Sega Genesis vs Super Nintendo: Revengeance

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Speaker 1 Oh my God, I am so excited for this week's episode, Nick. This is going to be so much fun.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we're talking 90s game consoles.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and sort of to get us in the mood, I have brought some 90s snacks. I thought maybe we could like snack on them and kind of like get into that.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's fun.

Speaker 1 That child headspace.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like when we were kids.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 so i've got uh i've got here i've got this uh this is uh some dunkaroos i have some bagel bites i've got uh some tricks yogurt i've got 3d doritos oh wow hey you got totino's pizza rolls over there i remember those yeah i've got uh i've got some uh butterfingers like you got some gushers yeah some ecto cooler yeah i've got i've got all kinds of 90s uh 90s snacks so i thought maybe you know maybe i would uh we could like dig in and see how these snacks held up yeah hey, if I know anything about podcast listeners, they're gonna love

Speaker 3 rustling plastic and crunch sounds into the microphone. Okay.
All right. So, you all right?

Speaker 1 I think I misremembered what dunk rooes taste like.

Speaker 3 Yeah, those are terrible.

Speaker 3 Sorry,

Speaker 3 pass me one of those. I'm gonna have one of those in forever.

Speaker 1 Those are really fucking bad.

Speaker 3 Let me just peel back the

Speaker 3 frosting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I squeezed a little frosting.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because this is like the vanilla flavor. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But the top is black. This is just covered with black mold.

Speaker 1 My eyes.

Speaker 3 Your eyes are really. Oh.

Speaker 3 You should not have eaten that eyes.

Speaker 1 I think I put some in my eyes because I wiped my eye because it started watering.

Speaker 3 You know, maybe the fruit by the foot holds up a little bit more. Okay.

Speaker 3 I need something to sort of like, like,

Speaker 3 maybe,

Speaker 1 maybe, uh, here I am.

Speaker 3 I feel like my throat. Wait, I feel like my throat.
Pass me the fruit by the foot. I feel like my throat.
My throat.

Speaker 1 My My throat is...

Speaker 3 My throat is hard.

Speaker 3 It's getting... My throat is getting hard.

Speaker 3 Are you going to anaphylactic shock? My throat is getting hard on the inside. Fruit by the foot is supposed to kind of have the texture of tape.
That's part of the fun of it.

Speaker 3 This is as solid as a meter stick. Should not have put this into your mouth.

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to get in that 90s vibe. I got some.

Speaker 3 Yeah, look, don't eat it anymore.

Speaker 1 Get some PB crisp. I love Peaby Crisp.
It's one of my favorite snacks.

Speaker 3 Look, I also know you have a serious peanut allergy. You should not have eaten that to begin with.

Speaker 3 Even if that was new, you shouldn't have had any.

Speaker 1 It's something's wrong. I can't sneeze anymore.

Speaker 1 It's like trying to make me sneeze.

Speaker 3 Rich your mouth out or something. Try some of that Capri sun.
Okay,

Speaker 1 I can't poke it through. It's hard.
Yeah, just slip it upside down.

Speaker 3 Put it in the bottom.

Speaker 1 Poke through. No, the whole thing is hard.

Speaker 3 I can't poke in the straw.

Speaker 3 I'm still trying to sneeze.

Speaker 1 how about the ecto cooler i might have some ecto cooler

Speaker 3 cooler

Speaker 3 oh it's sick god

Speaker 3 oh that looks like anti-freeze coming up the straw thick like the texture of a smoothie 90s are harder than i remembered yeah i think you should just maybe just not eat any of this i think also you might want to we might want to call poison control uh ranch if you want to get poison control on on speed are you all right just want to sneeze you think my body forgot how?

Speaker 3 Are you gonna be good to do the episode? Yeah, fine. Okay, you know what? I actually kind of am feeling some nostalgia.
Can you hand me one of those squeeze-its? Yeah, here you go.

Speaker 3 Oh, thank you. Okay,

Speaker 3 these were fun because you get to twist off the top and then you just get to

Speaker 3 squeeze this into your mouth and just sort of chug it.

Speaker 3 A little taste of memory, a little taste of memory lane. Here we go.

Speaker 3 I died.

Speaker 3 This is my ghost. I died.

Speaker 3 We rise from our graves and watch G-rated Mortal Kombat fatalities as we refight the 16-bit console wars in Super Nintendo v Sega Genesis Revengeance this week on Get Played.

Speaker 1 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, Heatheran Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

Speaker 3 That's me, Nick Weiger.

Speaker 3 And we are not here with our third host, Matt Abodaka, who is on his honeymoon. Honeymoon!

Speaker 3 So I guess there's no one here to say hello, everyone, but we will extend our general greetings to the audience at large.

Speaker 1 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where it's just me and Nick. So, this week's gonna suck.

Speaker 3 We get to be old today. Old!

Speaker 3 We get to be old. Relitigate a console generation from 30 years ago.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Nick, Nick wrote me, and he's like, I have an idea for this week's podcast. And I was like, What was it? And then I watched him age like the guy at the end of Indiana Jones.

Speaker 3 He went,

Speaker 1 and I was like, Okay, buddy, that's it.

Speaker 3 That's all just for my diet.

Speaker 3 We have a lot to talk about, and we're going to get into that. We're going to get into the console wars of yesteryear.
But first, the question we ask, the room,

Speaker 3 is what are you playing?

Speaker 3 Stay a while and listen. It's me, Decad Kane from Diablo.
Hey, who are you? Oh, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 I thought I might warrant a guest appearance here for the What Are You Playin' segment because of my new game, the Diablo Vessel of Hatred expansion. Buy a purchase now at the Battle.net online store.

Speaker 3 I'm not going to take off my sunglasses, so can you describe what you look like? Yes, of course. I am an old man in a robe.
I am bald.

Speaker 3 Try to think of my other distinguishing characteristics. I will identify items for you.

Speaker 3 That, I mean, is I. I like to tell really, really

Speaker 3 long stories. Like, if you want an exposition dump, I will just keep going and going.
It sounds like the two of us should be friends. I think we should be the best of friends.

Speaker 3 I feel like maybe we should host the rest of the show.

Speaker 3 What do you say?

Speaker 3 I worry that would be unlistenable. I don't know.
Plus, I have

Speaker 3 a lot of podcasts that have like a like they do bits the entire time.

Speaker 3 Yes, I just feel like two confused old men is perhaps. I'm not old.
Okay, I'm sorry. I'm in my early 20s.

Speaker 3 Early 20s?

Speaker 3 Yeah. That's a rough early 20s.
I'm 23 years old.

Speaker 3 Canonically, the Resident Evil Merchant is 23 years old. The question I was supposed to ask is, what are you playing? But

Speaker 3 I want to ask you, what are you eating? Well, for, you know, for a while, I was on a

Speaker 3 caloric restrictive diet by a proxy of not having a lot of income.

Speaker 3 So, you know, they've done that to mice and the mice lived in like two, three hundred years. And that's basically what I had to do.
That doesn't sound accurate. That's true.
In mice's years.

Speaker 3 In mice's years. Okay.
So I think it's like six days, which for a mouse is almost intolerable.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I was on a calorically restrictive diet and now I'm

Speaker 3 only eating fish patties.

Speaker 3 I'm on an all-potion diet.

Speaker 3 I got some potions for you. Uh, let me tell you, the Diablo, Diablo Universe potions taste terrible.
Well, the Resident Evil potions taste

Speaker 3 fantastic.

Speaker 3 Why don't we ask Nick and Heather and Branch what they're playing? What do you say? Uh, maybe together at the same time.

Speaker 3 I need to get back to Sanctuary anyway, so yes, we'll ask this help teleport, Alier. Two,

Speaker 3 three,

Speaker 3 what are you playing?

Speaker 1 Nick, why don't you go first?

Speaker 3 Thanks so much for asking, Heather. I've been playing because I've been out of town, but I've been playing some Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom on my Nintendo Switch.
Wow.

Speaker 3 Got about six hours into this bad boy. Okay.
A lot of it have been playing, you know, because I've been on the road.

Speaker 3 A lot of it have been playing handheld mode, but I did dock it at home for a bit and I played a few hours on the TV.

Speaker 3 I do really enjoy it, and it is a very clever design. I am worried I'm about to bounce off of it.

Speaker 3 Have you gotten a chance to play it at all?

Speaker 1 I have not. I have not.

Speaker 3 So the gameplay is largely based around a mechanic of...

Speaker 3 There's a few ways you can interact with items in the with objects in the environment, but the but the main gimmick of it is that basically any object you encounter and any enemy you defeat, you can create an echo of them.

Speaker 3 Right. And then you can summon that at will.
So like, you know, like the

Speaker 3 table in this studio, I could make an echo of this table.

Speaker 3 In fact, that's a very, that's one of the first things you get in the game is that, is, is a table, which you're basically using to solve vertical puzzles.

Speaker 3 You can stack, you can climb onto a table, stack two tables on top of each other. You get increasingly, you get a bunch of objects that have, you know, different dimensions.

Speaker 3 The bed, everyone has been saying, you know, is OP.

Speaker 3 And in practice, that is true because the bed, the way it can be used as a bridge and you can stack them on top of each other to ford all sorts of chasms.

Speaker 3 And that's why the bed has become a user icon on the switch yes i think i'm i mean i i wouldn't doubt that because also you can rest in the bed and it heals you which is another thing okay uh but anyway so you have that and then the other the other aspect is the way most combat takes place is you know you kill uh say a a keys um then you can summon that keys and then they can you can use them to fight on your behalf or an octorok or whatever so here's the thing the puzzle design is cool but it does feel like because you have a handful you have you have uh all these echoes that are pretty similar.

Speaker 3 And they're things like you end up with like multiple types of pot, multiple types of bed, and so forth that are functionally identical.

Speaker 3 It does feel like you can brute force your way some of these puzzles with a handful of echoes. Because really, the main thing you're doing is you're either crossing chasms or you're scaling heights.

Speaker 3 It's really just those two ways to interact with the environment. And there's only so many ways you can remix that.

Speaker 3 The other thing is the combat, because it's so passive, because you as Zelda do not really attack directly, except for one thing which I'll get to in a second and the enemy AI seems relatively crude you can rely on just spamming a few highly aggressive echoes at least as far into the game as I've gotten and highly aggressive echoes and

Speaker 3 it's really all you need to worry about like it's not like there's a bunch of like

Speaker 3 you start this game you're like oh there's gonna be a bunch of uh you know Pokemon style rock paper scissors scissors gamesmanship but in practice that's not really what happens you can just throw out the you know the moblins that throw boomerangs and you can you can just, uh, you know, blaze through so many encounters, including boss fights with them.

Speaker 3 The other thing is that it's got a cooking mechanic, uh, because you know, it, it does, it is like a top-down Zelda. It is, looks most like Link's Awakening, but it is pulled mechanically.
And

Speaker 3 as far as how you interact with the environment as well, you know, it's got the other thing from Tears of the Kingdom, basically like the big powerful hand that you can use to move objects.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's got that as well.

Speaker 3 It is very breath of the wild tears of the kingdom in terms of how it actually plays and in terms of how the world is built. And so

Speaker 3 you have cooking, but it's a lot more tedious than it is in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom.

Speaker 3 You have to go to an NPC. There's a bunch of repetitive dialogue you have to button through.

Speaker 3 And it's also

Speaker 3 less essential because, again, the combat is so passive that you don't really need a lot of these buffs or as much healing as

Speaker 3 you do in those other Zeldas. But this is another thing.
And this sounds minor, but from like a

Speaker 3 fantasy standpoint, from living in this world,

Speaker 3 it bothers me maybe more than it should. The thing you are crafting when you're cooking is solely smoothies.
Like you're not making a bunch of dishes. You're just making smoothies.

Speaker 3 And it's not potions. It's distinctly smoothies.
Like I was like, maybe it's a localization thing, but no, they have like a little straw on them and like the garnishes that a smoothie would have.

