20 Years of Xbox 360 + Console Draft

Speaker 1 This is a head gun podcast.

Speaker 2 Hey guys, I know Heather's not here, but

Speaker 2 I feel like I have to tell you guys something.

Speaker 2 Ranch, this includes you too. I just feel like I have to tell you guys.

Speaker 2 I got some news this week, and it's not great news. Yeah, I wasn't liking your tone here.

Speaker 2 I'm just gonna get out with it right now. Um, I have the red ring of death.
Oh my god, man, I'm so sorry. Yeah, it was not news I was ready to hear or anything like that, but um

Speaker 2 apparently there's nothing they can do about it. Um,

Speaker 2 but I decided that

Speaker 2 I think I'm just gonna

Speaker 2 just do my best to sort of like keep on keeping on, you know? What happened?

Speaker 2 Like, you know, you get up in the morning and you sort of notice the three parts of the circle on your chest are lit up in red and you're just like, I got to get this thing checked out.

Speaker 2 I hope it's not the worst. It's basically exactly that.
I woke up one morning and just did everything that I normally do every single morning.

Speaker 2 Brush your teeth. Brush your teeth.

Speaker 2 Well, you floss, of course. Oh, I floss.
I floss.

Speaker 2 I'll probably do a little face wash. Do a little face wash.
I've been doing trying to do that a little bit more recently, actually.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and here's the thing I want to really emphasize this part, not necessarily in this order. Okay, yeah, I got it.

Speaker 2 But I am doing all these things at some point in my morning, yeah, and then I just do a little stretch, do a little. I mean, I honestly should be doing that a little bit more.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've been doing that, it's actually like a good thing to do as you get older. I heard about this

Speaker 2 younger than me, but well, I guess you and you'll kind of just be stuck here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm hoping to not gonna get not gonna get to my age, are you? Not getting any older, I guess.

Speaker 2 Sort of a sorry, buddy. It's okay, no, no, no, it's fine.
I, you know, we, we, we, we, we, we laugh so we do not cry. We gotta laugh.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing: I knew coming in that it was going to be a little bit funny. Yeah.
Because you know, I am sort of famously the Xbox kid. And of course, this would happen to me.

Speaker 2 What an ironic death for the Xbox kid. Yeah.
Yeah. But anyway.
Anyway, rest in power, Matt Abadaka. Who should we replace you on the show?

Speaker 2 Probably just like my brother, maybe. Okay, great.
My twin brother. Yeah, give me his contact in.
Okay, I'll text him. He's going to say no.

Speaker 2 But anyway, yeah.

Speaker 2 I guess you guys, um,

Speaker 2 well, we'll just end it. That's fine.

Speaker 2 I ran out of, I like, ran out of juice in a tank. I was just like, actually, why bother? We ended on a laugh.
That's fine.

Speaker 2 We dance with our Kinects and attach our HD DVD drives as we discuss the 20th anniversary of the Xbox 360. 20th anniversary, Jesus Christ, this week on Get Played.

Speaker 2 Wow, it's Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played.

Speaker 2 I'm your host, Tiger Weiger, along with my co-host, the Xbox Kid, Matt Apodaka. Hello, everyone.
Ooh, dusting off.

Speaker 2 Dusting off an old one. That's right.
You are Mr. Games, but you are also the finisher.
Yeah. And you are also the Xbox Kid.
There's more in there, right?

Speaker 2 Give me, Lord, it's time to go back to the old me.

Speaker 2 Xbox Kid, the correct, like

Speaker 2 a wrestler bringing back their old gimmick, like

Speaker 2 mankind deciding to be a cactus jack. You know,

Speaker 2 it's that sort of environment here. Hollywood Hulk Hogan going back to regular Hulk Hogan.
That's right, yes. Rest in power.
Rest in power. The famed racist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Destroyer of the one true evil, the website, Gawker.

Speaker 2 Railed his buddy's wife on camera and said a racial slur. How much sushi do you think he had to eat to be that full? I, you know, I will say this.

Speaker 2 It is the one piece of media, the Hulk Hogan sex tape, which I've never watched in its entirety. Yeah.
But I do know that clip. Usually I scrubbed to the end.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 See this thing finish up.

Speaker 2 I got to know how it ends.

Speaker 2 What the hell? What the hell? Where'd all that stuff come from?

Speaker 2 It's the one piece of media I had ever seen engage with the idea of being too full to fuck. Yeah.
Which is like, it's like, oh, that's an interesting thing about having a body that, you know.

Speaker 2 It's like... You can identify the feeling,

Speaker 2 but like... I guess

Speaker 2 you've never seen it in a film. You'd never see a rom-com that had that.

Speaker 2 Or maybe there is a rom-com where that happens, but I don't think it's a- It's in a deleted scene of when Harry met Sally, I think, actually.

Speaker 2 I had too much of what she was having.

Speaker 2 I can't.

Speaker 2 But I guess you could eat enough sushi to become full. Like too sushi.
I've gotten full off of sushi. Let me tell you, that's a bad full.
You don't want to get stuffed off of sushi.

Speaker 2 Because your mind doesn't stop at the time your stomach goes. Oh, yes, yeah.
So like you kind of think you're just putting them away because they're little.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden you're like, oh no, I'm like completely round now from eating this many.

Speaker 2 You don't want to over-order at a sushi restaurant or you're, you're at one of those places where it's coming by on the boats or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 2 And it's just like, then all of a sudden you're, you're, you're, you're overindulging. That's, that's a bad, a bad situation.
Heather Ann Campbell is out this week. Yes.
Uh, everything is fine.

Speaker 2 She just had a scheduling conflict. So it's just the boys and ranch.
It's just the boys and ranch. And you know what? Ranch is one of the boys.

Speaker 2 That was cool as hell. Yeah, it was way cooler than us.

Speaker 2 I think, and this, and maybe this is like a crazy take. Yeah.
I think, and I think Heather would have a lot to say about this, actually, if she were here.

Speaker 2 I think when the rolls are too crazy, we're not having, we're not really like having fun anymore. Totally agree.

Speaker 2 It's you end up in a situation where it's just like, okay, well, I got, you know, it's got crab in here and shrimp tempura, and then there's salmon row on top. There's like cream cheese.
Spicy mayo.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we get spicy mayo, like Peter North Don there. I'm like, I'm reaching the point.
It's like, this is ungopachka. You get too many things, too many components.

Speaker 2 And it's just because you're trying to

Speaker 2 one-up

Speaker 2 the craziest role at some other competing place. Yes.

Speaker 2 And I just don't need it.

Speaker 2 Keep it simple.

Speaker 2 I'd always like a Nigiri or even a sashimi over a roll in general. But if I am going to get a role, I want something like, I want one of the classics.
Give me a spicy tuna roll. That's all I need.

Speaker 2 Salmon avocado, like something like just like plain. I'll go a little crazy with like a Philadelphia roll, but that's like maybe as far as I need to go.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 We went to a place, we all went to a place that had like interesting roles. And I would qualify interesting over crazy.
Well, so this is the thing. Yes.

Speaker 2 This is a, this is a

Speaker 2 style of, there's Peruvian sushi, which is a style. There's a lot, there's a big Japanese expat population in Peru.
And so they have like, you know, they're kind of own

Speaker 2 sushi culture. There are some Peruvian sushi restaurants in, I mean, I imagine everywhere, but there's a, there's a, you'll run into them in, in Southern California.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it is just like a different style. It's a different approach.
But this is one of those places. And it's, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 There's some novelty to it, but they're not throwing in so many components where I'm just like overwhelmed by a bunch of flavors. I don't even know what I'm eating anymore.
Because like.

Speaker 2 If you have to like really widen your bite to take a bite of sushi, we lost the plot completely. 100%.
No, I fully agree.

Speaker 2 I'm trying to look at a menu for one of these like kind of more chainy fast food places to see, like, like, get a sense of some of the things that we're dealing with here.

Speaker 2 Um, have you ever been to Kabuki? Oh, yeah, Kabuki's. Kabuki gets the job done.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's fun. And I'm not, I'm not trying to go against Kabuki specifically, but I'm just kind of looking for an instance of the kind of thing.
See, shrimp roll, California roll, okay, fine.

Speaker 2 Uh, Philadelphia roll, I mentioned, yeah, that's fine. Salmon skin roll, yeah, okay, okay.
We're not, we're not doing anything too crazy here.

Speaker 2 It doesn't look like they actually have the completely wild

Speaker 2 and crazy

Speaker 2 oh, Oh, here we go. Specialty roll.
It's a different category. Yes.
Yeah. Okay, here we go.
Here we go. Kabuki roll.

Speaker 2 Spicy crunch roll topped with tuna, salmon, yellowtail, spicy albacore, spicy tuna, smelt egg, salmon egg, and crab. That's just like all the kind.
We got five different types of fish.

Speaker 2 We've got two different kinds of row, and then we've also got some shellfish on there where we got the crab meat. What are we doing? I'll just like get a burger if I want.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what exactly? What are we doing? Cilantro albacore roll. Shrimp tempura, cream cheese, albacore, crab meat, cilantro, vinaigrette,

Speaker 2 red onion, and soy paper. No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's not, that's not, I'm not going to order that. I want like, I want a couple of just like normal rolls for like the table.
We're all picking at it.

Speaker 2 And then I kind of want like a side thing of like my own little like miso soup and then maybe another small other little thing.

Speaker 2 And then I'm like the happiest guy you've ever seen at one of these restaurants. Here we go.
Aladdin roll. Spicy albacore, shrimp tempura, lettuce and smelt egg.
Lettuce in this roll? Lettuce?

Speaker 2 I got a wish. Make this roll go away.

Speaker 2 The way I was hoping you'd say that, uh-huh.

Speaker 2 It was as if I made a wish of my very own. A lava roll.
Now, you know, I'm a bit of a heat seeker. I like to like things spicy.

Speaker 2 Salmon, cream cheese, spicy tuna, crab, avocado, deep-fried jalapenos, spicy mayo eel sauce. Just too many components.

Speaker 2 Once you start getting like three sauces in there, I'm just like, I'm out. You just hit us with a lava.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'll do a lava sometimes. I just, I don't have like a, an issue.

Speaker 2 I just kind of wanted to, I, I feel like that's the type of thing that like the people online will be like, nobody said anything when he said that.

Speaker 2 And I kind of just like, I'm putting it out, but like, I have no issue. I'm not, I'm not upset with you commenting on it.
I think it needed to be acknowledged. This is how normal people converse.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We're sort of like, I had to say something, but I don't care.
Like, and I'm actually not upset that you said something.

Speaker 2 Okay, I feel like this is a fixture you'll see on like, this is, this is not specific to Kabuki. I've seen this at a lot of different places.

Speaker 2 The rainbow roll, which is again similar, similar to the kabuki roll. Tuna, salmon, yellowtail, halibut, shrimp, avocado, and California roll.

Speaker 2 I just don't, I just, like, I don't know why we're good doing all these fish. We don't got to do all that.
Yeah. Just like one fish and like one vegetable ingredient.
That's it.

Speaker 2 Well, I really think a lot of these two are for, and, and it's, hey, it's fine.

Speaker 2 I know those, I know this, this segment exists where there are people who are like, maybe like a little bit less into raw dishes or they just like, they don't necessarily like sushi, but they're at a sushi restaurant.

Speaker 2 So, like, what's something I can order that's more like an app at a chili's? So, that's why you end up with these ones that are like deep-fried and like you know, doused in eel sauce or whatever.

Speaker 2 I don't need a baked roll ever. Like, that to me, like, I don't need to

Speaker 2 like that at all. Yeah, yeah, no, thank you.
Kind of get something that's covered in sauce, get grow up

Speaker 2 gonna eat it with a fork, you fucking freak.

Speaker 2 Rancher producer Rochelle Chen, where are you with? Where are you with sushi? Do you have any favorites?

Speaker 2 I usually just usually go for Nigiri. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 The rainbow roll pisses me off so much. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 mostly it's like fish you don't really want on top of it.

Speaker 2 And it like looks pretty, but then you always get left with like the shitty fish. Yeah.
For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But yeah, usually Nigiri. or a California roll is also I always like.

Speaker 2 But yeah, simple. I feel like you'll sometimes see like a rainbow roll at it, like it's like a Chinese restaurant, but they also serve sushi for some restaurant or something like that.

Speaker 2 A place that's trying like the PF Chang sort of Pan-Asian sort of approximation. And yeah, it never really satisfies.
And then like, it'll be like a piece of like

Speaker 2 tempura shrimp, but it'll be like just like the shrimp tail. I'm like, well, I can't eat this.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I have to pull this out to eat this. What the hell? This is just a garnish.
I actually do eat the shrimp tail. Do you eat a shrimp tail?

Speaker 2 Do people eat the shrimp chimptuid i just like i'm scared told me really

Speaker 2 i don't know when i was little she was like you should eat you can eat it it makes sense that you could eat it yeah i just thought it tastes good no it didn't seem like a pleasant bite yeah

Speaker 2 i

Speaker 2 we find out ranch also eats the bones

Speaker 2 you can eat some bones yeah should we i guess we should this will be a week late but we should probably talk about the game awards nominees yeah and once again the premiere video game podcast was fucking spot on across the goddamn board, weren't we?

Speaker 2 The Game Awards streaming on, we absolutely were, 20 for 25 streaming on Thursday, December 11th. They revealed the nominees as of the day of this record recording pretty early this week.
Yes.

Speaker 2 That's how the schedule worked out. Game of the year.
Just to give you an idea of when we're recording,

Speaker 2 Garfield not happy with us right now. And I'll just leave it at that.
I was certainly not happy when this episode comes out either.

