Press B 226: The Games That Made Us

I thought about doing that and having, like, a little Optimus prime right here in the matrix. Right there. Right. But, yeah, I didn't want to be. I don't want to steal your thunder. Bingo. Bingo. Yeah. Okay, right there. Yeah.

Show me on the bowser. Show me on the bowser, everybody. Hello, and welcome to press me to cancel the show where the lines are made up. Is that right? No, the points are made up and the gps don't matter. So today we're discussing, like, a formative game kind of discussion. What. What game impacted your life or molded your experience in gaming, presumably, growing up, if there is such a thing, with me today, four of my. My closest friends. I know I almost said five, but I'm like, no, I'm not a friend of mine. I hate me. Have you guys met me?

You are when you're playing Tetris. I'm my own worst enemy. Yeah. So with me today, uh, werewolf, how are you, sir? Uh, firstly, I disagree with you saying that you are not your best friend. Like, you should be your friend, but I'm great. Have you had to hang out with me, like, one on one? That's not. That's not line up for. Thank you. Thank you for being charming and sweet. Thank you. Uh, sick. Jake. Hello and welcome. How are you? I'm doing great. Always glad for a Friday.

I hear that. Okay. And sinistar. Hello, how are you? Hello. I'm. I'm exhausted. I'm stressed, but I'm here. All right. I like that you're coming into the episode that way and not leaving the episode that way due to. I still time. We still got an hour. I just live at a low key stress level, like, probably until, like, mid November. That's my secret. GP. I'm always stressed. Can you imagine if instead of the Hulk being an anger monster, he was, like, an anxiety monster or, like, a stress monster?

Just curls up. I like that I have to create that now trademark. He's just always scratching his arms. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And Chardonnk, welcome in. How are you today, sir? I'm good. I'm also glad it's Friday. It's, it's going to be a, it's going to be a fun weekend this weekend. And I'm glad to start it off with you guys. Yeah, I'm with you. We're going to go to a renaissance festival. I'm very excited. But that's a different episode. The common vernacular among nerds is a ren faire. Wow.

Are you going to dress up as Star Trek characters? Are you going to be that guy, the Star Trek guy who goes to Ren Faire, but you dress up as Star Trek and you're like, hell yes. No, but I do support, I do support the Trekkers. A lot of people say truck is the technical term is actually Trekker is not important. And who said something about Hans Zimmer? I'm going to see Hans Zimmer tomorrow.

So I know some people who just went and saw that show a couple of nights ago, maybe a week ago, and they said it just blew their dicks off. It was amazing. So I'll make sure to wear the cup. Yes. I'm just saying be. I was already prepped for it. I've heard it's a. God damn it. It's a bad thing that a drug gives you side effect. It's a side effect of the show. Okay, so what you're saying, what you're saying is the final song is by King missile. Oh, wow, nice. Wow, nice.

I hate it here. Followed by King Crimson. Oh God. No, don't, don't disparage them. I love King Crimson because I've always said it, you have to be happy with what you have to be happy with what you have to be happy with. Okay, so we should get into the episode again. The topic is, you know, games that formed our gaming experience, ones that touched us and left us a different person. Would you like to start us off? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, let's start it. We will watch again.

So the game, it's actually, I mean, it came out, I think, when I was in my early twenties, so not as formative as it could have been, but it definitely affected kind of gaming with friends and gaming on the Internet as a whole. It was one of the biggest influences. My pick is Starcraft. Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Tng. Absolutely. All the way.

Yeah. So. And you know, I mean, Blizzard, blizzard always kind of nailed it with Warcraft. And then Warcraft two, and then StarCraft came out and man, that just hit all the spots for me. So. And the reason that I call it a formative game or a game that touched me in my heart bone. There you go.

Is. It was a game that I literally would get together with friends and we would stay up all night and it was just game after game after game. And you know, sometimes it would be competitive, but more often than not it would be cooperative. This game I took to the point that I would design maps for us, you know, to play. Um, yeah, it just, I, I had dreams about this game. I dreamt up, uh, strategies. I literally did. I, like, I, I came up with the, like the, the bat death. Like there, you know, there's a. And so like, yeah, just spam the crap out of them with, with flying, you know, the terran bats, the fire. Not, I can't remember the full term, but yeah, fire bats. Thank you. And then, and then the, the DLC came out and it got even better. And yeah, amongst, amongst the friends that would get together and this was, you know, when my friends and I were roommates, we would have a couple people come over and yeah, it was literally all night. And we, we referred to the DLC as extra crispy on top of original recipe. So we'd always say, we'd literally look at each other and say extra crispy. And, you know, it was like, it was on.

It was on. I love that. And I will throw my support between any game that gets the friends together for a shared experience, especially one involving nationwide chicken franchises. Yes. That's wonderful.

So to go into a little more detail, I still play this game even to this day. It's funny because Starcraft two came out. I've played a bunch of Starcraft two, but I keep going back to Starcraft and extra crispy and it kind of stemmed off of I played a fair amount of Warcraft and Warcraft two. I played a hell of a lot of command and conquer. Had a friend who lived with his mother, but he basically had the entire basement and he took coax cable and ran it along the upper edge of every single room and just put tees at every, I don't know, seven or 8ft. And then you could just bring your computer in and just plug into one. Plug into his. Oh yeah. Although his nickname was Schwa, so we called it Schwanette.

Schwanette. That's a great nickname. Yeah, that's short for Joshua. No, no, like literally. Literally. He just liked the term schwa. You know, the upside down, the schwa e. Although, although to this day he has, he has changed his nickname. So if he's ever listening nuts. We're talking about you. Okay. He went from Schwa to nuts. That's right.

Okay, we have to do a schwa episode if you want to invite him on. I have so many questions. Also, I might be misunderstanding this, but you can't give yourself a nickname. Says GP. But, you know, you can give yourself a handle. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we all call them nuts sometimes. Uncle nuts. Yeah, well, uncle Nuts is fair.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we would, we would get together and, you know, plug into his to Schwa net and then we play net. Yeah, exactly. Started out doing, started out doing command and conquer and, you know, progressed all the way up until StarCraft. When you play Starcraft today, do you play the. It's the remastered edition they did recently. Or do you play the original? Original. The remastered.

The remaster is fantastic. I mean, it really, it plays. I don't know, that gameplay was really changed. I think it was honestly just the graphics that were changed. So, you know, I have, the nice thing is it scales. I run on a 4k screen. So it does scale where, you know, the original, it was designed for 640 by 480 crt. Right. So, yeah. Yeah, I remember lugging around a computer, you know, a case and a big ass CRT monitor. Like that was.

We had backpacks for our, for our towers to bring them everywhere when we were doing land parties. How recently did that remaster come out? Uh, I don't know. I'm gonna have to go to my mind palace. Oh, you don't have to mind palace that. I just thought maybe it was like 2021 or some shit, like. No, I think it was like, oh, it's 2017. Okay. That's still pretty recent. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know they did a remaster of that.

Yeah. And the nice. Oh, yeah, I mean, the nice thing is, is, you know, the original, this was back before the Internet was really a big thing, so it was all to get nerdy. IPX, SPX on lan didn't, didn't trans. Thank you. Didn't translate well to, you know, the Internet. Then they came out with battle.net and it was a little wonky. And now it's, it's just, it's just solid. Yeah.

I was gonna say, like, for me, when Blizzard brought up Battlenet, they crushed it. Because I remember being in the chat room for Diablo. Diablo, actually. And then you could see the avatars from people who are playing Diablo or Starcraft all in the same chat interface. I just thought that was a wild thing. This is before I found I oversee, but I used to, I really like Battlenet. Once they got it working? I thought it was fantastic.

Yeah, we used to use, I don't even remember the name of it, but there was a program that was designed to encapsulate that old style network and run it over the Internet. And it was always a little. You'd have pauses. And the nice thing is, when Starcraft has network issues, it pauses for everyone and goes like, gray. I remember that.

