3: That's it's fun.
Speaker 4: But I kind of kept like waiting for you know,
is there going to be like a real race or
because the highways kind of narrow, it's not really a
drifting game.
Speaker 3: You can drift, there's not a lot of room to
do that.
Speaker 4: So you know, I was like, Okay, at some point
we're gonna expand here, and eventually I race so many
people from one faction that I fought there like boss,
but it was still just sort of another one on
one race, so the vibes were very good. I almost wish,
and you know, I hate being like I wish it
was a different game. I prefer to have just some
more traditional Hey, there's eight cars in a starting line
and here's the track we're going on. That just sort
of doing this kind of weird like limited version of
Burnout Paradise, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it doesn't need to be like full modern
like need for speed game where like there's a million
different races littered all over a map, but it's like
I would like to like get off one of these exits,
go find like maybe a small part of town where
there is a set up race there, and yeah maybe
and maybe that does happen eventually. Again, I don't know,
but the way the structure works early on was I'm like,
I'm just I just don't feel like I have a
lot of options here in how I race, And.
Speaker 4: It might still open up, either like in that game
right now or as it gets further in development, because
like you know, sometimes you get these branches where it's
like you can turn left or right, but like the
one is always blocked off. Yeah, so you know, I
assume eventually I can go different places, and I'm not
expecting suddenly to you know, get in the big open areas.
I think the game is all this highway driving. That's fine,
but yeah, like the first hour literally is just this
circuit and the progression stuff as you know, the kind
of typical you know, hey, you can upgrade your car
here do that? As ever, is so much into that
garage aspect of racing games right for your kidstyle was like,
here's the three cars you can pick. I don't need
to adjust their suspension. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's go with this. This game of
the week, Ninja Guide in two Black. All three of
you have been playing it. I want to get in
there find some time, but I have not yet. Real
quick before we do have all three of you played
the original Ninja Guide in two before.
Speaker 6: I played all every Ninja Guiden game I've played.
Speaker 2: Okay, interesting you say that, Actually you go first.
Speaker 3: I never played two, but I played all of one,
and this is very okay.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I played one and two and some of three,
but it hasn't been since each of those games released originally.
So I'm actually going back to the best of my
ability to check some of those out because I want
to do a comparison. And so I fired up Black
in emulator, and then one Sigma is on game Pass
and if I don't have access to original two, but
two Sigma in Gay Pass and then now too black
to sort of see yea, and how the different versions
compare to each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I do wonder, like it seems like mostly
people are pretty happy with this, but I have seen
like some there's a conversation in the Ninja Guiden fan
community about like, okay, is this actually the definitive version,
and they're like, like scalpeling it apart, that's probably not
gonna be something that that's gonna bother us too much
one way or the other. How are you guys finding
this game? Well?
Speaker 3: I think it's so fun. It just feels good.
Speaker 4: What I love about these Ninja Guiden games now, and
I think it's maybe why some people have a hard
time like jumping into them right now, is that there
there's a kind of delineation of action games, and they
definitely follow the more of like the Devil May Cry
and God Have More than Later the Arkham games, Right,
those are the real blueprints.
Speaker 1: Yeah, x Men Origins Wolverine likes.
Speaker 3: This says exactly.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes obviously took things from Ninja goid It,
but even still, these Ninja Guiden games, they feel like
they're doing their own thing, right, You don't really walk
onto enemies, like enemies aren't going to attack you one
at a time, right, the a three of them, we'll
just come at you.
Speaker 3: So you know you're really moving around a lot. But gosh,
it just feels so freaking good. Still, that kind of
calm as you pull off you know, those iconic moves,
the swallow dive or whatever was.
Speaker 4: Fam out of that so good, especially early on. Gosh,
you just cut people's heads off. Then you figure out
the Azuna drop. I'm not even usually a fan of
the different weapons now I'm just gonna use the sword,
but you get this kind of staff thing that it
just goes wide.
Speaker 3: It feels so freaking good just spinning that thing around
like a absolute madman. So I've been having a ton
of fun with it.
Speaker 6: I love the clause later. I remember those were awesome.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I've actually liked seeing the reaction to this
because I remember back in the day, like I never
was like, oh, this is better than one, but I
thought it was also very good and you know, pretty
close to one in quality, and for some reason it
got a lot of ship back in the day. I
think it's still reviewed fine, but everyone was kind of
like the vibe of it being disappointing and a three yeah,
three side, but two was good and I'm glad to
see people coming around on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What I find interesting is that Ninja Guidance fans really
seemed to like the blueprint of one, and when I
went back to Black in particular because uh, Sigma Sigma
sour smooth some of this stuff out. One is so
much more focused on like the light puzzle solving and
light platforming.
Speaker 1: No DMC one resident.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it has like yeah those Resident Evil one references
which influences and I kind of liked I think I
kind of liked the second one going away from that, Oh.
Speaker 2: You do, okay, I thought you would like you would
appreciate how much one has it. But like, you know,
this is why I said during the talkover, and some
people really did not like me saying that the talkover,
but I did not like how Ninja Guy and Black
I had, you know, at least I went back into
like two levels of it, and yeah, there's like a
decent amount like tracking and like grab the mcguffin to
unlock the thing, and it is more focused on the
environment rather than the combat. And two is much more
involved with the combat. That's why I do compare it
to like Ninja Guy and Black Ninja Guy in Black
and two versus say DMC one and the later ones
like three and especially five, because four kind of falls
into those traps a little bit more too. I like
it when it's more combat focused because I'm not a
fan of that resident evil lineage there that clearly DMC
one has that because it was originally a resident evil game. Yeah,
and so that's why that's there and why it's like,
you know, fixed camera most of the time and stuff,
and clearly that was part of the blueprint for Ninja
guid in one. And I think just especially a post
Good of War because everyone looked at God of War.
If you're making an action game, they didn't move any
more combat oriented direction, more control over the camera, even
the camera's not great in two. I just think that, yeah,
two is a huge step forward. And here with the remake,
it's a full on remake in on real engine five h.
It's really good. I think it loses somewhat charm a
little bit because Jeff you and particular will know I
meis say it looks very unreal engine.
Speaker 5: That's always been a Shiny series. They look like action
figures and they always have.
Speaker 2: And Unreal by default kind of has like a Matt
finish to a lot of stuff. Like you look at
the blood of enemies in this game and it looks
like Clay almost. It's a little odd, and so yeah,
I do think that the style is lost in translation
a little bit.
Speaker 3: It's also very heavy game.
Speaker 2: That's Unreal lunch in five. But I think in general
it's a good remake and it's I always think it's
fun when they like do bring these games back, adding
quality of life stuff and just make it more accessible.
Speaker 5: And I remember little moments in the combat of those
games that I love were that I haven't seen other
stylish action character action games do. Where it's like you're
being overwhelmed by enemies and you just killed one and
his orbs floating around. It's like, Okay, if I can
just land with enough time to hold and wide to
suck in that orb and that fucking crazy ass attack
and you just chop them all up, that feels so
fucking good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Ultimate Technique or whatever it's called, that you can
charge up to two levels and we just does like
a canned like going to enemy to enemy to enemy,
just like going to town on them and it's so satisfying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, yep, definitely was gonna play it.
This one is not running great on Steam Deck, right,
I would.
Speaker 3: It's great on Xbox just me laying on your Xbox
plants great.
Speaker 2: I mean it's really heavy even yeah, like I'm my system,
I have a just a thirty sixty TI and it's yeah,
I have to like turn the internal res down to
like ten eighty jeff. So like it's it's a heavy game.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: We on the PC then that'll be the way to
play it.
Speaker 5: Funniest update, I have been playing Crimson Skies on my
rog ally via the Xbox Cloud streaming and that's been
working fine. So I think I'm near the end of
Crimson Skies and I like that game a lot.
Speaker 1: I have not started Grim Fandango, but I'm making plans
to do so this week because I wanted to start
before January is over. So I got a couple of days.
Speaker 2: Well, I I was waiting to get the Wii set
up in earthing, but now that I have that step
and everything, yeah, I planned.
Speaker 6: So world Mitch the best student, You're the homework teacher's pet. Congratulations, Bridges,
it's my old things. I love academics.
Speaker 1: All right, that does it for the games. We're gonna
take a quick he says, bricky break and we're gonna
do that in on our a jam right now. We'll
be right back after this. All right, we're back. Uh,
let's do some news. Look gonna work there it is. Nope,
you guys still aren't hearing it.
Speaker 3: The recording of the doors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we'll just put it in there.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 1: There's no reason it shouldn't work now, it's just the
broken computer's fault.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Uh news, I have it written down here somewhere. I'm
so I can find that window. Let's start with one thing.
I don't know why where did it go? I have it?
Speaker 3: Want me to do it? Yea.
Speaker 4: With Nintendo Switch to Preview event, confirmation emails are being
sent out. Nintendo Switch to Preview events will take place
in various locations across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia
between April fourth and June first. Nintendo has started informing
registrants of their application status while waitless opening January twentine,
for those who were not initially selected which You console
official launch claier this year, with a full reveal plan
for April second. The console's price, really, state of softwaretos
have You yet to be confirmed, although a new Mariocard
game was featured in the reveal trailer.