Speaker 2 Garfield, our least biggest fan

Speaker 2 enemy of the podcast

Speaker 2 game of the year clair obscure expedition 33 death stranding 2 on the beach donkey kong bonanza hades 2 hollow night silk song kingdom come deliverance 2 that's maybe the one that's kind of i think hades 2 probably a little bit perhaps a little bit of a surprise mild surprise although it came out recently enough but kingdom come deliverance 2 coming at the start of the year and

Speaker 2 I think there was a fear that it might be forgotten or could be overshadowed by a more recent game like Ghost of Yote.

Speaker 2 I think people were kind of surprised by that. Also, just the absence of Blue Prince from Game of the Year actually was separately talking to Heather off pod, and she was pretty struck by it.

Speaker 2 Did Heather say anything about me?

Speaker 2 She asked if you were going to be at the record, and I said yes, and then she said she couldn't make it. Oh, interesting.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'll just like

Speaker 2 think about that instead of speaking tonight. It did get Blueprints did get a nominee for debut indie game along with Claire Obscure

Speaker 2 and a few other ones, including Megabon. It's kind of crazy.
I know, and it's like, I know that Claire Obscure is technically, is an indie game. Right.

Speaker 2 But kind of weird to think of it as that, kind of, to me for some reason. It feels like it's like so robust and so like, not that indie games aren't robust.
It just kind of feels more AAA than

Speaker 2 what you would come to expect from an indie studio. I'm kind of surprised under indie game, we didn't see a nominee for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Speaker 2 He's fucking back.

Speaker 2 I was talking to somebody over the weekend, and they were saying that

Speaker 2 they had just gone to the Vatican, and they were looking up at the,

Speaker 2 what is it called? The Sistine Chapel. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And they were not very impressed with it because they had seen it in really great detail in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Speaker 2 They were kind of just like, it was okay. Yeah, yeah.
That's really funny.

Speaker 2 Did you, how far, how far did you get in that game?

Speaker 2 Not very far. I,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 I kind of just, I didn't love that it was, it didn't seem to me that it was necessary for it to be in first person. Oh, sure.

Speaker 2 Because, like, the experience of playing an Indiana Jones game to me isn't that I'm Indiana Jones. I kind of just want to like see him doing cool stuff.

Speaker 2 And I'm, so I'm not getting the satisfaction of like watching a you know fist come in and punching like you know this guy

Speaker 2 or whatever or like cracking a whip or anything like that. I want to see, I want to see my guy.
It's kind of the issue, and I heard these games are good, and I haven't played them.

Speaker 2 I haven't played either the RoboCop. Actually, I don't know if the second one's out yet.
I think it is.

Speaker 2 It's like a standalone DLC. The standalone DLC, but the RoboCop games,

Speaker 2 it's the same sort of thing. It's just like, I don't want to have RoboCops POV.

Speaker 2 I want a character action game, a third-person game where I'm seeing the RoboCop character model. And see, that's where you and I differ.

Speaker 2 I do want the RoboCop POV because you sitting there right now, you'd be looking like a slice of Swiss cheese, my man.

Speaker 2 Blast my dick off.

Speaker 2 Just like too much.

Speaker 2 Like, what the?

Speaker 2 RoboCop went a little too hard, actually. It rocks.
I still have never seen it. I gotta watch it.
Matt, treat yourself. It's fucking awesome.
You know what I watched this weekend?

Speaker 2 There was a criterion sale. There's a criterion sale going on right now, so I treated myself to some discs.
Might get back in there actually before the end of the sale.

Speaker 2 I got

Speaker 2 one of my favorite movies I think I've ever seen, Perfect Days, which we've talked about

Speaker 2 a bit.

Speaker 2 I got Sorcerer, which I hadn't seen.

Speaker 2 So I'm excited to watch that. But this weekend, I watched, I re-watched No Country for Old Men, which I hadn't seen in a long time.
Just an absolute ripper. Just great stuff.

Speaker 2 And then I watched Thief for the first time. Oh, sure, yeah.
Thief? James Khan. Whip's ass.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And my letterbox review of that movie was when I was

Speaker 2 a courtesy clerk at Albertson's when I was 19 years old, one of the old ladies that I used to hang out with when I worked there.

Speaker 2 You know how you had your first job and you just kind of hung out with old people? Like when you worked there, you're like, my best friend at work is like an old person. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's just, like, you're just, you're just like kind of an adult. And I was like, oh, wait, we're all, we're all just adults.

Speaker 2 So the 60-like-year-old woman told me when I was a 19-year-old that I had the shoulders of a young James Conn. And I've been haunted by this thought ever since.
Haunted?

Speaker 2 It was too flattering.

Speaker 2 It was very, very nice because I hadn't seen really, I didn't, my only experience of James Conn was an older man. So watching him be a little bit younger and sure, I was kind of like, oh, she was.

Speaker 2 This lady was flirting with me. James Kahn was like an athlete.
No, he was like, he would, he looked great when he was young.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think he looked great the whole way, but like, like when he's younger, he had a very, very, you athletic build. But in that classic sort of

Speaker 2 70s sort of guy, but before everyone got on steroids, HGH. He was just like cut.
He was just a guy who was just in good shape.

Speaker 2 But I brought those up to be like, I am watching movies that I hadn't seen before. But

Speaker 2 I got to bump Robocop up into the list because

Speaker 2 it should be in my letterbox top four. I just saw the Edgar Wright remake of Running Man with Glenn Powell, which I was like, okay, on.
I mean, it's closer to the source, but not really.

Speaker 2 And then the... You're a big kinghead.
I'm a kinghead. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I've listened to the Just King Things podcast that did and

Speaker 2 been reading a lot of his bibliography. But the

Speaker 2 so I re-watched last night the 1987 Schwarzenegger Running Man, which deviates wildly from the source, but I think is just such a more successful movie. And it's so fun.

Speaker 2 The thing it has that RoboCop is way better at, but Running Man still is pretty good at it, is kind of

Speaker 2 satirizing 80s consumer culture. And then also just...

Speaker 2 in a way that's just like a little too on the nose talking about like, you know, like,

Speaker 2 it's set in 2017, so it's like 30 years in the future. And it's like, you know, income inequality has created a world of haves and have-nots.
People live in tents outside of skyscrapers.

Speaker 2 You know, it's just like, just

Speaker 2 a police state has outlawed much media. It's like, oh, yeah, okay.
All right. So, like, when's the fucking movie started?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 no disrespect to Glenn. The real thing that that movie's got that the new one doesn't have.

Speaker 2 Arnie, baby. Arnie's good.
Arnie's fun to watch. Yeah, I love Glenn Powell.
I think

Speaker 2 he's a great actor. I think he's a legit movie star.
It's a little bit of a tough bit of casting for him because he's such like an angry sort of like asshole character he's trying to evoke.

Speaker 2 And they're just like, I don't buy this from this guy. You kind of want to see him having a little fun.
Yeah, yeah, being a charming guy. Yeah.
He should be Indiana Jones. Yeah, anyway.
No.

Speaker 2 Boy, are they ever going to have another Indiana Jones?

Speaker 2 They had the young Indiana Jones Chronicles. They did cast some

Speaker 2 different actors. I think of the options we have, I think he would be the best at it.
I wonder if they'll continue that franchise. It feels so they'll do one more with Harrison when he's fucking 90.

Speaker 2 Goes back to see Archimedes again.

Speaker 2 I have to stop 9-11.

Speaker 2 He's just like this ancient man.

Speaker 2 Wait, you're past 2001 now? The movie took place in 2004, and he's fucking like 103 or some shit. I have to stop 9-11 to prevent the re-election of George W.
Bush.

Speaker 2 He knows time travel is real, so he's going to go back. It is taking him a minute.
He's like, I have one last job. Fucking gets the whip, fucking cinches his spine so he's standing up straight.

Speaker 2 Time to get to work. And Chewbacca's in the movie, too.
He's like, let's go, Chewie. Yeah, Chewbacca is, of course, in the movie.
Finally, the crossover redemanded.

Speaker 2 Build out the Ford verse.

Speaker 2 What's his name?

Speaker 2 I almost called him Deckard Kane, but that's not his name. What do you mean? From Blade Runner.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 It is Deckard, though. It's Deckard.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's a name that should come back, I think. It's a great name.
I mean, Deckard Gain, obviously, reference. Yeah.
Well, Rick Deckard. Rick Deckard.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Anyway, he gets in there. He gets in there.
And of course, they take a trip to the Mosquito Coast.

Speaker 2 Should we talk about some video games on this video game podcast? I think so. Congratulations to all the nominees, by the way.

Speaker 2 It feels as clear, obscure as the race to lose, right?

Speaker 2 I really do think it's that or Silk Song, but I think the difficulty discourse of Silk Song is maybe going to do more harm than good.

Speaker 2 And I also kind of feel like

Speaker 2 that's a similar sort of thing. I have not played Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
Heather has. Heather loves it.

Speaker 2 But I mean, that's another game that's like a little bit less, quite a bit less successful than some of these other ones.

Speaker 2 So I could see that one also being, you know, not quite having the push from voters to put it over the top. Then again, the Game Awards will surprise you sometimes.

Speaker 2 It takes two getting the statue of a few years ago. So who knows? Maybe you could have a dark horse in there.

Speaker 2 But I think if there was going to be a dark horse, I'd actually probably go with Death Stranding too. I think that would be kind of like the surprise resurgence and like a Kojima reappreciation.

Speaker 2 It would be nice. I do think that that game did a lot of really great things very well.

Speaker 2 But it's, you know,

Speaker 2 I think it sold well too, but I just don't know if it like had the

Speaker 2 It didn't have the like staying power in the discourse that

Speaker 2 Claire Obscure seemed to have but i would love it i would love uh death stranding to bring home the hardware yes

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Speaker 2 you know, Matt, we ask a question every week on the podcast, and uh, I think it's time to ask that question, that question pertaining to any video games that we have played, yeah, since the last time we recorded.

Speaker 2 No, yeah, interesting, and it's interesting. It's uh, that's a good question to get into.
It's a good general topic. We've always got something to talk about, and that question is,

Speaker 2 what are you playing?

Speaker 1 What are you playing?

Speaker 1 Curse you, Bail.

Speaker 2 Oh, God. No, it's...
It is I, Egon. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 Your fears made flesh. Solid of scale you may be, foul dragon, but I will riddle with holes your rotten hide with a hail of harpoons.
With every last drop of my being.

Speaker 2 Hey, Matt.

Speaker 2 Hey, Egon, how's it going, man?

Speaker 1 Ah, it's going pretty good.

Speaker 2 I'm hanging in there. You're hanging in there.
I know that, you know, that bail seems to be giving you a lot of trouble. Bail!

Speaker 1 Vile bail!

Speaker 2 Oh, terror and carnage!

Speaker 2 Can I ask? Oh, you know what? You're here to ask us a question. I haven't...

Speaker 1 You parked in front of my driveway for the last time, bail!

Speaker 2 I wonder if I could ask you a couple questions, actually.

Speaker 2 Who's your favorite Batman?

Speaker 2 Ah, favorite Batman. Why, that would have to be Christian Bail!

Speaker 2 Alright, that's my only question, I think.

Speaker 2 But, like, he's parked in front of your driveway. All these, all these offenses sort of don't really seem to be, no offense, that big a deal, honestly.
I know that he fucked your wife, I think.

Speaker 1 You really are minimizing the damage done to me, Egon, by Bale the Dread, who has haunted me. You know, I saw him last week at Handel's ice cream parlor.

Speaker 2 You saw him at Handel's?

Speaker 1 I was there to get myself a treat. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I wanted to have a scoop of blue monster in a cone.

Speaker 1 And Bail was in front of me in line. Of course, doesn't even say hello.

Speaker 2 Okay, yeah. And that's always so awkward when you run into somebody you don't really like and they're just like right in front of you.

Speaker 1 He asked for 14 samples.

Speaker 2 I thought there was a limit of three.

Speaker 1 And then he didn't even get a scoop. He left without paying.
Curse you, Bail.

Speaker 2 All right, you know what? I wasn't. I wasn't really sure before.
I'm on your side now because that is, I think that's rude. I think no matter what, if you get a sample, you're buying a scoop.

Speaker 2 You gotta buy a scoop, I think. Thank you, Matt.
Thank you for agreeing with me. And I have to ask you

Speaker 2 here before I go,

Speaker 2 before I go to hopefully

Speaker 2 no longer be haunted by the curse of Baal the Dread. Matt Appodaka, what are you playing? Thank you so much, Egon.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 I feel feel sort of different when he comes around. Yeah, I mean, he brings a lot of

Speaker 2 pizzazz, I guess.

Speaker 2 Yeah, flair, certainly. Attitude.
Attitude.

Speaker 2 So I'm playing Ghost of Yotay pretty much exclusively right now. Wow.
And

Speaker 2 it is

Speaker 2 just an like just an incredible, incredible experience.

Speaker 2 I'm almost not doing any story things. Wow.
I am just following the wind and discovering,

Speaker 2 you know, little foxholes and,

Speaker 2 you know, happening upon settlers who need help and things like that. And just like

Speaker 2 destroying. I did complete one major side quest, which was

Speaker 2 leveling up an entire weapon. Just like one skill tree, like weapon.
And I think I'm going to do that for the other weapons as well, of course. But which weapon?

Speaker 2 Or is that, are we, is it too much of a spoiler? No, it's not too much of a spoiler. It's more that I like don't know how to say it.
Got it.

Speaker 2 But it is like, it's like one end of it is like a heavy spike ball, and then the other end of it is like a blade. So you're kind of like, it's almost the same.

Speaker 2 It's like almost the equivalent of like Kratos' blades, kind of, where it has that kind of gameplay. I really like that.

Speaker 2 You use the heavy ball to break shields and then the... the knife to like slash and stuff.
It rocks.

