Gaming on the Road with Zack Mykula

This is a head gun podcast.

Nick,

you okay?

Sorry, no, sorry, I'm late.

I just, I had the craziest day.

I had the

craziest day I've ever had, and I'm like, I'm shaking.

I'm so scared.

Yeah, you seem like freaked out.

I was driving home the other night, and I, you know,

you know, I'm like a really nice guy.

Yeah, one of the nicest.

I'm so nice.

What's that's maybe your best quality?

That, I mean, that and that million-dollar smile.

Well, hey, come on now.

There it is.

Like, I'm seeing it.

Okay, maybe I'm not having such a bad day at all, but actually, I'm having a

horrible day.

I'm sorry.

I'm driving home.

I see this guy on the side of the road.

He's got his thumb out.

Hitchhiker.

A hitchhiker.

He's got a familiar silhouette.

I pull over and I'm like, holy, holy shit.

It's it's Mario.

It's Mario.

Mario Mario was hitchhiking?

Mario from the Mushroom Kingdom was hitchhiking.

Okay?

Get out of town.

That's what I thought he was trying to do.

He was getting, he had his thumb out.

Yeah.

I'm like, where are you going, Mario?

And he's going, I'm not going to do the accent because I don't think you're supposed to do that anymore.

Yeah.

I mean, I would do it.

Yeah, of course you would do it.

I just don't feel like it's appropriate.

Yeah, I understand.

He goes, I got some stuff I got to do.

Yeah.

Well, now you're kind of doing the Pratt Mario so that it works anyway.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm doing Pratt Mario.

So he goes, I got some stuff I got to do.

Uh-huh.

And he goes, he hands me, he hands me like a wad of cash.

He's like, you're trying to make some money tonight?

What the hell is this interaction?

Mario is doing this?

Yeah.

And I'm like, look, I don't, this is not what I do.

I was just offering a ride to a guy, but you know, you don't have to, you, you, for the hours and hours of entertainment you've given me over the years, your money's no good here, Mario.

I'll just happily drive you to your destination.

He goes, okay, drive.

So he gave me the destination.

I drive.

He's like, drop me off in this alley real quick.

I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, no problem.

He goes up to this apartment building.

He goes up the back way.

I'm just kind of sitting in my car.

I'm just kind of like waiting.

I was like, wow, I can't believe I met Mario.

Maybe I'll work up the nerve to ask him to come on the show.

Yeah.

Well, maybe a selfie is a first step and then, yeah, a guest appearance later on.

You know, I had my phone ready for a selfie.

I'm always, I'm always ready for a selfie.

Wait, so what happens?

He goes in this apartment building.

He goes into this apartment building.

He's up there for a couple of minutes.

I'm sitting there thinking about this and, you know, working up the courage to ask for the selfie and then maybe guests on the show.

Next thing I know, a body falls straight into my windshield from up above.

Oh my God.

Mario comes down, pulls him off the hood of my car, gets back in the car, goes, all right, next stop.

And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell?

I thought somebody, like, something bad happened, like somebody fell or jumped onto my car.

But Mario, he's covered in blood.

Yeah, well, I think what happened, Matt, is you forgot for a second that Mario's Italian.

Oh my God, I forgot.

No, I forgot.

Yeah.

That's what I do.

This whole thing is now sort of making more sense.

And I, you know, again, I won't do the accent.

I won't do any of this stuff.

We go to a bunch of different spots.

We go to like a club.

Yeah, you went to the bottom, probably.

You went to the bottom of you, hung out with Furio, Paulie Walnuts, Christopher was there.

I can't believe Silvio Dante, Johnny Sack.

This is so embarrassing.

Bobby Bacola Jr.

was there.

AJ.

I can't believe

Jackie Jr.

Vito.

Who did Joey Pants play?

Ralphie.

He was there too.

Ralphie was there.

The guy.

The guy.

The guy played by Joe.

Joe Pantaliano.

Basically, we drove all around Los Angeles up until now, basically.

Right.

And look,

it got to just a point where...

Look, we were having a good time.

He treated me right.

It was scary.

It was dangerous.

But, you know, we ended up having a nice time, but it could only go so far.

No.

No, Matt, what is it?

I just knew I could feel it.

I just knew it was coming.

He just knew I had seen too much.

Yeah.

Before he could even try to pull a fast one on me, I freaking jumped on him.

And then he got smaller.

You jumped on Mario?

I jumped on Mario.

I had to.

I had to squish him.

You did not have to do that.

You smalled his ass?

I smalled his ass.

You had to do it.

He's going to to find a magic mushroom in our realm?

He's

got to go back to the Mushroom Kingdom.

It was either that or, you know, one in the back of the head from old Jesus Christ.

Mario.

I don't think you should be putting this on audio, honestly.

I'm not sure if we should release this because I think you could find yourself in hot water.

Well, I'd like to see any of these little

Mushroom Kingdom Italians do anything about it.

I mean, I don't know if there's a challenge you want to issue publicly.

What are they going to do?

Throw a fireball at me?

There he is.

Get him, boys!

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!

Oh, man, those look painful.

Ow, they're just hitting me.

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.

I threw a green shell at you.

We look for our USB chargers and battle motion sickness as we discuss gaming on the road 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 Tiger Weiger, alongside Mr.

Games, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Mr.

Games is really stuck.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Get Played.

I forgot because Heather's not here.

I got to do that part of it.

That's right.

Yeah, that's the part we always forget when Heather's not here.

Yeah.

And then the show comes to a screeching halt.

Yeah, it kind of loses all momentum, just kind of falls off a cliff, and then we've got to spend the rest of the time, you know, crawling our ways out of it.

Goo-goo-gaga-ing, filling our diapies, all that stuff.

Well, I wasn't going to say it.

Well, you say we're reverting to infancy?

That wasn't what I was talking about.

Oh, well, well, I feel like we got to bring it up.

It happens.

We just go straight to being babies, baby mode.

Maybe you do.

We turn on each other.

It's part of the issue.

Fucking piece of shit.

Yeah, it becomes Lord of the Flies in here real quick.

Yeah.

Then we start helping each other, changing each other's diapers and stuff.

And then

it comes back to the show you know and love.

I mentioned that I think on the podcast before that they showed Lord of the Flies.

My Boy Scout troop went on a,

we go on, we go on camp outs, but

we went to like a weird leadership outing that was at a cabin.

And so we stayed at some, I don't remember what, I don't know, we might have been staying at a camp, but it was someplace that had a cabin where we had like a, like a TV VCR combo.

And they showed us Lord of the Flies

as like some sort of like, hey, this is how, you know, this is the, the, the, the, this is, this is like a leader.

This is what happens when there's a vacuum in leadership.

This is what the, what, you know, things happen when people go wild, really.

There needs to be some sort of order.

There needs to be some sort of hierarchy and you all need to look out for each other that was meant to be the message um but instead it just led to all the cat the kids chanting piggy piggy piggy

that's yeah i mean kids kids are not

retaining bunch of 12-year-olds just fucking psychopaths they're not equipped for whatever lesson that was going to be and that also the lesson doesn't work just chanting that as a chubby little boy and i'm glad it's not me

thank god I wasn't perceived today.

I've never seen it, but I just, I just know about it.

The book is better.

Well, I don't know if there's been more than one movie adaptation there.

Maybe it's a British.

The book is British and has a very British sort of

affect to it.

Oi, we're lost in the woods, ain't it?

That sort of stuff.

That sort of oi, bruv, wish there was cheeky Nando's out here, that sort of thing.

Man, do anything for cheeky Nandos, bruv.

And oh, what, or a fit bird?

There's a lot of that.

I do the silly walk, of course.

Yeah, of course, right.

Austin Powers' dad, Michael Caine, shows up.

And he's Austin Powers' dad, Michael Caine, in the movie.

Right, yes.

Not Nigel Powers.

Right, of course not.

Anyway, the

we have we have a guest, and we're trying to do a really good job, actually.

You are.

It's good.

Thank God.

Prodigious powers of bullshitting, if you weren't lying.

So he gets, so like the book is the book is very different, and the movie is super American, changes a bunch of things, makes it a little bit more aggro.

But it is like also just some horrific violence you see of children committing against other children, which is just, you know, I know it from The Simpsons.

I'm realizing.

I think The Simpsons version of it is better than the movie version.

Well, it's got The Simpsons in it, first of all, and that's already a huge

leap forward.

That's a that's an A plus already.

I'm so hungry, I could eat at Arby's, it tastes like burning

At the end, they were rescued by, oh, let's say, Mo.

A lot of good jokes in that one.

They're just like, it's over.

All right, we should introduce our guests.

Enough nonsense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very, very, very excited to have them.

From Pup, their new album, Who Will Look After the Dogs, is available now.

Zach McCool is here.

Hi, Zach.

What up?

How are you guys?

Zach, joining us from Toronto, where you reside.

Thank you so much for making time for us over in the Eastern time zone.

We know it's late over there.

You are a gamer.

Yes.

So

what are your primary platforms for gaming?

I just got the Switch 2.

I got a PlayStation 5.

I got a Steam Deck.

Ooh.

And I got

a busted ass Game Boy Advance that

I just cart around all over the world.

Hell yeah.

During sound check when I'm waiting for somebody to stop talking,

I basically just play Tetris.

Hell yeah.

So basically, what you experience at the top of the episode.

Yeah, you're like, I saw you looking around, like, where's that fucking Game Boy Advance actually?

My attention was waning rapidly.

Like, I wish I had one of those square blocks and then one of those Z-looking blocks.

Yeah, but the problem is when you wish for it, it's like the Murphy's Law.

Yeah, it's just slightly out of reach.

You can't get it.

Going back in time, what got you into games?

Like,

what were the first games you remember getting their hooks into you when you were a kid?

I got to say, like, the Mega Man games or Mega Man X.

Oh, wow.

Probably the first.

My stepbrother was very into it, and we sat, I basically just watched him just own the game.

And

I aspired to his level of skill, which is, I didn't realize at the time, I was just memorizing the levels.

Yeah, sure.

So, yeah, that was the first one.

And it's still a great game.

