Herdling is Beautiful, But is it Fun?

Before the recording began, before the pod, in the cold, cold, colder open, we were discussing Metal Gear Solid for whatever reason.

And we're talking about Hideo Kajima and he, and some words of wisdom and stuff.

And I want to tell you guys the one thing he ever said to me.

And it was, I hold, I really keep it in my heart.

We were at E3

and I saw Hideo Kajima with

a colleague of mine who knew him pretty well.

They were like pals.

So we go over and he said he was going to see a movie he was there was his translator and his translator said he was going to go see they were going to go see a movie and and i said oh cool what are you seeing and hideo kojima looked at me and said

I was like, oh, cool, Terminator, nice.

Have fun.

It's the only thing Hideo Kachima ever said to me.

Awesome.

So it's freaking, he broke the language barrier with the sting of Terminator.

It kicked ass.

That's awesome.

That's the universal language.

It's awesome.

I feel like

he probably gleaned a lot from what I assume was the most recent Terminator movie, which wasn't.

Like, honestly, dude, there's secretly been 80 of them.

I don't know.

Like, I can't keep up, but it was one of them was around.

I'm just saying, if you look at some of the stuff that guy has to say about machines and computers and machines, the future of computers and machines.

It could all have started right there.

You may have been there the most important day of his life.

And now he's all about tar.

What does that say?

Oh, he saw tar.

He saw tar.

He saw tar.

He saw tar.

A little more of a language barrier there, but still, I think he basically got it.

Cape Blanchette turned in a great performance, but I'm all about that sticky, oily, nasty stuff.

He walked out halfway through.

He's like, this is not what I signed up for.

This movie did not deliver.

Sorry.

I need a second.

I do want to start the show, but the

idea is.

And we do, but like the idea, and I know this is not a Comedy Forward podcast, but you guys have to understand the idea of Hideo Kojima going in to see the film Tar and then leaving halfway through because no tar was contained therein is really powerful.

My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ Rushika.

I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It's a video game club.

Just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member.

Now, as everyone knows, Griffin and I are members of the Marshall Thundering Herd, proud alumni.

But today we're thinking a little smaller.

From the ashes, we rise.

We rise.

Didn't find glory.

We are.

Marshall Funerals in today.

Thank you so much, Marshall.

Thank you so much, Griffin.

But today we're thinking a little smaller with herdlings.

What's a herdling?

Herdling is a video game about herding these mythical, fantastical creatures that kind of look like giant,

I don't know, ox, but with way too much hair.

They look like cursed yaks, sort of.

If a yak had a curse put on it.

Yeah, like if the Muppet organization was responsible for

Neverending Story 8, maybe this would be a creature that would show up in it.

And you heard them through a pseudo-dystopic, but also beautiful setting.

And that's the whole that's the game.

That's the game.

All right.

Well, let's talk about that right after this.

Have you guys played any of, I believe it's Okamotives other games, Far and

the other, yeah?

Yeah, so I know them from the Far series.

I believe there are two of them, and I played through the first one.

I don't think I played the second one, but I really, really liked the first one.

And there's actually a lot of connections from the first, not lower connections, just like from a game design standpoint.

Connections from the first one to this game, which is Far, I think it was called Lone Sales.

Lone Sales.

That was the one I played on, I i think like ios or something does that sound right it's on like everything but uh the premise was basically you were just this like little teeny little guy and you had a giant like boat effectively like an air boat or whatever it actually went on land so it was a land boat a car and you tried to move it from one position in the world to another and to do that you had to go through a lot of trials where like oh no there's a giant pit or oh no how are you going to get this thing from here to there using you have to like bring parts back to the ship.

There's like a lot of like ferrying this giant mechanical beast through this world.

And obviously, in Herdling, which is their newest game, you are ferrying this herd of many creatures, many big beasts.

Yes,

an increasing number of big beasts.

You'll reach times where you're like, certainly, I'm not going to have any more big beasts than I currently have.

They keep them going.

No, you're going to get more.

Yeah.

What, Griffin?

You had played those games?

I played Lone Sales.

I didn't play

the other one.

I'll be honest, it was wild for me playing this game the week after we did Sort of the Sea.

Because I think you could make the argument that Hurdling kind of slots into this atmospheric,

dialogue-free, very interpretive, very lovely,

kind of curated.

uh you know story experience and sort of the sea does that that same thing as well.

It's just that the, let's say, the tempo of those two games could not be any more fundamental.

If Sword of the Sea is a

roller coaster, this is like a dark ride to use the Disney parlance.

Very, very generous in terms of pacing, as you're describing that.

I would say if Sword of the Sea is like a roller coaster, this is like having to walk across a balance beam.

It is

very

the progression is the total opposite.

So let's get into actually what you're doing in this game.

The whole mechanic of the game is you collect your herd of herdlings or whatever.

Calicornicorns, they're called, and they're amazing.

I love them.

And at first, it's about the pleasure of just take them through a space, take them through a city, take them through a field, take them through a forest.

There's even like a DMV style, like

there's cones up, and you're trying to just like bury them through

like you're trying to get your calicorn license.

Yeah.

And then as the game proceeds, it gets a little tougher because you have more creatures and suddenly it's like, oh, you have to take sharp turns.

So you have to know how to stop your herd and then adjust and then move them.

And uh-oh, now there are spiky objects and they can actually hurt your herd.

And you need to avoid those or you need to make sure they're not falling off of things.

And it becomes a slower

game as you go through it.

