Star Wars Games

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Matt, I am super, super excited to do this episode on the history of Star Wars video games.

But I've just gotten a sort of email from corporate, and we cannot.

Corporate.

Well, we can't, we cannot use these suits.

These headgum suits make me sick.

The headgum suits are, they're tough.

They're tough, but they're just trying to keep the business afloat.

And what they've told me is we cannot use any of the Star Wars sound effects in this episode, or we will be fined many, many, many, many thousands of dollars.

And I know that this is the premier video game podcast.

And I know that that, to our listeners, probably sounds like such a little amount of money that we cannot take that hit.

Yeah, we can't take that hit right now.

That's too much money.

But, you know, we're going to be doing a lot of talking.

So, uh, so Matt, my, my hope is here's what we could do.

Obviously, there's going to be blasters.

Obviously, there's going to be lightsabers.

Obviously, there's going to be, you know, the sound of X-Wings and TIE Fighters screaming through the air.

I'm just going to need you to lay down a little foley

for for what we can use instead of those sounds absolutely those iconic Star Wars sounds so can you give me um how about three options for blasters okay

those are great those are great and honestly much better than I expected

I want this to work oh I do too okay what else you got I mean I also like I guess I'm trying to get cast and like voiceover stuff so like oh that's great if people if you hear this and you think I did a good job bang my line.

Okay, okay.

Uh, now we need, um,

we need lightsabers igniting, you know,

honestly, Matt, you're blowing my fucking mind.

That's it going back in.

Oh, that's great.

And then

I thought of a motion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's

you know, I'm going to tell you right now, Matt.

That one's probably not as good as the other ones.

When I pitched this opening to you, I expected your sounds to be shitty, and these are fucking fantastic.

Can you give me a lightsabers clashing against each other?

Holy fuck.

This intro is not at all what I expected it to be.

All right, can you do

like TIE Fighters

coming in from

outer space?

Okay, great, great, great, great, great.

Can you do, what other, I mean, what other effects are there?

I mean, there's like

R2-D2?

That's going to be harder.

I'm just going to be honest.

I know that this one's not going to be that good.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, I can do him like screaming.

Yeah, there you go.

Woo!

Wow!

All right, great.

Well, I think we've got enough to get us through this podcast.

There's only one more issue, and this is going to be tough.

We don't have any license to use the John Williams score.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Kind of like a lot of these old Star Wars games didn't have access to the score.

But we do need, you know, something that will let people know, like, this is a Star Wars podcast.

Okay.

You know, I know that I kind of just like blew your mind

with my hidden talent of being able to do all the Star Wars noises.

Uh-huh.

You don't know this about me?

I started to play music.

You did?

And I kind of wrote a new song that's kind of like,

I wasn't really sure what it was for or why it was coming to me, but now I realize that it was exactly for this.

And I think it's going to fit in exactly in it's a Star Wars type song.

Great.

That it's like you evokes, you know, Star Wars without being exactly that.

Right.

So here's my pitch.

I'm going to roll you in with my best rendition of a a cappella Fox fanfare.

And then you, you knock that theme in as the big, you know, Star Wars comes onto the screen.

There it goes.

Brapap Brapapa

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

Ba-ba-ba-ba.

Ba-ba-ba-ba.

Ba-ba-ba-ba.

Ba-ba-ba-ba.

We engage our hyperdrives and blast past more than 100 titles as we reminisce about the history of Star Wars video games this week on Get Played.

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

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Matt Appodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where you have not one,

but two hosts.

Two.

And this week, that's it.

That's it.

That's it, and that's all you're going to get.

That's all you're going to get.

And you're going to like it.

You're going to, well, I'm not certain they're going to like it because we've never actually done this pairing before.

Well, we've done it once when we had Albro, but Albro was like, uh,

Albro's so cool.

Everybody loved Albro.

He counts as a third host.

Yeah, that's true.

And he's just like the coolest guy ever.

But just you and me, we've never done it.

That's not, yeah, that's true.

That is true.

And also, now that you said that, I remember now how stressed out I was.

Even with a third person.

Even with a third person.

And I want to say to you, the listener, I am just that stressed again.

Yeah, before we started recording, Heather said, I'm stressed.

I'm stressed.

Fuck, I'm stressed.

Yeah.

And I said, it's going to be fine.

And she said, no, it's not.

I'm stressed.

I want to say

our

producer, Rochelle Chen, is out of the studio this week.

So we have our guest engineer again, Sam Rogich, is here.

Hi, Sam.

Hi, Sam.

Hey there.

Thanks for having me.

So there is a third person.

There is a third person here.

We might be leaning on you pretty hard.

Yeah, I'll do my best.

Every five minutes.

So what's going on?

What's new with you, Sam?

Hey, Sam, anything kicking over there?

What's that board looking like these days?

I also know, I know that when Nick found out about this topic, he was so bummed out that he wasn't going to be a part of it.

Yeah.

And that isn't why we picked it.

It's kind of why I suggested it.

Really?

It is?

It's kind of a punishment.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

Next time you're out, it's going to be something that you love.

I think next time you're out, Nick and I are going to cover Mother 3.

I would listen.

No, no, no.

It was, there was no spite involved.

Yeah.

But I'm really excited about this topic.

And Nick is so excited about it that I do think he's going to drop in just a little segment of his own.

He's going to record.

abroad or wherever the fuck he is.

Yeah.

He's going to record it non-locally

because he has some stuff he wants to say about this week's topic.

It would be so funny if we threw to it now because we're just like floundering.

I think here's two minutes in.

Here's what I think.

Honestly, I think that at any point during this podcast, when we are at a loss,

throw to it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know what?

If we are at a loss twice.

We can throw to it twice.

We'll just play it twice.

And just he could play, we could play it twice, or we can say to him, hey, look, man, you got to go.

Yeah, too.

Send him a video of us going like this, like with our fingers stretching.

But we're going to talk about

the legacy history and sort of an overview of all of the Star Wars video games that have ever been released.

The reason we're doing that is that Matt and I really dipped into Star Wars Outlaws and we were enjoying it and we've been talking about Star Wars games and we've been thinking about Star Wars games and Matt was like, maybe we should do a whole podcast sort of about all of them yeah and you know i guess should we say this too yeah say it this episode not unlike all episodes of the podcast when you stop and think about it this episode is a bit pre-recorded right obviously all podcasts are what the are you saying this episode is coming out later than usually we're record we record it comes out the week after yes days after really five days after not a full week yeah yeah yeah this one is coming out in a couple of weeks yep so it's not going to be super current.

We'll probably both talk about a game that we'll have covered as a WePlay You Play

in the past when you hear this.

Wait, so we're going to talk about a game that we're playing in the present, but by the time this is released, it will have released as the WePlay You Play behind the episode?

That's right.

In the rearview mirror?

That's right.

Holy shit.

And, you know, who knows when even this is.

Right now.

I just hope Star Wars hasn't been canceled by the time this needs to be released.

Gosh, could that even happen?

You know, the way people,

nobody cancels Star Wars.

They just hate it louder in different ways.

I, uh, you know, today in at work, literally at work,

um, I was talking about the acolyte.

Okay.

Um, and uh, sort of talked,

none of, no, nobody in the room wanted to watch the whole thing, even though I was very uh effusive with my praise about the acolyte.

And they were like, well, I remember you coming in and being like, oh, it's episode four.

And I'm so fucking frustrated.

And that was the truth.

Yeah.

I was frustrated four episodes into that show, but episode five turns the tide.

We, they were like, well, what's so good about the choreography?

And I was like, why don't we just watch some?

And we put it up on these giant screens in our new office, these huge fucking like.

theatrical sized screens.

That's pretty cool.

And we watched just the choreography of the of the major fight in episode five of the acolyte.

And everybody in the room, Star Wars fan or not, was like, this is pretty cool.

That's pretty cool.

It's pretty cool.

I still haven't seen it.

I haven't even seen clips of that.

I've avoided all of it.

Oh, man.

It's so good, dude.

I'll find a time to watch it and go back to it someday.

I really like it.

I guess before we press on further.

You mean before we start talking about Star Wars, it's time to ask the question we always ask up top?

I was going to ask a secondary question.

Oh, what's that question?

Sam, how do you feel about Star Wars?

I

love the first three movies.

Right.

Yeah, I think I was at the right time for the reboots too, for the second three.

Uh-huh.

And then I haven't.

Well, no, okay, I take that back.

What three...

Okay.

Okay, episode four through six.

Yeah.

I love.

Right.

Episode one through three.

You were the right age.

You were the right age

group for that.

Okay.

And then...

Well, speaking of the game, that's when I had the racing game where they had the big heads.

Oh, yeah.

There's a different racing game.

I think it's Pod Squad.

Bombad Racing, I think it's called.

That's what it's called.

I loved that game.

But after those six movies, I haven't really given a shit, honestly.

So that's what I'm doing.

I think that's fair.

I think that's like, that's pretty good.

Yeah.

Because, you know, you've like, I mean,

not that I think you would be like this.

There are people that have engaged with the new Star Wars in a way that feels bad, in a way that's sort of like, you know, I'll just very plainly say it, condemning it for being woke.

And it's just like,

what are you talking about?

And now everybody who thinks that, who listens to this show, is mad.

Before we press on any further,

I do have a second question to ask.

What is that?

What do you plan?

If you need a third host.

Oh.

You could have got you could ask me.

It's me, the Resident Evil Merchant.

And I'm here to ask a question I always ask.

Yeah.

What are you playing?

Good to see you, Resident Evil 4 Merchant.