Speaker 3 It's clearly intended to be smoothies.

Speaker 1 So she all she only drinks smoothies she only drinks smoothies that's kind of fucked it's we it's really strange that's i i i i i mean

Speaker 3 can i say that feels a little sexist well there was a pa there was a oh well i don't want i don't i think it was polygon but i'm not sure but there was a polygon article kind of to that degree that like yeah it did it it it could it could very there's there's very well a very plausibly a reading of that, but it's just some sort of casual sexism.

Speaker 3 But even that aside,

Speaker 3 it's just so, it's just such a strange choice, right? For it to be like a fan, like, like, I don't know, it's a little too cutesy at minimum.

Speaker 1 Why isn't she making like cornbread and stew? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Why not make just the same dishes that you have in Breath of the Wild or new dishes that are akin to the ones that are in Breath of the Wild, if that's what you want to reference?

Speaker 3 And why do I have to go to this fucking Deku instead of just creating them in a campfire? Anyway.

Speaker 3 My main issue, the main thing that is making me want to bounce off of this is the UX of this game, which is the interface for selecting your echo. And the way this game works is that you have like

Speaker 3 very early and you have dozens of echoes. Yeah.
And I looked it up and by the end game, there's over a hundred. So the way that the your UX works is you just have one basically like the PlayStation

Speaker 3 cross media bar. It's exactly.
It's one horizontal bar that spans the width of the screen.

Speaker 3 And you can scroll through that and it's just, again, you're scrolling through a bunch of very, very similar like enemy types and object types.

Speaker 3 Or you can pause the game and then go to a grid, which is similarly, like, you know, kind of not really sorted and

Speaker 3 just a ton of information to process. It would be nice if there was something to like, say, bind your four most useful echoes to like, if I hold L1 and

Speaker 3 I said L1, but you know what I mean. If I hold the shoulder button, the L button, and then I,

Speaker 3 and then I, you know, press up or something like that, that will use one of them or whatever. Like, like just something so that I don't have to scroll through this list the whole time.

Speaker 3 But it's really inelegant, and I think it actually leads you to use fewer options for a game that's presenting you with dozens of options.

Speaker 3 I'm also getting, you know, some frame drops at times. And for something with such a simple art style, it's just the Switch is really showing its age.

Speaker 3 However, all that said, I am overall still having a lot of fun, and the soundtrack is pretty awesome. And, you know, as a Zelda, you come to expect that.

Speaker 3 But the arrangements, orchestration in particular, are really good. This, this one track I did want to play just because I think it's a really good remix/slash arrangement

Speaker 3 slash spin on

Speaker 3 a Zelda classic. This is the Hyrule Field theme from

Speaker 3 Echoes of Wisdom.

Speaker 3 Isn't that a little clarinet? Isn't that nice?

Speaker 1 This is

Speaker 1 almost

Speaker 1 worth purchase.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's look, it's a gorgeous soundtrack. I think the game is really cool.
Look, I'm harping on a bunch of things that are bugging me.

Speaker 3 It is overall a cool design. It's a cool game.
And it's a top-down Zelda.

Speaker 3 And I have a lot of affection for that game, for those type of games, based partly on one game that we will get to in our discussion today.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 here's another thing.

Speaker 3 So I alluded to this earlier, and this is early enough in the in the, you know, this is early enough in the game where I think I can give a minor spoiler because you get this pretty early on. So

Speaker 3 combat is generally completely passive. You're summoning familiars to fight on your behalf, which I'm fine with.
I like that sort of gameplay.

Speaker 3 However, there is a mode, like a super-powered mode, where you can attack directly when you get a certain key item. However, that direct attack mode just turns you in to a version of Link.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And you have Link's sword that you're using. And I'm just like, why, I have my big fucking staff.
Why can't I be hitting with a staff or whatever?

Speaker 1 I feel like

Speaker 1 I feel like we, this echoes a lot, speaking of echoes,

Speaker 1 echoes a lot of the complaints we heard last week from Jason,

Speaker 1 where it's just like, yeah, why, why not give her a sword? Why not give her a staff? Why, why does she, like all of these,

Speaker 1 these minor quibbles are preventing the game from being sort of a masterpiece.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a little, and, and, you know, I wasn't here for the Jason episode, but I mean, like,

Speaker 1 and I that wasn't calling you out on that.

Speaker 3 No, no, no, but I mean I mean

Speaker 3 I'm also like the the

Speaker 3 I mean if you thought I was here that would be weird

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Speaker 1 So, I've got a question for all the gamers out there. Are you seriously,

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Speaker 3 I wasn't here for the Jason episode. I always like Jason's thoughts, and I think he's really smart about the, you know, commenting about games in general.

Speaker 3 This is also a comment I've heard like larger, you know, beyond just like us. Like I've seen a lot of people like have this issue with the way the game is.
Was it Matt who was saying all this?

Speaker 1 I don't remember. One of the two of them was

Speaker 1 I was

Speaker 1 as here as I have ever been, which is to say 30%.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I guess I'm just at a place where like I think this game is really cool.

Speaker 3 It's a lot of things are annoying me and I've got so many games that I want to play that I'm going to put am I going to put 20 to 30 hours into this? I don't know if I am.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry to be down on a game that I think is well crafted, but that's kind of my take on Echoes of Wisdom.

Speaker 1 I mean, the truth is, I didn't pick it up because I was like,

Speaker 1 this doesn't, this isn't ringing my bell right now.

Speaker 1 And I do feel like maybe there's been a little bit of Zelda oversaturation over the last few years. Maybe.
Like, I think that Zelda games used to have a longer

Speaker 1 a longer intermission between releases. And that, like Star Wars, would make them more special.
And the moment you start putting out these, like Tears of the Kingdom came out, what, two years ago?

Speaker 1 Maybe a year ago?

Speaker 3 It was the same year as Elden Ring, I think, wasn't it? Wasn't it 2022?

Speaker 1 Fucking, I don't know. Two years ago, probably.
Yeah, two years ago. And it just feels like.
Was it the same?

Speaker 3 Was it last year? I think it was the same year as Baldur's Gate 3, right? Maybe it was last year.

Speaker 1 You are asking the wrong person who has no idea who was talking last week.

Speaker 1 Hold on. Maybe it was me.
Maybe I was having those complaints.

Speaker 3 2023. Yeah, it was last year.
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I feel like there's that, that's that, that rings true for how I felt about the release, but I was like, that can't be right. It had to have been two years ago.

Speaker 1 I just feel like there's a little bit too much Zelda being thrown at us because right before that was Link's Awakening and right before that was Breath of the Wild. And it's just been a lot of sort of

Speaker 1 aggressive release schedule for the Zelda IP. I think they could take a little break.

Speaker 3 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 Since since 2017, when Breath of the Wild comes out and really shakes up the franchise and is one of the best games ever made, then we have Link's Awakening, Skyward Sword, the remake, and Tears of the Kingdom, and then Echoes of Wisdom.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, we have gotten five, you know, mainline Zeldas. A couple of those are remakes, but you know, very extensive remakes, complete overhauls

Speaker 3 in the past seven years.

Speaker 1 Mario Odyssey, Mario Wonder, and Mario 3D World. There's been a lot less Mario jammed down our throats.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I guess if you count all the, you know,

Speaker 3 the Zelda spin-offs,

Speaker 3 whatever that Hyrule rhythm game was called, I can't remember the name of it.

Speaker 1 Hyrule Rhythm.

Speaker 3 It's like beat to the kingdom. Cadence of Hyrule.
That's what it is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, there have been a lot of those. And I know those are, you know, a lot of those are well-regarded, but still, it's been a lot of Zelda.

Speaker 1 It's a lot of Zelda.

Speaker 3 It's a lot of Zelda.

Speaker 3 Anyway, Heather, what are you playing?

Speaker 3 The truth is,

Speaker 1 the only

Speaker 1 gaming I've been able to do this week is on a company that struck, so I'm not going to endorse the company nor the game. Wow.
And I guess I'm going to pass my time

Speaker 1 on to Ranch and ask what Ranch has been playing.

Speaker 3 Wow, Ranch, what are you playing?

Speaker 1 I've finally been brave enough to start Resident Evil 4.

Speaker 3 I fucking love to hear it. I love to hear it so much.

Speaker 3 That's the best thing I've ever heard. Ranch, I'm proud of you again.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 Where are you in Resident Evil 4?

Speaker 1 I just finished chapter 4. Okay.

Speaker 3 Is that the, are we dealing with a lake monster? Where are we exactly in the crowd?

Speaker 1 I have done lake monster. Got it.

Speaker 1 I have done very large man, large guy with big hammer

Speaker 3 with dog.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, that's a fun fight.

Speaker 3 Jonathan.

Speaker 3 Oh, Jonathan. That's how you know him.

Speaker 1 And I just got to Ashley.

Speaker 3 Wow. Okay.

Speaker 3 Now, remind us where you are because I know you played some of the Resident Evil Frenches. Did you play Resident Evil 4 back in the day? No.
Where you knew this game?

Speaker 1 Okay. Never.
I've never played Resident Evil 4.

Speaker 1 RE2 was the first one I ever tried playing, which I think was scarier than Resident Evil 4. Yeah, Resident Evil 4 is a little more action movie.
Yeah. And just like not being

Speaker 1 in like tight hallways and stuff.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 For some reason, I thought, so the Resident Evil movie, like like in the 2000s,

Speaker 1 I like loved that movie. It was like a word.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was like formative for me. We had some fun when we re-watched it on the podcast.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was actually pretty. It holds up pretty well.
The Paul W. Sanderson movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I like loved it as a kid. Yeah.
And for some reason, I thought Resident Evil 4 was going to feature Alice. I don't know why I had that in my head.
I was very surprised to be in a village in Spain.

Speaker 3 No, I can understand that though.

Speaker 3 Like, you might, you would assume if you, you know, like, if you're familiar with the movie, that, oh, that that must be the main character from that must be a key character from the game would show up in some of the games uh del lago is the is the river monster of course and then el gigante is the big old uh the uh the the big brute jonathan el gigante

Speaker 3 what do they call a fish in that what are you got a guidebook del lago del lago yeah doesn't that mean the water it means from the lake the fuck would you name a fish from the lake why would you name a mexican food chain Del Taco?

Speaker 3 I mean, we could be here all day. Wait, what does Del mean? Of.
Of the. Of the taco.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Look.

Speaker 3 What does it make mean? We're saying the same thing. What does Mick mean? Mick is, I think, just a prefix for a, you know, a Scottish or Irish name.
It doesn't mean like of the Donalds.

Speaker 3 I mean, it might technically.

Speaker 3 I don't know the etymology of the MC prefix. Yeah.
Well, I mean, the only MCs I know are MC Esher and the ones that drive the beat.

Speaker 3 Okay. Eclectic bits of knowledge you have there.

Speaker 3 Wait, you don't know what an MC is? No, I know what they are. I know both of these things.
All right.

Speaker 3 Well, are you enjoying yourself? Yeah,

Speaker 1 I really like it. I'm having a lot of fun with it.
I've actually been streaming it.

Speaker 3 Oh, cool. Wait, what's your...
Do you want to shout out your Twitch or do you want to keep it private?

Speaker 1 Actually, some get play listeners have been dropping by the stream, and that's been really fun because... I'm often lost and don't know what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 But I started streaming so friends could keep me company and I wouldn't be as scared because it's just much scarier playing by yourself.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that's been helpful because I- Yeah, that is that is the thing.

Speaker 3 We, you know, we talked with our, with our buddy, uh, our buddy Oscar Matoya has been when he's been on the podcast of just like one way to deal the to deal with like being afraid is just to like eat something.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean? Like it's just like you're playing a you're playing a scary video game, you're watching a scary movie, just like eating something. It's like, oh, I have control of the situation.

