178: Virtual Springfield 2K25

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free trial. What? Okay. That was not the mute. Okay. Okay. All right. When I push the button, it's... When I push the button for the podcast music, it's just... It's just doing... Okay, alright. Some things got a little discombobulated over here this morning. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the program. How are you doing? It's the Jeff Gerstmann Show for what is today's date? 11-4.

November 4th. We're here. It's Tuesday. How's everybody doing? How are you living out there? Fantastic. It's been a weird week.

Obviously, Once Upon a Katamari has descended upon this household. You heard my boy talking about it last week. And he is... playing it constantly and also he some he occasionally seems done with it um For the past couple of days, he's been oscillating back and forth between We Love Katamari and Once Upon a Katamari. He's been kind of going back to that one and playing some of those levels. He...

He kind of burned through the game pretty quick. Well, I say pretty quickly, but he's been playing a lot of it. And Once Upon a Katamari is organized into eras. It's a time-traveling game. And so you move from zone to zone. And so it spreads the levels out in a weird way, but also creates an anticipation of like, oh, there's going to be another level. And so he reached a point where he's like, we need to do the levels so we can unlock more levels. And I was like, buddy.

i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure you have beaten the game and unlocked every area already and he's like oh and he doesn't seem he's just like no no we just need to get the rest of the crowns and then and then a new and then there'll be more and like i Yeah, we should get the rest of the crowns because that's where all the PlayStation trophies are wrapped up in collecting all the crowns. So get out there and do my dirty achievement trophy work. But...

Yeah, I don't know. He kind of has hit the end of it. He's settling into playing a few levels over and over again. There's a multiplayer mode in the game. And you can play it online, but I don't think anyone's playing it. I'm not sure that we've ever encountered another human while playing it, but there's also an offline version of it and four balls roll around.

um and there are different power-ups to get and there's kind of a scoring area so you're kind of like you're getting big you can roll up the other guys while you're big which takes them out of commission for a while but you need to roll into the scoring zone to kind of get additional points And at the end, at the end, there's some Mario Party bullshit where it gives you bonuses based on three different like stats over the course of the over the course of the game and whatever. And.

And you unlock different Katamaris, different balls as you level up. And he has almost all the balls. There's only five balls left. Because by playing that mode, you very quickly, I think for every win, you level up and get a ball. So he's been cleaning up on these bots, I guess.

And and so he's been playing a lot of that and not and not really not really digging the main game. He's been handing it off to me because, you know, sometimes the crowns there are collectible crowns in this one that weren't in previous games. Sometimes the crowns are in tricky locations, and so he's handing the game off to me more and more, too, as we're kind of going after more and more specific goals. And so I've been playing a lot more of Once Upon a Katamari.

And it feels bad. It doesn't feel right. The ball doesn't move right. This was something like when I first put my hands on it. I was like, there's something here. I'm not really sure what the deal is. But it was like, are the levels too, like, especially in the Old West, which are some of the early levels.

Like some of the levels are a little too tightly packed and the game doesn't handle collision super well. And so I found myself getting like stuck in certain spots and like really having to work to get out of these spots. Like areas you kind of just can't get into because you're too big or like the previous games have handled these situations, I think, a little bit more gracefully than this one does. Your control over the ball is not the same. So just the act of rolling.

especially with any kind of precision feels a little bit weird sometimes the skid on the ball like when you're changing directions the skid feels a lot longer and so there's You know, you're losing control of the ball for a longer period of time as you're changing directions. And it's all kind of little stuff like that that I'm surprised is like not.

right basically um and yeah i think that that some of that stuff is really frustrating you know because some of it is like i think it's a game that has some really cool ideas um and some of the things that they do in the levels it's nice like i actually really like the the time travel stuff because it gives the game you know more kind of different looks as you're going to ancient greece and whatever else and uh

And they have different level types where you're like, oh, you need to roll around and, you know, there's a desert and you need to roll in some water and then spread the water across the land so that it will so the grass will grow. And so you're trying to cover as much ground as possible with this, you know, and you have to go back and refuel with more water from time to time. There are levels where you need to just like find or there's a level.

We're going to like find eight philosophers or one where the Pharaoh has requests and you need to roll up specific stuff to satisfy the requests. And some of that stuff is neat and well done. And then it also has like another cow bear level, you know. Or another level where it just kind of rolls on its own like a race or another level, you know, more levels where you're rolling up food to get big and the levels that I think directly compare to.

We love Katamari specifically because that's the game that's been getting so much play here. I think a lot of that stuff is better in the previous game. in a lot of ways but uh yeah i don't know it's it's it's i still think it's like fine um and i i really like the things that they're doing with just the structure of the game and

They have like in in level cut scenes that will kind of stop. And so you just get to see more chaos as like, oh, this door opened and all these people are running around. It's fun to see the blocky humans of a Katamari game run around and panic and all of that. And those scenes are skippable once you've seen them multiple times. And so I don't really think that stuff gets in the way.

uh but it is it is a change from the from the previous games but yeah i think as we play more of it you know as it's kind of like leveling out um and and now that we've we've pretty much seen the entire game around here like it's it's Yeah. It's got some really neat ideas. It doesn't always execute on those ideas very well, partially because just like the fundamental act of rolling the ball feels awkward compared to how it has in the past.

And I, that's something I feel like they should, I say that, you know, I say that they should correct it, but you know, like, cause there's just certain angles of the, you know, like the way the ball rolls is wrong. That could be fixed like the collision stuff and some of the other ways that your ball interacts with the world around it. That's probably a bit harder because I think some of that is fundamental to the way the levels are built.

But I don't know. It's a different developer, like Ran Game or whatever the name of the studio that is listed on it. Ran Game. And I don't know who they are, but it doesn't, yeah, I don't know. The field is off, and that's a bummer. I don't know. It's still enough for him to want to wake up and play every single morning as soon as he wakes up, and we're having to figure out.

What are gonna be the lines that we draw to you know like like over the weekend? He wanted to just sit inside and play it all day and eventually we're just like, okay We're kicking you out of the house. You need to go out outside and play we're gonna go give you some lawn darts go get out there and Try not to get hurt

And he was against it. He was like, no, I don't want it. Anyway, let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll talk about Arc Raiders, which is which is out. And I don't know. Seems. Seems like a big game. Be right back. Moving into the fall, the days get even shorter and the time gets even tighter. So, you know, finding time to cook can be tough.

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Uh, finally came out last week after, I don't know, uh, after a long development where they, at some point they pivoted that game into something completely different from the sounds of things. Um, but from a, you know, some successful, uh, Closed tests and open beta weekends and what have you. The game is out now. And it has been interesting to kind of get more, collect more data about.

extraction shooters and if people will take to them in mass and and all that the steam numbers seem like they've been very good you know it's not like uh it's not crushing battlefield 6 or anything like that which i think like you know hey battlefield's a very established franchise that's a that'd be a tough thing to do but like the steam numbers have been somewhere in the neighborhood of you know three and four hundred thousand uh concurrence which um you know that's

That's definitely top five almost all the time. And so so that's been that's been doing well so far from the looks of things. And yeah, I don't know. I've been I've been playing it and like.

enjoying it and not sure what i'm doing or what i'm working towards or what the point of it is i guess is kind of it's kind of where i'm at with it it's um You know, it's an extraction shooter which I think is a term that is getting thrown around more and more and I think a lot of people get what that essentially means but the idea is you are deploying into an area

that is populated with humans and AI, things that will fight you. You are scavenging for resources and looking for things as you are out there. And then you need to escape. There are places where you extract from the area to return to your base. And you return to your base with your stuff and then you craft things and do things and whatever else. If you die. All your stuff is still on your body. And so it is gone forever. With the exception of like. There's an idea of. You've got a safe pocket.

And if you put something in your safe pocket and you die with it, you still manage to keep it. And yeah, I don't know, man. It's... Like I said, you know, the, the early quests in the game are, are really like get out there and you need to get six, six wires and a battery.

And you go out there and you rummage through things and you collect stuff. And some of the things you get can be broken down into other things, which will sometimes get you the wires and batteries that you're looking for. You don't need to like loot them directly or whatever. and uh and then you're getting out there and like oh hey there's a you know i think like even just like it's the second or third quest is like get out there and there's a um

There's like a radio tower or there's a bunch of these things around there. Meaning like we're not going to tell you where they are. But hey, go find one of these field arrays or whatever and repair it. And so there's like a story forming and it's weird, man. The game has a codex full of like lore about why the world is the way it is. And that's where I learned that apparently you're in Toledo. Or the surrounding areas around fucking Toledo. Which is a great place to set a game. But.

like you kind of go in not really knowing a lot you know but but the codex unlocks after like i said five or six runs and then it's like Yeah, everything was going like everything was real bad and humans had to live underground and they were figuring out and then the machines came and fuck, dude. And and so waves and waves of machines falling out of the sky. and murdering humans to prevent them from getting to the rooftops and doing all of that stuff.

Yeah, I don't know, man. It's... the the lore like the story part of it is like kind of interesting and but it doesn't it's that stuff is is woven so thinly through at least the early parts of the the game i don't know you know maybe later on that stuff becomes More relevant. But somehow I doubt it. But yeah. It's. It's an okay game.

It seems fine and fun. I have been extracting more often than not because players seem kind of friendly, which is kind of the antithesis of what the whole genre is. I mean, that's the idea. Like, this is... It is the multiplayer mode from the first Kane and Lynch game turned into a full game. Like extraction shooters in a lot of ways are just that, right? It is this idea of like, you can either work together or not.

You can opt to group up with players and fill squads and go out there and do stuff, or you can drop in alone. It seems like when you opt to go in alone, you only face other solo players. I haven't seen situations where... Where I've gone in against like full teams. So I think I think that is how they are handling it. But it is that idea of like this human might be cool or they might not be.

and the negotiation around that and so the basics of that mean that like voice chat uh can be a a meaningful a meaningful thing in the game um and working with players that way and saying like hey no I'm cool it's cool it's cool it's cool uh And not fighting them. I've opened doors and had human players just like run in and start shooting and I've managed to fend them off and kill them. I've had players that just run up and.

jump a couple of times and then you just go, okay, well, they're just jumping a couple of times. So clearly they want to be friendly or do they? And so, you know, like there is that tension. It's kind of nice that it's been like less hostile. Because that's what creates the mystery, right? That's what creates the will they or won't they? And that was the thing that drove the multiplayer mode in Kane and Lynch is you all spawned in together and you were all robbing.

And you were basically just like moving through a level and you could all get to the end without double crossing anyone and you could all split the money and go or whatever. But closer and closer, you got to the end. There were choke points in those levels where it was like.

if someone's going to turn on us it's going to happen right here and and so part of the the downfall of of that mode was that you know you had players who had no patience you had players who were not playing it thoughtfully and so just like they would start shit in ways that in areas that were just logically dumb to do so um

And, you know, you kind of ended up with kind of the same thing happening every time, just like one or two outcomes there. Here, you know, because you don't know if you're going to run into any humans at all. let alone what their disposition to you is going to be. Like, there's a potential there for that to be a really exciting kind of social video game.

And this is this is kind of akin to some of the stuff we saw in. I think, you know, like it's like Battle Royales have done it, you know, for for a while now. But I think Call of Duty ended up being like the big social hit. where you had players on microphones fooling each other and going, hey, let's work together and do this, or hey, let's join the squad and do this, and I get out and do this.

And so that led to a lot of like really interesting videos to watch of players screwing each other over and what have you. And this is still, this is effectively that. But, you know, and maybe it's because I'm still in the relatively early parts of the game because it just like progression or whatever progression there is in Arc Raiders seems like unbelievably slow.

And so maybe it's just because I've not been playing run after run after run after run since the game came out or whatever. But no one has anything on them that's worth a shit.

There's no point to kill other players because they're all just like, I don't know, man, I got fucking two wires and some seeds and I have the same starter shitty piece of shit gun that everyone has. So. You know at some point it's like why fight like they don't have anything that I couldn't get by ransacking a filing cabinet around the corner like there's no There's no massive benefit to engaging in combat with other players.

And so it's weird, man. I don't know, like the stakes feel off in a strange way in terms of like what you're trying to accomplish and how you go about doing it or whatever. It's nice in that sense because.

i think it gives you like like the targets are different right uh the targets are different because you're like okay my quest is to get this like i don't care like the quest you had to do to go like you basically you walk up to a satellite dish and hold down a button it beeps a couple of times and then it's done and you're like great okay awesome that quest

is complete like on my way to do that i ran right past a player who was looting shit i didn't even see him until i was like because i was just like i had my gun put away and i was just like running for this ladder And as I was running past this ladder, there was a dude there and he was very startled by a guy running up on him. But like, and so he stopped looting and I was like, oh shit, did I fuck up?

Now do I have to fight this guy? But like, I just ran right past him and, and, and started climbing the ladder and he just went back to doing what he was doing. Um, and it was, and then I ran off in the other direction and, and, and whatever. It was fine. And so you end up in stuff where it's like, oh, I'm out here and there's someone shooting at me from a weird distance. And they're not really hitting me much, but there are gunshots coming at me from somewhere strange.

Because someone's out there just fucking around being a dick. You're like, okay, all right, weird. But I'm just going to hide behind this rock while I wait for the elevator to show up so I can win.

or win i mean win is a weird way to even think about it i guess but it's i don't know man it's okay but i uh i know that there's higher stakes stuff eventually because you unlock more locations to go to and then there end up being like nighttime versions of the daytime locations that i think have like stronger um stronger, like, you know, CPU enemies to face or whatever, which most of the stuff...

are drones you know it's just like a drone floating over and zapping you to stun you and then shooting you and they're they're very effective especially if there's two of them um when you're alone and uh and that's that's frustrating to deal with but like it's not insurmountable as long as you're bringing enough bullets i guess um

But I've been making forward progress in that game, and you gain XP, and you gain skill points to put into a tree that'll do things like, oh, you can loot containers more quickly because... they put artificial like slowness on uh items showing up in the thing that you're looting because they want to increase the tension that way and I guess that's a way to do it. I don't know. I don't love that part of it, but okay. Yeah, I don't know. It seems very well made on that front, and also I'm...

