911: Human Sandtrap

Hey everybody, it's Tuesday. Welcome to the Giant BombCast, Episode nine hundred and eleven. I'm your host approaching the Green jam Shoa, Welcome to the Giant BombCast. Joining me as I was co captain of the ship. He's picked a sand wedge as a driver and we're just going to see him cook.

Jeff Grubb, it's a beautiful day out here on the greens, Janichoa.

We are really going to witness some special golfing here today.

Speaking about special golfing, it's all in the hips, because he is the most hip person in a hip moving guy on the podcast on the website. Jeff Beckler, Well.

No, it's a beauty all day out here.

And Agusta, we're apparencing winds out of the north, not three miles an hour.

Did they do that?

They do the weather a lot because that matters.

That's like a big part of the gold broad.

Part of the meta.

Back to you at the at the studio, Jan, we have.

The human equivalent of a sandtrap. Dan Reichert, I.

Feel like I'm going to strain something trying to talk quietly for the first.

Time in my life. How you do it? Is this good they don't have to trap it hurts I hear it, heard it. We all have to do this until we introduced the last guy. Okay, all right, who's he's no longer the bad boy of games media because he's a dirty boy. That's right, Because he's out on the what do you call it? It's not a field when it's golf course court, of course, there you go. I don't I still don't know the battle zone, that's right, Thank you, Dan,

The merchmaster, my Bnatti, buy all this shit that I'm wearing. Go to store dot die bomb dot com and deposit money. Get hat and shirt, golf hat, golf shirt, get giant buck golf with It's.

A merchmaster, a Pokemon that can only say the merchise selling.

I gotta say, there's several forms of Mike Manati, and I think my favorite might be screaming merchman yeah wears Yeah, it's.

Really I really need to edit the video you did, Mike. It just throw some CRT filters on it. Throw in like a bunch of like PNGs of like you two can buy Golf week March. Yeah, taking like a local TV ed Mike Manati. I say this in the most pop a way possible. You exude when you're in merch master mode, the biggest Billy May's energy.

Oh yeah, sure, and.

Like we need that in the world, you know, Yes, Jan I forgot how little you know about golf vocabulary. I remember the last time, right, what were we doing last time where you were just like, what do you call the flat carpet part with the hole in it? Right, Like you just didn't know like what a green was?

It was awesome. I think it was.

Was it Mario Golf for the switch been?

Yeah, I mean I yeah, it was. It was Oh no, someone chested it was Bingo Papadoppolis. No, no, because that's not quite a golf golf game.

Yeah, I don't know about golf. I learned that a driver and a sand wedge and an iron or different golf clubs.

Would you happy, Gilmour?

I love a lot of Adam Sandler things, but I'm not familiar with the character's familiar with.

To hockey stick. Yeah, yeah, sure, like you. I can never think of the word pool que. Whenever she sees one, she calls it a pool pole, And then when I say it's a queue, she's like, I think pole would be better. Even if so, that's not what it's called. It's it's q Yeah, you know, Okay.

It's a little bit late to start lobbying the pool industry to change the name of it.

Yeah, I speak about pool cues and pool poles. I've encountered a lot of old men walking to a pool hall that bring their own cues. Oh yeah, is that yeah? Is that like too much pieces?

I have two pool poles in my storage here.

It's like bowling balls. I get right, because you want the weight, it feels right for you.

Same thing.

They're the exact same level. You bring your own bowling ball, You're going to be the same guy that brings your own pool queue for sure.

I bet fifty percent of them have flames on them.

Oh I wish, I wish.

Maybe maybe I want to say fifty one. I want to say it's on the over.

I want to say, yeah, yeah. Do people bring their own darts or is that yeah? I want to do the game thing.

There's always gonna be like leagues and people who take it super seriously and they always have their own ship.

That makes I mean, all this makes sense, right, because all the stock stuff is it's it's garbage, it's you know, it's been through the ringer.

Sure, sure, sure, sure sure. I'm trying to think of another sport where you would just rock the default stuff. But I guess if.

Yeah, yeah, the ones where has to be provided by the league itself, right, Yeah.

There's very few.

I mean, I guess yeah, not even like people bring their their own bats to batting cages obviously your own clubs to the golf course.

I betles.

Okay, okay, you know what word in the in the twitch chat? Would I use default coffee gear? You're right now, it all makes sense, right, It just had to be put in perspective.

I think I think I'm letting golf we get to me. I think I'm sorry to take it too seriously. I don't know. I stayed up like watching videos about the actual Pebble Beach, not the Siga Saturday Quick Stadler, for like three hours last night. I've learned a lot about that course and why there's First I think there's just a Golf Digest overview of it. Then there's some like Young, there's some golf influenc there who just has a very

A golf it's an interesting course, right, it's like very famous.

It's like uh oh, it's beautiful.

It's very strange, right and difficult, and it's even it's even better when you realize it's naturally occurring.

Yeah, he got me on the side.

Wait be young golf influencers, and I'm thinking, like, their videos can't just be like unedited eighteen holes, right, it's gotta be like, is it like mister beasted up?

What?

This one wasn't that bad.

It was mostly he played eighteen holes and it was cut, so you know, it was like a forty five minute video of him doing all that and talking about the course and you know some goose here. I bet he probably has more gimmicky videos too, but this one, like you know, it's just I'm playing Pebble Beach for the first time. This is a dream come true. You talking about some of the history, like the seventh hole. Is that par three that's right there on the cliff by

Right, Yes, yes, he was very supportive, the grandfather figure I never had until he wasn't he got I saw a video that he had to control his rage. Of course, I.

Told you, like, I have no evidence of this, but he just looks like a person with.

An anger management problem. And then you do have evidence.

There's literally a video where he talks about how he control of anger management issues.

And that's why he got really into wine.

Maybe Mike Maharty, Yeah, yes, yes.

Yes, one of the same one and the same. When I think of Mike Maharty, I think of a Walrus as well, but like a smaller, more spelt one.

Lle you ogotiate wine with Mike Maharty now that when there was a news story on NPR yesterday about how the wine industry is kind of been a lull, like people aren't buying wine the way they used to, and so it's like they're they're gonna just let like a metric ton of grapes rot this year because they're not gonna be able to use it for wine.

And I was just like legitimately worried about Mike.

I'm like he was distraught he had to miss a couple episodes.

Yeah, yeah, that's what That's what I figured all six time off bounce back.

Okay, I really like wine, but then I've noticed I just I think I like wine because it's cheap. Where I go get wine, I mean there's cheaping versions of the booze, you know. Yeah, but like I don't like cheap beer, but cheap wine like yeah juice.

I'm with you guys there.

The delta between cheap wine and expensive wine is a lot slimmer.

It's at Yeah, you're gonna summon Mike Mahrdy like beetle juice. If we keep talking, It's okay, it'd.

Be nice to see him.

It'd be nice he's a nice guy. Like he's a nice boy. He's a nice boy. And I just remember one time we were at a bar and he looked at me and he just like threw his hands in the air and said, jan, I know you're looking at my ears. I'm like, what one you know, I'm not what And then he just goes like, I know I have small ears. Stop looking. I can't help but look. But it's okay if you out there have small ears

Uh.

There's like a small little toggle when you go select the podcast and just like boo that and then hey, bing bang boom, you can see our lovely mugs on the go. I believe it also works on the desktop version. So there we go. If you've ever only listened to us and you want to see what we look like, Hey, what's cooking something? I have a hair?

What what could be better than that? Aside from like, I don't know, mugs in the store?

How up that the whole golf The before delivered a huge sales day for us through golf Week, which you could be a part of my going to store dot giant bomb dot com everybody, and you're on this mug bullshit?

Right?

That was That was yesterday, Mike today is today.

Lately selling more colf shirts and the hats. Hey, why'm sure to that? That's what I'm doing today?

It's golf week.

Idea to do a golf week There I am dressed like an asshole, I mean a stud to sell.

The shitory straight, get your story straight.

Speak about getting the story straight. We're open to communication, we're being honest and what we're going to be honest about. And I'm going to toss this to Jeff Beckler. You're going to get an email in your email inbox from you might us you might Yes, No, it's not from us. It's not from us. See that's why clear communication. So I'm going to toss this to the more qualified person to talk about it.

That's right, me, the emailer, the one and only true emailer. No, listen, folks, depending on the level of engagement that you've had with our website over the last I don't know, two years or so, you will likely be getting an email. I believe the email will come from our from like a

That's about it.

Just want to put that out there on everyone's radar, make sure you know what's coming. You might get this email today, you might get it next week, you might get it two weeks from now. But if you do get it, I think the subject will say something about you know, independent Giant Bomb and all that good news. Yeah, give it a read, let us know if you have any questions. And that's about it, Jan speak about two weeks, give or take.

I just want to say this out loud because this is an open forum and a safe space to talk. But I miss seeing yell in person. I wish I could see all in person. Dan, can you do anything about that.

I can absolutely do something about that. Jan, you know, four or the five of us on this call. You know, Mike wasn't born yet. Mike, remember in twenty twenty two, we all got together and we had a real fun time on the East Coast and we spent fifteen hours spending time with each other, playing local multiplayer games with each other, and doing a whole subscriber drive thing for a giant bond back in the day.

That was three years ago.

Now we including young Mike Manatti and including Chuck and Sean, we'll be going back to the East Coast. We did fifteen hours last time, twenty four hours stretch switch, YouTube, subscriber drive, Giant Bambathon. We got a lot of fun stuff planned, a lot of stuff in the works right now. We've been talking about it for like two months now. I think maybe some people here haven't seen love on a leash. We'll see if there's some incentives for that,

Yes, let's leave my hair alone this time. I agree. Everyone chat's worried about it. I should be too. Yep.

Well, we also got to figure out what we're doing with Extra life and Kayla. Kayla is always a foot, so you never know.

She just comes at me with the scissors. That's right, thought up, But she's a person. Book, I'm just fucking donkey Kong. That's awesome.

Hell yeah, kaylamon, Yes, it's gonna be awesome. We have a lot of fun stuff planned and uh, it's gonna get stupid and fun late night twenty four hours evening to evening.

You'll want to tune in for this.

Yeah, I'm very excited. There's been a lot of behind the scenes work going on a gang, so hats off to y'all here. I'm very excited to see y'all very soon. I'm less excited to perhaps witness love un a leash. Dan, there's no guarantee you have to watch it the least lounge, the least lounge. Well, I was going to throw it to Dan to reveal it, Mike, but I guess you could just talk about it. I got excited, Mike, Why don't you tell us the name of motherfucker? We had

Wish? Wow?

Why did you say like that? I felt like I had to do something.

Yeah, I'm about to fuck up my like Amazon recommendations when I buy like seven leashes with human sized collars.

Yeah, you can do that. You can go to your your local Roman sort.

Of find.

Extreame restraints dot com. Everybody there's they're a sponsor.

Now, Yeah, there you go, which is so leaicious on the bum. Michael, you got all the power to do that, you sybody. You don't even have to word yeah embroidered wishes. Oh great, Yeah, fantastic. It's gonna be a fun time. I'm very excited. Perhaps, uh well, we will do a full twenty four and who knows what else we're gonna do.

Yeah, it just it feels like a chance, like really like just set up, set us up for the future, and just like really declare, Hey, yeah, all that stuff happened earlier this year.

Now we're going forward and this will be the.

Real start of it. So very excited about it.

Yes, yes, will there be singing, who knows. We'll probably do a podcast or two in between we are during actually yes, during during Shenanigans will be afoot. I'd like to order a pizza at one point the sorry.

Yeah, it's Detroit invention.

Actually, yeah, you know I'm gonna say this. I think I like Detroit style pizza.

Better anyway better, yeah, turned me ye, It's just it is demonstrably better.

Opinions. I think both are good.

Probably both are good, you know what, that's right, Just like Jimmy Fallon where we're not going to get political here, how dare you?

And everyone loves that guy on a on account of that bullshit.

Mike, the Jimmy Fallon of games media.

Though the good boy never sold anybody anything, that's true are you talking about? I think he has.

Somebody's bought a Fever Pitch DVD at some point.

Depressing.

I just SND.

I think he has sold a lot of people, a whole lot of nothing.

Hang on, I need to check something right now. I'm searching.

And don't you look Barrymore in that movie? Yeah, she probably sold that movie.

Do you think I'm gonna look this up?

I don't know.

Do you think he put out a comedy album with songs?

I'll who probably? Yeah? Are you gonna look? Yes?

And if he has one, there's gonna be an option in the Leash Lounge where you can just send some of the Leash Lounge and that's put on headphones and listen to the entire gymn.

Maybe pot he collaborated on something.

Yeah, he's he popped on stuff and he he loves to sing on his show. But I don't know if he's made it. Folks album album, we have two answer.

We have The Bathroom Wall from twenty two thousand and two, and we have Low Your Pants Off from twenty twelve.

Twenty twelve. Yeah, twenty twelve.

Seems to be an actual music album where he brings in like, oh, it's like Timberlake and Paul mcfurk on it. He looks like the Bathroom Wall. Okay, Okay, the bathroom Walls count He released.

Oh Christmas album last year Holiday Seasoning.

Yeah, that's not exciting.

The look of this.

I think that the bathroom Wall is his attempted at a Sandler thing. Here are the tracks, Idiot Boyfriend, I Can't Play Basketball, Drinking in the Woods, Road Rage, Snowball, troll Dolls, Celebrities, dorms, shower baskets, and the Walk of Shame Roommates Chris Rock was my ra gotta get a fake id troll doll jingles. We have two troll doll themed songs in two thousand and two and hammer Time.

Do you think that's just a cover of hammer Time by mc hammer? It might be.

Do you ever think about how is the movie Fever Pitch is a baseball movie, but it's a remake of an English movie about soccer, and so in the English movie it's fever pitch as in the field is called a pitch, and for baseball it's because they're pitching a ball.

Yeah, that's interesting thing about that movie.

Absolutely it is.

Yes, do you want to see Taxi?

Yeah, Queen Latifa.

And yeah no no, I watched that and Set of Love on a leasht.

Nine tomatoes, nine Yeah, couldn't break double digits, could it?

No? Not quite? Oh you mean a nine out of one hundred.

Yes, that is what I meant.

That's what I meant.

Okay, Wow, I was confused there for a second.

Yeah, So in uh, when I was in college, I had like a I forget the specific class, but you just kind of had to make like a mini reel for yourself. And I made this whole thing where I just wanted to take Jimmy Fallon's job of hosting Late Night and I just had like under it, and I thought I did a pretty good job. I don't fucking know where that file is anymore, but the whole thing was better than Jimmy Fallon and my classmates. Dug it. I thought I did a very good job in everything.

One, No, but I think that's the kind I think that those are the people who like that something in him.

Nice boy.

Yeah yeah, And then she just kept going like I loved his contributions to Saturday Night Live, and I love.

Yes, such a fair way to describe it, though, contributions because he didn't make anyone laugh, but he contributed.

He had a decent sailor impersonation on Celebrity Jeopardy. Outside of that, he was mostly known for sucking at like breaking during sketches. It's like the main thing he's known for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've never understood why he's popular.

No, Mike was there, a teacher, a ropey.

