PlayStation's 30th Anniversary

This is a head gun podcast.

All right, Sony, we are at a pivotal part of our history.

We are about to launch our first ever video game system.

And I brought you all into this meeting because, well, it needs a name.

And so

I want you to think about the names out there of existing systems, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Mega Drive or the Genesis.

Like,

I'm looking for names that have some heft, some import.

Let's start throwing around the room.

Just to get this one out there, I'm thinking about Nintendo Entertainment System,

Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Yeah.

Sony Entertainment System.

You know, we are the newly created Sony Computer Entertainment America, as opposed to the SCG, the SCJ, rather, the Japanese division.

So I think that that actually fits pretty well.

The Sony entertainment system.

I'm sorry, I'm going to say no.

That's there.

I'm just going to say no.

I knew it wasn't going to be the same.

I'm not putting it on the board.

Not even making the board.

I want more names.

I want more names.

Throw me some names.

All right, I got one.

You know, this thing's going to have some games.

Right?

Why be coy about it?

Yep.

The Sony

game thing.

That's pretty good.

We have the walk man.

Yeah, we got the game thing.

Now we have the game thing.

because it's more of a thing than a than a walk thing i do i do want to point out i do want to point out that the game boy already exists so you can't really call it a game thing so i that that's another no from from me well how about we just uh take the walk man branding and we do one better than the game boy we got the game man

are you a game boy you a game man yeah step up to the plate or show your fucking hog

Yeah, is that fucker cut or what?

Okay, well, I will say this is the first one I'm I'm putting on the board, but I'm worried that we've got an internal division separation here at Sony, so I don't know if Walkman is going to allow us to potentially risk the tarnishing of their brand.

I got it, got it.

Yeah.

Because the Walkman

is portable.

The idea is that you're going to be walking.

That makes sense.

But last time I checked, you play video games sitting down.

Okay, yeah.

The Sony sit man.

I like it.

Again,

I like where we're going, but these are separate enterprise divisions, and I don't know if

Sony Audio is going to let us.

Again, because we don't know if the system's going to be huge, so they may not want us to risk the brand of Walkman, Disc Man, et cetera.

I mean, we also could go in an edgier, more adult direction.

Okay, okay.

I like what I'm hearing.

Give me some more.

The Sony

book.

Now that's going to get some headlines.

That's pretty good.

Okay.

I have to agree that it's pretty good.

It is good, but

I don't think we're going to get shelf space at Toys R Us, KB Toys,

Babbages.

These are major retailers, Sears that we need to get the system into.

I can't imagine kids being like, Mom, mom, I really want the fuck.

Well,

my only thought about it, because I think it's good.

Yeah.

Doesn't really say what it is.

It's gonna look a little confusing.

Yeah, that's true.

It doesn't really sound like a video game console.

Okay.

So I think it should be the Sony game fuck.

Pretty good.

Are you man enough to fuck this game?

What that dick do?

I what?

What that dick do?

Put your uncut dick in this game console.

Okay, so our options right now are the Sony fuck.

Sony f

game fuck.

Yeah, I notice you haven't written any of these down on the board, by the way.

I I

like I have a different angle.

Okay.

And I think we could just like also say play against it.

We're not going to be edgy at all.

Wait, what word was that?

We'll play against it.

Oh, okay.

Like play against play against the expectations.

Play.

Okay.

Yeah, and play.

And, you know, like, like we, you know,

the current station we're at, we're trying to figure out with a name of this thing, you know.

Yeah, and so

I just think in a play

and station,

I think we can call this

the Sony Pray Station.

And it's a Christian demographic.

I've been wanting this so bad because like this is like, I'll say, an ungodly work environment.

And I like can't, there's like, it's just not fitting.

I was just to, I'm like, like, I'm, I'm, I'm an evangelical Christian.

I have been like trying to cover that up by going hard in the opposite direction.

You pitched the game for me.

I know I'm covering up for my deeply held religious beliefs.

I'm

shamed by saying that.

I'm meeting with my pastor after work every day.

I'm giving myself 40 lashes after this.

Okay.

Well, I, I, I, I,

I'll run these up to corporate.

Uh, giving myself some lashes with my fucking hog.

But

I do think that maybe some bitch over my shoulder.

The

PlayStation 1.

The PlayStation 1.

I'm sorry for saying that.

Gentlemen,

what is happening?

We endure long load times in square triangle cross-circle as we discuss the 30th anniversary of the PlayStation 1 this week on Get Played.

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

It's time to get

Played.

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

That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr.

Games, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we're celebrating somebody's birthday.

Oh, it's somebody's birthday.

Whose birthday?

Who's the birthday boy?

Look at this big bouncing baby boy.

Look at this 30-year-old man.

Oh, look at this 30-year-old, this cute little 30-year-old.

Look what daddy did.

Oh, this 30-year-old's got a full dipee.

Matt, what happened?

You know, sometimes you kind of just do one for you.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah, and probably, you know,

20 or 30 times an episode.

Yeah, sometimes we all just got to say one for ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, well, I mean, I like hinting at it, but I love saving the topic

a little bit later in the pod.

Yeah, eagle-eyed listeners will know if they read the...

I wonder how many people read the thing.

Nobody.

Nobody reads the thing, right?

Nobody listens.

Nobody reads.

I was going to call you out for saying eagle-eyed listeners, but I realized you were actually...

What you're saying was that the listeners who actually read the podcast description, which I think a lot of people don't even realize exists.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, maybe don't be so ready to.

take me down.

Sometimes I'd say I'm saying something good.

Shout out to the podcast producers of the world, tirelessly cranking out podcast descriptions, which I have to be in there for some reason.

Man, you had me tirelessly cranking.

Speaking of podcast producers of the world, our normal producer, Rochelle Chen Ranch, is out this week, but in her stead, we have Doughboys producer Emma Erdbrink.

Hi, E.E.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for coming back.

Always great to have you in studio on Get Played.

Emma, I would describe you as a focused gamer.

I feel like you find a few games and you play the shit out of them.

I have my little Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild and Stardew Valley have been my obsessions over the past few years.

Stardew Valley is the one you've most recently gotten into.

Yeah, I was just telling Matt this that I started playing it like maybe two months ago and I've put like 200 hours into it or actually o'clock.

I think I play it sometimes when I'm exporting things and then like the export finishes and I just put my switch down on my desk and it stays open.

So I think I'm clocking hours.

I'm not actually playing by doing that to myself.

Oh, well, we'll talk about this off box.

I mean, I would never on the clock.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no gorgeous.

No, no.

Fucking body.

I am stupid.

That's a funny guy.

What do you want from me?

I'm a dip shit.

I don't know anything.

Nosy dinking.

What's up?

Who are you?

Now they're just like that dumb?

They don't like know somebody that they like work with?

Whoa!

What's this?

Oh, yeah, I'm like, lungs.

They know what lungs are, though.

Well, I get limited little chunks of knowledge.

You know, we all have our pockets that we're experts in.

Who are you?

At Stardew Valley, obviously, a big part of it is the, you know, the, the, the farming element, the crafting element, the, the, the, the, the light combat, but, and dungeon exploration, but there's also the social element.

Yeah.

What is your, what is your current status in the game in terms of like romance, in terms of family?

I just married Sam Wow congratulations

And I have a room with a crib in my house, but I don't know what how that happens So I haven't gotten that far yet, but yeah, it's it's cute I like the social aspect of it in the game because you can't spend too much time on it like you can talk to each person like twice a day and give them a gift and that's it and then it just like they don't respond to you so like there's not that much pressure for that part of it you can be like oh i said hi okay goodbye and i leave yeah it's cute the thing that always like fucks me up in that game is if i forget someone's birthday Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

I like didn't realize I was supposed to be keeping track of that stuff at first.

And so I was just ignoring everyone's birthday.

And then I was like, oh, there's like a calendar and I can keep track of these things.

How are you with that generally?

Like in real life?

I would say I'm like, I'm pretty bad at it.

It's about tracking people's birthdays.

I enter it into my phone and then that is it forever.

Okay.

Like it's just, I started doing that.

I said a reminder every year.

Yeah.

Because it'll, you'll find out once

and then you become the good friend when every year you're like, hey man happy birthday that's right i

people hate it it's a uh

like like it used to be a thing you'd have to remember right and now it's become a thing that you just like uh like you just note somewhere and yeah like i i feel like in the facebook era it would just come up and you're just like you don't have to put exert any effort i feel like i've talked about this in the past uh but my like the Apple calendar somehow linked to my Facebook

and people yeah that I haven't thought about in like 10, 15 years.

I'm just constantly being reminded it's somebody's birthday today.

I'm like, I haven't talked to this person in, I've never wished this person a happy birthday.

But I have at least four birthday pop-ups every day

for whoever.

And it's the same thing.

I don't know what to do.

Like, I've tried turning off birthdays, but then it turns off all my birthdays.

Yeah.

And that's not what I want.

No, I want to.

So I did think about going through Facebook and just deleting everybody.

Deleted my I don't have a I don't have an account.

Oh, so that doesn't work.

It's just it's just in there.

Oh man.

Oh wait, no, no, I think I do have a meta account because I think I had to make one for my meta fucking MetaQuest.

I think at some point I was able to separate them.

Like, you were able to, like, they were able to do that where it was, like, you don't have to have one to, you don't have to have a Facebook account to have the thing, but I guess I ultimately have an account because I have Instagram and stuff still.

Yeah.

But you can't escape it.

Man.

Man, everything's good.

But

everything is real good.

I agree.

I'm frustrated that Meta is the one that's beating everybody to AR glasses.

Me Me too.

I don't know if you saw the announcement this week, but the next version, and I'm a happy, happy owner of the fucking Meta Ray bands.

I love having the off-ear headphones.

I love having the most appealing part of it.

It's great.

And I like having the ability to just touch my lenses and take a photo without having to dig out my phone.

All that stuff is great for just like that technology in the wrong hands can be a big problem.

Hold on a second.

What?

I'm not a pervert.

I'm not a predator.

Nick's camera roll is just infinity photos of his hand.

I would want it so that I could see behind me.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah, I get that.

But the new glasses this week have

invisible screens in them.

We're already there.

They have AR screens in them.

And you wear a wristband that

handles all your gestures.

So they don't have the tech that is like the Apple Vision pinching tech, but they do have it if you wear the wristband.

So you can have all your text messages, fucking like maps, all of it in your eyes already.

Wow.

I've seen

already.

Let's go.

Got anything about the wristband and gestures, smart guy?

Well, I didn't say one, so you know I don't.

Oh, man, this guy keeps texting me over and over and over again

for

26 seconds.

It's a marathon.

That's just, that is a little too much stuff.

Yeah, too much stuff.

The glasses I can sort of get behind.

I also don't like that the new ones are much thicker frames.

Yeah.

I don't know that I need.

The other thing is, I don't like Meta's suite of software.

I don't want Meta's text messages.

I don't want Messenger in my fucking eyeballs.

No.

I want Apple shit in my eyeballs.