It's not that I'm not enjoying it. It's that I'm having an okay time with it, but I don't really see where all of this goes or why I want it. You do see some higher level guns or some upgraded versions of the starter guns. And those aren't great either. So unless there's like entire like scads and scads of guns and loot and things that as you level up, you just move away from these dog shit fucking guns into other stuff.

and and it becomes a much better slicker playing game at that point because the guns just you know you aim down sights faster you do this you got like i i don't think the action itself is like good enough for me to want to keep playing it I guess is where I'm at um you have workstations that you need to build and upgrade back at the base and so like you know I can't even like I don't even think I can craft upgrades.

I don't think I think I can craft like terribly meaningful upgrades for my existing guns yet, because you need to bring back like 60 pieces of plastic and 14 wires. And now you can build the level two gunsmith bench. And, you know, so there's. There's just like crafting on crafting on crafting. You have to craft the benches that you use to craft the things and then if you die you lose the things and so boy you better get out there and fucking go rummage through some fucking drawers.

Until you find some more rubber tubing or whatever the fuck. And so, like, I... I don't know, man. All of it is fine. I think it looks really nice. I like the art style in it overall, like the cosmetics and some of the weird kind of NASA spacesuits and things that you can get. look neat. And I do like that it's Toledo. But there's just something about the progression to it that it's just, I don't know.

Like that aspect of this is, is not like, I will play one round of it and go, okay, I made it out. Cool. What did I get? Like kind of nothing. I don't know. I got wear and tear on my existing gear that I will need to use some of the items I looted to repair it. Or I will sell it and replace it with a different version of the shield because I have like five shields or whatever. But in that aspect, I don't necessarily feel like I'm coming away from these rounds with like...

more and or better stuff. And so I think that part of it, it just, it feels off. Like, you know, it's providing you with quests. To like go here and do a thing. And like that's fine. But I'm going there. And I'm doing those things. And I'm chipping away at it. And like I said. I'm extracting more often than not.

You know, like I'm making it out with my stuff more often than I'm dying, which is more than I can say for some of the other games in this market segment or whatever. But I think that that... that's where a lot of the, just the, the loop of it or, or like the, like, I think a lot of that is sort of where it breaks down. Um, because like, I don't, I don't feel like I'm, I'm.

I don't know maybe I'm getting a little bit better at it or like I'm at a point now where like I look at the gear that I have and I know that if it all gets lost who cares because it's very easy to like the the low level shit that i have is like it's fine it's like it's whatever even the level three versions of the guns that i have i'm like okay yeah yeah these this yes it has

increased magazine size and i put a muzzle flash hider on it or whatever else and you're like okay yeah i don't know this is like a slightly better gun and if i lost it that'd be annoying but it wouldn't be the end of the world because i know that i can probably build three more of them if i had to um but like yeah i don't know man like it's the that social aspect of it i think is really interesting and it's fascinating and i think that that part of it

They do it really well in a way that I think will create a lot of that kind of social content of like... Look at, look at me screwing over these players and talking on the microphone. There's a thing in there, man. I don't know if you ever. So on the Xbox 360.

It was on Woot one day and we bought like three or four of them because we were like, these look like absolute garbage. And they were, it was little things that plugged into your Xbox 360 controllers, like voice chat port, like the headphone port. And then you plugged your headset into the other side and it was a voice changer.

Um, that also had like buttons for sound effects on it. So you can fucking spam garbage. Like you could, you could add your own audio to it. Uh, and you could spam audio through the voice chat channel on an Xbox 360. And it's great. It was the dumbest shit because you could alter your voice in a handful of ways and also you could spam a bunch of trash down the line, which was fun.

Arc Raiders has an option you can turn on where it will replace your voice. They have like eight different voices you can choose. I don't know what technology they're using for that voice stuff specifically. That's technology that has existed for a very long time in some forms. Basically, you can set it to where... If you have players in your party, they can hear your real voice. But anyone on ProxChat, anyone that's out there in the world will hear, like, fake voice.

um and and i think from like a privacy like kind of perspective or or from a you know because i think a lot of people are afraid to talk because they don't you know they they're you know Sometimes their voice is not received well on the other end for whatever reason, whether, you know, little kids and, and, and whatever else. And so they've got, um, and so they've got all these other voices in there, uh, that you can choose instead.

And there's something inherently distrustworthy about the sound of these fucking voice clones or whatever. Again, whatever tech they're using for that particular thing. I don't know. It sounds like they've used at least some AI on some of the voice acting back in town. Like some of the... characters that are giving you quests i think i think people are are claiming that that stuff is is ai driven the steam disclosure is really ambiguous um about

their use of AI let me look and see unless they've updated it or something but during the development process we may use procedural and AI based tools to assist with content creation in all such cases the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team like that. What does that mean? Um, I don't, I don't, I don't actually know what the fuck that means. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I think that the,

There is some usefulness I think for players who are sensitive about the sound of their own voice in games to be able to replace it with something else. I think that is pretty interesting. And I would not be shocked if that was some kind of, you know, I don't know what the latency on it is. I haven't actually, you know, I haven't actually used it much in game or whatever because I don't like to talk at all.

But from a technology that has an actual use case that I think can help people, I think that that's a thing that actually is kind of interesting. So... so that is in there it's listed as like a beta or something so you know again who knows uh but i i do think that that's kind of a neat a neat thing to do Building off of like you know what it was because on the original Xbox. Didn't they just have like a setting there was like a weird.

they had like four different voice changer options in there that were all terrible. And, you know, like, like, you know, like a lot of kind of traditional voice changing tech is, is kind of, it's kind of whatever, right. It's, it's like, you can kind of change. someone's voice a little bit, pitch it up and down and do a few different things to it, uh, to make things, uh, come out the other end a little bit different, but, uh, but I don't know. That's not.

That's not going to work as well. I think that that's sort of frustrating to deal with inside of a competitive shooter. And so... Having something that can sound like a little bit better or more intelligible, I suppose, is kind of interesting. I don't know, man. Arc Raiders is something that I want to keep playing. I guess like that's probably the best thing I could say about it is like I'm really not sold. Like there are just like pure concepts in this game.

that i mess with and go like man i don't know man i i don't think i don't know that this leads anywhere or rather like i don't know that this is this is going to a place where i i think that it it's gonna net out and be like oh really cool that that's you know that this is where it's going or or whatever but but the the action feels okay i think it looks nice enough um and

And again, the penalties for failure, at least at this point, I assume that's probably the thing that ratchets up, right? You probably eventually get to a point where you're like, okay, I'm... Now I'm like fucking level 25 and I've got all this high level shields and all this other stuff. But I would assume that, you know, when you get to these higher level areas, you're probably looting better stuff that makes it so you can craft that stuff more easily. Right.

Because I'm looking at it right now at a low level. You can actually just say, fuck it. Give me a free load out and not take any of your stuff. And so depending on the quests that you're trying to complete.

like when i knew i didn't have to loot anything and i just needed to go like hit a button on a satellite and then go back and cash in the quest because i want to see what's next like i just took a free load out and it's like okay yeah we'll give you a shield you don't have a safe pocket but you you know you you have like

a gun some bullets for said gun get out there and I was like okay cool and I ran out there and I hit the button on that thing and then I left and along the way there was like one AI like drone thing that i shot down and i had enough gun to do that and then i left and and so you know that drops the stakes to zero

At that point, you're like, well, it's the free loadout. Who gives a shit? If I die right now, I could hit that switch on the satellite and then just go jump into the fucking the sea or whatever. Who cares?

And, and I don't know, that's not bad. That's not bad, but I guess like, I don't know, like the there's, I don't know that I'm going to be the sort of person that wants to like get on a microphone and like, deceive people and play that kind of like social that social aspect of it and you know lie to people and screw them over and take their guns or whatever

and so it's been nice that like most human players so far um at least in solo play uh most of them have just been like like in the same boat of just like dude leave i'm just i'm over here doing my fucking thing Like, just don't fuck with me. We're going to eyeball each other and go like, I don't know about you. And so there is that tension. But generally speaking,

It's been mostly fine. So I assume that changes as you get into the deeper parts of the game as well. Just the raw mix of players who are just getting started versus players who are like, actually, I'm going to take y'all's shit. Yeah, I don't know.

like it's you know i think some people are using emotes and you know there's an emote wheel it's got the the um the the hell divers approach to like battle pass content where it's got multiple pages of cosmetic gear uh or i guess i'm not just cosmetic gear but you know like multiple pages of unlocks and as you accrue enough currency to unlock enough stuff on one page you unlock page two and page two and then get in there and i don't know get more helmets or whatever it's yeah uh

That I, that's, that's my, my short version of arc Raiders is, huh? Hmm. Yeah. I don't know. There's something to it, but I don't, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to keep messing with it and keep poking at it and see where it takes me. The thing I'll say about it most of all is that it's not a game that I feel like I'm not like, I'm going to sit down and just play this game and I'm playing it for hours. I'm having like one, maybe two runs. I'm going in.

i'm getting some stuff i'm finding a box and going oh weird and then i'm taking it to the place where the boxes go i'm maybe completing a mission or two and then you're like okay i'm gonna go i'm gonna go play something else now you know I'm curious to see where they end up going with it. I know they've got kind of a roadmap about more levels and things that they're going to add to the game over time. And yeah, we'll see where all of that stuff ends up. But yeah.

It's given me a lot to think about with regards to the genre and everything there because it's like in some ways this feels like it subverts the... the maximum potential of the genre at least at low level again keep in mind i'm talking about like the first area or you know like like it's it's not i'm not talking about end game arc raiders or or whatever but like

um like they definitely feel like they're onboarding you in a very light way of just like hey man yeah there are stakes but it doesn't i mean you know also you're you're gaining xp you're coming out of this with

some currency you know if you if you flipped a switch in the mission and then died like it's you you still completed that quest like don't worry about it like you know there's there's aspects of that that um could be more harsh than they are and uh yeah we'll see we'll see i don't know um

Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection is out. This is an interesting one to talk about. So I'm in this. I got an email from... from Dan Amrick, uh, some number of months ago that was like, Hey, I want to talk to you about a thing that we're doing that maybe you would be, you know, interested in or, or, you know, whatever, you know, and I, I signed whatever NDA type thing.

And he said, okay, we're working on a Mortal Kombat thing. I was like, awesome. Great. Yes, I would love to talk to you about Mortal Kombat. I would love to talk to anybody about Mortal Kombat. And so we got on a Riverside call or whatever and talked for a while about MK. And and I was and that was like a while ago. And I was like, well, you know, I don't even know. Maybe I didn't even make the cut like we did it remotely. And so, you know, I hadn't heard anything at all about.

I hadn't heard anything at all about whether I was actually in the final product or not. And yeah, I ended up in a couple of bits of the documentary. It was super fun to do. For disclosure, I was not paid for this appearance. They did not say, and we're going to give you X number of dollars or whatever. We just recorded it right here on this same camera that I'm talking to you about right now. Talking to you through right now. And yeah.

It was fun. Uh, and, and it's, it's, it's really, it's a fun documentary. I guess like all of that is to say I'm in this thing, you know, use your own judgment and what have you, uh, and, and, and so on. Uh, it's a really fun documentary. Uh, there was, there's a lot of stuff in there. It's like, it's hours of footage and it's like a lot of interviews with Ed Boone and John Tobias and, uh, you know, like there's, there's a good.

There's like good chunks with all of the kind of original guys from the origins of Mortal Kombat. And hearing them talk about it along the way, it's pretty front loaded insofar as. There's just kind of more to talk about in the lead up to the release of Mortal Kombat one. Whereas I think by the time we get to MK two and three, there's like really interesting kind of supplemental material and they talk about.

where their heads were at with regards to putting secret stuff into three because of the reaction to two and why they were felt okay about taking scorpion out of the game in the initial launch of three and um and and all of that stuff um and seeing some of the the older material drawings and and and stuff that i you know

You think, you know, I thought I knew a lot about, you know, kind of the origins of Mortal Kombat. I think everyone has heard like, oh, there was a point there where they were pitching Jean-Claude Van Damme about maybe.

being in a digitized fighting game and so if that had gone that way then it would have been something completely different and blah blah you know um and and but like they've got like initial sketches from from john about you know some of the initial characters and and how Curtis Stryker was a name that they had come up with before the release of Mortal Kombat 1 for more of a military character that eventually kind of morphed into both.

Sonya and Jax in different ways over the course of those first couple of games. And then Stryker became a cop by the time three came out. Just kind of a lot of like neat stuff. There's like, if you're, if you are a fucking Mugen developer, if you like to make custom fighting game characters or, or weird hacked up versions of MK characters for use. In Mugen, there are a lot of frames in this thing that you could probably pull out of it. Frames for unused moves and animations and stuff that...

Uh, that I bet you could probably grab and use for your, uh, use for your weirdo. Like I, now this night wolf has even crazier. Because it's got a lot of stuff like that in there too, which was neat to see. The games themselves play fine. It needs work on the part where you play a video game. That's some stuff that I think they need to do some stuff. They've announced that they are working on a lobby setup.

For online play right now, the online menus are just like it's a list of games and you go in and you match make for a match for that specific game and nothing else. And if no one else is doing that for that particular game at that particular moment, you're never going to match up with anyone. And so it's been hard to find games. When I have found games, it's mostly been for MK1 and 2. And those games have ranged from perfectly fine to like.

practically unplayable, uh, from a lag perspective, you know, lag is kind of a sort of a, your mileage may vary sort of scenario. Right. Um, but it does seem like that a lot of that stuff could be better. uh matchmaking would be improved by cross play it does not have cross play and that would that would be nice

Um, something where I could just go in and toggle, like I want to play MK against somebody and it could be any one of these seven games or these two games, one game, you know, like whatever. And, and, and let me go out and match make that way. But they are working on a lobby system and you'll be able to kind of get in the lobbies and do and play whatever games you want that way.

