Tiers of the Kingdom: Rare with Bridger Winegar

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Thanks so much.

Hey, I thought this might be fun to get warmed up for because we're doing this rare tier list and these things tend to be kind of, you know, kind of sprawling and unwieldy.

Yeah.

But I thought that we could just do a fun thing, you know, for us of like maybe we just did a host tier list.

Okay, yeah, that's right.

Like for like for a get-played host.

Oh, so just our show, not like, say, all headcump podcasts or anything?

It's just us?

Well, we could do that, but I don't know.

I thought we could just do the show.

All right, let's start with us.

That sounds great.

Very great.

Nick.

F.

Yeah.

F-tier.

Immediate F.

F-tier.

F with a a bullet.

What?

Preferably with a bullet.

Yeah, I think, Matt, I have to agree with you.

You know, like, there's been some debate on this, you know, like whether or not

Nick has sort of stood the test of time.

You know, it's kind of a retro, retro host.

But the truth is that I do think

reviewers were initially very kind to Nick, but on looking back, they probably regret those reviews.

I see you say he's an F tier.

And he obviously just has like flaws in general.

I'll name a few off the dome.

Like, just for example, we would have moved the recording so you could have gone to New York for Good Morning America.

Okay, well, I'm going to bring that up.

So it's an F as far as I'm concerned.

I'm your friend and we do a show together.

You'd think I'm F tier?

Wait, not as

friends.

Top tier of the guys.

Yeah,

we're ranking as hosts.

Yeah, if it was like guys that we know, friends of ours, probably in like the C easy.

Yeah, yeah, Nick's easy C.

Ranch, be objective.

Do you have a tier ranking for me as a host?

Leave me out of this.

Okay.

Wait, wait, Ranch just handed me a piece of paper and I'm unfolding it.

It just says F.

Oh, it's just got F.

I assume that's what this is in reference to.

She spelled it out.

She wrote E-F-F.

Yeah, she did.

I guess let's move on to Matt.

Wait, no, no, no.

It has an arrow pointing to me.

Oh, wait, no, no.

From her, okay, if I'm sitting from her perspective, it's pointing to me.

Where where she's sitting pointing directly okay okay

matt uh matt i'm gonna give

s tier s tier that's really nice i was gonna say s tier yeah s tier for matt i think that's great uh i you know i think that matt has become one of the most irreplaceable voices in podcasting uh he's a he's an incredible host suck it marin uh incredible person

uh i would

just race raking hosting and they would bring personality into it yeah so uh again uh that makes you feel like maybe your F tier of me involves my personality as well too.

I'm just talking over the female host is part of why Nick is at F tier.

Yeah.

Uh but I will um but I'll let it slide because he's already been ranked.

For example, if the

uh if the tier was for

actions uh during this portion of the show that could get you canceled, you'd be at the S.

All right.

For sure.

Specifically for talking over.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everyone in this room should shut up except for me.

I'm the only voice that matters in here.

Anyway, I'll give Heather an S tier too.

I like Heather.

You know, can I say?

What?

Just for pitching this as an exercise for us to do,

it was Nick's idea.

It was.

I feel like we had to give some credit.

That's true.

That's true.

This is an F tier.

F for fuck.

Okay, now I'm starting to like him.

We carry a bird in a backpack and battle toads as we make our tier list for storied UK developer rare this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

Hi, that's me, Nick Weiger.

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

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premier Video Game Podcast, where this week, we are talking tears.

We're talking lists, talking games.

Yeah, we're always talking games, and sometimes we dedicate an entire episode to one game, and hey, we're going to be doing that at the end of November, our final We Play You Play of the Year, covering the surprise breakout JRPG of 2024, Metaphor Refantasio.

God looks like that, y'all.

Heather is singing the

battle theme, which we will talk about extensively.

That episode will be coming Monday, November 25th, if you want to play along.

And we hope that you do because this will be a fun one to discuss.

Yeah, it's a multi-platform game.

So, you know, wherever you game, metaphor is there.

And you know where else metaphors are?

In our lives.

Wow, that's it, isn't that something?

Yeah, that really is.

Gosh, I can't.

Sometimes I leave the house and I'm just like

inundated with metaphors.

Yeah, kind of just driving me crazy all the time.

Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Can't walk,

can't walk somewhere without running into one.

Virtual reality is like a metaphor for real life.

Kind of a visual metaphor.

Hey, we also, there's been something of a groundswell of

our listeners asking us to cover UFO 50.

Now, I have UFO 50, and I will talk about it on a future.

What are you playing?

I don't think we're going to do a full- What are you playing?

Resident Evil Merchant.

Nope.

No, it was fair for you to jump in there.

That was not your cue.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I heard it, and I was half asleep, so I didn't want to miss my cue.

When Beetlejuice appears,

when you say his name three times,

that's on you.

That's on you.

Yeah, that's on you.

So that was on me.

No, just just sit back and enjoy your kind bar, and we'll get into your segment in just one one second.

UFO 50, I think we talked about it, and I just think the nature of the game, it's like a very interesting game and like an amazing art project that exists, but I don't know if it would be like an interesting thing to talk about for an entire episode, if that distinction makes sense.

Yeah.

Just because of the nature of it kind of being, you know, kind of like a collection slash anthology, you know, a presentation.

This one's good.

That one's good.

Yeah, I think that's cool.

You know, maybe we're wrong.

But I think that that's kind of where we landed, and

we're going to instead talk about metaphor.

But we're also going to talk about

some other stuff right now with our guest, Returning to the Podcast.

He hosts his own podcast, I said no gifts.

Bridger Weiniger is back.

Hi, Bridger.

Oh, thank you for having me, you guys.

Thank you for coming back.

Thank you for your studio.

Last time we recorded with you was deep pandemic, so we were on Zoom.

It's nice to have you at IRL.

I feel like last time I came on with the most negative attitude you possibly just came to complain about the current state of video games

ended the zoom and I was like what did I just do

no it was great we probably didn't help you feel any better about doing our show

but it was also it was a tough time well it was a tough time to be doing anything honestly I honestly my memory of part of it is I haven't really listened to the episode but my memory of part of that was which ones have you re-listened to none of them

my memory was that

because we were talking about the game crazy taxi and the Crazy Taxi version that was available to us was a port that is not great and has a lot of the charm stripped out of it because of a bunch of, you know, they don't have the license to the music anymore.

They don't have the license for like Pizza Hut and all the real IP anymore.

Don't include me in that us.

Heather has the real one.

Yeah, you have the real one, but I'm just saying.

We can't all have the real thing.

Part of it was us complaining about, like, hey, if you don't have the Sega Dreamcast version of Crazy Taxi when we recorded that episode in 2021, If you didn't have that at hand and you were playing whatever was available on Steam, you weren't getting the full experience.

But Nick and I being like mad, they took KFC out.

I was like heart and soul of the day.

Meanwhile, I'm under a pile of magazines and I'm like,

they still have it in my garage.

You and Tim Walls.

That's what I was going to say.

Crazy taxi is back in the news, coincidentally, as we're having you, our crazy taxi correspondent, back on the pod.

It feels like such a full circle thing.

Yeah.

Hopefully in a good way.

Hopefully, like it means something good for the rest of our lives.

Yeah.

I was shocked.

I was so thrilled.

I never get into like these humanizing headlines about politicians, but that one got me.

I was like,

I mean, that's such a specific thing.

I can't believe the Dreamcast is being talked about.

Like in here in the year 2024,

I think the New York Times has probably had to print the word Dreamcast.

I'm so happy about it.

Which they probably didn't do when it was out.

Yeah, probably not.

Sega's weird system failing.

What the fuck?

Have you ever, have you like, have you thought more about Crazy Taxi in the, like, in its, in its pop cultural resurgence?

Since the Tim Walls thing?

A little bit, yeah, because I've...

You know, like with Dreamcast things in particular, it was like, I was the only person in the neighborhood that played Dreamcast.

Right.

Sort of.

So, of course.

So when it comes into pop culture, I'm like, like, oh, there are other people out there that played these things.

And I've gotten a new MacBook since the last time I saw you, so I can emulate a little better.

Okay.

And so I'm getting Dreamcast games.

I don't know about piracy talk on this podcast.

No cops listen to this fucking show.

And if they do, turn into fucking.

There are some games I just don't have access to anymore in a convenient way, and I've got to find my way into them.

Which is also, I think,

pertinent this particular week because the U.S.

Copyright Office just found that

I don't have the headline in front of me, but it was that

games should not be available in libraries for research purposes because there is the possibility or ROMs in general should not be legalized

because there is the possibility that researchers will be playing them for fun instead of research.

And it's like, does that mean that when movies are available at the library that you're supposed to not enjoy them?

Like, like, that's a weird caveat.

It comes from them still, you know, I think there's just an older generation that still

views games not as art, but as toys.

And so I think that's where that's coming from.

But yeah, that's dumb.

What's the distinction?

That is the most 1994 headline possible.

I thought we were beyond that with video games.

Yeah, that's like Joe Lieberman's

hearings.

So

the other thing I wanted to ask about, just in the intervening years since we've had you on the podcast, is did the pandemic itself affect your gaming habits?

Like, have there been lingering after effects from, you know, in the types of games you play, how much you play, whether you play or not at all?

I feel like

it didn't change at all because I was playing so many video games before.

It was like a nice end to the pandemic for me where I was like, I'm set.

You know, like

it hasn't gone up or down.

I would say I'm playing a little bit more video games lately.

Maybe it's, I mean, I think that one thing I complained about a lot on this, uh, the last time I saw you was that there were no 3D platformers available, and now there's been this giant resurgence of them, right?

Like in the indie space.

So, and then I don't know, I feel like maybe things are just going my way.

Yeah, things are finally going Bridger's way.

Wait, well, we're talking 3D platformers.

You know, a couple of

great ones have been released in recent years.

You know, there was the Ratchet and Clan Grift apart, and then also

most recently Astro bot.

Oh my god, are you kidding me?

Yeah.

It's, I mean, what a pure joy.

So fun.

I mean,

I'm recommending it to people who don't play video game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And who will probably not like it.

But for me, like, it's like the most Nintendo feeling game I've ever played on a PlayStation for sure.

Right.

It's like just every moment to moment is just like a fun thing you get to do.

Yeah.

There's, it's so polished and just

it's nice something that's just happy and joyful.

And it feels like the people who made it are happy.

You mentioned indie 3D platformers, which is something that I have less knowledge of.

Were there any particular that you'd want to point people towards, or just that you particularly enjoyed?

There's one called, I think it's called Lunistas.

Okay.

Let me, I wrote these down because, again, I was like, I cannot be grumpy about video games on this podcast.

I have to bring a better energy.

Let's see here.

Yes, Luna.

We have a great energy.

We loved having you on the last time.

No, you didn't.

That's not true.

We wouldn't have had you back.

Well, maybe you just made a mistake.

Oh, this Bridger.

Oh, God, it's him.

What's the other Bridger we know?

No, it's called Lunistis.

It's so good.

It is kind of like an early PlayStation.

There's like a Sega platformer energy to it, the look of it.

And it's kind of like

precision-based.

It's delightful.

There's a game called Super Kiwi64, which is fantastic.

I did pick up Super Kiwi64 on Steam Sale, and I have not played it yet, but with that wreck, I'll mess around with it for sure.

Yeah, it has like one specific mechanic in it that's like very fun as far as platforming goes, and it's stupid looking, and you're just a little Kiwi.

And then I got one called Corn Kids 64, which I'm liking, but

it's like an industrial aesthetic, and like in that type of game, you don't want to just be looking at gray walls.

Right.

Yeah.

So that has been a little bit harder for me.

I mean, like, the gameplay is actually very fun.

Lunistys, I'm watching some of it right now.

It looks awesome.

And yes, it is like very much like a, this looks like a Lost Sega Saturn game.

It's interesting because the retro aesthetic was for so long like, you know, anchored in the 16-bit generation.

And now we're at a point where I guess, you know, 3D engines are.

3D engines are at the point where like a small team can make like a full-fledged 3D game, but then also like there's nostalgia for that early, you know,

no anti-aliasing, no texture filtering, just kind of

like almost like ugly but charming sort of like PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn look.

Right.

And almost all of those games have a like blur filter in case you want it to look even worse.

There's like an extent that I can go to.

I need it to look kind of clear.

Wait, this fucking looks like it rules.

It looks so good.

Holy shit.

It came out in 2022.

I somehow completely missed it, but this is absolutely kind of game I'd want to play.

Yeah, it's really, really delightful.

And it's mad's a cat game.

Look, oh, I didn't okay.

Look, I didn't even know I didn't even know about this, and I feel like this should have.

I'm actually mad at the audience for not telling me about it.

And it kind of sucks that they wouldn't have my back in this way, actually.

See, we can just do that.

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But yeah, Astrobot has it's maybe the best game I've played this year.

I mean, the demo, you know, like whatever came with the PS5 was my favorite PS5 game until this game came along.

It's like, yes,

so delightful.

The only one I haven't played, I wanted to play the VR one, but I'm like, I can't justify buying a whole VR headset to play a single game.

Yeah.

I mean, that is the only thing to,

if you buy a, if you buy a PSVR 2, you are only probably ever going to play one game on it.

So, like, it's, I mean, like, I played, I played Gran Turismo, and then I think I put it down,

and that's kind of how it works.

And it's like in the same spot still, probably.

Yeah.

Just tripping over it all the time.

It could be worse.

I feel like the two worst case scenarios for VR headsets are put it on, take it off once, that was kind of it, or you just always keep it on.

Well, that's that's me with Division Pro.

I never fucking, I love that fit.

