Spot, the video game. Warning, not recommended for squares. That was great. That was a great joke there. That was good. You liked it. I was so confused. You just gotta know. For those that don't know, spot is a circle. So it would make sense that it's not for squares. So good, dude. Who are we? Who are you? And I'm Joe. I'm Sean. We have Joe, we have Sean, and you have me, Mike, your host, doing a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America.
This week we're playing soda. We're playing soda. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry. It depends on where you're from. Soda, pop. Would you say fizzy drink, Sean? Yeah. Coke. Sean says fizzy drink. I know over in Europe they say they want it with gas. they're like water with gas that just sounds you guys gotta work on something better they all say that dude does anyone just say soda pop anymore just combine bring back no you're actually kind of I think you're some kind of
schizophrenic, I think. I might start trying to do it. I think it sounds the most delicious. All the soda talk is happening because this is a game about a soda mascot, 7-ups mascot. Spot, who is a red circle who wears sunglasses, has stick figure arms and legs, but not stick figure hands and feet. It's a little confusing. I guess like technically he might have them under the shoes and the gloves, but I prefer to just think that the shoes and gloves are like atomically part of his body.
Now, I like to think that basically he is just a stick figure and he's wearing the red circle. And he's wearing the gloves and shoes and sunglasses. And he's really just like a void of stick. And this is just like his job. He's just like, hey, it's a living. Yeah. He kind of looks like he'd say that. Yeah. No, Spot's, like, cool. Spot would be, like... Not here.
What do you mean? Well, there's a game, Cool Spot. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just meant, like, he's giving off that he's hip, you know? It's like, Spot would be like, I don't work for the man. Man. Yeah, exactly. Spot also not around anymore, right? When was the last time you saw this guy on a bottle of 700? I don't know the last time I saw a bottle of 7-Up. Oh, that was going to be my next question. You know, when's the last time you saw a bottle of 7-Up?
I don't know. What about you, Joe? I haven't seen 7-Up. I hadn't thought about it until I started playing this game. I was like, is 7-Up still around? Do people still drink that? Now, the 7-Up, it does have in the logo a red circle. And I promise this is going somewhere. But obviously, like, I think that that red circle is...
Not like, I don't know why it's there in the first place. But now that like they were like, hey, we can make that red circle our mascot. I'm all in. You know, I'm invested in spot as a character. You know, he was always there. He was always lurking. And now I just want to know, you know, like when I don't see Spot on screen, I'm asking myself, where's Spot?
Uh, it's weird that, you know, if you're just playing a standard game that like the, the number one, like the, the first player is not the red circle. Like you are not, you are never spot. Unless you play like a four-player game. You can't just talk about the gameplay. Okay, you're right. I'll hold off. I'll hold off. I know what it was. I gave you guys too many Simpsons quotes at once.
and you didn't have any of them. Yeah, it's with Poochie, and they're like, oh, God. Yeah, never mind. Oh, God. It's not an oh, God moment, because believe it or not, The Simpsons is actually a popular American TV show. If you can believe it. In Europe they call it gassy. Yeah, yellow people with gas. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, they are yellow, Sean. It's not controversial. It's not new. Well, on my CRT, they're kind of like a sickly green. You've just got to adjust your CRT.
We're not even doing filler stuff right now. That's what's crazy. There's things to talk about in this game. We're not trying to kill time. I tried. I don't think I'm trying to kill time. I think there's just so much to talk about when it comes to... a video game starring a soda bottle mascot where the mascot does not make me think about the soda at all. You know, like Pepsi Man? He's just like a guy dressed to the nines in Pepsi.
What does Cool Spot make you think of 7up4? I'm not going to lie, though. Maybe this is the genius of their branding, but just that red dot does make me think of 7up4. There you go. And you haven't seen a bottle in ages. 7-Up is not red. It doesn't have like a cherry flavor or anything. It does. Cherry 7-Up is one of my favorite flavors. Well, no, no, I'm saying, but like regular 7-Up doesn't have an inherent cherry flavor. That's poser 7-Up. But like that.
