How to Get Started in Handheld Gaming with Retro Game Corps

I'm so glad that Russ from Retro Game Core is joining us this week because...

Yeah, when's he going to get here?

He's late, and it's really

embarrassing as cars.

He's on island time, but the real, the problem I'm having with all my MUs, and I don't know if it's a bug or a virus or glitch, but all my Pokemon games,

all of the Pokemon sprites are nude.

Like, they're all nude and naked and anatomically, like

really

detailed.

And I don't know like whether I need to get a new device.

You're making a face Russ Frush dick and I do need to be clear.

Well, I'm making a face just because traditionally speaking, Pokemon are always nude as far as I'm aware, except unless you're talking about like throw or one of those.

Hitmonchan kind of wears clothes, but largely speaking, they're always nude.

That's true.

So you're saying they've reached another layer to it.

I'm saying that you see Pikachu's genitals, and I'm wondering if I get the Retroid Pocket 5,

is that not going to be a featured?

Or are you going to see it maybe more enhanced?

If I get the Odin 2 Mini Pro,

are the genitals going to be more, are they going to be gone?

Are they going to be detailed?

I don't know.

Russ, if you can't stop drooling, I would ask that you turn off your camera.

And that's both Russ's, by the way, for the record.

All Russ's.

You know, I could be Russ 2 this episode.

No, listen, that was a great cold open.

We did it.

We did it.

My name is Russ McIloy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ McRoy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ Froschik.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ Crandle, and I know the best handheld of the week.

Welcome to Russ City.

The blasted land where Griffin and I are the only survivors in a world of Russ's.

This is the besties.

It's a video game club.

And just by listening, you have become a member.

This week, we are going to be speaking with Russ Crandle.

Russ Fruschtick, Chris Plants, and I hear, so you have to tell me about Russ Crandle.

Yeah, so Russ Crandle, we've all, I think people know Russ as Russ from Retro Game Core,

and we've all used his very detailed analysis and setup guides on YouTube because he's done such a good job in that space, such that I think he has become the Mr.

Beast of retro gaming.

Is that fair to Sal?

High praise.

Huge for you, I bet.

Without all the baggage.

Just the good stuff.

Welcome aboard.

We wanted to bring you in because we've been talking about this stuff for a while and we have so many questions and the readers have so many questions.

So I'm very excited.

What should we be snacking on?

What should we be drinking?

Now,

that's

an incredibly long introduction.

And now we are going to take a commercial break after your absolute soliloquy.

We'll be right back.

Russ, before we get started, what should we be snacking on?

And what should we be drinking?

Wait, I have a better question for Russ that is going to tell us a lot more about him as a person.

Russ, when you are setting up a new emulator, do you have

a game or a game on each console that you're like, gotta fire it?

Like, gotta do it.

That's gotta be the first one I fire up.

For me, whenever I set up a new

emulator, the only one I have consistent is if it's PlayStation, you know, I'm playing Blasto.

If it's NES.

Blasto for the benchmarks.

Yeah, for sure.

If it's NES, I'm playing

Rescue the Embassy mission

is what I'm firing out there.

What about you?

Do you have any

standards?

Man, my stuff is so boring.

So I basically, in the moment I get a handheld, I'm just testing it already.

And so I just like, so for Super Nintendo, it's Mega Man X because

it'll show pixel distortion like really quickly.

And so

wait, really?

Why?

So on the left side, if you think about Mega Man's life bar, it'll be like perfect little pills all across the

but only if your screen is balanced.

And so you need like a high resolution or something that's a good integer scale to it.

So it's like one of those crappy pattern thing.

It's like almost like a test pattern that you can use to adjust.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I'll always fire that up and be like, ah, is this a good screen or not?

And then I can usually figure that out.

Do you have trouble just playing video games?

Oh, man.

I don't play anything.

I just test games.

You know what I mean?

Like, I never sit down and be like, hey, let's play Mario World for the hundredth time.

It's always like, ah, you know, what can I do to make this screen look better?

Or, oh, the audio's off.

Let me see what I can do.

Even when you're traveling, you're not like whipping out the latest whatever and playing something?

No.

I'm usually sleeping or reading.

Reading sports.

Reading sports books.

You've created

hunting animals with his bare hands.

I do two things.

Neither of them are play video games.

Russ, we brought you on specifically because I think there are a lot of people, and you have been a great ambassador and an introduction to this space.

I think there are a lot of people that are very intimidated by,

you know, we're talking about a lot of Chinese handhelds from manufacturers that no one's ever heard of before.

I mean, we have, but that's only thanks in part to you.

I feel like a lot of people don't know how to get into it.

And I sort of wanted to like, add a baseline, if you're side, like just slightly interested in this space, what is like step one?

Yeah, you know, it's it's hard because I think Chris mentioned it really well in his written review earlier last week.

It's basically all of these things are magical in their own way.

It's just finding the right magical one for you.

And it's really hard.

You know, I've got some roundups on my channel and stuff, but even then, within a month, the story changes all the time.

That's the big thing I've noticed.

And so my advice is really just like look at your budget.

Like, say it's going to be like the price of like a modern game, so 60, 70 bucks, and then see what's available at that price point.

And it's probably going to be pretty magical on its own.

And then just kind of go from there yeah the first one you get regardless of whether it's quote good or not is always kind of magical i remember yeah i think it was an rg351m

oh the rg351m i still have a poster of it

we all we all remember our first

my my advice for getting into this scene is always just go to the mall look for a kiosk where someone is selling a one an 801 uh nes box definitely unlicensed they're gonna have some art that's like glass cut glass that you shine a laser light through um you can pick up one of those if you want it's not necessary for the emulation but you can go wrong with a kia a mall kiosk uh retro box

uh you mentioned the the price point uh russ at that like

a console game price point

Where are you currently at in your like this is the thing to buy because I feel like at that price point or maybe a little lower, for a long time, it was the Mew Mini Plus, I guess.

I feel like it's not there anymore.

Right.

It is that fair to say?

A very recent replacement, but for me, it's now one called the Trimui Brick.

And so this one looks a lot like the Mew Mini, but smaller, but a really high resolution screen.

I think it's like 768p.

You know, all these are using like, you know, recycled like phone parts and stuff.

So all the resolutions and stuff are always crazy.