Speaker 2 But I leveled that up and I got like the best one in the game from like the guy who teaches you how to use it. And I,

Speaker 2 you know, Erica was here. Their performance is so fucking good in this game.
Erica Ishii, recent podcast guest, who was also nominated for a game award. Yes, incredible.
Congratulations to them.

Speaker 2 Really well deserved.

Speaker 2 Just truly, just like an insane performance.

Speaker 2 Also gets to be like kind of funny.

Speaker 2 Like gets to like there's like a lot of serious stuff, but there is some like very like light humor throughout the game where like Atsu will just be like obviously like very annoyed when when somebody

Speaker 2 it's so good

Speaker 2 weird I think they were doing that bit when I was here

Speaker 2 hi buddy I'm Weiger

Speaker 2 but the the gameplay is just so good and then you know what

Speaker 2 I I this is such a small thing

Speaker 2 I had it on the PlayStation 5 menu screen and like the cursor was like on the game like on the ghost of Yote icon and I was just like listening to the music that was playing like in the menu and was just like, this is like the most beautiful music I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 It's just, it's so, so great. The score is really wonderful.

Speaker 2 A lot of like flutes and stuff, a lot of like wind, like wind instruments.

Speaker 2 And then of course the,

Speaker 2 what is the one that Heather got called?

Speaker 2 The Shama Sen. The Shamisen.
That's a great instrument as well.

Speaker 2 But I'm just having a blast with it. I think I'm like 50 hours in, and I think I'm only, I'm less than like halfway done with the story.
Because I'm just going in, like, just,

Speaker 2 you know, defeating camps and stuff. That's like the, that's the really, really fun stuff.

Speaker 2 I got like the upgraded heavy bow, so I'm able to just like snipe guys with like huge armor from like far away and just like kill them. It rocks.
It's so good. I love the bow.
Hearing the bow sound.

Speaker 2 Oh, man.

Speaker 2 Sound design goes such a long way for me. Yeah.
Hearing the

Speaker 2 stretch of the bow.

Speaker 2 That's good shit, man. That's good, good stuff.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And there's like, there's four weapons that you can choose from or like that you can switch through. And each weapon is like better against the other.

Speaker 2 You know, there's certain weapons that are better against other weapons. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And like sometimes that can not frustrate me, but sometimes I want to just be able to just use the one thing that I'm using instead of switching back and forth in between stuff.

Speaker 2 But the variety, I think they all do things so differently that the variety does make it a little more fun. Yeah.
Ranch, are you still playing Yote?

Speaker 2 Not as much because me and Mark are PlayStation time. Got it.

Speaker 2 So I haven't played in a few, like a week,

Speaker 2 but I did play Five Hours of Player Obscure last night. Oh, wow.
What do you think? I love it. I think it might be the best game I've ever played.

Speaker 2 Hell yeah. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 You got to tell Mark to hop off the damn game. He's busy writing segues on

Speaker 2 Final Fantasy

Speaker 2 Rebirth.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you can just ride segues in that game. It's good.
It's good.

Speaker 2 That game is incredible. The amount of content in Rebirth is overwhelming.
Yes. I mean, this is the whole issue with any sort of open world game, but in particular,

Speaker 2 Rebirth, and I have, I haven't gotten into Yote yet, but my understanding is similarly dense with content. There's a lot, like I was like, not, I was on my way to a side thing today

Speaker 2 and then stumbled upon a different side thing. I was like, well, I'm going to go help this guy get his horses.
Like, he was like, I need my horses are lost. Can you help me get them?

Speaker 2 I was like, I'll do anything for these horses. I'm already on a tangent.
Now I'm going to do another tangent. Exactly.
Yeah. At a certain point, I do tire of doing that, though.

Speaker 2 And then I will get, you know, follow the story a little bit more but the fast traveling just makes it so easy to be like just to get off the beaten path or whatever and then once you're like done doing that like okay i'm just gonna fast travel back to the the main story area and like then do that stuff so like i uh i look forward to like seeing more of that um but i was on a journey with uh one of the the yote six the the kitsune and i really thought that story was so satisfying sort of making me hungry for the other stories within the game.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like, I feel like maybe the feeling in these games sometimes is like, okay, I'm going to Target.

Speaker 2 And then I was like, oh,

Speaker 2 I'll stop by the GameStop. Yeah.
And then you go to the complex with the GameStop. It's like, well, I'll grab a Cinnabon.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's just like, like, you get so distracted by shit.

Speaker 2 It's like, I've lost the plot. I forgot about the original object.
I never got to Target. I never actually got to Target.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I'm playing. I'm looking forward to spending more time with it.
I think it'll be

Speaker 2 because we got some games coming out that I'm like, I got it. I got it.
I can't. They never stop.
They never stop. And I'm like, I sort of have decided, I think, I'm going to cave on this.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I kind of don't think I can get Metroid Prime 4 until I'm done with at least Yote, if not that and Silk Song. I think.

Speaker 2 There are certain games where I'm like, I will get this regardless. And there are other ones where, yeah, I will instill a similar sort of restriction.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And what will oftentimes happen is that I just never play that game. Yeah.
I just never get to it. Yeah.
Someday never comes. I got it.

Speaker 2 Someday never comes, and then you live in the long shadow of regret.

Speaker 2 That's life, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Man.

Speaker 2 That's what Frank Sinatra used to say.

Speaker 2 That's life.

Speaker 2 Right, that was him? Yeah, that's his song. That's what all the people say.
Yeah, I think that was Sinatra. He said a lot of crazy stuff.
I don't listen to everything he says. Just that.

Speaker 2 What are you playing, Nick? Matt, thank you so much for asking.

Speaker 2 I ended up playing a game that was not on my radar, but that I'd read about and I'd heard some really good things, and it felt like something that would appeal to me specifically. Oh.

Speaker 2 So I bought it and I played it and I 100%ed it over the weekend

Speaker 2 in a total playtime of about four hours. It's a particularly slight game.
The game is called Strange Jigsaws. Two words, Strange Jigsaws.

Speaker 2 It is developed by Solo Dev Phleb, who previously did the free game 20 Small Mazes. I read a profile of Phleb

Speaker 2 after I finished Strange Jigsaws. You see what's going on with this guy.

Speaker 2 An engineer who lives in North Carolina, a hobbyist puzzler, who I guess has been involved in some MIT puzzles in the past, contests, and makes them on his own. Also has five kids, which is wild.

Speaker 2 It's just like, oh, I've got this other career, but I'm also going to make this full game in my save,

Speaker 2 my spare time in the Godot engine as a solo dev. And then I'm also going to raise five children.
Also, I have to make five PBNJs every morning for their school lunches and, you know, wipe five asses.

Speaker 2 I got no kids. And I'm like, I don't know if I can do two podcasts.

Speaker 2 A lot. This is a lot of stuff.
Got to come to the studio twice a week.

Speaker 2 I got to talk and have fun.

Speaker 2 Do you think Strange Jigsaws was inspired by

Speaker 2 his victims being like, this guy's fucking strange. Hopefully not, because I don't think Phleb is particularly twisted in the way of jigsaw from the soft ranch.
Okay, thank God.

Speaker 2 It seems like Phleb is a little bit more wholesome. Although there is like kind of like a, you know, very fun, all-ages appropriate,

Speaker 2 sort of a dad sort of vibe sense of humor to everything in it. It's just, it's just, it's got a little bit of light absurdism, but in a very fun, accessible way.
This design is so compelling.

Speaker 2 This is such a cool game.

Speaker 2 It's basically, I'll just read verbatim the Steam description because this will set it up a little bit.

Speaker 2 Solve around 50 or so strange jigsaws, each with their own surprising way of being solved.

Speaker 2 Enter the jigsaw verse, maybe, because yes, as you start to expand on this, as you start to solve the puzzles, it starts to lead to a larger, I'd say kind of pseudo-narrative, but more largely kind of like a meta sort of aspect to it.

Speaker 2 For instance, very early on, one of the first things you do is it opens like a fake UX where you've got like a bunch of different, the way the connective tissue between the different games is that they are all apps on like a you know like a Windows 98 kind of sort of throwback OS yeah and then you will play through all of them and when all those get completed it goes to a different way uh where you've got a different sort of layer to how you are stepping through this and this continues all the way to the post-game where there are a you know like like you're playing through

Speaker 2 prototypes of previous versions or whatever, what are ostensibly prototypes. So it really sort of expands the whole

Speaker 2 world of

Speaker 2 this thing that lives entirely within

Speaker 2 menus, lives entirely within

Speaker 2 the sort of more abstract graphical elements and is just purely just an interactive puzzle book, but in a really

Speaker 2 much bolder and more expansive way than you might expect.

Speaker 2 And it's also like a game that I didn't

Speaker 2 use any of the accessibility functions, but it seems like it's got colorblind-friendly mode built in, which is like, you know, there are some puzzles that are color

Speaker 2 contingent, one of which I'll talk about. And, you know, it's got stuff for people who are hard of hearing as well, because some of them do involve some sort of

Speaker 2 voice or music

Speaker 2 as clues. So it's kind of helpful from that standpoint.

Speaker 2 But if you like the lateral thinking puzzle parts of like Blue Prince, for instance, which I know some people who are playing that game, there's like, that's what they really responded to more than the roguelite element.

Speaker 2 Yeah. More than the story is just like, oh, these puzzles are cool.
It's just just the puzzles. It's really just that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, as I mentioned, it's divided into layers as you progress through each of the different aspects of it, each of kind of like the different hub worlds that all have sort of different framing devices.

Speaker 2 I'll just talk about a few of the specific puzzles. One, you know, you may know me in my other life as the burger boy.
That's right. We're talking food earlier.
That's right. This is this is

Speaker 2 hamburgers are my thing. And there's a game called hamburger maestro, which is just basically like kind of like burger time.

Speaker 2 You're assembling hamburgers in order, but they are just sort of presented with clues of like above and next to. So it'll be like patty above cheese.

Speaker 2 cheese uh next to bacon bacon not next to onion you know like it'll be a bunch of different clues like that and as such there's one specific pattern uh that satisfies all of these requirements and you just kind of have to like use your your methods of deduction to sort of figure it out yeah and it's it's just like it's you start with that it's really really simple but then then it heightens a few different times.

Speaker 2 And then it reaches like a kind of a logical endpoint. It's like, okay, you've taken this as far as it could go.

Speaker 2 There's one that's called Jigsaw Mountain, which is like, you've got a bunch of jigsaw pieces, but they're like, we don't have enough pieces. Some of these are from a different puzzle.

Speaker 2 So you've got to recolor them so they fit in.

Speaker 2 So it's like the shape sort of determines where they fit into, but then you have to use paint tools to recolor them so that the

Speaker 2 pattern of the piece, the jigsaw piece, fits into the overall picture.

Speaker 2 But because it's a different image on it, you have to choose like how you're going to color it so that it corresponds. So it's a little bit more abstract than it sounds.

Speaker 2 But it's just like really cool. And it's just like, oh, this is a thing I wasn't expecting for before.

Speaker 2 There's also just solves for things like...

Speaker 2 There's a puzzle and a jigsaw piece you need happens to be part of the of a UX element that you weren't you would not think was like an interactive part of the play space.

Speaker 2 There's continually things like that. There's another one.
This is a very minor spoiler, but there's like a part where it's like, there's some text that says X marks the spot.

Speaker 2 And what you're actually looking for is the physical, is the letter X. You know what I mean? So it's things like that where it's just like, this isn't part of what I thought the play space was.

Speaker 2 Or actually the play space is

Speaker 2 everything that I could possibly interact with. And so it just kind of expands how you're thinking about everything.
There's a really awesome couple of brain busters.

Speaker 2 One in the post-game, which is a...

Speaker 2 just a big blue sort of like like

Speaker 2 a completely blue sort of thing that you're looking on like like like a like basically a children's drawing that's just a big scribble of blue all over

Speaker 2 one surface. And I won't dig into that one any further, any bit, any further, but it's one of the more challenging puzzles in the game.

Speaker 2 I found it like super duper satisfying to solve, and the way it heightened was really cool.

Speaker 2 There's a time machine puzzle that involves sort of like recursively zooming into and out of different phases of the puzzle, and then like, you know, kind of like rotating objects as well to change different elements that affect other

Speaker 2 aspects of it. There's a rope puzzle, which is basically a bunch of different,

Speaker 2 you're trying to recreate the, the image of, uh, of rope that you're seeing.

Speaker 2 You're trying to like, but, but it's a bunch of different tiles that are all tilted in different directions that you have to connect with physical rope to get them to stitch together into one, um,

Speaker 2 into a cohesive picture. Okay.
That, that is what you're like, what it represented.

Speaker 2 Uh, what you're, I'm explaining this really clunkily, but it is a, it's just one of those things where it's like, oh, it's kind of a brain buster.

Speaker 2 And I'm just like, I'm essentially just arranging six tiles but the way that it's presented is just kind of

Speaker 2 making me think about this in a completely different way um but it's five dollars i saw that i think i'm just gonna get it

Speaker 2 five dollars on steam yeah what can you get with five dollars almost nothing not much these days you can get well

Speaker 2 Two hot dogs at Costco and still have a little money left over. Well, I mean, Costco's a special case.
Yeah. Kayebe, it's still $1.50 at Hot Dog and Soda Combo at Costco.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The departing CEO, of course, saying it, you know, if you change the price of the hot dog, it will fucking kill you.

Speaker 2 I got to tell somebody that anecdote over the weekend and was thrilled by their reaction. I thought it was, because everybody rightfully thinks it's great.

Speaker 2 There's these puzzle boxes in Ghost of Yote, actually, that you might enjoy.

Speaker 2 You find them at various different shrines and stuff, and they are in like a 3D space. So you're like

Speaker 2 moving the box on all sides to figure out what tabs to pull out so you can slide the top of the box off. And I was actually pretty impressed.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was working my way through these like nothing, kind of. And then I got to this one that I can't fucking open.