Yeah.

I wonder if they'll ditch the

like

visor

Apple technology.

Sure.

And then the next version of it would be like a nice pair of glasses.

God, when fucking Apple glasses come out, I'm done.

I'm cooked.

I'm fucked.

I'm ruined.

Yeah.

The one thing that's inevitable in whatever your AR, you know, the apparatus of choice is in your field of vision, ads.

That's coming.

It's coming soon.

Inescapable.

You'll be looking at ads at all times.

I can't wait.

I hate that so much.

I hope it's moving t-shirts on everybody.

Yeah.

Marlboro.

The only thing about them that I enjoy is like when I turn on my TV, I don't enjoy them.

Full stop.

I actually don't enjoy it at all.

But when I turn my TV on, of course, it's the stock interface of the television.

So it's, you know, whatever the fuck.

Mine's Google.

And

it'll show me these movies that just

exist, but also don't.

Like, I was like, that's not fucking real.

There was one that I saw that was called President Evil, and it's exactly what you think it is.

Yeah, sure.

And

Joe Biden slash movie.

What a fucking sale that was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

President Evil is the fastest I've ever heard a a concept and the cash register sound in my own brain.

There was one that's like a glam metal shark.

Let's go.

Yeah, and I was just like, these are not true.

These are just not true, but they exist, and I could watch it right now if I want.

Absolutely.

And then it also, we live in this hell now, too, where

it tells you

like the tomato score.

Yeah.

When you before you watch something.

So you're already pre-judging something before you watch it.

Great.

And they're all like, it's just showing me rotten movies.

And I'm just like, this is, what good could this be doing?

This is horrible.

There was also an announcement, speaking of ads, that there's this really fancy $1,800 Samsung refrigerator with a screen built in.

And as of today, they did announce that you'll start seeing ads on your refrigerator.

I love it.

I fucking love it.

I fucking love it too, Nick.

There's so funny.

Accelerationism.

Let's just get on board.

Yeah.

I got like, that's, I've noticed that about Apple Maps now.

There's now ads in that.

I was just like, Jesus Christ.

Yeah, it's inescapable.

Great, let's go.

Why not?

Just

put a tube over each of my eyes.

And down, just down my throat.

And another tube in my throat.

Make the eyes showing me ads all the time.

Put me in that fucking goo from the matrix and just call it a day.

Don't forget about the tube up my ass.

So you want the optional tube?

Get up there.

You don't want your, so you don't want the other other one.

You just put me in a coup with one tube up my ass.

And I'll deal with it.

This guy is raw-dogging the Matrix without a feed.

He only has this sensation of shitting.

I'm producing so much electricity.

I'm glad we all seem to be on the same wavelength today.

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You were talking about stuff that just comes up by default when you put on your TV, which again is the sort of thing of like, yeah, I understand the era of linear television.

You were getting free programming in exchange for watching commercials.

And then at a certain point, it became you're paying for cable television, but that still has ads.

So now you're paying for some.

And now it's a thing like you buy a television and you're just seeing ads just for owning a television.

Like it's just, it's just part of the device.

But anyway,

I was hanging out with this was a while back.

I was hanging out with past guest friends of the show, Libby Watson and Brendan James, and they showed me this Roku original show called UFO Cowboys.

We watched several episodes of UFO Cowboys, which is great because it is like a group of, it's a reality series with a group of,

you know, just like, like, like cowboys that all have their own

discipline.

One guy's a tracker, you know, one guy's like a, you know, like a scout, one guy is the gadgets guy, which is clearly, I think they're just like, look,

we're gonna give you a drone, you'll be the gadgets guy or whatever.

Yeah.

But it's just them going around and like, and like they'll be flashing light and this guy would be like, I just saw the gates of hell.

It's the fakest, like there's lowest stakes thing that they just edit like it's, you know, it's somebody's grandparents.

It's like my favorite show.

Yeah, 100%.

Very watchable.

Hey, you got you seen that show on Raku?

I'm going to move to that city.

Oh, no.

Thinks it's real?

They had a bit where a guy walked into like a, like he was like walking into a field where there'd been a UFO landing.

And then clearly they just did a stunt where they put a cable on him and pulled him from behind.

He fell down, like, something got him.

Yeah, and then they just like they never gave closure on what it was.

And it's just like, so you're just faking stuff now.

There's no pretense that this is like, oh, there's some actual mystery.

It's just like, you're just making stuff up and acting like it's real.

Whatever.

Just thinking about my grandfather real quick.

I got a funny voicemail from him the other day.

Oh, yeah.

He called me.

He always calls me.

He goes, Matthew, Matthew,

this is your grandpa.

John Wick, chapter four.

End of message.

All you need.

Pretty good.

I got it.

I was like, oh, yeah, he must have just watched it and thought it was good.

Brevity is the soul of wick.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Great man.

Should we talk about some video games?

Okay, sure.

The question for the room is: what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Oh.

That's it?

There's an evil merchant.

You're doing okay?

Yeah, I'm not.

I'm trying to keep a low profile.

Oh, what happened?

I don't want to go into it.

Okay.

Well, you don't have to.

You don't have to share anything.

You're not going to get it.

Yeah, if I think

if I'm picking up what you're putting down.

I didn't say nuts and things.

Stay clear.

And

no more words.

That's it.

Okay.

That's it.

Sure.

What are you playing?

Turn off your phones.

Turn off your phones.

Maybe start learning how to read a map.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, just

check.

I think next week I gotta ask you guys to go analog before I walk in the room.

Oh, boy, okay.

I'll talk about my analog pocket.

No, no, no, no.

That's not what I mean.

I mean, like, that's weird when you think about it.

It's not analog, is it?

It is not analog at all.

I'm not sure how you do an analog podcast.

I guess if you recorded real to real,

you know, I mean, like, you could maybe, that'd be, that'd be the closest you could get.

Uh, I think if you give uh

uh podcast producers uh one week to figure it out, they'll figure it out right away.

Yeah, yeah, we got it.

I guess it'll take somewhere.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, in and out real quick.

What are you playing?

That's like Nick Other Trail.

Yeah.

Nothing real quick about my in-and-out meal.

Taking my time.

Join the feast.

Have we talked to you about this?

I think fries are done there, and I'm thinking I'm a two burgers guy.

I mean, that's a valid, you know, approach.

Have you tried the cheese fries?

Yeah, the cheese fries, I do like the cheese fries.

I do like the animals fries.

I don't think I've done that.

I like the cheese fries.

Yeah, cheese fries are good.

They just put a slice of American cheese on that sum bitch, and it's not bad at all.

It melts pretty good.

But you can also get the animal fries, which are they put that cheese on there,

they put a little bit of the spread, and then they put some griddled onions.

That's a lot of fun.

The spot that I'm coming from, too, I don't even dislike the fries.

I just like the burger a lot.

I like the fries.

I understand why the fries are polarizing.

Emma's right.

You can definitely plus them up with some add-ons.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, you can do whatever you want.

You're your calories.

Choose how to budget them.

Bread only.

Interesting.

That's the thing that, like, I'm like, is the bread, is the extra bread

worse than fries?

That's about on par.

I wonder if they, because, you know, they kind of let you do whatever you wanted in and out.

I wonder if they would let me do double bread.

They might.

Two buns top, two buns bottom.

They might just be bad.

Regular food in the middle.

I bet they'd give you, I bet they, if they'd at minimum, give you an extra bun for like a nominal charge.

But I'm not sure if they'd construct it with two buns.

They might.

Could you do, could you ask them

bun, burger, bun, burger, bun?

Do they do it?

They could.

They might.

I bet you they might.

I don't know.

You might ask for an odd number of buns.

I feel like you might have to go in store to ask for that.

For sure.

Because if you've tried to explain it.

Oh, by the way, I went to Burger King.

Emma saw this video.

I went to fucking Burger King yesterday, got an Impossible Whopper meal, and

they have a fucking AI

at the drive-thru window.

You're not talking to a real person now, you're talking to an AI.

The king has fallen.

Yeah.

I got a food delivery last night, and it came in one of those little robots for the first time.

I had to go outside and meet a little robot on the sidewalk.

A clanker?

Yeah, a clanker.

Bobby my dinner.

And a Waymo drove by.

It was raining when I got it.

It was real dystopian.

All this rules.

Yeah, I wish a fucking nightmare.

That's what the AI said to Weiger at the end of his order.

I said, You rule.

I wish it was all just a little bit cooler.

If it was going to be shitty, at least if it was cool, it wouldn't be so.

Yeah, I wish it had like a

voice that was like the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion.

Yeah.

Like the way the drones sound in that, I wish that was how Burger King AI started.

Like,

and it was like, give me your order.

That's what we're dealing with is ugly cyberpunk.

It's like we're like, we're kind of getting that shit.

And we're certainly getting the dystopian elements of it.

We're certainly getting the, you know, the income striation.

But like,

the fucking

it's like, it's like shitty little robots and things, but everything like looks like shit and sucks.

No, what are you going to do?

I don't mind Waymobos, actually.

I enjoy writing them.

I have not been in one, but my wife FaceTimed me from one

not long ago, and it was a very very funny experience she goes there's nobody driving

my uh my wife will not allow me to get in a waymo wow she does not trust them she does not trust the tech companies or the the conglomerates yeah she's like i absolutely do not think that uh that we should uh allow these people to um commodify safety yeah uh so you are not getting in one and i went This sucks.

You ran to your room.

This fucking blows.

I want to drive in a robot car.

I was taken only when for only waymos for for rideshare for our our uh you know for our listeners uh jemmy the dog emma's dog a staple of the doughboys podcast has just made her cute little way onto the couch next to heather and is snuggling up adorable anyway

i was i was exclusively using waymos for ride share and then i i had a there was a gap in where the you know the parts of the city they covered where i had to take an uber i was like all right i'll take an uber it's fine and i get in there great the guy immediately starts starts talking about Trump.

I was like, all right.

And then, just based on that, I know it wasn't in the way you'd want it to.

The question is, what are you playing, Matt?

What are you playing?

Look, I'm playing Silk Song still, okay?

Hollow Knight Silk Song.

And I don't think a single game this year has made me feel this way.

Wow.

Where I am just like, it's just pure,

pure

Game.

It's Heather,

you would fucking love this video game.

It is so fucking good, and it's hard, and it feels like.

I wasn't there for this, but I think this is the closest thing I can compare it to, and you were there for this, so I think you'll understand.

It feels like the jump from Demon Souls to Dark Souls.

Really?

From

Hollow Knight to Silksong.

Yeah, like it's so much.

There's so much.

Well, the difficulty is

it's there.

It's true, but like,

it's just, it iterated.

It's seven years of iteration.

So, like, it's like a just a,

you know, they didn't just like shit this thing out.

This thing is, like, it's one of the most polished feeling video games I've ever played.

And this, the real sense of exploration and stuff is, like, is, it's so fun and so great.

But, like,

there's an act structure.

There's a quest system now that wasn't pres present in the previous game.

