Handheld Gaming

This is a head gum podcast.

We're doing this episode without Nick today.

I know that we're talking about handhelds.

I'm really excited to talk about this handheld that I had

for years and years.

Oh, I'm so excited to hear about it.

Please, please, you want to say, do you want to like prep me?

Actually, I'm pulling it into the rumor now.

Sorry, it's just Matt, what have you done here?

So I didn't have like a handheld that like everybody else had, you know, when I was a kid because I was told that I had, I already had games at home.

So what I did was I taped, I taped my PlayStation to big TV, big 32-inch

CRT TV.

Yeah, no, I can see what you've, what you've brought into this room.

And I would just like take this with me places, but I like.

You brought this.

I have questions.

One, why doesn't it have wheels?

Why are you raw dragging this along the ground on what appears to be a plain

wooden surface?

No, yeah, now that you're saying it, wheels would have been probably a pretty good idea.

I probably could have put like two.

I was thinking two, yeah.

Where is this plugged in?

Is this plugged in at your home?

Yeah, so it's The cord is just really, really long.

It has to stay plugged in, otherwise it don't work, right?

But the cool cool thing about it is, you know, all these other devices have Wi-Fi on it.

This has Wi-Fi on it, too.

What?

How?

I have

a router taped to it that's plugged into a motor map.

I have a distinct memory of you telling me when you went on your honeymoon.

Also, I'm bringing my favorite handheld on.

Did you bring this?

How much does this weigh?

Did you bring this on your honeymoon?

Well, I did bring it, yes.

My wife was very mad, and it was very tough to bring because I wasn't really sure that the cord would be long enough.

So you left it plugged in here.

I just said that if I unplug it, it don't work, Heather.

Matt.

They let me have the cord dangle from the sky.

They let you.

I had to ask.

All right.

I like slid the pilot a note.

First off, I'm surprised you weren't shot on sight when you did that.

All the note said was, You better let me leave this thing fucking plugged in or I'm going to scream.

Yeah, at any moment now, the TSA is going to come here to our record it wasn't a threat they're going to execute you ranch and then me it wasn't a threat i also don't think they're allowed to do that yes they are and the only reason i'm going third is because i'm going to shout let me watch

it wasn't a big deal it was fine it made it all the way over there i was i had to buy so much cord

i'm sure you did a lot of cord that i everything you've described about this is also confusing to me because playstation games are available on multiple handhelds now.

I don't have that, Heather.

I said I don't have that.

I have this.

I wish.

The Matt Station 2000.

You named it?

People got to know it's mine and it can't steal my idea.

Better not steal my idea.

Nobody is stealing this idea and nobody is actually stealing this device, Matt.

About to kill me first.

Matt, no, don't say that again.

Well, I'm glad you brought this because I also brought, I brought my favorite handheld and it is a stark contrast to yours.

Would you like to see it?

Yeah, show it to me.

Great.

Heather, what you're pulling it, you're pulling your tooth out.

I wanted portability, so I got it.

I shrunk a Nintendo down into my tooth.

Hang on.

You have a shrinking machine?

Yes, but it only works once.

Oh, I was going to see if you could shrink my thing.

It would be a little easier to hold.

Oh.

My mouth is full of blood.

We game and watch and game and gear and game and boy, oh boy, our way through this history of handheld games 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, Matt Appadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast.

We are one host short,

unless you're counting the Resident Evil merchant,

of a full basket of eggs here.

I would say

usual, we're one host short because I think two of you are tall and I'm the little one.

You think I'm tall?

I think you're taller than me.

I have, if that's true, I have never noticed it.

Maybe I'm just, is it that I'm scared of you?

I know.

I would say if I had to guess, and I'd never

six, like 6'1, 6'2.

6'9.

Get it?

Hey!

I did it!

I did the thing.

Wait, is that, does he do that?

No, I was doing that.

Oh, you were doing that?

Like, I was laughing so hard that I couldn't even breathe.

Okay, great.

I'm slight.

I'm little.

If I'm too little,

I've, I've literally, if that's, if, if it's true that you are shorter than me, I've, I've never noticed.

And if I had to guess, I would say you're probably like an inch and a half taller than me.

Like, not much.

Not much more.

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

That's not much.

I thought that was a lot.

I didn't know what point you were making.

What the hell?

But anyway,

Nick's not here.

He's at jury duty.

I think we could say that he's at jury duty.

Yeah, he's civic duty.

Yep.

And he'll be back next week unless they decide, hey, we actually should keep this guy and put him on trial.

Hey, now that he's here, we got him.

Yeah, we got him, motherfuckers.

We were joking that, you know, maybe he's on some kind of crazy show, but he said that James Marsden's not there.

Yeah.

That'd be such a, it'd be so funny if that happened to Nick because he would hate it.

It's so funny.

And also, the thing about Jury Duty, and if you haven't watched the show, it's incredible.

It's, it's an incredible show that didn't have a gigantic audience.

And it was one of the most heartwarming and inspiring things I've ever seen made by human beings.

It's possibly.

And it's, I feel like it's tough working in comedy and adjacent adjacent to comedy to say something like this.

Cause it's like, I feel like a lot of comedy people are like,

you know, a little bit jaded when it comes to other comedies and stuff.

I think it's possibly one of the greatest shows ever made.

It's so tough.

It's an astonishment.

Yeah, I can't believe that it worked.

Like,

it premiered on Freevie, right?

Yes.

So Freevy, which was just announced to be like killed today on Amazon.

Yes.

So this is, so this is a subset, a commercial-based subset of Amazon Prime.

So it's not where you're going to watch a television show.

And this show is so good.

Think about how good this show has to be that it ended up nominated for Emmys.

Yes,

on a platform nobody has or knows about really.

It's as if a 3DS

video clip was nominated for an Oscar.

It's so fucking good.

That reminds me of one time when I went to a museum and they had

a part of the museum was

dedicated to

3D images.

And a 3DS was in the museum as part of it.

And I was like, I have this.

I was like, what do you mean?

And I was like, I have this at the house.

I've never owned something that is also in a museum before.

This is pretty cool.

Well, at the Louvre in Paris, they have a piece of software that is the Louvre tour guide that is a 3DS game.

And it is a very rare cartridge because it was only available at the Louvre gift shop.

But you could walk through the Louvre and get history of the paintings on the walls on your

3DS or their audio tours were available as a 3DS game.

Wow.

And I do think that this will

play a part in today's topic, which we had to scramble and figure out last second because Nick, Nick had this great idea.

We're going to save it for a future podcast, but the entire episode was going to be on Nick's shoulders today because he had this absolute bombshell of an idea.

And we were like, holy shit, I can't believe we've not done this before.

And then he got roped in a jury duty.

Yeah, so just know that whenever Nick comes back

and we do this episode, it was his idea.

It was good.

It was incredible.

It's incredible.

I do think now you just kind of give me an idea.

One of the episodes that we should do, we should all like do like some sort of feats of strength

Wait, what we should do we should compete in some sort of triathlon on the show

My idea was wait what I thought because you were like it's such a good idea

Saying it's on his shoulders sort of painted an image of me in like us competing in some sort of way.

I don't know why

but we're gonna move past it.

Yeah, we are because actually I have an announcement and we should announce this now.

Okay, what is it?

Well,

people have been asking for this what wait what are we and we're gonna give it to them finally what get your wallets out folks what are we talking about get played's got merch baby oh okay

we got merch we've partnered with uh kinship goods uh so our merch is available as of release now on uh kinshipgoods.com slash get played and it's this the the first wave of our merch we got um we got a hat we got a hoodie we got some shirts and some buttons.

So just go check that out.

If you want to go buy some merch and rep one of your pods, one of your favorite pods, go for it.

We actually just want to shout out the team over at Kinship, great folks, been working with them.

It's been a lovely experience.

It has been a lovely experience.

And our logo is so fucking good that I can't wait to actually wear it on a shirt.

Yes, yes.

On a shirt of what I will say is,

maybe somebody else should say this instead.

What?

A shirt of actual good quality is what I'll leave it at.

High quality goods over at Kinship Goods.

So go check that out.

KinshipGoods.com slash get played.

Is it just the logo or is there some other surprises in our lineup?

There's some surprises I got to say.

Okay, do you want to say one?

The one that it is?

It's coming out.

It'll be out.

People will have seen it already.

As of the record?

Wait, as of the as of the release as of the release of this record people will know yeah nobody's

how will they know if we because they're just hearing it right now well maybe somebody on their computer is going

maybe somebody else wants to say something about this particular shirt i don't think he knows oh he doesn't know should we tell him

i don't want to okay

let's just say

look before he gets here i'm going to go ahead and i'll just go ahead okay right there's a resident evil four merchant shirt

so now my question for you, the listener, is, what are you buying?

What are you buying?

So that's all there.

KinshipGoods.com slash get played.

Very exciting stuff.

But

I know I just asked a question.

Yeah.

But I guess it's time for another question, isn't it?

Yep.

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

ASB, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask a question that I ask every week.

And it's, what are you playing?

Sorry, I was in the bathroom.

Did I miss anything?

Uh, don't worry about it.

It's okay.

You were in there, I will say, for a long time.

What was?

You were in the bathroom for a long time.

I was?

Yeah.

How long was I in there?

Gosh, I mean.

I do tend to lose consciousness.

I think sometimes when I'm urinating.

If I'm remembering correctly, the last time I saw you,

last week when we recorded, after the show, you went into the bathroom.

I was in there a week.

you were in there for a week

good lord

it's a long time were you going the whole time I know it's a graphic question no okay no no no

okay wait no it's coming back to me I did I broke the urinal

and I was I was putting it back together and I got tired and I took a nap yeah I remember hearing on, I was listening to another Headgun podcast.

And I remember in the background of listening to that podcast, I heard a lot of, oh, God, oh, fuck, I broke it.

I broke it, it's broken.

Oh, no.

Nick's going to be so sad.

I don't think that was me.

You don't think that was you?

You don't ever think of Nick's well-being?

I guess that's fair.

I guess it could have been anybody.

I guess it could have been

Jeff Kevin or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I'm here to ask you the question of the week.

Oh, by the way, if you're confused at home, who am I?

I'm the Resident Evil 4 merchant.

And in the games, I say, what are you boring?

But here on the show, I say, what are you playing?

And

I'm here to ask you, Mad Abodaka,

what are you playing?

Oh, God.

I think you have to go back to the bathroom.

Also, real quick before I say,

obviously, we said that Nick's, not for you, Resident Evil Merchant.

I'm talking to the listening audience at this point.

I also look to Heather as well.

Can I hear it?

You can hear it.

Yeah,

is it for me to hear?

It's not for you to hear necessarily.

It's obvious.

You want me to go?

No,

I just want to say, I know that we said that,

you know, obviously Nick's not here because he's at jury duty.

I know that it's been a tricky time of year and just things going on

with different folks at different times.

Oh my god, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Just put one and one together.

Now I know where I know that guy from.

From here?

No, the guy on my jury.

Oh.

Oh, then Nick shouldn't be on the jury, I think.

Yeah, I was like, how do I know that guy?

Yeah.

But you can't.

I didn't want to tell my lawyer because I was like, maybe he's a friend.

Yeah, you should I mean you're gonna be I think in more trouble, but also maybe Nick should disclose that there's a conflict of interest, you know, but also I guess you could be I don't know Nick's a pretty objective guy I would say, but um

I'm suing California

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

I was gonna, I was saying that I know it's been, you know, there's been absences and there's been, you know, weeks where like I wasn't here or Heather wasn't here or Nick wasn't here.

And I know that you guys like to hear us all, but I appreciate everybody's patience patience in this,

just, you know, just this time, this busy time of year, where just

happened just to be a lot going on.

And I know that it's not everyone's favorite when not everybody's here.

But we appreciate it.

I agree.

I like it best when all three of us are here.

And when I can't be here, it is not by, it is under extreme duress that I have to miss the show.