Little circle makes me think, yeah, that's what 7-Up, that's what the taste of 7-Up would look like. Now, I, if I could talk about video games. I don't want you to talk about the video game. You're going to scoop my story. I'm not going to talk about this video game. Oh, perfect. Then go ahead. Okay. So the spot that I remember.
is from Cool Spot. And maybe I'm stealing your sequels and spinoffs bullshit, Mike, but I want to talk about this. When I was young and would go to Blockbuster to rent video games. Uh, I had, I had rented Cool Spot. And thought it was one of the coolest things in the world. Like, you know, you just see this bottle of 7-Up. Looked real realistic. Like, wow, I'm playing this game and it's in real life.
And the bottle sort of washes up onto a beach and then you just sort of jump out of the bottle and like start hanging on the beach. And I thought that was one of the coolest things in the world. And then. The rest of the game happened and it was lame. So that's all. That's my memory. Of 7 Up and Cool Spot. Well, thank you. I appreciate that because that was relevant to the topic we were discussing, which is one of the mascots in the Mascot Hall of Fame spot from 7 Up.
I have a 7-Up memory, and it involves Cherry 7-Up, which is not a poser drink. Poser 7-Up. Yeah, it's not a poser drink. And that was that one time I like some birthday party that I was invited to. I was like four years old. Whose birthday? I don't know. It was like my cousins, I think. And I had a. How many cousins do you have? 15 cousins on one side and six on the other.
And I drank a cup of Cherry 7-Up, and I still can taste it to this day. I don't know if I said I was going to remember it or whatever, but I remember how refreshing that Cherry 7-Up was that day. And so I really want spot the video game to be good. Joe, last chance, any seven up memories? I don't, I honestly, I'll just, I'll just be straight with you guys. I don't know what seven up is. I don't know what we're talking.
Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. It's like Sprite. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, well, okay, but that, all right, joking aside, I know it doesn't taste exactly like Sprite. What's the difference? Really? I don't know. Is it sweeter? No, I will tell you the difference. I do know the difference. Sprite has an emphasis on, in my opinion, on the lime part. of lemon line. I don't think seven up hits the same line.
You think it's more lemon? I think it's more lemon. I disagree. Wait, who's doing it harder? I think that... I don't remember the taste of 7-Up. And you're going to disagree? What are you? So I'm disagreeing. Oh my goodness, this guy. Because I don't remember the taste of it. I honestly might right after we're done recording this. run and grab a seminar. Who let one of our Twitter users on the show today? What the hell is going on over here?
Anyway, to get into the video game, which is aptly titled Spot the Video Game. Naturally, it's based on like Othello and Reversi rules. And if there's one way I'm going to make my soda mascot stand out, it's by reinventing the rules to a 100 plus year old. I've never played Othello before. Didn't we? But you kind of have. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't it an episode? It was a game. We already played Othello. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure you were on it. I don't think I was. The black and white circle.
No, oh my god, we definitely didn't play Go. I don't think we can bring Go to the NES. I must have not been on that episode. Well, we'll check it out. Listeners, please check it out. Let Sean know at... It's not, but it's not Othello in reverse. I think that's important to say is like, this isn't just like, Hey, let's take the rules of Othello. Let's use the same exact board and let's just make it, you know,
red and green. Is it because there's breakdancing in this one? No, no, no, it's way more than that. No, there is breakdancing in Othello. In Othello, I believe, in Othello, you could play... one white circle on any of the, I think it's an eight by eight board. You can place it anywhere on there. And then your opponent puts a black piece down and then you keep doing that. But basically. After you try to capture the opponent's... So if you have...
If you're white and you have a white piece and then there are three black pieces in between, like sandwiched in between, if you put the next white piece down in between those three black pieces to kind of like... hug the ends of those three black pieces, they turn white.
yeah you have to sandwich your opponent's pieces in between two of your pieces to to capture them yes oh and this one it's just they gotta touch they have to be adjacent yeah right so this yeah this is a different kind of game and again a weird way to like be like When I think of 7-Up, I think of that old board game, but with new rules. Next, they're going to tell me that Pepsi Man is going to go on to make Chess 2.
