Day/Night Cycles

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Oh, man.

I am so excited to talk about today's topic.

Yeah, I think there's a lot there. There's a lot of meat on the bone for a topic like this.

Oh, Heather.

Heather just fell asleep, it looks like.

Heather?

Good morning, guys. Wow.
I can't believe we are here to record so early in the morning. Yeah, actually, we were here just a couple of minutes ago, and then you took a quick cut.

You stayed here overnight? That's crazy. No, we.

Oh, no, God. Heather then.
Heather fell back to sleep.

Wow, what are you doing in my house? We're not, we're not. This is, we're in the street.
Right, no, sleep at get played.

Heather, do you, are you on it in like an advanced day-night cycle, like accelerated day-night cycle? Yeah, is that what's happening? Accelerated day-night cycle. What the fuck are you talking about?

Like, is it like what? Everybody knows that the time of like an hour equals one second and one second equals 12 seconds. So you

okay, yeah, so I think what we're learning is that Heather's on a different day night cycle in us and hers accelerated. Right.
I'm like, man, I slept like shit last night. Hi, guys.
Guys, what do you,

what are you doing?

Did we, what day is it? It's for us, I guess it's still, it's still the day we record. Huh.
Okay. Oh, man.
So we have a double, double this week?

Two records and two in like, what is it, like four days now? Yeah, but

it's like kind kind of not that typical. It's not different.

I thought

we normally record two episodes.

Oh, God. She's going to be really cranky tomorrow when she wakes up because that was because she was up longer.
We also didn't even get the episode done. Oh, man.
Oh, hey, guys. What's going on?

Heather, we still got to record the episode. What the fuck is this? No, we haven't done it.
It's Friday. Why don't we have done it? We have to keep fucking recording.

I told you she was going to be cranky. I'm so fucking tired of this.
I feel like I've been at the studio all week.

Like, I don't even know when I saw my wife the last time for you it was probably it seemed like it was a week oh my god and you know what i can't even really be mad normally i would think it was rude to fall asleep are you wait i don't talk while i'm sleeping i'm sorry

oh my god i need a cup of coffee i feel like shit What are you guys looking at me while I'm sleeping for? I just like don't even know how you would have time to make a cup of coffee.

It feels like you don't don't have like I feel like it would take you six days and nights for it to even finish brewing. Well, if you hadn't fucking talked to me all through my entire day,

maybe I would have had time to make a cup of coffee. I'm going to make a podcast.

I feel like this is just going to be a huge roadblock for us for a number of reasons.

I think Ranch will just like in and around it, I think. Yeah, you think so?

Hi, guys. You know what? You're right.
I feel really bad.

Maybe I've accelerated some of my day-night cycle in an effort to get better experience points here in my life. Oh, sure.
Yeah.

Yeah, what's going on? We're all trying to, yeah. Yeah, I'm min-maxing.
So, I guess we're just gonna have to record this episode over several days. So, I'll

let's just edit me together. Okay, great.
That sounds good. Great.

What?

What the fuck?

I don't know how to sleep.

I don't know how to do it. I just wanted to be cool.

We find shelter from night skeletons and play songs to accelerate time as we discuss day-night cycles and games this week on Get Played

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played.
I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger.

That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr. Games Matt Apodaka.
Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we are talking about the existence of the moon.

Yeah?

For a long time, man has speculated as to whether or not the moon exists. We're going to settle it.
And I just so where everyone's at, Nick always believed in the moon. Heather, anti-moon, anti-moon.

I'm somewhere. I could go either way.
Right. Depending on the day.
We're going to try to win Matt over through the course of a civilized debate. How can the moon exist if it doesn't exist?

What we have is we have a table set up in the middle of the room, and there's 20 people on the outside of the room. They all have sort of the same opinion.

And they're going to all run over to to me and try to convince me of the of the moon. It's going to be good.

And we're talking about this in part because we're doing a rare daytime record. Yeah.
We're like, all right, let's talk about, let's talk daynight cycles and games.

I'm sorry, a what cycle? There is only day.

All right, you've gone too far. Yeah, that's Heather.
You have to know. I remember reading this.
It was a John Ronson book, actually, and it was talking about a conspiracy theorist.

Wait, is he really? I don't know.

It was a John Ronson book who was talking about conspiracy theorists, and it was like about 9-11 truthers. And it's always funny when there's

a guy who's, there's the fringe, you know, like the 9-11 truthers, but then there's a fringe within that who themselves get exiled.

So there was like the, like, like, everyone's like, we all know Bush did 9-11. We all know that, you know, like whatever, Jet Fuel can't melt steel beams.
We all know that. This is taken as a given.

This is, you know, but this guy's crazy because he thinks there were no planes.

This guy is a no-planer who thinks it was a digital projection of planes crashing, but that that didn't actually happen. Yeah, there's like a sect of people that are like, it didn't happen.
Yeah.

And it's like,

what are you, what, what? But that's like the, the, the, and the people who don't think the moon exists, the people who go so far as to say night doesn't exist.

That's like the next level of like, even, even the anti-mooners are like, all right, calm down. You made us all look bad.

There are a few of these now, I think, popular with like Gen Z because they weren't there. And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to start something.
I'm just stating sort of, I think, reported.

They weren't there for night. They weren't

for some of these things. Like, some of them don't believe that Helen Keller was real.

Yeah, I mean, there was an NBA player, I think it was Tyler Hero, who was talking about how he doesn't trust any history before 1950.

He's just like, I don't know. How would they keep track? Yeah, exactly.
How do they know that? But like, yeah, I also, it's interesting to,

as someone who largely grew up in the 90s, to encounter people who just like these things that really broke through and were like big news stories. Like,

I'll mention something that came up yesterday, the John Benet Ramsey murder. And there were like younger people there who were like, who's John Benet Ramsey?

or like, I've heard that name, but I don't know who that is. And then I remember that just being like all over the news.

And we all know that John Benet Ramsey was the person who went up against Obama in the 20, was that 2012? It was 2012. Yeah, 2012.

It was uh barack hussein obama versus john benet ramsey yeah uh and they agreed on a lot of uh

it's like it you know in hindsight like a really civilized debate yeah versus you see what what we've declined to there's a 2024 i think people there's like a conspiracy that um

and if we just talked about this for the rest of the day we'd be the biggest podcast

um

that people think that Katy Perry is John Benet Ramsey. That's interesting.
Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's a common thing because I heard somewhat a different, like a right-wing media figure is John Benet Ramsey. I think that's just like a common.

I also heard this because I was where Nick was, but I appreciate that he's not bringing the name into the podcast so that it's not in any transcripts so we don't get attacked.

You do know who John Bene Ramsey is. Oh, yeah.
I mean, I was just like a little, I mean, that was on the news when I was a kid. Yeah.

I remember way too much of the news when I was a little kid. Swift Boat was a big issue for John Benet Ramsey.
Yeah.

It was, you know, there was a binders full of women. Yeah.
That was a big thing. I remember he had, he was talked about like 48% of the country doesn't want to work for a living.

That was like a secret tape. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, John Benet Ramsey's

favorite meat hot dog. Favorite meat is hot dog.
Yeah.

Yeah. Do you know who John Benet Ramsey is? I don't know who John Benet Ramsey is.
Wow. What a blessing.

A really, a really bleak true crime story from the 90s where a it was a, and this might also be because you didn't grow up in America,

but it was a young pageant girl who was murdered and the murder was never solved. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

The cops went to the house where she had disappeared and they do a full sweep of the house and they can't find her and they put out an APB and then they do another sweep later and they do find her in the house dead in the basement.

And it's just like, well, how did you miss?

Like, what else? What were you doing?

Yeah.

So that's part of like the

kernel that begins the conspiracy theories is people being bad at their job isn't like something you can conceive of.

So you have to start filling the gaps of stupidity with storytelling. Yeah.
And cops have never, ever done a bad job before. So it is crazy that they make such a big mistake.
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Matt, speaking of people doing a bad job, I went to Del Taco last night. We talked about this on the podcast last week.
The first part of this

absolutely scared me.

Matt, speaking of people doing a bad job,

what have I done?

Fucking firing me.

We're all 33.3% partners of this. You can't fucking fire me.

Ranch can fire anyone. We'll say when she isn't.
Ranch is the boss. Yeah, Ranch is our boss.
Yeah.

Here's what I would say.

We were talking about Del Taco on the podcast last week. Yes.
And I went to Del Taco last night. And I'm not, I just should say, I'm not blaming the workers.
I'm blaming the company at large.

There's been society. There's been a general decline in quality at my beloved Del Taco.
And your beloved Del Taco as well as a fellow lifelong Southern California.

It could possibly be because the economy is being ravaged by 130% inflation since the year 2019. That's crazy.
I don't think so. The ingredients have had to take a back seat to

like less,

I don't know, less flavor in general. That's what I think.
That's a conspiracy theory I have. Well, we need to dedicate our resources to building data centers full of 50-80s.

You know, we just need to make sure we don't mind that. Let's go.

But so you went and it was, was it bad? Yeah, it was, here's the thing.

They, they just like, everything's just like a little off now, you know, it's just, I was like, I'm getting the bean and cheese burritos. I was like, this is just made different.
Yeah, yeah.

And then we got some, and

I got,

like, I got a big order. You just brought Nick into the bathroom.

Here you go, buddy.

Are you sure? Like, yeah, it's like, this is obviously a piece of shit wrapped in toilet paper. Like, no, that's a tortilla, dude.
What do you mean, a toilet? There's your meal. All right.

Don't much care for it, but

you got my $16. Yeah.
$16. That's been $16 del Taco.
Well, here's a. so I got, I got two, uh, two bean cheeseburgers with green sauce.

I got myself a, uh, a, a, uh, the mini quesadilla because the regular quesadilla is now $5,

which is absurd. 2019, single cheeseburger at McDonald's, $1.
2025, single cheeseburger at McDonald's, $3.15.

Anyway, just on principle, I'm not spending $5

for a cheese quesadilla. They don't even have the pepper jack quesadilla anymore.
They got rid of that one. Not at Del Taco.
Not at Del Taco. No.

Then I got, well, yeah, I mean, like, we're talking, if I could go to like a proper taqueria, a nice Mexican restaurant or something, that's a different story.

I'll give them all the money in my wallet. Yeah, for sure.
Hey, you have fresh handmade tortillas? Sure. Hey, why not? Yeah, here.
Can I write you a check?

Carrying a checkbook in 2025?

Fucking freak. Anyway, then I got a, I got a

Del Taco, the Del Taco, and then I got myself the deluxe chili cheddar fries.

And I was like, this is a big order. We'll see how hungry I am.
I might eat everything, but if not, I got leftovers. And then now I can have my leftovers or whatever.

I get to kind of have it both ways where I get to be like, I'm either, I'm either like, hey, I got something for you, or my fat ass just gets to gorge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a fun, that's a fun hack for all you out there who want to order one of everything on the menu.

But I hate the burritos. I was like,

the mini quesadillas, like, I mean, it's just not the same. This is the thing.
You get what you pay for. The ratio is a little bit off.

