Speaker 1: Hey, Aidan, did you enjoy having a video game industry
Speaker 1: anchored by small, closely held companies with decades of history
Speaker 1: and the toys and games making businesses? You mean the
Speaker 1: type of industry that made Final Fantasy six in like
Speaker 1: ten months?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And did you enjoy a games media comprise mostly
Speaker 1: of independent publishing companies, most of whom specialized in games, tech,
Speaker 1: and or hobbyist publications?
Speaker 2: Loved it? It made me who I am? Too bad?
Speaker 1: Welcome to fun Factor Season two, Rise of the Corpos.
Speaker 1: You've got fun Factor. Two old gamers reviewing old video
Speaker 1: game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Shelter, He's Aidan Moher, and
Speaker 1: we're two professional writers who grew up loving the video
Speaker 1: games and video game magazines of the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: and two thousands. Every episode we take a critical look
Speaker 1: back on the games media that, for better and for worse,
Speaker 1: inspired us to do what we do. First, go to
Speaker 1: Factor pod dot com, follow the show on your podcatcher
Speaker 1: of choice, leave us a rating review on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. We read the best, kindest, funniest,
Speaker 1: and most insightful ones on the air in our letters section.
Speaker 1: Please consider becoming a member of fun Factor Ultra, our
Speaker 1: premium tiers, the unlock ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and
Speaker 1: the swanky members only channel of our discord. You also
Speaker 1: get access to watch our recording sessions live on secret
Speaker 1: private feeds as we have members of fun Factor Ultra
Speaker 1: in the chat with us right now as we record
Speaker 1: this very episode. Just go to Funfactor pod dot com.
Speaker 1: I promise you cannot miss the sign up with it
Speaker 1: on our homepage. Then help us spread the word. Shout
Speaker 1: us out on blue Sky at funfactor pod dot com
Speaker 1: and everywhere else at fun Factor Pod. Aiden. This week's
Speaker 1: issue humbles and shames me like no other for reasons.
Speaker 1: We're about to get into you. Uh but first, what
Speaker 1: is the wrongest you have ever been? The wrongest I've
Speaker 1: ever been? I mean, if you ask my kids or
Speaker 1: my wife, I'm sure they have many examples. Sure if
Speaker 1: you ask me the wrongest I've ever been?
Speaker 2: Man, that's tough.
Speaker 1: There were definitely like things I was excited about, but
Speaker 1: I'm that like didn't pan out or didn't become what
Speaker 1: I sort of hoped they would be.
Speaker 2: But are chronicle? Are you in Chronicle?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like it was okay, it was mid right,
Speaker 1: it was like it was mid So I don't yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I get excited about things, but
Speaker 1: I'm also like, just by nature a little cautious about enthusiasm, sure,
Speaker 1: and so I don't get over hyped on things. So
Speaker 1: what's something that I like didn't expect to be my
Speaker 1: jam and was? You know, like I think about like
Speaker 1: something like Elder or just hard games in general. I
Speaker 1: went through thing where I was like, man, like, this
Speaker 1: trend of hard games is not great. It makes them
Speaker 1: inaccessible and makes it hard for people to get into
Speaker 1: it and stuff like Hollow Nights, stuff like elden Ring,
Speaker 1: stuff like Dark Souls. So then I went to write
Speaker 1: a piece for my newsletter Astrolabe about why death is
Speaker 1: a mechanic is bad. So I played a bit of
Speaker 1: Dead Cells and then I was like, oh wait, no, what,
Speaker 1: I wait?
Speaker 2: I like this.
Speaker 1: I played some Hollow Night, which didn't click with me
Speaker 1: right away, but I've since played it and love it.
Speaker 1: And then I bought elden Ring because of the George R.
Speaker 1: Martin connection.
Speaker 2: I was just curious.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a big I have a big background
Speaker 1: and fantasy books, and you know, I've read all the
Speaker 1: ice some fire books, song Arise, Fire Buks. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, you know what the hypes get
Speaker 1: into me. I'll buy Elden Ring. I'll play it for
Speaker 1: a couple hours and then just to see if I
Speaker 1: can see like George's fingerprints on it. And then one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty hours later I had platinumed.
Speaker 2: It and I was like, yeah, it's good.
Speaker 1: And so that was one where I was like I
Speaker 1: kind of started to get it and my cynicism about
Speaker 1: difficult games, I should say challenging games, because I think
Speaker 1: there's a difference between like a challenging game that's ultimately
Speaker 1: fair and balanced, and like a hard game that's not balanced,
Speaker 1: So like something like Hollow Night very challenging, something like
Speaker 1: the stuff Working Designs was doing in this era where
Speaker 1: they're artificially increasing difficulty was hard in a bad way,
Speaker 1: and so like, I kind of didn't understand the difference
Speaker 1: between the two until then, And now I understand why
Speaker 1: I was missing out on.
Speaker 2: All these popular games that I actually.
Speaker 1: Really like in the end, and it was because of
Speaker 1: that sort of cynicism towards something I didn't understand well, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I had a whole bunch of cynicism for something
Speaker 1: and it turns out it was wrong. This issue Next
Speaker 1: Gen eighty five is a monument to the absolute wrongest
Speaker 1: I have ever been and it's next Gen. We've time
Speaker 1: skipped from our first season well passed in the magazine
Speaker 1: was called all Capitals, Next and then Generation. I want
Speaker 1: to describe this cover for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have a very.
Speaker 1: Green, very xboxy cover, a lot of like white text
Speaker 1: on a black background, but dominating is a big glossy
Speaker 1: Xbox logo. Yes, and it says Special Edition Ultimate Xbox
Speaker 1: Review Guide. Twenty six launch titles rated, including four genuine
Speaker 1: classics okay, sure, two complete duds that tracks three major surprises,
Speaker 1: but which are which. When this issue came out in
Speaker 1: January two thousand and two, we'd all been reading more
Speaker 1: and more rumories about Microsoft's Direct Xbox, and unlike the
Speaker 1: timeframe of our first season, by this point I not
Speaker 1: only had a gaming PC, I was a registered small
Speaker 1: business owner, buying parts at wholesale and building custom PCs
Speaker 1: for friends and businesses. So I was very well acquainted
Speaker 1: with what Microsoft was doing in the computer space and
Speaker 1: the idea that they could build a small, self contained, reliable,
Speaker 1: powerful and cool games console was laughable. We were still
Speaker 1: in the sort of eraw when vaporware quote unquote was
Speaker 1: most often applied to hardware. I've often joked that every
Speaker 1: year at CEES they'd spin this big wheel full of
Speaker 1: electronics makers, telecom providers, and toy companies and then make
Speaker 1: them hold a press conference announcing their new games machine
Speaker 1: or multimedia platform or whatever that had zero chance of shipping,
Speaker 1: let alone selling. Matt Susheta is teaming up with Mattel
Speaker 1: to make your Pacific Bell cable box run LaserDisc games,
Speaker 1: right Like, So many consoles got announced and then they
Speaker 1: never had any real games to show, never had any
Speaker 1: third parties on board. The M two M two for sure,
Speaker 1: and they basically just seemed to think if they could
Speaker 1: just get the plastic box in the world, gamers everywhere
Speaker 1: would lap it up. And you could bet that these
Speaker 1: consoles would never get made, and if they did get made,
Speaker 1: they'd completely suck, or if they somehow didn't completely suck,
Speaker 1: they'd see like a tiny release in Japan or like
Speaker 1: California only, and then just vanish the Apple Slash Bandai
Speaker 1: Pippin is still effectively a fairy tale, even if Wikipedia
Speaker 1: tells me today that twelve thousand units did ship in
Speaker 1: the US, and all of these things I swore up
Speaker 1: and down to my friends also applied to the Xbox.