It's just as weird got upset on Jimmy Fallon's behalf.

I don't know. She was okay the rest of the semester, but I didn't quite trust her and I didn't want to bash Jimmy Fallon anymore.

We got to talk about Jimie Town for another thirteen minutes. Right, that's the quota.

Oh yeah, check, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, okay, did we clear the King of Meat threshold as well?

I don't know, insane that Jimmy Fallon has a ride in Universal.

Yeah, that's the crazy thing actually about him.

He would you say the Backlot Tour is a Jimmy Fallon ride.

He's in Orlando. Gender is an entire ride that's just about Jimmy Fallon. You go in the Q is themed. The Q is actually the best part because it's the show museum that was where Twister was.

Which was more dorade.

Yeah, and it's it's it's just a bad simulator, right, It's really weird. It's like you're in the audience for a show and you were three D glasses that he races you randomly, and you're the whole theater races him, and you go to the mood and office beloved characters show up, like when he's that girl who goes aw you see.

Her, right, Jimmy Foul feels like the last celebrity who's famous just because he was on TV.

Like he's just famous because he was he happened to be on TV.

Yeah, I think he's like.

The harbinger of the death of good late Night, you know, because you don't. She was kind of coming in. It's like you're starting to get like, Lettermans retire. Yeah, Letterman's about to retire. The whole Lino Conean ships about to go down, and Conan kind of like exits, you know, uh late night not too long after. It's just like I think it all got what the ship once Fallon got involved.

You don't, okay, because if we don't get Fallon, we don't get James Cordon right, right?

Or is that a chicken or the a kind of thing?

Oh sure, I don't know.

Uh.

At the same time as is Fallin, right, they both started a little bit, I think a little bit. But after okay, yeah, okay, that being said, I miss Craig Ferguson. He's not a piece of right. He's around, he's doing something right, He's okay.

Ferguson.

Craig Ferguson was the best. He was so good at his monologues.

It was incredible.

Jolbourne doing is is remember Yambo.

No?

I remember being in that old was he an old school.

Whatever?

He's the creep?

Yeah? Was he talk soup.

And guy I care about Craig Stadler from Pebble Beach Golf Leaks, speaking of golf, taking away my.

Golf Week is happening right now.

Everybody on Giant Bomb and you can celebrate with your very own Giant Bomb golf at and Giant Bomb the golf shirt. Go to store dot giant bomb dot com get one or the other, or be a real pro and get both store dot giant bomb dot com. Everybody Golf Week. It's not just for us, It's for you.

He was the daily show host, former John Stewart.

That's what I was.

Thinking, old enough to remember Stuart being the new guy.

And then I also got Kilbourne's late Late show after Tom Snyder and before Greg Perguson.

Yeah right, and Tom Snyder was like not funny, and I was very confused.

This is a dark room where he talked to boring people.

That was the thing.

That Ken Work came on. He was he was pretty funny. Actually he was fine compared to Tom Snyder. I could so do that.

If I, okay, Gang, if I wind up moving to l A, I'm just gonna rent out a shitty the shittiest little closet studio possible, and we're just gonna invite whoever wants to come, and.

The cigarettes too.

I could be miss.

Eve better.

You speaking his language, and then they roulette. Yeah, Pokemon cards.

Tom Schnyder would not shut the fuck up about Pokemon cards.

It's like you guys are reading off of a list of my favorite things. Tom Snyder Pokemon cards. I don't know who Tom Snyder smoking overalls, don't.

We're just standing there, gin there. I miss the robot host of me to Craig Ferguson.

He was a gay robot and that was a representation we need ever spelled that way of a g I'm sorry.

You know what.

Yeah, maybe we'll maybe we'll compile lists later. But speaking about lists, Dan Riker, you came to us early this morning because you got a new magazine. Please please please describe the thought process.

Yes, I have not told you the plan for this list. I only told you I want to have a blank list of fifty entries, and I want to see if we can just kind of rapid fire how many of these we can name. I just the time and place of this magazine, and it makes me very interested. The video game history Foundation. This is not an ad. I pay for this every month and I have for years. They do a vintage magazine kind of blind box thing, so every month you get like an old DGM or Game Pro or you know whatever.

You can get some.

Computer Gaming World yesterday. So I was very excited because I've never read one of those, only heard good things about it.

It's a good thing. Yeah.

So I got mine yesterday and it was from October two thousand and one, and it is a PSN is a issue number fifty of PSN, and that's the top here.

It is a least for.

From SSX, which I showed up to.

Banka pointed about what I remember crappy the face looks and then lovingly drawn breast like just the marks and everything.

The lips and the tits, and you're, guest, wait, that's that's snowboarding.

This is the snowboarding game, Beckler.

Yes, I know, I don't remember that character anyway, they do, never mind.

So what fascinates me about this is for the fiftieth issue of PSM. You can see the seal is not broken. I have not opened it yet, so I don't know anything. They list the fifty best PlayStation games ever as of year two thousand and one one, so we're so we're like a year into and keep in mind that probably like got finalized and sent to the printers in like August or whatever. So that means there was a lot of stuff in that first year PS two that they're like kind of a week first year and then like

So I am so curious.

I mean, this would basically be like from the first PlayStation launch to the first year of the PS two, Like what would the top fifty games be?

So, Jane, you've got a list. Can the folks at home see that?

Yes, they should be able to find the list?

And Jim, why don't you like call us out one by one and then Dan, you'll gill check and then we'll go to the next person.

Does that sound like the best way to do this? Yeah, I'm thinking quick, look, yeah, well let's do let's let's go around the horn. I'll call you all out. Let's do two games each person.

And don't do me because I'll be checking this and Janie'll go out the list and now let's try to get the top ten.

First, guys, let's try to like nail the top ten.

They do separate it from the truly tantalizing ten and the tremendous twenty five and then the top fifty. So and I'll get the truly tantalizing ten.

Okay. And again, Dan, this is the best, the top the.

Best PlayStation games ever. This is PSX, the magazine PSM PSM. Okay, is that imagine or was that future?

Who made this? Is Davis?

I don't see right now, I'm gonna lose, Okay.

Jeff, Jeff knows the different leanings of those magazines a little bit of.

And this is it's not pouring, Dan, you can just Yeahka just tells you to start though.

Okay, Oh, this is oh cool.

Imagine Bill don hughes On here yep, yep, yep.

Okay. And this is according to PSM magazine, right, yes, got.

October twenty He said it's the company that would was starting I g in at this time.

Yes, okay, okay, all right, let's start with mister Minati. Okay.

Uh, I'm going to suggest Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Solid is the number one PlayStation game of all time.

Yeah, okay, would also like to suggest a final Fantasy seven.

Final Fantasy seven is the twelfth greatest PlayStation.

Wow, I thought that would be in the top ten.

I can guess as well.

Yeah, yeah, okay, yes, one, yes, one, Okay, mister backlar.

Uh.

Crash Bandicoot all right, crash Bandicoot is maybe you can give me both at the same time. So as I'm scanning, I can and Silent Hill okay, crash Bandicoot and Silent Hill. Silent Hill is the fifteenth best PlayStation game of all times. Pretty high for so Hill one before Hill two though, singing crash Bandy there's okay, hang on, I.

Wonder if they might put do the sequels higher than the original.

You know, I'm scanning. I'm scanning. I've looked at all of them. I'm just seeing if I missed anything.

It's already.

I mean, do any of them right, let's just do that way, okay?

Yeah.

Crash Bandicoot Warped is the tenth best place station. Crash Team Racing is the twenty eighth best PlayStation.

Oh you got two? What number DAN for CTR?

CTR is twenty eight? So we'll go buy those rules too. So if if you say like a series or whatever. I'll just go ahead and going forward.

Okay, Okay, okay, mister Grubb, well wait a second. He wanted to look right now for the other Final Fantasy because I feel like a nine and the.

Should just do that.

Yeah, he's showing up thereats.

Tactics is nineteen.

Oh, Tactics made it.

That's great, So.

Tactics at nineteen. Final Fantasy eight is number twenty one.

W this was this was before and nine was reconsidered and is everybody's favorite back then. I think no hard Nope.

Final Fantsay nine is the sixth The best PlayStation is.

A good list.

Yeah, but it kind of I feel like Roger Burt Show was writing for this magazine.

He was a huge ARPG guy. He probably would have been right there.

Okay, then let's go with I'll just say the specific ones I'm thinking of, but you can check the whole thing Resident Evil too.

That is the fourth best PlayStation game.

Okay, that sounds right. Okay.

Now I'm like split between Tony Hawk or Castlevania simply of the Night. I'm gonna go for Castlevania Symphony of the Night because I think I think I think it was being real reprised right in this moment.

Is the third best. Yeah, there we go, there we go. All right, Okay, Dan, what about uh I guess any twisted Metal game? Oh, that'd be way up there on mine the twenties.

Yeah, Black isn't out yet, so.

Folks, I don't see a twisted Metal game on this.

I don't forget.

At this point, we had like just about three and four people had soured on the series.

But the Middle Black game out that summer, which I think would have been for that summer. Oh you know what this does say PS one all time. It did not say that. It just has PlayStation up here. But this is just PS one.

Yeah I figured twist but yeah, okay, gotcha, Okay, second one. Gosh, if they had tactics on here. I'm gonna take another shot in the dark for other RPG the PS one, Dan, show me legend of the Dragoon.

Legend of Dragoon.

Yeah, it could be there, could be there.

I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking.

It is the fortieth best place, okay, job, all right, all right, we got there. Legend of Dragoon might be Mikey back to you.

Yeah, definitely give me a grint charisma too.

Ah, good choice, let's go. And you're looking at the chat.

I'm looking look at the chat. Look, I know my PS one and then some of the Uh, here's a series we haven't said yet. Yeah, I know, but I think I'm going to go with a parasite Eve.

Okay, Oh, interesting choice here, Wow, folks, Parasite Eve did not make the list.

I don't know.

I don't know if there's fifty better P one games and pairs?

But maybe do we it was my turn? Did we not get the number two? No, you do not, so we did.

Go ahead.

Let me give you resideval because we already did mention the resideval two. So three is number twenty nine?

Right?

And then four wasn't on it?

Four?

And to be fair, I forgot we said right, that was the big franchise I was thinking about.

Ye, yes you did. Yeah, I know. Listen, I'm a bad person.

I think number two is probably it could be Tony Hawk.

It has to be, right, doesn't.

I think there's a pro skater two is gonna be Skater two is number nine? Okay, Okay, I feel like we can go to like a group if you just want to call him out.

You know.

Yeah, and then my other one was going to be snipher and filter.

Oh interest filter. Good choice is gotta be on here, right?

That was a big one, kind of if it's not there, just you know, throwing tech.

And three hang on real quick, resident Evil. The first one is number forty two.

That makes sense.

Oh wow, there's got to be a tech and three up there. I don't see siphon filter. I do not see sicher filter. Nope, where's taking three? Number eleven?

I know, all right, I know a spiral game.

I think the original spiral of the Dragon beable.

I mean, Revenge Year Dragon is number twenty two.

Okay, oh yeah, is that the.

More spir Oh uh, that's the only spiral.

Okay? What was that one vagrant story? I don't see. They don't know really, dude.

It has been like it would have been.

Kind of soon for that. Oh okay, I have too go akay uh.

PaRappa Parapa is number seventeen.

Okay, okay, my two were wipeout real quick.

I do want to say I'll count Jammer as part of the Parapa series. That's number sixteen.

Okay.

Greb comes in with wipeout, which is no, no.

That was Backler.

Yes, sorry, get you guys mixed up. Fourteen is wipeout xl okay.

And then my other one was soul Reaver.

Oh wait, I'm sorry, siphon filter is on here. It was number thirty six. Sorry, okay, soul Reaver Legacy of Kine.

No, get the frick out of here.

Alright, let's's top ten. Nope, it's not.

Let's uh, let's stick to the taking turns just because we're stepping on each other. But g drop three games. Okay, all right, let's see here.

I'm trying to like think outside the box that number two to be I know, turmb Raider two.

Look at the series you would think, so.

I just don't.

To me, it's like I could be weird for even by Dan for them to still be like kind of glazing tum Raider.

But number thirty seven is tomb Raider. The last revelation that was three or four?

No, three like four four four.

Mm hm four is the only tomb Raider on this list. That's weird.

I think I have a good one.

Hang on, let me, let's let me do a couple. Well, no, you have a good one.

Could just go that's fine because this guy likes RPGs.

I'm thinking maybe Zeno Gears is this.

Yeah, that was the definite staff list. I would imagine Zeno Gears is number twenty.

Okay, Oh, sorry, okay.

I thought I thought my confidence was unfounded. A Kronocross thirty three. Oh, okay, there's a lot more RPGs here than I thought.

Third, Hey, the I G the Imagine staff are rpg weird, Yes for sure.

Yeah, if you are a PS one magazine, you better like j RPGs.

Actually, there are still three from the top ten that are not.

Yeah, this is that's driving me crazy. We are so vagrant pars legend is the wild.

Arms, Yeah, wild quite a while. There's another real just doesn't check wild Arms.

No wild Arms.

There's a real sick o jerap. We have may sweak it in two.

Oh that's a good one.

It might not have been like it might not have risen to that cult status at this point yet though.

Uh that is number thirteen.

Okay okay. Oh, is there is there a sports game like a Big One? Yeah?

Game Day Madden O two for the PS one is eighteen.

It's weird.

I definitely play the m POS two.

Weird Driver oh oh yeah, very good choice.

That's gotta be there. Oh yeah, barely Jesus.

It does seem like in general they're doing like one entry per series. Okay.

Oh they're saying if games of a series are different enough, more than one may appear on the list.

But they're saying, like with like tech and they just took one.

Okay, yeah, this one did just show up and chat. I did just glance, but I was thinking this one.

Let's can we just check ape escape?

That's just wondering.

I was one of that number two, number two. That's pretty high. Yeah, we still have a seven and eight.

Yeah are they Ridge racer Type four freaks?

Yeah, that's that's a good one.

Number eight one a good list, good list, this list.

That was number yeah, that's my favorite number.

Oh my god.

Okay, Mikey, back to you. Give me two more stretches.

Are type four? Okay, back to me two more. It is it is getting to a point where, boy, those are some really big impactful ones.

That we have up there, and at a certain point when you went throw on the towel, I'm just gonna read it from the bottom up.

Yeah, I don't know.

One just just just to just pipe up at this time because yeah, now I'm just trying.

Wait. Abes Odyssey. Oh good call, okay, I don't think so, I got one before we go to uh just made I got more, all right? Was AME's Odyssey on the top fifty? Dan World? Oh wow? Okay, this has to be on there based off of like the other games on there, guys, bless thee.

I bet game it's not though. That makes me think of another game that should be on.

It, which, okay, guys, is not. But I think Mike is about to guess number forty four.

I hander, yes, I thought.

Games games that are related except their names are exactly the same to me.

Where rival schools? Dan did? How about Bashido Blade?

Blade is number fifty? No rival schools, No rival schools?

But any other any other ones that we want to Knowah?

Yes, I saw that earlier. That is number twenty four.