You know, it's like we don't need to just why couldn't it? Why couldn't it be an action platform? Why couldn't it just be like Spot doing something interesting? Probably because you probably need thousands of, I don't know how this works at all, but thousands of fewer lines of code to make this. I feel like you could just make this. I think you guys need to take this from my perspective. Somebody who has already described that they know of Spot from an action platformer game.
And then seeing like, oh, I guess there was one on the NES. And then getting this, I think it's even more surprising than just... only hearing that it was a soda at one point and now it's a video game like it's just it's just very strange i mean i agree and i i fully expected this to be a platformer but then once i booted up i was like oh they were lazy
So there's a couple of other big changes other than just like, so we're saying the Othello things this way you at least get the general concept, but also Othello does not have any more than two players. Spot allows for four-player fun. So that is kind of interesting as well. And so you can have anywhere from two to four players. Each one starts in their own respective corner.
And you just put a piece down in a 7x7 board. You're free to design the board however you want. And by design, I mean removing available spaces to lay down your... But everybody takes turns. starting from the corners, laying down a piece. And the game kind of starts slowly. You know, you're at the corners, and they're at their corners. Nobody's really touching each other yet. You know, it's like a middle school dance.
And then next thing you know, all of a sudden, somebody gets close to the middle and another person sees an opportunity to take. And if a player selects an existing piece of their color. adjacent to a piece of another player's color. All of the adjacent pieces that are not the current player's color will also change that color.
And when you have to talk about colors and squares and grids this much, you can understand how confusing it must be if you're not playing the game to have someone describe it to you. It's kind of like Othello with some extra steps to make sure that they don't get, I don't know, who invented Othello? Nobody's going to sue them. Shakespeare. Somebody might hold the right.
And here's an interesting thing, too. You don't have to – you can't lay down pieces anywhere. But basically, from the piece that you laid down, you can either move one or two steps away from – So you can move across the board pretty fast.
Yeah, but the sort of balancing act here is if you do move two, then you have to sort of like... that that that piece is actually like jumping over there like it doesn't get to stay there but if you only move one it's kind of like you're uh a cell undergoing mitosis And then you get to sort of like blob a bit. Yeah. And that actually makes it, that does add an extra layer here because if you're surrounded by, you know, the opposite color and you want it.
you want to jump over them to take a bunch over there you are already inherently leaving an open space for them to come and take a bunch of yours because you're not you're not leaving a piece behind So if you can, sometimes it's better to just move one space. So keeping all your spaces filled so there's not like somewhere in the center of all your pieces that they can go in and take a whole square worth, a whole, you know. three by three yeah of your pieces
There's so much strategy here. There's endless opportunities for not just fun, but also for capturing the pieces, too, because the boards change. So it's not like. oh, you know, like I know how this goes because it's just a 7x7 board and you can play somewhere ever. It's like, no, all of a sudden you can design it in the shape of like a smiley face if you want to. That's pretty neat. Endless fun. Endless fun, but we all know that the game really shines, and I mean really.
Spot becomes an animated character to move between the pieces. So when you select, even if it's not a red circle, if you select a piece and move it somewhere else, that piece becomes spot. And he does some cool things with his legs and arms. And I think he even has, like, what is that, like a cane? He'll do, like, a cartwheel. He'll breakdance, like I said before. He'll sort of loiter.
Yeah, like you would in an alleyway when you're waiting to make your... your your move and so he can jump you because he's that kind of cool yeah he's kind of dangerous i love that like the the idea of what's cool to these developers is like loitering But like it is, it is a very cool loitering, but like it's just, it's like, yeah, this is what kids like to see. He's like a jet. Yeah, that thing. He has a lot of different animations depending on where you make him go, too. So if he's facing...