There's,

like, I mean, the bosses are so engaging and so fun, but, like, so, so, so

souls-like, uh, where, like, you really, really have to, like,

memorize these patterns, like, and go in prepared.

You get tools now, so, like, tools are additional weapons that you can, like, toss or, like, throw down that cause, like, damage and stuff.

I, uh, I'm,

uh,

also the environments feel a little bit more like that too, or like in the first one, it's still bugs and stuff, but this one,

it feels like the world feels a little bit bigger

in a way.

And there's like the bosses are just so cool.

I spent the good part of the weekend fighting the boss that I mentioned last week, the widow, and was just getting my ass kicked, but not having a bad time.

Yeah,

just like being like, this is like the, this is just the best.

This is so great and so cool.

And getting closer and closer.

And

when you, when you fail a boss run like that early in the run, you sort of know that you just like fucked up.

But when you can spend a few minutes doing it and then you die, that's when you feel like, I'm going to do this.

Yeah, for sure.

And so when I did it, I like screamed.

I was so excited.

I was so happy.

And now I'm at this boss.

The run backs are like the most punishing aspect of it, actually, because some of them.

are not just like far, they're also treacherous along the way.

So like sometimes if you have a great,

successful run back, is then you not getting hit at all or not taking any damage

and then being able to start this boss fight.

But, like, there's some times where I just fucked up so much along the way that I have one health left and I'm about to start this boss fight and just like know it's not going to happen, but just try anyway.

Um, and it's um it rocks.

It is just it is so great.

The music is so good.

There's more music in this in general now, Silk Song.

You like get this thing that like can

like play songs to unlock things

um and what kind of instrument is it you just you sort of gesturing as like kind of like a lute or something like that stuff like that where it's like

because she's um she hornets like a spider i think or something so there's a there's like silky element yeah so she's like in command of these like webs and and things like that so she has like

This it's like it's I mean they call it like a needle, but it's like it's like a like a harped needle

that she's like playing to then open these different things and stuff and I'm at a boss fight right now that everybody in the Discord was like, Jesus fucking Christ, this boss.

And I'm like, I think I might go

wander around a little bit

because I'm very close to getting an additional

health mask.

Sure.

Which is going to be needed at this point because it's just

some of their attacks are like unavoidable, too.

It feels like sometimes.

And it's just, it's just a, it's,

it's just an absolutely incredible, incredible game.

I know that it's on Game Pass, so if, if you had some time to check it out, Nick, I think you should too.

It's just, it's, uh, it's nuts.

It's nuts how good it is.

It's, and, like, I know that people waited.

It feels like Stolen Valor to have, like, finished the game the day before the new one comes out and then get it.

To finish the original Holocaust, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, like, I know people have been waiting seven years for this one and for good reason, because it's just, it's astounding.

I'm loving it.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

I'd love to hear this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I mean, mean my whole thing is like

I've talked about trying you know bouncing off Hollow Knight a couple of times.

I should give it another go I don't know if I would jump straight into Silk Stong without playing Hollow Knight all the way through because I do want to have that experience too.

So we'll see.

But I'm glad that it's like so

it's interesting because the initial response I feel like from a lot of people was just complaining about the difficulty spike.

And now I feel like it's settled a little bit more to just admiring the craft throughout.

Yeah, because like the difficulty is, it is true, like, and like I could see why they had to patch some of those early bosses that just as a reminder, I did beat before the patch.

Okay.

But the, I think you do get set up a little bit more later on with like tools.

Like there's like tacks you can lay down that like if you lay them down in the correct spot, the boss is just standing in them and just taking continual damage while they're like standing in it.

And like that's cool.

That's that's a great

idea, just a cool idea.

And there's like other little boons you can have and stuff.

It's incredible.

I'm loving it.

This is an absolutely true story.

One time I was in Japan and I had my cell phone with me, but

I was

following somebody around in the city and having a good time.

And then they locked me on a roof of a skyscraper because they were a crazy person.

That's a true story.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

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So here's the thing.

Look, I got sent some of this stuff, all right?

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I'm not out here blazing it.

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Heather, what are you playing?

Well, Well, I'm sort of reorganizing my office and I kind of took everything offline for a little bit.

And

so I haven't been able to really play a ton of games.

I've been,

I didn't, so I thought when I hit Master Ball in Pokemon Card Game Pocket that I would stop playing.

But there is a siren song of getting into the top 5,000

that is just constantly dinging its little bell at me.

And so I'm still playing, even though I have hit the highest rank that I've ever hit before.

Whoa.

So I'm inching my way up the leaderboard.

I would love to be ranked before the end of the season.

I don't know if it's going to happen.

I've had good days.

I have, I've had bad days.

The cutoff for hitting the leaderboard is 2,000 points.

I'm currently at 1750.

So it's possible.

Yeah.

It's

possible that I could become a ranked Pokemon player, like an internationally ranked player.

So I've been doing that.

And then I've also been playing more of the very, very, very poorly optimized Persona Royale on my Switch 2.

It's ugly, man.

That's a bug.

It's a real ugly game on Switch 2 because it's like not the...

the resolution.

There's something about the way that it has been upscaled for the Switch 2 screen that makes it look soupy soupy as fuck but the rest of the graphics like the um the overlays all the ui elements crystal clear like look like stickers that you could peel off the screen and the game proper looks like i'm looking through vaseline rubbed on my glasses it's it is ugly but i'm i don't know it's been on my mind a lot lately tick tock's been feeding me footage of that neighborhood in uh in japan so i i keep being like i should go back and for the first time i had curry and coffee because I had it.

I had an early lunch.

And I was like, oh, for the first time ever, I can have curry and coffee.

I got to try it.

And you know what?

It was so fucking hot.

It was perfect.

It was straight heat.

A real, I mean, like, here's the thing.

When I was playing the shit out of that game,

I got also got into curry and coffee.

But for me, it was like a bang bang.

Like I'd have like the curry and then I'd go and get a coffee afterwards.

And I kind of, I mean, I loved it no i had i had it plate on the table coffee cup on the table having curry sipping a coffee so fucking good

i can say you know i get my my curry a little a little spicy you know i'm sort of a heat seeker and and i

would

i want like a cooler beverage you know what i mean like like so but i guess you could have a glass of water with your yeah you can have a glass of water there's something about the way the bitterness of the coffee brings up the sweetness of the curry sure like it it it It changes the sort of flavor profile of the curry, which I wasn't expecting.

I was kind of like, I don't know if this is going to work.

But I've seen it work so much in media and specifically in Persona 5 that I was like, I'll give it a shot.

And yeah, really, it really fucking works.

I just got to say,

Jimmy's asleep and it's really cute.

Yeah, Jimmy tends to do that.

I think me talking is a cue for

some Z's.

Well, she hears it here and then at home in my office, she hears more Doughboys all day.

So she's just snoozing to it all the time.

The Tiger Wagger lullaby.

What are you planning?

Heather, thank you so much for asking.

You're welcome.

Deep Rock Galactic Survivor hit 1.0 this week as of

this record.

Its final retail release has happened after being in early access for some time.

I played the shit out of this game in early access and really enjoyed it.

It is, as you can maybe infer from the name, a vampire survivors-like auto shooter.

I think the, don't quote me on this, I think the final release might also be on Game Pass.

I could be wrong about that.

I think I heard that this week as well, yeah.

But I'll say this, I think it's a really fun game.

I do love the art direction.

I think the effects are great.

It's a super, like,

the, the ultra lo-fi aesthetic of you vampire survivors has its charm, but it's nice to see a game that like looks this refined and modern, but also with like a really strong aesthetic,

you know,

the established Deep Rock Galactic aesthetic, which is kind of like this,

I don't know

what the correct term is exactly.

It wouldn't be steampunk because it's future, but it's kind of like a Warhammer sort of vibe to it a little bit.

Anyway,

great color palette.

I really like how the game looks.

I really like some of the gameplay elements that have been added on top of the existing Vampire Survivors convention.

there is one thing that i will say about this as it's been iterated upon in early access and and finally hit the 1.0 build the metagame does feel like a bit of a slog to unlock things um i i have a negative steam store review of the 1.0 release that this is by user bears uh and i i will just

I'm just going to read this because I think this is this is kind of well said, although it's a little bit more cynical than my take.

Yeah, let's talk to the meme reviews.

The real reality is this game is a massive grind.

It used to be good and have good meta progression.

Now it's complete a 20-minute dive for plus 2% damage to one gun.

They've made the difficulty spike,

and it's not only unbearable to run through a 20-minute dive just for the small rewards, but also you can just not roll very well and get fewer or weaker rewards each time because you find the loss because you cannot kill the last boss.

Yeah, I mean, I kind of get that sort of assessment.

And there is the element of.

You know what?

This is a completely different type of game, but it's kind of like

we remember the initial release of Cyberpunk 2077, and aside from the bugs, a big issue with that game was that the way the skill tree was balanced is like you would get, again, like you, like, you'd get a

new thing unlocked, a new skill point unlocked, and what you could give it to would be something that'd be, that would give you like an extra 1.5% damage to, you know, a katana.

And it's just like, this doesn't feel like any sort of upgrade.

And that's kind of a little bit of an issue is that it doesn't necessarily feel like you're making tangible progress, unlocking things

in an ideal way.

That's say, I wouldn't go so far as to say this game is not worth playing.

I really like it.

I think it's super fun.

I also think that's obviously the kind of thing that could be tweaked.

And if you like these kind of games, this one, again, maybe on Game Pass, don't quote me on that.

I don't want to see an image of my face with a quote of me saying Deep Rock Galactic Survivors on Game Pass, even if it's true.

I just don't quote me on it because I'm not saying it's dogma.

I'm not confident in that.

I could look it up.

I'm choosing not to.

But I'm I'm just saying, like, it might be on Game Pass.

So if you have Game Pass, take a moment and check before you spend the money on Steam, which, where right now it's on sale, it's like nine bucks.

I think it's absolutely worth nine bucks,

especially if you like Vampire Survivor.

But do quote the price.

Quote Nick on the price.

It might be a little bit more than nine bucks.

So don't quote me on that either.

Oh, my God.

Now we're just saying stuff.

I think it's $12.99 and like 20 or 30% off.

So it's like not, you know, it's, it's, I don't know exactly what the, what the sense figure is.

Having played some of it in early access myself, I think it's worth it at any price.

That's a good, that's a good fun game.

Yeah, it's really fun.

Yeah, yeah, I gameplay.

I did just look it up for you, Nick, and your picture is next to it.

It's it's uh

uh

Deep Rock Galactic Survivor launched on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass September 17, 2025.

Wow, Nick Weiger.

Yeah,

they didn't have to add stink lines.

Look, there's a lot of quotes with my picture that I disavow.

Just taken out of context.

This one says, I eat diarrhea.

That'd be like, you know what?

If I'm being honest, if it were me, that'd be the first one I'd disavow.

Politician having to.

I mean, look, honestly, that'll probably be like the 2028 campaign.

I did not eat diarrhea.

