We Play, You Play: Donkey Kong Bananza

This is a head gum podcast.

Donkey Kong DK DK DK Donkey Kong is here

DK DK Donkey Kong

DK

DK Donkey Kong is here

Sometimes it's that simple.

We take naps and shelters and oh banana as we play you play GOTY candidate Donkey Kong Bonanza this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, HAC, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger.

That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr.

Games himself, Matt Abodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week, we're getting right to it.

The game, the legend, the myth, the man, the monkey himself.

DK

Donkey Kong.

DK.

Donkey Kong is here.

I have a quote from him.

I'd like to read a real quote.

Yeah, please.

Ooh, ooh, ah, ah.

Pretty good.

I mean, you know, consider better myself.

Sage words.

I've also got a quote from him.

Is that

the way in which he does consume bananas, a bit concerning.

I think he's eating the peel.

I think he's eating the peel.

Does that hurt?

To eat the peel?

Does that hurt you?

Is it like an orange rind?

I've eaten a peel.

Oh, no.

It's all starting to make sense.

I was playing a character in a sketch, and

I ate a whole banana.

At least you did it in the name of comedy.

Someone handed me a banana.

I was like kind of like a feral creature and I just ate the whole thing without feeling it.

go over in the room?

Uh, people liked it.

Yeah, it's a whole in the room.

This is a pitch in your mind.

Yeah, I don't think we're gonna do that.

I don't know if you should do it.

He's like, No, but I'm halfway done eating it.

I'm getting to the stick part.

Stick.

The feel is actually really good for you.

Feel good to me?

Yeah.

Contains fiber, vitamin C, potassium, magnesium.

Only people who should avoid them are those with latex allergies.

Wow.

Okay.

Interesting.

What the hell?

Yeah, I mean, I got one of those.

Yeah,

trust me.

Me neither, brother.

Our producer Rochelle Chan Ranch.

Where do bananas go in your fruit tier list?

They're pretty low unless they're like in something.

Wow.

Whoa.

Like a smoothie.

Wow.

So you're talking like a C tier, maybe?

I think a C tier.

I don't grab a banana if I see one.

What the fuck?

I'm like a day.

I mean, I mean, this is heresy on the Donkey Kong Bananas episode, but I.

Yeah, maybe we should, maybe we should cut this.

We wouldn't come after ranch.

Ranch is free to speak of mind.

I'm like a daily banana guy.

Me too.

I'm usually like bringing one of them things.

I can practically use a holster for it.

I'm, man.

Thank if

somebody saw a holster on your hip and then saw there was a banana in there, they'd be like, thank God.

But they'd also be like, somehow he's still going to do his shit.

There would be three stages.

It would be like, holy shit.

Oh, thank God.

What the fuck?

It's like very clearly a gun holster.

There's a gun somewhere.

You have to buy them put together.

I'm aspirationally a banana a day guy.

I feel like I get a bunch of bananas and then I'll

eat a few of them and then I'll probably do like three days in a row and be like I'm killing it with this banana a day thing and then the other bananas bananas in the bunch will

become spoiled because I'll have neglected them after some time.

Right.

I love metrics.

You know, I've got both the Aura Ring and the Apple Watch on me 24-7.

And I have

like the data to prove that eating a banana before bedtime helps me receive on average 15 more minutes of sleep per night.

That's wild.

So I'm eating a banana at 8 p.m.

for

it to be in my digestive system and processing by the time i go to bed now so are you eating are you eating the banana in bed and then just like tossing the peel on the floor because i'd be really careful if i sleep in the bed i'm not getting in bed at 8 p.m i'm eating the banana at 8 p.m banana at 8 p.m what's the latest you'll eat something i try not to ever eat anything after 9 p.m okay because i'm like if if i have not eaten dinner by like eight i get i start to get i start to get really cranky actually and it becomes it becomes a bit of a problem i get a little i get a little mad i like to eat pretty early.

I also try to have a cutoff.

I definitely can't eat after midnight because then I transform.

Yeah, that's tough.

That's really tough, too.

And it's important also.

Yeah.

And

I know this for now knowing you for so long that you cannot get wet either.

No, yes, yeah, definitely.

We can't.

That's why every clip is bone dry.

I think they could do a Gremlins 3 that was just a negotiation of the rules.

I think you could take the existing rules and all of the internet style conversation that has happened about gremlins and what midnight is, for example, and you could do

a gremlins reboot or a gremlins three where you've got Gizmo and there's like a bunch of smarmy college kids with him.

And it's like, well, if we just keep driving, doesn't midnight change?

Can't we feed him at like

if we cross state lines, does that mean that midnight hasn't happened?

All right, and then I know, I just feel like you're being pedantic.

I mean, I just like we know intellectually what after midnight means, even though after midnight does mean all of time,

after midnight in this context, means before dawn.

Yes.

Oh, before dawn?

Yeah.

That's your.

It also means that it cannot guessed on the panel show after midnight.

It could not, it's not eligible to receive points whatsoever.

I'm saying that that could be the movie.

Yeah,

I was being a guy in the movie.

You were being a guy in the movie.

Okay, great.

I was outside of the movie.

I was not part of it.

You're just watching and enjoying it.

Here's the thing.

You're a test audience.

I'm seated and I'm ready to laugh my ass off because I'm going to see what these guys are getting into.

I think this movie little guys.

I think this movie is that a gremlin never happens, but Gizmo gets so pissed off about

the constant negotiation of his personal terms

that he eventually takes up arms against these college cats.

That's fun.

I have one pitch for the movie.

Yeah.

And it's going to be, it's going to seem like sacrilege to the whole franchise.

I think you should speak English.

I think you should speak.

I think you should say fuck.

I fucking hate you.

I hate you you guys.

I think you should be a little guy with a salty little attitude.

I fucking hate you guys.

It'd be kind of funny.

You're hiding me.

Stop.

Just let me get wet and let me eat something after being like, please.

You're really cute.

You know?

I don't know how that song goes.

Something like that.

I have not seen the second one.

I've only seen the sketch that you're featured in.

Well, let me tell you, the second one is fucking batshit crazy.

Yeah.

Second one's a lot of fun.

Yeah.

And

it's absolute nonsense.

Yeah.

I feel like the 80s sequels I didn't really do.

I've never seen Ghostbusters 2, never seen Gremlins 2, and I think those are it.

So, I had a Poltergeist 2.

I had not seen their original Poltergeist 2.

Oh, wow, too scared, I think.

Oh, I'd watch it now.

I definitely watched a lot of those sequels, and my heretical opinion I had for a while was that Ghostbusters 2 was better than the original, just because I watched it so many times as a kid.

Yeah, it just kind of became my Ghostbusters.

Yeah, obviously, that doesn't make any you watch both movies, like, oh, Ghostbusters 1 is like a perfect, you know, sci-fi action comedy.

Ghostbusters 2 is kind of a fucking mess, even though it's got some fun stuff, you know.

I'll have to, I guess I'm going to say, you know, what's crazy?

I've seen every other Ghostbusters movie except Ghostbusters 2.

I haven't seen the frozen one.

Frozen Empire.

Yeah, I haven't seen Frozen Empire.

Good thing they're not taking that seriously at all.

I'm glad they went straight into Frozen Empire.

It is.

I mean, like, look, we're talking Donkey Kong.

Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze was like a, yeah, that game was a triumph.

And also, like, just the idea of a freeze being a premise is fun.

It is good.

But, but in, like, I don't know.

I just feel like there was something about that that made it feel less like this is a this is a big Ghostbusters franchise movie, if that makes any sense.

And I, from what I never actually saw the fucking thing, so why am I saying this?

But I also heard it was just so, oh, so overstuffed with characters, which always happened.

I mean, this is the whole thing with the despicable me franchise.

Here we go.

Now we've got the point where we've got like, yes, so many minions.

We've got Grew, but then we've also got grews family and then we introduce a new grew baby and it's just like like already Agnes has nothing to do in any of these movies like like the like the the the the the the the kids and the dispinkable wing family are so underserved yeah and they're just we're adding additional kids and then and and then we're gonna be like instead of being like hey the kids should go off to summer camp and we'll just focus on the minions we'll focus on grew and the minions because then then we at least have a story justification for getting out of the picture or you know like whatever uh the the the the kids are the family is getting kidnapped and you know now they're they're like that they at least have are tied into the central story but instead they're trying to give them all these like ABCD and E stories and it's just so jam-packed that it just feels like a series of sketches not a coherent movie

you go well I was gonna ask Chef do you need me to turn up the temperature on this pot or should I keep stirring

because it seems like you're cooking

let him cook here's what I think and I think maybe they're trying to do this yeah

and it would be crazy I think it's crazy because there's two franchises at this point.

Yeah, there's two timelines.

Yeah, there's the minions timeline, which is like the prequel timeline, and the despicable me franchise, which is contemporary.

And because of the existence of the minions franchise, they have focused Despicable Me less on minions, which is to me, that's like dance with the one that brought you.

You know what I mean?

Whatever made a billion dollars, the fuck do I know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, do you need me to turn this?

Like, do I keep stirring, or do you want to do I had the chop?

Okay,

yes, chef.

I can't wait to go to this restaurant where they just stir,

stir and turn up the heat.

That's good.

That's good stuff.

I like it.

I was going to say, like, I think you got to just, like, they got to just take one foot off the gas and just, like, I think maybe take the minions out of Despicable Me entirely.

