Nintendo Switch 2 Revealed + Tri-Force of Kongs

This is a head gun podcast.

Basketball game crushed it, and the day's just getting started.

Now, kicking it with my crew.

When I need a quick snack, GoGo Squeeze Active Fruit Blend with Electrolytes pouches are always in the starting lineup.

Made with real fruit and select electrolytes, and mmm, so tasty.

From workouts to hangouts to whatever's next, I go with GoGo Squeeze Active.

Snag yours on your next store run.

Available on Amazon.

Fuck.

Okay, guys, guys, guys,

I'm in big trouble.

What happened?

Are you in the middle of the day?

I'm in huge trouble.

Nintendo is really, really mad at me.

Oh, my God.

Liza, what did you do?

What happened?

I've been leaking all this stuff about the Switch 2, and they're so mad.

Oh, my God.

Mad, if you're leaking information that you that you corporate is trying to protect did you signed an nda you're gonna get in a lot of trouble i proprietary information dude i know i know it's i was just so excited and i didn't i i figured they're gonna everyone's gonna know about it anyway why not i just parse out every little detail i have over months and months of speculation and then and you know and selling it to uh you know accessory uh manufacturers as well and then leaving cryptic messages online about what it is and the thing about it is I feel like they're mad in a way that's not fair.

Okay.

I mean, like, I can understand why they have these trade secrets that you're making public that they, you know, communicate in confidence.

They'd probably be upset about it.

What do you mean by not fair?

Like,

are you in danger?

I woke up last night.

Uh-huh.

Wario was standing over me.

And he said,

Keep your fucking mouth shut.

Jesus.

Keep your fucking mouth shut.

I'm going to come back here.

I'm going to break your legs.

And then I'm going to win.

And then he left.

Also, he picked a booger out of his nose and he left it there.

That's gross.

He does that kind of stuff.

I think he was chomping on an onion.

Yeah, that's nasty.

Not a particularly.

They're sending goons.

They're sending

campaigns after me.

That sounds like a campaign of intimidation.

You know, I'm not saying you deserve it, but I mean, that's what you might expect from a multi-billion dollar corporation trying to protect its IP.

I got a phone call the other night.

Yeah.

All I heard was breathing.

Uh-huh.

I was like, who is this?

Who is this?

Yeah.

And I was like, it's me, Toad.

Don't tell any more of our stuff.

And then he farted it into the phone.

That didn't really affect me, but I heard a lot of character.

It was kind of funny.

I guess what I think is you're full of shit or crazy.

Yeah, that's kind of where my head was at too.

Is either Matt's just like making all this up like he's a huge liar or he's out of his fucking mind and he needs to be institutionalized.

Either what you're saying to us is all lies and absolute bullshit or

you're fucking insane.

If I was lying,

would I have this?

This is freaking Mario's hat.

Did you buy that at Universal?

Cause it has a price tag on it.

Wait.

Wait.

Are you realizing something?

Why?

I was going to just say this.

Like, it's kind of reassuring that you're just full of shit because if you'd been like, I I have Mario's hat, and you like held up like a packet of almonds, I would have been like, oh, Matt's fucking crazy.

Oh, that's what's going on.

This is really, really distressing.

Someone at the studio door.

I, yeah, you come in.

You can come in.

Come in.

Come in.

Holy shit.

Hey, Matt, it's me, Wario.

Keep your fucking mouth shut.

They do exist.

Oh, my God.

Oh, God, toad.

We race minecarts in interfunky mode as we discuss the Switch 2 updates and form our Triforces of Kongs 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 Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Abadawaka.

Hello,

everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where we're launching right ahead into the year 2025 with new content, new juice, new sticks.

The juice is new.

The juice is new.

And the sticks are also new.

That's right.

Everything is new

from the juice to the sticks.

And everything in between.

Sticks, you were thinking drumsticks?

Like you're on a kit?

I was thinking joysticks, my friend.

Oh, joysticks, because we're a video game podcast.

That does make more sense.

Yeah, I was hoping it was drumsticks like a piece of chicken.

Amen.

That'd be pretty great.

I would love that.

I saw a video on TikTok, rest in peace,

that had a chicken that was cooked so

juicily

that when he put it into the

to-go box, he took a pair of like tongs and pulled the bones out like a cartoon.

Wow.

That, I mean, like Heathcliff deboning itself.

Yeah, like, like he took the, he took the end of the drumstick and clamped it and then just put like a gentle pressure on the top of the drumstick and pulled it out like a like a fish.

And they took this from us.

The app is gone and now we can't see stuff like that.

Well, it might still be here.

Yeah, it might still.

We don't know.

We have no idea.

I'm doing my due diligence.

I deleted the app.

I will not be sitting in a jail cell for having the phone, the app on my phone.

I'm ready to VPN my way to Japan and get the really good content once all the Americans are off the app.

Give me that good stuff.

Yeah.

Where's that good stuff?

Like once we're gone, all the secrets are are going to come out, and they'll be like, Thank God.

Okay, I'm back on.

Ruin this fucking place.

I'm back on.

I've never signed up for it, and I don't know what it is exactly.

You don't fucking like it that way.

I've never posted a video on TikTok, but boy, oh boy, do I love it.

Despite how many people on my blue sky mentions tell me I'm a fucking idiot bitch for liking it.

Okay, I always told you I was sorry about that.

The three of us are here.

We released an episode last week with our buddy Sam, but our regular producer, Rochelle, is back.

Ranch,

so great to have you here here in 2025.

I'm so happy to be back.

You spent part of your new year, part of your break rather, in Thailand, is that correct?

Yes, I was in Thailand for three weeks.

What was that like?

And where did you stay?

I stayed with my mom, and it was the best time ever, and I'm actually very sad to be back.

Ranch, you gave us a gift.

You gave us two gifts.

One are these incredible keychains of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, and Game Boy Advance cartridges.

They are like little, little, they look like miniatures.

They're miniatures to keep on our keychain.

But you also gave us,

am I saying this correctly?

Poission?

Yeah, that's pretty good.

It says inhale and apply.

All you told us was that it was good for smoke.

So here live on the podcast, I'm going to open up this package and I'm going to I'm going to see what all the the hype is about with this mystery product that honestly looks like a firework that I'm about to put in my in my in my face.

Yeah, it's bas it basically got kind of got the form factor of a uh of a tube of chapstick.

Wait, do I put it up my nose?

Don't put it up your nose, even though Thai people like to put up their nose.

I think it's too strong, but just

and so this is it working.

It's it's okay, so my first smell of it was extremely over.

I was surprised.

But my second smell upon it's like,

what is that like?

It's like, I know this smell, but I don't know it.

It's menthol and a bunch of other different herbs that I am not sure.

I think it's got some eucalyptus in there.

Yeah, eucalyptus.

That's the thing I'm smelling.

It's eucalyptus.

It's supposed to, no, it's supposed to make me a better driver.

Is that what you said?

It's the limitless pill.

Thank you so so much, Ranch.

I will be using this.

Oh, I see.

It's menthol, Cam4, eucalyptus, and Borneol.

Yikes.

Now,

were you in Thailand when the LA fires were happening?

No, my second night here back home was when...

all shit went down.

But did you get these in Thailand?

I got these in Thailand for you.

So by a coincidence, you got something that was the antidote to inhaling smoke just before this massive weather event that created us, like the smoky air that we're all inhaling it doesn't it's not the antidote to smoky air but it helps mask smog

and it also helps nausea from smog can i ask you a question ranch that i never thought i'd have to ask yes do you have that's a raven powers

what are those

i wouldn't be here

but that's so raven powers if i remember correctly from my youth raven would see something that was like a glimpse into the future and often what it was actually was a misunderstanding.

She didn't actually have the full context of what was going on, so she'd actively work toward making that thing not happen, and it would always happen, and then she would actually find out the reason why it had to.

I didn't realize there was any sort of magical element to the That's So Raven franchise.

It's like it's she can see the future, kind of.

Wow.

Kind of.

She's actually not that good at it because she's always wrong, actually.

Yeah.

And she just jumps the gun.

She's just enthusiastic.

She's just a kid.

Yeah, sure.

Who can blame her?

Yeah.

What was the, there was a, there was a show that was on when I was a child where it was a

girl who could stop time.

And I can't remember what it was.

Small wonder?

No, not Small Wonder was a robot car.

That's right.

You were a child when I Dream of Genie was on time.

No, not I Dream of Genie.

I'm not that fucking old.

I went on a train coming toward the screen.

It scared the hell out of me.

I ran out of that fucking theater.

Wrote a letter to it.

A child that could stop.

Is that Matilda?

No, it was a sci-fi show that was like, it had a, it had, maybe it had science in the title, but I can't remember what it was called.

I'll look at it.

Out of this world?

Out of this world, yes, thank you.

Like the video game franchise.

Oh, which is unrelated.

Completely Another World.

Another World.

Another World was the name of the show, and then they had to change Another World, the video game, to Out of This World.

Interesting.

Unless Out of This World is...

What did you...

Out of this world is an American TV series, American fantasy sitcom about a teenage girl who is half alien, which gives her unique supernatural powers.

There is another TV show called Another World, which I believe is a spin-off of the Cosby show.

Oh, yeah.

I'm thinking the wrong thing.

But that's right.

Another world is a soap opera.

A different world is the Cosby show spin-off.

There's too many, you know,

too many worlds.

Let's just parse this down.

One world only.

Yeah, let's simplify things.

Yeah.

But anyway.

So, yeah, Another World is the game,

but it was released as Out of This World.

But I remember being released as out of this world in the u.s am i wrong about that or was it out of this world the the international title i really don't know no north america's publishes out of this world another world is the is the uh title in um it in its home territory in europe and i don't know why they renamed it but i don't know if it was it was related to the uh

the existence of the tv show

look I mean, it wouldn't make sense to try to capitalize on the TV show that it's not related to.

It wouldn't help them very much, would it?

But you'd know pretty quickly that it wasn't the same thing.

It's also one of those things you look at it and you're like, they made 96 episodes of this show.

The show was on for four seasons.

TV is fucking wild.

TV, well, it used to be so crazy.

Yeah.

Too.

Cause like, think about Alf.

Right.

The fact that Alf was even is real.

Kind of just crazy to think about.

But now I guess the equivalent is they're just, it'll be like, you know,

Hillbilly Bakers.

And there's like a reality show called Hillbilly Bakers.

And that show has been on for eight years.

And it's like huge, like the, it's like the biggest thing on like, you know,

the learning channel or whatever the fuck.

There are 97 episodes of Alf.

A lot of Alf.

This guy ate cats for 97 episodes.

I don't know if he ever actually ate a cat, but he certainly talked about his desire to eat cats.

Yeah, it's weird that an alien puppet show was like such a sensation.