But this one is like super crisp and clear, about 50, 60 bucks and can play a lot more.

So you can play, you you know, up to a good amount of like Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast, which the Miu Mini Plus could not do.

And so that's been my one.

It's like a really solid, small handheld just to kind of throw in your pocket.

And that's running Linux as well.

Yeah, it's just running Linux.

And there's a bunch of, you know, custom firmwares and all that stuff, which is a whole nother world, you know.

But that's like my big one.

And then the other one would be like the Ambernik RG35XXSP.

Terrible name.

It just rolls right off the window.

Which one?

RG35XXSP.

Did you say it?

It looks like a Game Boy Advance.

Yeah, so it looks like a Game Boy Dance.

Wait, yeah, you're a professional, and you're recommending the 300X

SP because all of us real ones know that the 400000X3P is going to be the one to wait for.

I'm sorry.

There is actually a 4,000 one, as I'm sure Russ is running through his head.

It is this weird gray area, though.

Tell me if my read on this is wrong, Russ.

It feels like they never want to be so strongly branded as to be easily suable.

So it's like kind of a moving target.

Like, I don't know, it's kind of like a jumbling names and numbers.

It's impossible to know what this thing does.

For Ambernik, I have to assume it's just that they are releasing so many of these that they could not possibly create like a marketing team large enough and productive enough to come up with like original, like memorable names for every device they release.

Yeah, part of it, too, is that they just created their own nomenclature because there are so many.

So the numbers mean something.

So 3.5 means 3.5-inch screen.

The XX is a specific, it's referenced to a specific chipset.

And then they have other things.

P means like plastic, M means metal.

And so they just can't come up with that many names.

There's just not enough names in the English language.

And so they have to come up with nomenclature.

What's the race still?

Like,

what is being chased the most actively in this space, in this sort of like portable arms race?

In terms of like what's.

Yeah, size, price, power, cost.

Like, what is the, what's the, what is everybody chasing?

Yeah, there's like two main tiers.

There's the cheap under $100 one, and then there's like the $200-ish dollar one, like the Retroid Pocket 5.

And so the cheaper ones are just really trying to get to that impulse by category where they're looking at just something that reminds you of the old days and that you're just going to pick it up on a whim.

And then the more expensive ones are really targeting basically GameCube and PS2 performance and like an OLED display, all those kinds of things, like really trying to bring in that generation.

Do you have insight into how big Ambernik would need to get before they were like, maybe we shouldn't ship ROMs on these SD cards when we sell them?

Yeah, I don't have any insight, but they.

It's weird because they, you know, their domestic market is much bigger than their overseas market, right?

They're really making this as an afterthought for the rest of us.

And yeah, I don't know how much bigger they need to be.

I know that they've been dropping listings on Amazon, like pulling them because they've been getting in trouble and stuff.

Miu, same thing.

How do you, for yourself, Russ,

I feel like everybody has to kind of answer these questions on their own, but like, obviously, the conversation of like emulation is always kind of like in tandem with the piracy conversation.

I always find myself kind of torn, and I did when I was setting up.

I'm always finding myself when I set up one of these, like, surprised at how far caught up, you know, the technology is.

And like, I really struggle because I cannot find a rational argument why you should not download a ROM of an Atari game that is absolutely unpurchasable for you in any planet.

But on the flip side, there's a game released this week that, you know, is that you could also find the same way.

How do you, how do you, and that feels like I definitely have like a yuckiness line that is a pretty moving target.

Like, how do you, how do you sort of like navigate that, that, those waters for yourself?

Yeah, so for me, I try to make everything available.

So I have like guides on how to like rip ROMs, you know, from an original cartridge and stuff like that.

For those who really want to kind of keep it very clean.

And then for everyone else, i basically just start at the moment where i assume you already have those games and so i don't don't kind of get into that thing and you know try to jump on one end or the other but for current games like so there's a there's a tool called port master which is available on most of these linux handhelds that allows you to basically run certain steam games directly on your device by pulling your steam files and putting them in a certain folder and whatnot all totally legit and legal it's just basically porting it over right and some of these companies will actually ship with those on there all the with the commercial things like celeste or Bellatro.

And for me, that's like totally crossing a line.

So I always call that out if I ever see that in a review.

And then also, you know, make guides and links to that other port master thing where you can just do that yourself: buy the game on Steam, grab those files, throw it on there.

And so there's kind of a middle ground there, but with emulation, yeah, it's one of those where I show people the tools.

And to be honest, there's not a lot of interest in that.

Not a lot of people really care about that.

Those are like my worst performing videos

in terms of what?

The tools to rip from your physical

cartridge.

Yeah, those things bomb.

But I mean, don't need to i don't need to rip it myself right i know i have a copy of rescue the embassy mission somewhere i own it it's my dad got it for me for my birthday i know i own it i didn't get to sell it

I guess that brings me to the other point.

And I don't know how comfortable you are talking about it, but obviously there was the issue with YouTube strikes and Nintendo

and you had to alter the way you do stuff.

Where does that sort of sit at the moment?

Yeah, that was rough.

So I got two strikes on my channel.

And the first strike was literally me showing how to do that thing, to legitimately dump your game onto a file and then play it somewhere else.

But it was a Switch game, and I think they were pretty sensitive about that.

So I got a YouTube strike, and then they were just kind of targeting my channel.

And the next time I showed a Nintendo game, which was for the Wii U, totally different system, got another strike.

And so that was rough.

Those strikes are now expired, so I'm good.

And just since then, I haven't really shown any Nintendo at all on my channel.

So it's been about three months.

I've been slowly testing the waters waters by showing a little bit in a couple of days.

I was going to say, I think I saw a little bit in a recent video.

Yeah, and that's me just kind of, yeah, I'm just testing the waters to see what is the threshold.

It's not like they ever talked to me.

They just threw those strikes at me.

And so I want to kind of figure out, like, if I can show Mario 64, I want to show it.

That makes sense.

That explains why the retroid starter guide I was just watching didn't explain to me how to set up Nesticle for the 30th time.

And I still

need the...

When you're doing a guy video, I still need the guide to find.

Is there part of you that just wants to be like, just get Nesticult?

Like, you know how to, you know how to, just get retro arc and then you fucking know how to do this.

Come on.

Trust me.