Yes.

It is the only thing in the week that I look forward to.

That is, I would say for me too.

Other than lunch.

Other than lunch, and I guess spending time with our beautiful wives.

Yeah, and sleeping.

Yeah, and sleeping.

Doing work, breakfast.

Oh, my God.

Make a good cup of coffee.

I can't go down this road, actually.

Why?

I've been very interested in an espresso machine that I

can't get into it.

Don't have the counter space

to justify the, I'll say,

mildly expensive purchase.

Yeah.

Don't have the counter space, but I've been eyeballing one.

I got one in a cart just in case there's a

dip.

And, you know, know, there's a specific time of year where there are a bunch of deals coming up.

Oh, I know about deals.

Interesting.

So I'll tell you what I've been playing.

I've been playing,

I've been playing a lot of metaphor.

Hopefully, enough to talk about it next week.

Great.

But I've been playing that.

But when I'm not playing that,

actually, I just remembered something that I didn't even bring in to talk about.

Oh, wow.

So, as you know, I'm a big fan of the Arkham games.

I'm pivoting completely.

Holy, you're all over the place.

I'm going insane.

I'm a big fan of the Arkham games.

Yeah.

And I saw that the Arkham games are now available on Switch.

All three.

All three of the main ones, not Arkham Origins.

For some reason, they never port Arkham Origins to anything else.

It's locked in the PS3 for some reason.

I wonder if they lost the code.

I think they must have lost it.

And so.

I saw it on sale.

The trilogy was available $30.

I'm doing the math.

That's $10 a game.

To me, that's a pretty good deal.

Yeah, exactly.

Even having read that Arkham Knight runs atrociously

on Switch.

But what I have read is that Arkham Asylum and Arkham City run fantastically on the Switch.

Wow.

And those are my two favorites.

I didn't, I liked Arkham Knight just fine,

but didn't love it as much as I loved.

I think City is the best one.

I know that there are people that are like, Arkham Asylum is the best one, but I've been playing Arkham Asylum on my Switch.

Matt, I've never played an Arkham game.

Oh, Heather.

They're as good as the Spider-Man games, but Batman.

And Arkham Asylum is actually pretty interesting.

Having not replayed it ever until now, I like completely forgot parts of it.

It's more, obviously, Arkham City is open world, Gotham City.

You know, the whole city is a prison type of thing.

Arkham Asylum is just like, it's so, it feels so

it's just so closed in and intimate it's Batman Silent Hill kind of like but like with um aerial traversal like and like sneaking and stealth and just lots of punching I have an admission you don't like Batman honestly so here's what happened to me I watched the penguin

And I hate Batman now.

Oh, I hate Batman.

I haven't seen a second of The Penguin yet.

Penguin's great.

I want to watch it.

I'm not watching it for

I wanted it just to be all out.

It's great.

But

you watch the show, and I know that the sort of mimetic joke of like, you know, how

hard the world has changed since Batman was created.

That now, the idea of a billionaire in this oppressed city dressing up in like all of his fancy toys at night and beating the shit out of criminals

is like kind of distasteful.

Yes.

Watching Penguin, you're like, how fucking dare this guy?

Like, and it's not like, certainly the penguin is not a good guy.

He's not a good, they don't like

a criminal master.

Yeah, they don't clean wash the penguin.

No.

The penguin is still a bad person.

Yeah.

But you're in, you're in the trenches with these people and some of the stories you see, you're like,

man, this fucking person is just like getting

a bad hand at every turn until they have no choices but to have these

associates.

And you're like, if Batman showed up and beat the shit out of this person, I would shoot Batman in the head with a gun.

Run him over with my car.

Like,

I'd be so livid.

Yeah.

And I know that we're supposed to think, oh, Bruce Wayne has this technology, so he can probably keep

track of everybody in Gotham or whatever.

Like,

that's bad.

Yeah, whatever his action is in the stories, whether it's the Nolan trilogy or the, or the new, uh,

is it Matt Reeves?

Matt Reeves.

Yeah, Matt Reeves trilogy.

But watching the penguin, you're like,

the idea that Batman exists in this world, and it is so well fleshed out, and it makes sense that he'd be in the world.

It take, you know, it starts like two days after the Batman movie.

Yes.

It's so fucking good.

I can't, I can't wait to watch it.

I've been holding off until it was all out.

So good.

So good, dude.

One of the episodes is like a top-tier, actually good.

Like, instead of it just being like, wow, this is really good for a comic booked series, there's one episode where you're like, oh, shit, this is actually a good television episode.

I like that every show now has an episode that is like...

Like the episode in The Last of Us is like just better than anything that's ever been on TV.

And it's better than the entire show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What if we went extremely hard and snapped on this one?

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm replaying Arkham Asylum on my Switch is the headline there.

The other thing that I was going to say is that I haven't mentioned this on the show yet, and this kind of plays heavily into the topic for today, is I'm holding something in my hand, and Heather is like, what's Matt got in his hand there?

It looks like a Galaxy note.

It does kind of look like that.

And that's honestly one of the things that I like about it.

This is...

Is that a 2DS?

This is a 2DS LL from Japan.

What the fuck?

Which is the XL in Japan.

And

it is

modded and tricked out galore.

Wow.

And this is now in my pocket basically at all times.

It has a bunch of 3DS games on it, of course.

It has some of the games from the eShop on it, all games that I have.

And it also, I have, instead of having a bunch of loose carts lying around, I have a flash cart in here with a bunch of regular DS

games on it as well.

And let me tell you something about this damn thing.

It's very lightweight.

It's very lightweight.

And

it's extremely pocketable in a way that I wish that like the analog pocket was and some other devices that are open face.

But the fact that this is a clamshell and just pops in your, slides in, it's about the size of my phone, basically, a little bit thicker.

That thing is with me basically anywhere that I know that I'm going to have a little bit of downtime.

Can I say something about this device having never held it before?

That I don't mean as a criticism of your joy.

No.

So one of my favorite things about the 3DS is the build quality feels...

Really unlike

it feels so dense, it feels thick and unhollow.

Like you could chuck it against the wall.

The original 3DS almost feels like an Apple device.

Like it's really solid.

Yes.

This is much more toy-like.

Yes, I agree.

And there's like a sort of a little bit of travel on the top screen.

Yes.

I'm surprised.

I'm surprised at the device feeling as it's so lightweight that it's...

I can understand why you would just carry it everywhere.

Yes.

But I am surprised at the build quality a little bit i wish it was a little harder i agree like the the

the

the way that it feels in the the way that it feels in the hand here is like it's very much like this is plastic cont that uh you know containing the um like 3ds within it yeah whereas the other the original 3ds was like this is the whole goddamn thing yeah like and like i i do agree that it feels a little bit uh uh not cheaper certainly but um a little less um protected.

But I do I love that you have it.

It was really fun to mod.

It was extremely hard

because

all the menus are in Japanese and there's not a way you can

region change a

3DS pretty easily,

but there's just like extra steps involved and I think like opening it opening it up is a factor.

Oh shit.

And I was like, I'm not gonna do that.

I think I'm just gonna download Google Translate on my phone and navigate the menus with a second screen until I'm done modding it.

Because now I don't really need to mess around with it.

I just pick on the game and it loads in English.

I have a

surprisingly uneducated question.

Yes.

Why go with the Japanese model?

Because that was what was available.

For some reason that

when I was buying that, when I was sourcing them,

and I think it's probably because the modding community is now buying these and modding them.

And of course, so there's a premium on this device now.

Okay.

I'm not uncomfortable saying that it was like $200,

which is, you know, basically what it cost new.

And this is a second-hand one.

This was an S-tier

condition from what I was able to get.

There was a seller that had a bunch of them in varying conditions, had photos supporting all of this.

And

I went with the one that was the nice one because I didn't want it to have any problems.

Um,

and that was just yeah, what they had available.

They didn't have the um regular Excel because that would have made my life, I'll say, uh,

25% easier while I was modding it because I wouldn't have had to look at a second screen while I was doing it, uh, and things like that.

But it ultimately was still as easy as doing a regular one.

And now that the eShop is now closed on these devices, uh, it is imperative that if you have one of these devices, I highly recommend modding one if you are able to do so.

When I heard that the e-shop was closing,

I went back onto my 3DS and I downloaded the Louvre game.

Because I was like,

I will never fucking see this again.

Yes.

I should get that to see if I can, I should see if I can be able to source it out.

I'm sure there's like a ROM for it or whatever, but I was just like, I want an official copy of the Louvre walking tour.

So now, I mean,

we'll get into this later.

I'll have all three versions of,

I have three versions of the 3DS.

Not all versions, I suppose.

I have this one, and this is the 2DS XL.

It's not a 3D version.

I have the regular 3DS that is the Ocarina of Time 1.

And I have

the wedge, the 2DS wedge.

I have two 2DSs, which is insane.

That's a lot of 2DSs.

Yeah.

I don't have a 2DS because I loved the 3D effect on the 3DS.

I just never used it.

Oh, I had it.

I would use it a little bit and then turn it off.

Permanently on for me.

Permanently on.

Loved it.

What are you playing, Heather?

Well, Matt,

you've changed my life a little bit.

I'm playing the Pokemon card game on mobile.

I'm still playing it as well.

And I am loving it.

And I want to anecdotally say that my wife is the luckiest person on planet Earth.

Can I say what I said earlier?

No.

Fine.

I said, I already know that because she's your wife.

Very nice.

Ranch didn't get to hear it earlier.

It's very kind.

I don't get it.

What does it mean?

If this were a sitcom.

If this were a sitcom, instead of a laugh track,

the audience would go, oh,

wait, I'm lost.

What audience?

Can you guys hear them?

No, if there were.

I can't hear anything.

No, there's not an audience.

No, like people listen to the show later, so I guess there is an audience.

They're not all listening to it at the same time.

I would suspect some of them are listening to it at the same time based on just listening habits.

But I don't think there's not like a group of people that listen all together in a room and respond as

you know an audience okay

okay

i just i just i want to make sure i didn't miss anything yeah i'll i would love to keep talking about uh the pokemon card game uh merchant um so i uh so yeah i i'm playing i'm playing the pokemon

pokemon card game on mobile great presentation uh anytime i boot up a nintendo or nintendo adjacent mobile game the first time i play it i play it with the music on I play it with the volume up, the music on, because there's such loving, crafted quality in all of those sound effects, all the little chimes, the default music.

Great work.

I would say that

while it is a battling game, while it is a Pokemon the card game on mobile to battle against strangers or AI,

it is mostly an opening a pack game.

Yes.

And

all you do all day is look forward to opening a pack of pictures

on your fucking phone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

With the hopes that maybe one of the pictures will be unlikely.

But also, it's not like you can't see those pictures if you just go online and look for the pictures.

You're describing this the way an alien would describe it.

So you open this.

You open this package with pictures, and some of the pictures are less likely to occur.

So those are nicer pictures.

It's what it is.

It is

like that.

Well, I so my wife was why I brought my wife to Disneyland.

She'd never been before.

It was the first time ever.

And I was like, Oh, my, while we're standing in this line, my timer's up for opening a Pokemon card game.

I explained the game to her, and she's like, Oh, can I open one?

I was like, Absolutely.

My fucking wife, on her first open of a fuck of a pack,

pulls a crown-rated Charizard card that is like the title card of the deck.

Like ultimate 3D gold foil fucking like first.

And it's also not, it isn't even presented the way the cards are randomly, theoretically, randomly shuffled.

The pictures are randomly shuffled inside of these virtual packs.

Yes.

It's the first fucking card on the top of the deck.

It's not even like she goes through a couple of them.

Yeah.

It's the first thing she sees.

And I went, oh my God.

And she's like, what, is this one good?

And I'm like, yeah, it, yes,

yes.

If, if this had happened in real life, we would have probably made like $200 just now.

Anyway, excellent little game.

I have,

I've gone through the playing against other people.

It's awakening these old memories of when I used to play the card game for real.

