Now That's What I Call Video Game Music: Ice Stage Music

This is a head gun podcast.

Nick, um.

Alright, uh,

you ready to start the show?

Yeah, but, um, um, I, can I, can I ask you something real quick?

Yeah.

Are you cold?

I'm pretty cold.

You're cold?

I'm pretty cold.

I'm pretty cold, too.

Um, do you think that's gonna

maybe impact

how we do the show?

No, I think it'll be, you know, we're talking about ice stage music this week.

I think it'll get us in the right mindset to be

cold.

Okay, I just, um, you know, I just, if I, if my teeth chatter anymore, they're all gonna fall out.

Yeah,

I feel like, you know, what here, here, have a, have a little bit of this slurpee.

That'll help you out.

Matt, we're supposed to be cold.

Okay, okay.

If we're not cold, we're not in the right mindset.

Okay, you're right, you're right.

Oh, um, I'm gonna take a buy of this chip witch.

It's so cold.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, oh, how about some iceberg lettuce?

Just hearing iceberg lettuce makes me even colder, which is good.

That's what we want.

Here, let's watch this.

Um, this, this, the only scene from the Titanic that features people being cold.

The end!

All right, I think this is good.

I think this is good energy to do the show.

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely

easier to do than the normal show.

I froze solid.

Oh, no, I froze solid.

I got too far.

We went too far.

I froze solid.

Somebody get us out of the way.

Somebody for me.

Help.

Mochelle, did you turn up to here?

Michelle, can you actually just...

Can you leave the studio as is and we'll just thaw out?

I'll just be here.

I actually, I think I want to stay.

I want to be frozen.

Yeah, I kind of...

This is actually easier, good for me.

Maybe just like tell

Conifer that we're just going to be in here.

Conover will be in here while he's doing factually.

I'll just be frozen solid.

And it might actually, like it might help it might help us i think it'll help us at least i'm frozen by my friend

finish him oh shit oh no sub zero oh no

we feel cold and lonely but also feel warm and cozy as we discuss ice stage music for the wintry season this week on get played

Wow, it's Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm Nick Weiger, along with Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Get Played.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Heather is out this week, as you can probably infer.

She's still recovering.

Hopefully, have her back real soon.

That's right.

And so it's just us boys today.

Boys' night.

Boys' night.

That's enough of that.

Yeah, I immediately didn't like it.

That's not our energy.

No, no, no.

We're boys' night, guys.

Oh, we're men day.

We're men day.

What's really being manly is acknowledging that

it's men day.

Yeah.

It's not boys' night anymore.

It's men day.

Time you grow up and have it be Mend Day.

Yeah.

Wake up.

Here in Menday, we talk about video games.

That's right.

Talk about games

that we love, games that we've played in the past, and we talk about all sorts of stuff.

And I actually want to start a little bit more generally because we're talking about ice stage music today, which we'll get to.

Brrrrr.

Brrr indeed.

I wanted to talk about winter because you and I are both from Southern California and Rochelle, our producer, is also from California, but up from NorCal.

I have not experienced much cold in my life, and when I've experienced cold or winter, it has been like I'm a place that I don't live.

And so it's been like, like, I've been in, I was in Saskatoon, Canada in January, and I was like, this is impossibly cold.

I cannot imagine living like this.

Yeah, yeah.

I've spent some time in Oregon.

I have family in Oregon, and I visited them quite a bit and have seen the snow there, been up to Washington, been up to Mount St.

Helens.

You know, you learn about these dormant volcanoes in school.

So I was like, I'd like to go see that.

So we went and went to go see it.

Matt, that one's not dormant.

It went off.

What?

Mount St.

Helens went off in the 80s, didn't it?

Well, it's dormant now.

Well, that's what you say until the next eruption.

This thing's dormant, then you're fucking showered with a lot of stuff.

So this is an interesting new data point for me.

Nick living in constant fear of volcanoes.

Doesn't matter what you say about them.

He's like, it could go off anytime.

Look, I saw this documentary with Tommy Lee Jones.

Thing might be right beneath our feet.

But I remember being there and being like, well, this is boring, but the snow is like, it's so novel.

And also, you know, being from here, I've been up to Big Bear quite a bit in my time, and I've seen snow up there.

Yes.

But it's been a very rare instance where I've seen snow fall, like actually falling from the sky.

And a couple years ago, I was in Chicago in January.

Wow.

And it started to snow there.

And I was like, I knew that it was going to be a possibility that it was going to happen.

And so on this trip to Chicago, I was like preparing preparing myself and sort of being like, wow, this is going to be so idyllic and so like

beautiful.

I was ready to like be kind of sweat.

Like, I was romanticizing this snow.

And

it sucked actually a lot.

It was like really bad.

It didn't snow that much, but it snowed just enough where I wasn't wearing like any eye protection.

It was just getting in my eyes constantly and I hated it.

Yeah, that's the thing.

Cause I always, you know, I've known a lot of East Coasters and people from the Midwest who, you know, romanticize and Canadians who romanticize snow and think of like that, have such fond associations with it.

But for me, it's like, and we should say, you know, despite living in California, at least my entire life, it's like California has the

video game world map like diversity in terms of biomes.

Like you can, like there's the desert, there's the ocean, but you can go up to the mountains, like you were saying, you can go up to Big Bear or you can go up to Mammoth where I've been and experience like snow.

There's the Sierra Nevada mountains here, you know, it's, it's like, It's all there.

So I have experienced snow, but it's always been kind of like a distant exotic thing.

And I've also never much cared for it.

But get this out of here.

I don't need this stuff.

Snow's mid.

Yeah.

I'd go less than mid.

I'd say it's sub-mid.

Do you think it's cringe?

Do you think snow is cringe?

I think snow is a little bit cringe.

I think snow's cringe.

Yeah, that's, I don't, I don't need it.

But I do sort of get jealous when I see like

all my comedy friends going back home to their East Coast

wealthy families for the holidays.

Yeah, you're right, right.

That's a different aspect when you find out your friends are rich.

Yeah, well, I like to go see, I like to see the photos.

They're like, oh, I'm posing with, you know, these fall leaves.

And we get fall leaves here, but I've

got fall leaves like that.

Right.

Yeah.

They're either a little, they turn a little bit of a color or they just completely fall off.

Lovely fall leaves on the yard in front of my guest house.

Like, okay, you're a guy who does improv?

Snow activities.

Throwing a snowball, making a snowman, doing a snow angel.

Who cares?

Inside.

You think making a snowball is going to be the funnest thing?

Because you see it.

Like, for me, I always saw it in cartoons and comics.

Yeah.

So I was like,

this looks so cool.

And then you actually do it.

It's like, oh, my hand is cold.

And so it's like a little bit more.

It also doesn't hack really well.

Yeah, it's got a lot of mud in it.

Yeah.

And you get hit with that and it hurts.

Like hurts like worse than a paintball.

It's like, oh, this sucks.

Yeah, it's something fun about this.

No, and then shoveling a driveway.

Yeah.

Miss me with that, dog.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm not doing that.

Yeah, I feel like anytime I built a snowman, it's been gray.

It's just like all muddy.

It's like, this is disgusting.

You made a yellow one one time.

All right.

But what I do like about winter is being cozy.

I'm into being cozy.

What's everybody's favorite hot drink of choice?

Mine's hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate's a good answer.

I mean, if I'm not saying coffee,

that's not the context.

Coffee's off the table.

Coffee's not.

It's not like,

you know,

that's an every morning morning or in this case, like an afternoon drink for me.

I know.

Nick's flying off the walls right now.

Got to have my Java.

Got to have my decaf oat latte.

And you know what he said, too, when he came in?

He put his finger up in front of my face and said, don't talk to me before I've even taken a sip.

Yeah, well,

good for your sake, you took the no.

Yeah, I think I would have got my fucking head chewed off by this guy over here who's so mad.

I think I like a boy, I like a hot toddy.

Oh, that's a fun thing to mess around with.

And it's also like that's so, that's so to me, like, seasonal, you know?

But I don't know.

Rochelle, you got an answer?

Something hot you like?

A honey vanilla chamomile tea from a Celestial Seasoning.

Wow.

Okay, the specificity.

That sounds good.

That sounds nice and cozy.

Yeah.

That's the bear.

That's the cozy.

