Tri-Force of Trilogies

This is a head gun podcast.

Hey, so we're talking about our favorite video game trilogies today.

And I thought just before we start recording, we should just make sure, you know, we don't have any overlap because we have some of the same tastes, and we just don't want to be one of us to be, you know,

back on our heels because someone else picked what we're going to say.

Can I say, like I I I just didn't want to be this person on the podcast, but between the three of us like I really wanted to put mother one two and three on my list.

Yeah, you know, but I don't want to be like it's like I want to engage with the

listeners, but but I think I think I don't have anything else that might overload.

What do you yeah, beyond the obvious ones, you know, um

Matt, how about yourself?

Anything you were considering?

I mean, I'm going to put Kingdom Hearts one, Kingdom Hearts two, and Kingdom Hearts three as at least part of one of the parts of the Triforce.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah.

That's great.

Sure, that's all you.

Yeah.

Cool, cool.

I wasn't sure, but I had to pick it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got it.

Yeah.

Of course.

No problem.

That's like your thing.

I think I'm going to,

for the second part of the Triforce 2,

I'm going to do Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts 358 over two days, and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep.

Okay, is that like a

cohesive trilogy?

I mean, I guess you can pick it up.

I mean, it's certainly

three more games in the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

Got it.

Okay, sure.

More games?

Maybe Willis should set down rules at the top or something so that's clear.

Yeah, it might be just helpful in terms of the discussion, you know, because I'm less familiar with the franchise if you just had a different

do in that case, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix, and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue Prologue as my games.

I mean, it's your list.

I think it just made me feel like it.

I can do something.

I can do Kingdom Hearts Coded, Kingdom Hearts Mobile, and Kingdom Hearts X.

Those

mobile games.

Yeah.

So you'll do a trilogy of Kingdom Hearts mobile games as your Kingdom Hearts entry?

Or if I have to, it's really a problem with my other picks.

No, I don't have a problem with it.

I just don't.

Are these trilogies?

I'm confused.

Isn't one of those like a

exclusive to PC browsers?

Wasn't that one of them?

Yeah, but it was eventually picked up.

Or like a web game,

Android and iOS.

Okay.

I mean, it's again, it's your list.

I just thought we'd all kind of like pick from different buckets and maybe have, like, you know, maybe you pick a maybe we could pick three Tony Hawk games or something or

I don't know.

Okay, yeah, some other friends.

I'll do Tony Hawk, Pro Skater 1, Pro Skater 2, Pro Skater 3 for one of them.

And then for another part of Triforce, I'll do 4, 5, and Underground.

And then for the other one, I'll do Underground 2,

American Wasteland, and Tony Hawk's Project 8 for the other one.

I think that's going to make,

I think that's just the same problem there.

Yeah.

I would say maybe probably.

It sounds to me like

that.

Yeah, but you don't.

It seems to me like there's not been a lot of clarity on what a trilogy is or how this game works, which is.

Trilogy means three, Heather.

I don't know what's so hard about this.

Well, yeah, no, you don't have to ex I know what I know what trilogy means, but like

you

So I feel like the fun of this segment is oh for wisdom.

I choose this for power.

I choose this and for courage I choose that.

Okay, yeah, and it sounds to me like you're just dumping all the Kingdom Hearts or Tony Hawk games onto a triangle shape.

Why don't I just just say some of mine and maybe this will help

Matt, you know, just guide you what I'm thinking is a little bit.

So, you know, one I was considering, I don't know if I'm going to pick it for sure, but it's like the Super, you know, or the Super Mario Brothers trilogy for NES, Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Bros.

2,

and Super Mario Bros.

3.

So that's like one I was considering.

What are you considering?

Another one I was thinking about doing was like Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3.

So, you know, three Mass Effect games are kind of one story.

But

one that I'm definitely, though, going to put on my list is Kingdom Hearts Magical Puzzle Clash, Kingdom Hearts Recoded Gummy Ship Studio, and of course Kingdom Hearts Point 2 Birth by Sleep of Fragmentary Passage.

Okay, so I thought we weren't trying to overlap with each other.

Now I feel like I don't understand the assignment.

Because I was going to do We Fit,

We Fit When I Put Off More Pounds, and We Fit When I Put on Five More Pounds.

So overall,

that's three different game experiences.

I don't know where I'm I'm going to slot in Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory yet.

So I'm going to need some time before we get started.

I'm going to need like three days.

Okay, all right, we'll reconvene.

All right, we're back.

I'm still not ready, okay?

I don't know where this actually is.

Hey, fine.

We'll take three more days.

We list a group of three of a group of three and do it three times as the Triforce of Friendship names our Triforce of video game trilogies this week on Get Played.

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

It's time to get played.

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

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

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

And welcome back to the Premier Video Game Podcast, where I've heard some grumblings.

Who's grumbling?

Shut up.

I'll tell you, there's people grumblings.

And they're grumblings that we aren't miserable.

But you know what?

We're not going to let it happen.

Guess what?

not going to go.

I am miserable.

There's grumblings about, well, why don't they do this format?

Why don't they do that format?

Well, you know what?

The format here is: we talk about games.

It's right there in the intro.

Yeah.

I don't look at any of that stuff.

You don't look at it?

I don't concern myself with what they're saying.

What do I care?

Oh, I have it.

I just have to say that.

He talks like this.

He gives me big

Ozzy Mendez vibes, and it scares me.

They will look up to myself, me to help them, and I will look down and say, no.

See?

That's Rorschach.

That's Rorschach, but it's the same, but it's not the same.

Properly the same name might be.

Ozzy Mandeus is the one who's like, I did it 15 minutes ago.

Yeah, I also get self-conscious about how to pronounce that.

Ozzy Mandeus.

Yeah.

Then there's an owl guy who's just like,

I got to put my dick in it.

Yeah, night owl.

He's horny.

He's horny.

Everyone's horny.

I saw that movie in theaters at midnight.

Yeah, he's an incel.

But I saw it at midnight with my friends from high school and my mom.

And guess who was seated right next to my mom during that long sex scene?

Your boy.

Nightmare.

An absolute nightmare.

You...

I have a story like that, which is that I'm not.

The way you told that was very strange.

I'm just.

Yeah.

Okay.

I was going to highway past it, but no,

I'll give.

I'll give.

I was creating the sense of intrigue.

I was like, oh, it could be anyway.

Was it Matt's friend Jeff?

Was he sitting next to your mom?

To Matt's mom?

No, it was me, actually.

And it's you all along.

No, that is very uncomfortable.

When I was a kid, up through now in my life,

I

have always really been into vampires, right?

Love vampires.

Think vampires are pretty fucking cool.

So when Dracula came out, you know, had to see it.

The Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Gary Oldman.

I was a child.

Sure.

And so for my birthday party, my mom and all my female friends went to see Dracula.

And that movie is,

I mean, there's like fucking a dog in that movie.

Like,

it's not.

My mom was like, oh, no, I'm going to get in trouble with all these parents.

These little girls are going to go home and they'll be like, I saw a woman have sex with a wolf.

Guess what I saw at the movies today, mother?

Yeah, that's like the sometimes you see the, you don't realize that the R-rated movie you're seeing a little bit too young is like a hard R.

Yeah.

It's just like, oh boy, okay, this is really, really not meant for me.

You know what?

I'm a little scarred as a result.

I was not scarred.

I think you turned out okay, Nick.

Yeah, I'm fine.

I'm doing great.

I'm thriving.

What's going on?

Rocking and rolling.

I think

we should give a quick shout out to our producer, Rochelle Chen.

Her birthday was yesterday as of this record.

HBD Ranch.

Happy birthday, Ranch.

Happy birthday to Ranch.

And I'll say, and many more as well.

And many more.

Wow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

What was your birthday wish?

World peace.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

Yeah, sorry.

Didn't work out.

Sorry, you're going to have the worst birthday of your life, I guess.

Hey, speaking of birthdays, there's a big anniversary edition coming out.

The Braid Anniversary Edition.

It's coming out this month.

And I had an idea.

Just hang on one second.

Hang on one second.

We're all in the presence of a goat.

Do you just see what he just did?

That was amazing.

And I know it's not, it's maybe uncouth to point out the strings, to point out the mechanics of

podcasting while it's happening.

But goddamn, that was, that was Santana Santana Smooth, baby.

That was good shit.

That was really good.

I brought that up.

I feel like I'd find a way to crash it or fall off of it, despite them being famously stable.

I brought up

the anniversary edition of Braid because I think it would be an interesting thing for us to do.

We play you play about.

It's a game that I remember and that I played back in the day.

Heather, I believe you played it back in the day.

This new anniversary edition, I think we'll have a bunch of other content.

And it's like a game that has, that gives a lot to discuss.

So I'm just going to propose schedule permitting, time permitting, and hey, maybe this is something that makes one of us miserable, which is something that apparently our listeners are demanding.

I'm proposing a we play you play for Braid Anniversary Edition, which I believe is out this month.

I am

okay with it.

I, so, Braid was, Braid came out when I still was, and I guess I could speak to this during the episode, but Braid came out when I was still like,

I should like puzzles.

It's me.

I'm the problem, as opposed to being like, it's okay not to like puzzles.

So I did finish Braid back in the day.

I don't know that I have the patience in me to rem

The other thing is solving a puzzle once and then 10, 15, whatever years later, trying to solve a puzzle that you know you've solved before and being like what the fuck was the solution to this is like doubly frustrating.

But I will I will give it a fair shake.

I will give it a fair, a fair jump.

I think here's, here's the thing.

Anytime I encounter that in a game, and yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of braid I don't remember,

is

if I've already played through it, I don't give a shit about using a guide.

Cause I'm like, I figured this out before.

I don't need to like, whatever.

I guess I can see how much I remember.

But if I reach a stopping point,

I'm fine going to looking for a hint to progress.

Although I guess this is a game that loses a lot of its charm by looking up solutions.

I don't know.

I think it would be an interesting one to discuss because it is like also Jonathan Blow is an interesting figure.

And also, just something that's trying very hard to be like the highfalutin sort of games as art sort of thing, I think, gives us some discussion points.

My own experience with Braid is when we watched Indie Game the Movie for an old DLC, premium DLC in the event format.

So, I'd be interested in giving this a try.