Speaker 3: Anybody try to get in on this? Nope? I did not, No,
not that close to me. Were close to me, So yeah, yeah,
I guess I could go to New York.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, Mike thinking was wet me. Maybe
they'll invite us, But now I'm like, I don't. I'm
not so sure. I don't know things. Yeah, it's nice
to want things, but yeah, so I didn't even try.
But I did see like a lot of people including
Kitt and Christa and Jeff Keeley being like I didn't
get in. Jeff Kehiey was like, horrible day over here,
and then he deleted the tweet after that, so maybe
maybe felt bad.
Speaker 3: I don't know, horrible day for Jeff Keeley. Oh No,
it's rough.
Speaker 4: What I find really interesting and it's kind of touched
on here is how all the anxieties about the switch
to being announced have just transferred over to how much
will the switch to cost?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean that's a fair one. Money pays,
given money to people sucks. So I understand that we
are kind of dialing in though, where four hundred feels
right to me. But I mean, god, I wouldn't be
I guess I wouldn't be shocked if it's four to fifty.
I would be shocked if with three fifty that would be.
But I don't think there's really any shocks that go
below four hundred.
Speaker 3: Three fifty would shock me more than five hundred would
shock me.
Speaker 2: Honestly, four hundred has always been the most logical price
point because.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of like naturally falls it for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if they drop the price of the Olan,
you know, having a switch at two hundred, three hundred
and four hundred. It just makes so much sense, you know.
Speaker 5: Question, I feel like all of you know more about
actual like horsepower and graphics and GPUs and stuff than
I do. Will this almost certainly be let's say, more
powerful than the current steam deck or.
Speaker 3: Roger X much, not by much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be like it's gonna be in that
It's gonna be in that zone. It will like once
all the bells and whistles are applied, will probably run
games better than a Steam deck, and then probably better
than a rock Alley, but not by much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the difference between Xbox one and PS four.
It's all within that ballpark, but yeah, one runs a
bit better. The more interesting thing is that, because it's
still in video, they're probably going to have some form
of DLSS upscaling it to look nicer on your four
KTV than any of the current handhelds do, and certainly
better than the current switch.
Speaker 1: And stuff will just be on by default, so it
counts as the horsepower for that device. So yeah, I
mean the effectively your games will be a little bit
smoother than the current crop of handhelds. But very soon
we're going to get a new crop handhelds from PC
hands right after that that will be probably blowing this
out of the water. But there's also be much more expense.
Speaker 2: We already heard about selling ships come out of CES
and yeah, the next way a handhelds are gonna be
so much more powerful and switch too probably, but also yeah,
not having that up scaling, so it's sort of like
evens out a little.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think the way to think about
it is somewhere between PS four and PS four Pro.
It's whateverone keeps saying, whether it's closer to PS four
Pro or PS four We are just going to have
to wait and see.
Speaker 2: I think people heard speculation of PS four Pro misunderstanding that,
especially like when me and Grubbs say stuff like that,
We mean it's going to run games like a PS
four But like the PS four Pro did upscaling to
those PS four games to make them look nice, That's
what's happening here.
Speaker 1: Better up scaling the PS four pro head that are checkerboard. Yeah,
and no machine learning applied to that stuff. So yeah,
they're It's going to be good for Nintendo games for sure,
and a lot more third lot more third party games
will run on this always.
Speaker 2: The need to keep in mind is keep your expectations
in check, and it will probably be a solid machine.
Speaker 6: If Mario looks good on it, I'm happy.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, but what about Xbox games? How will that
look on this shoe? Because Xbox will be on switch
to Phil Spencer did a kind of some interview rounds
last week here with Microsoft Gaming CEO Praise the Time,
switching plans to support it with Xbox game ports. Xbox
teams are prepping multiple releases for switch To, including the
Level four Halo, Massive's Collection and Microsoft Flight Simulator. That's
a bullet point here, Jeff. Is that all that's not all?
Speaker 1: Okay? So yeah, and I got the doc, thanks Mike.
This is not not all that's confirmed. All that is
like between speculation and rumors leaks. Uh, stiff definitely, like
in that same bounty, the same basket of leaks where hey,
we've heard the Gears of War might be coming a
PlayStation similar to that, but also very likely. Uh these
days because Microsoft is talking openly about Hey I did
I'm talking to Nintendo and I'm going on all these
podcasts and saying, yeah, we're gonna support switch It's part
of our switch To. This is part of our new
thing where we're putting our stuff out everywhere and everything's
an Xbox. I mean that's their marketing campaign. So yeah,
this stuffs very likely.
Speaker 4: It's just gonna be incredible to me after all this,
like you can't invite Phil Spencer out to coffee without
him screaming about how they're going to release Xbox games
on other platforms and yet like where they when Master
Chief shows up on a play station, people are still
going to like lose their.
Speaker 3: Buying and be surprised.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does feel like, you know, the message is
beginning to sync in. And yet you're right that there
are still those on the deserted aisles during World War
two fighting the war, not knowing that it's over. So yeah,
but he's repeatedly basically said console war's over. PlayStation's basically
saying the same thing. That's not gonna stick into every
one of these kids heads.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 4: It's it's good though, especially for some games. I loved
Diablo three on the Switch. One actually a great way
to play that game. So I could see myself may
be getting back into Diablo four having that on the
switch to you know, the next Halo. Sure, but there's
something about the Master Chief collection, like, oh, I could
play Halo one on the Switch.
Speaker 3: It's just so novel. How could I say? Noticed?
Speaker 5: It was very Sonics on a Nintendo platform. You know
exactly they should call it.
Speaker 4: They should call it Halo Combat Evolved Battle and.
Speaker 1: And and the directory, and then they should definitely do
a Sonic and Mario and Master Chief at the Olympic
Games and.
Speaker 6: Halo every once in a while.
Speaker 4: God, God, I just hope that, like I could find
I hope that in the next Metal Girl Solid Snake
randomly falls down.
Speaker 6: I would every would not you're telling you.
Speaker 3: What I wouldn't like it?
Speaker 4: No, I think, yeah, I think when you're trying to
actually play a video game, you're down, You'll be because
and fucking meddle your solid too when you roll when
you're going up or down the stairs.
Speaker 5: He just donks his head and eat ship and I
laugh every fucking time.
Speaker 3: I would love you best something.
Speaker 4: Up and you slipped on bird Ship, not because algorithm
said it was gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Now you're wrong about this. I would love it.
Speaker 1: Why don't we always do podcast? I don't know.
Speaker 6: We're all trying to be TikTok YouTubers. That's what the
meeting was about. How to be more TikTok yellers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, boy, I don't mind if people don't like the show,
but I hate it. It's like, look, they have to
appeal to a younger audience.
Speaker 3: What are you talking?
Speaker 5: I never thought of that ever. We need to yell more.
The kids like yelling. We're always saying that. Yeah, just honestly,
just like yelling. At each other.
Speaker 1: It's weird.
Speaker 3: That's how friendship works. Yeah, it's odd. Uh.
Speaker 1: Okay, So all these games are going to be on
switch huh, and they're going to keep coming out to PlayStation.
What does that mean for Xbox hardware? Well, in more interviews,
he did a lot of this talking on gamer Tag Radio.
Very good interview over there, if you want to go
listen to this. Basically said we are going to try
to make the hardware stand out on its own through
its own capabilities. Now, didn't say what that means. I mean, obviously,
one thing it could mean is it runs games very
very well, and I'm sure that is one of the
things they will try to make a key point of
the next Xbox. But it also to me feels like, well,
if that is the point, well I'm still just going
to keep getting PC. And of course they don't mind
if you get a PC. But if the point is
to make Xbox stand out through capabilities, I think that
also means capabilities including you can run your games from
any store, including Epic and Steam, things along those lines,
because then then the capabilities will really matter if I
can get my games from anywhere and bring it to
this device and it's very simple plug into the TV.
But what other capabilities do you would you want from
an Xbox if you can get these games anywhere?
Speaker 4: Right now, the backwards compatibility stuff was so good.
Speaker 3: I would love more of that, but they already seemed
disinterested in that.
Speaker 4: But like, aside from that, I just like, what, what's
even a possibility here?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, I think what he's getting at, though, is more
Xbox specific ecosystem stuff, you know, like uh quick resume,
you know, stuff like that at a hardware level, and
then being the console where a game passes. I think
that's the type of thing he's getting at, where sure,
you can play those games anywhere, but there's still a
lot of people who, you know, they tell us all
the time they don't want a PC, you know, I
mean grub blax poetically of our PCs, and some people
are like, I just don't want that. I think that's
where a space for Xbox consoles continues to exist, because
even if that is a diminishing audience still having, even
if it's just a really really pre configured PC and
that's what they're selling as the console, I think that
still works. And I think that's the type of thing
he's getting at is saying, hey, we have hardware for
this audience that gets them in the ecosystem. It'll have
some specific things that it'll do, like quick zoom, like
having backwards compatibility with the older console games and stuff
like that. And I think assumed sort of just like
hedging their bets a little.
Speaker 1: In terms of hedging things, he had to talk about
Xbox Series S, something that people always point out as, oh,
this is holding back what Xbox is doing with games.
Of course that's sorry because for years they were still
making games for Xbox One and they have to make
games for a bunch of different PCs. But it's simply
something gets brought up frequently, and he's like, ah, for
the most part, it's been a benefit to us, because
when we make games for Xbox Series S, well, hey,
now we have a game that is more optimized and
more ready to go to something like say a Roger
ally or a Steam deck or Sweaches so It or
switch even right exactly, or a future Xbox handheld. And
so having these these smaller, slimmed down versions means that
we are more malleable when it comes to supporting less,
lesser powered devices. And that seems to be becoming more popular,
not less popular. So this is something we're going to
do more of in the future. And at that point,
Xbox Series S just continues to not be a problem,
which sounds right to me.
