Get Played

Save the Switch 2

116 min
Jan 19, 20264 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

The Get Played podcast team discusses strategies to save the struggling Nintendo Switch 2, which has underperformed significantly compared to the original Switch with 35% sales declines in the US. They analyze the lack of killer software, examine successful indie games and legacy titles, and propose solutions including Game Pass-style subscriptions, exclusive first-party releases, and innovative hardware accessories.

Insights
  • Nintendo's mid-generation problem: new games releasing on both old and new hardware reduces incentive to upgrade, unlike previous console transitions with exclusive titles
  • The Switch 2 lacks a system-defining launch title comparable to Breath of the Wild, leaving consumers without compelling reasons to purchase despite strong hardware
  • Indie games and legacy ports (Hades, Hollow Knight, Mario and Wario) demonstrate the Switch's strength in curating niche content, but this alone cannot drive hardware sales
  • Nintendo's resistance to industry-standard features (achievements, robust online infrastructure, Game Pass-style subscriptions) puts them at competitive disadvantage
  • Three-month window identified as critical: February Nintendo Direct must announce major titles or the Switch 2 risks becoming a commercial failure like the Wii U and GameCube
Trends
Console mid-generation stagnation becoming industry norm as cross-platform releases delay exclusive softwareIndie games and visual novels gaining mainstream recognition as system-defining experiences rather than AAA blockbustersSubscription gaming services (Game Pass, PlayStation Plus) becoming expected baseline feature, not premium offeringPortable gaming devices (Steam Deck, ROG Allies) fragmenting handheld market and challenging Nintendo's hardware dominanceNostalgia-driven hardware design (clamshell, dual-screen) resonating with consumers despite technical obsolescencePokemon franchise underperformance despite 30th anniversary opportunity signaling broader Nintendo IP management issuesNovember 2025 hardware sales collapse (worst since 1995) indicating systemic console market weakness beyond Switch 2Visual novels and story-driven games gaining critical acclaim and mainstream visibility on gaming platformsFirst-party exclusive strategy proving essential for console differentiation in multi-platform eraDragon Quest 7 Reimagined success suggesting turn-based RPG renaissance opportunity for Nintendo platforms
Topics
Nintendo Switch 2 hardware sales performance and market positioningSystem-exclusive game strategy and first-party software developmentGame Pass and subscription gaming service models for NintendoVisual novel games and narrative-driven experiences on consolesCross-platform game releases and console upgrade incentivesNintendo online infrastructure and achievement systemsIndie game curation and discovery on Nintendo platformsPokemon franchise strategy and 30th anniversary opportunitiesHandheld gaming market competition and device innovationGame preservation and legacy title re-releasesNintendo Direct announcements and software roadmap transparencyDual-screen and clamshell hardware design trendsTurn-based RPG renaissance and Dragon Quest franchiseGaming hardware design aesthetics and colorway optionsConsole lifecycle management and mid-generation refresh strategies
Companies
Nintendo
Primary subject of episode; Switch 2 console underperformance and strategies to improve sales and software library di...
Game Freak
Developer of Pokemon games; mentioned regarding Pokemon Pokopia and franchise's 30th anniversary opportunities for Sw...
The Pokemon Company
Publisher making significant revenue from Pokemon Pocket card game; discussed as potential distraction from console g...
FromSoftware
Developing exclusive multiplayer game for Switch 2; mentioned as potential system-defining title in development
Supergiant Games
Developer of Hades and Hades 2; discussed as example of indie game success that defines Switch platform identity
Team Cherry
Developer of Hollow Knight; cited as indie title that became synonymous with Switch platform despite multi-platform a...
Sony
PlayStation 5 mentioned as primary console alternative; potential portable device announcement could threaten Switch ...
Microsoft
Xbox Game Pass model discussed as template Nintendo should adopt for subscription gaming service on Switch 2
Valve
Steam Deck mentioned as competing handheld device fragmenting portable gaming market away from Nintendo
ASUS
ROG Allies handheld device mentioned as competitor in portable gaming market
Square Enix
Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined demo discussed as example of successful cozy RPG that could inspire Pokemon franchise direc...
Bandai Namco
Mentioned in context of Tekken and fighting game franchises potentially available for Switch 2
Capcom
Resident Evil 4 mentioned as GameCube exclusive that helped define that console's library
CD Projekt Red
Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 mentioned as example of mature content and nudity on Nintendo platform
Mattel
Power Glove mentioned as historical Nintendo peripheral; discussed in context of Switch 2 accessory innovation
People
Heather Ann Campbell
Co-host discussing Switch 2 problems and proposing solutions including Game Pass model and hardware accessories
Tiger Weigel
Co-host analyzing Switch 2 game library and discussing Hades 2, Dragon Quest 7, and system-defining titles
Matt Apodaca
Co-host discussing Hades 2 gameplay experience and proposing three-month deadline for Nintendo to save Switch 2
Nick Weigel
Co-host discussing Death Howl deck-builder, Balatro gameplay, and game release timing analysis
Ryan
Guest intern receiving Sonic Speed Cafe merchandise and participating in game discussion segment
Michelle Chen
Podcast producer mentioned in context of Chicago visit and restaurant recommendations
Robin Williams
Referenced for naming daughter Zelda after game franchise; discussed as example of genuine fan appreciation versus co...
Elon Musk
Criticized for naming son Commodore after video game reference; discussed as example of try-hard corporate gaming cul...
Chris Pratt
Joked about potentially voicing next Mario game without accent; discussed as example of corporate gaming missteps
Joe Keery
Mentioned as having a band; referenced in context of Stranger Things and celebrity gaming culture
Quotes
"The Switch 2 is on the verge of being shut down. And maybe this is the Nintendo curse. Maybe Nintendo nails it and then slips, nails it and then slips, right?"
Heather Ann Campbell~2:15:00
"I think the Switch 2 is a flop. We don't know. No, I think it is. I think it is. I just have three months."
Heather Ann Campbell~2:45:00
"There's nothing happening on this system. For half, like you're going to have it for a year and you're going to compare that year to the Breath of the Wild Odyssey year. It's a flop."
Heather Ann Campbell~2:50:00
"They just need to do this. And it could be first-party games. It doesn't even have to be, it could be a rotating library. It just has to be something."
Heather Ann Campbell~2:35:00
"I think we just need a new one post-haste. Jesus, listen to those numbers compared to these numbers. For the Switch 1, Mario Kart 8, 69 million. Animal Crossing New Horizons, 48 million."
Matt Apodaca~2:40:00
Full Transcript
This is a headgum podcast. All right, Nintendo of America. Look, it goes without saying that the Switch 2 has been a bit of a disappointment after the raucous success of the Switch 1, its predecessor. We just need some ideas for how to write the ship. How do we fix this thing? How do we get people excited about the Switch 2? Look, I know I was the one that talked us out of naming it the Super Nintendo Switch and in favor of the Switch 2, but I feel like this not completely my fault. I have some other ideas though that I think could be really helpful. I don't think the name is the only problem. No. I think the branding is okay. Thank you for saying that. And you did a good job. Hey, thank you. And you look great. Hey, thanks. All right. Sorry, continue. I've been thinking about a couple things and obviously it has the library, the Nintendo Switch. Have you been working out? I have actually. Oh, okay. You can tell. Thanks. Doesn't that look great? Yeah, I'm actually here from HR and I've been hearing that there's been some... I know that our sales are lagging and I heard that maybe there was a distraction issue happening here at Nintendo America headquarters, but from what I've seen, there's definitely a problem, Matt. And you're here for no reason. I didn't say you should be here. Yeah, no, no, no. I think the problem is, Matt, you got to calm down with that bod, buddy. You can't go around shaking that thing in front of the Nintendo employees. You know what? Yeah, I also, I did get a BBL over the break. What's that? Did I or did I not hear that you did 50 straight push-ups in the hallway before you headed into this conference room? Oh, he did. I count them out. You're standing on my back. Yeah, it was like a strong man. Yeah, I think we need to focus up and the only way that's going to happen is if you start wearing some baggier pants. I'll try it. I'll give it a go. But look, I have some ideas. Yeah, sure. Switch to. I mean, like... We should talk through these over dinner. I just think it would probably be a better, creative, collaborative environment. I don't know what the premise was on this. I don't know what I walked into, but as the HR representative, I want to know how you keep that shine, that glistening shine. The premise is we're trying to save the Nintendo Switch too. I can't fucking focus on that. I'm from HR. It's okay. It's fine. I mean, look, I think while, of course, we could probably get this done today while we're at work. Yeah, sure. Of course. Then drinks after. Yeah, celebratory drinks once we solve it. Sure. My name is Sharon and I'm going to leave my husband. I just want to make that clear. Okay? You don't have to do that. I just like, look, I have a couple ideas. I feel like I messed up. So I have the biggest reason to try to save the company for us right now because I feel like I really messed up. So obviously we have the library of Nintendo Switch One titles. That's all great. Sure. But the Nintendo Switch Two library. It's a new library, but with the addition of the previous library, completely backwards compatible. What I'm proposing is that we make it so that you and I get married. I have no idea what it was that you were proposing, but if you're going to marry him, then I want to be at that wedding so I can stand up and object. Here's my idea. Okay. Here's how I save the Switch. We take a plastic mold of your chest. We reshape the system to look like it and then I lay on top of it in the parking lot. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Look, I look. I have no idea what the premise was. Premise. We're just trying to save the Switch. That's the premise. That's what we are. We are living our lives here. We're having a meeting. And look, I haven't, I haven't really even got the idea. Yeah. I'm sorry. I keep taking this. I can't even focus. My bra just burst. I got triple D's and they're hanging loose in my shirt. I shit my pants. All right. So one of those is not working for me. We got to save the Switch. We got to save the Switch too. What is your idea? What was your idea? Start a rumor that it could suck you off. We detach our joy cons and don't have any exclusives as we try to save the Switch too this week on Get Played. Welcome to Get Played, your one stop show for good games, bad games and every game in between it's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell along with my fellow host, Tiger Weigher. That's me, Tiger Weigher and I am here with our third host, Mr. Games, Madhapadaka. Hello everyone. Hello everyone and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week we are responding to an SOS. That's right, save our Switch. Hey, it's me, Wario. Fucking shit. Not who I thought was going to show up for some reason. It was alarmed by Wario. Wario was alarm-o'd. Hey, every night and every morning. Yeah, I'm back by the room. Your marooned and Wario shows up. Last person you want saving you, Wario. Got any garlic? Dude, shut the fuck up and save me. What's the matter with you, dude? Got some coins I could have. Dude, calm down. Suck my dick. But all right, fine. Are you going to save me or what, dude? He farts while you're sucking his dick. Fuck. Sick bastard. We are the all ages friendly podcast get played. Guys, I have gifts for you. What the hell? I have gifts for you. I have gifts for you. Not just any gifts, but gifts. Gifts. Gifts. Well, one gift each for you and you. A total of gifts. And ranch. And we also have. I thought you were saying gift. No, not gift. Man, I got some gifts for you. You've got to see what I'm rocking with. I got some crazy gifts. Kermit losing his shit. Kermit losing his shit. Bart hitting Homer in the tub with a chair. That guy eating a gun in the 70s on the news. My go to gift. What's that guy's name? Rest in power. I got gifts for you here in this bag. Because I guess it ties in a little bit to what I'm playing, but I'll talk about that later. Because I just came back from Chicago. Wow. But when I'm back in Chicago, I feel it. Start spreading the news. It's windy today. I think I'm just going to burn this. I think I'm burning these gifts. I was just trying to appeal to Gen Z. Gen Z likes that song, the song that I did. The Stranger Things Boy. Oh, OK. Joe Keery has got a little. That's cool. He's got a little band. Hey, how about that? Why did I? That was thought I would be nice to you guys. All right. So anyway, I got gifts. Once you said you have gifts, kind of can't take it back. You kind of have to give it to her. On this show, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Doesn't matter how we behave. We get the gift. There are three gifts in this bag. We do have a head gum intern here today. And I feel a little bad, Ryan. Thank you so much for joining us. I don't know. Are we a shout out that? Yeah, here's the thing, Ryan. The gift is just being here. So far, you're welcome. This is huge for you. Congratulations. All right. All right. Here are the. No way. Come on. Here is the gift. Oh my God. Oh, Ryan's going to get it. Yeah, maybe don't throw it toward all the equipment. There you go. And there you go. Thank you so much. I got it. Oh my goodness. This is so sick. You have to say, OK, do we show what it is? Yeah, we should. These are sweatshirts with Sonic the Hedgehog from the Sonic Speed Cafe in Chicago. Oh my God. And on the back, it has Sonic with the word Chicago over it. And he's in his little ring and he's standing over a chili dog. This is by far the hardest sweatshirt I have. I'm putting this on immediately. Yeah, me too. Even though it's hot in here. It's hot as hell. We're putting this on. We're doing it. We gotta do it. