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This is a head gun podcast.

All right.

Hey, buddy.

I'm excited to do the bald guy episode.

Oh, yeah, this is going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah, yeah,

let's get in the studio and just wait for Heather

to go on in there.

Oh.

Whether you're married, single, or

in a spiral of...

Okay, let me take this again, Ranch.

Hey, sorry.

Resident Evil Merchant, what's going on?

Nothing.

I was just trying to cut.

I was just doing a little side project.

Okay, well, we're waiting on Heather anyway, so if you want to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, go feel free.

I'm just going to chill.

I'm nervous if you guys are watching me.

Well,

you're just like, are you reading an ad or something?

No.

Well, okay.

That no kind of sounded like a yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, we do that.

We do that.

I know, but in case you guys were, like, not available when we guys thought I would just have some, like, backup copy.

Okay, you know what?

Well, here's the thing.

I got some show notes to prep anyway, so I'll just let you do your thing.

I'm just going to hang out for a second.

All right, all right,

take

31

from chinos to shoes,

Ziploc bags to fire extinguisher.

If you're looking for what you need around the house, then you need to go no further than

Amazon.com.

Hang on.

Yep.

So you're just reading an ad

just for the website Amazon?

What yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And is this is your this is the thing they hired you to do?

Who?

So this is a thing you're you're dude you're not getting money for.

You're just doing on your own?

I

maybe I'm unfamiliar with the process.

Yeah, generally what happens is that an advertiser will say, hey, we want to run an ad on your show.

Here are the talking points.

So we'll read something loosely like this, and then we'll be.

It's usually a contractual arrangement.

It's usually not worked.

We're just doing our own ad.

I thought you would read something that you wrote.

Uh-huh.

And then you would build them.

No, but another way this happens, though, too, is that sometimes you'll opt into a category of a type of ads, for example.

And then

some ads are then sneaky about mozzarella cheese.

Do you wish you had some in a refrigerator?

What about

if you put mozzarella cheese in your refrigerator?

You can make a sandwich or pizza.

Mozzarella cheese.

Who would that be from?

From just like the mozzarella.

The concept of mozzarella.

And I'm pretty sure.

The mozzarella cheese council?

They don't want you to do a song.

And don't do any more work than you need to.

Just read the copy.

Sometimes the ad copy on some of these things, they'll sort of like make you sort of like invent the brand.

Sort of, they'll make you sort of like invent the voice of the brand.

The testimonial, the testimonial in the middle.

Got it, got it right.

Responsibly sourced

a pragmatic outlook for change and growth.

We're talking about Vaseline.

Okay.

What?

Wait, hold on.

I want to hear more.

Vaseline!

You have overlooked it for years

as just an item in your medicine cabinet.

But did you know you can eat up to three tablespoons of Vaseline every day?

It's not just a brand name.

It's a

Vaseline.

I mean, I'm just going to guess that that's not one of their suggested uses for the product, that they probably don't want people to get.

That's just going to give me no trouble.

No, but I got that.

I mean,

I'll be.

I was just going to say, like, message received.

I mean, I got some Vaseline at home.

I'm going to dig into that bad boy.

Yeah, I'm going to get a spoonful.

Three tablespoons, you say?

We polish our domes and make some bald decisions as we draft our dream rosters of smooth-headed video game characters 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, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, and I am here with our third host, Matt Abodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we are doing something that only Nick Tiger Weiger wanted to do.

This one straight from the dome, as it were.

And you know what?

I say let my man cook.

Yeah, let him cook.

Sure.

But what is he cooking?

It's still runny.

It's been several hours.

I think it's an egg.

You wouldn't know because you can't get one open.

Wow.

How dare you?

I was saying, look, you're going to come from my guy.

I got it to fucking

here.

Look, am I sorry?

Yes.

Am I scared?

Yes.

Let me say something.

First off, my arms are covered in tattoos.

I know.

I'm martyred for death.

Let me say this.

First off,

I am not out of episode ideas.

So that's not where this is coming from.

I have plenty of episode ideas.

There wasn't DBD on the calendar, and it didn't need to be

immediately filled.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No.

This was Nick being like, what if we did this?

And me going, ah, they'll forget about that.

No.

They'll forget about that in an hour or two.

You see that.

I then become the Antonio Antonio Bandera's meme, and I'm putting my hand to my mouth, and I'm sort of going, oh.

We're talking bald video game characters on this week's Get Played, and we will get into that, and we will dedicate a good chunk of time to that discussion.

I kind of feel like this doesn't usually happen on the show.

We don't like say what the title of the episode is.

Right.

You got to hit them with the title, I think, though, right?

Want me to do it now?

You know what?

They haven't earned it.

They haven't earned it because you know what?

I'm hearing

the seed of doubt and the seed of judgment has been sowed.

And I don't know if they're ready to really to really grasp what it actually is.

Isn't the title going to be on the title of the episodes?

Yeah, but you would be surprised.

How comprehensive and how much information is in there.

One, people will still be like, I don't know what the heck.

Wow, I was surprised surprised when I turned it on.

And then, two, there's actually not enough information in there.

I wish there was more information.

Nobody's happy.

Yeah.

I think there are a lot of people who have autoplay on their apps and they don't really process episode titles.

Or they see there's a new get played and they're like, okay, and then they just put it on.

It just got pushed into their feed and they think about it beyond that.

Oh, a new get played.

They often cook.

I'm going to let them.

And they're going to pop that on.

I don't even care what it is.

I hope Matt's little game's in the episode.

This is what they're saying.

This one demented listener

listening in a straitjacket.

It's an Arkham asylum.

Even the Joker is like, this guy's crazy.

Freak likes Matt's little game.

Jesus Christ.

Have you guys seen the

Joker?

It's the only time a Joker parody has ever made me laugh.

It came out in the last couple of weeks.

It's the

woke, The Woker.

No, that sounds good.

Yeah, it does sound good.

God damn it.

It is so fucking good.

Toss it in the group chat after the show.

I absolutely will.

Shout out to The Woker.

You actually made me laugh with a Joker parody.

It's pretty fucking good.

I mean, what I'm imagining may be vastly different than what it is, but I like what's in my head.

And if it's what Nick's thinking, I'm pissed.

We got a lot of show today, and the first thing we always do is discuss some video games that we've been playing lately.

It's time for what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask you what you've been playing.

But first, I gotta ask you guys

evolution.

Yay or nay.

That's a yay for me, Resident Evil Merchant.

I think the science seems to be pretty sound.

I just heard about it this week.

Evolution.

You just heard about it.

Sapiens.

What is a sapiens?

I heard about it.

The only reason I'm going to say nay

is because look what we did.

We were given it all, and look what we did with it.

Right.

I kind of am like,

if I was still,

you know, Homo erectus.

Is that who we're talking about?

What?

You're.

You're a Homo sapien.

If I was still a Homo sapien.

No, you are.

I'm a homo sapien.

Who's the guy before?

Well, there's homo rectus, but I don't know if homo ectus was a direct ancestor of homo sapiens or if it was one of those parallel, you know, uh, human-like beings that that would eventually died out in homo sapiens reign supreme.

I don't know.

Let me just say it this way.

Yeah.

I'm further along.

in the chart than I would have cared for.

I would have

I think I would have preferred to have been sooner.

Thank you very much.

Can you go backwards?

Can you devolve?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Go in the opposite direction.

Yeah, if I wanted to be a fish or like a dog.

Can you just imagine how much more peaceful an existence?

Yeah.

Even though that you have the looming threat of one being swallowed by a bigger fish, there's always a bigger fish.

Or being yanked out of your home and

killed.

It's weird that

the fish can

move up and down, we can only move side to side.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, they can go up or down.

If you can navigate, you have a little more freedom navigating water

than people.

I think we are fish more like birds than people.

I think you just learned about evolution.

I think you just need to cool it for a second.

I don't know if you know what you're talking about, actually.

Well, a fish goes up and down and side to side, and

the

birds go up and down, and so I design.

It's

a compelling point.

And they got those little bones, too.

Yeah, they've got access to a whole different axis, whereas we're just kind of, you know, X and Y.

Damn, they got access to an axis.

Right.

This week on Deathblade, fish are birds.

Yeah, Nick, I don't co-sign that last joke.

And that's a math word for you.

And you actually probably didn't even think I was that smart.

No, that's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

i'm like freaking i'm like the hamilton guy over here

why do you write like you're running out of time

resident evil merchant uh i i don't know i mean i guess it's good that you're continually learning more and more about our world

uh yeah i would say you know at evolution do your own research but i i think it's a it seems to be pretty that's an important point everyone needs to do everyone should be doing their own research

research you can get a library card and do it whatever you want i will heartily endorse the endorse the library yeah they love the library i want a a third space a place where you can spend time without spending money yeah not a lot of stickers allowed in the books

no nick what are you playing yeah i would not put a sticker on a library book they tend to frown upon that if there was a sticker book at the library i would have to guess that a lot of those stickers have been unstuck at the books.

I can't imagine there's many stickers left at this point.

Yeah.

God, remember a sticker book?

A lot of fun.

Those ones that stunk were good.

The ones that, like, a scratch and stiff stink?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you classify it as they stink.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't like any of those smells, but it was neat that they did it.

Nick, what are you playing?

I imagine the Resident Evil Merchant got one and like the smells were like a sticker of a dead dog.

It wasn't like a strawberry.

Like a dead dog, like a wet dead dog.

Like

a strawberry that grew out of a dead dog.

Yeah.

Just a green herb.

Green herb.

You know what does a green herb smell like?

Mint.

I have an idea what it smells like, my man.

And let me tell you, you might find out on

a day I like to call 420.

I'm, of course, speaking of the plant marijuana.

Oh, Weedsman, are you?

I was just thinking about this a second ago, and I do have to voice this out loud before we continue further.

We all just ate a burrito.

Yep.

I kind of feel like I'm on one.

You think you're on one from eating that burrito?

I think it kind of charged me up.

I kind of feel like I'm on one.

On a burrito.

No, just like one.

Metaphorically.

Just sort of like, I feel like a little silly.

That didn't happen.

I usually get groggy from a heavy meal, but I'm not feeling particularly groggy right now.

That was good.

Yeah.

Five forks, I say.

Nice meal.

All right.

Calm down.

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This is an absolutely true story.

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And then they locked me on a roof.

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That's a true story.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Resident Evil Merchant, what I've been playing is an indie game called Keep Driving.

Oh, this was developed by

a team of...

My brain immediately assembled what the game is.