Yeah.

It's the bear.

That sleepy little bear.

I guess there aren't that many hot drinks.

It's not like we couldn't have done that all day.

I think we named all of them.

Tea.

Tea, hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate, hot alcohol.

That's it.

I guess you could have like a hot cider, like a hot apple cider.

Yeah, oh, like a muled wine for the holidays is actually pretty nice.

I like that quite a bit, but I'm not going to do that.

If it's somewhere, I'll have it, but I'm not going to go do that myself.

Generally, though, I will say that winter is one of my least favorite seasons, but in the context of a video game, I do like ice and snow.

Like, I do find, I do like encounters.

It's like, oh, okay, this is the snow level or whatever.

Like, anytime, like, that's fine.

I'm generally into that.

You know, the one exception a lot of times with platformers

and we experienced this recently with Super Mario Bros.

3 and the ice level is just like, you know, the gimmick of it is that there's no friction,

you know,

and so it affects your mobility quite a bit.

And like that a lot of times is just like I find like a little bit annoying and frustrating if it's not that the physics aren't aren't tuned up.

But generally speaking, I do like encountering some snow in a video game.

Can I speak to that no friction?

Yeah.

I kind of like that part.

I You like being able to slide and slider a little bit.

I like slipping and sliding because it's like, it's just, it's just a fun way to make traversal just a little bit more of a challenge.

Yeah, sure.

And it's like, so it's learning to navigate into account for how much you're going to slide is kind of a fun exercise.

I think.

I think it's pretty fun.

It can be cool if done well, but there are times when it gets annoying where it's just sort of like, you know,

it's like water levels or whatever.

How do you like ice?

And so this is why Weiger will forever be in Mount Podmore, in the hallowed hallways of the, you know, the best of the best, right?

I can just hear Ira Glass and Mark Maron being like,

how do you like ice?

Like they all do, they all get to this question at a certain point.

I do like it.

And it's actually kind of a problem, actually.

Yeah, do you chew it?

I'm an ice chewer big time, and my dentist is always like.

Dentists hate that.

Here's 10 hacks dentists absolutely hate.

They do hate you chewing ice.

They don't like it at all.

They don't lecture you.

And they tell me all the time that

I do need to stop.

They also know you do it too, which is another thing.

You've been chewing ice, haven't you, Ben?

They love.

Dentists love to make you look like the biggest asshole on earth.

Yeah.

Because they're like, oh, have you been flossing?

And you'll lie and be like, yeah.

And they're like, okay, really?

You definitely haven't.

Yeah.

But they actually can't catch me with that one now because I have been flossing a lot.

There you go.

It's like a detective with a polygraph.

It's just like they're ready to bust you.

Yeah.

Or like Columbo at the beginning of the episode, even though he knows everything already.

Just one winner.

One more question.

Do you like ice?

That's because good.

I do like ice.

And, you know, everybody has their preferences.

I do like that, that sonic, like, pellet ice.

Yeah, I love that kind of ice.

A home run.

If I'm going to chew it, that's actually like kind of not the worst one to be chewing on.

It's pretty soft, actually.

I have heard that this is an American thing, that in a lot of the world, they don't love ice like we do.

Like that it's just like it'll be like, you know, especially in Europe is just like the idea of like getting a glass of ice water or a soda with ice in it is so foreign.

Well, everything sucks over there, so that makes sense.

No,

shout out to all, shout out to all my favorite Europeans out there.

We love you here on the show.

Even though your drinks are often room temp.

I like one big cube.

And I've said this before, and people are like, come on, the one big cube thing, really.

But I was like, I love that one big cube.

I like it from

an artistic standpoint.

Yes, yeah.

It makes the drink really pop.

It's very interesting to look at.

And

you're not going to really try to chew on that, are you?

And you're not going to chug it.

That's the other thing, because it's kind of like, you know, it's a little bit of a tooth stopper.

Yeah.

So like you get like a craft cocktail with that one big cube in there and then it slowly melts over time.

It's sort of like, you know, you're parceling out your alcohol a little bit.

But you're not going to, that's the only context that you're going to get the big ice cube in the cocktail.

You're not going to put a

pib extra with one big cube.

What the fuck am I doing here?

You're not going to do that.

You might sprite zero, can I get that with one big cube?

It sounds good.

Actually, it sounds like it sounds kind of funny.

Interesting that you went pib extra.

There's a lot.

There's really just a lot to embat with you today here.

Rochelle, how about you?

I'm trying to enter these hallways as well.

How do you feel about ice?

You'll get there.

Maybe I don't belong in the hallway because I have no preference for what kinds of ice I get.

Do you don't like, like, do you, when you say no preference, you mean what type of ice?

Or do you mean ice or no ice?

Like it doesn't affect you?

What type of ice does not affect me?

I will say sometimes ice is too much.

Sometimes I do want a room temperature water.

Okay, so water is one thing where, because I've actually got, you know, I always have,

this is a little peek behind the pod here.

I always have two beverages.

Yeah.

That's just my thing.

I got two drinks, so I can spill both of them all over the place.

But I have like a decaf coffee.

I got a hot one right now.

And then I've got a room temp water.

Because actually, when it comes to flat water, I do prefer it room temp generally, unless it's like really hot out.

Because it just chills my teeth too much.

Does this track for anybody else?

It absolutely.

I know what I'm about to say doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

When water is too cold, it tastes different.

Yeah, I think that's true.

I don't know what it is.

Yeah.

But it tastes a little different to me.

I don't really like it though.

I'm with you.

Yeah, no, I don't want that to be too cold, but there's certain drinks I do like ice cold.

Yeah.

Oh, like a frosty cold one, for example.

But I don't want ice in a cold one.

Oh, no, ice in a brew dog.

A beer in a with ice?

I might think you're Mork from Orc or something doing something that strange.

I will say that, you know, Natalie.

Do you want to know Mork and Mindy on this?

Listen to this?

Yeah, most of our audience was born in 1965.

Natalie took me to a Vietnamese restaurant once where, and it was like a largely Vietnamese-American clientele, and I was surprised that

people were drinking Heineken with ice in it.

Oh, wow.

And I guess that's like a, I don't know what it is.

I don't know if it's if it's just a thing specific to

that country or it was just a thing at this restaurant, but it felt like a thing that was just like, oh, this is an interesting

cultural preference.

I just thought of a different type of ice that I also really like.

It's often the ice that you get in

a Thai iced tea, or it's like, oh, sure, really crushed up.

Yeah, that's super crushed ice.

That's a blast.

That's my shit right there.

Should we switch topics?

Should we do a different format?

Just do ice?

Yeah.

The drink dudes.

Heather comes back.

Hey, we're the drink dudes.

We're the drink dudes now.

Both Heather and Mitch are mad.

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Let's get on topic, actually.

Let's talk about what are you playing?

Wow.

And Nick, for this one, because

we're banking this ahead.

Yes.

We were going to talk about

ice games, like snow games, right?

Winter.

I thought that was a thing we could get into.

Yeah, we could just sort of talk generally about that.

Although, if you do have anything else, feel free to shout out.

I was going to shout out

Bob Mackey's book,

which has been out for a couple months now, but I'm just getting around to reading.

Congrats to friend of the show, host of the great Talking Simpsons podcast, along with Henry Gilbert.

Bob Mackey, on his new Boss Fight Books

version of Day of the Tentacle, which you can buy from bossfightbooks.com.

Can you order it from there?

I believe so.

And

it is just an oral history of Day of the Tentacle, a game that we've covered on the podcast.

Some of it is stuff that was previously published, I think, on US Gamer, but

some of it is a lot of it is new and is greatly expanded, is very cohesive, and it's just like a really engaging read.

And it's like just really cool to have like a text that's about something so specific and about a game that I have a lot of fondness for from somebody that I know.

So, check out that Day of the Tentacle book by Bob Mackey.

Wow, hell yeah.

Yeah.

You should read it.

You'd like it.

I'll hand it over to you.

Okay.

I'll buy you a copy so we support our friend.

I could, I could, I could, I could, these, these books are

run for a very reasonable price.

Uh, I can, I, I can, uh, I can source my own.

I'll, I'll, I'll get this myself because that does seem like a fun read.

In thinking about this,

obviously,

there are ice levels in games, but there are very few.

