CSB305: Nintendo Wouldn't Care if you had the Mandate of Heaven

Hey, Wooly, how you doing?

You feeling great today?

That's great.

I mean, look, I'm here, right?

Yeah,

that's the spirit.

Yeah,

I made it back and I got everything plugged in and

we are live.

To be honest, like the type of, so usually if I look at a travel weekend and I go, all right, well

this is going to be a you know traveling early on Monday, get back in, put everything together and

get get ready to go, then Tuesday is more than fine, you know,

in most cases.

However, given I had like probably my worst travel day experience yesterday,

it's a little bit more difficult than that, but I still decided to

not try to push things any further forward because I'd rather.

Oh, I wouldn't have been able to do tomorrow.

Well, there you go.

Yeah.

But

we need Thursday fucking pockets.

Because so to start at the end, you know,

after MAGFest, getting back was a.

It was tricky because based on the timing of when I had

got looked into the flights and stuff, usually you fly out.

There's the 15-minute away airport, and then there's the hour-away airport.

Right, Yeah.

And so, most of the time, I try to take the closer one.

This time, it ended up being the further one.

And

getting there,

you know, did the whole thing, got in three hours international.

For anybody who

ever, if you travel international, it's always recommended you be there three hours in advance.

Yeah, because it's all bullshit, man.

Exactly, right?

If you're at a,

if you're at a, if it's a local traveling thing, then it's, you know, much less than that usually.

But anyway, so, um,

yeah, so for whatever reason, flight delayed gets canceled.

Hell yeah.

Right?

Been there before, nothing new on that.

So it happens.

Was it flight direct?

Yeah, it was direct.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well,

delayed direct flight is like, eh, but delayed connecting is like, oh, fuck.

Yeah.

So,

yeah.

And even if you have pre-check, by the way, if you're thinking you're getting, no, no, no, you can get it.

Ah, man.

You still want to have those extra hours, believe me.

Yeah, you want to get out of the regular long line into the also long pre-check line.

I have pre-check.

I go through this shit as fast as possible, given that traveling is part of what I do.

And I'm still telling you, you can't just assume you're going to be fine with pre-check.

Canada doesn't have clear.

That's an America-only separate company thing or whatever.

But in any case, the way we do things, it's like you save a lot of time on the back end but you you can't risk it going in um so anyway the flight got canceled and i'm like okay so oh let's see what happens right that's just straight up that's happened before right so it's like you're gonna rebook us all right fine please be today and not tomorrow that would be nice you know not good and uh yeah after about you know maybe like 20 minutes or so you would get the update to the boarding pass and everything and it's like okay there's a new flight you're gonna be on it and it's gonna be four hours from from now.

So, you know, instead of in the early afternoon, you're going to be flying out in the evening.

It's like, all right.

Says here, it's a different gate.

You know, originally we were at a gate in the Z section, and now we got to go back over to A, you know.

Well, you have four hours to get there.

Sure.

Right.

So it's like, all right.

You know, everybody's at the gates talking, like, ah, this sucks, but, you know, yeah, it is what it is.

And it is pretty cold, I guess.

Could be a weather thing or whatever.

You know, so everybody starts getting their stuff and whatnot.

So,

yeah, we roll back over

and head over to the Newgate.

Myself, Punch Bomb, and Reggie.

And

yeah, and so getting there,

we kind of are chilling, looking around, getting settled in, trying to find the seats and whatnot.

And,

you know, we're just kind of like, okay, well, like, everything baggage related should be, like, oh, no, no, no, no, directly

sent over, right?

This is how these things typically have gone in the past.

If something goes off or whatever.

Please don't tell me you were taking American Airlines.

Please don't tell me you were taking American Air Canada.

I was not taking American Airlines.

In many, many a situation, in most situations, I'm taking Air Canada, you know?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

And so

take a look at

the

updated info for the new flight coming in.

And it doesn't, we're just kind of like looking at it.

We're like, we're at the right gate, but it's that thing where it hasn't shown up on the gate yet, and it doesn't say it's in your app or whatever.

But it's in the app, and you're like, this is okay.

So we're like, hmm, what's going on with that?

Why does this not seem to be?

And it's also like, okay, well, now we're in a united area.

So let's just go ask over there what's going on, right?

And this is like, I guess, like, you know, some time has passed, maybe

two hours or so, you know.

Oh, no.

Um,

head over, go.

So, uh, hey, this is the right gate, right?

That's we're here that says that the things have been moved over to this one.

And they're like, oh, you actually want to be in terminal, you know, whatever for Z, where the Air Canada stuff is.

I was like, right, but that got canceled.

And then they told us to come here to specifically gate A3.

And

he looks at it.

He's like, yeah.

And he looks at it again.

And he goes, this is at

Ronald Reagan airport.

No, you fucking no, you're at Dulles.

They rebooked you

at an airport an hour away.

They rebooked you at a different airport, and just it just updated

and at no point indicates that to you.

At no point tells you, it just says, Yeah, no, go to, it's like gate A3 now from Z10 to A3.

And it's like,

what?

Like, what?

Right.

It's like, yeah, you're going to need to, yeah, okay.

So it's one of those bits where it's like, okay.

That's not.

It's not a bit.

Well, but it's just like, it must have felt like a bit at the time.

But I'm like, I know, having been there, having been in these situations and having been with people as well where you're like, when the airport is just completely batshit crazy and loses its mind, no one's gonna no one gives a fuck.

Too bad it's your problem.

Too bad.

Eat shit.

Right.

And if you get upset at that, or if you're bothered by that, or if you try, it doesn't matter.

That's just, you're not gonna get your way.

Fuck you.

And like, so it's immediately like, I don't even have time to think about trying to process.

Let's just go, right?

Yeah, no, there's no time now to let's just go.

So we're just

clear security.

Getting and going, right?

And then, and then there's that decision of like, okay, well, this is an hour away, and we're out, we're out of the, the, the zone for the safety check-in point.

So

now I'm like, hold on, we need to check this with the gate agent to make sure that that's actually the case and that this is not someone fucking up, right?

We need to check this with the Air Canada agent.

There's the one that's in the terminal that we were originally at, which is not where we currently went to, but that's, and that's going to take a train ride to get there.

Or we can go out to where the exit and taxis and stuff are going to be, but

that exits our clearance.

And if we have to go

longer in the secure corridor.

And if we have to exit the clearance, then coming back in is going to take a whole thing.

And then,

you know, and like our luggage.

And so I'm just like, okay, got to make a call here.

Let's go to the curbside and then

speak to the agent over there.

And that's probably what I would have done.

Find out what the fuck's going on because going back to the inside one, like with the clearance, it's just like, it's too risky.

And I want to be able to get the fuck in a car because this clearly says, Hey, yo, you're not here, right?

Um, go over there, it's closed because they're like, Yeah, we're gone for the day or whatever, right?

Just we're done, we'll be back here tomorrow morning.

Cool.

Hey, uh, Iceland Air, can anyone next door, can you please find somebody?

There's an emergency right now, and we're about to get fucked over.

Can you, is there anybody?

So they go into the booth, they grab someone, they that comes over, and dude's like, hey, yeah, what's going on?

And I'm like, what the fuck we got rebooked at an airport at a different an hour away and this isn't indicated on the email i got or on the text message i got or on the app that i got like the three different places where they alert you to things going on none of these things indicated that um and he's like looking and going okay uh hold on and he's like oh no well you know um

Oh wait, he goes, oh,

and he goes, yeah, you're going to have to get over there.

You should be able to get there with just enough time if you leave right now.

And I'm like, okay.

And our bags are already over there and he goes uh wait what uh

what hold on what color are your bags and i describe them and he goes into the office right next to him and goes actually they're right in here and i'm like so there was no you didn't automatically transfer them you were just gonna keep them you did they were just here in this office upstairs out by the curbside How the fuck did that happen?

Right?

Why was there no, and uh,

they're like, well, he's like, oh, we said it over the comms you know and i'm like did you say it like like

you have okay we sent it over the comms i was there and uh we said that you know you were gonna need to go come grab these and it's like

Are you talking about like when everyone was filing out and when things like like or like at what point and like if there's people that are walking from different gates from different areas from different bathrooms they who the fuck knows at what point that happens?

I have never heard an announcement on the airport communication system that I've understood in my life.

And furthermore, at any point when you're moving around, usually with the app and boarding pass and shit, there will be things that say, Your luggage has been now loaded onto the plane.

It is transferred over to here.

You don't need to pick it up.

It has all these little things if you're moving around and it's telling you what's going on.

So the time when it's crucial to know what the fuck is happening, it doesn't have any indicator of that, much less the fact that the airport itself is completely changed.

And we just happen to get lucky enough to walk to the exact booth where it's like, oh, yeah.

We just happened to, we happened to wheel it right here.

So just like, and it's like, you know, it's, it's at that point where like he starts getting like attitude back in a way, going like, well, we said it and, you know, that's if we said it and you didn't hear it, well, you know, we, and it's just getting in, getting that kind of like indignant about it.

And I'm like, right, I remember this point where it's like, yeah, you're not, you're not going to like anger your way into a victory here.

They don't give a fuck because they're so used to getting yelled at when the customer is wrong that even when they're completely in the wrong, they're still going to get this attitude and get shitty about it.

And it doesn't fucking matter.

So just like, it's almost like tune it out.

Just please print out our shit, right?

We need to get the fuck going.

Can we make it in time?

Can you ensure that we can make it in time?

That's what you're saying?

Yes.

Okay.

Give us our shit.

Yeah, whatever.

And then it's like, okay, it's an hour away.

How much is that fucking tech going to cost?

And they're like, oh, yeah, we'll print out your voucher.

And here's your, here you can go.

You can get a free ride over there and here here's a bunch of extra uh credit money for a meal at the airport or or credit on whatever you know like like like you clearly fucked up but you're something

but you're giving the attitude as if like you know i like i we were in the wrong but yeah well next time fucking you know well maybe you should hear better now here's no here is the apology pieces that we're giving you for what is indicating that something wrong took place here but it doesn't matter who's responsible, you know?

Anyway, take that wheel, run, go.

Um,

you know, like, what to get to the place where we were told to go.

Of course, there's no taxis there.

Just like, I see a captain, I'm like, hey, captain, like, can you, is there, where's the nearest taxi?

We're just, we're going to get fucked over there.

And, you know, very nice pointed to, actually, yeah, you're supposed to go down this ramp in a different way from the way that the person told me.

Oh, so even the directions to the taxis were incorrect?

Fucking awesome.

Get there.

There's one small car, and it's like, cool, we have all our luggage, and there's three of us.

We have our check.

Can we make it work?

And the taxi is like, I'll do my best.

Let's do it.

Gets us in there.

We do it.

We go.

You know, great.

Fucking cool.

Hope we can do it in the 45 or whatever, you know, at this point.

On the way, looking at the app where it says the updated flight was, suddenly the updated flight, I'm like, like, like, because me and Punch Mom and stuff are like, okay, let's get our boarding passes and get ready to go.

Looking at that flight, it's suddenly just gone from the list.

Oh, that's so awesome.

That's so good.

We're midway through, and I'm like,

okay,

so

there's now just no, there's just no flight listed.

And

the airplane got tired and took a nap.

And I'm like, well, I'm already, I'm just like, okay, well, one,

thank fucking God that we have the bags with us and we're in a car right now doing whatever, because I couldn't imagine relying on any part of this system to actually transfer the shit it was to the place it was supposed to go

at this point.

Because what happens if the new thing that they book you on gets delayed?

Where do your fucking bags go even then?

Like, I don't even know.

They go to some guy's apartment where he scavenges it for iPods.

Straight up.

So

what even happens next?

So at this point, I'm looking at it.

The old, the new flights got like just not listed there, too.

Going to the website, it's like it seems like it was, is it delayed or something?

And it's just not showing up.

So, I'm just like, okay, fuck all this.

Grab the old record locator, go through the old check-in process again.

And now, instead of showing me, like, oh, sorry, your flight was canceled and we're putting you on a new one, it says you have to call an agent, right?

Just get on the phone, and we'll, we'll have to sort this out like the old school way or whatever.

So, I'm like, okay, get on the phone, get through the process.

The process of

using a phone for calling

the airline is basically, I want to say a solid five minutes up front of like, did you know that you can use the website or app and not the phone, you fucking idiot?

You should

never use the phone unless a human being told me I had to call the phone.

You should get the fuck off the phone right now, you stupid moron.

You should actually really use this app or website.

I'm going to use the phone because your app is a piece of fucking shit.

And after,

and then at a certain point, it's like, yeah, so are you sure that there's nothing that you needed that couldn't be solved with the website?

That we should proceed with this call.

And it's like, yes, proceed with the call, please.

It's like, okay, would you like us to send you a message about how to use the website in more detail?

Like, we could give you instructions if you don't know how to use a website.

And it's like, no, I need to use the thing.

And it's like, okay, cool.

Thank you.

And I'm just like, it's the response bot or whatever.

And yeah, get through to the person and like explain the scenario.

And

she's like, yeah, so I can't really

like you're like, I can't really book you on anything from here if it's saying that you're unable to check in or whatever on the app.

And I'm like,

stop this entire process.

Let's start at the beginning.

Like literally the thing.

Where's my plane?

Like we are like, like ignore,

like, because we've walked down a complicated pathway and you might or may not be really paying attention.

Just I'm like, ignore everything.

Let's just start from scratch here.

Our flight has been canceled.

We're in a car moving to another airport because we were told to go there.

Can you please help us get onto a new flight and ensure that we can check it in time?

And it's like, okay, yeah, let's look here.

He's like, okay, cool.

Yeah, I can do something.

This I can see now that your account has the old flight logged as your current flight, even though it was canceled.

So I'm going to erase that and,

you know, like take a look again.

And then I'm like, cool.

I look at it.

And then, yeah, sure enough, now that the old canceled flight is not blocking what is my current status as whatever travel, you know, the new flight pops up again.

And I'm like, cool, awesome.

Thank you.

Can you check us in?

Where's that new flight?

We are in the, we're squaring into like almost the near 90 minute range or so.

Can we please, can you just, can you check us in?

And it's like, okay, cool.

You can do it on the app.

And I'm like, great.

Can you stay on the phone while I do that, please?

Can you just hang out?

You know,

I just, just please.

You know, it's like, yeah.

I have also done this and they always hit you with this like sigh.

And I'm like, I have had it happen.

Like, I've done it like in person where I'm like, can I sign in on the app or would do whatever I need to do or the email like at the customer service kiosk?

And the person's like rolling their eyes.

And then it fails.

in front of them and I get to just stay there and go here.

Like when I got a new phone plan and I wanted to transfer my phone number, that process took four hours.

Yeah, and I had to keep rotating through.

And at some point, I'm like, I'm just going to call my phone company in front of you.

That's it.

And then it failed.

And then I put them on speaker and just handed them to the guy at the kiosk.

Because the incompetence that has led to this was some human bullshit a minute ago before we got in the car.

And now that this extra part is failing, this is your technology not doing what it's supposed to do while every automated process in your system is telling me to keep using this thing.

So while you're here, stay there so that I can confirm this is working, please.

And then you don't just go like, yeah, it's great.

Bye.

And then I'm, you were fucked.

So yeah.

Yeah, because if you had to go through that process again, you wouldn't even be able to check in before the flight left, right?

Exactly.

And sure enough, I go through, I check in, awesome, check in Punch Bomb, check in Reggie, doesn't check in me.

Says you're going to have to wait and go see someone at a desk for that.