If they're going to not do anything with them, just take them out.

Who gives a shit?

The Minions got their own thing going.

Matt, can we talk after the podcast?

Nick's going to kill me.

He's going to beat the shit out of me on the internet.

He's like, actually, minions should be in more movies than just these ones, actually.

Despicable Me 4 did have the fun thing of the mega minions, the minions with superpowers.

That's really fun.

I forgot.

The thrust of their marketing campaign was the mega minions.

And then you get in there and it's like, you know, three or four scenelets.

They kind of tie into the climax, but not really.

When do I add the seasoning?

Just dump the whole fucking thing together.

I forgot all about the mega minions.

And so

I will be issuing you a notap apology at the end of the show.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah, you're welcome.

I'm sorry.

Fucking sorry, man.

It would be great if minions did show up in other movies.

Why not?

I've had this thought for a long time, and I may have said it on the show.

I think one minion should be allowed to be in Mario Kart.

One minion.

I think, here's what I think.

The future of cinema is that everybody has gotten, like, the things that pop now are have to be, like, pretty different.

Like,

even the Marvel.

like success spreadsheet isn't functioning anymore right and so it's got to be stuff like you know weapons where it's like oh that's a totally new thing right well i'll go see everybody goes and sees weapons and it has barely any drop-off on its second weekend.

I think shit's going to have to start getting weirder in order to both combat the

fact that you'll be able to push an AI button and generate your own content pretty soon.

Yeah.

I think it'll be stuff where it's like a fucking Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy and a fucking minion walks in.

And he has to,

his date is the minion.

Yeah, like

two full hours into the movie, a minion walks in.

You're trying to outmaneuver outmaneuver ai at that point it's like what is something that's so like bat shit so off the wall so unexpected that that it would not be just like generated by a user yeah i i i like that gambit see if it happens that's what i think people are gonna have to do do you think anybody would be mad though if there was a minion in a mario kart i don't think so i don't think so i think but yeah minions look like a mario kart well and especially because they got the universal i mean i think some people would complain about it with it because it's it's the i think smash brothers would maybe be the more natural fit because pretty good first off you could have like a fun

you could have like a fun mechanic like the Pokemon Trainer where you've got like

multiple minions you're swapping in that have different abilities or maybe like a trio of minions

and maybe Bob, Stewart, and Kevin are all controlled together.

They do fun gimmicks with the characters when they implement them, but also that there are already a bunch of third-party characters within

Smash Bros.

Whereas I feel like that's less of a thing in Mario Kart.

It's more Nintendo IP.

Yeah, definitely.

I just like,

I kind of just want to kind of want to drive around a minion.

There's also a natural fit because they have the minions are obviously, you know, the Nintendo has a presence in the Universal theme parks.

So that seems like a natural time.

Link isn't in Mario Kart, but he was once.

He was at a certain point.

He's in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, as are Isabelle from

Animal Crossing, and then there's Villager characters.

I think there's an Inkling from Splatoon.

Gosh, will I ever investigate Splatoon?

I don't know.

You got to just accept some blind spots at a certain point.

Yeah.

You can't get to everything.

It's a whole alarm section on my Alarmo is Splatoon alarms.

And I'm like, I have no connection to this.

Right.

I would just be disoriented waking up to these sounds.

There are listeners to this show that Splatoon is like their number one thing.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

People love Splatoon.

People love it.

I was surprised I knew Inkling.

And that might be wrong.

I think that's right.

That sounds right.

Oh, man.

Thank God.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Should we talk about Gamescom at all?

Gamescom?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean the handheld unit from, oh, that's game.com.

Games.com.

No, the games come the 2025, which just had its opening night reveal, which may be partly as of this record, Heather may be why it's not on your radar.

You know, you know,

Ranch is a, as a Hollow Knight enthusiast, and Matt, you as well.

There's some new Silk Song footage.

Have you got to check out any of that?

Not just footage, a release date, my dear.

September 4th.

4th, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's coming.

Silk Song is real.

It's happening.

I'm excited.

I got to wrap it up.

Rochelle, are you going to dig into Silk Song?

I I have to.

I have no choice.

Jason Schreier had an article out as of today

that was basically like why it took so long for it to make why Silk Song took seven years.

Yeah.

And a good chunk of it was that they were just having fun making it,

which is awesome.

They had like no, they had no stress at all.

They were like, well, we didn't have a deadline.

We were just like, we were just making it and making it making it sure it was good, which is awesome.

I hope it lives up to everything that everybody wants from

a sequel to Hollow Knight.

I know I'm greatly looking forward to it as well.

There was some other stuff from Gamescom, though, too.

The more, you know, gosh, the more I see of Resident Evil Requiem.

It looks cool.

It looks really fucking cool.

And I kind of...

I think I might go through a Resident Evil tear.

I kind of, there's of some of the ones I haven't played, like two and three, the remakes and stuff.

Okay, I did see footage from the Resident Evil.

It's like two, it's like a daughter and a mom running through a house and running away from like a sick fuck.

Yeah, they're running away from a nasty guy.

I did see that, and I was like, these women, this woman does not look like this other woman's mother.

They look like they are sisters at best in terms of like the age difference, but you know, maybe she's aging well.

The thing will i i i will eat some um crow on is that i thought that there was no way that vampire the masquerade's bloodlines 2 was going to actually come out this year but it looks like it's coming out october 21st it has a date yeah i'm i'm i'm i'm uh

i'd say

I'm arm's length excited about that game.

I still, I hope it, I hope it comes out and is, and lives up to, you know, its promise.

But I, I also know that it's just like it's a

been a long time since the first one came out, or the last one came out, I should say.

And

I'm just interested to see what a 2025 version of it is.

I'll have to, and just like, I think I'm just interested in seeing what that game is like because I've never played that franchise before, so I'm just interested in checking it out.

There were a couple other things I wanted to flag.

They had,

there was a Nintendo Direct this week that was just about Kirby Air Riders, and it was like because it was at Gamescom, it was playable at a Nintendo booth there.

And Kirby Kirby Air Riders looks fucking awesome.

It looks really, really cool.

It does look cool.

And I was kind of, you know, I was a little on the fence about it because, you know, I already have Mario Kart.

I already have a racing game.

So like the third big game that's coming to switch to is another racing game, but it looks completely different.

It looks rad as hell.

It looks really, really cool.

So I'll be looking forward to check that out.

And people have got their hands on Pokemon ZA also, which is pretty exciting.

I'm sorry.

There was a BUBSY game announced.

That's right.

Bubsy40 is officially announced.

Should we play the trailer?

What the?

I haven't seen it.

Let's watch it.

I brought up the YouTube, and the top comment is: How is he still alive?

All right, let's watch this Bubsy4D trailer ranch, if you will.

Yo, remember me?

Your old pal, Bubsy,

from all those classic games you loved.

He has like more of a cell-shaded look these days

in 3D.

I'm really glad that he still looks like shit.

Yeah, I mean, it's not a super appealing character design is the thing.

It's kind of just baked into Bubsy.

He is inherently abrasive.

And also, this game, I know,

looks like it's a low-budget game.

Yeah, I mean, the environments seem pretty simple and pretty linear.

I mean, it's...

Boy, this is a.

Hey,

God bless them.

I never thought we'd see a new mainline Bubsy game, but here we are, Bubsy 40.

And it's, yeah, you could wish list it now, it looks like, which is...

I mean,

I broke my wish list button smashing it so hard.

I'm speechless that we just watched that game that announced like...

Yeah, they didn't announce when it would be coming to the second Dreamcast.

It looks like a fucking Dreamcast game.

It's pretty rough, man.

It's in rough shape.

Well, I mean, like, who knows how early of a build that is, but yeah, I mean, certainly

I would not be shocked if the developer Fabraz

was not given the most resources to bring a new Bubsy to life.

Also, the fact that so much of that trailer relies on the knowledge that Bubsy 3D was bad means that they're appealing to a very, very, very small slice of the pie that's like, I remember Bubsy was bummed out that 3D was not a good game, but I've been waiting for him to return.

That seems like,

I'm going to be honest, that seems like 2,000 people total

on planet Earth.

And that,

it's very possible.

That might be high.

I do think like I, you know, with the Bubsy character design aside, I do think he animated pretty well, the player character.

Some nice, nice bits of animation.

It's just the environment seemed a little bit different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seemed a little bit simplified.

I'm reading the wiki here.

The game story follows Bubsy and his struggles against series antagonist, the Woolies.

Similar to the first Bubsy game where they were stealing Earth's yarn balls, the game sees the Woolies attempting to steal sheep to obtain the golden fleece.

However, when the planet sheep revolt and fight back, creating weapons called Ba-bots to steal the golden fleece for themselves, Bubsy has to obtain it from them.

I mean, look, that's just good lore.

I mean, I was joking about

leash listing it.

Now I gotta get that in there.

That sounded like somebody just clicked the next autocorrect over and over again until I finished this ass.

It's kind of interesting that

as the man with cats,

or a cat currently,

you'd imagine that I'd be a little more interested in Bubsy.

And I just, can't get there.

I guess he is just kind of an annoying guy.

Yeah, that's kind of his whole thing.

Yeah.

He's like, this fucking guy.

Yeah.

Because he came from an era where he was trying to

out-edge Lord Sonic.

You know, he was going to be like, you know, fuck you, Sonic.

And it's the same sort of thing with like they had some of those other character mascots of that era, like the,

you know.