But then again, I was a child.

I was a boy.

I thought it was great.

I loved him.

Yeah, I thought it was wonderful.

I think he's so funny.

Didn't he have puppets at Burger King?

Yes, I believe so.

little little doll guys little puppets i don't remember where where he had tie-ins but there was an alf doll i did have an alf doll for some reason my grandparents had an alf doll in the original packaging in the closet wow and they wouldn't let me play with it and i wanted to play with it so bad uh and they were like no that's going to be worth money someday and i can almost guarantee you it was not

i was going to say the opposite probably is i was going to say they probably were right they're probably ahead of their time that was before people were collecting things like that there's no way they.

I see an Alf Plush on, I see Burger King Alf Plush $15 on eBay.

Well, that's different.

An Alf here, let's see.

Alf Doll in packaging.

And we're going to get to the main thing in the show in just a second, folks.

Alf doll in packaging.

Vintage.

Here we go.

$104.

Hey, not too bad.

Hey, that's not too bad.

Vintage.

I better call my grandparents.

Vintage ELF with packaging.

Another one, Coleco Vintage 86 Wisecracking Alf, $249.

Okay.

This guy looks like his face is taking a dump.

Yeah, the thing about Alf is that no matter what, he looks like shit.

He's kind of a bad-looking guy.

And I'm not so confident that he's even good.

Like, you know, like, morally?

I think he might be

immoral, yeah.

He might be an immoral being.

Well, I think that's always the kind of the joke, though, when you get any sort of alien-human culture clashes that they just have a different value system, right?

So obviously Alf would that he's willing to eat cats.

That's his

greatest desire.

Like that's kind of foreign from, you know, our understanding.

Yeah, he's better with animal life.

You better keep him away from your leg, Nick.

All right.

Here we go.

Now we're talking.

Nick Weiger has a huge tattoo now.

Yeah, I got a tiger tattoo.

Yeah, I'm Tiger now.

Nick's Tiger now, and we're the three tattooed video game hosts,

video game podcast hosts.

So don't fuck with us, actually, because we'll kick your ass.

That's right.

The Triforce of Friendship is basically a street game.

And we'll do it as a team.

If you try to fuck with any one of us, you're going down.

Three of us are kicking you like the fucking printer in office space.

We'll do things like one of us will like sneak behind you and then get on our knees and the other one will push them over.

I will stay.

And then one of us will cry because we're scared.

I'll stick my fingers in my throat and vomit on your face when you're on the ground.

God, that'd be fucking awful.

Can you you imagine?

You get your ass kicked and then someone stands over you and vomits onto you.

Jesus Christ.

Never heard of a clearer example of insult to injury.

Has this ever happened to you?

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

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

Well, I got something for you.

Nord VPN, protect your private data, like bank details, passwords, and online identity.

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

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

You can make it think you're somewhere else.

You're wherever you are, you're not getting the best deal, switch to somewhere else.

They might have a better deal.

That's huge.

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

I kind of theory.

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

She's using NordVPN.

They'll never find her.

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

Unless that phishing site is fastpro.com.

No protection required there.

It's the fastest VPN in the world.

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

ISP bandwidth throttling, a thing of the past with NordVPN.

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

Now that's what I'm talking about.

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

Your phone, your iPad,

your mom's iPad, your laptop,

maybe even your watch.

Who could say?

That's not even 10.

You surely have some more.

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

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

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

By my estimation, that's 28 months.

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

The link is in the podcast episode description box.

NordVPN, you heard?

Comic-Con the Cruise is the ultimate vacation for fans of comics, gaming, and popular arts.

Popular arts.

The popular arts.

It's five days of non-stop fandom fun, panels, and theme parties while sailing the Caribbean.

Get ready to embark on another unforgettable journey where the world of popular arts comes to life like never before.

Meet and interact with fan-favorite celebrities and creators.

Enjoy intimate experiences you won't find anywhere else.

No convention floor chaos.

The stink, the sweat, the

wetness.

Well, there's going to be plenty of that because you're going to be on the open sea.

That's true.

It's an immersive community.

Artists' alley, panels, workshops, and late-night conversations that feel like the heart of Comic-Con, but more personal.

Also, there's daily cosplay events, gaming lounges, late-night parties, and exclusive panels you can't find on land.

Yar!

Yar!

Sail round trip from Tampa, Florida to Nassau, Bahamas on Celebrity Constellation, January 30th through February 3rd, 2026.

This four-day luxury cruise fuses fan favorite elements of Comic-Con community with unique, interactive, and immersive experiences designed exclusively for fans like you, our listeners.

That's right.

It's the ultimate fan adventure.

And look, there's a lot of people that fans of our show might also be fans of.

Felicia Day, for example, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd.

They're from Lord of the Rings.

So many folks.

So Doug Jones, who doesn't love Doug Jones?

Learn more and see the full 2026 lineup, including host Felicia Day and a star-studded roster of fantasy, sci-fi, and more at comic-conthecruise.com/slash get played.

Book a new reservation with promo code GET PLAYED to snag $250

off your cabin.

Yar!

Shall we terry forth with the show?

Yeah, we got to talk about the the switch 2.

You know, we don't normally talk news up top, but this is such a seismic thing.

Breaking news.

Breaking news.

Breaking news.

Breaking news.

The switch 2.

The president.

Oh, no.

Okay.

As of this record, we have just gotten official confirmation of the name Switch 2.

The

size form factor that the Joy-Cons attach magnetically as opposed to snapping on

a new U-shaped kickstand.

A few details have come out via this

first look trailer that Nintendo presented for the Switch successor.

Also a new Mario Kart.

New Mario Kart.

And I guess I want to take a step back for just a second too because

this is announced

on this day,

the 16th.

Yeah, we're recording today on the 16th, which is when it got announced.

And this episode is coming out on Monday.

After months and months and months of leaks, of leaks that were not addressed by Nintendo at all, leaks that were all very, very specific and even up to showing like what concepts of the hardware looked like.

Uncharacteristic of Nintendo to have those leaks.

Yeah.

Like before the Switch came out, nobody.

No.

Nobody heard about it.

Before the fucking Wii controller came out, the original Wii controller,

that was blindsiding.

The entire industry.

I do think that I do remember, and maybe some of this was coming out officially, but I do feel like there was a lot of like dolphin stuff you were hearing, which was the prototype for the GameCube.

I think I feel like a lot of that was coming out.

Yeah.

And the same thing for the Ultra 64 and the N64.

Yeah.

But

they were kind of a black box after that.

They really put the clients down.

They put that shit down.

Nobody knew the virtual boy was coming.

Nobody fucking knew that we was coming.

Certainly nobody knew that the Wii U was coming.

And then they just.

Nobody knew it left either.

And then, yeah, and then they dropped the ball.

We all knew the Switch 2 was coming.

By the way, I want to be the first person on all podcasts to say, I love the name.

I think it is clear, concise.

I think it does away with problems that every retailer is going to have.

When

you go in to get an iPhone, it's like, which iPhone do you want?

The 15 or the 16?

When you go in to get a Nintendo,

people would be like, oh, I want a Nintendo.

I'd be like, well, which Nintendo?

I want a Wii.

Which Wii?

The Wii or the Wii U?

U?

What the fuck is a Wii U?

With Switch, Wii U is a horrible name.

Switch and the Switch 2.

The Game Boy, the Game Boy Advance.

The Nintendo, the Super Nintendo.

I fucking love it.

It's, you know, like since going back to the PlayStation to PlayStation 2, it's like the cleanest, like, hey, here's the next step of this existing product.

As opposed to the Nintendo Switch Series S.

That's the thing.

Yeah, there was a chance they could have named it really stupid, but they seem to have basically made all of the simple choices here.

It's just like the Switch.

It's called the Switch 2.

It's a more powerful piece of hardware that's also like, it seems like a little larger.

And yeah, but beyond that, it's just backwards compatible with both physical games and digital games.

And so it just does basically kind of everything that you would have hoped for as a Switch 1 owner.

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be...

At least for me, it doesn't have to be too exciting or too new even, right?

Like

it's extremely iterative of the previous thing, but it's just a little bit more, which is, I think, all anybody watching.

Yeah, I, I, I'm in total favor of every choice that they've made except the magnets.

I'm worried about playing a game

in a fit of excitement and having one of those magnets snap off in my hand and the whole thing falls to the ground.

I'm ready for that some bitch to collapse when I'm like in a, yeah, like when I have some sort of intense, I almost said heated gaming moment but that's like a loaded thing

yeah you mean that you have like an anger management problem

no it's a it's a uh

yeah i do worry about the structural integrity of it because My favorite version of the Switch, I do have the OLED Switch.

I do like the OLED Switch, gorgeous screen, but my favorite one is the Switch Lite because it's got the unibody construction.

And I don't have to worry about it feeling like kind of janky at all when I'm playing it in a handheld mode.

And so I do worry a little bit about

how secure those magnets are actually going to be.

Maybe there's some sort of locking mechanism.

Maybe they've figured out the engineering side, but that's my one little speed bump.

You know,

I can't worry about something like that because we still have not ever really had a satisfying answer to magnets.

How do they work?

So I'm just going to be cautiously optimistic.

Magnets, how the fuck do they work?

How the fuck do they work?

What are you talking about?

Are you not familiar with the works of

magnets?

The Insane Clown posse.

What?

Wait, what?

You haven't heard the ICP song Miracles?

Are you ready for no life?

You know what's up?

What the fuck are you guys talking about?

Are you ready for your life to be changed, Heather?

There's a song that asks life's hard questions that we don't have good answers to.

I'm dimly aware of the meme,

Magnets, How Do They Work.

I did not know that this was A, a reference to a song, B, that the question was unanswered, because C, it is

answered.

If the answer is just science, i don't know are you gonna are you gonna play a song that says magnets how do they work well i pulled up the lyrics maybe this will this will enough will clarify okay and i will say i am i am not necessarily an icb fan but i'm a bit of an icp apologist they're at the at most extremely funny and i also think that they are a like i think they are a positive for their fan base absolutely i think it's like a it's like a good community and i think they they they are

a lot of people have a lot of a strong connection with that music and and I think they are a force for good in that regard.

All right, here we go.

Music is a lot like love.

It's all a feeling, and it fills the room from the floor to the ceiling.

I see miracles all around me.

Stop and look around.

It's all astounding.

Water, fire, air, and dirt, fucking magnets.

How do they work?

And I don't want to talk to a scientist.

Y'all motherfuckers lying and getting me pissed.

Solar eclipse and vicious weather, 15,000 juggalos together.

And I love my mom for giving me this.

Time on this planet.

Taking nothing for granted.

I see a caterpillar turn into a butterfly.

Miracles ain't nothing to lie.

And so this is sort of like what has me like I'm neither worried nor hopeful about the magnets within the Switch 2.

