The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

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I just can't believe he's gone.

Sonic is dead.

He's dead.

They got him.

They killed him.

They killed him.

They killed Sonic the Hedgehog.

Guys, I know I'm late to the party here, but

you've heard of April Fools, right?

I don't think you could.

I don't think you can joke about something like that.

That is so fucked up, Heather.

They killed Sonic, and you're coming in here, and you're acting like it's just a joke.

Our guy is dead.

He's dead.

I saw his dead body.

And he wasn't just killed.

it wasn't just didn't just die he was murdered he's blue took his life from him he he first he's always blue

like it's not like he's blue because he lost oxygen he's blue because he's blue canonically different to me when i saw it yeah secondly he knows blue me because he's dead what

i'm feeling wait i didn't what did you say i'm feeling blue we're grieving here heather me because he's dead i'm feeling blue

first off

legit.

I only heard, I wish he blew me before he was dead.

Well, you heard what you thought you wanted Nick to say.

No, I didn't want him to say that.

I want you guys to know what April Fool's.

I just think it's really bad of you to be acting like our friend isn't dead and acting like it's just some big joke.

Nick's

so sad.

He's crying.

He's crying.

He's acting like he's not dead.

He's dead, dude.

It's not dead.

It's an April Fool's joke.

It's like on the Heather, I'm getting so fucking mad.

Our friend is dead, and you keep saying that.

It's so messed up to say that.

He's not your friend.

He doesn't exist.

Oh, he's not our friend.

Oh, he doesn't exist anymore.

You know why?

He's fucking dead, Heather.

Don't you know how this mortal plane works?

Once you die, you don't exist anymore.

Life's not a video game.

You have to respawn.

He didn't.

We all.

Okay.

Okay.

You're right.

It's not worth fighting.

Sonic's dead.

He's dead.

You guys are right.

He's fucking dead.

And you are right.

I did wish he blew me before he died.

We're the Watson to Detective Tales and interrogate Rouge the Bat in prank visual novel The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog this week on Get Played.

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

It's time to get played.

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

That's me.

I'm Nick Weiger, here with our third host, Matt Abodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

And welcome back to Get Played, the premier video game podcast, where we don't just talk about shitty games anymore.

It's been years.

Yeah.

It's been fucking years.

And we are here to talk about

whatever we want.

You know, one thing we won't be talking about?

This bullshit indictment.

Yeah.

so here's

no what it meant that we're not going to be talking about today is the Mario movie, which none of us have seen as of this record, recording a little earlier, a little before it comes out.

That's right.

And well, they know we're recording on time.

We're recording the day we record.

They put this movie out too early.

That's what it was.

Yes.

They fucked us.

Yeah.

I

got, I got to be honest, as of this record, the

review to audience review ratio is already out.

Yes.

Because I guess it's been released in like Central America or something already.

And the disparity between 40% or 30%

of

legacy critics being like, this movie sucks, and 98 or 95% of audiences going, this movie rules.

Yeah.

Really, it reframes that

famous quote about the Tetris movie about the guy who was like,

I won't even say I've played Tetris.

I've never even heard of Tetris.

I feel like a lot of these critics are like, wait, this plumber is like a short guy?

Yeah, I think there's, it's interesting.

There's definitely a mix of that.

There's definitely a mix of like the old world elitism, you know, dismissing video games as an art form or not even like being aware of them in an almost cartoonish way.

But I think there also are, I did read some,

the New York Times review I think you shared, Heather, did seem like it was someone,

that was a straight-up pan, but it did seem like the critic was very familiar with the Mario franchise, at least, was referencing specific entries

in the series.

But all that said, I'm more populist than elitist these days.

I definitely was the opposite when I was younger and thought I was like above a lot of mainstream pop culture.

and these days now I'm just like my favorite movie is Mission Impossible Fallout like I just

like I'm probably gonna like I think I this Super Mario movie I think will probably be for me, but we'll find out I just like to go have my freaking popcorn have my big drink and have the fucking time of my life and just escape in the movie theater, baby.

And no, no fucking politics.

Movie doesn't have to you know be all preachy and tell me it's politics.

As soon as I sniff that this movie has gone woke, I'm leaving the theater.

Flush it down to damn turkey.

I've read some criticism about it having gone woke.

Oh, boy.

Well, I hope they're ready to go broke.

I've read somebody being like, why does Princess Peach have to have a plot?

Can't she just be a damsel in distress?

Why does everything have to be a gateway to feminism?

Shut the fuck up.

I feel like taking an action isn't feminist.

Like, it's not like,

like being like, hey, let's go do like having a plan.

Hey, that woman stood up for herself.

She's a feminist.

I think it's been forgotten that 1977 Star Wars, the George Lucas-directed, you know, movie that's been retitled A New Hope.

Heard of it.

Is, yeah, some people, you may have heard of it.

But like, that's like the character, the characterization of Princess Princess Leigh in that movie is meant to be a subversion of the damsel in distress trope.

It's like they find her and then she takes charge and she tells them what to do, you know?

So it's like, this has been it's, I don't know, that just feels like such anhow Ray is a,

what is it called, a Mary Sue or whatever.

I feel like the internet is a tired take.

Yeah.

I'm waiting, I'm waiting for those, those

whatever comes after Gen Zers, whatever that's going to be like

gen zero

sure fuck that would be so fucking cool that would be

cool man um like for for them to be like we're done with takes we're done with clicks we're going offline

sure i'm ready for somebody to hit control alt delete on the whole damn thing You know, I believe it was Albert Einstein who said, I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be

fought with like sticks and stones and stuff.

Okay, well, he did say that, but I.

Did he say it just like that?

I feel like

he said it like that.

Yeah, he said it like that.

How you doing, Heather?

So Einstein's a fucking idiot.

I feel like you bailed midway through whatever it was that you were actually going to say.

Just fuck with me saying no, he didn't.

That joke,

whatever was intended there, you shifted to spite me double time.

Like you set it up as a spite, and you're left turned as a spite.

Possible, or maybe I'm just dumb.

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Well, we haven't seen the Mario movie, but we have been playing some video games, which is the primary topic of this particular podcast.

Yes.

And so the question...

I have.

Great.

Can't wait.

So let's talk about it.

What are we playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, guys, what are you playing?

What are you playing, Nick?

Why don't you start?

Because you're like, oh, I've been playing some stuff.

I haven't tell us what you've been playing.

I know what you've been playing, and I'm really excited for you to talk about it.

Look, there's no special guest here this week because I wanted to just get right into it.

Yeah.

There's security outside.

Security is out now.

Yeah.

They're ready to stop anybody from coming in here.

They're heavily armed.

Yeah.

So that I can tell everyone that I rolled credits on a game called Sekiro Shadows Die Twice.

Finished this game.

The pledge that I made, thank you so much for that ovation.

That's the pledge that I made to publicly at the start of 2022, and then did not start playing this game for another year in earnest.

But I did finish it.

I finished it.

We're recording on Thursday.

I finished it on Tuesday morning.

I got the purification ending, which is the quote-unquote true ending.

So I like fucking finish this thing.

Wow.

I will say

this game is just incredible.

It's one of the most satisfying gaming experiences of my entire life playing through it start to finish.

And I'll also say to everyone out there who's maybe, you know, a little spooked by its very deserved reputation as a notoriously difficult game, if I can beat it, you can beat it.

So I would not be put off by that.

What it requires, even though it's a game that can be unfair at times, but you know, unfair can be fun, even though it's a game that can be unfair at times, what it requires is persistence and patience and discipline.

And those are traits that anyone can have.

I'm going to talk about the final boss fight a little bit because I texted the two of you after I beat a boss who is before this boss.

And like, I just beat the hardest boss of the game because that's what I'd read.

I'd read some consensus that this boss that comes in the late game.

Not the final boss is the hardest boss in the game.

That is not true.

The final boss is the hardest boss in the game.

And I came to understand that a lot of people who said, like, the earlier boss was the hardest boss never actually got to the final boss or weren't able to take down the final boss.

So, like, that was kind of their end point.

Because

I saw in some lists that this is considered like the hardest boss fight in the hardest souls game.

Like, a lot of people who just rank all the souls bosses say this is number one.

Um,

I'll compare it.

I'll say for me, I think this is probably I still put Mike Tyson and Mike Tyson's punch out at the the primary, like number one in terms of

final bosses I've beaten.

But that also, I was a kid and I didn't even have game facts at that point.

I was just like, I just practiced him over and over and over again until I finally could beat him consistently.

This definitely felt like that, except at this era, I had, you know, like I was watching YouTube guides at a certain point, just trying to figure out how to beat this dude.

The thing is, you can't over-level because the way the system, the way the systems are set up, there isn't like a way to like, you know, get overpowered.