Yeah.

Makes me angry at myself for giving away my decks.

It's a really good presentation.

Am I of the

understanding that

after you get through the expansion packs that you're currently on, that you get to go through other maybe historic

expansion packs?

You know, some of the art from the cards is

like recycled from the cards that I remember.

That Pikachu is like the original Pikachu.

Yes, and some of them are newer and maybe from different sets.

There's a section that says like, select

booster packs or whatever, and it's only the three that are currently available to us.

I would imagine that as like the game goes, continues and there are seasons, uh, they will probably add uh new packs.

Um, I, yeah, like I said last week on the show, I guess if you don't spend any money, um, it could take two years to get all the cards that from this particular set.

Um, I have like 500 cards now, but like I get a lot, a lot of repeats.

Yeah.

A lot of repeats.

But when you get repeats, you can make them sparkly.

Yes, that is pretty nice.

Which is a great, just a really simple way to make you feel unpunished for getting a duplicate.

Do you think,

I guess I hadn't thought about this.

So like when you select, because there's three packs to choose from currently.

Right.

So you select the type of pack you want.

Right.

It's either Charizard, Mewtwo, or Pikachu.

Yeah.

I'm in a Mewtwo pack opening phase right now.

I've been opening a lot of of mewtwo packs okay i randomize interesting i just like i for some reason i've been like i'll go through like okay i'll do one of each when i can but i'm like i think now my strategy is do a bunch of one kind for a while until you're like okay now let's move on to another one um

do you think the cards because like it'll show you like 10 or 12 packs that you can quote unquote pick from yes do you think all those packs have different cards in them or do you think the cards that you get ultimately are in any of the packs?

I have no idea.

And I would imagine that it would take a lot of hacking to find out what's in that code.

Yeah.

I do know that when it was Mary's turn to pick her pack, she did very slowly cycle through all of the packs available.

And then she was like, oh, this one.

Which made me feel like I was watching Neo.

Because if they aren't all the same pack,

then she could have picked any of them.

She could have picked any of them.

But instead, she picked the pack that had the fucking crown Charizard on top.

Like she could.

She told her finger.

Like she could see through my phone into like untruths.

Yeah, that's pretty concerning, actually.

What's started as a good story has now made me scared.

I'm terrified of my wife.

I think, as every person who has a wife should be.

She's so lucky,

it's crazy.

Yeah.

Like, if you have to be like at a roulette table,

ask my wife what to bet on.

Okay.

But she hates gambling, so she'll never be at a roulette table.

I bet you if I said that I wanted to go play roulette, Mary would be like, I'll go with you.

Like, it's like, it's like she, what?

Well, yeah, I'll hang out.

Why not?

I mean, probably if you asked.

I'd be like a crazy thing for me to want to do.

Yeah, I would be.

She'd be like, oh,

okay.

I'll make sure that I go with you so that you stay safe.

What does that mean?

I go with me.

No, with me.

She comes with me to protect me.

She's going to go with you to a casino to protect you.

Yeah.

What do you think is that?

It doesn't matter.

What I was going to say anecdotally is,

it's like when we're playing Animal Crossing back in 2020, and she's looking at all the pictures of all the different animals that could come to the island, and she's like, oh, I want that one to come.

And the first fucking dude that comes to her island is that guy.

Wow, it's that way.

I that just reminded me: I had the phone one, the phone Animal Crossing, which I think is coming out now as like Animal Crossing pocket camp complete with all the stuff in it.

Okay, thank God.

I had a, I had an animal in my village there named Ketchup, okay, and she was a green duck.

Yeah, I know, red duck with green hair.

Yeah, Extremely cute.

Yep.

I wanted her to come to my island on Switch so bad, and I never saw her.

It was devastating to me.

I loved ketchup.

I think ketchup is the cutest one because the name is so cute, too.

And I like ketchup.

The condiment.

It's a pretty good condiment, I would say.

What's this now?

You've never heard of ketchup.

you mean to tell me what you mean to tell me

you've never heard of ketchup what is it maybe i have it's like it's it's a tomato-based

sauce i guess you would call it uh like a dipping sauce uh it's typically sweeter so it has a sort of sweet quality to it when you dip like say like a french fry in it it's got it like a salty sweet oh it's like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah there's this stuff on spaghetti

um

you see, the thing that I'm having a hard time with is that I've heard of people doing that.

What?

Like, eating spaghetti?

Yeah, eating spaghetti.

Like, putting like ketchup or like

I've heard of like ketchup spaghetti before.

All right, well, maybe that's it.

Then I have it.

Maybe that's how you've had it.

You go to the restaurant and you say, I want a spaghetti.

Yeah.

And it comes out with the red all over it, and you're like, yum.

Yeah.

So you do know what it is.

It's the red.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The red.

You can go anytime you can.

Anytime is fine.

Well, Nick's not here, so I don't.

I just want to

stick around if you got any help.

It's okay.

It's alright.

Do you need me to do an ad read?

Actually, no.

No.

Cactus!

You need it?

Where are you going to get it?

Okay, I guess we'll use that.

Rob's cactus, Jack.

Get a cactus.

Get one free.

Alright, so $39.99.

Ranch, when we do the ads later, we don't have to do that one because the Resident Evil Merchant did it already, okay?

Thank you.

You can go.

Yeah.

You can go.

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Matt, do you want to talk about the topic?

I'd say there's no time like the present.

Certainly.

Okay.

Well,

being that we had to pivot so hard right before we came into the record, uh, Matt and I got to thinking, what are we passionate about?

What have we been thinking about lately?

And then we both looked at each other and at the exact same moment pointed, and I said

French fries, and he said handhelds.

And then I was like, oh, right, right, I got to do handhelds.

But here's the thing: fries was a close, it was a close second, if I'm being honest.

If there's a video game, French fries is, wait, let me try that again.

If there was French fries, but were video game, then we would do an episode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If there was French fries, if French fries were video game, we would do the episode for sure.

Correct.

Real quick before we get into the topic, what are your favorite kind of fries?

This goes for ranch as well.

Oh, I have the unpopular answer.

Well, no, I have a popular answer.

Hold on.

I have two, three answers.

Is your answer going to be mashed potatoes?

My favorite kind of fry.

Mashed Mashed potatoes.

So, my very, very favorite, of course, is going to be a Dutch french fry.

Okay.

They are the masters of the French fry.

They are a double fry.

Tell that to the French.

I will.

I'll tell the French, go fuck yourselves.

Eat some Dutch French fries.

So, Dutch French fries are sort of like a Belgian french fry variant.

They're a double-fried,

thick-cut French fry.

My favorite sauce on a Dutch french fry is Orlog sauce, which is peanut butter, mayonnaise, and onion.

Let me tell you guys,

this was the worst thing I'd ever heard when I moved to Holland.

I was like, there's no fucking way I will ever try that.

And then one night when I'm drunk, my Dutch friends are like, you got to try it so good.

And I was like, okay.

And I tried it.

And motherfuckers, I don't understand why it's a good sauce.

It is incredible.

I'm looking at it.

It looks

like poutine adjacent.

Like, that's gravy typically.

Yeah, but it's not gravy.

It's not gravy.

It's peanut butter.

I'll go to my grave never happening.

No, here's what's going to happen.

Next year or the year after, when I finally convince you and I to go do shows in Europe on a tour.

Yeah, here's the thing, Heather.

You don't have to convince me.

I'm there.

And Nick, and Nick is remote recording.

Nick is remote.

Super Zoom

to these events.

How mad would people be?

I think that if they were fan enough to come to the show, they would understand that Nick wouldn't be there.

Yeah.

I'm there no matter what.

I'm there no matter what also.

But

while we're doing our stop over in the Netherlands, I'm going to treat Orlog sauce after a couple of beers, and you're going to be like, holy shit.

And you'll come back

evangelizing and change.

I know I just said I'll never have them.

But if we're there?

If I'm there, I'll eat it.

Like, I'll always try like the, I'll try the, the unique food of the place.

Yeah.

Yes, I'll try the local.

Um, so that's fry number one.

Fry number two is the uh French fries at Wurst Kuch.

Those rule.

Those fucking fries rule.

It's a place in the arts district here in Los Angeles, in the arts district of downtown Los Angeles, um, that is an incredible, um, like,

what would you call it?

Those hot dog sausage restaurants.

Yeah, it's a sauce.

It's a sausage restaurant.

A hot dog restaurant.

They have brat worst, bachwurst, but they also have very bizarre variations like rattlesnake rabbit sausage or whatever.

Like really, really strange,

interesting and unique sausage concoction, but they also have a double French or a double fried Belgian french fry.

Excellent French fries.

Really good.

And I will say,

if you're ever in the area or have never been, if you're from Los Angeles, you've never been, highly recommend going, especially if you're a mustard fan, because the tables are lined with like every kind of of mustard and some of them are almost sand.

Like they're just like the most granular mustard.

Yeah.

So good if you're a mustard freak like me.

The third, because I'm only naming top threes.

The third is going to stand in stark contrast and confusing stark contrast to these two excellent french fries because I know it's extremely polarizing in-and-out French fries.

Wow.

Fucking love them.

I like them too.

I like, but the place to eat them is at the restaurant.

Yeah, you can't eat them to go or some shit.

You have to eat them right there.

But

when you're in the four walls of an in-and-out,

that's a home run.

Matt, what's yours?

I'm going to go ahead and say same.

Just.

No, you know, I actually like the fries at Spitz a lot.

Oh, okay.

Spitz is a Mediterranean street food restaurant, a chain here in Los Angeles.

No, I can't say that they're my favorite fries, but I like those.

And I actually just remember what my favorite fries are.

Let's go.

You ever been to Islands?

No, but you guys talk about it all the fucking time.

Islands is my favorite restaurant.

I think Island, it's number one with a bullet for me.

Ranch, what do you think about fries?

I love fries.

Where are you getting good fries?

Where do you like to get them?

I really love Shake Shack fries.

Oh, those are good.

Those are crinkle, right?

Yeah, crinkle cut fries.

Anytime I see a curly fry, I get a curly fry.

Yeah, great.

Yeah.

And I also love In-N-Out fries.

Everyone gets mad at me when I say that.

People dunk on fucking In-N-Out fries.

They're so good.

What they should be doing is dunking them in some fucking ketchup and shut your damn mouth.

What is this?

Oh, God.

Okay, you can't go.

It's the red.

The red.

All right.

I'm going to try it.

We have to talk about the topic.

Catch up.

It kind of, you know, fries do kind of play into it because you hold them with your hand, do you not?

There we go.

That's, that is the king of transitions right there.

Nick just kind of like

just there, Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

wait, do you know what I just thought or realized?

If he's not here because he's on jury duty, then he's on a jury.

Do you think

it's late at night?

And I think he's not, I think he's not telling us.

I think what it is is because Nick commutes into the studio.

Right.

So I think jury duty, I think, probably finishes around five o'clock.

And depending on where he had to go, travel time would make it so that he couldn't come either way.

I don't know that that's true.

I think so.

I think he's on a jury.

Oh, well, sure, yeah.

Or do you think

he said jury duty?

Do you think that

do you think he said jury duty, but he meant that he is

on trial?

He's representing himself.

Hey, buddy.

Yeah, he's on.

I'm innocent, buddy.

He's on trial.

Oh, boy.

Oh, my God.

What a way to find out.

Nick, please don't be.

Don't be on trial, Nick.

But handhelds.

Heather.

Handheld video games.

Handheld video games.

So we're talking about handhelds this week.

Matt and I are big fans of handheld video games.

And I want to talk a little bit about the history of handheld video games.

A lot of this is going to be cribbed from

Wikipedia because I didn't have a lot of time to prepare, but I did prepare one segment, and that's coming a little bit later.

The history of handheld video games doesn't start with the Game Boy.

It doesn't start with the game and watch.

It starts with these single-use L C D style

game machines that are effectively digital watches with a single game inside blown up to the size of a small

laptop computer.