Mega Man X Rocks.

did you ever play the the the like the the nes mega mans do you ever get back into those eventually or yeah i did they're so much harder they really are yeah it's crazy they did um mega man seven for s nes and that's that's a great game too yeah on line with mega man x but yeah it's a great game my my first mega man i finished was mega man two for nes and that was tough as nails and in hindsight it's just like man i it was just a child's dedic like like you know fixation and then amount of free time that allowed me to actually get through that game.

But what you were describing with your stepbrother, I realized is like a thing I haven't talked about as much on this podcast, but that was a big part of my relationship with games growing up via my older brother, my awful older brother, Nate, is that he was like, you know, he was always, he was, you know, five years older than me.

And so.

Just, you know, had a, had a higher degree of motor control and everything.

He was also just generally better at games and cooler and, you know, more well-rounded person.

But he, he, like, he would,

a lot of my gaming time was like watching, well, looking over his shoulder, watching him play games

when I was young.

And so it was like, that's partly how I learned to play games, but that's partly how I got into like things like RPGs, which were maybe a little bit over my

comprehension level

as like a seven-year-old, but then I could, I got into them via him.

I'm an older brother, and the way you talk about your older brother, I just know that my brothers have no reverence for me whatsoever.

They're always like, ugh.

Or maybe it's like the madman meme.

It's like, I don't think about you at all.

Yeah, which is worse, actually.

Actually, I'd rather than think poorly of me.

Yeah, that is worse.

You know, we used to have Mega Man.

Okay.

Now we have Mega Men.

Oh, my God.

Don't remind me.

Political.

Zach certainly doesn't need to be hearing about it.

I'd rather have Mega Man is what I'm saying.

So So, what is your primary, like you got the Steam Deck, you obviously got the Game Boy Advance for the Robe, you have the PlayStation 5, what is it, you got the Switch 2.

What is kind of like your default platform?

If I'm going to get a new release, are you playing it on PlayStation?

Yeah, usually I play on, but it's like I get into these ruts.

I get like hyper-fixated on games, and I just don't get new games.

And then, you know, the trends pass me by.

I just got like Claire Obscure.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

But it's, yeah, my go-to is usually PS5, but like Switch 2 is too,

it's just too good to pass up as far as like a portable system.

But my partner is currently addicted to Donkey Kong Bonanza, so I can't take that on to her.

Oh, banana.

Yeah.

Oh, banana indeed.

Yeah, I mean, like, it's, so you're just, you're just splitting one Switch two between the two of you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Basically.

Natalie, I tried to think when we got separate.

switches at a certain point during the pandemic, which was, but like the switch two is so cost prohibitive.

It's like, what, I'm going to spend like what, $1,200?

How much is it Canadian?

I think I spent, I want to say $700, but that could be wrong.

Man, wow.

Next thing you'll know, you'll be both wearing monocles.

You'll have two monocles in the head.

Yeah, exactly.

And then you just got a pair of glasses.

I mean, I think you can get a pretty cheap monocle.

Well, yeah, healthcare is taken care of, and that falls under it.

Yeah.

That's huge.

Maybe that's what we need for heads to roll, for people to start wearing monocles again.

If some billionaire shows up with a fucking monocle, it's like, all right, you know what?

Fine, it's time.

I I think powdered wigs actually would be the main one.

Yeah.

Because

that's head-chopping head wigs.

Yeah.

The modern France Ferdinand is someone showing up with a monocle.

Yeah.

So you mentioned Mega Man X.

I mean, I imagine, I have to imagine that's what that be because of my virtue of getting a uni game that's one of your favorite games of all time.

Like, what are some other games that are like some of your all-time favorites, whether you played them recently or years ago, and or games that have influenced you in any way?

I mean, the big ones, Super, I mean, I have a pretty normy taste, but it also runs to like the weirdest shit.

But like Super Metroid and

Mario Games and

Toy Hawk and

there's like, there's this game called, they just re-released it.

They ported it to PS5 called Gex.

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah, Gex.

And I loved that game as a kid and I played it recently.

Like, oh, this is very inappropriate.

No wonder my mom was upset when i played this uh when i was younger um

yeah like that's uh final fantasy 7 is like a big that's one that always shows up for me hell yeah um chrono trigger uh just like hell yeah uh killer instinct was a big one too so just like tons of stuff and like for now it's uh more recent stuff like skyrim and ghost of tsushima and eldenrine

Yeah, I mean, like, I, I,

you're mentioning some altimers for me there and that, that run of things, but I want to go back to Gex.

Yeah.

So Gex was a, Gex was a gecko with attitude.

My memory, he was like,

I'm not sure if I ever played Gex, but I feel like he was like a James Bond.

Was that an element to it, or am I thinking of something else?

But he was like a,

he was in that era when they were trying to come up with other mascot platformers that were cooler than Sonic.

Yeah, it was very, it's like James Bond as adjacent to James Bond as possible with like they're trying to make him Jim Carrey to a degree or like yeah some pastiche of Jim Carrey and Robin Williams quippy annoying like uh Ryan Ryan Reynolds-y

type

so

I like I like that to like combat Sonic there were like we have to like invent a gu a guy and like imply he fucks kind of yes right like we have to like make him like sort of like suave and horny Sonic is clearly asexual which the fan base does not respect no but like yeah but like but like they're the the other bra we're like yeah well well ours will be cooler and hoardier or he'll swear or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's just, it's just not the mood.

No, it's not.

Yeah.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

can I ask you about some of your songs appearing in video games, Zach?

Because your band Pup, one of my favorite bands, I have to say.

Huge, huge fan of Matt.

I got it, Zach, this is Matt is, I think,

you know,

he's saying it, but like, like, and he's saying it directly to you, but like the excitement, the palpable excitement we've gotten both from Matt and from our producer, Michelle Chen Ranch, over your appearance.

I cannot convey this enough.

A couple of huge pup fans here.

That's very flattering.

No, this is like, we look, I'm going to throw all our guests out of the bus real quick.

This is an all-timer for me.

This is huge.

Because, like, a lot of the guests that we have on are great, but they're like friends of ours, like people we know.

So, this is like just truly very exciting to be able to do that.

I'd be excited to talk to Sean Diston.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, great.

Amir wants to come on.

Someone I don't know that well,

Shinnet Rose.

But so, no, i so obviously i mean pup you have you guys have songs that appear in games uh i'll just run through some of these real quick reservoir is in watchdogs 2 and writer's republic uh lionheart is you have actually a lot of songs in uh

in various uh nhl hockey games uh lionhearts in nhl 15 sibling rivalry in nhl 20 totally fine in nhl uh 23 uh matilda in rock band 4 which is really cool and then uh dvp is in Dream Daddy, a dad dating simulator.

That's right.

Nick is

fondness for.

I was going to mention that, but I wasn't sure.

It's like, depending on what corner of Reddit you're in, it's a controversial game to be a part of.

But I'm sure that's just like infighting between fans.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, look, anywhere you're on the internet is controversial.

Yes.

But the but this the video, I guess,

because like songs, songs in games, like it's like, it happens a lot, but like, what was, what was it like for you to have one of your songs actually like appear in a video game?

Like, what was that like experience?

Uh, it's pretty wild.

I think the first one that I was like

fully aware of might have been Dream Daddy, and I, it's like an indie studio, so I was like, that's cool.

And then it turned out that that brought a lot of, that actually introduced us to a lot of people.

So not only was it cool to like have our, our song in a game, period, like that's amazing.

Um, but just like a lot of people started showing up at our shows.

That was like one of the biggest booms of

first booms of fan base that we had was because of that game.

That's really a dream, Daddy.

That's fascinating.

Yeah, it was cool.

I saw this band.

I used to love this band,

The Living End.

They're a three-piece band from Australia.

Yeah,

I saw them once.

Well, one of the very few times they played here in the States.

They don't really come, they don't really come over here.

As I understand, it's very far away.

And

they

were just there.

Just there.

It's quite far.

And

they played one of their songs, End of the World, and they were like, you might know this song from a fucking video game.

And it's from,

I think, Tony Hawk's Underground or Tony Hawk's Underground 2 or something.

And I was like already aware of them.

And I thought that was so funny because people went nuts.

They're like, we do know it from a video game.

And they have one of their songs in Guitar Hero.

Carry Me Homes in Guitar Hero 2, actually.

So

they did their little video game chunk, which was crazy.

But yeah, it must bring the awareness that must bring to a band, especially like

a quote-unquote newer band,

must be so huge.

Yeah, it was.

It was cool.

That was quite early on, if I remember.

Yeah.

Yeah, we were very grateful that we got that chance.

And then we got in Watch Dogs 2, which I didn't know what it was.

And then I've since

played and loved.

I'm sure this will get me uh backlash uh i've played and loved watchdog legion since like i love that game it's it's super fun i know not everybody loves that game right it's like i only knew about that because our our song was in two so yeah yeah it's it's great like

yeah

That's awesome.

And then so the video for DVP, obviously, is comprised of clips from video games with the dialogue boxes in these games being filled with lyrics of the song.

How did that,

like, what was the impetus of that being the video?

And for people who haven't seen it, we could put a, we could put a link in the show description, but it's basically like,

it's,

in my memory, entirely 8-bit games.

Yeah.

Like, it's, it's, it's, is, and, and, and, you know, so, like, like, like, it's just jumping between a bunch of different frames, a bunch of,

like,

you know, Punch Out and,

you know, like River City Ransom, games of that era, a lot of NES games.

And then it will have, like, yeah, yes, what you're saying, like, within the style of the text, the in-game text, in that same sort of font, it will be lyrics for the song.

Yeah.

But yeah,

Bat's question.

How did that come about?

That was our,

I mean, we were always looking to do something a little weird.

You know, we're kooky guys.

We wanted to make a lyric video that didn't suck.

And most,

I'm sure this isn't controversial, but most lyric videos suck.

Yeah.

And

so our director friend, Jeremy, who's done like all of our videos, all of our best videos are Jeremy.

He did Reservoir.

He did

If This Tour Doesn't Kill You.

He did all like the

most graphic ones.

It's probably Jeremy.

And so he like he came up in the same era and he

just pitched this idea.

