Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition

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I'm really excited to cover this game.

I know it's like super zeitgeisty, but

Nintendo World Championship, sign me up.

In fact, I think we should play right now.

Oh, I'd love to play.

Yeah, it's a fun way to start the show where we're covering Nintendo World Championships, NES Edition, and I think we should just like play the very first challenge, which is who can be the fastest to get the first mushroom in Super Mario Bros.

1.

Oh, I'm in.

I'm in.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

So,

I guess we'll just count it down, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Three, two, one, go.

Done.

Done.

Hang on a minute.

Hang.

It's...

Hold on.

Nigga, it's pretty.

It's so easy.

I just need a minute here.

Hold on.

Wait, no, no, no, no.

It's just the mushroom.

It's in those first blocks.

Yeah, I know.

I know, I know.

I know.

I know the game.

I played the game, but I know how the game works.

Hold on.

Give me a second.

Hang on a minute.

The game is telling me that I wasn't even born

when this game came out and I still got it before.

I don't understand what you're doing right now.

I'm playing the game that I've played a bunch of times, and I know how to play it.

So just like, I probably just know it too well is the thing, so I'm just like, don't overthink it.

Yeah, okay, I got it.

Hold on.

Hang on a minute.

Ranch, do you want to play?

Oh, sure.

You want to try on my Switch?

Just hang on.

Okay.

Then.

Hang on a minute.

Okay, she already.

Ranch did it.

She started long after.

No, I got this.

Hold on.

What are you doing?

I'm

trying to play the game.

I'm trying to do the challenge that we're all doing.

What is taking you so long?

I don't know.

I have no idea what you're doing.

How about why don't I turn it float around on you?

Since I'm getting the third degree here, since you're all getting hyper-competitive for some reason, I'm just trying to have fun playing the game.

Why don't I ask you, how'd you finish this so quickly?

I just ran up to the blocks, jump over the Goomba, and get the fucking mushroom.

Yeah, it's level one, World One, Mario.

It's so easy.

What are you doing?

How did you get fine?

You did all that.

How did you get Mario to jerk off to completion first?

What the what?

What are you fucking talking about?

That's what he has to do first, right?

Why would he...

In what world would he have to do?

I'm so angry.

Wait a minute.

What are you talking about?

I am so angry right now.

Wait, hang on.

Are you doing that?

What are you doing?

And like, he can't jack up?

What buttons are you pressing?

Yeah, take a look at my screen here.

What the fuck?

Oh, my God, Mario.

What is happening?

What the fuck?

What is happening on your game?

What the fuck is he jerking off?

All right, there we go.

There we go.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Yoshi, don't.

World record.

I don't.

Alright, I'm done.

It kind of still feels like it took too long.

We earn A ⁇ rank in MushZoom and attempt to control Ice Climber as we discuss Retro Speedrun mini-game collection Nintendo World Championships NES Edition this week on Get Played.

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

It's time to get played.

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

That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matabadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we're talking about Nintendo World Championships NES Edition for the Switch.

It's a brand new game.

Not a lot of hype here.

Yeah.

But

I'm hyped for it.

I'm hyped for it.

I'm hyped for it.

Yeah.

I think there's a lot to discuss when we get into that game.

There's so much to discuss.

Yeah.

I'm hyped for it.

I keep forgetting about the NES edition

subtitle.

And you hearing it

presents a lot of possibilities.

Oh, yeah, because you're going to get that Super NES edition.

You're going to get that N64 edition.

You're going to get that GameCube edition.

Give me the...

Just give me the Game Boy Advance edition, baby.

Let's get straight to my heart.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

That would be incredible.

I can't wait to talk about the game.

Yeah, I mean,

there's a lot to discuss.

There's also just some general video game news that I think we should address.

This is pretty much breaking just before we record, hours before we're recording this episode.

SAG AFTRA has called for a strike covering video games.

So I can read some of the statement that I have here, but it's all basically centered on AI, which I am surprised by.

I'm surprised that that becomes like the one sticking point, the one thing that the game publishers, that the parts of the collective bargaining group with SAG after the convenience bargaining group is

the name for it.

Like that, that's like their one, their red line is they're like, they're like, we're not going to do anything to give actors any sort of control over their likenesses and voices.

Like, we want to be able to have AI versions of that that we can use in perpetuity.

It's really kind of a bummer.

I would imagine.

Yeah.

Here's the problem, right?

If you are a video game company and you are constantly toggling these performances and the script, the script especially,

is constantly being toggled, then bringing back those actors for additional voice records on things that are very, very

malleable is probably cost prohibitive.

But...

On the other hand, there's no fucking way I don't see the actor's point of view on this.

Yeah.

Because you can't just record lines and then grant the company rights to your performance and remixing, re-scrambling, and creating.

If your tool is your performance, you cannot give the concept of you over to a company.

Yeah, 100%.

I think it's a

pretty intense stalemate.

It's a,

it feels like one thing that just like intuitively as human beings, we feel like everyone should be entitled to is like the rights to their own personhood.

Yeah.

And so it's like, it should be a thing that SAGAFTER should fight for on behalf of their memberships.

I can read from the statement real third.

Matt, do you have any thoughts on this?

I'm not like,

this is what I'm going to say.

I'm not like, I don't feel smart enough to like even like offer any thoughts.

I just know that I'm on the side of the workers in

any strike.

Yes.

But obviously,

it's so wild to me that like even a few years ago, this whole thing with AI is like, this wasn't even part of the conversation.

And now because it's just, it's around more and people are using it more, it's become a bigger thing.

But that nobody who's wanting to use it is hearing the people when we say that it fucking sucks and we don't like it.

It's so crazy.

It's weird because it's fixing a problem that nobody has.

Nobody has this problem.

No, nobody needs this solution.

It is like I came in and I was like, hey, guys, I finally figured out how to make your sneakers full of ice.

Yeah.

You'd be like, why?

I don't want that.

I don't need that.

The idea is, guys, I learned how to piss out of my ass.

Right.

Nobody needs

that.

Doesn't solve a problem.

Guess what?

I'm very sick.

You know, my friend Simon Rich talks, like, he and I have been talking a lot about.

And the reason I name drop him is he has a profile in the New York Times this week, and he is extremely concerned as a writer about

AI and the way it is encroaching on all industries,

all creative industries.

And I was raised to believe that the first place

the shark would head for is autonomous driving.

I thought the first thing that was going to fall apart was that they were going to put AI in trucks and deprive truck drivers of jobs.

And it turns out that's a much harder problem to solve than creating a poem, which

makes me feel like shit about what I do in my life.

Well, making a creative poem.

Yeah, Yeah, because that's the thing.

It's like, like, a lot of the,

so, so much AI art and AI, you know, of any medium is like just absolutely execrable.

Right.

But I've also read,

you know, sort of tell-alls from people who work at Open AI and the unreleased

AI chat GPT

algorithms or whatever the fuck you want to call them that they have are so much better.

And the reason they can't be released is that they can't figure out how to contain them safely.

But like, apparently the creativity is fucking off the charts.

And it really reduces, it reduces art to a question of why are you consuming this?

Because you want to consume content or because you want to

understand

something that your fellow human being has experienced.

And I think that the reason that people don't give a shit about that is because corporations and multi-conglomerates have trained us through spreadsheet-based filmmaking to not give a fuck about the artistry and instead just be like, oh, it is the next movie in this sequence.

I think so, but I, I, but I also think consumers are fans of individuals.

You know what I mean?

So, like, like, I, like, people, people are, are, feel a connection with somebody personally.

Like, for instance, you might be able to come up with an equivalent podcast that is three AIs talking as us,

you know, that's that is like the same quality level of get played.

I do not think it might be better.

It would be better.

It would be better.

One time it would work out.

It would definitely improve.

But I think like our audience feels like they have a connection to us as individuals.

And I think that's pretty common with anything.

You're not necessarily a fan of an IP, you maybe are a fan of an IP, but you're also a fan of the creator and you're a fan of the actors who are a presence in it and that the people make stuff for it.

You know what I mean?

Like, so it's like, I do think there's an element of like, if stuff was just purely machine-generated, if they decided, hey, all our MCU films moving on are going to be machine-generated,

they're going to use AI scripts, and they're going to use AI performers and AI scores for the music.

I think people would be like, like, less interested in it.

I think there would be like a lot less engagement for it.

Maybe generationally, they will reach a point where people are accepting of that.

But as of right now, I think there's like

people want to, people want to be a fan of somebody.

a fan people want to know that this was created by a human and this was their perspective What if you're just a fan of the particular AI that created them the film though like what if it becomes uh like authorship is like

oh I subscribe to Alpha Labs Gen 5 and it's like oh, what does it do?

Oh shit, it makes such good Marvel movies.

I love this this thing.

I think

you could reach a person at every party then.

Like that's like I would hate I would hate that person.

But I mean, yeah you could that could

things could reach a point where like a you know a specific ai has such a clear uh clean creative voice and is actually adding something uh artistically beyond what a human being can achieve where i can where like an individual might be like hey you know what i actually am a fan of their work we haven't reached there yet but to that point what you were saying like that's one of the reasons why we need these sort of workplace protections for people who are currently working in these fields but then you also what heather was saying too about these companies that like ChatGBT and stuff that have stronger AI than is publicly released, they're in the Jurassic Park zone where they're sort of like figuring out, is this safe to open?

Are we allowed to do this?

And then forgetting.

the central message of Jurassic Park, which is don't fuck around.

Don't do anything like this.

This is crazy.

They shouldn't do it.

It is, it is frustrating.

Yeah, as we started this segment by saying, it is solving a problem nobody has.

Nobody is listening to music and being like i hate that this was made by a person yeah i hate this is good yeah uh the article that i referenced is called if ai is coming for comedy writers simon rich is ready it is in the new york times on july 24th 2024 i recommend it um the failing new york times just kidding

just kidding

the one good use of ai so far is ai presidents arguing over video game tier lists those youtube videos are tremendous.

That is good, but that's also, that is not hurting anybody.

That is not hurting anyone.

And also, they're making fun of war criminals.

It's fine.

There is a human being who is writing those scripts and who is

editing those videos.

So there's still, you know,

that's like a part of the tool set for what they're making fun.

Give us something about this.

Let me read this.

Yes, let me read this.

This is AI Productions Remain the Sticking Point is the headline.

I'm reading this from SAGAFTRA's website.

And, okay, let me read a little bit of this.

SAGAFTRA, National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree, Ireland,

the same person who was in charge of the negotiations in the successful SAG AFTRA film and TV strike,

acting under the authority delegated by the SAG AFTRA National Board and with the unanimous advice and counsel of the Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee, called a strike of the Interactive Media Agreement effective July 26th at 12.01 a.m.

The convenience bargaining group with whom the SAG AFTRA is negotiating includes Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight

LLC, Disney Character Voices,

Electronic Arts Productions, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Llama Productions, Take-Two Productions, Voiceworks Productions, and WB Games.

So from that list, like some of those are clearly publishers.

We all know what Insomniac is.

We all know what Activision is.

Some of those other companies are, you know,

voice voiceover houses that are sub contracted out to provide voiceover services for video game productions, sometimes, a lot of times, specifically for localizations.

Reading a little bit more of this.

Any game looking to employ SAG After Talent to perform covered work must sign on to the new tiered budget independent interactive media agreement, the

interim interactive media agreement, that's a mouthful, or the interim interactive localization agreement.

These agreements offer critical AI protections for members.

A lot of companies that aren't named above, not all of them, but a lot of them have agreed to those, and that's one reason they can continue to use SAG After Talent during the strike action.

I'll just read this quote from Fran Drescher and then we can open things up.

We're not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse AI to the detriment of our members.

Enough is enough.

When these companies get serious about offering an agreement our members can live and work with, we will be here ready to negotiate.

