Get Played's Most Iconic Video Game Character List

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Speaker 2 Team, we've done it.

Speaker 2 We've taken all of the most iconic video game characters of all time and genetically engineered a perfect combination of all of them, all of the attributes of the biggest, most successful video game franchise characters.

Speaker 2 This character is going to be huge.

Speaker 2 We're going to be rolling out some games, and it's going to have all the play styles of all these iconic characters: Lara Croft, Mario, Agent 47, Sonic, Sackboy, Pac-Man, and so many more, all rolled into one just perfect character.

Speaker 2 I'm very, very excited what we did here today. Mario's Mario's mustache, Link's inability to speak, Solid Snake's mullet, Lara Croft's wrath, Master Chief's voice, Pac-Man's ability to eat.

Speaker 2 And you know what he eats? Crash Bandicoot's Wampa fruit. That's right.
He doesn't put it on the front. It's the one thing he eats.

Speaker 2 It's kind of, that's the, that's the sort of. And he eats it really fast, like Sonic would.
He eats it so, so fast. And he's also got Sonic's shoes.
And there's a barcode on his neck as well.

Speaker 2 And pink belly. And he's got a barcode on his neck.
But he definitely has a pink belly, the the pinkest belly you've ever seen.

Speaker 2 And he's also from the old west, like Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption. That's right.
Yeah, and he's

Speaker 2 also from the city. He's also from the city.
That's crazy. He's also from the city.
He's also from the city. Like CJ from Grand Theft Auto.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 we got all these iconic characters all rolled into one.

Speaker 2 It's all one character. You know that phrase, everybody's here? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Everybody is here inside this one character. Everyone is here pulled from Smash Brothers.
What if we took every character from Smash Brothers and smushed them all together and made them into one?

Speaker 2 We have created this, the perfect, most iconic video game character, God's greatest creation, the main character of the ultimate game.

Speaker 2 And what this means going forward is there's only going to be one video game, right? There's only going to be one video game, and it stars this character. I give you Chumbus!

Speaker 2 We list a bunch of names and are objectively correct as we decide the most iconic video game characters of all time this week on Get Played.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played.
I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

Speaker 2 That's me, Nick Weiger, and I am here with our third host, Matt Apodaka. Hello, everyone.

Speaker 1 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where we used to talk about bad games, and it made us so miserable that now we talk about games that we love, games that we hate, games we're playing, games we're thinking about, and this week, game characters.

Speaker 2 Are we markedly less miserable, though? I am.

Speaker 2 I'm definitely less miserable. Okay.

Speaker 1 Though I do think that

Speaker 1 I think back on it really fondly, though. Like, sometimes I'm like, it would be fun to play a fucking terrible Atari 2600 game again.

Speaker 2 Well, we always have that option.

Speaker 2 We can always go back and say, like, hey, we're going to do a one-off and play some garbage. We've done that a few times.
Yeah, we've done it.

Speaker 1 In the format called Game Slop. That's right.

Speaker 2 Cleverly named by Nick Wager. Very good.
Yeah, you know. It's what I do.
It's his bread and butter, as far as I'm concerned. And a lot of things are his bread and butter, actually.

Speaker 2 This guy loves bread and butter. That's true.
And I had some yesterday.

Speaker 1 What's your favorite bread?

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 fuck, Heather.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 sourdough with a bullet.

Speaker 2 I think that I was going to, I didn't want to just say the obvious one, but it feels like a really high-quality sourdough. It's just hard to top.

Speaker 1 That is an excellent answer.

Speaker 2 But you know, I really like a seeded loaf, like something with like, you know, like a,

Speaker 2 I'm into that.

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 i really like a good rye a quality rye rye a little too

Speaker 2 ready for me you know what i mean it depends on the rye i mean the like this is the thing it's one of those bread is one of those things where if you get it from a good bakery uh shout out to bub and grandma shout out to tyler out here at uh and oh hell yeah tyler uh what's up tyler um who i know listens to the show the the

Speaker 2 like that's like a local bakery here and they just like you get anything from there and it's just like this it doesn't fucking matter This is all hitting.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't even know what this, what, what loaf this is. This is not a loaf I've heard of before, but you know what? Yeah.
I'm having a great time.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing: you put some bread in front of me, I'm going to eat it and say, this is good.

Speaker 2 Let me flip a question back at you. What's your favorite kind of bread?

Speaker 1 I think a crispy baguette.

Speaker 2 Great baguette. Fantastic.
Crispy outside. I love it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Super soft inside.
Super soft. Yeah.
Like, like the kind that you get sometimes, you'll get it at like a shitty pizza restaurant. Sure.

Speaker 1 And you'll be like, how is this bread so good and so plain?

Speaker 2 One of my very first jobs was I worked at Albertson's, which is a grocery store chain. Yes.
Great fried chicken at Albertson's. Oh, this is the problem.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I worked there. I worked sometimes at the opening shift, sometimes worked closing shift.
Oftentimes,

Speaker 2 I worked basically all hours of the day. Yeah.
Could you believe it? Afternoons, they're pumping up that chicken. They're getting fried chicken going.

Speaker 2 You're smelling that chicken all throughout the store. But in the mornings, fresh loaves of French bread right out of the air.
Yeah, I remember those loaves.

Speaker 2 And I just remember being like 19 years old and being like, I'm going to buy one of these for $2.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And eat it all day and just eat a loaf of bread when you're 19 years old.
Could never do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Shouldn't even have one piece.

Speaker 1 I was a real fan of the rotisserie chicken from a grocery store as a two-day meal when broke.

Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely. They used to, so this is what, I think it was an Albertson's, but it might have been a Vaughan's.
No, they're

Speaker 2 whatever.

Speaker 2 I don't know how big these

Speaker 2 regional grocery chains are.

Speaker 1 Aren't they all like one?

Speaker 2 That's the thing. A lot of these are all owned by like Kroger, Safeway, and they get the same corporate masters.
But anyway, the

Speaker 2 whichever store it was, they had that. They had like a rotisserie chicken and like a side of either potato salad or max salad and then four Hawaiian rolls and it was like $5.99.

Speaker 2 It It was like an absurd value. And yeah, that's absolutely like a two days' worth of meals.
I invented a little sandwich at my grocery store.

Speaker 2 Matt, I mutual invention, I also came up with that sandwich. You take the Hawaiian roll, you put a little bit of MAC salad on there, and you put a little bit of chicken on top of it.

Speaker 2 I wasn't putting MAC salad like a psycho, but

Speaker 2 how dare you? What is MAC salad? Macaroni salad. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, oh, wait, what? You were putting that on a sandwich?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I could see it. But it's.
It's wet, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Are we talking about wet? Yeah, you can have it.

Speaker 2 It's okay if it's wet. You can have wet ingredients on a sandwich.
Do you think it's like,

Speaker 2 is that like in place of like a mustard kind of? Because it has a mustard quality to it. You don't necessarily need another condiment on top of it.
It's doing the job of that.

Speaker 2 But you could put more mustard if you want it. You put more mustard, but also the potato salad.
If I was done with the potato salad, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What else? What's happening on the rest of the sandwich, though? That's all you need.

Speaker 2 Nick famously does not do it. Bread, macaroni, bread.
No, no, no. You put chicken on there.
You put rotisserie chicken onto that bad boy. That's your protein.
It's good.

Speaker 2 But I've also heard of like a spaghetti sandwich.

Speaker 2 I've heard of a spaghetti.

Speaker 1 I've got a spaghetti sandwich. I eat spaghetti sandwich.

Speaker 2 I would do it.

Speaker 1 That's got meat in it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's got meat in it.

Speaker 1 I thought he was just putting bread, macaroni, bread.

Speaker 2 No, it put rotisserie. That's what I was saying.
It was taking some rotisserie chicken on there.

Speaker 2 That was the other element.

Speaker 1 It made this gesture like it was like.

Speaker 2 I was like,

Speaker 2 I would do King's Hawaiian roll.

Speaker 2 Honey mustard because the deli was right there. Ooh, okay.

Speaker 2 Fresh fried chicken tender, my God.

Speaker 2 Well, there, now you're cooking. That's a great, that's a great combo.
Yeah, the ladies back there loved me.

Speaker 2 They loved me and were in love with me.

Speaker 1 I worked at a grocery store. Did we all work at grocery stores?

Speaker 2 You worked at one. I worked at one.
Did you have Survivor's Kill when the pandemic happened? Because I did.

Speaker 2 I was like Jeremy Renner at the end of the hurt locker. I was like, I got to get back to bagging.
I was like, I don't know what else to do.

Speaker 1 I worked at a grocery store here in LA called yummy.com. Yes.

Speaker 2 Not from here.

Speaker 1 There is a branch near here, but the original branch that I worked at was now gone. Ah, I believe.
Because that area gentrified into oblivion.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I could not afford the sandwiches that they made at the grocery store

Speaker 1 while working at the grocery store.

Speaker 1 So I'd buy a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly, put it in my car, and then like covet our own sandwiches and like be like, one day I'm going to be rich and I'm going to order the yummy BLT and I'm going to eat it from start to finish.

Speaker 1 It's going to be incredible. And

Speaker 1 they have incredible sandwiches, but yeah, that's like a $15 sandwich.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. I mean,

Speaker 2 that's more than an hour's labor back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 A good sandwich is like one of the best things you can have.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 And if we had, you know, some other podcast, we could talk about it all we wanted, but we should probably move on to talk about something else. Wait, Rancha,

Speaker 2 you ever work at a grocery store? I did work at a grocery store. Wow,

Speaker 2 three or four.

Speaker 2 What did you do?

Speaker 1 We had a juice bar coffee bar and I worked there, but then sometimes I would be called to cashier.

Speaker 2 That feels stressful, like the juice bar coffee bar in a grocery store. Isn't that high volume? It is stressful.

Speaker 1 And it was this bougie grocery store in Malibu, actually.

Speaker 2 Oh, man. What a nightmare.

Speaker 2 Because you got to work with rich people.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so. A lot of them were really mean.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. A lot of them were very, very mean.
And I cried a lot on that job. Jesus Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Can I say I also cried at my job, which because Yummy was when I worked there, which was, you know, mid-2000s,

Speaker 1 it was either extremely rich people or extremely shut-in people who were ordering groceries because it was also the only place it was like that and Pink Dot doing it.

Speaker 1 And the rich people, I was shocked because I'd never had exposure to rich people were so mean.

Speaker 2 So mean.

Speaker 1 So mean. And I was like, what if I had this money? I'd be so happy.
Yeah. Like, I don't understand.

Speaker 2 But then the most miserable people are the absolute richest. It's guys like Sumner Redstone, these fucking, like, 90-year-old ghouls.

Speaker 2 These incontinent guys on feeding tubes who are just like, feed me and fuck me. Like, they're just like

Speaker 2 fucking literal monsters.

Speaker 2 If you listen to,

Speaker 2 there's audio of Sumner Redstone.

Speaker 2 like like calling like like leaving dirty voicemails.

Speaker 2 And it's just like it's just a fucking nasty he's dying. He's rotting.
Yeah. And he's just talking about like,

Speaker 2 he's propositioning women for three ways with him and Robert Evans, the producer, who's also like just old as shit at the time. It's the fucking nastiest.
And he's also just like miserable and angry.

Speaker 2 And this is your white noise before you go to sleep.

Speaker 2 Hey, Nick.

Speaker 2 Why don't you come over here and fuck my potatoes?

Speaker 2 On my way, buddy.

Speaker 2 Rochelle, what's your favorite bread? A sourdough.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a very sour sourdough.

Speaker 2 It's a great sourdough. I've always just loved it ever since I was a kid.

Speaker 2 I remember there was a time when I got my braces tightened when I had braces. Nerd.

Speaker 2 What the hell? In this room?

Speaker 2 Me roasting Nick mercilessly and then being offended that he called me a nerd.

Speaker 2 What the hell? I also had braces.

Speaker 2 I remember one time I got them tightened.

Speaker 2 This is nerdy and sad. And I tried to take a bite out of sourdough bread and it was too toasted and I couldn't take the bite.
Oh, man. And it hurt, like, it hurt, and I couldn't do it.

Speaker 2 So then I did cry.

Speaker 2 All I wanted was a sourdough bread so bad. And I had to eat fucking like soup or whatever.

Speaker 1 I'm going to invent a sandwich right here, right now.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Look, fuck video game.
Sandwiches rock. Sandwiches are so much better.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 This is in line with what I thought Nick was

Speaker 2 saying. Okay, so this is a joke sandwich? No, it's a real sandwich.

Speaker 1 I think it's a good sandwich, maybe. Okay.
Sourdough bread, slice of New York pizza, ranch dressing, sourdough bread.

Speaker 2 Okay, so you said it wasn't a joke.

Speaker 2 What the fuck? It's interesting. I could see it.
I could see it being good.

Speaker 2 I could see it being good just because those components are good, but I could also see it being like a little starchy and heavy. But I like it conceptually.

Speaker 2 I have the, I have an alt for this sandwich. Okay, okay.
If this is what we're going to do for 90 minutes, I honestly couldn't be happier.

Speaker 2 Sourdough bread,

Speaker 2 tomato sauce. Yep.
Melted mozzarella cheese. Yes.
Pepperonis. Yes.

Speaker 2 Sourdough bread. But ranch dressing.
Oh, ranch dressing as well.

Speaker 1 Yes, there we go.

Speaker 2 Sounds fine.

Speaker 2 You take out the pizza crust. Unfortunately.

Speaker 2 One of the best breads we got too. But you could have a sourdough pizza crust.

Speaker 1 What if it was a crispy crust, though? Because then you get a crunch in there.

Speaker 2 Honestly, why don't we do it?

Speaker 2 I'm so fucking hungry right now. Let's get some papadillas in there.

Speaker 2 We're recording way too close to dinner time.

Speaker 2 Just on the Albertsons thing, real quick. I've told this story before on the podcast, I'm pretty sure, but I'll tell it again.
That's what podcasting is.

Speaker 2 I used to work in a video game studio. This was when I was doing video game design, and we were like right next door to an Albertsons.

Speaker 2 And so I would go over to that Albertsons either for lunch or to like get a snack or whatever. I go there all the time.

Speaker 2 And one day I was like, I went and got an afternoon snack and I got like a four-piece of fried chicken from Albertson's, brought it back to the studio. The end.

Speaker 2 I lived happily ever after.

Speaker 2 So I brought it back to the studio.

Speaker 2 I brought it back to the studio. And as I like get out of the elevator, they're being like, hey, we're doing a meeting real quick.
We got like an all-disci meeting.

Speaker 2 So I bring it in to the conference room and it's the entire design team. It's all of the designers.

Speaker 2 And it turns out,

Speaker 2 and this is a quality of mine that you've no doubt picked up from working with me: is like, I am a bit oblivious, and I also kind of don't give a fuck. So I had my chicken out just on the table.

