Tiers of The Kingdom: Video Game Physical Media Formats

This is a head gun podcast.

All right, Zenith, here's the thing: we got to get in on the console market.

I mean, like, everyone who's getting in there is making money hand over fist.

It's the late 1980s, we're about to go into the 1990s.

We got to have our own game console.

We can't just see the entire market to, you know, to SNK and to a nintendo and to atari and to sego we got to get in there no yeah i i'm here i'm hearing that uh you know sony is like is starting to want to get into this market too so we have i've heard microsoft is thinking about doing a console we gotta we gotta beat them to the punch we gotta beat them let's go zenith Yeah, let's go Zenith.

Yeah, let's go Zenith.

That's the spirit of it, Dougette.

Thank you very much.

I don't know if you guys have system names yet lined up.

I think just the Zenith Z is a cool, it's cool.

Like, hey, do you, you, you got a Z in your house?

That's pretty good.

That's great.

That's pretty good, right?

What people know about

it is that it's a very good thing.

What people know about Zenith is the Z.

Yeah, it's the strongest specification.

And

it's a big, bright Z on the cover of the system.

I love it.

You know, like you can use a sort of formatted branding across all of your game cartridges or your CDs or whatever.

You guys talked about formats yet?

Yeah, well, that's the big thing.

If we're brainstorming a console, we got to figure out what the hardware specifications are and notably what the the the game delivery format is going to be when you think of games yeah what is the thing that comes to mind it's software right that's what holds the games yeah but why are all of the formats hard as rocks

you make a lot of sense dugout i'm not quite sure on the etymology there you got me i would like to propose you know those um

snakes that you can't hold because they keep slipping in between your hands.

So, they're sort of those like, yeah, they're sort of like gel-filled tubes.

Yeah,

so imagine if you take out of the box, that's your game, and it you don't even have to put it into the system because the system's down below you, it just goes right in

because it's because it's a sort of a wet tube.

I'm just trying to figure out what I'm picturing here.

So, you know, your set-top box, which we know in most homes from our research, lives on the home entertainment system like in the living room.

Absolutely.

So someone is going to.

And it's the Zenith Z.

The Zenith Z.

So someone is standing in front of their Zenith TV hooked up to a Zenith C.

That's great brand synergy.

Now that is the American dream.

And they are holding

the slot is

like if

you took a cocaine and you cut off the top, so it's a round slot.

Yes.

And then you got your

snake and you drop it in.

Bam!

You're playing with Z.

Okay, that's one idea.

I could see it being maybe a little bit commanding.

Hey,

hold on.

I came in here with my top-tier ideas and you said yes all the way.

You said Zenith Z, branding is good.

And then you just shit on my idea.

No, I didn't.

I don't know why you had to zenith to me.

Do you have any idea how many jobs I've had?

Don't get that.

I've had so many jobs.

I like the Zenith Z.

I think that's a great pitch.

Fucking go for the cube.

You what we go with first idea, best idea.

It might be.

Go for the cube.

Duggette, hold on.

Just calm down.

If you're getting defensive, you're getting hostile.

Yeah.

You can't just yell, go for the tube at us

when you propose dropping a wet snake from a certain height.

Oh my god, Duguette, that's amazing.

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

I'm pregnant.

Do you need to step away for a moment?

Do you need some time to gather yourself?

I'm all over the place.

Okay.

Yeah.

That explains it.

Let me just pitch another idea.

We could have a insensitive.

Sorry, I just, I was trying to get around what was going on.

Okay.

We could have a

rectangular piece of hard plastic with a circuit board inside and some pin connectors that go into a top-loading slot.

But the consumer is confused because they're like, what is it?

Hardware or software?

Well, I think they're just used to that being how game systems work.

The game bend.

I need this to go.

I need this to go forward.

My baby needs money.

I need to get an education for the baby.

I hate to be taking away money for your baby, but I think I've solved it.

Yeah.

So it's a gun shape.

Okay.

And you jam the gun into the console and you pull the trigger and then the game starts.

Oh man, I'm going to lose my job.

That's so good.

It is really good.

That's awesome.

And is it like

the game is a bullet?

That's no, it's like a wet tube.

Now we're talking

Zenith Z.

Bang!

We blow dust out of our cartridges and debate CD-ROMs versus GD-ROMs as we make our tier list of game formats, mediums, what do you call these?

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, the finisher, the Xbox Kid, Mr.

Games, Matt Abodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we are talking about formats.

Formats, game, mediums, boy, has, you know, a topic that is sadly no longer really relevant as everything is switched to digital distribution.

Untrue.

All right, we'll talk about it.

Four mats.

That's like three more me's.

Let's go.

It is like three more you's.

Yeah.

I'm one.

Yeah, you're one of them.

I'm one, Matt.

It's also every Kingdom Hearts game.

Four Matt.

That's true.

That's for me.

God, is there one of them that's not for me?

No, I even like the card one.

The card one's great.

Nice.

Like to hear it.

We'll get into it.

Chain of memories, it's called.

We'll get into game formats, game mediums, game delivery devices.

I played it.

The back when software was a physical medium and the different types that existed.

and which ones are best, which ones reign supreme.

That's what we're going to decide today.

I got to just say something real quick.

What?

We were trying to figure out what to do for this week's episode.

Yeah.

I sort of pitched this as a like, I don't know, this.

And then immediately it was like, ah, this kind of seems a little crazy.

No.

That's maybe too much.

And then you both were like, no, no, no, no, that's the show.

Yeah, that's what we should do.

We're doing the right thing.

This is the right topic.

Yeah, that's the show.

Yeah.

And then when you guys said that, I couldn't disagree because that is the show.

That's right.

That is the show.

And that is today's show specifically.

Yeah.

Do you think that the listeners can tell that I'm wearing sunglasses?

You do sound cool.

Yeah, you do sound like you're wearing sunglasses.

I feel more confident.

Yeah, that's cool.

I feel more aggressive.

I wish I had my sunnies on me.

I have my regular reading glasses, and gosh darn it, I feel like a freaking dork, a nerd.

I may have to shift to regular glasses when we're looking at the screen for the formats.

Yeah.

Because these are awfully dark.

Yeah.

They look cool.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, I can definitely, I'm definitely getting sunglasses energy from you, but also I can see you're wearing sunglasses.

But I do feel like it's coming across in your performance.

I love it.

I love to hear it.

You're like flexing really hard.

I feel flexed.

You think people can tell I'm wearing a hat?

Because I feel like I don't normally wear a hat when we do the podcast.

You usually wear a hat.

I'm usually hatted.

You've

done it, but I'm just, it's not a, it's not an everyday thing.

Most podcasts that I'm having.

And I just feel like I got to point out it's a hat pack hat.

Yes, that's right.

our boy, our friends over at the Hollywood Handbook.

Our buddy Chef Kevin.

Yeah, Chef Kevin.

I do have to point out,

there was a period of time in the recent past where Rochelle was engineering on behalf of Kevin Hollywood Handbook.

That's true.

You were subbing in for

Chef Kevin.

And I'm not trying to start B or not.

I'm just pointing out what was said on the show.

They asked Rochelle which show was her favorite to work on.

She said our show and not theirs.

And she could have easily said theirs to make them feel better.

Right.

But she invoked us.

We weren't even in the room.

And you know what?

That feels nice.

I've been on that show.

It feels like you're on a sinking yacht.

You're on a sinking yacht and you're like one of the last ones.

My experience being on that show is feeling like one of the pieces of hanging meat that Rocky punches.

I go to this well a lot, but I'm Sideshow Bob and they're sentient rakes and they're standing in front of the.

Love those guys.

They're great.

Hey, and I love you guys.

And I have a little something for us with the whole show.

That's right.

Us guys?

I got my hands.

Wait, what?

Us guys?

Yeah, us guys.

Not the listeners.

The people in the studio.

Wow.

No, I don't give a fuck about the listeners.

Oh, shit.

We love our listeners.

We do.

I got my hands on some MTG Final Fantasy booster packs.

I have one for them.

for each of us.

I figured we could rip some packs here on the show.

Shit, wait, oh shit.

Give me the bottom one.

Give me the best one.

Okay, good.

You get the bottom one.

So that means Ranch gets this one.

Or Ranch, which one do you want?

Yes.

Left hand or right hand.

Right hand.

How do we know what's worth money?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm scared.

But also, these are my now very, very first.

I guess I have a commander deck at home, but this is the first pack of Magic the Gathering cards I've ever opened.

Oh, wow, really?

Yeah.

That's wild.

Yeah.

I should have brought some sleeves.

I apologize for that, but yeah, I trust us all to keep these up.

She sure does.

We're talking about tattoo sleeves.

That's right.

All right.

How should we do this?

Should we all open at once and just sort of show it, or should we go one at a time?

Let's go one at a time.

Okay.

All right, great.

Heather, I'm terrified to damage the cards within.

How do I do this without?

There's a little slit here.

You see that little slit?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Can be your starter.

All right.

So I pull this down.

See, again,

how do you do this without?

Does everyone's boosters have cloud on the front?

My booster has cloud.

And let me tell you something.

He's looking good.

Yeah, he looks good.

All right.

All right, all right, all right, all right, all right.

Here we go, here we go.

Okay, here we go.

Here we go, here we go.

Yes, here we go.

This video is going to get a million views.

You think so?

Okay.

We're opening cards on the internet.

Don't they normally turn it over and then you put this one behind?

That's something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you turn them over one at a time.

I've watched some unboxing.

So we've got Warrior's Sword.

Okay.

Show the camera.

Oh, I got to show the

camera.

Warrior's Sword.

Okay.

This means nothing to me.

I don't know who Warrior is.

Then we've got

Gigantoed.

Okay.

Fun.

That's pretty cool.

Pretty fun.

Okay, great.

Then we've got

White Mages Staff.

That's a final fantasy reference.

Cool.

I'll take that.

Wow.

Love the art on these too.

Very nice art.

We have 14 cards apiece.

Oh, Jesus.

That's a lot.

Oh, okay.

Stuck in Summoner's Sanctum.

Sorry, I went so far.

I didn't know.

Oh, you're doing great.

Let me, I'll do it this way.

That's a lot more cards than I thought.

Magic Pot.

Love Magic Pot.

I like that.

Very nice.

Very nice.

Yeah, buddy.

These are, these are, this is delicate.

Okay, we've got

Fight On, which shows.

I got Aerith and Tifa on the nope.

Who is this?

I don't know.

Aerith and somebody else.

You cool.

Oh, yeah, you're on the front of that art.

Then I've got

Realms Sketching.

Okay, great.

Cool.

Okay, up next, we've got Galoof's final act.

Wow.

Okay.

I don't know if any of these are worth anything.

Black waltz number three.

I know that guy.

Okay.

Then this one was already backwards within the deck.

Oh.

The Lord Master of Hell.

What the heck?

Wow.

And on the back of it is the Emperor of Palmacia.

Whoa.

Okay.

That seems cool.

Wait, is that a two-sided card?

Huh.

Interesting.

I've never seen that before.

I haven't either.

but it's got blue and red, so I assume that it's on purpose.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, I've got another two-sided card here called

Trance Kuja Fate Defied and Kuja Genome Sorcerer.

That's cool.

This is how out of touch I am with magic because, like, I stopped playing before the idea of a two-sided card exists.

Probably something that's been around for 20 years now.

We've got a light hologram in Ice Magic.

That's fucking silly.

Look at that.

I look at that.

I like that card.

Okay.

Then we've got

Charlianne, Nation of Scholars.

I don't know that reference.

I should.

Then just Treasure.

Hell yeah.

Lovely.

We've talked about Treasure in the past.

Treasure's good.

Treasure.

This is a long segment.

And Hero on the other side.

Wow.

And then the final card, which was at the back of the deck, is now Black Mage's Rod.

Wow.

You got the White Mage's staff and the Black Mage's Rod both in one.

Wow.

All right.

All right, right, man, go for it.

Here we go.

Here we go.

I hope you get a hologram Sephiroth and your hands are shaking.

I'm scared.

I'm nervous.

I'm nervous.

Okay, here we go.

I'm going to do exactly what Heather did.

I'm going to take the one on the bottom or one on the top and put it on the bottom.

So here we go.

My first card is Haste Magic.

Okay.

And it's got Cloud on it.

Cloud doing his thing there.

I got Town Greeter.

Sort of the hey, buddy card.

Here we go.

I got Gala Cat.

It's a little white cat with bat wings.

Nice.

That's good stuff right there.

Dreams of Laguna.

Okay.

Okay.

Here we go.

Okay.

That's the Orange County card right there.

Then we got Lunatic Pandora.

Oh, fuck.

That's sick.

That's pretty good.

Wow.

Wait, can I see that card?

Yeah, you can see it.

There you go.

Lunatic Pandora is pretty good.

Adventurers In.

That's a cozy looking card.

This is awesome.

That looks really, really nice.

Legendary artifact.

Wow.

Folks, we have a summon.

Oh, this is Primal Garuda.

Okay.

Primal Garuda.

I'll show it to the camera right there.

There we go.

I feel like card guys are going to be so

we're doing something wrong.

No, I'm not going to be able to do it.

Like the way we're handling these or the way we're unboxing.

So we're doing something wrong.

Yeah.

We're sorry.

We're not usual pack rippers.

We're not pack rippers.

We're just having fun.

This one is called Swallowed by Leviathan.

There's a ship inside of a monster's mouth.

Was that Lunatic Pandora Shiny or was it regular?

It is regular.

It is regular.

That is a three-cent card.

Very cool.

Okay, this is huge for me.

Poison the Waters.

Poison the Waters.

Check that out right there.

Pretty cool.

That's what the EPA is up to these days.

Their new executive order.

I gotta just dump a bunch of arsenic in the waterways.

I got another summon.

Okay.

Shiva.

Ooh, Shiva's a good summon.

Shiva's a great summon.

Zodiarch Umbral God.

All right.

Looks really cool.

It is a cool.

Pretty good.

And then let's see.

Oh, this one is a hollow.

Undercity Dire Rat.

Oh, okay.

Rat Boy.

Very cool.

Rat Boy right here.

Very nice.

Oops.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry to the card ripper.

Sorry.

Sorry, card guys.

Sorry, card guys.

Vector Imperial Capital.

Okay.