Speaker 3 I'm not actually involved for this. I was like, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 I actually,

Speaker 1 when I played Resident Evil 4, ate pizza every single time I I played it.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 Because it was my weekend,

Speaker 1 my weekend time was with Resident Evil 4. And so I would always order a pizza with my friend Jim.
And we would play Resident Evil 4 on Sundays.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 1 when I play Resident Evil 4, I want a pizza.

Speaker 3 I know it's Jim, you mean, and I am just having such a sense of time and place of like you, when Resident Evil 4 comes out, the original Resident Evil. This is 2004, right? Yeah, I'm in Amsterdam.

Speaker 3 You're in Amsterdam. You're with, you're with our good friend Jim Woods, and you're eating pizza and playing Resident Evil 4.
And that sounds like a hell of a memory.

Speaker 1 It was a paradise. And

Speaker 1 let me tell you about the pizza because

Speaker 1 I know I've talked about this pizza on the podcast before, but I'm not going to assume that everybody has a perfect memory for every piece of pizza I've ever eaten.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 1 They had a pizza in Amsterdam at Domino's called the Double Decker, and it was a thin crust pizza

Speaker 1 on top of a regular crust pizza with a layer of cheese in between the two and then different cheese on top and the sauce on top.

Speaker 1 So when you bit down, it had like kind of that Gordita crunch style effect. So you'd have crunch and soft and two different kinds of cheeses.

Speaker 1 It was the best pizza I've ever had from like a chain restaurant.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they had a, I remember you talking about this, they had a double decker pizza, but I can't remember if that was

Speaker 3 in the States, but I can't remember if that was a, might have been a Pizza Hut promotion.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 It was a Domino's promotion, full thin crust on top of a regular crust and in fact saying this out loud i'm like why haven't i done this why haven't i ordered a thin crust domino's pizza and a regular domino's pizza and then put

Speaker 1 on top

Speaker 1 because i'd be able to semi-duplicate they they had a they had better cheese over there it was you know it's yeah it's all better quality it's a better fucking quality but I mean, I could probably synthesize the experience.

Speaker 3 That sounds amazing. Okay, there was a Pizza Hut one.

Speaker 3 I think it might have been the double decker, but one I'm seeing here is Pizza Hut had the triple decker only.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. That's too many decks.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's American excellence. That's what that is.
So, okay, so you're going to keep playing the game. You're going to keep streaming the game.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think I'm going to continue.
I love the story so far.

Speaker 3 I just, I love the cult stuff.

Speaker 1 I love that they're like kind of still people and not bully zombies.

Speaker 3 Right. And I love

Speaker 1 roundhouse kicking the old ladies.

Speaker 3 There's something uniquely scary about the way the villagers are, the ones infected with the Laplaga. It's just like, yeah, you're, you're right.

Speaker 3 Just like the, that their humanity is still there makes them even more threatening. What, what, what's your Twitch channel, if you want to shout out?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's um at yard underscore or

Speaker 1 yard underscore underscore sard.

Speaker 3 Got it. Got it.
Just like your social media. Yes, yes.
Awesome.

Speaker 1 So here's, I found an image from an Italian double-decker domino's pizza, but this one is two thin crusts on top of each other, which is different. It's a different flavor profile, I think.

Speaker 1 But I cannot find, I cannot find images, even though I spelled it in Dutch. But then again, why would anybody save from 2004 an image of an advertisement from Domino's? Right.

Speaker 1 We got to have it sometime, guys. I'm going to, I'm going to make it.

Speaker 3 I'm going to master it.

Speaker 3 I feel like, because my thing with the, you know, the the big thing I thought would be the most amazing thing I could possibly eat as a kid.

Speaker 3 And then every time I've gotten in my entire life, it was a disappointment was stuffed crust pizza. Like anytime I have stuffed crust pizza, I'm just like, this is,

Speaker 3 this is, this is too much of this ungapachka to, you know, say, well, there's one, one, one, too many things.

Speaker 3 What? Ungapachka. It's a Yiddish word, meaning like it's, it's one thing too many.

Speaker 3 All right. I'm going to use it.
Yeah, I think you should. I think you should adopt it.
My balls are ungapachka.

Speaker 3 Don't want to interrogate that.

Speaker 3 That means I've got five.

Speaker 3 Well, okay, then I would say I would not say Ungopachka would be three.

Speaker 3 Five is, yeah, you got something else going on.

Speaker 3 I get five. It's like a full, it's like a full drawer.

Speaker 3 Ah, Christ. So anyway,

Speaker 3 yeah, I did. But that double decker sounds like it's the right balance of of ingredients.

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Speaker 3 All right, let's talk about the Super Nintendo slash Super. I think it should be, before you move on.
I have said in the past that I only have one ball. Yes.

Speaker 3 But I did go to a doctor and tried a cream and it went far in the other direction.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, whatever this cream was, it, you know, may have been some sort of growth hormone or whatever. It seems like it overreacted.
Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 my stem cell's got a lot of labla in it, so, you know, we're gonna, we, every, like, week, I have to go to the hospital and get a few of them trimmed back.

Speaker 3 I mean, trimmed back is

Speaker 3 not the language I want to hear about that.

Speaker 3 All right, I'm on my way out. Thanks so much for stopping by, Resident Evil Merchant.
Let's talk about the Super Nintendo/slash Super Famicom versus the Sega Mega Drive slash Sega Genesis.

Speaker 3 It is SNES V Genesis Revengeance.

Speaker 3 So, the Sega Mega Drive launches in October 1988 in Japan and is rebranded the Sega Genesis for launch in 1989 and August in North America.

Speaker 3 I believe Genesis, I believe North America is the only territory where Genesis is used. Mega Drive is also used in PAL.

Speaker 3 The Nintendo Super Famicom launches in in November 1990 in Japan, and the Super Nintendo subsequently launches in August 1991 in North America.

Speaker 3 So basically two full years separate the launch of these consoles in their respective territories, and one year separates their launch in Japan and their launch in North America.

Speaker 3 We're still in that era where there was a huge gulf between foreign and domestic launches, which would continue through the Sega Dreamcast era.

Speaker 1 And what a wild time it was. If you were a video game fan, you would know that there was a console that existed out there in the universe that you couldn't play because this was before the internet.

Speaker 1 So you had photos of these things in magazines.

Speaker 1 You would have like long sections of text in EGM where Quarterman would talk to you about like how, how intense the graphic shift was between the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo or the Master System and the Genesis.

Speaker 1 It was an interesting time to be a young person into video games. Were you a Quarterman kid?

Speaker 3 I like Sushi X.

Speaker 1 I did not like Sushi X.

Speaker 1 I like Quarterman because I like that long, it felt like reading, I mean, now you would liken it to like behind the scenes, like scandal bullshit in like Hollywood like rags where it would just be like, oh, did you hear about what the problems were on the Megalopolis production?

Speaker 1 Our insider info says. uh it would be like that except for video games like they'd be like the rumor is the next Final Fantasy game will be launching on a Sony system, not a Nintendo system.

Speaker 1 You'd be like, that's impossible. But then

Speaker 1 it happened. By the way, side note, I've been in a real Sony like mindset lately.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, the PlayStation 3, you could hook a printer up to it.

Speaker 3 I did not know that. You could print.
Through all the myriad ports that were in that.

Speaker 1 Like all of the, all of the, in the cross-media bar, there are printer settings. And you could print

Speaker 1 from, like, if you, if you put in, like, a, uh, a photo, um, you know, because it also had slots for like SD cards and shit. Like, you could print photos from the PlayStation 3.

Speaker 1 Wow. Fucking crazy.

Speaker 3 I never knew that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Anyway. Now I'm just stuck in a rabbit hole of looking at the old EGM review crew.

Speaker 3 Che Chow. I like Che Chow.

Speaker 3 Candyman.

Speaker 3 Virus.

Speaker 3 Who else? Shawn Amo?

Speaker 1 Just in case you're lost about what Nick is doing right now, in the 90s,

Speaker 1 Electronics Gaming Magazine, or EGM,

Speaker 1 had what was known as the Review Crew, which we reference in the Ryu Crew, Hadouken.

Speaker 1 And it was a group of different voices, sometimes all penned by the same person, but it would try and provide you perspective on if you identified with one of those characters that you would probably follow the games that they gave a 10 to versus the games that they gave a five to.

Speaker 1 So you'd like Sushi X, who is a character that Nick mentioned earlier, was really into action games. And so if Sushi X liked a game and you liked action games, you'd be like, yes.

Speaker 1 But if it was a dating sim, Sushi X might be like, that's a five. And you'd be like, oh, I like action games.
I shouldn't play this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, different, you know, different, different review crew were into like fighting games or schmucks or RPGs or what have you.

Speaker 3 And then I think when we did our chrono trigger episode pretty recently, I went through some of those.

Speaker 3 And that was one of those ones where just like everyone, despite their taste, regardless of their taste, they were all on the same page of like 9.5 and 10s or whatever, which would happen sometimes with a really, really classic game.

Speaker 3 I think they were.

Speaker 3 discreet individuals. I think they were, because

Speaker 3 I think later on when they added photographs, you could be like, oh, these are all different people.

Speaker 1 But I know that that's not true because I know that one of the people who was

Speaker 1 writing for Sushi X was somebody that I worked with. Wow.
So it was multiple people.

Speaker 3 Wow. That is wild.

Speaker 1 But yeah, when I was a games journalist, a guy was like, oh, yeah, I used to sometimes be Sushi X.

Speaker 3 Oh, Shu, I remember it too. Dan Shu.

Speaker 3 Anyway, yeah,

Speaker 3 and by the, before the, before the, uh, the, the pedants in the Discord jump down your throat, it's Electronic Gaming Monthly. Oh, the amazing.

Speaker 1 What did I say? Magazine?

Speaker 3 Magazine. Understandable.
Like a fucking idiot. Like a true blue fool.
Anyway, so yes, these systems come out in Japan. We're coveting them from overseas.
They come out a year later in North America.

Speaker 3 And one thing that happened is that

Speaker 3 for the first time,

Speaker 3 to paraphrase Yoda, begun these console wars have.

Speaker 3 This was the first time where really the generation was cleaved between fan bases because previously it was either Atari hegemony or a Nintendo hegemony.

Speaker 3 There was just one basic, you know, like one huge dominant presence that was completely owning the console market.

Speaker 1 And I say to Sega's credit,

Speaker 1 there was a Sega system at the same time as the Nintendo Entertainment System, and that's the master system, right?

Speaker 1 So the fact that they went from a footnote to being like 50-50 market share at their height, I know that eventually they ended up losing that console war.

Speaker 1 And as a Sega fangirl, I'm, I'm, I hate to admit it, but it's true. Yes.

Speaker 1 Um, the fact that they came from the bottom and then managed to eke out almost equality in the next generation is a testament to how powerful the Genesis was and how powerful the Genesis marketing machine was.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, what, in terms of what was the most significant console, you know, of all time, how you rank them, that's a different episode.

Speaker 3 I mean, I think that there's a pretty strong argument for the Sony PlayStation just in terms of how it completely shocked uh shook up the marketplace and and you know it led to the transition to um disc-based games over cartridge-based games.

Speaker 3 But you know, you can also say the NES slash Famicom for effectively creating the gamepad and launching the console market.

Speaker 3 But regardless, the Sega Genesis slash masters or slash Mega Drive rather is in the discussion because it was such an impactful console. It made gaming cool for the first time.

Speaker 3 It made it not just a thing for a toy for little kids, but an activity for teenagers. Pretty wild right now.

Speaker 1 You're arguing for my side.

Speaker 3 No, I'm just saying, look, it was a very important console, and part of that came from its marketing.

Speaker 3 So I thought we'd start things off with a couple of commercials to show the contrast between how the Sega Genesis was marketed in North America and how the Super Nintendo was marketed.

Speaker 3 So let's start with this Genesis commercial ranch.

Speaker 3 16-bit arcade graphics. You can't do this on Nintendo Genesis.