Duke Nukem.

Duke Nukem, yeah, but also like a specifically, like, I mean, I'm thinking of like Croc or like Arrow the Acrobat, you know, three-star.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So a lot of them were trying trying to just be like more sonic than Sonic, but they pushed it too far.

Sonic's already plenty enough.

Yeah.

Sonic's got to fucking cool it.

You better watch that.

Sonic became a little too sonic as he was going there.

Started kissing ladies.

What the fuck is that?

Yeah, well, that's exactly where I draw the line.

Everything after that, not so sure about.

Heather, did you see there's a Sekiro anime?

I did, but I didn't watch the trailer yet.

I thought it looked pretty cool.

Oh, okay, great.

As someone who finished Sekiro, Shadows Die Twice.

Thank you.

I really love that game, and

I'm cautiously optimistic about

an anime adaptation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What if the main character of the anime dies at the end of the first episode, and then the second episode is the first episode again?

They got to do it again.

They got to just keep doing it.

I saw meme.

I'm on the Sekiro subreddit as one of my subscribed subreddits.

Typically, typically I'll I'll subscribe and then I'll never unsubscribe.

Yeah.

And the memes were not kind to the trailer, so I didn't watch it.

Oh.

Yeah.

It was a lot of, look, look how they massacred my boy.

Hmm.

Interesting.

I can't believe, I don't know.

I guess I had a less cynical reaction.

You can't believe that the active Sekiro players this long after the game's release would be curmudgeonly about the release of the anime?

On of all places, Reddit.com on the page of the internet.

It also legit might suck.

So we'll see.

If it's, I mean, like, whatever.

But,

you know, and I guess, oh, I guess there's some accusations of AI usage.

That's part of it.

Okay.

All right.

Don't love that.

All right.

Well, never mind.

Ranch, delete what I said about being cautiously holding a second.

And go back and delete the thing that I said.

Delete all the man, just maybe just delete all this so far.

A lot of the people who are commenting on the accusations of the AI are like, you don't understand how animation works.

These aren't actually

that, like, the criticism is like, why would anybody draw a hand this way?

And it's like, because it's an in-between frame.

Right.

It's not supposed to be a perfect hand.

Yeah, it's not supposed to be as seen as a still.

Yes.

So, like, there is, it's unclear whether or not those accusations have any

foundation.

Yeah.

The other thing that I saw that was sort of like a bigger announcement at Gamescom was the release date for the Xbox ROG Ally

handheld collaboration thing that's coming out.

And it's coming out in October.

And the crazier thing about it is there's been no price announced for it.

Well, as of this week, the price of the PlayStation went up.

Yes.

Yeah.

Everything across the board, as far as their products go, I think went up like 50 bucks

on the console side.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can you imagine if I bought another handheld just so that I could reinstall Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and start again?

On the way here, I was listening to the CD soundtrack, which is an up-rez MIDI.

It's like, hey,

what if instead of running on the Game Boy Advance, this soundtrack had been pumped out by like the top-of-the-line MIDI engine that is possible?

It's a gorgeous soundtrack as a result.

And then I was like, what am I doing?

Why am I not finishing this game?

You're driving a car.

I got to finish this game.

Do you struggle with procrastisaving?

You know, when you put off doing something that could save you a ton?

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Uh, hey, speaking of games, should we talk about them?

Sure.

Let's do it.

It's time for the question we ask every week on Get Played.

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

It's the time who you ask to give us an annual

it.

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant.

That was my drop of my latest single.

What are you playing?

I mean, I asked my friends what they're playing.

So, what are you playing?

Matt Obadaga, what are you playing?

Move over REM.

There's a new REM in town.

The Resident Evil Merchant.

That's right.

Holy shit.

Uh, Chef, do you want me to turn the burners down?

It's too hot.

It's too hot in here.

And I gotta turn the burners down.

Losing my religion.

I also, to just comment on this, this

sous chef or, you know, lime cook character that we're all kind of doing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If this person was asking this many questions in the kitchen, they'd be fucking

sixth immediately.

Baby out of there.

Too many questions.

Too many questions in the kitchen.

Don't go in the questions.

No, the good.

Don't go in the kitchen uninvited.

That's also true.

They don't want you back there.

There's a system back there.

Look, I'll tell you what I'm playing.

I rate my douglas.

What do you mean?

I'm playing Death Stranding.

Yes.

I'm in the spot

where

the orders,

the main orders, are becoming

fewer.

Hey,

so like, because they're wanting the story to move along, right?

Yep.

So, like, in the earlier part of the game, you'll have like some maybe some sections, some chapters that have like more orders and stuff.

But now, I feel like I'm in a spot where it's like, this is like one order, and it's this, this, but this is going to take a couple, this is going to take a while.

Okay.

I'm in the middle of a

of a of a trek.

Yeah.

That even the guy,

uh, Tarman, when he was like, hey, just so you know,

this one's going to be a bitch and a half.

It's like tough.

So it's hard.

And he was like, you could basically go three different ways.

And one of them is faster and two of them are longer and not easier.

Okay.

And so I'm like, I'm doing that right now, but I'm just having such a good time with it still.

Yeah.

And now that, I mean, we'll talk about the game at length today.

With Bonanza, now that that's sort of

out of my rear view for right now.

The chapter is closed.

I have this itch, and it's a disease.

It's a sickness, isn't it?

I'm playing a big game, but I kind of want to dig into something.

I kind of want to, like, I want another thing going too.

I like having a couple, I like having a couple pots on some burners.

Yeah, this is the, you know, this is the

struggle inherent to Mr.

Games is that you got a big game.

You don't want to wrangle just that game.

You want to get another game as well.

Yeah.

You're always always big game hunting.

But here's the thing.

Man, whoa, that's good.

The big game hunter, Mr.

Games?

That's pretty good.

I don't know if it should stick.

I wouldn't add it to the notes necessarily.

My grandpa would love it, certainly.

He's a small game hunter.

He's not a big game hunter.

If you are a big game hunter,

find something else to do.

You creep.

What is a small game hunter?

Like, armadillo?

I'd be like deer.

Oh, okay.

I go to like normal game.

I I don't know.

Yeah.

Game.

Game.

Okay, game.

But I kind of have, like, look,

Snake Eater's coming out, but I'm kind of like, wait,

I'm holding back on Snake Eater.

Okay.

Because it kind of feels like, it kind of feels nuts to want to pick that up while I'm playing

his other game.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And one where he is intimately involved and one where he was removed from the process.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One where he was like, please play Death Stranding 2.

And one where they were like, are you going to play the Metal Gear reboot?

And he was like, fuck no.

Yeah.

It would be like going back to like your dad's house on dad's weekend and telling him all about how cool your stepdad is.

Right.

Right.

That sucks.

Yeah.

But so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, and also, like, I actually don't know if it's going to be good.

Like, I, I kind of go back and forth.

Every other time I see something about the snake eater delta, I'm like, that looks kind of good.

And then I see something and I'm like, I don't know.

Like,

And they could fuck it up big time.

They really could.

They could.

So

I'm waiting to hear about that.

But as I mentioned earlier, with Resident Evil 9 coming out, and I know that Ranch, did you finish Resident Evil 2?

I didn't finish 2.

Yeah.

But I finished 4 and 4.

Seven.

Okay.

I like, I'm kind of...

I'm kind of feeling like I want to get a little spooky with it.

Okay.

I might want to play a little

Resident Evil 2 or something.

We'll see.

So I got some prospects.

I mean, mean, here's the thing.

I got to finish Hollow Knight before Silk Song comes out.

I got to finish it.

So I honestly, that's what I will be picking up.

Yes, go start another big game.

No, no, no, no, no.

I just realized

Snake Eater is probably not going to start with a Hideo Kojima game.

Like, it's not going to come up on the screen.

Will they excise that?

I bet they will.

Interesting.

It would be really crazy.

But I also...

I think it might be crazy if they left it in dude.

It's kind of nuts.

But anyway, that's I'm still really enjoying Death Stranding 2 and then I guess getting back into Hollow Knight.

I'd love to hear it.

Nick, what are you playing?

Matt, thanks so much for asking.

You know, time constraint, which no one ever wants to hear

among our audience.

Sorry, I'm just, that's the reality of what my

life and schedule have been.

But I have been playing some Bilachro when I got some free time for non-bonanza gaming.

And, you know, I mentioned I was going for gold stakes in every deck.

The thing is, that is like a really

labor-intensive process.

It takes a long time.

You got to just grind and grind and grind.

I think the,

you know, it says something like 200 hours expected to eventually do that, to get all the way to the top level of each of the individual curated decks.

So

just chipping away at other achievements, I've been making my way through the challenge decks.

The challenge decks have changing rules.

They also have...

Changing rules that are different than the house rules for Balacho.

They also have some individual decks that are like have their own attributes, not just the way that the different bonuses are applied, but things like it will have, you know,

more face cards than a typical deck or whatever.

And then they will have, you know, some sort of

like overall sort of premise to the run that will impose some restrictions and

make it a challenge, thus the name.

One thing

I do like is the invocation of eternal, perishable, and rental jokers, which are something that start to happen as you ascend through the different stakes stakes in Balacho.

Those start to become more of a presence.

Eternal Jokers, once you get them,

they cannot leave your stash.

Perishable Jokers only last a certain number of turns, and rental jokers cost a certain amount of money every turn.

So, like, and they come, I think, I believe in that sequence in terms of how they arrive.

