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Welcome to the All Things Nintendo Podcast. I'm Brian Shea, and this is a weekly podcast to discuss all the biggest news and games from the world of Nintendo. I am back from the Game Awards, and while there wasn't a ton of Nintendo news out of that particular show... We do have some stuff to touch on, so we will get to that first, as is tradition. Then during the main segment, we will be discussing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Rewind. That's a tongue twister if I've ever heard one.
Then in the final segment, we are going to give our reviews of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which just hit theaters the same day you are listening to this show. Joining me for all of that is my pal, Dr. Ben Richland. Ben, how are you doing? Hello. I am doing well. Just got back from New York City seeing Sonic 3. I am...
Ready to be a Sonic sicko and a Power Ranger sicko and everything else in between. Well, we've got lots of topics to talk about, especially in this new segment. So you'll have plenty of time to be the sicko that I know you to be. Perfect. But. The first news item up here used to be a tradition that we would start our shows with Pokemon news.
And we've got a little bit of that. Nothing monumental here. But have you been keeping up with Pokemon trading card game Pocket Bend? You know what? So like I installed that I think the day or two days after it came out. And I was like. oh man i can't get into this because if i get into this then i'm not going to stop playing look i know you're a collector and this is all about collection yeah that's that's dangerous for me um i am not playing it right now i
am playing Pokemon Go and Pokemon Sleep. So I have gamified walking and sleeping. Great. Perfect. So I have... I was kind of resistant to it. I didn't really think it was for me. And if you go back and listen to the episode where we dug deep into this new app, I was pretty skeptical about whether or not this would be something for me. I have, you know, it's not...
my most played mobile game yet, but it is gaining ground on my most mobile, most played mobile game, which is Marvel strike force. That is going through a rough patch. Whereas Pokemon trading card game pocket just. launched a new expansion. So the game itself came out
End of October, it launched with the Genetic Apex expansion, which has more than 225 cards. You can choose if you want to open a Charizard, Mewtwo, or Pikachu pack, like booster pack, and they all have different sets of cards you can pull out of them. So you have to kind of be strategic. Oh, I really want that Articuno. Let me open. I think it's the Mewtwo pack that has that.
But then, like, you know, maybe you've opened a million of those packs, so you have to choose, like, okay, well, the Pikachu doesn't have the card that I want specifically, but I, you know, will be able to... get more or fewer duplicates if i open that one but of course you every time you get duplicates you get points that you can use to go into the card store and buy the specific card you want and you know the the more valuable cards are worth more as as you would expect
Are you trying to ruin my life by tickling a certain part of my brain? Unrelated to this conversation, yes. Look, this sounds exactly... what Dr. Ben Richland would have loved 10 years ago, maybe 15. But there's not enough hours in the day. It's very hard for me to like, like, are you playing the game at all? Yeah. So you get some rewards for playing. It's only if you win. But then if every game you can send a thanks to your opponent.
And that will give you like a small rewards just for like, you know, there's no way to, well, there's no way to communicate. So I don't know. Like, I guess it's just like if somebody wasn't like a total jerk in like a move that they played, which, you know, if they.
win they win like it's not like they're like doing emotes to taunt you or anything there's no system like that like like there is in like marvel snap or clash royale but i have had a great time with it i like the streamlined nature of the battles yeah um it's like three and three yeah and then ex cards are worth two so it's like you have to really like be smart about your use of them um it you know it um
It's gaining traction, and maybe I might dip my foot into it once things calm down a little bit on my end. It really does fascinate me, though.
Just at some point, but I'm, I'm, I'm afraid to dip my foot into it. I don't think I would fall into any sort of the microtransaction stuff. Like I think I would just keep it FTP. That's, that's what I. started with and then when they announced the news this week which is uh they're adding its first post-launch expansion it's called mythical islands and it stars mu ex of course it does um
It adds 68 new cards to the collection, handfuls of secret cards. And some of the cards are new versions of Pokemon that were in the first one. Some of them are all new cards. Some of them can... definitely shift the meta a little bit like there's a superior card that has an ability that absolutely destroyed me in one of my early battles it makes all energy worth double that you attach to your your grass pokemon oh man so Yeah. I used to play competitively.
Oh, no, I didn't know that. So when this happened, though, I was perfectly content not like they give you a two week trial of the premium, which is $10 a month. And all that does is it gives you like, you know, special. objectives and missions that you can complete to get extra bonus rewards but then on top of that you can open one additional booster pack a day yeah which isn't great but it's only ten dollars a month whereas marvel strike force the other game that i play it
I mean, I don't buy the battle passes the vast, vast, vast majority of the time. I've stopped spending money on that game almost completely. But they want you, if you, just for buying the battle passes, and that's not counting any of the other stuff. They want $80 a month from you on the battle passes. There's four different battle passes and it used to be the best value that you could get in the game. And now it's just like, there's no way that I'm spending that much money. I might drop like.
You know, $20 every six months on that game. Do you mind if I ask why? I'm surprised that you don't play Pokemon Go. I used to. I used to be diehard Pokemon Go. What happened? I just, well, I stopped for a little bit. I picked it back up during COVID because I was always going around walks around my neighborhood. And then I got to a point where... I ran out of space in my Pokemon box. I ran out of space in my backpack. And I was just like, well, I don't want to...
I just want to go out and catch Pokemon and I can't select a Pokeball to throw because it says your box is full. I don't want to go through and clear that out because it takes like...
10 minutes to go through and clear out anything you don't want to keep yeah same thing for the items like i can delete all the like the the standard pokeballs but it's like i think that you were supposed to keep up with the upgrading of that backpack by like getting coins from being in gyms and stuff like that yeah and i fell in like a sweet spot where like i would have to go and like
basically wipe out a bunch of the Pokemon that I've caught and a bunch of the items that I've accumulated over the years and not having a bag big enough for all the different items they've added and all the different Pokemon that they've introduced. It just feels like I'm kind of in a no man's land with that game. Yeah, the menu game is a term that me and my college friends have coined. It's basically like you're just stuck in the menus.
forever. That's Marvel Strike Force as well. I'm sure. Inventory management is the most obnoxious thing.
in games having to change having to like constantly delete games off my ps5 not anymore because i have a pro but like dumbest purchase i've ever made but like still this is how's that working out for you yeah spider-man looks nice it's spider-man looks better you know whatever god worth the 700 i don't know um but You know, going back to Pokemon TCG Pocket, do you think that they are going to eventually bring that...
to the world championships as another arm of the world championships there is a built-in private match functionality that you can invite a person specifically i would be shocked if it's not included in the next one I would be absolutely, now that you mention it, I would be astounded if they, Pokemon Day, February 27th. 2025 they come out and they're like oh pokemon world championships is happening here and first time ever pokemon tcg pocket is joining or whatever and i would
That would be the easiest, most slam dunk announcement I think that we could predict going into that week, now that you mention it. Yeah. If they announce competitive... Then I'm in. Do it. There's PvP and PvD right now. That's how they would get me. Start honing your skills now. Oh, Jesus. I do have to admit, you get a little bit of squirt of dopamine. Just like when you open up the pack and everything like that. Oh, yeah. I get it. They figured it out.
Yeah. Yeah. It feels good to drag your finger across and like watch the pack open up. Even if it's only five cards, I wish it was a slightly bigger pack. Although haven't they dropped it to that in the. No. So, so the American packs. are now i think 11 or 12 cards in a pack but japan has been five for years actually
Well, that would make sense. The most recent booster pack that I have opened in Pokemon TCG was the Japanese pack that I bought when I was out there in July. Yeah. But the other thing too is, and I think like... Like you said, it's a more compact version of the game. And so because it's a more compact version of the game, it makes sense for the booster packs to be more compact.
Yeah, there's only around 300 cards as well. So I mean, there's also like hidden cards and promo cards and everything that you can get. So it's probably more than 300 even in that ballpark. But yeah, that.
expansion is out now i've been playing with it there's all kinds of uh fun new mechanics they've introduced through these new cards they put out and i'm having a good time deciding which version of like you know pikachu or mewtwo or mew that i want to throw in for uh my decks and i'm i'm enjoying opening all these decks plural you've built several oh yeah i have like six different decks oh man
Well, because I want to have different themes. I want to have a fire deck, an electric deck. If I get into this, can you help me? I mean, it's pretty easy, especially for a seasoned pro like yourself. Oh, sure. Uh, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's very easy and they, they do a good job of the onboarding experience. Like once you get through like the explanations and everything, it, it, it's off to the races basically.
But I'll be your friend. I'll like all your showcase items and give you shop tickets. Thank you for that. Yeah. But Ben, speaking of games, I simply cannot stop playing on my phone. Bellatro. Yeah. So here, I was originally not playing it on my phone because I had it on the switch and I always played that version when I was traveling. I remember.
uh i liked that because one i had a save file that i was building up on my switch that i wanted to continue i wanted to continue unlocking stuff on that version and two i liked that it had a a barrier between me and being able to just fire up Bellatro whenever I wanted to, because I knew that would be the thief of productivity.
If I had a way that I could just be sitting at my computer doing work and then suddenly I'm able to immediately pick up my phone and play Bellatro. I knew that would be a bad idea. Fast forward to last week and I am on this flight. from Minneapolis to Los Angeles for the game awards. And I fire up my switch because I'm like, okay, good. I charged it overnight and I want to play some Bellatro.
My Switch is, I mean, I figured this out in September when I went out to San Diego, that the battery is just not what it used to be. It basically drains within an hour of playing. Is this the launch one? Yeah, it's a launch switch. It did its job. It did. So I fired up. I'm like, okay, well, you know, even with the crappy battery, I bet I could get a few rounds of Bellatro in while I'm on this flight.
It charged overnight. It was at, I think, 95% when I got to the airport and I was checking to make sure it had everything. By the time I got on my flight, it was 13% battery. So this Switch is basically just a TV system at this point. There's the Switch Lite, which is exclusively handheld. I have the opposite of that. I could probably play... a game while I walk up to my bedroom if I wanted to play in bed. And then I just have to plug in my iPhone charger into the switch. But even that.
doesn't really sustain it. So this Switch, it's safe to say I am raring for the Switch 2 to come out because then I can finally replace this thing. Yeah. But anyway, anyway, Bellatro. The reason I brought this up is it announced its next wave of third-party collaborations with other games. And this is another lineup of killers. So now you can customize your deck with card designs from Divinity Original Sin 2, Enter the Gungeon.
Potion Craft, Don't Starve, one of my personal favorite survival games, Warframe, 1000x Resist, and Cult of the Lamb. Tell me you finally played some Bellatro. I haven't. Oh, Ben. I've been so busy
I get it. Mr. Professional Card Player refuses to play both of the card games that we've talked about. Right now, that's a good point. That's actually a really good point. Right now, it's more... professional card buyer uh but but like i was very um i did see like how it came up a lot for the game awards and that like definitely like piqued my interest aside from our conversation previously about it. At some point I will play it. I forget, do you have an iPhone or an Android? I have an Android.