For example,

Tomy released a Pac-Man handheld game, which was in the shape of Pac-Man.

There were four face buttons that allowed you to control the directions of Pac-Man on the front of the machine,

a start and a power button.

And it chewed through batteries.

And I actually owned this.

I may still own this in my whole.

But they're simple, like single-color LED displays.

And I don't, I'm not thinking of like

machines like Simon, which, you know, on the Wikipedia page is listed as one of the handheld electronic gaming

steps in the history of

the medium.

Didn't we do an episode on Simon?

On Simon.

We just, we learned that.

Nick can't memorize one.

But yeah, there's there's a bunch of like early toy-based uh handheld devices, yeah.

Boppit,

Boppit,

yeah, what do you think about Boppit?

That's like in the 90s, though, yeah, but it's still kind of the same thing, I guess, yeah, I guess so.

I guess so, they'll get me started on Boppit Extreme.

Um,

so uh,

uh, very famous Gunbei Yokoi

from Nintendo History

In 1979,

anecdotally, he sees a businessman playing with an L C D calculator by pressing the buttons on a bullet train.

And he comes up with the concept that would be a miniature LED game machine used for killing time, a game watch.

And then in 1980, Nintendo begins to release the game and watch games, which are like little micro versions of Donkey Kong or balloon dudes.

What was the name of that one?

Balloon fight?

Balloon fight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Balloon fight.

It has

a single game on an L C D screen and a built-in clock.

They're immensely popular, and they also introduced the D-pad controller,

a format that ends up extending onto all the other Nintendo handhelds all the way up through this day.

Well, I guess the Switch doesn't.

Switch Light has a d-pad.

Yeah, and it's superior for it.

God, it's.

You should just, they should just have the option.

How could they not make a left Switch controller that just has a D-pad?

They have third-party Joy-Cons that have a D-pad instead, but I don't do third-party.

Oh, shit.

Oh, fuck, third-party.

Whoa.

And then in 1989, everything changes.

The Nintendo Game Boy is launched with the game Tetris.

And if you've seen the movie Tetris on Netflix,

on Apple, you get kind of a...

Because it was on Apple, I'm guessing you didn't watch it.

Yeah, you didn't watch it.

That's okay.

And also, it's not very historically accurate from what I understand.

No.

But you get

a little anecdotes, little stories about how hard it was to license a game from the Soviet Union in order for it to be the launch title of the Game Boy.

It's a cartridge-based system and it becomes a global phenomenon.

The monochromatic display, the durable design, and extensive game library solidified Nintendo's dominance in handheld gaming for years to come.

At the same time, the Atari Lynx, Atari being a huge name in games still in the 1980s, the Atari Lynx is released, which was the first handheld console with a color L C D screen and backlighting.

And despite these advanced features, it struggled due to its high price and extremely short battery life.

I'd also say the limited software library

is,

it holds back the Atari links.

It's also an ugly machine.

Let me see this.

Fucking ugly.

You look up the Atari links while I take a swig of water before I launch into my pre-written book.

Oh, God.

It looks like you could stand on it.

Yeah, it looks like a scale.

It looks like Atari was like, what if you turned a skateboard into a handheld gaming device?

And I also know that, like, it must be because of the time, the amount of batteries it would take to power a larger screen.

For those of you not looking at this, the amount of this thing that isn't screen

is baffling to me for how large it looks.

But then the handheld wars began.

Today on our program, The Colorful Challenger.

Stories about ambition, innovation, and the quest to change the game, literally.

We're diving into the history of the Sega Game Gear, a handheld console that dared to bring color to the monochromatic world.

Act 1, A Vision in Handheld.

Picture this, it's 1990.

The Berlin Wall has just fallen.

The internet is in its infancy.

And in the world of video games, the Nintendo Game Boy reigns supreme.

It's chunky, it's gray device with a tiny greenish screen.

The games are in black and white, or rather, shades of peace soup.

No one seems to mind because, first time, you can play Super Mario on the go.

Enter Sega.

Known for its edgy arcade games and the Genesis console, which comes later, Sega looks at the Game Boy and sees an opportunity.

Why settle for monochrome when you can have color?

Why squint at a dim screen when you can have a backlight?

Why settle for the Atari Lynx when they can do it better?

So in late 1990 in Japan and 1991 in North America and Europe, Sega releases the Game Gear.

Sleek and black with a full color backlit screen.

It's like holding the future in your hands.

The Game Gear is not just a handheld, it's a statement.

And what you're saying is, we can do better.

The console feels substantial both in weight and in promise.

It brings to life games like Sonic the Hedgehog in vivid color, a stark contrast to the Game Boy's muted tones.

Sega positions the Game Gear as a sophisticated alternative, a step above in every way, but innovation comes at a cost.

The color screen and backlight, while impressive, are power-hungry.

The Game Gear requires six AA batteries and offers three hours of gameplay.

Compare that to the Game Boy's four double A's and up to 15 hours of gameplay.

Wow.

Three hours on six double A's.

Jeez.

That's a lot of batteries for a kid.

Yeah, and batteries have never been cheap.

Yeah, they haven't been.

Gamers find themselves tethered to walls with AC adapters or carrying pockets full of spare batteries.

Or if you're my parents, you introduce the concept of rechargeable batteries to your daughter.

Act two, the battle for Pockets.

Despite the battery life, the Game Gear garners a dedicated following.

Sega markets it aggressively, often taking direct shots at Nintendo and commercials.

They showcase the Game Gear's superior graphics, its ability to display dozens of colors simultaneously, and its backlit screen that allows for play in the dark, something the Game Boy can't do without a third-party accessory.

And the Game Gear just isn't about games.

Sega releases a TV tuner, turning the handheld into a portable television.

Let me, as an aside, say, watching the commercials for the TV tuner blew my mind as a child.

I never had it.

Yeah.

Too expensive.

Very little use case.

Yeah, because what are you going to watch on it?

But imagine, imagine if you could plug...

I mean, now you can imagine you can watch anything on Earth on your phone.

Yeah, I could watch Oppenheimer on my phone.

Right, but if you were, but if you were, when were you born?

In December of 1990.

So you're born in December of 1990.

1990, so you probably have memories of

the Nokia brick phones, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Imagine if you could snap something into that and it would become a television.

It was pretty wild.

But while the Game Gear pushes technological boundaries, Nintendo focuses on content.

The Game Boy's game library expands rapidly with titles like Tetris, which becomes a cultural phenomenon, and then Pokemon.

which spawns a franchise that still thrives today.

Developers are more inclined to create games for the platform with a larger user base, and despite its technical limitations, the Game Boy outsells the Game Gear by a large margin.

The Game Gear also faces challenges with third-party support.

Many game developers see the Game Boy as a safer investment due to its massive market share.

Sega tries to compensate by porting popular Genesis titles to the Game Gear, but the handheld's hardware can't replicate the console experience.

By 1997, the Game Gear is discontinued.

It never dethrones the Game Boy, but its influence lingers.

The Game Gear showed that gamers desired more immersive experiences even on the go, and it paved the way for future handhelds that would incorporate color screens and more advanced graphics.

Fast forward to 2020.

To celebrate its 60th anniversary, Sega released the Game Gear Micro in Japan.

It's a nostalgic nod to their ambitious handheld, shrunk down to a collectible size.

Imagine a keychain that can play Game Gear games.

It reminds us of a time when Sega dared to challenge the giants to innovate boldly, even when success wasn't guaranteed.

Wow.

You know, if there's going to be an opportunity for me to like just talk about Sega at length, I'll do it.

Here's the thing.

Let her cook, I say.

There's, you know, I didn't have a Sega handheld.

Obviously, my, I'll say for me that the handheld, the handheld genre, as it were, is basically, in my mind, a Nintendo genre.

Wow.

Like, I only ever think about Nintendo handhelds because that's all I had for a long time.

Woof.

I only had my first one was the Game Boy Color.

Yep.

Released in 1998, an upgrade to the original Game Boy.

It introduced a color screen while maintaining backward compatibility with the Game Boy games.

Huge.

And backward compatibility, obviously, being talked about now with the successor to the Switch that was announced

weirdly on November 6th, 2024.

One of the only good things that happened that day.

Just happened to be announced at the exact same time.

So I only ever think about that, but

you lose backward compatibility

for a lot of consoles

at a certain point.

Obviously, you could play PlayStation 1 games on PlayStation 2

and both on PlayStation 3 launch, but then after that, kind of never again.

I loved my Game Boy color.

We had, I've told this story a million times.

We had one.

We had one.

Yeah.

And we had three copies.

We had red, blue, and yellow.

I think I got my Game Boy color when yellow came out because we had yellow first of Pokemon and then got red and blue afterwards, not realizing, being a little kid and also just not knowing that they were different or that they were the same, but just like different.

And then we eventually got a second Game Boy color and that was fine, even though I had

there was four of us.

So we were still, there was never as many as we needed, is the thing.

I finally, then we got a Game Boy Advanced.

I got my own at a certain point because I couldn't deal with not having my own.

Like saved money for a couple of birthdays and stuff just and did whatever I could to get extra money to buy my own.

Actually, rare one that I still have, the Toys R Us Edition

Game Boy Advance that was black, which I was

incredible looking.

Looks really good still.

Have that one.

But yeah, then from then on, I didn't get, I got a PSP late.

Well, before we move forward, let's look a little bit more at the other handhelds that are released in the 1990s.

You have the Turbo Express, which was a handheld version of the Turbo Graphics 16.

It played the same cue card games.

That's crazy.

But was extremely expensive and had very limited market impact.

I think the Game Gear is more popular than the Turbo Express.

You have the Neo Geo Pocket and the Neo Geo Pocket Color, which were SNK's entry in handhelds, and they were a 16-bit experience.

Again, crazy.

That is really wild to think about.

I think that at the same time the Game Boy Color is playing like 3-bit games.

There's something that's trying to turn out Super Nintendo and Genesis quality graphics on a handheld device.

I remember I used to go to this day camp during the summer, like like when we were off school and my mom had to go to work.

And I remember going on like a field trip with this camp and everybody had Game Boys and Game Boy Advances and this one kid in the

camp group had a Neo Geo pocket.

Jesus.

And we were like,

what the hell's the matter with you?

It was cool because nobody else had anything like that.

You're talking about my youth.

Think about everyone's playing like Pokemon and everyone's playing, you know, whatever else, uh, Mega Man Battle Network or whatever.

And then this kid's like playing like Metal Slug on a Neo Geo Pocket or something.

Yeah, unbelievable that it's possible.

Yeah.

But just

shocking.

In 1999 and 2000, you get the Wonder Swan and Wonder Swan Color, which are both developed by Gunpei Yokoi.

He's no longer at Nintendo at this time because

of the virtual boy.

Handheld or not handheld or not um

right heather no not right right it's that part you have to put your face into it

hold on let me let me make sure it's not a handheld we've had the wonder swan on this uh podcast before an incredible device low cost extensive game library but was never released internationally and what was the thing with the

the games were like what were they on they were like they were like a sort of unique format no the cartridge they're just like cartridges.

They're just like wide cartridges.

Okay.

The problem is that by the time they're looking at releasing this thing internationally, the Game Boy Advance comes out in 2001.

And

everybody in their right mind is like, why would we ever try and eat Nintendo's lunch?

Nintendo had the, and I feel like this has come up in a similar way.

And perhaps you have said this.

There was a time at Nintendo where Nintendo was kind of like Apple, where like they were sort of like leading the industry in this way, where they were like, as soon as they put something out, whatever else came out was cooked.

They're fucking done.

Because can you imagine

you're Mr.

Yokoi

and you're like, Wonder Swan's about to come out in the States.

It's going to be huge for me.

Nintendo's like, come back.

Here's the Game Boy Advance.

Like, you just couldn't.

Yeah.

Even as much as you liked the Wonder Swan after you got it.

Yeah.

There's, it's, it's not a Game Boy Advance.

