CSB299: All World Peace Needed Was a 3 Button Layout (feat. @TheSphereHunter)

Rolling starts.

Rolling starts.

Oh, man.

What a great time for this.

I'm worried.

Very worried.

I'm worried.

I am

concerned.

Yes.

I am concerned about

our profession.

Yeah.

I am concerned about the future of the gaming industry in general.

I am to some degree worried about the after effects of a possible video game crash affecting the global economy.

Because at some point in the next year, possibly two,

video games will be over because Virtua Fighter VI will release

and there will be no other games.

That'll be it.

And no one will buy anything other than Virtua Fighter.

And we have to get ready for that foreseeable and inevitable future in which everything is just over because it's Virtua Fighter time.

That's it.

That's all there is.

Every subsequent recording and or stream will just be the sounds of sticks being hit.

Yeah.

And I mean, like, we'll have world peace and shit.

So, like, that'll be good.

Because all global conflicts will then be solved in, you know, double limb three out of five.

But, you know, like, it's going to be different.

Who knew that all we needed was all World Peace needed was a three-button layout

the whole time, it was right there,

man.

That's that's one of the best things you've ever said.

That is just that is just perfect.

That is dead on.

Yeah,

okay, all right, so Virtual Fighter 6 has been announced.

Now, Pat, Boivé.

Yes, that's me.

Hello.

In this trailer, we saw

our

mystery man in a hat reveal himself to be Akira.

Now, he is Akira.

He's a Kyuki, known karate boring man.

Yes, now he is known karate boring man, and some time has passed, and he has put a hat on.

Is that too much flavor?

Or are we still okay?

So there's a really fun...

thing that happened when that VF6 trailer dropped where

something was that was going on is like once his foot enters into the frame and you can see the stitching on his pant, my brain went, oh, that's RGG.

That's how they design fibers in clothes.

That's crazy that you noticed that.

That's why.

And

then it's Akira, and what they've done, and what they're apparently going to do, is they're just going to take virtual fighter characters and then just turn them into side quest characters from the background of like a dragon games.

okay um

and that is that is like the perfect distance from their old boring karate man selves in that they have been transferred to a different seg of property in style which is still

realistic i'm using big air quotes in in in tone

so so ryu has has gone from being a boring karate man to being a boring karate man but he is thick and the fact that he barely understands technology is one of his

character traits, and his density is also become endearing, right?

Can Akira

be...

Is it okay to add this idea of with some time and some mystery, he is covering his face and he is kind of shadowy now?

This is okay.

Okay.

I like it.

The time has passed.

That's going to be a thing.

Now,

I believe so.

We saw the footage, so we saw him do his Tetsuzanko

on Sarah Bryant.

No, you didn't.

Excuse me.

So I had to re-watch it multiple times.

That is not Sarah Bryant.

Whoa.

What is Stella, the Bridge Between Worlds?

So

here's what we saw.

We saw a cutscene of Akira in a new, very kung fu, hustle, like Hong Kong

look.

Tetsuzankoing a guy through like five buildings.

Right?

Which is one, that's your tone setter of it's going to have a lot more environmental destruction, kind of like dead or alive.

Then you saw like five seconds of Akira fighting Stella

in a very realistically modeled, like kind of looking Hong Kong, maybe Chinatown kind of area, which is not a square and it's not a cube.

You know, it's like a

place.

So it's going to be more like Dead or Alive, knocking people into stores, knocking people through walls.

She's a new generation looking Sarah vibe-looking character.

And you also hear Akira talk, and Akira sounds older, and also he sounds like an RGG voice actor.

He does not sound like a Sega AM2 arcade man.

Clearly and we'll get to that all in a second.

Right.

So what I believe is going to be occurring for Virtual Fighter VI is they are doing the thing that we all love, which is they're going to do the time skip.

Okay.

Stella is going to be a clone or a fucking

brainwash or whatever.

The new kid.

Akira's old.

Lau is definitely going to be dead by now.

Shundi still alive, though.

Shundi somehow still alive.

Yeah, okay.

But like, it's going to be the new generation, but they will have like direct replacements.

Interesting, okay.

So in the direct, because like I did go through it, but I went through it like fairly quickly, admittedly.

The theme of this week you're going to hear is the extreme lack of time that I have for

anything.

I had time.

But in going through it

and kind of quickly, I saw there's a part where they kind of zoom in on her model a bit closer, and you see like her bangs are curly in the front.

So I kind of.

She's got little freckles.

So I kind of just went, oh, they're making Sarah look a little younger and they're changing up her bangs.

Yeah, no, she does look much younger than she's ever looked because that is a different

person.

And it is,

I guess, like the other thought, too, was like up close, if you zoomed in real hard with modern effects, would you be able to tell the difference between Sarah and Nina?

You know, like it'd be tough, it'd be really tough.

Like, Sarah always wears it in a ponytail, yeah.

But, like, the her or the blue tight look is very, very close.

Those characters look nigh identical to each other, yeah,

especially as like time goes.

As we all know, that's because Nina stole Sarah's design.

Well, she's wearing the very thing that Virtua Fighter did first.

Well, the wedding dress and the new business gun look is is established.

Stolen from Kill Bill instead.

Don't ask him for shit.

So, hey,

two things, I guess, come to mind now.

So, one,

because of that Virtual Fighter Direct, which aired after the TGA

announcement,

a bunch of people got on stage to talk about, like, hey, we're excited about Virtual Fighter coming back.

I believe the person that we theorized existed,

the person that was in RGG Studio holding down Virtual Fighter the whole time.

He stood up on the thing and was like, it's me.

Yoko Yama is the name.

We have a name.

The guy that went, hey, I'm that guy.

I'm the one that kept Virtual Fighter alive inside of RGG.

He actually

put a pin on it directly.

It was this man.

Literally him.

And he basically confirmed.

He's like, yup.

So we've got our new Yakuza game in development as well.

Be sure to check that out.

But

RGG Studio and the Virtual Fighter team are working together on this game.

And so they're just like,

we kept it alive, and now it's time we're taking it.

And it's ours now.

And with that, you can almost just hear the sounds of all the, like, the roster of the protagonists from...

RGG dropping into diddler!

So I don't think, I don't think they're gonna do that you think they're gonna just ignore them completely I think I think what we are gonna see so uh one of the so they only showed like five seconds of footage right like of real footage one of the things that I noticed was um and I'm gonna circle back around don't worry um is that uh there's no crouching in that footage um and uh characters are holding block but they're individually blocking like specific strikes.

So like Sarah is like holding down block, but she's putting her hand out on each strike and even doing like a leg check by lifting up her knee.

Dynamic blocking animations are the best.

Love it.

Right.

And, like, if that's for everything, that's a lot.

That's a lot to do.

Street Fighter V was the start of that, and I've wanted it forever.

I've wanted that forever.

It's great.

Actually, that's not true.

Shikamaru in the GameCube Naruto game was the start of that.

Oh, you're right.

He would actually avoid your hits instead of blocking them.

Go on.

But I believe what we're going to see is we're going to see

because

Virtual Quest was supposed to be the Virtual Fighter story mode that we never got, right?

The open world RPG that happened to be Virtual Fighter, and then it became Virtual Quest.

Yep,

I think

that if the RGG team, who makes full-length single-player action-adventure games over the course of a weekend, is the primary developer for Virtual Fighter VI.

That Virtual Fighter VI's story mode or single-player content is going to be a microcosm of an RGG game where each chapter is a playable character.

I could absolutely see that, and they have the experience and the team to do that.

That's awesome, and it would be fucking sick to give Virtual Fighter more context than it's ever had via a story and have to have that be the wild, the wild story of the Yakuza team is an awesome idea.

And if they want, they can just put it in Kamarocho and Dotenbori and

fucking Okinawa and whatnot.

Now, here's the thing: I think that fan expectations are that they would like to see the characters they know and love.

It's a hope.

Yes.

Right?

So I expect that I'm holding out the idea that there will be

at least Kiryu, if not Kiryu Majima and Ichiban, available in that roster, as a holy shit, they're here because this is the studio.

If we don't get that, right?

And if time is a factor and I guess story is a factor, which it doesn't have to be in this series, never has, right?

There could be another way they play it, which is here is a brand new character that now also exists in the other game we're working on.

That's what I'm expecting.

I'm expecting the Virtual Fighter cast to coexist in the same generalized universe as Like a Dragon, but I am expecting them to never run into any B lister or above.

Right, okay.

But C listers and below, absolutely.

Or Project Century Man.

Yeah.

Right.

Possibly Project Century Man.

Project Century Man will just be in both as a means of like, hey, look, the new project showing up in the two things we're working on.

It's look at so Unika is the character from the Guilty Gear anime that's about to show up in the the season as well, right?

That's a very understandable move that crosses over the two ideas for sure.

But

something is going to come of the fact that this particular studio is now making the game.

So there's a lot of weird...

So they showed off that Virtual Fighter V Revo has rollback and that it has a balance adjustment, which the balance adjustment is really good, by the way.

I'm not going to go into any details, but it's a really, really good balance adjustment that is one of those things where it's like, okay, these are the kinds of ideas they're going to be pushing forward for the next game, and they're good ideas.

Like, certain things that were annoying are gone.

Certain things that were a little drastic or small?

It depends on how you feel about certain aspects of Virtual Fighter.

Okay.

All jabs are now advancing jabs.

Okay, so like that.

Massive, massive surface level changes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

Stuff like that.

They added moves back in.

They evened out the cast.

They reworked Taka.

All that kind of stuff.

But, okay, so like, and you're watching the VF6 thing, and they're being really cagey about it, but at the same time, they're having a massive presentation.

Like, this is a

big boy direct, and part of that big boy direct is there will be more Virtua Fighter directs coming.

And also, here's our Twitch channel, here's our YouTube, here's the Discord, here's the Twitter account you can follow.

Here's also here's the promise of esports coming through Saudi Arabia.

Not even that, because what happens is, is like your brain is going like, oh, this looks like a fancy big video game, and that's really expensive.

And well, for a big first person, like, first player, sorry, single-player story mode, like that would be expensive.

And charting out all the move differences and animations for all this blocking shit would be really expensive.

Okay, so let's super cut to the CEO of fucking NVIDIA

showing up on the fucking stream going, hey, by the way, I personally love Virtua Fighter and also NVIDIA owes Virtua Fighter.

What?

Like, what are you going to do for Virtual Fighter as a favor, Ken Jong?

No, that's not his name.

Whatever.

Jensen Huang?

Jensen Huang.

I keep calling him Ken Jong, the comedian.

Yeah.

But, like, one of the richest men in the world is like sitting in front of a camera going, I'm only rich because of Virtua Fighter.

I love Virtua Fighter.

I got your back, back, Virtual Fighter.

I'm stuck on the guy in charge of Nvidia just going

staring at a tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of paper.

Anyway,

yeah, that's crazy.

That's an unexpected one.

And also, the tofu that is a Virtual Fighter character design is the furthest thing from a video card box character design that Nvidia would like to put on their Instagram.

Absolutely.

So that's wild that they would have to do it.

And then you smash cut to the saudi esports prince

who never shows up for NVIDIA ever because he hates that shit.

So that is, it's the esports prince.

It's in specific.

It's not actually MBS, but it's the guy in charge of esports, mind you.

And he's sitting there going, by the way, I also love Virtual Fighter so much that I have decided to show up here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

that's an unexpected cast of characters showing up at the end of this video.

It's a weird feeling where the Sega is out here going, we have fucking as much money as we want on to blow on this.

The sky is the fucking limit, guys.

We're going to push this so hard.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, there you go.

And the idea, of course, is that how long has this been worked on?

A while.

Probably a while.

Sounds like it's been a minute, right?

Sounds like it's been under wraps for quite some time.

At least seven or eight complaints ago.

I want to say perhaps five tantrums have occurred in the time that this has been in development.

I would say at least four or five tants, like proper tantrums, proper tantrums.

I had a tantrum about this last week.

And I got the same reaction I always got, which is people going,

little baby with his BF.

Like, it is, though, I have realized something about like these annual, whether it's the award show or the direct seasons or the E3 kind kind of moments, there is something that does happen every year.

And I do have this:

if you wait long enough, things happen.

Things happen.

The things you want to happen, they eventually happen.

Okay.

Sorry, go ahead.

And I will say, in terms of Virtual Fighter, the Revo Open Beta came out.

The net code's good.

Virtual Fighter can totally work with rollback net code.

Thumbs up.

It also has really good tournament options and Kumite options and round-robin mode.

It worked really flawlessly.

But more more importantly than that, I tricked

Twitch

into getting more than a thousand people watching Virtual Fighter by immediately switching from the game awards stream to the Virtual Fighter category.

There you go.

Before anyone could leave, there you go.

You locked him in.

Yep.

I locked him in.

Nailed it.

Virtual Fighter is now popular.

I did it.

Does that work in terms of like, can you break records by inviting according According to Twitch tracking websites accounts.

Gotcha.

You can invite everyone out for like free chili day and then lock the door behind them and go, nah, you're here for Virtual Fighter.

You all showed up.

We had so many people.

People got their bulls like, I'm here for Chili.

All right.

Well,

so here's something now.

I have seen.

a a what is uh purporting to be a leaked screenshot of some kind I've also seen that leaked screenshot.

It is making the rounds on the Virtual Fighter subreddit, which I should note has tripled in size over the past week to 6,500 people.

Well, of course,

there's a reason to pay attention, right?

That's 6,500 Virtual Fighters.

That's crazy.

Unprecedented.

Damn.

That's almost 7,000.

More than dozens.

That's wild.

You think we can get them all?

You think we can get them every single one?

so so there's a screenshot that's going around that um apparent that apparently is leaked and it looks like it's the same stage

legit looks pretty legit looks like you're seeing uh akira with and without his hat on um if i liked various versions of akira's costume which like obviously the classics will be there but the most noteworthy thing

is a second bar Under the life bar.

So you know what's great about that?

Watching people just lose their fucking minds.

Just, just, like,

just, what the fuck is that?

There should be no bars.

There should be no bars.

There should be no bars.

This is the most straightforward, bland three-button fighter ever.

Why is there another bar there?

What the fuck is that about?

So here's the weird thing.

Apparently, the devs on VF have talked about in the past that they love the drive gauge of

interesting.

So, like, everyone was like,

is that a fucking guard break?

Okay.

Because that's like the most obvious idea.

The guard break meter is the most passive and

thing that it could be conveying to you, right?

You block it too much, and then eventually your guard gets cracked open.

But we're also talking about a team of developers that are probably holding themselves back every day from typing the word heat.

It has to be heat, right?

Like, I was waiting for you to say heat.

If they, that should be called heat.

So that's the name that's that's what that fucking book I don't care what it does I think it should be called heat yeah now now the concept of we've already we've already been over this once or twice recently the concept of adding heat to a

very

bland and normal pot of of of

miso here, you know, with the tofu in it.

What what is acceptable, you know?

So this is, this is like, this coincided really perfectly with me streaming a bunch of VF5 Revo.

So first of all,

VF5 Revo has like kind of reinvigorated a hope that

I've killed in my heart for a long time is that normal people might actually like Virtua Fighter at some point because Revo being an open beta had tons of people in our chat like just trying it.

Like, why the fuck not?

Yeah.

but let's be real.

You have been non-stop about this shit for so long that everyone has to, just for the sake of scratching that itch, go, what the fuck is this thing that he's been talking about forever?

I think the

most interesting

comments I've seen were basically people who were like, well, I've never actually even fucking seen Virtual Fighter because it's so dead.

And all I've been hearing about it is that it's so boring.

But now that I'm playing it, I'm blown away at how fast it is because it's super fast.

It's lightning fast.

Yeah,

those strings come at you real quick.

But people don't know because they've never even fucking seen it.

Okay, because when I think of Virtu Fighter, I think of the sound of,

right?

The one, two, three, the jab, ja-jab.

And like those moments of you're floating, and the normals are coming out way quick while your body is slowly dropping to the ground.

Absolutely.

The micro decisions you're making per second are infinite.

And

so I'm like, okay, so what is the core of Virtual Fighter?

Because RGG wants to innovate through technology.

That has always been Virtual Fighter's thing.

You don't need to know if that's minus because you can see that it's minus.

You don't need to, you know, that kind of thing.

I have a feeling they're going to be pushing this

system.

That's horseshit, by the way.

Well, that's absolute dog shit.

No, you can feel it.

You can feel the minus.

Okay, go on.

You can feel it.

Sure.

You can just see it with your eyes.

On the crouching jacket.

Yes.

All right.

Yeah.

But I think they're just going to push it towards like super, super, super aggressive.

And if it's going to be super, super aggressive, then a guard break makes perfect sense or something to make your shit more plus or, you know, better.

So before Tekken went full super, they did introduce heat as, or rather, they did introduce rage, right?

Dude, it was fucking heat, bro.

Yeah, so that's the thing: is

you get like, all right, how passive can we go with like a comeback factor or like some sort of additional meter?

You're like, okay, it doesn't give you any special moves, and it doesn't give you anything crazy, except it makes your damage a little bit better after certain punishments.

It makes you a little bit better when you're on the edge.

Or you can put some, or if it's guard breaking, it's like you can't block forever.

But otherwise, the game is the game, you know?

But then eventually that gives way to, it activates a once-per-round move, and then it, and then you also have special conditions like Street Fighter in 3D installs, you know, and yeah, I mean, by that point, we had proper Hadoukens also in the game.

And let's be real, Jin's been shooting, Kazuya's been shooting lasers out of his ass since fucking Tekken 2.

Like, one of the things that's really exciting about Virtual Fighter 6 is that now we get to see kind of what

Tekken 9 is going to look like when they just lift a bunch of things from Virtual Fighter like they always do.

Oh,

even when it was dead, it was still being lifted, was it?

Woolly,

what is the one bad Virtual Fighter game?

Three.

What Tekken game came out right afterwards and stole all of its ideas and was like a weird misstep?

Four?

Yeah, wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

Okay, and then for everything that happened, all the ghost releases afterwards,

they were clearly cribbing notes of non-existent Virtual Fighter.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Well, no, they also took

Rage from MK vs.

DC.

Oh, yes, yes.

That's where they stole it from.

Right, got it.

Okay.

Sorry, I need to take a phone call.

Excuse me.

That's fine.

BRB.

I'm going to just kiss this dog.

All right.

Excuse me.

So,

I think what I'm kind of curious about is just the idea that

if you're standing around holding up the keep Virtual Fighter boring sign, you know,

you're showing it to the wackiest, most funny, and exciting team possible.