OK, never mind. I was going to ask if you subscribe to Apple Arcade, because if you do, you have it for free. But there is a. paid like you pay at one time and i think it's pretty cheap on on ios and android because there's bellatro and bellatro plus and the only difference is bellatro plus is free from what i understand brian i have a work iphone
But here's the thing. I also work. And I don't know if I can finagle all of this. But you know what? It's something I'm willing to investigate. If not... I mean, I can probably play it on Switch. I have the Zelda one from last year that came out for Tears of the Kingdom. So the OLED. I have the SWOLED. Well, it's $10 on Android if you want to check it out. Yeah.
Oh, okay. And I think it's slightly more on Switch. I'm looking it up now. It is $15 on Switch. Interesting. Let that be your guide. I mean, that's, again. One of my favorite games in a long time, Bellatro. What do you think it is about it that made it one of your favorites? Because it is a perfect kind of revamping of a game that was already...
pretty perfectly designed poker. Okay. So it takes poker's mechanics and it is reworked through the lens of a developer that is not even a poker fan and makes it like a roguelike that is, that perfectly caps, cap the. capitalizes on the tried and true formula of poker and like the scoring and all that, but then adds all these modifiers and ways that you can build your loadout and all these like video gamey mechanics to one of the most.
played games in the history of the world interesting and again game informers marcus stewart reviewed this without being a poker fan. Like I've never played poker in my life. Yeah, he didn't. He didn't know how to play poker. He didn't like he vaguely knew like the concepts of poker. Yeah. And he gave it a 9.5 out of 10. Interesting.
Okay. And I like poker and I also like it. So, I mean, it, it goes both ways where it's like, it doesn't, you don't have to love or hate poker to enjoy this. I'll tell you this. My new year's resolution. Check out the law trail. Screw everything else. Yeah. Shirk all of your responsibilities as a medical professional. Yes, yes. Everything that was about me, you know, like working out more and, you know, working on myself as a human being.
It's going to be Benny Bellatro. Benny Bellatro. That's what I'm changing your name in my phone to. Yes. So, Ben, while we were talking about indies, one of my main complaints about a game that came out this year, the Plucky Squire, was how much it held your hand. And then the other complaint was how verbose and kind of halting of the momentum that the story was. Yeah.
Yeah, developer All Possible Futures has heard those complaints apparently and is putting out a free update in the near future that will allow you to remove unnecessary dialogue and reduce the number of hints during puzzles in a specific mode. that you can select. That is interesting. I love when developers listen to the feedback that players have because...
Plucky Squire has a lot of potential, but I was just like, oh, my God. No offense to the writers, but I just want to play the fun. Yeah. Look, the idea. Everything that it did in terms of puzzle solving was definitely scratching the right itch in my brain. It was like, I loved all of it, but I... I got so fed up with just like stopping and then going forward and then stopping again.
It became very frustrating. Yeah, like imagine if every time you went to a new screen or solved a puzzle, you had to have a lengthy lore conversation in Zelda. It would be so annoying. Instead of just getting the little like jingle and then you get to move on to the next room. It's like, no, now you have to have a conversation before you move on to the next room. Yeah.
That was the biggest problem I have with that game. And I get that part of it is because it's a storybook, but they could have thrown it down. I... didn't really get that far in the game at all. And I mean, like it also came out like at a really rough time. It came out like when a ton of things that you and I were playing. Yeah. I'd like to re... re-approach it again.
I've completely forgotten about the game until just this moment, which really sucks. Memory unlocked. Memory unlocked. From a couple months ago. Yes. Which really sucks because like I was watching trailers for that game. I was super excited about it. Hearing this news, though, makes me excited again. So I am looking forward to re-approaching it again as a New Year's resolution.
in 2025 just everything is yeah it's 2025's problem all possible bennies uh unfortunately we don't know when this update will come out but hopefully it'll make this game into the the experience that I was hoping it would be when it came out earlier this year. Yeah. Ben, Nintendo published its year in review 2024 portion of its website that lets you log into your Nintendo account and see your most played games of the year.
Mine were TMNT Splintered Fate, which I reviewed, so I would explain that being up there, Bellatro, and Penny's Big Breakaway, which I also reviewed. Are you someone who cares about these end-of-year wrap-up features that it seems like so many apps and companies are doing? Everything does that, you know? I mean, I guess, like, the calculator app doesn't do that. You performed 7,342 calculations that you should have just been able to do in your head. That's right. I did not do...
year in review for my Nintendo. Having said that, I feel like this past year is maybe the least amount that I've played Switch in a while. I noticed that for me as well. Because there wasn't like a big game that really sucked me in like last year when it was like Tears of the Kingdom easily. And, you know, before that, there was just a more steady stream of games. I think whenever there was an imminent announcement.
of like nintendo direct or something like that like we had like sort of an idea that there was something in the pipeline this entire year everybody was like switch to switch to switch to But there wasn't. It was an alarm clock or a theme park thing or like some other weird thing. So I want to say like the only things that I've really played.
on switch this year is definitely plucky squire um zelda echoes of wisdom and a little bit of epic mickey um which i'm still currently playing right now and just like I don't know. Like there just isn't, there's no new Pokemon game. There's not really a lot out there right now for switch in terms of this year. Am I wrong that it was a weak year for Switch? I don't know.
I don't think that it was a weak year, but I just think that it didn't have a big tentpole release, right? Echoes of Wisdom, yes, there's a new mainline Zelda, but it's kind of like a different style of Zelda, and it's not done by the core team. But like, you know, it's a good game, but it wasn't like Tears of the Kingdom big or Mario Wonder big or, you know, insert big game for the holiday here. But like, I don't even think that Mario Wonder was as big as it probably could have been.
Yeah, I mean, it was good. It's probably my favorite 2D Mario since Mario World. Okay. Yeah. Which is, you know, just saying that it's better than the new Super Mario Brothers series, which I would definitely stand by that. But it came out at such a weird time. It did. I mean, it was a crazy week because that week alone was Sonic Superstars, Mario Wonder. And by the way, Sonic Superstars definitely suffered from releasing the same week as Mario Wonder. Yeah, major. And Spider-Man 2.
Yeah, and Alan Wake 2 was originally that week, but then they saw that week and they said nope, and they delayed it by 10 days, specifically citing that as the reason. They were like, we don't want to be in that crowded week. Just bought that game, by the way. Finally going to play it. I bought it during like the Black Friday. It's incredible. It's a masterpiece. Yeah. I still have to finish the first one and I still have to play Control. Again, all these things. 2025. Benny.
Come on. I'm sure you get some time off for the holidays. I do. I do. That's a good point. Yes, I will also be doing that. But I'm also playing metaphor right now. As you should. As I should. And that is, look, I know that we're not talking about metaphor on this episode, but let me just say something. This is maybe one of the coolest games I've ever played in my entire life. It rules. It rules. Like Persona 5 walked so Metaphor could run. Wow.
But having said that, I don't think it's better than Persona 5 Royal. I think that will always just have a place in my heart. But we'll see. I mean, metaphor is just so great. I'm at the... I'm at port... Brile Haven. Okay. Yeah. I think I played that as part of my trip that I went out to Atlas back in July.
But you actually did touch on a couple of things here that – let's just talk about them now before we – because I was going to talk about them later. But you brought them up in that rant you just went on. Thank you. First up, Alarmo. If you have an Alarmo, Mario Kart just got added to the themes. So you can have little scenes featuring Mario Kart now. Great.
Yeah, why not? And then Switch 2, there has been a leak or rumored leak that has been going around the internet. Again, no idea if it's valid or not, but it does sound consistent with some of the stuff that has been...
bouncing around for a while basically uh the joy cons joysticks are not they're built in a different way that should minimize uh the drift and any kind of problems it's i think it's called the hall something uh effect yeah it was like hall hyphen it was named after two people yeah great so There's that. The fact that the Joy-Cons just go in. They don't have to go on the rail to slide in. And then you press a button to release them.
The kickstand is apparently like a U-shaped, so it's like a little bit sturdier. Almost broke my Joy-Cons when I first took them out of the box because I put them on the wrong way. And I was like, oh, Jesus. So yeah, that's floating around. I believe it was The Verge that also reported on it, but it's all just rumor, speculation, leaks, allegedly. So take it all with a huge grain of salt.
But yeah, those are two ones that we're going to cover later that we could just jump to right now since you mentioned both Alarmo and Switch 2. But now's as good a time as any to remind you that you can support all things Nintendo through several different methods. The best way is through the Patreon page, which offers bonuses like early and ad-free episodes and access to the community Discord.
And if you come in at the $10 level, you get an entire second weekly podcast called All Things Gamers. You can also support the show through our merch shop on tpublic.com and my YouTube channel, which you can find at Brian P. Shea. Also, in a fun announcement that I didn't mention last week, officially as of last week, All Things Nintendo is part of the Poderation Podcast Network.
This is a podcast network that is geared towards nerds, and I am absolutely honored that they reached out to me to join their network as they start building out their video game presence. Woo! Yeah, so go check them out, Poderation. I believe the tagline is Podcast Network for Nerds or the Nerdy Podcast Network.
I'm sure that they appreciate me butchering their tagline in this first announcement of this partnership. Synonyms are synonyms. It's fine. Yeah, there we go. Speaking of all things gamers, Ben, we covered the biggest announcements out of the game. as well as some of my stories from my encounters that I had with several legendary developers out on the ground during this week's All Things Gamers. Can I say something? Yeah.
You looked very handsome at the Game Awards. Oh, well, thank you. You're a very, very, very handsome gentleman. I just want you to know that. And I don't know if people tell you that enough. They probably do. The vast majority of this audience is audio only, Ben. Oh, well, okay. For the people that are just listening, Brian is extraordinarily handsome. Well, thank you. And he was very handsome at the Game Awards. I did wear a suit. I tried to find a new suit.
suit unfortunately they did not have the size in the suit that i i liked when i went the weekend before the game awards and then i realized it was too late so we moved on and we i just wore the black suit that i i wore like three years ago next year wear a garbage bag So not a whole lot of Nintendo announcements. But not none, no Nintendo announcements, but a few announcements that are pertinent to a Nintendo audience. We're going to talk about those on.
