Games of 2024 Part 2

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Woof!

I am so excited about today's topic, guys.

I have finally finished Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker saga, and it has been such a good start to the year 2022 that I am really, I like, I can't wait to talk about the rest of the games we have to look forward to for this year.

Heather, what?

You said it's 2022.

Yeah, no, no, no.

Great, great year for games.

We got Elden Ring, God of War, Ragnarok.

I played both of those.

Horizon Forbidden West.

I mean, it's been a great year for games.

And I finally, finally beat Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker side.

That's great.

I'm happy you beat that game.

I beat that game the year that it came out in 2022.

The hard thing about these games is

so many games come out that you kind of like, you lose track, and you really have to keep that momentum going in order to beat enough games to stay on that release calendar.

So, you know, I blazed through Stray.

I blazed through Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

In fact, I bounced off it a little, but I'm going to come back to it here in the second half of 2022.

Uh-huh.

I just...

What?

The current year is 2024.

What are you talking about?

It's not 2022 anymore.

No, while you've been playing this game, two more years have happened.

Two more years' worth of games have been released.

Don't

fuck with me, man, because that's not funny.

No, I actually.

No, no, no, it's not funny.

I'm not laughing.

I'm not laughing either.

Like, the idea that I am that far behind on games.

No, it's

it makes me want to fucking throw up.

Okay, I'm also kind of concerned that it took you two years to finish Lego Star Wars the Skywalker.

Wait, it did take me two years.

Stop it.

No, I think it did for sure.

No, I think what happened is that because Heather was playing through all of these games to completion, this Lego Star Wars game, you know, when she finally got to it in her backlog, we were well into no, this is my

now log.

This is a current log.

It is not a backlog.

Let's not say now log or current log.

Neither of these sound okay.

If Nick's telling you that, he means it.

The games in my backlog are things like WarioWare touched, like shit from like 20 years ago that I haven't had a chance to play yet.

That's a really good WarioWare game.

I do hope you get a chance to play it someday for the DS.

It is April 6th, 2022.

No, that's the day.

This game, the Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker Saga, those games, I love those games.

That's games for babies, and it took you two years to play this baby game.

Were you telling me that, like, Elden Rings DLC already came out?

Yeah, it's bad.

Bad Skate 3 already came out.

I played through it twice.

These games came out already?

They already came out, Heather.

Yeah, you had your fucking...

What?

You're playing Lego Star Wars the Skywalker saga too much.

You played all of it.

You played it for too long.

I feel like

you're harping on her for this.

I feel like the larger issue she's either on some Rip Van Winkle or Tenet shit.

I don't know exactly what it is.

It's some sort of weird sort of temporal pincer maneuver you've done on yourself.

You're right.

We're mad about two different things.

That's the issue here.

You and I aren't on the same page.

No, yeah.

We got to lock in, see what we got going on.

There's something wrong going on here for sure.

Well,

let's just settle on it.

I think it's insane that it would take so long to play a game like this, and I think you need to agree with me.

Okay, so I should just be saying that.

Heather, you spent too much time playing Lego Star Wars saga.

Guys, I don't know how this happened, but I got a lot of video games I gotta I gotta play and I hope you'd be supportive

because I'm gonna play a lot of video games okay yeah of course whatever you find if you like that that's good better than you playing just one for a long time well in order to because I realize what I've done now so I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to play all right what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start with a current release of Lego Star Wars Saga Skywalker saga.

It's the same, it's the same game.

It's the same fucking game.

You can't stop now.

You had to stop now.

I get it now.

I get why you were mad.

That makes sense.

Yeah, it's the same fucking game, Heather.

It is like an eight out of 10.

You got to get over it.

I finished it.

Well, you finished it?

I did.

I liked it a lot.

How year do you think it is?

2004, right?

What's happening?

We add to our ever-growing backlogs and A some of your cues in the question block as we do a 2024 mid-year check-in 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, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where we used to talk about bad games.

We subjected ourselves to bad games.

We've slogged through bad games.

And then we were like, I'm not going to take this any fucking more.

I'm not going to do it.

You can't make us.

And so then we broadened our approach.

And now we talk about games that we love, games that we hate, all kinds of games, because we're we're all fucking losers.

I don't know if I'd like to relax.

We are the lamest of the lame.

The lowest of the low.

Well, yes.

Yeah.

I mean, I got you out.

That's true.

That's true.

But if you're listening to this podcast, you're not like us.

You're a good person.

You're someone who can look down on us.

Yeah.

And laugh.

Yeah.

Laugh at the worms beneath your feet.

I'm not going to sign off on this either, frankly.

I'll fucking take any of you guys.

Ah,

video games.

What the hell?

Are you okay?

What?

I'm just thinking about how normal our world is.

Just a wave of reality that you at once, okay?

Video games.

Yeah, video games are good.

Video games are good because

they're an escape.

They're a source of enjoyment.

They can be a source of achievement and pride.

I have such a treat for you guys today.

I can't wait to share it.

Oh, I'm looking at it.

Can I circle back to something Nick said real quick?

Oh, yeah.

He said they're an escape.

Sometimes, if you're lucky, they can be an ape escape.

Yeah, you know what?

I am glad you circled back.

I am glad you circled back.

Did you ever see that?

There's this,

I have not been able to find it.

And maybe it's on Daily Motion or something.

No one's put it on YouTube, but there's an old,

there was, so there's Ape Escape, which is a PlayStation 1 platformer, which was a lot of fun.

We were catching a bunch of monkeys.

It's a hoot.

Ape Escape 2000 was a semi-sequel, but the premise of Ape Escape 2000, which I think maybe was not released in the U.S., was that you found a bunch of monkeys with dirty pants, you stole their pants, and then you cleaned them in a washing machine.

What?

Are you sure this isn't just a dream you had?

Nick, after like a 24-hour session of playing Panty Party,

it's like, time to clean the monkeys,

yeah, President Nixon, like using the missions.

It's you, it's you and Nixon and your third grade teacher.

Anyway, so

the, but there's a, there's a,

I wish I could find the video.

If anyone out there in the Discord or whatever has, has, uh, has it or knows what I'm talking about, uh, link me, but there, there was like a video that was like, it was a Japanese-only commercial where it was a, who's that, the artist I'm thinking of?

Why can't I I think of the name?

It's like a Salvador Dali, like type Salvador Dolly, big Salvador Dali mustache.

I found the word for it as he gestured like a big mustache.

He kind of has that sort of mustache and has like a, but he's like a French guy and he has a beret.

And then the like as he's watching these monkeys dancing, like these guys in mascot suits, he goes, Bien,

pants, tre bien.

And then their pants like get whisked off, like some unseen force pulls

their pants out of frame.

It's like one of those fucking surreal ads I've ever seen.

I've not been able to find it.

I'd like to watch that.

So yeah, drop the link if you got it.

Also,

this is, I'm just thinking about this.

Yeah.

On Get Animate, our other podcast on Patreon, patreon.com slash get played.

One time we were talking about apes as we do.

Nick says, Nick drops this bomb on us.

He says, and I think I quote, man has always been fascinated by apes.

I stand by that.

I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, we have ape escape.

Yeah.

We have Super Monkey Ball.

We have Donkey Kong.

I think Nick's right.

Yeah, of course.

I don't think Nick is right.

I think Nick's right.

Look how big the fucking ape franchises are this year, even.

Two huge ape movies that people are like, all right, I gotta these ape movies.

They both come out.

They're both hits.

I did just see both of those ape movies.

Yeah.

But

of course, you're a human being.

You're going to be fascinated by apes.

I'm not seeing it, but that could have been anything.

It could have been leopards.

Like, I would see.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

I would see rise of the planet of the leopards.

No.

I would see that, but that's like the, I think there's just like a not a general, I think there's a human interest in our fellow primates that's like kind of like, you know, I think Kingdom of the Planet of the Caps.

Cats.

Cats.

I'd see it.

That sounds interesting, but it also sounds like it could be a little bit of a novelty.

Yeah.

There's a bunch of cats rolling around.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Grapes.

Did you like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes?

When I see those movies, I'm just in awe that they exist.

I love them.

Both in terms of how they've resurrected a franchise that nobody ever thought was going to make it for another go.

And then, additionally, the technological marvel of watching a movie that is just apes.

Yes.

And if you watch the deleted scenes, you get to see the ping pong ball guys

acting out the scenes.

Yeah, that's cool as hell.

I love that, but I also love how it's a franchise built on

the idea.

The first, the original movie, everybody knows it.

It's like a pop culture, like

it's like everybody knows what the movie is.

Yeah.

These movies build to that and then away from it and never really like give you the thing.

They never really remake that moment in those movies, which I think is the right way to do that.

Otherwise, you end up with something like Abraham Lincoln in the Tim Burton one for a second.

Still good.

Which is good.

Oh, yeah, that sucks.

That movie's bad.

Okay, I may have found the ad.

And, you know, I haven't looked for it for a while.

And to be, you know, is there any way we could put something up on screen?

Would that be possible?

Nick is

curiously closing tabs as he sets up to screen share.

I've never seen a man click faster.

I'm just going to send this to Ranch because this will be this other.

Right, because then you don't have to use it.

Yeah, we don't have to worry about about it.

His iPad is like

from how many tabs he's closing.

Okay, so I had the year wrong.

It was Ape Escape 2001, was the name of the game.

This did come out only in Japan, but yes, here is the ad that I have been thinking about for 20 years.

Let's watch this real quick: the PS2 logo Elite.

Yeah.

You've you've vacuumed off monkeys' pants and washed them in a washing machine.

Yeah.

This game would be localized in a post-Katamari world, but it just was not localized back in 2001.

Most bizarre about that ad you just showed us is the prominent placement of McDonald's in the background.

There is McDonald's signage, like it's a, it's a branded tie-in.

And I don't know if that's just the location or if there's, this was an actual like

cross-promotion thing.

It was fucking weird as shit.

Yeah, it's really weird.

I don't remember McDonald's being that forward.

Because you can't do that in the United States.

You can't put another brand in your commercial for something else.

Yeah.

No, you can't.

Like you can't even wear a t-shirt with like a

like you can't have a tattoo in a commercial.

When I see, like, a, a commercial for, like, Pepsi or something that, like, mentions Coke, I get, like, scandalized.

I'm like, can they do that?

Yeah.

It's so crazy to me.

They can do whatever they want.

Well, yeah, I mean, Pepsi.

They're Pepsi.

The.

The tattoo thing is interesting.

There actually was a video game-related court case.

I can't remember if we talked about it on the podcast that got settled this year where a tattoo artist who had worked on some NBA players, most notably, I believe, LeBron James, had sued because his tattoos were recreated in NBA 2K.

Oh, and I'm not sure.

And he's like, that's my art.

I should be getting royalties for that.

But it ultimately was ruled that that is a part of, when you get a tattoo on your body, that is a part of an individual's likeness, if that likeness is recreated digitally, which is an interesting precedent.

Huh.

Yeah.

Didn't.

The case for Mike Tyson in The Hangover go the opposite way?

I don't remember what that was.

Was that a video game thing, though?

No, wasn't it that one of the characters in The Hangover got the same facial testing?

And Helms gets it.

