839: Weird Bird Prison

Hey everybody, It's Tuesday, and welcome to the Giant BombCast, Episode eight hundred and thirty nine, powered by n ZXT. I'm your host, Jan Ochola. Welcome to this May seventh, twenty twenty four. Today we're actually uh getting rid of all of the news. We're getting rid of all the video games. You know what we're gonna do this is that we're actually going to dissect chronologically in order of the Drake and Kendrick Lamar Beef. Let's go

expert on all things bbl's Jeff Grubb Todd. You know you should see my search. It's wild out there. There we go, There we go, speaking about experts on bbl's. We have an expert on all substances. He's watching the Citizen App. He's watching the Neighborhood App. It's surprisingly enough. He's also brought back the good old app from twenty eighteen. Yik yak, Jeff Beckler. Oh yeah, yeah, I did all that. I did

all of that. I'm I'm a neighborhood watchman. Now. I just stand outside yelling at people who come too close to my lawn and our person on the streets, our dear friend Nicki Grayson, Nicki Grayson is reporting live from their place. Nikki, how is it feeling over there? Hey, everybody's going great over here. The news is we've got big news. Yit yak. I don't know if you heard, but it is back everyone's favorite platform to bully other freshmen. On has returned that it was, uh, that's

all, That's what I used it for. Yeah, it's someone of the Jeremy Renner app. Someone in Chad said, that's not got about that. As far as I knew, was like Reddit, except there were no subreddits. You would basically tweet into it. There was like a character count and it had up and down votes and that was it. And it was just like a revert, a revand feed and then you would post rumors like this person gave this person your blojab. But it was like hyper local. Yeah.

Yeah, it started out as far as I remember, in like on my college campuses. You had to be within the geo fence of a college campus and then it would give you that. But then they expanded it and then it shut down. Remember yo, No, no, I don't remember. Yo. Remember buzz No, you made that Google Buzz Google Plus different? Yeah, but yes, that too, yo, was just an app where you had a list of friends and then there was a big button on

it. It was purple and it said yo. And then you would press the button and then you would it would you would yoe somebody, and then it would just send a notification that said yo to the person. So long you know that everyone here has probably seen my phone and how many text notifications I have because I just don't read my texts because I suffer from that debilitating thing of like, well, I'm going to thoughtfully respond to this later,

and then I never thoughtfully respond. So our text message is like emails, do you know? Because the emails I have no time for either. I'm just try Like, well, emails is just a bad number right now. Emails the new snail mail, you know. Oh yeah, yeah, I get. People have been talking about this more too, like like I'll be in a meeting and Aaron was like, oh yeah, email, don't ever send an email. I wasn't going up, but now I'm definitely not going

to. Like there was a moment where it was like we're all in agreement here, Oh are the worst than the all times? Messaging is different because I'm right there with jam on this one as well, where it's like I see it, I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm going to get back to that, and then I will like throughout the day like craft something in my head and I'm like, well I sent that and then I actually didn't say it exactly. Yeah. How many how many texts you'll have right now?

Oh? Read? No decades? What you said? Yeah, I got zero thirty nine and they're but they're all from one group chat that I have. Oh sure, yeah, totally if I read. If I read those, the number is now twelve. Okay, I like, I don't know if it like counts them all up on Android, but I see a book that like that one's I got fifty five on read from Coal's Coles the clothing them store. No J Cole, stay out of yeah, don't don't get involved. Don't get involved, stay out, but yeah, save yourself.

Where'd you have like texting relationship with Coles? Well, they got discounts, they text me couples. Come on, you gotta get those cup ons. I'm coming. I'm coping on him. Do you have a line after which like someone loses permissions to text you? So, for example, yesterday a website sent me a text, and then an hour and a half later they sent me another one that was like, hey, actually we changed the coupon code and I was like, congratulations, lost ability to text me,

lost the access to Yeah? Yeah like and I immediately replied, stop unread text messages. Do y'all think I have one hundred and ninety I've got hundred. Uh. Keep in mind some of these are like receipts from stores groups that I've muted. Sure my number still stands, my dispensary emailing me the weekly offers or directing me six hundred, seven hundred and sixty three. Oh

hell yeah, that's a good number. There we go. I dk Oldies has has emailed me so many times since I bought that Superman for Dan. Every day it's like ready for a new experience. No one else is doing this. These are all the subject lines a bundle you need to see retro gaming question thought emoji be the first to see these new games. It's joey with a quick message. Well, I will eventually block them, but I'm

kind of still more of bidly curious about this. I just feel like rapidly approaching quadruple digits of unread texts is a thing that I could not live with. Yeah. Yeah, let's be clear, we're in different no worlds. Like yeah, because I know there are people out there that see the big number and it's like all they can think about. And I see the big number and it's everything I could do. Just like it goes out of my head immediately. I need to like put in a whole other bucket and it's

not part of my life anymore. And that's what we did. You realize this college of owning an android phone is different, right, Like I feel like it's not as I still got the big I'm talking about, like like the big number like four and ninety one unread emails my inbox that goes. I wouldn't know that so many of these is the dispensary that I frequent and and uh it's fine, it's okay. Uh yeah, you're gonna be there next week. You don't need it here exactly, here's my here's my idea.

Okay, just mark them all is red jan Yeah, yeah, like them all is read at the same time. Your jin in my inbox right now is important. They'll come back, they'll come back. Oh man, what could the dispensary want what could they want? They want to, they need, they want to. Speaking of drugs, I'm on drugs now too. Oh he's on the gimmicks. Are you on the roids too? I'm on the roids. I'm taking steroids. Why are we all taking aeroids right

now? I don't know? But like I just started taking the happy pills. What's happened? She's coming on? We gotta get yo. Dan talked about all these side effects. I got nothing, damn nothing. She's doing nothing to me. Is this for your when your ankle got banged up? No, buddy, this is like I had like swollen tonsoles out of nowhere last week. Yeah, I don't know. It was I it wasn't anything, and it's gone now. I don't know. You know, it's weird.

I used to get tonsilitis chronically in my twenties, and then Stacy, my wife, my wife was my girlfriend at the time, had her tonsils removed. As soon as she got her tonsils removed, I stopped getting tonsilitis. Wow, Like that's when I would get it, like every three months. It's compassion, I think, yeah, she she she took one for the team. Is basically what happened. Uh is that insane, like, and I don't have like the science to support that. It's anecdotal still because

there's no like real thing. But I definitively remember like the line drawn where like I just stopped getting consolitis why this is positive for mono for like ten years. Part of this story is the kissing disease. Yev it is the kissing disease. Tell me more so. I definitely had mono in like junior high because I remember I had to stop wrestling because it's like, well, if you wrestle, your spleen's gonna explode. Wrestling, right, Yeah,

I was wrestling. I was wrestling wrestling too right, too correct. And that's why I can't think that baby, for a decade, you were, you were mono positive. Yeah. And then and here's the thing. I haven't been tested since. And I'm like, what, like, you don't have mono. You're too energetic. I'm sorry, Like I right, maybe I don't have mono, but there's something that happening inside of my body.

I think that is causing it to show up as mono positive because I remember being like, well that's weird because it was like well out of high school with mono. Yeah, but I'm sleepy a lot. But one of them. I know, like, every time I see you, I'm in all of your energy. I used to be a lot more energetic, though that would have been to deal with. Yeah, this is post mono gl Yeah, people have the sorting facility. I used to ask me to chill out

after a shift. They're like, how do you still have energy? I'm ready for another one. Let's go bring on another plane filled with boxes to the doctor. I'm thinking, like, what if I went to the doctor doctor and explained, here's here's my problem. The last doctor I went to and explained anything, he was such a chump that it was like really frustrating. I'm like, oh, I'll go explain this, and I'm like, cool, story, We don't care. I don't think men should be allowed

to be doctors. You're you're right. All the positive experience I've had with medical professionals for the last ten years, especially since having kids women, yeah right, you're right that men should be allowed to be doctors. Men are trash. You know, we know this. I mean, you know, look at me, so yeah, grow up. Hey, what what about your mark out on a Monday that you're just gonna be gone because you're gonna

go talk to a new doctor. Yeah, sounds good. I'll do that next Monday, maybe before game, maybe before SGF even Yeah, do that pretty good. Now. I'm for my my and my child's well being. You're walking around saying that your monopods from me. I don't think I'm just gonna kissing me. I'm just gonna stop tongue kissing you. That's gonna that's not an option. The team bonding experience is just gonna plumbing them all right, find other ways to bond. James is not going to be the same.

No, it's not gonna be the same. We can't kiss in front of Mickey. Oh no, Mike wouldn't allow that anyway. Yeah, very disrespectful to Mickey. You you can't kiss at Disneyland. I think that's a Minati rule, folks. We're gonna do things a little bit differently today on the BombCast. We're actually gonna start with the new oo oh, I wonder fucking why. Yeah, if there's something happen, hi, everybody, I have the news here and we're started with it. Because of poor management and

bad companies just sucking left and right. Microsoft is closing down Red Fall and High Fi Rush Studios. Among other cuts, Microsoft is closing for Bethesda Studios, Arcane Austin, Alpha Dog Studios, Tango Game Works, and Roundhouse Games. The decision is part of a reprioritization of and this is their words, high impact titles by Xbox Game Studios, Redfall, Mighty Doom, and High

Fi Rush. We're among the latest games released by these studios. Arcane Leone will continue to continue development of its projects, Tango Game Works will close entirely, Roundhouse Games will merge with ZeniMax Online Studios. These closures will have some people losing their jobs. I would imagine quite a few people. Actually,

that's the like short version of it. They made this announcement this morning, and they basically repeated a bunch of things saying, yeah, this is about moving around resources to things that are gonna be our bigger games, blockbuster games. I guess, Okay, what's the initial reaction to this, And then when we get in some of our long term thoughts about what the future is, I guess I'll start. I think a lot of people are saying,

like, hey, this is the result of consolidation. I think this probably would have happened no matter what with some of these studios, especially since the way Microsoft operates, where it's like all these studios have their own like sort of little bubble that they exist in and they have to make enough money. It's not like, well, Microsoft makes enough money, you're definitely safe. It definitely seemed like for a while there it's like, well, you won't

get shut down. Clearly that's changed, But to me this signifies that I think for Microsoft, the strategy that they had shifted to of like hey, game pass and getting a bunch of games on game Pass, and I have all these studios put out games, whether they're big games, small games, whatever, we just want content that doesn't seem to matter, and believing in a studio like Tango Game Works that put out one of the best games of the last year and be like giving them another chance to build on that.

That's not in the cards, that that's not an option anymore. It seems like the whole thing just doesn't work, and they are shifting probably towards hey, we have call of duty, let's reinvest in that. I just I don't see any type of motivation to try and work for a triple A game or try and make that or be acquired by one of these big studios anymore, because you thought you would be safe, right, like you think there's two billion last quarter? Yeah yeah, kind of go ahead, go ahead,

Oh yeah. I'm just because like it's the kind of thing where they make so much money as an overall corporation that you just assume, Okay, well, you made these choices to acquire these companies, you said, do what you want to do. They did it, and those games came out and many of them were successful. Redfall wasn't. But that, like, that is a studio that has had successful games in the past in terms of at least at least in terms of critical reception, and it just feels like

there's a disconnect. Okay, well, then let's try it again. Maybe change up a few things, but let's do what we can to make the next game even bigger. That seemed like what should have been before them, and instead they are pulling, they're they're just ripping these things out of the

organism and throwing them onto the street. And it's just it's unbelievably disheartening because it seemed like, Okay, the whole point of something like game pass, and your new strategy and acquiring all these studios was let's let them just make what they want and let's give them a home in this live serve or in

this ongoing service that will justify everything we do. And now that is no longer the case, and it's I just kind of don't know what the future is for Xbox other than yeah, sure we're gonna have an Indiana Jones game and there's gonna be a Call of Duty every year. Beyond that, Are they just giving up on all these other games? It seems like it at this point that's the sea. Yeah, go ahead, and oh no,

sorry. That's the thing that I fundamentally don't understand with these moves, or with any move that is, like where you are are shutting down a team at this scale. You've just spent sixty nine billion dollars on Activision Blizzard,

right, which has a bajillion ips underneath this umbrella. You need teams and people to make game to justify the purchase, right, Like, yes, if you put Call of Duty out of the room, you need to justify the purchase by having studios make games using the rest of the intellectual property inside of the company that you just bought. Also, those teams make their own very good games. Yeah, I agree, make those extremely good games all

ready. You can hire more people later, but like you already have these talented ones in the fucking house. Like I don't. I simply don't understand. It's so short sighted. It's like, yes, it makes the numbers look good this year, but then in two years, like you just said, Greb, you release Indiana Jones, you like Xbox releases their slate this year, and then what yeah, And it's like, uh, we see the strategy of everyone's been like, hey, we are doubling down on our

biggest stuff. And it's like, yeah, I mean I've seen a company already do that and have some success, and that's that's the Sony On Sony Computer Entertainment Company. And they are also like, okay, and now we're looking around, Hey, where's the growth. We don't know where it's coming from. We need to make some changes as well, even though we keep we double down on all our biggest games, and most of the stuff we've

done recently is either making sequels or remasters or remix of those games. And people want those things, they are buying them, but it's not enough. We also need to grow. So it's like they are going to shift more towards that strategy. Again, this is their words of high impact titles.

That's what they're interested in. And a certain point, if you couldn't make the game pass strategy work where it does enable them to have a chance to make something like a high Fi Rush or Pentiment and make those things make sense, then I think you have bigger problems than one studio not making enough money. It doesn't make sense where like these studios feel like they're being punished, where other aspects of the company may not be measuring up, that they're completely

out of control, is out of their control. I worry about Indiana Jones. Right, it's a massive ip. People are very excited about this game. I'm hoping and I'm thinking it's gonna do very well. But is that gonna be enough for Microsoft? Is that gonna be enough for Xbox? Or are they gonna just lose their Are they gonna get shut down like five months after the game is out? Yeah? I like The thing that is starting to bug me a little bit is people being like they lied. It's like,

yes, they always lie. It's like, stop taking their fucking word. Nothing is ever going to make sense because everything is always a lie. It doesn't matter, It does not fucking matter. And if you think it matters, then you're paying attention to the wrong fucking ballgame. Because there are only a very very few people at the top, at the tippy tippy top that are making decisions. That group of people is incredibly small, and they're

incredibly ruthless, and they don't care about anybody. It doesn't fucking matter. Stop being surprised. This is what. Yeah, I like that, and I don't mean that to be like, I just think people are fooling themselves. The more they're like, I have the receipts they promised, they said this at this press conference. This is what they're shut. No, it

doesn't fucking matter what they say. It doesn't fucking matter because yeah, like, have you not learned this by Yeah, because they'll tell they'll tell you anything, right like service, Yeah, in service of in service of getting you to be confident enough in them to continue to buy a box or buy this ex They'll tell you whatever the fuck they want. Yeah, But like the people that they answer to, no, no, no, But the

people that they answer to don't and don't care about that. Like fundamentally, they are looking at a number on a screen and that number needs to go up, and if that number does not go up or stays the same, then it's like, okay, well, what are you gonna do to make

the number go up? And it's a it's like it's politics on like every side, because I wasn't like gonna bring this up because I don't want like make it about the stuff I talked about before, but like that that the Tango game works Hi Fi rush thing and at the time reporting that you know, it this much and only made this much and it didn't make its money back and all this stuff, and you know, they came out and didn't

basically denied that. What they said was we couldn't be happier. It met all its key measurements that we put up against it, and now people are holding that up you and like, hey, they clearly what is this This is age poorly And part of that is like part of is that like, hey, okay, maybe some key measurements it didn't it did meet at the time, but clearly they have been putting this thing on PlayStation and trying to

make more money from it. But the reason they really came out at that time and I talked about this, but this was by then it was like buried. The reason they did they did that is they were trying to make Tango Game Works let them like realize that, hey, we care about you, and we don't care what anyone else is saying, and yeah, the money may not be there, but we believe in you or reinvesting you. Now, what has happened since then to change that? I have no idea.