It's just

you see something horrible on the side of the road

and you have a prompt and it's stop or keep driving and dad is

at the wheel and mom is just screaming, keep driving, keep driving.

The game is basically the exact opposite vibes of that, actually.

This is a really chill game.

This was developed by Joseph Martinovsky and Christopher Anderson.

This is a two-person team who calls themselves

YCJY,

located in Sweden.

And this is an open-road RPG where you're a young adult in the early 2000s on an aimless cross-country road trip.

Oh.

There's this soothing pixel art aesthetic.

It reminds me to some degree.

This isn't one-to-one.

It's a little bit more lo-fi than that, but it has the same sort of, you know, nice pixel art portraits of something like Coffee Talk.

Okay.

And

it's a fictionalized world.

It's not explicitly to the U.S., but it does seem like it's analogous to American geography and car culture, which also means this game has one of my favorite things, which is the European take on America, which I always love seeing.

Anyway, so basically what happens is you drive from checkpoint to checkpoint on this map of this continent.

You keep your car gassed up.

You repair it.

You customize it.

And you make sure you're rested and fed.

And that's kind of the game.

You can get status effects, like you get cold or you get sad, and then you can fix those by like buying a hot coffee or finding a porno mag in the woods.

There's these encounters that happen that are a little, everyone just blazed past that.

I thought someone was going to say something about my porno mag thing.

It's the thing that happened in the game.

You find a porno mag in the woods.

I just kind of feel like it's like a thing that happens

i guess it's too real yeah yeah i was like i was like no i was like that's happened we've all done i've seen that

someone on forest porn so how does it get there and what are people i mean they're just jacking off in the woods i guess they're just leaving it

The encounters, I will say,

they're a little abstract, even though I do like what is effectively the combat system.

So it'll be a thing like

you're pulled over by the cops.

And then you'll see this,

there's a lot of

art in this game, and there's a lot of animation in this game.

So it's like all this stuff will be fully rendered.

So like a police cruiser will pull you over.

But during this encounter, it will have

various icons will come up on screen.

And then the way you do various moves is that you can kind of cancel out those individual icons, icons signifying things like, you know, durability of your car, fuel,

people's moods, money.

And so

like you'll use like a certain ability, like basic, like step on the gas, and that ability will cancel out, will neutralize certain of those icons.

It's a little bit hard to describe when you're playing it.

It makes a little bit more sense, but also it's still

not necessarily one-to-one with what's happening on screen and what's happening in that reality.

So

it just kind of like feels a little bit mini-gamey and detached, but it's okay because it's not really like the whole point of the game.

The game is mostly vibes.

And a big part of the game that

is great is picking up hitchhikers.

So,

you know, during the course of some runs, I picked up an old hiker who wanted to be taken up to the mountains.

And he was just like a super old guy.

They've all got unique banter.

He had like kind of a British way of talking.

I don't know if that comes from

the game's authors being European or is he specifically meant to be affected as a Brit.

But like his stats take a dive when you go into cities because he likes country life.

There's the scumbag, and he keeps getting chased by loan sharks.

Like you'll get to a certain town and like loan loan sharks will show up and try to threaten him, and you'll have to

pay him off, or whatever.

Uh, he would also steal your money while you were sleeping to gamble.

Um, there's a guy who keeps falling asleep, but he has certain abilities only work while he's asleep.

And then there's a character who I think is the most talked-about character in this game: the Hurricane, who's this cool young woman who just turns out to be out of her fucking mind.

Um, one of the quests she gave, because they all have their own unique quests, and a lot of times they're like, Hey, take me to this place, take me to this festival, take me to this.

The hiker wanted to be taken to the mountains.

Um,

her unique one of her requests is, I want you to drive drunk.

Anyway, it's really fun.

It has a lot of character.

I was surprised it was as robust as having like a side quest where, or side, a side quest type of side quest where you get out of the car and explore an area in first-person mode and kind of a grid-based, you know, look around and find treasure.

And the vibes, as I mentioned, are absolutely impeccable.

There's nice moments when you're driving.

You just have a Zen breakthrough looking at clouds and, you know, that could affect your stats to give you a perk.

There's a whole skill tree that's

got a lot going on.

I find low stakes role-playing really comforting.

It's the same sort of feeling I get from something like Stardew Valley of like, yeah, you can't, there is a way you can stress out about this.

There's a way you can min-max this.

But even the fail state isn't like.

horrible in this game and you can kind of you know

avoid it pretty easily like it's it's not super it's not a punishing sort of roguelike run based game um i i mean i there's there's a stretch I played for two and a half hours one session without really even noticing it because it's just sort of like, you know, you're just kind of living in it.

And I think it's been really well received for that reason.

One thing I will say, so I did end one run and I picked the boringest, most Weiger end possible, which is just I went to a town and I got a job.

And it's great because the ending is just like, just like, oh, you know, you go to work now, you don't kind of abandon the road.

I guess this is your life.

I really enjoyed this game.

And I think it's like if you're looking for something comforting,

or just a good, just a sort of good mood piece, I think keep driving.

I've had a lot of fun with it.

So that's what that's what I've been playing.

Yeah, I had not even heard of that.

So I just wish listed it because I'd be curious to check it out.

Yeah.

I will.

I guess I have more to say, but

you can come back to me because I've been dominating the conversation.

Oh.

Heather, what are you playing?

But that's how that works, is what you're playing.

You can dominate the conversation.

I want to hear the conversation.

All right.

So last week we used RNG to pick the game in my backlog I play next.

The ranch number generator.

The ranch number generator.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth 1.

And I started playing it the very next day.

I played it for like five hours straight on the day after we were last recorded.

What a fucking video game.

That's fucking good, dude.

That's so good.

I'm so glad I forced myself to come back to it.

I can't believe I almost just skipped it because it was just kind of like, all right, I played remake.

If you played remake and you loved remake and you're like, I don't really need more of it, play rebirth because it's like perfected remake.

It's so fucking good.

And I am glad to hear that a lot of people are giving it a second glance now that it's on PC.

Apparently it's been selling quite well on Steam.

It's maybe supplanted Alan Wake 2.

Last I said was like the best looking game I've ever played.

It's like maybe taken that slot.

Yeah.

But then they also realize what happened is that I built a new PC.

So like that's part of part of what I'm reacting to.

But it is a gorgeous game.

Everything's going to be gorgeous.

and also

it's just like more, it's just nicer to look at than Allen Wake 2 because there's just like, you know, like grass and

bright colors.

Yeah, there's

so much diversity of the biomes and in and in the palette, and the character animation is so incredibly lush.

The side note, Tetsuya Nomura's character designs for Final Fantasy VII are...

Are those like the best ever for a roster top to bottom?

Because it's like, you look at that.

I'm trying to think what else is even in the running.

Something like Street Fighter 2, of course.

Like every character pops.

Every character is immediately identifiable.

But Final Man 7's characters, you look at all of them, like, God, they all are so fucking.

And that's quite a silhouette test.

That's exactly

exactly who everybody is.

Yeah, and they look, the, the, you know, the, the, the modern, the contemporary redesigns that, of course, are established in Remake, but are, are done so well in Rebirth.

Um,

yeah, so much, so much animation, a level of polish where even minor cutscenes, like you're just talking to a random NPC and it's fully voiced, fully animated, camera blocked.

It's like, I mean, it's like Baldur's Gate 3 does the same thing where every single one is treated with the same level of care, but it really is something.

And Contra Allen Wake 2, where I wasn't quite sold on the combat, here the combat is so good.

It's so

kinetic.

It is fun.

It's rewarding.

I'm excited for battles to begin.

I liked it in Remake, but I really like it in Rebirth.

It's got the hybrid, and people who play

the first one are familiar with how it is, but I'll just say it anyway.

It's got this hybrid action slash JRPG menu menu combat.

It's kind of like real time with pause.

And it's engaging and overwhelming, but manageable because you have time to like evaluate what you're going to do.

Yeah.

But you're also like, it rewards just hot swapping between characters so often.

And that's, that's the thing that I've just sort of like, I'm getting back into the rhythm of after having played a bunch of remake of like, oh yeah, right.

Basically, as soon as I start whatever,

as soon as I start this attack, as soon as I start this animation, I switch to another character so I can, you know, start going ham with them.

I'm playing with Japanese VO because that's how I played Remake.

I really dig the performances.

The thing is that they introduce so many systems immediately that it's kind of hard to keep track of everything.

They don't stop coming.

They don't stop.

They just keep coming.

Like the first 10 hours of gameplay, just like here's thing after thing after new thing, and you're still getting a grasp on the old thing and also remembering stuff from Remake if you played that.

I can't even remember what elements of all the upgrade systems and what have you or carryovers from Remake, but it is still really, really good.

I'm so into doing all the shitty little side quests.

They're all awesome.

Matt, and I say that with affection.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's just like,

yes.

We know what kind of side quest I'm talking about, but they're all really fun in this.

Yes.

My question for you, Matt, as someone who played Rebirth as one of Rebirth's biggest advocates, how do you feel about Chadley?

I'd kill a man to save Chadley.

Chadley is my guy.

Chadley, I love Chadley.

He's just a little dork.

He's just a little sniveling dork that wants data.

He's so great.

But he rocks.

And then, like, he's like, I don't know.

He's a necessary NPC.

Yeah, I can't believe there's like there's apparently an anti-Chadley movement.

I can't believe this.

I think it's because he's not in the original game.

So he's like not

part of it.

But I think he's cool.

He's cool.

Like when you start to find the different things in the environment,

I can't remember what they're called presently, but there's like these things that like a bird will lead you to that sort of like you can do sort of

like mini-game, sort of like quick time event to unlock this thing.

And that makes the boss encounters that he has easier, kind of.

And that's just, I don't know.

The whole, the whole game sort of like works together to make this like just beautiful system.

And I described it to you, I think, in the past as the Kingdom Hearts 2 of Final Fantasy VIIs.

And it really does sort of follow that by, it is exactly just more than remake, yes.

Where remake was a huge leap forward from original seven.

It's like, okay, now that we're here, let's get crazy with it.

Like, let's go nuts.

You're gonna see cloud flying around that battlefield when you start adding different materials and things like that.

It's also like seven remake is so centered on Midgar and Rebirth.

You basically are immediately into this open world, into these grasslands, and it feels so expansive.

And

I don't know, It just kind of has like a different sort of cadence to it.

Yeah, it's quite a disc 2.

Really, really enjoying the shit out of it.

One more thing I'll just mention is Queen's Blood.

Queen's Blood, the card game.