Yeah, and Helms gets it.

Yeah.

In The Hangover, too.

And then, wasn't there a lawsuit for that, too, and it was lost?

I don't remember that, but I mean, that also, I guess, if you, if you think about it, that is a slightly different situation.

Yep.

And also, we're just looking at, you know, 10 to 15 years later, we're looking at a much more conservative judiciary overall that's going to be a little bit more friendly to businesses and a little bit less so to artists.

I can't believe Mike Tyson would even be in the first one.

Then they pay homage to him in the second one.

And how does he repay him?

By taking him to court.

Shame, shame, shame.

But was it him or was it the artist?

I don't think Mike Tyson was like, I think he was probably like, oh,

that's my face.

I like it.

He's like, these are my best friends.

These are my friends.

Either of you ever,

my two tattooed co-hosts ever contemplated a face tattoo?

No.

That's a a big step, right?

No.

That makes you a different kind of person.

Damaged across my forehead.

Yeah, I don't really do that.

Maybe ha ha ha on my hands, you know.

No, I,

yeah, I'm,

gosh, no.

In no disrespect,

hats off to you if you can just pull it off.

I, I don't, I, all my tattoos are pretty, uh, you can hide them pretty easily.

Right.

Um, you know, no, I, I've thought about getting like a hand tattoo.

Yeah.

But no, I'm not going to do it.

Yeah.

I didn't even go that far down on my arms so that I could roll up my sleeves.

Right.

Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about you, Nick?

You can get a face tattoo?

First one?

Just let's just say I'm happy we can get my tattoos hidden.

What?

Don't worry about it.

He's just going to get like a child's drawing of a penis on his cheek.

A child's drawing?

Yeah.

Of an adult adult penis.

It's not going to be a child's penis.

Look, I'm the way you slice it.

It's not good.

There's not a better version of that scenario.

Oh, no.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

All right, let's change topics.

Let's talk about some video games we're playing right now.

Ah, video games.

Let me ask everybody, what are you playing?

What are you playing?

What are you playing, Matt?

I really was able to understand that a little bit better than normal.

Yeah, that to me was like, I don't know.

You know, like when you hear a song without the music, you just hear the vocals.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Yeah.

This is really cool.

It's looking kind of beautiful.

That's one of the features of Fortnite is that you get to strip out everything but the vocals.

Yes.

When you're jamming with other players.

Really fun.

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

Actually.

Resident Evil Merchant, you feature actually really prominently in this.

Oh, is that Joe?

That's true.

There's so.

yeah that's that's true yeah what is it it's so um i've been you know i after shadow of the ur tree right now i was saying i was saying before the show uh in a bit of a in a bit of a dry spell in the release calendar for video games uh and so i was so i've been kind of chipping away at a couple things nothing's really grabbing me right now been playing the thousand year door remake and i kind of like and i'm enjoying it but i i'm what i'm thinking is i don't love i just don't love paper mario every time i trip,

look, I think he's cute.

I think he's cute.

He's too flat.

He's a little too flat.

He is really flat.

I mean, look, I like that aesthetic.

I will say, if Thousand Your Door isn't clicking for you, then yeah, maybe you just don't like Paper Mario because that's the

franchise.

Yeah, and I'm enjoying it, but I don't feel the pull to it the way where I was like, when I was really into wonder, I was like going back to it all the time.

With this, I'm always like, it's going to be a little slower than I want it to be.

And I kind of just want to blast through this thing.

So, I probably will finish it at some point.

I'm not playing it right now.

I put it down because I remembered that sitting on my shelf has been a DLC in my backlog that I've been wanting to play.

And it's the Resident Evil 4 Separate Ways DLC.

Oh, wow, okay,

featuring Ada Wong, who I don't know.

This is the first time I've met Ada other than the cutscenes in the.

Oh, she's a lady in the halter top, right?

Yes.

Yeah, I see her in my shop.

Yeah, well, you're in the Resident Evil merchant.

I guess you're not in it, but in the remake, the new merchant is there a lot.

And every time I visit this,

well, this is the thing.

Maybe don't bring that up.

Every time I encounter this guy, I'm always like, why isn't this my friend?

Exactly.

Why would I, I mean, like, there's a lot of reasons to fire me, but not from my flagship, my flagship production.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You think the way things go, you get fired for, you know, the things that you've done.

And then a couple years later, you're just rehired and it's fine yeah yeah you should just be doing that still um i got fired from a public park the other day

did you get fired or did you get banned like were you employed there

did they just say like keep out of the park i was just trying to i was i was uh playing that game everybody's been playing shatter of the earth tree right and they they told me i had to leave Yeah, that's a video game.

So probably if you were like LARPing it, they probably just thought you were like some sort of specter haunting, you know, the

screen.

No, you just shit next to a tree.

That doesn't shatter the Eerdtree.

Are there more rules I'm not aware of?

I just think you're playing a different game.

Oh.

It happens.

Look.

The present is a confusing place.

Yeah, I'm trying to get an A to C, sort of how you get from the Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erd Tree to taking a shit next to a tree in a public park and thinking that was the game.

What did you call it?

Shadow?

Yeah.

Oh, I missed her the title.

That's your problem.

Yeah.

That's the main thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shat seems to be part of it.

Yeah.

New merchant aside, I got to say, the DLC is a lot of fun.

Playing as Ada is very cool.

She has like a grappling hook that is like really fun to use

for traversal because you're basically just kind of going through the whole thing again.

Right.

But her side of the story.

And

for some reason, when I was playing the remake, when we played it for the show, I remember being a little more scared of it.

But I think because I've had such a I had such a time in the lands between and in the land of shadow.

Yeah.

These fucking

La Plaga guys.

I am not afraid of these guys.

They're fine.

It's comparatively goofy, first off, just like tonally.

It's like a little bit sillier, a little bit more like horror genre, you know, campy, but also it has a little bit just like, there's just less menace to it because it's less threatening.

Yeah.

Like you're not, you don't feel like you're going to be like one shot at all.

Like, like, I, you know how to manage these guys.

Yeah.

The times that I've died have been environmental reasons.

Like, sure.

There was

these.

These big blocks that come smash you.

And you've heard of a gill sandwich.

I was ate a sandwich in this situation.

Wow.

And

I've been thinking about that for days.

I'm glad you said it.

It's pretty good.

I almost wrote it down, but I didn't have to.

I remembered it.

I love the idea of having the same thought for a few days.

It's all I've been thinking about.

That's great.

And, you know, I will, but like, it does feel like this game allows you to sort of have like a bit of a power fantasy because I'm just fucking blasting through these guys.

And, you know,

you get better weapons as it goes on, obviously.

And so I have like sort of all the...

Does the traveling grappling hook do damage to the enemies?

It can with melee attacks.

So if you're far enough away and you sort of stun, you stun lock one of the enemies, it'll, you know, pop up like X for melee.

It'll zip or it'll, you know,

it'll grapple them and pull you closer to them so then you can kick them in the face.

That's pretty good.

It's really good.

A reverse get over here.

Yes, exactly.

That's fun.

I'm coming.

You better stay right there.

I'm coming to you.

Bit of a mouthful, Scorpion, but all right.

You stay right there.

But I'm really, really enjoying it.

I'm on chapter six of seven chapters.

I'll probably finish it up tonight.

But that's it for me.

That rocks.

Yeah, I love it.

Now, the thing, I have not played

the DLC, but I have seen some of the video of some of the Ada death animations.

Have you experienced any of those?

Like any of the really specific cinematic deaths?

No, because I mean, look,

he's kicking at

the bottom.

Part of the reason why I'm doing so well and I'm not so afraid is that I am playing on easy.

Like, I'm not, there's no challenge here.

But,

I mean, I did watch her get crushed to death.

Yeah.

Right, right, right.

You need to mention that one.

But otherwise, no.

But

I want nothing bad to ever happen to her.

I love Ada Wong.

There's one, I think it's from the DLC.

I think that's the source where she gets like, what's the

movie I'm thinking of?

Cubed.

She gets cubed.

Well, that's also a Resident Evil is a Resident Evil thing that happens as well yeah well you know I was looking forward to that in this DLC too because I know that in the original Resident Evil 4 there's like the laser room thing that's not in the remake and I was like oh maybe it's in the DLC it's just not in there it's not there at all because they took out all quick time events and the and the merchant and the merchant first of all Original Merchant gone second worst offense yeah no laser room

but people don't like quick time events I guess well what are you going to do?

While we're talking Resident Evil, I want to check in with our producer, Rochelle Chan Ranch, because you were playing Resident Evil 2.

You told us this, the remake, a few weeks ago.

Where are you at right now with RE2?

So I passed the, or I went underground to the lab, got past Mr.

X

at the police station.

He showed up again in the underground lab.

He killed me, and I quit immediately and uninstalled it.

I was so upset.

I've not encountered

Mr.

X before.

I've not played Resident Evil 2.

I'm interested in maybe doing it after finishing the DLC, but it seems like he's a scary guy.

He's very scary.

He just, he's like, it follows.

He just keeps coming.

Yeah,

I played RE2 on PlayStation 1, as I believe you did, Heather, but did not play the remake Nope, and so I don't know, but I've heard the remake is is great.

I've heard all the remakes are good, but I have not played any of them.

I've played four.

We played four for the podcast.

I mean,

this was an episode you weren't around, but I, that, that is the one that I played, and I did love it.

And I played

with the Resident Evil 1 one?

I did.

I, I, I, I, it's hard for me to play a remake because the thrill of the game is the first time you play it.

I, I dabbled in Demon Souls.

Yes.

And I was like, oh, wow.

But ultimately, I was like, I remember this.

And so much of the horror of a FromSoft game is what the fuck is going to happen.

No, that's, I mean, that, that's true.

And that's kind of true of horror generally.

But, but I will say, I do, one thing I do like is like when the

format of our show, when we commit to like, hey, we're going to cover a game and we're kind of forced to replay something.

Cause like, I probably would have not gone back to Shadow of the Colossus, an all-time game if we hadn't done it for the podcast, but playing through it all the way through again was just like, oh, that was a really cool experience.

And this made me remember what I found so engaging about it and, you know, what aged well and what didn't.

So I do like a really well-done remake from that standpoint.

Also, like something like the Final Fantasy VII remake, which maybe we'll touch on later in this episode, is like, because it's just such a starkly different take, that's something that

I find really

inert, like, like engrossing.

And Shatter Shatter of the Colossus is not

a completely different sort of thing than what you're envisioning.

You gotta know, you have to know the word shadow.

Yeah.

You have to know it.

I mean, like, I know.

Wait.

What's the word you're saying?

Shadow.

Shatter.

No, no.

And what do you think shatter means?

Oh, it's like the past tense of shit.

I just see a future word.

Which is also the past tense of shit.

This is like

who's on first if they both had TBIs

traumatic brain injuries.

Oh,

oh, yeah, that would be me.

Okay, well,

call it like a seed, I guess.

Just I don't want to see a future where you're getting cuffed at the base of the Statue of Liberty because you've misunderstood again something.

So just don't be.

Don't be.

That's not what Shadow of the Colossus is.

I mean, I was cuffed at the Sega shop

for

playing Shatter the Hedgehog.