That looks cool.

This appears to be a double-sided card.

On one side, it says hero, and on the other side, it says wizard.

All right.

And the wizard kind of is like a little guy.

Yeah, it's a good little guy.

And then finally, I have cornered by black mages.

Wow, both cards in our last slots.

Black mage cards.

Black mage cards.

Black mage cards.

There we go.

All right.

I'm going to open the sunbitch and then Ranchi can take us home.

This is thrilling.

Okay, here we go.

I got upside down.

This bad boy on the bottom.

All right, first up.

Blazing Bomb.

Whoa.

Thanks.

Second up.

Blitzball Shot.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Looks like Waka's on there.

Very cool.

Love that.

Cool.

Summon Choco/slash Moog.

Very cool.

Wow.

We got a

Rook Turret.

Ooh.

Hilgigas.

Wow.

Prish's Wanderings.

Rufus Shinra.

Okay, okay.

We all know this guy.

Legendary creature, human noble.

Whenever Rufus Shinra attacks, if you don't control a creature named Darkstar, create Darkstar, a legendary 2-2 white and black dog creature token.

I'll control the world with fear.

It takes too much to do it like my old man.

Why are you saying that?

That's what's a fucking flavor turn.

Hey, I want you to be careful with that card.

Okay.

That's a $70 card.

Whoa.

Even just as

a non-shiny, as just a.

I mean,

if you look it up on eBay,

on its own, non-shiny, $70.

Wow.

How about that?

Okay.

I struck gold.

I fucking rigged it.

What the heck?

I knew which one had the legendary in it.

Wow.

How sad.

You needed the $70.

Hold on.

Wait, I'm wrong.

But on TCG Player, it's 8 cents.

Okay, great.

Summon Fenrir.

Cool.

And

unexpected request.

Matt, do you have any Q-tips?

I just asked it.

I guess I wouldn't expect you to ask that.

Wow, Cloud Midgar Mercenary.

I got a fucking cloud.

That's cool.

When cloud enters, search your library for an equipment card, reveal it, put it into your hand, and then shuffle.

As long as cloud is equipped, if an ability of cloud or an equipment attached to it triggers, that ability triggers an additional time.

May I see their card?

Yeah, look at the front of their card.

All right, that card on TCG Player is $24.

Okay,

that might be a real boy.

Very cool.

I'm going to hold on to it.

We have Search for the Frozen Esper.

This is really cool because this has just like the straight-up pixel art from Final Fantasy VI on it.

Awesome.

Wow.

It's a lot of fun.

And then uh-uh, Thunder Magic.

This is a shiny, it looks like.

Wow, nice.

And then finally,

am I at the back end?

Oh, hell yeah.

Swamp.

Oh, shit.

You got to have some land cards.

You got to have some land cards.

And it's nice that they have some land cards with the Final Fantasy flavor.

That's a lot of fun.

What is this?

This is just

an art card.

Guys, I'm scared I might get into this.

Yeah, I know.

It's pretty cool.

That was fun.

Richel, you got to open yours.

Under City Dire Rat?

Did he do that one?

I got that one too.

That one's great.

Yeah.

I love the rat.

You would.

I do sort of love rats.

I don't want one in my domicile.

I don't want one to sort of graze me at any point.

But, you know, when you go to New York City and, you know, that rat-infested town and you're in the subway and you see a rat from kind of far away, you're kind of like, that's kind of funny.

Fundamentally, a rat is a little guy, and you love little guys.

Yeah, they're just kind of my...

Pizza Rat, one of the great rats.

My rarest card is going for $1.19 on TCG.

Okay.

Here we go, Ranch.

What do you got?

Namazu Trader.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

A sabotender.

Okay.

He looks like a cactus.

Nice.

Like a cactoar.

Summon fat chocobo.

Hey!

Very cute.

That's good.

We love that fat fuck.

Yeah.

The card art universally, very appealing.

Oh, yeah.

bound moogle okay

moogle on its way to cloud perhaps

is he bound i wonder if he's bound to cloud strife or if he's or if he it's a it's a uh maybe he's flying in physical cloud yeah like a locketu sages now litz okay okay

looks cool i guess we should be saying like i i i should have been saying like creature or instant or you know land or whatever but whatever who gives a shit who fucking gives a shit cares we don't do this we're just having fun we're new get off our fucking backs with that one one.

Instant mad.

Instant mad.

Instant laughing mad.

Okay, instant laughing mad.

Zidaney.

Zidane.

Zidane.

Wow.

Holy shit.

Wait, can I want to look at that one?

Let's look up that one.

That one's a...

He's a good boy.

This is really cool card art.

Let me see.

This is our guy, Final Fantasy 9 protagonist with the tail.

Human mutant scout, legendary creature.

When Zidane enters, gain control of target creature until an opponent controls until end of turn.

Untap it, it gains lifelink and haste until end of turn.

Whenever an opponent gains control of a permanent from you, you create a treasure token.

I'm sorry, that's 20 cents.

He looks cool, though.

He looks cool.

Very cool, but only 20 cents.

I don't know, Zidane.

I got to get in there.

Final Fantasy 9?

I haven't played it.

When you were going through playing through the whole series, you stopped at 7, right?

Or did you play 8?

No, I didn't play 8.

I've played 1, 2, and 3, and

I played some of 4, but I didn't finish four each.

Okay, so you get the Super Nintendo ones to go through too as well.

Yeah,

I've done seven and then

16, my favorite.

Lionheart artifact.

Cool.

Okay.

Okay.

Nice.

Lionheart's a good sword.

Thief's knife.

Love that.

Nice.

Sorceress's schemes.

This one's like a

telegraph.

Sorceress's schemes.

Let's look at it.

Sorceress's schemes.

Gongaga Reactor Town.

Yay, okay, cool.

Summon G.F.

Cerberus.

Okay.

Summon Titan.

Oh, cool.

And then Luca Stadium.

Wow.

Very cool.

Okay.

What kind of like about Cerberus?

What's that?

Got three heads.

So the main thing?

Yeah.

Dog with three heads.

Pretty cool.

You know what I like about Edward's scissor hands?

What's that?

His scissor hands.

Honestly, it's what makes him notable.

That was a lot of fun.

I like his penis hands.

They're under the scissors.

That's the porno parody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which my brother got me for my 18th birthday.

Edward Scissor Hands, first movie to ever make me cry.

Oh.

How about that?

Yeah.

As Edward Penis Hands, something else happened.

You cry because you saw those cookies going away.

Yeah, I was like, no.

He didn't have a really good hair.

It was a disgusting film.

Yeah, he couldn't cut anybody's hair with those.

All right.

Hey, wish.

I like that.

Nick, thank you for the gift.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for watching.

It was super exciting.

Yeah, why not?

Extremely addictive.

I definitely want to start gambling and just opening packs all the time.

Yeah, that was fun.

I did some.

This is a thing I would, a deep pandemic thing I did when I was on Twitch.

I would open some basketball cards.

I actually have, still have some, some, a stash of like skybox like 1990 unopened packs.

Wow.

And I was ripping them open and I'd just be like, like, just pull it, like pulling a Michael Jordan from 1990, even if it was like, you know,

a PSA 3 quality is not going to be actually worth anything, but it's like very exciting in the moment when you do it.

I was doing Pokemon cards

during that time and I bought so many Pokemon cards

during the pandemic.

And they sit sweetly in a binder.

I was watching some slot machine streamers and YouTubers just because I was like, this is a whole world that exists.

I didn't even know about this.

This is the thing, like you watch it and it's like immediately so compelling and it just reminds you how fucking dumb you are.

But it's just like, now this is so like playing, sitting at slot machines, like, I know I am dumb, but I understand I am putting money in and sometimes getting money out.

It's a, you know, delayed reward sort of, I, I forget what, uh, you know, what of the classical conditioning, operant conditioning things it is, but, you know, like the, the, uh, the, the, the intermittent reward or whatever the, the term, the, the term is, the most addictive one.

Like, I get what it's going, it's going on for.

But when there's a a layer of abstraction of I'm watching someone else doing it, but you're still like, oh, I hope this guy wins.

You know, it's just like, oh, I'm fucking dumb as shit.

I got rocks in my skull.

I'm watching and enjoying random chants on somebody else's behalf.

And then like these streamers, it'll be like someone, and hey, whatever, it's fine.

Like, do whatever you want with your time and your money.

Like, it's totally fine.

I'm not even being judgmental here, but like, people will like give donations on the stream so someone can gamble that donation.

So you're like, here's some of my money for you to gamble on my behalf, and you keep the winnings, and I'm just going to enjoy my $20 being spent by you at, you know, like the Cheers slot machine at the MGM Grand or whatever the fuck.

This makes me think that, like,

Running Man is like completely possible and like plausible in our, in our life.

Yeah.

That's like 100%.

That's so wild.

I think the only thing that stops Running Man from happening is

the theater of

goodness.

We still, you know, we're all engaged in this theater of goodness.

When we finally debase ourselves and reveal the country as the ugly thing that it is, like truly, like without any of the sort of artifice,

Running Man will be on the next day on television.

Oh, for sure.

Like, if it was their show and it was just like

whoever can drink the most piss wins money, people would be watching the piss drinking show.

Yeah, yeah.

I would be watching the piss drinking show.

I'd be the fucking champion.

I would watch somebody be like, oh, no.

I would not feel like it

if they liked it.

If they liked it, I'm off.

I'm turning on top of it.

They're like, oh, God, no.

I like it.

Get out of here.

You're disqualified.

Yeah, get out of here.

ED is more common than you think and simpler to treat than ever.

Through HIMS, you can connect online with a licensed provider to access personalized treatment options discreetly on your terms.

Through HIMS, you can access personalized prescription treatment options for ED like hard mints and SexRX Plus climax control if prescribed.

HIMS offers access to ED treatment options ranging from hard mints to trusted generics that cost 95% less than the brand names if prescribed.

Now that's quite a savings.

You shouldn't have to go out of your way to feel like yourself.

HIMS brings expert care straight to you with 100% online access to personalized treatments that put your goals first.

This isn't a one-size-fits-all care that forgets you in the waiting room.

It's your health and goals put first with real medical providers making sure you get what you need to get results.

Think of HIMS as your digital front door that gets you back to your old self with simple 100% online access to trusted treatments for ED and more all in one place.

To get simple access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss and more, visit him.com get played.

That's him.com slash get played for your free online visit.

HIMS.com slash get played.

Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan.

Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality.

Prescription required.

See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information.

Guys, fall is here.

The beers are colder.

The football's back.

And the fits are getting layered.

But if you're still rocking old beat-up boxers under those flannels and jeans, we gotta talk.

It's time to upgrade to Me Undies.

These things are ridiculously soft.

Like, don't want to take them off soft, if you catch my drift.

They're made with micromodal fabric that feels like a cloud, but they still breathe when things heat up.

And just in time for spooky season, Me Undies limited edition Halloween line features festive prints including glow-in-the-dark underwear so you can bring the spooky vibes underneath it all because that's what you want your underwear to be scary Mi Undies has a cut for every butt with over 20 styles in 100 different colors and prints.

Me Undies signature super soft micro-modal fabric is breathable, stretchy, and unbelievably cozy, perfect for crisp mornings, chilly nights, and everything in between.

Whether you're layering up for a hike or lounging in flannel all day, Mi Undies moves with you and keeps you comfy.

Want even more seasonal comfort?

Try the Breathe Line, designed for moisture wicking and anti-odor tech to keep you fresh throughout fall workouts or just a long day of pumpkin picking.

I love it.

They use sustainably sourced materials and work with partners that care for their workers.

Not happy with your first pair of undies?

It's on me undies.

With more than 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five-star reviews, me undies are an essential summer must-have for every drawer.

I've talked about the undies, okay?

I've talked about me undies.

And folks,

the me stands stands for me, mine, me,

I, Matt.

I got the undies.

And I loves them.

Cause guess what?

The old undies, I gone back to them one time in a moment of weakness, right?

Laundry Day.

All my me undies are in the freaking

wash.

And I put on an old pair of undies and I'm just like, ow, ow, ah, I can't breathe.

Ah!

It hurts.

Oh no, it stinks.

But with the me undies on, those are not my problem anymore.

Right now, as a listener to my show, you can get cozy and spooky for less with deals up to 50% off at meundies.com slash get played and enter promo code get played.

That's meundies.com slash get played, promo code get played for up to 50% off.

Meundies, that's comfort made for all.

This is an absolutely true story.

One time I was in Japan and I had my cell phone with me, but I was

following somebody around in the city and having a good time.

And then they locked me on a roof of a skyscraper because they were a crazy person.

That's a true story.

And my cell phone didn't have wireless access.

So this next ad is specifically something that I could have used in the past.

Because if I'd had Wi-Fi, I could have called somebody.

But instead, I had no cell phone service.

trapped on a roof in Tokyo.

If you've ever been lost abroad or badly needed an internet connection with no Wi-Fi spot in sight, you'll understand what a difference a local SIM card can make.

An e-SIM provides an internet connection wherever you travel and saves you money on roaming fees.

That's where Saley comes in.

Saley is a new e-SIM service app brought to you by the creators of Nord VPN.

Here you can choose from several affordable eSIM plans in over 190 countries and eight regions.

With a Saley eSIM, you'll always have a connection when needed.

Download Saley once and you won't have to install a new e-SIM for each country.

You can avoid scammers selling fake SIM cards outside of train stations and airports.

No more wandering around looking for a public Wi-Fi spot.

With a Saley, you're always connected.

They provide 24-7 support, and you get a full refund if your device isn't eSIM compatible.

Download the Saley app in your app store.

Use code GETPLAID at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase or go to saley.com slash get played.

That's S-A-I-L-Y dot com slash get played.

I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

All right, we should talk about some video games.

It's time for the question that we always ask each episode: What are you playing?

Who's drinking piss?

That's Resident Evil Virtue.

That is not the question.

What are you playing?

I thought that was what you were doing.

We can't

compare that.

You can't audition to be the host of that show during this show.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to America's favorite dog show.

Who's drinking piss?

My name is Kenny from Rhode Island, and I'm drinking piss.

I drink Kenny.

You're going to drink so much piss.

Oh, fuck, I hate it.

Charlie, it says you're your teacher.

I teach piss studies.