If you just go through the late game progression, you'll be as powered as you can possibly be by the time you get to this dude.

And you can't really cheese this guy.

There really aren't any opportunities.

There are things you can do to try to bait out certain attacks, but even that is extraordinarily tedious and not risk-free.

So you end up just having to fight him straight up, and that's what I did.

And it feels like a final exam because this boss has four phases.

The first phase is a boss that you fought earlier in the the game,

who is already like a very difficult, like kind of like a roadblock boss, a skill check boss that a lot of people check out on about halfway through the game.

So you have to fight him first, and then you fight this guy through three different forms.

And

it's just so punishing and brutal, and he has so many different attacks, and he comes at you with so many different ways, so many feints, so many counter moves to the move that you think is coming.

But

you can beat it.

You can get past it.

It is just unrelenting, but you can figure it out.

And

I was just like learning it as I practice it over and over and over again.

There's a move in this game called the Mikuri counter, which you learn very early on, which is that when someone uses a thrust attack, you can step on their weapon and then, you know, counterattack.

And it's got such a great animation.

It's got such great sound design.

And it's so, so satisfying when you you land it.

And there are, and Mercury counters are key in this final encounter, which is part of what ties it into feeling like, you know, kind of like a final exam for the game.

And that is just so satisfying.

And when you land those, you feel so great.

The,

you know,

when I finally finished this thing, the context of where I was is that I had like...

Woke up.

I sometimes have this thing with my sleep where I wake up randomly like really early in the morning and then I can't get back to sleep.

Yeah.

So I was like, I'd woken up at like 3 a.m.

and I just could not get back to sleep.

And I was on the last boss at this point.

So I was like, ah, fuck it.

I'll give this guy a couple of goes.

And I went up and I played against this boss for like about 40 minutes or so.

And I reached the point where it was like 5 a.m.

And I was like, you know what?

I'm just going to try this one more time and then I'm going to try to lie down again and try to sleep again.

And that was the time I fucking got him.

And ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

We got him.

But I was, it was such a, it was such an odd thing because I was so tired.

It was, it was 5 a.m.

It wasn't even, you know, it was still dark out.

I was on like, you know, two hours of sleep or something like that.

And, and the feeling of satisfaction when I finally landed the death blows on this dude, the fucking shinobi execution and took him out, I stood, I like stood up and raised both arms over my head and just went in a whisper so I wouldn't wake Natalie up.

Yes!

Yes!

Hell yes!

Yes!

I just did that for like a minute straight.

And I had two gourd charges left, which made it feel even more satisfying.

But yeah,

this game is just incredible.

I know this is partly just me rambling for my own

self-efficacy, but fucking whatever.

I feel great and I'm so happy that I played through it.

And it's just such an amazingly designed game.

Such a great convergence of system design and narrative and

tone.

And everything controls so well.

The the sound design which i've just raved about repeatedly is just such a key part part of it uh just a fucking incredible experience uh all that said i'm going to publicly commit to finishing two more souls games i'm not going to give myself a timetable but i'm going to publicly commit to two more because i i i like this is partly what drove me to finish sekuro which i'm very very happy that i did uh demon souls remake which i have for ps5 and still have not played uh and bloodborne uh so those are those are two more that I have on my list that I'm going to try to get through.

Not even Elden Ring, which you're almost done with?

No, I'm going to play.

I'm going to do Elden Ring, but I'm going to go back to Elden Ring.

I would go back to Elden Ring now if I didn't have to dive right back into Resident Evil 4

for the podcast.

But yeah, I'm definitely Elden Ring is first.

But those are the other two that I haven't played that I'm going to get myself through.

This fucking guy.

I love to hear it.

We're both very proud of you, Nick.

God bless you.

Hugely.

God bless you.

I'm jealous.

I want to do that too.

And I guess that I can.

You can do it.

You just said that I could.

You can do it.

If I can beat it, you can beat it.

I know your famous catchphrase that you can't stop saying.

If I can beat it, you can beat it.

You won't stop saying it.

He's wearing a hat that says it.

Available in our merch store.

Do we have a merch store?

Yeah, podswag.com/slash played.

There's like, there's some stuff there.

That hat's not there, but it could be if if we make it a thing if enough people demand the if I can beat it you can beat it hat.

We'll fucking make it

We don't want the hat.

We want a bubsy hat.

Fuck.

We can't do that.

I don't think we can.

I think we'll get in big trouble.

The game's great.

It's so fucking good.

The traversal is another aspect.

I was watching a on the on the on the on my bus ride over to the studio, I was watching a YouTube video of a dude who did a 39 minute and 50 second

no-hit speed run through the entire game.

And, you know, obviously just it's

an incredible feat.

But a big part of like what was so fun about watching that is just like this, this particular player had such a great sense of how to traverse the world,

particularly with a grappling hook so efficiently.

And it was just like glorious to look at.

But yeah, but that's just one aspect of it.

It's like a great game, great, a game where it just feels good to run around.

And that's just one small aspect of it.

That's really great.

I absolutely love it.

I've not messed with Bloodborne either.

I've messed around with the Demon Souls remake a little bit.

Yeah, I played OG Demon Souls, but the remake is effectively still in shrink wrap.

So the world might be mended.

So the world might be mended.

Hey, I want to go back to something we said about Bubsy.

Please.

Why don't we have a mascot on this show?

Like a real one, like ours.

And I think it should incorporate three things that we love.

So, like, it would be a

pun,

a punny fucking like little critter, like a Saturday morning cartoon critter who speaks exclusively in puns and Weiger jokes, right?

Who skateboards

so we can get a little mat and then has like a

power-up or like a like a demon mode

where it just becomes violence.

Who am I?

I am violence,

And it's called like, it's called like,

like,

I don't know, like, chippy.

Chippy.

GP.

GP.

Oh.

GP.

GP.

GP.

Oh, he's GP.

He's GP.

That's great.

Forget played.

He's GP.

He's GP.

He's an annoying.

He's like a chipmunk that's like, hey, guys.

I don't know if you've seen this.

Like, he's like, I don't know.

You're basically describing Conquer.

He's conquer.

Sorry, Mascot is Conker.

He's like annoying, but he like fucks.

Well, I can go as a bridge to Matt.

Please.

Please.

With an extremely short, what I've been playing is, I think, three matches of Fortnite.

Wow.

Wow.

And that's it.

This last week, I have been busy beyond busy.

And so I had like a

15-minute span, which is not long enough to play Fortnite.

You need about like a half hour to do like a, it's like a 20-minute match or something like that.

So 15 minutes means you either have to kill everybody on the island fast enough to win or you have to die.

So I played like a 15-minute round of Fortnite a couple of times where I would just charge everybody constantly without any strategy.

And

they announced some attack on Titan skins.

That's it.

That's all I got.

I haven't even had a chance to take a walk and use that bird app I talked about last week.

Nothing.

I've been playing nothing.

I turned on my Steam Deck for this week's

week's game.

And my first level of criticism is, you can't fucking play it on the Steam Deck.

I didn't realize that.

I haven't even held a fuck, like nothing.

I don't think it would be bad if you got in some fortnite while we were recording

like if you wanted to play around i think that's okay

no that's insane what are you saying i'm just saying like you could multitask if you want to do this is a it's it's it's on topic for gaming I'd have like

it too.

Well, that's off topic.

Not a dental care podcast.

But Abadaka,

what have you been playing?

Okay, so i didn't prepare you guys for this i've been making this as we've been talking i'll guess i've been multitasking as well um

but

i was in new york city over the weekend new york city yeah the city that never sleeps the home of the slice

that's what they call it and i went i visited well a couple things happened first of all the one thing i want to get into real quick before we get started

i was recognized on the streets of of New York by a get played fan.

Wow.

Holy shit.

Shout out this fan.

James, James Gethins.

James, thank you.

James did not stop me.

James DM'd me, said, hey, I think I just saw you.

And I know that I did.

James, you could have stopped me.

I would have said hello.

I would have been delighted to say hello.

But thank you for what you did do.

Yeah, thanks for taking the weirder approach.

I think to James's credit, they might have been doing something.

That makes sense.

No, I think it's respectful of your privacy.

Yes, that's a nice way.

And I also think they didn't weren't for sure, wasn't

they weren't 100% sure.

And then they saw that I was in New York on my Instagram story.

But James recommended that I go to a store that was very nearby to where I was.

Wow.

Called Video Games New York.

And I went in there.

One of the best.

This is what his recommendation was.

He said, it's one of the best video game stores ever.

I went in there.

It was lovely.

I loved it.

It was hot as hell in there.

it was a cold day in New York.

Wow, so it was nice to be in there because it was, they had just cranking the heat, but just wall-to-wall games, just like cases and cases of games, uh, and like just like fun stuff to look at.