God, the Magnus thing, the Magnus chunk gets, yeah, that's fair.

The Magnus chunk gets isolated because it is such a good individual line, but like, there's so much of the song is so fucking like, look at the mountains, trees, and seven seas, and everything chilling underwater, please.

Hot lava, snow, rain, and fog, long-necked giraffes, and pet cats and dogs.

And I've seen 85,000 people all in one room together as equals.

Pure magic is the birth of my kids.

I've seen shit that'll shock your eyelids.

The sun and the moon and even Mars, the Milky Way, and fucking shooting stars.

UFOs, a river flows.

Plant a little seed and nature grows.

Niagara Falls and the pyramids, everything you believed in as kids, fucking rainbows after it rains.

There's enough miracles here to blow your brains.

So I think

Heather is typing a resignation letter.

That rocks.

It's very good.

I was trying to remember the name of this frontline documentary from 2001 on PBS called The Merchants of Cool, where they

sort of did an overview on like how MTV in the early 2000s and late 90s had a lock on

young people and

where coolness was being dictated and like what it meant to sell out or not sell out.

And one of their focuses in this frontline documentary was that the insane clown posse could not be co-opted, that there were very few bubbles left where the interests of any subgroup had not been co-opted by big business.

And they pointed to the insane clown posse and they were like, you know, this is like the definition of not selling out.

They did another version of that documentary 20 years later, The Merchants of Cool 2, where kids were like, wait, if you don't have a brand backing you, then you're lame.

Like the entire thing had become completely flipped and that like if you were on instagram and you had like ad money coming in then you were cool and if you didn't if you hadn't sold out then you were lame no i remember reading about like people pretending to be influencers, kids pretending to be influencers and posting fake ads just to look like they've been paid for, you know, like basically look to show like they've sold out, to pretend like they've sold out because that in and of itself is, you know,

back in the day, it used to be, I'll never sell out.

Now that's aspirational.

I want to sell out.

I'm looking forward to sell out.

It's a, yeah, it's, it's a, look, capital has won.

This is the total triumph of

corporations over us all.

And with that, we'll be right back.

DraftKings Casino has your playbook for gaming action all season long.

Play thousands of popular slots for a shot at jackpots.

Over 400

million has already been awarded.

New players get 500 spins on Huff and more.

Puff over 10 days.

Download the app, use code GET Played, and claim your spins of your first $5 wager.

Get in the game with DraftKings Casino, home of the largest jackpot win in online casino history.

The crown is

yours!

Gambling problem?

Call 1-800-GAMBLER.PALLERM GAMBLING.

Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.

Please play responsibly.

21 plus physically present in Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West West Virginia only, void in Ontario.

Eligibility restrictions apply, new customers only.

Non-withdrawable casino spins issued as 50 spins per day for 10 days, valid for feature game only, and expire each day after 24 hours.

See terms at casino.draftkings.com/slash promos.

Ends October 5th, 2025, at 11:59 p.m.

Eastern Time.

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

That's where IndiCloud comes in.

You juggle the chaos.

You answer the emails.

You even go outside sometimes.

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

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

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

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

Just a better vibe in your mailbox.

So here's the thing.

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

I ate one of the orange soda gummies, okay?

Now, look,

I'll be honest.

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

I'm not out here blazing it.

I'm not out here.

I'm I'm not over here, you know, insert euphemism here.

I'm not doing any of that.

All right.

I'm not always doing it.

But when I do, I like to just chill out and relax.

It made me very silly with my friends and

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

It sounds too smooth to be legal, right?

But it is.

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

And that's just a fact.

Dispensaries are 25 minutes from wherever you personally are.

That's just how it is.

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

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

This is how adults get elevated now.

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

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

That's Indacloud.co.

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

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

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

All thanks to IndaCloud.

I'm getting back to Nintendo.

No, I think the switch too, look, I think that I love that the Steam Deck exists.

Although I'm not a Steam Deck owner, I know a lot of people really love them.

And I know that the, you know, I have friends who game primarily on Steam Deck.

I know you both have enjoyed your Steam Decks.

Like, I like...

I gave mine away.

Ranch, a new Steam Deck owner.

Oh, yeah, the Ranch has a Steam Deck.

And it's like a, it's a,

I love that that exists.

However, the Steam Deck is kind of serving a different market.

That's that's serving a little bit more of an enthusiast audience.

The Switch is going to be, Switch 2 is going to be a lower price point.

It's not going to probably be as powerful.

It's certainly not going to be as extensible or customizable, but it'll be more user-friendly.

It will be more child-friendly, and it will have a Nintendo first-party software.

I'm glad it exists.

I'm just waiting for the new Sony PSP because I know that's going to be fucking weird, but it's also going to be cool.

So I hope that actually, we actually see some details on that, some more details on that in 2025.

Yeah, I look

I was thinking about this on the way over here because

we're out the other consoles.

We're not

if we get anything from like PlayStation or Xbox, it's auxiliary stuff.

We're not getting a new, we're not getting a console refresh, hopefully, for another, you know, I'm gonna say in my mind, five years.

I feel like 10 years for this generation would seem good.

Am I wrong that like it feels like just last year, maybe a little bit before, but it really just kind of feels like last year you were starting to commonly see PlayStation 5 just like at any retailer.

Yes.

So I like.

Like they had inventory problems for a long time.

There's no need to refresh that hardware just yet.

Obviously, the Pro just came out.

This year, 2025, I'm going to go ahead and call it the year of the Switch 2.

Wow.

We're going to be hearing a lot about the Switch 2.

Wow.

Because we're going to be getting them.

We're going to buy them with our own money because we're not getting them from them.

They're not aware of us.

Although, if Nintendo is aware of us and they want to give us Switch 2s, we will cover them on the show.

And I promise you, we will be honest and kind and grateful.

And I'll suck your dick.

That goes for all of us.

Yeah, we'll suck your dick.

Wario, Yoshi,

Waluigi, King Boo.

King Boo's tough to suck his dick because he'll turn away from you.

So

here's the thing.

There are also these hands-on things they're doing.

I went to one of these back when they did the GameCube launch.

I actually went to one of these Nintendo experiences, and I don't remember if they did these for the Wii, but they're certainly doing it for the Switch 2.

And there is going to be one in LA April 11th through 13th.

So maybe we'll be able to get some hands-on experience with a Switch 2.

Remember when they did this with the GameCube, God fucking 20 years ago at this point?

It was like a pop-up, and

they just basically rented out a club in Hollywood.

And I went there with my then-roommate, and we played this thing before it was out.

I think we can

probably estimate the release date if that pop-up's happening in early April.

Yeah, then they're not going to build up that hype and then not drop the thing until late summer.

Well, the last one of these hands-on things is in Seoul, and that's on June 1st.

So, I don't think it's coming until sometime in June at 4th of June of July

4th of July.

I still could see it being a holiday launch, but who knows?

What?

Christmas?

Or fall leading into holiday.

November.

No way.

No way.

I could be wrong.

I don't know.

We'll certainly donate.

Plus, put money down.

Let's do it right here.

Or, or, or, or, or, or, or.

What if,

what if we all place a bet?

Okay.

Whoever's closest, prices right rules, without going over, gets to pick a game that we have to play on the show, and we all have to play it.

I love that.

So we'll, we'll do a we play, you play of of

a game of the winner's choice.

Yes.

I love that.

That's fun.

Okay, so we're just going to pick a date.

Yeah, you just got to pick a date.

Maybe a week.

I look at the calendar.

Okay, but

no, I think it's a.

Maybe we should pick a date.

A date?

A date.

Let me look at the calendar real quick.

I'm excited.

This is crazy.

I can't wait for you guys to play Mother 3.

Hey, if it's available on Switch 2, I'll be very excited.

That's not, no, that wasn't the rule.

It was any game.

You said any game.

It's gotta be a Switch 2 game.

What the fuck?

What?

No, I'm just kidding.

What would be the date?

What would be, I mean, this thing, because I feel like Nintendo usually does their software on a Friday, but would they launch a new console on a Friday?

I think they have, because I think, I think, let's, what day did the Switch one

launch?

Switch one.

It came out March 3rd,

2017.

All right, so a little bit of reverse engineering to figure out what day of the week that was.

Yeah.

It was a Friday.

It was a Friday.

So I think it might be a Friday.

We'll see.

That's typically what they typically do.

I am going to go ahead, and since we're looking at fall, I think I'm going to put a marker down for September 19th.

I'll go first, and they'll stake that out.

Nick's saying

September 19th.

I'm going to write these down.

And hey, they'll be just in time to get it for Chef Kevin's birthday.

You have that on your calendar?

I do have it in my calendar.

All right, I've got mine.

Okay.

June 20th.

Oh, I was going to go with June 20th.

That's really good.

June 20th is really good.

So I have to split the difference here somewhere.

Or you could go later.

Or I can go later.

I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with,

oh, my God.

July 4th is a Friday.

Wow.

I think I'm going to go with July 4th.

All right.

All right.

There it is.

Wow.

So, again, it's closest without going over.

I feel like that might screw us because

there's a possibility nobody could win, right?

Well, yeah.

So maybe it'll just be like if it's earlier than Heather's, it'll be Heather.

And if it's later than mine, then it'll be me.

Okay.

And then you'll get anything that's closer to you in the middle.

Okay.

I think that's fair.

Great.

Switch to prediction dates.

Okay.

You heard it here on the show first.

This is what we're doing.

We don't have to decide what our games are yet.

We can decide that later.

Actually, why don't I say this?

If it's after mine, well, we will do prices right rules.

So if it's after mine, if it's after September 19th, then no one wins and Ranch gets to pick a game we have to cover.

Okay,

I love it.

I love it.

Okay.

Okay, great.

The gauntlet has been thrown down.

The wager has been made.

We will see just when the Switch 2 is playable.

But right now, we got some other games we've been playing.

We're not just talking about the future.

We're also living in the moment.

So the question I have to ask.

for everyone in studio is, what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Oh, guys, I miss you so much.

Resident Evil Merchant, I missed you too.

Oh, yeah, I missed you so much.

Yeah, I really missed you.

We talked to you last week.

I know.

It's been a long week.

Yeah.

It's been crazy out there.

You gotta be careful.

You gotta be careful.

That's one way to put it.

Fires, waters.

Yeah.

All kinds of.

Like, you gotta be careful.

No matter where you live, the world's changing.

Yeah, it's true.

I missed you guys.

I missed you too.

Yeah.

So.

Are you doing okay?

Are you hanging in there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I found out

this week that I met a Badaka's friend.

Oh, that's so nice.

Well, I mean, I like to think that we've been your friend, but it's nice that you've at least connected with that.

But without confirmation, Nick, you should know this.

It's all words.

Hmm, right.