We're like, sort of the sea is take pleasure in movement, take pleasure in speed, take pleasure in moving through this beautiful space.

This is, I don't know, it is,

it's rigid in a way that I, I, I, it's very much the opposite of Sword in the Sea.

Yeah, I think it, I mean, there are moments in this game when you've gone through like a particularly tight, narrow passageway or obstacles or what have you, where

it opens up and you get like,

five to ten minutes of like, we're gonna sprint through this field as fast as we can.

And the music kicks up and you get a nice vista and it's like kind of a breath of fresh air.

But the actual core gameplay predominantly is like, how am I going to get, how am I going to get these like nine fucking oxen through this very dangerous scenario without having any of them beef it?

You do that mostly through staying behind them and using your staff to kind of shepherd them.

So when you are behind them and, you know, using your shepherding power, they go, you know, away from you, and you can tell them to slow down and stop, and sometimes charge to go faster.

But it is very much a shepherding simulator in that, like, you're not in there with them, moving sort of single-mindedly.

You're not, like, calling them to you.

It's very much like, I mean, it is.

It's hurting.

I mean, I'm hurting a pack of people.

I said it was like Babe last week, and people probably thought I was being fucking crazy, but that's what I meant, is it feels like you're, you know, controlling the sheep in babe.

It's very forgiving in that.

It's not, I was genuinely worried it was going to be like that horrible mini-game from Twilight Princess that you like start out and you have to just like go around a big field and like, oh, fuck, that one wandered off to the left.

I'm going to, oh no, I went to get him.

Four other ones wandered.

It's not, it is not that

annoying.

The only time where it gets precarious is when it's like, okay, you got to go through this like patch of brambles.

And if you touch one, the world's worst owl is going to come and kill you.

That is where the wheels kind of fell off a bit for me.

And I get that it's going for a different tone, one that gets a little bit, you know, stressful or

not scary necessarily, but more intense than a lot of games in this genre typically go for.

But it, I don't know, man, I just want to chill with my with my roadhogs and trot them out, you know?

How do you feel about it, Juice?

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, it's kind of, it's pretty boring.

Like, it's really boring.

Like, to play it is incredibly boring.

I didn't have any fun the whole time.

No pleasure was found here.

It's incredibly boring.

Playing it, experiencing it is really boring.

It's very pretty to look at.

Having to live through it, I found excruciating.

When I started it, I felt like we were in a sort of tutorial sequence where maybe I was learning about how to interact with this world.

Yeah.

And then the game would begin where

not, it's not,

it's not, the thing that I'm saying is dull is that there is almost no concession made for me as a player.

I am an encumbrance to this this whole thing.

And

it's really, it suffers in contrast, I think, to sort of the sea, which is so much about empowering you and the freedom of movement and the joys.

So that's not this game's fault, but like

it was just so unpleasant to experience.

And I thought it was a tutorial, like a training thing, and then the mechanics would get out of the way and we'd be like,

I'd be able to connect with it more because I wouldn't be so in my head about all the different like, but it never does that.

It's just, you do exactly what it wants you to.

And then, and if you get off that path, God help you, because

sometimes a lot of the woods look alike a lot of the other woods, and you realize you've been going the wrong way for 10 minutes, and that is a real kick in the nap.

I think.

Yeah, man, I just found the whole thing so boring

and that is how I felt.

I think when I was playing it and I felt honestly not far off from how Justin felt when I was playing it and while I was going through the tutorial I was like and this is a genuine reaction like this is a really neat interaction.

Like I've never seen this in a game before where it's like you're standing behind and it feels like that I guess in Twilight Princess there was a fucking mini game.

Good work Griffin.

But for me a bad one.

One of the worst Zelda minigames of all time.

But I don't remember having this like sort of interaction where the camera pulls back and you really do feel like you have very direct control over these creatures.

And I was like, this is a really neat idea.

I'm very interested to see where they take this idea and add gameplay levers to it to spice it up in interesting ways in the way that

games like Hollow Knight start with a very basic core input mechanic and then they evolve that mechanic in interesting ways.

And it doesn't feel, and I'm several hours into it at this point, it does not feel

that they knew where to go after coming up with the idea.

Like they white boxed the idea of I want to control these creatures, and here's how it's going to work when I'm controlling them.

And then, beyond the art design of the world, which does look beautiful, and the music is very good music.

I like the music, it's lovely, but the actual interactions in the game, they didn't know what else to do beyond this is what you're doing with these creatures.

It's a shame too, because they do nail another thing, which is that as you add more of these calicorns to your pack, they all have kind of different personalities, which is like genuinely a very neat idea

for a shepherding game.

It's like, I had one named Giuseppe, and Giuseppe was just always, he always needed validation from me.

The others would be trotting along and he'd turn back around and be like, hey.

I'm dirty.

And does that mean you don't love me anymore?

It's like, Giuseppe, fucking chill, dude.

We're going to like, that's hard.

That's hard to nail, especially for a, uh, uh, you know, a tough guy like me who doesn't really care about virtual or most real life animals.

But yeah,

I felt the exact same way.

I would find a new thing, a new mechanic, a new type of puzzle, a new calicorn to join my herd.

And I'd be like, this is where it, this is where it gets going.

And

I don't know.

I don't really think it does.

There's a certain type of...

listener who is going to really enjoy this game and is the person who loves that that feeling you used to get playing Eco or Shadow of the Colossus or those PS2 games where you are a silent protagonist and the story comes from the environment and it's somewhat of like this dystopic apocalyptic setting and then you go on your journey and at the end you have a big emotional swell of music.