Speaker 2 I just brought it with me and I just started eating it as the meeting began.

Speaker 2 I'm eating like a chicken drumstick. And my boss,

Speaker 2 the design lead, is like, okay, so we had this. I'll just say Matt because you're here, but that wasn't his name.
He said,

Speaker 2 unfortunately, we had to let Matt go. And it was very painful for everybody.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I'm just really sorry. I'm just eating more triggers, like making noise.

Speaker 2 And my buddy said next to me, he goes, There goes Wager chomping on chicken.

Speaker 2 Dude's got to have his chicken. And then everyone's just laughing at me.
The thing is,

Speaker 2 you take, you know,

Speaker 2 this story is amazing. You take this, you put Tim Robinson in it, you put it on Netflix.
This is the best sketch on Netflix.

Speaker 2 Like, what? It's 12:30. Am I not supposed to eat my chicken?

Speaker 2 This incredulous dumb guy. Yeah.
It rocks.

Speaker 2 You don't know how hungry I am.

Speaker 2 I know this is bad, but I'm so hungry I have to.

Speaker 2 I think fried chicken is also one of the top, one of the top foods. One of her favorite foods.
One of the best ones.

Speaker 1 I'm a huge fan of fried chicken. I love it.

Speaker 2 I feel like I could recommend you some that would change your mind. Okay.

Speaker 1 I always feel like it's a little,

Speaker 1 I don't know. I like tempura.
I like tempura chicken and tempura of shrimp and all that.

Speaker 2 Caraage.

Speaker 1 It's like a, yeah, I like a caraage.

Speaker 2 It's good.

Speaker 1 But fried chicken, I just haven't found the spices always make me burp afterwards.

Speaker 2 I would, I would, I think if you broaden, like broaden your idea of fried chicken, it becomes like a cuisine that like basically every culture has a version of. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Like green fried chicken is very different, very good.

Speaker 2 I love Gus's is like a local chain that I really like.

Speaker 2 That's every time I get it. Gus's might be from Nashville.
I think it's from Nashville and it's here and it's all over. I got a frantic text from my mom one day.
They opened one in Long Beach.

Speaker 2 She was very excited. Similarly, frantic text when it closed.
She was like, I'm devastated. Yeah.
It's very, very good fried chicken. Some of these places overexpand.

Speaker 2 All right, we've got to talk about video games. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 A nice, casual, 15-minute diversion where we just hung out, talked about bread.

Speaker 1 I'm so here on the main feed here.

Speaker 1 This is my first time back in the studio. That's right in six fucking months.
Wild. And I am so fucking happy to be here.

Speaker 1 I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 I've been watching you guys on Zoom. It has been miserable.
Also, it's really exhausting to Zoom. It just is.

Speaker 2 It's more tiring than talking in person.

Speaker 1 Really? It is, which is weird.

Speaker 1 I think you suffer from the same

Speaker 1 horror of humanity. Yeah, sure.
So, like, it's shocking to me that it is harder to talk over Zoom.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But it is.

Speaker 1 It makes it worse. Yeah.
So I'm really happy to be here.

Speaker 2 We're happy to have you, yeah, yes.

Speaker 1 Uh, I have watched through the screen as you guys have, um, fended off the Resident Evil merchant, right?

Speaker 2 We did really good,

Speaker 2 we've been doing a good job.

Speaker 1 I've watched, I watched you guys have uh, Y2K Fest in here, it was pretty cool, that was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 Um, and I watched you guys, uh, I watched you who was the host who came in and head-to-toe, like Salmon Pink, the guest.

Speaker 2 Um, yeah, we had a,

Speaker 2 I think I know who you mean.

Speaker 2 We had a super pink guest who came in. Yeah, we had this one guy that he was so pink.
Yeah, that was a good one. It was Earthworm Jim.
Earthworm Jim was a stream

Speaker 2 without his suit. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I'm here, and I'm happy to be here. It is great to see you guys in person.

Speaker 2 What a treat. I got to, I mentioned this already on Get Animate over on our Patreon, but I witnessed

Speaker 2 like Anakin Skywalker meet Obi-Wan Kenobi. I witnessed the first IRL meeting of Heather and Ranch.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 Which the listeners will hear about happening after they hear this episode.

Speaker 2 Is that out sequence out? Okay, good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is chronologically the first time I've met Ranch, even though I met her yesterday when we recorded Get Anime. Got it, right?

Speaker 2 Fucking tenant shit. Oh, man, this is so tenant.
Fucking temporal pincerman. Who's directing my life? Christopher Nolan?

Speaker 2 This is crazy stuff we're talking about here. Also on Get Anime, you'll hear.
It's really fun to see Heather not react in person.

Speaker 2 You call it fun, I call it the worst thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 No, I've

Speaker 2 battle scarred. I

Speaker 2 can't get to me.

Speaker 2 Yesterday, Heather

Speaker 2 gave me my sweet little boy, Sora, as an amiibo, and now he's on my shelf. And you'll hear me get that on Get Anime.
This is like a plug for Get Anime. Check it out.
Check it out.

Speaker 2 We're watching solo leveling. A lot of fun.

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Speaker 1 So I've got a question for all the gamers out there. Are you seriously,

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Speaker 2 All right, let's answer the let's ask some questions so we can talk about some video games. What are you playing? What are you playing? Hey, is me the Resident Evil Merchant?

Speaker 2 And I'm here to ask you guys, what are you playing?

Speaker 2 Wow. Thanks, Resident Evil Merchant.
Very succinct. Yeah.
You want me to

Speaker 2 brevity is the soul of wits.

Speaker 2 I feel like you're always teeing me up for it. No, no, absolutely not.
No, this is just. Every week I try to come in, get in, get out, grab a fish on my way through the kitchen.

Speaker 2 But you guys are like, whoa, look at you.

Speaker 2 So brief, so succinct. And then I'm like, all right, well, take his.
Yeah, once we start to pick at it, then it becomes an issue, right? So I think the lesson here. Maybe you better leave it alone.

Speaker 2 We should also, you should just make sure you check with Anya up front before you just take a whole fish from the kitchen because that may be for another podcast. That could be someone's lunch.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay. Well, I'm leaving a fish.
Oh, you're leaving. You take a fish? Yeah, leave a fish, take a fish.
Okay. Okay, sure.
I think it might be Chef Kevin's fish.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, please get a surprise fish.
Okay. That's going to be hard for him to deal with.

Speaker 2 How you guys been?

Speaker 2 I've been great. We see you all the time.
I know. I see you guys all the time.
But it's been, I'd say, honestly, it's been good.

Speaker 2 I rented a car. Oh, how about that?

Speaker 2 Big moves.

Speaker 2 Okay, so what? What did you do? Like Ikea Sportage? What did you go with?

Speaker 2 It's a Mustang. Oh, oh, boy.
It's a horsepower. It's a model.
It's like a 1998 Mustard. Right.

Speaker 2 Well, it's weird that 1998 is like an older model now, but that's how time went. I know.

Speaker 2 There's a, there's a

Speaker 2 model that, and you were born in 1998. You're old now, too.

Speaker 2 Is that true? Like a model model? I guess you'd be like 26, so yeah, you'd be done. Yeah, it's a, it's a cruel industry.
Get to the diner, sweetie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Whether it be the Olympics, wait, what? You're aged out of being a model? Go get a different job.

Speaker 2 So, you think there's a model-to-diner pipeline? Oh, it's like a straight line. Yeah, it explains why all the waitresses are so fucking hot.
I also, I don't like you being horny. Well, don't be horny.

Speaker 2 Also, there's no way that the listener heard this. There was a big pop in the office,

Speaker 2 like a big laugh,

Speaker 2 timed exactly at the previous joke, and it made me laugh. It was very exciting.
Wait, can they hear me on that? Like, someone outside was laughing. Somebody outside was laughing.

Speaker 2 It's impossible that they were laughing at us, but

Speaker 2 it made me laugh to think that it could have been a possibility. Nobody makes eye contact with me as I come in and out of the building.
Yeah, I think we're 7-2.

Speaker 2 Maybe read something into that. Hey, do you have a Resident Evil merchant we're talking earlier? Because we're talking about grocery stores, and you're something of a merchant.

Speaker 2 You're kind of in that field. Do you have a favorite bread?

Speaker 2 That's a good question.

Speaker 2 Uh, pita,

Speaker 2 you know what? We didn't really explore the flatbreads, but you know, I like,

Speaker 2 oh my god, I love a flatbread. You know, I like is like a roti, just like there's a lot of people who get like the naan, but the roti is more the like the wheat-based merchants.

Speaker 2 Cheese garlic non-I love a cheese garlic non. That's an adult.
The thing about a pita is

Speaker 2 it's a

Speaker 2 what is the phrase? It's like a high ceiling.

Speaker 2 What? The high, the floor. I feel like the high ceiling, low floor.
Maybe, but a lot of variants. Maybe, but because I feel like a bad PITA is worthless to me.

Speaker 2 I've gotten a lot of shitty, like, this is directly out of plastic pita.

Speaker 2 Like, you'll go to places, just like, oh, this has like a great Mediterranean, like, you know, a Euro plate or chicken or something like that. But then you're just getting a really shitty PITA.

Speaker 2 I can't believe it. Versus like a fresh baked bread.
I love it. Like a straight out of the oven pita.
I love it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, my top three breads are definitely pita, non-communion wafer.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Because I, I, you know, there's a commonality to do. There's like any bread that's got a little bounce to it, I'm suspicious of.
Right.

Speaker 2 I just think that for a pita to be good, it has to have like good structural integrity.

Speaker 2 Because, like, yeah, one of these out-of-the-plastic ones, you try to fold it, you try to wrap it around something, it snaps in half. What am I, what are we doing?

Speaker 2 It sounds just like it tastes like nothing. Yeah.
This is, this is just empty, empty calories. Yeah, a lot of times they're plain.

Speaker 2 There's sometimes they're baked with like a little bit of butter and like some seasoning that's that's that's fun which one which one uh pita yeah no yeah yeah yeah you ever had a pita peanut butter and jelly sandwich i have not

Speaker 2 incredible oh wow that i could see that with that maybe working you should really talk to heather because heather also loves peanut butter and jelly yeah no it's really yeah she runs when i come in well yeah you're very scared yeah i'm tall i'm tall and also i wanted to point out when you said you rented a car i feel like we just learned a new fact about you you're at least 25.

Speaker 2 i always assumed you were over 25. Yeah, I'm over 25.

Speaker 2 You thought I was, that's, that's nice. What a compliment.
What a nice thing to say. I'm trying to be charming.
That's sweet. That's good.

Speaker 2 I think we also learned a detail when you said communion wafer was one of your favorite types of bread. You apparently go to church? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, you can buy those. Oh, got it.
So you're not actually having the holy sacrifice.

Speaker 2 You know, there's like church supply stores? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. You can go in there and buy stuff that's holy and you can just eat it.

Speaker 2 I think because it hasn't gone through the ritual of transubstantiation, it actually hasn't. The communion wafer

Speaker 2 is already blessed, but you can house it like a sheath of rich crackers. Put it out at a charcuterie board.
Yeah, you can do whatever you want. There are no rules except the ones we make.

Speaker 2 Damn. Yeah, it's true.
I'm getting freaking.

Speaker 2 I feel like I'm getting blazed right now. What are you guys talking about this week?

Speaker 2 We're talking about this. This is the episode where

Speaker 2 the entire channel is. I don't know.
I don't think that's actually the episode. We actually are going to talk.
We're going to talk about the most iconic video game characters of all time.

Speaker 2 So who knows? Maybe you'll be a makeup present. That is really this week.
But I'll let you guys get to it. Mala Modaka.

Speaker 2 What are you playing?

Speaker 2 Was he doing the voice from Dune? Yeah, I felt like that was like

Speaker 2 band. That was like extremely Bene Gesserit code.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You like have to do it.

Speaker 2 Okay, so I guess what I'm playing is I'm back on.

Speaker 2 I put down,

Speaker 2 I had to excuse myself from Bellatro.

Speaker 2 I had to take myself out of the equation. Right, 100%.
I experienced a similar thing.

Speaker 2 I don't think I've put that many hours into it. I think I've put at least seven hours.

Speaker 2 Not nothing for a game like that, but I... You certainly put a lot more.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I had to step away because it is too fun and too good, and I needed to get back to

Speaker 2 my boys, my gang, my squad, my girls.

Speaker 2 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Wow.

Speaker 2 And right now,

Speaker 2 I would say of the three of us,

Speaker 2 I've put in the most time on this thing. Easily.

Speaker 2 I'm about

Speaker 2 63% done with the story, it says on the PlayStation menu, And about

Speaker 2 73 hours played. Jesus.
So there was a point where those numbers could have been closer

Speaker 2 to each other. And maybe even the same at one point.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 they're two ships in the night. They're gone.
They'll never be close to each other ever again. I guess.
Oh, probably, that's not true. What are you saying? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Because one's not going to get lower and the other one's, they're both going to increase short time. So no, they could still,

Speaker 2 they can match up again i thought it was on to something it's okay i thought it was cooking i thought it the resident evil merchant came in here said we're the rule and the i haven't left

Speaker 2 i just stand over in the corner you can't see me that way you sort of like blair witch yourself in the corner over there

Speaker 2 i love that movie it's pretty good what's happening in that movie We don't have time to go to the next one.

Speaker 2 I think that's part of the appeal of it.

Speaker 2 You're just like, oh, you have a general sense of menace, but you don't have crystal crystal clarity on what's going on.

Speaker 2 I for sure had told this story probably when we did the Blair Witch VR episode, but

Speaker 2 when that movie came out, I was like, this trailer is crazy. Like, I saw it when I was a little kid, the trailer.
And I was like, that's pretty scary.

Speaker 2 My aunt, who is now very Christian, said to me, it's real. And I started to cry.

Speaker 2 I was like, wow, that looks really scary. It's real.

Speaker 2 Like, with that, like, that outspeed, basically.

Speaker 1 I have a similar, a similar story. My grand, I think I've told this on the on the podcast before.

Speaker 1 My parents would show me R-rated movies and then pause them and be like, this is how this is being done.

Speaker 1 Like you could see the special effect and here's how they make the special effect work so that I wasn't afraid of movies in case I like ever saw scary movies or whatever on my own.

Speaker 1 I'd be like, oh, it's like, that's not a real skeleton walking. It's claymation or whatever.

Speaker 1 But one day we were watching The Predator as a family.

Speaker 1 And my grandmother came in and went, what are you doing? Like, she's so angry.

Speaker 2 And my parents were like, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 We pause it. We show her.

Speaker 2 And she's like, what?

Speaker 1 What if it, what if she thinks it's coming for her?