You know.

It's good to see you, man.

The reason you can't.

The reason you can't be...

I can't wait to hear what you're about to say to him.

Oh, yeah.

Well, the reason you can't be in the third seat.

Yes.

Even though you did.

It's too small.

I can sit on the floor.

No, I know that you've done it in the past.

I actually did get a pretty intense...

I got a pretty intense email.

You did?

From the network.

That was like, headgum.

Headgum emailed me.

And they were is that supposed to be a reference to how you put gum in your mouth, and your mouth is on your head.

I think that is

when we stop and think about it, that's exactly what it is.

Why isn't it called mouth gum?

Because that's confusing because you have gums in your mouth.

You do.

So, I got an email from the network.

I go bone to teeth, bone the teeth, no gums.

Teeth are bones.

Yeah, they come straight out.

No, I got rid of the flesh.

Are teeth bones, actually?

I think they're like fingernails.

Heather?

I think they're...

I think they are bone-ish.

They're bone-ish, right?

Well, when you see like a skeleton on the ground, I see them all the time.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you see a skeleton on the ground, you normally, like, there's...

The teeth are still there, but the fingernails aren't.

That makes me feel like teeth are bone.

If you had a third host, maybe he could answer.

Here's the thing.

Nick 100% would know this to a degree that we wouldn't like.

Yeah.

That's scary.

He'd be like, actually, teeth are a sex organ.

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Matt, do you want to answer the question or do you want me to keep vampires?

I'll answer the question.

As I said, this will be, this will be,

this will be moot.

By the time you hear this, kind of.

Yeah, by the time you hear this, because I think we're going to talk about the same game.

Yeah.

And...

Can I answer the question this week since you got a...

You need a third answer?

If you have a third answer, we can get your third answer.

All right, great.

Heather and I are both playing Astrobot.

Astrobot.

Which you'll have heard a full episode about at this point.

But we've recorded this before that episode came out.

So we've just started playing Astrobot.

So these are our first impressions of the game, really.

Game fucking rules.

I did send a text an hour after

playing it for like a little bit.

For just an hour.

Yep.

It's so cool to me that video games can come out and be this good still.

The idea that they were able to release this game and have it be one of the best in this genre.

Yeah.

Kind of out of nowhere.

Not really out of nowhere.

There's the VR game, of course, and there's the pack-in that came with the PS5, Astro's Playroom.

The pack-in hinted at this.

Yes.

Because the pack-in was better than it needed to be.

Yeah.

And

you feel that vibe in the pack-in.

You're like, man, this is a good game.

Like, people talked about it as if it was like,

like, like it was like as, if a Windows computer came with just a fantastic action adventure.

game.

Yes.

You'd be like, holy shit.

But you wouldn't really think of it.

You wouldn't put it in

your mental library as video game.

Right.

You'd be like, what a great demo.

Or the pinball game that came with all Windows computers for years.

Mind sweeper.

Mind sweeper.

Those games come with computers.

Those are good games.

Those are good games, but you're not thinking about them as the best ever.

Yeah.

Astrobot is basically a love letter to PlayStation.

Yep.

Cynically could be seen as

Nostalgia bait?

Nostalgia bait.

I did see somebody call it

a playable graveyard of like of like dead IP and stuff.

But like, I don't know.

There's so much joy injected into it.

It feels impossible to think about it cynically at all.

It feels like a love letter.

It does not feel like a graveyard.

No, and like we were talking about this, and we'll talk more about this in the past, I'm sure.

Nintendo could do this.

Yep.

Sega could do this.

Yep.

Meaning, they could make a game that was a

playful tour of old franchises and IP.

A celebration of their work.

One could argue that Smash Brothers is

an Astro bot for Nintendo.

Yes, absolutely.

You know who would have a really hard time doing a game like this?

And I know that we're going to sound like haters.

We're going to sound like haters of the, what I'll call the green box.

Yep.

Microsoft couldn't do this.

Microsoft would have a very shallow,

exclusive library to reference on an Xbox style Astrobot.

And I don't think they could do it in as fun of a way.

It isn't a console

series known for platformers.

Yes.

Whereas Nintendo obviously has.

They had blinks.

Yeah, they had blinks.

But like, Nintendo has always been a platform company.

Yeah.

Sega, when they were making consoles platformers, even all the way through the Dreamcast, they were trying to do platformers on the Dreamcast.

PlayStation has, you know, Ratchet and Clank.

They've got like, what's the other one that I'm talking about?

Ratchet and Clank, Jack and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro.

Yeah,

they've done platformers throughout their entire history.

Yeah.

Xbox, not a big platformer console.

Happy to be proven wrong as well.

I'm sure there must be one that exists, but didn't catch on in the same way as these other ones.

And then, you know, who are their guys?

Halo Man.

Master Chief.

Halo Man.

Halo Man.

So a lot of their guys are people that they've acquired.

They have Doom Guy now, right?

They have Skyrim.

Gears of War guy.

They have Marcus from Gears of War.

Yep.

They have what?

An airplane from Flight Simulator?

I mean, if I was playing Astrobot for Xbox and I saw Airplane, I'd be like, oh man, it's airplane.

It would be pretty good.

It would be pretty funny.

And I'm sure there are others, and maybe we're being glib for humor.

But I just think my impression so far of Astrobot is that it is the most fun video game I've played this year, and I have a hard time seeing what could beat it possibly in our eventual games of the year discussion.

Yep.

Really,

really,

this Astrobot is like you're driving down a highway.

Thinking you already know where you're going and where you've been.

Behind you is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

You know, maybe

Star Wars Outlaws, maybe other major releases.

But you're driving down that highway and you're heading towards game of the year and you kind of know where you've been, where you're going.

When all of the sudden, a train off its tracks T-bones your car.

And on the front of that train is Astro Bots.

Yeah, the train is screaming your name.

Yeah.

And chasing you.

How many?

Because I know that I've put in about nine hours into this game already.

I have about 170-something bots found.

I'm at 103.

Okay.

There's one I want to ask you about if you found it, but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Well, if it's not, I've gold-flagged everything up through bot 103.

Okay.

So you'd have to be like, what bot is this?

I've only cleared the first two space.

Have there been any guest bots that,

you know, like the ones that are wearing the costumes?

Because some of them are generic.

Some of them are.

I mean, there's so many guests.

Has there been one in particular that you are very excited to see?

If you're asking me if Sam Porter Bridges,

I haven't seen Sam yet.

That's not one that I asked about.

That's all I'm asking about.

So I don't know.

I mean,

like Joel and Ellie, sure.

I've seen them.

And saved him.

I don't fucking know.

Now we're about to look this up.

Hold on.

I have to, because I have to know.

Yeah, find out about where this bot is.

And if it's after 103, I haven't been there yet.

But if it's before 103, I've definitely caught them.

Whoever they may be.

It's a hard metric because also the levels are kind of like...

Yeah, will it tell me where to find this?

You can choose which, where to go.

God, I like it.

I like the game.

You might have done this level yet.

It's the Hieroglitch Pyramid level.

The what glitch?

Hieroglitch, is what it's called.

Like instead of a hieroglyph, it's a hieroglyph.

No, I haven't done that.

You haven't done this one.

You're going to enjoy this level.

All right, great.

I can't wait because I've enjoyed every level so far.

Yeah, that is the thing, too.

Every time I see one of these characters, even if it's one I don't know, I'm thrilled.

I'm so excited every time.

What a weird thing to be talking about a thing we already covered in depth.

Yes.

And we've said probably similar things at this point, but what else were we going to do?

Yeah.

Trick people?

Yeah.

I'm not going to trick.

I don't trick.

I'm going to start playing some or talk about some game.

What?

What?

I interrupted.

I said, I trick.

I heard, yeah, I heard that.

Do you want to know a trick I've done?

Sure.

Tell me about a trick you've done.

Do you know that you can get liquid out of a, out of a, like a Pepsi bottle, a plastic one with a syringe, and then refill it with a syringe, and the plastic has such tension that it won't leak.

Is that true?

Yes.

What liquids did you replace it with?

Well, one time I tricked myself by took all of the

blue Pepsi out of a Pepsi.

Pepsi blue?

Yeah, Pepsi Blue.

I took all of it out.

I replaced it with Windex.

And I put it back in the fridge.

Was I ever tricked?

I don't know if that counts.

That's sort of like...

I fucked myself up for days.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's sort of like, I think to put it in a way Nick would put it, that's like doing a prank the stranger, kind of

sort of like to yourself, but not really.

Oh, that's that one you said on your hand.

I don't need to do that because I don't have feeling.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

In one of my hands.

In just one.

Only one.

Okay, I guess that's then that's the trade-off.

I got it caught in a cyber truck door.

You said you were playing a game, Resident Evil Merchant.

Yes.

What's that?

I'm playing Tycho baseball on a handheld Tycho machine.

I think you've said that.

I think you've been playing that before.

Yeah, you have been playing one.

Well, it's a hard game to beat.

I don't know where I am in the season.

Now, describe that for me as somebody who doesn't know what that is.

All right, so it's like a

round.

It's a round handheld with an L C D screen.

I see, I see.

It looks like a digital clock.

Okay.

And a little ball come at you and it goes beep, beep, beep, beep.

And you have to time it so you hit the ball.

Would it be one of those ones that has basically the outlines of the ball and when it lights up, that's where it is?

Yeah, but it's sort of like it.

It's backlit.

It's not one of those ones that is like, you have to have a sunlight.

Okay.

It's a backlit machine.

Okay.

Tycho baseball.