But now I can see clearly that there's been

a misunderstanding on my part.

So, yeah, I won't be shitting in public.

Okay, great.

Yeah, just maybe just a solemn vow.

A good mid-year resolution, perhaps.

Don't shit in public anymore.

It's 2025.

Heather, what are you playing?

All right, guys.

I've brought in something for all of us to kind of play a little bit together.

Oh.

I've been squawking on our mutual text threads that this is my summer of swan.

That's right.

And that means that I'm playing Wonder Swan.

What are you laughing at?

Squawking, Swan.

I like the bird motif.

It's fun.

All right.

So I've brought

Wonder Swan here, which I don't think either of you have ever played before.

I've never seen one.

Oh, great.

Well, this is, let me pull up a little, little history of it.

So the Wonder Swan was the final

system

designed by

Gunpei Yokoi, who was the guy who designed the Game Boy and the Virtual Boy.

And when he created the Virtual Boy for Nintendo and then left the company in disgrace,

he created

another company, which was called Koto Laboratory.

And at Koto Laboratory, Bandai approached him and said, Hey, can you make us a handheld game system?

And so, this system came out before the Game Boy Advance and was more advanced than the

Game Boy Color.

Okay.

It was a 16-bit processor and it only used one

double A battery.

So, it was also pretty ferocious in terms of like, wow, you can put a double A battery in this thing and

it lasts for a very long time.

So here is a Wonder Swan color, which was the second iteration of the Wonderswan.

You'll notice that the system can be played horizontally or vertically.

I didn't notice that until you showed me.

So you could play like top, like horizontal shooting games, like plane games or whatever.

I also have an example of a horizontal horror game

which reads like a story.

So the screen is

long

instead of wide.

The games are like kind of big.

They're kind of...

The carts, yeah.

Yeah, the carts themselves are kind of large.

They are

they weren't

And they weren't like niche games because Bandai is a large company.

So Squaresoft games came out for it.

A lot of Shonen Jump style video games came out for it.

So there was like One Piece games, Digimon games.

Like it was a major system and ended up taking almost 8% of the Japanese handheld market, which was a huge chunk for a third system

until the Game Boy Advance came out and absolutely destroyed it.

So yeah, this is a this is a and this is what the the boxes for those games look like.

Wow.

This is now, this is a,

this is a dumb question.

I should know this.

Did this receive a North American release?

It did not.

It did not.

Okay.

So this is a Japanese.

And you got this in Japan on your trip.

Yes.

So

there was a planned release by Mattel.

They drew up a partnership and they were going to release it.

And then by the time it was going to come out in North America, the market was just too flooded with handhelds.

And they were like, there's no way we're going to achieve the kind of market penetration we need to be able to call this this a success.

It is a lightweight, like feel that, feel the weight on that system.

It's lightweight.

It's super, super portable, super friendly.

And it feels like,

I don't know,

it feels sturdy, but also toy-like in a really nice way.

I'm holding this thing.

It is definitely lighter than my iPhone, which is for what it's worth.

It's a...

It's a good looking piece of hardware.

I do love the way it looks.

No, it's got, and this is that kind of like that part, that, you know, semi-translucent plastic where you can see the guts a little bit, which I, which I always like in a handhelder controller.

I was always talking about guts.

The brains, if you will.

And what I was going to say is, like, I, so, you know, I've hold like I've held like a Neo, I've messed around with like a Neo Geo Pocket color, with a Sega Nomad, with an Atari Lynx, but this is the first time I've actually held a Wonderswan color.

It's a cool piece of hardware.

So this screen

on this particular Wonderswan has been swapped out for an IPS screen.

So, this screen is not, it was

the kind of screen where you had to use the available light, like the original Game Boy Advance.

This is now a backlit screen.

Cool.

Some of the games I brought are

based on the anime that I love called X.

I was having kind of an X

resurgence when I was in Japan and re-watching that show.

And there's only two X video games that are out, and one of them is for the Wonder Swan.

So, I picked that up for the very cheap price of $16.

And then I have Hunter-Hunter, One Piece, another Hunter-Hunter game, two different Digimon games.

This game is, I don't know what that game is.

Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy II, Conan,

and Terrors, which is the aforementioned horror video game where you play horizontally.

The Conan game is a detective Conan game, not Conan the Barbarian.

Got it, man.

It's not a late night TV.

It's not a late-night game, yeah.

Right.

It's not Conan O'Brien.

No, it's not.

That's not the case.

Is there any particular game you guys wanted to try?

Gosh, I don't know.

I mean, you can't jump right into Final Fantasy one or two.

Yeah, but

I think those are games that we're familiar with.

I'd say load one of them some bitches up.

Let's take a look at what it looks like on that screen.

That's what I would jump straight to, of course.

Let's see.

And

so, the

era of this,

just before the Game Boy advance, it was kind of like,

you know, we still didn't have

handhelds were still feeling either very crude or extremely battery inefficient.

And this one feels like it kind of struck a balance for this.

It wasn't going to suck power like a Sega Game Gear, but it also wasn't going to look like, you know, two generations

before where home consoles were like

a Game Boy.

I mean, it's a great looking screen.

I know this has been replaced, but.

Yeah, no, I mean, it was really pretty.

It's a 16-bit handheld color console.

My complaints about the system are that the

sound,

in order to get headphones, you had to get an adapter that only came with this game, Terrors,

which is the horror game.

Oh, that's annoying.

And

otherwise, yeah, there's no headphone jack on the system.

Do you know how do you adjust volume?

Is this the power?

That's the slider on the side.

I was just wondering if we could crank the volume and hear the prelude

into my mic a little bit, but it just doesn't get much audio out of it.

I don't know if that's being picked up at all.

That is all the way up.

I was frustrated with how quiet the system was.

God, this looks cool.

This looks really good.

It does.

Look at that.

It does look really good.

And

there are, so there is one flash cart available called the Flash Masta, but it's out of print.

Yes.

So it's very hard to track down.

There are also translated carts that have been re-uploaded into the original cartridges

that you can pick up, say, like on Etsy or on third-party websites.

They are unfortunately quite pricey.

The other thing I like about that, it's form factor, because you talked about like you can go into like Tate mode.

You can look at the screen vertically, uh but the it has like another set of controls it has like d-pads on you know both the top and bottom of it so that it can accommodate that control wise it's not like awkward to to play if you do that yeah it's it's uh it's almost like the switch controller took a uh sort of a a hint from the wonder swan yeah trying to load up.

I'm also frustrated.

So it's an old system.

It's more than 20 years old.

It's almost a quarter century old now.

The power button is extremely sensitive.

Oh, that's yeah.

And sometimes this particular system, I have trouble turning it on and off.

But maybe I maybe I won't be able to again.

And then that's it.

That's

did you get all of these games in Japan or did you have some of them in your library prior to this?

I got all these in Japan.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

They're all just a, I mean, it was like a grab bag that came with the system itself.

Right.

And

what are these retailing for in the use market?

I know the retro market is out of control, but I so part of the reason that I got really excited about getting a Wonder Swan while I was there was that

there are a few games that are like retailing for a thousand bucks, right?

I think one of them is called like Drill Princess or something like that.

But for the most part,

I think that it's the Western market driving the huge price gouging on retro games.

Okay.

And since this this is not a system that ever came out here, these games remain pretty inexpensive.

So I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,

thirteen games plus the system for about 250 bucks.

Yeah, that's not bad at all.

That's pretty good.

Which, again, considering that like you can't get four Game Boy Advance games for less than $50 each anymore, it felt like a real bargain.

Yeah, and with a new screen.

I mean, it's a very

elegant thing to own.

It's so slick looking, too.

I really like, I love the orange that you picked.

Did you pick orange out of necessity?

Like, did you like that color in particular, or was that just the one that was available?

It was the one that was available.

Okay.

So here's

Terrors.

Okay, you gave it to me so I can get really scared.

Got it.

I know that Matt is

Matt is scared of scary games.

What if I got so scared?

You know, like lots of reasons to miss physical physical media, but one of them is just like box art like this.

And I know this is, I, this is the kind of thing I wish we had a video component because this, this X card of fate box art is so,

it's, it's just so, so well realized.

It's, it's pleasant to look at.

Yeah.

And also, I kind of miss cardboard.

I know, I know this may not be a popular, a popular take because cardboard

box holders

have deteriorated over time.

And like

Switch boxes,

Saturn boxes, PlayStation boxes have all like retained their shape and thus their value.

But there's something really like,

I don't know, nostalgic about a cardboard box.

Yeah, sure.

And

cardboard boxes that like somebody has taken care of, you're like, man, this feels like a little treasure might be inside here, like a Cracker Jack box.

I'm realizing that there's no way this game can scare me because I cannot read what it says.

Here's a little of the horror game, Nick.

This is awesome.

So the art is black and white.

And then, yeah, there's just a lot of text with,

you know, it's mostly hiragana, but there's enough kanji here where I can't really read this.

I've been playing this one by holding my, and I think I had an idea for an Etsy device

that was a bracket, like a bracket that you could mount onto an old Game Boy or a Wonder Swan Swan that would allow you to play the system with your hands, but have Google Translate photo mode up on your phone so you'd be able to get to see these old games translated if you're not quite adept enough at the language to be able to enjoy it.

I think the reason that this game came with headphones is because a lot of it is creepy audio.

Oh, cool.

So you hear like a whisper on the translation.

I'm going to kill you.

Also, what's just a different time where it's like, oh, yeah, we got to release an adapter for this one game in case people want to use headphones with this device.

I was thinking about that very specific use case where someone would want to have a headphones with their handheld.

I was thinking about the extra

grip and like extra

directional stick.

For Monster Hunter for the yeah.

Well, the one that I got, yeah, but I got it for

a Metal Gear Solid 3 stick here for 3DS.

It was the only thing that I ever used it for.

And now I have a 2DS that is flat that it doesn't fit on.

I just like looking at this thing.

I got to say.

Yeah, it is really cool.

And it's also like, that's, I do miss the,

it's probably part of the reason why I ended up buying all these little devices like the,

what's, I can't remember what it's called now, but like the emulator SP that I got basically.

Is that the analog pocket?

Well, and the analog pocket as well.

But like, the

I missed the handheld experience, but I also missed the pocketability of a handheld.

Yes.

That is like perfect pocket size.

Perfect pocket size.

Yes.

There is a Wonder Swan core available for the analog pocket.

And you can download and play the translated ROMs of these Wonder Swan games on the analog pocket.

But you miss

like that, that

Y2K aesthetic of the device itself.

Flipping it horizontally.

You miss all of all of that.

Like,

like the reason a bok tie,

you know, ROM with no solar panels where you press a button to make the solar panel work is less exciting than playing it on the Game Boy.

Yeah, the form factor of the device and its kind of unique tactility.

Like just those buttons have a very distinct feel to them.

They're kind of shaped differently.

Yeah.

That's really awesome.

Wow.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

That's what I've been been playing.

I love it.

I guess I'll follow that by talking about the Wordle archive.

Jesus Christ.

I should have gone second.

I'm just like,

follow the fucking Wonderswan.

So I've been still playing Elden Ring.