Like, uh-huh, okay, great.

Is there anything you can do do about it?

Check in the guy who's doing it?

No, I just won't let me won't let me do it.

Okay, cool.

And on top of this, because like I brought

extra setup stuff, like tech and camera-wise or whatever,

I paid for an extra check-in as well.

So I'm like, can I also just not have the money I spent to check in another bag go to nothing?

Can I, would that be possible?

And yeah, sure.

You know, ladies, just like, yeah, you're just going to have to go over to the booth when when you get in there.

So it's like, all right, cool, that'll take extra time that we don't have.

Instead of just going straight to the gate and rushing, we're gonna have to go find a person at the wonderful, you know, and it's just there's a there's a really strange attitude I've dealt with with every single time I've spoken to anyone at an airport under any context.

Not in the airplane.

at the airport specifically, where they're like, oh yeah, just do this thing that takes time.

But I'm at an airport.

I don't have time to do anything because the airplane is going to leave.

Yep.

And that's the thing is every single time it's like,

are you assuring me that I have time to do this?

Right.

Because I'm also thinking every time these types of things happen and I find myself, there's times where I've been sprinting through fucking

Pearson, you know, or whatever, banking a corner to the airport to the flight.

I'm like, is grandma getting a drive down in one of those carriers going to be able to make it in time?

There's no

anyway.

So, yeah, and you know, whatever, run through, get to the desk.

It's like, hey, okay, cool, check in.

Yeah, hey,

you know, even though over at the other airport, we checked this in with your laptop, but this time we can't.

So, pull it.

Like, so there's different policies depending on which one we're at.

Well, in the time you were in that taxi cab, you could have hidden a bomb in that laptop.

Naturally, awesome.

Great.

Yeah.

And, like, as I'm kind of going, like, well, I'm just, it's just weird because I literally just we just came from this same thing being checked in as was, and a dude comes from the back to be like, well, sir, you got it.

And I'm like, it's fine, it's fine.

I'm not starting any issues here.

Just, please, we just want to get in and go.

And yeah, you know, like, roll through to that.

And just as one last little swift fucking, just a little, little, little nut check, just book, you know, on the way is going through the security and like getting all of the boarding passes scanned.

And the person who scans mine looks at it and goes, okay cool uh yeah you're at uh d51 scans punch moms goes uh d52 scans reggie's and goes uh d33 all right and we're like we're all on the same flight man

and like at that point i'm just like i'm so dead i'm at that like i've gotten to the point where like um like five minutes prior when i was going through the the bit and i had the pre-check thing and the guy's like oh you're pre-check go this way go this way they'll go this way and then we're like okay cool thank you would i go that way and he's like oh no wait it's closed.

Sorry.

Come back around.

Right.

So, because that happened, I'm like, oh, now I'm just having fun.

Now we're just getting loose with it.

I'm just like, yeah, let's go.

Let's, let's have a good time.

Like, let's have it all go wrong at this point.

Don't drop the combo.

Keep the rhythm up, right?

If this day is going to go fucking nuts, if this is going to be the dumbest flying day ever, then keep it up.

Have it, have more go wrong, please.

You know, I get to that loose point.

And then, yeah, just walking by when the person reads off three different incorrect gates for where we're supposed to go, I'm just like, like, I'm just laughing.

And we move past it.

And I check the computer and I check the thing.

And it's like, no, we're all at the same one, which is not what was said there at all.

And I was just like, was any of the three correct?

Yes, the last one, right?

Reggie got his correct.

Punchbomb and I got our gates wrong.

And I was just like, could you imagine if someone listened to you?

Like, what if someone was here doing this thing and then they listened to you as a person who's giving information about what they're supposed to do?

Like, in this situation, too, as well, where we're on the clock and everything's urgent.

It's like, going to the airport is so uniquely miserable.

Oh, because there's like an authoritative bent to everything because it's not just these people have control over whether or not you're going to travel and you're usually in a foreign country.

It's also that like they have legal authority to just block you, cock block your shit at like any

on a whim.

Yeah.

But they're all like insanely incompetent.

And

like, I just, every time I think about bad airport story, I think about like an instance that happened to me twice at two different American airports in which I asked, is today a take your shoes off day?

And I received the answer, yeah,

like I'm an idiot.

Uh-huh.

And at a different airport, I received the answer, no, yep, like I'm an idiot.

Yep.

Why would I know

your security protocol in a city that I don't live in?

Every time.

And different sizes, different different airports in the same city, depending on who's doing what, have different energy for what you're supposed to do.

Laptops out, laptops in, shoes off, shoes on, right?

I mean, I remember when it was, when like sanitizer was like enough to be, to travel with and a nail cutter, a nail clipper

was not allowed and now it is allowed.

And it's like, okay, cool.

But that exhaustion at a very, very reasonable question is that that's exactly it, right?

Knowing that that's the energy, it's, it's, and I've also, um,

Like people I know and people I've traveled with and stuff, there's been situations where it's like getting upset, upset, even when you're in the right, does not help in any way.

They just go, we're going to fucking kick you out.

We're going to get you.

Like it's like, because it's just, right,

you're looking at a

whatever the fucking percentage of like Karen-based behavior is, right?

There's a percentage of that where you're like, no, you're just fucking me over.

in every possible way.

And

a bunch of this too involves automation where a person could fix the problem, but in this case, the person is actually making it worse.

Isn't it way easier to just have the robot do it?

Wait, it's not?

And actually, customer service reps are now drowning under complaints because the system doesn't work.

So it just like at the point where like, you know, the, again, the apology printouts are happening, I'm just like, okay, I'm just basically explaining, like, me and PunchBomb are just talking, like, wow, it's really stupid how this thing tells you all the important stuff about where your bag's going, but the most crucial thing, like get up and change airports, isn't on the app.

Isn't that crazy?

And it's like, yeah, I don't know.

What's the point of it then?

Like, you're pushing this as an...

And we're just having our conversation between ourselves in front of the, because it's like, what else are you going to do at that point?

You know?

Anyway, we got in at whatever fuck in the morning, you know, and are here, but it's just.

Oh, so you got in this morning?

Yes.

Oh, no wonder you sound like shit.

Oh, that sucks.

It like, there was a point where I'm like, on the way, you know, like, this was a two-hour flight from Montreal to Washington.

And on the way, by the time we got back home, I'm like, we could have been at Narita airport right now.

Like, this was a flight to Japan in how long?

I bet it feels good to be back after that fucking nonsense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dude, I never told this story before, but when I was traveling with a friend of mine

internationally,

we had to do a connecting flight to Toronto,

and

we almost missed our flight because they did that thing where they offloaded us to that tiny little baby Toronto airport.

Porter,

right?

Dilly Bishop,

us specifically

because he had to be randomly checked

because he had an Arabic last name, but he had to be checked on the connecting,

which was insane.

And then we were almost late.

We barely got on the connecting flight.

And the person

at the gate gave us shit for showing up late after they pointed us to a different landing location.

Like,

when,

unless you beat me into it and there's no other way, I will never fly Porter fucking shit ever again.

It's insane.

There's only one reason to fly Porter, and the reason is I only want to go from Montreal to Toronto or Toronto to Montreal.

Downtown Toronto specifically.

That's the only, like, if you want to have any other location

combination ever, you don't do it.

So, I guess to translate for Americans, like, um, this is what they call you, you guys call like spirit airlines equivalent, but what if they had their own airport right and what if it was that doesn't connect to the real airport and what if it was built on an aircraft carrier essentially i feel like

i feel like that's what it is i feel like it's an airport just built on an aircraft carrier floating out in the you know just off the dock and um yeah and also because the wind is insane flying off the water um every one of their planes which are propeller planes which are very tiny have the most insane batshit turbulence you've ever felt.

I tell you what, though, I love good turbulence, man.

I think it's fun as shit.

Yeah.

Because, like, yeah, I, so I, I think turbulence is fucking cool because I'm not worried about it.

Uh, my wife does not think turbulence is fucking cool.

Yeah.

And that's that's really funny to me.

Uh, but it's also other people on the flight do not think that turbulence is cool.

And I'm like,

the plane plane go bouncy.

Okay.

Well, for most people, it's pretty fucking churning.

Understandably, I did learn something that made me feel a lot better about it, which is that essentially the way planes, especially modern planes, are built, turbulence is never what causes an issue.

It's always like a bird strike or a wheat landing gear issue or whatever.

So a bunch of shaking around and whatever.

Nothing has ever like gone horrendously wrong as a result of just turbulence, you know?

So

when we went and got this freak dog from America,

we took

America to Canada Ferry, and that motherfucker hit some waves.

Like, that thing was going at 40-degree angles on either side, going, whoa, whoa.

And I was walking around holding the baby, and we were going, woo, woo, while other people on the boat were going, oh my God, I was we're gonna tip.

And I'm just like, ha ha,

boat go back and forth.

That being said, having been in planes where where you get the drop and you're shooting upwards and almost hitting your head on the fucking

Yeah, you're like, no, that's partially that's potentially lethal type shit.

Yeah, but it's fun if you're in your seatbelt with the yeah, you put your seatbelt Okay, well, no, shut up.

You're insane.

But like

the roller coaster for free.

Like

people have broken fucking limbs and like I think there have been fatalities from heads hitting the top of the oh absolutely, but they didn't happen to me.

All right.

Well, in any case, all that to say that

when there's a good turbulence and the good turbulence is the, oh, we're pulling in for landing and you can see the air, you can see it turning and getting ready to land.

So like look out the window and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm feeling that because we're just lining up and everything's going good.

So great.

But I'll, but yeah, fucking, fucking Porter's insane.

Fuck that airport shit.

I'm, I'm beyond exhausted and tired.

I'm glad you made it back home, bud.

No, and I think in conclusion, we all kind of were like, as we're out of there, we're like, the amount of insane, stupid shit that went wrong today is grounds.

If we felt like carrying the fuck out, we could.

Yeah.

Right?

We absolutely could.

I don't have the energy or wherewithal.

I just want to get back to my bed.

But

there was more than enough there

each step of the way that could have gotten us fucking shit or

free vouchers or whatever.

Anyways,

we're very sorry for your unoptimal flying experience.

We hope you fly with us again.

Just tell us.

It's a $10 voucher that will not cover one sandwich.

And the thing is, is that

in a lot of cases, when it's like, oh, goddamn it, the flight's been canceled.

To me, I'm like, ah, that sucks.

It happens.

Like, that's not even remotely

the first thing that I'm bothered with.

I've really had trouble with canceled flights.

I usually just hop on another one a couple hours later, get a food.

That's it.

That's it.

But just get on, like, actually, you're supposed to get the fuck out of here an hour ago.

Yeah.

Anyway, so that was that was me getting back.

That sounds like that's

that sucks.

It was not great.

Man, God half-blighted you this week.

That's a proper blight.

A little bit, a little bit, but

that's all right.

MagFest was pretty fun, and

yeah, some of the reason you were gone on an airplane.

There you go.

And,

you know, that travel day is

still

less of a disaster than Lotus Juice on stage.

No.

No.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Lotus juice was there.

Oh.

Lotus juice was live, and I didn't scream.

I didn't know.

And it was like,

let's go see Lotus Juice.

He's.

It was.

Okay.

Live.

It was.

It was.

It was cool.

He needs to be mixed.

Yes.

Is what he needs to have.

So it was super cool that Lotus Juice was there.

And I didn't know.

And I was really happy to find that out.

And

there was even a secret show the first night.

And I was like, oh, fuck, there was a chance to go catch that, you know, just in one of the rooms over on the side.

And I was like, fuck it, let's get to the main one, you know, late night.

And

yeah, we pulled up.

And, you know,

as I was finding out, it's like, oh, shit, Lotus Juice is here.

And it was like, yeah.

And it's like, is that him walking right over there?

And it's like, yeah.

Oh, hey, it's Lotus Justice.

There he goes.

Ah, shit.

And, you know,

concert started 40 minutes late,

got pushed forward.

Previous act kind of delayed.

Oh, it was the previous act.

Previous act delayed things by, you know, 40 minutes or so.

So, yeah, it was supposed to start around 12.50, started around 1.30.

And I think everyone, you know, there's a bit of a,

I guess there's a bit of a Neil Young thing is

what we'd call it, where, all right, let's hear what Lotus Neux has got with some of the original tracks.

Cool.

First two, first three,

first six.

Everyone's kind of like,

hey,

if we can just get a crumb,

a crumb of that good shit.

Really?

A little bit.

Are you serious?

A little bit.

But I'm like, but I'm like, let's see.

I don't want to be that guy, though.

But I'm like, but we're also at MAGFest, so it's very clear why and what's going on and what this audience is about.

You know, you have that one good teacher at some point in your career through education.

There's like a one teacher that knew what the fuck they were doing and they gave you like a couple really good pieces of advice.

My English teacher, who was an old ass bitch, I loved her so much.

She was great.

She was so fucking mean.

When she's like, When you write something, the number one concern should be audience.

Who are you writing this for?

And I think about that all the time.

All the time.

When I look at something and go, who the fuck is this for?

And when you tell me that Lotus Juice went to fucking massive Weebass NerdCon MagFest and did six songs of his own material,

I'm just like, who the fuck is that for?

I don't want to be the play free bird person, right?

Because I'm always super down to hear the original stuff that is like, you know, what you're currently up to.

Like, that's the thing.

I think the best way to do it is to sprinkle and like paste things a little bit and jump around and then have these kind of like highlight moments as we're building things up.

But

it was long enough that it felt like the audience, the room was starting to stir.

And, you know, like the group I was with definitely did because some of the folks that were there were like, I'm out of here, I'm literally leaving.

I'm tired.

This was already 40 minutes late, and then on top of that, it's like, uh, you know, so there was that, right?

I'm like, I can't blame you, I get it.

Um, sing heartbeat, you motherfucker!

Wait, he's not even on that track,

but but you know, and then um, and then there's some stuff too where there's a couple folks who were like, Yeah, like

Shoji Megaro composition is like, in particular, like a like a wonder's like, those are the, I've seen some of those live concerts where it's you're like you're covering the span of like all the games, and like they're pretty, they're pretty fantastic.

Look at Juice comes out to do like three songs taller than those fucking things.

But but that being said, that being said, right,

you know, I don't want to fucking spin the narrative here, but it's just like, I just remember hearing about just like the Neil Young concerts where it was like, can you play one for us, Neil, please?

And he'll be like, if you all stay till the end of the set, I'll play my classics.

And then everybody does.

And then he just starts his new shit again.

I remember

back in the 2000s when Madonna had a resurgence, or that she had that music video, which was in aerobics gear, whatever the fuck, with her new album.

And she did an interview in which someone from like Vanity Fair or some shit asked her, it's like, how do you feel about playing your old songs at concerts?

And when people go to your concerts and they ask you to sing like a virgin or something like that and madonna responded with like i don't even know the words to like a virgin anymore i can't believe people even ask about that anymore

but

shut up sing the song now now this is the thing right i say all this fully knowing that like a ton of artists are also just like i just don't like either either maybe it's like i don't have all that in me maybe it's just like i've been this i don't want to just be that one thing my whole life you know i certainly wouldn't appreciate it if folks were just like, hey, yo, go do the best friends thing now.

Just do that, though, right?

I would be like, come the fuck on, man.

No, you know what I would be like, Wooly?

What?

It'd be like, hey, Wooly, you ever gonna do another video like Fighterpedia?

And you go, I don't even know fighting games anymore, man.

What are those?

Jesus, man, whatever.

