Chill Music

This is a head gun podcast.

Hello everyone, it's Matt and I just wanted to get in here before the episode starts to let you know that we had planned on banking this episode to release at a later date or in case of emergency, but then an actual emergency happened the day after we recorded the episode, so we are releasing it instead of recording a fresh one like we had intended.

The episode is new and was recorded just before the state of emergency occurred in Southern California.

So you might hear us being vague about when we were recording and that's because we didn't want it to seem like we were,

you know, holding on to an episode from January to release in May or whenever we were intending to do it if we needed to use it

that far out.

So you might hear some silly stuff like that.

You also might hear us making some predictions about stuff that hasn't come true yet, and that's because we thought maybe by the time this had come out, some of the things we were talking about maybe would have happened by then, but you'll see.

It's all fine.

We're all fine.

And hopefully by the time you're hearing this, the fires in Los Angeles have been extinguished.

Our hearts go out to those directly affected by the fires.

Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

Hey, Matt, you ready to do this episode today?

Yeah, Nick, I am.

I'm actually really ready to do it, but I don't know if you could tell us about me right now.

I'm kind of in a chill zone.

You seem very chill.

I kind of just want to chill out a little bit.

You seem chill AF.

I've got to be honest.

You know what?

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I'm chill AF.

Yeah.

I'm just vibing over here.

I'm just

living.

My life's a movie, man.

I'm just vibing.

Hey, guys, what's going on?

Do you guys know how to get shit out of a boot?

Resident Evil Merchant, you're...

Yeah, hey, Resident Evil Merchant.

Kind of.

Kind of harsh in our vibe.

Kind of harsh in our vibe.

Why are you whispering?

Well, I just, we're kind of like doing a chill episode today with kind of a chill energy up.

Kind of just chilling out.

All right, I'll let you guys do it, but I gotta know how to get shit out of a boot.

I mean, i would assume that probably you can just hose it out probably hose it out get the hose sort of i don't even want to maybe turn it turn it upside down and just see if you can shake it out first but you know what can i say boots aren't a very chill shoe you can just take them off and deal with it another day man you don't gotta do it right now you can just chill out with us i'm gonna try the hose i'll be back okay yeah

oh i gotta say that sort of changed the energy in here for a sec yeah i'm a little um you know i'm nice and mellow i'm having this uh I got this herbal mint tea.

I'm having a little sip of,

ooh, that's good.

Oh, and I have a little herbal something over here.

Ooh, that's good.

Oh, hell yeah.

That'll chill you out real nice.

Can I say something, Nick?

I love being chill, man.

Hey, is a Resident Evil Merchant

washing out that shit-filled boot in the kitchen sink?

Really hony.

Yeah.

It doesn't.

You know what?

A bunch of fresh fruit there and someone's birthday cake on the counter.

And can I say it's more shit than I was initially picturing?

Why?

It's like filled to the brim.

It's like, what happened?

I thought like maybe there was like one turd in there.

Well, here's what the thing that's so crazy about it.

And I just want to say, I'm like still so chill.

I thought he had like stepped and shit, but it looked like it was like filled with it.

It's like filled with it, yeah.

Like

someone was trying to see how much they could possibly fit in there.

And like if that was what...

If that had been explained to me, I would have given a different answer.

I would have said turn it upside down and dump it out.

I would have said throw away the boot.

Just

get new boots.

Yeah, get a new boot.

It's not a salvageable situation.

Yeah, the boot.

All right, new question.

Your sink doesn't have a garbage disposal.

We are relaxed and just vibe as we play some of our favorite chill video game music 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.

I'm here with our third host, Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Oh, the first fresh hello, everyone, of the new year, baby.

Let's fucking go.

Wow, Matt, you are

letting everyone know that this episode is banked.

Oh, wait.

I forgot.

Never mind.

Hold on.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week, We're taking a little break.

We're playing it chill.

We're taking it smooth and easy.

Kind of getting into NPR podcast mode with this episode.

We're going to get things nice and chill.

And we should let people know we are banking this episode.

We're recording this in advance.

This is going in the get play backlog.

So we will release this down the line.

But this is one we just got in the hopper that's kind of evergreen.

That's right.

It's a little evergreen.

And you know what it also is?

Pretty chill.

It's pretty chill.

Hey, what's more evergreen?

Than chill video game beats, right?

Can I say?

Yes.

I think everybody has this.

Y'all got like a chilling outfit when you're at home.

You're just chilling.

You're not wearing like your street, your hard clothes.

No, you're at home.

Hard?

Yeah, like I wouldn't be sitting around on the couch and like wearing denim.

You know what I mean?

I got my sweats.

I don't know the time of year.

I got my favorite pair of sweats right now.

Or, you know, depending on when you're listening to this,

I could have my shorts on.

I could have my sweats on.

I got a pair of house slippers that I'm rocking.

I'm always having, I'm always comfy at home.

I did not own a pair of sweatpants until 2017.

Wow.

And then I was always formal at home.

I liked being formal all the time.

Like a, how formal?

Like a suit?

I would say a button up and slack.

Okay, yeah.

But then I started to even it out.

I started to chill it out.

And now my favorite home outfit is sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

Better than that.

I walk in the front door.

I'm immediately Mr.

Rogersing it and getting into into something more comfortable.

I'm discarding my outdoor clothes and I am putting on usually like a light t-shirt, like a, you know, like a very soft tee.

Yeah.

Maybe I'll do like a sweatshirt on top of that if it's a little bit chilly, but usually I also run pretty warm.

I'm a big dude, so I'll usually just be fine with the one layer.

And then, yeah, I'm usually just wearing a

pair of sweatshirts, a pair of athletic shorts, you know, something nice and breezy, very flowy, very comfortable.

Yeah, I like to be cozy.

And I'm always barefoot at home.

Once I get home, the shoes are coming off and they're staying off.

You got socks?

No, I don't do socks.

You don't do socks?

No, no, no, just barefoot.

You don't have like a house shoe type situation, like a sleeper or something?

I have like some

flip-flops, but that's really like if I'm going to go take the trash out, I can slip the flip-flops on.

If I'm just walking around the house, no, I'm not doing like a house.

So your dogs are just out.

They're just out, yeah.

You got a Baja, you got a Baja Man situation at home.

I got a

Hunten jacket.

Do you guys know what a Hunten jacket is?

No.

A Hunten hanten jacket is kind of like an indoor soft padded coat like this.

Oh,

it's very cozy.

It's got the consistency of kind of a, like a small pillow.

Yeah.

You know, cotton on all sides, like a thick layer of cotton on all sides.

I got it because it was a Gundam collaboration.

Oh, yeah, you did.

So I got a Zaku Hanten.

And boy, putting on like a big pillow to like sit around the house excellent good times i used to be at work in an office work with a sulu show and it was one of those things where it's just like you sometimes in an office and it's just like the cooling is just like just it's awful like it's one of those things where like this particular room it got so fucking cold but you could not adjust the

you could not adjust the temperature for just an individual room like it like adjusted for three floors the hell of everyone

exactly so everyone would get like super everyone else would get super hot except for the occupants of this office where we were fucking in an ice box.

We're like in a walk-in freezer.

Yeah.

So I, what I, what I basically, what I ended up doing, and then other people ended up doing it as well, is I got a snuggie that I would wear at work.