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Heather. You're welcome. You're welcome. Did you get one for yourself? No, I did not. What the hell? What? Oh, the largest. It's a crew neck. I love it. It works out. It works out. Oh my God. Yeah, this is great. I thought it was a hoodie. Great. Look at that. Good stuff, folks. This is really good. Man, how good would a chili dog be right now? I know. Be good as hell. Yeah, so I mean, I'll talk about it. I'll talk about once we prompt me to talk about what I've done because that's part of the show. That's for our new segment, Heather, what have you done? Heather, what have you done? Covered in blood. It's interesting that they would put a chili dog on the back because obviously there's the Sonic Association. We know Sonic loves chili dogs. Right. Only thing hotter than tails. But this is me, myself, once. It's good. Sonic looking into sexy tails and saying Sonic learned there are some things hotter than chili dogs. And that's just prime association with chili dogs is that they're hot. But you think of chili dogs associated with Sonic, but you don't think of chili dogs as the Chicago style dog, which is its own thing. You don't. But the restaurant. They got the freak hot dogs with pickles on it and shit. The restaurant is in Chicago. It's in the Wicker Park neighborhood, completely gentrified since the last time I was there 20 years ago. It's not like a pop up, as far as I can tell. It's a fully themed restaurant. There's rings that are mechanical, that are rotating up on shelves. They got onion rings. They do have onion rings. What I'm talking about. They got chili dogs, Chicago dogs, French fries, etc. But also. They got ketchup in there. They do have ketchup. The music playing the entire time in the restaurant is from Sonic Games. Wow. So it's like Sonic Adventure songs, Sonic Team Racing songs. It's a little overbearing. And then they also have a console set up playing the latest Sonic game, which I think is Sonic Team Racing. I'm not sure. It was packed. I don't know. It was a real lively scene. And I thought the merch was fantastic. Really, really high quality. It's also a nice sweatshirt. It's great. This is now just in the rotation. This is good stuff. Yeah, 100%. Everyone's going to be jealous. Right before they kick our asses, they're going to be so jealous of our sweatshirts. Who is? Just people. Oh, OK. I'm wearing this sweatshirt in my casket. Baring me face down. I'm going to renew my vows wearing this. But yeah, it was fun to be back in Chicago. I met a listener. Wow. He shared his Fortnite name with me so we can party up. And I don't know. It was a good time. For some reason. Come Goblin 420. Yeah, no, CG420. Always really cool. Cool guy, cool listener. For some reason, I associate Chicago so much with you because of how much you've spoken about your time in Chicago and stuff. But for some reason, when you had said that it was the first time back in 20 years, I was like, oh, I guess I hadn't realized you hadn't been back in so long. Well, there's two answers to that. One is that I was scared. I know a lot of people who moved to LA, right? And then they get offered gigs on a boat, like a comedy boat or back in Amsterdam, for example, or in a theater in Chicago. And it's like a patch over gig. It's like, hey, I know you're having trouble making ends meet. Why don't you do a summer on the Second City boat or whatever. They'll get sucked into that world. And then they have a lot of trouble leaving that stability to enter into Los Angeles again. And I was always terrified of that happening. Oh, sure. So I didn't go back to visit. I didn't go back to do shows in Chicago. I did go back for a single weekend in the mid-2010s because I wrote for an episode of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. But that was just at NPR and then at the hotel and then at NPR. Like, I didn't get to go anywhere in the city. Yeah. But yeah, my wife had never had never gone with me. So it was time to go. And it was I love that city so fucking much. Yeah, you had a Lumet-Nadi's Pizza. Lumet-Nadi's, Portillo's. I know there's a bit of a thing between the Wiener Circle and Portillo's. And it's really hard to fall on one side or the other. But I like the I like it. I think of Portillo's though the one time that I've been there. It's like a one-stop shop, though, because like you got the place for the beef or you got the place for a hot dog. You can get both there and they're both good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was what Mary had never had either a Chicago dog or an Italian beef. So I wanted her to be able to get both of them at the same time. And I took the best photo of my wife ever of her eating an Italian beef. Hell, yes. So great. But yeah. I famously took down both by myself right before getting out of airplane. Biggest mistake in my fucking life. Sweating like I had a bomb on the airplane. Way you did. I kind of did. Yeah. I almost got the cake shake, too. I for sure would have passed away. Oh, yeah. I made her get a cake shake. Yeah. And she took like three. A cake shake for those of you who don't know Chicago food is a Portillo's favorite where they take an entire slice of chocolate cake and put it in a blender with ice cream. They make a chocolate cake shake with it. So I've been hyping this shake up to her forever. And my wife likes sweet things. So she takes one sip. It's a marriage to you. Aw. Bad. That was cute. That was cute. You earned the sweatshirt. Nick's still waiting. How would you do it, Ryan, over here? She takes like four sips of it and then she puts it down. She's like, I'm only getting cake. She's like, they don't blend it into that milkshake. They just put it in. There's something very Chicago about that. I'm like, keep going, keep going. You'll get to them in it. It's really good. She does it like more. She's like, I guess I don't like chocolate cake that much. Not enough to drink it? Yeah. And I've been on a sugar diet for years now, but I allowed myself a few sips of that chocolate cake shake. That should hit so well. Yeah. I'm glad you allowed yourself to have a little bit of a tea. I couldn't not. She's not going to drink it. She's upset by it. You just throw away a full chocolate cake shake. I'm sweating. Have an edge sugar. It's so good. You're running around like Sonic. I'm going to Chicago next week. That's right. How about that? Holy shit, dude. For real, for real, how long are you going to be there? Four nights, five nights? Four nights. If you want to list a rex. Yeah, give me a hit. Hit me with them. All right, great. Chocolate cake, chocolate cake, chocolate cake. You should go check out the bear. Yeah, I've heard a lot about the bear. Yeah, probably. Maybe don't go if you want to, if you're trying not to laugh your ass off. Funniest restaurant in town. Slipping on banana peels back there and shit. Our producer, Michelle Chen, ranch. Have you been to Chicago? I've never been to Chicago. Wow. Ryan, have you been to Chicago? No. Wow, okay. Shytown. They've got a bean, right? They've got a bean. They've got a big ass bean. They've got a bean, a big old bean there. I had never seen the bean. Yeah. And I drove by and I was like, huh, and that was it. I think the bean, no, just every, I'm going to get in trouble. Every major city sort of has like a sort of monument, like this thing that comes see. Here's what, the Hollywood sign? Yeah. I guess so. Maybe the Hollywood Bowl. And it's like, oh, it's a good venue. Like it's something like that. Or like the Walk of Fame. The Walk of Fame, there's other buildings like in New York, they have like the Empire State Building or like the Statue of Liberty. I think the bean, extremely low effort. Oh yeah. But top tier. Like they didn't have to do that much for it to be kind of good. The bean is, the bean is at the very least is funny. Yeah, it's a shiny bean. It is funny. We had. It's big. It's funny because like just a few blocks from the bean was a sculpture done by Picasso, which was like the calling card of Chicago in the 80s. It's like this beautiful, very strange off putting thing that looks like an antelope skeleton, but also a woman. And so like you drive past that and you're like, I know this. And then you drive past the bean and you're like, oh, Chicago. Yeah. The bean. That's, nothing says Chicago quite like the bean, the arch in St. Louis. Deep dish bean. We also have the Minion, the big Minion. The Minion is kind of a huge landmark. What's better, Minion or bean? Oh, well, it's a first shirt. It's Minion. I can say Minion, but the bean is not tied to IP, which is nice. The bean knows what it's doing. Real easy conversion to a Minion. They just have to paint it yellow. You should reskin it seasonally. Yeah. For Halloween. Why not? Why not? Beano, beano, banana. All right. I'm aboard. It's good. Took me a second. Yeah. You were on board before. Fucking licking your lips over there. Like, oh, a big old Minion. What? What? You're gonna get off that thing. Hugging it from above. Jumped out of a plane to land on it. Like Dr. Strangelove. We should talk about some video games with this video game. I will say I did have some tenders. You said we were gonna talk about it. We don't spend too much time on it. I didn't want to talk about it before, but since now we're in this zone. Got the tenders from Wendy's. The Wendy's tendies. The Wendy's. God damn. That's why he does it. They have a commercial where they put tendies on the signs. On the signs at the store, they didn't have that. And I think... Missed opportunity. Missed opportunity. I would have for sure at least liked them a little bit more. I thought Wendy's was this fresh, never-frozen type thing. It kind of seems like they're abandoning that. These seemed pre-frozen. They didn't batter these in store. They kind of seemed like they were frozen. That said, the sauces. The sauces were pretty good. I got a Honey Mustard and then I got their signature sauce, which is like their cane sauce. Good stuff. Everyone's doing like a cane sauce now. There was a time when everyone was cloning the Chick-fil-A sauce, which I think is what the KFC comeback sauce is. But now the peppery canes one's on. Raising Canes, chicken tendies. Chicken fingers, they call them. Don't know it. I mean, I know Raising Canes is, but I didn't know they had a sauce and I didn't know it was peppery. They got a sauce that if you don't dip the tender in it, the tender is plain. It tastes like nothing. But with the sauce... That was my experience when we had McDonald's tenders that one time. I was like, what the fuck is this? How dare you? No. Just with all due respect? No. Having not had them in forever when I tasted a chicken nugget from McDonald's, I was shocked. I was shocked at the plane. Not to blow up the spot. I think you said this on the show. I think when you had those, you had just gotten over COVID. That's true. You might not have had all your faculty. That's true. My experience eating a lot of shitty food, fast food, shitty I say with affection, is that it tends to either be way too salty or completely unseasoned. I feel like Raising Canes, they definitely, their approaches were not seasoning the tendies. You're getting them plain. It's towards a child's palate. If you want any flavor, not just texture, you got to rely on the cane sauce, which is quite delectable. The sauce is good. The sauce is well fried. The tenders at Raising Canes in comparison to the ones from Wendy's seemed Michelin star. They're really good. These were just like, I had to eat something and I talked to myself out of getting the spicy chicken, which never again. I always have to get. That's the thing to get. The sauce was good. Honey mustard, always fun to have. Not very many occasions to get it. I had some excellent chicken tenders just this week from Los Angeles restaurant, Piku Niko. Oh, okay. Piku Niko. It's, I think, a Japanese fusion fast food restaurant. They're famous for their fried chicken sandwich, but they also have chicken tendies. The chicken tendies were so real that they were all in different shapes. That's good. They looked like they'd been torn off of a chicken instead of pre-porked. The nuggets are also in different shapes. McNuggets are also different shapes. There's the orb in the boot. I understand. It's not that many different ones, but they are different. He said two and you said that there's not that many? Well, there's two. I made it seem like there was like a billion shapes. Oh. Would you describe it? It's not quite an orb. The boot, I think, is more distinct. What is the other one? The circle? It is ovular. Yeah. It is like, yeah. Ovular. Right. The ovular one. Yeah. Because it's not orb. No. Orb is now tender orb. That would be interesting. Yeah. I wonder how the bite would be into that tender orb. Biting into an apple? Probably too much meat. You want like a good surface ratio. Yeah. But anyway, that's enough about my tenders. I had to bring it up. I didn't want to, but we said we would and now we could. I'm glad we talked about it. I'm glad we touched on it. Yeah. We've all had those nights, the ones where you laugh until the sun comes up, where conversations go places they've never gone before, and you walk away feeling closer to the people around you than you have in years. That's psilocybin. It doesn't just open doors in your mind. It opens them between people. This episode is brought to you by Schedule 35, the most trusted name in psilocybin products. Whether you're microdosing for focus and clarity or taking a full recreational dose to reconnect with life, Schedule 35 makes every experience intentional, consistent and precisely dosed. These aren't party drugs. 