And we basically scoured games scoured gifs and videos and just like pulled them pulled them together and pulled them apart and then just like he went to work editing

forever to add the lyrics in and then it's been on youtube for however many years now we're just playing chicken with uh copyright at this point but uh

apparently under uh

I guess it's parody law.

It's technically legal.

So, you know.

Feels like parody fair at use to me yeah and so you guys had say in like what what uh video games were like selected for the thing was there one that you were like super like this one has to be in there like were you like super like you had did you have to put your foot down at any point I remember um somebody specifically said battle toads had to be in it

it's a good it's a good call yeah

there's this I like I just toss it a bunch of games it's like Mega Man and like whatever fit whatever frames ended up working, because we're not super precious about that.

But

he just letting Jeremy, because Jeremy, again, came up in that era, so he just let him, you know, let his imagination go wild, basically.

That's awesome.

Because you, you, because Pup has been in video games and stuff, is there like a dream video game that you're like, I wish we could be in this one?

Is that like something that you think about at all?

I mean,

we kind of, in a sort of oblique way, we kind of already did.

Uh-huh.

Somebody,

I think it was somebody on the regionalization team for Paper Mario and Origami King.

Nobody's like copped to it, but there's a specific part of the game where they put our song titles in the dialogue.

Oh, wow.

Whoa.

And it was, this like came up a while ago when the game initially came out.

And like, still a part of me is like, there's no, there's no way that's it.

But then the sequence of dialogue, it's like clearly our songs.

Yeah.

Um, so it's still possible as a coincidence, but it's like it'd be a huge coincidence.

Yeah, a huge coincidence.

It's like, it's all like morbid stuff

references.

So it's, it was pretty wild.

Like, I was just playing innocently and just like, I'm like, wait a second.

And then like two weeks later, I saw on, I think it was Reddit or something.

So many posters, like, the lyrics are in the, in the video game.

And it's like, that's crazy.

That must have been so strange to like just be playing it and being like, what the hell?

Yeah, it's, it was wild.

And it's amazing.

Like, that's kind of like, you know, I've gotten what I want.

So

it's cool.

There also, though, must have been an element of like, because that's like the dream scenario for the fan of pup who's on the localization team, who's putting those Easter eggs in there, is that a member of Pup organically discovering it while playing the game.

Yeah.

That's pretty rad.

Truly wild.

That's cool.

Yep.

And then so you also make a lot of you make lots of different kinds of music, but you have like made original like video game compositions as well, correct?

Yeah, like I mean, I compose for fun mostly, but I'm trying to like that's a that's a side of the business I'm trying to break into because that's like the the dream.

I mean, I've already gotten my dream and being a like being in a band and like being able to live off being in a band, which is amazing.

And being kind of in Paper Mario, pretty cool.

Yeah, that's huge.

I could quit now, but it's yeah, it's like the next step, I feel like I just really want to cut my teeth on some indie games and so fight just practicing until then, just like biting my time, writing, and just like

trying to, I don't know, worship at the altar of all these amazing soundtracks that are out there.

What do you compose on?

I have like a, I have a bunch of stuff.

I have like a little pro a sequential Prophet 6 here.

It's a synthesizer and a Juno 106 and

guitar bass drums.

I I have like a, you can sort of see the electric kit behind me.

Awesome.

Like an array of synths and stuff.

And I have a, I just run into logic.

And, you know, it's just like a lot of, it's kind of where I, this is like my favorite place to be is tinkering.

So that's what I do.

Do you have any

notable favorites among game soundtracks, be they indie games or otherwise?

Final Fantasy VII again.

Yeah.

Is like, it's, that's like an obvious answer, but a good answer.

It's like hard to overstate

when the original came out,

the intro, when you see like the sort of like swooping shot over Midgar and the theme comes on.

It's like, I didn't know like video game music could be this cinematic.

Right.

And that, I think, changed my mind.

Because I mean, I was used to Mega Man X and all those games.

And those have amazing soundtracks.

It's like great, like succinct, amazing compositions.

That's what I was used to.

Very catchy, like very short and then it's like you have the sprawling like orchestral soundtrack i mean at the time it was it was a little more like eight or 16 bit i think it was 16 bit but it's it's still amazing it just like evokes the imagination and uh i don't know if you guys are familiar with the podcast uh strong songs yeah yeah kirk camera

podcast yeah kirk would went in depth um he was talking about like the magic of final fantasy 7's soundtrack and what made it magical more magical in the original is that it left to the imagination more like if you fill in the details of the orchestra a little bit more

and the new soundtrack is great i agree it's great but i understand what he's saying and it's just like there's such power and in that and being young and hearing that for the first time for sure and so like when you're when you're tinkering when you're just kind of like doing it for fun like are there other soundtracks that you're sort of like are you making music with like a specific type of game in mind?

Is it like a Final Fantasy type thing?

Are you just kind of like whatever the mood strikes type of thing?

It's a bit of both.

And it's like sometimes I just,

sometimes the best place to start is like try to make fun of something.

And sometimes it's like, it's, it's easier to write music when you're making fun of something, I find.

Wait, what do you mean by that?

Well, it's like, I mean, you know, from playing Mega Man, there's like a, it's a little tropey as far as like the, it's like heavy metal music as filtered through a synthesizer in the, in the 80s.

Right.

And it's like, or like a MIDI synthesizer in the 80s.

So it's, it's like how can i take that and like translate it to a more modern sensibility and it's just like kind of make a funny like sort of circuitous uh

melody and just like make it ridiculous got it the drums are impossible to play

just like all this shit like in mega man who's this unrealistic uh guitar playing so yeah just like doing that kind of stuff and it's still with reverence it's just like it's it was designed to be ridiculous and i think that's kind of the best part about it.

That's one thing I

love about chiptunes

is, and you know far more about music than me, obviously, but just like that they that they the the composers of that era uh back when now obviously there's there's basically no hardware limitations on what you can do musically, but there was a time when you had like I've got I've got four channels to work with, I've got eight channels to work with.

You know, playing things like chords was

difficult.

So you'd like turn a lot of things into arpeggios.

And then like what you were saying is it's just because it's not a real

because you're just putting a sequence in there.

Yeah, you can have these impossibly fast runs, which is part of what's fun about it from you know, Sonically.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, not Sonic, like, the guy.

No, not Sonic the guy.

Yeah, no, yeah.

And I think of him as a guy, by the way.

He's just one of the guys.

I think he is canonically a guy.

Yeah, yeah, like how Hello Kitty is a girl.

That's right, a human girl.

Yeah.

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I did want to ask about there's music and video games, but then there's also music games.

And I'm always curious on a musician's take on the rock bands, the guitar heroes, the Samba Day amigos, the Donkey Kong jungle beats of the world.

Like, how do you feel about rhythm games that involve some sort of like, you know, a peripheral?

It's, uh,

it's embarrassing for me to play.

I, I tried, I tried rock band once.

I'm like, oh, this, it's like, I'm trying to play, I'm trying to listen and play the song, and that's not what you're supposed to do.

Right.

So it's, it just like defies every instinct that I've learned to like sort of believe in.

as a musician.

So I'm totally into it.

Like, it's cool.

Like, I love the,

I love the competitive nature of Guitar Hero and that stuff.

And just, like, I love the sort of open sourceness.

That's such a great thing.

And people adding songs and, like,

totally getting insane.

It's like putting a Dream Theater or

Diliger Escape Plan song in Guitar Hero is amazing.

Like, that's so cool.

And who knows what that means for exposing kids to like cool music.

But yeah, I'm terrible at it and I don't make a habit of playing those games.

That's interesting because like, yeah, you would as a, as a drummer, are more used to like listening and

like and playing along.

But like the game is obviously so visual that like it's probably just like messing with how it's being processed in your brain like entirely.

Well, it's I think it's more it's it's that but like there's also a lot of visual in

in playing on stage.

There's like a lot of communication.

And the number of times like Steve has fucked me up from making a face at me, like while we're playing, and it's just like we try to fuck each other up.

But it's, there's, there's also like a perceptual delay that's part of it.

There's also literally, like, it's still a video game, so you should be pressing buttons, not playing music.

Right.

And it's like, you'd think I could marry those two factors, but it's two, it's like two parts of my brain that couldn't be further apart.

So it's, yeah, it just doesn't work.

Uh,

you know, I'm not sure if you are familiar with this, uh, Zach, but they, uh, but I imagine you've seen this at some point, but Canadian Rock Legends, Rush, R.I.P., Neil Purt,

there's a video they made of playing rock band, attempting to play rock band back in the day.

Have you ever seen this before?

No, I heard about it, but I didn't watch it.

Yeah, I think it was on on Colbert Rapport where they did it and they they like they they uh they like they failed they couldn't get through it

and they failed part way in and then the quote from Alex Lifeson the guitar says uh because they failed at 31% in 31% they hate us.

They're mad at like the game is mad at them.

That's so, that's,

it's got to be so strange.

Cause, like, I mean,

I like to play the rock band drums in a scenario where like we're playing rock band with like a squad or whatever, like, or, you know, at a friend's party, but like, even listening to like the isolated, like, just hits of the video game drum pads, it doesn't sound like it doesn't sound like music it doesn't it just sounds like you're hitting or like pressing buttons really is what it sounds like but it doesn't it doesn't sound like anything yeah you really got to like lean into the video gaminess of the

play i'm also bad at it so it doesn't sound like it doesn't yeah that's always going to be a little bit of a roadblock yeah yeah yeah it's going to sound a little bit worse um

i guess i mean that's all that's all bye no that's all my questions for this part of the show well actually there is there is one more question that we tend to ask on this podcast, Zach, to you and

really to everyone in the studio.

That question is:

what are you playing?

What are you pawing?

Oh, no.

Hey, it's me, Bubsy Bobcat.

It's Bubsy Bobsy.

Bringing some positive catitude to this hysterical podcast.

I'm sorry, I should say paw the cast.

Okay, thank you.

First of all, thank you for correcting yourself, Bubsy.

You're on thin fucking ice as it is.

Second, Zach, I'm so sorry.

This is Bubsy the cat, of course.

Bubsy.

If the camera wasn't on, I would guess that it was Nick.