And I want to say that like maybe that will be you, listener, who is hearing this.

The problem for me and to go to everything y'all said is

I think we try to meet a game on what did it set out to do and did it do that well.

And for me, it fails to do a lot of the things that I think it's clearly setting out to do.

Griffin mentioned that, you know, you get the hurdling, and maybe one or two you connect with.

They have you name these characters.

You're supposed to clearly care about all these.

The problem is, you're getting a new one every like 15 minutes.

And they all look kind of the the same, kind of different.

Maybe they're different sizes.

And

I had forgotten their names, I mean, basically right away, you know, by the two or three hour mark, I have, you know, eight or nine or 10 of these or whatever.

I had like a loose family structure in my head at first.

I, you know, at first it was like, oh, I got like a parent one and like a kid, a couple kid ones.

And it was like, by the end of it, it's like fucking full house.

Like, I don't know.

I got a, I got a...

Jesse's weird grandma that comes over for three episodes and I've forgotten her name.

Yeah.

And then as an environmental storytelling game, there's just not that much story,

especially for the first two or three hours.

I mean, and again, if I am being generous and I'm trying to like read into it, the story is especially overly familiar, which is like you start in a city and then you get out into nature and nature is beautiful, but nature is also dangerous.

And it's like, yeah, I've seen children's movies of the 1980s.

It's fun enough.

The herding mechanic is better than it has any right to be.

It is truly one of my least enjoyable mechanics in video games, shepherding around AI characters, let alone many of them.

And it makes it fun-ish, though.

It does feel more like shepherding AI than it does shepherding creatures that you care about.

But yeah, it is.

It's really weird.

The Stampede mechanic is like, is one that I feel like for me is really emblematic of a lot of this stuff.

Like at Hour Show In, you get this ability to like,

you run through colorful flowers or feed your your uh calicorns and they will have the ability to like

run quickly they call it stampeding right and there's a bar at the bottom that is represented by each of your calicorns and it seems like you can maybe dash or stampede more times in sequence as you collect more of them and it's so strange because first of all when you get the stampede ability and you feel like thing things are about to open up to me the fact that you cannot do it all the time and mechanically you would not want to do it most of the time because it's about avoiding danger, but it does feel like this concession that it doesn't feel good

normally.

Like it usually does not feel good to play.

You do need to speed it up to have, to make it pleasant.

Like you would want to experience it at this speed, right?

That is so helpful.

That's not a mechanical thing.

That's a getting around the world thing.

I want to like that to be part of the game because the game part is at a snail's pace and it is dull.

That is so helpful for for making that comparison with Sword of the Sea, and where I wonder almost like, is this just really brutal timing for us, especially for this game?

Because this is a game about it being uncomfortable, about it being frustrating to herd these things around that don't want to go wherever you want them.

And then, yes, every once in a while you come across that big open space, and suddenly it's a breath of fresh air, and the tension gets to be released.

But then you go back to the game, which is frustrating managing a whole bunch of like ox children, versus Sword of the Sea, which is the opposite, which is

it's always fresh air.

There's always, you know, some thing to zip around.

The music is always swelling, and then maybe you have a few seconds here and there where you're squeezing through a crevice to get through the next level.

The ratios are the complete opposite.

And I will say, like, even Sword of the Sea actually mimics some of this pacing, but the baseline is so much more exciting than the baseline of this game.

But there are moments in Sword of the Sea where like you jump on the fucking dolphin and have this like dolphin moment.

And that's what they're trying to do, at least my interpretation of it.

That's what they're trying to do with those stampede moments where again, it's like a breath of fresh air.

It just doesn't have that impact.

I also think

part of the challenge is

we talked previously about how many cowicorns you get.

And you really do like, I think if you're collecting all of them over a dozen at one point like it is an astonishing number of fucking calicorns that are falling around and I think the reason for that is they wanted tension because they wanted you to name the calicorns and care about them because some of them can die.

Some of them can fall off cliffs or get eaten by an owl or whatever the fuck.

Bad things can happen.

So you should be sad.

So they couldn't only have two or three, which is when there's companions and it means a lot to you, like the horse in Shadow of the Colossus, it's because there's one horse, or even like if there were three companions, it's like you remember those three companions.

When you're talking about a dozen, it's so many that even if one died, look, I was bummed when one died, I wasn't thrilled about it, yeah, but I wasn't, it wasn't a memorable experience to me because there were so many other fucking ones running around here, and honestly, that one kind of deserved it a little bit.

He was a bit of an asshole.

So

I just, I just, man.

Okay, If it's not about the story, and it's not, because there's very little like story being communicated here, aesthetically taking it in is like, is really nice.

It's, the, it looks nice and it's, this, it sounds nice, but you're experiencing it at a speed where those charms wear off before that.

And what you're really left with is the experience, right?

It's the experience of doing it.

And I think that that's what's powerful about video games is that they can use experience to communicate.

Like we were talking about last week with

sort of the sea, like using experience to communicate narrative without words.

And I feel like if you look at the experience that they set out to create here,

I don't need to experience this.

Like, I don't need to feel the feeling that is being, that this game is trying to get across to me.

I feel this all the time, man.

You know, like, I genuinely, it feels like I have the, that game, like sort of the sea, especially like right now where I'm at, the idea of like having this experience that is like escapist and taking you somewhere fun and letting you do something fun.