Yeah, classic. Yeah, yeah, we would, we would haul our computers around, so of course you'd have your like 3 hours of getting set up and like, the network isn't working or sound isn't working, or this isn't working or that isn't. And then after 3 hours. Yeah, it was on all night. It's good to know nothing has changed in the past 20 years.

Oh, it very much is the same. I do, I do Sunday games with some friends. I do. We call it church, video game church. And every single time it's like, whose sound isn't going to work right now? Like, we have to wait until like. Yeah, so, hell, that's our podcast. Have some weeks, right. This week it's one of us. It's always somebody at a thousand.

Exactly. So, yeah, my, uh, I mean, yeah, it was in my, it was in my twenties, but, uh, in my early twenties, but honestly, it really kind of introduced me to, you know, the concept of land gaming and then eventually Internet gaming.

Very cool. Yeah, those are. I don't know, there are games like that, and I think if, I don't know if the current generation of kids playing games has that same experience. I like to think they do because Internet gaming is so popular and wild, but obviously they don't have to lug around crts and with tech and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, everybody's got the Internet, which is great, but there really was something special about just kind of connecting with the bros or the gals and gaming together, which. That's great. I love that story.

And it had to be in person, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's funny you talk about, you know, my kids are early twenties, mid twenties now, and, uh, we got them tablets one year for Christmas, and the first time we drove off from the house, they're like, using their tablets in the car and they're like, dad, the Internet isn't working. Uh huh. Well, yeah. Doesn't travel. Yeah. Wow. Idiots. Yeah. Doesn't travel. Embarrassed children. Yeah, that's how I talk to my kids. Yeah. Yeah.

GP's quoting me. He's heard it. Here is demonetization. .2. Ours is shorthanded to no inter. No enter. There's so much time. Everybody saves, you know? That's cool. I love that. I love that. The first time the kiddo explained he didn't have Internet, he didn't know how to say the whole thing. He was only like four, so it was no intern. Okay. And it stuck. Well, okay, yes, then I have to admit I'm an asshole. I'm sorry. I love that kid. That kid's great.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, that's my story. Starcraft. That's my story. Yes. Starcraft, even to this day. Yeah. Bonus points to command and conquer. My older brother showed me red alert and that. That was like a light switch for that kind of game in my life, so. And it is easy to spend all night in the. Into the early hours playing. Playing those types of games. So.

Yeah, oh, yeah. And you know, I mean, going to command and conquer, there's nothing like hearing, you know, nuclear launch detected while you're playing and you're like, oh, shit, there's. A ghost in my goddamn. Where's it gonna land? Where's. Everybody farts at the same time because they're like, yeah, there it is, actually. You just hear the sound of. You just hear the sound of. Of clench. Just. Everybody clenches.

Love it. Well, tell you what, let's move on. Love Starcraft. Love the memories. That's great. Werewolf, would you regale us with some tales next?

Sure. For mine, we're going to go back to 1997. I was 14 and didn't have this game yet, but rented it from the video store and made it a very quick purchase thereafter. Symphony of the night, Castlevania. Because I had to think about it. I was like, what do I play most these days? Metroidvanias, all the time. Those are what I gravitate toward most. And I'm pretty sure symphony of the night was the first game that really showed me that that formula is what I just always yearn for. And there were games that I played before that that, you know, it didn't have a term yet, so I didn't know that. But, yeah, Metroidvanias with 2d platforming and all that, that's kind of my jam. So symphony of the night, with all the power ups and collectibles and hidden rooms and all that, the different weapons you could pick, you know, you're working your way through the castle. You beat that first boss the first time. You think you beat Richter that first time, thinking, this is. That's it. That's the end. And you get the credits. And it's like, wait, I've only got, like 75% of the castle explored. Let's figure this out. There's more to find. And then in the process of doing that, you learn, you find all the stuff, and then you go to fight him again, like, okay, what's going to be different this time? And all of a sudden, there's another dude floating above him, so you kill him instead. And then a whole other frigging castle. It's ridiculous. So this was like, oh, my gosh, this is a huge game.

Well, your boss is in another castle.

Let's go back a few years before that. Super Metroid is where the line kind of goes backwards from there. Super Metroid was very much, a lot of those same feelings, but it was more of a cautious exploration and wondering where things would go instead of the, like, I can go anywhere I want. What's going to stop me? You know, and just the way it told that show, don't tell narrative. And again, all the secrets and power ups and everything, it was great. And then inevitably, the speedrunning, before we knew really what speedrunning was. Go back a few years before that, and we're at Blaster master, and I know it's not quite as tight in the Metroidvania vein, but it's still like exploration, finding power ups to break through barriers, backtrack, find secrets, and or find levels through other levels, things like that. You go back before that and you're kind of bringing it around a little to Simon's quest.

There you go. And, you know, I didn't have that as a kid, but it was always like, I want to play this. I want to get the power ups. I want to just explore everything, find everything and beat it. And I never got to as a kid. I didn't until I was an adult, sadly. But where it really started for me, and this will not be a big shocker to people who've been listening for a long time, is zillion. Yeah.

It had all that stuff. It had the level ups to increase your health, pool jumping ability, the power ups to your gun to make them more powerful and, you know, destroy more things to advance further, and even other characters to find that if you didn't find them, you got a bad ending, which it might have been like different 50 words, but still, it was a bad ending. So for me, I really think symphony of the night is where I just, that all cohesed together was like, oh, that's what I really enjoyed.

I.

Fantastic game. That's such a good game. I I played that way late in my. My career as a person, and, man, I enjoy. Well, that's the best way I could put it. I. That was the first game that I badged on Ra. It was the first one I attempted before I even played it. Said, we're gonna do this. And everybody was like, you're crazy if this is gonna be the first game. You're gonna try and bash. I was like, nope, we're gonna. We're gonna play this fresh. Fresh. Never played this before. We're gonna badge it. And I ended up doing it. But holy cow, man, that. That game just without. Without having all the retro achievements and stuff attached to it, I don't think I would have explored as much in that game or had the. The patience to really dive deep and define all the stuff that you end up finding. And like you said, it's, you know, you beat it on the bad ending, and you're just like, that's it. This is what everybody's bragging about.

Yeah. This is the game. Yeah. And then that's it. And then smooth jazz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Real final bosses jazz. It just. It opens up, and then you get to play. You can play as Richter, and in the Saturn version, you can play as the. As the girl. I can't remember her name. Maria. Maria.

Thank you. And it just. It just. It's a whole nother level of gameplay. And symphony night is just fantastic. It's all those parts of rpg's that I like and then platforming and slashing, slashers that I like all mixed into one. It is a perfect melting pot of a video game. I don't think there's many. I don't think anything before Castlevania 79 or beyond that has ever been better than symphony tonight. In my personal opinion, I I think that is the peak of castlevania. Castlevania. Dim was. That's a word.

It is now. It is now, yeah. I think it's just the most accessible because it wasn't on handhelds, because kind of after that, they. It got relegated to handheld in that format for Castlevania, which is unfortunate because portrait of ruin was good order of order of ecclesia. Washington. A little weird about it, but, yeah. Portrait of ruin, dawn of. Sorry, sorrow, aria of sorrow, even circle of the moon. Those were not bad games. They just. Right, they just on a little tiny screen, and it sucked.

What about the. What about.

Even when you play those. Get those handheld games now. Sorry, sister. When you play those castle games now from mobile on, a big screen. They. They're still. They're not bad. They're good, but they still don't hold a candle to symphony. The night. Like symphony and I is a game I'll go back to and always find something new to. Like a new way to play, new weapon, a new, new build. I guess. Try using spells. There's different ways me to play that game and I don't get tired of it. When I go back to circle of moon, I usually burn out after a few hours trying to find the stupid cards. And I find the newer ones. Well, not bad, but they don't hold my attention like something I does.

Yeah. Harmony of dissonance was really the only follow up to that formula that I think is trash. But that's just me personally. Of the blank. Of blank series of Castlevania. I find symphony of the night to. To be the. The preeminent one, the. The tits. The best. The best. Oh, yeah. My favorite Castlevania. Yeah. Never was really topped. Yeah. I like the Rolodex of disgruntledness. That's a great. We can come up with like an AI algorithm for Castlevania names. Right. There's that.