I feel like there are very few games that almost take place entirely in the snow.

Yes, that's the thing.

This is going to be an ice-focused game.

I do have a,

I did think the ice level is like a different discussion.

Yes.

But I think as far as an ice game goes, I always think first and foremost of the SSX franchise.

And I know there are some people who are Snowboard Kids fans.

And I just, you know, I wasn't on board with Snowboard Kids.

I didn't play the Snowboard Kids.

I know some people love the Snowboard Kids.

If you respect the Snowboard Kids, I'm not disrespecting the Snowboard kids.

We love the Snowboard Kids.

We absolutely love them.

But

what I played was SSX.

Yes.

And I think the SSX games, particularly SSX, tricky when they really got the format.

But

it was like basically one of the only worthwhile launch titles for the PlayStation 2.

I recently played SSX Tricky at a friend's house

and thought I'd have that muscle memory back.

Did not.

No.

Did not have it back.

Not in the same way that

I took a long...

break away from Tony Hawk, but got back into Tony Hawk when the new one came out.

And like all that muscle memory was still there.

SSX Tricky felt hard to me, but I was also playing it on GameCube, which I was not used used to

at my buddy Connor's house.

But I loved SSX Tricky so much, and

I loved SSX3 quite a bit as well.

So Tricky is where I fell off with a franchise.

So

I don't know SSX3 at all.

Do you remember anything with SSX3 specifically?

It was just SSX Tricky is more of like...

They're both pretty arcadey, but like Tricky is crazy taxi.

Yes.

And SSX3

is maybe like Forza Horizon or something, where it's like, it's a little closer to the real thing, but still fun.

More of a sim, but still

pretty crazy.

Like, there's nobody doing the worm on their

snowboard as a trick.

But I liked that, that one quite a bit.

And also, because I think it was, I think SSX 3 like really pushed the PlayStation 2.

It looked really, really nice at the time to me.

And I was like, I can't believe that this is on the PlayStation 2 because

it looked real.

So, like, I said, like, snow is one of those things, like water that, like, it's just, you know, you could, they can, when it, when it gets rendered visually effectively, it is like, oh, wow, that, that, that feels, uh, uh, that feels, that really feels spectacular.

Um, and uh,

I don't know, I mean, maybe, maybe because it's just especially in the, the, the, when

environments were a little bit more low poly and like just doing like a big, vast, smooth section of terrain, like it, like, maybe you could get away with that a little bit more.

Maybe this was like a way that like it justified that.

So, um, I don't really know what I'm saying here.

I'm just kind of saying, like, I wonder if that part of why these games look so good is because they were able to take their the technical limitations of the age and like, you know, turn them into an advantage.

I'm seeing here on the SSX3 Wikipedia, yeah, uh, the reception, there's like a chart here, or you know, a grid that has all the

outlets that reviewed it for each console.

Yeah.

And it has unanimous praise, mostly critical reception.

The one that I'm interested in right here, 3100% across the board for the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and the GameCube versions of this game from Playboy Magazine.

Wow.

Playboy was reviewing video games for a time.

Do you think, is it a different Playboy, you think?

No, I think it's that.

I mean, no, I don't think it's like a video game publication.

I'm hovering over the definitely not Purple Link.

Yeah, you have to do that purple link for the Wikipedia for Playboy.

Yeah,

I really like to only read the articles.

But it's yeah, it's I wonder what they were, what the calculation was there.

They're like, we're not selling enough of these magazines.

We have to have video game reviews in them.

Honestly, I think that probably was a thing of just like they saw that their audience was getting older and older and were just like, yeah.

Let's try to be fucking Maxim.

Let's try to be FHM.

And then, of course, those publications don't exist anymore anymore.

No, and

so many magazines have shut their doors we got to bring magazines back I guess they're not good for the environment I like magazines I do like a magazine I like a magazine I was thinking the other day that I it sucks that Nintendo Power isn't a magazine anymore I would or exists at all I would love a Nintendo Power magazine to come back I'd love to just be flipping through a magazine and be like what's Mario up to it is amazing also that they were just so ahead of the curve in terms of because that's now every every company kind of handles their own media, right?

They all have their own PR organizations, and Nintendo was just like, you know, we're just going to pull out a full-on propaganda rag.

We're just going to, we're just going to have a fucking, our own version of Provda is just going to come out under the Nintendo power label.

We're just going to send it to kids and we're going to tell them every game is good.

Yeah.

And like, but that's like, that's what you want in a magazine.

You're like, wow, this is good.

Yeah.

But I'm thinking of recent snow games for me, and a big one.

By the way, by the way, just before we got away from SSX, I was like looking at it because similar to you, I was like looking for info through this as we were talking.

And

I was like, what the hell happened with this franchise?

And I was just like, oh, yeah, EA.

It's just a fucking EA franchise.

And like everything, they eventually, you know, bleed it dry and then kill it.

It's a bummer.

That's a shame.

Yeah, I feel like that's due for a proper reboot, but we'll see.

Or requel.

There's so many of these games that I think look fine enough that I would take a port of just SSX Tricky and have it on Switch.

I'm fine with that.

They don't have to make it too much nicer.

Maybe the Tony Oc 1 and 2 treatment is in the works.

Who knows?

In the same way, I've said this probably a million times, too.

I just want a port of NBA Street Volume 2.

I don't need the first one.

I don't need the third one.

Two only.

But what they would do is they would just, like, they'd have lost the license for everybody, so it'll be a bunch of generic-sounding characters.

As long as they have that sweet, sweet music in there, I'd be happy to hear it.

A big snow game came out just last year, Nick.

Hmm, what's that?

God of War Ragnarok.

Wow, great poll.

Takes place in Fimbel Winter, my dear.

That's a snow game.

That's a big time snow game.

A lot of snow.

You get your fucking ass handed to you by Thor in the snow.

It's really, really good, too.

It's a super...

Not all of it is snow, but a good majority of it is.

At least the very intro is in the snow.

And then you get to back into snow a little later once you're coming back to some of the places you've been before.

But

you got to traverse a lot of snow, a lot of ice, actually.

But that's probably the biggest snow game in recent memory.

That's a good one.

The other one I was thinking of in recent times was Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze.

Oh, yes.

Which I loved.

I loved that fucking game.

I never finished it, but

I put some time into it and was like,

this is as good as Donkey Kong Country can be.

This is fantastic.

Just turn on the fucking funky mode and blaze through it.

Get to play Funky Kong and you can't fail.

I live my life in Funky Kode, maybe.

I just put on sunglasses.

I will.

Wow, we actually did it for the bit.

I've gone funky mode.

I don't know if we can handle funky mat.

I can't really see.

Well, I'm a visual bit for the podcast.

That's good.

People like that.

Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, I thought, was a lot of fun and also just like a good way of what we were talking about.

I think it did have a good balance of using the

what can sometimes be a liability or can feel kind of clunky to play ends up being, you know, that I thought it was well executed, the ice physics in that game.

But the one I was going to talk about just a little bit, just real briefly, is Icewind Dale.

There were a couple of these that they made back in the day.

These were around the era of Baldur's Gate.

Oh.

And

they were

They were developed by Black Isle and they had a

they released a sequel as well.

I never got around to playing the sequel, but I did play the first game and the expansion.

And

it basically was like, you know, kind of the same sort of thing at Baldur's Gate,

but in the way that Planescape Torment took the Baldur's Gate, you know, sort of

the engine and sort of the structure of it, but like made it much more plot-focused and much more about the story and much less about the combat.

This went in the opposite direction.

And it basically was like so focused on combat.

You created the your entire party you didn't just create a player character wow uh and and so like that in of itself took a lot of time um the score was by jeremy soul and i actually thought about picking a track from this one for the my i stage music but as i was going through i just like i as much as i like it i feel like i had some other stuff that was kind of similar so i'm i'm not pulling from that but it was a really fun uh and really intense uh pc rpg back in the day it came out in like 2000 and uh another franchise that's kind of dormant but i i feel like in this this, when we're seeing like Baldur's Gate 3 having such a, you know, such this amazing reception right now, I wouldn't be surprised if someone tries to resurrect the Icewind Dale franchise, knowing that a lot of those fans, you know, also exist.

Not unlike the aforementioned volcano, Mount St.

Helens.

Not actually dormant, maybe.

