Neopets with Sierra Katow

This is a head gum podcast.

Audival's romance collection has something to satisfy every side of you.

When it comes to what kind of romance you're into, you don't have to choose just one.

Fancy a dalliance with a duke, or maybe a steamy billionaire.

You could find a book boyfriend in the city and another one tearing it up on the hockey field.

And if nothing on this earth satisfies, you can always find love in another realm.

Discover modern rom-coms from authors like Lily Chu and Allie Hazelwood, the latest romanticy series from Sarah J.

Maas and Rebecca Yaros, plus regency favorites like Bridgerton and Outlander.

And of course, all the really steamy stuff.

Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wondery.

That's audible.com slash wondery.

You buy a pair of socks, that's two socks.

You buy a pair of bombas socks, that's four socks.

Because one purchased is one donated.

Socks are the number one most requested clothing item in homeless shelters.

So So when you buy a pair of super comfortable Bombus socks, you're also donating a pair.

Bombus customers have powered over 150 million donations.

So Bombus would like to thank you 150 million times, but we only have like 30 seconds.

Go to bombus.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase.

That's bombbas.com and use code audio at checkout.

Welcome to Neopets.com.

I see that you're a new user.

When you've created your account, you'll get to choose the name of your first Neopet.

So please enter a name for your first Neopet.

Okay.

All right, Matt, here's what I'm thinking.

You know, we got this little

Chia here.

He kind of reminds me of my pet turtle.

Okay.

I think I'm going to name him Chip.

I'm sorry.

The name Chip is already taken.

Oh, God.

Oh, it has to be a unique name.

Oh, yeah.

So it's not just, you can't just...

It's not it's not like you can just put any name, I guess.

Yeah, I thought it was like Pokemon where you could just like name it whatever, but I guess it has to be unique on the server.

Okay.

Yeah.

If it let's if it's let's go still turtle like let's go with I don't know Raphael.

Raphael is already taken.

Yeah, I felt like Raphael was going to be taken.

It's probably would be a lot of people's first thought.

How about

my fifth grade teacher,

Mr.

Johansson?

Mr.

Johansson is already taken.

What about, I mean, I wonder if

he's playing.

You think he's playing?

He might be playing.

I know this is...

I feel like we just have to clear this as an option.

Because obviously it's a very popular name, and somebody that has this name is going to go ahead and pick it.

But maybe they're going to think, I'll get a little more creative than my own name.

What about Matt?

Let's try Matt.

matt the name matt is already taken

it was a low percentage play but it was worth trying yeah we knew it i got one just kind of like getting a little punny here uh instead of timothy chalamay how about uh timothy uh ski chalet let's see if that works timothy ski chalet is already taken

such a good pun explain the pun to me later i guess um how about how about this i mean let's just see if we can even put in a cuss yeah

doctor

all right let's try doctor shit.

I can want to get to doctor shit.

Doctor shit.

Doctor shit

is already taken.

Yeah, someone else is going to come up with that's too good.

That's too funny.

How about a doctor fuck?

Doctor fuck is already taken.

All right, that was probably big.

What about doctor ass?

Dr.

Ass is already taken.

Do we try doctor shit?

Doctor shit is already taken.

Fuck.

Fuck is already taken.

Even without a degree.

Yeah, even without a degree.

Yeah.

Ah, shoot.

How about here's here's here's what I'm gonna do.

I think if we just throw in a bunch of extra characters.

So I'm gonna do mr underscore pib underscore 07032249.

Mr.

Pib underscore

07024229 is already taken.

Aw, fuck.

Fuck.

I wasn't trying to trick the computer.

No, Joey.

We're not trying to trick the computer.

If any computers are listening, we are never trying to trick.

We only

deal with something unique.

It's really difficult.

Your account will expire in 35 seconds.

Wait, wait, no, we want to explain.

I want to play.

I want to play so bad.

Okay, can I just, I don't want to get too political, but let's go, Brandon.

Let's go, Brandon.

It's already taken.

Of course, it's going to be taken.

So somebody who thinks that is playing.

Someone's definitely, yeah, of course.

Yeah, of course.

How about Let's Go Brandon

420 let's go brandon 69 420 is already taken you have 20 seconds left to register your neopet what about

what about is already taken no um um um

yeah don't just type out your thoughts

sorry sorry um what about i'm scared that i'll never be the man that i'm destined to be i'm scared that i will never be the man that i was destined to be is already taken okay so at least it's not just me thinking about this yeah um

How about a doctor ass?

You already tried to input this name once before.

Dr.

Ass is still already taken.

I don't want to play.

I don't want to play anymore.

Congratulations.

I don't want to play anymore is the name of your Neopet.

Who's the Dr.

Ass now?

We visit the soup fairy and collect interest on our Neopoints as we discuss still active quarter century old web game Neopets 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, Tyler 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 I'm excited because I think today's episode falls kind of in the category of our old format.

Maybe a little bit.

Maybe a little bit.

Maybe a little bit.

I think some defenders would have

perhaps some things to say about that.

Some defenders of the Neopets franchise

tie you up like gulliver at the little pushin island no but i mean like worst and weirdest i think it falls into weird i think it's weird it is definitely an odd experience i will say certainly as someone who did not play this at the time and coming to it in 2024 i was definitely disoriented we'll get into it talk about those little

pushions for a second though what are we what you ever read that book fucking nasty it's nasty but they also like they made short work of governing they like they got they got his ass they tied him up but once they did what he was like he it was like nothing to him they ate him like piranhas

right i haven't read it no he just like but they they tie his ass up but but then he can like he's so big it's like it's like one of us being tied up with uh like a bunch of of fire ants tying us up with dental floss it's like we could just like i'll just stand up and i'll be fine

he'd be annoyed he'd be annoyed be like why'd you guys do that to me what did i do to you why i mean i would not move if fire ants tied me anywhere like i should have like fire ants like they're just like like like regular ants yeah

plain ants Yeah, I was just trying to get the scale right.

And even that's probably not quite right.

More like field mice.

Field mice.

Yeah.

Again, if field mice tied me up, I'd be like, I am not moving.

I'm terrified of what else these animals can be.

They'll do whatever you say, I guess.

You know, they can tie knots, little tiny baby knots.

Hop in my chef's hat.

Let's make some money.

Yeah, I will open up a restaurant.

I see the potential here.

We have a couple of things I want to mention before we get to our guests.

First off, Rochelle Chen, our normal producer, is out, but Emma Erdbrink is back, guest engineering today, our Dobo's MVP.

Hi, Emma.

Hello.

Thanks so much for being here.

Yeah,

yeah.

And also,

there's a couple of news events.

We're not the newsiest of video game podcasts, but in case people are coming to this wondering if we're going to talk about them, the answer is not really.

The Sony state of play happened since our last record, and now we'll be pretty dated by the time this episode is out.

Also, the Xbox game showcase will have just happened yesterday, Sunday, as of this episode's release on June 9th.

So we won't be talking about either of those things.

That's why Giant Pomcast exists.

I thought you were talking about the fact that the Google employee.

So it turns out that the leaks for the state of play have been because a Google employee has been watching the videos before they are public

and then released that content as like leaks.

And it's like a huge privacy issue.

Because like, if you're a major corporation, of course you trust Google to keep your YouTube links private.

Right.

But then those links were being watched by an employee and then leaked so some google employees just watching my unlisted reel

is it also is it even like a google employee because also they they imply an army of freelancers all of these companies who knows some of them who have the the the shittiest but most essential jobs like content moderation yeah i don't know

We don't know.

We're not a news podcast.

We're not a newspod.

Check out the BBC if you want that.

We're going to be talking about a game from 20 years ago.

25.

That's correct.

It is a full quarter century since Neopets first came on the scene.

We'll talk about it with our guest, a writer, actor, and comedian from Sex Lives of College Girls and the upcoming Golden Axe.

Her new comedy dynamics special is Funt.

Sirakato is here.

Hi, Sierra.

Hi.

Hey, thanks for having me on.

Such a treat.

I wanted to start with just generally talking about video games and like your fandom.

I think as adults,

some of us continue to game and make that into content.

Other of us, like, have other things going on.

But I didn't spill.

Fucking watch.

Wait, hold on.

Yeah, hold on.

I didn't spill.

Hold on.

I didn't spill.

He didn't.

He didn't.

You need to put your arms down.

Put the drinks on a different table.

Where can I put these drinks?

I have three.

You need a fucking Lillipush and you can tie your ass up.

Three different containers of liquid.

Yes, I have three drinks.

That's fine.

And I am prone to spilling.

That's fine.

I'm very good at running for paper to do that.

drinks.

But this asshole's going to kick that table.

I can see it.

He's more of an arms guy.

He's got dead legs when he's sitting down.

Those things aren't going anywhere.

You need a bandolier holster that just like you slam drinks into

and then you withdraw.

Like, because then they won't spill

unless you tilt yourself over.

Maybe I put you in a sleeping bag like Mike Berbigley and that one back.

A multi-pouch camel back.

So you've got like your, whatever that is, vodka.

Yeah.

and then like your

grapefruit juice.

Vodka meat.

My glass of room temp vodka filled at the bottom.

Your full glass of room temp vodka.

You should get like a beer hat with like two spindricks.

Say, no.

That would be really great for Nick.

That would be really good.

That'd be very useful.

Yeah.

Okay, back to my question before I was so rudely interrupted.

I know us hyenas on this couch over here.

No,

I'm curious, where are you as someone who plays video games?

Do you play video games still?

Is it something that was more in the rear view?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I definitely still play.

I think I'm a little like light version because I kind of, I know if I get in, oh, I get in.

When I was playing, you know, I already dropped some names.

When I was playing Tears of the Kingdom recently, it was sort of a thing where.

um you know we were also on strike so i could play and then i would go to the picket line and i would try to find people to talk about it like it's like you really like i couldn't i can't just you know set it down in moderation i think that's kind of the design.

Yeah.

So, yeah, but you know, I think I came into all of it.

I really wasn't gaming as a child.

Wasn't, didn't have any,

wasn't allowed any gaming things until my family got into DDR.

And then that convinced my parents to buy a PS2.

And then from there, we were able to like rent games and stuff.

So you had the PS2 floor pad.

Yes.

We've talked about that floor pad on the on the show before.

What was your solution for the slippage problem?

The way the thing would like fucking slide all over the floor.

I think at least a rug at some point, I'd imagine, but I think sometimes we're just slipping.

We were just slipping.

Part of the challenge

was to stay afloat.

It's funny when families get like their hooks into something like that because we had a Wii and I didn't I was not super into the Wii when we had it.

It was sort of like the family's Wii.

And because it was on like the family TV, I wasn't like...

I'm going to go play.

I didn't, I never bought a Wii game, but the person that was buying games for the Wii all the time was my mom and they were all like dance games.

Like they had all these Zumba games and stuff and like different like sort of like dance workout games.

And so I think if, if it logged the hours of who was using the Wii the most, it's for sure my mom by a country mile.

How did your family get into DDR?

Oh, yeah, I think our friend, our family friends who are, you know, my, my dad's dental school pals, who we see every year, got into it.

And like many things, I feel like they also introduced me to Wii Mario Galaxy.

And I was like thinking about that a lot after I got it.

So they definitely were more in the gaming business.

I remember they even would bring it, you know, bring like back when

I guess they played like Mr.

Beans or something or beans and something.

I don't even know what it was, but as a child, I was in awe of that.

And I think even, you know, sometimes we would go on vacation with these families and some of the like condos had a gaming console in it already.

So I think we played like Mortal Kombat and stuff.

So I associate those friends with gaming and then they got my parents into it.