That is something that I was like hungry for and needed and found like so bracing.

I don't know who is not getting enough of this sensation in their day-to-day life that they need to virtually double down on it.

And I'll put just a light tweak on that for me: is I don't mind a game or a movie or a book that is challenging and doesn't make me feel good.

I just he loves it, guy.

This guy loves

his ass.

He loves his whole shit.

But it needs to serve something.

And like, it can't just be that.

Like

it's for what, right?

Like for what?

And this, the, the juice wasn't quite worth the squeeze.

Also, the game's like four hours.

So that's the other thing.

No, that's a good, that's a good thing, quite honestly because I just care for for the game

length.

I'd rather short games that leave an impact.

Like, Sword of the Sea is a short game.

Man, these guys are going to hate Sword of the Sea so fucking much.

People are going to bring up Sword of the Sea in 10 years and they'll be like, no, actually, fuck that game for real.

It's wild.

I have not played a game like this in such a long time.

And then I played two, two in a row for Dubesti.

So it's, this is

super clarifying, though.

I'm really kind of happy, right?

Because for me, I think

experiential games got a bad rap when it was all indie developers wanted to make like 10 years ago.

And I feel like these two are a really good example of how you can make a bad one of these and you can make a good one of these.

Yeah.

I mean, that's true of

any genre, but it is wild.

It is wild that it all kind of

came together so quickly here.

Can we do, can we talk about something else?

You bet.

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hey I wanted to tell you guys about experience that I just finished that I thought was really interesting as a jumping off point for discussion because I feel like this is a place where gaming could expand and is on the verge of expanding.

And we're close.

But anyway, you know, I've been messing around with like some of these retro handhelds and stuff and

building some of these to serve as like museum pieces or collections or stuff.

And I think that that's fascinating to do.

But there is this like problem with iteration in this space and there's a problem with iteration in the mainstream consoles too, right?

Where we're getting a console and then they're wanting an upgrade to that console.

Well, let me tell you what I just did with my Prusa Mark IV.

What is that?

Prusa Mark IV, it's a 3D printer.

It's one of the 3D printers that Prusa, it's a company, a very well-regarded 3D printing company sells.

They'll sell you a Prusa Mark 4, and that's a kind of an older model.

And recently, Prusa started selling the...

Not recently, it's actually been like a year or so ago.

But anyway, Prusa started selling the Mark IV S.

Right.

And I don't need to tell you guys.

You've been in the game long enough to know.

That's good.

I started in the Mark IV.

Mark IV is

this one's amazing.

With the Xbox Series S, that's the worst one.

So, yes,

that part is confusing.

But think about more like S Record.

Got it.

Sure.

So what is really cool is if you have a Mark IV, like I did, the Mark IV S comes out, Prusa will sell you a $100

kit to upgrade your Mark IV to a Mark IV S.

What's cool is...

Just like a sticker that says S on it, and that's it.

It comes with a sticker that says it comes with a new serial.

no no no russ you joke it comes with a lot of the proofs of mark four and a lot of the proofs of printers in general are 3d printed so a lot of wait wait wait wait wait the printers are 3d printed yeah russ the printers it's the future man oh my god it's the free what was the russ think about it this way think about it this way if something breaks you can make another one right yeah yeah yeah that's amazing right so i they had they sent me these parts i take the parts from the old machine and i throw them in the garbage and then they send a new, no, put them in my, in my filament recycling bit, actually.

So we, the, the, this new kit comes with a, uh, a, a, a new fan and a new hot end and a new, uh, basically a lot of a new belt, a new belt for the printer.

It doesn't matter the, the parts.

The thing is, I had to take apart the Wi-Fi.

I had to take apart the networking.

I had to take apart the belt.

I had to take apart the hot end and take off the fan to put on a new fan.

In the process of doing this, when I bought this printer, you could buy it assembled or as a kit.

I bought it assembled because I didn't know what I was doing.

In the process of doing this upgrade, now I have the upgraded Mark 4S.

It even has like my serial number has been taken off.

I updated the firmware.

It is no different from the Mark 4S at this point.

I've upgraded my own thing.

I've learned so much about this, like understand this thing so much better than I did when I started.

It took six hours.

It was a gigantic pain in the ass.

I mean, unfathomable, but it was a joy to do because the instructions that this company gives you are fantastic.

They have videos.

They have individual, like, blown-up sections to show you exactly color-coded what is going where.

My favorite, it comes with a pack of gummy bears.

And they tell you exactly, they tell you how many, it's a Haribo pack, right?

They tell you how many gummy bears are in there.

And then, as you're going through the instruction manual, they tell you how many gummy bears you can eat at the end of each section as your reward.

And they're like, don't fool around with this.

Don't kid around.

Like, you have to do it perfect.

And, y'all, I got to tell you, the best fucking gummy bear I ever ate is when I finally got that fucking L C D in place and I finally got it screwed in.

And I was like, feeling like such an idiot.

And then I got that beautiful gummy bear and started chewing it.

And I felt like an absolute superhero.

I want to do this in video games.

And I feel like what is hard is this hobby, video games writ large

should have been a cool space for like makers and hackers and it has been but it's never been like

an encouraged thing like

PC gaming is really the only space.

Yeah, absolutely, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And that is different.

Like obviously like PC gaming is its own is its own thing, right?

But this idea of we still have a lot of consoles that are still the best way of playing these old consoles.

Like we need people, I think

in order to like keep gaming history preserved, I think we need more people that are fluent in at least the basics of this stuff.