Maybe we'll see.

Maybe.

Is that why the word dormant is in my head?

I think so.

It's gonna be thinking about dormant volcanoes that aren't actually dormant all day.

Yeah, just living in fear constantly.

It's like, it's happening.

Icewind Dale's my pick.

Should we talk a little bit of music?

Let's talk tunes, my man.

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All right, so the topic is now that's what I call video game music, ice stage music.

Burr.

Burr indeed, my good boy.

Oh, I also want to shout out a couple of games that aren't like ice games, but that have,

just in my notes, that are, but that have like very big ice sections.

Metal Gear Solid is a big one.

Oh, yes.

And then Uncharted 2 has some great ice venturing.

Love the ice sections of that game.

I got to play through through those.

I'd played Uncharted, but I had not played Uncharted 2 and 3 until a few years ago.

I think I played through them in quarantine and talked about it on the podcast in their old format.

And I think they absolutely hold up.

You play the play the re-releases.

All right.

How do we want to do this, Matt?

Do you want to start?

We've just basically each picked out some ice stage music that we like, and we're going to alternate.

Yeah, I'll start.

You know, I didn't even know where to begin, really, because I feel like...

I know where to begin.

You know where to begin?

Yeah.

For me?

Or for you?

No, for me.

But I'm just saying, if you don't know where to begin, I have a place to begin.

You begin.

Okay, I'll begin.

Because this is the intro of a game.

And this is an intro of one of the greatest ARPGs ever made.

This is the intro for Final Fantasy VI.

This is by Nobu Uematsu.

And there's some run-up up to this point, but there's a point, and I think in the video I sent you, Matt, you can watch the visuals of it.

It's a point where

Terra, who is effectively the protagonist of this game,

and two other soldiers walk in their mechs through an endless blizzard, through an endless ice land, and while that is playing, this track kicks in.

Are you watching it?

Doesn't look cool.

It does look really cool.

They're just kind of walking,

but they're big.

Yeah.

The lonely dirge of marching to battle.

And so in the pixel remaster of this,

they removed the credits.

Wow.

So it's just them silently walking with nothing going on.

I wonder why they did that.

No idea.

It's weird.

Anyway,

this track's an all-timer.

And I just have such a vivid memory of just experiencing that for the first time.

So this one always says ice to me.

That did say ice.

That was that was simply that was that was frigid, my dog.

I'll go,

I'll start here.

Wait, so you mentioned the pixel masters, because I know you're playing through the Final Fantasies.

Remind me if you played six.

I did not get to six.

I am somewhere in like in the middle of four.

I did fall off of that playthrough.

There's an ambitious project to play through all the Final Fantasies.

And we were talking, or will be talking, I forget which order this is coming out, about Final Fantasy VII.

And,

you know, like, I think if you go with this project, you'll want to actually play through Final Fantasy VII once you get there.

I think

I'd like to do it because that just seems like something I should have done already.

I should have just done this before.

But, you know, we don't have to belabor the point of there's just no time and infinite amount of games to play.

This first song from me is from one of my all-time favorite games, a game we covered on this show, Pokemon Gold.

And, you know, in the in the first pokemon games red blue and yellow each each gym has an has a has a type right you got your fire you got water grass electric normal in the heyday of buzzfeed quizzes was there ever like a which pokemon type are you that feels like something that would have i'm sure there there there had to have been and now there's like there's too many types there's too many types uh but they added they added some new types to pokemon gold and silver one of them being

There is a BuzzFeed quiz.

Let's find out which of the 18 Pokemon types you are.

Oh, my God.

How long is the quiz?

We can't do this.

Why can't we do this?

Because you're scrolling and it hasn't stopped.

This is way too long.

This is so long.

I cannot believe how long this is.

I'm sure a lot of them.

They really want to keep you engaged with this page.

Yeah, yeah.

So you don't get fed all their ads.

Yeah, it looked like it was mostly ads.

This is from a section of the game that is very challenging.

And it's this part, it's called the ice path.

And so you're in, you're in, we talked about this lack of friction.

Yes.

So you're in a cave where there is a bunch of ice everywhere and you have to navigate the cave.

The caves are like puzzles.

And so you have to figure out how to skate across each of the ice planes, basically, to land in front of or

you know, or have a have a have a boulder stop you so you can get to this ladder that you can't you can't just walk over to it.

You have to go a very specific direction.

And this is the music from the ice path from Pokémon Gold and Silver.

Ah, this rips.

I know this track.

It's like kind of aggressive because like it's a hard part of the game.

This part right here,

now that sounds like ice.

Yeah.

Yeah, that crunchy bass line.

Yeah.

I mean, it just feels like it would be in like a rap song.

It's really, really good.

But I did bring in, for a point of comparison,

because the game was remade for the DS under Pokemon

Heart Gold.

And so here's that very same track from the DS version.

I like that.

I thought about pulling in one of the orchestral scorings

of the Final Fantasy VI track.

Because sometimes I like those rearrangements and other times I'm like, hmm, I don't know about this.

I like the original.

This is good.

This is a good arrangement.

This is really, really good.

I mean,

heart gold is like a perfect execution of that type of thing.

Yeah.

Of the remake that improves upon the original.

It's so good.

But there's something that you're just getting from that of just like how much the character of the instrumentation affects like the mood of it and it affects how it comes across.

Because that second one sounds a lot more, even though it sounds like mysterious, it sounds less threatening than the first one.

The first one feels like someone's going to stomp on your throat.

Equally as cold, though.

Yeah, they're both cold.

I'm like, I'm getting kind of cold.

You're getting cold from hearing?

Listening to that.

I think I feel like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining right now hearing that one.

Oh, Matt, warm yourself up.

Okay.

Did I talk about

the book The Shining on this pod?

I can't remember.

I don't know.

I read the book, The Shining.

Shout out to the Just King Things podcast, which is a reads through all of Stephen King's books in chronological order.

And I've been reading all of his books and listening to that pod as a companion.

It's a great show

and a great motivator to get through it.

But, you know, a while back at this point, I read The Shining book, the book the shining and uh i i mean i think like it and the movie are are basically equally good um the book is certainly like perhaps a little bit more problematic has some stuff that hasn't aged as well uh but i think it's like it's just got such it adds such interesting detail and depth to it and it also i think really is a great psychological portrait of both addiction and also like gradually losing your mind it's just sort of stuff you don't really you know just because it's a different medium it doesn't communicate as well on film although it's really effectively portrayed by kubrick obviously, and Nicholson.

Anyway, the big difference, or one of the big differences, is how it ends.

So, the first thing.

This is our new favorite thing that we do.

Yeah.

You tell me something insane of an ending that I haven't somehow been spoiled.

So, the ending of

the movie, obviously, he freezed to death, like you referenced.

The ending of the book is

the caretaker, the

groundskeeper rather, who arrives,

who also has The Shining.

I can't think of the character's name right now, a play by Scatman Crothers.

He arrives to rescue the family.

In the movie, he's basically immediately killed, despite traveling all the way across the country.

And in the book, he's

like, actually, it's kind of rude to this guy.

Just get an axe to the back as soon as he shows up.

Just got here.

You know how expensive it is to book a last-minute flight from like Miami to rural Colorado.

And then that drive.

Christmas season?

Yeah, and then that drive.

They had to get in the snowmobile.

That was, that was, there was no way that drive was like sub three hours.

Yeah.

There's no way.

Anyway, so like he, in the book, he doesn't fail.

In fact, he succeeds at rescuing the family.

And there's this thing about the boiler that's going in the whole in the book the whole time.

So the ending of the book is him like driving away with the family on a snowmobile as the hotel behind them explodes.

And it's just like, man, that is so

completely different.

It works in the book, but it's like so completely dissonant versus what you know from the movie.

That's because like the ending is so it's like a Michael Bay ending.

Yeah, like, yeah, they had to like make in an action movie.

Like, oh, this book wasn't exciting enough.

Uh, let's blow up the hotel.

Yeah, I know.

It's like the opposite of what would happen, but instead they make a much more like kind of subdued sort of ending in the movie.

I gotta, is it a thickie?

It's a big boy.

Ugh, that's not what I wanted to hear.

I feel like it's a pretty substantial read.

I'd like to read the novelization of the movie then.

Make it a little bit shorter, maybe.