Uh, I didn't buy anything because I didn't need, I was like, I don't need to get anything.

I'm not doing, I'm not, I'm not gonna do any shopping today, but it was really nice to be in there and just be among uh like gaming stuff.

I was like, oh, cool.

Like, they

they just had like everything.

Like, if I was like, oh, if I needed a replacement nunchuck for my Wii and I lived in New York, this is where I'd go.

There you go.

But it's a great story.

If you haven't been there and you live in New York, go there.

It's great.

But the real thing I wanted to bring up was that I went to the Nintendo store in Nintendo, New York, and

I made a little slideshow.

Wow.

And

I made a little slideshow, and I'd like to share it with you guys.

This is a for YouTube exclusive.

Well, we'll we'll tell the audience what it is that we're seeing.

Yes, it's a PowerPoint, a full PowerPoint.

Matt's trip to Nintendo NY

black text on a white background.

Like, uh, like Matt is a district manager in a

Schaumburg, Illinois branch of uh

of U line.

But here we go.

So, what do we mean when we say match trip to Nintendo, New York?

Um, I went to New York and I went to, this was like, I was planning, I was there for a wedding, yeah, but on one of my free days, I was like, we have to go to the Nintendo store, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go.

Uh, so I, so my girlfriend and I did, and this is just really just a slideshow of pictures.

Um, you're greeted with this gold statue of Mario,

looking at it.

It's an amiibo, but big, it's a big amiibo.

Uh, so you already know, you're like, okay, there's no mistake.

Yeah.

I'm at the Nintendo store.

This has been a talk of the internet for a little while, last couple of weeks.

They made Mario's shoes in real life.

And

these are his shoes.

On top of a question.

He's on the ground floor.

Matt is currently showing us a sort of poorly framed.

Yes.

I didn't do it like John.

He was not holding the phone straight up and down.

So it's like he was running past this dispatch.

You are spot on.

When I got into the store, I was immediately just like overwhelmed.

It was like, because here's the thing about it.

It's just a fucking store, right?

Like it's not any different than like a Disney store or something, but like just everything.

I wanted to buy every single thing in there.

I loved it.

It was just great.

It's a beautiful store.

There's me and my girlfriend.

We were standing in front of a photo.

We stood in front of this standee for the Mario movie.

Mario looks like he's stepping on me, and my girlfriend looks like she's in on it.

They plotted this thing so they can run off together.

But we took that picture.

Oh, this is a photo of

a KK Slider plush that my girlfriend said, he's hot.

Wow.

What?

She said, hey, he's kind of hot, right?

And I said, KK Slider?

Yeah, if you're not familiar with the Animal Crossing franchise, KK Slider is a dog with a guitar.

And apparently he's

huge eyebrows.

That was the one thing she responded to in the entire store.

Holy shit.

And now this is just two displays.

I will say

in her defense, there is a KK Slider meme I am fond of that I used to.

When I post on social media, I used to use it all the time.

But it is a KK Slider,

like a super muscly KK Slider

sitting on a stool, wearing like boy shorts and strumming his guitar.

And he says, any requests, and someone from the crowd yells out, yeah, lose the shorts.

That's my favorite meme.

I love that.

I gotta find it.

This is just the display case.

It's like, it's kind of like it's a store, but it also has a little bit of history in there.

It has every single one of their handhelds in display and every single one of their home consoles,

which is it's just, it's just cool to see all this when you're there.

It's just like nice to see it all.

Yes.

You get a you get a real, go back to that slide for a moment, Matt, because I just want to point out how gorgeous the Super Famicom design is

compared to the chunky

Transformers rectangle boy that we got here as the Super Nintendo.

I love the design of the Super Famicom.

Really, really nice.

So pretty.

Yeah, I also, pretty.

I also like

the four different colored buttons, the face buttons.

We just got two colors and says for some reason at the time, that was like, no, Americans want things to be blocky.

Like, we can't have something that's like sleek and molded.

And now look at us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you look at all the other consoles on the shelf above it, which are all

international release consoles, like the Switch and the Switch Light and the Wii U, they all retain that rounded corner look

of the Super Famicom that was just fucking dropped dropped uh i put that kk slider meme in our group chat um matt i've got the fucking fbi is here

uh the security that's outside the studio right now is turning on us

um i'll go through the next couple of these this is just me and mario my guy mario um that's nice I was as happy as all the other small children that were in this store.

You look elated.

Just like concentrated joy.

I didn't want to leave.

I loved it.

It was just so cool to see all this stuff.

This was really crazy.

They had a big wall that had a huge monitor on it that people were playing Mario Kart on.

And you could line up and play Mario Kart on a big wall.

That's fun.

We didn't get in line because we had somewhere else to go.

But there's me and Bowser.

And Bowser, he's going to freaking kill me.

And I'm still like as pleased as Punch over here.

Yeah.

These are some of the things that I got.

I got three little plushes.

They had some Pokemon plushes that I just I couldn't leave without.

I got Groudon, Empoleon, and Sabel.

Sabel's like a keychain kind of.

Sabel is sick.

Sabel is really good, but Empoleon and Groudon are from Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, and those are my guys.

And I was like, I need to get them.

I will die for them.

So I got those.

And I also got this really great mug with Yoshi on it.

And this shirt with Bowser on it that says, where everyone can play Nintendo New York, established 1889.

That mug is awesome.

The mug is awesome.

And the shirt you're wearing today at this record.

Yeah, I'm wearing this shirt right now.

They had a Princess Peach mug and a Bowser mug, and I sincerely regret not getting the other ones that they had too, just because they're just so sick looking.

The art is really, really cool on them.

But that's basically, I didn't play any games when I was gone.

Just I came back and started playing Resident Evil 4,

but that was my big, that was my big,

my big trip, my big vacation

to the Nintendo New York store.

And thank you for indulging my slideshow, my visual slideshow for the audio podcast.

Wow.

Any chance we could put that KK Slider meme up on the Zoom?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So we can take a look at it.

Don't.

Yeah, well, I know Jordan's in there.

Jordan's going to watch it.

I'm going to get arrested.

Yeah.

Just for looking at this.

Let me see here.

Let me just get this.

It's going to be really funny.

Here it is.

that's good it's good

this is an absolutely true story one time i was in japan and i had my cell phone with me but uh i was uh following somebody around in the city and having a good time and then they uh locked me on a roof of a skyscraper because they were a crazy person.

That's a true story.

And my cell phone didn't have wireless access.

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

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

I have one more thing

I want to talk about.

You're just going to put that fucking slide back up on the screen.

I mean, now I wish that was my plan.

Look, he's saying any requests, and the response is lose the shorts.

It's classic.

It's funny.

It is funny.

No, I'm going to talk a little bit about what I was streaming.

It's time for a little stream, Daddy.

Did we agree on that?

Did we...

Is that...

Did we...

Was there a conversation that we had that I don't remember?

Jordan and I had a conversation about me asking if she could make the song, and she did.

Song's great.

I'm sorry I talked through it.

I guess we should play it again for the fans.

Jordan, that's you singing on that too, right?

Yeah, that's me singing.

Lovely voice.

The track is the track is great.

I applaud the artistry and

the love and the attention to detail in the track.

I don't remember the conversation where we named a segment of our podcast after like a urine fetish.

Like, what?

What?

When did you guys hijack this?

I feel like this is what happened.

Yeah.

Nick was very in a rare, in a rare moment, fast asleep,

woke up,

sweating,

ran over to his computer.

Yeah.

Opened up his email client of choice, emailed Jordan and I.

You might have been on this email too.

I don't know if you're for sure on this email, but it's also like, there's no way you saw it.

Your life is very busy right now.

And then he put in the request, and then Jordan turned it around basically immediately.

Yeah.

As if it had already been done.

Look, it's a tribute to Dream Daddy, a great visual novel, a great dating sim, and akin to the game we're going to be discussing

in a bit here, the Sonic game that came out as an April Fool's prank in in terms of how it plays.

But yeah,

it's not meant to be like a water sports thing.

It's streaming content.

So when you say water sports,

you're not talking about piss.

No, I was there.

I was saying it's not meant to be a reference.

What Heather was saying is that she thought Stream Daddy was a urine fetish, which I'm saying it's not that.

It's about streaming content.

But you understand that there are water sports.

I understand that water sports exist.

I understand that that is a euphemism for piss play.

That's not what we're talking about.

And also, I'm not kink shaming anyone.

Yeah.

Drink all the piss you like, you fucking freaks.

Guzzle it up.

I'm not kink shaming either.

I just feel like there should have been a conversation.

You would have said yes.

You would have said yes.

This is the thing.

You would have agreed.

This is the thing.

Now you've heard the song.

So you're like, it's good.

Can I mention what the other name was supposed to be, Heather?