Speaker 3 We're getting a bunch of game footage through here of just like really cool looking like arcade style games.

Speaker 4 Get Joe Montana free, Pet Riley free, Buster Douglas free, Super Monaco GP free or Collins free.

Speaker 3 What Nintendo does

Speaker 3 16-bit Genesis system between now and October 31st and get an extra game. Look, you listen to that in 2024.
It doesn't sound cool, but that was like pretty cool for the era.

Speaker 1 Well, it's also like Nintendo was a

Speaker 1 bright, colorful, like the, the marketing campaigns for Nintendo games were like clay, like claymation or costumes or cartoons.

Speaker 1 And when the Genesis comes out, suddenly there are pop stars and actual sports heroes in commercials.

Speaker 1 And the, the, the, uh, the base background for like what the marketing campaign is is black and red instead of like gray or colorful. Yes, right.

Speaker 1 So it's it's putting on this like edgy, cool teenager vibe to contrast with Nintendo, especially in the year before the Super Nintendo launches.

Speaker 1 It's saying, buy this system because the regular Nintendo is so far behind us already.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and that

Speaker 3 aspect of its marketing extends to its the aesthetic of the hardware itself,

Speaker 3 which we've talked about, but just like it being black as opposed to

Speaker 3 gray or, I mean, I guess all the Nintendo hardware at the era

Speaker 3 was a shade of gray. It just felt more like a piece of consumer electronics as opposed to a toy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it seemed like something your dad would all.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and here is a Super Nintendo commercial of the era.

Speaker 5 When you decide to step up to this kind of power, this kind of challenge, this kind of flying, crashing feeling, when you decide to get serious, there's only one place to come, the games of Super Nintendo.

Speaker 5 No one else creates this kind of experience,

Speaker 5 because no one else creates these kinds of games.

Speaker 5 Now you're playing with power, superpower.

Speaker 3 So the now where you're playing with power tagline was one they used, but a big part of what's interesting about that ad to me, beyond featuring an ageless Paul Rudd,

Speaker 3 is

Speaker 3 it's crazy how he looks the same. He looks ad from 1991.

Speaker 3 But anyway, it's like, that's such a reactive ad. It's acknowledging the existence of competition.
It is saying that, like, oh, but

Speaker 3 we still got the cool, we got the games. And hey, we're kind of cool too, you know, while it's showing footage of FC Roan Pilot Wings and

Speaker 3 Ninzelda.

Speaker 1 It was a reactive ad and it was a response to Sega's pressure, Sega having, you know, Michael Jackson in a commercial for the Sega Genesis. And suddenly you have to be like, well, no,

Speaker 1 now you're playing with power. It's superpower over here.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But at the bottom of that very ad, it's like Zelda game forthcoming.

Speaker 1 Like they're advertising stuff that you can't even do on the system because they're so desperate to catch up to the Genesis lead in the early 90s.

Speaker 3 So let's get into this, Heather.

Speaker 1 Fucking go.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to argue for the Super Nintendo side. And I'm arguing this as my birthday is in August.
The Super Nintendo launches in in August 1991. I am at Camp Aero Bear

Speaker 3 playing clarinet in an orchestra on my summer vacation.

Speaker 3 And I come home from Camp Aerobear, and my dad surprises me with my birthday

Speaker 3 for my birthday with a new Super Nintendo. It was the, it's still like the most memorable gift I ever got.
Wow. Yeah.
And so like I effectively had a Super Nintendo at launch.

Speaker 3 And I will say I spent most of Summer Camp with a Nintendo Power Magazine thumbing through it excited about the upcoming Super Nintendo system. So to come home to it was just like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 It's still, it still kind of gives me chills. So I was in on day one.
We were a Nintendo family. We had the Nintendo,

Speaker 3 you know, the

Speaker 3 NES. I had the Super Nintendo.
Then I had the Nintendo 64. My first non-Nintendo console was a Sony PlayStation.

Speaker 3 You're coming from the position of a Genesis slash Sega kid.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I'm a Sega household. My dad is always

Speaker 1 super enthusiastic about whatever the cutting edge technology is. And so he buys me a master system instead of a Nintendo because it can display more colors.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I'm obviously too young to be making those decisions on my own. But once I'm in the Sega-like

Speaker 1 mindset, then I'm Sega all the way through my childhood. And I have a photo here of the moment that I unwrap my Genesis.
And this is the picture of me unwrapping my Genesis when I'm a kid.

Speaker 3 Wow, that is wild. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And that's like your Nintendo 64 video. That's like the moment of

Speaker 3 recognition of what you're receiving. That's wild.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So

Speaker 1 my parents,

Speaker 1 my parents know, because they're, you know, trying to milk the master system for as long as possible, like get as much play out of it before we upgrade.

Speaker 1 And Sonic the Hedgehog comes out before we upgrade to the Genesis.

Speaker 1 And I want Sonic so badly that I start cutting out advertisements of Sonic the Hedgehog and taping Sonic to my wall where most young girls are putting like, you know,

Speaker 1 new kids on the block or backstreet boys or whoever the fucking, I don't know, the band guys.

Speaker 1 I've got... tons of photos of Sonic the Hedgehog all over my fucking bedroom.

Speaker 1 And so when I get the Genesis, I'm like, finally, now I can play Sonic because Sonic is so beautiful and brilliant visually compared to what Nintendo and

Speaker 1 I think it's, I think, Sonic comes out before Super Nintendo, also. It does.

Speaker 3 It comes out a few months before,

Speaker 3 in the United States, it comes out a few months before the Super Nintendo launches.

Speaker 1 So when those commercials are playing, you're like, holy shit, this game is so gorgeous. And I know you look at it now and you're like, oh, it's a 16-bit game.

Speaker 1 But at the time, if you compared it to like the washed out palette of Super Mario Bros. 3, which was the Nintendo flagship at the time, it was astonishing.

Speaker 3 Well, it also had an incredible sense of speed. And that's a thing you never really got.

Speaker 3 with the with Nintendo's games, particularly the Super Nintendo, which was notorious for having such a slow CPU and having a lot of slowdown.

Speaker 3 I think I experienced a particular firsthand with a lot of the first generation, you know, the very early wave

Speaker 3 launch title era games.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 I have numbers for you. Yeah.
The Sega Genesis was equipped with a 7.67 megahertz Motorola

Speaker 1 68,000 CPU, which was faster than Super Nintendo's 3.58 megahertz RICO 5885A22 processor. The higher clock speed allowed for the Genesis to handle those faster-paced games like Sonic the Hedgehog.

Speaker 1 And the commercials were constantly showcasing how much faster, they called it blast processing this time, the Sega Genesis games were.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And, you know, look, if we're going to do this, the stats side, and you talked about

Speaker 3 colors earlier. The advantage the Nintendo the Nintendo hardware had, I mean, it was more advanced hardware, but it had more colors.

Speaker 3 It had a palette of 32,768 versus 512 for the Genesis, and then on screen could display 256 at once versus 64 for the Genesis. That was particularly visible in ports.

Speaker 3 But also, the other thing was that the Super Nintendo had sprite scaling and rotation, meaning that you could have...

Speaker 3 I don't know how much explanation of sprites I need to give to the listeners of this podcast, but I guess people who grew up maybe with 3D games only, it's like the equivalent of a model, of like a character model, say in a 3D game, might be like the sprite for a character in a 2D game, not just for a character, for any object that's displayed on screen.

Speaker 3 And you could spin those, you know, along an axis. You could scale them towards the screen or away from

Speaker 3 the screen.

Speaker 3 And relatedly, there was a mode, Mode 7, which allowed actual like depth that was like you could you could kind of use the plane going into the screen

Speaker 3 For visual information which was was used in a number of Super Nintendo games, but I think the main advantage the Super Nintendo had was input which is that the controller for the Super Nintendo was an actual innovation It wasn't just this incremental thing that the Genesis like at first had a third button as opposed to two buttons on the the controllers of of previous generations.

Speaker 3 The Super Nintendo controller had four face buttons plus two shoulder buttons and the four face button layout, the diamond face button layout, uh, and the shoulder buttons became standard for gamepad sense.

Speaker 3 Those were two things that just became uh, you know, like the template for how controllers are made from this point on.

Speaker 1 Which is a shame because after Genesis launches with the three-button pad, they upgrade to a six-button pad where all six buttons are on the face of the controller.

Speaker 3 And this was partly because of the super the street fighter and other fighting game ports that were coming.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there was a huge influx of arcade ports of fighting games, and those fighting games in the arcade have six buttons on the surface of the cabinet.

Speaker 1 So to emulate that, the Genesis comes out with a six-button pad where all six buttons are right there where the four buttons usually are on a Super Nintendo pad. And that

Speaker 1 input aesthetic continues onto the Saturn.

Speaker 1 And it's a real, like for me at the time, when I would try and play Street Fighter at a friend's house, I'd be frustrated because I'd be like, well, you can't the stuff like who would in their right mind would ever use their left finger to to do a roundhouse kick this is a whole thing with with this with playing street fighter on consoles but sorry keep going but but but now that we have now uh adopted these like

Speaker 1 controllers where effectively every physical space on the controller especially if you're using like the the dual sense edge yes where there's like in extra buttons it feels like you're holding a

Speaker 1 conceptual circle. Like everything that your hands can clutch can move some actionable interface.

Speaker 1 But at the time, again,

Speaker 1 the consoles were going in two separate directions and Genesis was chasing these arcade ports.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 look,

Speaker 3 I think I'd love to have six face buttons when I think about it. Because it's just like so many, so many, the games are so complicated.

Speaker 3 There's so many bindings, and there's so many times where I'm just like, I kind of wish I could, just there was an easier way to do some of this shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the, the, I think the dual shock would be better if it had six face buttons.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it might be nice.

Speaker 1 Or the dual sense, whatever the fuck they're called.

Speaker 3 Anyway, with the, the, the four on the face and the, the, the shoulder buttons became standard.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about, I want to talk about Sega's initial dedication to their fan base. If you're playing the Super Nintendo, You have to leave your NES behind.

Speaker 1 You can't just take those games that you grew up with and drop them into the Super Nintendo.

Speaker 3 It's wild that it took until the PlayStation 2 for backwards compatibility to even be a consideration for console manufacturers.

Speaker 1 But that's not true. The Genesis had the Powerbase converter, which was a simple snap-on cartridge adapter that allowed you to take all of your Master System games and play them on the Genesis.

Speaker 1 But this was an add-on, right? Yeah, it was an add-on. But it's not, it's, it was an option.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 1 And if you're going to say like, oh, you know, eventually the Super Game Boy comes out, which lets you play your Game Boy games on the Nintendo, Super Nintendo. Sure, great.

Speaker 3 I'll just strike through that bullet point then.

Speaker 1 But I'm saying that, like, a Game Boy game is significantly less.

Speaker 1 It's less of a console experience than the Master System games. So you were coming into the Genesis with a much larger library.

Speaker 3 Look, Nintendo has always done this. They have always tried to find ways for you to rebuy or

Speaker 3 to try to get you to buy more software. And one way they do that is by introducing,

Speaker 3 you know, like the whole thing I remember when the Super Nintendo came out and people were like, I would wish I could play my old games on it, where they were just like, well, you could hook up both systems to a

Speaker 3 TV, which was extremely cumbersome because a lot of TVs of that era had like an RF switch, like had one input that you could plug a console into.

Speaker 3 You're not going to unhook one and hook up the other every time you want to play something different. But the main thing is they were just like, there's all these new games you can play.

Speaker 3 Cause really all they wanted to do was drive you towards new software.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and then ultimately resell you their back catalog. But

Speaker 3 the other thing the Super Nintendo did beyond the controller is that it had things like the Super Scope, which was a... functional, interesting light gun.

Speaker 3 I don't think it was any sort of, you know, it wasn't a world beater or anything. It wasn't this incredible innovation, but it was a cool light gun.