So, it's just a matter of like, are you playing for the long term, the short term?

But they are ultimately ultimately drawbacks because,

you know,

they impose restrictions that don't exist on regular Jokers.

Just to talk about one of these from a design perspective, one of the challenge runs on a knife's edge gives you a Joker that is an eternal pinned ceremonial dagger.

Pinned is not a typical mechanic they have in the standard runs, but it's in this challenge run.

The pinned Joker is always in the leftmost position.

And the way the pinned ceremonial dagger Joker is, when blind is selected, destroy Joker to the right and permanently add double its cell value to this malt.

So

whether you play Balacho or not, I can say that

the way I guess

I'll take a different deck.

I'll explain it for people who

are maybe less familiar with Balacho.

You're accumulating Jokers, and then Jokers you can have typically up to five

add bonuses to your deck that allow you to go deeper into your run.

So this is a Joker that you cannot get rid of that will keep eating any Joker you put next to it.

So you kind of have to perpetually be be like, what is my least useful Joker?

What is a sacrificial lamb I can put next to it?

And, you know, also what am I going to use to replace it?

And sometimes it actually makes sense for you to buy a Joker that's not particularly useful just because it can preserve some of your other Jokers.

Anyway,

I thought it was really fun.

I thought it was a really

cool design.

And

I felt a good sense of satisfaction when I completed it.

But yeah, I've really enjoyed the challenge decks.

I'm excited to knock them out.

There's so much.

You could just play that game forever.

There's an insane amount of content in Vilatro.

it is wild, yeah, and it's all like fun and interesting, and like, just like it's just the design of that game is staggering, impeccable design, yeah, it's really, really great.

Yeah, yeah, Heather, what are you playing?

Well, I feel like I'm the marriage between both of the things that you guys are playing.

I am playing uh, Pokemon, the card game Pocket, continuing through uh, this season's ranked matches.

I'm at Ultra 4, trying to hit Master Ball for the first time since I've started playing the game.

Um, it is uh

still eluding me.

I'm running, for those of you who play at home, I'm running a

Charizard Sylveon deck,

just doing my best to

hit those big damage numbers and keep myself alive.

I've experimented with a few other builds this

season.

And when

I have an intention that I want to try, I'll build my own deck and try it out in like unranked mode.

And I was trying so hard to get a um

a porygon deck to work because he changes up the energy that is either on uh no that's coming out of uh out of the uh other character or the other players uh energy pool or he can also slow uh the abilities on the active pokemon that you are up against um

and i paired him with a uh a smeagel uh who changes the energy that is on the card that they have already put out couldn't get it to work So I'm back on Charizard.

So it's, I don't know, wish me luck out there.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Godspeed.

And then I'm also playing Death Straining 2.

I went back to Mexico.

You gotta go.

You gotta go back to Mexico.

I went back to Mexico because I'm really, I really want to five-star everything.

I'm having problems with one of the missions.

And I keep wondering if it's bugged.

It's a mission where you have to retrieve six pieces of cargo, right?

And only three of them, I can only ever find three of them.

I can go straight to that location, scan everything in the area, circle the area a million times.

It's not, it's an early mission.

It's a standard order, right?

It's a standard order, and only three of them ever show up.

I have the same problem with a different Mexico mission where you have to destroy six pieces of cargo.

It's at an enemy camp.

I execute everybody on the camp.

I find the first three

and

detonate them.

Yeah.

Can't find the other three anywhere.

Oh man, what a bummer.

And I don't feel like I don't have this problem.

And I've run those standard orders orders multiple times.

And I haven't had this kind of problem on any other level, any other order in the entire game.

Interesting.

And I feel like either there's something very obvious that I'm getting wrong or it's just the glitch, but I don't, that feels like, oh, it's a controller.

I don't, I, you know, maybe it was a controller, yeah.

Like, it's really frustrating, and I guess I could just look it up and be like, does anyone else have a problem with these three boxes that are showing up?

Yeah, but um,

yeah, I uh

I had some significant story progress, and I was like, Well, slow down, gotta slow down.

Yeah, that's what that's sort of where I'm getting to, also, where I'm sort of like,

I don't want to be done with it, but I know that.

I mean, here's the thing: I'll have a lot more free time when I'm done with with it.

Like,

I'll have time to get to some other stuff, uh, but I don't want to necessarily wrap it up because I'm enjoying it so much.

Yeah, I've also gotten to a place where I'm like, I've built an enormous highway network, I've built out an enormous monorail network.

Yeah, I don't know why

you don't know why, yeah.

I don't know why because that's satisfying.

The length, the, the, the monorail.

The thing about the monorail is it takes two fucking it takes a really long time to use

four minutes.

Yeah, it's it's the monorail takes a long time and I don't find that the highway services the areas that I need it to yeah, like it's not that great a highway network.

Yeah, yeah, it's weird because I I feel like

the only reason the high I'm building the highways is because the highways need to be built not because they'll help me.

Right.

Does that make sense?

I'm on foot right now for what I'm doing and I haven't been on foot in a while.

And let me tell you something.

I wish I was in the goddamn truck.

I missed the truck.

But truck is good, but now I have new gloves that I can pick stuff up while I'm in the truck from the ground.

I, I, which is huge.

That's huge.

That's to get chiral crystals from the ground.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Um, I spent

a significant part of the weekend on my gaming day, my date, my free day, building a

zip line network so so that I could uh

triple L

pizza delivery nice

only to unlock the mission and find out that it was impossible for me to physically carry all of the pizzas oh no oh wow and I had to put them in the truck still got the triple L

but I had not

I had not clicked through to see what the mission requirements were I had just assumed oh this is a time-based thing it's really far away what they want me to do is build a zip line network.

Yeah.

And I built a zip line network ahead of time.

Yeah.

So I could go from one side of the map all the way to the other side of the map with the fucking pizzas.

And then triggered the

mission.

And it was like, you can't physically carry,

even with the

carrier.

You can't physically carry all these pizzas on the zip line.

You don't get it.

It's a lot of pizzas.

Who's that guy?

It's the guy.

It's the game.

He's in the game.

It's a guy made up.

The guy is that it's a lot of pizzas, guy.

And his whole thing is that he's like, oh, yeah, you want all these pizzas?

You don't know how many I'm going to fucking give you.

It's like a punishment, kind of.

I got to get deeper in this game.

I will say that there's so much pizza in the game that when I play the game, I need pizza.

I've been thinking about pizza a lot.

Yeah, there's a lot of pizza in that game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that's what I've been playing, Nick.

We could get pizza.

I'm not saying we have.

to.

I'm just saying we have to.

I'm just saying we're not going to obligate anyone to.

People have their own dare plans.

I'm just saying, like, we could.

Like, it's just, I,

you don't want the pizza I want.

I only want you want, I want, you want punishment pizza.

You want, you want damaging pizza.

You want, uh, you want, you want a deep dish.

And we got it one time, and it was so goddamn good.

But

I'm going to speak for, I don't have to speak for everybody.

I'm going to speak for me.

My tummy hurts.

Night ruiner and a next day ruiner, but

worth it.

Welcome to Masa Vaqua Park.

We don't have to do this.

Yeah, I can do whatever I want from my dinner.

Let's get into our

let's pivot from Death Stranding 2 to another goatee candidate, Donkey Kong Bonanza.

For our We Play, You Play was released on July 17th of 2025 for Switch 2, developed by Nintendo EPD and published by Nintendo, directed by Wataru Tanaka and Kazuya Takahashi.

And apparently, the original concept came from Yoshiaka Kuizumi, who directed Donkey Kong Jungle Beat,

a game that is absolutely singular.

It's a platformer that uses the Donkey Kong bongos

to control.

And this is the first Donkey Kong game developed by Nintendo since that one,

which is incredible also.

It's also the first Donkey Kong, original Donkey Kong game since Tropical Freeze in 2014, and the first 3D platform Donkey Kong since Donkey Kong 64.

If I ordered a large, would you guys have some?

Look, I'd eat some.

Yeah, I'd eat a piece of pizza.

All right, Rochelle is nodding.

Okay, let's go.

I'll have a slice of pizza.

The,

I mean, look, what a fucking video game.

I said it already.

Yeah.

Donkey Kong Bonanza is fucking great.

It's so fun.

I've had

friends who love games, who have just said that it's their favorite game of the year.

And I think there's a strong case for it.

I'll say, as somebody who rolled credits on it last night.

Wow.

Wow.

I went on a bit of a journey with this game where at a certain point, I had a bit of a crisis of faith.

Oh, my God.

Oh, where I was like, because I've been high on this game.

I've been like, this is an incredible, incredible game.

I think it overstayed this welcome just a little bit.

I think,

and I have it, because look, I have it right here.

It has basically 16 levels, like 16 areas.

And some of these levels, some of these areas have sub-levels also.

So, like, you'll be like in

layer 500, and they'll have like, you know, sub-layer 501, 502, 503.

Not every single one of them has one, but some of them will have a couple layers to the layers.

My thought is,

if this had

10,

if it had a thousand layers, because it goes by the hundred, right?

If it had 10 levels

and then those had sublevels too, I don't know that I'd, I don't know if anybody would miss the other six, right?

They're all good, and that's the thing about it, though, is that they're all great and they're all extremely fun and satisfying.

But if you just shaved like six of them off, I don't think anybody would miss anything.