This show as well, in addition to all things gamers, which we went into a wider net of the announcements over on that multi-platform show. First up, The Game Kitchen, which is the studio behind Blasphemous and Blasphemous 2, kicked off the pre-show with Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, which is a direct sequel to the NES Ninja Gaiden. And according to the press release that I saw, Ryu Hayabusa has left Japan for America to avenge his father. So you take control of a young ninja named Kenji Mozu.
who is a member of the Hayabusa clan, and he is tasked with fighting off the demonic threat that is no longer safeguarded against with Ryu Hayabusa off. avenging his father. And the game promises to retain the high speed and challenging sequences of the original titles. And it contains an absolutely gorgeous pixel art and very deep combat system. And I don't know if you ever played the Blasphemous games, but as soon as I saw that this was the studio that was doing...
a game in this style, I was like, oh man, Blasphemous 2 was one of my favorite games from last year. And it's kind of like one of those like 2D Metroidvania meets Dark Souls type of combat. um very very challenging almost you know, throw my controller up against the wall at the end. That's just what I need right now. High blood pressure. That's great. Yeah. Well, you know, we're about to enter a different world after January 6th. And so, yeah, that's great.
I'll be throwing a controller. Which controller will I be throwing? Switch? PlayStation? Hey, it's on all the major platforms, including Switch. You know what? I don't have any holes in my wall. i could just get it on all of them you've been doing your your boxing training so you just yeah so it's funny because i was watching it and i saw the like the art style and everything and i was like oh this is from the game kitchen i love those guys and
That's a cool name for a developer, by the way. It is. And then I was like, oh my God, are they like doing a Ninja Gaiden inspired game? And I said that to somebody because I was actually at a watch party. I didn't go to the actual award shows this year. I just went to a watch party because I was like, that sounds great being able to.
eat, drink, go to the bathroom, talk whenever I want to, which is all things you can't do if you actually go to the Game Awards. So it was right next door to the auditorium that the show was held. And then I just walked over to the after party and that was great. So I looked over to the person next to me. I was like, oh, wow, Game Kitchen's doing a Ninja Gaiden style game. And then next thing you knew, it said Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. I was like, yes, that's amazing.
So that was very exciting. That is set to arrive on Switch and other major platforms in summer of 2025. So not too far off. Maybe even not just the Switch anymore. It would be nice if it was Switch 2. I bet it will be. Yes. So while I was out in LA, Ben, I was invited to a private screening of Amazon Prime Video's Secret Level. I don't know if you've heard any of this.
It was very cool. Tim Miller was on hand, the director, who also was the director of Deadpool, the first one. And the owner of Blur Studios, which is where Jeff Fowler, the director of the Sonic movies... Got his stint first. Well, it also makes sense because Blur Studios does all the animation of this show. Oh! Which is a very high-quality studio. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
So you can hear my full impressions and also a, yeah, over on all things gamers, you can hear my impressions. And then I also have a story about how I almost walked out of it. What? Not because it was bad, mind you. But basically we had to start over about 30 minutes deep into the, but there was a story about why. And you know, Tim Miller made an impassioned plea for us to start over and for people not to leave. Okay. Okay.
But one of my big takeaways, I enjoyed the series overall, but what the heck was that Pac-Man episode? It left me... basically my mouth wide open. I was reading about this, wondering what the heck I'd watched. But after the Game Awards, it made a lot more sense because we learned about a game called Shadow Labyrinth. which turns the idea of Pac-Man into a 2D Metroidvania with a super creepy vibe. And guess what? It is the same aesthetic and concept as that secret level episode.
and we didn't even know it we were basically watching a trailer for this new game it was like this is not pac-man but like i guess there's some pac-man references and stuff scattered throughout and then you get to the game awards you're like oh That was just like an early look at this game that wasn't yet announced. I don't know if it was supposed to be announced after or before or whatever.
But we don't know a ton about it, but we know that somehow Tekken's producer, Katsuhiro Harada, is the executive producer of this game, Shadow Labyrinth. And it's set to come out in 2025. Didn't they have a different name for the Pac-Man like creature? I don't know. I think I was reading this last night or like two nights ago that they had like everything has like a different name or something. What a cool way to do things.
Like you just don't, but you can't replicate that. You can't do that for everything because that would be, I mean, like I would love gimmicks like that, but like cool gimmick. And like, yeah. I would say if you have Amazon Prime, go watch the Pac-Man episode because now that we know that there is going to be an actual game in this style, it makes so much more sense. I want to go back and rewatch it now that I know this. And I think these episodes are only like 10 or 15 minutes long, max.
So it's not even like a long time. Did you watch the Concord episode? I did. It was the worst of the bunch, I think. Oh, man. I was hoping that it would be at least better than Concord. I did not enjoy that one, but it was that one in the Mega Man one that kind of left me upset. But the Mega Man one made me. A lot of people not happy. It was mostly just because it was so short, and as soon as it started getting really cool, it cut to credits. Oh, that sucks. Okay. So, yeah.
If you want to hear more, you can subscribe to the Patreon. $10 tier gets you all things gamers every single week. Bonus podcast. But Ben, next up, we got a couple of quick teases in the Game Awards. First up, we learned about a new Dave the Diver DLC. It's called Into the Jungle. And as the name implies, Dave and his crew are going into the jungle. And there's new friends, new locations, new discoveries to find.
That's coming out end of next year. So we're about a year away from that. We also got a teaser trailer starring the very hedgehog we were going to be talking about later on in this episode, Shadow.
getting into a race car and speeding off. And all we got was a name called Sonic Racing Cross Worlds. We don't know anything about this really, but it ends with coming soon. Do you think that this is a... uh just a purely like a team sonic racing follow-up or is this going to be more in like the all-stars racing transformed cross worlds has me believe it's going to be you know multiverse style like you know ryu ryu hayobusa is in it
or not Hayabusa, Ryo Hazuki from Shenmue, Ai Ai from Super Monkey. Well, I think we're going to get a lot of the Sega characters, especially since it seems like Sega is going hard into its legacy IP. Yeah. So I think we're going to start seeing more of them popping up in some of these things. I think cross and all that. Yeah. World's hints at that. I think pretty heavily. I mean, I think so.
I didn't really play any All-Star Transformed and I did not play... Oh, it's so good. Is it really? It's... Nothing is going to top Mario Kart. Like, I love Diddy Kong Racing. Yeah, that's the thing. I love All-Star Racing Transformed. But it's a good alternative. And I know you have a love for Sonic and several Sega IP. So it might be worth it just to check it out. I mean, if you can get it cheap, I think it's backward compatible on Xbox. Yeah.
Yeah. I think it's on Steam. A few days ago, I did fire up Team Sonic Racing. That was fun. I played it with one of my friends. We just wanted something to play. That was two-player. And yeah, I mean, nothing can top Mario Kart. I guess it's not what I'm asking for for a Sonic game. Agreed. But it's nice to have nonetheless.
we'll see we'll see when when when is it did they have a release date um i think it just said coming soon coming soon so i don't know if that's gonna be like early next year middle of next year maybe that's like a sonic day in june announcement and like shadow drop or something and no intended yeah um yeah but yeah i don't know if there's nothing to go off of on this whatsoever so we'll have to wait and see
Yeah. And then the final announcement from the TGAs that we will talk about here was a big one. They announced a sequel to the beloved 2006 Zelda-style game starring a wolf, Okami. And not only that, but Hideki Kamiya, who was the director of the first game, as well as the director of Devil May Cry 1, Resident Evil 2, the Bayonetta games, and Wonderful 101. is coming back to direct the project. And Kamiya put out a statement, actually. He's known for his social media shenanigans.
But this seemed like genuine excitement that he had coming back to this franchise. He said, quote, how long has it been since the story was concluded with that? Okami... Okami, everyone who has worked so hard to make this project a reality, the friends who believed in me and gathered at Clover's Inc., and most importantly, the voices of so many of you who have continued to support Okami.
Even after such a long time, all of this has come together to create this miracle for which I am deeply grateful. Like a strong rising sun, this project is finally in motion, but it's still a small bud that's blossoming. Kick-ass. Yeah. I'm in. I'm so excited. Okami 1 is on sale on Switch right now. Okay, good. Because I've never played it. It was like $6. But hearing all of this has me interested in exploring this. I will...
I will pick up Okami one. So there's sadly no release date for this one, but we do have a teaser trailer that you can check out if you are so inclined. So that's all the TGA stuff we are going to talk about on this show. If you want to hear the wider breakdown as well as some of the stories and hands-on stuff that happened while I was out in LA, go check out this week's All Things Gamers.
We will end the news segment on this. I've done a couple of Donkey Kong Country dedicated episodes over the last few weeks. One was a retrospective on that first game. The other was with Kev Bayless, who was the art... the lead artist of Donkey Kong Country and that SNES trilogy, guy who created Donkey Kong and redesigned, created Diddy Kong and redesigned Donkey Kong. Go check out that episode last week if you missed it.
But we're probably gonna have another Donkey Kong dedicated episode here pretty soon, if we're being honest, because Donkey Kong Country Returns HD comes to Switch early next month. So we got a new overview trailer for this Wii port that is coming to Switch and really just gives us a lot of info we already knew. But it does tell us about the ability to play co-op with just one pair of Joy-Cons.
And it confirms that you can use buttons or motion controls for the actions, which makes sense because they got rid of the motion controls when they ported it to 3DS. So it's only fair that you can use either the Wii or the 3DS controls. use the 3ds controls honestly that was why i was so turned off from this game originally was on the wii it just the motion controls were so annoying so invasive then when it came to 3ds i thought it was a substantially better game
So that's really all I asked for with this port. But there's also Modern Mode, which adds more hearts and lets you carry up to nine items that you can use whenever you need them. So it's coming to Switch on January 16th. Did you ever play this one back on the Wii? Or are you looking forward to this? Are you a DKC fan?
I was never really a DK fan to begin with. I'll be honest with you. Growing up with Sega Genesis and then like having an N64 where I was really just mostly into Pokemon and like the odd Nintendo game here and there. never really got into donkey kong um willing to try it out though it's good it's i mean you i know you probably have switch online yeah go play the snes games and then if you like them
Check out Donkey Kong Country Returns HD next month. But like the SNES games, the first one is a really great like kind of... proof of concept that like they know what they're doing when crafting like a really fun platformer yeah and then dkc2 i think is what most people consider the best of the trilogy and then dkc3 i've actually never played through
But, you know, it's more of similar mechanics, just different characters you control. And then Donkey Kong Country Returns is a very good revival of the franchise. But I think the best one in the entire series is Tropical Freeze. which is on Switch already. Okay, okay. Retro Studios has done a very good job picking up the ball and running with it from Rare after they departed Nintendo.
For sure. So yeah, that comes out January 16th. But Ben, we are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're talking Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Rewind. We will be right back. We're back, and during this middle segment, we are going to be discussing a new release from a studio that I hold in very high esteem, Digital Eclipse. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Rewind is available now, and I know, Ben, you were excited about this.
this when we talked about it previously did you end up taking the plunge with this game i did i did take the plunge i bought it on uh playstation That's your review, an exhausted exhale. No, it's not a total review. There's a lot of love in this game. um i got up to i got up to the first megazord fight i finished the first megazord fight that's all i was able to do in terms of time okay um
played as Billy. I think that might be the only character I haven't played as yet. Who's your favorite? I always liked the Red Ranger. Of course you do. But then, like, you know, once Tommy came into the picture. Sorry, I shouldn't have said it like that. But yeah. Once Tommy came into the picture, though, come on. The Green Ranger into the White Ranger. That was fantastic. fantastic sagas that they put together there, for lack of a better word. But yeah, let's talk.