Speaker 2 And I try it every time I play the game at least once just to be like, let's see if I maybe go this way. Nope.
And then I just like close that menu and just be like, I'll come back to it.

Speaker 2 But it's, it's, that one is on my back right now. That one's tough.

Speaker 2 I will say that this, this is, for anyone who loves puzzle games, because I, and I'll say this as someone who, this is ostensibly my job to talk about this sort of shit, this game was completely not on my radar.

Speaker 2 I somehow completely missed this game. I think it's been really, really,

Speaker 2 you know, a low-key release, obviously coming from a solo dev who did not have a big

Speaker 2 did not have a bunch of support systems to promote themselves, promote their project. I think it's been like kind of like word of mouth that's driving this.
But

Speaker 2 I would encourage anyone who likes puzzle games to check this out if you haven't already played it. And again, $5.

Speaker 2 I brought up the Del Taco app.

Speaker 2 Bean and cheese burrito with red sauce, $229.

Speaker 2 So you get two of those. Your budget is busted.
Yeah. You're trying to get that for $5.

Speaker 2 I guess you throw in the crunched tata toast toddler, maybe the mini cheddar quesadilla. Although the mini cheddar quesadilla is like $149.

Speaker 2 And it's just, yeah, like, like,

Speaker 2 I don't know. It's such a paltry amount.
Like, we're like, we're taking like a mini flour tortilla with a little bit of shredded cheddar in there. I, like you, a SoCal kid, yeah, used to be

Speaker 2 sort of more Dell taco. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like Taco Bell fine for like their crazier stuff. But for, like, the basics,

Speaker 2 that being like bean and cheese burrito, like crunchy taco type stuff, I would be like, actually, Dell's where it's at. Yeah.

Speaker 2 These days, I'm sort of thinking there's no reason to go to Dell. I think Dell is done.
I think the bell rungeth for the last time.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't go that far, but I have been, I'm perpetually disappointed by Dell talking. It's tough.
They keep excising menu items that don't need to be excised.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 their promotions are weird.

Speaker 2 And it's like, what the, you're doing pozzole? What are you talking about? You see, now this is like, I might get in there for that.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 that's interesting. It's like crazy.
It's not, it's not

Speaker 2 by any means something that you should come to expect from a drive-through place at all. Yeah.
That's sit-down food.

Speaker 2 I don't know if they've specifically done that, but that's what I feel like they're always doing. They're always throwing some sort of experiment on there.

Speaker 2 It's just like, I don't know why you're trying Ropa Vieja or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, just do, just do what you do.
Do tacos and burritos and fries.

Speaker 2 Jacob Waisaki and I will often talk about the strange offerings at Del Taco. We'll like text each other a new one to be like,

Speaker 2 basically, do you dare me to get this? And I got there.

Speaker 2 one of the last ones they did. This was maybe a couple of years ago.

Speaker 2 Uh, they had like two for six like

Speaker 2 bean cheese and carnitas burritos. And I was like, there's no way these carnitas are going to be any good at Del Taco.
And I got them and was like, you got to get to Dell,

Speaker 2 this Dell, immediately because they were, dare I say, bussing. Wow.

Speaker 2 They were good. Wow.
That was good stuff. I just know somebody back there had the wrist.
I never sampled their Carnitas.

Speaker 2 The last time I get Del Taco, because I always get their fries there. And as far as what it offers over Taco Bell, for people who aren't familiar with Del Taco,

Speaker 2 fries is the main thing. The fact that you can get a burger and fries at a place that you can also get tacos and burritos.
And the burger is just small enough that you could, I feel like,

Speaker 2 get ready for some big boy math real quick. You can get a burger and fries and still be like, I have a little room for a little bean and cheese burrito.
I'll do that all the time. It's a perfect trio.

Speaker 2 It's a perfect trio. I mean, also that double Delt cheeseburger is pretty substantial if you go all the way.
It's not nothing. It's not nothing.
Anyway,

Speaker 2 the last time I got Del Taco, I got, and also Taco Bell a lot of times has fries these days. So again, that sort of edge has kind of been smoothed over.

Speaker 2 But the Del Taco fries are plainer in a way that is more satisfying. They're a lot like Shake Shack fries.
They're the crinkle cut and they're very satisfying. Yeah.
Usually well fried.

Speaker 2 But unfortunately, last time I got them, I was like, these taste sweet.

Speaker 2 And I looked it up and it's like, they have a, they had a funnel cake fries promotion, which is all these chain restaurants are doing fungal funnel cake fries these days.

Speaker 2 They're all sourced from Cisco. It's all the same fucking product.
But they were sharing fry oil with their dessert and it tainted the flavor of their fries, which is one of the reasons I go there.

Speaker 2 I was like, this sucks. That's.

Speaker 2 Shut it down. That's get John Taffer in there.
Shut it down. Also, Funnel Cake, sorry to say, has never been it.

Speaker 2 We can't, I can't get there with it. I don't, I like Funnel Cake.
The funnel, and I think there is a version of a Funnel Cake sort of mall restaurant that could prosper if

Speaker 2 they did it right. Again, I mentioned Cinnabon earlier.

Speaker 2 If they're doing it like Cinnabon or like nothing but cakes, they're like, we're going to have a focus concept that is going to have a good version of this. Funnel cake fries are definitely not it.

Speaker 2 Get it out of there. I don't need those.
Anyway,

Speaker 2 I was just going to say to put a bow on this, the two-del tacos meal, which is two tacos, fries, and a soda,

Speaker 2 $9.79 for regular.

Speaker 2 That's not even anything. That's not even anything.
And that's not, let me just tell you, that's not getting my fat ass full.

Speaker 2 You'd be better served with the aforementioned $1.50 hot dog soda combo. One hot dog, you're kind of good.
Well, obviously, yeah, that's a much better, but you have to have a Costco warehouse with a

Speaker 2 report that you can get. And you're going to battle that parking lot.
I mean, it's like a whole thing. And

Speaker 2 you can't just get the hot dog anymore yeah although i did i think i saw somebody maybe in the discord say you can order costco postmates but there's like a it's like a or uh one of those apps but it's like a pre there's like a premium oh i'm sure for not having the membership yeah which i'm like not it's not that worth it

Speaker 2 but i'm there i'm getting i'll get myself a hot hot dog in a double chunk every time yeah oh man how many booms

Speaker 2 um probably five probably five that was pretty five big booms all big ones huh yeah interesting okay yeah tweets their own Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 2 Really, really can't say enough about Strange Jigsaws. One of the,

Speaker 2 absolutely delightful gaming experience.

Speaker 2 The most pleasant surprise of the year for me. Wow.

Speaker 2 I'm happy that you found that. That's great.
And hey, you know.

Speaker 2 No matter the

Speaker 2 what am I trying to say? Just because you knocked it out in a couple hours, that still adds to the total of how many games you completed this year. You got one in the can.
It's true.

Speaker 2 That's not nothing. Adds to the tally.

Speaker 2 I mean, and then you're the finisher, so you're the authority. My numbers are low this year.

Speaker 2 Don't get me started on my numbers. My numbers are paltry.
But I bet other stuff going on. Yeah, you got other stuff going on, too.
Barely get over here.

Speaker 2 It has to do two podcasts a week, if you can believe it.

Speaker 2 I don't hear anybody fucking banging their pots and pans for this guy.

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Speaker 2 Matt, it is the 20th anniversary of the Xbox 360. Wow, where do the years go? Launched on November 22nd, 2005, but was officially unveiled on a special that aired on May 12, 2005.

Speaker 2 MTV presents Xbox, the next generation, revealed. Let's watch a little bit of this.

Speaker 3 Welcome to the Avalon in Hollywood, California. I'm Elijah Wood, and MTV is here to bring you an exclusive look at the new Xbox, a console that's about to change digital entertainment forever.

Speaker 3 Tonight we will learn tricks from pro gamers as they take a look inside the studios of Rare in London.

Speaker 3 Then we're going four-on-four showdown style with some of your favorite celebs and gamers in the ultimate celebrity deathmatch.

Speaker 3 Also, tonight, Sway will take us to the Xbox Design Lab in Seattle and visit with the Pittman Ride guys to get their take on the Xbox.

Speaker 3 But tonight, the next Xbox isn't the only thing that looks cool, as we have a special performance from the killers like you've never seen before.

Speaker 3 Let's kick it down to MTV2's Jim Shearer for a look at the phenomenon that is the digital revolution. Thank you, Elijah.

Speaker 2 Pretty much. Pretty, it really could not be more anchored in the year 2005.
Truly

Speaker 2 alarming

Speaker 2 murderers row of 2005. I will say

Speaker 2 within the last three or four years or so, I saw the killers and it was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Wow, okay.
It was unbelievable. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was like my first concert after COVID and

Speaker 2 they did allude to that and that we probably all shouldn't be there.

Speaker 2 But it was great. It was really great.

Speaker 2 Gosh, it is, I forget that Elijah Wood is like a huge gamer, actually, and not just like a little service, like, oh, yeah, I play games type of thing. Like, he gets in there.

Speaker 2 He was like very big on Animal Crossing when the new one came out and stuff. And I recently saw a post

Speaker 2 online when the analog pocket was like new.

Speaker 2 He couldn't get one. Like, he responded to a tweet from the analog

Speaker 2 company and was like, I had one in a car and it escaped.

Speaker 2 And I was like, damn, fucking Frodo can't nail down a goddamn analog pocket.

Speaker 2 Elijah Wood, very, like, I feel like just like a very wholesome social media pre.

Speaker 2 I could be, I could be missing something, but, but, like, from what I've seen, but the one I remember is when, because Denny's had the tie-in meals for the first two Hobbit movies, and then they didn't do it for Battle of the Five Armies, the third one.

Speaker 2 And he just was like, Denny's, no, no, no tie-in menu. What's going on?

Speaker 2 To me, yeah, my reading of him is he absolutely gets it and he likes to have a little bit of fun and uh and and god god bless him yeah we love we love elijah here yeah anyway he was part of the marketing campaign the push back when mtv was

Speaker 2 airing something other than ridiculousness and was was actually it's it's so weird to think about now a dated reference by the way Is it really? Ridiculousness as of like last week has been canceled.

Speaker 2 It's not on anymore. That's wild.

Speaker 2 But like 20 20 years ago was mtv still part of the zeitgeist still part of the youth culture which is weird to think about in this this era i guess youtube existed then but it was just like still not as not as prominent people were still watching cable tv yeah it is i mean i used to like if i like was turning on my tv at this time it was probably straight to mtv actually like just like uh like see music videos and obviously like check out the honeys see what's going on sure uh and then also maybe i guess watch whatever this was um uh it's also interesting to think that um this is right after uh like return of the king just like sweeps at the academy awards yeah a year or two removed yeah i think yeah but it's it's it's definitely like right there is king kong out by now oh is king kong out by this point it must be yeah man that king kong is good i like the i like the peter jackson king kong

Speaker 2 It is the seventh console generation that it is a part of. Is this the weirdest generation? Because we got the Xbox 360, the PS3, PS3, which is a very quirky piece of hardware.
And of course, the Wii,

Speaker 2 which is its own thing. And then everyone was trying motion control in response to the Wii Remote.
So we had the PS3 6-axis and then also the Xbox 3, Xbox Kinect, which we'll talk about a little bit.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I do think this is probably the weirdest because it also just like of the

Speaker 2 other

Speaker 2 accessories, not just Kinect, but like, I don't know if you remember the PlayStation Home. Oh, sure.
Yeah, of course. Which was like the streaming

Speaker 2 box for playing Vita games on a television. Is that the one where the guy immediately fucked his wife?

Speaker 2 That was day one.

Speaker 2 Or was that a different thing?

Speaker 2 That was, I mean, I think that that might have also been called PlayStation Home, but there was like a, that was like a streaming platform of some kind, but this was like a, yeah, I can't remember what the box was called.

Speaker 2 PlayStation TV is, that's what I was thinking of. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Which you would think would have been the other thing.

Speaker 2 But yeah, the Xbox, very interesting.

Speaker 2 Xbox 360, interesting console.

Speaker 2 I was not an Xbox kid when I was young. Yeah.
I became Xbox kid when I got the Series S, and I was like sort of making up for lost time and

Speaker 2 playing my Xbox and

Speaker 2 seeing what I was missing as far as the

Speaker 2 various console exclusives or whatever. But I had a lot of friends that

Speaker 2 had the had the 360 over the PlayStation 3 instead. The

Speaker 2 The original Xbox got me with Halo, which I've mentioned before,

Speaker 2 like playing through Halo won co-op the entire campaign.

Speaker 2 One of my favorite experiences, game experiences of my life. And there was just enough on the original Xbox for me to justify purchasing it and using the big honkin Duke controller.

Speaker 2 The Xbox 360, however, launched only four years after the original Xbox in North America, November 15th, 2001, which is crazy to think about. It is really not.

Speaker 2 It's basically like if the PlayStation 6 had come out a year ago. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It's just that they would iterate that quickly. And basically what it was is that they were third in the previous generation.

Speaker 2 I believe they might have been ahead of the GameCube, but they certainly were worried about their relevance going in the next generation.

Speaker 2 So what they did instead is they were like, we're going to be first to market. And they were.
Xbox 360 came out before the PlayStation 3 and the Wii.

Speaker 2 I don't believe this is apocryphal.

Speaker 2 I think this is true that the name Xbox 360 partly came out because they were anticipating the PlayStation 3 and it was what tested better than 3 or what tested as more powerful than 3 is 360.

Speaker 2 That is interesting

Speaker 2 because, yeah,

Speaker 2 they would have been the Xbox 2, which doesn't sound as good as PlayStation 3. No, yeah, it sounds good.
We're going back in time. You're behind.