And that's SAG After President Fran Drescher.

I guess the problem it's solving is greedy people want their money.

Yeah.

Yes.

Like that's the problem.

problem.

It's like the CEOs are like,

what if we could get drawings without paying an artist?

What if we could get scripts without paying a writer?

What if we could get music without paying a musician?

That's the problem it's solving.

Yes.

It's solving a problem for like eight people.

Yeah, I mean, it's like, look, the promise of automation was always like, oh, our menial tasks will be handled by like machines and we will be freed to do creative pursuits.

And now that's been completely inverted where it's like, actually, machines are going to handle everything creative.

And, you know, like, we don't actually don't need people anymore because it's expensive to do that.

It's a bummer that what we've consistently seen is technology employed to transfer more wealth upward.

But that's where we are, and that's why we need unions.

As soon as somebody turns this technology around on them, and then we can have an AI CEO, they're going to shut all this shit down.

Because those fucking people that sit in those fucking offices don't do a goddamn thing.

They're losers and they have no taste.

Yeah.

That being said, if you want me to be be the ceo of your company i will be i will be the ceo

i will 100 do that job

you you just contact us at head gum

see like you know cce me yeah and just be like we want you to be the ceo i'll fill out a ceo application i'll do it whatever i won't fill it i'm offer only

do y'all have a dream like ceo position i'll i'll go first fudd ruckers i feel like i could turn that company around you're gonna turn it around you're gonna bring it back yeah fuddruckers is back you're gonna be like Leo and the Wolf of Wall Street in the fucking...

I'm not fucking leaving.

Fud Ruckers deserves a for sure come back.

That place is an excellent restaurant.

I guess, honestly, Islands might be the new Fud Ruckers.

So maybe I should go in with a rescue operation for Islands.

Maybe he's not long for this world.

Nick, don't.

They just keep closing, Matt.

I don't know what to tell you.

The original location is closed.

I'm going to punch the wall like this.

Islands is my favorite restaurant.

Islands is so good.

Heather, have you been to Islands before?

I've asked you this a million times, I'm sure.

I think once, maybe.

Did you love it?

Okay, to answer Nick's question.

Matt, we should go tonight.

Here's the thing.

I would love to go tonight.

I can't, and it kills me.

Oh, man.

Drive all the way to fucking Burbank.

What the hell?

Oh, right.

Our offices are kind of nearby islands at Rig and Morty.

We're like real, we're real close.

That's where I see it every day.

I drive past islands.

Yeah.

I'm like, why is this?

I know islands.

I've never been there.

Yeah.

If Mr.

Poopy Butthole or something wants to go to islands, my treat.

Great.

To answer Nick's question, I want to be the CEO of Sony.

Oh, sure.

That would be fun.

Because I would be immediately, I would like, I would cancel all streaming services.

I would reissue everything on physical media, and then

I would release Sony proprietary machines to play that content and

through profitability demonstrate to the rest of the industry that this was the path of the future.

Simultaneously to that, I would have an entire division activated that would be

mid-90s Sony design.

And I would be like, we're making computers, we're making mini-disc players, we're going to fucking make all of the shit look cool again, and we're going to take on Apple with quirky,

retro futuristic design.

I love that.

That's really good.

Bring back the Vio.

Fucking Vio?

Fucking Vita 2?

Yeah.

What?

Put a Vita 2 out?

Yeah, I'd put out a Vita 2.

Like, I would either it would become, it would,

the ascent of Sony would be so fast that people would write about me in Fortune, or I would tank the company in a month.

Yeah, yeah.

The only thing I can think of is wing stop so I could eat wings whenever I wanted.

This has been getting played.

I love wings.

Matt and I seem to have similar trains of thought here.

Can I ask a question that was posed to me once and I can't stop thinking about it years later?

Where are the,

and forgive me, vegetarians, vegans, if this is an upsetting question to you, then, you know, please feel free to tune out for a moment.

Where are those chickens?

What do you mean, where are the factory farms that produce those genetically enlarged chickens?

The amount of chicken eaten every single day in the United States

is like one chicken per like five people, right?

And that's one day, okay?

So you're wiping out

a good day for me.

It's 300 million chicken a day, and there have to be adult chickens in order to do it.

So where the fuck are the chickens?

Like, where do they live?

Like, where are these?

If you're slaughtering,

how many people are in the United States?

300 million?

Ballpark?

300 million.

So let's say that, let's say you're slaughtering every single day

60 million chickens

i don't know what the think about the space of that and how 365 days a year you have to stack there should be a skyscraper yeah that you can see from every point in the united states that is each layer 60 million chickens i mean an enormous amount of land area is used by is used for like animals grazing and just for storing livestock like i believe the bulk of water that's used in the united States is used in agriculture to, you know, for animals, to feed animals.

So it's, so it's like.

It's specifically the beef industry.

Yeah, beef is, beef is extreme, is, is extraordinarily water dependent.

But like, yeah, as far as like where they are, I mean, they're just like in communities that have like ranching and that have hatcheries.

And yeah, go on.

All right.

All right.

The number is so much larger.

The number is so much larger than I expected.

Yeah,

I'm looking at a similar statistic.

Hold on a second.

Yeah.

The U.S.

chicken industry kills 9.5 billion chickens each year.

So what is the average size of a chicken?

Where are the chickens?

I mean, here's, I think, I think there's like a stat that's like there are more chicken.

There's like so many chickens on earth per person.

Like they're like, there's, I can't remember exactly how many chickens there are.

on earth but there's like there's a lot of chickens and they're not very big and i don't think it takes very long for them to reach full maturity how big is this is this seven inches uh Yeah, I think so.

Hold on one second.

Hold on.

Heather was kind of making a bowling ball shape.

That's not right.

We don't have to further investigate that.

Just as far as where

the poultry industry is centered in the U.S., I mean, I have to look up a map to see where it is.

I know that they're stored in poor conditions and they're not like.

Yeah, a lot of them live absolutely

horrible lives.

Maybe animals live in hell to provide cheap meat for ourselves.

As CEO of Wingstop, I'm stopping it.

I'm the guy on the inside.

I'm putting an end to that.

You're getting ousted so fast.

No, not before I

did 35 minutes ago.

I'm on my Ozzy Mendez bag.

Hold on a second.

I'm doing math here.

Okay.

I will say that, yes,

I think future generations will judge us extremely harshly for our complicity in factory farming.

It is an absolutely abominable practice.

This is physically impossible.

Where are these fucking chickens?

So I averaged six inches per chicken at 9.5 billion chickens a year.

That

represents 852,000 miles of chicken.

Yeah.

How big is the United States?

This is the thing.

I mean, look, we can't keep doing math.

We have so much to talk about.

No.

But the thing, I think we're forgetting is the land area of the United States is about 4 million square miles.

Chickens are being slaughtered and born exponentially.

Like, they're just always, it just always happens.

But listen to what you just said.

It's 4 million square miles.

Yeah.

That means that a quarter of the country should be chicken every year.

An enormous, yes, an enormous part.

When you look at a map, they're not there at once is the thing.

You're thinking about them as all as they're there once.

Even if they're hold.

Do you understand how think about it?

It's crazy.

It's too

much.

Oregon, California.

Think about 25% of the fucking country.

Yes, mechanized breeding and killing

for the means of feeding human beings.

It's like kind of crazy.

Physical space.

Yeah, the logistics of it are insane.

If they were all out, if they were all out and about.

But even if they were stacked up top,

that would be

scarier to me.

Well, a lot of them are.

I mean, I think a lot of them are.

Live in cages that are stacked on top of each other.

I mean, you know, again, this is, this is, they're not being able to see them from space.

It's 25% of the country.

It's the largest thing on planet Earth.

I don't want to see them from space.

So most of the production of chickens is centered in the American South, in the U.S.

So, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, it looks like

Arkansas.

What about Kentucky?

I think a lot of the land areas.

Yeah, there's a decent amount in Kentucky, though, less so.

And you may be making the association because of Kentucky fried chicken.

I stressed exactly why.

I'm stressed out.

Yeah.

Are you worried that one day you're just going to turn a corner and it's going to be millions of chickens?

A few

thousand miles of chicken.

You ever seen chicken run?

Her year, yeah.

I think if there were that many chickens in chicken run, they wouldn't have the problems that they were.

That's what I was gonna say.

Well, that's like an argument for collective action.

They all sort of work together and they're able to escape.

I guess that's true, yeah.

If they could find a way to unify all of them, yeah, we'd be in trouble.

Am I still on the show?

Look, take it up with Heather, all right?

She derailed us with a chicken discussion.

I'm gonna turn this into a mass packet briefly.

I feel like you guys are lost.

I've never heard more times in one show, hang on, I'm doing math.

Yeah, I didn't like it.

I didn't like that at all.

If you're thinking about how to manage your inventory,

I can think of a way that you could fit more chickens into a briefcase.

Interesting.

Yeah, I'm the Resident Evil merchant.

Yeah, Resident Evil Merchant.

This is your first episode.

Usually I'm queued up to introduce a segment, but today you guys got lost in in a maze.

Don't blame me.

I'm not blaming you.

Don't blame me either.

Like, I don't want to...

I'm not allowed to have a concern about something.

Yeah, we don't want to hear about it.

The Resident Evil merchant, actually pretty familiar with chickens.

You could sell gold eggs to the

merchant.

I love an egg.

Do you know how creamy a gold egg is?

I never thought about eating the contents of a gold egg.

What do you think I use them for?

I assumed it was like, you know, like a

some some sort of jewel.

It was some sort of, you know, a

no, it's going to be just gold.

It's an egg.

It can be used as a weapon.

It's an egg.

Yeah, you can.

You can use there's a there's a I can't remember what boss it is in Resident Evil 4 the remake, but you can

use the gold egg and it the enemy takes a substantial amount of damage.

Well, I'm glad I don't I'm glad I get a chance to crack them open.

Wow.

And eat that delicious yolk.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Hey guys, I'm here to ask you, what are you playing?

And I'm going to get Heather out of the way.

Okay, okay, thanks.

Well, this is going to be the last time I think I talk about this game for a bit.

And for some of you listeners, that's going to be such a pleasure to hear because Epic Games is on the list of struck companies as of midnight tonight for SAG AFTRA.

So I'm not going to talk about Fortnite until they resolve their labor dispute.

But today,

I'll talk about it one last time to say that the Cybertruck has been added to Fortnite, and I fucking hate that it's happened.

Everyone seems to be really mad.

Two strikes.

Two strikes.

Why?

Why would you add the Cyber?

Nobody wants that.

I mean, it does look like a video game car.

So the place that it is most

appropriate design-wise is probably inside of a video game.

Yeah.

Yeah?

Like a PlayStation 1 video game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A shitty game with a stupid car in it.

Given that,

like, the

memes about the Cybertruck is how often it gets stuck in mud, stuck in dirt, stuck on a road, wheels blow off.

Guys accidentally smashed his balls getting in and out.

You see that one?

There's critical wiring failures because the entire system is daisy chained together.

You can't put it in a car wash or you void your warranty.

Like there's so many,

and these are like popular problems with it.

These are like Reddit front page problems, not like who knows what a mechanic would think when they look in it.

But being that so much of

the play of Fortnite is driving your car through a river or up a mountain, it seems awfully misleading that you would be able to do any of these things in a Cybertruck.

So

I won't be playing those quests.

I won't be downloading that skin.

I do, they did add a Dotson to the game, and I do drive my old car.

That's pretty good.

I drive my old car.

That's way better.

Yeah, it's pretty great.

You know what car they should add to Fortnite?

What?

The Homer.

The car that Homer makes.

Yeah.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

That's funny.

Very similar to the Cybertruck.

I know.

It's aesthetically

one-to-one.

The Cybertruck is what a dumb kid or Homer would come up with.