Speaker 2: You know, I was right there with you.
Speaker 1: So you know, if this was wrong, doubting the Xbox,
Speaker 1: that probably would be the wrongest I've been in a sense,
Speaker 1: except there's only.
Speaker 2: Been one good Xbox time, the three sixty. All the
Speaker 2: rest have been like.
Speaker 1: Sus I think, so, I like, I don't think I'm wrong. Next,
Speaker 1: what is Xbox at this point? Yeah, that's the thing
Speaker 1: is that we should have been right right, Like so
Speaker 1: many people are involved back then today talk all the
Speaker 1: time on podcasts about how what a moonshot it was,
Speaker 1: and how counter to Microsoft corporate culture it was, how
Speaker 1: often the project was nearly killed, and how many tiny
Speaker 1: little miracles had to happen for the company still shipping
Speaker 1: Microsoft Office with Clippy the paper Clip Assistant to design, build,
Speaker 1: develop a library for, and then successfully sell millions of
Speaker 1: units of a genuinely cool game console. But it did
Speaker 1: hit stores en mass across the continent. On November fifteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, making Japan wait for once, and
Speaker 1: here we have all twenty six launch titles rev in
Speaker 1: this issue of next Gen, which would have been on
Speaker 1: newsstands in time for Christmas shopping. Microsoft launching a legitimate
Speaker 1: challenge to Sony's already dominant PS two would mark the
Speaker 1: birth of a massive, glorious new era in games, but
Speaker 1: it would also mark the end of a beloved era
Speaker 1: in games media. If you are not already a member
Speaker 1: of fun Factor Ultra and getting ad free episodes.
Speaker 2: Hang tight through the break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we will crack open the cover
Speaker 1: and flip through next Gen eighty three right here on
Speaker 1: fun Factor.
Speaker 3: If this is tied from the future, I said issue
Speaker 3: eighty three right here, but I meant issue eighty five.
Speaker 3: So every place I say issue eighty three this episode,
Speaker 3: just know that I meant issue eighty five.
Speaker 2: My apologies.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to fun Factor, where two old gamers review
Speaker 1: old video game magazine reviews. Of course we want you
Speaker 1: to review us. Did we get a full five point
Speaker 1: zero fun Factor? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and
Speaker 1: we'll read the best, kindest, funniest and most entertaining ones
Speaker 1: on the air. Aiden the deal with next Gen. Again,
Speaker 1: this is next generation the magazine, but we can see
Speaker 1: already it is not next generation in the magazine. It's
Speaker 1: next gen. Logos change, the fonts have changed. It doesn't
Speaker 1: look uncool, but it doesn't stand out from its competitors.
Speaker 1: A lot of other games magazines had kind of leveled
Speaker 1: up as well and gone to the you know, sans
Speaker 1: serif once more professional looking, kind of clean design that
Speaker 1: they kind of led the industry on. And so it's
Speaker 1: not like A doesn't look like an evolution of it,
Speaker 1: but it also doesn't look much different than most of
Speaker 1: the other magazines on the shelves at this point.
Speaker 2: It is it's very generic. And that was my first thought.
Speaker 1: When we when I bloaded up this issue to start
Speaker 1: taking a look at is it just looks like a magazine.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Like Next Generation had such a vibe to it and
Speaker 1: it was so far ahead of its time, but it
Speaker 1: feels like they kind of missed the boat here and
Speaker 1: this looks like, you know, it looks.
Speaker 2: Like it could be anything, really like it could be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the world, it could be games for Windows, it
Speaker 1: could be you know, like it looks like one of
Speaker 1: those kind of generic magazines you see on newstands. Now,
Speaker 1: that's like the ultimate guide to chat GP. It's just
Speaker 1: like the most like, you know, generic magazine you could
Speaker 1: possibly imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So issue eighty three, January two thousand and two, one
Speaker 1: hundred and three numbered editorial pages. That is slim.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Number of games reviewed forty nine these twenty six for
Speaker 1: the Xbox cover story in twenty three for other platforms,
Speaker 1: which is wild. That's a huge number of reviews at
Speaker 1: the number of systems. That's like a review for every
Speaker 1: two pages.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh huh uh huh uh huh yep uh number systems
Speaker 1: reviewed for his five, Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation two, Dreamcast, and PC.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna open this up here a little bit and
Speaker 1: get to now the masthead proper is actually at the
Speaker 1: back of the issue. However, we have a little editorial
Speaker 1: letter from the editor here.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: This guy holding cannon mountain. Do don't recognize him? He is,
Speaker 1: in fact Blake Fisher, executive editor. I don't remember his name,
Speaker 1: despite his having worked at Next Gen for several years
Speaker 1: at this point. And I guess that's what happens when
Speaker 1: you don't give people bylines. Eh h Could you please
Speaker 1: read for me the beginning of his letter from the editor. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: in the three years I've been at Next Generation, I've
Speaker 1: always hoped that one day I'd be that guy at
Speaker 1: the front who tells you what this issue's all about.
Speaker 1: Never did I think it would be like this, though.
Speaker 1: You see, it's Sunday.
Speaker 2: I'm really tired and haggard.
Speaker 1: And I need to get this call him in before
Speaker 1: the magazine ships to the printer first thing tomorrow morning.
Speaker 1: In short, I'm exhausted and my work is late. Honestly though,
Speaker 1: I just had to see how Halo ended, and trust me,
Speaker 1: it was worth the all nighter, all right, So good
Speaker 1: kind of first introduction to Blake here. Unfortunately, it's very bittersweet,
Speaker 1: not just because he's haggard and tired and turning in
Speaker 1: his first issue late after pulling a all nighter playing Halo,
Speaker 1: but because this is also his last letter from the editor,
Speaker 1: because this is the issue of Next Gen. The magazine
Speaker 1: ended after this. We get a little hint here and
Speaker 1: the ending it was always called ending, right, because they
Speaker 1: were doing NG at the beginning of the magazine.
Speaker 3: They tried to.
Speaker 2: Work an NG into all their site.
Speaker 1: And so we say so long, We love our readers
Speaker 1: looking back back page Bye bye. This is the only
Speaker 1: actual reference in the magazine to the fact that this
Speaker 1: is the last magazine. Yes uh or drub in Chat
Speaker 1: says press f to pay respects Big F in the
Speaker 1: chat for next Gen. Don't worry about Blake, though, he
Speaker 1: did very well for himself. After four years at Future Us,
Speaker 1: the publishing group that published Next Gen and Game Players
Speaker 1: and other magazines, he switched to Game Dev and he
Speaker 1: must have really loved this Xbox launch lineup because a
Speaker 1: couple of months after this issue hit the shelves, he
Speaker 1: started a sixteen year run developing third party portfolio planning
Speaker 1: for Xbox title. By the end of it was Director
Speaker 1: third Party Portfolio Planning. And then in twenty eighteen, Microsoft
Speaker 1: started a new quasi independent first party studio called The Initiative,
Speaker 1: and Fisher started there as Director of World and Narrative. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this was the studio created to make the Perfect Dark reboot,
Speaker 1: and as we all know now, that did not go
Speaker 1: so hot, so he left in twenty twenty three, joined
Speaker 1: Hi Rez Studios for a year and now he is
Speaker 1: at Tencent Director Venture Lab. So my guess is it's
Speaker 1: more portfolio type management stuff as opposed to directly getting
Speaker 1: into game death. So yeah again, Blake Fisher Dida Okay
Speaker 1: after this, but I got into games journalism at the
Speaker 1: wrong time.