And

I think it'd be fun.

I say, why not?

It's Super Meat Boy, Fez, and Braid are the three games they focus on, right?

That's what I remember from that documentary.

Maybe I'm misremembering Braid as Fez, actually.

Maybe Braid's not in it, but I feel like

they're doing similar things,

but

they have pretty different aesthetics.

Yeah, Braid is the one where Soldier Boy is playing it at a certain point in the documentary.

Braid is in there, that's right.

And Soldier Boy is just kind of roasting it.

And then

so much of the documentary is Jonathan Blow just being upset that, like, first off, he's just completely going nuclear and people adding him, which is, you know, it's its own thing.

But then also just like being, he's just always like, people didn't understand what I was going for.

You know, like, just even the people who liked it, he's like, he's like, no, it went over their heads.

It's an interesting figure.

We'll figure that out.

But that's a proposition.

That's something I'm putting on the table.

And I feel like we'd like to hash these things out on the air.

So, you know, I think we should see

if we do do it, and I think we should.

Yeah.

We should see if we can get Soldier Boy on the show.

That would be an interesting booking, you know?

None of us know him.

No connection to him at all.

No.

He does love video games.

He did have his own console he was making at a certain point.

That's right.

I don't know what ended up happening with that.

I think it seemed fine.

It worked.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It turns out it's harder than you expect to make your own console.

That's it.

Like, that was what happened.

I'd be great if the Soldier Boy console, like, turned into the Steam Deck.

I was like, oh, wow.

Okay.

We're all playing the Soldier Boy game.

How about that?

Good for him.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

All right, let's talk about some video games we're playing right now.

It's time for what are you playing?

Huh.

Hmm.

Strange.

That's weird.

Yeah, usually when I say what are you playing, the Resident Evil merchant kind of barges in here and kind of takes control.

Radio silence so far.

Interesting.

We had to reschedule a record.

Do you think he got confused?

It could have been because Matt got sick.

And

we ended up moving this to

we rescheduled it and then we ended up moving it to remote just to be cautious.

So yeah, maybe he's still...

I don't think he's at the studio right now because I would have to go to the house.

He may have gotten there yesterday and just still be hanging out.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

I know that.

Chef Kevin was at the studio today, and I haven't heard from him in a few hours.

I think maybe it's possible that the merchant is holding court.

He just got like roped into a really long conversation with the Resident Evil merchant and Adam Conover.

Yeah, yeah.

They're just sort of swapping stories.

Yeah, I could see that happening.

Merchants trying to sell him some,

you know, some product for that pompadour of his.

Yeah.

Well,

I mean, I just, it's always, it's always a pain in the ass when he shows up.

So I guess it's a good thing that he's not here for this record, although.

You don't think we should continue to speculate what he's doing?

He could be taking a nap in the men's room.

I don't know.

I don't know what he's doing

over there.

I think I could just, you know, toss it over to you, Nick.

You know, what have you been playing?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just get into it then.

I have been playing Manor Lords, which entered Steam early access on April 26th.

Have you been playing this?

No, but I'm so excited to hear about it.

So this is a game that kind of exploded

on Steam.

There was a lot of hype behind it.

It is from a developer, Slavic Magic, which is actually a solo dev, Greg Steesen.

I don't know exactly how to pronounce their name, but it is a medieval city building and tactical combat game, RTS game that is striving for exacting historical accuracy.

And

first off,

for something from a solo dev, and it's still in early access, so it's got some

times when a UI element will be a variable instead of text or whatever, or

It's got some sort of like rough around the edges elements as is to be expected from anything in early access.

But the overall presentation is really, really impressive.

The art direction is great.

It's got some a lot of

granular detail with like individual peasants and oxen who have their all these distinct animations moving throughout the city.

The thing is, this game is immediately overwhelming.

Like it's like you've got to,

there are factors like soil fertility and crop rotation and things, and there's no real tutorial for it.

So, you know, like I tried to play it on my own a little bit and I was just messing around with it.

And I was just like, I'm just completely lost.

I just, I'm, I'm trying my best.

There's some tool tips or whatever, but just, just simple elements like, for instance, you can completely fuck yourself

because you need to build a certain structure.

I believe it's a logging camp, although there's like four wood-related wood-related structures.

It's like that level of detail.

And so

I believe it's a logging camp that you need to build.

And if you don't build one and then just exhaust your starting supply of wood, you can just not build anything and then your entire civilization will die out because you just can't get any more wood.

So like you have to like, there, there are ways that you can come, you can, you put yourself into a corner if you're not

sequencing things correctly.

And that's stuff you either learn or through failing or you just have to do what I did, which is watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials of how to play this from people who have already got, you know, dozens of hours into it.

That said, once you sort of wrap your head around the systems to some degree, it becomes really, really engaging.

And just, it's one of those things where, like, I love this sort of city building thing, you know,

like a civilization 4X game, but also games that are a little bit more like this

on a smaller, more civic level as opposed to a global scale.

And the thing that I really like is that you are not stuck on a grid for building placement.

Like it's, it's, so you have these things that are called burgage plots, which are, which is not a vocabulary term that I was super familiar with or really had ever heard before I started playing this game.

But that's like where your...

where your citizens live, where the people, where the peasants in your city live.

You don't have to build those as a square or as a set plot plot of land.

You can like create like a weird sort of oblong sort of polygon.

You can really have it follow like the curve of a road.

You can have it be long and skinny or short and fat.

You can have multiple families live on one plot.

Like there's all this flexibility and extensibility you can do in terms of how you build it.

And as such, Again, you're not beholden to just like building as like a checkerboard, like a lot of city building games.

You can like have like, for instance, like a radial city design, like have all your buildings kind of going around in concentric circles.

And that sort of shit is really cool.

And I think some of the people who spent some more time in this game have some really, really awesome civic designs.

So it's really, that's really fun from just a, you know, ways you can kind of experiment with the game and make what you're what you're building your own, which is kind of the fun of any sort of building game.

The economy is so, so complicated.

And I have barely wrapped my head around it because there's, again, there's so many different buildings.

You have to assign a family which is one of the represents you know some of these the citizens who live in your city to that building uh but that that leads to there's also a marketplace where there are market stalls so for instance if you have like a berry like if you have a foraging uh hut which lets peasants collect berries from the woods then you can have a separate building which is a dyer's d-y-e-r's uh hut or whatever it's called and that's where that you can create dyes from berries then if someone is is assigned to that they might have their own stall in a marketplace, which it's, it's like, and it like that, that's just one of many, many things.

Uh,

like there's also like tanning for hides and such.

Uh, there's, there's ore you can mine and stones you can gather.

There's just so much, there's so many resources and so many ways that they can be used.

And then that's just one element of the economy, which also ties into this ornate system of taxation.

So, there's just so much going on, but it's kind of amazing that this one developer had this level of, again, just precision in terms of recreating what it actually was like, not as an abstraction.

I mean, it's abstracted to some degree because it's a fucking video game, but like not as an abstraction, but like, hey, this is actually how complicated all of this shit was in a pre-capitalist economy.

So yeah,

I really am enjoying it.

I'm not sure how much more time I'm going to put into it in early access.

I'm definitely going to mess her.

I say that, but I'm going to load it up again and play some more for sure.

And it's one of those things I'm going to want to load it up.

I'm just going to play it for several hours because that's how these sorts of games work for me.

But I am really excited to see what the final game is like and if there is a little bit more onboarding

because I think that would probably be one of those things that would come in in the final stages of development.

Again, because it's just so fucking complicated.

But really, really, really cool, extremely impressive design.

And that's Matterlords.

Heather, what are you playing?

Oh,

well,

I achieved

elite rank in Fortnite this week.

Wow.

Thanks in no small part to listener Topo Sito.

But also I crossed that threshold in a solo match.

So I want to give myself a little bit of credit.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

Hell yeah.

A huge achievement for me.

Now there's only two more.

There's only two more ranks left to achieve.

I'm not going to do it by the end of the season.

But now that I know this is a thing that I enjoy in Fortnite, I think next season I'm going to, or next chapter, I'm going to start right away doing ranks.

So you're devoting right here on the podcast to like Fortnite more?

Yes.

The other thing, though, is that I decided to join the Discourse.

I purchased Stellar Blade.

Oh, I love it.

I've been playing Stellar Blade

because it's like an action game version of Dark Souls is what people have been comparing it to.

It's got like similar save systems and mechanics and like it's not as brutally difficult so far.

But when you say action game, you mean like it's like a little bit kinetic, a little bit more active, a little faster paced?

Yeah, it's a lot less,

I'm worried about this thing, I'm this skeleton I'm fighting turning into a dog and biting my head off.

Like I'm not

like it's like it, and it's very clearly cobbled together from a bunch of different ideas that the developer liked,

which is that like there's a scanning system that maps out the world a la death stranding and shows you sort of like a stripped down wireframe version of the of the landscape to give you a better idea of like what parts of the topography are interactable.

Like it'll be like,

is there anything to climb here?

And you tap that thing and this little metal gear guy, this little metal gear, like metal gear, like that little guy

who's talking to you the entire time, his name is Adam.

And I don't know how present he is.

I've just started this game.

You know, I beat like the first two levels or something, whatever a level is in these games.

But that little guy is like, hey, you should scan the environment and then

you can find places to climb.

And you climb those places.

And like, oh, there's, I like that anytime I'm rewarded by trying to get my character off of the map, which is my favorite thing to do in a video game, is how quickly can I break it?

Uh,

and then being rewarded with a treasure chest.

And I'm like, oh,

okay, so it's this kind of game where a place that looks like you shouldn't be able to access it is accessible and has a reward for getting there, even though I don't know like what to spend the chits or the little, it's like, you received 15.1

E

class and I'm like oh all right great um

and then of course there is the uh the reason that everybody's talking about the game is the uh

just

2007

uh design concept of the main female character Eve yeah

She is right out of a game of, you know, Dead or Alive or any of the

that, like, it feels like an old game that's got fancy new graphics.

That's what it feels like.

Because she is so ridiculously like over-the-top sexualized that it doesn't even, she doesn't even seem like a person to me.

She seems like

almost like a Picasso painting of what a woman looks like if your eyes are moving too quickly.

