Get Played Remastered: Bible Adventures with Paul F. Tompkins

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Speaker 2 Sure, Charlie Brown. I can tell you what Christmas is all about.
Lights, please.

Speaker 2 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

Speaker 2 And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

Speaker 2 And the angel said unto them, fear not.

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry to interrupt your little speech there.

Speaker 1 What is this music?

Speaker 2 It'll make sense. Just give it a moment.
Just give it a moment. It'll make sense.

Speaker 1 Okay, it's really abrasive.

Speaker 2 And the angel said unto them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

Speaker 2 You hear the music?

Speaker 1 Sorry, it'll make sense?

Speaker 1 What do you mean it'll make?

Speaker 1 How is this making sense?

Speaker 2 Close your eyes. Okay.
Okay. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm I'm hearing what you're saying.

Speaker 1 I just like, I, this seems completely disconnected from anything at all Christian or biblical.

Speaker 2 It's a hymn.

Speaker 1 It's a hymn. Or even Christmasy.
No, it's not.

Speaker 1 This midi track is a hymn of God.

Speaker 1 This dissonant bass line is a hymn of God.

Speaker 2 Midi, you should let the Holy Spirit enter you.

Speaker 1 Midi, you should let me.

Speaker 2 And this shall be a sign.

Speaker 1 Whatever the hell is going on with this music.

Speaker 2 Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger

Speaker 2 and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host

Speaker 2 playing a song like this and saying i get it i get what's going on here

Speaker 1 this is this is hell this is i have sinned in my life and i died and i am in hell

Speaker 1 and that involves hearing this sort of vaguely you know spiritual thing and then also being subjected to this music at the same time No, this is this is the one song God wrote Himself.

Speaker 1 This song is, this is the one.

Speaker 1 Look, I'm sorry I cheated on my taxes, okay?

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 I took some deductions I wasn't entitled to.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Oh, no.
Oh,

Speaker 1 oh, now I gotta suck your cock.

Speaker 2 What? No. Don't.
Nobody's asking you to do that.

Speaker 1 We stack oxen on our heads and carry baby Moses past giant spiders in unlicensed NES game Bible Adventures this week on how did this get played.

Speaker 1 Welcome to How Did This Get Played, the show where we discuss the worst and weirdest and wonderfulest video games of all time. I'm Nick Weiger, along with Heather Ann Campbell.

Speaker 2 I'm Heather Ann Campbell, along with our producer, Matt Apodaka.

Speaker 1 Ho, ho, ho, everyone.

Speaker 1 Ho, ho, ho,

Speaker 2 everyone.

Speaker 2 And I didn't prepare anything for this, so I'm going to say, welcome back, Bucket of Snow.

Speaker 1 Edge of a reindeer's antler?

Speaker 1 Guys, we have a truly execrable game to discuss this week that is Christmas-themed.

Speaker 1 But before we do that, before, you know what? This is interesting because we have a Christian-themed game, but it is very much a hellish gameplay experience.

Speaker 1 And so we are very much descending into gaming hell metaphorically, but before we do that, it is time as we always do to first spend 70 seconds in gaming heaven. Matt, count us off.

Speaker 1 Go for it.

Speaker 2 Two big things for me this week, guys. One, I beat Miles Morales.
All right. Wow.
Beat Miles Morales.

Speaker 2 It is the first game that I think I've completed since quarantine started that wasn't for the show.

Speaker 2 I think. I might have beaten one other one, but I have returned finally to Final Fantasy Remake, which has been on my can't wait to get back to it.
Playing it excitedly.

Speaker 2 I'm so happy to be there. And guys,

Speaker 2 when I played Final Fantasy for the first time in March, I had just come off of boxing. I was boxing two times a week or two times a day, every day a week.

Speaker 2 I was in the fittest fucking shape of my life. And I was like, fuck, I could look like Cloud.
I could get that body. And now I,

Speaker 2 no joke,

Speaker 2 I am wedge.

Speaker 1 And seeing,

Speaker 2 seeing my,

Speaker 2 like,

Speaker 2 I have a bit that I do with my girlfriend where I take out my stomach and I put it over the back of a chair and it hangs like loose pizza dough.

Speaker 2 That's the kind of love we have.

Speaker 1 Wow. That's the shape of it.
Time's up. Yes.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.
Your co-hosts are already two wedges. So

Speaker 1 we're adding a third wedge to the dynamic. We'll see how that works.
All wedge all the time.

Speaker 1 I'm really excited to hear what to talk about you when you finish that game. I know the time for discussing good games is up, but I loved it.

Speaker 1 And I am interested as an FF7 fan to hear your take when you finish the remake.

Speaker 2 Well, I said this to you guys on text today. I'm astonished at, after playing Miles Morales, that the graphical fidelity of Final Fantasy Remake seems like worse.

Speaker 2 I'm playing it on PS5. Interesting and it just doesn't have that shine that Miles Morales did.

Speaker 2 It feels like a cheap game in comparison, which is bonkers because that game, Final Fantasy Remake, cost them like, what, $200 million or something to make?

Speaker 1 But like, all the textures are a little bit blurry in the background.

Speaker 2 And, like, you get up close to stuff and it's a little bit chunky. And you're like, oh, shit, this is the generational difference.

Speaker 1 It's the, it's the world fidelity.

Speaker 2 The main characters are indistinguishable. I mean, like, Cloud looks as good as Miles in most circumstances, but the world itself has so much more more richness and detail and light

Speaker 2 in that Spider-Man game.

Speaker 2 I'm really excited about the video gaming future, guys. Real excited.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm glad, but it's time now

Speaker 1 to get into the video game past and to help us with that. Our guest today, we're thrilled to have him, an actor and comedian from the podcast, The Neighborhood Listen and Threedom, Paul F.

Speaker 1 Tompkins, PFT. Welcome to the show.
Oh, wedge number four, reporting for duty.

Speaker 1 Paul, we're very excited to have you. Of course, now, I believe that people who follow you on social media are aware of this, but you are a gamer.
You're someone who plays video games recreationally.

Speaker 1 Yes. I don't do it for money.
I only do it.

Speaker 1 I only do it for the love.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've been playing video games since the first console I ever played on. Well, like the first video game I ever played was probably an arcade game.
It was probably asteroids or something.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 my brother-in-law got an Atari when Atari was a new thing. And I was fascinated by it.
I wanted, I, I wanted to be over there all the time.

Speaker 1 Eventually we got one for Christmas one year. Um

Speaker 1 and I absolutely loved it. I had a weird experience where a friend got one of those plug-in consoles that has like ancient games in it.
And one of them was Adventure.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And I, it was like the craziest, purest muscle memory. I got through that entire, I got through the whole thing in like 30 seconds.
I just, it was just like happening.

Speaker 1 It was just like the little square. I was moving that little square through this room.
I know I go up here, get the magnet, you know, all that shit. I couldn't believe it.
It was really wild. And then

Speaker 1 I was big in

Speaker 1 big on GoldenEye,

Speaker 1 was like the next big gaming thing that I remember.

Speaker 1 And around that time, we were working on Mr. Show when that game came out.
For whatever reason,

Speaker 1 this, this, we had, we, we had this one season, I think it was the third season, was split up into two halves.

Speaker 1 And so the second half, we were in, we had access to this bungalow that was formerly used by, I think, the Keenan Ivory Wayans writers when he briefly had a late night show. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then in between our seasons, that show got canceled. They were all gone.
So we had this bungalow that we could use while we were filming.