There's that really depressing object of verb. Verb. There's that really depressing one. Sorrow of sorrow. Just sorrow of sorrow. Sorry. The sorrow of joy. The sorrow of sadness. Tetris of moistness. They actually reused harmony at one point. I don't know if any of you guys remember, but they had an online Castlevania game that was like up to four players at once. Right. And that one was called Harmony of. Despair, which is so fucking metal. What a great talk of despair is.

A really, like a dreams dream theater song. Yeah. Olaf metal. I hear you hating, but I'm not feeling it because I didn't there touring, huh? I didn't say it sounds like a dream theater song. It does, doesn't it? Froggiest shit I've ever heard. That's a great pick. That's a great pick. How do you feel about the. The. We'll call it the spiritual successor. Bloodstained.

Oh, I fell in love with that too. I had to stop playing it after I played through it like three or four times in a row. I had to like, step away to move on to something. That episode. And we lost you for a little while. Yeah. We almost had an intervention. Intervention. I cut myself off on that one. Nice.

Very cool. I love it. So great picks so far with great stories accompanying them. I think that's wonderful. It warms the cockles of my heart. We've talked about heart bones a lot. Okay. Can do sinister. Thank you. For anybody out there in listening land, sinister is wearing a shut the fuck up shirt and he just pointed to that. And we still have 40 minutes of wrap it up. Wrap it up. How am I getting the oscars music? I was pointing at the cockles of my heart, which just happens to be.

In the f. That's part of the f. You. I apologize. That's my fault. That's on me. Okay, sig Jake, are you feeling up to telling us about that or.

Yeah, sure. So I guess for my pick. So I didn't get a couple of things. I didn't have access to the Internet or really a PC until I just finished high school. So I came this kind of late. So I was kind of all in on PC gaming early on, and. Cause it's brand new and fresh to me around 2000, 2001. And I never sat down to play a game like Morrowind before. Morrowind is from Yellow Scrolls series, like a 3d, just massive open world and really truly massive open world with a map that was staggeringly large. Nothing I'd ever seen on console as a kid growing up with nes ness and Genesis. None of that. So when I first, you know, you start up Morrowind and you get to customize a character down to a bunch of details. You're picking stats, you're picking skills, Arcana star signs, but it's all that character building. While there's been character building in some other games I've played up to that point, nothing is in depth as Morrowind. It has different in feel when you play different characters in Morrowind. And just that sensation when you get into the. You get off the boat, off the dock, you're a prisoner, but you're let loose this really bizarre, unique fantasy land of Morrowind, where, you know, instead of trees, there's giant mushrooms and the elves are, got blue skin and there's bugs everywhere. For some reason, just such a. Just such a really inventive and creative world. I'd never seen anything like it, and I just fell in love with it. And I fell in love with a lot of the elder Scrolls games, right. Oblivion and Skyrim for very similar reasons. Just the studio just makes games that you can just get lost in. And I think I've beaten Morrowind like twice, although I've played hundreds of hours. But I never did beat oblivion, never did beat Skyrim, because I just like playing the world. I like exploring. I like how I can walk down a road and there's a random cave or a shrine, and suddenly I spend 2 hours, you know, exploring this, this labyrinth or ruin. The sense of exploration was always great in these games, but it goes back to Morrowind, right? Where you have ancient dwarven ruins with like steampunk stuff. There's like crypts with undead or vampires. I mean, the first time I got a vampire and I got bit and you get the vampirism disease. That was wild. Just, just everything about Morrowind really struck home for me as a game that just kind of shaped my love for open world games. And even today when I kind of sat down for this episode trying to figure out what game do I enjoy the most? What kind is the game do I enjoy the most? And it always comes back to, I like the games where I don't feel like the story is forced on me, and I like the ones where I can explore at my own pace. And that's why I like games like no man's sky, right, which is the procedurally generated infinite exploring game. All you do is explore. That's why I'm excited for some of their stuff coming out later. Like, it just the open world games, and it comes back to Morrowind for me. So I know a few of you have played Morrowind.

I definitely have. Sorry. I want to take one piece of umbrage, though, with what you said. You said that you explored the labyrinth of ruin. That's a Castlevania game. Sorry. That's true. Yeah, that's true. Maybe it's tied to more of a. Professor umbrage on me, bro. Why are you Harry pottering me right now? Not cool.

No, I played, I played a lot of Morrowind, both on PC and on the original Xbox. And yeah, that's like, it definitely has. When you said, you know, mushrooms instead of trees, like, all of a sudden like, that clicked in my brain, you know, I mean, all of that stuff. I just, I mean, I don't want to, like, I'll let, I'm just going to give a little aside here. My struggle with the elder scroll games is I want a completionist them. Okay? So good luck. Yeah, yeah. So the only one I have is.

A piece of candy. Yeah. The only, the only one that I, the only one that I have ever beaten is Skyrim. And it's because I went in and I said, I'm going to do the main story and I'm going to fucking finish this thing. And like 15, 20 hours later I'm like, that was it. I have played, I mean, in the middle here I have hundreds and hundreds of hours in oblivion and I probably have progressed the main story like five steps.

Yeah, that's, that's not on. That's pretty much what my experience was with oblivion. I loved it. Never got close to finishing it because I was just busy exploring all the elf ruins and that wasn't the story. I didn't give a shit about the oblivion portals. I was doing everything besides that. But great.

You're right. It's like. You're right, it's like, oh, piece of candy. Like you get distracted 20 times just in the way, just moving from one waypoint to the next village. You get distracted by ten caves every single time. Yeah.

And it's why I was so kind of disappointed in Starfield, which is the game they just breached. Brought it last year. Right. And it's. It should be Skyrim in space. And it feels like that in a lot of respects. And the world is interesting and the, there's spaceships and people and the graphics are amazing, the music is awesome. Like a lot of the building blocks are there. But when you're exploring all the planets, of which there's hundreds of planets in Starfield, they're all barren. There's almost nothing there of substance. So you don't have that Skyrim problem or morrowind problem where you get distracted. But I. I hate that. I want. I want to find things.

Yeah. Piece of nothing. Oh look, it's a space rock. If you're lucky. It's a rusted satellite dish. Big whoop. But there's nothing. There's nothing like dwarven ruins in Starfield. There's.

There's stuff in Starfield, but it feels like you have to go out of your way to find planets that have something on there. And it just does not feel as fun exploring a dead science lab like it does exploring an egg mine in Morrowind, which is stupid, but it's funny to see. So I kind of. I'm. I kind of like those three games that they've released in the elder Scrolls franchise. I have real, real doubts and worry about El Scroll Six, although with their track record on releasing, I'll probably be dead by the time it comes out. This is going to be decades from now. But I hope they kind of look at Starfield and they go back to what they used to make in terms of their world building because I really don't like Starfield. I love the other three.

Yeah. Morrowind was what made me really start digging into PC gaming. That's why I had to upgrade. I bought Morrowind, thinking, oh, yeah, my PC can run this. Took it home. PC couldn't run it. Turns out I needed a better video card, even though technically my specs were meeting minimum. But it was as soon as I got out of the ship, game would crash. So it's like, no, it's not going to work. Upgraded it, started playing the crap out of it. Absolutely fell in love with it. I loved how you could just get lost and run across various random encounters that were just like. It felt like you were just walking up in the middle of something going down, right. Like, sometimes you find slavers and they're like, hey, you know, leave us alone or we're gonna attack you. Or, you know, you can kill them and release the slaves or take the slaves and sell them somewhere else. Like, the options were open for you to be a good guy or a really terrible person, and it didn't affect the main plot, it just affected how people interacted with you, which was cool. And, yeah, I absolutely. I fell in love with. I even bought the strategy guide for this game. And that sounds stupid, but I mostly bought it because it was just full of maps that showed all the little things that you could interact with. It's really cool. There's one on archive.org, if you go look at it, the Morrowind prophecies, you just see, like, a chunk of the map and a bunch of numbers and then what those numbers are and what kind of stuff you can find in there, and it's wild. I wish I knew what happened to my book. It's long gone, but it's really cool to see. And, yeah. Marrow, and I've never beaten amaro and elder scrolls, and I've spent hundreds of hours in all of them, right. And I've tried. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna beat it this time. And then 45 hours later, I'm like, I forgot I was gonna beat it this time.