Like, it's like

she's got legs, but her legs are like the length of like a regular person.

They're not human dimensions on her legs.

Does that, you, do you, do you understand?

Like,

I think so.

Well, like, if you stood her next to me, her legs would come up to my shoulders.

And then her.

I get it.

I do.

And then

her torso would be like crushed to the size of my head, but her boobs would each be the size of my head.

I'm sure you're telling us right but i am gonna google it just to make sure

like what she's does she's not

she's like a an impressionist painting of sexiness like it's like oh i i saw sexiness once and this is what it looked like and it's legs and boobs and butt right um and of course i think the other difference between like dark souls and uh

and this game is that typically when you move the camera in a dark souls game to like get better oriented around an enemy, you aren't also given the option to drive the camera straight into a butthole, which is like part of the, like, the design of this.

It's like, I never need the camera to swing directly underneath my player character so that I am staring up at their now 80-inch vagina.

Yeah.

Like, like it's not, I don't need that, but this camera is designed to.

You don't need it.

If that camera was in a Dark Souls game, it would like lead into a new biome where you would fight

some eldritch horror inside your own body.

So,

anyway,

I'm sure it makes me a bad person to take no issue with this game and just be having a good time, but I sure am.

And the music,

the music is

kind of reminds me of like Final Fantasy 13.

Like, it feels like a game from 2007 to 2010.

Like, the music is this sort of like poppy, whispery

pop music.

And then the way you know that you're in combat is the lyrics get louder.

They don't get any more decipherable to me.

Like, it'll be like you're playing a game and you're kind of investigating like the landscapes.

Oh, you opened a chest and like Adam character's like, well, these are leftover from the Legion forces.

And I'm like, okay, great.

But then all of a sudden, this music that's that's like,

like, suddenly that will become like, in a minute,

you're like, oh, I'm fighting something now.

Okay, we can't play more of it.

We're going to get in trouble.

But yeah.

Enjoying Stellar Blade.

I bounced off of Dragon's Dogma 2 for a little while.

I think I'm going to go back to it.

But

I'm just,

I want there to be more in Dragon's Dog Bun.

So far, there isn't.

It's just kind of like running around, which is great for like a cup of coffee, but not, it doesn't give me a video game feeling after a while.

Whereas this, yeah, this feels very much like a video game.

It is what we remember on the Xbox 360 as video games.

Um,

Matt.

Well, I'll say just to talk Stellar Blade for a second, I did download the demo when the demo was fresh and I played it a little bit and was like, oh, this seems cool.

I don't know if I'll like, I probably won't get this.

This is not, this doesn't seem like I'll be playing this, but it seems cool.

But I guess there is like a larger conversation about it that I don't think I'm equipped to have.

But it seems, if you're like enjoying it, I think that's good.

I think that seems fine.

I don't think it was made with any malintent or anything like that.

But

I did roll credits on a game that I had put down.

I was away over the weekend and I was texting you guys that I was agonizing on what to bring for the plane and like for my time, my little brief windows of time in a hotel.

And I knew that the PlayStation portal was out because I couldn't play that on an airplane.

And I couldn't really reliably play that on hotel Wi-Fi.

Because it's an incredibly stupid device.

Yes.

Yeah.

That somehow two of the three of us own.

It's limited utility.

You have to be like physically next to your existing PlayStation in order to be able to use it.

Well, it's more that you need to be on Wi-Fi that doesn't require a browser to agree to terms and conditions on.

Because

it does have a built-in browser that you can't use,

which is also great.

And we talked about this a little bit.

I was like, I guess the Switch is the way to go, because Steam Deck, you're not going to get that much

battery life.

It's going to be kind of chugging along for the flight.

It wasn't a long flight, so I didn't need anything that long.

But

I brought my Switch.

I double-dipped on Bellatro, got Bellatro on my Switch.

I was playing it on Steam Deck.

Okay, okay.

Happy to double dip on a game like that.

A game that is,

to me, is perfect.

Like, it's just like a perfect game.

It's just a wonderful game.

I love that.

But I had...

A delay.

I had a delay in the airport, about a two-hour delay.

Kind of annoying.

I'm like, okay, what do I do?

What do I do?

I boot up Super Mario Bros.

Wonder.

Bros.

A game that I hadn't finished, bros.

You could say Super Mario Bros.

Yeah, no, I'm Bros.

I was doing it like a poetic echo.

Yeah.

Super Mario Bros.

And my

hat.

Mario is saying, let's a fucking go, dog.

And they're crushing beers.

That's a, yes, right.

That's the bro culture, Mario.

It's kind of like more like a beer.

And his little red hat is backwards.

Well, it's a different kind of red hat as well.

Oh, well, yeah.

His this Mario, let's say, he's, you don't want him to vote how he's voting.

And you know what?

The real Mario also might be doing that.

That's true.

We don't know.

But anyway, I guess I was closer to being done with it than I had realized.

But while I was experiencing the delay at the lovely Burbank airport, I crushed an entire area.

Like the fifth, I think there's six areas or something.

I can't remember what they're they're called in there, but I

was in the fungus one, the fungus biome.

Okay.

And I.

Is that the underground one?

I'm trying to remember.

That one is underground, but there is also a magma one that is underground.

Oh, okay, okay, yeah, right, right.

But

I did the fungus one just while I was waiting, just knocked that out completely.

Yeah.

And then I was like, I'm going to fucking finish this thing.

So, like, the whole weekend, I just like chipped away at the rest of it.

And

Nick had an interesting observation about mario wonder that we texted about that you liked it and that it was good and a fun game but none of it really sticks with you

yeah i mean like i i and i want to i'll i'll

i'll adjust that a little bit just to say that like there are

certain set pieces, like certainly like when the perspective changes and we're going top down or whatever, or we're inverting the gravity, you know, like like, or or when you're writing like a dragon or whatever, there's certain times when you're getting that,

you know, the Wonder flower and it's completely deforming the stage.

Like some of those things stuck with me.

But like thinking of the game overall, it was more of just like a breezy, fun, throwback Mario experience that's really

aesthetically pleasing.

Yes.

It's really well done.

The game I really like.

A fantastic Mario game.

I don't know where it ranks in my Mario ranking because remember we did a Mario rank and we had around the time Wonder was new.

We couldn't rank it.

I'd be interested to see where it slots

in there.

It's probably A, right?

It's pretty good.

But

there's a couple of secret areas that I didn't find or secret

stages that I didn't find.

And I think I will go back to get those at some point because it is just like a fun game to pop in and pop out of.

But I was happy to roll credits on that.

The

final like Bowser area

I found to be

easy.

I had almost no chance.

Even though some of the difficulty stars were higher than some of the other stages, I was like,

I didn't have any problem with the end at all.

But that's the modern Mario philosophy,

I feel like.

It's like the main game is designed to be...

You can just finish basically at any skill level, right?

You can just kind of plow through the end.

But then they have all these secret stages that are, in fact, punishingly difficult but it's also completely optional for main path i i really loved it i'll i'll still remember my time in that one stage that is is you have to jump with the timed blocks uh oh yeah i can't remember what it's called now but that was

that's that's the stage i'll think of when i think of this game in in in retrospect um but i i really loved it i did put I took it out of my Switch and I put in Super Mario RPG, a game that I bought and have not

touched since I got it, hoping to maybe try to start and finish that before the thousand-year door comes out.

But

I'm still playing Rebirth for Crying Out Loud.

Who knows what I'm going to do?

But that's it for me.

Hey, you're the finisher.

Good on you for going back to that game and taking it over the finish line.

Slow numbers so far, but

it's only May.

You're going to be crushing us all by the end of the year.

I'm very, very much impressed with you, Matt.

Very much impressed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I got to give it up to Mario.

His games are good.

Yeah.

Yeah, they are.

Games are good.

Rochelle, are you around?

Hey, Ranch, I know you binged the Knuckles show.

I wanted to see if you want to talk about that at all.

It wasn't the Knuckles show.

It was Fallout.

Oh,

never mind.

Wow.

I thought it was Knuckles.

It was Fallout that you binged.

What did you think of Fallout?

I loved it.

I thought it was really fun.

I had a great time.

I finished it in like two days.

And I honestly had never heard of Fallout before

the show.

But I did end up downloading Fallout 4.

I think a lot of people are doing that.

Yeah.

And spent a really long time on the character creation, trying to make me and Mark like as close as possible to our real selves.

And then he ended up just dying in the first five minutes.

I have to.

I'm seeing my confusion in the text thread because both the Knuckles series and Fallout franchise were brought up in quick succession.

And then Ranch said, Man, it's so fun.

I watched it in two days.

I thought you met Knuckles.

But I'm glad you enjoyed Fallout.

Everything I've heard about it is that it's a lot of fun.

I got to check it out.

My wife and I also finished Fallout this week.

And she absolutely fucking loves it.

She loves it.

And I also love it.

But I would say, of the two of us mary likes it more

which it's got all the stuff that i like it's got like you know violence and like fucking bad guy and i love it that's it that's the those are the two things i need violence and bad guy

we're watching it in my household now we're about we watched three episodes and as i mentioned last week on the show uh my fiancé isabel saw the billboard and saw it moving and was like that's really cool I want to watch the show.

And so we put it on and she's really, really been enjoying it.

But she's, when things are super violent like that, it like really like makes her like freak out, like not like freak out, but she hates seeing stuff like that.

So like there's a thing where it's not really a spoiler, but there's like a guy, one of the Brotherhood of Steel guys crushes a guy's head in his hand.

And it's really funny and fucking gross and like nasty.

And there was a point where she was like, I don't know if I could watch this anymore.

She was like, this fucking, that's so gross.

But the story is keeping us, is keeping us invested.

But if there's more violent stuff like that, which I'm assuming there will be, we're going to have a tougher time.

But we're really enjoying it.

Before we move on from this segment about like watching stuff and everything, I'm surprised that resident

Kingdom Hearts man,

Matt Opodaka, hasn't brought it up that there was a huge rumor drop of a live-action CG Kingdom Hearts movie that is currently being

ushered towards production.

Well, it's interesting that you bring this up because before we started recording, before you got, before you hopped in

the stream yard here,

I was, I did say, I can't get my hopes up until I have like basically a ticket in hand for this because

I heard about a TV show that they were making,

they were supposedly making a couple of years ago.