Power Rangers, Rita's Rewind, which is still giving me trouble every single time I say Rita's Revenge. So do I. Yeah. It's funny. I searched Rita's Rewind. And there is actually a book that, like an e-book, an e-pub that came out earlier this year. called Power Rangers, Rita's Rewind, that is just like a rewind and like a discussion. A retrospective? Yeah, like a retrospective on like the origins of Power Rangers and like an episode guide and everything.
So it's very interesting that both of those came out this year. But all right, let's talk about the game itself. Yes. It's a side-scrolling beat-em-up brawler. And I'm actually surprised by the variety of stages in this game. There's brawler stages, which I have a good time with. The enemies are very repetitive. The environments are fun, I think. But I vastly prefer the environments in Shredder's Revenge. And then...
The thing that I've had a problem with is that sometimes the depth is a little bit tough to gauge. Like there is a level where I was playing as, I guess I was Kimberly, the Pink Ranger. And I kept doing, I did like a dive kick so you can jump and then you do a kick and you can do a dive kick. Kept falling off? Kept falling off?
I was like, I was not lined up with that pit whatsoever. Yeah. But I somehow fell in the pit even though I was on like a, what I thought was a different plane. So I don't know if maybe I was just doing a poor job of gauging the depth or if something happened there. I ran into this.
with playing as Billy on the second level with the Tengu Warriors, who were on a rooftop, and, like, you have to, like, walk across these, like, wooden planks, and I just kept on, like, falling and diving, and then he would... reappear and say affirmative affirmative affirmative yeah there are some repeated voice lines i will say that it feels oddly in these brawler stages it feels oddly lonely
Yeah, right. Which I didn't get that sense from Shredder's Revenge, which is weird because they're both team-up shows that have been adapted into these brawler games. And it's... There's something that I can't put my finger on. It just feels weird. I think I know what part of it might have been. Actually, you know what? You say what you think. Well, one, they have dialogue constantly as though there's somebody else there. True. But also like...
It just doesn't – it feels like there should almost be an option to enable like NPC bots or AI bots. Yeah, to like join you in this fight. But go ahead. What was your – So first of all – the comment where you're saying like um where they were like there's dialogue and then it's like okay i said my part bye bye it's all up to you buddy um i think That part of it is that the backgrounds are not as lively as Shredder's Revenge.
you don't have putty patrollers working behind the computer screen or playing a game boy or like, like there's not enough life in the background. Am I wrong? No, that's actually probably a very accurate assessment of it. But there was something I couldn't put my finger on. It just feels weird only having one.
Power Ranger on the screen. There's been shows where like a Power Ranger goes off on their own and does like a mission by themselves. Yeah, but with the dialogue, it feels paradoxical. It does feel very strange. So something weird about that. But overall, the brawling stages, I think, play pretty well, even if the environments are not nearly as interesting as something like Shredder's Revenge. We're going to talk about this later, but they did release an update.
for ps5 and pc and then it's coming to xbox and switch at a future date that improves a lot of the things about the brawler stages and the megazord stage So we'll talk about that at the tail end of this. But these are just my impressions. I was playing the PS5 version as well, but it's on Switch.
uh then like another type of mode is zord chases so like you hop in your zord and you're you know running through a canyon or something and you're chasing the boss early on it's goldar and you know it's like kind of like a almost like a space harrier style uh level where like you are just going you can move left and right and then you can move the reticle to like target stuff but it didn't doesn't work that well because you're moving left and right
And the reticle does move, but sometimes it doesn't move. They needed to make it so that it was mapped to the right stick, I think. Yeah. And so like when I was behind those barriers. And I was trying to take out those towers that are shooting those things. Yeah, that was kind of frustrating. That sucked. Yeah. That took an hour. So my least favorite thing was the bike chases. So I don't think you've gotten to this yet.
But there's a bike chase sequence where I think it's in the third episode because they're separated by episodes, which is cool because, you know, it's very much inspired by the first season of the TV show. And they do like yesterday of the dumpster, which is a nice touch.
instead of day of the dumpster yeah yeah so these this bike chase you're you're controlling your power ranger going like chasing the the bad guys as you like dodge oncoming traffic you're dodging like craters that are coming in what's the view it's third person behind the okay so it's similar to the megazord okay so the problem was is
It tried so hard to be like this retro aesthetic where every time a target came on the screen, because like you're chasing it and you have to destroy five of these targets that are like. the enemies are running away and it's almost like these tanks that you have to destroy that are carrying this stuff that you need to blow up.
And every time one of those came on big screen, warning, warning, warning across the screen. And then there's other times like where like, you know, so many things are popping up on the screen. It was like. crowded to the point of absurdity and then there's like a point where like rita comes on the screen like blocks your entire view and she laughs and ha ha ha ha ha ha is floating across the screen you're like this is just too much
I get what they were going for because like, that was very arcade of them, you know, to have like warning a boss is approaching or something, but it was just, something was popping up every other second. It felt like, and it just like. It was impossible to actually focus on the action at hand. And thankfully, it's not that difficult of a level. But it was still like, man, this is just annoying. You're making me not want to go back to it.
Let's talk about the good stuff. Well, there's one more bad thing that was very frustrating. And that was... Maybe this is just me being stupid. I... Was playing the game and I was like, the game looks really fuzzy for some reason. Why does it look so fuzzy? Didn't realize that CRTV or whatever view was like a thing. Scanlines.
So annoying. I turned it off. I think it looks crisper without it. Yeah. Yeah, I played like two levels. It should not have been the default. Well, Digital Eclipse, there's such like... like historians and I could see why they would want that in the game. And I understand why people would want that given like the retro aesthetic to make it look like you're playing on an old tube TV.
or an arcade machine but it i don't know i think it looks better without the scan lines personally yeah same here even if it was just like when you first started up just have like a still shot on the screen say scan lines or no And like, like, you know, like a lot of games will have you cut, like calibrate the HDR, like just have that. So people have an option when they go in. Talking about the good. It really does feel like Power Rangers.
There's a lot of love for the IP, you can tell. Yeah, yeah. How far into the game have you gotten? Just past the 50% mark. Okay. Is it all very just strictly Mighty Morphin? There's not really any references to other stuff? From my understanding, that is what they did. They just wanted to tell, basically do like a loose retelling of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first season. Okay.
Okay. Which I'm a fan of. That's the only Power Rangers I really care about, to be honest. No, no, no. That's fair. That's fair. And look, I accept it. well i'm glad they appreciate that you accept but i wish there was more i don't know i mean maybe there's a sequel yeah yeah look um aside from these bike chase levels that um the way that you've described Sounds like it's going to give me anxiety.
It probably will. Yeah, everything else sounds great. I mean, the boss battles are fun. I like, you know, very retro in their sensibilities of like... This guy's going to attack you three different ways, and then maybe he'll summon some minions to fight you while he sits over in the corner. So rock him, sock him. That was cool.
That was cool. And you've got the theme song playing. I mean, come on. Megazord battle. That's what you want. First person is how you take on enemies in the Megazord and you're basically attacking them and charging up your sword because like the sword is kind of the Megazord's finishing. move so that's very cool there's an on-rail shooting stage that switches between side scrolling and and kind of like behind third person and
That is very fun, actually. It takes place in an amusement park, so you're on a roller coaster. You may have seen it in some of the trailers. Yeah. That has been a highlight of my gameplay so far. And it's also very fun to see the story kind of retold because... I grew up on the Ninja Turtles and then I jumped ship to the Power Rangers. And then that was when I started falling more in love with like game IP, like Sonic and Mario and all that stuff. But the Power Rangers was like my second.
like pop culture obsession yeah and it was those early seasons so it's cool to see that story resurfaced and like kind of retold more or less even though some of the stuff is very very different from how it was portrayed in the show So online, is online available yet or no? I believe it's online available for PlayStation 5 and PC. Okay. So we could play. So we could play.
And we should play. We should. With all your time. With all my time. But how does the Megazord fights and all that stuff look? How is that possible with online? That's a good question. I couldn't tell you. I haven't played any online yet. Okay. But it's not available on Switch anyway, so it's not even pertinent to the listeners of this show right now.
But for people who are wondering how long this game is, it's pretty short. It's only 15 stages and it's three hours long according to how long to beat or three and a half if you want to be a completionist. So put in the extra 30 minutes and get a hundred percent on this game. But Digital Eclipse has also released a free update.
on platforms uh i think it's on playstation and pc right now and coming to switch and xbox soon but it increases ranger movement and attack speed it makes the dodge more effective in easy mode And it tunes a lot of the on-foot and Zord combat sections. And like I said, the Switch and Xbox versions are still waiting for online play.
But the game itself is available now on Switch and every other major platform. So any other thoughts you want to throw out there for your gameplay so far? No, I mean, like, I... I need to get a little bit more into it. I was able to play like maybe about a half day's worth. Um, not even maybe like just a quarter of a day's worth. Um, but, um, I,
I was really impressed by the Zord fight, like the actual mega Zord fight. So I'm looking forward to more. Kind of punch out style. Yeah, it was, it was like, that's what you want in this. Yeah. And I will say that like the on foot stuff can be a little repetitive, but I think it's done well enough that it.
doesn't feel out of place among the, like mentioning it alongside something like Shredder's Revenge. I think Shredder's Revenge though is the better game. Absolutely it is. But I don't think that that's necessarily a fault. of digital eclipse completely. Like, I think it's just, it's really hard to make a game like this and make it feel alive and not make it look like a copy.
Yeah. I will say that, did you catch the Easter egg in, I think it was the second level? There's several different Easter eggs. So there was an Easter egg that I did not expect them to make. No. I was going through and I think that the second level is like you're going through like an industrial park where there's like toxic waste everywhere. Yeah. Toxic waste is green.
And if you look at one of the spills, there are four turtles in the waste. Oh, that's fun. That's a cool little nod. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. So lots of Easter eggs related to Power Rangers as well as you play through the stages. You should pick up the Power Rangers Ninja Turtles comic. I would love to. I mean, I watched the TMNT versus Batman.
yeah uh animated movie that was really fun it was i mean you get to see batman fight shredder how cool is that that's cool did you watch power rangers in space with Ninja Turtles, that one episode. That was crazy. I've seen like the stills. of it like i saw like a video something you need to understand and now we've broken my brain entirely something that you need to understand is that that was from a ninja turtle show
that was being done by Saban at the time called Ninja Turtles, the next mutation. Yep. What you, I don't, a lot of people don't know this. That show is a direct continuation of the original movies. Is it? Yeah. That's when they introduced a fifth turtle, right? Yeah. Yeah. Venus to Milo. Ah. That one. That one. May she rest in peace because we've not heard from her since. Actually, she recently was in the comics.