So lots to thank them for wow

also dentist dad that feels like a lot of pressure oh you know luckily i don't think he was like super passionate about it so he kind of it was a job to him and so i don't think he was trying to like bring it home with him i hate what i've done

he knew what he was doing yeah all i see are tea yeah yeah he doesn't you come from a dentist family this is true yes oh yes yes i'm sure we've talked about this but yeah my mom is also a dental hygienist so they work together so yeah so that's kind of the origin story but also you know, I don't think she was, she was too passionate about either.

I actually think she loved seeing people and making them happy and smile.

But there has to be some sort of sim game, not unlike a power wash simulator for

dentistry, I would imagine.

I think that like there's a hospital simulator, I think has a dentist simulator, but like the hook of those games is that like you can't pick up anything.

Yeah.

So it'd be like trying to like do a surgery, but like, remember, we played it for for the show.

We did.

Well, yeah, we played, we played Surgeon Simulator, but that's kind of a meme game.

But we also,

there is the, um, there are some like the, it's not called Sim Hospital, but there, there's one of them that they have a university one, they have a hospital one.

I'll look it up that I both played, messed around with on Game Pass.

But those are more like strategic.

You're more like running the facility.

All right.

First, I'll do the first tooth.

Then I'll do the second tooth.

That's good strategy.

Yeah.

I did have a toothbrushing game for like our shitty computer.

Like, and it was like a, it was like a, it was like a five and a quarter inch floppy disc.

I remember loading in and like,

yeah.

Shit.

Use the keyboard to like move a toothbrush up and down.

Look, mom and dad, I'm having fun.

Our child.

Our child.

Anything to keep him away from you.

Keep him away.

Go play with your teeth, son.

The series I was was looking for is the two-point series, two-point hospital, and then two, I think it's called two-point university.

What the hell is it called?

Something like that.

But yeah,

that's a different approach versus actually like, you know, simulating the...

I don't know if there's, there's got to be something where you're simulating, getting in, getting all of that.

Honestly, the power wash simulation game should just have a mouth level.

That would be very satisfying, just cleaning some teeth.

Yeah.

Like a hippo or something like that.

Because I feel like a lot of

people a lot of my tick.

I've been talking about my TikTok algorithm a lot recently.

Yeah.

One of of the things that pops up in my algorithm a lot is dirty rugs.

Oh, yeah.

Like people like sort of power washing rugs.

Oh, it's yeah, I can't.

I'll send you one, Heather.

I think you'll love it.

I've seen those in the past, but I, it, my algorithm was like, she does not care for this.

Oh, I love it.

It's so satisfying to watch the dirty rug become clean rug.

Yeah.

It can be like five minutes.

Yeah, so these fuckers are long, yeah.

Yeah, and I feel like also living in California and watching that, it's a lot of stress because it's so much water.

You're like,

they could be anywhere.

They could be in a droughtless place.

Yeah.

You know, an interesting experiment on a podcast might be the first five videos on your TikTok algorithm.

Absolutely.

Like you're just like watching it and water buy a new phone and do it.

Wipe your history.

I was like getting,

so I don't have, I don't have a personal Instagram account, but I have one that, you know, my wife and I just look at for dogs.

And so it's just like, I, I have, I have one follower and it's her and I don't do anything else with it.

But like, I just hit dislike on every single ad that I get served.

So it reached a point where my ads have gotten so targeted where now it's like a guy advertising like himself

because I basically said any brand or anything like I'm not interested in.

Yeah.

So now it'll just be like, check me out.

I'm on, I'm online.

This guy seems awful.

Yeah, yeah.

What is he offering?

Yeah.

This is my new friend.

God, I'm glad he spent his hard-earned money on that pad.

That's going to work for someone.

I think it does.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I want to ask about, because you talked about DDR got you

into gaming.

Did you have any other games from when you were younger?

Was there ever a point where you had like a, you know, a Game Boy color or something?

You had a handheld?

I guess a lot of, you know, a lot of this is just the PC game stuff.

And then I, I mean, I played like Oregon Trail 2.

I remember Sims for sure.

That's where it was.

Sims won all the expansion packs type of gal.

And then, you know,

also, I think my dad loaded onto like an old PC like Galaga and like all, but you could like play, you know, pole position and dig dug.

So those kind of ingrained in my brain.

Plus got into Mavis Beacon teaches typing, which I think could count as a game.

I was a big Mavis Beacon guy.

It was not till later in life that I learned that Mavis Beacon does not exist.

Well, I also, yeah, I learned that within the last five years.

Blew my mind.

I was scandalized.

Yeah, yeah, really.

I feel like they lied to us.

They really did.

I was like looking up to this woman.

No, I had a close personal relationship with Mavis.

Kind of,

it's a real, like, they have a photograph of a human being on the box.

She's like, I'm Mavis Beacon.

And then like, she's like in the game.

Why couldn't they just call the game whatever her name is?

You know what I mean?

Like her name paying for her face.

Just name it after her.

Who gives a shit?

Right.

She could have been, yeah, had a legacy throughout.

I know.

I think they probably, they even, you know, whatever, I think I had like Mavis Beacon eight.

He just typing eight.

And then like, even for subsequent versions, they picked a new actress.

So I think it was a different face.

Yeah, that isn't her.

Yeah.

So I would have known if I had, you know, collected them all.

I kind of think that typing games

could have been more popular.

Because

we did Typing of the Dead on

here

many years ago.

Very good.

It was a good House of the Dead game that you type to shoot.

Oh, good.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Really, really fun.

But then you had that Pokemon one or that Pokemon typing game for the DS.

Yep.

And that wasn't too bad.

And the keyboard that came with it was pretty cool, actually.

And I don't know.

But I guess maybe do we want to type so much?

We kind of all do that for work all day, all the time.

Maybe not so fun anymore.

Yeah, I wonder.

I think it's also like it's a different skill.

Cause I think a lot of, I've heard that like kids will like write essays on their phone now.

Like they're not even like using a laptop anymore.

People are just so used to that sort of typing that it's like a different skill.

I would not be shocked if in the future it's just a thing that no one knows how to do.

Typing?

Yeah.

We've just like lost that skill.

We've forgotten it.

Because you think it's going to become all dictation?

I think it'd be replaced by different input methods.

Either we'll just be so used to doing it by thumb input, you know, or we'll, yeah, we'll have some other way.

Exactly.

Suck out thought.

Isn't there, not to skip ahead to Neopets, we will talk about it, but in some of the videos that I was watching about it, there was a typing component for Neopets, right?

Or is it, was there one of the minigames that was like a typing game?

Or maybe that was the thing that was happening later.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

I feel like because they had so many mini-games, you know, but I'm sure because, you know, there was like all the basically anything you could make with Adobe Flash into a game, and that was probably the right age.

So, but I can't think of what that might have been, actually.

You know what's interesting thinking about typing of the dead.

So Pokemon teaches typing or Pikachu teaches typing makes sense because like there has to be an introductory elementary course for teaching typing.

Like we learned how to type in fucking elementary school at my school, right?

Yeah.

Typing of the dead implies that you've made it all the way to like 15 years old without any knowledge of typing because it's an R-15 game.

Yes.

Like you can't just play that as a child.

Like you would never teach a child how to type using typing of the dead.

Yeah, right.

So that's like for a very specific subset of people for whom typing is difficult, but but they are also older.

You're looking at them.

Such an odd thing to have existed, but I think, but it's rad that's for that reason because it doesn't really make sense, you know, commercially.

I guess the novelty of it is why, and it, you know, has lasting notoriety, obviously.

But also, yeah, the Dreamcast port, you needed to buy the Dreamcast keyboard to play.

I don't even think there was a PC port initially.

I don't think so.

I think it was, it was, yeah, and I had it.

I had the Dreamcast keyboard and I had typing of the dead, and I loved it i was on the time of my life it's really fun it's fantastic it's rad fantastic and then i sold all of it to game stop for school for credit god wow yeah i don't know what'd you do with the ten dollar

pre-ordered like madden 21 or whatever

ED is more common than you think and simpler to treat than ever.

Through HIMS, you can connect online with a licensed provider to access personalized treatment options discreetly on your terms.

Through HIMS, you can access personalized prescription treatment options for ED like hard mints and SexRX Plus climax control if prescribed.

HIMS offers access to ED treatment options ranging from hard mints to trusted generics that cost 95% less than the brand names if prescribed.

Now that's quite a savings.

You shouldn't have to go out of your way to feel like yourself.

HIMS brings expert care straight to you with 100% online access to personalized treatments that put your goals first.

This isn't a one-size-fits-all care that forgets you in the waiting room.

It's your health and goals put first with real medical providers making sure you get what you need to get results.

Think of HIMS as your digital front door that gets you back to your old self with simple 100% online access to trusted treatments for ED and more all in one place.

To get simple access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss and more, visit him.com/slash get played.

That's him.com slash get played for your free online visit.

HIMS.com/slash get played.

Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan.

Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality.

Prescription required.

See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information.

Guys, fall is here.

The beers are colder.

The football's back.

And the fits are getting layered.

But if you're still rocking old beat-up boxers under those flannels and jeans, we gotta talk.

It's time to upgrade to Me Undies.

These things are ridiculously soft.

Like, don't want to take them off soft, if you catch my drift.

They're made with micromodal fabric that feels like a cloud, but they still breathe when things heat up.

And just in time for spooky season, Me Undies limited edition Halloween line features festive prints including glow-in-the-dark underwear so you can bring the spooky vibes underneath it all because that's what you want your underwear to be scary.

Me Undies has a cut for every butt with over 20 styles in 100 different colors and prints.

Me Undies signature super soft micromodal fabric is breathable, stretchy, and unbelievably cozy, perfect for crisp mornings, chilly nights, and everything in between.

Whether you're layering up for a hike or lounging in flannel all day, Mi Undies moves with you and keeps you comfy.

Want even more seasonal comfort?

Try the Breathe Line, designed for moisture-wicking and anti-odor tech to keep you fresh throughout fall workouts or just a long day of pumpkin picking.

I love it.

They use sustainably sourced materials and work with partners that care for their workers.

Not happy with your first pair of undies?

It's on me undies.

With more than 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five-star reviews, me undies are an essential summer must-have for every drawer.

I've talked about the undies, okay?

I've talked about me undies.

And folks,

the me stands stands for me, mine, me, I, Matt.

I got the undies.

And I loves them.

Cause guess what?

The old undies, I gone back to them one time in a moment of weakness, right?

Laundry Day, all my me undies are in the freaking

wash.

And I put on an old pair of undies, and I'm just like, ow, ow, ah, I can't breathe.

Ah!

It hurts.

Oh no, it stinks.

But with the me undies on, those are not my problem anymore.

Right now, as a listener to my show, you can get cozy and spooky for less with deals up to 50% off at meundies.com slash get played and enter promo code get played.

That's meundies.com slash get played, promo code get played for up to 50% off.

Meundies.

That's comfort made for all.

Okay,

I know we can't talk about the series Golden Axe, but I do want to talk about the game Golden Acts because if we can get into that, because this was a game I played

as a kid, I played this in the arcade.

Also, my friend had the port on his Sega Genesis.

Did you have much experience with Golden Axe going into this?

And

how have you reacted to the game in its previous and its more contemporary iterations?

Right.

Yeah.

I honestly, I don't think I did have much experience going in.

Maybe that's not what I said in the interview.

No.

But, you know, I played like the emulator before.

Right.

You know, and everything.

And then, yeah, I think just like uh

similar games to that, of course, but um yeah so much over the course of yeah, how many different versions of it.

But yeah, what we were saying.

Oh, I was just gonna say give give context for any of our listeners who maybe aren't familiar with the series, it was a it was a beat-em-up, but it was like set in like a fantasy world.

So you'd be one of three different fantasy classes and going around killing monsters.

It was a Sega beat-em-up.

Yes.