Me and nobody.

Yeah.

You're just wearing that for like hours?

Yes.

What do you do?

What don't I do?

So like it's really great for, haven't I talked about it on the show?

I have, but I guess I didn't know the extent of that you were just like sitting around in your home wearing this.

I mean, not like, I'm not like just sitting around in my home being like ah with it on my face

but like i really like working in it because uh i i work primarily on a laptop unless i'm like at my dedicated desk and i don't like the angle of typing when you're looking down at a laptop.

So I wear it and extend that monitor into like my regular necked field of vision.

And it's a much larger monitor, which makes me feel more comfortable with the workspace.

And it's a fine resolution for reading text?

It's, dude, it is, it is sharper than my brain.

Wow.

Like, it is so fucking sharp.

And then I also use it when I want to watch movies, especially 3D movies.

It's just, it's kind of, it's just a pleasurable device.

If it weighed less, I would wear it 10 times more.

Wow.

I would probably, if it weighed less and was like glasses, I'd wear it in here.

But not.

And we should, I don't know.

We should draw the line there.

We should do an episode with it so you guys can use it.

Have either of you guys used the most.

I'm fucking sight.

I didn't know what to say.

I do want to do it.

You have to understand.

I was at a crossroads.

Make fun of Heather or.

No, no, no.

Actually,

here are the two options I had.

Answer sincerely, which is, yes, I would like to try it.

Or actually, make fun of Nick.

That was what I was trying to do.

And I couldn't decide which one to do because I'm sitting on the same side of the couch as Nick.

Don't know what the angle would be to make fun of me, but all right.

Bridger, one more question for you and for everyone.

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask the question of the week, which is, what are you playing?

And I want to apologize to the listeners who were as disoriented as I was when Nick called me out but didn't want me in the room.

Well, I guess now we're pot committed to keeping that in.

I was going to have Ranch edited out and then no one would know.

Wait, do you edit me out of the show?

Well, I mean, we could have

an option to do it.

We don't usually do it.

I was gonna put it,

I didn't hear a clean cut.

There wasn't a clean cut, too much crosstalk.

There was just too much going on.

We were all so excited.

Yeah,

I gotta go back and listen to more episodes because now I'm worried that I'm not in them.

You're definitely in them.

You are all over them.

Am I 90% of the show, like I am in the room?

I cut everyone else out.

I like you, Winch.

Winch is my friend.

Nico is my antagonist.

Wait, wait,

what happened?

I thought we got a lot of people.

I love you so much.

I love you.

You too, buddy.

I love you.

And you too.

Matt and Bridger.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

And Heather.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Thanks, Resident Evil Merchant.

Resident Evil Merchant Class Act.

I am.

I am.

All right, wait, wait, wait.

What are you playing?

Matt Abodaga, would you like to go first?

I'll happily go first.

I've finished two games since we last spoke.

The Finisher.

One of them was quite short.

The other one I had been pecking at for a little while.

I finished the Silent Hill 2 remake, a game that nobody forced me to play.

We covered the game on the show in the past, and that was my first experience with it.

Did not enjoy it, did not have fun at all.

A very scary game, but it is good.

The remake

is

exactly the same thing it's like but the thing about it that gene park had a good um

i'm gonna butcher what he said gene park had a good quote about the experience of playing it kind of because he's like it's kind of like looking at someone's photo of the mona lisa because like the the work itself is great and shouldn't have needed to be remade necessarily it's good but you do sort of lose something in the remake a little bit because like there is a the main difference between the remake and the um and the original is that there is a camera perspective shift where um in the original what would you call that camera angle it's almost isometric it's almost isometric it's not that it's not the modern sort of over-the-shoulder where it's a little bit of a flatter angle but it's a little bit skewed right it also has cuts yes like you'll be running in one direction and suddenly you'll change to a different camera angle and you'll be like what the fuck and a lot of people like to call that like a limitation of the era but this game came out on the PlayStation 2.

It wasn't a limitation, it was an artistic choice.

In the remake, it is an over-the-shoulder

experience, third-person experience, not on like a Resident Evil or an Alan Wake or something.

So it does change it a little bit.

There's something about it where, because you do feel a little bit more in control.

I'm still very scared.

Like, it is a very scary game.

And also, I guess knowing the ending doesn't help you

experience the actual horror of the game because I know the fate of these characters.

I know what the story is.

There's a dog in the control room behind everything.

Yeah, there's a Shiba Inu who is responsible for this evil town.

But that said, I did enjoy it.

I liked the

vocal performances in the game a lot more than in the original.

Probably one of the negatives of the original, but it did add to the charm of it, of course.

That said, I wish I had

rented it or something.

So, like, I have no reason to go back to it ever again.

I'm not going to play it again.

I, I read an interesting, maybe it was in Gene's like story about it, which was that the difference between also with the graphic fidelity is that when you played the original, you were like, I can't quite make out what this is supposed to be.

And it would be upsetting to be like, I can't figure out what the face on this character is or what the face on this monster is.

And that now, now with the

fancier graphics, you're like, oh, it's a face that is supposed to be blurry, which is a very different experience than

being like, like kind of squinting and pushing into your CRT and trying to be like, what am I looking at?

Which is kind of what James's experience of seeing those things is versus being like, oh, it's a nurse without a face.

Yeah, it was designed around the limitations of the hardware.

And it was like, okay, it was designed with that in mind.

And then when you remove those limitations,

you know, creates the problem of how do you render this in a way that honors what the original

piece was.

Yeah, and so I played that.

I liked it.

My wife did take the controller from me at one point

and encountered Pyramid Head immediately and screamed and handed me the controller back.

It was very, very funny.

And then I also played through the Alan Wake 2 DLC, The Lake House.

And

you're fully in spooky season.

I'm in spooky season.

And that's not my, it's not my zone.

No, very much not so.

I'm

typically a coward.

But I was like, Alan Wake 2, I think, is one of my favorite video games.

And I was like, I have to see what this DLC is.

And it's about...

art versus content.

It's about like what it means to be an artist.

What is the responsibility of an artist and art?

And it's very, very interesting and very cool.

And I loved it so much.

I think Alan Wake 2 is a masterpiece and that everybody should play it.

I think it's an incredible experience top to bottom.

So that's it for me.

Matt, by the way, congrats on your World Series champion, LA Dodgers.

How exciting!

Thank you so much.

Very excited.

Did not,

I think I said motherfucker more in my life this week than I have

in my entire life.

And also, like, felt like smoking cigarettes, which is not something that I do either.

But I'm glad I'm.

You have one.

I'm good.

I'm good.

Thank you.

I'm glad my boys brought it home.

And

that's it for me.

How exciting.

What were they playing?

Some great baseball.

That's nice.

When they were playing the way I wanted them to play, which is the winning way.

They were not doing it that way.

They went 4-1.

It was pretty.

Yeah, they were doing it for them.

It's pretty good.

I wonder if the White Sox will ever be back in the World Series.

From what I understand, probably not.

And they break the record for losses this past season.

No, they almost did.

They almost did.

They couldn't do that.

They couldn't be so bad.

They had to go again and go ahead and win one time.

Unnecessarily, unnecessarily cruel.

One day.

Chicago.

One day Chicago will go the way of your high school, Heather.

And disappear.

No.

Heather's high school is gone.

It just vanished.

Yeah, it's gone.

No explanation.

No, I mean, there's an explanation,

which is that it sucked

is it a public high school uh no it's a private high school and it just like my i joke on the podcast but it's not kind of a joke but it's kind of a joke that my goal was to someday be so rich that i could buy the high school and shut it down uh and instead it did it for me

they beat you yeah they beat me

uh bridger what are you playing um i'm playing three things i'm mainly playing uh echoes of wisdom the the Zelda game.

Okay.

And I'm having a fine time playing it.

That was kind of my experience.

I bounced off of it.

But keep it.

Yeah.

I'm like kind of just forcing my way through it.

But it's like it has the my problem with it is the biggest problem I had with Tears of the Kingdom, which is it's like the the problem I had with Tears of the Kingdom, it seems to be the only thing you do in Echoes of Wisdom, which is look at a menu screen.

Right.

Which is just constantly opening the menu screen and picking a thing, which is just like not that

happy to it's not that much fun.

I'm also, I'm hoping, I haven't googled this, I was like, does she ever take the hood off?

She's wandering around in the hood and I want to see that beautiful blonde hair.

Yeah, sure.

And so I'm, I feel like maybe it'll get its hooks in me eventually.

I'm still pretty early on, but I'm like, if I just have to keep opening a thing and then going through an inventory to pick a thing that basically does the same thing as everything else, it's not that fun of yeah, and your options are either like this massive horizontal bar that spans the width of the screen that you have to scroll through

that's kind of has some sorting options, but it's pretty cumbersome.

Or like you were saying, like stop gameplay, go into the pause screen, and then you know, and this is all to basically generate objects that you can use to solve environmental puzzles, which is the bulk of the gameplay.

Right.

And if that was every once in a while, that would be fine, but it's truly most of the game.

Yeah.

Even when you're, I mean,

the combat is essentially that, having to pick different.

So, I don't know.

I mean, I obviously those like 2D Zelda games are always so charming.

Uh, but I'm so far, I've never had to force my way through a Zelda game.

Yeah.

So, that's it's tough.

Yeah.

Um, it's like too woke, too, right?

It's way too.

I mean, obviously, that's the underlying problem.

I, this is the first video game I've ever played as a woman, and it's been very difficult for me.

I'm just sweating, I'm gritting my teeth.

Why is this happening to me?

I'm so nervous when I'm playing.

Oh, is this allowed?

I did bounce off of it, but I'd like to get back to it but the menus thing is a yeah it's kind of a drag unfortunately what am I at that cheesecake factory

Nick

I liked it this guy knows what I'm talking about

Nick take it back you don't mean that I don't mean that

what else are you playing uh i'm playing in the spirit of the season dead space the remake oh which i'm very i'm getting better at playing scary games there was the only did you play the original yes okay But the only survival horror game I've ever finished is Resident Evil 4.

Love to hear it.

Of course.

I had to bring it up.

You lost me at why when are they going to take off their hood?

One day back with Resident Evil 4.

I want that character to have beautiful blonde hair, too.

The merchant?

Yes.

Me?

Yes, you.

Nobody will know.

And I don't think I'll finish this remake either, but I'm having a good time.

I can't speak enough about the stomping mechanic.

It's one of the most satisfying things you can do in a video game.

It's like whatever they did really clicks.

Like, I feel like you could put like, it could be like a game about a watermelon field, and it would still be, still be as fun.

You're just going around stomping on things.

It's really weirdly satisfying.

I think you got some of this watermelon field game.

It sounds fun.

Yeah, that actually could just be a game.

But I'm a little bit more.

I'm doing these watermelons.

Yeah, like that, like that action

pause when you successfully hit crush a watermelon.

Like when you land a punch in Street Fighter, it would probably be a very satisfying.

I really think so.

I think maybe I start developing that now.

We'll mail this episode to yourself.

And that way

it's a copyright.

But yeah, it's very scary.

It looks great.

The Dead Space games for me are a little claustrophobic.

Eventually, I'm a little bit like, I don't want to look at this spaceship anymore.

But I'm playing a little bit of that.

And then in the spirit of this episode, I started another game I'm forcing my way through is Banjo Tui.

They just put it up on the Nintendo service.

And as much as I, we can get into that, but as much as I love the original, this feels like kind of a chore to play.

I want to say before we move off it, I believe Dead Space is featured in the film Anora.

Oh.

And I wasn't quite sure.

I thought I made out Dead Space.

There are multiple sequences where the main protagonist, male dude, whose name is, I think, Ivan,

is playing a video game on a TV and you see flashes of the TV.

But

he's a young man, you know, certainly a young actor.

And he does.

His character is like 21.

He's like very young.

Yeah.

And he, the actor does not know how to hold a PlayStation controller.

Why is he holding it?

And I was like, how is this happening?

It was so distracting in every scene where he's supposed to be playing video games.

He was holding it like, you know, like first he's holding it like, you know, a dual grip where he's got like his hands in the right place, but then he starts.

hitting the like left side of the controller with his like index finger on his right hand or like tapping the buttons on this on the front face like he's playing street fighter and it was it was i was like but i don't understand how this

human not the character but the human being who is playing this thing this character doesn't have any access to how to hold a playstation controller and then they would show dead space and i'm like do i not know enough about dead space well okay

i saw the movie That didn't bother me, but I don't know how to talk about it without getting into spoiler country for a movie that I really enjoyed and I think people should see.

But I felt like it fit the nature of that character to

have no grasp of how to do that.

You know what I mean?

Like,

and maybe you could say a thing, like, generationally, it doesn't make any sense, but to me, it was, it felt like a choice from the actor

to me.

But, but that was just, that was just my reading.

I didn't read it that way.

Yeah.

But I'm glad we both liked Enora.

I can't find any information with my binging of what video game is in the movie and Nora.

I guess it hasn't been out long enough.

Did you think it was Dead Space?

Did you happen to clock it at all?

I couldn't place it, but then I also didn't play the Dead Space remake.

What if it was Shadow of the Colossus?

Again, it's the only game ever featured in a movie.

Before we move too far past it, I feel like I have to say this.

Yeah.

And I'm sorry.

Banjo Hoctoui.

Oh,

Christ.

For sure.

Did not have to say that.

Thank you, Bridger.

Thank you for being on my team.

Holy shit.

Jesus Christ.

Famous Bridger bad attitude.

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All right.

Heather, what are you playing?