Speaker 2 And that changed my relationship to Predator. And

Speaker 2 I was like, what?

Speaker 2 And then start crying.

Speaker 1 And my parents are like, no, no, no, it's not real. It's not real.
I'm like, come get me.

Speaker 2 The movie before that you watched was like Poltergeist. So you're like familiar with things coming out of the TV.
Like, no.

Speaker 2 I had a discovery when I was playing Rebirth this week. Yeah.
And I informed you guys of it.

Speaker 2 It took me forever to read. I don't know why.
I hadn't had this realization even playing Original. But it took me seeing his 3D model to recognize.
that Kate Sith looks like my cat.

Speaker 2 And that's very nice. He's a little black and white, little tuxedo boy, and doesn't have the same sort of coloring on him, but now I look at him and I see my boy Kate Sith, and that's pretty fun.

Speaker 1 I love that.

Speaker 2 But also,

Speaker 2 my party is huge right now. It's great.
It's it's this game

Speaker 2 just is so goddamn good. Um, I'm really enjoying it.
I'm not slowing down on the side quests. It pains me.

Speaker 2 I'm in an area right now where there are a lot more side quests than

Speaker 2 there have been thus far.

Speaker 2 and the icon for if you want to continue the story

Speaker 2 go that way uh icon is there and i'm sort of like i'll get to you when i i'll get to you when i get to you because these side quests are they're fun i like doing them a lot of them i was talking about the variety earlier A lot of them end up do being kind of similar, but they're paced out well enough.

Speaker 2 We're like, oh, I haven't done something like this in a while. Sure.

Speaker 2 I just had to corral a bunch of chickens.

Speaker 2 And that feels like something that you shouldn't do.

Speaker 2 60 plus hours. That feels like an early type of side quest.

Speaker 2 This, I was like, this is kind of fun. Is that the quest that PETA

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 like shouted out because the bread?

Speaker 2 No, the chickens. We cannot continue talking about bread.
The chickens. Okay, I thought you were mentioning the PETA bread.

Speaker 1 No, PETA, P-E-T-A. Okay, I see.

Speaker 2 Was that on purpose? I was, of course, I can't tell. I'm doing it for fun.
Oh, for fun.

Speaker 1 Okay, no, I got it. No, I just wanted to know where we were.
Look, I don't, I'm not here

Speaker 1 to make you feel bad.

Speaker 2 It doesn't surprise me that PETA,

Speaker 2 the organization, would be mad at something dumb. Like, I don't, I, that's what they do.
That's their gift. I don't like that.

Speaker 1 I thought there was like a Gene Park, PETA

Speaker 1 triangle like a thing.

Speaker 2 There was a thing that I saw that,

Speaker 2 and Gene Park was like, no,

Speaker 2 don't put me in there.

Speaker 1 Because it was like

Speaker 1 a quest where you gather a bunch of chickens, and then they're like, okay, now to throw those chickens in the stew. And you cut to like

Speaker 1 Red 13. Yeah.
And he's upset about it. And then Peter was like, Red 13's right.
You shouldn't eat a chicken. Take it from this talking animal.

Speaker 2 Chickens.

Speaker 2 are almost bugs. They're almost bugs to me.

Speaker 2 I don't want it. I don't want it.
Put it on a shirt.

Speaker 2 Like, there are like a lot of like i don't want to get into all of the moralities because like that's like of course like

Speaker 2 we shouldn't be eating meat on the whole we just shouldn't but uh there are some we won't be soon we won't there'll be no left yeah uh but chickens i think we

Speaker 2 I think chickens, I'll go as far to say, have no souls.

Speaker 2 If they do, they go to hell. I think, yeah, you have to make some compromises.
Like, you have to eat life forms to sustain yourself as a life form.

Speaker 2 That is just like, but that said, I mean, you certainly can eat entirely plant-based if you have the means to do so. Yes.
Um, and, and forego all of that.

Speaker 2 As far as animals go, I don't fucking, man, I just gotta make, you can just make your choices. Yeah, pigs are tough.
You gotta have your own morality.

Speaker 2 I don't eat pigs anymore. I don't eat pork, right? I don't eat, I don't eat stuffal pods.
Is uh

Speaker 1 a maypole the kind of thing where you like, there's like a ball on a tether and you throw it and then it gets closer and closer to the pole. Is that a maypole?

Speaker 2 I mean, there just is the thing where you, they, I think that's the, the thing where fucking you hold onto a ribbon and you just walk around it in a circle, right? Isn't that what a maypole is?

Speaker 2 But I thought there was like a weight. Isn't that the tether ball? Isn't that just tether ball? Are you just describing tetherball?

Speaker 1 I don't know, but I feel like food on this episode of this show is the maypole.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it just keeps coming back. I mean,

Speaker 2 I think we're just hungry. We should have just had a snack before we recorded.
I did. I tried.

Speaker 1 Oh, well.

Speaker 2 But all that to say, rebirth, very, very good. There have been times while playing this, and this might be,

Speaker 2 I don't, I haven't really dug in on the discourse of what people are thinking about the game. So, I don't know if people love this game or don't like it.

Speaker 2 I think it's been a pretty positive response, like overwhelmingly. There have been moments throughout the game where I've thought this feels extremely like Kingdom Hearts in a positive way.

Speaker 2 So, I've been enjoying that element of it.

Speaker 2 Not in so much like the storytelling, some of the story, some of the things that they've done with the story. Feel a little Kingdom Hearts.
Some of the certainly the black-robed figures. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Very Kingdom Hearts. There are some mini-games that are extremely Kingdom Hearts in this game.

Speaker 2 And some of the abilities feel

Speaker 2 Keyblade

Speaker 2 Combat Adjacent as well. Okay.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 this game, to me, rules. It's very, very good.
But that's it for me. I'm so glad to hear it.
Yeah, I'm all in on Final Fantasy VII. Heather, what are you playing?

Speaker 1 I am. First off, I want to say I hit Diamond Rank in ranked Fortnite.
Wow. And I want to shout out a listener,

Speaker 1 Tobo Cito,

Speaker 1 who's been a ranked duo partner. And we've had some fantastic rounds where we non-stop laugh while also ranking up.
It's really great.

Speaker 1 What a hoot.

Speaker 2 What a hoot.

Speaker 1 But I haven't had a ton of time to play Fortnite.

Speaker 1 My hours have been all scattered. My squad hasn't been online.
So I've been playing Dragon's Dogma and I haven't bounced off it. If anything, I'm deeper in.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I have still not left the

Speaker 1 initial town. Like, you, I mean, there's like a town that you start in, but like the first city you get to.
Yeah. I'm still running quests in that town.
Wow. Because I refused to look at a guidebook.

Speaker 1 So it's been a lot of trouble. Like, it'll be like, one of the quests was like, find some place where this guy can read.
And I was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 1 Like, how do you do that unless you go in literally every building in the city?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 So, I went in every building in the city, couldn't find a place for him to read, and then discovered later that a different unrelated quest gets you to a hidden place in the city where there's a place for a guy to read, and the quests are like linked conceptually, which is really nice.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, great, I found the place where this guy can read. And then he was like,

Speaker 1 it was a quest where

Speaker 1 you had to break into a dungeon. There's a guy in a cell.
You have to sneak past guards. The first time I did it, I didn't sneak.
And I murdered a lot of people. And it was

Speaker 1 really rough because I had to restart the game because I realized you're not supposed to, like the game was giving me like, hey, you have to spend your own

Speaker 1 wake stones, which are like your, like, bring you back to life if somebody dies. You have to spend these to bring these civilians back to life.
And if you don't, they're going to go to the morgue.

Speaker 1 And I was like, okay, all this sounds bad. I, I got to get out of here.
So I restarted. Um, but you break into the dungeon, you get to the guy, and he's like, I'm not leaving.

Speaker 1 I, I'm not leaving unless I have some place to read because I like it here. It's nice.
It's quiet.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, fuck. Okay.

Speaker 1 And then you just leave him in there. I was like, I snuck all the way here to get this guy to like shoot me out.
And then I find the place for him to read.

Speaker 1 And I have to go break back into the dungeon, escort him out of the dungeon. And he's like great now I'm gonna go look I'm gonna go read um

Speaker 1 I have you know my three pawns uh I've seen what happens when a pawn dies for the first time they just go back to the rift so I have to go to the rift and find a new pawn part of that is a really fun

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 what what would it's like a it's like a flea market of people's custom designs.

Speaker 1 So the last time I went into the rift to like look for pawns, there's Legolas. looks exactly like Legolas, is named Legolas.

Speaker 1 There's Kratos, looks exactly like Kratos, has is a berserker, so like he's got a similar-esque moveset.

Speaker 2 I'm assuming you can use the same character creation tool set that you could for your own character with Lego Pawns. And that one, the Dragon's Dog 2 one, is famously robust.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's so robust. Like these, you know,

Speaker 1 there's like a, I saw a Werner Herzog

Speaker 1 who was photo identical. I saw,

Speaker 1 who was the one I saw? Oh, I saw the dude from Andor.

Speaker 2 Wow. Cassian Andor?

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 1 The guy who's like,

Speaker 1 my dreams are ghosts.

Speaker 2 I live alone.

Speaker 2 What have I sacrificed?

Speaker 1 I forget that guy.

Speaker 2 The

Speaker 2 Baron Harkinen. Oh, yeah.
Same actor, yeah. Yeah, that guy.

Speaker 1 I saw him in the rift.

Speaker 1 but I chose a uh a woman in a bag with it over her head, and I was like, that's fucking great.

Speaker 2 And her personality, did you sit shit to the Heather Ann Campbell filter?

Speaker 2 Which one's what I pick?

Speaker 1 Her personality is also generous, so she's like constantly, she's much taller than me, and she's got a bag over her head.

Speaker 1 And she says, like, I'll help you find ingredients, and then I'll combine them in order to help you with your your way.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Arisen.

Speaker 1 And so like while we're out, like running a quest, she'll be like, oh, look over there, a treasure chest. And the other

Speaker 1 pawns will like chew her out. They'll be like, this isn't the time.
We're in the middle of combat.

Speaker 1 And another one will be like, I say, if you abandon us here to go open that chest, I'll be upset with you. And she'll just run off and be like, look what I found, Arisen.

Speaker 2 I found flowers.

Speaker 1 I'll combine them to make a potion. As we're like being fucking slaughtered by a cyclops.
It's great fun.

Speaker 2 every because you're telling me a little bit about it yesterday too every time i hear something about it i think this sounds great and then also i will never i'll never do this because it just sounds like i it doesn't have enough

Speaker 2 hand-holding like onboarding like and i like i need that stuff i like need quest markers i like need

Speaker 2 but you finish you're you're you finished elden ring i don't i don't think that like that's this is this is a definitely it has like markers on the map Like, they come up automatically, and you switch between your priority quest, and it'll change what markers are on your map.

Speaker 2 Because I did see somebody make a, um,

Speaker 2 make their character look like, like, buff Lord Farquhad from Shrek.

Speaker 2 I do now want to play as Lord Farquad from Shrek.

Speaker 1 It's great. It's super fun.
It is not challenging. Um, that I like to hear.
It is just easy times.

Speaker 1 It's like if Elden Ring is your fancy Italian meal with like multi-courses and you're like, oh, I have to choose a

Speaker 1 Dolce and a

Speaker 2 Triccia and a catorce.

Speaker 1 Like, if I have to choose all these things and then I get little, like, go through, that's Elden Ring. This is craft macaroni and cheese.

Speaker 2 This is a slice of bread with a pizza and ranch dressing on top of it, another slice of bread.

Speaker 1 It's so, it's just plus. It never, I'm never like, oh, I really have to focus.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Ever.

Speaker 1 That's good. I'm like, oh, I'll just run a quest.

Speaker 2 It's great. Okay.
I love that.

Speaker 2 Nick Weiger, what do you plan? Heather, thanks for asking.

Speaker 2 I first off want to say last week with our friend Grant Party, we talked about Sonic the Hedgehog, and I mentioned the Sonic the Hedgehog IHOP menu.

Speaker 2 I did go back.

Speaker 2 Let me just say this. I think the menu is really good.

Speaker 2 For me,

Speaker 2 I was surprised because that was going to be too much for me, but I really think the shadow chocolate pancakes are the standout. They were really hitting me.
Hold on.

Speaker 2 They're double chocolate chip pancakes. They're chocolate pancakes with chocolate chips on them and chocolate sauce.
You complained last week that the pancakes were too much.

Speaker 2 Now you're saying, I got more pancakes and they were good. Well, this is the thing.
It's like more, that one's more explicitly a dessert. I see.

Speaker 2 Kind of in the same way that Amy Rose's waffle Sunday is the same sort of thing.

Speaker 2 They're both like more desserty, and it just being a dessert versus like taking, trying to take the breakfast portion of the menu. Yeah.
I think it actually works better. Knuckles sandwich,

Speaker 2 it's fine.

Speaker 2 I do think like the sub-roll is maybe a miscalculation. Nick Weiger parlance, that was, that was brutal.
That was. That sandwich is done.
Yeah. That sandwich is never coming back.

Speaker 2 No, I didn't dislike it.

Speaker 2 But I wanted to use the bulk of my time to talk about a movie. To talk about chocolate chip pink.

Speaker 2 I want to talk about a film. This was a feature film made in 2022, an independent film in Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 And it was an attempt to make the definitive Wisconsin movie. It's titled Hundreds of Beavers.

Speaker 2 It was directed by Mike Cheslick and written by Cheslick and Rylan Brixon Cole Two's, who is also the star of the movie and is in like every scene. It's like very, very much his movie.

Speaker 2 This is a mostly silent black and white film set in the 19th century, and it's based around the

Speaker 2 character that Rylan Bricks and Cole 2 plays is an Applejack salesman who's trying to become a fur trapper.

Speaker 2 And so he does battle with the titular hundreds of beavers who are all played by actors in mascot suits. It's a limited theatrical release.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Natalie and I saw it with a very full house at a theater in Santa Monica. I had a fucking great time.
They were loving it. It's so fun.
It's so funny. It's so goofy.
It is so silly.

Speaker 2 But the reason I'm mentioning it is because it has a video game structure. It is a video game ass movie.
It uses a world map that the protagonist consults and comes up full frame.

Speaker 2 And you use to like both navigate the, he uses to navigate the world and it helps you navigate the story, like where you are in the story beats, him circling through these different locations.

Speaker 2 He has an inventory and then he's collecting beaver pelts as he goes through all these these like, you know, just like like

Speaker 2 old like classic music, like classic movie, like silent film style gags, like like Pratt Fall gags, a lot of slapstick, a lot of vaudeville comedy with, again, with guys in mascot suits as beavers.

Speaker 2 So it's all very, very goofy, very silly, but also impressively shot. It's like shot largely in.