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You know those linen pants I was talking about? I'm wearing them. I'm wearing them right now as I read this ad and you know what? They are so comfortable. I think they're stylish too. They feel like pajama pants, but I wore them to work because they look professional. They're perfect for spring. I'm having a spring fling right now with these pants. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com. Get played for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too, A. Go to q-u-i-n-c-e.com. Get played for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com. Get played. All right. Let's talk about some video games. The question for the room is about video games you're playing right now. What are you playing? What are you playing? Highest me the resident evil merchant. I love you to make a new friend. Oh no, stay away. Stay away from Ryan. I don't know. I'm not. No, no, no, no, Ryan. You don't have to speak to him. It's okay. I'm a fourth host of the show. Not true. I'm from resident evil four and I sell goods and I do a segment on a podcast. This is all true. I had some trouble breathing. You all right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a macaroni and cheese for breakfast and I've had a clot all day. You should have a heavy breakfast. Eat something a little more nutritional and start your day. I mean, I've done it. Yeah, no, I've done it. This year, yeah. They have leftover KFC mac and cheese for breakfast this year and then go to work. Yeah, but I don't think it's a good idea. Are you firing at all cylinders at all times? Absolutely. I feel like I feel like the cast of the stone in a glass house. Just keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing. I'm just saying that that could explain. We can dip back into this. The KFC mac and cheese is really good. It's pretty good. Yeah. The KFC is mostly just cheese. Elbow noodle and KFC. Yeah, it's like an elbow macaroni. Is it like a perfect half circle? I don't know if I'd describe it like that. I think if you put two together, you're not going to find that they line up exactly. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah, I don't like that. I like my food to align. You seem disgusted by that. It's disgusting to me. I don't want that. Okay, sorry. Disgusting. One of my favorite pastimes when I'm relaxing is to reassemble the potato when I get a french fries. Yeah, you like to get food that is typically served in pieces and put it back together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no. So when you eat steak, it's very alarming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get upset at the restaurant. Yeah, like a bunch of people. You can do this together. To be fair, to be fair, they get upset the moment I walk in. Wow, yeah, that's not fair. Yeah, that's just... It's not fair to judge people. Yeah, yeah. It's sort of like from Pretty Woman. Big mistake. Huge. Very much like Pretty Woman. Matt, that's what I was thinking of. Are you... Is it... Which one am I in that scenario? You're not Richard Gere. I'll tell you that. I'm the Pretty Woman. You're the Pretty Woman. I love it. I love it. I'll fuck you for cash. Boy, don't say that to the intern. That could be an issue. You know what? That's work. That is your job. Right? Yeah. Sex work is work. I'm good. $3.50. What currency? What quantity? The one in Resident Evil. What is it? Is it the peso? In four? In four? It's not the American dollar. Yeah, I don't know. It's also not... Aren't you like trading like rubies and shit? That's what I was thinking. I was like, what is the money in Resident Evil 4, a game I've played through multiple times? Yes, it's not jewels. You're not picking up like $5 bills. No, no, no, no. It's not everything. Pesetas. Pesetas. Pesetas. Yeah, it's a Spanish currency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. $3.50 Pesetas. All right. We'll talk later. You have a question you want to ask us? Yeah. How are you? Oh, come on. I don't know why I thought this was an interesting thing to look up. I was like, what's... For some reason, I thought that Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman had an interesting last name and I was wrong. It's just Vivian Ward. Why did I have that in my head and why did I look it up? Did you think it was Brokovich? Yeah, I thought it was something like distinct. I think it's because, monomically, he's supposed to think Horde. Oh, you think so? Like, oh, she was Horde. No, she's not anymore. Yeah, Horde. Who's the age that's cleaner? I think it's... Yeah, it's a monomic device. And this is fine. We're fine with this. Yeah, we're fine. Everybody's fine. Nick Weigert, who are you playing? Rizzany Wommershwin, thank you so much for your listening. You're welcome. I have been messing around with a Game Pass game. Well, it's not a Game Pass game, but it's on Game Pass called Death Howl. This is a Souls-like deck builder that came out in December of last year. As opposed to a Rogue-like, it has Dark Souls-esque, like, you know, checkpoints, like the campfires. It's just like you reach certain places where you die, and if you respawn, you'll go back there, absinthe some resources that you have to retrieve. We all know the Dark Souls game play loop. But it's really interesting to see that for a deck builder, which are almost always like Rogue-likes. Yeah. That's just like the traditional approach for these. And honestly, it's what I thought it was getting into when I downloaded the Sombitch, but it's very different mechanically and structurally. I saw this described as a mashup of Into the Breach, a game I loved, my favorite game of 2018, and Slay the Spire, a game I also loved and had to delete from my phone. And it kind of is that. It's very because it has this tactical grid-based combat where, you know, you'll see like an enemy on the map that you're navigating around, on the world map, the gameplay space, the environment. What am I looking for here? You know when you walk around in a video game, what's that called? What is that? The environment? The environment. What are you looking for? The place you're in in a video game? The play space? Play space. Yeah. The play space. What? You know how like in your video game, like I just mentioned. Terrain? Terrain, sure. Yeah, the terrain. Why are you, what are you looking for? I think environment is closest. The world map? No, but not the world map. I'm thinking of like a UX element. It's not that. It's like where you're actually walking around in. You don't know what that's called? Yeah, what do you call it? The world? The world. That game. That's supposed to be the game. You're walking around the game. What do you call it when you walk outside? That's outside. That I can wrap my head around. When you asked though, for a second I didn't know. I knew what the answer is, but when you asked it, it escaped me. What, outside? Yeah. I don't know what's going on out there. When I'm in here, I don't know what's going on out there. If somebody calls you and you're outside and they ask you where you are, do you say I'm outside? No, you usually say I'm where I am. I have said I'm outside. Well because when you're talking to somebody on the phone and they want to know where you are, they are alarmed. Where are you? I'm outside. This game is very fun and it is a little bit, I mean, I think just, it's just, it's maybe it's the, maybe it's just the dark souls eschiness of it that is making me think that it's kind of like a little bit of a higher difficulty curve than some of these games. Maybe that's not actually the case. I'm just projecting that onto it because it's evoking souls like so strongly. I do like it and it also has this sort of grim dark pixel art aesthetic that I think is gorgeous with this Nordic influence. It's really cool looking and you're just a, you're a grieving mother searching for a way to bring back your dead son. It's just like this totally sort of bleak thing that would be in a souls game. One thing I like of this beyond it being, beyond its structure is you collect resources to craft cards as opposed to just like, you know, to just lay the spire, for instance, you get a few different options like Hades and you do pick which of these three are you going to go with. Here you're like, like actually like, oh, I'm working towards getting this specific card that I can put in my deck. And then also just the idea of like progressing through an actual campaign, a single player mode as opposed to just like doing a bunch of runs is an interesting approach. So I've been enjoying Death How. I've been really also on the gold stakes grind on Bellatro for some reason I'm toggling between doing two different card games. I was thinking about Bellatro as I've now reached the threshold where my gameplay time is measured in days. That's always a little bit of a warning sign. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, yeah, you have that, you have that. You haven't had that yet? I got to get to your guys level. I guess I'm not a real gamer. Wait, you've played games for more than 24 hours. You had like 100 hours save on Final Fantasy rebirth. That's right. And I think also in 16. So there you go. Is Bellatro the game of the 2020s? By that I mean not just because I for me, I think to hit that threshold, you need not just awareness and fandom within gamer culture, but the mainstream. And Bellatro is a game that non gamers play. And I was thinking, is it that? I mean, you could say Elden Ring. Elden Ring is my favorite game of the decade, but I feel like that one. Not more than Baldur's Gate 3. Baldur's Gate 3 is my favorite game of the decade. And Elden Ring is my number two. Yeah. Thank you for reminding me. You're so welcome. Why did I say that? I don't know. I don't know why you say half the stuff you say. Yeah. I'm just sitting here. I'm experiencing it the same way everyone else is. It's not Elden Ring. It's not Baldur's Gate 3 as much as I love those games. Yeah. You guys, I have to do it. I'm so sorry. It's going to make it feel like shit in here for just 30 seconds. Yeah, go for it. You saw the Elon Musk thing? No. Oh, Matt. Oh, you named his kids? Oh, wait. No, I do remember that. Yeah, no, you, yeah. He named one of his kids Commodore. Very try hard. It's all, it's just so fucking. It sucks so much. It sucks so much. So it's a fucking embarrassing loser. Like it's also like there. I hate video games and I hate gamers. I'll kick all your asses. I'm a jock now. I've been radicalized in this moment. It's also because like when, when Robin Williams names his daughter Zelda. Cool. It's cool because there's like a, there's like an honesty to it in some strange way. Yeah. It doesn't feel like a panda. Right. Not doing it so that you can post about it on some social media platform. And it's also like, and whatever, anything can be a name, but Zelda an existing name. So it feels a little bit less sweaty. And it was also, I feel like that was at a time where like video games were popular, but they weren't like, you know, so ubiquitous that that was sort of like a unique, it was just unique and cool. And he had a genuine affection for that franchise. It was like a fun fact about Robin Williams. He actually plays video games. Yeah. How about that? Yeah. Celebrities just like us. Yeah. RIP. RIP. Just a king. An absolute king. Absolute. Anyway, you were saying that you're like Elon Musk because you love that game the best? Yes. His Wario is so funny. I loved when he was Wario's hilarious. Good shit. Yeah. Definitely the best comedy Wario so far. The only one to date. That's why they haven't put him in the movies yet because they can't, they don't, they haven't quite cracked how they're going to top it. You know, it has to be a sort of definitive Wario and it's already sort of