Yes, go ahead, George.

Please.

It was supposed to be Cream Daddy.

Oh, no.

Why is everybody on the same team that's not my team?

What happened?

Save that one for the other podcast.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I know what I'm talking about, though, which is a game I streamed Chained Echoes on Game Pass.

You both may have heard of this game because there was a lot of late-in-the-year hype.

It came out in like late December of 2022.

And so it's effectively a 2023 game developed largely by a solo dev named Matthias Linda.

And it is a throwback JRPG so clearly inspired by Chrono Trigger

and has

an awesome battle system that revolves around overdrive.

So it is turn-based and you can see the order of your turns for your party members and each of your individual opponents.

And as you execute certain moves, this meter fills, and when it lands in overdrive, all of your attacks are twice as potent.

So, however,

you can overheat past overdrive by using it too much, at which point you are extra vulnerable and not as potent.

So, you want to just, you're trying to just keep that dial, keep this

little,

you know, this little sliver in the same sort of section of the gauge.

And that comes from just like nudging it, you know, left and right in terms of how you sequence your moves, because certain moves will cool down that meter, and other moves will amp it up, or most of your other moves will amp it up.

So it's just a really fun balance in terms of how, you know,

that system works as the primary gameplay component.

The storytelling seems like, you know, great throwback, very kind of straightforward stuff, but, you know,

a really cool world with some great pixel art, some great sprites.

And also, it has a really good score.

The music is by not by Matthias, it is credited to Eddie Marie, Eddie Marianukro,

and who is a Texas-based composer.

And here's a track.

This one is called Calling Upon Bravery.

Let's hear a little bit of this.

This is great.

Anyway, awesome JRPG.

It is on Game Pass, Chained Echoes.

And if you like that sort of thing, check it out.

I'm going to put some more time into it.

Maybe on and off stream.

Wow.

Yeah.

I got to get back into this into streaming.

been, it's been a crazy couple months.

Matt, if you get back into it, we can play the theme twice.

I think you'd play it once.

That'd be great.

And then, and, you know, have it sort of be the umbrella sting for us.

That's right.

Yeah.

Oh, you're, you're not talking about the music we just heard.

No, no, the sting.

That reminds me, my, uh, my mom called to tell me that I bought her a ton of games for Christmas for her Switch.

Uh-huh.

And she was like, I just started Octopath Traveler.

It's incredible.

Wow.

I looked up and it was like four hours later and I was like, oh my gosh, this game is amazing.

Man, your mom owns.

Shout out to my mom playing Octopath.

Yeah, Gail Campbell might have just sold me Octopath Traveler.

I've heard two is like

a big step up from one.

That's what I've heard, too.

I'm fucking intrigued by that too.

But, you know, so many games so little time.

I feel like I haven't done a good job of explaining the posture system in Sekiro.

I'm just, I'm just going to acknowledge that.

We've talked about the game a lot.

I just feel like I haven't explained the posture system well.

Yeah.

It is a really great system.

It's the central,

you know, the central engine of the combat.

You're trying to break your opponent's posture while not having your own posture broken.

It's separate from your health bar and it involves, you know, aggressively landing.

sword swings and as well as as time deflections of the weapon attacks from your opponent.

And for me, when it really clicked, there's a mid-game boss where I realized that the way you beat him is you just, you play super fucking aggressive.

You're just hitting him all the time.

He's hitting you back.

You're deflecting them.

You get up in their faces.

And hit and run does not work in this game.

It's all about like, you know,

being bold, being up against somebody, taking it to them.

I kept reminding myself of this when I was playing this Final Blast, like, take it to them.

And the posture system is central to that.

There is one attack that you have, and the Ichimonji, and then there's an upgraded version called the Ichimonji double that

reduces your own posture and also damages the posture of your opponent.

And

like that, that

is super duper potent inside

in the context of boss fights because bosses can usually have super hard-hitting attacks.

And if you don't deflect them perfectly, you don't parry them perfectly, you're taking a lot of posture damage yourself.

So it's, it's, again, it's separate from health.

You can beat a boss without really depleting its health bar much.

You just are breaking their posture and then hitting them with a death blow.

And it, it's, it feels fucking great.

Sorry, I just, I felt bad.

I don't, I don't think I ever explained that well.

I'm never sure if I explained it well then, but I felt like I had to say something.

I think another example of posture breaking would be like every time Nick says a joke and you watch me like

double over in pain.

That's when I'd hit you with a death blow.

Yeah.

Red dollar appear on you.

It's just setting it.

So like you don't have to like do chip damage.

Like once in a while, he'll just be like, like, hot dog, how about my dog?

And I'll be like, what the fuck does that mean?

That's good.

Posture broken death blow.

That was so good.

How about my dog?

You know, my old catchphrase, if I can beat it, you can beat it.

I think it's maybe gone.

Now that's hot dog.

How about my dog?

How about hedgehog?

Oh, sonic, that is.

And see, what?

This is why we're the premiere podcast.

Unscripted transition, fantastic delivery.

The rest of this?

Scripted to a T.

Scrubbed to the end.

You all got played.

The murder of Sonic the Hedgehog was developed by Sega's social team, published by Sega, and released on March 31st, 2023 of this year for free as an April Fools prank.

I want to say before we get into this game, as far as video game April Fools Fools pranks, I find them kind of exhausting as I do find April Fools at large.

However, the one that I think was genuinely great, and it comes partly because it was from the era of print media, was the, and Heather,

you likely remember this, the April 1992 issue of EGM, where they said there was a hidden character in Street Fighter 2 called Shang Long,

which was a...

reference to a mistranslation in Ryu's,

like if he beat you or if you beat somebody else, like his winning text would be like, you have to defeat feat Shen Long to stand a chance.

And people created this mythology that Shen Long was Ryu's master or something like that.

Yes.

So that, and that all,

you know, like you were saying, it was a mistranslation, so it was only happening in the West.

And so there was this rumor that Shang Long was an unlockable character.

EGM published like a full-page,

you know,

spread in their

April issue of that year saying that how Shang Long, how to unlock Shang Long.

And they have like this super elaborate thing that you need to do that involves beating M.

Bison without taking a hit, without doing any damage or taking any damage yourself for 10 rounds.

So just this Herculean feat that you have to do.

And then if you do that, if you survive through 10 rounds of ties with full health bars, Shang Long will enter, toss M Bison away, and now you have to fight him.

And

it was one of those things where it's just like people were just trying this

because there wasn't like the internet.

There wasn't a way for people to say, hey, this is bullshit.

This is made up.

People would just like go to the arcade and try to do this or like play this on their home version and try to pull this off.

And I don't know.

I thought it did.

So it's one of those ones that's genuinely clever.

It's also one of those things that folded back in on itself because they ultimately made him an actual character in the game, right?

In some Street Fighter version?

In Street Fighter Fighter 4,

Ryu's

master, Gouken, was released.

And he

was not fun to play as.

Let me tell you.

Not my favorite character in the game.

But I want to shout out an April Fool's prank by a video game company.

Please.

Which

comes recently enough in the internet that it had all like

there there was a inflection point where we all started, oh, it's April 1st.

It's going to be a lot of bullshit.

Yes.

Right.

And I think that this happened after we were all media savvy enough to be like, oh, it's a brand jumping on a bandwagon.

However, I think that this prank

plays upon a self-knowledge by the company about how fucking crazy their peripherals peripherals are in general and like all the shit that you would buy for a Sony system.

And it was 2015's PlayStation Flow, which was a commercial for a

like a VR thing that you bought so that you could do swimming levels by making the motions of swimming in your living room.

And that's like, okay,

it throws up a red flag.

You're like, oh, it's an April Fool's joke.

But you have to remember that this is the same company that patented that you would interact with commercials in order to get them to stop by standing up on your couch and shouting McDonald's.

So it's not

out of character for Sony to be like, how about if you buy this thing?

It's got a very, very niche audience.

And it's not going to be something fun to execute, but we're going to mass produce it.

Like.

That's one of my favorite April Fool's pranks.

The PlayStation Flow from 2015.

Had you guys, have you seen that commercial?

I kind of remember it, but I'd have to re-watch it.

It also, it also is a really good, cringy Sony commercial, like glass offices and lots of bokeh in the camera, and

like some woman being like,

nothing we appreciate more than a sense of movement in game, like that kind of language.

Right.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Well, you know what?

Another April Fool's prank I now like is this one because I do think this game is pretty fun.

And I saw someone characterize this.

I think it was a Polygon reporter

who said that this is like better than it has any reason to be.

And that's kind of my feeling on this one.

It largely plays like a visual novel, you know, murder mystery game

with a, you know, with a little bit of...

light investigation, kind of just a kind of like, like hunt the pixel style,

you know, kind of Phoenix Wright style, like just finding objects and then, you know, unleashing pieces of evidence.