No, it's for sure, Bubsy.

It's Rinitz Bubsy.

Nick is just starstruck.

Yeah, it's what I would.

I'm here.

I think maybe you're just, yeah.

Yeah, Nick is Nick is crying.

He's so excited that Bubsy's here.

Bubs me in the flesh.

Stop saying that.

Litter, litterly here.

Bubsy, you have a new game coming out.

That's right, Bubsy Bubsy4D.

I hear the difficulty is impossible.

So, okay, this is what I think so far about your whole thing, Bubsy.

You've got one pun.

One pun?

I think I've got nine lives.

You know what?

I take it back.

Bubsy's good.

Bubsy,

how can you guarantee that this new Bubsy, Bubsy4D, isn't going to suck shit like all the other Bubsys?

Of course, you know, some of the previous Bubsy games have been catastrophic,

but this one I think is going to be a positively received by the gaming press.

Okay, Bubsy,

the Resident Evil 4 merchant usually is here.

I don't know who that is.

You don't know the Resident Evil 4 Merchant.

I don't know.

I don't listen to this podcast.

I don't know who that is.

Well, I would assume you guys know each other just from the circuit, from

being in video games.

Oh, I'm not invited on the circuit.

Oh.

God, so everybody hates you.

It brings a a real outsider energy, too.

Could you persuade Resident Evil Merchant to invite me into the circuit?

Look, he's a tough nut to crack, I gotta say, but he's always looking for a new friend.

I'll tell him

that you're interested.

But

he usually does a little bit of business up top, and then he kind of gets to the essential question of the show.

Oh, right.

The essential question of the show.

I'll get to it, Matt.

Or should I say cat?

I'm not even mad at it.

That's pretty good.

cat's good i i i like that i have actually

of my tattoos the i was realizing this the other day obviously i have a tattoo right here that commemorates my two dead cats but i also have this other cat tattooed on me i have three cats on my body is it me bubsy it might as well be you

know what an honor it's it's you now what an honor yeah that's perfection as far as i'm concerned oh wait i have two more real quick and then we'll get your wait okay waiting count two more one i think your guest is from Pup.

You know, my favorite band, Kit.

That's one.

Second one, pretty good.

That's really

good.

I'm actually surprised you weren't scared to be here.

So, Bubsy, have another one?

Yeah, I have one more.

Yeah.

What's the other one?

Uh, you know what I use for as my large language model?

No.

Cat GPT.

Christ.

That's that was the best one.

What are you playing?

Wow.

Thank you so much, Bubsy.

Zach,

are you playing any games currently right now?

I know you mentioned Bonanza up top.

Yeah, I tried it.

It made me really dizzy, but I think I was hungover.

I mean,

as you can tell,

I have a very big personality.

So

the game that I'm playing more recently flexed that, I'm playing Bellatro.

Oh, yeah.

Hell yeah.

It's just like the only thing I have energy for, like mental energy for.

Yeah.

It's It's just like you can jump in or jump out.

And it's like, that's also good for touring.

It's just like games like Vampire Survivor or like Forager.

Those like, you just like pick them up and play them and then you could just turn them off immediately.

Yeah.

But also I just like, I always just go, I always go back to Elden Ring.

I've like beaten it six times at this point.

So

six times.

Are you someone obsessed with it?

Do you do new game plus it?

What it like, are you just keep run, keep rerunning it?

Yeah, I'm afraid of like losing the success that I've had with

it's a little bit like entertainment.

Um,

but yeah, yeah, I just love that game, and it's easy to go back now.

And I wouldn't have called it a comfort game before because it's so fucking annoying, um, but I love that game, so I just go back to it again.

What is the build of your

character, or do you have a favorite build that you've that you've found?

Um, I do like my guy is mostly like intelligence and dexterity, got it, um, but i also like i constantly go back to um what's her face to respec and just like try out different stuff i like arcane a lot arcane's really good and it's uh what's it called it's the prisoner is my my guy i made him look like a croatian plumber yeah

and being of slavic descent it made me feel uh close close to him yeah so have you messed with um elden ring night rain at all uh no that kind of scares me that it feels i feel like that'll uh lay my skill level to bare yeah it is i will say it's because it's run based it sort of is like a great equalizer kind of so like you're always kind of starting starting from zero but it is you do sort of need a good squad going so you need like

two other two other pals that are as into it that you can get you can get going you can do it with randoms it's easy to do with randoms i've done it with randoms but you gotta you gotta just be if you're gonna play with randoms you gotta just be submissive and just like let the other guys just follow the other guys.

And I just do what they're doing.

And then I don't have any problems.

Yeah, like I couldn't get, I mean, I know it's not the same because it's co-op, but I couldn't get into like the online stuff because you always, it's just like some Gen Z kids just come in and just like annihilate you.

And then you're like, all right.

Well, this is not a community spirit that I'm looking for in the most annoying game ever created.

I want to ask about Balacharo because that's a game I've put a lot of time into.

It's been in particular recently.

I played it at launch and then I was like, I got to get this off of my,

I have to delete this from my Steam store because it's just, it's too, my Steam library because it's too addictive.

Then I got on my phone, same process, had to get it off my phone.

Lately, then it came when it came to Game Pass.

I installed off Game Pass and I started playing it.

And that's when it like most got its hooks into me because of the steep the achievements.

For whatever reason, that the the game pass achievements are really motivating for me but i i i it's it's such an incredible design and it's so playable do you have a particular uh deck or or or build you glom onto or do you have a particular goal as you're playing the game are you just riffing

uh i was thinking about this earlier To make it sound romantic, I would say that I have a very Buddhist approach to Bilatro and that I move through it with curiosity and I try to see what I can do with whatever disaster I'm handed.

So

it's just like try to get as many polychromes as possible.

That's basically my whole thing.

And just like, I'm not, I can't say I'm the smartest person ever.

So I really rely on any buff that I possibly can get.

And I mean, you're right.

It's like, it is a wonder of game design.

It's like, it's so addictive.

It's crazy.

Like, and it just turning, it's like turning poker and solitaire into a rogue-like is like who, like, what twisted mind thought of that?

That's wild.

Totally ingenious.

Yeah, the polychrome, uh, polychrome jokers are uh that they're basically bonus cards.

It's a uh, it's a bonus that can be on an existing joker that puts a 1.5x multiplier on it.

So if you stack a few of those, uh, but there's also cards that give uh X multipliers, and the whole thing is like balancing because you get like the plus chips, the plus molt, but then ultimately, once you get into the late game stages of your run, when when you're trying to finish a run, the times molt is what's going to really give you those exponentially larger scores.

So it is, I will say that as

great as the game is, there is kind of a narrowing of strategies as you get deeper into it because you just need so many points.

And talking about video game music, that one track that plays the whole time of playing is incredible.

What a track.

So good.

I mean, by design, catchy because you have to listen to it.

Yeah.

So

do you ever hear a song like that that doesn't have any drums and think, I could really add something to this?

There's nothing my drumming does that improves any song.

Not true.

Is what I've learned.

Matt, what are you playing?

Well,

I have a big announcement.

Wow.

And that announcement is

I finished Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

Wow.

And now let me just tell you something about this.

I didn't mean to.

I just didn't mean to.

I didn't want it to be over.

Yeah.

I've been playing this game so patiently and so

just measured and just like doing a bunch of side things and things like that.

And last week when we talked about Bonanza, I talked about how that game overstayed its welcome for me a little bit, but I still ultimately really enjoyed it.

This game.

This could be all this.

You could play this game forever.

Yeah.

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

I think I played it for like 80 hours.

I played a lot of it.

I didn't want it to be over.

Like the story, story, the story that moves through the chapters,

if it didn't have any of the other stuff in it, the story's not that long.

Like, it's not, there's not that much story in it, I think, compared to

the experience of playing the game, right?

So, like, well, and also, it sounds like if you're saying there's, I mean, because Death Stranding 1 had so much story.

Yes.

And you're saying that, like, this is comparatively not as robust, or

I don't mean to say that.

You don't mean to say that.

No.

because

the

in on similarly to the first game a lot of the story stuff

is

on the back end you get a lot more of the like reveals and and and and story proper story beats toward the end of the game and i was just in such a spot where i was so compelled by what was going on i just had to then mainline the rest of the story missions and keep going and

my wife walked in on me crying i was crying playing the game uh and like in in the middle of i'll say a long cutscene but it was and she's like are you okay we had somewhere to go yeah like afterwards and then like completely with yourself yeah we were when we went out i was in a bad mood i was like not in a good mood because i had just been crying um but it's uh it's a stellar incredible game i'm gonna be thinking about it for a while tough it's gonna be tough to beat for game of the year for me so far.

Wow.

And then...

How many times have you and your wife have that same interaction, but it's you playing Kingdom Hearts?

I mean, look,

more than one.

The answer is not zero.

She's just like, what the fuck is this?

You're crying over Doddleduck?

What the fuck's going on?

He didn't heal me.

He doesn't heal.

I've already moved on to something else.

Look, I'm still chipping away at Hollow Knight.

I'll just update you on my Hollow Knight progress real quick.

Silk Song comes out when this episode drops in a couple of days.

Yeah.

I don't think I'm finishing it before the drop date.

But I'm in,

I'm at an encounter with Hornet in the Kingdom's Edge area, and I'm getting my fucking ass kicked because I've had months and months off of Hollow Knight.

Yeah.

But I've relearned how to play.

Rochelle Chen Ranch, our producer,

do you remember this fight in Hollow Knight?

Yeah, that was a really tough fight.

Yes.

Because it's a small area where you're fighting, and then she has this now ability.

She's faster and more aggressive in this area.

Remember my ranch?

Yeah, yeah.

Ranch.

Yeah, that's why I prefer Studio G.

Yeah.

But then she also is able to sort of string these barbs in the play area.

And so while you're jumping and dashing around, they can get in your way and damage you also.

But

I've gotten close, so I know I can do it.

So I'm still doing that.

But since I was loving Death Stranding 2 so much, I was like, I got to go back to the original, Metal Gear Solid 1.

I've never played that one before.

Messed around with a little bit of that on my Vita.

And then I was like, I want to play this, but I got it.