That ad a is a fake.

Yeah.

And then the winner is like, I eat diarrhea and I love it.

A bunch of chuds eating diarrhea.

Feel owned.

All right.

Should we talk about the PlayStation 1?

I think let's talk about the PlayStation 1, but also before we start, I'd like to...

Maybe if we could all just

take this moment to listen to one of the most beautiful sounds ever made.

Emma, if you'd please.

So the beginning of that sound,

it's good on its own.

Yeah.

If it stopped there, you'd be like, that was pretty good.

Yeah.

Then the second part of it kicks in where it's kind of like chimes.

And you're like, well, now

now we're just showing off.

This is good stuff.

I love it.

One of the great sounds.

The PlayStation 1 startup sound was created by Takafumi Fujisawa, the sound designer for the PlayStation Project, who sampled real-world instruments, MIDI sequencing, and the console's own sound hardware to create that sound in less than a month.

It was designed to evoke excitement and security, progressing from an orchestral-like tone to twinkling bells and a traditional Japanese flute, all while fitting within the console's limited memory.

It rocks.

It's really great.

Is it the...

I know we did this before.

Is it the best of the PlayStation startup sounds?

I know the PlayStation 3, like the original orchestra one is great.

The original orchestra tuning on the PlayStation 3 is the biggest moment of hubris in the history of games.

It is so hard for me not.

Like, I do think the PlayStation 1 is the best one ever.

Yeah.

And that's, and I'm a second kid.

Yeah.

So that's a hard admission for me to say.

I'm a pretty big fan of the solo beep of the new generation.

Oh, good.

Beep.

Fuck.

Beep.

Get me started.

Just beep.

Yeah.

Used to make things in this country.

And now it's just beep this and beep that.

Oh, I love this.

There's an interview I have with

Takafumi Fujisawa.

And

one of the

concepts was to maintain the core image of this sound no matter what type of TV speaker it's played on, as there can be countless types of TV around the world.

The only limitation was the size of the ROM.

But I love that idea.

Like being like, okay, this has to sound good if it's on a shitty speaker, on a great speaker.

It's got to have a good, a good, rich, full sound, and also enough high-end, minimal sounds that it'll sound good coming through those like, those Costco VHS players.

Yeah.

Always interesting to hear somebody who made something good talk about wanting to make it good for a good reason.

Yeah.

It's like,

wish I thought like that.

I love the PlayStation 1 startup sound.

Yeah.

It's a great startup sound.

But yeah, the reason we're talking about this is that this month marks the 30th anniversary of the PlayStation release here in the United States.

Of course, released December 3rd, 1994 in Japan, but then didn't make its way stateside until September 9th, 1995, and then the 29th in Europe, and then all around the world thereafter.

I don't remember the launch being a huge thing.

Like,

and again, I was not paying attention to games in the same way, but I was definitely playing games and definitely tracking new consoles.

It did not feel like, like, the existence of the Sony PlayStation was seismic, obviously, Sony's entry into the market, but I don't remember the launch itself being like this earth-shattering thing.

Well, there was, I mean, I remember going to KB toy stores with my parents and and seeing the announcement, like a poster that said Sony PlayStation.

Yeah.

And I had this vague idea of like there being other companies that made game systems, but I was like, this is gonna not work.

It's Nintendo or Sega.

Like, that's who makes games.

And there was, at least for the people who, the limited number of people I knew who played video games at that age,

there was like a skepticism from for for from my small group of gamer friends.

It was it was kind of like I don't know and like looking at pictures of the controller and being like that looks cool, but does it work?

You know, yeah, the the you know, like the the initial PlayStation 1 controller did not have the analog sticks.

It had a very weird looking and honestly, I think kind of cumbersome to use D-pad

that is that persisted in various forms and been improved upon.

Uh, Obviously, the buttons were their own thing.

The two,

was it the first to have the four shoulder buttons?

I think it was.

I could be wrong.

I think that's,

I kind of remembered that the very first one only had L1 and R1.

Oh, that might have been an addition with the dual shock, is what came with the L2 and R2.

Yeah, and yeah, the second ones were then on every version afterward.

It was also such a weird time because Sega made the colossally terrible choice to suddenly launch the Saturn that summer.

Surprise launch.

Yeah, they announced at E3 and that system will be available today, which had like fucked over retailers.

It fucked over like so much of the industry because they were like, oh God, if Sony eats our lunch, we're fucked.

So there was, I had, I mean, I already had a Saturn and I thought it was so magical because Panzier Dragoon was one of the launch titles and it was so gorgeous compared to the

Sega CD.

Like, I was like, this is, this is all I need.

And then the launch titles for PlayStation were like Battle Arena Toshinden.

Yes.

And that was not a good game.

No, a weird, like, you know, C-tier at best fighting game.

You know, it's, it, it, it, it was,

yeah, they, they didn't, what it was that was Jumpin' Jack Flash.

I don't know if you have the launch titles in front of you, Matt, but Jumpin' Jack Flash, I feel like was a pretty early Jumping Flash.

Just Jumping Flash, I apologize.

Yeah, Jumpin' Jack Flash is the, uh, the song and the Wobby Goldberg movie.

Yeah, the

Jumping Flash,

which, you know, people,

fans exist of that game, Ballerina Toshinden, kind of whatever.

But the other thing about the Saturn is that it was initially 2D focused and grafted on 3D to compete with the PlayStation.

Also, again, with the surprise launch, another thing where just like the genius level stupidity of Sega displayed in being ahead of their time, like they were with all the online play that was built into the Dreamcast, but in a disastrous sort of way.

Because, you know, like Apple would do surprise launches, but they'd figured out how to do it by the time that was, they had the infrastructure for that.

The games that were launched titles in North America included Air Combat, Rayman, Ridge Racer, great game,

Street Fighter, the movie.

Oh, yeah.

Battle Arena Toshinden, Jumping Flash, Power Serve 3D Tennis, The Raiden Project,

Lemmings 3D, Wipeout, and Kalik, the DNA Imperative.

You know, Wipeout's no slouch, but it's kind of a, like, it's, yeah, it was a semi-underwhelming lineup.

It took some time to come into its own, but like, what was so smart, again, about Sony is that they had a...

a 3D strategy.

They were like aware of where gaming was going, and they made a console focused on, you know, like having 3D hardware capabilities that the games could take advantage of.

There were also NBA Jam Tournament Edition and Soul Calibur, which is a pretty decent game, though not the Showstopper that Soul Calibur 2 was.

It can't have been Soul Calibur for play.

Was it Soul Edge?

I mean, yeah, Soul Edge.

Yeah.

It's listed here on gamerant.com as Soul Calibur.

But yeah,

I remember renting the PlayStation and renting Toshinden and

Jumping Flash.

Yeah.

And being like,

boy, these are clunky.

These are clunky games.

This ain't it, especially because, again, can't sing the praises of Panzier Dragoon enough was so smooth, orchestral, grand.

You're riding a dragon.

It's fly, like it's beating its wings.

And the last like 3D flying game that you played before that was probably Star Fox.

Like it was just, it was awesome.

It's interesting that

it came out when it did, because it's obviously, it's at the tail end of the Super Nintendo.

That's still, like, you know, massive.

And

it releases before

the Nintendo 64, which is obviously their next thing.

And then, you know,

contemporary with the Sega Saturn.

But, like, kind of then really kicked off.

I mean, I guess the console wars had already begun because of Sega and Nintendo, but now that there's a third entrant, or third major entrant, rather than some of these other ones that aren't doing so hot now, it became a real, a real thing.

And of course, I feel like we should mention that

the PlayStation only exists because of a failed attempt to make hardware with Nintendo.

Yes, yeah.

What a different world it would be.

Yeah.

If

first off, do you think that's where things started to go the way we are now?

That's the moment?

It could be, yeah.

Well, like, if Nintendo had had a CD add-on,

like, it would have been such a color-forward experience.

Like, because Super Nintendo games were always leaning on the fact that they could display more colors than the Genesis.

So it would have been such a color-forward experience.

It probably would have been a lot, like, a launch game, would have been a Miyamoto game.

Like, it would have been a totally different trajectory.

And then the PlayStation doesn't come out.

And then maybe Sega still exists as a hardware company.

It's a, it's just a, it's,

It's hard to play the what-if game with something that was so huge because it's just like it changes absolutely everything about the video game industry.

So many games don't exist as we know them.

And the hardware market is obviously completely different.

But it's a fascinating thought exercise.

The other thing we'd lose is the Philips CDI Nintendo games, which are, of course,

so fucking bizarre.

They're so, I mean,

one reason I think that, and along with the Super Mario Brothers live-action movie that came out in the 90s, uh, that Nintendo is so protective of their IP now is because back then it completely bit them in the ass that they, you know, let some other developers mess around with Zelda and Mario and ended up with, excuse me, princess.

I can remember the first PlayStation game that did wow me,

which was uh uh

Bushido Blade.

Oh, sure.

Bushido Blade was a 3D arena fighter.

Arena fighter?

Is that right?

I don't know.

You would have these

sort of large play areas.

And most of the fighting games at the time were very confined.

Most of them were 2D.

They were just the beginning of transformation into 3D fighting games.

But you could free run anywhere

on the level.

And any damage you did to the opposing player or that they did to you was permanent.

So if you struck them with your sword and they took the damage in their arm, they couldn't use that arm anymore.

It was a really interesting thing.

I was like, oh, this is a type of game I haven't seen before.

And that's when I started getting interested in picking up a PlayStation, even though I already had the Saturn.

Bushido Blade was very fun.

I maybe only rented Bushido Blade, but really enjoyed it.

It's like kind of like an anti-fighting game in the way that, again, just like you, it's like when you'd play Rainbow Six versus like a more arcadey FPS game and you could just take, like you shoot someone once and they're dead.

It's the same sort of thing of just like, you hit someone with a fucking katana.

They're, they're just probably going to die.

The match is going to be over.

I'm almost certain that Bushido Blade was my first PlayStation game.

That's after I rented it.

I was like, oh, this is it.

This is the thing.

And either saved up money or begged my parents for a Christmas present and got the PlayStation and Bushido Blade.

And then that was

my two systems for a while was Saturn and PlayStation.

The free roam running was a big, big, big part of the fun of that game too, as you mentioned.

I gotta say, I gotta issue a correction.

If you're being a pedantic listener out there on social media or in the Discord, I'm correcting it.

All right.

So if you, whatever you typed, you can just go ahead and delete that now.

I would say, too, save your corrections for when you're done listening because this happens.

Sometimes you'll see a comment that's like, oh, I wish they said this.

And then guess what?

Not two minutes later, we say it.

I started to doubt myself, and I was correct when I looked it up.

Um, that I had to doubt myself.

Excuse me, Princess is not from the Phillips CDI game, it is from a cartoon, it's from an animated series.

But Captain N.

Yes, but but there are a bunch of

um

uh

there are a bunch of shitty quotes and with really bad voice acting from the um the Phillips CDI semblance game.