Squirrel, you know? Yeah.

It's still got the best spell, spell system, I think, in any game. I played rpg boss, that you could build a spell that does whatever you want. Yeah. And there's no restrictions. You can make a jump spell that lets you fly across the map with chunking, chunking your capacities loading as it goes, just stalling as you're flying through the air. And hopefully you put slow fall so you don't die when you land. But you. There's. There's spell making in oblivion, but it was, it was restricted, so you couldn't do broken spells. Morrowind didn't care. It let you do whatever you wanted. If you have one, if you wanted five points of every element, go for it. If you want to put armor and damage, you could do it. You could do whatever you want in the spell making. And I loved it for that. Like, even the alchemy was interesting if you collected the certain ingredients and you experimented with combinations to make certain potions, like they did that in other games. But Morrowind, I think, is the first time I've seen something like that before. It's really good.

Well, Morrowind just had more freedom than the subsequent elder Scrolls games, just in general for the player. Like, it even had more armors, like types, like slots to put on your body, so that it was, it just felt more customizable and interesting. More and more, more, more, more. And then more, more.

I think one of the characters I made was I did unarmored for most of them, but then I did like heavy armor for the arms. It was like jacks from moral combat and I gave him fireball spells. Just cuz like the amount of freedom you could do with your builds. If you want to be a samurai or you want to be a cleric, you could do that too. Paladin, go for it. You want to go around as a naked cat punching people, you could totally do that too. I just. The freedom was there and I never.

Got out of my head.

Get out of my head, college naked cat box and go. I love how you said you updated your computer for morrowind because I also got a new monitor for morrowind because I was still rocking a monitor where the highest resolution was 800 by 600. So I had to get a new monitor if I want to play morrowind at a better resolution because so cramped, low resverat. It's crazy. It's a game I want to go back to and play again. And I know there's ways to do it with open morrowind and some mods, but. But I just, I don't want to ruin that, that nostalgia memory of playing morrowind as a young adult, right, or adult, I guess it was 20.

So yeah, I had that happen. Not, not video games, but I went back and watched some thundercats. Oh, yeah. And yeah, I kind of wish I hadn't. Yep, been there. Yep, been there. I felt like there was supposed to be more to that story because.

Okay, so let me explain. The problem that I ran into is like, every time they had a problem to solve, they would describe how they were going to solve it, and then they would do the thing and it would turn out exactly the way that they described it. And so it's like, this is filler to make these shows longer. And as a kid, I didn't give a shit. As a kid, I didn't give a shit. Right. But as an adult, I'm like, my time is finite, and where's the content?

Okay, here's what we have to do. We have to take the audio track from Oceans Eleven, and we have to put it over, you know, a long episode of Thundercats, because that's basically what you're describing. Yeah. How funny. Lionel, what are we going to do? Well, we're going to run a boesky, a looky Lou. Yeah. You can make, like, supercuts where they're talking over what they're doing. Like a montage kind of thing. Make the episode, like eight minutes.

Yeah, I mean, that's the problem is the episode would be eight minutes. Don't get me started on Dragon Ball Z and abridging that shit. Oh, have I been saying that wrong my entire life? I always thought it was dragon Balls. Dragon Balls. Dragon. Tread lightly for you tread on my. You tread on my dreams. You guys are watch Dragon Ball. Not disease, but the. Yeah, try him. Very good. Yeah.

Yeah. Morrowind. Great stuff. Morrowind was the first of the series where I became aware of Elder Scrolls arena.

Was. Okay, I'm gonna. I mean, I played all of them. It really fleshed itself out when I hit Morrowind. So, I mean, I believe you want the nostalgia factor. Go back and play the first two, but really start at Morrowind. It's. It's. It's kind of like. It's kind of like fallout. There's fallout that was, you know, the isometric top down, and then there's fallout three. And they really are kind of two universes in the same, or two. Two games in the same universe. Right. So, yeah.

What were you gonna love? Fallout two. But fallout three is. Is where it goes. Goes hard for me. I love that one a lot. What were you gonna say? It occurred to me. I remembered I had a question for Sinistar earlier when he said he spent hundreds of hours both in the PC version and Xbox version. How on the Xbox version, that frame rate is awful. Look, it was a different time. Yeah. And you had it on PC. Well, I think I got. I think I got it on the Xbox first.

Oh, it had to be a gateway, because then you're like, this is so much fucking better than anything I've ever seen. I was having it on PC and seeing it at best Buy setup on an Xbox and I was like, oh, let me check this out. This is terrible.

So let me. Let me give a little background. There was a period of time because I was a PC gamer, as you guys know, from, like, day one. But there was a time when I got an Xbox, and I may have put a matrix chip in it. And so I spent basically all my time on the Xbox for like a year. And so. Yeah. And so, honestly, I think that's the direction it went. Gotcha.

Yeah. It's bizarre because I can't imagine playing morrowind on a console in a controller. Skyrim runs just fine on console, and I played oblivion on the Xbox 360, and it was okay, but Morrowind interface on Xbox feels it was janky. Yeah. Okay, let's, uh, let's switch gears over to charred. What do you got for us today, sir?

Well, you what for me? Terraforming for me. Um, so I know a lot of people are probably anticipating something that has to do with dark souls or Final Fantasy or are we gonna have another. Elden ring episode or what, but Elden.

Ring was the biggest. I'll sleep when I dead space. No, I was really digging deep because, you know, I gush about the same. I feel like I gushed about the same, like, three series all the time here. And it just so happens that a series that I have not gushed about a lot, but I truly do enjoy and have been revisiting lately because there is going to be a revisitable remake of it coming here soon. And it really, really diving deep. It really brought out my horror survivor love that I play quite often now. It was the first thing I played before we played Visage and summer 58 and devour and phasmo and all that crap. The phasmas. Phasma is more of a ghost adventures thing than, you know, because it's more the ghost hunting than anything. But I played Silent Hill two many, many, many years ago, 2002. I think it came out in one. So not too long after its release on the PlayStation two. And I had never played. I mean, I played Doom. Doom three was after that. So this was probably my first horror game that I willingly purchased and played because I had heard things about the first silent hill. I dabbled with Resident Evil, but never enough to say, like, I'm gonna play this shit. I got scared by the jogs jumping out the window. And I said, fuck this. I'm done. I was never known for being an enjoyer of horror movies or horror video games or anything along those lines. And I was like, I'm gonna sit down, and I'm gonna force my way through this game and get it done. And it was. It was different than Resident evil because Resident Evil had the zombies everywhere you turned. This game was a psychological mind fuck from start to finish. There's a lot of lull at the beginning that you see because you're dealing with the fog and, you know, you're trying to navigate through the town, and you see, like, one or two enemies here, and there wasn't. It wasn't really based on what enemies were there. It was based on the surroundings, the environment, the sound, which is what I'm. I'm a huge fan of any game that really messes with your head with sound. Like alien isolation, for instance, has probably one of the greatest soundtracks, the Dead Space games, the remake soundtrack. All of that stuff is what really brings me in. And it turns out that it's not action horror that I'm about. It is the. The slow burn of a psychological mind fuck. Because you have Silent Hill two, which I think is the kind of the pinnacle. Then you have Silent Hill three, which was a great bleed into with, like, both whatevers, and then you went all the way to PT, right? You have Silent Hill PT that was never released, that was being made, which then spawned all these different carbon copies, which was one of our favorite horror games we've played lately. Visage comes from the PT code, essentially. It's designed the same exact way. And I didn't think about that until I started replaying it now, which we're. We're playing it on Twitch right now. And I was like, holy crap. Like, I get it now. Like, it makes sense why I like the Madison's, why I like the visages, why I like all these different styles. It's because it's the same slow burn of trying to figure out the story as you're playing, but not being totally clear to you what's going on. But you're, you know, you're deciding there's all these puzzles that you have to solve while trying to stay alive, but you are literally sweating to figure this stuff out. As you hear pyramid head. His first appearance in the Silent Hill series was to dragging his giant knife towards you, and you're trying to unlock a door, but he's slow. It's a slow walk. He's not running at you. He's not jumping through a window. You just know he's behind you. And with the way the camera angles. Now the. The remake is going to be like. Like the Resident evil remakes, where it's a third person over the shoulder kind of look. They take the tank controls out, which I'm excited about. And though I hate take controls for the most part, it actually really, really works well in Silent Hill two because of the way that the camera angles work and the psychological warfare that you're fighting in your head as you're trying to escape these things chasing you. Um, I finished that game. I was so proud of myself because I actually finished a scary game that, that still. I got some jump scares from the last time we played it a couple last weekend still from a PS two era game. It's still got those pops. So I think that is the. The seeds that were laid that turned me into the. The horror enjoyment streamer and player that I am today. I didn't even think about it until we had told. GP brought up this discussion, and I went, yeah, I was talking about final fantasy. It's a fur. That's because that's what we fucking. That's what I always fucking talk about because it did do a lot. But what's. What got me into this. I don't know what got me into this vein other than I just want to scare myself stupid. It had to come from there. Yeah.