Fucking stupid ass.

It's also funny because, you know, as other players have pointed out on Twitter,

the amount of visual space you have in a vehicle allows for greater targeting of the drivers.

So if you want to play competitively, you want to reskin your car with a smaller windshield.

And the Cybertruck has all glass in the front.

So if you are driving it, you're effectively paying to lose, except you're not paying because it's a free, they're giving it away.

But putting that skin on your truck is going to make you and your passengers vulnerable to sniper fire.

I'm just like, when you told me this, I was just surprised because it feels like they've taken pains to do things like, you know, scale down someone who's famously tall, scale up someone who's famously diminutive,

take a character like Peter Griffin and give him a buff body so that he's like got the same.

Like it feels like they're trying to make sure there's no advantage of one skin over the other.

But I didn't realize that existed with the cars, that there was like a meta where certain cars were more advantageous than others.

I assume they were all balanced.

No, they're they're they as of right now, they are not balanced.

There have been tests on the uh windshields of various cars, and if you can see the player, then you can shoot the player through the car, through the car window.

Um,

and because of that, I think cars in general have been taken out of competitive

because there are different advantages to different skins.

Plus, people just fucking hated the cars.

And if you want one more reason to hate the cars, the Cyber Truck is coming to Fortnite.

That's my fuck.

What?

It also just kind of feels like

it feels too late, kind of.

Like, it's like, let's put this.

It would make more sense to put the cyber truck out as they're becoming commercially available.

Or before.

Or before.

Like, people would have been like, oh, shit, I drove this in Fortnite.

Maybe I'll drive it in real time.

I'm driving the car from Fortnite.

That's actually really crazy and kind of cool.

It sucks still because Elon Musk is a piece of shit, but it feels like they're just doing it now at a point at a critical cultural apex where nobody likes the car and nobody likes Elon Musk.

It's a really weird time for them to do it.

I still like the car.

You like the car?

I like the way it looks a lot.

It's funny to see it.

It's awesome to see it, but I hate everything else about it.

I like that it's on the road.

I wish there were more diverse vehicle models available to purchase.

I do think that's true.

I wish it was like the way, you know, in the 1970s when cars came in all these different candy colors.

Like, I wish that that was still an opportunity for or an option for consumers.

So, for that reason, I like that the Cybertruck exists.

I don't like that it exists because of who made it and how shitty it is.

Yeah, I will say

that if you have one, I hope you get your balls trapped in it.

Me too.

For that reason alone, I'm going to save my money.

The one thing about Homer's truck that was cool is that the horn played La Cucaracha.

It's really good.

It's not in a cyber truck, is it?

No, I mean, I think you can

modify that.

You can modify because it's just a

built-in feature.

Yeah, you can play anything.

Nick Weiger, what are you playing?

Thanks so much, Resident Evil Merchant.

You're welcome.

So I want to lead things off by saying I feel like people out there might be expecting me to have a comment on click holding, the cuckholding clicker game.

Because of my taste in games, I have not yet played click holding, but it is on my radar.

I almost buy it.

I will report back.

Yeah.

I haven't even heard of this.

Should we do it on the show?

We could cover click holding.

It's only like $2.

I think we should just do it.

What is it?

I think we should do it next week.

Maybe we'll just talk about it later.

We'll do an episode about it.

I don't know.

I asked what it was, and Nick's eyes rolled back and had like a mentat.

I haven't played it yet.

I don't know.

I have a sense of it, but I haven't first-hand experience.

It does feel like there's something else going on.

Yeah.

It's basically like my understanding of it is having heard other people talk about and read about it is that you go, the gameplay is you go to a hotel room and you're, and a guy is paying you money to click like a mouse or click something for him, click some sort of device.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

That's not what it sounded like.

Yeah.

But I mean, it is.

You probably know why you looked it up.

It is certainly meant to parallel something.

I was going to talk about Evo 2024.

Fuck yeah.

So we're always about a week behind because of our record schedule.

So this will have been

not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, as you're listening to this on the Monday.

But this has happened since our last record.

Evo 2024 was held in Las Vegas.

This is the major American fighting game tournament.

And I watched a lot of it live on YouTube.

Me too.

And I had a, I know we were all watching it.

We're all texting about it, but I just had an absolute blast just taking this in.

So like, you know, I don't really play play fighting games, but it is a,

I don't mean this any sort of negative way.

It is like a pretty narrow genre.

Like if you understand how a fighting game works, you can kind of understand how like all fighting games work.

So you don't have no one specifically to pick up like watching it.

And it also just televises incredibly well.

It's just like really well broadcast.

Two large characters in one frame the entire time.

It's a one-on-one competition.

It's really easy to track, much easier to follow if you're casual than something like a MOBA or, you know, an FPS where you've got to monitor like a bunch of different screens to understand the play space.

And I don't know.

I just thought it was super

valid.

That's a really valid point, Nick.

I've never considered it.

Well, because that's a big thing about sports is like, like, one reason people think the NBA is so much more popular than hockey, even though these are games that like should have roughly equivalent fan bases, equivalent number of franchises, and, you know, have similar schedules, is that just like you, it's easier to watch an NBA game on TV than it is on, on, the hockey game where you have trouble like, where's the puck?

You know, it's harder to follow.

So, and, and, and the NFL and, and, and, you know, the, the biggest sport in the world, uh, you know, proper football, soccer is like

those are other sports that televise really, really well in HD.

I fix, I have an easy solution for watching hockey, the problem of not having, seeing the puck.

Huge puck.

Big puck.

Make the puck big.

Yeah, I like the idea of a really big puck.

I mean, I think that's just like a

fun adjustment, make it like really big

a little bit, but yeah, make it sparkly, but then also to come because, like, you can't make it too big, right?

You have to make the guys really big, too.

Yeah, then you're kind of getting, but going back to ice hockey on the NES, where you can get like a team of just like all big fat guys.

Yeah, what if it was bigger guys, bigger puck, less guys,

smaller rink,

like five guys in this room?

I'd watch it.

I mean, this is compelling, yeah.

Anyway,

this was just an awesome experience just watching.

And I just sat down.

I just took a lot of it in.

And as a viewer who doesn't really play fighting games, I will say it's a very welcoming community, it feels like.

I never felt alienated or like I was being talked down to or overwhelmed by jargon or anything like that.

I never felt like I was like, oh, this isn't for me.

It felt like, hey, they were like, hey, check this thing out, you know?

You wrote something in our text thread that I want to copy paste into our dialogue here, which was that when we were talking about watching these games, there were a couple that I was watching where I didn't know the game at all, but I was still fixated on it.

And you wrote, mastery is intoxicating.

Yes, 100%.

And that's, and that stuck with me because I was like, it is, it is.

It's incredible to watch anybody be extremely good at a thing, which is part of why AI sucks.

100%.

Yeah.

It's not like no one's rooting for Watson, you know, in Jeopardy.

No one's rooting for the computer versus Kasparov.

Like,

that sucks, you know?

But, but, like, and yeah, you could design an unbeatable fighting game AI, but, like, no one's going to cheer for that.

You're, you're rooting for people.

And yeah, just seeing human excellence at its highest level.

On that note, while we're talking about that, I was surprised by like how

many winners of the grand finals for a particular game were using game pads.

I was like, oh, that's fascinating.

That elite players now have moved away from fight sticks.

Not all of them.

Some of them are using sticks, but a lot of them are just using game pads.

I'm sure that's a development that's happened in the past decade or so.

Street Fighter VI too had that, or you know, Street Fighter VI had that

control scheme.

The modern control scheme.

The modern control scheme that doesn't benefit the

fight stick.

Although I have to imagine that's banned at something like Evo and everyone and all the players would want

the more granular control over their inputs anyway.

What was I going to say?

Okay, so talking about specific games, I feel like Tekken fans have gotten grumpy with us because none of us are like into Tekken.

But I really.

I love Tekken.

Okay, that's great.

That's one.

That's someone on the podcast who's a Tekken fan.

I love it.

I love that lion guy.

King.

Yeah, King's great.

Love him.

King, he's like the one guy I have.

What happened to him?

How did he get like that?

I think it's just a mask.

I think it is a mask.

It's like a skin.

What?

I think it's like a.

I think he can take that off and he'd have a human head underneath.

yeah i hate this game

the the tekkin eight play was really super high level and super fun to watch guilty gear strive obviously gorgeous game um but the surprise highlight for me is grand blue fantasy versus rising this is a game that's not on my radar at all i watched the top six all the way through to the grand finals and loved it like i don't know this game at all it's super watchable super clean frames lots of hips hit stop uh there's a free-to-play version which i have downloaded have yet to play uh the the finals the grand finals ended up being Aaron DeMac versus Tororo, which was a rematch.

Tororo had not dropped a game until they faced Aaron DeMac, and Aaron DeMac ended up winning American Flyers.

And

it was just awesome.

It was really cool to watch.

The Street Fighter III third strike, we were texting during that.

That was happening on Saturday night.

It was really cool.

So good.

One of my favorite-looking games ever.

So just watching it is just like, in and of itself, I'm just like, I love looking at this game.

The art and animation are so incredible.

It also featured,

obviously, we've talked on this podcast about Evo Moment 37, I think is what it's called, which was

a sequence of events like 20 years ago in an Evo tournament where one player tried to

essentially chip damage another player to death, and that player ended up parrying what at that point was considered

an unparryable super art.

And it was a very compelling clip to watch.

You should look it up if you haven't seen it.

You don't even have to know the game.

But this tournament had what people are calling evo moment 38 yes i mean do you do you have it specifically

i mean i i don't i mean i know uh it was hugo versus ken one of the players was named hayo hayao yeah hiyao is like a fan favorite and

and he leapt over he used a an input which is basically unusable.

It is a

drop kick by Hugo, who is a character so large that he takes up most of the screen.

Huge Burley wrestler.

But it has

an unusual hitbox, which means it's invulnerable in strange places and managed to leap over the

super move that Ken, and I don't know who he was playing against, and I feel bad about that.

And what I'm describing is described with so much more poetry by the actual announcers of Evo, but basically,

he pressed a button that nobody presses.

It allowed him to dodge, and then it allowed him to win the game.

Yeah,

it was Hugo, it was versus Ken.

And I mean, I have the clip up here if we want to.

Oh, yeah, no,

I knew you said that.

I was just

who was, though.

It was Frankie BFG, I believe.

Okay, there was a game.

Okay, and yeah, I have the clip up here.

Actually, I watched this live, and it's a combination of, yes,

the inventiveness to use that move in this moment.

It's, again, what you're saying, completely useless move, as is my understanding.

And yeah, the commentators and the crowd reacting to it.

And then Hayao just does this incredible celebration.

He's like this contortionist who does, like, who has

also an incredible showmanship,

an incredible showman.

And so it's just, it's just a great, great bit of sports entertainment.

Okay, here is the clip.

It is Hayao versus Frankie BFG.

He's not dead yet.

Do we go for the we go for the cross-up topsuit?

He goes for the universal overhead, then backs.

Away, dashes up in danger.

Oh, my God.

No, no, no.

He went past.

He stayed free.

He went for the downhouse.

He jumped over completely.

Do you understand?

That is a worthless button.

That button is so worthless, but he was able to make it useful in a very touch, crazy scenario.

And look at this.

The pop-off.

And this is awesome.

It's just at a lot.

Everyone's just at a loss for words.

And then he runs to the crowd and just starts fucking high-fiving everyone.

It's so awesome.

I wouldn't be that excited at the fucking Olympics.

There's no way.

Yeah, it's also an arena.

I think it's like the MGM Arena where the boxing matches.

It's a huge amphitheater.

Maybe it's in the sphere now.

I don't know.

I think it might have been in the convention center this year.

But yeah, it was a very huge, very large space.

Street Street Fighter on the Sphere would be so sick.