Speaker 1 And somebody brought in, they had a huge TV and somebody brought in a fucking Nintendo and we played GoldenEye in between,

Speaker 1 like while we were rehearsing. And we also, because our season was split up, we had a, we had a totally different crew, like different stage managers.

Speaker 1 These people hated us because all they, we would wait until we were like little kids. We would wait until the last possible second to go literally like 20 feet to the studio.
We were in this bungalow.

Speaker 1 We just had to walk across the parking lot to the studio. And we were like, uh-huh, yeah, we'll be right there.

Speaker 1 And she would, I remember her standing in the doorway, like, she couldn't believe what disrespectful, unprofessional assholes we were being. But it was like, we've been doing the show for a while.

Speaker 1 We knew how much time we had. And, you know, and we were like, we were the writers and producers of the show.
Like, we, you know, like Bob and David were sitting there playing the game.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? So it was,

Speaker 1 it was really weird. And I'm sure that we left those

Speaker 1 people with a horrible impression of all of us that nobody else would have gotten from,

Speaker 1 you know, in terms of professionality

Speaker 1 and I feel bad to it to this for it to this day but

Speaker 1 that that was the power of that game

Speaker 1 and then when when the Xbox came out I was an Xbox guy

Speaker 1 we used to I used to participate in these huge halo parties

Speaker 1 fellow parties oh yeah fellow Mr.

Speaker 1 Show writer Jay Johnston we would have it at his house where we would where people would bring television sets and Xboxes so we could be all in the same building in different rooms and playing

Speaker 1 16-person capture the flag games.

Speaker 1 And it was, we did that for like an entire summer, leaving when it was getting light out, you know, just like people are, we would just eat pizza and drink beer and smoke. And it was, it was insane.

Speaker 1 And we did it for such a long time, every weekend. And it was, it was like like you would go home

Speaker 1 and the game would be in your head. Like you'd be on the road and you'd be seeing it like you were seeing Halo, and it was, which was, that's bad.

Speaker 1 You shouldn't be doing that.

Speaker 1 And then I just got my

Speaker 1 first PlayStation. I got a PS5, which I hooked up.
I haven't played anything on it yet, but I just hooked it up. So I'm now one of those two console people.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was that when I when I crossed that threshold, when I, and for me, that was the PlayStation Nintendo 64 era when I when I finally got a second console. I'd been all Nintendo up to that point.

Speaker 1 That then it was then it was just no going back. From that point forward, it was just like I was buying basically

Speaker 1 eventually accumulating everything.

Speaker 1 Um, but you, were you, were you, so were you gravitating more towards first-person shooters? And those, was that your genre for a while with Golden Eye and Halo?

Speaker 1 I, I like RPGs and, and, uh, um, you know, my favorite,

Speaker 1 some of my favorite games are Bioshock, Bioshock series,

Speaker 1 Dishonored, I loved.

Speaker 1 And now

Speaker 1 my most recent favorite, and I think is an absolutely beautiful game is Red Dead Redemption 2.

Speaker 1 To the point where I can't stop playing it online. Like the, when they keep like,

Speaker 1 you know, providing these, this dumb extra content that's really not that great, but it's a new thing. And so I will keep going back and, you know,

Speaker 1 going up the ranks of whatever bounty hunter naturalist whatever it is um because i just love that world so much i love how open it is and you know it it's it's it scratches a lot of itches for me that game i i i just love it can i ask so i've never played other than like dabbling for like five minutes grand theft auto online and i've never played red dead redemption online what is the core

Speaker 2 like do you just run around or is there like i'm taking on this

Speaker 2 inside of the world there is a smaller game, and I'm playing that game.

Speaker 1 It's yeah, there are little tasks. Um, there's, there's a very brief, um,

Speaker 1 there's a very, very brief story mode online.

Speaker 1 Um, and then once you're done with that, you have uh different uh roles that you take on.

Speaker 1 So, you can be a bounty hunter where you're collecting different bounties. Um, you go, you know, you go all over the map to find these people and bring them in for a reward.
You have

Speaker 1 the trader role, which is you are selling goods to other areas. So you can do like short trips, you can do long trips.
If you do a long trip, you're now vulnerable to other players on the map.

Speaker 1 So if anybody else feels like it, they can come and kill you and steal your shit.

Speaker 1 There is a

Speaker 1 the naturalist role is the most recent one where they introduce these uh legendary animals that you have to hunt and uh and you

Speaker 1 you have to sedate them, take a sample.

Speaker 1 You have to take a picture of them.

Speaker 1 And then if you want to, that's to deal with the naturalist boss, who's this woman Harriet that you bring all this stuff to and you sell these things to her.

Speaker 1 She doesn't like it when you kill animals.

Speaker 1 But if you want to complete them, you do have to kill them at some point.

Speaker 1 And if you kill enough animals in a row and then go visit Harriet, she will spray you in the face with some weird drug because she's mad at you, which causes you to pass out.

Speaker 1 And then she's locked for a while. So it takes her a while to forgive you.

Speaker 1 I was a little disappointed that the strange drug did not cause something to happen.

Speaker 1 Right. It literally is like you just get essentially like roofied in the face and then

Speaker 1 her door is locked. Like you can't go visit her anymore.

Speaker 2 To be fair, most roofieing does take place in the face.

Speaker 1 I don't know that.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of, is that?

Speaker 1 I can say that because I've been roofied. So it's okay.

Speaker 1 I thought it like took place in the tummy in the head.

Speaker 1 Can I just say, just to return to it, as a fan of Mr. Show and a gamer, the idea of you and Jay Johnston having a land party to play Halo is mind-blowing.

Speaker 1 Like, just like, that's such a crazy, like, early 2000s time capsule. Yeah, it was wild.
It was really like, there was a reunion that I was not able to take. I was very disappointed.

Speaker 1 I was on the road and I was not able to take part in it. But they got pretty much everybody back

Speaker 1 from those days.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I mean, I can't believe that we did it for as long as we did it. And Jay lived with his then girlfriend.
And I can't believe that she allowed it to happen for as long.

Speaker 1 Like she would, she would essentially,

Speaker 1 she would like say hi at the at the beginning of the evening and then she would just go in the bedroom and like live her life. You know what I mean? Right.

Speaker 1 We never, we would never see her for the rest of the evening. And I, she was very, very cool about it.
Um, but uh, yeah, we would, we would play for hours and hours and hours and hours.

Speaker 1 And, and we were, some of us were really good. And four of us, the four of us who were considered the

Speaker 1 best players, one time

Speaker 1 entered a Halo tournament here in Los Angeles, and we were destroyed by some children. It was

Speaker 1 humiliating.

Speaker 1 Like so fast, like so fast.

Speaker 2 Man, that really tracks with my tournament experiences, which is like you'd be hot shit at your local arcade and you enter into a tournament and like some human destroys you in a way that you're like, how, how, how are you reacting this quickly to anything that's happening?

Speaker 2 I think I've told the story on this podcast before of me going into an arcade in Akihabra in Tokyo and being like, I'll play some Street Fighter 3 and dropping infinite amount of money into the machine and not losing or not winning a single round against a dude who looked annoyed that I was playing the game.

Speaker 2 Like there was no like like like oh, what a this is cute, you know, like smile and like a little bit of an elbow, just like smoking a cigarette, hunched over, like, not even making eye contact.