Don't even fucking get me started, dude.

Like, we'll be here all fucking day if I start talking about how good Queen's Blood is.

It's really simple, and it's so much about like controlling the board, but it's super fun.

And I want to beat every card.

There have been plenty of RPGs where I've just bounced off the card game and like, whatever, I'm just going to ignore this fucking fucking thing.

This is one like Triple Triad.

I'm like, every single person I can challenge to Queen's Blood.

I'm playing Queen's Blood.

If only they had the fucking balls to release it as a standalone game.

Yeah, I wonder.

It's so good.

Rebirth Rocks.

You're next, Heather.

On Rebirth?

Yeah.

Well, I won't lie.

This last week, I finally bid the bullet and bought myself a PS5 Pro.

Let's go.

The reason I did it.

You're a professional.

Was I'm a professional.

I'm a a professional gamer.

I wear a suit and tie when I play a game.

I'm a pro.

Was that

I finally,

like when a pro first came out, the list of games that were enhanced were so slight that I was like, eh.

But now I would say the majority of my library is PS5 Pro Enhanced.

So it's like, okay, I'll get this system.

And the three games that I downloaded for it were Fortnite, of course,

gotta do my daily driver, but also

Kingdom Come Deliverance and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

With my intention being, I've heard that this system makes rebirth look spectacular.

I should just drop in.

I should join up with Nick.

I made the mistake of first

dropping back any Kingdom Come

just to see how it looked by comparison.

And it looked so much better than on the regular PS5

that I was like, oh, wow, this is really, this is pretty.

And then I just kind of went on a couple of attempts at quests.

Yeah.

As we know from last time, I don't know what I'm fucking doing in the game.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

Like, I know there's a wedding and I know that I have to do stuff in order to get the wedding, but I don't know how to get to the people who are going to help me get into the wedding.

So I started with a side quest.

I started with the same side quest I was on the last time I talked about the game, which is, how is my dog?

Is my dog okay?

Now,

I have

an answer to your question from last week, which is,

do you have to use a consumable in order to save?

Yes.

The answer is yes.

You have to either make the potion in order to save, or you can save and exit.

Right.

And then start by continuing, but that's the only way.

Those are the only ways to save the game.

Like if you're going out on a long run,

it's Elden Ring style where it's like, god damn it.

I, if I go around a corner and there's a dude on a horse with a fucking bow and arrow, I'm toast.

Right.

So it sort of

inspires fear and cautiousness.

It's like the ink ribbon in Resident Evil.

It's like it's a consumable resource to say, to give yourself a checkpoint.

Yeah.

So I

headed out to where my dog was last seen.

And the last two times I tried it before this week's episode, I come upon a guy and he just starts walking at me and he's like, what do you want?

And

I trigger the dialogue and I'm like,

nope, nothing here, buddy.

And he's like, come here.

And I'm like, oh, fuck.

And what I've learned by dying to this one man multiple times is that he is the start of the dog quest.

And so

finally

I go, I tried sneaking up on him thinking I could get like a secret kill.

Couldn't do that.

You know, because you can like jump, jump a dude from behind.

I tried coming around a different direction.

No, I'm too low leveled to sneak.

So finally I was like, God, I just have to beat this fucking dude once.

Draw my, I think I have a wooden sword.

I don't even know what the fuck I'm armed with

and I engaged in a very thrilling

and very

challenging battle with this one dude

Again, maybe I haven't equipped.

Maybe I've dropped something.

I don't know.

But finally kill the guy.

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh shit.

Oh fuck.

I did it.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Take off all his clothes put them on my body because I have no no fucking armor

take his sword, and I'm like, oh my God, I have an actual fucking sword.

Let's go.

And I go over to look at what he was doing because he's kind of hunched over something in the grass, and it's a dead body.

And I was like, wait, what the fuck was this guy doing to this dead body?

There's no way to know.

Yeah.

He's dead.

There's no clues.

Your guy is as dumb as you are.

So he just goes,

What was happening here?

And you're like, I don't know.

And then you see a dead dog in the grass.

And I'm like, motherfuck, this game is brutal.

Wow.

And I walk over and I'm like, I can't handle this.

I can't fucking handle it.

And you get up and he's saying, oh, please don't let that be mud.

Please don't let that be mud.

Oh, God.

And you go up into the grass and it's a deer carcass.

And I was like, wow, the game got me.

Yeah.

Like, I had the feeling of the guy where I was like, oh, no, not my dog.

Like, my one mission.

Did I not get here in time?

So then I drag that guy's body into the river because I was like, I don't know how often there's a guard that walks past here.

I washed off myself so I'm not covered in blood.

And

he's like, maybe the old lady that helped me out will

maybe she saw mud.

So I go to her house and she took care of me last time.

I'm fucking, I'm fucked up from my fight.

And I'm like, hey, have you seen my dog?

And she's like, no, but I need you to hold my fucking grand.

My granddaughter is kidnapped.

And I'm like, oh, God, okay.

And then I think, oh, she has a bed here she let me use before.

I'm going to lay down in her bed and take a nap so that I can heal.

When I woke up, the old lady is screaming.

And she's like, get out of my house.

Get out.

She's like, fuck.

Oh, no.

And I'm up in the corner goes, reputation destroyed.

Oh, my God.

This happens to you in every game.

I was like, I can't.

I'm really trying to play an honorable run.

So I, by choice, exited my own game and had to go all the way back.

Oh, my God.

So I have yet to beat this man.

This game sounds like a nightmare.

So good.

I have accomplished nothing.

So that's what I've been playing.

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Matt, what have you been playing?

I'm glad you asked, Heather.

I'm basically at the final boss of Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance.

Wow.

I finished the Sora story, and I'm now in the final stages of the Riku story, and then it's done.

I'm still playing Avowed, enjoying that.

I think it's a very good game.

I just discovered that you can have a gun.

Love that.

And it's like you could have like a spear or like an axe or like a mace or a wand

or a gun.

In Kingdom Come Deliverance, I was watching clips to try and like figure out what I was doing wrong.

Yeah.

And one of the clips is he has a gun, but it's like a medieval gun.

So it takes him like 45 real-time seconds to like load the gun as like knights are charging him.

It's very, very funny to me.

Um, I'm enjoying that.

It's like, there's funny, like, I'm getting into, I'm getting too into the side quests, I think, uh, because they're all very interesting.

I like, there was a side quest

that um Maddie Myers of Triple Click wrote about, and I had seen uh her piece about it after I had done a side quest

where you help a sex worker smuggle birth control.

Oh, uh, and was like, surely nobody has a bad opinion about this.

But it was such an amazing and cool thing.

To me, that was like, this is extremely cool that this is in a video game.

You have to like lie to like these guys that like took it because they know what it is too.

It's like a crazy thing.

I loved it.

There's other really great side quests in the game, but I need to, I think, start, you know, just moving a little bit forward in it.

I'm loving my wizard build so far.

I only have a basic spellbook,

but I can do ice, electricity, or fire, or heal myself basically.

But

I did bring in something that I wanted to share.

Oh, this is exciting.

And this is a segment I'm going to call Matt's Hole.

Matt's hole.

Matt's hole.

Matt's hole.

And it's not as.

Can we?

I just note that this is a, this is not.

I'm going to surprise some listeners who have not maybe not heard the genesis of this.

Heather has a hole.

Heather's segment, Heather has a retro gaming segment, Heather's hole.

This is an homage to Heather.

This is an homage.

Okay, gotcha.

So, what I've been a hole.

It's been a minute, we haven't done it in a while.

This is a regular Game Boy Advance SP.

Okay.

I'll hand that over to you.

Okay.

I'm going to hand over a regular Game Boy Advance to Heather.

These are both my original Game Boy Advances.

Oh, what a sweet little boy this is.

And then this right here is in Anbernik RG35XX, which is a reproduction of a Game Boy Advance SP-like system.

Wow.

And this is an RG, an Ambernick RG34XX, which is basically one-to-one Game Boy Advance.

Now, the reason I have both of these

is because they're extremely inexpensive to get.

The SP model is not one-to-one.

It's very close, but yeah, it's not exactly one-to-one.

It's actually a little bulkier than the SP.

It's a little bulkier and the screen is not quite the same in terms of uh like scaling.

Whereas the um

the Game Boy Advance one, the regular model is uh basically the exact same size.

Wow.

The same scale, but not the same size screen.

No, that's yeah, exactly.

The sc the screen is bigger, but it's the correct dimension so everything scales correctly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Instead of either smushing or stretching

the right um the screens.

And the buttons

on the RG34 are preferable to me than the ones on the 35.

Sure.

The RG134, is that what this is?

The RG34, yeah.

The RG34 really,

it visually looks almost identical to this Game Boy Advance.

Yes.

But you really get a sense of there's some secret sauce to the Nintendo D-pad.

Nintendo's buttons and their D-pad are so

clicky.

Here, let me trade these with Nick so he can see.

And you can see the difference.

The difference on the SP and Bernick is that I think they use a plastic membrane on the buttons.

Okay.

The membrane on the 34

is closer to rubber, I think, or is rubber.

But it's much better than

how it is, because the SP, the buttons are too clicky and too loud for me.

But I've been really, really enjoying my time with the 34,

the regular, the, I don't know what you call that shape, the horizontal

Game Boy Advance

model, because that was my first Game Boy Advance, and I was really enjoying it.

But it can play up to, it can play past the Game Boy Advance in terms of what it's able to do.

So there are scan lines on the 34 that aren't present on this unit.

Can you change the scan line?

I think you can.

I did install a different OS on this.

So I wonder if that wiped the scan lines from it or something.

But I do think the overall, the experience overall on the

34 has been much better so far.

I did start playing a Pokemon ROM hack on it, which I've not ever thought to play before, but a lot of people in the Discord were like, you got to play one of these ROM hacks.

So I'm playing Pokemon Unbound on this thing, which is kind of like, it's kind of the thing thing about it that's so crazy to me is that because of it being a game, just basically a one-to-one Game Boy Advance with like scan lines and proper scaling, it's like I'm playing a Game Boy Advance Pokemon game that I've never played before, which is an odd experience.

And

the fact that somebody

on their own, maybe not on their own, but like

independently of the Pokemon company and Nintendo made this is fascinating to me because they just reuse assets from different Pokemon games and they include other Pokemon from various generations and they just make their own story.

And I just think it's so impressive and so cool.

So I don't remember if I said I'm playing Pokemon Unbound and it's unbelievable.

Just what you can do, what people can do better than the Pokemon company.