And

when the Genesis came out, like having the ability to play Golden Axe was one of the few highlights of the early library, the pre-sonic library of the sega genesis also it had one of the best sounds for like swinging an axe which was like

like that just like a like a low

like that was yeah that was quite accurate

did you do the voice move

but yeah that is that is true great sounds and the dying sound was always a lot of fun a lot of bouncing and like long dying modes

which makes it all the more satisfying can i ask a question that I think is going to be interesting for like maybe 12 listeners, which is like, so

I worked with Joe Chandler,

one of the,

I guess he's a co-creator on Gold

for

like 12 years.

Do you have any gossip

about Chandler?

Like,

does he like, I know he's tall

because I worked with him for 12 years all the time, but the only thing I know about him is that he's tall.

It does, yeah, that is a big fact, I feel.

Like, I think sometimes when somebody is that tall, then it's sort of like

that's where the brain blows.

Like, for the listener, I cast him as Slender Man, and he had to, he had to sort of bend down a little bit because he's too tall to be believable.

Yeah, I feel like he, I feel like he did maybe mention the Slender Man role.

I definitely said that was probably one of his, you know, magnum opus outside of Goldeneggs.

Um, But yes, I think

a San Diego man.

Okay, great.

Not to dox his family now.

He doesn't live there anymore.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think, I mean, you know, just great all-around guy.

What does he eat for lunch?

That's what I want to know.

Like, is he like a tuna fish sandwich type of guy?

Because he seems like a...

I, you know, I would say no, no, I don't think I was seeing a lot of tuna fish sandwiches, but that might have just not been on the Burbank menu.

You know, did he bring like au jus for sandwiches that weren't weren't necessary that's like right in like a very tall yeah like case so it could reach yeah all right that's enough inside that's enough inside jokes yeah maybe

look them up google them okay

um yeah i i i'll look into the ju i feel like that that feels right you know that really that quite heather that the interrogation i like that last bit made me anxious because i was like because sierra and i worked together and i was like i if someone asked me what does sierra eat for lunch I'd be like, man, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'll find

your lunch.

Why are you teaching me?

I hope nobody knows the answer.

I've worked with you, Nick, and I don't know what you eat for lunch.

I know you know what I eat for lunch.

Yeah.

But he didn't.

I've got a jug of Soylent.

Yeah.

That's true.

At the time, I was.

Yeah, that's all you need.

Soylent and a multivitamin.

Yeah, I actually, I didn't bother the get played group text with this today, but I sent Nick a picture of my lunch and it was two hot dogs.

It did look great.

Now, were those homemade dogs?

Those are homemade dogs.

Made them at home.

How did you cook them up?

Pan-fried them, baby.

Yeah, that's okay.

That's the way to go.

I suggest an air fryer hot dog.

I've heard this.

I don't have an air fryer.

It's fucking astonishing.

I have six more hot dogs at home.

I will be eating the rest of the house.

Here's what you do.

Here's what you do.

You cook the hot dog first.

Yeah.

And then

once the hot dog is like 95% cooked, then you stop the thing, turn it up to 400, put it in its bun and put it back in the air fryer.

Bun in.

And it's, it is the best hot dog you've ever had.

Former host or former guest of our podcast, Ashley Esquaheda,

told me about this hack.

And it's fucking life-changing.

I'm out to Ashley.

I'm going to do it because

I got to finish these hot dogs.

Yeah, they're good.

You always want two hot dogs and you're like, why do I have all these hot dogs?

I kind of just wanted two.

Do you mean like you want to, you buy a whole pack and you only wanted two of them?

Yeah, I kind of wish they would sell them as two.

You can solve

them by getting hot dogs from a butcher, which is how I get my hot dogs.

Whoa.

This is never think to go to a butcher for me either.

For like a loose dog?

Yeah, you can get like two hours.

I can't get a loose dog.

Give me two loose dogs.

Two loose dogs, please.

Put them in the bag.

Wow.

There's them in a jar on the counter.

I got my own buns.

Just deposit these.

I want to know when you've decided this was the wrong podcast.

It's kid.

It's kid.

We're talking about guessing lunch, and I just happened to send a picture of my lunch today.

Yeah, I'm just, yeah, I don't have an air fryer, but I am thinking now,

where else am I going to put my loose dogs?

You know, so I got to get one.

It's going to be expensive.

But

what you were saying about Tears of the Kingdom earlier and talking about it on the back of the WGA SAG After Picket Lines, which was last year, but feels like forever ago.

It's like, I'm remembering that now because you spend a lot of time just like walking and talking with people and you need something to talk about.

It's like, oh yeah, Tears of the Kingdom landed there.

And the other game, like Baldur's Gate 3 also landed during that stretch.

And so I feel like I had just long conversations with people I kind of knew about just like their own experiences playing these games.

Why is this guy talking to me?

I'm practically running and he's still

trying to make Shadowheart my wife.

Oh man.

Oh my God.

Oh man.

No, I'm sure you were the bell of ball.

I do think there was like, there was like a wave of relief, I think, when I brought it up with people where it was like, okay, good.

We can't, we do have something to talk about, you know, because there was a lot of like small talk where you're like, oh, so, you know, what, you know, if especially it's somebody you don't really know that well.

So I think it was, it was like, oh, good, okay.

How many temples?

What temple are you on?

You know, and then even somebody who had like a Korok leaf like sign that was really well done.

And that just, you know, I felt like

going up to her and, you know, like when you go up and say, like, I love your work, you know, I just think it was, it was a bonding moment.

So I feel like another game that was like sort of like a totemic game for people who are lapsed gamers and also came during a time where we had a lot of time was animal crossing new horizon

did you do did you mess around with that no i actually didn't my sister got into it pretty heavily and then she ended up getting me a switch specifically to play with her and then i ended up only playing other things so i'm sorry melissa but but yes she was really into that and i i'm enticed but again i was a little scared It was, yeah, I mean, the day that it dropped, I played it for 11 hours.

Oh, good, good, yeah, yeah.

And it was like week, it was like the second week of the the pandemic.

I mean, that's great, though, because then it became social, right?

Like,

yeah, like you guys were playing, or like, I think I saw that on Twitter.

I was like, oh, cute.

They're like meeting up, but not in real life.

I did stumble across a screenshot of Weiger on my island, and I dug a hole next to him and I typed in, get in.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Good times.

Yeah, really good.

Wouldn't let me get in.

Okay.

the final question I have for you, Sierra, is also for everybody.

The question is, what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask the question of the week.

What are you playing?

So, Sierra, when you got here,

the gate was closed, and I think we are sort of like...

I have a key card.

You have a key card now.

We gave you a heads up that a guest would be coming in for this part of the show.

I have a key card.

You don't have a key card?

No, I have a key card.

It seems irresponsible that you have a key card.

Why?

I'm an employee.

No, I guess, I mean, it just seems like, you know.

Imagine the mixed messages of being like, hey, show up for your segment, but also like not giving me a way into the building.

I know.

I just think that...

I'd have to dig a tunnel.

You can still show up and be here on time, but you should be escorted in and out.

I don't think you should be able to come in freely.

I agree.

Well, because of what I did to the refrigerator?

We weren't going to get into that on the pod, but that was going to be discussion for later.

But yeah, it's kind of.

Is that your broccoli in there, by the way?

Yeah.

Okay.

Want to cover that up?

No.

Why?

Can you just put loose broccoli?

Yeah, it's kind of

making everything smell

everywhere.

Well,

if you cover it up, it gets wimpy.

It gets loose, you know, flexing.

Why don't you just take it with you?

Because you're not going to be back till next week.

And so then the problem's solved.

And then you, you know, I got to do pickups.

Pickups, pickups, yeah.

Usually, they they have me in to do some pickups,

they're like, Hey, you were popping, right, because I can't control my volume.

We'll, we'll just we'll get we'll roll on all those at the end.

We'll just make sure we got you cleaned up here so you don't need to come back.

All right, do you need me to do some loose efforts?

Um,

oh, yeah,

yeah, I guess we might as well get these, might as well come in handy

here.

This is where, like, it imagine I'm trying to get on top of a car.

Honestly, that video pockets.

That was, I did sort of

struggle when I felt the triumph.

It's not that hard to get on top of a car, but it's harder than you think it's going to be.

Yeah.

I was picturing maybe the back of the car and not the hood.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, right, you're right.

Yeah.

A little bit more.

Yeah.

No, that's what I was picturing.

I guess I'm some fucking asshole and I was picturing the front.

You're not an asshole for that.

Here's one for the front of a car.

Yay!

Okay, yeah, that is really.

Yeah, that's it.

That does.

I do now hear the difference.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kind of just bounded up at it.

Yeah.

Like, well, the front of a car is knee height for me.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, right.

You are gigantic.

You're like, I don't know if you know Joe Chandler, but you're kind of his height.

He's tall.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was doing a lot of cars.

He was a tall man.

Yeah, yeah.

No time for tunisia.

I thought I was going to lose my job to him.

Tall guy.

So,

I guess I'll ask you, Matt.

What are the planes?

Okay.

Look, last week, I talked about how I am now back in.

I had a bit of a reunion

with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

And

they say it in the game.

I like that.

Yeah, it's nice.

Yeah, yeah.

And I like when they say it.

I like it.

Just my head just bouncing between Emma and Sierra to see who's more confused.

I have no idea what's going on.

It's my fault.

I'm like, things in the last 30 seconds, it's my fault.

I provide continuity.

I come in, I say the thing, and then I leave.

Yeah.

They say it in the game.

I just met, you know, because in my first playthrough in the original Final Fantasy VII, I didn't get to meet Vincent Valentine.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, wow.

Well,

he's an unlockable character.

You have to jump through some hoops to get him.

He's a secret boy.

I love this guy.

Yeah, he's great.

He's got a bad attitude.

He's grumpy.

He's a star, this guy.

What a great character.

He has the best moment in Advent Children.

He does, yeah, because he's like, I got to get a phone.

Where do they have phones He's got two then, yeah, because he's like, I gotta find a phone.

But then he also, he also has the moment where, like, the little girl hides behind him and he wraps his cloak around her like a vampire to save her.

Yes, it's pretty good.

He's good.

He's really, really good.

I like that.

I'm toward, I'm in the latter half of the game now.

I've abandoned side quests.

And I'm just having fun.

I got to have a whole sequence where I was playing as Kate Sith.

And it was just like, I love watching this little guy guy run around.

He's a cat.

He runs around like a cat.

It's really funny.

Matt likes cats.

I like cats.

I have two of them at my home.

The cat Apodaka.

I have Hurley and then my newest Bonnie, aka Bonnie Flip.

And so we're a big cat household.

And

they don't care.

They're not very interested in the games, honestly.

But I've been playing that, and

I also picked up Paper Mario, The Thousand Year Door.

Haven't spent that much time in it.

Gorgeous.

It's really cool.

Really, really gorgeous.

Hoping to spend more time with that too.

That's sort of a nighttime one because it's a little less.

There's a little less going on.

That's sort of like my reading

for the night because it's sort of just low, low input.

You kind of just pick it up, put it down.

Whereas like Final Fantasy, I'm like, this is getting pretty nuts.

Getting pretty nuts in here.

But that's it.

I'm playing two huge games

as I'm known to do.

That's it for me.

Who wants to go next?

Heather, what are you playing?

So I've had a busy week.

I dropped in.

I know I complained about Fortnite for most of the segment last week.

I stand by those complaints.

They've balanced a few things in the game

to make it a little less like when you get in a car, you are invincible.

So I've played a couple.

I've been playing ranked.

I think I'm either diamond or platinum 2 now.

still frustrated still still bummed out um but that's it like I haven't I haven't had a lot of time

It's hard when it's like I feel like I've was broken up with like I'm I'm still like seeing my ex

and I'm like, hey, you want to have some fun?

But the truth and also to clarify Mary didn't break up with me.

I'm saying that Fortnite is the game that broke up with me.

Just so that a listener who's like half tuning in, half driving their car isn't like, oh, shit.

No, that didn't happen.

