Oblivion Remastered, Rematch, Look Outside

Hello friends, welcome to episode 224 of the Noclip podcast. It's a crew cast. Jesse is still in parts unknown, although we did actually talk about it on the podcast before. We'll just keep it mysterious here on the crew cast. In other parts unknown, Jeremy Jane, who knows where you are, liminally. Yeah, it's still in the beta testing zone. Still in the Unreal default scene that loads up when you load up Unreal.

Yeah, chilling. It got nice here. It was snowing like a week ago, and it was 80 degrees the other day, and I ate pizza outside. Hell yeah. Would you get those muggy summers? Those sweaty good ones? Yeah, it's brutally muggy out here. People say it's the cold that'll kill you in the Northeast, but it's the humidity. It's the mug. It's the mug. I got brutally sunburned. I'm not sure if you can see it because this camera is terrible on a good day, but I'm very red and I'm peeling today.

I got a burnt at the Butter and Eggs Festival in Petaluma. That's not real. You made that up. So ridiculous. That's what you call your breakfast on a Sunday morning when you overeat a little bit. Butter up that egg, boy. baking up that sausage uh frank howley you were not at the butter and eggs festival in petaluma you were enjoying uh copious amounts perhaps too much uh wrestling in sin city how are you doing when'd you get back

I got back Saturday night. Oh my God, your voice. Oh, my voice is gone. This is like day four of being back. I've gone through lozenges. I've been drinking tea 24-7. Wow. Yeah, I have videos of me screaming and you can like hear my throat getting torn. But no, it really was maybe one of the best weekends of my life. I'm actually surprised I was able to have as much fun as I would in Japan. I was like, oh my God.

But I mean, you know, all the wrestlers came out here. But yeah, it really was one of the best weekends of my life. I saw seven wrestling shows, more than I would actually have gone to than if I was in Japan. Seven shows in like four days. I met so many of my favorite wrestlers that I've idolized.

at least like like years and I don't know I'm just so content I'm so happy I'm already like some of these people are coming back to Texas in July I don't know I think in Japan again in the future but yeah I'm ecstatic and happy and then you know games are getting dropped today there's a new like 9 hour Tim Rogers film noir so it's like I'm happy. It's lots of good stuff. My voice is gone. We're going to give you breaks in between your segments, I think. I'll ask you about the wrestling.

in a little bit uh jeremy yeah did you see that tim rogers dropped a nine hour la noir video i did i thought about watching it live but uh i feel like whenever there's a tim rogers video i kind of watch it like a like a season of television you know Yeah, the intro is like 24 minutes long.

It's ridiculous. I watched the intro and then was like, whew, I gotta go to bed. This is gonna be like fucking Game of Thrones. I'll get through it eventually. But yeah, and also presumably he got... did he get that footage back from when the stuff got stolen I think I heard or something I don't know like

something crazy like that i don't know he got remember all his stuff got stolen in oakland his camera equipment so i if that went down i'm very curious like if a criminal was like listen i'm gonna keep all your shit but i'm a big fan of the channel didn't realize i went through the hard drive i saw the footage

I saw a comment. People said they got the footage back and someone commented like, yeah, the thieves saw Tim Rogers dressed up in 1940s clothes walking down streets. And it's like, we got to give this nerd his footage back. I feel too bad. Or conversely, they were like, he'll solve this case and we need to get ahead of it.

They probably saw what they had and it's like, oh my God. Okay, sure. Or maybe they just sent them the memory card. We robbed Dick Tracy. We need to send this back. I hope that it like, I mean, thematically it kind of works. Like if anyone can pull that into the video, then. I'm sure it is, like, it must come up. Yeah, in the last hour he goes with a gun to the front door of the thieves. Oh my god.

And I was about to say the name of your friend. We so frequently almost say the name of the guy who broke into my house because it's an iconic name. It's an iconic name. Yeah, it's a double consonance. That's all. If you meet Jeremy in person, maybe he'll tell. day yeah it's like he's my he's my nemesis because my first I have Jeremy Jane and it's the double it's the elimination and he's sort of the inverse of that you know he's the uh he's the who's a superhero that has an inverse

Superman Bizarro? Thank you. Thank you. That's the reference I was looking for and did not have. Beautiful. Thank you, Frank. Our... Oh, I had a segue earlier. Fans of our channel, if we just rewind that in there a minute ago, are our Battle Pass holders, including the wonderful Yush. Dwayne the Rock Lobster. Anthony Thomas. Nico Passateri. It's a me, Ferrario. Penelvi Hayes. Senator Armstrong. Kind of put an accent on the last syllable there. Harry Flanagan.

Arno, Jose Orr, Matt Pearson, James Brown, Mark Rojas, Tucker Morgan, David McGarry, Sven Huster, Pez. John Akers. You went Nate. Tim Robinson. Forrest Pruitt. Jonathan Kremen. Eric Hamilton Schneider. Christophe Patouille. Hammered lap. Zachary Snader, Alex Goucher, George Sakotis, Jacob Godserve, and Theogen. James Med. Don't hear Tilly F.

And Rycin, thank you all so much for supporting us over at patreon.com slash noclip. And thank all of you. You can go watch, if you're in the bonus video tier, you can go watch Taron Adams play around with Dwarf Fortress on a Steam Deck for the first and probably only time in his life. I'm not the type of guy who tends to spend money on fancy things like anything, I would say. Coffee tables, guitars, steam deck. We do though. We play video games and we're here to talk about them today.

But the game we need to talk about right now, which, Jeremy, this has happened so recently that you did not know until I just told you that about an hour ago... They just done put out that Oblivion remaster. They dropped it.

It's out. I knew they were going to announce something. I didn't realize they were going to do like, and it's out now. Like they were on stage D3 type shit. Yeah. I wonder if all these leaks just forced them to do this shit two months early. Like, why would you do it now? What? It's a Tuesday in friggin' April. I don't know. Why not? Yeah, they should have dropped it on 420. That's my only hot take. Exactly, that's true.

I feel like the weather is appropriate. It's spring. Honestly, when I think of oblivion, I do think of all the forests and just running out in the spring. You know, like, they're trying to trick you. Like, no, no, no, ignore real outside. Just as the weather is getting nice, they're like, fuck it, go back inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think the original Oblivion came out in like November or something. I might be crazy. I might be crazy. December 13th. Oh my God. Or October 17th. Is that right? Yeah, I came out in fall anyway. But yeah, it's out. They did like a 30-minute presentation, kind of similar to their E3 stuff, the same crowd who film all their E3 presentations.

This might be because Bethesda don't do their own thing anymore, right? Because they're all bundled in with Microsoft. So maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's them getting out a little bit, doing their own pre-three, I don't know. But yeah, it's out. They did a 30-minute or so video, which was kind of sort of like a developer breakdown. You know, the history of Oblivion and what's in the remaster and yada yada yada.

And I have played about 45 minutes of it because I downloaded it as quickly as possible. It's 120 gigs or something. It's a little bit bigger than Oblivion was. And I basically got through the dungeon as fast as I could to watch Uriel Septon getting shanked. Patrick Stewart, rest in power. giving me that amulus and getting out into the world and watching my framerate drop. The second I did. So what questions do you guys have? I have.

Look, this podcast isn't going to be out for three days. People are going to have been played way more of this game. I have the hottest of take. It has literally been out for 90 minutes and I've played 45. What is your question? The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered.

How does, like, the color palette stuff look? I saw, like, an early thing. Yes. Is it, like, muted now? Is it not as, like, saturated? Like, that's something I'm curious. Yeah. So this, I think, is going to be something, the one thing maybe people are a little bit. Hmm about so the the Elder Scrolls for oblivion had a very particular look And some of this had to do with the art style and some of it had to do with the sort of technical place we were at in 2007 or whatever on the Xbox 360.

So the first, one of the things I really like about Oblivion that I'm not so mad about with Skyrim is Skyrim has a much more muted color palette. Oblivion is like high, well, I don't know if it's high fantasy, but it's... It's colorful fantasy. You come out of the tunnel, big blue bursting sky, you know what I mean? Like sort of like Wyoming sky, you know what I mean? Like Kansas sky, big blue.

with like you know clouds in it and stuff um colorful lush green like it felt like you said it felt like spring felt like late spring summer And yeah, when you come out of the tunnel, it feels like weirdly autumnal, I'd say. It's like kind of... you know, maybe it's more quote unquote realistic. I'm not sure, but it definitely feels more, it has a different like vibe to it. So whether, you know.

art art styles can do lots of things and i don't know maybe the people making this you know we had this come up with the uh was it the until dawn remaster was super like blue or something i forget or wasn't blue enough i forget it was something like that um This definitely has, from what I've seen so far, and they obviously showed off a bunch of footage in that video thing as well, and it seemed pretty consistent, that, yeah, it didn't have that feeling to me. Now...