And so hopefully they'll get there on that front. That that's, that's been a little frustrating. Like offline play, I think has been, has been mostly fine. Um, But you don't want, you know, like no one's here to, unless you've got other people in your area where you can play Mortal Kombat with them, which I do not, then, you know, the offline play is largely.

you know fairly limited in use I suppose because no one wants to play against the the AI in a Mortal Kombat game they were never fun they were never fun to play against the AI it was just like oh Okay, I need to jump back and kick over and over again for every single fight in this game because otherwise it will just fucking kill me. Yeah, so I hope that they kind of get there on that specific front.

and and yeah steel knight says can you get your wife into mk funny thing my wife is already extremely into mortal combat um but she likes the ps2 and she likes deception and she likes them the the awkward mid period uh, the, the middle period, uh, the middle phase of mortal combat is where she, uh, is where she mostly played it. So, you know, maybe if they do another collection and collect those games, maybe we could, uh, maybe we can have something. Um,

But yeah, it is. Yeah, the documentary is a lot of fun. The supplement material is really cool to see. It's been it's been fun to to dig through that stuff. When you're playing the games, you can actually just rewind. You can click in the left stick and rewind up to 30 seconds, which is pretty standard for, I think, the digital eclipse.

projects at this point um but they've got achievements in there they've got trophies in there for stuff like uh do an animality or you know do a babality do this and so like i just i got to a point where i was near the end of a match And it was round three because you need to be in round three to do Animality and Mortal Kombat 3. And I just would do a finish. The trophy would pop. Click in the left stick. Roll back. Do a different finish. Do the stage finisher or whatever.

get the trophy roll it back do the animality get you know and uh so you can you can knock out a bunch of those real quick like if you want to um And they've got, you know, they've got a lot of, they've got some bad video games in there. Mortal Kombat Special Forces is in there. Mortal Kombat 1 for Game Boy is in there.

There's some really rotten stuff. There's some true hidden gems like Mortal Kombat Mythology Sub-Zero. The PlayStation version is in there. And so you can finally experience the magic for yourself. They've got Mortal Kombat trilogy for the PlayStation in there and the Shang Tsung morphing happens instantaneously. Whereas previously there was like kind of a long load time whenever he would morph. And so that's kind of nuts. And you can play that version online if you want to.

It's neat. There are definitely more things that could be in it, you know? But like, you know, I don't know, like the, you know, the Sega CD version of Mortal Kombat 1 is not in there, but the Sega CD version of Mortal Kombat 2 is. And you go like, okay, well, that could be... that could be in there it's just kind of the genesis game with like slightly better color and and audio i guess but but yeah like that could be in there um

And when I say that could be in there, I think the expectations for this have been all over the place in a really weird way. And I saw someone going like, man, if they're going to do this, they should do. I don't know why they would release this if it doesn't have Mortal Kombat 9 in it. You know, why would they put this out here if it doesn't have, you know, like all this, like way newer stuff. And you're like, I don't know if you understand what.

Like the technical limitations of what you're asking first, but also like just a lot of the. I don't know. There's a lot of games in here. It feels like there's a lot of video game in here for the price, which again, I'm in it, so don't make up your own mind.

But I kind of look at this and just go like, yeah, I don't know. When I look at it, I go like, oh, you know, there's like the Game Gear versions of... of like mk2 and 3 or whatever like there there's there's a couple of handheld games that are not here or um Well, there's like a pal only or Japan only PlayStation version of MK2 that didn't come out in the US, I think. But also you kind of have to look at it as like.

You know, a lot of people are asking about Mortal Kombat Gold, which is the Dreamcast release of Mortal Kombat 4. Because the arcade version of MK4 is in this collection. And that's cool to see. It's fun to play. MK Gold would be nice to have. It's a better version of 4. I think in a lot of ways it has an extra character. It kind of looks sharper. But like, I guess... I look at it from the technical angle of like, okay, now go make a Dreamcast emulator.

On top of all of this other work, go program a Dreamcast emulator, which is work that will probably, you know, if Digital Eclipse keeps on this road of doing these collections. They will eventually have to do that. There will come a time when they want to do a collection where they're like, oh, now we have to, we absolutely must emulate the Dreamcast now.

Or the Saturn, for example, because you could put the Saturn version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 in this would be, at least from a timeline perspective, would be very much in scope with this collection. But there are no other Saturn games to put in there. And so, and I don't, if you look at their past work, I don't think they've done any Saturn stuff previously. So they don't have anything that they could immediately pull from to put in there.

And so I think that would take kind of a lot of work. There's no N64 stuff in here, which they could have done for. or trilogy or mortal or sub-zero there's a there's a you wouldn't want the n64 version of that you want the playstation but you know you could uh have that stuff but then you're saying okay now make an n64 emulator and you know like like all of that sort of stuff so um

And N64 emulation, though it's gotten quite a bit better, the mister is really capable when it comes to running N64 stuff. N64 emulation is still kind of a mess, and that would not be a small project. And so I look at the work that they did, and I think the one thing I look at and go, it would be really great if they did this, would be the... The game.com version of mortal combat trilogy, the shitty tiger handheld, uh, cartridge based device, the game com, uh,

It's an absolute piece of shit. It's one of the worst platforms probably to ever come out ever. And that version of MK trilogy on it is a disaster. The. the Game.com is not well emulated. It is technically emulated in MAME and I was playing some MK trilogy there yesterday just to kind of get a look at it. And, um,

I'm not really sure if that stuff is... I'm not really sure if that's accurately emulated there or not. I do have a real Game.com around here somewhere and a copy of MK Trilogy, so one of these days I'll... fire that back up and get a look at the real thing. But that would be fun to have because that's just dumb. It would be really dumb to have that piece of shit in this collection.

And, but, but, you know, is that work worth it? Is that the thing that like, I feel like they already, they already did a good job of having a bunch of insane Mortal Kombat ports. In this collection. By putting in the Game Boy. Like it's really neat going from Game Boy MK1. To Game Boy MK2. Because MK1 on the Game Boy. Is a just top to bottom shit show. A real piece of garbage.

An absolute trash fire of a video game. Feels awful. Looks terrible. Sounds bad. And then you put in MK2 and you're like, oh, wait. Dude, this is great. What the fuck? This is amazing. The Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat 2 is not an amazing game, but by comparison... Holy shit, man. It's like, you're looking for a quarter slot on the goddamn thing. Um, and so it's really neat. I don't know, to, to be able to, to dig through all of that stuff.

The documentary does a good job of contextualizing kind of where they were at as a team. They interviewed Blackburn. They talked to John Blackburn of Avalanche Software. who, uh, you know, Disney infinities and, uh, who they, they did the, they did the versions of mortal combat trilogy that came out. That was their project. And so they talked to him a little bit about that version of the game, which is interesting as well.

And so, yeah, man, I think it's a really cool collection. I think right now with the state of it online. I think it's a really fun documentary to watch and digging through the supplemental material and looking at the stuff that they came up with is really cool. Playing the games themselves.

is right now i think kind of secondary because of again the the online just not working the way you you want it to so that was something on launch day i think they got out there and said hey by the way we're working on a lobby system we're working on on a lot of this stuff right now so

So hopefully the online play gets to where it needs to be so that we can get out there and we can play the WaveNet version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 with people because that's an insane thing to be able to do after all these years. And, uh, yeah, it's cool, man. I didn't even realize it until, uh, Marino posted. I, I, it was something like I saw the entry for it in the documentary and was like, I need to go watch that. Cause I might be in that.

And literally like the first fucking frame of it is there. There's footage, just some kind of little behind the scenes footage that was shot at the 1995 arcade show in Reno, Nevada. Where Mortal Kombat 3 made its debut. And that was the event that I basically dropped out of college to go to. And the very first shot of it is me and Glenn.

like in the, in the background, like in the distance is like a panning shot of the booth is like the two of us sitting there playing MK three. I was like, Oh fuck crazy. That's fucking crazy. Um, and so that's, that's pretty cool. Um, that they, that they have all that stuff from, from Reno. The booth is much bigger than I remember it in my head. Um, but, uh, but yeah. So yeah, you know, obviously like.

I have a I have a very personal kind of connection to some of this material. Right. So. So, you know, like I'll kind of stress that again, but. But I do think the documentary is really fascinating, even as someone who has known a handful of behind the scenes things about the Mortal Kombat franchise over the years. There was a lot in there that I was not.

I was not really aware of. And so it was very neat to be able to kind of pour through a lot of that and see the ups and the downs of the whole thing. and uh and yeah so that's out there now that's that's on like everything it's on like there's a switch to version of that which is kind of neat uh that's that's still i think There are not so many Switch 2 games yet that I'm like, oh, Switch 2, crazy. They're putting out video games for that thing? Wow, all right. I guess they got dev kits, cool.

Let's take another break. We'll come back. We'll talk about a couple more games, the weird keyboard I bought, and more after this. Yeah, I've watched a lot of people over the years try to quit smoking and, you know, and more recently, obviously, you know, vaping. And one of the problems I think a lot of folks have run into, this was something.

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Did you know that that Double Dragon game came out like two weeks ago? It's true. Double Dragon Revive was released like two weeks ago. I somehow missed that. I feel like that's kind of... In terms of games coming and going, that game came out. I found out this morning and downloaded it and played the tiniest bit of it. And I think I'm good. This was the game that Ark, they put out trailers for it, and it just looked fucking terrible, dude. It is terrible.

Hey, guess what? Yukes did not make a great double dragon game here, as far as I can tell, unless it immediately changes and becomes a better game.

as soon as you get to the next level or the third level or wherever it was that I finally said, I don't want to play any more of this. Um, it's a side scrolling double dragon game with like, more slightly more modern looking character models uh like in terms of like art style they didn't really go for anything that is designed to resemble the original games or or whatever it's just like here's some dudes

Abobo is just like a big bald guy. He's not unpleasant to look at the way you want a nice Abobo to be. You know, like NES Abobo. You have certain expectations. Arcade of Bobo, obviously a completely different beast. But this one, the one they put in here is not even, I don't even think scratches the same itch that Arcade of Bobo does. You know, we've seen some games that have taken the beat-em-up, the belt scroller, the brawler, if you will, and they have pushed them forward, whether it's by...

offering a lot of interesting attack options or long combo strings or whatever it is, they found ways to make these games more engaging. Streets of Rage 4, I think, is a great example of a game that... that just feels great and gives you relatively interesting encounters and fun systems to engage with.

And what have you, and good variety in characters and so on. Like Streets of Rage 4 does a really good job of kind of like finding a way forward for that genre. River City Girls is another good example. of a game that you know kind of leans on nostalgia a little bit but finds good ways to push past the I think that you know what became the limitations of that genre

Double Dragon Revive is not finding that. Double Dragon Revive's big idea is they literally call it a gimmick. Sometimes there's objects in the background where if you knock a guy into them, it'll kill him. There's a guy standing in front of a dumpster and your kick, uh, it is sort of like, uh, it is sort of like turtles in time, uh, with where in turtles in time, you can throw a guy towards the camera.

In this game, your kick knocks guys into the background and so they'll splat against the wall in the back. And so if there's a dumpster, you can hit a guy into the dumpster and the dumpster will close on him and he'll immediately be dead. And so they've tried to fill the game with this sort of environmental stuff, but ultimately it just means, oh, there's a glowing thing in the background, and so if I kick a guy near that, something will happen.

Um, the nicest one I saw was pretty early on. It was a basketball hoop. And so, you know, you could kind of hit a guy into the basketball hoop, um, which, which should be more like that sound. That sounds like a great time. Honestly, I think in practice that stuff doesn't, um, doesn't really make good on. on that concept um all of that goes to filling up meters and so you can do supers and specials and and what have you and um

Yeah, that game came out. I don't know. I was just shocked that it actually exists. But I guess here we are. It's November. The games that they said were going to come out this year. I guess, are just going to come out this year. And so, yeah, that thing appeared a couple of weeks ago. So I just wanted to kind of issue you a reminder that, A, they announced that game.

B, they announced that that game was coming out, and C, it actually did. D, I don't know that I would say that you need to play it, but there you go.

I was playing some Battlefield 6 last night, which was the first time I played it in a little bit there. I wanted to check out a new mode they added called Casual Breakthrough.

Because I just haven't been going back to Battlefield 6 the way I thought I would be. And so they added a mode, and they're like, this mode's got some bots in it, so it's just easier going. Just like, get on there and... and just fuck around i'm like okay well that sounds like something i might want to i don't know maybe that will just be a little more low-key and you know um get in there and and fuck around with it but it's um

it's funny so it's not a fully a bot match it's just basically like you know they fill half the slots with bots i think on both teams so it's not like you're a bunch of human players it's not some you know old school RTS comp stomp action. You're not just like rolling over bots and just going, haha, we're having fun, whatever. Um, it's just kinda, uh,

You're playing against other players, but they are also playing with bots. And the weird thing is like they're they're billing. This is like they're literally calling it casual. You know, let me I should look up the language that they're using to describe it because. Introducing casual breakthrough. We understand that sometimes you want to jump into battlefield, but without the intensity of a full PVP lobby.

To create a more relaxed way to play while still earning progression and completing challenges, we're introducing casual breakthrough. Here's what you can expect. Smaller player teams, 16 real players, eight per team with 32 bot teammates, 16 per team. You'll still earn XP, but it is reduced XP. And there you have it. That's kind of the, you know, it's initially just on two maps and it will not offer dog tags or accolades in the new mode, I guess.

So I played a couple rounds of it, and I just got fucking smoked. Like, almost worse than usual. And at the end of the match, they show you the top squad in the game. Like who were the players that did the best? And it pops up and it says, here you go. Here's the best squad. All of the players on the squad were like level 80, like level 75 or something. It was like, oh.

I guess they just wanted a casual relaxing time too. Great. So you're playing as players that have everything unlocked and they're fucking just like steamrolling everybody. Oh, okay. I don't want, I guess I don't want to do this. Like, I guess this does not solve any problem for me. Like no part of it seemed like more or less relaxed. You see some bots, you shoot them.