But at the time, the reason they were so orciously like like against what I was saying is because they wanted to make sure that they didn't think internally at Tango Game Works that Microsoft didn't believe in them. Cut to a year year and a half later, they don't. They don't believe in them. Why why does that? What where does that change come from? Well?

I think it's a couple of things. I think the overall like macroeconomic situation of investing in games from all these studios has changed, and that they don't think that that's necessarily always going to pay off. But it's like, boy, that how does that not scare every other studio at Microsoft and really across the industry. Everyone is in a similar situation. But the idea was, you know, two billion dollars in profit last quarter, twenty two billion

dollars in profit the year before that. What is the point of acquiring all these things? If if they if you don't like give them that safe, safe space to operate in, right and let them have a stronger buffer. It's like, no, you are just as expendable now as you were before. There is no difference. And when you say you believe in us a year and a half later, that could change and we get to cut Like everyone else, this is this looks really bad for Microsoft, like this situation

that they're in now. Yeah. God, I I just think of the story uh on game mess I think it was last week grub where Microsoft was saying that they want to meet gamers where they are, and that's completely fine. If games like High Fi Rush, Grounded are headed to PS five and other platforms, whatever, that's great, more people can play more of these games. But then they go and do these closed down all these studios and it's like, what where are you going to meet these gamers with? Are

you just expecting to meet them with? I know everyone's joking around now that's like you're just going to meet them with Candy Crush and Call of Duty. But yeah, that has that has to be what the plan is though, right yea, because that's where the that's where the money faucet is. Yeah, And it's like if that's the case, and they'll never do it. But if they were, like, we're actually just going to lean in to the fact that we have Call of Duty and Candy Crush and like in theory,

like a like fall Out, we have five games. Just do what Activision used to do as recently as three years ago, which is say we have three video games that we make and that's it. Every year we every year three video games come out and that's all we do. If that's the if that's what you want to do, then just fucking lean it, like just just do it. But like don't like have this like ah, actually we're invested in a big like we want to like you said, we want

to meet everybody where they are. Yeah, Like that's not true, Like I have no interest in playing Call of Duty actually, and like if you're if you're trying to meet me where I am or meet other people where they are, you actually need smaller games like yes, and like that keeps the

industry healthy. But like they've had so many conversations over the years and declarative statements, and you know, this goes back to back Lar's point of like, well, we want to make we want to like claim in Japan, we want to put steaks out in Japan and like really invest in that market. And then you just shut down a whole fucking studio, the one Japanese studio that you had that was you know, kind of finding its way. It felt like, yeah, sure, Shinji Binkami has left, and maybe

that's a big part of it. I don't think so. I think at the end of the day, it's like these companies weren't profitable enough and the overall, butthest the structure is probably looking a little bit rough because I don't think Starfield made as much money as it needed to make to justify the whole dances weird, and so I think that they're they're just like these studios are

getting cut off because of a profit and law sheet and that's it. But like from the perspective people playing games, I think we look at at Tango Game Works and like, no, they're figuring stuff out High Fi Rushed. That was awesome. You know Fi Rush two is gonna be great. If they came back and announced you know, Evil within three, I think that

would have been popped. That would have popped off really big. I think that Microsoft probably just doesn't have the appetite to see these games get announced and have a five six year development cycle and not be not be a sure thing where it's like, we do have sure things now, so we're gonna look

at those instead. And it's like, oh, you bought Activision and and they sort of that mentality was unov at a certain point, like, if you do the path of least resistance resistance and you operate under the one guidance being return return shareholder value, you sort of can't help the becom act division if you acquire Actiation. And I think that's what it seems like, that's what's happened, But that's the that's the thing that was so thoroughly confusing to

me. When I was working at fan Byte and they announced it, I was like, isn't it cheaper all across the board to just sign Activision to an exclusive deal? Then it would be to merge this company into this company and I know that Like the way that American business works is that it's multiplicative, right, Like you you put your numbers together, number go up so big yep. But now you're in a situation if you're Xbox, if you're Microsoftware, it's like, okay, you have to justify this thing that you

bought. You know what, you wouldn't have had to justify if you didn't this fucking the business that I invented at the beginning? Do you remember this? If they if they were like a middleman, if they were allowed to be like, we think we're gonna spend sixty nine billion dollars on Activision and they set it in a box and they were like, well, let's think about this for four fucking months. But instead, now you're in this.

Now you're just fucking Activision. Yeah. Okay, So they have confirmed already that the June showcase is going to happen for them. Yeah what about next June? Yeah, I'm you right, what are they gonna have then? But I'm like, they come to this thing, and are they really gonna get people to have competence in these games at this point? When it's like why? At a certain point, I'm like Okay, I know you're gonna not abandon some of these biggest things. But it's like Contraband from what Avalanche

or whatever, that one that had the steely Dan sounds right thing. It's like, Okay, yeah, maybe that comes out, maybe it doesn't whatever, Uh, but is it something I'm gonna really want to spend my time with? And if I'm like, if not sure that you're gonna stick with it as a franchise going forward, if you don't seem interested in it, and when you're we know what happens when you lose your interest, kind of feels like I should maybe just wait and see instead of getting excited about a

lot of this stuff. And then they're you know, they have a ton of games already announced and I'm as part of that, like they'll fallout from this. It's like, you know, hearing more and more, and I've been hearing for years. Perfect Dark in the Rough State sounds like it's in a very rough state. It's like, yeah, that game was announced when I was in college, yes, and it doesn't sound like it's really come

together in any way since then. And like Crystal Aamack's coming on board to help work on that if only within the Microsoft umbrella, the Xbox Game Studios umbrella, there was like there were any sort of teams that had any experience making first person shooters. Yeah, and it's like that it sounds that's what they want to do with that. Yeah, and they like they have so they have these things they've already been announced that they have to deliver on,

and they're probably gonna come out with some new announcements as well. We know, like you know, we know, we have a pretty good idea Gears will be there. They're probably there will probably be some other stuff, even

stuff from like the a Bethesda umbrella that will get announced. And at a certain point it feels like, okay, but the whole stench around Xbox is bringing all these things down and not like in a way where once upon a time it would have been like, oh being Xbox is figuring things out and like that makes me feel better about all these other things, and at this

moment it does not feel that way. And this is like very similar to like the stories from last year, like going into the Summer Game Fest and like they had a bunch of layoffs then I think there was a whole bunch of problems with Xbox going into last Summer Game Fest and it's like, well, you know, if they figure it out, put out some good games, people start to feel a little bit better, maybe they build a bright

future. It's like, well, nope, that things kind of didn't improve across the board, and so they have made even deeper cuts and they've abandoned some strategies that they started just a couple of years ago. And boy, I don't know how you feel good about about this company at this point.

I would feel really scared to be on like a team that's working on an existing project like Overwatch two or World of Warcraft right of like we're may making money, still kind of are we making enough for y'all to keep us around? Yeah? You know, like they've like Overwatched too, has been through

the ringer in terms of like like canceled updates, canceled plans. I just hate to see what, like how that team may be feeling under, like the pressure that they see with everything collapsing around them, and like with World of Warcraft being on a pretty big upswing in terms of numbers compared to the

last previous years, does this sour any of that audience at all? That they think like they're all their stuff is gonna get yanked from underneath them that they just jump ship to a different MMO or even like further down that line chen like they announced so okay, say they I don't know who God knows how many games are all announced this year. Then those studios that will have released their video games between now and like let's say this time next year,

their games will come out inevitably. I'm sure, yeah, they will not reach those goals like just numbers wise, based on Xbox's previous history of like the games that they're producing, it seems like their goals are way too high for the titles that they have, and instead of like adjusting those goals,

it seems like they are still holding them to like impossible standards. All I feel like is going to happen next year is that we are going to be in this exact same boat where two more studios are going to be shut down or people are going to be like they're gonna soft be like or like what they just did, They're gonna shut the studio down, but be like, oh, actually not all of these people are losing their jobs, are just gonna go work onf fall of seventy six, which has how much time left

in the tank? Right? Yeah? Right, yeah, Like that game is old and not like huge numbers right now because of the TV show. But without the TV show, how much longer did that thing have? Not very long? I would I don't know anything, but I wouldn't feel like very much longer. And like we could like look ahead to some games that, like you know, Ninja Theories help Lay two comes out, like wow,

how well does that happening to sell? Even like Indiana Jones, like Machine Games has has put out some games I really love, but none of them have like really broken out in terms of sales, and some of them have done really poorly, including that like cooperative Wolfenstein game Young Young Young Blood. Yes, And so it's like, Okay, I mean, is this were we in a world where like a Machine Games gets shut down or you know, spun off or sold off or something like that. I don't know.

That doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility at this point. It doesn't. It's like no makes the whole thing stink. It makes the whole like whole like crop of games feel like, oh, the stinch of death is here, Like no matter how abysmal and disappointing Redfall was when it came out back of my mind somewhere, I was thinking they might be able to

turn this around. Vampires are always hot. People still love vampires, whether being them, sleeping with them or killing them, and that like Redfall somehow could have like may throw the hail Mary and pulled it off and made it like a big switchero. Even something like Starfield right could have could have massively turned around and like garnered back the public support because Cyberpunk did it right, No Man's Sky did it so like I'm I was hopeful that that would be

possible. But now, like with something like Starfield, like, are are we going to see like big projects that have the potential to make that one eighty just get canned and just like nah, you're just making call of duty now, I think in this in this environment right now, yeah, that seems like it leans more towards No, don't even try to bring it back. It's not worth it, even though we've seen it happen over and over again. It's it's just it's gonna save us more money in the short term

to just cut these things off and move on. Well, so I guess the thing that I'm still trying to square as much as I'm like, oh, you just have to operate from the position of like I can't believe anything you say, put putting that in a vacuum for a second after this the size of this acquisition last year, right, Like, I guess I just can't square like how that sort of coexists with everything and just sort of like is this a sort of like retro active rationalization for like, you know,

expenditure and like loss prevention some sort of like preempt Like is that whole thing just a preemptive acquisition in terms of just like strategic you know, I mean, like like what is all that is? Basically, I think it's two separate things. It's actually how they view it. It's like, we have a lot of money sitting in the bank, and Sati Nadella is willing to listen to anybody about who might know some way to get a return on that

stuff. Because all that money's doing right now in the bank is losing value because of inflation. It's losing value way faster than it used to. So we want to spend it. We want to spend it bad And then as inflation got worse throughout that process, or like, man, we locked in a price when that like, now that money's worth a lot less, so good thing. We locked in the price when we did. We're going to

see this thing through. And then on the other side, it's like all of these companies inside of Microsoft, they really are their own little like like like business infrastructure, to the point where if you like now, like especially if you work at like Activision, you're like, well, you know, maybe I could transfer over to Bethesda. There's no process for that. You have completely different four oh one k, completely different like hr. Everything is

so separate. And that's like not just true of like Activisions Pathesta. That's like Microsoft Games and Bethesda. Like if you work at three four three, you can't just like one day be like, hey, can I go shift over and work at at Bathesta. It's like that's a huge process and pain in the ass. They have nothing set up for these things, and that like Filters all the way down to each team sort of needs to make their

own money. I remember when c Ifie's launched, I talked to Joe from that team who oversees that project, and I'm like, well, you know, you're part of game Pass, so it's not game. As long as game Pass is doing all right and people are debscribing, you should be fine. Right, He's like, no, we have to make money. We have to make a lot of money to make this game. Makes sense for Microsoft. That's it was true back then, feels like it's more true now.

And I think if you just look at the studios they shut down, it is an example of them looking at their profit and law sheet Ambula being like, these studios didn't make the money they were supposed to make, and so what what is our option? You can reinvest in them? And I think that was at one time the goal. And then as you know people are spend a little bit less money on games, they're like, never mind, let's just not do that. And again that's a big problem for me.