Worse or better? I can't really say at the moment, but... I definitely, that moment definitely hit very different than it did originally. Because yeah, that's what I really like about that game. Morrowind is quite like diluted too, you know, which kind of I think works with the... place and everything that's in that game it's a very particular vibe that's in Morrowind and it does for Skyrim too I think Skyrim is definitely more like

northern hemisphere and you're you're getting like different you know the sort of more Icelandic Norwegian kind of vibe to the mountains and all that stuff but um Cyrodiil always felt like Is that the word? No, that's the area, isn't it? Isn't Cyrodiil the area you're in? Cyrodiil is the area and then the Imperial City.

Tamriel is the world, right? And Syria is the area, I think. That always felt more, you know, Central European, English, French kind of, you know, vibe to it. So, yeah, it definitely... It's a weird situation with remakes, and this is perhaps a surprisingly credulous position for someone like myself who fucking hates all remakes. Most of, 90% of them.

But it's like it's damned if you do damned if you don't, because if you're super faithful to the original source text, there will be people who are like, oh, you didn't try anything new. You just like. did a shot for shot remake of this uh and then if you try something new people would be like oh so you're not faithful to the original and you know what i mean like yeah i i also wonder if like the

I wonder what this... Someone's going to mod this, right? So someone's going to like change all this. Put the piss filter on it. Exactly. They're going to do their color grade on this game. But like outside of that, like the original... oblivion also was doing like there was loads of like bloom and like hdr kind of looking you know or before hdr kind of effects and stuff and like the bloom especially was so intense on on oblivion that like

i don't know maybe maybe cleanly this stuff you know doesn't work as well like maybe the color palette just looked a bit ott with these big blue skies If you're trying to do like proper, you know, lighting and stuff with like, because this thing is, I'm running this on medium. Like this, this is.

I could run the interior stuff on high when I was in the dungeon, and it looks great. Don't get me wrong. The facial animation stuff looks great. The enemies look great. The fire effects, like when I was walking through my torch, it looked great. it looks like the bee's knees and this was on like medium or high um but yeah you can clearly like this thing has been it's unreal engine right i'm pretty sure um and it's it's cranked up like it's it's I suspect on full...

you know, full beans, this thing looks incredible. But yeah, it's definitely got a different look to it. I will say it is funny to go into like the Imperial City and there's like two people walking. because it's like they didn't change the game you know what i mean the game is very very faithful it has all the same voice actors you know this i'm sure they've got like better sound in here and stuff although the i think the original 5.1 i think a lot of xbox games did

Xbox 360 game. But I'm sure it has improved. sound but yeah and obviously the graphics are more improved but there's like great little touches animations like when you collect You know, mushrooms and herbs and stuff. There's a nice little animation on them when you pick them up.

It feels great. I don't think I've ever played Oblivion on a PC. I mean, I love that game. I've played it multiple times, but I always played it on 360. And it feels really good on mouse and keyboard. The combat feels good.

Yeah, like, I'm definitely going to play a lot of this. In a year where, like, there's already been too many first-person RPGs, and then they go and stick fucking Oblivion back out. Like, this seems just completely unfair at this stage. I'm still trying to be Kingman Cum, Stalker. to friggin' I forget what else. I guess I technically didn't complete Adam Fall yet, even though I got to the end of it. I still have to play the...

What's the Obsidian one? I forget the name of it. Oh, Avowed. Avowed. I haven't played more than six hours off. It's ridiculous at this stage. I can't believe they put out Oblivion right after Avowed came out. That seemed mean. yeah that's salt in the wound um yeah yeah it's it's I don't know. I'm kind of curious about playing Oblivion again. What you were saying about the way that it sort of removes a lot of the sort of like trappings of the time, I feel like it's like...

That's sort of like the holistic experience. It's like reshooting a 1940s film noir and not putting pantyhose over the lens or something. And it's like, you know, like there are sort of like technical workarounds or something, but the low fidelity-ness of it is sort of like part of the feel of Oblivion to me. I don't know. I worry that it will feel like cleaned up in a way. The thing I was wondering, you probably did not encounter this in the 45 minutes you played of it, but...

I wonder when you're making a remake like this. Oblivion is famous in many ways, but perhaps my most beloved aspect of Oblivion is the weird 11-minute compilations of people showing the NPCs acting in... totally bizarre ways well where they'll like stand in lava and be like oh how's it going and then die immediately uh oh yeah i'm doing grace when you're making a remake um

I wonder, like, I don't know how from the ground up is. I don't know anything about the production of this remake, but I wonder, do you try to preserve any sort of like weird edge cases of bugs like that? Or do you sort of like try to work around it?

you know what i mean yeah because like so i need to like look up whether this is is this unreal i think unreal engine it looks like there's some reporting today saying that that just goes for on unreal engine 5 yeah they did so it is unreal engine 5 so that is like kind of remarkable wait so i'm trying to think is their not their engine they've been using for years it's not based

I don't think it is. They're proprietary. What's it called again? I literally said its name last week, I think. Is it Creation? Creation Engine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it is. But it is remarkable. Look, and in three days' time, there's going to be videos of how this game is broken and different in other ways. But it is kind of remarkable how the combat... And the like way people are walking and all that stuff feels very similar to.

I'm kind of surprised and shocked this is on a different engine because it looks like... very very similar i didn't i was i was recording another podcast while they're 30-minute video was playing, so I wasn't listening to it. So I don't know if they were explaining any of this. I was only watching it while also trying to talk about Formula One race cars. So if I'm quiet for a while on Shift F1 this week, apologies, everyone.

But so I don't know how they integrated it, but it is, it is crazy how like this feels like, like that game and like, like stop criminal scum and like all that. Like I, I loaded into the Imperial city and like. The area loaded and then the people like faded in in the same way they did in the original and then started walking around.

And I think you're right. There's like, there's this weird thing where with the graphical update, Like even the opening shot of them spinning around the Imperial City. Because the game looks so new now, I'm like, this is the world's worst planned city. Like, 50 people could live in this city. It's fucking tiny.

Like, the prison district is as big as most of the rest of the city. Like, it makes no sense. But in 2007, sure it did. It looked amazing. It was like, wow, they all live in this big walled-in city. And then you go in and da-da-da-da-da. But when you're watching it in high fidelity and they're like spinning around and you're like, wow, that little merchant district has like six shops in it. It's like, how is this, how is this possible? Yeah, so there's definitely I bet stuff like that.

Yeah, the physics look very similar. The, you know, the sounds, the door opening noises, all that shit. The loading screens, it feels like, oh, I felt right at home the minute I started playing. How different does the combat feel? Because people were saying it was a pretty big overhaul. Yeah, so that's one thing I'm not so sure of because... I didn't play it with mouse and keyboard before, so I feel like my sort of...

Accuracy may be slightly off here. I would say the original Oblivion felt sort of animation priority to me, where like if you... hit the swing sword button, the sword swung and you kind of came down on them. And I can't tell if that's a console latency thing going on there or if that was the way it played out. But I would say I would... I would say that Skyrim sort of fixed some of the sluggishness of Oblivion.

The sword swinging in particular. And this feels way snappier. But I can't really tell. I would suspect that this is just snappier. Like, that it's faster overall, that the spell casting is faster, that the... The sword play is fast. It feels really good. I mean, I was going through those rats like no one's business. It also kind of felt like maybe they were giving me more green. What's that again? The green juice? The...

Not strength, the other one. Stamina? Stamina, thank you. God, my fucking brain is. I had no idea what you meant. The sun, the sun. You know the green bar? I was thinking of like smoothies you get at like a healthy place that are like a green juice. Soil and green. Green juice. Soil and green juice. Whatever the green juice is, right? Where your stamina goes. Yeah, your stamina goes down.

I feel like they were giving me a bit more of that maybe. I don't know. It's, you know, maybe because it is faster. Maybe they just kind of like retune that a bit. uh but yeah i was i was i was cutting through those assassins like a pig through warm strawberries and it was uh it was a good time that's a funny thing because people were saying that the combat would be like the overhaul was more souls like

And it is funny because the trajectory of the Souls games is that originally stamina was at a premium and then if you play Dark Souls 1 and then play Dark Souls 3 or like Elden Ring, the difference in stamina allocation is ridiculous. Like it was this precious resource originally.