Speaker 2: Time.
Speaker 1: Oh, you don't even know. You don't even know, Aiden
Speaker 1: because besides Jeff Lundergan and a couple other you know,
Speaker 1: future and next Gen regulars Bulwarks Longtimer's managing editor jennifersal
Speaker 1: now had been managing editor for over a year, and
Speaker 1: after this she'd move on to EGM and was the
Speaker 1: managing editor there for five years. Over five years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she also in the meantime took on that title
Speaker 1: for the One Up Network when it came into being.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, she jumped over the desk
Speaker 1: and joined Sega as Associate creative director for like a
Speaker 1: year and a half. Then there's like a several year
Speaker 1: gap in her resume and she notes only doing freelance
Speaker 1: work for Wikia quote creation of parent oriented articles within
Speaker 1: existing video game, TV and movie wikis, so like part
Speaker 1: time wiki editor. And then in twenty fourteen she joined
Speaker 1: Venture Beat as managing editor again, where despite her titles,
Speaker 1: she said, the staff endearingly call her the quote chief
Speaker 1: Typo and Deadline officer. But then, Aiden, could you read
Speaker 1: the second half of her venture Beat bio for me.
Speaker 1: I grew up in and around Silicon Valley and I've
Speaker 1: worked here for almost twenty years. I have close friends
Speaker 1: and family members with ties to major companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and others. I'm committed to keeping these relationships separate from
Speaker 1: my professional life as a journalist, and I will recuse
Speaker 1: myself from involvement in any story where a conflict may arise.
Speaker 1: I support venture Beat's ethics statement.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Jensow's work history on LinkedIn ends here, and I
Speaker 1: could not find any other place where she may work
Speaker 1: after twenty fifteen, And I did a little digging around,
Speaker 1: and it feels like I can pretty constantly say that
Speaker 1: the close friends and family members with ties to major
Speaker 1: Bay Area tech companies is how she is able to
Speaker 1: lead an instagram worthy life still to this day in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area, doing all sorts of cool stuff all
Speaker 1: the time and not really having to work for money.
Speaker 1: So yeah, right place, right time. Uh, literally living a dream.
Speaker 1: Congrats to Jensau. That's how we would all love to
Speaker 1: be able to do it. And again, it just kind
Speaker 1: of goes back to you like you said, and I
Speaker 1: got into games media at the wrong time. And you know,
Speaker 1: so much of that was where were you at the time, right,
Speaker 1: Like were you in San Francisco? Were you in New York?
Speaker 1: Were you at a did you know somebody?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Were you really talented, really hard working person with an
Speaker 1: absolute passion for games writing or both? And you know,
Speaker 1: way ahead of the curve. Okay, cool, you could end
Speaker 1: up at running these pubs or being in tech or
Speaker 1: directing game studios or whatever it was. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more opportunity to get in at the
Speaker 1: ground floor. But the floor doesn't get all.
Speaker 2: That much higher up the ground.
Speaker 1: Now it's like subterranean, get in in the sub basement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, like a skimmer of water. Who on
Speaker 2: the floor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is time for the flip through, okay, In
Speaker 1: we have to start with the first ad of the magazine.
Speaker 1: This is for Connecticut Racing has evolved. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: there's so much to unpack here. We have this person
Speaker 1: with wheels on their hands and ankles and this, but
Speaker 1: like armor, we have to be clear that these wheels
Speaker 1: are attached like to the insides of their feet. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: now I believe you could stand on these two wheels
Speaker 1: with these but then the wheels on the hands are
Speaker 1: like on the palms. I'm this is wild attack, so
Speaker 1: I think the idea is like wipe out. But no, no,
Speaker 1: you turn into the motorcycle.
Speaker 2: You are, yes, like you.
Speaker 1: You like connect your feet and you connect your hands
Speaker 1: and you turn into a motorcycle. Yes, okay, and I
Speaker 1: have apologies, folks, I'm trying to with this CBR the
Speaker 1: we so yes, see, okay, this is the dream, right
Speaker 1: not having to work, that's like, you know, that's great,
Speaker 1: but this is the dream. We're ang getting to turn
Speaker 1: into a motorcycle with your like boo bar with your
Speaker 1: boo barmer. And this is this is the part of
Speaker 1: been slow playing. First of all, I didn't even recognize
Speaker 1: this is her hat here right, like this is a helmet.
Speaker 1: And we want to talk about like anatomically impossible like
Speaker 1: the skeleton, the rib cage. This spine has got to
Speaker 1: be like seven feet long and everything is protected except
Speaker 1: from the rib cage to the knees. And then we
Speaker 1: just get underwear and then the tagline here zero to
Speaker 1: sixty and thirty six twenty four thirty six gross of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely bizarre freak stuff. I like the boob armor
Speaker 1: also notably has like nipples, yes, like nipple armer too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yeah, good amazing stuff. We're gonna see,
Speaker 1: like in a way like we've been doing late nineties cringe.
Speaker 1: I think like early aughts cringe.
Speaker 2: Is gonna be worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's like it's going to be trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to like older cringe forry people than like like
Speaker 1: twelve year olds. Yeah, so get excited for that, I
Speaker 1: guess everyone. We go ahead to the editorial content, of
Speaker 1: which spoiler, there is very very little we have lift
Speaker 1: off launch Mania, Xbox and GameCube are now in the
Speaker 1: hands of gamers, real fun starts. They have a little
Speaker 1: tiny bit of an interview with Bill Gates. It's mostly
Speaker 1: not cool. Another bit of news here Tokyo Game Show.
Speaker 1: Word at the Tokyo Game Show was that Sega looked unstoppable,
Speaker 1: it says here, chucking off the hardware business instead. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Sega's doing great, focusing on software only, which, by the way, folks,
Speaker 1: and the time skip we were seeing teasers for Dreamcast
Speaker 1: specs and the Naomi Arcade Board, which was Dreamcast based
Speaker 1: directly right, basically just Dreamcast in an arcade box. Skip
Speaker 1: forward four years. Dreamcast is dad. Never mind, forget about
Speaker 1: that whole Dreamcast come and gone. We have Windows XP
Speaker 1: plays hard randomly five star review, revolutionary, brilliantly conceived and
Speaker 1: flawlessly executed, a new high water mark according to their
Speaker 1: grave and according to their grade system, it's it is
Speaker 1: the best Window.
Speaker 2: Four Windows XP. Ah yeah, I would give that.
Speaker 1: A five stars as far as grading on a curve
Speaker 1: because it's still Windows.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Windows XP has features like.