That's literally what are those?

Yeah, you know?

Wooly, you,

was it last week or two weeks ago, you literally pulled out the wens mavel fucking card but yeah yeah yeah it's right it's right next to you right now

yeah sometimes you gotta sprinkle in a couple of the classics so to to to to to peel back the curtain on this one this is no No, okay.

No, don't.

I know what you're gonna say because that looks too good.

It looks way too good and it doesn't doesn't have any creases.

This is not the original from back in the day.

Of course it isn't.

Of course it is.

No, this was made because someone asked me to use it in a video.

Yeah, sure, but like that will be upcoming.

So I did a little bit of a same bit.

Yes, it is the same bit.

And I was requested to do the same bit, right?

As people are talking about pie stealing over there.

So 100%.

100%, right?

I know that feeling.

And

I also know when an artist feels pigeonholed and creatively fucking locked into some shit that they don't want to.

So all, but I think like, I think the balance, especially when it's like, this is the event you're at, is to do some and some and drop.

And then you have these like, oh, fuck, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then like, okay, okay, let's feel this shit out a little bit.

Oh, here it comes.

You know, you kind of play it.

I think there's a way you can do that and keep the audience like getting more and more excited as we build up to what everyone's really kind of excited and waiting for.

You want to get that mass destruction going, you know?

I,

Willie,

just between you and me,

pretend no one else.

Can I say something really brave?

Can I be brave here?

You can be brave and controversial.

Okay.

I don't think it'll be controversial.

I think

that a musician on stage

thinking

with any sense of pride or ego

is the lowest form of life.

Right, right, okay.

Okay.

I think I see.

Yeah.

Once they get up onto the stage,

they are there to dance and sing

and leave their body so that their muscles and voice can do the show.

Okay, yeah.

Listen, part of the reason why we love Ava so much is because Anno was completely insane in making that 100% selfishly and all about himself and said, fuck the audience, right?

There are times and places where fuck the audience is the right energy.

Yeah, yeah.

You know what?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna flip this around on you.

If Onho put out an Evangelion thing that was like beloved and non-controversial and all that shit, I'd be like, what are you doing?

No, you're supposed to get out there and take a shit on the stage and say, fuck the audience.

That's what I'm here for.

Oh, that's what you're supposed to do.

Right, right, right.

Okay, okay, okay.

Now that you've established what you're about, the next time you've got to do that thing.

You've got to go, yo, fuck you guys.

And if you didn't, now you're, I see, I see.

This is Riley from the boondocks looking at Ice Cube and going, that guy from all those kids movies?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see.

Okay, you're supposed to do what my expectations are.

Even if my expectations are for you to say, fuck me.

Yeah,

if I went to a GG Allen concert and he was alive,

I'd be so fucking mad.

Right.

And you're not flinging fecal matter my way.

Yeah, man.

Oh, what?

You're playing your folk music and shit, and you've turned over a new leaf now that you've come back to life?

Get out of here.

I mean, Steve Martin doing ukulele interviews where he refuses to talk about anything he's worked on except for the ukulele stuff is...

It's hostile, wild, hilarious energy that you could have towards what people know you for.

And I think this is the this is literally the the I would say the artist's struggle, but it's like all mediums, all things, like when you're known for this, and then you're like, okay, I also want to do this, and then people are like, I'm showing up for this, though, yeah, you have to find the right way to present it and to hit those things.

And I've seen shows, I've been to concerts where artists have pulled off both, and it's fucking incredible.

It's awesome when done right.

So, so, like, we have, we have an exit, we have like an example that is like much closer to home and that like we are variety content creators, right?

Which we poke a little bit here.

But we know lots of people, like I know tons of people who were not variety content creators.

They were

single serving content creators.

They did Warframe.

They did Destiny.

They did fighting games.

They did Dark Souls.

They did, you know, and this and that.

And every time that they would like go like, oh, I'm going to branch out,

people would go, this isn't fucking dark.

Go back to Dark Souls.

What the fuck?

And they all had to have this horrible period

in which they're like, dude, shut up.

I want to play something of God.

We've had that conversation, I feel, with way too many people that we know that are just like, yep, you're pigeonholed.

You're stuck.

You cannot escape what people have showed up for, and they don't want to see anything else.

And the truth of the matter is, you just power through it, and then eventually people that do want to see other things will show up and are going to be fine with it.

But yeah, that initial.

I remember when fucking Mr.

Charlie fucking

Penguin Zero Moist Critical was a black ops content creator.

And Max was a Call of Duty content.

You remember that?

I mean, Jesus Christ.

Fucking, yeah, it's insane.

And

a lot of the time, too, like, I would say just sidebar, like energy has a lot to do with it as well.

Because like, by the numbers despite like me being perceived as an FGC content creator count up how many videos go out that are actually FGC oh yeah by volume you're like I don't know 20% and less

it's it is clearly a variety category when it comes down to it you know um

so to the point where like chatting with with uh other creators as well about like oh yeah you just jump on do a week of this character you know like grind up a little bit and stuff, and kind of like, oh, oh, that's that's not how things go over here.

Well, even by FGC standards, you are like insane variety.

Cause like, what variety to an FGC streamer, a lot of times, is like, well, we're going to try a new character for the month of February.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That's, that's what I mean.

That's what I'm talking about.

Nah, man, we got to go into that dumpster and find that old Kusoge garbage for this week.

For one Saturday, and then next to slop, you know?

Anyway, so all this to say, like, there's been, yeah, there's been shows.

Like, I mean, shit, when I went to go watch

Shingo 2 and Oma doing the New Jabest stuff the other day, like, it was an amazing mix of, like, you know, originals, news, and then into some of the classics, and the audience got real hype with the progression of things.

But I think there's also a second reason here that might become a little more apparent.

So, like, you know, we were having fun with it, and like, you know, Lochus was doing stuff in,

you know, he was killing it.

He was jumping up there.

He's by himself, just, you know, performing.

um

then uh there was that moment of like yo y'all mind if i take my shirt off and he takes his shirt off and he's got a persona shirt underneath it and it's got a little jack on it and it's like ah there it is okay here we go you know and um

uh went into like a you know a couple of tracks like uh um it's going down now the new the new battle theme you know disturbing the peace uh it was it was yeah it was it was good um but there's definitely some stuff where i i felt like okay i think with the uh persona tracks it might just be because of how old it is, but it might be something where it's like, oh, maybe you haven't been performing these over the last two decades, you know, so it might not be fresh in the mind, but there were a couple of like, you know, little moments of like, ah, that line got dropped.

And it was like, okay, come back on the next line, you know?

So I think it was also a matter of like just performing while not super like fresh on the material.

That was also some trepidation as to like, you know, putting them up front or like, at the very least, going too heavy into the persona stuff, which folks were waiting on, you know?

And I think that all kind of came to a head because I feel like the

tracks we heard, you know, up to that point were,

yeah, just a couple of line skips and then you pick it back up on the next line.

And when it came to mass destruction, like the first verse, unfortunately, hit a point where it got really rough.

Like, the first couple lines were just gone.

And I think, as a recovery move, there was a moment of like,

the mic is not working.

Hello, hello.

And then

the singer, who did an incredible job covering and doing

the vocals, she kind of came up and did like a mic switch.

And there was a moment where it was like, oh, shit, okay, no, this mic is working.

And I think everyone's like, okay, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

We'll we'll politely kind of just accept, like, yeah, that's kind of what happened.

But it really wasn't.

The mic was fine.

It was just, there was a line flop that kind of turned into that.

And I think we all kind of knew.

You know, I think that's what it felt like in the room.

That sounds like a great show from Lotus Juice.

Verse two killed it.

Came back in full speed, full power, great times.

Bada, bapa, bada, bapa.

Loved it.

But

yeah, just being real about how that kind of went.

That was great.

It was a save.

And,

you know, and then I guess I was kind of hoping for, like, the one last thing I was hoping for, I was like, oh, are we going to do the fast intro?

Can we get the fest intro?

We didn't get the fast intro.

And I was like, God damn it.

I wanted to.

And I'm the ace.

We didn't get that either.

So

at the end of the day,

got a cool cover of it's going down now and got half of Mass Destruction.

Pretty cool.

Didn't get the dorm room Iwatodai Dorm theme.

Well, he's not on that.

In the remix, he is.

The new version.

Yeah, I know, but like, I don't want that remix.

I want that.

But he's a new one.

No, but the new woman.

Dog shit free sample CD shit.

But nah, because the new tracks are like Atlas mandated.

Bro, like, I don't know who it was, but I remember we were talking and somebody agreed with me.

Like, nah, like, a lot of the soul off that Iwatodai Dorm track is gone in the new version because it's better.

Nah,

that is a piece of shit that got down sampled and fucking just pitch corrected into garbage.

I love that original version.

Oh, it's so good.

What was a real fucking headspin was when he was like, yo, who's a fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure?

And we're like...

I'm not a fan of your particular track in that

JoJo because

it's the same fucking lyric over and over again.

Did you know?

I don't think any of us knew.

Absolutely.

Because it was like, yo, this is from part two.

I was like, I'm a spring song to when he's in the plane in part two.

I had no idea.

And we looked it up and we're like, sure enough, Lotus Juice

recognized it on the song.

Overdrive.

Well, I will say this.

The entire side of the room we were on were all baffled at the idea that

Lotus Juice was in JoJo.

None of us knew that.

You're fucking fake fans over there.

Jesus Christ.

No one knew that.

And as we see here, we continue to be confused.

Lotus juice was in JoJo part two.

Anyway, so

that was there.

I unfortunately did not get to catch Red Vox, but I did hear that they were pretty good.

And I mean, you know, Vinny's killing it.

I know that they do an awesome job regularly.

And

I enjoy Red Fox but yeah no um that was that was the

the the the beginning or so of things I feel like um

you know uh uh it's it's

it's cool if we kind of can go back and see that if it's like, hey, he like he's talked about how apparently he was like from Jersey for a while.

He like he grew up in or spent some time in Jersey like 30 years ago or so.

So

if it's one of those things where it's just like he hasn't, he's only been performing new shit, and then it's like, hey, he got asked to do something, come back, and then like I'm like quickly trying to remember, then I'm like, I totally understand how it went the way it did, you know, and that's, that's all fine.

But yeah, that was, that was Lotus Jues.

How much did that concert cost?

I mean, it was part of MAGFest.

Well, that sounds like an appropriate deal then.

Can't complain too hard for an included concert.

It's like a continental breakfast.

How much are you going to complain about your complimentary hotel breakfast?

I mean, for what it's worth, like MagFest performances are usually fucking 11 on tens, you know.

Oh, well, then it's extra dog shit because he should have done better.

All right.

Well, anyways, moving on.

Other stuff

that

was going on there.

We had,

yeah, I jumped on a little

Sonic Fox versus everybody event.

That was a lot of fun.

Who won?

Sonic Fox.

No shit, huh?

Yeah,

so, you know, they came down to the game room, and

they're like, hey, yo, fighting game event.

You want to, can you get on that?

Can you join?

And, you know, that.

I'm like, yeah, sure.

I can, I'll do whatever.

You know, I can do it.

I can, I can talk about a fighting game, even one that I don't really know that well, but let's go.

And

yeah, and basically it was a very straightforward, like upfront.

SonicFox was just walking through like, you know, some, you know, tech getting competitive.

And if you want to, you know, play this game and like get into it and get better at it.

Here's some cool stuff to know, little tips and tricks for the audience and stuff.

And

I had some questions myself.

You know, that I was curious about.

So I'm like, you know, just kind of about some of the systems and things that as a a Capcom boy over here, I'm coming in and there are things about MK1 that I'm like, that is a unique thing that

other games aren't doing that I do think is interesting, right?

What's that?

Exactly.

So one example of that I will say is like when you are out of life and you're on your magic pixel about to die, your last sliver and you take one more hit and or get chipped out.

If you still have meter, it'll use your meter to keep you alive instead.

So like each case of chip will cost meter until you're down to no resources, and then you die, you know.

And I was like, okay, that's interesting.

It is wild that it took until right now in this conversation for me to even hear about that mechanic once.

Sure, yeah.

Different games have over the years, like Street Fighter 4, you used to just get chipped out on any specials or supers.

In Street Fighter V, it was like only with a super, you know.

know um

and you know now as we in six it's like only when burnout so like there's these conditions for how you get chipped out on things and you know one of the ones where it's like it's going to cost you your resources is like yeah i'm like that's an interesting thing there uh but anyway you know so we kind of went through and then there was a wheel of uh misfortune and then every time someone came up to play you could like get a real match or you could spin the wheel and then it would be like okay sonic fox can't play with uh a certain button or could only use a certain button or different types of restrictions and at one point, the restrictions were not enough.

It was just like, yeah, you know, there's always a character that's like, okay, who's going to be really good at just using

three or just using the square button or whatever the case is, you know?

Yeah.

And all of those challenges, yeah, no problem.

So then eventually it was just like, okay, how about this?

I'm going to put the mask on backwards and we're going to do a blind match.

And okay, Woolly, just tap left on right on my shoulder if I'm on the left or right side of the screen.

And sure enough, as Gene filmed and the footage is up there, absolutely wins a match completely blind.

You know, incredible.

Very.

There's only so much you can limit a person.

Yeah, I would say so.

Especially if you're talking about like, it's like, okay, well, I'm going to play a character that is

playing, playing blind Kenshi as well.

Blind character on blind, you know, match, right?

We're just like, look, if you don't know what's coming at you here or not a deal, I'm just going to do a combo.

And then, oh, did you side switch?

Okay, I'm going to do it going this way now.

It was

great.

So that was a lot of fun.

And, you know, like a big, big crowd pop-off.

Everyone definitely enjoyed that stuff.

So yeah, let's see how that goes.

I think

in two more Evos,

I think with two more wins, Sonic Fox is going to break the record for most Evo victories.

Are they still.

Is that why Mortal Kombat is coming back?

Maybe

it's coming back so that that record can be crushed because last time it was because last time

last time they they beat Daigo's record with

I think it was six to now be at like seven and then I think Justin Wong is at nine.

So yeah

Jay Wong's was like a shit ton of Marvel's right yeah and and and I think not just Marvel though over these like there's a there's a the variety in there but um

all that to say we'll you

I think that's possible.

Like, we could just see another two, and then that record's going to shift.

But, yeah, that was a lot of fun.

And, yes, of course,

there was a whole lot of what I'll call lore progression as far as Versus Wolves goes.

Oh, I see.

Those events, there was the Dokopan incident, and then there is the main episode will be popping up later this month.

And, you know,

I'll leave it to those episodes when they arrive for anybody to see how they went and what's going on.

Yeah, they streamed them, but we're going to have some cooler, better versions and edits going out there.

But lore, updates, and progression has occurred.

So stay tuned for some real good shit over there.

At what point is this just going to degenerate into like

pitfighting?

Implying it already hasn't.

All right, all right, fair enough, fair enough, fair enough.

So So,

yeah, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to finish this podcast

and then I'm going to upload a bunch of shit and then I'm going to

fucking chill out this week.

You should chill out.

You should take some time off, bro.

Is what I'm going to do.

And then, you know, check the schedule.

I'll post something up to let you know when we're going to be coming back around.

But yeah, give me a minute.

And

for those that, yeah,

that missed it and are wondering, so

the episode of Versus Wolves will be going up at the end of the month.

It's

this Friday, right?

So the end of the month.

And the Dokupon incident is going to go up separate from that as well.

So don't worry if you missed it.