I'm still playing the game that has become our we play, play you play metaphor uh i don't want to give uh too much into it because or go too much into it because i want to share my thoughts when we actually do a deep dive into the game at the end of the month uh but i will say that um gene park uh you know friend of the pod uh has been talking about how it's changed

other games for him like it's kind of lightly ruined uh other games for him for at least the short term um and i am experiencing the same thing uh which is that it is such a it's a really compelling play.

And so I am like, I really want to go back to Outlaws.

I really want to play, it's fall.

I want to play a Viking game.

And I'm not playing anything but metaphor

as we head into the holiday season.

And I'm surprised by that because it was not, again, not on my radar at all.

Yeah, not on our radar either.

It came out of nowhere.

Before I saw a clip of it and heard the music and and I was like, oh, I'm in.

This music's, I'm done.

Okay.

I'm in.

Nick, what are you playing?

Thank you so much for asking Heather.

I'll just real quick

share my metaphor

ReFantasio PC port issues.

I actually

ended up returning it on Steam and getting the PS5 version and I'm playing it on there.

It just has a number of

It's a bummer when this happens, but it just has

a number of graphic and sound issues that I spent too much time debugging.

There has been a patch, but it didn't seem like the patch, like in the time when I got the game, there was a patch that fixed some technical issues, but it didn't seem to address specifically what I was dealing with.

The main problem, which I not could not get resolved, and

I was looking through various forums to try and find any info, watch like an 11-minute YouTube video from some guy just like walking through every single step you can do to debug this and doing all of it and it's still not fixing it for me.

The next step that I saw was people were saying like, yeah, if you download this third-party software, that helped.

And I'm just like, I'm just not going.

I'm just not taking that next step.

I'm not downloading some new application to fix the VO balance issue in one specific game.

I'm just going to return it on a play on a different platform.

So this is a little bit of a bummer, even though I think the game is really cool.

The main thing I want to talk about is Diablo 4, Vessel of Hatred.

The DLC.

I finished the main campaign.

I hit the level 60 cap.

I started cranking on Paragon levels, which is

the endgame content.

One thing I like is that the way Paragon levels work in Diablo 4, so you have your normal levels that lets you

get more skills for your skill tree.

And then there's Paragon levels, which allow you to apply additional bonuses that you kind of go through.

And

honestly, it's kind of a sphere-grit sort of system where it's like

it just opens up various branches and you decide

which aspects of it you want to expand to.

But I think it's a really nice inversion of how progression is typically paced in the endgame of these sorts of experiences, which is paragon levels happen faster than regular levels.

So you just start getting a bunch of levels all at once once you hit the level cap.

And

it's just really fun for that gameplay loop of killing monsters, collecting loot, and incrementally improving your character.

How does that sped up gameplay experience compare to, say, our quiz game Blast Processing that we played, Nick?

I'd say it's a much calmer experience than blast processing, which gave me a panic attack.

There is

a specific dungeon that has kind of like a roguelike slash time attack sort of mode that I was looking forward to playing.

And when I messed around with it, it didn't quite get its hooks in me.

I think just because it's, I don't know, it's just not quite,

it just doesn't quite have that same sort of roguelike feeling of like, oh shit, I'm like, I'm, I'm on, I'm on one ass cheek trying to see how long I can survive this thing.

It just, uh, maybe it's a, maybe it's just the way it's balanced or whatever.

Um, and one other thing I will say is, like Shadow of the Erd Tree, it just kind of ends in a little bit of an anticlimactic fashion.

Like, there is a cool boss battle, but then I feel like the ending of that is just like the way it wraps up the story threads, which is overall pretty compelling.

Uh, it just didn't feel like it was like, oh, there's the sense of finality here.

I mean, there's a gorgeous intro cinematic, and I know it's super time and budget intensive to craft these.

It's a, you know, it's a Blizzard signature, but it would have been nice to have a nice like outro cinematic, like just some sort of like reward for people who stuck through to the end of the campaign, especially, you know, from whatever the number I heard was they make $150 million annually from the Diablo 4 in-game shop.

So they have the budget for it.

Wow.

But the main thing I,

main feeling I had playing this in the afterglow of Vampire Survivors and other survivors likes, like Deep Rock Galactic Survivor.

I was still in early access and really enjoy.

It just really, those games have really distilled the slot machine effect the Diablo franchise has on my brain.

You know, this is like maybe my most played video game franchise.

I played every Diablo

at launch and played the shit out of all of them.

Played Diablo 2 the most, but I put a lot of hours into Diablo 4 and its DLC.

The formula is like perfected with Diablo 4, but fundamentally what you're doing is cycling through like a half dozen skills on staggered cooldowns.

And it's just to me, I'm like, what is the difference between having the skill fire off automatically when that cooldown lapses, which is what happens in a vampire survivors game, or

it's up to the user to press a button when that happens?

And it's like, at a certain point, they're kind of the same sort of thing.

And they're kind of, again, doing the same sort of thing to my brain.

So I kind of think

my half-assed take here is I kind of think when we get Diablo 5 in 2032 or whenever the fuck,

I think it's going to be an auto-shooter.

I think they're going to just finally say, like, you know what?

Because they changed the gameplay on each of these.

You know, Diablo 1 to Diablo 2 went from being one dungeon to having like this, this, this whole open world that you could explore and a bunch of different dungeons.

Diablo 3, you get health orbs, you got controller support.

It's, you know, again, you're playing Diablo 2 with a mouse and keyboard.

You're never thinking about playing this thing with a couple of analog sticks 10 years later, but that's what ends up happening.

And Diablo 4, you know, it's completely,

you know, a redone potion system.

It changed how evades work.

It's, you know, the skill tree is handled differently.

Like, I just kind of think they're going to make another fundamental change to the game that still retains its essence.

But to me, the next step is just to like, yeah, make this be like a survivor's light game, but with the, you know, huge campaign that is the Diablo signature.

Anyway, I did overall really, really enjoy Vessel of Hatred, but

it made me think some things.

All right, let's talk about,

I obliviate enough, let's talk about Rare, Tears of the Kingdom for Rare,

the UK developer, and it was founded by the Stamper brothers, Tim and Chris Stamper, in 1985.

They were already successful programming PC games and arcade conversions, and they are known for their workaholic mindset or were known in the era.

This is one quote I found.

We feel that a 9-to-5 work ethic produces a 9-to-5 type game.

So they were crunching over at Rare.

Became a marquee second-party developer at first for Nintendo and later for Microsoft when they were acquired in 2002.

Okay, Bridger, this was one of your pitches for what to talk about for this episode.

What is your relationship with Rare Games?

It seems like you are a platformer enthusiast.

Yes,

Rare is a weird company because they've been around for, they were around for such a long time before they became like what they...

Were

they had various versions because the new one is, I don't know what it is either but like i think most people associate it with like the starting with donkey kong country maybe starting with battle toads but like that even feels like a different company at the time so uh my probably the first rare game i ever played was battle toads um but i didn't become aware of it as a brand i don't think most people knew of of it as a brand until donkey kong country yeah um

but i followed it all the way through until it's sale to microsoft and then i get a little foggy.

I've played a few of those games, but I think the quality is a little bit more all over the place.

And

but yeah, I feel like they have made some unbelievably great games.

And

what I should say what's going on in the studio right now.

So our producer, Rochelle Chen Ranch, is trying to get a TV working, a monitor working, so that we can have a tier list up that we can all look at.

What's happened instead is that another TV got turned on and a Hallmark Christmas movie started playing.

So we're all kind of distressed.

That's my request.

And the actual secret thing is, it's my fault.

There you go.

Yeah, I mean, like, it's a, it's a company that I have a lot of thoughts on, certainly.

And, and I, I don't know, we'll find out where we all kind of lay here.

But yeah, I guess, I guess when you met, you talked about it like that, I wasn't really thinking about rare as a developer, though.

How much was I even thinking about developers all that much to

begin with until the 16-bit generation when I was a little older and was trying to be, was more conscious of these sorts of things.

Yeah, I feel like the first time I was ever aware of a developer was Squaresoft because it was like, I also felt like the commercials that were for Squaresoft games would often.

shine the Squaresoft logo on the screen first before you would have the commercial.

And from that, I then became aware of Capcom because I was like, oh, the word in front of the thing means a thing.

Right.

And Street Fighter is a Capcom game.

And then at the arcade, I'd be like, which other ones are Capcom games?

But until that, yeah, until that 16-bit era, I was like, like, I wasn't, I didn't know that Mario wasn't made by the same people who made fucking Pit Fighter.

Like, I didn't know.

Right.

They were just all video games.

Yeah, they were video games.

Heather, what is your, do you have a relationship to Rare in particular?

I mean, these were, their output was largely clustered on consoles that I feel like you were not like

necessarily in that ecosystem.

Yeah, so Rare games are,

I played Battle Toads, but I played it, you know, after, like, I either rented a Nintendo and rented Battletoads.

Yeah.

And you're like, this is too easy.

Yeah, I was like, the fuck?

You beat this?

So it was either that, like, I just wasn't in the ecosystem for them,

or I would come to them late.

The exception to that is

I bought

by the time Perfect Dark came out, I had a Nintendo 64.

I'd like succumb

to the pressure of Nintendo.

And so I'd played GoldenEye at friends' houses and I was like, this is fucking great.

And then I bought Perfect Dark and the expansion pack Day of Drop.

And I played it.

For like two years, that was our multiplayer game of choice was Perfect Dark.

And so I feel like I could quote perfect, like visually, emotionally, mentally quote Perfect Dark.

And I don't know if you guys have felt this as we've all gotten older in video games.

I have memories of spaces in the Perfect Dark game that my brain thinks were locations that I was in.

Does that make sense?

That sounds incredible.

I would love to have that sort of memory.

It sucks.

I'm getting lost.

Like, I'll be like, often I'll be like, where was that that big, there was like a big oil drum that was, and I'm like, that's fucking, that's the Final Fantasy Battle Royale that's no longer available.

That's where I'm thinking about that, like that game and its environment.

But yeah, that's, so I would say that of the, of the group here, I'm probably going to know the least about rare games, uh, but I have played a significant number of them post-release, sort of like uh, archaeologically.

Uh, Matt, same question.

Where are you on rare?

Uh, you know, if it's if it's called Donkey Kong Country, I'm very familiar with it.

Great.

And, you know, some of these other ones, like, I feel like I've dabbled in quite a few of them, actually.

So I have very, like, yeah, sort of minimal, but

some knowledge of a good majority of these for the most part.

Oh, shit.

Killer Instinct's a rare game?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I played that a lot in the arcade.

Yeah.

Of course you did.

You had Killer in the title.

I definitely have some blind spots when it comes to rare,

but I have played a lot of rare games looking at this list in totality.

I think as we're going here, I think

we should make use of the didn't play tier if there's one of these games that all of us just, you know, we don't need to try to rank it off of reputation.

If there's something that we don't have a...

any sort of

first-hand knowledge of, I think we can just kind of have

an NA and move on.

All right, let's get into it because this always takes for fucking ever.

Okay, first up, Matt at a bunch of extra rows.

Nick, stop.

It's okay.

Okay, great.

All right, first up, where should we start?

I mean, this is a weird place to start the way this list is ordered.

The Banjo-Kazooie Game Boy Advance game.

Well, can we, looking at this list, start at all chronologically and then move on from there?

I kind of think the bottom might actually be a better, like it's not, it's not perfect, but starting at the bottom might actually be kind of something of a better guidepost because we're starting with snake rattle and roll.

That was an NES game that I did play and is pretty, uh, pretty rad.

So, I, I mean, maybe we start there, although that leads us into Sea of Thieves.

Ah, fuck, what to do.

Yeah, it's just chaos.

A lot of things that are going wrong today are my fault.

This one is not.

This one was an existing tier list.

Here's what we'll do.

I'll try to be

the steady hand on the tiller here, and I will just kind of drive things.

So let's start with Snake Rattle and Roll.

Snake Rattle and Roll,

a very cool game that, as an NES game,

I might shove into A-tier.

I mean, it's very playable.

It was very fun, and it was very cool.

I haven't played it.

You know, it's been years since I've played it on even an emulator.

So this looks like, from just screenshots, it looks like a Qbert or Marble Madness style isometric play screen.

And look, I love the isometric stuff.

But I mean, like, it just like the way you maneuvered was very fun.

In my memory, there was a mechanic where the snake would get longer or shorter, and then it was a bunch of environmental obstacles and enemies to navigate past.

I did put a fair number of hours into this on my my NES, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I mean, like, the reason I would say maybe

not for A tier is just knowing how NES games compare, you know, to modern stuff or to more contemporary games, even 16-bit games, when you play them through a modern lens.

I feel like it probably maybe slots more into the B tier, but I do remember really enjoying this game.

I do like the way the snake looks.

I gotta say, I love this.

Great design.

Great box art.

And it does.

I haven't played it, but it does seem like the sort of game that has probably aged decently, like Marvel Madness.

Yeah, sure.

Basically get it.

And it doesn't matter what it looks like.

Let's B-tier it for now, and then we'll

move on.

Yeah, we can adjust.

These aren't permanent until it's over.

I want to say,

I haven't played that game, but also I've never heard of it.

So I'm shocked.

that Nick has played it.

And then watching it, I was like, I can't believe I haven't heard of this game because it looks, one of the things that the early game systems do well is like

separate spheres as body.

Yeah.

And it has like a really kind of

kind animation cycle because of it.

Like something that has

stood up well compared to like Mario's like two or three frame running cycle.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, also the the way that it was the the the environments were set up is that you had verticality.

So

it wasn't just maneuvering on

a flat plane.

Like a cubert, you were going up and down, and that kind of added

a new feel to it before the era of 3D gaming.