Very interesting to me.

There's like, there's missions that aren't just go to town,

gym, leave town.

There's like, you'll find NPCs with like thought bubbles over their heads.

And you talk to them, and they're like, oh, like, I need you to save 100 times.

And like, that's not like that interesting of a mission.

Right.

Right.

But like, you'll do that over the course of your gameplay.

And then you'll come back later on and get a reward from that person when the thing is done.

That's cool.

Like, and there's other things that are a little more intricate than that.

Like, oh, catch this Pokemon for me or whatever, and I'll...

do something for you or whatever.

It's unbelievable to me that this exists and it's very cool.

And also, I should note, I caught the vanilla ice cream Pokemon and I named it after Weiger.

I thought that was a really, really nice tribute.

I appreciate that.

Vanilla's a flavor, baby.

Vanilla's a flavor.

By the way,

the reason I haven't been talking is because I've just been playing

Yoshi's Island on the Game Boy Advance.

Real, real fucking good game.

Just a really good game.

You know what I bet would look really good on that screen?

Probably Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced.

I was going to say Mother 3.

Oh, yeah.

No, for sure.

I have it installed on there.

I have a bunch of classics that I've played through on there.

But also Tactics Advance.

I have Tactics Advanced, and I've, there's like RPGs from the Game Boy Advance era that I didn't play because I was not into those games.

So games like Sword of Mana and Golden Sun that I have been interested in my entire life that I think I'll probably maybe give a spin on.

I think Final Fantasy VI on a Game Boy Advanced screen is actually really pleasant as well.

I have it on there, so I'm excited to dig into it.

But notice how quiet those buttons are.

Like, they make a sound, but the clickiness of

even the D-pad on the SP one is just a little

favorite.

Yeah.

But I do, but I, you know.

Great little devices.

This is a really cool piece of hardware.

What was the impetus for...

Did you have these?

Did you have an analog pocket?

So I have an analog pocket.

I have a retroid pocket.

I think what the impetus is is that I'm sick.

I'm sick.

I'm a sicko.

I have, you know, DSs that are modded and PSPs that are modded.

I'm more handhelds than I do for sure by now.

I think I'm Johnny Handheld.

I get the handheld.

Is this a new nickname?

You're the Xbox kid.

You're Johnny Handheld?

I think I'm Johnny Handheld.

Wow.

You're the finisher?

I'm the finisher.

I'm the Xbox kid.

What else are we?

What am I missing?

Nick's foil.

We're sort of a team, actually.

What actually got me interested in that was that it's the influence influence of YouTube.

Like I'll watch YouTube videos of like retro handhelds and stuff.

And

the

I watch this channel sometimes Retro Game Core.

This guy Russ, and he does great videos about the hardware.

And his video on this one in particular sold me specifically because of the

the scaling of the screen because even on analog pocket the

You know the it'll scale correctly, but it'll be in black box.

It'll have like a sort of added bezel to it.

So it's a little bit smaller.

It's not flushing, it's not filling the screen.

And that to me is like, it's fine.

It gets the job done.

But I think the pocket is best when it's

the right ratio.

When it's the right ratio, yeah.

Nick's loving Yoshi's Island.

I got to stop playing this game.

I'm sorry.

It's okay.

He's stuck.

The baby crying.

I can't get the baby.

Also, every muscle in his body is locked and tense.

But yeah, I just, that came in the mail literally over the weekend, the new one, the

34,

which was exciting to me.

So I spent my weekend playing a Game Boy Advance.

I love to hear that.

This is one of my favorite that just playing this game because you mentioned Baby Mario, who, of course, you have on your back.

Yeah.

Since you play as Yoshi in this game,

people complained about like Baby Mario's crying is annoying.

And that's by design because they found that when

the crying was less annoying, that players would not prioritize rescuing Mario, and that people would rescue baby Mario basically just to shut him up.

And then you're just like, Oh,

Mother Nature is something of a game designer because actual babies are annoying as shit when they're crying, and so you want to go take care of them.

Man,

God, the original gamer

put it on a bumper sticker.

Confuse.

Calvin praying to him.

People be like, I don't know if this is disrespectful or respectful.

But that's what I've been playing.

These are rad.

This is rad hardware.

And they're not, I think all told, I was out the door like 70 bucks on that bad boy.

Like, not too, not too crazy for a,

you know, because there is like a there is a market for like modded Game Boy Advances that like, you know, can be pretty costly.

Like they if they're gonna put like an OLED screen in or something or

an SD card slot or whatever whatever mods you want a

USB-C charger like I see them done there they look really nice because they're in the original thing and that's about as close as you can get to it I think I spent some of my weekend researching because I'm when I move I'm going to wire all of my retro systems permanently into a working solution so that I can turn on any one of them and they'll appear on the proper monitor, right?

So I'm looking at an Xtron cross point.

I'm looking at maybe SCART switching stations.

I'm just sussing out different options.

And while I was doing this, I was like, you know, I have a lot of optical drive emulators on a lot of my retro systems.

The Saturn has an optical drive emulator.

I have a Dreamcast with an optical drive emulator.

And I would say that the Mega SD effectively emulates the Sega C D as an optical drive emulator, even though it's not actually there.

Yeah.

So

I'm doing all this research and like kind of like starting to schematic out how I want, how I want this system to be set up.

And then I was like, oh, you know what?

I should get is a PlayStation 2 optical drive emulator.

And then I can have all of the PlayStation 2 games running on the original hardware.

Looked it up.

One does not exist because the PS2 is very, very hard to emulate.

Yeah.

And then also like the top Reddit comment was,

nobody wants this.

What do you mean?

Like, and I was like,

what point did I, what, what, because it's nobody wants this.

PlayStation

has an optical drive emulator.

Yeah.

And PS3 allows you to play with the original PS3, allows you to play PS2 games.

So nobody is in the market for a PS2 optical drive emulator except me.

Except Heather Cameron.

Because I want one that plays all of the PS2 games outputted to a

CRT monitor without any lag.

And I know people are like, oh, the this doesn't, this has like no lag or that has no lag, but they all have just the whisper of lag makes me feel like I'm not playing the actual thing.

And that's also part of the, the, the thing that I have to make sure that my multi-monitor, multi-game system hookup has is lagless pass-through.

Um, because I don't want there to be it like even a whisper, uh, even the ghost of lag.

But, um, yeah, nobody makes a PS2 ODE.

So, um,

now you know.

Now I know, but you could, I mean, gosh, well, you want the you want the hardware emulation is what you want.

Like, you want the, yeah, so getting one of these wouldn't really solve that.

Yeah, because like they, you know, they sell them,

sometimes they sell them with cards that have the games on them already.

I mean, you could buy a Raspberry Pi that plays PS2 games.

Yeah, but it's not really.

But it's not, it doesn't, it's not quite the same.

No, right.

Not to me.

I will say one thing about holding a Game Boy Advance again is, you know, I like, I like that SP and I used, I ended up playing the, even though I got a Game Boy Advance at launch, I ended up playing the SP more,

particularly the SP light, the revision that had the, I can't remember which one, one of them had a front light, one of them had a back light, whichever the revision was, it was a really great screen.

But your hands are a little cramped in that thing.

Yeah.

And the holding on the other side, the sides of the screen, which obviously they've retained for things like the switch of the stream, the Steam Deck, is just such a more natural position for your wrists and your thumbs.

It really is.

Like, I truly spent hours and hours and hours over the weekend just playing with it and was just like, I could do this.

Yeah.

I could do this all day.

This is, and I, and I effectively did on one of the days.

Hey, speaking of spending hours and hours and hours playing something,

our producer, Rochelle Chen Ranch, has spending some time with a game of her own.

Ranch, tell us about Hollow Night.

I am currently at 96% completion.

Wow.

Hollow Knight.

Oh, my goodness.

And I have had 92 hours of playtime.

So the ratio is really bad.

I feel like the last time we checked in on you, you were like at 30 hours.

Did you, this ballooned in recent weeks?

Yeah, because I realized that it's a great game to play while i'm deep bleeding audio which is like a third of my workday

not on this show certainly

this show is the longest

you're trying to beat a boss hearing me make some inane comment

it actually helps

because on the one hand you're doing your job and then on the other hand you're like then you're doing something you like

Yeah,

I'm stuck.

I don't think I can progress further than this.

I technically have gotten an ending.

Right.

But there's still like quite a few things that I haven't done that I know that can get me to the other endings.

Is this one of those games that has an over 100% like threshold you can reach?

Okay, I remember this.

Because my brother, I did finish this, like finished this game completely.

I remember remember him telling me about that.

I don't remember what exactly that.

You say 112?

112%.

Okay, okay.

I want to say.

You made a substantial dent in that if you're at 96 out of 112.

Yes, I'm extremely proud of you, Manch.

This is huge.

It's negatively impacting me.

So if the audio this week isn't de-bled,

you know why.

But no, I think that if you got...

all the way to 96%,

you could get the rest of the way.

I think you could do it.

I believe in you.

To borrow a phrase from another show, believe in the me that believes in you.

Wow.

When did you originally start?

Because I had my experience with Hollow Knight.

I have not finished Hollow Knight.

I played

a bit of Hollow Knight.

I bounced off of it years ago.

I know it's a game that if I actually dedicate some time to, I'll absolutely love it because it's exactly the kind of game that I love.

And everyone with good taste, including you, seems to really like this game.

But like.

What was your initial experience with Hollow Knight?

And when did you finally get hooked?

My friends have been telling me to play it forever.

Yeah.

And I think like the first 10 hours of it even, I was not really there.

I was like, I'm just aimlessly wandering around.

I have no fucking clue what I'm supposed to be doing.

And I don't know.

They just got better.

I was like, starting to understand the point.

Right, right.

The bosses, I was like, okay, this is how you beat the boss.

I can do it.

Because the combat's

pretty challenging.

And then it's a little bit inscrutable in terms of navigating the world.

Like it's a little bit, uh, it doesn't quite tell you exactly where to go and what to do, you know?

Right.

That's your experience.

Yeah, okay, okay.

So it's a, it's a little bit of a

black box in terms of getting into it.

But yeah, once you get into it, okay, it's, it's just, it's worth pushing past that initial phase.

Exactly.

Um, I'm glad I wish you godspeed as you, as you push ahead towards 112.

I thought that's uh, that sounds like you played the shit out of this game.

Yeah, I've almost thrown my Steam Deck

multiple

Wait, so what is your workflow?

You've got the podcast audio

in your headphones and you're playing your Steam Deck handheld.