Like, I can say, I can ride an ostrich, but unless you see me do it, I think you should be suspicious.

I believe you can ride an ostrich.

I just can picture you doing that.

I kind of don't think you can.

I kind of think you're maybe too top heavy.

You're doubtful your friends.

No, I'm just saying your legs might be too long.

Why do you doubt me?

You know what?

You can do anything.

Matt, how did you, how did this happen?

How did you officially declare your friendship for the Resident Evil merchant?

We talked on the phone.

Wow.

He talked to me on the phone.

Wow.

He took my call.

Yeah.

And I gave him some tips.

And it was

confusing to a couple of people, but otherwise.

I was on a Twitch stream.

I was streaming some Bilachro on Twitch and

doing a fundraiser, raising money for direct relief for

fire relief out here in California.

And

the people that were watching wanted to know what the merchant was up to.

And I shot a text over to the merchant.

I was like, hey, if you're free, give me a call.

Merchant.

Got on the phone to me.

I had the phone on the speaker and there were some people who didn't know what was going on and were justifiably confused.

But the people that were in the know were very excited and very appreciative that you made the time to speak with me on the phone.

Wow.

Thank you very much.

I was honored to be there, and I'm happy that you raised money for the firefighters and the fires and

Los Angeles.

It was for helping with the fires, not for the fire.

Yeah, that's what that sounded like you were being counterproductive.

I want to make that completely clear.

I thought you were hedging your bets.

I want to just make a statement here.

I'm not playing both sides of this.

I think for safety's sake, you should consider it.

It's four years where you just see like Mark Zuckerberg at like the fire's inauguration.

Look.

Gotta be got to lash myself to the fire now.

COVID-26 is the VP.

This sucks.

So, guys, I guess I want to answer to the question, what are you playing?

Nick, where are you you tell us what are you playing?

Uh, wow, thanks so much, Resident Evil Merchant.

Well, I'll come out of this from

a different angle than normal.

Uh, I built a new gaming rig over the break.

Yeah, I built a new gaming PC, uh, and I did have the moment of like, I might actually be getting too old for this shit, just in terms of, I, I mean, like, I'm really glad I built this one, but

I'm like, I'm just, I'm fucking old.

So like, you know what I mean?

I'm just old as shit.

And so it's like things like you know like i have like a low grade tremor so like like sometimes working with screw with little screws and shit and like it's like it's just kind of like a little bit cumbersome it's a little it's a little bit uh difficult for me just physically uh but um i but that said i i i i enjoyed this process uh i may have said on here before and i don't i don't remember if i said specifically I like building PCs.

However, the last PC, my most recent gaming PC was a pre-build that I bought.

And the reason was because of it was a mid-stay,

when I was going to upgrade, it was a mid-stay GPU shortage.

Everyone was fucking buying them to mine Ethereum.

And so it was actually

about the same price for me just to buy a pre-built, a pre-built PC as opposed to buying a GPU on the secondary market.

But even though it's usually much, much cheaper to build, but this time it was more,

you know, it made more financial sense to build.

And it's also more fun.

And also you get to like customize it and not end up with some janky components.

I'm sure everyone who builds PCs knows about PC Part Picker, but it is just such an invaluable resource.

And it's one of those things where the internet mostly sucks, but there are some pockets of the internet that represent like the ideal of community that we were promised, you know, and PC Part Picker is one that's, I'm sure there's maybe some weird monetization that's going on there, but for the most part, it kind of feels like this was created as a resource for people who are knowledgeable to help people who maybe need some assistance in a particular niche.

And so just having a resource where like, hey, this is all, these are all the parts you can use to get this particular type of

build.

And this, this is what's compatible with whatever.

This is how much power you're going to need.

Just having an interface like that is so, so, so helpful.

And I did lean on that pretty heavily.

So the thing I will say about assembling a PC, which I think both of you would love doing because I know you both love building things, it is pretty straightforward.

And

it's pretty, usually pretty easy, but there are always moments that come up where you have to use a little bit more force than you'd expect.

And that's always the thing of just like, I am, you know, I am seeding my GPU.

And you know what?

I've just got to put a little bit more pressure into this to get this into the PCIe slot than I would, you know, I would want for a thing that I'm holding that costs more than a PlayStation 5.

You know what I mean?

Like it's, it's just, there are just like a few times when you're kind of just on one ass cheek, just like, okay, I'm seeding the CPU.

I don't want to fuck this up because this costs a lot of money.

And if I drop this, I could, I could dent a pin or whatever, you know, so like like

That there is a little bit of anxiety with making something which again goes back to me being feeling just feeling a little too old for it But it's very gratifying when you finally post for the first time post acronym power on self-test

Mine didn't post the first time I had it all assembled and I was like fuck I was like what I fucked something up and this is just like

it wasn't wet a Resident Evil Merchant actually it was as simple as I was just like you know what DVI cables can be finicky I swipped up I swapped on my DVI cable for an an HDMI cable, and that was it.

And after that, it booted up and worked fine.

So it was really just a cable thing.

And as far as components go, I won't talk about this in too much detail.

Maybe I'll put the full list of components in the Discord for if anyone was curious, but I did get a fractal design north case, which is the thing I'd been eyeing.

This is just like a, I think they're a Swedish company, and it's just a really pleasant aesthetic.

It's kind of understated.

I feel like a lot of

my last rig had a bunch of RGB shit, and I just felt like it was very busy.

And it's kind of the dominant aesthetic with PC for whatever reason.

So I was just like, I just want less, I just want way less RGB.

And this case is part of that because this case is like kind of understated.

It's very functional.

It's really easy to work with.

It's a nice piece of design, plenty of operating space inside of it.

It's super duper quiet.

The case fans are really, really, you know, don't generate much noise.

And it's got this walnut wood paneling in front, which is, I think, just, again, just very visually appealing.

As far as

actual horsepower, I got an AMD Ryzen 7 and I got a GeForce RTX 4070 TI Super, which is kind of like the sweet spot for price and performance right now.

The thing is, like, so, you know, obviously PCs, you're

almost all of them are towers.

And so your GPU is mounted.

And this sum bitch is so heavy that it's like sagging, like it's like putting pressure on the slot and it's physically falling down just from all like, you know, how much like physical weight is on the car.

So these things come with a

support bracket, but you know, the motherboard that I had was not fully compatible with this support bracket.

So I kind of had to jerry rig it where I've got it like kind of there's it's supposed to go into one of the mounting screws in the motherboard, uh, but it didn't exactly fit.

So I had to like just, I'm just using a zip tie to like hold it up.

Yeah.

It's one of those things where it's just like, this is like a computer that I spent more than $1,000 on and holding it together is just a little piece of plastic.

But whatever, it's working.

And, you know, it's a little bit of an adjustment to get to Windows 11.

My old rig was Windows 10, which I never upgraded.

And Windows 11 is nice, but it's got some little quirks I got to get used to.

But, Matt, for you, the first game I installed outside of Stardew Valley was Alan Wake 2.

Let's...

Wake.

Because this thing is like,

this machine's a bit of a beast.

I tried to future-proof it a little bit.

You maybe heard the graphics card.

It's pretty powerful.

It's pretty potent.

And I found a list of the most resource-intensive PC games, and Alan Wake 2 was number one.

So I was like, you know what?

Let's just go.

Let's see what this baby can do.

And I'm going to talk about Alan Wake 2.

But first, next week, I got to talk about the end game of Metaphor Refantasio, which I will get to.

But yeah, building that new rig, super, super satisfying.

And I'm glad I used a good chunk of my gaming time to this guy go

to get into that.

Hold on.

First of all, a couple things.

My man's built a PC over here.

That's right.

He installed Alan Wake 2.

Then he's buried the lead.

He finished Metaphor Refantasio.

Fucking go.

This guy's a freaking beast over here.

I mean, I.

He talked about his computer being a beast.

The beast, he's sitting right here.

Hey, I'm tiger now.

Oh, my God.

I guess he's fucking built different.

I also, this makes me sad because I'm on the opposite journey, which is that I've decided that I have to sell my PC.

Oh man.

I never, I never use it.

It's the full Gundam build of the PC.

And as much as I would love to like just keep it to look at it.

I am moving soon and the place I'm moving to has less room.

Right.

And this thing is so big, you know, it's like mid-thigh.

Yeah.

And it's, I, I just don't have any physical space for it in my new setup.

And it breaks my heart a little bit.

It's, it's, it stinks.

I mean, it's one of the things like, like, I love living in a city, uh, but yeah, you are space limited.

And it would be nice if you're someone who has a hobby to have a little bit more space for things.

But yeah, you have to make tough choices.

I'm having to get rid of shit all the time.

Yeah.

It's a bar.

Yeah.

That KCF is really cool.

It's the full, I mean, it's the Gundam graphics card, the Gundam monitor, the Gundam everything.

Yeah.

I didn't know about this website PC part picker.

So of all the things that you said, that is like the thing that is now imprinted on me.

I'm going to be now looking at this for the better part of this year.

Yeah.

Like just looking at it and

seeing what I can do.

I'm totally open to someone telling me there's something wrong with it.

It doesn't seem like it to me.

It seems like it's a pretty wholesome environment that seems to have good advice.

But, you know, if there is any criticism that exists, you know, I'm saying, hey, I'm sure you'll let me know.

I'm sure everything is above board with people who are interested in building PCs for gaming.

Yeah,

everything's hunky-dory with a PC master race demographic.

No, I do think most of the PC gaming community is really supportive and really eager to share their knowledge base.

And so,

yeah,

that community is part of what makes building a rig so approachable.

I was scared about putting an additional SSD in my PS5.

Yeah.

Because I'm just not used to opening up a gaming console.

So it's kind of like a jarring experience.

And then you do have to like.

Jam it.

You have to like jam it in.

Yeah, you have to, you have to crank it.

Yeah, and that little thing costs like

120 bucks or whatever.

Yeah, so you're like, am I breaking this thing by putting it into this slot?

It feels like, and then you hear like a ka-chunk, and you're like, is that good or bad?

Yeah.

And then you, then it works and you're like, okay.

But like, I would just, I personally would not, if I was the guy making this stuff, I would make it a different way so you didn't have to do it like that.

Because that's really scary.

And I know that people are doing it are really scared.

And I just don't want you to feel that way when you're doing it.

I bought a PC part over the holidays that

is a little bit more niche, which is an adapter that allows me me to plug the original Macintosh mouse into an iPad.

There we go.

So that

on my

fake Macintosh, which is the old Macintosh chassis with an iPad mini, which happens to be almost identical-sized screen, a 3D-printed laser-cut

mounting bracket on the inside of the Macintosh.

Then I got an adapter that allows me to hook up the original Macintosh keyboard, but the gap in this

simulated like little workstation, because it's also such a good, like it's got a handle built in, you can put it anywhere, it looks pretty on a table.