And then it's like you can swing, you know, a thousand times in a row later on. Yeah, this felt like I was swinging a lot in a way that felt different to the original. So, yeah, I wonder if it is a little bit speedier in that way. Yeah. Any more questions about Oblivion Remaster? It is like a full price game. What is it? You don't get it for free if you own Debliv. At least I don't think you did. I wasn't listening, so who knows. I can't lip-read Todd Howard.

It is a $49.99 or a $59.99 for the deluxe edition, which comes with, let's see, does it have horse armor? That'd be fucking hilarious if it did. New quest. For digital, unique digital, Akatosh, and meth runes, Dagon armors, weapons, and horse armor sets. They did it. They did it. That's funny. That's funny. I can get behind that. Digital art book and soundtrack app. Yeah, that's it. Literally the horse armor is there. That's beautiful.

Amazing. Well, I'm excited to check it out. It's always fun to just revisit a world through a new lens. Yeah, again, it can go either way. It could either be like, wow, it's like playing Oblivion again for the first time, or it could be like, what if they, look how they massacred my boy. Yeah, it feels very similar. Like, I would, yeah, I would...

I think this is probably the way to play Oblivion. We'll see. We'll see. It's good. Dude, the fucking music is so good. The music is so good. The lockpick sounds, you know, it's all that stuff. It's all, you know. I believe it was a good time, man. It's a good video game. I never played Shivering Isles, and it was one of those things where it's like, well, I didn't want to replay, like, the base game just to get to the DLC on Xbox 360. So the fact that this got announced, it's on Game Pass.

I am about, I'm almost a thousand achievement points away towards a hundred. So it's like, this could be the game that pushes me across because oblivion compared to like Skyrim, the others. It's such an easy game to 100%. It's just do all the quests basically and you get all the achievements. You get 40 achievement points for leaving the tunnel at the beginning of the game.

uh actually that brings up a really interesting point which is that if you go back and play oblivion now the original oblivion uh because there was so much content added and dripped out over the years when you fire up oblivion for the first time and you know you get past the whole protect the emperor and like leave into the world uh

instantly you're hit with a like dun dun your uncle has sent you a letter there's a mansion dun dun make sure you go to the island dun dun oh if there's a whole lady with a horse like dun dun it breaks my immersion so much to immediately get like 700 quest notifications about about horses i can get from ladies um So this may be preferable in that sense that you're not getting what it amounts to like.

a pop-up from the Xbox store being like, don't forget to purchase the new DLC. Except you already have the DLC. I remember Fallout, the same thing that happened when you got all the expansion packs. I was like, oh, a mysterious signal has been, you know. Yeah, it feels a little less mysterious when there's 14 of them dropping as soon as you step foot in the world. Madness. Good stuff, man. Oblivion, it's back to save gaming. Play it now on everything, I'm guessing. I bought it on Steam.

I don't know. What are we, games journalists? Get this. Jeremy J, though, we've been playing the hotness. We've been playing the important games off the mainstream, diving into that good old indie juice. sucking it up swirling around your mouth and swallowing it tell us about your latest adventures in the Indie Woods. Yes, I have been playing a game called Look Outside, which was very funny to type into the podcast document because it felt like...

You were like, hey, what game do you play this week? I was like, hey, why don't you fucking go touch grass, asshole? I felt like I was admonishing you guys for being nerds. But no, Look Outside is a video game. It's not just a passive aggressive attack on my peers.

This is a survival horror RPG. It's pixel art. It's kind of... presents like you know like earthbound or like old school sort of 16-bit jrpgs uh the combat is is first person looking at enemies on a on a 2d field kind of like you know dragon quest or the mother series things like that um And it's really, really great. I was so pleasantly surprised by this. This came out roughly a month ago. And it's done really well.

Almost 1,300 reviews on Steam at this point. Overwhelmingly positive. Oh, nice. So this is... It's also very clever structurally because survival horror RPG kind of perfectly describes this, but this is not sort of like a linear RPG where you start in your hometown and then venture across the world in a linear fashion. This is more like... in survival horror fashion, you're starting your apartment, there's been this sort of apocalypse where if you look outside, terrible things will happen.

So the game is called Look Outside, and then the first NPC you beat is like, hey, why don't you look outside? And I won't spoil what happens, but it's not fucking good if you do it. So everywhere in the whole building, there are like, you can see there are windows with the blind shut and there's just like eerie light peeking through. Oh, that's so creepy. There's always this temptation to...

Like the game keeps tempting you with little bits of like, Oh, why don't you just do it? You're like, I don't, I don't want to. I know bad things will happen. So, um, so essentially there's been like a, some sort of apocalyptic event that, um, And it appears that if you look outside, you too shall become a monster. So the whole game takes place in one apartment building.

but you're doing runs essentially from your apartment out into the building and kind of like getting, it has a very nice like risk and reward pushing your luck kind of thing where you can only save in your apartment. So if you die, you have to go back to your last save. And you can only save in your apartment if you push your luck sufficiently on a run. So there's a meter that fills up.

So if you go out and just like go to the vending machine and buy a bag of chips, when you go back to your apartment, you will not be able to save. Oh, that's cool. Which is very, very clever because there was a moment where early on I had kind of. you know, was playing a little fast and loose and pushed my luck a little too hard. And then, uh...

And then I was like, well, I didn't get to the save bar yet because I went out with like 20 health and no healing items. So I hadn't had a chance to push my luck enough to save. So I had to go into a very, very ill-advised battle just to get the save meter over the threshold. but it's how do they gamify that like what's the save me

Uh, it's like a, it's like a meter at the bottom of the screen with like, um, sort of like dots that fill up. And then there's like a save icon, like a little disc that gets to it. And then the meter keeps going. I actually don't know what the subsequent rewards are for pushing your luck more. because I'm a coward. Anyway, so this game is pixel art, and the pixel art is very...

When I heard pixel art survival horror JRPG, I was like, oh, I bet it's like, I bet it's cute. I bet it's got like cute little monsters. This game is fucking grotesque and in the most fascinating way. It's got this kind of like... I don't know, like, our crumb kind of, like...

weird, exaggerated, like, bulbous shiny disgusting wet pixel art that is is so good um just like creatures with too many fucking legs and dudes doing weird stuff and and very smart with the sort of like economy of animation there was one animation early on that a character did that was

so like legitimately grossed me out. Like I was sitting at my computer going, oh my God, that's fucking, that's like wild that they did that. But it was only two frames looping back and forth. So it does a lot with a little. And yeah, I'm really enjoying it. It's got a couple other clever things going on, like... So you're constantly looking for new weapons and trying to build up a...

Not quite Breath of the Wild level repertoire of weapons, but... a similar feeling of of scarcity and stuff that uh you know if you if your baseball bat lasted forever you might not have so right it constantly feels like you're trying to get away with as much as you can on each individual run before you go back to your apartment and uh

Yeah, and the NPCs and the writing are also... I was just about to ask, actually, what the writing's like, because there seems to be a lot of text in the gameplay trailer here. Yeah, the writing is so good. It's funny, but it's not like... it's not jokey if that it's funny, but not jokey. It's like, I was constantly laughing kind of at the absurdity of what people were saying and characters are being weird and kind of obtuse and quirky in a very sort of like, you know, earthboundy way.

But but it never feel like they it didn't feel like this is a comedy game. The game is not trying to make you laugh. It's just doing things that are so absurd, especially against the backdrop of this like.

apocalyptic Lovecraftian horror scenario that it's like when people are weird and in a funny way that's slightly off-putting you're almost like laughing to cut the tension because you're like you know it's like it's like when someone talks to you in public and says something really weird and you're like you're not like laughing because it's funny you're laughing because you're like oh i hope this guy doesn't like stab me on the bus

Yeah, that's kind of the energy of the NPCs. And people show up at your door as well, which is kind of a fun mechanic because, you know, you'll go back to your apartment to save and eat food to regen your mana and health.

and uh it'll be like there's a knock at the door and then there's like the fucking scariest looking drifter out there and he's like please could i do you have any food and it's like i something good might happen if i feed this guy but also i might open if i open the door he might just like jump me with a knife um So yeah, I'm really enjoying it a lot. I highly recommend it.

Hell yeah. Developed by Francis Colombe, I want to say, is how you pronounce it. Thank you for taking the bullet. I was afraid to mispronounce his name, their name. No worries. From Quebec. They have a YouTube channel that has a bunch of dev diary stuff from...

I think it's a different game. Is it Malison or something? Malison the Cursed City, I think, is another game that they were working on. Oh, cool. So if you want to check those out, they're a couple of years old, but look pretty interesting and some pixel art.