I feel like they're a little bit more paltry with the cheese these days, especially with that you get that that mini little case like like tortilla and then now he's eating the the fucking fries she's like these are bad like what happened she's like and she's basically like has del taco fallen off the thing that you and i have already talked about she's come to this conclusion separately and the answer is yes unfortunately I think we got we got to see him in court, I think.

Let me say that I had the opposite experience at a local Los Angeles restaurant last night of Mexican food, which is that for fun, I went to El Coyote, one of Los Angeles's oldest restaurants, founded in 1931, famously the restaurant where Sharon Tate has her last meal before she is murdered in the Manson murder.

You mean before she is saved by

Cliff Booth. Right.
Cliff Booth saves her life.

A morbid tidbit about a Los Angeles sort of perennial restaurant, even more morbid is that her picture is up on the wall at the restaurant. And I was like,

you don't need to tell tell people when they come in. It's not the restaurant's fault.
That's true. She went home and got killed.
That's true. So

pre-pandemic was the last time I had eaten at El Coyote.

And I was surprised to find that the food was better than pre-pandemic. Oh.

And I had a delicious burrito there. I think it was like $18 fucking dollars, but still,

it was the size of my torso.

So I guess, I mean, like, you know, anyway,

it was a shockingly good time because going in, I was like, I can't wait to eat this mid-Mexican food because I just want the atmosphere, the fun. And it turned out to be a really delicious evening.

I'm glad you had a nice night. I was wonderful.
Yeah. Fun fact: El Coyote translates as the coyote.
Now, that's interesting.

And that's all I have on that. That is interesting.
Wait, is coyote? Hold on, though. Just for, just for my

ignorant fucking ass. Yeah.
Is coyote a word for something else?

I mean, it can be in slang terms. Yes, it can be.
Yeah. There's like the type of people that assist.
Right.

Yeah. But like, but like coyote is

coyote isn't the word dog.

Is coyote a different word? I think it translates to fool of the roadrunner. Oh my God.
Never mind. I'm sorry I went down this fucking road.
I wish I'd never talked.

Famously where Piper Paribo danced. I wish I fell into a well as a baby.

Coyote's top speed, 35 to 43 miles per hour. How about that? I would just say, like.
That's only when they steal your car.

We have a lot of them here in

the city of Los Angeles. I hear them on my street.

I hear them constantly. When you hear them going off, that means

that means they got something. Yeah.

Yeah. Me personally, I'd be keeping it a secret.
I wouldn't want to be sharing with everybody. Yeah, all my stuff.
That's how I eat food is just yell, I've got food. I've got food.

Everybody at the restaurant, hey, cool.

There really aren't any definitions of coyote beyond what we've already, according to a couple of dictionaries. Coyote is the coyote.
It's not coyote is a word that in other languages isn't coyote.

No, and it seems to cut the origin is from Mexican Spanish, from a,

I'm not sure how to say this, but a Nahuto language. Okay.

So, yeah. All right.

I had a, just, just, just to

end the delta, go back to the Del Taco discussion for one quick. One second.

No, no, I just, because I was not sure, I was trying to remember the chronology of this, and it is very, very recent, and this may have something to do with it. Jack in the Box owned Del Taco.

They recently sold it to a franchisee called Yadav for $115 million.

Less than you'd expect for all of Del Taco. Bleak.
Anyway, that was this year.

So that honestly explains a lot. But it's like, it's like Blackstone Capital buying Jersey Mics.
It's just like, okay, well, we're just going to wait for this decline to happen.

And sometimes it happens rapidly. The fact that it was doing better under Jacket and Box

is insane.

Anyway, guys, thank you for listening to Get Dough Boys.

Yeah. Mitch's going to be here this week.

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All right, we can talk about some video games. The question for the room is, what are you playing? What are you you playing?

It's me the Resident Evil merchant, and I'm out in the daytime, and it hurts.

Oh, yeah, you're usually, well, I mean,

in Resident Evil 4, there is

a bit of day and night. Yeah.
Right? But it's a little grayer where you're at.

I need that cloud cover. And honestly, I wasn't worried because it's been raining in Los Angeles.
It's been raining, yeah. But the sky cleared up, the sun came out, and I got attacked by birds.

Attacked by birds? Hello.

When I was trying to come to this studio.

Did we point out? I mean, I think we did. We're recording during the day.
Did we make a big video? We did mention that we're recording during the day. Yeah, I think that came.
I think that came.

We spent a little bit of time on that up top. Okay.
I think. Rochelle, we talked about it.
Yeah, we talked about it. I was standing over there listening to you guys.
Yeah, I saw you sort of like

sort of gesturing like you were about to enter the conversation. Kept going like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I raise my finger.

You're kind of trying to pick your spots at every one of these records when really you have a very clear cue, which is just what are you,

when I say, what are you playing? That's what you're playing. You're like in full sprinting position, like ready to start running.
You're like, you don't need to do that.

I don't? No. What do you say to the time I'm not prepared? You'll always, it's always, well, here's the thing.
It could be. 15 minutes or an hour in.

A few times I've tried to use my mic before you guys cue me. It doesn't seem to pick up my voice.
Well, sometimes, you know, I think that's

by by design. We gave you this sort of like

this mic that's not plugged in. So, if you wanted to, while you're not on the show, you could talk into it and sort of feel like you were doing something.

Can you imagine if you met a guy whose name was Mike and it was short for microphone?

That'd be interesting.

Yeah, I wonder if there's anyone with a given name microphone

in my ass,

Residential Four Merchant. You're a fool.

I don't want to overstate my welcome. So, uh, you got any more jokes like that? Yeah, that was pretty good.
I think, but I also maybe go out on a high note.

I guess, yeah, I don't want to, you don't have to come up with one.

Who's there? Mike. Mike, who? Microphone.

Fuck. Two or two, this is good.
Callback already.

That's those two jokes alone, funnier than any special I've watched this year. Oh, yeah.

Do you think I could get it? Like a 45-minute deal at Netflix? Yeah, probably Hulu, probably put you under the Hilarious

banner. Yeah, I think you absolutely have enough.
How could I not know who's waiting? They don't know. What do you mean?

Who's in their shows? Oh, no, it's okay. We actually don't have time for this.
Yeah, we kind of

feel like the microphone.

How could you set up a studio and not even know who's coming?

That's. Man,

Metrophone.

What are you playing? I guess the rule of threes doesn't work.

I'll tell you what I've been playing. I'm back in on Ghost of Yote, of course.

Having an absolute blast. Did the

Kitsune line of quest. Nice.

Something that I've...

In games like this that is maybe immersion breaking

is when you're off kind of just doing your own kind of stuff

and you're sort of like just doing a bunch of side quests and you've been like, it's been 20 hours. Let me go check back in on this quest.

And you go back into it and everybody's like as mad as they were after you had finished the last thing. But you've kind of just been doing your own thing.

So you're just kind of like, well, what the fuck?

Like, Jesus.

But I'm still just like really, really enjoying the game.

I love finding or getting

map map fragments and then adding them to the map and just because that's just more reason to not do

like the main story. And I'm like, oh, cool, more stuff.
I get to do, I get to find more stuff. Matt Mapodaka, hmm, map Apodaka, map, Apodaka.

I mean, take your pick, they're both good. Um, Matt Mapodaka or Map Apodaka? I'm I'm gonna choose neither.
Okay, fair. I don't want either.
I, I prefer my name and not it to I don't want to be map.

Yeah, yeah sure

but thank you yeah you're welcome um

and you're right they are it is good

um

i'm still doing that but i started something else this week oh another one because you know i have

what a disease sickness a sickness um it's a there's a new rom hack and i actually prepped some notes.

There's a new Pokemon ROM hack that just came out. Matt just got out like a

bag from Wendy's that he'd written all over. Yeah.

Don't read the back. My manifesto's on the back.

Okay. Let me just find it, actually.
God damn it.

Matt's crinkling the bag. Fucking holding it.

Eating fries. God damn it.

Is there a baconator in there?

You know? This is for a completely different show. If you want to cut this out, put it in the other one.
The other one? The other show.

I only ever get the chicken sandwich from Wendy's. I never really get the burger.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's... Look, Wendy's has fallen off, too.
This is a whole thing.

Fast food is supposed to be the thing that is good. The last six years have been hell.

Everything is declining. Everything is getting inshidified, obviously.
It turns out you can't just give money.

You have to do... You can't.
We fucked up. I saw, I was at a bookstore the other day, a local bookstore over here.
They had a book in the window.

I can't remember exactly what it was called, but it was, it was basically like the and shitification of everything. Yep.
And I was like, I'm not reading this. I know everything sucks.

You gotta tell me. This book probably sucks.
The book probably fucking sucks. Also, to be clear,

the giving of money isn't the problem. It's the way that companies respond to the giving of money by raising prices because now they know that people have disposable income.
Inflation is a creation of

companies.

I think I saw.

I wish I saw this. I mean, I saw this TikTok that was like chronicling the

minimum wage

over time and how it has barely increased versus the cost of

like rent,

the average rent. And it's like that has tripled in price over the last like

10, 10 minutes.

Anyway,

I didn't have enough information to bring it up.

What do you do? You do the spicy chicken sandwich of Wendy's? I do spicy chicken. Okay, yeah, because

that's my go-to, too, obviously. I think that's their strongest overall menu item.
I think here's the thing. I mentioned the bacon at her.

I just do a Dave's double. First, I mean, I'm not eating it.
I try not to eat pork in general, but also, I just think it's a better composition. But their burgers are just not.

I feel like the produce is what's declined. And that was another thing Natalie was pointing out at Del Taco.
It's like these tomatoes are fucking bad. The tomatoes on the Del Taco.
Same thing.

The lettuce and tomatoes, I should just maybe just say, don't put them on the burger anymore in a lot of these places. And it's so low quality.
And get

your farmer's market market veggie. Exactly.

Put them on there and be like, now this is good.

Just have them cook a burger for you.

Can you just put it in a loose bag for me?

So this Pokemon ROM hack just came out. It's called Pokemon Lazarus.
Ooh, I've seen this. And it just came out

like last, well, it came out as of

November 14th as 1.0 release.

And it's built off the Pokemon Emerald engine. That's the third in Ruby and Sapphire.
Then there was Emerald. And it was created by Nemo622.

And it's got all these great features.

It has sprite graphics, first of all, and it has sprites of Pokemon that were not in the sprite generation. That's awesome.
Which is really, really crazy to me.

There's 400 Pokemon in the game from all nine generations. There's a day-night system, of course, which we'll talk about later.

There's Pokemon in the overworld that you can encounter and battle,

which

has never, they don't do that really. And they started doing them in these uh Switch games.
Um, there's like side quests, you mean, like, you'll see them on the map screen on the map screen.

They're not just random encounters, exactly. There are random encounters, too.
Yeah, but you can see, like, you know, like per one area of grass, like one guy walking around. Sure.

And you're like, hey, I'll catch that. I'll specifically go after that guy.

And it's, uh, the, it's a whole new area that's based on Greece.

Wow, that's fun. and i just like it's just so cool that like and this person in particular has made uh

pokemon emerald seaglass another um rom hack that people seem to really really love so people were like hyped for this like release so i've been playing it on my analog pocket and first of all

you have you so i have we have all these niche devices yeah

and i'm i Kind of like, you know, you spend time with it and then you kind of put it down and then you go back to something else. I hadn't hadn't probably touched my analog pocket in months.