The gap was the mouse, because there was no way to use a mouse on the iPad unless you're using a trackpad.

So I printed a skin for my trackpad that matched the aesthetic of the Macintosh, but it always bothered me that I wasn't using the actual original mouse.

Finally, somebody cracked it and they made an adapter, and now I can use the original Macintosh mouse and original Macintosh keyboard on an iPad that is housed inside of a Macintosh.

That's cool as hell.

That's

fun to write.

A series of things that are the most Heather Ann Campbell thing I've ever had.

It's fun to write on, man.

Fun to write on.

I love it.

Get that nice, satisfying like kachung.

That's so, so good.

There's a new coffee shop, a new cafe here in Los Angeles that is called File Systems of Coffee that is all original Macintosh aesthetic.

Wow, I've heard of this place.

And they have multiple Macs that have been retrofitted to have like modern day monitors and screensavers and probably iPads built inside of them.

I was hoping it would be

a little bit denser an experience.

It is sort of a superficial aesthetic, and I also wish that it had had more 1980s Mac furniture.

For example, over the holidays, I became enamored with this original Macintosh desk called the Mac Desk, which I didn't know existed.

And it was a Danish company that made a table specifically for Macintoshes, and it's gorgeous.

And I'm thinking about maybe getting one as my actual desk.

Yeah.

Because they're not that expensive when they pop up.

Cause nobody fucking wants that thing.

Heather, what are you playing?

Oh, what am I playing?

Let me tell you what I'm playing.

I'm playing the Pokemon TCG Pocket game.

Wow.

I'm not just fucking playing this game.

I'm fucking dominating this game.

Let me tell you about my decks.

Let me tell you about my Celebi EX deck.

That's a standard deck.

A lot of the subreddit on the TCG Pocket is,

you know, that's a high-ranking deck.

So is the

Gyarados deck.

That's a fine, that's a fine deck.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit.

And I also, of course, have my Mewtwo deck.

And let me tell you, when I want to draw cards, I let my wife do it because she has the luck of God.

Yeah, Mary's so cool.

Yeah, she's the coolest.

And also, we already know she's lucky because she's married to you.

What a nice thing to say.

I've said it before.

Oh, that's really sweet.

Oh, thank you.

But let me talk to you about

my meta decks.

Because this is where I feel like the game really shines.

Because by the time you've built these three big decks, the Celebi, the Gyarados, and the Mewtwo deck, which are standard decks, maybe you swap out a card here or there.

I'm sorry, how many cards are a deck or in a deck?

20.

20, okay.

20 on the pocket.

I think it's more in the actual game.

I think it might be 40 in the actual game.

So it's a little bit, wait, I think, I believe Hearthstone, or is Hearthstone 30 or 20?

I I think Hearthstone is 30, but Marvel Snap is 12.

So it's kind of in the middle of those two.

So once you, you know, these, the, the top three decks, which are also the decks being played in the tournaments, because I, I'm telling you, I've gone fucking all in on this game.

Like micromanaging decks, like

pulling for specific cards, telling my wife, I need an Electross, and she's like, on it, spins the fucking like thing all around, picks a deck, opens it up, and there's the card.

This woman, in less than 500 cards, pulled two gold Charizards, which

is impossible.

But anyway, once everybody's got their decks, and you know the most likely three decks that you're going to see are either Gyarados or Celebi or Mewtwo, then you have to start countering those specific decks by building decks that are specifically weird to counter those decks.

So my three specific weird decks, Dragonite Meta, not that weird.

Everybody knows a Dragonite.

You got to build him up in your bench before you unleash him because he can attack both the bench and the frontline card.

Meltan

is a good meta deck.

It's

a slow build.

Like

a lot of decks aren't prepared for the evolved version of Meltan, whose name escapes me off the top of my head.

But But it's a heavy hitter, 120 damage, and also has a 20 damage protective coat on the card itself.

But my favorite meta deck that I'm playing right now is something I'm calling Weeping Hell.

Great.

Which is based on a deck I saw on Reddit that is a Weeping Bell meta.

Weeping Bell has the ability to pull a card from the bench up to the front line so that you can attack that card.

And no matter how many times you pull the card back to the bench, Weeping Bell can pull it back into your active, uh, active place.

Wait, so from the opponent's hand?

So, yeah, so the opponent has their bench and then their main attacker.

And is their bench, these are cards in play that are not, okay, and then they're, they're, they're, they're, uh, you know, they all, they also have their other pile.

Typically, typically, you can damage the, the, the bench of a deck using specific cards, but generally speaking, those cards can't be damaged.

You have to to focus on your active opposing Pokemon.

Weeping Bell can pull any card that is a basic Pokemon from the bench up to the front line and then do 60 damage to it.

You combine this with the Pokemon Flute,

typically the most unused garbage card in the entire deck.

Wow.

Pokemon Flute can only do one thing, which is pull a deceased basic Pokémon out of the opponent's like expired discard pile, right?

Essentially their graveyard.

Yeah, their graveyard.

So let's say there's that you're playing against somebody who's got a Gyarados deck, right?

You build all the way up to Weeping Bell before they can manage to turn a Magikarp into a Gyarados.

You pull that Magikarp using Weeping Bell into the primary spot and kill it.

And then on the next turn, use the Pokemon flute, bring the Magikarp back to life, pull it up to the front kill it again.

Wow.

So you can just execute the same Pokemon over and over and over again.

Jesus Christ.

Drag it back from hell.

It is so fun.

It is, I would not say that I have a higher than 50% win ratio with this deck.

Sure.

But of all the decks, it is the most fun because I've never seen, I've never encountered anybody else playing with it.

Shout out to whoever it was on the Reddit TCG Pocket who was like, you guys should try this deck.

And it was in a comments.

It wasn't even like the main thing.

Right.

Wow.

Because it is an absolute delight to play.

That's what that's one thing I do like about card games is that when you,

there are some decks that, like you were saying, that like are not optimized.

They're not like S tier, A tier decks.

They're maybe even not even really competitive, but they're so fun that they're just like, you get in there and like, yeah, you're going to lose most of the time.

But when you do win, it's kind of in a way that even like sometimes even your opponent is like kind of having fun with it.

Yeah, like I remember playing, I got into uh and when I was playing more hearthstone, I was doing into mill decks, which is basically like you know, you're milling your opponent's decks, you're making them burn all their cards, yeah, you're making them draw too many cards that their hand can handle, so they're just eventually gonna run out of cards.

And again, it's like it's like not an efficient way to play, but it's a super fun way to play.

It's like if you're in a Street Fighter tournament and you're mating somebody like Dan, yes, right.

Like, it's it's not likely that you're going to win, but when you do, it is so satisfying and playful and fun.

There's also in the Pokemon Pocket game the ability to concede.

Like you don't have to allow the game to play all the way out.

If you can game out every step that's going to happen, it's like, okay, there's nothing I can do here.

I'm definitely going to lose.

And you want to save time, you can press the concede button.

My favorite thing with my Weepin Hell is when I Pokemon flute and Magikarp goes back in the bench and they concede immediately.

I know what's going to happen

but that is I haven't just been playing it I've been guys I haven't played the game that shall not be named for more than a week

because every free moment I get I'm playing Pokemon against other people on the pocket

I love it I love it thank you for uh introducing me to it on this podcast it's so it's so fun that sometimes I'll even sweat a little bit.

Wow.

Because it's like such an intense, awesome match.

Matt, what are you playing?

Well,

I'll keep it brief.

Because I went too long.

No, no, no, no, no.

Not because I went too long.

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

You both went too long.

All right.

We've almost been on this show for an hour.

No, no, no, no.

We're having fun.

And honestly, I think one of the best parts of doing this show is having very spirited conversations.

So this is like really, really great.

But I don't have that much to say, really.

I've been playing, I've been bouncing around a lot of games right now.

For some reason,

and I can't really put my finger on why, I

started playing Animal Crossing

on my 3DS.

Certainly not to pacify me during a time of severe stress.

The 3DS, it's called...

You can't go outside.

You can't go outside.

You can't go outside.

Need to have a sense of community.

Have to wear a mask if you go outside.

You have to have air filters on inside definitely not something i'm going to be uh unpacking with somebody uh that's uh medically uh able to do so

i definitely didn't get a flyer that said more debris has been released into los angeles by a factor of 10 than during 9-11 in manhattan very chill very tight time awesome i love it super zoomed out like i'm i'm chill i'm looking at everything from a distance i'm relaxed i'm chill i know last week we were chill i'm like chill right now I'm super chill.

I'm super chill.

Don't have air filters going 24-7.

I have a constant barrage of white noise going currently.

But over the, I didn't get to say what I was playing really over the break because we had recorded that one in advance.

I finished the Astrobot DLC.

So

that gave me a lot of fun.

This is the Christmas DLC.

The Christmas DLC.

How is it?

It's fucking awesome.

Ah, fuck.

I gotta play it.

I wanted to play it before.

It wasn't Christmas anymore.

But it's a great great Christmas level.

It's really, really fun.

But I also did some of the speed run

levels because there are new characters added for that as well.

So that game is now sitting at 100% again.

Hell yeah.

Did that started Indiana Jones?

Bounced off of it.

Would like to get back to it.

How many hours did you put into it, you think?

You get through kind of like that.

You got through the tutorial, got into the main game on the game.

I got through the tutorial.

I got through like the first area, basically the first destination, I guess.

You got it.

But was like really enjoying it and thought it was very cool.

And I guess also forgot how much I like Indiana Jones.

I kind of don't think about him as a franchise that I like that much because I don't like the movies that much.

Because most of the movies are not very good.

There's

litigate this.

There's one good one.

One.

The first three are pretty good.

But the first one is

an all-time.

Is an all-time.

Yes.

The second are good.

But Over the Break 2, I played through almost all of Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time on my Steam Deck.

And it's fucking great still.

Such a fun, fun game.

I think I have maybe like two hours left to go back in there and finish it.

I got Stellar Blade.

I've been loving Stellar Blade.

It's great.

It's fucking awesome.

And

my wife makes fun of me when I'm playing this.

You should get a gaming system that's separate from your wife.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean,

honestly, she shouldn't be seeing this.

Yeah.

It's humiliating.

Especially now that the boobies mash together.

It's

thanks to the update.

The mashing update.

It's a real problem.

They got my letters.

Also, I wanted to shout out.

I didn't get to shout them out when we were in the Switch 2 conversation.

There was a thread that was born in our Discord

because people were complaining about the amount of Switch 2 rumors being shared in a general channel.

So we were siloed off into a thread.

So shout out, Anthony, shout out, Sixwire, Foxy the Kid, Zeegs, Fake JSF, and whoever else.

If I'm forgetting anybody, we were a small but mighty community who were just going and just believe.