So I got to give myself two Pinocchios

Now that I heard what the correction was,

you can't have that happen again.

I cannot mess up like that again.

I have a very specific

early PlayStation memory for me because I did not get one at launch, obviously.

I was but a wee boy.

But I remember seeing it at my uncle's house and being like excited when he would be playing on the PlayStation because that to me was it was more grown-up.

It was like more like, oh, these are like the this is where like the cool games are like these are like the the cooler games and like at that point uh he was playing like metal gear and um

well maybe not right at that point but like when I became super aware of it he was playing metal gear and ten chu um

oh yeah which still in my there's like

There's sound effects from that game that are just stuck in my brain because like the like the sound effects of like like slashing at people with like your sword were so so good in that game.

But

I got my PlayStation, I think, in like 1997 or 1998, so a couple years after the fact.

And I was so pumped.

And the first game, the two games that I had, well, I had three games for it.

One of them was a demo disc that I've mentioned on this show before.

It was the Sony PlayStation Interactive CD Sampler Disc Volume 5.

Wow.

Okay?

And it had games like Parappa the Rapper, Tomb Raider 2, Armored Core,

Cool Borders 4, Star Wars Master of Terrace Cassie,

NFL, Game Day 98, NHL, Face Off 98, Crash Bandicoot 2, Cortex Strikes Back, Intelligent Cube, and Jet Moto 2.

What a phenomenal disc.

Yes, I played this game so much because I didn't have that many PlayStation 1 games.

God, that is a good disc.

Yeah, so I would play a lot of the ones over and over again, mostly because the Star Wars game there is a like a lightsaber fighting game.

Yeah, so I would play that with my brothers for hours.

That I remember being pretty bad.

Yeah, it was not great.

But it had Star Wars characters.

Yes.

My PlayStation came with, I think, Demo Disc 1, which one of the features was just

an animation of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

And that was it.

And they were like, look

how real it looks.

And at the time, you were like, wow,

this looks real.

Uh, the other game that we had was Tomb Raider, which speaking of dinosaurs, speaking of T-Rexes, yeah, but it was not a game that it was not a game that I was particularly interested in when I was that little.

Sure, but I uh, I've said this before on the show, too, but I remember waking up in the middle of the night, my mom sitting in front of the TV like in poltergeist playing Tomb Raider, uh, and just like I was, it was shocking to me because I was like, then I feel like I remember like telling my brothers and be like, guys, mom's cool, like, she's like playing a video game, yeah.

And And then I had

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

And that obviously

changed the trajectory of my life forever.

But yeah, so I got to it late, but then we just like we had it.

I still have, well, no, I didn't even have my, uh, at some point along the way, uh, we said goodbye to my uh PlayStation 1, and then I had to rebuy a PlayStation 1 because that was one of the features of things to do at my wedding.

I had Tony Hawks Pro Skater and Crash Bandicoot for people that wanted to play

video games in the bar that Heather lent

a nice little CRT for.

That's a cool little setup.

I have footage here of the tech demo

for

the

T-Rex that came packed in with the original PlayStation.

There's no backgrounds.

There's no nothing.

Oh my God.

It was just footage of a dinosaur.

Then you could control if his head moved.

You could move him in space.

But at the time, this looked real to us.

I was going to say, I sort of understand the people that ran out of the theater in the train came.

It's a good model.

It is a good model.

It's also...

That's the only thing the PlayStation is doing.

So every polygon that it is capable of producing is in this one dinosaur, which was kind of a misleading tech demo because you were like, oh my god, if games are going to look like this, it's going to be like Jurassic Park on my television screen.

Do you guys want to take a guess at when Sony ceased production on the original PlayStation?

It's because they had their remodel.

They had the PS1,

which is like, I would want a, you know, really aesthetically pleasing a console, really, really small, like actually white.

Like, like it was like, as opposed to the gray, it was like a, like, you know, it's like a, like a, a, a totally white body to it.

Uh, look, looked really great, and then it had a detachable screen.

Right.

Um, I'm gonna, I, I, like, I mean, these things, the shelf life of these things stretches out really long, especially internationally.

I will guess 2009.

So, PS2 comes out in 2001, right?

Or is it 2000?

One of the one or the other, maybe 2000.

Um,

yeah, it must have been 2000.

Uh,

so

I'm going to guess 2010.

It was 2006, which is still a really long time.

It's a long time.

It's 11 years, and it's the year the PlayStation 3 came out.

Wow.

Yeah, I can imagine them having a meeting like,

we got to stop making these.

While we're talking through our personal histories with the PlayStation one, I did buy a PlayStation one.

It was the first time.

It was a thing I bought with my own money that I had saved up.

And it was the first time I became someone owning a non-Nintendo console.

I did end up getting it.

I did have a Nintendo 64 as well, which I got earlier.

I got the Nintendo 64 at launch because I wanted to play Mario 64.

You're the kid in the video, right?

I'm the kid, yeah, I'm the kid in the video.

But no, it was the first time I had it.

I had a PlayStation, you know, first time I had a non-Nintendo console.

And I was also a PC gamer, but that's obviously its own thing.

It felt like something of a betrayal, but what are you going to do?

And anyway.

You felt betrayed?

No, like I was like betraying

Mario cried.

Oh my god, don't tell me that.

I heard Mario cried.

Oh, fuck it.

I feel horrible.

Yoshi licked his tears.

There was a compilation video.

There's a compilation video on YouTube I used to

I would share for the the appropriate occasions that was a someone had just strung together a bunch of clips of Luigi Luigi crying.

Anyway,

I've mentioned this before that I'd like the games that got me to buy a PlayStation 1.

It's not anything

shocking, but it was an experience playing Resident Evil at a friend's house.

And then also

the Final Fantasy VII ads, and a limited amount of time I got playing Final Fantasy VII,

where I was just like, I got to own this fucking thing.

This is doing stuff that is just not available on Nintendo hardware.

And also, as someone who had played Final Fantasy 1, Final Fantasy 4 slash 2 US, and Final Fantasy 6 slash 3 US, and loved all of them, I was like, I have to play the new Final Fantasy game.

I guess at the time, it was the fourth Final Fantasy game that had actually been released in the U.S.

They later went back and have released the full catalog, but they never released five here.

They never released two or three.

So I was like, I got to play the new Final Fantasy game.

And the cinematics there, like like the dinosaur animation, were just so staggering for the time that I was just like,

I just have to experience this.

And so Final Fantasy VII was the first game I bought for PlayStation 1 when I got it, which I believe would have been 1997.

Played the shit out of it.

Loved that game so much.

And the second game I bought was actually not Resident Evil.

It was Castlevania's Symphony of the Night, which I had read a bunch of rapturous reviews in,

you know, like EGM and GamePro and other mags of the era that were just talking about how great it was.

I know it was a game that did not sell well initially because it was a 2D experience, but the game that gave us the idea of a Metroidvania, because that was the first time that Castlevania had a, you know, like

more of an open-ended structure as opposed to the linear sort of straight-ahead approach it had in the earlier games.

And just an absolute masterpiece one of the best with the best 2d games that's that's ever been uh been made uh the saturn version of just go back to the saturn the saturn version of castlevania assembly night with which i never experienced i always heard was better yes but the playstation port was um you know obviously much more more easily available it was also um uncensored uh because there was some oh yeah some light censorship in the playstation version that wasn't present in the in the saturn version yeah um especially if you my saturn was my first ever modded system.

Like I brought it to a place that modded systems in Chicago and I asked if I could make, they could put a switch in it that would make it so that it could play Japanese games or American games.

And you would just have to make sure the power was off before you threw the switch.

And then I could import games for the first time.

And that was...

crazy, but we're not talking about Saturn.

We're talking about PlayStation.

The way you would play imported games on a PlayStation, if you had the original model, is you would wait until the boot started and you would have

a paper clip or something jammed into the mechanism of the door so that you didn't have to close the door when you were playing a PlayStation game, like lock the lid.

I had accomplished it with a couple of beads that I had jammed in the mechanism and then taped over so the door was perpetually open.

You'd wait until the boot animation had stopped and then you would pull out the disc physically and jam in an import disc, and you could bypass the import copy protection stuff.

Wow.

So I, those two systems are my first introduction to like, oh, I can go to the Japanese mall and get games that nobody has

that may not ever come out here.

I got Ghost in the Shell for PlayStation 1

because there was no, like, Ghost in the Shell wasn't huge here.

Right.

And I, and it's a phenomenal game.

It did eventually come out for the PlayStation, but but I had it for at least a year, if not more, before it was announced.

Wow.

And I don't know, it was a pretty exciting.

It was an exciting time.

Also,

to what Nick was saying about Final Fantasy VII,

I don't think people now can understand

the sort of

concussive.

speed of Final Fantasy VII, eight, and nine all hitting within four years.

Yeah.

Like, like the biggest games that anybody had seen all coming out for the same system.

Now we're lucky if we get one Final Fantasy system, Final Fantasy game per system.

And at the time, there were three on the PlayStation 1, and each one of them was a full banger.

And a, like, just a completely different swing.

Obviously, seven is the one with the biggest legacy, but like eight is trying some crazy shit.

Nine kind of a response to eight, um, or at least that's how it was perceived, and sort of its return to more of a fantasy sort of aesthetic.

But yeah,

and then obviously, again, we're not talking about Sega, but the move to completely cuck the Dreamcast launch in North America by launching Final Fantasy VIII on the exact same day.

A masterstroke by Sony.

And now people,

like, that doesn't happen.

People, like,

a game gets announced, and then other games are like, we're not even trying to come out on that day anymore.

We're not doing it.

Yeah.

The, the, what you really, like,

heather i had not thought about that sort of the the the the soft mod uh way of of you know getting your

playing import games in so long like like like ah yeah that used to be a thing you could also could get a mod chip which was i i think for for our listeners who are maybe not as familiar with the the region breaking of previous generations uh you would generally you would go to an independent game store or you could do it yourself but it was usually easier just to go to some guy who had the stuff um and then pay a guy who looks like me now to open up the, you know, your hardware and then solder a chip that would pass the region protection so you could play imports.

I did ultimately do that on my PlayStation 1 a few years later.

I still have my original PlayStation 1.

I wish I had mine.

Which I got the Mark 1.

So it has

three audio outputs on the back instead of the fused

single like Sony proprietary jack.

It has like RCA outputs.

And there are audiophiles who still, because they were taking such a beating, like a big loss on the CD drive on the original PlayStation just to get it out, that there are a bunch of people who still use the original, original PlayStation as their CD driver.

Wow.

Because the audio fidelity on it is apparently

like an extraordinary engine.

I never heard that.

Yeah.

You can.

In certain subsets of like

audiophile community, you will see these like

reskinned like glass PlayStations.

Yeah.

Or like somebody has taken the entire chipset and the drive and put it into a different housing so that they can just use it as a C D player.

That's fucking rad.

Yeah.

I got to talk about my PlayStation build, if you will.

Okay.

I had the one controller that came with it.

I never had the dual shock

controller for the original PlayStation.