And you're like, OK, yeah, I mean, the bots were easy, but like there's still a bunch of human players rolling around doing stuff. So it's still like if anything, it's more frustrating because you like half the fucking players on your team are fucking bots.

And there are more than half, like two thirds of the players on your teams are bots. And so it's up to you to go capture the point because the bots fucking suck. So I don't know, like as, as a. as an idea of like hey let's do some casual like here's some laid back casual battle like no dude this was this was the exact opposite of that what i did find though was a custom server

So I thought to myself, like, well, if those guys are level 70, whatever, maybe I just need to get on one of these bullshit custom servers and like go crouch in a corner and repair a tank until I'm level 80 or whatever the fuck it is. And so I jumped on a server that had infinite ammo and like a bunch of bots, but a bunch of players also. And it was like they were building it as like a quick XP server. And so they had implemented these weird rules where it's just like you've got.

a ton of health and so it takes a long time to drop you and so it was like i don't know maybe i'll go farm a bunch of xp and and see how that goes i didn't get any xp because the match never ended and so i don't know i eventually just quit and i don't think i got anything at all But you had infinite ammo. And by that, I mean, you don't even have to stop and reload a magazine. It just shoots forever. And so I just got to like the middle control. I got to point C on the map.

and just aimed in the direction of where players would be coming from and just held the trigger down. shot for like seven minutes straight. I'm just walking around shooting. I'm like, oh, does this wall break down if I shoot it? No, it does not. Oh, but this lattice thing does. That's neat. Okay. It was like walking, holding the trigger down like infinite grenades. So I'm just like.

throwing grenades over and over again into the control point it just it was the dumb it was super fun it was complete fucking nonsense But I had a really good time just fucking running around doing stupid shit. I don't think I got any progression for it at all because I was not there for the end of the match. And I don't think it gives you the XP until the match ends.

But it was set up in such a way that I don't think the match was ever going to end unless one side got so bored that they let the other team just completely capture all of the points, which that does end a match. I don't know. Like if you want to see some, the problem is it was so like, it was so live. It was so over the top.

Of just like, you know, guys going to roll a tank in there and just shoot the tank over and over again. You've got like guys running around with RPGs, just shooting them over and over again, just rapid fire. Like the game, I was amazed that the game held it together. Um, frame rate wise, everything like it all was still like just everything. The entire game is exploding. Like I'm standing on point C and it's just, everything is just going for like four minutes straight.

And I was like, this is really stupid, but I'm having a really good time. This is nonsense. This is absolute garbage that's happening here. And so if you have a copy of Battlefield, I recommend just dip into some of the custom servers a little bit and just see if you can find a brand of nonsense to just look at and go like, oh God, what the hell?

Like, is it balanced? Is it fun? Like, those are very different questions, right? Is it something that you would play seriously and competitive? No, of course not. And again, there were a bunch of players off in the corner, like just like. like healing tanks constantly so i i maybe they were getting a bunch of xp i don't know i was using my adrenaline shot over and over again because every time i pushed the button it said it was giving me 116 xp

And I was like, well, if I just sit here and inject this over and over again, then won't I eventually hit the max level? I don't know how they I know they're capping XP on custom servers in some ways to keep people from just. pushing buttons to get to the max level in five minutes or whatever it is, but, but they're, yeah, I don't know. Um, it was some real nonsense. And so I appreciate that the battlefield portal is, uh, is in, in, is allowing for some extreme garbage.

But some garbage that you should go take a look at if you haven't, because it's real stupid. That, to me, was a casual video game. Their casual breakthrough mode. was just like, here's a game where two-thirds of your team sucks and two-thirds of the other team sucks, but there's still just enough real players in there to make it annoying.

If anything, it felt like the opposite of casual because you're like, are these bots or not? I'm not sure. And it became a little bit frustrating to deal with. But that is something they're testing for and looking for feedback on. There's my feedback. I don't think it achieves anything that they said that they were trying to do. You ever get bored late at night and just buy something?

You ever just looking at something and you're just like, this thing looks real stupid, but if it works, that could be really neat and I should try it out to see if this works. And so all of those things combined to lead to me spending, I think $35 on half a keyboard.

uh and i'm still i don't i have i have not messed with it much but it's i bought i bought half a keyboard i bought the left half of a keyboard um And it is for playing video games on because it's got the parts that you would use for your left hand playing any kind of shooter or anything, your WASD, your space bars and whatnot.

Um, it's got whole effect switches on it. And so it does the kind of snappy tappy, like it has the thing. Remember when valve put out that thing a little while ago saying like, dude, don't use these. I'm pretty sure this is what they were talking about. Because of the actuation points on this, you can set it up to really skitter back and forth like a real maniac. And that's an interesting concept.

um i thought it would be handy you know just to get a little bit more desk space when playing some games but also there is sort of this idea of um you know having a half keyboard for like you could take if you were if you were if you wanted to play first person shooters on the go on like a steam deck or something, and you wanted to do mouse and keyboard, this would be a really easy thing to throw in a bag, I guess. I don't know. It's.

I've been interested in this idea of the analog keyboard or the keyboard with different actuation points and all of that for a long time now. This was like a nice low enough price that I was like, I'm going to just fucking take a flyer on this thing and see. It's just a, it's a weird fucking thing. I don't know. I don't, this is not me recommending it because I don't, I have not spent enough time with it. It is the Fury Cube M30HE. This is one of those items like a lot of weird Chinese.

things that are like you can find this for like 20 different prices depending on where you look and i ended up buying it off of aliexpress i think for like 35 bucks um But like, there were some places that were trying to charge 60 for it. And I would say, do not do that. But it's a real, just, I don't know, it's an insane little device that I was like, I just, I want to see this thing in action.

And it feels pretty good. I don't know. I'm going to kind of put it through its paces. But also I realize I don't play that many shooters with mouse and keyboard these days. Like I play Battlefield with a controller mainly. So it's really for like, I don't know, doom. I'd use it for Counter-Strike, but aren't they banning people that use weird things? It's got like, basically it has kind of sort of SO, was it SOCD?

SOCD cleaning the same way a leverless gamepad would have and you can set a bunch of different modes like you configure it via a web browser which is kind of crazy on its own and I don't know it feels much better made than I thought it would for the price so it has that going for it but Yeah, I don't know. I've been obsessing like like off and on like you get into it and you're like, yeah, man, what if what if you did just have analog buttons? I really like I think about it more and more.

in terms of like the future of consoles or the future of like what are we it's insane that we still use a mouse and keyboard to play video games with at all that like that hasn't been supplanted by some kind of more refined you could argue that a gamepad is that device and whatever but like something that achieves the same kind of split hand thing

I don't know. Like, it feels like you could have a more purpose-built device than even just the left half of a keyboard. But I guess ultimately everyone has a keyboard and everyone has a mouse, and that's why it is such the standard. So, yeah, I don't know. It's a weird thing where you're like, man, this seems like it could really be replaced by something more bespoke and more specific for video games.

But we'll probably never like it. It'll probably never happen in our lifetimes because it's just like everyone has a mouse and a keyboard already. And so developers are going to target that. And not like the insane, you know, whatever insane claw device that people come up with down the line. If anything, it'll be game pads. And so, I don't know. I guess a lot of that just comes back to, do you think that there will be innovation?

In game pads. And I don't know that I see it. You know. Maybe back buttons become more normal. And more standardized. In a generation or two. Like everyone just has like a set of back buttons and maybe they're used for more than just macros. Maybe they can just be their own separate buttons. I think that'd be nice as long as they weren't just macros and whatever else.

But yeah, I wonder. All of those thoughts, plus it being late at night, led to me going like, yeah, I'm going to order this thing. I don't know. The tariffs on this particular item don't seem... too bad so let's let's give it a look and uh yeah like i said it's it's it's nicer than i thought it would be um but also you know

ultimately i think like keyboards with like really soft uh or really light touch points like you know you can set this to be like one millimeter whatever it is like you know barely move it at all and have the button register which is like a cool idea but like my fingers are heavy. And with the keyboard I already have, sometimes I will have my hand in position for gaming and suddenly start moving left and realize like, oh my.

my ring finger is barely is is like a little too is a little too heavy on the key right now and i just randomly started moving left um In conclusion, I need to get back to my finger workouts, I suppose. To make that work. Let's take one last break. We'll come back. We'll get into the news. After. This. There's a lot of holes in the, uh, you know, nutrition profile of my daily intake. And this time of year, you know, we're swimming in Halloween candy.

You know, you got the other holidays coming up. You know, it's hard to kind of just stay focused and get in the things you need to get in. And so it's been great to have AG1 because AG1 is something you can just handle first thing in the morning. Take care of it. Get it out of the way and get on with eating the rest of the garbage that you're probably eating. You know, AG1 has prebiotics, probiotics and enzymes that help support regularity and gut resilience.

It's also got a full spectrum of micronutrients from whole foods that help fill those nutrition gaps. That's right. Superfoods, B vitamins, all that sort of stuff to give you some, some steady energy, antioxidants, probiotics, functional mushrooms. All that stuff that can support immune resilience, which is also kind of nice this time of year. AG1 is simple. You get a little bit of this powder.

And they sell it multiple ways. If you want a big jar of it with a scooper, that's the main kit that they'll do. And you put that into some water. You put all that into a shaker. You shake it up. You drink it. Boom. Done. If you're on the go. They have these tiny little travel packs that are just the right amount. So you can just like throw five of them in a bag and hit the road. And then every morning, wherever you are, just find some water and make it happen. It's easy and it's effective.

And that's nice. Head to drinkag1.com slash Jeff to get a free welcome kit with an AG1 flavor sampler. That's right. They've got multiple flavors now. And a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 when you first subscribe. That's drinkag1.com slash Jeff.

msi claw yes it's a handheld gaming pc But the MSI Claw has become the first kind of the first second handheld to get access to the Xbox full screen experience. This is something that is only available on Windows Insider builds. And so if you've opted into... Is it beta or is it on beta or is it dev? I guess it's on beta and dev. So if you are...

If you were on either of those insider channels on your MSI claw, which I feel like you're living on the edge there if you're using insider builds on a handheld. But hey, if you are doing that, then you will get access to the same Xbox full screen experience that exists on the Xbox Ally X as well as the original Xbox Ally. non x um this interface as i've been saying for a couple of weeks now is is an improvement over just trying to raw dog full ass windows on one of these things uh

but it is not at all where it needs to be. It is something that still needs a ton of work. It is something that still has a long way to go before it is truly ready for prime time. But it is an improvement. This is something, you know, you could technically enable this full screen experience on...

A lot of other devices using something called Vive tool. It's very easy to get in there and like, you know, punch a couple of commands into a terminal and enable this. But I got to say as much as I am almost. As much as I have almost turned it on on the PC that I have hooked up to this television behind me just to see if it worked, I don't want to. That's maybe a bridge too far in terms of things that...

are likely to not work. Um, especially on a desktop because you have to go in and lie to it and tell it that it's a handheld because there's other weird stuff that, that I worry would have ramifications there. Uh, so I have not pulled the trigger on, on. a full-ass uh pc yet with this stuff but um this is earlier i think than the timetable that they had originally and granted it's on an insider build and what have you so

It is not technically ready for full rollout and release or everything. But this is still earlier than I thought it would be for them rolling out any form of the full screen experience to any of these non... these non-Xbox branded, co-branded devices or whatever. And so it's kind of neat that they seem to be pushing forward on this stuff. I think there's still, like I said...

There is so, so, so much work that still needs to be done on this particular feature of Windows before it's truly going to be ready. And the benefits to it seem... relatively minimal compared to if you wanted to install linux on one of these things like those benefits seem weirdly more tangible and easier to see um which again is not a great place If we increasingly think about the future of Microsoft's gaming efforts as the future of Windows, the notion that there are all of these...

You know, like you can go get Bazite and you can go, you know, like the methods that you have at your fingertips to get better performance out of your games by eliminating Windows completely.

is like I think that as we go further and further down this road if Microsoft can't get a handle on that performance and find ways to get where it needs to get I believe that that will eventually become something that is somewhat existential for them um if the story immediately becomes hey uh it's cool that you can play all these things on a pc do you know what will get them all to run better

And all you'll have to do is sacrifice the ability to play some of these games that have anti-cheat and kernel drivers and all this other stuff that you may not be playing anyway is to install Linux. That is the exact opposite of the story that Microsoft wants to be telling. Even at this early stage, it is a bad look for them.

to have these comparisons be available. And installing Bazite is not a difficult thing to do. And the experience on the other end of it of having something that boots into Steam Big Picture mode is... Smoother than the current state of the Xbox full screen experience. So I. It's early days. No history has been written. Nothing but like this is a.

this is a bad place for them to be. When you've got Nadella out there talking about, you know, this idea of them being, you know, like, oh, well, you know, Windows is our main gaming platform. I mean, Steam is built on Windows and look at all the money they make. Like all of the, you know, let's sweep the console concept under the rug as quickly as possible because this is the direction we're moving in. This is a, it's not a great spot for them to be in.

Um, and that's like an alarm bell that is extremely quiet right now because not that many people have these things and who cares and whatever, but like as time goes on, if they put out the next Xbox.

a console that you plug into your tv that is actually just a windows machine and the the report immediately becomes hey did you know that you can get way like like did you know you can get like a noticeably better performance out of these games by like getting windows off of this thing completely super bad Super mad for Microsoft and their efforts in the gaming space. Not where they want to be. So they should get on top of that. I don't know. Animal Crossing is getting an update.

I got all excited for a minute because I woke up one morning and people were talking about Animal Crossing stuff and I was like, oh shit, did they announce a new Animal Crossing? Alas, no. They are going to release a paid update.

for animal crossing new horizons there will be a free side of this update that comes with new content uh as well as a it's not as expensive as it's like a it's a five dollar upgrade um for the Switch 2 edition of the game and if you are playing on Switch 2 with the Switch 2 edition you can use the mouse which is kind of cool you will get higher player counts online

You will be able to have up to 12 players in a game, which I don't think I ever had more than three, but you do you. It'll have support for the camera and a few other things. That's cool. It also says to me that it's unlikely that we're going to see a brand new Animal Crossing anytime soon, which actually kind of bums me out. But there you go. The Simpsons.

