Shaun
Host
00:00
This is Off To Off Topic, a show where two men with the attention spans of a squirrel try and fail to stay on topic with today's subject. Where will their oral meanderings take us? Well, stick around and listen, because today's Off To Off Topic topic is… the Diablo series. With Diablo 4 about to be released, we thought it would be fun to do a dive into the history of Diablo Nate. What do you know about Diablo?
Nate
Host
00:23
I know that my friends all loved it and I never played it, at least the first one. I never played the first one. I did pick up the second one. I think a buddy of mine had a copy. He had a pirated copy. He was like here you go, am I cool? And I loaded it up and I played it for a minute but just… I don't know, I didn't know what to expect and it was just… I just remember running around like random things happening me, shooting things, like yeah, I was dropping.
Shaun
Host
00:48
You're like, hey, this would be fun if I had people to play with.
Nate
Host
00:50
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I knew it was dropping, but I didn't know what they did and at that time I wasn't a gamer who was into loot, like the loot hunting. Yeah, I think the video gets…. When was this? When did Diablo 2?
Shaun
Host
01:02
came out. Diablo 1 came out in 97, 98 and Diablo 2 came out in 99, 2000.
Nate
Host
01:09
Yeah, so there… I can't remember. It would be great if I have like a list of games that came out at the time, but I was playing other games and that just… it didn't click with me. Diablo 3 came out I actually worked at a GameStop and Wild came out and I actually got it. I was like everyone… yeah, I really need to give this a try, and I played a little bit and it didn't really do it for me, though I will say the most fun I had was when we got together on PlayStation and played it. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
Shaun
Host
01:40
That was my best memories of playing Diablo 3, because other than that I was kind of on it, but we'll get into that a little bit more later.
Nate
Host
01:47
Yeah, my favorite character was like the expansion type of Necromancer. Yeah, because that Necromancer was awesome. He was a total sheep, though I mean….
Shaun
Host
01:54
Yeah, you could just summon an army of skeletons and you could have like Thorn Shield Onion and just march through things.
Nate
Host
02:00
Even his basic attack was just overpowered. You could… once they leveled the thing up, you could just stand in one place and you're murdering people even before they get close to you.
Shaun
Host
02:09
They don't have an opportunity to do that. They're just flinging phone spears across the screen.
Nate
Host
02:12
Yeah, I mean now, of course it's hard, so that doesn't necessarily hold off a thousand of them when they're coming at you. But if you're walking through and you've got some low level mobs coming at you, they're dead before they even are even a slight threat.
Shaun
Host
02:27
Absolutely. And if they get close enough to you, you can just throw an army of skeleton children at them from the graveyard you just summoned…. Right, yeah, he was… you never noticed there's always adult skeletons that get summoned in these games. You never get wind up like a little kid just popping out of the ground or whatever. Yeah, you think that… A toddler just runs around with like a steak bar, completely useless the only game that had the caho'nas to do it that I've ever seen.
Nate
Host
02:51
I may be wrong. I'm sure there's indie games out there who did it too, but the only mainstream triple A game I've ever seen to do that was Dead Space.
02:59
Oh no you don't play Dead Space, no I played it, but I don't remember that one, the very first Dead Space. Yeah, I mean, they were the first Dead Space, but they were definitely the second Dead Space. Gotcha, were they in the first Dead Space? I'm not sure, no, but they were definitely the second one. Babies they were like explosives. So you had baby babies that crawled on the ground, they were dead and they would come at you from the walls and stuff and they would explode. And then there were slightly more… they were toddlers, a little older baby or whatever, and they would come at you like spider people that came out and then like adolescents, like small, let's say, nine, 10-year-old children. They were kind of goblins and they just rush at you with claws. So I'm like you know what, get on you and the way they introduced.
03:45
That too is you roll up on this…. We're in the middle of a nursery and you see this woman who's clearly crazy and she's like calling over a baby who's clearly dead and she's like come here, baby, come to mama, and then he explodes, killing her. She's in splattered everywhere. Basically, that's showing you, hey, babies are bombs, but it's like, dude, this is messed up, I'm here for it.
Shaun
Host
04:08
That would be a cool punk band name. Babies Are Bombs yeah, babies Are Bombs. Yep. Babies have like the album cover being like babies being dropped out of a B-52 bomber.
Nate
Host
04:17
I just think about the opposite of Toys R Us. Toys R Us and Babies Are Bombs.
Shaun
Host
04:21
That was Hayden competitor.
04:26
Babies Are Bombs made another run at Toys R Us, suicide bombings left and right. I played Diablo 1 actually quite a bit back in the day. I was really into it. And then I played Diablo 2 even more because I was even more into that, and kind of the same thing with Diablo 3. He was like, hey, this is all right, it's fun to play with people, but eh. So our story begins with a young man in the early 1980s named David Brevik. He is the eventual creator of Diablo and the hero of our story. He was a big PC gamer and youth enjoying the finest text base and assy art games Ascii, assy I'm not sure I pronounce that. You know which games I'm talking about back in the day, whereas you're basically piloting little letters around, yeah, and assy. It's like I'm an Ampersam and I'm going to war. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nate
Host
05:10
I'm wasting time back then. Those types of games, those text ones, right yeah.
Shaun
Host
05:15
Well, some of them were text, where you're actually like reading a book, almost like choose your own adventure. And then there's other ones where, like the end, it was basically thinking of almost like Zelda, but the levels were made out of letters Like the walls were letters and your character was like a little symbol just running around and it was like playing a game inside of a Word document or a spreadsheet.
Nate
Host
05:33
I played a few of those. Yeah, yeah, they were a hot back in the day back in graphics. It wasn't my thing Like that game was definitely not my thing. So I had friends who had it, but that wasn't my thing.
Shaun
Host
05:43
Yeah, they're also a little before our time-ish kind of. Yeah, we had choose your own adventure style stories around a little bit more during our youth. There you had some of those on the NES as well, like Uninvited and Shadowgate. Yeah, I didn't play those either. Yeah.
Nate
Host
05:58
They were fun. Yeah, that was not my. The closest I got to choose your adventure type things was the books.
Shaun
Host
06:03
Yeah, like the, those things were great. Yeah, I was a little bit of a school-astic book fair and walk out with a bunch of those.
Nate
Host
06:09
Well, you ever play the Choose your Adventure books. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, you'd go to Page this, yeah.
Shaun
Host
06:13
School-astic book fair where you go there and you buy them for like a dollar or whatever. No, I didn't do that, I got it.
Nate
Host
06:17
You ever had a school-astic book fair at your school? Oh, we did, I just never. I didn't get any of those. I was on comics.
Shaun
Host
06:24
We never had comics at our own thing, we did. I guess for us it was just like I mean Choose your. Adventure was like the most action or you know fun books. They had everything else. It was kind of like learning, yeah two books and such.
Nate
Host
06:37
Well, maybe it was a school-astic book fair. It was just a book fair. Yeah, because a book fair is they bring whatever Like Ella's coming out from her book fair and bringing like Pokemon books. Yeah, she brought home one book. I'm like Ella, you need to bring a book we got to read together. This is not a book we can read together, it's just, it's a Pokemon compendium. Yeah, it really was. Now it turned out, we did. We actually.
Shaun
Host
06:58
This Pokemon comes from the Kanto region.
Nate
Host
07:00
It's gotten kind of ripped up now but like sometimes when we feel like we're going to lay down, we'll do 15 minutes just going through and look at a Pokemon, talk about them, and basically it's me like the primary is me just going through and shitting a Pokemon, but she loves it. We basically go through like, tear apart the logic behind them and it's pretty fun. I mean, she's into it. It's not like she's like no, don't say that about so-and-so.
Shaun
Host
07:22
There's no way a drift loon could pick up a small child and whisk them off to the never-ending things like that.
Nate
Host
07:27
I mean, some of them are like Some of those backstories dude are dark yeah.
Shaun
Host
07:31
Yes, they are.
Nate
Host
07:32
The favorite being, I think probably the most popular one, is that one with a skull forehead, our skull mask on it. That's the skull of his dead mother.
Shaun
Host
07:40
Oh, yeah, yeah, Yep the Q-bone. I think something along those lines yeah.
Nate
Host
07:44
But then you think about how that would work, because that means they can only have one child, because one child gives the mom's head bone. You don't have a bunch of head bones, you have one. So if they have siblings, are they not wearing skulls? Are they stealing the?