So I'd be at work the whole day and like sitting in a writer's room wearing a, I had a leopard print snuggie that I would wear.

And it was so comfortable.

But it was, but I was also like, this is, this is so, like, what a dumb way to live that I have to do this just because we can't regulate the temperature adequately.

When it's when my, my favorite comfort level is when it's like 60 degrees outside.

I'm at home.

I got some nice socks on.

I got some sweats on.

And I have like a crew neck sweatshirt.

That's the zone for me.

Yeah, I love a crew neck.

That's like, I'll never be more comfortable in my life.

Sam,

our guest engineer today, Sam Rogic, Rochelle, is out.

Sam, you got any, how do you like to lounge when you're at home?

How you chilling, dog?

Just put on, yeah, like running shorts and some socks.

Yeah.

But sometimes it just, it doesn't hit until like I'm about to go to bed.

I'll be just wearing my day clothes.

Oh, sure.

Sure.

Which I wish I cared more about my comfort, but that's just the reality.

You got to take care of yourself.

You got to just be comfy.

I think being comfy is like the best,

it's the best feeling.

It is the lesson we learned during the pandemic, for sure.

Yeah.

The ongoing pandemic, we've learned to be comfortable.

You know what?

I think my sweats purchases went up 300% during that time.

I doubt that.

Man, I love it.

I love, and I just love chilling.

I love being chill.

You know, when you are chilling,

when you got some perhaps chill beats to study to,

maybe you were back in your dorm room.

And so, we thought because this one's going in the backlog, we would do a what were you playing talking about things that we were playing back in our chill beats to study to days at university.

Back when you were at college, what were you playing?

What were you playing?

Hello, it's me the resident of a version trying to do NPR voice.

Quiet.

Chill.

Low-key.

God, if you ever were actually on NPR, what would you even be doing?

Maybe you'd be on Planet Money discussing being a small business owner.

Hey, you know what?

Beat me up to that planet.

The IPO was met with frustration

by that.

I mean, yeah, it's pretty good.

The CEO was ousted in a late-night bloodbath.

Oh, now I'm listening.

Dog hell yeah.

What were you playing in college or in school?

That's the topic of the day.

What were you playing, Nick?

Wow, Resident Evil Merchant, thank you so much for teeing me up to go first.

I thought I thought

I was thinking about this and I was like, I want to talk about something that I haven't really talked about at at any length on the podcast previously.

And what I landed on, and I think this is the case, I don't know if I've brought this game up before, I've maybe touched on it, but it's a game I put a lot of time into

when I was in college.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

This is a Forex turn-based strategy game.

I thought it was the first game from Firaxis, which is Sid Meier's developer with Brian Reynolds and some others.

It's still going strong.

Very, very successful strategy developer, but it's actually the second that Sid Meier's Gettysburg came out a couple years earlier.

But basically, it is a game.

So the end of one of the win conditions of the civilization games is that you can make a space,

a spacecraft that can travel to settle another colony on another world, and it goes to Alpha Centauri.

So this one kind of starts with the premise of like you're arriving at Alpha Centauri.

It's not necessarily connected directly to the civilization IP.

It's kind of implied, but it has a similar sort of way of playing.

So it's basically about colonizing a distant world in a post-Earth scenario.

Very, very early on.

You're just like, oh, well,

you're not connected to Earth at all.

You're now just kind of on your own trying to survive.

And it came out in the aftermath,

I think maybe a year after, maybe a few years after a Sierra game with a similar premise that was hyped and ended up being a disaster.

It was called Outpost.

It's like one of the worst,

a famous, like just absolute flop, both critically and commercially, just a completely broken, bug-ridden game.

It's one of the most disappointing games I ever picked up at launch.

I was so hyped for it, and I was just like, absolutely did not deliver, but this one did.

Sid Meier's Ava Centauri is awesome, and it's so well done.

And it's one of those things where it's like got so many, it's got great gameplay mechanics, but it's also got these like really like heavy science fiction themes and so much futurism, so much hard science that it makes me, it made me feel stupid because it starts to feel abstract.

Cause you're just like, these are the concepts I can't really wrap my head around.

Like, I understand the idea of, you you know, inventing horseback riding in a civilization game, but the idea of inventing, you know,

like nanotechnology or whatever, whatever that, whatever the equivalent is in Alpha Centauri, it's not like the same sort of thing they could wrap my head around.

But it is a very cool game.

And

it has this sort of depressing streak to it, which I think is part of its charm, which it's thematically about, you know, whatever new planet will land on, we'll figure out how to ruin it and destroy each other.

It's basically where it ultimately lands.

We're going to harvest its resources.

We're going to

turn it into an ecological disaster, and then we're going to go to war.

But I mean, one of the leaders I remember is this is CEO Noabudike Morgan and his faction, because it's just like civilization, you've got all these different factions that splintered from this space colony.

And

I think it's called the Morgan Corporation.

He just runs his, or Morgan Company, he just runs his

civilization like it's a corporation, which is like really bleak, but it's like, that's also like just where we're headed, I guess, in a few years, probably on Earth.

And there's a thing in civilization called Wonders of the World that, you know, and the civilization will be like, hey, we're building the Eiffel Tower.

It's a wonder of the world.

We're going to get this big tangible bonus as a result of doing it.

And, you know, or like the pyramids of Giza, like every

civilization, every different, every era of history, rather not necessarily married to any specific civilization, can build these wonders of the world.

What they have in

Alpha Centauri is secret projects.

But again, because

it's living this dystopian future, there's a huge tonal difference between

building the Colosseum and

inventing essentially

defeating mortality and people becoming brains and jars.

So one of them, I've queued one of these up because it would play this video

when you achieved one of these secret projects.

And this one, just because it kind of gives you an example of like the sense of like

progress, but also like just,

it's like you've done something momentous, but at what cost is the healing of all of these?

This one is when you we have the secret project, which is the cloning vats.

We shall take only the greatest minds, the finest soldiers, the most faithful servants.

We shall multiply them a a thousand fold and release them to usher in a new era of glory.

Colonel Corazon Santiago, the Council of War.

Jesus Christ.

So, while that narration and that ominous sound design is playing, what you are seeing is a

a chicken processing plant.

And the process they were actually doing there is they are separating male chickens from female chickens.

And because the the male chickens,

because they cannot lay eggs, and because these are being raised for eggs, not meat, are immediately destroyed.

So, what you're seeing is you're seeing chickens being separated, and then the males, just like basically right after birth, being sent into

a macerator that just turns them into meal that's fed to their livestock.

Really, really grim shit.

And it's talking about that and applying it to humanity: of just like, we'll reach this point where, like, congratulations, you invented cloning labs.

Now, you can cull the weakest and just focus on cloning the strongest.

Nick?

Yeah.

This is the chill episode, dog.

What the hell?

Very cool game.

That's awesome.

I mean, not awesome, but it's like cool that something like that is in a game even.

That's very interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm surprised they can't do that before they hatch.

Like, it's surprising to me that they can't tell that they're male chickens before they hatch and then just destroy the eggs.

Don't give me a bad thing.

It seems like such a fucking bummer to be born and then ground up.

My guess is that they can, but this way is just cheaper.

Right?

That's probably it.

Yeah, I mean, that 100% is it.

What's the cheapest way we can make a billion dollars?

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

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

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

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

Now that's quite a savings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HIMS.com/slash get played.

Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan.