Long running television show. When was the last time you watched an episode of the Simpsons and was it a new episode or do you just go back and watch episodes from the seasons you like? I don't know what the answer is to that. I, I, I had my, my, I really hated the Simpsons when it first started, when they spun it out of the Tracy Ullman show and started the Simpsons.

And it became like the, it was like every fucking dick at school had a Bart Simpson t-shirt all of a sudden, like every fucking jock asshole was suddenly like. way into it and and i remember like really fucking hating it and uh after i got out of high school you know like you know the things like the show itself changed I mean by the time they got to the point where they realized like oh wait like Homer is the main character of this you know they settled into a really amazing groove um

And and made some fucking incredible television. And. And then I stopped hanging out with the crowd of folks that watch The Simpsons all the time, like I was hanging out with some guys. The Simpsons was always on because it hit syndication by that point and so it seemed like the Simpsons was always on somewhere and it was always on the television at this particular party house.

that I started hanging out in when I was around 20 or so because they could all buy me beer. And... yeah i don't know i had a like a good a good chunk a good handful of years there where i like was as obsessed with the simpsons as anyone else was and then i just kind of fell away from it and like i don't know man like every time i see Every time I see the Simpsons and like catch a random episode over the last, I don't know, 20 years, 15 years, whatever it is.

I always go like, oh yeah, this is still good. Maybe it's not as amazing. I don't know. Not as amazing as the glory years of the Simpsons probably were, but what are you going to do? But I don't, I just don't really feel any like huge draw to stay current with the Simpsons. I guess like, I don't know, like people, I guess I don't know anyone that does either. Like everyone.

Everyone knows what seasons they like or whatever and that's kind of what everyone just kind of keeps reliving over and over again and keeps quoting over and over again for sure. But yeah, anyway, the Simpsons are in the Fortnite. The Simpsons are in the Fortnite now. And people seem very excited about this. This is going to be around for like a month or something.

they've created a version of springfield in a battle royale map and so if you were the person who Like we're really excited about virtual Springfield, but also really bummed out by the existence of virtual Springfield and how it didn't quite do the thing you wanted to do. Or if you are trying to relive the excitement of driving around Springfield in Simpsons Hit and Run.

Or just the Simpsons skateboarding or like some of the high points of the video games and seeing some of the locations of Springfield recreated in video game form. From the looks of this, this really looks like they sat down and said, no, we're actually going to do this thing for real now. Here we go. We're going to make you a fucking Springfield.

And that stuff looks really, really well done. It looks really well done. I don't have enough of an attachment to this or to Fortnite anymore to necessarily go... jump back into it and and go obsess over it or whatever but like seeing the power plant and some of the you know just some of the accoutrement the features of springfield most tavern and such uh it's it that stuff all looks super well done um

And that's going to be around for like a month or so. There's been a bunch of leaks about some other stuff that's coming. Video Games Chronicle dot com had a story up saying that. There's a teaser video about potentially a Hollywood month or, you know, like a Hollywood season or something, and then maybe they'll do a Kill Bill outfit. There was talk that like this, there was some leaker that was claiming that Harry Potter was going to be in the game soon, which, um,

So, but this Simpsons thing, at least, looks super... This is the closest I have come to reinstalling Fortnite since... Well, since they put Rock Band into it, which actually did get me to reinstall Fortnite. and go like god damn it they put rock band in this but what if i want to what if i want real rock band and not this god damn it um but uh but yeah that stuff looks super well done and and like underscores that like man

That Simpsons game was pretty neat for what it was. Was it the game based on the movie, right? And there's just been a very small handful. of really good Simpsons games cut with some of the worst video games ever made. The Simpsons IP has truly seen both ends of the video game spectrum. That's been a good reminder going back and playing all of those NES games as I am ranking every NES game released in this country every Friday.

right here on the internet, uh, playing so many of those fucking terrible Bart meets radioactive man and, and Bart versus the world. And even just a lot of the 16 bit stuff is so. fucking terrible just so bad dude um So, I don't know. They have managed to pull together a couple of pretty good Simpsons games over the years, but man, more often than not, that stuff has been pretty miserable.

And I wonder, you know, like Fortnite is an interesting catch all for a lot of like licensed stuff. And this is, it's, it's neat that the Simpsons are getting this treatment like this. But wouldn't you rather just have a Simpsons game? Wouldn't you rather, you know, just have like, hey, here's, I mean, I'm sure like from a money earning perspective, I actually bet that putting them in Fortnite is a much better business move.

than going and green lighting a brand new full on Simpsons game. But, um, but yeah, man, you wonder sometimes like, you know, is this like, Hey man, it'd be cool. Like it's, it's great that this IP is here, but. Did you do this instead of making a real video game? Oh, shit. This is actually, like, instead, you just end up getting really bummed out. Like, oh, they just put it into Fortnite when they could have actually just made a thing. Damn it.

shit, I guess that means they're not going to make a thing. Uh, cause they'd be cool to see like a, another kind of full on big budget Simpsons thing. And you know what? I guess like, I don't know, like, you know, now that Fortnite is Roblox. Now that they're just like, fuck it, dude, here's all this Roblox.

Does this stuff just vanish or is it the sort of thing like I assume that this stuff gets pulled out of the game eventually and you don't get to go back to Springfield. It's not like if you just know the map code, you can go punch it in and go back, right? Or do they leave this stuff up for a lot longer than their month in the sun? I would think that'd be something that'd be nice to be able to revisit somewhere down the line.

EA has made a statement here about their upcoming acquisition. This was something that Eurogamer picked up on, something that was filed with the SEC. As part of a fact that they wrote partially for other employees, the following contains a supplemental employee fact made available to all EA Inc. employees on October 30th, 2025. And they filed it with the SEC because it's related to the sale of the company. In here, EA maintains, again, coming from Eurogamer,

EA maintains that they will maintain creative control even after the sale. Which I guess like. What are the implications of this possible transaction? There are three bullet points that they have said. This partnership gives us the ability to move faster and unlock new opportunities on a global stage. The fuck does that even mean?

Like, really? I mean, you know, like, you take it at face value, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, we can move faster and we can unlock new opportunities on the global stage. Like, what? You're EA. You're not a small company. Already. The consortium also expects to invest in our business, enabling us to accelerate innovation and unlock new growth opportunities.

With a longer investment horizon and the same discipline, focus, and operational excellence that has fueled our success, we'll have greater creative and operational flexibility to drive innovation and build the next generation of entertainment experiences. We'll continue to take bold creative bets and invest in our largest growth opportunities in service of our global communities of fans and players.

Will our culture change as a result of this deal? Five bullet points there, more than most of the other answers. Our mission values and commitment to players and fans around the world remain unchanged. We will continue to be guided. by our cultural values of creativity, pioneering passion, determination, learning, and teamwork. Now get out there and break some rules. But don't break any rules.

The consortium is supportive of and committed to investing in our exceptional employees and our strong culture. The consortium believes in our vision, our leadership, and the strength of our teams. They are investing in EA because they believe we are uniquely positioned to lead the future of entertainment. And this last one.

EA will maintain creative control, and our track record of creative freedom and player-first values will remain intact. That's kind of a bold statement for them to make, I think, before the deal has taken place, because, you know... they're saying what everyone says at any stage like this early stage in an acquisition um the thing that you know management always says in these sorts of situations is

Well, they're buying us because they like us and they want us to be us, but better. Which is. I think largely true in most acquisitions at this stage, right? like everyone says that like oh yeah we you know we're buying this because we like it and we want it to be better we think we can you know we think we can make it better um and then the reality of it all very quickly sets in i'm just like okay well there are you know business redundancies and

so there's a lot of layoffs that we can make to you know this business now that it's merged with this this then this or hey we're going to focus on this and like you know the the leveraged nature of this acquisition results in ea taking on potentially a massive amount of debt that even if no one comes in and says hey we really want you to focus on xyz like i think the new business realities that they will find themselves a part of will end up

requiring them to think very differently than they have in the past. Also, When I think about the big question, and you had a bunch of people that were part of some Sims creator program, some kind of EA marketing, whatever it is. You had a lot of them resign. because the sims is you know a fairly fairly inclusive franchise as as things go as as the things go these days very inclusive but you know um but those those players being like oh like

you know, like the values of the Saudi Royal family do not mesh at all with either, you know, their personal values or the values they see in the Sims or, or what have you. And. I would put it to you that I think that like these sorts of investments are like not done to take those specific cultural values of, you know, of the Saudi royal family and like.

force them into every single investment they make. This isn't about spreading that culture. It's about papering over that culture and going like, what? No, that's, we're great. You should come visit. We're just like you. We're all the same. We love these video games. Everything's cool. That's why we invest in it. Did you know that we own our own golf? It's great. It's just golf. Don't you like golf?

But we put the soccer man into Fatal Fury and you like that guy? And so it's really, if you look at, and this is, I get this from the WWE stuff. which I've seen a little bit of over the years. Because WWE signed a deal some number of years ago to put on shows in Saudi Arabia. And... Those are, you know, let's say, you know, most pay-per-views, they're like three-hour shows in a general sense.

You're watching this show, you know, and it's like you look at it and you're like, OK, yeah, like the only real difference other than the location and that sort of thing, like the fans are way into it and all of that. The big difference, the biggest difference. is that all of the women are extremely covered head to toe. And it's like very hot. And you just look at it and go like, this looks like a very unpleasant place to wrestle wearing that many clothes.

Like culturally, that ends up being the one very visible change that's a part of the wrestling show. The other thing they do is like at some point in the middle of the show, you get Michael Cole, the announcer for WWE. Like breaking down a video montage of Saudi Arabia going like, and we've been here all week and it's been fucking awesome. And look at this big building. And, you know, like they run this like commercial.

for Saudi Arabia and talk about like, Oh, it's so great here. And it's been so amazing. It's the thing they achieved with the, um, with the comedy festival, like Bill Burr. Came back from that comedy festival going like, well, you've never been over there, so you don't know what it's like. I was there. It was great. And like he did the wrestling thing of like, well, I don't I've heard some bad stuff, but they were really nice to me.

which is what all the old wrestlers say when it turns out that they shared a locker room with a literal Nazi for like 20 years. Like, yeah, I don't know, Dick the Bruiser. Like, yeah, that sounds real bad. He was always great to me. like it's just like crazy like you know like that is that is any old wrestling podcast they will happily they will happily hand wave away uh fucking white supremacists in wrestling with that like nice guys

And so that's always bonkers. But that is the goal here. It's not like... You know, the goal isn't necessarily to come in and say, oh, we're shutting down all of this stuff and making sure that this represents like, you know, maybe that you get some of that over time. But their short term goal is to make you think Saudi Arabia is great.

And that the people that run that country are just like, they're just fun, just fun times, just fun time. And like the people of Saudi Arabia end up getting caught in the middle, you know, and I think that's the, the, the, the hardest part to kind of parse in all of this. is you look at it and you go like, there's a lot of people who live there who you're just like some regular ass people. And they're regular ass people that probably, you know, they should be able to be entertained as well.

You know, should they should they be forced to suffer because of their leadership? And I would say, yeah, maybe some just like I might. But. you know it's kids it's you know it's families it's like you know just look at it and go like yeah man i don't know like yeah they're they're i i don't think that they should be denied all forms of entertainment

I guess, but like also like they've there, you know, these companies are doing deals directly with the government and like WWE in particular has set up an office there. Like a government liaison office, which you're just like, what the.

fuck is you know like like that's pretty fucking wild um and so like when you see these crowds it's very easy to look at it and go like oh well you know it's just people having fun and like everything behind the scenes is set up to do exactly that and make you go like some people they didn't kill that journalist I don't know like it's it's to make you just stop and go oh I don't know just long enough for them to um

make more and more people forget about how they got to where they are. And so they're taking all of the money they have made on oil and they're investing in video games and they're investing in all of this other stuff. And yeah, I think that aspect of it's really gross. So I guess all of that is to say that I don't necessarily disagree. I don't think there's going to be some heavy-handed thing where they're going to come in and go like, okay, this is how EA makes games now.

culturally they must be x y and z and they must do this like i think if ea wanted to green light a game where you went in and you know killed the saudi royal family they might go whoa whoa whoa huh like that might be like battlefield 7 is you know like yeah But I don't necessarily think that that is something that they are expecting in all of their investments. And I don't think we've seen that in some of the other things that they have invested in.

I think the problems the EA will face will come from different pressures before they come from that particular one. And it'll be around... Again, like if this is a leveraged buyout and they've got $20 billion dumped on their head, then they're going to have to make choices to service that debt. And you may, okay, so you may see like soft compliance, right? Like to what I say, like, hey, I don't necessarily think that.

I don't necessarily think that EA will make those changes as a result of the Saudi government or anything like that. I could see them very much making changes for what they think will be compliant and think will align. So when... This blue venue says the next Battlefield will absolutely have the main character team up with the Saudis. Yeah, maybe. Yes. Yeah, I could very easily see that.

I could very easily see EA leadership if, you know, someone was pitching, you know, more kind of inclusive or LGBT friendly, you know, like that type of content. In a game, I could see that getting shot down more easily, but honestly, I could see all of that stuff getting shot down right now today by an EA that was not getting acquired also because. That's the.

the political landscape that we're currently in. And so I don't necessarily look at that as like, that's going to be a factor of the Saudis coming in and doing it. I think that you're seeing a purge of a lot of that style of content from companies that are just like, fucking spineless to begin with. And the Saudis won't have to do much because it'll all be done by the time they take over. But we will see.

Uh, again, I do think it's kind of, it is sort of, you know, like it's a thing that you say in these sort of statements where you're like, we're going to maintain creative control, but like, those are the things you don't know until you're in it, man. like once you're sold you're theirs you're somebody else's and they can change their mind tomorrow or the business might change in such a way where you're like oh actually we're pivoting away from all of this stuff into this this and this you know

And if they have to serve all this debt, they're only going to make the biggest of the big games anyway. They did the NFL license, I believe, got extended. It looks like I'm looking for a better source on this. Okay, ESPN is reporting it. The EA Sports and the NFL have extended their deal through 2030.