You know what I mean?

Like how to replace a battery, things like that.

The ejector on an NES cartridge thing broke.

The battery in like old cartridges is one that we're like, they just stop working.

Like it's a kind of like basic skill set that we, I feel like gaming makes it really hard to start getting into

those mods without it.

There's There's like not an easy, fun way to like

hobbyist into it until you're like whipping solder around in the guts of your console, you know.

Yeah, I agree.

I think we're like somewhere weirdly in the middle, which is you can go and find so many different versions of Dreamcast uprisers and various connectors and tweakers and ways to

SD mini into your Dreamcast mini SD.

But you're right.

There isn't the there's no pleasure in it.

It's mostly people being like, well, Sega's not going to do it.

And we.

But this is the difference.

This is the difference, Chris, that I want to highlight here.

This is Prusa doing it.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

That's what I mean by the stuck in the middle.

It's not full soldering anymore.

There are people who are creating...

slightly easier ways of doing it, but they're still having to step in and fill in on Sega's behalf.

and that means that you don't get the like

pleasure you don't get that level of detail you don't get the ease that the actual company could do in your case Prusa you know is is taken out upon itself yeah I think that there could be a space like and and I will say this also I've mentioned the retro handheld thing there is not I do not know of

with the notable exception of Retroid has just released their like dual screen add-on for the Retroid

Pocket 5 and several other handhelds that have a similar form factor, but that's more of like an add-on, not exactly an upgrade in the way that I'm thinking, it doesn't take one to the next.

But I think the speed at which you're starting to see some of these like independent consoles get released and iterated on, I think you could start to see a sort of like a company that fills in that middle ground between hobbyist and Microsoft Nintendo, you know, Sony

and has like an upgrade path.

You're also seeing it, and again, this is fan-based, but I think companies are kind of picking up on it.

Like, whether it's changing the guts or even just like, hey, I'm going to design a CAD file for a grip for these specific handhelds,

I think not only shows that, like, hey, there's a demand for that, but also shows the companies like, hey, maybe you should be offering these sorts of like aftermarket add-ons for people that actually want them.

So, yeah, I agree with Plan.

I think it is kind of in this middle ground.

It's hard for me to imagine like an Xbox

selling you the parts to turn your Xbox into an Xbox 2, whatever the fuck they're going to do next.

Yes.

You say that, but they talked about doing that for a long time of doing modular systems where you could upgrade.

That's true.

But it never really took off, right?

They would sell those hard drives for like way more than market value, and it just wouldn't necessarily work.

I think it's really compelling, but again, the second you make it like very modular to the point where it only works on this device ever, I think that's where it gets very expensive and kind of seals off the market a little bit.

Do you feel like analog is doing a version of this?

Well, no, because their shit's way more boutique and

I don't know how to describe it, but I mean, they're pretty intense about like,

you know, this is not a emulator first thing.

It's all whatever it is, FGLP.

FGPGA.

FPGA.

Yeah, I thought there was an L in there, but I guess not.

And there's a place for that too, obviously.

I think those devices rule, but it's like almost the opposite sort of thing.

There's an ethos, I think, that I would love to see that is at play here.

And part of it is definitely the

3D printing is open source in a way that I find kind of like moving a little bit.

It's like genuinely like a really open open thing.

And I find that like you find people iterating on stuff so quickly that having like that as an open platform and an open way of iterating on that stuff and Prusa has really like embraced that, like that sort of like open source idea.

And I think that that, and there's a ton of care there for customers too, like the idea that like you would care about

people enough that you would wanted to give them an upgrade path so they didn't have to buy the newest thing, you know, and they could spend a hundred bucks and just upgrade it.

Um, I'm going to guess this is not a publicly traded company.

I am going to assume you're probably right.

I'll tell you this: two weeks before I got this thing, and part of what made me want to get it, I had a problem that was my fault with a nozzle.

And I was contacting them about it, and they said, you know, you've never asked us for any sorts of replacements or anything.

So, let's send you a whole hot end replacement rather than just the nozzle, and that'll be a lot easier for you to replace.

And, you know, those wear down events, like they sent more than I asked them to for my warranty Place.

That's awesome.

Very interesting.

Do we have a reader?

Yeah, we have a few letters from the readers.

This one comes from Bethany.

The sunshine disrespect, this is in reference to my dragging Super Mario Sunshine.

The sunshine disrespect from my favorite video game podcasters hurts my soul.

I know it's not the most popular Mario, but still to this day, it's my favorite Mario game, flaws in all, and I'm still hoping out for a sequel one day.

I do want to comment on that.

You can like a Super Mario game, but it can't make it your favorite.

Your sunshine can't be your favorite.

Okay, come on.

Have you played the other ones, though?

Come to the Odyssey.

Like, listen to that, you know?

Even nostalgia, I'd give you

nostalgia in that one.

But not set, Flood.

Look, look, look.

Spin Doctors, when I was a 12-year-old, was all happening.

And even today,

I still listen to the Spin spin doctors i like their live album i like that pocketful of kryptonite album i'm sure they've done other music

and they gave they gave some good advice for when people love something that maybe we don't love

can't be wrong

would you say that your favorite band is the spin doctors not publicly

i do want to say this about mario sunshine it kills me that i don't care for this game because i love the theming the like paradise theming.

I think it looks visually great.

It introduces one of my favorite Mario characters of all time, baby Bowser.

Sorry, Bowser Jr.

And so it genuinely kills me.