But yeah, I feel like Fortnite broke up with me and I'm trying to find.

Your other girlfriend.

Yeah, I'm trying to find somebody new.

And

it may be

this handheld dreamcast that I sent to Matt.

Yeah.

There's a there's a dreamcast that's on, I think, AliExpress that was

sent to me by a, I believe, a listener on Twitter.

And if they weren't, then I'm sorry.

They won't ever know.

They're not a listener.

But it is a, it is a, it a, a custom-designed, handheld, Dreamcast-only Dreamcast where the bottom of the machine is the Dreamcast controller and the top is an IPS screen.

So it's not like, oh, you're playing Dreamcast games on essentially a Game Boy.

It looks like a Dreamcast that has been Frankensteined from parts.

And it has like a hard drive on it.

You can obviously take any game that you own, but at this point, also games you don't own because nobody's fucking, no, no one's enforcing.

Nobody's enforcing whether or not C-Man exists.

It even has a built-in

VMU like into the controller.

So that might be something I hunt down and becomes my new obsession.

And I could like play through the back catalog of some Dreamcast games, but real sad about Fortnite.

It's what you were just saying about games you could legally own.

I remember that's a thing you'd always see on ROM sites.

And

you'll still see that copy.

And I think it's one of those things that has legally no foundation.

Like, I think even if you own the cartridge, even if you own the disc, it's still illegal to have this, have this ROM in your possession.

I think it's still a violation.

Wait, so you can't, if you have, I thought that the VHS

law, which was created so that you could like make a duplicate of something you already already own, or like the cassette law.

I thought that applied to games.

I could be wrong.

So maybe it, maybe it does, but I think

there's fundamentally something different from making a digital backup as opposed to burning a copy of a CD.

And also, like, if you burn a copy of a disc of a game you own and then put that into like a modded, you know, version of your PlayStation or whatever, I think that is still also illegal.

So like, it's like, but I don't know, but it, but to me, it's like the kind of thing of just like you'll sometimes hear like, oh yeah, we can use, you know, 15 to 30 seconds of

this track as long as we have commentary over it.

It's just like, wait, no, that's just completely, that isn't true.

That's just a thing that people say.

Yeah.

You know?

And I want to say here, first and foremost, I would download a car if given the option.

I would press download.

I'm getting the car.

Yeah, it'd be nice.

It'd be nice.

Especially if it was like pre-modded.

Yeah.

We'd be like, it has better gas mileage.

It's or it's hacked so it doesn't need gas.

Yeah.

This is the issue though, and we've learned this from basically all anything that's that's gated in an online store.

If cars are downloadable, they will be more expensive.

Oh, yeah.

They will find a way to jack the price up.

Horrible.

Sarah, what are you playing?

Oh,

pretty boring answer, but I did really get, okay, because I'm on my phone a lot and I was like swiping on TikTok a lot and that was being bad.

I like deleted it for a bit and then I downloaded, I re-downloaded Candy Crush.

So I've been playing a lot of that.

Wow.

Like a senior.

Yeah.

And all the, you can watch ads to like, you know, prolong your gameplay to get like lives and extra bonus things.

And a lot of the ads are like, hey, seniors, you know, here's another great game for you.

You don't even need Wi-Fi.

I'm like, hey, I'm one of you.

I like that that's a top concern for seniors.

Like, this game needs Wi-Fi.

I'm out.

I don't need Wi-Fi.

Yeah.

Why would you have that?

Yeah.

It's all in the disc.

So yeah, I think it's been kind of nice because I think, you know, it's just the scrolling and stuff is really just me

muscle memory with the phone, turning it on and like just whatever's there.

And TikTok provided that sort of endless like game of swiping.

So in some ways, you know, it's, I think this is slightly more positive.

Are you a phone game person?

Like, do you get into them?

Do you have phases?

I used to be a little bit more like, I mean, we'll get into Neopets, but there were like certain pet games that you could play.

And then I think like,

you know, there's different variations, but like ones where you're kind of just local and like raising your little pets.

And then so I would play those and then

I would delete them because, you know, various time issues.

And then, and then, you know, I was always a bejeweled person.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

So I feel like that's why Candy Crush, you know, finding out that that was gaining extreme popularity when it was at its height, you know, I think that was kind of like, oh, yeah, bejeweled does, you know, need a little candy theme.

laid on over it.

Yeah, it's all, it's all, I mean, like those match three games I find very compelling.

I mean, and, and like, I was playing, I did play Candy Crush for a time before I was just sort of like, you know, all the

like the just the weighting or the ways that it was like designed to have you sink cash into it.

But I it's funny that you mentioned because the the senior side of it, because my dad does play, like he's play gotten into a few handful of games.

One of them was Minion Rush, which he was really into, and the other one is Candy Crush.

Oh, hell yeah.

And yeah, I think they're just like, they're super playable for people who aren't like frequent gamers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's, you know, it's, it's, uh, kind of endless.

Like they kind of, they're just different variations and different maps.

So you're like always getting something new, but it's still familiar.

I like consider that like Candy Crush as like one of those, one of those like phone games that was like just ubiquitous.

Like I feel like that's up there.

I'm forgetting the name of it.

Clash of clans was like super big.

I was very into Clash of Clans as like a phone game.

I didn't know that.

I played Clash of Clans with like a group of like UCB people.

So it was like me, I think maybe Fernie, Alex Alex Fernie was in there, Drew DeFonso Marx,

like just friends of ours.

And then, and I think, I think Billy Merritt was in there too.

And we're all just like mean to each other in the chat.

It was really funny.

But it was like a really funny time to be playing that game.

But then also the,

gosh, there was this other, oh, Angry Birds.

I was so into Angry Birds.

Yeah.

I loved it.

I know Angry Birds never really clicked with me at that specific game, but like I, the physics-based gameplay was obviously the thing of just like that.

That that i think was was a real novelty for a lot of people i didn't care how funny it was it was just like it was like i i did like the trying to figure out how am i gonna knock down this structure with a pig or whatever what pigs am i gonna use talking about it out loud sounds dumb but it is a good game i i the only two mobile games i've ever really sunk my teeth into were Final Fantasy Record Keeper and Final Fantasy, what was it called?

First Soldier?

First Soldier, yeah.

You always ask me what it was called, and I always remind you.

Well, it's because I'm the keeper of this heather lore.

This is the thing that I'm holding, and you're soldier for you.

Yes, um, and I spent real money on both of those games, yeah,

and now neither of them exist, and neither do the things that I purchased.

Yeah, that's which is brutal.

I mean, I will say, like, some of the mobile games, yeah, they can just stop updating, yeah, and then you are like still invested, and you're like, hello, and then it's like the whole company, like, okay, when I was playing the, the, like, I think it was like all

there was there was like a whole thing called like castle story dragon story those that my i know my sister played those there was the one that i was playing was oh tiny monster so there was a whole like tiny line and so i was playing tiny monsters and they weren't updating and it was like affecting the game and and then i like went on their company's website and you like see all the people and it's like oh they're working on some like family guy game or something so that all like okay great you got fox money now or whatever and you're going down that path and then you've abandoned me and the rest of my friends in tiny monsters territory in favor of Stewie and Brian and Quagmire and Cleveland and the rest.

Yeah, hey, that's good.

I think that, like, that does tie in with what happened with Angry Birds, which I think the original was delisted because Angry Birds 2 is the one that has microtransactions that wasn't built into the first Angry Birds.

They're just like, well, we're getting that out of there.

We don't want people buying this thing once and then not being able to spend money endlessly.

I like Star Wars Angry Birds the best.

What it just is Angry Birds with this Star Wars skin?

Yeah, but the pigs have little lightsabers.

That's fun.

Yeah.

That's pretty good.

Yeah.

Did they have...

Or no,

you throw the birds.

You throw the birds at the pig.

Yeah, yeah.

The birds had lightsabers.

And they use that as part of the physics, too.

So sometimes you'd have to use the lightsaber to hit a certain thing.

It was cool.

Oh.

Were the pigs the Sith?

They were.

Nice.

Wow.

Those pigs.

Were they, but were they all like, were they, were they dark Jedi or were some of them like stormtroopers?

And like, were they like kind of like a panoply of

different skins, but I feel like I'm picturing a lot of the pigs with the Darth Vader helmet.

Like, it's like not more creative than that.

Yeah, sure.

It's like, but I liked it.

I liked it the best of all those.

When you finally finished the level, did the next level start with somehow pigs return?

Yeah, sometimes there are more pigs.

They fly now.

Pig patina.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

We were talking, we were talking

brushing teeth earlier.

And

no, you were.

I was talking brushing teeth earlier.

We're talking teeth.

Teeth games.

Um we but the but my friend had a Darth Vader talking toothbrush that had a voice clip in it, but it was not James Earl Jones.

And it was not even any someone even attempting a James Earl Jones soundalike.

So it was a thing we would quote to each other all the time because

you would like, you'd use a toothbrush and then had like a button it would press and it would be,

what was it?

Impressive.

most impressive, but you are not a Jedi yet.

It's just like they just had someone in the office just like cold read this line.

Are you sure that the you were in like the wrong battery size?

I could tell that

that was like deep from deep from within your soul.

You remembered that you really searched to remember what it was.

That's so fucking funny.

Wow.

And it wasn't even like, it didn't give you like a timing of how how long you should be brushing or it would just be a little bit different.

No, I don't think it was that advanced.

I think it just had like a clip, some clips that were built in.

I just want to remember.

I was like, I'm a female toothbrush growing up that sang a song and you had to listen to the song three times and that was the length of toothbrushing.

Wow.

Three times?

Yeah, it would sing a song and it would finish and then you'd press it again and it would play it one more time and you press it a third time and it said on the

well my parents told me that on the box and so you have to play it three times.

So maybe they were tricking me.

Song was Eric Clapton's Layla.

What song by Mickey?

Yeah.

11-minute piano break.

Hey, what I've been playing is Humanity, which is on Game Pass.

This is developed in Japan by the LTD, which in the past has done like art installations, I guess.

This is, I think, their first like traditional sort of video game.

I could be wrong about that.

And it's published by Enhanced, which is Tetsuya Mizaguchi's company, the guy behind Rez and Luminez.

It is a puzzle platformer akin to Lemmings, if y'all remember Lemmings, but it's in 3D in this grid-based reality, and it's with human beings.

The humanity

is a mob of people that are following you, who is a ghost Shiba Inu leading them through different obstacles.

So it's kind of a follow-the-leader style of gameplay.

Fuck.

It's definitely...

It sounds amazing.

It's rad, but it's all puzzles.

So I'm not sure how much you'd like it, but like aesthetically, it's really cool.

And it's kind of like this kind of Philip Glassy score.

And the whole thing about it is it's just like, how many character models can we get on screen at once?

It's just

an abundance of

just like humans walking around, a massive humanity.

I mean, it looks fucking cool.

It's really cool.

And it looks awesome in motion.

Anyway.

So basically what you do is is you go around as a Shiba Inu and there's there's all these,

you know, it's the, I love grids.

I love how the tiles feel here.

You know, give me some

cardinal directions to work with.

So you take the Shiba Inu and then you can leave individual commands on a tile and then the humanity following you will follow that command.

So like if you have like, I'll have you turn left here, then they will turn left before that gap and then continue on their path.

And then you'll also have things like, oh, like I can do a...

a long jump here.

So it'll be a specific type of jump that will cause me to jump over this chasm or what have you.

It quickly gets extremely complicated, but

it's really, really fun.

And there is a thing where when you can retry stages, that's a really useful feature, which is keep commands.

So basically everything that you've previously done on your previous runs will just still remain in the playfield.

So you can just make adjustments instead of having to do it all from scratch, which is kind of fun in terms of how you want to experiment with it, especially because there's this other element.

which are goldies, which are specific people that you want to try to retrieve from specific locations and then keep them alive and usher them towards the goal.