What's that arcade game that is on this list?

Is that Arcade Battletoes?

It is Arcade Battletoad.

Oh, never mind.

I think we get to that when we get to our larger Battletoes discussion.

Let's stay in the NES era.

So what else do we have here?

It looks like we've got both Wizards and Warriors and Iron Sword.

Yeah, those are the ones

you're mousing over right now, Matt.

I believe that is the box art for the original Wizards and Warriors.

It might be the one to your left.

Yeah,

let's start with that one.

Now, Wizards and Warriors was a really janky,

janky side-scroller.

It was kind of cool just because it was like swords and sorcery, but I just remember it had like a really strange jump.

You know what I mean?

Like

the physics of the jump didn't quite feel right.

It did have like some cool potions and shit that kind of changed gameplay, but I think that I would probably put this as like a C tier.

I will say that when you search Wizards and Warriors on YouTube, the second video that comes up is NES Games No One Played.

Well, I own this and its sequel.

You do?

Yeah, I did when I was a kid.

Oh, I was going to say, I thought you got rid of everything.

No, I don't have anything.

Oh, that went to Goodwill.

I'd put Wizards of Warriors.

Ah, fuck.

But I don't think that's Wizards of Warriors with that one.

That's a different game.

No, I think the one too.

I'm watching gameplay of this.

Yeah.

And

it looks like you don't attack.

You ram your sword into things.

Yes.

It had a weird feel to it.

What the fuck?

Oh, wait, no.

That Matt, that one was

Iron Sword.

That one is the Boxer for Iron Sword.

Yeah, Wizards and Warriors was the first one.

I was wrong.

Oh, no, you can attack.

This playthrough is just not doing the attack.

He's just jumping into stuff with his sword extended.

All right.

I can't speak with any authority about this game

because

I've never even heard of it.

It had an odd feel to it.

Iron Sword, the sequel,

was a little bit more fleshed out, a little bit better.

I think I would still probably just put it right in the same tier, though.

I don't think there's any reason to go any higher than that.

What else do we got?

What is Bermuda Triangle?

Is that what that one is?

Yeah, that's what that looks like.

I never played that.

Did anyone play that?

Bermuda

Triangle.

I did not play Bermuda Triangle.

Looks like a boat racing game.

Cobra Triangle is actually.

Cobra Triangle.

Dude, worse than we thought.

Well, they couldn't get the rights to Bermuda Triangle.

No, no, no.

And they already had a snake in their IP.

They're like, what do we just have a different snake actually?

Wow, this has a soundtrack by David Wise, though.

Oh, wow.

The composer for the Donkey Kong Country franchise, of course.

So I bet that slaps.

This gameplay looks like it's an isometric boat game, but I don't think any of us can really speak to it.

So we'll put that down in NA.

Well, and they like the only NES game I can think of other than Battle Toads from them is RC Pro-Am.

Is that what it's called?

Yes, that game rocks.

Well, RC Pro-Am is fucking fantastic, and it's not on this list.

It's not on here for some reason.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

RC Pro-Am is, like, that's a game I rented multiple times.

I can add it.

Oh, yeah.

It's so fucking good.

We got to add it because that was a rare game.

And that to me is like the best of their NES output.

I also, you know, I rented and played Wheel of Fortune.

I would love to play Wheel of Fortune right now.

Yeah.

I love Jeopardy Wheel of Fortune video games.

They're incredible.

Yeah, they're like,

I feel like they also did the Jeopardy games for NES.

So I feel like those are...

Holy shit, they did Who Framed Roger Rabbit, another game that I fucking rented and played a ton of when I was a kid.

No, No, there were a lot of rare, like, licensed games.

That was kind of their bread and butter for part of the NES era.

And they did Marble Madness.

Yeah.

They did Marble Madness.

They did Marble Madness.

So Snake Landman, whatever the fuck it was called.

Mr.

Snake, Snake Extended Snake.

What was it called?

Snake.

There it is.

Thank you so much.

It was off the screen.

It wasn't like I couldn't read, listener.

Okay, I want to say Marble Madness is an A-tier game.

Are they the original developer of Marble Madness?

I mean, when I searched list of video games developed by Rare on Wikipedia,

Marvel Madness is listed in 1989.

So maybe they

based it off of.

Oh, yeah, it was an arcade game designed by Mark Cerny and published by Atari.

Yeah, it was a port.

It was a port.

They did a port.

Never mind.

A beautiful port.

A beautiful port.

That's probably the port most, or the version of the game most people have played.

Yeah, yeah.

Where are we putting RC Pro-Am, though?

Oh, jammed that up in A-tier.

Yeah, I think that's an A tier game.

That game rocks.

Um, I do want to say, uh, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is worth watching.

Like, it was one of those classic

licensed games, but it had a really, really pretty

cinematic aesthetic

that I think show is like shines given the limited palette of the NES.

Like, that's a good looking screenshot

for a game like the giant Roger Rabbit logo up in the corner of your HUD.

A game we covered in the past with our pal Joan Ford.

Yeah, so

I think who framed Roger Rabbit's a pretty decent game.

I'd give it a C.

Was it just like a side-scroller?

Yeah, but I also think it had minor puzzle elements.

Oh, interesting.

I can't remember for sure.

We covered it on the podcast, and I barely fucking remember.

Also, the Nightmare on Emmett.

Did we do the Nightmare on Elm Street game on the podcast?

We did.

We did.

That's another one I just, I do, I do not remember much.

I don't know.

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

What are we doing here, Matt?

Come on.

C tier, dude.

I'm sorry.

I got distracted by looking at Jessica Rabbit.

We're all drooling.

Jaws on the floor.

Yeah, we're all our big hammers are just slightly out of frame here.

Nightmare on Elm Street, wasn't that the one where you play as four different people?

No, that was Jason.

That was the Friday the 13th game.

No, Nightmare on Elm Street sucked.

I think that one goes in F tier.

Yeah, okay.

I think that one was, I think of the two, we're like, oh, Friday the 13th had some interesting, it had like the day-night cycle.

It had like a bunch of different characters you could swap between.

It had some interesting ideas, even if it didn't quite land them.

Nightmare in Elm Street was just

a shitty game.

And you play as Freddy or a teen?

No, I think you play as a teen.

Play as like a funny little mouse.

The thing about it is, Freddy looks good here.

Yeah, the pixel art is good, but it does not mean that it was a good game, F-tier game.

F-tier game.

Oh, there were you could control multiple characters in multiplayer mode and in Nightmare and Elm Street.

Okay.

Uh, all right.

Uh, I over, bitch.

I love that I can't remember stuff I've said on a podcast.

We like researched that game, played it for the show, and then did an episode about it.

I'm just like, I don't know who the fuck this thing was.

I don't want to get into it.

Yeah.

Our brains are irreparably damaged.

There's, there's just no going back.

We're cooked.

We're fucking cooked.

I mean, they do, there was that study published like a couple months ago that was just like, each COVID infection ages your brain seven years.

We're fucking cooked.

I think we overscope this.

Overscope.

I think trying to do all of rare, I think it's too much.

I think we're going to have to draw the line somewhere.

I kind of almost wonder if we should just, I guess we'll see how long this takes.

I am just learning that there was a Wizards of Warrior, Wizards and Warriors 3.

What the fuck?

They made a third one?

I'll put that in the NA right there.

I can't believe that for the one man who played the two, didn't know there was a third.

Wizards of and Warriors 3, Kuros Visions of Power.

All right, that's a subtitle.

If we're going pseudo-chronologically,

Battle Toads is one of the next games that comes out.

All right, let's talk Battle Toads.

That's 1991.

It's published on the Nintendo Entertainment System

by Trade West.

And Battle Toads, we have covered in the show.

And it is a historically difficult teenage mutant ninja turtles rip-off

that kind of stood on its own for its

characters with a bunch of personality and its cartoony

finishing moves where you'd punch a guy and your fist would become gigantic.

Were they called Zit, Pimple, and Rash?

Yes.

Wow, funny.

Disgusting.

See, okay, your brain's not doing so bad after.

Oh, my God.

Mom's birthday not in there, but the names of the Battle Toads.

And you say them every night like the Rosary as well.

I think Battle Toads was a solid A or B tier game, especially given the limitations of the NES and the difficulty of launching an IP that withstood the test of time and ended up having multiple sequels developed for it across multiple generations of gaming.

And they also became a meme and not every game becomes like a meme, which I feel like that alone

is a testament to its cultural relevance.

I'm not as bullish on the battle toads.

I think it was

cool.

I don't think that game played as well

as some other beat-em-ups of the era.

And

I would have, I would, would, I'm against the consensus here.

I would have tried to slot that in C tier and take our C tier games and slot them down to D tier just to kind of, but I think it, I could see it resting up in B tier.

I don't feel, I don't feel like it's up and up in A tier.

No.

All right.

All right.

Make it a C tier game.

That's fine.

That's fine with me.

Now, does that include the arcade version?

The arcade version was nicer, but I'd still put it at C.

Okay.

Yeah, it's a weird game considering how difficult it is.

I imagine 98% of people have not finished the game, but like, the fact that it's like a weird knockoff IP has managed to worm its way into all of our brains is very interesting.

Yeah, we all like know what it is.

It is, I will say, it's extremely funny that the frogs, or excuse me, the toads rather, they're buffed.

That's funny.

They're so hot.

They're so funny.

Like this one right here.

Let any of these toads take me home.

It was like the sixth best.

Super friend.

If we're going

chronologically, games like Beetlejuice for the Game Boy, Wizards and Warriors 3, Danny Sullivan's Indie Heat, RC Pro-Am 2,

and

Battle Toads for the Mega Drive,

1993 becomes the year of Battle Toads for

Rare with Battle Toads, Battle Toads, Double Dragon, Battle Toads and Battle Maniacs, Battle Toads and Ragnarok's World.

Oh my gosh.

They become the Battle Toads developer, including a Battle Toads release for Game Gear that I can't believe I never played.

That's too many Battle Toads.

It's a lot.

It's one year?

It's 1993 is the year of Battle Toads for Rare, and then also Snake Rattle and Roll for the Mega Drive.

Okay, let's go.

You know what?

Now that we're done with Battletoads, let's go back to the well.

1994, 1994, the streak continues.

Battle Toads Arcade, Battle Toads for the Amiga, Battle Toads and Battle Maniacs for the Master System, and Two Bangers, Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct.

Let's talk about those.

We totally overscoped this.

What are you talking about?

No, there was like this.

There's like a full day's work required just to prepare the tier list, is the thing.

There's so many fucking games.

We didn't talk about Anticipation, which was a game I had,

which was rare.

I don't know if it was rare developed.

I believe it was rare published.

We can't talk about all of them.

The episodes would be

too long.

I think I'm doing a good job.

You are doing a good job.

I'm just saying, like, this is like, this is just a lot.

And I think once you get into when they are in league with Nintendo, it really, the scope narrows pretty quickly.

Yeah.

All right.

Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct for the arcade both come out in 1994.

And I would say that

coming off the success of Battle Toads and the years of Battle Toads releases, these are two

maximalist successes for Rare.

Killer Instinct is

a game that has pre-rendered SGI graphics, like silicone graphics, workstation graphics.

Yes, this kind of became their signature aesthetic of the era.

Where the, instead of doing pixel art, they would design these characters and then output them on a supercomputer as single animation frames and then string those animation frames together like

pixel art.

So it wasn't that you were seeing silicon silicon graphics on what you were looking at,

like being

that it wasn't that the system that you were watching the SGI graphics on was creating those graphics, but was rather just showing you pictures of those graphics from a different machine.

Yeah.

A little bit like the backgrounds in Resident Evil, your initial game.

Yes.

Where they look unbelievable for the system.

Right.

Because it's not actually rendering.

Or Final Fantasy VII.

Any of those, yeah.

But Donkey Kong Country also uses the same technology, and both of these games are published in the same year.

Donkey Kong Country, I have played because of my wife.

And we played it on the original Super Nintendo, and it fucking rules.

It's an awesome game.

Now, the question is, what do we do with the Donkey Kong Country trilogy?

What are we doing?

No.

That was orthogonal to your intro line.

It's not really exactly.

We didn't say, what do you play?

And we were saying, what are you doing?

Honestly, I'll just say, you should leave.

You don't need to be here anymore.

You're done.

Thank you.

You know I hang out until the show's over just in case something

you play.

And also, Nick, I never want to hear you say orthogonal ever again.

All right, fine.

I'll excise it for my vocabulary.

Kind of blowjob.

Or a banjo hawk tooey, if you will.

Oh, my God.

Jesus Christ.

It's starting to catch on, I think.

Killer Instinct.

Where would you slot Killer Instinct, though, Heather, as the fighting game actor is so pod.

I played it a lot, but I hated it.

I was very frustrated with it, but I kept playing it, being like, is it me?

Am I bad at this?

It had these insanely long combos that you had to memorize.

Kind of the dial-up combo era.

Yeah, where like,

which were the same reason that I didn't like Tekken.

It felt a lot less like you were improvising and more like you were setting up a guitar hero hero style chain of buttons to press.

Right.

So I would put this game,

I would put this game firmly in C, but I know that that's going to anger a lot of listeners.

I'm sorry.

That's my experience of the Killer Instinct brand.

But Donkey Kong Country, that's a fucking A or an S.

I was going to say

I would have slotted Killer Instinct myself.

And most of my, I did play it in the arcade, but most of what I played it was

the

were the ports.

I do think that is like of the fighting games of the era, I think that is a B or C tier fighter.

I think it's fine in the C tier.

Wait, what one did you slot in there, though?

Is that the right colour instead?

I think it was the arcade one.