It is hard to go over the basics every time.

Like, for example, last year, the Retroid Pocket 4 came out and then the Odin came out.

And they came out very quickly.

And so what I did is I did the Odin guide first.

And then I used the same footage in my Retroid Pocket Guide because it's the same thing.

It's an Android device.

People got mad about that.

They're like, I can't believe you're so lazy, Russ.

And I'm like, come on.

It's the same thing.

So, yeah, from now on, I'm just doing a single guide every time.

And it takes several days just to make one guide.

Was that the Odin 2 that came out?

And then there was also the Pro and also the Portal.

It seems like last year was kind of crazy for

Odin 2, the Odin 2 Mini, and then the Odin 2 portals now comes.

And then Retroid released the Pocket 4 and the Pocket 5.

It feels like those two are sort of in direct competition.

And

I remember when the Odin first came out, I got the Odin Pro,

and I really enjoyed that.

I played PlayStation 2 games, and it was like the first emulator that I was able to like really play PS2 games on like a handheld.

But it seems like Retroid sort of the pendulum has swung back in the other direction a bit, and now Retroid Pocket 5 is able to do a lot more than the sort of previous generation was.

Is that sort of your read on things?

Because those two sort of occupy that higher end space.

Right.

I would say that the retroid is always focused on kind of that middle tier, you know, like getting up to potentially PS2.

And then the Odin 2 is kind of overkill.

Like basically.

Anything you can play on Android was going to play on that.

It's basically like a high-powered phone.

And so it's interesting because these two companies, it's speculated that they both have the same parent company.

And so they're just kind of trying to hit two different targets, but also undercutting one another.

But yeah, I would say the Retroid is like $200 space, whereas the Odin's at $300 space.

Oh, is it?

Okay, I didn't realize it was.

It's wild to me that we don't know that they have the same, whether they have the same pairing company or not.

That is insane to me.

Yeah, but like,

I can see why they're probably no idea.

I mean, hey, Russ, can you tilt your camera to show us the huge pile of discarded handhelds that you can?

I figure there's a corner somewhere.

Is anyone going to show up at your house

and say this is a site that needs to be cleaned up?

There's so much work.

Oh, man.

I limit myself to 200 devices at any given time.

Like, that's what I keep on hand.

I can't tell if you're joking or not because that number is so high it feels like a joke.

It's not a joke.

That's true.

So everything else I give away to like other YouTubers or, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So I try to get those out of the house.

But I keep 200.

Do you have a spreadsheet?

How are you tracking that number?

It's just in my head.

Like, I'll count that.

I've got 200 cuts.

But, all right, let's go and see what needs to go.

And so, yeah, around 200.

Are your neighbors appreciating the benefit as well?

They getting some of these?

So, like, friends and stuff.

Yeah, like Christmas.

Like, hey, here's a bunch of handcuffs.

Rush shows up at your door at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Pow, pow, pow.

Hey, listen, good news for you, bad news for me.

I'm up to 201.

I got a fully crooked.

It's like smoking.

It's so full of

nasty romps.

I had a question about flip devices.

You mentioned the 35XX

SP earlier.

And we have a new one, the Miu Flip, which just came out.

Oh,

you haven't put out the review yet.

You put out an impressions video.

As of today, I don't know when the review is going to go up.

Do you think there's anyone that could ever come up with a flip device that would sustain long-term use without essentially falling apart?

No, I don't think so.

I mean, these guys, they don't have that same engineering team as Nintendo, and even Nintendo stuff breaks, you know, like the DS gets cracked and all that stuff.

So, yeah, I don't see that happening.

And it's just a a matter of when with each of these.

And it's always been that way.

I will say that they're getting smart and not doing as many translucent or transparent colors because those are brittle.

The plastic is brittle on those and they'll crack more easily.

Yeah, there's just there's nothing you can fix about that.

I think it's just time.

The worst, I haven't, I've been out of this scene for a while.

It was very much a like COVID hobby sort of situation.

But I was like doing, you know, shell swaps for like a Game Boy color or, you know, building a metal,

switching a GBA SP into like a single metal case so it had sort of like that DMG form factor.

And doing that with the Game Boy Advance SP was the biggest pain in the ass of any, because they tuck little ribbon cables up in that little, like, I don't know what they make, the little bolts that they secure the hinge of the SP with, but it's like...

It's unobtainium.

It is like such a pain in the ass to crack one of those apart and not shatter it into a million pieces.

Is there a device in particular that's like a real pain in the ass to work with, Russ?

Those SP ones are really bad, like the clamshell ones, because of that ribbon cable, like Griff was just saying, like, it's bad.

It's weird because it's a trade-off because those are so fun to take around because a clamshell protects itself, it protects the screen and the buttons.

You can just throw it in a bag.

And so, but that's the one that's going to break the fastest.

So it's just a catch-22.

Russ, for yourself, when you're looking at these, the different systems, like, do you have

a sense in your head of an audience that is just focused on

tinkering?

Like you're talking about someone who is just like a tinkerer who is not necessarily interested in playing the games.

Do you sense like a bifurcation in the audience where there are people who just want to like fool around with these things and get to understand the works?

And then there's this segment that just wants to set up their thing so they can play the games.

Do you sense that like sort of split?

Yeah, totally.

Like, so my videos are always geared towards the newcomer because I'm just like, you know, if you're just stumbling on this, let's start from scratch every time.

But there are those guys who are just, they're in the scene, you know, they're just, they're heavy into Reddit and Discord and whatnot.

So I make videos for them on the side as well.

Be like, hey, here's this setup I'm using right now.

And it'll be like a 20-minute video and just kind of talking through the details of that kind of stuff.

And I also think that sometimes those newcomers will graduate into those other guys too.

And so I kind of try to bridge that gap as well.

Is it kind of a bummer that because of the speed of the releases, like, are you still seeing traffic from older videos or does that stuff kind of just fade away?

Yeah, there's still, especially in like the

outside of the Western world, you know, especially down like South America and whatnot, a lot of these devices will get really cheap and then people pick up on them, you know, a year or two later.

And so they're still getting some good traction.

My big

kind of regret is that they come out so fast that I don't get enough time to really live with each one.

You know, I'm just moving on to the next one.