The goal is really fun because the goal is just basically a portal to heaven.

So you're this massive humanity.

You're just watching them be raptured, basically.

They're all being sucked up.

And it's got this weird, you know, hard to follow, but cool story tying it all together.

But I just, I just really enjoy it.

I think it's just a really cool puzzle platformer.

Yeah.

And I really did like lemmings back in the day.

So anything where it's just like, hey, here's a huge, huge swarm that you've got to control, that you got to muster.

I find that like really

just engaging and satisfying when you finally tie it together and you get to, you know, fast forward as you're seeing this, like, again, thousands of people just walk through this path that you've laid.

I just saw that it's on PlayStation Plus, and that is one of the ones that I pay for for some reason.

So I just downloaded it as well.

Yeah, why not?

Try it out.

Nice.

Yeah.

No, I'm really enjoying it.

Look, I got like Matt, and I'm not playing games of this scope, but I've got too many, too many irons in the fire right now because, you know, I still got to polish off Animal Well, which I really,

really have enjoyed um i've got to but i but i gotta i gotta keep uh keep uh plugging away at that um and then i gotta do uh you know i've been playing chance of sonar which i really liked but i had to mess around with this one and and i'm i'm glad i did because i'm gonna continue with it hell yeah that's humanity

Do you struggle with procrastisaving?

You know, when you put off doing something that could save you a ton?

I used to be a huge procrastaver until I heard about Mint Mobile's best deal of the year that's ending soon, 50% off unlimited premium wireless for new customers.

Let me tell you how I procrastisaved.

I would reuse toilet paper.

Stop overspending with big wireless and cut your wireless bill to $15 a month when you switch.

All Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network.

You can use your current phone and phone number on any Mint Mobile plan and bring along all your existing contacts.

Don't miss out on three months of unlimited premium wireless from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month.

But hurry because this deal ends September 22nd.

Look, cell phones are cell phones.

What are we talking about?

Your wireless carrier isn't, it's all the f ⁇ ing same, man.

Am I allowed to say f ⁇ during an ad?

Well, I just did.

And I told you I would reuse toilet paper to save money.

Think about how much you could be saving with Mint Mobile.

Quit stalling and start saving when you make the switch.

Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash get played.

That's mintmobile.com slash get played.

Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month.

Limited time, new customer offer for first three months only.

Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan.

Taxes and fees extra.

See Mint Mobile for details.

This is an absolutely true story.

One time I was in Japan and I had my cell phone with me, but I was

following somebody around in the city and having a good time.

And then they locked me on a roof of a skyscraper because they were a crazy person.

That's a true story.

And my cell phone didn't have wireless access.

So this next ad is specifically something that I could have used in the past.

Because because if I'd had Wi-Fi, I could have called somebody, but instead I had no cell phone service trapped on a roof in Tokyo.

If you've ever been lost abroad or badly needed an internet connection with no Wi-Fi spot in sight, you'll understand what a difference a local SIM card can make.

An e-SIM provides an internet connection wherever you travel and saves you money on roaming fees.

That's where Saley comes in.

Saley is a new e-Sim service app brought to you by the creators of Nord VPN.

Here you can choose from several affordable eSIM plans in over 190 countries and eight regions.

With a Saley eSIM, you'll always have a connection when needed.

Download Saley once, and you won't have to install a new e-SIM for each country.

You can avoid scammers selling fake SIM cards outside of train stations and airports.

No more wandering around looking for a public Wi-Fi spot.

With a Saley, you're always connected.

They provide 24/7 support, and you get a full refund if your device isn't eSIM compatible.

Download the Saley app in your app store.

Use code GET played at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase or go to saley.com slash get played.

That's S-A-I-L-Y dot com slash get played.

I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Shall we talk Neopets?

Let's go.

Neopets.

Okay, so here's the thing.

I do not understand Neopets.

I like had been aware of it forever.

I am definitely too old for it.

And when it came on the scene, I was like, you know,

this was a thing that kids were playing.

And so this was not a thing that I was really like ever following actively.

I have a few just sort of like

bullet points here to just kind of lay the groundwork for what Neopets is.

And anyone feel free to correct me because again, I don't know all that much about it.

But as far as I can tell, it's a web game that's kind of part Pokemon, part Nintendogs, with a bunch of different mini-games that kind of like, you know, end up being ways that you can accumulate in-game currency and then subsequently like kind of upgrade your arsenal of Neopets and get them wearables and so forth.

That's my understanding of it.

Yeah, I would almost even think of it as like sort of like an extension, not an extension, but like the next iteration of what like a Tamagotchi was.

Right, yeah, this is the same sort of thing.

It's more about like, as opposed to, hey, we're going to take all these things and, you know, and like Nintendogs, as opposed to we're going to take all these things and and they're going to fight each other.

It's more like, well, I'm just going to, these are my friends and I'm going to make them cozy.

But it was also, it was, it came out in 1999 and it came at a time when everybody was making these effectively like portals that would be their

product portal on the web, right?

So like you'd, you'd have like, say, for example, and I don't, this is not an actual example, but a conceptual example.

Wired magazine, one of the first tech savvy magazines, creates a website, wired.com, where you can read the latest issue of Wired, but you can also go to the Wired store and you can listen to Wired radio show, which would eventually become like the Wired podcast.

But there would be like these gates that you would enter on the web before social media, where it would be a pipeline of all the same brands' material.

And Neopets was one of those things where it was like, this is where you can go to the Neopets.

You can play these Flash-based games.

You can also

use that pet and print them on a t-shirt and like buy the t-shirt.

Like it was a bunch of shit that was all coming through the same pipeline.

And you're correct that this was an age of the internet where, yeah, you would have a bunch of websites, a bunch of URLs that were bookmarked that you would visit manually to see what was going on.

Like I remember going to at a certain point in my early internet history, going to yahoo.com daily just to see like what is going on here because they have news and shit too.

Anyway, so it was, as you mentioned, it was launched in 1999 by British college students Adam Powell and Donna Williams, quickly acquired by American businessman Doug Do-Ring, who passed away last year.

But Do-Ring was a devout Scientologist, and the company was originally managed by the Scientology org.

However, Powell and Williams were able to successfully prevent Neopets from becoming a Scientology indoctrination site for children, which I think was Do-Ring's ultimate aim.

The site ends up being sold to Viacom in 2005 for $160 million.

Subsequently, it's acquired by American company Jumpstart in 2014.

Then Jumpstart is acquired by Chinese firm Net Dragon in 2023.

The original site was Sunset in 2023 and relaunched as World of Neopia.

And this year, as we mentioned, it is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

But this was a game that was very, very big

in its heyday.

At its peak in the mid-2000s, it had 35 million unique users per month, 80% of whom were children.

So this was like kids were just playing the shit out of this game.

And Sierra, I imagine that was your experience.

Yeah, yeah.

I hit it right in the sweet spot.

I think like kids at school were playing.

So there was a lot of like, you know, discussing, hey, can you send me your neo points?

You know, and no, obviously.

Do not give away your neo points.

And there, you know, I think a lot of it, like, cause I think, yeah, because it's pets, a lot of people, it, it, it's reminiscent of like Tamagotchi and stuff.

But I think what was so enticing to me about it is that it was really like a community.

And I wasn't, you know, of course, pre-social media.

I was also under 13 signing up.

So I think you had to at some point like have your parents fax in like a signed waiver so that you could have more access to like the community parts of it.

Cause there was sort of a light version, which was like, you can play the games, but like you can't, you know, go on the message boards, of course.

And those were already very censored anyway, but like you couldn't participate in like exchanging, you know, I don't even know exactly the limits, but it just opened up a bigger, better site when you had your parents

sign the waiver or if you were already over 13.

so so yeah that's how you know that it was very popular for that and i think the fact that like you know you could build wealth and um sell things like the marketplace was really there so you have your own shop right and then you kind of do your daily things and like i mean i i had like 16 accounts that would like fun

so yeah this is where we get into it but yeah that everybody did it but it was probably against terms and conditions but you know that because there are things that you could do every day per account, I would like use the 15 satellite accounts to then accrue whatever to send to the main account and then the main account you know had the most wealth and then um yeah you just use that to your advantage i guess so you're logging in and out of 15 different accounts doing your dailies and then sending all that the currency and goodies that you accumulate and by dailies we mean like flash-based games or were there like yes there was it like the way that when we played pokemon sleep you had to like okay i've got to feed this guy i've got to search with this guy i've got to like dig with this guy

piss me off yeah it's like, so yeah, definitely the games.

I think you could only play three times and actually earn points.

You could continue to play beyond, but then it would just be for nothing, which I kind of made games into almost like a chore.

You were like, oh, I got to play this game.

And then if everybody, if anybody asked me to play a game for fun, I would be like, no, I need to be earning currency.

So why would I do that?

And then there was things like going to the giant omelette and getting your free piece of omelette.

You know, then that feeds your, I was going to say child, but, you know, Neopet.

And then there's also, you know, going yeah to the money tree which the money tree had like free items you could snatch up but it would become like it would not work after a certain point so that was kind of a daily thing as well um yeah and then going around the world or just different things and things got added and like when viacom bought it it turned into more of a real media site where you're like playing a game that's related to the new uh you know movie that's coming out that weekend sure so there was that element it changed over time and then wearables were kind of later as well um but but yeah for sure I think there were like daily chores to do that that was kind of what made it good.

And I would even do a thing called pound surfing, which was like you would like surf the, this is crazy, but I guess like the pets you could like disown and then you could look for unique rare pets.

So at the time for me, it was like when they were painted different colors, there were like Christmas theme pets or like spotted pets.

And those were rarer because that required a paintbrush, which was extremely expensive.

So I would like refresh the pound on end and I would fill all the

excess accounts with the rare pets.

And then you could send them to the other ones by putting it in the pound and then trying to, you know, like hurry up, log in, and then log back into the new account and get it.

And sometimes somebody would get it before me and I would try to message them and be like, please, it was, and then they'd be like, no.

you know, because it's a doggy dog world out there.

And, you know, I was learning that young.

And Ethiopia is not a meritocracy.

Yes, exactly.

Many things, you know, could go on, but there are, there are just lots of advantages, I think, of having multiple accounts.

Wow.

And then, and I want to clarify.

So you were under 13 and your parents did have to, did you have a fax machine?

Yeah.

Or did they have to go to like the Kinko's?

Yeah, I think they had a fax machine at the dental office.

Oh, right.

Thank God for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So thank God for that.

But yes.

Fax machine and I had to fax something recently for the government, which they have apps on your phone you can use as a fax machine, just in case anybody's wondering.

But anyway, you know, but yeah, so that was,

I think, and I had some friends who did it.

So that kind of was the reason I learned that that's possible.

But also a main thing too is I think as time went on, like the rare Neopet thing was then the name of your Neopet because each Neopet has to have a unique name.

So you can have numbers.

This is a thing I learned, which I was shocked by, because like basically any.

you know, account system these days, like you would, like you're making a username.

You can cut, you don't have to come up with something that's completely unique.

Like they will affix something to the end of it that will make it be like, whatever.

i can be nick weiger and then i've got like a 0406 seven that's hidden at the at the end of it uh but they these have to be utterly unique it has to be something that's no one's ever used in the game's history oh yeah yeah it was quite a it was a lot it was pretty difficult but i got very good at like i wanted for some reason my no pet uh my main one to be called bomo scoco

which is and so then it but even bomo scoco the way i guess you would think it would be spelled was taken so it ended up being b-o-m-o-s-k-o-k-o-a

Wow,

just one example, but trailing A, it became trailing A, but it became a thing that the unique thing is called R N, which is a real name.

So if you had a Nick or you had, you know, like, I think I had a Ulysses, wow, but then I lost, I lost Ulysses, so I don't like to talk about it, but you know, that was a real name, and that would be extremely rare today.