happened. They need credit to use for it. Even though you're joking, it's making me angrier and angrier. It's not Elton Ring is not Baldur's Gate 3. It could ultimately be Grand Theft Auto 6. Better coming up. It could be, you know, but I think it's maybe, it's either Bellatro or Wordle. Now that's interesting. The game of the 2020s? For like kind of the defining game, like, and I don't mean, again, I'm talking about like in terms of mainstream awareness and like in terms of like ubiquity. I think Wordle is at the very least the Tetris of the 2020. Yeah, that's what I'm like. It's kind of like, oh yeah, but again, people who don't play games play Wario. Yes. They don't, would never identify as gamers. My wife in the year of our lord, 2026, has gotten into Wordle. It is the funniest thing she could have done. I really love it. She calls it our morning games. But, but Wordle isn't, hold on. Wordle isn't. I love that. You can't, okay guys, wait up though. You, I know, because I was going to say, you can't say that crosswords are a video game, even though you can play them digitally. Yeah. And Wordle technically needs the video game element in order to function. So I already corrected myself. It could be, it's probably Bellatra. I mean, the easiest answer is Fortnite. It's like, for a lot of these things, it's like, there are little kids on the playground who are like, I can't wait to be a little older so I could play Fortnite. Yeah. Fortnite or Roblox. Did Fortnite come out in the 2020s? Oh, no, it came out in like, 2015 or something. Yeah. So that's because it was a thing of Minecraft, people, they're still playing a ton of Minecraft, but like, it's not like a game of this decade. I have, I feel like I've seen people on like the red carpet on TikTok for like video game adjacent things who aren't necessarily gamers, but they're like actors and they'll tell IGN or some shit that they're like, I play Bellatra. Like I weirdly got into this game called Bellatra. Yeah. So I think there's something to it. I do think it's possible it could require more investigation. It's an interesting idea. It's true. I don't know why I fired off this take. I was about to say, I just wanted to say something. I feel like, I was about to say, I feel like we should wait until like more of the 2020s had passed. And then I looked into my own mental space at the fact that it was 2026, more than half the decade has already happened. And I felt like I was going to kill myself immediately. Arguably. What does a gun taste like? Arguably. It tastes like relief. I heard it tastes bad. I heard that they actually, they taste yucky. Don't don't taste it. Animals. Nintendo Switch cartridge stuff on it. It's like shit. Animal Crossing is the game of the pandemic. Yes. Bellatro is the game of the 2020s. That's your argument? It's not even necessarily a, it's a different episode. I feel like that's all, this is a whole episode. Yeah, what are we doing? We're burning. It's not a conclusion. I'm just, it's more like a hypothesis. It's more like an offering. It's more like worth investigating. Okay. Okay. Okay. Episode idea. Let's do it next week of the week after whatever. Games of the decade. Pretty good. So we do the games, the game of the 2010s, the game of the 2000s. Like what is the Bellatro of the 2010s? What is the game of the 1970s? It's got to just be pong, right? It's got to be pong. It's like that or like dice or something. Cup and ball. Yeah. Poop. Yeah. Poop. Do it then what you want. Figure it, you figure it out. I talk too much. Someone, someone else go. You did great. I'll tell you what I've been playing. Matt, what are you playing? As I mentioned last week, I kind of got into Hades too. Yeah. On the airplane. Yeah. And on the way back, I played Hades too the entire flight home out. Oh, I love it. Oh, I love it. And then when I got home, I've basically gone from having two hours or so logged on my switch to having about like 15 or 17 hours logged now on Hades too on my switch. And it's just fucking, it's amazing. Because it's a bigger game than Hades won. Yeah. I have not beaten Kronos yet. I have not defeated him. I haven't gone past the second like biome. Miniboss? Yeah. Second biome, second mini boss. I haven't done that yet. But I'm having so much fun unlocking. There's like so many different things to unlock, so many different systems. You can, like there's the tarot cards that you can unlock that sort of give you different abilities or different stats going in. There's the different weapons. You can sort of upgrade those weapons at a certain point too. There's, I'm just having fun with like learning the different boons and stuff. So like that's been really satisfying. There's a freaking little hot bath you could take. Love that. You give a gift to a character and then you invite them to go to the hot spring with you. And you have a little like conversation with them in the hot spring. That's nice. That's pretty good. Really good. Very death stranding. Yes. And there's something that I've discovered in the game that is not really a discovery, but it's also like feel like something I don't want to spoil. But when this happened to me, I was shocked. Wow. It sort of like opened up the game in a completely different way to me, which is then how I ended up syncing an additional like 10 more hours into it. Are you willing to have this spoiled? It's more like about our listeners. Well, yeah, but I mean like you, if you agree and I agree, then we could just say for the next 30 seconds, Matt's going to spoil this element. Someone crashes their car. Yeah. I'm going to just skip. I can't turn off. Shaking to the other side of the fruay. Never mind. I don't want to ruin anybody's enjoyment. I will defer to Matt's judgment. I think my feeling is because Matt chose to preserve it. It's because it's a surprise worth discovering. How about this? I'll say it. And then in real time, you guys determine if we should have it bleeped or not. Okay. And then Ranch will bleep it. Okay, great. So in Hades, you can go down, right? And you're going down and you're exploring the other worlds. That's like working because you're on your way down. So you're doing that in Hades too also. I've gotten to an outplace. I knew this already and we should and we should bleep it. It shocked me. Yeah. It was very exciting to me. And it's now, there's just a different flow because you're used to doing sort of one thing before. Now I'm sort of like after a run, I'm like, you know what? Maybe I'll just do this other thing for a little bit. Right. So it's sort of like the game really becomes, it's just quite different than the first one. And not to say that it's, I think it's better yet. And that's, time will tell if I think it's a better game than Hades won. Because I think Hades won is about as close to a perfect game as you can get. Sure. But this, they just really cooked with this. It's really, really good. Do you have a God, goddess, deity you are crushing on? These are very horny games. They're very horny. I mean, it's hard not to say Aphrodite because she's wearing basically nothing. Yes, yeah. Which was very delicate on the, playing that on an airplane, on a big old screen, like a switch to screen. Yeah. Freaking nosy neighbor. People love looking over your shoulder. Yeah, yeah. God, there's these people behind me on the flight. They were having a very intense political conversation that I wanted to jump out of the plane. Because they were talking the whole flight. It was nuts. But Aphrodite is great. There's, I like the lightning power. So like Zeus kind of feels trite because he's like the number one guy. Yeah, sure. But like, I like the, like the area of effect of like, you know, lightning bolt striking and then having blitz as a, as a, as a power to, but that's not the only thing I've been playing. Yeah. I also burned through the Dragon Quest seven reimagined demo on switch to and we talked about this in the games of this year episode as a game that we were sort of maybe not hotly anticipating, but interested in excited to have a cozy game. This game has jumped up to the top of my list of games. I'm excited for it. Wow. It was exactly that. It is cozy. Oh, it is, it is all vibes. It is like the first part of it, like they mean the demo, you're going through it. You're not doing that much. Right. Like you're kind of going around, you do this like introductory chapter where you're doing a couple of little puzzles. The puzzles are really fun actually. I think I had like six battles or something like that. There wasn't that much combat in the demo. So if that's something that people were like, oh, there's not that much combat in this game, there's going to be more, but like it was just a very short part of it. There was a lot of, I felt like the demo is probably like doing this part of it. So you don't have to do it when you're playing. I felt like there was a sort of bit of a fetch quest element in the beginning of the game. So I'm hoping there's either less of that in the main game. In the main game or that like that sort of satisfied the thing that we needed to do to get to the next part. But I thought it looked gorgeous. I loved the characters. The music obviously is always so great in those games. And I just, you know, turn based combat. We talked about this a little bit last week too, or I'm sort of like, I think in a, an RPG kind of mood recently. So that game, I cannot, cannot wait to play. I will be getting it. Day one. What's the release date on that? Do we know? I think it's either end of this month or beginning of February. Great, great. Yeah. So there's a little bit of time. An excellent opportunity to fall in love with a game. You know, right around Valentine's Day. Oh, hey, there you go. That's nice. Oh, that's an episode of games we love. Hey, we can't just say everything's an episode. Yeah. Yeah, we can't. I think it comes out February 5th. February 5th. Is the official release date in, I guess, worldwide? Yeah, worldwide. Love it. It looks great. And the guy that looks like a Team America character is very funny to me. Oh, this is, okay. I know that people have probably made a lot of this already, because it's the second time this game's been remade. But the king's name, Donald, kind of tough. Oh boy. But his son's name, who's in your party, the Team America looking guy, his name's Kiefer. They're named after the freaking Sutherland family. Isn't that fun? That is a lot of fun. Who did that? What a hoot. Why'd they do that? Why not? It's the 80s. I guess the funny thing to me is to think that at one point, these were the two most famous father and son. I was trying to look up the name of the directors of the reimagined version, which we talked about when we were doing our preview for 2026. And unfortunately, I can't find it at the ready, but they were someone who played Dragon Quest 7 as a kid and are now of the age where they're like, I love this game, but I can fix this game, which is just an interesting perspective. Yes. It's like, who's the Star Wars game I'm trying to think of? JJ? It's like JJ. How dare you? Save it for the DLC. No, who am I thinking of? It would just be so funny if for some reason you couldn't remember JJ Abram. That's right. What guy? What are you talking about? Right, Dave Filoni. Oh, Dave Filoni. Dave Filoni is like an enthusiast who, a fandom has a fans knowledge, understands what's in the contents of Wikipedia, but also has their own perspective to break it. Yes. And it has become the person I trust most with Star Wars. Very interesting. I want Gilroy. If I could give the whole thing to anybody, I'd just give it to Gilroy. Well, here's the thing. It can't be that good. It'd be too good. Part of the charm of it is that some of it's bad. Andor stops feeling like, and I love Star Wars, but Andor does stop feeling like Star Wars, partly because it's too good. No. It's too good. No. No. Andor is what happens if they manage to steer the ship away from the iceberg. Like it is a world that could have been, like, because you're like, oh my God, look at, like, they're going to pull away. They're going to pull away. They did it. They didn't get hit by the iceberg. They didn't have to. I'm about to quote something I liked. I was about to say they didn't have to do the hold-over mover. And I do like maneuver. And I do like that. The hold-over is good. It is good. Yeah. Oh, well. Star Wars is all kinds of stuff. And we'll talk about it on our Patreon exclusive show. Get played DLC. DLC. The paywall, the Patreon could be anything. The Patreon. And this is what we've been saying. Yeah. Patreon could be anything. Patreon could be anything. Heather, what are you playing? Well, I started playing a game specifically for this episode of the show. So I kind of want to weave it into our larger conversation. Oh. Um, we're talking today about how to save the switch too. Mm-hmm. And by the way. We're shutting this thing down. No fucking way. No way. Any idea what that was. Unbelievable. He's being John Taffer from Bar Rescue. John Taffer from Bar Rescue. Kind of his thing. He goes in there. He calls someone a failure. It does a worse job than they were doing. So their business is pathetic. Ruins their bar. It sells in six months. It is the best show on television. Nothing like a confident idiot doing a bad job. Sounds like this show. No, what are you guys like? He just goes in. He's like, this place fucking sucks. I have a good idea. And it's the biggest dog shit makeover you've ever seen in your life. When's the last time you clicked these beer taps? That's why your wife left you. And it's like, he's like, he sort of answers the question, what if there was a worse guy than Mr. Wonderful? There was a guy that sucked more. Who was less fun to watch. It is kind of like a microcosm of our world where it's just like the biggest, loudest idiot. Let's give them absolute power. And they're fuck everything up. It's unbelievable. And be proud of it. But so Nick just did what I can only describe as, a spot on him, probably. That's why I was very excited. We're shutting this thing. And that's the thing he says. We're going to shut it down. We're going to shut it down. Hola, buddy. 