And that happened, I believe, last week. So, you know, clearly this news of the new owners of EA has not scared away the NFL. If anything, they were quick to lock up something as soon as all of that went down. We're already in the works of getting that locked up. But if you want to get into the politics of the NFL, I think we're going to be here a lot longer than maybe you want to be.

So, yeah. How about FIFA? Yeah, that's something. Yeah. Bandpuncher asks, what about FIFA? I think that's something that. doesn't get broached until the I could very easily see the FIFA license coming back to EA mostly because it hasn't I don't think anyone else has picked it up. If anyone has, then they haven't announced a game. There was talk for a while that, oh, 2K's definitely going to get it, but that hasn't materialized.

And so there's all of that sort of stuff that has kind of swirled around since FIFA and EA split up. But, you know, I don't think FIFA has found a better deal. I think they've discovered that like there are just not that many. companies out there that are willing to start making a soccer game from scratch. And that the FIFA license, I don't think guarantees success.

You know, I think with with EA still being out there making their soccer game like, you know, they were they were not so thrilled with some of the sales, some of the long term sales on EA FC. It sold fine without the FIFA name on it. So like. people clearly know that like that's the game to go to and to in order for fifa to actually stop that from happening um

It would require them to make a world class soccer game. And who is going to make that? Konami? Probably not. Like, you know, I think Konami has come. Like the game, the e-football thing they're doing is not as big of a clown show as it was a year or two ago, if I remember right. But they're not going to, you know, they're not going to do it.

Does 2K want to get involved with this and start making a soccer game from scratch? Like that would fit their portfolio and everything else. But like, you know, that's a dicey endeavor too. You know, like, okay, now we make FIFA. Now what? Now we have to market it side by side with the entrenched game with a different name. Is the FIFA name enough for us to take over? and make the best-selling soccer game? And I don't think the answer is yes. So yeah, I just, you know, I look at it as like...

FIFA probably thought they were going to get out there and immediately sign on a new deal and everything was going to be fine. And then, you know, they found out that the video game industry is not as interested in that as they maybe thought. And so I wonder if they do kind of come back and do a re-up with EA eventually to kind of get that back on track. And maybe EA doesn't even want it. But again, the sale to...

the Saudis and, and this, this consortium of investors, Jared Kushner and all that shit. Um, you know, maybe, maybe that's something that they see as a benefit. I don't know. Like, do you think that, I guess the question becomes. If they like the money it would cost them to go do FIFA, the amount of money they would have to spend to get the FIFA license back, which that number is probably lower than it was.

you know, a few years ago, but it's still probably pretty high. Do you think that rebranding the game from EAFC back to FIFA, do you think it makes enough additional money annually? to be worth whatever FIFA's cut is. Because EA's out there selling Ultimate Team packs. They don't give a fuck. They're like, you know, this is still selling great. Like, we're still stacking money on money on money over here. Like, is it...

Gangbuster sales the way we wish it was like, ah, you know, it's close, but you know, no, not, not really. I think the, the earnings call stuff that I remember out of, out of EAFC and out of college football, uh, year two of college football specifically. is that it maybe wasn't selling throughout the year the way that they thought it would or the way they hoped it would. And so maybe they've seen a little bit of drop-off throughout the year in a way that they hadn't in the past.

Again, I don't think that slapping the FIFA name on the box does anything for them. And everyone probably still just calls it FIFA because who cares? And I don't think that there's anyone out there that could make a, like right now, you could always build a team, right? And maybe they make the greatest soccer game ever created, right? But that's probably pretty hard to do.

starting a studio from scratch to suddenly like okay year one this needs to be the best football fucking game on the market mate get your kit on and go yeah I don't know man uh I think that's really hard. I think, you know, and, you know, I think the knowledge that FIFA is kind of a corrupt fucking scummy organization is obviously...

You know, like that's only getting more and more well known as time goes on, I guess. Right. So, yeah, how much that matters? Probably not that much, but. But we'll see.

I guess what I would say about EA and FIFA is it would not shock me if they got back together. After a few years of FIFA going out there and searching, I think FIFA's best chance would be to make a really strong... phone game because I just don't know like looking at the landscape of studios and publishers like who else like 2k is really the only other like meaningful sports publisher out there

So unless you're going to, you know, like sign with somebody else who doesn't have any experience in sports whatsoever and hope that they can build a studio that can do all that stuff, like at least 2K would have. mocap facilities and everything else that they use for nba and for i guess wwe you know like they already have that operation up and running uh

But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Also, what the fuck do I know? Ask me anything about soccer. I know that at halftime we get orange slices. They give us orange slices at halftime. And the goalie can't use his hands. And that's going to do it. for the news you know there's been actually just like quickly there's been

Nintendo seems to be losing or they seem to be not faring well in their lawsuits. They're trying to get patents around capturing creatures in video games. which they failed to get that patent, and now Eurogamer is reporting that in the U.S., like after the patent got rejected in Japan, now in the U.S., I guess like over here, they're going to take a look at the previously granted Pokemon patent and decide, wait, should we be nullifying this patent too? Because this seems like it is way too.

way too confining and that they may invalidate that existing patent that Nintendo has here. or that game freak or whoever holds the patent but um that is pretty interesting as well the the pal world stuff i feel like has not um has not really been front of mind for anybody But, you know, there is kind of a weird competitive thing happening there where Sony has invested in the PAL world developer, like the movie is coming from Sony Pictures.

and so like sony and sony's business and sony's board of directors and like all those are like they are kind of wrapped up in a little bit of the pal world stuff that nintendo is trying so desperately to like squash And so there's sort of an interesting undercurrent to a lot of this stuff that you may not hear about. on a day-to-day basis. But yeah, the movie thing, when did that happen? Sony signed...

Yeah, so they have basically, it looks like they have made, yeah, there's a joint venture. It's with Sony Music Entertainment along with Aniplex, but PocketPayers signed a JV deal. um with with sony to explore kind of other pal world ip in the entertainment space anime movies like that that sort of thing um merchandise and everything else so So Sony is, is kind of like involved on the side of, of, of all of the power world business, which is kind of, uh, again, interesting.

As far as all of this stuff goes. Why don't we get into some emails here? Podcast at guard.bike is the email address. You can email me. You can. I swear it.

Max in New Hampshire writes in with some Silent Hill F discussion. Upon the release of Silent Hill F, some game industry professionals... Said they are more interested in a 7 out of 10 than a 10 out of 10. I know survival horror is not your cup of tea, but do you have any appreciation for this kind of sentiment regarding a game that does something incredibly well despite flaws?

Do you see a world in which a 7 out of 10 game can go on to become a true classic? Despite combat being somewhat stale and repetitive, the setting, atmosphere, story, characters, and themes are supremely good quality. I believe Silent Hill F. will be likened favorably to Silent Hill 2 and may even be considered a horror game masterpiece. So sure, I mean, when people say that they prefer 7 out of 10s to 10 out of 10s or whatever,

I think what they're really kind of saying is they're interested in games that are trying stuff. It's more interesting, especially as you've played more and more games over the years. It is specifically they're talking about games that are trying new things that are interesting, that are working outside of the box and doing wild stuff.

as opposed to a game that has like mastered and polished to the existing form, you know, like games that are getting 10 out of 10s, especially these days when I think, you know, like the form has matured in a lot of ways. Games that are more or less perfect examples of current gaming. Usually that means that they've iterated on something. They've honed things to a perfect edge.

and you look at it and go like wow this is really great it's huge this is this is the best game of the year this is whatever you know that doesn't always make for the most interesting game sometimes games off to the side that are doing insane insanely different things, you know? Like, hey, we've come up with entirely new systems for this. We know that controls are largely codified around...

You know, you pull this trigger to shoot. This is the look stick. This is that. But like we came up with a whole different thing for our game that works perfectly for our game and this and that. Like developers that are out there trying insane things, I think is like that is oftentimes way more interesting.

But you do have a lot of 7 out of 10s that are just like flat examples of the form. That are not pushing on anything. That are just like, I don't know, we made another character action game. It's fine. You know, like it's not every seven out of 10 that is magically somehow some incredible thing, but there is sort of a sweet spot of like, you know, if you want to see games that are a little bit more on the edge and sometimes they fail.

you know? Um, but, but, but they are at least like trying things and doing crazy stuff. Like, I think that that is, that is the spirit of what we're talking about here. And it's not necessarily the score or whatever. Um, it's, you know, like deadly premonition is a really good example of like a cult classic. It's a game that, that tried and did a lot of really crazy things and it failed at a lot of them and it's, it's clunky. It's a mess. It's like that game is.

is fucked up. And I don't even think I would give it a seven, but it tries so many things that you're just like, yeah, here we go. Here's a thing. But I do think that there are games that kind of fall on the boring side of 7 out of 10, right? Some people are saying sleeping dogs in the chat.

you know i think sleeping dogs is a game that is is probably debatable depending on what other games you played and when you played them or all that sort of stuff but i would put sleeping dogs on the shrug side of seven out of ten like yep you made another one of those you cleaned it up pretty nice in some ways and yeah, here's your open world thing. Okay. I gotcha. Um, whereas I think other people like, like see way more in that game than I ever, ever did. Um, but like,

I don't know, man. Like, you know, and again, like seven out of 10 is a bit of a misnomer because I think there's some games that are scoring way worse than that that are actually still kind of, you know, vanquish. Is a good example, I think. How did Vanquish review? How did Binary Domain review?

In some ways, we're kind of talking about B games, but I think when we talk about B games, we're looking at games that are just like solid examples of the form. It's not necessarily that they're pushing hard in some new direction or anything. Bariki one says dark void. Dark void is a cool game. Um, dark void. I would actually say is the seven out of 10 that is, is largely, I don't know, like the flying stuff. They were trying something there. I guess you could say that.

But Dark Void, a lot of Dark Void is cover shooter. Like they sat down and said, we're making a cover shooter where you can fly. Army of Two is a great example of not what we're talking about, right? Like Army of Two, well... army of two did try some stuff just not a lot army of two is just kind of an average shooter but they did the weird thing with like aggro where like if you got a shinier and shinier gun

Like if you chose a gaudy gun, they would be more likely to shoot at you than at your teammate. And so it was this idea of pulling aggro in a two-player shooter. And that's kind of fucking weird. um also the back to back stuff which was really just kind of cutscene type business but um but yeah I think that like yeah there's sort of um

Games that try and they miss the mark, but you still find something in them. Not even games that you would necessarily recommend to everyone, but you're like, hey, there's actually some really amazing stuff. I know I rated it higher than this, but I actually think that the Syndicate reboot is a relatively good example of the game that did some stuff, the game that has points in it to where it is greater than the sum of its parts.

You know, there's nuance to it. There's whether some of that is just in the lore or in the modes they built or in the. animation work or something when i look at syndicate um outside of just the gameplay which i do like i i think that like a lot of it comes down to That's a game when star breeze was still star breeze. Um, and you know, and, and machine games, I think inherited a lot of this DNA along the way, but like,

It is the thing that they did in Riddick, and Syndicate still has some of that, but Riddick is actually the game worth talking about here. Riddick is that game that, like... It's flawed. It's got some weird stuff going on, but it's trying so much and it's doing, and also the gun handling for such an established genre of like.

Look at this front top view of this gun model at the bottom center of your screen for eight hours. You know, like for something that had been done a zillion times by the time Starbreeze had gotten to it. just the way like even just dumb simple stuff like you look at it now and you're like oh that's that's actually like it is still really cool because a lot of developers still don't do this but it is when you press up against a wall

And you see the animation of the gun going up against it because logically the gun couldn't just sit at the bottom center of the screen. If you're pressed up against a wall, like treating the human body in a first person shooter as a real thing and not just. a fucking metal dick at the bottom of the screen and a crosshair. You know? Like Quake, for example. Nothing, you know, Quake's an amazing video game, but...

You know what I mean? Like that, like making that stuff feel real. Yeah. Indiana Jones does a good job of that. Like the Wolfenstein games do a good job of that as well. But like Riddick was really, I think the first game that I had seen that.

that did all that shit um and did it really well and did it automatically it wasn't something where you're like i need to pull my gun in so i can get closer to this wall you know it's not a system it's not some insane game thing you know but but it's a It's a subtle thing that adds so much to the overall experience.

That it helps make that game stand out and and you know the rest of Riddick is no slouch either like I don't mean to you know Like it's not just that it's like it's like hey, you're exploring this pretty like all of that stuff is, is super fucking fascinating, especially for a first person shooter type game that was coming out when that game came out. Um, but that game is flawed in a lot of ways too. Like it's fucked up. It's messy, you know?

um they they pull off a lot they don't get all the way there but there's enough there that if you can kind of work through the kind of frustrating parts of it you see something special And so I think that's ultimately like, that's what people are talking about. And people say the same thing about movies all the time too, that they'd much rather watch a seven out of 10 movie than some like, you know, massive box office, 10 out of 10, whatever.

And I tend to agree. But, you know, it's something that's like, cult classics is a way to kind of describe this stuff, but I think like... In a lot of cases, we're describing things that are a little bit better than the typical kind of cult classic or a little bit, in some cases, better regarded than games you would often just attach the cult classic moniker to.

But that gets you most of the way there. That's a sensible label for this stuff as well. But I think a lot of it comes down to just like if you're a person who values... Whether it's, you know, whether you want to call it innovation. Or you want developers to try to like push the medium forward and you're okay if they don't.

If they don't hit it all the way out of the park, you know, like there's a better version of a lot of these games. Mason weather says Drakengard isn't amazing. Seven out of 10 that gave us near. Sure. Sure. I guess. I have zero. I will keep no candles lit for Drakengard. I will not. I will not. I am. I have zero. I do not like Drakengard, but I understand where you're coming from, right? Like it's.

Like Drakengard did some stuff that if you were able to appreciate that stuff, then, then yeah, like, yeah, there's some cool stuff there. Drakengard maybe just piles up the shit a little too high. I don't know. Phil Bosch says Dragon's Dogma. Dragon's Dogma is probably a really good example for what we're talking about, right? Especially, I think, you know...