Yes, right, 10 years ago, which is wonderful.

I mistakenly tried to get the name Matt and was shocked that it was not available.

You You gotta do Matt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I ended up going with, because I made a Neopet to just see what it was, a Jub Jub, which I don't know really what a Jub Jub is.

It's like a little fuzzy looking guy.

I actually, let me pull up his stats because his stats are,

because

you make this guy, right?

And you can pick...

There's a variety of pets you can pick from, and a lot of them look like animals.

that you've seen before that are like

yeah like they look cool it looks like a like a dog kind of.

It's like a Pokemon or a Digimon.

It's like, you know, it's akin to real wildlife a lot of times.

Yeah, there's an elephant named Elephante, you know, that sort of shit.

Right.

But then there's Jub Jubs.

And Jub Jub is just like feet and like a fuzzy little head.

Yeah, that's the same one I picked, man.

I picked that one because I was like, this one's kind of the funniest looking one.

And he looked like a Pokemon.

And I picked, I made him green and I gave him a yellow

bandana.

And I was like, I'm going to name this guy Pickle.

That was my first instinct.

No, no, absolutely not.

Pickle was taken in 1999.

Yeah, yeah,

I ended up having to go with, uh,

I named him Atma.

Atma, yeah, A-T-T-M-A, like, because I was like, I just want to get my name in there somewhere.

So I got that in there, and you have to fill out a little personality profile for him.

Where does your neopet like to live?

I picked city.

What does your neopet like doing?

I picked reading and learning.

Yeah,

how does your Neopet greet others?

I went with a default here, which was stand their ground.

Oh,

stand their ground loss.

Yeah.

So I was thinking, what the hell?

What's happening in Neopia?

It's been pretty intense now.

Yeah.

But

I found it interesting that, like, you can just make another guy.

Like,

when I was doing it, I was clicking around.

They're like, you can make another one.

Yeah.

You can have four.

You can have four at the time, you know, they they may have updated it since but uh yeah four i think was the limit and so you said you had 15 accounts you said the name of the guy of of of your of your main one it was what kind of uh pet was oh uh shoiru okay

yeah and i paint him christmas this is

he's christmas it was the cheapest one at the time this is the first one i made

is i don't what kind of guy is that that's a jub jump

yeah because because as i learned, they're trying to

make this a mobile-friendly website.

I see.

And so, a lot of the HTML design that they're trying to do in order to

recreate these video games that were all Flash-based, which are no longer in existence.

Also, I can't imagine the day that Flash got turned off by Geopets.

Must have been like apocalyptic.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

Like the stock market crash.

But I named my guy Gajorpaporp.

Ooh.

um

and uh

and then i tried to play games and i could not get any of them to work darren the the games are confusing you can get the games to work period on ios not at all okay because i got the game i was playing on pc and i could get the games to work but getting them to work did not really help much because i didn't know what was going on uh but i i was able to i i made a mohog um

and uh who's like you know as you might assume kind of like a warthog little guy uh and i was able to name him My Big Fat Hog, which I was shocked was not taken.

I could not believe that was available.

Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.

I think we have to just like end the episode.

Yeah, yeah.

I think you just won you.

That's it.

I didn't know that was possible.

Well, I'm guessing that it's been taken and that they continually, the moderators of this children's game delete that name.

That's amazing.

You have long done to a game that is like a 13 and over game and you walked in as a, I'm assuming, 30, 40 year old man, however old you are.

Yes.

And you immediately chose my Bic and Black battle.

Oh, yeah.

No, definitely when I was like, when I was, when I was scrolling down to find my birth year for a long time and I get to the 1980s, I'm like, they should not let me play this game.

I just just say I'm too old for that.

I was thinking about that when Sierra said that you had to fax in this is okay.

Yeah.

That's very easy for a weird adult to circumvent.

Right.

I mean, also, a lot of kids, I mean, a lot of my, once I learned that that was the case, because I was an honest child, I put in my regular year that time.

The subsequent accounts, I just put 19.

Yeah, your parents were 80, whatever.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

We were not fax in.

We don't have that much money from our fax machine.

Yeah, so it was, yeah, I feel like everybody was just lying about their birthday.

So I think if they saw that, they'd be like, this is probably a 13-year-old saying that where

we're going to be able to do that.

And obviously, the games are a big part of it and i do want to talk about the games but i want to circle back to the community part of it because like that was the part of it that i didn't and would not interface with no i could engage with that yeah but like what was the experience like as a kid on there like what are you doing in the chat well i know that harry potter six book was spoiled for me on the neobor oh my god unfortunately yeah that was like the top title one of the top ones was snape kills dumbroll doy oh my exactly

dang it they just made that the forum post title yeah i I guess.

So I guess that was okay.

I'm sure they took it down at some point.

But anyway, it was very limited.

Like, I think, man, but, but so, and I will also say this kind of spun off into, so Neopets would also play April Fool's prank.

And one time they made it seem like you were, anytime you went to a different page, you would have to like pay money or it was like accruing like a debt for you.

So I was like, oh, hell no.

And then I like, I didn't realize it was a prank.

So I moved over and I looked for other pet sites and I actually moved over to Subeta, which was this other one at the time, a little less popular, a little aged up, i would say so that was more like more possibilities because i feel like there are things there where it's like you could like create your own digital art avatar thing or something and then like create like a persona for yourself which it feel like felt like early social media of like i want to be known for how good i am at digital art oh my god what are the what's you know um it would be so cool to be famous for like on subeta or whatever right so so but neopets was more limited like i don't think you could share images or anything custom so you couldn't really have a personality The only thing that you could kind of do, which actually helped me learn how to code and stuff, was you could

customize your pet page.

So people would be really creative with that, because that was even very limited.

They had something called Neo HTML, which means you couldn't just do, like it was a limited version of HTML.

So you could do certain things, but you couldn't like hack the site, right?

So, um, so yeah.

So I feel like there were certain ways for you to stand out and not just be playing the game, which I feel like was kind of something that was building at the time, which was like, hey, this internet thing, like, what if you could also be like, you know,

making a name for yourself or something?

Is there much chatting going on?

Like, can you talk to another person in the, like a stranger in the game or whatever?

I mean, so yeah, how did that work?

I know there was neo-mail.

So that was kind of like direct message, but I feel like you could kind of only, you know, message people who you were friends with.

Yeah.

So, you know, make sure it's a mutual situation.

So I was mainly messaging like my friends from school.

And so that was like very safe.

And I'm sure, you know, they monitored a lot.

And certain words were definitely like you probably couldn't even say pretty harmless words.

Yeah, yeah, but you could say my big fat hog.

As long as it's, yeah, no spaces in between, I think you could say that pretty easily.

But, but yeah, I think it was, it was pretty, uh, pretty much all in service of like the Neopia and

making sure, yeah, everything was pets related.

Now, when I, when I was watching videos about this and reading about this, what one thing

that seemed to be the case, and I don't know if this, this, I imagine as you you were talking about that this worsened after Viacom comes on the scene, but there were a lot of like ads that was always monetized, right?

Like there is like a premium thing I think you could pay for.

I don't know when that was added, but like I imagine a lot of it was just like you're basically playing advert games.

You're just kind of like,

you know,

you're watching an ad.

You're being fed an ad under the guise of like, this is some sort of activity.

Totally.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a lot of the games.

Sometimes they were like outright like a quiz about whatever movie was coming out.

So that felt really different.

But sometimes they would, you know, probably whatever the company comes in is and is like, we want to make it really interactive with Neopets itself.

So I think for during like World Cup or something, they had like a Neopia cup and you could like play with the different lands of Neopia and that was like in tandem with like, and also watch the real one in the real world.

They had like,

I know they had a partnership with McDonald's and did like a happy meal.

So like, and I was like kind of old by that point, but I kind of wanted to get.

the benefits of like, if you got the happy meal, you got the toy.

Right.

And then you could scan that toy and get like certain prizes online online or something.

So I did that a couple of times.

And that was like the most, you know, I was willing to bridge into like the real world of, you know, spending real money on it.

But

but yeah, that that was big.

So it was getting pretty commercial towards the end of my playing, which was, I don't know when, but

post-Viacom for sure.

Right.

And then, yeah, and I feel like they, they also, they had a magazine that I have a couple copies of.

I think they discontinued it at some point.

Um, and they had plushies, of course, and or that's what they called them, plushies in the game and I think in real life.

Um, and yeah, I, it was, it was not too crazy, but I like Webkins, that was like later, but that kind of was like, oh, all you could do to really monetize, like go forward and do sell extremely like physical merchandise, right?

Um, but yeah, well, the other one I remember like this, I don't know if this is something you ever played, I

never did it again too old for it, but I remember Club Penguin was another one people were super into.

Anyone ever messed with Club Penguin?

Remember you talked Club Penguin guy?

I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't allowed to do like this or Club penguin right emma was saying that too like you were just kind of like your parents just at sort of overall anything that you had to sign a waiver for that they had to like authorize you were just not allowed anything online there was nothing online that was allowed like independent console was fine but yeah anything internet based absolutely not yeah i can't imagine my mom using the my mom printed out like sheets and sheets and sheets of like Pokemon websites and stuff like for me like at work and got in like so much trouble.

I can't imagine her using the fucking fax machine to like allow allow me to play neopet

i told my parents that i had to write a book report on the satanic bible and they bought it for me

i love the campbells

i gotta fax the devil

okay another thing i saw is that at a certain point

Macy Gray was a neopet.

You remember this?

She was, well, I don't know that she was a Neopet.

She was a featured character.

She was a featured character in the Neopets world.

It wasn't that Macy Gray was,

she was, it was based on Macy Gray, but it wasn't like, oh, this is Macy Gray.

It was like, oh, we're doing a parody of Macy Gray.

And she's a little bit more.

She's a Macy Gray-esque character that exists in the world.

Got it.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

I do remember this.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is, that maybe predates when I was playing because it is like a specific, I mean, you can can kind of tell from the artwork too.

Like, it got programmed, you know, the digital art became more like refined, I guess.

Yeah, it was like pretty, it seemed, it seemed like when, when it launched, it was pretty crude.

And then they kept iterating on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Makes, makes total sense.

And then recently they tried to convert Neopets into a metaverse project called Neopets Meta, and they were selling.

NFT Neopets.

So you would actually have your own Neopet.

And of course, when that entire scam collapsed, not the scam of Neopets, but like the scam of NFTs, then it brought down the Neoverse meta project with it.

Oh, yeah, I believe it.

Yeah, because I feel like when that was hitting and everybody was, you know, oh, oh, you know, Neopets, of course, they're probably like, that's exactly what we were doing.

But like, you know, now, now we want to cash in.

And then, of course, yeah.

Which is also funny because

it's not, it's not the same, but

because you have to come up with a unique name, you are creating essentially a non-fungible, permanent

NFT Neopet.

Like Ulysses, you saw Ulysses.

Ulysses still exists somewhere on those Neopet servers, is somewhere out there, and there isn't another one.

Yeah, that's the whole thing.

You don't actually need the blockchain to do this stuff.

People have been doing it forever.

But I'm still hopeful I'll be able to flip my

JaVail Mickey NBA Top Shot NFT for Mickey.

Yeah, yeah.

Good purchase.

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

I did, I did mess around with some of the games today.

Yeah.

And I mean,

they're all

like for kids.

Like, I mean, they're all, I mean, obviously they're all for like little kids.

Yes.

Like one of them was like a bejeweled type game that I was playing that was just like match

three of the same color ball.

That's all it was.

There was another one that I couldn't figure out how to do.

This is the thing.

So I feel like this is my experience.

So for instance, like fairy bubbles, which I played, I was like, okay, this is just puzzle bauble slash, you know, bust a move.

This is just like snood.

Yeah.

This is the exact same.

This is just a clone of one of these.

I can wrap my head around this immediately.