Speaker 2 But it's interesting because I sort of forgot that the 360 was contemporary with the PlayStation 3 because I guess I got my PlayStation 3 pretty late in its run actually because I had the PlayStation 2 up until I like graduated high school.

Speaker 2 Okay. I had, I think I got my, I got my PlayStation 3 with my first job, like when I was in 2009.
So like pretty, pretty steady into its

Speaker 2 into its lifespan, I think. The slim is what I got.
But yeah, I would have, I was interested in the 360, but

Speaker 2 just was like not really familiar with, like, not interested in Halo. And I knew that was like the main thing that they had.

Speaker 2 And like, some of the other games, I was like not really into like shooting games really like that. Like Gears of War, which I then played Gears 5 on my Series S, and I loved that.

Speaker 2 But I was more into like baby games

Speaker 2 for my PlayStation 3 or, you know, like your ratcheting clanks and your

Speaker 2 the stuff that PlayStation had there for me. Your Kingdom Hearts, of course.

Speaker 2 The PlayStation 3, which we're not talking about in depth today, but it just remains, you know, because obviously the Wii was so unique.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 what they did with the PS3, like going so heavily into Blu-ray, and then it's just having such a bizarre architecture. Yes.

Speaker 2 Such a, like, like the most console kind of specific development, you know, that like of the 21st century, basically.

Speaker 2 Just just so, such a fucking weird piece of hardware.

Speaker 2 But it's,

Speaker 2 like, it's kind of crazy that they they had the playstation 2 they had just like the market completely locked down they just had utter dominance and then they just like opted to go in this this this direction of just being a little bit more i guess sony like with the next generation and alienating some of their consumers i'm remembering now that my uncle had my uncle who played games uh always had both yeah didn't ever really i don't think he was like he didn't have gamecube but he had xbox and playstation kind of just like stuck with that stuff and i remember he bought the disk drive for Xbox 360 that would play

Speaker 2 the HD DVDs. Yes, so there was a format war that people may or may not remember: Blu-ray, but the other, the competing format was HD DVD.
Blu-ray was Sony's format.

Speaker 2 So Microsoft was like, well, we'll compete with the built-in Blu-ray, the PlayStation 3, by having an expansion drive, which plays like HD DVDs. Yes, but I remember him having a stack of the Blu-ray

Speaker 2 cases cases are blue on the outside for the most part um and now like the 4k ones are black and then they have specialized ones for you know like criterion or whatever but the uh hd dvd cases were red and i just remember him having like a big stack of the red ones and not really like thinking anything of it at the time not realizing that there had we'd been through this before with vhs and uh and and betamax and stuff like that i kind of just thought that maybe both would exist at uh one point but obviously like Blu-ray like really like cleaned house immediately and became the dominant format.

Speaker 2 And he just then had all these DVDs or these HD DVDs that like

Speaker 2 can't watch. You can't watch them now.
Yeah, it's like having a UMD of like wedding crashers. It's like, you know, this.
That's fucking wicked.

Speaker 2 Laughing my ass off with my PSP in my hands. That's another thing.

Speaker 2 I guess if we if we consider this generation also encompassing the Nintendo DS and the PSP, it's like that was all shit was also weird there on the handheld side.

Speaker 2 What was going on?

Speaker 2 Can you guess, Matt, the best-selling game on the Xbox 360? Now, number two is a lot easier, and you might get number two. It's a multi-platform game, one of the biggest franchises in gaming.

Speaker 2 I'm going to have to guess then number two, I think number two is like Grand Theft Auto 4. It's actually 5.
Is it 5? Okay, of course, that makes sense because that's the biggest thing ever.

Speaker 2 But for number 1. Number 1 is a first-party game.
And

Speaker 2 I was surprised by this.

Speaker 2 I'm guessing you might not get it. Is it not a Halo? It is linked.
No, it's not a Halo. It is linked to a peripheral.
It's linked to a piece of hardware. Oh.

Speaker 2 It's like it's a Kinect game? Yes.

Speaker 2 Is it Star Wars Connect? It's not Star Wars Connect. It is Connect Adventures, which came bundled with a Kinect.
So it's a little bit of a cheat, but it's kind of like Wii Sports. Okay.

Speaker 2 It was just their equivalent of just everyone had it. And again, it just speaks to the weirdness of this generation of everyone was buying these gimmick games,

Speaker 2 you know, like WeSports and We Fit.

Speaker 2 Like that were just,

Speaker 2 again,

Speaker 2 we don't really see games like this being made as often anymore. This is absolute news to me.

Speaker 2 Never heard of this.

Speaker 2 I'm now going to solicit the listeners in our Discord. You do not have to at me.
Do not tag me. I want to, you just respond in the correct channel, in the get played channel.

Speaker 2 If you were into that at all, if you liked, what is it called? Connected Adventures. Connect Adventures.
If you're like, I love Connect Adventures.

Speaker 2 I played Connect Adventures because I've never heard of this. Let us know if you were into that shit.
Let us know if you're fucking into that shit, you sick little fuckers.

Speaker 2 Star Wars Connect, though, was so fucking weird, too, because you're like, you're Han Solo and you're like dancing to yeah, like holla back girl. Exactly.
Who the hell is this? What is going on?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. And like, that was just like the meme, like the meme potential of that stuff, like, really, I think, is the thing that we remember of that.
But I don't know if you ever saw,

Speaker 2 I think it's paranormal activity four the xbox the xbox connect is like a like a big part of wait really yeah there's like a big uh part i love the paranormal activity movies like a lot actually um because uh and they're always right outside of actually being fully good shout out to dan lippert dan's in one of them dan lippert is in a great one and he's the best thing in it he gets to be so funny in the way that dan is funny in this movie in a way that they were like surely thinking about cutting,

Speaker 2 but like they, like, he's there, he, there's like a, I almost even don't want to spoil it. It's so funny.
He, um, they're at like a spooky cabin, and it's like in the sort of like Amish like area.

Speaker 2 And he like comes out and he like has the clothes on and he like does the thing with like the hat, like sliding it down his arm like he's Michael Jackson. And he says, He, he,

Speaker 2 I love it. It's so fucking funny and so great.
Um, but those movies are always so interesting to me.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you see like the ghost in one of them like appear in the like fuzzy screen of like the calibrating your body for Kinect or something. And it's like, ah, what the fuck? I'll fucking kill you.
Wow.

Speaker 2 What a culture artifact that is. You mentioned Grand Theft Auto 4.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that was a seismic game for the Xbox because it was when this franchise became multi-platform, which obviously we know that that's just

Speaker 2 how all games ended up being. Yes.
But

Speaker 2 there was a reveal at E3, I think, 2007, by Peter Moore. And we'll play a little bit of this and I'll describe what's going on as we go.

Speaker 4 Some guys do rubber ducks,

Speaker 2 some guys do tattoos.

Speaker 2 Referencing a PlayStation Tech demo with the rubber ducks.

Speaker 4 So, what I'd like to show you

Speaker 2 is my so Peter Moore Moore just pulled up a his shirt to show on his left bicep a Grand Theft Auto 4 tattoo.

Speaker 4 Microsoft and Rockstar Games are bringing Grand Theft Auto 4 the next generation of the wildly successful Grand Theft Auto series to Xbox 360 on October the 16th 2007 in North America and October the 19th 2007 in Europe the first date it's available so yeah it was not just that it was there was not even it was not even a timed exclusive it was just available yeah unfortunately.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, the most Rizzlest thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 So I think he previously gotten a Halo 2 tattoo, if memory serves. So this was like kind of the second beat of that.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing. It's the Grand Theft Auto 4 logo.
And hey, whatever. I'm not going to criticize whatever anyone wants to do with their body.
But I do think that the white is a weird choice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I know the actual logo has a white color, but I feel like if you just did the black outline, it would probably be a little bit more flattering. Or like did GTA 4.
Yeah, GTA 4.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's too much words. I ain't reading all that.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 do you think he's still got them? I bet he hasn't gotten the lasered off. Yeah, you got to commit to it.

Speaker 2 Explaining that to your grandkids.

Speaker 2 So I was on stage. I was wearing the greenest shirt you've ever seen.

Speaker 2 I had the look of my eye like I was seeing a thousand spirits in front of me.

Speaker 2 It's really,

Speaker 2 like, like, like, I guess this was kind of the beginning of the end of exclusivity. Like, it's like it, it's, it's just once this happened, uh, that this started,

Speaker 2 the expectation started to be that the games were just going to be multi-platform.

Speaker 2 And now we've got the thing where, you know, we're seeing even Game Pass is going to be on everything, that the Sony games are going to be, you know, they're games that are that are

Speaker 2 from Activision. This is ostensibly owned by Microsoft or is owned by Microsoft that are coming to, that are on Sony platforms.
Sony games are on PC. It's just

Speaker 2 the number of true exclusives is dwindling. Interesting that it sort of started and stopped with Xbox, right? Because...

Speaker 2 That's like, that's a huge one. PlayStation obviously was like the Grand Theft Auto console.
And now they're like, you can play gears on whatever I want in Halo on whatever you want. We're sorry.

Speaker 2 We're so fucking sorry. Including your phone, I guess, if you want to.
Play it on your phone. Play my phone in the cloud.

Speaker 2 We're sorry. We fucked up.
We don't make consoles anymore. Yeah, this is an Xbox.
And they're like pointing at themselves. And they're like, wait, stop.
You're an Xbox? I don't know. Guy?

Speaker 2 Get out of here, dude.

Speaker 2 The thing that I sort of think of

Speaker 2 the most when I think about the Xbox 360,

Speaker 2 and maybe the reason I ultimately never got one, is the Red Ring of Death. Yeah,

Speaker 2 the R-R-O-D, the R-Rod.

Speaker 2 And yes, I thankfully never encountered the Red Ring of Death on my near-launch 360. I didn't get it right at the launch, but I got it pretty soon thereafter.
And a lot of these were failing.

Speaker 2 And basically, what this was was: I'm sure we have some listeners. Again, chime in in the Discord.
Yeah. Let us know if you got the Red Ring of Death.
And let us know if you were into that.

Speaker 2 Let us know if you liked the Red Ring, actually. Famously, people did not like it, but if you liked it, let us know.
And don't tag me.

Speaker 2 But yeah, it was just, it was an alarming number of consoles were failing. And if you saw that, you saw three different

Speaker 2 amounts of the four different lights

Speaker 2 that would glow in a circle around the power slash reset button.

Speaker 2 If three of them were red, then it was just basically indicating a critical failure. Have you ever had a console or like, you know,

Speaker 2 like actual console or handheld or anything like that that was like busted like when you got it? My launch PlayStation 2, actually, I did have to send into Sony and they sent me a new one. Wow.
Okay.

Speaker 2 It had a problem with the disc drive. Okay.

Speaker 2 Were you putting like too many discs in at once?

Speaker 2 Yeah, this thing won't read all four discs at once. I put in the entire Austin Powers trilogy and watch them all in a row.
And the special features disc.

Speaker 2 You know, that's a supplementary disc.

Speaker 2 I gotta say, there's probably hours of bloopers,

Speaker 2 and I'm watching.

Speaker 2 My PlayStation 2, my original PlayStation 2 died out, but I think it was just because of like my brothers and I just playing it every single day, never dusting our room.

Speaker 2 But then,

Speaker 2 and also I just actually learned because, oh,

Speaker 2 you know what? I'm remembering right now in this moment, I owe Libby Watson a text because I lent her my PlayStation 2 for a stream she was doing.

Speaker 2 And we learned together that my PlayStation 2 actually does not work.

Speaker 2 And she still has it.

Speaker 2 I got to get my trash back. I guess that's why I haven't been in a rush to get it back because it don't work.

Speaker 2 But I'll get that back from you, Olivia. I owe you a text.

Speaker 2 My launch, not launch, I guess close to launch, Nintendo DS had a dead pixel in it. Oh, wow.
That I just dealt with. Yeah.
Because

Speaker 2 I just didn't know what to do. And it was so small.
I mean, I guess not really. You could see a dead pixel pretty good on a screen with that fidelity.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I just dealt with it because I couldn't stand to the thought of being away from my beloved chunky DS. Yeah.
I loved it. Uh, certainly couldn't buy another one.
That was like a

Speaker 2 like I had to have that right for forever. Yeah.
Um, and I still have it actually.

Speaker 2 The, the thing I associate most strongly with the Xbox 360 is Xbox Live Arcade. Yeah.
And that, I think, is maybe its

Speaker 2 actual legacy. I think is, is perhaps the most impactful part of the Xbox 360 is introducing digital distribution and widespread acceptance and

Speaker 2 appreciation for indie games and indie publishing platform on console. And now obviously a standard feature of all of these, you know, so many indie games, people, including myself,

Speaker 2 I've played on Switch or Switch 2. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 maybe it was inevitable anyway, but certainly Xbox 360 by presenting that platform

Speaker 2 accelerated it becoming standardized.

Speaker 2 Previously, everything like living on PC only, living on Steam, but it being accessible to console players was so huge. Yeah, I remember probably,

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I remember hearing about Xbox Live Arcade and stuff, like going to my friend's house and playing

Speaker 2 some of those games, but then also just like the idea of downloading a video game was like such a concept to me that like I remember being over at a friend's house and like downloading one, and it just took forever because it was such a new, relatively new thing that we just had to wait hours for a game to download.

Speaker 2 Are you on dial-up? Yeah, I was on dial-up. He had like a 14-4 modem.
His uh, and his modem was outside. Oh boy.

Speaker 2 The whole thing.

Speaker 2 The, yeah, I mean, like, the, the Xbox 360s all shipped with a built-in hard drive. Yeah.
So I, and I think there was, I think one of them was 20 gigs and one of them was 60 gigs of memory service.