Speaker 3: It sounds right, especially for them.
Speaker 4: I think it's maybe a bigger struggling to play for
third parties, right right, you have to do that optimization.
Maybe they don't really want to or it's yeah, we
saw a Borterskate three that for a long time it
was this problem. They had to kind of get special
permission to release an Xbox Series S version that didn't
have split screen. I think just recently they finally got
that stuff figure it out.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well yeah, and and that that game ended
up running really well in steam Deck eventually because of
all that work though exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's also a company doing something very specific or
the hardware then maybe the hardware can't really do anymore.
And the reason we could do split screen, uh, you know,
using the example back in the day, we do split
screen is because it was easier to basically just render
to viewpoorts to render everything twice essentially, or you know,
to like do some smart mat to like make sure
everything that you need is rendered in at the same time.
And on modern hardware that's just getting harder and harder
do because of how realistic everything is. And so it's
very specific things like that that are rougher on the
S because of you know, less ram and stuff like that.
But broadly speaking, yeah, games do run as they intended.
Is just like the difference between a high end PC
and a low NPC. You just need to scale things back.
And also some things just won't work on that low
NPC and that's maybe what Xbox needs to be a
little more flexible about with the s of.
Speaker 1: Like, and they've like gotten moderately more flexible here or there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And Baller's Gate three, I think is a good example
on that of saying like, oh, okay, like the vast
majority of the core gameplays here is just like this
one feature.
Speaker 3: Okay, I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So yeah, one last little tidbit here from Phil Spencer
this week in Xbox Nins You Got him for Collaboration
was apparently Phil Spencer's idea, or he at least helped
facilitate it, where apparently Team Ninja had talking Xbox constantly
about Ninja Guide in but they were struggling to come
up with a plan for it, and he suggested, why
don't you work with Platinum. It really makes it feel
like a make good for whatever happened with what was
that game called scale Bound? Thank you? Yes, right, yeah,
it wouldn't. The timeline would not be that far off
from like scale Bound. You know, scale Bound got canceled
quite a bit ago, but not too long after that
they probably started working on this, so yeah, yeah, I
kind of give them some work. Now, a lot of
Platinum games people have left since then, but you know,
this game's also come out later this year, so maybe
a lot of that work was done still though, a
cool thing that, you know, when Phil Spitzer talks about
going to Japan and working with these developers and trying
to get stuff to happen, it's always like, Okay, what
does that look like? It doesn't feel like that. Okay,
this one here's some good evidence of that, And I'm
glad that at least some good has come out of
his efforts in Japan. So pretty cool. I'll accept it,
all right. Moving on to other topics, the SIMS one
and two are both reportedly being re released with all
expansions very soon. He's remembered to be rereleasing The SIMS
and The SIMS two by the end of January to
celebrate the twenty fifth anniversary. It's the end of January, basically,
I guess the rest of this week. This could still
pop off at any point, but yeah, I'll take this.
Have you got any guys ever spent any time with
the SIMS.
Speaker 3: SIMS one was a phenomenon A bit on the first one.
Speaker 5: It didn't really run on my computers, so, okaymember really
wanting to play it.
Speaker 6: But SI City two thousands about right top down here.
Speaker 3: You're more of an Herbs Sims in the City kind
of guy.
Speaker 2: Actually, my SIMS agent Herbs was on the DS and
so that was like one of the only games we
had early on with that system. So it was like
half of my friends had the Herbs for some reason.
Speaker 3: The Herbs the.
Speaker 1: SIMS nostalgia does feel like it's at a point now
where like they're gonna be able to capitalize on this,
and I'll be interested to check this out. But I
think I'm at a point where if I was going
to sit down and play The SIMS, I would probably
jump into SIMS four now and really go to town with.
Speaker 3: All those the scores already old anything, yes, exactly, and they're.
Speaker 1: Gonna keep supporting it like well, they are working on
a new SIMS. I think they keep saying it's not
gonna be SIMS five so much as like something else.
Who knows what that really means? I don't know, Okay,
all right, use us and physical game spend has had
since twenty twenty one. Mapis Catela from Sircana put out
a report this week about you know, game sales from
last year as well as from December overall, you know,
hardware way down. Software sales kind of booyed it for
the most part, but really it was mobile game spending
that really saved game spending in the United States last year.
But one interesting tidbit is that while we've known that
physical game sales have been declining for a while now,
since two thousand and eight, basically it's gone down every
year since then, it has actually begun to accelerate the
rate of decline has begun to accelerate. So from like
twenty twenty two to twenty three and then twenty four
it is dropping off even faster, and a big part
of that is, you know, people are just buying Xbox
Series s is and PlayStation five digital editions or you know,
the PlayStation five and not getting a disk drive, right,
the straight up PS five Slim, and so there's just
fewer people are like, oh well, I'll get that later,
and then they don't, and then they just get off
digital games. This is sort of going to be a
self fulfilling prophecy, right, It's going to be something that spirals.
Now that there are fewer people buying digital, there'll be
fewer reasons to or fewer people buying physical. There will
be fewer reasons for companies to print digital copp or
physical copies. Keep saying that, and then now with tariffs
threatening everything, this is probably only going to get worse
for people who buy physical, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was always this was accelerating, It
was always waiting for a bit of a tipping point.
I think that you know that the PS five Slim
right with an optional disk drive, is a pretty big
tipping point. You know, then when that next generation does happen,
way Station six or whatever the Xbox is, I don't
know what drives look like with that, but I could
very well see it again, being like it a standard,
it doesn't come with one, and then the acceleration is
really going to continue faster here. I mean, you know,
I go into a Best Buy now and I see
that physical game section getting smaller, smaller, just like how
I remember the DVD and Blu ray section getting smaller
and small for it just disappeared. And before that, the
C section, which was once half the store, getting smaller
and small before that just disappeared. It's kind of just
the next thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of factors that I contributed
to this, because I won't be surprised if the pandemic
had a big impact on this, because when you're just
you know, staying inside and trying to find that kind
of entertainment, I'm sure a lot of people didn't even
want to even think about going to the store, and
they didn't want to wait for Amazon to deliver it,
so they just start buying games digitally. Realized that they
really liked the convenience of it, and now they've just
kind just stuck with it.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, once you break the seal, right, it's like, well,
now this is where my game collection is. I want
all my games to be on this device because it's
it's convenient. But also, like people just you do have
a collector's mentality. Humans do just want to gather things
and they want to gather them in the same place.
So once you start doing it digital, you just start
going all the way down there. And then of course
there's going to be exceptions.
Speaker 2: A little bit of a bummer for console players definitely,
because you know, over on PC we have at least
feels like we have more ownership our games, Like, yeah,
the Steam is still a DRM platform, just like the consoles,
but there are other ways to get games on PC,
if you know the mom rises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, long supported ways by the community exactly kind of
can you can rely on it?
Speaker 2: And that's what physical games have been for a long
time for consoles ever since digital became one of the
normal things you could do. Having a physical disc at
least felt like ownership for you. But yeah, it's a
little bit of bummer sye that slowly going away.
Speaker 1: PS six, Xbox next, you know, Switch three. Do these
things have physical media insert things built into the system
or are they all going to be sold separately or
do they not even sell them at all?
Speaker 2: We'll switch in particular definitely has it because.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, but like the switch after switch for
backward compatibility, you think yeah.
Speaker 2: For backwards compatibility, and also the switches all over the world,
and so they still need physical games getting out to
certain places. It's less of a concern with these Xbox
and PlayStation consoles, which are more and more being sold
to a more particore crowd who is leaning to digital,
and they basically just have to wait out people being
mad that they can't insert the disc anymore is kind
of what they have to do here, and so I
don't think they go away in any real form next
generation maybe with Xbox because of how much they've leaned
into digital, but I think the one after that, as
weird as it is to talk about, like the PS seven, Yeah,
assuming PlayStation still looks like a console, then I think
that's what it's all digital.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they really did just kind of seal the deal
when it was like, Hey, if you want to get
PS five and you want to complain about the disk drive,
just go buy one yourself, Go get your own. And
it's like at that point, it's like, what can you
really complain? They are still giving you the option, But really,
they are selling you a console without a disk drive,
and that's that. That's going to be it from now on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, speaking of disk drive real quick, I just said
someone in the chat say they pre ordered the retro
remake PlayStation thing superstation with optional disk drive. Did not
realize that was optional.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's a little weird that it's an optional
add on. But yeah, you have to email me or I.
Speaker 1: Bought mine separately later because I didn't realize either. If
you it.
Speaker 6: Literally says do not buy separately on this, so.
Speaker 1: To buy it separately and then email them and say
I bought these two things separately, can you combine them?
Speaker 6: And I emailed them just seeing like can I add this?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I just emailed them and that works. Took okay, you know, yeah,
they're very it was very responsive, very quick. So they
understood that people were going to make this mistake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good to hear.
Speaker 1: Okay, uh, okay, you'd be soft. Confirms one eighty five
layoffs as the closest former DJ Hero studio and downsizes others.