Didn't have that experience until PlayStation 2, right?

My other controller was

like a mad cat's like third-party controller.

Of course.

And both of my memory cards were third-party memory cards.

Yep.

And that was it.

And then it was playing on a TV that I wanted a family reunion and everybody was really mad because I was a little kid and I won the raffle.

Everyone was pissed off at me.

Toward the end of the PlayStation's life cycle is when I got a job working at a video game store and they were selling

the gamer television, the GX TV

at the video game store.

And so I used my employee discount and got a GX TV so that I could play PlayStation at like higher fidelity or however the fuck it was sold to you.

It's one of the things that I don't own anymore that I really fucking wish I still had was the GX TV.

You guys should look it up.

It was a CRT television with a closed front, right?

And when you opened the front, they were huge speakers, like speakers the size of the screen.

And it was an all-in-one model

with a also with a giant speaker on top.

What do you think, Matt, of that thing?

This is the most Heather Ann Campbell thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like that dinosaur from Jurassic Park

that spits on Newman.

The dilophosaurus.

Yeah, exactly.

Matt, you mentioned Crash Bandicoot, which was a big part.

A bigger reason the Sony PlayStation 1 ruled the world and the PlayStation 2, obviously, as well,

was the marketing.

And,

you know, they kind of took the followed up of Sega's playbook for the Mega Drive and the Genesis, which was kind of making it like a little bit cooler than Nintendo.

Yeah, but here they like absolutely just look cooler and more adult than what Nintendo was offering.

And, you know, like certainly the Final Fantasy VII being like just watching TV ads of that was so like crazy at the time.

The Gran Churismo ads as well were also like things that just like made this game so,

you know, look so compelling and again, kind of like more of a grown-up experience targeted at teens as opposed to little kids.

And then, of course, the, as I mentioned, Crash Bandicoot, they had a Crash Bandicoot mascot character.

Past guest Alex Berg, back in her old format, at one point played Crash Bandicoot in the mascot suit.

So crazy.

It's one of the things that confused me about what Hollywood was.

This guy we know is Crash Bandicoot?

Yeah.

But those were were like kind of like, you know, edgy, quirky, funny.

Like, like, you know, like, like a kind of a pre-internet or early internet sort of like random sort of comedy.

And they, they, they connected with audiences in a different way than Nintendo's marketing.

Crash was huge for me when I was a kid, um, specifically because I didn't grow up a Nintendo kid.

So, like,

not on my radar.

It was Pokemon and Crash, right?

So I have two very specific Crash-related memories.

Okay.

One was we were like leaving to go somewhere and I hadn't saved yet and I just beaten the boss that was taking me like a long time and my brother came and hit the eject button, which by the way, I miss buttons that push in.

Oh, yeah.

Physical buttons are good.

Physical buttons are so good.

They weren't.

They had great buttons on this thing, but he pushed the eject button

that opened the climb shell, the lid.

And I was devastated and was in a bad mood the whole time that we went out.

And then the second crash memory that I had was uh uh going home early from school on September 11th, 2001, and playing Crash Team Racing all day.

Wow,

yeah,

got a lot, got a lot done, and that they've now re-released

the insane trilogy, uh, Crash Bandicoot and uh Crash Team Racing.

And Crash Team Racing, I still think

better,

I think better than some of the Mario karts.

I'll go ahead and say it.

It's really good.

Crash Team Racing was solid.

It was a fun kart race.

Also, that reminds me of one of the most early 2000s images of all time.

Matthew Perry, R.I.P.

as Chandler being on Friends playing Crash Team Racing.

That's right.

Look,

Crash on Friends,

that's like game-recognized game kind of.

You know what I mean?

Friends is the biggest show on TV.

Maybe not at that point, but it's a huge show.

Then Crash Team Racing's on the thing.

It's like, damn.

It's not unlike when Kevin Spacey played the Vita on TV.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not as weird as that, but

lobbying Congress is kind of like eating barbecue.

Fucking foghorn Lego.

I love the backpad technology on the PlayStation Vita.

Like killing a dog.

Have you played this exclusive uncharted card game?

I want to talk about being a girl gamer and Tomb Raider.

Okay.

Because

at the time, I know the Tomb Raider is designed for the male gaze.

Like, you know, you're staring at her ass.

Every time she like pushes herself up on a ledge, it sounds like she's fucking the ledge.

Like, I get it.

I get it.

But I gotta play this thing.

But also,

I had grown up playing video games

and I had never played as like a girl action hero before.

And it was such an emotional experience for me.

Like, I was like, this is

like, I felt like special and seen, even though I know that I wasn't the intended audience for it.

Like, so much of the marketing of Tomb Raider was, you play as a girl.

And then it would be like her, like.

like holding a gun like it was a dick uh like i you know it's like not it it it was extremely 90s and extremely like, you know, unwoke or whatever.

Yeah.

But for me personally,

I like it.

Being an archaeologist, an archaeologist, girl, main character with guns who was like going through this adventure was really, really important to me.

And Tomb Raider 2 was one of my favorite games on the entire system.

So when you were like, oh, it's on the demo disc, I was like.

That's the good Tomb Raider.

That's the one where you start and you can like lock your butler in a freezer.

I've literally like never played any of the six original Tomb Raiders.

They are so of their time.

The mechanics and everything are really clunky.

Like if you, if you've played Mario 64 and you're like, oof, this is rough, playing Tomb Raider is like trying to drive a car with cardboard covering it.

Like you can't see anything.

You don't know, like reversing is really hard.

Like it was, they are

a very mechanically precise game, also.

Like, you would have to, like, step specifically up to certain ledges to be able to jump certain distances.

Yeah.

And you would have to, like, inch the character forward in order to achieve these things.

Yeah.

Or, like, like, set where you were going to jump and then, like, do two back steps so that you could get the proper amount of leg movement before you leapt.

I really remember, yeah, like, seeing, like,

you know, Laura Croft doing, like, flips to get, like, from platform to platform and like that is like insane of course uh but like yeah seems like it would be difficult

it was a difficult game but it was also so enjoyable yeah um

i don't know uh the the what you what you talked about i mean like like obviously again they were they're marketing towards uh yeah you know horny teen boys with the with the way they they pushed uh the tomb radio for them i don't think that was necessarily the intention of the devs playboy or something i don't know if they went that far

There was a video game character in Playboy.

Now, it's escaping me who it was, but I remember that.

Look, it was Blood Rain, okay?

I know.

I'm sorry, I know that, but I know that.

Was it Playboy or was it like Maxim?

It was Maxim.

It was one of the...

Yeah, they definitely were like leaning into that.

But I mean, that was, again, also part of why they were like

the anti-Nintendo.

There were other games that were just

very...

pushing how horny they were.

I mean, the Parasite Eve games.

Again, I don't think that was necessarily the intention, but that was the way they were marketed.

And then there was the Fear Effect series, which I think is defunct.

But, you know, I remember those games being

very horny.

It was, again, you just weren't seeing the stuff on Nintendo hardware.

The other thing you weren't seeing

outside of

that was part on cartridge, on the cartridge format, was extensive voice acting and, you know, symphonic scores.

And that was like such a huge distinguishing characteristic.

That was a big part of what made it feel so like like such an upgrade, even though in some ways the Nintendo 64 was superior hardware.

And, you know, I think that brings us to Metal Gear Solid, which we should talk about.

I will say this.

I really like Metal Gear Solid, and I love the Metal Gear Solid VR missions, which was a separate game or I think it was a separate full game that I later bought.

But it did not grab me

and it did not make me be like, I'm like, like, I love this series at the time.

Like, I appreciated it, but it was not really like a, you know, it didn't get its hooks in me.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is the one that made me be like, oh, fuck, I love this.

Yeah.

Yeah, but, but, but still, Metal Gear Solid was like such an amazing experience.

And, you know, just again, like the stealth as gameplay was such a novelty and so much voice voice acting in that game, such a cinematic presentation.

It really felt like so cutting edge

in its moment.

I've played some of it actually pretty recently on my PlayStation Vita, and

it's interesting because it's obviously

of its time

in terms of gameplay, but it's very challenging.

My main Metal Gear is Snake Eater, right?

So you do have that sort of like, it's still a stealth game, but you could also just kind of like go crazy and just like,

you know,

be a murderous psycho

in this game.

But in that one, you can't really.

Sam, you just killed that man.

Oh, no, Sam.

Sam, make sure you don't use

your grenade launchers because it makes too much noise with the explosions.

But yeah, like in Metal Gear Solid 1,

if you get seen, you're basically done for.

You're cooked.

But I feel like that game belongs on,

maybe it belongs on the Mount Rushmore of PlayStation 1 games, I think, right?

I have my 10.

You have your 10.

I have my 10, and I wonder how much overlap there is between all of our 10.

So I didn't make a 10 going in.

I thought we were going to collectively make a 10, but I want to hear your 10.

No, no, no, no.

Well, we can make a collective 10.

I mean, you know, we could use yours as a starting point.

Well, a game that we haven't talked about yet that is very important to me is Sui Coden.

Yeah,

which is

a previous to Final Fantasy VII RPG on the PlayStation 1 with an enormous cast and a small like castle building.

Really, really good game.

It was recently remastered and re-released for the Switch 2 and Switch 1, and I highly recommend it.

Also for PlayStations.

So Sui Coden, Final Fantasies 7, 8, and 9, Perappa the Rapper,

Vagrant Story.

Yes, incredible game.

Final Fantasy Tactics, Tomb Raider 2.

Wait, is this more than 10?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Oh, it is.

Tomb Raider 2, Silent Hill, Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

and then Metal Gear as well.

I have Metal Gear on the list, but I actually did not play Metal Gear on PlayStation.

Wow.

I mean, like, yeah,

it's so notable that I think it like kind of has to be in there.

Like, I was, is there a Resident Evil?

Because I would think Resident Evil 2 was one I would think has to be on a list.

For other people's lists, absolutely.

The Resident Evil franchise ends up being like

a genre-defining series of games.

And Resident Evil 2 is incredible.

Resident Evil 1 has the first...

you know, for a lot of people, the first scare in a video game, which is the dogs jumping through the window.

It's like become like the iconic moment in retro gaming horror.

I think the first scare is when you press start and that guy says, Resident Evil.

But I, I greatly preferred Silent Hill because I was like, this place is

fucked.

Yeah.

Like it was not, like, Resident Evil had like sort of things that made sense.

It was like, oh, there's zombie virus.

Oh, the dogs are zombies too.

Yeah.

Whereas Silent Hill, you're in a classroom and there's a baby crying for no no reason.

You're like, oh, come on, what is happening?

What is this?

I love Silent Hill 2, incredible game.

I did not get into OG Silent Hill, but I think it's obviously fair intrinsic.

The games that I would lobby for,

one of Odd World Abe's Odyssey and Odd World Abe's Exodus.

These were puzzle platformers

that were kind of like a hell world where you were

an enslaved factory worker

going through a series of really deadly sort of gauntlets to free your fellow workers.