Yeah, it would be.

Uh, it would, that was a, that was an awesome moment, and yes, it's it's uh, hey, I'll just like just also, I think like an older player.

Like, I think he's it, I think they're in their 40s, so it's like that's as a gamer grandpa, I'm always encouraged when I'm just like, oh, that person's still at it.

That's a wild thing for Nick to drop.

I didn't even know he had a kid, let alone a grandchild.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

there's a lot you don't know about me.

Um, yikes,

highlight for me, uh, beyond that, Street Fighter VI.

I watched the top six for this game live.

Just such a beautiful game and just the level of play has gotten so high.

There was also just like a great story through here.

So

the grand finals was Big Bird versus Punk.

Big Bird lost in the winner's final versus Punk.

Then they made their way through the losers final of the top six because it's a double elimination tournament.

So if you lose, you get another chance to get back in.

Ended back up in the grand finals for a rematch.

The grand finals, Punk, one of the top fighting game players in the world, but they'd never won Evo Evo and had been competing there since 2017, I believe.

And it was kind of like, are they ever going to go over the hump?

It's Rashid versus Cami.

These are the characters.

It goes all the way to the final round of the final game.

And if anyone's curious, just look up the VOD of that match if you haven't already seen it because it's really awesome.

But it's just

such an incredible bit of emotion and one of those awesome bits of humanity that you get with sports.

I don't know.

I loved it.

I mean,

I just had so much fun watching it.

And I just, if anyone attended Evo or watched Evo, you know, let us know in the Discord because I'm curious at your thoughts.

And I kind of just, it just makes me want to play a fighting game.

Again, just the fighting game community feeling so welcoming makes me want to just like, I feel like I want to be some sort of participant in this.

And I think I'm just going to go to Evo next year because I just, I just would love to have that experience.

I would love to do that with you, Nick.

And I will say that watching the Street Fighter VI finals and seeing Akuma present on the roster again made me want to break out my fight stick and put some time into Street Fighter VI because I've been waiting for my boy to get into the game.

Where is it?

Evos in Vegas.

All right, I'll go.

I'll fine.

I'll stay up for two days and just smoke cigarettes.

Oh, y'all.

I'm there.

I'm in.

I'm in.

I can't wait to go.

I'll drive.

Anyway, my car is wet.

Just wanted to say some, probably a few too many words about Evo just because I've just like I had such a fantastic time watching it.

I thought it was better than the NBA playoffs this year, honestly.

So this is such an incredible sporting event.

It's incredible praise from Nick Weiter.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Was it because was it because you didn't like any of the teams in the NBA playoffs?

Maybe.

But I'm part of it.

The eventual championship.

Matt, what are you playing?

Okay, so I do have a, I have a.

That's my job.

I'm sorry.

Resident Evil Merchant, can you please queue up our

next podcaster?

I want to take the wind out of your sales.

You do a good job.

No, it's okay.

You seem kind of deflated now.

I have an update and a correction.

Are you eating a whole chicken?

Hey!

Heather was just talking about that.

Sometimes

you got to eat a whole chicken to get to the egg inside.

That's not

even how it works.

Where do you think they come from?

I mean, I guess it could be how it works.

It's still

a defrain calculation.

For a time,

there is an egg.

You gotta hit that window, my friend.

Have you ever been into a chicken to have a yolk come out?

No.

It is kind of crazy to think about that animals that lay eggs form shell.

They make shell with their bodies.

That's the worst part of it.

Yeah.

Bones and shell.

Yeah.

But otherwise, get into that chicken when the egg is inside.

I have an update in correction from last week.

I said that I had read, and I had read this, so this is not my fault.

I just reported something that wasn't true.

Oh, okay.

I had read that the laser room from Resident Evil 4 is not in the remake nor the DLC.

And I'm here to tell you right now,

that laser room's fucking there.

Wow.

Wow.

And it chops you up if

you don't go through it.

And it's funny.

It's pretty good.

Great.

And I finished the Separate Ways DLC, and I really enjoyed it.

So much so that I do think that I have,

I'm not getting to it soon, but I've bumped up the Resident Evil 2 remake in my queue because I would like to play more Resident Evil, but I think I'm too scared to play the first person ones because that's too much.

Even though

I want to see that big lady.

We all like the big lady.

We all love the big lady.

Yeah, I like the big lady.

The big lady is good.

She's scary.

She's scary.

But also, I was away this weekend with some friends.

This is the same group of friends who, when I went away last year, I brought Rock Band.

We played Rock Band.

Didn't bring it this year because it was too much of a pain in the ass.

And I don't think that my set could take another trip.

It just could not.

It was such a pain.

I need to replace all the

components.

But I got us all into Overcooked, and we all got really mad at each other.

We were all yelling.

There was pointing at getting up, pointing at the TV, telling people to stay in their zone, stay in their section.

It was pretty intense, but we all made it through.

And we all got so happy when we did, we did one level.

We beat like,

we got through half of the game.

Wow.

And we got through like three of the worlds, like fully.

That's incredible.

And we got to this one that we were stuck on for hours.

We did this one level for hours just trying to get one star.

We're like, we couldn't, we were getting fucking cooked by this one level and we couldn't do it.

And we finally did, we did do it.

And there were, we all had like tears in our eyes, like not fully crying, but we were like so happy that like we started to like well up a little bit after hours of trying to do it.

That's incredible.

That's what friendship's all about.

And if you're a listener and you don't know what overcooked is, it is a cooperative party game that is,

you play a bunch of little chefs in a top-down restaurant.

Yes.

And you're supposed to service a restaurant.

Now, typically, it'll be like somebody's chopping vegetables, somebody's putting those vegetables into a dish, somebody's cooking those vegetables, somebody's plating the vegetables, and somebody is cleaning the dishes and running the plates to and from the restaurant.

But the levels are designed so that these restaurants are less and less cohesive as environments.

So, sometimes the restaurant will be

splitting a busy street.

Sometimes the restaurant will be on the top of two cars that are not maintaining the same speed.

Yes, yeah, yeah, that was a tough one.

And also the movements that you have as a player are wobbly and imprecise.

They are not very

like,

you can think you're going to, you know, you're grabbing onions and you accidentally grab a fucking tomato and you want to scream.

It's a real nightmare, but it was really, really fun.

But, you know.

Nick's a thirsty little bitch, right?

Oh.

Did not have to be commented upon.

Intentionally opened that soda away from the mother.

Nick also walked in here with four cups, and we all got really scared.

It was really, really crazy.

He was like, once empty, once empty.

I've already finished my one can of spin drift and half of my water.

I've been, you know, pretty parched right now.

Let me just tell you right this: yeah, if you spill, I'm gonna open up a can.

All right,

feeling what it, what the rest of it is.

I was in Palm Spring, I was in Palm Desert, so it was like 113 degrees.

All my friends were outside in the pool.

That's not my zone.

No.

Inside is my zone.

And I had my PlayStation portal with me.

I was like, you know what?

I'm going to do it.

Seems like a good weekend to start.

Avatar, Frontiers of Pandora.

So I popped the disc in so I could play it remote when I was away.

And what did I do?

Start a new save on Baldur's Gate 3.

Hell yeah.

Started a barred run in Baldur's Gate 3.

And all weekend I played it.

People are like, what are you doing, Matt?

Oh, I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3.

Oh, great.

It's really hot outside.

Yeah, great.

See ya.

And over the course of a weekend, I got to the start of Act Two.

I like,

I flew through it.

I just blazed through it.

In comparison to,

it's just because I know how the game works.

I know how the game works.

I know what I have to do.

And I think it's been patched a bunch to where there are things that are like a little more clearer.

They're a little more like

there's a little more hand-holding early on.

There's like tutorial pop-ups and things like that.

So like stuff that I wasn't remembering, it was telling me like, oh, make sure you do this when this happens or whatever.

Some really useful stuff.

so and i knew where everybody was yeah so within like the first like

less than an hour of my playthrough i basically had almost all my friends back uh i had will in my party pre uh transformation which was like very very sick um

and I'm loving it.

I have I have Lazelle.

I've uh romanced Lazelle.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm afraid to break up with her

because I want to, I want to see what else is going on too.

Because I thought that this was going to be my Carlac run.

But I'm like, I'm afraid that she's going to jump out of the game and kill me for real.

Oh, yeah.

Layzelle is not going to be happy if you try to sever that relationship.

You're locked in, buddy.

I wasn't aware that Will, or maybe I knew this in passing.

I didn't know that Will could be a party member.

I thought he was just a guy.

No, no,

you think this is about everybody in the game.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

You can kill him.

Yeah, you definitely can because he attacks you.

Because Will is very angry.

Will is pursuing Carlak,

and that starts with they have an antagonistic relationship between the two.

You can get both of them in your party, but you killed both of them.

Yeah, no, they attacked me.

Well, that's how you frame it.

I did not attack them.

They attacked me.

Carlak said on sight and just came after me.

I didn't know she was a party member.

And Will attacked me in that town.

Yeah.

Because I looked at some beans.

We ran into this lady with Lazelle in my party, and I ran into this lady before where she's like, go break into there and

steal a Geth Yankee egg.

And even then, I knew that that seemed bad.

Yeah.

And I killed that lady on site.

But now that I had her in my party, it was an even faster.

Like, I'm going to kill this lady because I was like, how dare you?

That's my wife.

I will say.

Did you do that quest on your previous playthrough?

Because

that one's an interesting one because I did not follow through with it on my first playthrough.

On my second playthrough, I did retrieve the egg, get the egg, and then that one continues into act three, and it's kind of crazy.

Oh, really?

No, I didn't do it.

I guess I could go back because I'm not super far into

act two.

I just got to the

Shadow Inn or whatever it's called.

Yeah.

And

I think I'm going to.

I think I'm going to.

I've gotten this far.

I've put in like 20 more hours into this game over a weekend, basically.

And so I think there's no reason for me not to see it to the end again.

I'm playing a bard, like I said, and I was saying

in the chat that

it's a funny way to play because you can just lie all the time.

It's so fun.

It's so funny.

All the bard dialogue options are such funny lies that I'm just like, this rocks.

This is so funny.

And sometimes it's like performance.

And, you know, sometimes you could mean what you're saying, but a lot of times it's like, just like, it's just,

it's just blind confidence a lot of times it's just a psychopath yeah it's great it's so so funny and so good but it's also fun for a you know a game that is so centered on combat how many encounters specifically with a bard but with other high charisma characters as well but but a bard has the most you know versatility you can kind of like

end an encounter with no combat.

That's the thing I always love in any RPG.

You can do this in

Fallout as well.

But I mean, there's a lot of games that have this.

But anytime that's an opportunity of like, oh, I don't actually have to do this combat encounter.

I don't have to fight this boss.

I can talk my way out of this.

It's super satisfying.

And what's satisfying about that, too, is that you get experience no matter what.

Right, yes, right.

Experience isn't locked behind having to have like an encounter with an enemy,

which,

you know,

there aren't, it's kind of funny too, because I guess maybe where I'm at right now, this isn't true, but in the in the early part of the game, there are like not that many like enemy like random encounters.

Like there's like some some beasts around that you can fight, like, to maybe get a little extra like experience, but otherwise, it's just like the main battles that you have to fight.

I remember, I mean, I'm getting through a lot of this stuff without dying.

I haven't died once, that's great.

And, you know, I am playing on Explorer because I'm just trying to have a good time.

But in my previous playthrough,

I was probably stuck on that goblin encampment for like days.

And I was like, I think I just can just kill all these, these guys, I think.

And just kind of, because I was, I was trying not to kill the goblins, and I couldn't figure out how to do that and help the tieflings and

the

druids.

I don't think you can help all three of them at once.

You must be able to, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

I think you can help them through.

Do I be killing all three parties and just letting them?