Speaker 2 the Wisconsin wilderness. There's a lot of snow and there's also like a lot of VFX in it that are really elegantly used for something at this budget, elegantly implemented.

Speaker 2 But then it's also got a lot of stuff that feels like stuff that would happen in like a platform game, like that, those sorts of gags.

Speaker 2 But as he's doing battle with these beavers, he collects their pelts and then he goes to a shop and he goes to the shop and it's just a straight up video game shop where he's like, and that's where he's buying stuff from.

Speaker 2 So it's like got all this kind of like.

Speaker 2 video game pastiche stuff that doesn't feel gratuitous or fan service y it's like just in service of the shit of the story and actually makes it like it it feels like it should rub against all the silent silent film specifics but then you realize how much

Speaker 2 they're both like references to crude versions of the medium right it's like it's like that those very early video games those very early movies and somehow marrying the two uh makes a ton of sense uh aesthetically uh someone in the discord said the director uh mike cheslick cited snes games as an inspiration i could not find a source on that on specifically him saying that you know there's a lot of like writing about the film and a lot of criticism about the film that's talking about how nintendo it feels how super Nintendo it feels.

Speaker 2 But definitely like it wears those influences on its sleeves.

Speaker 2 And you can definitely infer that that's where a lot of the stuff is sourced from. But Hundreds of Beavers, I think, I just think it's just, it's a very funny comedy.

Speaker 2 And it's just also really cool that they just like, these people made it on their own and made something really unique and specific that, you know, just feels like it's a...

Speaker 2 It's a singular artistic vision. So yeah,

Speaker 2 I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a fun time in a movie theater if it's playing in your town. Wow.
Yeah. I'm going to check it out.

Speaker 2 That was not on my radar at all. Yeah.
I think you'd like it a lot. I'm going to check it out.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, there you go.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 I saw Monkey Man.

Speaker 2 I saw Monkey Man too. It's a pretty video gaming.
I'm going later this week. I'm very excited.
Oh, there you go.

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Speaker 2 All right, let's talk about the most iconic video game characters. I don't know what exactly we want to call this, but that's what the BAFTA poll was.
So, this was a BAFTA poll.

Speaker 1 Do you call the episode BAFTA bullshit?

Speaker 2 B is for bullshit.

Speaker 2 BAFTA had this poll from a couple weeks back as of this episode's release. The most iconic video game characters, according to a poll of 4,000 people.

Speaker 2 BAFTA says more than 4,000 gamers around the world took place in the poll through its website.

Speaker 2 So it is definitely, you know, an element, there's an element of self-selection and selection bias in terms of how this list is created.

Speaker 2 And also it coming from BAFTA, I think, skews it a little bit more towards the kind of people who would use the BAFTA website, a more British audience, a more European audience.

Speaker 2 But my lukewarm take is that the order is the big issue here. I don't think a lot of these characters being on this list is terrible.

Speaker 2 Like, I think if you kind of look at it overall, you know, and don't worry about the ranking as much as this is a decent representation of some of the more recognizable characters in video games.

Speaker 2 This is an insane list. It's an insane list, but I think like you could also pull individual characters from it and sort of say, okay, there is Mario's on here, Link's on here, Pac-Man's on here,

Speaker 2 Pikachu's on here, Solid Snake's on here. You know,

Speaker 2 it's got a lot of the big ones.

Speaker 1 But it's called the most iconic characters of all time.

Speaker 1 I'm going to say that this list largely fails the silhouette test.

Speaker 1 Interesting. And if you can't, like, you cannot put a silhouette of Nathan Drake and, God bless her, Ellie Williams on a fucking board and be like, who are these people? They're just people.

Speaker 2 Right. But I mean, there's also like,

Speaker 2 those are also different aesthetics, you know, like like someone like Kiryu from the Yakuza like a dragon franchise is like, you know, aesthetically very different from Crash Bandicoot, who would pass the silhouette test.

Speaker 2 Let me just read down the list so everyone has context for this.

Speaker 2 Here, I'll read the top 10.

Speaker 2 Number 10, Shadowheart, recency by ahoy. Number nine, Kratos.
Number eight, Master Chief, number seven, Link.

Speaker 2 Number six, Pac-Man, number five, Sackboy, number four, Sonic, number three, Agent 47, number two, Mario, and number one, and this is what created a lot of the headlines, Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, the most iconic video game character of all time, according to this BAFTA poll of a horny idiot.

Speaker 2 Well, I was thinking about

Speaker 2 this number one spot in particular with Laura Croft because I disagree.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 mean, I guess I don't want to say what my number one would be from this list,

Speaker 2 but Lara Croft, maybe, maybe on the list. Sure.
I think maybe based on

Speaker 2 name recognition alone, like let's remember, there were

Speaker 2 one,

Speaker 2 her series was one of the first video game series to get a movie adaptation. That was like a serious

Speaker 2 adaptation. For sure, and with a movie star playing it.
Yes. Playing the character.
Yes. So

Speaker 2 people know her name outside of that. Yeah, no,

Speaker 2 she maybe has a, belongs on this list

Speaker 2 at some ranking, but I don't don't know if number one.

Speaker 1 I could be wrong, but I feel like Mortal Kombat came out before the Laura Croft manager.

Speaker 2 That is true. And there isn't a single Mortal Kombat character on this list.

Speaker 1 Not that I could name a Mortal Kombat character.

Speaker 2 Well, okay, so this is what I think the exercise is going to be, because I think we're going to collectively try to decide. I don't know.
We haven't discussed any of this, but

Speaker 2 I think our own top 10.

Speaker 2 I think that's probably the right number.

Speaker 2 Try to come up with what is the actual definitive iconic video game character list?

Speaker 2 What are the characters that define gaming that at a glance you can kind of say, like, have an understanding of what video game gaming is?

Speaker 1 So, we, so, we each pitch a top 10, and then we're going to, like, you like, if we all have the same,

Speaker 1 how does this work?

Speaker 2 I think we're just going to have a discussion. I think we're just going to figure it out as we go.
It'll be like a definitive top 10. We'll be our each top 10.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think we'll make, well, we're going to make the three of us are going to collaborate on one list. All right.
Unless there's a true schism, and then we can take it from there.

Speaker 2 But the Mortal Kombat thing.

Speaker 1 He's pointing at me. No, both pointing at me.
Hold on. Everybody's pointing pointing at me.

Speaker 2 Roche just pointed too. I am going to...

Speaker 2 Here's what I, here's, here's what I was trying to say. Going back to Mortal Kombat, your point, which I think is a good one.
This is kind of the issue. And I think

Speaker 2 when I mentioned recency bias, I've got Shadow Art on here. And if you expand it out to the top 20, Astarion is also on the list.
That is because people are like, well, I like Baldur's Gate 3.

Speaker 2 Baldur's Gate 3 is

Speaker 2 in the zeitgeist and it's recent. And speaking for myself, it is my favorite video game.
So I want to represent that. But does that game have a divining character? That's the other thing.

Speaker 2 And Mortal Kombat might be the same thing because of its sprawling roster.

Speaker 2 Is the game defined by Scorpion or Sub-Zero or Liu Kang or Johnny Cage or what have you? Or is there just no entry for Mortal Kombat?

Speaker 1 I think we need to discuss the, like, what we mean by iconic. Because I'm not talking about, like,

Speaker 1 Arthur Morgan is not iconic, right?

Speaker 2 Ronald McDonald is iconic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's like, what is an icon? And I think that a lot of the, like, I fucking love the Yakuza series. It's fucking great.
Like a dragon, great. But, like,

Speaker 1 is, is he iconic?

Speaker 2 No, I think what I, I mean, maybe, but I, I think there can be, you can make a case for it. But I also feel like if I see somebody wearing a silver suit and a red shirt, I'm thinking Kiru.

Speaker 2 Like, I just think that's what he looks like. I think there's an element of

Speaker 2 you look at this character, going back to what you're saying originally, Heather, going back to the silhouette test. You look at this character, you're like, oh, yeah, that guy from that video game.

Speaker 2 I know who that is. And I feel like Pac-Man fucking passes that.
People look at Pac-Man, they're like, I know who Pac-Man is. Pac-Man makes me think of Pac-Man.
Oh, it's the star of Pac-Man, Pac-Man.

Speaker 2 I think someone like Cloud Strife, who's also on the larger top 20 list, also is like, oh, that guy from Final Fantasy VII. You know what I mean? It's like a blonde guy.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I think that's maybe the direction to head in.

Speaker 2 But also, we don't even have to do most iconic we can pick our 10 favorite characters that we want because on this on this list alone broader than that i'm taking off and it and this isn't because i dislike these games at all

Speaker 2 i'm taking off nathan drake i'm taking off ellie i love both these characters love

Speaker 2 i'm taking off kiru I'm taking off a starring. So I just want to be clear because I just read the top 10 list.
Matt is looking at the top 20 list. Should I read this whole list? I guess I will.

Speaker 2 Let's get a whole lot. Number 11, Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2.
Number 12, Pikachu. Number 13, Steve from Minecraft.
Number 14, Solid Snake. Number 15, Crash Bandicoot.

Speaker 2 Number 16, Cloud Strife. Number 17, Astarian from Baldur's Gate 3.
Number 18, Kazima Kiryu from the Like a Dragon franchise.

Speaker 2 Number 19, Ellie from The Last of Us. And number 20, Nathan Drake.

Speaker 1 Can I say another thing about this from the game?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Don't say it's too small.

Speaker 1 No, I'm going to point at the list because I'm angry at it. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Your character is not iconic if you have to put the name of the game after the character.

Speaker 2 Yes. I think the one exception is Steve from Minecraft because if you just see Steve, you're like,

Speaker 2 I mean, I think people will still will put that together, but I think these sees really well.

Speaker 1 But like Kratos is not the name, like you can't, you like Mario is the name of the game. Sure.

Speaker 1 Sonic is the name of the game. Yes.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 But Kratos is not the name of God of War.

Speaker 1 And the fact that he can be on that list and you don't have to put a parentheses after him, but you do after Arthur Morgan means that Arthur Morgan doesn't belong on the list.

Speaker 2 Or Master Chief, but I also think a lot of people know Arthur Morgan from the name. I mean, Matt, you'd know that.
I knew that. I mean, I would know it's Sight Unseen for sure, but

Speaker 2 I think I would take Arthur off the list even because, like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 If we're talking about silhouette test, you can make Arthur look however you want.

Speaker 2 Let's take a step back. I don't think we should be married to this list.
I also, I kind of think we should start from scratch. If we want to say, like, that one shouldn't be on it, that's fine.

Speaker 2 But I think there's a broader way to think about this, which is like,

Speaker 2 if we're talking about video games holistically, which franchises should be represented?

Speaker 2 Because I think part of the desire to put Arthur Morgan on this and part of the reason there was some sort of, you know,

Speaker 2 collective momentum behind his candidacy is because if you look at some of the most critically revered games of all time and some of the biggest selling games of all time, they are rock star games.

Speaker 2 They are the Grand Theft Auto franchise. They are Red Dead Redemption 2.

Speaker 2 But it's also like, what is the individual character you pull from all of those? And it's kind of the Mortal Kombat problem of like, you know, for me, I'd probably think CJ from Grand Theft Auto over

Speaker 2 Arthur Morgan, but I think there's just kind of a general sort of idea of like, there's one central protagonist we can latch on to.

Speaker 2 And I think the silent protagonist from Grand Theft Auto 3 is more iconic than Arthur Morgan. I mean, maybe.

Speaker 1 But I also think that when you think of it as iconography,

Speaker 1 none of the characters from

Speaker 1 Mortal Kombat really stand out except maybe forearm guy Goro, right? I love Goro.

Speaker 2 Because you're like, oh, it's that forearm guy from the fighting game.

Speaker 1 But I do think that Chun Li transcends Street Fighter. I think everybody knows who Chun Li is, which means that she belongs on this fucking list.

Speaker 2 I could say, I think there's a strong case for Chun Li. The problem with Street Fighters, there's also like Ryu, there's also Guile, there's Dalsum, there's Zang Deef.

Speaker 1 As a person who loves the franchise, I agree. Those are great characters, but they aren't iconic in the same way that Chun Li is.
Chun Li is like.

Speaker 2 There's a Nicki Minaj song about Chun Lee.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's Chun Lee.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but Zangieef is in Wreck-It Ralph. Well, you don't even like that movie.
You're only bringing it up so you can talk about how it's a candy movie and not a video game movie.

Speaker 1 I have a provocative character to elevate to the conversation

Speaker 2 who I don't.

Speaker 1 I'm leaving.

Speaker 2 I'm fucking heading out of the studio. That's kind of fun.
That's a new element. Heather could leave.

Speaker 1 She threatened to leave.

Speaker 1 And this is, again, just to be like, hey, this is an iconic character. I don't believe that he belongs on the list, but I do think he passes the silhouette test.

Speaker 1 And I do think that if you see him in any context, like you could put Ellie in a, you know, like... like take up all of these characters and put them in a packed dance hall, right?

Speaker 1 You're going to have trouble pointing to some of them and be like, oh, it's that person, right? And Ellie is one of those people, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 Even though I think The Last of Us is maybe, Last of Us Part 2 may be my favorite game of all time after Disco Elysium. Wow.
And I would never put Harry on this fucking list either. No.

Speaker 2 But. Hmm.
Could you put Harry on this list? But I put Kim over here.

Speaker 1 I think Pyramid Head is iconic.

Speaker 2 I wrote Pyramid Head down. All right.
I think as we go, we should start to write some of these down. Just in a general sort of brainstorming category, we can take it from there.

Speaker 2 But Chun Lee was mentioned. I think that's a strong candidacy.
I said, I don't think we should have CJ.

Speaker 2 I hope I said San Andreas. I feel like I accidentally said Grand Theft Auto V.
I hope you know what I mean. No, I think you said CJ.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I think Chunley was one that was mentioned. What was the other one that came up? Pyramid Head.
Pyramid Head, I think, is another good candidate. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I honestly kind of think, let's stop fucking around. Let's just put Mario at number one.
Is there any Mario character?

Speaker 2 Mario's just number one.

Speaker 1 Mario's number one. Pikachu's number two.
Sonic is three. That's how it goes.

Speaker 2 I think that's a really strong one, two, three. I feel less solid about those second two, but I think those both belong in the top 10.

Speaker 1 Then it's Mario Sonic Pikachu, but if that's the case, I think everybody knows who fucking Pikachu is. Everybody.
Yeah, no, it's true.

Speaker 2 Everybody. I mean, there's maybe a thing that Pikachu

Speaker 2 is better known because Pokemon is the most successful franchise of any kind of all time.

Speaker 1 I have Pikachu at the top of my list. I put Pikachu number one.

Speaker 2 Pikachu number one? Yeah, I put Pikachu number one. Who gives a shit?