I want to call out, I I I played resident evil one, uh, before I ever played the silent hill games. Yeah. And to me, the thing that I love about silent hill and silent hill two, uh, is. And you touched on this is you say the sound to me, it's that absolute feeling of desolation. It is that absolute feeling of, like, uh, I like this. This place seems empty and feels empty until all of a sudden, it's not. Right. Right. Yep. Yeah.

And you see, you see, there's characters that you have interactions with. Now, the voice. Let's just talk about the voiceover is not as good as it used to be, but it's a product of its time, so it's just like thundercats. It's a product of its time lost. Yeah. Like she's unfamiliar with the word. Yeah. Just what got me was the graphic style of silent hill. Why is everything so covered in rust like, the entire town? Because you're made of sheet metal. Well, it's. That what it is.

There's also a. There's also a permanent mist at basically all times. Yeah. Which is gonna. It's gonna oxidize. Is gonna oxidize everything. Okay. You're going scientific. Yeah, but I mean, it's. It's. It's either going to get covered in moss or it's going to run very. Few saltwater lakes in the middle of America. Well, I mean, the same. The same thing with last of us. Right. Everything is either covered in moss or rust. Right, right.

Understandable. But even when you see, like, when you see people in Silent Hill, two to interact with, like, actual. Not. Not the weird fucking demons you're running into, but the actual people, you're, like, excited to be like, oh, shit, I get to talk to somebody who is of human. Human intelligence. It's not a murder hobo.

Yeah. And then you talk to them and you're like, you're worse than the things that I am literally being chased by, like, what the hell are you talking about? And it just watching the story kind of unfold as you're going through and watching James Sunderland, like, go click and it's, this is really cool. I listen. Psychological games like this that make you really think that, like, your fears are being projected into reality really take me places. Like, I don't know what it is about it to be like, this is all just meant. This is all in your head that's happening, and it's. But you're projecting it, and it's just really cool to see that kind of thing in action. Personally, for me, I'm a fan of seeing that, so. Yeah. So I blame silent two for my sick and twisted October stream fest that we're going to be playing this week, so.

Love it. Yeah, yeah. What an amazing game. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. This is the game that has the Shiva inu ending, right? I think. Yes, yes. I want the remake to have that ending, and if it doesn't, I'm gonna be upset. But I'm pretty because if you special order it, you get the Shiva emu fucking helmet. You can wear it. Got the fucking. The. The big cans, you know, the earplug earphones on it.

Big cans is a mod chart they'll come to. It's on the Unreal five engine. Trust me. They're going to mod that game like they do resident evil. And it's going to be a thing on TikTok. James is going to be thick. Don't most of the silent hills have, like, the sort of joke ending? Yeah, I don't know about most of them. I. I'm. I think two is the most flushed out and most, I don't want to say obvious, because it's not obvious. You have to go. One had, like, the most alien joke ending. Yeah.

And then two had the Shiba inu joke ending. I think three had a joke ending, but I don't remember what it was. I don't know if they kept that going after that. But it. I mean, it was a pretty strong point of it early on. Like. Before we get too far away from this, GPD has a picture of himself as pyramid head. Oh, yeah. You get a. You get a DLc download for a pyramid head helmet, but it's made out of pizza boxes. I'm talking IRL Halloween costume.

I. Right. I just say in the game and the remake, if you pre order it, you get a pizza box pyramid, and. You can wear in the game. And I was like, what?

I've heard nothing but good things about the remake that's coming out. Like, I don't like the company is making a. Blooper. Was a blooper team, I think they're called. Yes, Blooper team. People been shitting on them for some of their past releases, but I was looking on Wikipedia for the studio, and most of their past releases were like, okay, you know, set low seventies. Right? So it's nice to see them get Silent Hill two remake and just knock out the park. Like, I haven't seen a review under under eight and a half. Like, it's always eight and a half plus. Can't wait, which is nice to see. Right?

We'll do it. Don't worry. We'll do a whole nother episode on that specific game here in the coming weeks because we'll be firing it up on Sunday. But, yeah, I. I just. The more I think about what really got me into the scary games that I play now, it is definitely stemmed from that particular moment of me sitting in Germany with the lights out in my. My apartment living room, playing this goddamn terrible game with these tank controls and. And having a real hard time getting through all this fog and this weird straight jacket thing that's spitting on me. It's getting me the old hawk to. Before it became a hot, you know, trademark. But, yeah, no, it's too late.

Silent Hill to hawk to silent till hawk two. It sounds like a podcast to me. Getting sued. All right. Coming after.

Love it. Yeah. Silent Hill as a franchise. Fantastic. I'm kind of, like, sinister. I had hit up the Resident evil series before I had been made aware of Silent Hill, but I remember when the first advertisements even came out for Silent Hill, I thought I was pretty badass because I enjoyed resident evil. And then I remember seeing some of the. The artwork and then some of the. The advertisements for Silent Hill and tapping out and saying, I don't think that's going to be for me. And then I remember when two came out and then there's the buzz around that and then the inclusion of Pyramid Head and all that. And, yeah, they just did a really good job of setting it up, giving you enough to make you want to find out more. And then really that game does just grab you and bring you in. And it's one of those things where it does kind of, I don't say double dip, but it gives you the worst of both worlds where if you're a social person, you think desolation is as bad as it can get. I don't want to be alone. And it puts you in that feeling, like you said, but then it also turns that sideways and says, but you're not alone. And somehow that's worse. And it's just this really great, creepy, freaky. I mean, you're talking about being in Germany, lights off, playing it in your apartment. And all I could think about was, I know that feeling. I can think. I can bring that in. And it just immediately gave me the chills.

I have it. I have this experience because PC Gamer, I have this experience. My buddy and I, Solarcake, we were just out of high school. This wasn't silent hill. This wasn't. This wasn't. That's why this was. This was alone in the dark on the PC, okay. And alone in the dark on the PC. Like, the graphics were bad and. And so, like, it wasn't so much the graphics. It was. It was the sound, right? Because every once in a while there's like, creaks and, like, noises and stuff like that. Well, he and I have been playing. He and I have been playing this one night and the sun has gone down and we have not turned on any lights in the house. And so it's literally us in front of a CRT monitor with, like, the glow of the monitor. And brother of sin comes home because I lived with him. He was my roommate. And he comes home and he, like, walks to the doorway to my bedroom where my computer was. And he looks at both of us. He's like, what are you guys doing? And we both are like, silent scream. Yeah. For those. For those that are listening, it was very much a look over and like, what the fuck?