Speaker 2 I'm like round 60 for him, like, just like infinite time.

Speaker 1 That I've been running it. No, Nick, me.
I've been. Uh,

Speaker 1 I've learned it's best to just take command in these Zoom situations. There's a lot of talk, over talk.
Right. I feel like the best thing you'd say.
Nope, me first, then you.

Speaker 1 I i playing red dead online there's a lot of people that there's there's there's there's two types of players most people

Speaker 1 you see other people maybe you acknowledge them most of the time you don't everyone's going about their business doing their little tasks or whatever then there's other people that just like to go on and shoot people for no fucking reason i there was there was like um And the thing is, you get these ranks, right?

Speaker 1 Which make you kind of more,

Speaker 1 they, I think they, they contribute to your, in your relative invincibility as the game goes on.

Speaker 1 And so the high, when it first, when it first started online, the highest rank was 100, and you would unlock all these different things as you went along. Now it's just you keep going up in rank.

Speaker 1 You don't get any new thing, but you just keep attaining levels. And so I, I think I'm at like 160 now, something like that.

Speaker 1 And the other day I'm on there, I'm just trying to go into my moonshine shack and brew up another batch of moonshine to sell to some weirdos.

Speaker 1 And these guys, like it was two guys that kept shooting me before I could get in the door. And then I always engage in a thing where it's like, okay,

Speaker 1 I'll just keep like shooting you back until one of us decides we're not going to do this anymore. Right.

Speaker 1 And then I would look up the players and these guys were like their rank was in the 300s or something. It's like, is this fun for you? Like, there's two of you, first of all.

Speaker 1 Of course, you're, of course, like, but I did, then it does make me feel like a sense of victory.

Speaker 1 If I can, if I can bean one of these guys and pick him off before the other one kills me, I'm like, at least I'm making it a little bit more difficult for you.

Speaker 1 But I just don't, like that kind of play,

Speaker 1 I just don't find.

Speaker 1 It's just shitty to me, you know? And also

Speaker 1 their group name was like Sons of Odin or something like that. I'm like, oh, these guys are white supremacists.

Speaker 1 The people who, like, I agree that the people who I just like their online gaming experiences, I just want to grief people.

Speaker 1 I just want to get on and I just want to bully people and make sure they're having a bad time. It's like, it's like if your hobby was just like standing in front of a mailbox.
It's just like, why?

Speaker 1 Why are you just trying to inconvenience and upset people for no reason? But I guess I think for some people, it is genuinely like,

Speaker 1 they're just kids, right? These are like teenagers who are like

Speaker 1 funny better be these are these are

Speaker 2 these are gentlemen in their like late 40s with good careers like excellent family life. They have they have a car and a two cars two car garage.

Speaker 2 They're like just living it large and they load up Red Dead Redemption because this is their only joy. I got it.
All the rest of it is just like artifice.

Speaker 1 I got to dox them. I got to dox them all.

Speaker 1 I want to ask you real quick about, because the Bioshock, your Bioshock fandom, I remember you mentioned on Doughboys, and I've only played Bioshock one,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 how do we rank the series?

Speaker 1 Don't worry about it. Yeah, don't worry about it.
Is this like a Charlie listening? It's not important ever. Don't worry about it.
You don't need to know about this.

Speaker 2 Is it on TV? Will you tell me if it's on TV? Like, is it like something I can find on television?

Speaker 1 You can play it on a TV. Also,

Speaker 1 it was almost on TV once.

Speaker 1 Then someone put the kibosh on that.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 how do you rank the series? And

Speaker 1 I guess just more generally, why is it a game series that speaks to you? Why is it a game series you're such a fan of? I loved

Speaker 1 the world of it. I loved the look of it.
It's extremely stylized. And there was something about the idea of

Speaker 1 this city being sunk.

Speaker 1 There was supposed to be this utopia that was built under the under the sea um that appealed to me like i love i love nautical stuff i love i love the ocean and uh

Speaker 1 like this this this this idea that this crazy uh you know Ayn Rand type villain built this undersea kingdom for himself.

Speaker 1 I don't know. It just it.
Everything about it appealed to me. I love the big daddies.
I love the... Yes.
Like, it's wild. It's a wild game.
I really loved it.

Speaker 1 And it's, it's creepy and spooky and, and, but not so,

Speaker 1 it's not so creepy and spooky that it, it, it, it freaks you out. I know this is a concept that Heather can't understand, but, uh, uh,

Speaker 1 um,

Speaker 1 it, it has just enough, like, kind of, uh,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 sort of 1950s surreality to it, you know, um,

Speaker 1 that it's and and the fact that you're playing this sort of weird enigma of a character. Um, you don't know much about yourself at all as you're going through this.

Speaker 1 The plasmids, like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I thought it was a wildly imaginative game. I really, really enjoyed it.
And

Speaker 1 I liked the, I really liked the sequels too. Like, I recently,

Speaker 1 maybe a year or two ago, replayed them all like in order. Bioshock 2 was a lot better than I remembered.

Speaker 1 I remember kind of thinking it was kind of a weak follow-up, but I really enjoyed it a lot more on a second playthrough. And Bioshock Infinite, I think, is a beautiful game.

Speaker 1 And the idea of taking it from under the sea to up in the sky is like a such a simple twist that, and what they did with it, I thought was great. I really liked it a lot.

Speaker 2 I did feel like the first Bioshock was a complete thought. Like even if, you know, like it's very rare that an IP will drop and it will be an absolutely complete thought.

Speaker 2 Even if you are like oh there's what was the word they were throwing around at the time ludonarrative dissonance like there's like there's you know there's like some issues of like how you're praised depending on your actions in the game etc etc but there there was still this feeling of like oh shit this is a whole thing like a whole thing with like act

Speaker 2 act structure in the storytelling itself and like reveals in the storytelling that complement the visual identity of the game. Like it really felt like something.

Speaker 2 And it's, it's rare that that happens, I feel like. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, like I'm really excited to play Cyberpunk tomorrow, but Cyberpunk, you look at it and you're like, I've seen this and I know what it is.

Speaker 2 You know, like I'm excited to like drop off in like Blade Runner Light and that'll be fun.

Speaker 1 But but Bioshock, you...

Speaker 2 There aren't like movies that you could like cite that are like Bioshock, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I I think, I mean, definitely the

Speaker 1 idea of like a libertarian utopia that fails is like such like, oh, that feels like that's new, just narrative ground. Like, just, that's just like an interesting concept.
So, for sure, yeah.

Speaker 1 Whereas cyberpunk, I feel like it's just going to be like, the future is fucked.

Speaker 1 It's like, all right, sure.

Speaker 1 Well, we should get into this week's game, Bible Adventures.

Speaker 2 Oh, boy, that was so funny to me.

Speaker 1 The future is fucked.

Speaker 2 That's like the way the ad ends.

Speaker 1 People are like, exactly.

Speaker 1 It's like the first time somebody does fuck at a commercial.

Speaker 2 Dicks out, gentlemen.

Speaker 1 The future is fucked.

Speaker 1 This is a got milk ad?

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Speaker 1 So, Bible Adventures, Heather, was an unlicensed game released in 1991 for NES by Wisdom Tree originally.

Speaker 2 Yes, it was released in 1991.

Speaker 2 It is a Christian video game, although the entire content of the game takes place in the Old Testament.