Well, I hope you can beat baseball, I guess.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't exactly know what that means.

Usually to win baseball, you have to be playing against another team.

You are.

I mean, it's not like I don't pitch against my own team.

You're not like Bugs Bunny out there, like throwing the ball and then trying to swing at it.

No, no.

Well, thank you for telling us what you've been playing.

Yeah.

Resident Evil Murder.

Thank you.

You know, I think we're just, we have a lot to get to.

Yeah, we got a lot to cover.

I know that you have somewhere else to be, so that's, that's totally cool.

Wrong!

I do not have anywhere else to be.

I kind of remember you saying you had to be somewhere.

So I think that's cool.

We don't have to.

We don't have to.

You don't have to stay.

It's okay.

I'll just stand in the corner.

Okay.

You can stand in the corner, but just make sure you Blair Witch rules and face the corner, please.

It's harder for me to be here when Nick's not here.

Why do you, how do you mean?

He's my antagonist.

I guess we've both been being pretty nice to you, huh?

Yeah.

Just thank you.

Thank you for thank.

That's the Resident Evil merchant.

Thank you so so much, Resident Evil.

Yeah, thank you.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

I got a little intro about Star Wars.

Okay, let's go.

Should I do it?

Should we talk about the topic at hand?

I was like,

no, of course.

All right.

Here we go.

So I was sitting in my truck thinking about Star Wars.

Not the movies, not the lore, the books, the TV shows, the action figures, none of that.

I was thinking about the video games.

And you you know, it hit me.

The history of Star Wars video games is almost as long and winding as the franchise itself.

Like the movies, these games have gone through their own evolution, riding waves of technology, public taste, and of course, corporate ambition.

It all starts in 1983 in the arcades.

Imagine this.

The original Star Wars had come out in 1977 and people were still living in the afterglow of the trilogy by 83.

The video game industry, on the other hand, was just a few years into what would become a golden age of arcade cabinets.

Enter Star Wars, the arcade game.

It was cutting edge.

The graphics were vector-based, those sharp glowing lines that formed TIE Fighters and X-Wings.

The sound design included a synthesized voice of Luke Skywalker and a John Williams score in reduced fidelity.

The joystick was a perfect match for flying through the Death Star trench.

You weren't just watching Luke blow up the Death Star.

You were Luke, gripping the yoke, dodging laser fire.

There was something visceral about standing there, locked in battle, your friends crowded around cheering you on, and quarters clinking in the slot.

The arcade experience was pure adrenaline.

Arcade cabinets back then were the beating heart of gaming.

But then things started to shift.

Arcades began to fade and home consoles began to rise.

In the late 80s and 90s, Star Wars found a new home on the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega consoles.

One game in particular stands out, Super Star Wars for the Super NES in 1992.

If you're a kid at the time, it was probably one of the harder games you'd ever played, and yet irresistible.

You run around as Luke Skywalker, blasting stormtroopers and sand people, navigating impossibly difficult levels.

Luke was very reliant on his blaster, unlike the movies.

Sure, maybe the game was unforgiving, but in an era where you couldn't save your progress, every victory felt monumental.

Then, of course, there was Star Wars TIE Fighter on the PC.

Released in 1994, this was the game that let you step into the cockpit as an Imperial pilot.

It was part of a string of Star Wars flight sims, X-Wing and TIE Fighter, that were more tactical than anything that had come before.

It wasn't about that sort of raw arcade thrill.

It was about strategy, maneuvering your ship, managing shields and energy.

Immersive, complex, and it showed that Star Wars could be more than just a backdrop for action.

It could be a world where you felt the weight of decisions.

The PC era had another standout, Star Wars Dark Forces.

Released in 1995, it was LucasArts' answer to Doom.

A first-person shooter, but with that Star Wars flare.

Dark hallways, stormtroopers to blast away, and a new character, Kyle Katarn, who went on to become a fan favorite.

It was gritty, atmospheric, and felt like you were playing through one of the original movies, albeit with a much darker tone.

It opened the door for more immersive storytelling in Star Wars games.

Then comes the late 90s, the dawn of 3D gaming with the PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

Can't talk about this era without mentioning Star Wars Shadows of the Empire in 1996.

This game was a whole event.

It came with a novel, a soundtrack, like a multimedia explosion, all focused on this character, Dash Rendar, who is basically a Han Solo stand-in.

It was ambitious, combining platforming, vehicular combat, and of course, that incredible Hoth battle sequence.

It was a sign that Star Wars games were becoming more cinematic experiences.

Then we get to the 2000s.

This was the era of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

Released in 2003, it was a role-playing game from BioWare, the same team that would later give us Mass Effect.

But Knights of the Old Republic was different.

It wasn't about playing as Luke or Han.

It was set 4,000 years before the movies, and you created your own character deciding whether they'd follow the light or dark sides of the Force.

It was emotional, it was deep, and it brought these Star Wars stories to new heights.

For many, it is still the pinnacle of Star Wars games.

Of course, the saga doesn't end there.

You've got the Lego Star Wars games, these fun, irreverent takes on the franchise that somehow became beloved even by hardcore fans.

And then there's Star Wars Battlefront, the 2015 reboot that was a technical marvel but controversial for how it handled microtransactions.

A reminder that as games became more advanced, they also became more entwined with realities of modern gaming economics.

Now we're in an era where Jedi Fallen Order is showing that a single-player Star Wars story can still grip audiences in a world obsessed with multiplayer experiences.

And who knows what's next?

Star Wars games have followed the arc of the franchise itself, reinventing, rebooting, expanding, contracting.

There are VR games now too, Vader Immortal, Star Wars Squadrons, and then there's the latest release, Star Wars Outlaws.

Star Wars started as a movie, but it's always been more than that.

It's a universe that you want to explore,

a galaxy's edge, if you will, a world that you want to be a part of.

And for the last 40 years, video games have let us do just that, whether we're dodging asteroids in the arcade, storming a base on Hoth in our living room, or navigating the moral complexities of the Force on our PC.

In a way, Star Wars video games have allowed us to live out the adventures we've always dreamed of, not as spectators, but as participants.

And that's a kind of magic no movie, no matter how spectacular, can quite replicate.

Wow.

We did it, guys.

That was great, Heather.

That's the intro.

I have, um, I have something to say about something you said.

Uh-oh.

I'm wrong.

No, no, no, yeah, yeah.

Just flat out

wrong.

Try again.

No, you mentioned gripping the yolk.

Yeah.

And that sort of reminded me of you cracking an egg.

All of that I just said, and you're like,

you dumb bitch, you can't break an egg.

I get it.

I get it.

Listener, what may have been months ago, I mentioned that I cannot peel a banana nor break an egg without either

obliterating the egg in the process or destroying the banana.

Yes, I don't know if that made it across the pond, if that made it across to get played.

Actually, I think that was on get animated.

That was get animated.

I think so.

Somebody has offered to come help us.

Yeah, multiple people have offered to come help me learn.

We all want to help you.

I think you can do it.

I

am not.

I am not a a child.

No.

If I was a child, then maybe there'd be hope.

But like, my wife makes me crack each egg individually into a cup so that I can then get the shell out of it.

And she also says while watching me, I don't know what you're doing wrong.

That's.

Because it looks...

Like I've watched videos.

Like, I know how an egg should be cracked.

I'm not, I'm not a fucking psychopath.

I think I know how to fix this.

You tap flat on a flat surface.

You don't tap on a rim.

You tap on a flat surface.

You barely tap because you don't want to shatter it when it hits the thing.

And then you pull the egg in two separate directions, the shell, in two separate directions.

You don't push in, you pull.

And then the yolk and the white drip out of the container into another, into a cup or in a frying pan or whatever.

Every fucking time I do it, it's shell all over the place.

Next time you're on egg duty.

Video it?

No.

Oh.

Ask Mary to swayzee you.

Swayze me?

Like in ghost.

Hold your hand from like.

I think that's going to get worse.

And just show her.

I'm going to get on the phone with Mary.

We're going to solve this.

Great.

You can, I also have her solve banana.

One thing at a time.

We're going to try to change it.

I have to use a knife to be able to open.

It's not funny.

It's true.

I mean, it's funny.

I'm like, I'm not, I'm not so like,

I have enough self-insight to know that it is funny that I can't do either of these things.

I know exactly who could help you open a banana.

Who?

Donkey Kong?

Yeah, damn monkey.

I've tried from the top.

I've tried from the bottom.

It just turns into mush.

You need a chicken for the egg to help you.

I don't think chickens are trying to open their own eggs.

Finally, I've laid an egg.

Time to kill it.

Yeah, time to rip it open with my talons.

Heather, that was fantastic.

And a great table setting for...

Because here's the thing.

You mentioned a lot of Star Wars games in that intro.

We can't talk about every Star Wars game.

There have been over 100 Star Wars video games.

Like, there are very few in that little intro I did.

Yeah.

Like, I didn't mention Star Wars Pod Racer, which is one of my favorite from my, from, from the 90s or whatever.

Came out on both N64 and the Dreamcast.

And then there was Racer Revenge, which was the sort of sequel to it as well.

Wikipedia says Star Wars games have gone through three significant development eras.

Early licensed games,

games developed after the creation of LucasArts, and games created after the closure of LucasArts, which are currently licensed to EA and include an EA Star Wars logo.

Interesting.

Because, you know, I was thinking about that

in a little bit of research that I did as well, where you see the games that are tailored for the first three movies.

Because at a certain point prior to, let's say,

1997, nobody was really thinking about

more Star Wars.