Speaker 2 I should have this in front of me, but

Speaker 2 it was just a standard thing where you like they, again, a thing that's, that's, that's become an expectation for any sort of console, but certainly the, you know, the, the, uh, it wasn't present in the previous generation.

Speaker 2 The PlayStation 2 hard drive was a piece of expansion hardware.

Speaker 2 The, the, yeah, Xbox Live Arcade just had so many games that were worth playing.

Speaker 2 And again, just its existence really sort of changed people's calculation of what they'd expect from a console experience. Is it possible that

Speaker 2 the Xbox 360 has more console revisions than any console?

Speaker 2 Good question. I have in front of me the Xbox 360 Core, the main one, the Pro, the Elite, the 360S, the Slim,

Speaker 2 and then the 360E,

Speaker 2 which was basically that looked exactly like the Xbox One, but was the 360, which is not confusing at all.

Speaker 2 The start of their troubles, maybe. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it could be. I wonder.

Speaker 2 It's they certainly had a bunch of different iterations of it.

Speaker 2 Yes, it was 20 and 60.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I just had the 60, I believe. And that was the one that got me through the entire generation.

Speaker 2 And it was

Speaker 2 in production

Speaker 2 for over a decade, like until like 2015, I think. They were still making them, which is kind of crazy.
Yeah, considering how quickly they abandoned the original Xbox.

Speaker 2 It certainly had a longer tail with the 360, which speaks to its general

Speaker 2 larger success,

Speaker 2 which they then squandered with the Xbox One, such a bizarre console in its aftermath.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, obviously the Series S and Series X thing is so,

Speaker 2 then they just got so confusing with the letters where people didn't even know what they were buying anymore. It's kind of crazy to think about.

Speaker 2 I feel like the X, the original Xbox and

Speaker 2 the 360, which we're talking about now, will be the ones. I don't know if they're like people are like, the Xbox One actually fucks.
It's like actually really great.

Speaker 2 I think those first two are going to be the ones that people remember and the ones that people think back on fondly versus the ones that are, no one's going to be like, man, the Xbox Series S.

Speaker 2 That was my console. That was it.
I don't think anyone has, yeah, I could be wrong, but I don't know if anyone has any fondness for X the Xbox One specifically as a piece of hardware.

Speaker 2 And say this is someone who had an Xbox One.

Speaker 2 I think it's more just like you had the Taco Bell one, right?

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 did, yeah. I did have the one that played Taco Bell bong every time you loaded it up.
Then I actually take back what I just said.

Speaker 2 The

Speaker 2 Xbox One and the

Speaker 2 PlayStation 4, I think, were, eh, people probably have more funness with PlayStation 4.

Speaker 2 But anyway, I think that's more just like whatever ecosystem you were in was going to become your primary gaming platform.

Speaker 2 And so it was more like, what am I choosing to buy, you know, the handful of exclusives that still exist and then also the third-party games?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 the console gaming became increasingly platform neutral in subsequent generations. Should we do a little, maybe a little draft, a console draft? We can come up with with a roster of some games here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's do it. All right, great.

Speaker 2 You want a rock, paper, scissors, so you go first?

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure. All right.

Speaker 2 One, two, three.

Speaker 2 Okay. Wait.
Okay. We fucked that up really badly.
So I was saying one, two, three. And then which I think we can all agree is not how you play.
You said rock, paper, and then threw on scissors.

Speaker 2 And you also threw scissors. It's a bit of a tell.
I also did throw scissors, so I will say that it's a tie. Why don't you just go first? Okay, I'll go first

Speaker 2 thanks Matt

Speaker 2 I'm thinking of being a little cheeky here no don't no I could I could there's there I'm just thinking of this draft and how it could play out and I was like I could get a little cheeky here he's gonna he's gonna be the freaking some but sun bum I just don't I like I don't want to like this

Speaker 2 there were a lot of great games that were released on this platform so I but but I don't know I think

Speaker 2 I think I might get a little cheeky you might My man's freaking hauling around a BBL right now. He's getting cheeky.

Speaker 2 I'm going to start with a game that I really like, but that I associate very strongly with the Xbox 360 because of the aforementioned Xbox Live Arcade.

Speaker 2 But I actually never finished until we covered it on the podcast. And then

Speaker 2 it's one of those monkeys I got off my back when we were in the get-played era. You got monkeys all over your back right now.

Speaker 2 Matt, Goodey, I am wearing a sweater sweater with monkeys on it.

Speaker 2 I was not even thinking about that when I said that, but yes, there's egg on my face because I'm not getting these literal monkeys off my back.

Speaker 2 As easily as you can get them off, you can put them back on.

Speaker 2 The quarter zip, that's a good thing. That's good.
Yeah, I like the little quarter zip. Yeah.

Speaker 2 The game I'm going to pick is Super Meat Boy.

Speaker 2 Okay, yeah. Tough as nails, precision platformer, uh, featured in indie game the movie.

Speaker 2 And again, I just like very strongly associate it with the platform.

Speaker 2 And I also just like,

Speaker 2 think it's a really,

Speaker 2 you know, like, like, like a game that sort of set up

Speaker 2 a sub-genre that would, that would, uh, you know, it'd become one of my favorites over the years. Yeah.
You don't have like... You probably don't have Celeste without Super Meat Boy, right?

Speaker 2 I think so. Yeah.
I think

Speaker 2 there's definitely like a pretty direct line there.

Speaker 2 I like the squish sound from that game. Just like hugging the wall.
There's a little bit of a squish. Really fun, really fun sound design.

Speaker 2 I mean, like,

Speaker 2 some of the humor is like a little edge lord. I don't like how Dr.
Fetus

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 punching the heroine repeatedly, but still overall, like, I do,

Speaker 2 I like it. It is kind of like anchored in that time and place the year came out, but it is still a really, really fun, playable game and a really impressive design.
Okay. So

Speaker 2 in prepping for this it's my turn yeah

Speaker 2 i was looking at i was trying to look at the like exclusives yeah for xbox 360 and i just want to say right i just want to put this out right now you are you sticking to exclusives i was thinking about doing that but i'm going to pivot but i just want to just point out i'm not trying to be a hater yeah i'm absolutely not trying to be a hater i was looking at the exclusives and i was like that's it

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. It's

Speaker 2 it's dominated by the Halo and Gears of War franchises and Forza. It's basically that.
Yeah. And then it depends on how you feel about.
I guess Alan Wake was a console exclusive.

Speaker 2 Yes, and that's my first pick, actually, is Alan Wake. Wow, okay.
Because

Speaker 2 I obviously played it on, you know, famously, a game I played exclusively on my PlayStation Portal for some reason. Right.

Speaker 2 But a game that I really love, and it's a game that...

Speaker 2 Without it, I wouldn't have other games that I love, like Control or Alan Wake 2. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So that is my first pick. The Birth of the Remedy verse.
That's right. Man, Alan Wake 2 is so good.
Love that. I've been thinking about replaying it, but I just like,

Speaker 2 when could I do that? Yeah. When?

Speaker 2 Your first pick is Alan Wake.

Speaker 2 Here's where maybe I'm going to

Speaker 2 stick to being a little cheesy. Oh, my God.
This guy. He won't stop.
And maybe,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 a Moth Eared Listeners will, Moths famously have very good, very good hearing. I've heard all about this.

Speaker 2 Moth Moth-eared listeners, the podcast equivalent of eagle-eyed viewers, will maybe figure out what the theme is as we go.

Speaker 2 But this was a game that I've bought on multiple platforms, but the original way I played it was on Xbox 360.

Speaker 2 Season one of The Walking Dead. Oh, wow.
That's right. Telltales: The Walking Dead.
Wow.

Speaker 2 This guy's getting cheeky with it over here. Yeah, maybe getting a little cheeky.

Speaker 2 He's talking about Clementine and Lee over here.

Speaker 2 He's a little cheeky.

Speaker 2 Not an exclusive. No.
But again, it's just like in terms of the distribution platform,

Speaker 2 it was a way you could get a seasonal game like this. By the way,

Speaker 2 have you investigated Dispatch at all? No.

Speaker 2 I think for my next picture, just don't follow up on it.

Speaker 2 I've been curious about it. I know a lot of people are talking about it and seeing its praises and it's selling like hot, like hot cakes.
No, people like it. It's had really good.

Speaker 2 I mean, I bet I will really enjoy it. I definitely really respond to the art style

Speaker 2 and it seems really cool.

Speaker 2 And it's a little horny.

Speaker 2 Any amount of horny I'm in.

Speaker 2 But yeah, supposedly consequential choices as well. So

Speaker 2 hopefully one of those games will get around to playing at some point. Yeah, hopefully it doesn't end up on my you missed out list.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 I do want to check it out.

Speaker 2 And it's former developers from telltale so i want to i want to toss them some support because they've made some great games in the past as i said earlier that's it that's all they got

Speaker 2 and it kind of it doesn't feel right necessarily to like pick something

Speaker 2 that i've played on something else already you know what i mean like so like to me that excludes like red dead redemption Grand Theft Auto 4, Grand Theft Auto V. I played those on other ones.

Speaker 2 I can't pick that for this, I think. So I am going to play a game that that I absolutely love and I've talked about a lot on this show already.
But Halo Reach is my second show. Sure.

Speaker 2 Because I think it's the only Halo I've finished,

Speaker 2 and I have to have Halo something

Speaker 2 on my draft. And I think that's a great one to have.
So Halo Reach is my pick. Now let me guess.
Yeah. You're going to be cheeky.
I'm going to be a little cheeky. How many are we doing?

Speaker 2 I think we can just do four. Okay, we're doing four.
Kind of a mount 360 more. Yeah, mount mount 360 more.

Speaker 2 Okay, that definitely changes the calculus a little bit because if we're going to do five, I might go in a slightly different direction. Do you think? Wait, hold on.
Ranch is going to get this.

Speaker 2 You're not going to maybe get this one. Okay, this one's for Ranch.
Okay. You know whose favorite console is the Xbox 360? Who's that? Charlie XCX.

Speaker 2 All right. Ranch did get that.

Speaker 2 Got a 360 song? Oh, yeah. Okay.
I pieced it together. Figured it out from context clues.

Speaker 2 There's a game that, again, is featured in Indiegame the Movie and is a little bit up its own ass, but is still a very good experience. Much like the creator of the game.

Speaker 2 You may be thinking I'm thinking of Jonathan Blow's Braid, but I'm actually not thinking of Braid. I'm thinking of the other one.
Fez.

Speaker 2 A game I really ended up liking. And again, that it was exposed to via Xbox

Speaker 2 Live Arcade. I love the soundtrack, which is by Disasterpiece, remains in my rotation.
But Phil Fish, the developer, who has a really fascinating arc in Indie game, the movie, and

Speaker 2 another Xbox Live Arcade game that was on my radar because of it. I don't think...

Speaker 2 So what games are in is Super Meat Boy is in that documentary? We watched this. We watched this documentary for the game.
Super Meat Boy, Fez, and Braid. It's those three games.

Speaker 2 I kind of feel like I would love Fez and Braid. I just

Speaker 2 have never investigated them. They're both cool.
I like Fez a little bit more, even though Braid, I guess, is perhaps a little bit more artful.

Speaker 2 But I just like what Fez does in terms of it's a platformer, but also a big part of it is just

Speaker 2 a puzzle platformer, but a big part of it is also shifting perspectives, which just gets you thinking about environments in a different way. Sort of

Speaker 2 Captain Toad treasure tracker. Yeah, a little bit.
Yeah, and it also has just like a, like, like I mean, you can get a sense of the visuals from looking at it.

Speaker 2 It's kind of spare and minimalist, but the score, as I mentioned, is so, so cool by Disasterpiece, who obviously also moved on to scoring films. Hell yeah.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna check it out.

Speaker 2 I have to see it. Um, okay, my next pick.

Speaker 2 I've played the remake of this game on modern Xbox Console on Game Pass.

Speaker 2 So I think I have to claim it for my own:

Speaker 2 Ninja Gaiden Gaiden 2. Wow.
Ninja Gaiden 2, a game I didn't finish. I'd like to get back in there, actually.

Speaker 2 If I can, you know, should I start a fucking GoFundMe to get an Xbox Game Pass subscription again? Good grief. Ninja Gaiden 2.

Speaker 2 So far, what I had played of it rocked. And I think I would like to have it in my...

Speaker 2 In my library here, as it were,

Speaker 2 so I could finish it off. Being a ninja is just cool, actually.
Being a ninja is cool, and you know, the ninja guiding games were actually pretty rad Xbox exclusives. And as like a PlayStation boy

Speaker 2 god of war guy, those games,

Speaker 2 the ninja guiding games on Xbox are sort of their god of war, I feel like combat-wise. Uh, so I think having one of those ain't so bad for me.

Speaker 2 There was a time they were Microsoft was really putting effort into getting Japanese exclusives. Team Ninja was part of that.
But then also, you know, the

Speaker 2 Sakaguchi games,

Speaker 2 you know, Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon as well.

Speaker 2 I'm guessing those aren't on your list.

Speaker 2 You cheeky bastard.

Speaker 2 No, I am. referring to not to the uh Hironobu Sakaguchi developed uh creator Final Fantasy uh JRPGs.
I am instead

Speaker 2 continuing to be a little cheeky. Oh my God, this guy, he won't stop.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing. If I had five slots, one of them would be Castlevania Symphony Night, which I originally played on PlayStation 1, but it being a part of

Speaker 2 being on Xbox Live Arcade allowed a lot of new people to play it and appreciate this game and ultimately led to it being

Speaker 2 a staple multi-platform release. I was ready to not allow it, but I will allow it.

Speaker 2 I'm not picking that. Instead, what I'm picking is

Speaker 2 outside of Ms. Pac-Man, the best Pac-Man game, and certainly the most playable in a contemporary context.
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.