Speaker 2 But I think we also might have to accept, and this is maybe a generational thing that we just have to come to terms with, Steve from Minecraft probably belongs in the top 10. It just probably does.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I mean, that's a thing of just like, this isn't our, it's not our generation, but it's also like, I think just like, if you're talking about video games overall, like, it's just like, it, it feels like an incomplete list unless you acknowledge it.

Speaker 1 I would accept Steve from Minecraft in that top five because I feel like he dominates.

Speaker 1 But, but on the other hand,

Speaker 1 how much of Minecraft is about the character? And how much of it is about, like, if you see Minecraft, like the world of Minecraft, you're like, oh, fuck, it's fucking Minecraft. Yes, right.

Speaker 2 No, that's a good point, that it's maybe not based on the character. And since it is a game that's largely played from a first-person perspective anyway.
I have a nomination.

Speaker 2 I don't know if he's going to make it on the list, but I'm just going to put it under Pyramid Head over here.

Speaker 2 Freddy Fazbear.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 1 Is that the bear in

Speaker 1 Freddy, Five Night at Freddy's? Yes.

Speaker 2 My argument against that would be that movie sucked. That movie sucks, but everybody...
Started at the Silent Hill movie.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 if we're going off of what movies of video games are good, this is going to be an empty list.

Speaker 2 I like the Silent Hill movie.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I think at least Freddy is like... People know who Freddy is.
Yeah, I think he's worth putting on the shortlist. He will make it, but I just want to.

Speaker 2 I would also, if we're along those lines, let's also slap in Gorgan Freeman from the Half-Life games.

Speaker 2 I think I'm going to to say

Speaker 2 I think Link probably belongs to the shortlist. Master Chief belongs to the shortlist, probably in the top 10.
Pac-Man. Pac-Man, sure.
I think the thing is, the Souls games are another issue.

Speaker 2 It's just like you look at all the FromSoft games. It's like there's not like one character that you can kind of pick.
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 And that's, and none of this is about whether or not the franchises in the games are iconic, these are characters.

Speaker 2 Samus, I think, probably belongs in consideration. Kratos from God of War.

Speaker 1 Like, you could always look at a screenshot of Fortnite and be like, hey, it's Fortnite, but nobody's going to be like, oh, Peely is so iconic. Yeah.
Sure.

Speaker 2 Or what's the Jonesy? Yeah. Nobody really, I don't care about Jonesy like that.

Speaker 2 I have a pitch, and I don't know if this, he'll make it. But Leon.

Speaker 2 Leon S. Kennedy.

Speaker 2 Sure, why not? Throw him on there.

Speaker 1 Throw him on the short list. I would love to put Donkey Kong on this fucking list.
That's crazy to me that he's not on it.

Speaker 2 Love Kirby.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Kirby, I think, is a candidate.

Speaker 2 That's the thing. That's what Nintendo does, and it becomes a little bit Nintendo-heavy.
And then I think that's why you maybe want to counter it with

Speaker 2 a Kratos or what have you.

Speaker 2 We toss in Cloud on here. Yep, yep.
Yeah, they'll throw Cloud.

Speaker 2 I think if you're going to take any character from any JRPG, you know, like you could say like, hey, Joker from Persona or whatever, but I think it's honestly, it's Cloud.

Speaker 2 It's not Chrono from Chrono Trigger. It's because I like that game.

Speaker 1 I think,

Speaker 1 and I, I, that we haven't made a rule about this.

Speaker 1 And I, I think that there's an argument to be made that some of these most iconic video game characters of all time will have to come from the same franchise. Sure.

Speaker 2 And I think Bowser

Speaker 1 is extremely iconic.

Speaker 2 See, I would say, if we're going to do that, we're going to make the antagonist argument, I would put Wario over Bowser. What? Because I think the idea of Wario is such a huge part of how

Speaker 2 gaming characters are created. The idea of the anti-version of a character.
And I also just feel like people just know Wario more than they know. More than Bowser?

Speaker 1 Do you think if the Mario movie had come out and

Speaker 1 Wario had been the main antagonist, that people would have been like, that's the right choice?

Speaker 2 We have Jack Black voices in me.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, Jack Black's voicing anybody in the movie. You're like, this is the best character in the damn thing.
No, when you put it like that, I mean, Bowser is like who people think of.

Speaker 2 So maybe it would be.

Speaker 2 But I kind of feel like the iconography of wario versus mario is just like so strong so striking like the inverse of this guy sure the evil shitty version i don't think wario is not iconic yeah i do think waluigi is more popular than wario i think that i throw waluigi on there

Speaker 1 i think peach belongs a higher than both of these characters yeah peach is up there wario and waluigi i also links on there okay great i i know he's not gonna make it but i feel like i just have to mention my guy Sora.

Speaker 2 He's not on the list.

Speaker 1 I thought about Sora. He's not on the list.
Cloud is more iconic than Sora.

Speaker 2 I think he's more iconic. But is that also like

Speaker 2 me being old that is making me think that? Is Sora the better choice? Something I was reading about

Speaker 2 online when I was in line at Disneyland over the weekend. Very cool.

Speaker 2 I was like, there's not enough Kingdom Hearts stuff here.

Speaker 2 There should be, there should, I want to see Kingdom Hearts. I want to see Sora.
I want to see Goofy and Donald running around with fucking weapons and stuff. I want to see that here.

Speaker 2 I want to see, you know what, too? Let's get Cloud running around here. Let's get Leon running around.
Why not? Like, if they're, they,

Speaker 2 I want to see it. I was reading that, I, and I don't know if this is speculation or this is true.
Disney doesn't really

Speaker 2 fuck with Kingdom Hearts like that. Like,

Speaker 2 they don't see it. It's like a, it's a very niche property.
It's not very recognizable in the same way that they... So it would be a dud of an attraction at the theme park.
I don't think that's true.

Speaker 2 But I think they're just thinking of it in a very old corporate sense. I think that's correct.

Speaker 1 I think if Sora walked

Speaker 1 onto the lot at Disneyland, people would lose their shit. Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 First of all, he'd be real, which is very exciting.

Speaker 1 But I do think that,

Speaker 1 yeah, I think Sora is iconic, but I also think that there was an unfortunate chunk of time after Kingdom Hearts 2 where the only way you could play Kingdom Hearts games was like on like PSP. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think that that 20-year cycle aged him out for a lot of iconography.

Speaker 1 Like there's there's a generation of people who were one when Kingdom Hearts 2 came out and then didn't see another Kingdom Hearts game.

Speaker 2 Let me just go down some of the biggest franchises of all time, best-selling video game franchises. This is a list I'm I'm looking at.

Speaker 2 The ones that have sold over 250 million copies over the course of all the games in their franchise is very short.

Speaker 2 Mario, obviously, already going to be well represented here. Tetris, not really a defining character.
Pokémon,

Speaker 2 I imagine if we're going to choose one, it would be Pikachu. I choose you, but I don't know if there's any other Pokémon we want to nominate.

Speaker 2 You can't say that too loud.

Speaker 2 Call of Duty, not really a singular character. Grand Theft Auto.

Speaker 2 Grand Theft Auto, similar problem. FIFA, similar issue.
And Minecraft, we've already talked about.

Speaker 2 You step down to franchise that sold over 100 million copies.

Speaker 2 Wii is kind of a cop-out, but you could say like a Wii Sports or a Mii or a, but I just, I don't think any of those really actually work. The Wii Sports Trainer.
Lego, same sort of issue.

Speaker 2 So many of those are borrowed IP as well. The Sims, same sort of issue.

Speaker 2 Assassin's Creed, I mean, even the Ubisoft anime that we watched, Matt Furr, get anime did not have like a, like, they didn't figure out how to actually represent Assassin's Creed.

Speaker 2 They just invented a character. So there's one protagonist you can center it on.
Final Fantasy, we've talked about Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah, Sonic's got to be on there, I think.
Resident Evil.

Speaker 2 You know, maybe it is Leon Kennedy.

Speaker 2 I don't know what the move is there, or does that even need to be represented? But that's also one with a bunch of characters. Legend of Zelda, if it's anyone, it's Link.
Again, and it's Zelda.

Speaker 2 Need for Speed, NBA 2K, Madden NFL, Star Wars, e-Football. These are all whatever.
And then after that, you get into

Speaker 2 the Monster Hunters, the Tomb Raiders, the WWE 2Ks of the world.

Speaker 2 Now, for the listeners that listen to this show and say we don't talk about that many different games, I want you to rewind that and listen to that again because that was a lot of different types of games.

Speaker 2 So keep your little mouth shut and keep your gullets full with that for a while.

Speaker 1 A lot of people complain that we don't talk about games.

Speaker 2 Don't we all talk about a different game every week? Not enough, I guess.

Speaker 2 I think what that is, is because we have, look, if you have a, if you're into like driving games, you know, or like schmucks or something, there are a lot of like more niche genres that we just don't touch on all that often.

Speaker 2 And I think there's also some big games that just like none of us, we all, this isn't our full-time thing is doing this podcast.

Speaker 2 So sometimes like a major release, just all three of us will end up overlooking. But yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's, that's.

Speaker 1 I've talked about, I've talked about Gran Turismo and VR.

Speaker 2 I've talked about Ikaruga.

Speaker 1 We've got schmupps and we've got driving games on this podcast.

Speaker 2 Okay, but who is this? Put those to the side.

Speaker 2 What

Speaker 2 the fuck is this?

Speaker 2 We can't talk about everything all the time. Yeah, we can't talk about everything all the time.

Speaker 2 But also, we should just talk about sandwiches for 20 minutes.

Speaker 2 Here's one I want to throw out because I think this is a big franchise, and I think there is a very good candidate for being represented in this list. Dragon Quest Slime.

Speaker 2 Yeah, slime is good.

Speaker 2 You just look at that motherfucker. You look at that.
He has silver tests. I know what the fuck that fucking guy is.
It's the fucking Dragon Quest slime. It could be the poop emoji.

Speaker 2 It's not the poop emoji.

Speaker 1 There's like piling in. Yeah, it looks different.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying. No, the poop emoji is not a circle with a tip.
Hey, I'm just saying. I don't think it.
I'm just saying.

Speaker 1 I think Slime is maybe one of the most iconic video game characters of all time.

Speaker 2 Who's that fucking guy from Borderlands? I don't want to put a Borderlands thing on here. No.
But that one fucking guy.

Speaker 2 That one fucking guy. Clap Trap? Clap Trap, yeah.
The robot? Yeah. Voiced by Jack Black.
He's going to be good. He's going to be good, unfortunately.
I'm I'm sorry. Is that in the movie?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's in the movie. Oh, that'll be good.

Speaker 1 What about Pip Boy?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I mean, I love that.
I love that character design. The thing is, it's

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 thumbs up. Fallout.
Thumbs up.

Speaker 2 I love that character design. I love that bit of art.

Speaker 2 The thing is, it's like, it's not really a character. It's more just a presence.
But you do look at that iconography and like, oh, I do know that franchise. You do instantly recognize it.

Speaker 2 If we're talking silhouette, Tess. Yeah.
I can't think of a more unique silhouette than a Big Daddy from Bioshock. Sure.
That's a unique one.

Speaker 1 What about Mega Man?

Speaker 2 Love Mega Man. Throw Mega Man in there.
Let's not overthink it. Mega Man is good.

Speaker 2 Gerald of Rivia from The Witcher, worth considering.

Speaker 2 How about someone from Animal Crossing? I don't know who it would be. I don't know if it would be

Speaker 2 Isabelle Tom Nook. Isabelle's a Mario Kart.

Speaker 2 She's the representative or the village character.

Speaker 2 I would always go Isabelle over Tom Nook. Fucking bullshit.
You can't romance Isabelle in the Animal Crossing game. I can in real life because my fiancé's name is Isabelle.
Happy for you, Matt.

Speaker 2 What else we got there? God of War Kratos. We're talking about Metal Gear.
Probably solid stakes should be on there if he hasn't already. What about Spider-Man?

Speaker 2 Interesting. I feel like you kind of think of a character that's like defined, that's defined within video games, though.

Speaker 2 So for me, that's more like you think of like Diablo from Diablo or Crash Bandicoot. You know what I mean? A character who like that's their heritage is this medium.
What is the guy from Doom?

Speaker 2 Doomguy. Doomguy? Doomguy is pretty good.
Doomguy is good. Even though Doom putting Doom Guy on the list is pretty good.
Doomguy.

Speaker 2 I think probably Master Chief takes Doomguy's slot, but it is fun to have Doomguy in consideration. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, no, it's for sure Master Chief over Doomguy.

Speaker 2 But Doomguy, you don't get Master Chief without Doomguy. Yeah, maybe it's Doomguy.

Speaker 2 But I'm trying to think of what else. I mean, I feel like there's someone who's had a long tale of

Speaker 1 being an icon for having almost zero games come out. Parappa the Rapper.

Speaker 2 Parappa the Rapper is a good character. And I also

Speaker 1 prince from Katamari Damasi

Speaker 1 is pretty iconic.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Just putting them on the long.

Speaker 1 Why did you type in Parapsychosis?

Speaker 2 I'm typing on an iPad.

Speaker 2 And it auto-filled for me. Here, I got a fucking proper keyboard.
Let me in on that Google Doc. I can type this shit.
Here you go. Hold on.
All right, Matt is updating the sharing progressions.

Speaker 2 How about Tiger Woods from PGA Golf?

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 you know what? Tony Hawk.

Speaker 2 I kind of love Tony Hawk as a nominee. That's really funny.
I think

Speaker 2 it's insane that Tony Hawk's not on the list.

Speaker 2 While we're talking the Matt's territory, how about the Prince of Persia? The Prince of Persia, pretty good, but I think he does unfortunately fall into

Speaker 2 this sort of subcategory of character design where he is just a guy. Yeah, he's a guy.
Like, he's just kind of like a, just like a hot guy. Did you mention the subcategory?

Speaker 2 You want to talk about bandages?

Speaker 2 You know what? Why isn't there a video game where you can play as a sandwich? I guess there's I Am Bread.

Speaker 2 Yeah, is there a game where you're a sentient sandwich? I don't know if that's. A sandwich with arm and legs is pretty good.

Speaker 2 I'm sure probably there's some indie game where that's the case. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Parappa the rapper.

Speaker 1 Parappa is not. I don't think he actually belongs on the list.

Speaker 2 I don't think he does, but if you were just making a short list, we're making a bunch of candidates.

Speaker 1 It's shocking to me that you can still see a Parappa image and you're like, oh, I know who that is.

Speaker 2 That's that guy. It's that guy.
I got to do what? I got to believe.

Speaker 2 Agent 47. is on the BAFTA list at

Speaker 2 number three. Look, he looks cool, and I recognize, you know that guy.

Speaker 1 He's just a bald dude in a suit, right?