Well, when it's the bleeding, nothing is being played.

It's just like processing.

Oh, okay.

So it's like.

So this is just, this is like rendering.

This is like a passive process.

Got it, got it.

So you don't even have to listen to us.

No.

That sounds like paradise.

It's probably the preferred way to experience the show.

Is there a way I can do that while recording?

All right.

Shall we talk about bald characters?

Yeah, and Nick,

what are we calling this?

We're calling this Baldies Gate.

Again, we are not out of episode ideas.

No, no, no, no, no.

We are instead drafting our rosters of bald video game characters because there are a lot of baldies over the course of gaming history.

Yes.

But the thing about this is, we couldn't do this again.

Like, we couldn't do a characters with hair draft because that's just too it's too many.

It's too many.

You could maybe do characters with like crazy hair draft.

You know, that's that's

it doesn't sound like we're out of ideas, are we?

Kind of sounds like we got a lot left in the tank.

I have some rules questions for everyone.

My first question in terms of figuring out the parameters of this exercise, are skeletons bald?

What the fuck?

Yes.

Skeletons do count as bald.

Okay.

I think skeletons count as bald, and I kind of want to put, I want to put this out there.

Yeah.

I'm going with a three-hair maximum.

Like the Homer-Simpson threshold.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

I think if you have

less than three hairs, you're bald.

But if you got four,

I don't know.

Here's what I would just put.

We'd probably be splitting hairs, wouldn't we?

Here would be my counter

is the Larry David.

uh theorem which is that i feel like larry david is a bald guy yes he's got the wings right?

Like he's got male pattern baldness on top.

Yeah.

So like I feel like if you do the, if you do the Homer Simpson,

like if you if you establish that as the rule of law, then you're excluding a lot of notable baldies who have just like let it be natural.

That's true.

I'll let, you know what then?

It's not a rule.

Okay.

My other thing is I feel like this is, this is what I'll call the male commander Shepard for Mass Effect rule, which is that I don't think a close-cut character, like a guy with my, even though I am balding, my hair as it is now, I've got this buzz cut.

I don't think I'm like a bald guy.

No, this is not, this would not be a bald character.

You would be considered a hair haver, I think.

Yeah, I'd be, yeah.

So, like, like this should be, these should be true chromedomes.

Okay.

Yeah.

How many we're drafting?

I think we said four.

Okay.

We also then said Mount Baldmore.

Right, Mount Baldmore.

We're drafting her Mount Baldmore.

And I just, like, I just know what it sounds like.

I just, I feel like we have to get out against it.

I got to get out in front of it.

We're not out of ideas.

Actually,

the truth is, we have stuff

locked in for other days.

Yeah.

We just didn't have one for this.

And sometimes you just kind of come up with a really good idea

close to when you're doing it.

This is great.

Does that mean we're going to pivot?

This is Baldi's Gate.

And I will start because I have a character from its namesake, Baldur's Gate.

Minsk from Baldur's Gate.

Okay, that's really good.

Who is present in both the BioWare games and the Larian developed Baldur's Gate 3, my favorite game of all time?

Minsk, known for his undying devotion to his miniature giant space hamster Boo.

Very funny character.

One of the funniest characters, not just in this franchise, but I would say in all of gaming.

Very, very

hilarious dialogue and

an ironclad sort of persona that is just consistent throughout how he is written.

Also a pretty useful party member who is an absolute unit, just absolutely fucking jacked.

Yeah.

And I will say additionally, and this is part of why I think he's a great pick as a bald character for my personal Mount Baldmore.

Aesthetically, he has this awesome face slash head tattoo that takes advantage of his bald scalp.

Yeah.

So using that extra real estate for a little bit of body art.

And I think

that's part of why I think he fits so well.

So Mince is my first

pick.

Extremely cool.

Yeah.

Somebody with tattoos.

Yeah.

Which is all of us in this room.

Yes.

Yeah.

Except for Ranch,

who I believe is

next

to become a tattooed person.

Sounded threatening.

People are not making Ranch get a tattoo.

It's content, baby.

And I see people who look extremely cool with like face and neck tattoos

that extend toward the top of the skull.

I don't think I could do it.

I don't think I could pull it off.

Yeah, I think you have to have the confidence in your own skin to do that.

But yeah, I don't think I could pull it off either.

But Godspeed.

And Minsk certainly pulls it off.

Mince looks great.

I do want to point out that Ranch made a

graphic for us.

It took the logo of Baldur's Gate and replaced the U and the R with a Y with just a plain text Y.

Pretty good.

With a red background.

Pretty good.

It's very good.

And with the appropriate attention to detail that this episode deserves.

Well, who wants to go next?

Heather, would you like to go?

Sure, I'll go next.

Kratos, next.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Kratos has got to be maybe the number one overall pick.

I did not pick Kratos for myself, although I do like Kratos, and he is a great baldy.

But he also has the benefit, or not the benefit, the

I feel like bald on top, big beard is a big beard is a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's a, he's a, he's a big dude.

Uh, I like him, you know, his adventures through

Norse mythology have been

very pleasant and exciting.

Um,

fucking game is still on my backlog, the Ragnarok.

Uh,

but um,

I don't know.

He seems like if I found out that Kratos was going to be like training me, I'd be like, let's go.

This would be good for me.

I'd be happy.

What do you mean training you?

What does that mean?

For what?

For what?

What?

Fictional character is going to train you for some sort of event?

What are you guys talking about?

What do you mean?

What?

What do you mean?

What are you preparing for?

Whatever he wants me to prepare for.

Like,

if he came into my house and was like, let's go.

What I'm saying is if

Kratos goes straight to you.

Yeah.

We're all cooked.

We're cooked.

Why?

I guess we're probably doing okay.

What if he's training me to save your lives?

I will say that

side by side.

Kratos kind of looks like a darkest timeline Minsk.

Yeah, because they do sort of have the face tattoo thing going for them.

Although...

Something horrible happened to Boo and Minsk is out for revenge.

I think a lot of these guys are going to look like themselves.

The thing about it is

the Kratos' thing is less of a tattoo and more of

the blood of his wife and daughter.

Right.

Right, right, right.

Bear.

Okay, so I guess that falls to me.

Yes.

My first pick.

Kratos is immediately off, which sucks for me.

Because he's one of my guys.

But you know who else is one of my guys?

Who?

From the Hitman franchise?

Agent 47.

Very strong pick.

Certainly very well known for.

Balding.

He's like specifically bald.

Yeah, he's specifically bald.

He's a bald guy

and he's got bald guy ideas.

The thing about this game,

particularly the new ones, Hitman's 1, 2, and 3, they're such Heather games that I can't believe you haven't played them.

Look, man,

there are so many games that I am going to have died not playing.

Yeah.

And it breaks my heart because I love video games so very much.

Yes.

And sure, there's probably somebody out there who's like, well, stop playing Battle Royale games if you want to play Hitman.

And that time is taken up right now with going to the same fucking dude next to the river and hitting him with a wooden stick until he dies.

Because the thing about it, it's like, I mean, there are stealth games.

You like stealth, okay?

The thing about it is, like,

the puzzle aspect of it is combat.

Because, like, you can kill a waiter, right?

Then take the waiter's clothes, dress as the waiter, and then do the waiter's job until that gets you closer to the target.

Yeah.

It's extremely,

extremely funny.

The games are so funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've

only seen clips of it on TikTok that make me want to play the game.

Yes.

I will say, based on the graphics so far, this is the most alarming thing we've ever done.

Everyone's everyone's on January 6th doing a different gimmick.

We got two QAnon shamans.

One classic Brooks Brothers, a freak.

Okay, so Nick, back to you.

All right.

How to set this one up why don't i just say let's go girls

that's right y'all thought ladies can't be bald let me introduce you to jack from mass effect Jack is a bald uh woman who is a true badass and is a biotic in the Mass Effect universe, which basically means she's telekinetic.

Has a classic kind of sci-fi tropey sort of backstory.

Subject Zero, originally, a gifted child stolen from her family, raised in a lab by Cerberus, who was an evil pro-humanist, actually human supremacist organization.

She was imprisoned.

She was experimented upon until she became so powerful, she took violent revenge on her captors.

Like Minsk.

Makes the most of the added real estate with a cool ass head tattoo.

Look how fucking cool that tattoo is.

So now that you're a tattooed person and you keep bringing this up, I'm actually nervous that this is going to be your next move.

And I'm going to shave my head and get like a barcode at the age 47.

No,

I don't know if I'm gonna do that if I do the head tattoo move, but I don't know, maybe.

I thankfully have enough coverage where I'm fine with the regular old hair right now.

But but Jack is really cool and is also

extremely mean

and scary,

which means that I love her.

Yeah, no, here's the thing: she's fine as hell.

No, extremely bad.

The thing about

I want to just circle back.

Yeah.

To whatever the fuck that was you did when you started with this.

What are you talking about?

The Shania thing.

Yeah, what about that?

You think that was okay?

I think so.

That's why I did it.

I think it was good enough to do it on a podcast.

She gets a pretty low bar.

And here's the thing: we are already doing this.

um, I was giving you a hard time.

Um, in actuality, I loved it.

Heather, you're up, Heather.

Back to you.

Um,

who's bald?

Who is bald?

She thought, Who's a bald person?

Then I looked up on my shelf and I saw Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, and I realized my man Sagat is a bald guy.

Wow, he is a great, great baldy.

And so,

let's go, fighters.

So

I'm putting Sagat on my, what is on my Baldy's gate?

Sagat is from Street Fighter 2.

He sports.

I actually might be in Street Fighter 1.

He sports a chest.

He is in Street Fighter 1.

That is...

uh diagonal across his chest that was burnt into his flesh from a dragon punch delivered by Ryu.

He also killed Dan's dad.

So

when

Dan faces off against Sagat, Dan is very emotional.

He cries.

He shouts his father.

He shouts for his father.

And then more often than not, immediately gets just trashed by Sagat.

Dan's car looks like he was almost cut in half.

Yeah.

Well, Ryu's is a really strong guy.

Yeah.

I,

you know, when I, when I picked him, I was worried a little bit that since

Tiger Weiger is now in our lives, that

Sagat, known for shouting Tiger, Tiger, Tiger,

was going to be

chosen by Weiger.

But instead, he got horny too fast.

So I got to.

Hold on.

Very useful party member in Mass Effect 2.

I'm talking about Minsk, dog.

So, Sagat is my second bald for Baldi's Gate.

Matt?

Did you guys know there's a bald character in Kingdom Hearts?