Okay, good showing for Clinoa there. I want to look at my collection real quick.

Yeah, okay, let's uh, let's get one or two more from everyone and then let's just get through the list.

Was there a Spider Man?

They were not bad?

Those are the never soft ones. I don't think that's on here.

No, yeah, I'm probably not gonna make him. I liked that game a lot. Actually, yeah, I love that. I did look at chat.

At this point.

But Star Ocean two.

Did that make it? No, it didn't know. Vib ribbon No, no, no, it's surprising.

You can't funk around with mister Domino whatever it was called.

No, No, incredible crisis unfortunately. No.

Conny Warris, oh, Connie Wars that.

Critics love that.

There were forty five Colonie Wurrison police. All right for me, right back, okay, mega man legends, I don't remember seeing that.

No, let's do this.

Wild that we're missing one.

The top was there?

There was a there was a grand theft auto right, yeah, but that serious were the top down?

Super not really?

Maybe on there no associated with PlayStation enough, I guess.

Okay, jet Moto, Oh that's a good guest.

Thereto to not here, that fell off pretty quick.

NFL blitz Nope, No, but that, yeah, Jan start from the bottom up. Call out blank numbers and I'll tell you what they are, all right, Uh forty nine Vigilante eight, gilt eight.

Wait we say that blasphemy, didn't we say that there wasn't a Twisted Metal on this list. Yeah what you said? Yeah, that's crazy, that's incrazy.

All right, forty seven ten chu oho you eventually? Yeah? Yeah, all right? Hit me with forty six and forty three Soul Blaze in Fear Effect retro Helix, the Lesbian Game.

Yeah, these are actually kind of impressive poles. He is jumping Flash two in the top ten.

It should be.

We're going up from bottom up.

Okay, alright, alright, right, let's go to forty one alone in the Dark four. What they got to four? Yeah, I didn't even know they ever.

Number two wait above Resident Evil one, saying yep.

There's one above Resident Evil one that is Infogrames June two thousand and one alone in the Dark four.

Okay, okay, hold on, I love soul Blade, but Einhander above Soul Blade.

That's correct.

Oh Okayander, I could see Ironhander above, So maybe top ten, chen absolutely, yeah, I don't know about guys.

No, If who is guys, it'd be top fifteen, okay, Dan hit me with thirty eight and thirty or thirty nine.

Thirty eight, thirty nine is Colin mc ray rally, oh of course, and thirty eight is ray Man two.

Oh okay, I never.

Think ray Man, I never think that's as one game.

Yeah or og raymn for sure. Dan, thirty five, thirty four please.

Thirty five is Breath of Fire four?

Yeah it could have gone. Okay, that's Roger Burchill. Definitely we worked on this list.

It's a thirty four. Thirty four is Dino Crisis.

Oh okay, we missed that's so wait Dino Crisis, but no Parasite Eve.

Okay, yeah, a little a little strange or vagan sorry.

Okay, okay, Dan hit me with thirty two, thirty one and thirty thirty two is Ace Combat two. She should have got at Yes, yeah, that's a great game. Yep, got it.

Thirty one one Grandia, Oh okay, in thirty how did you guys miss this?

Roll Cage Stage two? The hell is that?

What that?

It's PlayStation game of all time? Jan I retire.

You're right, this is Champ is better than Parasite Eve. I don't even know what you just said.

Old Cage stage two number Cage's extreame g but bat when your cover looks like that, you get number thirty is Roll Cage Stage two.

This is not what I thought it was. Gonna game actually looks pretty al right, okay, keep going alright, left that we haven't picked, okay, Dan, hit me with twenty seven, twenty six and twenty five.

Twenty seven is FEEFA two thousand and one okay, okay, twenty six is need for Speed three Hot Pursuit okay, speed?

And what was next?

Five five Medal of Honor two.

Underground alright, twenty three that would be Super puzzle Fighter too, Okay, Wow, cool, okay, there's only one left, all right, number seven, Dan, I feel like Mikey should have got this out of all of us.

It wasn't Is it a Mega Man X four or something?

Street Fighter Alpha three?

Okay, I was wondering, Yeah, okay, yeah, probably should have. Yeah, we should have said street Fighter Also, X four should be on this list.

Okay, it's the list. I agree. No Legends weird.

No Legends was not super well liked that at that time. Honestly, this came.

Out when October two thousand and one, which.

Means they probably rode it in May. It was, right, yeah, right, and then nine eleven happened, sure of course.

Yeah, but it was pretty comprehensive of the whole PlayStation one era outside of.

Like the sports games they released until like oh five or whatever.

So yeah, it's an interesting list for sure.

Apes of two is crazy to me would have been metal Gear in Final Fantasy seven, and so for f F seven to be down at twelve is kind of crazy.

That they are right that Night's better than it. I just I usually whom that seven is going to be put higher than that? I like, Yeah, I'm impressed, like Register Type four being at number eight, That's that's right, RESI Evil two of four, that's right, Cynthy and Night at three, that's right. There's nothing too crazy. There's some admissions that seem a little whild to be like a parasite of like a vagrant.

Story alone of Dark four being above Resniva one is pretty insane.

Yeah, that's bizarre. Yeah, yeah. I do like seeing how high the O G Silent Hill is on this list though, So that's that's cool. Yeah yeah, yeah, interesting.

List for sure, which is you know, kind of what you go for when you make these.

No jet Moto I'm kind of surprised by, but it's almost likely. You're right.

Yeah, it was an early when I think like early PlayStation one, I think of single track. I think of you know, Warhawk, Twisted Middle one, Twist Middle two and Jet Moto, and like Jet Moto pretty quickly. It might have been around the same kid the Twisted Metal went Downhill with the nine eighty nine changeover. But yeah, people forgot about Jet Modo pretty quick.

Yep, okay, okay, that's right, hex Proof. It's an atrocity that there are no golf games on hill. What the well the best ball game was on the Saturn. It's main competitor, it's made competitors. Yeah, all right, folks, you know with old games, let's uh, let's talk about stuff we've been playing. I don't like good games, no, I know, I know, I know. Now I'm I can't believe I'm looking up how to play roll Cage Stage two, remember.

And it was made by Midway, it says, So it's like that checking out. I'm kind of curious.

Yeah, damn.

You can't play old games on your own time, though, You got to play new games to do your job here. All right, that's good, that's clearly, that's good.

That's a joke for me, man.

Now, I just want to go play a bunch of JRPGs. Thanks a lot Gang good. They're very good. I think that's why Press the Fire for is good. It's overrated, little over yeah, a little overrated. All right, we got a jar with the games here, So let's start with a game that just that someone finished and they said they have a note here, real quick, mister backl Are you finished Kronos?

Oh? Yeah, I finished. I don't want to take a lot of time talking about it. I finished Kronos.

I then had to watch a YouTube summary of the story because it is almost unfollowing. Yeah, yeah, I wish, I wish. I don't know, I can't. Maybe this is a larger issue of is can Jeff just simply not pay attention to some stories and games anymore?

I don't know.

I feel like I'm sort of struggling with that a little bit. Uh in Silent Hill f as well.

I don't know.

We could talk more about that in a second. But I did finish Kronos, and I and I am mostly happy with it. I do encourage people to play it now. It is a very scary, very spooky game that is very ambitious with its storytelling.

But believe me, I did it.

I didn't think I could do it, So thank you to all the people who said I could You allowed.

Me to persevere and see it through and that means a great deal to me, and for that, I thank you.

Okay, good the question for you?

Yes, And you're playing this and Silent Hill F. And I know you're gonna talk about that in a second. But if I was gonna pick one of these to play for October, which one would you recommend?

At this I think I think the better complete package is Silent Hill F.

Okay.

It's also like eight to ten hours, which sounds real good to me right here after playing so many games that I'm like twenty plus hours into.

And we could just parlay this right into the F conversation if you don't mind, Jen, I think go from's talking to a super eyepatch. Well, I'm talking to John about Silent Hill F and He's like, oh, yeah, you got to play it four times? And I was just like, who the fuck are you that's gonna play Silent Hill F four times to see all these different endings.

I don't know.

I don't understand how you can do that. I'm like, don't you have a video to make about Garfield or something? Like you're gonna tell me, you can play Silent Hill.

F yeah, Simpsons right now, we gotta know.

I'm like, please, I need you to make videos and not play this game eleven times?

So uh in your automatic Like is it automic?

No, it's even like cause Naro not has the different endings, but it's really kind of a linear progression through the right. It's like Silent Hill too, where depending on your choices you get different ending and like the people who really like the series, they're like, well, I gotta see all them. I'm gonna I'm gonna watch them on YouTube, is what I'm gonna do.

I watch I just watch them on YouTube and get the same effect, is what I'm saying.

I just, you know, there's if there's a lot of like for me, you do you guys, what do you call it? When you're just like I don't know, maybe this is exclusive to me. Like there's the there's this thing I have where I'm just like map slopping where I'm just like constantly looking at the map like sure you know, I'm like in this labyrinthinian area and I'm just.

Sort of like, whereas what's you always left?

Where's left?

Like come left?

Where am I facing where's my arrow facing?

I have to go up? Okay, I'm you know, like getting old Becklow. I have the same thing because it's always been that for me.

That's always been that for me with these games. Uh, it's like, you know, I don't know.

It's like it's like if you have like Google Maps in your car and you're not doing north, You're not doing like up is always up right. That's obviously not always know, but like I need that. I need that sort of constant positioning awareness to show me up right. Like that's how I coordinate myself, That's how I yeah, right, exactly what's up?

Just everyone's chat saying apparently like the new game plus stuff is more than just a different ending. So I guess I bet it's very interesting to play the game more than once. You need to to feel like you got feel experience a full experience there.

Yeah, I mean, I look, I'm happy to I'm happy to have it. I'm happy that the value is there, I'm happy that the replayability is there. I'm not I'm never gonna like look that across in the face, but it's like, I I can't do that with your game, especially in such a densely.

Packed fifteen games. I need to do baby Steps.

I haven't even done anything outside of that unfinished baby steps.

Are you kidding me? You're the baby Yeah, I gotta take some steps.

Anyway.

I really do like Silent Hill. I think it is is really good. Say for like maybe one or two areas where I'm just like, all right, we this is maybe a little repetitive, but yeah, I'm super into.

What do you What do you think, Mike? Yeah, yeah, I checked out maybe the first three hours or so and was definitely enjoying myself.

I love just the setting.

Anytime something is said in that very rural kind of Japan, which for me is basically just this persona flour in my neighbor totoro.

Those are the three things I associate to say.

But I always really like it. It's a very interesting kind of vibe and aesthetic. But yeah, I see people talk about the combat and some people complain about it. I love it all specifically because it's kind of clunky and not sophisticated, just like how it should feel for just some you know Japanese schoolgirl who's wielding a pipe.

Right, you know, it's not dark souls, it's not some you know, intense action game.

Yeah, don't you off combos, you know what I mean, Like.

Yeah, she's just kind of swinging shit the kids.

It's just a little kid. But even though there is still like good mechanics to it and good kind of game logic and reasoning there without it necessarily devolving to just oh it's dark souls or you know, oh it's it's this or that. I was actually surprised how good, Like I did like a big boss fight right where I just actually had a whole boss encounter situation going on. There are some fun gimmicks, especially with him disappearing and

So all of that is good.

I'm excited someone play more. It feels like a perfect little October game. I don't mean little disparagingly, but you know, it's a great game for this season.

I will say this may be spoilers for some people, but I'll just keep it as vague as possible. And for folks that have already completed Silent Hill f you will be well aware that this game actually shares a lot with Sonic Unleashed. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

I can't play it now.

You just ruined it.

Yeah, that was a spoiler the entire experience for me.

I don't know. If you put that on the back of the box, you know. Yeah, that's good.

People won't buy it. They're like, why do I even need to play it?

Now?

That's what a detour?

Is that? The way with the wear hoog? Yeah, Jeff Grubb speaking about beating games, You're not the backlar. Isn't the only Jeff finishing games? You conquered baby Steps? Yeah this morning?

Actually, so I had spent several streams in the morning here on Giant Bomb, trying to conquered the Man Breaker, which is this big mountain where they they give you the option to go up the stairs, and that was a really powerful, awesome thing to do, and it was it was a lot of fun to actually get through there. And then there's a little bit more after that. There's apparently a couple paths you can go to get up

And so get through that with chat this morning, and I just I love this game.

It is so well done and it's it definitely feels like the right way to make one of these right now, where sure it's punishing, but it's not as punishing as something like Getting Over It, where Getting Over It is another Benetfotty game where you're in the pot and you have the hammer and you're swinging around trying to like pull yourself up, and you could fail in that game to the point where you could really do at any moment,

How did you find again, I'm only coming from the first time we touched it, but like, how did you find the sort of like understanding of like what you're really meant to do? Because I feel like, for me, you know this game, I have not been able to isolate myself from seeing more, you know, videos about it. Obviously you playing it, how do you feel about how all that was presented and whether or not you think it's a really like satisfying way to be presented with the game?

Yeah, so so, yeah, it's it can be discouraging at first because you don't know where you're going and you feel lost. Eventually, though, that very quickly settles into being like, oh, that's part of what's happening here. It's not just that he's bad at walking. He's bad at walking and also doesn't know where to go, and it's like, these these dual factors working against the character are are really the both things to be overcome, and it's like, well, what

There is a chance.

It's not like it's allowsy with this stuff, but there's a chance you're going to run into some cut scene that you wouldn't have seen had you not gone the wrong way, and that's really well done. So there's one early on where I was super lost. There's point in the kind of funny race where both me and snowbike Mic are trying to find out where to go, and we're like neck and neck, and I went to the left and he went to the right, and I was stuck at this place because I didn't see the pathway

You can't tell that.

When you're actually in the game, but there's a map later that kind of showed you that's what was happening. I was doing that over and over again, and I got to this like sand cast or this giant sand cast, and I'm like, let me get to the top of this, see if there's anything up there. And the only thing up there was two little naked men who just kind of yelled at me, and I sat on one of them on accident, and it was hilarious. They were all

It has that pretty often cool awesome right now. God, I didn't think i'd have to check this out before Game of the Year time, but I guess I got it.

It's very much a me game, Like it's not like I'm gonna be out there on the streets trying to hawk this to everybody. But I definitely see a lot of people in chat when I was playing, being like, Hey, I wasn't gonna try this out, and I've been watching you play and it actually won me over, Like watching this game be played, and it's like, I think there's

Fantastic of Fantastic, speaking about overwhelming, I have been enjoying, but I've found Ghost of Yota be very, very overwhelming. Dan, you talked about this a little bit last week on the podcast because the embargo lifted and I had reserved to myself that I wasn't going to check out Ghost of Yota until the holidays, because we've talked a lot about holiday kind of games, and this feels like one you have to really sink your teeth into. And I'll say this up top, I did not like Ghost of Tsushima.

You all game pretty It's really it's unbelievably gorgeous.

And like, Jan, how are you finding like the open world because it's got those elements from the first one, with like the wind taking from place to place. But I am finding myself just enjoying that open world a lot more than Sushima.