Face, mouth agape. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel that. I mean, that, that, that also, when I played Silent Hill and Silent Hill two, I didn't have quite that level, but it was very similar kind of feeling. Oh, for me, resident evil felt like a horror, like a bad horror movie with zombies and puzzles. Right? So it had the jump scares, but it didn't have me on edge. Yeah. Silent hill. Like, it drew on that terror, that fear that, like, what's gonna happen? I have to be ready for anything. Yeah.

And sure enough, the next thing that happens, you're not ready for. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Solid hills again. That had skinless toddlers with butcher knives. At least the first one up, no matter how you spin, it was so horror. Like. It's a horror game. Resident evil. I like resident evil two and three a lot. But you're right. They're puzzle games. They're bad movie games. They are not horror games. Like. Like Silent Hill. Silent Hill? Yeah. I can't sit through because of the terror, that siren.

And then all of a sudden, everything goes dark, and you start hearing the radio. White noise. Yep. And all you've got is your flashlight. Everything's rusty and dark. And then you see that little figure just dip through the light a little bit before it starts coming over to you with that little. Perfect. It's so well designed to just. The baby laughing and the rattles. Oh, my God. Yep. The silent hill is to mortal Kombat as resident Evil is to street fighter.

I could. Yeah. Both with their merits, but one is much more intense. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Good pick. Thank you. I wouldn't say that was a formative game for me, but it did make me form some dookie in my pants. And any. Any semblance of maturity I may have displayed throughout this episode, I wanted to do away with that. And that's fair. That's fair. Well, you've got to walk into your pick, so you might as well. Yeah. What? It's the perfect lead in, right?

Yeah. There you go. I will sit in.

I will do my best to be brief with this. When the conversation came up about this topic, there, of course, are a bunch of things kind of like chard was saying that I could talk about, but you've all heard me talk about the mad nauseam Final Fantasy four, the Mega man games, the Mario games. And I started realizing I especially early on, loved familiarity. And I think we're all that way. I mean, we're on a retro video game podcast. We each have had our retro themed twitch channels and all these things. But really, if I look at that, it was always the platformers, Mario specifically. And that'll pay off here in a second. The Mega man games, so on and so forth. But then when I think about Final Fantasy for so long, I really just enjoyed four. And I've said this before, whenever I would try to boot up a new Final Fantasy, I would just get mad that it wasn't Final Fantasy four and go back to play four. And the game that really shook me from that is one that I wanted to talk about today. And that's Super Mario RPG, legend of the Seven stars. Super Nintendo came out in 96. It's a great pick. It's a hidden gem. I get it.

Yep. But yeah, deep cuts. The thing is, by then Final Fantasy three or Final Fantasy six as we know it now had come out. And I was familiar with the game from watching family members play it, but I hadn't been into it. And at that point, all we had were Final Fantasies. One, two and three, or one four and six, however you want to say it. Right?

Yeah, yeah, four, of course, being just my jam and my comfort game. But I. Whenever I knew there was a big game that I wanted to play, I would kind of like back out at the last second. Because for whatever reason, life, being a kid, I didn't feel I had the bandwidth for it. There's all these new characters, all new mechanics, all knew everything. I didn't want that. So Mario RPG gets announced and they start ramping up the advertisement for that. And I was like pumped. And I've told this story before, but this is the first game I paid for with my own money. Put it on layaway at Walmart. And I remember taking it home and just being so, so pumped. But this was like a good middle of the Venn diagram for me between what's familiar and then what's kind of new, but still in that RPG franchise or that RPG genre that I like, but really just the one example of it. So I wanted to see where that would go. And I just thought there's not going to be so much to learn because I know the mushroom kingdom, I know the characters, but RPG gave us new characters. They gave us Geno, they gave us Malo, you know, Smithy and all of them. And they gave us new mechanics, the timed hits specifically, and all these different things, all the different places to go visit that were never before seen in any Mario thing. And I just thought if I could handle this and enjoy it, surely I can fall in love with other RPG's. And sure enough, that's what happened. And now RPG's, Chrono trigger, Final Fantasy, all these things are such a mainstay in my world, and I think I owe a lot of that to Mario RPG.

Yeah, that combat is some of the best combat in RPG's to this day, I still say it holds up. I love that time hits. I like the limited characters, but I like the spells and abilities they have. I love to just. I love all of it. It's up there with Chrome trigger for me in terms of favorite combat engine. Yeah. A bunch of mini games, Easter eggs, secrets. I mean, it's. The graphics for the time were like next level, too. I mean, it was pretty good. Yeah.

I mean, it required that chip inside the cartridge. Right. I mean, it was. It was. It was, uh. It was definitely, uh, pushing the limits of the super Nintendo. Um, I want to. I want to bond with GP for a minute here because we're going to have a bonding bondage moment. Yeah. Yes.

Breathe it in. Breathe it in. Drink it. Um, I. When I got Final Fantasy two four, I was the same way. I was very adamant about this. Every time we'd play a different RPG. And being a sega kid growing up and playing Final Fantasy Four at my friend's place, having to come home and play, you know, Phantasy star four or Shining Force or something, it just did not. It did not equate to what Final Fantasy was. I was so adamant about not wanting to play anything outside of up. Outside of four because it is a comfort game. It's. It's very. Well, it's a great story. It's fantastic music. You love the characters, this, that and the other. But chrono trigger for me was your Mario RPG that got me out of just being in four and then I fell in love with six. And it goes from there to go on Mario RPG when we. We played it on the stream, it's. It's. It's cool. It's a cool game. I love the time to tack hits. I really enjoyed that. I like the kind of goofy, the goofy storyline of, you know, and by bringing Bowser in and him not being your enemy, him being your partner through the whole thing because he's got something to gain out of it, all that stuff.

Yeah, enemy. Yeah, yeah. I really liked the. A lot of the tongue in cheek stuff, which I'm always a fan of, but his ability to, like, use chunk, he was using a chomp chain as a weapon and all this other, like, mario esque type stuff in an rpg. And then of course, the hits. Hit secret hidden boss in Omari RPG has the finals fantasy for fight music to it. Culix or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, that was. There was a lot of fun. I. We jokingly shit on it from time to time, but to be completely honest with you, I wouldn't have finished it if I didn't enjoy it in some facsimile of it. Well, this. On the episode we did on this. And I want to be nice and not be a dick now.

Hold on. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna say, like, even though I did not enjoy Mario RPG as a whole, honestly, I think it had. Yeah. You know, on the whole, it had the so many tropes that have. Or things that have continued through, like, I love the paper Marios that have. That, you know, that timed hit I have. I love. You know, honestly, my biggest problem with Mario RPG was I hated the platforming in it. Yes, mate.

And the music was so repetitive. It was tiresome, like, yep. You know, otherwise, like, it was. It was a good game. It was. It just. It. I got so tired of that music by the end of it that I was like, I'm done with this now. I'm tired. Every time GP and I have a discussion about something, I feel like I shit on it. So today I was trying to be non shit on me for him. No, no, I love him. And this is a good game.

No, I want it to be clear that I value what Super Mario RPG led to. Like, I'm not the biggest fan of the Beatles, but I absolutely know what the Beatles. Oh, you're using my Beetle trope. You're using my Beatles. No, but it's fair. But it is. But that is what. That is what Super Mario RPG is to, like so many games after. It's. It's the Beatles leading into, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Well, and. And to go back to charge thing real quick with Chrono trigger, like, what a cool game that is. And the near perfect game, I'm not going to take anything away from that. But if you consider what Mario RPG accomplished, considering the already established. Yeah. Albeit varied market ip, like, it's even more impressive to look at it kind of like, as an adult who appreciates that side of it now. Right.

It really was this wonderful moment in time for that game. I don't think if it had gone much different, we would have ended up with what we have. And it's super special argue. It's almost kind of a brave step forward for them to take the Mario platforming ip that we've seen forever and go to square and be like, make this an rpg and how successful it was. I mean, it's a huge game, everybody, but, like, sinistar and I are the only people.