Shaun
Host
07:59
siblings. When it comes time to kill their mother, the siblings all get together and have a battle royale, and whichever one wins that yeah.
Nate
Host
08:06
They don't mention that part. Like the culling yeah, exactly, the strongest one gives the mother skull, Yep.
Shaun
Host
08:13
And the ones that don't win that battle royale just walk around like missing limbs, eyes gouged out but no skull on their face.
Nate
Host
08:19
The untouchables. They're like inside the Pokemon, they're like back alleys. You know when the camera usually pass of a movie. You see the. You know the dregs and the background huddled in the shadows. That's them.
Shaun
Host
08:30
Yep. And then their leader is the one with the skull, the toughest of them all. I was able to take down all you and take down mother and I fixed it on her flesh gave me strength.
Nate
Host
08:43
He's saying this is the dirt table, with someone else next to him. He's like. We know we all did that. We all have masks on. We all killed her mom. We all did that. Will you please, please, shut up? I mean like all of us.
Shaun
Host
08:56
Her mom was seen island and feebled when you took her down. It wasn't even that hard. She fell down the stairs running from you. Didn't do anything special, we could all say this Mark down there.
Nate
Host
09:08
see Mark over there. You should hear his story. It is real fucked up.
Shaun
Host
09:14
But you, sir, you are nothing special, You're not special, his mom, his mom just would not die.
Nate
Host
09:21
I mean, he had to beat her to death for a while and she did not go quietly, she pled the whole way.
Shaun
Host
09:35
Yes, the dark world of Pokemon.
Nate
Host
09:37
Right yeah.
Shaun
Host
09:39
That's what makes it interesting, though, makes it fun, full of lore that we get to play with, thank you. So David Brevko was a huge fan of those tech, space and ASCII games and he also enjoyed the old role playing games like Might and Magic, wizardry and Ultima, those old hard school PC or hardcore old school PC games which I actually played, all those games on the NES which are very, very stripped down versions of the PC versions. Still fun, but still way more advanced than anything the NES had at the time.
Nate
Host
10:10
I believe the.
Shaun
Host
10:11
Ultima game actually had like day night cycles, which was brand new for back then on the NES.
Nate
Host
10:16
I'm so upset, I missed all that. You know, like people always talk about, oh, ultima, I'm like OK, but I don't know I missed all that.
Shaun
Host
10:22
They were very, very hard. A lot of them actually had permadeath too. So you'd be plotting along with your favorite character and all of a sudden they'd just get hit with a critical attack and dead, favorite character, gone, scrum from existence, man, that would be so mad no more. Oh, it was, it's. Yeah. The worst one was Might and Magic, because I got really far into that in the NES and was had a really good group going in and then the actual save game battery inside the cartridge died and it couldn't save games anymore.
Nate
Host
10:50
Oh no.
Shaun
Host
10:51
Yeah, so you could hold onto a save, sometimes like overnight, but then I'd fire it up eventually and it'd be like your game is gone. Why not?
Nate
Host
11:00
How. That was the noise it made.
Shaun
Host
11:01
Yeah, why not? What what?
Nate
Host
11:06
That would be funny if they program that. They program to like those NES cartridges that battery died Like OK, what's it? What's a better diet triggered something else that would literally go what, what.
Shaun
Host
11:17
That literally used just the last bit of battery power to play that sounding. Then delete your safe. It's like you couldn't be transferred your safe, but we decided to use this cute little womp, womp, womp at the end. So, like the old Motorola Razer phones, when they'd be like a 5% battery, they would just light up like a Christmas tree and play music.
Nate
Host
11:33
It's like dude. You could use that to stay on longer, right.
Shaun
Host
11:38
It was like don't do that, we're trying to nurse every last little electron coming out of that battery. Well, let's go with Brevik, daydream about the games you would love to make and then transfer these ideas to papers via crudely drawn stick figures, exactly as I did back in school. That was kind of my thing, is I just be like, hmm, what would I like as a game? Then I draw like really crude 2D levels, a lot more like 2D role playing games, sort of like Zelda 2.
Nate
Host
11:59
Yeah, I think I did that. I got on my boarders I always had like, yeah, a little border hole. I always had a whole drama. You know, I'd do like a obstacle horse and things yeah. Or sometimes you got really fancy to do a flip book, or I'd have tanks. You know, drop tanks like there's a war.
Shaun
Host
12:16
Mortar shell shooting over stuff, shooting over the words on your paper onto the other side. We're like where? The whole side of the paper and we're going after the margin side of the paper. Take that Go holes, yeah, go holes. The fighting three punch, woo, yay. So as he was doodling these ideas back in schools, somebody gave him something that would change his life forever, something that made him go hey, I should do this for a living. Remember the National Enquirer innate, that tabloid that we saw in supermarkets that gave us something to read while our parents paid for groceries? I do, they used to be fun.
Nate
Host
12:51
Yeah, yeah.
Shaun
Host
12:52
That's what National Enquirer is mainly celebrity stuff. It was a weekly world news that did Backboy and all that.
Nate
Host
12:57
Yeah, I get that, but it used to be fun. You know like, okay, this is a bad boy, sure, it's ridiculous, but now you walk by one. I was like Joe Biden blue, fucking.
Shaun
Host
13:11
Santa Claus in front of shot of a tense.
Nate
Host
13:16
I mean, it's just the policy, so we still do have their case all like, I don't know. Dick Van Dyke rose from the grave yeah, but I think they find that's dead, though that he looked, he rose from the grave, he's dead.
Shaun
Host
13:31
That is true, he's dead a few times. He just keeps on coming back. Pops out of a random chimney.
Nate
Host
13:37
No, there are chimneys left on sweat.
Shaun
Host
13:39
I must dance and sing as I go up, I must pick up this awful cockneyed accent one more time and take the mantle up.
Nate
Host
13:46
You know, it's terrible. I didn't realize that was an awful cockneyed accent till someone mentioned it one day. Because, you know, I mean I don't think about Mary Poppins I watched I was a kid. So I just say, okay, british, sure, whatever, and. But then someone's like, oh yeah, like his awful accent, like awful accent. Was it Like go back and listen Like, oh yeah.
Shaun
Host
14:05
Was it awful? Because I've always heard that too and, like you, I never really realized it was awful. But then I'll send. I don't know. Like 10 years ago I started hearing people talk about it as one of the worst accents ever and I was like well, I never bothered to check it back.
Nate
Host
14:16
If you go back and like, set aside your youthful innocence and you go OK, what kind of you? Now that you hear regular English accents, it's like OK, it's not good, it's pretty bad. I mean, if, if I, would you, I don't know, like it's almost almost a mocking when he's going through he, but he's doing genuinely, tell us he's trying like he could come across as look at me do your actions, you stupid cock knees he is doing his darndest, so good on him.
Shaun
Host
14:46
Yeah, I I salute the effort it was like a really bad accent, like how a white dude would try to do an Asian accent back then. Yeah, yeah, it was like well, I mean, that's an attempt for the time, but I always say it was racist, like that.
Nate
Host
15:01
But it's not racist. They're all white, so it's not racist. But it's, you know, it's, I don't know nationalist or big. It did. Whatever is yeah, why not? Maybe?
Shaun
Host
15:09
scare, you attack, but it wasn't, it wasn't.
Nate
Host
15:11
I am not saying it.
Shaun
Host
15:12
There is not maliciousness in his or was there.
Nate
Host
15:14
We believe you. I know I think he, from what I understand they've been nice pretty good dude, so I haven't I've never heard anything negative about him now that I keep coming back from the gravest, because he has come back out as goodness, we might find out later on, after his death. He was a monster, but as it stands right now, I will say that I haven't heard anything bad about him and Betty White had their concentration camps of fans that they would torture.
Shaun
Host
15:40
Well then, walking around like Nazi SS uniforms, I can't get up the morning without a cup of blood it sustains me from a virgin.
Nate
Host
15:52
It only has to be the first time drawing. I can't jump from the same person twice, so we kill that person and we put in the other is true evil.
Shaun
Host
16:03
So, along with bringing dick van dyke back from the dead, we can actually think the national inquirer for giving us Diablo, believe it or not. Yes, the whole game series was kind of came about because national inquirer. Why? Because they didn't article in the early 80s on ultimate developer Richard Garriott and the fact that it well, in college he made the ultimate games and netted a cool hundred thousand dollars while doing it before he even graduated. Now, this was important because before this article nobody thought making video games was anything economically viable. Everybody's just like, hey, this is just like a weird hobby of little nerds hiding in their basements and nothing, no good money can come out of it. The big games, like you know, donkey Kong and Pac-Man and the such, those were big teams and the developers pocketed all the money Atari, nintendo, well so, and so was it a lie, because it was a national choir.