I'm playing a strength build, and I'm still reading Jason Schreier's excellent book about Blizzard Play Nice, which people should pre-order.

But the New York Times app opened up the Wordle archive.

Wordle is the game where you try to guess a five-letter word.

You have six chances to do so.

And then each time you guess, certain letters are eliminated.

It's one of those things where it's such an elegant, simple design like Tetris that you kind of wonder how it was not created earlier.

But I'm very glad it exists.

It's a great little daily time sync that I was not playing for a while, and I got back into playing, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, largely because of social pressures and some group texts I'm in.

Anyway,

it was just like, here's a puzzle for a day, and then it's gone.

And I kind of did like how ephemeral it is.

But now they have all 1,000 plus puzzles since the thing launched, since it was, you know, it came out in July of 2021.

And

I just went back to day one and started doing them.

And I gotta say, that's pretty fun.

I mean, I'm just like, I had it, like, it's, it's, it's the

early puzzles, and I think they've maybe got away, got away with this as they figured out the hooks of the game and they figured out like its intrinsic quality is why people are playing.

Because some of the very early ones feel like they're trying to set up traps for you.

They're trying to set you down a path or like they're trying to, you you know, like, like present a word that's a very, this isn't one of them, but this is the kind of word that might be in there.

This is too many letters, but like a word like gruntle, which is a proper word, but the only way you would ever hear gruntle is in the context of disgruntled.

You know what I mean?

Like it's like you would never hear it used in the affirmative form

as just a,

you know, like like a and just it's it's it like so like it would have things like that.

And as it progresses, it starts to get more towards just like standard vocabulary.

And then you just kind of realize how many words are kind of unique.

How many words like swoon is just like, oh, there's just nothing, no other word that kind of shares some characteristics with it, even though it's a five-letter word.

It's kind of

like you reach a certain point where that's the only possibility.

Well, this is the thing.

Swan is like close, but of A, that's four letters.

And then how many do you need?

Five.

Swans.

Swans could be in there.

That's a possibility.

Did I win?

Yeah, you won.

Good job.

Thank you very much.

I feel gruntled.

I guess it would come up in other scenarios.

Anyway, like,

I've been enjoying playing the archive.

And also, like, I just like big projects as someone who committed to

going back through the entire all-of-one piece.

I'm like, I like that I, hey, I've got a thousand puzzles to tackle, and I'm on month two of year one.

So, like, let me just keep going with this.

That's really, I don't know, nice.

Yeah, why not?

It's a very adult game.

It's also like I'm, I'm, I, I try for the longest time, I had no games on my phone.

This is the only thing that's like a game that I have on my phone because I get too addicted to them.

But, what, why this one works is that I might be like, you know what?

I have like three minutes in a line.

And if I'm just going to be looking at my text or something anyway, this does not feel like this is a time sync.

This is just like I'm just doing something.

And so I can, I can rationalize it that way.

You talking about this made me realize that I forgot to do mine today.

And so while you were just saying that, I did do my wordle.

Yeah.

And then,

but you got me back into this actually because you brought it up a couple weeks ago on the podcast.

Yeah.

I've been doing, I've been doing that.

I've been doing connections.

I've been doing strands.

I really like strands.

Strands is fun.

Strands is like a word search.

Yeah.

And then sometimes I'll do spelling bead, but then I, you know, I've never gotten all the words.

Sometimes I'm like, okay,

I run out of them pretty easily.

And I don't do the crossword because it's too hard.

My wife and I do the crossword every night.

Every night.

Yeah.

We,

as many nights as we have free to do it.

So, like, not every night, like, it's mandatory.

Yes.

But it is our

group game.

Like, it'll be like, well, let's pull up the crossword and knock it out.

Yeah.

And crossword puzzles have their own fucking language, which Mary knew

before I started playing crosswords.

But so much of it is like learning the code of like how they give clues.

Yes, yeah.

And then once you understand that, you're like, oh, okay, this one's a joke.

This one's a pun.

This one is abbreviation.

But there's no like

place where you're taught that stuff.

No.

Unless you're handed that knowledge by another person.

Yeah.

I would,

my wife and I used to play the crossword together.

And the issue was I was too fucking stupid.

I couldn't like help her.

She just like did like she just was like, I got this.

Like, you know, it was just faster for her to do without me.

I am often very quickly humbled by the crossword because like first thing will be like something I don't know.

And I'll be like, what the fuck?

Right.

Well, so Mary and I have great, a great overlapping or a great

What do you call it?

Where there's two different skill sets, but they work in Congress.

I don't know.

Anyway, so she knows and understands.

Two wrong people.

We both just said we're dumb.

She knows.

Please have complimentary skill sets.

Yeah, she knows all of the literary stuff.

She knows all of the like another way to say ashamed, another way to say

puzzled.

You know, she like, she'll, she'll look at that and be like, instantaneously.

Yeah.

But when it's like,

like

this scientist worked on the atomic bomb, I'm like, oh, it's Enrico Fermi.

It's Fermi.

And she'll be like, great.

And that's like all the only time I like pop up.

Yeah.

Is it'll be like,

for example, the thing I complained about on a previous episode of our podcast, predecessor to the Switch,

where it was Wii's instead of Wii U.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That's annoying.

But like anytime, anytime it's like a thing like that, she'll be like, what's this one?

And I'll be like, oh, it's that.

And that's, that's my role.

Yeah, maybe if there's like an NBA clue or something, I can talk about like high-flying Seattle Super Sonic.

Oh, Sean Kemp.

I got it.

Maybe if they have to, if there was like name a character from The Simpsons or something, I could do that out there too.

Yeah.

That's Mary and I both stare at The Simpsons clues and are like, I don't know.

Well, now you know who to ask.

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All right, hey, let's get to this mid-year check-in, I guess we'll call it.

So, Matt, this is the thing you were talking about.

And we're just sort of,

this is perhaps vaguer than our general sort of topic, but it also kind of felt like a point where in the

gaming year where we can kind of talk about what's behind us and what's ahead of us.

Yeah.

Because it's been,

maybe not as

crammed of a calendar.

I think that was a weird way to say it, but like not as jam-packed of a gaming year as last year, I feel like, so far.

But there have been been some high-profile releases, and certainly more stuff than I've been able to get to.

Yeah, last year was like a regular, like, oops, all-bangers.

Like, you're just dropping huge games, and they were all really good.

And it was just like a, you know, when you're in, when you're in the part of the year where...

Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom comes out, and then the next month, Baldur's Gate 3 comes out, you're like, this is fucking, this is nuts.

This is crazy.

This year doesn't have that as much,

but still some great games have come out.

And I think there are some exciting games on the horizon that I'm really looking forward to.

Boy, I wish I felt the same sort of excitement and optimism about the rest of the year, but I struggled

when you talked about this being the topic.

I was like looking through all the game releases and I was like, fuck, unless it's like an indie game that I literally don't know about yet.

That's going to like pop up on my radar once everybody's like, holy shit, you have to play the luminescence or whatever.

That sounds pretty good.

That sounds pretty good.

There were only like three or four titles left in the rest of the year that I was like, I definitely want to play this.

So that to me says maybe I'll finally get around to playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Rebirth.

Rebirth.

Yeah.

Gosh, that was on my, you know what was on my list of games to play in this interim time?

What?

Final Fantasy XV.

Nice.

I might do it.

I'm not sure.

Ah, please do.

I love those boys so much.

I kind of just want to see the boys.

They're good boys.

All your friends from Kingsglay.

Oh, yeah, those guys are in it.

Wait, what was that movie then?

Exactly.

Those guys are all dead.

The hatred of that movie.

I did watch it.

You know, I mean, just to shout out some games that I loved from this year.

Obviously, Helldivers 2 was

a strong contender.

Could be game of the year, depending on what else comes out this year.

Bellatro is like a game that I'm like,

that might be my game of the year.

I'd fucking love it.

Bellatro is a fucking blast.

I love Bellatro.

The aforementioned Rebirth,

Animal Well.

Yeah.

Animal Well and Bellatro were two that for me it was just like oh that this is what I love about I mean being a fan of anything is there's always something that comes out of nowhere that's on not on your radar at all and you're like oh wait this thing comes out and it's the best yeah I love when that happens was into the the Prince of Persia, um, the lost crown, but that did not get back into it, uh, fell off of it, would like to get back into it.

But is there

any highlights from the first half of the year that you guys want to shout out before we get into the second half?

Yeah, you know, you mentioned, oh, go on, Ather Plus.

I'll tell you one thing that wasn't a highlight is Fortnite,

which, as I've, uh, you know, has appeared less and less frequently in my What Are You Playings,

um, has the lowest concurrent player base count of I think the last five years.

Wow.

People really hate the new season, myself included.

Wow.

Yeah.

But they did leak maybe that

John McClain was coming to Fortnite.

I did see that.

And holy fucking shit.

That'll change my relationship to the game no matter how bad the season is.

I didn't realize how much you love Die Hard.

Me?

Yeah.

I love Die Hard.

I mean, everybody loves it, but like, I didn't know it was like, I kind of, I'm getting the feeling that it's like one of your top things, maybe.

No, I wouldn't go that far, but it's, it's, I mean, if it was, if I still watched TV and it was on TV, I would not change the channel.

You got to see what's going on.

Yeah.

I re-watched it this year.

It holds up.

It's really, really an excellent movie.

He's such a, I mean, this is not the discussion.

Yeah.

I just have to say, Bruce Willis is an incredible movie star.

Well, it's, yeah, it's

an incredible.

You're absolutely right.

and and and it's just so profoundly human in that movie and then also it's like

this has been discussed but it's it's it's so funny that that movie began as like a subversion of action movies and then ended up just being like oh this now this is how a conventional action movie is set up yes and then also hit john mclaine's character in and of itself turned into what he was kind of originally yeah exactly jumping off of falling freeways right right right and holding onto the wing of a fighter jet anyway i i you know like you hit the ones I was going to mention, Matt, which was

Helldivers 2, Apalacho, and Animal Well.

But I am going to shout out

a few things that are in early access that I've really enjoyed and that I'm going to continue to be tracking because that's the process of early access.

Deep Rock Galactic Survivor was actually out last year, but has had some major updates and is really just like a really fun take on the survivor template.

As is Death Must Die, another game I talked about a couple of weeks ago.

And I just kind of want to see where those games go.

Manor Lords, I feel like, is going to be an early access maybe for a while, just because it's such an ambitious game.

But what I messed around with is like, this is, I just, I love how granular this is.

This is probably too much for me, but I just kind of love that it exists and I'm happy to support it.

But the big thing is Hades 2.

I mean,

I hope they'll take all the time they need to on that, and God bless them.

But

I was just so impressed by where it was, where it is at its current state, and just to take it from there.

I was going to bring something up, which is just me being kind of overwhelmed, but I want to talk about games that I missed that I'm hoping to catch up with at some point, games that I've just added to my backlog in the past year that have already come out.

Lost Crown, you mentioned the Prince of Persia game.

Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth.

I just like, I still really just want to get into the new Like a Dragon.

I really want to play it.

I've not done it yet.

And I just, I just need to do it.

This is the thing.

You just have to do it at a certain point.