So everything that was Star Wars was

New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and like, that's it.

Yeah.

So

when the, when the prequels come out, episode one, two, and three,

then we start to get licensed games based on those movies.

And I talk about this a lot, and I feel like I've pitched this as an episode in the past, and I can't remember if we did it or not.

I think licensed games should come back.

I liked, they're good.

Yeah, I mean, like, DuckTales, incredible game.

Great.

What's the other one?

Lion King.

Lion King.

The Scott Pilgrim

game is really good.

Great game.

I've mentioned in the past the Peter Jackson King Kong video game being

incredible.

A very, very good first-person survival game.

Yep.

Really fun.

But this is the type of game that, you know,

I know Weiger has experienced working on some of these himself, but these are the type of games that they don't make anymore.

Maybe they weren't as profitable as

the studios thought they would be.

But I certainly do miss them.

But this, okay, so let's just go through.

You know what my first Star Wars game was?

What?

Star Wars Masters of Terrace Cassie.

Is that the card game?

Chess game.

It is a

fighting game.

That's right.

And it was, I played it first on a demo disc that came with my PlayStation 1.

Wow.

And I would only play that.

I think Armored Core 1.

was on that demo disc.

It might have been Armored Core.

One of the first Armored Cores was on this demo disc.

Crash Bandicoot 2,

Cool Borders, and a couple other ones.

And because we didn't have a lot of money, and I didn't have a lot of games at this time, I played through this demo disc.

Oh, and Tomba.

I played Tomba so much on this demo disc, but the one that'll go back to was this Star Wars fighting game.

And it was a very exciting, it was very exciting to play

as a Jedi and just fight.

And, you know, I guess usually it was Luke versus Darth Vader is what it is.

Yep.

In the demo.

But it was extremely fun to me.

And I thought it was very, very good.

I don't know what history thought of it, but at the time, I was like, this is everything I've ever wanted in a game.

It was great to me.

I mean, I never played that one, but I remember

there's a window of time where I'm not a Star Wars fan.

Yes.

You know, where I...

I think my first experience of seeing a Star Wars film is not on VHS or on DVD.

It's the re-releases in the 90s in theaters.

Wow.

And I was like, oh, I should see Star Wars because everybody talks about Star Wars all the time.

I was a Star Trek kid.

Okay, sure.

So I go and see Star Wars in the theater.

The Sega to Star Wars is Nintendo.

Yes.

And honestly, like full honesty, I did not like it.

I had, this thing had been built up my whole life.

Yeah.

And I saw it and I was like, this is goofy.

It's silly.

And I didn't expect that.

I didn't expect like, Star Trek is kind of ponderous.

It's kind of serious.

You know, the next generation stuff is like, though there are jokes in it.

Yeah.

It's not weird.

And Star Wars was weird.

Like, seeing Chewbacca yell at like a mouse droid and it squeak away.

Yeah.

I was like, what the fuck am I watching?

Now, if that...

happened, say,

in the holodeck

on Star Trek, that wouldn't be considered weird.

Yeah, because there's context.

They'd be playing a game.

Yes.

And, you know, I've been pretty upfront about this.

And also, you know, before

how did this get played, one of the things that Nick and I flirted with was doing a Star Wars podcast.

Yes.

And that's because when I saw The Last Jedi, I became so deeply obsessed with Star Wars that I went back and consumed everything like

a ravenous beast.

Like the cereal?

The Star Wars cereal?

Yeah, I did.

I mean, like, every, I could not get enough Star Wars

after The Last Jedi.

Like, I went insane, read the books, subscribed to the comics.

But my first Star Wars video game comes before I had seen the Star Wars film, and it was Star Wars for the 32X.

Oh, wow.

It's

Star Wars Arcade for the 32X, which was exclusive to the 32X.

And at the time, was the fanciest home graphics you could get.

Like, it was like, oh, my God, it's 3D.

It's like if you take Star Fox on the N64 and you add so many more triangles.

And it also starts with the John Williams score and it had been like digitized.

And I was like, this is fucking amazing.

This is great.

That's awesome.

Gosh, some of those old Star Wars games, it's kind of interesting to me that obviously there wasn't, I mean, there had to have been a contemporary console like when the movies were coming out, but these ones that come out for like the NES and stuff come so much after

their release.

Yeah.

It's kind of funny to me.

Like the first one is released like six years after the first movie.

And it's like at that point, it's still a cultural, like, you know, it took everything by storm.

Everybody was super into Star Wars like pretty immediately.

Yeah.

You know, I guess the games really start picking up with the release of the prequels, wouldn't you say?

Like, obviously, there's plenty before that.

And I know that there's like PC games that I'm missing that I'm sure Nick will fill us in at some point.

Wait, before we move on,

can I read the January 1995 Next Generation issue number one review of Star Wars Arcade for the 32X?

Sure.

All right.

Star Wars Arcade, forceful,

24 megabits available now.

Based on the recent coin-op of the same name, Star Wars Arcade has to produce on the 32X what was previously accomplished only on Sega's famed AM2 board, which generated the polygons behind such Sega hits as Virtual Fighter 2, Daytona USA, and Desert Tank.

The result?

A fine attempt.

The 3D graphics are remarkably good, although the absence of texture mapping gives the game a flat look.

The music is CD quality, including many songs from John Williams' classic theatrical score.

The ship controls well, and most importantly, the game doesn't force you to fly down a specified track like in Star Fox or Starblade.

Also, eight new levels were created specifically for the 32X to give the home player a longer replay value.

A excellent translation of a good game, and a good hint of what to expect from the 32X.

How wrong they were.

Man,

that's tough to think about.

That's really hard to consider.

Yeah.

Like, also, it was a launch title.

So, like, as the second kid, I was like, I got to get a 32X.

I have to get it.

I have to get a 32X.

Yeah.

And that was one of the first games that I got for 32X.

And I was like, holy shit, this system is going to be amazing.

In your estimation, is that Star Wars arcade game fun?

Yeah.

I've gone back and played it.

Yeah.

It's, it's legitimately fun.

Okay.

You play it now and it feels, um,

especially because it's coming out like sort of concurrently with like the nes games or the super nes games it felt like pretty fucking cool i guess at that time too think about i got i'm thinking about it in this way where like the graphics for those video games are similar to me than as the graphics depicted in like the movies like as far as like what's on their like screens and stuff like that so that is that is that must be pretty cool do you want to see a video of star wars arcade on the 32x yeah let's let's watch it And probably you'll have to cut out this part, but then you can get Matt's reactions afterwards.

Before we watch it, I think it's important to just see the context of where it is in gaming time.

Okay.

Which is that you should see, like, you know, games look like this.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it's 1993, you know?

And this comes out for the 32X in 1993.

It's a LucasArts game.

Honestly, that's pretty good.

That was a neat effect.

Yeah, it's a really neat effect for a 1993 video game.

They've captured what it looks like in that shot where the camera is sort of under a Star Destroyer while it is flying through space.

And then it plays the actual theme,

which coming out of a console in 1993, you're like, oh my god, it's actually Star Wars.

And like, even though I hadn't seen the movie, I know the theme.

All kids know the theme.

I could see how you could see this and think the 32X is going to be pretty good.

Because that is good.

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

You want to fast forward just a little bit to like some actual gameplay?

So again, it looks like

it's 1993, what looks like computer graphics, but it's significantly better than Star Fox is at the same time.

It looks so cozy to me.

Something about it is making me feel,

for lack of a better word, some type of way.

I'm very

comforted by it.

It's simple, but inviting.

And also, you immediately see that it is iconic.

Like, you're like, oh, it's Star Wars.

Can I say a take?

Yep.

I think maybe you well, I don't think it's an insane thing to say.

Okay.

I kind of wish video games still looked like this.

I wish that more games chose to look like this.

I wish they looked like this, but played that they felt good to play.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because I do think that this is an aesthetic that looks cool to me, but I could see maybe booting this up now and being like, oh, it feels clunky.

It feels dated to play.

Yeah.

All right.

That's enough.

We get it.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

You know,

I mean, there's just so many, there's so many games, and I know that we won't get to them all, but I will say,

obviously we covered Yoda Yoda stories on on this very show with our friend Mark Rennie and that game fucking sucks like it

like sucks ass there was like a like it wasn't he like asking us to get like acorns and shit like it sucked yeah pretty bad game uh so while Star Wars games can be good they could also be pretty bad yeah for example Yoda stories

I probably hadn't played another Star Wars game until the Phantom Menace comes out.

And then there were a bunch of licensed games based on The Phantom Menace.

And I played quite a few of them.

I played just the Phantom Menace game for PlayStation 1 and was pretty excited about that.

And I also played Jedi Power Battles for the Sega Dreamcast.

And that was one of the games that my uncle rented.

And I remember thinking that they were both fun and cool.

And it was just neat that I was playing a game based on a movie that I had seen twice now.

It was very exciting to me at that time.

I loved Podracer for the N64 enough that when it came out again for the Dreamcast, I got it again.

Because my complaint about it on the N64 was I was like, this is good, but I feel like with just a little bit more power in the system, it would be phenomenal.

And sure enough, on the Dreamcast, Podracer is amazing.

It's a great game.

It is a super good game.

And I know we also did the

remaster

on the show with Lauren Lapkus.

And that was super fun.

And playing it still feels pretty good.

I think, you know, for all the faults in the prequel series, pod racing is good.

Like, pod racing is good and cool, and it looks awesome.

It maybe goes on for too long in the movie.

Because when I saw it re-released this past year in theaters,

I was like, this sequence is like, it feels like it's 15 minutes of the fucking movie.