Kind of forget how fucking good that thing is. It's so good.
That thing is great. I really, really like it.
I have it directly loaded onto the

system. I bought like a little dust cover for the card slot because I'm like, well, I don't really need the

one. I don't need dust getting in there.
Yeah, two, if I don't have a cartridge in there.

And I'm just really, really enjoying it so far. I like, I picked.

There's like nine Pokemon that you could pick from. There's like nine starters that you could pick from at the beginning.
I picked Froakie. Nine starters? Yeah.
That's a lot of options.

Yeah, but too many options. But nice that there's like

they account for so many.

And

it's just a lot of fun so far. And I think

I'm going to keep playing it. I'm going to be going on a little weekend trip soon.
And I think I'm just going to take that with me because

it's easy enough to put in a carry-on bag.

Do you have a... Because

remind us the previous ROM hack you really got into.

uh it was called Pokemon Unbound and I never I never quite finished it, but uh I do I was really enjoying that too, but there's like a there's a bunch of these that people are just like just you know that they really respond to because then they add things that like the main games like aren't doing and like just even with this I don't mind that you don't notice that there's no voice acting in a game when it looks like this but then when it's like a fully 3d environment and there's like just no voice acting you're like this sucks.

Like this is bad.

They could put a little more care into something like this. And I just really, I have been missing the Sprite graphics.
And some of them look older than the Game Boy Advance era too.

So you kind of like, there's like sort of like a mishmash of assets. And I'm just really, really loving it.
I think it's just so great. And like, I'm so far like, I mean.

This is definitely hyperbole, but like, I'm like,

I sort of like it more than ZA, like, as just like as an idea, as a concept. Cause also, like, I've seen things later on.
Like, you get to wear a suit of armor at some point. Oh, that fucking rocks.

Like, I don't know what the story is or whatever, but

I'm enjoying all the little dialogue and stuff. And then there's, like, you, it encourages you to talk to a bunch of people because then that's how you get side quests.

There's not like an obvious like side quest like marker or whatever, but you can talk to people and they'll be like, can you find this thing for me? Like, this type of Pokemon and bring it back to me?

And then you do, and then they give you something.

I love this. I love that this sort of shit exists.
I mean, I love I ROM hacks are cool as hell.

I think the, you know, it's, it's like, it's like fan art, it's like fanfic, it's like anything that someone's creating just for the passion of making something and sharing it with a community.

I just think is like

that's one of the handful of positives that have come out of the existence of the internet, the easy, you know, distribution and of that and the easy way for people to find find communities and find

fans of what they're doing.

I just, it's, it's the kind of thing Nintendo, so famously litigious, Hopefully, at some point, they don't try to shut down all these ROM hacks the way they've put down some other fan projects.

It also,

it

sort of

exposes a hole in the development world, which is that there is a demand for this kind of game. Yes.
And it's weird that there aren't...

There aren't that this game isn't coming out of the main developer.

Like that you aren't doing your main 3D Pokemon games, but also like portable D makes, you know, like why isn't there a Switch like 2d pokemon game it's it's kind of wild to me yeah it really it's like they're leaving money on the table they're leaving money on the table you should at least be able to buy the old one yeah like so you can like just play those yeah on modern hardware but nope i who i mean they must know something They're making enough money on the Pokemon Pocket, which is now outpacing Pokemon Go in terms of

bringing in money. Yeah.

They're making money on that and

suing anyone that they can.

Here's what drives me crazy, though, because I feel like so often in capitalism, it'll be, you know, like the question you're asking is like, how much is like, you know,

you're seeing people try to find all these other new avenues for monetization, all these new ways to make additional money when they already have so much money.

And I know that Pokemon is like the most profitable IP like in history or whatever that metric is.

But like still, typically what you would see from these companies is like, well, how do we make even more? Like, that's not, we're not content with being number one.

We want to be, we're not content with being a billionaire. We want to be a trillionaire.
You know what I mean?

And so like, why, why does that not lead them to the conclusion of like, yeah, we could, we should make more Pokemon of different,

Pokemon games of different types in this franchise to try to extract more revenue? It would just like, yeah, because like they used to, I mean, they would put out a couple every few years, really.

And like, they, now they've sort of been, you know.

I guess been more intentional, but also not really because the product has suffered. Yeah.

it hasn't been as good so like it's just interesting that like there are people who are like oh like what if it was just like an old one

because like i guess you know i don't know what it's like to make a game but it seems like because there are so many of these types of things i would imagine that if you have any amount of knowledge of how to do something like this you could just spend the time i don't know how long this was in production for example but um it is like It's just cool that, yeah, people are making it.

I did bring up like a screenshot that I wanted to share just so you guys had an idea of like what it's looking like and stuff.

It's just really cool. Like the title screen has like the,

like, it has like, what do you call it? It looks great. It looks awesome.
It just looks really, really cool. No, that art is, that art is really, really cool.
Just really lush

palette there.

Yeah, really, really good style to it.

You know what I'm, Heather, you're making me think of is that what they, what has happened with the Ninja Gaiden franchise this year, where they had both a 2D game, like kind of a retro throwback 2D game, and a full, like full-on 3D character action game.

Yeah, yeah, let's see more shit like that. That's fun.
It happened with Prince of Persia last year, too, with

The Lost Crown, their Metroidvania, and then

everyone said it was awesome, and they didn't play, and part of the problem, and the studio got shut down.

It was sort of, they were saying, I think I read this, that they just needed one more person to play it. Fuck.
They just needed one more. That makes me feel like shit.
No, don't. They said person.

But then they also

had the rogue Prince of Persia, which I think you would also really like. I've messed around with a little bit and it's a roguelite and it's

great.

I just think,

I know we could talk about how there's too many games. There's too many.
There should be more in different kinds, actually. Yeah, it should be more, but there's too many.

There's too many, but there should be more.

That's not a contradiction. No,

there should just be... more that of the ones we like.
They can stop making the ones we don't like and care about. But if we like them, then they could go ahead and make more.
Yeah.

Target your demographic, which is the three of us on Get Played. That's right.
Heather, what are you playing? All right. First off, I want to shout out two games that I'm always playing.

One is Pokemon Pocket.

New season's up.

Ranked is about to start up again. I love the game.
It's not getting old. My mom loves the game.
They've just implemented a new feature where you don't have to trade cards anymore.

You can just give them, which is streamline the process. You pull up any of your friends

on on your friend list and you can see what cards they're missing. And if you have extras, you can just give them to them.
And it's like, thank you, thank you.

I have a pretty robust friends list and thought, oh, I will make the first move here and send a bunch of cards to like, you know,

players that I don't know, but have befriended me in the past, expecting reciprocation. Nobody sent me shit.
And I was like, what the fuck is this?

But my closest friends have been sharing. It's been really

beneficial to sort of fill out my roster, fill out my missing cards and my decks. I love it.

It'd be funny if your mom didn't send you one back. Yeah, she's just like, thank you.
Like, won't respond to a text about it either. You're like, hey, can you send me something? Who is this?

I don't have a daughter.

I only have my Pokemon time.

So that's great.

As of this record,

the Simpsons season is coming to a close in Fortnite. There have been a couple couple of updates of the Simpsons events.

Naked Homer has also come out as a skin. Itchy and Scratchy are rumored to be around the corner.

But there's been a huge number of leaks for the next season of Fortnite, which is apparently kind of Hollywood-based.

There was apparently a chapter of Kill Bill that was not filmed called Gogo's Revenge, which Quentin Tarantino has implemented as a Fortnite experience.

So

if you want to see all of Kill Bill now, you have to have played Fortnite. There was a Fortnite premiere at the Vista Theater, which Quentin Tarantino owns,

where they had the pussy wagon, which will also be coming to Fortnite. The bride is coming to Fortnite, etc.
Can they do that? They can do whatever they want. They can put the pussy wagon in Fortnite.

Yeah, it's got a picture of a cat. Oh, okay.
It's got a cat wagon. Got it.
But everybody knows that. That's fun.

Buck's not a skin.

Oh, boy, Buck's a bad dude. He's really bad.
As Fortnite becomes more and more ascendant as the metaverse that everybody has always expected somebody to make. Yeah.

Almost as if, like, being crowned in that position, the DeLorean and Back to the Future is coming to the next season of Fortnite. Wow.

Which is like the hallmark of Ready Player One's metaverse is like, oh, he's got the DeLorean. Yeah.
What?

But yeah, you'll be able to drive the DeLorean in the next season of Fortnite amongst

other

announced collaborations, but there does seem to be a heavy Warner Brothers presence in the leaks, which is cool.

Gotta get him in there now before that sale goes through.

But the game that I'm focused on

remains

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Wow.
I have

a newfound respect for what Matt.

Hold on. Our audio listeners will not have picked up on this.
Matt just full-on did the Antonio Bandeiris meme in reaction.

I like bit my knuckle.

I was so excited. Cause like, I forgot you were playing it.

And I, like, I, I just, I'm happy that you're doing it. Well, did do it.
Well, so, Matt, you, you didn't underplay how big the game is. Yeah.
Um,

I am still in the opening area. I uh have spent 12 hours clearing the opening area of all of its side quests.

It is enormous.

And one of the ways they cue you in on how, or clue you in, on how enormous the game is, is when you look at your saves, generally at a save, will show like your time played or whatever.

There are three spaces for hundreds of hours built into the save space.

So it'll be like 12, but there's a zero in front of it, like zero, 12 instead of just 12, which is, you know, kind of tipping their hat, like, oh, you think this is a big game now?

You're going to get to that third slot. You're going to get, you're going to get to 100 hours on this game.
Yeah. Um, I was having a lot of difficulty with the combat when I returned to it.

Uh, I was talking to Nick about this, really, um,

just talking without me, yeah, because

uh,

and hanging out, I was like, how can I go from ultra-hard difficulty on Ghost of Yote to being fucking fucking bodied over and over and over again in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

I even ticked my difficulty down from whatever the hardest setting was because I was like, what the fuck am I doing wrong? Yeah.

Turns out that I had just not done any of the research on how the combat system worked and was missing an entire like avenue of combat like a completely new menu.

Yeah, like I was not pressing one of the buttons. Oh, so that brings up another slew of combat options.

Oh, okay, because during our conversation, that was like my suspicion was that there was like some sort of mechanical mechanic, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true.
Got it.

I also had forgotten, again, because I picked up, I didn't restart the game. I picked up from where my save was previously, which was only a few hours in, and post all of the combat tutorials.

Luckily, Chadley.

and his virtual

combat simulator has a full tutorial of how the combat system works which also when you engage with unlocks materia for you yeah so it's not like you're just doing fucking random battles for no reason you have to sort of do them in order to like fill out your material roster um once i went through that i was like oh okay i i i i was not doing like most of the stuff that i needed to do in order for the combat to work and it is a great combat system so playful so fun um sometimes i mean you'll get to this point you're gonna

you're just going to be like flying around that screen, basically. I'm already flying around that screen.
It's crazy. It's so good.

It is, it's a great game. It is so full of detail.

The

acting is

insane. Like all the facial expressions.
I was talking to Nick also about how they did full mocap.