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There's stock prices down, people are frustrated, there aren't enough games for the switch to. And today we're talking about how to save the switch to, especially if you've already purchased it. What are you supposed to be playing on that piece of shit? Like what are you doing with it? Is it just collecting dust? And so with that in mind, I purchased and downloaded the 25th highest rated video game of all time. This is a list that includes Ocarina of Time. It's the big boys list. Yeah, 25th of all time, but I think top four switch, right? Like is it like number one? Isn't it like the number one switch game? Uh, no, because it's rather wild about it. But this is a game that I've seen on these lists for years. And I was like, okay, what the fuck is this game? If I'm going to be selling switch to somebody, am I going to play the house in Fatha Morgana? Wow. Wow. Let me tell you guys, I have had so little time to game in the last week that I only have played a single round of Fortnite knife in my heart. That's rough. Alarming, that's rough stuff. Awful, awful experience for me. Like, like my brain is boiling. That's like you telling me that you had one glass of water all week. It is. It is. It is like that for my body. I have an aura ring and the thing is started saying minor signs of injury. Oh my God. I think it's because my stress levels are so high. Wow. I have an aura ring now too. I like it. I like it. I thought about getting that silver. The silver is pretty good. It's pretty good, but I like when it tells me that I'm stressed out. And I was like, guess what? Bitch, I already know. Are you telling me to pour? Yeah. I'm always stressed. But now I've been listening to it. I've been going to sleep. I haven't been doing any activities before I go to sleep. I get in bed and like shut my eyes because I'm trying to get a good score. That's amazing. It's really good. It is. My watch really happy with me my sleep. I'm in zero sleep debt currently. Me too. Come on. Give me that. Boom. Previously three hours. Man. So. It's up horribly last night. Oh man. I. You got to get one of these. I do. Yeah, you should. I have one too. Hey. Wow. If you need something extra to yell at you, you got to get one of these. Yeah, I'm getting one. It's a really, it's a really good, I think it. Then make them hog size though. So don't try it. Okay. I wish that I'd never been in my head. I don't want that in my head at all. I walk in hands with the same. Got my ordering guys. But you're like. Heads beat red. I've been sleeping great. Blood pouring out of your ears. So this game is extremely highly rated. Yeah. The house of Fetalmop before Fata Morgana. And let me tell you this tragedy that occurred to me last night as I'm playing this game. I am two hours into the game, right? Yeah. Which is all of my time this week to game. Yeah. Two hours into this game, I've made a single choice. And it was whether or not to say hello to somebody. My option was like, hi or ellipses. So I guess before you continue. Yes. What type of game is this? Well, I thought it was going to be like a dating sim. Okay. Turns out it is a straight, hardcore, 40 hour visual novel. Oh my God. Yum, yum, give me some. Yeah, you're absolute nightmare. Yeah, my nightmare. My nightmare. I am a fast reader. I'm blazing through these text things, trying to get to the next choice, taking in the scenery. Of note, the game features, instead of like drawn backgrounds, it's photographs. So like when people are talking to Rose Garden, it's two anime characters speaking in front of a photograph of a Rose Garden. Yeah. When they're talking in a room near a fireplace, it is a photograph of a room near a fireplace. It is about a house that has been around for hundreds of years. I don't know who the protagonist is, but the protagonist is being spoken to by a maid who is like, let's talk about the memories and the history of this house. And to start, we're going to go all the way back to the year 1600. And so you start with this relationship between a brother and a sister in the 1600s, and the fucking game is chugging and chugging and chugging along. Now, up at the top of the screen, when you touch the D-pad or whatever the analog stick on your left hand, you'll pull down a little drop down menu that'll have like play, fast forward, skip to the next chapter, quick save and quick load. I assume this is the only, because there's no, you just dropped into the game. There's no like tutorial. Yeah. So I quick save the game, and then I'm like fucking around with the buttons or whatever. And I also find out that the plus sign on the right hand is also quick save. Okay. After I've played two hours of this game, and I haven't made a single choice, I decided to go to the option screen to see what my options are. Can I make this text go faster? Like, and there's a grayed out portion that says voice, which is really interesting to me, because it means that either later you get voices and can toggle that switch, which is, I'm like, how can this game be so highly rated if it is literally just a straight visual novel? There must either be like a doki doki literature club meta element. There's got to be something that makes this game compelling enough to be a 40 hour straight read. And the voice toggle is like hints at that to me, because I'm like, oh, there's something else that's going to happen here. Because otherwise would have to be the strength of the writing alone, basically carrying it. Right, right. There's got to be some element. And I haven't read anything about the game other than the extremely high Metacritic score. Today, when I prepped for this part of the show, I did discover it was straight visual novel. I thought it was going to have choices in it. There are no fucking choices. Nothing. There's nothing. There's no branching story pads. It is a straight fucking book. Yeah. But let me also tell you that after I go back to the main screen and I'm looking through the seeing if there's like a making of something else I can talk about. I'm like, OK, no. So I load up the game to start from where I had saved. And in the loading process, accidentally touch the quick save button with my right hand. Oh, no. And I lost all two hours of my fucking reading. I don't know that I'll ever, as a result, find out what is exciting about Fatima Organa. Because the idea of going back through all of that text makes me feel insane. Yeah. Only after that that I discovered that there is a full menu that you can open. I don't remember with what button that gives you a proper save. I don't know why quick saving. I don't know why there wouldn't be multiple files. Right. It broke my heart. And but so you fucking broke my heart. It broke my mind. So you thought that playing this game and maybe liking it was going to be what saved the switch too. Well, no. So the reason I'm talking about it is I know it's a great game. I unfortunately don't have like I'm an empty Amazon truck. I went to the warehouse to pick up something to bring it to the show to say, here's a way to save the switch. But instead, I didn't pick up the package. In fact, I ran over the package. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know that I'll ever have an opportunity to speak to the game because the idea of going through two hours of text with a single choice is pretty off-putting. Have you seen that before? Like a package that was like obviously meant to be delivered but run over. Yeah, I've seen it. Horrific. It's great. March 14th, 2025, it was announced that a live action adaptation from a North American director is in development. The House of Feta McGraw, Morgana. Yeah. Wow. This game, this has always been kind of on my radar just because of its extremely high medicritic like you were saying. But yeah, I was just looking up when it officially released. It came out on Windows in 2012. Whoa. In Japan. Japan only. And then it was localized worldwide in 2016, which is when it started to get a more mainstream attention or more widespread attention, global attention. But I think it was sort of a slow burn in terms of sales. And I think that the switch release, which comes out in 2021 is part of why it got a little bit more run in the collective consciousness. But you know, my understanding, I mean, this game would probably very much be for me. I do like visual novels. I will say that by the time I'd gotten two hours in, I was interested in what happened next. Yeah. And I think that's all the game needs to do. Is give me enough that I care about what happens next. And also the fact that the game is rated M for Mature and all of the reviews are like, there is some pretty intense stuff in this, very violent, some torture, some other triggering words I don't even want to say on the show. So it does have like, I don't know, it's gothic. It's got something. Maybe I'll find out. Maybe I won't. Yeah. I don't think you're going to touch this game again. Nick, I'll bet I never touched this game again. So you're both on the same side of it. I guess I'll take the opposite action to be interesting. Yeah, sure. Yeah, a losing side. But that wasn't the only game that I played this week to try and save the switch. So this week I also played a Super NES game that was previously only available in Japan, which has now come to Nintendo Switch online because of the Switch 2 mouse controls. And that game is Mario and Wario. It is a first party Mario game in which you control like a little fairy and Mario as a Wario flies by and puts a bucket on Mario's head. Eh, fuck you. We watched like, we took a look at some of this footage. I'm trying to remember what context. I think maybe it was when we were playing the Mario paint. Oh, that's right. That's right. So in the game, Mario has a bucket on his head, eventually he's an egg. He gets all sorts of shit on his head and he just wanders around and you are a fairy and you are using the mouse controls to alter the landscape so that Mario doesn't die. Let me tell you how fucking snappy this game felt and how good it felt. Oh, wow. Okay. I was shocked. Not my kind of game. It is puzzle adjacent, but the music and the animation, the sprite work all said like high era 90s Nintendo and it was clicky, it was fun. Um, and as a use case for the Nintendo switch to mouse controls, I was able to, you know, just use that mouse on the couch beside me and it controlled perfectly. Whoa. And I got to play a fucking game and it was, it was good game. Kind of sounds like a, like a lemmings mechanically. Like something's moving forward and, you know, you got to alter the environment to, because you're not controlling Mario's movement. No. Yeah. Okay. He's like a, he's a maniac who got a bucket put on his head, doesn't know that he can take the bucket off and he just starts walking. I'm telling you, he's not bright. He's a dumb motherfucker. I can't see anything. Who turned out the light? So, it should have been Luigi. That's more of a Luigi thing. Yeah. Luigi's at the end of the level and he's like, hey, when you, when you, when you get Mario all the way there. I do like that. Yeah. I like that for this exercise. You did two things that you wouldn't necessarily like because you thought maybe, maybe something's here that I'm not aware of. Well, I'm also trying to save the system for other people. Yes. Like if I'm trying to save the system just for me, I'm going to be like Fortnite, download Fortnite, you're done. Yes. And you can play it on the Switch 2 and it runs great. It runs great on Switch 2. But I'm not, I'm not here to just pacify my own needs. I'm here to try and save the switch for other people. Let me play devil's advocate here. Uh-oh. Why does the switch 2 need saving? What are you talking about? There's nothing fucking to play on the fucking thing. Yeah. But, but I'm like, like from sales wise. It's crashing. It's crashing. Okay. Yeah. I think there was like some stat that like around this time, you know, around this time in the Switch 1's launch, it had hit a certain benchmark and it's not quite there yet. Got it. With this. It's underperforming relative to the previous generation. Yes. Nintendo Switch 2 sales slowed significantly over the 2025 holiday season compared with the original with declines in the U.S. around 35% by comparison and 16% in the U.K. That was six days ago that that new story came out on GameSpot. I think a big issue for this console and for all current consoles, unfortunately, is their sort of mid-generation, right? Because, kind of guess by that, I mean, a new game comes out and you're like, oh great, this is going to be for my PlayStation 5. This is going to be for my Switch 2. Actually, it's on both. You could play it on your regular Switch. You can play it on your PlayStation 4. So there's less of a need. It's going to run worse, but