Nate
Host
16:51
So nope, it was real okay.
Shaun
Host
16:53
So actually national inquirer has broken quite a few stories like legit, yeah, I remember that.
Nate
Host
16:58
I remember they were the one who caught um oh man like, and he was a front for a minute. Front runner for a president, john O'Wears oh yeah, they did that.
Shaun
Host
17:09
They also broke, built the Bill Cosby story, did they? Yeah, well, they kind of brought to light let's see 2005, nine years before any other publication. They were like, hey, bill Cosby's not good to women.
Nate
Host
17:22
Well, it was that. I think the thing that really brought the spotlight was that one comedian who, like, was talking about Bill Cosby and everyone's like what he's like. Yeah, he's a monster, but you can be right by the require to you. I mean, I'm not saying that was the only thing. The national choir thing was like I had heard that bit of it, but I believe it.
Shaun
Host
17:43
Yeah, they were also the ones that found discovered in his Cosby's killer when Bill Cosby's kid died. Hey, you think Bill Cosby's kid got killed, his retaliation for him being a rapist, hmm seems unlikely, but it does seem likely.
Nate
Host
17:58
I would. We could run with that theory. I did not agree with putting my name to that conspiracy.
Shaun
Host
18:03
In theory I have heard through the grapevine, and they also broke a whole Cogan's racist rant, bob Dole's cheating scandal, rush Limbaugh's oxycontin addiction. Do you know what the difference is between the tabloid and a regular news outlet?
Nate
Host
18:19
I do.
Shaun
Host
18:20
Okay, I want to guess, but I'm not gonna okay, basically, a tabloid is allowed to pay people for their stories, pay people to interview them, regular news stories supposed, yeah, it's supposed to be like journalistic integrity. So, like ABC, nbc, if you want to tell their story to them, yeah, they are not gonna give you my. But tabloids they have no such scruples. They will gladly be a hundred thousand dollars so they can have exclusive exclusivity to your story neat, I did not know that yeah.
18:49
So there you go. That's actually how some of the recent Donald Trump scandals got buried. Donald Trump actually got with the head of the yeah wire and yeah, and he was like, hey, buy up all these stories and then just snuff him for me and he had a dumb name too, like was it Crapper it was something like that. It was something like that William Kid kill Johnny exploding babies oh I gotta know pecker.
Nate
Host
19:23
Yes, very good, because Crapper was actually like a name like that was. Yep, those toilets were named crap, crappers after a, it just.
Shaun
Host
19:33
John or Thomas Crapper I don't remember which one it is.
Nate
Host
19:35
I mean I get it like I guess okay, that's my family, we made toilets, so you know I'll take it, but just forever more. Your company will be forgotten, your family will fall to the ways of you know whatever, but your name will still live on as meaning a toilet yeah, this is the product I'm so proud of.
Shaun
Host
19:57
I want my name to be associated with that forever. I sent you actually a picture. I don't know if you can see it in the voice channel text. It's good the actual article, richard Gary it looking very excited sitting in front of a computer.
Nate
Host
20:11
No, there is okay, there we go, that's totally what it makes $100,000 in your creating video games neat, yeah, and he's very excited.
Shaun
Host
20:22
I would be too if I was me at hundred thousand bucks back in early 1980s is that excited or is that like I'm gonna eat your skull? Oh, I like that better. You want to know how you get the ideas for this and strength and knowledge.
Nate
Host
20:39
I eat souls. If I was like he's just like about to unknit.
Shaun
Host
20:41
That's right before he unhinges his jaw, and just go straight at your face.
Nate
Host
20:45
I would be legit upset if they posted that like okay, we have an article, great, they put the article up like really a bunch of pictures. You could write any other ones.
Shaun
Host
20:55
I had to sit there for 45 minutes while you snap pictures, and that's what you picked the rebuttal could be like yes, and that's the best one right they just start showing you all the other pictures like oh god oh god, those are all worse and worse, worse okay my shlong out in that picture. Yeah, you just pulled it out. We don't know why. We actually asked you three times put it away. You're like nope, need to breathe.
21:18
I don't know how you can remember, forget that yeah it was a long, long day so suddenly seeing the hundred thousand dollars could be given to somebody who could just make a really good game. David Breviks said to himself David, we should go to school and learn how to make video games because that could make us some money and it's something we'd like to do. So he graduated high school and headed out west to develop games, attending the California State University in Chico, california, where he had studied near Mount Diablo. We might come back to that little tidbit later, nate you think yeah on a podcast about being Diablo.
Nate
Host
21:56
He might circle back around and talk about the mountain called Diablo yeah, we might now.
Shaun
Host
22:02
Don't get your hopes up now watch, I'm gonna like completely skip that paragraph later on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he continued learning, studying, getting better at his craft at California State University, doodling more notes and coming up with more ideas, and eventually graduating college, where he went straight into the exciting industry of clip art programs. Remember those Nate back when you'd have to go be like, hey, I want some images and PNGs or gifts, I'm gonna go spending where between a dollar ninety nine to a hundred dollars on a CD full of images.
Nate
Host
22:36
Yeah, no, you never did that?
Shaun
Host
22:39
nope, no, I did it a few times working on websites back in the day, because it's back then. There wasn't really like a Google image search for you just to go through and just like download images left and right, or if you did my image left yeah, lacking images, lacking images, lacking visual excitement.
22:58
But yeah, and the problem with those two is it'd be like you get a hundred thousand images in this, but of course you know, several thousand would just be various fonts of the alphabet or a whole lot of different colors and be like here's a strip of a color, make yourself a background yeah, yeah you know, what I think about this clip art, though I will say I've noticed them like on some local businesses, or like I'm like really just straight up, just took some of those little figures, like okay, it's a stick figure, man dancing you.
Nate
Host
23:33
I don't know if you know what you want to talk about, but it's that one and they just use that on the side of a building. It's like you you're not even trying, yeah, yeah we all see the plagiarism happening here.
Shaun
Host
23:45
We all get what's happening anyway. Anyways, the exciting world of clip art software. That actually didn't go very far for him fact that company went under shortly after brev start working there. But this was a good opportunity for him to do some networking, get some friends and co-workers with some like-minded ideas and go off and find found their own game studio. Thus in 1993 condor game studios was born. They went out doing a little side gigs here and there. First couple they had was working for a claim entertainment in the form of making a couple NFL quarterback club games for the legendary Game Boy and a battery munching game gear. I almost got a game here.
24:23
I really want one back in the day, cuz oh so, yeah, we didn't though, because the battery life on those things was awful.
Nate
Host
24:32
I know, but still, at least it's the novelty of having one.
Shaun
Host
24:35
Yeah, I mean it would have been a game, because I remember the Game Boy batteries last in forever, but a game gear six double a batteries would only last between three to five hours. That's terrible. That is terrible, really, really bad. That's really really bad. That would have been very expensive for us to game, true, yeah, and I mean I really want to back then like my game.
Nate
Host
24:57
I had one game boy. I got a Game Boy fans. I started have a game with your game with fans. I mean I got. So I was so mad I was moving to my dad's play, I'm moving from Washington to here and I had, like, my Game Boy fans. I sat down on the street like a bit sidewalk and I went in like I rushed in, I was moving stuff inside the house. I came back I was gone. I mean, of course it was because I was sat down, I was set on the fucking sidewalk yeah, I was.
Shaun
Host
25:24
Yeah, you might as well put a take me sign on top of it. Yeah, it was my fault. I mean, it was there for the steal on it, but I saw but it takes two to steal, one to let them in one to do it right. Yeah, that's a bummer. I'm sure you walk down. You're like my game. Game will be right where I left now, sad well honestly, I didn't register like it was gone.
Nate
Host
25:44
It didn't register till later because I did not do it for it, otherwise you would turn around and rushed over and beat the first person you saw, assuming they had. Yeah, I just come here, old lady. Yeah, I just put inside. It's like I was like where's my game boy? And I looked around the middle ground and I looked in the box. I put it in. It's like I know, I know what happened. So it took a hike.