Speaker 2 He's just a bald dude in a suit. He's got a fucking barcode.
He's got a barcode on his back of his neck. He, and look, this is somebody, this is coming from somebody who

Speaker 2 mainlined all three of those new Hitman games, like back-to-back-to-back.

Speaker 2 It is insane that he is number three on this list. He's a little bit high.

Speaker 2 I think that might be one of those things where that franchise is maybe more beloved in the UK, which is where the bulk of the book is.

Speaker 1 He's number three on the list, and Donkey Kong isn't

Speaker 2 on it at all. But also, Sackboy, and I love Sackboy from the, I don't, I never played any of the little big planets, but I played the

Speaker 2 Sackboy platformer that came out for PS5.

Speaker 2 And it's fantastic. It's really, really good.

Speaker 2 And this is probably one of those

Speaker 2 games where he's like bigger elsewhere, but I've never once heard anybody mention. The only person I've ever heard mention Sackboy publicly is Ariana Grande in some interview.

Speaker 2 She was mentioning, she was like, I just got a PS5, and somebody was like, oh, what are you playing? He's like, I can't stop playing Sackboy.

Speaker 1 Sackboy has one of the most unfortunate names ever given to a character.

Speaker 2 It sounds like a mean nickname. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Somebody who was wearing shorts that were too short.

Speaker 2 I'm bald.

Speaker 2 Hey, Sackboy.

Speaker 2 It was like just some kid hit puberty before his friends, so they're making fun of him.

Speaker 1 I think this is a really good.

Speaker 2 base so far. I tossed on a few more as we were going.

Speaker 1 Who is Commander Shepard?

Speaker 2 From Mass Effect. No, take him off.

Speaker 1 I don't even know who that is.

Speaker 2 My only quibble with this is that I do think it's... I'll just go through on Frogger, which I know is not going to make it, but I think like

Speaker 2 some really old characters. I thought about Frogger

Speaker 2 and a Lemming from Lemmings. Because everybody.

Speaker 2 I think of two things when I think of Frogger. I think of one, having the time of my life.
Two, Seinfeld. Like, there's a whole episode of Seinfeld dedicated to Frogger.
It's true.

Speaker 2 For a single payoff of a. No, talk about iconic.
George Costanza. They were like, when there was Seinfeld Writer's Room in like 1997, was like, what's a video game everyone will know?

Speaker 2 They picked fucking Frogger. And that's what George Costanza used to play.

Speaker 1 I think Qbert is visually identifiable and iconic, but I don't think that anybody.

Speaker 1 I don't think anybody under the age of like

Speaker 2 I'm going to say 30 knows who Qbert is.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe kids who saw Pixels and some fuck Jet fuck Josh Gag.

Speaker 2 If I hadn't seen Pixels,

Speaker 2 Qbert was going to be one of those things that's just not in my

Speaker 2 lexicon.

Speaker 2 I do think a Tetris block should be on the list.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I mean, I think that's funny, but I, and it is like the biggest, like, it's like, I think the best game ever made is probably Tetris, but it's just like the only perfect video game.

Speaker 2 The perfect video game, but I also, I don't, like, if we're talking characters, I don't know if you're not doing anything. I feel like they're adding a chess piece or something.

Speaker 2 There's not like a particular.

Speaker 2 And it's also like, which one do you pick? Is it L block?

Speaker 2 Is it the big long boy? Is it the square? Is it the T piece? It's easily the square. See, this is the thing.
I disagree with you.

Speaker 1 I think it's the shape that only exists in Tetris, which is the weird, like, lightning bolt type block.

Speaker 2 That one is good. It comes in clutch.
The square is obviously, it's easily the worst piece, actually, if I'm thinking about it.

Speaker 2 Such fewer applications.

Speaker 2 But I think, okay. so we're crafting a top 10.
Our top three is locked so far.

Speaker 2 We have Pikachu, and I would not say it's locked, we have three that are on the list: okay, Pikachu, Mario, and Sonic in some order.

Speaker 2 Let's, let's just, let's just throw up what other one, what other characters have to be on here, link link for sure. Okay, I'm tossing a link on here.
We'll figure out the order as we go. Um,

Speaker 2 I do think Donkey Kong has to be

Speaker 2 on here. It has to be on the top 10.
Donkey Kong

Speaker 2 phrase, it's on like Donkey Kong exists. None of these other video game characters have a phrase.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 I just, again, I think there's maybe a case for like Wawario over a Donkey Kong, even among Nintendo.

Speaker 2 I think you're being characters like Raymond.

Speaker 2 I think maybe, you know,

Speaker 2 I said Raymond like everybody loves Raymond, but I meant Rayman. I think there's.

Speaker 2 Where'd my arms go? Deborah.

Speaker 2 Calling Scott Ackerman right now. I got my new character.

Speaker 1 I can't imagine that, like, it's hard for me, Nick,

Speaker 1 to think that you think that Wario is more iconic than Donkey Kong.

Speaker 1 That's surprising to me in good faith.

Speaker 2 I think there's some element of,

Speaker 2 I think recency-wise, I think there's maybe more momentum and more knowledge of Wario. I also think conceptually, I think the idea of what Wario represents is perhaps more iconic.

Speaker 2 And I do have an unfortunate data point for exactly this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 On Saturday Night Live, Elon Musk didn't play Donkey Kong.

Speaker 2 Look,

Speaker 2 my personal leaning,

Speaker 2 I do think CloudStrife belongs on this list. Cloud's on there.
And I also think that I would make a case.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying he's going to make the final cut, but I would put a case for Dragon Quest Slime. Yeah.
I think you just look at that guy and you're like, that is video games.

Speaker 2 I do think Pyramid Head is on the list. You think he's on the list?

Speaker 1 I don't. Look,

Speaker 1 as the person who brought up Pyramid Head, I don't think he's on the list. I just think he's more iconic than, say, Shadow Heart, Arthur Morgan.
Shadow Heart, Arthur Morgan, Steve from Minecraft.

Speaker 2 Okay, maybe he's not top 10, but he's on the list. But here's the thing.
We all like God of War.

Speaker 2 Probably Kratos makes it on the list, right?

Speaker 1 In this day and age, isn't Kratos a top 10 video game character?

Speaker 2 Kratos, to me, is the PlayStation icon right now, where it used to be Crash Bandicoot. It used to be, you know, Daxter or Jack and Daxter.
It used to be that.

Speaker 2 They want it to be Joel. They want it to be Ellie.
It is Kratos. Kratos is the PlayStation's god.

Speaker 1 I think also a lot of these characters pop up in Fortnite, right?

Speaker 1 And when the character is in Fortnite style and you can still spot them across a map and say, oh, fuck, Kratos is coming up.

Speaker 1 He's hiding behind a building. Everybody knows who you're fucking talking about and what you're looking for

Speaker 2 and even if it's drawn in fortnite style you can identify that it's kratos and nobody is making joel in elden ring no one's making joel in dragon's dogma they're fucking making kratos they want to be kratos in a different game let's put this motherfucker on here uh pac-man goes on somewhere right yeah I mean, is there another character of that era if we're talking about like the pre-8-bit

Speaker 2 era of arcade games? Is there another character that stands out as much?

Speaker 1 Pac-Man's got a... I mean...

Speaker 2 It's just Pac-Man right Pac-Man yeah it's not like a character from like Galaga or Tempest the the bartender from uh Tapper from Tapper Peter Pepper from Burger Time it's not it's none of them

Speaker 2 it's Pac-Man okay um I wish that guy was real Pac-Man but well yeah but also the guy from Tapper from Taffer you wish he was real what does that mean I just love him I think you what I think he's funny he is funny funny I think all the characters in that game are funny.

Speaker 1 Isn't he just like make a drink and slide it down the game?

Speaker 2 Yeah, but they want the drink so bad, and if you spill it, they get so mad.

Speaker 2 It's a really funny game. Okay.

Speaker 2 I wonder if he has a canonical name.

Speaker 2 An unnamed bartender. Yeah, he is funny.
He looks really funny. He's funny.
He's in Wreck-It Ralph, too. Passes the Wreck-It Ralph quest.
That's right. The Wreck-It Ralph test.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think on our list has to go Master Chief.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think Master Chief belongs in the top 10. I honestly do.
And I have played a few Halo games.

Speaker 2 I'm not an FPS guy, but the character is really well known.

Speaker 1 I feel 0% about Halo, but I think Master Chief is extremely iconic.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 we have nine.

Speaker 2 But obviously we don't, this is not locked.

Speaker 1 To annoy the listener, I want to celebrate myself for a second and say that I've been extremely, extremely judicious with this list. I am not forcing

Speaker 1 my heroes. Pyramid Head and Chun Li down people's throats.

Speaker 2 No, I'm furious at you, but you're arguing. I kind of want to throw their Chun Li on there.

Speaker 2 Um, I do think either Chun Li, Chun Li should go on the list. Um,

Speaker 2 dog from the window

Speaker 2 of the Resident Evil things, that's very nice, but also it's insane that the merchant didn't say himself because the merchant, I think, is I know what people come for, they come from Window Dog.

Speaker 2 I do think that, um,

Speaker 2 gosh, I'm looking at this list and I'm that's why I'm here.

Speaker 2 You guys can't get Window Dog. No, we can't get Window Dog.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be over in the corner.

Speaker 2 Donkey Kong not being on the list.

Speaker 1 It's crazy.

Speaker 2 Even there, I was like, I would take, if I take another Nintendo character, I take Samus over Donkey Kong. Over Donkey Kong? I think so.
I would take Samus. Well,

Speaker 2 we've also, we've also, you know, we talked about Mega Man, but we didn't talk about like Simon Belmont from Castlevania. Like, that's a big character.

Speaker 1 I think that.

Speaker 2 He's probably been usurped at this point, but I think it's worth acknowledging.

Speaker 1 I think that, like, Donkey Kong Country was iconic for a generation. I think Donkey Kong is in the Mario movie.

Speaker 2 We're not even talking about

Speaker 2 actually. He's also, I think, in Wreck-It Ralph.
One of the more iconic

Speaker 2 Mario characters.

Speaker 2 Yoshi. Yoshi's not even on the fucking list.
I do like Yoshi, but yeah, come on. Are we putting Yoshi in a top 10 of video game characters? Are we going to have five

Speaker 2 in this movie?

Speaker 2 Again, it's.

Speaker 2 Honestly, they should all be Mario characters.

Speaker 1 It's hard. It's hard not to.

Speaker 1 But these aren't like the best characters of all time. It's the most iconic.
Yeah. I keep saying it.

Speaker 1 I would shut up.

Speaker 2 I do think Dragon Quest Slime is iconic. Yep.

Speaker 1 I don't think he's.

Speaker 2 I don't think he's more iconic than Tony Hawk.

Speaker 1 I don't think he's number seven iconic.

Speaker 2 I'm not, this is not. We should not think of this as ranked.
I'm just writing these all down.

Speaker 2 We'll figure out the ordering. You know what?

Speaker 1 I'm going to say, because we've been so angry about her placement.

Speaker 2 Okay, he did put Tony Hawk. That's pretty funny.

Speaker 2 I don't think Tony Hawk is a video game character. I think he is.

Speaker 1 If he is, then Spider-Man is more of a video game character than Tony Hawk.

Speaker 2 I think Tony Hawk has more games than Spider-Man.

Speaker 1 I'm sure he is, but like,

Speaker 1 Spider-Man is so a video game that he's in the Spider-Man movie as a reference.

Speaker 2 We don't have to put Tony Hawk in here. Can I say something? What?

Speaker 1 What do you want to say?

Speaker 2 First off, I know none of us are the biggest

Speaker 2 Witcher heads.

Speaker 2 I messed around with Witcher 3. But, you know, Gerald of Rivia is like a very well-known character that I think probably has more of a case than some of the other characters that were in the top 20.

Speaker 2 So I think he at least weighs a little bit of consideration.

Speaker 2 But the other thing I'm going to say is,

Speaker 2 as much as we wanted to shit on it earlier, Laura Croft might just belong in the top 20.

Speaker 1 She does belong on the list.

Speaker 2 So maybe that part of this list is, again, it goes back to a thing I was saying earlier. It's like, I think it might just be a lot of reordering.

Speaker 2 Like, it's like, you kind of look at what they've got here. Maybe, maybe Agent 47 goes, maybe Sackboy goes, but Shadow Heart goes.
Asterion goes. Well,

Speaker 2 we're making a top 10 here, not a top 20. So if we're looking 10 and below, I think the cuts are Shadow Heart, Sackboy, and Agent 47.
Doesn't every other character just kind of stay? Yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 And you just sort of shuffle the order?

Speaker 2 I would argue.

Speaker 2 I do agree, yes.

Speaker 2 I could hear an argument for cutting Pac-Man.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I would be the one to start it, but I do think that Pac-Man,

Speaker 2 a lot of the Pac-Man love is based on good faith of early Pac-Man. There are not a lot of strong iterations of Pac-Man.
No, most of the games fucking suck.

Speaker 2 Most of the games are fucking dog shit. Even though the movie games are horrible,

Speaker 2 but the character is so identifiable. And I also think if we're talking about video games overall,

Speaker 2 he represents an era of video games, the pre-console arcade era of video games. Like our moms know who Pac-Man is.
Right, exactly. Everyone knows who fucking Pac-Man is.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Our children wouldn't, but

Speaker 2 that's sort of what I was getting at. Is that like, I think, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 wrong room, I think. But

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 kids today don't fuck with Pac-Man the way we do as kids.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no. They definitely don't.
But.

Speaker 2 Because also arcades are just not really the same. Like, they don't really have them like that.

Speaker 1 Children are not exclusively like

Speaker 1 what makes iconography. No.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 Steve would be number one.

Speaker 1 Do kids care about Minecraft now?

Speaker 2 Kids? I mean, they're making a Minecraft movie. Jack Black also playing Steve.
Gonna be very funny.

Speaker 2 I honestly think. Is that true? Yeah, it's gonna rock.

Speaker 2 That's really funny. He's honestly I'm just doing VO, right? I do think kids have, I think the younger generation is more into Roblox than Fortnite.
I think that's the, or I'm sorry, Roblox.

Speaker 2 I said Roblox and Fortnite. I meant Roblox and Minecraft, but I think there's a lot.
I think kids still play fucking Minecraft. It's a huge game.

Speaker 2 It's the biggest selling game of all time. Who's that pig from the Minecraft thing that we watched? From the Minecraft

Speaker 2 story. We played it.
We did Minecraft story mode. Yes, we did.
That was an old episode.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I own it on Switch.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I don't. That was a Telltale.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was towards the end of the Telltale experiment. So, how about this?

Speaker 2 I know we took Tony Hawk off. Did we take,

Speaker 2 are we losing? What did we lose there in the seventh spot? I don't even remember.