It's still an all-time great Donkey Kong game, and

as far as

3D 3D platformers go I think it's in the conversation to be one of the greats as well I think I like Odyssey a little bit more it's the same team but I but I I think this is still it's just a little it's a little bloated for me Matt yeah

Matt I I never thought I would agree with you about a game being overstuffed yeah but I do think this game is overstuffed it's practically a freaking deep dish pizza I enjoy every part of the, I haven't finished it.

Yeah.

I enjoy every part of the game that I have experienced.

But when I log in and start playing it, I'm a little bit like, oh, right, more of this.

Yes.

It's not like, what else is going to happen?

Where is Mario going to be next?

Yeah.

And it's in part to me that the biomes, though they are visually different,

are kind of samey.

Yeah.

I think let's get back to this and just go back a little bit to like just even what the game is about, first of all, right?

So like the game starts off.

Donkey Kong's looking for bananas.

He's digging for banana gems.

Bananium gems.

But then there's this

evil mining company, Voidco, led by the evil president Void Kong, which, by the way.

The fact that the game has there's a there's a president that's bothering everybody in the game kind of fun.

That's what I want.

Everything I want in a video game.

evil president, evil guy

bothering everybody.

I also love anytime a company tells us that a company is bad.

Yes, like a Nintendo company is being like, Can you imagine this evil company?

Yeah,

we're a good company because it's possible for a company to be bad.

We are the Donkey Kong in this story about another company.

Yeah, I also really like Void Kong, the president's character design.

He is kind of gremlin-y.

He's a bit

gremlin.

He he got a little bit wet didn't he

wait wet makes more wet makes more yeah and then food makes yucky yeah food makes yucky wet makes more

and sunlight burns right

man

being a gremlin fucking hard there's too many rules hazards all over the place yeah catching strays left and right yeah

Go outside.

You completed a night.

You didn't get wet.

You didn't eat too late.

You just want to see the sun come up.

And then what happens?

Fucking dog.

Right.

It is sunlight, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fucking brutal.

Dracula rules.

He does rule.

Yeah, you're right.

He's fucking awesome, actually.

I know what you mean.

I was just kidding.

So basically...

Void Kong is after, he wants to get to the planetary core, the very center of the earth.

And this Earth in the Donkey Kong world is like a hollow Earth type thing.

Not just Donkey Kong World, Mario World also.

Mario World also.

And then I think probably our world too, actually.

It's possible if the

latest Kong movie is to be believed.

Is Donkey Kong, is New Donk City our world?

Yes.

I think so.

What was that Kong movie that had the, there was like a Kong got

listening with the Beast Glove?

What the fuck was the subtitle?

Yeah, wait, wait, the Beast Glove's in Godzilla XCOM.

Godzilla XCOM, but it's like called like a new dawn or something.

Yes, yeah, it has some subtitle.

Yeah, that's what I meant by late Kong movie.

I realized I just said Kong movie, but I meant that one.

New Empire, New Empire, Frozen Empire, New Empire.

I realized what it said was confusing because we're talking about Donkey Kong.

It's still, hey, aren't we blessed to have some great Kongs as people who've always been fascinated by apes?

You all, but Mankind has always been fascinated by apes.

But

you know the story, but I mean, maybe our listeners aren't as familiar with the, some of our listeners, maybe you have not heard the story that there was a lawsuit involving Donkey Kong.

Nintendo was sued by the rights holders of King Kong, and Nintendo was triumphant in that lawsuit by being able to show, you know, prove parody fair use.

The lawyer in that lawsuit, John Kirby, the namesake of Kirby.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so, and the reason Donkey Kong wears a tie is that he had to appear in court.

He had to go.

Yeah, he had to testify.

He was deposed.

They had to make

the little

box that you got to go sit in.

They had to make it really big for him.

They put his hand out.

They put a Bible out for him to swear on, and

he took one of his leg hands and did it.

Put his hand on it.

But he still did it because because he respects the Bible.

He's right the Bible.

Leg hands?

Yeah, because he's like, no, I know.

Apes have leg hands.

So apes have no feet.

I think of them as leg hands.

Because, yeah, because they can do so much with them.

Yeah.

That's fine.

They can do more

than regular feet.

I think they can't do is walk upright for long stretches.

That's true.

That fatigues them.

I just wanted to know what we were talking about.

You know what's interesting, actually?

What?

Mate, while apes do have leg hands,

I think

they might have hand feet, actually, too.

They can do stuff with the hands still, but they run with them also.

Yeah, maybe it's more hand feet than leg hands.

We'll figure out the right taxonomy for it.

Because I guess leg,

leg is the long part.

Yeah, I get it.

Yeah,

I'll concede the point.

I'm not trying to be right.

I'm just saying.

I'm lost, and I was trying.

I have no idea what you guys were talking talking about.

So VoidCong is after the Banandium root, which, by the way, I love how banana is just crammed into so many different words in this and it rocks.

Bonanza is a triumph of a portmanteau.

Yeah.

Bananergy, really good.

Bananergy is really fine.

Bananergy is good.

Oh, there is a name in here that I wrote down.

And

I have a lot of the characters' names in front of me here.

So let me just get, I'll just get through this part real quick.

Yeah.

The reason Void Kong wants the Banandium route is that it grants wishes

to whoever has it.

And I'm just like, yeah, great.

I don't care.

And then he wants it to become like, you know, it's like a rich businessman.

He wants to be a rich president.

Yeah.

The president wants to be rich.

Yep.

And so then Donkey Kong, he goes underground and he meets this odd rock, this like sort of like purple rock.

Yep.

who then is revealed to be Pauline.

I don't know if you've talked about that moment.

I mean, I alluded to it, but tried not to spoil it when I gave my first impressions when I did my solo episode.

But the, like,

I did not know that was coming.

Maybe that was in one of the trailers.

I didn't know it's coming yet.

I had no idea.

When that was the emergence of Pauline, the origin of Pauline, that she was encrusted with rocks,

I was shocked.

And honestly, I loved it.

It's really, really fun.

And let me just tell you about Pauline real quick.

Pauline.

Is the Pauline we know and love from New Donk City, but she's a little kid.

She's 12, I think, or something like that in this.

And she just wants to be a singer.

Yeah.

Which I think is really fun.

And then in New Donk City and Odyssey, we see she is a singer.

She achieved her dream.

So, in many ways, this is a prequel to

Odyssey.

Do you think she was like kind of a celebrity candidate?

Like, she parlayed her singing ability into

becoming the leader of municipality?

Or was it more that I have the platform now because I'm mayor, now I get to sing?

Kind of like how, you know, like John Ashcroft, when he was attorney general, like make everyone listen to his voice.

I think it's the secret third option where they're like, you're so good at singing, you have to be the mayor.

You're so good at it.

Like, we just love you so much.

You got to be the mayor.

Yeah, I wonder if she did.

Like, I would love to see.

It's like, hey, you got to vote for me.

I sing really good.

Do you remember John Ashcroft?

This is, this is, you know, the Bush era, George W.

Bush era

reference, but

he had an original composition, Let the Eagle Soar, and he like performed it at like a press conference or something like that, or some sort of event.

So he's just making everyone, and he had a fine voice, but it was just like, man, this is so self-indulgent.

You're singing your own song.

Yeah.

If I was in a position like that, I would never want anyone to have any ammunition or reason to call me corny.

It's like already too late.

It's like, it's, it's, it's tough.

Have you guys seen

the question of whether or not the fractones are in Donkey Kong Country.

Wow.

I have not seen that.

So, yeah, there's an image from Donkey Kong Country 3 featuring a rock in the background that's on the Donkey Kong Country, or the Donkey Kong Bonanza subreddit, and perhaps has crossed over to the games subreddit that shows what looks to be a fractone in the background of DK

Country 3.

That's really cool.

The fractones are these like crystalline sort of life forms that you encounter in an early sub layer.

Yeah,

they're ever-present throughout the entire thing.

They persist, but you first encounter them.

And you can use them, you can punch them, and then they break into a bunch of rocks and they reform.

It is, do you feel bad doing that?

I felt bad doing that.

It doesn't seem like it would feel good if

your entire physiology was punched out of existence and then reconstituted

be horrible.

It's inevitable with the way that I played the game, which we'll talk about later.

Yeah, okay.

So, yeah, basically,

Donkey Kong and Pauline, they team up.

They're on a quest from the Elder Kong.

They're all these animal elders in the game that then give you different powers, which we'll talk about.

But they're on a quest to get the Benandium root

before Void Kong can get it.

And so that Pauline could also then go home, return home, and become a singer.

A singer and a mayor.

A singer and then a mayor.

And then so on their way, they discover some more underground lairs and they fight a bunch of different voidco minions and the like.

And then they meet other animal tribe elders who give DK various transformations.

And so the way the transformations work is that DK has to pound his chest and Pauline has to learn a song.

Pauline, who wants to be a singer, actually not so confident and like kind of scared of singing, not is a little shy with the singing sometimes.

I thought the first time in encountering the record,

I was so tickled.

I was so tickled by that sequence of events.

It happens so much.

Not so much.

I think there's ultimately

there's five

five bonanza forms.

You have Kong Bonanza, which grants you super strength.

You have zebra bonanza, which is fat, makes you really fast, running around fast.

You have ostrich, which then is like flying and projectiles.

And then you have

elephant, which I think elephant is OP, actually,

because you can suck up the terrain, so you can easily mine resources like banana and gold and stuff, and chips, and the like.

But you could also then throw things, too, which is very useful.