I think that that's what I might be enjoying more. And that's kind of the friction I'm encountering though, is that, like I do enjoy the open world more, but because I'm enjoying the open world more, it's kind of stalling my overall progress in it. Sure, and this game just is full of like the different cinematic styles you can throw the game into. I tried playing it in black and white for a second, but then again, game two

Also the duels and see how you're blown into the microphone.

Yes, yes, uh. And it's kind of a bummer that this game uses the dual sense so well, because what is the last game y'all would even think using duel sense? Yeah, exactly Astro before that, even maybe.

The ratchet and clanking, Yeah, maybe ratri Yeah. It's great when games do use it really well because I actually do like a lot of that stuff, even the gimmicky things. But a few people really kind of make good use of it.

I mean, Sucker Bronx loved doing that.

They did that with the second son I remember the first time I used a PS four track pad was right checking that out, and like they would have things where it's like, oh, swipe up to pull this tank up and then shoot into it, and right, they love using the hardware like, I.

Don't have much more to say about a Ghost of Yota than you already covered last week, Dan, because I'm still fairly early in, but like, I don't I can't quite articulate why it is clicking with me more? Can I ask this? Because please? He brings us up and chatting. This was going to be my question.

So the first game was very big on hey, we were still a video game, so we're gonna have moral choices, and you're a Samuraid do you have to be you should be honorable? And there was like the father character who was like reminded you you should be honorable, and then you had the option to be a sneaky little assassin guy, but that was dishonorable, and the game was saying you were naughty for doing that, or at least

I don't really need that.

But whatever that was the first game does the second game maintain any of that. I guess you do still have the choice to be because Dan showed me in the Quick Look you can still like do the thing where it's like, Okay, I'm going to announce that I'm here as a samurai and do a showdown with a guy, which I thought was cool, But I also think I want the option to be equally weighted to like go be a sneaky little ninja. Does it kind of open you up?

Or what it doesn't like have like a larger system that I've seen yet, Like you know, Infamous, you know, was very just like you know, blue Glowy Halo guy or Red devil horn guy. This is like you will come upon certain scenes and stuff not even necessarily tied to the story of just like are you gonna loot all these corpses and kill the guy who says that that's shitty? Or are you gonna like, you know, give the guy money and help collect these masks and stuff

Like that, really, I think that's I actually, I think that may be what it is for me where I felt like I couldn't play Ghost of Tsushima in a way that I want to play, where like I do want to be a sneaky little guy sometimes and then like if shit hits the fan, just go into a duel. But here it's like I guess it's just like cool

So it does it does like solve that problem of like because she her whole thing is just revenge, right, Like she's just out there to like do this, and so who cares how you get revenge?

It frees them up.

It answers that question of like how do we deal with this problem in the first game if it was a problem, which I think they've decided by doing it this way. In the second game that maybe it was something they didn't want to repeat, so maybe not a problem, but they wanted to try something different here, and so they were gonna need a different character.

Yeah, and anyway, I there's so many games coming out, but I do just find myself just firing this up and staring at it, just like letting the wind blow. And now I think I finally understand Brad Shoemaker.

Oh no, really, there's just no you don't now, I'm sorry. Samurai.

Yes, maybe you have called him that, Yeah, I mean behind it se yeah, behind the scenes, we would call him the last Samurai. Yes, yeah, yeah.

It was a biograph biography about him, biography and biograph.

I think you were there this This might have been either my first or second game of the year. But Brad had gone on about how how he had enjoyed so much of Red Dead Redemption two and just like living in the world and kind of just like losing time in it. Yeah. Yeah, And then I could easily see myself doing that in Ghost of Yote and kind of like the same way that that Brad had enjoyed all the bits and pieces around the main story of

Yeah, yeah, it'd be pretty good for the most part. And it's like the whole ship and all that. Than I'm with you on the Red Dead two thing, But like you know, it does do the thing that like makes me like it more than Red Dead two in the way that like, if you're writing past a fraud is that a word, I don't know, something you can pick up.

You can just hit R two and it just picks it up.

It wears like Red Dead, Get off my horse's fraud, you know, like.

Arthur, you got there, thank you, thank you.

Yeah.

It's not a person no nuts.

Yeah, I mean this is like not afraid to be video gaming in that way where it's like there's some quality of life stuff and every once in a while, like it's like you don't need to do the cooking mini game, we got you, you know, just give you a boost, you know.

So it's not as slavish to that as as Red Dead is.

But the thing this also reminded me of is that Assassin's Creed Shadows came out this year. It's oh boy, uh not a year in a fair.

Amount of that, which is one of the reasons why I'm not like chopping at the bit to get into OTA, which is not fair to Ota, but that's just where I'm at.

I think I may be more of a two D Ninja mood because I've yet to check out the Shanoby game and Sean super Dan, you were also super high, so god, that is on the list. I feel like all these games are consuming me. But Dan Reiker, yes, you have been playing consume me? I yeah, I started it last night. I started it. I didn't really know what it was.

I don't know.

I feel like I saw some like posts about it where I was like, it's gonna be one of those really narrative games that are probably extremely like like a desk Belote or something like that, where it's just like, Okay, I can recognize the craft inness, but like, typically I don't enjoy playing those type of games, And uh, what's that smirk backler, it's the isn't it below te Probably I assume no, yes, yes, so, but Bonk was playing it, and Banc was really enjoying it and telling me about it,

So you got like nine days basically to.

You know, you're trying to stay underneath your calorie limit, which it says early on it actually like to avoid like triggering people with eating disorders, it just calls them bytes, and so you have like five hundred bytes you can do each day. So it starts with like you're eating lunch, and it's like a Tetris minigag type thing where it's like, okay,

So I'm going to feed that to the dog.

So there's all these like very interesting play mechanics that go into the story they're trying to tell. So like another thing you're trying to do is level up, Like you've got skill meters for like diet, athletics, academics, and chores, and so you're trying to do all of those. So you know your mom's on your ass for like it's a semi autobiographical thing. So like the character's mom is like, hey, you're getting chunky.

You need to lose weight. And it's like, hey, your grades are you know, slipping. You need to work on this.

So like the minigame for when you're studying is like you'll pick a You'll be on the bus and you have to read a book to study for a test, and like your head is rotating around and you have to like jam a when your vision is over the book.

But it's like rotating around.

And then it's like also these thoughts are popping up and they're visualized by like clouds like thought bubbles and stuff. So it's like, oh, it's your mom yelling at you, it's the scale, it's all these other things that are entering her mind. And that kind of like like your the minigame cone bumps against it and makes it so you can't finish it. So it's just so smart with all these different ways. It very much gamifies the thinking

Now I need a change.

But because I hadn't done the laundry minigame that day, I didn't have any clean clothes.

So the mood meter goes down.

So it's just this like really really tremendous way of like like it is on its surface like fun mini games, and it's it's just kind of like a time management thing. But as far as like getting across you know, the message of this game, and like as far as like you know, you don't really hear empathy games that much anymore. I was kind of a phrase that people throw around a lot. I think this is like tremendous as far as that goes.

Awesome, you do, so you think it accomplishes the goal of like someone like you who is a somewhat familiar with these things but maybe can't necessarily immediately put yourself in those shoes? Does it bridge that gap a little bit?

Yeah?

And and most importantly, you know, I asked Bianca.

I was like, I mean, do you feel like effective and like and she's like, this is so relatable, Like yes, absolutely so Yeah, it seems to like absolutely be nailing the message and also the game aspect of what it's going for.

Yeah, I know, and I'll almost expecting next.

It does seem made by people who have who want to convey these things, But I think it's one thing to convey to someone who knows what they're going for and has experienced it. Yeah, but like you know, it does sound like it even can reach out to people who have no frame of reference for this and maybe begin to help them understand it, which is really impressive.

Because yeah, again, like like so many mental illnesses, I think people that don't understand it or haven't excloruished it, like it is very hard to like, like, Bianca doesn't have anxiety, so like I can, I can explain what a panic attack is. Act She's seen me have panic actually knows they're not fun. But unless you have felt that, you can't understand. Right, It's like it's like, oh, hey, you're not gonna die, what's going on?

You know?

It's like this is a great way to kind of let someone feel that a little bit, you know.

For as dire as video game news seems to be every single day that we report about it on this website, I'm very happy that the indie game scene is able to pull off neat things like this Despolote and just other weird stories that, like you know, I talked about last week, can only really be pulled off in video games. Like on its face, Baby Steps is just a frumpy white dude in a onesie. Uh, that's too dirty home,

Know, I'm not someone who's dealt with a lot of depression, but the game, clearly it's like such a good way of like understanding someone and like kind of like what they have to overcome or things like that. I don't know if it's as good as as consume me, which consume me.

I swore you were saying consume me, and I was like, Google and consume me. I'm like, that's a lot of dinner.

Compared it to Baby Steps. I'm just seeing this from the chat, so I can't verify myself, but it says fun fact. I love to bring up Jenny the lead dev is a protege of Ben at Foddy.

Oh wow, okay, yeah man, that's hell. Yeah, that rules okay, very awesome from the Bennett Foddy Learning Tree and that yeah, okay. I I was thinking about this where quick tangent to movies, but I watched Infinity Castle, the Demon Slayer movie, and it is obscenely long. When it comes to I'm going to download it and make my own edit because if you were to show this to anyone, it would be

Eighties two So credits yesterday, nice, I saw credits this weekend.

I beat it.

Yeah, yeah, I you know, I've talked about it more at length in the past, but I'll just say that now that I'm done with it, And the last few weeks have been so Hades two in Megabank Heavy, and I still am loving MEGABONK and I'm still I'm definitely you know, knocking off checking off all those boxes and stuff like that. It is like, I beat Hades and I had the thought that, like, you know, MEGABONK is a scoop of ice cream and Hades two is like a three course meal. You know, Oh, we're both good.

Now, are you also feeling a pool to kind of keeping and getting the epilogue done.

Are you trying to use this as a break to check out some other games?

Same thing.

I should do that, but I also kind of keep going to play Eighties two.

It's the exact same approach I had to Soilk Song, where it's like I got to the end of Act two and it's like Act three started, and it's like, all right, I do want to play this because this is definitely one of my favorite games of the year. But it's like, I feel like I've seen credits, I've seen an ending of this game for sure, Like I'm going to focus on other stuff right now and then maybe I'll come back to it at some point.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

I feel like I kind of need to do that as well. So many things. You know, I need to start tactics and like I should be trying Trails on the sky. But god, it's just so fun playing Eighties two. And you know the first game did this too, but it's just so smart how when it starts almost get kind of easy. It introduces that system where you can make the game harder through various ways that you can pick, and then you get rewards for doing that that unlocks

It's just insane how dense.

This game is.

But I think that's the most impressive thing is that is you both you and Dan now have touched on that where it's like it just keeps going and the three course meal of like they just find ways to make everything still feel so worthwhile even though you are still doing these runs over and over again.

It's they could change things up on you.

It just feels like one of the most well thought out games ever made in terms of making sure the player feels like they're never wasting their time.

That starts right away.

I talked about that last week when we were talking about it. To hear that that continues and there's new things to unlock and see and like new systems that late, that is impressive start.

I mean, I still haven't actually completed like a romance path or fooled out, you know, filled out an entire relationship.

Thing, which God, are you trying to fuck? I?

I you guys aren't gonna like is I? You both disliked them, like the mean lady with the short babe.

No ghost, are you? That's a McGroom, Mike.

Also scary movie the lady ghosts.

You're getting the ghosts, Mike, dan Ackroy fuck the ghost he got blown by ghost.

But yeah, I mean out of you know relations, the meaning.

Of it is, of course, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah themreal seems like a nice guy. Huh, good for you, Mike. You know, hey, do your thing, chicken wing. I like the lady that's mean to me. Yeah, no, no, no, says okay. I nemesis went too far that one time. But she was like I at least knew my mother. Uh no, there's no coming back from that. She doesn't even really apologize for it. You can go get fucked.

I'm a Sellini man, I get it for sure.

Can you later, Harry?

Carry line? Isn't it? I'm sorry?

What did you say? Does Aras show up later?

Is that?

Which?

Which one's air? She's short hair? The game girl.

Oh she's the worst.

She's the one who gives you the deep buff and what in the beginning of the game thro trash on the ground, Yeah, a second area.

Yeah, no, you know what Mike I get it. I get it. I understand it. Yeah you know what, Yeah, that's a cheat code for me as well.

It's a strife yeah, okay, right, all right.

Okay, I get it. Mike. Did you encounter the person I was alluding to last week that had the cum gutters? I I.

Saw somebody with just a massive i'll just say it, a massive penis bulge.

Yes, that's him, dress.

Like I dress like fucking dress and acting like Matt Riddle.

Yeah. I didn't notice. I didn't notice the I'm not gonna call them the cgs. I didn't notice the cs as much as you.

I was distracted by his thong bulge.

It was insane. He stuffed it. You think he's stuffed? I mean, God is wild. So he put a grapefruit in there, a grapefruit maybe of some kind.

What are you even trying to say? You put a grapefruit in there? Jesus Christ?

That spherical? It is kind of spherical. Okay, all right, all right, Well we talked a lot about eighties two and and like the replayability and unlocking everything. I want to hear from y'all. What is the load out that y'all have been rolling with? And or like the builds that you're trying to.

I mean, I generally will do the one that recommend that like switching up, unless it's that axe. I have not ever made that axe feel bad. So give us some tips because've been struggling with the I ax.

You do the scythe version, the aspect that turns it into a scythe because that I think already, oh yeah yeah, so up sythe and the attack speed goes up. So like the big downside of the axe is the swing speed. But it's got like good damage. It's got this huge range of attack, and so you focus on getting like

I did have a good run when I was doing the slash twice. I got one where it was like slash twice and then also Mike slash twice if you do a dash, so it was actually slashing four times occasionally.

That was insane. That was really cool.

I think my favorite has been the last one you get that just kind of turns you into an armored Corps robot with all the missiles you can just kind of run around spam your special or aiming at people. I've gotten pretty strong with that, and the one where you and then the one you throw out the skulls.

And I really didn't like. Those are the two I didn't like for most of my time with this game was the wands and the skull. The skulls and I barely ever even even when they were the glowy one. I didn't pick it, and then like yesterday, I was picking them a lot, and it's like, man, any weapon in this game you can kind of tweak it. Like with those hammer upgrades. I love when I'm going up

That's the thing with the weapons. The right run can make anything awesome. Yeah, you kind of get it.

You just start getting a sense of what boons you're looking for, what upgrades are even taking advantage of those uh those items that make certain gods appear more often because you're looking for something. Yeahcific and the bosses are just super good too, you know spoilers. But the third boss on the going up route, I love that fight. That fight is so much fun. There's parts of it that remind me of like a World of Warcraft raid, with the way you.

Certain things fire stuff that Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm the middle top bottom.

I literally hear my raid leader calling it.

Out in I was assigning numbers to be like a two one, two three I would.

Do if you like that kind of stuff, that's what That's a lot of what WOW rating is like, Well, I didn't like that, so.

I recommend it for you.

Kronos, it like didn't seem like I'm still pretty early on. I got to Kronos once and got him like the second phase, and like one fit of his south I was like, right there, I'm like this s that fight wasn't too bad. I'm assuming like he is an appetizer for like what is really happening in this game.