This is hard to describe again on a podcast, but he's always looking at you, right, out to the television. And if you move him backwards one square, he kind of pretends to, like, fall in the hole. Yeah, yeah. And that's just really cool. He does like the Egypt walk if it's just to the left or right. Yeah, with a little music to it, too. It goes like...
Actually, that's the song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's also a little cartwheel thing. And this, correct me if I'm wrong, it's one animation per every possible direction you can go, right? Yeah, absolutely. so i feel like if you if you go down like diagonal down right one he's the same animation every time but if you jump over an extra one it's a different animation but it's like it's all dependent on
which direction you're going. Yeah, down and left is a moonwalk. It's pretty crazy. You have no idea what Spot's going to do at any time, and that's the hook of the game. Spot can do anything. It's actually scary, but he could. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't do it, but he could do it since it's a game of capture. It also has like a. finite amount of moves that can be done before the game is over. So just like Othello and Reversi, the way the game is scored is by whoever has the most colored pieces.
on the board at the end of the game after every possible square has been filled, that is the winner. Then it goes back to the title screen and you ask your friends, would you like to play again? Well, no, it doesn't just go back to the title screen. Oh, my goodness. It then pulls back to show that you've been playing this game in the center of a giant stadium that is doing the wave.
and they're holding up signs that say that your color won, and there's fireworks, and then it goes back to the screen. That's just a stadium where you're inside a TV, though, so it's not even real. Because in the setup of the game, you're seeing... First off, you're seeing, like... The controller, like, you know, whose computer and who's a human and how much time they have between moves and stuff. You're setting that up. But there's an NES.
that you're seeing as well as the tv so like you're playing on an nes on your tv now you're on a screen looking at an nes with a tv and then you're gonna go inside that So are you saying that if you can find the button to walk away from the in-game NES, it's like a life sim? Yeah, there's got to be – you get to go see what Spod's doing otherwise because you can actually see on the TV.
Spot is, at least in this section of the TV I'm remembering, he's on not ESPN, but SSPN, which must stand for the Spot Sports Network. Spot Sprite News Network. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's not Sprite. Wait a minute. Don't say Sprite. What does the P stand for in this? Delicious Sprite. What does the P stand for in ESPN? Oh, in ESPN. Well, in SSPN. Entertainment Sports.
I've never thought about this. What does the P stand for at ESPN? Well, what does the E stand for? Entertainment? Entertainment, sports? People? People Network? What, are you just going to say every word after me? Entertainment and sports programming network. I said these last night before I went to bed. Okay, got it. Sports programming. Here's a question, okay? Here's an answer. Spot the video game main menu.
Uh-huh. It's already pretty bare, right? Should it just be one button moves your cursor in all directions? No, no, no, no, no, no. I would never ask a question like that. I would never. This is serious, okay? Okay. The way that they have, like, put spot, you know, like how they've done the text for it. There are black dots on the P and the O that kind of make it look like two eyes, right?
Sure. Like two eyeballs. Like googly eyes. Yeah, they're more googly eyes than eyes. Yeah, exactly. They look silly. But couldn't they have just put Spot's sunglasses? Oh yeah. Over the P and the O. So this way, cause you know, there's, there's kind of like circles and then it's like, or just over the O and then it's just spots in the logo. Sure. It's just kind of weird that spots not on the logo and it's just this. Well, Mike, are you in your name?
Great point. It's just you all crunched up as an M. Like, if I were to write my name, would you be in there? Write that one down, Joe. Write that one down right now. No, I don't have to be in my name because that's not something that's possible, but we don't know that Spot can't do that. Like, that does feel like something Spot can do.
You're right. That is the vibe that he's putting down. Spot gives me the vibe that he could do anything. That might be my favorite thing you've ever said, John. Wow. The bar is so low. I'm not saying other things are worse. No, no, the bar is really low. Yeah, that's what I figured. I don't even like that, but it's still my favorite thing you've ever said. I don't even like it.