Two times he talked about.

There was, there's full mocap and

voice acting on all the NPCs, and it is an enormous amount of recording. Yeah.

And it's like you'll talk to people who have no fucking business being fully animated, fully bought, like bodily walking around your party. And they're like an item vendor.

And they're just like, Cloud, what are you doing here, buddy? It's just like, who the fuck is this? Is this going to be a quest line? Yeah. No, it's just a guy.
Yeah.

I'm selling the color red. You're like, okay.

There's my day rate on screen. Yeah.

It is, it is fantastic. I'm so happy to be returning to the game.

I'm also really happy that it is coming in a time when I know that,

say, GTA isn't on the horizon. Like there's not, for the rest of this year, for me at least, it's a, it's a nice chunk of open space for gaming.

Not open space in terms of like my personal availability, but open, my open gaming,

you know, chapter headline is going to be Final Fantasy Rebirth for the foreseeable future.

I'm sorry I'm not talking about it when it came out and it's in the zeitgeist, but that doesn't make any of these backlog games any

worse for the playing. Right.
Speaking of which, I did not know there's a letterbox for games. There is? It's called backlog.
Yeah, I wait, really? Yeah, there's a couple of these.

I've messed around with that one, and then I think there's one called

I can't remember what the other one's called. I can't, I wish it was more like Letterbox.
How so? Um,

because

on a first glance, it looked like the same thing.

It's closer. Maybe it's gotten better now.
I'll tell you how ill I am

with these types of like list apps and things like that. Yep.

I

basically went through each year I've been alive

and looked at every single movie that came out and logged it because I was like, or log the ones that I've seen. Because you're the finisher.

I had to, like, I just truly be like, I need to know if I've seen this movie.

So I just, what I started there, and then movies that I know that I had seen that came out from before I was born, I went more like directly to there.

I think probably actually I,

I know that there's like a for sure date cutoff of like of movies that I've seen

and probably just like did the same thing for like you know 60s on

until I until I'm born. But anything prior to that, probably good chance I remember if I've seen it.
I don't have to go through a bunch and see a bunch like that. But with games, it's harder, I think.

I watched a super old movie the other day, a farewell to arms, like the original, because there's two old ones.

It's so old.

I'm just going to keep going.

It's so old that it's filmed in in square, you know, like instead of like the

4x3 aspect. Yeah, 4x3.

4x3 is back. Yeah.

I was so bored. I was like, oh man, I really want to enjoy this, but I can barely, like, I can barely track it.
It's so old. And I felt Gen Z adjacent when they're like, Goonies is so slow.

Yeah, I think the problem with Goonies isn't that it's slow, it's that it sucks.

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Uh, Tiger, what are you playing? Heather, thank you so much for asking. By the way, I'm looking at backlogged real quick.
This does look similar to Letterbox.

I wonder just how toxic it is because just games tend to be more toxic than

cinema. Not that the

film bros can be very, very toxic, obviously. Some of the worst gatekeepers out there.
But it seems like Letterbox, which I just started to account of this year, is

reasonably like you can at least avoid that stuff. Yes.

But backlog looks pretty... I don't know.
This looks interesting. By the way, they're making an effort, a pretty sleek UX.

When I imagine you guys having a conversation outside of here, I imagine it's between

like prison phone glass.

Heather, what I'm playing is Dispatch.

This is from developer ad hoc and publisher critical role. Ad hoc consists of a lot of Telltale veterans, and this is very much a 2025 version.
of a telltale game down to

character name. We'll remember this.
And let me say this.

What a fucking video game. I got to get it.
Dispatch fucking rules. Matt, you would love this game.
Ranch, you'd maybe like this game.

I think you would like this game because of the story and because of the

sense of humor. Heather, you'd hate this game for sure

because it is

very much does not have just the aspects of gameplay that are so core to you enjoying an interactive experience. We are a spectrum of players.
Exactly. None of us are right about games.

We are all enjoying games as they come to us. It's a Goldilocks situation here.
Yeah. You're on one side, you're on one side.
I'm sort of like somewhere in the middle there. Yeah.
I think so. Yeah.

But this is very much a Weiger-ass game. The first thing is, so basically what it is, is it's an episodic release.
The full game is out now, and it's $30 for the whole package. Definitely worth it

as far as I'm concerned. The final two episodes were released November 12th, so it's all fully out there now.

And I think a lot more people are getting on board because it's just a completed package and the whole season is.

I have not finished it yet, but the whole season, from what I've, what I've read and what I've heard is really, really satisfying and how it concludes.

It is a superhero world, like kind of an alternate earth where the player character, very much an alternate LA, actually, where the player character is Robert Robertson, who's the alter ego of Mecha Man.

Mecha Man is basically Iron Man

slash the Phantom because, you know, like the Phantom's whole thing is that it was generationally handed down.

So like this, Robert Robertson's grandfather and father were previously mecha man both of them died in the suit and now Robert is is carrying on that heritage uh but it's also like kind of like a like a slightly smaller gundam it's a bigger scale than a than a fucking Iron Man suit okay and uh it's it's cool as hell The premise is your mecha man suit is destroyed by a supervillain named The Shroud, who's also who killed Robert Robertson's father.

So you get recruited to be a dispatcher for pretty much the suicide squad, villains who are given a chance at reform by becoming superheroes.

And so you're both a coach mentor, but also a CIA style kind of man in the chair, which is an interesting approach for a superhero thing is just like, who's the person who's telling the superheroes where to go and what to do?

The gameplay consists of these telltale style cutscenes with time decisions. For instance, like

which of these characters is going to be cut from your team of villains turned superheroes.

Quick time events, which you can toggle off, which are just a lot of times like whatever.

I'm playing with mouse and keyboard, but like just moving a mouse to a certain location to indicate like a character punching or something like that.

I kind of wish I'd just toggle them off because I just feel like they're kind of uninteresting and they kind of feel a little bit retrograde, but they're totally fine.

But then the dispatch aspect is a management sim.

where you are dispatching these heroes to crises on a city map, spinning plate style. It's kind of like the Yakuza Zero hostess minigame, my favorite minigame of all time.

So it's kind of like you're just like, hey, this is

a riot happening at the shopping mall. It needs someone who's got brains, but also someone who's got brawn, all of your, and it will use various verbs to indicate what

various keywords, I should say, to indicate what attributes are. most useful, but indirectly, not explicitly saying which of these, which abilities are going to be most useful.

And then your array of characters all all have different sort of things that you could that they focus on and then as you upgrade them you can decide how you want to specialize them but like you know things like attributes like intellect charisma uh you know also the like power and then uh defense of which i think is called vigor etc

So it's just like tactically dispatching these characters in different combinations to try to fulfill the requirements of all these quests.

And then within that, there's also this grid-based hacking mini-game, which is fine. It's just something else to do.

But it's like, I find that whole, I find all these gameplay elements meshed together really well. They're really satisfying.

There is a ton of like flavor dialogue that is happening within these dispatching sections that like informs the story further.

And also some of the dispatching sections are like straight up like story beats. They're not just like, hey, this is not just filler to get to the next

series of cutscenes. This actually has story consequence in and of itself.
Also, this game is very much rated M for mature. You're seeing dongs basically immediately.
What the fuck?

Yeah, there's just a fucking character just hanging a hog, like within like the first, you know, within the cold open.

And

that open's not so cold, though. This guy's showing some stuff.

There's a lot of crass humor.

Similar to that? Yeah.

A lot of it's worked on me, but more so than the comedy, which is a part of it. But

it's also just like

a really effectively told classic story story of like redemption, revenge, you know, what is what is fate is,

what you make of it.

There's a love triangle and just just fucking classic shit, but it's really well executed, really compelling, crisp dialogue, zippy pacing.

Doesn't feel like it's ever taking, ever wasting your time or just marking time.

It's like a prestige TV series where there's no filler episodes. It's just like kind of keeps going.

And Aaron Paul plays the lead, and he is phenomenal.

It is such a human, funny performance, but it also shows

this depth of range that I mean, I think if you're mostly familiar with Aaron Paul as Jesse from Breaking Bad, you just wouldn't expect him to have this within him, but it's just a really awesome performance.

I read an interview with him where he talked about how much he loves video games and how much he wanted to act in games and like he's never had the opportunity to do it before.

And also said working with ad hoc in this game was a two-year process recording all of this dialogue, which is just crazy.

But I mean, you think of how long the development cycle is, how many things are iterated through as you are writing one of these scripts, and then also how many contingencies you have to have because there's player agency in terms of what choices you go, and that leads to all these different branching story paths.

But that's like, he's a highlight amongst the cast,

which is just very top-notch all throughout. Also has incredible art direction and animation.

Top-notch staging and camera blocking. It is so cinematic.
As far as my taste goes, this is the best-looking game I played this year.

And it's just a subjective thing, but it's like whatever you respond to visually. But it really is something of just like seeing what cell shaded,

what the cell-shaded aesthetic has turned into going from the early days of like Jet Grind Radio and whatever that weird Capcom racing game was and, you know,

Wind Waker, which still looks terrific, but like to something like this is just like, this just looks like an animated series. It just, it looks incredible.

Yeah, I'm looking at screenshots of it now, which I haven't seen previously. And it does, it looks like, it just looks like the thing.

And it's gorgeous in motion, and it has great scoring too. Matt, as a fellow Southern California native, you will appreciate how centered this game is specifically on the city of Torrance, California,

which is such a, maybe the game's best overall joke is treating Torrance as like a megalopolis. Like you're just pretty much policing Torrance.
That's so funny. That's great.
That's incredible.

Yeah, it's so, so good. And there's a dog named Beef, who's the best boy.
Beef. If you haven't played this game yet, I know a lot of our listenership is very much on

the Engage with the New Cycle and is playing new stuff as it comes out.

But also, I know we have a lot of listeners who are a little bit more casual, and maybe this game has not been as much on their radar.

If you like graphic adventure games, if you specifically like Telltale games, or you just like storyforward games in general, and you don't need like a ton of combat, combat which this game doesn't really have uh it it is a it is a strong recommend i i just i'm really loving this and i i you know a few weeks ago i was like i'm not sure if i still like video games but i'm playing this game i was like oh i'm i'm fucking having a great

backup baby

hell yeah i love it yeah i've it's awesome it's been on my radar i kind of want to get it and see if my wife would be interested in like playing it with me it's sort of like making choices together it could be a kind of fun way to play that's interesting it also is a little horny so there's the thing you should like there is a romance aspect I will not be showing this to my wife.

Cool game. Let's talk about day night cycles in video games.

I'm not sure what y'all's research showed, but there are a number of possibilities for what the first game with a day night cycle actually was.

Some of these were, I was just like reading message boards and seeing fan theories because, you know, a lot of the early game history is not as well documented as you would hope.

Someone theorized that that it was 1983's Forbidden Forest for Commodore 64, which is developed by Paul Norman for Cosme. This is a game where you're an archer shooting monsters.

One of the first games to show animated blood also had a parallax scrolling, but also had a day-night cycle. And it was very simple.

It was just like part of the game would take place during the day, part of it would take place during the night.

As I was reading about this, I remembered, because my dad had a Commodore 64, I played this game at some point.