Shaun
Host
26:01
It ran off with somebody else, it found a better love than it had with me no, but you know, eventually I got a better one.
Nate
Host
26:08
I mean the one I got it was it was the game boy advanced that didn't have any backlighting and so it had this. It all had two contraptions on. There had a contraption that made you put it over the screen. That kind of made the screen look bigger, and then there was a light on that so you can see the screen, kind of like how the original game boy had, in a way one those add-on yeah, yeah, because early game boy advances. You know, they didn't, they didn't light up, so yeah.
Shaun
Host
26:33
I didn't know that. I would assume the early game boy advances had backlit screens.
Nate
Host
26:37
Nope, they did not they didn't start going, they just are going backlit till the flip ones. Oh, like the little.
Shaun
Host
26:42
SP. I think it was called no, that's not right no, sp was, that was the DS.
Nate
Host
26:51
I'm not sure what I think it's. I don't know what they call it. There's a fish, a one, but yeah you know I'm a little silver guy that flipped open. Yeah for the game boy advanced yeah, was that game? Boy advanced. No, that was DS. I thought the SP title game boy advanced to do to do game boy advanced SP okay, we give my information.
Shaun
Host
27:11
Game boy advanced SP it there.
Nate
Host
27:12
Flip clothes SP bird yeah, okay, then you're, you're right. I don't know, I was thinking you for some reason. I was thinking it was the DS, but you're right, it looks like a little DS. Yeah, but that's that's what I had. That's the one that actually lit up, because the one before that did not the one that kind of looked like a game gear yeah, I guess the the flat, the like the longer flat one, yeah, yeah, those I was disappointed this point in the game here, or game boy.
27:43
I mean, I was disappointed in this effect that, like I had to. I mean, seriously, it was a big, it was a contraption, like it was not knows, not not noticeable. It was a big old block on your hand because you have the Gameboy Advance and then you'd have the whole magnifying slash light up thing on top of that. I'll do a big modular setup.
Shaun
Host
28:00
Yeah, it's not to like 10 times this original size. I mean for as bulky as it would it folded up pretty good.
Nate
Host
28:06
So you know, it actually did kind of like compact, but it still was pretty bulky. I wouldn't say, just tossed your pocket.
Shaun
Host
28:13
Yeah, I could imagine that, unless you wanted to disassemble the entire thing every single time. No, disassemble, no disassemble. Johnny, five alive.
Nate
Host
28:21
No.
Shaun
Host
28:21
Stephanie, what are you doing?
Nate
Host
28:24
step, stephanie. I haven't seen that movie forever and I kind of want to and I kind of like to show my kids it, but at the same time it is, there's a white man just as Indian man, yeah, which I didn't think of anything of it back in the day.
Shaun
Host
28:35
In fact I didn't even realize he wasn't an Indian until like a few years ago, when people are like hey, remember this racist drama, that dude wasn't an.
Nate
Host
28:43
Indian. I do that's terrible, but I didn't know he wasn't an either until like later on that I saw him in like a poo.
Shaun
Host
28:50
Of course he's an Indian. That's what they all sound like.
Nate
Host
28:51
What I see him it was that maybe hackers.
Shaun
Host
28:55
I saw him in hackers and I was like, wait see, is he right, he's a little whiter than I remember that Indian dude in white face having an American accent. He's a horribly racist. I remember that movie being alright, though, but Johnny five short, sir the first one. I remember the second one I didn't like because they made him gold at the end I thought that was really stupid.
Nate
Host
29:21
I don't know why. Yeah, I'll get you. I mean, I don't know if that would change my thoughts in the movie stupid but it was stupid.
Shaun
Host
29:27
Yeah, yeah, I like it. I could work at a Persian strip club after that being all and of course, the only returning main character is the racist Indian dude. The character you love so much. We had to bring him back.
Nate
Host
29:40
I mean, but to be fair, he was the best character on the show of the movie. So we arguably, arguably even better than Johnny five. You know Johnny five was five or a fine, but you know that dude was legit funny. Yeah, again, I acknowledge, shouldn't have been played by that guy.
Shaun
Host
29:58
This is what will follow under a guilty pleasure. Yeah.
Nate
Host
30:01
Yeah, it was. It's one of those things where you just shrugged go. It was the 80s.
Shaun
Host
30:07
Times were different back then.
Nate
Host
30:09
You're able to use words like that and it doesn't excuse a lot of stuff. I'm not going to say you go, oh, it's 80s, it's all okay. But I just get acknowledged like, okay, it was fucked up then, is fucked up now, but it was the 80s.
Shaun
Host
30:23
Yeah, at least progress is being made. It feels like yeah. So after doing some NFL quarterback club games for the Game Boy and Game Gear, I claim gave Condor a gig developing Justice League Task Force, a fighting game for the Sega Genesis. Things are just standard to get the game like all fighters at the time it kind of looked like eternal champions from screenshots I saw if you remember that, maybe don't what game was it? The game I'm talking about, justice League Task Force a?
Nate
Host
30:47
fight. Okay, sorry, I was tired of remembering which one it was and I got it. Yeah, so just lead task force. Yeah, this would be mid 90s. I've never played it because I didn't have a Genesis, but I do. I remember seeing some battles.
Shaun
Host
31:00
Well, it actually was on the Super Nintendo. However, the thing was is a Condor didn't know this. They went to show the game at the Consumer Electronic show, let the public take a good look at it, and as they're displaying their Genesis version of the game, they looked across the floor and realized there is a completely different studio showing off a Super Nintendo version of Justice League Task Force and they went over like hey, this is interesting. And they looked at and the Super Nintendo crew looked at Genesis game, was like oh, that's interesting, turns out to claim, hired a second studio and told him to make the Justice League fighting game for the Super Nintendo and didn't even tell them there's a Genesis one in progress either, in development.
Nate
Host
31:37
Oh, so neither one of them stole it.
Shaun
Host
31:38
They both got hired to the same game Yep, yep and none of them had either contact with either one and they came out with a shockingly similar game. Oh, that's hilarious, yeah. So that actually gave both studios a good laugh and they bonded over this moment, which would actually turn out to be a pretty important thing for David Brevik and Condor Studios, because the studio that was working on Super Nintendo game was at the time, known as Silicon and Synapse. Other games they did was rock and roll racing and three Vikings on the Super Nintendo. Both were excellent games, especially three Vikings. It was a puzzle style game, one of those where you had to alternate between three guys who had their own special set of skills to get through puzzles. I'll take your word for it. Never played it. Yeah, I don't think most people did. It wasn't exactly a big game, yeah, I don't even have you heard it before, so yeah, it might have been on the PC as well.
32:27
Silicon Synapse would become important to Condor Studios because shortly after this meeting they would change their name to Blizzard and release the game called Warcraft. Never heard of it? No, nobody has either. Really, I mean Warcraft, it's kind of a small little indie kind of game? Yeah, no one you know just kind of yeah, Not one person that I've heard of it. I remember they were talking about maybe doing an online thing about, but that fizzled at because the internet never really caught on.
Nate
Host
32:53
Yeah, I love.
Shaun
Host
32:53
Warcraft.
Nate
Host
32:55
I mean I went to a friend's house and played that. I mean that's, that's staying. Honestly, that's a whole podcast by itself, or two, oh absolutely but. I started with.
Shaun
Host
33:04
I started off with Warcraft 2 before, one which I mean they're kind of the same game. One is just a little more tweaked than the other and they came out almost the exact same time. I think Warcraft 1 came out like 94 and Warcraft 2 came out like 95. You know what I?
Nate
Host
33:18
think I did play Warcraft 2 first. Most people played Warcraft 2 first. Yeah, I don't think I've ever played the first Warcraft, but anyway, the Warcraft 2, man, you'll click it on a sheet to explode. That was hilarious.
Shaun
Host
33:32
That was hilarious. I had forgotten about that. I mean.
Nate
Host
33:37
I don't know, I like those games. Nope, I'm just, I'm not good at them. Yeah, I don't think those had difficulty sliders on them really.
Shaun
Host
33:46
Oh yeah, they did. You make the enemy smarter and dumber, or at least for multiplayer you could.
Nate
Host
33:51
I'm just I'm not good at it.
Shaun
Host
33:53
Yeah, and those games can be intimidating sometimes too. When you think you're doing good and also you just get mobbed by an army about five times your size, you're like what did I do wrong? There's no way this dude should have had that big of an army. Well, I had, like, my three guys cutting wood still.