Now I'm hearing about this movie.

How about you show me a damn something?

Show me something.

And then I'll,

yeah, you, Heather.

I don't have access to whatever.

Why don't you get this movie made and then show it to me?

And then I'll tell you if I'm excited or not.

No, I

look, I want there to be Kingdom Hearts stuff.

To me, it is not a movie.

It can't be a movie to me.

It's like,

there's too much going on

for it to be a movie.

It has to be a series, I think.

Because

they got to spend time in each new world or whatever, or however they're choosing to do it.

I'm going to guess they won't do the Disney stuff.

It's going to be primarily.

Whoa, that is a.

Why would it be a live-action CG hybrid?

Why Why would it be Disney Plus?

Oh, it's for Disney Plus?

Yeah, that's the thing.

It will be Disney then.

But

I just think it's like it's just too much.

There's too much to do.

But I could see Disney getting their,

you know, multiverse

be quet even wetter.

They're like, oh, we can get all these Disney IP in one thing.

Let's do it.

But I think a series would serve it better for the story.

Here's what the source is: DizInsider.com, the Skylar Schuler.

It's, I guess, like a mailbag.

And I don't know

if

this source is someone who is reliably breaking news or if this is just a rumor mill.

I'll read the entire thing that has led to all these news stories.

Well, to get one thing out of the way, Disney is developing an animated Kingdom Hearts movie.

Well, years back, I had heard the idea was to do something on Disney Plus.

More recently, I've heard the goal would be a big screen adaptation, but as of now, these are just rumblings and nothing has been green lit.

So it's pretty, uh, you know, pretty vague.

But they're making a movie about me, too.

I heard.

I wouldn't be shocked.

I mean, look, look, look, again, this is the thing that we've seen with these video game adaptations.

First off, audiences love them.

Secondly, they lead to increased sales of back catalogs

on the gaming side.

So, you know, all of a sudden, we already talked about this last week and we were talking about it on this episode of just like how many more people are playing Fallout 4 and Fallouts all the way back to Fallout 1 and 2.

Yeah.

just based on the series.

And the same thing happened with The Last of Us.

So I'm sure

there's just more and more incentive for

studios and

game publishers to collaborate on this.

Mostly.

I fear the person I will become

if the movie is bad.

And I fear the person I will become if the movie is good.

I stand to lose either way, I think.

I'm very excited.

I would be very excited to see

my favorite video game franchise come to the big screen, of course.

I could see that going either way with Kingdom Hearts fans.

Either they will not allow it, regardless of its quality level, to be good, or they will not allow it, regardless of its quality level, to be bad.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

No matter what level it is, they'll either rebel against it or say it is a perfect masterpiece.

It'll be

no matter what quality it is, it will be a Kingdom Hearts movie.

in terms of like, yeah, the way people, you know, not me, of course, I think it's all good.

But some of the

maybe the little bit of irony some people have with the franchise.

I want to know what it would be like getting story notes from Tetsu Nomura.

Like, I'd want to know, like, if

that guy would come in and be like, no, no, no,

that's the shadow of the unbroken version of

his,

like that, I want to know if that guy has massive cannon in his head.

Yeah.

And it's just like everything is clear to him.

And so he'd have to, he'd be like, no, you, that character's name is spelled like that for reasons I can't get into, but you can't change it.

And they have to pronounce it with a silent E.

I'll take those notes over Bob Iger's notes, probably.

There.

Hey, the Kingdom Hearts games, you know, there's many of them, but really a canonical trilogy.

He's doing it of titles.

And that leads us to our topic this week, another triforce of, this week, the triforce of trilogies, a three of threes.

We are going to each decide our triforces of wisdom, power, and courage of video game trilogies.

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Now, before we get into this exercise, I want to see if anyone has any rules they would like to propose.

I.

Or guidelines.

This is not necessarily a rule or a guideline.

It's more of a thought.

Obviously, the numbers one, two, and three

can factor into this exercise.

Sure.

In sequence, in order.

I don't think a trilogy in this case necessarily needs to be three,

like one, two, and three.

I think if there's a lot of games from this series, it could be any three.

Like, let's say there's nine games.

Yes.

And

the ones people really like

are

two, three, and four for some reason.

Those are the ones you can pick those, and that's allowed.

Yeah.

Okay.

There's a, there was a time when people would have said that, for instance, about the Resident Evil series, maybe.

Sure.

Or, or, you know, Silent Hill.

Not Silent Hill is the best thing.

I get what you're saying.

There are, yeah, there are games where there's like Street Fighters, you know, what, a much better example.

Um, I was, I was going to say something similar, which is just if a series is longer than three entries, you need a justification for why the three you picked comprise a trilogy.

Like, you know, like, which I think is akin to what you were saying.

That's um, better and cleaner than how I said it.

So, I think that's good.

Okay.

Who wants to go first?

I'll go first.

Wow, wow, Out of the gate.

Wow.

With power.

Oh, shit.

Because there's nothing more powerful than being able to go fast.

She's doing it.

And there is nothing more powerful than a single game.

A single game challenging

the ubiquitousness,

the hegemony of Nintendo.

And one small blue hedgehog almost did it.

He almost upended

the righteous order.

He almost said, you know what?

The NES, the super NES, they've got nothing on me.

That's power.

Sonic 1 is one of the best debut albums in game concepts of all time.

Sonic 2 is fucking perfect.

And Sonic 3 is an enjoyable masterpiece.

The only reason there are movies being made still

with fucking attached with like Idris Elba, Kiana Reeves, Jim Carrey

is because

is because of Sonic 1, 2, and 3.

It's true.

No, you're right.

You're absolutely right.

It's not Sonic Adventure.

It's not...

Shadow the Hedgehog.

Shadow the Hedgehog.

It's not Sonic the Werehog.

It's not Sonic 06.

It's because those first three games were so fucking powerful so fucking good and so close to changing history Yeah, that the echoes the ripples the the tidal wave of their presence is still being felt today.

Why are you giving me that face?

Matt was giving you a face.

Oh Matt.

Oh, I'm just I just like when you talk passionately about your blue boy.

I fucking love Sonic and and But mostly I just like those three.

Those three games Sonic one two and three

Fucking I love Sonic.

And that's your pick for Triforce of Power.

Power.

Power.

Power.

We'll start with Power.

Is this a

kind that does

flush turds?

Is this a good.

Could this be a good painting?

You know, are you all familiar with the painting of Blue Boy?

Yeah, of course.

Love that painting.

It's a great painting.

It's Blue Boy, but it's Sonic instead.

Sure.

Yeah, sure.

Why not?

Somebody do that.

I think it's good.

I think put Sonic in the, like, make him the girl with the pearl earring.

Put him in all of them.

Every.

Put Sonic in every painting.

Yeah.

What if, what if somebody redid the Night Watch with all the Sonic characters?

What an incredible waste of a life that would be to spend your time doing like a masterpiece, a masterwork Dutch

painting, like stroke for stroke, except replacing all those characters with...

Anyway, that's my first pick for power.

Sonic one, two, and 3.

Wow.

I love it.

Matt, you can go next.

Okay.

Unless you want me to go.

No, no, no.

This is

interesting.

There's a lot on the table.

Yep.

A surprising number, a shocking number of video game trilogies when you think about it.

Because a lot of times, like games are not often divided in, not always divided into clean trilogies, clean one, two, threes, as we were saying earlier.

That's more of a, you see that more likely with films, obviously.

But if you look, if you look at the landscape, there are a lot of trilogies, a lot of good trilogies.

And you know, I think there's a lot.

I feel like there's stuff that I want to take that is obvious, but then there's other stuff that I feel like I don't get to talk about as much that would be more interesting to take.

Go with your heart.

Well, for power, I'm going to go with maybe an unconventional trilogy, but

I think we'll all agree that it's a trilogy.

Starting with Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.

Wow.

What a great...

That's a good...

That's good.

That's good.

Those games just remind me of being 13 years old.

And they rock.

They're so fucking good.

San Andreas is, I mean, I'm not saying anything new.

It's like, I think one of the best video games.

It's just fucking amazing.

And the fact that they, you know, they did put out the,

they put all three of them.

They packaged all three of those games together and have many times and recently ported them to modern consoles and did a bad job.

But those games, those are those, that's Grand Theft Auto.

Grand Theft Auto V is,

you know, right, that's what defines the series, that's what, that's what set the template for what Grand Theft Auto is.

It's not the first two, and though the games that followed it were refined it, it's ultimately comes down to Grand Theft Auto 3 and its two follow-ups in that console generation.

And like, Grand Theft Auto 3 is just like an amazing game.

And then Vice City comes along and you're like, oh shit,

it's as good as that one, but there's more talking in it.

And now you're like, and it's, you know, it's set in Miami in the 80s.

That's like fun.

Motorcycles.

That was a big thing.

Motorcycles boats.

Are there boats in 3?

I can't remember.

But I think there are boats in Vice City.

That sounds right.

Then...

Just the characters of San Andreas, like CJ, is just like an amazing character.

And it just, you know, it's been memed to death.

Oh, shit.

Here we go again.

That's good stuff.

It is good stuff.

And I think this is an incredible pick, Apodaka.

I think this is a.

It's not on my list.

It's look, there's a lot of stuff that is on my list that we're not going to get to, unfortunately.

But that's, that's my power pick.

Grant that Ado.

I love it.

So it falls to me, my triforce of power.

And I've thought about this a bit.

I have a few different options, but I think what I'm ultimately going to land on, there's a genre of games,

the Metroidvania,

that is defined by the Metroid franchise beginning with the first game and perfected with Super Metroid, and the Castlevania franchise, though not beginning with the first game, which was very much a linear platformer, and that was the way the series progressed until the PlayStation 1 and Castlevania Symphony of the Night, a totemic game was released.

And again, you know, further iterated on, perhaps perfected the formula.

But there were three games that were released for the Game Boy Advance that were all Metroidvanias in the Castlevania series.

Castlevania Circle of the Moon, Castlevania Harmony of Dissonamence, and Castlevania Aria of Sorrow.

And these games aren't all equally good.

But it is awesome that there are three of them and that they are just further exploring this formula and again, just setting the guidelines for what this genre is.