Speaker 3 But then also the mouse, just the idea of trying out a mouse on a console. And that allowed for some interesting games, most notably Mario Paint.

Speaker 3 And that also like led to like, you know, something like Mario Paint also was like, hey, we can kind of expand the possibilities of what you can do with a console.

Speaker 3 This isn't just for playing through, you know, linear games. This is, it could also be like something of an outlet for creativity.

Speaker 3 And we see that with a lot of game designs that followed in later generations. Not saying it all comes with a Super Nintendo mouse, but that's where their thinking was headed.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's tons of bizarre third-party input systems for the Sega Genesis.

Speaker 3 Sure, but these are first-party things that were presented as like.

Speaker 1 I mean, there was a light gun for the Genesis. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 But there were also things like the activator.

Speaker 3 I got to defend the activator.

Speaker 1 Feels like a point for me. I want to say that.

Speaker 3 Look,

Speaker 1 from the perspective of 2024, it's hard hard to argue that Sega is the better system here in the 90s. But

Speaker 1 in part because Nintendo is the one that's left standing, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, and you could also say, and you mentioned this earlier, but the market spoke to some degree.

Speaker 3 The Super Famicom slash Super Nintendo ultimately sold more units worldwide, which is 49 million versus 31 million for the Mega Drive.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is also surprising given that it was more expensive at launch.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it really did seem like the Genesis was going to win. But I mean, I think there was was also like just enough Nintendo momentum plus all these huge Nintendo IP that started to come out that,

Speaker 3 you know, led them to secure this generation as well.

Speaker 1 I think one of the things, though, that is going to be a hard sell here on the podcast, but is an important sell, is that

Speaker 1 in the same way that the Sega Genesis launches at a small at a lower price point,

Speaker 1 it also

Speaker 1 extends through expandability through console add-ons like the Sega CD and the 32X, which we might joke about now, but was an what?

Speaker 3 No, I mean, keep on.

Speaker 1 But those were an opportunity for families like mine

Speaker 1 to extend the lifespan of the system and to keep giving you more and more powerful options of play without having to totally throw away your gaming library.

Speaker 1 And I can't stress enough how hard that was for parents in the 90s to be like, these games that we've spent the equivalent of like $120 per game.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 1 Because these are like $59.99 or whatever. So like each game is a massive investment for most families.

Speaker 1 Sega was saying, hey, how about instead of upgrading to the next fucking Nintendo system where you're going to have to repurchase all the like Nintendo is already making you repurchase Mario games in collections like Super Mario All-Stars.

Speaker 1 How about instead of doing that, you get a Sega CD and you can keep all your Genesis games, you can keep all of your Master System games and you can add better processing than the Super Nintendo without having to give up everything you've already invested in.

Speaker 1 I think that's an important point.

Speaker 3 It's, I get what you're saying.

Speaker 3 And it is one of those things that, hey, some expansions to extend the lifespan of the console without requiring a new investment of an entirely new console is one of those things that makes a lot of sense in theory.

Speaker 3 There's two issues with that. One is that neither of these hardware expansions were all that well supported

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 they fractured the market and

Speaker 3 the developers were like, and publishers were like, well, why make a game for this, the subset of console owners when we could make a game that would appeal to everyone who owns one, not just people who owned a 32X

Speaker 3 or a Sega CD.

Speaker 3 The other thing is

Speaker 3 these just were still so expensive. Like, it's like the 32X,

Speaker 3 it retailed initially, well, to go back, the Super Nintendo launched at $199

Speaker 3 in the America. This 32X launched at $159.

Speaker 3 The Sega CD launched at $299.

Speaker 3 So, like, if you're getting a Sega Genesis, a 32X, and a Sega CD, all of a sudden, like, you know, you're approaching $600 worth of hardware. Well, I'm not sure.
That's a big investment.

Speaker 1 I'm not telling you to buy them on launch day.

Speaker 3 I'm telling you to buy them once they drop in price. But I think the main, but I think it's also like, you know, you get,

Speaker 3 it's like, how many great 32X games were there? How many great Sega CD games were there?

Speaker 1 I mean, there were, like, it's hard. There are incredibly important Sega CD games, one of which we've played on this, on this podcast.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, Snatcher is the big one for me, but like also, like, you know, there was a, there was a Lunar verse, there's a version of Lunar, which I ended up playing on, on, on PlayStation when they ported it there.

Speaker 1 Sonic CD, Lunar, uh, Snatcher.

Speaker 1 Like, these are big fucking games. The sequel to Out of This World premieres on the Sega CD.
Uh, like, there's also games where

Speaker 1 there's just addition, like, Echo the Dolphin comes out on Sega CD with an entirely improved graphic system and also an entirely improved score. Like, those are important things.

Speaker 1 Yes. Fucking system ruled.

Speaker 3 Look, I'm hey, look, I'm not, I'm not a Genesis hater, but I'm saying, like, if we're talking about the console holistically,

Speaker 3 it was something of a boondoggle to be like, hey, there, here's your tier two hardware expansions to experience its full library. And if you ever, I don't, did you have both expansions at once?

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 if you look at this, the Sega genesis with both a sega cd attra like attached underneath my television currently and the 32x in its i mean literally hooked up right now in its cartridge slot it looks like an abomination it looks like it wants to be killed i can't argue don't it doesn't look like that

Speaker 1 i can't argue that it is a pleasing aesthetic

Speaker 1 that is not what i'm here to do I am arguing that it is an excellent entertainment system. And frankly, you sound like somebody who's

Speaker 1 who's forgotten that Nintendo, the only reason Nintendo didn't have a CD system is because they couldn't close the fucking marriage with Sony and created their worst enemy.

Speaker 3 What a sliding doors moment that is in video game history. If Nintendo had figured out the Sony PlayStation expansion and actually had that been, you know, had that been a part of

Speaker 3 Super Nintendo or of the Nintendo hardware

Speaker 3 as opposed to its own standalone.

Speaker 1 That is what the PlayStation is.

Speaker 1 Initially, it was just an add-on for the Super Nintendo that was going to snap onto the bottom. And there are prototypes of the machine that function that are out there that have been sold on eBay.

Speaker 3 And I think the fact that they didn't do that and they were like, ah, we don't need to do this, is what led to them to do the 64 DD, the disk drive they had that ended up being Japan only.

Speaker 3 That was like kind of a thing of like, well, why are you doing this?

Speaker 1 That was on the N64.

Speaker 3 And I meant to say N64. Yeah,

Speaker 3 the 64 DD for the N64. But like the next generation, they were like, well, we can't miss the boat again, even though

Speaker 3 it was a cartridge format. They, you know, they did this Quixotic disk drive.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 that's all fair. And that may have been ultimately a miscalculation, though.

Speaker 3 I think probably for this generation, they were probably right to keep it to not have an expansion for it, to not have there be an add-on.

Speaker 3 But I think what was smart about Nintendo's approach additionally is that instead of being like, hey, we're going to have new hardware, they were just like, we're just going to push the hardware that we have as far as we can go.

Speaker 3 And so you get these late in lifespan games that are doing things with like.

Speaker 3 late in console lifespan games that are that are really pushing the hardware and that are really trying uh you know uh some new things from a from a graphical standpoint like most notably Donkey Kong Country uh but also uh you know the Super Mario RPG it

Speaker 3 is like another one where like these have um

Speaker 3 you know rendered 3d models that are that are presented as sprites uh and it ends up being like a you know a completely new aesthetic uh that that that that that again makes this feel like a like we're pushing this hardware in a new direction i if you want to talk about pushing hardware in a new direction yeah why don't we talk about the sega channel

Speaker 1 the genesis is the first

Speaker 1 the first online gaming uh console and this was uh early internet feature for the Sega Genesis that would allow you to download.

Speaker 1 Fucking imagine this at a time when like everybody else is going out and purchasing their their cartridges or going to the fucking blockbuster and renting them or like

Speaker 1 Genesis effectively has Netflix. It has a downloadable service that allows you to play games via cable.
So you would plug your fucking cable into the back of your Sega system

Speaker 1 and play Genesis games without leaving your house. That's fucking crazy for the 90s? For 1994?

Speaker 3 Like, I thought you were going to say for the 90 people who owned one. All right.

Speaker 1 We're going to get snarky.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there was the Saddle of You that Nintendo had as well that I didn't think ever made it to North America, but I mean, that was another one where it was like,

Speaker 3 it was just kind of ahead of its time.

Speaker 3 But, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I do admire that Genesis, that Sega was trying stuff.
Yeah. Like, it's cool that they were just like, that they were just like,

Speaker 3 we don't fucking know. I don't know.
Let's try this.

Speaker 3 Let's try this other thing. Let's try this

Speaker 3 proto-modem. Let's try this, you know, this 32-bit hardware expansion.

Speaker 3 But I think Super Nintendo, by keeping things focused on like, hey, we're going to just like try to make the ultimate 2D console.

Speaker 3 I think where they ended up winning is the software side of things. And that's really what matters with a video game system is the games.

Speaker 3 I mean, we go through, I was just going through a list of best Super Nintendo games, and I just was like, I'm just going to stop at a certain point, because so many of these are just like stone cold classics.

Speaker 3 Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World, those are both games that are in my personal top 10 games of all time.

Speaker 3 I think generally, a lot of people would say Chrono Trigger is, you know, one of the best games ever made.

Speaker 3 And, you know, platformer enthusiasts and Mario fans would say Super Mario World is maybe the best 2D platformer, one of the best 2D platformers in the conversation.

Speaker 3 Legend of Zelda, linked to the past, teased in the Paul Rudd ad. Super Metroid.
I mean, just,

Speaker 3 that's a game that's like aged a little bit, and modern Metroidvanias certainly play better, but like Metroidvanias, as they certainly,

Speaker 3 you know, as they are now, don't exist without Super Metroid. Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy VI, the Japan-only Final Fantasy V.

Speaker 3 Super Mario Kart, birth the Mario Kart franchise, Super Mario RPG I mentioned. Super Mario All-Stars.
If compilation games were included on all-time lists, I mean, that would be in the conversation.

Speaker 3 conversation. You have several of the best 2D platformers ever made all in one

Speaker 3 package with a fresh coat of paint. Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Bros.
2 Japan, called The Lost Levels here. Super Mario Bros.
2 slash USA and Super Mario Bros. 3.

Speaker 3 Tetris Attack, incredible puzzle game. The Donkey Kong Country franchise, which I mentioned, three of them.
Mario Paint, I mentioned. SimCity,

Speaker 3 a really, really unique port of Sim City. Two incredible Japan-only Dragon Quest games, Dragon Quest V,

Speaker 3 Dragon Quest VI,

Speaker 3 which I later ended up playing when those got ports over here on different hardware. And then just a few deeper cuts.
Actorazor, game I really loved. This was a 2D,

Speaker 3 they did a remake of it that my understanding didn't play all that great.

Speaker 3 But Actrazer back in the 90s was awesome. It was a game where you had a sim where you were a town, like there were town, you were building towns, and in between that, you had action platformer levels.

Speaker 3 So it was like this hybrid design that was really engaging and one informed the other it also had an incredible score uh legend of the mystical ninja uh this was a really cool uh 2d platformer slash adventure game zombies ate my neighbors we covered on the platform um super duper fun action game axolay was a really cool schmup and you know a lot of the shooters on this this system particularly the r-type port that i remember uh the the original uh I think it was R-Type 3.

Speaker 3 Maybe it was Super R-Type, whichever, like, really suffered from a lot of slowdown, but Axel A played really well and took advantage of the Mode 7. Star Fox, that's another one.

Speaker 3 It shouldn't be in the deeper cuts. It should be in the hardware or the larger list, but that one births a franchise.
And here's another one: Harvest Moon. Think of what a big genre farming games are.

Speaker 3 Life Sims are. This is the birth of that genre.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 it's just the breadth of software that we have on the Super Nintendo is really impressive. And that's not even mentioning ports.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of those games are extremely impressive. I'm not going to argue that they aren't.