Oh, okay. Well, she's not in any of the other movies or live action stuff. That's true. She's never going to appear in other media. But the Ninja Turtles Power Rangers comics are a lot of fun. I bet. I mean, I love both those IP, especially the turtles. I love Power Rangers, but Ninja Turtles will always be my boys. Yeah, yeah. But Ben, we are going to take one final break. And when we get back, it is a time that you and I have been eagerly anticipating. We are going to deliver.
our full reviews of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. We're going to be sick. We're going to be sick. I guess so. I'll allow you to be sick. We'll be back in just a moment. Sonic the Hedgehog hit theaters in February 2020 and proved to be an unlikely comeback story after one of the ugliest reveal trailers in recent memory basically caused fans to bully Paramount into fixing the character model.
But the movie came out and was surprisingly good and did very well at the box office. Then a couple years later, Sonic 2 hit theaters, adding Tails and Knuckles into the mix. And now here we are, the tail end of 2024. And Sonic the Hedgehog 3 brings Shadow the Hedgehog into the fold as Ben puts on his cardboard shadow hairstyle. Very, very good, Ben, eating out of your Sonic popcorn bucket there.
with nom nom sound effects. Okay. It's 1am here. And as everybody listening to this knows, this entry adds everyone's favorite edge hog shadow to the character roster. as well as associated characters like Gerald Robotnik and Maria. I think we had different theater-going experiences, but we both opted to go to the AMC. fan event, which meant that we were there with the diehard Sonic fans. We were there with the people who maybe took a day off from work to hit this early showing.
We both got a keychain. We both got a poster for our troubles. What keychain did you get? I got Sonic. I got Knuckles. Okay, so there we go. Sonic and Knuckles are here. You picked... No, they just handed me one. Oh, we got to pick. I just assumed that all they had was Knuckles. And I was like, oh, these must be leftover from like Sonic 2 or something. But no, the guy...
The guy letting me in obviously did not care. He was just like, here's your poster. And then he just like struggled to open up the plastic. bag full of the keychains and they were all knuckles and just handings like here's your keychain i felt so bad for the theater employees you know when i was doing all of this look the whole shadow mask thing that i just did a crazy thing on
So I went with my friend who's visiting from Vermont, and she had never been to New York City before. She had a really rough year this year, and I wanted her to have a nice time. And so you took her to a Sonic fan event. Well, she loves Sonic. So yes, she, this is, this is her favorite franchise. Okay. You know, we went to.
We went to see it at AMC. Before we actually went to go see it at AMC, we crossed the street over to Regal because Times Square has AMC and Regal next to each other. Crazy. And we got to see the actual costumes. that Gerald Robotnik and Ivo Robotnik wore. They were on display. It was crazy. Yeah, he sent me a picture of that. That's really cool. My friend was like, did you plan this? And I'm like...
Sure. I don't know. This is weird. This is crazy. So, you know, we went there and yeah, all the other Sonic fans were there and people are just like, very happy. And when, when we went to, when my, my friend bought a popcorn tin combo, which came with a special Sonic popcorn tin, a special cup. And this shadow mask. Well, my friend was like, the cashier was like, which mask do you want? And my friend was like, I don't want a mask. And he was like.
I have to give you a mask. And I leaned in and I was like, did you ever think you would ever say the sentence, I have to give you a mask in your entire life? I feel so bad for you this weekend. God bless. I hope everything is okay. And, you know, it's just... It... Who could have guessed this with this franchise? So I may have told this story on the podcast before, but when I was a little kid, full throes of my Sonic obsession, I had a dream that...
There was a live action Sonic movie coming to theaters and I was so excited. And then I woke up and I was so sad because it was never going to happen. And then you fast forward, what, 25 years? And here we are, three movies deep. And they're great. And, you know, I'm having a blast. I'm wearing a soap shoe around my neck. Like, this is so weird. But like, you know, I just assumed like, oh, they're never good. How would they ever make a live action Sonic movie? How do you do this?
I think we were all just sort of taken by surprise in like the entire like lead up to it. Oh, Jim Carrey's Robotnik. How is that going to work? There's just so much to it. So yeah, let's get into the cast here. So Ben Schwartz is Sonic. James Marston is Tom. Jim Carrey as Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Jim Carrey as Dr. Gerald Robotnik. Tika Sumter as Maddie. Colleen O'Shaughnessy as Tails. Idris Elba as Knuckles. Keanu Reeves as Shadow.
Adam Pally very briefly as Wade Whipple, Lee Majoub as Agent Stone, and Kristen Ritter being another one of the big additions here as director Rockwell. The thing that kind of hit me when we were... When I was watching this movie today, and this is not a slight at Colleen O'Shaughnessy at all. I think she does a fantastic job. Yeah. And she's a delightful human being. Got to interview her as part of the Sonic 2 media tour.
absolutely delightful she embodies tales yeah fully but it's so strange to like look and be like okay ben schwartz is sonic idris elba as knuckles and keanu reeves as shadow but she as the person who does the voice in the games is the only one who also gets to do the voice in the movies. And I'm wondering what the reason for that is. I think they needed... somebody to be Tails I think the answer is simple they needed somebody to be Tails at the end of the first one and they I hate saying this
They didn't want to pay a major name. That's right, because Tails did have a speaking line at the end of Sonic 1. And fans really were like, yes, good. Do that, especially after fans were pissed that Roger Craig Smith was not being Sonic in the movie. Well, that was also kind of spurred on by Roger Craig Smith's reaction to it. Yes, yes. He basically retired from the role and then they brought him back eventually. Right. Now, so I think that there was a lot of like fan alchemy that...
allowed it to be where Colleen stayed as the role of Tails. But it works. But you're right. She isn't, she's terrific, but she is not the same pedigree as like the other ones. Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba. Yeah, yeah. But hey. I'm very happy for her. And again, she's a perfect voice for tails. I'm so glad that it is her. I'm 100% over the moon that it is her. And I'm glad that it's not somebody else.
I'm trying to think in my head who they would have... I'm assuming it would still be a woman voicing Tails. I'm trying to think of who it would have been. Cameron Diaz. No. Reese Witherspoon. Why are we going... Why are you just bringing up, like, rom-com stars from the 90s? Because I don't know what else it would be. Like, I just don't know.
It would probably be like Sydney Sweeney. Who are we kidding? Sydney Sweeney. Yeah, that sounds right, actually. She could be a... You know. She could be Rouge the Bat. She could be Rouge the Bat. But all right, let's non-spoilers, overall impressions for Sonic 3. Well, first of all, coming into this, how would you rank the three pieces of Sonic? cinematic universe media that we've gotten. Yeah. Sonic 2.
Sonic 1, Knuckles. Okay, so Sonic 2 being your favorite, Sonic 1 being after that, and then Knuckles being after that. Okay, that's exactly how I would rank it as well. I mean, it's a short list, but I also think that it's the one that makes the most sense. Okay. So we're on the same page there. I think Sonic 2, the highs in that movie are unlike anything we've seen to this point. Yeah. Especially like, you know, once they hit...
What is it? Is it officially the Mystic Ruins? Is that officially the name of it? I don't know if it was the name of it, but it certainly felt like it. Like, in my head, I'm calling it that. Yeah. So once they get to that point, it is just off to the races. And then, you know, the attack on Green Hill is awesome as well. So Sonic 2, fantastic ending to that movie.
And then, of course, the post-credit tease that led us into Sonic 3, showing us that Shadow is going to be here. Give me your overall impressions, spoiler free, of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. My overall impressions are that this was a true blast.
This was fun from beginning to end. There were some pacing issues. You know, just like... just like kind of just mostly at the beginning of the movie there are certain things that happen without an actual explanation which we could get into more with spoilers overall though this is sonic adventure 2 the movie and i'm here for it and i'm so happy that this exists and i don't think that it could have done anything different other than have more time
to allow certain things to breathe but i can't think of something that i would want to there's like one or two things that i would want to shorten but that's about it um This is not a movie that focuses too heavily on the human characters. I think that's the biggest lesson they seem to have learned. They learned it with Sonic 2 by sending most of the humans off to Hawaii. Yeah, yeah. But they still had that weird wedding sequence. Yeah. Now, this one...
Without going into spoilers, it treats every single actor well in the previous installments. Sort of the same for the characters, but, but, um, you're going to see this movie to have a good time and to see Sonic and all of his furry buddies. And. do weird and cool, magnificent things and have a great time. I don't think that this is a spoiler for me to say. Okay. One thing that I was disappointed in.
This movie felt like it was sold to me as a Christmas movie. Why do you say that? It felt like through the marketing. They were really leaning into this being a holiday themed movie. Okay. I got the sense from one scene that they showed in the marketing.
But I didn't get the sense that it was going to be a Christmas movie. I mean, aside from the fact that it's just coming out five days before Christmas. I mean, there were other holiday things that they were doing. I mean, like in the background, I felt like... They were doing, like, an ugly sweater contest, and, like, they released that holiday, like, CGI short. Now, none of these are actually in the movie, so they get a pass there, but, like, it felt like this was...
Going to be a holiday movie. I didn't. It wasn't. Having said that. It might have also made things. Too chunky.
If they put in the Christmas stuff? Yeah. I think that this is a movie that while I would agree with you, there are some scenes that I... think could have been shorter and some scenes that could have used a little bit more time and some that were just straight up ridiculous now that I'm actually like really thinking about it yes they trimmed off a lot of the fat off this movie it feels like yeah
Overall out of 10? We'll get to that. What are your overall impressions? I had a great time with this movie. I think that there were... The pacing is a little bit strange, as you had indicated. I think that a lot of the action scenes, especially one later on, were a tad underwhelming. Okay.
And one of them, I had a hard time tracking what was going on, which is a problem that kind of... reached its pinnacle in like the mid 2000s to the mid 2010s and it seems like we'd kind of learned our lesson but there was something that there's a scene that plays out that I was just like I see
pretty colors and like things flashing in front of my face but i don't really have a great grasp on what's going on and you know that's that again that's a problem that i felt like we had left in the past but it did kind of rear its head in this One scene that I'm talking about. I there were certain things that I didn't quite care about. I'm overall positive on it. I think. Yeah.
This movie is sloppily constructed, I would say. Okay. And I think that there's a lot of stuff that I didn't end up caring about, but I would much rather have a movie that's a little bit sloppy. but a whole lot of fun. A movie that is perfectly constructed, but boring to tears. Right. And this movie is definitely on the other side of that spectrum. This movie is a little bit sloppy, a little bit weirdly paced.
but it is just nonstop fun from start to finish and it also has a lot of heart yeah as all the sonic movies do right all the sonic media like knuckles despite my problems with that show it has a lot of heart and a lot of moments yeah But that would be the case here. I think that the interplay between Sonic and Shadow is great. I think that some of the Robotnik stuff between...