Then I played, I played some Fashion Fever and I was just like, I don't think this is a game.

I think this just is a way for you to dress up your Neopet and then somehow you get currency.

But like somehow you're getting Neo.

I could not figure out why.

Like

I think my costume got judged, and then I got whatever the currency is on Neo points.

And then

I was playing both Judorah's Bluff and Ellucin's Glade, and I was just like, I don't know what the hell is going on here.

Because they started playing Judorah's Bluff, and Judorah's like, you need to get me a red carpet.

And I was, and I see the red carpet right there.

So I'm like, I got this.

And I click it and she's like, you're a liar.

She got all mad at me.

Yeah.

And then I was like, well, okay, I pissed her off.

I'll go play Ellucin's Glade.

And I go to Ellucin and and she's like she's like you can't be here you're over at judora's bluff and i was like

all right yeah what the hell are you doing man i know i know so i guess they have like a little a war so that i figured out okay what you're saying is you want me to get an in-game item which is a which is a rug an in-game rule like a buy a red rug from the online store and then once i did that i went back there and i was like oh then you dissolved it she was like great job i'll see you tomorrow i was like okay so that was my daily judor like but but it was a kind of thing of like i could see this getting its hooks into me if i was a kid yeah i think the figuring that out as a kid would be very satisfying.

Or having your friend at school tell you, you got to do this.

And like, oh, yeah.

And then you go home and do it.

Like, that would be very satisfying.

And then the idea that I'm doing this thing today and then I'm coming back tomorrow and I'm going to do another one.

Like that would be, that would absolutely get me hooked.

One of the ones that I did, I don't remember the name of it, but it was these two little guys and they were on like a seesaw type thing.

And you have to take turns jumping to catch letters or other things up there.

Oh, yeah.

I think that's like hussy bounce.

Yes.

And you have to also, yes,

you have to just,

you have to spell out the name, and you're doing that.

And I was, but also,

there are these like little like donut type things that you could also get that extend your time.

But then there's also shit and barf.

Yeah, you don't want shit and barf.

No.

You could like land on the shit and it'll say, like, ew, gross.

Yeah, there's like the bit, the coughing sound for like too long.

Yeah.

And then I didn't get

all the letters.

So when my time ran out, it just shows the two little guys on the screen and they're crying like babies.

Yeah, what the heck, man?

It made me feel so sad for that.

This is all, like, I do think a lot of it, it's the, it is for kids, but it's also from like the early 2000s.

Yes.

And like, thinking about Judorah and Lucin's Glade, like, I know, so it's a PHP game, right?

Like, initially, like, everything is PHP.

At some point, they introduced, I think, the Flash games.

But the sort of like, go to, click around and go over there and then bring it back and stuff, that's very like PHP.

So I feel like that's probably even predates all the Adobe Flash games.

Yeah.

And Hockey Bounce is kind of newer.

I mean, newer than that, but still very old.

So, I think, yeah, everything like, I don't think kids now would even find it exciting because it just technology has progressed and they're just like, this is so boring.

Well, yeah, kids now are playing Call of Duty Warzone.

Oh, yeah.

Well, yeah, not enough war.

Yeah.

I, I think the Ted Chiang novella, The Life Cycle of Software Objects, is based on Neopet.

Oh my God.

Cause I read that and I felt all the feels.

Yeah.

It is about

a semi-sentient or fully sentient pet

that somebody creates.

And then I believe basically the servers are shut down.

And they have to take this conscious entity into their personal care because they can't play in like the Neopets arena anymore.

And it's kind of like a real melancholy read.

Yeah.

it's and I mentioned before because

I may have listened to that one.

I listened to one Ted Chang

collection on audiobook.

And it was really a disorienting experience because it had like a traditional narrator.

And then between chapters, Ted Chang would

hop in and tell you where the story came from.

But it would be the thing of like, of like,

you know, the creature breathed its last, its consciousness faded into oblivion.

Just zeros and ones once more.

Hi, I'm Ted Chin.

So

I came up with a story when I was playing the game.

You kids ever play Neopagan?

Ted.

I think if I had, if they were like, for some reason, Animal Crossing New Horizons doesn't work anymore, I would be like,

Dom, the sheep, could live with me for the rest of my life.

Wow.

I love him.

I would die for Dom.

Yeah, that was the thing they're always like, like, because I did play Nintendo's.

And the thing I remember, which I referenced earlier, but the thing I remember at Nintendo's is like

your dogs wouldn't die, but if you left them unattended, you'd come back and they'd be like a little dirty, starving and filthy.

And you'd feel like, and like have to use the bathroom.

It's just like, I can't, this is just, this, this poor animal's been living in a prison inside my Nintendo DS for like, you know, the past four months since I stopped playing.

I don't know if I ever, I don't know if I've ever told this story before.

Uh-oh.

I killed a dog.

No, no, no, no, no.

I remember this is like in like high school.

This is when I'm getting electronic daily or electronic gaming monthly magazine sent to my house.

I remember seeing Nintendogs in the magazine being in, like, telling all my friends, like, guys, there's this game coming out called Nintendo's where you can take care of a dog for the DS.

And I was like, one of my friends that had the DS, and they all like made fun of me so hard.

They were like, you would play this dog game?

They roasted me for months and months and months.

Just for wanting to play it.

Just wanting wanting to play it and I never got it and then my birthday comes around and my friends bought me Nintendo Wow

you want it so much and then they make fun of me for playing it oh no yeah they like threw it at you and then kicked you and the stomach yeah but I remember playing it and I did I loved it I loved it no I love Nintendo

bullying it was really

play it you stupid dude yeah like we were like freshmen in high school and didn't have jobs they had to like scrape they wanted to scrape together like five bucks and like buy me this $35 Nintendo DS game just to make fun of me more.

Very funny.

Chicken, Matt, he's having the time of his life.

What an asshole.

We made him feel good.

Just kick his ass.

We're all going to be friends forever.

They're still my friends.

I like saw them like a week ago.

There's a real window of time when

every company was trying to create this interactive pet.

Like Tamagotchi sort of kicks it off.

And then, like, Neo Pets.

And then, I feel like, like, Heyyu Pikachu, and the Pokemon

Pedometer, or whatever it was called.

Even some Dreamcast VMU mini-games had that component.

And then, like, Nintendo's.

And then simultaneous to this, on like the hardware side, like, Sony's releasing the Aibo, which is like a

dog that could, like, live in your space, but was like a mechanical dog.

And it felt like a lot of people trying to solve the problem of like

of like going and getting a pet.

Yeah.

Like, because they are

almost as much work.

Like the amount of stuff that you have to do at the beginning of the day to do a NeoPets.

Yeah.

Very similarly, the thing that eventually bounced off of Animal Crossing, I was like, I feel beholden to this thing.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was getting too

invested in the turnip market.

I was like, I had an app.

I had several apps to manage my turnips.

I was like, I can't do this anymore.

Yeah.

Once I started doing that, because it also like you can really break the balance.

You can accumulate so many bells by doing that.

Once I was like, I have to stop doing this.

I'm just like, if I see a good price on like a friend's, that's fine, but I'm not going to like try to find, I'm not going to exchange like Tom Nook tickets, Nook Miles tickets to get to go to some stranger because they have a high stock market price.

Yeah.

But man.

I'd do anything to go back to those times.

It was, I will say it's the thing, and I'm sure, Sierra, your experience with Neopets is similar of like, you have this, this time of like you spent so much of your life doing this thing, and then it just kind of goes away and all you're left with are the memories, but it doesn't feel like wasted time.

It's still just like, oh, that was a thing that I occupy my time with.

Think of the hundreds of hours I put in Animal Crossing New Horizons that eventually, like Heather was just sort of like, this is taking up too much of my time.

I'm done with this.

um and walked away from it but i look back at that fondly because i was like you know what this was this was a this was a thing that i needed and i enjoyed right then oh definitely i feel like it you know it fills the void sometimes i I mean, as a child, it was like, oh, maybe a hunger to be in the real world.

So it's a little bit of like, oh, I have money, you know, points.

And then like, I have, you know, they even had like a fake stock exchange or something.

You know, you could like learn certain things and feel like you're doing something that you're not allowed to do yet.

And then.

And then as an adult, yeah, I feel like it's kicking into the thing of like sometimes, you know, feeling getting deep, feeling powerless in our economy, no, and stuff like that.

And you're like, oh, but, you know, if you're able to like have your whole world be fine in this other life, then hey, maybe i can do it yeah um so yeah i i like the things that are like you know quaint and have clear numbers of like doing better you know escalating over time it's funny that you because that you created these multiple accounts in order to funny money funnel money into your primary account because when i did my first online game which was final fantasy 11 same thing you create multiple accounts and then you can use one account as like uh your storefront and just have that account sitting out with like open trade uh activated because you that like there was like a place you could put uh items on like a community board in the game or you could have items on your person and then you would sit that person down in like a designated area and and then people would just click on each of the individual people but it's funny that in these uh simulations of capitalism how rapidly it becomes that you exploit a group of people in order to enrich a primary person or account.

Yeah, for sure.

Like even on Neopets, it's like, oh, I'm going to create these like 10, like

it's always kind of the exact same experience.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, I, so you were talking about that and what you just mentioned, Heather, is making me think of like my Diablo 2 days, especially before

the first expansion.

I guess the only expansion,

the stash that you had for storing items was so small that you ended up employing

what were mule accounts, you know,

which mules are like that's a that's a common thing everyone knows, but like I remember this was my first experience having like mules, creating mule characters.

And yeah, when I think about like their digital reality, I was creating, I had like characters that got to enjoy the fun of playing the game.

And then they also had their characters who are basically like laborers who their whole job was just to carry all their excess possessions.

Yeah.

And like, so you'd have a thing of like, I'm trading with somebody.

And so I got to get my mule who has all my stones of Jordan so that he can come in here and he can like, and you would have like a, like,

you, you'd, you'd, you'd have a server and then you'd throw your character in there and you'd like drop an item on the ground and then hope that no one else picked it up by the time you got back there.

So you could switch it to your main or whatever.

But yeah, it is like when you actually think about what you're doing,

it is that, that, that whole, it all feels like multi-level marketing.

Yeah.

Wow.

Interesting.

No, yeah.

I mean, yeah.

And that's just the natural like incentive, right?

So you're even as a child, you're like, oh yeah, this is what we do now.

Teaches you that lesson young.

Well, yeah, because also in Neopets, you can like have a bank account and then you like accrue interest, right?

So that's a whole thing.

And that's a whole like a preview of adult life ass.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

And it even does have a tiered system where if you have a higher net worth, you get a higher rate.

Right.

Interest.

Yeah.

I wonder if there's somebody that our world is, our world is so bad and then we just like choose to like emulate it digitally.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe I can win in this version of it.

I just saw a thing.

This is new and true.

In Roblox, you can get a job at Ikea and they pay you.

I don't know if they pay you in the game or real money.

I doubt it's real money.

Yeah.

But they must pay you.

And so you have to do...

You have to have a job in fucking in the fucking game.

20 years from now,

the younger versions of us and a younger version of Sierra will be doing like some version of a podcast, whatever it is, talking about Roblox.

Because I know a lot of kids are growing up with it now, and it is like just in their bones.

And it's a thing that like Neopets is completely inscrutable to me.

I would never have any actual understanding of it.

but it's also way more predatory than neopets because people like kids can spend so much like actual money in this thing right and yeah they can basically do free labor that is then just like like other people are making money off of it and then i i was wondering too i wonder if there's somebody who's been playing neopets for 25 years like and has like i'm sure there is absolutely yeah i mean i so i know they like shut it down for a bit like i don't know what's been happening with the flash interim but like yeah i i think that it was definitely going for a long time.

I saw when I was making my account that there are a couple of options when you're making the account.

Like, it's like you can start a new thing, or you can, I think you can use your old login to bring stuff into the new ecosystem.