it'll run. It'll play. So you could still play God of War Ragnarok on a PlayStation 4. You could still play Metroid Prime beyond on a regular Switch. So there's less of a reason to buy one because if you already have the thing, you can still get the game. And from a consumer standpoint, that's good, right? Because you're like, oh, I actually don't have to buy the new thing. I can just get the new game. I can't afford to get the new thing. I already have the old thing, but the new game comes out. I can get the new game. That's good. That's good. But it holds back, I think, the games. It holds back the potential of the current system. Well, that was the early PS5 lifespan issue of all these games were also on PS4. That's the idea that seems to have been resolved now. But certainly the brand split for the Xbox Series X completely hamstrung in that regard. Yes. Yeah. Because the Switch is so dusty. It is so old. From almost 10 years ago at this point. Yes. But also put all that in the same parcel as the idea that November 2025 was the worst month for hardware sales in the United States since 1995. You have to go back 30 fucking years to find a November this dismal. And the Switch 2 is the anchor sinking that ship. Because that was the big console for this Christmas. And parents weren't being pushed by their kids to go out and get one because unless you're playing Bonanza, what are you playing on the Switch 2? I feel like also kids today are not really like, I don't look, we like Nintendo. The Nintendo brand is strong with Nintendo fans. Yeah. Right. But kids who are new to games aren't, I don't think aren't necessarily being catered to. There are no baby games for babies on Nintendo anymore. I fundamentally disagree, especially because of the recently announced Nintendo for babies initiative. My Mario. Yes. I do. But I do think that's, I think sort of the thing I'm getting around to though is that kids are more interested now in your Roblox or your, you know, the brain rot games that are being made on, you know, in Roblox or in Minecraft or whatever. Or in Fortnite. Yeah, in Fortnite. And it's just like that's, because that's what the kids are talking about. Kids aren't, probably maybe aren't talking about Bonanza on the, cool kids are talking about Bonanza on the, on the schoolyard, but I don't know if they're into it. I don't know if they are. But so with that, if the Switch 2 is supposed to appeal to us, if it's finding a hard time appealing to kids, then how can people like us save the Switch 2 for other people like us? This is why I played Fatima Organa, because I was like, who are people like us? People like us want a huge legacy library. They want highlight games that perhaps slipped through the zeitgeist that weren't targeted specifically to them that maybe they are hearing about today on the show. And they're like, Oh, I'll give that a shot. And hey, if you like visual novels that are extremely highly ranked and apparently very violent, then Fatima Organa may be for you. But to talk about, to protect it onto people like us, people like us are probably not just going to have a Switch 2. They're probably not going to be a one console household. Well, I think if you have one console, it's going to be a PS5. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like, and, and because, to Matt's point, because so many things are multi-platform now, I mean, me, I'm just like, I was going to play Fatima Organa, I just played on PC, you know, because, and I'm a Switch 2 owner who I'm not doing shit with that fucking thing. I really haven't gotten much use out of it since Bonanza. So you do, you're proving the hypothesis, which is you aren't doing shit with that console. Yeah, I agree. So how do we fix that for people? I think I, there's a couple of things that I mean, look, I think we have to stop this wishy-washy sort of, it's coming out on both. And I'm sorry about it, but something's got to give. The new games have to only be on Switch 2. That's just how it's going to have to be. I think, and they got to be good. They have to be better than Bonanza. Bonanza was good and fun, but was it the best? Is it the reason to buy a Switch 2? I'm going to say no. No, I would say like, if you were already going to get a Switch 2, then, but Bonanza, they maybe said this on her episode, but I push you over the edge, but like, it's not a reason to like, it's not a system seller in and of itself. It's crazy to me that Breath of the Wild is the Switch 1 launch game, which also comes out on the Wii U. So it's not like, that's also a split generation title. But the way that it became instantly a part of the zeitgeist where everybody was talking about Breath of the Wild everywhere online and in person. Like I was playing Switch 1 at a bar and people would be like, oh, is that that Zelda game? Like that's like an entirely different thing. And it feels to me like history is repeating itself with the Wii U and Switch 2. In that like people are not speaking about the system because there isn't any killer software for it. Yeah, no. And I was thinking through this because I think there was a lot of weight put on or and maybe from Nintendo's perspective, but I also think like the gaming audience in general had higher expectations for Mario Kart World. And I think Mario Kart World kind of landed with the shrug. I mean, if people like it, maybe, hey, maybe it has a huge online player base now. I don't know. I mean, I know they've done some things to update it, but I feel like it just, it hasn't even made the impression of that Mario Kart 8 did. You know what I mean? I mean, it's like that one had a lot more stickiness and it was quite a bit more zeitgeisty. But in terms of Switch 2 games, I think there is Kirby Air Riders as something worth highlighting. Now, look, I remember Kirby Air Ride from the GameCube. This is the remastered, expanded version as a bunch of new content. And as a racing experience, someone who's not been hands on with this game, but from what I've read about it, it is delivering a sense of speed. It is delivering like the sort of like joyous, chaotic sort of like manic feel to it that people were expecting with Mario Kart World. So I mean, that could be one thing to point people towards a Switch 2. It's like, and I would say larger than that. We already talked about Breath of the Wild, but I've heard secondhand from some friends that Tears of the Kingdom on Switch 2 is a much better experience. It really is just like a, oh, wow, okay, I can kind of appreciate this game. It doesn't feel like it's fighting this old hardware. It's pushing it to its absolute limits and instead feels like, oh, this is a machine capable of rendering this game in all its glory of giving us the appropriate view distance and what have you. So I was like, oh, that's an interesting one as well, because that's a game I bounced off of, even though I enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. And that's a big chunky one. That would, and there's the Switch 2 upgrade for it currently too. So that could be a reason to get in there. I heard this too. I think the Switch 2 is the first Nintendo console with boobs. Am I wrong about that? What do you mean? I think there's games with boobs in them that are on Switch 2. And I don't think that's happened on Nintendo before. Maybe it happened on Switch 1. But so that's a reason. So Cyberpunk? Yeah, yeah, because it gets like, if you want to see some titties or a hog in that case in Cyberpunk, if you want to see nudity on Nintendo console, then Switch 2 is maybe that's the upgrade path that that's a reason for you. If that's like what you want, you could do it. You could do it. According to nintendofandom.com, the top selling Nintendo Switch 2 games are Mario Kart World with 9.5 million. And that's just the attach rate of the console because it was bundled. And then Bonanza is way below it at 3.4 million. And those are one and two. That's crazy. That's nuts. Yeah, that's not good. No. That's grandpa's in hospice. I do think they could do a couple of things. I mean, this is just a no brainer, of course. And this will happen. We need a new 3D Mario yesterday. Yes. We need it's, we just need this. Yeah. And it's great that we had Bonanza, Odyssey, sure, like it was enough to tie us over for a little bit, but I think we just need a new one post-haste. Jesus, listen to those numbers compared to these numbers. For the Switch 1, Mario Kart 8, 69 million. Animal Crossing New Horizons, 48 million. Yeah, that's like almost nine years of data though, right? Sure, sure. But it's also, I mean, Animal Crossing New Horizons didn't come out nine years ago. No. Like, Breath of the Wild only sells 30 million with a 10 year cycle. Yeah. But like, these are, those are not, those are rookie numbers. Yes. Okay, I was wrong. I found this Reddit thread from two years ago, a list of games that feature nudity at some point on the Switch. And you post, you were a no-poster? 20 Ladies. A lot of these are like indie H games that I've never heard of. 20 Ladies, this game is a platformer, displays 2D topless girls on completion of levels. Okay. I do. Qualco Blockknockers. It's a puzzle game that unlocks images of girls with less closing items. Okay. This is a fun one on here. Mario Odyssey. A swimsuit can be purchased and this leaves Mario topless. I love that. Stretching the definition a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I do. So I have seen... Wait, Witcher 3 was a mainstream game that had nudity that was on the Switch. Of course, CD Projekt Red also. Yeah. They're fucking, these guys are horny dreams. They're horny as fuck. I have seen in the eShop a lot recently a lot of like hentai games, a lot of sort of AI generated like slop, like brain rot, sort of like games in the eShop. And I think, I think that stuff's got a fucking guh. Well, this is a big issue with the Steam Store that is like, the Steam Store that was well curated. Yeah. And so like, even though there's so much fucking garbage on there, you kind of have to be digging for it. And I feel like the eShop, it's just like a little bit more front and center. Yes. And it's like in the recommended section. Right, right. So I mean like, yeah, I mean, this is... The whole thing is like so much of like what's what fixing the Switch 2 is would be is addressing core issues with Nintendo itself. Like their approach to online is so frustrating. They're weird sort of bespoke, you know, gum together architecture. Like the friend codes are so cumbersome. Yes. The, you know, the lack of achievements is like a bit like there's a lot of gamers who just are expecting achievements. You get fucking achievements on your iOS now. I mean, it's just like, it's like all it's everywhere except for Nintendo. And their determination to be the exception is part of why I think people get frustrated with it. I think the lack of a Zelda, the lack of a Mario, I mean, the full opacity, like the fact that Nintendo has been so opaque about when those games may come out even to the system without any like hint of, you know, wahoo coming into 2027, like anything is killing the Switch 2. It feels GameCube adjacent to me. When the GameCube, when N64 comes out, you've got Mario 64 on day one and people are like, that sells the system. And then a couple of years after that, or maybe a year and a half after that, you've got Zelda, right? Where like the fact that there's no Mario that drops with the GameCube is what sinks the initial sales of the GameCube. And even though you get Smash Bros on the GameCube and it does have like a true Resident Evil 4 also GameCube originally and exclusive. Yeah. Like you do have like a momentum that builds over time, but the GameCube feels more like a Sega console than a Nintendo console. And I think Switch 2 is having the same fucking problem. Yeah, they tried to launch the GameCube with Luigi's cuck-ass. Luigi's mansion thinking that he was going to carry the weight. Yeah, you can't do it. There's no Mario game. There's no Mario game. Like Mario World, where Mario Kart World is not Mario, it's a kart game. Right. That is, no, that is true. It's catastrophic. Yeah, it's really, it is such a bummer. I do think I have a couple of radical pitches. Let's go. And like there may be, look, some of them might be craving. Some of them might be dark-sided, but like maybe necessary. Okay. And you know, I don't know if I have the strength to do what I have to do here. Okay, but I'm going to do it. Okay. Xbox has Game Pass. Yeah, right. PlayStation has PlayStation Plus. Yeah. Nintendo has Nintendo Switch Online, which basically it doesn't have if you don't have it. Right. And that's just like the library of, you know, retro console. Right. From the Nintendo Entertainment System all the way to the GameCube currently. Yeah. And that stuff's cool. And it's added, I feel like a decent price for what you're getting. But I want more. Okay. I want more. I want a library of Switch games that you could play to have, you know, with the subscription. Yes. They just need to do this. And it could be first-party games. It doesn't even have to be, it could be a rotating library. It just has to be something. Yeah. This is again something that is so contrary to Nintendo's like, you know, core ethos. Yeah. Just like they just don't approach things this way. They want to sell you the same thing over and over and over again. But you are right. There is now an expectation that you could have some sort of subscription service that will guarantee