Especially for something that seems like a relatively well-worn genre. Especially even from a company that had already made Monster Hunter games at that point. And then Dragon's Dogma comes out. And they're just like, I don't know, man, there was a guy here and he said, I got some different ideas about how to do this monster fight thing. And then he gave us Dragon's Dogma and I don't know what we're going to do with it, but we're putting it out.

fucking i don't know like yeah i like dragon's dogma is a really good example of just like hey there are multiple ways to solve this problem and i think that's that's something that we kind of lose these days and i'm There are cases where I'm happy to lose it because sometimes I like just a polished up game and, you know, they don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time, you know, and control schemes and what have you. But like, there is something that I think we lost.

in games as a lot of this stuff became. It's why I was talking about controller innovation earlier. In some ways, that feels like the only way out of it. First-person shooters control a specific way now, and that's kind of it. You know, you can try to sit there and say like, oh, well, the halo control scheme is better. You're wrong. It's fine. Like the first thing to do in a halo game is to change the controls to call of duty. It's, it is the.

De facto standard across so many games for so many reasons. Killzone, another great example of like, oh, we tried to have a slightly different control scheme. They went more in the Halo direction as well. But for the tasks at hand in most of those shooters. The halo control scheme, like the idea of like devoting your right, your left trigger to throwing grenades when you have all of these other buttons available is stupid.

But I do think that it's frustrating in a way that we have lost... a lot of variety in control schemes across a lot of these games you know like I wish in some ways I wish that wasn't the case you know that like shooters were different enough from one another that a lot of these different control schemes would make more sense. And you see things like, like if you want to call, you know, Metroid Prime a shooter.

That was kind of the interesting thing about playing the remastered version of those games where it was on a more standardized controller is you're like, oh, like it doesn't need this. It's cool that it controls a little bit more typically and the buttons do what you think they should do or whatever, but aiming and shooting and dual analog sticks and this and that, that's not what Metroid Prime is about.

It's an adventure game. It makes sense that it has lock-on targeting because it's not why you're there. You're not there to fucking nail headshots from across the level. It's just not that game. It's an adventure game. It's a search action game that has some fucking... The action is shooting. And they've made that shooting better over the course of those games. And that's cool.

as they've kind of found themselves into more and more typical controllers and schemes and what have you. It makes sense that that game would evolve in that direction, but... PropagandaV2 says Capcom still tries to change it up. Exoprimal and apparently Pragmata tries to change it up. Pragmata! Pragmata is fucking weird, man. I can't remember what button you hit, but like...

Pragmata is less about changing up the defined control scheme for combat and more about layering an entirely other system on top of that control scheme. And so it's about you working your way through the world and then the girl on your back needs to hack something. And so a puzzle interface pops up over the screen. And so while you're kind of still kind of half-assed trying to shoot.

And work your way around. Or at least try to avoid damage. You were also trying to avoid damage long enough. And do this puzzle at the same time. And so. Pragmata is really interesting in that way. And if that game iterates on that concept a lot and finds new ways to put you into those tense situations where you're trying to do those two things at the same time...

That'll be really special. I think if they can nail that, it'll work out really well. It'll be really fucking neat. But I came away from playing it feeling like, okay. This is a really cool demo, but if the whole game is just this, it will not be enough. Like there needs to be more variety. And near the end of the demo I played, it kind of layers another thing on it. And you're like, oh, okay. Like clearly they know that it can't just be this little hacking mini game.

With every single enemy you face because that's how you knock their shields down and then you shoot them like it can't just be that. And so my hope is that they. stumble on you know then it's a hard problem like they need to stumble on like five or six different cool control inputs for the different aspects of that game and and make them all work and make them all work together sometimes simultaneously and that'll be tricky

But if they can do it, I think it'll be really cool. And yeah, Pragmata could very easily end up being a game that fits this description. We'll see how they do with it. But yeah, you know, it feels like we kind of lost a little something and I don't, you know, I don't know. As we talk about whatever the game industry is, whatever is happening here, right? Whatever the fuck is going on, however you want to describe it, you know.

As like the, you know, the, the, the transition of the console business into something else or, or the, you know, the, the big games need to get bigger and, and everyone else can't afford to make big games anymore. So, you know, who are the major publishers that will survive? You know, like what's going to happen to EA on the other side of their acquisition? And, you know, it's likely that EA will just make safer and safer video games, right? Safer bets anyway.

hey, we made a really big, expensive first-person shooter. Like, hey, we made this license thing. It still makes sense for them to make an Iron Man game as long as the budget is right. but like is ea gonna go out on a limb and make something completely crazy on their own and do it like no dude like they were already not heading in that direction and you know like again if they are required and have to

Find ways to be more profitable on the other end of that acquisition, which is what it sounds like will end up happening to them. That is not a recipe for Titanfall 3. That is not a recipe for... another burnout game that is not another recipe for another need for speed game that is you know like there's a lot of stuff that that probably just doesn't happen in that framework

And so, you know, a lot of the games that I think we'll see innovation out of are going to be increasingly smaller and smaller games in size and scope where they go like, okay, we came up with these. really wild things and that's what this entire game is about because we don't have the budget to do anything more you know like smaller teams smaller publishers uh you know like continuing to move in that direction for for innovation

As the large games just get safer and safer and safer. Because they become increasingly risk averse in the current environment. You know, I don't think Microsoft is going to be a great home for innovation in AAA games. Game Pass affords them a little bit of leeway to where they can still make something like Keeper.

And a game like that probably still makes sense in their portfolio going forward. But I don't know that I would say that they're going to... you know they're not going to go out there and just like reinvent the wheel especially something like halo you know like like they'll change the underlying engine they'll do the stuff they need to do to make it work for a business reason like i don't know

I would not expect some massive innovation to come out of like the next Halo sequel or something to that effect. You know, iteration on like, oh, we found a new way to do co-op or a new way to do this, new way to do that. Like gears. Yeah. Gears E day. Well, yeah, I expected gears of war emergence day to be almost a throwback. Like, you know, the last gears of war was like a half-assed open world game. Remember?

Where you're like out on the ice on the weird skiff thing and you're like going around and like there are just these random small encounters you can roll up to and get like currency and other weird items and you don't need any of that shit and it's not super well fleshed out. But it's kind of cool that they did it. It's weird that all of that content just felt so pointless. And there were such...

such like very pointed and noticeable transitions from like open world to, Oh, now it's a gears level. Like it literally, like he shimmies sideways until there is room through a little crevice.

And you come out the other like, I'm going to crouch under this thing. And then when we come out on the other side of this, we are no longer in the open world and we are in a Gears of War level. Like it was kind of like Halo ODST, you know, like that's a good way to split the difference in some strange way, right? Like. Like ODST is a really cool game, but when you get out of that open world and into the levels, it's a Halo game through and through. And the transitions are very rigid.

You know, it's like you go back to that hub and it's fucking jazzy and smoky and dark and you're like, man, what the fuck? This is crazy. Am I shooting all of these things or am I not shooting any of them? I don't know. And then you get to the point where you're like, look at this man's helmet. All right, let's do a halo level, you know, and, and then you get into some very, very standard halo levels on the other side of that transition. Right.

And so it's kind of neat to see the framing. I don't know. It's kind of cool. Just to have the games framed up in new ways, at least. Like, hey, we gave it a weird hub world that's got a totally different vibe.

than the typical halo game or here's a you know and they use it as a storytelling uh mechanism you know to be like okay we're gonna now we're gonna tell this chapter of the story and you can kind of see them in any order because it's an open world you walk around like it's it's kind of i don't know Like Gears was neat and I would be interested in seeing a Gears sequel that took that stuff to a more logical conclusion.

but also i think that in terms of just trends and whatever else i think people have had their fill of open world games and they don't necessarily need fake open world games and so gears i think i imagine gears goes right back to the well and just goes like here's a

Very linear, straightforward Gears game. And it's a prequel, I guess. I don't know, whatever. Like Halo Infinite, I thought was really neat. You know, Halo Infinite is another cool way of splitting the difference between... open world and something that has some real focus in it you know like halo infinite was an open world that didn't get bogged down in a bunch of in a bunch of side garbage it had like some

tactical things some tactical side stuff that you could do to gain an advantage in an area or gain access to some stuff and you know i think that stuff was really neat and structurally i think halo infinite was really cool um I would love to see them do more of that. I don't think they will. I can't imagine that like the next Halo is going to go back to that in any way, shape or form. I imagine they put out this Halo one campaign and then they go right into a very traditional Halo game.

because it will have been long enough since a new one of those was made that they'll go, oh, yeah, we're boots on the ground. I don't know. Master Chief and the Warthog. I don't know. What happens at the end of the game? I don't know. You get in the warthog and you got to drive away from something that's going to blow up or I don't know. You got to get away from something. You got to drive. I'm gonna write that down. That's good shit. That's good shit. That's good shit.

Ryan writes in from Texas to ask, what is the worst button to press or use on some controllers that you've used? For me, it's the Z button on the N64 controller or the touchpad on PlayStation controllers. I'm also not a fan of the little joystick on the GameCube controller. The worst buttons. I mean...

A lot of people saying L3 and R3, which I've never had any issues with those at all. I don't know. The clicking in the sticks has never been a big deal to me. Yeah, black and white buttons on the original Xbox were garbage. And I still couldn't tell you which one was which. Which one was white, which one was black. You had to look at it every time. The share button on current PlayStation controllers, I think super sucks because I don't need that button there at all and would much rather.

I would much rather the touchpad have no buttons on it and then just to have a very normal and regular select button instead of the share button. Yeah, the PS3 analog triggers are some real garbage. Those L2 and R2 buttons on the DualShock 3 or on the 6-axis even are awful. Like just the contour, the shape of them, the feel of them, the mushy, squishy, like, oh God, what am I like? I'm putting my, it's like I'm blindfolded, putting my hand in a box full of goo. God, I'm dying.

I'm dying when I'm aiming down sights. This is terrible. It's why all the developers decided to switch it. Um, because they, they knew they knew L2 and R2 were like fucking. Yeah. Sick. Um. Man, I don't know. The, uh. The worst buttons. The worst buttons. I'm trying to limit it to an official controller because we could really... I would say that the Intellivision controller, everything about it, everything about the way those...

membrane buttons pushed felt really terrible. Um, that was real bad. Um, The Z button on, like I would say the Z button on a GameCube controller, like their whole thing of like, we've got three shoulder buttons, not four. It's just like. you numb nuts what are you doing like it's just so stupid uh us saturn controller shoulder buttons yes jump again says that in the chat those are real real bad those are real bad

Oh, the right stick on 3DSs, the little camera nub thing? Yeah, that's an atrocity. That's like, hey, check this thing out. It's, you know, like, it's real bad on a laptop. And now you can use it for video games in like the two games that support it. I mean, to the benefit, in defense of the right stick on a 3DS, nothing used it. So, hey. But yeah, that Z button on the GameCube was not great. The analog triggers on the GameCube were neat in theory, but I don't know. How many games used that?

how many games used the like analog to click at the end you know it's really just it's a super mario sunshine controller which is disgusting in its own weird way um The 3D controller for the Saturn. Yeah, the weird analog thing on the Saturn is not great. But there were no good games that used it, so it's kind of hard to... It's hard to really... Judge that. I don't think that the Switch 2 feels great.

You know, it's not really a button problem. So I've been playing more Switch 2 stuff because my daughter's been getting jealous of my son playing video games. And so she's been coming in and she wants to play something. And she's tired of all the games on the Switch 1.

And I made the mistake of letting her play some Street Fighter 6 on the PC a while ago. She wanted to play more of it. But I'm usually in here trying to use the PC for... work things or you know whatever the hell it is i do in here record videos with no audio on them apparently i i recorded the next hall of fame and then went to go edit it over the weekend and then whoops two-thirds of it has no audio on it at all

So I have to rerecord that whole thing. I was, I was so, I was so pissed anyway. So I had to give her something else that she could play street fighter six on. And it turns out the, I like my options became. The Xbox Ally X, which was around here a minute ago. It ran away. I don't know. Or the Switch 2.

I opted for the switch too, because it was more lightweight. And I think that she was just going to have an easier time with it. And I felt very like if he is like, oh, you're going to get your, you know, your hands, these kids, these kids. I don't know if you know this about children, their hands are always sticky. If you're the sort of person who doesn't want to get your electronics all funky, kids are going to do that.

But I was like, well, whatever. It's not like anyone is using this Switch 2 anyway. So here, no one ever uses this thing anyway. So here, play some Street Fighter 6. And she's been having a great time playing through the story modes in Street Fighter 6. She's six years old and I feel a little iffy about her playing a fighting game, but also it's really fucking cool to have conversations with my daughter about Cammy and Chun-Li.

It's been very exciting for me, a fighting game fan. And she's been playing it. I've been setting it to dynamic mode for her, which is the mode that they put into the story mode where you can just kind of mash buttons and... Moves come out. And it's been awesome for her. She's been having an awesome time. Like just beating the story modes over and over again with all the different.

She really only plays as the girls unless then she finally asks me who she should play as. And I'm like, you should check out Ken. Hey, have you tried Ken? Get a look at this Ken guy. And she's like, yeah, huh. All right. Well, anyway, Lily is in here. And I'm like, ah, it's getting to the point where I have to decide if, um, if I'm going to buy the season three, cause the, the, the switch to version of street fighter.

they put out the year one and two pass alongside it. And so it has all of the DLC up to, it does not have Sagat and Sea Viper. uh who are the i think the only two season three characters that are out right now and she sees sea viper and she wants to try sea viper real bad uh And she asked me all about Luke. And what is Luke into? I was like, he's like a mercenary. He's like, I don't know. He just wants to have some fun. I don't know. He sucks. It's hard to tell a six-year-old that someone sucks.

without using the word suck. I just go like, I don't know. This guy seems like he's not a good guy. And then she says, who do you like playing as? And I don't want to lie to my kids more than I have to. And so I'm like, well, you know, I like playing as Luke. I like playing as Luke. He sucks. God damn it. So I said Ryu instead, actually, in that case.