You just have to be like, this is what I'm going to commit myself to.

I'm going to just say like i'm choosing to do this over some other things that i could be doing but because i've been wanting to do this i should just do it and i'd probably enjoy myself because i've liked all the time i've spent with the yakuza games chiefly yakuza zero uh persona three reload and uh a final fantasy 7 rebirth um you know again love love persona 5 uh royal led to finished that game it's it's it's incredible it's a masterpiece and then final fantasy 7 remake i really enjoyed but i just not get did not get around to rebirth what you know what that that's that's the thing there's just there's always there's there's way too much, even in a so-called light year.

I know.

That is really something like I was thinking about this year as being not as packed, but then all these games came out and they're all really good.

Yeah.

And they're, and a lot of them are long.

Chunky boys.

Yeah.

That makes it harder to be like, oh, like you, you put in

50 more hours into Elden Ring.

Yeah.

You put in 200 hours in a fucking Final Fantasy VII.

It was like,

no, not quite 200 hours.

It was, because Elden Ring now is like

by most played game hours-wise on PlayStation by like, I think, like 100 hours, 230 hours all told.

I do think maybe

Rebirth was around like 120.

And then I think, I think Final Fantasy 16 has like 150 hours.

I played so much Final Fantasy 16.

I mean, a big part of why these early releases have been blocked out is because of something that you said that about the end of last year, which was Baldur's Gate 3 came out.

And I love that game.

It's, it's, I can just call it my favorite game of all time now.

And a big part of my first portion of the year was replaying it.

And I don't know how I did it, but I always do it.

Like my replay, I feel like I should know this game.

Yeah, I'm playing it on hard difficulty.

So maybe there's some more obstacles there, but I know what to do, but somehow it takes me even longer.

And like this game that took me like 130 hours for my first run, run, I'm doing more stuff and it takes me like 150 hours.

So like so much of my gaming time was just reserved for one

gigantic game,

the chunkiest of the chunky boys.

Well, the extra time added to your Baldur's Gate 3 thing is because you kept safe scumming so you can do the bear sex scene over and over again.

Did not romance Halson.

Daddy Halson.

This is the thing with the romance in that game: I feel like I was so like,

we shouldn't just be talking about Paul Discay 3, but I was just, I roleplay it where I'm like, well, the characters I'm spending time with who are in my party are who I should be romancing.

Paulson's just setting up at camp.

I don't want to be doing my romance arc with him because it feels like it's not really, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's overthinking.

That's like somebody you see at work.

Yeah, exactly.

Instead of somebody that you're like out doing stuff with all the time.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Right.

It feels like, oh, I'm out here with Lazelle.

We're going everywhere.

I'm hoping with Gail.

Like, these should be who I should be.

My partner.

There's so many characters I never met.

I mean, should we just go

down the road?

Let's look to the future.

Yes.

Let's look up ahead at the upcoming calendar and maybe we can just kind of each trade off.

I mean,

I'll start real quick because this is a game that we already mentioned.

It's a game that I already played the demo of.

And we did an episode with our friend Eva Anderson when Heather wasn't here on the case of the Golden Idol.

The sequel, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Idol, is promised in 2024.

It does not have a date yet, but I really like what they've done to the aesthetic.

I really like that the puzzles seem to have a little bit more,

you know, unity and cross-pollination across them, the way it's set up in the demo.

And I also just like that it's got this new setting.

It goes from kind of like this, you know, 19th century, 18th century, whatever it is, this vague sort of colonial era British Empire to like more of a 70s sort of feel

and like 1970s sort of feel, much more contemporary, and that I really like.

So, Rise of the Golden Idol is definitely one that I am

looking forward to and will 100% make time for.

There's a game that I've pitched for us to play on the podcast, and I think we might actually tackle it, and I'm looking forward to it.

Can I talk about that game here?

Sure.

Nintendo World Championships NES Edition for the Switch is a in the vein of like the Mario 100 or any of those like micro game versions of classic NES games that they've been releasing on the Switch.

This is a speed run

rehash of like levels from The Legend of Zelda, levels from Super Mario 1, levels from, say, Kid Icarus that are inspired by the experience of the Nintendo World Championships in the 1980s.

And I'm looking forward to that.

Because

the other, like, Mario 100 or whatever the fuck it was called, I don't even remember remember what it was called.

Tetris 100, Tetris 99.

Tetris 99.

I think it was weirdly though, Mario 100.

Let's get one more Mario.

Those experiences have been so fun.

Yeah.

And they really sink their teeth into me for a short amount of time, and then they're usually taken off of the system.

Yes.

So the idea of having like a tangible version of this that I can like pick up and

drop in, play a couple of times, and then kick out again.

Like that's a, that's a kind of gaming experience that I need in my life.

I have a

Nintendo World Championships sized void

in my gaming life.

I think based off of where you were recording this one a little bit earlier, I think it might actually be out by the time this episode's out.

It's slated for sometime in July, but I'm curious, did you ever play NES Remix for the Wii U?

No, I didn't.

This is a game I was thinking of.

I had that game and it was all right.

It feels like this is going to be maybe a little bit more robust and maybe a little bit more what you thought that game was going to be.

It was kind of fun, but it was more like kind of like a

It kind of felt like more like a WarioWare kind of approach.

And then it had a bunch of different games.

I mean, I have the full list here, but you know, it had like

Balloon Fight, the Donkey Kongs, NES Donkey Kongs, Dr.

Mario, Excite Bike, Punch Out, Mario Bra.

There's the original one, Kid Icarus, Ice Hockey.

Jesus.

You know, Wrecking Crew.

It had a bunch of different like classic NES games, and then you'd just play small chunks of.

Asking the question, did you play this on the Wii U is like an impossible question for people to answer?

I'll tell you guys one I'm excited about.

Well, at least in August, there are two games coming out that I'm actually pretty excited about.

One's called Thank Goodness You're Here.

It's a game from Panic.

and Cole Supper.

And it says,

Thank goodness you're here is an absurd comedy slap former set in the bizarre northern English town of Barnsworth as a traveling salesman take the time to see the sites and meet the locals who are very eager to give you a series of increasingly odd jobs.

And I like the way it looks.

I'm going to play it on my Steam Deck.

It looks like it's pretty funny.

I think Matt Berry has a voice in it.

Other English comedians as well.

It seems kind of like a cozy, little weird, funny game.

And yeah, I just like the way that looks.

And

it's from the publishers of the Untitled Goose Game.

So that's kind of like a, I don't know what, I don't know what the thing is.

It might be puzzles or something, but it seems like it's pretty cool.

And then this other game's coming out on the almost exact opposite end of the spectrum, Star Wars Outlaws.

I think Star Wars Outlaws looks really good.

I can't wait.

I hope it's good.

Yeah.

All I've been hearing is, I've been hearing Uncharted comparisons, and that bodes well to me.

That seems like it might be good.

Here's the truth.

Yeah.

Acolyte pulled me back in.

I gotta watch the Acolyte.

I said, I talked to Big Game about being excited about it.

I watched one and was kind of like, eh, yeah, I gotta watch it.

The first couple of episodes,

not so much.

Okay.

But I stuck with it and was very, very heavily rewarded.

Okay.

So

I want to like it and I want to watch it.

This is like literally the first positive thing I've heard about Star Wars Acolyte.

So yeah, yeah.

Think about who you converse with.

Acolyte's fourth or fifth episode was

shockingly good.

I've been hearing that specifically.

And

it felt like there was a pacing choice made where it's like...

Here's the show you think you're watching, and then there's a turn and you're watching a different show.

And I appreciate that.

I wish it was longer.

Yeah.

Because it would have been wild to see a season before that turn happened.

Yeah.

But

I'm digging the acolyte.

Star Wars Outlaws is the Ubisoft game, which gives me a little pause because it's, you know, I'm just the Ubisoft open world for me.

I find it a little bit exhausting.

How it was from Massive Entertainment, which made the Avatar game, which was

pretty well received.

I mean, like, I know that I've heard that maybe just doesn't have a ton to it, but that could have been because of schedule or budget limitations or whatever.

And hopefully, with a little bit more

time and leeway with the Star Wars license,

we can really see what they can do.

Avatar game was beautiful and confusing because it was so beautiful.

I have it unopened.

I've been wanting to play it so bad.

This may be the time to do it.

The thing that excites me about Star Wars Outlaws is that I am curious because this is now the second major studio to be making a triple-A Star Wars game outside of

the Jedi series.

As far as I know, no Jedi in in this game.

At least the protagonist isn't a Jedi.

But as you know, with Star Wars, if there's a character in Star Wars in something, it's canon to the rest of Star Wars.

Yeah.

So

can I anticipate seeing my boy Turgle, the little frog guy, in this game too?

Or is he just in that one?

Interesting.

I wonder.

I wonder if that's a possibility.

Is he proprietary to the EA Star Wars game?

Yeah.

Or can he be in the other Star Wars games too?

Because he's in Star Wars.

He probably won't be because of the time this game takes place, which is in between Empire and Jedi.

Yes.

But

they can't own any.

Like, Vader has to be able to, say, appear in the Jedi series and also in Outlaws.

Yeah.

Because he's, it's Vader.

Right.

But if you create...

I just hope he shows up and he just fucking merks the main character and you're like, oh, the end.

Just at least leave Turgle alone.

Leave Turgle out of it.

I wonder what the licensing agreements actually say though, because like if a character you create, if they that is like a thing that

I would imagine first off that unless the unless Lucas film said, or I guess Disney said, we want to see Turgle in this game, that probably there wouldn't be much, you know, of a reason for the develop another developer to be like, let's poach a character from another developer's game.

They'd be like, we want to make our own Turgle, you know?

So I don't know.

But I also like don't know if

I just, I don't, don't I guess I don't know who owns turgle.

Okay, I don't know who owns turgle if he introduces Disney own Turgle Disney owns Turgle because I mean they're not gonna put Cal Kestis in this right because like he would be uh not the appropriate 60 years old or something But it's it's it's interesting to think about uh but I mean that's I know there are other games coming out in August.

It's two games for me.

That's that's a light month.

The other game that's coming out in August that I'm lightly excited about is called Gundam Breaker 4.

Oh, it's been six years since the last Gundam Breaker game, and I was not into Gundam six years ago.

So

this is a game where you construct Gundam.

So it's like a Gundpla game.

You're building the model kits, and then they are transmuted into actual mobile suits to fight.

So you can like build and kit bash, like, oh, I want the head from the Gundam 78, but I want the legs from Gundam Ariel.

And you.

People do that?

Yeah, people do that.

Because

the systems all work together.

Matt, you seem scandalized.

I just don't think you should be able to do that.

They're putting the fucking head of Statue of David on the fucking Statue of Liberty or something.

What the hell are you doing?

It needs to be very small.

Do you know,

have you messed around with any Gundam games?

Do you know the reputation of Gundam games as a franchise?

A lot of anime adaptations are not considered to be good games.

So I have messed around with some Gundam games.

I have not yet found a Gundam game that I love.

Because what I want is

I want

Armored Corps, but Gundam.

I want the Gundam universe and the Universal Century,

but it is treated with the same sort of military seriousness that the series themselves treat Gundam.