Yeah, you can end the conflict that way.

I just like felt like the tieflings deserve a place to be,

and the druids don't want them there.

The goblins are trying to kill.

You can't make peace with all sides.

You have to make a choice.

Yes.

You can have something of a, you know, you can, I think the virtuous thing to do is to assist the tieflings.

Yes.

The druids, there is a large, you know,

good contingent there, and it's more just sort of like ridding the leadership that is trying.

I mean, like, like, there's a way you can kind of play a middle path.

Yes, because that one woman who's in in charge while Halson is gone is like pretty bad and was going to like execute a child.

Yeah, yeah.

That's why I murked her.

Yeah.

I let her stay, but I freed the child.

I was able to free her just through talking.

Did you find,

this is one of those things, like, there's like an additional bit of lore attached to her that it involves, I believe, finding a note in a different area of act one.

Like, there's like a letter that's like tucked in a tree, and I didn't find that in my first playthrough, but I did find it in my second playthrough, and it like gives additional insight into that character.

that's kind of interesting oh okay I kind of see where she's coming from a little bit more I know she oh like oh the the that the leader character yes yeah oh no yeah I haven't found that no uh but I'm uh you know I'm trying to fuck this bear all right like I'm trying to see what's going on so I had to like I gotta like see like make sure that he stayed that yeah sure like his quests are are satisfied but I hadn't gone into the

the Gith Yankee crash was it which I've learned now to pronounce because I actually experienced this part of the game.

Huge part of the game.

It's amazing to me that you didn't encounter this in the first place.

You didn't see any of it.

Was stunned by it.

Loved it.

Loved it.

Loved that.

And now I'm excited to continue on into Act Two

and do things differently.

I'm trying to do as much differently as I can, but some of the stuff.

I just kind of liked doing it.

So I was like, I kind of picked a lot of the virtuous options.

So I was like, well, I'm not going to not be good at getting it.

Yeah, I can't bring myself to sell this guy guy to fuck off.

You know, like my big thing that I found when I was playing an Oath of Vengeance paladin in my second one is like, if I just role-played as a paladin, I would find myself doing some options.

It's just like, that isn't what I would normally choose, but this guy's oath of like upholding, you know,

this kind of

his idea of justice leads him down the path of like, okay, well, I would not normally side with this guy and punish this person, but that's what my character would do.

I will say that I have been choosing the options to be more sus of my dream visitor, and that's all I'll say about that.

Because I like it

last time, let's say I trust them a little too much and made some

made some choices that I can't take back.

I uh I did not, I did not trust that, that person at all, um, but I never beat the game, so I don't know what that meant.

I will, I will say that, that I, I played it both ways.

I, I did, uh, I did fuck the squid, and then on a subsequent playthrough, I did, I was a lot, much less trusting of the, of the, of of the Dream Visitor.

And

that character's

talk about this delicately.

The Dream Visitors eventual, like their reaction to me

dismissing their advances made me be like, oh, shit, this was complete manipulation from their side of things.

You know what I mean?

I understand.

They totally were working me in my previous playthrough.

And I just didn't see it.

I mean, I fell right into it last time.

I think this is a great time to plug the Dungeons and Dragons movie, which is so fucking good.

It's so insanely good and really makes me think

that there's no meritocracy in art because everybody would have seen that movie.

Yes.

Anybody had known how good it was.

And instead, it has just unfortunately been like it would be a a treasured VHS tape if it had been released in the 80s.

And instead, it's like, people don't believe you.

I'm here to tell you, I am hyper-critical of film.

I am hyper-critical of television.

And I fucking love the Dungeons and Dragons movie.

It's such a fun movie.

You're talking about Honor Among Thieves is the subtitle, starring Chris Pine, and it's who's awesome in it.

And kind of plays like a bard-like sort of figure as well.

I saw some discourse recently that was suggesting that he's a rogue, actually.

He's a rogue, okay, sure.

But he is kind of like a charlatan sort of character and very silver-tongued.

But yeah, it's an incredible representation of the D ⁇ D experience as a movie.

And it's just, it's also so incredibly fun.

Yeah, that movie rocks.

The hardest laugh I had in, I think, what was that, 2022 or 2023?

23, I think.

Whatever.

Was it just last year?

Whatever year.

No, it had to come out in 2022.

Yeah, because I wasn't.

in the United States last year.

Release date to March 10th, 2023, apparently.

Oh, shit.

You might have seen it when you came back.

Oh, maybe I saw it before I came, before I left.

Or before you left.

Because I did see it in the theater, so I must have seen it.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Point is.

Were they saying a bunch of Dutch words when you saw it?

Yeah.

Oh, then, yeah, I think you saw it when you were not here.

Yeah.

I saw a triple feature.

Barbie, Oppenheimer, Dungeons and Dragons.

Anyway, it's a great movie.

If you haven't seen it, give it a shot.

It's game adjacent.

Matt, I knew what you were going to talk about.

Did you notice my t-shirt?

I did.

I was admiring it earlier.

Is that Scratch and an owl bear?

It is.

These are the two camp

pets you can get in the game.

Or two you can get an owl bear.

Oh, Matt, you're missing out on that owl bear.

I killed an owl bear.

Oh, boy.

Could have been your pet.

I could get that one.

I killed it too.

There's a baby.

There's a baby owl bear that.

I killed that owl.

I killed that one.

No, I killed that one.

I killed everything.

You're a monster.

I'm not a monster.

Everything's fucking attacking me.

I killed one that had killed or had maimed

a tiefling in the

area.

Yeah, I forget the exact sequence of events.

There's a giant owl bear.

There's like the mama owl bear who's in the cave.

And then there's also some baby owl bears.

And I believe one of the baby owl bears will eventually come to your camp, but I forget exactly what we have to do.

Slaughtered.

Slaughtered.

Slaughtered.

Slaughtered.

It's the owl bear who's at the goblin camp, who

they're treating as like a curiosity.

Yeah, you can talk the goblin into giving you that owl bear, and then that owl owl bear will flee, but eventually return to your camp.

I did not see that owl bear at the goblin camp.

Yeah, probably among a pile of corpses, just buried under dead goblins and deep ones.

My favorite thing about the goblin camp is walking across that bridge, opening fire on somebody because I was not going to side with the fucking goblins, especially since I had to kill everybody else.

That felt like a real, like...

That would have been a shitty position to find myself in.

I wouldn't have felt that.

Yeah, you're right.

It was worse.

hold up keep them alive than kill everyone it would have been less work because you could just told them hey that we i killed all those guys you walk across the bridge you open fire on the guy that you see and then you see the bottom of the screen just become red

like with like every goblin suddenly like aggroing you it's it's great it's great and you work your way through the okay we've talked about this enough uh this shirt is from the larian store this is like they get they get some official new uh some new official designs so i really like this shirt.

Yeah, it's just it's scratch napping next to an owl bear.

It's really lovely.

Yeah.

Scratch is a good dog.

Yeah, very good.

Very good.

I'm wearing a Gundam shirt from the Premium Bandai store.

And I'm wearing a Pokemon shirt.

Look at us.

We're all on brand.

Are you really?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, there it is behind the microphone.

I guess I want to say one other thing about Fortnite before I never get to talk about it until the end of the strike.

Yeah.

Gundam is coming to Fortnite.

Does look cool.

In October.

And I'm really excited about it.

And I hope I get to play it.

I hope that it is after the contract negotiation comes to a close.

I would just wrap this up.

Yeah, we don't want to stretch this shit out.

I mean, come on, let's get to it.

Let's get to an agreement.

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Hey, let's talk about Nintendo World Championships NES edition.

This was released on July 18th of this year, 2024, published by Nintendo, developed by Nintendo EPD in collaboration with Indie Zero, which is a Japanese developer who also did the NES remix games for Wii U and 3DS.

And,

Matt, this is in your wheelhouse.

The rhythm game Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory.

One of the few Kingdom Hearts games that I haven't really tried, but I

am interested.

I like a rhythm game.

There's no reason I haven't, I shouldn't have, I should have been playing this.

And now that I know, I'm interested.

Even when they have the opportunity to give it a normal title, like memory of melody makes sense.

And instead, it's melody of memory.

Right.

And their memories, if you think about it, what is a memory if not a song?

Jesus.

He's got a Keyblade tattoo on his leg.

He does have a Keyblade tattoo on his leg.

My eyes start glowing.

So here, I want to open up the floor here and say,

I didn't know anything about this game a few weeks ago.

I didn't know what to expect.

And as release date approached, I was assuming that this was going to be like an Atari collection, like that incredible Atari collection we covered a few years ago or a year ago.

I don't know what time is anymore, that gave you sort of a history of the games, documentary footage.

It's an incredible package.

This is not that.

This is a game that lives in the present, doesn't tell you fucking jackshit about any of the games you're playing, and then does a remarkable job of breaking them down into mini-games.

Like our intro bit,

instead of playing all of Super Mario Bros., for the people who aren't familiar with Super Mario Bros.

because it came out before they were born by like 20 fucking years, it breaks down the first level into all you have to do is jump and get the mushroom.

And it really shows,

it brings a great illumination to how much

of the classic NES experience is effectively a string, a chain of mini-games, like minor engagements

instead of the more fluid,

you know, open world shit that

we now do?

Yeah, I mean, if you really break it down, it's like a series of discrete tasks.

I was looking it up.

So, NES,

the North American release of Super Mario Bros.

1 was October of 1985.

So, yes, if you were born 20 years after that, you can vote in this year's presidential election.

Yeah.

Like it, it, it's, it's.

But no, it was a long fucking time ago.

It's as far away as, you know, I feel like everybody knows about the JFK assassination, but none of us were around for it.

And it's like that kind of event in the background.

Right.

JFK equivalent to Super Mario Bros.

Okay, so the, this is, yeah, Heather's, it's basically like a collection of short challenges pulled from NES and/slash Famicom games, whatever it was called in your territory, uh, designed for both single-player and multiplayer speed runnings.

There are modes for both.

It is named after the Nintendo World Championships, which were early esports competitions, kind of a proto-Evo.

They were convened in the early 90s, they were officially sanctioned by Nintendo.

I have a quick description of what this was like from a person who participated in the 1990 NWC.

The source here is GameBits.net.

Quote:

The NWC's games were announced in advance.

Contestants would have to earn 50 coins in the original Super Mario Bros., complete one lap in Rad Racer, then use the remaining time to play Tetris.

Each game was worth more points than the last, so the goal was to rush through them as quickly as possible and then max out your score in Tetris.

So it kind of had like a built-in thing of you were playing for time in the first two games and then popping.

Exactly, yes.

So NES Remix is another game that they made that is pretty similar to this.

Did either of you play NES Remix?

Because I had the first one on Wii U.

I don't think I played NES Remix.

Not me, no.

Didn't have Wii U.

It's pretty similar to this.

This one is certainly more speedrun focused and has some things built in, like the...

like the two up that you get of your previous best run when you're when you're when you're playing the game so like you'll see a screen of your ghost uh next to a screen of your current playthrough if you're trying to beat it you're trying to get to higher rank as a person who is playing primarily in handheld mode i will say that a lot of the design on this game is small screen prohibitive.

Too fucking small.

In the settings, you can change it to prioritize your screen, which is good.

But you only get that clue, that hint, after you've compete one time.

So I entered the Silver Cup.

Of course, I place first.

And then afterwards, they're like, hey, you can make your screen bigger.

And I'm like, that would have been really fucking nice to know.

Yeah, because of the Silver Cup, and that's a different thing.

That's the multiplayer mode.

So the speedrunning mode is single player.

The The Silver Cup, it's the same gameplay, but it's multiplayer.

And yes, so we'll start with an eight up, eight different screens that will get, you know, like the top four advanced and then the top two advanced and then there's an ultimate winner.