A bunch of studios kind of throughout Europe got hit
with the downsizing. This is a studio that's mostly done
a lot of support work recently. They have not made
a DJ hero game anytime recently. That's yeah, yeah, yes,
that was so that that was they were called something
else back then. Now they were like Ubisoft Lymington, if
that's why you say that, And they've been working as
a support studio for a very long time. This is,
you know, continuing the trend of Ubi Soft cutting jobs,
and they're going to continue cutting jobs unless some miracle
happens there. H So this is going to keep happening.
You just took a pay cut too, right, No, no,
of course not Sean, so we can yell at him.
Of course.
Speaker 4: I was like, I was like, oh, finally I took
that seriously, No, no, of course not. Gosh can you
I just can't imagine if Assassin's Screen Shadows doesn't become
a big hit.
Speaker 1: Right yeah. And it's like talk about headwinds coming out
of meetings, Uh, like it has a game that like
the quality almost doesn't matter at all compared to like
just how people feel about Ubi Soft right now, ever
existed more than Assassin's Creed Shadows where it's just like
it almost doesn't matter, like if people like that game,
they just hate Ubi Soft so much right now that
it that they're probably not going to buy this thing,
so it has to be kind of above and beyond
in quality to break through that ceiling set up for
them games.
Speaker 2: You have a rough time between how people justifiably feel
about Ubisoft the way the chuds have done everything they've
done to that game, like bad game, just like it
really needs.
Speaker 1: To hit yep.
Speaker 5: What is the vibe on Ubisoft from.
Speaker 2: Like overall like what's the overall violentce You mentioned it
being like bad like and everything.
Speaker 6: Oh sure, the thing forever that's been the.
Speaker 1: Thing that it's really come home to roost where it's
like now every one of their games is that people
see it. They're like, this is more you be slopped.
That has become the term, and it's like now but
now it's like showing up, yes, but now it's showing
up in the sales.
Speaker 3: Figures like Soft like made a lot of bets that
seems short sighted, you know, like live service, but also
like they were the one big third party publisher that
not didn't it just talk about NFT games, they actually
did make some and release them, right, that kind of stuff,
the quarts quartz.
Speaker 4: Uh huh, Right, And of course like there have been
just tons of layoffs and things like that, and shutting
down these studios and all these false starts with like
that Prince of Persia remake right, and you know, things
like Skull and Bones take you forever to come out.
Then it comes out and is bad anyways, and beyond
good and evil to being a punchline. Just so many
issues over there right now.
Speaker 5: Quurts okay, Ubisoft, Quartz quarts ubisof dot com.
Speaker 3: It's still just very are is this.
Speaker 6: A thing that's happening?
Speaker 3: Still enjoy the unique years of your digit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it still exists. I don't think they're
everybody myself to isolate that. Yeah, wow it digit genuinely
dumb decisions on top of everything else.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, the choice of an energy efficient technology, proof
of blockchain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this seems great. It says this is just the.
Speaker 1: Beginning on its grand opening. Yeah, you guys. Ever hear
that that song sung by that old lady where it's like,
taste the biscuit, Taste the goodness of the biscuit.
Speaker 3: Now, definitely there's ring my bell, you know, there's that
if you say a little bore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course I could see the whole thing for you.
It is an internet meme. But when you just said, uh,
enjoy the uniqueness of your digit, it just triggered me
because it sounded like the goodness of your biscuit. Okay,
well we'll splice that in. I'll make sure I do
the work, all right. Final Fantasy seven Rebirth has a
strong start on PC. Basically the most played current player number,
first single player Final Fantasy game on Steam. It was
in the forty thousand range previously, like Final Fantasy fifteen
and sixteen, we're like thirty thousand underneath that. Actually, and
sixteen had fewer players at launch than fifteen did, so
they are kind of seeing a bounce back here now.
It's not as much as a Final Fantasy fourteen does,
but of course not that is a massive online game
that has a lot of PC players already, and it
didn't those those expansions don't have massive delays from the
PlayStation five version. So this is pretty good news where
it's like, hey, that strategy of putting out games where
people play games seems like a good one for score INIX. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I liked Rebirth a lot, and I
was a little bummed out that it kind of did
seemed relatively poorly on PlayStation five.
Speaker 3: The thing I bounced back here is good.
Speaker 4: And you know, they they've been talking pretty openly about
how like, hey, we don't want the next one to
just be exclusive on one platform for like a year, right,
kind of hoping next time they get it, figure it
out and they just release it on Steam on day
one and you can just have this big first day
right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this in part is performing well almost surely
because this is what people want Final Fantasy to be.
If it's going to be an action RPG. Sixteen was
clearly too much of a deviation for the formula that
really just is an action game with RPG elements kind
of bolted on at a certain point, and this is,
you know, there's this big open world to explore. Mike
talked about that. I think here are gody stuff of
just like it feels like an old school RPG and
how much you sort of just explore the world. And
the combat is fantastic in rebirth and in remake before it,
And so I think that's yeah, good word of mouth,
it turns out does sell your game, and hope hopefully
you know, yeah, there's less of a gap for the
next one. There's some creative phrasing about the next one
where they're like, yes, it won't be a PS six exclusive,
and it's like, okay, so this will be a PS
five exclusive.
Speaker 1: PS five and PS six and it is a yeah, right, put.
Speaker 2: Put it on PC day one please. I also fix
PC stuff because I I know Alex doesn't have his
Digital Foundery video out yet, but it seems like maybe
it's still got some tech issues, just like remake before it.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, Sean, you mentioned like the deviation and I
don't even know if that's like the problem where it's
like it's just so honed down to be this slick
thing that is easy for people to consume. And I
think the lesson has been learned now that sixteen sixteen, yes, yes,
sixteen Yeah. I think gamers want something that is not
not necessarily messy, but something they feel like you can
take ownership of. Do you remember that Folding Ideas video
about World of Warcraft where he talked about the evolution
of World of Warcraft from being like this thing where
like a lot of people like would just do the
thing where they'd go and kill a bunch of stuff
for a long time and grind, and and then they
were like they made the game much more streamlined over time,
and then people began to crave having the old style
World Warcraft where they could just sort of have ownership
over how they leveled, even if it was technically less
efficient and on paper less fun, but people felt an
ownership of it. So I think that they kind of
are learning the lesson here coming out of sixteen. Yeah,
they wouldn't maybe give people more stuff to do that
they can just decide on their own how to approach it.
Speaker 4: It's so easy to like pitch streamlining, right when you're
developing a game and you're talking to a bunch of people,
It's like, well if we streamlise something that means where
people will jump in and play, you know, maybe those
people aren't interested in playing. They're never going to leave Fortnite.
And you know the boters Gate three on this side
and then the Final Phisy sixteen and Dragon Age Vailguard
thing on this side thing, right, it really does just
say it all. You have this game that's so old
school in a lot of ways, and it is kind
of messy and it's complicated, and that attracted so many
more people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that you look at the success
that they had with fourteen, I think that's exactly what
Jeff is talking about there. Where fourteen it's a convoluted
ass game. But guess what, everyone's playing it anyways, because
you have that person in your life who tells you, no,
this is really good, like here, if you don't like
this thing, I'll tell you how to get around it,
because I just want you to start playing this thing.
And that Like that's how like me and my friends
were where like they know about it. I'm like, oh,
do you want this thing out of it? Oh yeah,
I did. Just ignore this. Go do that and you'll
have great time. Yeah, they get into fourteen, and that's
how like their numbers are getting too crazy.
Speaker 1: Choosing to ignore stuff that you don't want it, like
that is actually a feature a lot of times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Like people, it's like just look at like Minecraft, right,
and what's a big Minecraft or Pokemon that's not a streamline?
Speaker 3: Yeah people, it's like the most popular thing ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like but Pokemon the same way, where it's like
there's so many like tiny little things in there that
you can either gauge with or not. But when kids
do they feel an ownership over it because they're like,
I understand this thing.
Speaker 2: There's my parents don't even under There's stuff to discover
that doesn't feel like bloat in the you know, we
were talking about Ubisoft of like, oh, we need to
put a outpost here for you to take control over,
because that's what you do in this game. Like no,
there's like random things that maybe don't land and like
maybe people really dislike but they you know, taking some
more risks, while yeah, just having the freedom, you know,
the freedom is what people are looking for there. And yeah,
when you said streamlining doesn't always work, I struggle to
think of a time where streamlining has worked like at all.
So I mean you have.
Speaker 4: All right, mass Effect too I think Mass Effect to
god away at it. Yeah, and everybody took the wrong
lesson from that, even BioWare all the games became more
like Mass Effect too long, very good point.
Speaker 1: It's like we were craving it in that moment, but
we did not think it was going to the pendum
was going to continue to swing in that direction forever.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, I have a breaking story here. This is
from January twenty third, twenty twenty five, from Greg Bowman
at Folding at home dot org if you haven't. If
you haven't already, we invite you to check out the
latest release of Folding at Home client version eight point
four point nine. Is it still going from five days ago?
This version makes it much easier to create and join teams.
You could find the controls by logging into the client,
clicking on your avatar in the upright corner to access
your account settings, and selecting teams from the menu at
the left. So they've added, I.
Speaker 3: Boot up my PS three right now? Could I be
folding right PC? Unless they have a PC version.
Speaker 1: I think this might be the PC version, only the PC.
Speaker 3: I love back then.