And then snake bonanza, which gives you big jump.

But

I think snake bonanza, my least favorite other banana.

Yeah, it's interesting because

I get the case for the elephant,

but I mean, like, I kind of almost just feel like the,

you know, the straight-up Kong bonanza, the first one you get, is kind of like

it's just such a great

there's just such a great feeling, like from a power fantasy standpoint, being able to smash the shit out of things and then and just feel so potent.

And also just because it's just like a more powered version of your standard moveset, it just kind of seems to have the most utility.

And I also I think I have a take about this as well that is maybe going to make some people mad.

Go for it.

I think Donkey Kong,

Donkey Kong shouldn't turn into other animals.

I think he should have just been different Kongs, different big Kongs where like this one is fast, this one can fly for some reason, this one can suck, and then this one can do big jump.

I'm torn because these are abilities that are, you know, provided by elders that represent these different animals, right?

And so,

and it does have a mystical magical quality to it so you do have the leeway to change but yeah i think i i think i agree with you i think it's miss him when he's when he's nobody nobody wants to play snake country or snake bonanza no

snake bonanza

zebra country

it's just like it might partly be that the the design doesn't quite look donkey kong enough you know i wonder if it was more like they just is a little bit more simian

You know, the snake one was maybe a little bit less reptilian.

And maybe, maybe there's a way they could have spilled the difference a little bit.

But yeah, I get what you're saying.

There is a speedrunner who has already found out that there is a way to hold a rock and fly without ever getting the ostrich form.

Whoa.

And

this has significantly reduced the overall footprint of the hourage of the game for a speedrun.

Wow.

It is a two-frame

button press that will allow you to just fly with Donkey Kong with a rock in his hand.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Because like speedrunners are the best of us.

I mean, God,

I love them.

Yeah.

But so like with the

with these with these bonanza powers, you're also you have a skill tree that when you find bananas throughout the world.

And so that's like kind of the main thing that you're doing where in

Odyssey, it's moons, right?

But in this game, it's bananas.

But

I feel like in Odyssey, in Odyssey, Odyssey, they're like on the overworld too, and you can like find them in like secret little places and stuff.

Sure.

But in typical games like this, you're like earning them as

a reward for completing a challenge level or something like that.

This, they're just kind of like...

Sometimes they're just in the dirt.

Or they're up really high and you have to figure out how to get to like a different place.

Or there are these challenge levels that are scattered throughout the various maps that then you can get like three at a time for doing them.

And then then you have different skills

per each bonanza.

And then also, like, DK gets skills too, that then you can upgrade along the way.

Yeah, I like the skill tree.

I mean, I've got so much skill tree fatigue, but I think it's like it's simplified and straightforward enough.

And

it's my big, my big issue with skill trees is a lot of times it feels like you're getting like these incremental sort of advances that don't really feel like they're doing much to your character.

You know what I mean?

But here, here it feels like they they they're pretty tangible i have a take on this game yeah

i don't think everything needs to be open world

you know the areas well i think well i agree with you 100

the areas themselves because they're so destructible

have to have

They have to sort of you they I guess they can't be linear is what I'm thinking because they have to be

Like you have to be able to just go anywhere in this whole thing yeah it's more of a playground more of a play space and each place is so contained you can only go

like you can't go from the 800 layer to the 700 layer so easily you have to like actually uh go to a fast travel

yeah um I do

I do kind of wish it was a 2D platform.

I kind of like, I like that more.

Like, that's like my favorite version of Donkey Kong is in 2D.

I didn't play 64 so i had no experience with him in a 3d space and i liked i loved i loved this game so i feel like i'm just like thinking for what i would like best is when we were doing when there's some uh 2d like donkey kong country style levels in here now some of my favorite stuff in the game i i agree i love those 2d levels i think they're super fun yeah

There's just no way they're going to make this.

I mean, like, like, it's just like, if they're going to have a flagship sort of like system seller sort of game, I think it kind of has to be a 3D game

at this point.

And I also do like them taking on the challenge of like, hey, let's do a 3D Donkey Kong platformer.

And let's, we've done the 2D thing over and over and over again.

We've done a bunch of different iterations of that.

Let's see what it's like.

I also feel like it's like the Mario Odyssey thing, right?

Of like you get a mostly 3D game, but you get those little sort of fun sublevels where you're getting to mess around in 2D a little bit.

And those feel like a nice little vacation.

So I don't know.

I honestly do not have any sort of like the like I was not even thinking of it as an issue with this game, with it being a 3D platform.

I think that I think it's part of the joy of it.

I, I, but, like, to Heather's point, like, it is,

I think we wouldn't mind so much if there was maybe six less areas.

Like, there's

so much.

There's, it sounds like such a crazy thing to complain about.

No, there's an excessive biomes.

It's also like the first time I played it, I played it for eight hours straight without a break.

Like, it's not like I didn't like the game.

Yeah.

But there was like, I, I expect there to be some sort of transformative element.

And I know that you get new powers also.

Yes.

But there's,

it felt like I was waiting to turn a corner a lot

in the game.

And instead, I was just given more of what I was enjoying, which eventually was like too much chocolate cake.

There was, I mean, let's talk about some of these binomials real quick, actually.

Cause like there, I'll just read off the layers.

There's one that I won't say.

Okay.

There's one that I won't say because I don't want to spoil it.

Right.

Because when I, because here's the thing: I, while

while I was sort of thinking toward the end of this game, when is this going to be over?

I'm kind of done with this at this point.

Not that I'm not having fun anymore, but I'm just kind of like

I'm just ready for it to be done.

When I got into the end game, I was like, this is a staggering achievement.

This is unbelievable.

This game is so fucking good.

And the ending is so much fun and so worth getting to, I think.

Yeah, I have not yet finished the game, but I have had the end, uh, the end game spoiled for me, unfortunately.

And

it, uh, hey, look, I'm looking forward to it.

I will say, I also had it spoiled for me, and yet my mouth hung open.

I was so, I was like, I was like, so, it's great.

The ending of it is so fucking good, and like, the, it's just like a gauntlet.

It's just, it's, it's fucking great.

It rules.

Um, you have like the lagoon layer, the hilltop layer, the canyon layer, the divide, which is like a sort of fork in the road type place.

Uh, then you have the freezer, the forest, the junction, the resort, the tempest, the landfill, which I was kind of like, Heather likes this one.

This one's the trash area.

I love trash.

You have the racing layer, which I think is my least favorite of the entire one.

Sure.

Because like the only thing there to do is a race, and it doesn't play like the rest of the game at all.

And it's actually genuinely frustrating to me.

There is a similar moment in Death's Training 2.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

The Radiance Layer, the Groove Layer, which was one of my favorites.

I loved the Groove Layer.

The Groove Layer is fucking good.

It's really, really good.

The Feast Layer, which reminded me of you, Nick, because it's a bunch of burgers everywhere.

Bunch of big burgers, a bunch of big juicy burgers.

Yeah, I mean, look, I haven't gotten to the feast layer yet, but I imagine I'll move in and live there.

Where's Nick?

Oh, he lives in a big burger now.

He lives in the game.

Lives in the feast layer.

He's never been happier.

He taped his Switch too to his face.

He just has a conveyor belt like Homer Simpson feeding him burgers all day.

Oh, man.

Pretty good, actually.

Yeah.

Then you have the forbidden layer.

Then you have the planet core.

That's 16 levels.

That's a lot of stuff.

It's just a lot.

It's a lot of stuff.

And

I've heard the same criticism from other people who have finished the game.

So I don't think, I mean, like, I think you can say it's great, but it's maybe too much of a good thing and could be some addition by subtraction.

Whereas then, like, and I'll say too, I was not looking for a challenge with this game.

I was actually delighted that it was very easy

and I think dangerously close to being for babies.

Because

up until the end game, there was like it almost posed no challenge for me at all.

Yeah.

I had enough resources for like buying the extra

like hair dyes and

different little outfits.

By the way, yeah, you can get outfits in this game, and some of them are real cute, some of them are really, really fun.

Yeah, and they give you some of them have different boons, I guess, where it's you know, like this one charges your banana gy faster or whatever.

This one makes you impervious to the poison goo or whatever.

And the outfits are not just for DK, they're also for Pauline, so you can make the two of you look stupid.

Yeah, you can look really stupid, uh, break the immersion.

I love getting the Pauline outfits, the Apolline outfits are great, and if you have the amiibo, let's just say you get a familiar-looking outfit that you might.

Wow.

My amiibos are currently in storage.

And boy, oh boy, am I frustrated not being able to tap my amiibos

to my switch 2 right now.

If you bring your switch 2 next time, I'll bring my amiibo and you can get it right.

That was like yes and no.

You can do that kind of stuff.

There's like,

oh,

I know we talked about smashing stuff, but you can also make stuff within the game.

So, like, there's some, there was like some, the game wants you to figure out how to get to certain things and how to achieve certain goals.

So, there was one early on where I could see a banana in the distance, but I didn't really quite know how to get over there.

And I knew there was probably like something else I could do later.

Right.

But there was a lot of mud by me.

And if you throw mud at mud, it kind of sticks to it.

So I just like made a bridge and like walked over there.

Yeah.