And also the history of the development of that game with square and with Enix and all this stuff is very well documented, and you can find a million videos over it on YouTube. And you should, if you don't know the history and the story behind it with some of the Nintendo higher ups and, you know, specifically some of the funnel fantasy people and their involvement, it's worth a good watch.

I think I have the disadvantage that I didn't. I only barely touched Super Mario RPG when it came out. Yeah, I played it as an adult. And so the problem is, is like, I look at the platforming now, it's so janky. I look at the, you know, the repetitive music. I'm like, we have so much better. And that's the problem is, like, as an adult, I've. I see the, you know, the little cracks in the. In the varnish. Right.

There's no nostalgia for people who played it in their forties as opposed to the people that played it when it came out. Right?

Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of the game anymore, but I played it. I think I played it through twice when it came out, like, I was into it then. I do agree the music gets repetitive and, you know, I've shit on it too, as an adult. But, you know, when I was 13 and this was a brand new rpg, and I was just like, give me all the rpg's. This one was like, yeah, that's. That'll do, you know, that'll do. Kind of set the expectation for future rpg's with what it added to the format. And it's. No, and.

And I love the years prior to this. Go ahead. I was gonna say. I said this before, but I love the games that came out of this. Like, I love the, you know, the Mario and Luigi games on the DS and super and. And DS. Three deciseconds. I love the paper Mario. They all came from this game. They all came from this game. So. Sorry, wolf. Go for it.

Oh, I was gonna say, for years prior to this, I had kind of been. I'd started reading the Sonic comics, and so, you know, being into rpg's and reading the Sonic comics, I was like, why don't they make this an rpg? This would be great. And so I would do, like, fan art of, like, a sonic rpg. And then when we finally got a Sonic RPG, it was the hottest fucking garbage. Same thing with Mega man rpg. Yeah. What was the sonic RPG on Sonic Chronicles? The Dark Brotherhood. For the DS, it was.

Which is another fucking name. Yes. Castlevania name. Yeah. Dark Chronicles of the night. Dark Chronicles of the sorrow and night.

And, you know, I. Okay, there's a game that I don't talk about enough. In fact, I'm not sure I've really talked about it much at all in the history of the entire podcast. But Final Fantasy, Mystic Quest, I do love that game. I've had that cart forever. But we got that because, you know, japanese manufacturers or, you know, game developers didn't think western audiences were hip to what rpg's were doing. So they did it as kind of like this. I don't say beta test, but, you know, dipping their toes in the water to see if we would. If we would dig it.

It was throwing us. Yeah. If they had just done Mario RPG instead, it would have got, you know, we would have got the full. Yes, but you wouldn't have that fucking bang soundtrack is. Yeah, that's. That sounds a quest song track was really good. There's a place in my heart for Mystic Quest. There is a place in my heart. There's anything that Mystic Quest does perfectly, right. It's that fucking soundtrack. I also like you. It's not like you can't explore. You can go point a to point b. Right.

Very straight. Yeah, very. I'm playing a board game rpg. Very mindful. I'm looking at screenshots of that Sonic RPG. I didn't know this even existed, and I kind of want to play it. You don't lose your own risk. No. You don't. Watch the way through. Wait, wait, wait. Wolf, he likes circus Charlie. Maybe he'll like it. Oh, yeah, Charlie.

So, yeah, no, I don't like Sonic Zero six. I just want everybody in the world to play it so we can all, like, share that, that experience. Joy of playing Sonic Zero six together as a squad. Goal. We all need to play it, but nobody's going to enjoy it. Nobody except for people who maybe watch us play it.

I do want to say this, though, and this is kind of like, to my detriment instead of to my credit, because we all know how much I love saying to my credit and the lessons that I gleaned, though, from playing Mario RPG and saying, okay, maybe you can handle a bigger game and all this kind of stuff. I've. I've defaulted back my standard state twice since then as a kid. Once was my freshman year of college when Metroid prime came out and all my friends were like, you got to watch, you got to play, you got to do all this. I said, I, again, don't have the bandwidth, don't have the time. I got other shit. I got to do. But then I played it. Loved it. And it's, you know, one of my top ten probably favorite games of all time. And I'm currently sitting in it with Final Fantasy X because two years now, I've been. I've been supposed to be playing this game. And I've been like, no, no, no. I got too much stuff going on. And I know for a fact how much I will love that game if I really get into it.

But I hope you. Let's also be. Let's also be fair. My problem is, is time, right? Yeah. I figured out how to make the time for Witcher three, but, like, it was at, like, the detriment of everything else I was doing, right? I mean, so, yeah, adulting kind of sucks sometimes. Adulting sucks hats. It's okay. GP. We've seen you playing Volatra on Discord. We know what you're doing.

Actually, I got to play it for a few minutes late today, so I fired it up and I mentioned it to my wife before coming down here. I'm like, hey, do you remember Bellatro? And we haven't. We haven't played it in, like, a month or month and a half. Gotta get that balatro bump. I miss it. Well, now it's on phones now. Yeah. I lost my wife to this game for the last two weeks or the last week and a half. She won't put it down. Yeah, it's a problem.

So, no, I. Honestly, Super Mario RPG is a great pick. As much as I have struggles with that game, I see the legacy that it led to, and so I. I think it is a great pick. It is a formative pick. Yeah. For not just you, but for. For the industry. Yeah. I mean, it's. It's just one of those things. Without it, I wouldn't have been brave enough to, you know, open the doors I opened and gone through and all that kind of stuff, whatever. So I'm. I'm happy it's there. And it holds a special place right.

There in the cock with. In the. In the width on your. On your shirt and the width in the theater.

I like this episode, guys. This was a fun one. I was. Having been gone for a couple of months, I was afraid to do kind of a more conceptual episode instead of a straight discussion, but I think this worked out well. I've missed you guys so much, but the work you've been putting out while I've been gone has been top tier, as always. And, you know, I always hate to leave because I'm like, I'm missing out with you guys. But I also hate to hear how good you guys do without me, because I'm like, I don't need me for anything.

Bullshit. You're very much a needed person in this. In this dais. No, it's like when the kid, you know, learns to ride the bike, you like being there to help him and pick him up, and then he starts doing it without you, and you're like, well, guess I'll go play Mario RPG or something. So fall off the bike, GP. We know you're busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, and we love having you around when you can make it.

Consequently, that one legged man has two hands to play Bellatro. But that's cool. That's right. See, and I fucking knew it. I shouldn't have played. I shouldn't have fired it up for that ten minutes that I only had because somebody else was late. Don't blame me for your addiction. It's okay. Here's what sucks, is I didn't even win that round. If I had won, I would be a little bit more like, you know, whatever, that's fine. I fucking blind.

I'll see you guys in December. All right? So, yeah, let's. Let's wrap this up and land the plane and tell everybody where they can find you and what you're up to. Sinistar, if you wouldn't mind starting us off. Well, I have been dj spin a starring, and I've kind of actually toned that back a little bit because for. For those that are unaware, sintstress and I are in the process of buying a new to us house. Thank you.

Thank you. And it's likely going to impact me more and more until it doesn't, I will probably be here and here and away, depending on the week, until mid November, probably. Awesome. All right. And sick. Jake.

Yeah. I've mostly been playing games. I've been playing a crap ton of UFO 50. I'm trying to get through a few more of those. Yeah, I know, wolf. Me and you both, man. But I'm getting kind of down that rabbit hole of the secrets and see your codes, and I want to kind of break into that a bit more. So playing a lot of that, I've tried to like Zelda. Echoes of wisdom. I'm really trying, really freaking trying hard. But I think I might hate this game. It sucks because I love Link's awakening. It's the same style as that.

Do the glitch let you play through his link instead? Is there a glitch for that? Look, look. Learn to love building tables. Yeah. I can't.

So sick. I'm so. I got so sick of tables and beds as platforms. I've been using the spider to just climb everywhere, and it just feels. Anyway, I really don't like that game. I. To the point where I went and bought Diablo four expansion. So I'm going down that rabbit hole. I might record something about Diablo four. I don't. I don't know. I'm debating on it. I don't know if I want to sit my desk and play that game or if it's just normally deck thing. I'm mostly playing UFO 50. Everybody play UFO 50. If you don't own it, go buy it.