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

Prescription required.

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

Guys, fall is here.

The beers are colder.

The football's back.

And the fits are getting layered.

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

It's time to upgrade to me Undies.

These things are ridiculously soft.

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

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

And just in time for spooky season, Me Undies limited edition Halloween line features festive prints including glow-in-the-dark underwear so you can bring the spooky vibes underneath it all because that's what you want Your underwear to be scary.

Me Undies has a cut for every butt with over 20 styles in 100 different colors and prints.

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

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

Want even more seasonal comfort?

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

I love it.

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

Not happy with your first pair of undies?

It's on me undies.

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

I've talked about the undies, okay?

I've talked about me undies.

And folks,

the me stands for me, mine, me, I, Matt.

I got the undies.

And I loves them.

Because guess what?

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

Laundry Day.

All my meundies are in the freaking wash.

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

Ah, it hurts.

Oh no, it stinks.

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

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

That's meundies.com slash get played.

Promo code get played for up to 50% off.

Meundies.

That's comfort made for all.

Hey, Matt, what were you playing?

All right, well, back in the day.

Picture this.

Hey.

The year's 2010.

Nice.

I'm in college and I'm like, this college stuff is pretty crazy.

And no, I wasn't just trying to.

It kind of sounds like I was saying stuff because I couldn't unlock my iPad, but actually, I was able to do it.

Got it.

What?

I wasn't stalling because I couldn't unlock my iPad.

I was like talking normal.

Do you think?

Know how to unlock your own iPad?

Is that your iPad?

This is mine.

And was I typing in the year 2010 and not my password?

Absolutely.

You know, 2010, interesting year for games.

Not really like games that

were like, quote unquote, like chill, but these are games that I was playing a lot.

And games that I have talked about at length, of course.

But like God of War 3, for example, comes out in 2010.

And I actually just replayed the opening of God of War 3 pretty recently, God of War Remastered God of War 3 Remastered, and was like, this game fucking rips.

If you don't remember it, the end of God of War 2, Kratos teams up with the Titans, and the Titans are fucking climbing up Mount Olympus, ready to kill Zeus and fucking everybody.

It's crazy.

So the game opens with that sequence, and you're just traversing different parts of a Titan's back, and there's like platforming sections on the Titan, and it rules.

It is so good, and it just communicates the scope of the game so well.

And it's so like it's it just is awesome.

It's insanely violent as well.

Really, really great.

The other game I'm playing a ton of at this time is the first Red Dead Redemption, which is, of course, the second in the Red Dead series of games.

The first being Red Dead Revolver, which is completely different.

But Red Dead Redemption is your,

I wanted to call him James Marsden, but it's Marston.

Those are two different guys with a similar sounding name.

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess it is pretty similar to James Marsden.

Can you imagine if he was in the Hedgehog franchise and jury duty?

Anyway, it kind of crazy if he's in the guy.

Hey, you know what?

He very well might be.

He's in everything.

He's in everything.

He's good in all of it.

He's good.

He's good, this guy.

We love him.

We love to watch him and stuff.

Anyway, I'm playing Red Dead Redemption.

And obviously, like, this, I mean, this game

really sets the table for Red Dead Redemption 2 later, which is the best version of this possible.

But not knowing that,

playing Red Dead Redemption so much and just just experiencing the open world in the in the wild west and going into Mexico and doing all sorts of crazy stuff, just really, really loving that.

But I also wanted to highlight some games from the year 2010.

God, that walk into Mexico and that game is so fucking good.

It's awesome.

It's so great.

And I actually, I bought the port of this for the Switch and was playing this on my Switch.

And let me tell you something.

They shouldn't have done that.

It makes the, I mean, it plays fine, but it chugs.

It is,

it's, it's, you know, it, it ran pretty good on the PS3, I will say, but the Switch is not the PS3, is it?

That's kind of incredible.

It's not.

It's not, but

it plays.

Nick is looking into the distance.

No, I'm,

is the Switch, does that, the Switch have less horsepower than a PS3?

It might be similar, I guess.

Or is that, or it's just kind of a shoddy port?

I don't know.

It plays decently, but I bounced off of it because I was like,

am I going to do this again?

I played that game.

I replayed it a couple of times.

That's a great one.

We're, of course, talking about the Switch, not the Switch 2.

Not the Switch 2.

Yeah.

Not the Switch 2.

The Switch 2?

Great machine.

Make a regular Switch 2.

Super fucking fun.

It's so great.

It's really, really good.

Day one drop.

Bought it.

I'm having a blast with mine.

I love it.

You know what I love about my Switch 2?

Knowing what its name is.

Yeah, I love that.

I still call it the Switch 2 because I just think I'm thinking about it as

the pre-release hype for so many years.

But we know, of course, know what it's actually called.

But you know what's so crazy about that too?

It's like it obviously knowing what it's called is so good, and I love that.

I also love knowing what the games are, yeah, that's also a good thing to know.

I love having the games and knowing them, yeah.

I called the Switch 2 because for years after the GameCube was released, I just called it the Dolphin, right?

Like it's its internal code name was for development, yeah, the Dolphin, or the Nintendo 64 being the Ultra 64 for a while, Yeah, but anyway, I mean, we're not, look, the Switch 2 episode,

you heard all about it already.

We loved it, of course.

But we're not talking about the Switch 2 anymore.

So,

some games that I came to later that were released this year, which is not the exercise, but I got to shout out these two games from 2010 that I think are two of the best games I've ever played.

Okay.

Alan Wake.

Which I became a huge remedy head after playing Alan Wake

two years ago.

Yeah.

And And also, Halo Reach.

Halo Reach is so fucking good.

And

it was the first game I played through on my Xbox Series S.

And

I'm not a Halo guy.

I like Halo fine.

Halo Reach is incredible.

It is so good.

And I wish I could play it again for the first time.

It's magnificent.

Wow.

It's a really, really great game.

And what a year 2010 was.

But that's what I was playing and what I could have been playing had i had an xbox in 2010.

uh heather what were you playing um so when i was thinking about this i was reminded that at our student center at college there was a

room that they clearly had no purpose for and so they put two arcade games in it and those arcade games were house of the dead the original not even house of the dead 2 yeah House of the Dead and Marvel vs.

Capcom 2.

Wow.

Which you couldn't, I mean, like, if you're just going to throw quarters into machines as a college kid, those are great machines to throw quarters into.

Sure.

And I would often.

Probably should throw some in the laundry machine.

I should.

In the college student.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Not you.

Famously not good at budgeting, though.

And some of them hygiene is an issue as well.

So I would play a lot of House of the Dead and Marvel versus Capcom 2.

I don't know, like,

I don't know why they had, like, maybe they'd had those machines since they were released, or maybe they were purchases for this weird space.

But I often would go through the student center on the way from one class to another just so I could play around of one of the two of those games.

Or if we were doing like rehearsals for a comedy show, like when people would take a break, like to go smoke a cigarette or to eat, I would go down in the student center and play Marvel Capcom 2 or House of the Dead to my knowledge there were almost never anybody on either machine ever so I didn't co-op and I didn't versus oh damn which also was kind of nice yeah sure okay like to have private access to a Marvel versus Capcom 2 machine was kind of cool um

so I think more than any other game, those two games stood out because they were just randomly in the fucking basement of the student center at Northwestern.