And it has a lot of the same problems that Mario 64 does, which is it's a lot of it is just you fighting the camera.

The problem is it's way more fighting the camera when you're fucking launching yourself in the air with a jetpack.

Yeah.

So that, those are my issues.

I'm glad people love it.

I think there are people that were raised with this as their first 3D Mario game.

game, so I kind of get it.

But yeah, it's really super de-duper, not for me, unfortunately.

Kidding aside, if you're the sort of person that likes to do this sort of thing, there is a

mod called Super Mario Sunburn that make...

So this is, I'm reading this list because there's a lot.

Essentially, it makes Super Mario Sunshine play more like 64.

There's a toggleable options menu.

It's open world, so you can free travel stage to stage.

You can do multiple missions at once and collect shines out of order.

Shines don't always kick you out of levels.

There's an auto-save, 100 coin missions possible on every mission.

It's sensitive collection engine and bug fixes, an actual reward for getting all 120 shines.

It's like an overall,

many, many years in development.

If you're the sort of person that is inclined to do this sort of thing,

I think Sunburn is well worth checking out.

It's extremely cool.

Sunshine's cool too.

I was giving a hard time.

But Sunburn is really neat.

That sounds awesome.

Yeah.

Look it up.

And it is frequently updated.

The 2.0 update came out two months ago.

So Sunburn is still very active.

Okay.

We have another complaint.

And this was not the only person mentioning it, but Caleb mentioned it specifically.

People didn't care for the disrespect on the Lego game specifically.

I found I've completely justified myself to the last person, and I'm happy to do it here.

I do have a question, though, Justin.

Have you played like a recent-ish one?

How would I know?

It came out in the last, I don't know, five years.

How could I know?

I mean, how would I know?

How would it

change?

My point is.

If I put Lego into any console or storefront, the thing just fucking explodes.

That's true.

The whole thing just melts down.

How do I know if I played a new one?

What I would say is I think they are games in the way they were in game.

I agree.

They are games.

On this, we are united.

My favorite thing with the Lego games right now is the ones that are trying to do something different.

And I think that there there are more and more of those happening.

I think Horizon Adventures, you know, that sort of stuff.

And I will say,

the Skywalker saga, I enjoyed that one.

It was nice.

That was really good.

I really

burned so many times.

I've tried to play so many of these games with Henry, and absolutely none of them have really

stuck.

So for me, it's a kind of personal vendetta.

I don't have anything against the games, but.

Justin does, but that's okay.

Listen, Justin had to play through all of Lego Ninjago movie video game,

and he has never recovered.

Anyone would have a favorite.

That's better.

That's all.

That was his bane origin story.

Okay, we have one more letter.

This comes from.

Does this person want to fucking get their nose bloodied about?

Beetle Bat.

It says, hey, y'all, you should check out Chibi Robo.

It recently got added to the GameCube Classics collection.

It's my favorite game of all time.

And I'm glad people finally can play it.

For those of you turned off by it looking too much like a cozy game, let me assure you, it's much more like an adventure game.

I have never played Chibi Robo, and I basically know nothing about it.

I played the 3DS one

quite a bit.

It's not the one with the mouse and the...

the cats and the game.

No, it's the little metal guy, and he has a power cable attached to him that he carries around.

I was thinking of Choo Choo Rocket.

You were thinking of Choo Choo Rocket.

This Chibi Robo Plug It to Adventure is a great game.

I have not played it since, you know, it came out first on

GameCube.

I would love to return to it.

He helps a family, and he's a cute little robot guy.

He's great.

Oh, it's like one of those games where it's set in a big house and each level is like a game.

Everything is big around you and you are a tiny little guy pie.

Yeah.

I love those games.

I have a recommendation for our listener.

There is another Chibi Robo game that you have probably never played.

There are a number of them.

There is a photo one.

There is a DS one.

There is a second DS one that never came out in the US.

Okairi, Chibi Robo, Happy Riccio Soji.

And

more

Chibi Robo.

So if you have ever been just saying, I gotta get more Chibi Robo, you should check it out.

Weirdly, got pretty good reviews.

I'm looking at the Famitsu score, 34 out of 40.

Solid.

Why is that weird?

Why is that weird, Chris?

It's weird.

Well, it's weird because its sales did not reflect that.

It sold like 130,000 units,

which is not enough to get more games made.

But yeah, it's such a good series.

And just one of the cutest character designs that there is.

That's great.

I'm glad Chibi Robo is getting some respect.

Please spell the name of whatever that was.

Is there an English translation?

Because I don't speak Japanese.

Is there an English translation?

There's always an English translation on the internet.

There appears to be one.

I'm not sure if it is actually successful or not, but the translation looks like it came out in 2016.

And I will include all of this on

the newsletter.

Thank you.

Honorable mentions time.

I have an honorable mention I wanted to call out.

Please, it is very well timed because when this episode goes up, we will be, it'll be like four-ish, five-ish days before the launch of Hollow Knight Silksong, a video game that in theory is happening on September 4th.

If you have played Hollow Knight before, chances are you beat the game and didn't know what the fuck the story was about, but you still had a great time like me.

And if that's the case,

I'm going to throw in a link or Plant's going to drop this link into the newsletter to a video that explains the plot of Hollow Knight to normal human beings.

It's a fun, it's a little, a little meme-y from like mid-2018 era.

So just be aware there might be some references that feel a little dated, but broadly speaking, it's a very good explanation for what the hell is going on in that game from a plot standpoint.