Yeah, and like you make a commitment to reinvest, right, but then you you have to understand how long it takes to make a fucking video game, right, Like, you don't just you don't like commit to reinvestment and then twelve to eighteen months later say, just kidding, that's not you

don't make a game in that much time. You don't like, that's not how much time it takes to make a video game, so like you can it put you can't ever in this Like this feels like Sony and Microsoft are kind of from the opposite ends of this spectrum, right, Microsoft makes unbelievably short sighted decisions all of the time, and Sony gets complacent, where like they sit in their their bubble and they're like, oh, fuck, yeah,

we were making more money than God. And it's sick in theory like in the past, right, like not now, but like we're making more money than God, and we can just keep making the games that we kind we make right now, and that's gonna be set and fine. And it's like, actually, no, like this isn't working. And also if you make short term decisions all the time, that doesn't work either. So it's

like you can't there's no vision past the next earnings call. No, because the next earnings call is when they have to report to the people who are really actually in charge, right, And it's like, well, actually, if you just waited three if you just said we're gonna wait three fucking years, shut up, shut the fuck up Friday for three calendar years so we

can see what happens. Give us the time and space to run, so we can actually release some video games under this new directive, right, But then actually, if you just recap everybody halfway through, then like, yeah, of course it doesn't work, Like of course the XCEL document's gonna look bad, and like the other aspects of that is like again, a lot of the stuff other decisions that Xbox Microsoft are making are out of control of

the developers, like how hard they're pushing game passed, how the consoles aren't selling well, and how it doesn't seem like Xbox as a whole is any more of a viable platform. But you are owned by Microsoft, so you can only make the games for this platform unless told otherwise or saying or finding out further down the line after your game is out that no, you can

release on Switch, you can release on PS five. It feels I think it must feel terrible right now, especially of like we're gonna get meecapped either way. Like he doesn't seem like there is a path floward that is sustainable for any of these studios, And it works backwards too, where it's like they when there's no path forward, they make decisions outside of these developers' hands and they only see to the next quarter and then you like, okay,

well then what what what would be a solution to those issues. It's like if there was a strong, like centralized vision from these leaders that have been at this company now for a very long time. And the thing I always hear is like, no, that doesn't that's not really there. There is no strong vision. And what you what you can expect from the company though, is a lot of politicking and a lot of people just trying to make decisions that don't either don't get noticed and stay out of the way. Uh,

and then trying to undermine one another. And you know, this is all up and down the infrastructure of the company. Uh. But then they're like okay, so then what, like, these leaders that have been there for a long time, what do they have to say to these companies to sort of guide them along? And there's there's a vacuum there, there's this big space and OI all this feels like it's rooted out of that where it's just every lack of strong every bad decision feels like why didn't they think of

that? It's like, well, they aren't really looking that far ahead. It's like they had a lot of money to spend there doing that, and that that's an easy choice to make when you have a ton of money sitting in the bank. But beyond that, how what to do with those studios once they have them? Clearly that was not there, and I think we were seeing the evince of that repeatedly. Now sixty nine billion dollars, sixty nine billion dollars and like to not have a thorough this is why I was

another reason why I was so shocked. I was like, you haven't even done like at Microsoft, like when they started announcing that they were what was the E three was at sixteen or seven twenty eighteen eighteen when they were like we've acquired everybody. Yeah, and it was like when they had like or not to Bulvar Tim Schaffer studio, Yeah, double fine and yeah, and it was like oh, like oh okay, like I see what like sure,

yeah, like this is this makes a lot of sense. Like one of the things that you can always point at Xbox game studios is that there's no breadth, right, and this gives you breadth. And then they didn't they didn't do anything with it, like they did do nothing with it, and before trying to figure out what they could have done with the shit already in the house. They saw, Oh, you know what would be cheap

right now, Activision. Okay, so we'll spend sixty nine billion dollars on Activision because that's cheap in the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot of money. But yeah, they say repeated, it's like, we think that where the value will get out of owning that will be way more than the sixty nine billion dollars. So for us, it's a no brainer. And I get that, but but okay, uh, you bought these studios

four or five years ago. The whole idea was like, let's see what they can do, And at no point does it feel like we saw what they could do. It feels like we never got to that point. There was a bunch of legacy decisions that were left over, a bunch of contracts that needed to be fulfilled that got a stuff like Ghost Wire, Tokyo and and and a bunch of other games that like, okay, yeah, those

are going to PlayStation first, even like that's weird. We're like, okay, they're seeing this and then once they get past that, we'll see everything. And that never happened. Yeah, because there was no time there. Again, there's like they forget how long it takes to make a fucking video game, Like you have to commit when you buy a video game studio that's actively in production on a thing, it takes its double the amount of time.

Like fundamentally, it's just double the amount of time because they have to do the thing that they're already working on, sustain that, and then they can start working on the thing under your umbrella. It's just it's so infuriating because it's not It really isn't this hard. That's the thing. Like I

shouldn't feel like I could run this company better at any Yeah. Yeah, and certainly I think at a certain point the leadership will have to has to answer for it, right at some point, And it doesn't feel like that's happened yet. So I think I might be able to run a trillion dollar company, y'all. I think I can stand on business. Yeah. Maybe I don't even have to look look at my emails to run this company. No, yeah, just call and then at that point you have someone else

looking for you. Yeah, just show up to the meetings. Don't even do that the meetings. I don't even have confidence now that like I will ever be reinterested in playing Call of Duty, Like I can tell you that, Like I am just not a fan of like how the game plays. I understand there are people that really enjoy it. We have two cod people, Nikki, I forget if you're a recovering cod nurse, and I worked

on one, so I'm out there we go. But like, I'm never going to get interested in it at all, And I don't know what they could do to get me reinterested. And I'm assuming that audience can only that audience has to have plateaued or is going to continue to plateau and stagnate? Where like are you are these same people going to show up every single year? I mean that happens for FIFA, that happens for Madden, so maybe, but like even then, does that audience just become increasingly disinterested? Like

where is what does the future? What does the growth look like for those games? Or are they going to innovate other than just turning out modern warfare black ops? Do they think that every well I know that they don't, but like, do they think that every single that eventually a Call of Duty is going to come out? That is going to be as big as the first Modern Warfare two or alternatively is going to be as big as GTA six.

I mean, all they need to be at a certain point, right, is as big as the at least the last Call of Duty every year, which it mostly has done over time. And I think, and you know, they were also looking for spaces to grow Call Duty, so they had Called Duty Mobile and now they're having the Battle Royalite and mobile things like that. Yeah, and these things at least make a lot of money, they do, but Call Duty's tapped out, like it's it's the room for

growth in for that series is not like there. So it's like, okay, you have this reliable revenue generator, and it's it's so much revenue that at a certain point, Okay, that's fine. That does pay for a lot of other stuff. But these are companies that need growth. So it's

like the Call of Duty question blingers just as hard as anything else. And then I think, you know, to speak to Jan's point about like feeling good about the games they're putting out, you know, I don't know what they could do at this at this E three or next year to make me like forget about all this stuff and be like, well, I'm excited about

what Xbox has. Again, it's just that that doesn't seem like it's in the cards because the studio is not going to exist next year, right yeh, Because I'm like, I would I would need assurances that like, Okay, well if Tim Shaffer comes out and not to something new, It's like, okay, but isn't that just like any of these other studios that could one day just get the plug pulled Josh Sawyer to make it another passion project.

Okay, you seem not too happy with Pentiment either. It just seems just by you know, the fact that it's Obsidian, that that didn't have the same fate as a High Fi Rush and Tango game works. And then like on the big side, it's like, well, okay, you've announced so many games and so many times they haven't hit the way that you promised they would hit, So at this point announcing stuff just doesn't do anything anymore.

Yeah, I just I'm not sure how to feel about this company at this point other than very very frustrated and sort of a little disgusted by the way that they're How do you how do y'all feel that this may affect like Microsoft's relations with other companies, Like, how does this affect Microsoft's working relationship with some studio or a whole company like Capcom? You know, like Capcom is like buying into releasing games on game Pass. We've Path of Goddess was

like really highly featured last year during Summer game Fest. Yeah, how how

does this affect that? Like eave Sega even moving forward? I think, you know, I think the reality is all these companies are just as ruthless underneath, right, So uh, they're not going to be like yeah right, They're like well, yeah, well they all go to the same country club, and they all have the same conversations about how they're the resources and resources is a way of referring to human beings, and they all want to have the same option to be able to lower how much they pay these people

and cut the jobs whenever they need to cut the jobs. So I think the partnerships are gonna be there just the way they have been as long as Microsoft keeps signing the checks like that'stuff continue. I think that's the that's why we're in this situation and like that's right, Like you know, Nikki was right, Well, why not why buy activism? That what's the point? Like and like I understand it's expensive to license, Like I get it,

but it's like it would make so much more sense. It's just the system, right, that's just capitalism. Like in a non capitalistic society, if you existed in a world where sixty nine billion dollars was not a cheap purchase, right, then you don't have any of this. And actually, the small studios that they were, that they acquired at first are allowed to flourish and grow and make mistakes along the way, because that's what happens when you

make art, right, like you fuck up, it's inevitable. But because there has to be a number attached to this art that we are making. Because someone somewhere who doesn't know what video games are their car, their BMW is powered by whether or not Hi Fi Rush sells enough fucking copies it didn't buy. It didn't sell enough copies. They can't get a new car. Therefore they are mad at Microsoft. Therefore Microsoft has to make a decision. All of these fuckers are mad. We have to shut this down. It's

the only it's the only thing we can do. It just sucks, like it just fucking sucks to live now. Yeah. Yeah, and we'll get to we'll get to next year and a lot of stuff will probably start growing again and the market will bounce back and that company boom times. You know, of course, because the pendulum will swing. There's peaks and valleys that

has to and then and then the problem is is that everyone forgets. And everyone is very charitable to like, you know, forgetting the past a little bit, because when things are good, they're good, and you know, I don't know, it's it's it's just like, uh, we have this thing that we are all attached to. It can be very bad, but we're here. I don't know, Thanks for coming. Hell yeah, Well we'll keep following this story. I'll talk about it more in game. This

morning's probably tomorrow, we'll see. All right, a lot more news to get through, let's just do it. Nintendo confirms it announce its next console this fiscal year. Nintendo is confirmed that it will announce the next generation console. It did this during a basically a fiscal report where and then it came out on Twitter and Shintaro for Okawa, the president of Nintendo, was like,

this is for Okawa. We will talk about Hey, yes, we will talk about the next Yeah. Him and Mimoto both do it like this is Miomoto, this is for Okawa. That's great. Uh. And he's like, yeah, yeah, we're going to talk about it before the end of this fiscal year. So by March twenty twenty five they will begin they will announce it. Uh. And then he's like, there will be a switch direct. We'll get to that more in a second, and that's not

gonna have anything to do with switch to in June. So sometime after June, but before March, they will announce the next console. Now, he was asked in a call with investors and like analysts, Hey, so how would you describe this thing? Basically, it's what they asked. He's like, switch next model is the appropriate way to describe it? Yes, sure, okay, but yeah, but it's like, okay, that so they're not like saying like it's a whole new thing. This is them saying it's

a switch to. This is not it's not a switch pro right, people should not get concerned about a switch pro right. Yeah, and like okay, but yeah, I think it's like, yeah, they had to do this right, Like I think they were once the news came out that it was delayed for whatever reason, whether or not like the software lineup was not ready or the hardware was not like whatever, whatever reason. They were kind of behind the horse, a little bit behind the cart. Which one is

it? What do you get behind or you can't put the car before the horse? Yeah? Behind the eight ball is I think they got behind the eight ball. It's a billiards thing, not not a cowboy billiards. Yeah,

exactly, they were behind the eight ball on it. They needed to get in front of the eight ball again, being like, hey, very explicitly, we are announcing the seek the next iteration of the Nintendo Switch at some time between now and March twenty twenty five, March thirty first, twenty twenty five, Like yeah, of course, thank you so much for saying it out loud. Yeah, and this thing is probably in early parts of

manufacturing. That's the rumors that have been going around. So, yeah, this thing's gonna leak, Yeah exactly, that's what That's also what it is. It's like we're getting out in front of the fact that this thing is about to fall out of every factory in China and like you're gonna see pictures of that electromagnetic suction device, pictures of the wearable watch that they've about all of the different bands for jan Yeah, what if the wearables are not actually

a watch? What if it is like a early two thousands to mid two thousands cell phone? Holster that you're aware? H yes, right, all right? Aund they are kicking around? Yeah, your phone. When they called the Sidekick a hit, a hip top and a laptop, it was a hip top because you keep it on your hip. Nothing terrible happened to the person who coined that that company that the company that made the Sidekick was called Danger, Danger Requirement Google, and then yeah, and then what happened?

And then what happened? And then and then he he left to do like didn't he do? The nothing phone is like the essential phone? And then and then what he do? Yeah? I don't remember, but I remember it being bad. He did a lot of sexual harassment he did. That was hey, he said the company was dangerous to work at. Come on, yeah, right now. Danger is a cool name. I think it's up there with panic, and that's it. Can we called can the D and DIBB now start or stand for danger? I think he always has

all right, so yill, and that's this thing. I mean, honestly had this conversation a game Best Mornings yesterday, even though that was based on like an erroneous thing, I saw the thing right before word yeah yeah, and it was like and everything panned out exactly how we discussed me on that

show. So uh, pretty relevant. Still. They they will probably have a video of this thing here in a couple of months, and then they'll have the real like actual reveal either really late this year or early next year, and then this thing probably is out by March the way that he's talking about it, if he's coming out here saying this now thing is probably out by March. Think you think they're going to be on a higher rooftop this time? Like what's the that's the only option, right yeah? Space?

Yeah, a moon elevator yeah yeah. Uh. I think the the other thing with the hardware is that with him saying switch next model, they really are just there's not gonna be a big surprises. Okay, you know how long has the Nintendo Switch been? Around seven years and nine years ago?

Oh yeah, yeah, so so we we've had nine years now of like them starting all these Nintendo directs with like the their snap thing right of the switch shirking in what if it's just like because that's the magnetic section and then instead of like the the transition sound sucking sound. So instead of like the video transitioning where it goes like switching down and snapping into place, it's just

like coming from the side. Now it's Yeah, Kirby Tech called I think you guys are all off okay, but think about okay, but think about this though. Think about this. The left joy con is Kirby's eyes, and the top of his mouth right joy con and the bottom of his mouth and the green Yeah, so it's black enough to be yes, the void of his mouth is he is he wet or dry inside? I asked this a couple of years ago on the by Twitter. But do you think that

is wet? That galaxies? I think he's like, it's like a black hole. It is a black hole. Wetter cold, I don't know, or wet or dry? I don't know that's what you like? Cold? Dry? Dry? Okay, I'm gonna say dry. What what if the switch to is just a bop it extreme? Think yeah, instead of buttons, you have to flick it. I mean, Jane, you're joking, but like there's a strong there's a non zero percent chance that the one to

switch equivalent this thing launches with is something like a bop it. What if they have a wheel wheels are real hot, Like there was like that AI device that came out that like teenage Engineering also made like the Rabbit or something and then like a little wheelie deally. Yes, what if do you think there will be any capability to connect a switch? Two? You put the switch to in the dock and there's a projector app for an old switch? What turns it into a WEU? No? Oh, it's like so double

dual screen sort of thing. Yes, I think they might have some sort of solution for that. I don't know if that's the way it would work, though, Mario Maker three and just switches cod Dickens I like that. I think they just sell a separate VMU. They licensed that from Yeah, and I just that's that's your memory. Uh, all right, Nintendo will have a excuse men Nintendo Direct in June, I slept the hell of my

mic but switch to won't be there. The company like said, hey, this is going to set up the second half of the year for Switch games for the rest of twenty twenty four. Uh, where where you all at on like the hype roller coaster are? Is this guy you feeling better about Nintendo Switch for the rest of the year because as it stands, you know, we get Luigi's Mansion two in June and then there's nothing else announced. Basically, I think there could be some big things here. Nah, after

Paper Mario. Nah, I think after Paper Mario, that thing's going to sleep until March. Honestly, I think it's gonna be like a hand sleeper Clips two. It happens, It has to happen, Like there's always a senioritis gap for a console at the end of its life cycle. It's just what has to happen. Yeah, they go to the retirement home and we just all sit around waiting for it to die. Jez now, now you

say that, but Nintendo's okay. So Nintendo shipped fifteen point seven million Switch consoles last year and jan this is part of the more financial highlights, and they're expected to sell about a little bit more than thirteen million this year, so just a slight decrease. And and also are like how expecting to do that unless they have some pretty big games. I think maybe, Okay,

what do you think is more likely? They will have some games that will get people excited to still buy a switch this holiday, or price cut because I lean towards games or more so, they're not gonna cut the price. They're not gonna cut the price of the regular switch until the Switch two comes out, So I think they're gonna dust wind Waker off the shelf. I think the switch light. I think the switch light gets a price cut because how much is that thing right now? Two fifty it's two. It's either

two fifty or two hundred. I think it might be two hundred if they cut that thing to one. If they cut the switch light to one fifty, and then they're like, well, yeah, people just buy that for like like a single road trip, yeah, or you or bundle bundle a