It also says 7up, which is spelled out S-E-V-E-N dash U-P. 7up, and then 7up, the number 7 and U-P. Are there two different brands of 7up? No, no, it's just that they're both trademarks. And that's the show. That's got to be the show. Now, well, wait a minute. I have a question. How many spots are there? Is it the same spot every time you see the animation or does each team have their own spot? Well, there's at least we know that there's at least two spots. Right. We know there's at least like.
150 compared to everybody in the stadium was a spot. Oh, were they? Yeah, they're all in the back. They're all red circles. Oh, yeah, you're right. They spell out your name, they say when, and then, you know, whatever color. So this is like an extended, like, this is like an alternate universe where everybody is a spy. Well, maybe this is just, you know, it doesn't have to be an alternate universe. It's just like a planet of spots. Oh, okay.
They should have made, like, an Astro Bot-style game for Spot, and he, like, works at the 7-Up factory, and it's, like, all cool, like, 7-Up memorabilia and history, and, you know. It's not too late. Maybe if they drop a console. I'm also noticing right now on the options screen where you can change your timer and all that. The TV with the NES, there's two spots in a band. One's playing a guitar, those playing the drums. Oh, there's all sorts of different channels. That must be on STV.
Can you change the channel? Oh, wait, I just saw the cursor go over the button. Is that what's happening? Well, yeah, like we said, this is just a minigame in a larger spot universe. Wow, I didn't realize that you actually had that control. I thought you were just commenting on the... Just the animation. Go select the NES. You can change the cartridge to Super Mario Bros. You can play that instead. You can play any game. And it's just Spot doing Mario.
No. Can we go back to the game for a minute? And by that I mean, we've been talking about the game, but I meant the Othello style game. Can we go back to that for a second? You can't get that attitude. to try and talk about the game after. I tried to talk about the game, and you were mean about it. That's true. I was kind of mean about it. You were pretty mean about it. I'm sorry. It's okay. All right, back to what I wanted to discuss.
There is some depth to this, though, even if you don't have friends, right? Because, like, the computers are tough. I'll say that much. Like, the computers know how to play the game. They're vicious. Yeah, you and your friends probably don't know how to play the games. That's probably more fun. to put into this. I'm not saying the developers put in a lot of thought, but there is a lot of thought as a player to like...
Be good at this. To go back to pipe dream, right? Like, it takes five seconds to understand, but it takes a lifetime to get good. Really good. That spot. But no one's going to spend a lifetime. Is that what you're saying, Sean? Nobody's still playing spot today? There aren't like the spot world championships on SSPN? No, I just, I just hate the way you said it. Like that stupid AI said it. And it really, it really grinded my gears, but I think partially that. Yeah.
It's funny that this game is so simple and the developers probably didn't really think too hard about it. Yeah, I'm going to make that claim that like what Joe said earlier, we're just going to call them lazy. But yeah, I guess there are some emergent strategies that come out of it, like protecting your interior. yeah yeah i don't think that this like as a board game is a bad game i like games like I like Othello, you know? But...
You know, now that I'm thinking about it, this isn't one of those ones. Like, this does do a little tiny bit of that thing that I'm always saying. Like, if you're going to make it a video game, might as well do stuff that you couldn't do in a board game. And this sort of does. I mean, it's stuff you could do, but it would be tedious.
If you had four players, you'd have to be replacing. You can't just flip over the discs. You'd have to be replacing the different colors with different discs. That would be annoying. Yeah, and you know you can't have Spot do any of this stuff in real life. You'd have to breakdance on the board. But then the same thing with like, you're moving things one, I guess, yeah, you could, instead of moving things one space, you're just like adding one to a space adjacent to your own.
But, I mean, I guess none of this is stuff you couldn't do, but it's just, you can't flip over the disc four times and have four different colors. We'll just have a four-sided die. That's true. You got to have cubes. Joe, it's kind of like that time. You have to have six players.