Speaker 1 But I also think that a lot of the love that

Speaker 1 those IP receive is because of their continued existence in modern gaming.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 1 it's hard to be like, holy shit, you know, Toe Jam and Earl is an incredible game when people now don't have any access to it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, what was the last Toe Jam and Earl? Did they try one for Dreamcast?

Speaker 1 I think they did.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 1 so it's, it's, again, maybe for Xbox? I think it's a, it, it is a losing argument when you when you fight against these

Speaker 1 colossal IP that Nintendo has fostered and and cultivated over the course of the last 30 years but that being said the Genesis still has Sonics 1 2

Speaker 1 Sonic and Knuckles Sonic CD Castlevania Bloodline Streets of Rage which has an incredible score streets of ra Streets of Rage 2 Toe Jam and Earl Phantasy Star 4, Gunstar Heroes, Contra Hardcore, which is fucking awesome.

Speaker 1 Golden Axe, Comics Zone, which was a game that played as if you were looking at a comic book. Like you stepped in and out of panels.

Speaker 1 It was visually unique and I feel like wasn't replicated until Beautiful Joe came out many, many years later. Echo the Dolphin, which was a

Speaker 1 almost like a climate

Speaker 1 pseudo-platformer where you played as a dolphin, but you still had to like navigate a map as if you were moving through a two-dimensional space.

Speaker 1 Rocket Knight Adventures, and then you have games like Mortal Kombat, which weren't censored on the Genesis. Mortal Kombat 2.

Speaker 1 Earthworm Gym is a fantastic fucking action platformer.

Speaker 1 All of the Street Fighter games are better on the Genesis because they are faster. And then you have RPGs like Landstalker, which still command a huge cult following.

Speaker 1 And these games, other than Sonic CD, are all on the Genesis proper.

Speaker 1 I'm not even diving into games like Snatcher, games like Lunar, games like Sonic CD, and even 32X games like Star Wars Arcade, which still holds up visually, or fucking weird footnotes like Knuckles Chaotix.

Speaker 1 Like, it's the Genesis is not the system of Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger, but it is still a system that had an enormous library of extremely gorgeous and compelling games.

Speaker 3 A lot of cool games. Gunstar Heroes was one I remember playing later.
Like, that was when I played.

Speaker 3 an emulated version of because I'd heard so much about it. And I was like, oh, this is a really, really cool action game.

Speaker 3 The ones I remember from, because my brother's friend had a Sega Genesis, and that was where I did most of my, anytime I played Genesis, it was at, it was at their house.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the thing I remember is I do remember a lot of Golden Acts, obviously remember Sonic, but I think this is a thing that's been forgotten.

Speaker 3 So Super Nintendo's, this is still the era of the pack-in game, where a game comes with a, with a hardware, hardware by default.

Speaker 3 Not like a later bundle, like, here's the Spider-Man bundle or the Call of Duty bundle to do do sales. It's like, oh no,

Speaker 3 when a system launches, a game comes in the box and a full game. Super Nintendo's launch title, pack-in title was Super Mario World.

Speaker 3 The Sega Genesis pack-in was a port of altered beast. Now, look, a cool game.
Rise from your grave. Rise from your grave.

Speaker 3 A cool game, but not on the same level of Super Mario World. But I do remember being like, like thinking that it was like, oh, this is like a, this is like a grown-up, like kind of arcade game.

Speaker 3 This game's a little bit edgy when I was playing it.

Speaker 1 I think Thunder Force 4, which maybe I didn't mention in my list, was also maybe the best schmup of the entire 16-bit generation and pulled off graphics on the Pega Genesis that

Speaker 1 you kind of can't believe are being done on a Pega Genesis. They used huge, huge

Speaker 1 layers of parallax scrolling to make the background look fully 3D.

Speaker 1 a it's fantastic do these games hold a candle to super mario world

Speaker 3 other than sonic probably not probably not yeah i think it depends on how you weight the phantasy star games i never really got into the phantasy star series but i think if you're making a list of like the top 10 games of this generation i think it there's going to be a lot of super nintendo games in there and i think particularly the top five i mean again depending on how you want to put rate sonic 2 it might be all super nintendo games

Speaker 1 sonic 2 Come on, put Sonic 2 on that fucking list. It's an incredible game.

Speaker 3 What do you bump? Prino Trigger, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Final Fantasy VI,

Speaker 3 Link to the Past. I mean, we're running out slots here.

Speaker 1 I think Sonic 2 is better than Super Metroid.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 I'm shocked. But also, I don't really like Super Metroid that much.

Speaker 3 I would think if you wanted to be a wanted to acknowledge the existence of Sega and like some sort of top five list there, then maybe you could create room for it. But I don't know.

Speaker 3 Am I making my personal list? I'm like, I like Sonic 2, but I don't know if it's better than any of those guys.

Speaker 1 I mean, I personally, and I wouldn't argue this for like most people, but I personally like Sonic 2 more than Super Mario World.

Speaker 1 Like, if I've got two televisions next to each other and Sonic 2's on one television and Super Mario World's on the other, I'm picking up the Sonic 2 controller.

Speaker 1 And I don't think that that's exclusively because I am more familiar with it. I also think that it is a more enjoyable pickup and play experience.

Speaker 3 I will say that that was a thing that if you go into like a, you know, an electronics boutique of the era and they had both kiosks side by side.

Speaker 3 Or I believe there were ads with which blast processing ads, which did the same thing, where you're seeing like the speed of

Speaker 3 Sonic the Hedgehog or Sonic 2 versus Super Mario World, which plays like a dream, but has a positively plodding pace in comparison.

Speaker 3 That was a thing where you could really see the visual contrast and really just felt like, oh, wow,

Speaker 3 this is an experience. And the other one's kind of like, okay, this is the Rinky Dink sort of feeling thing.

Speaker 1 It's also that sort of like visual comparison happens a lot when the 32X comes out because you have games like Virtual Racing or Star Wars Arcade being compared to the FX chip.

Speaker 1 Is Star Fox a more fun game than Star Wars Arcade? I don't know. Like they are very similar experiences.

Speaker 1 One is got fucking John Williams music, and the other one has

Speaker 3 like that shit happening.

Speaker 1 That being said,

Speaker 1 I'll admit that I've probably played more Star Fox than Star Wars Arcade in my life.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about.

Speaker 3 Oh, I want to touch on one thing before we get into music, which I do want to spend a little bit of time on. Okay.

Speaker 3 Because the Genesis obviously has an incredible sound chip, but the Super Nintendo is no slouch. And there's there's some great chiptune composition on both the platforms.

Speaker 3 You talked about the Mortal Kombat thing. I don't know if people are as aware of this if they didn't live through this generation.
We've touched on this in the past.

Speaker 3 Games like Night Trap for Sega CD where he launched

Speaker 3 Splatter House for

Speaker 3 PC Engine slash TurboGrafx 16.

Speaker 3 Mortal Kombat,

Speaker 3 these were hugely controversial games. There were congressional hearings.

Speaker 1 Night Trap was fully pulled from the shelves. It was pulled from the shelves.

Speaker 3 Joe Lieberman, rest in piss, was like fucking, you know, this complete dipshit senator was like railing against these games. And

Speaker 3 one thing that

Speaker 3 Nintendo did, and this was not necessarily in response to it, but one thing that they were like kind of had, again, just from thinking of it more of like, this is for kids, we are a toy company, or we're coming, we're a game company, but we're operating in a toy space.

Speaker 3 There was heavy censorship of Nintendo platforms really up through part of the Nintendo 64. It wasn't really until then when things started to soften.

Speaker 3 We talked about when we did our Corner Trigger episode, I believe, that, you know, that any references to alcohol which are present in the Japanese game were taken out by Nintendo of America and turned into like root beer or whatever.

Speaker 3 It's very childish. And the Mortal Kombat port for the Super Nintendo was the most egregious, which I owned because they took all the blood out.

Speaker 3 And the whole reason to play Mortal Kombat, fun fighting game, but the whole reason to play it was because you want to see blood, you want to see gore and you want to see fatalities.

Speaker 3 And what they did is they just did a palette swap so that when you hit somebody, instead of blood coming out, it would look like sweat.

Speaker 3 So it would look like a, like, you know, and it just, it honestly looked disgusting. It looked really nasty.
When you uppercut someone, a bunch of sweat would pour off of them.

Speaker 1 They also censored the fatalities.

Speaker 3 They censored the fatalities.

Speaker 3 So it would be things like, you know, Sub-Zero's fatality was that he, in the arcade version and this, the Sega Genesis port, he ripped someone's head off and you could see their spinal cord dangling down.

Speaker 3 In the Super Nintendo version, I remember it well, it was the same input, but then he would backflip away and then he would freeze them and then he would hit them and they would shatter, which was like, you know, that was honestly one of the more violent ones that was present because a lot of the other ones were just like ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Remember when we played Eternal Champions?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Eternal Champions are oxygen.

Speaker 1 Eternal Champions was

Speaker 1 another Genesis adult adult skewing title with the most absurdly gratuitous fatalities in it. People would be like shredded in wood chippers, hit by cars and explode, fall through endless...

Speaker 1 endless bottomless pits that would have like saw blades sticking out out of the side. It was like full-blown torture porn.

Speaker 3 They were trying to heighten Mortal Kombat. There was another game of the time.
I can't remember what it's called. I think it's not Times,

Speaker 3 not Time crisis obviously but something like that time killers time killers was another game where it was just the whole thing was they're going to try to be more violent than mortal kombat my favorite eternal champions uh fatality is uh the character senator uh when he would uppercut you off the screen and then you would um become impaled onto the washington monument

Speaker 3 corpse just exploding anyway the the the but the other one mortal combat another mortal kombat fatality i remember i think it was kano would rip your heart out right yeah And in the censored Nintendo one, he would just like

Speaker 3 kick you in the chest and rub his foot around. So it looked like he was just like kind of like giving you a foot massage to death.
It was laughable. It was so, it was so tame and so lame.

Speaker 1 I think if Grand Theft Auto had been released during this era, there's no way it would have appeared on the Nintendo.

Speaker 1 And it took a long time for Nintendo to shake the image of being a child-friendly video game company. Like, it's still strange to me when Switch ports

Speaker 1 like exist with blood and violence in them because I always assume, well, that probably didn't come out on Switch. Yeah.
And then you're like, oh, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 They've fully grown past this. But for a while, they were...
aiming specifically at the family-friendly experience.

Speaker 3 I remember, I think I read last year or something that there was finally, like you can finally see boobs on Nintendo hardware because there's a game with boobs on Switch, which was, again, unthinkable in the 90s.

Speaker 3 Anyway, I'll be looking that up.

Speaker 3 Comics code, like I think if I think if we, if Grand Theft Auto, I mentioned Comics Code, I think if Grand Theft Auto comes out for 16-bit hardware, it comes out the time of Night Trap and

Speaker 3 Mortal Kombat, and you have a game that comes out where you can do drive-by shootings and murder sex workers, I think we would end up with something like the Comics Code Authority, which happened with the comics industry, where there would be this heavy amount of self-censorship where there just wouldn't be like guns in games.

Speaker 3 There just wouldn't be violence in games, there wouldn't be blood in games, and that would be like the case for like 20 years before it grew out of it because it would be so reactive and so afraid of like the government coming in and censoring everything.

Speaker 3 Yeah, um, so yeah, it's it's it's kind of a it's kind of crazy when you compare that to uh to now and and just how violent and how

Speaker 3 uh graphic games have gotten. All right, let's talk about some music a little bit.

Speaker 1 Uh, the Sega Genesis has the Yamaha YM2612 FM synthesizer, which produced a sound that I've been told was deliberately an attempt for the Sega producers and the Sega hardware designers to recreate the sound of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Speaker 1 And I want to play

Speaker 1 a little clip. I've played it before on

Speaker 1 the show,

Speaker 1 but this is the sound that they were aiming at.