Speaker 2 Other video games that were released in 1991 include Street Fighter II, The Legend of Zelda Linked to the Past, Super Castlevania, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bible Adventures for the NES

Speaker 2 and for the Mega Drive and PC.

Speaker 2 It is consistently on lists of the worst games ever made,

Speaker 2 sometimes ranking in the top 10.

Speaker 2 The gameplay is split into three modes. You have Noah's Ark, Baby Moses, and David and Goliath.
The gameplay itself is deeply reminiscent of Super Mario Bros. 2

Speaker 2 US, which was dokey dokey panic in Japan, where you pick up things

Speaker 2 and then bring them to other places or throw them at stuff.

Speaker 2 Guys,

Speaker 2 this

Speaker 2 game, this is

Speaker 1 some rough play.

Speaker 1 It's truly bad.

Speaker 1 It's truly wretched.

Speaker 2 My notes, I wrote two notes on this game. Two notes.

Speaker 2 One, it's very funny to me that you would go to all of this length to create a Christian unlicensed video game so that Christian households could be like, you can play this game, kid.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 relegate the gameplay to absolutely absurd reinterpretations of the Bible. You get like the full text of a Bible verse, and then Noah lifts a cow over his head,

Speaker 2 then stacks a horse or a sheep on top of that and delivers them into his ark. There's only like 10 or 12 animals that you can collect.

Speaker 2 And it's,

Speaker 1 I, I, I can't even, it's so, it's so bad.

Speaker 2 And I think we probably played the music in the opening if we went with the opening that I thought.

Speaker 2 But the music is the same for every single level of the game. Uh, in Baby Moses, you have to deliver uh

Speaker 2 baby Moses to the end of the Nile. You just carry a baby through the length of a level.
You can't kill any of the enemies who are all trying to hurt you.

Speaker 2 Uh, and then in David and Goliath, you you're hurting sheep.

Speaker 1 Uh, I guess

Speaker 1 every time, I'm sorry, every time I would come back to the menu, I was like, wait, which one's David and Goliath again? Because I don't remember there being a Goliath.

Speaker 1 And then I realized, oh, it's the one, it's the other sheep one. Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's a David and Goliath is so, because I played them in sequence. And

Speaker 1 when I was playing through that this time, and you know, play through Noah's Ark,

Speaker 1 well, I have a history with this game, which I'll

Speaker 1 say, but I played Noah's Ark. I'm not a Christian.

Speaker 1 Then baby Moses.

Speaker 1 And both of those are very, like, they're non-violent, but like, I'm like, okay, I understand why these are non-violent. They're meant to be like, these are tasks.

Speaker 1 I'm, I have it, I have, I'm, I'm, you know, wrangling animals for the ark. I am escorting this baby.
I get why these are, why I don't have an attack. But you get, so you get to David and Goliath.

Speaker 1 You're like, great, I get to fuck up Goliath. This is finally some action.

Speaker 1 And no, it's just a worse version of Noah's Ark. You're just herding sheep again.
It's so, it's such a disappointment. Um, but I guess I'll get to it this way:

Speaker 1 I'll address this now because I just brought it up. So, I played this game as a kid.
Uh, I was not raised in a very Christian household. My parents were Episcopalian.
I went to church on Sundays.

Speaker 1 You know, it was kind of a standard, very mainstream religious upbringing, but not super religious. But I did have a good friend, one of my best friends in elementary school who was an evangelical.

Speaker 1 And his parents were evangelical. And so, I was exposed to a lot of Christian media and via his dad, some gay porn uh but that's another layer anyway so

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 so uh you know i i went i i i just consumed a lot of it and it's all usually very very bad and this is no sorry i consumed a lot of

Speaker 1 a lot of christian media sorry yes

Speaker 1 i consumed a lot of christian media and it's it's for the most part you know like christian rock christian rap um uh you know christian movies

Speaker 1 even like like uh like christian christian like novels they're they're all just like shittier versions of the mainstream stuff, but they have a built-in audience.

Speaker 1 And that's very much the case for this game.

Speaker 1 This game, despite sucking, despite being absolutely borderline unplayable, sold 350,000 copies back in the day, a massive blockbuster, and sold them solely through Christian bookstores because it was not an officially licensed Nintendo product.

Speaker 1 So they could only sell them direct through Christian outlets. And Christian parents would go to, like my friends, mom and dad would go to a Christian bookstore.

Speaker 1 They'd go to Lighthouse and they'd see a video game for their son's Nintendo that was about the Bible and they'd buy it. And that's how my friend ended up with it.

Speaker 1 So Bible Adventures came on a weird like powder blue cartridge because it was not officially licensed. And I remember playing this as a kid.

Speaker 1 The only one I remember playing was Baby Moses because my friend said it was the good one.

Speaker 1 Playing through them again now, I think it is the closest to being an actual game of the three of them, right?

Speaker 1 Because Because you pick up a baby, you kind of platform through a level, you avoid enemies, you get to the end of a level, you get a congratulation scene.

Speaker 1 Each of the five levels, and there's only five levels, is a little bit different.

Speaker 1 It actually kind of feels like a game. The other ones are just like, there's just nothing to them.

Speaker 2 Well, it's it's religious Yoshi's Island. Like you just are deleting it.

Speaker 1 Yes, 100%.

Speaker 2 Baby Mario is baby Moses, and you just got to get him into the end of the level and hand him off to another Yoshi.

Speaker 1 The other levels are just errands. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 Guys,

Speaker 2 it occurred to me while playing this, this unlicensed game bypasses the lockout chip on the NES by creating a voltage spike so that the game can be run.

Speaker 2 The act of playing the game is committing a sin.

Speaker 2 Like in order to play the game, you have to break the law, which is such an insane way to start a game if you're a Christian, to be like, well, I do have to ask for forgiveness for this well you but also render under caesar what is caesars

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 nick i have to i have to ask wait what yeah

Speaker 1 did your what other games did your friend have

Speaker 1 So he had beyond this, he had like just normal Nintendo games, like, you know, Super Mario Bros. 3.
I remember playing this game. How was it called? Like Astianax, something like that.

Speaker 1 It was some side-scroller that had a weird like sounding non, you know, non-word fantasy name like that.

Speaker 1 But this was, this one I remember, and I remember even like bringing it to my house and playing it on My Nintendo.

Speaker 1 And yeah, it's just, you know, it's back when you don't have the discerning critical eye. You're just a kid.
So you're just like, this game is hard.

Speaker 1 You aren't like, oh, this game is poorly designed and the physics are awful and the control is terrible, you know? And, you know, it feels like every surface is like is like you're ice skating.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, you don't quite have, I just remember it being difficult to play.

Speaker 1 a little bit more about the developer. So you mentioned Wisdom Tree, uh, Heather.

Speaker 1 So Wisdom Tree specialized in unlicensed Christian games, but before they were Wisdom Tree, they were a company called Color Dreams.

Speaker 1 And Color Dreams was just a normal NES publisher of moderate success. They had games like Captain Comic, Challenge of the Dragon, Menace Beach, and Mission Cobra.

Speaker 1 which all sounded like direct-to-video, like, you know, Steven Seagal movies.

Speaker 1 And so they, they were they were uh they they just basically opportunistically purely out of like just craven you know financial gain they they flipped becoming a christian games company and it worked and so there is like a level of like what you were saying heather of like they you bypass the uh the copy production you bypass the uh the the the nintendo chip whatever the fuck it was called so that you could the 10 nes

Speaker 1 yeah the you you bypass that chip

Speaker 1 there's something to just like that's this is like, this is like an old grift.