Speaker 5: Okay, I understand it exactly as much now, which, by
the way, this is because in the chat I said
that I thought grub was talking about folding it home
ideas they I read so much about that back then.
I downloaded it and it's just like, Okay, my screen
just gets filled with quigglies and I guess it's like
solving gold, global warming or something. I don't know, Like
I don't know what the fuck was supposed to be happening.
To throw the word hero round.
Speaker 1: I think like a cancer treatment or something they were researching.
I don't remember.
Speaker 3: Did the PS three cure cancer? I think three problem anymore? Interested?
We justies?
Speaker 1: Oh boy? All right, real last story here is Skies
of Arcadia actually coming back. Sega has renewed its trademark
for the Dreamcast RPG Skis of Arcadia that was, you know,
originally released way back in two thousand. They have not
done a ton with it since they did have the
GameCube port. Was there ever a Sky's Arcadia two?
Speaker 3: Nothing out? Never two and never another ports? Right?
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's why, you know, I look at this
and I'm like, hey, yes, guys, are K two would
be good? But boy, first thing should be just making
sure people can play Skies of Arcadia on the switch
to and on PC.
Speaker 1: Yep. And that feels pretty realistic at that point. That
feels like that could easily happen. Of course, Sega right
now very much going after their old ip, like going
through the library, pick and stuff off the shelf, say
we're going to make a new one of these, and
they they're doing that with a ton of games, so
many games. We talked about Echo the Dolphin recently. There
was like there's at least ten to fifteen others like
in the works or planned to be in the works.
So why not Skis of Arcadia at some point for
doing Common Zone? Why not Sky's Arcade exactly? Like exactly so, uh,
there is a chance that we're going to get more
Skis of Arcadia, but it's always worth pointing out when
these things happen. Could just be a lawyer doing their job, yes,
and it also could be could be zero, but it
could just be a port And at this point I
would be happy about that. I like Sky's Arkadia quite
a bit.
Speaker 3: It's really cool.
Speaker 4: And you know, Sega has so much success with RPGs
on the Atlas side of things right now, right, you know,
maybe Atlas's bandwidth doesn't let them specifically jump in and
help here.
Speaker 1: But still, but if you're and you're looking to invest
in something on RPG right now, makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: It'd be like RGS twentieth game that they haven't.
Speaker 4: Development, right, Yeah, bringback Skis of Kadia, but make another
Fantasy Star that is just an RPG again, doesn't have
to be an MMO kind of thing. Gosh, even you know, hey,
there is an RPG if Panther Dragon that's really neat
that's ever been on the Sega Saturn. So there's yeah,
there's a lot.
Speaker 2: Of Yeah, like we were just talking about with a
messiness and you know, sort of like letting people decide
what they want to do. I think that's kind of
what Sega's doing right now. They're kind of having the
shotgun approach by like you know, brain stuff back, like
having this like wild new concept for Crazy Taxi, by
having like a new Shnobi game and uh was the
Golden Axe was the other one. Yeah, they're trying rage again.
They're just trying things, which is cool. So yeah, I
wouldn't be surprised if yeah, New Sky's Marcadia they tried
that because they're taking some risks and you know, maybe
they don't pay off super well, but it seems like
they are sort of garnering that fan dedication again, which
is what you need to not have a company that
people are just constantly pissed off with, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, you gotta like, you gotta have that identity
beyond just oh, I guess this company also makes games.
You don't like, you could be a UBI Soft and
you don't want to be a ubi Soft or you
can go this path and try to say no, we're
Sega and you know what that means now, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: You can't just think of about investor relations the entire rights.
You actually have to like you are in the business
of good for.
Speaker 2: Those games I will sell like a million or two
And was a safe risk to take because like maybe
you don't make another one after that, but at least
you try it, right.
Speaker 1: Do you shoot like vector man? Dan? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that was tripped? Was that? What if he
tripped every ten minutes?
Speaker 6: I think I would like that in any game. Honestly,
it's just a lie.
Speaker 3: No not, I mean it.
Speaker 4: I think that's not a lie that I think you're
you're fibbing.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that that would be the case.
Speaker 1: Can someone to make ad for a game that Dan
is playing at some point that makes his character trip
randomly and we will force him to install it and
we'll just test this.
Speaker 5: It makes me laugh every time, Like if you're in
the cold for too long in metal gear and you
just sneeze while you're trying to be sneaking and you
get caught because of that, that's fucking.
Speaker 3: Funny to me.
Speaker 6: Like I would absolutely find that funny in any video game.
Speaker 1: I believe you.
Speaker 4: But there was a reason just now that you said
that that's happening because he's in the cold and.
Speaker 7: He sees the reasons people trip, Yeah, but happen.
Speaker 6: But fucking because of unexpected things is funny.
Speaker 3: Mike, You're wrong about this. I would like this, damn.
Speaker 1: Point.
Speaker 3: The point is that you shouldn't.
Speaker 5: No, I do, and I do like vector Man, vector Man,
I occupies the same space in my head as Yoshi's Island,
because I remember I had Genesis of my mom's, I
had Super at my dad's.
Speaker 3: And there's a ps A PlayStation in sixty four.
Speaker 5: I started seeing the magazines talking about Saturn PlayStation sixty
four and it's like, I don't I'm not gonna be
able to get this.
Speaker 6: I don't have money, like I.
Speaker 5: So I am my head not understanding video game technology,
being like, well, maybe they should just keep making good
games for Super, Nintendo and Sega and then those will
be the only consoles forever and these new ones will fail.
And so like when Yoshi's Island came out and like
the Mode seven, like the warping and stuff is like,
see look at that that looks incredible. Oh, they put
Virtual Fighter two on the Genesis. Oh, this is like
the cardboard box era of Genesis. Donkey Gun Country is
three D. Donkey Gun Country is three vector. Man's three D.
Speaker 1: We don't need a new conton he campaigns for those games.
Where's like from a dunky country, It's like, who needs
thirty two bits?
Speaker 5: Specifically, there was an ad that was an e GM
all the time that was like a very nineties fish
eye shot of a baby crying and it was like whining, sniffling,
you know, shit in their pants whatever. And that's just
the people who bought new consoles have ever seen them
be like fuck yeahs, that's.
Speaker 1: What I like. All Right, we're gonna go to another break.
We're gonna come back. We'll do emails after this.
Speaker 2: It's working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Uh we got emails everybody. Let's let's
hop into him. I'll read this first one here. Uh,
let's see. It is from Alan from Wisconsin. Handheld Game Consoles.
I recently got a trim Ui brick. Shout out to
grub I fuck with you and your handhelds. I fuck
with you too, brother, and I just finished Metroid Fusion.
What a game? What are some deep cut GBA games
I should check out. Thanksgang Alan from Wassau, Wisconsin. So
how you say that?
Speaker 3: Saw? Sure?
Speaker 1: Thank you a PS. Please make this Wisconsin we fuck
with Grub meet up happen. I can be designated driver, Okay, yeah,
I'll get out there.
Speaker 6: That happens, I will go out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can take an am trek out there on
Wisconsin Ambassador to Giant Bomb.
Speaker 3: When do we decide we fuck with Grub?
Speaker 1: It was the last episode. It was there was someone
from Wisconsin that said they fuck with me, and I'm like, okay,
all right, yeah just oh would be a good answer.
Speaker 3: And that just got a re release, right, you can
just play that on everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but played on your trimum, I believe. Yeah, that's
the thing.
Speaker 6: Even when they get re releases and stuff.
Speaker 5: I have found that, Like I remember I had that
moment with the Advanced Wars.
Speaker 1: And you started taking about Vance Wars, was like, why
don't I just play this?
Speaker 6: Sounded like I like the fun factor.
Speaker 5: It feels more true to the original you know vision
of it, and I also like the way it looks more.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's that astro Bot game that's really good. Yes,
astro boystro Boy all the.
Speaker 5: Time, ham Tarrow, Ham Ham Heartbreak, hamp Tar there's like
the hamp Tarow Sports collection.
Speaker 2: To love those ham Taro games at least. I don't
know which ones were like spinoffs within us, but like
at least the Game Boy Color one was just like
an adventure game and it was really cute.
Speaker 3: I like that one.
Speaker 5: In the chat says as Minushkapa good Zelda, Yes, I
played there a few years ago. Again, I think it's
a much better than links Awakening.
Speaker 1: You can tell.
Speaker 5: That it was. No need to play out my ranking
of Zelda's.
Speaker 1: No, I don't know what you.
Speaker 8: Do that it.
Speaker 2: No, we're just saying that you're wrong.
Speaker 6: Better menus cap all right, it's links Awake things at eight.
Speaker 1: Nintendo make better the games than Capcom, but it's still
in general.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was. I okay, I was thinking about it
if you played the Oracle games.
Speaker 1: Yet, I played the Oracle of Ages when it came
out and didn't love it, which I understand. Oracle Seasons
is supposed to be better.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 3: More Yeah, I like, okay, just more, I think okay.
Speaker 1: I had always heard Seasons was just better, but uh, okay,
fair enough.
Speaker 2: It may be an obvious one. But if you like
metro Fusion, go play Zero Mission if you haven't, because
it's awesome. It's it's my favorite metroid. I still think
it's the best one overall because it combines so much
of what metroids should be into one package. And while
I do like the creepy vibe a Fusion more, in general, uh,
Usion just talks so fucking much. And Zero Mission is
just like, we're gonna give you a title card with
Samus's internal monologue and you're just going, man. You get
the occasional like three second cut sing that's kind of
like a loading area, but you're just guys going.