And it often will be like

more like Dynasty Warriors, is what I've played, where it's like slashing through a bunch of dudes.

Or I played a little bit of that first-person or third-person shooting game that was like

Gundam online game.

And that was okay.

But

none of them have been the experience that I'm craving.

But I'm hoping that this one is.

I'm willing to give it a shot.

I certainly

like one of the games I've purchased tangibly for Switch is a Gundam

game that mashes together all of the characters from all of the different Gundam properties.

People do that?

They do that.

But yeah,

August is

a light month in terms of titles, but probably a heavy month in terms of hours.

Yes, yes.

Moving on to September, I don't know if we're going to keep at this pace, but.

No,

I just say while you're talking about September, I do have one here.

Okay, please.

Which is,

you know, one of the best games on the PlayStation 5, at least one of my favorite games on the PlayStation 5,

was a launch title five years ago, if you can imagine that, four or five years ago.

That's how long ago the fucking

PlayStation 5 came in.

It kind of...

Seems impossible.

It seems impossible, but 2020 was that long ago, that far in the past.

Anyway, in 2020, when it launched, one of the launch titles was in fact a pack-in game, Astro's Playroom.

Here we go.

Incredible platformer, just one of the best 3D platformers I've ever played.

The issue is Astro's Playroom is a little bit slight.

And I don't, hey, that's fine with me.

I got not like I have this abundance of time to play every game.

If I got something I can get through in under five hours, I'm into that.

But it's also so good and so playable and such a pleasant aesthetic that I would love a full-length game version of that.

And you know what?

We're going to get exactly that.

We are going to have Astro Bot coming out in September.

And I just think this is, again, from Team Asobe, same developer.

I just love this character, and I love the way these games play.

I like the way they make use of the dual sense.

I will also say, from the standpoint of someone who has been very excited to see all of these PlayStation games ported to the PC, where I do most of my gaming, the prospect of this being on PC seems like it would be, it's a really cool possibility, but I'll probably play it on PlayStation 5 when it comes out, especially if it does retain some of the dual sense specific gameplay that Astro's Playroom had.

But I just, I am just, this game just looks like pure fun to me.

And

yeah, I mean, I just, I love that, I love this, this franchise.

I have such a hunger for this type of game, like a mascot platformer that is just

going

from level to level.

Yes.

And the Sackboy platformer game, which I don't think either of you guys played.

Too floaty.

Oh, I loved it.

I thought it was so great.

I did hate hearing Uptown Funk every level.

That was like an insane part of that game to me.

But I like Sack.

I had not played a little big planet game before.

I know those games are very different, but I liked the overall.

I just liked that.

That was like a return to basics with like,

as far as like mascot platformers go.

This looks like it's going to be more of that, but with like fun, sort of like meta PlayStation stuff.

Yes.

Which I think is really, really cool.

And I did love that,

the pack-in for the PS5.

So I'm very, very excited about that and optimistic that it's going to be very good.

The other thing is because, and we saw this with Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, which is still one of the best looking games I've ever played.

And it's like,

you know, because the character designs, I don't mean simple as a pejorative, but you're not trying to create like a photorealistic human being, you know, because it's a little bit more stylized.

It feels like a lot more resources can go into having having these vibrant environments and,

you know,

a screen filled with a bunch of dazzling effects.

Yeah.

You don't need to just put everything in into detail of character models, although those character models are very detailed.

And certainly with the character design, is again relatively simple, not meant as a pejorative as Astrobots.

The same sort of thing.

You have like a really lush environment that really takes advantage of the hardware and also just hopefully plays really fast and fluidly.

I'm also looking forward to Astrobot.

Astrobot.

I'm not hugely hungry for a

mascot platformer, but I am really hungry for control.

And I don't, I've been so frustrated with the sort of

modern 2024 feeling in a game where there's like a slipperiness to like, they've added way too much, too many frames of animation to a character turning around.

so like you go to turn around and it feels like there's a a huge amount of inertia and like pull and then they like kind of stumble step and then they're going in the other direction and what i like about uh astro's playroom is that it just felt good yeah yes and so that's the reason i'm looking forward to astro bot not because i particularly care about the character design, not because I'm particularly interested in the universe, but other than Fortnite, I'm waiting, there hasn't been like a game that's just good feeling to play.

Well, I think that's another thing where when you're trying to represent reality and you're trying to represent like human locomotion,

there's so much, you know, anticipation to a lot of movements.

There's, there's so much, you know, like ancillary motion that you have to create, recreate that makes it feel less precise

when lined up with a button press.

You know,

if

someone tells me to jump, I first off ask how high.

But then the other thing I do is that you squat down because that's how you jump, right?

Like you don't like go straight from, you don't immediately go up above the earth.

It takes a moment to go down.

But like if you animate that, it feels sluggish.

So

if it's a design like Celeste, you can get away with like, hey, we're just not going to have any anticipation here.

We're just going to take off immediately.

But it's harder to do that when something looks like a human being because it starts to feel uncanny valley-y if it doesn't move like a human being.

Agreed.

Yeah, it's tough.

It's tricky, but it's a tricky balance.

I mean, I don't envy these developers having to solve these problems.

I'm jealous of them, kind of.

Yeah, I mean, I'm also jealous of them getting cool games people like.

If you have a hunger for control, I got a great game to recommend.

Don't you say it.

Don't you say it.

Alan Wake 2.

October is next on our list.

Wise.

Nick is crying.

Nick is listening.

Because I knew the direction you were going.

I knew what you were going to do.

I didn't know exactly what you were going to do.

It was just like a little bit of a swerve.

I thought you were just going to say control instead of citing another game for the game.

That's what he was going to say.

Yeah, then I got in trouble.

October is the next month on the calendar, and there's a game that's going to be high-profile release that I am really not excited about.

And I had a thought, which is, I wish you could still rent video games because I don't want to pass judgment on Silent Hill 2 without playing it, but I definitely don't want to purchase it.

No.

And while there are demos for some games, it's not universal.

And it used to be that you would go to a video store and you'd rent a game and then you'd be like, holy shit, I love this.

And then you would buy it which is a great way for a game company to get five extra dollars out of you yeah over the over the retail price of a game and I wish you could still do it I'm sure there'd be people who though who would be smashing they'd be smashing their way through that title so fast that they'd be able to rent it three times

and then not spend all $60 on the game.

I know that like

Gamefly is like still a thing, but I've never known somebody

that I know that plays video games to do it.

I had Gamefly, but I don't think since like the in the 2010s.

I think the last time I had it was in the odds.

It's been forever since I had that.

That might be a fun experiment for next year.

Just restart GameStop.

Just Gamefly and not purchase any games and see how far it can get you.

I think the equivalent now, unfortunately, is you buy something in a digital store and then you just play it for a couple hours and then get a refund.

But I mean, that's just like, you have to hope that it has a good refund policy, but it's just like, that's, that's a pain in the ass.

It's another thing that just like everything's gotten fucking worse and more annoying.

That just like, there's not an easy way.

You can't reliably count on that demo existing.

You can't rent something to try it out.

You just have, because we're married to this digital, you know, ecosystem, there's just nothing you can do about it.

Mike kind of sucks.

Brother and I rented the Futurama video game eight times because we

should have just bought it.

We were committed to finishing it.

And the thing about it was, too, we knew it was bad, but we were like, we love Futurama.

we have to we have to see this thing through and we're getting so frustrated and one time we rented it we were stuck on the same spot the whole time we had it and we were getting so mad and finally uh we did beat it and we were both so so happy that it was over my friend was

uh

when I was in middle school that at Final Fantasy 3 slash Final 6, Final Fantasy 6, Japan was out for Super Nintendo because I'm very old.

He was renting that game.

And because it was a cartridge, your save was on that game.

So, and it's also a JR, a big-ass JRPG.

So, like, you know, you invest a certain amount of time for it, and it's like, even if he was going to buy it at a certain point, he wants that specific cartridge, which you can't reliably get.

You can't just go to Blockbuster and be like, hey, I want to buy this specific game.

They're not going to sell it to you.

So, he just kept renting the same car, the same cartridge, and accumulating

late fees to reach the point where he spent like $90 on a $60 game, but it was just all sunk cost fallacy.

Yeah.

the

other thing that's coming out in October is Sonic X Shadow Generations.

I don't know why.

I am kind of excited about that.

But maybe it's because it's appealing to the 2003 me who like,

you know, was interested in Prince of Persia, Warrior Within.

You know, it's like sort of like playing.

This one's for the little emo kids.

This is a Sonic for the Emo generation.

is this a is this an unspoken x is that one of those like a spy family or is this sonic x like the sonic x anime oh i'm pretty sure it's silent it's silent i think it's i think it's uh godzilla kong got it got it it's one of those yeah hunter hunter i mean yeah you know whatever maybe it could be all right i just it's it's it's tough it's so tough with sonic games It's just, they're so, like, it's such a cool franchise and the games are so hit and miss.

The Sonic that I've liked the second most after Sonic 2 was the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog.

A fun game.

It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, the Silent Hill 2 remake and that game were both kind of wait and see for me.

I mean, like, there's Romancing Saga 2, but I just want to

play another Romancing Saga.

I'm just not going to have time for this.

But the one I am going to shout out is Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred.

The Diablo expansion packs,

you know, have always been good, and they've always added a ton of new content, content and they've always rebalanced the game in a way that makes it more engaging and playable.

I've heard good things about the, you know, the recent Diablo 4 update and

the

they're adding a new class, which they do with,

you know, that they've always done with these.

They've always done with these expansions, with these substantial expansions.

And so that's a reason for me to have optimism in that, like, this being a thing that brings me back in a little bit.

Because that's been the thing about Diablo 4.

As much as I loved just a very fun single-player campaign, playing it through once, it was not the sort of thing that kept me coming back the way that Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 did for repeated playthroughs.

But

with Diablo, it's always like they kind of seem to iterate on it and figure it out and iron out the kinks and, you know, publicly kind of playtest it over a period of time and then figure out they drop something, they drop some new system, they add

a new thing like rune words or just a new character class that completely rebalances everything and that

breathes some new life into it.

So I'm optimistic that's what's going to happen with

Vessel of Hatred.

I also, I forgot, I'll look up what the name of the class is.

I forgot what it is, but it's like kind of like a Beastmaster sort of class.

It's like a very distinct thing beyond what they've done in the past.

So it's like, oh, I like that they're trying something new instead of just bringing back another iteration of like a paladin or whatever, you know.

I'm going to have to get back in there for that.

And unfortunately, I must say,

I am excited for Call of Duty Black Ops 6.

And I have never been excited for one of those games, but I feel like I am going to play that one for some reason.

Spiritborn is the name of the character.

Spiritborn, Apex Preditor of the Jungle.

So, sorry, go ahead.

Why?

Is it because it's the 9-11 one?

I think it's because it's finally now based in a time that I've lived in.

I know nothing about it other than the rumor that 9-11 was a playable level.

I think I know for sure Bill Clinton is in it, and I think Saddam Hussein might be in it as well.

Oh, so that would mean that the end of the game would be 9-11.

Yeah, that's the

post-credits.

Right.

I probably, I don't know if I'll actually play it.