Yeah, okay, you're completely right.

So

I trust those guys.

Just straight up, I trust that team

and I trust that guy.

And

one of the things that takes a lot of the weight off of the worry that maybe they go too crazy

is the changes they made to VF5 Revo are excellent.

Okay.

They are

solid system and balance changes that make the game much better.

Okay.

Okay.

So then, yeah, it's in good hands for

gameplay.

it's in good hands for netcode, and it's in good hands for story mode.

I guess we're going to...

And here's our billionaire backers.

Yeah, infinite money.

I have a sneaking suspicion that NVIDIA is going to invent a new technology specifically to be used in Virtual Fighters.

For Dural.

For the Dural.

I don't know.

I have a feeling they are going to use their DLSS shit

and that VF is going to contract martial artists to feed their shit into the NVIDIA robot so that they can get a procedural blocking thing going on.

But something about Dural's shiny texture, which before it was like, oh my god, it's reflective.

Unlimited ray tracing, right?

Yeah, so now, yeah, now Dural is going to be the thing that crashes all systems

unless you have the latest and greatest RTX.

Yeah, that Dural has to be the walking benchmark of technology.

But yeah, one way or another, we are clearly going to be hearing a lot about Virtual Fighter because Sega seems fucking all in on this one.

Pretty committed.

And again, like RGG love pushing that as well from behind because Sega has, you know, also committed to re

launching a bunch of old franchises.

But as we've been all of them, it feels like.

Yeah, right.

They've made that decision to be like, oh, shit, okay, we can let's do this all at the same time.

And I think they're kind of being spurred on by, well, one, Capcom has been successfully doing that for the last five plus.

And in fact, they literally said, well, I mean, we're going to talk about more of that later, but Capcom is also way into like, you know what we used to make?

We used to make good old shit.

And I want to say that Konami is also now getting back into the games business.

Well, that's just funny in a different way.

Yeah.

So I feel like Sega's like, hey, hold on a minute.

We can go back to the things that everyone's been bothering us for for all these years.

The way they talked about it was like really

point of the WrestleMania sign.

It's like, we are excited to return as the king of the 3D fighting genre and be the peak of all fighting games and shit like that.

And it's just like, holy fucking shit, guys.

I mean,

it is,

there is legacy to the fact that this is the 3D fighter, right?

Like, it is true,

but

the world's very different

for so long.

But, um,

but it is that it is that thing where the, the, the, the salary men that still play Super Turbo in the arcades in Japan, there's also the salary men that play Virtual Fighter, you know, like it's, it's, it is that, like, staple in people's hearts forever.

Um, but yeah, Sega being like, hey, Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi and

Golden Axe.

Shinobi.

Shinobi.

Some of those releases are getting

gassed up more than others.

And that's just a matter of like, we don't want to take risks.

So this is how you mitigate it.

But in the process, you also make everyone kind of vomit in their mouth a little bit.

I can tell you right now, Virtual Fighter VI is probably going to be gassed up a significant deal.

Well,

they can't do season passes like other video, other fighting games, because characters don't come out fast enough.

This is where I was going, right?

I think that everything Sega brings back, they likely want to put it through the fucking gas chamber.

But what's probably

sorry.

That's okay.

It is what it'd be.

But I suspect that because there's like an RGG behind it, that's like, okay, but we care though, right?

Whereas we don't know where or who's involved with the others right now,

there's a hope that maybe there's like

resistance to that to some degree.

I don't think that we've seen any of the recent RGG releases be gassed up to oblivion.

So you've seen them have like pre-order things and tons of bonuses and

like massive marketing pushes, but they haven't gone down the depths depths that we've seen

the other, like what's going on with Jet Set Radio, for example, happen.

I don't know if that is a factor of the RGG team getting like some

independence from those types of decisions, or if it's the fact that

that kind of like monetization doesn't make sense for a studio that puts games out every 10 months.

They have an annual release.

They are a sub-annual release development team.

So, when you put out a game like this, where you're like, how do you make this monetize and how do you make this make money for a predetermined?

And they're like, well, we don't know.

The next game's out.

We put the next game out during this conversation.

Yeah.

And they're going to have to do something.

And yes, season passes and DLC characters are a big part of how fighting games survive.

Seasons, you know, in general, as a concept, have to be a thing.

Yeah, it's just like Virtual Fighter has a history of putting out like

one character every year.

I just can't.

Like, they're slow.

I mean, that's generous,

you know.

But I also, can you envision a world where here are your 14 different

Raphael outfits?

You know, I mean, I can imagine that because

VF in the arcades had

the card that you would put into the arcade

that would save your character's customization.

How extreme were the cosmetics for four?

Yeah, okay.

The cosmetics in Virtual Fighter V were about as extreme as Tekkens are now.

Okay, okay.

You make your characters look real fucking stupid.

Because, yeah, four is where they really started with the card system and the

the playing online against people in different arcades and shit like that.

Okay, so then, yeah,

you know, making money off of those cosmetics.

And here's the bit too, of course, a chunk of this is going to be dedicated towards esports in the game, for sure.

Oh, yeah.

On the title screen, there will be an esports button.

It's a 25 Revo.

Yeah.

Where there's just a fucking, on the main menu, it's just playing matches all the time.

Well, the first thing that got, the first new Virtual Fighter anything that got announced was the esports decision, right?

Before the Blitz Netcode release, before anything.

Yeah, that game's called Virtual Fighter V esports.

Yeah, it's, you know, so it's quite clear that, yeah, that's going to be a big push for this as well.

And, I mean, as far as players go, it's very simple.

You have to incentivize with a giant pot off the jump.

Yeah,

I foresee a big pot.

I foresee a million dollars.

No.

It's like the first tournament.

Get on the plane and fly over.

You know,

like we didn't even, we didn't even like go into

it.

Like, they also had Mark Man show up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And be like, by the way,

VF is going to be at Frosty Faustings,

and also it's already part of the Evo Japan tournament.

setup.

Like, it's already part of Evo Japan.

Like, they went out to everyone they could possibly get to support Virtual Fighter and got them.

It's crazy.

I wonder if they would do a million.

I wonder.

We'll have to see.

Sponsored by NVIDIA.

Here's a million dollars.

Or, you know what?

Fuck it.

A million and one so they could say it's the highest pot ever.

Sure.

But whatever it is, then 2xKO now has to double it

immediately, right?

Well, let him fight.

Let him argue over this.

This is where we're heading.

So, yeah.

Cool.

Okay.

Well, Dota does something really smart

where

they have like a massive cosmetic season pass kind of thing associated with the tournament.

And when you buy into that, that money feeds into the prize pool.

Yeah, right, right, right.

There is that.

There is that.

Which I think every, I think, fighting games should do.

I think Street Fighter did that with the sale of the

stage, the championship stage.

oh yeah they did they did they did packs where you basically would uh you buy outfits and a stage that would contribute towards the capcom cup uh yeah towards the tour exactly that we're in a really weird place

of that

someone in the chat just said something really funny which is well 2x ko has to come out for it to do any of this.

So we're now in the place of like, which one of these is going to come out first?

And I swear to God, I could put money.

Virtual Fighter might actually come out before 2xKO.

Possibly, but it doesn't matter because 2XKO is also free.

Right?

Well,

and that's a pretty big factor.

And I also think as well, well, just on that thing, I think you're going to click on that esports button on the title screen, and it's going to be esports presented by Kadia.

And you're going to click it, and you're going to go straight to Riyadh.

And it's going to

the whole environment will change.

One of the things that's like it's a relatively minor thing, and I remember I saw Max talking about it, and I totally agree with him.

And I spoke about it, and I think Rufamonger also spoke about it, where

VF5 Revo gives me a lot of hope for the future because they could have priced that to trip at the starting line.

They could have priced that like disastrously, and it would have

fucking been a nail in the foot, like right away.

That game is $15

US.

it's an apology game for the re-release that they just botched yeah they can't also did the open beta they can't sell this game that they just released with bad net code a year ago for anything more than that i mean come on you know i and To those of us like me who want that fancy edition, which costs $40, they're like, hey, do you know that this includes like the entire Sega AM2 music library, including like a hundred unreleased tracks for Sega arcade games.

Hell yeah, nice.

And I'm like, oh, cool.

My B-Right backscreen is about to get a massive upgrade with Sega Arcade tracks.

Thank you.

Pat, can I interest you in that season pass including one fighting viper?

Oh, absolutely.

Bon.

Not Bon.

Not Bon.

It should be the.

Lucky?

The bike guy.

It should be the girl that has

the black girl who's in purple that has the rollerblades.

I forget her name.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

But Bon is the title guy.

Bon is just a Joe Taro.

He's Jotaro.

And Joe Taro is good for sales.

No, put the Daytona USA car and rent it here.

I was getting there.

I was getting there.

I know.

I know you were getting there, and I had to get there first.

You start with a fighting viper, and then you see Bean the Dynamite, and you go, oh no.

They put a fucking Sonic the Fighters character in, and then they let it sit, and then, and slowly, you get your Daytona car,

you get your Pepsi Man, and hey, look at you, fuck off.

It's the Fighters Mega Mix season, and the AM2 logo is now playable again.

The last thing I want to say about Virtual Fighter, other than I love Virtual Fighter, and I'm just very happy, is that

they're really really zeroing in on just the right little buttons to make people emotionally resonate.

So, like, Sega AM2's new goddamn sound effect is the coin noise from the old arcade machines.

Damn straight.

And when the president of Sega is like, hey, everybody, I have something to announce to you.

And a like 40-foot-tall sign drops behind him that just says Virtua Fighter is finally back.

I got a little tear in my eye because, well,

like, they're doing it.

They're doing all of the things.

They're doing every single thing that I wanted them to do.

And then they're doing 10 more that I never would have expected.

So I'm very happy.

Young man.

I'm not, I'm old now.

But yay, I only had to wait decades.

Just see Go getting pieced up and broken around and tossed.

Big slow motion of his face getting like,

but this time it, the camera pans back in its Tifa.

Yeah.

What?

Yeah,

yeah.

Yeah, okay.

So obviously,

the second

big bit.

Game awards.

Clive!

Clive!

Clive, not Tifa.

Toggle!

Yeah.

It's good for Ben Starr becoming a fighting game character.

I mean, goddamn, is Ben Starr doing it properly, right?

And not letting anyone down.

He put out that tweet or that Instagram photo where it's like, oh, you wanted Tifa?

Okay, well, here you go.

Fight me.

And he's just wearing the Tifa outfit full time.

Oh, absolutely.

It's great.

It's great.

And he looks really good in that Tifa outfit.

Killing it.

Get you a man that can do both.

Did you see the intro with

Reyna?

Yes, I did.

She's like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's like, ooh, nice cosplay.

I dig it, you know?

What the hell hell is cosplay

i love it um i think there's a lot to be said here but overall um

the decision is an understandable one uh uh squeenix had a moment where they were able to choose um

between

like

sure shot

and

rise the profile of the current thing.

And last time around,

Noctis was a big hit.

They were very happy with that, clearly.

There were.

And like, Tekken players were happy enough with it also that

they made a Noctis replacement character in the roster.

A weapon character is a lock from here on in.

Absolutely, right?

Somebody to pick up and just

go with.

Yeah,

so

there were a lot of rumors, and some very credible sources as well, really,

you know, standing behind the idea that Tifa might be a thing.

At the very least, one thing's clear is the idea to continue working with Square was

that was the only thing that was like 100% on lock.

That was incredibly obvious.

Because of how well it went last time around, you know, for all parties.

I'm happy with that.

I'll take that over a Negan, no matter what, regardless, you know, please.

But yeah, but when you kind of look at it, you're like, okay,

so

Tifa is a cash out on the

fame and the most, the most popular video game

drop you can ever have.

And I also think as well that like, there's a little bit of an idea of like, it's a better fit, and it's more obvious, it's a better fit and a funner idea than Cloud or Sephiroth, right?

We've seen them in Smash and stuff, and there's a bit of an idea that like, yeah, they do show up everywhere.

They're kind of expected, but Tifa would be a nice, particularly fun third choice to go with here

in that spotlight that still has all the gravitas of FF7.

But by going with the current thing,

you know, like we were just saying about

the new character for Virtual Fighter, you raise the profile a bit and you go, hey, we're still advertising and pushing FF16.

And 16 is on its way out, right?

It did its thing.

It had its DLC.

He had its crossover with

14.

So there's not much left for Clive Clive to do.

Other than being in a fighting game.

So yeah, a little bit more of a push to

raise the profile of his game is a decision that I think

they went with on the idea that you're investing in more, right?

And I can say that

they could always,

if the game continued, Tifa's a surefire lock, no matter when she drops.

No matter when she drops, if she ever drops, it doesn't like it.

Yes, she is got like relevance yesterday, today, and tomorrow because there's still another Tifa game coming out down the line.

Clive is relevant right now, and Clive cannot be relevant later, you know?

Yeah.

Unless they make an FF16-2, which I don't think we're going to see.

I just feel really good for Ben because like Clive is out now, right?

Like he's proper out.

So like Clive had this moment where like, okay, one,

I'm a new fighting game character.

Also, two, I'm the main character of

Warframe 1999, which also dropped the day after the game awards.

Nice, it's Ben Star time

killing it.

And, and, you know, um,

again, he was he was willing to be Mario, he's he's willing to do, he'll work on whatever.

He's made it very clear,

he was also a Bellatro man, yep, he'll do anything,

so uh, uh, you know, working all day.

I, I, I respect it.

And,

yeah, I don't know.

If he takes over things like Balatro and

then

fighting game cameos and bit, and Troy Baker's on stage there,

bleeding out AAA,

I think that this new generation of Alex and

Ben and voice actors that are are actively memeing non-stop online with their characters.

I prefer this.

I like this class of voice actors leaning into it.

I think.

So what were we just talking about?

The

DGAs, Clive.

Clive, so the extended footage shows you a bit more, and like he does call in the dog.

He's got everything.

He's got everything.

He's got the full style switches on display.

And as a very cool character character that looks faithful as hell to what he is, there's that part of me where I'm like admiring it and going, God damn it, he looks so annoying to fight.

Oh, absolutely.

He looks like a nightmare.

And he's going to be.

He looks like he's just drowning in bullshit.

And screen

fooling bullshit, too.

And all of it is going to be pressing 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 or 2-2-2-2-2-2-2.

You know, it's going to be like

set to go.

like five mids in a row or some shit.

The overall,

the sentiment I get looking at him flipping around and doing all that shit, and this is the pick two, is that I'm like,

this is a Soul Caliber guest character.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Fucking Tekken.

He is a Soul Caliber six character.

But because there is no Soul Caliber to make him a guest in, we get this instead.

It's this weird thing where like Virtual Fighter got to be...

Like, Virtual Fighter will be the number two fighting game of 3D fighters by default because all the ones that aren't Tekken died.

Ah, man.

You know, like, it just, it would have been the placeholder.

And Soul Calibur was the guest fighter, like,

spotlight, you know?

He's perfect for that world.

And Tifa's perfect for this one.

So one of the things about like Tekken is like, I think,

I think even Negan was like probably a good pick for the time.

Like, their guest characters have been stellar.

I think Soul Calibur had like a really

fucking dog shit run with guest characters for a while there.

I don't think they were ever able to run back how bad Yoda was.

Yoda was terrible because Yoda couldn't be fought against, right?

Yoda like made the game worse by his inclusion.

I mean, Darth Vader just kind of confused everybody.

And then The Apprentice was also there.

Kratos was Kratos.

2B and Geralt were good.

Yes, 2B and Geralt were good.

And like, that's the thing is, it's the Soul Calibur 4 generation, right?

That's the issue.

Because obviously, the first guests, Soul Calibur 2, fucking spawn Heihachi Link.

Got a basic.

Oh my god, this is incredible.

Incredible, right?

Absolute bangers.

That next gen

with them and then...

The Star Wars gang.

The Star Wars gang.

And all the manga characters.

Yes, I was going to say Shaharazad.

Well, they were original characters designed by Mangaka, so not quite the same as guest characters.

But Etzio coming in was a pretty good pick.

I thought that fit really well.

And

what are we forgetting?

Tubi, Geralt.

Probably somebody else.

Okay, I feel like there is like one other, but yeah, in any case,

it should...

Soul Calibur should exist, man.

No.

It's too late now.

No, you like Soul Calibur can't exist because BioDynamco is not going to split their attention on two different fighting game series when they have to have all hands on deck because they're afraid of Virtual Fighter.

How Maru.

Yes,

that's another slam dunk ass pick, but actually, let's not, lest we forget, on

the Wii Soul Calibur game, Lloyd from the Tales series

was playable.

Yeah.

that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lloyd was playable in Broken Destinies or no, not Broken, whatever, Dual, whatever, Waggle Game.

Waggle Game, yes.

Soul Caliber Legends had a Tails character in it.

Fucking crazy.

Yeah, so

there's the Game Awards, and then there's a bunch of these follow-up stories.

There are a lot of Game Awards shit.

There are.

Did you have anything

for a week?

I played a bunch of Virtual Fighter tournaments with my chat, and they went really well, and they were really exciting.

And Gene's pretty good.

I did not know this.

Every new piece of information I learn about Gene Park, friend of the show, is like one of those things where, like, I love you.

Can we be best friends?

kind of information where he's just sitting around going i love virtual fighter i used to play virtual fighter all the time like fuck yeah you did gene he's holy shit he's nice with it

Yes,

that's pretty sick.

I played, yeah, I did that, and I played some other crap, but oh, yeah, you know what?

I've discovered I'm uh, I

did all of my weeklies and dailies and Marvel Rivals over a couple days, and all I need, you know, that weird part where if all you need to do to get the costumes is actually just buy the battle pass instead of because you already earned all the currency, yes.

Um, and I'm, I'm torn onto it because I think I might be like complete dog-ass fucking dog shit at Marvel Rivals.

I think I might be actually like fucking super terrible.

I have fun playing it, but like, I think I might just suck ass at that game.

Once the children go to sleep, you're having a hard time?

It seems like that, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

But it's fun, though.

Very.

I'm trash.

Okay.

Yeah, so that's okay.

So that's pretty much the deal.

Where do we fucking start on the TG Airborne?

So yeah, for me,

again, extremely, sorry, I've been super busy, not a ton to talk about, but Cyberpunk, I did end up,

after all the shenanigans previously, I did one more boot on the day of after doing a full NVIDIA driver reinstall.

hit me another crash and went all right console time so we jumped over

console time it is and uh yeah pushed into that first mission or so you know everything after meeting dex i think it was all kind of like part of the tutorial, not tutorial, but the

demo of the

how the game was going to work and stuff.