Dev stuff on there. Maybe we can stick it in the show notes maybe. Frankie Small Show is the YouTube channel. That looks cool. Yeah, it looks super interesting. I'm going to check this out. I didn't come across this. And again, it's another game that's gotten like... shed loads of really good reviews published by devolver as well so Yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe it should, I don't know. Did you see this market as much? I'm like, I don't want to dunk on Devolver, but I'm not.

I didn't see much of this. Maybe it's just a way of gaming at all. Yeah, it kind of just organically came to me. I feel like I saw maybe... Like a post from the developer. I just followed them on social media literally as we were speaking about it this second. So I don't know how it made its way to me. But yeah, I mean...

1,300 reviews on Steam ain't nothing to whatever. So I feel like it might have just surfaced because I play a lot of survival horror games and Steam was like, you're a little freak. Hey, sicko. Yeah, exactly. That's Look Outside, available now on... on PC, on Steam, and maybe somewhere else. Who knows? Check if it's on itch. Itch people get angry at me if I don't talk about it on itch. It's on ad. It's a demo. It's a demo on itch. Go check it out.

Speaking of demos, I played a... Not a demo. I played a beta of a rematch. This is the soccer league without the cars. Remember that? Also known as soccer that's the game by the folks over at slow clap who have made sifu of course and absolver and I think they're, I feel like they're based in France. I feel like if they're not, they're quite. And they're making rematch, which is a, I want to say four on four, like three outfields.

One goalkeeper. Soccer game. It's almost five-a-side soccer. You play soccer. You control one character. It's multiplayer. It seems very popular. Like, that's the thing I've noticed is that, like, you can jump into this beta and you will instantly find games. Like, no problem whatsoever. It seems to be pretty well received so far. You guys have any questions about rematch?

Soccer, big soccer fans here. First of all, I have to say in the trailer, they say keepers are sweepers. And I feel like that's a slogan that is, it's so perfect. It's such a layup and it rhymes, but I don't care about soccer. So I'm like, okay. If you want, I can explain what keepers or sweepers mean. I mean, can I guess first? Yes, you can. It is telegraphing the aggressive in your face.

type of soccer that you're going to be playing because your keepers are not staying in goal conservatively having a cup of tea like your granddad's soccer. They're scoring goals with the boys.

great great explanation totally wrong but very i liked it a lot i gave it my all it was imaginative like these aren't your these aren't your your your granddad's sweepers the keepers these are sweet A sweeper is a position, it's sort of like an antiquated position in football now where you would have the two centre-backs, the full centre-backs Basically one sort of playing slightly behind the other one. So if the ball went past the first one.

that the one behind would basically be the sweeper. It's sort of like the last player before you hit the goalkeeper. So what they're saying when they say keepers or sweepers is basically the goalie's not just sitting on the net. They're also playing. sort of behind the defense, so they're also in the game, sort of. which is not my experience of rematch. I'll be honest. The keepers are usually fucking back on the line.

And you get when your game starts, it's like kind of random what position you're playing, I guess. And I mean, you can play whatever position you want, but like whether or not you're on goal or not. But if you if you run back, I've been the last player back before and ran back to the goal. And.

goalie gloves basically spawned on my character and i was in goalie mode then um which is another concept from like playing you know football with your mates or something called you know last man back we'd call it where it was like the the person who's on goal is the person who's closest to the goal, basically. A way of just allowing people to jump in there to be on goal. But yeah, it's sort of...

Similar to if you played the single character modes in FIFA over the years, which I... doing or maybe they i mean i think i trouble doing it last i talked about in the podcast a couple months ago right trouble in fc24 doing this or maybe it's only available online i don't know fifa's got like 15 000 modes i can't keep up anymore but There was a mode before where it was like a third-person camera and you played one character.

This is a sort of much more arcadey, snappy version of that. There aren't many fouls in the game. You can slide tackle and you'll get them or you won't. The high degree of skill is about how much... control you have over the balls or you know you can do like special moves to flick the ball over people or dummy or around them and the shooting is done interestingly it's it's almost like

So you're controlling the character with your left stick and your right stick is sort of the camera, but also it's the like the reticle for shooting. So you like point it at the top corner and hit the shoot button. They'll put it in that corner. And similarly, there's kind of not really a pass button. There's just like a kick the ball button, which I think works good because it basically means that instead of you like.

You know, similar to Rocket League, I guess. In FIFA, you hit the pass button and the ball gets passed to the player you're facing. You know what I mean? The control is taken away from you. And ultimately what football is all about. playing football, playing soccer is how accurate you are kicking the ball. Like that's the most kind of important part. And FIFA sort of obfuscates that into decision-making. It's more about like...

You're deciding to run past this player. You're deciding to cross the ball. You're deciding to shoot here or head the ball here. And it's not the act of doing it. And that's why Rocket League felt like such a great version of soccer because... It was about the kicking. I mean, it was about driving a car into a ball, but ostensibly it was about like hitting the ball in the right place so it goes in the right place. And this is similar to that where, you know, the shooting...

Similarly, I guess you can put spin on it and stuff like that, and you can be as accurate as you want, but the passing in particular, like lobbing and chipping is sort of manual in that way, where you're kicking the ball into space, you're hitting it two people. I'm sure there are people who are playing this who are really good at it.

um, you know, team play and able to, to basically, you know, do a put, put together amazing team plays and stuff like that. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I've, I've enjoyed it. I played like, I don't know how many games of this, 10, 15 games of this. And then since this week, I've been playing a lot of Rocket League. So I don't know what that tells me. Maybe I got out of, you know, maybe I got.

enough added this beta and then was like oh i'll play rocket league or maybe i was like oh i forgot how awesome rocket league is i don't know um But it definitely has a similar feel to it. And yeah, art style looks good. The animation is slick. It seems pretty far along. And I don't know how they're doing the beta, but it seems large enough that you could probably, on their website, I'm on it right now, and you seem to be able to apply to the beta on PlayStation, Xbox, Series consoles, or Steam.

So maybe it's just a pure signup thing. Yeah, it is. You just give them your email address and hopefully wait for a beta key. Does it remind you more of... Rocket League or does it kind of reminds me of just from viewing it of like the soccer version of NBA Street where it's like scaling down and like densifying the sport.

There have been many versions of FIFA Street. I think actually FIFA Street was out before the NBA. I could be wrong, actually. Maybe that's not true. I don't know. Maybe that's not true, actually. The FIFA Street games always had, like, some... element did they always have i feel like they usually at least had

more arcadiness to them, which maybe FIFA Street did too. FIFA Street sort of sit between NBA Jam and regular NBA games. I kind of feel like he was kind of in there somewhere. This feels definitely more rock. I would say. Yeah, I don't know why. I guess in FIFA Street you also played the team, right? A lot of the time you were the team. You weren't just one player, I think. Yeah, in NBA. I have never played any FIFA game ever in my life, but I believe in it.

I think so, yeah. And this one feels like there was a great mode in...

was it FIFA 95? I forget which one it was, where there was like an indoor football mode. And it was great because you kick the ball off the walls and stuff like that. And you're kicking the ball off the walls a lot in... uh rocket league as well uh but that's one way in which this game's different like maybe that maybe they have indoor levels at some stage i don't know but in this one when you hit it off the wall it doesn't seem to like

It's not like you're ricocheting balls off the wall to get into good spaces. It seems to kind of kill the ball a bit more. So there's less of that. But yeah, no, it does feel, I don't know, it probably has a lot to do with the like. The camera angle and sort of, you know, what you're meant to be doing when you get the ball, like passing it around and moving it up the field and stuff like that. Yeah, it feels kind of a bit, I would say, pretty Rocket League and just the online nature of it.

Cool. It looks fun. Yeah. Rematch. Mario Strikers. How does it compare to Mario Strikers? Two soccer games have ever appealed to me, and they're the least sportsy soccer games ever. One was Mario Strikers, and one was Mega Man Soccer, which might be the all-time best.

What was your favorite Strikers? The one on the GameCube? Whatever the first one was. God, it's been so long. It was GameCube, I think. Was it the GameCube one? Yeah, it must have been. My favorite was Charged, the Wii one. It was really good. Mario Strikers Charged. Kick like four goals. I remember the ball would go flying up into the sky and then you could take like multiple shots and multiple balls would go in the goal. Big alligator goalkeeper made no sense.

No, it's not better than Myra Strikers. Myra Strikers is fucking brilliant. Myra Strikers has surprisingly low reviews. I just pulled up the wiki. Let's see. GameSpot gave it a 7.2.

Brian Eckberg? Oh, Brian. He's the sports guy as well. Shit. Damn. He was probably like, this is not sports. You're kicking three balls at once at a crocodile. This is not what... soccer is all about brian has been uh i think he's still there he's been working at turn 10 for about uh i don't know a long time now like he left before five years before

As he's known online or was 15 years ago. People gave a shit. I still give a shit. God damn it. It's still real to me. God damn it. Speaking of which, we need Greg Kasavin to do a fucking 24 hour Oblivion remaster stream.