And

it was a gnarly game, had really cool character design, incredible animation.

You know, there were two of them back to back.

And I actually prefer Odyssey, although Exodus was a little bit more expansive and

ambitious as the sequel.

But, you know, just like

it was, it's, I love

Super Meat Boy is much harder,

but also has like grinding you into things and

is a really sort of nasty, bloody sort of game

while also having like a like a

cute element as its contrast.

Super Meat Boy is way harder, but I like that sort of gameplay where it's like, here's a gauntlet I need to get through and I need to like kind of like, you know, I need to

get, be precise enough in my movements to get everything correct so that I can traverse through this section and achieve this objective.

But I would lobby for, you know, maybe an Abe's Odyssey.

I know that's a little bit of an offbeat pick.

I was trying to think of what else should be on there.

I mean, you noted Parappa the Rapper, which would have been one if you hadn't mentioned it that I would definitely want on there.

I guess it just comes down to what do you want to do with all the with all the Final Fantasies?

Because, you know, some might say that having three Final Fantasies on there is perhaps a little bit excessive.

But again, this is your list.

I'm not sure.

Is the exercise we're making a collective list?

I think it can be a collective list.

I nominated all these because

I think this is Squaresoft at its prime.

Yeah.

It's right before the collapsing hubris of Final Fantasy Spirits Within.

But like 7, 8, 9, Vagrant Story, all of those games, tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics, those are like monolithic games.

They're incredible games.

And it's hard for me to imagine the PlayStation without them.

It's kind of like Jim Carrey's early 90s, right?

You're just like, holy shit, this guy's on fire.

Yeah.

It's been talked to death.

I feel like this.

I've heard this fact on so many, in so many different contexts.

Yeah.

But Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber, and The Mask released the same calendar year.

It's insane.

Absolutely staggering.

It's like this year with

Eddington, Fantastic Four, First Steps, and The Materialist.

Look, I like two of those movies quite a bit.

I haven't seen

the two that you like.

I looked it up and

Fear Effect

had a like, like, because I talked about how it was being kind of a horny game, and I was trying to remember which one it was.

It it was the sequel, Fear Effect 2 Retro Helix, and it was definitely the sort of thing that was like,

it was, it was marketed towards, like, like men, it was marketed towards dudes, but it did have a lesbian, like, uh, uh, love triangle within the game.

I just got to say, yeah, I know we did the titles episode a couple months back at this point.

Fear Effect 2 Retro Helix, that's an all-timer.

That's really good.

Is Fear Effect effect scary?

What?

No, it's not really scary.

It was more of like an action sort of experience in my memory.

I only played the first one.

It's not enough that it's just called fear, right?

The game's got, what is fear?

Yeah.

Like, fear

is nothing.

What we need is the effect of fear.

The effect of fear for me, me saying, ah.

Fear effect.

What a meeting.

God, I wish I could like, you know, if you, you get a time machine and you could like go back to certain events and like maybe just be like a ghost in the room, then you're like witnessing these events and just getting to like see history without affecting that time.

Oh my God, Lincoln's conception.

You're there the night he's conceived?

Not even

the weirdest part of what you guys said

is you making eye contact with the other time traveler due to one other guy in the room.

All right, Randy, okay.

Put a top hat on his back.

I like how this fits.

There are so many meetings in 90s game rooms that I wish I could have been a part of.

And the naming of Fear Effect would be a good one.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting that Rayman was a launch title

because I feel like Rayman is now console agnostic.

Right.

But like, he like, there's a world where, like, with if there wasn't crash, Rayman is their guy.

Yeah.

And I don't think, I don't know if he had the juice.

I don't, I, I like Rayman.

I like Rayman.

I like the two battles.

I think Rayman also came out for Saturn.

Did it also?

I think it was more like Platform.

I think it was on PC too.

I don't, I don't remember.

I remember it being everywhere.

I could be wrong.

I played the shit out of that first Rayman.

I really liked it.

I mean, the guy who is, like,

I know this may sound biased because of the list I just provided, but the guy who is the face of PlayStation is Cloud.

Like, he is, he is a, he is still relevant 30 years later whereas I don't feel like a lot of people that that crash holds a lot of currency anymore sure you know yeah it's kind of a shame because like the after the first three games and crash team racing they sort of bungled the franchise a little bit and there was like crossovers with spy there was like then he moved uh from naughty dog to activision and you know activision of course ruined it yeah yeah uh and it just didn't it didn't ever really uh quite recover But the most recent one, the fourth one, the now the canonical fourth, not the,

there was a fourth game, but they're now like, this new one is the fourth one.

It is supposed to be great, fun, in the spirit of the originals.

I wouldn't put either of these games on the in my top ten or on the Mount Rushmore if we're going to do that, which is maybe the way to go.

But maybe we just collab on a Mount Rushmore.

I think that's easier.

You know, what are the square, triangle, circle, and cross of the PlayStation 1 games?

This right here,

that's podcast hosting excellence.

That was incredible.

First, I should shout out Tekken 3, a PlayStation fighter that I did really like, and the one entry in the Tekken series I really got into.

And I think all the Tekken games on PlayStation 1 were pretty good.

But the games I was going to mention were two JRPGs, one Chrono Cross, the sequel to Chrono Trigger that was a little bit bloated and certainly didn't stick the landing.

You know, certainly didn't end a super satisfactory way.

Definitely not the complete package that is Chrono Trigger.

I think it's worth experiencing for someone, Matt, like you, who loves Chrono Trigger now and was as a late convert to it, just to kind of see what they were trying.

And it was a game that I like the way it came out.

I mean, I remember.

I have a stronger affinity for the trailer for Chrono Cross because it had such awesome music and it got me so hyped for this game.

I was like, holy fucking shit, they're doing this.

And then you actually play it and you're like, oh, I think they lost the plot a little bit,

but it is still a cool game and it's an ambitious game.

The other game I was going to shadow is a game I mentioned before when we were doing like a retro, what are you playing?

But Zeno Gears,

which is just

an awesome, again, super ambitious JRPG that also is a little bloated and certainly does kind of like collapse under its own weight towards the end, but is just like an awesomely ambitious game with with its own, you know, like distinct aesthetic and bursts the Zeno Saga franchise.

Is Xeno Gares the one where you fight Jesus Christ at the end?

Yeah, I mean,

I wouldn't say it's you're fighting Jesus Christ, but yeah, there's definitely some, you know, crucifix imagery.

I'm fighting him every damn day.

What?

Wait, what is that?

I don't know.

You're fighting him?

We're fighting.

Or he's testing me.

Oh, Jesus is testing you.

Yeah.

You're confusing him with the devil?

I don't know which is which.

Big red guy?

Yeah, that's the, yeah.

That's Jesus.

Okay, okay.

That's Jesus after he's been on the cross for a while.

Yeah, the sun.

Why'd we make it like this?

Why'd we make it like this?

The issue is you say something like that, and to me, I like that joke.

Yeah.

But now we got to worry about the FCC shutting down head gum.

Man, to quote Eminem, the FCC won't let me be.

I think that if we're going to make a Mount Rushmore, if we're going to make

a top four of, or just like the dotemic, most important, most significant, most iconic PlayStation 1 games, I do.

I mean, Final Fantasy VII, I think, has to be on there.

It's one of them.

I think there's an easy three.

We'll go for it.

I think it's Final Fantasy VII.

I think it's Metal Gear Solid 1.

And I think it's the first Resident Evil.

You think it's Resident Evil 1?

I would go 2, but I guess Resident Evil 1 maybe had more of an impact.

Yeah,

it's hard to argue with those games despite

my lack of personal experience with Metal Gear 1.

Now the question becomes, do you go Gran Turismo?

which, you know, based on sales and based on relevance and based on, you know, its long tail might be the

entry there.

I don't know if you you like, certainly wouldn't be my pick.

I'm not someone who's into racing games.

You said Long Tail, and Jemmy looked up and was like, oh, more for me to chase.

Do you go with a Crash Bandicoot?

I'm not sure.

I mean, there's a lot of options, but yes, filling that fourth slot is tricky.

Ace Symphony of the Night was mentioned.

Not a game that sold well, but a game that is incredible and has

existed in the collective consciousness of gamers.

Continue to persist.

I do think that

if it were to be a Crash Bandicoot, I would personally say

Crash Bandicoot 2, Wrath of Cortex.

But see, that's these.

I agree, that's a better game, and it's a more fully.

But this is the Resident Evil versus Resident Evil 2 argument.

And I think it's fine to say, hey, Resident Evil 2 and

Crash Bandicoot 2 are what's up there.

Is it Tomb Raider?

Which not only is still an existing franchise and

upcoming television show.

Yeah.

But like it could be argued maybe that Uncharted doesn't exist without Tomb Raider.

Totally.

I don't know.

I don't know if I'm looking at the Mount Rush more of,

I mean, maybe if you're just thinking about also the iconography of

these games, you see Cloudsface and it's like, oh, yeah, duh.

You know,

you see the Resident Evil dog.

You see Snake and you see Laura Croft, and you're like, PlayStation.

That's pretty good.

You like, you would know immediately what you were looking at.

Maybe not with the dog.

I just, just to talk through other possibilities, I don't think it's something for the Ridge Racer franchise.

I think if it's a racing game, it's Gran Turismo, but I'll mention it.

Perappa the Rapper you mentioned, you know, it's it's probably maybe not in the top four, but just a, a, a distinctly PlayStation game and like the kind of thing that sort of like music experience experience with full lyrics is like the kind of thing that you can only do on CD hardware, CD-based hardware.

It's all in the mind.

Yep.

If you want to test me, I'm sure you'll find.

Let's see.

And let's see.

What else am I missing here?

I mentioned Tekken 3.

Spyro the Dragon.

No, it wouldn't be Spyro, but I mean, I think worth mentioning.

Yeah, maybe it is Tomb Raider.

I mean, honestly, it's maybe Gran Turismo, but if it's our list, I guess we can throw Tomb Raider in there.

I do think Seven Miller Garsalid and Resident Evil.

It's funny kind of now to think because there was a BAFTA list a couple of years ago, or maybe sometime last year, where Laura Croft was the number one character.

Yeah, yeah.

And you were all.

Like, well, that's insane.

Yeah.

But she does deserve, I think, a spot on the Rushmore.

I mean, it's a British character from a British developer, I believe, too.

So probably skewed by them BAFTAs.

yeah uh them brits love their own uh what what is the what

but matt matt what what is your take on tony hawks pro skater because i think there's an argument for that as well i think there's an argument for it i was thinking about this sort of over here quietly to myself which is not uh conducive to uh podcasting at all

but uh i think because yeah it was on playstation i think it has a strong association with playstation but it was multi-platform at launch it came out on the nintendo 64 also

I think maybe with a limited soundtrack

comparatively, but

I think, hey, I'd love to see Tony Hawk doing a 900 on the on the Mount Rushmore.

Why not?

There's a game, too, that I don't think that this is, it's in a similar, it occupies a similar space.