We didn't stop believing.

Wait, you were part of the problem?

Oh, no,

I wasn't part of the problem.

You got exiled to a separate thread?

I didn't get exiled.

I joined the exile

because I saw their plight and I didn't think they did anything wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I joined in there because I was also, you know, I'm very excited about Switch 2 and I want to see what everybody was talking about.

We were all exchanging memes and stuff.

We were also just like, it was a smaller channel.

So we were like having like interesting, fun conversations.

It was like nice to talk to some

internet pals.

It was great.

It's a nice community.

Nice community in their discord.gg/slash get played.

I will say the thing that has really taken over in a way that I think I described in our group chat as I have Bellatro sickness

is Bellatro.

Yeah.

And I just have, I have Bilatro sickness.

Yeah.

I can't stop playing it.

I own it on multiple platforms.

I

am just constantly trying to play it any chance that I get.

And I'm not good at it.

I've been winning, but I'm not, I'm not a master by any means.

I just enjoy it quite a bit.

And

I

had about 10 hours in it on Steam

before the

before before the winter break and during the winter break I

quadrupled my hour

I love this and just became obsessed with it and I the

my favorite sound currently

of all sounds I can hear are the chip sounds when you win yeah it's so satisfying look I it's a Balacho is a is a phenomenal design I think we kind of when we did our our our games of the year uh you know awards I think we maybe kind of didn't give Balacho enough of a highlight.

We all really like the game.

We all really appreciate it.

It's a genius design.

But it is the kind of thing I'm looking back.

It's like, man, should I have squeezed Balacho into my personal top five?

I feel like with the amount of time you're putting into it now, retroactively, it might be a top five game for you.

It's a top five game.

It might be a top five game of all time.

Holy shit.

I have Bellachro sickness.

Yeah.

So I looked this up because I wanted to find the text.

You did text us, I have Belatro sickness.

But I found another text that I forgot about from my friend.

So, Bilacho, I think, is getting like

it's kind of gotten into the larger culture now, like a non-gamers, casual gamers.

I think they're like, hey, playing it on their phones.

They're like, hey, what's Bilacho?

I feel like I've encountered more of that.

Maybe it was part of it, was all the game of the year buzz.

But

a friend of mine, who I won't dox, who

texted me, I've played an insane amount of hours of Bilacho.

I'm ignoring my children.

It's a real problem.

That was Bill Clinton.

He's ignoring his adult children.

He's ignoring Chelsea.

But that's what I've been playing.

Just a roundup of games.

Excited to hunker down and actually play one game to completion.

Yeah.

Start

the list of 2025.

All right, let's talk Kongs.

We're doing the Triforce of Kongs.

Of course,

there's a Donkey Kong redesign in the new Switch 2 Mario Kart footage.

Plus, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD released this past week.

Kong is in the zeitgeist.

He's been away.

Kong never left us.

No, Kong is always near and dear.

He's one of my favorite guys.

Kong is eternal.

We love Kong.

We love Kong.

And also, we love Kongs.

And that's what we're doing here.

This exercise is applying to the multitude of Kongs.

I love it.

We were each going to pick three of them.

I love it.

We did think about doing a Kongs tier list, but it feels like we covered the DK games when we did the rare tier list.

I know we didn't do all of them.

Yeah.

But, like, you know, the Donkey Kong countries were on there.

We discussed the retro games.

It felt like a little too similar.

So, so Triforce of Kongs it is.

Of course, the Triforces of Courage, Power, and Wisdom.

We will each name one for each category.

Who would like to start?

I'll go first.

Okay, great.

All right.

I'm going to go with power.

Great.

Great place to start.

I think it's a good place to start with Kong

because we associate Kong with power.

And so,

for my spot on the Triforce of Kongs in the power slot,

created by American filmmaker Marion C.

Cooper, King Kong was

one of the archetypical giant Kongs ever to grace our shores cinematically.

In the film, an American film crew led by Carl Denham captures Kong and brings him to New York City to be exhibited as the eighth wonder of the world.

I can think of no more powerful Kong than King Kong himself,

a monkey that has starred in video games.

King Kong, the video game, Kong versus Godzilla.

He's even a skin in Fortnite.

Yeah.

And the King of the Monsters game.

The movie tie-in game for Peter Jackson's King Kong film is very good.

Yeah, it's excellent.

Is that the one where the title is like King Kong the movie, the game?

Yeah, it's a really cumbersome title.

I mean, the Ur Kong, obviously.

There are no other Kongs without King Kong.

It's kind of like the ultimate pick.

So for the Triforce of Power, it makes a whole lot of sense.

King Kong, of course,

cited in the famous court case where Nintendo was sued by the movie studio, I forget which one, the movie studio

that owns King Kong.

And Nintendo won the court case

because they were able to establish that it was meant as a Donkey Kong was meant as a parody.

And that case was litigated by the late John Kirby, the namesake of the inspiration of Kirby the character.

There you go.

Man.

King Kong inextricable from video game history.

Kirby defending Kong?

Kirby defending Donkey Kong, yeah.

Pretty crazy stuff.

Against King Kong.

The actual title of the King Kong movie tie-in video game is Peter Jackson's King Kong, the official game of the movie.

That sucks.

That's fucking bad.

The official game.

It's a game that would never be ported because it wouldn't make sense to port it.

It is a very good game.

I remember it being fun.

I loved it.

A great first pick, Heather.

Great first pick.

Thank you so much.

You want me to go?

Well, I can go if you want.

No, I want to go because I'm scared that you're going to take mine.

Okay, great.

Staying in power.

You know, power can present itself in many forms.

Strength, obviously, is the main

attribute of power, wouldn't you say?

Sure.

But you know what's cooler?

What?

Or you know what's more better, what's more powerful than strength?

Being cool.

My pick for the power Triforce, Funky Kong.

Puck.

So Funky Kong looks exactly like Donkey Kong in almost every single way, except he has a couple of accessories, a bandana, sunglasses, what I believe is now called an A-frame shirt, and cutoff jean shorts.

He fucking rules, and he rides on a surfboard.

Funky Kong.

Funky Kong.

Funky Kong is great.

Look, he's one of the great characters of fiction.

I think the thing with Funky Kong is it is powerful,

to have that look, to embrace that look.

Yes, that aura, that aura of cool is powerful.

And also, you could argue in Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, when they did the remaster, they added Funky Kong, they added new Funky mode, and Funky Kong was more powerful than the default player character.

So he's, you know, he's quite, he's naturally OP, or at least has OP charisma.

He's got Riz.

He does have Riz.

And I love him.

I think he's such a funny character.

He is a very funny character.

Inarguable.

He's my choice for the Triforce of of Power, Funky Kong.

Look, Funky Kong was on my list, but he's claimed by you.

But I have actually, I think, still my first choice available for the Triforce of Power here.

I see.

Matt's showing me an image, an image of Funky Kong doing the T-pose.

Yeah, he's T-posed and his proportions are very like he's got a lot of arm.

You can really tell his wingspan there.

I think Nintendo characters should never be T-Posed because it looks insane.

The proportions are bigger.

It looks like they're dead.

My choice for the Triforce of Power, you know, King Kong is the Kong who started it all, but there's a video game Kong who started it all and started a franchise and also built a company.

I'm talking about OG Donkey Kong, who is canonically also Cranky Kong.

Original Donkey Kong from the first Donkey Kong game slash Cranky Kong

is my choice for the Triforce of Power.

Powerful figure,

a bruising brute in his initial depiction.

He's powerful enough to

render steel beams askew and to heave heavy barrels on an endless loop.

He is a titan.

He's a Goliath.

And then Cranky Kong maintains that power and dignity in a different way by being cranky and telling you exactly how he feels.

And you know what?

Telling it like it is is pretty powerful.

Being true to yourself is pretty powerful.

Nick's always like, I'm just saying.

I'm just saying.

I'm just asking questions.

That's a powerful guy.

Of course, there he goes again, too, talking about steel beams.

OG Donkey Kong and Cranky Kong.

That's my Triforce.

So that means Cranky Kong's off the table.

It's the same guy.

This is a devious pic, Nick, and I salute you.

It's canonically the same character.

Yeah, I know.

Donkey is cranky.

I know cranky is donkey, and I know that donkey is cranky.

Yeah.

Donkey is cranky.

Yeah.

Put it on a shirt.

So I think moving on to the next piece.

And Heather, it's back at you.

All right.

I'm going to go with Courage.

Okay.

I'm going to go with Courage.

You see, after being seemingly killed by UH-1 Iroquois helicopters

atop the World Trade Center in 1976, King Kong was actually taken to the Atlantic Institute and kept alive in a coma for 10 years.

Dr.

Amy Franklin set out to save Kong's life by giving him a computer-monitored artificial heart.

However, Kong was alone.

And that's why, courageously, another Kong had to step in and provide companionship.

I'm talking about the one, the only from the 1986 film King Kong Lives, Lady Kong.

Wow.

Lady Kong.

Now, you've shown, you showed me a picture of Funky Kong tea posing.

I'm going to show you a picture of Lady Kong, specifically her large breasts.

Oh, my God.

Hell yeah.

So Lady Kong, in the 1986 film known as King Kong 2 or Kong Lives,

is

put into confinement with King Kong, who eventually falls in love with her and mates with her and then frees her.

Yeah.

But as he is fighting, fighting for their safety,

he gets

attacked by the army, who's cornered him, and fills him full of bullets.

And his mechanical heart fails and King Kong dies, but not before Lady Kong can give birth to Baby Kong.

So there's not a Mr.

Lady Kong is what I'm hearing.

Well, someone fathered that Kong.

Yeah, King Kong Kong fathered.

Oh, I'm not trying to step on any toes.

Here's Baby Kong.

In case you guys are unfamiliar with the 70s and 80s King Kong films.

I'm always,

it's always fun discovering the things that you know

and then you sharing them with us.

I like to know the things that you know.

Well,

I like, you know,

you took a shot at Steel Beams earlier.

I wasn't taking a shot at steel beams.

I will leave any steel beam where it stands.

Well, you brought them up.

Okay, yes.

In terms of what Weiger may or may not believe.

Yeah.

What we did learn in the 1976 King Kong film is that not even King Kong can destroy the World Trade Center.

No, that thing was still there after Kong was around.

You need to do a little better than a kaiju to knock down that tower.

Yeah, you're going to have to do a little bit better than that, sweetie.

Come up with a new plan.

Sending a big ape up there ain't going to work.

Yeah, guess what?

Send it back to Skull Island, babe.

It's not gonna work.

Man, I love Skull Island.

Skull Island's cool.

I wish I could live there.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I don't know if I'd want to live there.

I would do fine.

Skull Island has one of the funniest moments in a film.

Is it the...