We got you covered.

You're going to be able to check those out

over on the Versus Wolves channel.

Cool.

Yeah, let me take a quick bathroom break.

All right.

Enjoy your time in the bathroom.

and we'll be right back.

At MagFest, it was announced that there's going to be some merch at the panels, and one thing that is happening is

the old

Get Into Fighting Games t-shirt that was not allowed to have cool

heart on it is now going to that's now going to exist with the heart on it.

So,

yay, because

for whatever reasons, people that we that used to handle that were

yes,

so finally that is being rectified because the thing that people have asked for from the fucking beginning of like, hey, look at this cool intro, it'd be cool to put that thing on a shirt, wouldn't it?

Hey,

finally possible.

So, yay

at that.

Well, that's great.

Anyway, what is going on?

So, you ever have a moment in your life in which you can pinpoint the exact second that you're going to have a hard week?

Like, you see an event occur and you're like, oh, that's going to be a problem.

So,

Paige took our wonderful baby boy out to the community play place to run around and hang out with the other toddlers and get all socialized and shit and talk to moms and all that shit.

And right before Paige left, she looks over, and mom comes in with her little child.

And that child walks up to my perfect little boy and goes,

Oh, right in his face.

Oh.

Oh,

not intentional, but no.

So, I want to be really, really, really clear, right?

That's no kids' fault that they're sick, right?

That's mom's fault.

You don't bring sick kids to places with other kids.

What about the parties where people get their kids together specifically to get each other sick?

Oh, everyone

in that situation is a bad person.

The deliberate spreading everyone in that situation is a psycho.

Pox immunity, whatever.

That's nonsense, man.

Is it?

It's not real.

Oh, no, it's real.

That happens.

I'm just saying it's fucking stupid.

It has always struck me as like, is there a less gross way to do it?

Like, yeah, just don't.

Yeah, okay.

Just don't do it.

Okay.

Just don't do that.

That's it.

So the baby's sick.

He's a little trooper.

He's, he's, he's doing his best, but we're going through it over here.

I'm sick.

As you can see, I have my sniffle rag here.

It's nothing serious.

It's not COVID.

It appears to be the common cold.

I feel mostly fine other than some sniffles.

Okay.

Paige is not sick because Paige never gets sick.

So that's good.

So that kid just fucking

dropped a bomb.

Yeah, Paige says that she feels like she could see the particles transfer from one child to the next.

But what are you going to do?

But

like, you see it land on your kid, but you're still, you got to get in there.

Yeah.

So you get in there.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So that's been going on.

Poor guy.

He's so sick.

He's, he's miserable.

So we're, we're going to be moving to shifts at night because somebody pretty much has to like be with him like the whole time because he's just so miserable.

So that's fun.

It's the fun part about being parents.

You get to watch the mistakes of children reflect into your own body quite quickly.

But you know, you know how like sitting in bed, I don't care.

Do you have that thing where sitting in bed with like chicken soup and like a big blanket is kind of like preemptively comforting?

Because you're like, oh, I'm sick, but you know, like I'm getting taken care of and that feels nice.

I don't really do that.

Okay, well, so that's-I've all, I have only done that once, and that was when

that was when I had the flu.

The flu is the sickest I've ever been in my entire life.

Okay, okay.

And

I did that right after I kicked you out of my house.

Okay.

Do you remember the E3 where they showed off like 12 hours of like

fucking Zelda?

I mean,

no.

Like, so we all did that live at E3.

Okay.

And like, it was in my house, in my apartment.

And then I'm like, hey, guys, I don't feel so good.

And then I went into my bedroom and then sweated it out for three hours.

Okay.

And then came back in and you were all still in my living room watching Zelda.

Okay.

And I was like, you guys need to get the fuck out of here.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

I'm so sick.

Okay.

And you were all like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm sorry.

And then I got a big blanket.

and some some fucking soup and all that shit.

That is the only time I have ever done that.

Okay.

Well,

more so, I'm referring to the, like, you know, you get to create the, like, there's a positive memory that you get as a kid of like, oh,

I'm sick, and my parents are going to bring me some chicken soup, and I can, you know.

Nah, man, they just gave me that bucket.

My mom would just get this orange bucket and be like, here you go for if you need it.

And here's a stick, too, just in case you need to.

Yeah, all right, okay.

Well,

that's just how it was.

I can't even look at an orange bucket without trying not to fucking throw up now.

It's the association is so strong.

So, for me, for me, it's a blue basin that we kept under the sink.

That's like, this is for you get sick into this guy.

Exactly.

And I'm like, even when I'm fine, this basin associates

immediately.

Yeah, no.

What else?

I discovered a Twitch channel called Midnight Sumo.

Have you ever seen Midnight Sumo?

Please tell me that it involves both things that it's titled after.

Well, it runs late at night, and

this dude is just commentating

just a shit zillion non-stop sumo matches.

Oh, awesome.

That's so cool.

I heard that there's a new Yokozuna.

Yes, there is.

Paige watched him win the round robin and get crowned the other day.

Fuck.

That's dope.

Hell yeah.

Also, dude, sumo matches being run in a round-robin tournament is so nuts.

It takes forever.

And you no fucking breaks either.

Like, fighters never usually have more than one thing in a night.

And to just be like, nah, get back out there.

Nah, man, you're fighting 25 matches in the next nine hours.

So, yeah.

For the first time in three years, New Yokozuna.

That's pretty cool.

It is wild to see the variation in big boys on the sumo channel.

Because then you have like

you have some big boys

on that sumo shit.

Some proper round boys.

And then on occasion, you see some that are like, that's just a regular guy

in the sumo get up.

Like, I saw two guys.

Like, that is just a regular man.

Just

a little thick, you know?

Just a little, a little thick.

No, no, no, I don't even.

I literally mean like a tall, like, muscular, but, like, no significant body fat, regular Japanese athlete.

Wow.

Okay.

I mean, it is technique too, right?

Like, well, those guys are apparently former wrestlers.

So

they don't push the guys out they they they juke and

uh they they like slap the the big boys down and get around them that kind of thing okay um

man sumo

as as a spectator sport sumo's so weird because it's not very dramatic but it's incredibly easy to binge for extremely long periods of time Because Sumo matches last like five to 40 seconds.

They're like virtual fighter, like, like length matches.

So I never understood, because, yeah, they can go insanely quick,

but I never understood, like, like,

weight classes aren't really a thing, right?

Because they don't appear to be a thing.

No.

It's just,

did you win or not?

Because I don't know if you remember, like, the huge black guy that, like, got popular.

Yeah, I remember him.

Right, yeah, as Manny Yarborough.

It was like this huge dude at our moment.

He remember big boy.

But he had all these matches against people people that were less than 700 pounds.

Yeah, no weight classes are for pussies, man.

Whatever.

And you're just like,

how is this supposed to work?

Like,

what's the thought here?

The thought is

who gets to be Yokozuna is the strongest.

I mean, according to...

That's it.

Yeah.

According to it.

And I can respect that.

I understand the idea of like also doing like, you know, like

I'm not even going to try it, but like niggi atari or the moves where you grab and you move to the side, and it's like, oh, you're heavy, but now I've used your weight against you.

And according to those gifts from the year 2003, the Yokozuna does get access to wings, eye lasers, and insane teleporting 100-hand slap pressure moves.

I think that all champs should be a squash champ, and if your champ isn't a squash champ, you haven't found the real real champ yet.

Okay.

So it's not enough to just win, but if you don't absolutely decimate.

Yeah, no, every match against the champ should be a joke until you meet the new champ.

Got it.

Yeah, no sell.

Yeah.

Matanza and Lucha Underground.

Or just fucking Brock Lesnar.

I would love

if there were some sort of modern update or incarnation of hyper sumo gifs.

Yeah, it was good stuff.

I believe they started as gifts and then they became like Nico Nico videos and then like

you know, there was like a channel that added sound effects and shit.

And it got very, very elaborate because there was a few of them where they were doing like one-winged angel like

light from heaven attacks that were like exploding outside of the arena.

But

I think I'm gonna see.

I I think if you just you can probably still google like hyper sumo gifts and see some cool shit,

yeah, probably,

but the question is: is it the same cool shit that you're thinking of, or is it a different new cool shit?

Oh, there it is, right there, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, we're still doing it, awesome.

Um, so this channel is

Midnight Sumo, okay,

uh, really good.

Guys, got guy's got like a good, like,

soft radio man voice that's perfect for commentating Sumo.

So it's really quite good.

I advise anybody who has a passing interest in Sumo to check it out.

In fact, is he on there right now?

No, that's the hold on.

Let's find out.

Is he live right now?

Midnight Soon.

Don't, don't, don't stop watching this.

Now, would you say that you have a passing interest in Taka Arashi?

No.

Okay.

He's too big.

Okay.

Virtue Virtua Fighter came out, everybody.

How about that?

Virtual Fighter's out, and you can't make fun of me for liking Virtual Fighter anymore now that Virtual Fighter is back.

That is the new rule.

You can't do it.

I'm sure.

Because we're going to go into the new world of Virtua Fighter going forward.

I'm sure.

And you'll look silly.

I'm sure glad that this new world of Virtu Fighter has hitched its ride to NVIDIA.

That's great.

No, no, you see, you misunderstand.

Nvidia has hitched its ride

troubles, and Nvidia hedge their bets by hitching their ride to the incoming era of Virtua Fighter.

I have to say,

I'm embarrassed I didn't see it coming initially.

You're 1,000% correct.

I mean, 6D Copium is a thing to behold.

It really is.

I'm watching

the stars and the lines.

Virtua Fighter helped NVIDIA get its start, so Virtua Fighter is going to help NVIDIA come back from the brink.

I think the new Virtua, Virtual Fighter 6, will make $600 billion in profits.

Yes.

Light work.

But also, genuinely, like...

I mean, we'll probably talk about this in the news, probably, but like, NVIDIA has the Nintendo Switch contract, so they're fine.

They're also the only...

like it's like I mean when it comes to video cards, it's them

peasant.

We're not like the conversation feels like it's completely shifted.

Like there's nothing else to say.

Remember voodoo?

Remember voodoo back in the day?

No, that's not even the question, Wooly.

The real question is, do you remember voodoo 2?

Because voodoo 2 was the good one.

But like there were actual video card options and competitors.

It was a thing to you had to go look at.

I used to have NVIDIA, sorry, ATI cards.

I had a 9600 XT.

It was a great card.

Yeah, I had an ATI rage.

There were 3DFX back in the day as well.

And look, you looked at the stats, you looked at the numbers, but then you looked at the stupid 3D reboot character on the box and went, I want that one.

No, what you actually

with the gun.

What you actually did is you looked at Doom 3 and then you looked at Half-Life 2 and you said, which of these games

do I want my video card to run well?

Because Doom 3 ran well on Nvidia, but Half-Life 2 ran well on ATI.

And I said, well,

Half-Life 2 is going to have all those Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat shit come out for it, so I should probably go with ATI.

And then Day of Defeat

Source came out and it sucked ass.

And then fucking CS source came out and it was dog shit compared to 1.6.

And I made a mistake.

Yeah,

right around that time was more like my main concern was: can any of these handle Allegro any better so that Mugin will run peak

when we start getting into the weird, wild, like

massive resource characters?

I remember running World of Warcraft on a GeForce 2,

and that was like punching way above its weight class.

That was crazy.

GeForce, once upon a time, was like the holy fuck, you got one.

Yeah.

No, didn't get it.

So, anyway, back to what really matters.

Yes.

Virtua Fighter V Revo is out,

and

the online play is about on par with the beta, which is pretty good, has some hiccups.

It really, really doesn't like it when your frame rate drops.

If your frame rate drops below a lock 60 at any point, you start to get skipping and desyncs and shit like that.

Though the desyncs have been cleaned up, are there connection settings?

Absolutely.

You can do rollback frames

from

you can do rollback from balanced performance or quality, but you can also manually change it from one to ten, sorry, zero to ten frames of rollback.

Yeah, okay.

Though I would not recommend 10 frames of rollback.

And can you also change the frame rate of the game in the sentence?

Okay.

Yeah, I would recommend that.

The frame rate is 60.

If it's not 60, the game don't work.

That would be extremely weird given online and make it very hard.

So I did a big stream yesterday, ran a bunch of tournaments.

That tournament functionality still works great.

Nice.

Game's great.

Game's Virtual Fighter.

It's Virtual Fighter.

That means it's great.

It's good.

Did I see?

It's weird that I actually have a lot to talk about with Virtual Fighter.

It's good.

Well, did I see that there were costumes?

There were new.

Oh, no.

There's like 30th anniversary bathing suit costumes, but whatever.

Though the Yakuza and Tekken costumes are also there.

Okay.

Those are all really old, actually.

The Yakuza costumes are old.

Those are from like 2018 or something.

I don't know, but they're quite old.

I didn't realize that.

Okay, okay.

I thought they dropped some new shit.

All right, fair enough.

Cool.

No, this is a re-release of a classic game with working online.

Though I will say, there is something that is a little disappointing.

And you get to see it with people that don't know how fighting games work and why rollback is so important.

So the open beta for VF5 Revo was

free, right?

Anybody could play it.

And

I messed around with the rollback and I found that the rollback in the final retail release is somewhat improved from the open beta.

Mainly the desyncs re-sync more consistently.

Like

in the beta, if you desynced, it would kind of stay desynced and be a problem.

However,

You go to the games review page or you go to the game subreddit and people go this so weird because Everyone's ping is higher than it was during the beta.

I can't find any games that are under a hundred ping

I'm in Europe and it's Monday yada yada and the difference is is that they are playing a paid game right now instead of an open beta so the matches that they are pulling from are farther away because there's less people.

And with most games, this wouldn't be as noticeable.

But we are talking about 20-year-old ass Virtual Fighter V revision, which has maybe 1,000 to 3,000 people playing it at any given time.

So if you are in the middle of Europe, in Germany, you are probably playing someone in fucking France or some shit.

Yeah, your paying is a little higher than 100.

I would even say that, like, while they get important stress testing data out of an open beta, what you're not going to get personally is the feeling of fighting someone really far away if there's enough people around, you know?

Like the real conditions this.

So, I ran some tournaments, and that included people from like as far away as Norway and people that were in like Eastern Europe.

Like, okay, yeah, it was getting a little dicey at some parts, but like, overall, I would say that the rollback is about on equivalent of like Tekken.

Okay,

um, anytime it's not Street Fighter Sixes, oh, God, is it not Street Fighter Sixes?

But like it's good enough.

Any Japanese players?

No, okay.

So, and that actually is uh, so my other question, I'm curious, for you personally now, aside from, you know,

so it's funny, like naming people, like naming it, getting out, but like, oh, you're getting them in.

You're getting them in.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They're getting out of fighting games because Virtua Fighter is out.

You don't need to play fighting games,

plural, anymore.

You just need games.

There's only Virtua Fighter now.

Understood.

I should mention that I changed the meaning of the title of that section based on my vibe for the day.

I see.

So if I'm really good at the fighting game in question, it's to beat people out of fighting games.

If I'm really bad at the fighting game in question, it's me being a sour puss like crybaby and I'm getting out of fighting games.

And if Virtua Fighter is out, then it's about getting out of other fighting games to get into Virtua Fighter.

Okay.

All right.

There's a, yeah, there's a flexibility to that.

Understand.

Didn't you mean this?

No, stupid.

I obviously meant this other thing that I didn't.

I lied.

It's called an option select.

That is, in fact, an option select.