Speaker 1 And I think that they manage very effectively to replicate this sound which was extremely popular in the 70s so of course when these guys grow up and they're designing a system in the 90s this is what they're trying to emulate

Speaker 1 it's an entirely artificial synthesized sound whereas the super nintendo is aiming at actual instruments yeah like the super nintendo is taking these um

Speaker 1 almost like sonic snippets of real instruments and downgrading them into uh their um

Speaker 1 their sound chip which is the sony spc 700 we can uh we can fade this guy out god i love fucking yeah i'll take all that that you got the the nintendo

Speaker 3 sound chip which as you mentioned was designed by sony uh

Speaker 3 one of those interesting things where it just goes back to what might have been.

Speaker 3 The engineer behind that was Ken Kutaragi, who would later be the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Speaker 1 Fucking weird. Isn't that wild? That's so insane.

Speaker 3 The guy, the man who launched the PlayStation 2 designed the sound chip for the Super Nintendo.

Speaker 1 I want to compare what we've just heard to the soundtrack of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which I think showcases how

Speaker 1 the sound that they were aiming at and then how they executed on it.

Speaker 3 Ah, fuck, this is so good.

Speaker 1 The two systems have extremely different oral profiles.

Speaker 1 I prefer the Genesis because I grew up with it. But this song fucking wools.

Speaker 3 Look, you know, our old

Speaker 3 original engineer, Devin Bryant, back in the dark days here,

Speaker 3 that we love Devin,

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 such a fan of this sound chip and would do remixes of our old theme. And this was like his favorite sound chip to work with, his favorite sound profile to work with.
It's a really, really cool chip.

Speaker 3 I think from a hardware standpoint,

Speaker 3 just the music of

Speaker 3 the Sega Genesis, the Sega Mega Drive, I find just so appealing. But there's a lot of great composition that happened with the Super Nintendo.
And I think there are some amazing,

Speaker 3 amazing tracks. I mean, in fact, I think some of my favorites ever.
This first one I got here,

Speaker 3 should we just toggle off?

Speaker 3 I think we go back and forth.

Speaker 3 Okay, this first one is just an all-timer. This is a Final Fantasy VI Terrace theme by Nobu Ematsu.

Speaker 1 It's a great, it's great. It's a great song.

Speaker 1 But you can hear how it's trying to emulate an orchestra.

Speaker 3 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 And I think that's...

Speaker 1 They really pulls it off in a 16-bit era.

Speaker 3 It's another thing where you're seeing that Mode 7 with

Speaker 3 the mechs are walking through the snowfield.

Speaker 1 This game's so fucking good. Video games are good.
Video Video games are so good.

Speaker 3 I love video games so much.

Speaker 3 All right, what else you got? All right.

Speaker 1 Now, up next, I want to play a little bit from Streets of Rage,

Speaker 1 just to give us

Speaker 1 another

Speaker 1 sound example for

Speaker 1 that sort of punchy.

Speaker 1 I would call the Super NES chip sound chip mushy,

Speaker 1 like softer,

Speaker 1 rounded edges, whereas the Genesis sound chip is more punchy and a little bit more vibrant.

Speaker 3 The thing about Streets of Rage is it was kind of Sega's first-party answer to

Speaker 3 largely the Capcom and Konami arcade beat-em-ups of the era.

Speaker 3 And, you know, like the sprites of the characters, like, weren't as big as they were in, like, Final Fight or, like, oh, there's another one, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade ports for the Super Nintendo.

Speaker 3 There's another one. I don't know if those came from Genesis.
They did. But the...

Speaker 1 Well, sort of.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know if Turtles Untime did. Maybe it did.
Yeah. Anyway,

Speaker 3 it was an awesome game and played better than Final Fight, and the soundtrack is unimpeachable.

Speaker 3 This is rat. The other thing I love about Streets of Rage is

Speaker 3 just the meme that's

Speaker 3 had a long tail from it, which is only trust your fist. Police will never help you.

Speaker 1 Let's hear another one from the Super NES.

Speaker 3 All right, great.

Speaker 3 Hey, look, we got to shout out David Wise and the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack. This is a big one from it.
Why not play one of it? One of the big ones, Aquatic Ambiance. God damn it.

Speaker 1 This is such a fucking good song.

Speaker 3 This is one of those ones where you look it up, and it's like some... It's kind of hard to find just the actual track because there's so many like

Speaker 3 10 hours, you know, just like extended

Speaker 1 HD upgrade of the original sound. Yeah.
But I'll allow it because it evokes enough of the Super NES sound chip.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's, you know, not really compressed in the same way, but

Speaker 3 you get what it is.

Speaker 1 Didn't he have to, like, individually program each each of those, like,

Speaker 1 because a lot of these sounds don't exist in the sound chip. He had to, like, fake them.

Speaker 3 Yes. I mean, this is just from the Wikipedia, but I'll read it.
You know, according to Wise, he took eight waveforms and played them in sequence.

Speaker 3 The song took five weeks to compose.

Speaker 1 God damn.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that anyone was able to.

Speaker 3 I mean, no one was able to make anything without the modern tool sets we have. No one had Unity back then.
No one just had like an off-the-shelf engine to make a game.

Speaker 3 People were doing so much stuff from scratch, hard-coding so much stuff in assembly language. Yeah, anyway, that track rocks.

Speaker 1 Great. Great track.

Speaker 1 Things are about to get a little unfair because I'm going to start dabbling in Sega CD soundtracks because it is available for the Genesis.

Speaker 1 We're going to listen to a little bit from Snatcher, a Hideo Kojima game. This is One Night in Neo Kobe City.

Speaker 3 Ah, it's so good. I love this game.

Speaker 3 This could have just been a music episode.

Speaker 3 Fuck yeah,

Speaker 3 let's go

Speaker 3 so good.

Speaker 1 Pop your collar,

Speaker 1 take a big swig of whiskey, and get behind the wheel.

Speaker 3 We did a Snatcher episode in our old format. For people who haven't played it or haven't heard that episode...

Speaker 1 Actually, I don't know if that was old format.

Speaker 1 That was Get Played. Oh, wow.
And that was Hideo Kojember. Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 Well, then we did it. We did it in semi-recent memory.

Speaker 3 Awesome game.

Speaker 3 It was my first time playing through it, and

Speaker 3 I absolutely loved it. Incredible graphic adventure.

Speaker 3 There is Metal Gear in this game, but Metal Gear is like your R2D2. You just look like, I'm Metal.
It's so great.

Speaker 1 It's fantastic.

Speaker 1 When I met Kojima this summer, I was like, I love Snatcher. And he said, I was so young when I made that.

Speaker 3 That rocks. All right, let's my turn.

Speaker 3 Next one I got is from Super Metroid,

Speaker 3 which, you know, maybe Heather isn't the the best fan, the biggest fan of, but is an incredible soundtrack. This is Norfair.

Speaker 3 Moses here are Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano.

Speaker 1 I am going to follow this track with the first time I ever heard a voice singing in a video game.

Speaker 3 This is still good stuff, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's still good stuff. It's good stuff.
But.

Speaker 3 What's great about this is also that it just so matches like the menacing atmosphere of the environment so much. You're about to face Ridley, and

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 it's all good shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it feels dangerous.

Speaker 3 All right, let's hear what you got. All right.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 the first time I ever hear a voice singing in a video game to me is when I drop in Sonic CD for the United States system.

Speaker 1 And I watch this fucking intro, which is also fully animated

Speaker 1 on a home home console. This was unheard of.
And this fucking ruthless song starts playing. Let's go.
This is Sonic Boom from Sonic CD.

Speaker 1 We can reach the other side.

Speaker 1 You can imagine me running downstairs and going, Mom!

Speaker 3 Mom!

Speaker 1 Mom, they're singing!

Speaker 3 They're singing in my video game!

Speaker 3 I had the same reaction first time we had full speech in a PC game, which,

Speaker 3 for at least in our household, got a sound blaster,

Speaker 3 which was an add-on sound card you could plug into your pc into like a pci slot or whatever the the standard was at the time and then

Speaker 3 you know that would upgrade your sound from bleeps and bloops to like you know

Speaker 3 uh full speech and and

Speaker 3 uh you know like like like uh

Speaker 3 orchestral music but there was a might and magic 3 was a game that had like a voice intro and i remember hearing that for the first time just my mind was blown

Speaker 1 yeah all right I'll let you

Speaker 1 uh play

Speaker 1 another song, and I've got one more after this,

Speaker 1 and then uh

Speaker 1 then we can maybe move on to a segment.

Speaker 3 Uh, yeah, I mean, look, I

Speaker 3 can

Speaker 3 know what to choose here. Let's let's let's play this one just because it's a change of pace.
Uh, this is from Mario Paint, this is creative exercise.

Speaker 3 Look, Nintendo is fantastic at making working music.

Speaker 3 Or just idle music, like the Wii Shop store theme.

Speaker 3 Credited composers on Mario K, Mario Paint, Hirokazu Tanaka, Ryoji Yoshitomi, and Kazumi Totaka.

Speaker 3 How fun is this? This is great.

Speaker 1 And honestly, if I ever made a movie, it would be funny to have a score that was like this shit.

Speaker 3 It's very Sims-ish-ish, you know. I feel like the Sims shop music is kind of like this too.

Speaker 3 Let's look, let's just roll right into my last one, which is A Legend of Zelda Linked to the Past, Dark World, which I'm just playing for completionist sake. But this is a great track.

Speaker 1 God damn. I love video games so much.

Speaker 1 I feel like we, you and I were so lucky to be born when we were because we got to get more complicated as games got more complicated.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I feel like if you're a kid now,

Speaker 1 yeah, there are simple games, but conceptually,

Speaker 1 they're all as big or as crazy as an adult. Whereas for us,

Speaker 1 with the Genesis and the Super NES, they were young like us.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's also like,

Speaker 3 I mean, more broadly than that, we almost got to witness the entirety of video games. Yeah.
Like, you know, the first consoles were on the market when we were too young to appreciate them. And then,

Speaker 3 you know, going from the 8-bit to the 16-bit to the 32-bit to,

Speaker 3 you know, to modern hardware, that whole transition and how different games are now from 2D to 3D gaming. Like, we got to experience all that.
It is very fortunate. Yeah.

Speaker 3 All right. right, what do you got?

Speaker 1 All right, for my final two tracks, um,

Speaker 1 one of them I just want to play just again as a demonstration of maybe some of the supremacy that the Genesis and Sega CD would offer. This is the soundtrack to hook for the Sega CD.

Speaker 1 This is an action platformer

Speaker 3 for

Speaker 1 the Sega CD that where you played as Peter Pan.

Speaker 3 I mean, yeah, just having a CD.

Speaker 1 16-bit graphics.

Speaker 3 You're flying through the air.

Speaker 1 You're like still striking like regular enemies, like,

Speaker 3 but the score is full-blown John Williams.

Speaker 3 Yeah, just, there was whatever this, I think it was Redbook Audio, the standard that would just like play tracks off of the tracks of the disc.

Speaker 3 So like the game would be track one and all the rest of the tracks, you could just play the music off of. It's just hard to compete with this.
This is great.

Speaker 1 When I rented this game, I own it now, but I rented it when it first came out and I was like,

Speaker 3 what the fuck?

Speaker 1 And then the last track I'm going to play is composed specifically for the game.

Speaker 1 This is from Lunar the Silver Star Story.

Speaker 1 And this was, again, another opportunity to hear somebody singing in my video game system.

Speaker 1 Given that this game, this Sega CD game is still being remastered in 2024, gives you some idea of how astonishing it was at the time.

Speaker 1 Like there is a new Lunar remaster coming out this year or maybe early next year that is just the Sega CD game again.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I had the Lunar Silverstar story complete, which I got for PlayStation 1 when that came out.

Speaker 3 Oh, that was really cool RPGs. Yeah, the music was awesome.
And it's some fully animated sequences, too, which I think were present in the Sega CD.