It's so long.

It feels like it's a long time.

But Sam mentioned earlier a different racing game called Star Wars Super Bombad Racing.

And it's characters from episode one and Return of the Jedi.

for some reason only those two uh and they're you know it's like darth maul with a big head uh racing around on endor with ewoks and uh and suboba and things like that very strange-looking game.

Did you ever play Shadows of the Empire for N64 or other systems?

I didn't.

No, I didn't play Shadows of the Empire.

Shadows of the Empire was a game that I rented

because, again, I didn't have that,

you know, aggressive connection to Star Wars.

So when a Star Wars game came out for the N64, I was like, I'll play it, but I'm not going to.

The opening level of Star Wars Shadows of the Empire recreates the Hoth battle, and it was amazing.

And I don't know that I ever got farther than that level in that game.

Maybe I got to other levels, and I just was like, these are unremarkable by comparison, but you had to like fly around the legs of the walkers in order to like bring them down.

Yeah.

And it was like a full three-dimensional plane that you like flew.

not plane as in like airplane, but like a like 3D plane.

Yeah.

Yes.

And it was so great to just play that level

that I, yeah, I don't know that I ever went back and played any more of it.

And so Shadows of the Empire, I'm reading here

is a multimedia project, and it's not just a video game.

Right.

It's the book.

It's the book, comics.

Yeah.

All one thing, which is pretty cool.

Yeah.

I like when I like, yeah, I know that the Matrix tried to do that too.

Yeah.

But I think more things should be like that.

I think there should be, to understand the totality of something, there should be a movie, a TV show, a video game, and maybe even a rock opera of some sort, some sort of song.

It does sound to me like you're selling yourself on Kingsglaive.

No,

I mean, I think something like Kingsglaive could and should exist.

It should just be good.

I think if it was good,

I would like it.

Well, I think Kingsglaive is pretty good.

Yeah, that's where...

That's one of the ways we're different.

You know, there's a couple of other Star Wars.

You know, I've talked about this so much on the show, I think.

I don't remember playing any games for Attack of the Clones because I remember,

even though I was a kid when these ones came out, I guess I was a little bit older at this point.

2002, I was 11 or 12.

I had more

a sense of my opinions and taste.

I remember seeing Attack of the Clones and being like, this sucks.

Like, this is bad.

And I think still to this day, I think it is the worst of the Star Wars movies.

Yes.

And I'll say by a significant margin.

Do you think it is worse than

Rise of Skywalker?

That's tough to think about because I just forgot that it existed.

Gosh, I'll have to watch them all again to be sure because I haven't seen Attack of the Clones in gosh in years now at this point.

Attack of the Clones did give us the best meme.

I hate sand.

Yeah.

Yeah, that is pretty good.

Oh, no, I meant the picnic scene where

the meme format of the four panels where it's like.

I'm going to do this.

And she's like, you're going to do this first, right?

And then he doesn't say anything.

You're going to do that first, right?

Yeah.

That is pretty good.

That's a good meme format.

Yeah, that is excellent.

And you know what?

There are no memes from Rise of Skywalker that are good.

So it is.

Somehow Palmatine returned.

But that's not, but that is good.

That's a good meme format.

When you want to communicate that something sucks, that is good.

So you know what?

Let's just call it a tie.

But the Star Wars Episode 3 game

is good, I think.

Okay.

For a licensed video game.

It's a pretty, you know, by the numbers sort of thing.

You go through the plot of the game.

The game did come out before the movie and did spoil the movie.

Oh, this is the one that has two endings, right?

This one has two endings.

You can go with the canon ending of, you know, exactly what happens.

Anakin gets chopped by Obi-Wan and then becomes Darth Vader, and that's the whole thing.

Or you can kill Obi-Wan

and then kill the Emperor and then be like

Emperor Anakin, basically.

And that's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

That is pretty fun.

I like that a lot.

It is crazy.

Yeah.

Because now they're so protective of,

you know, they've wiped so much of the expanded universe canon

and have now created this new canon that people don't like.

Yeah.

But and now are very protective of what happens.

So, for example, like in these new games, you can't.

do like a character creator because the character is canon to all of Star Wars.

Cal Cestis exists as Cal Cestis.

Now he can have a mullet or like a mustache or whatever.

Right.

Because these are stories being told.

Yeah.

But

you can't make him how you want him to look.

Did you ever play?

Or make him not a boy.

Did you ever play Star Wars The Force Unleashed?

Yes.

How is that game?

To me.

That came out at the right time because it's in that same pocket of time where I'm playing like Prince of Persia.

I'm playing God of War.

So like my characters, I'm playing Jack 2.

All the characters I like are a little bit edgier now.

And this is basically what if you were Vader's Apprentice in these games.

And it's pretty fun and it's pretty cool.

I don't know.

You just kind of just go around to hack and slash sort of like force user game.

It doesn't,

it's not as satisfying to me as a story.

It's not as satisfying gameplay

as the new Jedi games because I think those are peak Star Wars.

I think those are peak Star Wars media.

They're pretty good.

Jedi Survivor and Jedi Fallen Order.

But

I like those games quite a bit.

And you never played Star Wars Squadrons.

I did play Squadrons.

The newer one, though, right?

Yeah.

The one that has the VR.

I didn't finish it.

I played it for, I probably played like two or three hours of that and then decided that it wasn't worth me feeling sick because

piloting in that game is very fun and very exciting, but it's too much for me.

I get a little topsy-turvy.

I think it's one of the best VR

games that's available.

I'm worried that I'll fall out and then just be floating around in space.

You do feel that.

You do.

Like you're in the cockpit and you look down and it is endless and you feel a little like, oh, I should stay in my seat in this ship.

Yeah.

Which is a crazy thing to feel in a video game.

You've probably played Knights of the Old Republic.

No.

You weren't in on Star Wars in this way.

I wasn't in on Star Wars.

And the truth is, a friend of mine has gifted me Knights of the Old Republic because he's so, he's like, this game is the best Star Wars game.

Yeah.

And I just haven't had, because

we play so much for this, for this show.

Yeah.

And I have such limited time, it's just right there on my, on my, you know, the desktop of my mind installed on multiple devices installed on my phone even.

Oh, yeah.

Because I'm like, oh, I can't wait to play Knights of the Old Republic.

And I just haven't had a chance to dig into it.

It is one of those ones that I feel like I have to play it as well.

I've played a few hours of it on an old iPad.

I had like an iPad mini, like when they first introduced the iPad mini and was playing it.

I've played so much Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on that thing and some of,

because I was like, oh, this is cool.

I can just have granite daddo san andreas with me whenever i want this is great oh shit here we go again but um with uh knights of the old republic i think there was just something i wasn't as into rpgs even though i was obviously a massive kingdom hearts fan yeah i was not as into rpgs uh when i was playing that and i would like to go back to it i think the remake is cancelled yeah i've heard that um but i'd be interested in in trying it out and if they do remake it i'd love to play that of course but maybe i should just boot up the original and just see what it's like.

It's on everything, it's on

Switch.

Yeah, you can play it on literally everything.

Uh, I'd be interested in checking that out.

Uh, I know the Jedi Knight franchise is really popular as well.

I have Jedi Knight 2, Jedi Outcast on Switch, uh, and played that a little bit as well, and thought that was pretty interesting.

Have you dabbled in you did dabble in the Star Wars Lego game?

So, this is what I wanted to bring up.

I feel like you think it's one of the best.

I feel like the Lego Star Wars games are the best Star Wars games, And I also think some of the best games ever made.

I think they're so good.

They're so satisfying.

And I think the Lego movies captured this joy as well.

Yeah.

The sound of Legos is good.

It is good.

And that is half of the battle to me.

Being a little Lego Qui-Gon Jinn building a thing that you need to open a door.

And you just hear his little,

and he's like, you know, clicking all the stuff together.

That's a home run.

That's an A-plus.

They're super funny.

The games are funny.

Yeah.

And I think, I don't know, they're just pretty satisfying.

I know that, you know, the first, the ones that first came out were of the prequels, and then they did the original trilogy, which was so fun.

And then they did a bundle with all of it.

And then they did the

remake

that had all the new Star Wars

ones, including

Grandfather.

That guy, Kylo Ren.

Kylo Ren.

Imagine being so mad about your grandpa.

He's not mad about him.

Oh, he loves him.

He loves him.

I love my grandpa.

I'll finish what you started.

What girl?

What girl?

I like his performance on the ride so much.

I haven't ridden the ride.

Dude, I.

Never mind.

I thought I was sitting here with somebody like this.

Hold on.

Hold on a fucking second.

I got...

Let me tell you about my commitment to Rise of the Resistance, which is that when

Galaxy's Edge opens, I go to Galaxy's Edge multiple times and I'm like, this place fucking rules.

It's good.

Nick will say it's not good, even though he's never been.

It is good.

It is great.

It is great.

I like to walk around the stores.

So I, yeah, I love walking around the stores.

I am so pot committed to Star Wars that I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to get...

an annual pass to Disneyland.

I remember the rest of the story.

So that I can get into Star Wars land whenever I want.

And the truth is, I'm I'm going to bring my laptop and I'm going to write.

I'm going to work at the fucking restaurant, at the cafe.

You're going to be eating a Ronto wrap and then getting back to a Zoom.

Yeah, I'm going to work in Star Wars land as if it's a place that people work and go.

Because how fucking awesome is it to live in Star Wars?

And I do all the sounds and all that.

I know that Rise of the Resistance is coming.

It's about to open.