That's too, it's too small on that screen.

Too fucking small.

Too fucking small.

Here's my big, my big thought on this.

Uh-oh.

There are 13 games represented in this, right?

Yeah.

I can give you the full list, but I feel like we'll just end up talking about these individually as we go.

I have played through every one of these games before.

I've played

all the way through them.

No, no, well, I said that wrong.

I've played every one of these games.

I have finished nine of the 13 games.

Holy shit.

And it's on original hardware.

Like, so like, I've pretty familiar with all of these.

There's just not a lot of content here, right?

Like I feel like it's like it's it's kind of cool what they've done.

It's cool that how these are being presented.

And I feel like if you're coming to these games fresh, it's kind of like like, okay, this is an this is an interesting way to experience what balloon fight was like.

I don't have any sense of this game, but like, yeah, okay, I kind of, I kind of understand what this, but like for $30, $30,

like that's what you're paying for this.

Let him cook.

I just feel like, like, shouldn't you be, shouldn't there be more to this?

Wow.

I have the opposite impression.

Here's what I'll say.

Yeah.

There's not

there's not a lot if you're not interested in beating your own time right because like the the thing that this thing is selling is replayability based on improving your score, improving your speed run.

Right.

I want to get an S rank on every single one of these kiddick risk challenges.

That's the thing that, like, out of the box, I would guess

no one is able to do.

I mean, there's probably, you know, a top 1% of players that are playing this game that are getting S rank every time somehow.

And then maybe the game's done with them.

For some of these, especially because there's a couple different levels, right?

There's like, oh, or the the challenges are ranked by difficulty.

So the first few will be easy.

Even some of those, I'm having a hard time getting an S rank in because,

you know,

I can't pretend that I'm so young, but like, I didn't play a lot of these games growing up.

So I have

some of these games I've never even played.

I've never played ice climbers.

Yeah, I...

Ice Climbers is, I mean, like, I had ice climbers, and I think that's a game that is not aged well.

I think kind of controls, like, shit.

I mean, a lot of the gameplays.

And a lot of these have archaic things like the, you know, the, like, they have

like Donkey Kong, for instance, a game I really like, I think, does hold up, but it has like a, you can, you can, it has a fatal fall in a 2D platformer, which feels like a thing you're just not used to.

A fatal fall from not that high not very high.

It feels like you,

and there's other things like some jumps just feel very floaty, or you just don't have a lot of friction on surfaces.

So they, they're just like the control is like a little bit imprecise, and so that's a difficulty.

I want to say that I was surprised at the amount of content in this game, uh, in part because I'm, you know, I'm not an NES kid.

I'm a Sega kid.

So I was like, wow, there are a lot of games here.

And then additionally, each of those games is broken up into, I don't know how many different challenges.

I'm going to say 10.

So you've got like 130

grid of like, here's 10 challenges for the original Super Mario Bros.

Here's 10 challenges for the Super Mario Bros.

3.

In addition to that, as a

competition

junkie, the fact that you can online play against other people

was what hooked me in the game.

Yes.

And then

also knowing that there was, like, there's this concept, it's called the World Championship because there is a leaderboard of like the actual winners from that week.

And watching those replays, I was like, how the fuck is this happening?

Like, there was stuff being done in in just these little thumbnail games that was so impressive.

And obviously, I'm impressed by watching fucking video games every goddamn day.

Like,

some clip on Twitter or YouTube or whatever.

But, like, seeing it on the console and imagining that it was something that could conceivably be done with my hands and brain.

This is the thing that really fucks with me because I'm looking at this like, cause

I've entered two, at this point two world champions for the because like there's like a week-long thing where it'll be like five challenges and that refreshes each week and updates with different challenges so when you get your although although as far as i can tell so far these are challenges that already exist they're not new challenges they're not new they're challenges that are present in the game which isn't that you know hopefully as this game keeps going they will be new challenges because i could see that kind of getting stale playing the same like you know donkey kong barrel chase and fight kill the lionel or whatever the cool thing though is that as you unlock challenges in the speedrun mode if you've done a challenge already in one of the

like in either the cups or the world championship for the week, it counts your score in there, and then you don't have to play it again in the

speedrun mode.

But when he gives you your rank in the world championship at the end of the week,

it was so humbling and so like, because I thought I was like, I'm doing pretty good, but like, I know that there's, you know, I don't know however many people are playing this game on planet Earth right now.

I was like, oh, I scored in the top 90%.

I'm playing this game the same amount or playing it at the same level as almost everybody.

There's

10% more people who are better at this game than me.

That's like a stat that I could live with, even though I didn't succeed.

But then going back and watching the winning one, I was like, how did a human being do this?

No, that's

crazy.

That shit is awesome.

Like, there,

again, you know, I'll repeat the thing that Heather said earlier.

Mastery is intoxicating.

You watch it.

You said that.

I just quoted you.

I know what I'm saying.

Like, I'll repeat the thing that you quoted earlier, just so that I know that you're repeating me.

So you're repeating yourself.

I'm repeating myself,

as quoted by Heather.

Mastery is impressive.

Man has always been curious about Apes.

I stand by that, too.

Man has always been fascinated by Apes.

Fascinated, that's what it was, yeah.

So

yeah, like you watch someone and they're doing the speed run where it was it's like retrieve the key, right?

Like and it's it's a Super Mario Bros.

2 one and the the way that it's one of those ones that involves all this tech if you do it to

you know the the the absolute fastest execution where there's a magic carpet that you're supposed to jump on that you ride over across a bass fast crevasse uh this motherfucker is just jump like jumping bouncing off of enemies heads to uh

to uh uh you forward the crevasse uh without using the magic carpet to go even faster and then just like every movement is absolutely so precise that that shit's incredible watch i absolutely agree with you there.

I don't know if it offers much beyond, you know, what you could just see just watching people do speed runs,

you know, on YouTube or Twitch or what have you, but I guess it is built in here and you can compete.

So that is kind of a cool element.

I think the offering for me is,

yeah, like you could see something similar on YouTube.

Yeah.

But you can't see somebody do something that you also just.

No, that's the thing.

You can compete directly against them in this clear, discrete task.

So I do like that aspect of it.

I guess I just kind of feel like it's like a little bit slight.

And if I paid $30 for this and I wasn't discussing it for content, I might be kind of pissed off.

Like, shouldn't this be, shouldn't this cost like $5?

So I think,

especially when you compare it to the Atari collection.

Yeah.

I do think that

it is a...

It is a

the premium that you're paying for is that these are all Nintendo titles and so they're tight to begin with on the whole.

Like, Ice Climbers or whatever the fuck it is, is sure, it's a weirdo game, but like a lot of these games, the reason it is pleasurable to engage in these speedrunning mini tasks is because the game is fucking tight and clicky.

Yeah, Super Mario Bros.

3 has incredible control and physics.

So like even the original Zelda, it's like, you know, go fucking kill these Octoroks or whatever.

And I'm like, this is engaging just as a snapshot of the Zelda franchise.

And you can take all of this out of context and just enjoy yourself while you compete against these three enemies.

And that's a lot of what the Atari collection doesn't have.

You play some of those games for 30 seconds and you're like, I am never thinking about this ever, ever again.

Yeah, that's a great point.

There's such a huge generational gulf going from like the, you know, pre-8-bit to eight-bits when games actually are still kind of playable in a modern sense.

But I agree with you.

It is a slight collection.

I do wish there was like, you know, some history about each of these fucking games.

Yeah.

Like something that was like, hey, especially since when you're choosing your title as like your gamer card or whatever

on the game, so like the title you're competing under, one of the first titles they offer you is, I was born after the NES.

Right.

Right?

Like that's one of your first options to choose, or like my parents are NES generation are like a title you can choose.

So you might be seeing these games for the very first time.

Like if you're a 14-year-old kid playing NES World Championships, NES World Championships, you might not even know what, you might be like, what, what the fuck is an NES?

Yeah.

Like, especially when you see some of those YouTube videos where they're like, hey, here's a handheld phone and they show it to a Gen Z person and they're like, what is this?

Do you eat with this?

Is this a fucking spoon?

You fucking little dumbass kid.

No, you're totally right.

And there is an opportunity because there's a thing that you get, which is the pin collection.

So as you you collect coins, you can unlock, or as you collect coins and as you beat challenges, you unlock pins.

But the pins are basically just like a JPEG to look at.

And so for instance, like I'm looking at one of,

you know, like the harp from Kid Icarus.

And it's just like, it's just an image of it that says Nintendo World Championships.

It's basically just like a like a 2D trophy.

And it's like, I don't know, maybe some context, like explaining what the harp was.

And this was its usefulness of the item.

Hey, maybe some history on what Kidikaris was.

Even if it would just feel like you were like, you were unlocking something as you progress.

Even if for that, if it was like a, you know, when you can look at like the character models in a video game, you can spin it around.

If you could even just like turn the pin around and like look at it from another angle, it'd be like, this is a little more interesting.

Right.

Yeah.

And I understand it's a sprite.

So like it's not quite the same as like having a 3D model, but still it would just feel like you had something a little bit more tangible.

I will say that I, to that point, I purchased and Nick's nightmare.

Yeah.

I purchased the NES deluxe set, like the collector's edition of the Switch game.

Yes.

And this was such a

lovely little package that came with

hard cards of all of the art of individual hard cards of all the art for all of the games featured inside of World Championships.

It also came with a replica cartridge, a gold replica cartridge, which was the exact same kind that was handed out at the World Championships themselves.

An original Nintendo cartridge sleeve, which was something that was packed into the original NES games.

And it came with the pins.

The pins that you get in the game

you can fucking hold in your hand.

And they are high quality, glossy, heavy pins.

They don't feel cheap.

So I paid for, I paid a premium in order to get, because because also I thought I was getting, before I knew what I was getting, I thought that I was buying like the Atari collection.

I thought this was gonna be like a tiny little museum.

Yes.

And I wanted all the little goodies to go with it.

But instead, I was like, oh, this is like a racetrack.

I bought a racetrack.

I wonder if maybe that, I mean, that could just be it in and of itself.

Is like, I bought the digital edition, you bought the physical edition.

It seems like the physical edition actually is cool and has a bunch of tangible stuff that you're getting.

Those cards are great.

I saw that the Japanese one, you know, has like

Famicom controllers, which is awesome.

That's a thing that we should have gotten over here.

But like, I believe that's...

But you can plug into the Switch to make

the gaming experience more accurate.

Absolutely should have been included here, but it feels like that I think is $20 more than

the digital version.

I think if you're going to buy this game, buy the physical edition.

I can't justify the purchase of the delight.

I can't

justify the purchase of the digital.

I bought digital as well, and it is a big regret of mine

because I would like this little stuff.

Stuff looks cool uh but i i did buy an additional extra thing because i was like i know that like the i was playing handheld mode and i was like

these

dumb switch buttons are bad yeah i don't like the directional buttons on the switch did nintendo ever release Joy-Cons that have like a proper d-pad and stuff?

You can get them third-party, I think.

I think they have like a missed opportunity for Nintendo.

Well, the Pro Controller still like has a proper D-pad.

Yeah.

And I do like the D-pad on the Pro Controller, actually.

But I wanted to replicate the experience of holding,

well, this is, I guess, more modeled after a Super Nintendo controller.

But I got this 8-bit Doe SN30 Pro, and I'm just going to click into...

You probably can't even really hear that, but the clickiness of these buttons is my I love this.

Yeah, that's got a lot of click to it.

I need that click, and it's a little, it feels a little more precise as I'm playing it when I'm playing it on the TV.

I love that you got an accessory for this episode.

Yes.

Well, and I'll keep playing.

Honestly, it works pretty good as like a regular Switch controller.

It just kind of feels different, of course.

But, you know, I have now an additional controller from when I make my friends yell at each other playing Overcooked.