Nate
Host
34:08
I can do okay. If I get left alone long enough, I can build up my stuff. But I'm very much a turtle, I turtle. So I just like basically focus on my defenses Until finally I'm comfortable enough, I can launch my army. But the problem is, since I'm never attacking them, they never really work on their arm. They're like defense things come primarily work with their armies. I'm not taking any resources away from them. So here I am. I'm also. I get mobbed by soldiers. My defenses are good enough.
Shaun
Host
34:35
And eventually you look at your gold mine. You're like, oh, there's nothing in there anymore. Where's?
Nate
Host
34:40
all the gold mines.
Shaun
Host
34:40
Oh, they have them oh.
Nate
Host
34:42
I also have a. The other tactic I use is like a virus I'll send off a, a peon and a soldier who's sending them off like go forth and start another colony somewhere else. And so then I'll have, if I can, I'll try to get on their land somewhere like they don't haven't taken over yet or have no sphere of influence. It's our building a base there, so I have someone there. I mean, these all sound cool, like oh well, great strategies, but keep in mind I lose a lot. I wouldn't, I wouldn't bake on that strategy to being a real, like good one. Huh, right.
Shaun
Host
35:16
This I'm going in depth on the strategy I like to use. It was not successful, so I do not recommend copying it.
Nate
Host
35:22
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I just I like playing those games, but not patient enough to get good at them. Yeah.
Shaun
Host
35:28
And also some of them, to. Being patient is the worst thing to do on those games. Sometimes you just have to like build a quick army and rush people.
Nate
Host
35:35
Yeah, and I'm just, I don't know, that's yeah, you want to play for the long game Be like.
Shaun
Host
35:39
I want this massive giant army before I go sending it out. And then next thing, you know some dudes just sitting, nothing but those little goblin sappers that explode when they hit things at you.
Nate
Host
35:48
Those things nonstop, I mean I don't know if it's still big, but you know, in South Korea they feel stadiums watching those people play. I mean, these people are professional, they like Starcraft.
Shaun
Host
35:57
Starcraft is huge over there.
Nate
Host
35:59
So yeah, I'm sorry, I just was a Starcraft but I was, I was basically referencing like that genre, but yeah, specifically, yeah, it's particularly Starcraft I mean. Oh my God, dude, there's like there being Starcraft was better in Warcraft. My opinion, yeah, I'll give you that, yeah, the Warcraft, I mean Warcraft really to shine on what's. It came on like the MMO. But the get I will give you that the Starcraft is a lot more better, that's better but a lot more better.
Shaun
Host
36:30
Yeah, it'd be more good than the others, but Warcraft 3 actually wasn't too bad either, but that one kind of had some interesting role playing aspects to it, to where you would actually get like a hero that you would talk to and you'd be like I'm going to lead our guys through the forest and you get little stories, as you did it.
Nate
Host
36:47
I really like the hero aspect of it.
Shaun
Host
36:49
I mean, it was fine, I didn't hate it, but just played enough to get into to form an opinion on the third one Well I literally played it just long enough to be like I should buy this eventually and never did.
Nate
Host
37:00
I've noticed that, like a lot of people who really get into this stuff are also into the lore. Yes, and I am not. Yeah, and that definitely affects my like of Starcraft or Warcraft, because I don't. I don't know what's going on. All I know is I have an army and I'm killing the army over there and since I don't care about the heroes and their stories, it doesn't affect me. One of them dies.
Shaun
Host
37:26
No, I'm like the orcs back.
Nate
Host
37:28
So yeah, I mean honestly, I had a more deep connection to a character. I've told you the story before, but I'm gonna say for the podcast, it was that NES game, it was a GBA game. It was oh man, it's that. It's not RTS, but it's the Advance Wars. No, it's like Advance Wars, but it's oh man, I'm liking it. Fantasy, final Fantasy, tactics no, ok, david, I'm gonna have to look this up. Is this driving nuts? Is really really driving nuts? It's right there. I see everything about. I can't see the thing. Like the name Fire Emblem and neither fire. Ok, oh man, that was gonna. I was gonna kill me. I decided to type in RTS, gba games and if it wasn't on there I was going to say OK, obviously I switched universes at some point. I'm not where. I thought it was A Fire Emblem, so I played that. The most kind of emotional connection I had was it was so stupid. So I was. I'm playing along at some point.
38:43
This you can't see the characteristics, but I guess it's a princess runs into a random ass soldier and the soldiers, like the princess goes oh Adam, what are you doing here? And he's like oh, you saw me here, I'm, I'm. I joined these bandits. When my mom's sick and she's like, oh my God, that sucks here, let me give you money for your mom. He's like, oh cool, I'll join your side now. And I'm like sweet, I just picked my guy. That's weird, I didn't really know.
39:07
A whole interaction happened, the battlefield, I got a new character, but then so I finished that role that round. Well, the next round I'm going through and I see a bad guy Like. He's like clearly the boss of the level. He's big to do with a bunch of axes and I sent a random soldier or were attacking to see how strong he was and that's and that you know this going. The boss kills this random soldier and as this random soldier is dying it's the fucking dude he's like oh, I'm sorry, my sick mother, I'm sorry, princess, I tried and, as you know, it's permanent, so that dude's gone forever. Yeah, no, not my random random soldier. And I tried to reload it, and so I actually I reloaded it and when I like I couldn't, I couldn't get it back, it was too late.
Shaun
Host
39:56
Yeah, it just like no matter what I tried to be like hey, kid, I know there's like your second day with training with us, but I'm see that giant boss guy over there with the giant axes. Go over and see how tough he is. Just take a little bit or two and come back and report.
Nate
Host
40:10
I go ahead. The problem is I saved just before I attacked the big giant dude. Ok, so he was like not that far away from the big giant dude. So when I reloaded, even if I ran away from the big giant dude, big giant dude got me and it was just. It was just well, he's gone. This sucks.
Shaun
Host
40:29
Well, at least he distracted him for one turn. That one turn was all that you needed to win the battle.
Nate
Host
40:34
Well, not really. There was no one else nearby. This guy was alone. He died screaming alone in a field. You gave the boss a good warm up to kill. Yeah, exactly, because by the time anybody else came back to the boss, the boss was fully rested, fully rested. It's totally fine.
Shaun
Host
40:51
Possibly even more amped up than before. He was Right it takes a blood day.
Nate
Host
40:55
I really work now.
Shaun
Host
40:57
As far as real time strategy to, the first one I ever played was a Dune 2 on the PC. There was actually a Dune real time strategy game before there's a Warcraft one, and it was done by Westwood Studios. The guys did command and conquer, but now you just go around harvesting spice, avoiding worms. That's pretty much all I remember of it. A lot of people think that that's actually like a knockoff of Warcraft, but they are wrong. It came out first. Liars, liars all.
41:24
All of them liars. They must see the light. So, because of Warcraft being the huge hit, it was, blizzard Studios had some new found wealth to spend and wanted to use this money to finance other studios' projects. Since Condor made an impression with them at the Consumer Electronics Show, blizzard gave them an old ring of ding-ding and invited them to come over and pitch them some ideas. So Brevik jumped at this opportunity because while they were working on the project for a claim, the Condor crew had dusted off his old notes from high school and college and were using those to make a basis for their next project. They wanted this project to be a single player DOS game with targeted towards a hardcore RPG player with turn based permadeath, much like the aforementioned Wizardry games, might, magic or even the uh, uh, what were we just talking about? Fire Emblem? Because they liked the idea of permadeath. They want something super stressful and plotting that would just completely make you think every move over and not do something stupid like sending a grunt out to test a boss power.
Nate
Host
42:21
Well, I had never played permadeath games before. That was like a new thing for me.
Shaun
Host
42:25
So I was like oh, I was like whatever.
42:27
I'm just you know. Oh my God, death is real. Hey, grandma, guess what I? Oh, oh no, phoenix Town. I've seen the movies. All you gotta do is just hit with those little electronic paddles and they come back. Another plans they had for this game they're developing was expansion packs, basically like Magic. The Gathering was really big at the time and people were buying booster packs of cards you know the extra little five, six cards to add to their deck and everything in cashing, cashing in on that craze and essentially it's just going to be like paid DLC, but little, bite sized things like little armor sets, maybe a little new map here or there.
Nate
Host
43:07
Horse armor.
Shaun
Host
43:08
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Horse armor, Great example Nate. Uh, the internet blew up over that.