And there's a Katamari cousin named Ryu. And so they're both very confused about how there could be multiple people with the name Ryu in a thing. I'm like, well, it's a pretty, I mean, it's a very common Japanese name.

it's extremely calm it's a very common word and it's it's well i i'm trying to explain to a six-year-old and a four-year-old the name ryu is again it's super fun uh so anyway she's been playing a lot of um the switch too and so she's occasionally handing it to me when she can't beat the truck because there's a truck bonus stage and I tell her like just keep hitting the button you will beat the truck but sometimes she loses faith in that and hands it to me

And so as someone who's been playing Switch 2 a little bit more, because then she got into Pokemon ZA and I started playing that because she got bored of reading. I hate the way the Switch 2 feels. Uh, undocked as a, as a handheld. And I need to get my hands on more switch twos to find out if it is a problem with my switch to. or just some switch twos. And it's, I've talked about it before, but the joy cons flex ever so slightly in those magnetic slots.

And I fucking hate it. I fucking, I hate to push buttons on that thing. I like triggers the, the D every single move. It just moves. Like it moves away from me as I'm pushing the buttons because it just, it's not a massive, you know, it's maybe some people will just ignore it and be okay with it, but it sucks, dude. It is so, it is just loose enough.

To make me crazy. And I hate using it. For something that is as expensive as it is. For something that is supposed to be better than the previous switch. Which. also kind of had some of those problems, but a little bit less so than these. It is crazy. It is crazy to me that these things move at all. Um, and I've, I've heard from people who say that theirs don't move at all. I've heard from other people that say, oh yeah, mine move a bunch. And so maybe it is just like a, a.

Maybe it is just a problem that some of these things have or whatever, or maybe some people don't notice it. I don't know what the issue is, but every time I push a button on that thing, I am reminded of it and just go like... God, dude, how did this happen? This feels so bad, especially like trying to play a fighting game on it where you're just you're asking for a level of precision.

And then they give you the split D-pad, like trying to do dragon punches on these four separated buttons on the Switch 2. Kind of sucks as it is. And yeah, man, I'm really surprised. I'm continually surprised by that. And it makes me not want to play games on that thing undocked. Like I started playing Donkey Kong.

a couple of days ago which we're very close to the end of the game and then never finished it so now when i pick up donkey kong i'm like i have no idea how to do any of this like which buttons do i hit in what order to launch off of this ledge and get some forward distance in order to make this grab i don't remember the roll jump grab this like i don't remember any of that anymore and like um And so I'm the absolute shits at it at the worst possible time. But.

but in like having on top of that having like the d-pad move as you're pushing it like the having the whole controller move as you're pushing it like i i think that super sucks um Whereas with the Switch, I eventually got to a point where I only played it undocked.

the switch to i am playing almost always docked except for you know when i'm giving it to my daughter because this tv is in use and then she's handing it to me because she's like i don't she's reading all the stuff or you know she's actually she's she's playing whatever the new She's playing Pokemon ZA. Because I had it installed. And I hadn't launched it at all. But she. Loaded it up. And.

We're walking around fake France or whatever. And she's reading about all these systems and just buttoning right past them and barely understanding and then handing it to me and going, I can't win this fight.

i'm like oh okay yeah well i can you know it's a pokemon fight so i can you know whatever i can pick things off a menu you just got to read it and she hands it to me and i realize like oh shit this is what the fuck am i looking at um these are this is like real-time combat with cooldowns for attacks and like what holy smokes this is okay um because in in this game you

Hold down like ZL. I'm really good at using the names of buttons, like add the appropriate names for buttons, but for whatever reason, ZL and ZR. are maybe, they aren't the worst to feel, to get back to Ryan's questions, but they are perhaps the dumbest names for any buttons. And I never remember them, and I don't want to remember them, and I don't like that they are named ZL and ZR.

But the combat in Pokemon now, at least this one, is you are holding down ZL to lock on targets to the enemy Pokemon. And then the face buttons are... maps to the different attacks that your Pokemon can have and so each one of those takes time to cast and time to come out and then there's a cooldown that fills up on that button before you can hit it again

And so it becomes more like, okay, well, I want to do this to lower defense, and then I immediately want to attack. And so you're hitting that button. It's doing Lear. You're hitting this button. It's running over there and pecking or doing whatever it's doing. And... As someone who has not really messed with any of this stuff too much as of late, when she handed it to me and said do a Pokemon battle, I was expecting something very different.

like oh shit okay it's actually kind of cool i don't know like i can't decide if it's actually good or not to change the battle system to this but at least it feels more dynamic like i'm still as the as the dude as the trainer i'm still walking around And, you know, making my fucking rat cast spells or whatever. And then I had to assign a TM to...

my bunny so that it could break rocks. I don't know. It's a very early part of the game, very early part of the game. So if you've played the game, I'm sure you probably know what I'm talking about. But I don't know. I think I have a lot of Pokemon Legends ZA or whatever in my future here because she seems to want to keep playing it. But also she doesn't want to play it. She wants to keep playing it.

but doesn't want to do any of the fights and uh and is is asking me what everything means before she picks any dialogue options and so we're just kind of we're sort of sort of playing it together and then she goes off and does her own thing for a while then comes back like a while later and there's like you know tutorials for like four systems that I have missed and I'm just like oh shit like I don't know well I don't know it's still a video game I think I think I can figure this out but uh

It's been a really weird way to play that game, I'm sure. Let's see. Adam in the UK.

It says, you've mentioned your fondness for the Commodore 64 a few times. While that was certainly popular here in the United Kingdom, I rarely hear Americans talk about it. From an outsider's perspective, 1980s gaming in the States seemed dominated by Atari and Nintendo.

I'd love to hear more about your memories and what you enjoyed most about the C64, your favorite games, all that sort of stuff. Over here, there was a big rivalry between the C64 and the ZX Spectrum, and to a lesser extent, the Amstrad CPC. all fighting for the top spot in the UK gaming market. Did the C64 face any similar competition in the US? As from what I understand, the spectrum and the CPC were pretty much non-existent over there. Yeah.

I knew someone that had a Timex Sinclair, but, um, no, I, um, people pretty much had if you didn't have a commodore you had a pc you had like a 88 and whatever era of p you know that was i guess pre-286 no i guess like by the time i had my commodore the 286 was probably the thing If not the 386. But yeah, you had like an IBM PC Junior or something because your dad did spreadsheet work or something.

The Commodore 64, I, my, my second cousin had one and I don't know why he got it or how he got it, but he had it and he had GI Joe.

and a couple of other games uh you know wheel of fortune and just like he had just a small handful of games for the commodore and i didn't have a computer at the time like we had the nes and i still had my atari 800 but it wasn't like hooked up um i didn't you know i didn't really do anything with it it was just kind of you know done um And basically like I became very aware that like if.

My cousin had all of these Commodore games. If I were to buy a Commodore and a bunch of blank discs, then I could have all those Commodore games. And I had another friend who got one also. And so he had, he was kind of a second source for games. And then he knew someone else that had one. And so that was another source for games. And so even before we were calling BBSs and, you know, like. getting up to no good online um you know there was a there was a

there was a path that games took through like, okay, I'm going to copy this for you and copy this. And then, and then I'm going to get a copy. And then we're going to, you know, at the end of the day, all of us had the same game. And so I wanted it. Once I saw GI Joe and a couple of the other games, Agent USA was another one. I wanted a Commodore. I wanted to play all those games. And so my parents eventually got me one for Christmas one year.

And we bought maybe three or four games for it over the years that I used it. I bought like LA Crackdown, which was a terrible video game. I bought 720, which was broken. My copy of 720 didn't have any bees in it. We bought Paperboy, which was cool because it would automatically fast load on the 128. I had a Commodore 128, but never used 128 mode for anything. I did not know how to program in CPM.

Yeah, just started amassing a large quantity of fucking bootleg games, and it was awesome. And then I got a modem. And I got on Quantum Link, which was the online service exclusively for Commodore Computers from the company that would eventually bring you AOL. And Quantum Link was basically AOL for a Commodore 64 in a lot of ways. It had some of the same features and concepts, just way slower and way uglier.

And you had to pay like six bucks an hour or something to be on it in the expensive set. If you wanted to do chat, if you were in chat rooms, you had to pay by the minute to be in a chat room. In addition to a monthly fee. in addition to a long distance phone call because my town did not have a local access number for quantum link and so i ran up some bills being online for sure

But it was awesome. I don't know. But it was really just a small handful of us that had Commodores and no one else had a computer at all. Or if they did, it was a PC. It was a early, you know, like a, like a very early MS DOS machine or, you know, something like that. Uh, the schools still had apples. Like the school had like an apple to GS. They had one Mac or something and then a classroom full of Apple IIs. When I was 15, this would have been 1990.

In 1990, I took a typing class and computer class, and it was all Apple IIs. They were still using Apple IIs and Apple IIEs and Apple IICs in 1990. And, yeah. And so, you know, I had my Commodore for a number of years. And then, you know, around 1992, I started hanging out with Glenn. And that was around the time the Amiga was coming out.

And Commodore was sending him Amigas nonstop. He had like three Amiga 500s, all of which were broken in slightly different ways. And he ended up... giving me like three he ended up giving me three Amiga 500s that were broken in different ways one the modem port didn't work one the mouse port was fried and one just worked

Finally, I got a hold of one that actually just was fully functional. And so I switched to the Amiga because I wasn't getting any new Commodore 64 games. And I wanted to log on to BBSs on an 80 column display instead of a 40 column display. And so I had an Amiga 500, but I, I barely used it for games. I really was just using it to call BBSs and I would download some games here and there. And, you know, like I would, you know, do some stuff and.

but like i did not have it like i didn't know anyone else that had an amiga and so other than glenn and glenn was just getting games from publishers and so i would grab those sometimes and and just check out some games or whatever but like i wasn't I was not playing a lot of Amiga games at all. And then in 93, I got a PC. I went from, you know, I had the Amiga for a little while. And it's neat for what it is.

and we had a a cd tv which is basically an amiga 500 that's been consolized we had a cd tv with a genlock card in it that commodore had sent him And the Genlock card meant that you could load up deluxe paint and make images that you could use. And you could layer the images over video. And so we were doing, we got into public access television around that time. And so we started doing credits for the show on the Amiga.

or on the cd tv really because you could just plug a keyboard into the cd tv and it would it would just act like an amiga 500 it wasn't you know it was it was just there wasn't anything unique about it Other than the Genlock card meant you could pass video through it and layer stuff on top of it. And so we would, you know, have a VCR hooked up on one side and on the other and just run this stuff through. And, you know, it was.

It worked well enough for what it was, but it was a pain in the ass. It was always fucking broken. Sometimes it just wouldn't work right. And you're like, I have no idea. I'm so in over my head on this. I am fucking 16 and I am lost. with this fucking Amiga. Um, and, uh, and yeah, so I don't know. We, that was, that was, we, we did that for a while and then, and then I, you know, like we,

Glenn and I both got like straight up four 86 is not long after that. And, uh, and he started running a BBS out of his house and I was a sys op on that. And, uh, And then I got a PC. Like when I graduated high school, my parents got me a PC and I got a 486. 66. And played a lot of Doom. You know?

And then I had access to the proper internet. I had a friend sign up for a class. Even though I wasn't out of high school, quite out of high school, and I was not going to the junior college, I had a friend who was going to the junior college. And if you went to the junior college, you could sign up for a shell account.

on their unix system on their linux system you know and uh and so i told my friend like hey go get an account for this thing and then give it to me and so i had his name as my email address for like a couple of years um, on the, the local junior college system. And so I would, I would get online there. That was before the worldwide web existed. And I would, uh,

Dial into that shell account and look at news groups and figure out how to get all the cool stuff off of news groups. So many pornographic GIF images that you could pile up.

as well as fully registered copies of Doom and all sorts of other video games. I bought a copy of Quake. I ordered a copy of Quake, but by the time the CD showed up... like quake had been online cracked and you know i'm not even cracked really but just like it was all i was online full version was online for weeks and weeks by the time they shipped the the disc version of the game

And so I put it in and I was like, okay, well, I guess now I have the soundtrack and now I can listen to the music except CD-ROM IRQs and configuring all that stuff to work at the same time as the sound card was hard. Anyway, it was a mess. PCs. But yeah, I don't know. I got really good at finding stuff online. I got really good at finding stuff online.

That's going to do it. One more quick one. Steven in Hillsborough, Oregon writes in and says, I found myself in Washington, PA for work and I have to stay the weekend at a hotel with nothing to do. There is a StarCraft 64 in-person tournament in Philadelphia five hours away this Saturday. Should I go? A StarCraft 64 tournament is hilarious, right? Yes. I mean, yes. Like, I hope that you went. This was sent on the 30th, so this tournament already happened.

But yes, I think you should have gone and taken a bunch of video and pictures of an in-person StarCraft 64 tournament because that's fucking crazy. Five hours is a long drive. But again, if you're at a hotel with nothing to do, I mean, shit. Might as well go enter. Maybe you win, or I guess it already happened, but that's exciting. The idea that, um, that people are getting together to play Starcraft 64 competitively.

And also advertising it in such a way that you heard about it, even though you were staying five hours away is also kind of amazing. So I hope that you went or at least found something to do. while you were there. Anyway, that's going to do it for the show. Thanks, everybody, for writing in. Again, podcast at guard.bike is the email address. Hit up the Patreon. You want to add free version of the podcast?

A bonus podcast and additional content. Get it over there. Sign up for the Patreon. Please support this nightmarish hell endeavor of ours. Get on the Discord. We'll have a good time. I will be back tomorrow with something. We'll play some video games. We'll do something, I don't know, on Wednesday. And then on Friday, we'll rank some more 8-bit Nintendo games. Come on through. And of course, next Tuesday, be back with another episode of This Thing.

This podcast. This podcast. Whatever you want to call it. And we'll be back then. See you soon. Bye.