Yeah.

You look at the Wonder Swan and you're like, this only takes one battery?

Holy shit.

That is crazy.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

But no,

it doesn't make a difference.

It's 2001, the Game Boy Advance comes out.

In 2003, the Nokia N-Gage comes out, which is a hybrid mobile phone and gaming device predicting the future of mobile games.

Yeah.

Absolutely garbage machine.

Because I think the miscalculation is.

Or at least there was.

Because it was a phone.

It's a phone.

I believe it was a shitty phone.

Shaped like a taco.

And they're trying to bring

the Tomb Raider game on it.

Yes, they're trying to bring like full-ass games to the phone at this time.

And it's not, it's not there.

One of the one of the worst parts of the Nokia N-gage, I don't know if you remember this, Matt.

I wanted, I coveted an N-gage.

I did not.

Is that you hold it sideways to your phone, to your head in order to make a call.

Yeah.

You couldn't hold it like a phone.

You had to like perpendicularly hold it to your ear.

Like a gun.

Yeah.

I wanted one so bad, but you just, you have to remember

I was but 13 years old.

Yeah.

Of course I would want something so stupid looking.

Yeah.

Because everybody else had like the

big phone at that time, at least of my youth, was

the

T-Mobile sidekick.

Yeah.

That had the little screen that would flip up.

Oh, Oh, yeah.

And then to reveal a keyboard.

And that was really cool.

And I was like, actually, you know what's cool?

The Nokia N-gauge.

I miss cell phones with action, flips, twists.

You know, this is sort of why I've been thinking about handhelds, honestly, because I miss

dedicated devices.

Tactile experiences.

I miss phone just being phone.

I miss iPod.

I miss, you know, mini discs.

I miss, yeah, dedicated music player.

I I miss a thing that was just games only.

Now game is computer.

Now it's all the same stuff.

They're all one thing.

But you know what?

There are still dedicated devices.

They're, they're, they're just virtual reality helmets.

There's not anything else you can do in that helmet.

See, I look at no, but

to me, it's the helmet, but it's also everything else.

Yeah.

It's not just that.

It's like, it's to replace all of it.

Yeah.

You know, what's funny is that I could probably bring a mini disc in and show it to Ranch and she wouldn't know what it was.

Have you seen a mini disc before, Ranch?

Like a small CD.

All right, great.

So I'm going to bring that in for one of our recordings.

I can't wait to show her.

She'll be like, what is this?

Here's the thing, Ranch.

I barely know what it is.

They do seem cool.

I liked like the occasionally you'll post like a cozy photo of one.

Oh, my God.

I love them so much.

Yeah.

It's 2004 and the Nintendo DS comes out.

It's the same year that the PlayStation Portable comes out.

If you're too young to remember this face-off, the PlayStation Portable looked so much better than the Nintendo DS, especially the launch unit.

Yeah.

Like I'm on the train in Holland looking at magazine articles about these two devices and I was like, oh my God, you can watch movies on the PSP, you can listen to music on the PSP, and you could play fancy ass fucking 3D video games on the psp sony's about to win it holy we're gonna go the thing that was so crazy about the psp to me is that it was little discs not mini discs

yeah it was little cd umd yeah little umd and for those of you that weren't there

these are i think the loudest things ever made they were so fucking loud they were they were they were loud You mean when they were spinning in the machine?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They were like buzz saws.

Yeah, they were buzz saws.

But also,

when you've just come off of the first generation of CD-based

home consoles, the idea of having a CD inside of your portable device in an era when CDs were still technically available at store, like you're still buying CDs once in a while in 2004, you're like, oh my God, this thing is going to, it's going to kill Nintendo.

I think the last CD I bought was when I was in college, like in 2012.

But somehow,

somehow, despite CDs remaining until 2012.

That's true.

I bought CDs recently.

Recently.

I have not bought a CD in I don't know how long.

I bought a box set of C Ds.

What?

It was a Weezer 30th anniversary.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

I bought it just to have it.

Okay, that's fine.

That's great.

I'm glad that you did that.

I'll never question a Weezer purchase from you.

I don't have anything to fucking play them on.

My car doesn't have it.

Wait, can the playstation not play us oh i guess you probably can

i guess i'll find out or break it

somehow despite the playstation portable's everything machine capability and excellent commercials yeah the nintendo ds eats its fucking lunch with worse graphics an uglier machine and like

Like like a gimmick that at the time nobody understands why you would want it.

Two screens.

You're like why it looks shittier than the one screen on the psp because i mean i know that this isn't true for all psp games

because the the some of the games that are on the psp are wild to me that they're even on there like the god of war games are as good as the god of war games for the playstation 2 and then are ported to playstation 2 later but some of the psp games that come out are sort of like they don't feel like full experiences kind of they're so strange they're like it kind of feel like i don't know like they're just not really they're kind of all half-baked kind of, or they're like smaller, they feel like smaller experiences than what you would want from the IP, sort of, like, even like, even the Daxter game, which I know has its fans.

I'm like, this kind of is like a shittier version of Jack and Daxter.

And also, Simon, you're also in a world where you, there's no way for you to watch a movie on the go.

Yeah.

So I got my PSP right before I went to Japan for the very first time.

And I packed,

I think, three movies.

And I also found out a way to transcode because you could also load media onto the thing.

Yeah.

And I found out a way to transcode hard-subbed Naruto episodes onto the PSP.

So I had like 10 episodes of Naruto to watch on the plane.

Yeah.

And everyone around me was stuck watching just the like in-flight entertainment, which at the time didn't offer you any choice.

It was like, this is the movie you're watching.

Right.

And

adult men, mostly adult men, would be looking at me, switching between like rain of fire or like

Shrek or some shit or like watching Naruto episodes while they were suffering through the notebook or whatever was on the loop.

Yeah.

My PSP came with a copy of Kick-Ass.

Yeah.

I can't believe that anyway.

I can't believe that device failed.

It's crazy that it failed, but it had no good software.

No.

And all it came down to at the time was the software.

The stuff on the Nintendo DS was inspired.

People were like, oh, wow, two screens?

This might be fun to fuck around with.

Yeah.

Let's make the world ends with you.

Yeah, let's make the fucking that Zelda game that when you close it,

the link becomes flat or whatever, like, or part, you know, whatever that was called.

I don't remember.

In 2005, Game Boy Micro comes out, which is a smaller, sleeker version of the Game Boy Advance.

It lacks backward compatibility with older Game Boy games, but is a tiny, little, perfect, beautiful little device.

Ooh, wee, I'm so happy I still have mine.

I know that you said that it's not that good.

I covet one so bad.

I'll bring mine in and you can play it.

I want to see it.

And you can be like, it hurts my hands.

Yeah, you can be like, this is too small.

Yeah.

The Nintendo DS Lite and Nintendo DSi come out in 2006 and 2008, which were improved versions of the original DS with brighter screens, slimmer designs, and added features like cameras and downloadable content.

When the DS light comes out, that's when I'm like, oh, they finally made the DS.

The original DS felt like a prototype.

Yeah.

It.

Yeah, like a

like a developer kit.

Yeah, it felt like an internal use only machine.

I had it.

I got it.

And like, I was made fun of.

Yeah, it's a weird looking fucking thing.

Yeah, and like, I eventually

then bought a

I kept I had the foresight for some reason to keep my launch DS,

but bought a DS light also instead of trading it in.

Yeah.

I don't know what I must have traded in to get it, but I was like, I have to have a DS light.

This is going to be, I have to have this version of it.

Got that

and loved the DS light.

The thing I hated about it was that it still had the slot for

Game Boy advanced games yes but it would they they didn't fit all the way in yeah they stuck out yeah i was like i wish it was just like it was you know uh flush with the end of the the console yeah but i loved i loved the ds light quite a bit but then i traded that one in for my 3ds and i wish i still had the light

i have i have a

a dsi l

because the the discord made me get it because they were like you're wrong about chrono Trigger on the DS.

And I was right about Chrono Trigger on the DS.

Don't bully us into making any more purchases.

I went to like a like a,

I don't even, I'm, I don't even remember.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

2010s.

We start blurring the line between consoles and handhelds.

The Nintendo 3DS comes out in 2011, which featured glasses-free 3D technology and backward compatibility with DS games.

It expands with models like the 3DS, XL, and the 2DS, spoken about earlier.

And then the PlayStation Vita, 2011 in Japan, 2012 worldwide, Sony successor to the PSP with a high-resolution OLED screen in 2011 motherfuckers.

Yeah.

Dual analog sticks, son of a bitch, and touch capabilities.

And somehow it fucking fails again.

The thing...

Well,

did you ever get a Vita?

Yes.

And I was playing the Uncharted game on there for a little while.

What the fuck is happening?

That system is so good.

It's so good.

It's fantastic.

The thing that I think it excels at

is being a portable PlayStation 2.

So the games that are ported from PlayStation 2,

you know, the Jack and Daxter games, the Sly Cooper games, the

first two fucking God of War games run great on it.

And then, you know, some of the other games on there.

Vice City is on it.

Vice City, yeah, there's like great games for it like that.

I feel like some of the standalone games for it, it's a software thing again, where they're like, the, it doesn't feel like that Uncharted game is fun, but it's not,

it's not that good.

I wish the Vita had launched with Astrobot.

I mean, yeah, if I could go in a time machine and have Astrobot around sooner in my life, I think things would probably just be a little bit better

overall.

The 3DS ends up fucking stomping the vita

and for sony fans like myself

it was a crushing blow to my it it it buried me in my own grave because like i mean the thing about the 3ds that is so great um is that it's possible it's just like possibly one of the most perfect yeah handheld like i mean i should have showed you this 2ds one it's so this is so much better this is nicer than the vita like or not nicer necessarily but it's um

it's more functional.

Can you imagine a science fiction world where...

And you can hack a Vita pretty easily as well.

Like, for whatever reason,

aliens show up and

they forcibly make it so that we are not allowed to develop any new technology.

Okay?

Here's the thing.

I'm going to stop you right there.

I'm in.

No more.

And it happens in...

Like they're like, you can make TV shows.

No.

You can make movies.

You can make everything.

What about songs?

You can make new songs, but you have no new tech.

You are locked in the tech of our era.

And they land in, let's say, 2013.

Yeah.

And we have, and we have like 12 years

of

3DS games and 11 years of PlayStation Vita games.

Fuck, that would be crazy.

Yeah, we'd probably at least have a couple of good ones by now.

Yeah, god damn it.

I do like the way it looks that OLED screen is really like is the whole thing, but the backpad there's a fucking backpad stupid.

It's stupid, but it's good.

Like the back of the console is a touchpad, and you can use it to interact with like menus and like the games by touching the back of it.

There's not a good way to feel like you're doing it.

No, it's it's it's a weird it feels like somebody had a spreadsheet and they were like it needs to have a touch screen on the back And everyone's like, okay.

Not to pull back the curtain on our show too much.

It's a very dugout choice.

Yeah.

It's like they're like, when they heard about the touch screen and somebody in the room was like, oh, I wanted to touch the back and it moved.

That sucks.

I wish it was, I wish it was more.

I wish it had a little bit more of a library.

Yeah.

Cause I do think, like I said, those ports are great.

Like they play really well.

It's a good way to, it's a good way to experience those, I feel like.

You don't lose that much.

I have, you know,

a substantial video game collection.

And most of my cabinets are like, oh, it's the Super Nintendo cabinet on top and the Sega Genesis cabinet on the bottom, right?

Like it's like split cabinets.

One entire cabinet is handhelds.

I love handhelds.

I was thinking about this when we were coming up with this.

I have so many handhelds.

Over the years, just doing this show, like I didn't have a Vita.

I like bought a Vita in the last couple of years.

I now have three versions of the 2DS, or you know, the, I have two versions of the 2DS and my 3DS.

And now there are like niche ones that are, like, not

of any particular

ecosystem.

Yeah, where it's like the Retroid Pocket 2 Plus, which is like a pocket emulator that I have.