But then it's also got some light platforming that is used to take the place of like actually making an argument.

So like your character, when your character is thinking, you go into these like isometric platforming sections that you control with your keyboard.

But overall, I don't know.

I thought this was pretty fun.

I want to say two opening remarks here.

Please.

One is fucking crazy that the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic's born on a console, and you cannot play this game on any console.

It is Mac OS or PC only.

Like,

that's nuts on its own.

It's a, it's, it's a gated April Fool's joke.

Yeah.

The other thing is, as this game starts, you are reintroduced to the cast of characters from Sonic the Hedgehog games, and I didn't know who half of these assholes were.

And I thought I was pretty well versed in Sonic lore, but I,

through the play of this game, was like, what is Espio?

Is it a rhinoceros?

I mean, I know of Espio, but I can't remember if I've encountered him in a game.

But I was like, that guy's not new to me.

Like, I know him.

I know Vector the Crocodile.

Like, I know...

I knew all these characters, but I know what you're saying.

Like, the kind of the roster of Sonic's shitty friends has bloated quite a bit.

I know Rouge because of the pornography that Weiger uploads.

Yeah.

And I got to say, Rouge in this game, Rouge the Bat, has never looked better.

Yeah.

Baffling, baffling.

Halter top over human breasts on a bat.

Yeah.

That's a thief?

She got something to do with it.

It's nice to see my boy Shadow.

I love seeing Shadow in a thing.

I like Vector.

I was not familiar with Vector.

Vector is cool.

Yeah, Vector is cool.

And they didn't have Big the Cat on that train, which was interesting.

Yeah, they had a Big the Cat.

I feel like the train conductor was Big the Cat adjacent, but I was like, just make him Big the Cat.

I was waiting for the reveal of like, it's been me, Big the Cat, all along, which doesn't actually happen.

Yeah, but it does take place on a train.

There is a train conductor.

It is kind of like a classic, you know, murder mystery train thing happened.

It's Amy Rose's murder mystery birthday party.

Like she's like, oh, we're all going to dress up like characters and have our own backstories.

We're going to play this thing.

But then there's an actual actual quote-unquote murder that takes place.

Sonic becomes devastated.

So I've just looked up Vector and Espio.

Yeah.

And these are

canonically long-lived characters who were both introduced in a 32X game.

Like Knuckles Chaotix is where we meet Vector and Espio the chameleon.

who for a short time was voiced by Joel Troy Baker.

Wow.

That's really cool.

Espio was voiced by,

I don't remember his name in Death Stranding.

Oh,

oh, yeah.

Goldface.

Yeah.

Goldface McGee.

Higgs, right?

Action movie.

Hey, Sonic, is this one of them chili dogs you're looking for?

It was Higgs, I think.

Higgs, yeah.

Higgs, that's it.

Higgs, right.

It's so funny to think Higgs Monaghan, that also known as the Mad in the Golden Masks.

So So you were right.

Yeah, but it's just funny that like we talked about something for so long.

And if you asked me kind of like anything about it, I would sort of be like, yeah, I remember some things, but like something like Higgs would take me a second to

pull, certainly.

I remember fragile, but not that fragile.

Hell yeah.

I yeah,

I've had this thing where like I finished like a 700-page book and then like the next day I was like, I don't remember what the main character's name was.

So my brain is just so rotten at this age.

Mine's basically almost fully smooth.

Yeah.

The gameplay, I will say that, yes, I was a little, I understand why they put it in there.

When we start going to kind of the Sonic 3D Blast style platforming sections, when that happened, I was kind of like,

I don't know if I love these, like, I like this mini-game thing being in here, being in here.

All that said, I'm going to be very careful about what I say because we are a free podcast that sometimes complains about people complaining about our free podcast.

I don't want to be that and then also complaining about a free game that was presented as a gift.

So, like, it's, it's like a thing where I just like, I kind of would have liked more of a Phoenix Wright style approach where we're actually like pointing out the right evidence and that's how we're getting there and we're actually making the right, you know, dialogue choices in terms of advancing the case, like actually have this play like a detective game as opposed to having this be the stand-in for the detection.

But overall, I think I really enjoyed it.

The thing that I will say about the platforming, Matt, and there's this discussion you and I had when we were getting sandwiches before the recording.

That's right.

There is a sandwiches are so good.

Yeah, as soon as you said it again, I felt like Scooby-Doo.

I was like, I just, oh,

sandwich, sandwich.

They are a little difficult.

Like,

especially the difficulty ramps up towards the end, where I'm like, this is kind of challenging.

And

I don't know if it needs to be challenging in this context.

That was sort of a roadblock for me for finishing it, which

you told me afterward that you could basically turn it off.

Yes.

And

which I didn't do, by the way.

I beat it straight up.

It's interesting that you had to do it, though.

But

I didn't.

But

this sort of made me realize something.

this I this execution was so good

that I want them to do this for other games, like not just like even April Fool style.

Like I would play a Pokemon point and click like adventure, like sort of game, or I would, I would do that.

That's a home run to me.

I would play a Mario

just little text adventure.

That's why not?

Like, I just think that's a, it's a fun way to get a little, just a little bit of story out.

You get some characters, get some, get some of the fun characters out there into the world and, and, and, and just have a little blast.

I, I loved that part of it.

That was really fun to me.

Fully agree.

I think that hits so well.

And I do feel like overall, this might be...

Is this like a top 10 Sonic game?

Okay, and just

another point that I have.

Because he's not really running around that much in this,

I can really get around what Sonic is in this one.

And I was like, I like Sonic.

He's like kind of just like a, like, I don't know.

He was like a fun guy.

Like, he was there to, he was was there for the party he's like the captain sort of uh he's represented as the captain or whatever he's wearing a cool outfit yeah uh he's impulsive he's he did practices mindfulness lives in the moment yeah he's like fearless he's cool he's cool as hell uh but

i also liked that i if this was like obviously this like a this was a free thing if this was a full game I would have loved more mysteries, of course.

I would have played this game for 40 hours.

Seriously,

I would say take a full-length version of this game i loved it like i thought it was so fun and i would have the thing that i would have implemented was i would have um made it so that you can design your sonic character uh because i think it's all the same generic like red guy yeah you just get to name him you just get to name him but it would have been fun to be like this is what this is how i look like in sonic was there was like was there like a sonic game you could do that i feel like it was sonic generations or something one of them had a character builder i can't remember maybe i'm wrong that to me just seems great like and maybe you don't you're not limited to uh hedgehogs or whatever.

You can just be animals, like whatever animal you want, uh, with it with the sonic design.

Um, but I, yeah, I just had a blast with this.

Um, I even

did sort of like the

platforming elements of it because I was like, oh, like, this, this is at least a little different.

This is, uh, this is easier than me having to think about the mystery.

Yeah, I understand why they did.

I understand why they took that approach.

I did, I did kind of enjoy them.

They are, they are fun.

I think they just like ramp up in difficulty a little too much for what this game needs.

But I'm curious, and Heather, I want to get your thoughts on this too, because you were talking about it being

like, it's weird that this is only on PC and Mac, and you know, and as such, you're controlling these platforming sections with a keyboard.

So I'm like, you know, doing WASTA and Spacebar to jump, and that in and of itself feels a little unnatural for a Sonic game.

But I mean, did you like those platforming sections?

The difference between people complaining about our podcast because it is free and they don't have to listen is that I had to play this game for the podcast.

So

I don't feel the same sort of responsibility about complaining about something that was free.

I'm glad it exists.

I hope that the people who made it are proud of it.

I'm glad that you guys enjoyed it.

This game was not for me.

No segment of this game was enjoyable, and I resented spending my short amount of free time cramming this game into my life over the last week.

It's,

it is everything I don't like about a game.

And I,

that doesn't mean that other people can't enjoy it.

It's not, I'm not saying it's a bad game, but it is not a game for me, right?

Yeah, no, I get that.

It's like, you know, it's like, I'm not going to enjoy what you don't like this type of game in general.

Like, yeah, in general.

In general, so it would make sense and track that I didn't enjoy this experience.

Yeah.

I was so excited when it switched to an actual, like, I can interact with this game.

Like, when it was like, oh, it's, there's a level here, and I can play the level and I can like run Sonic around.

This is awesome.

But yeah, the implementation of that was so close to being a a game that it was like somebody let me smell the aforementioned sandwich without eating it.

I was sad to play this,

but

really

the art is really charming.

Art is great.

And the music is surprisingly like

palatable.

Good screen.

It's not a badly designed free game,

but you could, there are a few ways that you could have, like,

I don't know, it felt microscopically engineered to be like, Heather's not going to like clicking on the environment.

How much of this

can we like spoil?