There was a Spider-Man game for the PlayStation just called Spider-Man that was,

I think...

There are more good Spider-Man games than there are bad ones.

I think there are some atrocious ones.

But this game, to me, was everything to me when I was a kid.

It's so fun and so great.

There's like, it's not as good as the ones we have now.

It's more of a linear thing, and like the swinging is very limited and stuff.

But

it was one of the very first games I ever had a dream about that then gave me the solution to what problem I was having.

I kept, there's a early, early, like, I was like having a hard time at the beginning of this game.

And, you know, keep in mind I'm seven years old.

Sure.

So I'm like, dumb little shit.

Not that different than now.

You said it.

Hey, what the heck?

Wait, I am stupid.

Fuck.

But

you have to stop this bank from blowing up.

And I was like, I'm putting the safe, I'm putting the bomb in the safe, but nothing's happening.

You got to press the button.

I had the dream

where I had to push, close the safe, and then I was able to continue the rest of the game.

The game gets really hard after that.

I think it's all time great game to me, but I don't think it deserves a spot on the rush more, but I just had to shout it out still.

I think the case for Tomb Raider is solid, except I looked it up.

I'm reading just from Wikipedia here.

It was first released on the Sega Saturn, Heather, followed shortly by versions for MS-DOS and the PlayStation.

That's like this is a Hydrox situation.

Yeah.

Huh, did I play it on the Saturn?

No, I'm almost positive I played it on PlayStation because it was considered the superior version.

But yeah, I guess you can't put Tomb Raider on the PlayStation Mountain Rushmore.

Not allowed.

Gran Turismo it is.

The front of a car it is.

By Metascore.

By Metascore, Tony Ox

the top five PlayStation 1 games.

And, you know, this is skewed

because these reviews were not being

collected in the same sort of way prior to, I forget when Metacritic was established.

It might be 1999.

But Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2, Tekken 3, Gran Turismo, Chrono Cross, and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3.

Wow, Chrono Cross that high!

Chrono Cross got a 10.0 from GameSpot, I remember.

And again, just like I like,

I played it too, and I was like, huh.

Like, I

just didn't.

I do have a funny story.

Yeah.

So, um,

I uh, I

was playing Chrono Cross

after I turned 21, right?

Like I'm playing Chrono Cross because I think I missed it when the system came out.

At some point,

you could do the hot swap with burned games.

So I just went back through the PlayStation

library and burned a bunch of games and was playing them on my PlayStation 1.

But it was also when I first started drinking and I had my very first hangover the day that I burned Chrono Cross

and

put it in the system.

And I had never had a hangover before either.

So I didn't really know what was happening.

So I wake up and I feel like garbage.

And I had had a lot to drink the night before and didn't know, like, didn't know what to do.

And I was like, you know, I'll just play video games.

So I hot swapped.

I hot swapped Chrono Trigger and the sound of the PlayStation boot up made me puke.

I would have loved it if that was, that had bookended at the start, you hearing the startup sound and then just puking all of your stuff.

The fuck?

Like, what the hell?

Oh, I get it.

Well, guys, I love the PlayStation.

Yeah, I love the PlayStation.

Look, I'll always be PC, you know, Nintendo.

Those are what got me into games.

So that's all where I'll always have some allegiance.

I have so many frustrations with Nintendo, but I'll keep buying

their shit forever.

But the PlayStation is, is like, like, it has given us so many terrific games and also was just such an innovation in hardware design.

And,

hey, you know,

everything worked out the way it should have as far as

Sony becoming a hardware provider.

But everything, Heather.

Yep, the correct companies ended up winning the console.

But also,

everything

going pretty good for me.

I have more rights.

They're inventing new ones to give it.

I just get a $10 bill when I go to the airport.

All right.

Honestly, that would make going to the airport so much better if they just like handed you just cash.

$10.

Get yourself a candy bar candy.

Yeah, get yourself half a muffin.

Good grief, the price is there.

Shall we do a segment?

Yeah, let's do a segment.

Let's do a segment.

It's time for the question block.

These are, of course, from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

Here we go.

This first one's from Fierce Deity.

Hi, Fierce.

What's up, Fierce Deity?

And they write, are you as excited for Metroid Prime 4 as I am?

Motorcycle.

Now, look, I saw this

in the direct.

Yeah.

I am excited about Metroid Prime 4.

I'm very excited about it.

Yep.

I kind of think that the motorcycle looked bad and dumb.

Oh,

hot take.

I don't know if anyone agrees with you.

There might be some,

I haven't read the reaction, so there might be some people who

are on the same page.

It was in an environment that looked very just like empty.

Sure.

And it's just sort of like, well, what do we, what is this part of this?

There's only one part of the direct that was worth talking about.

Well, yeah, the virtual boy, of course, which I'm tempting is just coming up now.

That is insane.

What a crazy, crazy world.

I don't know how excited you are, so I can't speak to my excitement relative to yours.

It seems like you're pretty excited.

So I would say,

you know what, I will answer it.

I'm not as excited as you are, but I am excited.

You sound pumped.

Fierce Deity for Metroid Prime 4.

I love Metroid Prime.

I loved playing the remaster,

you know, and

I'm excited to see Metroid Prime 4 with a

long-awaited

continuation of the franchise feels like on modern hardware.

Yeah, I just wish there was some way I could play two and three on Nintendo hardware, but they seem to not want to let me for some reason.

Well,

that's what they do.

I am probably the least excited about Metroid Prime, but I am excited for people who are excited about it.

Yeah, I loved the remaster of one.

I thought that was great.

That was awesome.

Yeah, I would let so i put an episode on it experience it but just don't make me use the switch mouse

don't make me use the switch mouse don't make me use it make us use it i don't want to use it make us use it i i like that they don't make you yeah nobody's forcing you to do it i can i concur um this next one's from sergeant sars ben sergeant sars uh and they write Would you rather play games chronologically or in release order?

One of these is objectively correct.

Now, here's the thing: Fuck, this is a really good question.

Also, what series does this apply to?

I'm wondering, I can't think of one off the top of my head, but keep going.

Well, because think about this: the Metal Gear Solid franchise, just as an example.

Oh, okay, yes, that's a good one.

Not necessarily.

The games don't follow a chronological order.

Some of them are prequels, and some of them are direct sequels to other ones.

But they release, you know, in the order that they're released, certainly.

But it would be, and then the MS DOS ones as well are part of this canon also.

So it'd be interesting.

It would be,

I think it would suck to play them in chronological order because,

you know, in story chronological order versus release, because you would be playing

like

Snake Eater and Peacewalker into four.

Yeah, I actually have the narrative, the chronological timeline here, if you want me to go through it.

Please.

You'd start with Naked Gear.

I said Naked Gear because I was thinking of Naked Snake.

Naked Gear is not my mod of Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater would be first, set in 1964.

Then in 1970, you have Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops.

Yes.

1974, Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker.

These are not, again, not release years, obviously.

These are the years of, these are the canonical years in the game.

1975, then Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeros.

1984, Metal Gear Solid V, the Phantom Foot Pain.

Then in 1995, you get Metal Gear for the MSX, later part of the NES.

And 1999, you get Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear 2, rather, Solid Snake,

where we get the, you know, the Solid Snake becomes part of it.

2005, we get Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation 1.

2007 through 2009 is Metal Gear Solid 2, Sons of Liberty.

2014 is Metal Gear Solid 4, Guns of the Patriots.

And 2018, a game we covered on the podcast with the aforementioned Brendan James, Metal Gear Rising Revengeance,

which fucking rules.

Anyway, I was going to say,

as far as the mainline series goes, the order you would play them in would be Metal Gear Solid 3, Metal Gear Solid 5, Metal Gear Solid,

then Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2, and then Metal Gear Solid 4.

That would be an interesting experience, but I don't think for an initial playthrough.

Yeah, I don't think so.

You'd have to, yeah, that would be like, I've played through these before.

Let's do it this way to see how the story tracks.

I think that generally, you know, there are rewarding experiences when you watch things in chronological order.

For example, if you watch Andor into Rogue One into Star Wars, like that is a very, very, very rewarding experience.

But I think that oftentimes prequels are writing for existing knowledge.

And I think that the gravity of certain situations, for example,

Anakin Skywalker meet Obi-Wan Kenobi means nothing if you haven't seen the rest of Star Wars.

It's just two dudes meeting.

There is no gravity.

yeah so i think that you watch things in

release order and then for pleasure or interest you can watch them in chronological order that's what i feel yeah i like that i like or play i i i think release i mean like i think for first

play three do you want to do release order i'm curious what the what the correct answer is do they say they didn't say they just said one of them is objectively correct i hope we're on the right side of history me too

uh this next one's from horse gam what's up Horse Gam?

Horse Games Horse Gam.

And they write: with Silent Hill F coming out next week.

God,

really?

Come on.

Highest rated Famitsu Silent Hill of all time.

Wow, that's interested in checking it out, but I'm also very scared.

I'm super excited to check it out.

What a great October game.

Yeah, I will say that that review is probably a little skewed because the F stands for Famitsu.

Oh, Silent Hill Famitsu.

They're like, hey, a game for us.

You're going to say I do it 20 to 30 times an episode

and sit there and be like that.

You remember just interesting.

You remember in Death Stranding 1 how they referenced the existence of Famitsu?

I mean, I remember a lot about that.

I love Stranding 1.

With Silent Hill F coming out next week, what's your opinion on the game not being set in the titular Silent Hill?

I have an immediate take about this.

That ain't right.

I mean, if it's, you know, if it's good, I think

have the leeway with Silent Hill is now a franchise.

You know, Silent Hill, colon Chicago.

Yeah, Silent Hill is not a place, it's a people.

It is a little weird, but also the town has become so canonical that it's a little like, okay, well, don't you want to see other environments?

Like, I'm fine with it.

I'm very scared to try the game, but I think I will

investigate it.

And then finally, Mad Max 4025.

Hi, Mad Max.

Wow.

I'm writing in on my ballot.

Would you

have to put a 15-foot marble statue of a game character in front of your home forever?

Who is the character and what is the pose?

Nico Bellic pointing a gun.

That's a sweet skip played.

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

Hey, thanks to Emma Erdbrink for filling in.

Thanks for having me.

Emma, anything you'd like to plug?

Doughboys.

Hey, check it out.

I've got some chain restaurants.

Sure, plug this bigger show.

Our music is by Ben Prunty.

BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

You can find our merch at kinshipgoods.com and check out Get Animator's sister show on Patreon.

Matt, what's going on over there?

We're watching one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my fucking life.

Elfin, it's Elfin Lead?

Elfin Lead,

the show that inspired the existence of Stranger Things.

We are watching it as Stranger Things returns for its final season so that we can see what happened to give these boys these ideas.

And if this entices you at all to watch along with us, when I revealed in the Discord that we were watching this show,

there were multiple comments that were just, Jesus Christ.

Find that over at patreon.com slash get played.

And you know what got played?

What?

The PlayStation One sound.

That was a head gum podcast.