Something that you

should learn once you're in fighting games, but once you get out,

you don't need to use it.

I am fuzzy guarding the title of my program.

What did you find was the skill level like for your matches online with just

0 or 10.

Yeah, okay.

Absolutely.

This has a bell curve of two points,

which is brand new player who will not rematch you.

And this dude lives in an arcade and will rematch you until the sun burns out.

You have gotten stomped or done the stomping, and there's no.

There is no in between.

When I was having chat tournaments, chat tournaments had the full range

of new players and like intermediate players and like killers.

But if you just hit ranked, you are dealing with new people and you're dealing with like stone cold murderers.

Literally fudo.

Yeah.

Sitting right there.

Okay.

Okay.

Interesting.

And so, yeah, I'm sure over time, you know, you'll start to see that like pare down a little bit.

Also, of course, depending on the time of day.

But

I'd be curious to log in during a Japanese weekend, you know, and try to see what that looks like specifically.

Yeah, because it was hard to gauge because it's Monday afternoon when this shit dropped.

Right.

It's like, that's not exactly the most peak-ass time ever.

But the world was never going to get set on fire by VF5 Revo.

VF5 Revo is like a

like in a different world.

This would have been like a pack-in game for like a different Sega game.

Be like, look, remember Virtual Fighter.

Potentially.

But it also

helps the team figure out how to do rollback.

It's a test game.

It is a priced, it's a, you know, it's a, you know, a B2P test game.

I read an interview today that the devs

basically were,

they didn't know if they could do rollback because the guts of VF5 Revo are like 13, 14 years old.

And it was definitely not built with it in mind.

And it's a 3D fighting game.

That's it.

It's that struggle of, like, yeah, we've talked about this a bunch of times, but it's like, it's that struggle of the game that is too recent to just be like, yeah, slap that in an emulator.

The emulator will handle all the rollback, you know?

Anything that's like, yeah, more that's 3D and like from like, yeah, the last 10 or so, where you're like, oh, you've got to go back in and implement this in a much more difficult way.

Like,

the source code for VF5 was built with no online functionality or care at all back in the aughts.

But, like, ironically, the older the game is, the easier it is to implement.

Yeah, you'll throw more processing power at it.

You know, infinite processing power.

There's, there's the close window

of time that's like actually the hardest where, you know, Dragon Ball and and Samurai showed out and all these other things are like struggling.

I may be reading between the lines slightly on the interview, but they said that basically if they couldn't get rollback working for VF5 Revo, they feel like they shouldn't have even made it at all.

Like rollback was like the single number one priority.

And they describe how they started working on the rollback functionality before committing to making the game.

So like, they went into the process of throwing their nerds at it to see if they could technically manage to get it to do rollback before going up and being like, we should put VF5 Revo out because they describe the technical difficulties in implementing it as extreme.

Yeah.

Well, none of this is surprising, nor should it be, given that they attempted a re-release of this game not but a year or two before and they just completely ignored that topic and it fucked over the entire thing.

The entire release was nothing but 100% of the audience going, why would you make it without rollback?

Like, so they come, they ignored it so hard that like after having every inbox possible blown up with, I don't even remember what the version was called.

Esports.

Esports edition?

Yeah, like it just.

It's called Virtual Fighter esports.

It's insane, right?

But it's like, yeah, no, it was loud and clear clear at that point that like everyone that is interested in this game, of which there are a few numbers out there, 100% of that smaller number want you to put working fucking netcode in this thing.

And if you continue to just pretend that only Japan exists, and as long as it works here, then it's fine.

They talk about that in the interview.

Really?

Yes.

Wow.

What do they say?

It's not a super long interview, but they're like, we realized very early on that in a region like Japan where players are extremely close together geographically, that these types of network conditions can be mitigated much more easily.

But if you plan to sell your game overseas to anywhere, regional distances are much, much larger and rollback becomes mandatory.

God.

To hear this from Sega on Virtua Fighter is crazy.

And the thing is, is we know that it's like, we know that it's born from stubbornness because we've seen the roundtable discussions that were literally aired.

We've seen the the fact that a bunch of different creators in the genre get together and they talk about what's going on.

They talk about technology.

They talk about stuff.

And

like the last two or three roundtables, the chat's just exploding with one word.

And we're just going to pretend we're not seeing it.

We're just going to move forward.

But it's like, we know at this point that like Namco is working with, they have some people in the West that know how to use Rollback.

We know that SNK is working with some of them.

And like each studio that doesn't, it's just like, it's out of your own stubbornness at that point, you know?

So yeah,

feel the fucking heat of making a release, having it eat shit, and then, hey, try, send the plate back is basically what the community did.

They sent it back, and the chef fucking fixed it.

And now here we go.

Thank you.

So I'm going to step outside of the interviews and whatnot for Virtual Fighter.

And I feel like I can put a couple pieces together.

Virtua Fighter esports or Virtual fighter ultimate showdown slash us racist net code edition dismal failure like that was supposed to be yeah virtual fighter's back and like complete dismal failure i feel like the sequence of events is

that game eats shit

guy on rgg

goes

give me that shit

and then asks the technical team if they can make rollback work for Virtual Fighter V.

Yes, we can

start work on VF5 Revo.

Hey guys, we have a team in place that can do Virtual Fighter VI.

Give us Virtual Fighter.

In fact, I believe that, and I'll even add a step in between one and two.

Fucking esports edition eats shit.

And likely they go internally, well, guess everyone hates Virtual Fighter.

No,

not me.

Then RGG guy steps in and does it.

Yeah, because it's like, well, by the numbers.

Two guys already making three games.

And they're like, whatever.

You know, like,

I swear to God, I can feel in my bones the like, well, you said people would like this, and it seems they don't.

Therefore,

fuck this franchise then.

Buy the numbers.

And then somebody else.

Do you know that team of guys who've been steadily implementing iterations on your extraordinarily successful, cheap game to produce series?

And you just kind of leave.

So

there was a fucking interview with, I think it was the director of RGG around like infinite wealth.

And he described his boss coming to him and just telling him, yeah, just keep doing whatever.

for the like a dragon series

like that's their advice from that's the the implement that's the fucking the word on high is just keep doing whatever

like it's just every year there's a boardroom you know and everyone gets around and then rgg guy just like clicks the slide and then it's just a picture of jack sparrow and the ceo's like Tsubarashi.

You're like, great.

Fuck it.

All right.

We're going home.

Done.

So, yeah, this is a test game, but it's not the usual test game because it doesn't feel like it's testing the audience.

What it feels like is like practice.

It feels like a dry run for the technical thing.

And deep in that at the end of that interview, is

we don't believe we will encounter nearly the same difficulties starting from scratch with Virtual Fighter VI,

which, no, of course you wouldn't.

Right?

Like, could you imagine?

Could you imagine six drops and the net code is terrible?

Oh, my God.

That'd be.

I would kill myself.

I would do it.

I would do it.

It's over.

It's so over.

It's so over.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, man.

Oh, oh, fate.

Oh, reality.

We can't put that energy out there.

But yeah, no, Virtual Fighter's back.

Hooray.

I'm probably going to do some,

probably going to run like tournaments every couple of weeks or every week for a while.

Because

under the context of like, hey, audience, this game costs $16.

Want to run some sets?

And it's like relatively easy to start playing.

It's easy to fill up a 16-man tournament.

That being said, I ran a 16-man double elimination tournament.

It took three

points, like three hours and ten minutes.

Okay.

It's the full set.

So basically, 16 people jump in a lobby and then it automates the rest, right?

It takes care of the business.

It automates everything.

You said double elimination

and it just counts the, it does the rounds correctly, it does the matches correctly.

It runs the loser bracket.

Are people simultaneously playing or is everyone?

You can choose yes or no.

Okay, okay.

So I chose no to watch

matches.

Yeah.

And so we watched all the matches and I commentated on all matches.

But you can do it simultaneous.

You can also run a 16-person round-robin tournament.

That's crazy.

Damn.

And that I would highly recommend putting

fucking simultaneous matches on.

Okay.

Holy shit.

But for everyone's

mental reference, it does not take that long to do that size of a bracket.

Not if you're doing simultaneous match.

That's just to spectate and have everybody get to watch each other play.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no,

it's a pretty solid package, though I will say,

there is no definitive version of Virtual Fighter V.

For some reason,

this version of the game has none of the quest stuff from earlier Virtual Fighter V releases.

It has none of the single-player content.

This is for fighting people online.

It's almost like a bit of a Marvel 2 situation where it's like each release has something up with it at least a little bit unless you're in the arcades yourself you know okay

it's it's really it's really weird like the amount of online options are great you have double and single elimination tournaments you have team battles you have round robin tournaments you have a couple types of room options like you have kumite fucking rooms it's great it works really well Where did all that single player content go?

I don't know.

I don't get it.

So like there's arcade mode, but that's it.

Well, did they ever, because I'm not too sure.

You know how 4 had the tour Japan and fight the project?

Yeah, no, that's what I'm talking about.

There was a version of VF5 that had that.

I think it was the 360 version.

Okay, and that's just not there.

Final Showdown as well.

And it's just not there.

And it had the AIs of different player styles.

That sucks.

Okay.

If I had to guess, it's because the AI of all those player styles are locked to whatever version of the game they were created for

and don't work.

If that data doesn't get exported properly, properly, then yeah, that would make sense too.

Or if it was arcade data, even or something else, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, there could be hiccups there.

But now there's a Steam game that you can kiss on while you wait for Virtual Fighter VI.

I also watched Frosty Fausting's top eight for VF5 Revo.

It's great.

Tasty Steve and Team Chris are great Virtual Fighter commentators.

Yeah, well, I've never heard Steve doing any VF.

That should be interesting.

He's great.

He has a great energy for that shit.

So the official VF6 waiting room is now here, effectively.

So the official VF6 waiting room includes

Ryan Hart is also doing

fucking videos on the Virtual Fighter channel that came out today.

I don't know if you saw that.

Nice.

Okay.

No.

Scott, like, blocking is hard at Ryan's dojo.

Also, Ryan Hart is like turning into Leroy.

Have you seen him?

I saw him last Evo.

Okay, because he's got like the salt and pepper shit going, and he looks great.

Can I also

improve my Virtual Fighter VI game by watching a Jackie Chan movie?

You can.

Absolutely.

So this is just like a really

minor detail, but the VF6 development preview, the fucking

slice.

the bullshot that they gave to the higher-ups is based off of, I don't remember what movie it is, but it's based off of the second fight between Jackie Chan and Benny the Jet.

God, and it's just like a shot-for-shot remake.

Anytime you see defensive stuff happening way too deliberately in that way, it's like, come on, guys, don't do this.

And what's dumb is that the actual real gameplay they did show in the reveal is great.

It's super cool because it's way faster.

But just you didn't have to do this thing and then confuse people and it's ugh.

Fucking bullshot stuff, man.

Yo, see, that was not for like that one didn't really feel like it was for the audience.

That was NVIDIA's technical demonstration, right?

Because that's where it got shown.

It got showed at NVIDIA's conference.

Okay, to an audience of people that have no idea.

Because it was supposed to look pretty.

Sure.

And that was described as like the pre-development visualization, which is, I believe, code for this is the thing the RGG team put together to show their boss to give them the okay to keep making Virtual Fighter.

Pre-Viz typically can be a pitch, or it can be a vertical slice, but like you can, or pre-not a vertical slice.

Like, pre-vis is going to be like, yeah, the image that is that you take and then you start actually coding around, you know, what you got there.

But so the real question is, like, when are we going to see more Virtual Fighter?

Because they haven't actually shown off like any extended gameplay of the real game yet.

I don't think it'll be at Evo.

It will be.

I think it might be around that time.

Yeah,

I think it will be perhaps behind closed doors.

But I mean,

the front-facing, hey, everybody, look at Virtual Fighter because

the thing that they did with the VF Direct feels like they're going to have their own dedicated little shows where they're going to come out of nowhere going, tomorrow, 40 minutes of Virtual Fighter.

And they'll have the CEO Govsega come up and be like, I love Virtufighter and give a thumbs up and all that shit.

It's been rather sudden out of nowhere marketing announcements so far.

So I assume that'll continue.

But it'd be cool if they did start taking it around and showing off more.

Or like, you know, character profiles.

There's a lot of ways to go about it, right?

Playing through

VF5 Revo with a bunch of people and just looking at that cast.

And I'm like, you know what I'm looking at?

I'm looking at a cast that is just going to be replaced, like

almost

to the character.

Like,

I wonder.

See, the thing is, I feel like Virtual Fighter is not at the level where you can drop like one character as a reveal and have it be like the huge pop.

You know, you got it, you got to do a couple of things.

So I feel like each trailer might show off a group, and with each group, you want to have a couple returning and some new shit, right?

I have a feeling, like, I mean, archetype-wise, we'll get like essentially the VF1 cast, G Kundo, Wrestler, etc.

But like, those, it's been so,

so long.

It would not surprise me if Akira is the only character to actually show up in VF6 from the old games.

That would be nuts.

Would it, Wooly?

Would it?

Virtua Fighter, the fucking

the storyless,

But like, well, look, if you're going to Gran Turismo of fighting games, if you're going to third strike or Garo Virtual Fighter and put a bunch of cool characters in, I'm always open to the possibility, but I do feel like I'll, you know, folks are like, yo, I want Wolf.

I want to, you know, I kind of want to.

See who said that, Woolly?

Rufflemonger.

Yeah.

And me.

Anyway, shout out to Rufelmonger.

He's got two great videos on Virtual Fighter right now, how to pick a main, and basics, which are about three and a half hours in total.

Great place to start if you want to learn how to play VF5 Revo.

Yeah,

look, I'm always excited for the prospect of the new generation, but you just want to get combat kids.

You don't want to get caliber kids, right?

We've been over this.

Oh, man.

Hey, so

I'm going to shoot my shot right now.

I said this yesterday on my stream.

I'm going to say it here so everyone can mock or laud me as appropriate.

Akira's obviously there, and Sarah's been replaced by Stella.

If there was a single character that was likely to also make it across into the future with Akira, it would be Vanessa.

One, she's very popular,

and two

because

of the Dural experiments that led to her dramatic change in skin tone, they can justify her not aging at a regular rate.

Because to people who don't know, Virtual Fighter is a sci-fi series.

I appreciate the lore.

I was not aware.

Damn.

You were not aware.

That's why she had a change in appearance?

I think I forgot.

It's because she was partially turned into Dural.

Gotcha.

okay.

That's why.

That's why.

Okay.

Well, hey, look, you know, Kage can be a ninja master that teaches a new ninja student, certainly.

Yeah.

You know, and literally just call him Kage again.

You could have Blaze Jr.

That's not his name.

No, he's a shadow.

You can have Blaze Jr.

You can have like, yeah, so some characters can be like king, sort of like inherited, you know, roles and such.

I mean, I don't like a young drunken master might be a problem, but then Jamie's chilling.

I think that Shundi

has a better shot at getting into VF6 at like 120

years old

than Lau does.

I think Lau has been dying of lung cancer since 1993.

It would be quite hilarious that old man Shundi is actually still doing it.

I kind of like that idea.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love Virtual Fighter.

Also, hey, you know what?

It was the two-year anniversary, and we've got confirmation that there will be a sequel.

So I went back to Hi-Fi Rush.

Nice.

I said, fuck it.

And I went back to Hi-Fi Rush, and I discovered that if you've beaten the game, it will let you start a game of Rhythm Master on new game.

So Rhythm Master is the very hard difficulty.