That's the thing.

Well, I mean, you could enter

that

godless land known as spoiler country.

I mean, Nick, did you just did she?

Can you believe what she just said?

I can believe the opening she just left us.

We're headed to spoiler country.

Giddy up, motherfuckers.

Put your hats on.

Time to blast off.

Yeah, I mean, so I honestly got a little lost in the narrative as we were going.

I will say that, like, I was kind of.

I was like, towards the end, because also I started this game like you, Heather, I was kind of cramming it in, even though my schedule is not as chaotic as yours uh right now but like I started this game at like 10 p.m.

last night I was like okay I'll play it for a little bit and finish the rest of the morning end up playing through the whole thing so by the end I was pretty sleepy and groggy just kind of groggily waking my way through those final platforming sections but yeah it's basically like the

you're you're you're you're looking through a series of clues and piecing stuff together and pretty early on I got that I identified who the killer was and that was who it ended up being like I was like okay there's a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing towards this one character.

And then by the time you get to the end game, it is that.

However, there's also like Eggman is somehow involved.

And then the train is also,

you know, driven by a

train is like a mechanized forest critter in the way that, you know, Robotnik would employ.

There's a moment in what Eggman says that's like,

I don't have time to pay attention to every commuter train.

Yes.

because like he's created this train to like

i don't i don't remember his fucking motivation he creates a bunch of trains that aren't specifically designed to kill sonic but all robotnic creatures are designed to kill sonic like he he also is i think trying to

better the infrastructure of the Sonic world

by creating AI trains that can deliver people from one place to the other.

But once Sonic is on that train, it's like, well, it's got to kill Sonic.

Yeah.

And he's like, yeah, I didn't know you were on this because I just started like an engineering division and let this thing run itself out.

Yeah, is that what it was?

It was that the train, because

they are all engineered to kill Sonic, it started to do it like on its own.

That's kind of what happened.

It was kind of gained sentience.

I was a little confused.

The thing that it's a flicky.

A flicky is the creature that has

been turned into

the bird that's been turned into the train.

That was something that I was confronted with

this game, with playing this, was that I was just like, oh, there's so much about Sonic that I don't know.

Like, there's like, I didn't know what a flicky was.

I was like, oh, like, when you were saying that these new characters, I was like, yeah, who are these people?

He's got so many friends.

And then there's these little enemies that I'm not aware of.

Like a flicky?

A little bird?

Well, yeah, flicky is like a good creature that gets turned into a bad nick.

So a flicky is, I think, a sweet,

innocent forest animal.

And then Dr.

Robotnik has mechanized them and enslaved them as bad nicks.

Did either of you at any point think that Sonic was dead for real?

Because I sort of did.

I was like, he's fucking dead.

They're going to come back.

They're going to,

he's like sort of groggy, maybe about about to die at one point in the beginning.

Yeah.

And then your character's like, well, I better go solve this mystery and just sort of leaves them there.

It's like, it's going to be so funny when we go back to Sonic and he's dead for real.

I, I, I, this was like, I don't know.

I, I, I had a blast with it.

I thought it was super fun.

It was a lot of fun.

Looks great.

And yeah, it looks great.

The art's great.

I have a, I have a screenshot.

What did I screenshot?

Um, oh, I screenshot part of the end of the game where Robotnik is hanging out with

his

little guys and they wanted to throw a party.

Yeah.

And he's got a digital face ghost girl from Sonic Frontiers, but he's also got Mecha Sonic from Sonic CD.

And they're in t-shirts that say, Let's go, dad.

Yeah.

See, I thought took that as a reference to Sonic's dad, Jules Hedgehog, who is like becomes a robot.

What?

You know about that?

Is there like a book I could read?

Because I'm not playing all of these.

There's a whole lot of fanfic.

No, yeah, Jules Hedgehog gets turned into like a robot hedgehog.

Let me find a picture.

I just shared the image of Mecha Sonic in the Let's Go Dad t-shirt, and I love it.

Also, Mecha Sonic's got such a good design.

Let me pull this up here.

Check this out, Nick.

Yeah, it does look awesome.

Yeah, I remember this scene.

Yeah, he looks really cool.

He looks cool.

Yeah, that's not Jules Hedgehog.

That's a different Robo Hedgehog.

Jules Hedgehog.

His son's name is Sonic, and he has like a normal name.

Benjamin Hedgehog.

It's like Samus' parents.

Oh, yeah.

What are they like?

Ned and...

Yeah, it's like Rob and Virginia.

Yeah, that's right.

I will say that I think it is cool that Sega has embraced Sonic as a franchise in the proper way in at least some media.

Like they are, I feel like they're just like, you know, they figured out what to do with the movies

and like letting the social media team be a little cheeky with Sonic.

I feel like that's really fun.

And this is an outcropping of that, an outgrowth of that, obviously.

And yeah, I mean, it would be cool to have

another awesome mainline Sonic game.

But in the meantime, I'm glad shit like this is able to be created.

I hope somebody hears my cry and makes

like...

I like a visual novel

with like this.

Like I like this quite a bit.

I would play another visual novel with characters that I recognize.

That's just fun.

That's fun for everybody.

Yeah, it's good stuff.

I want

a real Sonic game, and that's what I came out of this experience wishing for was Sonic Frontiers really scratched a niche.

And I hope that we can continue to live in a world where both of these parallel tracks of Sonic's development can be expounded on.

Hopefully, one of these tracks doesn't have a freaking bomb you got to jump over.

What?

You know, how, like, sometimes on like Sonic will be on a rail or something.

Yep, got it.

Got it.

Sonic Frontiers is fucking great.

It's so good.

So good.

Matt is giving us the evil eye, and it's so nice to be on the receiving end of that.

I'm not even mad that you guys like it.

I just, I'm, I guess I'm mad that I don't.

I didn't like it.

I wish I could have loved it.

It's a game that was not for you.

No, it sucks.

Any other thoughts on this?

I don't know.

I'm, I, I, I am glad it came out.

I am glad we, we covered it.

I probably was going to mess around with it anyway, but I would not have played through it all the way off if not for the pod.

So it came out on

March 31st for April Fool's day

is this a prank it's not really because they gave us something i guess the prank is that sonic's not dead right he's not really dead it's just sort of like they put out a funny thing on the funny day it's not really a prank i think you're right not a prank yeah it's not a prank

because what what's the

i didn't get fooled I guess I did think he was dead for real for a minute, but we've, as established, have the mind of a child.

The prank would have been announcing a new Sonic game called this and with a teaser and then being like April Fools, it's not coming out.

But they just made it.

Yeah, it's like, it's like

Starbucks announces the new peanut butter and jelly latte, and you go and it's there and it's delicious.

Yeah, that's not really a prank.

And also,

that sounds good.

Yeah, that sounds good.

That sounds really good.

Yeah, I'd be into that.

I recently invested in what could be called one of those stunt food items announced right around April 1st.

So it may have been an April Fool's Day prank, but they actually made it, which is cup noodles breakfast.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

It's cup noodles, but it's got pancake, bacon, and egg in it.

So you have like a maple bacon-y egg experience in your cup noodles.

I'd give that a try.

Why not?

But yeah, I wouldn't say this is a prank.

And so, based on that and that alone,

they really fucked up.

And I think that even though it was free, that they should really issue an apology.

That's not how that day is supposed to go.

Yeah.

You're supposed to be fooling people.

Yeah, not a prank, but a fun game.

Really fun.

Yeah.

A blast.

And if you haven't messed around with it, it's free.

Go check it out.

It's limited on what you can play it on, but if you have

a Mac of some sort or even a PC, it'll run very easily.

It's not very demanding at all.

Yeah, Heather's right.

They should have released this on everything.

Why not?

At least Switch.

A kid downloading this free Sonic game being like, he's fucking dead.

Maybe there's

licensing issues and quality control stuff that they didn't have.

Maybe this was made in like two weeks.

Yeah.

Don't have to worry about ESRB ratings or anything.

Yeah.

Maybe.

They shouldn't have made him.

I do think they should make him cuss.

He should just be like, this fucking sucks shit, dude.

I'm dead.

I'm sure the mod community will figure that out.

All right.

Hey, that was our discussion of the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog.

It's time for the question block.

All right.

This first one.

Well, first of all, these are all sourced from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

But send us emails, getplayedpod at gmail.com, and leave us a voicemail at 6162Played, 616-275-2933.

Leave us voicemails.

We love voicemails.

And the voicemail box

is a little dry right now.

Oh, boy.

So, this time next month, I want to be playing some voicemails.

You understand me?

Yeah, fill her up.

Leave some voicemails.

Here we go.

This first one, this first message from our Discord:

Gamer Gun.

Gamer Gun writes:

What's your favorite classic retro toy that's not a video game?