And I think it is a powerful pack of games that have been collected as the Castlevania Advance Collection, which you can now play on any modern platform.

So I am going to pick.

the Castlevania Advance trilogy, three games, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow, for my Triforce of Power and the Triforce of Trilogies.

Those games got me through

a time when, I mean, that, like, Game Boy Advance is the portable system of that era until the PSP comes out, right?

And

those games were robust portable games.

They took a long fucking time.

And when you have a limited budget, you really need a long time.

to come out of a video game.

And that's not often a thing that you get in a portable game.

so to be able to be like i'm getting aria of sorrow and i know it's going to take me a very long time to beat it yeah that's a that's a rewarding experience for a youth good good pick wigger thank you it's also like a you know it should be said that these games also just have like you know awesome art uh and uh incredible music as the franchise is famed for so yeah that's my pick for the triforce of power uh we'll send it back to heather which uh no go go go for for whatever you want to pick.

Well, it's weird that you guys brought this up because I was going to ask a question about it, and then the question was answered by

our pre-conversation about the thing.

So I'm going with Wisdom, and I'm not going with games one, two, and three in a trilogy, but rather games two, three, and four in a trilogy.

Wow.

And those games are Street Fighter.

Wow.

And Street Fighter 2.

Fucking iconic.

Yes.

Undefeatable.

Like, a permanent fixture in every barcade in the United States and abroad.

Street Fighter 2.

It's been more than 30 years since that game came out.

And I know this because I know how old Matt Opodaka is.

Street Fighter 2, flawless.

But Street Fighter 3,

that's my spaghetti.

That's, that's my, that's my home.

That's a classic phrase.

That's my.

Sphaghetti.

That's my delicious taste.

Yeah.

Street Fighter 3 also, as I've argued on this very show, I think is responsible for the existence of the modern e-tournament scene.

The e-gaming, all of that shit comes down to like one moment between Justin Wong and Daigo.

In a Street Fighter 3 tournament that became viral and then people were like, holy shit, it's so much fun to watch video games.

And Street Fighter 4, in terms of addictiveness, dominated my own ability to play video like street fighter if we'd had this podcast back when the fucking game i would have talked about every week would have been street fighter 4 that would have been fortnight yeah it's so fucking good

and it had my favorite version of akuma that has ever existed which is not akuma but oni uh just an ugly

like not a it's a broken character really easy to like take down by a lot of other characters on that roster But man, it is fun to drag and punch somebody into the sky and then punch them again when you're like follow them up and like fucking knock them back down.

Such a great anime move.

So my wisdom.

Street Fighter 2, 3, and 4.

Not a fan of 5.

Played very little of 6, to be honest.

And one,

I don't even know how it exists.

2, 3, and 4.

Great trilogy.

Wow.

Great pick.

Matt, it's your turn.

Okay.

Triforce of Wisdom.

This is.

This exercise is tough because I'm just,

I'm already mourning the fallen soldiers, right?

Like,

there are games that I want to pick that I know that I'm not going to.

But wisdom, wisdom,

is an interesting section of the Triforce.

Because not every game, I think, fits

into there.

But

in times of combat in times of war i think it is wise to not only

fight

but also to hide

okay

okay

my pick for the wisdom trilogy metal gear solid metal gear solid 2 sons of liberty and metal gear solid 3 snake eater snake eater

what a pick great trilogy trilogy.

A great.

I mean,

what can even be said about it that hasn't been said?

Those games fucking rock.

They're just so, they're so good.

Yeah, they're so, so good.

They're also all distinct.

And the first one was so seismic as, you know, the kind of the 3D

stealth, you know, the

prototype for what that genre would become.

Two, obviously, ahead of its time, prescient

in its themes and its narrative.

And And then, three, just a perfection of the gameplay.

That's a great pick.

And I'm just looking at the ones that I have as options because I was certain it was going to get taken at some point.

But

I salute the ones that were not selected.

That's it for me.

Nick, you're up.

Goodbye, England's Rose.

That one?

Yeah, that's good.

You know what you need.

What?

Unique New York?

Well, no, I was halfway through my sentence.

Oh, okay.

You know what you need wisdom for?

What?

What?

A big,

meaty, sprawling, dense,

dialogue-driven RPG franchise.

I know where he's going, and I'm not afraid to follow him down the road.

That's what's happening right now.

Country Road.

Take me home to play.

There were two I was weighing for this slot.

And people who have played the more of the Witcher franchise than I have might also include The Witcher among this, although the first couple games are completely,

you know, I haven't touched.

I've only watched videos about.

The other one I'm weighing for this slot, the other one I was considering, my runner-up is the Mass Effect trilogy.

But I discovered Mass Effect as part of the Legendary Edition.

I'd never originally played it, and I didn't get around to going through Mass Effect 3.

So it feels like

a bit of a cheat to claim that when I don't have the entire trilogy, you know, a knowledge of all of that.

Although those games, very cohesive, following Commander Shepard

narratively throughout all of it.

All the NPCs, you know,

are retained and evolve throughout the different games in the series.

And they're also just really, really awesome stories with really fun gameplay.

But I'm instead instead pivoting to the Baldur's Gate trilogy.

Baldur's Gate 1, 2, and 3.

The first two games, isometric Infinity Engine games developed by BioWare from over 20 years ago.

But they are remarkable works.

And Baldur's Gate 3.

updates the formula, obviously gives it a modern presentation from Larian

and, you know,

a turn-based gameplay as opposed to the real-time with pause gameplay, a tactical gameplay of the original couple of games, but retains its spirit and does things like carrying over Jahira and Minsk as NPCs from the original trilogy to make it feel like it's a part of this larger world.

It definitely feels like not just a spiritual successor, but an actual proper sequel to those first couple games.

And I think you can view them all as a trilogy.

And now also, considering that Larian is not making any follow-ups to Baldur's Gate 3, I think that's a kind of a good place to close the book on the canonical Baldur's Gate.

We'll see.

Maybe we'll be handed off to another developer who will do an awesome job with a Baldur's Gate 4.

But I think as it exists, Baldur's Gate 1, 2, and 3,

games that I played back in the day and a game that I'm still playing these days are my trilogy.

I'm sorry, my Triforce of Trilogies of Power.

Triforce of Power of Trilogies.

That's what I meant to say.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Wisdom?

Wisdom.

Triforce of Power of Trilogies.

See, it takes wisdom.

Triforce of Wisdom of Power.

Triforce of Wisdom of Trilogies.

My wisdom is drained after trying to get through that.

I forgot to preface my why I picked Street Fighter for wisdom, but I think that's because it's obvious that it's a wise choice.

Yeah, yeah.

We don't have to.

We don't want what happened to Nick just now to happen to you.

We've got to go back.

Power of trilogies of wisdom.

Nice.

My brain is oatmeal.

That's here's the thing.

I loved it.

Yeah.

What is courage?

Hmm.

Good question.

That's a question we have to ask ourselves.

Yeah.

So that we can answer it with what trilogy represents courage.

Courage is high, it is,

you know, that there is something lurking in the darkness, and yet you force yourself to take steps forward, to confront the unknown,

to challenge yourself, though you have shaking hands, though you have

nerves shattered by fear.

And what greater fear can there be than losing all your souls?

Wow.

Dark souls, one,

dark souls, two,

Dark Souls 3.

The only FromSoft trilogy that exists.

Though I would argue that Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Elden Ring are a trilogy.

I don't know that there is a game more

important to modern game design than Dark Souls 1, except for Demon Souls.

But Demon Souls is like, it's like getting, it's like having access to the Oasis demo demo tape.

Yeah.

You know, if you've heard it, you're like, holy shit, this band's going to be big.

But it's not until definitely maybe that you're like, oh, this band is big.

Same way, Demon Souls, you hear it, you're like, fuck, this is incredible.

Are people playing this?

Nobody's playing it.

Then Dark Souls 1 rolls around, and suddenly, here in the year 2024, I'm using save points in Stellar Blade, which respawn all the enemies.

Who?

Who gave us that courage from Soft?

What courage do we have to exchange for it?

Our own to walk down hallways where any regular mob can fucking wipe us out.

Dark Souls one, two, and three.

That's courage.

Wow.

And that's America.

Matt.

Oh, it's also America?

Yeah, it's also America.

Okay, I didn't realize.

Okay.

I followed.

Oh, yeah, yeah, it makes.

I wanted to make sure I heard it.

What is courage?

You know, when you really stop and think about it, what is courage?

What is it?

Is it going through a platforming puzzle one time, making a mistake, and dying and having to start at the main menu again?

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

Perhaps it's going through a platforming puzzle, making a mistake, and reversing your mistake by rewinding time.

Wow.

Should have seen this one coming from here.

And learning from your mistake.

It takes courage to learn.

It takes courage to fail and and courage to learn from your mistakes.

I agree.

My

final pick of the Triforce for the courage part of the Triforce.

Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time, Prince of Persia, Warrior Within, and Prince of Persia, The Two Thrones.

Three games that I absolutely loved.

Memories of them being fantastic.

Haven't revisited them in a long time.

Would like to to see if they hold up.

But those games, to me, the prince is such a good, courageous character.

And I would be hard-missed, hard-pressed to think of a character that is as courageous as him, as he.

It also takes courage to opportunistically pivot to like a new metal slash Zack Snyder aesthetic for the second entry, and then for the third one, be like, ah, we should not have done that.

Yeah, just go back to the storybook look of the original.

We'll go back to that and we'll get the voice actor from the first one again.

And we'll just not mention this.

Sorry, we're sorry.

He's not Emo anymore.

That takes courage to admit your mistake and to go in a different direction.

I remember playing the first, the second game, Prince of Persia Warrior Within.

For some reason, I was on a family vacation, brought my PlayStation 2.

We stopped at a Target and I had a Target gift card.

I bought Prince of Persia Warrior Within on vacation.

Played it.

And the second I knew it was different was

in the beginning there's this fight with this lady and she like slashes his face with his, with her knife or something, and he goes, you bitch.

And I was like, whoa,

this is crazy.

Great games.

I love them.

And I missed the prince.

And

I hope he comes back in some way soon.

What a truly stupid, stupid era of gaming when everyone just took the wrong lessons from the success of God of War and were like, you know what?