That's the arcade one.

Oh, we're evaluating the arcade and

which one did you play, Heather?

I played the arcade version.

Okay.

And I'm curious because it's kind of a knockoff of Mortal Kombat.

Yes.

Do you prefer Mortal Kombat?

Very, very minorly.

Okay.

Like, if I saw the two machines next to each other, I would definitely go play Mortal Kombat.

But I wouldn't say that I enjoyed Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat 2, I really liked.

Like, I would say Mortal Kombat 2 is a fair, straightforward, good game.

Right.

Mortal Kombat 1 was clunky, and Mortal Kombat 3 started to get, like, too ridiculous.

But yeah, Killer Instinct, solid C-tier game.

Killer Instinct for the Super Nintendo, same.

It was like a great port of a game that I didn't like.

Yeah, I thought that was, I, I feel like this, they were kind of the equanimity in terms of the, the port and the arcade.

Not that it was arcade perfect, but it was like they kind of were the same game.

It wasn't one of those things where it was like sometimes you get, you have an arcade

port that would just be like, oh, this is, this has the same title, but this is fundamentally pretty different.

Like, I would put closer to like the Street Fighter 2 Super Nintendo.

It was like a pretty good translation of the arcade experience.

Yes.

I would put Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo in S tier for music alone.

I'd have no issue with putting DKC up in S tier.

My only issue is,

does that, I may think DKC2 is better.

So do we want to put them both in S or do we want to put DKC in A and put two up in S?

Put DKC in A, put DKC2 in S.

Where do you think DKC three falls?

I could see them either place.

I mean, I like one more,

but...

What do you think, Bridger?

I think, I mean, weirdly, I think three just belongs in B just because, like, at that that point, if you've played both of the

one and two, three is just like, this is essentially nothing new, except for if we've added the baby character,

which nobody really cared about.

Yeah, it hasn't had like a lasting legacy among the Kongs.

Yeah, because two is crazy.

Diddy Kong is like maybe more well-known than Donkey Kong at this point.

Yeah.

Introducing that character is interesting that...

That started here.

Yeah, Diddy Kong and then Dixie Kong becomes the big addition.

Oh, right.

But also, you know, you got Funky Kong and Candy Kong.

They're still lingering.

Of course, Cranky Kong is introduced.

I mean, the whole Kong family, the extended family,

no one really talks about Donkey Kong Jr.

anymore.

Nick's grandparents' names out of his own brain.

Knows all the Kongs.

Look, I forgot orthogonal at your request.

More Kongs are going in there.

Oh, go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to say something slightly controversial.

Please.

Oh, let's go.

I think that the retro-developed Donkey Kong games are better video games than the original three Donkey Kong Country games.

Wait, the retro game?

Interesting.

The what?

The ones that the retro released, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, and then Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Yes.

Those are both.

I believe retro developed both of those.

I think just like gameplay-wise, they are better video games.

I think that the original Donkey Kong Country games are pretty good, but what people remember most is the music and the pre-rendered art, which that part I don't think has aged that well.

I still think that this is great, that tears make sense to me, but I do think that there's some nostalgia that

the newer Donkey Kong Country games are actually better video games.

God, I'm realizing we could separately do a Donkey Kong tier list, and it would probably take even more time.

Oh, yeah, hundreds of years.

And then we got to rank all the Kongs, of course.

We haven't talked about Donkey Kong Land for the Game Boy, which was rare's port of

silicon graphics workstation graphics from a super nes to a game boy so these were like

very weird looking games because it's it it it it does evoke uh the donkey kong country aesthetic

And it also played really well on the Super NES Game Boy adapter.

Like it had like fancy backgrounds and additional colors and graphics.

That was how I played it was on the Super Game Boy.

I marvel at the technical achievement of making that game on a Game Boy.

It's as if you told me that somebody had ported.

Baldur's Gate 3

to a fucking analog watch.

It's like, you're like, how is that?

What are you even talking about?

Um,

it's not a great game, but it's a technical Marvel.

So I want to put it at C

Donkey Kong Land.

It's the Game Boy.

It's on the same level to me as when, do you remember when they somehow figured out how to cram Shrek the whole movie onto a Game Boy Advance cart?

Yeah.

And they sold it.

It's like, I don't know how they did that, but God bless them.

Yeah, I never played the Donkey Kong Land games.

Matt, did you play those?

I don't think that I did.

No, because yeah,

my first foray with Donkey Kong was on the

in the Donkey Kong country ports for the Game Boy Advance.

And I loved it.

I think those games are some of my favorite

platformers in general.

But I do think that the new ones are very, very good.

They're excellent.

Amazing.

Yeah, those are cool.

Are we?

Okay, are we in the N64 era?

Is there any other Super Nintendo we haven't covered?

1996 gives us Killer Instinct 2, Ken Griffey Jr.'s Jr.'s winning run.

Oh, right.

Donkey Kong Land 2, Donkey Kong 3,

and Killer Instinct Gold.

I feel like you said

you made a sound when we said Ken Griffey Jr.'s winning run.

No, I just like I forgot that game existed.

But yeah, that was the,

I didn't play it.

I mean, like the

Nintendo kind of first-party sports games, I don't feel like were ever all that worthwhile.

I did like Kobe Bryant.

I thought that was a good basketball game.

Oh, okay.

1997 is another monumental shift for Rare as a developer.

This is the year they bring out their first N64 games.

We'll call Killer Instinct Gold one of those, which was technically released in 1996 and was awful.

It was terrible game.

It was fucking awful.

It's really

shocking.

But then they release Blast Corp.

GoldenEye

and Diddy Kong Racing all in the same year.

We played Blast

all the same fucking year.

1997, arguably one of the best years in gaming history.

Hold on.

Before we move on from Killer Instinct Gold,

we should tier list that game.

Yeah,

it was just, look, there was a paucity of,

is that word okay with you?

There were...

What's happening over there?

All these big words coming out of his mouth.

I took a limitless drug this morning.

And I took the reverse limitless drug.

there were a ton of there were a ton of n64 games uh outside of the big ones you wanted killer instinct gold to be good and it was not i i think that i i think that's maybe a d tier fighter game fighting game f you put it all the way in f

in

like it flopped and also it was a terrible use of the controller like it it sucked playing that game on that that's true wasn't it a d-pad game yeah it sucked that was a bummer

we played blast core on

on this podcast, didn't we?

I don't remember doing it, but

that was a game I rented and played the shit out of and really enjoyed.

Oh, my God.

The amount of calls I made to the West Jordan, Utah blockbuster asking for Blast Corpse

probably at least 25 times.

But I think it's such a good game.

Yeah, it rolls.

It's not coming up on my master document of all the games we've, or all the episodes that we've done.

We must have talked about it at a certain point.

Maybe.

maybe this was a

Mandela Effect episode that I recorded in a different multi-we did Contra Rogue Corps Core.

No, I remember that one.

That sucked.

Yeah, it probably has come up in discussion.

It's one of those things we've talked about, and so it felt like we dedicated more time to it.

I think that I would say Blast Core is maybe an A-tier game.

I mean, it's a really, really fun, fun, and unique design, and kind of like one where it's just like, oh, man, it would be cool if they made another one.

Yeah, I'm surprised there hasn't been another one.

Yeah.

Nick, you definitely said that on the episode where we played Blast Blue.

You remember it specifically.

Yeah.

Let's talk about

the big one.

GoldenEye 007.

It's look, I'm not the biggest GoldenEye guy.

Part of this was being a PC gamer.

I just like it.

The frame rate was a big issue for me.

But it is a really cool game historically.

And for what it did for console first-person shooters and for console multiplayer.

It absolutely belongs in the S tier.

It also is a game.

It's also a cool game.

It's a well-designed game.

It's a well-designed game that came out when nobody gave a shit about GoldenEye.

Right.

Like it was many years after the movie comes out.

It's a game that launches on the Nintendo 64 to no fanfare and then becomes like the college dorm room multiplayer shooter for years afterwards.

Yeah.

You don't get to Halo without Goldeneye.

And so that alone puts it up in the S tier.

But I also think, and we did an episode and revisited it,

there were

part of my experience is like, this is just a really well-made game given the limitations of the hardware.

I mean, I can't speak to this, but like, is it the first-person game to kind of have a heavy stealth element?

Good question.

Because I remember that being like, oh, this feels different.

I have to be sneaky.

Yeah.

Good question.

I mean, there was Thief on PC.

Oh, right.

But, but I don't know what came first.

I think those were roughly contemporaneous.

I think the GoldenEye absolutely, again, it's one of those things where it's like, whether or not it did it first, it popularized it and it made it a thing.

And so much of what it did, I mean, like, even targeting specific body parts was less of a thing before GoldenEye.

You know what I mean?

So I want to read from Wikipedia here.

GoldenEye 007 was released in August 1997, almost two years after the release of the film, shortly released,

shortly before the release of its sequel, Tomorrow Never Dies.

It faced low expectations from the gaming media during development.

However, it received universal critical acclaim and sold over 8 million copies, making it the third best-selling N64 game.

It was a fucking licensed game for a James Bond movie that came out years earlier.

That's wild.

And one and two are Mario 64 and Zelda Ocarina of Time, I assume.

No, Mario Kart?

Mario Kart, Mario 64, Mario Kart, GoldenEye.

That's wild.

GoldenEye is above Ocarina of Time.

I think GoldenEye is probably the best game that makes me want to throw up when I'm playing.

It is a nauseating experience.

If that's the case, then you would have hated

the

weapon in Perfect Dark.

It's a spiritual sequel, which made you drugged and blurred.

Oh my god, I forgot about it.

You could inject in multiplayer, you could inject something

so many times that their screen became mushed.

Like a literal gray page.

Oh, my God.

And it wasn't because it was like a pre-rendered graphical effect.

It was because they had been so drugged that every time they'd move, those pixels would bleed for like a full 30 seconds.

Oh my God.

That's making me ill thinking about it.

Where are we in the chronology?

Are we on?

We've got Donkey Kong Land 3 on the Game Boy.

Again, Technical Marvel, but I don't think any of us played it.

And then Diddy Kong Racing also comes out in 1997.

Look, I like Diddy Kong Racing more than Mario Kart 64.

Holy shit.

Wow.

I think it's a better game.

I also

introduced Conker.

who we'll get to.

This was Conker's first appearance.

And I kind of just think

it's a super fun kart racer, especially in the single-player mode.

This is one of those games inexplicably 100%ed because what else was I doing?

And I would argue

to jam this bad boy up in A tier.

Oh, maybe so, certainly.

Okay, okay, all right.

I prefer Mario Kart.

I feel like Mario Kart has more character.

Like,

Diddy Kong feels very like you found this at the bottom of a cereal box or something.

Yeah, some of the peripheral characters, like, you know, is it a tipsy mouse or whatever?

You're just like, what is this?

Right, Title.

Swaw turtle, this sort of thing.

Yeah, exactly.

Very generic.

I played it within the last year at a friend's house, and I was very, very bad at it.

But

it was my first experience with it ever.

And it was one of the levels where you are flying a plane.

Yeah.

And that's...

So

you're absolutely right.

The aerial aspect is a whole other dimension to it.

It's a hovercraft.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But a lot of fun still, even though I was not

winning.

Who's the fucking pig you got to race?

That bit, WizPig?

Wizpig is an asshole.

The only game that Rare releases in 1998 is Banjo-Kazooie.

Banjo-Kazooie

is the height of 3D platforming of the era.

I think

it's a wonderful game.

I really love it.

I would argue for that to be at S tier.

If it's not S tier, I walk.

It is such a a good game.

Yeah.

And it holds up so well.

And at the time, I feel like people are like, this is just a Mario 64 copy, but they're very different games.

It's more of like an adventure type thing.

It added a lot of more, you know, dimensionality to it.

The

level design

was really creative.

I can't remember the name of the seasonal level, but that was

such an amazing level.

And then also, it was like just before it went over the edge to getting into collectathon territory, where it was just like, this is like the right amount of collectibles.

Right.

Yeah, really, really awesome game.

1999 sees four releases from Rare.

These are Conker's first personal game, or first individual game, which is Conquer's Pocket Tales for the Game Boy Color.

So funny that that came out first and had a completely different tone.

Yeah.

Jet Force Gemini for the N64, Donkey Kong 64, and Mickey's Racing Adventure for for the Game Boy Color.

Okay, did anyone play Jet Force Gemini?

I did.

You did?

I did.

Where would you put this?

I would put it at...

I would say C tier.

Okay.

It's perfectly fine.

Yeah.

But

it's kind of has a ton of backtracking and is ultimately like none of it really works that well.

I also remember when they first announced that the two main characters were children.

And then I think there was some period where Rare had to like, they're like, let's make them more mature games.

And so they turned these two into teens.

They just made them slightly taller and sexier.

Just so bizarre.

But I don't think it's a good game.

I think it's fine.

Fair enough.

I did not play at Conquer for Game Boy,

just Game Boy Vanilla, right?

And I gave Billy.

Game Boy Color.

Yeah, I did not play that.

Okay.

Did anyone?

No.

No.

But did you play Donkey Kong 64?

I played Donkey Kong 64, and it is a, in fact, I won 100% at Donkey Kong 64.

Wow.

uh it is a bloated mess there is disaster way too much going on in that game that the characters are all too similar the reason i the only thing i think that maybe nudges it up a full tier is the donkey kong wrap which has lingered But as a game, I think it's just it's just way overstuffed.

And by the time you reach the end game, you're exhausted.

This is a game that came packaged.

Now, I mentioned this earlier when I talked about Perfect Dark.

Donkey Kong 64 included the expansion pack.

Yes.