Nate
Host
43:14
I remember, and now that's so dumb, like everyone does it, it's like horse armor. What are they doing Like, uh yeah, welcome to gaming.
Shaun
Host
43:23
Yeah, you and I saw the writing on the wall with that one Like, oh well, here it goes yeah.
Nate
Host
43:27
Well, because people bought it.
Shaun
Host
43:29
You know, like if nobody had bought it and everybody just shamed them and they probably wouldn't have taken off.
Nate
Host
43:33
Well, yeah, other places would have tried, but oh no, and they and they needed to stay strong but they didn't. Yeah, everyone, I mean I've got my own, you know, shame things. I bought a four Xbox live. I bought um Stormtrooper armor for my avatar, you know, and yeah, I wouldn't a lot of money but a lot of my but heads like me spending that little bit of money.
Shaun
Host
43:56
Yeah, If everybody spends a dollar, 50, uh, once a month or whatever, then right adds up in a hurry. Oh, that new Golem game that's supposedly awful or really bad. Uh, they actually have all sorts of DLC for it. It's like $7 just for a few emotes, like idle emotes, and $9, I think, for the soundtrack and other just stupid little cosmetics that total up to about 25 bucks if you wanted to buy them all, damn. Yeah, oh, one of the expansions like $8 and allows the Elvish to sometimes speak in Elvish.
Nate
Host
44:30
Yeah, that's dumb.
Shaun
Host
44:31
Yeah, that is totally dumb, Sadly.
Nate
Host
44:35
I've seen some pretty um harsh criticisms. I mean all valid, oh yeah it's. I mean I haven't seen the like. Well, I don't like this because they're you know, here's look exactly like going from the movies. It uh, none of that.
Shaun
Host
44:51
It's all like actual legitimate complaints that people should have.
Nate
Host
44:54
The main one.
Shaun
Host
44:54
I watched some people playing. It looks boring dude, and it's one of those. It's stealth oriented and it's if you get caught doing stealth you might be able to get away, but it seems like it's just a lot of. I'm going to run around circles for like five minutes straight thinking I'll get away, only to fail at the last minute when the controller walks up.
Nate
Host
45:12
Honestly, it reminds me of a video game that came out a while ago. I can't remember the name of it, but it doesn't really matter. It was a vampire game and but you couldn't really fight the vampires like, the premise being the vampires are super, super powerful, so the only thing you can do is avoid the vampires. So you had to like stealth around and but the vampire saw it. It was over, immediately it was over. If you even try to fight them, you know you have people with guns. You can shoot that the vampires. It will barely injure them. I mean, one vampire can easily wipe out your entire part.
Shaun
Host
45:47
Yeah, and at that point you might as well just make it so when you get caught they just like scream at you and then that's the endage. So you don't have to like think you're going to win, I mean I hated this splinter cell for a long time because of the first one.
Nate
Host
45:58
The first one was you got saw it was over and I didn't. Really it wasn't told the Xbox one where I tried it and I can't remember which one it was, but if you guys seen it, it didn't matter. It mattered because then, like, oh there's that guy, get him. But if you wanted to you could shoot your way out of most situations. It's not recommended.
Shaun
Host
46:20
I didn't wind up with no ammo for the next encounter.
Nate
Host
46:23
Yeah, you'll. You know, emma, or you just get killed because they're not. You weren't geared up for combat. You're good for stealth. You know you're not walking around with a bunch of armor on.
Shaun
Host
46:34
No kind of like that Deus Ex game where you can do either stealth or attacking, but if you took stealth the bosses were almost impossible. That's true. Yeah, that was not good game design.
Nate
Host
46:45
No, you talk about the one like the first one they made with, like I used to be, not like the ones.
Shaun
Host
46:50
Yeah, and then when they actually came out they made an apology for it, because they gave one studio the stealth things and they gave a different studio the bosses and I guess, kind of like we just talked about shortly ago, they didn't really tell the crews what was going on with the other one, and that's just so stupid? Yeah, yeah. I don't understand why you would do that. Seems very, very unwise.
Nate
Host
47:15
Well, especially as vocals gamers are, I mean, I get it. Okay, we have a vision and this is how we want it, but someone that that doesn't sound like a vision thing that doesn't sound like something trying to save money somehow, yeah, but I'll just try to get out faster, yeah.
47:29
Yeah, no one has a vision of. I want the game. I want a game where 90% of it is this way and 10% that's very important to beat is another way. I mean, I didn't even like the In a God of War, like the original one, because the original God of War you're playing one way through the whole fucking thing and the filing is the main boss and suddenly there's more to combat, like it was literally like the button prompts changed all of it. You are now doing a one on one giant battle with Aries, but you weren't.
Shaun
Host
47:57
Yeah, I kind of forgot about that.
Nate
Host
47:59
Yeah, it's like you weren't doing what you've been doing this whole game. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't super hard. You could beat him. It took a minute or so.
Shaun
Host
48:06
I didn't go turn to like a giant Kaiju battle basically and stand up and stand up, and stand up, and stand up, yeah.
Nate
Host
48:10
And it wasn't the same controls. I mean if they did the same Kaiju battle but then pulled back the camera. You're still relatively, and I don't know.
Shaun
Host
48:19
They have the same combat, but make you look bigger in scale, right.
Nate
Host
48:23
I mean, or just made the arena, the water, like you pull back and you have, like your kind of the same camera angles you has been, and they just have the little circle for your arena and you're two guys fighting but instead like nope more on a combat.
Shaun
Host
48:39
People like these fighting games. I always take a fighting game at the end of this action game. That'll make people all sorts of excited and then later on they use the experience to send Kratos to the actual Mortal Kombat games, because I'm pretty sure there's a character on the few of them.
Nate
Host
48:52
Is the Mortal Kombat. I mean maybe you're right. I mean, well, he did do the show on that, the Sony one.
Shaun
Host
49:01
Oh, I'll start battle royale. Yeah, I mean, that's fine, something, something that's no K game.
Nate
Host
49:05
It's not great.
Shaun
Host
49:06
Smash Brothers knockoff.
Nate
Host
49:08
It was no.
Shaun
Host
49:09
Smash Brothers, but it was okay, that's the problem.
Nate
Host
49:11
It was no Smash Brothers yeah.
Shaun
Host
49:15
And when you're making a game like that, everybody's going to compare you to Smash Brothers.
Nate
Host
49:19
Yeah, rightfully so, because it was Smash Brothers, like to the point where you're trying to knock them off a platform and you know, I don't know, it was Smash Brothers and it was a adequately done. I'm not going to say it was bad, no, no it wasn't bad, but you're right, it was adequate.
Shaun
Host
49:35
Nothing special. It was just to make you go like. This makes me want to play Smash Brothers yeah.
Nate
Host
49:42
I mean it was. It is kind of fun to use Kratos to beat the crap out of a rapper, the rapper, but it's still. This is true Punch kick, it's all, oh God, or vice versa, I mean, depending on who you are the controllers per rapper. The rapper totally swiped on the floor of the Kratos. I don't know.
Shaun
Host
50:04
Kratos, though. Another thing Condor Studios wanted for their new game was right now. Clay fighters and primal rage were actually pretty popular with their whole claymation stop motion style graphics. They really, really wanted that for Diablo. They thought that would be a really cool look for it, and they were sticking with their guns on that right up until they found out how expensive it was.
Nate
Host
50:25
And then they're like nope, I thank God for being costly, because I think that looks stupid.
Shaun
Host
50:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it would be kind of hmm.
Nate
Host
50:35
Well, I guess it depends on how they did it to.
Shaun
Host
50:37
Yeah, exactly Because it would have been 2D models.
Nate
Host
50:40
I think you're right. I think with the right vision and under the right like management, it might actually be pretty cool. So I'm being too. I'm PD restricted.
Shaun
Host
50:50
Mainly my brain is going where their brain probably was, and that's stop motion skeletons and how cool they look, all janky and bloop, bloop, bloop.
Nate
Host
50:56
Yeah, that would that. I take it back. If they had done that right, it would be pretty cool, but yeah lots of them doing it right are pretty slim, though, I would guess with the technology. They had the time, yeah, especially to say this is a very small studio.
Shaun
Host
51:10
Yeah, they're working on the class Super Nintendo games. You're right, so it's quite for the best. Yeah, it was. I like the idea.