And given the fact that there are continuing characters, specifically Hornet, is in both games, you might want to know what the fuck the deal is with Hornet.

Yeah.

So it's a great video.

It's about an hour and 15 minutes long.

Buckle up.

Can we talk about Silk Song?

Because when we recorded last time, we were very transparent.

The Gamescom show had just happened.

Keely had gotten on stage and said, here's some news about Silk Song.

It's coming out this year.

And then two days later, Team Cherry did their own announcement where they said,

It's coming out September.

It's coming out in two weeks.

No one has wedgied Jeff Keely more.

What

could have possibly happened behind the scenes there where he he could be he could be so thoroughly i don't want to say cuckolded by like announcements announcements

it's distasteful it's distasteful to say that so like i'm trying to find a better way of saying it's accurate yet distasteful it's just wild to me for for him to get this announcement and show off this gameplay footage and then two days later team cherry's like yeah it two weeks y'all see you see you there it's real it's happening uh it's just it's just wild i'm so excited couldn't be more excited i'm so excited.

I've been on total black.

I didn't watch the announcement trailer.

I haven't watched any gameplay.

Every time it pops up in my YouTube, I close my eyes and run away.

I'm going in, as we know.

So you have, so you have not seen Miss Hollow Night.

Well, I mean, in a way, not wrong, because Hornet, I know, is the protagonist, but yeah.

I'm pretty bad.

It's a shame you can only get married once.

What a loss.

Yeah, fuck.

Yeah.

I am worried, and I've spoken to a few people about this, that the discourse is going to turn on this game in a bad way when the game comes out.

Oh, as is all things that people are really excited about.

But maybe I'll be wrong, and people will just be real.

It'll go quick, I think.

I think it'll be like, oh, this is the best.

Oh, this is actually the worst.

Actually, it's nothing.

I did hear that it does have weapon durability in this game.

I hope that's not an issue for people.

As weapon durability?

That was a good question.

Oh, no, Jesus.

You can't do that to me.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

What else is going on?

I've been reading a book.

It's called A Drop of Corruption.

It is the second

in the,

I forget the name of the trilogy.

It is a fantasy murder mystery.

I'm finally going to read that book.

You keep saying that.

No, I'm like, like, I say that.

I mean it.

Here's how you know I mean it.

I'm gonna do it while we're just doing the show.

Oh, okay.

That's how you know I'm serious.

It is, it's the sequel to The Tainted Cup, which I brought a couple months back.

Oh, wait, I remember why I never get it because I hear the name and I think it doesn't sound very good.

Oh, no, it's fucking rad.

And this, this one is also really great.

I'm nearly done with it, and it's just another great, great mystery in a world of magic plants and kaiju.

And

it's just really great.

Some of the best.

Is that the the same author's City of Stairs?

It is.

Robert Jackson Bennett.

But a different, is that a different

soccer.

Yeah, he's whipped up quite a few of these.

Is it a connected?

Does he do a connected thing?

Is it

a Cosmere way?

Not in the Cosmere way.

No, not in any way that at least I have.

I've read a few of his sort of

trilogies, and I haven't noticed much connective tissue.

That's not to say that it's not.

Are the Kaiju fucking?

Is it one of those books?

No, they're being harvested for their blood, which gives gives people super power space.

That sounds like a kink.

Yeah, I guess.

I guess if you want it to be.

Also, this season of American Ninja Warrior just wrapped up, and I just want to give them their flowers.

Fucking great, great season.

They adopted a tournament-style all-racing structure that was just absolutely thrilling, watching some of my favorite old dogs up against the young guns.

What does that mean, all-racing structure?

So, historically, in the past, it's been a like you qualify, you go to city finals and then there's stage one and stage two but it's like get through this course in this amount of time or get through this course without failing or whatever and now once you qualify it's just races non-stop and if you lose you're knocked out um and then they take that to the to the final victor uh and i don't know that show is still corny as hell most of the time but it's pretty exciting watching people be extraordinarily good at uh going through obstacles.

Rachel and I, we don't talk about it a lot because I think there's an understandable amount of shame for being into this particular television program.

Justin's nodding in agreement.

I was looking at something on the ground.

Oh, okay.

Repeatedly.

I was looking at something on the ground repeatedly.

Over and over and over again.

But yeah,

it's a show about people who are extraordinarily enthusiastic about this one thing that will not be applicable in any other part of their lives.

So there's always a lot on the ground.

But it has gone on long enough that it does seem like a more applicable skill, right?

It feels like if you're if a show's on long enough, that it is like, I don't know, he's good at survivor.

That's the one thing you can say about him.

They have also in recent years reduced the like age requirement to go on the show.

So there's a lot of just like, you know, 14-year-olds whose,

you know,

muscle to weight ratio is so fucked up and insane.

And they are, they smash the course and they're going up against these 40-year-old veterans who are just like trying to trying to stay for one more round just so they don't have to go and

parent their kids tonight.

It's really genuinely, it was a thrilling season.

And I still don't, I wouldn't talk about it publicly, but I felt like this is a safe space.

It is.

Justin's not making it feel very safe, but

Justin knows how nasty I get with this shit.

He knows I'm a

dirty dog.

Justin, you got anything?

Been riding a bike.

Like a bike that moves around?

Yeah, riding a bike around.

That's fun.

Sounds pretty nice.

I've seen a road hog over here.

It's a cool bike.

Cool bike.

Yeah, it's like cool.

I'm riding around.