you some new or at least semi-current releases that you can play free of charge even for a limited time. Yeah. I mean like, yeah. And just again, there's stubbornness to do that because they would never do it. No. They their games don't go on sale. No. But like if you could just get like a like, oh, there's a Switch Fire emblem on here on Nintendo Switch Online. Sure, I'll give this a go. Why the fuck not? I'll try this. Yeah. Right. And then, you know, oh, you have like, in next month, it's going to be a whole roster of games. So you have to sort of like be judicious with the games that you're picking from this library or whatever. Like it could be, it could be a shitty Nintendo version of something that's already good. Yeah. Like they could find some way to fuck it up. But give me the, give me the option. You know what I'm saying? I want that. And look, I know that they've already, they've gone into the weird peripherals area. We're already getting the virtual boy. Why? Why are we getting, look, I am the happiest person in North America about the release of the virtual boy for the Switch 2. Yeah. I'm the second happy. Why the fuck are we, why are they doing that? End of list. That is an insane priority to have over all hands on deck. We've got to get a fucking Mario on to this console. Yes. Well, so they're, they're not afraid to do something weird. Yep. Right? Yep. I think you're going to say the thing that I was going to say. Because now people have adopted. Yeah. People have adopted the shape of the Nintendo Switch. Yep. You see the Steam Deck, the Rock Allies, these other PC handhelds. I think we're going to say the same thing. But there's, there's a bit of nostalgia happening for an earlier time, not too, not too far back in the distant past. I know where you're going with this and I'm on the same page. People like to shut devices. Yeah, they do. They like devices with hinges, a clamshell. I want a second screen attachment for the Nintendo Switch 2. If you flip the console over, that USB-C that's down at the bottom, Yeah. is now at the top of the, of the Switch. That's right, not blocking the buttons. You could snap a hinged, like if it has like a grip, a hinged second screen on there that could then fold into the system. And you could play DS or 3DS games on the Nintendo Switch 2. I'm all in for some stupid bullshit like that. That's the kind of thing that would also. Don Chaffer's going to be giving that a thumbs up. He'll be like, shut that on. But that's not going to save the system. No, but that's what it's going to say. Like that's the sort of thing that's. I want it. That would be a niche product and it would also like fracture the market. But going back to what you were just saying Heather, and also returning to the GameCube. I totally get the urgency of like, yeah, we should have one of our flagship games. We should have a Mario or Zelda on Switch 2. Like obviously that should have already happened or should have already at minimum been announced. We had Switch year one, we had Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey. It's like kind of crazy what abundance of riches it was in the early release window there. It was like Jim Carrey's 1994. Oh my God. Just the greatest blessing we've ever received. It felt like Ace Ventura and the Mask came out in different years, but no, it's the same year. Ace Ventura, the Mask, Dumb and Dumber all in the same year. Incredible. How's he do it? I don't know, but I wish he would bless us with a little bit more every so often. But you know what, he's giving us enough. Yeah, he's doing Sonic movies. Three incredible performances in the Sonic movies. I don't know what to say. Anyway, like. But going back to the GameCube, the one time Nintendo really dropped the ball on a mainline Mario with Super Mario Sunshine. A game I have some affection for. A game I finally finished when we returned to it to do it on the podcast, but a game that is flawed and certainly has a very messy end game as a result of just being kind of like rushed out the door. And so I feel like Nintendo has learned a hard lesson from that and is very, very protective of Mario and is just going to take their sweet ass time until they feel like that Mario is as triple A as it needs to be. But like I think like if they panicked and we're like, well, shit, we got to get this Mario out a year earlier, six months earlier than we planned. We got to hit this in holiday 2026 because because we're we're freaking out. It just feels like that would backfire. But but how OK. How could it be that the last 3D Mario game was almost a decade ago? They've had 10 years to develop this fucking 3D Mario game. The only other Mario game proper that releases on the Switch is Mario Wonder. I think part of the issue is availability. Mario has been shooting movies. He's been busy. And you know, once you become hard to book him, throw my phone. He's got he's got he has to decide, you know, which which one he's going to be. Is he going to be in video games, music, and be an actor? Because he has his foot in sort of in both worlds. Yeah, it's kind of hard to do. I swear to God, they're going to they're going to they're going to fucking give a trailer for the next Mario 3D game. And it's going to be voiced by Chris Pratt. And we are all going to be so fucking angry. I love God. You're like, well, what the hell? No accent. I love God. And white Jesus Christ. I we can't sit here and think. Press pause and you just kind of put down the controller and you're just like, oh, man. I was credits roll games over. We can't sit here, though, and act like there's they're probably almost done making whatever the Mario the new next Mario game is. We just don't know about it. I would have to assume that they're working on it. Well, yeah, you'd assume that. But you would also assume them that we would have a trailer or or some hint. There's not as far as I can tell in like gaming press, Reddit, etc. There's no like, oh, the next Mario game is going to be a four player simultaneous. Some leaks somewhere. Yeah. And the Bonanza team was the Odyssey team. So it's like, who's then who's doing it if they're not doing it? Bonanza was a semi stealth release. I mean, they did just sort of like announce that very close to when it came out and was like, oh, shit. This is so they might be like, hey, that that paid off. Why don't we take that replicator approach? You know, three million copies is not paid off. I don't know. I mean, I also could just say that there will be a long tail to Bonanza, I think. I think there'll be more DLC at some point, too. I don't have to. I think the game doesn't have enough stuff in it. I think. I think Mario will might get some sort of announcement, some sort of tease because we got the upcoming movie. I mean, it feels like a natural time to do it. Right? Tomorrow Galaxy movie. Tomorrow Galaxy 3. Would it be that? It wouldn't be that. It would have to be something completely new. That would be totally fine with it being Galaxy. A new Galaxy would be kind of rad. Yeah. Because they put the mouse controls. They put Galaxy one and two on the switch and it fucking rules. Yeah. Is that are those switch to exclusives? Those are no, they there is just for both. You can do it for both. God, there's games fucking. They're so good. And we got to stop this. So good. I'm sick of this boat. Yeah, we don't need the both. Yeah. I don't need both. But also if you're going to re-release a game, why not both? Because that's not a system seller. You're not nobody's buying the switch to play Mario Galaxy from 15 fucking 20 years ago. No, no, it's true. And this is not, I don't know if this is going to, this wouldn't save the switch was kind of more something I want. I think it could help. There's got to be a ball just get three port for the switch to. And I know that I saw this last week, Larry, and was like, was there the coast not have we have a bad relationship? It's never happening. Yeah. And I'm just sort of like, just do it. Just do somebody do something. What are we doing? Fix it. Fix your beef. They are getting, we are getting a from soft exclusive to the desk bloods. Yeah. Now I wonder how that's going to be. It's a multiplayer game, which is on kind of like, what it's not really what I'm looking for. But you know, maybe that right now, I know that rain, like what are they doing? It may be, maybe that, maybe that'll be awesome though. Maybe that'll be a reason to play it to have a switch to. I also feel like it's not going to be switched to exclusive for long. No, if it's very, you know, successful. And there just needs to be like, because I feel like even though Hades is multi-platform and, you know, but I feel like that game was sort of defined as a switch game. I associate it very strongly with a switch. I certainly played it on switch. Hollow Knight, I feel like similarly occupies that like Celeste too in some way. Well, okay. So what we're speaking to is that part of a big part of the switch's appeal is that it was kind of like Xbox Live Arcade. I mean, it's just like it was bringing indie games to a much larger audience than, you know, previously been exposed to them. So games like Hollow Knight and Stardew Valley and, you know, the aforementioned Hades, all these console only players, all these switch exclusive gamers were all of a sudden like, oh, I'll mess around with this game. Oh, this game is good. You know, it was finding its way to a casual audience that would, you know, normally those games are things that would, you know, like primarily be on Steam, which has its own different player base. So yeah, that's part of what was interesting about the switch. The Switch dude just hasn't had the same effect because you can just play them on switch. I have a thumbnail for the episode that if we were on YouTube would be the take, which is that I think Nintendo has three months to save the system. And if they that made a face, made a YouTube face. And if they can't, if they cannot do it in three months, I think the Switch 2 will be a flop. I think that will forever be on the defensive, trying to catch up. I think that that, that if it, if in three months they haven't changed people's mind about the system and in six months, Sony announces whatever their portable is, then they're fucked. Because like, I mean, Nintendo's like, you got three months or I'm burning this place now. Nintendo is locked into this design, right? They can't go back to a home console, like just a box. They can't go back to it. Right, they can't. It has to be portable and it has to be the home console also. So it needs to be a thing you can look at. Yes. It can't just be a box. You have to be able to look at it. You can't just, you can't be sitting from far away and looking at it. You have to hold it and look at it. You have to hold it and look at it. You making fun of me piece of shit? No, I'm just saying, like if I, I agree with you, I'm just saying, but you gotta look at it. You gotta look at it. I play, I play Switch so infrequently in like, docked mode. Hey, you're not looking at it. That when I do it, I'm shocked at how good it looks on the television. It looks great on the TV. Because I'm like, oh right, Switch, it's not a Switch 1. The graphics is pretty good. It's pretty good. Fancy screen. It's nice. They got it. They gotta fix it in three months or it's fucked. They gotta fix it in three months or they're shutting it down. I do think they fucked up in a couple aesthetic ways also. Right? Like I do think it's a sleek looking piece of hardware. Yeah. It's nice. It's looking good. Man, this thing's looking fucking good. Man, Switch 2 is looking fucking good. What are you guys, are you gonna fuck your game? I don't know what happened. It's looking good as hell. They just announced some new colorways for Joy-Cons. Hey, when I hear this, before seeing it, I'm thinking bright colors are back. We're gonna see some, you know, red and blue, like solid colored Joy-Cons. Right. When I click on this goddamn link, and not link from Zelda. You got Ryan with that one. Finally. Only took an hour and 30 minutes. I've been laughing. I've been laughing. I'm behind the camera. Okay, thank God. I love God. It was really funny. The new Mario's really good, but can't believe they replaced Mama Mia with I Love God. I love God. Look, there's still the regular Joy-Cons, but the accents around the joysticks are just different colors. And I just think that's completely wrong. They lost the plot. Yeah, I mean, the Switch launched with the red and blue one as an option, the two Joy-Cons. That was part of the fun. And then if you didn't want that, you got the gray ones. And the gray ones are nothing. Those are nice. Oh, yeah. But I mean, this one's available. It's just one colorway at launch. And also, yeah, there maybe is something that was like, it just looks too much like a Switch one. It doesn't really distinguish itself. Guys, I'm looking at the release date, the release calendar for the upcoming games for 2026. And I think the Switch 2 is a flop. We don't know. No, I think it is. I think it is. I just have three months. Yeah. No, I'm looking at these games. You've got no outstanding original titles in January, 2026. In February, you have Dragon Quest Reimagined, which is a remake of an existing game. But still, maybe enough of a shiny toy to keep people invested in February. But that'll also be on everything. Right. In March, 2026, you get Pokemon Pokopia. Yeah. No, that's going to, here's the thing. I have a good