There's the other one.

I have too many of these.

It's called the Anbernick RG35XX SP.

And

it looks like a Game Boy Advance SP, but it's a pocket emulator.

It has too many letters and numbers.

It's too many, but I have it.

I have the play date, which we both have.

Well, we've skipped a major release.

What is that?

The Nintendo Switch.

Oh, well, yes, of course.

Which

destroys.

For a moment, moment,

they're making the 3DS and the Switch.

Yeah.

And they're trying to say, no, they're two separate systems.

And then somebody at Nintendo is like, what are we fucking doing?

Bring the 3DS out back and put a bullet in its head.

We have to just be focusing on the Switch.

And the Switch is on the verge of maybe overtaking the PlayStation 2 as the most successful game system of all time.

Yes.

And I do think that's why we're not getting the Switch 2.

You think it's just because they want to beat the PlayStation 2?

I think they want to do it.

I think they were like

as soon as we announced Switch 2, Switch 1 sales stop.

I don't know if that's true because the PlayStation 3 came out and they were still selling PS2s in

all over the fucking world where people couldn't get the PS3 right away.

Yeah, I guess.

I mean,

as soon as they announced a Switch 2, I'll tell you what, I'm buying a Switch Light.

You don't have a Switch Light?

I did, but then I traded it in

when I upgraded to OLED.

Oh, okay.

I upgraded to OLED, but I had the Switch Light, and I loved it.

And I preferred it, honestly.

I should have kept it.

If they made an OLED Switch Light, that would be like one of my ideal gaming devices.

Oh, yeah.

I almost bought the Zelda one just because it's...

gold and I was like this is kind of funny.

Pretty nice.

It is really nice.

Maybe I'll get it.

They're very available.

Yeah, yeah.

So then it's the 2020s, and we come to the aforementioned play date released in 2021, developed by Panic.

It was a black and white screen and mechanical crank as controller input, offering a curated selection of indie games.

I also have a play date.

Yes.

I don't play it.

I think it's just a question of time and saturation.

I think so too, you know, and it's not like a, it's, I know that there are games being developed for it and being released for it, i'd say pretty regularly um yeah there's not that many that i'm like interested in but i'll pick it up every now and then like that lucas pope game that came out uh earlier this year i was like interested in that gave that a shot um bounced off of it uh

to me that's not like a

game comes out for it.

I have to finish this game.

It's more like, wow, I can't believe that this exists.

This is really, really cool.

Except for that game Bloom that I was obsessed with and I absolutely loved.

But I know that they just announced a season two of their

play date.

What I mean by that is when you bought a play date, you were guaranteed a game every single month or something like that, every couple weeks of the season.

And you would get a new game delivered straight to your device

with that same regularity for however long it was.

And they're doing another season of that, which is

which I'm like, just keep funding it somehow where where that happens, and I'm I'll check out those games as they release.

Absolutely.

2022 is the Valve Steam Deck release year.

Yeah.

Uh, which is, um, I don't think it's the first portable PC, but it's certainly the first popular portable PC.

Yeah.

Uh, it's Valve's entry into handheld gaming.

The Steam Deck runs PC games from the Steam library featuring a powerful hardware and a customizable Linux-based OS.

This, uh, the Valve Steam Deck also just announced a white edition.

and god damn it, it looks so beautiful.

And I'm like, should I get it?

And then I'm like, why would I pay a premium for a two-year-old handheld gaming device, especially when there's like the ASUS rug alley or whatever the fuck, ally, yeah, alley, ally.

Um,

the thing about it that makes me mad, and I was saying this to you before we got started recording, yeah,

is that I feel like early adopters or who are typically enthusiasts

are often punished when the nicer ones come out later.

Like

with the analog pocket, yeah, I would have liked one of these fucking clear ones, one of these colored clear ones.

Like my childhood.

Do you know that for a while there was one company that was doing the opposite to its customers, and that's Sony.

The launch PS3 has a lot more shit that you can do with it than the PS3s that follow.

The launch Vita has an OLED screen.

Yeah.

Like the Launch PSP has a better build quality than the PSPs that follow, although the PSP Go is an incredibly gorgeous machine.

I know, I was just looking at that.

So you would, if, if you

spent the money up front to be an early adopter of these Sony devices, you were rewarded.

Yeah.

Because they'd be like, well, we took away the Linux.

We took away the cartridge slots to be able to look at your photos on the TV.

We took away backwards compatibility with PlayStation 2 games.

We took, like, they take all this stuff away.

So if you have the launch type or the launch PS3 that weighs as much as a car, you're like, oh, I have the best version of this.

But lately, I would say that, like, the PS, the PS4 Pro is better than the PS4.

And the PS5 Pro is better than the PS5.

So they are starting to get into that same upgrade cycle where they're not stuffing everything they can into their launch machine.

Yeah.

Which is, uh, breaks my heart a little because I love, I liked when, when Sony would be like,

you know, it, it comes with like, what's something that

it would be like if they announced now, like, and the PlayStation 6 has an iPhone dock built into the front of the machine.

You'd be like, what?

So that you can use your iPhone on your control, like some insane thing that you'd be like, this is never going to work and nobody's going to use it.

No, and

when stuff has built-in technology from a particular time,

it's immediately obsolete.

Like, it's just like it's always like that's going to change.

I had a TV for the longest time before I had the TV that I have now that did have an iPod dock in it.

And, like, the little flap didn't work anymore, so it was just always out.

And I hated seeing it because I was like, I don't even, I haven't had an iPod that could fit this, I think, ever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gosh, but the thing about these handhelds now that come out.

Oh, and the analog pocket.

We didn't touch on the analog pocket, which is

my favorite current handheld device.

Yeah, I would say so as well.

Apart from this 2DS that I have, of course, the analog pocket is an enthusiast handheld.

It's not for everybody, but it plays the original hardware.

It plays Game Gear games, Game Boy games, Game Boy Advance games with an adapter.

I think it plays

Neo Geo Pocket.

Yes.

And then it has all.

TurboGraphic 16 as well.

Yeah, and then it has all of the emulators built or the emulation technology in it, the FPGA, FGPA,

that allows you to

load

really, really high-quality emulators into the machine.

So you could, say, play Chrono Trigger on it, but be playing a Super NES version of Chrono Trigger on your handheld pocket.

Yes.

And I absolutely love it.

I played Chrono Trigger on

that.

And it has a dock for the television.

Which I also got and I really, really love.

Have not used it since I played Chrono Trigger on the TV, though.

I will complain to this day.

Complain until they release it.

Those motherfuckers said they were releasing a software upgrade that allowed you to play that dock on a CRT.

And I was like, this is only for me.

Yes.

And god damn it, they haven't released it.

They got to put it out.

The thing about handhelds now, like I was saying, they're not, for the most part,

they're just not

like to a dedicated like console.

Or like, you know, like they're not like, there's not a Sony handheld anymore.

There's the portal, of course, which is not really a handheld because it's like it is, but it's not.

It's a streaming handheld.

It's a dumb device in a way.

Yes, because it doesn't work if you don't have a Wi-Fi connection.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's other ones that are like that.

There's a, I can't remember what it's called.

There's one like that for the Xbox, but it's not actually for the Xbox, but it does do it.

But Xbox is apparently working on a handheld.

Yeah, they announced, I think, today, that a few years from now, they are going to release an Xbox handheld, which surprised me because I did not think that Xbox would be around in a few years.

It's like, wow, that brand is going to be still sticking in.

We'll see.

So, but like the ones that come out now are are

more niche devices, and they're also, I would put them in this category of things that I don't need.

Like, I don't, I don't, I have a bunch of these.

I have three different ways.

Four, if you count my Vita that is also dual boots a PSP ecosystem.

I've I could play Chrono Trigger five different ways.

Yep.

Don't need to.

Don't need it.

And they keep making these, they keep making these other

handheld PCs that are like interesting, like you were saying, like the ROG Ally or like

isn't there like a Lenovo device that allows you to play Xbox?

Like Game Pass.

Yes, there's that one.

There's this other one that

I don't need it.

I don't need any of these.

I don't need any of these.

I don't have time to play our We Play, You Play.

No.

When the fuck am I going to have time to play any of these?

But before I got this 3DS,

the Ionio Flip DS

is a handheld PC that has two fucking screens and it's huge.

It's the size of a Steam Deck, basically.

And it's huge, but it costs like $800.

Why does it, what is it, why do you need two screens on a handheld device other than emulating DS games?

That's it, kind of.

But I'm like, I don't need, I can't, I can't justify this.

That's insane.

The thing is, an $800 DS emulator, just get a DS.

It's gorgeous, though.

It is.

Yeah.

Can you show me a picture of it?

Holy shit.

It looks so nice, but it's not necessary at all.

It looks like something from THX 1138.

It looks like something from

a dystopian future where they're like, your pill has arrived in the mail.

Take your pill.

So the one without the two screens is $800.

If you want one with the two screens, it costs almost $1,200.

Sitters and enjoy your pill or throw in the

That's a crazy device.

Yeah, I don't know who it's for.

I don't know who it's for.

And I'm, I think, the target audience.

Yeah, because it's like, it's, I mean, it's a PC, so you could play your Steam library, the Epic Game Store are probably on there too.

But, like, I have a Steam deck that I also don't use as much as I'd like.

I don't, the only time I have to play a portable game now is to drag my finger across the screen once a day to open a fake Pokemon deck.

But, like,

that's what I miss about dedicated handhelds is that the experiences

were fuller.

Yeah.

They weren't just, you know, oh, I'll play this for a few minutes and put it down.

Like they were like full games.

Like they're just, you know, they were just not as at the same scale.

That's why I liked having a Game Boy Advance and a PlayStation 2 because the valleys between those two were so different that the experiences felt completely separate, but um rewarding at the same time i'm gonna feel really depressed when

all of our computing is in our glasses yeah and our games are no longer tactile yeah uh i i i i know that there are still games that you can play in say the vision pro by holding a controller in your hands but who's gonna i mean maybe people are going to bring when when we have these ar devices in glasses and we're sitting on the subway train, maybe they'll bring a controller in their bag and you'll just play like a 300-inch version of Call of Duty on a, on a, on a virtual screen.

Maybe.

But I feel like we have these gaming.

My cell phone can play Death Stranding.

Yeah.

I'm not playing Death Stranding on my cell phone.

No, because phone

phone has to be separate.

It can't be.

There's,

I can't accept that it would be an all-in-one sort of thing.

Like the idea that you could be fighting

the fucking guy from Death Stranding, the bad guy.

The bad guy.

I can't even remember what his name is.

Oilface.

Oilface.

The fact that you could be like running from a BT.

Yep.

And then get a phone call.

And then get a phone call.

Stuck.

No, thanks.

No way.

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

I mean,

if you had to say, Heather,

what is your all-time favorite handheld?

Oh, man.

You know,

the contrarian in me wants to be like, it's the PlayStation Vita, but there's no way it's the fucking Vita because

I carried that system around wishing something would happen in it, like that it would, like, something would happen, right?

Yeah.

i think for longevity just for for the the impact it's had on my life

for the fact that i'm still playing games on it it's the game boy advance yeah

it's a pretty pretty good case for it i wish

i wish that

this 2ds

ll xl had a Game Boy Advance slot.

Losing the Game Boy Advance slot on the 3ds was brutal yeah because you can play ds games on this you don't need a second slot for that yeah

if this had the slot for it it'd be an all-timer for me because you get then all three of the best handheld generations in one in one that would be an incredible device yeah there's a nice slot right here that has that's where your games go and an sd card goes that's how i'll run this whole bad boy right there but

there's space for a Game Boy Advance cartridge somewhere in here.

They just didn't do it.

What's your answer, Matt?

One handheld console, and that's the only one you get to use.

It's tough because

I love the analog pocket so much, but that's like...

That's a niche device.

It's not going to get me anything I want.

I picked the pocket.