And so I missed the old days of 2020 when I only had like one handheld and I made 20 videos about it, you know, and it's just impossible at this point to keep up.

Instead, I've got a stack of things to review.

Yeah, it does seem exhausting, quite honestly.

I'm kind of baffled that you're able to keep up the pace.

You don't feel like you're hitting a wall anytime soon.

Like this is still bringing you joy or is it getting a little old?

For me, it's a service to others, you know, so I just think about, you know, anytime I make a video, like, who, who's this going to benefit and how can I make that easy for them?

And so I don't even think about it along the lines of like, oh, I'm not having fun with this device.

It's more about how can I make sure that I unlock the fun for everybody else.

So right, but I guess guess I'm going to ask that again.

Are you having fun in the production of these videos?

Not so much the playing them,

but it does seem like a grind, as useful as they are to people.

I don't mind that.

I'm a retired military, so I'm used to doing crappy things for a living, you know, so I don't really mind that at all.

And how does this compare to military, would you say?

You know, it's actually very similar because attention to detail is super important.

And I was a linguist in the military, so not like a grunt or anything, you know, and I was a master chief for most of my career as well.

And so I was in the higher ranks working on policies and stuff like that.

And so that attention to detail just completely carries over to my videos, too.

So it's really important thing for me.

You mentioned the brick as the like lower tier recommendation currently.

Would you say it's the retro pocket five for the higher tier?

Yeah, that's the mid-tier for me.

So it's like kind of three tiers where I would say, you know, brick is like the good one.

And the Miw Flip is really getting there too.

Like I'm really thinking.

Yeah, I'm very excited about that one particularly.

And then, then yeah, the Retroid Pocket 5 and kind of that $200 tier PS2 tier, you know.

And then for the Beyond, if you're just going nuts, then that would be like the Odin 2.

Or at that point, I'd just say get a Steam Deck because the price point is kind of bridging that.

And so it's like, well, you might as well also play PC games at the same time.

Are you anticipating like Steam OS, the release of Steam OS, really just blowing this whole

sort of niche like wide open again?

Because it seems to me like everything's going to kind of change when you can legally and somewhat effortlessly put steam on one of these things uh it's it really depends on the architecture so something like a retroid or whatever that's not going to be able to run steam os unless they make an arm version right because there's arm versus x86 i do see steam os being still kind of niche because you're going to have to flash it yourself onto whatever like the rog ally or whatever you're still going to have to do that extra effort to actually install it onto your device so i don't see it really breaking the mainstream except for that new lenovo device that's that's coming out that's actually going to have it already on it.

And if they put that in Best Buy, that's going to be a big thing.

You know, that's the one thing about Steam Deck is you have to actually order it yourself.

There's a bit of effort there.

But if you can walk by and be like, holy crap, that's a Steam OS device, then that's really compelling to me.

Yeah.

That area in particular, the like Linux to Android divide, is really where I get hung up because in my experience, it has seemed that once you set up a Linux device with a custom firmware and it's all done, it kind of does its own thing.

And Android, I feel, is like constant tweaking and adjusting power perimeters and shit like that.

And my patience goes out the window.

Yeah, totally.

Every time I end up in an Android menu, I feel like I want to get out of it as quickly as possible.

Just take me to some other UI, please.

You're basically putting lipstick on a pig, right?

Like you're just taking this house of cards and stacking a bunch of emulators on top, then throwing a front end to hide all of it, and then hoping that all these updates and whatnot are not going to break what you have set up right then and there.

Whereas Linux, you can just take that thing offline and you'll never have to worry about it again.

Yeah.

Is anyone getting close to like solving the Android problem?

Like is Retroid's front end coming close or not really?

No, no one's there.

I mean, we now have Emulation Station Desktop Edition, which is a nice, really robust front end.

We now have that on Android.

But even then, that's an effort barrier because you got to join their paper, because they won't list it on the Play Store because it asks for too many permissions.

And so they have to join their Patreon for one month only.

Then you'll get the code to be able to download it.

And that's, again, you're just putting layers of effort into the setup process so none of it's easy none of it's simple i i prefer the linux stuff you know like the miu mini where you just buy that thing and it already works pretty well and you can update it later if you want to uh do is there any sense that these like the people that are making the platforms will ever come up with tools that make like easier migration and stuff like that so where like it's not always a huge pain to to switch from one to the other no i i don't see that happening i mean so uh you guys might be familiar with mu deck which is like the emulation setup guide for Steam Deck.

That developer made something for Android where you basically plug it into a Windows computer and then it will download all this stuff and then transfer it over for you.

But even then, he's taking all these disparate parts, you know, like all these different emulator apps that are made by different people, putting it all together with all their set of rules, plus all the layers of security that Android keeps popping on and everything.

I don't ever see this being an easy task on Android in particular.

Last question for me.

Who do do you think is currently winning the custom firmware race on Linux?

There's a number of options.

You got, what is it, Nully and MuOS and a few different ones.

What do you think is doing it best?

Yeah,

I really like what Nully is doing, which is basically Bota Sera, a very emulation station-focused operating system.

It's been working for a while.

It's a Linux-based one.

But I also am a huge champion of one called MinuI, which is a minimized, like text-based operating system.

I really love that one because that's the one I actually put on for friends.

You know, I'm like, I'm going to give them a device.

I'm going to put menu eye on it because you cannot break it.

And that's the biggest thing for me.

And it is limited.

It basically only caps out at basically PlayStation 1.

But for those, you know, if I'm giving it to a casual friend, they just want to play Dr.

Mario.

And so it's like a perfect setup for them.

If you're just as like a friend gift, what do you think?

The A30 is like a good, like, eh, I don't care.

It's 30 bucks or whatever it is.

Is that like a good starting point?

I honestly think the clamshells, like this Mio flip in particular, is probably going to be the best one because that clamshell thing, it's like, hey, when you're done with the game, just close it.

That's all you have to do.

And that's just such an easy thing to just convey to anybody.

Yeah, the last time I gave someone a gift, I put like sticky labels on the back, like hold start and select to exit the game and shit like that.

It's fucking insane.

So that's a good point.

But if they ever become easy to use, then we won't need Russ.

So we need them to stay complicated and a pain.

You don't want to make yourself

obsolescence.

Russ, any closing thoughts before we get over to Indiana Jones?

No, that's it.