And

I, like, after doing it, like,

that first kind of mission

where at the end, it's like 11 different outcomes or so.

And I kind of remembered, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm remembering a demo that involved using the little robot dog.

Yeah.

Inside that mission at some point and stuff.

And, you know, I was just kind of getting my bearings crawling around and then like failed two stealth moments and went, all right, we're going hot.

And just took everybody out.

So just did the most like fucking loud, you know, run and slash

thing possible in that mission.

But it just does feel, it feels like if there's a bunch of hyper-specific, really detailed, cool outcomes

that like stepping on a loud box might destroy, then this, this game is going to, we're going to have a lot of potentially cool moments lost

don't worry about it you know why because that's the vertical slice mission which means it's by far the most complex mission in the entire game

okay

yeah I can I just I'm I'm reminded of like you know also like like DX a bit like in the having those those those kind of moments but um

the moment it goes bad it's like all right we're going hot but all right time to stab and shoot these people But it does seem that, like, in order to make sure that you don't miss out on all the cool things that the game has, the developers have put into the game, you go hot for this room, and then the next room you can try again.

Yeah, I like that.

So that's fair.

And

yeah, I mean, not much to it, except just like, I very quickly have learned that, like, ooh, if you ignore that tech stat, you're not going to have a fun time.

So you put things where you want to, but conversation right off the bat is like, oh, you're text too low.

You can't notice that.

You can't say that.

You can't do that.

Yeah, I noticed that as well.

But they all do.

All five stats have something like that.

Okay.

So, yeah.

What's coming up this week on Wooly versus?

Nothing.

Well, that's a good amount of stuff.

But

I was also going to mention something else, too.

Sorry.

So, yeah, I did start Thousand X Resist, and not much to say so far.

Just one session, no context, still learning what's going on with the story.

We'll see.

I watched the one

I watched The Secret Level for Mega Man.

Yes.

Did you check that out?

I did not.

It's pretty short, and it's awesome.

Cool.

Very cool.

It's just a...

And it's been picked up for a second season.

Sweet.

I'm hearing that a lot of them are hit or miss.

The Mega Man one is the only one I've seen so far.

It's pretty much just.

yeah, it's almost like reading one of the comics, you know,

from

the run,

was it the Ian Flynn run, I think, or so?

Anyway, but like, yeah, just like almost like that, just like high-budget animation and very, very cool so far.

I would love to see

more of that if it ever were possible, but I don't know that any of these things are kind of set up to necessarily revisit them.

Oh, I don't think they're going to revisit them, but Secret Level itself has been picked up for a second season.

The anthology

is working.

That's pretty cool.

No, great, great stuff.

And, you know, as something where you're like, Mega Man's needed a win for a while now, it's nice to kind of just see a little like Rockman dub, you know?

Maybe Mega Man will have a win in the future.

Maybe.

But for now, we'll take this little four-minute cutscene of Rock and Light hanging out.

Very cool.

Would you you say four minutes?

Four minutes.

Wait, how long are these episodes?

It was extremely short.

It was basically the intro of a video game.

Oh.

Okay.

Yeah.

The other half of the eight minutes is credits, you know?

So, yeah, it's not much.

Oh, oh, I can bang this out in like an afternoon then.

I don't know that they're all like that, but at least that one is.

Yep, so this week, no streams as I'm going to be doing a lot, but on this weekend, Thursday, I'm going to be flying out to Florida.

So for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, if you are in the

Orlando area, come on down to Holiday Matsuri,

where me and Reggie are going to be there.

It's also CEO Taku, so simultaneous

tournament and anime con in the same venue.

We're going to be doing some stuff on the stage in the gaming room.

So we've got

four events planned for the weekend.

There's going to be like just a regular

panel.

There's going to be fighting game sound trivia

where you're going to have to listen and try to

see how quickly you can identify what's being played.

And then

the debut of a brand new thing, Fighting Game Charades.

So it's going to be about getting on stage and performing the move that you draw to the best of your ability and seeing if that's going to be cringe.

Seeing if other people

can actually guess it and figure it out.

I'm doing a cringe test on it.

Oh, yeah.

I'm doing a cringe test.

We'll see.

We'll see.

But I think there's a potential for big laughs if

people do it terribly.

So,

should be fun.

And, yeah, and then there's going to be a signing as well.

So, come hang out at Holiday Matsuri if you're in the Florida area with me and Reggie.

On my end, I'm just going to be streaming as usual.

I'm going to do Turnip Boy Robs a Bank and checking out Animal Well, as well as some more Marvel rivals and some backlog stuff.

Go to twitch.tv slash past stairs at.

That's it for me.

We got too much news.

Okay.

All right.

So the game awards happened and everything was announced.

And you know what?

That's the TGA's awards for games?

The TGA Game Awards.

The TGA Game Awards 2024.

Shit.

You know what?

As far as the announcements go,

pretty fucking good year, man.

Pretty cool stuff.

All in all positive.

There is a

yeah,

a lot of things were covered that I think we're all pretty happy about.

I think there's a bunch of shit there that I was like the dead last fucking thing I ever expected to fucking see.

For sure, for sure.

I did not expect to see the fucking words Elden Ring show up on the screen.

Insane.

Insane, right?

And like, and like, never mind the personal check marks that are like Virtual Fighter and like Okami and stuff.

Like, yeah, the fact that they said there's more coming is insane.

No, it was pretty exciting.

And I was fairly dead inside as that was the fourth shift, fifth, technically.

Absolutely dying.

But I,

the other, and I've said for many times as well that I'm like, I also hate like sitting down with a cynical attitude to watch these things.

Like, it just, it kills me.

I don't, I don't want to fucking

I need to water my flower internally,

you know.

But no, there wasn't, there was a lot of good shit happening there.

And it was also nice to kind of see Balatro get that nice recognition, Balatro getting the sweep, and local thunk is nowhere to be seen.

I really like local thunk.

I like how he's like, I want to be a mystery person because gamers are weird.

And I also like that he shat all over fucking EA Sports yesterday because Balatro got an 18-plus rating from Peggy.

He's like, so sorry, it's got playing cards.

Should I have filled it with real gambling and put footballs on it to fool you, idiots?

Like, just real, real, real fucking, yeah.

No, you know, I like the idea.

It's pretty cool.

Like, he's like, all right, keeping his head down.

He's sticking at it, doesn't want to deal with all that, but people are recognizing the game, and that's dope.

And you know what?

Apparently, he might have narrowly avoided getting jumped by the Wukong team.

Oh, boy.

Oh, yeah.

This may be unpopular, but I would like to give a tiny little golf clap to Jeff Keely for one, putting on a good show, but much more interesting to me, allowing the Muppets to just shit all over him

shit all over him Statler and Waldorf went in they did um they also made sure that Flute Man was given no seat he was given his own camera he was set up so flute man goes strong um that dude's incredible how and then also like again yeah so the the the announcements were were solid but there was some good there was some good bits the the best narrative bit

right

How come you haven't won this, Troy?

No, no, no, not that.

No, no, no, no, no.

Sam Lake,

and then it goes to black and white, and it does the whole bit.

Yeah, very good.

I love Sam Lake.

That was fun.

And

yeah, like, you know, one or two other bits that were just like, okay, that's that's dope.

You know, Kojima just flexing in a goddamn fucking,

what's the word?

A bedazzled, like a bedazzled, like fucking fucking nuden's jacket.

I thought there was this very interesting distinction that when Aaron Paul and Laura Bailey came out, where one is a big-time TV actor and one is a big-time voice actor,

it was like astonishing to see because you usually expect like, well, video game actors are like, you know, it's not real, whatever.

But Aaron Paul was being Aaron Paul, and Laura Bailey was like bursting at the seams with overwhelming charisma.

Just absolutely ridiculous.

That was good.

Snoop Dogg comes up on stage and confirms that yes, little kids are now allowed to see walk because it's in Fortnite.

That's great.

He has officially endorsed it.

And the fucking doggy style mascot from his first album is also an outfit you see in the background there, which is hilarious and crazy because the first, so Snoop Doggy Dog's first album, Doggy Style, has

the little mascot cute dog version of him, but it's also got a bunch of like girl dog asses all over the album.

So if you know what that character is and what it represents, it's just kind of insane to see it in Fortnite.

We are in a like absurd alternate universe because

this means that I think as of tomorrow that like the skibbity toilet can crip walk with their Jordans on.

That's true.

That is true.

That's fucking weird.

I also, although speaking of skibbity toilet, I think I saw someone on the someone was on the narrative team on Borderlands said they might just fucking end it all.

We have something to talk about when you get to that Borderlands stuff.

Yeah.

I have my eye on that.

I can't promise that there won't be.

We're going to dial the writing back a little bit.

You know what?

Fuck, we'll talk talk about it right now.

The tone trailer they showed didn't have a joke in it for Borderlands.

Right.

Already a really good fucking start.

So he's like, no, we're not going to have a skibbity bit.

And then someone was like, what if they had a gun called Hawk 2A?

And he's like, I want to put my hand into a garbage disposal.

And it's like,

this is the most exciting thing you could possibly say about Borderlands.

Oh, man.

Yeah, that's a forever franchise, right?

Like that's.

Oh, it's it's they're really fucking fun to play.

Hmm.

Okay, so.

Do you want to do it sequentially in order?

Like there were so fucking many things.

Yeah, I mean, I have a layout here with some highlights.

All right, just hit me with the list.

All right.

So, hey,

Siri, confirmed.

Witcher 4.

Yep.

That was.

So, I mean, you didn't play Witcher 3, but if you did, that was like the most obvious fucking character pick in the world.

And because I said that name, it fucking activates every machine.

You mean Cyrilla?

If you want to say that.

Thank you.

Or Zeriel, if you prefer.

That's like the most obvious fucking thing in the world.

Like, Witcher 3 has multiple endings that set up.

Maybe she could be a Witcher in the next game.

Oh, because Geralt's so old.

So that, yeah,

I remember hearing about, I think you mentioning it and other people as well, the idea that it's like, okay, if Witcher continues, there's clearly going to be a new one, and it'll be one of these

supporting characters

in the series.

Yeah, okay.

And so my question that I asked, which Chad answered during the stream, was,

my impression of the Witcher series is that the majority of its appeal is in Geralt's own grumbly personality and not necessarily the job he's performing.

That is all, well, I mean, the job is also really cool.

Right.

But like Geralt being tired for every moment of every game is really funny.

Yes.

Now, so the idea of like, well, there's a new Witcher in town, but like, what is their attitude?

It needs to make sure they, it needs to be an appealing, fun attitude because that's doing the majority of the heavy lifting, right?

That being said, if I were to just jump somewhere else, if you asked me, I would have said Dante being a wacky woohoo pizza man is the majority of what's going on there.

Yeah, absolutely.

In addition to incredible gameplay, so when you hand it over to like a serious punk kid,

we're not sure how that's going to land, but it turns out it's fucking excellent.

So, if it makes anybody feel better, even from the small bit that we saw of Witcher 4, which was just a CG trailer,

Siri is now also tired.

Ah.

She is much,

much older than she was in the last game, like possibly on the scale of decades.

Um,

and the she does a lot of weird witcher shit in the trailer that people who played those games is confused by because she's literally not a witcher, she's not the mutant, she's just a magic lady.

Um, at which point the dev said, yeah, in between the last one and this one, she did the thing, she did all that witcher mutant shit, she did the thing that turns you into that.

Yeah, which sucks.

And I assume it's going to be a big part of the story as to why you would do that because it kills most people and it's horrifically damaging to your body.

And it's very dramatic.

The process is something that

creates a problem with the narrative.

Well, most people die during the process.

Okay.

Just straight up.

And it's very painful.

But they did set it up in the Witcher 3 because

there is a a character that you do the Witcher process onto to uncurse them.

So all they have to do because Siri as a character would be tough to include in her end of Witcher 3 state because she can time travel, go to parallel universes like Night City, teleport.

Yeah,

I asked, I was like, oh, does she hate Portals 2?

And everyone said she is one.

She's the Portal Queen.

Okay.

So she's one of those characters that can do

anything, like anything.

like a Franklin Richards character.

Oh, shit.

Okay, okay.

Okay, and so you can't have that as your playable Witcher character.

So she's going to have to get nerfed somehow.

She'll get cursed, and then they'll turn her into a Witcher, and so the level-up system will probably be getting her old powers back kind of thing.

Trip over a route and drop her various suit.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes, very interested in that.

I would like to see CD Project Red release a game that is not wildly fucked up on damn day.

This would be their fifth attempt.

They have failed four times.

They've got the money, they've got the momentum, they've got it all on their side, but

I don't know, man.

As somebody who didn't play any of those games and definitely didn't play them on release, it is impossible to overstate how fucked up every Witcher game was when it came out.

I remember.

I remember.

I remember every cyberpunk was the most fucked up, but man, it was close.

Like the state of those games on launch dominated the news while when those things, when it was happening.

Yes.

Hey, Gwent, though, right?

I think.

So also you can hear Geralt at the end.

And Doug Hockle is doing an even older, more tired-sounding Geralt.

So I have a feeling that he will be a Gwent boss.

Cool.

He should be the boss of Gwent.

He should be the final boss of the Gwent tournament.

Okay.

Meanwhile, Naughty Dog announced Intergalactic, the Heretic Prophet.

How many brands can you spot in five minutes?

I was like super

underwhelmed by that shit.

So, well, okay, the weird, the thing is, I don't know what they want you to feel when you see that many brands.

Like Adidas comes up on the fucking

ship.

Adidas is like, if you see that on the clothing, you're like, oh, you're establishing something with that type of shoe.

Right.

But then, yeah, and like, as it goes and goes, you're like,

is this the price is right?

Like, what is going on here?

And then I was wondering, I was like, is Mass Effect just going all fucking McDonald's?

Like, full in?

You know?

I don't know.

And it turns out how I feel about that game.

And

it's being headed by Neil Druckman.

And

there's a quote going around that has made me much less excited about the game

because

Neil says, we're trying something really ambitious for video games because it's going to be about a religion that's false.

And I'm like, that

sounds like you have never played a video game in your entire fucking character.

Have you watched an anime?

Have you played it?

Any RPG?

Any of them.

Pick one.

All of them.

Literally every single RPG.

Wow.

Okay.

That.

Woo.

Oh, boy.

Wow.

Like,

that's most games in general.

I am.

That's like.

Local biased biased religion hater,

checkmate atheist man over here on this podcast, and I am shocked and guffawed at that statement.

That's wild, man.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

All right.

Well,

what I was going to say was just that

I think the

whole

flavor of like, hey, let's take retro and different styles that are

clashing with in a Guardians of the Galaxy vibe kind of thing.

Right.

Exactly.

You kind of, you know, you see that, and you see,

yeah, it feels like it's almost like a star-lord, you know, energy coming off of everything going on there.

That's all cool.

That's fine and fun, and I'm super down to see where that goes.

I think the character design.

I want to see more game.

I think the character design, yes, I think the character design is incomplete.

I think she's missing some kind of cool

affectation.

Scarfs.

Scarfs.

Fucking visor.

Just something.

Throw something on that.

Do you know what that character fits right into?

That's right.

Concorde.

Well, the problem.

Yes.

I was thinking the shaved head soldier man era of video games, right?

When I see that.

And ultimately, I'm like, jackets there.

Just, just, just give her a little something.

She's kind of, she's kind of incomplete, you know?

Yeah.

But yeah, that's what Naughty Dog is working on.

It's this thing where like, okay, the Witcher 4 trailer is like a CG trailer, right?

And the Intergalactic trailer is also a CG trailer.

But the difference is, is like, I know exactly what the fuck Witcher 4 is going to be because I played Witcher 1, 2, and 3.

When you see Intergalactic, I'm like, well, it's a tone trailer, but I don't know fucking shit about what the fuck the game is going to be because you didn't really show anything.

But you could imagine it's gonna be Last of Us in Space, you know?

Yeah,

that's basically

that's what I'm expecting.

Space of Us.

And yeah, anyway,

so fucking everyone's spit take all over your shit.

The word Elden Ring pops up again, and I'm like,

I was so, I was like, in my gut, I felt fear.

I'm not gonna lie.

I felt a deep, deep fear for the idea that I'd have to fucking boot this up again

this soon.

I saw the trailer and I saw like the shot of the ground.

I'm like, that is a from software game.

And then they cut to like the thog rolling in and

like the figures in the distance.

And I thought it was going to be Demon Souls 2.

Okay.

Right.

Because it looks like the fucking image that's on top of me right now on the video.

Right.

Right.

On the podcast.

Yeah.

No, like, we were watching and like, we're just like, okay, what is some fantasy something?

And it's like looking at the assets, you're like, okay, yeah, assets do have a feeling to them.

And like, I think Min

was the first one to go like, is this from soft?

Or this reminds me of Fromsoft.

And then it's like, because it is, right?

And then you saw Grace, and that's when all the confusion started to coalesce.

Okay, so before we get into what it actually is,

do you agree that another full giant expansion within this timeframe would have been too much?

I started to get really worried.

I started.

Okay, yes, thank you.

I'm like, I was like, stop, man.

Because, dude, like, like a month ago, I don't know when it was, but when we were talking, when you had beaten Erdree,

I was like, I don't think I'm ever going to play Elden Ring ever again.

Do you remember me saying that?

I do, I do.

Because, because I had spent so much time across the main expansion.

And then I saw this, and my, my stomach just like dropped.

I'm like, no, I don't want more.

I just, you know, and I'm like, fuck these insane, like, people that are like, no, more forever, forever, forever.

Like, no, no, man.

God damn it.

It's been months.

It's been months.

Holy shit.

And so we see a bunch of like crazy new abilities.

And you're like, oh, yeah.

And I was like, this is...

Well, the first thing is that you see characters sprinting like they're dashing in second row.

You're like, what?

The flying up walls and hopping them and shit.

And then arm birds, you know?

And.

Yeah, the bird that flies like a hundred feet in the air if we're coming down and so what i thought was i was like okay this is a robust pvp expansion yeah right and then it started to get really strange because i'm like i i was watching it i'm like is that the nameless king

and like i didn't i didn't even catch it

where they take the rig and attach it to a new character like it was clearly the model ripped out of the old game and put into this game and he's throwing lightning bolts and shit like wait what the fuck is this i didn't catch it when it happened.

I was looking at it, and I saw the dragon, and I saw the fucking up top, and it just, and it went by.