Y'all remember your toys?

Ooh, yeah,

I had a lot of Ninja Turtles.

That's not a video game.

Did you say Ninja Turtle?

I had, yeah, I mean, like, I just remember the Ninja Turtles.

My parents wouldn't let me get there were like no vehicles, no play sets, but you can get

TMNT figures.

Yeah, so I had some Ninja Turtles figures that were pretty fun to pose them, Look at them.

I'm thinking of two specific toys.

Well,

there's a category of toy that I used to love, which was the Star Wars figures.

So when I was a kid, they were like re-putting those back out.

And I loved those.

But I also had these Power Rangers that had like a flip head that one, you flipped it, and it was like who they were under the mask.

And then you flip it over and it's their Power Rangers mask and they're already in the Power Ranger suit.

I loved those.

It's cool.

Those are really cool.

And I also had a Batman, the animated series Batmobile, that had a detachable bat plane in the back of it.

So you'd like squeeze the back of it a little bit and pull out the cabin from the car, and it became a plane.

I loved that thing.

I would take that everywhere.

It was so cool.

I loved it.

I, oh man, I've talked about a ninja turtle that talked on the show before.

It had like a zip, a zip cord that kind of had record player lines in it so it would speak.

Cowabunga, that guy, yeah, cowabunga, master splinter, let's let's hit the waves.

Um,

but I have a I have like a glass case here full of things that I didn't get rid of from my childhood, and I could probably just open the case and see if there's anything that sparks joy.

Wow, is the gas gas from your childhood in there?

Sort of like an impromptu, uh, an impromptu

Heather's whole

Heather's stepping away.

I will say that I'm trying to think of like things that I would like enjoy now because some of that stuff I'd just be like, oh, yeah, I remember this, but then like I had something that's a little bit more active.

Like, I wasn't a Rubik's Cube guy, but I feel like that I had toys like that that I can't think of right now.

You know, I would like Legos were a big one.

I am anytime I mess around with Legos now, I was like, oh, this is, if these weren't so fucking expensive, I'd be more of a Lego guy.

Yeah.

But I had, there was a similar, there's a ripoff of Legos called Constructs that let you like build like

constructs were super fun.

And I felt like you could be a little bit more architecturally inventive with them.

Wow.

Because they were more of like a,

you know, it was

like had central pillars that you were connecting to

like kind of connector blocks.

And then you had like like pillars that came out of it.

And so you can see.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the thing that i fetched from my glass case is a uh doll from a 1990s anime that i really loved called serial experiments lane

uh and this is uh like she's almost barbie sized but more articulate like you can bend her knees and her ankles and she's got cloth clothing and a cloth backpack and i loved

I loved Lane,

which was about a

girl whose schoolmate commits suicide and then starts emailing everybody afterwards.

Yes.

Such a good, like, high-concept thing.

And then it ended up being this like

existential deconstruction of the relationship between technology and people.

And

doesn't sound relevant at all.

She's so old that her face color is starting to change.

She no longer matches the skin color on the rest of her body because the face is made out of a different like plasticine or something.

But I like my little, I like my little Lane action figure.

I had a, I, I, I own Serial Experiments Lane on DVD.

I really like that series.

Uh, it's, uh, I would not consider that appropriate for a child, but I guess we're like that, like that falls under more generally kind of like a retro toy sort of thing,

less a thing from your childhood, correct, Heather?

I mean, I was was young.

Yeah.

I, like,

I don't know what age I was when that came out, but I certainly couldn't drink alcohol, for example.

Yeah.

I just, I got, like, I was thinking more like under 10 years old, but I guess the question could be broader than that.

Well, if it was under 10, I wouldn't have anything to say except Sega.

You know, like, I was, I was like, oh, what is something I Constructs?

Yeah.

Loved Constructs.

Loved Lego.

Loved Serial Experiments Lane.

There you go.

go.

Let's get another question.

Okay.

I feel like

we've maybe answered this before, but I feel like I have a new answer to this.

This one's from Shiny Fork.

What movie IP would you like to see as a game?

And now, very recently, I texted you guys this after seeing John Wick 4.

It is

baffling to me.

That there isn't a triple-A John Wick game.

That is a home run.

Yeah, that feels like a very natural fit.

It'd be an easy thing to do.

I'm not easy.

Making a game.

Easiest thing in the world to me, I guess.

Fucking kids' stuff.

Yeah.

But I think so much of it, like, I don't know.

That to me would just be a home run.

There's a sequence in the new one, in John Wick 4, that is very video game-like.

The whole thing's really good.

Yeah, if you mean like the third act.

Yeah.

Well, there's like a specific shot, like a specific camera thing that they did in

this sequence that is

a full video game.

That I was like, this rules.

I'd love this.

Do you mean like kind of that?

There's like an overhead runner.

I'm not spoiling anything.

It's like a one-shot that they're doing, kind of like from an overhead perspective.

Yeah,

exactly.

It's an overhead perspective.

And a lot of people were shouting out Hotline Miami.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's not for that.

But the director in Keanu had never heard of that game, but the director was like, I saw this game called Hong Kong Massacre, which is basically the same thing.

Right.

And I was playing that a little bit actually last night.

And it's not as good as Hotline Miami, I think, but it's cool.

It has a sort of sharper look to it.

But a John Wick game, there is a John Wick game called John Wick Hex that is a strategy game,

which is not...

That's not what you want to do.

Yeah, a bit of a departure from the source.

If I was maybe planning something in the hotel,

in the continental, maybe a strategy game would work.

But

I'm trying to get out in these streets and be John Wick, baby.

Uh, I, my answer is: you know, first off,

thanks for the question.

I'm always more interested in original ideas than adaptations, but I understand where this is coming from.

And so, my answer is I would say I would point towards another big action franchise that has not really been mined effectively.

There was one Nintendo 64 game, but basically nothing else, and part of that is because its star does not like video games, unfortunately.

But

the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible franchise that feels like there's just so much action, so many cool missions.

If they could figure out how to do those just death-defying stunts to like a way to sort of recreate that and where it wasn't just a quick time event, but it actually had some real interactivity to it.

That feels like one.

The other thing I'll say, my favorite movie of last year, and one of my favorite characters in fiction, Lydia Tar.

should have a game.

It feels like that could be like kind of like a spooky sort of point-and-click sort of experience.

Would love to play the tar game.

Wow.

Tar the game.

Tar the game.

Throw in some rhythm sections where you're conducting a symphony.

Yeah.

And then the rest of it is sort of like what remains of Edith Finch, kind of.

Yeah.

You sort of get a little bit of the story behind Tar and low-key psychic horror.

Yeah.

What do you think, Heather?

To shut down the conversation that has been going for the last 20 years, I think they should adapt Citizen Kane into a game so that you get the Citizen Kane of gaming.

Wow.

That's a great idea.

A whole mini-game where you're the sled.

Actually, it's pretty good.

This next one's from Llama Guy89.

Favorite toppings on a burger.

I have an oddball one.

Grilled pineapple, baby.

I would not call that my favorite top hanging on a burger, but I've had it in certain contexts, and it is, it is delightful.

With a teriyaki sauce, yeah, that can be a lot of fun.

That's that's there's an Islands burger like that.

That one's a blast.

My favorite, this is my favorite, favorite restaurant.

Yeah, I fucking love Islands.

It's a shame so many locations have been closed.

I don't, I can't even talk about it.

Get a slice of cheese pizza, Heather, a big one, like a New York slice.

Oh, cut a circle

in the middle of that using like a mason jar or something slightly larger.

Get a double cheeseburger from your place of choice and put that slice of pizza that's circular in between the two patties of meat.

That's my favorite topping out of pizza.

You've done this.

What are you?

Yes.

How could it be my how could it?

It's so delicious.

Your brain is like, oh, it's all of it.

It's everything.

Like you're just so happy to be eating it.

How does one even conceive of something so genius?

Yes.

It's a beautiful mind.

Yeah.

Well, here's how you do it.

You've had a pizza the night before and it's in the fridge.

You order a cheeseburger and then you're like, fuck, I had pizza leftovers.

Hmm.

You know what I could do?

Toss that, toss that pizza slice in a

toaster.

Yeah.

Fucking heat it up, put it in between two slices of meat.

Woof.

It's good.

It's like a Big Mac, except the middle bread is pizza.

Yeah, that sounds great.

That's exactly what I would

do.

What would you put in my head is a Big Mac.

The

boy, I really, we're talking about individual toppings, and I'm going to say cheese is just assumed to be on a burger.

I am going, or not

category of topping.

Honestly, I think my answers would be like dill pickles and raw onions.

Wow.

I feel like those, like, those are, that's always hitting on a burger.

If we start to be more like construct an entire burger, then my answer might change.