You're going to love this show.

Big money, big money.

Oh, man.

So, anyway, well, yeah, what is it?

What are you playing?

That's right.

That is the correct question.

Resident Merchant, thank you so much for being here, gracing us with your presence.

You're welcome.

I love being here.

I love you guys.

We love having you.

Nick, what are you playing?

Wow, R.E.

Merchant, I will answer you.

And I rolled credits on a game I've talked about the past two weeks, The Drifter.

Oh, wow.

I am sadly very busy with work right now, so it took me two weeks to get through a nine-hour game, but I did get through it.

I went, I saw myself all the way to the ending because I found it incredibly compelling.

I loved it.

I think this is an all-timer among 2D point-and-click adventure games.

It's definitely trying to be a callback to those 90s, as I've said before, as I've said in the previous two weeks, but I'll just repeat myself: the 90s LucasArts and Sierra Online adventure games, graphic adventure games.

If this came out as it is in 1996 and was like an, you you know, like a, like a, uh, that, that first-gen, second-gen sort of PC CD-ROM game that had full voice acting, uh, it would be considered a classic.

And, and I, I, it's so great as this grimy, grim, dark aesthetic.

It is also, speaking of which, something of a period piece set in the 90s.

It has dial-up internet, like limited, you know, cell phones that are clamshell, uh, Windows 95 UX when you use like a computer terminal, which I found very appealing.

Just, it's just the whole thing of like the pre-Matrix era when just like, like, oh yeah,

this was just a better world that we used to live in, we used to occupy.

But also, this is like a hellish version of that.

There's also just like this

pixel art aesthetic with sprites.

But as part of that, a big thing of...

that they just absolutely nailed is the bold pixel art font that is different colors corresponding to different characters, which is a very LucasArt sort of thing.

They did a great job fitting that in there.

And it both meshes with the aesthetic, but also feels like a callback to that era of adventure games.

I mentioned in my initial impressions that it begins in a vaguely sci-fi direction, and it's kind of ambiguous.

And maybe some of these things are hallucinations.

As it progresses, I will say without going into spoiler country, yeehaw, it is just full-on science fiction.

And specifically, it is a sci-fi thriller/slash conspiracy theory narrative that, again, just by being a slow burn, by trickling out of like, like, what's real, what's going on, is this, is this a delusional man's fantasy of like, no, this is straight up like time loops, time jumps, and

specifically exploring that in a way that is different than mostly what I've seen, where like

a time folding back in on itself, one person initiating a time loop affects everyone's perception.

So it's not just that one person has their own pocket universe they occupy, but everyone feels like something has shifted.

Oh, that person went back and did this, you know what I mean?

Which is just, I don't know, it's it's just kind of an interesting

philosophical thing to think about, how that, that would, you know, how that would affect the world.

The art direction, and I've already referred to it by Barney Cumming is top-notch.

Just absolutely gorgeous lighting within the pixel art framework and some incredible environments, including this Cold War-era underground facility that is so well realized, feels so lived in.

And then absolutely, I've referred to this again, but previously, but some absolutely gorgeous character animation, which includes some just brutal violence, just people being absolutely fucking ripped apart.

Some real, real nasty gore.

I also love that your player character is weak and afraid, kind of the inverse power fantasy than you normally get in games.

Your character is like this marginalized unhouse man who has no resources, nobody trusts him, not even people close to him.

He's also fragile, easily scared, easily killed.

And there's a safety net built into the premise that makes death a terrifying consequence, but one that you can persevere by.

You can respawn and improve and fail and win and that whole cycle.

But in the end game, that safety net is removed.

Again, being spoiler light here because of a story development.

And you think the game isn't going to allow your character to permadeath, but it also makes it feel genuinely tense that it's like possible.

And so you're just kind of on edge the whole final act.

And it's really, really compelling.

I also just found it story-wise profoundly moving by the ending.

It's thematically just talking about how you have to learn to live with the injustices imposed upon you,

sometimes by social circumstances, sometimes by random chance, and also own up to your own poor decisions whenever you make them in life, even if they're in reaction to something unfair that's happened to you.

Also, just a truly menacing villain and really, really scary monsters.

Like

it goes back to the Hillary's,

Hillary's.

Freudian slip there.

I was about to talk about history's worst monsters and threw Hillary in there.

History's worst monsters are utilitarians.

Wow.

And it's one of those sorts of ends justify the means sort of sort of guys at the head of it.

But yeah, I just thought it was so great.

Again, I think anyone who loves graphic adventure games is probably already playing this game because it's got so much buzz behind it.

But

I'm really glad I did.

The Drifter.

Yeah, one of my favorites of the year so far.

I love to hear this.

Yeah, me too.

Oh, it's so pleasant.

Matt, what are you playing?

I'm playing too many games.

Uh-oh.

I'm playing too many games, but I'm having a lot of fun.

You are Mr.

Games, after all.

I'm Mr.

Games.

Mr.

Games.

It's me Mr.

Games.

I'm playing too many games.

I'm playing too many games.

Ninja Guide and Rage Bound is fucking awesome.

And I think you guys would both really like it.

I play it.

I got yourself.

So fun.

The soundtrack kicks so much fucking ass.

Damn it.

It rules.

It's just, and it's hard.

It's just like a challenging

video game.

It's great.

Why would you sell me on games when you're already playing too many games?

I need you to suffer with me.

I can't do it.

Because, like,

everyone else is also

playing these for the most part, too.

I'm still playing Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Oh, banana.

Oh, banana.

Banana.

And I'm enjoying that.

That's a lot of fun.

But the real thing that I'm back in on right now

is Death Stranding 2.

Let's.

It's been a couple weeks

since I've given an update.

I'm not that much further than my previous update.

I'm in chapter 9.

I'm at the start of chapter 9.

And I won't spoil anything because things are now very spoilable at this point.

Okay.

I will say there was something

that happened in it that I just went, yeah, sure.

Great.

It's just like, okay, yeah, I guess.

And just sort of had to then like take it in stride.

And it's like, it's

nonsense.

It's like complete nonsense, but in the best Kojima way.

And I'm just really, really enjoying it.

And gosh, you know, I feel like we've talked about how good the combat is and stuff.

It It is, it is not,

it's not even like easy combat.

Like, I feel like

if it were easier, some of the encounters would be quicker.

I feel like some of these combat encounters can take several minutes.

They're just in there for a while.

Like, there's these missions where then you're like, you're tasked with going and taking things out of a base, basically.

And then there are, you know, brigands or whatever there are

in the base.

And they're like, sneak in.

and,

you know, go do this like undetected.

But

I'm not engaging in stealth at all.

I'm just going in and just blasting, just going crazy in there.

Just like walking up, getting noticed immediately and just like shooting whoever I can in the face

first try.

And it's still like, I mean, it would probably be.

It would probably, it honestly might be faster if I was stealthy.

It would be just a little bit faster, maybe.

Yeah,

you and I, and I think,

Heather as well,

me and Heather have vastly different approaches to how we play these sorts of games.

I always try to stealth through.

I got executed.

I'm on, you know, hard, hard mode.

I got executed by one of my encounters this week in Stranding, and I was like, let's go.

Yeah,

it's great.

I'm really enjoying it.

I will, like, there's like times to do the stealth.

I'm very stealthy around the BTs.

Yeah.

Because I'm just not even trying to.

I'm not even trying to poke the bear.

I'm not trying to.

I'm going to cause a void out.

You don't want to do that.

No.

Yeah.

no, no way.

I'm not doing that at all.

But I've been really

enjoying my playthrough of it so far.

And I, I, it's this real delicate sort of like push and pull of the game though, because part of me wants to just like hunker down and just get to the end of the game and experience the story and just kind of like like finish it but I'm having so much fun doing other things.

Yep.

Just like

the game almost doesn't like need like the other things in the game that are not the story stuff is so good that like you almost don't even need the story.

Yeah, yeah.

Like it's like it's just fun to build roads and like deliver uh packages and yep, uh, things like that.

But like you almost want like an endless mode.

You know, somebody's just like, hey, just fuck around.

There is an endless mode after you beat the game.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like in the first one, kind of like you sort of go back to whatever before the last delivery is or something.

Before the president or whatever.

What a clever conceit.

Yeah.

That they just, they're just like, hey, we're just going to give you a time jump to just mop up all your

earlier quests.

And I mean, it's Death Stranding 1 has been out long enough.

We can just talk openly about that, how they handle that.

But just like, the, of course, what happens in the end game would make it not make any sense if you were going to, you know what I mean?

So they're just like, yeah, go back to doing what you were doing.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's just like, yeah, we'll just have a little time jump here.

Why not?

And so I'm just excited to keep playing it.

And

I just, I

just love it.

I love it.

And the performances in this game, too, we'll eventually just like dig deep on this at some point but there's just like some truly stellar acting in the video game it's just like unbelievable well these are stellar actors yeah honestly like

just to shout out real quick yeah

Troy Baker's performance as Higgs is like one of the greatest like video game performances I've ever seen.

It's unbelievable.

It's so fucking good.

And like he's like the go-to guy for this type of thing.

So like, of course, it's great.

But what he's doing in this game is so nuts.

And it's just such a crazy, great performance.

I really, really love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

My buddy Van Robyshow pointed out, just was talking about how Elf Fanning has kind of like shifted in the sci-fi direction with some of the recent choices of like, but like, you know, I think is in upcoming Hunger Games.

And there's also like

Predator Badlands is like a half like, you know, like cyborg.

But then obviously in Death Stranding 2 on the beach as well.

Yes.

I'm very excited about

her career.

She's like, she's making cool choices.

She's making cool choices.

Yeah.

I can't wait to see Predator Bad.

She's the star of my wife's movie.

That's right.

Man.

Good shit.

So I'm on Death Stranding 2, baby.

I'd love to hear it.

Yeah.

What about you, Heather?

Well, I also got to play about one total hour of Death Stranding 2 this week.

So I can't speak

with great emphasis on how much of Death Stranding 2 I've been able to play.

I'm here to talk about the Nintendo Alarmo.

Whoa.

So

last week, I started to get nervous that the Alarmo was going to disappear and that a piece of Nintendo hardware was going to sink into the abyss and become the sole

purview of collectors.

And I was like, I can't let this happen.

I'm the one with the hole.

I got to get an Alarmo.

Especially since I did see that it was sold out of the Nintendo store in Tokyo.

And I was like,

oh, oh, man, maybe they're not restocking it.

Maybe they've already stopped making the Alarmo.

So I got an Alarmo.

What is the Nintendo Alarmo?

Well, for those of you listeners who weren't following the news maybe nine months ago, Nintendo announced

an alarm clock,

which

features...

soundscapes from different Nintendo IP.

It comes packed in with, I think, six different soundscapes.

Each of these soundscapes is subdivided into different themes.

So, like, if I'm picking The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, which was the first one I picked, of course, because I don't want to wake up to the sound of coins.

I already do in my head.

You have the option of like waking up to,

like, the first setting is waking up to adventure.

One of them is like waking up to a battle between you and one of the, you know, spider-looking fucking things.

You can set the intensity of your wake-up, like an aggressive wake-up, a moderate wake-up, or a slow wake-up.

The way that the alarm clock works is that without cameras, it can sense motion.

And the theory is that Nintendo had this patented technology and needed some way of executing on this technology.

And so they released this piece of hardware, the alarm clock.

It also has

go-to-sleep sounds.

And first time I tried it, I said the Legend of Zelda go-to-sleep sound, and it was spooky sound.

And I was like, who wants to go to sleep to this?

No, I can't.

I want to go to the sound.

You know, like the

and like, but once you get past the initial

spooky sound, then it's just the really nice piano, like the tinklings of piano and owls and a sound of a campfire.

and it is very relaxing.

And I was like, oh, okay.

I'm glad I chose to do this again the next night because I would have given up on sleepy sounds.

Right.

I don't know what a Mario sleepy sound would be.

Like, I can't, can't, I would imagine it's going under the pipe.

Maybe him,

maybe him falling asleep in his idol animation in Super Mario 64?

It could be, except each Mario game has its own soundscape.

Oh, okay.

So the

original Super Mario Bros.

is one soundscape.

So what could the sleepy sounds be on the original Super Mario Brothers?

On Odyssey, I'm sure it is like a water level or something, you know, like something sleepy.

The interesting thing about the alarm is that the only way to deactivate the alarm, there's no, you can't do anything to the fucking clock.

Maybe you could pound on that button on that, there's like one big button on the top of the clock.

Yeah.

That's also a light, which is pleasant.

And I know that you can set it so that pressing the button is the only way to disengage the alarm.

But the default setting for the alarm clock is that you have to move in order to turn off the alarm.

Okay.

So you can roll over and it'll go into snooze mode.

Like you roll over and it automatically senses that you've rolled over and then it'll snooze for five to ten minutes, depending on your pre-established setting.

But the only way to get the alarm clock to go off is to get out of bed.

Wow.

And if you set it to like a moderate intensity, the sound of the thing that wakes you up becomes more and more intense, like you're in a battle the longer you stay in bed.

Interesting.

So, you can like when I first woke up, it was just like the like a chiming sound, like a nice like morning soundscape.

But then

today, I got out of bed before the alarm clock went off and I assumed, oh, it knows I'm out of bed.

So, I went into the kitchen, made myself coffee, and I came back, and I just heard Link in a battle with like the battle music going, and the alarm clock numbers were like shaking up and down.

And I was like, oh, it doesn't know I'm awake.

Wow.

And I like, I stood next to the bed and it registered that I was out of bed and then I left.

It is a delightful little piece of hardware.

I am certain that it is going to be a failure.

Right.

Because who is, who, who wants this?

Yeah, I mean, it's like so many people are just using their phones or their watches as alarms now.

I don't keep my phone in my bedroom, but I do use my watch as an alarm, and that works for me.

It works because it taps, which is,

yeah, yeah.

But I also had a separate alarm clock for a time, and I feel like if anyone's going to be like, I'm going, if anyone's going to be like, I'm not going to, I'm pointedly not going to use my smartphone as an alarm.

I want that to be somewhere else.

I don't want to charge that in the bedroom.

I don't want to be reading that, reading my phone

at night or first thing in the morning.

Then I think that would also be someone who would pick like a low-tech alarm clock, right?