Our game will sell better if it's just like bloody and has cussing in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then Jack and Daxter did a similar pivot.

They did.

They also they had like the jar the the dark Jack and Daxter era.

But then it was just Jack.

Yeah, they got rid of Daxter for that.

He's in the games, but they lost, they dropped, they Sean Parker the titles.

But then they also were like, let's make these more like Grand Theft Auto kind of.

Right.

That's the other thing.

Which did work for them.

I thought it was, those games were really good.

Also on my list, but not, didn't make the cut, unfortunately.

Yeah.

Nick, you're up.

So it falls to me to ask the question:

what is courage?

Some might say courage is, in fact, wisdom.

Others might say triforce is in fact power.

Okay, what the hell?

But I am here to say

that

what makes a good trilogy, a courageous trilogy, can be a a number of factors.

It can be some of my runners-up, which are platform games that are challenging,

or like Donkey Kong Country, or a game where you are isolated and alone and have to explore all on your lonesome, like the Metroid Prime trilogy, or even one where you have to battle Lucifer himself, the Diablo trilogy, although I've disqualified that because Diablo 4 very much is part of the whole.

So I don't think I can pick that.

What I am going to pick comes with a different sort of courage.

The courage to believe, the courage that a long-anticipated sequel will in fact someday actually be made.

Two of the greatest games of all time, the most influential games of all time.

Fans have been anticipating a follow-up.

for decades.

And I am choosing to believe that Valve will stop just reaping profits from Counter-Strike, from the Steam Store, from the Steam Deck, and will in fact commit some development resources towards making the final entry of the Half-Life trilogy.

My Triforce of Courage is Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, and I'm choosing to believe that Half-Life 3 will in fact be released someday, maybe 25 years from now, but someday it will come out.

This

Half-Life trilogy is my Triforce of Courage.

What the fuck?

Nick asked if anybody had any rules or anything.

Didn't say anything that could even hint at this.

I also didn't assume that one of the rules we should specify is that there need to be three games.

Okay, yeah, you're right.

Well, look, I could have said Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life Alex, or, you know, Half-Life 2, episode 1, 2, and 3, or something like that.

But I don't think that's courageous.

I think it's courageous to pick a game that may never come out, but I think will come out.

Half-Life, 1, 2, and 3.

The Half-Life trilogy is my Triforce of Courage.

How many like

I'll accept it?

Look, I mean, what can we do?

Are we going to not say he can't?

Did you have an alt?

Do you want me to pivot to an alt?

No, no, no.

I mean, he's

going to say Pac-Man, and we'll be like, that's one game.

Yeah.

How many Half-Life games are there past two that aren't technically Half-Life 3, right?

Like, there's Half-Life Episode 1 and 2, and Alex, is that it?

The Steam Deck game that was set in that world, kind of.

I don't know if that counts.

Yeah, I mean, some of those were like, I guess it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot about Lost Coast.

There's also the, there was a Half-Life 1 expansion that I think was made by Gearbox.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not sure how canonical that one is considered.

Yeah, Lost Coast episode 1, Episode 2, and Half-Life Alex.

But yeah, episode 3 didn't come out.

And

I mean,

you could say maybe the Portal games are also in that universe, but they're not canonical Half-Life games.

Hey, you know, I also could have said Portal 1, 2, and 3, anticipating a Portal 3 somewhere.

Okay, well, the more that you do it to some of other games,

you can't do that.

Would be cool.

Hey, I'll take more Portal.

You kidding me?

Yeah.

All right, let's recap our Triforce of trilogies.

I'll go first.

Triforce of Power, Castlevania Advanced Trilogy, Triforce of Wisdom, Baldur's Gate Trilogy, Triforce of Courage.

My belief that someday there will be a Half-Life trilogy.

Heather, how about yourself?

Sonic 1, 2, and 3 is the Triforce of Power.

Street Fighter 2, 3, and 4, the Triforce of Wisdom.

And Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3 is Courage.

Wow.

Wow.

Triforce of Power, Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.

Wisdom, Metal Gear Solid, Gear, Metal Gear Solid 2, Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater.

And then finally, Courage, Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time, Prince of Persia, The Warrior Within, and Prince of Persia, The Two Thrones.

I also have the ones with the most titles, I think.

I like that.

Oh, I didn't go through all the subtitles for everything.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't say Street Fighter 3, Third Strike.

Oh, yeah.

Although there is a trilogy of Street Fighters 3s, which is kind of Street Fighter 3, Street Fighter 3, Second Impact, and Street Fighter 3 Third Strike would have been a funny trilogy, too.

Yeah, that's funny.

Games are complicated.

They are.

There's so many of them.

There's so many of them.

Do you remember?

I was Matt picking the Metal Gear Solid trilogy.

Had me.

Do you remember this, Heather, when someone on NeoGAF, this was like 15 years ago, just made

a fake press release that Konami was developing a game, Metal Gear Solid colon triology that was a collection of like all the, you know, you know, of

uh you know the the Metal Gear Solid one, two, and three like remastered.

Um, and then IGN just picked it up as a news story.

But just I remember the phrase, the subtitle Trilogy I guess just sounded so perfectly plausibly stupid that that's like the kind of thing that you know Kojima would would would would run with instead of trilogy.

I don't remember it, but I just reminded of that.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, that was our Triforce of Trilogies.

Hey, it's time for a segment.

Matt, what do you got here?

Oh, God.

Oh, my God.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

You're one, you're so late.

You are insanely late.

You're like an hour and a half late.

I scared Rochelle.

Because you're supposed to be here before we start recording.

Yeah.

Ranch put in the chat that scared me.

It was just her birthday.

Say sorry to Ranch.

I don't mean to be...

I'm sorry.

I don't mean to be upsetting anybody.

But I do have one question for you, Ranch.

Yeah.

What are you playing?

We already did.

We did.

We already covered this.

What are you doing?

Ranch already, Ranch, in fact, did do the segment, which she doesn't always do, and talked about the Fallout series.

Well, I missed it.

Yeah, you were just, you were just, you're insanely late.

All right.

Like, you were supposed to be here before we started recording even.

And now we've been recording for for well over an hour.

What day is it?

What day is it?

Like what day of the week?

Is it Monday canonically or is it Wednesday?

Well, it's what we're recording this on a Wednesday.

We can say that much.

Recording this on the Wednesday.

This episode will be out on the subsequent Monday.

Is it always Wednesday when we record?

That's not anyways.

Not always.

It changes things up.

And again, the schedule shuffled a little bit because Matt was under the weather and we went remote.

Well, I've been to three buildings.

I'm going to be able to get to this.

No one's blaming you.

I'm just saying the circumstances that exist.

I don't need to make excuses to the fucking Resident Evil merchant.

I've been to three buildings looking for you guys.

Three buildings?

Yeah.

There's like a building where you guys used to record.

Wow, a lot of security there.

Yeah,

that's kind of like visiting the Death Star.

Yeah.

Tried to get in there.

Came to Fisticuffs with a security guard on the bottom floor.

Oh, boy.

Then I was like, oh, right, right, right.

They moved.

So I went to that place on sunset across from where I sleep.

And yes.

And you guys weren't there.

Oh, yeah.

We're remote.

And then I drove to Santa Monica.

Uh-huh.

And I was yelling up and down the streets for Nick.

Right.

Nobody replied.

Yeah,

I don't live there anymore.

And I'm not going to dox myself anymore specifically because I don't want you to try to find me where I now live.

So now you can see that I'm at a single Nick in Santa Monica.

Not a single one.

What?

There's probably some nicks out there.

You didn't know there are.

They didn't want to say, yeah.

They didn't want to say anything.

They didn't want to engage with the shrouded yelling person.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's fair.

The seven more.

Yeah.

Now you can see that I'm at a Starbucks, and this lady, this kind lady, has allowed me to zoom into your call.

Yes.

Which is why it took me a while.

She looks petrified.

So, I mean, allowed maybe,

you know, she may be fearing for her life.

I don't.

i've told her that i would not harm her and then uh-huh and then didn't like how

huh why

telling someone you will not harm them seems kind of like a threat like so like it was on the table you know i would like i would assume like hey you're not gonna harm me just because i'm just living my life in a starbucks all right well

since you guys have already done this segment i guess my work here is done i just wanted to make sure i got i you know it's contractual that i got to show up in order to get paid so i don't want to Yeah, we got to pay you now.

Hey,

actually,

Resident Evil Merchant, we never asked you this.

What are you playing?

What?

Nick.

Well, I don't know.

I want to know.

That's sweet.

I'm playing.

So there's this bar in Los Angeles called the Cat and Fiddle.

I've been playing darts there.

Okay.

Sure.

I like that place.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

I like the original location better.

I like the original location better.

That's kind of of a bummer.

It had to move.

The food is good at the new location.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Beans.

Then

beans.

Yeah,

cat and fiddle.

Beans.

That's what you get off the menu order side of beans.

Did you just order beans?

I'm going to bring up the cat and fiddle menu because I don't remember this specifically.

Maybe it's on there.

I feel like I got like a steak sandwich there or something.

I think I've definitely done like fish and chips.

Alright, so hold on.

I'm playing that.

Are you looking at the menu?

Of course he is.

Yeah, you know, they got like like a veggie sausage roll, a kiddie salad, sticky toffee pudding.

It's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like upscale gastro puby food.

They get some savory pies, some sandwiches.

It's English adjacent.

A little bit English, isn't it?

It is.

I like that.

That's funny.

Why are you talking like that?

I was just doing an accent, just kind of like a.

What?

Sometimes

people from different places sound different.

But that's the only one I'll do.

I have no experience of that.

So, yeah, playing darts at cat and fiddle.

The only thing I can figure is that they have a cat and fiddle breakfast, which comes with eggs, beans, and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That one.

That one.

So you just got a side of beans off of the breakfast platter.

Yeah.

Yes.

What is a clarification of the breakfast?

Did you think there was a little bit of a drink?

That's reasonable.

No, I just was

not sure if they actually had beans, but yes, it is an English sort of pub concept, so naturally they would have a proper English breakfast.

Tomato sauce.

Excellent.

Yeah, they look good.

They're delicious.

So, yeah, darts.

What do you want to do is load up on baked beans before playing around at darts.