I think that the biggest thing is just check out my channel or other channels.

And if you see a form factor that really kind of jives with you,

keep going, investigate a little bit more.

And it's under $100 is really the place to go.

Maybe not jump right into a Retroid Pocket 5.

Maybe get your feet wet with something else instead.

Especially because it's an Android device and it's kind of a pain in the eye.

I would definitely, definitely recommend price not being like the first concern.

I would say get

a device that is famously easier to set up because that is the worst thing is buying one of these and then getting it and feeling like, oh shit, I don't know, I don't know how to get this.

Hey, here's a quick question.

We were talking about the Odin 2, and I noticed I was looking at

the video that you had on it is over a year old now,

October of 2023.

Do you have a sense of like a pace of these devices?

Like if I'm thinking about making the jump into one, like is there a pace at which these are getting released?

Do I maybe want to hold out for Odin 3 at this point?

Yeah, it's

so it really comes down to the chip set.

So, for example, Ambernik releases a new device every three to four weeks, like it is all the time, but they use the same chips for the most part.

So, it's really a form factor thing at that point.

But when you're looking for a generational leap of the chip, then it's usually every year and a half or so.

You'll see a big jump.

So, the Odin 2 portal, which is coming out basically this or next month, has the same chip as that original Odin 2.

It's just a different form factor.

It's really about you know, what really appeals to you in terms of the power and then the form factor.

All right.

We'll take a quick break and we're going to talk a little bit about Indiana Jones, which we didn't get to talk about in December because of timing.

And then so we'll be right back.

Let's take a break.

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uh Indiana Jones yeah let's do it okay Indiana Jones is uh a new game from uh from Bethesda from a lot of the people who worked on Wolfenstein games and they've got this uh this new uh Indiana Jones game which if this is a uh a comparison that was immediate to me and a lot of other people but maybe has missed a generation and it's uh not unlike chronicles of riddick It is a first-person, I guess you'd say, like

a first-person exploration and

brawling game.

I wouldn't say it's a first-person shooter.

I wouldn't say,

but that is about where I'd put it.

And that's similar to Chronicles of Riddick, which if you've never played it, it was about basically like a big prison break.

And you are like sneaking around through a prison with whatever sort of like hand-to-hand weapons you can scrounge up.

It's really good.

It was like really surprisingly kind of shocked everybody how enjoyable it was.

And this is kind of similar to that for me, I feel like, where I'm really kind of surprised by how closely they've sort of like captured what the

a really good version of an Indiana Jones game might

be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, starting with Troy Baker's performance as Harrison Ford, as Indiana Jones, is genuinely one of the most impressive, I think, like video performance

I've ever seen in a video game or animated feature or anything.

It is, you really, he really gets lost in it and just constantly you will forget, like, oh, that's not actually, that's not Harrison Ford, uh, because he sounds like it, but he also brings his own thing to it.

It's not like a, an impressionist that you hired for a birthday party.

No, like he, he, he sells it in a way that is,

I think, if you had asked me before the game came out, I would have probably assumed it was like an impossible needle to thread.

He fucking, there's a moment where you're like climbing up a rope or whatever,

and the grunt that he makes is a Harrison Ford grunt.

And I have no fucking clue how you do that.

What really impresses me, honestly, and this is a credit to the technology too, I think, and not just Troy Baker, but like.

There are tiny like micro expressions that he does that carry over.

Like, for example, there is an upgrade you can get where if you get beat up, you can, and you get knocked out, you can grab your hat and put your hat back on, and then you're back in the fight.

You get another chance to do it.

But when you put your hat back on, every time there's like this tiny one-second cinematic where he kind of looks at the guys he's fighting, gives them a little like smirk.

Like, and it, it's, it's every time it's so small and specific, but it feels like exactly right.

Yeah.

Ross, I knew you got into it a bit.

What was your initial reaction?

You know, I played the riddick game back in the day but then also the darkness is the same starbreeze studios from back in the day and i i found that that one is a really close analogy because you know you have like those snake whips in that one uh yeah you're playing like melee and that's very similar to holding the whip as indiana jones so very similar and even the vignetting that happens when you go into stealth mode like super close and so it took me a couple of while to really figure that out but yeah i really enjoy it Apparently, a lot of the developers actually were from Starbreeze and they came over and joined this studio.

So it's so I think Machine Games, right?

Is the

right machine games is uh they made Wolfenstein most recently

and

yeah, I mean it's it is truly um it is wild to me how often I feel like this game bucks like modern uh sort of game design and world design convention uh in order to present an authentic sort of like uh globe-trotting Indiana Jones-esque experience.

It doesn't feel, I feel like this game would have been tarnished greatly if it had felt more like a video game at times instead of feeling like a like a

quest to raid tombs.

The first thing you do, really, as Indiana Jones is you go through the scene of a break-in at a museum and you have to go and pick up relics off the ground and identify their nation of origin and put them back back in their display cases.

And it's so boring, but it's also like cool that like you are,

you know, history archaeology professor Indiana Jones, like cleaning up a mess.

And that's the first thing you do as you're sort of like introducing.

Well, I guess the introduction to the game is

the introduction to Raiders the Lost Ark.

Yeah, and it's also

a lot of good performances in it.

There's a priest,

Enrico Colentoni, plays from Veronica Mars and Just Shoot Me.

Oh, I didn't know that's who that is.

It's wild, right?

It's like really wow, I know, right?

It's really impressive.

I had to look it up because I was like, who is this?

And it's him.

He does great.

He's killer.

He's really good on English teacher, too, if you guys haven't.

Anyway, we'll save it for honorable mentions.

It's not like, I guess the point I'm trying to make is like, it's not like dishonored where you have superpowers and you can

zoom around.

It's like if you see a building and you know there's a thing up in there, getting to it is going to be kind of slow by most game standards and like sort of unspectacular.

It's it's but he's like a guy, he's a human being man who likes history and you really feel like the game is going to great pains to not make it feel like he is an action hero, which is like the thing with Indiana Jones is that he gets his ass kicked sometimes and he gets hurt and he's not invincible.

Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because I feel like I feel like you are absolutely right.

And I feel like it was so, such a really

smart and

way of envisioning Indiana Jones.

And here's, here's, and I played it.

I started playing it the first day it came out.

And I'm still playing it.