Oh, boy.

Is it Xehanort?

I think I might know who you're thinking of.

Should I keep going?

Master Zehenort is on my list.

Wow.

Good luck, Ranch, spelling that.

It's

X-E-H-A-N.

X-E-H-A-N-O-R-T.

Zayanort.

He's voiced by Leonard Nimoy.

Wow.

Oh, Zayanort.

By the way, Sagat is in Street Fighter 1 as the final boss, not playable,

but the second

Thailand stage, you fight Sagat as either Ryu or Ken, who are the only two playable characters.

Tiger,

he is also.

Look at his scale in this.

He is big as shit.

Whoa, fuck.

Yeah, he's huge.

Imagine having to fight somebody that big.

Yeah.

I mean, he is big in Street Fighter 2, but it's not as pronounced.

Xehanort.

Game really sucks.

Street Fighter 1.

It's real bad.

God, it's like, it might as welln't even exist.

Have you played it?

It's real bad.

I have played it.

It sucks.

It's so crazy because Street Fighter 2 is so good.

Yeah.

And like every Street Fighter act is basically as good as that, kind of.

Yep.

uh for

man we could live in a world where street fighter like didn't exist

it's it's crazy um

xehanor of course

is a bad guy from kingdom hearts but depending on who you ask he might be misunderstood oh do you think so i don't think so i think he seems a little bad um but that picture that picture that uh ranch picked he kind of looks a little bit cheeky doesn't he a little bit he might be like up to something you can't be too mad at him

He's my friend.

What is this episode?

We're just ranking.

It's the same as any of the other draft ones.

Yes.

But we're just drafting bald guys.

I think it's interesting the breadth of bald characters that exist in interactive entertainment.

Why is that a surprise to you?

Bald people exist.

That's a great point, Heather.

And we should acknowledge them.

And you know what?

Some of our best are bald.

And now, this next segment is for them.

If you're listening and you're bald, I just want to say, here at Get Played, we love you.

We love you.

We're doing this episode for the Baldies.

Yeah.

I don't know if they like being called baldies.

We're doing this for the chrome domes.

Listen, cue ball, this is for you.

My dad is bald.

So my stepdad's bald.

And we make fun of him.

Oh, man.

Oh, no.

Well, here's the thing.

He makes jokes about it too.

He knows that's fun.

Because the thing about him is,

he used to have long, beautiful hair.

Oh, sure.

He was a soCal surfer dude.

Hey, I love that.

He had long blonde hair.

Wow.

And it's just now all gone.

I think it goes when you become a police officer.

Mother time comes for us all.

All right.

I'm up.

You're up.

Okay.

Here's the thing.

Who's bald?

Who is bald?

Who's bald?

Let me tell you who's bald.

Someone who's so fucking bald that their name includes the word bald.

I'm speaking, of course, of bald bull from Punch Out.

Wow.

Wow.

Bald Bull.

That's bald as hell.

Bald Bull, the Turkish boxer.

who does have the classic George Costanza style wings around the side.

Just a little bit of hair, but is very, very bald and a little bit pointy on top.

A bit of an egghead shape.

Cone head looking ass.

Yeah, is defined by that characteristic.

I think this is a really cool character design from the Punch Out franchise, which has a lot of great character designs.

I will also say that I have particular affection for Bald Bull because it was a very satisfying time in my

very, very young gamer life when I figured out the timing of his bull charge and when to counter it with a gut punch and how to defeat this character.

I think the punch out franchise is oftentimes

you know,

it's not a top-tier Nintendo franchise, but I think the Punch Out games are overall very, very fun.

How many are there?

I know this is the original one.

I think there was one for the Wii.

Yeah, there was a Wii one.

The Wii one was good.

I mean like like

I feel like there's probably like a half dozen canonical ones, maybe fewer than that.

Because there's punch out, there's super punch-out.

There's a punch of the scale of Mario next to Bald Bull.

Yeah, look at the scale of Little Mac, your character next to Bald Bull.

I mean, this motherfucker is huge.

Like, this is a, that's a horrifying.

Like, if you it's David and Goliath, yeah.

Worse than Sagat.

Yes.

By far worse than Sagat.

Yes.

If I was that,

if that, if I was against a guy that was that big and I was that little, I would be so curious as to which one of us was wrong.

Wrong?

Who's out of scale?

Me, you can't beat that big.

Oh, I see.

I see.

I thought you meant like who had done the worst thing?

I mean, this is incorrect.

Yeah.

Yep.

So if you're counting the arcade games, there are five punch outs.

Wow.

Five punchouts total.

And the last one was the Wii game that came out in 2009 so it's been a while yeah they should have released new punch out that was very fun uh by the way the punch out wiki which is exhaustive has a section for each character which details all of their infractions according to the rules of boxing governing bodies and i find that i found this very entertaining uh regarding bald bull quote he is shown lifting a dumbbell in the corner breaks the dumbbell counts as a foreign object which is not allowed Upon getting back into a match, he throws the dumbbell he was using into the crowd.

This counts as interfering with the crowd, which is not allowed.

It'd also be very dangerous to throw a dumbbell.

Look, boxing's rules are pretty stringent, so yeah, you can't apply cartoon logic.

A gentleman sport.

All right, Heather, back to you.

The sweet science.

Strongest of the Turks,

the

offensive unit.

And the Shinra Electric Power Company.

Oh, I know where this is going.

Is Rude from Final Fantasy VII.

What is that?

You had both Kratos and Rude on your long list.

Oh,

that's what happens in a draft sometimes.

It's okay.

I just kind of knew that I wasn't going to get all my guys.

But see, this is interesting.

There's so much crossover between the three of us because there are so many bald characters.

That's true.

Rude.

Rude looks like.

He looks like Pitbull in this picture.

Rude looks like a bodyguard at a Dutch dance club.

Rude is, he wears a black suit.

He wears black gloves.

He's got one of those

chains on his hip that lets him carry a wallet without it getting stolen.

I guess he looks a little like Andrew Tate.

Not a handsome man, but a man who is bald nonetheless.

That's true.

And if I'm pulling from my favorite game franchises, I'm going to pull Rude from Final Fantasy VII,

where he's a, you know, sort of a minor character in the first game, but then

makes a much larger appearance in Advent Children, and that role continues to expand in Remake, and I suppose in Rebirth.

Yeah, you get a couple opportunities to knock Rude on his ass in Rebirth.

And we should say that he's not unhandsome because he's he's bald no he's just bald and unhandsome these are separate these are separate categories yeah bald can be beautiful yeah no

kratos is fucking sexy yeah he's hot as hell yeah everybody up here

jack sexy

uh those are my two uh the other ones not so much bald bull not really my type yeah

uh all right we we we each get one more yeah uh i i i'm next but then we still have one more you're right of course of course go ahead matt look

this is gonna be a controversial one, and I think I should just say it so we can just get it out of the way.

Okay.

Diglett.

Yeah, Pokemon Diglett.

I guess Diglett is bald.

Can we pull up an image of Diglett?

This is why I brought up the three-hair rule a second ago, not that long ago.

Motherfucker's got three hairs.

Yeah, just kind of under the bar.

Is that his nose or is it his mouth?

It's his nose.

Okay.

He's like a little.

He's supposed to be, I think, not unlike a naked mole rat

or a Buddha from Gurin Lagan.

Which, even if you take naked to its full extent,

that's no hairs.

Do female Diglets have hair?

There are Diglet variants from other regions that have

long blonde hair.

Well, then, yeah.

So then Diglett is bald.

Yeah, I think Diglett is bald.

Because I would also say, like, Jigglypuff to me is bald.

This is real.

Okay.

The long hair that Ranch is looking at and laughing at is real.

Well, this is canon?

That's from the

3DS

game.

Long flowing locks of golden hair.

Yeah.

Like was on your stepdad back in the day.

That's right.

Is on these Diglets.

That's really unsettling.

It's pretty nuts, but it's just true.

Wow.

So, thus, Diglett is bald, and Diglett makes the list of bald characters.

Wow.

That's horrible.

What part of it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a great pick, Matt.

And I'm glad you got one of your guys from the Pokemon franchise, which I know is near and dear to your heart as is Kingdom Hearts.

I did, man.

I'm glad I didn't choose Diglett because you would have been brokenhearted.

I would have broken one of these windows or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Diglett.

And he's just cute.

He's coming out of the ground.

He's a useful guy.

Like, sometimes you don't have

an escape rope when you're in a dungeon or a cave.

You can dig your way out of there with a Diglet.

Not too bad.

That's not bad.

Yeah.

You got to think about this, you know, because we're building a roster, but we're also building a squad.

And you got to think about cohesion at a certain point.

You got to think about the balance of your team.

And that brings me to my final pick because, you know, I got some wild cards here.

Minsk, Jack, Baldbull, though I don't know much about his personality, I can assume.

All kind of erratic, eccentric, unpredictable, with their own agendas, need to be wrangled a little bit.

And who is better to wrangle them than one of the great world leaders, Gandhi from Civilization?

Oh, my God.

Now, here's the thing.

Gandhi

is famed as a pacifist in real life, but in the civilization franchise, he does not fuck around.

Let me read you a quote from Gandhi from Civilization 1: Greetings from Gandhi, ruler and king of Indians.

Our words are backed with nuclear weapons.

Oh my God.

That's right.

Gandhi will nuke your ass in the civilization games.

Wow.

Won't think twice about it.

It's such a jarring occurrence that in the game series Among the Fandom, he was famously speculated to have been either intentionally programmed or that there was a a bug that caused him to

declare nuclear war with frequency.

The bug was confirmed to be an urban legend.

It's more likely that it was just so startling to see Gandhi, again, someone who would never resort to this in real life, threaten you with nuclear annihilation that it stuck in players' memories as abnormally likely, even though it was just as likely as any other leader.

You may make the argument that he just shouldn't have done it, but he would do it.

He would nuke your ass, or at least threaten to do so.

They actually ended up making this a mechanic in Civilization 5 because it was such a thing that they were just like, people were players were used to this.

They were just like, all right, fuck it.

Let's go for it.

And Gandhi is just going to be programmed to be more likely to nuke your ass in that game.

But anyway, nice to have a true team captain, Gandhi from the Civilization franchise, is rounding out my Mount Baldy more.

Okay.

Gandhi is bald.

Gandhi

and all these other people are bald.

That's right.

Many Many of them are men.

Yes.

What

is a man?

What would any of these men be without the first man of video games?

And a man who can only be bald.

I'm talking Pac-Man.