Speaker 1: Easy CD burning and a built in firewall, but gamers
Speaker 1: need only remember three words stability, software, and speed because
Speaker 1: it's built on the two thousand kernel. Okay, great, and
Speaker 1: that's the end of the editorial, which is wild for
Speaker 1: next generation. Like what a shift from what we were
Speaker 1: reading and looking at last season. Absolutely so we get
Speaker 1: Xbox review as promised, We have capsule reviews of every
Speaker 1: Xbox game. At least Halo gets a full one page review,
Speaker 1: but only a one pager Yeah, like that is the
Speaker 1: Xbox game, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And let's see Halo didn't get five stars. Yes,
Speaker 1: Halo got five stars, so it gets what are the
Speaker 1: seventy five words like what's our other all time classics
Speaker 1: Aiden Dead or Alive three? Quite possibly the best three
Speaker 1: D fighting game ever made, both in graphics and gameplay,
Speaker 1: is this. Did Did I miss that? The HDTV advantage?
Speaker 1: I no way that was an advantage. I Those thhdtvs
Speaker 1: were so bad in two thousand and three. Man just
Speaker 1: input leg alone and stuff. Yeah, well what I what
Speaker 1: I wanted at the time was and and God help you.
Speaker 2: Uh those HDTV c rts, those.
Speaker 1: Big, huge oblong ones with giants.
Speaker 2: I want one.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, those things were. Those things were monstrous yeah,
Speaker 1: and bad like and they also had like tremendous input lag.
Speaker 1: They're great for, like if you want to watch some
Speaker 1: Blu rays, but uh, they're no good for I didn't
Speaker 1: even realize that at the time. Yeah, so Odd World
Speaker 1: Munches Odyssey. I got four stars. Maybe that's not a cut,
Speaker 1: but again, and I'm not saying one star Kabookie Warriors
Speaker 1: needed or one star Shrek needed any more time, right,
Speaker 1: But that's.
Speaker 2: The Holy cow.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate that they're using their full scale They
Speaker 1: absolutely are.
Speaker 2: You didn't see that all that often.
Speaker 1: So you've got this box checklist, right, So what genre
Speaker 1: number of players. Does it support five point one dillivy
Speaker 1: Does it support HDTV? Some of them do, some of
Speaker 1: them don't. Tony Hawk pro Skater. They're also counting for
Speaker 1: ADP is HDTV, which is pretty funny. Yeah, the seven
Speaker 1: is the only one. Tony Hawk is the only one
Speaker 1: that sports seven twenty P objection. Halo did not support
Speaker 1: four ADP. Interesting. Interesting, Okay, that's according to Lord Druv
Speaker 1: and the chat. So yeah, skip ahead two previews here
Speaker 1: and this in this issue is just stacked. We've got
Speaker 1: this huge spread for Terminator Dawn of Fate, which I've
Speaker 1: never heard of, and then Matt hoffins Doom on the
Speaker 1: game Boy Advance Banger. Yeah, Space Channel five Part two,
Speaker 1: spider Man in the movie. But we've got Final Fantasy ten.
Speaker 1: We okay, maybe sid Meyer sim Golf, I.
Speaker 2: Know that exists. That actually seems kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm that looks pretty cool. Yeahsaha, yes, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: We get a two page ad spread for Final Fantasy ten.
Speaker 2: Pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Then we get to the reviews. Again, this is the
Speaker 1: whole this is the whole thing. It's it's all reviews.
Speaker 1: No editorial five stars from Metal Gear Solid two. But
Speaker 1: one thing the tagline for the Metal Gear Solid two
Speaker 1: one thing review is quote one thing's for certain you
Speaker 1: won't be disappointed, speaking of like how wrong could you
Speaker 1: possibly be? As like our intro discussion, like man, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of disappointed people who played MGS two.
Speaker 2: I liked it. Yeah, yeah, not me. Okay, but.
Speaker 1: I'm actually gonna skip ahead two letter section. When I
Speaker 1: heard that the shen MoU two was canceled for a Dreamcast,
Speaker 1: I was, like many other Dreamcast fans, really pissed. I'd
Speaker 1: been looking forward to a great game like Shenmu too
Speaker 1: for my dying or should I say dead Dreamcast anyway,
Speaker 1: I would love to know if any other upcoming Dreamcast
Speaker 1: games are to be canceled. This would be a great
Speaker 1: help since I would be spared the disappointment of my anticipation.
Speaker 1: From Joshua P Seven via email and do you want
Speaker 1: to read the response here starting with sorry to say,
Speaker 1: Sorry to say, but a quick glance over upcoming Dreamcast
Speaker 1: releases in the US shows well nothing no first party
Speaker 1: games after Sega Sports Tennis two K two and nothing
Speaker 1: from third parties either. So while Dreamcast won't and shouldn't
Speaker 1: be forgotten, it certainly is gone. It is worth pointing
Speaker 1: out that Shenmu two res and Headhunter will be released
Speaker 1: for Dreamcast in the UK, but unless you've got a
Speaker 1: model console, that's not much help. A man, it's tough,
Speaker 1: and we'll have to do some We'll do some Dreamcast stuff,
Speaker 1: and certainly at some future season will be the intermediary
Speaker 1: period in here where we're skipping ninety eight, ninety nine,
Speaker 1: two thousand and two thousand and one. Obviously we've got
Speaker 1: a game, a demo disc here, and atter the demo disc,
Speaker 1: all the stuff, the best three D fighting game ever made,
Speaker 1: Dead or Real life three Halo, et cetera. But I
Speaker 1: really wanted to get to retro view because this is cool.
Speaker 1: And as we've showed, they've been doing retro gaming you
Speaker 1: know inserts, and they by this point they've got a
Speaker 1: regular feature retroview look back at January nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: with a fake next Gen cover like this is what
Speaker 1: the vegazine Fun would have looked like at the time.
Speaker 2: That's sick. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any other magazines do that. We have
Speaker 1: retro sections, but like doing an actual like second cover
Speaker 1: for January nineteen eighty Eight's pretty Fun special My Super
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers two was delayed again.
Speaker 2: Like this is great.
Speaker 3: I love this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah that this is so good.
Speaker 1: Japan's Special Report, Japan's Loving sixteen viit Console or at
Speaker 1: what it means to you? Yeah, at want to play
Speaker 1: while waiting for the sn s, Shnobi, Bionic Commando, Ghouls
Speaker 1: and Ghosts, Narc Ninja Gaiden. Yeah, and I don't know
Speaker 1: is this the original box art? It probably is, or
Speaker 1: at least an original asset, right. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: big zoom in on Shinobi's like face covered by like
Speaker 1: his ninja mask.
Speaker 2: Yeah, glowery and eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Because I was gonna say that art is very much
Speaker 1: of the time. If it wasn't, it wasn't original. It
Speaker 1: looks like it'd be amazing if they actually commissioned well
Speaker 1: in an eighty style. You can see up at the top
Speaker 1: it seems oh maybe not, Maybe that's just the arrow
Speaker 1: has a black box.
Speaker 2: I thought there was like a clear cut at the top,
Speaker 2: but no.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Top ten Hills of nineteen eighty eight rain Man
Speaker 1: who framed Roger grab It in the real world That
Speaker 1: got Emmy winners. The price of a first class US
Speaker 1: postage stamp Skyrockets from twenty two to twenty five sets. Okay, woo, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is so funny in nineteen eighty eight. That's it's
Speaker 1: cool that they're doing that. And then we get the ending,
Speaker 1: the ending ending, and here's where we've got the masthead again.