Ivo and. Gratuitous. Very gratuitous. I enjoyed seeing Jim Carrey do what Jim Carrey does best. But there was also like a time we got to a point where I was just like, I just wish we could not. cut to them right now and i wish we could yeah yeah yeah so there's that and then um but yeah i mean it's jim carrey doing jim carrey things and i am always going to be there for that
I do think that Knuckles and Tails were a little underserved, underutilized in some of this stuff. Especially Tails, I felt like didn't really get... a lot to do at certain points but i feel like we're tiptoeing up to the line of spoilers anything you want to say before we drop the drop the hammer and announce the spoilers before before we go to the spoilers. And I see what you did there. So can you tell me what you felt? How did you feel about Keanu Reeves being shadow overall?
It took me a second to not be like, oh, that's Keanu, you know, but it, the same could be said about Chris Pratt as Mario. Yeah. But then once we hit, like once the film really hit its stride. I was like, oh no, that is Shadow. Just the same way I was with Chris Pratt as Mario. Once we hit the meat of the movie, I was like, nope, that's Mario. That's just how Mario sounds in this movie. And eventually I was able to divorce.
Sitting on his bed talking to his father, right? I was able to divorce Keanu from, you know, Shadow's voice from Keanu Reeves. Yeah. And same thing for Idris Elba. The same thing when he comes on at first, I'm like... that's not the same voice from the games. And then I'm like, Oh yeah, this is just, you know, Idris Elba. Right. Right. But then eventually it's, it's just knuckles. Yeah. Yeah. Um, a whole lot of fun.
But you liked Keanu overall in this role? Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was a rumor for a while that it was going to be Hayden Christensen. I'm kind of glad that it wasn't because I think we would have just gotten a bunch of Vader jokes. And that would have just been annoying. Really happy with Keanu. He brought a certain depth to the character. And listen, all you sickos out there.
That love shadow, I get it. I understand it now. Oh, you didn't understand it before. I understand it now, but I still don't accept it. All right. So Ben, we have tiptoed up to this line a couple of times here. We are going to now give the official spoiler warning. Anything after this.
moment in time anything spoilery in this movie is fair game so If you have not seen this movie and you plan on seeing it unspoiled, this is your chance to turn off the episode, to pause it and save it until after you're able to see it like this weekend or next week or whatever you go and see this movie. But yeah, we are going to be talking open spoilers from here on out. So Ben, what was your number one highlight moment from this movie? Live and learn.
Yes. And I, the people next to me in particular may have been the biggest Sonic fans on the planet. When Live and Learn came on. One of them started air guitaring and the other one started air drumming. Yeah, there it is. brought the band with you yes i did and they were all in and you know i knew what i was getting into when i went to a fan event and i was about it you know like if i was there trying to like just like oh i need to like
really understand the complex dialogue of this film. There's none of that. Like I said, there's heartfelt moments, the part where Sonic and Shadow finally kind of connect on an emotional level. That is actually a very good scene. It is. It's very touching to see them kind of like see each other because for the longest time, Sonic's like, oh, I'm nothing like him. And Shadow's just like, well, you're more like me than you realize.
And then there's that rage that Sonic has foreshadow after his attack on James. James. Tom. James Marsden. He plays Tom. And, you know, I interviewed him once. We're on a first name basis. Yeah. But, you know, he and Ben actually swung by a theater, but it wasn't my theater. That's what you get for going to AMC instead of Regal. I should have gone to Regal, I guess. So they, you know, the connection between Sonic and Shadow in that moment, I think was one of my favorite.
That was also, though, the scene where I had maybe the most problems was the Super Sonic versus Super Shadow fight. The versus or were they teamed up? The fight against each other. The fight? Yeah. No, no, no. It was the team up, actually. When they teamed up and they went up into space, live and learn blasting, and then it cuts away to a Robotnik. I hated that.
momentum killing moment and i'm not and and that's the exact reason why it has nothing to do with like my love for the music and my my friendship with johnny and everything like that like it has nothing to do with that it had to do with the momentum killing like we're we're jumping into a joke thing now like we have a kick-ass moment right now and we're just doing like
For lack of a better term, the two Robotniks are doing a dick measuring contest with their nanotech or whatever. That stinks. Yeah. It just didn't do anything for me, right? Yeah. It was like, I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of this. We're watching... Super Sonic and Super Shadow on a major motion picture movie screen right now. We are watching the best Dragon Ball Z live action movie that will ever be made. And then it cuts to this Robotnik face-off.
And then I'm like, Oh my God, just go back to supersonic and super shadow. And then they do go back to them live and learn kicks back up. And it feels like, okay, well, somebody just hit like repeat on the track that they had. And then the.
the scene that i was talking about where everything was happening too fast for me to like really track on what was going on because like you know they sent out like okay well here come all these these robots out to fight them and they like bounce around and because i'm not used to shadow being like like white yeah i just can't my eyes can't track who is doing what i just see one glowing hedgehog attacking one thing and then And it was over before we really got –
to see it get going, you know, like it was very, very fast. And I felt like they didn't want to waste too much time on it. But I was like, this is like the climax of the movie, man. Yeah. Let us enjoy it.
There's a part of me that's wondering, because I know how much creative input Jim Carrey had in a lot of this. The two things that bothered me about the two Robotniks was... what we just discussed and also far too long of a dance scene yeah but there was a dance scene in sonic 2 and then fine also the slow motion scene that's cool in sonic 1 i don't understand
why people in some weird boardroom feel the need to put that in. I'm in my brain. I'm thinking it's a boardroom decision. I don't know. Maybe I think it's a appeal to kids decision. Yeah. That was certainly the vibe that I got from Sonic 2, especially. And then Sonic 3, they were like... Because there was actually a dance sequence with Jim Carrey in Sonic 1 as well. There was. There was. Look, Jim Carrey wants that...
Nickelodeon kids choice award and he wants to get slimed again. So I get it, I guess. So I love the story overall. The Tokyo scene was very cool. Yeah. We got some one okay rock in there. Yes. That was fun. Yeah. So I stayed and watched like, you know, we're, we're not going to jump into the post credit scenes quite yet, but you know, I'm watching this, the credits as they go by escape from the city.
When did that play? So I was also wondering that, too, because I read that and I was like, what is happening? Apparently. I'm seeing the movie again tomorrow. OK, I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it with Johnny. And I will definitely try to pick up on it. I'm sure that far more sick individuals than you and I have figured it out. But... Like, that may be... I mean, like, live and learn to open your heart, stuff like that. That may be my favorite Sonic song. Yeah, so I spoke...
I spoke to my friend about this, my friend Jack Botnick about this, and he said that it was somebody's ringtone. Oh. That's weird. Huh. I'm not seeing anything. I searched city escape. Yeah. Well, the song is called Escape from the City. Yeah. Escape from the City. I searched and I didn't. find anything. So I don't know. It's mostly speculation of like, do you think we'll hear Escape from the City in Sonic 3? Like Reddit posts and stuff like that. So I know that the Eggman theme...
was Eggman's ringtone. So I don't know. I'll keep my ears peeled and I'll tell you tomorrow. Are you seeing this again, by the way? I would like to. Maybe not till after Christmas, but I was one of those movies where I was like, I feel like I would appreciate this more fully on second viewing. I know if you see it Saturday, you get a free poster.
I already got a free poster. You get another one. Is it the same one? No, it's a different one. It's actually a better looking one. I hate this world. I have a very busy weekend. That's fair. That's fair. Look. Those were the big things that I didn't like about the movie. And I feel like it doesn't... How is Gerald alive?
Yeah, because he even said not bad for like a hundred and five year old or a hundred and ten year old. And like he's wearing his lab coat with his like name tag on it and everything. Like what? What's happening here? That's not explained. As far as I can understand, that was not explained at all. I mean, was it something to do with like the same stasis chamber that Shadow was in or something? I don't know. So I spoke to Jack Botnick about this. Again, shout out.
And the theory is that he gained some form of like increased life with the quill. Okay. Like. Because he kept on putting the quill against his tongue, and maybe that's, I don't know, something. I'm convinced Jim Carrey just really loves doing that motion with his head because he does it as both characters. Shocked by the quill. A reaction? It looks very uncomfortable. It does. Yeah, I don't know. How did you feel about their interpretation of the Eclipse canon?
I was okay with it. How did you feel about their interpretation of their arc? I mean... It wasn't an arc. No, it was just like a lab.
And also the death of Maria. That was very breezed through, it felt. I felt like it had to be. Yeah, they couldn't show... her being shot directly like they had to have the the guy being like what are you doing there's a kid and they're like orders are orders right right and they'd be they accidentally shoot the explosion yeah um yeah they couldn't just have straight up child
murder on a family movie. So I get it. Yeah. What did you feel about the inclusion of Chow? It gave me hope. It made me happy. I thought I was going to tear up when Live and Learn was playing. They didn't give me enough of a chance to feel anything with Live and Learn because they had to break it up with the Robotnik nonsense.
But the chow garden, I got oddly. My friend did. My friend teared up. On the chow garden or live and learn? On live and learn. Okay. The chow garden kind of got me a little bit because it's like, wow, these. They have not announced, they have not said, they've not mentioned Chow Gardens in so long. Yeah, it's very- Exonic Frontiers has like a passing reference to it. Yeah, yeah. It's-
We got it. We got to get that in another game sometime. Yeah, absolutely. Stop putting them in cars. Like... Has it ever explained how Agent Stone was suddenly like incredible on a... My theory is plot force. It's a wonderful thing. You know, I was about to be so mad if pulled it off and it was Wade. I'm a warrior now. I know, but not... We had six episodes of how he became a warrior. Yeah, yeah. And then we saw all 30 seconds of him on screen in this movie. Yeah.
And it wasn't even a, it was, that was frustrating. That was actually a good bit. Him playing hockey with the master Emerald. That was, that was a funny bit. Look, we're, we're dealing with some like really like dumb. And so like at a certain point, it's all goofy. It's all silly. And so we have to sort of be like, well, if we're dealing with goofy things.
Let's take something that's a serious thing within the universe and make it all so goofy. I'm okay with that. And I'm okay with just like a short stint of Wade. Like we had six episodes of him. This was the right amount for this movie. And there is, I mean, if you are not extremely interested in Wade and Knuckles to a lesser extent.
There's no reason that you need to see the Knuckles series. If you're not a Paramount Plus subscriber and you don't care to be, there's nothing that you are going to really get out of this. There's two elements that carry over, really. the whole Master Emerald and Wade and that relationship and whatever, and the Flames of Disaster. But you could just, if you don't know any better, it's just like... You could just sort of extrapolate, yeah. Oh, he's got fire on his fist. Fine, whatever.