So I got my annual pass february 2020.

i am unable to use it once i'm not laughing at you i'm laughing at the how much that sucks i was unable to use it once and to disney's credit i think i've said this on the on the show before they did refund me about seven months into the pandemic that's pretty good and they gave me my money they needed to do it yeah they were like hey we're not going to open for the rest of the year.

Yeah.

You can't ever use this.

That's crazy i forgot about that i've been so you haven't been back to disneyland since i haven't been back to ride rise of the resistance i think i've been on the ride like 10 times holy

it's really good and now you can just kind of walk on well i'm trying to convince my uh mary does not like theme parks she's never been to disneyland and i keep trying to convince her to go because i'm like the truth is it's awesome i love it It's incredible.

And specifically, Star Wars Land is incredible.

I grew up here, so I'm biased.

And I know that, like, you know, people have opinions about, quote-unquote, being like a Disney adult.

I like to go three times a year and like

call it a day.

That's pretty good to me.

It's a totally fine thing to do.

And you don't have to be a Disney adult to like Disneyland.

Right.

You're not, you're not.

I don't want a lounge fly backpack.

You're not bounding.

I'm not bounding.

Yeah.

You're just going and having a good time.

And I'm sure that you want to go because the Kingdom Hearts guys are there now.

I'm.

UK UK Met, I'm Jonesing.

I almost called you Nick because he always sits there.

I wake up.

This is a common conversation in our household.

And it's sort of a race to who will say it first.

Okay.

Isabel and I will go, when the fuck are we going to Disneyland?

We want to go so bad all the time.

We love it.

I love the food.

I love just being there.

Yeah.

It's great.

I love it.

But

if that makes me some kind of freak, I guess lock me up.

Encase me in carbonite, why don't you?

Don't.

Like Han Solo.

Yeah.

But the Lego Star Wars games, I think, just to circle back to that real quick.

Uh-huh.

Are they games for babies?

Absolutely.

Okay.

They're the most, they're so, they're, they're not quite like Astrobot.

I was going to ask.

But I think they're about as close as you can get to something.

Like, I don't know, that first Lego movie is like so filled with joy and

so much fun.

Those Star Wars games really nail it as well.

And I do think

of the other,

I know that some people love the Lord of the Rings one.

I know some people love the Harry Potter one.

I not really mess with those.

Not very interested.

I am interested in the Lord of the Rings one, I gotta say.

Yeah.

The Star Wars one, it's just, I like hearing the Star Wars stuff, and I like having a lightsaber.

And I like, you know, when you get hit too many times, you just explode and you become a pile of Legos.

That's funny.

That's pretty good.

That's really good.

I think those are some of the best games.

Period.

Just period.

We have to talk about Star Wars Battlefront.

Wait, before we move on, because we did touch on Kingdom Hearts, has there been,

there hasn't been a Star Wars Kingdom Hearts crossover yet, right?

Only in my dreams.

But there's a likelihood that since the next Kingdom Hearts game takes place in the real, whatever the fuck that means, that it might incorporate more human characters into the Kingdom Hearts world.

I say...

Go for it.

Do that.

But do across

all of the Disney subsidiaries.

Get Marvel in there.

Get The Simpsons in there.

Yep.

Get Avatar in there.

Get...

Sora interacting with a Navi would be hilarious.

Get him a Xenomorph summon.

And get

National Geographic in there as well.

Donald getting a facehugger on him would be one of the most iconic images.

It'd be really good.

It'd be great.

It'd be great.

I want to see it.

sora

you're in space they can't hear you scream

battlefront yeah there's a i have this very specific idea in my mind about battlefront it is raining outside we've ordered pizza oh my god sounds like great day i have my psp

and i'm playing star wars battlefront 2 and i'm having the best day of my fucking life pretty good it's pretty good i Because, I mean, I played it on PlayStation 2, but then I had it for the PSP as well.

And like, I don't know, something about

the PSP.

I'm also just nostalgic for a PlayStation handheld, of course.

Yeah.

But Star Wars Battlefront on a PSP, there's nothing like it.

And it's been taken from us.

They took everything from us.

Yeah, I mean, it's been a shame that Sony has exited the weird market and gone towards the useless.

As of record,

to place this record in time this is the week when the ps5 pro was announced yes

and it's as everybody knows an insane amount of money for for a for a system that currently doesn't really even have games to showcase its power and one of the games they used in the showcase was a remaster of a PlayStation 4 game so we're not even tapping the potential of the PlayStation 5 yet and they're already launching the pro.

The personal issue I have with this is I wish they'd released a weird little guy instead.

I wish there was a weird little guy, and to this point as well, I wish they had released, I wish Sony had an amiibo-type thing so I could have a little Astro bot on my shelf.

That would be great.

And the fact that my shelf is Astrobot-less right now is actually really upsetting to me.

You know what would make for a good visual novel is and or

they should do an and/or visual show.

Sure.

why not yeah

so talk to me more about battlefront it's it's 2005

i'm just getting together with my boys and we're booting up the ps2 yeah just getting in some battlefront and just like going nuts like and just having the time of our fucking lives i the the new remake was also called battlefront yeah very confusingly yes yeah uh i played those games i like those fine yeah they're fine i don't they don't feel they didn't really...

Not in the same way that the Tony Hawk remakes did, where that felt like how I remember doing it.

This was just like, it felt like a new type of thing.

Yeah.

With the same name.

And I was like, this is fine.

I'll allow this.

But if I can just go back, if they could just port the original Star Wars Battlefronts to Switch, I'd never ask for anything else.

Except for all the other ports I want for Switch, like Beautiful Joe and NBA Street Volume 2 and that type of stuff.

You know, even though we've mentioned some shitty games for Star Wars, for example, Yoda stories, another one we haven't mentioned is like the Kinect Star Wars dance off or whatever the fuck is that.

Where they're dancing.

On the whole, most of the game games.

I think that's good.

I don't know how I feel about it.

It's not good.

I'm glad it exists.

On the whole.

Most of these games are pretty good.

Yeah.

And some of them are great.

The ones that I think really get it right,

it's the same thing to me that you hear about these directors that go to the campus

of where, you know, what's it called?

The ranch?

Yeah, where they go to the ranch.

Yeah.

Skywalker Ranch.

The directors that go and

engage with the texts of George Lucas and Dave Filoni.

Filoni did this.

Favreau did this.

Gareth Reynolds did this.

I think Tony Gilroy did it as well.

I think Ryan Johnson did.

Right.

Yeah.

There are certain directors that went to this place before they started making their movie to understand the vision.

Yes, yes.

To understand the canon, to understand

how it feels, what it's supposed to be like, to learn all the rules.

Yeah.

And thus, I think those properties,

the stuff that they made is the stuff to me that resonates more, is more in line with what I think Star Wars is.

Yes.

The same can be said, I think, for the games that get what the the games that portray Star Wars in the same way that I enjoy.

These Jedi games, I think do a really good job with feeling like Star Wars, looking like Star Wars, sounding like Star Wars, and also telling what I think is like a good Star Wars story.

Yep.

Not just.

you know, magic space wizards

like fighting good versus evil.

Yeah.

There's a good, there's a, you know, there's balance.

There's, there's a sort of, I guess balance is the right word for it.

Where like, you know, Cal Cestis is the apprentice to somebody who was one of the sisters.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And like, that's an interesting story because this person was previously evil.

And like, what are this, what is this person's motives and things like that?

That is good.

That's a good story.

Yeah, it's good writing.

Good structure.

It doesn't work for me as much in like the force unleashed because it's like you can be good or bad.

That's sort of inconsequential to me.

Yeah.

Whereas like in these new Jedi games, they really play with like,

you know, sometimes you have to make a hard choice, doesn't make it necessarily a good choice uh or making a good choice doesn't make you a hero necessarily yeah and i also like that they don't they're not tied necessarily to just what i think the bad stories of star wars do which is let's focus it on this one family in this entire universe and that's it yeah i like that this new jedi game has elements of you know the

what are they calling it the high republic yep that's because that's interesting because it's like nobody knows what that shit is like that's cool and it's like making the world expansive.

I like stuff.

I like Star Wars that adds to the world that doesn't rely on the world.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

That's what I think is good about Star Wars.

Yeah.

Star Wars that's additive and expands.

Yes.

Instead of being like, oh, we're drilling down on the two years in between when Luke was here and when he was here.

Yes.

Yeah.

And we better get, you know, let's make sure that Han Solo's name has an origin.

Yeah.

You know, that type of stuff.

So I really liked Solo.

I'm a solo apology.

I liked it too.

We talk about this a lot.

I feel like we talk about this a lot more off pod.

It is hard to make stuff.

It is hard to make something.

And I feel like with you know a microscope on a production like that, it's going to be challenging, even if it comes out good.

Yep.

It's going to be a fucking nightmare to make something like that.

So the fact that it even works a little bit is good.

I think that that actor is great.

And I've been great in other things that I've seen him since.

Yep.

I was excited by Donald Glover as

Lando.

Yep.

But I'm interested to see what I think about Outlaws upon finishing it because I have taken a pause from it since

the same here.

I was so in for Outlaws and the things about Outlaws that I feel like it succeeds at.

A lot of people are like, oh, the missions are kind of samey.

The, you know, like all of that stuff is sort of secondary to me to atmosphere for that game.

And I feel like it is showcasing atmosphere above all else.

And from the moment, like all we want, all we want is a

cyberpunk style, like gigantic world where you can go anywhere in a specific Star Wars land and everything is infinitely detailed.