I played this game on five and a quarter inch floppy disk, probably with a joystick, and kind of like have a fuzzy memory of it.

But it's like, oh yeah, I remember like shooting spiders with a bow and arrow when I was a really little, little kid.

1983, there's a game called Enduro for Atari 2600, which was developed by Larry Miller for Activision.

That was a racing game where the time would change from day to night, and also there were weather effects.

And then 1984, there's a game called Night Lore for the Spectrum ZX, developed by the Stamper brothers, later of Rare, where the player character had 40 days to cure his werewolf curse.

Cool, cool premise. That is cool.
And then daytime, nighttime was indicated within the game world and on the HUD.

But it really seemed to come to the mainstream in the late 80s with chiefly with JRPGs. I saw

an earlier example in Sea Wolf 2, which is 1978, which was an arcade shooter that

just had a day-night cycle, and all it was was changing the palette. And that was it.
Like, it wasn't like additive to the gameplay element or anything.

It was just like, oh, now it's day, now it's night, now it's day, now it's night.

I think it also might be interesting to reference a japanese pc game called reviver okay from 1987 which used the pc's internal clock to affect the game time of the game so that that's its own thing is that that using the the real world clock to influence the game's clock yeah that that seems like its own innovation and certainly a thing we've we've seen with other games um like world of warcraft which we'll get into it It seemed to really come into the mainstream, like I was talking about,

with JRPGs. Dragon Quest III, Phantasy Star, Hyde Lide 2 were all kind of like cited as, yeah, these had day-night cycles.

The only one of those I played is Dragon Quest III, which I have a kind of a fuzzy memory of.

But also a game we covered on the podcast, Friday the 13th for NES. Yeah, I was remembering that.

Yeah, I remember being blown away by that for some reason.

It was like the coolest thing about that game. Yeah.
A game that doesn't really work, but a game that has some real ambition behind it. Yeah.
You also have Castlevania 2, simon's quest

oh sure where the uh when you were playing at night the enemies would become stronger so it was like a gameplay mechanic was nighttime is worse yeah um and then ultimate five

uh was uh was a game where the day-night cycles also affected npcs for the first time um so the shopkeepers would have their own schedules and be available internally in the game depending on what time of day it was.

If you're a vampire, the day cycle, probably your least favorite cycle, I would have to imagine. Probably want to stick with a night cycle.
Yeah, can't be doing any of that.

I also want to shout out a game that I never hear anybody talk about, which was a

Blade Runner for the PC,

which had such a strict day-night cycle that if you missed talking to somebody, that was it. Wow.
Like, you couldn't do that part of the fucking detective work because they were home or they had left.

And that game sucked as a result, even though it was beautiful.

What is the first game everyone remembers really encountering it? And I mean, I did play Castlevania 2 Simon's Quest. I had forgotten that aspect of it.
But yeah, I guess it was that.

But honestly, for me, I was like, the one that feels most concrete to me is Ocaring of Time. You know what I mean? Like, that was where it was really like, oh,

day and night are such clearly different things. I know this has happened in other games.
This happened in earlier generations. This didn't start with

Nintendo 64, but like, that's the first one I remember it really being concrete for me. I think for me, the very first game that had this in it was Pokemon Gold.
Oh, right, of course, yes.

Because I guess maybe the, I mean,

it had to have been the first one, because I sort of remember being like, no way, because you have to input the

time. And it's a different time scale, of course,

within it. It's not like one-to-one

in that game. But those cartridges had batteries in it because of it, because they do sort of use like a real-time clock for it.
But my gold cartridge, the battery is dead,

so it can't save. So like it always now, if I wanted to boot that cartridge up, it's like it's a brand new cartridge basically every time unless I swap the battery.

Whereas my red cartridge that doesn't have that battery in it is fine. It has...

like level 100 like Pokemon in it still from when I was a kid.

But I remember loving the day night cycle in gold specifically because it was like an interesting challenge to figure out, you know, my dumbass as a kid being like, okay, there's certain ones that there's certain Pokemon that were only available in the day or at night, somewhere in both, but it was fun to be like, I have to wait till nighttime so I could catch, you know, a hoot hoot.

No, I, you know, we, I didn't have a Game Boy as a kid and I didn't grow up with Pokemon, but we did play Gold Silver on the podcast.

And yeah, it is like, oh, it is really really cool in that game it's done really well but i always also associate and i don't think about this in my life really but for some reason in video games i associate the nighttime with danger

it's true because like it's it's it's just a little bit scarier it's a little in particular in games uh it can become uh quite scary at night Has there been a game, perhaps a Dracula game to your point, that subverted that, where it's like night is it's it's safer, and then daytime, it's like be careful out there.

It's like a pitch black sort of scenario. I don't know, but oh man, maybe in the Chronicles of Riddick game, actually.

I don't remember if the Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay has any night cycle. I just remember watching my uncle play that game and be like, this actually looks fucking awesome.

It was pretty cool. It was a

shockingly good license game back when license games were oftentimes pretty bad. Yeah.
I mean, there are earlier examples, certainly, in the games that I played where there was a day-night cycle.

Heck, even I think Street Fighter II had a day version of Ryu Stage and a night version of Ryu Stage, right?

But the game that solidified in me a terror of, oh no, it is night, is Final Fantasy Online.

And I think a lot of these online games have really sort of prestigious day-night cycles because it is another way to add content for the player.

But in Final Fantasy Online, or Final Fantasy XI, rather,

the game was designed so that you had to play in a group like it was very very like there was a lot of an enormous amount of pressure to get partied up and to have everything on your solo uh experience be very very very very hard it was a an unusual gameplay system um

but i often would be playing because i was living in europe and so i was playing an american copy of the game in a region that didn't have Final Fantasy online yet.

So I was all off sync with everybody else in the servers and would often be playing solo because it was hard to get a party going.

And the danger level of playing solo was already increased. And when it would start turning night in that fucking game and I was not where I was supposed to be, I was like,

fuck.

Because also the punishment for

dying in that game was really, really, really steep. And there were places where it was like, okay, you can only catch certain fish in order to craft certain things at certain times in certain areas.

And yet if you just stand around in those areas in the dark, you will be drawing enemies to you like automatic aggro. And it sucked.

And it was like, I was so hyper-fixated on the day night cycle of Final Fantasy Online that they had a...

And I've talked about this on the show before, they had a clock, like an official Square Enix day clock that was synchronized to the time inside the game.

So even when you weren't playing, you could see what time it was in Vanadiel, the game, and

make choices about whether or not to log on based on where your character was and whether or not it was day or night, which

was intense. You were smiling like you ate a goldfish.

No, I wasn't. I swear.

What is he going to say? Do you mean a cracker or a real one? I think a real one like you're a cat.

I was just listening. I'm sorry.
I wasn't trying to.

I didn't have it. I didn't have a sort of wry remark.
He had a wry remark. Now you're thinking I'm going to, like, I'm hiding something that I was going to tee up, but I swear I was not.
Okay.

All right.

Got extra specific somehow.

Sounds like you thought I was going to say something that I was going to tee up, but I simply wasn't planning such a thing.

Grand Theft Auto games have fantastic day-night cycles. Red Dead Redemption has a fantastic day-night cycle.

Okay, so Red Dead Redemption in particular, for some reason, I think in open world games in general, like this, but in particular in Red Dead, I do think that the nighttime in those games, for some reason, is way scarier than the day.

Because, like, for some, like, you know, you can kind of see like a cat. Also, the West is just scary to me.
Like, the old West is scary. Yeah, the West is scary.

You know, in space, nobody can hear you scream. In Old, everyone's screaming all the time, and you can hear it.
But

I feel like there's like the, you know,

you can happen upon the clan in Red Dead Redemption 2, and then you serve them swift justice, of course.

But, like, I feel like then you're like, you could be walking around in a game like that, and somebody will be like, Oh, stranger, I oh, it's been days since I've eaten.

Do you have anything food to spare? Then, or something like that. And then they're like, I'm just kidding.
I'll fucking kill you.

And, like, it's, it gets, it gets scary out there. Well, the best way to handle that is anybody who talks to you in Red Dead Redemption, you should just execute it.

Yeah, I guess you just never know if they were going to cause you any harm or otherwise.

I also like this as a move in games with a day-night cycle. You talked about in Blade Runner

being able to miss out on quests. I like when quests are like, hey, come talk to me at this bar at night.
Yeah. And then you go and you're like, okay.
But if you miss it,

You just go the next night. Yeah, you get it.
You get another chance. And

what that brings me to is

The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, which has a lot of that.

And I mentioned Ocaria of Time already, but Majora's Mask, you know, Nickensis Ocary of Time. I like Majora's Mask more.
One of my favorite Zeldas.

I think it's just such a unique experience and was such a cool way to take what was established in Ocarine of Time. Do you like when Link's like, somebody stop me?

Yeah, I like it when he puts on, you know, because he's got a bunch of different masks he can wear in that, but the mask specifically.

And he's smoking. P-A-R-T-Y? Because I gotta.

That's a lot of fun.

So he has, but there are like specific NPC, specific quest lines, one of which,

which is such a huge pain in the ass, and you can fail it on the third day, but one of which takes all three days of game time before

the world is destroyed and the clock resets because of the groundhog day nature of this

uh the cycle but

it it is like like

it

it is really cool because it's not just like a day a night it's like oh i'm one time period closer to uh the end of this limited stretch of time i have before we go back to square one before uh you know the the the time loop resets and it's

yeah, I mean,

it's just one that really stands out to me.

You guys remember Shen Mu, don't you? Of course. Oh, yeah.
Shen Mu had a day-night cycle where like stores would be closed. Yes.
Because they wanted to make just the first realistic game.

And so you would like walk around town and then stores would be closed and be like, oh, I can't do this right now.

I do remember that because that would be, of course, when I want to participate in a gotcha machine.

Closed stores make me specifically think of Stardew Valley, where like Marnie will just be like, oh, I'm just not in today. And it's like, oh, this fucking sucks.
Yeah, oh, because it's Wednesday.

Do you make your own fucking rules? I guess you hate making money on Wednesday. Exactly.
Yeah. So that, that, like, but I, but I do,

I do like that,

except when it's a pain in the ass. Like, I'm just like, I don't know.
And I don't know how you kind of strike that balance.

I guess maybe it being something of a pain in the ass, it being a limited thing that you only have certain periods of time. I mean, that's that, maybe that enhances the overall experience.

That is scarcity to sell this butter.

Another fucking thing that was paired with day-night cycles, certainly in Final Fantasy Online, was weather systems.

Sure, like once these guys started being like, oh, it could be day night, but it could also be cloudy, rainy, like, yeah, they started to what a nightmare.

They decided to start playing God in that way, didn't they?

Of course, I feel like it must be mentioned.

The day-night cycle in Animal Cross,

which is

real time. Yeah.

And incredible to me.

It's unbelievable. The music for every hour of the game.

What a time. You know who hears that music every night? You do.
Right, because the Alarmo plays it as my sleepy sounds. I forgot you have an Alarmo.
Don't forget, I listen to it. And you know what?

Not only do I listen to it, my wife asks me to start the sleepy sounds over again because she likes the sleepy sounds so much. Wow, that's pretty good.
Alarmo has turned bedtime into a nice time.