I have that controller I purchased because you brought it in and you're like, look what I got.

And I was like, I got it.

I was like, I have that.

But I got it for the analog pocket.

Oh, yes.

Because if you dock the pocket, you can use that controller controller and play your retro games on your HDMI screen.

Yes.

What I remain frustrated by is that the analog pocket was advertised as being able to be played on a CRT.

If you got the adapter and they still haven't released that fucking update,

and that's all I

want that so badly.

A classic Heather frustration.

I'm so angry at that.

Well, why?

Like, if you're going to cater to these hyper nerds and say, do you have a CRT?

Well, we've got something for you.

Then I'm going to like sit up in my chair and like lean forward.

And then they're going to be like, You could play the analog pocket on your CRT.

And I'm going to get so excited.

And then they don't actually feel like that.

The Venn diagram of Heather and Campbell is so fascinating because you're as mad about this as you are mad about where are all the chickens.

Same problem.

It's a question of where is it?

Very angry.

Let me just like,

I hope I'm not sounding too negative here because I did have time with my fun with this game.

Jesus Christ.

I did have fun with my time with this game.

Melody of memory.

That's what happened.

I get Kingdom Hearts.

So I like, but I just like.

So for The Legend of Zelda, I played through all the Zelda challenges.

There's 14 of them.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah, so there's 14 total for the Legend of Zelda one.

I have at least an A rank in all of them.

A lot of these are like, you know, the time you get, it's like, these are all like under 10 seconds.

So, you know, like, I don't want to make us do more math here when we're earlier, you know, calculating the amount of land area that's allocated for poultry.

I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again.

25% of the United States.

But it is like, if you actually do the math on how much gameplay there is there, it's like there's not a ton, and Zelda has more challenges than almost all of these games.

So I think like you like like, yeah, okay, if I was trying to get S ranks in absolutely everything in this game, it would take me a little bit more time.

How much time do I want to spend redoing the run where one of them is

the it's dangerous to go alone, take this?

It's literally picking up the first wooden sword in Zelda.

So it's like, how quickly can I walk into a cave?

How quickly can I walk into a cave and position myself to pick up this sword?

Like it's like even getting an S rank there isn't particularly particularly difficult, but if you are going to be like, okay, I'm going to spend time doing this, like, how much time do you want to dedicate to this task just for the sake of getting it?

I guess it depends on your preferences as a gamer.

It also,

it, it,

the answer to that question is based on what you think of a game is.

Yeah, sure.

Is that a game, or is that a task?

Right.

And it sounds to me like you're describing a lot of this as a task.

It's like, oh, this is a thing I have to do in order to achieve X goal.

And that's fine.

Like, I'm not even certain

because a lot of these things don't have quite fail states.

And that often has been my

line on whether or not something is or is not a game is whether or not it has a fail state.

And I guess some of these games don't, you can't fail these little tiny thumb games.

No, okay.

On that point.

So the way this works, if you die in one of these, instead of you failing the run, which you would, which should is, should be what happens,

they, I guess, to make it more friendly to people, which I understand, I understand this design decision, they've made it so it's an automatic rewind.

So, like, if you fall down a pit, you know, like it will be like the game will automatically rewind it just before that, and then the game will continue.

So, yes, there actually is no discrete fail state.

Yeah, I had this happen while I was playing Kid Icarus.

One of the achievements is, or I'm sorry, one of the challenges is to make it through the entire first level of Kid Icarus.

And

I reached a point where I fell down a pit because it gets to a platforming section, section and I died and it rewound and my character picked up to the uh went went to back to the top of the pit to the ledge I fell off of.

And I was like, well, this run's fucked, but I'll just keep going.

I kept going A plus rank.

I was like, how, this, this feels like this should not be, like I should not be able to achieve an A rank if I died during the run, right?

Like it just, the way that's balanced is so interesting to me.

And then I'm like, are we gonna, is there gonna be an element of this where there's somehow it's, I don't understand how this would work exactly, but somehow advantageous to die like, you know, purposefully in some of these to get a higher score.

I guess that's maybe okay if that's how it works out, but it was just, it just felt so strange to me.

I was having an issue with that as well.

And, you know, you do, it does rewind, but your time still goes forward.

Your time continues to advance, but it, but it like may not be enough of a punish where it's like going to wreck your run.

So it's like, I don't know.

I mean, I guess that's just to make it more, you know, user-friendly.

I was getting kind of fucked by some rewinds because it would rewind me just far enough where then like I would be like mid-jump and I would still be falling and then it would rewind again.

Yes.

And it rewinds you when you've rewind a second time, it rewinds you a little bit further back too from that point.

And it can be a little bit of a trap.

Well, here's another thing.

So the Metroid challenges, some of the Metroid challenges are just beating the bosses in Metroid.

Beat Crayed.

So

I played through Metroid 1 on NES and I love that game.

It's an incredible game.

What I remember, I could be remembering this wrong.

What I remember about fighting Craig is that there was an exploit where if you hopped into the lava, because lava is not insta-death in Metroid, if you hopped in the lava, it drained your health.

If you hopped in the lava on the sides, that was actually a great way to position yourself because then you could just sort of blast Craid with missiles from there and you'd be out of reach of his prongs that he's shooting at you.

But the game makes it so that if you fall into one of those lava pits, again, that's what I went straight forward.

It could be Mr.

Memembering.

It could be Ridley, who you also fight in this once you fall in the lava it's a fail and then you it rewinds you so you don't even have that option anymore so i'm like it does feel like maybe the fastest tech for this could be to you know do that but it's it's robbing you of that option because of the way it's it's set up and i understand why they made these decisions but it's just a little bit odd the ones that are just beat this boss make me so mad because they're some of them they're not all equal in the zelda ones it's like here's you're right outside the dungeon or whatever you're right outside the boss area walk in, beat the fucking eyeball guy or whatever, and then you're done.

In Metroid, it's like, here's half the map and a bunch of enemies, and they're all around.

Go through all of it and

then beat Craig.

It sucks.

No, that one's more like, it's closer to a 30 or 40 second task as opposed to like some of these other ones, which are sub-five seconds, which is also fine.

Like, you're fine with some of these being longer.

But on that note, I feel like I'm monologuing too too much here.

So I'll

be talking about that.

People like it.

People love it.

So, like, you know, for instance, the Metroid, the final one is the escape sequence from the original game.

That's a prolonged, extended thing that takes a good chunk of time.

I don't know if you got to Mario Master, but Mario Master is the final Super Mario Bros.

1 challenge.

That challenge is beat Super Mario Brothers.

Now, it's built into the game where you can use, you can take the warp zone and

hold your hand with this.

You can can take the warp zone uh from level one two to level four and you can take the warp zone from level four two uh to level eight one and then play through all of world eight but it's still like that's a lot of time to dedicate to something

and i guess it's like from the end the standpoint

or am i thinking of super mario 3 yeah super mario 3 is a maze no super mario 1 is a maze at the end isn't it yes it is yeah yeah so and it also like again there's built-in things in this there's there's what they call classified information that tells you how to do some of these things so it does give you the solution for the maze if you just want to, you know, again, if you're new to this game and you wouldn't figure out that would be how it would work.

But it's like, that's the sort of thing of like, again, it's a game that at times feels like WarioWare.

It's like these are super fast, super micro games, but then you've got these longer tasks that are like, wait, so this is like a five-minute run.

So this is more like doing a, I don't know.

To me, that feels asynchronous, but maybe it's okay as like kind of like the equivalent of the boss fight for this game.

Oh, no, you go.

But don't you like, Nick, since you're obsessed with speed running, and I'm not trying to be antagonistic.

I don't think you are.

you like speedrunning i do let's say that you were to beat super mario one

in such a fashion that you believed it was your personal best ever and you'd have no proof and no record of it this is kind of a nice repository of those times that are like available for other people to see No, it's true.

And I guess that's the kind of thing, like, if you're not someone who's like, I know how to set up all the software to stream this and I know how to get a timer up and I know how to get this all, you know, like I know how to do all the work to get this through the official channels.

This is just kind of built into my Switch, and I can remember me running through this game when I was a kid and compare how I do to other people now.

So, I understand it from that standpoint.

I do think

the games featured in this game should be

in it in full, that you could play as an option outside of the speed running or any of the pedagogies.

Very simple thing.

Again, they own the rights to their own library, their own catalog.

They're remonetizing the same 40-year-old games yet again.

An easy thing they could have done is to include the full games in here.

And I know they're part of the Nintendo Online, but that's a separate thing.

And

again, that's the sort of thing that just a frustration I have with Nintendo generally, where it's like, you're spending this much for this.

And even if I like what's in here, it just feels like such a small amount of content.

I still like it.

I think it's fun.

I still overall like it.

I love my little pins.

I still overall like it.

I think if I like the if I bought the physical edition I think I would like it more I think that does look really cool I think the the my frustration with it is just as a value proposition I think it's overpriced I do also I will say I want to shout out the the music is really good the sound effects are really good and I do think that the presentation just even

I guess excluding the smallness of the screen is very good.

I like to see, I like how they have it all set up.

I do wish you could full screen it instead of even seeing the littler screens.

Yeah, if it wasn't, you know, 150 degrees in Los Angeles, I could play this on my big screen.

Yeah.

But my television isn't set up in a place where I'm able to play in docked mode during the summer.

Yeah.

So I

yeah, I look forward to being able to see these games larger because they are tiny as fuck.

Yes.

They are so fucking small.

They're really small.

They're Nokia phone, original Nokia phone screens.

Yeah, it's tiny.

I agree.

You're right, Matt, that the UX is pretty pleasant.

And

it's a nice presentation.

I do like to see, you know,

we've seen this now in wake of

Death Stranding, of Super Mario Wonder, to see other people doing something you've done or are about to do.

This is a strand game, baby.

It is a bit of a strand game.

I think that's good.

Yeah, no, I mean, i i love that in wonder i love that feature in wonder yeah really cool i love that ranch i'm gonna read read off this full list of games uh tell me if you've heard of it and tell me if you've played it all right first up balloon fight never heard of it uh donkey kong heard of it never played excite bike never heard of it ice climber never heard of it kid icarus never heard of it kirby's adventure Heard of it, never played it.

Metroid.

Heard of it on this podcast.

Super Mario Bros.

1, 2, 3, and Super Mario Brothers of the Lost Level.

I've played the first one, I think.

Okay.

One of them.

Legend of Zelda and Zelda 2, The Adventure of Link.

Heard of it, never played it.

Wow.

There you go.

One for all.

Here's a deal.

One for 13.

You pulled it.

But this is a bit of a generous people.

Yeah.

They're going to say they've at least played level one of Mario.

Everyone's played Mario.

No, but that's what I was going to say.

Like,

this is just going to Heather's point earlier.

It's been so long since these games came out.

There is like such a huge generational divide here.

That's kind of cool that this collection is being represented, being presented, and maybe some younger people will connect with some of these games.

I'm just remembering, what did y'all put as your favorite game on the system?

Because

you set up a profile, you pick a profile icon.

I picked Kirby going like this, like he's making a

suck face.

And I put

that

because they didn't have a Game Boy color generation.

I feel like that sort of more represents when I started to play.

It goes from Game Boy to Game Boy Advance.

So I did pick Game Boy Advance because I was like, I never really had the original Game Boy.

So I said, I'm from the Game Boy Advance generation, and I said that my favorite NES game was Final Fantasy.

Hey, because I've played Final Fantasy 1 and I do love it.

Wait, you can pick that from the list?

I thought it was just the

game, every game.

That's the cool thing.

It's like fucking Monopoly for NES is on that list.