That's just a fun night out.

Darts and farts.

Yeah, I love darts.

And

I've recently rescued a dog.

Oh, that's very sweet.

Who said two, am I right?

Yeah.

Am you?

Yes.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Never mind.

We can't.

I can't follow that you take that at face value.

We can't follow up.

We can't follow this up.

Every single thing you say

with a question version of what you just said.

Because the thing that you said that didn't make sense, can you make it make sense?

Yeah, we can't do this for everything.

Because then we got Nick looking up beans.

i'm telling you i'm eating this cat and fiddle breakfast it looks good oh it's fantastic especially the beans part uh you can ask do you know they'll that like at a restaurant you can ask for almost any any cook of your egg yeah i've i i think that's part of the fun of ordering eggs you know i usually

scrambled but uh they told me

like i like i go like an over medium these days i like overeat i like a wet egg all the way through wet

Okay, so

darts, dog, right?

I was telling you I had rescued a dog, and I'm playing a little game of fetch with that little guy.

Those are the two games I'm playing.

Darts

and fetch.

Wow.

You're kind of just living life, and that's that's really the ultimate game.

I turned over a new leaf like two years ago, remember?

Yeah, that's true.

Good for you.

Good for you.

Thank you.

Glad to hear that.

I'll try to be on time next week, but it's good to see you.

Yeah, don't let it happen again.

Don't change where you're doing whatever on the day.

Nick's going to throw me under the bus, so I'll just go ahead and say it.

We updated the Google Calendar is all I'm going to say.

This is the thing.

You just got to get it.

I know there's like a Google Doc that you look at that Matt writes you messages in.

Maybe we could have put something in there.

But I just, if you can, if you can't get with a modern calendar that like everyone has this on their phones these days.

Okay.

So just please try to set the

phone to the business account.

You can use the money we pay you to buy your own phone.

What am I buying?

You didn't know you could spend your money on whatever you want?

Aren't you a merchant?

Do you understand the basics of the economy?

This is...

I'm going to go to the Apple store, you guys.

This is great.

What am I buying?

All right.

I'm going to get an iPhone.

This is...

all right.

I'll see you guys next week.

And I I promise I'll be on time.

Maybe need a clarification on the calendar and how to set that up.

Well, we'll we'll get we'll get that going.

Matt, I'll give you put some copy-paste some instructions in that Google Doc for you.

But it's great to see a Resident Evil merchant.

Take care of that dog and make sure it's well fed.

And yeah,

have fun out there.

Yeah, and God bless you.

God bless you.

God bless you guys.

Oh, that means a lot coming from you.

Okay, you can have this back.

You can take...

Nope.

Just log out of the Zoom.

I don't.

No, just log out of it.

What is that?

Coffee is late to be.

The woman was trembling.

Was my English accent so bad that the merchant didn't recognize it as English?

Like, because isn't he English?

I don't think you can...

Like, ascribe any particular national identity to the Resident Evil merchant.

I don't know if he kind of exists outside of time and place.

Some of the words are like

an Australian accent that he says.

Some of them are like it's kind of all over the map.

Well,

anyway, I have a, well, that was fun.

I haven't, yeah, it was fun.

It was.

It's nice.

Nice to evacuate him from his segment.

We give him grief, but he's like a fun guy that we know.

It's fun.

It's fun when he's here.

I missed him when he wasn't here earlier.

Yeah, you know, it's like it's one of these things you take for granted.

We know a lot of interesting people.

He's a cool guy.

I think we should give him his flowers every now and then.

He's really great.

I have a new segment that doesn't have a title at the moment, but why not give you the basic premise of the segment?

Okay.

I have some video games.

As we know, that sometimes they have three of them in a series, but sometimes there are many.

In this segment, I'm going to challenge both of you.

I'm going to name a video game series.

Tell you how many titles there are in the series.

You're going to tell me how many titles you think you can name and then give me the names of the games.

So, is this like a

if I'm like, is this one of those barter sort of things where I'm like, I could name three, and then there's like, I could name four, and then I'm like, I could name five, and then Heather can be like, name five.

You know, is that how it's going to kind of work?

Yeah, baby, like that's one-opping each other, exactly.

Got it.

Got it.

What this seem this seems challenging, but we'll, we'll

think it's going to be fun.

I don't have, I have, there are three games, okay?

Like, okay, so three, three, three franchises, three franchises.

So, got it.

Let's start with the first one.

This one has been.

Wait, what's the name of the segment?

I doesn't have a name yet.

I won't, we'll maybe think of something.

Um, but the vibe is established, and the rules are set.

Do we all understand?

I got a name for the segment.

Nick's got it.

What do we got?

How many?

I mean, here's the thing that is better than nothing.

I came in with nothing.

You just came up with how many.

That's pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How many

how many how many

how many

so this is a segment called how many and this is how this works

i have some video game franchises here in front of me and i'm gonna tell you how many titles there are in the franchise and you guys are gonna barter back and forth between telling me how many that you can name and challenge each other to then name however many they say Does that make sense?

Sure.

Here we go.

This first,

the first franchise, Castlevania.

There are 23 titles in the mainline Castlevania franchise.

How many do you think you can name?

You said there are 22?

23.

23.

23.

I'll start the bidding at 12.

12.

Nick says he can do 12.

I can name two.

Okay, well.

Then I think, Heather, you should challenge Nick to name 12.

Oh, I challenge you to name, to name 12.

Oh, it's because

you should, like, if you can name 13, you could say, I can name 13.

I can name 13.

So it's the inverse of this game show that was on Game Show Network back in the day called Name That Tune.

And it was like, I can name a song in two notes.

Oh, I can name it in one.

And then they'd be like, go ahead.

And it would just be like, boop.

And the person would be like, I don't know what song that is.

All right.

So, yeah,

I call Nick at 12.

I call him.

Okay.

Castlevania, Castlevania 2, Simon's Quest, Castlevania 3, Super Castlevania 4,

Castlevania Rondeau of Blood, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Castlevania

the three I mentioned, Circle of the Moon, Arya of Sorrow, A Harmony of Dissonance.

What are we at?

We're at nine.

Fuck.

Okay, three more.

Castlevania X, is that one of them?

Or is that Castlevania X Rondo of Blood?

Is it the same time?

There's maybe

a famous vampire's name in there as well.

Oh, yeah.

Ah, fuck.

Like the most famous vampire?

Yeah, it's not.

But Castlevania 3, Dracula's Curse was Castlevania 3.

That's right.

It's Castlevania X.

Is it just X Dracula?

Is that all it is?

Dracula X.

I'll give it to you.

Dracula X, yeah, sorry.

10.

10, two more.

What are the modern Castlevanias that I'm not thinking of?

Why did my brain.

Oh, Castlevania.

It's the DS one is like something like a

Divinity of Shadows or Darkness of Shadows, something like that, but it's not that.

It's maybe

it's certainly blank of blank.

Dissonance of.

And it's in that dissonance.

Maybe it's a synonym for mourning.

Hmm.

Oh, Dirge?

Not Dirge.

I can't remember this one.

I know it's something.

I think it's a new

death.

Maybe it's a type of soap as well.

Dial?

I'm giving you bad clues.

Is it dial?

Is it dial?

No, but it could be.

The thing is, it could be.

Dial of soap?

Is it dial of soap?

It's dial of soap.

It's

we got you at 10.

Help me.

Okay, so so what what platforms am I missing?

Have I

on the couple for the PlayStation 2?

There's one for the WiiWare.

There's several for the DS.

You got all the Game Boy Advance ones.

There's a couple for

are any of these compilations or collections?

They are not.

No, and I didn't do the ones that

did.

Those are different.

That's a different thing to me.

Yeah, the fucking PS2 ones are tripping me up.

Uh

uh and then are there any of the Sega Genesis that you missed, too?

Oh, what's the Genesis one I miss?

I said Rondo of Blood.

That's right.

Uh, it's the

blood is a part of it.

I can't remember what the subtitle is.

It's like blood in regards to families, perhaps.

Hmm.

Oh, Castlevania Bloodline.

Okay.

11.

Yeah, okay.

And then

if I could get the fucking DS one, I'd be golden.

There are three DS.

What are the other DS ones?

I'm forgetting.

Were they also Metroidvanias?

Dicks of Suckage.

It's probably Dicks of Suckage.

They don't follow the same DS subtitle, unfortunately.

Right.

But are they like, do you know, do you know the style of game?

Are they also in that?

I believe there's only.

Okay.

I'm blanking on them.

I guess I tap out at 11.

At 11.

You were looking for Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow was the one.

Dawn of Sorrow.

Dawn of Sorrow.

Oh, that's what the.

It wasn't a D.

The D wasn't the morning.

The S was the morning.

Dawn of Sorrow.

Oh, and you're thinking of morning

as in the feeling.

Yes, more of the time of day.

M-O-U-R-I-N.

Yeah, okay.

And I-N-G.

Okay, got it.

But that was fun.

I liked hearing you do that.

What are the other ones I missed?

What were the PS2 ones?

Or Heather, do you know any I've missed?

No.

I don't know any of them.

The ones for the Game Boy, of course, we have,

Did you say?

I don't remember if you said Belmont's Revenge.

You might have.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Well, I said Simon's Quest, but not Belmont's Revenge.

Yeah, so it was Castlevania the Adventures for Game Boy, Castlevania

to Belmont's Revenge.

There's Castlevania Chronicles for the Sharp X68000

in the PlayStation, later released for the PlayStation.

You did Rondo of Blood, Bloodlines, Dracula X, Symphony of the Night.

There was Legends, Castlevania Legends for the Game Boy in Symphony.

I'm totally fair.

Castlevania for Nintendo 64,

which was colloquially called Castlevania 64.

Then there's also Legacy of Darkness for the N64, for the PlayStation 2, Lament of Innocence.

I should have gotten Castlevania 64.

That's the one that was a gimme that I should have remembered.

I feel like some of these

technically say it, but you were thinking of the NES one.

Yeah, no, if I didn't say castlevania uh 64 but i but like like castlevania the adventure rebirth i have no memory of this was like this was a wear game i guess there's um yeah adventure rebirth for the for the wear then there's um

uh lament of innocence i said for ps2

curse of darkness curse of darkness

okay portrait of ruin for ds and order of ecclesia for ds

wow let's get castlevania back out there i'd be interested in a new castlevania why not yeah i mean konami just They're going to Konami on the rudderless ship.