Like, why would they pick the alarmo, this sort of gimmicky sort of piece of hardware?

An alarm clock that I have to like create an internet connection

in order to download new alarm sounds.

I don't know.

It's fascinating.

I can see it.

I can see it on my shelf in the future and people being like, what is that?

Yeah.

So you're saying we should buy this?

I look.

The other thing is, I don't know how

I

just,

if both people don't get out of bed, does it, does it turn off?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

What about your partner?

Right.

Like, Mary gets up before me, so it's not, it's not an issue.

Yeah.

But, like, if, if she didn't, what, what would that be all about?

Or if she want, you know, like, how does it, how does it know?

Maybe on those days you set it to the button push.

Could be, yeah.

But, um, it's, yeah, it's a charming, it looks like it's from the world of Super Mario Odyssey.

It's got a great design.

I don't know if you're looking at it right now.

I am, yeah.

Because, yeah.

It's in your Amazon cart.

It's in my Nintendo Store cart.

I don't know if I'm going to pull a trigger on this, but I was like just looking at it just to see what it looks like.

And it is a cute.

It is cool.

It's a neat-looking design.

It's about that big.

It's not huge.

Yeah.

You know, it's a cute little guy.

I just like,

yeah.

I can't think of something that would

annoy my wife more

than this, I think.

Do you have a theory on why they did this?

Is this one of those things where just Nintendo just has a weird idea?

Their internal RD

is just like, ah, fuck it.

I had this idea for a thing.

And they're like, yeah, sure, why not?

I think that I think Nintendo's design philosophy is do no harm and it feels like a harmless thing.

Sure.

Right.

And I also wonder if they had this patent and it maybe was going to expire or something.

Like, I don't, I have no idea why they made the Alarmo.

It is a baffling Nintendo product.

So it's like the Nintendo equivalent of like warren beatty making a dick tracy special because he's going to lose the rights if he doesn't exactly exactly or maybe they were maybe they were like

it's going to take so much money to develop this concept if we don't have a way to make money back from it

then we can't put in the r d like we can't just drop that coin without some version of of of making bank from it so maybe they were just like what if it was an alarm clock i don't know because I mean it makes sense that they would like develop this they developed this if they were developing this technology for like a video game you could sort of like buy that a little bit right where they're sort of like oh yeah like in the way that like they somehow figured out 3d effects without 3d glasses they're like okay we this thing doesn't have a camera or like an obvious camera or a camera that we're used to and it can sense your body we can use this this non-camera sensing thing to uh track your body movements for a video game or something.

That's kind of interesting, but they're just in like, let's just put it in a clock.

All right, so I've looked up the answer.

The Nintendo Alarmo exists as

a continuation of Nintendo's quality of life initiative, aiming to integrate gaming and health by gamifying healthy experiences.

So this is their from their

little step tracker days.

Yeah, yeah, type of thing.

Yeah, it was

released on October 10th, 2024 and was widely released into regular stores in 2025.

Nintendo first announced their intentions to create a sleep tracking device during the financial briefing in 2014.

Whoa.

Intended to mark their entry into their quality of life market.

The device, which would have used sensors to track a user's sleeping habits similar to the Alarmo, was being developed in partnership with health company resmed but was put on hold indefinitely in 2016 i should say it does track how much you move in bed track your hours of sleep etc etc

um alarmo was developed in-house by nintendo's motion sensor research team as the device's sensors could detect motion without the use of a camera it was thought the technology would be appropriate for use in a bedroom There you go.

What a weird company.

God bless them.

I love Nintendo.

Yeah,

don't stop being freaky, Nintendo.

We love you.

Do whatever you want.

Keep Nintendo weird.

I'll fucking buy it.

Do you struggle with procrastisaving?

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

I used to be a huge procrastaver until I heard about Mint Mobile's best deal of the year that's ending soon, 50% off unlimited premium wireless for new customers.

Let me tell you how I procrastinate.

I would reuse toilet paper.

Stop overspending with big wireless and cut your wireless bill to $15 a month when you switch.

All Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation.

largest 5G network.

You can use your current phone and phone number on any Mint Mobile plan and bring along all your existing contacts.

Don't miss out on three months of unlimited premium wireless from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month.

But hurry because this deal ends September 22nd.

Look, cell phones are cell phones.

What are we talking about?

Your wireless carrier isn't.

It's all the finger, man.

Am I allowed to say f during an ad?

Well, I just did.

And I told you I would reuse toilet paper to save money.

Think about how much you could be saving with Mint Mobile.

Quit stalling and start saving when you make the switch.

Shop plans at mintmobile.com

get played.

That's mintmobile.com/slash get played.

Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month.

Limited time, new customer offer for first three months only.

Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan.

Taxes and fees extra.

See Mint Mobile for details.

Has this ever happened to you?

You've been traveling abroad and you want to watch one of your comfort shows or perhaps even a sporting event.

And then because you're somewhere else in a different country that doesn't have that, you can't freaking watch it.

Well, I got something for you.

Nord VPN.

Protect your private data like bank details, passwords, and online identity.

NordVPN can switch your virtual location, allowing you to save money by purchasing flights, hotels, and subscriptions from other countries at a cheaper price.

So look, NordVPN can do all sorts of crazy stuff.

You can make it think you're somewhere else.

You're wherever you are.

You're not getting the best deal.

Switch to somewhere else.

They might have a better deal.

That's huge.

Protecting your data whilst traveling, and yeah, I said whilst, and using public Wi-Fi, NordVPN protects you wherever you are in the world.

I have a theory.

This is why they haven't been able to apprehend Carmen Sandiego.

She's using NordVPN.

They'll never find her.

The NordVPN threat protection feature protects you from viruses, malicious malware, and phishing sites.

Unless that phishing site is fastpro.com.

No protection required there.

It's the fastest VPN in the world.

No buffering or lagging while streaming and stops your ISP bandwidth throttling.

ISP bandwidth throttling a thing of the past with NordVPN.

Premium cybersecurity for the price of a cup of coffee per month.

Now that's what I'm talking about.

One Nord VPN account can be used on up to 10 devices.

Your phone, your iPad,

your mom's iPad, your laptop.

Maybe even your watch.

Who could say?

That's not even 10.

You You surely have some more.

Perhaps a proprietary browser on a video game console or something.

To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com/slash get played.

Our link will also give you four extra months of the two-year plan.

By my estimation, that's 28 months.

There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.

The link is in the podcast episode description box.

NordVPN, you heard?

Some days your brain needs a vacation your body can actually afford.

That's where IndiCloud comes in.

You juggle the chaos.

You answer the emails.

You even go outside sometimes.

So yeah, you've earned a better way to unwind.

Enter IndiCloud.

Federally legal THC in the form of gummies, pre-rolls, and flour designed to turn hanging on into fully chilling.

So, if you're 21 or older, head to IndiCloud.co and use code GET played to get 25% off your first order plus free shipping.

That's Indacloud.co code get played, 25% off free shipping.

Just a better vibe in your mailbox.

So here's the thing.

Look, I got sent some of this stuff, all right?

I ate one of the orange soda gummies, okay?

Now, look,

I'll be honest.

I'm a bit of a lightweight, all right?

I'm not out here.

Blazing it.

I'm not out here.

I'm not over here,

you know, insert euphemism here.

I'm not doing any of that, all right?

I'm not always doing it, but when I do, I like to just chill out and relax.

It made me very silly with my friends, and

they all had a nice time enjoying me, enjoying IndaCloud.

It sounds too smooth to be legal, right?

But it is.

IndaCloud's products are farm bill compliant, third-party tested, and made for grown-ups who want a buzz without the need to drive 25 minutes to dispensary.

And that's just a fact.

Dispensaries are 25 minutes from wherever you personally are.

That's just how it is.

More than 50,000 people already trust them because when it feels this good, it should also feel easy.

Whether you're chasing deeper sleep, better focus, or just some peace between your streaming marathons.

This is how adults get elevated now.

If you're 21 or older, now's your chance to float above the stress because Indacloud, see what they did, is giving all new customers 25% off their first order plus free shipping.

Use code get played or click the link in the show notes to claim your discount.

That's Indacloud.co,

I-N-D-A-C-L-O-U-D dot CO.

Use code get played for free shipping plus 25% off your first order.

Fill out their quick survey when you order to support this show and make your week way more enjoyable.

All thanks to IndaCloud.

Let's do Tears of the Kingdom game formats/slash media.

T-I-E-R-S

is for tears, of course.

We're talking about how software is interfaced on different platforms.

And Matt, you're going to steward us through this.

Yeah, I do feel like we have to, at this point, sort of pull back the curtain just a tad.

Yeah.

Because we had planned this and I had prepped quite a few

options.

You know, there's like there's, because there's a lot.

There's a lot here.

There's, there's, there's video game formats going back to 1972 to today.

So there's obviously a lot of ground to cover.

And I got I was very comprehensive in my building of the tier list and got all of them.

And I believe we were rolling prior to

starting the episode.

And this was Nick's reaction, Ranch play the clip.

And so what I have done is that I have this list from this museum of obsolete media and it goes by year what they are and what they look like.

So I have this up so I can see what Jesus are.

But we don't have to do that.

We can't do this whole list.

No, that's what I can.

That's the show.

I prepped them.

Let's fucking go.

I prepped them knowing we weren't going to do them all.

We're going to do them all.

But I didn't want to not have one that we were going to not skip or something.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I was as comprehensive as like...

Look at that triangle.

Let's go.

I even got game keycards.

Oh my God.

What are you talking about?

Well, because I didn't know which ones to police out.

I didn't know which ones to

do.

I should have showed this.

No, this is great.

This is great.

This is good.

So everybody, of course, thought this was insane because, yeah, it is a lot.

I love it.

It's a lot of information.

We're not going to get to all of these, but I kind of just figured

I'd better have all of them just in case there's one that...

We feel strongly about including.

We can skip ones that we don't care about.

I love it.

We're not going to get on to all of these.

There's no way.

Because I need my life back.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, this is the thing.

Like, I, because I kind of knew when I pitched this that there was too much, but then you guys were both like, this is great.

That's exactly what the show is.

And I was like, are we sure?

And they're like, yeah.

And then now here we are.

Now there's like 70 options.

Yeah, what the fuck, man.

I tried to get us out of it.

I think there's going to be plenty of overlap where it's like CD, DVD, and Blu-ray.

It's like, okay, it's a disc.

We got pretty granular here, but fundamentally, we're talking about cartridge versus

card versus cassette tape.

Yeah, versus cassette tape versus, you know,

a disc.

I mean, like, there's only so many different form factors.

Let's just get into it.

Where shall we start?

Let's go chronological.

All right.

So I'm just going to go up front and say,

everything before 1990 is A tier.

Really?

Okay.

Honestly, that's pretty easy.

Because look, look,

here, here is an industry trying to figure out what it is.

Yeah.

Right.

Like,

is every car that existed before like 1930 an A-tier car?

Absolutely it is because they're cool to look at and they were trying to, trying to do stuff, right?

So

I would say that, you know, all the way up until the standardized Nintendo cartridge, like your Atari cartridge is so different from your Magnavox Magnavox cartridge.

You scanned past something that was a fucking triangle.

Yeah, the

triangle.

Let's just talk through them just for the sake of completionist.

So we got the Magnavox Odyssey.

You might have to impinge that for me to read it.

But we have the Magnavox Odyssey.

Removable printed circuit boards

were allowed to use your, were inserted into the Magnavox to select the chosen game.

How big were these were these fuckers?

That's what I'm trying to know.

I'm trying to figure out the dimensions dimensions of

each of these game cards.

I don't have that

in front of me.

All right, I'll try to look it up.

But yeah, so we got the, and these ones have very long pins.

They're very pinny.

And then also the general instrument PC-50X cartridge is another one, which is just from the first generation.

Because I guess a lot of the first generation was the console had something built into it, and that was basically its entire library.

Well, the PC-50X cartridge, according to this, the

obsolete media website, these are not ROM cartridges, and each cartridge contains a dedicated general instrument chip.

So, this is like each cartridge is the system.

That's crazy.

Looking at all these pins on the Magnavox Odyssey cartridge, you think this thing's a freaking

Hellraiser?

It's possible it's one of the centabytes as opposed to megabytes.

I think

it's That was low effort.

You guys can do better now.

I don't know.

I didn't even know.

It felt like both of you were falling down a waterfall.

The experience was: I was saying it.

Nick looked like he didn't like it at first, and then found what he was going to say, and then decided he did like it, and then said his thing.

Okay.

Okay.

These were the width of the Magnavox

game card was about

100 millimeters.

Tiny boys.

Yeah.

So these were little.

Tiny Tiny boys.

Let's look at the Fairchild channel F.

Wait, so we want to, we want to slot both of these into A.

I mean, like, I would just put the, I think the Magnavox Odyssey one is a little uglier.

I'd maybe put that as a B.

Oh, I was going the opposite.

You think you put it on the bottom?

But the Magnavox is A, and the general instrument PC-50X cartridge is a B to me.

This is, I will say, it just looks like, it just looks like Ram you'd put into a PC.

Fucking rules.

This one, like, imagine it's 1972, and you pull up into your friend's house who's got a Magnavox Odyssey.

You reach into your pocket and you pull out all these gold chips and you throw them out on the table and you're like, what do you want to play, boys?

That fucking rules.

Whereas like the general instrument 50PX cartridge, that feels like somebody invited you over to their garage and you're like, John, it's too hot in here.

And they're like, yeah, but don't you want to play sport?

So then I probably do want to play sport.

They're not both in A then?

One of them looks like a cyberpunk thing, and the other thing looks like something you would see in a public bathroom.

Let's put the fucking general instruments one in B, and then we'll put the Magna Box in A.

Let's go.

I bullied my way into an A on a...

list that doesn't mean anything.

No, this is very important, actually.

Okay, we're in the second generation.

In each generation, there's more and more

until we get to the more current times where there's there's fewer, of course.

Kind of a bell curve sort of structure is the number of entrants bloats and then, again, you know, it narrows to the handful of survivors.

I had a bit of a bell curve today.

After I ate my Taco Bell, my tummy got a little more full for me.

The Taco Bell.

Are you losing Nick?

Kind of a bell curve if you're making the rounds in that drive-through.