Right, And you know, and there's that yeah, because you thinking of him as like the final boss maybe's and super correct because you do have the uppath. I will say that he seemed he definitely seemed easier than Hades did the first.

Time they got to the comparison I'm making.

I think you get to that point with Chronos maybe because we're all a bit more trained on this now, right, But you got there with Hades eventually where that was kind of automatic. He just knew what he did. And you feel that with Kronos. But you know, you get those things too that make each boss fight harder, and I'm kind of working my way through those right now too. It's always really interesting to see the ways they do that.

I love the Sirens and like the building lore in between runs. I got fairly early they were like you're an agent, right out at you, and then like you meet them the next round, they're like, you're not a fucking agent. You lied to us. It is so good, It's so fucking good.

It's great characterization, amazing character like my favorite depiction of Greece, Greek mythology stuff I've ever seen, and they made a Disney movie about that shit.

Wow. Okay, yeah, yeah yeah, Heracles here doesn't need to show me any com gutters. I'm I'm down for the ride. Uh folks, that's wait. Wait, we talked a lot about stuff. We let's take a quick bricky break. We'll finish off games talk, and then we'll talk about the news right after this. Brub. I love podcasts and I would like to listen to more of them.

Oh boy, I've got the podcast for you, then, Bud Stage Select, Grub.

I have trust issues, especially with podcasters.

Look, it's always important to be careful and safe about podcasters.

But don't worry.

Host Julian Titus and Justin Hamm have over sixteen years a combined podcasting experience, and The Stage Select is finishing up its second season at the end of the year.

Holy smokes, what a pedigree? Tell me more, Grub.

Oh what about a video game variety show where the hosts act as if they're performing for a live studio audience.

Kind of like The Muppet Show. Do they have reoccurring characters Shenanigans, Bits and skits. Oh baby, we got bits, we got skits. I love bits and skits. Is there more?

The show is designed to be unexpected. Jan they'll go to space sometimes a surprise game show. Expect the unexpected space.

Grub, Grub, I'm hearing that. Episodes forty one and fifty nine are fantastic points to get a vibe of the show. Julian and Justin are fiercely independent and do this for the love of video and podcasts.

Oh yeah, they draw from the best, like the Giant BombCast, next Lander, Rebel FM.

And no one can know.

About this well Grub, I'm glad I know about this podcast at stage select give it a.

Listen, Bits and skits. We still got games to talk about. I realized my channel is muted, but hey, we still got games. So the truck, the train is moving along. That's why everybody.

No more distractions, no more pausing for any other bits or any other business unless it's related to golf Leek merchandise, which you can find at store dot giant Bomb dot com. Hey you look great right now, but I know you would look even better and a Giant Bomb golf shirt and Giant Bomb golf hat not just available in green, like I'm wearing all sorts of fun colors. You will be the main course on the golf course when you wear the the Giant Bomb Golf Week apparel store dot Giant Bomb dot com.

And he's like gone down since the first time.

Yeah, you're still working for me now, airs coming out of the balloon.

So yet, yesterday I learned in golf that there's like a beer cart.

Girl.

Can I just go to a golf cart course and just like hang out and and and counter one or do I have to play golf?

You can hang out at the nineteenth hole right the bar. Yeah, what a lot of a lot.

Of they're all legally obligated to be called that.

Yeah, I've never seen one not called that. Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of local Like at least here, all the local golf courses have generally a pretty nice restaurant in bar, and you can look out on the greens.

They're pretty Mike, I enjoy your business tactics, but you know what I enjoy more than that? No fy, no fantasy tactics. Now, I'm just grubbs.

I didn't see where that was going.

It's right, I'm trying to zig and I thought you were gonna zag with me, but you like ziggy z. Get over there, Jeff Grubb, you it says on this list here have peeped Final Fantasy Tactics, the Evilies Chronicles.

Yeah, yeah, I've started it.

I've done a handful of battles, and I like, I think it's clicking for me. I tell you what, it looks really nice and that helps. I think the presentation is very good. I think it took me a second to I get used to the camera, but once I realized, you could just hit the one of the shoulder buttons and it gives you a top down view.

And then if that's not even.

A toggle, it's just like a Holts. You hold, you check down, make sure that you got everyone in your site, you let go. It goes back to the more cinematic isometric view that looks really pretty. That helped me like unlock the game. For me, It's like, Okay, I'm not like struggling with this camera anymore. I could just quickly pop in, pop out and make my move. It's got a job system, which I of course knew, but I love job systems games and.

Just like barely sort of scraping the surface of that. I'm already like, oh, I'm good.

I'm super gonna get into this because I just can't wait to take these characters and build them out and give this one this job and then that next job.

And oh my god, a bit later on they're can be able to like take.

The things they learn and do some super special job. Because I went down that path, I'm like, ooh, that's my shit. So it's it's hitting sort of the tone that I needed it to hit. I think, like I remember Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced maybe being getting going a little bit faster and getting me on board with the tactical gameplay, which is what I'm really here for a

I am.

I'm like, I get what people why people think this is high quality, and I can tell that there's some seeds here that if they deliver on them, then yes, I will be right on board with everyone else who's super into what this game is doing on that front.

I don't know how many games allow you to work your way up to be a mime, but this is one of those that's a rules.

Have you guys played foun Fantasy five where like that's where the Final Fantasy job system style was written.

Talk to me about it before, and it sounded awesome.

So freaking good if you like this job system and tactics. My understanding is that it's very similar to the one from Final Fantasy five.

Got it? Okay, I'm glad to hear you're enjoying your time with it, Grub. I need someone to eventually tell me what the fucking Onion Knight is.

From Final Fantasy three is where Onion Knights first originated. It was the name of the starter class in the original version of the game and subsequent remakes. It was almost kind of the ultimate class that you could get instead. But yeah, it's just a it's a Final Fantasy three thing, original Fficy three, the one that was on the famicom.

Ah. I see there's there's there's lots of layers to it, just like ogres, just like onions, just like a parfait, and just like Lego Voyagers has lots and lots of layers. Jeff Beckelart, you have been playing this, I'm assuming, but dib yes.

But this is not a story about our time with that game, Jan This is a story about how we're not playing that game. Oh okay, and this is a story how we're not playing Henry half at because I offer these items to my son as a gift. He doesn't know how good he fucking has it getting to play all these goddamn games like Schmorga's Board of whatever you could possibly conceive, all of these free codes. He he's playing FC twenty six the week before it comes out,

We did the thing.

It was really really nice and we got to like a certain level where he was like, oh you know what, Dad, I'd really want to go back and play Steal the Brain rot on Fortnite Fortnite.

Oh now, my kids just started Fortnite because it came about Demon hunters and they've been asking for a brain rock game and I'm like I can't find one.

So now they have.

What does that mean?

What is a brain rot game?

Okay, just like the kids like like today regular like Sixcess. Okay, but listen, okay.

Just keep saying things.

Well, most people know what they are. It's not it's not your fuel, no don't, but uh at least not on my browser. Listen, here's here's what it is.

Okay.

Steal the brain Rot is very loosely adapted from the Roadblocks game. Steal the brain Rot kind of like a comic where you so it's like a Fortnite you know, uh, custom game right where someone built this map area where you get onto a server and out an assembly line comes these quote unquote brain rots that are just he's like insane sort of I don't know, for lack of a better comparison.

Ambos, right, just come out.

There's like trophy there, there's like a there's like all the brain rot classics you've come to know and love, all collected in one ridiculous Fortnite experience, and they come out and you can buy one and then it goes into your base and you collect all of these brain rots.

And that's what this game is.

It's very dumb. It is very dumb.

It is very bad.

And where I'm really like, you know, where he and I are locking horns. It's like, dude, you play all these like really sort of a I don't want to say cerebral, but certainly more engaging in a positive way, even Fortnite on its face, like with the strategy and the socializing. He's getting the socializing with the brain rod shit, but like he's not. This is not a game. This is just very dumb. And I'm like, dude, you gotta just stop.

You got to stop.

There's no like currency, there's no like V buck attachment. It's not like you don't understand.

He's not like he's not like, you know, draining the bank account, asking for seven thousand v bucks just so we can get like a tik tala miky mala, you know whatever.

Okay, Yeah, I wish.

It just sucks. Look, I get it. He's ten. Is the worst taste imaginable. He is just a piece of shit in every sense of the word. He has no understanding. That is true of every kid. My kids said loved garbage. I've said this for years. True, they love Track one hundred, like you know. I mean, look, need I say more than the cyber truck? Right, the thing that's only ten year old boys think is cool. Right, there's a reason.

So I get it.

And my patients only last so long with this stuff.

But did you get tungue tung tung sahar?

Yeah, we got like eleven of them. And the more brainroots you get, the more your base gains a floor. So he has like a five story base with all of these brain rots that generate fake money, and you collect all the money so you can buy more.

It's just like a collection thing, clicker. It's a time wasting collect a.

Lot of these games.

A lot of these games are basically like idol games with a little bit more going on. The k Pop Demon Hunter's Tycoon game, another Fortnite fan made game my kids are playing, is basically just an idle game.

I watched them.

I was like what are you guys doing because they had spent ten minutes straight just punching a box that was spreading out money.

Yeah, it was like yeah, like I can't judge. I've played a lot of idle clicker games, so.

Yeah, I mean get it.

I get it right, and I know, just like most of this slop, it will pass right, Like, yes, the time is running out on this for I go. Look like you're you play Fortnite, You've been playing Rocket League in Fortnite for like five years.

Those are the things you come back to.

I promise you in six months, you're gonna be like, oh right, I did play that brain Rock thirty years.

You're gonna have like a synaps spark and like wait did I play that game? And you're gonna try to find it and it's not gonna be anywhere because it's not worth preserving and like that, your brain.

Will decide to delete it to make space for other stuff. So you know that's Henry. Henry Halfhead. He played for like two hours.

He loved it. He's like, this is great, this is so much fun.

I'm you know.

He It brought a lot of like the Donut County, you know, memories he really loves and uh, I think that game's cute.

And very cool.

Uh and Voyagers is great as well.

I just, you know, I bring all these up because he put them on a shelf to go back to this goddamn brain Rock game. And if you're a parent, you probably know what it's about. But holy shit, I just can't wait till this this one passes, because this one hurts. This one is this one's uh scraping at my uh scraping at the wounds here a little bit.

What do you guys back are you know? Uh Jan Mike Dan, what do you guys think? Tongue tung tongue Sahar is it? I'm gonna say it. It feels racist in the mouth. Is there a racist mouthfeel?

Yeah?

It definitely had his racist mouthfeel and probably there could be something there, but well, I mean it originated from Indonesian Malaysian culture, so they're part of the brain Rock community.

Absolutely it is.

I think it's a piece of wood with arms and legs that carries.

A baseball bat.

Yeah, there's so many weird like the brain It's weird how the brain Rod stuff turned into like statues like these are characters.

You know, Valerie to Cappuccina, there is a literal one that's a six seven.

Yep.

He's just walking around like I'm a six almost seven.

Hey, so doing you know I'm gonna go live in the woods.

You do.

That's that's what they want, Dan, So you're you're seeding this culture to them.

That's what they want.

The old man to go away.

I will, Yeah, it's true, that is true. I mean, look, I think it's mostly harmless.

I get it.

Just like you said, Grub, we were into pretty dumb ship. No, no, yes, I never felt this way about you, Like my dad watched it with me and I lose SpongeBob and fucking uh. You know, Gravity Falls is amazing. There's a lot of good stuff there, for sure. There is.

Yeah.

POGs. Yeah baby.

If you if your memory is a poster deleted and POGs showed up right now as only a thing Dib and kids like that were into, you would hate POGs recess.

I will just say this, for the best majority of the brainwaw, shit is bad. I do think six seven is not the worst. I kind of in a way, I think it's all right.

It's so stupid.

Yeah, right, but here the thing. Uh Rich in the chat was like six seven is no worse than whats that?

And Rich is right, yeah, right now that's the Budweiser commercial. Similarly, like that's what we're all doing, right, yeah, yes, I mean it is, that's the truth. We're also all the homophobic things we used to just say constantly in the school yard, right yeah.

Yeah, they're better about that now. Yeah. Well I've heard some youth still saying certain words and like yeah, and then in fact, the art word. We got rid of that one, and like everyone's like we miss it, What the hell I mean? Yeah, okay, well it feels like the youth are in a completely different world, if not a completely different galaxy, just like Mike Minatti you have been on a different galaxy by playing Super Mario Galaxy too.

Yeah. I mean it's one of the all ten great games and it still is that, And the graphic improvements are more than I was expecting. The game looks very sharp most of the time, Like every once in a while you'll see Captain Toad and he kind of looks like a GameCube character suddenly, like his mouth is just a texture, you know, kind of a thing, like oh, that part looks old, but everything else actually still looks

Just using the.

Gyro controls is more than adequate instead of the pointer. I haven't had an issue with it at all. It was amazing when I was using the pro control and it works just about as well when I'm just doing the game in hound handhold mode. Even when I'm doing the Yoshi stuff. You had to kind of aim somewhat precisely with that pointer while you're platforming. I have not

They hear it.

It's like it's a story book with you know, texts, and it just feels cheaper. Spaceship Mario isn't nearly as good of a hub world as the Observatory from one.

The thing is like you know that's a matters.

It doesn't matter that much, certainly not as much as level design and mechanics, and Galaxy two is just so freaking amazing at that stuff. The levels are all so freaking interesting and fun and constantly introducing new ideas and new things. It's just an absolute blast to jump through all of them. The physics feel perfect. When you have those weird gravity moments of the little planet toys you're

I've had to stop myself because I have not played Galaxy two since I think it came out, and I remember at the time thinking like, yeah, this is the best three D platform of all time. I think this is a little bit better than Galaxy which was my previous best ever. So I got like one star in this just to kind of like see how it looks and everything kind of wet the appetite, and it's like,

So I'm happy to hear control. So well, that's great.

Yeah, fantastic, Chat says interesting question. Hey, is every mainline Mario game now on Switch? And I think it might be wait Sunschina. Yeah, it's in three D all Stars, so so okay, and I know maybe you don't. I'll just do it real quick.

I know it.

It's one two, three World, World two sixty four Sunshine Galaxy Galaxy two honesty.

Yes, all right on mom. Yes, so three D Land and Super Mario Lant aren't on there yet. And yes we also have three D World, which is still the weirdest one, Dan that you don't consider that one. Did you see like the museum put up a wall with all the Maine Mario games and there's no Yoshi's Island?

How interesting did it say? What was the phrasing? Send me a link.

I don't rember for you. The one that posted this Dan, I believe it's name line.

I pointed out that Yoshi's Island was on the Yoshi Wall.

Yeah, right, is that what you're referring to?

No, there's a new one. I'll find it for you later.

But yeah, so, uh, whatever you want to.

Call him of the May of the three D of the Mario platformer games, which somehow is then enough of a description to be mainline for Dan.

Uh, it's just Mario lant.

Which will be is that somehow stone?

That can't be right?

Is that not on nisode?

No?

That has to be what am I saying?