I'll check back in on it and I'll play for like another hour or so.

And it's like, I so respect it.

And this is probably just a comment on me, maybe, but like,

I,

because the the power curve has to be tamped down in such a way where, like, you, it almost has to be flat, like practically up to it.

Yeah, I mean, like, I'm trying to be generous, but yeah, 100%, man.

There is no point which he's going to be like, yeah, with two whips, I can really get some stuff done, right?

Now I can double jump, right?

Yeah, it's not going to happen.

And, and I will admit, there's a part of me that's like, as cool as the things are sometimes,

the, like, the feeling that I'm like progressing or it really like

everything you do has to be like really, really fun and nothing can feel like grunt work because the rewards for doing it aren't good enough, right?

So, like, it has to be really engaging.

And I have found myself for whatever reasons, just like pretty easily distracted while playing Indiana Jones.

That's what I would say.

Yeah, what was your, what do you think, Russ?

Have you noticed any of that?

Yeah, for me, it's uh, I found myself stumbling into the progression of the game where I'm not really sure what I'm doing.

I'm just kind of poking around, pushing on things, and and then all of a sudden it works, and then I'm moving on to the next part.

But that's very much Indiana Jones, right?

Because he's like that too.

He just stumbles into success.

And so that has actually been something I've really noticed.

Like, I'm in Egypt right now.

I just got dropped into the map, and I have no idea where I'm going.

And that's exactly what he would be doing if he was there.

So enjoy that realism.

That's very cool.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

I really do give you a lot of freedom too, just to pile on that.

When they give you a new environment, they'll kind of let you like walk around,

which does add to that immersion.

And it's like, I think they incentivize exploration in a way that is like really quite smart.

Mostly like, I think it is fun when you find like a little puzzle.

You're like, oh, okay, I'm going to do a little, I'm going to do this little puzzle.

And the reward is like, you know, whatever, adventure points that you can spend to unlock little perks that you find in these books scattered all around.

But those perks are not like.

huge.

It's like when you hit somebody with a candlestick, it breaks after three hits instead of two.

It's like very, very, very small stuff.

It is great that when you find those ones, it's like, just wait till I find a candlestick.

Then you got in real big trouble.

But it, like, I don't know.

I just like exploring.

One of the first big areas you get dropped into is Vatican City.

And it's like humongous.

And there is so much stuff to like poke around and find.

And it goes against sort of my nature as like what I like from games, which is like heavy progression hooks and like carrots and sticks.

And this game doesn't really do a lot of that.

I just like

going around as Indiana Joe's.

Like it feels pretty cool.

And sometimes you'll find something that helps, but for the most part, it's just exploring for exploring's sake.

It also has, I think, I can't think of a game that has done melee combat better than this game.

It's fucking

countercast.

It's cool.

Like it feels, it's very well animated.

It looks very natural.

And just the like, oh, I got spotted.

I'm holding a vase.

I'm going to throw the vase in his general direction and hope for the best and then just charge him.

That is like such an encapsulation of what Indiana just does.

I will say, and this sound bite, I hope, doesn't get pulled out of the context of this show.

I wish that they just hadn't put dogs in the game.

Yes.

Because clearly they were trying to be sensitive to the fact that, you know, there's fascists all over the Vatican, and some of them have dogs that will attack you if you get too close to kind of like mix up the sort of like stealth stuff.

But if a dog gets too close to to you it'll jump and bite you and then you have to like push him off but you can't harm the dog you can only crack your bull whip to like scare it and cow it sort of to the ground where it will just kind of sit for an idle animation of about 10 seconds before it gets back up and tries to bite you again it's so and it's such an insane like contrivance where like if a if a Nazi rolls up on you, you can punch him 10 times in the face and then that's he's done.

You don't have to worry about him anymore.

But if you see a dog, it's like this infinitely regenerating

wild.

The implication is also insane.

Like the implication is like, well, yeah, you can snuff that out.

It's just a human life, but that's a pupper's.

Like, you don't want to kill them.

Which, like, I understand why they did that.

I'm still

crazy to do.

It's like the whole thing's wild, man.

But yeah, it is.

It is like a dog stay down.

The fact that they come back and they're like, well, fuck you.

I'm not like hungering for dog violence.

Just don't put the dog in the the game if you're going to make it an invincible, unkillable sort of monster.

It is funny though, or kind of bumping up against is like part of this game, I do feel like is you can meet it.

I think you meet it a little bit of the way with role-playing.

There's just like you know you have a pistol.

And every once in a while, I will get frustrated enough to like walk up to some Nazis like, hey, I'm not actually a priest.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

And I'll walk in.

And the Vatican does have a very thorough response plan for

any any college professors to walk into the Vatican to do that.

But it is like, I didn't even fire a shot.

I mean, I really, until several hours in, I didn't even use the gun.

I forget I had it.

I will press a button trying to pull out a biscoti to eat it.

And I'll draw a revolver and be like, what the fuck?

He made it actually kind of, I'm at a point now where there's a lot more like well-armed Nazis.

And it makes it, it's a little less like, I don't really want it to turn into that.

Like, I really don't want to get into a bunch of gunfights, but I'm feeling like more pressed that way the more guys I run into with like automatic, automatic weapons.

Well, that was what was so great about Riddick, right?

Is like in Riddick, if you find a sharp toothbrush, it's like fuck it.

It's like pulling the master sword because, like, what you have available to you is so limited.

And yeah, I think it gets a little bit less special.

But it's also like, I think that also accurately reflects the Indiana Jones movies where he is not a gun-toting guy.

He will use a gun sometimes, but most of the time it's punching and whipping with some gun mixed in for seasoning.

He often uses his whip when he could probably reach with his hand.

There's like switches where he's like,

all right, all right.

Just settle down.

Just get it.

Just stand on your tiptoes.

Where do you fall, Russ?

Are you like fully in?

You're going to actually finish it, or do you think this is more or less what you've played?

Yeah, I'm going to finish it.

Yeah, I don't know where I'm at in terms of progression, probably 30% through the game, and I'm enjoying it.

I wish it wasn't so stealthy, you know.

I feel like Indiana Jones wouldn't stealth this much, he would uh spend more time bonking people on the head, like you can do, right?