Wow.

Heather.

Very strong choice.

Heather.

Pac-Man.

is a bald man.

Sometimes he wears a hat, but

he is just walking around

in boots and gloves.

What's wrong?

I'm just like the experience that I'm on with this right now because at first it kind of seemed like you weren't that into the premise.

But actually, what we're learning here with this pick is that you're the most into it because you had such a good pick, the best pick of the route of the whole thing so far.

You thought about this long and hard.

You waited till the fourth turn to drop an absolute bomb on all of us, and it paid off.

And I just want to sit here and say I salute you.

Thank you, Matt.

Rendered in this, in this more, you know, cartoonish

style as having eyebrows.

So yes,

we can infer that he has hair over his

brows, but does not have hair on top of his mouth.

He has a toast.

He's a bald, bald head.

He has a mouth.

He has a nose.

He has eyes and eyebrows, but hair, he does not have.

So he has eyebrows, which is hairs.

Yeah.

He wears gloves and boots which is clothes yeah but he's not wearing pants or shirt do we think he's got fugues this is a common this is a a dent issue with a lot of cartoon characters and there's just no way to know unless we get it a low angle shot i think i think we could also pull up a photo of him or a picture of him from the 1980s cartoon show the saturday morning

uh Pac-Man cartoon show and get a sense of whether or not he is a

he is a bald man.

And I think there are other there are other pac-men with like facial hair

yeah no that's that that pac-man's got a got a mane on him yeah and there's there are pac-men with with full heads of hair uh but our pac-man our pac-man does not have hair no he's bald and no pubes to be seen yeah not even in the 80s

he's he's clean shaven yeah certainly at least in the classic 2d version the the pizza slice version of missing pizza slice version of Pac-Man, that certainly appears to be a bald character, a hairless character.

Yeah.

I do like that Ranch is making us a graphic as we go, and she has hastily also named Pac-Man Sagat.

I love it.

Great kick.

My final pick.

And this is a tough one because obviously there's so many bald characters and a lot of good ones ones have been picked here.

Yeah.

But my final pick

is from a game

that

I believe has a reputation of being way better than it needed to be

for what it's based on.

Hey.

And that game

is the Chronicles of Riddick, Escape from Butcher Ball.

Wow, wow, great.

My pick for my final placement on Mount Baldmore is Riddick.

The Xbox FPS game that, yes, Vin Diesel had a good amount of personal involvement in, at least

some creative approval, creative oversight,

known to be a gamer, I believe.

Yes.

And yeah, that game was, you're absolutely right.

That was one of those early license games that was like those, those, one of the first wave, I feel like, of license games, I was like, oh, wow, this is actually like a legit, good game.

Really good, really cool.

I didn't have an Xbox growing up, but my uncle had one, and I would watch him play Riddick, and I just remember being so delighted that Vin Diesel was in a video game.

Yeah.

Knowing that he probably loved it as well.

So Riddick is

my final pick.

Boy, he really got close.

He got very close to...

having his own franchise.

Like, I know that there are multiple

chronicles of Riddick, like all that stuff, that there are multiple entries into the IP, but it just didn't have the legs that I assume he wanted it to have.

Yeah.

But

there was a multiverse where Riddick is mission impossible.

Well, the thing about that is he's still trying.

I know.

He might succeed.

Because I think he

leveraged his cameo

in

Fast and Furious 3

to get the rights to Riddick back for himself.

So I think he has the rights to it.

So that's why these movies keep coming out.

It's going to be like Warren Beatty at like age 80

doing a Zoom special to keep the rights to Riddick.

It's a,

this is, I mean, like, I look, here's, obviously, Vin Diesel does have a franchise he can claim of his own.

Although it's an ensemble, I feel like most strongly associated with the Fast and the Furious.

That's right yeah and you know let's not forget he's grot yeah he is grot he's grot in every language

yeah no i i i i know he's a famous man despite honestly despite the odds

like hey just because he's bald doesn't mean he shouldn't be an actor

you wouldn't think that vin diesel would have like survived the early 2000s.

No, that's 100% correct.

You know, and the man keeps coming.

Yeah.

And doesn't a Super Bowl commercial.

Yeah.

God bless him.

Like, I'm really happy for him.

Good job, buddy.

He kind of makes me sure.

I'm sure he's a bad person, but I could do it.

Maybe not.

One of our, you absolutely could do it.

One of our more fascinating slubs, I will say.

Yes.

His Instagram.

He's like a truly, truly odd man.

Odd is a good way to put it because

he just posts stuff on Sundays and he'll be like, happy creative.

And he's just like, that's all it says.

And it's just like him.

Like, posing in front of a car.

And he's, yeah, he's,

you know, he is my favorite dummy, my favorite big dumb guy.

Well, give him credit for Chronicles of Riddick, the video game.

He was

heavily involved in it.

So I would imagine that him putting his name on it and wanting it to be good played a huge part in it.

And again, this was an era when those games generally were going to be garbage.

And I certainly worked on some when I was in development.

So it was quite a pleasant surprise that this game from a, at the time, mid-tier sci-fi franchise ended up being one of the better games for the system.

All right, let's recap our squads.

Up first, me, my team, Mince from Baldur's Gate, Jack from Mass Effect, Bald Bull from Punch Out, and Gandhi from the Civilization franchise.

I have Kratos from the God of War franchise, Sagat from the Street Fighter franchise, Rude from Final Fantasy VII, Pac-Man.

from Gaming History.

And I want to do a shout-out to

Alan Ripley from Alien 3 on Super NES, who was on my runners-up card.

Wow.

That's

a great runner-up.

My picks are, of course, Agent 47 from the Hitman games, Master Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts, Diglett, the Pokemon,

and Riddick from the Chronicles of Riddick, Escape from Butcher Bay.

Wow.

You know,

we left on the board

talking about a three-haired rule, Homer Simpson himself from Simpson's Hit and Run.

I had some ones that I knew was going to make everybody mad.

I had Homer on there.

I had like Shaq.

Oh, fuck.

I didn't even think about NBA players.

Yeah, that absolutely could have been a whole area.

Dr.

Eggman, of course.

Yep.

Yep.

The question is, who do you pick?

Shaq from Shaq Fu or Michael Jordan from Michael Jordan Chaos in the Windy City?

It's tough.

It's really, really tough.

You couldn't have both.

You couldn't have both.

Guys, how do you feel this went?

I think it went really good.

I was having a really good time.

I loved watching Ranch build this chart here.

Yeah, it was hypnotic.

Yeah.

More work than necessary.

But probably not unlike playing Hollow Knight

while D bleeding audio.

Let's go to a segment.

It's time for a question block.

Wow.

This first one's from Holden.

Hi, Holden.

Hi, Holden.

Holden writes, what's the best hat in gaming?

Wow.

This is a great question.

Cappy up there, I think.

Cappy, the Cappy has so much utility.

Like, Cappy is like a character and Cappy is like a central mechanic in that game.

Yeah.

So there's a strong case for Cappy

because hats very often are purely cosmetic.

Yeah.

But yeah, oh, there's got to be, I got to think about this because there's definitely ones where hats are weaponized and so forth.

Heather's got an answer.

My answer, because I think we all get an answer.

Yeah.

Is

pot from Let Me Solo Her.

That's great answer.

Really, really good.

It is not just a hat that protects the head.

It is also a hat that is intimidating for the

bearer cannot see out of it and yet has still mastered the blade.

Pot

from Let Me Solo Her of Elden Ring.

I really like M.

Bison's hat.

He's got this sort of like.

Is that like a Nazi hat?

Sure, man.

Go for it, dude.

Whatever you want.

You guys are like, let's do skinheads as a topic, and I'm going to pick the hat.

That's not what it was.

Dickliffe's got some hair.

M.

Bison's got a hat.

Who else got a hat?

I mean, look, a big one, just from an aesthetic standpoint, in the Final Fantasy World, the Black Mage hat.

It's a great looking hat.

Oh, good.

It looks good.

But the one I was thinking of, and I had to look up what the character name was for Refresher, is Kung Lau's hat from the Mortal Kombat franchise because that hat has a fucking blade on it.

It cuts the shit out of you.

Because a fucking fatality kills you with a fucking hat.

Cut you in half hat.

That's pretty good.

I like that a lot.

What about, um, ah, fuck, what's the guy's name?

Am I conflating?

Am I conflating Random Task and the guy from...

No, Random Task throws shoes from Austin Powers.

Odd Job, from Goldeneye, does throw a hat.

Throw a hat.

Yeah.

So Oddball's hat.

Yeah.

Oddball had a hat.

Odd job.

Odd job.

Odd job.

Odd job.

Oddball.

He's a little weird.

Odd job.

Odd job throws a hat in GoldenEye 64.

That's right.

But, yeah.

I guess those are our answers.

Those are the answers for that.

Fuck, but there's so many good hats.

And I'm just thinking about that.

I mean,

let's save it for another episode.

Yeah, you're right.

We'll do a hat episode.

Oh, no.

What's the, what's the, I don't know the SNK fighting games as well, but is it King of Fighters, the one guy's got that badass hat?

Terry?

Terry's hat is really cool.

Terry's really cool.

Is Terry really cool or is he just strong?

I think that hat is fucking awesome.

That hat is cool.

Isn't it just a baseball cap?

Yeah, but he looks like a cat.

Yeah, but it's cool.

It's Fatal Fury, not King of Fighters.

Um, a lot of great hats.

Obviously, the Mario hat, Luigi hat, good.

Good hats.

Um,

a lot of

yeah, Lynx hat.

I mean, Lynx got a good hat.

Arthur Morgan, cowboy hat.

Yeah, it's a hat.

It's a classic hat.

Mario.

It can fall off.

Mario when he's cat Mario has the hat with ears.

Yeah.

That's really real cute.

This next one is from Sophie.

Hi, Sophie.

And Sophie writes, what is everyone's everyone's favorite game from their least favorite genre?

For example, what is Heather's favorite puzzle-centric game?

I think I know the answer to this.

You do?

I think.

Is Luminous not a puzzle game?

I don't think of like Tetris' puzzle game.

Yeah,

I think there's a difference between a game that's a puzzle game versus a game that has a puzzle in it.

Right.

That's like you don't like

how a Resident Evil comes to a stop where you have to locate some gems and put them in some

crest or whatever and even though uh i it is the cop-out answer i won't say uncharted because the puzzles in that are hey put that triangle that's on the ground in the wall yeah like it's not puzzles yeah um

i have an answer okay

i don't really like shooting games i don't really like fps games all that much There are games with a first-person perspective that I've enjoyed, but it's not my favorite genre.