Speaker 1 This is like you pander to evangelicals with some slipshod product and you break all the rules to do so and you profit handsomely. I mean, that's like, that's like 2020.

Speaker 1 That's like our past four years. We've just been seeing that same shit.
It's just like classic American grift. Yeah.
What's great is that a lot of Christians don't pay too much attention.

Speaker 1 And what makes so much sense to me about this game is that

Speaker 1 it's a Christian game that's entirely about the old testament because

Speaker 1 that's what a lot of evangelicals love. They love the Old Testament, which is the wrathful God.
The only thing they like from the New Testament is Jesus.

Speaker 1 And the only thing they like about him is that he said the only way you can get to heaven is being a Christian.

Speaker 1 That's it. So this is perfect.
It's like, this is a beautiful game. It's got Noah's Ark, David, and Goliath, Moses.
And

Speaker 1 it has nothing about loving anybody. It has nothing about doing good works.

Speaker 1 We should, Heather, you mentioned the music.

Speaker 1 We should play it here because the fact that this is the only track that you have in the entire game is

Speaker 1 just so mind-numbing. Matt, can we hear a little bit of this? Yeah, here we go.

Speaker 2 Good luck, Devin.

Speaker 1 This is the only

Speaker 2 sound created in the game is this.

Speaker 2 Whether you are gathering animals, rescuing baby Moses, or facing down Goliath by collecting sheep,

Speaker 2 this is the sound of the Lord thy God.

Speaker 1 I can't even find a song in it. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, you know, you know that you have that, you have that thing where it like it clicks in you're like oh i i now i get the pattern this is just like is it the same every time i don't i don't know that it ever comes back around it it's also in like 11 9 as a time signature it's like the same time signature here's what's very weird to me is that they didn't need to do this because you know what's royalty free All hymns.

Speaker 1 If you're going to make a religious game, like you can have so many hymns in there. Who cares? You don't have to pay anyone.

Speaker 2 The title screen does have one

Speaker 2 song that isn't this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's it. That's right.

Speaker 2 Is it Pacabell's Cannon? I can't even remember what it is.

Speaker 1 It's a Bach composition. Yeah.
It's one of Bach's religious compositions.

Speaker 2 They tried.

Speaker 2 They spent so much time

Speaker 2 transcribing that into NES that

Speaker 2 they were like, you also need songs for the levels. And the guy was like, I don't fucking know.
And he just hit two notes with his fingers meet.

Speaker 1 Let's reuse the boss theme from Minus Beach.

Speaker 1 Yeah, why did they do it? Like, honestly, what song sounds more like a video game song already than bringing in the sheaves?

Speaker 1 Like, you could just have that repeat over and over again. It would be entirely appropriate for these graphics for the look of the game.

Speaker 1 No, you got to hear beep, boop, pop, pop, beep, boop, bop, bop, beep, beep, doop, pop, beep, pop, pop, boop, pop, pop, pop, pop, beep,

Speaker 1 So it's it's really awful to to look to listen to and to look at. The art is just so bad.
I mean, you compare it to other contemporary games.

Speaker 1 The ones Heather, you mentioned, these are games that still look great in 2020. Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter 2.
This game looks awful even for its time.

Speaker 2 It looks like the South Park parody of what Bible Adventures would be. Like, the look of the game looks like somebody making fun of the existence of the game.
And, like, their faces are sort of like

Speaker 2 super dodgeball. Like, that, like, River City Ransom.
Like, they have huge expressions and eyes

Speaker 2 and their like little legs wiggle. But it's the game is like predominantly brown in the Noah's Ark level.

Speaker 2 And then, like, predominantly sand-colored in the other ones, right? Like, it's. Yes.
David and Goliath is predominantly brown because you're in a forest again uh it's

Speaker 2 the the palette is is very ugly you know the the limited colors they have on the on the nintendo and and even in the mega drive port it's it's just a very ugly smudgy game i'm sorry finish your thought heather well you you have all of the colors of of god's creation to work from like you can this should be a beautiful game like it should be like you're you're you're with noah in the forest there's light coming through the trees you're gathering the animals You have this heroic task ahead of you.

Speaker 2 But instead, it's like, it's really legitimately like, the brown of the ark is the same as the brown of the trees is the same as the brown of the ground. Not even like

Speaker 2 degrees of change.

Speaker 1 Let me share the box art with you guys because this is such a great, if you haven't seen it, this is such a great contradiction versus the actual art in the game.

Speaker 1 Look at the glorious majesty depicted here. Fuck you.
A gigantic Moses.

Speaker 1 Noah towering over the ark. David standing over Goliath's corpse with a sling in hand.

Speaker 1 It's just like this amazing piece of art. That is just, how dare you? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Noah looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Like he's semi-transparent.

Speaker 1 Oh, for sure.

Speaker 2 He looks like a forced ghost.

Speaker 1 Wait, is he Noah or is he, is that Moses?

Speaker 2 Why would Moses is only a baby?

Speaker 1 It might be Moses parting the seas, but I don't know. Oh, or maybe Moses just isn't represented here.

Speaker 1 Well, that's a mistake. I mean, he's a star.

Speaker 1 But you can see how someone would look at this box and, you know, back before kiosks or demos, someone would just be like, sure, I'll buy this game. This looks fun.

Speaker 1 But yeah,

Speaker 1 completely misleading. So the actual gameplay of, let's see, of the

Speaker 1 so of the Noah's Art game. I just want to talk about this real quick.
So

Speaker 1 you're mostly, as Heather was saying, you're stacking farm animals over your heads.

Speaker 1 The, you know, you're collecting both cows, male and female cows, and male and female oxen. It is specified in the menu.
The same animal.

Speaker 1 And oxen are all males, but you know, the game treats them as different entities.

Speaker 1 And then you... You got to get a female bull.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 basically, it's just as simple as you walk up to them and you pick them up, except for at least in the first level, and then the second level.

Speaker 1 And then I didn't get past the second level because it's boring.

Speaker 1 They're pigs that are slippery. You try to grab a pig and he slips away from you.

Speaker 1 So you have to throw a hay bale at them, not so they'll be distracted and eat it, but they'll just be knocked unconscious.

Speaker 1 And then when you knock the pig unconscious, you can pick them up and tote them into the ark. And that's that's basically as superficial as the gameplay is.
But wait,

Speaker 1 were you able to knock the pig unconscious with the hay bale? Yeah, you have to pick it up and toss it at them. What I did was

Speaker 1 I got it near a tree so that they would stop and eat it. And then a monkey would knock them unconscious by throwing a nut from the tree.
Oh, wow. I didn't, hey, that's got layers of gameplay.

Speaker 1 More depth than I understood. Yeah, I could have used less depth.
It would have been great to just throw haymail at them.

Speaker 1 So the second level, the animals get a little bit more exotic. Turtles, pandas, raccoons, blue jays, blackbirds, eagles, and toucans.

Speaker 1 So just like probably just whatever animal assets they had left over from previous games, they were tossing in here kind of arbitrarily. But this one, it's really bad.

Speaker 1 Baby Moses,

Speaker 1 as I mentioned, I feel like is the most playable. Apparently, I watched a playthrough and I watched some speed runs of this game.