Speaker 5: And I saw someone in chat say back tie and
now I was literally just going to eat because I've
never played it and it's a gem again wow, And
uh it's a bit pricey, but I do.
Speaker 1: That's when I that's when I think would be fun
to emulate on the phone and see if you can
get the senil the phone or the light.
Speaker 2: Thing lights on starting your phone to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you get the right emulator. It just works. Okay.
Get out of Pen Wisconsin Drill dozer.
Speaker 3: Car battles, drill Dozer kicks ass Yes.
Speaker 1: Drill dozer to. That's when that one should emulate pretty
well because I think they do the rumble on there,
but you want the rumble.
Speaker 6: Work twisted, but do it on your phone.
Speaker 1: That worri work twisted. I am about to beat it,
dan Uh. It's great on there right, It's so awesome. Literally,
I enjoy pooping so much right now because I'm playing
it every time I go to.
Speaker 6: The bathroom, shaking your phone around.
Speaker 1: Shaking my phone, and it helps, you know, helps work
things out, you.
Speaker 5: Know, with the it feels like better on phone than
it ever felt on GBA.
Speaker 1: Somehow, It's awesome. It's honestly, could get to the end
of the year and that might be on my Game
of the Year list. Oh yeah, twist twisted. So good
Car Battle or Joe. That's a good one. That's kind
of in that range of like Ninja five ooh, and
a few others. Let's see a gun Stars Superheroes. Oh sorry,
was that Gunstar Superheroes? That's a good gun Star go ahead.
Speaker 3: Back, Yeah, forget about Mario Kart Super Circuit.
Speaker 4: Play the Konami Mario Kart clone that has you played
as a bistical Ninja that.
Speaker 2: I feel like people overlook this one a lot. Pokemon Pinball,
Ruby and Sapphire is a really good pinball game.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all the Tony Hawk games on g b A.
There's like weird things like Max Pain on GPA. There's
this whole thing where they just took three D games
and made them isometric games on the g B A
and they're actually pretty.
Speaker 1: And people like shoot three D games on the Gameboy Advance,
like Stunt stunt Man. It's really good. I love Stuntman
on Game Boy Advance.
Speaker 2: It's like dank about with the sixteen big consoles getting
like three D adjacent stuff or light three D like
towards the end of the GBA, they were getting ambitious there,
and it was kind of cool sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Golden sounds good.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's a two D dragon Ball not dragon Ball Z,
dragon Ball kind of action game that's really neat.
Speaker 3: There's also a Star Wars episode three Beat Them Up.
That's a lot of fun on the GV Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, And then like any any sort of like, hey,
a big console game happened, and now here's the Game
Boy Advance version, like that zone of the enders game
Boy advance games. Pretty interesting tech in advance ye advance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff like that that's
worth checking out, especially when you have a trim ui
and you can just get it the way you get it.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, the term wise is very nice.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's just so handy.
Speaker 4: So I can't believe, like, Lakes Weakening is your favorite
game of all time and you like got no enjoyment
out of those two games that came out that were
like ninety five percent the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's game ever, it's it was it's very important to me.
Shut up, Dan, I'm I'm not talking. I'm talking to
my friend Mike Minatti right now. I I want of
them protect. I think that that's part of the problem.
Is I like hold I held Links Awakening in such
high regard that the five percent like feels like a chasm.
Speaker 3: D That Donkey Kong Country too things, the Donkey.
Speaker 1: Count Country two thing I have where it's like yeah, sorry, ahad,
just where it's like something's like I'm expecting one thing
and now I can't play a Donkey Kong in this game.
It's not exactly the same, but it's it's similar so.
Speaker 5: So question you just made me think because I'm as
I'm trying to look up like game Boy games since
I'm enjoying Mario Land one and two so much once
I'm done with Warrior Land. Are those Donkey Kong Land
games good and are they different than their.
Speaker 1: They're interesting, yes, okay, because they are mostly bespoke games.
There are there's a lot of like, oh, here's this
for version of this level from the Donkey Kong Coutry game,
but it's it's its own game in a lot.
Speaker 5: Of ways, and like two is Diddy and Dixie. One
is Donkey and Diddy.
Speaker 3: Is it the same?
Speaker 5: Like you know, the cover always looked the same, but
it was like, but they're calling it Land.
Speaker 6: This is a different game.
Speaker 1: I think that they're honestly, if you like, just like
in a vacuum ranked platformers on the Game Boy, I
think they would be in the top five for like
at least Donkey Donkey Kong Land one and two.
Speaker 2: So okay, they're You're right, they're interesting if I'm remembering
this right. So Land is like remixing slash scaling down
of the Country games to game Boy original. But then
they also did ports that were a little more flesh
out of Donkey Kong Country to the game Boy Color. Yes,
though so the like mostly faithful ports to game Boy Advance.
Speaker 1: That are really good act versions of those games. Yes, yeah, okay,
wild lot. I mean Donkey Kong. That Donkey Kong Country
one sold so well and two sold very well. But
they just went ham on Donkey Kong on everything back
then for the point now they put him into theme
park and.
Speaker 2: Then I don't think we much all but Dan, you're
aware of Donkey Kong ninety four right?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, that was, like I think the first
game I seriously played on the analog.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, well, good game, good god.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see here. Let me get back over
the emails. Okay, can Sean read this one from Dave?
Speaker 2: From Dave from California. Yeah's topic is video game skill
to real life application. Hey all, I worked at a
warehouse for a big online retailer. You can probably guess
which one. I played a lot of Tetris when I
was a youth, and all that time spent on a
game somehow gave me amazing skill at arranging boxes for
maximum efficiency. What game has given you an accidental skill?
Speaker 3: Keep up?
Speaker 2: The amazing work oil listener from the Shoemaker Days, consenting
kiss all lips for each of you.
Speaker 1: When I played that eco game, it gave me an
understanding of pricing and tariffs and stuff like that, just
by accident, just by arguing with my friends about how
we should arrange the econ me in our game and that.
So now when I see things in the news, I'm like,
that won't work. And I know how from firsthand experience.
Speaker 3: I learned how to yell from the Phoenix Right.
Speaker 1: Games during our podcast.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yep, I've never driven a stick shift, but I
feel like I understand the basic concept from switching to
manual in some old racing games, being like okay, it's
kind of topping off here, it's going to year two.
Speaker 6: Like, but I've never got I don't know how to
do that tunk tunk tunk stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the bulk of it.
Speaker 6: But I mean I think I know when like, oh,
that sound means I should shift gears.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when do you hit the clutch?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: I don't want that probably correct answer, but also where
my grandpa's lawnmower had a clutch on it and I
didn't know what that pedal did and it was a
riding lawnmower and I hit it once and like I
did some weird combination that it like bucked up, and
I thought I was almost going to get crushed by
a lawnmower.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, I'm not touching knuck
clutch every that my dad's Friday loanword did the same thing,
and I would purposely get it to do wheeling instead.
Speaker 2: I still remember it. I was like, fuck that, I'm
surprised I'm not dead. Yeah, I think anytime someone asked
me something like this. The only thing I never think
of is that I like kind of know how to
play the drums thanks to rock band, because obviously, you know,
playing the guitar and guitar hero is like just wailing
on a toy. Singing maybe you know, is like it's
Kerry okay, so it's yeah, you're singing. And then drums
are an interesting one because you can at least learn
like basic drum beats on this, especially if you're like
playing on an expert in your game.
Speaker 1: The actual pretty is kind of not one to one
but pretty close, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so there are songs where like I learned
the general beat through playing rock band, and then yeah,
I would when we were hanging out with friends Friday
night in my friend's basement, he had drums at there,
and occasionally, yeah, I would hop on there, and so
we're just like, yeah, play drum being He's like, oh, yeah,
that's that sounds right to me because he obviously played drums,
So yeah.
Speaker 1: That does remind me. Like I always think, if I
had to like shift gears into another business entirely, I
would take DDR and I would market it as a
good way to like improve the footwork of athletes, because
I think if you, if you can get good at DDR,
like a quarterback would benefit so much from that. But
like everyone in any sport where like you are moving
your feet a lot, having like to quickly move direction
and understand the way to get your body to do
that without like the help of a bar would be
beneficial to I think they all athletes should just do it.
But of course, like it's a weird little Japanese game,
so they're not aware of it.
Speaker 5: I bought a powerwasher at my old house because I
played a lot of Powerwaws simulator and then I instantly
fucked up my driveway.
Speaker 1: Did you like chip it away?
Speaker 3: Like there was like an.
Speaker 6: Asphalt driveway and it was like pristine.
Speaker 5: It was awesome when I moved in and there was
like some like bird shit or something on the driveway,
and it's like, all right, let's test this baby out,
you know, from like point blank, and then there's asphalt
pebbles flying up everywhere. That's like and just permanent, like
a whole. Then I never used it again. I sold
it on face place.
Speaker 1: Imagine the ant that was living in there. It's just
like his whole world exploded.
Speaker 2: Just a mushroom clock on your listeners. Mike is dying
inside right now?
Speaker 1: All right, less weird, Mike Minati. I read this one
from Tom P from Florida.