I know Diston, Sean Diston, big Metal Gear Solid V guy, has been haranguing the three of us specifically, me for a long time.

Yeah.

To be playing Metal Gear Solid V.

And I think he wants to come on an episode.

He wants to come on an episode and talk about it.

It's his favorite.

It might be his favorite piece of media.

Like, he loves it so much.

And so

I played Metal Gear Solid V, Ground Zeros, rolled credits on that, which is the,

it's a separate game, but it's basically a single level of a game and long cutscenes.

And then I started Metal Gear Solid V, but then something happened.

Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta Snake Eater comes out.

And Snake Eater is my favorite.

It's my third favorite video game of all time.

Right.

I think those top three are maybe all tied for one, depending on the day, right?

And which is, of course, Kingdom Hearts 2, Pokemon Gold, Medical Solid 3, Snake Eater.

Yeah.

I had to see what was going on.

I had to see how they, if they massacred my boy or not.

And let me tell you something.

It's good.

It's like,

it's just exactly the same shit.

It just looks better and plays a little bit better.

Yeah.

It plays more modernly, certainly, and there's some quality of life to it, but they didn't change anything.

It's exactly the same game.

And now it's probably like

the way I'll replay it as I've replayed it over the years.

I've played this game so many times.

It's nice to have a new way to just replay an old game.

And I'm playing it right now.

And look,

my wife caught me pressing R1

to get a closer look at something, if you know what I mean.

Okay.

She says, you can do that in this game.

I was like, they practically make you do it.

But Jim was a freak.

But also, Snake is unapologetically horny in some of these games, too.

He's just straight up, he's straight up a horny character.

I mean, in Metal Gear Solid 2, it's implied that he's beating off in a locker looking at posterior bikini.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it's amazing.

That's a marvel of video gaming.

I know.

Look what the art form can do.

But

I'm playing Delta right now, and

it does not start with the credit, a Hideo Kojima game.

It says based on Metal Gear Solid 3 Sneak Eater, but his name is in the credits several times in the opening, in the intro.

And then the last credit created by Hideo Kojima is still intact, which is cool.

And I just love the game.

It's like,

I mean, it's not, it's unfortunately, I think the real thing about it is why did they do this?

If they didn't make it newer, like, or if they didn't, like, change anything, it's almost, it's just, it's inert, kind of.

It's not really anything.

It's just, like, a fresh cone of paint on already a good game.

But maybe that's enough.

Yeah.

And, like, there is, like, the new mode, which is, it plays over-the-shoulder

third person versus

slightly above, right?

And you can do either one.

You can play either way.

But it's, it, it, it rocks.

And I, I, I hope to finish it pretty soon so I can move on to some of these other Metal Gear Solid games.

I love the swing of ingenuity.

Like, I don't think this is a spoiler at this point.

Yeah.

In one, when the to beat the last boss or whatever is the controller thing.

Yeah, Psychomantis.

Psychomantis, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the swing of ingenuity from that to you have to jerk off.

Well, you don't have to.

It's more of an Easter egg.

But you can sort of tell that

you can sort of tell that he had to do that.

Yeah, you have to.

If you had to progress through the game, he started shaking.

Nick, what are you playing?

Matt, thank you so much for asking.

I'll talk real quick about Tomba special edition.

Matt, I believe you played Tomba back in the day, isn't it?

I played Tomba back.

On PlayStation 1, released in 1997.

It was on sale on Steam, this remaster, and it holds up really well.

I'm pleased to report it.

It's super fun.

You can jump on and throw pigs.

It's got, you know, it's the side-scrolling Metroidvania platformer with just sort of like this Cave Boy sort of character, the titular Tomba, and these evil pigs that you're fighting against.

And it has the expected kind of quality of life improvements like Rewind and Save Anywhere.

It's just a remarkably

still like very, very solid game that I think is semi-forgotten because it was a side-scroller that came out for the PlayStation 1 in the era of early 3D platformers.

And also just no one was really paying attention to side-scrollers on

PlayStation at the time.

I feel like that was everything that was like,

all those games that were impactful were on

Nintendo and Sega.

And now there's obviously like a big market for these as throwbacks.

But, you know, it kind of reached it.

It reached a,

it was kind of ill-timed in terms of when it emerged.

But it's a great game.

It was directed by Capcom veteran Tokuro

Fujiwara after he left the studio and joined Whoopee Camp, which

Fujiwara, a legendary designer,

directed a Commando, Ghosts and Goblins and Ghouls and Ghosts by Anakomando.

Also Sweet Home, which has been called the original survivor horror game.

Anyway, I was looking for some more context on Fujiwara, and I found this polygon piece, How Resident Evil 2 Fell Apart then Became One of Capcom's biggest hits by Alex Anniol.

I'll just read a real quick bit of this that pertains to Tomba.

The first change was the departure of Tokuro Fujiwara from Capcom in late 1995 before the original game, Resident Evil, was even released.

Having been the grandmaster of Capcom's console games since 1983 and a mentor to younger creators of the company, his departure marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.

Fujiwara's decision to leave came down to his desire to make new and original games, something he says he never would have been able to do within Capcom.

Quote, outside of Resident Evil, Capcom wanted to continue making franchise titles like Street Fighter, meanwhile on to develop original games, but didn't look like there'd be any opportunity to do so in the foreseeable future, Fujiwara says.

Officially, he resigned from Capcom immediately after the release of Resident Evil, although in practice, he had stopped coming into the office in December 1995 in order to use up his accumulated vacation days, of which there were plenty given his 13-year tenure, which encompassed thousands of years of amassed overtime and unused days off, a pattern that was prevalent at a Capcom during these years.

This dude just cashed in all his PTO at the end of his contract.

He like went like full George Costanza at the end.

That's fucking awesome.

That's alpha as hell.

Unfortunately, Fujiwara did not achieve the same level of success at WhoopiCamp as it did at Capcom.

Neither Tomba nor the sequel sold well enough to sustain the cost of operating the company.

And as a result, Fujiwara placed Whoopee Camp in a dormancy.

The company continued to exist, but was effectively inactive.

So it's anyway, I'm glad this game exists.

And even though it was kind of a commercial flop, I think it's cool that he got to go off and make his own game.

And it's this cool weird game that is this cult fandom and has a remake, you know,

almost 30 years later.

They keep bringing back these little guys.

They brought back Tomba.

They brought back Gex.

They brought back Bubsy.

I think we're good.

Everybody stop.

We don't need...

No, we don't need Arrow the Acrobat.

Yeah.

Let's talk about road trip games, or I guess just games on the road in general.

How do you want to think of this, Matt?

Yeah, I think games on the road, gaming on the road.

On the road.

I like it.

Yeah.

I like it because

I've certainly done

my favorite travels.

I haven't certainly been on a tour

of any kind.

Yeah.

I know, obviously, Zach has been on many tours and is getting ready to kick off another leg of it here in the States You've you've toured quite a bit I've done some touring for Doughboys my podcast though nothing as extensive as a as a band might do but yes I've certainly done some of that and I but I feel like I see I've seen like crazy travel rigs on Like on on like various like tour buses and stuff and obviously not not not every not every band is gonna be doing this

like a crazy rig like that or whatever but like Zach what's your what's your typical setup on on on the road?

Are you guys like gaming together ever?

It's like, it's usually pretty ambitious to expect us to all get together.

We don't want to spend that much time at a certain point with each other.

Yeah.

Like I at first, so like on tour buses, sometimes you get like a, you know, an HDMI input and you can like hook stuff up, but that's, yeah, nobody wants to do that.

So I end up just like bringing a switch or something and we play Mario Kart or like that kind of stuff.

So it's not an extensive rig.

It's just like a switch on a table and you just break up the left to right.

So you guys don't all have

you don't live in a single big apartment with four separate doors for each other?

We wish.

This band would be over so much sooner.

Yeah.

No.

I didn't answer to your question, Joe.

It wasn't a serious question.

So you guys played a little bit of Mario Kart on the road.

So like I guess, yeah, you're bringing, you're bringing Switch.

Is it ever like, do you guys ever do any like is it does it get competitive what's the what's the vibe when you guys are playing uh games with each other if you do it usually one of us is knowingly like the lame duck so we just like admit defeat early on so it's not really it's just like a bunch of self-deprecating musicians so there's not a lot of competition nobody's trying to alpha anybody yeah no no one's the alpha we're all whatever is below Delta?

Is that below beta?

But yeah, no, there's not much like competition.

It's like whatever we can do to get away from each other.

And just like, I get in my bunk and play the thousandth run of Breath of the Wild or whatever.

Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait, you say bunk, you're talking, so you're on a tour bus.

Yeah.

So you're all in close, close proximity.

You got a show, you got to do, you're, you're performing together, a lot of meals together.

You're spending a lot of time with each other.

You're saying that those are points when you kind of want some alone time, even though you're in the same space.

And if you're gaming, it's there were times when you might all

game together, but a lot of times it's like a solo venture for you.

Yeah, most of the time it is.

And like Nestor, our bass player, he brings a switch sometimes

and it's solo usually.

And, but we like, yeah, we talk about games and trade tips on stuff because he and I play a lot of the same games.

So it is usually solo.

It is like a lot of

touring, especially for us at this stage is like a lot of

recuperating.

Right.

Yeah.

Whatever you can do to like regain the energy that you lost through like, it's very intense playing on stage.

It's like, and I've, I've talked

on other podcasts about like my performance anxiety, so it adds a layer to it, and just like all that stuff, whatever we can do to like sort of recuperate mostly.

So that ends up being a lot of attempted time alone.

Yeah, that makes total sense.

Yeah.

Would that then like dictate what type of game that you would necessarily like gravitate to?

Like if I was stressed out, I wouldn't necessarily want to be starting a new run in

Elden Ring or something.

I wouldn't want to face off against the godskin duo if I was

having a hard time, you know?

Yeah, but it's like sometimes you just go to the hills of Mogwin Palace and you just you just commit genocide on the Elden Aryx.

It just takes the edge off.

It's like going outside for a cigarette.

I've never smoked, but I assume it's like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I assume it freaking

rules it.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, like, it's like comfort games like Breath of the Wild and like that, that kind of stuff.