If it's off on Game Pass day one, maybe I will.

I will watch any memes that come about from the cutscenes.

That's what I'll be sure.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll make sure that if I do play it, I send you some homemade ones

um november the thing that i'm looking forward well there's actually a couple big ones in here actually mario and luigi brothership

i don't know i don't know about these mario and luigi games but the word brothership is funny

um i'll say this i you know i played some of the mario and luigis back in the day uh if you if the paper marios aren't clicking for you i don't know if the mario and luigi

sort of thing it's got a little bit of a different tone and a little bit of a different gameplay but it is fundamentally a Mario RPG.

Well, then

I honestly probably won't jump straight into that, or I probably won't, I'll probably skip that one.

But Dragon Quest III HD 2D is

maybe the most excited I am for a game this year.

Yes.

Yes.

I'm so excited about that.

And it's going to come out when we're like at our saddest.

Yeah.

It's going to rescue us.

It's going to save us in the same way that Animal Crossing New Horizons saved us.

And we're going to be so happy to just disappear

into Dragon Quest.

Yeah, I'm excited about that.

I'm sadly dropping off my RFK Jr.

for president shirt at Goodwill.

Oh well.

Maybe next time.

Trying, you go to schedule your appointment to get your brain worm removed.

He ate a dog.

It's so insane.

Well, I'm not going to get into it.

It's so funny that he's the third funniest one.

one.

And then also, Assassin's Creed Shadows looks pretty cool.

Yeah.

What better time to play a game that has been lambasted as woke politics?

Yeah, yeah.

Than to sit in on November's release of Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Who do you think you're going to play as?

Samurai or Ninja?

I really feel like I've gotten my fair share of the samurai playthrough with Ghost of Tsushima, and I know that it'll be different.

I'm kind of more interested in the stealth, you know, shinobi style of gameplay, because I miss the Ten Chus.

I miss the, you know, those types of games.

I'm going to get that Samurai and Axe, and I'm going to just

play my way to that.

A couple more I'll shout out just because I don't think this will actually come out in 2024.

But, you know, Wolf Among Us 2 is a

first Wolf Among Us.

And if that one's anything like the first game, I mean, it'll be a game I adore whenever it ultimately launches.

Another game is that this is one of those ones where I've had the original on my

wish list and now the sequel's coming out.

Enough time has passed so that one's just like, you know, lingered in my backlog.

But Frostpunk 2,

just sort of like a strategy game about surviving in an apocalyptic frozen world besieged by the undead.

That, like,

it just looks like extremely my shit.

I just never got around to playing the first one.

But maybe I'll play the sequel, or maybe that will give me a reason to play the first one.

But the other one I wanted to shout out, just because it's an interesting game to exist, and we rarely talk about sports games on here, and I'm a bit of, I'm, you know, the resident sporto here.

EA Sports College Football 25 is coming out this month.

In fact, I think it might be out out by the time this episode releases as well.

This is a franchise that has been on ice for over a decade.

What happened with the college football franchise is there was a lawsuit against the NCAA that ultimately

went all the way to the Supreme Court.

And this was, again, was something that was based off of athlete licenses because NCAA athletes for the longest time were unpaid.

While

the organization and all the schools made billions of dollars of revenue off of their labor.

They were also monetizing it

from the standpoint of licensing their likenesses for things like video games.

So all of these athletes were being digitally recreated in video games.

Sometimes there was some plausible deniability where they would be given different names or being given numbers

instead of their names so that you couldn't actually say one-to-one, this is who this guy is.

But if you check their stats and their character models, they were clearly meant to be an analog of a specific player.

And so that ended up being decided ultimately in the player's favor.

That has completely changed the economics of college athletics these days, where now players who are actively in school are making...

thankfully, like a substantial amount of money, oftentimes a very good living,

off of being able to play these sports while still in school.

And so because this has been resolved, this is now a thing because they figured out the financial side of it.

Now they can make these video games again.

This is the return of a beloved franchise.

A lot of people liked it a lot better than the Madden Madden games.

And

I think it's just, it's just great.

I think it's just great to have it back.

And I'll be curious to see how it's received.

You know, there was a time where

I liked playing like football video games.

Football video games can be very fun.

They're really fun.

Yeah, they are fun, yeah.

The problem is Madden has such a stranglehold on the industry because they own the NFL license and there hasn't really been a lot of innovation, unfortunately.

So I really like this.

These games have gotten really stagnant and buggy.

I liked NFL 2K

05 was the one that I had.

And I really, really loved it.

I could be interested in playing the college football game.

Why not?

That'd be fun if that was a thing that you and I both got super into.

So into it.

Don't know, couldn't tell you right now if there was a gun to my head, the name of a college football team.

Not your damn

click.

I mean,

not that much coming out.

I'm sure there's other ones.

It might be a surprise.

Who knows?

But some interesting games coming out for the rest of the year, I think.

And I think some really cool stuff to look forward to.

Yeah, I can't wait to not play most of the games I mentioned.

Yeah, this is the thing.

Which ones will I play?

Oh, I didn't even mention the Zelda game.

Yeah.

Echoes of Wisdom.

I'm for sure going to play Echoes of Wisdom.

You might skip it

too woke for you.

Yeah.

There's like an Epic Mickey remake, too, right?

Yeah, that was always a game that I was interested in and never played.

I wonder if it's, yeah, I mean, it's always a really cool-looking game.

So Mickey's back.

Mickey might be back.

Mickey's back.

And of course, they keep saying that the Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater is coming out this year, but there's simply no way.

I don't think it's coming out this year.

It's July.

We'll see, but my thought is

we're already halfway through the year.

If a release date has not been announced, that game's not coming out this year.

but we'll see.

Oh, hey, it's time for the question block.

All right.

These are all sourced from our Discord.

Discord.gg slash get played.

Get in there.

Here we go.

This first one's from Uber Horse753.

Fuck yeah, what a name.

Uber horse.

Uber horse.

Can you get an equestrian uber service?

Nick.

You're gonna have to get a horse pick you up?

Fuck, dude.

That'd be pretty cool.

Can you find that?

That'd be really cool.

Has anybody ridden a horse in the last like five years?

I have not.

No.

I rode one within that amount of time, and I felt like I was who I was always supposed to be.

Wow.

I loved being on a horse.

It was awesome.

They're fun but terrifying.

They're very, very scary.

They're too big.

Yeah.

They're way too big.

They're too big.

I had to work with a horse once.

Like, I had to act with a horse.

I don't really act much to begin with, but it was like a sort of thing.

right.

Yeah.

It was a real horse.

First of all, these things are big as shit.

Yeah, they're shit.

And the bit, I had to like grab the, grab the horse's mouth and like pull its face towards me.

And I was like, I was certain I would be killed.

It was so fucking terrifying.

We, we shot a sketch with a horse, a live horse, and the bit hinged on the horse being inside of a house.

And so we led this horse into

a Los Angeles home and had it in the living room.

And nothing makes a horse look even larger than seeing it in the context of human-sized objects.

Frightening.

It's like Gandalf in the Shire.

If a horse got into your house, you would be so fucked up.

It would just be a nightmare.

Yeah.

I gotta move.

Ranch, you ever ridden a horse?

Not that I can remember.

With a name like Ranch.

I think you remember that.

Yeah.

Two very good points.

I don't think I've ridden a horse before.

I will say I did it when I was in Hawaii a couple of years ago and I really loved it.

We went down YPO Valley and like they took us on a tour of it was it was it was like one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life.

It was unbelievable.

They did pull me aside and they're like, okay, so your horse is like more afraid than all the other horses.

And I was like, why would you tell me that and why am I doing this one?

I said I've never done this before.

And the guy that led us was like the craziest man I've ever met.

And

I loved him and I think about him constantly because he was just a real just like a lunatic, this guy, but he was really great.

Anyway, Uber Horse writes, you get to make a video game about a snack slash drink a la Pepsi Man and the Chex game.

Which do you choose and what type of game is it?

This is a great question.

I think, you know, a ChexQuest comes to mind.

And we were talking mascot platformers earlier.

And I think you wanted that the one thing that I always like in in a mascot platformer is characters that control differently, like that have their own mechanics, like the, you know, Donkey Kong Country or the Banjo-Kazooies of the world.

I think if you centered something around Snap, Crackle, and Pop, some sort of Rice Krispies treat adventure or Rice Krispies adventure, that could be a lot of fun.

You could live in the world of breakfast.

They could each have their own unique attributes.

And I think there's just a lot of, you know, a lot of fun obstacles you could come up with involving giant bowls and rivers of milk.

I got

really just those two things, I guess.

Guy's always talking about rivers of milk.

He loves that as a phrase and like an idea.

We've had to edit it out of so many episodes.

He's always talking.

He's always trying to get rivers of milk in there.

I just think a flowing river of milk would be really

cool to see and swim through.

I have an alt for your idea.

Yeah.

But it's a broader idea.

And I do think that

we need to mail this episode to ourselves

because I think this is a good idea to serial racer serial mascot racer that's good that's fun I think you could also make that into a party fighting game that's the other way you go like a platform fighter that's a whole that's and also I do I have been thinking about this and I think maybe you've said something similar to this too maybe you put this idea in my head why are the M ⁇ Ms only in the commercials Why aren't we doing more with the M ⁇ Ms?

I'm doing more with the M ⁇ Ms.

I want to expand the the purview of this game that we're pitching.

Okay.

And I want it to be a party fighting game.

Yeah.

But I don't want it to be limited to serial mascots.

I want it to be food mascots.

Okay.

So you can have

Captain Crunch versus Ronald McDonald versus like a, but all of them.

Chester Cheetah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everybody.

The Pringles guy.

Yeah.

All of them.

The Wolf from Cookies Crisp.

Yeah.

Cookies.

Cookies?

Cookies?

The wolf from Cookies Crisp.

Chocolate.

Yeah, they're all there.

But it also, the M ⁇ Ms are there.

Because I do think I, like, it's, there should be an M ⁇ Ms movie.

There should be an M ⁇ M's video game, a theme park.

They got to be all over the place.

Have we seen in a commercial...

The M ⁇ Ms are people-sized, right?

I think.

I mean, they're at least half Santa's.

They're not.

Okay.

So, so they are like.

And Santa's like probably like 5'10.

So then they're like Pokemon-sized.

Yeah,

just about depending on the Pokemon.

I just didn't know if it was canonical that they were M ⁇ M size or if they're like larger.

They're freaks.

Yeah, they're closer to people's size.

They're like Sonic size.

Oh, okay, great.

There's a commercial night where one of them just has a job.

I was like, huh?

What is this world?

See, I'd like to see more of that.

What's going on?

The polar bears from Coca-Cola.

I saw an ad of one, a still ad, a photo of the purple M ⁇ M grilling a hot dog.

And I was like, this M ⁇ M's going to eat the fucking hot dog?

Also, how does it stand so close to the grill?

Without melting.

Well, that shell.

It only melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

But the grill is hotter than my mouth.

Is it true?

We've maybe talked about this, but the packaging for the caramel M ⁇ Ms is downright disturbing when you think of the world that's been created because it's two M ⁇ Ms, two like sentient-limbed M ⁇ Ms, and they are pulling apart apart a third M ⁇ M to reveal its caramel interior.