And was kind of like, I don't think this was like correct yeah sure but you can do it but but that's kind of like what's cool about this this part of what's cool about this game is you've got you've got problems not puzzles right like there is a correct way to solve it but you can also sort of you know use the engine to sort of to to do an end around and that's satisfying in its own way and the game is very um and this is even in the wikipedia it's very um pleased with sequence sequence breaking it's not like you never punished for it it's always a little bit like good for you yeah good job yeah it's like it's like when you get you you figure out well how to roll the ball in a zelda shrine that's completely not what was intended but you end up getting you know a dude completing it anyway and uh

back to the the difficulty it's not it's not a challenging game by any means but there was something towards the end where i needed

without spoiling it too much you have to pay a toll a couple of times and the toll gets higher and higher and i was running out of gold and i was basically gated out of getting to like the final area because i had to go back and then like mine for gold.

Uh, which by the way, if you have to do it, the big trophy in the racing area is the way to go and suck it up with the banana because it was with the with the elephant trunk.

Because it's just a

it took a long time.

It was like, because you needed, I needed like 10,000 gold pieces to get to this final area.

And I was like, I don't, nobody's walking around with this kind of change.

I'm buying pink hair dye for Donkey Kong.

Those are, of course, you actually, no, you don't use the money for that.

You use that for fossils

and like.

But there are these like trees that then sprout bananas that you can give gold to and i've been doing those a lot too so you're yeah i'm spending gold left and right basically i'm buying i'm making little homes in the little areas to like rest which is really funny we talked about this in a previous episode yeah but the little shelters you can make very satisfying really gives you a real clear you know a

straight ahead boost in terms of getting some extra um uh you know notches on your health bar uh but then also it's just like these there's these moments of connection between uh you know dk and Pauline, which are really nice.

I think the amount of nostalgia in this game is like not overstuffed.

No, I think that the game itself is overstuffed, but the philosophy with

which they handled nostalgia is perfect.

It is a light but satisfying touch.

Yes.

I really enjoyed that part.

And I say that because in the houses, you can listen to music, and some of that music are old tunes.

I mean, come on.

That's pretty good.

I only had the DK rap going the whole time.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah,

I found other discs and was like, I'm only listening to the DK rap.

This game,

unlike, say, a Mario Sunshine or a Mario 64.

How dare you?

I didn't even say it yet.

I don't even know what you're saying, but to put those two games next to each other to make a point.

In those games, you need to get certain things to progress.

Okay, yes.

Where like you, what is it in, you need like, what is it?

Shine.

In shine.

Yeah, to unlock like, oh, the next level or like the boss level or something.

This is a really standard.

I mean, the rare, you know, platformers, Banjo-Kazooie,

this is like a very standard sort of platformer convention.

In this one,

you don't need to do that.

Nope.

You just, you could plow forward.

and not get bananas.

Like you could just like straight up not get them.

Your skills would be horrible.

Yeah.

You would have only base skills, but you don't need the bananas, don't give you any value besides

increasing the levels of your various skills.

And I actually do have a complaint about the well, there's the intangible benefit of getting to hear.

Oh, banana.

Well, yeah, that's priceless.

You'd be missing out on one of the great features, one of the more iconic features of any game to come out in the last decade.

Yeah.

Good drop.

I'm saying that you don't need to get bananas to tell you how many bananas I got,

which was near 500

in my playthrough.

Oh, bananas.

Yes.

There are a thousand in the game.

Yep.

Will I go and do this?

I don't think so.

Yeah.

I know that there's post-game stuff that I'm interested in checking out, but

I never went.

and got all of the moons in Odyssey.

I never

did all the cat shines or whatever they're called in the in 3D world.

I don't play these like that.

What if, what if, you paid me a million dollars?

Sure, I'll do it.

No, what if this game is, okay, what if this game is

not for us?

And what I mean by that is, imagine a kid getting a Switch 2 and Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Yeah.

And there's not a lot of other games that are coming out for Switch 2 proper.

And they have this.

big, big, big, big game that they can keep going into and keep digging into

and that's the game that's gonna tide them over for the next major Nintendo release yes not for us not as in not our taste right not for us that they designed it so that yeah like a you know a kid could get this one $70 game and have it for a couple of years probably

especially with the increased price of games the increased price of the switch 2 maybe it's like better that we made this game big and too too thick than that we we appealed to gamers in their twenties, thirties, and 40s.

Yeah, well, yeah, when you're a kid, you have nothing but time.

It's like, yeah,

the more is more, right?

It's just like,

it's like podcast listeners.

They're like, give me the longest episode you got, you know?

You got nothing but time.

And so

I feel like the,

you freaks know what I mean.

You like them long.

Yeah, yeah, you like them long.

Anyway, the

you're an adult.

It's just like, I welcome a four to six hour game.

A sub-10-hour game.

I was like, this is great.

This is perfect.

I can play this and I can play something else.

When these games start to really dominate

your time, it's just like, I don't know.

And I'm someone who doesn't have kids.

Like, if you did, it's just like, and it's not a kid, like, you're not playing with them.

You want some solo gamer time.

That might be, this might take you a couple of months to get there.

If you have kids, you probably have to put the kid in time out, face the corner until I'm done playing my game.

It's ridiculous.

But yeah, I mean, just like.

the kid died there.

And just as an adult with a job.

Yes.

Like, that's like, and I don't mean this job.

Like, as an adult with a job, it's like, you just have, you don't have as much time for gaming.

And it is like a little bit frustrating when something is so makes such an unreasonable demand on your time.

All that said, I don't really have a complaint.

I get that, but like, I love this game.

I think it's so fucking awesome.

I think it's such a masterpiece.

Yeah.

I, I, I, I hate to have,

I feel like maybe the most complaints

about it that I like,

at least here on the show, because like I didn't

not enjoy any second of me playing the game at all.

I loved it.

I thought it was so much fun.

And even last night when I was cramming to like to because I knew I was close.

Right.

And I just was like, I got to just like see this to the end, like at least to the credits.

So I can be here today and say that I that I at least rolled credits on it and I went to bed past my bedtime last night because I was because I knew what today was gonna be like for me I was like I have time to I'm just gonna knock this out now and you know I went to bed at 12 15 wow, that's late for me,

I'm usually in bed by 10 o'clock and but I was still I was having so much fun and here's the thing I felt kind of felt like I was being bad too.

So then I was like, this is kind of, I'm actually having a little more fun than I thought.

but i was like i couldn't put it down because the last the last section of the game is so fucking fun yeah and like all of it even the bloat in the middle and you know the before that was worth getting to the end it's because it's just so satisfying and just uh becomes uh i don't know just becomes a a really really fun game i do

I don't want to be somebody that overrates Astrobot.

Right?

Because like we talk about Astrobot and we talk about how that

game does nostalgia in a very specific way and does 3D platforming in a very specific way, too.

And I kind of think

it's going to take a lot to take Astrobot down.

And I don't know if this, I don't think this is it.

Astrobot was a masterpiece and it really

like how, how did that happen?

I don't know.

And it's, it's, I, it's going to take a lot.

And I think this game does a lot of things great that Astrobot doesn't do.

I think this game does

just,

it's a well-executed 3D platform.

I just think that right now, Astrobot's the king of this type of game, and

everybody else is on notice.

They gotta, they gotta fucking figure it out if they want to do something bigger and better than that.

You've actually finished the game, so I'll let you know make that claim.

I would not, I put it within the realm of possibility that when I roll credits on this sumbitch, I will like it more than Astrobot.

I do think it's super fun.

A lot of that is my affinity for just you know DK.

Yeah, just Donkey Kong himself, but also just like the

Astrobot,

there's such different vibes, right?

Like Astrobot is like kind of like this

cool, sort of breezy sort of feel.

And here, this is just such like, it's such chaos.

It's such, it's such demolition.

And I just, I'm just really finding myself responding to that more.

And you're both games are incredible.

You're a banana a day guy, too.

So you have a lot of

DK with the big man.

Anybody?

Oh, I'll say too,

I rolled credits at 35 hours.

That's all.

That's a big game.

It's a big game.

That's tricky.

It's a big game for a big boy.

But,

I mean, it's just,

I think the thing about this game, because right now, the Switch 2, the Switch 2 just came out a couple months ago.

It's got your entire Switch library.

And then the main games for it right now are Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bonanza are the two big ones, right?

And if Bonanza, if Mario Kart World was not a reason for you to get a Switch 2,

I think Bonanza is it.

Like Bonanza is fucking stellar.

I still stand by what I said for my first impressions, which is I think if you're going to get a Switch 2 anyway at some point, if you're like, I'm thinking to get a Switch 2,

and one's available.

My understanding is that stock is fairly

readily available.

I shouldn't say readily,

but that you're more likely to see a Switch 2 at like a target than you might expect.

They're not as supply constrained.

I think if you were like, I'm going to buy a Switch 2 at some point, this game is good enough to justify that purchase.

But I'm not sure if I would be like, I wasn't sure if I was going to buy a Switch 2.

I wasn't sold on it.

I don't know if I'd say you buy it just for Bonanza.

Unless you really, really like 3D platformers, in which case, you're probably buying a Nintendo first-party piece of hardware anyway.

But it is a fucking awesome game.

Yeah.

We'll see what happens when Kirby Air Riders comes out and then all these Switch 2s start flying off the shelves.

Any other thoughts, Matt?

I mean, I just loved it.

I'm excited to put it to bed for now.

Yeah.

I'm going to get to the post-game at some point.

But it was nice to spend a lot of time with it.

And

look, Donkey Kong,

for me, I think

at least top three Nintendo guys, right?

Like,

he's fucking awesome.