Speaker 2 I moved Dragon Quest Slime out for now. Okay.
Because I do think that Solid Snake is on the list. You think Solid Snake is in the top 10? I kind of think so.

Speaker 2 Maybe that's just me being, I love him, but I love him too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's in Smash. He's in Fortnite.
He's in Fortnite. Those are the two biggest games.
Like,

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't know how big Smash is, but Smash is like a big game. It's a big game.

Speaker 2 But if we're talking about, like, hey, this is the, the, the, the, they want to figure out they want to take the biggest characters from other games and put them all together.

Speaker 2 That is what Smash Brothers is. So maybe the Smash Brothers test is an important thing.
Yeah. Um, and then, you know, that's, I'm sort of backdooring my way into getting Sora back on the board.
Um,

Speaker 2 he was the last, he's canonically the last Smash Ultimate character.

Speaker 1 He's the final guy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he is. But

Speaker 2 he's not on the list.

Speaker 2 Sephiroth? Oh, fuck. We forgot about Sephiroth.
Sephiroth, I would almost put in above cloud. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've been thinking about Sephiroth for like the last five minutes, and

Speaker 1 it paralyzed me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because like obviously Cloud is the person you play as, but Sephiroth is the reason you're playing the game.

Speaker 2 I'm looking through third-party characters that are in the Smash Brothers franchise, Smash Brothers Ultimate current. Pac-Man, unfortunately, on the list.
Pac-Man is absolutely on there.

Speaker 2 No, he's a he and he belongs on there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 A snake, as was mentioned. In fact, that was one, I think, maybe the first third-party.
I remember that reveal when they were doing, was it Brawl? Yeah. It was originally in?

Speaker 2 Amazing trailer.

Speaker 1 Mega Man.

Speaker 2 Mega Man is on there, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Some of these characters are from

Speaker 2 Fire Emblem,

Speaker 2 which is first party. Roy.
Shulk is on there. Shulk is from Zenozo.

Speaker 1 Was in Smash.

Speaker 2 The representative they took from the Street Fighter franchise were Kennon Ryu. So maybe Ken and Ryu is a unit, if that's not a cop-out.

Speaker 2 Bayonetta is on there. I don't think Bayonetta makes lists.
Simon Belmont is on there. Richter Belmont also on there.

Speaker 1 I don't think anybody cares about the Belmonts.

Speaker 2 Joker from Persona. Hero from Dragon Quest.
It is a case for Hero, but

Speaker 2 I think Slime is more iconic. Banjo-Kazooie.

Speaker 2 Terry and Kazuya from, I think those are both from SNK Fighting Games. Kazuya is from Tekken.
I'm sorry. I'm less familiar with Fighting Games.
Terry's from SNK. If this list was.

Speaker 2 And Sephiroth and Minecraft Steven Alex. If this list was,

Speaker 2 gosh, I don't even know how long ago.

Speaker 2 Because I do think, obviously, people know who Crash Bandicoot is, and he has had staying power. He's had some bad games.
There's a fucking Cash Bandicoot on this list. We took one of our lists.

Speaker 2 We're going to have our characters Cash Bandicoot. No.

Speaker 2 You make the case against it.

Speaker 1 Who are you pointing at? I didn't say anything.

Speaker 2 I thought Matt was saying that Crash Bandicoot was on.

Speaker 2 He's number 15 on the BAFTA list.

Speaker 2 Does he make the top 10? No.

Speaker 2 I don't think so. I don't think so.

Speaker 1 I don't think so. There hasn't been a Crash game in forever.

Speaker 2 There was just the fourth one, but it was like a redo.

Speaker 2 Because there's been a fourth crash game.

Speaker 1 There was a crash game recently?

Speaker 2 There was crash. It's about time.
Yeah. Crash 4, about time.

Speaker 2 But I guess, yeah, he doesn't have the same kind of like, but you know what he is. You see him.

Speaker 1 You know what he is, but I'm still...

Speaker 1 I'm still sort of stewing on whether or not Sephiroth is more iconic than Cloud. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, certainly his music is the most iconic music

Speaker 1 possibly in all of games, because

Speaker 1 if you're playing a different game,

Speaker 1 any game,

Speaker 1 and that song started playing, you would be like, oh no, it's he's here for sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it happens in Kingdom Hearts 2. You're like, oh, no.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so hold on a second. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Let me take Cloud out of here because

Speaker 2 I I just want to make sure we're starting with the same baseline. We're saying that we're cutting Agent 47 from Hitman, Sack Boy

Speaker 2 from the Little Big Planet series, and Shadow Heart from Baldur's Gate 3.

Speaker 2 Beyond that, the rest of the list, Lara Croft, Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man, Link, Master Chief, Kratos, after all this talk, we are still saying, we're saying that those seven belong in the top 10 in some order.

Speaker 2 Are you saying that?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 They unfortunately did. That's correct.
That's what, yeah, and I think it goes back to the original thing I was saying. It's like

Speaker 2 this is not a horrible list. It's just kind of poorly ordered.

Speaker 1 I think what's most interesting about the list, though, is numbers 10 through 20, and I wish we were doing that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I mean, we could, but we're already at the fucking 90-minute mark. We haven't finished this.
We got a fucking segment.

Speaker 2 I have some new thoughts about bread. And none of us have eaten.
We all want fucking dinner. We all have bread dinner.
If we're adding Pikachu to this list, that gives us two slots.

Speaker 2 So now we got two slots for all of these different characters we've talked about. Is one of them Cloud? Is one of them Donkey Kong? Is one of them Pyramid Head? Is one of them Dragon Quest Slime?

Speaker 2 Is one of them Chun Lee?

Speaker 1 Pyramid Head is not in the top 10 of all iconic video games.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, not.

Speaker 1 I do think Cloud is.

Speaker 2 So, Cloud is one, and that gives us one more slot.

Speaker 2 I mean, if we say Cloud is that Cloud belongs in there, and maybe he does.

Speaker 2 I would maybe argue that Dragon Quest Slime maybe takes the Cloud slot, but you know, I could see being overruled here, especially if we're talking worldwide.

Speaker 2 I think I get what you're getting at. Uh-huh.
Slime is the Pikachu of Dragon Quest. And you fucking see that guy.
He's a pillow. He's a controller.
Yes. I think.

Speaker 2 I think Slime is the Pikachu of Dragon Quest, and Cloud Strife is Final Fantasy. I don't know.
That franchise is so big. I know, but he's like the guy.
Like, he's like, he's.

Speaker 1 Cloud is the guy.

Speaker 2 He's the guy. Slime is in every Dragon Quest.

Speaker 1 You don't know. Here's the problem.
If you don't know anything about Final Fantasy games and you see Cloud, you're like, he's a video game guy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you don't know anything anything about Dragon Quest games and you see Slime, you might think he's a cartoon.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 I'll put Cloud Strife in there under a light protest.

Speaker 2 That gives us one more slot, and then we just got to figure out the order.

Speaker 2 Number 10 then. So we have...

Speaker 1 Why can't Dragon Quest Slime be 10?

Speaker 2 I think then we're maybe a little JRPG heavy there. And we're also like, it's like, you know, we're looking at Western games and the Western canon.
What do we have now?

Speaker 2 We have Master Chief, Lara Croft, and Kratos. That feels like a little bit, you know a dismissive of what has actually become the dominant um

Speaker 2 you know you know the

Speaker 1 the dominant part of the market now maybe the western game studios outside of japan aren't like as obsessed with making iconic characters as they are making game experiences like

Speaker 1 to what we said earlier grand theft auto i'm fucking buying the next one even though i've never

Speaker 1 fucking played the my way through the entire grand theft auto game except maybe four, I think. Maybe.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Nico Bellic on the list? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Cousin.

Speaker 2 I think this 10th spot

Speaker 2 should be either

Speaker 2 Chun Li,

Speaker 2 Samus,

Speaker 2 or Donkey Kong. Both Chun Li in there.
Honestly, it feels like that's like a genre that's not really represented. Yeah, because it's either Chun Li or like Ken and Ryu as a pair.

Speaker 2 No, let's throw in Chun Li. Chun Li's more Chun Li's more interesting.
Yeah. Okay, so how do we order this thing? Is Pikachu number one?

Speaker 2 I mean, because that was completely omitted from the BAFTA list, but maybe Pikachu belongs there. Minecraft Steve, not on our list.
No. But that's okay.

Speaker 2 I think we can live with that. It's our list.

Speaker 2 Is Pikachu number one or is Mario number one? It's one of the two of them, right? There's no case for anyone else. No, I do think...

Speaker 1 I think the potency of Pikachu is crazy.

Speaker 2 I know. I guess it feels a little blasphemous to think because I love Pikachu and I love Pokemon so much.
My heart is saying Mario is number one for some reason, but

Speaker 2 the data makes sense for Pikachu to be number one. I think it's Mario.
You think it's Mario?

Speaker 2 I think if you, I think the parents test, name a video game character, Mario. They're going to go Mario because if they see back to the slime test, they're going to see Mario.

Speaker 2 They're going to know he's from a video game. They see Pikachu, they're going to say he's from a cartoon.

Speaker 1 Yeah, possibly. All right, Mario's first.
Pikachu's second.

Speaker 2 Sonic is three.

Speaker 2 This is. Sonic three.
Is that now? What comes next is the thing.

Speaker 2 That becomes a.

Speaker 2 Now we're kind of in the week.

Speaker 1 I'm going to say something that

Speaker 1 hurts my stomach. I think it's Master Chief.

Speaker 2 Throw that motherfucker in there. Wow.
Master Chief number four.

Speaker 1 I think Master Chief is above Link.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Link is like, Link has an iconic look, but... He has a few too many.

Speaker 2 Can I pitch something real quick? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think Pac-Man is number 10.

Speaker 2 i think he just fills out this list as kind of a nod to like game history i like that i think that's where he belongs yeah yep i think that's good um great i think i would like to put

Speaker 2 i think kratos of what we have left uh-huh i honestly think kratos is 10 and pac-man's number nine

Speaker 2 i think just i think kratos is just i think i think you're maybe underrating him at this point but i think that's fair Because I think, yeah, he's like a video game guy, but I think he's less recognizable than Pac-Man.

Speaker 2 All right, let's see what that looks like. Kratos 10, Pac-Man 9.

Speaker 1 I think Laura Croft and Chun Lee swap places.

Speaker 2 You think Link at five? Link stays at five?

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 2 Laura Croft at six.

Speaker 1 And then Chun Lee at seven.

Speaker 2 Chun Lee at seven.

Speaker 1 And I think, actually, now that I'm looking at that, Kratos is above Chun Lee.

Speaker 2 Kratos is above. Do you think Kratos goes seven? Yeah, I do.
Because Matt had him 10. But then where does Cloud go? Because I do think Cloud

Speaker 2 is maybe a seven contender. I would put Cloud over Pac-Man for sure.
And I probably would put Cloud over, I don't know if I put Cloud over Chun Lee, actually. Maybe Cloud is number nine.

Speaker 2 I would go six, Laura Croft, Cloud,

Speaker 2 Cloud 7,

Speaker 2 Kratos 8, Chun Lee 9,

Speaker 2 Pac-Man 10, I think. I'm lost.

Speaker 1 All right, so you want to just take Cloud from slot 9 and put him at slot 7 and bump everyone else down?

Speaker 2 Yes. Okay, Cloud Strife 7,

Speaker 2 Kratos, Chun Lee 8. Yes.
And Kratos 9? Yeah. Is that correct? I think so, yes.
Or did I flip something?

Speaker 1 I think you flipped something, but I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 This would be Chun Lee here and then Kratos above, right?

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 Two more things.

Speaker 2 One, late case for Akim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium, just because we love that game. He's not the choice, but I just want to reference him again.
Yeah. But also, I feel like Rochelle should weigh in.

Speaker 2 Rochelle, where would you put Mary Caten Ashley from License to Drive?

Speaker 2 One.

Speaker 2 This is,

Speaker 2 I got to say. Yeah.
That looks right. This is a really, this is really

Speaker 2 working our way back. We're working our way from number 10.
Number 10, Pac-Man, number 9, Chun Lee. Number 8, Kratos.
Number 7, Cloudstrife. Number 6, Lara Croft.

Speaker 2 And CloudStrife is such an iconic design. Cloudstrife, number 6, Lara Croft.
Number 5, Link. Number 4, Master Chief.
Number 3, Sonic. number two, Pikachu, number one, Mario.

Speaker 2 Look, it's a mainstream-ass list, but that's the fucking exercise. I think this is a pretty good list.

Speaker 2 And I think the thing about Mario being number one is that also Donkey Kong is number one, too, with Mario. Like, everybody that comes with Mario is part of it, too.
That's a cop-out.

Speaker 2 Pac-Man, Chun Lee, Kratos, CloudStrife, Lara Croft, Link, Master Chief, Sonic, Pikachu, and number one, Mario. That's our determination collectively in real time of the iconic video game characters.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't be surprised if later this week, when this episode drops, we find out that BAFTA is shutting their doors,

Speaker 2 just shuddering because we fucking own them so hard. We're officially changing our name to Bofa.
Bofa D's nuts.

Speaker 2 Terrible.

Speaker 2 Nick's been sitting on that for two hours.

Speaker 2 All right. Hey, any other thoughts on this? I think this is a good thing.
I think it's good. I think

Speaker 2 this made us all feel insane. Yeah, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 It's tough to do these. But also, I think the thing you land on, it's funny that we got into it pretty late in the next

Speaker 2 final slots that are tough.

Speaker 2 The first few slots are always easy.

Speaker 2 They're obvious, you know? It's like making a list of best basketball players of all time. It's awesome.
It's like, you got, well, okay, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, LeBron James.

Speaker 2 Like the first few are easy. It's just, it's eight, nine, and ten that get tricky.
Yeah. Um, it's also just extremely funny that we did hit on this, but the list, not that different.

Speaker 2 No, it's not that different. The reordering is good, though.
Not super interesting. Um, but I think

Speaker 2 people were,

Speaker 2 I hope the listeners found the exercise fun. Yeah.
Because it was, there was a sort of like, I don't know, there was like a,

Speaker 2 uh, there was like a newsroom energy to this kind of thing. There was a moment.

Speaker 1 There was a moment where Nick got really angry.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I think it was was when we started recording the podcast.

Speaker 2 Hey, I got a segment here. It's our video game version of Would You Rather? It's Would You Blathers.

Speaker 2 I love that. That's good.

Speaker 2 And I also,

Speaker 2 I have a few listener submissions from the Discord, which I am going to toss in to this list. Ranch feel free to play along with these.

Speaker 1 Yeah. If I could go back in time and rename our Discord, it would be Discord Elysium.

Speaker 2 That's really good. It's not too late.
That's really good. But that also might already be used for like the official Zaoum Discord or something.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it shouldn't be, given that nobody there is representative of that fucking game anymore.