Like their fucking home.

They just dismembered

someone who betrayed the tribe or whatever.

It was fucking horrifying.

Or they're kind of saying, like, he's not a real one.

He's got caramel inside.

Yeah, yeah.

Trix Rabbit stealth game.

This next one is from

Bronny Paper Towel Mascot Assist Trophy.

I don't know.

You can figure it out.

Here's the thing.

All the best mascots are serial ones because every serial has one.

So there's just so many serial ones.

Yeah, you got to have one because you're appealing it to kids.

Maybe a Paul Newman video game.

I'd love to have Paul Newman in there.

Why not?

He's for sure in there.

He's the final boss.

Yeah.

There's definitely also a generation that's like, that guy's an actor?

Like, it's like, it's like finding out that Quaker Oats guy was like in silent films or something.

He's like, what?

He was your grandma's favorite actor.

This next one is from Forest L and Forrest L, right?

Metroid

or Vania.

What?

Is the question?

Which is Metroid Vania.

Yeah, you're dude.

Castlevania or the Metroid franchise?

Is that the question?

I'm guessing that's sort of what the question is.

Castlevania.

Castlevania, interesting.

I've go Metroid because I think they're still making good Metroids.

I feel like it's been just such a long time since there's been a good proper Castlevania.

I've never played a Castlevania game with any real seriousness.

I've like maybe dabbled with level one or whatever or something.

I think Metroid is like a top five

franchise the other thing is that that there isn't like a great 3d castlevania but there are some really really good 3d metroids but i it's yeah that's tough i don't want to get rid of of either i don't want to do it either with most of these joys one one's got it one one's got to go

i guess they don't have to go you just you're just stating a preference yeah uh that's also like a tough portmanteau for castlevania because you only get half of the the castlevania but you get all of the metroid yeah i yeah well yeah that is that is, it'd be fair if it was like Metvania.

Well, not really, because Vania is a lot of the word.

The whole thing is tough, but we hate to see it.

Uh, this next one's from Level 2 Wizard.

Love that.

Great name.

What's your favorite F-tier character in any media?

Like, who is the scrappy you enjoy?

Dan in Street Fighter,

F-tier character.

Yeah.

One of the best.

I have a, I,

I think we're going to.

I think I'm going to say this.

Yeah.

And if you're going to be mad about it, I think it's fine.

Luigi?

That's insane.

I am mad about it.

F-tier?

I agree with you, Matt.

I think Luigi

don't like him.

I like Luigi, but there's.

He's not Mario.

I guess he has, he's a star.

He's a star of his own games.

Dan isn't the star of a spin-off game.

It's unfair.

But Dan doesn't have his own game.

I agree.

I'd say then in the Mario world,

F tier, I like,

what's the fucking guy?

Birdo.

Birdo.

Birdo's pretty good.

If we're going there, like,

I think of the Koopa Lings, I really like Morton Koopa Jr.

Morton Koopa Jr.

is really good.

He's based off of a talk show host that no one remembers.

That people don't even know who Morton Downey Jr.

is.

Do you mean Robert Downey Jr.?

Like, no, there was a big guy.

There was a dude in the

80s who had an obnoxious talk show where he smoked all the time.

I don't remember this.

And

he wasn't even like a top-tier, like, he was like an F-tier talk show host.

And then they made a parody of him in a Mario game, and he's continued to be canon for like 30 years.

That's pretty good.

Since it's been expanded to all media, I wonder if this is one you'll even know, Matt.

But there's a Simpsons character I think of a lot who's in one character, Big, who's in one episode.

Yeah.

Big Shirtless Ron.

Do you remember big shirtless Ron?

It is not a shock to me that this one is not far from your mind.

It's just a hay seat.

It wasn't a website.

It's in his safe photos.

As my lock screen,

it's just a big, it's a shirtless guy standing in front of a haysack with like a like, you know, like a garden hoe over his shoulder.

And the joke is that his name is Big Shirtless Ron.

They show up and they point that and they look at him.

I like it.

F tier in all media.

Yeah.

You know what?

I wonder if this is still considered F-tier, but I always liked Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2.

And he was a character that at the time that game came out, everyone's like, fuck this guy.

This sucks.

This game is a betrayal.

We hate him.

He's a whiny little bitch.

But I always found like he was an interesting character.

I like him.

Rock Lee from Naruto arguably is an F tier character, but he is also an A tier character.

So I'd throw Rock Lee in there.

He's the only ninja in the Naruto world that can't use ninjutsu.

But he's fucking amazing.

How about the psychiatrist from Terminator, the Terminator franchise?

Just a weird creep who doesn't believe Linda Hamilton.

Gets his ass kicked.

He's got the like Nyquil.

Not NyQuil.

Draino.

The Draino, yeah.

The Draino needle syringe.

David S.

Pumpkins is my answer.

Any questions?

See, I said it as a joke, joke, but then you said it, and now I'm laughing.

That's the thing.

I was like, it's pretty good.

I just watched.

I was just talking about David S.

Pumpkins, and we just watched it a while back.

It was like, we're laughing.

I was like, this is funny.

It's funny.

It's good.

The thing about it that sucks is that annoying people really love it.

Exactly.

But it is really good.

Yeah.

Well, that's the problem with all like super successful comedy.

Like the Borats and Austin Powers, the world.

And finally, this last one is from the odd tech, and they write, if you can only play one genre of games for the the rest of your lives, what would it be?

I'd probably pick arcade-style racers or Metroidvanias.

This came to me, and my answer might shock you.

I don't know if it'll shock you.

It shocked me because it was the first thing I thought of.

JRPGs.

Matt, I'm shocked.

Just knowing your gaming habits.

Yeah, I feel like.

But I guess you do like those big beef games.

I've become, especially in the last year and a half or so, I've become really, really into them.

And there's just so much, there's just so much variety.

They're long.

You could spend a lot of time with them.

The rest of your life would go by pretty quick, I think.

You know, my answer was the same, really.

Because if I could only play one kind of game for the rest of my life, I don't want it to be a battle royale game.

No, because I would love to like stories and games are so important to me,

but also Fortnite takes up so much of my time.

Yeah, that if I could only play one kind of game, it would force that game out of my ability to play.

Yeah, and so my chosen genre would be JRPGs.

This is tricky.

If I can't generalize it to RPG, and I feel like since you've both specifically gone to JRPG, that that would be a cheat to just say, like, I get all RPGs.

So I like of the RPGs, I would probably lean more towards the, you know, PC RPG Western style of RPG, where

you're more likely out of character creation.

There tends to be a lot more consequential choices.

It feels like there's a lot more replayability.

As much as I do enjoy JRPGs, I just feel like if I'm playing one thing for the rest of my life, just the endless replayability of

that style of RPG would really be something.

But there's also part of me that thinks about all the hours I've sunk into.

For instance, the Civilization franchise and just having strategy games.

That's another thing.

It can replay endlessly and just makes the hours melt away.

So that's another possibility.

But I think where I'm going to land is like a farming sim.

I honestly think, just like the idea of being able to, you know, if we're including things like an Animal Crossing, like a Stardew Valley, one of my favorite games ever, these are, again, games that I can play again and again.

I can play different ways.

There's a soothing aspect to them.

There's very often a social aspect to them, which is like huge.

A lot of times they have a story, which is great.

Sometimes it's a little threadbare, but it's enough to keep me going.

And it has a bunch of different different meditative aspects and calming aspects that I just like kind of

crave in a game.

But I would miss having, I would miss having some challenge and some action.

So that's tough.

Getting started.

Are you getting those caves?

That's a little action for you.

There's a little bit of action.

Yeah, there's some action there.

I don't know.

This is that's that's a tricky.

That's a tough one.

Limiting yourself to one genre.

Do you have to answer the question?

This question block.

Yeah, I think that's what I, I think that's where I land.

Farming sim.

Yeah, I think that's what it is.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is

not a choice I would make.

Well,

that's what makes us great.

We picked the right ones and Nick picked wrong.

If I knew that Battle Royale games were going to exist for the rest of my life and have a player base, I might pick Battle Royale games.

But I'd be worried that I'd be like, oh, I'm going to pick Fortnite, Final Fantasy First Soldier,

Apex,

like Overwatch, all that shit.

I guess Overwatch isn't a Battle Royale game, but like that, that I'd be worried that in like 10 years the genre would be dead and then I would have no games.

You'd be in a sort of time enough at last situation where the last player.

Yeah.

I feel like one thing that one thing that I like about Farming Sims is that we've seen this genre iterated upon and we've seen like things like Cult of the Lamb or, you know,

Dave the Diver even, which have added some like more

like roguelite elements to it that make it just kind of feel a little bit, you know,

more like extensive and remixed versus the ones that have, that kind of follow the same template.

So I feel like there's still like this, what the gen, what defines this genre is kind of widening a little bit.

And I think if I commit to that, it's going to go in some really interesting directions.

So Dave the Diver is a farming sim?

I think you can make the argument that it could be.

Yeah, absolutely.

You're farming the ocean for fish, aren't you?

But I guess

the questioner is probably the ultimate arbiter of what qualifies.

So I don't know.

Maybe they don't get Dave the diversity.

Questioners are not allowed to tell us if we answered their question correctly.

That is a rule.

Do we get mods?

Is that part of it?

Like game mods?

Yeah, can I download, like if I commit to the genre, but I can get mods?

Yeah, you can do exposed hog mods.

Yeah, do whatever you want.

Whatever's going to make you play the game.

All right, great, perfect.

You can see Pierre's hog in Stardew Valley.

That's it for the question block.

Thanks for writing in.

And I guess, Nick, that's this week's Get Played.

That is this week's Get Played, Matt.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen Ranch, yard underscore underscore sard.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, 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 our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated.

Matt, what are we doing this week?

Well, Nick, we're actually wrapping up Mobile Suit Gundam, the 8th MS Team.

We're watching the final two episodes of that series, and then we'll be moving on to something else.

And I got to tell you, I'm going to miss this show.

It's a very, very good show if you haven't been watching along with us.

I've really enjoyed this show.

I mean, people will hear what we say about it, but I was

pretty positive on the finale.

I

have not been fucking around for the last two years.

I guess what I've learned so far is that I should listen to Heather.

Gundam is good.

I'm wearing a Gundam shirt right now.

You have a Gundam bag?

I've got a Gundam bag.

I've got two Gundam bags.

I've got a Gundam bag inside of a Gundam bag right there.

Wow.

And I just, I love Gundam.

And if you listen to Get Anime, you'll understand why.

Patreon.com slash get played.

You can listen to that and our archive of Get Animate episodes.

There we go.

Hmm, who got played?

I'll tell you who's getting played.

The upcoming releases of calendar year 2024.

Hopefully, right?

If we can get them and play them, if we have time to play the games.

Yeah.

What was weird about that, Nick, was that you said it to an imaginary audience that wasn't mad enough.

You looked out

nobody

rather than sell that joke to us.

Well, that's because I didn't want to make eye contact with either of you.

Yeah, you were playing it to like the back of the room, but we're both sitting right next to you.

That was a hit gum podcast.