Forager is another great game that i've uh gone back to and another it's very addictive roguelike and yeah just that stuff anything that can like absorb you into something and take you out of the the world around you so tell us about forager because this is a game that i i'm familiar with but i've never actually uh spent any uh spent any real time with yeah it's like i want to say it's kind of Minecraft-but it's like you're gathering materials and building.

But it's like a very 2D, top-down aesthetic.

and it's roguelike.

So like constantly collecting and upgrading.

So it's super addictive and just leading to each like to new worlds based on your power level.

And it's like a bullet hell if it wasn't violent almost.

It is a little violent, but it's like, it's not, you're not constantly shooting in every direction.

You're like, you're just hacking away and collecting stuff.

And it has like a rhythm to it that's, that's, that can be pretty soothing in its way.

Speaking of bullet hell, or I guess bullet heaven, you, you mentioned vampire Survivors.

You spent some real time with that.

Yeah, I love that game.

Actually, Jeff Rosenstein turned me on to that.

Yeah,

it's so stupid.

That was the first Bullet Hell that I played.

And I, yeah, this is wild.

It's like just absurdity.

I didn't know that would ever be a trajectory for games that just like constantly fought.

But I also played, what's that game?

The...

What's the bananas?

My friend Pedro?

Oh, yeah, that game rocks.

Yeah, I love that game.

That's a great game.

And that's like another just like fantastic.

It's like, I never knew just like aimlessly shooting at things could be that fun.

I thought I knew that's more intellectual for Suit, but turns out I'm not

that smart.

So the more I've like, and you know, when I realize that, like, oh, I, I'm less depressed if I take a walk, you know what I mean?

Like, things like that.

And then I'm playing vampire survivors.

And I'm like, this is fun.

I'm enjoying myself.

I'm just like, I just have a dog brain.

You know what I mean?

Like, I just like, this is, this is, that's all it is.

Because like, is the it is as simple as gameplay could possibly be like you are your your level of interaction is like walking and then occasional decision making in terms of what your upgrade is going to be what your boon is going to be but like that's pretty much it but it's more than enough and it's such a compelling design like that's that's like that game like Bellacho another one that came from an indie dev a solo dev like kind of kind of out of nowhere and just like completely changed gaming yeah it's like and if you want something more intellectual than that, then like Vampire Survivor, just play like something more intuitive or more

intentional, just like play Hades or something.

Yeah, for sure.

That's a great game, too.

Like that almost does a similar thing, but yeah, it's such a great game.

Hades an all-timer for me.

Yeah, speaking of the kind of auto shooters, the one, the, the, you know, and the one I got really into in early access is Deep Rock Galactic Survivor,

which is super fun and adds some new wrinkles on top of the Vampire Survivor's formula.

It also has a completely different aesthetic.

Yeah, I messed with that a little bit too.

A lot of fun.

Fucking great.

Yeah, I'm writing that down because that sounds sick.

Are they like, what are the creatures?

Are they like big bugs?

They're like, there's like nasty bugs and stuff.

It's like, it's pretty cool.

A lot of bugs.

And then you're like mining stuff.

A lot of mining.

Yeah, it rips.

I think the thing about.

It's still technically in early access.

Yes.

The thing for me, when I'm like packing a bag for travel of any kind, I'm often thinking about what's coming with me for gaming, and it's going to depend on the situation, right?

You're going out for longer stretches.

I might go on like a long vacation every now and then, but if I'm going on a vacation or something, you're obviously going to these destinations, Zach, with something to do in mind.

So you're not necessarily like, I have so much time to be.

There's a lot of time.

I guess, yeah, what the shows are, like you're playing for an hour a night and each

more.

There's a lot of unstructured, well, it's structured structured and unstructured, but there's like a lot, it's mostly you have to wait and be in a place and wait.

Okay.

So you are, you're doing something, but you're, you have to be there.

So it's still, I guess, working, but I guess it's like working in an office, but it's like you're waiting.

And what do you do while you're waiting?

Is the thing.

So it would be funny if it was similar to working in an office where people, everybody did that type of computer.

They are playing the drums.

But I guess what I'm getting to is that like for me,

I don't like to have like a huge game going if I'm going on like a big trip, right?

Like I'll probably be in the middle of a big game as I often am.

But if I'm traveling with games, I'm probably playing a lot of stuff.

Not unlike a vampire

survivors or a Bellatro or a Hades.

I'm packing smaller experiences that are easy to pick up and put back down.

And I think that's probably a good recipe for travel in general.

Although I will say,

I took my Steam Deck with me on a vacation when I was playing Baldur's Gate 3 on the Steam Deck.

And I mean, that's like an all-time experience.

That's great.

Yeah.

You're on an airplane seeing what these tieflings are up to.

Good shit.

Some people bring, like, I don't know if you're familiar with a Pelican, like a travel case for...

like you can put like cameras in it or like musical instruments and stuff.

Some people bring one for their their ps5 yeah on tour like so you know it really depends on the scale but i find that a little excessive i think i've seen one of those that mark hoppis from blinkwina too has that has like a tv monitor and like ps5 and like controllers and games and stuff and that he just like wheel they just wheel that around on on tour because they're it's they're i mean they're it's blink one a two they're they're gonna have something like that it's crazy i'd be friends with someone who does that but i wouldn't bring it myself

it seems like a lot it seems like a lot of work it's a i also i i remembered something i when i went to italy maybe like the one huge trip i've actually ever done yeah uh i brought the only thing i brought with me was the switch light and it wasn't like for like every day it was just basically like for the flight to like there and back but before i left italy i was like i think i'm gonna miss it here and the assassin's creed uh etsio collection was on sale and they you can see the um the the vatican like in the game and i was my my hotel window overlooking the Vatican.

I was like, I gotta get this.

I'm gonna miss the Vatican and downloaded it and played it on the plane because I didn't want to leave Italy.

Do you get a quest from the Pope?

Yeah, I think you can fight the Pope in that one.

Wait, really?

I think you can fight and kill a Pope.

Wow, that's wild.

Because then they just regenerate.

It's like, what's the point?

They're stronger.

Yeah.

But

I always pack a couple of things when I'm traveling.

I'll pack like the big one, which is like the switch or the steam deck.

I have a PlayStation portal, and that is not great for flights.

That's great for

I'm dry.

Nick is laughing at me because he thinks it's bad.

No, I don't think it's bad.

Nick doesn't like the Nick's a portal skeptic.

I'm not a portal skeptic.

It's just that it's an interest, you know, you choose to spend whatever you want to spend your money on.

And see, there it is.

I, you know, it's a veiled criticism.

It might be a purchase I'd make, but that, you know, it's your life.

It's your life.

Well, it's here's the thing.

If you bought it, you would have really thrown it away.

But the thing that I love about it is that

it works for me in several use cases.

One, I only have the one TV in the house, so sometimes I'll be watching a show with my wife.

But it's good for like a weekend trip if I'm getting in the car, going the Palm Springs, where it's too hot to be outside.

I sit in the AC, I'm playing Death Strand 2 and the AC on my portal,

having a nice time with that.

But I also like to take something small with me, be it a Game Boy Advance.

I have this Ambernik RG34 that is like a Game Boy Advance form factor emulator, and that thing has been going with me quite a few places.

And

it's awesome.

I really love that thing.

Zach, you mentioned your Game Boy Advance.

Is that something that's also like a staple of your touring experience?

Yeah, it just lives in my backpack, basically.

What are you playing on that?

Usually, I mean, Tetris is the easiest go-to, but like Metroid, Zero Mission.

Oh, hell yeah.

And I bring my Pokemon Yellow from like when I was in grade school.

Yeah.

Still have a game saved from back then.

And another good one, the Zelda Diminish cap.

Oh, yeah.

I love that game.

It's a great game.

So, yeah, I carry those, all four of those with me

everywhere.

The Minish, like Diminish because you get small.

I was self-conscious about how I was saying it.

And now that you said that,

I feel justified.

I feel

better than justified.

I feel edified.

I got, I, um, I have an analog pocket, but also this, this Ambernick thing doesn't take cartridges, but I have an analog pocket that then does take cartridges.

But for that, I have a flash cart that has a bunch of games on it, and that's always so great because I'm not,

I'm always afraid to lose cartridges.

I think cartridges, And especially these Switch cartridges, they're at an all-time size deficit.

These things are small,

they're too small.

You could really lose them.

I'd hate to lose a cart.

I know I'm going to lose something, so I'm obsessive about where I put things.

And then, of course, I'm too clever, so I'm like, I'm like, oh, I lost.

I put it somewhere stupid, thinking it was smart.

You put it in the ultimate safe space, and then it's outside of your

mind, including me.

What kind of Game Boy Advance do you have?

It's the like clamshell

black.

Oh, black SP.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

and do you have the is the tetris you play on game boy advance is it tetris worlds which for which one was it uh it's tetris dx oh tetris dx oh so you're plugging a game boy cart into the your game boy advance yeah it's real awkward stuff it's sticking out there a little bit but you are playing the game you're playing the game boy version which is like these the better version yeah i've it's it's so like maybe this is a musician thing but i tried playing tetris worlds on switch and the reaction is not the same there's There's something about the digital like commands that don't, it's not as fast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't know if I'm crazy, but that's yeah, it's like the original Game Boy is probably the only one that I play.

I don't think you're crazy at all.

I think, I think the fan consensus is the Game Boy version and the NES Tetris are like the kind of the definitive Tetrises.

And I know in competitive play that they still use the NES Tetris because the Tetris company has like a control over how like the games that are are licensed now and they have a lot more you know like like like things like like the the like next being a certain number of blocks you're you're like that's something that that's dictated by the Tetris company or the existence of floor spinning is another thing that the Tetris company is like that that is the rules of Tetris that has to be in there but it's not necessarily how Tetris feels to a lot of people and also just separately I from what from what I remember Tetris worlds was not like a well-received version of Tetris in general so yeah I'm just like I honestly think that's that's fucking rad that

you're bringing the

original version and sticking it out the end of your cart.

Yeah, I love it.

It's such a good game.

It's crazy.

Just like one of the best, the smartest games ever, really.