It's when the guy steps forward with a, with a, yeah, with grenades in his hand.

Shay Wiggum, right?

To

call forth the kaiju ravaging Skull Island, assuming that it is going to bite bite him, and then he'll blow himself up inside of it.

And instead, it looks at him,

hits him with its tail.

He flies.

He flies

so far.

Like the man is dead

in the air for sure.

But his corpse flies,

I would say,

30 blocks

before hitting the side of a mountain and extremely loading

spun cartoon.

It's extremely good.

It is one of the

I mean, I'll laugh in a comedy.

Yeah.

But the hardest I think I've ever laughed in a movie may have been at that moment in Skull Island.

It's great.

Your heroic moment of self-sacrifice, backfiring, and then you having enough time to process it.

It's very funny.

Fuck.

All right, Matt, you're up.

Okay.

Courage, bravery, keeping your wits about you.

These are all tough for anybody.

Maybe a little bit easier for an adult, perhaps.

But these are maybe qualities that some little baby ass kid don't have so much.

My choice for courage, Diddy Kong.

Wow.

Because, yeah, he's sort of like a willing participant in Donkey Kong's little adventures, but you got to remember, he's just a kid.

He doesn't notice that he's getting himself into half the time.

How old is Diddy Kong?

It looks like you have Diddy Kong age already filled in in your Google search.

It was Diddy age, but

the face in the Kong.

Oh, my God.

Okay, so in...

His age is unknown, which is horrifying.

I think Diddy Kong may be more of a

like he may look diminutive more because he's a different species as opposed to

a different kid.

Yeah, because I think he's more like just Donkey Kong's friend.

Yeah.

But yeah, I guess his age is unknown, so he could be a kid.

And you know what?

I will say he is very courageous.

You can't knock Diddy for not being

courageous when there is a mission that needs to be accomplished.

He will volunteer.

He will be there.

He'll be there.

And you know what?

He's also a bit of a daredevil, isn't he,

with his racing?

Yeah.

I guess I still pick him for courage.

I think it's a great pick.

It does say his age is unknown, but he is Donkey Kong's sidekick and best friend.

So if Donkey Kong's a full-ass adult, it would be weird if his best friend was a little kid.

Yeah, that would be a little strange.

But they're monkeys.

It's a different world.

That's true.

We don't know what they're doing.

They have a different sense of what, you know, of adulthood and what have you.

Yeah, but I still pick Diddy Kong.

I think it's a good pick.

I like him.

And you know what?

As a hat-wearing guy, he's one of my guys.

He's got a great hat.

And

it's a great look for him, and he's fully committed to it.

I love him.

Staying on Diddy Kong, my Triforce of Courage pick.

Donkey Kong Country 2 begins with this text.

Haar, we have got the big monkey.

If you want him back, you scurvy dogs, you'll have to hand over the banana horde.

K-rule.

Now that means that Donkey Kong, their hero and protector, has himself

been kidnapped and incapacitated.

And someone's going to have to step up in his stead.

And yeah, Diddy Kong's there, but he needs a new ally because he can't do it alone.

That ally comes in the form of the very

embodiment of courage,

Dixie Kong.

Wow.

That's right.

Dixie Kong is my choice for the Triforce of Courage.

A great pick.

A very fun character.

Yes.

And of course, it's Diddy's Conquest.

That's right.

But then Dixie becomes a title character of her own right.

That's right, and Donkey Kong 3.

Yes.

And then that's where,

then Baby Kong becomes part of it.

Baby Kong becomes part of it.

But yes, Diddy Kong Country 3, Dixie Kong's Double Trouble.

And so, you know, it's another game where Diddy Kong, or Dixie Kong, who, you know, heretofore previously unheralded,

has to step up and has to take care of business for the betterment of all kongs.

I haven't seen any of these sequels.

My knowledge stops with King Kong Lives in 1986.

You got to catch up on the full canon.

I know Baby Kong is born in King Kong Lives, but it sounds to me like

you guys have seen a lot more

folks.

The Baby Kong in

Kitty Kong.

Oh, it's Kitty Kong.

Tiny Kong is in Dunkey Kong Country or Donkey Kong 64.

Diddy and Kitty?

Yeah.

Uh-oh.

Oh, no.

All right.

Let's get to her final Triforce piece.

We're each going to pick a Triforce of Wisdom.

Well, I covered a lot of the Kongs in

the films.

But there is a third film, which is not canonically King Kong 3, but instead is called The King of Kong.

And what could be

a more wise...

addition to our Triforce of Kongs than the man who is the King of Kong, Steve Weeby.

Wow.

Steve Weeby was born in 1969, and he's an American two-time world champion of the video game Donkey Kong, holding the title from September 20th, 2010 to January 10th, 2011, with a high score of 1,064,500 points.

Weaby was the first person to achieve over a million points on the game Donkey Kong on July 4th,

2004.

Wow.

So he's a real American hero.

21 years before the Switch 2 releases.

It's so crazy.

That is wild to think about.

From 1996 to 1999, Steve Weeby worked at Boeing as a testing and analysis engineer before becoming a teacher.

In 2009, he released a contemporary Christian album, The King of Song.

I bet that's good.

I bet, you know what?

That's going into my Spotify raft this year because I know that it's going to be good.

He could have gone with the Sing of Kong.

There's a lot of ways to play it.

Yeah, and either way you slice it, it's all good.

I think the issue I would say with a King of Song, even though it does evoke the King of Kong, it doesn't evoke Kong specifically.

King of Song, like that sounds like that could just be like an old Dean Martin album or something.

Bing Crosby had

the King of Song, you know, back in the 50s.

I would be shocked if listeners to our podcast had not watched the film King of Kong.

But if you haven't, please look it up.

It's a documentary that's almost 20 years old now.

Have we covered it on the podcast?

No.

We should do an episode.

That would be an interesting one to revisit.

I saw King of Kong in theater.

Wow.

I actually don't think I've ever seen it.

Holy shit.

I've seen like clips of it, and I'm aware that it's about a maniac, but I think it can be.

I'm interested.

Pretty fascinating, Doc.

My wife and I trade movie night, like who gets to choose the movie.

And I asked her if she'd ever seen King of Kong, and she said no, until literally three three weeks ago.

So, someone as cool as Mary is just like me?

Yeah.

That's pretty cool.

We watched The King of Kong, and the climax made her cry.

Oh, wow.

It's an excellent film.

And that,

and it takes a lot of wisdom to be so good at the game, which is why Steve Weeby is my

wisdom of Kong

in the Triforce of Kongs.

Great choice.

You're up.

So, wisdom.

There's like a type of person I think about when I think of who is wise, and there's a phrase that sort of rings in my ear: listen to your elders.

Okay, and you know, sometimes you have to think about the things that are said of your elders who are around, you got to hear what they're talking about, but also maybe some of them have passed away.

I'm already getting mad.

My choice for wisdom is the deceased wife of Cranky Kong, Wrinkly Kong.

I'm furious.

She's dead?

Wrinkly Kong.

She's livid.

I know.

Died in-game.

Died between games.

Yeah.

Started as a liar.

Krink.

And then became a corpse.

I believe between Donkey Kong Country 3 and Donkey Kong 64.

Yes.

Not unlike the conclusion of King Kong Returns, King Kong Lives.

King Kong 2.

Look, why is Cranky Kong so cranky?

Maybe because his wife died with no explanation.

Yeah.

And it's not because he cranks off a lot.

No, that wouldn't make anyone cranky.

No.

Wait, you.

I'm saying that they call him that because he does that.

He cranks off?

It doesn't matter.

I picked Wrinkly Kong, this guy's dead wife.

I'm fucking, I'm so mad.

That was going to be my pick.

She's the mother of Donkey Kong Jr.

and grandmother of Donkey Kong the third.

You separated my guy, Cranky Kong, from his wife, Wrinkly Kong on my Triforce.

On your own Triforce.

How awesome would it be if, because it's such a trope that the dead wife motivates the

male protagonist, if the next Kong game that came out was

Cranky Kong seeking revenge?

Like it was a full God of War style review.

Yeah.

Every level is one hit.

I would love to play as Cranky Kong in a,

in a Donkey Kong Country style game.

Why not?

I think you should get all the...

They should do it like Wonder, Super Mario Brothers Wonder, where you can play with a bunch of characters.

He's playable in one of the games.

Which one is it?

Is it just Donkey Kong Country Returns?

Oh, you know, I guess he is in Tropical Freeze.

You're right.

Tropical Freeze.

It seems Tropical Freeze.

Okay.

Yeah, but yeah,

you can mess around with him a little bit.

Yeah, but

I took her away from you.

From your...

yeah, you've taken two of my three picks.

You took funky Kong, you took wrinkly Kong.

I guess we're kind of not so different, you and I, huh?

Yeah, no, we're not, but I don't know.

Nobody's mad at me.

Nobody got,

I didn't pick anybody else's picks.

No, I didn't have, I don't have one on not even close.

Okay, uh, boy, um, Heather, can I see that pick of uh, of Lady Kong again?

Do you have that up?

Great, Cranky Kong's at it again, sure.

I can, I can pull up, I can pull up the uh, the image of Lady Kong.

Okay, great.

Why do you need it?

I just want it for reference real quick.

I think

it may just help inspire where my pick is going to go.

This is Lady Kong.

Yeah, so Lady Kong, an ape's face, an ape's body, but a tig old biddies.

Very asynchronous.

Yes, very, very asynchronous on that character.

Orange hair.

Orange hair.

And, you know, I kind of got a pivot here.

And maybe I'm outside of the Kong canon, but in terms of wisdom, who is wiser than Withers in Baldur's Gate 3?

What?

And you know what?

Withers

has a big naturals mod

to give him a body type as jarring as Lady Kong.

So my Triforce of Wisdom

here is going to be Withers with Big Naturals.

So the criteria for being on this Triforce is you have to be a Kong or have big naturals.

I think we have a little bit of leeway in terms of choosing who is actually a Kong.

Hey, you know,

he's an eternal character.

He's a god or demigod.

He's clearly meant to be

an elder sort of eternal force.

There's a heavy implication in the lore there that he is in fact the god of death.

I think I am going to,

I think he's the kind of guy who, if he wanted to take form as a Kong, he could.

And so I think for that reason,

Big Naturals Withers is going to be my pick for the Triforce of Wisdom.

Wow.

An excellent pick.

You were mad a second ago.

Yeah, I was furious.

I'm furious.

Is that character a monkey or?

He's more of like a desiccated skeleton.

Yeah.

But I think he looks kind of interesting.

The river guy?

Yeah.

Yeah, he's like kind of your character who, you know, you can can talk to.

He gives advice.

He lets you respect your characters.

Also, he can have big naturals.

You can have big naturals with a mod that is officially supported.

Wait, like the it's bones with titties?