And Outlaws gives us that by, you know, you start in a bar you've never been to before and you go, you walk around a section of, she's not Corellia, it's Cantobite.

Cantobite.

Yeah.

It's like a section of Kantobite you've never seen.

And it's like, all of that shit is great to me.

Like I love that stuff.

Even though we've just complained about movies that drill down on parts of the timeline between characters that aren't quite filled in.

The difference between that and what I'm saying about outlaws is environments aren't characters.

They're places where stories happen.

Yeah.

And if that environment is fully realized, it's no different than a million different movies set in New York.

Like nobody's ever like, ugh, New York again.

I can't watch a movie set in New York.

Like, it's the characters that exist in that city and what that city provides to those characters and how it informs those characters.

And that's why it's really fucking exciting to me that she starts in Kantobite.

And I do think it's interesting because, I mean, so much of what Star Wars is portrayed as is

Jedis and, you know,

the battle between light and dark and things like that, where an underrepresented part of this entire universe is like the crime world of it.

And that is like legitimately interesting.

There's just not that much about it.

It's always this larger intergalactic war.

She's just going planet to planet, like and fucking over different crime bosses or and you know, or serving one over another one.

And that to me is pretty interesting.

It's the same thing that I like about you know, The Mandalorian because it's just not the same type of stuff.

Yeah, like, I don't know, like, it's just interesting to see other characters because there's so many different types of people in the Star Wars universe, they're not just Jedis.

Here's what I think: if I was in charge of the future of Star Wars media, here's what I would set as a mandate:

you can never again create a show or a game or a book that ends on a permanent cliffhanger.

That if you're going to approve content, you have to approve the conclusion of any cliffhangers in that content.

You have to like solo ends on a huge cliffhanger with characters that never fucking come back except in the comics, right?

I think that that should not be allowed.

I think there is enough brand management there that if you're going to make solo, you have to be like, okay,

this has to be two films.

Yeah.

And we are locked in for two films.

And if those are a wild success, then maybe we'll make a third one.

But that we are no longer going to end the acolyte on cliffhangers that will never be resolved.

We'll never end books or video games in like half-finished worlds.

Yeah.

That

because

so much of what Star Wars rewards in a fan is you

see a thing and then you think about it with your buddies who are Star Wars buddies and you you you guess at where it's going to go next.

Yeah.

You know, and that's been the strength of the series since the beginning is like, oh my God, is he really Luke's dad or is he lying about being Luke's dad?

Like,

how do, why would you trust Darth Vader?

He's probably fucking with Luke.

Yeah.

And then like, by the time you get to Return of the Jedi, those answers are given to you.

And we'll never fucking know what...

I mean, you know, if you read the comics, what happened to the Crimson Dawn and all that shit.

And Crimson Dawn also pops up and outlaws, but it doesn't have that satisfying closure.

I was just thinking about this, and it's going to sound so stupid.

Okay.

It's kind of underrated how scary Darth Vader is.

I don't think he gets credit for being as scary as he is.

He's obviously a menacing figure.

And like, I think, I think the thing about him that, you you know, obviously we just lost James Earl Jones and his voice and his performance is like the whole thing.

Yeah.

But people imitating the voice and imitating the presence and doing the breathing and stuff like that has sort of taken the air out of how legitimately terrifying he is as a bad guy.

I think.

And like when he pops up at the end of Rogue One, I think it's the first time in a long time where I was like, holy shit, he's fucking scary, this guy.

Yeah.

Because he's just going in and just killing everybody.

Yeah.

And like, and cannot be stopped.

Yeah.

And I kind of wish if they were going to do stuff where they're showing us stuff we've seen before, do it more like that.

Cause that was like pretty, that was pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've, you know, I'm, I'm sure with a lot of brands, there's, there's so much management of the IP on the corporate side that is so hard to untangle.

Yeah.

I do wish that there was just a slightly lighter touch with some of the Star Wars stuff.

Yeah.

And I feel like Outlaws represents that lighter touch because it's like, I don't need every fucking game to end with Vader, Vader coming in.

No.

Like, it's cool, but save it for one out of every 30 games.

Yeah.

So that when he shows up, you're like, oh, fuck.

I do like seeing Jabba the Hut.

Yeah, Jabba can be in everything.

He's good.

Like, he's just good.

He's a good character, good character design.

Yeah.

I know it wasn't the original character design.

Okay, I understand.

It's supposed to look like Game of Thrones.

Yeah, but it's cool.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I like that he's a big worm.

Yeah.

He's like the one guy that looks like that.

I guess he has families.

There are other huts.

Yeah.

If we're going to talk about Star Wars, how about a segment?

Oh, my God.

Okay.

I prepared a segment.

Holy cow.

Matt Abadaka prepared a segment.

You know, Star Wars characters have appeared in non-Star Wars games.

I'm going to see if Heather can tell me who appeared where in a new segment called, Who's That Guest Character?

Who's That Guest Character?

Like that?

Yeah, exactly.

Like, that was exactly sort of the vibe I was going for.

All right.

And Sam, feel free to play along as well.

I'm going to suffer on this one.

I guess, yeah, this is going to be tougher for you.

Feel free to chime in, but if you don't want to, that's also okay.

So, I'm going to name a game, and you're going to tell me.

I'm going to name a game that a Star Wars character appeared in that is not a Star Wars game.

What the fuck?

You're going to tell me what character you think it was.

Okay, great.

From 1990, the game Night Shift.

Shift.

What is Night Shift?

It's like a toy-making game?

Chewbacca.

No.

It's kind of harder because it's only one of us.

I kind of thought you would know.

It's R2D2.

No.

How the fuck am I supposed to know?

This is going to be hard.

It's just, it's a bunch of stormtroopers and Darth Vader.

It's like in the toy factory, like assembly line type of thing.

All right, great.

Okay, I see how this game works.

It could be...

A bunch of people, not just one character.

You got to just be one.

All right, great.

Okay, great.

Okay.

Which Star Wars character

appears

in 2001's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.

Jar Jar Banks.

It is not Jar Jar Binks, but this is a good guess.

Fuck.

2001.

Yes.

Tony Hawk.

Fuck.

I wish it was Jar Jar Banks.

Think about what he could do with his tongue.

Grab the board.

When he falls, he would say, How many guesses it's Obi-Wan Kenobi?

It's not Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It is, in fact, the coolest character from this movie, Darth Maul.

Oh, cool.

And he has his double, he has a double lightsaber.

I remember this.

And

he does a trick with the force, and he holds the board out with it.

It's really, really cool.

I do vaguely remember that.

Super awesome to see him.

Having never played that game, really.

Well, you have another chance to guess right now, which character appeared in 2002's Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4.

It's Darth Maul.

It's not Darth Maul.

God damn it.

Any guesses, Sam?

Is this where we throw to Nick?

Just mid-segment.

Yoda.

It is not Yoda.

It is, in fact, Django Fett.

Oh, my God.

They kind of did the reverse.

Yeah.

They should have just put like Mace Windu or something.

Like, it would have been cooler.

Or even

Clocoon or something.

Yeah.

Anybody.

Anybody.

Not Django.

Not Django.

We don't talk about Django.

I don't know it.

You haven't seen Encanto?

Nope.

I think you would love it.

Okay.

It's universally beloved.

I think Mary would like it too.

Okay.

Which Star Wars characters appeared in Secret Weapons over Normandy from 2003?

All right.

I'm going to guess Stormtroopers.

I'm going to double that.

Yeah, Stormtroopers.

It's incorrect, and it's actually kind of a trick question because they aren't characters, but there are unlockable X-Wings and TIE fighters in the game.

So you can do Normandy with a fucking X-Wing.

That sucks.

Kind of funny information, though.

This next one.

Who appears in the game Mercenaries Playground of Destruction?

Jesus Christ, this is a hard game.

I'm going to guess it's Mercenary Han Solo.

Heather's correct.

It is is Han Solo.

Han Solo appears in the game Mercenaries Playground of Destruction now.

Heather's on the board.

Heather's on the board with one point.

She's winning.

Who appears in 2008,

Soul Calibur 4?

I'm going to say Soul Calibur 4 is Darth Maul.

That is incorrect.

Wait, fuck.

Oh, no, it's Vader.

Luke Skywalker.

Sam's incorrect.

Vader is on the PlayStation 3 version.

Yeah, I remember.

Do you remember who else appears in the game?

Yoda.

Yoda on the Xbox 360.

That's right.

Yeah.

And Starkiller from the Force Unleashed games is in both versions.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fuck.

And finally, who appears in the 2009 game, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings?

What the fuck?

A Star Wars character shows up in an Indiana Jones game?

Oh, God.

I'm going to guess C-3PO on a hieroglyphic.

It's a funny guess, but it's incorrect.

Han Solo.

It is Han Solo.

Or you can just kind of play as Han Solo instead.

It's Indiana Jones dressed as Han Solo.

That's weird.

It's weird.

And that was who's that guest character?

And that's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Sitting in this week is our.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

We have to throw it in Nick.

Oh, wait.

Yeah, you're right.

How do you know it?

Fuck him.

No.

No, we do have to throw it.

Yeah, we have to do it right now.

Nick,

what are your thoughts on Star Wars video gaming?

Specifically, maybe you want to talk about the PC.

Wow.

Thanks, Heather.

Thanks, Matt.

Thanks, Ranch.

Hey, buddy, it's Weiger.

I thought I'd toss in some of my thoughts as the resident PC gamer, because if we're talking Star Wars games, there were a number of notable PC-exclusive Star Wars games that were published by Lucasfilm Games, later LucasArts, in the 1990s.