And I was like, and then it was like, wait, what?

Um,

and now you're like, okay, so

everyone who's been doing the like, it's all connected theory gets to just fucking gets their day in the spotlight.

They get rock hard at the idea of like, we can connect all these worlds now.

There's a portal in the land of reeds that leads to fucking light town.

And

the door, right?

There's a door that's unopened that now we know where it leads.

And thank fucking God,

after the trailer, you go and read the IGN interview about what Night Rain is.

Elden Ring Night Rain.

And it is

not

a prop like a regular from software game.

It is very different.

It is a completely different game that is made in the Elden Ring world.

And

one of the battle directors wanted to basically make a

PVE spin-off.

Yeah, so

the logic behind it was the battle director going, yo, I've been watching a lot of Elden Ring randomized speedruns, and that seems really cool.

Sure.

Yep.

Also,

he said he's a fan of team co-op online games, right?

So stuff like Helldivers is, you know, picking up now,

any of these games where you're in a group of people and you're doing a run, you know, like obviously going back to the left for deads and everything.

There's been, you know,

a proper established genre here.

So them

being like, yeah, what if we could do this in an Elden Ring kind of from soft setting?

And

you're...

The thought here where it's like, and you're picking one of a set number of characters that you expand

and the whole thing goes, okay, okay, it's sane.

It's sane.

It's not importing your full custom character, and it's not the full, yeah, it's like literally

it's risk of rain or enter the gungeon.

It's a roguelite.

Um, some there's and then, yeah, the, the, the interview goes on to elaborate.

So there's going to be a three-day system across the three days as you're as you're traveling with either one

or three,

No, two.

Very peculiar in its balance.

But yes, one or three.

And you're going to have invasions.

You might get like the market, the fell omen, jumping into the middle.

But yeah, the map is going to be randomly generated, and the gear you find is going to be randomly placed.

Let's expand off of the chalice dungeon concept, you know, and do more with that.

Each day is also going to have a particular end boss.

You pick like a Dr.

Wily kind of setup.

And then there's going to be a final, final unlock after you level up enough and expand and do more.

Very cool and interesting concept of like picking a set character and building on top of that in the Elden Ring world.

I will play Enter the Gungeon Elden Ring edition.

I will.

And randomly walking into rooms that have a chance of loading up a fucking blood-starved beast or, you know, well, okay, not a Sony, but a bandai at the very least, right?

They

them Them showing off that they're willing to pull in just direct rips from other games makes that game super exciting.

But it's also what the fan community has been doing on PC for years anyway.

Oh, absolutely.

And

they were very straightforward.

Like, we saw that shit and we thought it was cool, so we wanted to do it ourselves.

What if we did it officially, though?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it can't be a proper

release on its own.

It can't be a proper part of the main game.

So let's just make its own world where you can can do whatever you want.

It's another

lens between.

I don't know if you saw, but like you were saying, like they're all connected.

Those people are empowered.

That discussion is now over

because the from software Twitter account tweeted out an announcement alongside Elden Ring Night Rain where it said,

the Night Lord's power is such that even ancient foes from a world long ago where there once burned a great fire have shown up.

And it's like, okay, they have just outright stated that Dark Souls led to Elden Ring.

Long ago in another world?

Yeah, like long ago, ancient foes were like the fire once burned bright or something like that.

Okay.

You could burn it up.

But yeah, it's like...

If a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars exists, but over here, Indiana Jones also exists.

Yeah, fuck it.

Are these in the same as that?

Yeah, totally.

Yes.

Star Wars and Indiana Jones,

same universe.

No matter how far apart they are universally,

if they're on the other side of a fucking Tesseract, it's still connected.

It's two dots on the same fucking point.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Sure.

Whatever.

So, yes, anyone can get pulled in from anywhere as long as

they belong to the folder that says Bamco and not the folder that says Sony.

Well, this is a really fun thing because one of the things that Modders found out with Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 is that

all of these games are running off the same guts.

They're all essentially the same game.

And so you can totally drag and drop shit over, and it mostly works.

So now it's time for them to drag coding drop shit over.

Yeah, you know what?

Yes,

there's a floating gallery in space, and every painting is a different

fresh

jump into.

There is no reason that we can't fight an armored core in this.

The final boss is like white glint.

And of course,

the moonlight greatsword existing is cause enough for anyone lore sniffing to hold it up and go,

but look, it's there.

And what are you supposed to say?

It's not?

It is there.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's cool.

Elden Ring Night Rain at the very beginning of the show felt like a threat of like, this is the thing they're showing off in the first 15 fucking minutes?

It was a threat.

It was absolutely, that was a fucking gun pointed at you.

Thank God.

What else do they got?

It's a spin-off.

It's a sane spin-off, and it has nothing to do with Miyazaki, and it has nothing to do do with Grimm.

They also specified as well.

Yeah, they're like, yeah, yeah, we didn't talk to him about this.

We just did it, whatever.

Also,

they didn't,

they had an explorative open-world version of it, but then they streamlined it to be like, nah, a bunch of hallways that you move through to get to the end of the day.

Well, no, it's not to hallways.

It's Limgrave.

Like, that's the map.

But the

Limgrave geography changes.

And there's these birds that get you back on track whenever you want to go to the next important location.

Like the topography, like the lake and the hills and shit, won't change.

But all the building locations will change.

All the cave locations.

But the idea of just getting or pulling this bird out and it flies you to like the

track that you're supposed to be on.

Elden Ring Arcade, right?

Like I feel like the Elden Ring Arcade game is what we're doing.

This looks super fun.

Yeah.

And I was like, thank God I can play it solo because I don't want to play that game with two other people.

I just don't.

And when asked about Spirit Ashes, they said, like, one character will be able to use Spirit Ashes as a part of the game.

Oh, that's perfect.

So it's balanced around the idea.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's this year, right?

I think that's 25.

Next year.

Yeah.

Oh, well, I mean, it's December, whatever, right now.

Fuck Slaying the Colossus.

Get in that shit.

Pilot the Colossus.

Project Robot.

I mean,

I'm

very...

I'm very happy that

you can look at a texture of fabric on a character.

And go, oh, yeah, instantly.

Eco, Shadow the Colossus.

You know, Last guardian you can see it um and uh the other thing is that one of the things that you like to talk about is that like the way

fumito ueda makes games is that it always starts with like a single picture a single image yes and this time we got to see that image and it's a boy climbing up a robot

But this time you get into the fucking robot.

And also it looked so much like Malice from Shadow of the Colossus.

Yeah, so the thing is, I'm like, I wish that Last Guardian wasn't the like kind of like cobble breaker on the streak.

And

in Shadow, controlling Dormine was not the smoothest.

It wasn't exactly the best part.

However,

hopefully lessons were learned and Team Ico can, you know, do some cool shit.

I'm glad that they are still working on stuff and this is still a thing, you know.

Obviously, piloting the robot is very exciting for me.

And in this case, you just get in its head and it takes off.

And it's like, okay, all right, let's see where you're going with it.

I guess we're going to jam this robot head into other robots.

Also,

pilot a robot with no HUD or UI or like tackle things that's going to be all analog sigils and physically dragging locks around, you know?

Very cool.

I'm excited.

We saw a bunch of other stuff.

And then, yes, the orchestra reveals an Okami sequel after 18 years.

And would you believe that that's not the most interesting thing about the Okami sequel?

It's Capcom working in conjunction with studio Cloverse.

Clover's, but who could work there?

Could it be staffed entirely by a huge exodus of Platinum Games staff?

So Clover's Plural Studio is now Hideki Kamiya's new venture.

And it's funny because, like, this is basically Seeds 2, right?

Yeah.

Because after Team Beautiful became Clover, and then Clover was their own little department within Capcom, and then they kind of separated, and then they left and went to do their own thing.

They started up Seeds, and they had a logo for it, and then that never

really went anywhere.

And so I think they were able to then get, as they were able to secure outside investing, and then Inaba joined, and then Platinum Games was the big name, and that was the announcement, right?

And Seeds.

Which never loses its luster.

Well,

so with this announcement comes some interviews where Kamiya explains that, yes, he's working from his own studio with Capcom on a sequel to Okami.

So, technically Okami 3, right?

Because Okami Den does exist, but technically Okami 4, if not 5.

5.

6.

Because Okami 1.

Yeah, 5, 6, and 7.

Yeah, that's it.

Okami 1, 10 out of 10.

Okami 2,

11 out of 10.

Okami 3, though,

7, you know.

Yeah, so then, and then Okami 4, which handheld,

was out there, and I bought it, but I never played it.

I also never played it.

Yeah, but here comes Okami 5.

The idea that he's doing that is pretty cool because you're like, okay, well, obviously, that means that if Okami is unlocked, so is

Beautiful Joe.

Potential for anything.

View Joe needs saving, right?

It really, Viewful Joe went way off the rails more.

Okami was like long-winded, but ultimately still a pretty cool memory

that got re-released enough times times because of, you know, like people loved it.

Beautiful Joe had some fucking stinkers.

And boy, does it suck to be like, yeah, the good, the first one, and then there was two, and then there was Red Hot Rumble, and then there was an anime that was.

Yeah.

And like Capcom says, hey, we're focusing on reviving dormant IPs, which means that due to the creation of Clovers and Okami 2, the likelihood of Godhand getting anything ever again has gone from absolute zero to maybe

more than zero.

Did everyone start saying Godhand because you brought it up on stream?

Did you mention it?

No.

Okay.

No, people love Godhand.

Children yearn for Godhand.

Okay, because that's a very understandable hope, and we would all love that.

However, Godhand is not Kamiya.

And I, it's, to me, I'm like, that's, that's Shinji Mikami.

We know this.

Yeah.

but the guy never happened so don't just be like no just do it anyway I'm like well no the reason why Okami's happening is because they waited for the guy who did that who's now there so it doesn't mean all old things it's the things that he worked on but Woolly remember according to Tim Rogers

according to Shinji Mikami

in God hand

There was that kid that tuned that punch really well.

Yes.

And that kid was such a good kid.

Okay.

And we don't know where that good kid works now.

Yeah.

And there's also

Devil May Cry 1, right?

Yeah.

No, I think the possibility of them going back to do anything here is like, yeah, it shows that it can happen.

But in this case, we've also got a track record of the last couple of years of Kamiya talking about how he has ideas for the next Okami and ideas for Beautiful Joe and how he would love to work on those things again.

Like, he's let that out years ago, and we knew that, right?

So,

I think if Mikami had any desire to work on this again

and was willing to partner up from his own studio to do something, then that could be an exciting possibility.

But I also think as well that, like, like Okami was much larger larger and well

okay it its initial failure of a of a release was then given like

some retribution in re-releasing it got called status it got called status and it was re-released three times you know so that initial fucking however many like 98 000 copies sold or it was bad whatever it was really bad um

over time the perception has changed about that whereas god hand is still this one and done fucking crazy ass thing that you know got dropped on i think ps3 digital store, and that was it.

Like, it's insane.

I think that what's the craziest

takeaway

from Kamiya's new thing in Okami is actually what it says about Platinum because he actually just straight up says, This is why I quit Platinum.

Yeah, he was being very nice about it initially, but like when the first interviews were coming out, but he went into it in full detail here.

But now that he has his non-compete clause is over

and he has the team set up and he's working with Capcom, he's like, Yeah, Inaba wanted me to jam gas shit into my Ultraman tribute game, and I didn't fucking want to.

So, what we're learning is essentially the most predictable, unfortunate.

You could have guessed this, right?

Platinum was trying to be guns for hire to fund the studio for a long time, and that worked until it didn't.

And obviously, with

everything with the projects that never came to be, you know, with

fucking,

whatchamacallit,

scale-bound,

and

things that they were hired to work on not really panning out, they were in dire straits.

So, the idea that they're like, okay, we need to switch this up and start owning our own shit, while Wonderful 101 is like the only thing that they have.

Yeah, Kamiya in that interview says, I would be more than happy to work with Platinum again on their wholly owned IPs.

And it's like, that's kind of passive-aggressive as shit, man.

It's literally just Wonderful 101, you know?

And yeah, so the idea of them being able to come in and deliver quality action games for other IPs, it's like that's been established.

But when that doesn't make a ton of money, when it doesn't pan out, you know, the days of them coming in for a revenge-style saving of a dying project didn't really repeat themselves.

And it sucks because you're like, these are the people that make the best action, but it was not making money.

And it hasn't been for a long time now.

And so we remember when we heard the announcement where they were like, we're going to focus on building our own IPs up and we don't want to have to rely on being guns for hire.

We want to be able to like survive on our own with our own name.

And so Project GG, you know, and the other

project that was started at the time, we've been hearing about for a while, and GG was going to be the, yeah, kind of like the superhero game that Camille was working on.

Inaba basically was saying that, like, the financials were getting worse over time, and they needed to now implement games as a service and live service into most of what they were working on.

And a lot of the projects that were being developed

were going full live service.

And he fought back against Project GG becoming a live service game.

And they would, and they, they kind of,

for months, they went back and forth, but couldn't come to an agreement where

they wanted to just include some live service features, even if the full game wouldn't be,

because Inaba looked at it as this is the only way to make money with anything we release from here on out.

And it seems like that was enough.

I would rather quit, said Kamiya.

And then he walked out the door.

That was enough to break the Cannibals back.

He left.

And what we're also learning is that he was not the only one.

No, a bunch of people left because a bunch of big people left.

Kenji Saito from Metal Gear Rising, Takeahisa Taura from Astral Chain, Masaki Yama Anaka from Anarchy Reigns,

Abebe Tinari from Bayonetta Origin are also

they changed their profile names from Platinum PG to not PG anymore and have unlisted their employment there.

So it seems as if they've walked and they're potentially going to be joining uh clovers

it appears that clovers is being made out of primarily dissatisfied platinum employees and when you think about the pedigree that is a studio making the best fucking action um

not wanting to

draw some people making the games they made drawing the line at not making them gas games completely understandable right um the phrasing that camille used in particular was that like, I can't, I don't want to put my name on something that I can't defend afterwards, right?

Right.

Like, you have to be proud of what you release.

And the idea of something that would come out and annoy everybody because you had to buy whatever fucking coins or subscribe to whatever service and da-da-da-da-da, all the ugly things

would feel fucking terrible, you know?

So, yeah.

That's a very understandable decision.

It is really interesting how we've been watching this play out over decades, Where you have this huge group of developers that can make bangers like Kamia and Mikami and these people, if they wanted to, they could make something that sold a billion, shazillion copies.

Like it's their in their pedigree, right?

But they're like, I don't give a fuck about how many it sells.

I just want to make the best goddamn games ever.

And watching them fucking ping-pong multiple times to various companies, going, I want to make games that sell bad.

Not exactly, but just over and over and over again.

And just, no, you should make a game that sells good.

I'll quit.

I walked

into this fucking thing, and I'm going to get it.

I'm going to quit last time over them telling me to make games that sold and made money, and I'll quit again.

Here's the thing, and this is the unfun, harsh, realistic,

you know, thing to the lesson here.

I'm not envious of the fact that Inaba is in a situation where they're like, yeah, we tried, it failed, we're fucking burning out, right?

The idea that they're like, it's not worth like quality is not it.

That's not all.

There's more to it.

And, you know, something like an astral chain can come and then it can go, but it certainly isn't enough to keep the lights on over years and years and years.

You have to be a very active studio to be on your own like that.

I don't envy that decision and to then look at it and look at investors and kind of go, well, the only thing that's really satisfying these days is to to lean into the trend

that seems to be like, if you say that word or if you say AI, you save everything.

Yeah, and all of their big hits are games for other people.

Near Automata and Astro Chain and shit like that.

It's like, that's not theirs.

Yeah.

And Bayonetta isn't theirs, for fuck's sake.

And obviously, the option to get bought out at some point was not exercised, right?

No, who would even want them?

They don't have anything.

So, well, I just, in terms of like the people that can come in and do a Nier or that can come in and do a Rising, if you just happen to want to be a studio that puts out a bunch of those games for a while.

But it's not, but anyway, the checks and balances are not adding up.

And

that's what sucks here is just the idea that

we can be happy that like there are a group of people that can make the fucking coolest shit.

And we are excited about that.

But if they can't make the ends meet at the end of the day and they have to walk walk away over these types of decisions that are very understandable, Platinum's obviously not going to be in a great state after this, right?

I'm sure that...

Oh, I don't think they have long for this world.

I mean, I think that, like,

you know, there's probably people there that might have

you,

who knows?

Who knows, right?

This is a desperate gamble to run the gas game.

And

yeah, I think it sounds like it's a final one if they don't want to, you know,

if they're not going to be busy with a bunch of teams working on IPs for other people and coming in to do like, oh, we always have a near game in the background.

Oh, yeah, we've always got a Korra or a Transformers.

They're not even Xenoblade out here, man.

That's the dream for them.

It's like that Nintendo will go, hey, you want to make four Astral Chain games in a row?

But that just didn't happen.

It feels bad that there's no financial security there.

And here's the other bit, too.

And this is like

this is just a nature of time moving.

Time moves on, right?

The day of a new king draws near.

The fact that a lot of other action games now are just platinum aping and are doing good.

They're doing great?

They're doing great at being like, hey, yeah, our character should have a launcher and then jump up and do an air combo.

That would be really fun, actually.

Like, guys, God of War caught up to you.

Action games have taken notes and now, even in the lightest, most simple sense, even in your brief moments of Zenla's Zone Zero, you know,

you can have

these little tight action sequences go off.

You can have, you know, people that are like, oh yeah, dodging and parrying and launch and like high-octane action.

It's become a thing that like you don't just get from Platinum anymore.

Others have rightfully copied notes and are implementing it as well.

So they don't have to be the only ones that are delivering that quality.

FF16 is an entire fucking experience in shifting one of the premier genres of video games into what Platinum has established.

So one of the things

there's a thread about Virtual Fighter where

people were saying like, hey, what did Pat sacrifice to get all this?

And somebody pointed out, hey, do you remember when Pat was talking about Hi-Fi Rush and said, quote, do we even need platinum anymore?

In reference to how good Hi-Fi Rush was?

Yeah.

I think so.

I don't agree with that in the sense that these folks that we're seeing leaving, these people that are moving,

them working on action games is going to make...

They're going to make cool shit.

um i mean bayonetta origins obviously is something else but uh

i i do have high expectations of like the fucking you know the the the final word of action so to speak but it is true and it is clear that like the lessons learned from devil may cry and bayonetta uh have reached out to again final fantasy and mobile action games and anytime you need your your character to do a cool fucking judgment cut/slash thing, you're like, oh, yeah, hey, everyone sees the shortcut and gets what that is.