I figured it's god which land it is?

It is?

It's just three D land actually, which I don't even know if they bother with that one. Honestly, I'm not sure if we get that one.

Oh bro, you're saying a game boy one. So those aren't mainline, but yeah, you.

Can just talk to me. Yeah, three D Land.

I think they'll redo that at some point. They'll because you can't just put that out in HD. It would look fucking bad.

Give it some extra love, you know.

I'm sure it could get away without being three D, but you gotta kind of replace that with something. I don't know because was important. Yeah, yeah, but.

It's like they can figure something out there, but it's it looks pretty barren when you played on an emulator now, so hopefully they do something there, but they'll do it at some point.

I think, Yeah, I forget and Galaxy too. How many different like suits and stuff does Mario get? There's a lot, because uh, I sometimes get which ones were brand new for two? But he was in the he was in the first one. What about Cloud was Cloud in the first one?

Cloud was Cloud is the best?

Cloud is the best Mario costume we've ever had. The way it looks and the mechanics of it are so freaking good. I think Boulder might have been new for two. I like bolt to Mario. You have fire, you have ice as well, you have the spring. Also you have that cherry that creates the copy of you.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah, it's all sorts of good.

Stuck. Well, yeah, Mario continues to wear a bunch of different hats, But I'm more interested in the hat that you're wearing, Mike Manatti, because you have it celebrating golf Week like no one else. You're still wearing the golf week clothes. You can get Store dot Giant Bob dot com. But you have also been playing a couple other golf games that you'd like to.

Talk about, Yeah, Josh Tomorrow, to kick Golf Week off, I dug into a bunch of them, starting with Pebble Beach Golf Leaks on the Sega Saturn, which was originally a three D O game, And yeah, that's really the vibe here. Don't think early three D polygons three think, uh, yeah, we're using digitized sprites and FMV cuttings on some three D levels. But boy, the vibe is actually really neat.

It.

It's Craig Stadler is This character just keeps popping up and talking to you. He doesn't have a lot of charisma, which is why it's amazing. Whenever he's saying lines, it's actually hilarious. He has become my favorite golfer ever. Now I'm obsessed with the Walrus and yes that is his nickname.

This is the virtual highlight engine.

This is the fertile highlight engine, so it's made for yeah, digitized sprites on three D world.

The best is uh I was.

I caught a glimpse of it, and it's like the shakiest fucking helicopter.

Yeah, it comes over yesterday.

I didn't hear that.

No, that is so funny to me, Like just these lengths of which they had to go to to just get an aerial shot of a single golf hole, where now it's just some putts with a fucking drone.

Yeah. The one thing I really struggling with was the power meter was just difficult to read. It was in like five segments, so it's hard to tell where percent was really and I don't know. It just feel like I was constantly undershooting or overshooting. You know, if I played it more, i'd get a feel for it. Yeah, this is a kind of golf game that could only have existed in this one two or three year window there in the history of video game graphics. So I'm

Right.

Oh yeah, sure, I'm nostalgic for those. Yeah.

Because it's easy to play on mouse and keyboards. It's very fast paced, you know, classic golf stuff with you know, click once for power, click again for accuracy. There's some a few other extra things happening, Like there's turtles on the golf course and if you land near their radius, they'll just sort of hit your ball, so like that could really miss you. Up there are portals, and if you go in a portal, maybe it'll get you closer, but maybe it'll get you further away.

You can also buy upgrades.

With sort of the experience points you're through playing things like oh you can use this ball one time that just won't bounce at all, or another ball that will always bounce in the direction of the pen.

So stuff like that. Yeah, so ito's golf in it. Go O L F I N I E. Then also checked out Super Video Golf.

Now this is like what a sega on a golf game would have looked like if it was like Virtua Golf, right, early three D polygons kind of a thing like the golf game we didn't get then, So I always love that low poly look.

So this has that in spades.

And then again just very classic golf mechanics on top of all of that has everything. He kind of went with, you know this, you know again, classic swing controls, stuff like that. It just had a very good vibe, very good music. It had a little bit of that Craik Statler energy.

Honestly looks cool. Yeah.

Yeah, you have the bad voice lines right with the low quality audio. So yeah, so it's the low fi video golf, very cool vibe, super good Again it's called Super Video Golf. So another very good uh indie golf game. To check out what I have online stuff like online tournaments or play with Okay, oh, that's cool locally things like that.

I did try that Beavis and butt Heead mini golf game from nineteen ninety eight to see if it would be worthy of Golf Week.

That game sucks, but holes a hohoy or what's it called.

It's like a bung hole in one. The best thing about that game, by far is the name good. It's just like what if mini golf was happening in the Beats and butt Heead world, but you don't like see them on the course. You like, it's one of those ones where you click on the ball, pull away from it and then it kind of flings forward like I like that mechanic. But it's just such a bare bones, basic nothing game that really isn't worth the time.

That's the new golf game I played.

I played some Neo turf Masters and stuff like that before everyone knows that rules, Yeah, I was.

I checked out some of that stream. Neo turf Masters does rule.

I mean it's funny because it has some of that similar energy to Pebble Beach, which is, you know, instead of like digitized, it's mo capped, really high quality spice sprite work. I think, Yeah, it just still looks so freaking good. The music is amazing. That's probably my favorite golf game ever. I love it.

It's it really holds up.

It's fantastic.

We are continuing the Golf Weeks celebrations and for those folks out there that may have heard the Game Informer at the play during the break, we're gonna go play against Game Informer tomorrow. That's right. I believe Dan and Grubb are going against the Vans. That's right, Van Allen and Van Ak, and we're going against them in everybody's golf, right is that's that's.

The everybody's I think Van Aken might be traveling, but I've been talking to Van Allen about it and if he's not availble.

Tongs one Van otherwise I'm out.

We will have a Van and another Game Informer out of there that we would go against. All right, okay, okay, unfeat against kind of funny. I think it's about time to be undefeated against another outlet.

Yeah, do it. Yeah. All the models out there, you're on watch, get on watch. We're all coming for you. That's right.

Right, We're getting out of the com gutters and we're gonna go dominate in video games across the board. Start giant bum.

We sell coung gutters. No, well, I was gonna I was gonna say, I'm ready to party with Game Informer. But before that, I want to hear about a party that we had last Friday, Lego Party. Holy smokes gang, imagine if was good so badly? This game was really fun.

Actually we played it and loved it. And then I said at the end, I said, because like I think it was. Yes, yeah, that Friday, because like my my sister, her husband and their daughter my niece were on the way up here driving up from Kansas when we were playing Lego Party, and I told you that, like, Okay, the real test is going to be is Mario Party has always been a game that can appeal to people if they don't really play a lot of games or whatever.

Can we do another game right now?

So?

Wow, it is, and I will say it it is. It is better than Mario Party.

It's frustrating how much better it is. Like they make fifty Mario Parties, they couldn't have thought of a single one of the one hundred improvements of the formula that Lego Party has introduced here.

It's just so much snapier.

I feel like on the outside where I'm at, like, yeah, we've been saying this for a long time, So Lego Party no, just about how like piss poor of an experience Mario Party is. And yeah, I'm not going to go that all of these all of these quality of life things that are like so sick people and obvious.

Let me run down a few here of like clear improvements and tweaks to Mario Party that I noticed, and I've only played three games of it now, and like there's maps I haven't played, like I want to play a lot more. All right, So mini game placement determines turn order, so yes, which is so smart because let's say it's the thing where me and Greb are both two or three spaces away from the golden brick, which is the star that adds so many stakes to the

Final thing. That's that's awesome.

So the boards themselves shift, Like the way they use legos in this game is so fucking good because like you'll do the theme park course and there's like the starting area and then like the central fountain thing they go around, but then when you go to the corners you get to build one, so you can build like the new land. So it's like do I want to do horror Land, like a haunted house themed section of this board, or do I want to build extreme Land?

To be different.

It does like these risky free bricks you can get there where it's like, okay, I can go to the water park land and if I can climb up this whole thing and avoid all six of these you know why slide things that will send me down shoots and ladder style to the beginning, I will get a free

Yeah, wh it's just like the way like it does like a solo mini game where a Mario Party, it just stops. You talk to NBC. It loads too a thing here. It just all happens on the board. As you're going along, your character just quickly looks at the mini game. It's an it's usually like one or two button presses, so it doesn't think forever and just move off your turn.

It happens so fast.

That's a great point in Mario Party. It happens a lot where you land on a solo one and Okay, we're gonna fade to the roulette to decide what single player game we do. Okay, lands on this, fade to the practice thing. Okay, like everyone's just watching. Okay, fade to the actual thing and then you got to pick your fucking glove item or whatever.

Fade back like it's just like so much bullshit.

And here, yeah, Michael, you said you can go to like an archery thing in the fantasy land or whatever, and it's just like okay, yeah, hit a twice to try to get the higher number and then move along like it's just so much snappier.

It's so much better, so demonstrably better. That Lego is inadvertently jeopardizing its licenses with Intendere's.

What they do.

They said they're gonna do a switch to upgrade when they get dev kits.

Here's what they do, right. They've They've done Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars, do Lego Mario Party Party awesome?

Give them the series, Like seriously, Hey, the Lego Nintendo sets are fucking great.

I love those. It's cross play.

So like my system, Katie and her husband can play on Switch while Cala plays on PS five and I play on PC. It's forty dollars. It's cheaper like it focuses on that. Like all anyone wants to do in these fucking games is play the core board game mode. And the recent Mario Parties outside of Superstars was like

Things.

You'll play once and be like what the fuck is this? And like put the resources into making the fucking board game experience better, and that's what this game is is. It's just the fucking board game experience. And then you're getting player XP levels up, you're getting a park, you know, like board levels up, and getting like fun Lego mini fig customizable stuff. I may like before they all got in town, I made all of us like Lego mini versions. So it's fun to be able to just be a

You're not gonna party off. You're not gonna party r off for it. Yeah that's a joke.

Uh.

It feels like NFL two K. So Nintendo's gonna go out and get exclusive license.

To party and actually do this and.

Parties.

The medium of cells are so good too, Like they're all very intuitive, they aren't too complicated. None of them are super chance based, which I came across these.

You're playing a game.

This is way more leg I jokingly said for so many years, Mario Party's a game of skill. There's so much bullshit luck in there. This is just like there's no bullshit stars at the end. I know you can turn this stuff off in Mario Party and everything, but there's always bullshit. And Mario Party was like you just land on a block and you got a star for no reason. This one like you kind of earn your shit in this. And some of these mini games, like Mike said, like very Tall Race. I don't know if

And you're doing like a multiple choice thing on like what this thing is?

It's cool.

It's so fucking good, Like I can't like, I feel like when we played the SGF, it was just kind of like we're all just looking around, like this is really good.

What the hell? Yeah?

Then we played it on Friday, had a blast, immediate winner. It's like this is our new thing. We're like, they're buying it on switch.

We need to play it again next week. I know this is golf week made time, but I need to this game again. Yeah.

Fun reason I want to.

Brothers in the getting it's I can play with them more.

I just want to play more Lego party. Yeah.

Maybe we don't know if it changes based on what map you're on, but I did see there's a twenty four turn option that was estimated that three hours.

Yeah, that's a party.

I honestly think that would be a lot of fun because there's so many things we didn't get to do. Because we didn't get to do any of those two versus two things because we didn't have enough time to land on that, and those are so high stakes, they're pretty rare.

Like I want to see everything.

I haven't seen the version of chance time like on the leg So chance Time needs to be a thing in my party. And that was the ultimate bullshit thing here. It's just the last turn. The shops are turned into like chance Times squares and like that can change things, right.

And even like the Boo equivalent, like the seas, they don't show up right away, right.

The banana guy.

Yeah, they're just kind of like the banana dudes show up in speedboats, like halfway through the game.

That was so cool.

A bunch of fucking monkeys from an airplane to beat the ship out of you.

Great. Maybe we should also invite another party of fiicionado to the Lego party party, Yeah, another sequel party I did. Did Bianca like it? Yes? Really?

She actively despises Mario party like that.

It's like a family thing and it's like we don't have the full group or whatever, and it's like, listen, the kid is like sixteen months old.

You're gonna we need a forest. She's like, I will do it. I will not enjoy this. I will not like I will do the family thing, but like she had fun with this one.

Wow.

I think this one can win over people that like actively hate Mario Party.

It's really good wild.

I did a Ninjago level, which that is totally different than the theme park one where it's like you're going to these uh you have these fights against these giant Ninjago dragons and stuff with like timing based things where you goat ship out of them and go they can get a brick.

I don't think it get like, you know, some of those classic Lego laces and stuff involved when they did the menses. I would love it if there was like a back to the Future level or.

A yeah, yeah, that'd be really cool. Lego Party devs, if you're out there, I know you have a lot of work because you're trying to get the switch to up and running for me, for me, your friend Jan, can you add bionicles please?

You're going to pay for that one, I'll do.

I've posted about this being better than Mario Party, and one of the devs did repost me saying this is the most professional validation I've ever had in my entire life.

I love it.

I love it.

Let's fucking go.

It's tremendous. It's tremendous. It's gonna be my go to and I hope they make twenty more of these.

Yep, that may be the best news that I've heard all day. Jeff Grubb, I challenge you to deliver some more no good news. Oop. All right, let's do this.

Let's start here.

Did you guys see this this thing that Nintendo dropped a weird video a short film. Nintendo post mysterious close to You animated short film this morning. A Nintendo clip titled close to You shows a baby chasing a floating pacifier around a bedroom. It'sok like a three DCGI animated thing. Nintendo has offered no further details, simply posting the video with the title. The video depicts a mother leaving her baby with a passifire, after which the baby's toys begin

You know what. The first couple of notes.

Of that song sound exactly like the Pickman music, but then it goes in a different direction, so it's like, are those my ears or my ears playing a trick on me? There is another moment in the trailer where the camera's focused on the baby and the baby's chasing some of its toys that's moving around, maybe the pacifier, and underneath its crib a small blow read object is moving that maybe could be a Pickman Even if it is, what do you guys think this trailer is trying to accomplish?

It looks like, a CG short, like something from an illumination or maybe it seems like.

Something that we'd play before the Mario movie later next year.

Yeah, like that is the court. Like this doesn't look like anything Nintendo has done before. But if I would initially think this is just related to you know, they have that Mario line of basically baby toys and baby stuff coming out. Yeah, but like, yeah, like the quality of this is seems surprisingly high and nothing in here, says Mario.

It's just this pacifier kind of moving around on its own.

Like maybe there isn't it like a new pigment type that's an invisible pickment, and that's moving the pacifier around.

This doesn't look like Piman to me. I'm just watching now.

The arts high.

That's a great many about it. Now we go go to one minute in thirty nine seconds to see that thing move.

Okay, there's something there.

That is a tiny little that's mmm, that's I.

Mean, it could be like the teaser for the Pickman movie from Illumination, right, and.

Yeah, that would be cool. I think that would be my best guess.

Right, I mean, even if it's like Pickman shorts before the Mario movie that eventually leads to a Piman movie.

Down the road. There are people, there's some other speculation.