Speaker 1: Not a ton of other than Jeff Lundrigan. We don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of recognizable names here, except there's a
Speaker 1: couple in this editorial contributors that I'm going to skip
Speaker 1: over for the moment. I know Jennifer sou from One Up,
Speaker 1: her days at one OP. She was big on the
Speaker 1: One Up show and stuff, And of course Jeff Lunderground
Speaker 1: a game player is alum, yeah, and I like this
Speaker 1: backwards compatible thing where they're talking about here, Oh did
Speaker 1: you miss something? Could be argued that even truly great
Speaker 1: gameplay wouldn't help you if your mouth is so and
Speaker 1: shut page forty one. What are those are the chokes
Speaker 1: on the end of his arms? Page sixty five. You know,
Speaker 1: so if you thought you read through the issue, you
Speaker 1: flipped through it, or you know, maybe you missed something,
Speaker 1: or maybe some people start at the back. Apparently we
Speaker 1: had a couple of guests say oh yeah. I like
Speaker 1: to go to the back and then read it backwards, like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that was me?
Speaker 2: Was that you? That was me? I've read magazine?
Speaker 1: Well now they the next gen was helpfully including a
Speaker 1: guide to here's all the stuff you are about to
Speaker 1: see next month. Games as art. Music is art, painting
Speaker 1: is art. Why not games? And this is presage twenty
Speaker 1: years of incredibly exhausting discourse. I love the mock up
Speaker 1: here of the Space Invader enemy on this beautiful hand
Speaker 1: carved wooden gilted frame, and the kind of the hutspot
Speaker 1: of this is that, as we know from the little
Speaker 1: hints there, this is the last issue with magazine. We're
Speaker 1: never getting the next gen issue of Games as Art, No,
Speaker 1: which is too bad. When did Ebert Roger Ebert do
Speaker 1: his whole games as I want to say, like that
Speaker 1: was seven eight something like yeah, okay, so that this
Speaker 1: was before that. I do find this funny, like especially
Speaker 1: the framing of like a Space in Vain is like
Speaker 1: sprite framed in a big, fancy like picture frame because
Speaker 1: just like just as week, what I did was print
Speaker 1: off a bunch of like screenshots that I've taken on
Speaker 1: photo at photo size on photo paper to hang up
Speaker 1: and decorate my office with. And so like I think that,
Speaker 1: like you know, it seems silly to put a big
Speaker 1: pixel lee sprite in a fancy frame, But as games
Speaker 1: have like progressed, there is art worthy of putting on
Speaker 1: a wall that doesn't involve what you know, I think
Speaker 1: actually makes video games art, which is you know, that
Speaker 1: immersive agency that people have when they experience it, which
Speaker 1: is what art is all about, right absolutely, But now
Speaker 1: it can also just look really pretty. Yes, both of
Speaker 1: those things. And by the way I looked it up.
Speaker 1: His original video games Can Never Be Art essay was
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and then he also wrote a response to
Speaker 1: it in twenty twelve, where he complains about everybody begging
Speaker 1: him to play this game or that game so he
Speaker 1: can see how wrong he is, and that at I I,
Speaker 1: just like Rogerie, were playing Shadow of the classus would
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, oh put that on pay per view.
Speaker 2: Incredible.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it is time to do the thing
Speaker 1: we do. If you have not become a member of
Speaker 1: Fun Factor Ultra getting ad free episodes, don't worry. After
Speaker 1: our amazing original music from Millennium Felc and a couple
Speaker 1: of ads. We will come back and review next Gen's
Speaker 1: review Uh pickman, we are back on fun Factor. Uh
Speaker 1: incredible first episode of our second season, Rise of the Corpos,
Speaker 1: the beginning of just big big, big, big, big, big, big,
Speaker 1: big money companies dominating the space, and the end of
Speaker 1: some really beloved game magazines, but also the beginning of
Speaker 1: some beloved game magazines and game media outlets. We are
Speaker 1: starting to see the seeds of a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, if you like what we're doing again,
Speaker 1: make sure you go to fun factor pod dot com subscribe,
Speaker 1: become a member so you can join us as we
Speaker 1: record these episode sessions, so you can get ad free episodes,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff and our bonus episodes. Also, we
Speaker 1: have big one coming up next week. We've had in
Speaker 1: the cam for a minute, hot minute, so real quickly,
Speaker 1: let's go over the review system. We've done this before
Speaker 1: because it's still next gen system. It has not changed.
Speaker 1: It's still five stars. They are no longer printing their
Speaker 1: whole rubric, but I pretty much remember it right, and
Speaker 1: they try to use the whole scale. Five stars is revolutionary.
Speaker 1: As I said before, brilliantly conceived, wlawlessly executed a new
Speaker 1: high watermark. Excellent is a step forward for an existing
Speaker 1: genre or successful attempt at creating a new one.
Speaker 2: Good is.
Speaker 1: You know, good like a good example of an existing genre,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Fair was perhaps competent, certainly uninspired, and then
Speaker 1: bad one star was like seriously flawed and design or execution.
Speaker 1: They say here, since we're living in a time when
Speaker 1: even average games are pretty good, we at next generation
Speaker 1: will continue to demand even better. Note that a three
Speaker 1: star rating is a typical good game, so expect to
Speaker 1: see a lot of them. I actually do like this
Speaker 1: rubric me too, Like I like that it attempts to
Speaker 1: use the whole thing and recognize that like three is average,
Speaker 1: so two is like just below average, not bad necessarily,
Speaker 1: I think is what a lot of people would consider,
Speaker 1: like the seven out of ten game now right, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, having like Revolutionary as a five star
Speaker 1: and then Excellent as a four star, like even like
Speaker 1: you know four star being like, hey, this is still
Speaker 1: like cream of.
Speaker 2: The crop, right yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: Is is good and maybe more useful than a lot
Speaker 1: of the condensed rubrics used that just don't use the
Speaker 1: full scale.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, I totally agree, and I wish we could like
Speaker 1: live by such a scale today instead of the binary
Speaker 1: five stars one star or the you know ten point
Speaker 1: scale that goes from you know, six.
Speaker 2: To ten or seven to ten even. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in we've got Pickman for game Cube. And
Speaker 1: as always, of course there's no by what what say what?
Speaker 1: And what's over here? What's over here? FIFA two thousand
Speaker 1: and two by Gary Whitta, Oh, Gary wit A, Star
Speaker 1: Wars rogue On, Gary, Star Wars Rogue Ones, Gary Whitta, so,
Speaker 1: Jim Preston, Scott Steinberg, Peter Suchu. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Who these people are.
Speaker 3: Some of them ar.
Speaker 1: WWF SmackDown what. I love that they got the British
Speaker 1: guy to review WWS and Madden, I'm sorry two K two,
Speaker 1: Gary wit A reviewing NFL two K two.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's so. They were doing freelance reviews, that is
Speaker 2: the thing.