I was, so I went to UCLA and I was so fucking old that the student union there had a full arcade.

Like it was like it had like just like, it was like, you know, like a like 20 to 20, 24 cabinets or something.

It was like a, it was like a full-size arcade.

It was like what you would have at the mall.

And what they had a dance dance revolution machine that was like out, like, you know, kind of facing towards the common area.

This is all in the ground level, so it was very accessible.

But I worked on the campus bookstore for one summer

and a summer and change, so it's into the fall semester a little bit.

And the songs from the Dance Dance Revolution machine would drive us fucking crazy because they'd just be looping all day long.

We'd just be hearing the same.

And it was just like, you know, like any sort of retail job, there's very often a soundtrack.

I know like certainly people who are like, hey,

the restaurant they work at or whatever has like a set playlist.

And so they're hearing the same songs over and over again.

But just hearing like the distant sort of loud and constant, um, uh, same-few tracks of, uh, of I, I, I, I'm your little butterfly, you know, all like the fucking Dance Dance Revolution originals.

It drove, it just

made me have a break from reality to a certain point.

I'm kind of surprised this hasn't really come up that much on this show.

Yeah.

DDR is so fascinating to me because it had such a

it had such a cultural footprint.

Like it was everywhere and so many people were suddenly experts at it.

Like I feel like as soon as I became aware of what it was, people were immediately very good at it.

But from my point of view, there's only two ways to play.

One is to dance sort of like rhythmically, like to move sort of rhythmically on the thing or stomp on it as hard as you fucking can.

There's no in-between.

It's very fascinating to me.

Yeah.

That whole era of like dance, dance through the end of rock band is kind of cool.

Yeah.

That gaming went through almost like an adolescence.

Yeah.

Where it was like, oh, I was really into music for a while.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, now I don't like music.

Yeah, now I'm not, I'm not super into music.

Now I'm like free to play, but like, I was like into music for a while.

I might do music if it's a mode in a game that's free that I already have.

Yeah.

Well, it kind of rolled into the Wii, which was like,

oh, the next score.

And as now, now I like sports.

Now I'm like, like active.

Yeah.

And then everyone was just like, no, what I like about video games is like, I get to sit down and like

basically use a remote control.

I want to do one thing for 150 hours yeah

that's this

i want to move my thumbs for 150 hours yeah

do you struggle with procrastin you know when you put off uh doing something that could save you a ton i used to be a huge procrasta saver until i heard about mint mobile's best deal of the year that's ending soon, 50% off unlimited premium wireless for new customers.

Let me tell you how I procrastisaved.

I would reuse toilet paper.

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

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

largest 5G network.

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

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

But hurry because this deal ends September 22nd.

Look, cell phones are cell phones.

What are we talking about?

Your wireless carrier isn't, it's all the finger man.

Am I allowed to say f ⁇ during an ad?

Well, I just did.

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

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

Quit stalling and start saving when you make the switch.

Shop plans at mintmobile.com/slash get played.

That's mintmobile.com/slash get played.

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

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

Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan.

Taxes and fees extra.

See Mint Mobile for details.

This is an absolutely true story.

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

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

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

That's a true story.

And my cell phone didn't have wireless access.

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

in the past because if i'd had wi-fi i could have called somebody but instead i had no cell phone service trapped on a roof in Tokyo.

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

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

That's where Saley comes in.

Saley is a new eSIM service app brought to you by the creators of NordVPN.

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

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

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

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

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

With a Saley, you're always connected.

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

Download the Saley app in your app store.

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

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

I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

All right, let's get into this week's topic.

Chill music.

I'm going to kick things off.

We've all got our own tracks.

Shit, but I'm just going to start.

I'm just going to go first because there's one that has to be played.

And I think this one kind of sets a baseline of what the exercise is.

This is look,

we know what's coming.

Donkey Kong Country, Aquatic Ambience from David Wise.

Maybe the Ur chill video game music.

I didn't put it on my list because I figured somebody else would.

Yeah.

I put it on my list because I just figured it kind of has to be here.

When I told Mary what the topic was, she said aquatic ambience.

Yeah.

Like, Mary

immediately.

Mary's so cool.

Yeah, Mary's the best.

Just a just a banger.

It is one of the most iconic pieces of video game music, and it has such a longer tail than the game itself.

Maybe.

I don't think people play Donkey Kong Country as much as people listen to Aquatic Ambience here in 2025.

David West scores is one of the best video game scores ever.

I think the,

I think,

in

defense of your point, I think it kind of established

the

A-U-R-A-L oral grammar for what is a water environment in a video game.

Because I feel like there's a lot of water tracks that are derivative of aquatic ambience and what it's set up.

And I echo the dolphin, obviously, the other, the other one that did a similar thing.

Yeah, good stuff.

Sam, you got any, uh are there any chill guck songs that's a great question

answer is no

hell yeah

this episode is about chill stuff but also not being chill is type two

it's the yin yang yeah exactly you gotta have not chill sam's band uh guck check it out what's the what's the url uh at guck band on instagram uh then we have a live video on youtube and then there's a song on spotify right now check that out nice heather do you want to go next sure i'll go next Um, my idea of chill, a little bit different than aquatic ambience, but I still think it's a chill song.

I think it's a chill vibe.

It feels like a chill morning.

And that's whirling in rags 8 a.m.

from the soundtrack to Disco Elysium.

The composers were British Sea Power.

And yeah, let's play this for a little bit.

It's always good to return.

It is super chill.

Man.

I gotta play it again.

I love it.

It's great.

It's great reflection.

It's fucking good.

It kind of perfectly both like sort of feels like morning,

but also like a little bit like you have a lingering hangover.

Just a little bit, you know what I mean?

You had a night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have a question about this version of it.

It almost sounds like the drums have been stripped out.

Maybe, maybe no drums for the morning?

Yeah, well, I mean,

they're different tracks, different versions that play at different times of day.

Yeah.

I'm not sure which one.

No, this is the one I wanted, but it feels almost like maybe the YouTube link I sent is

a little defanged.

Could be.

But it's still a smooth, chill vibe.

Very good pick.

Very, very good.

It's the,

I've spoken before of my breakfast mix, which people have asked me to share.

I'm never going to share it.

It's my breakfast mix.

I don't want anybody else out in the world listening to my breakfast mix.

But this was the first new entry on my breakfast mix playlist.

in probably seven years.

Wow.

Wow.

And I was like, oh, that goes on.

Well, they can't have the full mix, but they know one song on there.

Yeah.

So if you talk about another song at some point that's on there,

they could piece it together.

They could assemble it like I've assembled Hemingway's radio from everything that he wrote about.

That's true.

I love it.

Here's, I'll go, let's do one of mine.

Yeah, let's do it.

You know what?

This one's going to be a shocking one.

Okay.

And we're not trying to be chill, but I'm going to shock you guys right now.

Okay, great.

As I mentioned, I mentioned previously in episodes many, many moons ago,

I'd been playing Stellar Blade.

Let's fucking go.

And the thing about Stellar Blade that nobody's talking about is how fucking good the music is in this game.

It's incredible music.

There's little base camps that you can stop at to heal and buy items and stuff.

And this is one of the songs you could hear at the base camp.

It's called The Song of the Sirens.

That looks a little

chair at your little campsite.

There's like a little vending machine where you can buy potions or grenades.

You can upgrade equipment, add to a skill tree there.