Yeah, I i saw jeopardy on there yeah yeah but um i picked super mario brothers 3 as my game i don't remember what i picked as my title and i picked mario and a boot that's pretty good that's pretty good i picked nes generation as my hype tag and i picked my uh my favorite nes game is the legend of zelda which you may remember is on my top 10 favorite games of all time from our episode we did at the start of this year and uh og legend of zelda and then my favorite my avatar is uh pit from kid icarus Crouching, which I always thought is a really funny bit of animation because he's so squished.

That is pretty good.

I will say, too, because a lot of these games I had not ever played.

I've played all the Mario ones, probably not all the way through all of them, but I've played all of those ones.

I've played Metroid through Metroid Zero Mission, which is the remake, the Game Boy Advance remake of Metroid 1.

And I played Donkey Kong.

I had not played Ice Climbers.

I had not played Balloon Fight.

And I've not really ever played an old Zelda.

And playing the original Zelda in this format sort of made me think, should I play like the original Zelda?

It seems kind of good.

I'd be interested in your reaction.

I mean, have you played, which of the 2D Zeldas have you played, remind me?

I think none.

I guess I played the Link's Awakening remake, which is not that, but I liked that.

I would play Link to the Past and see how that

respond to that.

That's a good game.

Yeah.

Link to the Past is, it's got a good graphic look.

Okay.

Good, a good look.

Hey, well, I'm saying we should do something for that could be something we do on the show.

You like the way it looks, but you don't want to play it again.

Yeah.

Not for me.

League of the Past holds up.

That's still pretty fun.

Yeah.

I have that

Zelda Game and Watch, and I sometimes take that places with me.

Yeah.

And I will chip away at Link's Awakening on that because I just like, oh, I know how to play this game.

And that game, Link's Awakening is so fucking good.

Yeah, it's good.

But maybe I'll go back and visit one of those old Zeldas.

Nintendo World Championships NES Edition.

That was our discussion.

Let's do a segment, Matt.

I'm bringing back a segment,

but it's a slant on a segment we've done before.

Interesting.

I'm calling this segment Game Overtime Speedrun Edition.

Okay.

So here's how this is going to work.

I'm going to name a game, and I'm going to tell you how long it takes to beat the game according to howlongtobeat.com.

Okay.

What you're going to do is you're going to tell me what the fastest speedrun is according to speedrun.com.

I love this.

Closest without going over gets the point.

And I want to note that these speedruns are as of Thursday, July 25th at 8.52 a.m.

when I pull up them.

Because

some of these are constantly updated.

Continually updated.

Yeah.

Do you,

just for the how long to beat, are you reading like the, there's kind of like the three, there's the middle path, I assume is what you're doing, not the completionist.

Most of them are main story.

Main story.

I'll note when it's completionist.

Got it.

Like, for example, this first one, this first one,

Super Mario 64, 120 stars, completionist, because that's the whole game.

Got it.

How long?

So it takes 20 hours to beat the game to get everything.

Okay.

How fast is the speed run?

How fast is the speed run?

I'm going to say

with being able to like wall glitch and shit, I bet it's

28 seconds.

Yeah, this isn't a glitch list run, right?

It didn't specify that when this one, on some of the other ones, I have more.

Okay, okay.

So, yeah,

assuming glitches are a factor.

I'm assuming it's still going to take longer to get all 120 stars.

I'm going to say 16 minutes.

Oh, wait.

No, wait.

I thought it was just like, how fast can you beat the game?

Not how fast can you do all 120 stars?

Wait, this is specifically completionist.

This is completionist run.

How fast to 120 stars?

Jesus Christ.

Okay, wait up.

You said 16 minutes.

Yeah.

Heather said it was in the seconds.

Fuck.

No, yeah, because

I misunderstood.

I misunderstood the task.

I thought it was how, like, that's the, here's how long it takes to complete the game.

Yes.

How fast is the fastest speed run?

But now I understand.

How fast has somebody gotten 120 120 stars?

I'm going to guess

31 minutes.

Heather is technically closest.

The answer is an hour and 36 minutes and two seconds.

Wow, so it's still a pretty substantial run.

Still a pretty substantial run.

That impresses me.

Because what I was talking about, how like, you know, the legend challenges are like big meaty challenges in

the world and Nintendo World Championships game.

Like the people who do speed runs where it's like, these are, this is multi-hour commitments.

Yes.

And like, you know, it can come down to tenths of a second by the end.

Like that's like incredible to me that anyone wants to commit themselves to that.

It's really great.

And I have stats for who did it and what console and stuff.

So I'll read those as well.

This was by a player named Ouija from the United States on a Japanese Nintendo Nail 64.

And this record was solidified 19 days ago.

This is the newest, the most recent speed run.

I mean, these will all be the most recent speedrun, but this is the most recent speed run on this list.

One alpha, I know, absolutely.

That's also like the kind of thing of like PG2024.

Yeah, you hear about what hardware is being used, and sometimes those are ways to optimize as well.

Because, like, for maybe the PAL version runs, you know, just a little bit faster or whatever.

It's like, uh, that's just really interesting.

I love the idea that 19 days ago was maybe one of the highlights of that guy's life.

Oh, yeah, yeah, it's really, really great.

Uh, next one on the list: Celeste, any percentage,

how long to beat?

Main story

8.5 hours.

Hmm.

I love Celeste.

It's one of my favorite games.

I have a Celeste poster in my home office.

Wow.

I don't know.

I have not followed Celeste speedrunning, really.

So I don't know if there's any real glitches that let you skip through a huge chunk of the game or anything.

So I'm going to assume this is more just someone just

going through with technical precision.

And I'm going to say,

I'm going to say this is one hour and 12 minutes.

I'm going to say three and a half hours.

You both went over.

So in the case of going over, I have to go closest.

Well, also, no one can get a point.

Okay, nobody gets a point.

Nick, no point for Nick.

The answer is 24 minutes, 58 seconds, and

23 milliseconds.

Wow.

And this is by a player named Secure Account from the United States on a PC four months ago.

I'll have to watch that run.

I wonder what there must be some glitches involved.

I'm not sure.

Because, I mean, for a lot of these, when I could toggle it, I would click no major glitches or no.

For that one, I don't think I had done that.

I didn't see an option for that.

Next up.

I wonder what the skips are.

All right.

Keep me going.

Portal.

Full game in bounds.

You can go, there's like there's stuff you can can do out of bounds.

How long to beat

three hours.

What is the speed run?

I'm going to guess first.

19 minutes.

I mean, I was thinking sub 30 minutes.

I'll go lower and say 12 minutes.

You both went over on this one.

I love it.

This is what's good about this game: that I do think at the end of the day, it's just interesting information.

It's fascinating.

The speed run

by player Sidious from England on a PC one month ago: eight minutes, one second, and 275 milliseconds.

God, that's awesome.

Incredible.

I've seen portal speed runs, like just segments of it, and it looks like it doesn't even look like you're comprehending what you're looking at anymore.

It seems impossible to me because, like, for me, that game is like steady, steady.

Like, if I did it in three hours, that would be the greatest achievement of my life.

Um,

okay, next one: Hollow Knight, any percentage, no major glitches, time to beat

27 hours, which I didn't realize.

It was, it's, it's a pretty big game, yeah, chunky game.

Are you guessing?

That's what, no, that was what the original.

Oh, 27 hours.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think,

I feel like this is still going to be a pretty substantial thing.

I'll just say 10 hours even.

11 hours.

You're both over.

Wow.

31 minutes, 24 seconds by player Skate King from Ukraine on a PC one year ago.

That's really impressive.

Yes.

Oh, man.

Okay.

So So, Nick's on the board with one point.

Uh, from the uh, wait, when did I get a point?

With the Heather's in the league, no, Heather's in the league, excuse me, Heather got the point.

One point.

Uh,

the next game, a game we covered on this show, maybe you remember it:

getting over it with Bennett Foddy.

Oh, yeah, full game glitchless.

How long to beat?

Six and a half hours.

I'm tired of going over

three minutes, 30 seconds.

I'm not going to price his right Heather here, even though she just did the same thing to me.

I'm going to say.

I did.

Yeah, didn't you?

In the previous one, you said 11 after he said 10.

I did.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry.

That's right.

But I think someone probably gets through this pretty efficiently.

I'm going to say,

hmm.

I'll say 13 minutes.

You both went over.

The speed run by Blast Bolt from the US on a PC one year ago.

Zero minutes,

59 seconds, and 885 milliseconds.

I want to just watch this.

I know.

That seems like it's so amazing to me.

Because that game was very hard and not fun.

Is that the one in the pot?

Yeah, we were climbing.

Trying to climb.

Yeah, somebody did that in less than a minute.

Okay.

Next one, Cuphead.

Full game, any percentage.

Full game, I guess, meaning getting to the end of the game.

Any percentage, no major glitches, regular difficulty.

Time to beat, 10 and a half hours.

I love Cuphead.

One of my favorite games of all time.

There's only so fast that little dude can run, though.

He's not very fast.

He's really slow.

But there is, like,

there is stuff you don't have to do.

Like, not, I don't think, I don't believe every single encounter is mandatory.

Like, in Nick's case, you don't have to try to upskirt Miss Chalice.

Jesus Christ.

Achievement unlocked.

I'm going to guess.

You don't have to do that.

I'm going to guess one hour, 45 minutes.

What's that?

How long to beat time again?

Ten and a half hours?

Oh, man.

I'll go under and say 59 minutes.

You're both over.

The speed run by Markin SWS from Italy

on PC three months ago.

28 minutes, 45 seconds, and 410 milliseconds.

I got to watch that.

I got to watch that in the Celeste one one again.

All these are pretty watchable.

Like, you could just go home and be like, this is the rest of my night.

Watch these.

Yeah.

And it's, you'll probably have the fucking night of your life, honestly.

It seems great.

Last one here: The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, full game, any percentage, normal mode.

How long to beat?

50 and a half hours.

That's a big game.

Wait, but this is any percentage.

This isn't, you don't have to do anything.

You can go straight to Gannon.

You can go straight to it if you do.

Okay.

I feel like someone does this shit in like seven minutes.

I'll say seven minutes.

I'm going to say three minutes.

The player, player five

from the United States four months ago on a Nintendo Switch.

23 minutes and 23 seconds.

This game is a tie.

It's a tie.

What a way to end it.

Can we let's watch this here?

I found the world record getting over its speed run in 59 seconds.

Let's watch this.

This is a song that the uploader made that they put in the background.

Here we go.

Look at this thing.

Oh my god, he's a single-motherfucker.

He's flying.

I don't get through a day in my life this official.

This is incredible.

This is one of the most amazing feats I've ever seen in my life

to have this down so well

to be able to progress through a game this precisely

when the control is actively fighting against you

like this is a game that's hostile towards you

I can't believe this.

This is unbelievable.

Wow.

Incredible.

I was watching

like something I would see in a nightmare.

Top comment, undoubtedly, one of the greatest achievements in speedrunning ever.

GG.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, that's the segment.

Apparently, it took apparently six years in the making.

Jesus Christ.

I mean, look, this is the thing.

It's like,

it's so like dedicating your life to that is as good as anything.

I agree.

That's an amazing thing to do with your time.

I don't believe that wasting time is possible.

No.

Given that we are on a rock that's going to explode.

Like, it doesn't matter what you do.

No, absolutely.

No,

that was amazing.

Yeah.

I love that game, Matt.

Let's bring that back.

Hell yeah.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Michelle Chen Ranch.

Yard underscore underscore sard.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, Design, DuckBrigade.com.

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

Matt, what's up this week?

This week we're talking about Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocence.

And I won't spoil it for

you guys, but let's just say

we talked about the movie.

It's true we did.

Patreon.com/slash get played for all of that.

And you know what?

All these little games, all these little ass old games, they got played.

They got played and they got played again and again and again until I got a better score.

Also, I got played for spending $30,

Nick's least favorite dollar amount.

That was a Headgum podcast.

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