Pokemon game with it or something like that. People will leave that. People will just leave that like in the leave a penny take a penny tray, you know, to be like you want this podcast, like thank you, thank you, cash those in baby, But I don't know, like there's another fire Emblem game maybe right, Yeah, stuff like that will finally happen that Fire Emblem remake is rumored to actually finally happen the stuff like, yeah, they did not put Zelda win Waker and a Twilight Princess HD on the

switch, and maybe that could still happen. I don't know, I'm like still on yeah exactly. I do think it's fair that there will there will be like one more software surprise that's sort of just like the last you know, thing to get it over the hump until Switch, the sequel to the Switch. Yeah, maybe maybe we could see like another Pokemon remaster as well. Right, maybe this is where you finally see let's go to right,

something like that could actually still happen. It's it's you know, they didn't announce that that Pokemon direct a few weeks back, but I think there's maybe reason to believe that they could still like this, These numbers make sense. If there's a new Pokemon game this holiday, I think that alone will share it, so maybe we'll see Probably not, but yep, going back to Joe Toe, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joe Toe, he's out there doing his things. Thill. Okay, how many copies as Nintendo sold of

Mario Kart eight Deluxe in total? I know one hundred million. Thanky for give bomb, I'm sixty one point ninety seven million. Yeah, sixty two million copies. And that's with another one point three to nine million in the last quarter alone. How many switches have they sold? One hundred and forty one point three to two million is excelled. Oh, that's real good. That's that's third. That's third, only behind the DS at one hundred fty

four million and PS two at one hundred and sixty million. And that's way more than just everything, just about everything else. Now they do sell that thirteen million plus this year, that will put them right next to DS in terms of total sales. For the idea that they haven't sold as much as the Nintendo DS is fundamental, like breaks my brain a little bit. Well, that's pre it's a pre iOS world. That's a pre I. I think that's more like a yeah, yes, the DS was a monstrous success.

That's like when they had the first real reload of Pokemon fans, right, they had all the Pokemon fans before, and they're like, and we know how to get a whole new generation of kids more than ever before. And it all happened on the DS. They also released so many different kinds of Nintendo DS because you could That was when you could do that, though I had like three different DS. Yes, that's something they they've been doing that from the beginning. DS. They really mastered that all right. A

couple other things from Nintendo. Let's see here. Yeah, the analysts think they could have big games still, but we'll see. If you look at the chart for Nintendo Switch hardware sales per region, it's about on par with how it did in like fiscal year, but like Japan sales are more than double like it's still doing really well in Japan, so that's one of the

reasons they probably are feeling pretty comfortable about keeping this thing going. Princess Peach Show Time and Donkey Kong or Mario Versus Donkey Jung both sold more than a million units. Super Mario RPG has now a surpass three million units sold, Mario Wonder has sold more than thirteen point four million lifetime, and they did one point five in the last quarter, so they're still selling million a million selling games each quarter, are still doing very well for them. A couple

of small tidbits. The Kyoto Nintendo Museum is finished, but it's not opening till the fall. Yes, Nick, we're going We're going right Backler, you're sending the whole crew out to Kyo. Yeah, that's right, that's right, Nikki, thanks for ruined the surprise. I just wanted to make sure. Sorry he said it. Did RPG sell more? The remake sell more than the original game? I think so, Yes, Yeah, I'm

pretty sure that's that's the way it went down. Yes, because the one part of that is Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo came out pretty late in Nintendo's like Super Nintendo's life cycles, so I did not do its favors any favors Super Mario Brothers. The movie is the highest grossing illumination movie of twenty twenty three. It's also it was the most profitable movie of the year, according to Ninteka. Crazy Yeah, and then there's a bunch of baby

Yeah. Yeah, apparently I saw it four times in theaters. But yeah, overall, Nintendo doing very well. I think they set a record for profits as well as is a company that's always been very profitable. At the very least, they're they're making a ton of money, like always, and they seem to have figured out how to like keep that going. Even as they get to the near the end of the generation. It's not like hurting

their profitability, and they're making a lot of money on that thing. They had a few other rumors come out about it Nintendo over the last week. They don't have anything to do with their financials, including Vicarious Visions was making a three D Donkey Kong platform or game. The code was Donkey Kong Freedom. It was going to be like Donkey Kong Country and in three D. Hence the free him it was. He was also gonna be there. It mostly took place on January sixth, Yes, exactly. Yeah, ideas where

was Donkey Kong is a good question. Donkey Kong would have been able to climb those walls better than Yeah. For sure, it was gonna have Diddy Kong in it. Vicarious Visions seemed to be down for it. Nintendo seemed interested. Activision was like, no, go, we make more Call of Duty and they and they helped on that. Obviously. Vicarious Visions then eventually became part of Blizzard, But this was before all that. This was back

when it was like, no make Call of Duty. Vicarious Visions basically made Diablo, right, Is that like, is that the Okay, So yeah, they basically made Diablo I think they really helped with the Diablo to remake and everyone was really happy with that or remaster whatever it was. And then they're like, oh, hey, you should really maybecome Helpless Diablo for. And that team basically went in and made sure Diablo For was as good as

it was great. Uh. There's also a rumor unannounced Nintendo game that has the code name Banquet. And this is from Madori, that leaker we've been talking about recently that's very good at Sega and Atlas rumors. Uh, so no one knows what this Banquet is referring to. Do you all have any guesses? Because I think I have a guess. I'm an idiot. I heard you say banquet, and then it registered in my head. Bank wet

oh. I was like, okay, all right, so Kirby maybe Kirby's dry and this bank is wet, yes, bank, Kirby Bank robbing game. Sure, yeah, I know what it is. Please. It's a quadruple a expansion for the Likatungu Sushi game in Pokeon Stadium. Wow. I mean it's going to be a one and twenty hour long experience where you get to be each individual taste bud on the lickatungue tongue. So okay, well there you go, everybody. It's also possible it could be uh Mario at

the Paris Olympic Games. Why would it be that? Why would it be that? Why? Yeah? Why? Like? Why is that a rumor? Though? Like they always make that game like that's because it hasn't been announced yet. They haven't. They've never confirmed that that one existed. I think you're right about that. Yeah, Like what was the last Paris to Paris is this year? Yeah? Whatever? Like that thing? That one had cool eight bit games in there, like you can all the time.

There was like a two D fighter in there. There was like a very loose two D fighter and you could yeah, egg man and kick the ship out of Amy. That was cool, Jeff Becklar Do the Olympics still matter? Great question? Well are you asking me? Are they important or do they matter? These are two very different things. Can we get both? Uh? They are not important, but they matter? Yes? I would be even agree. Okay, all right then, but it's only the Winter

Olympics as well. That's nobody gets hot Olympics wrong. Incorrect but I do think that hot Olympics sports. The hot Olympics Olympics sounds like something that happened on the Chive dot com. Yeah, exactly, gross. I do think that the Olympics has the opportunity to hit a little bit like eight does, because I think the Americans are in the sports that we are good at, are going to be very good in a way that we haven't been since two thousand and eight. Wow, you keep track of this closer than I do.

What does that mean? Our basketball is going to be very good? Will be pretty pissed poor lately? Right, We've been okay, we've Europeans got good at basketball. Europeans got really good at basketball. And I think that tournament, tournament wise, is going to be really good. We're really good at swimming again. Oh yeah, figure that out. That's good. We figured. Yeah, after Michael Phelps. There's a girl Michael Phelps, Katie Ladecki. She's great. Our gymnasts are great again. We took a

fat l to China couple right the last time. Yeah, but now we got Livia done, so get fucked. Yeah, our soccer is going to be great. Soccer is the only thing I really paid yeah, so it's going to be a good Olympics. I think, Okay, you heard her first folks skateboardings in the Olympics. Skateboardingsoh we're going to lose, but it was so sick in Tokyo. Also, like it's the first Olympics with people since Rio, so like, I think that it's going to be huge too.

Like no one watched the twenty twenty Olympics because they were a in twenty twenty one and boy could go, so like, I think, I think this Olympics is going to be pretty sick. And then we have the ones after that in Lah Yeah, oh cool, Well all right, you've got your work cut out for you. Yeah, Calvin Vos says, is Livy Dunn even Olympic gymnasts And I don't, I don't care. Who knows.

I don't. Yeah, it's impossible to know. I need You don't need to know until Bob Costas tells you to care, right, yeah, once Bob Costas now comes on your TV, and yeah, absolutely lose. The skateboarding so bad. Oh, we're gonna lose for like the next fifty years. They're like so good in South America and in like Japan and a bunch of places. Yes it's nuts, but hey, Skateboarding and Activision rejected Tony Hawk's pro Skate three plus four in favor of supplementary call of duty work.

It's claimed this was also part of like the Vicarious Vision stuff. They were originally gonna add three and four to the original game. They're like, oh, okay, instead, let's just put some of the moves into one plus two and then we'll make three and four later. One or two sold better than any Tony ok game before, so they assumed, hey, we'll be able to make that. And they're like, no, go help with call of duty and then go help Diablo. Those are that's your job. Now.

That's said. I I have heard some rumors that maybe something's happening with Tony Hawk's so I'm hopeful bully if they right, Like, yeah, there's there's a there's a bit of a gap. A skate flour seems like it's not going to come out until twenty twenty nine, twenty six, like somewhere in that way, some there in that range. This game sold more than any of them have ever sold. Nope, and so like it's really good. It's really good. I hope they just are able to make three plus

four that way. Just really worry that they might follow like the weird Tony Hawk pattern of having something really good and amazing and just like fumbling the bag so hard and an activision or Microsoft being like, let's revisit Tony Hawk ride. Yeah, connect his back. Yeah they'll I think they'll play it's safe for this next one. But you're right, if they try to keep making Tony Hawk after that, who knows all this off? If they want to add skateboards to Call of Duty, that might get me back. Hmm.

Okay, there you go. Kind of make it call like Fortnite with each That's that's a great, great point. I would feel so differently about this. I call Duty was different in every single way. Yeah, if it was a bit different game, I would feel different Duty, right Yeah. Uh. The Witcher three's official mod editor launches this month. CD Project Red will release the official mod editor, the Witcher three Red Kit for the Witcher three Wild Hunt on May twenty twenty four. Uh. Boy, that's a

game that's just gonna live forever. Huh uh. Not like a huge Witcher fan, I tried playing Witcher three. I played it for a while. It's just didn't click with me. Yeah, I thought it was a little boring, But people like this game a lot, and boy mods is seems like a good way to get people to like keep coming back to it. There's already I'm sure a ton of mods for Witcher, but having the tools will make that a lot easier and should increase the number and availability of them

going forward. Uh, let's see. Hell Divers two PC players have started an operation to reverse negative reviews. Hell Divers two players have launched Operation clean Up to flood the Steam page with positive review after Sony reversed its controversial plan to require a PSN account for PC players. The community had protested the requirement by flooding the page with negative reviews, but now they are attempting to reverse

that protest and restore the game's user scores. The player base still has a long way to go, but more than seventy two thousand positive reviews have been uploaded since May sixth, that's yesterday. This is good news for the developer, Arrowhead Games or Airhead Studios. After a tough week of criticism. There was more than like two hundred thousand negative reviews, so yeah, a long way to go step resist yah steep video. Yeah, did you think it

made much of a change change? Or was it like once people started refunding the game and once that started more like and it got delisted from Steam into one hundred and seventy countries, that's what does it? And like now you're it's like such a weird apologia, right, It's like, oh we were we maybe probably took it a little overboard. It's like, yeah, you

did so weird frish cleanup. It's like it's like, oh, we made a huge mess in the street, but now as you clean it up, yeah, we're going to clean it up, but not to the it's still gonna be dirtier than it was before. Yeah. Yeah, is this help? And things aren't like this isn't like changing everything going forward. A Ghost

of Sushimom on PC. While it doesn't require a PSN account for the single player game, because that would be nuts, they would definitely get roasted for that, they are still requiring one for the online Legends mode, the cooperative mode that they added to the game after came on PS five after a few months or PS four after a few months, that will require a PSN account still, so all not really all that different, although I guess the difference

series like this will be available and you'll have to sign in right when this game launches, whereas with Hell Divers two that was only up for like a half a day and then they got rid of that to help with the connection issues. Sure, Resident Evil nine could be released in January, it's claimed. According to insider Dusk Gullum, Resident Evil nine is set for an early

te twenty five release and should be revealed soon. The insider claims that the development began in twenty eighteen as one of the potential options for Resident Evil eight, but when Resident Evil Village took that spot, they shifted development back over to this after some time and Receival nine reportedly is the most ambitious title in the series, with the biggest budget and longest development time. It's also one of the games that's reportedly going to be a more open world. It's going

to be using the same tech that made Dragon's Dogma to open world. So we'll see how that. Where are they going to put the the numbers? Oh, the number nine they go back. It's like they just flip the draft upside down, right, So the draft blow dropping out just being dude. It's actually that is true. That's a different that's a whole different sexual position for that diraffe than I all. It's new brand all contortionally speaking. But no, like it's super easy because it's IX, Like IX is the

easiest thing. Rexit in evil? Is that what you're saying suggesting like rexident evil? You know something cool? I X like, I don't know put the word in there. They did it for village, they'll find it for resident people's krillics. I don't know what they're to do, like with the I NX capital, Like, oh boy, that's pretty good. Yeah. Capcom's gonna have uh dragons, they had dragons on with two. They're gonna

have Monster Hunter Wilds that's already confirmed. That's coming out relatively soon. And then this game coming out early next year lines up with how they've done this stuff in the recent past. So this isn't too surprising, especially believing that it's been in development for so long. What are your hopes for Residubal nine?

Uh? I guess the big question do you want it to be first person like seven and eight, or do you want them to make a departure from that, I don't care, like they could do whatever they want because with you, yeah exactly, like talk about just like consistency and uh, reputation, like it is just been a magnificent one after the other since seven, which I guess is only two but you know, yeah, but I mean like it's been a it's been a as close to a flawless track record

as you can really pull off in this in this industry. So I welcome all of it. And people are like, oh, what do you mean open world? That's crazy? Well, like you know, eight was basically open world in a lot of ways, like you could decide, Yeah, you could decide like which bosses to kind of go to next, right in some way? Right, Yeah, just remembering that it doesn't matter this, I don't care. Do what you need to do. I will be happy. I'm just I need this in my life. It's the only real game

that I kind of look forward to anymore. If we're being honest, Give me a big boat, Okay, Okay, do you want to do you want it to take you places only? Or do you want to pilot the boat? May maybe we get like a snow piercer situation. You know was there was there a a big cruise ship in Resentable Revelations or Revelationships. Revelations was about a boat, right, let's go back to the boat. The beginning was the boat. Okay, hey, yeah, just visit the boat?