I would love that. I'll be there for the whole 24 hours. I'll drink, I'll drink, I'll track down some Surge. You said indoor soccer and it instantly made me crave Surge because that's what I would, every time Seacoast soccer in New England, I would go to the indoor soccer place and I would get a Surge. before the game and i don't think i liked indoor soccer i think i just liked abusing caffeine as a child

That's like when I have the same sort of sense memory with the local, we had one swimming pool in our town and it was the Waterford Glass swimming pool. It was like owned by the Chrysler. And we used to go there and like the smell of chlorine, of course, which I think everyone can remember. And then I would always try and blag a little. a soda that I don't think has ever been outside of the UK and Ireland. It is a pineapple-based soda. It is the totally tropical taste was the...

Everyone who grew up in the 90s and... And the British Isles is now singing the song with the Rasta guy's voice right now. Only European 90s kids remember this soda. Good stuff, man, yeah. Lilt. Get a fucking Lilt in you. There's probably a very obvious American equivalent to it. Oh, the font looks exactly like Fanta. I wonder if it's similar. We had Fanta too. Yeah, the font is, they're both Coca-Cola and the font is almost identical.

Yeah, it was just, it was, it was just pineapple fucking Fanta, I guess. Yeah, it was, it was a good time though. What is, is there, is there some sort of, like, what is it? Like lilting? Like when someone's voice is like lilting? I have no idea. That's, that's a good question. Lilt. Isn't lilt like an accent thing as well? Lilt? Now I'm doubting everything I know. I don't know why it's called Lilt. They couldn't think of a non-racist name to call it, so they called it Lilt. I don't know.

Okay, wait, hold on. From the 1970s until its dissolution in 2023, Lilt was promoted by the advertising slogan, Totally Tropical Taste. Totally Tropical Taste. This famous catchphrase was created by Ken Howlett, who entered a magazine competition and won second prize receiving a ghetto blast. First prize was a trip to the Caribbean.

that's i'm reading verbatim what it says he didn't win it but he didn't win but he fucking used it anyway did they send someone okay now this is a fucking then we need to do a documentary on this did they send someone else to the caribbean and not use their slogan Or was it a scam where they sent nobody to the Caribbean and they were like, hey, you know, second place ain't bad. And then they used this slogan. First place was like the fucking CEO's son. You know what I mean? Also.

To be fair, sorry, Ken Howlett, but totally tropical taste. I don't know if that deserves a trip to the Caribbean. I'm still singing it. It's been fucking 20 something years. Also, I just love that we've gotten rid of the term ghetto blaster. It is a clickable linked phrase on Wikipedia and it links to the wiki for Boomba.

which i think is the more politically correct way to refer to a ghetto blaster yeah ghetto blasters was only ever called ghetto blaster in places where there were no ghettos or people were did not live in ghettos

or did not use the term. I don't think anyone who lived at like a housing project was like, I'm going to go to the store and purchase a ghetto blaster. No, if you did that, I feel like in a certain time in America, if you asked for a ghetto blaster, people would think you were talking about like an MP5 or something. Yeah, like a Glock. Yeah. Fucking ghetto blaster. I'm going to go blast some shit in the ghetto.

Yeah, Lilt. Lilt was, when did they end Lilt? Discontinue 2015. Oh no, that was the mango flavor. When did the regular flavor, is it still around? It says 20, until it's dissolution in 2023. So you just missed Lilt if you're listening to this. Just missed Lilt. Oh, it's now just called Phantom Pineapple and Grapefruit. Wait, okay, wait, hold on, hold on. This is good shit. One advertisement in the late 1980s featured the Lilt Man, a parody of Milkman delivering Lilt.

In a Lilt float. Yes. Oh, okay. That is like a milk float, like a vehicle. I thought that was like a Lilt soda with ice cream in it. Ice cream in it? That would have been good. That's disgusting. He was singing the song. Totally tropical taste. That's a good time. Here comes the Lilt Man. Here comes the Lilt Man. Yeah, it's like the Dirt Man. Put a little Lilt under my pillow for the Lilt Man. Put a little coal under my pillow for the Coal Man.

I fucking love. I just went to the top of this Wikipedia article. We're just reading Wikipedia today on the podcast. It was only sold in UK, Ireland and Gibraltar. I can't, why the fuck did they bother? Like they would have had to fly cans of Lilz to southern France, Spain. To fucking sell it to like 20 people?

Dude, Lilt was like a smuggling scam. They were smuggling shit over, like, Hashish from Morocco was coming in. Yeah. Lilt was actually 2% Hashish by volume, actually. That's ridiculous. Could you imagine the fucking, like... What possible reason? Like, how could you sell that much lilt in fucking the Rock of Gibraltar? Like, how many people live in Gibraltar? Like, 2,000 people? It's fucking tiny. Like, surely there's not. I'm going to look up the population of Gibraltar.

They must have done like... 32,000 people. They must have done, like, a test run of Lilt everywhere, and Gibraltar was just like, we fucking love this shit. We love Lilt. Something about their specific, like, microclimate culturally, and I don't know. Yeah, who knows? Makes sense. They're way closer to the equator. You know, they got some little men dancing around with the little floats, probably. You couldn't, you know, crossing that.

Gibraltar is such a small country, they have a fucking road going through the main runway in their airport. Like they have in normal countries where you have those like, you know, when a road is crossing a train tracks and they have the things come down, they have one of those on their fucking runway because the country is like... England shouldn't own Gibraltar. Let's just say that while we're at it. I don't know. Get the Brits out of everywhere. I guess, you know.

colonialists can fight other colonialists and that's fine but don't worry about it you can still get lilt or at least you could down there until 2004 now it's called phantom Pineapple and grapefruit checking out now. Thank you to our sponsor, Fanta.

I'm picturing a loyalist who's like, hey, guys, listen, I know, yeah, get the Brits out and everything, but Lilt is pretty good. I don't know if we're ready to give that up as a nation. That's true. That's true. I'm not going to wander more into Spanish. politics. I already earlier today conflated the Catalan people and the Basque people on a previous podcast and I feel bad about it. But you can speak to the Irish experience of drinking Lil.

oh yeah we fucking love lilt that was as close as we were getting to the seychelles you kidding me yeah oh wait hold on hold on i do have to say at the beginning the bottom of the wikipedia see i didn't have context for this before but it says contrary to claims made by various news outlets Lilt has never been sold in the same...

I know, that's why I said it. Oh, I thought you were saying that, so that was the advertising? I don't know. Tropical is a fucking, you know, I always thought it was more Caribbean. But like, sure, maybe it was also... It's just anywhere where... We didn't know then. We didn't know the world. My Atlas had the fucking USSR in it until, you know, my whole childhood, and that had been...

That had stopped when I was three years old. So we just didn't know. Maybe it was the Seychelles. Maybe it was fucking, you know, the Caribbean. Maybe it was Hawaii. I don't know. I do feel like pre-internet, you could get away way more with being like, this is everyone's favorite drink in Micronesia, and no one could speak out against you. We didn't know. It's just all a bunch of stupid white people. It's like Kofi Kingston. You know what I mean? Frank knows.

They just rebranded that guy fucking, he was from 15 different countries. He was just a black wrestler. They were like, oh, he's African. Oh, he's from Jamaica. Oh, he's from, right? Didn't they keep doing that, Frank? They do that like constantly with, yeah. I mean, wrestling's sort of like ground zero for that shit, though, because like... Like, half of the...

Wasn't the Iron Sheik from, like, Eastern Europe or something? What was his deal? I forgot Sheik. I knew, like, Sabu was originally, like, hailed from, like, Bombay, India, and then, like, Bombay, Michigan.

even though he was, that's what they, that's what they, Mumbai, Michigan. Yeah. Yeah. And like, they would say that even though he was just a guy from Brooklyn, but he was like all the way from, yeah. And he was, yeah. So it's, I take it back. Fuck. He was born in Iran. I take it back. Iron Sheik. sorry dude i didn't know well he's he's the exception that proves the rule i guess

We're on to wrestling, and your voice sounds to be, maybe we've got like 16 sentences out of you before it goes hoarse. So what were your favorite shows? What was the good times? I did see Sabu's retirement match. Oh, yeah.

which uh uh the first big spot he did like it was a barbed wire was it they called it a no rope barbed wire match so they take off the they take off the ropes and it's just you know three layers of barbed wire and then there's also like uh tables and stuff and like barbed wire ever you call them like barbed wire pits or whatever where it's just

Imagine a mattress. Instead of a regular pit, it was a barbed wire pit. Yeah, it's a barbed wire pit. Sabu dove out of the ring face first into the barbed wire, and I think it caught on his eyelid. So when he got up, it was so disgusting. He fell on a barbed wire board, but the barbed wire ropes gave out and he just landed back on his head on the floor.