Start with the Bob Mackey book.

Work your way.

Okay, okay, yeah.

Sort of get a taste for reading.

Nick, you're a good pick.

My pick is from the Banjo-Kazooie franchise.

And I thought, just, you know, we had these first ones are perhaps a little bit more melancholy

or even upsetting.

This one is just pure winter wonderland.

This is Freezey Peak by Grant Kirkhope.

Horns?

Back me up on this, because I think you'll agree with me.

Horns is winter.

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

We're not hearing them now, but...

But I mean, it just sort of announced the arrival of winter and they're just kind of living in this sort of, you know,

this percussive sort of sleigh bell thing that's going on.

Yeah, in the same way that...

But the horns back now, doing this little lady here.

You can't hear

that type of bell without thinking.

Anyway, this is very kind of, you know, Tim Burton adjacent, I would say.

Like this would not be out of place in like the nightmare before Christmas.

But you know, a really good, really good ice level in this game, and I think this the soundtrack's a nice pairing for it.

You like them Banjo-Kazooies?

I was just about to say.

I've never played it.

I think one is the only one that's really worth playing.

I think Tui is just a bloated mess, and nuts and bolts is like what, and it has its defenders, but it's kind of whatever.

I just, I didn't have the Nintendo,

I didn't have the Nintendo 64.

Yeah, that's a big, yeah.

So I just, like,

I just never got around to it, but I feel like had I played it, I probably would have liked it.

Yeah, well, the thing is, like, I did have a Nintendo 64.

The Nintendo 64 had like eight games total that were worth playing.

Like, and some, some very, very high highs.

But the thing was, like, when Banjo-Kazooie would come out.

Lower your pitchforks, everybody.

Yeah, it'd be like an oasis in a desert.

It's like, oh, man, here we go.

Here's a fucking,

you know, AAA rare game.

I like their vibe.

These guys, Banjo and Kazooie?

I like them a lot.

Yeah, they're a good duo.

Yeah, that's fun.

They're so, you know, in the same way that I like any of those Instagram posts that are like, these animals that shouldn't be getting along are best friends.

Yeah.

I love that.

It definitely is one of those situations, you know.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

If Banjo-Kazooie was on Instagram, they'd be the biggest thing on Instagram.

People would love this bear with a bird bird in his backpack.

The fact that he, yeah, this bipedal bear that has clothes in a backpack is friends with a horse.

Not a horse, a bird.

Yeah.

My brain's going a little fat from this Coke Zero.

Slow down, Turbo.

Put those sunglasses back on.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

I got to get back into funky mode real quick.

Rochelle, did you ever play a Banjo-Kazooie?

No, I never played it.

What systems did you have when you were younger?

I had PlayStation and

Game Boy Color.

What were some of your favorites from that era?

There was American Kate and Ashley game.

Love that.

Do you remember which one?

I think it's called Sweet 16, and it basically was like almost like Life the Game Board, but as a Mary Kate and Ashley,

and there was like mini games.

So this wasn't, was this Sweet 16 licensed to drive?

Yes.

So it looks like this was basically like a

like a Mario party, but with Mary Kate and Ashley.

Yeah, it was like Mario Party.

Wow, that rocks.

I'd never even heard of this game.

This is the type of stuff that when my fiancé asks what we cover on the show, she's often asking, why haven't you covered Mary Kate and Ashley Sweet 16?

That rocks.

Yeah, I, well, hey, Banjo-Kazooie had kind of a Mary Kate and Ashley sort of synergy to the two of them.

I guess they did.

Collaborated on some bangers.

You mentioned just a second ago, Nick, that if that was in like a Tim Burton Nightmare Before Christmas

movie, it wouldn't stand out, it wouldn't be out of place.

I don't think this one would either, as a matter of fact.

My next pick is from Kingdom Hearts 2, Christmastown, from the Nightmare Before Christmas area.

Wow.

Here we go.

I didn't know this was coming.

And so, what this does very effectively, I think, is blend

the Tim Burton, like, or the, you know, the, I guess, the Danny Elfman score.

Yes.

Uh, the Nightmare before Christmas.

Yeah, I said Tim Burton.

I meant Danny Elfman.

Yes, I said the wrong thing.

Uh, the Nightmare Before Christmas score with this, like, is he cancelled now, by the way?

I think so.

All right, well, I feel less bad about it.

Uh, but he, like,

the, um,

the game, the score does a good job of blending that style of music with the like music of Kingdom Hearts.

And I think this is just a great, great track from a great game with a lot of great songs.

Wow, it's a great pick.

I think the other thing it does is that it says Christmas without quoting a specific silent night or jingle bells.

Yeah, just sort of evoking that sort of mood and sensibility.

Yeah, like if this was playing at a Christmas parade, no one's gonna be like, What the fuck is this?

What is this?

Chappelle?

They're dropping new Christmas bangers and they're not telling anybody about it?

We Three Kings or something, I know.

Yeah,

Joy to the World.

Or there's a lot of them with Joy.

The first Noel, perhaps.

Did you play this Mary Kate and Ashley game for the Game Boy Advance?

Is that what you're playing it on?

Are you playing it on PlayStation?

PlayStation 2,

I think.

Got it.

Yeah.

Yeah, because there's a couple of versions here.

I won't just be buried in this, I promise.

The soundtrack is very good.

Okay, well, if you want to queue up a track, we'll get it going.

But it's not icy.

It's very beachy.

We'll have that as a palette cleanser at the end then.

If you want to pick one out,

we'll queue that out.

We'll stay in Ice Town right now.

In fact, we'll stay in an Ice Town.

This is the town that you get to in Act 5 of the Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction expansion.

The track is called Fortress by Matt Euleman.

And I played this on the podcast before, but I had to bring it back.

Horns, baby.

Pretty little wintry horn.

This also kind of sounds like the nightmare before Chris Miss Katie.

Yeah, it all kind of seems to be saying in the same sort of tonality.

I mean, what I like about this track, first off, is that I just, I've heard it so many times that I never get tired of it, but also it was just like

this is to me is one of the best expansions, slash, you know, DLC before DLC when these things were sold at retail,

ever made.

And the music was so good in Vanilla Diablo 2 that they were able to have all these new tracks in

an expansion that basically entirely lives in an ice biome.

It's all like in this wintry sort of,

you know, north of the wall sort of area.

And I think the music absolutely lives up to the bass game.

But this track to me says so much about like like isolation and like kind of like just trying to be, you know, having to hold strong amidst

the desperate

circumstances you find yourself in

up in this stronghold of barbarians besieged by Diablo's minions in the wintry north.

You're hearing this, and then Deckard Kane says, stay a while and listen.

And you're like, I think I will.

Yeah, I want to go out there.

Yeah, it's too cold.

You're fucking killed killed by bail.

No, thank you.

I'm thinking, I'm bringing something to the show right now that we haven't really talked about a lot on the show at all.

We haven't really, I don't think we've ever really talked about Crash Bandicoot.

We have, yeah, considering how long the podcast has been going, a real dearth of Crash Bandicoot content.

I was a big crash head when I was a kid.

I loved Crash.

My first Crash was actually Crash 2.

You know, I'm remembering the one thing we did have Alex Berg on the podcast who played Crash Bandicoot in some commercials.

That's right, yeah.

But that was basically like that was the time we spent talking about Crash, I think.

That was probably the extent of it, yeah.

And I think our pal Jordan Morris wrote some jokes for the newest crash.

That's right, yes.

So that's the only capacity he's come up.

I was a big Crash 2 head.

It's called Cortex Strikes Back is the subtitle.

That was my very first Crash.

There's some snow levels in Crash 2, and so I brought the music from Crash 2 that is in those snow levels.

The snow levels being Snow Go, Snow Biz, and Cold Hard Crash.

And this is the music that plays in those levels here.

Cold Hard Crash is a great pun.

It's really, really good.

Different energy than we've had so far.

Yeah.

It's...

More of tempo.

What I like about it is...

It sounds like all the other Crash music, but it just has like jingle bells on it.

The the music in those games are really really fun and the um I spent a little bit of time with the Insane trilogy yeah the the remasters of of those games and they're all so fun and so good yeah I love Crash

a little bit of xylophone there or whatever mallet instrument that is really nice

I think Crash 2 was the like that one I bought because I know crash one I rented I never owned but I did, I did, I feel like, was Crash 2 a two disker, weirdly?