Sure? Why not? Yeah? And there's boat stuff at the end of isn't there boat stuff at the end of the boat stuff? One of them? Two recently? Uh, like seven or four had some boat stuff definitely like getting like a boat at the end of Resue four and yeah, driving all the fire and stide seven. Yeah, seven had boat stuff at the end. Thank you, bacha Ard, don't lie, you said the only thing to get excited about Resident Evil. You also get excited for Batman

Arkham Shadow announced in coming exclusively to the Metaquest three. Yeah, you had me until Metaquest three, but I feel like, you know, I have a meta Quest three. I play it. I think it's really impressive. I think it's fun. But uh, if for me to get excited about a Batman game, it's it's like a it's like a non VR Batman game. I'm going to list all of the interactions in this game. Are you

ready? You're going to pick something up you're going to go like this, You're going to rotate it and you're gonna be like wow, and you're gonna detect yeah, and then you're gonna do a detect and then you're gonna press a button on the controller and it's gonna turn your home into detective mood. And then the Riddler is going to be in your house, and then you're gonna walk up to like your desk, and then you're gonna like pick something up, and it's gonna be like, oh, the Riddler is Riddler,

and then he's gonna be like, oh, I'm scary. And then you put it down, and then you're gonna pick something else up, and then you're gonna rotate it a lot and you're gonna put it back down and that's the whole game. So this would be better if it was nineteen sixties Batman, right. I thought, you're like, it's gonna say the nineteen sixties,

and like, yes, this would be advanced technology. Crub like holding up a cartoonish bomb over your head, running around a pier right in the big red phone that commissure Gordon calls you on and stuff like that, Like I don't need another Arkham version of this. Yeah, if it was close job simulator than it was to a real Yeah, this was Alfred game, you know. Okay, God, that would be so fucking sick. You have to cook this, yes, and it's just like you have to cook

him. You have to cook him food, you have to clean, get the vacuums. It's just job sitting leader, except your Alfred. But you could. You would still be doing heroic stuff like you would find out like oh, like it's like Inspector Gadget right where Penny's actually the one doing all the stuff. It's not in the field. I mean, let's not in the field like he's Yeah, he helps like Batman remembers, you know, special bulletproof underwear or whatever. Typing right, Yeah, Okay, I'm into

it. This is being developed by Camouflage that people did Republic and Iron Man VR. If that does anything for you, I I just I know myself, No way I'm gonna play this game. I like the medical way. Okay, there's not no way, but I'm it's very unlikely. I'm never going to decide. But even if they send me a code, because I definitely had like some of the YR games, I'm like, Oh, I should go play that. I just don't. Yeah. I think you think

Batman plays like in his costumer Yeah? Probably? Okay, last story here, bad saber? That's good? What here? Here's Here's what I wrote down for the headline. What does the Drake and Kendrick beef have to do with the PlayStation showcase? Great question? A rap feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has gained much attention online rumors suggests that Kendrick's next track is being held back due to a marketing conflict with Sony's rumored May PlayStation showcase. Oh this

has taken such a lame turn. The claim originates from a Twitter post by Real Radick, who alleges that DJ Academics, a known Drake supporter, a known Drake deleted an Instagram posts suggesting that this was happening. However, the lidy of this claim is in question, as Real Radick is a less known figure. The story specify could easily be disproven if untrue, and Kendrick's recent

release of four tracks in four days adds to the doubt. So is the theory that can Drick has another song in the hopper, but he also has a deal with Sony. But what is what is what could he have possibly said in this MP three that is disqualifying him from releasing it? That isn't gonna make Sony If this is also this is also true, it also like removes so much sort of like fun and credibility from like all this ship, right, it just strips it of its like authenticity. Well, I mean

but I don't think it's true. Oh it's not true. O. Cool. In the diss he gives us the number of Terra flops and the release date and like exactly the right there. Yeah, it is a pack in with the PS five pro. This is just just this is the point of like, hey, yeah, this is how absurd. Thanks for getting out

there. That PlayStation showcase is happening this month still apparently, but whether it's next week or the week after, I honestly don't could be the end of the month, but I won't be surprised this does actually happen next week. It could happen at any moment. I don't think Kendrick Lamar will be involved, but who knows. We'll see, We'll see. All right, that does it for the news, jan I'm handing the show back over to you half what holy ship, big news astro Boto? Okay? What is the

why train? That's a great question, the big Sony crash. They don't own him anymore. No, that rap that that uh demot oh it is? Ok is that him? Is that they? Okay? So he's one of the big three, So calm. He part of the and then Gary siffenfilter yep, yeah, there we go. Oh and there's four. Actually, Derek Kills is the James kills him. What's what's the sife Fielder guy's name? Gabe? Okay, Danger Gabriel, Gabe Logan. Okay, listen. Kendrick is not even signed to Sony. He's a Universal music group.

Man, it's called a crossover. Hey you they could still pay them. I don't think they would. What if it's the rapper, but it's Kendrick as the voice of that's pretty cool. I'm back in. And instead of like like cut chop, cut chop, it's just what what what? Yes? Yes, yes, yes, all right, Sony, let's let's talk and then he can and then the rapper can say I'm whooping feet when he

kills cradles. I love yeah, disputable, I love everything about this, We're gonna go take a quick bricky break because that was a long news segment, and then we'll talk about video games. I guess right after this, you know, with all this talk about the Kendrick Lamar and Drake Beef and j Cole getting out of it, Rick Ross stepping in it, stepping out of it, Metro Boomin just inciting violence, Jeff Grub, I think you

would have a very very good seawalk. I would, yeah, And like I could just imagine, like you know, we we run up to the live show on June ninth at the Bellevue Theater, tickets available now get get them while you can, folks, and then like maybe it's maybe it's Emma,

maybe it's Nikky, maybe it's Dan introing the show. And then like we we we say like and now you're host, Jeff Grub, and then like we play the Kendrick song or for whatever reason, one of them, and then like Grub just comes up, like shoulders up, and then like he takes he pulls out a bandana out of his back pocket because has changed him, and then he swipes the shes and then like he he he gigs and like he does Nikky. What if Grub hit the smeez and then he

landed in his chair? How much budget do we have to get a choreographer? What's that budget? Like? There? No, we have plenty of money there. We'll just pull up a TikTok between you and YouTube video right now, walk for beginners, A nice British ladies tell me how to do it? Basically, Oh God, I bet you, I bet you. Lucy James can can can see walk? I bet you? Yeah? Absolutely totally totally, man, God, yeah we should. We should just come

up with a choreograph number for the big show. Actually like it coming, the big Show's coming? Uh? Kind of his knees really messed up, looking Yeah, just one that one of them. It's like we're pronated, almost like pronated where it's like plas no, don't he hit me with the pro Lashka. Okay, cool, very cool, Everything's very cool. Everything's awesome. Manor Lords is a game that has been blowing up on the internet.

Jeff, Grub, you played it last week? Uh? And then because of the pleasant time you had, Nikki was also hanging out, so is lucky. Uh. I tried to get into it, Grub, I really tried. I fired enough. What's your history with city builders? Non existent? Pretty much like you know, I'll dip into a sieve. But sieve isn't quite the same as like how manner lords is. But grub you see like you're having a great time. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. Do you have any bastard children? Janachoa? Not that I know

of? And that's why you're not a dad. I mean, what else there's no responsible answer? Yeah, I look, it's a dad game. It is, And it's it's hitting that where I'm like, Okay, I'm in charge of my little town and management and I got well, I need I'm gonna need some more OX and let's let's get to work on that. Oh to get that, I need to do this and this and that, and that bar is filling up, and now I get to sit here and wait enjoy the fruits of my labor. And while I'm doing that, I'll

think of three other things I want to do. And the good thing about the game is it's very it's it does a really good job of making every one of these actions have a strong visual representation on the screen. So when that when that OX is carrying that log, across town. Someone is standing right with with with that ox and they're they're walking it and they it has to physically walk over there. And then once the log is in place,

a builder will come over and use it to actually build the building. And all those things being so visually represented makes it easier for the abstraction to sort of meet you as a player and give you that strong sense of dopamine. Is like, Oh, I'm accomplishing something. The decisions I've made to place this building next to that the set of supplies is paying off because the building is getting built even faster than it would have otherwise, and all those like

small little decisions build up to make everything feel that much more satisfying. I haven't had much more time to play it, really, I really want to. I did finish Mini shoot Adventures, so it's like I have a little bit more time now. That's one of the things I want to get back to. But yeah, I see why it is taking off with so many

people. It's a genre that has, you know, a few entries here and there, and I think people just want slight changes and then they want a lot of attention to detail, and that's what this game has lots of little details, and it feels like the developers fully understood what the assignment was with those things, and the lording around in there is pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah, you could press walking on the keyboard and you can walk around as the lord and just like stand by peop while they're doing their work and you have a peak. Yeah yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, okay, grubbing your experience with city Builders? Is this any more approachable than others are? I mean, I think they have a pretty decent onboarding ramp, where you know, there's definitely things where it's like, Okay, what does this

do? That's how these games go. You need to sort of just experiment, and at the very least, it didn't feel too punishing, where when I'm like, oh, I didn't know how to fully take advantage of this thing, mostly because it's like, Okay, the big things going into the winter are do you have enough food and do you have enough fuel? And it's like, Okay, that seems like that could have been a problem if we've got to winter and that wasn't set up. But I was able to

like process that pretty quickly with the help of chat. But it's like, once I'm like Okay, I need logs. Oh I thought I had logs. Isn't that fuel? It's like, no, no, you need firewood. It's like, okay, that's right there in the bar, the guy that makes firewood setting that up right next to the stockpile of wood, and go from there, and it's all that stuff is like it makes sense.

It's like common sense. And then the game like does a pretty decent job of making sure that it's you in the direction of making those right choices. So I feel pretty good about that. It's not like Babies first city Builder. Honestly, if you want one of those, and babies is like,

you know, a pejorative. I don't mean it that way, but that Steam World Build game is very does a lot to like sort of funnel you into the right decisions, and then it has the whole other layer of and then there's sort of a defense game happening on the bottom layer under underground and things like that to keep you busy. So I was really happy to play that. But this one is like fulfilling actually the fantasy of running a town better. And so this one feels like it's going to have a higher ceiling

for me personally, and there's a stink meter. Well yeah, I mean, listen, it's a stinky time. And I knew that because Mike Natty was there telling me that's why he doesn't like the look of the game, because it looks like people smell. He's right, He's right, right.

Yeah, I'm curious to see what I guess late a late game level or map would look like Grub because when you zoomed out of your little instance there, it was pretty as yeah, and like I was playing in the sort of no battling mode, but apparently like there's a second mode that's for people who have played through that already if you want a little bit more of a challenge. It's like you can be building your town in this region, and

then other towns in other regions might come and do something. I don't know the attack. I'm not exactly sure how it works, and I know you could take over those towns. I don't know if it's just by force. It seems like you can also do like the cultural victory thing where it's like, hey, we just got a better religion than you. Now everyone wants to be part of us or something like that. So yeah, I'm interested to see how that all plays out. Our God is cool. Yeah,

we got those cool guys. Our God is a cool god. Well, well, you have been building a civilization and climbing up the ranks in terms of building a lovable, beautiful, slightly smelly town. I have been climbing a mountain in Surmount. I played a little bit of this too, neat do y'all? Remember Donkey Kong, King of Swing? I think about it every day. Fantastic, I'm finally that's why you and I get along. So uh where in King of Swing you are Donkey Kong and you are pretty

much just controlling with the shoulder bunts to swing around. Yes, that is surmount pretty much. But instead there is an accessibility option for you to auto swing depending on which arm you grab onto something with. But with the your arms are controlled by the shoulder buttons and you're swing controlled by by the shoulder buttons. Right in this one, it's a little bit different. Yeah, keep going and then you're swinging around and using that momentum to propel yourself and

to like catch on with your your hands. Again, climbing game is really hot, really really hot. I like climbing in games in general. Uh, like I like like the Quop came out, and then they had GARB, which is like the it's like Quap but climbing. I really love that, and I like some of the climbing VR games. I was really looking forward to this. I was trying to I'm like, oh, it doesn't feel exactly like king a swing, so I'm like, it's gonna take a second for me to get into it, I think. But overall, I

think they did a pretty good job. I like that. You know, it is okay, you have your your grip here and then you want to get over to this next part of the wall where you can grip it again, but there's a gap and you need to swing in a circle to get enough momentum to have the physics carry you over and you grab the wall once you're there. That move in general is something I like, and I think they do a pretty good job with executing it. Yeah, because it's realistic,

right, that's how you climb right, spin around. Yeah, I've been to a bouldering gym before. People constantly do That's what I'm doing every fucking time. Yeah. Yeah, my shoulders don't work. You you have to balance your stamina and there is occasional points where you can kind of like hook on, similar to Juice, where you can kind of let go and just like dangle for a bit to just help recover some stamina. There's the neat part is that there are some regular boundary walls that you can just climb

up to and you can kind of cartwheel your way up. This game is more involved than I thought it'd be, because I was assuming this would just be kind of like a fun, neat platformer, like what's the other climbing game where you can fart on your friends? Your friends the farting climbing. Yeah, I thought it'd be more simplified like that, But it turns out there's a whole less story insurmount that I was not expecting. That you kind

of activate a a cursor like a god climbing god or whatever. I haven't gone super deep in yet. I've just done a couple missions. It seems like there's there's there's a bunch there and they're playing around with the different materials you can climb up. They do the thing like in King of Swing, where there's certain pegs that you can climb up, certain types of walls where

you recover stamenough you hold on to them. So I'm interested to see if this game is supposedly like eight plus hours, how you're going to stretch out that climbing mechanic and fill that out with stuff. They have things in the early levels where there are these air rings that you like, if you swing yourself into, it'll provide you a little bit of a momentum where you kind of like zip through them all and you find a little Pathman exactly like Superman

and Sonic, the two of the Big Three. And then there's also like a little quest you're doing. You're you're meeting a bunch of like weird dudes as you're climbing through these levels mountain climbing. That's what happens when you do. I've seen Free Solo. Yeah, it's a bunch of little weirdos everywhere. It's it's neat. I think the thing with this game, though, it doesn't feel quite the best playing it on Steam Deck, and I don't

know if that's just because of the analog sticks. I was having a better time when I was using a dual sense on my my PC. Okay, but I also suffer from that thing similar to when we all play double Dutch where the hesitation to jump in yes, factors into the hesitation to let go

and actually get the right momentum in the swing never look go. So I think that's where I suffer from, and you should maybe should not play this game under the influence of anything, because you start to tense up and you just never let go and you just keep swinging spin for you, just spin forever. Do you think it would be better if if the name, instead of being Surmount as like you're surmounting an obstacle, if it was Sir Mount

Si r Mount and that was the character's name. Yeah, okay. Can you imagine like you're just clinking, clunking around with a pseudo armorless whole time. Uh. The neat thing with Surmount though, is that the physics in it are a factor in super duper hard. So if you have a very weird anchor point of where you're climbing, latching on and swinging and your legs might hit like a nearby wall, they will hit the nearby wall and factor in where it's like, ah, crap, like oh, this is gonna

mess up my momentum. And the mess up part though, is that it also factors in your anchor point rope. So if your last anchor point was super far away and that rope is just stretched out as you were swinging, you are pulling out more of that rope, so that rope is just slapping the wall as you're going through slap you know good? Like, Yeah, it's neat. I think I'll stick with it and and see how far I

can climb up this hill. I forgot that there were bosses in Donkey Kong King of Swing, so I'm wondering if, yeah, maybe Surmount is gonna throw in similar things. I saw the dev saying that obviously King Swing was a massive influence, so I wonder what else they might have pulled. You can eat fruit in this game as well. Is this game out or is

it in really access I want to say it is out. Okay, yeah, I think it's out, and I am going to turn on that accessibility option you said where it's like, so if I hold down, if I grab with R and I hold that down, he'll keep spinning in the right directions direction point which way you want to go with the analog stick? Okay, okay, cool, So instead of like constantly spinning it, which does get tiring after a while, especially if okay, dumb thumbs like me just

holding that. But it wasn't it didn't feel quite well playing it on the Steam deck. I didn't try that out with like the dual sense, so maybe it'll be a little different. Okay, I'm I'm mess around with a little bit, because I was definitely like I like in King of Swing, where it's like you're just you're holding the thing and you just spin on the whole time and you just got a time it and that's it by letting go and then you grab again to grab. Uh. This is it's pretty similar.