Yeah, it's like sign in with your original Neopets account, which is maybe what you don't want to hear, but you could get back in there if you wanted to.

No, no, no, yeah, I'm aware.

Yeah.

I haven't tried to migrate all the stuff over yet.

But yeah, there's a spreadsheet somewhere of all my passwords and birthdays.

Man, i had it i like i had an early email client that no longer exists and it it bums me out like because gmail didn't come out until like somewhere in the 2000s but like if you had like certain 1990s email and it wasn't hot mail or yahoo mail yeah like those emails are just gone no yeah

same thing of old email accounts they're just disappeared even if you had like a because one of my first you one of my first email accounts was a yahoo account and it was just so dormant that after a certain amount of time they like took it they deleted it and took it back.

And now I can't log into this one website that me and all my high school friends used to use called Photo Bucket where we used to put our

pictures online in there.

And now there's like memories just lost and like memes that we'd make making fun of each other just gone.

It's horrible.

If you got into it recently and there's really some cursed stuff in there.

I remember that because there was also a time when like every website, like what you were talking about earlier, was trying to have their own email client because just like, oh yeah, we'll just

have this and we'll have people come here.

So like I did it at a certain point.

I never used it regularly, but I had a marijuana.com email address.

That was really cool.

Wow.

That's awesome.

That's got to be worth something.

Yeah,

it's been deactivated.

That's for

funny.

Amazing.

Any other, like, any, any other, any other thoughts on Neopets?

Anything we didn't cover?

I know it's like, it's like a big topic and it's hard to mind the memory

wells of the archives, but like, like, was there, was there anything that like you really bothered you about the game or that you really miss about the game?

Oh, gosh.

No, I think, yeah, overall, like, you know, I think people, what's kind of funny too, is I guess this happens for all games or anytime there's changes, but anytime there was a change, you know, whether it was because another company bought it or it was getting more commercial or they like changed the look of the show and it's got thicker lines.

Like everybody would be out and, you know, up in arms and pissed about it.

But

so I think it was kind of nice to be, yeah, again, a part of that sort of community and seeing how people cared about like the good old days, even though it looked shittier, honestly.

Like, that was pretty funny.

Um,

and then, yeah, what else?

I mean, they, they like,

I guess personally, it did teach a lot, um, including myself.

I think it, because maybe it skewed a little bit more females sometimes, taught a lot of young girls to code.

So a lot of, I would say, maybe women in STEM these days or working, you know, at, in tech, like maybe came from Neopets.

Um, and it was how I got into it.

And like, um, other, you know, you can only learn a basic amount, but you know, it definitely like gave you the bug a little bit.

So, I think that was cool.

That's a cool legacy.

That's really cool.

Yeah, as you're saying earlier, like, even if you, even if you're just learning like kind of basic HTML through it, it still like feels like, oh, wow, look at this thing I was able to make, you know.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It opens up your mind in that way.

It was great, like, immediate gratification where it's like you type it in, and then you see the changes, and you're like, hey, this could be fun, you know?

Oh, oh, I did that.

And yeah, I think that I think that is a cool part of it.

But, but yeah, I'm not sure like what the evolution was after I stopped playing, you you know probably post high school or even in high school i feel like i might have played a little bit but um yeah it was was there an age threshold where you were like you felt like you were too old to be playing it i'm sure yeah i feel like everybody just stopped you know so there was a little bit of that but i feel like i would still play you know probably later than usual because that's what i did with most things so probably like you know into the 15 or 16 range i would say uh i well i asked i asked rochelle who all who played as far as i can tell the the two the the video games she played uh other than Fortnite were Mary Kate and Ashley Sweet 16 license to drive and Neopets oh yeah

and I ran sent over her thoughts I moved to Thailand with my mom when I was eight and was getting bullied and Neopets was my first real introduction to the internet this was my main pet she includes a little picture here who's a blue Ixy

yeah Ixy and I was really into stealing Hall's lozenges from the medicine cabinet so I named him Hall's 99

oh my god Wow.

Incredible Rochelle lore.

And just Halls99 is

really, really good.

I want to know, I want to hear from our listeners if you guys played Neopets, if you had any specific Neopets memories.

And I want to hear specifically if you're still playing it, because then I have some questions.

But let us know in the Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

And I'm interested.

Yeah, I'm curious.

Don't tag me, but I do want to know.

No, I'm curious as well.

All right.

Hey, that was our talk about Neopets.

It's time for a segment.

It's our quiz segment.

You don't know, Jack Off.

And this topic is Neopet, Pokémon, or Ewok.

I will read the name of a creature.

You tell me if it's a Neopet, a Gen 9 Pokemon, or a notable named Ewok according to Wikipedia.

So buzz in with your name.

Got it.

And chime in so it's it's neopet pokemon ewok emma kid could you keep score for us awesome all right first up jub jub heather or heather ewok

no it's not an ewok it's here what darrow neopet it is a neopet

yeah no that's the one you picked oh that's what he said yeah

Jub jub yeah he just he would go

oh interesting yeah that's that's the song at the end of return of the jedi

uh all right next up wiggle

Matt.

That's a Pokemon.

You are correct.

That is a Pokemon.

Hell yeah.

I think we're all going to guess the ones we know.

Jubjub.

Number three, Chirpa.

Heather.

Ewok.

Chirpa is an Ewok.

Oh, my God.

It's all tied up.

Jubjub.

Grundo.

Matt.

I'm going to say that's an Ewok.

No, it's not an Ewok.

Oh, my God.

Sierra?

Pokemon?

Grundo is a Neo.

Wow, he was added later.

Next up, Orlo.

This game is awesome and sucks simultaneously.

Orlo.

Heather.

Orlo.

Orlo.

Orlo is a Pokemon.

No, it's not.

Oh, man.

Anyone else?

See, we're all going.

See, we each each guessed not our thing.

Yeah.

That's the problem.

Sierra.

Go ahead.

Ewok?

It is an Ewok.

Wow.

Sierra has two.

Next up, Diplin.

Diplin.

The thing about this game is that you could have just written anything.

Like,

these are all insane.

Ewok sense.

Diplin,

I think.

I think Diplin is a Pokemon.

You are correct, Matt.

Matt gets another one.

What the score is.

Matt and Sierra at two, and Heather is at one.

Okay, great.

Gen 9 is...

Is that the most recent Gen 9?

That's why I made it Gen 9 because I figured it would be too easy if I made it earlier.

Because I know you're less familiar with the more modern ones.

Diplin, man.

All right.

Next one is Tebow.

Teebo?

Teebo.

Is Teebo a Neopet?

Heather.

Pokemon or Niwok?

Heather.

Neopet.

No, he's not.

The thing about this game, too, that you also have to know, listener, Yeah.

Nick loves saying these, and he loves saying, no, that's not it.

He's having the time of his life over there.

I'm going to hog Evan.

Teebo.

Teebo.

It's not a Neopet.

No.

Matt, I'm going to say it's an Ewok.

You are correct.

Teebo is an Ewok.

I should just guess.

I would have told you.

Ewok.

Next one is Walkie.

Sierra.

Neopet.

It is a Neopet.

You are correct.

Next up, Wattrell.

I believe that's a Pokemon.

You are correct.

That is a Pokemon.

Number 10, Wonka.

W-U-N-K?

Yes, that is correct.

Wonka.

Wonka.

Oh, man.

What they call Wonka in the German market?

Heather.

Yes.

Ewok.

It is an Ewok.

Is it all tied up?

What are the scores?

No, Emma.

It's not.

I'm not in the last place.

Heather's at two, Sierra's at three, Matt's at four.

Okay, we got a few more.

Uh,

Tugtar.

Wait.

Heather.

Pokemon.

No.

Fuck.

Tugtar.

Sierra.

Neopet.

No, Tugtar is an Ewok.

God damn it.

Oh, God.

Horrible.

Next up, Yerbal.

Yerbal.

Yerbal.

Matt, I'm going to say

Neopet.

You are correct.

Yerbil is a Neopet.

But can you guess the next one?

Palmy.

I can.

Matt, that is a Pokemon.

You are correct.

What's the score?

All right.

Heather's at two.

Sierra's at three.

And Matt's at six.

Wow.

Matt running away with it.

A couple more here, just to close it out.

Chomby.

Sierra.

Yes.

Neopet.

It is a Neopet.

And closing it out with Chundar.

Heather.

Yes.

Ewok.

I will give you a point, Heather, but this is a trick question.

This is actually a Wookiee.

Hey, I want my buddy back.

Matt wins.

Wow, but a spirited contest.

That's this week's Get Played.

Shout out to Emma for covering for Rochelle.

Hell yes.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And check out our Patreon, patreon.com/slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog, plus ad-free main feed episodes, and also our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated, Heather, where we're watching Mobile Suit Gundam, the eighth MS MS Team.

We're watching Mobile Suit Gundam, the 8th MS Team.

Nick said, let's watch Gundam.

And I said, okay.

And I'm having the time of my life.

The truth is, all three of us are.

Yeah, great.

You can check that out at patreon.com slash get played.

We're watching two episodes a week.

We've just started.

So if you sign up now, you can join us for the ride and watch Hulu's

8th MS Team.

Check that out.

Sierra Cato Funt is available now on Comedy Dynamics, and we'll be streaming on Prime Video July 1st.

Tell us about your special.

Congratulations.

And then anything else you want to plug.

Oh, yeah.

Thanks so much.

It's my debut comedy special.

You can get on demand,

Comedy Dynamics, Vimeo, Amazon, Apple TV, wherever you want.

And then, yeah, I'll hopefully be out on streaming very soon.

And then,

yeah, it's just, you know, a fun time hour.

Follow me on Instagram.

I'm at Sierra Kato, S-I-E-R-R-A-K-A-T-O-W for clips.

And thank you so much.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much.

What a treat.

Yeah, this was really, really fun.

And

I'm really sorry to have to do this to you as our guest.

I know Nick's telling me not to do it.

I don't think you should do it.

You got played, Sierra, and I'm sorry.

That sucks.

It sucks to hear, but you got played.

Wow.

I didn't expect this.

That's brutal.

I know, such a nice guest, and I'm like, sorry, but I guess we got to do it.

Well, all right.

Well, end of a couple friendships.

And that's okay.

Now you get Joe Chandler.

That was a headgum podcast.

What's up, everybody?

I'm Kyle Mooney.

And what's up, everybody?

I'm back by.

And man, ooh, we got something to tell you.

Oh, yeah, we definitely do.

Yes, it's a brand new podcast on Headgum.

That's right.

And it's called What's Our Podcast?

Yep.

And that's because we don't have a single idea what our podcast should be about.

Yeah, we don't.

So we actually have guests come on and they tell us what they think our podcast should be about, and then we try it.

Yep.

Guests like Mark Maron, Jack Black, Brittany Broski, Cape Berland, Bobby Moynihan, Make Stalter, and Tim Ball.

Landon Axler.

Joey.

Joni McGrees.

And Dender.

And Dender.

New episodes release every Wednesday.

So subscribe to What's Our Podcast?

On YouTube or any of your favorite podcast platforms.

Yeah.

I'm gonna go do it right now.

Hi, I'm Alana Hope-Levinson.

And I'm Dan O'Sullivan.

And this is The Outfit, the new podcast from Higher Ground and Head Gum.

You know, we're two journalists who are slightly obsessed with the mob and organized crime and other nefarious stuff like that.

Every week, we're gonna bring you a story about a mobster.

Some you've heard of, some you definitely haven't, but all of them are gonna help explain why America is like this.

See, the mob explains all sorts of things from milk expiration dates to why we got into Cuba to Las Vegas, gay bars, who knew

the mobs involved.

All that and more.

Subscribe to the outfit wherever you get your podcasts and watch video episodes on YouTube.

New episodes every Thursday.