There might have. There might have been a podcast that did an episode on it last week. Yeah, yeah. And I love that episode. I didn't get a chance to listen to it, but the thumbnail for it was really good. Like you and Final Fantasy VII remake game of the year. But I haven't finished.

Oh, jeez. I finished it. I finished it and then went right back to Bellatro. Establish this. What was that from Zoolander? When Hansel's talking about, like, listening, I might be misquoting that, but it's like, I love you, too. The band, I don't really listen to their music, but the fact that they're out there making that music, I think is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then werewolf. Where can people find you? What do you. What do you have to do?

Lately, I have also been playing way too much UFO 50. It's like. Like a highlight reel of games that never existed in the eighties. Yeah. I love everything you're saying. That's a really good way to sum it up. But. Oh, man, I. I need to step away from it, finally. I've also been listening to Adam Savage's book, every tool's a hammer, which is really interesting.

His rye wit is so good. I recently heard him tell a story about when him and Jamie were butting heads over what color of a net to use for. Well, it's not important here. I heard that one. The white or the black? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he basically, the lesson was, do I need to go to war about this right now, or will it later take care of itself? Yeah, I love his and then chart. Tell us more about. Well, obviously, you mentioned October is a big month for you. Tell us all about it.

Yeah. Well, most of you know that during October, we go full spooky game season. And this one is no exception. We're going to. We are doing the original Silent Hill two remake or two play through right now. Um, I'm hoping to get on tonight after the podcast is done. A little tired, so I don't know if I will or not. We're going to leave that tentative, but we'll definitely be back tomorrow before I head to Hans Zimmer. And then Sunday, uh, we get early access to the remake, so we'll be playing that to completion. Um, and then, uh, we're going to do dead space remake again because I really want to play that one again. And then a smattering of some devour with the team. Um, and maybe some phasmo, maybe some quick one offs father's days. Find yourselves, you know, just bring a diaper or towel.

As long as that fucking statue for Madison doesn't show up again.

No, we might play Madison just so the statue can come back. We'll see. We only got four weeks, so I always have these grandiose ideas and I end up playing like one or two of them. So we'll see how long it takes us to get through the remake of Silent Hill and Dead Space and then kind of figure out where we're going from there. You can find me on Twitch, wwwitch tv, forward slash, Chardonnay. I've also been playing a ton of uf 50, UFO 50 as well. Plus Bayonetta has resurfaced as a excellent playthrough on my steam deck at night. I can't believe how good that game is translated. And you want to talk about something that's the meaning of its time? Holy shit. I remember it being as goofy and as lewd as it was when I first played it, but I didn't remember it being this goofy and lewd. So like a very sexualized witch beating the shit out of angels. It's a fantastic game. Go buy Bayonetta. It's on sale on Steam. Or at least it was.

Plus guns attached to her shoes, you know, fantastic. It's devil may cry, but with witches and angels. I still don't understand why they haven't made a crossover between the two games. I know one Sega and once Capcom, but guys, get your heads together. This is perf. This is a perfect marriage in two games. Robert Rodriguez Rodriguez since rescue. A good question. When. When is visit? Oh, yes. I don't know if I'm ready for another round of families and bad openings to game on.

Come on, disco. Come on, discovery. Now I'm good. Good. I'm good. Rave. Sorry. Rave. It's a rave, but yeah, I'm good this year. I didn't drink tea and fucking talking. Fridges and I don't need another twat freezer right now. And Polaroid hard. We got to play the back rooms game that you got recently. Oh my God. I agree. I think we should get that. I don't know who else on the team has it. If not, we'll have to figure out how to make that work. And I have a backrooms game.

You have the one that we were originally playing. But Wolf and I got a different, newer one. I don't know if it's newer, but it's a different one. Supposed to be. Yeah, it's a different one. It's, it was, it was pretty good. I played through that one. Oh, I also should mention, uh, tangent. Uh, I beat the ascent with my friend. Nice. Oh, nice. That was a good game. Nice. Okay. And then I'm also beating these guys in the, uh, critics fuck you in the fantasy.

Slaughtered. Half my games are even out this year. I'm just glad that, what? I'm just glad that one of my picks is hurting you. That's fine. You're still in second place. Had one of your picks is hurting. Projected to remain there. So it's cool. Yeah. They charge. You're winning by two points. I think you said earlier today. I think one, actually only one for a whole point.

That's the projection. That's the projection. We'll see what. We'll see what happens when, oh, what's the, what's the coming out? Delta the sorry. Guard Velgard comes out. I hope that thing takes it. We'll see. Yeah. I love, I love the Dragon age games. I do too. But because you have it, I hope it takes shit. I don't want your quarterback to break, but I want him to lose really bad.

I want to point out, I want to point out the charter says, you know, I would love a game series that I love to be shit just so that I can, you know, welcome. To, welcome to Fantasy League, baby. We don't even have money on this league. What the hell? This is Quidditch. It'd be a whole nother ballgame or awful game. It's probably a good time to, to mention we think we're going to be doing this again next year. Go look up fantasy critic. We probably will involve the community next year.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good time. I can't just keep kicking these guys's asses. I need to add some more, some more challenges. Come on. My God. Line them up. I can talk big now because I'm winning. For now. For now. Yeah, it'll change when? When I'm losing, but right now, I'm big boy.

I've got to get going to finish up some balatro. I'm not going to lose. I'm not going to end on a losing note. So we got to get back to that. But thank you again, everybody, for tuning in. Oh, and I should tell you, I'm guy prime. I'm basically here. Twenty four seven. And that's 24 episodes every seven years. So keep tuning back in. Keep that streak going.

Yeah. And you can find us here on YouTube, and then, of course, anywhere podcasts can be found or check out our website that is still up and whose address Jake will tell you about. Now, that's presbytery to cancel.com or pressbe.org. You could have picked up a pack of Virginia slims on your way in. Your mother's very disappointed in you. I don't think I needed to pay a psychic for that. This girl's good. She guessed that as I walked in the door.

She actually crawled out of hell to tell me. To tell you that she's very disappointed in you. That's mom. It's not all bad. There's gonna be a happy ending in there somewhere. We should be live. Oh, God. Why do you think we went the. Way I was interrupted? A happy ending to this story. It's a happy ending. It was Tetris all day long. My goodness. Is it 7 seconds? Has it been 7 seconds? No, I think so. Here's the thing.

YouTube doesn't know what Tetris is to us. They don't know how dirty you guys got with that game. It's fine. It's okay. Monetized because we say Tetris, then they're fucking on to us. Oh, I don't see us live. I don't see us live either. We should be. No, it's not recording, but I don't know about the live. Oh, oh, the games that made. Yeah, there it is. It's. There we are. Yeah, we're there. Six. Jake, when was the last time you took the Nyquil? Was it within the past ten?

Because this episode, a big swig of it right after this episode. I drink wine on the ice because I'm a social drinker. Yeah, take your Tussin on the ice. I got that Nyquil mixed with honey upstairs. It's actually a pretty good combination. Got that quill. We preferred to call it whiskey and honey. This is this is going to demonetize it so hard right here. Oh. Oh. I'm not abusing Michael. I'm sick.

I didn't even think about that. Forgive me. Look, if anybody out there is listening at this point, don't, uh, don't abuse. Look, don't do drugs. Kids. Don't don't do those things. Don't use. Also, unless no one we've mentioned up until now is the sponsor. Look, don't do drugs unless. Unless they're legal and over the counter kids. Oh, my goodness. Only take us directed drugs. You're prescribed. All right, here we go. Here we go, here we go. Or a man in a trench coat.

Okay. Doctor Pat is here for you, okay? You give me a chipmunks in a drench code. And cut. Hey, good episode, guys. Let's go. Okay, did you bring your scritz? Opening line. Did you bring your skirts today on the.