Speaker 1 Like, Lunar was my Zelda. I was like, but you guys, but mine has singing in it.
And people were like, what are you talking about? What is a Sega CD?

Speaker 1 And I'd be like, No, it's like thing for your Genesis.

Speaker 3 And they'd be like, Shut up,

Speaker 1 shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 You don't deserve to be on the playground. Go back inside.

Speaker 3 Um, look, that's tough to compete with, but I did think of one Super Nintendo track that has full vocals. And Rancho just sent that to you if you want to play this real quick.

Speaker 3 Something's brewing at DD.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 Dunkin'! It's not out anymore! It's dark! Don't caccino? Don't mind if I dunk!

Speaker 3 Don't caccino!

Speaker 3 This is two weeks in a row, isn't it?

Speaker 3 This is an entire house.

Speaker 3 This is like the best sketch of all time.

Speaker 3 I don't catch chocolate.

Speaker 3 Don't cause it to be a good one.

Speaker 3 I don't know that anything tops this

Speaker 3 in the world of comedy.

Speaker 3 Burn this.

Speaker 1 Fuck, that's so good.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 3 Nick. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How would you like a segment?

Speaker 3 I'd love a segment. All right.
That was a fun discussion.

Speaker 1 That was a fun discussion.

Speaker 3 I don't actually, look, here's the thing.

Speaker 3 We took sides in this. Yeah.
But I think we both agree that this was an incredible generation of games. This was 2D gaming at its peak.

Speaker 3 This was when they'd figured everything out in the previous generations

Speaker 3 and the hardware, you know, as far as displaying 2D sprite-based graphics, Pixel graphics was like as good as it was ever going to get.

Speaker 3 And they're games that still harken back to the aesthetics established, both audio and visually, and the gameplay mechanics established by the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis

Speaker 3 generation. And I know

Speaker 3 there were other consoles, most notably the PC Engine Turbo Graphics 16, but they were much less of a presence than what really was about these two systems. And

Speaker 3 so I think the both of us as gamers, as fans of games, as appreciators of gaming history, can acknowledge that these are both two awesome systems with a whole bunch of just banger games those are excellent systems excellent systems um this is a segment the segment's called blast processing wow in this segment i am going to ask nick a series of extremely fast

Speaker 1 very simple questions about the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo. He will have one second to answer each of the questions as we blast through them.

Speaker 1 And the first one he gets, he gets three wrong over the course of the entire thing. If he if he gets all the way to the end without getting all three wrong, he wins the game.

Speaker 1 If not, he loses the game. How many questions are there? Maybe like 60.

Speaker 3 All right. I feel like I'm going to panic and mess something up, but let's just do it.

Speaker 1 We're going to go. Here's blast processing.

Speaker 1 Round one, Console Wars trivia. Which console was released first in North America? The Super Nintendo? All right.

Speaker 1 Which feature did the Super NES introduce that allowed for rotating and scaling of graphics?

Speaker 1 What was the Sega Genesis called in Europe and Japan? Mega Drive. Which Sega Console add-on

Speaker 1 allowed games to be played from CDs? Sega CD. What was the name of Nintendo's device that allowed you to play Game Boy games on the Super NES? Super Game Boy.
That's one round.

Speaker 1 Congratulations, you've won one round. Identify which of these characters is primarily associated with Nintendo or Sega.
Round two. Go.
Kirby.

Speaker 3 Nintendo.

Speaker 1 Alex Kidd.

Speaker 3 Sega. Samus Aran.
Nintendo. Echo the Dolphin.
Sega.

Speaker 1 Star Fox.

Speaker 3 Nintendo. Congratulations.
You've made it through round two. I feel like I'm on a plane that's losing altitude.

Speaker 3 All right. True or false?

Speaker 1 These are quickfire statements about Nintendo and Sega. And all you have to tell me is, are they true or false? Okay.
The Sega Genesis had a faster processor than the Super NES.

Speaker 1 Nintendo's original mascot was Mario.

Speaker 3 False.

Speaker 1 The Sega Game Gear had a color screen, unlike the original. Donkey Kong Country was developed using pre-rendered 3D graphics.
Sonic the Hedgehog was created to rival Nintendo's Pikachu.

Speaker 3 False.

Speaker 1 Correct. That is round three?

Speaker 3 All right. Nick looks sick.

Speaker 1 This is a hard one. Yeah.
You might not make it out of this one. Okay.
This is release date challenge. Okay.

Speaker 1 Answer the year that each of the following was released.

Speaker 1 When was the Super Nintendo Entertainment system released?

Speaker 3 Which territory?

Speaker 1 In the United States.

Speaker 3 1991.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. In what year did Sonic the Hedgehog debut on the second Genesis?

Speaker 3 1991.

Speaker 1 In what year was The Legend of Zelda linked to the past released?

Speaker 3 Oh, fuck, 1993?

Speaker 1 Wrong. 1992.
That's your first loss. In what year did Super Mario Kart first race onto the scene?

Speaker 3 Hmm, I feel like that was 92.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. You only got one wrong in that round.
You have two lives left.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 Having a panic attack. Yeah.
All right.

Speaker 1 Match the marketing slogan to the correct company or console. Okay, Genesis does what Nintendo Sega Genesis.

Speaker 3 Now you're playing with power.

Speaker 1 Nintendo. Welcome to the next level.

Speaker 3 Ooh, Nintendo.

Speaker 1 That was Sega. Fuck.
Play it loud. Nintendo.
Get in or get out.

Speaker 3 Nintendo.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. You have lost only one additional life.
You have one life remaining. We are in round seven.

Speaker 3 There are a total of 15 rounds.

Speaker 3 I'm not going to make it to the edge.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 1 This is guess the game from the description.

Speaker 3 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 Number one. This game introduced a bounty hunter exploring planet.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 1 A side-scrolling beat-em-up where players battle through the streets to take down crime.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 1 A platformer featuring an ape and his nephew as they reclaim someone.

Speaker 1 Okay, great.

Speaker 1 And an RPG where you control a group of heroes known as the Blades of Justice to defeat the Dark Dragon.

Speaker 3 Oh, is this Phantasy Star? Congratulations.

Speaker 1 One more.

Speaker 1 An adventure game where a pink puffball uses his ability to inhale enemies.

Speaker 3 I don't remember which Kirby it is, though. Do I have to get the Kirby? Is it fuck, what's the Kirby game on Super Nintendo? Is it Kirby's Adventure?

Speaker 1 I'll take Kirby. Kirby's okay.
Kirby's okay.

Speaker 3 What was a Kirby game?

Speaker 1 Kirby's Dreamland 3.

Speaker 3 Kirby's Dreamland 3. Okay.
All right. Here we go.

Speaker 1 Next round. Hardware innovation quiz.
What was the name of the chip used in Star Fox to enable 3D 3D graphics on the Super NES?

Speaker 3 Oh, fuck. Was it the Super FX chip?

Speaker 1 Congratulations. Which Sega Console was the first to include online play?

Speaker 3 This was the Sega Genesis. Yes.

Speaker 1 Which Nintendo peripheral route? Which Nintendo peripheral allowed for motion-controlled gameplay years before the Wii?

Speaker 3 Oh, fuck. What was the name of this thing? This was a Nintendo one? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 Oh, fuck. This was a first-party peripheral? Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is a stretch. This is a stretch.

Speaker 3 What was that thing that was, I can't remember the name of it. The N-force?

Speaker 1 Technically, it's the Super Scope.

Speaker 3 Super Scope. Oh, the Super Scope had motion control.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, it was more of a light gun than allowed for motion control.

Speaker 1 Wait, what was the one?

Speaker 1 I'll give you that one as a gimme.

Speaker 3 Okay. I think maybe you misunderstood the prompt.

Speaker 1 Which Sega Genesis accessory attempted to bring virtual reality to home consoles, but was never actually released to the public?

Speaker 3 Oh, fuck. I don't know the name of this.

Speaker 3 The

Speaker 3 Sega VR. Congratulations.

Speaker 1 And then finally, what was the purpose of Nintendo's Satella View add-on for the Super NES in Japan?

Speaker 3 This allowed for, this was downloadable games and online rentable games. All right.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. Round 10.

Speaker 3 I think Radical Dreamers was a Satella View game. That was the Chrono Trigger visual novel sequel.

Speaker 1 Actually, maybe this is round nine. I don't know.
I might have skipped a round. All right.
All right. This is the ESRB and controversial games.

Speaker 1 You still have one life remaining because I gave you a gimme. Okay.

Speaker 1 Which violent fighting game series led to the creation of the ESRB rating system in the U.S.?

Speaker 3 It's got to be Mortal Kombat.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. What was the name of the Sega CD game that was pulled from shelves due to its trend? True or false?

Speaker 1 Nintendo's version of Mortal Kombat on the Super NES initially featured the same level of violence as the arcade version?

Speaker 3 False. Yes.

Speaker 1 Which company took a more lenient approach to game content, allowing for more mature themes in the early 90s? Sega. And what does ESRB stand for?

Speaker 3 Electronic,

Speaker 3 oh, is it software or safety review board? Electronic software review board.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, that was your final life. It's entertainment software rating board.
You made it all the way to round nine or 10, whichever one we were at.

Speaker 3 All right. I feel pretty good.

Speaker 1 Glass processing. Very good, Nick.

Speaker 3 Very good.

Speaker 1 You look sick. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You look miserable. I feel like it just like chugged a milkshake.

Speaker 1 Nick is currently covering his face in the studio.

Speaker 3 He looks miserable. Very, very stressful.

Speaker 3 That was fun.

Speaker 1 It was also stressful to read it.

Speaker 3 Hey, that's this week's Get Play. At our producer's Rochelle Chen Ranch, Yard underscore, underscore sard on Twitch.
where you'll be streaming some RE4. Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Speaker 3 Our art is by Duck Brigade.

Speaker 3 Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com. Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

Speaker 3 And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com/slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gumback catalog, plus ad-free main feed episodes, and also our Patreon exclusive show, GetAnimaid.

Speaker 3 Heather, do you know what we're covering this week?

Speaker 1 We're covering Terminator Zero. However, I don't know which episodes we're on, but Terminator Zero is a Netflix anime that we're covering on Get Animated.
Wow.

Speaker 1 You can find that on our Patreon, which is patreon.com slash get played, where you'll also find all our other episodes of get animated. And

Speaker 1 what else? Oh, you already said all that.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, the back catalog. The back calendar.
It's all in there, though. It's helpful to say it again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all there.

Speaker 3 Wow, and there we go. And, Ranch, I think for having to listen to two people argue about events that took place before your birth, you got played.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, wait, wait. Ranch, which one had better music? What do you think?

Speaker 3 Second.

Speaker 3 Sega is. Yeah! Oh no!

Speaker 3 Oh no!

Speaker 3 Oh my god!

Speaker 3 Yes!

Speaker 3 It's bullshit.

Speaker 1 This is a headgum podcast.

Speaker 3 What's going on? It's Lamorne Morris.

Speaker 1 And Hannah Simone.

Speaker 6 And we host The Mess Around, a New Girl Rewatch podcast now on Headgum.

Speaker 3 Now, here's the thing.

Speaker 6 Every single week we chat about an episode of New Girl, and we really get into it. Like we get up in there.
We get up in there. You know, we reminisce about our times on set.

Speaker 6 We share behind-the-scenes tea. We react to re-watching episodes that we haven't seen in years.
We talk about how Jake Johnson is dog f ⁇ ing.

Speaker 1 That's not true. We talk about so many memories we have of working with the biggest stars on the planet.
I'm talking Prince, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo.

Speaker 6 We're just two BFFs having a good old time, okay? Sometimes we even talk to other co-stars like Zoe Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Damon Waynes Jr. and your dad.

Speaker 6 We talked to your dad on this show as well.

Speaker 1 Make sure you subscribe to the mess around wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every single Tuesday.