Nate
Host
51:18
Vision will take you so far, but money takes you the rest of the way, yeah.
Shaun
Host
51:21
And I remember playing clay fighters. It wasn't a great playing game, if I recall. I might be wrong on that, but I remember playing it like in my adulthood years because I never played as a kid and I was like this is clay fighters yeah.
Nate
Host
51:35
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. You know how much of the nostalgia is actually correct.
Shaun
Host
51:43
Yeah, and Primal Rage. I recall playing that and that was really clunky too, so it probably just been awful all over. Primal Rage is one where it's dinosaurs fighting. Yeah, I remember that one. Okay, yeah, from 1994, maybe.
Nate
Host
51:57
I'm a little bit of health If you ate the people who were rescuing me down below.
Shaun
Host
52:00
Yeah, good times. So Brevick and the crew got all these ideas and patched together and named the game Diablo after the Mount Diablo that he studied in college, right next to Fun fact, it did it came back.
52:15
It did come back pretty quick to actually another fun fact. Being a Wisconsin boy his whole life, brevick had no idea Diablo was devil in Spanish. He just thought it was a cool sounding name. It was a tell that fact. Somebody was like, oh yeah, that's like devil and he's like whoa, whoa. His mind just melted at that moment. He's like there's more than one language. What?
Nate
Host
52:38
The widest motherfucker ever just turned around.
Shaun
Host
52:42
Whoa Just down to Southern California, like his little Wisconsin cheese hat on.
Nate
Host
52:47
Ever met someone of a different race? Yeah, whoa A different race.
Shaun
Host
52:52
I thought those people were just tanned and just mumbling stuff. No, those are Mexicans. What? What have you ever heard of a taco? A what?
Nate
Host
53:04
What? Okay, that's enough yeah.
Shaun
Host
53:10
Just David Brevick with like a cheese hat, head hat on, with like a little beanie propeller on the top. And when Condor took all these, basically they took like a lot of the high school notes and like doodles and scribbles to the meeting with Blizzard because they were kind of an unorganized company at this point. In fact, for a basically for like a game design, they just took some shots of X Comm and they're like, hey, this is the view we want. They didn't really do up their own thing, they just took screens out of X Comm and was like like that, these ideas in this format, go my minions. Yes, x Comm Great game. Though X Comm which ones are? X Comm? That's the one where you shoot aliens and you can be right next to him and have a 99 or yeah, you'd be right next to him and have a 99% chance of killing them, is all, and miss, sometimes, miss repeatedly.
Nate
Host
54:00
That game makes me so mad. Again another one perma death. But, man, just man. He's right there. He is a thousand pounds and round and big. Get him a missed you even looking.
Shaun
Host
54:19
The very next turn, some grunt on the other side of the map, some grunt alien with his little pee shooters and takes out three, your guys with two shots in the eye.
Nate
Host
54:28
Yeah, each one shot per eye. Yep. And also is the best alien they have. No, this alien actually failed that several times, right, in fact. He just came with a bathroom and is this alien panther still around his waist?
Shaun
Host
54:45
He's from the remedial class.
Nate
Host
54:46
He fumbled it as he tripped, he shot that, the shot that killed your guys.
Shaun
Host
54:54
And that's when morale collapsed for humanity. But that does add something, because I once had the sniper in my ex com crew, the one on the ps3. Her name was socks. She was there with my team. From the entire thing, more kills anybody in my crew. Very last mission she gets killed, broke my heart.
Nate
Host
55:14
You know you're right. I mean I, I yeah, you're right, because there I remember there were times when I was playing the ex com. I mean it was like it was a heartfelt goodbye. The only way that I can get the mission done is you had your dude. He's been here from the start. He's wounded. You want to save him, but he's in a position I really need him to stay in and he is not going to last like in the next. He's going to die in the next few moves. It's just going to happen.
Shaun
Host
55:39
Yep, unless you just got cut them losses. Yeah, either he dies or the rest of you die.
Nate
Host
55:43
Yeah, If you move him you're going to fail. So sorry, dude, like salute, and he's all like. You know, he's one of two things, either one. He's so wrong he's saluting back. He's like tell my wife I love her, or he's like tell me God, please, oh you son of a bitch.
Shaun
Host
55:58
Just don't you leave me behind.
Nate
Host
56:01
I want to rub my legs won't move. The arrow in the sky won't put me.
Shaun
Host
56:07
But, captain, you ain't got no legs, you just got these little stumps waving behind you.
Nate
Host
56:13
Where'd my legs go? Where'd my legs go, billy? I hate you all. You ate my legs, didn't you?
Shaun
Host
56:18
know, and that's when it turns out the aliens aren't that bad. They actually collected them up and gave them robotic legs and get run around like Darth Maul, little spider like.
Nate
Host
56:27
It's actually. You know, the aliens are actually one big giant version of truck Kuhn, like they're trying to send to the other world. He doesn't die. He does die and comes back as a hero.
Shaun
Host
56:38
Oh, those aliens serve an important part in the ecosystem of the universe, right, they send people to where they need to be in other worlds. Blizzard did like the cut of their jib, as unorganized as it may be, and they decided to give funding for Condor, who asked him for a cool $300,000 in funding to make this game. At first Blizzard was pretty hands off in the whole process, just letting them do what they wanted to like. Hey, we like this, do what you want to do. But as time went on, they saw how popular warcraft and warcraft to his game for them and how people loved real time strategy games. They started calling up Condor and be like hey guys, you know, change this from a turn based RPG to a real time action RPG might be a good idea. People are really digging it.
57:20
Uh, the crew said no, especially David Brevik. This was his baby. He was adamantly against it. His whole thought was basically we're just talking about with XCOM, where turn based drama and permadeath can make people just stress so much over the little decisions, make them create their own stories in their heads and their own backstories make you sweat while you do the tiny little micromanaging. Pretty much exactly what we're talking about. Mm, hmm, mm, hmm.
57:45
So we can relate to David Brevik's feelings on that. Yes, they kept poking away at that. David Brevik kept saying no, they kept moving on the game. The Diablo devs also decided on a minimalistic menu setup. They're frustrated with all the previous PC RPGs that they're playing with long winded menus to wade through all sorts of stats to pick at just so many options. Sometimes you take you forever before you even get the game started. My magic was this way that was really bad is go into a pub and create your party of eight people from these long, long lists of stats. To combat this annoyance, they decided to go with what they would call the mom test. They wanted their menus in the game to be so easy to navigate through that even an inexperienced mom could do it A non gaming mom. Apparently, there's a lot of those back in the nineties trying to play.
Nate
Host
58:36
So they legit run moms like hey, look at this, you must like maybe they did.
Shaun
Host
58:43
I wonder if they hired those same moms that Mr T hired for his videos.
Nate
Host
58:46
Hmm.
Shaun
Host
58:47
Traveling. I wrote the video.
Nate
Host
58:49
Straight from the video.
Shaun
Host
58:50
Yeah.
Nate
Host
58:51
Like I need those moms.
Shaun
Host
58:52
Yeah, those, those are the moms. I want to see if they can play video game. So yeah, they're just trying to make the menus Well easy, make the game completely accessible, which is kind of weird because at this time they're also going for the hardcore RPG aspect with permadeath and turn based. But they wanted it accessible to get in there and die really easily. They took a lot of their inspiration for the menus from the gods of minimalistic menus themselves ID software, or id I d id id software. Think doom and quake. Remember how basic those menus were?
Nate
Host
59:24
No man did you ever play doom and quake Doom?
Shaun
Host
59:28
Yes, no, yeah, I mean you's very minimalistic, literally. You fired it up and it was like start game difficulty and boom you're in.
Nate
Host
59:35
Yep.
Shaun
Host
59:36
You're right, yep. No fuss, no must. Loaded real quick to the one exception for simplicity they made was with the mini map. They based the whole mini map off of the video game dark forces from the Star Wars universe. He plays Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working on behalf of the Rebel Alliance Discover the dark trooper project. Ooh exciting, I like that one.
Nate
Host
59:57
Yeah, did you play it. You could be dark side, could you? Nice, I never actually played that one, I think others you could Like all the ones, the first person ones. You could be go dark side because that's the only way you can get forced lightning. You know you couldn't get forced lightning if you're a good guy, that's true. Which were you a?
Shaun
Host
01:00:14
Jedi in that game.
Nate
Host
01:00:17
Kyle Katarn yeah.