But first, real quick, what are you playing?

Just because it's very zeitgeisty.

I have been playing.

I've been out of town, but I got back just in time for the Diablo 4 expansion Vessel of Hatred.

I've got a few hours into it.

I'm playing the new Spirit Born class.

It is so fun.

It is so kinetic.

You pick your animal allegiance through the skill tree and I am gorilla pilled.

Love the gorilla, Thorley Gorilla, very tanky, very fun.

It's a very different experience than Astrobot, but it's the same sort of like, here's just a game for the sake of being a fucking video game.

And I really enjoy that aspect of it.

So I'll have some more time in it, and I'll have some more impressions at a later date.

But yeah, Vessel of Hatred, as a longtime Diablo fan, since the very first entry in the franchise,

I am enjoying it.

All right, Star Wars PC games of the 90s.

I'll just go through these in chronological order.

And hey, let me know in the Discord if there's anything big that I missed.

But I think I pretty much got everything.

First up, X-Wing in 1993.

This was an awesome game.

This was much more of a space sim than you might expect.

You might think an X-Wing game is just going to be very arcadey, but this was in the era where a lot of these games were effectively flight sims in space.

You were using a joystick for control.

But this one played really great.

You got to be in the X-Wing, the titular X-Wing.

You got to play the Y-Wing, the A-Wing, the B-Wing.

Maybe that was in the expansion, but yeah,

they were all there.

And they were all very satisfying and had a really good single-player campaign.

And around the same year, I think it was also 1993, there was a game called Star Wars Rebel Assault, which was a very different game.

This was a much more glossy game that was designed for CD-ROM early adopters and I believe was a more financially successful game, more commercially successful game, because this let people show off their, like, missed their hardware with FMV and John Williams score.

But it just sucked to play.

It was a piece of shit.

It was basically a rail shooter.

And I never thought it was very fun.

It sold purely

via Pizzazz, but but it was as much a game as something like Dragon's Lair.

It was just kind of, you know,

a cool thing to look at, but not really a cool thing to play.

Certainly not as much fun as X-Wing.

There was also a Star Wars chess game, I think, just called Star Wars Chess that came out in 1993 that was kind of cool, actually.

I'm no chess expert, so I don't need like the highest level of AI in order to have fun playing a chess game.

So there was the series that existed at the time called Battle Chess that maybe people has fallen out of

the know uh collective knowledge a little bit but what this were this what these games were were they were chess games where they had pieces that were like you know uh like a knight or a rock monster uh to you know an actual knight to represent the knight a rock monster to represent the rook a spellcaster to represent the bishop and so on and when they when a piece would take another piece they would have a little combat sequence that would be pre-animated This was the same sort of thing, except it was with Star Wars characters.

So it would be like, you know, a stormtrooper versus Princess Leia, who would be the queen or whatever cool and but the issue was it was like the the mortal combat fatality thing or or like the final fantasy summon thing of like once you've seen it a couple times you don't need to see it anymore to kind of loses its novelty but still you know as a star wars fan it was it was a cool thing that existed okay 1994 tie fighter this is the sequel to x-wing where you play on the side of the empire this was even better than x-wing this was a heightening of the original uh the cool thing about the tie fighter is that the ships were very vulnerable a lot of them had no shields.

So you just like, it really felt fragile at there.

It felt like you were,

the Empire viewed you as just like, you know, as something that could just be like churned, ground through the gears of battle.

And they didn't actually care about you.

And that was like a fun, you know, kind of like a kind of hook to it.

Also made it feel very dangerous.

But it was this also, this game was just better in every way than X-Wing.

And playing as the different model ties was super fun.

The TIE bombers, the TIE interceptors, the mission design was really cool.

And Grand Admiral Thrawn was in this.

I have so much nostalgia for this game.

This is one of my favorite PC games of the 90s, and arguably still the best Star Wars game ever made.

Star Wars Dark Forces comes out in 1995.

This was the Doom Clone era of early FPS games.

This was actually a pretty good game.

I mean, shooting Gamorian guards with a blaster in first person, very, very satisfying.

It introduced the character of Kyle Katarn,

who we'll come back to.

But I don't know.

I mean, it was like...

This was like a B game, but it was a well-executed B game and a good use of the Star Wars license.

Star Star Wars Rebel Assault 2, the sequel to the CD-ROM game, comes out in 1995.

I never actually played this.

Another rail shooter, more FMB footage, huge sales, and everyone who actually likes games and played this one says it sucked.

X-Wing versus TIE Fighter, this was the one where, hey, we had X-Wing, we had TIE Fighter, let's combine them into X-Wing versus TIE Fighter comes out in 1997.

The issue was this was multiplayer focused and kind of ahead of its time in this way.

There was no actual single-player campaign, at least in the base game.

I mean, they just fucked it up.

It was unfortunately kind of a bummer because that was part of what was cool.

I mean, that was the main thing that was cool about X-Wing and TIE Fighters.

They had these single-player campaigns.

Star Wars Yoda Stories comes out in 1997.

We covered this in our old format.

This sucked.

This is just a top-down procedurally generated adventure.

There was no real gameplay.

It was meant to be basically a software toy like Solitaire or Minesweeper, a game you could play in a window at work.

But it just had nothing to it.

It was like a browser tab game.

Just

dog shit.

Just really horrible.

F dir you are.

Okay, Star Wars Jedi Knight, Dark Forces 2 comes out in 1997.

Awesome game.

Kyle Katarin from Dark Forces is back.

He develops force powers.

For some reason, it's fine.

Whatever.

Through the course of the game, becomes a Jedi.

You choose what kind of Force powers to pursue.

So it's kind of the first game that has that sort of thing, the light side and dark side to it.

It has a lightsaber, some of the best implementations of both of those pieces of canon.

It's a really cool game.

And it was followed by Direct Sequel Jedi Knight 2, which dropped the Dark Forces title entirely and became its own series, which was multi-platform.

But on the PC side, Jedi Knight's Dark Forces 2, really, really awesome.

Star Wars Rebellion, 1998.

I was pumped for this because this was one of those 4X games like a Civilization or Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri.

I don't know if Alpha Centauri came out after this game.

It might have been the same year.

The issue was they bizarrely made this real-time.

instead of turn-based.

And so it just didn't play very well.

It's like trying to manage an entire empire.

I know there are games like Crusader Kings now, you know, that are like this, the sort of sprawling sort of thing

that are real time, but this one should have been turn-based with all the games that it was riffing on.

And it was just a really baffling decision that made it just unfortunately not work all that well in practice.

Star Wars X-Wing Alliance 1999 was the sequel to X-Wing versus TIE Fighter.

This was well received, but I was just kind of over it.

I was kind of over the series after the last game, and I never actually played this one.

But I've heard good things.

1999, the Phantom Menace games, most notably Episode one racer uh and then there was also a phantom menace game just called the phantom menace that was like an action game um those were multi-platform and so the era of pc exclusive star wars games pretty much ended with the prequels uh as did our innocence uh there were there were a couple rts that games that came out in the early 2000s um star flarcraft clones uh star wars force commander and galactic battlegrounds uh that i think were of different qualities but i never actually played either of those never really into rts's and i also won't touch the mmos because those were much later and they were obviously kind of their own thing.

But basically, I just want to chime in,

first off, because I like to hear myself talk, but also because I just was like, if we're going to talk Star Wars games, we kind of have to acknowledge PC games because that was such a big part of the Star Wars video game canon for so long.

And also, it was a thing that was like, you know, these are the Star Wars games that I love.

These are the Star Wars games that I remembered.

And I was always hearing console gamers gushing over Rogue Squadron and Shadows of the Empire.

Very good games, games that I played, games I enjoyed.

But on PC, we had like the Jedi Knight franchise, the Dark Forces franchise, and the X-Wing/slash TIE Fighter franchises.

And they were just so much more fully realized,

you know, executions of the Space Sim genre, the action-adventure genres in the Star Wars universe.

They felt like these weren't just licensed games, like these were like great games that had the Star Wars license.

And, you know, I kind of wish

they were more remembered beyond just a PC Master Race enthusiast.

All right.

Hey, that's the end of my little rant here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks for all that, Nick.

Thank you.

Jesus Christ.

I know.

That was,

we'd already started ending the show.

We did the show already.

Oh my God.

You know what?

Hearing that and seeing how long he talked, I think he didn't believe in us and I don't think he thought we could do it.

Yeah.

And we actually did do it, didn't we?

We did it.

We did do it.

And that's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

And sitting in this week for us is Sam Rogic.

Sam, anything you want to plug?

Your band Guck, right?

Yeah, my band Guck is playing the Observatory in Santa Ana in October.

I think, I forget the exact date, but it's going to be a good one.

Well, this episode comes out in October, so if that performance is after that,

go see Guck.

Otherwise, you missed it.

Otherwise, you missed it, you fucking dipshit.

You missed it.

You fucked up, didn't you?

By not going.

Because you missed it.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played for our entire pre-headcome back catalog plus ad-free main-freed episodes, as well as our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animate, where by the time this is out, who the hell knows what we're watching?

Who knows?

We don't know.

Who could say?

We're recording out of time.

We're recording out of time.

And you know what?

I feel free by that.

It's like,

who cares?

Yeah.

It's okay.

But, you know, the only way to find out what we're watching is by subscribing to Get Played's Patreon, patreon.com slash get played.

And Heather?

Nick.

Nick got played.

Nick got played.

Nick got played.

Somehow, Nick got played.

Next week, it's somehow Nick returned.

This is a head gun podcast.