Right.

They realized the only

because the only way it was going to sell is if they sold the whole package for like $70, including the additional RAM you needed to run this game, which still had like a 15 frames per second, you know, frame rate.

It, it, it, you know, you've, you've sold it as like a piece of shit game.

I don't think it's a bad game, but I think it's way overstuffed.

And he's got elements that are fun.

It won the 1999 E3 Game Critics Award for best platformer.

Well, I could see it showing really well in E3.

It looked so good for the time.

Like the lighting was really good and it was exciting that they were finally making this.

Right.

And it's also like, oh, wow, I can switch over to Lanky Kong.

Right.

And little Lanky Kong play.

Yeah, exactly.

But they all, they all just have like different guns that are used to shoot different, you know,

different levers to open doors.

It's just like it's a pretty

crude way to differentiate the characters.

I also want to say, if you're a listener and you're, you know, too young to remember the expansion pack, this was a additional RAM cartridge that could be slotted into the Nintendo 64 to give the machine a little bit more power.

It was only four more megabytes of RAM.

Yeah, it's so crazy.

But it increased the console's RAM from four megabytes to eight megabytes.

And it was part of the reason it was released was that the

64 DD was held back in Japan.

It was delayed.

And so they started figuring out ways to make the system more compatible with larger games like Donkey Kong 64 and the upcoming Perfect Dark 64.

Yeah, this thing that was supposed to come on a disc format.

Now instead we've got to make it put it on a cart.

How do we get this to run on a regular N64?

Where would you slot the

Donkey Kong 64, Bridger?

I mean, I think I might be too harsh.

I would say D.

I'm fine with putting it in D tier.

There's so much, I mean, just the way they make you change characters is frustrating and time-consuming.

Really cumbersome.

It's a game that feels like they did not play it as they were making it.

It's kind of crazy that they shipped the Nintendo 64s with an empty slot that they knew that later on they would have to fill.

Well, there was a bunch of stuff on these earlier systems that were ports that they didn't, weren't quite sure what they would do with.

Okay.

There are, there are expansion ports on the back of like the Saturn that never ever saw anything

released for it.

You also, like notoriously, the

actual controller for the Nintendo 64 has a giant open port on the back of it, which would eventually accommodate like the Rumble Pack.

Um, but at the time,

they were like, Oh, here, let's make it so that you might be able to put something in here.

Let's give it a slot.

Um, it's the year 2000.

The games that come out in the year 2000 are Donkey Kong, Game Boy, uh, Dinky Kong, and Dixie Kong.

Didn't play it, Dinky, Dinky.

That's that's the most forgotten Kong character, certainly.

Uh, then you have Donkey Kong Country for the Game Boy color.

Again, technical marvel that they managed to put a Donkey Kong Country game on a Game Boy.

Mickey Speedway USA for the N64.

Did any of us play that?

I did not.

No.

No, I did not.

It felt like it really was like a cash job.

But

I played the next game, I'm going to say,

for two straight years, and that's Perfect Dark.

It is an S-tier game.

It's so good.

Perfect Dark is

everything that GoldenEye was plus additional stuff.

Minus frames.

Not if you played it with the expansion pack.

It was really chugging.

If you, if you play it with the expansion pack, it was a smooth experience.

I look, I'm not going to overrule you.

I'm just going to say I would not put this all the way up an S tier.

I do not think it is as good as the games that are up there, but I'm fine with it being an S.

Let me

push back and say that it has all, like if GoldenEye is known for its multiplayer, Perfect Dark has all of the levels from GoldenEye's multiplayer, and it has additional weapons.

It has additional concepts you can dual wield in Perfect Dark, and it runs smoother because of the expansion pack.

So you're playing those GoldenEye levels with a faster frame rate.

Additionally, it has the best gun ever made for any video game ever, which is the laptop gun.

The laptop gun is awesome.

And that is really cool.

And it's such a good opening

Great opening level.

It has a kind of

a sense of humor.

It's serious, but also fun.

Like you're rescuing aliens from Air Force or Area 51.

I really, really, really loved this game.

And for my friends who played GoldenEye multiplayer sort of religiously, this one just completely, it just, that cartridge never got slotted back in.

Also of note,

it was supposed to launch with a Game Boy camera

feature where you could take your own picture and map it onto the faces of Perfect Dark characters.

They pulled it at the last second.

So the code is still in the game

because they were like nervous that in the political atmosphere of the early 2000s, the idea of like taking a photo of your teacher and allowing you to shoot him over and over again in a multiplayer game was probably bad optics.

Yeah, but what really was going to happen is people were going to take pictures of their hogs immediately.

And put those onto faces.

Look at my character, ass face.

I'm fine with it being an S-tier.

I just want to shout out the same year on PC, No One Lives Forever comes out, which is also like an espionage first-person shooter game, and which is really cool and leans more into the Austin Powers side of being a little bit more of a spoof.

And, you know, I think that's just, that's kind of a better execution of a similar thing.

I did love that game.

Yeah, very cool.

Did it make you Randy?

I did not play Perfect Dark for the Game Boy.

Me neither.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Kind of surprising that it exists.

That's very interesting.

I didn't have a Game Boy.

That's a big blind spot for me.

So like a lot of Game Boy games I just never

played.

Did you go straight to Game Boy Advance?

Yeah, Game Boy Advance was my first handheld.

Wow.

Yeah, another game that comes out here in the year 2000 is Banjo Tooie.

Banjo Tooie.

Oh, boy.

I mean, I kind of want to banjo hawk tooey on this thing.

I don't like this game.

I really wanted it to be awesome.

I think it suffers from the same issues as Donkey Kong 64.

And it's just...

bloated and it's just got too much going on.

I think I like it better than Donkey Kong 64.

It's definitely a better game.

It's it's like there's not nearly as much character changing the worlds are a little smaller uh but it is like it yeah it's the thing where like people started getting sick of this type of game because there are a billion things to collect yes i think it's like a c tier game yeah i think c is fair it's a there's an interesting like kind of metroid element of it of like you see something i can't access it until later and you come back but Unlike Metroid, it's not like a cool world you want to explore.

So you just forget about all that stuff.

And so it's just not that that satisfying of a game, yeah.

Too many ideas, too many mechanics.

Some of the stuff that was like, it was a fun one-off in the first game, uh, you know, like turning into a washing machine now becomes like a whole like thing you have to play in this.

And you know, I'm really, that's reminded me another thing of Donkey Kong 64.

In order to finish Donkey Kong 64, not 100%, in order to finish it, you have to play through all of the Donkey Kong arcade game at a certain point.

So it's like it's just torture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And look, I like the original Donkey Kong arcade game, but also, but just to force you to do that, to force you to like, you know, go to an arcade cabinet in-game and play through it, it's just, it's a weird decision.

All right, let's keep going.

2001 sees two games released, Mickey Speedway USA for the Game Boy Color.

I'm going to assume no one just played it.

They were churning out those Mickey Speedways.

And Conquer's Bad Fur Day, a game that had been in development since Killer Instinct Gold and had been pushed back because they realized it overlapped too much with Banjo-Kazooie, and thus they made it into an extremely, quote, mature game with swearing, shit monsters,

tobacco use, et cetera.

I mean, like, look, I think a lot of people have affection for this game.

It's certainly like because it was edgy and because it had a sense of humor, I mean,

that was what made it stand out.

The thing is, like, look, I'm talking about frame rate a lot.

The frame rate in Conquer's Bad Fur a day is so bad.

And I don't think it's a particularly fun game to play.

And also, who am I to criticize anyone's comedy?

But the humor does not work for me personally.

I think the other rare games are funnier, though.

Yes, because it's more subtle and you don't expect it.

Like, I'm playing Banjo Touille right now, and the game starts like one of the characters is killed, and then you have to lie to the family that he's not dead.

Things like that.

That's much funnier than just basically Austin Powers.

Yeah, then reenacting

with Forest Animals,

the cold open for a saving private Ryan, you know, or doing or doing a Matrix, a Matrix gag that would also be in a bleach commercial the same year.

Is my memory of Conquer incorrect?

Did he say fuck and stuff?

Oh, yeah.

Some of the swears were censored, but yes, he did say swears.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

I just can't abide by it.

It's too rude.

They basically, I think, had fully developed the game as like a cute game.

It probably exists somewhere, and that probably would have aged better.

You can see screenshots of it in its original form.

It was an interesting approach.

I don't think it really works.

I'd put it next to Donkey Kong 64 in the D tier, unless anyone wants to defend it.

I'd say it's a C tier.

Okay, we can put it up in C tier.

The thing about him is, I don't like him, and I feel like I've gotten in trouble with our audience

in the past for bringing it up as like a game that is not good.

It's a game that I've never played, but I just don't, I like personally don't like him.

Yeah, I think if I ever saw him, it's on site.

We enter into a tough era for Rare as 2002 to 2006 brings

very few hits for the developer.

In 2002, they released Star Fox Adventures for the GameCube.

Oh, really wanted to like this game.

I did too.

It doesn't really work.

It's such a fascinating story because it started as a fully different game.

Well, kind of a different game.

Dinosaur Planet.

Right, right.

Last minute turned it into a Star Fox game, which I think they did.

I mean, that worked as well as it could have.

Well, also the idea, and I don't know if, you know, some people really like No Man's Sky.

I have not played No Man's Sky, but the idea of part of what people I think were disappointed about with Starfield is the idea of like, I can fly to different planets and then I can explore them.

Like the open world aspect is me flying through space.

Like

that is a cool idea.

And the idea of connecting the planets that way in Star Fox Adventures, it's like, oh, okay, the idea of having a space element as well as a, you know, like a like a like a 3D sort of Zelda-like element was cool.

But

yeah, oh boy, I just don't think it really works.

I don't know why.

I don't want to just...

overload the C tier, but I kind of feel like that's where it belongs.

Yeah,

it's surprisingly difficult it seems to make a good Zelda-like game.

I want to say, just as a side observation, and this is not a surprise to me, I can't stand most of the box art by Rare Games.

Interesting.

I find them

visually

just

a bummer.

I will say, as a company, their art has never been, even within the games, a strong suit.

Yeah, yeah, it's just not my aesthetic, and that's fine for people who it is.

But even on Perfect Dark, I was not like, wow, this game looks cool from the box.

Instead, I was like,

God.

Like, but if you were to just have like a blue box with that great font and logo, logo would be fantastic.

Instead, it was like, I don't know, close up on like a CG girl's face.

Can I just say in Rare's box art defense?

We didn't talk about the box art for Iron Sword, Wizards of Warriors 2, which features Fabio himself.

Oh, it's really him.

It's really Fabio.

It's not a Fabio-like model.

That is actually Fabio holding a sword like Conan the Destroyer.

2003.

So 2002 is the only game that is released as Star Fox Adventures.

2003, tough year.

You've got Donkey Kong Country for the Game Boy Advance, which was, again, technical Marvel.

Holy shit.

It's all of Donkey Kong Country and it's portable.

Not very many years after the game came out and was cutting-edge tech.

So you're like playing it and you're like, holy fuck, this is mobile already.

Yeah, the only thing stopping me from playing this anywhere is needing batteries.

Yeah.

Then you have Banjo-Kazooie Grunty's Revenge for the Game Boy Advance, which I doubt any of us played.

I played it.

Oh.

And it's shockingly adequate.

Oh, that sounds like a C.

Yeah.

It really kind of captures what the original game had

for a Game Boy game.

It's isometric, but it's interesting.

Interesting experiment.

I'll mess around with that on an emulator because I'm not sure.

And then a game with box art that I find straight up offensively bad, grabbed by the ghoulies for the original Xbox.

This game actually has pretty decent art.

It's kind of this self-shaded aesthetic, but yes, the box art is

it looks like a, you know, like a direct-to-video

CG animated movie, like

from the same people that made Food Fight.

It's a real bummer of a box art.

And something about the title bothers me.

If it was like Attack of the Ghoulies or Attacked by the Ghoulies, I'm sort of more on board.

Yeah, grabbed?

Well, it's a pun.

The double entendre.

Yeah.

Is it British for balls?

Yeah, British for testicles is ghoulies.

So grabbed by the ghoulies.

Not that that makes anything okay.

It makes it, yeah, it makes it a little randy, a little off-color.

I take back what I said.

I love it though.

Now it's good.

Now I have to buy the game.

Have you checked out that Xbox game?

Hey.

Grab by my cook.

She got

my ghoulies, love.

Grab by the ghoulies was the the thing about grab by the ghoulies is that they had a weird decision where you did all the control with this the analog sticks

and the camera you controlled with the shoulder buttons so it like it's it's i you know i haven't i haven't replayed it but i like i feel like if you messed around with with it in modern uh you know with that with that control scheme uh compared to modern games you'd be like what the fuck was was going on here it is a little cumbersome to play and i i don't know I would almost just say that's maybe a D-tier game.

Yeah.

It's what a rough period for them transitioning into a Microsoft.

Yeah.

And I wanted them to thrive.

I was very excited for that.

In 2004, you get Saber Wolf and Donkey Kong Country 2 for the Game Boy Advance,

as well as It's Mr.

Pants and Banjo Pilot.

It's Mr.

Pants also released for mobile phones.

Wait, was Saber Wolf, was that the Killer Instinct character?

I feel like it may.

The Killer Instinct character may have been based on another

previous thing that Rare had done called Saber Wolf.

Saber Wolf is a 2004 video game.

The player controls the Safari Adventurer Saber Man, who runs and jumps between platforms to retrieve treasure.

The game is a remake of the 1984 action adventure Saber Wolf.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So it is not a Killer Instinct title.

But then the name of the character is an homage to

the music.