But I'm just it just wasn't what was what I was expecting. So I think I'm gonna try to fudge with it a little bit more. There's also a multiplayer mode that maybe we should check out on an over that'd be great. Yeah, that's a good idea. Another game, speaking about Unprofessional Fried Days, that we all checked out, was a a Biotic Abiotic factoryiotic A. Yeah, sure, this is it's it's a crap. It's a crafting survival half life. Yeah. You are in a scientific facility that has

had something bad happened. There are monsters, and you need to go through a bunch of processes to uh continue building stuff so you have the ability to survive. It's multiplayer, and it has the what the trend right now of of proximity voice chat, so you know your voice is gonna echo and you can hear people around the corner and things like that. And I thought, I thought it was pretty interesting. I think it's one of those ones where like, oh, we need to be playing a lot longer to get to

the meat of it. It's not like some of the like Lethal Company or Content Warning, where it's like it's immediately you understand what you're going on these runs and every run has its own value. It's like this you are, you know, building up to the point until you have like one of the later weapons and stuff like that, and like we all have roles, Like

I think you were didn't factor in. That was the thing, like it felt, and I think for us right like we are we are playing this game, yes, but also we are playing for a game for an audience, right right. It changes the way that we interact with the game and interact with the systems, by which I mean I didn't look to see what any of the fucking abilities that I had. So like, I'm sure if we were playing it differently and a little more intentionally, it would have felt

better. But it did feel very slow to like get going. And every time it felt like we were moving, we would hit a wall that would be like, oh, actually, now we need to craft this thing, and it would do one thing you have to do to other things, and

every with every single thing. Yeah, but I think there still seemed to be a decent amount of you know, emergent fun with us interacting with each other or the world, and you know, my character pooping himself because I find the negative character trait of well I have a small bladder and that was

a big problem. And yeah, it was fun and funny. It just isn't like the immediate crowd pleaser some of these other games that it looks similar to, right, I think if we we did spend more time with it, and maybe if we didn't have as big of a group, maybe we had four people versus six, we could kind of define the roles a little

bit better. Speaking about the proximity voice chat, something that this game that does I absolutely love is it has like mouthflap, and not enough games have I saw some of that mouth flap in it, yes, but really watching Mike's character mouthflap around and he looks like a one from one like my high school theater teacher, and it just freaked me out. That's the cool dude, right, that theater teacher. Yeah, yeah, yeah he Also I'm going to say a game of the year because it lets you sit in a

wheelchair and it properly a wheelchair. I just heard. I heard you and Mike go and and I look around and see you guys rolling away. Okay, this is a good game. Yeah, I think it needs maybe a little bit more of overt handholding though, Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So what we did have is like there's an on screen icon as a waypoint, and were you all seeing that or is that just me? I would only see the waypoint for like the workbench. Yes, oh okay, okay, so that okay, well, see, you know what, I'll

take some of the blame. I thought you all could see that, so I just assumed, Okay, we all know we're kind of the general area where we're supposed to be going, and everyone else is just goofing off. Okay, So I should have been like communicating that more because the game it was my world and I could have said, hey, we need to be going over here, and I did a couple of times, but again I assumed everyone saw that. So I think that is like the handholding idea of

like, Okay, here's the general idea. You're gonna have to figure out how to get there yourself, because it is like a stitch together world where you're gonna be making shortcuts and solving those problems. Yeah, it was also so long ago that we had so like I oh sure, sure, but yeah, either definitely, only remember that it was Friday, it was third it was like seven pm. I think, no, it was it at the very least. I think that they probably will speed up some of those

things a little bit more and early access. Yes, it's the early access, and I think they'll figure it out. I think they have a strong foundation though. I like what they're going for. Maybe give everyone a weapon please? Yeah? Yeah, but that would reduce my power as the security guard because I started with a billy club, and really I think I should have the weapon. You died first, Well, no, because Mike Naughty murdered me. He pushed me off and it killed me. Right, we

have video proof of that. That's what That's what I and that's how I remember it. Greb, do you still have that uh voice drop of Mike talking about a treasure trove of duct tape? I probably do somewhere here. Let me see out. Nope, it's it's off the coxlar. I could see that all the buttons are dim Damn damn well, lost another one. Damn uh well, mister Grubb, since you may not have been properly guiding us, it seems like not only were you the lord of this manner,

but you also may have been the master of our doom. And you've been checking out Masters of Doom. Yeah. I read that book because of Dai Katana, which I'm playing for Blake Club. I got curious about mister Romero and his exploits. And I've heard a bunch of times how good that book is, and it is fantastic. It is really really good. It was

like the entire story was riveting. They're all, you know what, turns out, all kind of punks and assholes in their twenties when they were making games, and it's like, I wonder which one of these guys are going to be kind of the bad guy in the situation and they all just took

turns being the one another. It's how it went down. I think it's a fascinating time, right nineties and early three D computer graphics and honestly early because like, these are the people that got scrolling and working on on PC with Commander Keen, and then they figured out three D with Doom, and then they figured out full three D acceleration with Quake and reading like oh yeah, John Carmack was just making the engine and John Romero was one guy that

could really make that those engines sing. It's like, oh yeah, these guys were really were that talented, and it was it was pretty cool to read that story and see how it all built up and then fell apart and sort of ended with hey and Diakatana's coming, and people don't really like that. So yeah, I recommend that book. And that did get me like

wanting to go back and check out a bunch of other ID games. So I have played a little bit of Commander Keen and I've been playing some Doom and Castle Wolfenstein and stuff like that, so just in an ID mood, and who could blame me? After playing some di Katana for you love good video games here. That's right, That's that's right, taste. I can't get the visual of you screaming and Discord just cutting the audience out of the stupid one like I like I watched the from that first episode of uh Grub

Grub Katana. Yeah, it's all now, we can't that. When Mike tricks you into walking into that fucking laser fence, his reaction could power a sun. Oh it is so good. It's so peopure, like you could feel like all. Oh, everything he has said in the last like ten to fifteen minutes has been leading up to this point. As soon as I walked in this room and he started shouting, sew do you remember this?

Do you remember this? I should have known something was up. And then he gets some like poker face after that the entire time, So I don't know, maybe just struggling through the door. I don't know. Maybe we'll be safe now, Like okay, he you know, for folks who don't know, Mike has a very long headphone cable. Uh, and I in my head just saw him actually rolling around the floor. Yeah, he became a raffel copter. Yeah, that was a special moment in what was a

pretty good stream. Maybe people should go check that out if they happen. Yes, a new episode hitting Hitting. I gotta I gotta set up the game scent what No, don't tilt it. No, it's dirty? Used, why is it wet? That's the game juice Nikki's that. This was sitting on my kitchen counter and I'm like, ship, I don't want to deal with this. So I came down and just did my job, and that come up later and my wife was like, what is this? What

is this fucking abomination? Both me and your daughter touched it and now our hands wreak, Like, yeah, that's the game set. Sorry, orifices are like leaky, I don't know, leaky gaming holes, disgusting in the trash. So I got Now I gotta smell Katana. What do you think It smells like mosquitoes, tire fire. Oh I should not have actually, Oh, I'm like that is I am kind of upset and not just now. If you look on this podcast, that'd be all right for the audio

listeners. For the audio listeners out there that that have never seen a game sound and made oh boy, grub, it's just recoiling. It's on my hands ew okay, uh game of the week yees to do that? Do that? That just came out. I mean, how much could anyone have really played it? That game? He played thirty five hours the video game haities to what what for about a week? What I looked at my theme friends list, I was like, oh, tarm played this much. Uh,

so and So played that much. So and so played that much. And then I see Nicholas Grayson and I'm like thirty three hours. So okay, So here's what happened. So I think it's actually probably closer to like fifteen hours. But I left my PC on over night once and I wasn't playing the game, but the game was running, so I counted the kind

of so I put in like fifteen hours. I did see Chris Person playing a lot like over the last week when we got we got the codes, and I was I'm like, man, Chris is playing a lot forty five point three hours for pop a p sho oh boy, that's crazy. Yeh, folks, they really went and just made more hades and like fundamentally, the thing that's so nuts to me that I was like kind of afraid of, I think, is that like for a game I wouldn't call Hades perfect.

It's close, though, like legitimately, I do think it is close in insofar as, like with the intentions that it has for what it wants the player to do and the story that it wants to tell and the way that it wants to tell it through both narrative and mechanics. I think it hits every fuck it like that first game. I think hits every single mark,

right yep. The fear that I had when they said we're making a video game called Hades too, I was like, okay, but like, he did it so good the first time, like you could just walk away from it and never touch it. And then Greg and his friends were like, no, no, no, no, no, sweet summer child, Honey. Well, honey, what I've got for you is simply more Hades, and yeah, you could see more. Haites said, you know what, Greg, you were right. Yep, you were right. If you

just make more Hades, it's gonna be good. Milina Way is Zag's sister. She's a witch. So it changes up fundamentally your your ability set and changes your cadence, which I think is really important in these fights. It I don't fucking know, dudes, like it's so good, Like it feels

just as crunchy as the first one. There's so much more, there's additional and like I think that, like my fear coming into it was like, oh, it's early access, right, Like how how it's it's gonna stop after the first But no, no, no, no no. If they put this game out today, yeah, I think it would go crazy. Did they literally say it at this moment has more content than Haities Won?

Yes? Yeah, And and they still they're not as far as like the stuff that they've said, it's not gonna come out this year probably right, if it comes out this year is coming out in December, So okay, that seems all good and fine, but also like, can someone give me like a really compelling reasoning for like early access in this specific example, like it better, but your game seems to be beyond early access right away.

But no, I think they're like, this is the early access version of Hades two, and this is where we're starting, and we're going to make it better. I mean, look, I guess it's just a label thing, really exactly, It's just a label. Yeah, Like I would say

for most people, if you are curious by Hades two. You could play it now almost certainly, play through all the content that is there and feel like you got a full game, and then when War comes out, it's like, oh episode two is here, or or the DLC is here. Basically, look at it. Look at however you need to look at it.

But I think you're going to be able to have a really good time with this game as it stands right now without any of the concerns that people typically have about early access, which I personally think are overblown to begin with, but I get it's a mental thing for a lot of people. Under then where you're coming from this specific example, those things are just not really

a concern. Yeah you Yeah, if you play the video game haites to call an early access right now, you will have a complete experience, and

like, I just think that that is how it goes. There will just be more of it later, yep, yeah, I mean right as of right now, there's when you when you go to like the weapons selection little screen area, there's like, yeah, what two three, Yeah, there's there's a couple of weapons that aren't there, Like some of the characters don't have art or models yet, and you're like, oh, like oh yeah, like you're still working on this, but also fundamentally, it feels like

there's three little video games in this video game, and like every time it like, I, how spoilery do we want to get? Cause like that's That's one of the things that I do struggle with, like in conversation about it, is that like I don't want to talk too far because I've played so much of it. People aren't gonna want to hear the story spoilers. But there's like, uh, you know, gameplay spoilers. I think those are to me, I care about more about those than anything, but I

should probably get away with some of that stuff. I don't know. I here's here's how I'll frame it. You are the game has it does a really good bait and switch on you where it's like, oh, like you're like, oh, there's it's it's simply more hades. I go down, I go down to get out, and then you get to the doorway where you go down, and then to your left or behind you there's there's up and then you're like, okay, now what's this? Now? What could

this possibly be? And then you like get through the thing and they're like, I think you should go up, and then you go up, and then there's just there's there's more fucking video game up there. You just go, oh, so you go down and then they're like, oh, actually, like you remember Hades, You remember how when zag would go up to the planet and the planet Earth. It's like little Nikki right when it's exactly

like that. You go up and then and then and then there's a little curated like run based thing where you play one stage and the game tells you what items and boons you get, and it's rare. It seems to be randomized. And this part isn't as fleshed out. This is a part that it's like there are only three of these things. But like when you go up, it's open. It's like branching like dead cells, and you can pick paths, and some of the paths if you go down them, it

cuts off other paths. It's like I was so like, oh, like I didn't even think about up as an Okay, it's fucking good, y'all. The music is the game I'm playing now, this is it. I'm all in, Like I'm I don't care about any other stuff. I just want to be playing more Hades too. Yeah, one and like they have really I have not gone as far as Nikki, but the parts where I have gone two, they've they've like I don't want to say perfected because that's

very generous, but like they have really nailed the loop aspect. Yeah, where even in Hades one, I, when I had a bad run, I still felt like I made some type of tangible progress because you know,

you could further advance your little relationships you're getting whatever, et cetera. But here, because of the different I guess, different available currencies or different mats that you were grinding for your subtool that you're bringing out to each run, right, it winds up mattering because of like okay, like I have enough

silver, I guess I'll just switch it to this other tool instead. And and it has The other thing about like that mechanical stuff is that you can It's so interesting because you know how in Haites one, when you would really feel like you were going on a good run and it felt like the game was like seating you boons that were conducive to the build that you were making. Now each boon has an element. Yeah, so there's earth, water, fire, air, and then the fire Nation attack et cetera, et

cetera. And each of those boons they give you a credit basically, so if you get like you like, you can have like two air points depending on which God is giving you the boon, two airpoints and an earth and whatever. Then they're in. They're called infusions boons. And if you have x number, so if you say you have four or above earth, it gives you like an epic modifier on all of the boons. So it's like it it incentivizes you to as you build your as you create your build,

as you're going through, pay attention to like so many different factors. There are perks. Now you have a perk bar. There's so many fucking meters in this game. You have a you have a thing called Grasp and you have ten it's ten points, and you go up to this thing and there's a thing of tarot cards and it starts as six tarot cards. And as you start, I was like, oh cool, like what a cute little

like, oh it's an early access. There's like six little cards. You unlock one card and it unlocks another card like diagonal both ways, and then you unlock more cards and on that screen is so fucking big for me. Now there are so many kids growing. I have a question about so many modifiers. I don't I don't understand the currency for that, so that so go no, go ahead, jen Uh. It starts with with ash or like the like the the white whisky stuff. Yeah, goop ok, And

then you get that depending on which route you choose. Yeah, right totally in arabis right. Uh. You there's other means of acquiring that as you go along, and then you spend that ash to get those specific cards and Nikki, it's primarily like that's the uh what you use ash for, right is yes, unlocking the cards. Yeah, and then there are some recipes, you know how like in Haites one you would go to the store and be like, I want to buy this, like because she's a witch.