Speaker 1: So I believe outside of the ones that Blake Fisher
Speaker 1: and Jeff Lundergan did and again named, I think what
Speaker 1: they did was they as a staff reviewed all the
Speaker 1: Xbox games as their editorial for the month, and then
Speaker 1: brought in freelancers to review everything from everything else right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's how they got this issue out the door,
Speaker 1: the last issue out the door before the lock. They
Speaker 1: blew all their freelance budget for the year and couldn't
Speaker 1: produce another issue, right, Chrisly, You know Chris Late was
Speaker 1: like writing for five bucks a word.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, I had looked this up because he was at
Speaker 1: PSM for a while, and so I think he still
Speaker 1: would have been PSM's editor in chief at this point
Speaker 1: for the same company Future Us. Yeah, he was nothing
Speaker 1: like bringing in your PlayStation ehicee to review a GameCube
Speaker 1: game for a magazine like a magazine covering Xbox. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then he went from Future US because I think
Speaker 1: Future US took over Nintendo Power. He became editor in
Speaker 1: chief of Nintendo Power in October two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and then in twenty sixteen because he also in twenty
Speaker 1: twelve he became editor chief of MacLife, which was another
Speaker 1: Future magazine, and then in twenty sixteen he went to
Speaker 1: Nintendo and became their munications guy, still senior manager of
Speaker 1: corporate Communications. Yeah, so Chris Late still working at Nintendo.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty amazing that here he's the hardcore PlayStation magazine,
Speaker 1: fully independent, fiercely PlayStation by and for true PlayStation diehards,
Speaker 1: and he's here reviewing Pigman the Nintendo East of Nintendo
Speaker 1: Games truly. Yeah yeah, so, uh, Miyamoto, let your freak
Speaker 1: flag fly? And do you want to do just kind
Speaker 1: of the beginning two paragraphs here? Yeah, before that, I
Speaker 1: just want to touch on that, like subhead Miamoto, let
Speaker 1: your freak flag fly. We do talk a lot about
Speaker 1: like when we're individual creators starting to be credited the
Speaker 1: same way like musicians or film.
Speaker 2: Directors or authors would be.
Speaker 1: And so see Miamoto like called out by name without context.
Speaker 1: I think is a good sign of the fact that
Speaker 1: we were starting to like identify specific games with specific creators.
Speaker 1: Of course Miyamoto is like the creator, but I think
Speaker 1: that is an interesting sign of of evolution of how
Speaker 1: we talked about games. Okay, quote, every new Nintendo system
Speaker 1: has one wild card game at launch, pilot Wings for
Speaker 1: Superannias and Nintendo sixty four's Wave Race. GameCube gets Pickman,
Speaker 1: Nintendo's most bizarre creation since Pokemon, and the latest from
Speaker 1: legendary designer Shagaru Miyamoto. You control cute little Captain Orima,
Speaker 1: whose spaceship crashes on a remote planet Fyi in Japanese characters.
Speaker 1: Orima is Mario spelled backwards. Let me jump in here.
Speaker 2: Is that what he's called? Ol ol I m A R. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's uh, which interesting.
Speaker 1: So pre release, yeah, they like transliterated the Japanese character, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the yeah ri alright, oh yeah, but then they
Speaker 1: went with olimar so my, and then they did the
Speaker 1: l R. I'm just curious pre release, like when did this?
Speaker 1: When did this?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, that's interesting, Like they hadn't had like English communication,
Speaker 1: like like press materials about this and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah at this like at the time he was writing this,
Speaker 2: I guess that's really interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you played the Japanese version
Speaker 1: and went, oh, yeah, cool, that's Mario, Okay, cool. And
Speaker 1: then they localized it as Olimar maram what like I mean,
Speaker 1: like Orima I think is just I expect they felt
Speaker 1: like it was a hard word to say in English, right,
Speaker 1: and so they just sort of tweaked it a little bit.
Speaker 1: This is the l R thing with Japanese and English,
Speaker 1: and then they just sort of like, you know, you
Speaker 1: switch that l R to an L and then put
Speaker 1: the R at the end right right, And so that
Speaker 1: was just like a like, you know, trying to get
Speaker 1: some kids to say the name or whatever on and
Speaker 1: tweaking it from there. But do you see like in
Speaker 1: the screenshots or there is there English, like he probably
Speaker 1: was playing like a Japanese yet no, he just got
Speaker 1: numbers here. And this game obviously had very little text too.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a like, oh, here's your setup, Okay, great,
Speaker 1: you know there's They tried to make it as unobtrusive
Speaker 1: a UI as possible. Yeah, and look, all the UI
Speaker 1: elements are transparent, right, Like, I think that was the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I think me Moto really really really wanted
Speaker 1: to make this immersive something that I've you know, known
Speaker 1: I noticed years ago, I think in the coverage for
Speaker 1: Super Mario sixty four he talked about, like I wanted
Speaker 1: to create a small three D garden, like he talks about, yeah,
Speaker 1: games as gardens all the time, always has for decades, okay, right,
Speaker 1: and so like I really appreciated that given the GameCube,
Speaker 1: he really tried to literally let me just make a
Speaker 1: game that is a garden in a garden.
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: That was that was cool.
Speaker 1: I like, here, uh, controlling the pickmen is beautifully easy.
Speaker 1: They'll naturally follow you, but you can manually move them
Speaker 1: as a group with the yellow sea stick. The A
Speaker 1: button throws them and the B button whistles of Picman
Speaker 1: back back over if it gets separated. It's all very intuitive,
Speaker 1: with that special Nintendo magic to it at The levels
Speaker 1: are also meticulously designed so that when you find a
Speaker 1: ship part, you have to solve several puzzles to bring
Speaker 1: it back safely to the camp. Multitasking armies of pickmen
Speaker 1: to get the most done each day is the real
Speaker 1: key here. And like this is all like you know,
Speaker 1: very mechanical, but I think it's important to try and
Speaker 1: convey this is it's so wetted to the GameCube controller. Yes,
Speaker 1: the design is the game is like it's all put
Speaker 1: together in one way, and it doesn't it's hard to communicate.
Speaker 1: This looks really weird and the controller is really weird.
Speaker 1: And when you're trying to get like how is this
Speaker 1: gonna work? But you're like, no, you have to understand this.
Speaker 1: It feels like this console was built to run this game. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean that was you know, Miamoto was always
Speaker 1: trying to do that, right, like looking at unique games
Speaker 1: that he could make that embraced what his the latest.
Speaker 2: Nintendo console was trying to do.
Speaker 1: And Pickman is the most GameCube game of all time, right,
Speaker 1: and it's always felt I didn't play Pickman at the
Speaker 1: time on GameCube, but I've played it since. But it's
Speaker 1: one of those ones where, like you know, it was
Speaker 1: re released on Nintendo Switch online recently, I think, and
Speaker 1: that's one where it's like, if you can get your
Speaker 1: hands on the Nintendo GameCube controller for Switch, like do it,
Speaker 1: because the game just feels that much better than trying
Speaker 1: to play with the more generic like pro controller or whatever.
Speaker 2: I also like how this part.
Speaker 1: Of the review, you know, if you sort of like
Speaker 1: piece it together, it describes like a reverse Zelda in
Speaker 1: a way where like Zelda in Miamo do Zelda games,
Speaker 1: you were trying to solve puzzles to reach your goal,
Speaker 1: whereas in Pickman you sort of have to reach your
Speaker 1: goal and then solve your puzzles to get a bat
Speaker 1: yeah yeah track, you know, can't traverse back the way
Speaker 1: you came.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's an.
Speaker 1: Interesting reversal on his usual design methods for like Zelda.
Speaker 1: I love the death of a Pickman in set box
Speaker 1: here We're not going to sugarcoat this game for you.
Speaker 1: Many pickmen won't make it through alive, but if their
Speaker 1: deaths are entertaining, their sacrifices will not have been in vain.