Right away.

Plus, if you hit D on your style, you just instantly die.

Okay.

It's not that hard, genuinely,

outside of the first 60 seconds of a boss fight.

The first 60 seconds of a boss fight,

you have to get in there and start

doing it within one second of gaining the controls, or you just die.

Style or die is pretty cool.

Okay.

It's not quite

like

heaven or hell, you know, like it's not going or like hell or hell.

It's like you're kind of, it's not about like hell or hell still works along like the more or less regular rules of the game.

Also, it's weird.

Hell or hell is easier than heaven or hell.

Do you know that?

Because it's one touch both ways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, no.

Hell or hell I find easier than heaven or hell.

Heaven or hell, everything is one touch both ways.

Hell or hell is one touch, but only for you, but it gives you three tries.

So you can, so you can fuck up.

So, like, there are certain bosses on Hell or Hell that are much easier on Hell or Hell than Heaven or Hell

because

they're just so much more aggressive and they can tag you instantly.

But in this case, like

not beyond getting touched, like not being stylish enough.

And it's over.

Yeah, so like the very first boss, like QA1 million, it's like, unless you immediately dash forward and start comboing his chest after dodging the very first swipe, you will just instantly die right away because the combo counter just starts to tick down.

What does Corsica's fight look like?

Don't know.

I'll let you know when I get there.

Okay.

I did the first two levels and was like, oh yeah, this is manageable.

Though I assume it's going to become considerably less manageable once I have to start dealing with those fucking samurais with parries.

And you have full kit, like, immediately, of course.

Nope.

No.

No, no, dude, when I said I started Rhythm Master on new game.

Oh, my mistake.

Okay.

I am streaming the hardest version of Hi-Fi Rush that exists.

There is no upgrades bought.

There is no moves unlocked.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Okay.

Yeah, it's tough, but like, it's not nearly what I expected.

And then once I'm done with that, I can try BPM mode, which is so for real.

Did you spend any time with BPM mode?

No.

So BPM mode is like the tower, like, you know, the Bloody Palace.

But as you go up the tower, the songs start to change and they start to get higher BPM.

So the game starts to go turbo, and then it starts to go turbo, turbo.

Nice.

But you still have to keep up the rhythm.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

No, that definitely deserves

another look before whatever a sequel starts coming around.

Oh, my God.

Oh,

this dog's so deformed.

Ugh.

Aside from that,

I don't know, not a whole lot.

You can check out my stupid channel over at twitch.tv slash patstares at.

Gonna be playing more Metal Gear this week and more

hi-fi rush.

Oh, people remind me.

Yeah, Ninja Gaiden Black came out of nowhere.

There's some news news for you.

So that's technically docket.

So yeah, the

Ninja Gaiden Black 2.

Pretty fun.

Should run better.

It should run better.

So Ninja Gaiden is a weird, complete knowledge

vacuum for me.

I've only

worked, I did QA on

Sigma Black

for like a couple, for like, you know, very, for not long, like basic, like two or three days tops.

I don't know much else.

Why this specific release?

All right, so let's go through it.

All right.

And of course,

we might as well touch on the fact that

alongside this was the announcement that Ninja Gaiden 4

co-developed with Platinum Games is going to be happening as well.

Platinum going back to their lot in life, which is helping other people make better games.

But the Platinum people that we knew are not there anymore, so it's kind of like, I guess, the people that are left at Platinum

should still be a pretty fucking cool game, all things considered.

Let's be right back for 30 seconds so I can get a caffeine and power through this explanation because it's going to use some words.

BRB.

Right.

All right.

So you want to play Ninja Gaiden, huh?

So I perhaps

know that I have a perspective that is

confused on this, but my impression from the outside

has been that Ninja Gaiden has had revision one of their games called Black, and then revision two would be called Sigma.

No.

And then they made a thing.

Already, already.

Okay.

And then also I'm wondering, like, why specifically going back to two here,

as

there was like as opposed to three or one or so but all right all right all right all right

so you want to play ninja gaiden all right first off ninja gaiden was made by team ninja under tobonobo it tomanubo toman itagaki itagaki

It was a hard-ass motherfucking action game and was extremely popular, right, on the Xbox.

Then they released, I believe, this is the order.

Some of these details might be a little off because there's a lot here.

They released what was called the Hurricane Pack versions one and two.

And that was like a little bit extra, like a costume.

It wasn't like two nuts, but it was like, oh, cool, a costume, or maybe like an extra bonus level, that kind of thing.

Then

they released Ninja Gaiden Black, which was the essential special edition of that game.

We are not talking about the Nintendo games.

We are talking about the game.

No, we are talking about the Xbox games.

Yes.

Ninja Gaiden Black was an improved version of Ninja Gaiden in pretty much every way.

It had more enemy types, it had more weapons, it had

some changes that everybody liked, and that was really cool.

Then

Ninja Gaiden 2 came out.

Wait, is that the order?

Sigma first,

Sigma was first.

Then Ninja Gaiden Sigma

came out, um, which was the PS3 version of that game,

which had the dual sword weapons, but

it was built off like a different version of the game because it was PS3.

So I believe it had other issues that, like, not as many enemies on screen.

And it also had balance changes that were like just generally unpopular.

So, like, if you wanted to play Ninja Gaiden, I would recommend you play Ninja Gaiden Black.

Problem with Ninja Gaiden Black is that Ninja Gaiden Black only exists on the original Xbox.

So, huh?

Then Ninja Gaiden 2 came out on the 360.

Ninja Gaiden 2 is a great game.

Just a great game.

It's super violent.

It is

has a lot of dismemberment.

It throws a million enemies at you.

It's crazy.

Then, later, when it got ported, Ninja Gaiden 2 became Ninja Gaiden Sigma, which included new bosses

as well well as

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2.

I'm sorry.

This is.

But

that's the point.

This is the point.

You're fucking it up now, Evie.

It became Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2,

which included new bosses and weapons.

It also ruined the game's progression, and all of the new bosses were terrible.

And it included new

alternate character stories like Rachel and Ayane's, which are terrible.

So the update to two fucked it up.

And, and here's where it really matters: it decreased the amount of enemies that you would fight at one time and didn't have any gore.

Gotcha.

Hence why we need two black now to go back and fix that bad update.

Well, then we get ninja,

then we get

three Ninja Gaiden 3, which was made without it.

And it sucks.

It's not good.

And it includes like weird scenes, like a soldier, like begging for his life before Ryu kills him.

And it's very like, like, feel bad about the edge and all that.

It's fucking, it's terrible.

And then Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge came out.

Yes.

And Razor's Edge removes a bunch of that shit and puts a lot of more classic controls back in.

And it's better,

but

it's it's not in one or two.

It's definitely not one or two.

Then the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection came out,

which was Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, and Ninja Gaiden Razor's Edge, which then people went and modded Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma to be Ninja Gaiden 2 Black by reintroducing the amounts of enemies and tweaking their health values.

And now.

We just sleeping on Yaiba, Ninja Gaiden Z?

We sure are.

Along the way, somebody points out, there was a game called Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus.

I don't know where that came out.

I know it has more costumes.

Whatever.

But now we are at Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, which is how I accidentally said it when I started streaming it, which was humorous to me.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is still Sigma.

It's still Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma, which people don't like.

And the reason why they keep reusing Sigma, even though people don't like Sigma as much as the original, is because they have lost the original.

The original version of Ninja Gaiden 2 no longer exists.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus is the Vita version

of Sigma 2.

Whatever.

So Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

is still Sigma, but they have toned down the health values of a lot of the more troublesome enemies on Sigma to more black levels.

And then they have added more weapons, but they've removed some of

the costumes that were added by Sigma and Sigma Master and Sigma 2 Plus.

And they have removed two of the new shitty bosses, but left one in, but changed its name for some reason.

And now it runs an Unreal 5.

And also, if we're going to mention a Vita version of the game, we'd be remiss to not mention Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword

for the DS.

Yes.

See, because

the DS is Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is definitely the best version of the game that you can play that is like

of the best of the Ninja Gaiden games that you can play easily.

Original Black.

Yeah.

No, no, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, which is the new release.

Sorry.

This current.

Okay.

This current black.

This current black.

Yes.

Okay.

But if you're a purist and you really like the absolute ridiculous mass of enemies, the only way to play Ninja Gaiden

2 original reliably is to either have a 360 or buy Ninja Gaiden 2 Master Collection and then get the black mod off the Nexus to black it.

Wait, you've got to.

you've got a mod it black.

Yes.

Okay, so fans made their own black mod, and then you can drop that on.

I see.

Yeah.

For the master collection.

Well, shit.

So the collection doesn't even give you version variants then?

You just have.

No, it gives you the smith, the smigma.

It gives you the smigmas

and the razor's edge.

You're forced to have the sigmas, even though.

Okay.

Got it.

So then fuck the collection.

No, because the collection is the only way to get

to mod Ninja Gaiden 2 original

by

going and modding it to be the original enemy placement, which is unfortunately not in Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.

It's a mess.

It's a mess.

It is a mess.

And so.

All right.

And so here's where it gets

actually too.

When does Ninja Blade fit into the timeline?

It doesn't.

That's a from software game.

Ninja Blade fits alongside.

Is it Evergrace?

That RPG that From Software did where you fight Michael Wilson at the end.

You know that Michael Wilson is in Ninja Blade.

And other stuff.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he's a CIA agent that you work with in Ninja Blade before he became the president.

Yo, mid-aughts to fromsoft was wild.

Yeah.

All right.

So here's Enchanted Arms.

That's right.

You can fight Metal Wolf as

the secret boss in Enchanted Arms.

So

here's where it breaks down.

The original version of Ninja Gaiden 2 that everybody loves and loves so much

had an absolutely insane insane enemy count and ran like complete dog shit because it had an absolute insane enemy count.

It also had like blood effects going everywhere.

Dude, it ran so bad, but it was crazy, but it ran so bad.

And on top of that, like a lot of enemies had like exploding kunai they would throw at you from like off screen.

So like it was a mess.

It was like there were fights in that game that were absolutely fucking ridiculous.

So my overall vibe of Ninja Gaiden has been that it's like it's the character action game, but it's not about

styling.

It's not about style.

Everything can kill you instantly and you can kill everything instantly.

It's about doing things with perfect timing and killing as much as possible, as fast as possible.

Fuck style entirely.

It is anti-style.

It's about efficiency.

Survival.

Yeah.

And in particular, Ninja Gaiden 2 has the hallway.

There's like a hallway up to a big temple.

And it is like the microwave hallway, but instead of microwaves, it's the most enemies you could ever imagine thrown at you.

It's like a dynasty warrior's amount of enemies thrown at you with a character action toolkit.

But they're all real.

Right, right, right.

It is fucking bananas.

So when Sigma toned that down to be like a regular game, they then increased enemy health, which made the player feel a lot less powerful, which is why people don't jive with Sigma.

Okay.

Like, Sigma is a less idiosyncratic, but overall better game.

Do all of than the original was.

So the original had a ESEN-like system, right?

Where

you could attack right as you were about to get hit and just behead.

No, it's in fact the opposite of the ESEN system.

They counter hit you to death.

No,

it's instead of perfectly timing your strike to instantly kill, it's when you kill an enemy and they drop their

Yorbs or their Rorbs or their Blorbs, you can hold down the heavy attack and you suck in all the Rorbs and that makes an invincible combo attack that will auto-kill everything in your vicinity.

So it's not about perfect timing.

It's about finding the spot that you can dedicate to charging for two seconds like in this huge chaotic nightmare melee okay when can i sigma up all these orbs and to do my ultimate technique and is that a screen clear or just immediate vicinity it depends how long you charge it interesting okay if you charge it for like a little bit it'll kill one enemy if you charge it for a little bit it'll kill like three or four okay if you get up to like level three it'll kill like four or five because i feel like i'm having i'm remembering like like yeah these insane screen crowds and just a whole lot of like, like, like what looks like e-send, like quick beheading slashes, and then, like, okay, the numbers are back down, and oh, they fled back in again, you know.

So, the trick is that when you use a UT,

you

use up the currency like that you absorb, you are using it up to power the next attack.

Okay, but anything you kill will drop more than average

stuff.

Okay, okay.

So, when you use a UT, UT, you definitely want to make sure it kills what you're fighting.

Okay.

And then it seemed like boss fights, however, are much more in line with the character action boss fights.

Like you're going through the faces and wailing on them.

Absolutely.

The Ninja Gaiden, the boss fights are not great, and some of those boss fights are like viciously terrible.

In Ninja Gaiden 2 original, I don't know if they ever changed this.

There's a gigantic ice hedgehog that you fight.

Like, it's enormous.

It's like, and it's a terrible boss fight.

And then, right before it dies, it does

like a self-destruction, like X move, and it will kill you

100% of the time.

And there's no way to dodge it.

And it's a completely empty arena.

And in the original Xbox 360 version, the only way to survive the fight

was to make sure you have enough magic ready for the end of the fight that when it explodes, you start casting the fire spell so that you are invincible when the explosion goes off.

God damn.

Okay.

Like, this is the kind of nonsense we're talking about.

I remember copious amounts of like, fuck you game design discussions around this game for sure over the years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And each one, I feel like, was accompanied with an itagaki interview where he was like getting drunk and laughing.

I'm being told after all these years that you can just block it.

Oh, okay.

You can just block it.

I never thought to just block it.

I thought of a power three.

Or that.

That's crazy.

Okay, so there's a block button.

Yeah, there's a block button.

Oh, shit.

All right.

Well.

I think the Ninja Gaiden 2 experience is best summed up by the game's first room.

Because the game's first room is you have a cutscene that doesn't make any sense and then it drops you into the tutorial where like four ninjas are attacking our hero Ryu Hayabusa and at the bottom of the screen it says hit X to attack light hit Y to do a heavy attack and hit A to jump and you have to do each of those before the tutorial goes over like to the next stage of the tutorial

but unlike every tutorial in almost every game ever made the enemies that are in that tutorial are the normal real real enemies that are trying to kill you.

So as you read that and go, how do I hit the button, they are all simultaneously attacking you to kill you.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Something else I'm remembering is that your secondary weapon, I guess maybe early or so you get is like a big long staff, right?

And it's like much slower.

And it felt like, you know, in a game where you're styling on an enemy and you juggle them up, you can switch to a slower weapon and start doing, you know, your, your, your Captain Kilgore shit or so.

Nope.

This seems like death in this case.

You don't, you don't switch to other weapons.

So like weapon switching is, is you go into the D-pad menu and you switch to a different weapon.

It is weapon switching is not for like mid-combo.

Weapon switching is for the next part of this level, I would like to use the nunchucks.

Okay, okay, right.

I seem to recall the regular sword like just being way better at like

everything coming at you versus the staff.

It felt like the staff was like, yeah, just wasn't going to be.

No, no, no, the sword is the best weapon in the game.

The starting sword is the best weapon.

X-Buster.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is here, and it's a pretty good version.

It should run better.

But

if you don't know anything about Ninja Gaiden, this is a decent enough place to start.

Very interested in seeing Ninja Gaiden 4 and what's up with that.

Yeah.

I mean, look, if Platinum's got to fucking do the other thing that Platinum does, you know, like,

all right, jump on, help them out.

It feels as if, even though it's not really the case, but it feels as if Team Ninja and Platinum were kind of like soft rivals over the years.

A little bit.

You know, so this kind of comes up.

Well, I don't think that the timeline on that actually works out.

Yeah, it just, again, it just kind of soft feels like it, right?