Shaun
Host
01:00:18
Okay, okay, my nose just having is a mercenary, not a Jedi.
Nate
Host
01:00:22
Well, he becomes like. It's one of those things where he's like oh yeah, I'm a mercenary, but, by the way, sometimes I look at some funny things happen.
Shaun
Host
01:00:34
Did you see me summon that thing from across the room? That wasn't a forced thing, it was just a coincidence?
Nate
Host
01:00:40
Yeah, he was the main character. He was a bunch of stuff like he has a dark forces and then we'll see and he's, he's absolutely Jedi.
Shaun
Host
01:00:51
I guess I just never collected his Jedi training card, like most people did.
Nate
Host
01:00:55
There's Jedi training cards? Yeah, he's not. He has not entered like the current, like Star Wars universe, though. So he's non canonical at this point. Yeah, he's a. He's a legends character, mm gotcha.
Shaun
Host
01:01:10
Let's see, he appears in several video games and books, several books, really big writing about him back in daydream, like hey, this is character little, be around forever, around, forever, around, forever.
Nate
Host
01:01:27
He's in Star Wars Dark Voices, star Wars Jedi Knight, dark Forces 2, star Wars Jedi Knight, mysteries of the Sith, star Wars Jedi 2, jedi Outcast, which was awesome, star Wars Jedi and Jedi Academy. So, and man, some of those games have the bestest ever, like FMV, just just gloriously awful, I mean just ha. We're just like I'm here for the cheese. I bet you all the scenery, everybody hammered up like it's 1999. Mm, hmm.
Shaun
Host
01:02:05
And how and how. Yeah, I saw pictures of the mini map and yeah, the mini map in Diablo looks just like the mini map from Dark Forces, the little line art mini map. All the while, during development, blizzard kept gently suggesting the real-time approach more and more, and as they sort of poked in project condor studios, they, more and more of the staff was like you know what? This might be a good idea, maybe, maybe we should do real-time strategy or real-time action. And sensing the shift or the winds of change coming around, brevik decided it was only fair to take a vote and see what happened. He lost, turns out, eventually. He was the only one wanting to stay turn-based and even though he went along with the idea, he was kind of pissed about it. It felt like his baby was being taken from him. He was going to eliminate all the ch yeah, basically, like man, I don't like this. I'll just do it because you made me do it. That's my David Brevik impression.
Nate
Host
01:03:03
He's having a corner, all sad and soaking. Yeah, of course I'm glad this is actually down to prosperity. He actually did that because you know he could. Oh no, I was down for this the whole time. I don't know what they're talking about.
Shaun
Host
01:03:14
Yeah.
Nate
Host
01:03:15
He's like swimming in his money pool. He's like man. I was totally by idea to do that.
Shaun
Host
01:03:21
Yeah, it was my idea all along and it was a great idea. Pull the essentially like a George Lucas thing, like that's a great idea. I'm glad I thought of it, because all ideas are my ideas. So Brevik sat down one Saturday and started recoding the game to work his real-time action. He got everything set up and, in his own words, he clicked on a skeleton and watched his warrior slowly go over there and take down the skeleton with one hit and apparently this made him jump out of his seat and scream this is it, this is what's going to make the game great. He actually said. That's basically what he did. I don't know if that he actually like jumped out of his seat and was super excited that way, but that's what he claims. It doesn't take much to convince him of just killing one skeleton. Oh my God, oh my God.
Nate
Host
01:04:08
He walked over there and did it.
Shaun
Host
01:04:10
It wasn't turn-based. This is mind-blowing. He did the thing, yep, he did the thing. My coding was successful, yay. So now you decide you want to do that, it is time to recode the entire game to be real-time action. This would delay progress some, which was pretty bad for them in time because they were running out of money fast, turns out, 300,000 bucks is not that much to make a game on, especially when you got to pay a big old amount of staff and pay, you know, rent and for equipment and everything else. In fact, one of the numbers he said was with the 300K that they had, they only had enough money to pay everybody in the studio 20,000 bucks a year, and that was before paying all the rent and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I mean 20 grand was more in 1995, but it wasn't that much.
Nate
Host
01:04:57
Yeah, fair enough, I mean, but yeah, Don't barely anything.
Shaun
Host
01:05:00
So apparently, if you're making a game back in 1995, 96, ask for more than $300,000.
Nate
Host
01:05:07
I'll be sure to note that.
Shaun
Host
01:05:10
Yep, that is a life lesson.
Nate
Host
01:05:12
Joey Ford if I ever make a game in 1990, whatever.
Shaun
Host
01:05:15
Yeah. So to make ends meet and get back some money to continue on Diablo, condury Studios decided to go publish NFLPA, a football game intended to be released for the 3DO M2, the second of the 3DO system. Fun fact, the original 3DO cost 699 bucks back in 1993, the equivalent of almost $1,300 nowadays. Equal to a house. Pretty much, I mean, yeah, 699 bucks back in 93. You could buy a house, two cars and have enough money left over for a trolley down to the movie theater.
Nate
Host
01:05:48
And now that house is worth $2 million.
Shaun
Host
01:05:51
Yeah, right, oh yeah, and also 3DO M2s never released, but sometimes you can find them in little like mall kiosks and whatnot from the era, apparently pretty big collectors find I don't know if you can actually do anything with them, but you'd be like, hey, look, I got 3DO M2. Hey, rich guys, look at this, he wants it. Yeah, pretty much, if some of those things go for so much. Well, I sent you the link to that one. Yeah, into the 64 cartridge. Yeah, 8,500 bucks.
01:06:19
Gios collector one yes, if only we knew now what we knew. Then Wait, strike that and reverse it. Right, so this job, and netted them a cool million dollars from 3DO. However, they were still kind of hurting for Gash because this money didn't naturally come all at once, it came in little chunklets, so they were still struggling with money. Then Blizzard still printing their own money like decided to call up Condor and be like hey, you just want us to buy you out. We really like this Diablo thing and we have some ideas for you. Let's just buy you out and you can become part of us. Condor Studio said yes, please, for the love of God, do this. We are bad with money. At least we're having troubles with money. And thus was formed, blizzard North, out of the ashes of Condor Studios, and they were absorbed. But no God, yeah, yeah, pretty much.
01:07:16
Just like slams of the doors.
Nate
Host
01:07:18
Just like sell absorbing companies.
Shaun
Host
01:07:20
Blizzard was just going around whipping out their talents, sucking up studios. Also, side note, blizzard North. When they came out, their logo has, like ice in, as you know, the blizzard, the logo looks cold, the snowflakes come around, icicles hanging off of it. So I always assumed the place was in Canada. It is not in Canada, it's in San, or it's in San Francisco, not that far north. Yeah, the fact is only concerned north from the original Blizzard, which is San Mateo, just a few miles south. So that's kind of lame, like, hey, blizzard North, they must be up north somewhere. No, no, they are not, they're just buying process.
Nate
Host
01:07:56
Like Greenland, iceland, yeah, exactly.
Shaun
Host
01:08:00
The 3DO company got wind of the sale of Condor and they actually really wanted to buy Condor as well for their own uses. So 3DO actually offered the Condor Studios pretty much the same deal but twice as much money, which Condor decided against because they kind of, I guess, saw the writing on the wall thing and this 3DO company is probably not going to be around a whole lot longer. Yeah, they were right. So now Condor has become Blizzard North, so we have Blizzard Studios and Blizzard North. But to try to make it easier to differentiate, I'm just going to call Blizzard North the Diablo team. Yeah, because that way I'm not like Blizzard North and Blizzard and then wind up saying Blizzard too many times and that might actually summon a Blizzard Goblin and you don't want Blizzard Goblins around. Those are your insane you do not want to deal with.
Nate
Host
01:08:48
It'll be pretty interesting to deal with Blizzard Goblin middle summer.
Shaun
Host
01:08:52
They'll show up any time of the year, it just depends on how thick their fur is, is all Right? That's all this, yep, and don't let them whiz on your carpet too. Their urine attracts spiders, don't know why. And that's it for part one on Diablo, in our next episode we will talk about the problems that Battlenet had early on in its life, which you do not want the matrix to download into your brain. We tell you the story of the real Deckard Cain and we talk a little bit about the Diablo games themselves. Check back in next week and please subscribe to Offed Off Topic. This is where the ending jingle goes. This is where the ending jingle goes. I don't know if we need one. I don't know if we'll get one, but if we do, then here is where it goes.