There's a big cauldron in the middle of the that a bunch. Yeah. So like sometimes the ash will be used as an ingredient there, but mostly it is for the tarot cards. And then in those tarot cards is where you get like a death defiance or it'll be like your cast is like twenty percent bigger, but each of them, each card has a point value attached to it. The thing I can't figure out and it's maybe maybe. Oh wait, so you can only have so many cards unlocked at a time.

You can only activate so many cards. Yeah, that's what I'm That's the thing I was was hanging me up. I'm like, I think I have enough to unlock this thing. No for to give me the Yeah, you can only have turned on the card. I'm this is something that I'm confused about. Now I get it. I don't know if you can unlock. It is literally the pick ten system from Call of Duty. Yes, actually

it is exactly. And then there are cards that are like, you can't use this card unless you have a card that is worth one, two, three, four, and five, and then that will crocs the sixth. Oh. Christian is saying in chat that you can upgrade the power liamit I don't know how to do that. Can you please message me on Twitter to

tell me how to do that? Please? This game is great and it's so it feels feature complete, and I think that's the thing where I really want folks to not take this experience away from themselves by being like I don't want to play an early access game because A it's bullshit. It doesn't matter play the game again later, but also it does not feel like it is not complete. You will have such a robust and complete experience playing the video

game Haites two. You can then be cheaper now than when it was. When it comes out, it's gonna be charged three hundred dollars. There's also so much where it is right now, yes, right, like it is not only like really like with that tarot card system, there's like a different like objective system like hanging in the background as well that you're also taking care of, and it feels like you're just constantly making progress as you were playing

the game. Yeah, that's that's huge because in Haites one, there definitely were runs where you came back and felt like you would get a little bit of a voice, like a little bit of a conversation where you would feel like, oh, like that that was that was the run. It was kind of short. Everyone's gonna they're not gonna make fun of me, but they're gonna be like, I died in two seconds, huh. Get good?

But now, like you still have those conversations as conversations still do exist, but you did make progress on at least something You can plant stuff like you can collect seeds and each engagement, each encounter is uh time is like time for those seeds to grow. There are recipes that take x number of encounters to proc like every single action, even if you have a bad run,

it did something for you. Yep. That's that's the thing for me about about Hades and now Hades too is seeing like them, understanding the potential of the loop and using every ounce of the loop. I mean, Jen, you talk about like the sub weapons and having your subtool get you know, getting the pick and realizing, oh, now that I'm out there, I have another thing to do. And it's like, Okay, they're just gonna keep layering stuff, lawering more and more on top, and I'll be

able to do more and more every time I come back. And it's like, oh, that's such a clever idea of making sure that like every run feels like it accomplished something and doing that in a variet have different ways instead of just like, well, you fought things, so we're just gonna give you a different currency. It's like you're gonna have a different verb attached to that, and then that that unlocks more verbs back in the home base.

It's uh, I think they are They were the masters of that stuff with Haites. I think another like good examples is a Steamroll dig too. I think that's a really good loop. It does a lot of similar stuff. This feels like it is taking that idea to the next level. And it's one of the reasons I you know, I'm just already and I am in love with this game. Yeah, this is it's so appropriate that you are fighting Uh it's it's known who you're fighting now, right, yeah, it's

time. Yeah, yeah, you're fighting Chronos, they say, they say depth to Krotos is one of the first words. Like sorry if that's a spoiler to you, but like, uh, also, hey, that's that's what Percy Jackson is about. Sorry for spoiling a ya novel from like ten years ago. Listen, Copeland is in that pro okay, and he's doing his best work. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, he's all

right in it. But like it's so appropriate that like time Kronos is the big bad and this is killing so much to Yeah, this is wasting so much, eats it up. I think it's it's a metaphor for it so deep for me, I'm sorry if after all that, like I'm still not going to play it. I just need you to admit it's because you love having an excuse to not play games. Like that's what Patrick's like. It's like, I just like have an excuse to not do something until it's time

to do the thing. And I'm like, I can respect that. Yeah, I love I'm the same way. I love to hear that that's totally fine. Uh haities too early? Don't just just do it on the version number it says zero point nine two. Yeah, yeah, kind of almost there. Yeah, But the same time, they're like, and it's not going to launch it till next year, but what how much should access through the end of the year at least? Like and that's so what do you

mean you know? Yeah, yeah, it's like yeah, yeah, I think I don't know who else has as good of a relationship with the idea of early access. The super for for sure, but like they seem to have like really maximized their relationship with the idea of early access. Absolutely, yeah, they them, And like I mean I think, like you know, Minecraft was like the one like basically one of the adventures of it, and then since then, I don't think anyone's done it better than the super

Giant. The other aspect that I don't think we've really touched on is like how much they've adjusted the combat in terms of just adding a charge move. Yeah, Like you have a second meter, right, so yeah, you have you have a magic meter. She's a witch. I need to I like really need to nail this because it's so important to this character. She does magic. So you have you have, you have all of your you have your normal abx, A, b X Y abilities. All have a

modifier that you charge that takes this meter. Each of the weapons has a second like they're all different per weapon, except the cast, which like puts a circle down and like little spirits come up, like shades come up and they hold the guys in place. Except there are some boons that modify the way that the cast is placed, which gets kind of crazy. And like

they made the sprint useful. That's one of the things that like I really appreciate about, like very tiny change this sprint in Haities one didn't really feel like a useful thing. And I don't really remember if there were any boons that modified the way that the sprint behaved like there, but they were they were pretty few and far between. A couple runs where sprinting was like, Oh, I'm just going to sprint through all these enemies, but that was

rare. But there are now enemies where it's like, oh, you gotta you need to sprint so you don't get hit. And then in order to justify that, they're like, okay, well, if we're gonna ask the player to sprint all the time and incentivize them to sprint, we should probably put an ability tied to the sprinting. So now you can like there's a Poseidon boon that gives you a wave that pushes enemies back when you run through the mirrors. There's a there's one that its days like, it's so sick.

Did you get the one where it's if you're sprinting, any projectile will disappear and it will catch the person who sent the projectile at you on fire. So anytime I was like, okay, I'm attacking, anytime I see a projectile, I'm just running right up the projectile. They evaporate before me, and then I see the little dude one hundred feet away like catch it on fire. I'm like, hell yeah. That rules. The last thing say about Hades two, and then we'll take another quick bricky break and head

the emails. Saw Jordan Midler tweet yesterday that the boss of the second area of Hades two is the best in both games and maybe any worldlike and my man is a percent. It's so fucking true. I like, I all I want to do is talk about it, but I won't because it is so there. They're mechanic. There, there is a think I can't. I can't. It's so fucking good, like it's just it's already one of my favorite moments in games this year, and it's and it's may Jeff craft

crub. Yeah, how how many times did it take you all to beat hecate the first? You say it delicious hakat with a little line in there, God a third run? I was kind of fucking around the first two, but maybe I think I was the third one. But how many times against the boss at least? Though? How many times did you like fight the boss herself? Three? Okay before I beat Yeah, before you beat

her? Yeah? Three? Okay? I beat a first tribe. But Mike did as well, and he texted me because he was like, oh, I want you to know I beat it first try I'm like, yeah, I get it. I did too. Problem. Yeah, I I purposely threw it the first time, you know, Yeah, for sure I wanted to. Yeah, I had a I had this awesome boon that made my my my spear attack just do it twice every time I hit the button.

She just does it twice. And I was just crazy. Yeah, it was quite easy actually with that, there's so few when it fucking chugs, like it goes, like when when all of this stuff is popping off, and it feels like the game is really like in the flow, like there's nothing like it, Like it really does feel like so rewarding when you are faced. And also those little moments right where you're sitting at the crossroads and you're like, okay, do I have enough money to buy a thing?

But there's an enhanced boss version of this boon behind this door. I want to go buy this stuff and then take the Like that decision making is so nice, it's it's like a video. I understand watching folks play like a roguelike can be frustrating, but I do really enjoy watching uh friends play Hades too, and Original Hades as well, just because of how different everyone's builds are yeh like I saw a little bit of Mike playing and I saw a little bit of Bailey playing it yesterday. I'm like, huh, we

treat this game one hundred per different. Don't wait differently, miss me with I don't give a fuck what. I just like I like looking. I just like looking. Yeah, I'll look at her. But I got jack. Got plenty of JPEGs for that. You know that's true. That's true, plenty of JPEGs. Good, good, good good. Well, folks, we're gonna take another quick breaking break and we'll be back with your emails right after this emails. Pomcast at john bomb dot com is the email addressed

to send your emails to. If you were looking for your Chili's receipt from the other night for your one alcoholic beverage, I guess hit me up if you need that for finance purposes. Also, please stop what. I freaked out when I saw an email hit the thing saying like your Chili's order, here's your Chili's receipt. I thought like, oh no, my my air base card got fudged. Oh no, got I got hacked. And then I saw that someone just sent me their chili's receipt, So thanks, thanks

for that. What was was that? What was Dan like worried about it? Packs with like a card? Wasn't there something like weird snanigans? I was like, Oh, he's worried. I can usually ignorm at this point. Yeah, this pidding. Just take a deep breath, say oh honey, oh honey, he's just like what is it like your hand rainfall his face? Yeah, you know, I'm just like put a blanky over him.

Look it's nighttime now. Uh, send your fun emails with if you want to avoid a social interaction or you want to co write an email with someone you're on your first date with. Have you ever thought about that on a first date? That's a good that's a good idea, right, exactly, Like to send an email both of you send an email to this. That's quaint. Ye, It's like a thing to do. It's the thing

to do. Uh. I had a really good friend tell me that his ideal first date and I don't know what his success right for this was was bro Like, I think taking someone to do laundry is a good first date, and like, what are you fucking talking? There's just no way that's true. I mean that has a sentiment quicker have sex with a person than do that. Yes, Like I think like you would have to like be

on some sort of like dating app that agrees for like a laundromat. For like, There's no way you could just like spring that on somebody million dollar idea. We make a dating app. Okay, please drop the name SuDS and Buds. Okay, SuDS and Buds like it. After you you get matched with someone, the app will suggest a miscellaneous random activity. That s right, but we can still call buds. You can't suggest like the laundry

things. That just makes it sound like you want them to see your dirty under Yes, I have soiled these underwear and I want you to see that. Okay, see like I was approaching it from such a freaking wholesome place. You know, I want people to see your dirty underwear. Jeff backlar, I never have. I never we asked how much launder he was doing on this first date. But then you know, also I don't believe he got many second dates from this weird Yeah, this is also the same thing.

This is also the same friend that apologized to me because he ate a whole ice cream cake that we were saving for someone's birthday, and I'm like, wow, so his underwroum was fucked up. You can't eat a whole ice cream cake like you can't? Let me tell you. Put one in front of me. Let's see what happens. Korean Johnny, you ate that whole he ate that whole cake? Gro could you? You couldn't eat like a whale ice cream fudgie the whale cake? Could you not? Not?

Really? Now? I couldn't even know who cheese alone cake fucked if I had old pizza. But I could not a whole ice cream cake, no way. See. I used to do like this thin crust pizza challenge in high school. I've I did a seven or eight times and that was fine. No way now, no fucking shot, my dude, no way. I you know, I feel like I could do it, but then I can barely stay up past eleven PM. Now you'd be walking around all floatsy and weird, and yeah, I'd be in a bad way for sure.

Yes, shot, I think out of all of us, Dan is the most impervious to cheese. Can you imagine if that? I don't know, he was pretty bad. It's like, fuck them up, pretty bad on numerous occasions. At this point, lactose intolerance, I think is a mindy issue. You're right, I agree. I think we can you can rise above it. I think like if you take enough lactate, it's instead of mine over matter, it's mine over Mazzarella. Ay ay, all right,

First email, real life blight club. This comes from a buddy high and glorious Bombsters. I've come up with real life blight club circumstances for each of you, fellow Bombsters. Do you believe these people would make it to the end? FYI, no time limits, all difficulty. Dan, you are on a reality cooking show and Gordon Ramsey is the judge. Keep competing until you win. It is you and you alone on your team. Oh.

I forgot to mention that this is top Step Junior. He would get caught up yelling at the other the other kids, caught up yelling at the kids. Gordon is gonna make dang cry in the pilot. Yeah, and then he will be just like taking down a gigantic peg or two, and then all the kids beat up on him. I'm not sure I've been more excited about a fictional thing in my life. I think, Dan would do. He would do it. But do you think you would learn how to cook

through this? Yeah? I actually I actually do think so. Well, okay, because the thing is the problem would be he would get so used to the kitchen setup at the show that he would go home and it'd be drastically different. Right now, he would forget it all. He have to remodel his home kitchen to look like this setup, right chef cameras and everything. Hey, Top Chef fantastic show. If you ever have Top chef z list Internet celebrity, holler boy, Yeah, the rewards lady's name Chris,

Chris and Kish. Chris, come on the show, Chris and Kiss you want to pop on the dump truck? Please? Come on the dump truck Chris and Kish Please? I love her. She's great. Uh, Sophia Rowe, you want to come on the on the program the program. I'm on the couch. That's why I want to make a funnel cake now. Oh grub Nikki, I forgot to take pictures of this because I may have been under the drugs I made. I made the savory funnel kick. I was Oh you did it? Was fucked up? Nick I took I took

your suggestion. Yeah, I put. I bought some carnitas from the taco truck out there, and then I sprinkled some cotilla and that ship and some salts because I was pretty How does that happen? I don't understand, Gordon. Was it similar to a gordina? It's like, you know, two hours? I bet? No, no, no, The meat was pre cooked. The funnel cake operation easy peasy. Uh. Have you ever gotten a chiloupa from Taco Bell? Of course, it's like that. Okay,

it's like that, So it's like it's it's soft, it's chewy. I'm gonna get a chiloopa today. Hell yeah, if I you know what upf Maybe we'll start the pre stream early and I'll just make a funnel cake again. Yeah, let's do it. Uh. Backlar, you must spend an entire day at Magic Kingdom with Dibb and Minati parentheses. Your wife stayed at home, and your goal is to ride every ride the park has in one

day. Jeep is genuinely interested in everything Minati has to say, and constantly ask him how the Kingdom Heart's lore fits into each area of the park. It is July and you have no sunscreen every time you sigh. Every time you sigh, the day starts again. Wait a fucking minute. Okay, this is so dumb because I just I guess, I just die like I guess, I just every time you sigh. But you are living for the rest of your life. I'm sorry. So screened be a thing here that

is withheld from me? What are we doing? You just go buy one of those umbrella hats. Guess what. It's called reflections and the light is really good at doing it. I will get but it's okay because the reward is your immune to the sun. Ask him. That's a that's the thing. I don't think I want either. I think like I would. Everything about this sounded delightful. I would absolutely go to Magic Kingdom for an entire day, have Mike Manatti be our freakish little tour guide and Dib and I

shotgun learning all about the little nooks and crannies of the Magic Kingdom. Do you think it would be the Groundhog Day where it's like, you know, he is doing that for ten thousand years or whatever. Do you think it would be like that long before you'd be able to accomplish this without sighing?