Speaker 3: Idle Games while you work, Hey, Giant Bomb crew, I'm
currently playing the idle game Rusty's Retirement while I work.
I found it gives me a nice reward when it
glanced over at the screen and see the numbers go up.
Do you have any good idol games that you enjoy
whilst working?
Speaker 1: Tom P from anything, Yeah, talk about it.
Speaker 6: Go to click clickbomb dot com. It's fantastic.
Speaker 5: Chucktowski Pickle Draft, Oh my god, I think we all
got really into it, like talking.
Speaker 1: About it in our games this week for sure, because
I really did.
Speaker 6: I played the hell out of it that I be
it three times, Mike, there we go, okay.
Speaker 3: There yeah, yeah, Gosha.
Speaker 4: He just made a clicker game about giant bombs and
it's it's actually very undertating.
Speaker 1: Tchuktowski did the bulk of the work, and then the
art was like just taking screenshots from pixel Draft videos
of the various characters like Mike mcquanchie, for example, and
then those characters cards. You can level them up and
they become more powerful, and then you could take them
with you from one game to new game plus and
it's just so well done. It's not and it's not.
It's just like he could have just completely been like, oh,
here's an idol game and it was like halfway half baked,
and I would have been like, that's awesome. But it's
like such a good Idol game. It's got so many
good ideas. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: Tuktowski in the chat says, pickle Draft did those cuts
himself and sent them over in the right ratio.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Nice, Yeah, just amazing work. And then when we pointed
out saying, oh, you're like, Sean's not in there. Now
Sean's in there, and so it's tam and stuff like that,
because yeah, they hadn't appeared in a Pickle Draft video
because it's based on Blake Club, but they just made
new ones.
Speaker 2: So's I have been animated in the past. There was
a Dayshon cameo in one of those videos, but.
Speaker 1: Oh no, maybe that's the one they ended up using. Okay.
Speaker 2: Also, I just had a Pickle Draft emote that I
realized I've been saying that for a long time, and
they definitely deserve to be in the chat.
Speaker 1: All right, Dan, can you read this one titled Golden Age?
Speaker 5: Yes, Hello, smart Bombs. I believe Giant Bomb is in
a new golden age powerful. Jeff's great new and old
content and the vibes on the podcast are immaculate. What
is something else you love that is experiencing a golden age?
Like we're in the Golden age for Oreo Collapse something
like that. America. You're always saying, Wow, the real answer
for me wrestling?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, good point. Wrestling is healthier than ever as
a business, not just of it, are you? And content
has been fun as hell to watch and you know,
the Netflix stuff and everything, the Max deal, it's the
better ways to watch it. It's just been fantastic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I guess emulation, but like emulations always getting better.
But it just feels like we're such a good place
of all that and all these fun little consoles. Maybe
just retro gaming in general. Prices of actual games is
a thing, right that's always going to be a little
bit of a problem. But outside of that, there's so
many ways to play old games right now, and that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is something I me and Mike talk about
decent amount. We're kind of in maybe be the golden
age of fighting games. Like as much as people romanticize
the late nineties early two thousands, there there's so many
to play. They're so accessible now coming up with new
ways to play them even and they've been more accessible
than ever and that's really cool. And there's so much
variety that you always have something to check out. It's
really fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, go ahead, no you go because mine's bad.
Speaker 4: Go yeah, just like certain companies, so like it's clearly
a Nintendo Golden Age right now. Like you know, it's
been kind of going on since you know, twenty seventeen,
but we're still in that capcom definitely, and when it
seems like, say, guys maybe just entered theirs, like they
figured stuff out, and if all this sort of retrovival
stuff works out for them, they should be pretty And I.
Speaker 1: Might have talked to everyone. You said that was from
a Mike from Loveland and then mine. It's like you
guys had all the good ones that I would have said.
So right now, I just think that a lot of
sports are in a good place. Not the NFL because
the Super Bowl kind of sucks, but.
Speaker 6: Like they I'm okay with it, yeah, but you are.
Speaker 1: But like, you know, hockey's like a place where's like, oh,
there's so many great veteran players and then there's so
many great kids coming up at the same time that
like clearly we're watching like Sidney Crosby when they're young.
So it's just very cool to be checking in right
now when it's like there's so much skills in all these.
Speaker 5: Different sports sports question, as someone who grew up watching
the Chiefs and sense moving away, you know, I'll watch
them when they're in the Super Bowl or some of
the playoff games and stuff like that. I did get
the sense just on like Blue Sky over the weekend
that like, are the Chiefs becoming hated in the way
that like the Patriots were hated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they've won too many times?
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, that's it growing up there, you know that's cool.
I like that.
Speaker 1: Ye yeah, of course you want Everyone wants that for
their team. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean like we were like, let's be clear, in Detroit,
we were planning that, Like we were like, hey, when
once the Lions win, we're gonna be the most toxic
fan base you've ever seen. We are, you're gonna hate us.
And then of course you bit us in the ass
and we lost, so uh but so everyone wants that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's it is wild when I go home, because
it's like, you know, growing up, like of course, yeah,
were talking about like Elvis Gerbach or like when Joe
Montana came to the Chiefs and you know, uh, Trent
Green was the thing for a while, and like people
were obsessed about the Chiefs even when.
Speaker 3: Like at best they would get to the playoffs.
Speaker 5: Now I go home, if it's during football season, oh
my god, everyone's wearing it Mahomes is on every fucking billboard.
Speaker 3: It is like nuclear there.
Speaker 1: Now, yep, it's then that's that's how it goes. And
that is people hate that too, right, Like, oh, Mahomes, well,
here's the reasons why he actually sucks and the league
is always pulling for him and making making sure he wins.
It's like, I don't know, maybe, but we would all
take that in an instant if we were given the choice.
Speaker 3: By the way, and I really may say too many.
Speaker 5: Commercials you talk about, like all the leagues pulling form
and stuff, the amount of like weird conspiracy theories I
hear when I got home too, was like, well, Mahomes
brother has mob connections, and then there's the Tailor Swift
thing going on here. So whenever the Chiefs lose or
something or something goes negative, it's about the mob or
Taylor Swift or something like, yeah, the fuck are you
all talking about.
Speaker 1: That fucking rules?
Speaker 3: Actually, right?
Speaker 4: It is in crimble how many people just immediately believe
that like all the rests secretly make sure the Chiefs
win their games too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do find that when I come home in Kansas.
Conspiracy thinking is in a golden age, right, now, so.
Speaker 1: I go, yeah, all right, I'll everyone's read one, now
I'll read this one. The retro handhelds from a Brad
and Huddersville. Wait a second, and that's near Tumwater, Washington.
Uh okay to grub or anyone else sufficiently qualified. I'm
looking to get retro handheld like the size of an
old school game boy, preferably can play up the PS
one games. Any help would be appreciated. You guys rock
keep rocking. I mean trim you right, that's true, that's
the one.
Speaker 5: Well if you specifically went up to PS one games,
I think it's funny. This morning I went to go
load up. I was like, I had the trimuy and like, oh,
what should I do on this that I wouldn't do
on the Pocket. It's like, all right, pocket can't do PlayStation.
And I loaded up Tony Hawk three just I just
saw the words and I was like, yes, that's good.
And I loaded up and started playing the Foundry level
and I was like, this isn't running that great? And
then I realized, oh, right, this is the PS one
version of Tony Hawk three.
Speaker 1: Right, that's why it's.
Speaker 5: Not the way I remember. But it does play PS
one way I played Twist Medal two on there. It
plays PS one games pretty solidly, even some Dreamcast stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's some Dreamcast suff Yeah, go ahead, Mike, Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's a PS one version of Tony X pro Skater four.
And I'm like, I gotta see, what is that messed up?
Speaker 1: I mean, didn't we say that there was like a
PS one version like way past Tony Hawk's pro Skater four.
Didn't they have like thug even No, I don't think so, Okay,
I'm like curious because uh remember something along? Oh no,
it was game Boy. It was the game Boy design Yeah, right,
American and Doug two and yes, all those.
Speaker 3: Stuff.
Speaker 1: That's what it was. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah,
trim and the trimuney is really affordable. If you want
to spend a little bit more, you can definitely get
uh one up to like one hundred and fifty dollars
that will have analog sticks and can play easily, can
play Dreamcast, maybe even play a little bit of PS
two maybe. But I think, you know, if you're just
dabbling in this and you want one that's going to
be good out of the box, and it's just just
nice to use. I think the trim UIs is the one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a perfect starter one because it's
just like especially when you like follow some of these
YouTube tutorials on like really cleaning up the interface and everything,
like I forget what is it's not menu I for
the is.
Speaker 1: It MENUI for the you Ui?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that one's just fucking fantastic. It plays everything.
Speaker 5: Like I was debating about, like, oh, as I'm playing
through these Mario Land should I do it on the
pop do it on the trim And it's like I
do think the pocket screen is better and it just
feels better for like especially game Boy, game Boy Advance games.
Speaker 1: It's like literally just annext the resolution of a game
Boy screen.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, it looks awesome, but like, the trimuy is cheaper,
it's easy to set up. It's so easy to just
kind of like toss in a bag and not worry
about it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I like the sp one from Ambernick, but it's a
little chunkier, a little slower. I think the trimuy is
the best kind of like entry level hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've reached a point where pretty much the chip
in any of these systems will play everything that is
reasonable for you to emulate on the go that you
would want to emulate. I go that if you want
to spend a little bit more on like one of
the newer retroid pockets that can also do you know,
like Dreamcast GameCube PS two, you can. But yeah, it's
it's more a matter of, yeah, just finding the form
factor that they want and just playing YouTube channels out
there to help with that stuff. Now, like regularly really
like retro game Core, right.