People think that that baby could be Rosolina because of her eye color and what else that was written here, because of its mama storyline in the game. I think that's a stretch, but I don't know, I really don't know.

I mean, the baby's wearing blue, right, like that's spacey blue like Rosalina, And yeah, the blonde hair you know what. I like this theory actually immediately now, maybe maybe there's a Loomo over there or something like that. Okay, I think this is a rose oh gosh, yeah, and the mobile has stars on it. I actually immediately think that this is just related to the Mario Galaxy movie and that this is a Rosalina origin.

Actually, okay, okay, Chat says again just a chat thing not verified here, says Meamoto has said that pickmen are always quote close to you in the world, and the Pickman bloom app says that humans can't see Pickman.

Yeah, I was thinking I was wondering if there was something like that. Okay, So a lot of possibilities here, but regard this is weird.

Weird they don't.

This feels like you're like like Kajima tees of just like, yeah, movie Dick studios, you know what's this fucking thing?

You know? Like, yeah, it's very bizarre. All right, I'm intrigued. Yeah, Nintendo's name pops up. I don't.

I feel like if Illumination was very involved, they would have their credit on there.

I don't see. Yeah.

Ninato did acquire a three D video production team last and they called it Nintendo Video in like the last couple of years.

So I don't know either way, I'm fascinated by this.

Uh I listen, it's something new with Pickman. Even if it's a Pickman movie, Oh anything, I will be very excited.

I love I love Pickman. I'll take it. I would love a new Pickman game. Though. They should just make the Pickmen into minions.

Yeah, I mean, I'm honestly, they're gonna work with elimination, just like, have the Minion team do a Pickman movie.

I bet that would be all ruin pimen.

Pickman were doing that shtick long before the minions existed, so they didn't.

Have a stick. They were real, they were pure.

They're very honest, all right.

Months after delay, Bungee's Marathon is returning to testing. Buzzy a Bungee Shooter Marathon is set to return to close beta testing between October twenty second and October twenty seventh, nearly four months after it's an initial delay. This NDA protected play test aims to evaluate improvements made since the alpha does feel like and they say it, it's like

Just wait till it's out. I mean, it's an academic interest, because you know, we've heard pretty quickly that people didn't like Marathon when it was last testing, and that seemed to kind of, you know, put the game in this weird place. I'm just curious if I don't think I'm going to like the game almost no wonder what I tried it.

I think I just don't like extraction shooters.

Actually, who knows, But there are a lot of people who do, and I'm curious if this wins over more of them, if this does find some positivity, or if this Marathon is just going to continue to sort of drown in this negative space that's been occupying for so long.

Now.

Yep, yeah, we've talked a bunch about Marathon, so there's not much else to say here. But you know, that is a game that apparently they still want to get out by March, by the end of the fiscal year if it doesn't make that window.

If this goes poorly again, do you.

Think it could be as bad as pulling the plug on it?

Like they can't, right, they can't. I feel like they can't. I think you're right, I feel like they can't. I don't know, though.

No.

Metal Health Singer studio closed as part of fun coom cuts. Funcom is closed the Outsiders, the developer of Metal Health Singer, as part of company wide the layoffs. Founder David Goldfarb shouts out to David Goldfarby's school. Dude announced the closure, noting that the studio, acquired by Funcom three years prior, had survived a previous near death experience that led to the creation of Metal Health Singer. I see there's there's a lot of camaraderie there.

At the studio.

They're going to try to like do something to maybe save the essence of the studio. I didn't fully follow what he meant, but it sounds like they are going to try to continue in some way. Whether that's like building a new team off to the side with a lot of the same people or not.

We'll see.

I never played Metal Health Singer. It seemed like a like it seems like the idea. Yeah, it seemed like a good try an idea, do something different from everyone else and stand out like and they did that, and it seems like a lot of people did actually pick up on it and enjoy it. Again, was well reviewed, So yeah, it's a shame, I bet though. It's like, Okay, reached a certain level of success, and we want to see this level of success.

To just get out of here.

That's the story of gaming right now. Red Dead Redemption two is PS five, Xbox Series and Switch two versions are still happening. That's according to Nate the Hate. That sounds about right to me because Red Dead Redemption two on PS four and PS and Xbox one that version is the version that you can still get on modern consoles, and it then it's still locked to thirty frames per second.

So it's like, yeah, they will probably unleash that game in some new way here pretty soon.

Probably just with an update.

But yeah, then they release it on Switch To, which is a twenty eighteen game that will make sense. I don't know if I'm gonna replay it here. If I replay that game, I'll try it on PC with some ods. But yeah, they're gonna have Grand Theft Auto six next year, So do you think this comes out like much sooner than that. It's like not distract from it.

Maybe a January February thing that was, Yeah, that would makes sense.

We can still continues to sell pretty well, actually even yes, even still, so yeah, these updates will give it some juice. You know, they definitely couldn't use some performance boosts.

Yeah, I'd be cured.

I'm really curious to see how this game looks on a switch to, because sometimes it is just a matter of how much work you put into it, and we've seen with like the GTA trilogy, sometimes even a company's biggest take to just won't put that much work into it. So I hope they do a good job here.

Yep.

Mina the Hollower delayed. Yacht Club Games has announced a delay for Mina the Hollower. This is the shovel Night team. They were going to release this game on Halloween, October thirty first. They are now releasing it on unspecified date. They've not given a date, but they did say that they will tell everybody the date once they submit the game to platforms. So they're trying to suggest here like it is a quote unquote indefinite delay in that it's

I absolutely having a fancy I'm sure they wanted to hit Halloween. It's like, you know, it's a fitting release date for a game that has some spooky vibes like this, but it can also probably add pressure to feel like you have to hit this day and maybe you're rushing through certain things that you'd rather take your time on and make sure a really good Uh. You know, we've seen a lot of games now, Soak Song Haities two

We'll just have one powerwash simulator just like a couple of weeks from now.

I think now, like I think they're all like, why bothers setting up a release date, Uh that we that we might miss, probably will miss these days.

Let's uh just wait until we really know.

Yeah, they announce the state a bit ago, so it's a bit of a bummer, but it's probably the right thing for this game, almost certainly.

Yeah, now that you guys talk that out, it's like, oh, yeah, that's exactly what these other companies did. They submitted it to platforms, got the approval, and like, oh, okay, now we know two weeks from now this game's coming out, so yeah, we'll probably get exactly the same thing with Mina. Last week after the show, Xbox raised the price of game Pass. A Game Pass Ultimate will now cost thirty dollars a month. It's the twenty dollars a month. There's

But whatever.

The big highlight here is everything's getting more expensive. They are no longer trying to find new users, They're trying to make more money from the same users. You know, there was kind of a seemed like a rush to cancel this thing. I said I would, I still have not I need to do that because I'm just not using this at all. Really, you know, this is overall kind of part of Hey, what's going on with Xbox?

But I don't know.

Other companies are finding creative ways or working hard to keep prices down, and Microsoft does not seem interested in doing that. How are we feeling about game Pass.

It's it's just a it's rough at that price. Even though gay Pass had a pretty good year when it comes to releases, even though Microsoft Microsoft themselves don't have much I mean, game Pass had Exhibition thirty three, they had Soak Song, they had a lot of the biggest games this year. It feels like it should be able to ride this momentum. It just feels like, well, if

But the remember go ahead, Jen well it just real quick. But the thing is, it doesn't feel like they're making any active or positive steps to get out of the quagmire. It's not like they switch to their sand wedge web Norman bomb dot com.

Everybody is that the name of the thing that is Sandwichka think the open Face Club, the sand wedge opening.

Like with every new thing I see anyone from Xbox saying, it's like it's just kind of it's beyond sweep swiping or sweeping the problem under the rug because like the rug is like just full of coffee stains. Shrug exactly. Yeah, they're actively doing it, and like, what are y'all even thinking about doing? Scout, I know you're working a ship rug.

A shrug, that's right, that's what That's what a ship rug is called. I they I think they.

I think what happened is they had a bunch of ideas to try. They tried them all and and the whole time there's someone kind of behind them being like, Hey, when's this thing going to really start popping off and making real money?

And they're like, well, once we really get game Pass.

Going, and star fields are going to be once we have once we have starfield, Yes, once this happens, what's that? And then all these things happened, nothing really changed. I'm not saying these things weren't scessful or people didn't like them. A lot of that stuff did happen, but as far as the people standing behind of Phil Spencer were concerned, this thing is not really changing its stripes at all.

I remember when, like don't you remember right when this really started to take shape in a way where everyone was like, whoa, this seems like the greatest value in games, right. The question was always how can they continue to do this forever? That was the conversation when when game Pass really presented, the most compelling case was, holy shit, there's no way this makes sense financially.

What's the end game?

I'm gladly pay you now for this because it seems like I'm getting a tremendous deal and you're the ones getting fucked over. I guess this, But like, so to me with with that, you know, information not left leaving

Amazon Prime and all these other things. Sure, it just it didn't get big enough like those other ones did.

Well, and the miscalculation being there was never a you know, the opportunity to like parlay this into you know, dot dot dot profit question mark was never realized in a meaningful way right.

Yeah, I feel like that's the shoe dropping.

Yeah.

I feel like back then it was either like this is going to change the industry forever and now we buy games and play games, or this is too good to be true and this is it's gonna be on borrowed time.

So yeah, even if it like is making a profit, which they claim often that it does, you know, I think that is a fancy math a lot of times, like they aren't like really taking into consideration all the things that go into the cost of running something like this. But even if it is it is, it has clearly not grown the way that they wanted it to. There was that year that Phil Spencer and Satiinadella both had their bonuses tied to Game Pass growth. Neither of them

Get the V Bucks and stuff like that, and yeah for people to play.

Fortnite, like you're gonna be able to do some math here, but be like, oh, I get these games, and I get four Ande Crew, maybe I'll play Ubi Soft games. Some people are gonna be able to justify it, but most people, I think are just gonna see thirty dollars say I'm.

Out of here, and we're not.

We're not done right. The price doesn't stop here, it's going to be forty dollars a month.

That couple of years.

Yeah, like I thought they'd do like two dollars and fifty cents per per increase, right, small five percent increases here or there, a fifty percent increase and one go is bananas, and it says, oh, we can just keep going up from here, Like fifty dollars a month is probably not off the table within the next ten years for this thing, and maybe that's longer than really it will take for them to get there. And then meanwhile, because of all this, there's a lot of like bad

I to me that I think that's still there.

Focus is make Windows based Xboxes and change up the strategy in that way. But they claim that they're still making Xboxes going forward. We've talked about that a bunch of times. But I don't know what do you guys even want or expect from the next Xbox.

I don't want anything.

Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine what I think i'd possibly do to make it exciting anymore. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I think they are a bit out of a crossroads where it's like.

The time to Yeah, I don't know.

I always and maybe this is just like an antiquated way to think any more, of like the combining of like their their PC lane with the idea of owning a console, where it's like, maybe Xbox is just an idea, let alone a thing you can turn on and off. I don't know, but it's certainly, especially as we end this generation, having this kind of negative momentum is not setting them up for anything.

Xbox is dedicated handheld. Meanwhile, that thing that was rumored a long time ago, separate from the Asus Roger ally Xbox X whatever the fuck it's called.

This is a separate from that.

There was rumors about why that was canceled, and it's because apparently AMD was like, hey, we'll make you this chip, you have to guarantee you you'll buy ten million of them. An Xbox like, oh, well, you know the steam decks only sold five million. We're afraid to commit to that now. Jess Gordon's come on and said that the story is not true. He didn't say exactly what part of the story's not true, although I imagine it's this thing right

But maybe I'm wrong.

I mean, they could always bounce back the boy. They can't mess this one up, though. This thing has to come out and be pretty pristine if they want to repair Halo's image. And that Oblivion remake was pretty good, but it was very heavy and it was not running great on a lot of platforms, and I don't think people are going to tolerate that. Again, this should be an easier ass This isn't some giant open world game like Oblivion is. It has open areas, for sure, but yeah,

And that does it for the news. Jan the show is back over to you. Grab. Can I posit a question to you? Please? What if they made Halo a rogue light? I mean, that's a good idea. That's that'd be fun, man, Yeah, let's do it. You know what else is age light?

Yeah?

I fully agree with you. What sounds like a great idea is taking a quick coffee break and then we'll be back with emails. And super chats and who knows what else we'll be back with. We'll see on the other side. Rub It's okay, just look at it. Okay, it's fine. Well wait, damn, what are you doing here?

Oh like like existentially or what do you mean?

No, Dan, like here a giant bomb covering games?

Oh?

Oh what I do for a living? Okay, Well, I'm here because of Game Informer.

That's right.

Way back in nineteen ninety three, I saw a Game in Former magazine and subscribed for the first time, and it has been a huge part of my life ever since, from you know, working the register at Funko Land and selling subscriptions to starting working there full time in two thousand and nine. Has been there for me the whole time. They mean a ton to me, so it hurt me, just like I know it hurt a lot of you. When the unexpected news came down not too long ago that Game Informer was shutting down.

But nay, fair not, I say that's right.

Game Informer is back, and with one hundred percent of the staff that was there when it shut down.

Now, Danny boy, I see that you're holding a magazine right there. Tell me about how that page feels.

I'm telling you, I have held hundreds upon hundreds of Game Informer magazines from nineteen ninety three to today, and this is, without a doubt the best. But I'm feeling this right now. This is this is a smooth cover, This is a thick, nice paper here, the print is just this is a wonderful quality print magazine. It makes my heart feel good.

And I know that Game Informer is a team that I can rely on to say something substantial about games and the people who make them, because GII has a stellar crew of editors.

This these are people I.

Love to have on the couch at Giant Bomb at night, for at Summer Game Fest. It's people I can always rely to have something interesting to say. That's why I know when they have those excellent cover stories, just like they always did and always will continue to do. So it's going to be some of the best coverage in video games.

And another fun bonus, Game Informer donates five percent of every subscription purchase directly to Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital.

You know, earlier this year the future seemed very uncertain for both Game Informer and Giant Bomb. That's putting it mildly and as someone whose life in gaming hobby has been greatly impacted by both of those outlets, I am thrilled that we are both back and doing our thing online, in your podcast apps and in print in your hand. That is right, gaming news, reviews, everything in between, sent straight to your mailbox every month. To subscribe, go to game Informer dot com slash subscribe now.

Magazines like emails and a little coffee break to re energize you. Sometimes the coffee break is just shaking it out, you know.

Uh.

To BombCast, the giant bomb dot com is email dress send your emails too. You can write in about any and everything. I keep saying this every week, but it becomes more and more true. We're getting lots of emails. I love it. Thank you for sending your emails in BombCast giant bomb dot com right in about any and everything. We'll try and read it.

Not enough about Mike actually about the time he got some attention.

Yeah, you know what. We talked about this on the dump truck. We're getting too many calls about Mike. Uh, but you know what, I'll take it. It's fine. He's selling hats, you're selling shirts. I'll take it.

Three to the four to the five to the putt today is make a break. Can you make the cut and go to Giant Bomb store store dot Giant Bomb dot com get yourself a new Giant Bomb golf hat or Giant Bomb Golf shirt.

Right the greatest week of all time?

I don't know.