I don't believe so.

Maybe I'm misremembering it, or maybe it was a different Crash.

It's possible they sold Crash 2 and 3 together at some point,

I think.

I definitely played two.

Three is also really, really good.

Those are my Crash games.

I didn't play Crash 1 until way later, somehow.

Somehow I missed it.

In the same way that Austin Powers 2 was my first Austin Powers.

Insane.

Yeah.

You get it.

You get it, but also, come on.

I think the first one came out, and I was just a little too young to go see it.

But by the time two came out, also,

one flopped.

One was not like a big hit, but then it did really well on DVD, I think.

And then two comes out, and two is like the number one of the box office in the year that the fucking same year as Phantom Menace.

It was like a huge hit.

We used to have it all.

Star Wars in the box office and Austin Powers.

Austin Powers is so funny.

They got to bring Austin Powers back.

And

I think think they can bring Austin Powers back because his whole, like, he's not like, it's not bad.

He's always asking for enthusiastic consent and then just like drops it if he doesn't get it.

Yeah.

He's like, I'm done with this.

Well, and also this whole thing is that he's just like, oh, this is, everyone's telling me this is inappropriate behavior because the top, like, he, like, it absolutely trends.

He's not fucking Duke Newcomb.

No.

Or Pepe LePue for that matter.

He's, but I think he, I think he could exist in a modern world and maybe he goes to the future.

I don't know how.

This is the thing is, like, Mike Myers would not want anyone else to play it, but I think the way is you'd have to get someone to do like a young Austin.

That'd be the only way to go with it.

Am I looking at him?

I think you're looking at him, baby.

I'll do all the parts.

I'll do Dr.

Evil.

I'll do, I guess

they'll simply call him Bastard

is the one edit I'd make.

But I'll do it.

I'll be gold member.

There you go.

And you know what?

I'll take the love guru for a spin, too.

Just kidding.

I'll do it.

Yeah, I keep the love guru out there.

All right, let's see.

That was your pick.

That was my pick.

That brings it means it's my turn, which means a game we covered this year was the Betroy Prime Remaster.

This is a great one.

Some great, great snow music from this game.

Kenji Yamamoto was the principal on the score for this one.

This track is Fendrana Drifts.

So this one does a good job already

of communicating not only snow but also space.

Yes.

It somehow says both ice and future.

Yes.

Winter but science fiction.

Yeah.

Table communicate that all

with music.

Man, this game is so fucking good.

It's really good.

I wish they would get those other two out on the Switch before the Switch 2 comes out.

Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen with the other Metroid Primes.

I feel like they're probably not going to get proper remasters.

Nintendo's so fucking weird.

This one sat on the shelf forever, too.

Yeah, they had it finished for two years.

Then again, maybe they're just done and they'll just be released randomly.

Yeah.

You know what that's going to happen?

Yeah.

They're going to put them out on December 26th.

That's the kind of thing they do.

They come out on Boxing Day.

Yeah, they're crazy.

How many more you got, Matt?

I think I just have but one more.

Okay, then I'll just

narrow my picks because I've got a couple others.

I'm just going to pick one.

My final pick is from

one of the big games of this year.

The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.

Wow.

And, you know, there is actually a lot of snow in this game.

There's like a, I mean, there's a whole area where there's snow.

Yeah.

There's mountains of galore.

The higher you go up, the colder it gets.

That's just kind of how mountains work.

And this is from the Frozen Rideau Village.

You get to the

Rido Village, the top of this mountain, and it used to be bustling.

No, this is one of the sequences I played.

I fell off this game when I got here.

And

people walking around, hanging out.

But now you get up there and it's

desolate.

Covered in snow.

Where is everybody?

Hello?

Hello?

Is anyone out there?

Those are the vibes right now.

If Link could talk, that's what he would say.

Yeah.

And it's not that he doesn't talk, he can't.

He can't.

But you see all these little Rito children running around, and they're like, we gotta figure out what the fuck's going on So you're working with these kids.

Yeah

It's a great sequence of the game of a game with many great sequences and this music also rips

and Communicates cold really well.

It does communicate cold.

I almost brought in both cold and magic

Yeah, we got to kind of go back and say what the other ones

do too.

I almost brought in the sound

from when you start to freeze a little bit because there's like a specific sort of like,

not like a ping, but a sort of like,

I don't know, like an audio vibration kind of that that plays when you

when you're freezing in that game.

That's a great pick.

I've got one more,

and my final one.

I'll say both that I was going to say, and I'm just going to pick the one.

The one that I was, the one that I also had on my list that I won't play

because I played a different winter track, but there's like three tracks for each season in Stardew Valley.

And so the one I'd picked was, you know, by Concerned Ape, aka Eric Barone, Nocturne of Ice.

I was going to play that winter track.

But instead, I'm going to opt for a track from a game that we don't talk about as much on the podcast.

We did dedicate an episode to it.

They're Paul Zakoyama.

And yes, that's right.

And

I know there are a lot of people who have a lot of fondness for this game, and it's really impactful for them.

And, you know, for me, I think this is my big takeaway is just how good the score is.

And so there are are a few different snow tracks from this one, but I went with Snowy by Toby Fox from Undertale.

Fucking chord progression.

I know I said that horns is winter, but piano is also winter, too.

Yeah, a little tinkly piano that's very wintry.

Charlie Brown,

yeah, Vince Geraldi trio.

Come on.

This is one you just want to sit in for a while.

Toby Fox and Concernedate both like

solo devs.

Yeah.

To some degree.

Toby Toby had assistance on Undertale, Concerned Ape made Stardew Valley all on its own.

But

also, who do the music for those games, which to me is just like another thing?

It was like that skill alone is enough.

You don't have to do all the other stuff.

It's hard to hear stuff like that because we can barely do this.

But it is really like impressive and just like that both things are good.

You would expect one to not be as good as the other thing, but like they both stand on their own as good pieces of work.

Yeah, I feel like

a lot of times everyone has, and it's with, with, you know, with a solo dev or is like you've got, they've got their superpower, be that like art or composition or, you know, the tech side of things as a coder, but just the ability to do everything to proficiency on a scale from proficiency to excellence is just like that, that sort of all-around skill is really, really amazing.

Do you have one more, Matt?

That was it.

Oh, you played all of yours.

Yeah.

How did I start and then I also went last?

Because you had the, you have the extra one too.

No, but I didn't play the extra one.

Oh, did I?

I didn't skip one.

I played one, two, three, four, five tracks.

Oh, you know what?

I played two of mine were back-to-back because of the they were both from Pokemon Gold, but one was only a little bit.

Okay, okay, got it, got it, got it.

Yeah, so I had Final Fantasy VII intro, Banjo Kazooie, Freeze Easy Peak, Diablo 2, Lord of Destruction Fortress, Spetroy Prime, Fendrana Drifts, and Undertale Snowy.

Yeah, and I had, I had from Pokemon Gold, the Ice Path music.

I had from Crash Bandicoot 2, Cortex Strikes Back, Snow Go, Snow Biz, Cold Hard Crash.

I had from the Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix, Christmastown.

And from The Legend of Zelda 2 to the Kingdom, I had Frozen Rito Village.

And now we're going to hear as a palette cleanser from Mary Caton Ashley's Sweet 16 License to Drive.

Rochelle, which track do we have here?

This is a...

This is called I'm Gonna Like It Hear by Lisa Carrera.

All of the songs on this seem like they were just taken off of band camp because

there's like no, there's barely any info on all these artists.

I'm embarrassed now.

No, no,

this is awesome.

The whole premise of this game is you're racing to get your driver's license against three of your other friends.

Very relatable for a teen.

What felt more important back then?

Absolutely nothing.

London, England, Paris, Island, Mexico.

Land down under, there's a million places I could go.

This is going to be the first episode that my fiancé listens to because she legitimately sings this song every day.

She loves this song.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow, that's unbelievable.

And she knows that because of this game.

Because I'm in love.

And I think that's a good thing.

I think I'm going to like it here.

Wow.

I did not think anyone has ever ever heard that song before.

That rocks.

That's so funny.

I'm very glad we listened to that.

Yeah.

What a peek behind the curtain.

I love her.

All right.

It's time for the question block.