The one that I went to in particular, it's the only way in and out, actually.

You know the one.

The second generation, we got the Fairchild Channel Fs,

and these are, again, sort of like standard-looking interchangeable ROM cartridges.

We've also got the Coleco Telstar Arcade, which we should spend some time on.

The RCA Studio 2 is another one with this just sort of a long white boy cartridge.

Yeah, the RCA Studio 2 looks like the original Famicom games.

What I like about it is that it's got that sort of a thing I thought was like ugly back in the day, but now I have so much fondness for is just like that beige computer aesthetic.

And I do like that sort of look to it.

And then we've also got the Atari VCS,

which turned into the 2600.

And that one has very familiar looking sort of blocky cartridges.

Yep.

As well as the Bally Astrocade.

We had a bunch of different ones here.

These are all basically cartridges.

Yeah, they basically are all pretty similar, pretty interchangeable.

It's just a matter of like which aesthetics you respond to.

A lot of them are black.

Some of them are beige.

But there are

a couple that are different, and I want to highlight the different ones, the unique ones.

So let's go back up to that fucking triangle.

I mean, this one's S tier easy.

What is the Coleco Telstar arcade system?

Is that a

I it okay, so this is because I remember the Coleco vision.

I actually don't know what the Telstar was.

Fascinating.

Okay, so it's a triangular

cartridge that the pins are on the that aren't on the bottom.

It's not like you insert this into a machine.

Instead, you seem to lay this onto a machine in order to access the pin

architecture.

Um,

this thing fucking rules.

Yeah, this is, this is a clear S too, because it also, it looks, um,

like for the year that it came out in 1977, it looks like very futuristic.

Like, they're like, this is going to be huge.

Triangle shit.

It's very tron.

Yeah, yes.

This is for the for the guy who came to the magna man magnavox party and he threw all the chips on the on the table yeah this guy came and he went no i've got games yeah he throws out triangles and everyone's like wow it's funny to think that anybody was excited about this when it was like the most it's like a single pixel baseball game

uh there's a so i i found a pic of the coleco telstar arcade all loaded up we have a cartridge that is inserted in the middle and you'll see it's kind of like placed on top of it.

Yeah, like it's a, you know, like it's a rune to solve a puzzle.

But then also, look at what this thing is when it's all decked out with the peripherals.

Holy shit.

There's a steering wheel.

There's a gun,

like a classic revolver,

as well as some paddles that are attached to it.

Show that to Ranch.

Ranch, look at this.

Look at this thing.

We used to have it all.

Imagine the PS5 PS5 and a fucking insert for a gun.

That's crazy.

I love that.

The Coleco Telstar Arcade is suddenly rocketing up to the first place.

Put that in S.

That's an easy S, 100%.

A lot of these other ones are standardized cartridges.

I'd be fine with them being in B or A.

I put the RCA Studio 2.

I really like the look of that one.

That one to me is an A tier.

Now, this is the thing.

We're just evaluating looks, I guess, not functionality, because actually,

that cartridge might be completely,

you know,

these ones might fail all the time.

Oh, I guarantee that triangle doesn't work.

Yeah, for sure.

But I, but, but just in terms of looks, yeah.

I mean, this is a really cool way to deliver a game.

So, that one, this is the thing, there's so many of them.

Uh, this one goes in, you said B.

Yeah, put that some bitch in A.

Put that some bitch in A.

And then the other ones, I would not, I wouldn't argue for any of the other ones to not be above, to be above B.

I mean, what about the classic 2600 cart?

I mean,

this was for a moment the closest to VHS or DVD that games became.

Like the original

Atari cartridge is like ubiquitous until the Nintendo dethrones it.

They're sort of like, they look like monoliths.

They're just like, I mean, I guess they look like a book.

Yeah, they're a plain black.

They have the size almost of an eight track.

Yeah.

One cool thing about them is that they did have art on the outside.

Yeah.

So like you look at these and like some of them, you know, it's it's they're kind of fun to look at just in their

just as cartridges like laid out in a row.

And also often misrepresenting the game that you would actually

absolutely sucked.

The thing is there was such a massive overproduction of these cartridges that led to the

console industry collapsing before it was resuscitated by Nintendo's entry into the market.

But I guess the cartridges themselves, that's just what we're evaluating.

Just a B?

I think they're a B.

I don't know.

I just, I don't think there's anything that particularly stands out about them.

And then, so, would you say then everything else, like the Bally Astrocade, the

Interton VC4000, these are all then like in C?

Well, but I do like that Volt Mace.

Whatever the fuck that is.

I know.

It kind of looks like pills.

Yeah,

there's the Volt Mace Video Master Database Games computer comes with what looks to be either a pack of punch-out gum or pills.

Yeah.

And this, this machine, this, whatever this is, is this is pretty incredible.

That looks awesome.

Can you click on what that machine was so that we can see what it is?

Again, listener, I wish you could be here with us.

You are here with us.

I'm good where you guys are.

The Voltmace database games computer was a second-generation games console first sold in the UK in 1980.

It used

the 1292 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System Family,

all of which use a different shape or size cartridge.

Crazy.

So, wait, what am I looking at?

Is the cartridge like that plain milk-colored box?

Milk-colored is correct.

That is, that's very milky-looking.

Yeah, it has to be.

I wonder what this little punch-out thing is.

I wonder if that is like red with the.

In on it so that we can see what it says

uh

okay it's a black it's it's for oh oh it's maybe for your input

controller yeah that's not so the cartridge that's like an overlay oh that sucks okay remember that from like the intellivision would have a similar sort of thing because you'd basically have like a numpad okay that you would put an overlay with that would have the so the only thing the video master has going for it is it looks like every cartridge is completely generic in like the clockwork orange universe yes yeah other than that it is not a a remarkable format.

What a bummer.

The Video Master had a

43 bytes of memory and

was capable of displaying four single color sprites.

So just think of how limited that was.

You have four sprites on screen.

They can each be one color.

Yeah.

Matt, can you scroll back up one more time to the,

I think it's the,

keep going.

Oh, no, we went too far.

There it is.

The Philips Video Pack Magnavox Odyssey 2 also seems to have an interesting

format, which is a cartridge that also has a built-in screen at the top of the cartridge itself.

Is it a screen or a handle?

Good lord, I don't know.

It looks like it could be

a handle.

It looks

like empty space behind it.

How big is this?

It does look like negative space.

Is this the size of a briefcase?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to like slam it in.

What the fuck?

It's crazy.

Let's see.

I guess

I don't know how large these cartridges are, but it does appear like it was a handle.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, you have to chunk it like into a fucking computer.

S-tier.

Yeah.

This thing is the size of a human hand and has like a like a toolbox handle built into the top of the cartridge so you can smash it into your computer and then and then rip it out.

That's wild.

So the Phillips video pack was the Magnavox Odyssey 2.

It was the exact same thing.

So I'm familiar with the Magnavox Odyssey 2.

I'm not familiar with the video pack, but it's the same thing.

I don't know if you can understand this, listener, but what we are giving S tier 2 is the weirdest, coolest formats.

Yeah, so far, it is a triangle that you place on top of a console and then something that you have to jam.

All right, let's keep moving here.

Let's keep moving.

Because, yeah, a lot of these are just like basic,

you know, cartridge-shaped things.

Yeah, the Clico Vision,

which is a colorful cartridge with nice art on the out front, but it's still just cartridges, cartridges, cartridges.

The Vectrex, one of the cooler systems I've always wanted to

own, but there's nothing particularly notable about its cartridge itself.

The Vectrex had a built-in monitor, and

that was a tall-screen form factor, and it had vector graphics, which is the kind of thing that

looks so much better than the very limited pixel graphics of the day.

Oh, yeah.

This is one of those at the video game museum.

Yeah, it's fucking cool as shit.

All right, before we zoom past it,

I want to shout out the original Nintendo Famicom cartridges, which are elegant and very beautiful.

Like, if you look at the Japanese Famicom cartridge, like if you look at the Zelda cartridge,

it's a really beautiful piece of

art on the front.

It's a nice form factor.

I prefer the Famicom carts to the American Nintendo cartridges.

And I'm not saying that to be specific or contrarian.

Yeah.

Like,

pull up Legend of Zelda Famicom cartridge and just look at this beauty.

Look at this beast.

No, it definitely looked better just as the box art was better in this era.

Like, I mean, this is

Mega Man, the Ur example there.

The Legend of Zelda Famicom cartridge is a green cartridge with excellent anime art and a sort of inviting studio Ghibli font on the Legend of Zelda logo.

It looks like something you want to play.

It looks great.

I will say that I think the specifically the NES,

the North American NES release of The Legend of Zelda, which was a gold cartridge,

did look very cool.

And it had equally exciting and special.

And it had really appealing.

Like, like, you know, art on the cartridge itself, but that was not the case for all these.

Here's the main thing.

The Famicom

was superior to the NES

cartridges.

As a game delivery mechanism, his software was far superior because the Famicom fucking worked and the NES didn't.

The NES was always broken because it was a slot loader as opposed to a top loader.

And so it collected so much dust and debris that everyone who had one remembers blowing in it, which actually made things worse.

But it was like the way to dislodge any sort of dust or fuzz that was in, you know, affecting the pins there.

Or, you know, having all your tricks for like wiggling it, or having

the console be upside down just because of the poor design of it slot loading.

And

so, like, for me, the NES cartridge is like maybe a D just because it was just because it didn't fucking work.

It was so unreliable.

And you'd have games that just would be broken, or your console itself would be broken.

And that was just like a fatal design flaw.

I will say that if we are saying that the Nintendo gets to be judged based on

execution of media, all of these other systems, we have no idea if any of these ever work.

Well, I did.

Look, I didn't have an Atari 2600, but my grandparents did.

And so I played a lot of games on Atari 2600 when I was visiting them.

That did not have the same sort of issues that the NES did.

Just as a direct one-to-one comparison.

And certainly our family NES had more wear and tear than that Atari 2600 that

was just there to entertain the grandkids.

But like.

I'll say that no, it was much less functional.

It was much less functional.

Validates you by when they redesign the NES, they make it into a topology.

Yeah.

But all that said, what do we actually, I guess we should just probably think of these things visually.

I do think the Famicom looks better, and I would put that one above the NES if we're just judging by looks itself.

I'd put that in an A tier.

Yeah, put that in the A tier.

And I'd put the NES cartridge in a C tier.

All right, that's fine with me.

I can't do that.

I'm good with that.

All right, great.

All right, let's keep going.

We've got the Sega SG-1000.

As a Sega kid, I don't even know what the fuck that is.

Not my machine.

Not my machine.

You've got the Epic Super Lady cassette vision.

Oh, we've talked about the SG1000 before.

Yeah,

we've seen this thing.

Oh, yeah, we have nice.

Yeah,

this was a very early Sega effort that had a little joystick controller.

But guys, can we talk about the Epic Super lady cassette vision?

Yeah.

What does this machine look like?

Yeah.

You've got pink car.

All of them are pink.

Pink cartridges released in Japan in 1985, aimed at the female gamer market.

And the console and carrying case were bright pink.

Come on.

It sold poorly.

Hmm, go woke, go broke, I guess.

Yeah, but

it doesn't seem like they went completely woke because it was bundled with the game called Milky Princess.

I do like the pink cartridge.

It's really cool.

I do like it too.

It's Pepto-Bismo pink.

Yeah.

A real sort of sour pink.

Yeah.

But boy, I love the name Epic Super Lady Cassette Vision.

Pretty good.

Fuck.

I do like that.

Where should we go?

There's too many of these.

We can't do all of these.

We're not.

We've been doing all these.

We have the fucking Sega My Card.

We didn't speak about the Casio PV1000.

Hold on.

What is there?

What is that about it?

Guys, hold on.

The Sega My Card was something that you could slot into the Sega Master System.

You could either slot in cartridges or cards into the Sega Master System.

And I believe the cards were cheaper, which for

a time when you could purchase a game per year.

Yeah.

Maybe the card

does.

Yeah, did this make it to the U.S.?

I know that the master system accepted cards because I had a master system.

Got it.

I can't remember.

My friend had a master system, but I can't.

I remember

I remember interest in cartridges, but it could be wrong.

Outside of Japan, there was a third version released in 1986, marketed as the Sega card for use on the Sega Master System, the international version of the Mark III.

I had a game called Ghost House, which was on card.

It was on plain card.

Whoa.

So as the authority, did you like the card or did you like the cartridge?

I liked both of them, but the card felt neat because it felt strange.

Let's put the card up a little higher then.

Like, I, I like, also,

it felt way too small.

You were like, How does a game come out of this?

Yeah, the cardrites crazy.

The cartridge made sense because you're like, oh, games are inside this.

But a card, you're like, where's the game coming from?

What are we thinking?

B?

Put it in B.

Put it in B.

Okay.

I like, I like a game card.

Okay.

7800, we should rate it, it was uh big enough where it's it's worth uh, you know, it's worth acknowledging.

I don't know, I feel like put it in B or C, it's kind of whatever.

Wow, the you like the Atari 20 7800 control, I mean, it's a cool

shit about it, but I am gonna say

we're gonna push really hard for the next one.

You know, put the 7800 in D.

Who gives a shit?

Yeah, we gotta have some stuff in the lower tiers, yeah.

Fuck that.

Uh, the second master system cartridges, uh,

what makes them uh fascinating is that they they were forcibly

exactly the same.

They were visually identical.

There were no special carts.

There was no Legend of Zelda green cart, Legend of Zelda gold cart.

They were black carts with a red border, and the name of the game had to be in the same font.

Oh, I do remember this.

Yes, yeah.

I remember this specifically.

As a standardized play system,

they were so much more boring than when I would see people with Nintendo cartridges.

And I'd be like, yours is gold.

And they'd they'd be like, well, yours comes in a card.

And I'd be like, yeah, but yours is gold.

Yeah.

So I want to put the second master system cards solidly in C tier.

As someone who likes to organize libraries, I did like that they were uniform.

That's true.

I like to organize libraries too.

That's true.

Yeah.

All right.

What's next?

We should talk about the Famicom disc system.

This is a thing that never made it stateside.

S-tier.

It's so cool.

Yeah, put it in the S-tier.

It's just this big ass yellow, like, like, fucking floppy disc looking thing.

It's so great.