Um, uh, but I usually devolve into fisticuffs anyway, like I just am not good enough at uh sneaking around that I get caught and then I just beat everyone up and then move on to the next thing, which is a surprisingly effective strategy to just like get a wrench and go start hitting people.

It just feels wrong, it feels out to me.

Mike, but I feel like games that dabble in stealth are usually do so pretty wrongheadedly and that like if you're gonna have stealth in your game like have a lot of stealth stuff like you get a costume you get a disguise to appear as like a priest while you're at the Vatican let me beat up a Nazi and take his clothes so I can go in like the restricted areas like give give me some other tools but you do get a fascist outfit also in the Vatican so that that is true I guess it's not a Nazi outfit I know you want to you personally want a Nazi outfit that's cool Russ that's cool that's really terrible i do like for one thing on the stealth thing like we've talked about a little bit about dishonored which is a game i absolutely love but if you get spotted in dishonored you're reloading that save i certainly have like save scum my way through those games and if you get spotted in this by like a crowd with weapons you can legit run away yeah and the way the ai is programmed like it's possible to get like escape without having to reload a save and that is awesome i wish more games would do that yeah unless they have a dog with them who will pursue you till you are dead dead.

Yeah.

And there is nothing you can do about it.

Cool.

Why do you think Microsoft

buried it?

I don't know that they.

It's an insane time of year.

I don't think you have to be particularly well-versed in the industry to know that releasing a game, you know, a couple weeks before Christmas is

this is my best guess.

And Russ, you're smarter about like

industry stuff than I am.

My best guess would be Microsoft wanted wanted to release it so they could say they released it in 2024.

That was my thinking as well.

I think it's a fiscal financial thing because you're right.

Yeah.

Right after the game awards, everyone's on vacation.

I mean, I think they also view this as a Game Pass game more than anything else.

Even though it has got it out earlier, I mean, they probably could have, but I feel like I bet it was coming in really hot and they didn't want to wait another delay, another game pushed out of this year.

I think they want to be able to say this came out this year.

We released.

Yeah, I will say it doesn't feel like it came in hot.

It feels pretty fucking

smooth.

Like not buggy, runs well, gorgeous on PC, looks pretty good.

They released it in a way that a company would usually release a game that they were trying to put at the, you know, Friday, Friday at 4.55 p.m., like skip the news cycle, sort of really taking out the trash, as they call it.

And that is not this game.

This game's fucking good, man.

Yeah, I thought it was really great.

And it does give me hope for the other stuff they have in development.

We have a lot of Xbox games that should, in theory, come out this year.

Yeah.

Avowed and

maybe Fable, who knows?

So maybe this is an upswing.

Do we want to do honorable mentions?

Sure.

Sure, yeah.

I'll start.

I've been playing a game called Bellatro.

It's a card game.

I want to mention Bellatro.

I mentioned this on the RESTies, which is a Patreon-only thing, but I wanted to share it with the wider audience because I think it's important.

I came up with a rule for playing Bellatro on my phone, and I couldn't recommend it more highly to everyone else out there.

I cannot start a new run of Bellatro when I'm in my house.

So if I'm on the subway,

I'm in a waiting room or anything, I can start a new run.

I can start as many runs as I want.

Second in my house, I can continue and finish the run that I'm currently on.

I can't start a new one.

Two things it does.

One, time management, great for not like sinking an entire night on just playing Bellatro.

And two, it makes me play the game in a really interesting way where I know that I can't start a new run.

So I'm going to make the fucking best that I can out of this run, which I think is very true to the roguelike.

Is there a daily challenge mode of Bellatro?

Because it seems like that would be hot.

It does seem like there would be.

I know they're working on a content update this year.

And it wouldn't surprise me if, I mean, they already have seeding as an option.

That's the hardest part of that.

Sure.

So it seems like they would add it, but currently I think they just have the like set challenges.

So that was my Bellatro pro tip for everyone.

Wow.

Excellent.

I want to recommend the Circle France season one.

We were jones in to watch the Circle.

There's a bunch of international seasons on Netflix.

I looked up what's the good one.

Circle season one of Circle France was highly recommended.

Watched it.

Good shit.

If you enjoy that show,

it hits hard.

Everybody plays hard and strategic from day one, and it's a very, very entertaining watch.

I want to know if Russ is a reality guy, reality TV guy.

Not at all.

That does not surprise me.

I

also have been messing around and taking a beginner course in Godot, which is a game development platform.

That's cool.

I did a sort of a similar thing back when I was still at Polygon with Game Maker Studio 2, which had a sort of visual programming,

you know, dragging blocks sort of programming method, which was very accessible to me at the time.

And I really enjoyed it.

And I don't know, I've been kind of, I really enjoyed doing that.

And,

but I, but I wanted to sort of check out this other thing.

And Godot is totally open source, free to like download.

And lots of games are

made in Godot.

I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Yeah, so Halls of Torment.

Yes, that's the one that I was just playing.

I really enjoyed.

The golden idol games made in Godot.

There are a lot of titles.

It's very interesting.

I'm not going to get super deep into it, but it is very logically designed, and a lot of it really makes sense.

And the programming language that it works in is sort of designed to be very readable and very

user-friendly.

And all of anything I know from coding is from doing Code Academy courses on Python or whatever.

And I am following, I'm finding it's sort of fairly easy to follow.

So i don't have any designs on like making a big game or anything like that but i i don't know it's very satisfying to like have a challenge of like make it so that when you click this treasure chest it opens up and then like figuring out the like nine things you have to do in order to uh actually make that happen uh i find that very puzzly and satisfying uh in a way and it's free so the course is not free but the the Godot software is so what's the course uh program that you're doing it's GD quest

which I think is associated with like some of the dev team on Godot.

They have a few different ones.

There's like a free one that teaches you the basics of the sort of coding language, the programming language.

But the one I'm taking now is something, I forget how much it costs.

It wasn't crazy, but it just walks you through making basically like

a 2D, very, very simple game.

So it's very cool.

Cool.

I wanted to recommend a comedy called Y2K.

It is made by Kyle Mooney.

And

it is a sort of horror,

not really a horror, sort of like a horror comedy, heavier on the comedy, that is sort of like Imagine Can't Hardly Wait, or one of those like teen coming of age comedies, but set against the backdrop of Y2K in a world where Y2K was as bad as it could possibly be.