I thought he died. Is he trying to kill himself in his final match? It didn't matter if he was going to have a career-ending injury because it was the last match of the way. I think Sabu was like, let's do it. He really... Because people thought, like, he's 60 years old. He looks... He doesn't look great. He's awesome, but he looks like an old man because he is. And he's an old man who has had the most injuries of any wrestlers.

But they went for it. They really, really did. And it was shocking. But he did this one spot. He hit his head. Immediately pools of blood. And like, it was like, I was like terrified. Like it had like a hush in the crowd. Wow. And so what they did is they had like other wrestlers come in and then Sandman from ECW came out. So they did the whole thing where the arena lights went black.

Or went dark. And then Salmon, they start playing Metallica. Salmon comes out for five minutes drinking beer and pouring beer in the audience as he comes down. Sabu eventually gets back up and they finish the match. But yeah, so I saw a lot of like blood, deathmatch stuff. A huge highlight was like... finally being able to speak to a lot of the stardom wrestlers, but this time, like...

I've been practicing Japanese, very basic, but I was able to converse with them in Japanese, and so many of them were like, oh my god, your Japanese is very good. Nihango Sugoi. And so it was just so funny to go back and forth in Japanese, and that was the coolest experience. Um, so I felt, I felt very like happy. Even also getting the geek out. I got to speak to the president of stardom in Japan. Everyone is so busy. There's like, it's also like,

a little taboo to like directly go up and like, you know, they're working. But here in America, it's like, they're so hands-on. There's not many people, whatever. So I went up to the president of stardom and told him like, oh yeah, it's the best wrestling in the world. But then he saw my wrestling pins. I have one of the rival promotions girls on my jacket.

He's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, Utami? And I was like, oh, Utami's Tsukides. Like, I like Utami. He's like, it's okay, I like Utami too.

I went up to the referee. I went up to the referee of stardom. This, like, this, I think, 60-year-old guy named Daichi. And, like, I was like, oh, can I get a photo? Like, they're always, like, shocked. It's like everyone wants to meet the girls and stuff. And I'm like, oh, let me talk to the president. Let me talk to the referee. Because I was, like, so excited to geek out.

Uh, and then same thing. Like he saw my other rival promotion shirt, Tokyo Joshi pro. And I was like, Oh no, no, no. Let's start on his business. Like, no, no, it's okay. TJPW. Good. So it's like.

It was very funny. Same thing with all the wrestlers I talked to. They would all point at the pins. I would go up to the wrestlers and be like Starlight Kid, who's the bottom pin. I was like, oh, you're my favorite wrestler, like Ichiban, all that. Thank you. And then she'd point, like, Utami. Same thing. Oh, I like Utami. they would also like no i like utami too so it's very funny like it was just very very exciting just to go up and meet everyone also like

In Japan, the meet and greet stuff is so, like, strict and, like, difficult. Whereas in America, it's way more, it's easier. So, yeah, just geeking out. I was able to buy. I've been watching WCW Nitro and directly from one of the man like producers and managers from Nitro. They were selling liquidated WCW merchandise. Oh, no way. So I got a vintage Nitro grill hat.

Where the big boys eat, which was their failed restaurant they had in Vegas for like a year. In Vegas? No way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was the original. Nitro grill things hat. So it was funny too. I got to see Juventud Guerrera, the luchador from Nitro. It was just very fun just to go up. I got a Leopard.

LaParka mask. So I went to this thing called WrestleCon. Gotta earn the mask, man. Right? It was $30. Thank you so much. It was great. The whole premise of it is during WrestleMania weekends... every wrestler company indies come out and set up a bunch of shows around WrestleMania because the idea is like, well, if there's, what, 60,000 wrestling, however many people coming out.

And so that's why Stardom was in town, all these wrestlers. I ignored WrestleMania, just went to go see all the other shows. But they also set up a thing called WrestleCon, which is basically, you know, it's like a giant meet and greet festival, but people are also selling retro stuff.

So it was so fun to walk around and literally know every single people and so many people from all the obscure WCW crap I've been watching. So it was just like, oh my God, like it was so, so, so exciting. And yeah, so that's why it was like. It was so, I don't know, it was great. It was like the best weekend. Did you watch any of Mania like on TV or anything? The only thing I watched was the Eoskai match because Eoskai was from Stardom. Oh, funny. Yeah, yeah. So that was like the one match.

the three-way one yeah the triple threat yeah and so she is the she is the the first female japanese wrestler to win a match in wrestlemania oh nice yeah so and so she is yeah literally joshi wrestling history Two Irish girls won the tag team as well. One of them wrestled in Waterford once as well. There you go. Herself and Seamus. Two champions who've wrestled in my tiny town. Take that, Gibraltar.

and then the other yeah so it's so it was great and like yeah my voice is gone for screaming and that's the other fun thing too is like in Japan you have to be a little like you don't want to be the loudest person in the room so yeah it's very it's very like reserved but There's a Tony Storm quote that's like...

When you're in Japan, you're a foreigner. But when you're in the ring, they're in your country. And they were talking about just like wrestling. But I took that mentality of like, oh, no, like they're in America. We can be nuts.

And so all my friends and I were just screaming and starting chants and like, but like the wrestlers like that. Cause the whole point, like especially in these shows is you're trying to get yourself over. So you're playing to the audience. You're when wrestlers are coming out, they're trying to like pump up the crowd. So it's so fun to immediately just like, you know. scream out your favorites and they respond to you and stuff like that and like

So it was, I don't know, it was just very exciting. It was a great time and it was so fun to just scream. But yeah, seeing Sabu nearly die was nuts. seeing all my favorite Joe sitting front row screaming at all the Joe. She's was very exciting. Um, like again, same thing going up to them and just like, showing them a phone of like oh yeah i just saw you in yokohama in january uh like they're like

I was like going up to all these people wearing like merch I would get in Japan and they're shocked like how do you have this shirt and it's like oh no I bought it from you three months ago you gotta start bringing your resume around or something you gotta I know Finish the arc. I know, I know. So that's why it was insane to meet Okada. I was like, oh my God, I should have.

I even told him, I got like too familiar by the end. Like the referee recognized me by like day four. But I even told Okada, the president, I was like, I'll see you in Japan, which is too like, but I was just so in my element and happy. And then, yeah, so. There was a lot of fun stuff. It was just a great time. Also, on social media, it was so fun seeing all the Japanese wrestlers.

freak out by american food like especially in vegas so it was like giant pizzas and things like that so oh i saw a gerstman taking a retweeting one of the wrestlers with like a pizza and i was like why why are you Taking a picture of a pizza. But I was like, oh yeah, of course. American pizzas are ridiculous. I'm just used to it now. Her name is Wakana and she's in a tag team called Ober Eats. Oh my God, like Uber Eats? Yeah, Uber Eats, but just Ober Eats. I don't know what's...

She calls herself a big eater, and so she eats, not in the ring or anything, but she just eats a lot, but loves, like, they all posted pictures of them, like Panda Express, and like, just local food, but it's so exciting. Even like... Starlight Kid posted a picture of her in front of an American Starbucks because they have drinks you can't get in Japan and stuff like that. It's just all the same shit that we do over there. Yes, exactly, exactly. What's the word for a Japanese weeb?

That's a good question. Like a marabou? Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah. A marabou. I'm trying to think. It'd be, yeah. When they were in Pennsylvania last year for WrestleMania, they all took pictures in front of a yellow school bus. Cause that's such an American like thing where it's not, there's no, you know.

Totally. Yeah, I don't have those in Europe at all. That's one of the most American things in my mind is a yellow school bus. Yeah, it didn't even dawn on me. I was like, oh, I was like, yeah, it was so funny to freak out a yellow school bus. They love Miss Frizzle. They kept thinking of the Magic School Bus. Frank, I feel like you're at some 40% of the way through the story of your Yakuza plot arc, like the game Yakuza, not you joining the organized crime. uh, syndicate fingers.

Yeah, where you have nine fingers. No, I feel like we're at the arc where you're meeting all of these people, and then you go to Japan and see the president of Startup again, and he's like, oh yeah, it's that guy. Why don't you... Why don't you run a few jobs for me? And then you start the, you know, the Gaiden phase where you're just doing little side stories and then it elevates into your transcendence into, I don't know, whatever stardom figure you want to become. Right.