Speaker 1 And it's amazing because some of the speed runs of Bible Adventures are like two minutes and 27 seconds.

Speaker 1 There's not much going on here. But towards the end of David Goliath, after several levels of collecting sheep, you do eventually get a sling, and there is a fight with Goliath.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 And yeah, and Goliath is just like a bigger version of you.

Speaker 1 And you throw one rock at him and he dies.

Speaker 1 He's a final boss who dies from a single hit. So it's pretty anticlimactic.
So it's like you can't, you can't, there's no way to not kill him.

Speaker 1 I mean, it seems that way, at least from what I've watched.

Speaker 2 You have to complete the Bible task.

Speaker 1 That's true. You have to kill him.
You can't make the Bible not be true.

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Speaker 1 Um, also in the game, there are various tablets you can collect that are that they they both give you health and then they either give you a gameplay tip or they give you a Bible verse when you pick up.

Speaker 1 I forgot it was Bible verses.

Speaker 2 This is so crazy. Like, they because they look the same,

Speaker 2 they are placing. Look,

Speaker 2 when you play the game, they're placing press B to pick up an animal on the same level as, and lo, God spoke.

Speaker 2 It's the same textual, like the same font, the same pickup. It's like every time you're like, is this going to be some gameplay tip or is it going to be the word of the Lord?

Speaker 1 Like, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, Heather, what is scripture but a collection of hacks?

Speaker 2 I think you you just blew my mind.

Speaker 1 They should have just assigned a Bible verse to the gameplay tips. Like, press B to run.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Leviticus 7.16.

Speaker 1 What bothered me about the Bible verses was that they weren't really germane to what was going on in the game. I thought, and I assumed it would be like kind of,

Speaker 1 you know, at least like maybe taken from the story of Noah while you were playing the Noah's Ark level that they would have quotes from that I mean the the stories are based on Bible stories why not put store why not if you like because otherwise what is the point of this if you're not if the idea is not to uh indoctrinate people but I guess if you're a fly-by-night organization that's like I don't know throw some Bible in there

Speaker 1 they love it yeah then I guess you're not really paying attention like it doesn't mean anything to you yes I think that's entirely it they just did they just flat out did not give a shit.

Speaker 1 Everything is just so arbitrary and half-assed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I guess we should get to

Speaker 1 our final thoughts on this, Heather. It's time for our review crew.

Speaker 1 Review crew.

Speaker 1 So we'll each try to come up with one positive thing to say about this game and then end by giving it a numerical decimal rating. I can begin.

Speaker 1 I guess the positive thing I'll say is:

Speaker 1 I like that if you finish a level

Speaker 1 in the baby Moses, I like if you just don't bring the baby with you, you can still finish a level and you get the dialogue. Good work, but you forgot baby Moses.

Speaker 1 I think I took a screen cap of that because it really made me laugh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like they didn't want to program in a fail state. They're just like, yeah, fuck it.
Just tell them they didn't.

Speaker 1 They forgot the baby. It wasn't good work.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, not at all.

Speaker 1 Who cares if you make it to the end alone? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, this was a, so this game being unlicensed, it lacked the Nintendo Seal of Quality, which was a big significant thing back then because

Speaker 1 that was meant to be like this game is not complete trash. And there were a lot of very, very bad Nintendo games for the NES.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 you know, the whole Nintendo Seal of Quality, the whole approval process was instituted to, because of back in the Atari era, there was so much shovelware and parents were so frustrated that they were just like, that all these terrible games were overloading the market and drowning out anything of any quality.

Speaker 1 This is like a game because it's circumvented that process.

Speaker 1 It's extra bad. It's like it's it's as bad, I think, as you can get and still kind of be a game.

Speaker 1 I honestly think because of

Speaker 1 how poorly it controls, how flat and

Speaker 1 substanceless the gameplay is, and also just because of what this represents, just like it being a fucking cash grab.

Speaker 1 for you know just like uh just fucking pulling one over on on on evangelicals and just like cashing in on just like this fucking awful game.

Speaker 1 I mean, I just like every part of this to me, I think this is maybe the worst thing we've played all year.

Speaker 1 So I think my score,

Speaker 1 I think I'm going to go, I'm going to give this a, this, a, this, a, a zero. I'll give this a Bible-esque

Speaker 1 Weiger zero colon zero as my score. Wow.

Speaker 1 Heather, how about you?

Speaker 2 So in a video game, you can

Speaker 2 do anything. Like you can pro like we can make things float.
You can do, you can have powers. You can do anything.
So you could render in an NES game the presence of God

Speaker 2 because shit could happen around the characters. Like they could have like...

Speaker 2 some kind of like magical protection or they could hear a voice or like you could like actually

Speaker 2 represent God in the game. This game I find funny as an atheist because God is not present in it at all.
He does not make an appearance in a game called Bible Adventures, the story of his existence.

Speaker 2 Like, so for me,

Speaker 2 as a, you know, as a non-believer, I, I,

Speaker 2 I really enjoy that you're just playing three humans doing insane tasks with no, like, not being compelled by like, even like a digitized voice.

Speaker 1 It was like, go forth and

Speaker 1 save animals.

Speaker 2 Like, nothing.

Speaker 1 There's nothing. It's just like that crazy music.

Speaker 2 And you're an old man in a robe grabbing a pig.

Speaker 1 I just.

Speaker 2 The other thing is, so I, you know, I date a woman. My girlfriend

Speaker 2 is a believer. And she said, Don't talk about me being a believer on the podcast.
And I said, But any people know that about you. You talk about it in interviews.

Speaker 2 And she's like, Well, don't talk about it. And she's like, You can talk about this conversation, but don't talk about that.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to rag on Christians. I don't do that in the house.
Why would I do it on the podcast? And she's like, Well, just don't. And I was like, Okay.

Speaker 2 So I feel like I've done a good job of that. That being said, zero.
This game gets to zero.

Speaker 1 Matt, what do you think?

Speaker 1 So I'll say that my positive, I mean,

Speaker 1 I have two positive things.

Speaker 1 One,

Speaker 1 I just like the idea.

Speaker 1 In any media, when somebody has to catch a slippery pig, I love it.

Speaker 1 I just love to see it. Just the idea of that.

Speaker 1 What are your top five? It could be from any media. What are your top five

Speaker 1 catching a slippery pig moments?

Speaker 1 You only know any sort of thing where it's, you know, said at some sort of like county fair or something like that.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, Paul, you got me. I don't have an example, but I guess that's because

Speaker 1 there are too many to name. And

Speaker 1 I just love the idea of it. It's very funny.
If you had to list your top one instance of someone trying to catch a slippery pig, what would it be?

Speaker 1 Well, since you got my back against the wall here, I am going to say Bible Adventure. Okay, okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 My other favorite thing or my other positive thing is that it reminds me of the reason for the season. And it's fucking Santa Claus, baby.
I love Santa.

Speaker 1 He's not in it either. But if I had to pick between Christianity and Santa, I'm picking Santa, baby.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I'm sitting here and sort of thinking about what Heather said earlier about you could put God in the game. And

Speaker 1 there are games with gods in them. Famously, God of War has several different gods in it.
But

Speaker 1 that is not made by people who take it so seriously that they think that that's real. So it's a little more fun, a little more interesting.
Kratos would lay waste to everyone in this game.

Speaker 1 So I...