Okay, I guess.

I mean, you guys just told me that.

Skimming the group chat, I guess.

Yeah, I said this in the group chat immediately.

There you go.

Ah.

You showing that was about as bad as me typing what I just typed right now: withers with big natty.

Do you want to run down our picks again, real quick?

I'll say that for power, I picked Funky Kong.

For courage, I picked Diddy Kong.

And for wisdom, I picked Wrinkly Kong.

For power, I picked King Kong.

For

Courage, I picked Lady Kong.

And for wisdom, I picked Steve Weeby.

For power, I picked OG Donkey Kong, who of course is also Cranky Kong.

For courage, I picked Dixie Kong.

And for my Triforce of Wisdom and the Triforce of Kongs, I went with Withers with Big Naturals.

I almost chose Bink.

You almost chose Bink?

Yeah, I almost chose Bink.

What do you...

The skeleton Kong.

from the Game Boy Advance game.

Oh, I'm not familiar with Bink.

He's very, very, very little canonical information about Bink.

Oh.

And Bink would have been good.

Yeah, I thought about it.

But I thought, you know, when it comes to Kongs, these are my Kongs.

Yeah, you're right.

King Kong, Lady Kong, and Steve Weeby.

Yeah, Bink is different.

Bink's like a different thing.

All right, let's do a segment.

I've got some dudes, and we're going to see if our producer, Ranch, can identify them.

It's time for another edition of Dude Ranch.

And this time we're talking Donkey Kong non-Kongs.

That's right.

These are characters from the Donkey Kong franchise who are not themselves Kongs.

So these are non-apes

from the DK and DKC franchises.

All right, so the rules are, I will read the name of a character.

Heather, Matt, you will both guess whether or not.

Rochelle knows who it is, and then Rochelle will let us know.

Right.

We'll operate on the honor system here.

First up, Pauline.

I'm going to say no.

Heather says no.

I guess I have to say yes to

see if I can even just get a point.

Well, you don't have to because you could tie it up.

Okay, I guess you're right.

I'm also going to say no.

Okay, you're also going to say no.

Ranch, who is Pauline?

I have no fucking clue.

Pauline, of course, is the damsel in distress, originally just called Lady from the first Donkey Kong.

She later was promoted to the mayor of New Donk City in Super Mario Odyssey.

So, yes, she is the character who Mario is trying to rescue

in the first

Donkey Kong game.

I wonder if they were worried about losing that lawsuit because there already is a Lady Kong.

So they had to change her name from Lady to Pauline.

Oh, yeah, that's probably what happened.

They're like, we got to give this nameless woman an identity.

All right, next up, King K.

Rule.

No.

I'm going to say yes.

Matt says yes.

Ranch, do you know who King K.

Rule is?

I know the singer King Kruell.

I don't know who that is.

Ranch.

Is that a reference to King K.

Rule?

I don't know.

King K.

Rule is the main antagonist of the Donkey Kong Country franchise.

He's a big fat crocodile.

Kremling is the Donkey Kong species with a crown and a cape.

I just want to.

Yeah.

Do you have info on King Kruell, the singer?

King Kruell, born August 24th, 1994,

is an English singer, songwriter, musician, rapper, and record producer.

He began recording music in 2010 under the moniker Zoo Kid.

It seems like he has a lot of albums now.

So if he's born in 94, does he come?

No,

he's born before Donkey Kong Country comes out.

Yes.

And he's named King Cruel.

No, he takes the name after.

Nobody would name their baby King Cruel.

Someone might.

His given name is Archie Ivan Marshall.

All right, next up.

Contrary to some reports, his stage name is not inspired by the character King K.

Rule from the Donkey Kong Country video game series, but rather the Elvis Presley film King Creole.

I'm glad we have clarity there.

I wonder if King K.

Rule is also inspired by King Creole.

It has to be.

I bet it.

I bet it's worth it.

It's the journey.

Absolutely.

That makes sense.

Okay.

They both

mutual invention from the same source.

And he is a gay.

All right, let's not get into it.

Potentially from down in the bayou.

All right, next up.

Ramby.

No.

Heather says no.

I'm going to say yes.

Matt says yes.

So far, Heather has two points.

Matt has one.

Matt, we're split decision here again.

Rochelle, do you know who Ramby is?

Ramby's a rat.

Ramby is not a rat, no.

Rat.

Ramby is a rhinoceros who's a rideable mount in the Donkey Kong Country games.

All right, so Heather has three points.

Matt has one.

Next up.

Gonna send an email to Anya.

This is ridiculous.

Conquer the Squirrel.

Wait.

Hold on, though.

I don't understand

how would one answer this question.

Does Rochelle know who Conquer the Squirrel is?

It's kind of like the other questions.

Yeah, they're all the same thing.

Right, but this is saying what it is.

Well, it it doesn't specify beyond that.

It's the question is.

Can you explain

beyond what I've said, beyond the details

that I've added?

If I say King K.

Rule and your answer is he's a king, then that's not going to get it.

If I say Conquer the Squirrel and you're like, he's a squirrel.

Because the last one, it was like, oh, it's a rat.

Ramby doesn't have any characteristics beyond just being a rhinoceros.

Conquer the squirrel has some more characteristics.

Ramby is all.

So then my answer is no.

Okay, Heather's going with no.

I'm fucking up, but I have faith in Ranch, and that's not a bad thing.

I think it's good.

I believe in Ranch.

I'm going to send this one to her via our psychic link that we have.

Well, that's cheating.

If you have a psychic link, I'm going to say yes.

Ranch, who is Conquer the Squirrel?

Conquer the Squirrel is Funky Kong's pet.

Not Funky Kong's pet.

No, good guess.

Conker is the player character in Conker's Bad Fur Day, but he is part of the Donkey Kong universe because he debuted in the Donkey Kong kart racer Diddy Kong Racing.

That was his first appearance.

And yes, he is a foul-mouthed squirrel.

He's like a bad dude squirrel.

All right, next up, Banjo.

No.

Heather says no.

It's working great for Heather so far.

It's working great for Heather, but for some reason,

this one feels like a yes.

And I think Heather's wrong.

Wow.

All right.

Banjo.

Rochelle, who is Banjo?

Banjo's from Banjo and Kazooie.

He is.

Matt is going to get a point.

I'll give it to you.

Wow.

Yes, and Banjo from Banjo-Kazooie also made his debut in Diddy Kong Racing as part of the Donkey Kong universe.

More games should do that.

Just introduce a guy and then be like, you know what?

He has his own game here.

He's a cart racer, yeah.

There's like four characters in Diddy Kong Racing.

You just

end up

being part of other games.

All right.

Next up.

Stanley.

No.

Heather says no.

I'm also going to say no because I don't think I know who Stanley is.

Maybe Rochelle does.

Ranch, who is Stanley?

Stanley is also a squirrel.

Stanley is not a squirrel.

Stanley, of course, is the player character who's an exterminator, Stanley the Bugman, in the arcade game Donkey Kong 3, one of the fucking weirdest sequels

ever made.

You both get a point there.

Heather's got five.

Matt has

three.

Okay.

Next up.

Lord Frederick the Snowmad King.

No.

Yeah, I mean, there's just.

I know that I was saying earlier that I believe in Ranch.

There's no fucking way.

There's no way.

I don't even know.

I don't have no idea who this is.

Ranch, please tell us who Lord Frederick the Snowmad King is.

King Kruel's nemesis.

You're adjacent.

He is a new antagonist in Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, so I'm sure him and King K rule, although they have a mutual enemy, would ultimately turn on each other.

He is a Viking Walrus, of course.

That game has fun character designs.

All right, you just get a point there.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun with it.

All right, it is.

Pauline tab open still.

Put it in.

It is seven to four.

Heather has gotten.

Oh, wait, no, it's only six to four.

Heather got banjo wrong.

Finally, Mario.

Yes.

You're both going to say yes.

Ranch, who is Mario?

The guy with the red hat.

I'll give it to you.

Mario, formerly known as Jumpman, is the protagonist of Donkey Kong and the antagonist of Donkey Kong Jr.

Hey, like Diddy Kong Racing, Mario originally introduced via a Donkey Kong game and ends up having his own franchises.

You each get a point.

Heather's going to win here.

Well played, Heather.

Really good job.

Well played and well done, Ranch.

Well done, Ranch.

You did a really good job.

Yeah.

Even though you fucked me on every answer.

Kind of crazy that, I mean, this is like not a new observation, but kind of crazy that Mario is the Nintendo guy and he wasn't even the first thought.

No.

Like he was like...

I mean, he's the hero of Donkey Kong.

He's a player character.

I guess so, right?

Yeah, he's like, he wasn't like that.

That game is called Donkey Kong.

It's centered on the monkey.

They weren't necessarily thinking of him as starring in his own game.

And then he ends up making Mario Brothers and then Super Mario Brothers and the rest is history.

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

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore underscore sard.

Ranch, you do you been doing any streaming lately?

No.

But you do have a Twitch channel.

You do have a Twitch channel.

You can shout out.

Channel.

It is also yard underscore underscore sard.

Awesome.

Check that out.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com/slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gun back catalog plus ad-free main feed episodes and also our patreon exclusive show get animated matt what are we up to this week this week

we've read your comments we've answered your letters

That's right, Dan Dadan.

We are talking about it

over on Patreon.

The breakout hit of last year.

The whole series is out, but we're going to talk about it a couple episodes at a time.

It's a great show.

It's super fun to

it's super fun to watch and we've had a lot of fun talking about it.

Check that out over at patreon.com slash get played.

And you know what?

What's that, man?

What's gonna get played someday?

The freaking Switch 2.

Wow.

That was a head gum podcast.

I'm Tig Notaro.

I'm Mae Martin.

And I'm Fortune Themster.

And together, we're handsome.

What is handsome?

Well, it's a state of mind.

It's how you feel.

It's whatever you want it to be.

Handsome is also a podcast hosted by us, three stand-up comedians you may have seen on your TV.

We swap stories, share life updates, and occasionally laugh until we cry.

Every episode, we answer a question from a celebrity friend, people like Sarah Silverman.

It's Stephen Colberry.

It's Reese Witherspoon.

My name is Mindy Kaling.

Hello, Handsome Podcast.

It's Jen Aniston here.

You gorgeous W.

So if you're looking for a positive, joyful show guaranteed to make you giggle, check out Handsome.

Jump right in with whatever episode tiggles your fancy or start from the very first episode.

Listen to Handsome on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube.

New episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

And don't forget, keep it handsome.

It's easy to be a superhero.

You don't need a cape or x-ray vision.

You just need to sign up for PowerSaver Rewards.

That way, when you save energy during a a Flex Alert, you get a credit back on your energy bill.

Visit powersaverrewards.org and become a super power saver!