Move the camera towards the boobies.

And then conversely, move them away.

Rotate down under the butt.

Then back up to the boobies with the camera.

He'd do all sorts of crazy stuff with his camera, but you'd also just be like so chill hearing the song.

And I'm catching some vocals here.

This is great.

This is my first time hearing this.

I have not played the game.

I would imagine it's a lot of people's first time hearing it.

You know what, Nick?

It's going to be your favorite game of all time.

It's going to supplant,

what's that one?

Baldur's Gate 3.

Yeah, Baldur's Gate 3 that you love.

What's that game?

Baldur's Gate 3?

This is really good.

This is a great choice.

It's so good.

Not on my radar at all.

You got to hear the soundtrack and then play the game.

It's, as I said before, extremely satisfying.

All right.

I got another pick.

So, you know,

I feel like I'm the resident kind of

point-and-click adventure, graphic adventure fan,

puzzle game fan.

And, you know, back in the day, the LucasArts games famously had some great music.

I was going through this and I was trying to figure out what is the great chill LucasArts adventure track.

And what I settled on is from a game I really, really have a lot of affection for, and a composer who I really like, Peter McConnell.

This is from the Grim Fandango soundtrack, a Tim Schaefer game.

I believe this was maybe his last game before going on to make Double Feim,

maybe his last game at LucasArts.

But the track is Lost Souls Alliance.

Hell yeah.

And even though we're in kind of like a minor key here, it is still like very chill.

Yeah, I was about to say, I'm feeling pretty chill right now.

Yeah.

I could study to this.

Yeah, 100%.

But also,

I could see myself dancing.

Yeah, it's like

in socks.

Yeah, in socks.

Like just a shimmy?

Just a little bit.

About one hand up in the air, one hand sort of like

on my tummy.

It might be a little tricky to dance to.

I used to have a better ear for this, but I think this might be in 5-4 time signature.

It's kind of in a little bit of an odd cadence.

You don't know this about me, Nick.

I can dance to anything.

This whole soundtrack is awesome.

This is like one of one of the best video game soundtracks.

It's just really impressive in its breadth and also just in terms of evoking all the various moods of the various areas and the various scenes.

It's really well done, but I think this is a great track.

I don't know if this franchise has come up enough for me to admit this.

Yeah.

I've never played a Grim Fandango game, but he's a...

I think there's just the one.

Is it just the one?

I think there's just one, yeah.

I always was like interested in him.

Is the main character's name Grim Fandango?

No, the main character's name is Manny Calavera.

Okay.

Calavera, of course, meaning skull.

This is like how little I know of it.

I thought the guy was Grim Fandango.

I'd be interested in your take on it.

They did remaster it, and they remastered the soundtrack as well.

And

it is very,

you know,

I don't know exactly what your tolerance is for this kind of gameplay.

I know Heather's tolerance for it is zero, but like

it is walking around in dialogue trees and, you know, solving puzzles.

Some of them are a little obtuse, but most of them in grim fandango are pretty well and yeah well designed uh and i think it's like like pretty much like the the

when this formula had kind of been perfected got it um so i i yeah and it certainly is an is an awesome story it's like i think it's like a really really well like it's it spans four different years each of the different acts is a different year and it's just basically uh traveling through the land of the dead so it's it's a really really cool maybe i should give it a try because i don't like i don't like leisure shoot larry i didn't like day Day of the Tentacle, even though everybody loves that.

But I did love

The Case of the Golden Idol.

Yeah, I would say different.

This one is, I mean, it's not as silly, like Day of the Tentacles, like looning tunes.

This game is a little bit more serious, a little more grim, if you will.

But it also has a good sense of humor to it.

I think you might like it.

I'm going to have to check it out.

Yeah, mess around with the remaster.

All right, Heather, what's your next pick?

Well, I thought a lot about what kind of music we would be showcasing today.

And I was like, oh, I could, you know,

I could do the camping theme from Final Fantasy 15.

I could do these like big, these big songs that maybe people have heard before, and they'll be like, oh, yeah, I know this song.

But instead, I challenged myself to think of some chill music that maybe we haven't showcased on the show before.

And so my next pick is from Mario Paint.

And it is a background song from Mario Paint.

It is,

so chill as to be almost non-existent, but it still has a vibe.

Whoa.

Hell yeah.

You just trying to come up with some things to paint.

Maybe I'll try Mario's face.

Nintendo has always been so good at this.

I mean, like the

kind of like in negative spaces and like liminal sort of zones.

Yeah.

Just like having some sort of background music that just makes you feel like you're vibing.

I mean, one thing, and I apologize if I'm stepping on anyone's future picks, but like all the Wii Shop music.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or just the Wii Shell music in general is just like, even you just like bring up like just like the weather app in Wii and why would anyone look at that?

But it's just like it sounds so cool.

I almost brought in the Wii Weathers song because I heard it on the fucking stupid app.

The stupid ass Nintendo music app

for some dumb reason.

I was listening to it and I was like, this is fucking good.

It's so good.

The app is bad.

I used to watch the news on the Wii and

loved that little song too.

Isabel from

Animal Crossing is reading the news.

This is nice.

The best compliment I can give this is that I could hear this.

I could hear like a sort of melancholic like Drake or Kid Cuddy lyrics over this beat.

Never Drake.

Never, not Drake anymore, certainly.

So yeah, that's after we said about the Switch 2.

Some of the

background music from Mario Paint for the Super NES.

Very good choice.

Okay.

To continue on with stuff we haven't really played on the show before.

Nice.

I'm going to bring in a song from a game that I played and absolutely loved.

And I think you guys would like it too.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

This game has a lot of amazing things going for it.

The music is all incredible stuff.

I picked

the music that plays specifically when you're wandering in the Gungaga region.

So you're like

going around this area

and you're like

your cloud.

Of course, maybe you're running around as cloud and you're like,

I gotta find one of those fucking towers or something and turn it on so I can have more of my map unlocked.

And maybe there's like beasts that you gotta slay on the way, but you're having a chill time.

And oh, what's that?

A bird that's flying toward this like crystal button mashing mini-game that you gotta do now?

Let's go follow that bird.

I gotta get that so I can complete more of the map as well.

A lot of the game is doing stuff so you can complete the map.

It's extremely good.

And it's like a little more upbeat, a little more like faster paced than some of the stuff.

Sure.

But like you could still be chilling and be a sort of like in like vacation mode kind of.

Yeah, this is delightful.

it was a big regret of mine to not go to the final fantasy 7 rebirth uh concert that they had big mistake is this a is this kind of a tropical biome what kind of environment

adjacent

it was great

very very good maybe i'll get around to playing rebirth someday we'll see

yeah it was i mean i i loved it i know you loved it and i loved remake and i just didn't i didn't follow up i'm part of the problem i'm part of the reason like sales dipped you know 70% for the next entry or whatever.

You could have bought it twice and haven't played it once.

How did you buy it twice?

I bought the collector's edition and it wasn't coming.

And so I bought the digital version.

I forgot.

And then

I didn't play it because I just want to sit down with it like a meal.

Yeah.

And when do I ever have those times?

The thing about it that I will say is that I completely, completely understand why somebody would not play it at all.

I want to play it.

Love those haircuts.

Oh, yeah.

Nick, it's your turn.

This is the whole thing here is that, like, I'm making this list and I'm like, I have.