Nintendo Headquarters. Someone mentioned Alarmo on a podcast.

We better fucking sue them.

But just the, I mean, obviously there's certain things you can do during the day and night in Animal Crossing, but to, I mean, They could have just been like, this is the music of the game.

There's like five songs. There's a song for every hour of the game.
And I think that's incredible.

It's, I mean, it's a

rad amount of detail to implement. Yeah.

Unnecessary detail, like Heather was talking about with all the bespoke animations that exist within Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. But that's the sort of thing that just makes a

it feel like such a such a more such a richer experience. Yeah, I mean, like, I do really like the day-night cycle in Animal Crossing.
I'm torn sometimes on it being tied to the real world. I do think

the actual

time frame because a lot of that I'm thinking of my experience when I was playing World of Warcraft and working full-time in the video game industry, where I was just only ever playing at night because it was just like, that's what, and I was like, this is fine, but also, like, this isn't the only thing, I don't want to just be reminded of what time it is all the time.

You know what I mean? Yeah. But I also, I mean, it's cool to implement.
And I think WoW was one of the first mainstream

one of the biggest popularizers of that approach, I should say.

But I do think it works at Animal Crossing for me for whatever reason. Yeah, there was like a time where I was like, I guess I'm just like missing the whole day in Animal Crossing.

And like, I can't, you know,

I can't go to the little store and buy things with my bells, or I can't trade.

uh you know turnips for bells or anything like that it's all bells related of course uh so then you hit but like that's the great thing about that game, though, is that you can just be like, you know what, it's gonna just be, it'll just be tomorrow.

I'll just do it tomorrow, and that's fine. Yeah, I guess probably part of that association with Animal Crossing for me is because

we were all playing during the pandemic, and I like, like, I, I was one of the people who was working from home, so like I was playing during the day, so I didn't get to experience it, yeah, yeah.

Uh, when you didn't have any work to do, right, Nick? Uh, yeah,

work recording to podcasts

Ranch is going to fire you.

I had forgotten that Disco Elysium has something of a day-night cycle. Obviously, a game that appears on all of our favorite games of all time list.
Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, right.

That's one of those where what time of day it is does affect quite a bit and certainly also affects the scoring. Yeah, one of the best parts of

Disco Elysium's day-night cycle is the different versions of Whirling in Rags theme, which

has like it's so God. That game is so good.
Maybe I'm really good. What a once-in-a-lifetime event.
It's so fucking good. Yep.

Ko Kamamadaqua.

That creature. You remember that? Huh? You're talking about one of the cryptids? One of the cryptids.
Yeah.

I didn't remember the name of it. Ko Kamamadaqua.
I remember because it kind of sounds like my name.

Cole Ka Apodaka? Yeah, kind of.

Yeah.

Pretty good. I thought your name is Map.
It's not Map.

What do we think of the because I also like the approach where there are discrete blocks of time? This is like something you'll see in the Atlas RPGs. I think people think of most

commonly, like, you know, Persona 5 and Metaphor Refantasio. But it's like,

it's. Time is only passing when you choose to advance it, but also you have limited blocks of time when you can do things.
So it's like, what am I going to buy?

Oh, I'm going to, I'll read a book for this period. You know, I'll make a curry for this period.

I'll go hang with this character that I'm romancing for this period, you know, like, like, or I'll go explore a dungeon.

You're kind of just choosing what you're going to do with various chunks of time. I do like that, except when suddenly they're like, oh, you just got to go straight to bed.

I was like, what the, what the fuck? I was going to do something with his night. What happened to me?

This cinematic let me write to going to bed. I skip a whole block of time here.
Nick hates bedtime. No, I don't.
I don't want to go to bed.

I love bedtime in my life, but like in a game when all of a sudden I'm just like, oh, I thought I was going to have some extra time to work on improving one of my skills or something like this or working on one of these quest lines with one of these NPCs.

And then all of a sudden, no, I've just got to get to the next story day. It'd be nice if you could do in games like that, where

you often are then sent to bed or whatever. What if you could just stay up late and like still do stuff, but then maybe,

you know,

a negative negative boon is that then you're tired during the day when you're trying to do other stuff. Yeah, you get a little debuff the next day.
Yeah, yeah, that'd be kind of a little groggy.

Yeah, a little groggy. Yeah.
Sorry, I didn't sleep that much. You could be saying stuff like that.
Do games ever have like a hangover effect? That's the thing I feel like.

Some game must have implemented that. Maybe even a game I played that I've forgotten about, but I'm just like, because disco Elysium does, right?

Well, Disco Elysium has the effects you can take from all the drugs. Yeah.
But I don't remember if you have, if you get, like, drink a bunch and then you go to bed.

I don't think you wake wake up with a hangover that lingers. Man,

being hungover, I think for me personally, one of the worst feelings on earth. It sucks.
And it's one of those things where like the older you get, the worse it is.

And also the less it takes for you to be hungover. So it's just like, oh, okay.
So that's just like a, an avenue of fun that just is gone now. I fucking miss it.

I miss it so much. I had like three beers the other night.
Yeah.

Which was, I'll say, rare these days, not really doing it like that. And that was me being like, I'm being crazy.

Whereas when I was younger, it would be like more. Yeah.
The whole next day, I wasn't like hungover, hungover, but I was like, I don't feel right. Three year inks old, oh, give me a hangover for sure.

It is tough. It fucking sucks.
It fucking sucks. Horrible.
Remember when I used to, man, I used to be so fucking cool. I know.
Used to be a little party. Yeah.

But there aren't there

like crazy alcoholics who are older and just are like drinking a bunch. It's just like, you just have to drink a lot to get your tolerance up, I guess, right? We can't go down

the path of being jealous of those types of people. No?

Kiefer Sutherland's making it work.

I'm fucking jealous.

That's it.

I do.

There was nothing like waking up feeling like shit and knowing why. Yeah.
Whereas now I wake up and I feel like shit and it is a mystery. I'm like, what did I do this time?

Like, why would I feel like this? I stayed up 10 minutes later than normal.

Sleepy sounds. You don't put me to sleep.

The sounds are too good. You're like dancing.
Oh, it's good sounds.

I mean, we haven't mentioned Minecraft yet.

A good example of nighttime becoming scary. Nighttime is scary.
And also standardized in survival games, it's just like, oh, yeah, that's just always a thing.

Like, you have to find shelter for the night, and night is when the fucking skeletons will come out or whatever the fuck. I don't like those guys.
Those creepers. Yeah, I don't love them.
For me,

they're a little too scary, actually. And I know that they

that game is for babies.

Kids shouldn't be playing that. That's actually a little too scary, I think.

It's for everyone. And I will say that I do like that about Minecraft that there is a real sense of danger at night.

You can't fuck around.

I really do need to shelter in place or make sure I'm adequately.

Lego Fortnite, which steals almost everything from Minecraft, is the same way. I also like that about Lego Fortnite.
Yeah. Which was the most Fortnite I played.

I looked up what the longest day night cycles are in games and I thought the answers were interesting.

Technical answer for longest day night cycle is Animal Crossing because it's real time, but also Microsoft Flight Simulator, which syncs the daytime of where you're flying to the real world circumstances.

So

you're flying from New York City to Zurich. Yeah.
You will go through different time zones. Yeah, yeah.

The longest single-player experience for day-night cycle is a game that I've never heard of called

The Longing,

which has a real-time 400-day day-night cycle. I remember reading about this game, it's really an interesting premise.

And then the longest standard first-person survival game day night cycle, you've got Worm Online, which has a day night cycle of three hours, Death Stranding up there with three to four four hours for a day night cycle.

Kingdom Come Deliverance with 96 minutes. And Red Dead Redemption 2 slash GTA 5 for 48 minutes for

the day night cycle. I think for me, like bringing up Death Stranding is interesting because BTs during the day,

whatever. They're just boys.

I can do it. That's fine.
Yeah, they're just boys. BT at night? Nothing's going to try to fucking kill me.
Red eyes. Don't like it.
I don't like that at all.

You know what? I'm going to play The Longing Because I remember reading about this game, and I'm looking at it on Steam now.

It is.

I'll just read the description here.

Play is a lonely shade, the last servant of a king who once ruled an underground kingdom. The king's powers have faded, and he falls asleep for 400 days to regain his might.

It is your duty to stay in the earthen palace until he awakens. As soon as you start, the game inevitably counts down the 400 days, even when you stop playing and exit the game.

It is now up to you to decide what to do with your solitary existence beneath the soil. Don't stress yourself.
You have plenty of time.

So you can either choose to start the game and then come back after 400 days of real time to see how it ends. So play it like fully as an idle game.
Or

you can keep playing and walk around. I guess the game has a really, really slow walking speed, but you just are like...

You can just sort of like explore the caves and collect shit as well to kind of maybe

give you different endings. But what a cool premise.
The day-night cycle in Blue Blue Prince is actually not too bad because it's linked to your steps, right? So, like,

you only have a certain number of steps that you can do unless you get more steps as you go, which I love. I do like getting more steps.
I love getting more steps.

There's things about that game that I like. Honestly, it's an impressive design.

I do think there are more things I like about it that I dislike, but the things I dislike about it outweigh the things that I like.

Like, if I made a list, I think the like list would be longer.

When we were predicting our games of the year a few episodes ago, Blue Prince was my underdog for Game of the Year. Yeah.
Didn't even get nominated for the Game Awards as one of the possibilities.

It did get nominated for Indie Game of the Year. Yeah.
But I was shocked, stunned even.

Because despite my also...

almost identical experience of Blue Prince where I'm like, holy shit, look at this game, but also I hate it.

When you read the news, your teeth started chattering and your skeleton came out, right? what

apparently with with blueprints this is what i was some i was reading some analysis what is that you got so scared that you're like skeleton scared of what you're just so shocked from reading the news that my teeth started what are you referencing like cartoons or something i think like the cartoon joke of your skeleton jumping out of your own skin for what i don't understand what we're doing i don't either but i think but i think that's what we're where you were going with this you were saying that like

somebody goes whoa, whoa, whoa, and their skeleton jumps out of their body? Yeah. That's a thing.
Yeah, I've seen that. I've never seen that.

I've seen a clip or something, but like, I think you just got to believe it. I don't believe it.

I was reading some speculation as to why Blue Prince got snubbed for Game of the Year, the Game Awards, and apparently it wasn't localized beyond English.

And so a lot of the global audience was excluded from the experience. And so that would maybe make sense with the composition of the the voting body.
Yeah.

Because a lot of the, like, it's, it's not just that there's the in-game text, there's a lot of like art within the game, a lot of like in-game books and documents and whatever that would all need to be localized and re-rendered.

So that's it's a bit of a task. All right, okay.
But yes, I, what I was shocked

didn't get nominated for best indie game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. You did this with me, yeah, I know, but Heather didn't hear it.
I wish I hadn't.

I can't believe we've gone this long without mentioning

the day-night cycle in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Oh, sure.
Where

talk about getting scary?

It's not always happening, but sometimes the blood moon rises once again, and all the guys that had been

killed along the way, they returned to the surface and they're scary.