Top three Nintendo guys.

I mean, it's got to be Mario and Link.

Mario and Link.

Then who's three?

Yeah.

I think DK.

Could be Samus.

I guess DK has more iconography and more connection to, or I'm sorry, has just been, it's more of an icon because it's been with the company

since its very early days, Sigura Miyamoto's first game.

But I there's somebody because I was just thinking Donkey Kong to me is part of the Mario sort of, you know,

expanded universe.

So I'm like, is that a slot you want to throw in, like a Samus or a Kirby or something?

You know, there's somebody whose top three are an Inkling, Dr.

Olomar,

and

the hand guy from

Master Hand from Smash Brothers.

Yeah.

I mean, there's also people who would be like, Mario, Wario, Waluigi.

Yeah, it's true.

It's true.

Hey, this is an episode for me.

What do we, Matt, Matt, how?

How did was this an oversight?

It's Pikachu.

Is Pikachu Nintendo?

I think so.

Isn't he game freak?

Isn't he?

He's a Pokemon company,

but he's Nintendo.

People associate with Nintendo.

I think it's got to be Pikachu.

I'm about to say something so insane.

Yeah.

To me, Pokemon is its own thing.

And I know that it's only on the Nintendo platform.

I completely agree with you.

It's its own thing.

I completely agree with you.

And I don't have any

like any

you could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't be able to defend that it doesn't make sense even but but for some reason it's its own thing like

i don't know like i could see i could see a nintendo theme park without any pokemon representation and a completely separate pokemon theme park i see i could see a pokemon theme park as a separate pokemon theme park and hey that's that's it's a you just you'd be printing money if you did that but i don't think nintendo would have

no presence of pokemon in there and like you know i mean like it's just like it's so it's such a it's so tied to their brand.

And then it's Pikachu number one, it's Mario 2, and it's Waluigi 3.

But is

in Super Nintendo land,

is Pikachu there?

I'm sure there's a Pikachu walk around or something, right?

Because

there is a Ramby, there is DK, there is Mario.

I don't know if they're doing Pikachu because I know that the rumor is that they're going to take.

They want to turn the Simpsons area into a Pokemon.

Oh, okay.

That's what I heard.

All right, so maybe they're saving it.

They're saving it.

But yeah, great.

I withdraw what I said.

Donkey Kong Bonanzo on speedrun.com right now, the any percentage, number one ranking, Tyron 18 at one hour, nine minutes, 25 seconds.

That was clocked one day ago as of this record.

And for true ending,

Fabs has four hours, 35 minutes, 39 seconds.

I forgot.

I forgot to say the name earlier that I really liked of one of the bad guys.

What was it?

Abra Kajabia.

Yeah, that's a fucking great name.

I wrote it down.

I was like, this is the best name of the villain.

That's really good.

Abra Kajabia

is

a home run.

It's kind of like how you could butcher my last name, even.

Matt Abrakajabia.

Abrakajabia.

I

want to talk about

the way we played the game,

which is

what I liked about this game is that you can button mash.

Basically, you can create an internal combo that's constantly refillable that will allow you to just blindly dig, effectively camera-free, like unable to even see what you're doing.

And the game doesn't punish you for it.

And I found it such a satisfying form of locomotion of like, don't have to fucking look at anything, don't have to talk, constantly running into gems and fossils that I didn't even see, and continuing to barrel forward.

And it felt, even though it wasn't fast, it gave me, I complain all the time about games not being fast enough.

Yeah.

And I think what I'm complaining about is being punished when I want to do something.

Right.

And speed is usually the only barrier to the thing that I want to do.

In DK, he doesn't move particularly fast, but I never felt punished by his locomotion.

Yeah, because you were at least always doing something.

Yeah, you're constantly doing something.

Yeah.

And I really appreciated that about the the game and loved it.

I loved using the vacuum trunk from the elephant.

The elephant vacuum trunk is really fun.

Oh, we didn't mention turf surfing.

Turf surfing is awesome.

Turf surfing is really good.

And turf jumping.

Turf surfing's too slow.

I didn't like it.

You can traverse goofs, poison goo

and lavas in the sure, sure, but it's so slow.

I wanted him go faster.

You can make speed up a little bit.

You can speed it up, but it's still pretty slow.

I didn't have an issue with it.

I want Sonic Frontier's running speed when he's turf serving.

You want it to be Sonic speed?

Yeah.

Heather.

But also, I want Sonic speed in Blueprints.

Yeah, yeah.

I can't wait for you guys to see the Bananium Root.

It's pretty cool.

And

there's, look, there's a lot of bananas in the game.

Bananium root, really cool looking.

Really, really good stuff.

I love the game, and so did a lot of you.

Yeah, that's right.

It's time for the U play of our We Play Uplay.

It's your review crew, the Ryu crew.

Hello, Gruhr.

Here we go.

These are all from our Discord.

Discord.gg slash get played.

I got ranched.

You got ranch.

You scared me.

This first one's from Suico Man444.

Hi, Suico Man.

And they write, I put 55 hours into it and got all 1,000 bananas.

Wow.

Shit.

Loved every second of it and felt like a continuation of Super Mario Odyssey Formula.

That's correct.

Suico Man, that's alpha as hell.

Very alpha.

Congratulations.

Yeah, congratulations.

This next one's from JJ, JJ, JJ, JJ, and they write.

DKB, I'm glad you exist, but I'd still rather be playing Death Stranding 2.

Oh,

a take.

It's, hey, it's a take, and we'll allow it.

Look.

Yeah.

They're trying different things.

They're doing different things.

They're different stuff, but, you know, sometimes you're always like, I got to get back to the other one.

This next one:

Acho Sid.

Acho Sid.

Acho Sid.

Acho Sid?

We'll find out.

Sid?

Sid writes.

I just can't get that into it.

Feels repetitive, and the control scheme remains bizarre.

I don't think I'll finish it, but I'll never stop saying, oh, banana.

Oh, banana.

I agree.

The jump button is in a strange place.

You can change it, but I played too much of it to then change it.

Yeah.

There's not,

it's, it's really cool.

I thought it was really smart how they map the directional attacks to different buttons instead of having that be tied to an analog stick and one attack button, an analog stick tilt and one attack button.

You are left with those are the three most natural places to put those directional attacks and

putting the jump.

It's just where the jump button is, it's a little awkward, but it makes the most sense.

But also it's a little bit less of an aerial platformer, you know, than some others.

I don't know i it's an it's it's something you have to adapt to but it did not bother me every time i turn the game on the first thing i do is not jump when i try to jump yeah i'm always pounding straight into the ground

i go look for jump accidentally uh destroying a fractone um this next one's from olivia it's olivia and olivia writes kind of wish it was more of a traditional platformer but it's quite fun to smash stuff oh banana oh by the way a lot of people uh for their comment just wrote oh banana love that Really good.

This next one's from one of our mods, Ted Cord.

Shout out to the mods.

This was the perfect game to play with my five-year-old daughter.

She was so happy when Pauline appeared, and we gleefully said, oh, banana, every time we got a banana.

That's awesome.

We're working on post-game achievements together right now and still loving every second.

Five out of five,

great work, Nintendo.

Yeah, there is a two-player mode.

Did anyone mess around with that?

I did not, but I believe you just control Pauline on DK's back in the same way that you would be Cappy

in Odyssey.

Ah.

It's fun to do with a kid.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My wife wasn't interested.

This next one's from Bronto.

Hi, Bronto.

What's up, Bronto?

Emily Bronto.

Bronto writes, it's addictive, but it never ends.

You think you're done, and they want more and more bananas.

Please, I just want to see my family.

And finally,

UPN loaded rights.

So far, Donkey Kong Bonanza is the first game to give Claire Obscure

Expedition 33 a challenge for my game of the year.

Wow.

I've put in about 65 hours.

Holy shit.

And I had a blast playing it.

And for those worried about difficulty, the game offers some significantly more challenging missions in the post-game.

See, now that's what I'm talking about.

I can get in there and get a little challenge.

That's pretty good.

Oh, banana.

Oh, that's, to me, that's, oh, banana.

Oh, banana.

We started talking about minions at the beginning, and and now we're, we're still talking about, we're talking about bananas the whole episode.

Wow.

Yeah.

Life is a herald.

Peko.

That's this week's get played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore, underscore, sard.

What are you streaming these days, Ranch?

Silent Hill 2.

Whereabouts are you in Silent Hill 2 these days?

I actually just exited.

what was like the most bottom floor of the other world

and now I'm like back outside.

Okay.

I think I'm like at least three quarters done with the game.

Yeah.

Sounds like

you'll get there.

You're getting close.

Yep.

Yeah.

I feel like I haven't seen Pyramid Head very much at all.

Well,

he for sure sees you.

Oh, he's lurking.

Also, people should check out Ranch's podcast, The D-Files, wherever you listen to pods.

Our music is by Ben Prenti, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our artist by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com, Get Played MerchantKinship Goods.com, and check out Get Animate over on Patreon.

That's right.

This week we're watching Redline, the anime film Red Line, which is about racing.

And to that, I say vroom vroom.

Vroom vroom.

Let me tell you, if you haven't seen Red Line, treat yourself whether you're gonna listen to the Get Animate episode or not, but we do hope you join you join us over there at patreon.com/slash get played.

That's right.

And you know what?

Who got played?

Who?

Oh, banana.

Oh, banana.

Oh, banana.

That was a head gum podcast.