You checking it twice?

I'm checking it twice.

Gonna find out who's not here.

Nice.

I have so many possibilities.

Yep.

So many options.

And I'm trying to narrow the sum bitch down.

And it's just, there's, there's just too many possibilities.

But I'm going to play a couple here.

One, because it's short and is basically basically like an eight-bar loop, but I think it's just so chill.

And it's one of the first things I think of when we do chill vibes.

The other one is a fuller song and one that probably is much better known.

But I'll queue up the first one.

Team Eco, before they made Shadow of the Colossus, which we discussed on the podcast,

an all-time masterpiece, one of the greatest games ever made, one of the most influential games ever made.

They made a titular game called Eco.

Eco is kind of like a proto-Shadow of the Colossus, but it's a great game in its own right, even though it's a short walk.

And the save theme called Heal by Michiro Oshima and Koichi Yamazaki is to me just so, so chill.

So let's hear this track.

It's like a bench you can hang out on all day.

That is really good.

Really nice, right?

Really tranquil.

And it sort of also kind of just says safety, sanctuary.

So that's the first one.

The next one I'm going to play, a similar era in gaming, a little bit earlier from my favorite,

controversially my favorite Final Fantasy game on the PlayStation 1, Final Fantasy VIII.

Nobu Uematsu's Fisherman's Horizon.

Oh, nice pick.

I gotta play this one.

The remaster is really nice.

Yeah, I have it on Switch.

I guess I could play it on my Switch, too.

Yeah.

Because it's backwards compatible.

Because it's backwards compatible, which is something we know.

It's true.

We do know that.

We do know that.

Such a tranquil little melody here.

I think

Bumatsu must be proud of this particular track because it is almost always featured on piano compilations,

symphonies.

Like it, it...

occurs so much and given the dwindling you know popularity of final Fantasy VIII that's sort of like

falling into our rearview,

it's incredible how often Fisherman's Horizon comes up.

It endures.

Also, kind of an inconsequential part of the game.

Sure, yeah.

This is what's notable about it.

Yeah.

Anyway,

those are my couple picks here.

Interesting selection, though, too, because...

Fishing, the act of fishing, unless you're like deep sea,

pretty chill in and of itself.

Yeah.

Kind of just at like a

river or something.

Not for the fish.

The fish are having a bad time.

They're like, oh, look, some food.

What the heck?

They're going crazy.

I'm in space.

Imagine biting a sandwich and being in outer space.

That's so crazy.

Yeah.

This next track is a track very few people have heard, I think, probably in the West.

It is for a Game Boy Advance game called Orbital, which was part of the art game phenomenon for Bit Generations Nintendo releases, where they were just trying to, you know, make these little provocative trinket games.

The soundtrack to each of these games was...

really, really good and really, really minimalist to try and propel the experience.

And

also,

they were, I think they were put onto these cartridges in real audio or something like that.

So they have a really shitty fidelity, but that also adds to how chill they are.

And so, this is

a rip right from the cartridge.

And this is the song Satellite from the game Orbital.

You hear how it's

sounds like it's coming through a bad radio speaker.

Yeah, like the speaker and like an omnicord or something.

Yeah, now you add that to it coming out of the

Game Boy Advance speaker, and it had this really pleasurable quality to it.

Yeah.

Also,

kind of reminds me of the Final Fantasy, um,

the intro

that's on every game.

Yes.

The prelude.

Oh, for sure.

I'm going to have to check these games out because I have no frame of reference for them other than you mentioning them before.

You can always borrow one.

Or you could just put them on a fucking ROM card.

Anyway, that's satellite from Orbital.

Just a little piece of maybe lost Nintendo music, largely lost in Nintendo music.

Isn't that something?

A Nintendo product.

Yeah.

Like, myself included, a lot of people are just hearing that for the first time.

Yeah.

Insane.

Well, they're also like such a weird company that some of their stuff they'll just like kind of archive and hide and tuck away.

And it just won't be available intentionally.

It's not even in their shitty shitty app.

Okay.

I forget that app even exists.

I have it on my phone.

It's like on my home screen.

Very silly.

Very silly thing.

So I've played music from this game before.

Animal Crossing New Horizons, a game that like all the music in it is just phenomenal, in my opinion.

It's very, very good.

But I'm going to share a track that I haven't shared before.

that you could miss.

You could miss all of the music, a lot of the music actually, because like, you know, if you're not playing during a certain time of day, you might not hear, you know, the 6 a.m.

music or whatever, or you might not hear,

you know, you might just not hear some of it.

Yeah.

This is the music from

the aquarium area of the museum.

So, in the way that

aquatic ambience evokes

being underwater.

Yeah.

This sort of evokes the feeling of looking at water.

Like you're sort of, you're watching like

an entire life form live its life in the way that they think that they're used to living it.

But you're watching them do it.

You're like this omniscient god watching them swim

and they have no idea they have no frame of reference for why you're there looking.

Oh man, that thing in outer space is looking at you.

Yeah.

This portal to hell is.

I hope I don't eat the wrong sandwich and end up there.

I like the reverb on this.

Yeah.

It sounds like an empty room.

Yes.

It's weird how much of Animal Crossing is lonely.

It is interesting because, well, especially with New Horizons, and of course, probably on the new one that's coming pretty soon to the the Switch 2.

In New Horizons, I feel like the big thing was that you got to play that with people.

But, like, so much of the game you do experience by yourself.

Yeah.

Nobody's standing around watching you do a bad job decorating your house.

Right.

It's solitary, but it also feels purposeful.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's interesting.

Hey, that's a great pick.

Hey, we're just going to do a few more here.

I've got so many options that I could get to.

You know, I would want to have included something for Persona 5 Royal.

Certainly some incredibly chill music in that.

Lots of great vibes.

You know, one of my favorite games, Stardew Valley, there's certainly some things I thought about including there.

But right now, I'm thinking about the words of Andre 3000.

What's cooler than cool?

Ice cold.

And when I'm thinking about chill vibes, very often I'm thinking about snow.

So we've got a couple snowy tracks and we'll play back to back.

First up, this is one that's well known and I feel like it's pretty essential for a chill music playlist.

From Metroid Prime, Fendrana Drifts by Kenji Yamamoto with Koichi Kiyuma.

Let's hear a little bit of a bit of this bad boy.

It's kind of like a false sense of security.

Yes.

Because the song is chill.

Yeah.

But

your time

in this game is not at all.

It's kind of like an avatar sort of thing.

It's like an environment that's like beautiful and could be serene, but it's also so dangerous that things are trying to kill you at every turn.

Really, really enjoyed replaying this on the remaster.

Me too.

God, yeah, that was my first time with it, too.

I loved it.

Great game.

And the other one I want to play

in this quick one-two.

The game Undertale, of course, has such a great soundtrack.

And Toby Fox, who is, you know, like the composer as well as the

designer of this game, multi-hyphen it.

The track Snowy

is another one that I think is just so, so chill.

This it sounds like snow.

It really does

Sounds like looking at snow Yeah, you're inside

and you're watching the snow

When the strings come in it's just such like a

Cool variation on the already established piano

pumpkin theme

Really just just gorgeous orchestration here.

This is the type of stuff that I'm like How do you even do that?

Like Like, you make a game,

you create this entire world, and you're also like, you know what?

The music, too.

That's going to be, it's going to be fucking incredible.