It's so cumbersome.

It's so unnecessary.

It rocks.

It was a, yeah, it looked like a 3.5 diskette.

Often would have expanded music libraries.

So if you play The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo disc system, the soundtrack is better.

Yeah.

And that one was,

that's what Mother debuted on, right?

That wasn't on the Famicom disc system initially.

Yeah.

Wow.

Look at that Sega card.

Look how good that looks, though.

Very cool.

It's a cool looking thing, man.

Commodore 64 game system.

I don't remember the Commodore 64 game system.

We had a Commodore 64 computer at our house was this a separate console or is this a thing that was an expansion no this was actual console that that was built on cumbersome 64 guts it was interesting and uk and european markets only got it got it yeah

uh that cartridge is is ugly to me yeah a little little little hideous there and and so is the the uh armstred gx 4000

um

I think

I think part of what we're running into here is that I think maybe whoever's, I mean, this site's very comprehensive, but there's a little bit of like, it's a console, isn't it?

Like, we're getting a lot of like European stuff that we're maybe we're less familiar with.

You're going to fucking sit here and tell me that the Dendi was a big fucking deal.

Dendi?

Boy, mate, it's a Dendi.

It's a fucking Dendi, isn't it?

All right, let's go to the fourth generation.

Now, here's one I always coveted.

I always thought was cool.

My friend had a TurboGraphic 16 that

releases the NEC PC engine in other territories.

Again, going back to the cards, the Hue card, I thought was so fucking cool, and they were so fucking little.

And I just, to me, I would put the Hue card up in A or

maybe not S tier, but I put those up in A tier.

Put it in A tier.

Cards should be in A or B tier.

Yeah.

There we go.

That's solidly an A.

Yeah.

The Mega Drive cartridge for Genesis.

I like that they were black.

Pretty nice.

Pretty slick looking, I got it.

They're very cool looking.

Yeah, yeah.

And this continues Sega's tradition from the master system in in black cartridges so if you like a black cartridge you know that's a

that's a solid b or an a tier cartridge okay now here's where we get into things because we have our first just straight up cd the pc engine and the turbo graphic 16 had a cd expansion uh which

you know

the games like ease and and lunar i believe were first on the turbo graphic 16 that had these animated sequences uh that were pretty stunning for the era and some, you know, like orchestrated music.

I can't remember if they had speech or not.

I think some of them did have some limited speech.

This is the first entry of a CD form factor.

Are we going to rate each CD individually?

We're just going to say, where CDs are?

I think CDs.

Okay, so CD as a game format, I think, are S tier.

I think that's true.

Because it was so consequential.

And also, I just like looking at a CD.

I think it's a cool example.

I think a CD is S tier.

And I also think that it was such a staggering leap.

Yes.

Like,

suddenly having full orchestras in your living room, suddenly having video on your games was crazy.

Well, you're going from like eight megs to like 700 megs.

It's like a gigantic gulf between the bulkiest cartridges.

Boy, I love our S tier.

Triangle,

briefcase.

Yeah.

Nintendo Disc and CD-ROM.

Yeah.

All our top shapes.

Really, really.

Man, some of the best shapes are up there.

Yeah.

Okay, so all CDs are

S tier.

Yeah, Atari Lynx is D tier.

Yeah,

put that down there.

The Atari Lynx cartridges were too large.

Basically, Atari's aesthetics in general were pretty...

I'll say their logo.

I like their logo, but I think a lot of their hardware and software is

pretty unappealing.

Up next on this list is the original Game Boy cartridge.

Love those cartridges.

Which are both pleasant to hold, pleasant to look at and at the time if you didn't have a sega master system

were shockingly small yeah i will say too

fun to insert

a lot of fun

act of inserting a game boy cartridge into a game boy is is satisfying in and of itself one

hundred percent like a little a little chunk yeah i i think that could go in an s i'll throw it out there i mean i i wouldn't go that far but Yeah, I'd put it in A tier.

Okay.

I'd put the original Game Boy cartridge in A tier.

Excellent format.

Okay, let's keep going.

Let's keep going.

All right, Super Famicom, Super Nintendo.

We have to handle these differently.

The Super Famicom were sort of rounded, beveled, and the Super Nintendo were these big blocky chonkers.

I like the Super Famicom software.

Big hardware chonkers, isn't it?

Yeah.

I like the Super Famicom hardware and software better.

I think it just was like much more aesthetically appealing.

I didn't like the way, I mean, like, I have nostalgia for it, but I didn't like the way they redesigned the Super Nintendo for Western markets.

And so I would put the Super Famicom.

I'd put that probably in A, and then I'd put the Super NES maybe in C.

I think they were kind of ugly.

I don't know.

Does anyone want to argue with me?

No.

No,

but the way I have it, I only have it the one.

So I'll grab the other one later.

So I'll just put this one in A.

We'll placehold her.

We'll know where it's going.

Yeah.

I'm going to push for the next format to be S tier, and that's the Neo Geo cartridge.

Hell yeah.

The reason being,

they were enormous.

They were so fucking big.

They're the size of like VHS tape.

They're larger than a full Switch.

Yes, yeah.

They're large

books.

And they cost like $250 a piece in like 1995 money.

It's insane.

You could line up four Genesis carts side by side to be the size of a Neo Geo cartridge.

That's nuts.

Knowing that they existed and were out in the world

and never actually seeing them except in like a game magazine.

Yeah.

Like

you would see them being like held in a game magazine and you'd be like, what am I looking at?

Pretty strong manner holding it up.

Where do we think we're putting this?

S.

Put all the way fucking up there.

Put it in an S.

Oh, God.

I still want a Neo Geo.

I'll never not want a Neo Geo.

I used to covet like Magician Lord so bad.

I'd be like, oh, that looks so fucking cool.

These games are so big and they're so expensive.

It's got to be good because the console costs like $800.

Which adjusted for inflation is probably

$2,000 at least.

Absolutely fucking batshit.

Where to next?

The Sega Game Gear.

Sega Game Gear.

Now, here was a,

i think

this is also an a tier uh game cartridge here's why one it's black two yeah um it was more ergonomic than the uh than the game boy games there was a slight lip to the top of the cartridge which made it easier to pull out of the back of a portable system go ahead and look at it look at that look at that look at that little game you see that lip so easy to pull in and out yeah that's pretty nice it was you need something like that it's excellent excellent little cartridge.

I mean,

the Game Boy cartridge has a little bit of a

little thumb.

Yeah, it's got like a thumb.

Yeah,

it is very functional.

I'm pushing for them to be identical.

Okay.

Not above.

I mean,

Game Boy is clearly better than the Game Gear overall as a system.

What the fuck are you talking about?

But the Game Gear.

I mean,

in almost in every single way, it's better.

It had a color screen, the Game Gear did.

But it's just like...

It was lit.

Yeah, and so you'd get like 40 minutes of battery left.

Yeah,

it ran on 20 batteries.

I

am quitting the show.

Defend the Sega Nomad next?

What are we doing?

I will defend any Sega product.

Okay, there's the Super Nintendo separately.

Yeah, we can put that one.

I think that's probably in C.

I mean, honestly, ugly.

I do in D.

It looks like shit.

It kind of looks like it.

It fucks.

I have

so many great memories of playing Super Nintendo games and just never really loved the cartridges.

Yeah, it's an ugly card.

Put it in D.

Holy shit.

no put it in c it's not d

o here's here's where i'm struggling yeah it is nicer than the uh

the nes cartridges to me i like it more but it they can't so they're in the same one so i think that maybe the nes cartridge gets bumped down well they look like they come from the same design as that yeah i don't know i think they kind of belong together okay honestly honestly looking at them next to the master system cartridge the master system cartridge is a be compared to those two it's kind of true because like the master System at least had, like,

I don't know, it was trying something.

All right, bump it up.

Who cares?

Bump it up.

We, well, here's the thing, Nick.

We do, we care.

I'm having fun.

Let's keep going.

We do care.

Admittedly, yeah, there was Neo Geo CD as well.

A whole bunch of CDs.

What about the laser active LD ROM?

Okay, so we got to talk about laser discs.

Go.

Here's my argument.

Laser discs are big CDs.

C Ds are S tier, so that means laser discs are also S tier.

Yes.

Yes.

I think laser discs are so fucking cool.

They're so cool and they're so fucking dumb.

Yeah.

Have you ever watched like a movie on a laser disc player?

Yeah, I watched, I remember I watched the original Star Wars on a laser disc player.

It's so great because you watch Star Wars on Laser Disc and you have to flip the, you have like, it's two discs that you have to each flip.

Yeah.

So you're like, you get to like a pivotal bow and it just stops.

The movie just stops it and you just have to flip it over.

Gentlemen, child Heather begged her parents for a laser disc player.

Yeah.

My parents found a used laser disc player.

I don't even know how you find used stuff back then.

And they bought me

a used Sony Laserdisc player so that I could watch movies on Laserdisc.

And they were like, what is this?

And I was like, it's like a record player, but a CD.

The first movie they got me was Jurassic Park and widescreened.

Oh, nice.

And

it was a religious experience.

Like, even now,

it's not as high resolution as a DVD, but it was so much better than a VHS tape that it felt like you were at the movies, especially because you could see the whole picture.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

I loved my laser disc player.

It was a combination.

The viewing experience that I had was really cool because it was like a combination laser disc

projector

thing.

So it was like, it was just really, really cool.

I follow a lot of people on TikTok who are just doing that.

There's a guy who is all clinically insane.

There's a guy who is like a mint condition Sony basement with like the high, like a Sony projector from like 1985 that at the time cost like $70,000 now doesn't matter to anybody.

And it's got a format for movies that I've never seen,

which is like a cartridge with a disc inside of it.

Whoa.

Like a, like a, like a 1980s mini disc, except maxi disc.

Wow.

And it's watching the guy like load these things in and play like Star Wars on formats I've never heard of.

It's so crazy.

I love it.

Okay, so we got a few more CDs.

We shouldn't skip past these.

I mean, we should acknowledge that we have the scroll up a little bit.

We have the Sega.

The Sega Saturn.

Yeah, we have the Sega Saturn, you know, we have the 3DO, which was also the Commodore Amiga CD32.

Sega 32, or the Sega CD.

Yeah.

Like all these cartridges.

But we should pause at the Atari Jaguar,

which is one of the more hideous console designs of of all time.

And I think that the cartridge is its equal.

I have a pic pulled up of the Jaguar with the Jaguar CD attachment, a controller, and a cartridge library.

Look at this.

Puke City.

Yeah.

That fucking, fucking ugly as shit.

This cartridge looks like a video game cartridge that has like a discarded

mastacholi on the top of it.

Yeah.

The thing about the Jaguar that sucks is that it looks like what the worst guy you know thinks is fucking awesome.

Yes, yeah.

It's fucking sick as hell.

It's fucking black with some red highlights.

Yeah, we could blast rails right on top of this fucking fucking awesome.

Awesome.

Is this our first F tier?

This looks awful.

It looks like a like a paper towel roll.

It's like fucking it's ugly.

Yeah,

I put an F tier.

Why not?

Fuck that.

Fuck the Atari Jaguar.

Yeah.

Then we have the, yeah, of course.

And then the interesting thing about this list is that it has then like memory cards, which I didn't.

Yeah,

I think they're kind of a different thing for our Sodio PlayStation CD-ROM, of course, goes with CDs, Sega 32X.

The 32X cartridges

were identical to the Genesis cartridges from the outside, so I don't think we need to re-rate them.

Okay.

I mean, they're slightly different, but not super different.

We have to talk about this one.

All right, Virtual Boy.

Let's go.

Listener.

The Virtual Boy cartridges were wide and flat and small.

They were a strange shape, larger than the Game Boy cartridge, smaller than a Super Nintendo cartridge.

And they only were on the shelves for less than a year.

Like a fucking elf that walked into a game company and then walked away.

Yeah.

I love the Virtual Boy, and there is no way that that cartridge belongs anything higher than B tier.

All right, great.

What?

Nick just wants to get out of here.

Let 11 be.

You made your impassioned case.

I think that you're the authority.

You're the one who owns a virtual boy.

Cassio Loopy.

Yeah,

we can't abide by this.

The next big one would be the Nintendo 64 cartridge.

Now, I do like the Nintendo 64 cartridge,

and I believe this was one that was standardized globally.

I do think this one is like the best of the Nintendo cartridges.

I don't know.

I mean, like, it's, it's, it's nice and blocky.

It's rounded at the top.

It's not too big.

It

conformed to the shape of the Nintendo 64.

Yes, it looks very appealing when it was in the console itself, which is an important qualifier.

I do think it might take a ding because it comes at a time when everybody else had moved on to CD.

Right, sure.

And Nintendo stubbornly stomps their foot and says, no, we're doing cartridges.

The one thing that it had, the one big advantage that it had at the time is that, you know most of these cd drives were like 1x 2x 4x they were very very slow and you were dealing with punishing load times and so it was refreshing even though you were dealing with all these other deficiencies uh uh to to load up a a a a thing something in a cartridge-based format and just you get right into it yeah you you turn on mario 64 and it starts yeah and then you don't have to wait for load times in between levels and and and all that shit i mean like like some of the like the the saturn port of uh it's that there were like some Saturn fighting games where you'd like it would be a loading

like a character coming on screen and a fighting game would be a separate load.

And it was just like, it was so, so, so tedious.

So where are you going to put that Mario 64 cartridge?

Are you putting that in A tier?

Yeah, I think it can live up there.

All right.

With a Game Boy?

Nick, I defer to you.

All right, great.

Let's keep going.

Okay.

After that, we have...

What's the next big one that jumps out?

Oh, God, I forgot about the game.com.

Holy fucking shit.

How could you forget it?

It's your electronic

tigerelectronicsgame.com.

Click on that some bitch real quick.

So this was a portable controller, I believe.

Yes, this was a handheld, and it just absolutely flopped.

Tiger was making all these cheap sort of single function games, like would just be one beat, one,

an all-in-one piece of hardware that would play like one like word puzzle game that would retail for like $30.

Game.com had internet capability in a handheld format and had a larger black and white screen than the Game Boy with a touch screen.

So they were throwing everything at the wall with this thing, and it absolutely flopped in every direction.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean, it was a dial-up connection, is the whole thing.