Speaker 1 You know, as a non-believer, I simply must give this a negative 666. Hail Satan.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. That's so hard.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure that Kratos could kill baby Moses. I believe he's unkillable in the game.
Like, I believe you throw him as hard and as far as you want. He takes no damage.

Speaker 1 You can throw him in the river and fail. That's an insta-fail.
Oh. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which is weird also because that's where he belongs.

Speaker 1 You're supposed to deliver him to the bottom.

Speaker 2 He's supposed to be in the river.

Speaker 1 It's very confusing.

Speaker 1 All right, PFT, something positive, your thoughts, your score. I will say that the positive thing comes from a negative.
When I first started playing this, I was so annoyed to be playing on

Speaker 1 a laptop.

Speaker 1 It really bothered me.

Speaker 1 The controls menu was just about impenetrable beyond the first four commands. I was like, well, they would say

Speaker 1 four equals A. Well, I don't know what A does.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there was a lot of trial and error and switching back and forth to remember it. But once I started to get the hang of it, it did give me a little nostalgia for games like that.

Speaker 1 And like games that you couldn't play in the proper thing, but you had to learn how to play in a different way.

Speaker 1 It was frustrating at times because I'm a terrible typist. And so I would hit the wrong key a lot of the time while I was trying to hit the right key.
But when I got in a rhythm and was getting it

Speaker 1 going for a good stretch, it was satisfying just to not be annoyed. So

Speaker 1 if I had to give this a numerical score,

Speaker 1 I would probably give it

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 zero.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, really, really poorly, poorly received game there, Heather. But you know what? Maybe we're wrong.

Speaker 2 Maybe we were wrong, Nick.

Speaker 2 Maybe we were right.

Speaker 2 We've got some reviews from all over the internet

Speaker 2 that present a contrarian opinion to what we've just voiced here on the podcast.

Speaker 2 I've got one.

Speaker 2 from

Speaker 2 amazon.com.

Speaker 2 It is a five-star review, and it says, this game arrived very quickly. It works great.
Hopefully, we can use this as a teaching tool for our children as they become interested in video games.

Speaker 2 This review is posted in 2016.

Speaker 1 So let's break down 2016.

Speaker 1 One,

Speaker 2 somebody is using an NES in 2016. Two, they went on Amazon and purchased the game Bible Adventures, tested it, and their children are currently too young to be interested in games.

Speaker 2 So, this five-star review,

Speaker 2 it implies a lot.

Speaker 2 But it's a positive review. So, maybe we were wrong.
Nick, what do you got?

Speaker 1 I'm guessing that was a grandma situation. Grandma, grandma.

Speaker 1 It's so hopeful. It's so hopeful.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, Nick.

Speaker 2 The name of the person who wrote this review is Travis H.

Speaker 2 So it could be a grandpa.

Speaker 1 There's no grandpa named Travis.

Speaker 1 I have a Game Facts review by Wildcard with a Y. This is going to be nuts.

Speaker 1 This is from August of 2002. Bible Adventures on the 8-bit NES was a groundbreaking title.
It has never gotten much press. Unless you count Christian haters attacking it.

Speaker 1 If you're wanting to play an awesome 8-bit side-scroller, then Bible Adventures is for you.

Speaker 1 If you are a parent wanting to finally have a good, moral-themed game for your children, then Bible Adventure is for you. Who is the game not for?

Speaker 1 If your heart is filled with hate and you hate goodness, then you will probably not like Bible Adventures. If you hate Christians, then you probably will not like Bible Adventures.

Speaker 1 All others go out and buy this hidden treasure right now. Rating 10 out of 10.

Speaker 1 There's no morals to the game. No, no.

Speaker 1 No discussion of morality at all.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it just has the superficial trappings of Christianity, but there's no messaging behind it.

Speaker 1 I mean, was there before each story, they slap up a bunch of text that I guess gives you the backstory to what your task is. But I don't know that it even, does it even

Speaker 1 indicate like in the Noah round, does it even give you an idea of why God is doing this? No, it doesn't give much context. And if you go to the bottom of the body,

Speaker 2 It says that God is angry. And

Speaker 2 it starts with being like, He's going to destroy the earth. Like it lays it out for you.
God is going to destroy the earth. Collect the animals.

Speaker 1 It does not say why God is going to destroy the earth. No, no, no.
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2 Do you have any more, Nick?

Speaker 1 I got another one here. I have one more.

Speaker 2 Okay, great. 200 yards?

Speaker 1 Also for me. I'm going to have more than one.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 For people who are expecting an adult game, this is not it. When I was a kid, I was homeschooled, and we always got treats for good report cards.

Speaker 2 This was one of those treats. My and my two brothers would play this game for hours on end.
We especially loved Noah's Ark. It was fun, child-friendly, and something we look back on fondly.

Speaker 2 My little brother and I have both been on a quest to find a working copy and a working NES console so we could play it again. The title of this review, This Game Was Beyond Epic, written in 2014.

Speaker 1 Man,

Speaker 2 five stars.

Speaker 1 I have to think there's part of it: this,

Speaker 1 these were kids who maybe grew up in weird households where this was their one game, yeah. And you just have a like a strong nostalgic attachment to it, rather.

Speaker 1 Like, if you could geotag all these reviews, they come from the Footloose Town.

Speaker 2 I, I mean, what I loved about that review is that

Speaker 2 you're homeschooled, but also get report cards.

Speaker 1 Like, that's like,

Speaker 1 like, that's like, uh, uh,

Speaker 2 I don't, I feel like that's vestigial at that point. You don't need, like, you're, you're only interacting with one person.
They know how you're doing. Who is the report card for?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 it's the teacher is this, is the parent.

Speaker 1 Show this to your remaining parents.

Speaker 1 Make sure they sign it.

Speaker 2 Also, if you're the teacher and your one student is doing poorly, doesn't that reflect more on you than them?

Speaker 1 One.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like, if you're going to be like, well, my son is failing the class that I'm teaching, doesn't that make you go, maybe it's, maybe it's me?

Speaker 1 Raises a lot of questions.

Speaker 1 What do you got?

Speaker 1 I have one more. This is actually a negative review, but I like this one.
This is short. It's a game facts review by username Arcade.
This is from October of 2002.

Speaker 1 Warning, game does not go along with the Bible. One out of 10.

Speaker 1 It's true.

Speaker 2 It's true. It does not go along with the Bible.

Speaker 1 It doesn't go along with the Bible, guys. And look, Arcade, you may think he's all about games, but he's also about the Bible.

Speaker 2 I wish that, so in the story of noah there are animals that he leaves behind and i wish that there had been like unicorns and stuff that were trying to trick you to get onto this onto the ark oh yeah like that would have been so hype

Speaker 1 dinosaurs

Speaker 1 yeah please

Speaker 1 they speak

Speaker 1 like a slippery pig just running away but the dinosaur is like good sir i've bought you my cloak and my staff would you consider consider letting me on to your ark?

Speaker 1 What harm have we done to you?

Speaker 1 Hey, Noah, I noticed you left the talking dinosaurs out there. It's kind of like the coolest animal.

Speaker 1 I would have liked to have made that a priority over the pigs.

Speaker 1 So I would have brought them on, but it took me three hours to catch that slippery pig.

Speaker 1 It's time for the question block.

Speaker 1 All right, this one's from Rachelizabeth16 on Twitter. They write,

Speaker 1 I recently finished Wind Waker for the first time, and a few enemy sounds felt super new and unique, especially the mini blin and the

Speaker 1 cargar ock.