And like, you know, Wade having the Master Emerald, like, I don't know, you could just be like, OK, well, he's like a police. He's like the police chief. And it's not required viewing. Knuckles is not required viewing, which is both. great and a waste of time. But no, you know, the, I didn't really see any value for Kristen Ritter's character. Aside from just a gun general. But then why not just have the gun commander? They had to...
Kill him off, I guess. Did he die? That was another conversation. It seemed like he did. Really? They never showed him again, right? But here's the thing. You see Tom disguised as him, and wouldn't... Kristen Ritter's character Rockwell like react didn't she say something like you're okay or something like that I don't remember and then again because he had like a his arm in a sling I thought right he did have his arm in a sling
Which is the universal sign in Sonic 3 that this person almost died because that's what Tom emerged from the tent with at the end. Same flame? Yeah, probably. So, you know what? Maybe Tom was wearing that sling as the general. And he was like... I just have a really bad feeling things are going to really be crappy later. So I'm just going to try this out and just sort of like give it a good fit and everything like that. Did you have any...
doubts in your mind that Tom was going to survive that? Or did you think Shadow straight up murked him? I don't think that there was any universe that we would see a move, a Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie, where a child dies, and then we see a grave for another character. But that would have been, you know...
Kind of like a mirror image, which is, you know, what they were going for anyway, right? Because they were trying to be like, look, under the same circumstances, you too could become like this dark brooding, vengeful character. I don't, I don't, I mean... The look that Maddie gives Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles after they get into the ambulance and everything. By the way, everybody's just fine with these three.
aliens just walking around fine whatever um like that look was uh that like good acting like that was like a really strong look For somebody that's looking basically at three tennis balls. But I'm sorry. I'm sorry, man. I have to say, though, like there are some movies where it's like a human character and like a computer.
animated character in like a live action thing like you saw this sometimes with detective pikachu yeah where it was live action characters with a cgi character and sometimes you'll see there are certain actors who don't really know how to act with those CGI characters. I think all of the humans in the Sonic movies, despite my problems with some of the emphasis that they put on the human storylines at times.
I think they're all very good at acting with these, you know, fake characters that are acting alongside them. Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree with that. What did you think of... them not having Maria have an illness. I was okay with it. Okay. Because I think that having it be a vengeful story, because that even like kicks off things like, okay. Gunn was responsible directly for her demise. It wasn't some illness or anything like that.
it was literally gun and then that way when knuckles or when sonic knuckles and tails show up in tokyo and they're like hey we just want to talk which is what sonic would try to do in that situation shadow goes I saw you get out of that gun helicopter. We have nothing to talk about. And it's like, okay, that makes sense. Cause like, otherwise I feel like shadow could have been talked down in that moment if he didn't think they were with gun. Yeah. So.
Is it retconned then that Gunn existed because they didn't exist until the second movie, according to the director? I mean, I guess. It's also a little bit fast and loose with how they play some of the lore. Yeah. I mean. Like, didn't they also say like, oh, well, we found this like base that, you know, has.
been hidden for 50 years and then here we go we come to find out in the opening scene of this that there's somebody always sitting guard at it and like they have an entire team that so it's like okay somebody knew about this yeah Yeah. So I don't, I don't think that they, I mean, I think that it's kind of like Marvel where like they give you a post credit scene, which by the way, we're going to talk about that very soon here. Sure. And the post credit scenes are more.
setting the tone than being like gospel yeah this is something that happened yeah yeah like i i remember for like age of ultron there was like the Thanos, like love and everything like that. And then when the writers for infinity war and end game were approached in like, how does this fit in? And they're like, not our movie. And I'm like, great. Yes. You know what? You know what?
20 years ago, I would have got caught up on that. But you know what? Not anymore. I think that it's just one of those things where it's like, okay, this is like a... almost like a non-canonical tease of what is happening. And then the real canonical stuff is what we are, what we get in the actual movies, right? So like the post-credit scenes that we're going to talk about in a second here.
There's a few – there's like one or two other spoiler things before the post-credits. Yes, but like I don't know if the stuff in the post-credits scenes that we saw are actually like stuff that we are going to see. It is for now, right? But then when we get to the fourth movie – there might be
Something that is like slightly different about the way those events play out because they're probably going to want to show some of those events in the actual movie itself. Right. And they might change it in like, you know, the three years between now and when the next movie comes out.
But what are the other stuff that you want to talk about? We don't have Gerald dying. Look, we knew going into this movie that we were going to have Jim Carrey playing both roles. Fine. How did you feel knowing that? we were going into this movie without Gerald dying. And instead it was going to be Gerald is alive. And now we see the way that he died in this one, which is basically a quill shoved up his rear end and basically just getting obliterated.
Yeah. How'd you feel about all that? I thought it was fine. I mean, it was a little anticlimactic, but like at the same time, I think I was over the Gerald shtick by then. Me too. Patricide is when you kill your father. What is the term for killing your grandfather? Grand patricide? Okay. I don't know. Term for killing grandfather. This is going to be great on my search history.
Yeah. It is senicide. Senicide. Oh, but that is the cultural or ritual killing of the elderly. So I don't know if that is. Jesus! It says, CENOCIDE is the killing of one's elderly family members. Okay, we're going down a rabbit hole here. Yeah. By the way, I've taken off my chain. I look like an asshole wearing this. And I've given you a lot to edit out, and I apologize. guys um so good so um talk about boring flights no
No movies or food. I'm out of here. Crowd erupted. Yes. What did, what were the biggest pops for you? Yeah. Your crowd. So it was that. It was, oh, man. It was live and learn, obviously. Those were like the two... Oh! Women in the military? My crowd didn't react to that one. I have to tell you something. That was maybe the funniest line I've heard in a movie in a very long time.
That was really, really funny. Turns out Jim Carrey is very funny. Turns out he is. One of the greatest comedic actors of all time. It shouldn't come as a surprise that he could deliver a line. There were some jokes in there that I was like... wow they're kind of like the fourth wall thing dumb bad the fourth wall thing i wasn't the biggest fan of but whatever uh but like some of them i was just like wow they're they're touching on some some stuff with these with these boobs one yeah
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like not super family friendly, but whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there were some things where I was like, oh, are we supposed to joke about that? We didn't have. really Rachel and the other guy, her husband. Yeah. Well, we got the holograms. We got the holograms. I like that. We're just incorporating mission impossible tech with like, where did they, did tails make that?
i'm assuming because isn't it shaped like a tails like yes yes okay because i was like where did they where did Tom and Maddie get hologram technology? Remember at the beginning of the movie, we see holograms. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was wondering. Like, where did they come from? But I was like, oh, well, tails can do it. Tails can do anything. Yeah.
Trying to think of any other things we need to talk about. What other pops did your theater get? Anything else? Those were the two main ones. And then the post-credits scene was actually the biggest pop that... the entire movie got really. Yeah. I mean, there are people in seem to enjoy like the shadow, just beating the crap out of people scenes where he's just teleporting around chaos, turning super for the very first time. Also that.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. When when he kind of like got the Chaos Emeralds out of Sonic and then they both got it and like, you know. has supersonic in focus and then it pans over and you just see kind of blurry out of focus super shadow. Yeah. That got a little bit of a reaction. We got a lot of live and learn as the motif for shadow.
I thought that was really cool. It was a nice touch. Having Maria do it on the acoustic guitar at the beginning. It was just really smart. They really could not have done this movie without that song. Yeah, I would agree. Although I'm still... scratching my head at where Escape from the City was. You know what? I'm...
That is your job as you go to the second showing. You need to figure out where that song was played and why was it not more prominent? Yeah. Neither of us who are obsessed with that song picked up on it. Well, the thing is... that I feel like with this movie, there's not enough real estate to give that song its actual due. That's problem number one. Problem number two.
is that we had San Francisco as a locale already. Yeah. And that was in the first movie. Could they have done it when Shadow was running or riding his motorcycle away from Sonic? No. Just trying to think of a time that would have made sense to have Escape from the City as the lyrics. As much as I really, really, really hate to admit it, I believe that it was just a ringtone. Yeah.
Yeah, when I caught that, I was just like, what? How did I miss that? Me and my friend were looking at that as well. All right, let's talk about the post-credit scenes. Got two of them. Yeah. First one. huge pop i i would describe i remember i brought up the people sitting next to me as just sorry there's one more thing okay go for it eggman dead
I would have to guess that he is. Okay. This kind of does tie into the second post-credits scene, but I mean. Ties into the first post-credits scene. First one was the big story. Both. Yes. But like. we've had him vanish at the end of the first one. And like, we knew where he was and everything like that, but he was presumed dead. Then at the end of the second one, he was presumed dead. And that was like,
a real way to possibly get him out because Jim Carrey was retiring. Now, what else do you do with the Robotnik character? Yeah. It does feel like it's the end for Jim Carrey playing Dr. Robotnik, at least maybe for one movie. Although, I mean, I don't know. It seems like maybe like... Who is going to be the creator of Metal Sonic if not Dr. Robotnik?
Yeah, that's the big question. Jumping into the post-credits scene now, you know. So yeah, let's get into the post-credits scene then. I will say that the moment... Metal Sonic appears. Oh, okay, yeah. On the screen. Crowd goes wild. Yeah. Absolute insane. reaction to that yeah and then they all pop up and i'm like we're getting like a full scene here and then we get the cloaked amy coming in to save the day that was a bigger pop
The people next to me, the only way I could describe their reaction to Amy is guttural. Ooh. Just the... That's like... That's not a noise I want to associate with the character or the franchise. Just a guttural scream of excitement. And I'm there for it. Again, I'm not ever going to yuck somebody's yum, especially in just pure excitement.
Like, I am happy for people who are, like, so overwhelmed with excitement that Amy's there. We went to these fan events for a reason. I love seeing Amy and Metal Sonic on the big screen. I'm so... I didn't know any spoilers going in. Neither did I. Yeah. I'm so glad. I'm so glad that I got to experience this firsthand the right way. Did Amy say any lines? No. Did Metal Sonic say any lines? I think Metal Sonic did.
but Amy did not. I remember specifically thinking like, okay, they were smart. They kept Amy silent for this. Yeah. Who are you? And then she just kind of takes off the thing and then it cuts as soon as you see her face. Great. So that way they can cast whoever. We can get Bridget Jones's diary. I'm trying to think of like the oldest. Great. Meryl Streep will play Amy. Yeah. Hell yeah. Why did I do that? All right.
So what are we thinking here? I'm wondering if the way that they can make it so that Metal Sonic exists without Dr. Robotnik, either Dr. Robotnik. is that maybe this was some fail safe that he had in place that he had developed over the last several years after his first encounter with Sonic. And when he dies, it... activate some system that unleashes all of these because he's going to assume that it was sonic that killed him yeah so these metal sonics are going to come out and hunt him down
and then combined to form Metal Overlord. That would probably be the appropriate logical next step. And then we're going to get Sonic Heroes as our next movie adaptation because... Shadow had his presumed dead moment. And then in the subsequent credit scene, we see that he's alive, but we don't hear anything from him. And I think he might have lost his memory.