And all of our computers and phones and all of our technology at the time rose up to try to kill us.

And that is like the premise of the movie is like you have

four, five kids that are being like trying to escape this like robot apocalypse.

The joy of the thing is really like it is so evocative of the time period.

If you are

of a certain age where like you are getting the references and hearing the references, I think that you will really get a lot out of it and enjoy it.

And get, it's silly.

It's not super scary.

It's not like, doesn't have a lot of like huge points to make.

But for people who, you know, were

teens at that time,

it is, it feels like kind of a love letter.

And we, Sid and I both really, really enjoyed it.

It felt very, it was just very pleasant to see and it felt very nostalgic.

So

we liked it a lot.

I know it has gotten some negative reviews, which I think that if you are not someone who's going to enjoy the the sort of references this is doing, and not just references, because it's not like referential humor, but it is very much of a time and of a place.

If you don't click with that, I can see how you wouldn't love the rest of it.

But I really enjoyed it.

It's interesting because the other movie of his that I saw, which was Brigsby Bear, is like so referential to the 80s and like 80s TV.

And it's interesting to see him tackling a different genre.

I didn't know this was his movie.

Yeah, it's really, really, it's very well done.

It's very funny.

And it's really smart, I think,

and well worth watching.

Ross, you got anything?

Yeah, this one might seem kind of predictable, but I've been playing a game, and it's Final Fantasy 16, which I think, you know, it's kind of last year's news, right?

But what I've really learned about it, I just recently picked it up because it finally is on PC and it was finally at a good price at like 40 bucks or something.

And it is a perfect casual dad game, I think, when it comes to just playing an RPG because there's a couple factors to it.

But one is that you can use like these runes or trinkets, whatever they call them, to basically just spam one button to do all the cool special moves.

So you don't have to memorize all the button configurations and stuff.

So you really just mash on X and you can just do these amazing feats.

And if you don't care about the mechanics of it, it actually is really satisfying.

And the other part is they have like these pause context menus.

So you can pause any scene and it'll show all the characters and their references and you can go and read up a little bit more about them.

I do like that a lot.

Yeah, it's been really good for me in just kind of like, because I only have, you know, 20, 30 minutes a day and not every day consistently to really play games and relax and whatnot and that's the one I keep going to because it's just so casually minded which you wouldn't expect from Final Fantasy you would think you have to get immersed and kind of like live in it and this is one of those where you can just jump back in whenever and you can just mash that X button and you're right back at it And what's cool is by 2030, you should be done with it.

And then another Final Fantasy game should be coming out right around.

And Russ, you were telling me that you streamed that on your Coffee Maker, right?

You set up the

buttons to so the grind is jump.

Yeah, yeah.

Was that running on Android 13, the coffee maker?

Now, let's get serious, though, for a second.

Are you taking care of your hands?

Is that something you're thinking about a lot?

Oh, my gosh.

It is something I do think about a lot.

Like,

the way that I hold my hands, in particular for filming, is not a very natural position, but it looks good on screen, and it hurts after a time.

So I got to take breaks and stuff.

This is kind of back-of-the-scene knowledge stuff.

If you've ever seen

a first-person shooter that's zoomed out to show from third-person, you'll often see the hands like that because they want it to look normal on the screen, but it's really just hands chopping through the air.

That's right.

What are we doing?

Mannies, what are we doing?

Keep it really just clean.

I take breaks and give my hands rest, you know, and I'll kind of space all that stuff out just to make sure because it starts to polish.

Moisturizing, at least moisturizing.

Got to be moisturized.

I don't have to do any of that stuff.

I live in Hawaii.

It's like, you know, it's humid here all the time, so I don't have to deal with any of that crap.

You think that now?

You're still a young man.

You better be sleeping in gloves, lotion-filled gloves.

You want to still be doing this in 2080, right?

You still want to be.

Russ, thank you so much.

Again, where is the best place for people to find your work?

So my YouTube channel, Retro Game Core, C-O-R-P-S, like Marine Corps.

That's the place to start.

All right.

I guess I'll recap the stuff we talked about.

We talked about quite a bit.

A few recommendations on the low-end entry point.

Russ mentioned the Trim UI Brick, which is a new handheld in the 70-ish dollar range.

There's also the Retroid Pocket 5, which is in like the 200-ish dollar range.

And then on the high end, we have the Odin 2,

which is around $300

and probably is going to change by the time we

publish this episode on Friday.

We also talked about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is on Game Pass and Steam and everything else.

Fun fact, if you're playing on Xbox and then you switch for some reason over to Steam, the save file carries over.

You can actually connect the save file, which is awesome.

I've only seen that with Microsoft to Microsoft stuff.

So that was cool to see.

We also talked about my very handy Bellatro Pro tip for not ruining your life.

We talked about Final Fantasy 16.

We talked about the Circle France edition, Season 1, and a Godot game-making course that Griffin has taken called GD Quest.

And Justin talked about the movie Y2K from Kyle Mooney.

Thanks, Chris.

You're welcome.

Welcome us through that.

We also have some patrons I want to thank.

Thank you to the following patrons.

Thank you to all the patrons, but specifically today, we're going to thank Jason, Christian, Dovakin,

birth name, and Harrison.

Oh, Harrison?

Who knows?

Could be him.

Could be George Hannibal.

It could be George Hannah.

Or it could be Troy again trying to freaking trick us.

Thank you to all the patrons for backing us.

We have more exclusive content behind the wall.

We have the Rest Eats episodes, bracket episodes every month, all sorts of great stuff there.

So please.

There being patreon.com/slash the besties.

Correct.

Correct.

What are we doing next week?

How would I have any way of knowing that?

Next week, we're going to be doing, I'm so glad you asked for us.

It's going to be Donkey Kong Country Returns.

And it's the second time it has returned, which is just confusing.

So it's, it's, but it's coming out on Switch, and it's a very good platforming game so i'm excited to check it out

going ape

that's good jeez

yeah that's good man you did it you did it russ thank you so much for joining us uh go over to the retro game core uh you uh youtube channel good stuff coming out every week thanks for having me this is really awesome i'm honored to be on here

just an hour of happiness

That's going to do it for us for this week until next time.

For all the besties, be sure to join us again next week of the besties because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Besties.