Hate that part. Blood moon pisses me off.
If you want to experience

sleep sounds that is a little unsettling, you can set it to Zelda and it'll be the sound of Zelda Breath of the Wild nighttime cycle. Wow.
I got to be honest, not comforting.

What if it was her little speech that she does?

The blood moon rises once again.

Okay. Yeah, like, stop.
Could you stop? I'm trying to see. 15 minutes of it.

Was San Andreas the first Grand Theft Auto with a day-night cycle? I'm trying to remember. I don't remember.
I don't remember if it was in the case. I don't remember either.

I kind of feel like you can walk around at night in

Grand Theft Auto 3, maybe. Maybe it was 3 that started it.
Because you were going out to the club and stuff.

I love Grand Theft Auto 3. Cool game.
Trying to think there was like a.

There's not a day night cycle in Resident Evil 4, is there? No, I don't think so. No, I think there's just sections of it that are at night.
Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, it's a common...

You talked about it with Breath of the Wild. I mean, it's just like it's becoming a standard thing with Zelda games.
And then also, I think, just open world games in general.

And then it's been a thing in RPGs for a long time. I mean, it's just.

Is there an element? Yeah.

Because as day-night cycles were introduced to games and you were like, oh, wow, this is compelling because it reminds me of the real world and with that came weather systems and pcs coming and going items on sale at certain times in certain stores is there an element of the real world experience that you haven't seen in a game that you wish was incorporated or that you're worried shouldn't be incorporated for example I don't think in most games you have to get a license before you can drive one of the cars.

Sure. And it would suck if you had to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It might be kind of cool, though.

I could see that mechanically being something of like you can choose to drive without a license, but you know, you can get it, you can get pulled over. The consequences are really bad.

That's what's taking Grand Theft Auto VI, so long as they're simulating the DMV. Yeah.

Yeah, and the play testers are just like there waiting. They're just like at that part of the game, but they haven't got called yet.
Well, you know what?

Would actually, I think, would not work well in a game. I could be wrong.
Maybe there's a game that implements this effectively.

If you had to sleep as much as you do in the real world, and then that took actual game game time. Yeah.
So, if it was like, hey, it's nighttime, my character needs to sleep.

It's not like Stardew Valley where I'm going to bed and then we'll just move, jump forward to the next day.

It is, I need eight hours of in-game time to elapse for my character sleeping in order for them to be adequately revitalized for the next day's action. So, you're saying that there's no time jump?

You have to like experience eight real-time hours of sleep in order to continue progress in the game. You have to keep the game on.
By that measure, is sleep the worst mechanic of reality?

I think it's one of the better ones. Actually, good because you have, like, you get, you feel better,

you get to not be alive for a little bit.

You sometimes get to have a fun dream. Yeah, I think dreams are cool.

For me, dreams are cool. Nightmares could take or leave.
Yeah, not a big nightmares fan.

I love nightmares. Go crazy.
You're right in the middle of it. I love all of it.
Nightmares, though, generally, you can remember better. Yeah.

And they're also more interesting. And I love coming back from another existence and being like, what the fuck?

Because also, my brain is creating what is effectively extremely high-end CG. Yes.
You know, like if I'm in a burning building, my brain is making those graphics. And then you get to unpack, like,

why was The Rock chasing me, trying to kill me? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Why did I have a book where my boobs should be while my mommy was saying, who's the little girl

my problem

my problem is a lot of my nightmares are disgusting yeah i'm just like like i don't want to remember this is fucking gross yeah i don't want to think about this fucking clogged toilet or whatever

you your nightmares just take place in uh the other world in silent hill 2 i have a lot of dreams where i'm just like i'm in like a restroom i'm in like a public bathroom wow with like

16 stalls. None of them have doors.
All the toilets are clogged. Holy shit.
I was just like, this is fucking gross. I don't really think about this.
Yeah.

You'd rather it be the best bathroom you've ever seen. Yeah, give me a good bathroom.
I have

a bathroom in a Nordstrom or in a hotel lobby.

Since my childhood, I've had the same recurring nightmare about atomic bombing. And when I was a kid,

I went to a therapist for it because I was having the nightmare so aggressively, so all the time.

Now when I have the nightmare, I'm just kind of like, oh, it's this one again. Not in the dream, but when I wake up, I'm like, wow, what a different take on the same exact dream.

So like they couldn't fix it? No, they can't do shit. That's crazy.
They can just tell you when you're a kid, it's not real. It's not.
And I'd be like, well, it's going to happen.

And they'd be like, no, it's not.

Yeah. Do you ever have nightmares where you've

killed somebody? Yes. I have that.
Because that's the thing. I'm just like, like, why did I murder this guy? Like, Oh my God, I shouldn't have done this.
You know why you did it? Like, oh, great.

I fucking killed someone. Nick, can I ask if you have that dream? So I have that dream a lot, but it's always post-murder.
Do you murder the person in the dream? No, I've already killed them.

Yes, same thing. A lot of times,

it's never someone I know. I don't think.
I think it's maybe sometimes it's been someone I know, but not someone I'm like close with. But a lot of times it's like a stranger.

It's like an invented person.

It's like, I killed this shopkeeper. And even like, I effectively covered up his murder, but I know that I did it.
Okay.

So the problem we've just unveiled about Nick is that he referred to him as a shopkeeper.

But then there's also this thing too, right? Like, is it, and I don't know if this is true or not, but like you can't, your brain can't like invent a face.

So like that face is probably somebody you've seen or interacted with at some point in your life. So it's like they're like an actual person somewhere out there, but I don't know.
I don't know.

I feel like I'm getting, I see invented faces. I'm making some crazy ones.
People always say you can't read in dreams either. It's like, I'm reading all the time.
Yeah. Looking fucking.

In those shitty bathrooms.

I had a recurring dream for a while that has always stuck with me where I was, I'd met a girl in the dream, right?

And I was having these recurring dreams where this girl and I were going on multiple dates. And I would journal about it.

And I'd be like, this is the strangest sequence I've ever had in my experience of dreaming that I'm having new dates with this same invented girl in my dreams.

And in my dreams, one time I said, because she was like, you know, I really want to be with you or whatever for a long time.

And I was like, well, the problem is you're in my dreams. You're not real.

And she got so upset that she broke up with me and then she never appeared in a dream again. Wow.

Which

brains are so crazy. Brains are unbelievable.
You had the dream visitor from Baldur's Gate 3.

So fucking weird.

Fucking crazy. Was it a mind flayer?

I have a mind flayer myself.

Okay,

this I think is a good mechanic if your game is going to have a day-night cycle and quests or things that are sort of locked behind the day or time.

The ability to pass the time. Yeah, no, this is the thing.
Like, I can play a little song and pass some time. Great.
I can sit at a campfire, pass the time.

Look, maybe I'm an Elden Ring and I got to fight this one specific boss who is only, you know, on his mount at night or wherever. And I just, I'll sit at the campfire for a little bit.

I'll go kick his ass. I'll take his weapon.
Yeah, like I, I, like, that I love. I think that's really satisfying.

What, what, one of the, and to bring up Disco Elysium again, one of the coolest parts about the sleep to pass time mechanic in that game is that it unveils parts of the story through your dreams.

Like, dreaming as a mechanic is also pretty neat, which is a, which is a Baldur's Gate 3 thing. Yep.

In Pokemon Legends ZA, you can only, there are things you have to do to get your rank up in the game, and that is get these points that you can only get in battle zones, and the battle zones are only at night.

So, often I am just finding a bench because that's how you can pass the time. You have to sit on a bench for hours, I guess, is the in-game thing that's happening.

Uh, and they give you an option: do you want to pass some time? Yes, till when morning, uh, you know, afternoon, night.

Uh, I'm always picking night, and uh, then the screen just goes blank, and then the sun goes down, and the, you know, the moon comes up, um, and then you can find the what the okay i forgot

about that

this other guy shows up

and then you can uh go in the the battle zones but i kind of wish that i wish the battle zones were not locked to nighttime yeah uh and weren't just in one place one time i wish it was just like the entire city was sort of like purge rules uh but that's you know different different complaint for a different day it sounds like you have a lot of complaints about ZA.

I kind of do. Yeah.
But you know what? I think more complaints than I have about blueprints, actually. Wow.
Woof. I overall

do kind of find day night cycles because it's so

it's such an expectation of these types of games. You know what I mean? That I, there, there's, there's times where I'm kind of like, all right.
You know what I mean?

It's like, it's like kind of almost encountering another fishing mini-game. It's like, all right, yeah, I guess there's an overnight.
Never enough. Never enough.
I love a fishing mini-game.

there are times i'm just kind of like i guess this yeah fucking this game has fishing too yeah this game has a day night cycle too you know it's it's such a standard convention that i'm almost like when a game doesn't have it i find it a little bit refreshing or when it has just like a different approach like i was talking about like the atlas rpgs which were just

fish with big the cat in sonic frontiers jesus christ don't remind me

Fucking Totoro looking motherfucker.

Remember how I returned to that game?

Something I didn't know know you could do in the year 2025? They just took it back fully. You can return games.
So you, you, your overall take is you don't like day night?

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

it's like skill trees. You know what I mean? It's like, this is such a standard feature of this type of game

that I'm like, to me, it's not even necessarily additive. It's just like, okay, well, this is just a thing that's here.

And so I'm almost like, what are you going to do with this

that is all new?

Or are you going to justify its existence beyond just being like, well, we're an open world game, we're with RPG elements, so we have to have a day-night cycle because that's just what these kind of games do.

You know what I mean? Like,

is there anything new you're going to add to the formula? And to that, I answer, Bucktie. Buktai takes the day-night cycle of the real world and forces you to implement it in the game.

It's a game we've played here on the podcast before, a Hideo Kojima game for the Game Boy Advance that featured a solar sensor on the cartridge itself, which you could only charge up with the actual sun or UV lights, and then you would have more powerful weapon in the game.

I mean, there are things that are still available to us to do in day-night cycles. It's just you need people to come up with that shit.
I played Boktai.

We played Boktai when we did it on the podcast, and it's one of those things where it's cool in theory. It was a fucking pain in the ass.
You use the sun.

The only part of it that sucked is that you can't see the Game Boy in the daytime. Yeah, it's a pretty big obstacle sitting in direct sunlight, getting a sunburn.

I played it on an emulator and that was less fun. Like that was not fun.
Okay, I got to charge the thing or whatever. And you know, press whatever button was

the sunlight button? Yeah, sunlight button. Press S to sun.

I do like in games when they don't necessarily have a daylight, a day-night cycle, but like, you know, part of the story will be taking place in the day.

Yes, and they bring you to like a cutscene and now you're like, okay, now we're actually, now this section of the game is at night, and that's kind of just different. I agree.

A lot of times that's that to me is just more interesting. Yeah.

Or a more linear just structure in general where it's just like, yeah, parts of this are a day and then like, yeah, we got to wait till later. You know, it's but, but whatever.

I mean, like, that's, that's probably just my general fatigue with

open world games, with character action games. I'm shocked that, uh, to my experience so far in the game, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth does not have a day-night cycle.
I've played 12 hours of that game.

It has been night, you know, in part of the story, but when you're wandering around the overworld for the first time, there's no day-night cycle. It is always beautiful, gorgeous, perfect day.