It's not a big deal.

Is there anything else?

No?

Jumps?

No.

No jumps?

I don't play video games so much.

It's like I move them around.

You know, I move them from one device onto another device.

That's what I'm doing.

You don't ask a librarian if they read books.

You know what I mean?

I don't read a book.

I mean, no, I don't read books.

Remember when we asked Good Russ whether he enjoys playing video games?

Oh, no.

No, you asked if he enjoyed it, not enjoyed playing video games.

He likes playing videos.

It was enjoyed what he does.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it was even more weirdly personal than that.

That is a really, that, that time we have good, that was a trigger moment for me, that episode where it was like, after that episode, I went like absolutely mad.

Yeah, bashful.

That was the retrospective.

Now I'm like,

I've I've wrought, I've heard that man talk more than I've heard my own father speak to me in the last few years.

Like, he is so important to me.

I'm terrified if we get good Russ back on the show.

I, I'll be, I will pepper him with so many like minuscule questions.

Like, so, what is CD TV emulation and why can't it ever catch up?

Man, I'm so unplugged from social media.

I do not know what the response is to how much we talk about this stuff.

It's just a really fucking interesting time for this space, genuinely, with the speed that things are evolving and new shit is coming out and new uh you know forms of emulation and new hardware are just like dropping every single week and it truly is like uh i don't know a really exciting time to be kind of like part of that part of that hobby and it's really as these devices i the what is really neat is like as these devices are released and like improved and the technology gets better It's like better ways of experiencing certain libraries.

So there's certain games, certain form factors that are like a better experience overall because it's like emulating the closer to the size of the screen.

So you're not destroying the pixels so much or like the controls are more closely emulated.

And as I have more of these like libraries set up on devices that are really good fit for them, these libraries feel alive to me in a way that they do not normally feel.

Like I the library,

I've done so much of this.

Like the library of Sega CD in my head, the library of the TurboGraphic 16, I can kind of imagine the shape and the scope of it.

Like, if I saw 10 games on that list, I could tell you probably what libraries they are.

I know that Three Ninjas Kick Back is the first video game in the SNES library alphabetically.

I've probably played that game more than any other SNES game because it is like just the one my thumb hits.

Ah, real monsters.

Yeah.

And of course, in the arcade world, you can't beat the 1941 franchise because there's like eight of those.

There's no way you're going to click through all those.

I will say not to tackle on, but I will say Justin's newest approach, which I think is a very interesting approach.

When you get one of these handhelds, I think the default setting and certainly my setting is I'm going to throw on as many games as I can on this individual device and make it all work, just so I have it with me.

Justin has been taking individual devices and kind of dedicating them to a given platform or creator or maker.

So like you have like a Sega specific handheld that just has a retroid pocket classic that is a six button model.

So it looks very much like the second genesis controller or the the saturn controller uh and it feels great uh it's got like shoulder buttons on the back and it's more buttons than you need for these like old systems so you can map stuff like quick load quick save uh shaders and things like that to like really emulate the experience but it's really cool like historically to see

and and all of these like laid end to end kind of see the progression throughout and like see what the history would have looked like from that perspective and it's also like like when I'm able to emulate a console and have an experience that's like pretty close to what you might have had back then, like we didn't have

a mega

Sega mega, sorry, a master system.

We didn't have like we missed a generation of Atari, didn't have a Saturn.

So it's like some of these libraries like I'm checking out for the first time and in a way where it doesn't feel like I've sort of like completely botched the experience, something like where I can kind of get the, get the idea.

Um, that's been really cool.

Uh, I think we did it.

Point, you want to recap the games we talked about?

Oh my gosh, we talked about so much stuff this week.

We talked about hurdling and then we talked about Okairi, Chibi Robo, Happy Richie Osoji.

We talked about

Okairi is like returning home, Chibi Robo.

I think Happy Richie Osoji is probably a character's name.

It's like,

welcome home, Chibi Robo.

Happy Richie Osoji.

So go ahead.

uh

well a hollow night silk song uh we talked about the book a drop of corruption we talked so much about all sorts of different emulator handhelds uh next week we'll be talking about metal gear solid 3 delta and

new

Kirby new Kirby DLC not Kirby air right don't worry that's gonna be later this year but there is a new update and expansion to our beloved Kirby game for the Nintendo Switch

just in time for the Nintendo Switch 2.

So we'll be chatting about not just in time, a couple months late,

notably late.

Launch wave.

Some of us may have made certain promises to our children on the Switch 2 launch date, not realizing that the Kirby deal.

We should also point out that they are not, Team Cherry is not distributing code for Silk Song early,

which is why we're not doing that.

I'm a little bit thrilled, quite honestly.

Week after.

I'm fine with it.

It's fine.

We're going to play it alongside you guys, which is to say, yeah, we will not be talking about it at all on next week's episode.

It will be, I think, out for a day when that comes out.

Yeah.

So join us for a week after.

One real last quick thing.

Thank you to our Patreon members over at patreon.com/slash the besties.

We have Brittany, we have Gabe G, we have Johnny Dean, and we have Expo Stalfa.

Thank you for being members of Patreon.

It's great new content coming up, coming at you frequently.

I think we have over 50 episodes of bonus content on there.

Holy cow, including a new bracket episode, which is dropping the first Tuesday of September.

We also have our new resties out, so tons of stuff going on there at patreon.com/slash the besties.

Right.

And that's going to do it for us this week on the besties.

Be sure to join us again next time on the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games?

Besties