And then we get Conquer Live and Reloaded for the Xbox.

Just a.

Was that just the re- That was the remaster, right?

That's what they called it?

Yep.

You get Donkey Kong Country 3 for the Game Boy Advance.

Cameo, Elements of Power,

and Perfect Dark Zero for the Xbox 360.

Can't tell you how excited I was for Perfect Dark Zero.

Can't tell you how angry I was once I began to play it.

Fuck.

God damn it.

Fucking F tier.

Wow.

Yeah, it makes me wonder how much oversight Nintendo had of the company when they were working together.

Hmm, interesting.

Because the quality really goes off a cliff for a little while.

They had a pretty heavy hand in Donkey Kong Country in that series, I believe, but that part of that was like we're handing over our, you know,

the IP that founded our company to, we're giving that, putting that in your care.

So um yeah I think they had a lot of influence there but yeah I never really thought about that maybe just like the just them being freed from Nintendo's shackles also kind of

made them sort of creatively

listless did anyone play cameo yes I did play cameo um I thought it was fine I honestly think cameo might be a B tier game wow I mean, did you play it?

I played a little bit.

Yeah.

Not enough.

I wasn't that impressed, but yeah, I assumed it would be like a C-tier game.

Maybe I I will revisit it.

I think the,

you know, it's got this really pleasing aesthetic.

And

it's got this like kind of like vibrant, sort of colorful palette.

And, you know, it's mechanically pretty simple, but I thought that was a, that was a pretty

good game and like kind of like, okay, if this was like the first salvo of like what they're going to do, what they're going to be doing for Microsoft and hey, trying to create a new IP,

you know,

I'm a a little bit more bullish on it.

Viva Pinata comes out in 2006.

Microsoft had a lot of eggs in this basket.

It was a life simulation game that was also accompanied by an animated show.

This was supposed to be one of the big pillars of Xbox's 360,

I don't know, IP development.

Can we go back to Cameo for a second?

Sure, go ahead.

Am I wrong?

Was that in development for the GameCube at a certain point?

Yes, I think it was Nintendo alongside Star Fox.

Yeah, that was around for a while, right?

Yes.

Cameo is known for its prolonged development cycle, which spanned four Nintendo and Microsoft consoles.

It was originally conceived as a Pokémon-style game of capturing and nurturing monsters,

but traded the lighthearted Nintendo Overtones for darker themes more befitting of Xbox's audiences.

A multi-year development cycle for Cameo.

All right.

Sorry, I interrupted us.

We were talking about Viva Pinada.

Viva Piñata.

Viva Piñata.

I never played Viva Piñata, but boy, when I was going to

E3 at this time, everybody was talking about Viva Piñata.

Yeah.

I liked Viva Piñata.

I'd never played it.

What would you compare it to?

It's like a life management thing or like a gardening game.

So it's a little bit Harvest Moon, a little bit Sims.

It looks really cool.

I don't know.

It was for a company that's like so known for just taking other things and then making a slightly different version, it felt pretty original for them.

It is a gorgeous game.

It's a really, really like unique looking game.

And especially for the time, it's just the art direction and just the...

The animals all being represented as piñatas was very cool.

I do like piñatas quite a bit, just in general.

They're very fun.

They are fun.

Viva Piñata is featured on a list on comic book resource or whatever it's called

of

video games that should have been hits but had impossible competition.

And it is listed as number 10.

Unfortunately, sales of the game fell well below Microsoft's expectations.

The console's target demographic was busy playing Gears of War, Oblivion, and Dead Rising when the game was released.

Yeah, I think it would have done better on the GameCube.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Yeah,

that's just where its market was.

Where would you slot this, Bridger?

I would say it's a B.

Yeah, put it up there.

All right.

Viva Pinata.

That makes me want to put Cameo down in the C.

Let's just move Cameo down.

Put it down.

It doesn't make sense right next to Viva Piñata.

The tough streak continues with Diddy Kong racing for the DS.

Oh.

Jetpack refueled for the Xbox 360.

Viva Piñata, Party Animals.

Viva Piñata, Trouble in Paradise, Viva Piñata, Pocket Paradise,

and Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts.

We can't talk about all the Viva Piñata spin-offs, but I think we should talk about Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts.

Bridger, it seems like you're something of a banjo enthusiast.

Yeah, the more I think about it, I'm like, I guess it's because the original game is so good.

Yes.

Because, and I can see why people might like nuts and bolts, but it is not

the game.

It's not the game at all.

No, yeah.

It's almost like Tears of the kingdom, yeah.

It's doing its own thing, vehicles, it's doing its own thing, and I guess maybe there was an element of especially they were looking at the response to Banjo 2I, and they're thinking, like, okay, hey, we're, we're maybe almost 10 years removed from that game at this point.

Like, what, you know, what would

what do we do with this formula?

Let's completely shake it up, but it ends up being something completely different.

Did you play it?

Yes, did you enjoy it?

I wanted to like it, Right.

I feel like that's the feeling of most.

Maybe there are some, there must be some apologists.

I think there must be.

But I feel like mostly people are just like, I wanted to like it.

I saw what they were trying to do, but it doesn't really.

Is this another C tier?

I think the closest to a Banjo-Kazooie sequel is Jack and Dexter.

Yeah, that's honestly, yeah, 100%.

Because that's a really solid game and basically does the same thing.

The streak continues

as Rare descends deeper and deeper into sadness.

Connect Sports is released in 2010.

Connect Sports, a direct answer to Wii Sports, highlighting the body sensing camera apparatus of the Kinect.

Connect Sports, Season 2, released in 2011.

These are the only games from Rare in these two years.

Oh, to be working at the company at that time.

To remember remember the heights from which you fell.

But don't worry, listener.

There is a compelling third act for Rare.

Did anyone play Kinect's the

Kinect sport game?

I didn't.

Like at a Best Buy.

Okay.

But it was like one of those, it didn't work.

You know, it was based on motion, and it just fundamentally, I don't think, really worked.

I think that was a kind of a global note for the Kinect, unfortunately.

I didn't work.

I didn't have an Xbox at this time, but I remember hearing about the Kinect and thinking back that that was too invasive.

That was too much

privacy-wise.

Yeah, I was like, what do they need to be seeing me move all the time?

Especially when I look like an asshole.

Especially when the Wii could do very similar stuff.

Yes.

And actually kind of work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a tough couple of years.

for

Rare there with Connect Sports and Connect Sports Season 2, so much so that they go completely dark in 2012.

And then return swinging as hard as they can with Killer Instinct

for Xbox One.

I remember this game looking really cool, but I was not super compelled by the gameplay.

I didn't end up buying this game,

but I did play a decent amount.

It's tough.

It's tough.

Killer Instinct for Xbox One, not a major hit.

Not a major success.

2014, we see the release of Connect Sports Rivals.

Wait, coming?

Heather, do you have a do you have a take on Killer Instinct for Xbox One?

No,

if the podcast listeners recall, I wrote some advertising for Xbox One, and Microsoft did not send me an Xbox, and so I banned the system from my apartment.

I have never to this day played a single Xbox One game out of spite.

I guess we'll put that.

I mean, I did play some, but I, but, but, you know, if I'm, if I'm the one person considering I didn't own the game, maybe we should put this in the, the did not play tier.

Also, considering that, that I went from, I don't like the Xbox to I'm playing Xbox 360.

Like, this is toe-to-toe with the PS3 in my house.

Holy shit.

Am I Xbox girl?

You want me to write ads?

Yeah, I'll do it.

I'll fucking do it.

I'll come down to Microsoft and I'll see your new system, which at that point was still being packaged with the Kinect.

And they were like, you can't tell people about it, but you can't hint at it in the commercials.

And I was like, yeah, let's fucking go.

I'll fucking do this.

Let's go.

And I wrote it and I gave it to them.

They loved it and they aired it.

And I was like, yes.

Do you think I could have an Xbox One?

And they were like, no.

That is wild.

I was like, fuck you guys.

All right.

You never get, you never get, it's blood from a stone, getting fucking anything for free from any of these companies.

It has become my writer in commercial writing.

Yeah.

Because of that experience, now when I write a commercial, I ask, I'm like, I will do the commercial for my rate.

I additionally want one piece of merchandise.

This is why you have five Toyotas.

So like when I did the Wendy's ads that I wrote, they gave me a year full of free Frosties.

When I did the Adidas ads, they gave me the shoes.

Like they gave them to me in the wrong size, but I still got the shoes.

Yeah.

You know, like, I was like, I'm never, I'm not, never falling victim to the Xbox One circumstances ever again.

In 2015.

Rare starts dipping into their past catalog with Rare Replay.

This is like the fall of Rome when they start looking back at the good days of early Rome and they're like, what if we became Romans again?

But instead, Rare is just re-releasing old titles.

But what a value.

What a value.

An excellent value, the rare replay package for Xbox One.

How do you rank this given that it is games that we have already ranked?

I mean, do we, is it worth ranking a compilation?

Probably not, right?

If we've skipped some other things already.

I mean, I will say it's very comprehensive.

I mean, I would say it's a B just because it's such a good package.

Shove it up there.

A great package.

Shove it up the B.

That's 2015.

Rare goes silent.

Oh, my God.

2016, 2017 pass with no word from Rare.

What are they up to?

I'll tell you what they're up to.

They're up to bringing out their biggest hit in more than a decade, more than 10 years.

It's Sea of Thieves for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series XS, Xbox One, and Windows.

Sea of Thieves is a massive success and one of the largest IP launches for Microsoft in Gen 8.

So Sea of Thieves is a huge game.

I see it get streamed a lot.

I know a lot of people play it.

I've never played Sea of Thieves myself.

I don't understand.

I feel like every video I watch, it's just rowing.

Yeah, I mean, like, it just, it's the sort of experience that doesn't seem to appeal to me.

Kind of just like a, I mean, it's essentially like a pirate MMO, right?

Is there more to it than that?

Sea of Thieves is a first-person perspective action-adventure game where the player selects their procedurally generated player avatar.

It's set in a shared world, which means groups of players will encounter each other throughout their adventures.

It is the first game from Rare to ever be released on a PlayStation console.

Has anyone played this?

I have not.

Yamates.

It does seem huge.

The closest I've been to it is I've been invited to play it with some friends of mine who are all have like a squad, and sometimes they're down a player, and they're like, We need another player for Sea of Thieves.

Do you want to play?

And I always tell them, No,

I'm just straight up not interested in it.

I mean, if we were journalists, then I think this is the kind of game we would have played at some point just to like have an idea of what it was and have a wrap our heads around it.

But we're not, we're just like people who play games.

And I think this one does not appeal to any of our taste, at least on the surface.

No, that said, I don't think we can really rate it.

So I think this doesn't appeal to me, but what does appeal to me is the idea of, and I know it exists and I just haven't played it, piracy game.

Like where you just are on a fucking boat and you're ramming other boats and you're cannonballing other boats.

I've seen tons and tons of like TikTok clips of games like this that exist.

And

I wish that I had played some of them, but I don't have the time to play every game, listener.

Well, why don't we commit to at least playing like a dragon pirate yakuza in hawaii because that would be a fun one oh yeah that does look like a good pirate game i mean here's the thing yeah i'm in man of course i'm absolutely in i'm so wild uh see if thieves were right i i i guess yeah we did look i i i was uh i was worried about this and i was right we overscoped this it's almost two hours

but we're not done we have one more game jesus christ one more game so see if thieves comes out and it's a he it's a pretty big success can i also just say good on rare good

they rotated a ship they ran a ship with a yeah, with a naval experience.

They've had so many flops that in a modern day, this studio would have been shut down.

Yeah, and they wouldn't let it happen.

They persisted.

They kept trying.

God bless them.

And they hit the ground one more time with 2020's Battle Dog.

It's so awful.

This game did not really work for me.

This game did not work for you.

Yeah,

I just didn't enjoy it as a beat-'em-up.

I thought some of the writing was actually pretty charming, but I think the dedication to

I believe they were all hand-animated, the way that the, you know, the

character animations were.

But that's a really, really tough thing to make also play well.

I mean, it took the Cuphead developers like, you know, a half a decade plus to try to figure out how that, to, to mesh that arc style, you know, with the

playable gameplay timing.

I don't want to, I don't,

I probably would F tier this game, honestly.

I just don't think it's very fun to play.

And it's also so slight.

Going out with their final release from four years ago, Battle Toads in the F tier.

Did they develop Battle Toads?

Yeah, I'm curious, or was

the name just somebody else?

Battle Toads was indeed developed by Rare according to Wikipedia.

I can scroll down to the release and double check.

Yeah, a 2020 beat-em-up developed by, oh, Delala Studios with Rare.

Oh.

So maybe it doesn't count.

Yeah, maybe this one doesn't slot on here.

Maybe we can keep it just for being comprehensive.

Maybe the final game that has been released by Rare was Sea of Thieves.

Their next upcoming game is called Everwild and

is supposed to be published by Xbox for Windows and the Xbox Series XS.

What is the,

so we definitely, there were some that we didn't get to, you know, the Super Nintendo Battle Toads,

the,

oh, the Battle Toads Double Dragon that you mentioned.

There were some of these that we didn't touch on, but I think we did a pretty comprehensive job here.

Yeah.

Yeah, this was like the big names for sure.

I mean, we should probably just have skipped some of these, but fucking whatever.

No, it was good that we got Wizards and warriors three on there uh

we talked about that and how none of us played it i did play the other two wizards of warriors wizards and warriors yeah no of course um these are always like this but i always end up feeling like they end up being interesting because like this is such a comprehensive look at a single developer's output and i don't know there's just i don't there's like nothing like there's no trends necessarily well i i do think there's a trend because look at where the s tier is clustered Like they just kind of hit their peak in like between, you know, 1994 and 1999.