Speaker 6: They're great, use I use them all the time.
Speaker 1: Good boy. Absolutely for me, I've like kind of settled
into this way of doing things where it's like older games,
especially handheld but you know, uh a PS one, Super Nintendo.
I will use one of these retro handhelds. And then
if it is PS two, PS three and anything like that,
I'm just gonna do steam Deck. It's just steam Deck.
I know it'll run. I have a good interface already
set up. There's a ton of community sport for mu
deck to make sure it's as good as possible. So yeah,
you know, I keep eyeing like the iin odin or
something like that. I think that's what it's called. Yeah,
and I'm like, I.
Speaker 2: Don't think it's worth the price, especially, yeah, exactly. I
know the person emailing and specifically did ask for like
a very pofortable one around the size of a game boy.
But if anyone is curious, the steam deck is still
just like the best emulation machine that you can take
around with you portably. And now now there's trying to
clear out some of the older ones. You can get
them on sale for like you can get refer one
for like around three hundred, which is like.
Speaker 1: You put in a a Samsung SD card, one of
the faster Samsung a s D cards, and you're not
going to be hurt and for not having the SSD
actually turns out exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, good device.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see, let's do one more email Sean,
can you read this last one? What is a coworker
or what is coworker?
Speaker 3: What is coworker?
Speaker 1: Oh boy?
Speaker 2: Science is ever evolving. It is not magic. It is
a process. Observations are made, trials run, results are analyzed.
I realized my prior experiments were rudimentary and flawed, raw
with surface level speculation, so I narrowed my focus to
an individual subject co worker or apparently also known as
Jeff Backlar. I present my last work, the behavioral analysis
of Jack Backlar. Through careful observation, I've grown to appreciate
the mundanity within the life of Coworker. Admittedly, there were
times where I had doed his existence. Was Coworker something
my subconscious was implanting as a way to provide a message.
One minute, a disgruntled side in my headphones, so the next,
staring at the starring in the Blockfuster flopped the green
hornet the last in my dismay. He is real?
Speaker 1: But what for?
Speaker 2: Despite the odds, Coworker has made some slam improvements to
cementing his existence in the world. I now know that
Coworker loves the New York Rangers, hats and Jesus. But
the struggle of being the straight man in such a
wiggly world it's probably why that has so shiny. Anyways,
who was I talking about? George J from Chicago? Ps
of this major giggle. These are fun to write, bomb
fall asleep?
Speaker 3: Was was the Jack Backlar bit?
Speaker 8: An?
Speaker 3: Actually just type focus. That's a cred either way. Tyler
Dirden situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jack back, that sounds better. You should change Jack's back. Yeah,
there we go he's gonna start on bullying two. Yeah,
thank you, Jordan. Jay. Always appreciate your emails. These have
been very fun these past couple of weeks. All right, Sean,
we did get a message from Dan jan to check
the discord. I can play the sound if you want
me to focus on that, or can you or do
you want to do that?
Speaker 2: I don't know if if it's playing sound, you should
do it through your end.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, give me a second, you guys. Maybe
actually we skipped an email. Maybe do that? Why I
get that set up? Let's see here, Mike. Can you
read the one from is it perfect game mash up? Yeah,
because that's what we didn't do.
Speaker 3: Yes, I wasn't paying attention, Dan Riker.
Speaker 1: Could you read the way it says perfect game mash up?
The email from the email thing there?
Speaker 7: Yeah, a perfect game mash up for me, Jeff, Hello, Bombers,
co workers, poggers, and soap eaters.
Speaker 2: You are tasked with creating the best video game of
all time by combining the gameplay of one existing game
and the world of another. What's the best combo example
of one Slay the Spire gameplay mash with the Umble
Verse world page shout outs elbow drop, attack car, dang
one example two Doom gameplay, mash with Elden Ring World,
rip and tear those fucking lobsters. Dbi's doing all right,
Jeff from Quebec.
Speaker 5: Twisted Metal gameplay in the Mario Kingdom Mushroom Kingdom interesting?
Speaker 3: Hit me?
Speaker 2: Now, hold on, Hold on, Dan, I want to explain
that one to me.
Speaker 5: I want a Twisted Metal game where I can choose
between Mario Kart style characters, and I can choose different
vehicles based in the Mario world. And I didn't want
to drive around Mushroom Kingdom locales using fun I guess
I'm just describing battle mode of Mario Kart.
Speaker 4: Yes, never mind, Mike, I want hit Man World of
Assassination gameplay in the world of Shrek.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. Well what so what
did Shrek be the one point on disguise or like,
are you playing as Agent forty seven?
Speaker 4: You might not be playing a Shrek. Shrek might be
a target for all I know. Like worlds would be
like Lord Farquat's Castle, Far far Away Land, trek Swamp,
that that university, that that dweeb Prince Arthur went to
in Shrek three, all these good places, and yeah, you
just kind of have to wander around. You gotta mark
like the Big Bad Wolf as a big bad wolf
because he's smuggling cocaine and needs to die. So you're right,
you gotta go figure out the best way to you know,
find them when he's pretending to be Grandma or something
and put on. You have to disguis yourself as a pig, right,
so that you can go in there all on, assuming
like stuff like that.
Speaker 2: It would be the more the more you talk, the
more I like the idea. I guess, yeah, it's much
better than Dan's.
Speaker 1: I agree. All right, I have got this audio. It's
six seconds. While I was getting that ready instead, I
was gonna play it. You didn't see like Janet Show
and Chet say, oh god, don't.
Speaker 3: Play that right, see that. It's just talking right.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna play the audio. That's it. So this
is a confirmation that Jane Joe had lived up to
his side of the bargain. I'm gonna play it. You guys,
let me know right away.
Speaker 5: If you can't hear it, Okay, Dan record my god,
I did say in quotes, can you say I love
you solo. I said I would venmo him ten dollars
from my pocket if he said I love you solo.
He said I love solo.
Speaker 6: So he got seventy five percent of the words, which
I think should be seven dollars and fifty cents. So, Jan,
if you can venmo me back two dollars and fifty cents,
I think we're good.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play it one more time, just so we
could be clear.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I need two dollars and fifty cents back.
Speaker 3: Jane. We'll say, you know, I respect it.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 6: You gave it a good shot there, and you got
three force of it.
Speaker 1: I mean the heat of the moment. It's pretty good performance,
it is for Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a hard thing to work into a corporate
at all hands Media. Jacob fut To samoean werewolf reference.
But by the way, somehow we decided that Mike was
the Italian werewolf. So that's another one. You just want
to throw that into the Mike nickname bucket. Sure you
forgot these our Jacob fut To.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's got so many kids, this guy, Mike,
Yeah seven, all right, I don't know how does he
get in the show, he does what we learned. I
don't think we learned anything on this episode. Four of
us no, absolutely each other a lot. That was nice. Yeah,
that was good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Nikki Jacobo has seven kids and he's like thirty
two years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not done yet.
Speaker 4: Do any of you have grandparents that had like, like
thirteen siblings, because I.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my my grandma had like seven siblings. My grandpa
had a bunch of two.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, my my mom has like seven siblings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad like seven or eight. Yeah, it's hard
to count.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's gotta be impossible to happen eatingful relationship with.
Speaker 1: All your Oh yeah, that's where the idea of like
favorites definitely comes from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twelve or something.
Speaker 1: I'm good to have them.
Speaker 5: Jan, I am confirming I received your two dollars and
fifty cents with a note that says sorry, so one,
we're all good.
Speaker 6: Good work, Jan, excellent.
Speaker 1: All right, good way we did learn Jan does good
work in all hands meetings. So we'll wrap it up
with that. I guess you know what, maybe this this
is gonna work. I can just hit this and get
us out of here. Uh, he's gonna do the oka.
I'm gonna end it. There we go.
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 1: Well then in that case, bye everybody until.
Speaker 3: Next time on this show?
Speaker 2: How do you not know this show?
Speaker 1: I don't pay attention to this part. I'm long tuned
out at this point. All right, Yeah, Blake Club tomorrow Thursday,
will voicemail dump truck? What else is happening? We what
were we just talking about?
Speaker 5: Like we wanted to play on the site, or you
wanted to play or.
Speaker 1: Orcs Must Die or Orks Must Die game. We're gonna
try to do that Friday. Wow, that's pretty good.
Speaker 3: Are we doing the best music of twenty twenty four?
Speaker 6: B Yes, that's Friday ye put together.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be a big weeks, gonna be a
good time. And then Nicky says Minecraft. So there you got?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah there was something. Oh, Sniper Elite. Yeah, we're
gonna play some Sniper lead on the on uh on Thursday,
maybe Dan, I don't know.
Speaker 6: We're also trying to get Virtual Fighter and maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we'll maybe we'll decide between Sniper Elite and
Virtual Fighter. All right, everybody, we're gonna get out of here.
Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to Sean,
thank you to Mike, thank you to Dan, thank you
to the dog cam. I've been Jeff Grubb, thanks to
everyone else in Giant Bomb. Until next time, have a
good one, take care of yourself. Goodbye, japanstemperat