Because the Game Boy, because the Advanced, it's like the carts for people who didn't have it, the carts are like half the size

or

half the, I guess, height of a Game Boy cart.

So if you put one of those into the cart, into

the slot, it fits all snug.

But if if you put a game boy advanced a game boy right sorry a regular game boy or game boy color one in there it sticks out the back uh real awkwardly it does but it there's something about

doing it where you kind of like you kind of feel like tough shit kind of yeah sure you're kind of like i'm actually i don't need any of these fucking new games

yeah exactly no that's awesome me and my boy alexey pazhitnov are out here

repping have you messed with tetris effect at all no i i haven't like I am not very adventurous with Tetris games.

Is that a recommendation?

Should I get into that?

This one,

if you're not adventurous with it, this one might be a bridge too far.

This one is, I think,

it's very adventurous.

It's very trippy looking, but it's got some great music in it, though, too.

I think that's it.

Okay, yeah, I'm into that.

I'll take some mushrooms, a whole pile of them, and then

maybe not with this.

You might get trapped in the game forever.

That's all right.

This world is not great.

And

you know your way around the blocks, so you might be all right in there.

Nick, what do you do

when you're traveling with games?

So I was really into traveling with a Switch light for a time.

It's so good.

Yeah, the Switch, because the Switch Light, the unibody

construction, and

it is actually lighter.

I was enjoying that.

Now, if I am going to travel with a Switch, I will take my OLED Switch

because it's it's just such a better screen.

Although I'm always like, I treat it like a Faberge egg.

I'm so worried about like losing it or damaging it.

You know, it's just like

you cradle it like a baby.

I do cradle it like a baby.

Yeah.

Give a little kisses.

Yeah.

Tuck it in at night.

I breastfeed it.

Yeah, I was going to say, you put it right up to empty.

Anyway, the a lot of times it'll be like whatever Switch game I've been playing, I would just continue playing, you know, even if that was something a little bit meatier.

Although I do agree that in general, I like a game like, you know, Vampire Survivors, the

which was mentioned, or like

Into the Breach, which is like a roguelite

that is a tactical game.

Again, you could basically stop playing at any point and then resume later.

It's great for

any sort of run-based game are kind of good.

But like...

I also try to travel light, especially when I'm touring now.

And so sometimes I'll be like, how much time am I really going to have to play a Switch?

Yeah.

And is a better use of packing space like one book.

And then

if I want to play games,

that will be the time I will deploy Balachro on my phone again.

You know what I mean?

I will load that back up.

I will say there was a game, I think it was Civilization Revolution, and I can't remember if I was playing this on Switch or on my phone, but it was a Civ game that was a lot more mobile friendly, that was like a simplified rule set that I got really, really into.

And that was something that I was playing on the road a lot.

It was like perfect for playing on a game and passing some time.

I just remembered something that I did when I was a shitty teenager.

We went on a family trip and I'm it where we went completely escapes me and you'll understand why in a second.

I don't remember where we went for this trip

because I brought my PlayStation 2 with me and my brand new copy of Prince of Persia Warrior Within

the second in the Sands of Time series.

And I just remember playing that the entire time we were on the family vacation.

It was like some like golf trip for my stepdad.

It was just like we all just went.

It wasn't like a like, let's all spend some time together type of thing, which it probably should have been.

But I remember two things from that trip.

One, playing that game the whole time, and then also watching the unrated Anchorman DVD.

As a family, we did that as a family, of course.

And then I remember on a flight in the last couple of years, I was playing Street Fighter 2 2 with my wife on my Switch.

And our neighbor across the aisle saw us playing Street Fighter and asked if she could get in on it.

And we just passed her a Joy-Con, and then also we just made a friend on the plane.

It was really fun.

Wait,

so you're each holding one Joy-Con and playing on the same Switch?

Is that how it's working?

Yeah,

it's multiplayer, right?

It's multiplayer.

You're using the Joy-Con as a single controller.

And then you're just, you know, I'm M.

Bison, and my wife is.

Who does she like to pick?

She likes to pick, um,

was she playing Blanca at this time?

She goes, she likes the freaky characters in these, in these fighting games.

She doesn't like a single, like, man or like woman character or anything like that.

I cannot imagine playing a game against my wife.

Really?

You mean me playing a fighting game against my wife?

First off, she'd kick my ass.

Yeah.

Sometimes I'm just like, I have to just show my wife that I'm better at

something.

Dominate.

Yeah, at anything.

But for me, for me,

couples gaming is like, let's

do something co-op, not necessarily one-on-one.

But

every marriage is different.

Some people thrive on conflict.

Yeah.

My wife gets in there, though.

She's very good at...

She likes.

She can beat me at fighting games for sure.

And she'll win at Mario Kart if I'm not careful.

It keeps it interesting.

Keeps the spark going.

But then

I just thought it was such a funny move of this complete stranger on the plane to be like, can I play?

And we were just like, yeah, I guess.

Like, sure.

And then we had a nice time.

She let us borrow a pen when we needed a pen on the plane.

It all worked out.

The old

forums that they give you.

Yeah, they make you fill out all these freaking forms.

I guess for me,

I always bring like a Switch or like a big one, and I bring like, I've been, I've, what's become sort of an everyday carry for me is my 2ds my 2ds excel uh because that's just pocketable and i sometimes wish that that was my phone instead i wish that the 2ds was my phone because i like it i like it more than my phone it makes me happier than my phone does it is pretty cool it had a cool form factor if i remember it yeah correctly do you do we think there's gonna be there's gotta be a switch to light down the coming down the pike i don't yeah i wonder if the first upgrade will be an oled version an oled screen.

But yeah, I bet there will be a light at some point.

They did such a, they made such a big deal about the magnetic Joy-Cons

in the mouse mode.

I almost wonder if they just would skip.

Oh, because how can you do the mouse mode without like if that's that's going to support is going to be required for some games?

Yeah, that's a good point.

Maybe it's a, I mean, that was, like, I played origami, or, you know, Paper Mario Origami King on Switch Light a lot.

And there's like stuff in that game that you like, it's like then annoying to do because in origami king, you need to like move the Joy-Cons in a certain way, uh, and you just can't.

I can't, it's like a screen tap in the uh, or something, you have to press some button or whatever, but it was not as fun to play on the switch light.

I remember Breath of the Wild had a couple of puzzles like that, too.

It just drove me.

I'm so impatient, so it just drove me nuts.

Yeah,

the switch is tough with gameplay, like gameplay like that is tough if you're traveling because you don't want to be wiggling wiggling your arms

in front of anybody.

That's it.

That's for private.

It keeps people away from you, is what I'll say.

Something like

my microphone.

Weird mechanic.

I did want to shout out, this is not a game I played on a road trip, but a game that's about road trips that I played this year, came out this year.

And I talked about it earlier in the podcast, but Keep Driving, which is just like this cool, like chill, like sort of

pixel art game and you just you you pick your car and you just get on the road and you drive around you go to different places you pick up hitchhikers and you just it's just very it's it's very open road like just sort of like uh kind of had this aimless feel to it um but uh i i really did enjoy my time with it i remember wanting to check that out it seemed really cool It's also like kind of like an early 2000s element to it, which is like part of

a little bit of that nostalgia hit.

I was just thinking about that time.

Yeah.

Like very recently and how, God, we had it all.

It's interesting because we didn't even have it all.

Like it was like things were still bad, but it's just like less bad.

And it's just like, you got to go back even like further to where like things were like, I guess maybe the 90s was the closest to things being kind of okay all around, maybe.

Cause, you know, like, but like a little bit before that, it's like, ah, shit was still, shit was fucking bad.

I would go back as far as like the third guy on the

like the evolutionary chart.

I think that's like probably like the third guy.

That guy's starting to stand up.

Yeah, he like, that's when actually all his problems started.

I think maybe one before that is probably the sweet spot.

Go back in time and push that guy over a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, Act.

No, you don't.

Yeah.

The chart just goes back down to monkey.

Yeah.

The world ecology is not wrecked.

Actually, then, but then it becomes an alternate world where it's like monkey capitalism.

Oh, sure, right.

That said, I mean, gaming on the road, a big thing for me is I get motion sick if I'm staring at screens, particularly on, and Zach, I imagine the sensation on a bus is a little bit different than being in a car, but

that's such a

roadblock for me as far as far as gaming on the go.

Man, he's good.

Yeah, depending on, again, how much I've had to drink the night previous.

Definitely get emotion sick playing video games on the road.

But yeah, like a bus is more stable, so it tends to not sway too much.

But

there is the existential terror of being locked in a lightless box.

Yeah.

And you're trying to play a game, and

things are happening, and you don't know what it is.

So it's, yeah.

That's another thing to think about, I guess.

Ranch,

I know you travel, I don't want to, I don't know if you'd say frequently, but I feel like you've logged a lot of miles.

Do you have a you're someone I know I know has taken your steam deck on the road.

You'll sometimes play something on the go.

Yeah, that's like my only handheld

at this point.

And it is like quite beefy.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a big boy.

Yeah, I've been always making room for it for sure.

What a way to describe the Steam Deck.

Beefy.

It's beefy.

It is beefy.

It's not incorrect.

After holding it for a while.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It has to be put down.

I get this ad.

I get this ad on Instagram for this like fucking pillow.

I've seen that.

It's like a pillow that then has like an arm on it that then you can attach like a Steam Deck or a PlayStation portal or, you know, any sort of handheld like PC type thing.

And you put the pillow on your lap and then you're holding on to the thing and it's like you're like, you're not holding it.

It's just like the most WALL-I future

thing I've ever seen.

Which is like I'm thinking of like the evolution of humankind.

Like we're going to evolve to not have pinky fingers, but with that thing, it's just like we're going to have no need for elbows or shoulders.

Yeah,

it's just like that thing will be part of the evolution of man chart at a certain point.

Guy holding that torso with gaming apparatus.

Yeah, yeah.

We'll all have the dent from wearing headphones on our head,

and then we'll have no strength in our forearms.

Ranch, what was that?

Well, plenty of strength.

Ranch, what was your

ranch?

What was the last thing you played on that Steam Deck on the road?

On the road.