Speaker 1: Here are a few of their our favorite ways. Death
Speaker 1: by fire, death by water, death by a gested purple pickman,
Speaker 1: zombie on death and uh, you know, so like there
Speaker 1: is that playfulness and you feel bad. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, like especially when you screw up and then
Speaker 1: you have to hear like a big massive diode. Oh.
Speaker 1: But it's not like you know, X Calm or some
Speaker 1: of these other games where you have NPCs that you
Speaker 1: get so individually attached to that you're like, no, if this,
Speaker 1: if this one dies, I'm hitting reset.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's not that, but it is still gets you in
Speaker 1: the feels a little bit. And it's funny because like
Speaker 1: this comes back to what I was talking about with
Speaker 1: like my impression of hard games and death as a mechanic,
Speaker 1: And like in Mario.
Speaker 2: If you died, it was like, oh, that was a mistake.
Speaker 1: Now I need to redo it, learn so that I
Speaker 1: don't die the next time. Whereas this didn't trivialize death
Speaker 1: like you still needed to manage that, but it also
Speaker 1: showed that, like, you know, just as death is part
Speaker 1: of the natural world and the natural life cycle, like
Speaker 1: that's part of what Pickman is, Like you're not making
Speaker 1: it through without people the little pigman dying, and it
Speaker 1: kind of leans into the naturalistic themes that Miyamoto was always.
Speaker 2: Pursuing in his uh in his creations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to say I really liked Pickman.
Speaker 1: My wife loved Pickman my way. My wife played the
Speaker 1: silver off the disc of Pickman. Yeah, so much Pickman, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and all the sequels, right, she loved the sequels. And
Speaker 1: she actually plays Pickman Bloom, the Pokemon go alike, right,
Speaker 1: the Niantica, Yeah, she played and still played so much
Speaker 1: Pickman Bloom. I want to say, COVID kind of warps
Speaker 1: exactly how much. She's also a fanatic walker. She walks
Speaker 1: like six miles a day, so she plays a ton
Speaker 1: of Pickman Bloom. And at one point Nyantic just sent
Speaker 1: her a gift box with like bandana and like little
Speaker 1: tokens and trinkets and stuff, and it's just sort of like,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for playing so much Pickman Bloom.
Speaker 1: Like that, how much that is true sick oh mode
Speaker 1: when the developer the publisher is like, whoa you playing
Speaker 1: a notable amount of this game? Yeah, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fun and like they say here bottom line, they
Speaker 1: give it four stars, I should say, uh. In creating
Speaker 1: something between a classic Nintendo platformer and a PC real
Speaker 1: time strategy game, Mimoto has delivered a fun and quirky
Speaker 1: experience that may not be on Grand Escalist Nintendo's flagship titles,
Speaker 1: but will still be fondly remembered for a long time.
Speaker 1: And does that strike you obviously in hindsight, yes, it
Speaker 1: was fondly remember for a long time. Does that strike
Speaker 1: you as a bit of a swing, because to me,
Speaker 1: I feel like this was received. I think this wrong
Speaker 1: footed a lot of gamers at the time.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was like, I guess if you were looking at
Speaker 1: the GameCube and you were wanting but you were getting
Speaker 1: stuff like Supermatchal Idea getting you know, I guess people
Speaker 1: looking at Yeah, I don't like, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I like the New Miamoto game. You know, they didn't
Speaker 1: have a Zelda launch title, right, they didn't.
Speaker 3: Have the Mario.
Speaker 1: This was our Mario sixty four was Pickman. You know,
Speaker 1: like Mario sixty four was like the console defining game
Speaker 1: at once, Yeah, defined the whole genre of three D platformers, right,
Speaker 1: like this was like the most Mario Mario and the
Speaker 1: most you know, and so the equivalent to this is Pickman.
Speaker 1: And I think some people were thrown you know, the
Speaker 1: RTS thing, Like, I mean, I guess, yeah, it is
Speaker 1: an RTS. I remember being given for a loop by
Speaker 1: that but going I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it. I guess an RDS. You know,
Speaker 2: I guess maybe.
Speaker 1: But you know, so having this like genre bending, totally original,
Speaker 1: new character, new world, you know it again, totally unexplainable
Speaker 1: without the context to the controller, Like it felt like
Speaker 1: it threw people off. And I feel like that it's
Speaker 1: a not a huge swing, but a good line out
Speaker 1: to walk out on by Chris Slate to go, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be not remembered as like the epic new
Speaker 1: thing of all things, but it's gonna be fondly remembered
Speaker 1: for a long time and not like but.
Speaker 2: I think he was right. I think he yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he.
Speaker 1: Recognized that, like, hey, people might not appreciate this now,
Speaker 1: but and like we just got picked him four, Yeah recently, right,
Speaker 1: so like definitely, and I mean like it. Obviously, it
Speaker 1: didn't convince me to buy a GameCube because I didn't
Speaker 1: play it and I didn't get a launch I didn't
Speaker 1: get a GameCube until I got a game cube and
Speaker 1: walked out with Animal Crossing and Metric Prime, which like
Speaker 1: to old timers, but those are also very different experiences,
Speaker 1: and that's what I was looking for and always looking
Speaker 1: for from Nintendo, was, Hey, I want these traditional games,
Speaker 1: these traditional experiences like Metric Prime, but I also want
Speaker 1: some of the weird stuff that I didn't know I
Speaker 1: wanted in the first place. And so like Pickman as
Speaker 1: like a launch title here, I think you're right, is unusual.
Speaker 1: But I also liked and like the fact that Miyamoto
Speaker 1: was able to like do what.
Speaker 2: He wanted at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's that's important for Nintendo, and you know, but
Speaker 1: we also have to recognize that the GameCube did not
Speaker 1: form particularly well in this console generation.
Speaker 2: Right. I love the GameCube, It's I think it's.
Speaker 1: An amazing console, but it definitely like as a follow
Speaker 1: up for the six, Nintendo sixty four did not like
Speaker 1: did not help nintendover Like, it wasn't until the we
Speaker 1: came that Nintendo kind of came roaring back and so like,
Speaker 1: was it the fact that they weren't given us like
Speaker 1: Mario games right off the bat, and when we did
Speaker 1: get a Mario Game of Sunshine which was not.
Speaker 2: Great, right exactly?
Speaker 1: So you know, did they lean too heavily into like
Speaker 1: experimental stuff that people didn't really goe with.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a good question, Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: And again this is kind of why we go with
Speaker 1: Rise of the Corpos for the title of our second
Speaker 1: season now, because again we had Next Generation, which was
Speaker 1: this really bold, original, fully art driven, fully artistically and
Speaker 1: editorially driven project that in the at the end, here
Speaker 1: is some flipping through just a gaming mag like, this
Speaker 1: is just a gaming mag. This doesn't look any different
Speaker 1: from any other gaming maga the era. And again it
Speaker 1: doesn't look bad. It looks really professional and well thought.
Speaker 2: It's fine, but it's.
Speaker 1: Very different than what Next Generation looked like. Yeah, last
Speaker 1: season and we've got this generation is going to be
Speaker 1: defined by Microsoft versus Sony and Nintendo as kind of
Speaker 1: the weird third wheel. And as you said, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be in that weird third wheel place for a while.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is definitely like I think also where
Speaker 1: like the Nintendo is for babies, stuff really started to
Speaker 1: like rise. Yeah, because like thesion going zero to sixteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, twenty four thirty six.
Speaker 2: That doesn't even make sense.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: That would be thirty six minutes.