That's uh.

That's Pandemonium's uh song. Cut from quotes from Craig Stadler and Pebble Beach Golf links.

Well, let's just do this whole segment again. Email's first email comes from David from St. Charles, Illinois. Hey, dudes, every now and then, I asked myself dumb questions that asking out loud would likely get dumb looks. I routinely asked myself what do other people do when with their other arm when brushing their teeth? The reason I ask is because sometimes I notice myself clenching a fist for the entire duration, sometimes just passively scratching, or sometimes just dangling.

No?

No, that's only when I'm pissing at a urinal in public. Jan No, I, I just I have like my fort it's like straightened out up against the counter, just sort of like I make it straight, kind of like working it out a little bit, hands on the sink, like straight down to like support yourself for Yeah, just kind of like lean into.

It, give it a little stretchy pooh.

I'll brush my teeth and figure this out. Is there something fish he does?

He could have just pretended to do it. He didn't have to.

In the stream, before he gets back, we clean, like or clean the sink bowl as we're brushing. Yeah, I sometimes I do. I walk around and do other stuff too. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll clean the mirror a little bit while.

Yeah, maybe trim an eyebrow, pluck a.

Couple I can't do that with the lefty, No way.

Jam.

When he comes back, just tell him we moved on and whatever he has to say is irrelevant.

I mean we're gonna have to We're not going to wait for him to come back. Of course, do you think he's out there right now brushing his teeth instead of bringing it over here. No, I think he's going to think there because he wants to know okay. Well, next email comes from pile from Sorry, we moved on, We moved on. It was so interesting. No, no, okay, we told Sean to cut that email from No, you don't deserve No. I had a revelation that you're not going to know. I got my Keith.

You're so bad.

What a sucker? A sucker. I'm not saying for.

No amount of Bullshitna, No.

No, you're done. Move on, move on, move on, move on yourself. That very little Golf Week.

God, thank you?

Email okay. Email address emails to Cale from scotlet right said Hey, gang, in honor of Golf Week, which video game location would make the best golf course? And which character would you want to be your caddy for a round of golf? Thanks Kyle.

Apparently the What Walk About Golf has a missed golf course. I don't know how we missed that. Yeah, morning missed the block. But yeah, we weren't going to put you in VR. You get dizzy?

Oh that's VR. Yeah you should play VR. You like I'm going to I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna find the mis court, So that actually would be a great golf course.

That's like the right answer.

I think I think Mallard Duck has the right answer in Green Hill Zone is like the perfect.

Like that.

Shadow Moses, Shadow Moses would be cool. Right Sega did a tennis game?

Did they do a golf game with golf?

Be good? That had been awesome, just says Breath of the Wild. Jesus h golf mini game in there the most thing. Yeah, ye holes, yeah you went. I'm one from Doom's funny answers for this.

I like this.

Yeah, the Spencer mansion that makes no sense putt putt though, will be more putt putt fitting. Yeah, that'd be good.

Silent Hill for golf.

Yeah, the big crocodile fish then comes out and bites your ball.

Yeah.

Yeah, they should actually make a residevil Minnie golf spin.

Actually, that'd be great. That'd be cool. I love that Silent Hill would be challenging because it would just be nothing but fog all the time.

Yeah, no visibility, like Silent Hill is so fog based, And we didn't have a Silent Hill game in the N sixty four, the most foggy console of all time.

Surprising.

I think about that a lot.

Think about it all the time, keeps me up at night is going to be like you know what Bill Murray said to Scarlett Johansson and yeah lost in translation, there's gonna be like, there's gonna be like essays.

About whatever you could tell anyone.

I don't care.

You could never tell Mike.

I'm not gonna tell anyone, Okay, if that's fine.

Definitely not Mike.

No, are you over it? Mike?

Or no?

No, no, he's not. God it must be did your brothers fuck with you? Oh?

Yeah, okay, man, if you were my younger brother, I would.

Just be going down every day, not as much as others outside. Chris, my younger brother did it the most. Oh yeah, yeah, he's well, you're not the youngest that you can't do it. He's the middle. He's not how it's supposed to work.

I'm aware.

How it's like needs the most attention and stuff like that.

What a huge what a huge win for your youngest brother, he Chris, Yeah, right, friend Tom from London rights and hi guys, I decided, rather than keeping up with all the excellent game releases in twenty twenty five, Silk Song, Haities two, et.

Cetera, I'm gonna save a ghost of Yotay for the holiday break at the end of the year, he feels like a good holiday game. Any of you have any memorable holiday games or are you saving any games for the holiday break? Cheers Tom from London.

First Metrod Prime was I remember it was that Christmas I got the Platform Cube and Metrod Prime like bundle and it was like, oh.

That was perfect.

M that's a good one. I can't think of anything specific.

I could see myself really digging into Yo Tai that is the one like during the holiday break perhaps, but gosh, yeah, I can't like distinguish in my mind, like when was that when I sat down to play this game a lot? When was it? I remember the one year on Thanksgiving I spent a lot of it just watching D Space nine the video game.

I don't know.

Yeah, I told the one about Donkey Kung Country Thanksgiving a bunch, So this year I will I got someone mentioned Super Super Mario Galaxy to you, saving that for the holiday.

I think I might do that as well.

That's that sounds real good this year, like, okay, get the time off, maybe the Thanksgiving break even although I'll probably still be catching up on games at that point, so probably Christmas.

Indiana Jones was a good holiday game from last year for me. Yeah, yeah, I really like that.

And like Metric Prime for is kind of coming out in that slot this year, so that could be that for sure, could be real good.

Yeah, Okay, a couple more emails here. Caleb from London as well also writes in Dear BombCast ex Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney recent tribute recently attributed the team's success, including winning the Premier League, to the socom PSP game. Yeah. This is because during travel the team would play the game together, which he felt enhanced their communication and teamwork in a way which improved results on the pitch. My question is have you ever heard any other celebrity who

There was that NASCAR driver recently who like did some where you like grinded the wall and then he's like, yeah, I learned that in the GameCube now car games the price it worked, Yeah, and it didn't like.

He went from like he was not going to like make the playoff or something, and then because he did that, he went up like seven spots and made the playoff at the playoffs.

It really worked.

It's crazy.

And then they banned the move because it worked too well. Oh yeah, it's kind of super dangerous.

Isn't that what the grandt Tourismo movie is trying to say?

Pretty much?

Movie is like a true story about a guy who is good good in Grand turismo and like want a competition to become a real race car driver, and then became a really good race car driver.

I guess I don't know how true.

That is, but I want to still do this business of Uh, there's an important thing in all sports footwork of being able to move your feet around and be able to like kind of like move like without like thinking about it too much, and kind of being fast on your toes And there is nothing better for practicing that. And I don't think they've ever like, there's no one in sports that has actually realized this.

DDR.

Getting good at DDR would make a quarterback better like running backs, like kind of like really any sport, I bet, being able to fastly quickly shift your weight from one side to the other without without really thinking I think that would be like one of those things where you could like run like a oh, I'm gonna help little lingers get better at baseball or whatever, and charge parents way too much money just to play DDR and be like yeah, yeah, just play that.

I know what I'm talking about. So yeah, I think that could really work.

I think, uh, it doesn't always translate, but I do think sports games obviously not the skill of the sport, but understanding the broad strokes of the game and strategy I think is helpful. You know, Like, you know, there's a lot like right now, with the age that deplays hockey at, you've got a lot of kids who like clearly watch a lot of hockey and kids who clearly don't. So there is a lot of positioning there that I think, you know, makes a lot of sense. But yeah, I

I had a friend that like picked up the drums because of rock band and always like a pretty decent drummer like before Homie could not keep rhythm for shit.

Yeah, I think for rock band specifically, that's probably the only instrument you can really well, aside keeping time.

Man Rocksmith, which is like actual guitars. Right really, it's always more like a guitar learning software than it is.

Right right, all right. Last email of the show comes from Matt from Mesa, Hey, big Bamo boys. You know that oh deer diner thermis that keeps selling out for Alan awake too? What if Luca dear diner thermos importantly not a mug, but it also holds coffee.

And it's a dumb video game slash GB joke.

Years Matt for Mason.

Yeah, thermiss are cool.

I got no. I have no issue with thermises.

Everybody. Let it be known because they don't impact it, don't chatter on impact or through shipping. Yes, exactly. I got one from SGF when I saw the theater demo of actually that they note it later. So yeah, I do have one, and it's very nice. Oh I would have said it to you if I didn't like it.

Well, thank you for the thought. At least mikey folks.

That does it.

For emails, mister menoni, do we have any YouTube super chats?

We absolutely do. Uh And since I need to kill time because I haven't pulled them up yet, let me remind you about golf week. It's not just for us, it's for you. Store thought giant bomb dot com. Golfing is the national past time for whatever nation you reside in, or whatever nation you decide to admire the most. Okay, it will make you more virile, it will make you more attractive, it will increase your intelligence beams, which is yes, we call how brains work. Go to store dot giant

Please, but please do not wear jeans on the golf course, please please.

Whatever you do, is.

That really taboo? The golf you can do?

You can do most Some courses have like rule it's whatever, I'm just making fun of my okay, but like, uh, but you look, it's a sport.

Like how much you know you're gonna gonna fucking play sports? And jeans that's another thing. It's definitely a sport, for sure, But like you know, it's golf is also a sport, right, Yeah, if you're without running, let's be clear.

Yeah, I mean, look, if you're walking the course, you'll feel it. You don't want to be wearing jeans walking the course, even taking a cart.

You don't want to.

You don't want to wear jeans, man, jeans are too hot. You gotta wear something breathe that breathes better.

Of course, no argument.

No serious person plays golf in jeans.

But all right, I remember when I get into I'll remember that. Thank you. I can't wait to play around the golf with you.

Mike.

It's gonna be all.

It'll be great.

It'll be great, and I know that you'll be doing it in your very own golf shirt from Giant Bombs.

Giant bomb dot com.

Has prof says, are you all going to play the golf games in UFO fifty? Oh?

We may not have time. It is not gonna have the time.

It is while how many golf games there are that are worth playing? Because you know, like yeah, like you know, people brought up sim golf, which I love. I don't know how easy that is to play these days.

You know, what I want to do is like maybe for one of these slots still take biz Hawk and put a bunch of golf games in there, and is that the one that does the randomize? Yes, and I could like see like how many of them I could complete a round in or whatever, because I.

Would love it for just like stop and shift right.

In the middle of a swing. That'd be really fun.

Would definitely, I mean, you could set it to be like, you know whatever, your one second to one minute intervals randomly.

Oh man, all right, man, I might look into that.

Grog says, what if Mike never takes that shirt off all week? Yeah, look after this one is probably gonna get a wash, now, you know, I got to make sure everybody knows.

But yeah, do you know all kidding?

Is that?

Do you know if it's like a air dry only I feel like it might be one of those.

I don't think it's air dry, No, okay, I think I think it just goes in with a normal wash.

Yeah, hey, buy two shirts then they're disposable folks by five right now so that you destroy it clear? Yeah?

Well maybe maybe check. I put all the info there, but I think it's fine on the store store at gifon dot com. How shaky talking about our bonton just no Mario party hashtag never forget. We'll probably have to do something Mario.

No, well asked the you brought us up.

That's a question now, like do we play Mario party because it's the tradition it's kind of funny, how it's bullshit? Or do we play Lego party because it's better and more fun.

We could have an incentive and people can just like animals.

Yeah, is it a Lego party party or a Mario party party?

I like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like the trolley problem, Like we just have the.

Incentive be the party party, and then we have to run the thing once.

Its both at the same time.

I don't care what a think about it.

Dan No, no, don't let him think about it. Super chats, keep reading super chests.

Ep Idiot Box says idea fact your life. The main character and glove whun leash only wears green key out her wardrobe and play nubes over her clothes.

Oh my god, and her entire apartment green.

Oh my god, there's a lot of green. I was gonna say, let's do the Binurmal audio you have love on a leash like playing at a top channel and then.

Writing die, I'm writing some things down goals and incentives tab. Okay, so we've got Lego party, Mario party simultaneous and what was the Okay, I don't know if we can green screen.

Maybe we just have two TVs going.

No, we just have to edit it. Yeah, I can do it.

Okay, I'll do it. I'll do it on nob nubes on a leash, nubes on a leash.

And then we do what if we did spatial Okay, okay, hear me out spatial audio the leash lounge or love on a nubes leash has to be in v R and then wherever you look is what you're listening to.

Oh, if you can make that happen. And then in the leash lounge if somebody has to do VR, they are not.

Getting any controls. They can't do anything.

And it's max volume, not max volume of Jesus Ut except from Tyrant.

Everyone should have their own punishment room. They should have to watch either Peppa Pig or Ben and Hawley. Speaking of bad list pitchforks one hundred rap LP apparently, if people weren't.

Happy with that one, she's fucking garbage. Don't get me started on this one.

Oh really, yeah, let's see what Let me see what number one is real quick. Maybe I'll see if I recognize it. Number one squirrel scull scroll scroll.

Is is it ready to if that's wrong? If it's not mob.

Deep the Infamous from nineteen ninety old. Wow, interesting that six thousand says Top Golf has a green Hills zone course.

Oh that makes sense. They have the sonic thing.

Yeah, yeah, right, that's right. They did do that, right, And then Antoyo where else says do golf month? It's out of golf week, penis. Uh boy, we.

Could the whole month of golf. Could it be done? In our hearts, it can be.

If you order your own golf shirt and golf half from sort of giant on dot com, you can celebrate golf week the entire year long.

That's right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, who knows. We could fill out a whole month with golf and golf related things that people spell during golf.

Right.

We could do another spelling bl right again.

When I l I g an, it was not a challenge Dan, it was not a challenge spelled Craig Stadler r.

G S T A D or t D. I think it's D. I think it's l E. R. Craig Stadler A D. All right, Mikey any more super chats or is that it that.

Looks like it's it. I'll do a quick refresh here to make sure. But I think we're I think we're pretty good.

But uh nope, we're good. We're good.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you everyone for your emails, thank you everyone for your super chats, thank you everyone for celebrating Golf Week with us. So far, it's only day two. Don't worry. We got so much more golf headed to your eyeballs and speaking about eyeballs. All of the podcasts are now available in video form on Spotify. If there is another podcast platform that you choose and prefer and that supports video, I'll go investigate. Well, we'll see it then. Also reminders

Blake Club tomorrow, Grub, Did you send me a hat?

No, I didn't.

I forgot to do that.

Let me see if I can go and ship to you like and have it delivered in one day.

Overnight civil war hat, overnight civil war butt they have that.

Yeah, definitely.

Go to that spirit. Ye yeah, true, I was in on this weekend. I could door dash it to you. I'd be absurd, so stupid, that's irresponsible, right right right. Like we mentioned, we're going to be going against Game Informer tomorrow in Everybody's golf to continue the Golf Week Shenanigans. I'm gonna go flip some coins after Blake Club, but no one has to worry their pretty little heads about that. On Thursday, we're also gonna be playing Nintendo Switch Sports golf.

I love.

My god, I've been gentle seeing up for another week. Another episode of The Jopop Guys Goodbye,