Yeah, I think people should do one thing.

Yeah, one, and also, like, don't do it that good.

Anyway, those are two, those are two picks of mine.

I did two in a row, so I'll let each of you give your final two.

Okay, great.

Well,

for my

last, hey, I want to pull this to the forefront.

Maybe a lot of people haven't heard it.

From a game that a lot of people have played in the East, but not so many people have played in the West.

It's Mother 3, which I've brought up on the show many times.

I wish I could play it.

I just don't have a copy of it.

Yes, you do.

You literally have a copy.

Can I tell you something about my copy?

What?

I have it still, and

it's in a place that is visible to me,

so I can feel bad about not playing it.

And I look at it every single day, and I feel bad that I've disrespected my good friend.

Once you start it, though, you're gonna, it'll just be like falling down a hill.

It like it'll just propel itself.

Um, no, I'm not offended.

Someday you'll play it, and you'll be like, I can't believe I spent more of my life

having not played this than after my life.

It's like when you get, there's only so much, anyway, it's my final words as the sun crashes into the earth.

Heather was right.

Like, I don't rolling credits on the game and then

incinerate.

This is Sorrowful Tasmille from Mother 3.

Yeah, this is so good.

Can I ask you something about Mother 3?

About what we're seeing here on the screen real quick.

Yeah.

So we're seeing the title screen here, Mother 3.

There's a sort of metallic looking

typeface, and it's covered by what looks to be wood from a tree.

Yep.

That part of it?

Yeah.

Good question.

I'm just interested.

I like that.

It's an interesting image.

It's a great question.

Yeah.

I don't know if I've ever noticed it before as many times as I've looked at it.

Because I've never seen it so big.

Yeah,

it's metal with wood growing over it or wood that is being chipped away to reveal metal.

I won't tell you which.

Okay, I gotta try this.

What I like about Mother 3 is that it comes long after the Super NES.

But whereas like the Game Boy Advance,

uh,

like, which I think is slightly more powerful than the Super NES, so it's like the best-looking Super NES game.

Okay,

all right, that's it.

That's Sorrowful Tasman.

And then, uh, for my final song here, um,

boy, I got two bangers here.

But just in case you missed the episode where we talked about it, uh,

the composer is Dean Evans.

The game is Waterworld

from the Super Nintendo, which has a soundtrack that absolutely should not be in the game.

It is so fucking good.

This is the map theme from Waterworld, the Super NES game.

This is like the soundtrack to a TV show called Beach Cop.

It's

it's so funny to imagine

like

putting together this just like shitty licensed game.

Yeah.

It's like, it's like doing the science fair in grade school.

And you're like, okay, I'm going to make a volcano.

Okay, I'm going to, somebody else is going to make like, I'm going to test like four different kinds of paper airplanes.

And then some kid comes in and they're like, hey,

so I learned that if you add these two liquids together, you can generate electricity.

And my dad's submitting it as a research paper to the University of Wisconsin.

And you're like,

okay, I saw, can you make a necklace from paper clips?

Well,

the funniest thing about this, too, is that this is a song in a video game based on a movie where people have to piss and

do things and then

purify it.

Yeah.

Drink it.

Kevin Gustner has gills in the back of his ears.

Anyway.

Which we've all said before, by the way, is a good idea.

And it could, I think they should revisit the idea of Water World because it is good.

The Water World IP has potential.

They could.

Figure out what to do with the Mariner and the Smokers and the Deacon.

Yeah.

There's good stuff there.

Give me a limited series, a Water World limited series.

The most expensive television show ever made.

Film it in the middle of the ocean.

Yeah, so that's Water World for the Super NES.

We've talked about before on

this podcast that the music has no business being that good.

I'm going to play a song of my final two.

Okay.

A song from a game that I don't think is actually very chill at all.

Oh.

The game itself

sort of reminds me of like smoking cigarettes, actually.

Wow.

The game is Bilatro, and this is the theme song to Bellatra.

This track is the ultimate and chill, though.

It's so chill.

But there's no way you could learn from hearing the song how stressed you'll become

and how much you want to do it again and again and again

that's just extremely good shit one thing i think is great about this song is just how long it is like it goes through so many different variations before looping back upon itself and i think that's part of why you're able to like listen to the same i mean some people eventually play with the music off and i think it's somewhat designed to you know uh be able to be enjoyed that way.

But, like, I always play it with the music on.

Like, I just, and I think it

changes forms just enough throughout the course of an individual run that you don't ever really get sick of it.

It's definitely,

it's often my second activity.

Like, should either be, like, watching, like, Survivor or something and playing Bellatro on my Steam Deck, or listening to a podcast and playing it, or whatever.

But I always have the music on just a little bit because it's just so good.

So that's my penultimate track.

My last track here.

It wouldn't be a music episode if I didn't bring in a song from Kingdom Hearts.

Oh, yeah.

And this is certainly a song that I've played on the show before, but I gotta play it.

It's the town theme from Kingdom Hearts 1 from Traverse Town.

Oh, yeah, this rocks.

It's like a.

You're just kind of just walking around chilling you might go into an item shop you might try to buy some armor or something i i really like my life

but hearing this song makes me sad

because

of how young i was when it was playing sure yeah and how

hopeful I was even though I'm extremely happy and the things I was hoping for have all come like they basically come true.

Yeah.

Like, I wanted to be a writer, and I'm a writer.

Yes.

But hearing this song fills me with so much aching and sadness.

You wanted to be on a podcast that made you mad all the time, and you are.

Yeah.

The thing I thought you were going to say is that you're sad that Traverstown is not a place you could go.

That's where I thought you were going.

No, that's what I was doing.

That's my mind.

This song is like more of my life.

It's like my life.

My life.

yeah yeah

it's so it's it's also because

we waited so long for kingdom hearts 3 yeah that it felt like something that was so far in your past yeah well luckily

kingdom hearts 4 is coming out later this year

or soon there's no fucking way that kids

i just love the music in kingdom

it's so fucking good it's just it's some of the best traverstown is so fucking good yeah imagine you lived somewhere and that was just on really you'd kill yourself eventually well yeah if that was the loop in your the town where you lived shut this fucking music off if you were in some sort of some work done cute silent hill and

god that song can we hear it one more time just a little bit of it i know there's a listener out there that feels the same way when they hear it I have a is it weird that I have a specific flavor in mind when I'm hearing the song?

It's never happened before.

That is weird.

I'm thinking of like a hazelnut coffee.

I mean that makes sense.

But it's kind of weird for a track to make you think of a

flavor.

A flavor, yeah.

I get it.

I completely nobody disagrees with me, but it is.

I agreed it is weird.

Ugh.

Because I'm not going for the hazelnut all the time.

My whole life.

Yeah, that's just good stuff.

That's really good.

Yeah.

Thank you for letting me hear it again.

Before we wrap this up, I do have one more I want to play because I want to shout out the composer for our theme song, Ben Prunty, who composed a number of great soundtracks, including FTL and its DLC FTL Advanced Edition.

And there are so many great

chill tracks to pick here that I was going through all of them.

And I was ultimately like, you know what?

I think the title track, which is called Space Cruise, is kind of like the chillest of all.

This is your onboarding for the game.

Plays every time you boot it up, and it's just chill as shit.

Yep.

A game I've messed around with a little bit, but haven't sunk my teeth fully into, but I can tell that it's very, very good.