It's like they really just kind of crested there.

And that's when they were really, really, their approach to game design and, you know, whoever they had working there at the time, their pipeline led to just some classic games of the era.

Yeah.

I see another trend, which is that after they are purchased by Microsoft, they don't hit those tiers,

that tier of success again.

Yeah.

And and i think they were purchased by microsoft because of those games because of that success but like there's not a single fucking 360 game that really knocks it out of the park that doesn't even and and and i'll i'll even hear i'll field nick's um i don't like perfect dark attitude and say okay i hear that but not a single xbox 360 game hits perfect dark levels which is crazy i'd be curious from our listenership we must have some Sea of Thieves enthusiasts out there.

Where would you put that among a rare tier list?

I'd be curious for people's input there.

And if you've played any of these other ones, I mean, like, has anyone played Cobra Triangle?

I'm sure someone has.

Maybe it's good.

I don't know.

Maybe it rips.

I don't know.

Yeah, who knows?

Let us know.

It's the RC pro album of boat games.

Boat.

Yeah, my favorite genre: boat.

All right,

let's do a segment.

It's the return of Who's the Boss?

This is the music segment that Matt, for some reason, named after the forgotten Tony Danza sitcom, Who's the Boss?

So we'll need our headphones for this one.

Why did I do that?

I'm not 100 years old.

I'm too young for that sitcom.

So, Nintendo being Nintendo, they surprise launched something nobody asked for, which is Nintendo Music, a new app that silos off its amazing library of video game music into its own ecosystem, requiring, of course, a Nintendo online subscription.

So, they have a curated list of boss themes.

I will play a boss theme from Nintendo Music.

This is from their boss battles playlist.

There are 15 tracks on here.

We won't get to all of them, but I will play one of them.

For one point, and you can buzz them with your name, name the franchise.

For a second point, name the specific game.

And you can get a bonus point if you can name the boss.

And I will say...

The games that they have represented on here, because they don't have everything.

You know,

it's Nintendo.

It's the kind of they do shit like, hey, we want Super Mario Bros.

3.

And they're like, hey, here you go, Urban Champion.

You know what I mean?

There's a calculator.

Exactly, yeah.

So expect some games to be represented that you maybe might not expect and expect some other ones to be absent.

I will say that as a general hint.

Also, just while we're on this, a music app?

An alarm clock?

Where's the fucking Switch 2, Nintendo?

What are you doing?

It really does feel like they're just torturing people.

Yeah, what are they doing?

Surprise, Nintendo Music.

Hey, that's what we wanted.

All right.

We'll start things off.

So I'll play a little bit of this.

Buzz in when you think you've got it and get whatever specifics you have.

So name the franchise, name the game, and name the boss.

You can do any of those or all three.

All right, first up.

It's a me.

Go ahead, Ether.

That's Legend of Zelda linked to the past.

It is not linked to the past, though you do have the franchise correct.

So I'll get you one point for that.

All right.

Fuck.

Oh, my God.

Anyone else want to try to guess the game?

It's a Twilight Princess?

It's not Twilight Princess.

Is it Link's Awakening?

No, you're all dancing around the N64 generation.

This was from Ocarine of Time.

This is the boss battle theme.

And this is what plays when you fight the parasitic armored arachnid Goma.

Remember that boss fight?

That's a big boss fight.

I liked the oomph you gave that.

That was great.

Oh, yeah.

I'll put a steak.

I'd like to change my name to Goma.

All right, Goma.

All right, Heather has won.

Matt and Bridger are waiting to get on the board.

Next up,

play a little bit of this one.

Um,

Matt, this is um

is this from Super Metroid?

Matt, you are correct, it is from Metroid, but it's not Super Metroid.

But I'll give you a point:

is it

anyone else?

I'm trying to remember the names of the bosses in that.

Is it

Arachnid Goma?

Not Arachnid Goma.

Is the fucking thing's name Ridley?

There is Ridley, but this is not from the Ridley boss battle.

This is from the...

You know, I think this is actually from the base escape,

which happens when you fight Mother Brain.

Can you imagine?

This is from the original Metroid.

But again, this being Nintendo, they included the version from the Famicom Disc system.

Of course.

The one we all remember.

Well, it's got more, it's like

it sounds better.

Yeah, it sounds better.

It recently came out that Legend of Zelda had a much more elaborate title screen track on the original Famicom disc system.

I want to hear that.

That being said, can you imagine downloading this app and being like, fuck yes, and hitting that and listening to it in your car?

That makes me want to look at the security guard at the drive-in gate where I work and just like have it blast.

Just drive cross-country to that.

I'm going to DJ at a club and put that on and see how people react.

All right, let's do this next one.

All right.

Streaming.

I'm going to give it.

All right.

I'm going to give it a Donkey Kong country.

You are correct.

It is Donkey Kong Kong.

Because it sounds like David Wise.

Yes.

Because he does that really good in-and-out.

You get a point for name in the franchise.

Beyond that, I haven't played these games enough to know.

I only know his

Sonic signature.

I couldn't tell you

a name of a boss from Donkey Kong Country to save my life.

The only one, King K rule

as a character.

Is it Shit's Banana?

Yeah, this guy's name might be Shit's Banana for all I know.

Wait, you don't, you're looking at it and you don't know his name?

The track is called Bad Boss Boogie.

And I don't know if Boogie is the name of the boss.

We'll just move on.

But this is from Donkey Kong Country, the original game.

I believe Boogie is the name of the bird, but I'm not sure.

But yeah, it's a bird boss.

Love it.

I would have accepted bird boss if someone said bird boss from Donkey Kong Country.

Nothing is selling me on the app harder than this playlist.

Has no context for what you're listening to.

And you need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to have the app.

Yes, yeah.

But Heather does get a point.

Okay, next one.

This one you might remember because this is

in recent memory.

Oh fuck, this is Super Mario Bros.

Wonder.

Not Wonder.

Fuck!

Mario Odyssey?

It is Mario Odyssey.

Heather, I will give you a point for getting the franchise right.

Richard, you'll get a second point for getting

the game, the specific game.

Does anyone know what boss this is?

That game came out eight years ago.

Did it really?

Yes, which is eight years old.

That's insane.

Shit.

Oh, my God.

I've been thinking about replaying it.

Great game.

This is the rabbit boss.

It is.

It is the Brutals.

Wow.

The Brutals.

How can I forget about it?

You have four.

The other

boys have one apiece.

All right, next up, we'll do a couple more of these.

Bridge or where the boys.

With the boys now.

Pretty cool.

From here on out.

This has the timber of a Pokemon game.

I'm guessing this is from Pokemon

Scarlet and Violet.

Matt, I'm sorry it's not from a Pokemon game.

It's the legend of Zelda.

Not from Zelda.

Oh, wow.

I will say this is one that as it was playing, and yes, obviously I know the name of the track, but I was like, I recognize this immediately.

I knew what it was.

Is it Fire Emblem?

It's not Fire Emblem.

No, this is Star Wolves theme from Star Fox 64.

Wow.

Yeah.

You know what?

I'm realizing I also owned the Star Fox 64 soundtrack on CD.

So that must be part of why it's kind of in my memory.

It kind of sounded like Pokémon battle music.

It did a little bit.

It does, very much so.

All right.

Two more, then we'll get out of here.

I'm liking this game.

I love

Nostalgia that makes me angry.

Okay,

next one.

I'm gonna say Super Metroid.

It's not Super Metroid.

It's really good.

Yeah, this Rocks.

This is a great game.

This is an all-timer game.

Is this from Super Mario World?

I'll give you a point for getting Super Mario.

This is from a Super Mario World, Super Mario game.

Okay.

This is Super Mario Bros.

3.

No.

Fuck!

No, this is from the Cid.

This is not the NES sound chip.

This is a 16-bit game.

This is Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island.

He's the host.

I thought it was going to be Super Mario Bros.

3 re-released on the Famicom and Super Mario Bros.

All-Stars.

Alright, we'll do one more here, and then we'll talk about this app real quick and be done.

All right, next up.

Final one.

Smash Brothers.

This

is not Smash Brothers.

Fuck.

Oh.

Kirby.

Not Kirby.

This is Pokemon Project.

This one is Pokemon Mac.

Pokemon Scarlet Violet?

Yes.

This is...

Yeah, so you get another point.

Is this

for the Elite Four challenge?

I mean, it's for gym leader.

I don't know if they reuse the same cue or not.

Probably not.

I'm tempted to give you another.

Well, I won't give you another point because that would mean you'd win outright.

Instead, it will be a tie.

And see, isn't that interesting?

He doesn't want me to win.

They don't want me to win.

They're taking away my points.

Unbelievable.

So here's the thing about this app.

You can sort by, like, like it does have some cool curated playlists for, like, walking music.

It has all the Wii Shop music, which is awesome.

Like a lot of the Wii like shell music is really good.

That was very good music.

Yeah, some of it is awesome.

But if you search by title, it's just pure chaos what they do and don't have.

So they have one Game Boy Advance game, Fire Emblem, the Blazing Blade.

They have two Nintendo 64 games, Ocarine of Time and Star Fox 64.

They have two Super NES games, Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island, not Super Mario World 1, and Donkey Kong Country, none of the other entries in the franchise.

The only NES games they have are Metroid for the Famicom Disc System and Super Mario Bros.

And then they have more Switch games, but even among the Switch, it's like...

It's they have, they, you know, they don't have Tears of the Kingdom, but they have Pikmin 4, you know, they have Splatoon 3, but no other Splatoon games.

They have Kirby Star Allies, but not the other Kirby game that came out.

The Forgotten

Land.

But I do feel like your frustration, though, Nick, is unwarranted if you just listen to the tone of the baffling ad for this

that released it, where it was like, with Nintendo Music, you can listen to music that you liked on the Nintendo systems.

Uh-oh, it's Bowser's playlist.

And you're like, why is there pausing?

Why are there pauses?

There don't need to be pauses here.

It's very Nintendo to give us something we didn't ask for or want, and then also have it be kind of shitty.

Bro, it's still not the best version of the thing we didn't want.

And then they're going to add more stuff and it'll be like, oh, cool.

Now we have the soundtrack for Balloon Fight.

Great.

The only gaming company that could have done a worse version of this is Sony.

But at least Sony would have been like, surprise, all your PlayStation favorites are available on our new format.

Yeah.

The 70D 816.

Get a 71D 816 player, and you can listen to 15 tracks per record-sized cartoon.

It did sort of make me want

a shitty Nintendo iPod that just has this stuff on it.

Yeah.

I was like, I would buy that.

But you can make that.

Yeah, I could make that.

You could make like an iPod Nano that just had Nintendo music on it.

It might be kind of nice.

I mean, it might be nice.

This may eventually be, this app may eventually, once it has everything, it could be cool to have.

But also, there's an element of like, I just wish I could use my music app of choice to listen to Nintendo's songs, which they probably now will aggressively pull off of other platforms in YouTube.

Ruin lives to get them off of other.

Well, hey, that's this week's Get Play and our producers Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore, underscore, sard.

Ranch, you streaming anything lately?

No, not right now.

I'm done with RE4 and the DLC.

So are you soaring off of streaming now?

We'll see.

Okay.

No, I'm really enjoying streaming.

I'll be online more in the new year.

People can find you on social media there, and perhaps eventually you might return to Twitch.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by Duck Brigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played.

We can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog, plus ad-free main feed episodes, and our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated.

Matt, what are we watching this week?

Oh, boy, let me tell you, it's going to be really, really good once I let you know.

We're actually

watching something pretty interesting.

There's a Sonic the Hedgehog anime, and we did a watch-along for that.

And

you know what?

I'm just going to go ahead and say it.

We had a great time.

This came out in the 90s, and this was two different episodes that were stitched together into one OVA.

And we watched it as a movie, which is how it was presented in the States and talked about it.

Patreon.com slash get played for all that.

Can I say what's coming up?

Please.

Yeah,

we haven't told anybody what we're doing.

I want to tell them right now.

Let them know.

After Sonic, we are going to watch Gundam Requiem for Vengeance.

And let me say, it's heaven.

It's paradise.

Let's fucking go.

We are recording this on Halloween just for a little behind the curtain.

Don't be scared.

Behind the scenes.

I did go to work dressed fully as Char Asnable today in the helmet.

And, you know, the people who went by me on the star tour just looked at me like, oh, is that somebody in costume?

Like, what are they?

What are they?

Is that a movie that's shooting?

So, Heather, you mentioned that before, off pod, before we were recording,

that you went dressed as Char to work.

When you said it, I was unfazed, but also did not register that it was Halloween today.

Just accept it.

Yeah, it kind of just sounds like a normal workday for Heather.

Bridger Weiniger, thank you so much for being here.

So fun to talk with you.

Thank you for staying so long.

This was a super-sized episode, but we had a super guest.

Incredible.

It was wonderful to talk about.

I hope I was a little bit more optimistic this time.

That was great.

You definitely were.

Okay, I didn't complain that much.

I loved it.

Please come back.

A single joke didn't make you mad or anything.

It was like totally fine.

I said, No gifts is your podcast.

Feel free to plug that in anything else you want to plug.

That's it.

Uh, that's the podcast, and you can find it on Instagram.

There you go, right.

Uh, Matt, you got played.

Oh, thank god,

thank god.

I didn't want to have to do it.

I don't usually our guest gets played, and I didn't want to have to put you through that.

I'll take the bullet, it's fine.

Bridger also got played.

Oh,

that was a hit gun podcast.