One of the wrestlers is embezzling money, or maybe the ref was, and you have to figure it out. Anything they need, I'm there. there you go love it love to see it well thank you for risking life lemon voice to report to us from the uh the uh sin city wrestle fest that sounds like a good time where are they doing mania next year do you know so new orleans so oh that's a fucking good that's a good time so so i've never gone but it's like i i gotta go jeremy you filmed there for game spot once right

Yeah, I think so. When you were freelance, you did Mafia or something down there? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was trying to remember what gig it was. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a long time ago. Which is really funny because they make that a fucking tip wrong. Yeah, they flew everyone out who were all within a 20-mile radius to go. Yeah, exactly. Every game is a journalist.

It's like a fucking ferry ride from Mafia where Mafia is made in Nevada or whatever. They couldn't just like recreate Bourbon Street in a warehouse in Nevada. They could have easily done it in like South Africa. they couldn't leave some red brick building somewhere and fucking i don't know

They got to make a splash. They got to take you there and wine and dine you. I wasn't wined and dined, but if I had been, it would have made an impression. No, you were a freelancer then, so you were getting your own cab from the airport. I was buying my own wine and my own dine. That's all the games but the email we have is sort of on theme for this, Frank, it seems.

Yeah, thank you. If people do want to send an email in to us, write to us, podcast at noclip.video or in our Patreon Discord in the podcast chat channel. This time I had an email from Connor. They asked, what have been your favorite locations to visit and film for your documentaries? Jeremy, do you want to go first? Do you want to? Sure. Yeah, I am.

We've been a bunch of amazing places. I feel like the one place that we went to that I would pay my way back to in a heartbeat out of my own pocket is Japan. It just like... I don't know. We didn't even really have a traditional touristy experience in Japan. We made time to go see a couple touristy things, but I don't know. It was just like... People were incredibly friendly. The food was incredibly good. The city was incredibly clean and safe in our experience. And I just like...

I don't know. It wasn't even, I think a lot of people think like, Oh, Japan, it's so like culturally different that it's like, you know, like a culture theme park or something where you're going to this place and it's like, Oh, this is like, so the soda is different here. And that is like part of the fun. But, um, I don't know. It just, there was like a real, I just felt very comfortable there. And I felt like, uh, I, I don't, there was.

It's like my interest in my main interest, like my top five, I feel like three out of the five are things that are like buddhism and video games in japan are like the fucking thing and those are i don't know i feel like i have a spiritual affinity with uh with japan that i would need to explore more

It was like a weirdly short trip as well. Like we were really only there for like five days maybe or something, right? I think it was less than a week. Yeah, I think we left on the sixth day maybe. Yeah, because it was pretty, and we were pretty full on. We were filming for...

Three days at the studio, I think. And then... i mean the b-roll days were incredible it was just impossible not to get amazing b-roll everywhere you know ever went Akihabara it was during Sakurai season right so we had Sakurai season so Sakurai Sakurai season as well

Sakurai season never stops. Yeah. So like gorgeous shots. I still remember that random spot we got with the cherry blossoms falling. Yeah, it was just like a parking lot. Yeah. It just looked incredible though. Everything was incredible. All the shots were incredible. Great filming. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We got to drink all the Pocari sweat we wanted to drink. Go watch our behind the scenes. Go check. The behind the scenes video on our Patreon is basically 90% of that trip. So go.

Go check that one out. Other ones, I really loved Lyon. Lyon was a great city. We had good fun there, good food, beautiful town. It was our last trip before COVID hit. I think maybe we did Obsidian just before it. Maybe I forget. It was around the same. I think it was the same month we did it. So yeah, Leon was a great space. It was like one of those places I wouldn't have necessarily gone to if we hadn't had a trip. So it was cool to get away off the beaten path that way.

I had a lot of fun in Tallinn. I did not know anything about Estonia prior to that. That's the project that is coming next from us, the Disco Elysium one, but it was late last summer. Yeah, I had a real blast there. Such a weird, walkable city. I kept bumping into places I'd seen from the movie Tenet. It was lots of late nights, fun locals. I met a bunch of locals and hung out.

Anytime we do a meetup is good fun. Did a good meetup in Stockholm recently. That was good fun. Enjoyed that one. Stockholm is definitely a fun city. Been there a few times now. I'm trying to think where else. I mean, we've been like so many places.

richardson texas the of the alzheimer no i'm sorry i'm sorry richardson texas i'm not we did hardly anything there didn't we yeah we didn't even see any of richardson we just saw that guy power walking down the sidewalk and that will live forever in my heart Yeah, yeah, you're right. Some places you don't get to see much at all. San Diego, we were in and out as well for Rocket League.

that was that was Warsaw we always have good fun this said that private people usually it's a good it's a interesting city a lot of history for sure You had fun in England on that Creative Assembly project I wasn't on. Didn't you? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it was fun. It was very stressful because that was also the trip that... Stayed in a weird Airbnb or something? I stayed in a bizarre bed and breakfast in the countryside, and it was like the beginning of a 70s English folk horror movie because no one else was staying there.

So like this huge, they probably had like a hundred rooms there and they would, they would like come down and be like, dinner is being served in an hour. If you want to come down, I would, I'd go down and I'd be the only one there for like a bunch of the dinners. So it was like a dark and stormy night, and I ordered Indian food delivered, and I just like...

had a beer and ate samosas with the guy who ran the bed and breakfast, and I don't know. It was very, very cozy, but a very strange sort of feeling. Did you order the Indian food and then eat it in their restaurant? Yeah, I did, because I ordered it to the place.

And I was like, just call me when you're here. And he knocked on the door, which I was like, you know, a mile away from down the hall. So the owner of the place took it and then he called me and he was like, your curry's here i was like how did why do you have it uh so i went down and he had like put it out in the restaurant for me like set it up for me so it was very shit i can't go hide in my room yeah yeah yeah exactly so probably a good curry was it

uh it was all right it was all right okay it was yeah it wasn't bad um yeah i mean i don't that's not a reflection of uh the curry in in the uk i just maybe maybe it wasn't i was also in the middle of fucking nowhere um But yeah, it was cool. It was an interesting experience. But my adapters for power adapters kept like... getting incredibly hot. Oh yeah. Uh, during the last interview, um,

We're talking about alien isolation and I started to smell the whole room filled with the smell of burning plastic and an adapter had literally melted. Like the shape of it had heated so much that the shape of it was changing. So I was just like, I hope A, that we all don't. like have cancer in five years from this and and be that uh that you know that doesn't actually burst into smoke or flames during the filming but that's fair

Got to clean. And then Chris Bratt, a class act after the final filming, I got back to the bed and breakfast and the guy there was like, oh, your friend sent something for you. I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? And I got back to the room and Chris had sent me a bucket of Peroni beers to drink. Oh, what a legend. A class dude.

He's a class guy. He is. He went to like Italy for that shoot too. Remember on his own to interview. Oh yeah. I forgot about that. The original founder. Yeah. That was a, that was a fun one. I was off. I had no fucking involvement in that. I was off fucking. What was I doing? I was having a baby, I think. Did you edit that or did Chris? I think Chris did, right? Because he did all his stand-

You shot the stand-ups. I shot the stand-ups. I don't think I edited that one. I feel like Chris did. Is that the only doc that's gone off that neither of us edited? It must have been. I totally forgot that he edited that. I think so. We did the Alien Isolation one. Did Esteban edit the fighting game one? Oh, you're right. Sorry. Of course Esteban did. Did the...

The FGC one, yeah. What can I remember the guy's name? Fucking... I'm trying to think of it in Dunkey is the only thing that's coming into my head, which is not... So Dunkey's clearly over... Spooky! Team Spooky! Team Spooky. Team Dunkey. Team Donkey, exactly. Man, oh man. Yeah, good times. Good times. Everywhere we go is a good fun time, especially when we have a good meetup. I was at Warpigs in Copenhagen before my one day off when I was there, which I think I mentioned last week.

And we had a good meetup with Warpigs when we were there. Good barbecue place in Copenhagen. What's the best place we've eaten? Oh, that's tough. We do a lot of which is the best canteen. Yeah. We did a lot of that. I feel like one of the best meals we ever had was a yakitori in... Oh, that was good. You're not going to know Broadway. Was that with Ludwig Forsell? Oh, Ludwig, wasn't it? It was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fucking death-stranding-ass composer. Yeah, for sure. He was just a fan of Noclip and wanted to hang out. that would be that's the fucking dream I want to I want to meet Kojima and I want to talk I'm sure everyone is like oh my god Metal Gear oh my god Metal Gear I want to talk to him about fucking like Yasujiro Ozu movies and I just want to like

I want to tell him that Setsuko Hara is my favorite actress of all time. And I want to talk to him about the golden age of Japanese cinema. Ludwig brought us out. That was a fun night because we did like... We went to that weird bar where they sold drinks that were smoky and weird. Yeah, they had a gun that shot hickory smoke into the drink. That's what it was, yeah. Did we go karaoke that night? Yeah, we did. Like I sung Africa at the...