Joe, it's kind of like that time we played Monopoly on PS5. It wasn't necessary, right? But it made playing Monopoly so much easier. Oh, it's so much faster. It's just like, yeah, here's all your money. It's right there already. You don't have to... You don't have to track down the banker and be like, give me this money and then watch people steal from it.
There are other spot video games. Okay. I just wanted to acknowledge that. I'm not going to do a sequels and spinoffs thing because Sean already talked about Cool Spot. But here's something interesting. Joe, did you really call the developers lazy? Did I? Oh, are they not? I'm going to learn that they worked themselves to death on this, and now I'm going to feel bad. The NES version of Spot the Video Game was created in six...
I mean, that could be considered lazy. It could be considered hustle. No, no, no. It was, I think, I don't have any information to confirm this, but I think they were given six weeks. And then they kind of procrastinated for five of them. And then they made it. It was the night before. Yeah. Well, notice how I said the NES version. Because this is just a shameless plug for a giant soda company to try to get their branding on a video game on a popular console. You see, the original game...
Was a game called Infection. And it was made by Wise Owl Software. And it was on, like, computers. C64, Atari ST. And then there was apparently an arcade version called Attacks, but A-T-A-X-X. And then 7up branding got involved because they were, I guess, looking for like a quick way onto the NES. And they saw this game and said, hey, those are circles.
We have a circle for a mascot. Like, let's put our guy on this. And then the same development team that made the original game was in charge of making. the ADS version here, and they made it in just six weeks, which sounds like a lot of time to just put it out, but you have to remember. The NES is like in assembly. So it's like any game that is a port of another game is also basically at the very least a redo, you know, not necessarily a remake, but like it doesn't just like.
Oh, this is the C64 code and let's bring it on to the NES. It doesn't work like that back then. So that is kind of crazy. They didn't have Unity? They did not have Unity or Unreal. Wow. Yeah. Or even what's the source? Half-Life? What's the Half-Life one? Gary's Mod? Yeah, just Gary's Mod. They didn't have Gary's Mod to make these games. Anyway, one other neat fact. The NES version. was briefly offered for a limited time for just $24.99. Sounds expensive, but came with four seven up.
I'm trying to think about inflation adjustment here. Yeah, what that would be. I read it wrong. Is that still like a $60 game? I read it wrong. I'm sorry. It's even worse. The game could become 2499. If you hand it in for seven up bottles. This was the recycling. So what was it without the 47UP bottles? It must have been 50. Well, they wanted to make sure... Yeah, you spent...
You spend at least $15 on soda before you bought the game. Yeah, I actually heard that Fallout 5 will be discounted based on how many bottles of Nuka-Cola you buy beforehand. I'm in. The game is also available besides on the NES on the Game Boy, the Amiga, Windows, and... Atari ST, as I mentioned. And there's just some light differences between that. Sean mentioned Cool Spot on the Genesis, but there's also... That was on the Super Nintendo. Oh, okay. It's also on the Genesis.
Okay. And then Spot goes to Hollywood. Did you ever go to, not Blockbuster, but maybe went to Hollywood Video to get that one? I did not. so there was those two and then there was also spot the cool adventure on game boy and just saying spot a lot reminds me that like when i saw spot the video game i was thinking of a totally different spot maybe a much cooler spot
Uh, if you catch my drift, pun intended. Uh, and I'm thinking about the dog, the yellow dog spot. Yeah. Uh, where's his video game? That'd be sick. Probably in the baby aisle. You know, it's funny. Spot did teach me how to read. That was my first book. This 7 Up Spot? Yeah, 7 Up Spot taught me to read because I was like, oh, 7 Up! I was so freaking wired on caffeine. That you just knew how to read. Yeah, I just figured it out.
But we're not here to talk about learning how to read or spot the dog or really even... video games apparently today today we're just judging things based on 7up as a soda brand and the best place to judge anything Would be the essential games list. This is pretty easy. This is not going to be something that I'm going to joke about or, you know. make into a long spiel. This shouldn't have been what you ever do with a mascot. This is Mascot No-Nos 101.