I got hundreds of hours in FTL.

I actually came to FTL later after playing Into the Breach,

another game by the same developer that also has a Ben Prunchy score.

And FTL, I put so many hours into it.

It's just a really, really compelling design.

A great score.

And that's a big part of why it's so replayable.

But how cool is it that

the composer of this

also made the theme song for our shitty, shitty podcast?

You can contain multitudes.

You can make a good song for something actually good, or you can make a good song for something that sucks.

You can direct Apocalypse Now and Mygalopolis.

How dare you?

What?

Nick hates Apocalypse Now.

All right, let's do a segment.

All right.

Here we go.

Thank you, Ben.

Thank you, Ben.

I have something I'd like to read.

Can Heather and Nick identify the song that has been reversed?

Welcome to hell, bitch.

It's time for Matt's little game.

God damn it.

Ah, fuck.

So,

what I'm hearing here is:

the feedback I've gotten from you guys in the past is that this game sucks and you don't like it.

But we haven't done it in a long time.

That's true.

And I have modified it slightly.

It is a music-based game.

It's a music-based game.

I kind of thought it would be appropriate.

In the past, what I had done is I pitched the game down, or I pitched the song down, I slowed it down, and then I reversed it.

And what that sounded like was complete and utter hell.

Yeah.

And it was also too hard.

So I've removed several layers of this game.

Okay.

The songs are now just reversed.

Got it.

Oh.

So this might not be the balance.

This could

be maybe too easy, actually.

But I think I've picked some things here that aren't going to necessarily stick out right away.

So, Sam, why don't we play Song One?

I can't really wrap my head around this.

I thought it was one thing, but

and whoever guesses it gets a point, I should say.

The thing about it that's interesting from my point of view is that it still sucks to hear.

Uh,

a song from the game was played.

Uh fuck.

I don't know.

Um

I was gonna I don't think it's this.

It's not this.

Just say.

But just but I'm just gonna guess because I kind of just like was hearing kind of like the uh the vacillations

that I was gonna guess um it's um

uh the title themed mockery of time.

That is incorrect.

Yeah.

Heather, would you like to venture a guess?

I don't

I have no idea what this is.

Okay.

Do you want you can you give us any hints?

I'll be a fucking fool if I say uh what's the what's the what's the uh if i tell you the game

what's the platform for the nintendo switch it's a switch game okay oh is it animal crossing it is the theme song the theme track the title track animal crossing new horizons that is correct hearing it backwards though i can't even hear what it sounds like forwards properly do we do we have it uh the way it normally goes

So, nobody had, or I guess you know what?

Nick has a point because he did guess Animal Crossing.

I don't want a point.

You don't want the point?

Because I gotta know because I got it wrong first, and then Heather didn't guess, and then I needed a hit.

Okay, all right.

It's still at 0-0.

Let's go ahead and play song two, and don't be cute and play the blur one, Sam.

As a reminder, all these songs have been reversed.

And what that means is, I opened up Pro Tools, I clicked on Audio Suite, I went to Other, and I clicked Reversed.

And then I hit Render.

Wow.

Tucks a talk.

Sam and I were broing down earlier about Pro Tools.

Don't worry about it.

I mean, it sounds like...

It sounds like...

I know this isn't what it is.

It sounds like...

like the ghost house track from Super Mario Bros.

But it's the or Super Mario World.

But it's not that because it's missing the

You're right, that is incorrect.

Well, I didn't guess it.

I'm telling you what it sounds like.

Yeah, it definitely has like an ominous character to it, but I can't place it from this.

It's uh

a bit of a mystery, isn't it?

You don't really exactly know what it is when you start it, but then you start to sort of maybe learn a few more things about it as you you as you listen and as you uh experience it more is this a clue well maybe maybe it's like a sort of type of clue that you might find in a i don't know obtuse sort of game where you don't really know what's going on actually it's and then you start to figure it out and you're like wait actually i do know what's going on kind of i think and then you find out you actually don't there's more to it than what you thought oh my god

i don't know

maybe i'm just saying something i honestly don't know what this is i have no idea what this is what this is um the main theme from Animal Well.

Oh, geez.

And what I said was a clue, actually, wasn't it?

Yeah.

I haven't heard that theme enough to guess it.

Like, if you played that theme forward, I would be like, I don't know which one this is.

I guess what I'm remembering now as the person who played Animal Well the most, it was me who played it the most and not you guys.

Okay, great.

I would have, but I did play Animal Well, I might have gotten it.

Like, if you just played it for, like, like normally, I might have guessed it, but hearing it backwards, I was like, oh oh man, I'm fucking adrift.

I have no idea.

Okay.

Sam, go ahead and play song three.

Okay, this one will go great.

Yeah, I think you guys can get this one.

I agree.

This is the overworld theme from Final Fantasy VII.

Heather has one point.

There we go.

See, this is what I was worried about, the balance being.

No, I think it needs to be like this level, though, of obvious

to even have a chance of identifying it going backwards.

Okay.

It's a good note.

It's a work in progress.

We've done this segment a bunch of times.

We also don't have to do it a bunch of times.

No, no, no.

We'll finally, we'll get it right.

Yeah, we'll iterate.

Wait, getting one right, though, doesn't mean the balance is off.

It just means that I'm extremely familiar with this particular song.

The game's meant to be a challenge, isn't it?

It is a challenge.

I didn't even guess the other two.

It's too easy.

We can go ahead and go into song four, Sam.

Guessing the biggest challenge is for the listener of this podcast.

People love it.

They like it because it's hard.

All right, great.

I mean, that just fucking rules no matter what.

That's the kind of interesting thing.

You hear about the song how it goes backwards, and you're like, forwards, the song is pretty good

And then you hear backwards like it still kind of works

is this

Is this uh this isn't Helldivers 2 is it Nick?

Yeah, it is hell divers wow a cup of liberty.

Yeah, wow a great guess kind of this this had this soaring aspect to it.

Wow or tied at one tied at one and there's only one song left.

Oh no.

So, well, I mean, good.

All right, let's play some.

I'm looking at the waveform here.

The waveform has a very long time.

35 seconds of near silence.

You can go ahead and screw it up.

I imagine it's just a slow fade at the end.

Here we go.

Oh, this is Cyber 27.

It's the main theme from Cyberpunk.

Yeah, because it sounds very distorted.

I got Heather saying it first.

Yeah, that's fine.

Heather wins.

Nick doesn't want to win the game.

Nick hates the game so much that he doesn't even want to win.

Heather's our winner.

Wow.

Of Matt's little game.

Hey, that was Matt's little game.

I would like to

forfeit.

That's this week's Get Played.

Hey, thanks to our engineer, Sam Sam Rogich, filling in for Rochelle Chen Ranch, yard underscore, underscore star at our regular producer.

Sam, you got anything you want to shout out?

Duck's playing Zebulon in March.

Gonna be a good show.

Oh, hell yeah.

Check that out.

If it hasn't already happened.

Our music goes by Ben Prenty, BenPrentyMusic.com.

Our artist by Duck Brigade 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 our Patreon exclusive show, Get Anime.

Matt, what's up this week?

We're still watching anime.

I'll tell you that much.

Wow.

And playing Switch 2.

And we're playing around Playing Switch 2.

And if you don't have your Switch 2 yet, you got played.

That was a Hitgum podcast.