Strange. Yeah, but I, but I don't know, like, but yeah, because, because the expectation is that that would, it'd be there, but like, yeah, I don't know if it would be additive.

I think it's kind of cool that it's not. I don't know that it needs to be there because also it would affect your availability

when it comes to like talking to certain NPCs. And I don't want any of that friction in specifically that game.

I don't want to go to the chocobo place and have the girl be like, I'm not at the counter. And if she is at the counter at 1 a.m., I'm like, why are you here?

It would be funny if the dialogue was just a little bit different. They're like, they are there, but they're just like yawning a bunch.

Yeah, I'm here.

So it's getting a little late. Imagine having to do the mocap for all that shit, too.
You know, mocap for your 4 a.m. version of the NPC.

Shall we do a segment? Let's do it. Do a segment.
Segment.

It's time for game overtime. Wow.
I have some games here prepped that I had a little fun making this list. Uh-oh.
Matt had some fun.

Well, first of all, we all know the game. I'm going to say the game, the name of the game.
You're going to tell me how long you think it takes to beat the main story.

And this obviously are all sourced from how long to beat. And these are like self-reported averages of these games, of course.

So these are, and remind me because there's main story, there's main story plus extras, and then there's completionists, right? So this is the lowest threshold to finish a game, the lowest threshold

as documented on the site. And a little bit of fun that I had.
All these games have day or night in the title. Got it.
Doesn't

that's that? No, that's fun, doesn't have any weight to the game. No, that's a little bit of fun.

It's just exactly a little bit, a little tiny bit of fun, just a smidge of fun, just a little bit. So, for this first game, how long does it take to complete the main story of Days Gone?

Okay, I've not played Days Gone. This is an open-world motorcycle zombie game.
That's right.

I'm just going to guess

23 hours. While you're with 23? Other guess is 45 hours.
Ranch, you want to play? Sorry, what?

All right, you don't have to. You don't have to.
It's okay.

I just want to say someone just sent me a link to all of Jeffrey Epstein's emails, but someone made a website where you can scroll through. Like, it's actually your Gmail account.

Wow. So why would I was

you've been busy?

It's the conspiracy episode of the show and ranch is on the case. Ranch Command F.
Weiger.

I saw a statistic that the reason that like just as real quick aside, that the reason that the story cycle is so fixated on Trump in the Epstein emails that have been released is that that Clinton shows up for something like 20% of the emails?

Like, he's in and out a fucking ton. Like, he's in there, right? Trump is mentioned in 72%.

Jesus Christ. Oh, my God.
So, it's like the reason that the window of focus is on him in these emails is because they're constantly fucking talking about him. Yeah.
Because he's just become president.

Crazy. Yeah.

Weiger said 23. Yeah.
You said 45. 45.
I think we have the prices right this one. And so this one goes to Nick.
36 and a half hours. Okay, I'll take it.
Nick's on the board with one. Fuck.

God, I fucking hate this game. Next day.
Or next game.

Love Freudian Slip because of the day nights discussion. Just having a little bit of fun.
Yeah, just a little bit. Day of the Tentacle.
A game we played on the show.

Yeah, I mean, I played Day of the Tentacles as a kid. I finished it a number of times.
Is that like one of those Maniac Mansion style games? It's Maniac Mansion 2. Okay.
They have the Tentacle.

Okay, well, great. We did cover it on the podcast.
Yep, yep.

Was that with that? With Hayes. It was with Hayes, yeah, yeah.
He also played as a game. Yep, okay, okay.

Main story only.

Get through this game pretty briskly. I'm going to say six hours.
Four hours.

Heather's on the board. Five hours.
Five hours. Wow.
One hour differential. Could have gone out of this game.
This is my favorite game of all time. Okay, so it's tied up currently.
How about this?

Conquers Bad fur day

bad fur day of course acronymed as bfd which is another cheeky little joke from the stamper brothers what is it with this guy this conqueror he's quite he's ryeball 7.5 hours 7.5 hours heather on the board

um

would he like shit and stuff there is there is he's just shitting the whole time i feel like hell it's coming out something there's a there's a there's a the great mighty poo in the game one of the bosses is like shit there's shit and then there's like testicles, and there's like a lot of gore.

What the hell's wrong? Anyway,

seven and a half hours.

That sounds right.

I'll say four hours. Wow.

Undercut. Goes to Heather.
11 hours. 11 hours.
Okay.

This is my favorite segment of all time. Could go either way.
Anyone's game still. How about this? My game.
Kingdom Hearts. 358 over two days.
Which one is that? That is a 3DS one. Okay.

Or it's actually the DS one. The 3DS one is Dream Drop Distance.
12.5 hours. 12.5 from Heather.
You play as.

What is the name of that character? Roxas?

Roxas. Roxas.

Or is it Ventus?

Oh, I don't know. Because he's different.

The savvy move, if I want to go over, would be to just go a half hour, you know, but if it did like above that and say 13 hours, but no, but that feels like it's not the spirit of what we're doing here ruined i'm going to go because then then you either just gonna guess one above or one each time um anyway i'm gonna guess 17 hours what did you say heather 12.5

this one goes to nick 26 and a half hours

that is a big game yeah big boy Look what daddy did.

All right. Oh, what's that? The sun is going down.

Okay.

And now it's nighttime. Wow.

A day-night cycle for this very game. I'm just having a little both of us because it's night.
I'm just having a little bit of fun, is all.

I like it. We like it.
So it's tied up at 2-2. It's tied up at 2-2.
Could go either way. And if it keeps going this way, the whole thing can end in a tie-action.
Wow. Marvel's Midnight Suns.

Midnight Suns. I don't even know what this game is.

This is

a strategy game

that came out that was really well received, but was a commercial flop. This is, I believe, Firaxis made this game.
I think so.

It's really good. Yeah,

it's really like

people who've played this game says this game is awesome and has a very strong story, but it is like

a tactical game where you were deploying superheroes in combat scenarios.

Turn-based.

And you can date Blade.

I think this game is pretty meaty. I'm going to guess 37 hours.
Shit. 37 from like 30.
I was going to go with 36, but I don't want to be a jerk.

36 would be the worst way to do it.

Because then you only get it if you guess if it's exactly 36. I know, but that's why I was going to say it's 36, and now I feel like I can't do any of these things.
Oh, I see what you're saying.

I'm going to go with 42 hours.

Matt is rubbing his mouth as if to render a verdict here. It's 180 hours.

Nobody likes prizes right rules, but I feel like it's important in an instance quite like this. Yes.

Marvel's Midnight Suns main story completion: 40 and a half hours. It has to go to Y.
Wow. Wow, no.

I mean, it doesn't have to be. I fucked myself.
I hate this game. Heather, if we didn't have the price is right rules, Heather is technically close.
That is cool.

I never would have played this segment ever again. But I like the Price's Right rules myself.
I'm benefiting from it. Yeah.
This next one: Castlevania Symphony of the Night. 31 hours.
Got in there.

Got in there. Not a race.

I've finished Symphony of the Night. I've also, what is it? What 181%ed

Symphony Night, whatever weird percentage you get to in that game. Whoa.
So I played this game a good amount.

And I think main story only,

I'm going to say nine hours. Oh, my God.

I'm worried I maybe even overshot it. Here's the thing.

You both went over.

So then in this instance. So then no one gets a point.
I guess no one gets a point. Or in an instance like this, we abandon the prices, right? And then whoever's closest.
That doesn't feel fair.

It feels like no one should get a point. Okay, nobody gets a point.
What was it? Like seven hours? Eight and a half hours. Eight and a half hours.
Oh, my God. It was just a half hour over.

Yeah, that's right. My dumbass.

So the game, it's still, it's 3-2. Tigers in the league.
I will say, I was pretty close. If it's eight and a half, and I said nine, that's pretty good.
It is pretty good, but it's

incorrect. I know.
I'm not saying I should get a point. I'm just saying I was pretty close.
I was one way off. I'm looking for here.
I'm just wanting people to like, hey,

I hate this game. I can't wait till it ends.
It's still 3-2. It's making him feel happy about himself.
Hey, making me feel like shit.

Maybe that's why I made the game.

Throw me a bone every once in a while. I'm on the fucking Epstein emails.

Sounds like you were doing pretty good.

Can you imagine if in the Epstein emails, he just writes, have you heard Doughboys?

Be like, fuck.

You control F. Weiger and all it just comes up is, man, this guy Weiger won't stop bothering us.

Nights into dreams. Oh.
Okay. How long to beat? Main story of Nights into Dreams.
Who went first last time? Heather did?

I'll go first this time.

Three hours. One hour.
Heather gets a point.

Two and a half hours. Wow.
We're forgetting about fractions here. We can do fractions.
How did I overshoot it with three hours? Three hours is.

You'd think for some reason this is the game that Heather won't stop talking about, that there'd be more to say about it. No, that game rules its best.

It is a short game. It's a short game, very slight.
So it's all tied up. This is our tiebreaker.
Five nights at Freddy's.

How long? Five Nights at Freddy's to beat the main story. No, but this is, I've never actually played Five Nights at Freddy's.

This is an episodic release.

Or is it this is just like the

million of them? There's just a bunch of them. Yeah, I don't really remember.
Heather goes first here, right? Yeah. Five hours, five nights.
That's my hour. Five hours for each night, you're saying.

Yep.

We have five on the board. Five hours was the guess.

We'll go a little higher. I'll guess seven hours.

But she wouldn't have done that. Wow.

Because you wanted him to win? Well, no, because nobody gets a point now.

That means the game is a tie. Wow.
I love it. Five nights at Freddy's, two hours.
Oh, wow. Cool guy.
Brief experience.

Why they can make. Are you sure you're not looking at the running time of the movie?

If the movie was two hours long, good God.

Wasn't it two hours long? I think it was longer than we wanted it to be.

I like that that ended in a tie.

I don't mind us all being on equal footing as we exit this podcast. That's right.
Well Well thought. Hey, that's this week's Get Played.
Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore underscore sard. Ranch, what you got going on right now?

I'm back on streaming. I was gone for a month, actually.
Wow.

And actually, by now, should be done with Silent Hill F. Awesome.
Twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore sard. Speaking of Silent Hill, we didn't mention that Silent Hill trailer that came out.

I didn't watch it. You didn't no you don't have to

i'm looking forward to it our music is by ben prunty benpruntymusic.com first silent hill movie is good our art is by deck brigade design duckbrigade.com insane uh get played merch is available at kinshipgoods.com and check out get animated our sister show over on patreon matt what's this week we're watching serial experiments lane and I guess the way you're experiencing this show, we're kind of in the wired right now, aren't we?

Yes, very much so. Yeah, we're kind of in this experience.

You're tapping into the wired as the listener, and you're hearing the show. There's nothing better than HBO's the Wired.

Patreon.com slash get played. Can you imagine if the show was about a little girl who's just trapped in HBO's the Wired?

It's like, my friend is bubbles.

If Funnier Die still existed, this is what I'm pitching. I'm pitching Serial Experiments Lane, except she's in the wired.
I just, I mean, I'm getting news that it's back now because of that pitch.

Wow. So we got to make it.
Wait, HBO is the wire. The wire.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I get it. We get it.
Fucking matter. Fuck.

He got played.

That was a head gun podcast.