Like, okay, yeah, cool.

You like that?

The kinds of things and the way your character should move and the types of attacks that are kind of mandatory.

Then if spread out, they've been disseminated.

And if they weren't directly influenced by, you know, DMC or Bayo, then they're influenced by Nier, so you get your Stellar Blade, you know?

Wukong, like all these things are just like taking after

these established.

Capcom and Platinum action direction has seeped into the groundwater.

It's there now.

It needs to be more.

But I don't think, to me at least, that means it's like, oh, we don't need that anymore slash they can be replaced.

Because I still think we're looking at people that are successfully emulating something very cool.

And

I feel like that's different from the ones who are innovating it.

Yeah.

You know, I don't think Platinum's been innovating that shit.

Not for a long time.

Not for a long time.

But specifically, we talk about Platinum as almost a shorthand for a bunch of fucking sick specific individuals that can make some cool shit.

And if we have that list of names, I will always be interested in what they can make.

Let's fucking go, Clovers.

Let's see what's going on.

Can we get the poison chihuahua from Godhand in the new Okami game, please?

I love that fucking thing.

I think Godhand's Godhand.

I think

anything old Capcom has a chance, but you got to get the people, the right people on it.

I also don't imagine Hit Kamiya is going to be like, yeah, I want to work on someone else's baby.

He feels like the kind of person.

He's done it before.

At the beginning of his career.

And now he's like, I want to force you to play schmupps.

So he's now that he's in his, I'm going to force you to play schmupps and you can't tell me shit, phase, I'm going to put glasses on everybody, phase.

Watch me drive off in the Lambo, unemployed phase.

You know, he clearly is like, I'm doing what I want, and what I want is my own babies.

And what I care about is Joe riding on the back of Amaterazu in the intro to Marvel 3.

So we will see, but that's a pretty exciting

bit.

All right.

Beyond that,

there was a whole lot.

There was a whole lot.

And

not much to it.

It was.

I felt like that Outer Worlds 2 trailer was kind of like almost being a little like

almost acknowledging.

They're like, it's more and it's bigger and who cares?

Was kind of the tone.

It was very, it was like.

Ironically, meta.

It was this very weird thing where Obsidian is admitting that the second game that they make is always like by far the better one.

That's two

better than Pillars 1.

And yeah, that trailer,

that logo reveal, it was an OR instead of an I.

And

people kind of went, damn.

Mid part two.

Here's hoping it's better.

I'm hearing good things about Avowed.

Cool.

Okay.

We'll see.

Hey, Slay the Spire with 3D and animations and stuff looking pretty, looks cool.

Cool.

I'm down with more Slay the Spire.

That was really that was dope.

People like that game.

I like it.

I'm not good at it, but I like it.

Uh, yes, I am also down for

the

so one shout outs to uh Yosef Fades, of course.

Fuck the Oscars.

Oh, he's great.

The new game is Split Fiction from Haze Light.

Of course, Kings of Local Co-op continue.

And

two girls going on an adventure, hanging out.

And maybe this time we won't have to broach the topic of divorce or so.

Maybe, maybe not.

However, I don't know.

Like, the timeline doesn't add up because when they cut to his kids, they're way too young.

But the idea that they have twins and that's part of why they want to make

come on.

Isn't that the best?

It's so good.

Right.

Brothers, obviously, was made well before that.

Yeah, and that was his life experience with his brothers.

Yes, fattest, fattest, right?

Shout out to the Mario naming conventions of the two of them.

But

them together, yeah, they have that connection.

But then everything else, I guess, afterwards, you know, going from a way out into It Takes Two and such, you're like, oh, is this because they had twin kids and they want them to be able to play together?

Because no one else is fucking making local co-op anymore.

I gotta say, It Takes Two was obviously really great, but me and Paige, when we streamed it, had like a really like bored reaction to it.

Because we're a married couple and we're playing It Takes Two, a game about a formerly married couple is divorced.

And we ran into this strange issue where like me and Paige are too used to being

like to working together antagonistically.

Okay.

Like huge portions of the way the game is supposed to make you feel just didn't hit at all.

Oh, that's.

Because, like, we'll co-op and fight our asses off on like anything up here.

And so the game's like, ha, you guys really, you really, you feel intense?

Like, no.

No.

That's hilarious because me and Reggie are getting divorced.

Like,

we played through that.

Like, you fucking.

I absolutely felt it.

Like, that shit's weak.

You need to get into an argument about how to navigate a bloodborne level with your wife.

Now, that's

okay.

Okay.

Also, the shitty mustache book being a creep

was so awful.

It was

really bad.

I thought he was great, but I hated his fucking ass so much.

But that's nice to see

that that's coming out.

Hey, floating ghosts.

What are they doing?

Getting absorbed into

Oni Musha.

Onimusha's back.

So I gotta say, Capcom really like punked my ass with Onomusha because Onimusha had been I had been hearing about Onomusha for a really, really long time, but never a specific.

Just someone somewhere saw something that looked like Onomusha.

And then they put out Kenutsugami.

Yes.

Which is like Asian inspired with demons and you also suck in souls in your fucking arm and shit.

That could have been it.

That's what people fucking thought was Onomusha.

Nope.

They're also making Onumusha.

Onamusha Way of the Sword.

So

for 2026.

Full reboot, right?

You know what's great about Onomusha?

This is a game that formerly the last game was really bad.

Dawn of Dreams.

I'm not saying that Onumusha for Dawn of Dreams was really bad because Yoshinori Ono worked on it.

I'm just saying

that it was

and he did.

It's a sequel

to Dawn of Dreams then?

Get the fuck out of here.

Yo.

I mean, listen, I have a positive association with Dawn of Dreams, but that's just because I really like Soki in Tatsunoko versus Capcoff.

Yeah, Yeah, that's a weird, that's a weird place to go with that.

He's an awesome character as a guest in that game.

And you know what?

You know who else is awesome as a crossover?

Phoenix Wright and Monster Hunter.

I like those characters.

They're great.

They're super cool.

So

I have nothing but love for Soki.

But yeah, no,

this is not Samonosuke, right?

Will this win a Siggraph award again

for its opening cinematic?

Oh my God.

Are we in that world anymore?

I don't know.

I don't think so.

I don't, I would love to.

He went three for three, man.

That was crazy.

But like, that was an era where it was like, okay, Square putting out their FMVs, fucking Blizzard putting out their FMVs.

Onimusha intro was right up there.

Orimusha came in and like, no, we won it.

We mocapped six guys.

And then for the second one, we mocapped a horse.

Yeah.

And then for the third one, like, take a look at this small film we produced for you.

And I mean, like, literally, like, those were the three that were just crushing it.

And, like, I remember that

the Raven in the intro to Warcraft 3 was used to advertise 3D Studio Max.

Like,

you know, they were on the cutting edge.

I don't know that anyone's going to be in that space anymore because everyone can do that now.

But the fact that you can go back and that Onamusha 3 intro still stands up is hype as hell.

That thing's crazy, man.

Also, I think between this and then the anime, where they're kind of like, it's the guy, it's Samanosuke, but it's not the actor,

is where you can kind of like see, like, okay, that was a mistake getting real people and real faces that have legal.

That was a massive

problem.

Yeah, Jean-Renault, that's fun and all, but then legally we have to jump through hoops every time we want to release something.

Massive, massive, stupid problem.

We will never be doing this again.

We won't be doing this.

We've made a mistake.

And hey, look, it seems like fucking Judgment learned the lesson a little too late, you know, with Johnny's and all that bit.

Yeah, another.

Oh, well, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

Should we just get there right now?

Go for it.

With another century?

Because RGG showed off Another Century, which is their new RGG game that takes place in Project Century.

Taisho era, Japan, Akira, Japan.

Another Century, some mecha shit.

And it's like, hey, you know what's fucking dead, Judgment.

That shit's fucking so dead.

Bro, get out of my face with that judgment shit.

Let's try again with another

sister franchise then.

Yeah.

But there needs to be a franchise that is the action one

at all times, right?

Yeah.

It's very interesting that Another Century, or sorry, Project Century, my mistake,

features like huge amounts of violent murder in its action combat.

Hmm.

I think

they've established enough with,

I guess, the

world of what is now Ichiban's

setting going off in its own direction that they can just create a whole brand new thing now and this will be like two offerings per

every other year.

Sucked Kiryu and Majima into his goofball nightmare dimension.

Now, wasn't there...

So

what was the time period of the other spin-off games they did with like

if in the past?

Well, do you mean like

RGG games set like in the past?

Oh, in the past, it was like the fucking Warring States era.

Okay.

Like, like fucking, I don't know, 16, 17.

I'm not super familiar with that, what, what years those were.

But, like, Yakuza games take place in current year of release.

Like, like, they always take place either the year you're in or six months from now.

Okay.

Um, then there was the 80s, um, And then Kenzon was 1600 and Ishin was 1800.

Okay.

So old timey.

Taisho era, which is 1915, is definitely new.

Okay.

Did we get a date on this release?

No.

Okay.

But it'll be out in two weeks.

Wait, so and then when's when's Pirate Majima coming?

Like, what?

In February.

It would not be out of, it would not be impossible for another century to come out this year.

Project Century.

Projects.

Fuck.

You keep saying another century, and I'm like, are you wanting to say another century?

I'm like, are you talking about Gundam and or from soft mecha century?

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Hold on.

Sorry.

Quick break, BRB.

Oh, good.

I got a P.

One second.

Emergency guests.

Emergency guests.

Emergency guests.

Susie.

Hello.

Hi.

Thanks for having me on

two

hours and 14 minutes in.

Yes.

Thank you for joining us today, Susie Sphere Hunter.

What do you want to talk about?

Susie has kicked open the door and

forced her way in and has opinions.

Yes.

What's going on?

I'm really excited about the new Oni Musha video game because there hasn't been a new game since 2006 and the last one was indeed not very good.

If you guys want a quick catch-up, Onimusha 1 comes out.

It's fantastic.

Everybody loves it.

Capcom's like, oh, we made our own Kurosawa, like, horror movie, Throne of Blood kind of tribute game.

What do we do next?

Onimusha 2 comes out.

It's...

quite possibly one of the greatest adventure games ever made with like 17,000 branching paths that are all fully voice acted, and it's insane.

It didn't sell as well, you know, but whatever.

But they keep that going.

They keep the Hollywood, the film cinematic

thing going.

Yeah, which, by the way, that's the reason we're never going to play that game ever again on a brand new console because his estate will not release the rights to his face, which really sucks.

Okay.

It's not a salty Johnny's style judgment situation.

No, no, they hired a dead actor to play that character.

Oh, yeah, which is a little strange.

And by the way,

I have some kind of observation that might align with something like that for the new game, but I think I'm wrong, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

Anyway, Only Wish of 3 comes out.

I don't think it's sold very well.

I like it or whatever.

It's got genre no in it.

I'm sure you guys like genre no because

you're both Frenchies.

Frenching it up.

Yeah, Frenching it up.

Historically, a very funny statement from Inafune.

He was like, oh, Onimusha 2 didn't sell well because we didn't have a Western actor in it.

Oh, Onimusha 3 didn't sell well because there were too many actors in it.

And then Dawn of Dreams comes out.

It is a colossal failure.

Nobody plays it.

Nobody buys it.

And he goes, Onimusha 4, Dawn of Dreams did not sell well because there were too many actors.

Or there weren't enough actors.

There weren't enough actors, yes.

There weren't enough.

Genius KG Inafune.

Fans of the Onimusha series have come to have feelings about actors, and that's the quality metric for the game.

Yes, which there is.

Listen, I have

made an observation about this new trailer.

Anyway, the new trailer gets shown.

I think it looks fucking amazing.

I don't know how you guys feel.

I'm not

really about this.

And Monamusha rules, man.

I'm so fucking awesome.

Yeah.

Sorry, I'm just taking a second because I woke up today and didn't expect to have a new reason to have feelings about Inafune, but here we are.

Like, another day, another fucking KG.

Like,

yeah, exactly.

Well, yeah.

Hey, Soki was cool, though, right?

Was Soki cool?

I felt like Soki was cool.

He could do the one, two, three, slash ESEN system.

I'm just not the biggest fan of the camera system in Dawn of Dreams, okay?

It's like a weird, like centered perspective camera and not fixed camera, whatever.

So, like,

Susie, you and I are like survival horror, like, fixed camera diehards, but I really have to point out, like, it's weird that a better camera, like, an objectively better camera played way worse with Onimusha's system.

Yeah, which you would think wouldn't be the case because Onimusha, like, has tank controls as well.

And, like, you don't really think, like, oh, I'm going to knife only Resident Evil.

Like, that's not generally how you want to play Resident Evil.

But they were just like, fuck it.

You're going to sword only Resident Evil.

And it works perfectly.

I mean, I played the version I played,

I played it without the tank controls.

Like, I just

wanted to run in directions.

Yeah, it works perfectly.

Well, it was going to be a nightmare to action through slow rotation.

No, man, you get really good at it.

So, no, you can say that the running is supposed to be awkward when you're supposed to be afraid and when zombies and let's be, you know what?

Zombies and dinosaurs right scary they're chasing you and you're you're too full of fear to to get your left and your right fucking foot over each other so fine but you're a samurai man slashing with perfect timing to survive come the fuck on okay one onomusha one is a horror game it's a survival horror game you just happen to be a samurai two

dino crisis two has tank controls and it is the least scary game you will ever play in your life.

True.

That game has a dodge button and it works surprisingly well for

whatever it came out.

I don't know if you guys watched my Onimusha one retrospective, but I actually complained about that exactly.

Like for some reason,

when you rotate Samonosuke, he moves like a snail.

Like he's so slow to turn.

And

I rationalized it as like, oh, well, you know, he's wearing a lot of like heavy samurai armor, right?

But then when you hold R1 to lock onto an enemy, he moves moves at the speed of light and can like

and can like trickster dodge around enemies.

And it's like, oh, I guess that's a slash, right?

Yeah.

By the way, is that dodge button you're talking about in Dido Crisis 2?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, the Super Action-y one that I didn't play yet.

You have to.

So when you do play it, you have to actually turn on dodging in the options menu.

It's not on by default because video games.

Now listen.

You're also talking to the person.

I was fucking backstepping in Silent Hill 1 to narrowly avoid the fucking boss spikes on that roof.

I played footsies with tank controls.

I can do it.

I'm telling you, I've done it.

Sure, yeah.

But my question is, did you use the guard function in Silent Hill 2?

Ever.

Did I?

I don't remember if I did.

I don't think many people know that you can actually block in Silent Hill 2, and it's fucking weird.

I don't remember if I did.

Someone who watched the LP will have to tell me, but I know in three, I went in with that fucking samurai sword.

In through, I went all the way in.

That shit was the hype as hell.

Did you kill the final boss with the absolutely katana battle?

Okay, good.

The whole way.

Good job.

Yeah.

You got that infinite SMG.

Yeah.

Good job.

Anyway, anyway.

Okay.

Onio show.

Way of the sword.

I was watching the trailer, right?

And

I was like, oh, you know, Capcom's doing a lot of remakes.

Like, you know,

they kind of just put out, I mean, it was five years ago at this point, which is fucking insane.

They just put out HD Odimusha 1.

But I was like, you know,

that doesn't have to stop them from the ground up remaking it.

You know, we've got like RE4 remake, and original RE4 is perfectly fine and right there.

So I was watching the trailer and I was like, oh, this guy kind of reminds me of Samonosuke, but he doesn't, it's not Takeshi Kanashiro.

The gauntlet is like full gold, which is like the level three gauntlet at the end of Oni Mushawan.

But there were, like, I don't know if you guys noticed, but

the real Oni Musha heads in the chat would have noticed that the final enemy that he fights in that trailer is actually the first boss

in the

sorry, the Oni Nutters.

That's what I meant to say.

Oni Nutters.

The final.

What the fuck are we doing?

Oh, my god.

The mush heads, yeah.

The mushheads.

Yeah,

the final enemy that he kills in

the trailer is the first boss of Onimusha 1.

So I was kind of like, okay.

I was kind of like, oh shit, is this a remake?

I have no clue.

And I read the press release and I control F'd everything.

Like, I typed in remake, remaster, reimagining, and didn't, nothing came up.

So I was kind of like, oh, okay, cool.

But I did find out that the game takes place in Kiyomizu Dera, which is a completely different castle in Tokyo from the game one location, which is Gifu Castle.

Okay.

Also known as Inabayama Castle.

So it's not a remake.

It might be a reboot.

I think some people were saying that it's a sequel.

Did I see something about Musashi?

I saw people discussing Miyamoto Musashi or something like that, and I'm not sure if that was just out of nowhere or yeah.

I was kind of thinking that too, because

he's kind of got that look, right?

Way of the sword.

So far, yeah, Way of the Sword does lean in that direction as well.

The one thing

I'll send you guys a screenshot.

How familiar are you two, guys, with Kurosawa movies?

What have I seen?

I think,

yeah,

Seven Samurai.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And then I...

Yo, Jimbone stuff.

I don't know.

I might be off base here.

I'm going to send you a screenshot.

The main character of this game

kind of looks like Toshiro Mifune.

Mifune.

Absolutely is Toshiro Mifune.

And I'm kind of worried, honestly, because it's like, okay, it's going to be great, sure.

But what happens if I want to play this on PlayStation 7 and the Mifune?

Buy it

estate?

Well, first we need...

So, okay, Capcom reaches out to the Mifune Estate and

gets his licensed

likeness input and never learns a single fucking lesson

is what we find out here.

Yeah.

That would be really cool.

I like that energy.

That type of protagonist as well is not...

You don't see that often, especially in video games, like the brash, loud kind of fucking

kind of samurai man.

Yeah, yeah, Mugen.

Yeah, for sure.

Um, I believe uh

uh the Onimusha anime

is like that main character is like very obviously okay supposed to be Toshiro Mifune, and like I don't know if it's the same character in this game.

Musashi is from the Netflix show, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it, got it.

So, okay,

um, I think it's I think it's pretty exciting, but I feel feel like maybe if that is the case, like they might they might have trouble in the future.

But

I will say also another, yeah, another dead actor, which is kind of strange, but also

yeah, stop doing that.

I will say I am very excited because at the very end of the trailer, it seems like he's struggling with becoming a demon, which is something I've always wanted.

out of this franchise.

I don't know how you guys have ever felt about that.