Based on, you know,

the, like, this is the character action space, and those are the other folks that do games like this.

But, you know, altogether,

like for somebody like you who has not really fucked off the Magic Eiden series, yeah, pick up Two Black.

It's a good game.

It's also like hilarious in how much time it dedicates to things that it doesn't give a shit about.

The story, like nonsense.

Like incredibly short cutscenes that are

fucking incomprehensible.

I had it on the LP shortlist some time ago, but I kind of forgot.

It's good.

It is vicious.

It is a vicious, mean game, though.

Of note, there's no new game plus feature at all.

So when you pick like Grandmaster Super Ninja fucking difficulty, it's like, yeah, no, you're starting with no upgrades.

Fucking earn them.

It's ridiculous.

But yeah, I just like that overall thing of like, there is no style.

Just fucking, just kill and go.

Don't die.

Is

a different appeal there.

Well, as somebody who played all of these games to some degree,

because there would always be this fucking web forum thing of like, man, look at all this cool shit I can do as Dante in Double May Cry.

I can do all these crazy moves.

Can you do those moves in Ninja Gaiden?

What does Ninja Gaiden have?

And the answer is it has enemies that fight back.

Right.

Ninja Gaiden enemies are trying to kill you

a lot, like very much.

They're really fucking aggressive.

And the,

I'm not going to sugarcoat it, X, Y, X, X, Y.

Whatever that means.

That's the Azuna drop command.

Ah.

Well, damn.

I mean, in Dead or Alive, proper.

It works every time.

Yeah.

Fucking...

Hayabus is the shit.

It's so wild that Dead or Alive.

Like,

if you do play Ninja Gaiden 2, remember that Dead or Alive is happening two times over

while this shit is happening.

Because

these aren't like sister series.

Like, Ninja Gaiden's modern incarnation is like a spin-off of Dead or Alive.

Yeah, no, Tina is riding a horse and Zack is doing his funky dance.

Yeah, and you meet Aane

in Ninja Gaiden.

Like, she's there.

While people's heads are flying the fuck off of their bodies.

So, like, when you're doing all this nonsense with Ryu Hayabusa, you have to remember, like, yeah, Bass could do that.

Like,

and

also, a beach island vacation is happening right over there.

Yeah, also,

also,

Nicole of the Spartan program is somewhere in the background.

Oh, no way.

Get somebody.

Somewhere out there.

Somewhere out there.

Got it.

You got to remember that in the future of Dead or Alive, even the Super Ninja Ryu Hayabusa cannot stand to the might of the covenant.

Spartan 9-1, whatever is actually in Ninja Gaiden.

No, no, she's not, but the universe is the same, therefore, yes, okay, all right, does exist somewhere canonically in there, yeah.

They never brought um Ain over into those into those games, though, did they?

The other ninja,

you mean Hayate,

yes.

Well, Hayate

is

um Kasumi's brother, which means he's also Ayane's brother.

And Ayane is in

Ninja Gaiden.

So it could.

So he's somewhere.

Okay.

He's the Hayabusa Village's other male ninja.

Because I always thought Ain was cool.

Yeah.

When they changed him to Hayate, I'm like, I actually much prefer the Ain.

I like Ain way better.

Ain was way better.

That's why I still call him Ain, because because I'm like, yeah, I've been the ninja one, but you know, the fucking, oh, the big hits.

Yeah, Ain was sick.

Exactly.

Exactly that.

And then there's also, and I made this mistake, in Ninja Gaiden, you also find Ryu Hayabusa's dad,

Joe Hayabusa.

From the old series.

No, that's what I thought.

No, Joe.

is it's always been Ryu Hayabusa, and Joe has always been his dad.

Joe Hayabusa is a reference to Joe Musashi, the main character of Shinobi.

Oh,

old Genesis.

He had a dog.

Yeah, and then Big Scarf later.

Wow.

That's a tie-in.

That's crazy, but it's not like officially.

It's just like, okay, there's a lot of ninjas running around named Joe.

Yeah.

And it's not J-O.

It's J-O-E.

J-O.

Like an American.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I wonder if it's...

Like Danny Hayapusa or But that sounds like a one-sided reference, right?

Because shinobi came back out, relaunched itself with the super long scarf, and then kind of went its own way.

And I will say that, like, stylistically, shinobi is like, that's wallpaper shit, you know?

Yeah.

It's rat as hell with the big red scarf, like, like, you're flailing

along the wall when you run and shit like that.

That being said, I have to say, like, Ninja Gaiden, the modern Ninja Gaiden, is one of the best 3Difications of an ancient Ness game.

Because, like, when you think about original Ninja Gaiden on the Ness, you're not styling.

It's fucking hard.

You're surviving.

But it's bullshit hard because the screen scroll enemy really fucking spawned shit.

You know what, man?

Yeah.

In Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden 2, when enemies are firing, exploding rockets and Kunai from off-screen, you know that thing most action games do where enemies that are fully out of camera view become less aggressive?

And or audio cue.

Yeah, not here.

Okay.

Fucking fight and kill your ass off because they are coming at you.

Important question.

How good is the camera?

It's a 360 game at its core.

Is there a lock-on?

Soft?

No.

No.

No.

Ninja Gaiden doesn't use a lock-on.

Fixed angles.

Yeah, it uses fixed angles and you kind of home in on any.

If you're aiming at a guy with the analog stick, you're going to hit them.

Don't worry about it.

It's

so frustration abound because the camera will kill you.

The camera is not.

It's not the best.

If you're going to have an enemy that silently shoots shit up my ass from the camera.

Oh, nothing in that game is silent.

Nothing in that game is silent.

Okay.

But just give me a camera that won't murder me and I'll find a way to get away.

okay, you know, you know, in games when you get too close to the wall and like the wall becomes transparent so you can see your character.

What if in Ninja Gaiden we made that transparent circle around your character literally the size of just your character?

So you can see your character, but you can't see anything else that the wall is blocking.

Perfect, awesome.

Okay, okay, what you know,

Got it.

Hey, I got to take another quick break.

I think that dog's got to go out.

All right.

Hold on a sec.

Ready.

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All right, what's going on?

Well.

Just a heads up for video users.

I am not crying.

I am actually just leaking out of my face.

That is my cold symptom.

I feel fine, but I am just constantly leaking.

Are we hitting the Seinfeld bit?

What is this salty discharge?

No, I mean, straight up, the right side of my face has been like leaking non-stop for like two days.

All right.

Le chiffre.

Just dab at it menacingly with a soft cloth.

There you go.

You know what's really stupid?

The meme of those two guys playing Warhammer instead of poker has like completely replaced the whole fucking movie in my head.

Because that is the sickest shit ever.

Wah, Mr.

Bond.

Mads and Daniel going at it.

Hell yeah.

Okay.

So yeah, we've touched on already.

Ninja Gaiden 4 has been announced.

Platinum Games is working on it alongside Team Ninja.

And

yeah, I guess just Ninja Gaiden news out of nowhere, right?

That's by the way, that's two years that Microsoft has shadow dropped an action game in their January showcase.

I mean, shit, sick.

The instant the shadow drop of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

to everything.

Let's see, did they drop a date for Ninja Gaiden 4 as well?

It's supposedly this year.

Okay.

There's no date.

New protagonist as well.

So,

I guess we're entering a Apollo Justice arc.

Nah, man, it's the Nero arc.

Because you're going to fucking fight Ryu Hayabusa in that game for sure.

And we've already had a game which you fought Ryu Hayabusa in, and in that game, you just straight up

lost

super hard.

Because why would Yaiba?

Yeah, you were bitch-ass Yaiba.

Um,

so that's that's fun, always appreciate that.

Cool.

Uh, they also,

announced the

release for Doom Dark Ages is going to be May 15th.

That's way sooner than I thought.

So

that Microsoft showcase, every single game on that entire thing, I looked at it and like, oh, I'm going to stream that.

I'm going to stream all four games that they showed.

They all look really good.

When that Doom trailer first popped up

in the show, I kind of was like, okay, yeah, well, that's a cool new Doom thing coming, and we'll think about that some year or two from now or so.

Um, shit's coming in in two, three months.

Yeah, dope.

Uh, I really hope that the big blade shield is like

an essential part of the kit.

You know, I hope, I hope that you have to switch back to it constantly because it looks really, really cool.

Yeah,

um,

Doom Dark Ages.

Uh, we got an update, uh, Claire Obscure Expedition 33 is coming out even before that is in April

on the 24th.

That game looks great.

That look game looks great.

Looks fucking cool.

Very, very excited to see what that's going to be like.

And I believe as well, we got a drop that it's going to be 50 bucks.

It's 50 bucks.

It's going to be at a reduced price as well.

Extremely respectable, very commendable, very cool, awesome-looking game.

Yeah,

go take a peep if you haven't already.

If you have any part of you that is

afraid of,

well, not just mimes or clowns, but France as a whole, be warned, it's the Frenchest shit you've ever seen.

We saw a

quick trademark for Skies of Arcadia, Eternal Arcadia,

by Sega Japan.

By the way, before we move off of those

Microsoft games,

South of Midnight, is that the Bayou game?

Because that was also shown there and it looks great.

South of Midnight.

And the other thing that I need to genuinely, one of the weirdest takeaways from that Xbox show was this was right after we talked about Corpo Math and how Sony threw away its entire first party lineup.

And then at the end of this Xbox thing, it's like, oh, I'm really happy for PlayStation owners that they will be able to play every single one of these Xbox games on their PlayStation over the next six months.

Yes.

So alongside this, Phil Spencer basically did an interview where people were asking about like their views on multi-platform and he's basically like, yeah, we are going at it differently.

Everything can be on whatever.

We're not going to be doing lockdown exclusivity on our titles going forward.

And

I feel like we've seen a couple other stories like this

at the beginning of the last generation as well, of just kind of like, hey, we want to push towards a more

platform agnostic future.

Yeah.

But I don't think Sony or Nintendo will ever.

That really doesn't work when your other two competitors are like, thanks for the games, idiot.

I mean, one thing's for sure, right?

One thing that has happened that's kind of, I guess, unexpected is that PC has become a neutral ground.

Yeah, you can even play Nintendo games on it.

PC has become neutral territory.

And everyone is pretty much like, okay, you know, they're not a threat.

And in fact, PC can be a supplemental or

it can be a marketing thing, right?

In some of the way that Sony uses it.

But

yeah, as far as Xbox is concerned, they're like, yeah, we don't want to do

temporary exclusivity with our titles.

Because that's why we got that Game Pass.

I don't know if we ever covered it, but there was that

data that came out that if your game is on Game Pass, you're going to see

an 80% reduced rate of direct sales.

And the math on it was: I saw some interviews with indies where they're like, we try and get on Game Pass, and if we can't get the confirmation that we're going to be on Game Pass, we don't bother making it for the Xbox at all.

Interesting.

Because

people will go, is it on Game Pass?

Nope.

But correct me if I'm wrong, though, right?

But Game Pass also functions like PlayStation Plus in that

they pre-purchase a number of copies.

That's why if you're going to put your game out on the Xbox,

you got to get it on Game Pass.

Yeah.

So a Game Pass guarantee a return on investment.

Exactly, right?

So a Game Pass

play of a game

is not like a lost sale per se.

So here's the thing.

That attitude is

applying to all games on the Xbox platform and not just the Game Pass games.

Because remember the race to zero on the App Store?

They've done that with the Xbox, which is now the race to I should already own it by default.

What do you mean I have to buy it?

Like people who have Game Pass don't really buy non-Game Pass games.

Right, right, right, yeah.

And in the case of, well, I mean, at least the way, you know, when we were looking at the way, whatchamacallit,

Epic Game Store was handling exclusives, right?

They were also going out to indies that were,

they had no

shipping plan beyond just like I guess team or so and being like, yo, hey, Hades, hey, you know, darkest dungeon, whoever, like, how about you put that shit over here for that, you know, period of time or whatever, and then like, we will straight up give you more sales or we'll buy copies that they're, that, you know, at a second.

We'll just give you money.

We'll just give money into your pocket.

That are, you know, higher than you potentially would have made in the discovery phase of your game early on, you know?

So, yeah, it's, it's, we would have to obviously we like, I think when SNK came out and started talking about it more transparently, people were able to figure out a little bit more about how those Game Pass exclusive, not Game Pass, how those EGS exclusive deals worked.

But with Game Pass here,

yeah, I don't know that it's necessarily a case of like, oh,

you're fucked otherwise.

But if you're, if you're, a game that's on Xbox, but it's not on Game Pass and you're saying that you're seeing a reduction, that's brutal.

I don't have the numbers to support this.

I just have my gut.

I believe the reason why Microsoft is pushing for all these games to come out on other platforms now is because I bet you anything they're making more money off of their games coming out on the PlayStation than they are of those games coming out on the Xbox.

I could absolutely see that with retention rates and whatever being as they are.

Yeah.

Availability.

Well, well that's the thing though right as a whole it's the same thing we're yelling to fucking vanillaware about it's like availability helps you want people to play your game right you atlas please put your shit on pc you're finally doing it okay cool you're trying to move consoles as a hardware manufacturer but at a certain point when the generation shakes out the way it is and

you know

there's us like at Christmas you're gonna see your your your your consoles move off the shelf at certain rates and maybe every once in a a while with a major new game that is a huge seller, then sure.

But for the most part, the generation's shaking out the way it has.

I think the best thing

Microsoft's perspective being like, let's sell software to make money here makes perfect sense because what's going to convince people to go back and grab a current gen system?

I think,

remember Phil talking about how the generation they lost was the most important one ever because people built up the digital library.

The digital library, yeah.

I think Game Pass is a try a way around that, but I think they've really fucked it even harder because

if I own

Microsoft product Doom the Dark Ages

and Microsoft product Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Microsoft product the Master Chief Collection on my Sony PlayStation,

what fucking incentive do I ever have to buy the sequels to those games on the Xbox going forward?

Yeah.

Rather than just keep it on the PlayStation.

Unless you're someone who had the Xbox from the beginning of the generation to begin with.

Yeah, like what, like,

oh, my whole library of Microsoft games is on the Sony.

Why would I buy the Microsoft?

Like, it's fucking ridiculous.

And also, you know, again, if you're an indie or if you're a smaller developer that has no guarantees on your release and you're

getting a choice between like, okay, which one of these shops is offering to buy a certain amount of copies up front?

You know, that shit's that's positive.

That's good, you know.

So, in any case, um,

I think uh,

it makes sense why Phil wants it to go that way.

I just, I just don't think anyone else is gonna fucking I think it's crazy that they, they are, like, I have heard a bunch of shit.

They are absolutely dedicated to putting out another box,

and I think that's crazy.

I think that's fucking nuts.

I mean,

is there some shit that nobody else could possibly have that's like

you know like if it's a game pass box effectively so it's supposed to be a game pass box and it's supposed to be the most powerful con like it's supposed to be the biggest jump in in in like tech which means it's probably going to be like a thousand dollars it's probably going to be like a like a like a pre-built pc

And I'm just like, man, who is that for?

Who is that for?

I've been hearing it's going to be called the Xbox Prime.

That's

like literally like

just, yeah, okay.

All right.

I mean, if the thing comes baked in with an Elgato, I wouldn't be surprised at this point.

Now that, now we're talking.

Okay.

I would not be surprised.

Interesting.

Okay.

Well,

at the same time, though, like Nintendo, Switch 2, they're not exactly like stepping big for second place there.

So

they just announced that there's going to be a try a Switch 2 event that you can sign up for.