Let's go on to the next

series.

I started too high, though.

I started the bidding too high.

I should have started earlier.

That's kind of the fun of the exercise.

That's true.

So, Heather gets a point.

I got a point?

That seems unfair, but okay.

That's how it works, right?

That's how these things work.

Yeah, it's like

you challenge me.

If I get it, then I get the point.

But if I don't get it, then you get the point.

Okay.

So, Heather's.

I think that's how it works.

Yeah, that's how it works.

There are 22 titles in the Donkey Kong series.

Oh, fuck.

How many can you name?

Sorry, sorry.

Are we including?

Are these all mainline Donkey Kongs?

Are we including other games that are like peripheral, like, you know, spin-off games?

I'm not including Mario and Donkey Kong.

Okay.

But based on the Wikipedia entry,

there are a lot of Donkey Kong games listed there.

That's where I source this from.

And I will got it.

Got it.

Keep going.

There's maybe one in there that

seems like a spin-off, but it's in the main entry.

Okay.

I'll start the bidding at seven.

At seven.

I can do seven Donkey Kong games.

22 total.

I'll go a little lower this time.

What about you, Heather?

I can do one.

Heather.

So I challenge.

Okay.

I challenge Nick.

Okay, so Nick has to name seven.

Okay,

Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3.

There were the Donkey Kong games for the Game Boy, but I can't remember the subtitle.

I'll go to Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2, Donkey Kong Country 3.

And then I can say Donkey Kong 64.

That brings me to 7, right?

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Some of those weren't names.

You want me to get subtitles?

You can't.

I mean, like, I could have just named Donkey Kong over and over again.

Yeah, but I mean, like, if I said Donkey Kong 4, that's not a game.

So,

like,

Donkey Kong.

Okay, so Donkey Kelly, Donkey Kong64 doesn't have a subtitle.

Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr.

and Donkey Kong 3 all don't have subtitles, correct?

Donkey Kong Country does not have a subtitle.

So we're just talking about Donkey Kong Country 2 and Donkey Kong Country 3.

That's right.

One of them is

Dixie's.

Is Donkey Kong Country 2 just Dixie Kong Country?

Or is that 3?

Yeah, that's 3.

Well, there's more of a subtitle to it as well.

It's Dixie's something.

And then Donkey Kong Country 2.

I don't remember the subtitle.

But anyway, I can keep going.

If you want to swap out with two different ones, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze,

Donkey Kong Country Returns, Donkey Konga, Donkey Konga 2, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, or DK Jungle Beat, I think is the title.

Donkey Kong King of Swing.

Okay.

Nick gets the point.

He's named way more than Seth.

Nick gets the point.

I just.

What was the Donkey Kong Country 2?

Diddy's Kong Kong?

That one's Diddy Kong's Quest.

Yeah, Diddy's Kong Quest.

And then Donkey Kong Country 3 is Dixie Kong's Double Trouble.

Dixie Kong's Double Trouble.

I should have got it.

Is Diddy Kong Racing on this list?

Diddy Kong Racing is on the list.

Okay, got it.

What are we at?

How many more do we have left?

Of the Donkey Kong games,

there's quite a few more.

There's Donkey Kong Jr.

Math.

There's...

Oh, yeah, I should have gotten Donkey Kong Jr.

Donkey Kong.

You named Donkey Konga, Donkey Konga 2, Donkey Konga, Jungle Beat.

There's Donkey Kong Barrel Blast for the Wii.

Oh, right.

I forgot about that game.

And then

I was struggling whether or not to include these.

Because Donkey Kong, there's Donkey Kong 1, 2, and 3 for the Game ⁇ Watch.

I didn't do repeat titles.

Sure, yeah.

There is Donkey Kong Circus and Donkey Kong Hockey for Game and Watch.

Those would sort of be like, if you got those, those would be bonus.

That's kind of bonus.

Nobody would.

And then there's Donkey Kong for the Game Boy.

Donkey Kong Land.

Donkey Kong Land 2.

That's what it was.

Donkey Kong Land 2.

Donkey Kong Land.

It's Donkey Kong Land.

Do those have subtitles?

Just the numbers.

And then

you mentioned King of Swing, and there's also DK Jungle Climber for the DS.

Okay.

I can't remember which is which.

And finally.

All right, it's tied up.

It's tied up.

This is anybody's game.

I've done so much.

Diddy's Conquest.

That's what it is.

There are 20 titles, 20 titles

in the Legend of Zelda series.

Heather, do you want to start the bidding this time?

I can do five.

I can definitely do six.

I can do seven.

I can do eight.

Oh.

Are we including, is our like our remasters or re-releases separate?

They're not included.

Okay.

What are we at?

Snicks at eight.

Holding strong at eight.

Heather, you could either name nine or nine.

Make him name it.

Oh,

I'll go up to ten.

Okay, guys.

Guys, the game is good.

I'm so excited.

This is this is what I'm talking about.

It's tense.

Eleven.

Because the spin-offs is where it gets challenging.

I would say this one has more header lines.

Heather, name 11 Zelda.

Wow.

Legend of Zelda.

I think you're going to get it.

Legend of Zelda

Link's Awakening.

Legend of Zelda Link to the Past.

Legends of Zelda Wind Waker.

Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass.

Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks.

Legend of Zelda.

Ocarina of Time.

Time, Legend of Zelda,

Tears of the Kingdom,

Legend of Zelda.

Oh, the one before Tears of the Kingdom, which is called,

oh fuck, what's the one before Tears of the Kingdom called?

Maybe you know it.

You know, you know it.

It's,

I'm about to lose my

mind?

No.

Oh, that wasn't helpful, I guess.

I'm out of

time.

No.

Once you get it, you'll be like, those were good clues, actually.

What's the count at right now?

We're at eight.

I need to look at my hands.

Oh, Link's Adventure.

Great.

Well, it's not called that.

So no.

It's not?

Legend of Zelda Link's Adventure?

It's called something that's close.

It's close.

I would maybe change the order.

The Adventures of Link?

I'll give it to you.

The Adventures of Link.

Game Boy games is called The Adventures of Link.

It's not Link's Adventure?

Oh, well, it doesn't matter.

The second game in the.

I don't have that Game Boy game.

Zelda 2, The Adventures of Link.

Are you conflating with Link's Awakening?

Which I think you already said.

I already said that one.

Yeah.

All right.

So I'm at

eight.

Or nine.

That was nine.

What's the fucking one with the fucking octopus robots?

What is that game called?

The one that came out on Switch.

It's got the Sheikah slate.

I don't don't know.

Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess.

Legend of Zelda.

Hmm.

Skyward Sword.

Heather?

That's without whatever that one was that I can't remember.

You're the winner.

Wow.

Of the very first.

How many?

That was hard.

How many?

What is it?

What's a...

Yeah, wait, wait, what do we, what do you, so she had 11?

What do we have left?

We have 11 more?

Yeah.

So, wait, can we try to, like, like, there's, let's see, uh, the Minish Cap, was that said?

Minish Cap is on there.

Um, Four Swords Adventures wasn't said.

Four Swords Adventures.

I also have Four Swords standalone as well.

Majora's Mask.

Major's Mask not said.

Yeah.

Um, Skyward Sword, I think you guys.

Yeah.

What's the, what is the fucking Switch one?

Breath of the Wild.

God damn it.

Uh, there's.

Um,

the uh, uh, there's this, the rhythm game, the high rule.

It's not, it's not high rule symphony, but it's something like that one not on the list, unfortunately.

High rule.

There's also the tingles timer or whatever.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like yeah, tingle uh we're missing here freshly touched tingles, and then there's crossbow training on there training not on here.

We are missing the oracle of seasons and oracle of ages.

Oh, of course, of course, yeah, and then and then a link to a link between worlds, yeah, that's right, and then uh, and and Triforce Heroes was on the list as well.

Triforce Heroes, wow, yeah, it was on the it was on, it was

What about Wand of Gamelon?

Wand of Gamelon not on there.

Excuse me, princess.

Excuse me.

That was it for

how many?

That's mentally taxing.

Because if you feel confident, then you're like, quickly, your brain runs out.

I couldn't think of Breath of the Fucking Wild.

I was like, oh, no.

And I think we could do this a million times.

That's a good one.

I like that.

It worked out great.

I'm happy with your

performance.

That was fun, Matt.

Good job.

That was How Many, and that's this week's Get Played.

Our producers, Rochelle Chen, Ranch, Yard underscore, underscore sard.

Our music is by Ben Prenty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

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

Check out our Patreon, patreon.com/slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gun back catalog, plus ad-free, main-freed episodes.

And also our Patreon exclusive show, Get Anime, Matt, where we are in the thick of animehem.

We're in the thick of it, all right, with two C's, and it's it's getting crazy over there.

It's,

if you don't know, we're watching a random anime all month long and doing it as a watch-along, so you'll hear our live reactions to it.

Two different live reactions, one to the discovery of what the anime is, and two, the, uh,

us watching the show.

And so far,

It's been a blast.

It's been the most fun I have all week is doing Animehem.

Like,

there's an element of like

podcasting is tough.

It is like a one and a half hour, two hour performance of like trying to stay engaged.

And like, also talking is hard for me as a person.

This is not natural.

So, right.

So, like, there's, there's always like, I gotta,

I gotta gear up to podcast.

But, but animehem, I was like, fuck, I can't wait to see what we're watching, and I can't wait to see what it is, whether it's good or bad.

And this is

not a spoiler,

but

one of these things that we've watched has already changed my life.

Yes.

Two for two, I would say, on the series that we've pulled, but that may not be the case all month long, but check that out over at patreon.com slash get played.

Wow, what an episode!

What an episode!

And you know what?

I don't think anybody got,

I don't think anybody got played.

I think the merchant got played by showing up at the wrong time.

I think so.

Yeah, he played himself.

Damn, well, you guys have to tell him.

I'm out.

I don't want to.

I'm not going to tell him.

100% not going to tell him.

Ranch will tell him.

Sorry, Ranch.

Okay.

Happy birthday.

That was a head gum podcast.