Karaoke? My favorite moment at the karaoke, because it wasn't like karaoke where you get up on stage and sing. It was more like you would write in a request and they would play it and everyone would kind of sing together. That's what it was, you're right. The most cigarette-dense room I've ever been in in my life. It was fucking down like a... like a nightmare staircase too. It was in a basement that you had to like fucking climb at.

It was an 80s American music-themed bar in Tokyo. And I just remember for some reason, in the haze of a thousand beers that night and a thousand cigarettes, that it was... It was like Don't Stop Me Now by Queen or like Bohemian Rhapsody. Some Queen song came on. And for some reason, every Japanese person in the bar turns towards the three white guys. Your wife.

they're like this is your cue or something yeah yeah but i felt like so on the spot because i was like why is this the song that like i didn't request this i don't understand what's happening That's a good time. Yeah, that was fun. That's probably up there. We got to go back to Tokyo.

I know. Well, I can't get on a plane for the next couple months. All my fucking blood clot chills the fuck out, so... i gotta you know not to be not to be frank frank going off to wrestling shows we'll have to live vicariously through you Frank, you and me, Shigesato Itoi, hanging out, talking about Earthbound. I know basics of Japanese now, so I'm ready to practice. Between me and Frank, I feel like we probably have at least... You're basically one Chinese guy.

but i'm a chinese guy i feel like we have between five and seven percent mastery of the japanese language between the two us and who knows how much of the Chinese at least we have ni hao and that's all you that's all the Chinese you really need in Japan I'd say

Yeah, I can order food in China anyway. That's probably okay. Yeah, there you go. That's pretty good. China does feel like the country I'm going to die and never have seen enough of. Because I follow this one YouTuber who goes around China. China's fucking massive. And China is like gorgeous in like the random spots. And it was like when I was, I didn't have time, but we were flying from Korea. When myself and Ulle were flying from Korea to Warsaw, I was like...

Kazakhstan and just fucking because it's on the way like can I just like hang out in Kazakhstan. We didn't have enough time, but I was like, fuck. If there was one, I couldn't get a connection that would drop me in the same city in Kazakhstan that would get me to both places. I would have had to travel like 600 miles. across kazakhstan i was not willing to do that in one day i was like that would have been cool i got

I'd love to go to China. That'd be awesome. Right? Yeah. That seems cool there. Chinese fucking game dev money. You know what I mean? Make some games that don't have any Winnie the Poohs in them. Let's go. You know? Let's do it. And never mention Taiwan ever. We'll be the opposite of Red Candle Games. We'll just be these weird sellout fucking, you know.

propagandists just become Chinese propagandists that's honestly there's probably decent money in that yeah think about all the Russian propagandists that have done really well over the past few years you know all those right wing weirdos that are A little soft on Putin. Let's be soft on Xi. You know what I mean? He's a little cozy bear. Let's do it. No, no. See, that's what you can't go the cozy bear angle. That's what they don't want. Yeah. Pick a different cozy angle.

Getting awfully close to forgiving and genocidist. Let's back it. I'm going to back beep, beep, beep. I'm backing out of that one. Didn't mean it. Didn't mean it. Thanks for listening to our podcast. We talked about Oblivion today. Rematch. Wrestling. A whole bunch of it. And Look Outside was the game Jeremy was talking about. go check this out and plenty more over on you know the internet just turn on your console play a game

I bought Goat Simulator 3 yesterday. You can just get anything. You can do whatever you want. This is loads of videos. There may be three of those. There may be three of those. How much simulation of a goat can there be to do? That's a very good question. I don't know why I'm buying it. I've got four goats. Why the fuck do I need goat simulator? You've become the German guy who gets off his warehouse job and plays forklift simulator. That's it. Exactly. That's me. And then plays Shenmue.

The best game ever made according to, who was it? New York Times? I believe it was Frank. Frank Howley of the New York Times. He owns the New York Times now. He bought it off of whoever owns it now. Bezos probably bought that too. We're out of here, folks. Thanks so much for listening to our podcast, episode 224. We'll see you next week. Jesse will be back. Thank you to Jeremy Jane. Chapeau for producing the show this week again.

You did know you were producing the show this week. Yeah, for sure. I'm so cool about it. Live on the air. Oh man, I got an important date. Cancel it. Franco, gargle some honey. Thank you. Oh, and a special bonus pod is coming out later this week. Oh, yeah. Thanks to... Sorry, Jeremy, this is my fault.

Jeremy was like let's do a bonus pod we can do a review of something you know interesting something we like and then I was like I was so indecisive that I could not figure out which one i wanted to put forward so i was like look don't worry about it i'll just put up a poll we'll let the patrons decide i put it up on discord i put up four bad movies i don't know what i was thinking

Okay, full transparency, I suggested movies like Drunken Angel by Akira Kurosawa, and I was like, we could talk about post-war Yakuza and how it reflects on the Yakuza franchise. These are the Yakuza games I've played. real movies and then the four you suggested were Hitman Prince of Persia, Borderlands with Kevin Hart. And what was the fourth one? The other one is so unbelievable that I forgot it existed because it basically occupies the same space as Prince of Persia.

which is Assassin's Creed. Starring Michael Fassbett. These are all movies that are, they're so predictable that they exist that I phased the bat of my brain as existing. Like, I was shocked that they exist. I, similarly, I think this is why I ended up doing this. I think I thought about, what's a video game movie? And I thought of Hitman. And then immediately, because they all came out within, like, if you actually know, Assassin's Creed came out in 2016. Jesus.

Timothy Oliphant's Hitman. The only thing I know about it is that he hated working on it. I think he shaved his head for it. and it was not very well received. The only thing I know about Assassin's Creed and Michael Fassbender is that he hated working on it. He shaved his head. I don't know if he shaved his head. The only thing I know about Prince of Persia is that I think he's embarrassed about working on it.

And then the other one was Borderlands, which came out last year, which is total trash and of course got half the votes. So I'm so sorry. We will be watching Borderlands. Have you watched Borderlands yet? No, I'm going to watch it tonight. I'm going to watch it tonight as well. Honestly, it was the best case scenario because I feel like all the other ones are bad, but I feel like there's a window of lack of quality where it's like...

Is it bad and interesting or is it bad and boring? And I feel like Borderlands is so bad that it might be. sort of like cultural you know like you're driving by a car crash and everyone slows down you don't want to see the car crash but there is a deep sort of like morbid curiosity in us as humans to to stare into the uh the Nietzschean void We're going to rubberneck. That's what we're going to do for an hour and 40 minutes.

And we will have our review for you on the bonus feed. If you're a $5 patron, you get access to that as long as all the other bonus pods. We're actually behind the bonus pods. We're going to have an extra one as well. a week or so. But yes, I can't wait to check it out. 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. Cate Blanchett.

retirement fight imagine imagine like sabu she went out on fucking borderlands she fell on a bunch of barbed wire filming the movie exactly herself and jamie lee curtis is in it jack black i think is is claptrap Just a star-studded cast of Regret. They probably got a lot of good money for it. I think Pendulette's in it as well. That's pretty cool. Wait, who is fucking Pendulette? Or should I just be surprised? Take one guess. Take a guess why Pendulette is...

Is he clap trap? I don't fucking know. No, just who owns the Borderlands IP? Is Randy Pitchford in the movie played by Pendulet? Randy Pitchford is, I think, owns the magic. Doesn't he own the magic circle now? Doesn't he own? He's like a magic. Randy Petterford's a huge rat. He's definitely friends with Petterlett. He has to be.

He's a huge magic guy. I didn't know this. Yeah. He's a big magic bloke. That's what he does. When you say someone is a big magic bloke, I'm picturing like a huge, like a Hagrid. Hagrid is a big magic bloke. He's a big magic bloke. That's true. Is Pagrin magic... Yeah, he must... He has a flying motorcycle. When he's not... I think. In... you know losing usb sticks full of pornography in a

in medieval times, he's out there. I'm talking about Rodney Pitchford, not Hagrid. That's why he learned sleight of hand is because he was like, I got these hands must be trained. This cannot happen again. It can't happen again. Fuck. All right. Well, you can look forward to insights like that and more on the Patreon pod. Until then, we'll see you next week. Bye. Arigato gozaimashita. Matane.