Speaker 1 This is mortifying, Matt. Well,

Speaker 1 imagine how I feel doing this around you. Matt has always

Speaker 2 just read the question block for the first time.

Speaker 1 He chooses them blindly.

Speaker 1 Well, I picked it. No, I picked it before, and I do read it because I was like, oh, that's a good question.
But what we are finding out is that I'm just bad at reading, but I'm not good at reading.

Speaker 2 Wait, do you have the sounds? I want to hear these sounds. I want to hear these animals.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I'm not good at anything either because I don't have a sound.

Speaker 1 Hold on. We're not good at anything either.
No, no, no.

Speaker 2 What is the name of it?

Speaker 1 What is the name of it?

Speaker 1 K-A-R-G.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's it's one of the first

Speaker 2 it's wind waker cockerock sound.

Speaker 2 Kagarok sound is the first thing when you start typing in Wind Waker K, it brings it up. So

Speaker 2 you want to play it or should I? Play it.

Speaker 1 See, I'll just press play so then we can. Are you good at this? I can, this I can do.
Alright.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 2 It's a bee?

Speaker 1 It's like a bird? It looks like some sort of bird.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 They're like, yeah, these like big birds.

Speaker 2 Wait, the cockroach sound is just a bird?

Speaker 1 It sounds kind of like a sheep.

Speaker 1 It sounds like that, but it is a bird.

Speaker 1 Are you playing a clip of the sheep from Noah's Ark? No.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it looks like these are just big birds.

Speaker 2 That sound apparently was not only notable for the person who sent in the question, but also for people on YouTube who made videos dedicated to that sound.

Speaker 1 They like it.

Speaker 1 But to

Speaker 1 finish off the question here,

Speaker 1 you always, so

Speaker 1 the reason they say they like that sound is because you always hurt them before they saw them. What NPC/slash enemy-specific sounds do you love or fear? Ooh, good question.

Speaker 2 Well, I love that baby crying in PT.

Speaker 2 That's great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that is terrifying. I was going to say, while we're talking about crying babies, the crying,

Speaker 1 we talked about Yoshi's Island earlier, but the crying Mario, crying baby Mario in Yoshi's Island is like such good sound design.

Speaker 1 And they actually made it intentionally like loud so that you would go and find baby Mario, so that you would know that it was your priority. That's one that sticks out to me.

Speaker 1 But as far as enemies, as far as ones where you just know that

Speaker 1 you're in the shit when you hear that sound approaching,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I guess for me, it's in my memory because we played Last of Us Part 2 this year, but the clicker sound,

Speaker 1 just like those, those sounds of just like that, you know,

Speaker 1 whatever, that fungal sort of infection coming out of like a

Speaker 1 throat is just like so

Speaker 1 to me, that always just kind of makes me shiver a little bit and lets me know that I'm about to enter some sort of combat encounter where I may be in some trouble.

Speaker 1 As well as the, that, that any, like honestly, all of those enemies, because I feel like the bloaters too, they're just like, they have like, like, you know, when you hear them coming, you hear those heavy footsteps and you hear that brrrr, you know, you hear those sounds, you're just like, oh shit, this is going to get real bad.

Speaker 1 I don't know, Heather, PFT, any other any other uh enemy sounds any other things come to mind when you're thinking of sound design i love the sound of uh the the bears in um

Speaker 1 red dead um that there are uh these gigantic grizzly bears that uh come upon you very quickly uh there's a couple like panthers there's like cougars there's a couple like big predators that they signal their arrival but only when they're very close and so you don't have a lot of time to react In the Bioshock games,

Speaker 1 something that makes those games too scary for me is that sometimes you can hear an enemy very far down an echoey hallway. Yes.
And you know that there's nowhere for you to go really, but that way.

Speaker 1 And you can just kind of hear them sort of like rambling and screaming to themselves. And that's always, I mean, that's an answer for sounds I don't like.
I hate that.

Speaker 1 That's like one of my least favorite things ever.

Speaker 1 You You know what's an awesome sound that's

Speaker 1 not like

Speaker 1 that's a UI sound, but it is very much in this context is we just had Hideoko Jember,

Speaker 1 the exclamation point sound, the enemy sees you sound in the Metal Gear Solid games.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a great sound.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a good sound.

Speaker 2 As long as we're just talking about like good sounds, I really like the drum beat that goes on Yoshi when you land on him in Super Mario World.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1 Love it. Came out the same year as Bible Adventures.
Super Mario.

Speaker 1 Also, I think the sound design in Animal Crossing is off the charts,

Speaker 1 like beautiful.

Speaker 1 You go into that museum when it rains and you're near the store, like it, because it's a tin roof, it makes a different sound.

Speaker 1 Like the attention to detail in that sound design is just really satisfying. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of that in Hades, which I'm playing now.

Speaker 1 I won't talk in too much depth because I don't want to spoil it for people because I know a lot of people are just getting into it, but it's got some really awesome sound design and music as well.

Speaker 1 I wish we'd played Hades this week. Hit us up on Twitter and Instagram at get Played Potter.
Send us an email at getplayedpot at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 616-2Played. That is 616-275-2933.

Speaker 1 PFT, Paul F. Tompkins.
Thank you so much for being here. We're so happy we get to have you on the show.
Thank you for having me. I'm a fan of the show.
It was great to be on with you guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for saying that.
It was great to have you. Great to have you.
What would you like to plug?

Speaker 1 In addition to the two podcasts that Nick mentioned at the beginning, I also have a podcast that I do with my wife called Stay Off Homkins. We started it during quarantine.

Speaker 1 We thought we would be done by now, but we're not.

Speaker 1 And that comes out. We record, we have like a little date night where we, right after dinner, we record the podcast.
We throw it up online immediately. You can get it late Friday night.

Speaker 1 And I also have a, I'm weirdly enough, the co-host of the official Star Trek podcast,

Speaker 1 Star Trek the pod directive with the fantastic Tony Newsom. And we just finished our season one, the first, which was nine episodes.
They're available to binge now wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 1 And we are recording recording season two now.

Speaker 1 Wow. Rad, check all that out.
And Matt, tell us what's going on for next week. Okay, well, next week, we're doing a special episode.
It's our year in review episode. So we'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 Goodbye, everyone. Happy holidays.

Speaker 2 Goodbye, Bucket.

Speaker 1 Edge.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Nicole Bayer.

Speaker 4 Hi, I'm Sashir Zemaida. And this is the podcast: Best Friends.

Speaker 4 And we're here at HeadGum.

Speaker 4 So this is just a podcast where we just talk. Yeah.
We're best friends. Yeah.
We talk, and then we have a segment where we answer questions and queries.

Speaker 4 So audience members can ask questions about friendships and we can answer them to the best of our abilities. Yes.
We are professional friends.

Speaker 1 We are professional friends.

Speaker 4 Subscribe to best friends on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And watch videos on YouTube.
New episodes drop every Wednesday. That's the middle of a work week.

Speaker 4 I was deeply unhelpful to you during that whole thing.

Speaker 1 You were. I'm really solved the support.

Speaker 4 I was so okay. I was trying to be supportive.
Yeah. But I was like, I don't know.
Reading seems pretty hard right now.

Speaker 1 It's a lot. I think you did good.
Thank you so much. You're welcome.