I'm never gonna do it, yeah, because it will never happen. Uh. Maybe it's the secret to living forever, but that's what's gonna happen, because I won't have sighed because of the knowledge or the uh you know, existence of what. You don't figure out the sighing thing until like the third or fourth run. I'm just saying, the sun will cook me to death. I die before I can sign, or the sigh will be your last breath. Yeah, And the sign is like the one way to guarantee you

don't wake up with that sunburn the next day. So it's like, oh my god, way out you guys. You don't even know what it's like to be sunburn. Maybe you do, Grub, I definitely do. And if you, I think you could still be worse than me. And if that's the case, oh boy, you are that's terrible and men fucking star it is not okay, I know. It's how life came the great Okay, it's the bane of my existence. I am that shadow hopping video game.

That is me. Your reward backl are sun immunity and sun quality time. Oh I love the half of that Grub. You must go to Nintendo headquarters and you must convince Nintendo to take you off their blacklist. Crap. I forgot to mention that you don't have an appointment and you have to sneak in and if you get caught, you must start over. Also, you are cosplaying as a warrior for all of it. No save scumming the conversation. Well then no, no, I definitely won't be able to do this

if I can't save scum like Baclar can. If I don't have a Grindhog Stay situation, I get like probably shot and killed in this scenario. Do you think you learn each run or listen? If I if I got a run, if it was run based, I would eventually do it. But nothing here says that it's run based. I can't say some of the conversations conversations, it doesn't sound like I'm not doing a Groundhog Day situation. So I assumed these were all run based. Oh now now it has been added

to the email. It's run based now, Nikki, Okay? In that case, one million percent. I love early access emails. You're in a ground of the scenario. I think I could do most things eventually that you would probably be like a thousand years. But I would be able to do it. I figured out the exact scenario of being in a Warrior constume and getting me a Moto to give me his blessing. Yeah. Oh, but you would do it in less than a thousand years probably, Yeah. I

think it would take you probably two weeks. Yeah, I think very quick. Your reward you're off the blacklist lifetime supply of Nintendo discounts. Oh, those coupons you want to cool? Five up at that five dollars coupon they put in a magazine for when they like broke a off. Yeah. Uh, Minati, you must protest. You must protest the new Hollow Night Silk Song game outside of Team Cherry's studio every day until the day it releases.

In one point zero, advocating for bug rights, the developers boycott you in a fit of fury, denouncing the Minati name on all social media platforms. You addressed as a caterpillar and hashes a butterfly each day in a performance or fashion, proclaiming the bugs should create their own sequel. The more believable you protest, the suitor the game comes out. The less believable your protest, the more it is delayed. I think I think he could do it too.

Yeah, he'd get it done in like two hours, right. I don't think you would like if it was a situation where like, no, you have to do this, We're making you do this, I think he would go all out, go all out and make it happen. Yeah. Yeah. Reward you get to play silk Song first, and Team Cherry admits you were a marketing stunt. Oh cool, so you get let off the hook. All right, Yeah, buddy from an island in Florida'm gonn ask

you you email again and fill out the rest of the GB roster. I'd love to see Nikki's flight, Bailey's blight, TAM's blite, Lucy's blight, and then finally myself. You must drive read this for you show. Okay, Jen, You must drive an urgent mission to supply the East coast with Pokemon cards. You are riding shotgun with a semi driver hauling booster boxes of Pokemon cards. They are chatting with you over all things Pokemon. You must

never say the word Pokemon and can never say a Pokemon's name. You have to keep the conversation going and not ignore him. There is a slot machine in front of you. One in the cab with one to twenty odds to skip an hour of the drive, and it has a thirty minute cool down. It's a forty five hour drive. Fail the slot or say a forbidden word and you start over. The driver is also Donald Trump. Oh my

god, this went from okay to hell on fucking Earth. I was thinking, like, oh, I could like to just smoove my through a conversation. I could pretend to sleep. Perhaps that's so he's very lazy. The people the same, he's very lazy. Also, what the fuck? Well one out of twenty to skip one hour? In no way are you ever like incentivized to try and do that. That's crazy. Well, it doesn't seem like there's a losing no day, start starts over. The day starts

over, the drive starts over. I'm jumping out of the truck. Is that thirty Fail the slot or say a word, you start over? Also behind the wheel? Yep, little boy, fucking crazy. I could do it. I know, it's like, I know it's not I could probably do this for like, I could probably hit shotgun with with Trump. Forty or five hours is rough? Forty five hours? Well, I mean, listen, you don't have a choice, right, so I have like I try. I'm sleeping for most of it. No, you have to keep

the conversation going. Yeah, here's the thing I think I would. I think I would try and baffle him with bullshit so he would wind up being quiet, and then I would become the annoying one in the situation. Okay, I wouldn't you know? This is how the turntables and everything right, good point? All right, the reard semi truck of Pokemon cards and an extra truck for barbier Jan. All right, if barbier Jan's on the line, then I will Yeah, I'll buy it from an island in Florida.

Buddy, buddy, thank you so much, very detailed and that was great, buddy, good job. All right, that was a long email. Let's just read maybe one more. Uh. This comes from Quentin, also from Florida. This is about disc golf. Hello Bombers, longtime listener, first time emailer. I always wanted to send an email, but never knew quite what to say or what junk subscription to subscribe you guys to Never in my wildest dreams, what would I have imagined? The only other thing in

my life as important as video games to me. As video games would be brought up on this podcast, disc golf is truly so much fun. Oh cool. I'm happy to hear a member of the BombCast enjoyed playing and might bring a new audience to the game, no question, just the word of warning for anyone curious about the sport. I started playing during the pandemic to

stay active because I was sold on the idea of a cheap hobby. Four years later and hundreds of discs purchase, I can say you say, I will never be able to financially recover from this hobby, but in all seriousness, I highly recommend giving it a shot. It truly is a great time getting out there, as it's one of those easy to pick up, hard to master things. Happy throwing Quintin from Florida. Yeah, I'm not better than disc golf. I think like there's certainly like I'm maybe I'm I'm I'm

like a fall autumn disc golf person is probably the season for me. But it sounds lovely. I'm super into it. Yeah, and it's got to be like cheaper than like buying clubs for actual hundreds of discs, But still like, I think it's more affordable than a lot of other sports. So I'm looking at Chavez Ridge disc golf course and that's only gonna be it's right

behind Dodger Stadium, so that's only dot com. It's minutes. I don't think any place can be a disc golf course, right, Like, I feel like, yeah, if you get a trash can, yeah, anything you just need, like chains in a trash can, right, like a bucket, Yeah, yeah, y'all fuck with can jam yeah, sometimes beach thing, yeah, can jam. It's it's two trash cans and one of the trash Both of the trash cans have slots, little like male slots in them. You get more points if you if you eat the disc through the

slot. Otherwise you're trying to slam the disc into the top of the bin as it's tossed to you. What's the mini trampoline ball game too? What's that called spike spike ball? Slam ball ball is the greatest American passy. Well, that's the trampoline basket a ball, Yeah, the great American pastime spike ball. Yeah, he's nest all right. I found mine. Sland Ball's coming slamp ball's coming back soon a couple of weeks. Oh, lawsuits have been settled. Is that the Olympics because it came back. It came

back last year. Uh in Vegas? Can you believe it? They'll let you do it in Vegas. Oh my god? Weird? You know, I think going back to disc golf, it's funny. Like one time I saw like a disc golf a hole with the chain and I was just like, what you see it? And You're just like, what kind of alien contraction is this? No wonder prison? Yeah, like what a strange prison, some sort of aviary prison. Birds was torturing these these these sparrows. Uh, it's a weird, weird looking thing, that's all. How much

is it? S? Yeah? I was just doing that, like twenty to your middleman, don't forget grab middle film, all right, Yeah, I'm gonna get the overall pick here, the one that is forty dollars. I'm gonna go with that. How many discs in that bad boy? Is it just three? Let's see here The in Nova disc Golf starter set. Colors may vary one hundred and sixty to one hundred eighty grams. It's got a disc golf putter, a disc golf driver mid range PDGA approved disc golf

set, frisbee golf disk set. It looks like there's six or five total, or maybe six if a little one counts. What makes a frisbee a putter? Like, I know, I know, it's the weight I think, and it's like heavy. It's probably heavy. Yeah, yeah, it's denser, so you uh, you know when you're when you're putting, you're just right there versus like a big wobbly boy. There's a bunch of numbers on these. I don't understand a fairway driver mid range disc. They all

look kind of the same in terms of shape. So it must speed seventy, glide five, turn zero, fade two. This one has a turn rating of negative two. You know how they are driving ranges for for golf, right, Yeah, I just want to a disc golf driving range just to stretch a frisbee the park. I want to get a park bucket of discs we just come out. Also, let's also do ultimate frisbee in l a ultimate frisbee, So now that is that is a sweaty sport. Like

once you hold the frisbee, you have to stand. Yeah, you're there's a ton of running. What are you talking about? Okay, I'm trying to get you to play ultimate. I played Ultimate. I'll that Hell yeah, this okay, this is the most triumphant story from my high school experience. Uh you know, yeah, what made you prom king? Okay, maybe second most triumphant. Wow, we don't need to relitigate this. But I was never the most athletic. I dreaded pe because, like, I

could not dribble a basketball to save my life. I'm not one of those Filipinos. I could kind of swing a ball and swing a bat for baseball and all these other sports. Hated when we were running a mile on Fridays. But then when our pee teacher introduced us to the beautiful game that is ultimate frisbee, I got paired with like all the other fellow people that were uncoordinated, but we fucking won medals team because for whatever reason, my group

of hooligans understood the game. And then we would always just do the hammer toss, which is just throwing it vertically and just whiffing that and just tailmarring that bad boy. We'd make it across Ultimate frisbee. It's a great sport. We should we should do it. He play ultimate frisbee. What's kind of funny doing again the beach games instead of playing dodgeball, Let's play ultimate frisbee. Get five. I feel like snow snow Bikeael is probably so good

at well, he's gonna be he's gonna rally the troops. He's gonna be a real problem. But we'll just take him out first. Go along, Greggie, I'm gonna get your budge. Oh he's here. It's so funny. And he's fucking eleven feet tall too, Like you don't realize how tall Bikeael is, you know how like people will spin a basketball on their finger, that'd be snow bikel with like a frisbee. He'd just be like a jan I'm spinning the disc, buddy, I got you, righty A gent

Yeah for sure. God, it's so good. Tobaccla, you're you're a man. You're like Pistachio disguisio. Has anyone ever told you that? Many times? Many times? You're not the first, And I hope you tell me about nine to eleven. So yeah, that's exactly exactly Pistachio disguising. Yeah, uh God, is there is there a bastard disguised video game that we could fool Jeff back like I wish, God, I wish, but I don't think so. Imagine the world where that was the franchise to take

off and not Austin Powers. Uh huh god god uh. Folks, that is it for emails. Thank you for sending all of your emails into bombcasts at giant bomb dot com. What do we got going on for the rest of the week. It's a whole bunch of stuff as all. I mean, if we do we even really know in our hearts uh Daikatana Returnsdika Gubb Grubbatana tomorrow. Well. Also, I'll also be playing some more New Vegas tomorrow as well, so that'd be fun. There will be game mes mornings

the rest of the week. Thursday, what are we doing Thursday during the day? I forget we uh maybe checking back in with hell Divers too. Now that the whole snaff who is kind of situated to the dust is settled and stuff sounds good, yep, and then we will do upf We'll have BCR this week. It'll be a good time, yes, And we have a voicemail Dump Truck especial special duel time special time. It is an hour later than it normally is h seven oh seven Exit flu send your voicemails.

Not about any Marky wrestling shit, just about cool guys shit. Because we will have friend of the site Evil who Know and Adam Cole Bababe Babebee on the pod, so that'll be fun. Love Evil, who know, love Evil whatever the guy they're awesome chugs. Also, very very sweet individual, greb. Did you mention Blake Club? You did, right? Yeah, Blake Club at three pm tomorrow. Yes. Also, Hey, this Sunday,

folks, it's Mother's Day, So get that shit figured out. Take care of these or don't or don't yeah no, or don't for real because like not everyone has a great uh you know situation there. Yeah, I understand that. Do what you need to do, buy yourself flowers in that instance. Yeah, sometimes you're your own parent and that's valid and okay too,

So give yourself the space if you need the space. We're just if you are obliged, we're just the helpful reminder, helpful reminder, helpful reminder, and you know, but this is also a helpful reminder because you know, we're just gonna go over what we What did we learn today? Yeah, what do we learn? What do we learn? This is the wrong music cue, but we're gonna go with it anyway. Yeah, what the fuck is this? I don't know rules, Donkey Kolong adjacent. We learned

that maybe we can't trust big corporations. We learned that the hot Olympics might not matter anymore, and then the cold Olympics are far superior. We learned that Kirby's mouth could be cold, dry more hades is good, and don't let the game re juice touch your hands. Sometimes you also go up. We also learned that we all have plenty of JPEGs, and hey, we'll never know Backlar's pain and relationship with the sun. It's true, the folks, That's what we learned this week. I love it, just like I

love this podcast. And we'll do another one of these podcasts later in the week, BCR. Maybe we'll do the Hottest Moms in Gaming or best Moms in Gaming. Who knows. I'm gonna take a topic suggestions and we will see you next week for or another episode of the Giant BombCast. Oh, this is the old music's not playing? Stop lad, it's a good podcast. Oh God, too many thoughts. What's happening, what's happening. I charged the rock