Like, every Onimusha protagonist is like, oh, this is really cool.

I could kill every demon.

And I'm so cool.

I'm super strong, and there's no downside at all.

There's no downside at all.

And

I feel like I just hope that

they explore that more.

Yeah, spend more time exploring that and less time exploring a terrible second playable character.

Dear God, I can't speak to the others, but at least in Onimusha one,

it was not fun switching at the end.

Yeah.

Like, she could do so she could do so much less and I like I love more than one playable character, but like she just felt like an incomplete

kind of thought.

That's good.

That's because she's the guest character in the second, third, like Sherry or Ada or whoever.

Yes.

Because it's a Red Movie game you see.

Okay, but instead of like running from fucking

evil men trying to kill you and hiding under tables, like you're meant to fight, but not really.

Makes a little less sense for an action game.

You fight, but you can fight, but you fight badly, and you don't internalize that as like, don't fight, you know?

But you quickly realize after dying, quickly, you're like, oh, well,

I'm bad at this, but I have a lot of the same functions, just not the complete set, you know.

Yeah,

you can dodge into the enemies and like flip over them and then one-hit kill them, but it doesn't always happen every time.

So it's a little...

It's a little busted.

It doesn't come out every single time, which kind of sucks.

But anyway, I mean, the gameplay in the new game looks really cool.

I don't know if you guys paid attention to it, but I don't know.

It kind of looks a little souls-y, a little souls-like.

I would not be so camera position.

My mom wants that.

That would make a lot of sense.

Yeah.

I'll be honest.

I think, you know, it is cool.

And I feel like, you know, in the culture of video games, it makes sense to, you know, make the game about absorbing souls, a souls-like game.

But, as you guys know, that already exists, and it's called Neo.

And I already played that game, and I don't want

the identity of Odivotion.

Capcom did, like, yes, there is, there absolutely is Neo with the souls and the

samurai theme, but Capcom never got its deep down, right?

That never happened.

They were trying at this.

At the same time, I've played Neo 1 and Neo 2, and in Capcom games, typically you would, you know, go through an area and maybe fight a boss and then get a new weapon.

Whereas in Neo, you kill any default enemy and they vomit a bunch of fucking bullshit all over the floor.

Yes.

Making those very different experiences.

Also, the grave in front of the first enemy you fight is glowing purple and has the coolest shit in the game, but

the player ghost is very hard, so you just get detoured into fighting that for half an hour.

Never mind the rewards of the current mission.

And since this game is not made by Itsuno, I don't think they're going to have some kind of bizarre

multiplayer feature that isn't multiplayer.

Asymmetrical.

Yeah, yeah.

I thought that was going to go somewhere, but then it went nowhere.

It was so weird.

Yeah.

How do you guys feel about to change topics ever so slightly?

How do you guys feel about the future of Devil May Cry?

Now that...

I feel that there is a non-zero chance that Kamiya may direct Devil May Cry Zero, and that's really funny.

I think that would be fantastic.

I'm happy for anything to exist in that franchise, be that a Zero Sparta, be that a one remake, be that a six, or a ladies' night.

I don't care.

That's all cool.

And I also think that, you know, if that Netflix anime is actually pretty fucking good, there will be some current renewed vigor to see some more, right?

Although, currently, there's some weird shit happening on Spotify where, like, Barry the Light got like

pulled down or something.

I think that's somebody making a cover and abusing Spotify.

I think so.

But yeah, no,

but I do think the

anime coming out is, you know, you can do something with that.

That could be cool.

The thing is, of course,

when

you know, when the man leaves, who are you handing that franchise to, right?

Is it just, okay, Camilla, we're going to your Dante?

Because he's always, didn't he have a couple things to say about how he thought Dante was a different type of character?

Oh, he's a totally different character.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so his interpretation on things, like, I don't feel like Camille is the type of person who'd be like, I will.

Like, he's like, I've got my idea of what this should be.

And I think he'd kind of want to almost like bend it more towards that than keep what we've got going.

You know?

I'm kind of hoping that

he applies his version of Dante to Sparta, though, because Sparta

is

interesting.

Because, you know, like he,

if you really think about it, like, I think originally he wanted Dante to be British, you know?

And if Sparta, if you're playing a Sparta game, it's going to be in the past.

He's going to be like, you know, like, what is English?

Oh, it's this British shit, you know?

And he'll sound British.

And also, you know, Kamia, he's been directing, or not directing, but like overseeing Bayonetta for like the past couple of years.

And Bayonetta is a very like rustic-looking kind of game.

And, you know,

I feel like it would be an easy kind of transition there to apply that stuff to Sparta specifically.

I can imagine a world where he's like,

I kind of want to work on my own ideas, and that's gone in a different direction, and I have a lot that I'd like to focus on that's over here.

But I could just as easily see him being like, oh, well, it's kind of like a homecoming, you know?

Like, it'suno saw him left, and now

I have some ideas, and it's an honor to go from that to Bayo, and now back to this.

Like, I could see both kinds of directions happening, but either way, not for

after he's done with his current babies getting all the attention.

Yeah, I can also see like the being plenty of people who worked on DMC5 that would be willing to step up as the new director.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

For sure.

That is a full team of very talented people besides Itsudo that are still around there.

Yeah.

All right.

Hey, I have some breaking news, by the way.

What's going on?

Let's hear it.

I would like you guys to know that as of right now, Virtual Fighter V Revo is more popular than Mortal Kombat 1 on Twitch.tv.

So, one down.

Damn.

One down.

That's an accomplishment.

How's Multiversus doing?

Oh, my God.

I don't even.

Might be two.

Might be two.

Where's Multiversus at?

Multiversus is above the two of them.

Okay.

Well,

some Titans cannot be felled just yet.

Uh, there you go.

All right, sounds good.

Take it.

Hollywood, uh, the

slasher villains could not save Mortal Kombat, I guess.

Damn, no block button solidarity.

None.

Oh, shit.

Alright, other stuff going on.

We got

the

soccer game from, right?

You know what?

Actually,

pretty cool.

I don't mind.

He looks really good.

Yeah, so Rematch is from

the Sifu devs.

And it is...

It's a soccer game, but it's third person controlling your own member of the team.

And it seems to be styled like Rocket League in that it's like kind of like an indoor soccer thing.

It's a lot faster, bouncing off the walls, etc.

I don't think I've seen anything like that.

And Rocket League, obviously very popular, scratches a niche of people wanting to jump into a game that's soccer-like, but control one member of a team.

So that's very smart.

There's been a space, of course, for team-based games to be played in like large groups of people jumping online to control one member.

So yeah, them being first of the pitch here, this could, they could run away with it.

It'd be crazy to have a like a sports game that's fun to play.

That'd be astonishing.

Yeah.

I was going to say

when like when I was a kid, I tried to play sports games and like I always thought that sports games were what you just described, you know, and then I'd play them and be like, what the fuck?

Like, what do I even do?

You know, like, why am I not controlling?

Nah, nah, y'all are bugging.

There's a ton of fun sports games out there.

Oh, tons.

But what has happened.

And then they stopped coming out in 2004.

Because it also became like we can sell you a simulator for your fantasy

leagues on a regular annualized basis here.

And so we just

quadruple down on that.

And

yeah, no, this is cool.

And I love the idea as well that

the fun comes with a return to arcade style

sports games too.

Like, I like fast-paced um, not simulator versions of these games.

Everyone,

like, like, sports fans and basketball fans and not basketball fans all remember

Street 2.

You know, we talk about NBA Jam and shit like that, Blitz and all that wild stuff.

Like, all those crazy versions of the games were awesome.

Like, I think Sifu Dev's doing that.

Very smart move.

This conversation is only tangentially related, but I'm just sitting here getting fucking pissed off about Def Jam Icon.

Just like, oh, you fucking assholes.

Yeah, they didn't understand.

They didn't get what the point was.

Was that the last Def Jam game?

Was that the one where

you turntable on the air?

Def Jam Icon used the, built on the Fight Night engine.

They thought, we can do it ourselves.

We don't need Aki or any of the shit that people liked.

And they, yeah, exactly.

You're scratching in midair and like using a terrible, slow, janky system.

But you can create characters so people could do custom fucking Wheezy versus Soldier Boy at the time and

upload that to YouTube.

Piece of fucking shit.

Yeah.

And then, and then,

that's not the shit.

The shit is when the Twitter account for Def Jam keeps every like three or four years releasing a JPEG like Def Jam World

new fighting game, maybe idea.

Who would you want to be in it?

Engaging.

It's coming alongside the reboot reboot.

And then everybody tags me and goes, Oh my god, Def Jam's coming back, y'all.

Look, there's a tweet of a blurry JPEG with that one really bad MM Photoshop.

Who do you want to be in it?

Oh my god.

And then Boss Logic gets really excited and then starts making a hype piece of art.

And it's like, no, don't feed into it.

No.

God damn it, boss.

Could you guys imagine if Capcom, like, every three years was like, guys, who do you want to see?

And Darkstalkers

four

or five.

Who do you want?

What's your dream Marvel roster?

Asking people right now who you would want to see in a Marvel game.

Like today, actually.

While also putting up like you can get your tailbane outfit in Street Fighter VI and

icons and stuff.

I don't know, but I got it.

Yeah, rematch.

You know, smarts.

And this is the kind of game where, to be honest, like, if it takes off, Slowclap might just disappear and become the soccer company.

Yeah, possible.

But hey, at least Sifu got a cool episode of

Secret Level.

I feel really bad.

There's some guy with a YouTube account out there that has like 400 videos in a row that are all titled, I Beat a Sifu Level Every Day until they announce a sequel.

And then the newest upload is just called a soccer game.

Sorry, buddy.

Sorry.

So, Pal World announced a new update, and I bring this up just to say that, like, you know, the lawsuit means that they're pulling out Pokeball tilt throwing

and

they're updating with new features, bosses, and characters, and stuff.

But I don't know if you felt this, but I watched the new trailer, and I've also, I haven't, you know, touched PAL World since like all these last updates and stuff.

But it was just

a regular new feature content update trailer with new characters doing things and new people to fight and new monsters to catch.

And I'm like, oh, did the success and fame kind of lead to a like, we're not going to go into the crazy sweatshop shit anymore?

I I mean,

they did a lot of that.

Yeah.

I guess I'm like, don't just be an earnest new expansion.

Show me some bullshit abuse of your Pokemon.

Like, I mean, you have to remember they are being actively sued right now.

They are, but the only reason why anyone turned their head in this direction was because we saw

your pals getting whipped on a line where they had to build guns, which you then used to shoot to hunt

more pals.

You know?

so they tone that stuff down no I'm not I don't think so I don't think so but it's more just like the trailer I was like oh there was like none of it you know there's none of that like that scathing

like you know kind of like vibe of like yeah here's your fucking buddies like inject them to keep them working while they're while they're retired like all of that shit the things that I want them to lean in I want them to lean into the reason why we showed up

you know don't just be like oh everyone likes the characters and the bosses and the fun stuff well like more of that we made so much money, we don't know what to do with it.

You know, I'm being told, uh, Wooly, they added a PAL conveyor belt where you deposit PALs into a literal crusher and you

oh my god, that's fucking crazy.

Holy shit, yeah, okay,

all right,

now we're talking

the garbage disposal, holy death pops off.

I love it.

That's fucking crazy.

Anyway.

All right.

We got

Ninja Gaiden.

What?

Ninja Gaiden.

My brain didn't even complete it because I remember watching that and going, yeah, it's Ninja Gaiden.

Gaiden, whatever.

But it's, but it's, yeah.

But I thought you meant the other Ninja Gaiden.

No.

No, you meant the old Ninja Gaiden.

The original Ninja Gaiden.

Gaiden.

God damn it.

Gaymen.

Gaymen.

Okay, well, it's properly Gaiden, but like when we were all kids, we said Ninja Gaiden, so it's Ryu Ryu forever.

Okay.

Yeah,

I said Gaiden for a while.

You know what I used to say?

I used to say Resident Evil Gaiden on Game Boy.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

Gaiden.

Yeah, but because the Mortal Kombat guy said Raiden.

So then we said, all right.

it's

the same.

Yeah, it's the same.

So it's Ninja Rue.

I'm making fun of Seth Killian.

Ah, Rue, Rue, Rue, right.

Yes, yes.

Gotcha.

I'm like, yep.

Sorry, that might have been a bit too inside, even for this room.

No, he used to say Rue on the he adamantly said Rue while he was doing commentary for Street Fighter.

It's fucking ridiculous.

But yes, no,

that was

Raiden

until Metal Gear.

Wait a minute.

Hold on a sec.

Hold on.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Wait a minute.

Don't you guys say Sakura?

Sakura?

Okay.

Who says?

Oh, you know who I'm thinking of?

Oh, I got thinking of Max.

Max says Sakura.

Sorry.

Okay.

I got my fighting game people mixed up.

I say Sakura, yeah.

I say Sakura or Sakura, depending on if my brain is on or not.

Yeah.

Gosh.

No,

I used to say, like,

I didn't have dubbed Naruto, so I never heard Akatsuki as the

English way of that being pronounced over.

And I used to underline the use of.

The Akatsuki.

Yeah, the Akatsuki was what I was reading in my head when I was reading the manga pages.

Indeed.

This shit's hard.

Yeah.

Stick a microphone in front of your fucking face and see what you get right, idiot.

Hey, did you know that, hey, you should never make fun of somebody for pronouncing a word wrong because it means that they read it first, and that means they're reading a lot, and that means they might be smart.

Yes, they're trying.

Now, I just want to know which one of these people over here that's making fun of my pronunciations or words, or any of us for that matter, is laughing through a giant southern drawl.

Yeah,

thickest fucking south-ass

nonsense pronunciations of shit.

Oh, Paige makes fun of my accent all the time, and then I catch her saying her weird shit her weird way.

Mm-hmm.

Like, she offered me her condolences.

I'm like, what the fuck is that?

Have you been saying that way your whole life?

If you are typing out your fucking language corrections and you are south of the Mason Dixon, fuck off.

Oh my god.

Anyway.

We got to take a look at

the so the weird Pac-Man

secret level then led to a game about dark evil Pac-Man, Shadow Labyrinth.

That's fucking funny.

Crazy.

Is this just the new direction of the series?

Is it horror, evil, hell?

I mean, I thought it was a bit where they were like, hey, yeah, go nuts with Pac-Man, make it darker, make it crazier.

Actually, no.

Like, well, almost like when Capcom was like, you didn't make this Dante different enough, right?

Like,

go further with it.

I could see that being the case, but then they're like, actually, no, we have a game being made too.

No, man, Pac-Man's edgy as shit, because you know what Pac-Man is?

It's hunger.

Dark, evil hunger for ghosts.

So what's the actual episode like?

I haven't seen the.

I haven't seen it.

Yeah.

Shadowy ghost that's like...

poor and running away from this beast that's the you know trying to get him um

if it worked for Karate Kid, you can, you can flip the script on Pac-Man 2, right?

There was that, then a bunch of stuff.

Did all of that secret level stuff come out, by the way?

Yeah, it's all out.

Gotcha.

Oh, boy.

Can I complain about something for one minute?

Yeah, go ahead.

I was scrolling through Instagram and a Capcom USA post came up and it was a preview for the Mega Man episode.

And I didn't read the caption.

And I was like, oh my God, what the fuck?

Like, what is this?

Holy shit.

Like, I thought it was like, I thought it was like an RE Engine, like, Mega Man Legends 3, like, reveal trailer.

And then I scrolled down more and I was like, fuck my life.

Like, it's just a fucking goddamn TV show.

Susie, maybe we just don't know about it.

Oh,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.

It is very good, I will say.

It is an awesome four-minute intro to a Mega Man world that we could all enjoy.

Because basically, it felt like they were animating the comics, you know?

Super dope.

But yes, also nothing.

yeah I mean you know post Malone showed up I don't know other stuff whatever

I'm the my bold kind of ended at virtual fighter

a warframe 1999 you know what

that is pretty cool

good for you Rebecca you looked amazing that was cool

And it's also like, not everybody gets to have this thing where you're like, we get popular and then we can come back around and like reinvent the first thing that we did and like kind of remake it in a different way.

Like that, that's a, that's a cool bit, you know?

And

I think also

there was a story today about how there was a bug in Warframe that allowed people to use the Atomic cycle in regular missions.

Yeah.

And then they just said, fuck it.

I was supposed to use it in the 1999 sections and the open world.

And now they're like, fuck it.

It's a feature.

You can use it anywhere now.

That is the Warframe way.

Incredible.

That's how everything cool that has come to Warframe has happened.

They fucked up and let it be usable.

And then went, ah, fuck on shit.

Well,

roll it.

Ship it.

It's fine.

Does it break anything?

Can you do anything you're not supposed to do?

Oh, it definitely breaks tons of shit, which is why they're going to have to attack most of it.

The answer was supposed to be no, then fuck it, ship it, but no.

No, no, no, dude.

It always breaks tons of shit and then they fix it.

Okay.

It breaks everything.

Okay.

All right.

Sounds like Warframe to me, you know?

Yeah.

Oh, you forgot about Helldivers in there, bro.

No, I did roll past it, but it was there.

There's a new race,

the new faction,

and

I like...

Here, where was that?

Yeah, the Illuminati faction.

And then you also see the...

The Illuminate.

Illuminate, excuse me.

And they're also fighting in city urban environments.

Yeah.

And I'm like, so.

Well, now you're just EDF.

You put them in a city and the EDF vibes are complete.

So there's a lot of really great stuff that happened.

I'm a big fan of the way Helldivers does this stuff.

So they came out and said, they put out the trailer for the Illuminate, which is the new enemy faction.

And then followed it up with, we are under attack right the fuck now.

Like literally that second, the Illuminate attacked Super Earth, which is a cool little way to

put it in.

But I need to give special note because they put out a little trailer, like a proper feature overview

this afternoon.

Me and Paige watched it earlier.

And so the Illuminate are like, you know, fancy Protoss space aliens, but

their foot soldier unit is a bunch of zombies.

Those zombies have been deprived not only of their life, but also, more importantly, their ability to vote.

Ah, yes.

And that enemy type is called the voteless.

Ah, yes.

And when you kill them, they salute Super Earth on the way down to the ground.

Incredible.

Perfect.

It's so fucking funny.

Is this new faction on Super Earth on the map?

I believe they are literally attacking Super Earth.

Okay, that's what the environment is.

Yeah, okay.

okay, they may have been fought back by the time this podcast went live.

Amazing, that's pretty strong.