However,

and I put Portal aside because Portal to me is is not an FPS game, but I absolutely love the Half-Life franchise and Half-Life 2 I think is like my favorite FPS game.

So although that's a genre that I don't generally seek out and I will play games

if they're acclaimed or people tell me I should play them, but it's not like a genre that I enjoy.

I do think like Half-Life 2 for me was like had the best single-player first person

campaign and that's a game that I absolutely adore.

For reasons mostly of nostalgia, I'm going to say the King's Quest series are my favorite puzzle games.

Oh, yeah.

They are often puzzles that cannot be solved without a guidebook.

Like, they have no logical

way of puzzling them.

But sometimes you will get like a character in, say,

I think it's the perils of Rosella, who's like, what's my name?

Or maybe it's in the first one.

I don't really recall.

And

you know from fairy tales that it's probably Rumpelstiltskin because there's a character in a fairy tale who's like, if you guess my name in three

choices, yeah, I'll let you go.

And

so you'll try Rumpelstiltskin and it won't work.

And then he'd be like.

Just spell Rumpelstiltskin backwards and that'll solve the puzzle.

But really, you could have named him anything.

Yeah, I would say the King's Quest games.

Matt, what is your least favorite, most favorite game?

Real quick, on King's Quest, because

I loved all the LucasArts point-and-click adventures, graphic adventure games, but I was less in the Sierra games.

I played a Gabriel Knight series, but I never really played the King's Quest.

But I did bring up a screenshot of King's Quest I.

I think this is EGA.

That motherfucker has a hat.

That's pretty good.

Got a little feather in his cap.

There's a guy inside.

Someone calls him macaroni.

Dumb bitch.

The fuck you talking about, dog?

Calling a feather and a cat macaroni, this motherfucker over here.

Get his ass.

Let me guess.

Your name's John Jingle.

What the fuck?

What was your answer?

Halo Reach.

I don't really like shooter games like that either.

First person shooter games, but I played Halo Reach when I got my Xbox on the

insistence of last week's guest Cody Ziggler okay and it's an all-timer Halo Reach fucking rules yeah I made Halo Reach I didn't play I played the first couple Halos and I played the

I played some Halo 3 I played the

but the what the hell was the most recent one infinite Infinite that was the one that had that had a strong single-player campaign so the Halo campaigns are pretty usually pretty solid I got to get back in there because I mean I was liking I liked playing online Halo Infinite, but I didn't really, the campaign hadn't grabbed me yet, but I didn't play that much of it.

This next one is from Boop.

Hi Boop.

What normal yet badass thing from a video game do you wish you could do in real life?

I've always wished I could slide down ladders quickly in a way that you can in lots of games.

I have an immediate answer.

That's a great answer.

Go on.

That is a great answer.

It's better than mine, probably.

Yeah.

Mine's a kickflip.

Kickflip is awesome.

That'd be really cool if I could do a kickflip.

Well, because that's the thing people can do in reality.

So you're not like you're not a superhero, you're just like a really good skater who can do a kickflip.

Like, if I could do a kickflip, everybody in here would be pretty impressed.

Well, it would be a thing like, did you know Matt could do a kickflip?

And then he'll do one if you ask.

He'd be like, hey, Matt,

I hear you can do a kickflip.

It's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to get a skateboard around here somewhere.

And he's like, yeah, sure, can we do one real quick?

And I do it.

And everyone's like, holy shit, he did it.

Pretty good.

Yeah, that's a good answer.

I'm going to learn to do one.

My answer is more magical.

And I was just going to say double jump.

Just because I think double jumping is like the dumbest thing, but it's so fucking cool.

yeah and it works so well mechanically in so many games uh just for aerial mobility and I just uh I really really like it so I wish I could double jump I would love that I don't even regular jump all that often less than once a day I'd say I'm jumping how often are y'all jumping

I mean I jump rope every morning yeah I guess in the context of exercise sure but like just for actual like mobility I'm not I'm not traversing anywhere by jumping all that often.

Jumping's good, though.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm going across gaps constantly.

That's what I would be doing, yeah.

Just

hopping.

Well, like, also, you like misjudge a puddle.

You're trying to jump over a puddle, but you got the double jump.

You can bail yourself out.

That's pretty good.

Yeah.

Uh, my answer is, and how is it worded specifically?

What normal yet badass thing from a video game?

Normal?

Yeah.

Like, doing a kickflip is normal, but it is badass.

Yeah.

Double jumping.

Do you not think that qualifies as normal in a video game?

That's just a normal thing.

I guess it's normal within a video game.

That is true.

And jumping in itself is normal.

Yeah.

It's normal to jump.

Normal.

Normal.

What is normal in a video game?

How about getting kicked in the face and being fine?

Because before I heard normal, it was going to be summon.

Like

Final Fantasy.

I mean, that's normal.

That's normal within that world.

Oh, okay.

Then that would be the thing.

Summon.

It'd be cool.

I would love to be able to be like, oh, fuck.

I forgot my keys at home.

You know what?

I'm going to summon Odin and have him ride over to the house and get my keys.

You're watching like an 11-minute animation you've seen 20 times.

All right.

You're going to skip this?

Okay.

Harper overthinks rights.

Hi, Harper.

Have you guys tried the game Mouthwashing?

Because I feel like the game is all of you coded.

I've been hearing a lot about mouthwashing uh i think i mean i have not played mouthwashing i have not played it i haven't either i heard it short maybe it's something we do maybe um but it's uh wait let me get a little context on this

mouthwashing game yeah mouthwashing okay

it's supposed to be kind of scary or something okay this was a 2024 game it came out it seems about the crush of release is late 2024 so maybe it just wasn't on our radar yeah

but yeah this looks like a little it looks like a spooky spooky, scary sort of positive reception overall.

Yeah, I don't know what this is exactly.

It looks pretty surreal.

Yeah, but I think there's like

there's like the Nick's watching a trailer for it on his iPad.

I feel like from what I've heard about it, there's stuff in it that you don't know.

Like that, like there's like surprise.

There's like surprise stuff.

Yeah, there's definitely an element like, okay, this guy is covered in bandages.

There's a whole bunch of eyeballs, but then there's also a Five Nights at Freddy's looking mascot over here.

Missed me with that.

Yeah, so I don't know what the hell's going on exactly.

And then just a bunch of stuff about mouthwash.

Hmm, I don't know.

I think, I mean, on

the whole, I think Mouthwash is good and I like it.

Mouthwashing is a first-person horror game following the dying crew of a shipwrecked space freighter.

Who could have known what a good old Captain Curly was capable of?

Guess he thought his crew dying alongside him was only right.

But some men can't even kill themselves properly.

Maimed, limbless, and unable to speak, but alive, Curly is now at the mercy of the crew.

He is doomed to a slow death.

Follow the lives of the crew as they weather starvation, isolation, and each other.

People were never your strong suit anyway.

So, this, yeah, this seems like kind of maybe an Event Horizon sort of experience.

I'm into this.

Yeah, I'll give it a look.

Adding it to my wish list.

Let's take a look at that.

Matt, you never played Final Fantasy VIII, did you?

No.

I really want to show you a summon from Final Fantasy VIII.

I think I've seen it.

I think you've shown it to me before.

Is it like it's the big

mech that comes or something?

No, I have shown shown you that one, but there's a different one that I was just thinking of that I want to show you.

Okay.

Do you think we could watch a summon from Final Fantasy VIII?

Yeah.

Do you think we could put it up on the big screen?

Uh, probably.

Why don't we put on uh

put on our headphones since I have summoning on the brain and let's watch the summon of Eden from Final Fantasy VIII.

Okay, okay.

Now, Matt, you're familiar with summons.

You you summon like a horse rider or you summon like the Knights of the round or you know you you you summon some like some guy or something right yeah like or like genie or mufasa yeah or jack skellington yeah exactly so let's let's watch what what happens when you summon eden in in final fantasy 8

okay so they're fighting off against a dinosaur

Okay.

So the dinosaur.

I guess I'm about to summon it.

Yeah.

I didn't even know there were dinosaurs in this.

There are dinosaurs in the Parkleton escape.

It is.

Okay.

Wall disappeared.

And then your television goes to static.

And now there's like a big

faceship.

In front of screens in space.

No.

It

blasts

the T-Rex from space.

Oh my god.

But

it's not done.

It then transports the T-Rex to a dimensional grid.

The grid

in space begins to warp and buckle around the summon itself.

T-Rex is then dropped into

the upper orifice of this

machine, which then

itself summons a grid.

You cut to the exterior of Earth where a alchemaic circle forms on Earth and ticks like a clock in space before achieving the correct time, warping a worm.

Oh my god.

Blasting the T-Rex

through reality.

It shuttles across all of space to the center of the galaxy where it enters a black hole

and this thing has like

what 500 hp

that's so crazy yeah i gotta play final fantasy 8 it's great that's so funny i like that the first thing that happens with that summon is static appears on your television like oh man i broke it yeah

you've summoned something in a video game so intense that it is damaging your system.

That's an all-timer.

It is.

That's it for the question block, guys.

Thanks so much for writing in.

And of course, you can write in at discord.gg slash get played.

We're having a lot of fun over there.

I'm interested in everyone's favorite bald characters we missed in the Discord.

I'm also interested in any video game hats because I'm sure there's a, that to me is a long, long list, and I'm sure we missed a lot of them.

There's probably more hats than there are all, than there are bald.

Whatever category you're weighing in on, make sure to at Heather on that.

No.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Thanks to our producer, Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore underscore sard.

Are you streaming anything these days, Ranch?

Phil and Allen Week two.

Are you able to make time for that game without your binging of Hollow Knight?

No, I have not made any problem

week two.

twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore sard when you are streaming.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, benpruntymusic.com.

Our art is by Duck Brigade Design DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, you can find all our merch, including apparel, hats, and stickers at kinshipgoods.com.

Link in the show description.

Also, check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog plus ad-free main feed episodes and our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animate.

Matt, what's up this week?

We're watching Gurn Lagon, baby.

New show.

New show just dropped.

We're watching a classic, Gurn Lagon.

Drill your way to heaven, whatever it says, whatever they say in there.

I'm new to it.

But we're having a great time over there.

Patreon.com/slash get played.

There you go.

And you know what?

Who got played?

Barbers this month.

This week.

Wow.

You know what?

Actually, not even just this week, this whole month, Barbers, you fucked up.

That was a Hitgum podcast.