I think that was the Blueprints day.

That's when you're playing Blueprints earlier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was trying to remember.

I've been playing this amazing game recently on the Steam Deck, and it's called Ratcoin, and it's basically

rat coin, like raccoon, but like coin.

Okay.

And it's like a roguelike

coin pusher, and they like seem to have basically taken Vellatro

and then made this like coin pusher roguelike game.

game and it's so much fun.

How did you find this game?

Someone in the Discord recommended it.

I'm looking at this on Steam.

It has no user reviews.

I believe that it's just a playtest right now.

Okay, got it.

Oh, so this is the playtest.

I see it.

Yeah.

And you can request access to it.

It's so fun, but I also love coin pushers in general.

Yeah.

This looks rad.

Has a cool aesthetic to it.

Yeah, you're going to have to get that.

That sounds cool.

It's a perfect game.

It is a little embarrassing to play a deck in public.

Like, it is beefy, but you have your headphones on, and also the fan is so loud.

It's like you're landing a jet.

It's like, what is that guy doing?

I feel like when I take the Steam Deck and now, like, the Switch 2, the battery life on these things isn't so hot.

So, like, if I'm on an airplane for a long time, I have to have either an adequate power source of some kind or like some sort of portable battery to then plug it into, and then that becomes just a whole thing.

Should we do a segment?

Let's do a segment.

I didn't know what to title this, everybody.

Basically, what I'm going to do is I'm going to name some video game characters, and you're going to tell me what kind of instrument they play.

Okay.

I don't know what to title it.

Um, uh, well, what were

they playing?

What were they playing?

Is here's the thing:

that's really good.

Yeah, it is pretty good.

That's, man, that's...

Now he's just saying his own shit's good.

It's called, this segment's called, What Were They Playing?

And I'm going to name some video game characters, and you have to tell me what musical instrument they play.

Okay, great.

So some of these are easier than other ones.

Here we go.

Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us.

Weiger.

So, Zach, I think we're going to probably buzz in with our names, I would guess.

Yeah, buzzing with your name.

And it's like, it's like a, it's a, it's a game, but it's not like whatever.

We're not keeping some of that.

Oh, is this, so there's a right answer?

We're not just picking like

stupid shit, do we think?

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah, it's not like

he plays Thereman because he's annoying.

Yeah, I think Cloud would play the didgerie dude,

which is actually maybe a better game.

That might be fun.

Yeah.

They both play the guitar, of course.

They do both play the guitar.

How about Link from the Legend of Zelda series?

I mean, here's the thing.

There's all Weiger.

I think there's a few different answers here.

So

I will throw out one of them, a whistle.

I have a very specific instrument listed here.

The Ocarina.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean,

he has the baton as well.

He's a musical guy.

And we don't really talk about it.

It's pretty cool, actually, not to get too serious, but

yeah, the whole series, just like the things that revolve around music, like even before Ocarina of Time, it's pretty sweet.

I do remember playing on a Nintendo 64 and where I realized you could pitch up or down the ocarina when you're playing to bit to make like half steps so you could play like different, like you had you had to expand the amount of notes you could play.

Was like, oh man, this is so cool.

I had no idea, that's crazy.

That's a trailer.

That's cool.

How about this one?

Mr.

Bones,

Mr.

Bones, from the game Mr.

Bones.

So you're going from The Last of Us to The Legend of Zelda to Mr.

Bones.

That's the progression?

Mr.

Bones.

Okay.

I just saw it and was like,

I was not aware of Mr.

Bones, and I like him now.

I like Mr.

Bones.

Zach, is it

a rib cage xylophone?

Pretty good guess.

I wish.

I wish that was the answer.

Because he is Mr.

Bones after all.

I'll take another guess based off of the name of Trombone.

Ah, no, but that's all two great guesses.

He plays plays just like an electric guitar.

What the fuck is this game?

What is Mr.

Bones?

Mr.

Bones is like, he's just like a guy.

I don't know what kind of game he is.

How did you find Mr.

Bones?

I typed in video game characters that play instruments.

Mr.

Bones for the Sega Saturn.

Heather would know Mr.

Bones.

She might know Mr.

Bones.

Yeah, she probably would.

This was a multi-I'm just reading for the Wikipedia here because Mr.

Bones is a 1996 multi-genre video game conceptualized by Ed Annuziata.

The soundtrack to Mr.

Bones is compiled entirely and performed by Ronnie Montrose with cutscenes and art assets done by Angel Studios.

The player takes on the role of reanimated skeleton working to prevent the magician who revived him from using his undead army to ravage the world.

Oh, got it.

That's an A for a skeleton.

He is on the cover.

I imagine you can't see this where you are, Zach, but it is a guy.

It is a skeleton with a guitar just absolutely fucking shredding.

Yeah, exactly as described.

Yeah, it looks really cool.

You just like it, like the again, just like, it's like question number one is on the godfather.

Question number two is on Jurassic Park.

Question number three is on, you can count on me.

You know, it's just like my dinner with Andre.

Yeah, exactly.

Just completely jumping to something a lot, way more obscure.

I just, I just, you know, I didn't want them to all be so easy.

No, yeah, and I like that one.

I like learning learning about Mr.

Bones.

We all learned about Mr.

Bones today, and I think our life is like better.

He looks great.

I like knowing about Mr.

Bones.

Yeah.

How about this one?

I believe the pronunciation.

I don't know if this is the correct pronunciation.

So this is going to give us some trouble.

Iko from Final Fantasy IX.

Eco?

Iko?

E-I-K-O.

I shouldn't know this.

This is like one of my favorite games ever.

E-I-K-O.

I think it's Aiko, actually.

Boy, I can't remote.

Yeah, I do love Final Fantasy 9.

What the fuck does Eiko play?

Why girl, say a loot?

Nick, you're very close.

And not the instrument, but perhaps the word.

Flute?

Eiko plays a flute.

Specifically, the angel flute.

Okay, Eiko is a, because I had, like, I was trying to place which character it was.

Eiko has the, is the, the little girl with the bow.

I don't want to be that guy, but that was in my head.

Yeah.

That it was flute.

I think exactly's a point.

No, I don't think so.

You should take two points away.

No, no, no, no, no.

Okay, how about Cass, the Traveling Rito from Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, a game that's come up quite a bit today?

Zach.

That's the accordion.

It's an accordion.

That's right.

Cass plays an accordion.

You know, you always hear him playing the music.

I love it.

Cass is really cool.

Yeah.

Cass is a really cool guy.

How about this?

Steph Gingrich from the Life is Strange series.

haven't played the Life is Strange games, so

just a wild guess from me.

I will just say

the keyboards.

Incorrect.

Zach, you want to guess any instrument?

Perhaps maybe one that you're acutely familiar with?

For Christ's sake.

I was going to try to think of something stupid, but I guess drums.

Steph Gingrich from the Life is Strange series plays the drums.

Is she related to Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House?

It'd be so funny if in the game she's like, I gotta go visit my Uncle Newt.

Yeah, it's really good.

My dad's brother.

He always stops an In-N-Out Burger when he lands at LAX, tweets about it.

Honestly, he's just like me for real.

That's the best quality about him.

Yeah.

You guys are not going to get this one, so I'm just going to say it.

Demix from Kingdom Hearts plays the sitar.

Their weapon is.

Zach, you're not a Kingdom Hearts guy at all?

Never played it.

Yeah, me neither.

I never really got for a second.

Might I sell you on Kingdom Hearts 2 for a second?

It's simply my favorite video game of all time, and it's incredible.

It's just good shit.

Where can I play it?

You can play it on pretty much every platform.

You can't play it.

I would not recommend playing it on a Switch because it's a cloud version, but every other platform

you can play it.

It's just good JRPG nonsense, and there's fun Disney stuff in it.

It's just an all-time great game to me.

And finally, Donkey Kong.

Weiger.

I mean,

Bongo's.

He does play the Bongo.

Is the game balanced?

No.

But we had fun learning along the way, didn't we?

That was, what were they playing?

Wait,

can I toss one more out on here that I expect to be on the list?

Yeah.

Oom Jammer Lamy.

Oh, what does Um Jammer Lamy play?

From the Parappa the Rapper sequel.

Yeah, I was going to say, what does Paraba the Rapper play?

He certainly is a beast on the mic.

What is Um

Jamer Lemmy plays guitar?

Yeah, it was a guitar, a guitar playing lamb.

She shreds.

A game that did not have anywhere near the cultural impact of the first

game, Paraba the Rapper, but a very good game and honestly, maybe a better

music game overall.

Wow.

I've not messed with that one.

I should give it a try.

It's rad.

Hey, that's this week's Get Play.

It our producers are Shell Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore, underscore, sard.

Oh, sorry.

Zach wins.

Canonically, we'll just say Zach wins.

Yeah, but the exchange rate, it's probably a tie.

Our music by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

Get Played Merch, KinshipGoods.com, and GetAnimate at our sister show on Patreon.

Matt, what are we watching this week?

This week, we're talking Shin Godzilla.

And man, if you haven't seen that shit, it's fucking good as hell.

And we had a great time talking about it.

Great movie.

A lot of fun.

We took a break from anime to talk about a live-action film directed by Hidi Akiano of Evangelion.

And

it is just so singular and such a joy.

And also a joy, Zach Makula, having you on the podcast.

What a thrill.

Thank you so much for giving us so much of your time.

Pup is the band.

People know Pup.

They should check you all out.

Anything in particular you would like to plug?

Just our records, which I think you already did, so who cares?

And

we have a tour coming up through the United States.

We'll be everywhere.

So come to the show.

Yeah, if they're rolling through your city,

first of all, go to their website.

Check out their great website.

Check out those tour dates.

They're touring with, it's a co-headlining tour with Jeff Rosenstock.

And then Echo Astral is also on the tour.

Pup is one of my favorite bands to see live, and you will not be disappointed if you go see them

in your town.

So go get some tickets and have the fucking night of your life.

That's very nice.

Thank you.

And Zach, like that Tetris DX cart sticking out of the back of your Game Boy Advance.

You, my friend, got played.

Thank you so much.

Sorry, man.

Thank you.

That was a hit gun podcast.