Speaker 2 Absolutely awesome experience. Oh, so fun, so cool, and for me, so strongly associated with the Xbox 360.
Matt, did you figure out what I did?

Speaker 2 Super Meat Meat Boy, The Walking Dead. Mike Ann already said it.
Fez, Pac-Man DX.

Speaker 2 I picked all Xbox Live Arcade games.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 I was just being a little cheeky. You did it.

Speaker 2 But you go through it.

Speaker 2 Like, Pagel was an option. Oh my god.
Ikaruga, another Ikaruga, another game that was even more of a limited release than Symphony of the Night. That was like a suddenly available.

Speaker 2 Rez, same sort of thing. These games all became...
Rez and Fez? Rez and Fez were were on there. I should have done both.
That would have been a nice synergy. But also, like, Limbo was on there, Matt.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. The

Speaker 2 Spelunky. My favorite part of the game Limbo is when you have to walk under that crazy pole.

Speaker 2 It's so low.

Speaker 2 And then the, the, you know, some of the, the rare classics like Banjo-Gazooie and Banjo-Tewi were available on Xbox Live Arcade. Banjo Hoctoui, of course.
Yeah. Um.
All right.

Speaker 2 Fucking. Let's clean it up.

Speaker 2 Well, not gonna do that by spitting on that thing.

Speaker 2 Okay. So now I'm sort of in a bit of a pickle.
I have one more pick, and the other, I've been checking out the exclusives, and I'm just sort of not into them. I'm just like, don't really want it.

Speaker 2 Don't I have a halo. You know what I don't have, though? I don't have a gears.
Wow. Gears of War.

Speaker 2 The Gears of War that I played, Gears of War 5, is among some of my favorite gaming on Xbox. I loved it.
So I haven't played any of the other ones, so why not start the first one, Gears of War?

Speaker 2 Because that commercial, iconic, yes, and really drove me to wanting

Speaker 2 an Xbox 360, actually. It was like the thing that was getting me interested in playing it because the commercial featuring

Speaker 2 that song.

Speaker 2 All around me are familiar faces,

Speaker 2 worn-out faces, faces,

Speaker 2 worn-out faces.

Speaker 2 What's the name of the band?

Speaker 2 I mean, Tears for Fears is the original artist, but it's a cover. It's a cover

Speaker 2 that's in

Speaker 2 Donnie Darko. Yeah, I'm watching this commercial and I'm like, can they fucking do that? Mad World.
Mad World. That's the song.
Can they do that actually? This is crazy stuff.

Speaker 2 Commercial's really good. And

Speaker 2 look,

Speaker 2 commercials work on me. I love commercials.
Directed by Joseph Guczinski

Speaker 2 of that commercial of Top Gun Maverick and F1 fame. Man.

Speaker 2 I sort of knew when I saw that that he was going to do big tentpole blockbusters. Going forward.

Speaker 2 So, yeah,

Speaker 2 my draft here: Alan Wake, Halo Reach, Ninja Guiding 2, and Gears of War. Honestly, that's a fun day of gaming.
That's good stuff. Great games.

Speaker 2 And I've got Super Meat Boy, Walking Dead, Fez, and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.

Speaker 2 Anyway, a lot of good games left on the board. Xbox 360, a very important system.

Speaker 2 Yes. A very consequential system.
And again, a very odd generation. Shall we do a segment? Let's do a segment.
It's time for another edition of Segma Dreamcast.

Speaker 2 Segma.

Speaker 2 Remind me what Segma Dreamcast is. It is your invention, and it is.
Oh, right.

Speaker 2 We're going to take the cast of a video game and cast it like we would be, you know, two Hollywood big shots casting a movie. I love it.
And the game that I picked is Baldur's Gate 3.

Speaker 2 Wow, Baldur's Gate 3. This will be a bit of a challenge.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because the characters are already so,

Speaker 2 you know, they're so sort of ingrained in

Speaker 2 certainly our consciousness. And so strongly associated with the actors who bring them to life in video game form.
However, we understand how these things are going to be cast.

Speaker 2 They're not going to get a Neil Newbin to play

Speaker 2 Asterian. Yeah, they're lost, by the way.
They're lost, because that's an incredible performance.

Speaker 2 But yeah, they will get some known Hollywood quantity. Yeah, so let's start with first, with Shadowheart.
Now, I don't know if it's because of the bangs. I'm going Dakota Johnson.

Speaker 2 Dakota Johnson is a great pick, kind of a dead ringer for her look.

Speaker 2 Kind of, yeah, has the same sort of like, could do maybe both. Uh, you know, she could, as somebody who is like a spell user in the uh in the games, uh, not uh a stranger to Jesus Ranch.
Uh,

Speaker 2 Rochelle is bringing up uh pictures of

Speaker 2 potential cast members, and uh, I guess clicked on a fairly risque

Speaker 2 Google image there.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 I was going to say, not a stranger to saying strange dialogue, such as

Speaker 2 my mother went to the rainforest where she

Speaker 2 was killed by a spider, or investigating spiders before she died, or whatever she said in that movie.

Speaker 2 I could say something like that.

Speaker 2 But honestly, this could go a number of directions. Yeah, I mean, that's a great call.

Speaker 2 I'm just thinking of

Speaker 2 maybe someone who

Speaker 2 actually hails from across the pond. Oh.

Speaker 2 And my pick

Speaker 2 is an actor who I think is very good and I always am a fan of Mia Goth. Oh, Mia Goth?

Speaker 2 Well, here's the thing. Mia Goth might be good for a lot of these characters.
That's the whole thing. You're going to fit in wherever.
You catch Frankenstein yet? I didn't watch it yet.

Speaker 2 She's great in it. I heard she's very good in Frankenstein.
Now that we watched it, I haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet. Man.
Also,

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm a Jacob Alorty guy anyway. He's really good.
Yeah. What he does with the monster is unbelievable.
Yeah, that's what that's what Daly was saying.

Speaker 2 It's like her, his performance is really the

Speaker 2 known Steam Deck user, Jacob Alorty.

Speaker 2 Yeah, those are the pics you sent to the group chat, him in the makeup chair using the Steam Deck. Just straight Chad behavior.

Speaker 2 I like to think that that's how I look when I'm playing my Steam Deck.

Speaker 2 We got ally characters to get through. So I think let's just do one pick a piece.
I think that's the way to do it. One pick a piece is good.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So we got Mia Goth and Dakota Johnson. Now for Layzelle.
Oh boy. Wow.
This is tricky.

Speaker 2 Lay's L such specific energy.

Speaker 2 So alpha.

Speaker 2 So like,

Speaker 2 I mean, my favorite. Bezell, they call it.
Bezell. I think I got an answer that we're both going to be really happy with, actually.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I'm thinking about sort of a tough exterior,

Speaker 2 somebody who,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 is strong in her own right, doesn't necessarily suffer any BS from anybody willingly.

Speaker 2 Perhaps the actor who best portrayed Lydia Tarr, Kate Blanchette. Wow, Kate Blanchette is an interesting pick.
I love Kate Blanchette, an incredible actor.

Speaker 2 And certainly,

Speaker 2 I would be very scared of her as I am of Blaiselle. Yes, absolutely.
So, evokes that,

Speaker 2 which is a real asset for the performance. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I feel like I say Kate Blanchette for a lot of these because I just want her in more movies.

Speaker 2 Very versatile actor and deserves a redemptive role in a video game adaptation after the debacle that was Borderlands. That's right.
A truly wretched movie.

Speaker 2 How could they do that to her?

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, she also decided to do it.

Speaker 2 I guess it's that old adage, right? Of,

Speaker 2 you know, what did they say?

Speaker 2 For a movie to go well, a million things have to go right on set. Right.
For a movie to go poorly, one thing has to go wrong.

Speaker 2 I am going to pick an actor who I think is

Speaker 2 also someone who I think could definitely sell Lazelle's energy.

Speaker 2 Someone who's already been associated with a sci-fi property,

Speaker 2 with a sci-fi fantasy property. Oh.

Speaker 2 Of course, I'm referring to Star Wars. I'm talking about Rosario Dawson.
Oh, now that's

Speaker 2 putting butts in seats. That's good.
Yeah. That's real good.
I love Rosario.

Speaker 2 I was thinking Michelle Rodriguez, but she was in... Michelle Rodriguez would also be great.

Speaker 2 Great, great, but for me, so strongly associated with Dungeons and Dragons on her Among Thieves, great Great movie. Yeah.
And I'm like, okay, let's do a little bit of a swerve there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true. Those are two good options.
Great options. Love the board so far.
Let's move on. Also, who's going to be willing to

Speaker 2 put on that makeup? Are they going to CG it? I feel like you probably do the makeup with Lazelle. You got to do the makeup.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Next, we have Carlax. Speaking of spending time in the makeup chair.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I got one pick for this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to put it out there. There's a chance that I think I maybe know where you're going, and there's a chance that it would also be my pick, in which case we can just keep moving.

Speaker 2 We can just move on. Is it Katie O'Brien? Katie O'Brien.

Speaker 2 Because this is the whole thing with Carlock.

Speaker 2 I like the actor they cast as an actor

Speaker 2 for

Speaker 2 Abby and The Last of Us, but Abby's a fucking tank. Yes.
And certainly with Carlock, if you're going to try to bring that character to the screen,

Speaker 2 you've got to have someone with a little bit of meat on the bone. Someone who's got that more muscular build.
And Katie O'Brien absolutely can evoke that. Wow.
Katie O'Brien in

Speaker 2 one of the highlights of the movie I didn't really much care for, the remake of Running Man. Oh, okay.
I'm going to have to go see this thing, maybe.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Katie O'Brien,

Speaker 2 that's going to be great. We can move on to the next.
I guess we could just, we could put her on there twice if we wanted to both.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's put her on twice. I'd like to double her up.
Yeah, yeah. Just for synergy.
Yeah. Okay, great.
Perfect. Okay, that's good.
That works for me. Seeing double here

Speaker 2 for Katie O'Brien.

Speaker 2 Uh, Will.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Will is a great character. I kind of, I, you know, there's so many characters in the game, actually, that I cut down quite a quite a few of them.
So we're not going to be able to get it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 You're kind of going with core party members. Yeah.
Yeah. Some of the, some of the, like, Minsk who is a great character, but does not come around until the

Speaker 2 third act of the game, pretty far in. Yeah.
But would be fun to cast. Who's oh, shoot.

Speaker 2 I have to look up the name of this guy. Matt is looking up a name.
Because I think he would be great for this. And I don't remember the name of the movie I liked him in.

Speaker 2 So I got two things working against me currently. Oh, it was Tom Hanks.

Speaker 2 Okay. I have it actually.
Yeah. And actually, I'm actually really upset that I've looked up this man's name.
Yeah. Because I did not realize he was

Speaker 2 not just younger than me, much younger than me.

Speaker 2 But my selection for Will,

Speaker 2 because I think he's going to have a big career ahead of him right now, from the film Rebel Ridge, Aaron Pierre. Oh, man, Aaron Pierre.
What a hunk. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's got it. He's got it for Will, for sure.
Kind of like doesn't, it might not even, well, might not even, I was going to say might not even the contacts for the eyes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because the eyes are so piercing. You got to have one of them.

Speaker 2 One of of them is obviously its own thing.

Speaker 2 And you could just see him being a guy who wants to avenge his dad. Yeah.
Doesn't really know what's going on. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow. He's great.
And he's great in Rebel Ridge. 31 years old, this guy.
I really liked Rebel Ridge. Me too.
I thought that was a hoot.

Speaker 2 Did you, at Ranch, do you see Rebel Ridge?

Speaker 2 Real fun.

Speaker 2 It's like I usually like kind of the Netflix exclusive movies. I'm kind of like, all right, whatever.
Maybe if it's in a theater, I'll go see it. And it's obviously something like Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 I'm going to see. You can get Toro, but Rebel Ridge from the director of Green Room.
Yes. Great horror movie.
Really, really great. And so I was like, all right, I'll check this thing out.

Speaker 2 And I watched it. I was like, this is fucking great.
This should have been in theaters. I feel an awesome action movie.
It's the exact top of what you want from one of those types of movies. Right.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 it really is a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 Great David Denman performance.

Speaker 2 It's got a lot going for it. Is that Don Johnson too? Don Johnson Rocks?

Speaker 2 Anyway,

Speaker 2 that's my pick for Will. Ranch was going to put it on now.
Wow.

Speaker 2 Ranch about to press play.

Speaker 2 My pick is a very versatile actor who I've really enjoyed in a number of things.

Speaker 2 May know him from Straight Out of Compton. May know him from Black Adam.
The actor is Aldous Hodge. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Aldous Hodge has a, as a part of an acting family, a brother Edwin Hodge, who's also very good.

Speaker 2 But Aldous Hodge, I think, could absolutely

Speaker 2 pull this character off. He's great.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I like this exercise crew. It's like, they're good.
That's good. They're good.
They're hot. They're good.
I like them.

Speaker 2 No, those are great. Those are great picks.

Speaker 2 I think this one, this next one is going to be maybe the hardest one to cast. Astarian.
Astarian is tough.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's like, you know.

Speaker 2 He's just such a, he's so Astarian. He's so Astarian.
He's so strongly associated again with the performance that we know from the game. You want somebody who is like,

Speaker 2 who's not afraid to go big, maybe, right? Yeah. Like, you want somebody who can sort of do that sort of,

Speaker 2 like alluring vampire type thing, but you also want somebody who's going to have a little bit of fun.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I have a choice right away. And this is definitely an

Speaker 2 older actor than maybe might be cast.

Speaker 2 But then again, Asterian as a vampiric character is kind of like a, you know, could be locked in at any age. He's got gray hair.
He's got gray hair. And you know what? So does my pick.
Alan Cumming.