And these are from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

Join the Discord.

Get in on the fun.

Everybody has a nice time in there.

What are you doing?

Wholesome place.

Hop on in.

Hop on in.

This first one is from Modest Ghost.

And Modest Ghost writes, I love the podcast.

I was wondering, do you listen to older episodes you have done to see how much has changed as a person and content?

Now, I'll say this.

Yeah.

I've listened to a lot of these

because

I listen nowadays, I listen back for notes and I give, if any, to Rochelle.

But in the old days,

I'd get my hands dirty and I'd get in the mix and I'd hear all these episodes a lot.

Yeah, right.

Sometimes several times if I was like doing several passes or whatever.

So I've heard a lot of these, but I haven't heard the most recently that I've heard an older episode was when we re-released the Super Mario Brothers movie one that we did on the DLC.

But that wasn't even that old in the

run.

It was like kind of somewhere in the.

This is, to be clear, this is the Bob Hoskins Super Mario Brothers.

Yes, correct.

The live action one.

But I'm going to guess that Nick has heard none.

Yeah, no, I've never listened to the podcast.

I don't want to hear myself talk.

I don't understand why anyone

does.

But it's worked out for me.

But yeah, I can't, I don't want to hear my own voice.

And so I've never heard an episode, a full episode of the podcast.

It is something that if I didn't have to do it because it was my job previously, I probably wouldn't.

But I do podcasts where I don't listen to the episode after having done it.

No,

if I guessed on a show I like, I'm always a little bummed because I like, oh, well, there's an episode I can't listen to.

Exactly.

So I don't go back and listen to that.

But you have to become very,

you become aware of how you sound, all the things that you say that are like.

I'm doing it now.

Like

just the vocal things that you do that you do.

The ticks you have when anytime you hesitate or repeat or stammer or repeat yourself.

A vocal pause, you know, these types of things.

I'm just hyper-aware of that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And

it's a prison.

It's an absolute prison.

But thank you for the question, Modest Ghost.

This next one is from Life is an Internet Super Highway, and they write, like Scrooge had his three ghosts of Christmas.

Who are your three ghosts of gaming?

Hmm.

King Boo, probably, number one.

Oh, this is what we're naming famous ghosts from video games.

I don't know.

Maybe it could be

ghosts of games we didn't finish.

it could be our favorite ghosts yeah i guess it's pretty open-ended i mean you get you gotta throw a pat a pac-man ghost right a pac-man ghost is in there yeah inky maybe you throw all three of them blinky pinky inky and clide yeah they're all in there uh king boo i think is a good one king boo's a good one just as a representative of the booze yeah why not and then what about um that horrific lady from pt i could also say you could get like a uh you know the the big lady from a resident evil village lady lady Dimitress.

Yeah.

Is she a ghost, though?

I never played it.

I didn't play it either.

Is this a vampire?

She's a girl.

Is she more of a vampire than a ghost?

Did you play it?

No, but I watched a playthrough of it.

Is that something that you'll do often?

Like watch a playthrough?

Yeah, I watch a lot of horror playthroughs.

I really like them, but I'm too scared to play them.

That's a good way to approach it.

Because Matt and I are cowards.

I got to play seven and eight.

That's just of the Resident Evils.

Those are just like, ah, fuck, I should.

I had that feeling when we played the four remaster.

I was like, I should just finally fucking die.

I heard seven is good.

I'm a little bit more interested in eight, and it's not because of the big lady.

I just think it seems more cool.

A big lady doesn't hurt.

It doesn't hurt, but

she could be a normal-sized lady.

Not the sole motivating factor is me seeing this big lady.

No, yeah.

Kind of, it's not, it's barely part of it.

Not even the whole thing.

I guess the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are kind of adjacent to.

We've already got a Mario Cannon ghost, so maybe we don't need any of those.

But maybe Luigi's there with the Gustbuster.

Maybe Guigi, too.

Gooigi's pretty good.

I don't know if he is a ghost, but he is ghastly.

Yeah, but I guess if that's how we're answering the question with ghosts, then those are good answers.

If it's the other thing where it's like from ghosts of our back catalog, we'll be here all day.

You know?

Yeah.

I'm going to say let's go with King Boo.

Yeah.

Let's go with the Pac-Man ghost, and then let's do a Call of Duty colon colon ghost.

Okay.

Yeah,

just to get that in there, because I know we don't talk about Call of Duty that much.

Yeah, that'll be the one time we talk about Call of Duty this year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This next one is from Cody.

Hi, Cody.

Hi, Cody.

And Cody writes, what Christmas movie would make the best game, and what genre would it be?

And so, in reading this question, piggybacking off the Scrooge.

question.

Uh-huh.

I think, what is that story called?

A Christmas?

It's not called a Christmas story.

A Christmas carol?

A Christmas Carol would make an excellent, like Hades-like, roguelike.

Interesting.

Where the ghosts are giving you tasks and you have to go through it.

And, you know, you can.

It could even be Scrooge McDuck for all I care.

But you're just kind of like reliving

the same night over and over again.

You're reliving the same night, and then you have to, in this, you have to sort of do a series of things to correct the night or something.

It's very, what was I going to say?

That's very, you know, Bill Murray was in Scrooged and also Groundhog Day.

It's kind of a Groundhog-y day, Scrooged mashup.

12 Minutes meets Hades.

I like that.

That's a fun pitch.

I was going to say

my immediate reaction was Elf, just because I feel like Elf is just kind of like an adventure.

And

you could play that as like a,

you could do that as like kind of like an a

an interaction focused

or a dialogue focused like RPG or something or

an adventure game, a point-in-clogic adventure.

But then as I was looking through the list of Christmas movies, I mean, Nightmare Before Christmas, if you got something that captured that aesthetic and it just already feels like a video game world,

I feel like a Nightmare Before Christmas

platformer with

that same sort of

frame rate feel to it.

It felt like stop-motion animation.

I mean that that feels like that would be the kind of thing that would be visually dazzling.

Also something like an Edward Scissor hands or gremlins that has some fantastical character at the root of it feels like it would be a natural candidate for a character action game.

There is a Nightmare Before Christmas

video game that is that takes place one year after the events of the movie and it's called Oogie's Revenge.

And I did play this when I was a teen.

What did it come out for?

It came out for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

Okay.

And then there's a...

It was released at the same time as Nightmare Before Christmas, The Pumpkin King for the Game Boy Advanced, which is a prequel to the movie.

And so they hit, so simultaneously they released a prequel to the movie and a sequel to the movie, both video games.

And I remember thinking that the PlayStation 2 game was not good.

And

it's worse because...

There are original songs in it that build off of the songs from the movie.

And they're like all pretty bad.

But it has like a...

a, it kind of plays like Devil May Cry, kind of.

It's like sort of like an action, an action-focused game where you're Jack Skellington, and you have it, should have been a home run because Jack Skellington is such a cool character.

I'm looking at some footage of it now, and this looks like it actually looks pretty decent for what it is.

It looked cool, like it, like, because then you can have, you can become the pumpkin king.

Visually, it looks decent, yeah.

You can be Jack Skellington regular, you can be pumpkin king, jack, and you can be Santa Jack, and they all have sort of like slightly different movesets and like powers.

But you always want to be...

I feel like Pumpkin King Jack is like the coolest looking Jack.

Yeah.

There was a

of course, I mean, look, I'm not going to be the diehard as a Christmas movie guy, but

there was the diehard...

Was there Die Hard Arcade?

There was also Die Hard Trilogy.

Oh, yeah.

There were some Die Hard games that came out.

But that feels like a thing where they could just make an absolute banger of a game if

they wanted.

Oh, yeah.

This next one is from is from our old pal Drop King.

What's up, Drop King?

And Drop King writes, A franchise you love is now getting a tower defense game only available on phones.

What is it?

My first thought is God of War for some reason.

I can see a God of War Tower Defense game.

We're defending, like, you know, Mount Olympus or whatever.

Yeah.

My first thought is, like, come on, man.

I don't, don't make my game I like into a fucking tower defense mobile game with a bunch of microtransactions.

They're going to do it.

I know.

Come on.

Yeah, look at that.

Leave Kirby alone.

Kirby doesn't need to be in a fucking tower defense game.

I do think loaded up with a bunch of different currencies that you've exchanged real money for so you can buy new sweaters.