Um, I don't know if did uh, did did they get their momentum back after the fucking Sony bullshit?

Yeah, okay, good.

Oh, they got it back last night.

Ah,

okay,

because it felt like that steam garbage kind of like bummed everybody out, yeah.

Um, I think we also saw through the new DNF DNF duel stuff that, like,

the word I think Reggie coined was Hoyo Core.

Like, that exact anime art style that you throw on the Marvel rivals characters, you know, where you're like,

it's a particular type of lighting, and some of your, like, even Peter Parker has a couple of strands of red and blue in his hair, you know, like that exact aesthetic is cash money.

I would like to point out that the DNF uh people are

um

completely full of fucking shit because they had that Kazan, the lat the first person

that looked like Conan and super western and realistic.

That game is anime as fuck.

The actual gameplay is anime representative shit.

Oh no, I was damn it when I saw that.

The Hoyoverse looking game that that played afterwards, those games actually look the same.

I spent that whole trailer talking about, wow, they're going for like a Western, like, actual old Viking look.

Well, like, yes, that's where Berserkers originate from.

They are Viking, like Nordic.

And, you know, and we went into that whole, like, yeah, huh, they're going away from anime for one of these games.

Interesting.

What the fuck?

All lies?

Yeah, like, just

here, I'll just send you the fucking Google search of Kazan, the first Berserker.

Just click on that, and you'll see like a blonde anime boy fighting like anime monsters in a Dark Souls kind of thing.

Oh, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is like one of the biggest lie trailers I have ever seen.

It is like darker, more gritty anime, but it is still full anime looking in his hair.

It's like proper cell shaded and shit.

It looks nothing like that shit.

That's hilarious.

It looks cool in-game, but yeah, the trailer was like,

it was pretty, it was pretty awesome, like seeing that and just being like, what the hell is this?

Some kind of like witcher kind of character.

Well, I mean, again, the game they showed right after that was DNF embracing that same kind of Hoyo art style, which.

Yeah, what the fuck kind of game is that second one?

I mean, it's one where

I.

What was it here?

I think I lost it on the list, but

it's

it makes money to put you on.

It's a money game.

No?

What is it?

It's a gacha, full gacha?

Probably.

I imagine so.

And

a bunch of those characters that.

Yeah, if you see the classes you're looking for, you're like, oh, there's your Berserker, there's your

Battle Mage, et cetera.

You just kind of...

You slap that filter on it, and it's good to go.

DNF

Arad.

There we go.

ARPG from Nexon.

Yeah.

Zindless Withering Waves.

Bada da da da.

Okay.

I guess the only other thing is that Game of Thrones game, King's Road.

Oh my god.

Oh man.

The weirdest part is that this game wasn't released like

way like a couple years ago.

when people really wanted that thing that would have all the faces and names and recognition.

What a strange phone game.

You know that, right?

It's a phone game.

It's a fucking phone game, yes.

They hid that from that trailer.

Wild.

I was really put off by that because, of course, I think like literally everybody listening to this, my first reaction was like, who still cares about this after the final season?

But then my second thought was, why make it look like the horrible, horribly ended TV show?

Like, make it look like something else.

Like, it could be Game of Thrones.

Make it book accurate.

Make it look like the TV show.

I know, because we got Kit Harrington to do five lines.

Oh, yeah.

I just finished season two of House of Dragon and I'm enjoying it.

Like, it is pretty solid.

And I feel like you could have even gone that direction, you know, if you need, if need be, as what's current or so, because that has another, I think, two seasons before the book is wrapped up.

You see, the nice thing about having a story that you start making when the book is finished is that you can can pace it and you don't have to worry about Grimm's farts getting in the way of whatever you have to create for the final season.

Which, by the way, I don't know if you saw that story, but he kind of came out and said, yeah, guys, actually, I think I give up.

Like,

he said, I might not ever finish it.

He literally just said it.

Oh, I can't believe it.

Yeah.

It's just...

I can't believe it.

Who would have seen that coming?

Well, I have to wonder.

He's supposed to keep us edging until his grave.

The thing is, is that I have to wonder, is this kind of what like,

you know, Hunter-Hunter guy and like Mura and like

Inoue and stuff go through where there's like, I mean, illness obviously gets in the fucking

illness aside, right?

Where you're like, oh, this person's sick and literally cannot physically bake this, right?

So there's a lot of mangaka that go on hiatus and kind of like

fade away from the work over time.

And I wonder if, like, is he just kind of like,

in a way, in that place where he's like, I don't want to end this.

It's emotionally too hard, or I can't overcome, you know, or I'm stuck at a block, or there's a problem.

You know what I mean?

Like, is there something that we're just not knowing that we don't know about that's presenting a much more obvious problem?

Or is it just, eh, can't be arsed?

I believe he has talked about what has stymied him.

So the way that he writes his books is that he makes fully realized characters in his mind and then puts them into situations.

And in his head, he just writes the characters that would react the way he imagines them in those situations.

They're alive, yes.

A lot of authors do that.

He has an ending he wants, and he's looking at where he has put those characters, and he's going, I don't know how to get them to the ending I want

without changing the way that those characters are.

Okay, that's a that's he's fucked himself.

Wow,

that sounds pretty similar to something else that we all watched and didn't like

where characters that we all loved radically changed at the last minute

to become something else that nobody liked because we needed to get to this one spot to get to this one spot.

Oh, wow.

So he saw what happened with the show

And he says, I don't want to do that.

Yeah, yeah.

But now he's fucking stuck because that's what he has to do.

Imagine reading in a book that a coffee cup from Starbucks is in the background.

Imagine that being written.

Oh, that's so that a lot of authors do describe how you set the pieces in motion and then they play themselves out, you know?

That is a shitty fucking thing to have the looming outcome of this and also the comparison of how terrible the fucking series was.

And you'd be in your you can't do that.

You have to

Yeah, you have to do that.

I would rather let it just end unfinished than end badly.

Well, there's always Game of Thrones Brotherhood.

Yes.

Do it again.

Full Metal Alchemist to finish Game of Thrones.

Fuck it.

Let's just take that joke to the nth nth degree.

Conqueror of Shambhala,

that really short live-action thing where a bunch of kids are in our world playing in the streets, and then we just do it again.

Yeah.

Fuck it.

He did all of his Elden Ring work in the gap, man.

That's the part that makes it feel wild.

Is like

their name started with a G or an R or an M.

I just can't wait to read the passage.

Jorah knelt down,

sweat on his brow, reached out, picked up the modern-day water bottle, and asked the party, Whose water bottle is this?

Water bottle!

Whose water bottle?

That's what I'm excited for.

Yeah, British people.

Perfect.

I mean, literally, just like in the prose, he's describing the boom in the shot, you know?

That's all you go.

That's all you need to know.

That's all you need to know.

All right.

Let's take a couple letters.

Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

If you're newly into Virtual Fighter because of the open beta and you've discovered that Virtual Fighter is all you need in your life, please write in.

Please.

Make Woolly read those.

I lied.

We're not reading letters.

Oh.

Oh.

Let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

These are my favorite letters.

Letters from the sponsors.

I'll go get a bottle of water, I guess.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Please

do that.

Hydration is important.

Away from the microphone.

Yes, yes.

Muting the microphone even.

Yeah.

Let's do that.

It's fine.

Listen, listen.

Everybody Everybody knows the deal.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify.

Cha-ching is the sound of a sale on Shopify.

And that is your go-to place for if you are getting into trying to figure out how to expand your business.

If you are trying to sell stuff online, if you want to create a shop that's easy to track, that gives you all the metrics you need, scales with you from your first sale to your millionth, whatever level you're at, you want to get Shopify.

That's the number one checkout on the planet.

I've talked about how I, every day, even today, I'm glancing at that shop app to check for whatever I order as it's

integrated across so many sites that I can just see what's shipping to me when and keep track of it.

It's incredibly useful.

I very much like it.

And in addition to that, the integration for like something like selling a podcast t-shirt, you know, can go not just from the website that you sell it on, but it integrates into like your youtube channel into tons of different places online so that uh people who are interested can check out your merch um easier than ever so

yeah shopify is the brand behind uh aloe and all birds and skims and a lot of other successful online businesses and they can help you grow yours today

uh check them out they helped us so you can upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use uh sign up for your one dollar per month trial period at shopify.com slash Superbeast.

All lowercase.

Go to Shopify.com slash Superbeast to upgrade your selling today.

Shopify.com slash Superbeast.

Thanks, Shopify.

Thanks, Shopify.

This holiday season,

nothing better to get

your loved ones than an Aura frame.

Podcast is sponsored by Aura Frames.

Those frames are cool.

They're really cool, legit.

I absolutely endorse and am a big fan of them.

And I've mentioned it last time, but like get them for the parent or auntie or just, you know, the boomer in your life that might not know tech that well.

A digital picture frame might seem like it might be a bit daunting, but it really isn't.

It's a fantastic gift.

It's the number one digital photo frame named by Wirecutter.

Incredibly smart, super easy to use.

And

they were a big hit.

My mom absolutely loved it.

My in-laws absolutely love it.

You basically are getting a

digital picture frame that is

very

simple to set up.

You can put in a bunch of pictures of whatever you like.

What I've used it for is when we're traveling and,

you know like my mom wants to keep up to date with where we're going and what's going on we went to Greece I just upload the photos right to the frame and she can see where we're at and what's going on and be like oh hey I see you guys went to the Acropolis and stuff super cool

in addition to that you can set it up so that it's received as a gift as well so you can put a welcome message so that the the recipient just needs to make their once they uh set it up and connect uh to wi-fi all the photos that are waiting to download load themselves right on, and then they get the personalized message from you as well.

A huge, huge hit.

Super dope.

And if you can get one of those for Christmas for your loved ones,

again, I think it's a big, a big hit.

Love them.

They've also got a pretty cool ability to,

it doesn't get too bright in the dark, so it...

dims according to the light level in the room.

So it's not just going to be like a super bright screen that's hanging off the wall, like with the Carver matte frame or just sitting on a on a on a table or so.

It matches according to the light level.

You can swipe through and go and browse different photos.

They'll play that couple of seconds.

If you want to hear the audio, you can tap it to hear the audio as well.

And I mean, adding pictures is, you don't just have to do it through the app.

You can do it in a lot of simple ways, including there's an email address.

You can just email a photo to that address, and once it's attached and it gets received, the frame will automatically update.

So it's really, really smartly designed.

It's very cool.

So yeah, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get 35% off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frame by using the promo code SuperBeast at checkout.

That's A-U-R-A frames.com promo code SuperBeast.

This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays.

Terms and conditions apply.

Thank you, Aura Frames.

This week, the podcast is also sponsored by Boot.dev.

We've bigged them up in the past already, but boot.dev is basically the best way to learn how to code.

If you're trying to figure out how to

program, if you want to get into learning Go or Python languages,

you can want to learn for business purposes.

I mean, programmers are highly in demand and are, according to Stack Overflow, the median salary for backend developers in 2023 in the U.S.

was over $100,000.

So there's a lot of people out there looking for programmers.

It's a very useful skill.

But you could also just be looking to want to make your own things, make your own video games, for example, if you listen to this podcast.

Learning how to code is essential.

That's a very key way to do it.

As someone who's tried to do it, I've failed because it is boring.

It is bland.

It is difficult.

And reading textbooks and copying and pasting into text files and trial and error in that way.

Just kind of my brain was drying up.

I was not able to grasp the concepts.

And, you know, I'm somebody who learned later in life that if I gamify what I'm doing, I learn lessons a lot easier.

It sticks and I hold on to it if I can, you know, learn in a more fun way.

So that's exactly what boot.dev does.

It gamifies the process of learning how to code.

If you are someone who wants to experience kind of going through like an RPG, you can get through levels with challenges.

There's achievements, there's quests you go on, and each of these are teaching you a little bit more about how to program, how to code, how to do different lines, and how to test them out.

Anytime you get stuck, you can get in touch as well with their.

They have a Discord that's very active, lots of programmers giving out help on things like that.

It's again free to take a look at all of their lesson plans as well.

It's a very

just well-designed thing where you kind of get experience, you open up chests and progress through it.

um

i

uh had uh some fun going through that and uh in addition to all those features i took a look through and went and did some examples and i saw that they have boss fights as well um

and

After these boss fights, there's also lore chapters.

And so they're currently on chapter four, and they fought this large community boss where everyone's programming together contributed damage towards taking out the boss.

And And then a lore chapter was unlocked for the next bit of story progression over on boot.dev.

So they have this whole really cool implementation going on here.

And like, if you're just learning how to code, this is easily the funnest and coolest way to do it.

You get a spell book of cheat sheet links and notes that you can review at any time as you're progressing as well.

Like, it's, yeah, they made an RPG where you learn programming in the process.

It's super fun.

So check it out.

And if you're a student, you get a

30-day no-questions asked refund policy and a free demo of every course and its interactive features.

So again, just to check it out, you don't have to spend anything.

So pretty awesome.

I love what they're doing there.

Go to boot.dev and use our code CastleSuper Beast to get 25% off your entire first year if you choose the annual plan.

You can click the link in the show notes as well at boot.dev slash question mark promo equals CastleSuper Beast.

And then you use the code CastleSuperbeast, and you're going to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev.

Thanks, boot.dev.

Thanks, boot.dev.

And last but not least, this week, the podcast is sponsored by Factor,

and that is your healthy meal solution.

No prep, no mess.

They get you breakfast to dinner and anything in between delivered straight to your door.

But most importantly, they're getting you healthy food that tastes good.

It is difficult to balance between the two.

And

they are able to offer you a like 35 meals or so every week.

I can't handle this factor ad, bro.

I'm so hungry.

I didn't eat this morning.

I just went right into the podcast.

And like, I've I've had factor, and now I want the factor now.

That's your fault.

That's your problem.

Like, I should have ordered it and then would show up in the mail, and then I'd have it ready and I could eat it fast, but I don't have it now.

And I'm sat.

You didn't anticipate, right?

So now you're missing out.

Now you're missing out on homestyle chicken and gravy, loaded mashed potato pork chops.

You're missing out on sweet potato and chickpea curry, Peruvian shrimp and red pepper, cauli grits.

That's your fault.

You could have had that.

I'm having stomach pains listening to you read these off.

I don't like you right now.

I'm hungry.

Well, factor is the solution.

So yeah, that's America's number one ready-to-eat meal delivery service.

Everything you're picking from as well, you were talking about dietician approved, chef prepared.

So

it's the best bang for your buck, highest quality for you, and best tasting.

you know,

cut the fuss out.

Stay on your A-game and start eating healthy.

And, you know, if you expect that you're going to be going into that New Year's resolution, going, oh, I'm going to get my act together or whatever, well, how about eating delicious and healthy in advance?

Right?

Head to factormeals.com/slash 50 Castle and use code 50 Castle to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping.

That's code 50 Castle at factormeals.com slash 50 Castle to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping while your subscription is active.

I mean, listen, truffle butter for Lei Ming Yo?

Yo.

Yo.

Want that?

Killing it again.

Killing it.

Thank you, Factor.

Thanks, Factor.

All right.

Bro, this disabled dog somehow figured out a way to jump off the couch onto the baby's

high chair and eat all of his chicken nuggies this morning is that what happened okay yeah

all the nuggies like this this dog's got screwed up front legs and we don't even know how he got on there but i came into the room and like the baby was out of the high chair and the dog was like standing on the high chair that was like you know the top's like three and a half four feet tall like a foot away from the couch and like how did this disabled freak get onto and he got some nuggies okay got like at least two full chicken nuggies.

Now, here's the problem:

inside the dog, we zoom in on a sphere grid where way over here, nuggies has been unlocked.

There was nothing there, but suddenly, oh, right, or more like, yeah, or like the materia screen in FF7 Remake, just like in the in the deepest, darkest space, a flavor profile is now there.

You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to deal with that.

He earned those nuggies

with those elbows.

He set up a little ramp, right?

He set up a little ramp and just walked up there.

Oh, this dog, I don't, like, we're going to get a ramp eventually, but he just launches himself off furniture and lands on his elbows.

It's really quite a lot of fun.

Oh, poor little guy.

Oh, my God.

He's a sweet guy, though.

He's so cute.

Oh, my God.

Before we grab some of those letters, Susie, is anything going on on your end?

Yeah, what's up?

Yeah, there's a lot going on.

There's some.

I guess, you know, there's some cool projects I've been working on, like NDA'd kind of stuff that'll come out much later,

which is nice and fun.

There's that cool one.

Can't talk about that.

There's that one.

Yeah, but they said the cool one.

Yeah, you'd owe it up so I can.

Oh, there's that one.

Yeah, that one.

That one was really cool.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm making a pretty big video right now on the original Silent Hill 2, and I have played every version of original Silent Hill 2.

I beat the HD collection on both platforms that it's available for, and man,

I can, like, I

remember playing it back in the day, the HD version of those games, and was like,

Okay, like, you know, whatever, like, I have the PS2 version, that's okay.

But, like, actually forcing yourself to play those versions is, like, it's a whole other, it's a whole other can of worms.

Yeah.

It's, like, like, you could just be walking down a hallway and, like, like, a hallway in, like, the hospital or even in the apartment.

And then, like, the fucking horn, like the boat horn when you're going down the stairs will just play randomly.

And you're like, what?

Like, what?

How?

Why?

It's fucked.

Well,

were there lessons learned from this prolonged, painful experience that were necessary?

Like, did this contribute to the final script in any way?

Yes, yes.

Because

that's in the ports section of the script, but, you know,

I don't recommend those versions, obviously.

Everyone loves when in the middle of the video essay moment, the speaker goes, and so here's the activity I did that was unnecessary, but took like years off of my life to play.

Oh, the Tim Roger section?

Uh-huh.

And then the actual end result is going to be this sentence right here.

All right, moving on.

Yeah,

that's definitely that part.

It's like three sentences of like, yeah, you know, it's fucked.

Don't play it.

Yeah, just don't do it like Tim does where he'll read out like, I played these 48 games while suffering and dying from strep throat and I've shaved four years off my life so I can put a four-minute segment in here.

Do you know, you guys want to know something For the past, I don't know, three, two, maybe three years, Tim has been

just

out of the blue, randomly DMing me, like, oh yeah, that collab that I have in mind, like we're going to do it soon.

And then a year will go by and I hear nothing about it.

And then he'll just...

Yeah,

I still don't know what the collab is, but I'm ready.

I wonder if that invite he put in his Katamari Damashi review, where if you show up at his house, he'll let you crash on his couch and make you play Katamari Damashi.