Oh, yeah.

I was picturing Wi-Fi.

I'm like, wow, that's crazy.

I'm like, no, that wasn't a thing then.

Imagine having to plug your portable system into a landline.

uh the neo geo pocket pocket color i think these cartridges are pretty cool looking yep very nice yeah yep s and k logo on there nice and rounded very sleek yeah a gray colorway similar to the game boy yeah but i i don't know i i feel like those are a fine link b entry yep all right let's keep going here uh yeah game boy color same same cartridge format we don't need to uh to retread this.

Let's talk about the Wonder Swan.

Hell yeah.

Wonder Swan cartridges were

very similar to what the Game Boy Advance cartridges would be, but slightly wider.

I've demonstrated the Wonder Swan here in your company.

That's right.

I think that this is an A-tier cartridge.

They look really cool.

They're cool little guys.

I realize I'm like kind of a wide guy.

Oh, wide guy.

Yeah, when it's wide.

Tiger Weidger?

Hey, you know, that might be my new name.

When it's wide, I'm on board.

The wider, the better, I say.

When you're wide, when it's wide, you say, let's ride.

That's right.

What else?

What else?

I don't know.

So, yeah, both the Wonder Swan and the Wonderswan color, very similar cartridges and very, very fun to play with, very fun to hold.

A format that was not released here in the United States was the Nintendo 64DD.

Yeah, similar to the Famicom disk drive.

It just did not make its way stateside, allowed for some more expansive games.

Fucking rules.

Look at that fucking format.

God damn it.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Put it in the AT.

We don't deserve it here.

You know what we're not doing here?

We're not really digging in on PC form factors at all, which is fine.

We don't need to get into it.

We could make this be the console format list.

That's fine.

But like...

So many of the games I played as a kid were on three and a half inch floppy discs, you know?

And so that's a format I think about a lot.

I mean, before that, there were five and a quarter

floppy discs.

My dad's Commodore 64 did have some cartridges and some,

I feel like there was a tape drive, although I was very young.

And so I don't remember playing any games off of the tape drive, but they did exist.

But I guess we're not really covering any of those.

But just the invocation of the disc formats is reminding me of three and a half inch discs.

The thing about PC games is that once they started getting bigger in that sort of interregnum before CD-ROMs took over and fully consumed the marketplace and when games were being released on dual format, because not everyone had CD drives, some of those games would be like nine floppy disks because they're just they had so much and they were just compressed to shit so they would take forever to install.

Yeah, but it was kind of a fun process of like getting a new game and then in the same way that you get a new console and you download the updates and there's kind of there's kind of some fun to it of just like getting a new game and like I'm putting these seven discs in one at a time and waiting for each of them to install.

Yeah.

And then the game doesn't work and then I got to figure that out.

You know, it's like, oh, I put the sixth disc in front of the fifth one.

Well, you couldn't fuck up like that.

Usually that would detect that.

We're almost to my favorite game format of all time.

So I'm really excited

as we near our terminal destination here.

The Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM is just a CD-ROM.

Yeah.

And the way you know this is that you could burn

ROM.

You could burn Sega games to a regular CD.

The Sony PlayStation 2 CD-ROM and the Sony PlayStation 2 DVD.

DVD is the first, this is the first DVD format.

I do think GD-ROM should have its own slot.

Oh.

Because it did have more capacity.

It was a one-gig capacity CD.

And it was, you know, they had,

I believe it had, it had, it was like a double density format.

Like you could write to the disc twice, basically.

It was just packing basically, effectively twice as much, not quite twice as much storage data.

So I think by virtue of it being

Sega and it being a disc format, it did allow for some slightly more expansive games.

So if we're putting CD and Laser Disc in

S, I think the GD-ROM should belong in S as well.

Although it'd be kind of funny to put it in A just for being Sega.

If we're going to put the GD-ROM in S, then we're also going to have to put DVD in S.

Well, the reason.

The reason GD does

belong in S is that it was easily copyrightable.

You can easily pirate

those games.

DVD?

DVD

goes in S also.

DVDs are good.

DVD was around for a while.

I mean, yeah.

It was also like you started to have these formats be standardized across different

platforms.

That was nice.

The Game Boy Advance.

Okay.

This is an insane choice, by the way.

The image that is attached to

this, the Game Boy Advance game that they picked is Sonic Advance.

It's just not the choice I would make.

Here's the thing: I did like these guys again, very wide.

Yeah, if it's wide, it's all right.

Uh, the I like that they were wide and they were easy to insert and

take and uh take out.

Yeah, I love the Game Boy Advance cartridges.

Game Boy Advance cartridges look like candy, they should be eaten.

I like it, yeah.

I and they were little.

Do we what are we thinking?

A or S?

What are we talking about here?

I will put it in S tier, but I expect no pushback on the greatest format of all time.

I can't wait to hear what it is.

Let's keep going.

I'm putting it in S.

We'll see.

The GameCube disc is little.

It's a strange little guy.

F tier.

F.

Fucking sucked.

What?

It sucked.

Why did it suck?

Because it was not, like, it looked cool, but I mean, like,

that it was a little game, but it had way less storage than a DVD.

And the only reason they did it was Nintendo's stubbornness of like, well, we don't want our games to be, you know, like, we want to have some proprietary format that's not easily pirated.

He puts it in F.

I don't know.

I didn't have GameCube, so I can't speak to it.

I will.

I think it's dumb.

It looked cool.

I guess we're just judging on looks, and that's mostly what we're doing.

Then I guess it's higher because it was like a little CD.

It looked so fucking cool.

But it pissed me off.

Put it in B.

All right, fine, put it in B.

In between where it should be up in S tier, because it both looks cool and is a disc.

I have a complaint about it.

What is it?

And I think the complaint can safely lodge it in C.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

The complaint is

the cases that they came in are the same size as DVD.

I think small discs should have been smaller cases.

I agree.

Excellent complaint.

You should add cute little cases.

Excellent complaint.

Doesn't make any sense.

It goes in C tier.

I think we should add a tier and it should go in G tier.

Wow.

Fucking proprietary tier for a proprietary format.

Wow.

These are all, so many of these are proprietary.

Should I add a G?

Yeah, I add a G tier.

What the fuck?

And just put the GameCube.

No, at least add a P tier for proprietary.

I think it's G for GameCube.

I'll put it in G.

It's in there all by itself.

It's in there all by itself.

Let's keep going.

Let's keep going here.

How about the Nokia N-Gage card?

Y'all remember that?

That's a shit.

Who gives a shit?

Yeah, fuck that.

The Nokia N-Gage.

I wanted an N-Gage so bad.

You did?

Because I was like young enough that I thought it was cool.

Yeah.

Because what?

That was like 2003, 2004.

I was a teenager.

So I was like, oh, wow, it's a phone and I can play games.

That's awesome.

It hadn't happened yet, but I quickly learned that it

wasn't great.

Okay.

I love the DS and DS Lite.

I think it's just like those

and DSI.

I mean, they're all using the same sort of thing, but those little, those little cards are really fun.

Yeah, they're little.

They're really fun.

Easy to lose, I got to say.

That's a good point.

And that could be a case to bump them down a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, I could see, I could, I think it could go safely in B.

Yeah, let's put them in B.

B is good, is good for it because you could, you can, you know, they're getting lost between couch cushions, you know, it's it could get vacuumed up, there might be too little.

Yeah, all right, I think this is what you were driving at, Heather.

The uh, PSP UMD.

Is this what you wanted to make a case for?

S-tier.

It's crazy that you thought there was going to be any pushback about this.

It is, it is the best one on the the list.

It is the coolest format

games of all time.

It might need its own tier.

All right, make an S plus.

The UMD,

like, first off, nothing felt more futuristic in what was this, 2003?

Whenever this fucking thing came out, 2004?

Like, a tiny disc inside of its own little protective case so it doesn't get scratched.

Really?

Shit.

Like, sister to the mini disc.

Oh, it's really great.

It's It's

impossibly loud.

Plus, you get one that just had Shrek on it.

Yeah.

Just watch the movie Shrek.

I still have my Rain of Fire UMD.

My PSP came with

two God of War video games, Chains of Olympus and Ghosts of Sparta.

One of them was digital.

One of them was on UMD.

And it came with the film Kickass on UMD, which I then immediately watched on the PSP.

In 2004, watching a movie in your hand like that was

like to be

on an airplane

and throw in a movie on your little handheld guy.

I thought, God, I thought for sure it was going to win.

Because your other option was to buy a

like a specialized portable DVD player, which was not super functional outside of, you know.

Yeah.

Just be just travel.

What is this?

What is the V-Tech V-Flash?

This seems like it's like a thing for kids.

Yeah, but it looks awesome.

Yeah.

I don't remember this at all.

Wow.

This looks awesome.

It is aimed at children ages six and up.

So the cartridge looks like a Pac-Man ghost.

It is a hard format protecting a CD inside.

Yeah.

Wow, it's a CD-ROM and a special caddy that help protect the disc from scratches and fingerprints caused by careless handling by children.

It is a really cool format.

I got to say, real quick, just to shout out the website that we're pulling this from.

The obsolemedia.org website is very comprehensive.

It has a lot of great information.

It's an incredible resource.

Unbelievable.

Wow.

Yeah, this is great.

It's an edutainment-based sort of thing.

I mean, CD and Inside of a Ghost goes in A tier for me.

So wait,

we're going to rate it.

I'll put it in the A.

Why not?

CD and Side of Ghost.

It looks cool.

I like the way it looks.

It looks fucking awesome.

The rest of these, yeah, now we're in the Blu-ray.

Yeah.

I think Blu-ray also has to go in S.

Yeah, why not?

I mean, I guess we could compare the discs against each other and probably just decide some, you know, in in terms of relative import.

But I don't know, they were all pretty impactful in their own way.

I guess the Blu-ray was maybe the one that was just the, maybe you can make the strongest case for that not being an S just because it was so incremental and because also you're entering into the era where both these games are all coming, you know, a lot of these games are being available digitally, but it doesn't really look right to slot it into A.

No.

Just fucking leave it an S.

We'll put it.

We'll leave it in an S.

All right.

Let's keep it.

The Vita game card.

This was too small.

Two, this is.

These were too small.

Yeah.

and they were such a step back from umd i know that they they have an enormous amount of space on them and everything they're too small d tier vita in vita in the d vita vita the system s tier vita the games d ti oh absolutely no question uh nintendo 3ds sort of same problem as the ds one but it's a little bit bigger still than the um than the vita ones um

we have ds and b even by 3ds 3DS, I feel like I was.

I mean, I had some physical 3DS games, but I was buying a lot of these digitally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We could put this in C.

Yeah, sure.

That's fine, put it in C tier.

Then we're just at the okay, like the Switch cartridge.

The Switch cartridge is actually too small, but

it has funky taste if you put it in your mouth.

And so that's so you don't eat it.

Yeah, I guess the funky taste could maybe put it a little bit higher than a C.

I don't know.

I think that's maybe a C tier as well with the

neat

cases for the Switch.

The cases were cool.

The cases do.

I mean, if we're evaluating that, that pluses it up a little bit.

The good cases with a strange taste.

I can go and see, and

it's not the cartridge's fault necessarily.

There's a Sonic bias on this website.

Because why would the Switch game be like not a Nintendo game, but Sonic Mania?

It don't make no sense.

They're having fun.

They're having a lot of fun.

Maybe they're having a bit of a laugh.

Now we're at the Ultra HD Blu-rays.

Now this is too incremental and it cannot be in the

nothing.

We don't need to rate the Ultra HD Blu-rays.

Yes.

Those are like the PS5 and current Xbox Gen.

So then the last physical format is the Switch 2 cartridge.

Switch 2 cartridge and there are two different ones.

There is

the regular base one that has the games on it, which is

I think maybe C tier also, because it's the same thing, but it's red.

Honestly, red might bump it up to blue or to B tier, if I'm being honest.

The red color is pretty good.

But then

they also have cartridges that are game key cards that don't have a game on them, but have a digital license on it.

That's an F, F.

Those are F for sure.

That's an F tier.

And then what we don't have on here, of course, is digital, which is a format if we have to think about it.

It's not a physical format, but it's a format nonetheless.

I don't.

I think we can say these are physical console formats that we're evaluating.

I think that's the way to think of it.

I gotta be honest, looking at all of this obsolete media, I thought there was going to be weirder formats.

And these are surprisingly standardized.

Did you forget about the triangle?

I didn't forget about triangle, but all the stuff in S tier, triangle,

briefcase, Nintendo disc.

laser disc, all of these are

unique, but everything below it is cartridge.

They found a few sort of standard formats that, and just think things started just falling into a not uniform, but just like some general buckets, like cartridge or card or disc.

And then that ended up how everything just kind of shook out.

I'm really happy with the UMD up in S Plus.

Me too.

That's probably the happiest thing about all of them.

I feel like we could reread what these are, but it would be very hard because some of them are very unfamiliar to us.

You have UMD and S Plus tier.

You have Triangle, you have Briefcase, you have Nintendo Famicom Disk Drive games, you have CD, you have Neo Geo cartridge, you have Laser Disc, GD-ROM, DVD, Game Boy Advance, and Blu-rays all in S tier.

In A tier, you've got a Magnavox original.

You have some kind of weird milky cartridge.

I cannot believe you're doing this.

You have some other kind of cartridge.

You have Sega game card.

You have Genesis cartridge, Game Boy cartridge, Super Famicom cartridge, Game Gear cartridge, Nintendo 64 cartridge, and Wonderswan cartridge, as well as CD Inside of a Ghost in A tier.

B tier is, I don't remember what this fucking thing is that Nick liked.

Atari games, Sega card, Master System cartridge, Virtual Boy cartridge, and Nintendo DS cartridge.

C tier almost exclusive, is exclusively Nintendo properties.

You have the Nintendo NES cartridge, the Super NES cartridge, the 3DS cartridge, and the Nintendo Switch cartridge.

In D tier, you have Atari 2600, or is that the 76, 72?

I don't know.

The Atari Lynx.

No, that was a 7800 and 7800, the Lynx and the Vita.

The PS Vita.

In F tier, you have the Jaguar,

the N-Gage,

and the Switch

Game key card.

And finally in G tier is the Nintendo GameCube proprietary disc format.