I don't think this makes Spot seem all that cool. I do agree that the animation of the tricks he's doing is great, but why can't he just do those kinds of tricks in a game where I control him? It's so weird that they went this board game. It's going to be unmemorable. Definitely an oddity. Whenever somebody talks about 7-Up now, I'm going to think about this game. But overall, I don't think this helps Nostalgia, Nintendo, 7-Up, or...
Spot. I think Spot's probably the biggest casualty of this whole thing, and he's going to live for a lot longer. He gets all the way to Spot Goes to Hollywood, but he's not around with us anymore, and that's a sign. So no, it's not on this. Joe? Yeah, I generally, like, I like games like this. I like little, not video games like this, but I like Othello. I like Dots. You ever play Dots on a piece of paper?
I don't know if this is the place for it. I mean, I guess it's fine if you're looking for a board game experience. Uh, fine. This is... I don't think that especially if you're trying to market your mascot is like the cool thing. I don't know if anyone's like picking this and be like, yes, this is awesome. I'm going to say not essential, but like, yeah, it's a fine little take on Othello.
but definitely a disappointment for someone as cool as Spot. Sean? I'll take back what I said that the developer was lazy. and i kind of feel i've i've been feeling bad about that since i said it because obviously They did the job. They made the spot game. They made the moonwalk animations. So I just want to get that out. However, I don't like this. That's three no's, but I do want to revisit something Joe said in his Essential Games list vote, which is that he enjoys...
The game Dots on paper, as if that's a console. Paper is its own. Well, it was ported to paper. Yeah, it was ported to paper. So great. What are some other great paper games? Tic-tac-toe? Yeah, tic-tac-toe. It's an all-timer. I almost mentioned this on the Essential Games list, but I was like, no one will know it. But now I'll mention it anyway.
I like the game Dots. And what, you know, Mike and Sean, you both know about me. Our listeners probably don't. I am an obsessive Survivor fan. Love Survivor. You know, I've seen all 48 seasons, all that. I recently was rewatching an early season and one of their immunity challenges was dots, but with like ropes on like a beat.
And I was like, you know what? I like dots and I like survivor. I don't know if this is like, if this just because dots is good, doesn't make it like a great, exciting reality TV. You've got a paper full of a grid of dots. And you and another player take turns drawing a line from either vertically or horizontally, no diagonals, from one dot to another. You keep doing that until when one person closes a box. They own the box and then they can go again. So it, if you like leave someone.
to be able to close a box you can like cause a chain reaction right now they can close like 20 in a row Or something like that. There is a great port. of dots on Nintendo Switch. Part of Clubhouse 51. I thought you were going to say a port of dots on, like, the Magna Doodle or something. No, no, for real. Clubhouse 51, great game on the Switch, and it has many of these board games. I think it has Othello as well.
They might be calling it Reversi. You know, there is a difference between Othello and Reversi. I always thought it was just like a language thing or like a different... way of saying the same game. Like Hellman's mayonnaise. Sure. But the difference is that Reversi has the fixed position where it's in the center. The center four squares are black, white, black, white. So this way it's, or sorry, black, white, white, black. So this way.
It's a defined position, whereas in Othello, you can start in any position you want, which I think is interesting. One more thing I just want to talk about, which wasn't really like a flaw with the game. It's a flaw with me. But, like, was it ever unclear to anybody else which... circles exactly were going to change for them. Like, like, okay, if I move my thing here, like a hundred percent certain of like, which ones we're going to flip.
At first, I wasn't clear that it's diagonally adjacent works also. Because the way that the grid is laid out, anything that you're adjacent to not diagonally, they're a lot closer to each other because the... space diagonally between them is a lot larger. So that was confusing at first. But once I figured that, I think I got the... Yeah, no, it wasn't like black magic. It was pretty simple. Okay, so I should just feel bad. You should.
It's not as complicated as Solitaire. As Mike makes it out to be. Also, speaking of last week, I just want to confirm that Hogwarts Legacy does cut to black before you pet the cat.