I wonder if that invite is still

open.

Yeah.

I'm so, I would never want to work with Tim Rogers.

He would, like, I would feel like such a slob and a fucking lazy piece of shit.

I would just stare.

I would just stare like this.

Mm-hmm.

What's he going to do next?

Tell me more about not the video game that we're currently trying to figure out.

Tell me about that convenience store you went to when you were 13 years old and the guy behind the counter was kind of weird to you.

Like, I can't describe how weird it is because, again, like, I don't have video YouTube Tim Rogers at all in my brain.

I just have reading the articles from Insert Coin and

Five Red Stars, five red coins, I think, as well.

Like, the blogs, the articles, like, just long-winded,

unabridged.

You will know how he feels about

it.

I'm not going to watch those video reviews.

They're absolutely unbelievable.

I did get through about

halfway through Tokimeki.

I didn't finish it.

That Doom one is incredible.

And it's the one that really blew up right away.

It is not the voice I heard in my head when I was reading those articles 20 years ago or so, though.

That's the thing.

I heard a very different voice from what I got there.

Oh, he's got a professional radio man-ass voice.

But there's a desperation in his face and tone as he's describing it.

That's a a sick.

He has a sickness.

There is an absolute urgency behind his voice that I did not hear when I was reading it.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

I will say,

I think

I've never heard or seen anyone talk about this specific thing in Silent Hill, but I tweeted a video out recently of me playing the game on a CRT television screen.

And when you click on the save point the little red squares in the game your TV becomes a little red square in real life and I tweeted that out and

the director of Silent Hill 2 Matashi Tsuboyama actually retweeted it and was like

loving it and I was like what the fuck like this is wild anyway I just thought I would

is that what the fucking squares mean it's that I think that's what it means Did you figure it out like decades later?

I think so.

Holy shit.

It was awesome.

A retweet is basically confirmation, right?

It was actually a quote tweet, I'll have you know, with starry eyes.

So, yeah.

What?

I just realized.

Hey, Wooly, this is a great time to point out.

Woolly.

Would you like your pre-apology from Susie for when she inevitably runs you over with her car now that you're in Cyberpunk.

Yeah.

Oh!

Is that going to happen then?

Is it?

Listen, don't get in my fucking way, okay?

Like, I got places to be.

Okay.

Are you romanceable?

Maybe in the sequel.

Okay.

We'll see.

All right.

Who knows?

Damn.

Well, take a take an audience, take that however you want it.

Maybe in Witcher 4.

Who knows?

2078.

That's a long time away.

Yeah.

So.

Well,

if you crash your car, don't crash my game.

That's all I ask.

I heard you were having some problems.

A couple of them.

Willie has that certain special something.

You know.

Yeah.

A normal computer that passed all its benchmarks.

I don't know.

I don't know what to tell you.

And then a regular PS5.

You and Paige just have the fucking touch.

The fucking touch of doom.

Try to get out of the life.

I don't know if I ever told you, but there was a time when Paige started up her stream and was like, every single thing is broken.

Fallout won't turn on.

And I came over, sat down, pressed the button once, and it turned on.

And I started getting super pissed.

Just like, I didn't even change anything.

I didn't even change anything.

Yeah, no, that's the thing is, like, for a while, like, people would just be like, I don't believe you.

And I'm like, no, Reggie's here, and he witnessed that nothing changed, but different results occurred.

Anyway, anyway.

That's PC gaming for you.

It really is.

That'll just happen.

And again, I will sit there and tinker with an emulator for hours until it runs perfectly.

I just, for PC gaming in general, for PC games, I'm just like, eh, run it on console.

Who cares?

Like, I just.

Yeah, for sure.

Because my priority is like, I care more about getting the emulator to run the arcade game a lot more than I care about whatever fucking, you know, mouse-wise shit I'm about to get into.

For sure, yeah.

It's just what it is.

It's just what it is, y'all.

I will say PC gaming got way easier when I got a 4090.

I was like, oh, shit.

I was like, I don't even have to fucking worry anymore.

Yeah, just turn it all up to maximum every time and ignore it.

And fucking ignore it.

Unless you're Ghost of Tsushima, which apparently

turning on frame generation turns your computer off completely.

It's a piece of fucking shit like that.

Everyone screamed not to turn on frame gen for Superpunk.

Yeah.

Although, I don't know if you're running Windows 11 or if you're holding out Stalwart 10 like I was, but 11 is necessary to get GPU scheduling working properly.

You do a bunch of cool shit.

I have

on my portal computer, my portal-themed PC, I have Windows 11.

And on my Stars Office Resident Evil-themed PC, I have Windows 10 still.

I'm holding out on that.

Yeah,

I am too.

For me, it was Auto HDR that made me upgrade to 11.

I fucking love that feature.

Okay.

Yeah,

I'm pushing it on that one, and I might push it onto the others as well.

But I'm, I'm, yeah, God, I just, I hate the process of like cleaning everything out the moment you update it.

You know, like you're, it fills with bloatware immediately, and it takes weeks before all the stupid pop-ups are still

taken care of and whatever.

It's so insane.

Like, occasionally, you'll update your computer, and then, like, you just have no space on the main drive, and then you type in, like, file size gigantic, and it's just, like, a nothing file that's, like, 200 gigabytes, and you're like, what the what even is this?

How did this happen?

Where did this come from?

It's your Phantasy Star Online 2 install

than you did for that sponsored stream that you can't pull off your fucking computer.

It's a little bit more.

That might be more specific.

Okay.

CastleSuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Let's take one over here.

Apropos of the current topic.

Boomer tech opinions.

Salutations, Cyber Woolly and Virtua Pat.

No preamble or lead-in, just a quick and easy question.

What are your boomer tech opinions?

For example, mine is: I refuse to have smart appliances in my home.

Smart light bulbs, smart fridge?

My toaster doesn't need an internet connection.

Fuck off from dull.

Yeah.

Okay, so smart bulbs I am using for the current setup because I went through a couple different options that failed, and the smart bulbs ended up being really useful.

So all the lighting improvements are thanks to that.

But the internet of things is encroaching and will never go away.

And you can fight it off for as long as you want.

Eventually

that toaster is going to need a fucking firmware update.

I hold on to, I'm stubborn about a couple of things.

I still reject all cookies on websites and I go to the advertising options and I say all non-essentials basically, you know, whenever they force you to or whatever the case is.

They'll make it more annoying.

They'll make you have to open up a bunch of dropdowns to do it.

But I'll sit there and do it every time.

I'm like, yeah, you make it a pain in the ass.

I don't give a fuck.

Leave me alone.

I'll be stubborn about

every time I'm installing something and it's like, hey, do you want to do quick install, fast install, super convenient install, or custom installation over here?

You don't want to do custom.

And then you have to go to custom so that you fucking get rid of all the extra bloat and bullshit that they put on it.

Yeah.

So you could get rid of a game spy arcade.

Yeah.

If you remember that shit.

Is Pat?

Oh, shit.

He's gone.

A power outage just led to what I didn't think think was a freezing pat because it looks like he's just in his normal position.

At some point, this will blow up and then it'll turn into Infinite Woollies.

So until I release my

domain expansion, we'll sit here for now.

Yep, there we go.

Infinite goes.

Infinite Woolly domain expansion.

All right.

All right.

Well, that's okay.

Oh, you're back.

Hey, hello.

I don't know.

Can I I ask, hold on.

How do you have a power outage and then you're back immediately?

How does that work?

Because this computer loads up very fast.

Oh, but did your power came back?

Yeah, it was a brownout.

I see.

It left for long.

It left for just

so if my power had gone completely out,

my backup supplies would have kicked on and kept everything on.

But since the power came back within a half second, they never kicked on and thus the computer is all turned off.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

See, the magic of recording on a laptop setup is during a power routage, the laptop doesn't die.

So it's another.

It's like five times a year.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like it's another option select I run on it where it's just like, okay, cool.

Everything in the city is dead, but I didn't lose.

I'm power note about losing shit.

All right.

Yeah.

I mean, I saved it.

Yep.

Custom installations, always doing that.

OneDrive, fuck off.

Whatever onboarding process that wants to have you just quickly click install and

fill your computer with bullshit, always going into the specific options and unchecking everything you don't need.

That's my answer to that.

Oh, what's my

opinion?

I have one too.

Yeah, what do you got?

It'll be really quick.

New cars kind of suck.

There's nothing wrong with driving a...

a shitbox,

whatever, from the 90s.

As long as you maintain it,

it'll be fine.

You don't need to.

I don't want to subscribe to my car

to

be able to use the brakes or whatever.

Right.

There's a cutoff point for when, like, the

car's steel trap build and breakaway glass will just kill you, though, right?

Like, you can't go back too many decades.

Sure, yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

The cool looking retro cars.

I think iPads have ruined the children, and I think my kid's going to look like a goddamn genius for being able to install a program on Windows.

Yes, I agree.

Yeah,

that's not even a boomer take, man.

The children are bad at computers again.

Like, really bad.

And also reading and writing and crafts and not being mentally ill.

But that's a different, that's a different discussion altogether.

No, no, a lot of, like, now that a lot of them are, like, taught, are growing up and talking and saying like, yes, actually, I do hate that my attention is fucked up because of this.

And they don't know how to do

computer things or desktop things or so.

Yes.

You know what was a really fun experience, dude?

So we were like, okay, we went to get the dog.

We went on a road trip with the baby, right?

Baby is

15, 16 months old in that area, right?

And so we're like, okay, let's look up, hey, what's some good tips?

to keep a toddler entertained on a long drive.

What do you think every single article we fucking found said?

iPad.

Give them your iPad.

It'll entertain them for hours.

Like, no, god damn it.

Fuck.

Yeah.

So the answer is actually someone sits in the back and hangs out with the baby and sings them songs and shit.

And the problem is that that tip is right.

They will be entertained

for hours.

And you know what else will make them happy?

Heroin.

A fucking

thumb of whiskey will absolutely calm them down.

Yeah.

I talked to my mom.

She's like, yeah, you would cry and cry and cry and you had colic so bad.

So, you know, every now and then it was just a little dipping and a little dip and

it made you feel much better.

I'm like, I fucking bet it did.

Speaking of cars, I have an update about my answer.

Apparently, any sedan from the 90s is safe.

Cool.

Okay.

So, so, yeah.

As long as you're driving one of those shitboxes, you're good.

What about an 85 Hachiro?

Initial D car.

It's the fucking weeb.

It's a Civic.

Is it designed to roll?

It's just a.

Can you roll it?

It's just a Honda.

It's not.

Okay.

Yeah.

Fucking weeb.

Got it.

Anyway.

I'm such a weeb that I got it wrong.

It's 86.

Damn.

You're bad at being a weeb.

There you go.

I have another update.

Hold on, wait.

I have an update for you, Wooly.

That car is only dangerous if you mod the brakes.

Okay.

Gotcha.

I might have a car expert to talk to at every two seconds of my life.

So anyway.

I am a fake weeb.

I would have been better if I didn't say anything at all.

Damn.

That's brutal, man.

We got one coming in from Connor who says, hey, Watt and Pooley.

Yeah.

I hate that one.

It's pretty low effort.

In the last episode, you briefly mentioned the characters from Marvel Rivals and how they're getting a lot of play in the rigging and SFM community.

As a legitimate researcher of this stuff, let me tell you.

Is that a fun thing to call yourself?

This area is, in two words, depressingly, distressingly under-researched.

We do not have any info on people's interests aside from public metrics and view counts.

No, this person literally

wrote a paper on waifus that was accepted in a major American Psych Association journal on the subject.

So,

not just fancy gooning, like official, for real it is.

If you could learn anything about the people who engage in goon media, what would you want to know?

Wow, Connor is actually writing papers about

source filmmaker gooning.

I would like, the only thing I would like to know about the research end of Goon Media is fun facts or things you wouldn't expect, or, you know,

hey, I want

here's what I want.

I want a map of the globe, and I want every single country, when you click on it, to say

May,

Tracer.

Oh, that exists.

You can look that up.

Pornhub puts it out for America, right?

Pornhub puts out the

I want the SFM global map to see what countries are into what

every

country.

100%

Bridget.

There you go.

There you go.

She's at this point.

Okay, well,

Italy's got Tifa.

That's

true.

That's the rules.

That's how it goes.

But

I am very...

That's what I want, frankly, updated every single day.

Yeah.

I mean, listen.

You could probably scrape that data and it'd be publicly available.

That probably could be done like today.

I mean, if Marvel Rivals is not internally on some document somewhere tracking this metric, they're not doing their jobs.

By the way, there is Marvel Rivals news.

I forgot.

Aside from the gooning.

Yes,

but the idea here is that they've been so careful about this launch in every other way.

You're telling me they're going to ignore the fucking goon market that they clearly have a pie to take a piece of.

All right.

There's a lot of voice actors out there that have gigs where they need to sound alike to these

characters.

Alright?

How accurately can you scream pure

chaos?

And you know when to shout that.

Come on.

All right.

Oh my god.

Am I lying?

Where's the lie?

Where's the lie?

Yeah.

Where's the fucking lie?

The Marvel Rivals news that we didn't go into is that when they were asked, hey, are you going to do roll lock for ranked?

The devs on Marvel Rivals was like, no, that's stupid.

That's not fun.

Are you going to do roll lock for ranked?

Or roll queuing?

And they're like, no.

Just queue up and just fucking argue with the team and fucking play whoever you want.

Fight for, fight for whoever

your preferences.

If all you want to do is play Iron Fist every game, they're not going to stop you.

Okay.

You can put in the, like, please let me take this character.

Yeah, you could, you could, you could ask people on the internet, please.

But the hard no is.

Yeah, okay.

Um,

yeah.

And I guess let's take one last one from K, who says, uh, dear darling Willie and Nanny Pat,

what's worse, a bad boss fight at the end of the game or no boss fight at all, despite needing a third act climax?

This is obviously referencing Bioshock.

Fuck, that's what I was literally going to say.

Bad versus none.

I think that Bioshock Infinite taught us that no boss fight.

There's a third option.

No boss fight when the game told you there would be one is the worst of all.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah, that is absolutely the worst.

Like, that is easily worse than the other two.

Um, I'll take a bad one over none.

Uh, I'll take a bad one over none.

And I, and, but I can also say that there is a way to do none, and it's not really the same, but like, obviously, God of War reboot, like, you know, it's not none, but it's like there's a that denu mot is excellent.

It's like a repeat, yeah.

And I, I, I, I like that.

Um, but a bad one over none in a normal context is is

preferable because none just feels like what did i fucking do i don't know you know you shoot a bunch of grunts and then walk out the door in the credits roll that's that's mass effect three right where shadow of mordor fits here yeah because shadow of mordor i don't know if you guys beat it um it it could qualify as all three of these

Because Shadow of Mordor says, you're going to fucking fight Sauron.

We're going to go fucking fight Sauron.

And you're like, really?

And then you get there, and it is a cut scene with four QTE prompts.

Oh,

no.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, okay, listen.

Yeah,

yeah, bad, bad, like, you know, unfinished designed boss fight versus no boss fight or QTE.

Yeah, let's do that.

Because you know what?

You know what else?

You know what that just reminded me of, Pat?

An even worse version of that?

Halo 4.

They build up the didact the whole fucking game

and then it's just you press one button

and that's it.

You know, actually, you know what that reminds me of?

And it came up today.

You know what has a fucking dog shit ending?

Onumusha won.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

What was the last bit?

I forget.

So Onamusha won, you spend the whole game building up to go fight Nobunaga, and then you're looking at Nobunaga, and he gets up out of like an altar circle and looks at you and the game ends

yeah he walks he walks down the stairs and you're like oh here we go and then a dragon shows up instead and you fight the dragon and then you don't fight no bunaga i deleted i brain deleted oh dude it sucks um

doom eternal the final boss was a big monster with all the grunts at the same time yeah and you had to

do combo to to get out of the way.

Oh, I'm thinking of the DLC.

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

It was literally, it was a big demon.

Yeah, the icon of sin is not great.

Yeah, icon of sin.

That's what I'm thinking of, right?

And it's like, and it's like, and again, when you're struggling with boss fights and stuff, that's one thing if it's the whole game.

But the

Minotaur, I think.

No, no, the

cyber demon fight was incredible.

It was really good.

So, like, they have examples of fucking how to do it properly, you know?

So, anyway, yeah, well, bad over none, for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

All right.

No, to be fair, to Doom Eternal, the icon of sin in Doom 2 is fucking terrible.

So, like, that was very accurate.

What it was it like?

Icon of sin?

The icon of sin in Doom 2 was a wall.

Yeah.

You had to jump up on a high spot and shoot a rocket through a tiny hole and hit John Romero's face.

Like it was hidden in the graphics, but behind the texture of the thing you shot was like a decapitated head of John Romero going, ah, ah, every time you shot it.

Doesn't he also say that his name is John Romero, but backwards, so you can't make it out?

Like the icon of sin?

I'm pretty sure.

He says, I am John Romero, and to beat the game, you must kill me or something like that.

But it's backwards.

I'm pretty sure.

What about a fourth option, like

Dungeons and Dragons, Shadows over Mystera, or

Judge Dread, where it's just a wall of damage that never ends, and 20 minutes of attacking it

eventually give way to

it dying.

Yeah.

Okay, Songbird is like.

I'm so mad about Songbird.

Like, all these years later, I'm so pissed off.

The design was cool.

Yeah.

It feels like, like, Songbird, I feel, is like a perfect, like, okay, we made the coolest looking thing of all time.

How do we make it work in video game?

Oh, we can't.

Fuck it.

Oh, we can't.

Yeah.

Who gives a shit?

And I remember, and like, the big daddies, I was like, oh, that's a tall act to follow because those are really coolly designed big fucking threads.

Let's follow it with fucking nothing.

Like, nothing.

Like, oh, the handy man?

Oh, get the fuck out of here.

All right.

I guess that'll do.

Thank you for your emergency

Onimusha opinions.

Please repair the window on the way out, if you don't mind.

Yes, I will.

That glass might cut.

And

you can take the ladder back down.

I think I'll leave it there.

You never know

when I might need to show up again.

Okay.

We've proven that we can put podcast guests on with the five minutes of warning.

So now it's always going to be a threat.

Just always broadcast from the Discord room with everybody in it so that anyone can just fucking kick open a door and go, ah!

Get out of here, Gene.

Yeah, yeah, kid.

Oh, I'm going to tell Gene that I did this, and he's going to show up.

You know it.

He's going to show up.

Later.