Speaker 2 I was literally thinking Alan Cummings. Are we going to double up Alan Cummings here? Double up Alan Cummings.

Speaker 2 God. Wow.
Ranch found a pick where he's kind of making the same face. That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 That's it. Yeah.
And he has to wear decidedly less makeup than he did for Nightcrawler, but just give him some pointy ears and we're set. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's so good. Yeah, he's really good.
I love watching him on Traders just pronounce words in the most fun ways he can.

Speaker 2 Well, he's also like funny, which is like, to me, such a big part of this character, staring like one of the funniest characters in the game. Yeah, he really, he really rocks.

Speaker 2 I am a huge Alan Cumming fan. I think he's, he's fantastic.

Speaker 2 It's always when you're doing these, it's always like, especially when you're dealing with a character model, it's how much are you casting for physical resemblance? Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, some of these were getting closer than others, but

Speaker 2 ultimately, I feel like it's more about

Speaker 2 the actor's essence and what they bring.

Speaker 2 You ever see the Traders? No, I've never watched Traitors. People love Traders.
Can't you see Traders? Yeah, I love Traders. His outfits.
His outfits are unbelievable.

Speaker 2 I'm aware of his wardrobe and Traders. I've seen some stills.
It'll be like, we'll be watching it.

Speaker 2 It is the thing that elicits the most gasps in our household.

Speaker 2 We're both just like, oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Look, there he is as a beautiful bride. He looks great.
Looks like a million bucks. I forgot about Alan Cummings' role in GoldenEye.
Man. Oh, yeah.
Kind of where we'll put him on the map, I guess.

Speaker 2 Are you aware of his involvement in the documentary Chimp Crazy? He's in Chimp Crazy?

Speaker 2 He's in Chimp Crazy because the monkey that goes missing, he worked with on a movie so he's like extremely connected to this monkey wow uh and his arc in the documentary is like actually like extremely touching and emotional wow yeah it's great um

Speaker 2 it's the documentary is insane but every time alton coming comes on you're like oh yeah i forgot he's part of this

Speaker 2 all right who's next uh next we have gail gail my husband in my second playthrough yeah uh i really have a strong connection with gail again a very funny character a very specific character.

Speaker 2 And a little bit of

Speaker 2 a tough casting lift here. I kind of got somebody, I think, for this.

Speaker 2 Lee Pace.

Speaker 2 Wow. Lee Pace.
Pretty good.

Speaker 2 I think if you're just going to get somebody for this, might as well just get... the handsomest person that's ever lived.

Speaker 2 Tim Downey plays Gail in Baldur's Baldur's Gate 3, and it's a very good performance. Universally, just such an excellent cast.

Speaker 2 One reason the story is so effective in that game.

Speaker 2 We're scrolling through a few different Lee Pace pictures, and every single one of them is incredible. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Photographs extremely well.

Speaker 2 He could be a great Gale.

Speaker 2 I think he could play sort of like needy

Speaker 2 partner well. Yeah, I totally, totally could get that vibe because he's like

Speaker 2 he's cool but he's also like a little bit desperate so you kind of have that kind of have that side of it as well yeah he's a little sweaty

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 i am

Speaker 2 worried about getting a little bit too close

Speaker 2 with to

Speaker 2 another uh let's just say uh wizardy role with my one of my picks so i'm actually going to pivot here. Okay.
Because I think it's maybe just a little bit too on the nose and too strongly of an

Speaker 2 association to just put Daniel Radcliffe as Gail.

Speaker 2 It's kind of good. You think it's good? Should we just do it?

Speaker 2 Because you know what?

Speaker 2 I think you give him the hair. He could embody it.

Speaker 2 I think he could do it.

Speaker 2 And also, I know that he probably would think twice about it, right? Like it's a pretty big consideration to play

Speaker 2 another wizard because the people that that's gonna be what he'll talk about the entire press tour yeah like but so you're playing a wizard yeah yeah you've done that before you did that before didn't you

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 but i think he's you know he's like made very interesting choices post uh the harry potter movies and is a really good actor so i think he would uh like to you know maybe show what else he's got and bring something else to it all right great let's toss his ass in there get him in there ranch found a a long hair pick so that works out great There we go.

Speaker 2 And he's, you know,

Speaker 2 he wears a beard. Yeah.
He wears a beard, so that's to just show that he's not no little kid no more. God, Lee Pace is such a great physical match, though.
You really, you really pulled that one off.

Speaker 2 I was thinking about it ever since I decided we were doing this today.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 before I even said Baldur's Gate 3, I was like, Gail is Lee Pace.

Speaker 2 Okay, let's. I think with these next ones, we can go through them kind of quick.

Speaker 2 Catherick Thorne,

Speaker 2 I guess one of the main antagonists of the game, famously played by J.K. Simmons in the

Speaker 2 in the in the game. Yeah, and I have kind of like an offbeat pitch here, but I was thinking a J.K.
Simmons.

Speaker 2 I kind of do think that like if they were going to get somebody who's already in it, like how they got...

Speaker 2 Oh, fuck, what's his fuck from?

Speaker 2 Gotta give me a little bit more.

Speaker 2 The guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.

Speaker 2 What's his fuck, the guy? The guy from who was Commissioner Gordon and he was in American fiction.

Speaker 2 Oh, right, right. Jeffrey Wright.
Jeffrey Wright, how they brought him back to reprise his character in The Last of Us season two. Right.

Speaker 2 From his character in The Last of Us. Yeah, it's kind of fun to do to one of those.
Yeah. So I feel like maybe Kethrick Thorne could as J.K.
Simmons. That feels like a natural sort of thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I feel like that's, we don't have to think too much on that anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Now, Lord Enver Gortash. Wow, Gortash.

Speaker 2 One of the other villains

Speaker 2 in the

Speaker 2 Triforce of Villains in Baldur's Gate 3. So this is kind of actually.

Speaker 2 I think you could maybe even toss a Daniel Radcliffe in here. Oh, interesting.
Give him a little something, something meaty, have him be a little bit of a villain.

Speaker 2 Or actually, no, I take it back. We're not putting him.
We're putting Robert Pattinson. Oh, Robert Pattinson's a pretty good physical match.
Sorry. Sorry, Daniel.

Speaker 2 We're getting Robert Pattinson in there. And he gets to be a fucking freak.
He gets to be like a nasty bug man.

Speaker 2 I was going to toss in there someone who

Speaker 2 kind of likes to have some fun. I know likes

Speaker 2 to play it pretty big. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 certainly has gotten this characterization for their role in Frankenstein. Oscar Isaac.
Oh, Oscar Isaac.

Speaker 2 Fun is a big scenery chewing villain.

Speaker 2 He's playing a goddamn cartoon character in the Frankenstein movie, but it fucking rocks. Give him another go.
It's so good. Let him riff with Gortez.
He's great.

Speaker 2 I said out loud while I was watching this with Isabel and

Speaker 2 my in-laws. Can you imagine walking around being that handsome?

Speaker 2 It's kind of impossible to consider.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he would be really, really great.

Speaker 2 You get it like a guy who's that hot. And it's just like.

Speaker 2 let them do whatever they want in the damn movie well yeah but but i mean it's it's it's also like i don't like you but you get you do another thing yeah like it's like you're a good actor but then you're also like this good looking yeah it's like i feel like you should get one of those things yeah you shouldn't but you shouldn't be able to be both like if you're if you're that good looking you should be like like a hot guy with a mug shot or something like that you know it's like okay well yeah you're a good looking guy but your life didn't really show you the hottest guy that's ever worked at a bank yeah like yeah like and he's also like funny like in interviews and there's like a charming guy.

Speaker 2 Kind of sucks. Incredible beard, actually.
We're seeing this bearded pic of him. Looks really good.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's great. I love him.
I love him for this.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 one more crucial role to cast.

Speaker 2 Orin the red.

Speaker 2 Orin, the the the the female villain, the most kind of like,

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 just outright menacing slash sort of loose cannon, unpredictable, erratic of the

Speaker 2 of the triumvirate.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is a little bit of a casting challenge. If you hadn't already thrown Blanchette in there, I feel like

Speaker 2 that could be one direction to go.

Speaker 2 I was thinking this would be an alley oop for Mia Goth.

Speaker 2 Oh, sure.

Speaker 2 Just like Pearl style, like just go crazy with it. But

Speaker 2 I kind of think

Speaker 2 I haven't seen this from her yet, And I think she could do it, though. Emma Stone.
Emma Stone. Did you see Begonia? I loved Begonia.
Yeah, Begonia is a hoot.

Speaker 2 I think she could, I think she could get in there. I think she could access this side of her and be just an absolute maniac in something.

Speaker 2 That's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 Because you just kind of wouldn't see it coming from her, kind of. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I have a pitch for this.

Speaker 2 And not someone who does a lot of movie roles, someone who's very selective. I can see it.
I think he's being cheeky. But when they do,

Speaker 2 they make interesting choices, and they're not afraid to go big.

Speaker 2 Maybe she could bust out her puppet poker face. Lady Gaga.

Speaker 2 He's always got one of these

Speaker 2 ready to go.

Speaker 2 The thing that's different about this one yeah is that it's kind of not a bad i think she'd be pretty good

Speaker 2 kind of good yeah

Speaker 2 she's basically wearing something she'd wear on stage yeah yeah so she could just like get her between shows

Speaker 2 just photograph her on a red carpet and uh she's ready to go yeah i do like her in movies i think she's like a a talented actor such a waste and joker too because that movie sucks so fucking bad and she's still good in it But it's just like she has nothing to do.

Speaker 2 My request for her casting this movie, though, is that. that she's got to sing a couple songs.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, this is the thing.

Speaker 2 There is the big musical number in it, but it's not associated with aura. Yeah,

Speaker 2 she has no reason to sing. But that's actually, maybe that's good.
Maybe just give her something that, you know, she'll have to stretch a little bit. She sings in a lot of these movies.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's great. That's great.
We cast the movie. We did it.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 pretty good. That was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 And that's this week's Get Play. A real challenge to try to do that because it's like, yeah, you want to honor the game.
You want to make sure

Speaker 2 you really hit on all the main characters. Yeah.
And with a segment like this, I never know how much of a heads up is required. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because it might be beneficial to, you know, have a couple names locked and loaded just for this. No, I like kind of going in cold and figuring it out.
I just like it.

Speaker 2 You go just on gut instinct.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Raphael, of course, has the song Raphael's Final Act. Raphael, another villain that we did not

Speaker 2 choose to cast here. Javier Bardem, easy.
Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Let that guy belt it out. Yeah.
And he's a good singer. I think it's Lyle Lyle Crocodile.
Fucking go for it. I think our best casting in this is I think we did snap on

Speaker 2 Katie O'Brien and Alan Cumming, actually. I think those are great.

Speaker 2 The places we saw eye to eye were, you know, maybe some of the more obvious, more superficial picks, but sometimes that's the way to go. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I would like, imagine you saw on Deadline Alan Cumming circling the role of Astarian in the video game film adaptation of Baldur's Gate 3. You'd be so excited.
Like, okay, all right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're like, oh, yeah, I see it actually. I remember when I saw, I don't remember, fuck, it must have been one of the Lord of the Rings movies where they had a teaser for the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Speaker 2 And this was like one of the, and it was like, this was back in the era where it was like, they're going to make a ride, a movie? What the fuck? They're like, what is this?

Speaker 2 And it's like skeptical about it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. People were kind of skeptical about it.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 People were kind of skeptical about it. I mean, then they're making like the Lubo-Boo movie, right? Are they going to? Yeah, I think that's the thing that just got announced.
Anyway,

Speaker 2 they made the emoji movie. Who gives a shit?

Speaker 2 But I remember that teaser was the sort of thing where they showed that. And then when they started, like, people were like,

Speaker 2 and then when they started showing the cast, they'd be like Johnny Depp, you know, different era. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Jeffrey Rush.
Everyone's like, oh, okay, all right.

Speaker 2 It got people on board just seeing who was cast. I think that'd be a similar sort of thing.
Jeffrey Rush used to be able to open a movie.

Speaker 2 He's great. A better world.
Yeah. Our producer is Rochelle Chen.
Ranch, Yard underscore, underscore sard. Silent Hill F still streaming.

Speaker 2 Awesome. People check that out.
Twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore sard. Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Speaker 2 Our art by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com, merch at kinshipgoods.com. And check out Get Animate over on Patreon.

Speaker 2 We're still watching Serial Experiments, Lane. And let me tell you something, it's getting freaky deeky up in there.
It's getting nuts, actually.

Speaker 2 Fantastic show from basically the turn of the millennium. Come take a trip down back in time with us and spend a little time in that dial punk aesthetic.
Patreon.com/slash get played.

Speaker 2 It was a simpler time. It was a simpler time.
It was a better time when Jeffrey Rush could open a movie. But unfortunately, we don't live in those times.
We live in a time where we got played.

Speaker 2 That was a head gum podcast.

Speaker 2 What's going on? It's Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone. And we host The Mess Around, a New Girl rewatch podcast now on Head Gum.

Speaker 2 Now, here's the thing: every single week we chat about an episode of New Girl, and we really get into it. Like, we get up in there, we get up in there.
You know, we reminisce about our times on set.

Speaker 2 We share behind-the-scenes tea, we react to re-watching episodes that we haven't seen in years.

Speaker 2 We talk about how Jake Johnson is dog.

Speaker 1 That's not true. We talk about so many memories we have of working with the biggest stars on the planet.
I'm talking Prince, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo.

Speaker 2 We're just two BFFs having a good old time, okay? Sometimes we even talk to other co-stars like Zoe Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Damon Waynes Jr.

Speaker 2 And your dad, we talked to your dad on this show as well.

Speaker 1 Make sure you subscribe to the mess around wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every single Tuesday.