Oh, that was a waste of everyone's time.

Let's do a segment.

I had a good time.

I had a fun time.

I did have fun.

And I did say, are we sure we want to, this is not, this is.

I don't know how listenable it was, but I've had a really nice hour.

I don't think any of this is listenable, but it's nothing out of character for us.

Let's get to our segment here.

All right.

It's time for another Segma Dreamcast, folks.

We're going to cast the film adaptation of the Kojima Classic, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater.

Ah, yes, Delta is on the way.

Yes, this is a fan casting exercise where we will hypothetically cast a movie adaptation of a game.

And yeah, I guess we're going to do Metal Gear Solid 3.

Snake Eater.

So

we're starting with the big guy, number one.

Number one on the call sheet, Naked Snake.

You know, he's gruff.

He's got a lot of

gravitas.

I mean, voiced by David Hayter,

you know, it definitely has a distinct look to him.

I honestly feel like he's a little young.

Yeah.

But

we're almost at a point where you could put Austin Butler in a snake role.

Now, here he might be better for a write-in.

We might want to save him for that.

That's pretty good.

I just kind of feel like this is in Butler's Wheelhouse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's tricky.

Maybe we go with an older actor for this one.

What about

from Death Stranding 2, Luca Marionelli?

I mean, yeah, sure.

Why not?

That's pretty good.

Honestly,

Butler could have a great time in a lot of the roles.

I'm going to say Butler's too young, even though this is a younger snake.

I think this is probably

the wrong fit for him.

I just always got Butler on the brain.

I mean, here's the thing.

He's good.

He's good.

He's really, really good.

God, who's like a...

He's Elvis and he's he's Fade Raltha Harkinet.

He's also

a master of the air.

That's right.

And he's a fucking bike rider.

This motherfucker loves riding bikes.

He's basically got...

We got to get this guy in a fucking boat movie and he's got all transportation locked down.

Gosh.

Because, yeah, you want sort of like a...

Who's like a class?

I don't know if there's like a...

There's not a young tough guy right now.

We don't have like a

young sort of like,

I don't know who like the young action star star is currently.

Well, yeah, I mean, this is a Hollywood problem and also just like a general sort of problem is that we're not allowing opportunities for young people or there's certain like young, there's, there's not the same sort of a class that exists among younger generations.

I don't know.

It feels like if you, if you were going to go for a more established guy like Christian Bale could kind of pull off a naked steak, you know?

Isn't Christian Bale too old to talk about?

He probably is too old, but I mean, I'm just like, in terms of having the look, in terms of having that sort of beard,

I think you could pull it off.

What about this?

Maybe he's too young, too.

What about Superman?

All right, let's throw Superman in there.

What about, yeah, David Cornsweat?

He is too young, but

he's hot as shit.

Yeah.

And I'd like to see him with a beard.

Yeah, I'd love to see him with a beard.

Oh, wait.

In fact, I'm looking at a beard right now.

I'm looking at four.

Henry Cavill?

Yeah.

Cavill might be too big, is the thing.

Ah, he might be too big.

But Cavill might have a role elsewhere.

Okay, I think we got some good Naked Snake options.

Let's keep moving.

Yeah.

The boss.

Now, this is, of course, you know, Naked Snake's mentor.

This is the woman that played Dedra in Andor.

Oh.

That's a great pitch.

I was going to go, my mind goes straight for Kate Blanchette.

Lydia Tarr herself.

Oh, that's pretty good actor.

Denise Goff, is it?

Is that how you pronounce it?

The actor who plays Deidre on Andor.

She is awesome.

She actually is the perfect type for this as well.

Yeah.

A couple of good options.

She's great.

Kate Blanchette.

Yep.

I would almost even throw in a Kate Winslet if we're throwing Kate's around.

Winslett is.

Because you kind of want her to be sort of like

a teaching figure to

be.

You would see it.

You would see it.

I have a stunt cast idea.

Britney Spears.

What the hell are you talking about?

Isn't Britney Spears kind of like the age could play the boss?

It doesn't make no fucking sense at all, dude.

Can you imagine that?

Britney Spears is the boss, and then you watch the movie and she's fucking great.

Yeah, but that's not going to happen.

That happens sometimes.

Like, it's, it's, it's, it's a performance.

I've never seen her in a movie before.

But I'm just saying, like, it's been playing a Britney Spears type.

We haven't been like, hey, disappear into a role as the boss.

It's not going to happen.

I've just never heard a Nick Wants to Go Home answer more than ever in my life.

Yeah.

It's not fucking Britney Spears.

Nick's done.

He wants it out of the fucking podcast.

So do I, but I'm not answering incorrectly.

I think that's a good pitch.

I think if...

No, it's not.

It's the pitch.

Here's the thing.

I could hear it being said.

I could hear it being said.

I don't know if I'd hear it being said in the year of our Lord 2025.

Maybe in 2003,

if they're trying to adapt this movie when the game is new, maybe.

But I don't think they're like, I don't think anybody's like, let's get Britney Spears in a movie right now.

But you're not doing it for, I mean, you're doing it for, like, first off, she does have a lot of

people know who she is.

She has a large fandom.

And I know that there's a little bit more of a

regal quality to the boss that maybe Britney does not necessarily evoke.

But it's more like, hey, that's unexpected.

And, oh, wow.

We'll see what she's going to do, I guess.

Exactly.

I guess I would, I would, here's the thing.

I'm seeing the movie no matter what.

I'm not seeing it if Britney Spears is the boss.

The boss is 42 years old

as of the events of Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater.

All right, so then moving on, we have Revolver Ocelot.

So, see, now this is where I think we can get Butler.

We get Butler in a sort of like gunslinging creep kind of.

Yeah, how old is Ocelot in this one?

I mean, certainly, you know,

he's significantly older when you're seeing him in Metal Gear Solid, but that's also like much, you know, 30 years in the future.

So, okay, so if we if Naked Snake is Superman, we can't do this.

Nicholas Holt's a great revolver ocelot.

That's a home run.

Throw him in there.

Nicholas Holt would be a great revolver ocelot.

I think he'd have a lot of fun with that.

Yeah, he'd be perfect for it.

And he looks just like him.

Yeah, he's got the same eyebrow arch.

Fuck it.

One and done.

Yeah, that's great.

We don't need anybody else.

You sure you don't want to have Britney Spears play this too?

I honestly kind of think that Nicholas Holt could also be Naked Snake.

Like, Like, he's like a very versatile actor.

He's very good.

Interesting.

The thing is, there's just like so much, like, not in the same movie because, like, there's so much clones and such

that it would just confuse the lore.

Yeah, of course.

All right.

So,

after

Revolver Ocelot, who's next?

We have Colonel Vulgan, who's the electric man.

Right.

Now, this, you go, you go somebody, you go somebody who's like a heavy, like a classic sort of like big tough guy for sure.

He's already, I mean, mean, yeah, I mean, he's kind of already in the Kojima ecosystem via Death Stranding.

I kind of almost feel like this is a Mads.

Yeah, it could be a Mads.

Pretty good.

It could be a Mads.

I like Mads Mickelson in that for sure.

That's great.

Yep.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Look at him.

It's Mads 100%.

He's born to be Vulgan.

He's Vulgan.

And I also, like, he's a little old.

Yeah.

Dolph Lundgren, I feel like, is maybe kind of the

really really a bad pitch.

That's pretty good, actually.

It's not bad.

It's also not bad.

Like, you could see Dolph, like, kind of being like, oh, shit, Dolph is back.

He fucking brought it as Colonel Volgan.

What age is Dolph Lundgren pulling around right now?

67 years old.

Yeah,

he's doing great.

Yeah.

Isn't he like some kind of genius or something?

He is extremely smart.

Yes.

I think he has a degree in like biochemistry or something like that.

And he's one of those guys who's just like, like, like, like, like a big brainiac.

And then someone's just like, hey, man, you look like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he's like, okay, I guess I'll be a movie star.

I guess I look like this.

I better be in movies.

Yeah.

Okay, so then after Colonel Vulgan, Sokolov.

Now, this is where I can see my man Stanley Tucci having the time of his fucking life.

Oh, Tucci would crush this.

Tucci would crush this.

Buscemi would crush this.

Tucci would maybe have a little too much fun is the thing.

Yeah.

What about the guy who played

John Adams?

Oh, Paul Giamatti?

Giamatti.

Paul Giamatti is Sokolov on the poster.

That's fucking great.

Can I also say just like kind of a play against type as a famously bald actor and you let him grow out the wings a little bit?

It could be fun to have a Statham in here.

Yeah, Statham doing like a true character sort of piece.

Yeah, give him a mustache.

He doesn't really have facial hair.

I could see Jason in there.

Yeah.

Why not?

He's still trying to do an accent.

He's like, all right, here's what we're going to do.

Here's what it is, Sokolov.

You're from the Isles, aren't you?

I was born there, yeah.

My parents are Russian,

all right, good enough,

okay.

Eva,

this is a tough one, Ariana Grande.

Ariana Grande would be great.

I think you kind of want, gosh,

Ariana Grande.

I mean, here's the thing.

Put her in any movie, and I'm like, this is going to be great.

She's really, she's just extremely She's got star quality.

She would be great in this.

How about,

gosh?

This is the whole thing of just like, I just don't know young people.

Yeah, I guess.

Who's young?

Ranch, who's young?

Yeah, Ranch, who is, who is this character?

Yeah.

I have no fucking clue.

You know what?

We were talking about earlier.

What about Sweeney?

Yeah, sure.

Sweeney could pull it out.

That's exactly who you want to cast right now.

I was going to say, I feel like we're, you know, we're already again in

the ecosystem, the Kojima ecosystem, and definitely

we were talking about her sci-fi roles earlier.

I feel like El Fanning could be a...

El Fanning would be a great evil.

That's great.

Yeah.

That's great.

Fanning.

Get a Fanning in there.

Why not?

Yeah, put a Fanning.

Okay, who's next?

After that, we have Major Zero.

Now, this is where you could have Dolphin a kind of fun.

No, that's Kevin Costner.

Oh, Costner as Major Zero is fucking great.

Heather,

that's really great.

That's who that is, though.

That's funny.

That's who that guy is.

Costner.

Costner has one note.

He doesn't want to be major zero.

He wants to be major 100.

All right, I guess.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

And I want to be a rank higher than major.

You're like, wait, what?

Costner is major zero.

That's really fun.

I don't have a note for that.

That's great.

Yeah, we're doing it.

You know what's great is if you keep Costner around for Metal Gear Solid 4, he gets to be aged into this.

Yeah, that's really good.

And then he's like, why did I join?

Yeah.

He has to do that so much work.

That's really, really fun.

Basically, for audio listeners,

he basically looks like when they take Darth Vader's helmet off at the end of Return of the Jedi.

Wait, but I think I got one.

Yeah.

I think I got one.

Costner's great.

But when we eventually shoot a couple weeks and Costner walks, we get Cranston.

Cranston is made to zero is pretty good.

Yep, Cranston is zero.

Perfect.

Because then he'll have a fucking blast

being in a pod or whatever.

Yeah, he'll have a great time.

That's really good.

Yep.

Yep.

Either of those older white men.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then finally, we have...

The Cobra unit, which is, of course, the fear, the sorrow, the end, the pain, the fury.

I kind of have an interesting idea.

Go for it.

It's the same guy

doing all of them.

That's a fun way to go.

I was going to pitch, you stunt cast it

with in sync.

Nick is mad at us for some reason.

This is so crazy.

You almost said, you fuck.

I almost lunged at you.

Here's the thing.

It's the exact right number.

Exactly.

That's what I'm saying.

It is fun.

Okay, it would be fun.

Obviously, Timberlake, the media stroll.

Oh, no, no.

No, Timberlake's the sorrow for sure.

JC is the fear.

You have Joey Faton as the end.

Yeah, you're doing

Fatone in the

prosthetic makeup, give him the big beard.

You have the time of his life.

You have Chris Kirkpatrick as the pain, and then you have finally Lance Bass as the Fury.

That's a home run.

I feel like we want to see Lance Bass is pretty famous.

Yeah, he's gorgeous.

You have to actually, you know what?

He's the sorrow.

And Timberlake is the pain.

And then Kirkpatrick, sorry, is the Fury.

Great.

That's fun.

I like it.

Fun and done.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

I kind of was thinking that maybe like David

Dalsmashian would be a great

pain.

He'd be a great bug guy.

Great actor.

Oh, yeah.

He fucking rocks.

He's so great.

Who's like a fun old fuck?

Like, to be the end.

Well, I think Cranston, if he's, if, if Costner takes zero, the end could be Cranston.

We were talking about him before the recording.

Here's the thing.

The end is a hundred years old.

Yeah.

I think if you can get like, hey, Robert Robert Duvall, you want to come out of retirement.

You're in your 90s.

Hey, Clint Eastwood.

Yeah.

You want to fucking like like we are going to get a guy who is super duper old

but still can bring it

in a role that requires limited mobility.

I mean like it would be it could be a kind of a fun swan song for someone to just come in there, an older actor, a legend to come in there and just ham it up a little bit.

Either way,

when the Cobra unit comes out, big pop in the theater.

Everyone's going crazy because they're just like, oh my God, look at all these big stars.

Holy shit, it's in sync.

And if in sync's not available, we'll have the Backstreet Boys do, and that's okay, too.

We can go out to O-Town is a badass.

That's this week's Get Play at our producer's Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore, underscore, sard, ranch.

What are you streaming these days?

I'm literally still silent.

Do you think it's, are you, are you not having as much time to get to it, or is it so scary that you can't

get further than you are?

I've been playing maybe three to four hours once a week.

Okay, yeah.

It's a chunky game.

There's a lot to do.

It's a big boy.

Our music is by Ben Prenty, BenPrentiMusic.com.

Our artist is by Duck Brigade, DesignDuckBrigade.com, GetPlayed MerchantKinshipGoods.com.

And hey, GetAnimate, our sister show is over on Patreon.

Matt, what are we watching this week?

We're watching Birdie Wing, and we're, let me tell you something.

We're hitting a bunch of balls, and some of them are going straight in.

Birdie Wing golf girl story over at patreon.com slash get played.

Who got played?

A whole bunch of different game formats.

Britney Spears, please answer our email.

That was a head gun podcast.