And it seems everyone, no matter who you are, has to manually take a shot at the lottery.

And to quote one Gene Park,

Jeff Keeley failed to get in to the Nintendo Switch tryout, Switch 2 tryout event.

Nintendo wouldn't care if you had the mandate of heaven.

Oh, mandate of heaven.

Mandate of heaven's getting in there.

I love it.

Oh, man.

Yeah, Jeff Keeley posted his denial.

Other people in the industry have been like, yep, no Switch 2 for me.

I have never tied my...

expectations of a product more strongly to a single feature.

Like I am tying them to the Switch 2's backwards compatibility.

Like I have literally never been more obsessed with how much I'm going to care based off of the performance of like one single feature.

We just

talked about the digital library like importance a second ago.

I've had this discussion with you.

I've had it with a couple others as well.

I've bounced it around with Reggie and Min and stuff.

And I'm just kind of like, I'm really hoping that when they say some titles, they don't mean select titles and not 99% of them.

That would be god-awful.

Right.

I hope it's not some eShop shit.

I hope it's not some we'll sell what you'll sell.

Listen.

You'll take what we choose to sell to you shit.

You show me

a fucking demo video of Switch titles coming to Nintendo Switch 2 and show me a 30 FPS video of Age of Calamity and I will buy four Nintendo Switch 2s.

Old games.

I'm not even joking.

I'm not even joking.

Old games running properly.

Yeah.

We'll find out at the launch event where they'll have

Mario Kart confirmed.

Yeah.

Other things not confirmed, but we have some guesses.

Skong.

No.

No.

skong.

No skong.

No skong.

Anyway, Sega trademarked Skies of Arcadia, Eternal Arcadia.

That's dope.

That's good.

That's dope as hell.

I like that game.

Good shit.

That's a franchise that should exist.

Fun blue skies.

Man, Sega's cooking, man.

Cool character designs.

Vice Cutlass Fury.

Bring that shit back.

We'll see how it goes.

If that new Jet Set radio is

completely forgettable with a sort of mid soundtrack, I'm going to die inside.

Yeah.

If it's completely forgettable.

If it's completely forgettable, but the soundtrack is amazing.

That's fine.

I can live.

That's fine.

Yeah.

I can live.

Yeah,

that's.

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

Only other bit there.

Yeah, I know that we touched on it before, but you were excited about the prospect of the Darkest Dungeon 2, not the same gameplay, but the different gameplay.

That's the more that's the one you wanted.

Yeah, that's coming, or it might be out right now, actually.

Yes, out right now.

Kingdoms has launched, and it's a completely different style of game where

you have a map that you move alongside, and there are enemies and race types that take over and can destroy different parts.

You have to save a network of safe haven ins that you can go to for your resources.

And overall, yeah, you're traveling and moving between these pieces that are,

you know, moving with turns and quest lines and a bunch of new factions and shit like that as well.

So it's.

This is the game that they should have made.

Like I said, I'm like, I'm fine with the overall.

We can't do this talk again.

It's the same one every time.

Like, it's just

a lot of fun.

It's just the cart travel.

Yeah.

But either way, Kingdoms

is out, and uh, there's a bunch of new shit as of, yes, yesterday, so go check that out.

And uh, open beta for City of the Wharves,

February 20th.

Great,

everybody can try it out.

There will be eight characters, probably the ones we've seen announced so far, minus the guests.

And everybody, hey, guess what?

We're going to find out a lot about City of the Wharves

on February 21st when people crack that motherfucker open and data mined the absolute shit out of it.

Yeah, but maybe they're doing like Marvel Rivals and putting out fake data mining

data.

That's great.

That's great.

I was leaks.

I was looking at my phone, you know, over the weekend, catching people popping off over like, oh shit, like Rogue is coming to rivals and she's going to have abilities to like steal from the opponent's team.

And here comes Jubilee and there's a bunch of X-Men and shit.

And it's like, nah, paste pot peat is not coming.

Actually, it seems like there are fake leaks that they've put out so that certain people with certain

access to that information could keep track of who would leak it.

And then there's a real leak list that's based on data mine shit that we know that includes like Blade and Doom, Doctor Doom, and shit like that, right?

But the X-Men list that has been going around this weekend is pure bait.

I love it.

This is great.

Smart.

Smart.

And you know what?

Like, it's one list of like five, six characters or another, of which wait five, six months, and then there will be on to the next.

Like, there's going to be so many characters coming to this that it's almost like, yeah, just give it a second.

Who cares?

It's fine.

Yeah, they'll all get in there.

Everyone you could ever care about.

Like, if the X-Men aren't coming now, they're coming.

Like, they're just,

it'll be wild this time next year.

I feel like the pace are going.

Okay, so pushback pop-up.

Did I get a wrong update about this story?

Did I get a wrong update that some of that, some of those are real?

The last arguing I saw about that were that this list of characters, there's a dev that posted the list of characters that are

confirmed fake.

And that another list was confirmed real.

Someone in chat says the fake leak thing was in itself fake, and the fake leaks were actually real leaks.

Got it.

Okay, so as of the time that we're talking and recording this podcast, it is a confusing mess of a story, and I don't know what's real or fake.

Let's just wait for the thing in Fantastic Torchman.

And you five, you can fight U10 over there, and then you can let me know how that pops up.

But it seems like this is a confusing story right now.

I don't know which is real and which is fake.

You know what's really funny about streaming Marvel Rivals is that you're not paying super close attention and then you forget the name of a Marvel character and then just ballpark it and the new name is always really funny because it's always terrible.

Like, I couldn't remember the name of the,

I want to call him the flaming torch.

Why

what's his fucking name?

I can't even think of it right now.

Johnny Flamer.

Yeah.

He's burning hot.

The human torch.

Human torch.

Yes.

See, exactly.

Yes.

See, this is exactly what I mean.

I spent like a good five minutes streaming it once, and I legitimately could not remember Iron Man's name at all and kept getting confused and calling him Tony Man.

Yeah.

Yep.

Nope.

Great.

Perfect.

Say less.

Anyway.

Keep your eyes out for that.

That's fine.

Let's take some letters.

Oh, before we do that, the crypto, sorry, not the crypto, the AI market crashed because of China and NVIDIA's shitting their pants, which is really funny.

I believe $600 billion down on the market cap is 20%.

That's NVIDIA by themselves.

And that's like not even all the other shitheads.

I saw someone say that this is the largest loss of a company in

American.

Yeah, so I remember talking to somebody.

I was like, yeah, AI seems like a massive scam because it's all speculative investment dollars.

And then a single article comes out that says China can do the same thing, but cheapy, and everyone loses literally a trillion dollars.

It's like, okay yeah no it's a fucking scam it's a fucking scam so the thing that we've been like laughing at about how everyone has just been using these two letters to get a bunch of investors to show up yeah now the investors have noticed that they've actually wasted their money damn but what's gonna happen to game shark ai

i don't know man

i don't know the future of game shark was coming

was it

no i'm sorry ai shark i believe it's actually super weird because you had this extremely expensive product that wasn't good for anything and didn't make any money.

But the idea is that it might make money one day caused an investor run up like crazy because, well, if we own the thing that doesn't make any money completely as a monopoly, then later when we do figure out how to make money, we'll make a lot of money.

And then China says, actually, it's actually really cheap to make the thing that doesn't make any money.

So,

and also, it won't be a monopoly.

So, investing in the thing that doesn't doesn't make any money before it makes any money is actually stupid as shit.

Fucking idiots.

I think now that the word AI is no longer attracting people simply based on its inclusion in a title,

we should throw something else out there.

We should start having companies like, how about Goon Shark?

How about we start?

Let's start raising money around.

Goonshark was the first banner character for Zenlazone Zero, actually.

Okay, okay, now we're talking.

You see, right?

I think we start throwing the word goon around and we start just getting some ground squells, see who wants to invest, right?

Wall Street's going to follow.

Yeah, no,

you bring it to beloved brands.

You bring it to things, you know?

How can Ubi capitalize on this new gooning technology?

Oh, yeah.

So, hey, guys, you know that

you didn't cover it in the news, but Ubisoft shut down one of their studios in England.

Yep.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we'll be seeing more of that in the next two years.

Could that be one of the.

Sorry, my eyes are really watery because of the cold.

Yeah.

Always, always wonderful when a series of extremely predictable, stupid, fucking head-ass decisions result in a bunch of people being unemployed.

Great.

They goon sharking over there.

Goon shark.

That's the way out.

Gooner's Creep.

I think they may have Goon Sharked a little too close to the sun at Ubisoft, actually.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Head on down to your local Goon 11.

You know?

Never forget

use your use your goon pass to

get a

goon smoothie

no you want no no

no

I have guided us over here, and this is where we're staying.

If you want, send in a letter.

Go

gas a superfeastmail at gmail.com.

We're staying over here.

What do you

have for email?

Hold on, I'm still sandbagging.

All right.

Let's take one over here.

So Mitch says, hey, fellas, last week you talked about how YouTube has trash rules for adult content, even if it's implied.

I feel like I should inform you of the absolute hypocrisy they employ.

Part of the punishment for making sure you don't get, I don't get targeted ads, is I get completely random ads, and some of them are fucking insane.

The several I have seen involve a woman talking about this one weird trick you can do with salt to fix your broken dick.

I have heard and seen this exact ad.

I know what you're talking about.

Others using euphemisms for the word penis that are extremely graphic to the point where I can pretty much guarantee that if you recorded it and posted the video yourself to your own channel, it would be blocked.

Yeah, but they're paying money.

Yep.

One of the lines was: After my husband started drinking salt water, his big throbbing tool had be dripping wet all night.

Enjoy your bullshit video takedowns from the Corporal Overlords and remember that they're not human.

Yeah.

So I don't don't drink saline.

So I've seen this literal video and it is just, it is an AI generated script with an AI generated person talking with an AI generated video of

like a person's head snapping from line to line going through like how some salt solution shit is going to pork you up real hard.

And don't drink salt water.

Yeah.

And it's like you're seeing this as an ad running all over YouTube.

And in the meantime, if you uploaded that video directly, you would absolutely get your shit flagged for it, at least marked yellow minimum.

Right?

That's the platform it's on.

It's fucking...

Oh, boy, is it frustrating.

Hypocritical fucks.

And they're never as good as

the insane Chinese mobile game Facebook ads.

Oh, I mean, those are just...

Those things are legendary.

They're incredible.

Yeah, I mean, the ones where it's suddenly a dating sim, but of like the three kingdoms.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's like throw out into the street or impregnate are the two options.

Yeah,

I mean, I've gone off enough about fucking homescapes or plants, whatever, where it's like, I can't tell if this is a gardening game or a game about

your dad getting crushed in this spike cage.

Yes, yes, it is.

Or

it's a large, realistic zombies are invading from over the hill kind of game.

All right, and D says, Hey Castle and Super Beast, longtime listener, I always hear, games getting praised for amazing OSTs, stories, characters, worlds, et cetera.

I'll parrot and praise and talk

about that when speaking to others.

But when I actually play a game, I end up not appreciating any of it.

I do have decent media literacy.

It just never becomes something I exercise in games.

My interest is single-minded, and it feels almost hypocritical to speak positively of games like, say, Disco Elysium.

Um, if I ever play it, I've owned it for years.

I, what I end up, all I ever end up wanting to do in games is make a build and have combat, especially crunchy CRPGs-type builds.

If there's no build and no combat, no play.

I've played games like Pathfinder, Baldur's Gate 3, New Vegas, Pillars, etc.,

and

to make just to make my build and fight things with it.

The story is enjoyable fluff that happens in the process of exercising my build.

When my build is complete, I race to finish the game before I get bored or drop it.

I'll spoil a lot of the game story or mechanics while figuring out the potential gear, skills, party members I can use for the build, how to get them, and it doesn't really bother me to do so.

Then I'll say, that game had an amazing story when I beat it.

No punchline, just wanted to share that because it's probably weird.

Bro, just play Warhammer.

Like, just skip all the steps steps that you're currently playing and just play Warhammer.

I mean,

I'm, yo, popular or unpopular opinion here, but, like, play with your toys however you want.

Yeah, obviously.

Who cares?

No one's going to come, like, yeah, it's your thing.

You bought it, but you play.

Play with your figures.

Do what you want to do.

No one cares.

Like, if you're enjoying that way of doing things, I find it insane, but who cares?

Do it.

I mean, the main thing is that, like, a lot of the games that he describes as the ones that he's running these builds in are like extraordinarily story-focused.

So, like, you would probably like genuinely have a lot of fun doing like just tabletop shit because you can just

not interact with that shit if you don't give a fuck about it.

But I guess the fun of making a build in a big possible list of ways to do it is to watch the domino effects all crash into each other and do cool things, right?

Like you don't get that if

you just tabletop it as much, you know?

But yeah, that's

it's it's odd, but it's fine, you know?

If a story just doesn't generally ever compel you,

you know, then

not hurting anybody.

Now, if you're playing online with other people,

you know, well, that's another case.

Well, actually, you're probably better at being an online partner with people because

you're exclusively focused on the synergy and like

build compatibility.

So the fact that

there's a genre of MMO player that plays MMOs and will do like all the endgame content, and then you'll talk to them and discover they don't know literally a single detail about the game setting at all.

Yeah, yeah, and it's totally baffling.

It's super fucking weird.

But I mean, that's up to them.

Well, this reminds me a lot of when Street Fighter 4 dropped, and it was like

there was a, I remember a lot of, uh, there's arcade dudes that were just kind of like, wait, so, like, Goukin, like, isn't Akuma Ryu's dad?

Like, sorry, like, what, you know, like, there's just a whole lot of like, what's, what, there, you know, and you're like, I don't know, these are the games I popped quarters in, and then I did fucking Psycho Crushers.

I don't give a, I don't know or give a fuck who or what or where, you know, it's like Akuma, uh, Sakura is the little sister, right?

You know, it's like, yeah, might as well be.

You just see it and assume so.

It's like, yeah, okay, cool.

So like nobody knew or give a shit what Street Fighter story was.

I genuinely think one of the appeals of from software games to a lot of people

is that there is no explicit story.

Like the complaint of like, oh, these games don't have like a like a like a dedicated plot and through fare.

How the fuck is Vati paying his mortgage?

No, no, no.

There is not a So when you're playing a from software game, if you want a story, you can go dig it out.

Yes.

But if you don't give a shit.

It is not overt.

Go castle, fight boss.

Except for like a sec hero, right?

Where they barely.

They push it a bit more.

They push it more.

And then, of course, you know, like Armored Core and stuff.

Yeah, but like, I mean, if you want to play Dark Souls 3, like, it's Castlevania 1, you can.

But I guess it's the difference between lore and, you know, like active story, right?

Yeah.

Like, Doom has a codex lore that you're getting, but 90% of it is all just like learning about the past.

Yeah, 90% of it is the Doom Slayer was so cool.

Oh, my God.

Can you believe it?

And in terms of active moment-to-moment shit, it's like, blow that up, shoot that fucker.

Yo, he's going off.

Hey, fuck him.

You know?

Cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like, from software games are like the fantasy equivalent of wow, cool robot to most people.

Wow, cool devil, man.

But war bad is actually there, but you got to go find it on the ground.

You know, entropy inevitable?

What's an entropy?

I fought that guy because he had a wolf sword.

Or go find the shard in the middle of the mission table, you know.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, hey, look, in conclusion, there,

D,

we don't pay your sub.

Yeah, man.

All right, take it easy.

Have a good one, everybody.

Bye-bye.