But if it's like, what would I want on any burger?

Yeah, I think I'd want some raw onions and I'd want some pickles on there.

Wow.

That's a, it's classic.

But you know what?

What's a great, you were talking about that, that, that, you know, sort of the, the Hawaiian style burger that's got the

pineapple and the teriyaki sauce.

I like, like, I really like a good barbecue burger.

Like, I don't eat bacon anymore, but like, you know, back in the day, like that, the Western bacon cheese burger that's like

bacon, uh, barbecue sauce and onion rings, like those components together, like that could maybe be my favorite like combination of burger together.

Absolutely.

Um, great question.

I'm so fucking hungry.

I know, I love burgers.

Burgers are so good.

Burgers are like the top food.

They're the best one.

Um,

this one, this next one's from Andrew S.

How would you bring back the arcade?

Now, I thought this was interesting.

Because I had an immediate pitch.

Because arcade cabinets, I would imagine, are quite expensive to fill up an entire room with, right?

Yeah, and to maintain.

And to maintain.

They can't be more expensive than like a gaming console or even like a low-end PC, right?

I'm saying, let's just get some consoles in there.

They take up less space.

And then you sort of charge for like a round of Mario Kart or something.

Or like

you get like 16 computers all playing Halo.

And that's the Halo area.

And you can go play like, you know, 30 minutes of Halo for a fee or something.

And then you're like, okay, well, time's run out.

I've died this many times or whatever.

I can either add more money or I could just get up.

I've done that.

I think it should be, it shouldn't just be arcade cabinets anymore.

I think there should be a console experience represented at the arcade.

And that's also then expanding it to people who don't have the consoles at home and they can go and play a limited time of like a console game that's like, not like a story or something, but like something that's like multiplayer or sort of short run

runs of games.

So basically like a gaming cafe.

Yeah.

You're saying like merge that, merge that existing concept with like have some arcade cabinets as well.

So kind of the best of both worlds.

I know gaming cafes are much more of a thing in other countries.

They're not as common in the US.

But yeah, I know like, you know, you can go to,

I feel like at least there was a time when

you go to a gaming cafe in like South Korea and there'd just be like a whole bunch of land-connected PCs you could play, you know, StarCraft on or whatever.

Yeah.

Put that, like, put in like...

You could play like a level of like a Lego Star Wars or whatever, or like

you can select some tracks from

the Kingdom Hearts rhythm game or something, and that's like something you could do.

I think that's maybe what should be happening.

But also you have the classic arcade experience there as well.

It's not completely gone.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it just might be a thing.

I think it's just going to be

a niche for hobbyists.

I don't know if there's a way to bring back the arcade.

I think that ship is unfortunately kind of sailed.

I think the barcades have done pretty well.

And, you know, it just, it feels like, hey, Dave and Busters is still thriving, though a lot of the games there are like...

giant-sized versions of existing mobile games or, you know, just basically it's more of an experience.

It's more like, hey, this is the pirate ship game you sit down on.

It's not necessarily well realized as a video game, but you get to feel like you're in a pirate ship for a bit.

Maybe another way you could go is if you kind of merged it like what you were saying, Matt, but if like you kind of took that more into like the world of VR and then like, hey, you know, we actually have the commercial real estate space to, you know, to

allow for more, for larger VR experiences.

I know some of those VR things exist at malls and stuff.

I haven't actually been to any of them.

But maybe if that was like more of a VR-focused thing that also had arcade cabinets, I could see that maybe working.

I don't know.

I think

if I was going to revitalize an arcade,

I would make it

a dive bar.

Oh.

I think that, I think that to try and

beat the home console experience and like just the cleanliness and the pleasure of like playing at home, you have to go after the environment instead.

And I think the environment should be

like

filthy.

Just

filthy.

And

like, because you want, you, you want drinks forward so that people are like, yeah, I'll play a fucking round of rampage.

It's a dollar.

I don't give a shit.

I'll put a dollar in a rampage.

I'm drunk.

I think, like, all of these bars that have like one arcade game that's like Tiger Woods Golf or Big Buck Hunter, fucking like, instead, build out the back of that bar to have like

30 arcade games, but it's not barcade where it's like, oh, everything's shiny and the drinks are like video game themed.

I want this to be a place where like the saddest divorce men go to play and

they don't even know there's an arcade.

They're just there because they've got like dollar beer pitchers.

That's how I revitalize the arcade.

Basically, what you're describing is like a lot of the arcades I remember as a kid, they were like dingy and gross and like kind of shady businesses or like attached to a bowling alley that was kind of grimy.

And so

I think I like this in a sense in a sense of like kind of tapping into that childhood nostalgia of people, our generation, who are just now like grown up and like, oh, yeah, this is like the arcades I remember going to,

except now there's booze and shit.

I think it would also be nice to have some more like,

if you're leaning fully into nostalgia, you're leaning into millennial and Gen X nostalgia, have like some like, you know, we were talking retro toys earlier, but have that be part of the decor, have some like retro snacks available.

If I could go there and and, you know, have a fucking uncrustable, yeah, an ecto cooler, um

uh yeah and and and and and play some uh some bad dudes i'd be into that wow that sounds like a blast

um

and then also a dollar pitcher baby oh yeah

yeah love a dollar pitcher uh finally this one's from beefy fetus

what's

What series did you get into way into its lifespan?

I played the Metal Gear Solid and original Sonic trilogies for the first time a year or so ago and had a blast.

Been having a blast with Final Fantasy,

Final Fantasy XII lately, too.

I know Heather's a fan of that one.

Mass Effect, Mass Effect Legendary Edition got me into Mass Effect.

I was like, these games are fucking awesome.

And I always thought I would like them, but I just didn't have time or just wasn't in the right mindset when they had their original run.

And when I played them again, I was like, these are fucking great.

I was talking to like Mass Effect fans being like, this game's so good.

And they're like, we know.

I would say for me,

definitely Metroid.

I'm late to Metroid.

Hell yeah.

But getting, like, but playing Dread and then

Zero Mission and Fusion and

Prime.

I'm all in on Metroid.

I love Metroid.

Zelda to some extent.

Like, I haven't played that many Zeldas, and there are quite a few of those.

And another one, I was just, oh, God, what was it?

I was just thinking about this.

I can't even remember, but Metroid was my big answer.

Uh, oh, Halo.

I didn't play, I didn't have Xbox.

Uh, so I got into Halo when I got the Xbox Series S,

and

Reach is my favorite.

I've only played a little bit of Infinite and mostly played multiplayer on Infinite, uh, played through the first one a little bit, but I loved Reach.

Halo Reach is an incredible video game.

I love that game.

I think about it a lot.

So that's my answer.

Halo and Metroid.

Mine's going to be an IP that crosses the boundaries of,

and it's Star Wars.

Oh, yeah.

That's right.

Like, I didn't get into Star Wars for real until The Last Jedi.

And then I was like, I have to consume everything.

And that included the video games.

So the first time I think I played even the Super NES Star Wars games was after Last Jedi.

Wow.

Like, I was like, wow, I got to go back and see what this is all about.

They're not very good.

But,

like,

Rogue Squadron or Star Wars Squadrons, whatever the fuck that one's called.

That's only because of Last Jedi.

Like,

so,

yeah, that's, that's my answer.

Star Wars.

A latecomer, but, but, a, but a really intense like lore.

I'm going to love that.

All of it.

Yeah.

I love it.

I think we've said this on the podcast before, but Heather, you and I, our first attempt at a podcast, we recorded a pilot just on our own

for a show that was just about like me as the guy who's like super into Star Wars.

You as someone who just got into Star Wars because of Last Jedi, and it was called Star Wars a New Fan.

And we recorded one episode of that.

And then for whatever reason, we were just like, eh, let's not do that.

And then like a year later, we started this show.

Yeah.

It's true.

Yeah, it's all true.

All of it.

Okay.

Nice.

This guy must be the big fan.

And that's it for the question block.

Wow.

Thanks for your questions, everybody.

Remember, you can always send them to the email address and/or leave us a voicemail.

We love those voicemails.

So go ahead and do that.

You can find our social media in the episode description.

Our engineering is by Jordan Duffy, Jordan K.

Duffy on Instagram.

And check out our paywalled show, Get Animated.

Heather, what are we talking this week?

We're on episodes 15 and 16 of Blue Lock, the soccer anime that's actually a combat anime that just kind of lightly references soccer.

It's so fucking good.

People who've given it a shot have agreed with us that it is so fucking good.

Check it out on patreon.com/slash get played, or about a month later on Stitcher Premium.

Yeah, check all that out.

Love Blue Lock.

Love talking about the show.

And as a parting word to all of you, I just want to say:

if I can beat it, you can beat it,

and hot dog, more like my dog.

You got played.