Speaker 1: No, it's twenty right, Like even if you converted that
Speaker 1: into times, that would be thirty six minutes to get
Speaker 1: to sixty second sixty Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: so they go for Pickman. We should do the review.
Speaker 1: Review the review we should say, I say our thing.
Speaker 1: Pickman was four stars. Bottom line, a charming, addictive game
Speaker 1: that backs up Nintendo's promised to innovate on GameCube. If
Speaker 1: you like puzzles, then get your thinking camp on and
Speaker 1: put ohs Pickman to work. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Aiden Yeah, I think that this is a good review.
Speaker 1: I think Chris Late identified what the game was, what
Speaker 1: its strengths were, right away, even if it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe what was expected. It wasn't focused on, Hey this
Speaker 1: isn't Mario, Like, where's my Mario game? He got it,
Speaker 1: And I think that deserves some credit. I like that
Speaker 1: he focused on the fact that, like, this is a
Speaker 1: Meamoto game, like be excited about it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a fairly short review, and I don't know that it
Speaker 1: necessarily like.
Speaker 2: I guess you know what.
Speaker 1: Actually, it focuses exactly on trying to describe the game
Speaker 1: in a way that makes a very strange game feel approachable, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is a very good review. I'd give
Speaker 1: this like a solid I'd give this a solid same
Speaker 1: score he gave Pickment eight. I would give this like
Speaker 1: eight pickmen out of ten. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah eight
Speaker 1: live Pickment two.
Speaker 2: Sure for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm gonna go nine out a ton,
Speaker 1: especially in the constraints of this is an all hands
Speaker 1: on deck effort they're just putting Yeah, was it forty
Speaker 1: nine reviews? Forty six reviews in a magazine and calling
Speaker 1: it a day and bringing in staff from other magazines.
Speaker 1: I think this, Yeah, one page, got a bunch of
Speaker 1: good screen you know, four really big, really nice screenshots
Speaker 1: that show what the game is. We get the cute
Speaker 1: there's there's personality in it. And yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: he absolutely called it correctly. This is exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: If you like puzzles or strategy or platforming to an extent,
Speaker 1: or just cute stuff, you're gonna love this. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be remembered fondly for a long time, even if it's
Speaker 1: not Mario or Zelda franchise, mainline level epic. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I give it nine out of ten, and the rest
Speaker 1: of the magazine I just again, I just want to
Speaker 1: give an f in the chat to next year generation.
Speaker 1: And that's why I wanted to start this season here,
Speaker 1: because it lived and died with basically one and a
Speaker 1: half generations.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It started with, oh my gosh, the Saturn and PlayStation
Speaker 1: in n sixty four are almost here. They're out there
Speaker 1: in Japan, they're coming right, And then now it's like,
Speaker 1: well the Xbox is here, rip see everybody, like we're done.
Speaker 1: We finally got the next gen consoles and right, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and something that was such a big artistic
Speaker 1: spring and inspired me so much, going, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is what games writing can be, This is what
Speaker 1: games criticism can be, this is what games coverage can be.
Speaker 1: All the you know, lengthy, lengthy interviews with CEOs and
Speaker 1: auteur game directors and producers and you know, iconic designers
Speaker 1: and creators and exclusive hardware teardowns and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: Like all that stuff was in Next Generation. Like I
Speaker 1: feel like three years prior to this, we would have
Speaker 1: got like a Pigmin review, and then we would have
Speaker 1: got a feature on like the history of RTS games
Speaker 1: on game content, yeah or whatever something like that, right,
Speaker 1: instead of just like a one page Pickman review. This
Speaker 1: is obviously focused on launch of the Xbox, which is
Speaker 1: also interesting because it's not focused on like GameCube launch
Speaker 1: maybe those happened a few months apart, but yeah, they're
Speaker 1: reviewing like Pickman here, so like, yeah, it's just it
Speaker 1: feels very strange, right, It does feel very much like
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, heavily focused on Microsoft, and that you
Speaker 1: know fits the theme of our season really well for
Speaker 1: an opening episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. How about that? Amazing coincidence.
Speaker 1: Amazing coincidence. And one last note I want to say, amusingly,
Speaker 1: the sister publication, Edge Magazine, is still a magazine. As
Speaker 1: we talked about before, a bunch of the style and
Speaker 1: even editorial content of Next Generation came directly from Edge
Speaker 1: the UK version, and you you can still subscribe to Edge.
Speaker 1: I think they publish quarterly. There's still Edge happening in
Speaker 1: the UK. And meanwhile, and it's still very close to
Speaker 1: what it was in the late nineties, Like it's still
Speaker 1: what we have been describing Next Gen's first iteration as right,
Speaker 1: Like it's very good man edatorially and artistically ambition for sure.
Speaker 1: All Right, that is our review of Next Gen's review
Speaker 1: of Pickmin.
Speaker 2: Did we get it right?
Speaker 1: Leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcast,
Speaker 1: thumb us up on YouTube, make sure you subscribe, comment
Speaker 1: on YouTube. We'll read the best ones on the air.
Speaker 1: Leave our review or review on Apple podcasts. And hey,
Speaker 1: go ahead and pass show around to all your friends,
Speaker 1: like it's third grade and we're on the playground. Shout
Speaker 1: us out on Blue Sky YouTube and TikTok at fun
Speaker 1: Factor Pod. Blue Sky's actually at funfactor.
Speaker 2: Pod dot com.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Millennium Fact for all our amazing original music.
Speaker 1: Check out his work at Millennium fa lck dot com.
Speaker 1: Unlike these old magazines, you won't have to wait a
Speaker 1: whole month for your next installment drop. We drop new
Speaker 1: episodes every two weeks. So go to funfactor pod dot com.
Speaker 1: Follow our show on your podcast or choice. Please consider
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Speaker 1: to fun Factor pod dot com. I promise you won't
Speaker 1: miss the sign of widget on our home page. If
Speaker 1: you do, you and we we'll have a maximum score
Speaker 1: in fun Factor never had any third parties on them
Speaker 1: two what we're living in the shadow of the M
Speaker 1: two at the time, for sure, and so it's not
Speaker 1: like a doesn't one hundred and eighty I'm sorry one
Speaker 1: hundred and three that the shen Moo two was canceled
Speaker 1: for a Dreamcast. I was, like many other Dreamcast fans,
Speaker 1: really pleased I'd been looking for I'm sorry, really pissed.
Speaker 1: My apologies. I was like, wait a minute, that's not right,
Speaker 1: that's not what I remember. Really pissed. I've been looking
Speaker 1: forward to a great game like shen Moo too for
Speaker 1: my dying or should I say dead Dreamcast. Hold on,
Speaker 1: I know, Editor in chief at this point for the
Speaker 1: same company, right, yeah, future US, pardon future US, thank you?
Speaker 1: Aiden good one yeah, good one, tight one. Like the
Speaker 1: magazine turns out when there's like literally no editorial we
Speaker 1: can see. Yeah, there's no previews, there's like very little news.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was funny.
Speaker 2: That's good. It's gonna be a good season.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree, And it feels good to be back, Like
Speaker 1: I was ready for a break from the typical format
Speaker 1: and like, I feel, it feels really good to be right.
Speaker 2: I thought the same thing to you.
Speaker 1: I was writing up the script and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love doing this stuff.
Speaker 2: This is the stuff I like.
Speaker 1: Y