I thought we meant like the dedicated no if I can pick anything it's the pocket yeah the pocket is so nice pocket pockets and computers and the battery life on it is insane yeah yeah it's the pocket but I think it's the pocket okay it's the analog pocket but if it no if it's like an original release system

you know I've only had this for a couple months the 2ds XL yeah and 2ds LL I gotta say

I've said several times while playing it to my wife and to others, this is one of my favorite things that I own.

It is unbelievable to me.

Wow.

Because the, I, it's, it's bigger than the 3DS.

Right.

The screen is huge comparatively.

Yep.

Um, it's crisp.

It looks nice.

It's like not as big as the Switch, of course.

It's not as big as the Switch light even.

Yeah.

But it's big enough where,

you know.

I'm wearing glasses.

I need, I need a, a slightly larger screen on some of these things now.

Um, and that it's so easy to, uh, to mod and have all the games that you already own on it um on there

uh and so that's that's just convenient and so i would have to i think i'm gonna have to say it's the this the 2ds xl right here have you played i think you haven't played contact no

you should

borrow my copy of contact yeah wink wink and that's on the uh hold on there's something in your eye i think on the on the ds yeah it's on the ds okay you should borrow my copy and load it into your 2DS

and play contact on that machine.

I'll check it out.

Because it's a great game and very, very unique.

It has on each screen an entirely different graphic style.

I'm listening.

Yeah, I'll check it out.

That sounds cool.

Which I don't know why more people didn't do.

A really unique presentation.

Yeah.

I'll check it out.

Because, yeah, I mean, I like...

And I like the games from this generation because I feel like this is like, I had a Game Boy Advance, I had a Game Boy Color, but this is, I feel like from DS onward was like when I really locked in.

There's like a lot of stuff from this generation that I, and like, you know, it's the funniest, shittiest way to play Metal Gear Solid 3.

Like, I'll do that anytime, you know?

It's weird also that I said Game Boy Advance because I'm positive that I have more DS games than I have Game Boy Advance games on my shelf.

Yeah.

I know, I'm thinking about my Game Boy Advance and the games that I loved

were like

Donkey Kong Country, like games that weren't necessarily for it.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And I own it.

Or the Pokemon games that came out for it.

Yeah, yeah.

Ruby.

Fuck.

Am I dumb?

Is it the DS?

Wait, no, maybe.

Wait, hold on.

Am I dumb?

What?

Oh, no.

We're dumb.

We're dumb.

Is it the DS?

I don't know.

It's either the Game Boy Advanced or the DS.

Ranch, I know that you wouldn't call yourself a Capital G gamer necessarily, but you dabble in games.

Did you ever have a handheld gaming device?

Did you ever have a Game Boy?

I had a Game Boy Color.

Okay.

Nice.

And I also had a Nintendo DS.

Wow.

What did you have on your DS?

The only thing I had on my Nintendo DS was Nintendo's.

And what kind of dog was it?

I mean, you could not have had a more alpha answer to that.

I got a DS just so I could play Nintendo.

Fucking hell, man.

That's insane.

God damn.

I had Nintendo.

I told the story before.

I wanted it.

I expressed wanting it in front of my friends in high school who were all mean, and they all made fun of me for like an entire year that I wanted Nintendo's.

And then my birthday came around and they all chipped in and they bought me a copy of Nintendo's and then made fun of me for liking it.

I never played Nintendo's.

It's not really a game, right?

Would you say it's more like a...

Pet them and kind of just pet them and clean them and give them a toy and a treat.

And you used the stylus, which was very cool at the time.

Yes.

Do you think that it became popular, or do you think that the game exists because somebody just was at Nintendo headquarters just writing the word Nintendo over and over again and at some point just wrote OGS?

Yeah, and then

they made the S a dollar sign.

Yeah, they're just like, oh no.

If you add a G to Nintendo,

it becomes Nintendo.

Kind of surprised it's not still part of their whole thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

it's it could have been an intent dogs for the switch why not for the wii like like laser pointing like fucking lasers at the screen and the dog chases it around i wonder if there's a stat we could look up not today but at some point of how many tvs were broken from playing the wi

like from people just chucking the

The Wii market at the TV.

Yeah, there must be a stat available for that.

Matt, how do you feel about our conversation about handhelds that we had to kind of

just like hit the ground running because Nick is on trial?

I'd say we slapped together a pretty good topic, a topic that I think means a lot to us.

And, you know,

I think it's a good one for us in particular because as far as I know, Nick didn't have a handheld until the Game Boy Advance.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Not that that's a lot of years covered.

We kind of talked about that exact period of time for most of it, but I think, you know, I think of the handheld, I think we're the handheld twins.

We're the handheld twins.

Yeah.

I have not told this story on the, on the, on the um

pod before, but you know, I had the Game Gear because, again, I was Sega pilled as a child.

Yeah.

And

my parents bought me Mortal Kombat for Christmas on the Game Gear.

That's huge.

And to be able to play Mortal Kombat on the go was one, crazy.

And on the Game Gear, two,

terrible.

Yeah.

Very, very, very, very bad version of the game.

But

I only got like one game at a time and like had to show my parents that not only did I appreciate and have immense gratitude for that game, but generally I would try and beat it because that's the only excuse I would have to my parents to ask for another game.

They'd be like, well, did you finish that one?

Yeah.

Finishing Mortal Mortal Kombat on the Game Gear

was

like asking me to build

a space station

on Earth.

Like,

it was so hard.

And we would take these road trips every weekend, these eight-hour road trips, four hours up, four hours back.

And I would play Mortal Kombat non-stop with my Game Gear plugged into the cigarette lighter of my dad's Oldsmobile.

Yeah.

And just trying

over and over and over over again to beat Mortal Kombat on the Game Gear.

Why do I feel like that would destroy a car now?

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, I feel like cars are so like

if you leave like the little headlamp like or the little lamp above,

you know, that's built into the roof on overnight, your car's just dead forever.

Like, that sucks.

Yeah.

It just drains it all night.

That's it.

Yeah, it's crazy to me that when I was driving my Dotson, the way that I would charge my phone was the cigarette lighter.

I burned my thumb on that one time.

And it was, honestly,

the worst pain I've ever felt and the gnarliest thing I've ever seen.

And

it did not smell good either.

Oh my God.

The smell of burning flesh?

Oh no.

Mine own?

Did you put your thumb in it?

How would you burn your thumb?

Well, let me tell you that I was 22 years old.

Not the age I expected this story to take.

Much older.

I had taken it out because I was like, I've never taken this out before.

What even is it?

And then

I like pulled it out.

Maybe I pushed it in first because it has to get hot.

Yep.

I pushed it in and I was like, I better pull that out.

And I pulled it all the way out.

Uh-huh.

And then like thumbed it on accident.

Oh.

I want to defamiliarize.

I mean, maybe.

What about handheld?

How crazy is it that

cars used to come with ashtrays and fire starting devices?

It's kind of shocking that there wasn't like a place to put a gun.

Like

that is gun-shaped.

Yeah, like a holster for your gun.

It would be like.

But this is the iPod dock of its time.

Yeah, because everybody smoked at that time.

Yeah.

But also, it's like 30 years of everybody smoking.

So like cars for like 30 years come with cigarette lighters in them.

Crazy fucking thing.

It's like if you were, if there was a vape juice dispenser in a car, like in your Tesla, if there was a button that dispensed vape juice.

But now my car has a little flap where like that thing would go, but it's not a cigarette lighter.

It is like for chargers like yeah, it's like a USB.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very weird.

Very weird.

How about we do a segment real quick?

Holy shit.

Let's go.

It's time for the question block.

These are all sourced from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

Let's get into it.

This first one is from Alice Destroy.

Oh, Alice Destroy is a great name.

Thanks, Alice.

If you can have any video game creature as a pet, what would you have?

Apartment-sized and house-sized?

Wait, what?

That's like the size of the creature.

Like, you can give two answers.

One would be like, if if you lived in an apartment, what kind of video game could you do?

Oh, I thought they meant like a creature the size of an apartment or the creature.

I was like, both too big.

Yeah.

Yeah, I, okay.

And you have a little dog, so like, I feel like you're not necessarily somebody who's trying to have a big pet.

Yeah, let me think.

Let me think.

Apadaka, if you have an answer to this ahead of time.

Well, of course I would want a Pokemon.

Of course.

Which one?

I mean, it's kind of basic, but I wouldn't mind having a little Pikachu Pikachu running.

It'd be great to have a Pikachu.

It'd be fun.

My phone would be charged all the time.

If

Trubbish

didn't stink,

which I'm pretty certain he does, having a Trubbish would be great.

You know, I'm just going to go ahead and say.

Do I say it?

What are you saying?

What the original topic for this episode was going to be?

Yes.

Go ahead.

wait no you're your your first pitch the first pitch not Nick's pitch which is what was Nick's Nick's is the idea we're not gonna talk about Nick's idea because it's so fucking good I forgot yeah yeah yeah well you can say what your initial pitch was when Nick was like I can't come it was gonna be like a Pokemon thing yeah we were gonna talk about the current state of Pokemon and then I got self-conscious about it

a little nervous but I did learn something about Pokemon not necessarily about Pokemon but the idea of Pokemon I saw it on TikTok what is it Somebody was saying people complain about the new gen, like the new,

the new Pokémon that come out.

Like, not the games, but like the new designs of the Pokemon.

Okay.

You know, how some of them will be like strawberries and cream and

keys and a sword and a shield or whatever.

Yeah.

An inanimate object, a bag of trash.

Yeah.

But I guess there's this concept, this Japanese concept, where if something exists for long enough, be it an inanimate object, an idea, or

some kind of

being even, but like the idea of it being an inanimate object.

If an inanimate object exists for long enough, it becomes, it has a soul.

And I was like, that's really interesting.

And I had never really, I didn't know that.

So now when I see a Pokemon being like a fucking baguette or whatever,

I'm like, oh, that's fine.

That like makes sense.

Those have existed for a long time.

That's good.

I think this is good.

That's great.

Yeah, I love that.

Um, so obviously, a Pokemon would be the answer.

I wouldn't mind having Torgle,

bro, because Torgo's just like a big dog.

Do you want my Torgle?

I don't have space for it.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm moving, and I'm not taking him with me.

You're gonna throw Torgle away or sell him on eBay.

Do you want Torgle?

I'll take Torgle.

My wife's gonna be mad, but I will take Torgle.

Merry Christmas.

You just got Torgle.

Torgle.

The big one.

The small one I can't give you because my dog thinks it's her dog.

Okay, well, I want the small one.

No, you get the big one.

I want the one your dog chewed off.

She doesn't chew.

How big?

How big?

How big the big one?

This big.

I think I can get away with it.

I picked up a pillow off the couch.

I think I can get away with it.

He's wearing the bracelet.

Pretty good.

I'm going to wear the bracelet.

And I think he's probably still got his tag on him that he came with.

He's never, like, I got him and I put him on a shelf and that was it.

Like, he's never done anything.

You think he's going to scare my cat, Bonnie?

I hope so.

Scared the shit out of my dog.

She stopped moving.

Do you have a video game creature that you want to have inside your home?

Again, if Trubbish doesn't stink, Trubbish.

But if Trubbish does stink, boy, Pikachu would be great, man.

It's hard to top Pikachu.

Because he's kind of funny, too.

He's funny.

He's mischievous.

He's got a lot of personality.

He's helpful sometimes.

He likes to have a little relaxing time and like a little

dinner tube.

Yeah, he likes to drink like with a straw.

I think it's Pikachu.

Pikachu is pretty good.

Yeah, Pikachu is the best.

This next one's from Cameron C.

Hi, Cameron C.

What type of transportation options available in video games do you wish you could use for your daily commute?

Well, fast travel, obviously.

Okay.

I have an answer.

Please.

If.

You want to ride your sword like in metaphor?

No, no, I was going to say,

if

they would respawn with the same frequency as in the game.