And we start getting a little bit of the Sonic heroes, like figuring out who he is. So there was one other thing that we didn't touch upon in the spoiler. That reminds me. Again, it's 1am. I'm sorry. Shadow's origin being basically Superman. Yeah, just kind of falling out of the sky. Yeah. I'm wondering, like, is that telling you that, like, is he from Sonic's world? Well, I'm wondering if they, so, correct me if I'm wrong.
But wasn't there just like a little offhand comment about an incident 50 years ago in the Knuckles streaming show where they mentioned like black arms? Or am I misremembering that? That would make sense. Yeah, I mean, I guess they could have it be so it was a Black Arms or Black Doom thing. Yeah, because what I'm thinking is that will get explored in a Shadows show.
I'm going to say that. That was actually my next prediction was before Sonic 4 comes out, I think we get a Shadow streaming show and it follows loosely the story of... Shadow the Hedgehog and with elements of Shadow Generations. Okay. So then here's the question. How do you not involve Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles in that show?
Because they don't know he's alive. And I don't know if they necessarily need to do the stakes as high as like the president of the United States is getting involved. I think that they could just have it be a more personal story of. this alien coming to earth looking for shadow because you know shadows back out in the open so like this alien might pick up that he's out and about and then being like okay well like
you know, it's a more personal story of this alien, maybe even kind of like shadow generations, like unlocking his full potential and kind of like reacclimating him into this, into the world. I think. That's a good point. But I also think that Sonic is missing. We saw that Sonic had sped all the way to New York. Fine.
But I don't think that he just went to New York. I think he went to the future. Really? I mean, that would also fit in with the Sonic CD. Yeah. If they're going to go adapting that. It's entirely possible. What told you it was the future, aside from the fact that Metal Sonic looks a lot more sophisticated than any of Robotnik's other machines? It was that, and Amy was wearing a cloak. Like, I don't know. Like, it felt like very, like, she's like...
a lone warrior sort of thing like a dystopia you know what i mean like the last ronin yeah something like that like like there was something about that there was also a part of me that maybe felt like there was an element of sonico 6 that was being like
re massaged so to speak we're like instead of there being princess elise it's amy is the princess and now she's like this warrior princess that like from a ruined world or whatever and so then we get silver in the future movie i really hope we don't do multiverse like they did with sonic prime yeah I would really prefer if we just keep it single timeline. Like, yeah, okay, there's other planets and stuff. But like, yeah. I mean, honestly, I predicted that...
Metal Sonic was going to be the post-credits scene of Sonic 2, and then we got Shadow instead. Yeah. I think that my most wanted was Chaos, though. Yeah, I know. Cause I love Sonic adventures story. The first Sonic adventure and chaos is one of my favorite villains. And it would be a cool thing to be able to explore the, uh, maybe if we get like a season two of the knuckles show, we can explore like the echidna.
kind of ancestry which includes chaos and then i don't know i wouldn't want to see without sonic though because you gotta have the supersonic battle it's very tough um did you catch that bio lizard was in this movie No. It was literally the monster movie that they were watching. Oh. That's it. Wow. Yeah. They did that. They did that. Let's run down our scores here. So I would say that in hindsight, these may be different from the scores that I actually handed out at Game Informer.
Sonic 1, I would probably in hindsight, having just rewatched them before this, 7.5 out of 10. I think that that's fair. I think I'm like right there with you. 7.5 out of 10. Sonic 2, I'm going to say 8 out of 10. Sonic 2 was... I would actually... It's like an 8 or an 8.5. Okay. Knuckles, I... Only watched the one time, but I gave it a 6 out of 10. I remember. I remember reading your thing. I remember how bothered you were.
And I remember understanding it. I liked a lot of parts of that, but like, it's not a knuckle show. I would give it maybe a 6.5. You know, I remember waking up.
like i watched the first three then i went to sleep and then i woke up like an early like saturday morning and i was like let me just watch the next one while i'm laying in bed here and i see this like facebook marketplace monster lava monster and it's like explaining like the whole like the sonic 06 nonsense and it's like i'm like what what is happening and it's like a rock opera um
I would give that a 6.5. Okay. Now we come to Sonic 3. What is your score for Sonic 3 out of 10? Sonic 3 is a blast from start to finish. with some minor hiccups that do does not prevent me from giving this a nine out of 10. Okay. So you're slightly higher than me. I would give it an 8.5. Yeah. So still, it's my favorite of the Sonic movies. And I think it's also the highest scoring on Rotten Tomatoes. It currently has an 88%.
on Rotten Tomatoes, which is unheard of for, like, a video game adaptation. I know. I know. Do you feel like you're higher on it because of your love for Adventure 2, though? Or do you, like... I'm not afraid to admit I think that that might skew my score a little bit. I love Adventure 2, but it's my...
probably least favorite of the adventure games. Oh, okay. Okay. I like adventure. There's only two. Yeah. But no, I love adventure too. I, I just think that like, you know, the character of shadow was implemented really well. Yeah. I think that, again, Knuckles and Tails were a little underutilized, especially Tails. The Robotnik stuff wasn't the best in a lot of the stretches that they gave us. I think gratuitous is the right word.
Most of the characters felt indulgent. Most of the characters did have a lot of good stuff to do though. Like I think that like they found the right balance of like. the Tom and Maddie story and, you know, the stuff that doesn't involve like the main characters. Yeah. Yeah. But like, I still enjoy those characters. I just don't want like 15 minute stretches of just them.
One more thing. I'm so sorry that we're jumping. Christo Fernandez. Yes. Danny Rojas from Ted Lasso for people who. So I remember. I think in February, IGN had put out an article announcing the cast, and it was going to be Ayla something as Maria. She did great, by the way. Yeah, she did. Maria.
And Kristen Ritter is going to be in the cast and Chris and, uh, Christo Fernandez is going to be in the cast. And I'm like, Oh, Danny Rojas. That sounds great. Eggman is life. What does this mean? And then. We see... The telenovela. Probably... I don't understand. I'm having trouble understanding the purpose of that scene. I don't know. I honestly don't know what they decided to why they put a telenovela that Eggman was obsessed with. But they did. Yeah. And.
Yeah, it didn't seem like it mattered. I think it was just played for laughs. It wasn't important to the story. They made a big deal about Christo Fernandez being in this movie, and then it was just like, what? So... Ben, we're going to start wrapping up here, but did you get a chance to play the Sonic X Shadow Generations level that they released to promote Sonic 3? So did I. I thought it was one of the better Shadow levels, actually.
When you get an S rank as Shadow and he does like the fall and everything like that, people that love Shadow, I get it now. I understand. that like i know i said that earlier but like i really got it from that one like that it was such a cool level more of that Give us more of that. Absolutely. I hope they keep giving us cool stuff like this. I don't know. Give us a level based with Sonic.
Put a Sonic Generations DLC out. I would not be opposed to that. That would have been cool if we could have gotten Sonic Generations updated levels for the games that have come out since 2011. I know. But yeah, you know, this like this really felt like part of it was a love letter to Japan as well. Yeah. I was okay with Keanu's voice in the level. It wasn't as great as he is in the movie. Agreed. The skin, though...
Great skin for shadow. Why can't I use it for the other levels? What are you doing? Maybe they're concerned about having that version with the normal shadow voice. I think that there's got to be some weird brand reason. There's got to be some weird corporate reason that doesn't make sense.
Yeah, more than likely, because that's the answer for a lot of things that don't make sense in this world. Yes. Corporate nonsense. Speaking of corporate nonsense, you can get the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 level starring Shadow. included with the digital deluxe version of Sonic X Shadow Generations. But if you didn't get that, you can buy the level for $5 on your storefront of choice, or you can just flat out upgrade to the digital deluxe version of Sonic X Shadow Generations for $12.
And then before we wrap up this episode, I'm sure you saw this news, Ben, and I've referenced it before in this episode, but it should come as no surprise that Variety is reporting that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 has been greenlit. and will hit theaters in 2027. How old will I be? I don't know how old you are now. 36 now. Okay, so that's three years from now. Ugh. So you'll be almost 40.
And I will be 40. So it's, it only took 30 years for us to get to a Metal Sonic story. Yeah. And really be crushing 40. Literally. Yikes. Cool. Wish we didn't have to wait that long. I have a feeling it's going to be in the early parts because they've been in a two-year cadence. Unless they have a big stopgap where they're going to be like, okay, we're going to really blow this out and have like a shadow.
series that's going to fill the gap here or another writer's strike. Yeah. Maybe that's what they're putting. Everything strike. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I don't blame them. Like, yeah, do that. But like, um, I'm excited for that. Like the Sonic cinematic universe. Yeesh. Who knew? Amazing. I'm all about it. And. 2026 is when the Mario movie sequel is coming out. Is that correct?
When's the Zelda movie coming out? 2026 is the Mario movie sequel. That feels like a long time. Yeah, well, I mean, 2026 is going to be a big year because that's also the next Avengers movie. But it feels like a mistake for Mario to be that long. Like, children's frontal lobe development, they've already forgotten about the first one.
I guess they can rewatch it. Yeah, I mean, it's not like it's gone forever after you see it once. But that wraps up our review of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It's 1.30 in the morning. I know, I kept you way too long. If you're listening to this and you are wondering what is happening on the other side of the Patreon fence this week on All Things Gamers.
Former Game Informer editor and current MinMax video editor Charles Hart joined me to give his thoughts on Monster Hunter Wilds. I gave my full thoughts on Amazon's secret level animated series. as well as my hands-on impressions of the upcoming third-person open-world action game from Pearl Abyss, Crimson Desert. And we ran down all the biggest announcements from the Game Awards, plus I shared... some of my stories from being out there on the ground, including encounters with
several of the nominated developers behind games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Metaphor ReFantasio, and also my random encounters with various well-known voice actors and, of course, Sam Lake. So, uh... Go check that out at the $10 tier on the All Things Nintendo podcast Patreon. But that wraps up this episode of All Things Nintendo. Ben, thank you so much for joining me, staying up late and nerding out about Sonic 3. Will you tuck me in?
Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. As you know, that Patreon that I mentioned and the associated Discord server are the best ways to get any questions or comments in. But you can also hit me up, brian at allthingsmintendo.com or reach out to me on social media at brianpichet. That is also my YouTube channel name. And if you would subscribe to that channel, it would help out a lot. Ben, where can people find you online? You can find me at DrBenMD on Twitter.
whatever you want to call it. I'm going to be seeing the movie again with Johnny. And that's going to be a really cool experience. A lot of fans are very excited about that. Well, if you're in the area, go check that out. That is our show for this week. Thank you again for listening. Take care. We'll see you next time.
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