Speaker 2 They women purged from their own company, from their own IP. All right.
Would you, Blathers?

Speaker 2 Have your memory wiped but your personality stay intact, like Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3, or have your heart replaced with an infernal engine like Carlak in Baldur's Gate 3.

Speaker 2 So my personality has to stay the same.

Speaker 1 What's an infernal engine?

Speaker 2 Infernal Engine is a mechanical device. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 You played that person. Yeah, that's right.
You killed Carlak.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh, you killed Carlak.

Speaker 2 You bastard.

Speaker 2 It's a mechanical device that is designed in the hells that is burning very hot and makes it so Carlak cannot physically touch anybody. And it also is like a ticking time bomb with her neuron chest.

Speaker 2 She's kind of got, she got like cranked, kind of. Yeah, it's kind of a cranked situation.

Speaker 1 So it's that question of like, would I rather not ever touch anybody ever again or be me, but have no idea why I'm so great?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 2 I guess I would have to pick, get my memories wiped, keep my personality, because at least I'm still me. Yep.

Speaker 1 I'm going with Abadaka on that one.

Speaker 2 Ranch. Same.
Same. I'm going to Infernal Engine.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course. Of course.

Speaker 2 Well, because also, like, I want my memories. I want to remember shit.
I don't want my memories. I guess that's how you and I are different.

Speaker 2 I'd be confused all the time. Yeah.
Yeah. I guess, well, look.
That's why it's a good question because there's no upside. But then also, like, I get the Infernal Engine.

Speaker 2 Like, like someone goes in for a hug and a wand's like infernal engine sorry yeah could you maybe put like a marshmallow to your chest and get that nice and like crispy

Speaker 2 i they that feels like an upside yeah all right next up um

Speaker 2 would you blathers have all your money scatter when you're injured like sonic's rings or hear the sonic drowning music anytime you're underwater

Speaker 1 Sonic drowning music, anytime I'm underwater, is already present.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I'm taking that.

Speaker 2 I I think it would be more annoying to have my money go all over the place because like I also don't carry cash. So is that like coming out of some sort of like...

Speaker 2 No, it's like all your like everything through your bank account, all your cryptocurrency, whatever the fuck you got. You got to collect all that.
Straight shot to identity theft. No thanks.

Speaker 2 The drowning music is meant to be scary, but it is helpful. And so the fact that I know that I'm getting closer to drowning means that I'm potentially getting myself out of not drowning.

Speaker 2 I'm picking the drowning music for sure. Drowning music.
What do you think, Rochelle? Same. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that one's probably pretty straightforward. Can we play it? Can we put the dragon the drowning music in here too? A little bit of that.

Speaker 2 All right, here's a listener submission from P. Fafulis, Luigi Maine in the Discord.

Speaker 2 Would you blathers have constant pop-ups tutorial style telling you about mundane information you've seen a thousand times or never be able to keep pace with anybody you're walking with like an escort mission like so you're the escort yeah it's like the kind of thing of just like an npc is walking a different pace and it's like your your your analog stick you can't get in the exact same uh pace as them i think we've talked about this before not exactly this

Speaker 2 i'm always adjusting

Speaker 2 My walk speed with whoever I'm walking with because I'm just trying to get there. Right.
But sometimes, you know, I'll be walking to my fiancé and she'll want to mosey.

Speaker 2 Kind of want to look at something over here. I want to look at something over there.
And I'm like,

Speaker 2 I'm just trying to walk. I'm often told, slow down.
Oh, interesting. So

Speaker 2 I guess I'm just really fast.

Speaker 2 But that's also the video game problem. It's like your run speed is so much faster than this NPC and then you're trying to walk with them and it's not the exact same thing.
So it's so I live this.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I'm going to pick the other one.
Wow.

Speaker 2 Which remind me what that was? Pop-ups. Yeah.
You're having constant pop-ups. This is very solo leveling.
So this is what I'm saying. Except you're getting mundane information.

Speaker 2 Sometimes, I don't think a reminder

Speaker 2 is bad. Sometimes if I had a visual pop-up, you're dehydrated, drink some water, I would like that.

Speaker 1 But what if, but that's, I don't think of that as mundane. Yeah, no, no.

Speaker 1 I think it would be like every time you go to a door, there's a pop-up that says, use hand to open door.

Speaker 2 Right, yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, sometimes I might need that reminder. Like, I, so, you know, you get out of bed, you don't have your coffee before you leave the house.
You might need a door open reminder.

Speaker 1 I feel like the walking thing is something I already experienced. So, again, I'm going to go with the walking thing.

Speaker 2 Rochelle? Same.

Speaker 2 We're both like different ones.

Speaker 2 Same as Heather?

Speaker 2 Both.

Speaker 2 How about you, Nick? I think the pop-ups will be so fucking annoying. I think I just deal with just like, you know what, I've got to walk at a different cadence than everyone else.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. Here's the next one.

Speaker 2 Would you, Blathers, be a first-gen robot master from Mega Man with a broad power like Iceman or Elek Man, or be a late-gen robot master with a hyper-specific power like Pump Man or Clown Man?

Speaker 2 God, I don't like.

Speaker 2 I don't think I like the newer ones. The newer ones kind of seem bad to me.
Clown Man?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I think when you exhaust kind of like Cut Man and Fireman and Woodman and Air Man, you kind of use the big one, the big elements first, the more core ones first.

Speaker 2 You have to get rid of more specific. Cut.

Speaker 2 Blades. America blades.

Speaker 2 I think I would rather be a straightforward

Speaker 2 original gen

Speaker 2 Mega Man. But you're maybe a little cruder.
You're maybe more like a PS1 controller than a PS5 dual sense.

Speaker 2 So that's another thing to consider.

Speaker 1 Would you rather be specifically a clown or broadly an icy?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I guess, I mean,

Speaker 2 and I liked Mega Man 11 pretty good, actually. So,

Speaker 2 you know what? Maybe, maybe, I don't know. I guess I wouldn't mind being Clown Man.

Speaker 2 I'll go. I changed my answer.
I'm going later. Someone say you're already clown.
Already are a clown mode. Nick, see me in the parking lot.

Speaker 2 It's going down.

Speaker 1 Which also is a cage. So you guys are set.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Pretty much just crying in there.

Speaker 1 I would go broad power

Speaker 1 because I think you'd be more likely likely to achieve or to get something that you could use. Sure.
Whereas, like, I don't know how often I can use clown for anything.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, that's fair.

Speaker 2 Ranch, what do you think?

Speaker 1 I think specific power.

Speaker 2 You like one of the more recent ones.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I feel more specific.

Speaker 2 You're more of like a you have like a singular focus. You have a thing.
You have a thing that you're getting. That's actually in the current economy.
Specialization is good.

Speaker 2 Here's going for, I'm going to read the roster of Robot Masters from Mega Man 9 on.

Speaker 2 Concrete Man, Tornado Man, Splash Woman, Plug Man, Jewel Man, Hornet Man, Magma Man, Galaxy Man, Blade Man, Pump Man, Commando Man, Chill Man, Sheep Man, Strike Man, Nitro Man, Solar Man, Block Man, Fuse Man, Blast Man, Acid Man, Tundra Man, Torch Man, Impact Man, and Bounce Man.

Speaker 2 I think with that list, I'm like, I'm also going specific because I like how wild you can get with these. Bounce man is pretty good.
Bounce man is pretty good. I like to jump.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jumping is great.

Speaker 2 Like, I could just be fudge man, and Dr. Wiley's like, green lit, put him in the field, build a stage for him.
Fudge man. Good to go.
Fudge everywhere.

Speaker 2 It's going to be sticky and slippery. Yeah.
It'll be a hoot. All right, next up.

Speaker 2 Would you, Blathers, be kidnapped by a death cult like the president's daughter, Ashley Graham, in Resident Evil 4 or be kidnapped by ninjas like President Ronnie and Bad Dudes?

Speaker 2 Kidnapped by ninjas?

Speaker 2 Kidnapped by Death Cult.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'll go first. I'd rather take the Death Cult because I don't know the agenda of the ninjas.
I don't know what they're going to do. I was literally negotiating with these guys.

Speaker 2 What do they want? I don't know how to deal with them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They could kill me at any second. Yeah.
The death cult, you know they're going to be some drawn-out thing or Exactly. There's going to be some ritual.
They're going to try to put La Plaga into me.

Speaker 2 Like, fucking whatever. They don't run or anything.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think I would choose ninjas because I don't foresee torture.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 1 I think a death cult's more likely to torture you. Whereas ninjas are more likely to just, like, I don't know, behead you or poison you.
And I...

Speaker 2 Does this seem kind of crazy? Death cult seems like it stinks.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It would definitely smell bad. Ninja doesn't seem like it's like Ninja Compound spells that bad.
No,

Speaker 2 it's pretty hygienic.

Speaker 2 Keeping you nice and safe, even. But also, you won't see the death coming.
Death Cult, it's in the name. You know they're going to kill you.
Yeah. Ninjas.

Speaker 1 Ninjas might be ransoming you. Yeah.
Whereas Death Cult definitely wants to death you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 Ninjas could have like political maneuvering that they need. I'm watching Shogun.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 1 I think I would argue that there was a ninja in one of the episodes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I'd, you know, maybe.

Speaker 2 I haven't seen Shogun yet. Is it good? It's fucking great.
Purdy's great. Did you see Blue Eye Samurai? Nope.
Blue Eye Samurai rocks. Yeah.
It's animated. It's fine.

Speaker 2 It looks fantastic. I got to watch both.
Ranch Death Cold or Ninjas?

Speaker 1 Ninjas, because I feel like I could talk myself out of it.

Speaker 2 You're wearing your little costume. You don't have to be doing this.

Speaker 2 I think I'm going to pick ninjas too because if I'm going to get killed, I'd rather not know how. Like, they'll surprise me and that's fine.

Speaker 1 Dagger in the eye. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hey, if they're ninjas, they might be like Naruto ninjas also.

Speaker 2 Like it could be like a like a group of specialty-powered kids. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Final one. Would you, Blathers, have there exist an evil version of yourself like Waluigi, or have there exist a goo version of yourself like gooey g?

Speaker 2 Hmm, I already know Nick's going to say goo. Evil you or goo you.
No, Nick's you. I mean, I'm going to say goo.
I'll just say goo. Gig Nick's saying goo for sure.

Speaker 2 Some would argue, I'm already the goo version of myself.

Speaker 2 Like slipping through bars and whatnot.

Speaker 1 You know what would be like really cruel is if you were like, okay, I'll take the anti-version of myself and they ended up being a good person. Yeah, that would be

Speaker 2 really bad. That's a good premise or something.

Speaker 1 And you'd be like, oh, no, I'm the evil version.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Look at this person doing charity work.

Speaker 2 Like in the Simpsons, when. Oh, right.
That is the end of a Trios of Horror.

Speaker 2 There's a Trios of Horror where they find out that they're keeping an evil twin of Bart in the attic, but at birth, they were switched. And actually, Bart is the evil twin.
That makes sense.

Speaker 2 He's a bad boy. Really, really funny.

Speaker 2 Evil twin's name, Hugo. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hugo's a good name.

Speaker 2 A really good joke in that with Dr. Hibbert.
And he's like, I bet you've never even seen your old reflection. And he holds up an empty frame, and then Hugo looks at it, and he just punches him.

Speaker 2 you're laughing at a doctor punching a child in the face

Speaker 2 that's so fucking good

Speaker 2 this is neither here nor there nobody should ever complain that the simpsons is quote unquote bad so much good there's so much they have so much good to go off of yeah um to work off of um i'm gonna say upswing now too with the the current episode this is what i've been hearing i've been hearing it's uh the simpsons are there's yeah what's this is back 30 more years um i'm gonna um

Speaker 2 i'm gonna go ahead and say Gooey G, because I already have a twin brother. So

Speaker 2 I'm like, miss me with that.

Speaker 2 Because then there would be two of us. Yeah.
I think that's how it works. Yeah.
There'd be an evil one and him too. And let me tell you something.
That would be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 Then you're like double cherry Mario.

Speaker 2 Double cherries, huh? Yeah. Hmm.
You get a bunch of clones to run around. Well, here's the thing.
Solve puzzles.

Speaker 2 His twin would be the nice one.

Speaker 2 Matt. He's not here to defend himself.

Speaker 2 Heather, evil version, goo version.

Speaker 1 I would take the evil version and pray that it was not the good version.

Speaker 2 Rochelle, evil version, goo version.

Speaker 2 Evil. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Gonna win with

Speaker 2 where we'll do more Woody Your Blathers in the future. And if anyone wants to chime in, I think the question block channel of the Discord is a place to submit those.

Speaker 2 I'll parse some of those and compile them for future ones.

Speaker 2 Thanks to everyone who sent them in um and hey that's this week's get played our producer is rochelle chen ranch yard underscore underscore sard on social media our music is by benprunty benpruntymusic.com our art is by duck brigade design duckbrigade.com and check out our patreon patreon.com slash get played where you can find our entire pre-ahead gun battle catalog plus ad-free main feed episodes and our patreon exclusive show get animated matt what's going on this week we're finishing up solo leveling so get in there catch up see what we got uh going on and soon we'll be be telling you what we'll be watching next.

Speaker 2 And boy, oh boy, solo leveling. I'll say it right now, a little tease.
Absolute banger. Great show.

Speaker 1 Great show. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, we've been saying it every week, but we mean it. It's a really fun show.
It's very video gamey.

Speaker 2 I'm repeating myself at this point. But yeah, we're wrapping it up and we'll talk about the finale.
Check that out over at patreon.com/slash get played.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the BAFTAs got played. Yeah, they did.
Got played, didn't they?

Speaker 2 What's all this then? Bloody hell.

Speaker 2 All right, Matt got played.

Speaker 1 That was a headgum podcast.

Speaker 2 What's going on? It's Lamorne Morris.

Speaker 1 And Hannah Simone.

Speaker 2 And we host The Mess Around, a New Girl rewatch podcast now on Headgum. Now, here's the thing.
Every single week, we chat about an episode of New Girl, and we really get into it.

Speaker 2 Like, we get up in there. We get up in there.
You know, we reminisce about our times on set. We share behind the scenes tea.
We react to re-watching episodes that we haven't seen in years.

Speaker 2 We talk about how Jake Johnson is dog f.

Speaker 1 That's not true. We talk about so many memories we have of working with the biggest stars on the planet.
I'm talking Prince, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo.

Speaker 2 We're just two BFFs having a good old time, okay? Sometimes we even talk to other co-stars like Zoe Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Damon Waynes Jr.

Speaker 2 And your dad, we talk to your dad on this show as well.

Speaker 1 Make sure you subscribe to the mess around wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every single Tuesday.