I've been thinking about Kirby a lot recently.

Kirby rocks.

This is the year that I really decided that I like Kirby.

Kirby's great.

That new one was really, really good.

Kirby delivers.

We loved Kirby.

I guess my answer is God of War, and Nick's answer is, come on, man.

This next one is from Vox the Devil, and Vox the Devil writes, I recently just picked up an analog pocket, and I'm playing through Mother 3.

Do you have any suggestions on what to play next on it?

Any hidden handheld gems?

Now, look, I have an analog pocket.

I've finished some Pokemon games on the analog pocket.

Those are obviously go-tos if you haven't done those, which I can't imagine.

you wouldn't have.

I played through Metroid Zero Mission on the analog pocket.

And if you have not played Metroid Zero Mission, I feel like that's a safer recommendation for a game maybe somebody missed.

Because I certainly missed that.

Zero Mission fucking rocks.

It is a game.

It's really good.

I'd say check that out.

And I've actually been pretty interested in, I've been getting a lot of referrals for some Pokemon ROM hacks.

Have you ever messed with a ROM hack before?

It's not really my thing, but I know some people who are really into it in terms of like extending the shelf life of a game and getting a bunch of new content out of a structure they you like there are these ones that i've been hearing about i think there's one called pokemon prism or something and it like has like it has like a quest log and like things that other modern rpgs have that like pokemon has yet to implement and so people like seem to really like that as like a oh in in a different dimension these pokemon games became a little more serious and a little more um tailored toward uh modern audiences um i i mean you're the one with the analog pocket so i think you're gonna have the the better answer for this.

But in terms of what, because I also am not super sure like what it's what it's capable of, what it can emulate, although I imagine, you know, you mentioned zero emission, so I think I'd imagine all those Game Boy Advance games are on the table.

Oh, what's that?

Astro Boy?

That's what I was just going to say.

Astro Boy feels like,

I can't remember the subtitle is.

Oh, Omega Factor.

Yeah, Astro Boy Omega Factor is a real gem.

And you don't have to know anything about the anime.

I certainly didn't enjoy that game.

I don't know how a WarioWare Twisted or something would emulate.

I feel like I don't know if

they'd be able to do that effectively.

So I don't know if I'd say that, but I would say, like,

you know, Advance Wars is one I loved on the Game Boy Advance.

I think that a little bit.

They did port it to Switch, but they redid the art style, which is completely understandable, but it's just not really

as charming.

So I guess the original WarioWare.

Yeah, oh, yeah.

I don't know.

This is one of those things where the question is, like, it's very open-ended.

So it's like kind of like, I don't know what you've played and haven't played.

And I'm assuming something, if I'm assuming something about your tastes

from having played Mother 3, then maybe I'd also steer you towards Golden Sun.

Because there were a bunch of ports of Square RPGs to

Game Boy Advance, but Golden Sun was an original.

And

that was a really cool game.

You might be able to find a...

you know, a

modded version of Boktai 2, which we covered on this show that usually has the uh requirement that you have to have the special cartridge for uh to get uv light in it to charge up your attacks god what a pain in the ass i know what what a nightmare but but a cool interesting game nonetheless uh and finally this next one the castlevanias oh the castlevania advance games yes Those are those are all supposed to be pretty good.

Yeah, I played them.

I mean, Circle of the Moon, what were the other ones?

Harmony of Dissonance, Ary of Sorrow.

I mean, Symphony of the the Night

is the game, but as far as the Game Boy Advance,

the Metroidvania Castlevanias on Game Boy Advance were all good, all worth playing.

And finally, this last one is from X-Red Gambit from our Discord.

And they write, what do you eat during this holiday season?

What video game food would you insert into your rotation?

I think I got to get those

fruits from Crash Bandicoot.

A Wampa Fruit.

Yeah, a Wampa fruit would be really good.

Yeah, give me a Wampa fruit cobbler.

You know, those are juicy as hell.

They look juicy as shit.

Yeah.

They look like, you know, have I said this to you before about James and the Giant Peach?

I always wanted to eat the big peach.

The peach looks good.

I think that's part of what I think that the movie does look at.

It's like the same age, so I think we have a lot of the same.

No, I think that movie does a good job of making the peach look toothsome.

It looks really good.

Because you understand why a kid would want to burrow his way in there.

And so, in the same way that I've always wanted to eat the big peach, I've always wanted to eat a wampa fruit.

I've said this.

I don't remember if I said it on pause, the pod, past guest Shirako Dunlap

is in, as a child actor, is in James of the Giant Peach and has a line where, like, because he rolls into New York City, and she's like, that boy's in a peach.

Like, that's Shirako.

That's so good.

And

the second Henry Sellek picture to be mentioned on the show today.

Wow.

We got Henry Selik on the brain.

Yeah, how about that?

I wonder if she got to taste the big peach.

I don't think that's that's how it works.

No, I wonder if she got to try it.

Well, the tatter text,

yeah.

Maybe she got to try it.

But this holiday season, a big thing

for

one side of my family is that we'll be eating, you know, we'll be eating tamales, we'll be eating pozzole, and that's like my favorite time of year because I'm just eating that stuff non-stop.

And I will probably, I'll put away a bunch of tamales this year.

What's your favorite protein in a tamale?

Ooh, you know, it's going to be...

In recent years, I've been a green chili and cheese guy.

That's like a really great one.

Green chili, chicken, and cheese, I should say.

But I like a, I like a, we do like a slow-roasted sort of like, uh, like beef, like a roast, like with red chili.

And that's like, that's a home, that's always so good to me, too.

What a hoot.

Yeah, yeah.

I eat a lot.

I'll eat a lot of those.

And they, it's because my grandpa makes them, and he learned how to make them from my great-grandmother, and she learned to make them during the Great Depression.

So they're very small, so you'll eat like, you'll eat like eight of them and be like, this is, what did we do here?

This was, this is nuts.

But so they're just, they're small by design, but they're, they're very, very good.

I like that, though.

I like, it's like what it says sometimes the fun of sliders.

Like, I get to feel like a giant for a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we'll be eating, we'll be eating a lot of that.

But what video game food would I want to insert into the rotation?

You don't really eat a lot in a lot of video games.

Like, there's.

I mean, it depends on the game, obviously.

Hey,

those Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom Zeldas, you're eating all the time.

Some of those meals look really good yeah like the spicy fish on a stick or whatever or yeah exactly some of the stews yeah i don't want the dubious food no you definitely don't want dubious food get that shit away from me i'm gonna stick with wampa fruit well then if you're gonna go with wampa fruit i'm gonna go with the random floor food that you can find in a castlevania or something a big plate of spaghetti or whatever it is wall chicken wall chicken i'll have wall chicken that's gonna be good and that's gonna do it for the question block and that's gonna do it for this week's get plate big plate of spaghetti it's very funny to think about that castlevania

i mean

fucking dracula would ate that shit it's loaded with garlic oh get out of here that's true that's true it's but then italian food in my castle that to me then is i'm thinking that that chicken is probably very plain tasting it probably had a lot of seasoning on it that's why i was when i was playing vampire survivors and there's floor chicken and vampire survivors that's the you know your health item But I was like, you know what, if you're in that kind of time, though, if you're in this sort of gothic setting, if you're in like the fucking, you know, 16th century or whatever that a big roasted unseasoned chicken is still like the most delicious thing you could possibly eat oh yeah there's nothing that exists that is like everything else you're eating is like fucking you know dried or like you know uh a just a a bit a fucking loaf of bread you know you just you just have it you're never experiencing any flavor when do you think in history uh was the first time that like food was good maybe in our lifetime maybe kind of i kind of think so when did uh when did Doritos come on the scene?

Yeah, I think it wasn't until Dorito when people were like, we fucking did it.

Yeah, yeah.

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

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Check out our paywalled show, Get Anime, where every week we cover a different series or movie.

That's over at patreon.com/slash get played.

And guys, that'll do it.

I'll see you next time.

And you know what got played this week?

That track from Mary Caton Ashley, Licensed to Drive.

Let's hear it again.

Think I'm

That was a Head Gum podcast.

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Subscribe to The Outfit wherever you get your podcasts and watch video episodes on YouTube.

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And together, we're handsome.

What is handsome?

Well, it's a state of mind.

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