Riding a horse to work and then shooting it in the head.

Yeah, and then come out and the horse is fine.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

You know, I wouldn't mind.

I wouldn't mind.

Not just a go-kart, a Mario kart.

There's a difference.

Great answer.

It has a glider built into into it.

It has those little hover ones on it.

One of those awesome cars from Cyberpunk 2077.

Yeah.

The ones that fall out of the sky and crush you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, let's hold on.

I have to have a serious answer for this.

It's any video game.

Read the question one more time.

Sorry,

transportation options available in video games.

Do you wish you could use for your daily commute?

Just came up with another one.

You know, in Red Dead Redemption, you can either do the

traversal,

or you can like press B or whatever, and it'll just kind of do it for you.

Yep.

I want a do-it-for-you option.

That's good.

That's good.

Autopilot.

Yeah.

I have an answer.

In Fortnite season

two seasons ago, there was a sword,

which when you drew the sword would launch you into the air and give you fall, like absorb any fall damage.

You could sheathe and draw the sword three times in the air.

So it'd be like if I was standing on this block and could pull the sword three times and would be like five blocks away when I landed.

And it made a great sound.

I want that sword.

That's pretty good.

That's one of my favorite traversal items in the history of gaming.

I like it.

It's that fucking sword.

And also you can use it as a sword.

Hey, that's hey, that's even better.

That's even better.

This next one is from Hello Brian.

Hello, Brian.

Or actually, excuse me.

Hello, Brain.

Hello, Brain Rights.

Hello, Brain.

Mixed up two of the letters there.

Hey, hello to my brain.

How about?

Good grief.

Hello, Brain Rights.

I had a dream I saw Matt Abadaka eating gas station pizza.

How often do you eat gas station pizza?

Hold on.

I'm a dumb idiot.

I need to answer that question one more time.

Yeah, please.

But keep all my answers in so that people know how stupid I am.

It's the fucking portal gun.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

That's the answer.

And you can do it where you, like, you shoot, like, there's no stairs.

Yeah.

So, like, there's a platform up there.

You're doing it like that.

You can, you could also, for me,

fly the gun to Amsterdam.

drop a portal on on on the wall, fly back to LA and drop a portal here.

Do the portals, do you think they have like time?

Like

not in the game.

They don't.

You just stay up, huh?

Yeah.

So

if I could just create a fucking door in my house that goes to Amsterdam?

Fuck, fuck.

I wouldn't even have a house here, I think.

No, it would just be like on a wall.

I would just have it in a, I would have it like here in the office.

But it gives an issue of national security, doesn't it?

Well,

sure, but I'd have, I'd be in a secret place and I would just finish work, walk through the portal and be be in Amsterdam.

It's the fucking portal gun because also then I could be like, you know what?

I want to live in Japan for a while.

And then go there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's Portal Gun.

I like it.

I like, that's the best answer.

All of her other answers were bullshit.

Yeah, dumb answers.

Fuck the sword.

So, hello, brain.

Hi, brain.

They had a dream about me eating gas station pizza and they want to know if I, do I ever eat gas station pizza?

And I'm going to tell you right now,

the answer is no.

I don't.

Have you you never eaten gas station pizza?

I can't say that I have.

I'm more of a, I think a hot dog to me is a safer bet.

Not safer, more reliable.

I've eaten so much gas station pizza.

To me, the pizza always looks so bad to me that I just know that, like, even a bad hot dog, I'm going to be, I'm going to be just fine with.

I'll get a hot dog.

So much gas station pizza.

So many nights leaving the RIP, the satellite in Silver Lake, going to the 7-Eleven that's right there, getting a hot dog, walking back to one of my friends' places just

out of our minds, eating a hot dog, going to sleep on my friend's couch.

In infinity.

Shout out to me.

Finishing a show at UCB and eating pizza at the 7-Eleven on Wilton.

Infinity time.

Wow.

Infinity.

Like, like.

If you were to create a montage of it, I bet it would last 20 minutes of me just having slices of that fucking pizza.

I couldn't.

for some reason i've just never been compelled and i like pizza i love it i was drunk i don't know why i was i meant not making choices i went straight to hot dog one time a guy at a 7-eleven

was like you should buy a whole pizza he like tried the guy behind the counter was like they had a bunch of them excellent choice by that man he said you should buy a whole pizza and i was like oh no i don't I don't need a whole pizza.

It was like the middle of the day.

It's like $3, though.

And he was like, don't you have a girlfriend that wants pizza or something what the fuck yeah he was like and i was like yeah but like i'm not gonna

bring home a 7-eleven pizza and then i was like leave me alone and he left me alone yeah

this next one

postmodern martyr rights okay postmodern modern modern

harm right what killed game genie and game shark i think i have an answer for this okay

i have two answers Answer away.

Games just don't have cheats in them anymore.

Like, there's not a place to input cheats in games.

Like, even on, like, a cheats menu to turn on, like, uh,

well, because, like, now there are some things that are, like, put in, like, in an accessibility tab, which is good.

Like, the idea of like turning, having unlimited ammo or like turning off, uh, or, you know, turning on

player invulnerability and things like that.

That stuff is typically, if there is that in a game, it's in an accessibility tab, which is good.

I think

there aren't game, like there aren't cheats to like unlock secret costumes or stuff because that stuff is usually behind a microtransaction now or like an earned in-game thing.

Or there's like a

There's not like a big head mode where you need to cheat like that or whatever.

The other thing that I think killed it is those things don't exist anymore because of online play and games always being online, right?

So like you can't have, there's not a way to probably sort out who's using cheats and who's not.

So that's why they're all this like anti-cheat stuff that like, I guess, is a problem or something.

Yeah.

And I think that's just why they don't exist anymore.

Yeah, I mean, people are still using like Aimbot on Fortnite.

You know, they're still playing games with cheats enabled.

I would say that the thing that killed the Game Genie, the Game Shark more than anything was the switch to C D tech.

Like it's, I think it was probably harder to load

that kind of code toggling into the memory of a machine that didn't have access to that memory.

Like the PlayStation

doesn't have like there's where would you put a game genie?

Like conceptually, how would you get the information into the machine?

gosh disc swapping oh i remember that that's how it was i think for the playstation 2 i think my uncle had like a game shark or a game genie or something like that where you'd have to open

the disk tray while that screen was on yeah and then put the game in and close it and then it would load from there yeah or something like that i think that yeah those are the

Those are the

way that I think that that is the problem.

It's like

snapping Mario into a Game Genie and then snapping the Game Genie into your Nintendo, you're done.

The idea of like fumbling with a disc mid-screen, like that's even on a Switch, it would be hard because that little flap doesn't go down all the way or doesn't completely get out of the way.

And like,

I mean, when I had one for, I had an action replay, which was like a separate

thing same similar concept.

Yep.

And I would only do it so I could put whatever Pokemon I want in the game.

Like capture whatever Pokemon I want.

Like, you know, catch a Charmander and then have a Charmander when I picked Squirtle as my starter.

And I could have Charmander and Squirtle.

Yeah.

Do something like that.

Yeah.

Yep.

And then just go from there and then have like 99 Master Balls or something and just go about the game like that.

Those are my answers.

And then finally, with Dragon Ball, this one's from Squash Pockets.

Hi, Squash.

With Dragon Ball Sparkling Zero out,

anime fighting games are back in the zeitgeist.

What anime that doesn't already have one would you want a fighting game for?

Who would be your main?

And so I've been thinking about this question, actually.

Oh, shit.

There needs to be a Super Smash Brothers, but anime.

You should be able to be Dragon Ball Z versus Jiu Jitsu Kaisen.

You should be able to beat Jiu Jitsu Kaisen versus Chainsaw Mei.

Isn't there one?

I don't know.

If there is, I want it.

isn't there a

jump superstars isn't that what it's called oh i don't know

yeah

there is this kind of but why isn't it why isn't it more popular more popular and why isn't it bigger and on

this is an insane pull by the way because as far as i can tell

There is one and it is jump superstars and it is a 2D crossover fighting game for the Nintendo DS.

All right, look, man, I'm doing, I'm just living my life, okay?

I don't know what's happening in my brain.

Oh, there's Jump Ultimate Stars also, which is also for the Nintendo DS.

So, yeah, they did it.

Why isn't it, why aren't they doing it now?

There should be 50 of these.

There should be, you should be able to play anime superstars and have it be a fucking Smash-style fighting game.

That's a great idea.

Why doesn't that exist?

That being said, a fighting game for an anime that doesn't currently exist.

I mean, do I answer Evangelion because it's funny?

No.

Do I answer Death Note because it's funny?

No.

Narto already has pretty good fighting games, and they are pretty good.

I don't know, man.

Do you have an answer?

Wait.

There's another one called JSTAR's Victory.

I'm a dumb idiot.

Here's my answer.

A 2D Gundam fighting game where you're playing as the mech.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's my answer.

That's pretty good.

I like it.

I think, I mean, look,

make what I said.

Yeah, make what Matt said.

And you can just give me one for free.

I don't need the money from it.

Actually, dude, it was going to make millions and millions of dollars.

I'll take all you have to do is give me $5 million.

And the idea is yours.

Like, make Marvel vs.

Capcom 2 or Marvel versus Capcom 3, but

all jump fucking anime.

Have you messed with the

Marvel vs.

Capcom 2 re-release?

Nope.

We got to talk about it.

I've messed with it a little bit.

What?

Is it bad?

Why are you saying that?

No, it's good, but I'm bad at it.

It seems good.

That's this week's Get Played.

Okay.

Man, I always fuck this up.

God damn it.

God damn it.

Leave this in, Ranch.

Fuck.

I don't have the thing that Nick says.

Our show is produced by Ranch, Rochelle Chen, Yard underscore underscore sard

on Instagram.

Yeah.

Our music is by Ben Prunty.

BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our show art is by Duck Brigade.

Duck Brigade.

Duck Brade Design.

Is it wait?

Duck Brigade Design.

DuckBrigadeDesign.com.

Our merch is now available at kinshipgoods.com slash get played.

And check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played, where we do our show get animated, where we're talking about wait, wait, he always says where we

let's see if I can do it.

And check out our patreon, patreon.com slash get played, where you can get ad-free main feed back episodes and our Patreon exclusive show, get animated, where we're watching what this week, Matt?

We're watching Gundam Requiem for Vengeance on Netflix.

And let me tell you something.

It's episodes three and four.

It's episodes three and four.

And it's fucking good.

Yo, motherfuckers, it is good.

It is really good.

I know that everyone's sick of killer robot anime.

I don't care.

I don't care either.

I'll tell you what.

I'll tell you what.

Next year we'll do something.

If you tune in, I promise I, Heather, have put a lot of effort

into these episodes because I love them so much.

For how loose this episode was?

I plan so long

and write so much for those episodes of Get Anime.

The enthusiasm from Heather and Campbell is at an all-time high in these episodes.

You got to check it out.

Nick and I are also there.

We're enjoying the show.

If you want to hear me passionate and prepared, unlike today, when I was only one of those things.

I think you were both.

Check out Get Animate.

That's patreon.com slash get played.

Again, our merch available, kinshipgoods.com slash get played.

And

also, we're on Blue Sky, I guess.

Yeah, we're on Blue Sky now.

We're on Blue Sky.

Check us out at Get.

I don't even know what the fucking thing is.

Just find us there.

Just find us.

And you know what?

I think Nick got played.

Yeah, Nick got played.

Nick got played, and it's actually, it's pretty sad.

Sorry to say it, buddy.

Sorry, buddy.

All right, I've looked it up.

Ketchup is different than the spaghetti sauce.

Okay, yeah, I didn't want to correct you, but yeah, it is different than spaghetti sauce.

They're two different things.

Why make two versions of a thing that are the same thing?

Can you tell me what the difference is between ketchup and spaghetti sauce?

Yeah, but

I'll tell you later.

All right.

This has been 60 minutes.

That was a hit gum podcast.