feeling about this one. Yeah. This one's going to be big. But that's March, 2026, and you've got one game. That sounds like it's a three month window. OK. No, it's not going to save the system on its own. Folks, we're back. In April. The Nintendo Switch is so bad. In April, you have no original first party titles. In May, you have no original first party titles. Like in quarter to 2026, you get Super Mario Brothers, one Dirt Nintendo Switch to addition. It's a fucking, there's nothing happening on this on this system. For half, like you're going to have it for a year and you're going to compare that year to the Breath of the Wild Odyssey year. It's a flop. Well, here's the thing. They did it again. They fucking hit the high and then they flopped their second console. There is, I think, a Nintendo Switch Direct in February. This is going to be, they have to show up for this. That's within the three month window. That's within the three month window. They have to then be like, hey, here's the stuff that you know is coming and also some new surprises. That is their shot. They have to call their shot in February. In February. Or they're cooked. Yeah. And it's scary to think about. Because there's nothing. I will say. Are you looking at the release list too? I'm looking at Bar Rescue Updates. God damn it. The Crossroads. What the fuck? The Crossroads Grill. He is. The Crossroads Grill in Antioch, Tennessee was renamed Gattyshack by Taffer. The bar was closed before their Bar Rescue episode even aired. And it's not funny because a small business failed. It's funny because this guy fucking sucks. His whole thing is that he's supposed to be good at this. You know who could fix these places? Unfortunately, Guy Fieri could turn these places around. No problem. Yeah, for sure. We were talking. They'd be bad, but they would be in business. Nick taught me today about the Bobby Flay coming in and doing somebody else's job. Oh, Beat Bobby Flay. Oh, Beat Bobby Flay. Meanest show on television. And being better than other people. Sounds like he could fix it too. He can kind of do anything. Beyond the producer's desk. Have we heard of Beat Bobby Flay? Do we know who Bobby Flay is? I know who Bobby Flay is. He's a chef, right? Yeah. He had a show called Beat Bobby Flay. And it would basically be like, what it would be is they'd act like they were doing a fake special on a chef and like a, you know, like just a regular person, a non-celebrity chef. So they'd be like, this guy makes the best cheesecake in New Jersey. And so he thinks he's getting a food network special about him. And so he's going there, he's showing off his cheesecake. He's showing him how to make his recipe. Then Bobby Flay barges in. And he's like, I'm challenging you. I'm going to make a better cheesecake than you. And then he fucking, and then the person's always upset. And then a lot of times Bobby Flay wins and it's just like, this sucks. I think the shit out of this guy who's not rich like me. Fuck. I challenge Bobby Flay to a fight. He beats the shit out of you. I do. I do. Yeah, it's looking dire. I do think, I think. What? Nick, what? This is from this is the bar rescue subreddit three years ago. Right now, 47% of all the bars are still open. So low. What's the half of the ones you rescued? It's like 20 seasons. A lower approval rating than the president. God damn. Fuck. Fuck. Look, I want nothing more than the switch to be a success. Me too. Because I need the next thing to also be good, right? But maybe if this one's not as good, the lock in and whatever switch three, switch pro is would be. But that wouldn't even be like, they, what they do over and over again. I hope they're listening to it. Is they make a thing and then they try and do it again and they fuck it up. Like we to we you is, hey, why? We really, this is incredible. And when they hit on something, yes. And the we is an enormous, enormous correction from the mistakes of the GameCube, which was in a lot of ways the same as an N64. But also the GameCube was meant as a something of a reaction to the N64's absence of a cartridge or like like insistence on a cartridge format, which was more Nintendo suburness. I think that, you know, 3DS was not as popular as the Nintendo DS. Like they do this over and over again where they do the same thing twice. And then they fuck it up on the second, on the second round. So maybe the next console is going to be like fucking VR glasses or it's like, have you played the Nintendo gloves? Like it'll be something that we've never, we can't even imagine. Well, they've done the glove before. Power glove. Nintendo, is that a first party? It was a Mattel Power Glove. Yeah, yeah, it's Mattel. So they haven't done it. I'm surprised Ryan knows the power glove. It's so bad. I love the Power Glove, it's so bad. They've got to do, I think the system is going to crash out this year. And I think that we might end up seeing a rushed release of the next Nintendo console as a result too. Because when they fuck up, they abandon. Yeah. Like Virtual Boy abandoned. Wii U abandoned. I just think that like they have such a dense, I mean, not currently. They have a dense library of IP that they could dig into, that they're not really digging into. No. This Metroid game, not very good people are saying, people want Star Fox and they haven't really cracked what to do with Star Fox in a long time. There's things that they're just like leaving behind. But playing the Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined demo, even just in that brief, you know, little section, sort of had me thinking about what Pokemon could be. And I've been saying this for a long time in regards to Dragon Quest specifically. Because Dragon Quest 11, I think, really works well within the limitations of, oh, just what they're giving. Like, you know, it was multi-platform, but it was everything. But it looked pretty good and run pretty well on Switch. And I'm just thinking that like if they just really like locked in Pokemon, I think Pokemon is the thing that could save the system if Pokemon decided to become good again. Or if, because that's the other thing that's happening this year. It's Pokemon's 30th anniversary this year. Nothing has been announced other than Pokopia. Pokopia, but Pokemon has their own separate directs. Pokemon, and we're going to have one on Pokemon Day this year, I think also in February. Where there are going to be announcements for the coming year and the celebration of Pokemon 30. If they announce that all the original Pokemon games are coming to Switch in some way, either via Nintendo Switch online or individual purchasable ports, that could be pretty big. That could be good. That could be, I don't know if it's going to save it, but it could be something. Pokemon Company is making infinite money from the card game pocket. Yes. Which I'm still playing every fucking day. Yes. And it made more money in the same window of time than Pokemon Go did, which was an enormous release for the Pokemon Company. So they know how to make money. Got a Pokemon pocket card game to the polls. Hillary just lost again. That's just going to prison for life. The locker up I say. If you don't know how to use a phone, don't use a phone. What? Because there wasn't that big excuse. She was like, I don't know. I think everyone's like, oh, her emails, but her emails. And she was like, I just don't know how my phone works. And I was like part of it. Oh, yeah. I'm old. I don't know how my phone fucking works. Here's what you were just saying about them making so much money off of Pokemon pocket. Is this sort of the thing where Nintendo is like just switch to is just maybe not as big of a priority for them? Because they're just like. I don't know. Just like they. I'm just trying to think of where else they could be. They could be pulling in revenue. I mean, certainly they've got the is Pokemon Company Nintendo. Yes. It's like fully Nintendo. Yeah. Game Freak is elsewhere, but Pokemon Company is just Nintendo. But it's like the thing of like how EA, if you look at their revenue, like they're making almost all of it from, you know, whatever FIFA global team or whatever it's called. Like it's just like like this, this pay to win sports game that has a global appeal is such a huge part of their business that they really just the rest doesn't even fucking matter to them, you know. So I wonder if it's a thing like that. They're still such a hardware driven company. It's hard for me to wrap my head around that. But I do think that maybe there is a way where Nintendo could start to think to view it. And that's this is because these things keep coming out on both platforms as the switch to is like the PlayStation 5 Pro. You know what I mean? Like like the games come to the switch. That's the platform. And then if you want to upgrade it version of souped up versions going to be on the switch to. But we're still maybe selling switch hardware. I was looking for sales numbers for 2025 for the Nintendo switch and failed to do so. But I'm curious how much they were not they didn't have that on the bar rescue website. I wonder how many I wonder how many units of switches still being sold. Yeah, it's probably quite a few because I mean, I feel like I see on the shelves switch lights even and people are buying those. Oh, right. You know, still Pokemon is still the highest the highest grossing media franchise of all time on planet Earth with with a hundred and fifteen billion dollars compared to say Star Wars, which only has forty six billion dollars underneath Pokemon is Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh at sixty one billion and fifty billion. All of this being pulled from Wikipedia. So who knows when it was most recently updated. But you can't have the Pokemon IP continue to make money if you don't have the games. They got to I think the games. I don't know what what keeps fuel. I don't if you can't keep putting Tinder into that fire. Yeah, it eventually burns itself out. Yeah, right. We're going to start swiping. Let's do a segment. Wow. I do have a segment. I swear to God, if it's just going to be bar rescue jokes, I wish I was that much foresight. It's time for game over time. I'm going to ask Nick and Heather how long it takes to beat a game without going over. This is, of course, main story only. All of these are sourced from how long to beat.com. Nick, just read it. Just read the fucking he's not even doing this show. He's just basically on his phone over there like fucking reading about some other thing. He might as well be on Vine watching Vine. This bar is still open, but the details are funny. Park 77 was renamed the Lister in San Francisco. Still open with mostly negative reviews about bad service. Links to the porno shot in the bar in the detail update. Was that a pre or post time for it? I guess I'll click the link. God damn it. You know the one about that's the one where they changed the pirate bar into corporate, right? Yes. Yeah, I know that. It's just an all time fuck up. Which might I interject since I did talk about Chicago earlier, hadn't been to Chicago in 20 years. Come to discover that rock and roll McDonald's, which is downtown tourist spot, known for being like a body sort of like, you know, abrasively colorful McDonald's has been replaced by a gray cube. I sent you guys pictures, a gray fucking cube that from the outside looks indistinguishable from a bank. Like literally a bank. And I know this is old news for people in Chicago, but to go there and get sledge hammered in my emotional kneecaps, by coming around a corner and seeing and being like, first I said to Mary, literally, oh man, there used to be like a really fun McDonald's there. It was like a, I think it was called rock and roll McDonald's. And as we continue to approach the building noticing dwarfed by the solid gray windowless facade was the McDonald's drive-through. And I was like, oh my God, that's still McDonald's. Fucking place sucks. Yeah, what a bummer. Rock and roll McDonald's, R.A.P. Wesley Willis. Zero forks. Zero forks. All right. Angelo, who's a manager at the Lister and one of the owner's sons can be seen in the porno. What on earth? He can be seen like he's in the background. Here's another four minute video, an SFW of the porno. And this one you can see Angelo behind the bar in a black and white checkered shirt. That's insane. Here's another one, another two minute video with Angelo reaching out to touch the porn star about the one minute mark. I don't know about that. Touch. Yeah, the word touch is really unsettling there for some reason. Yeah, something about it, not right. Yikes. I'm closing this tab. I'm sorry. He's closing like a hundred tabs. So yeah, this is game over time. We all are familiar with how this works. I'm going to stay a game and all the games that I have in front of me right here are nominees of last year's Game of the Year. Oh, OK. So how long does it take to beat the main story only? This is the shortest of the three thresholds that are available on howlong2beat.com? That's right. That's stranding two. How long does it take to beat? That's stranding two. Main story only. Main story only. And I have not finished this game. You have. We finished it. But the play times are skewed because I'm sure we didn't blast straight through it. No, you weren't just mainlining it. And what we know from how long to beat is that these usually tend to be faster than the people who self-select to report their finishing times tend to be a little bit faster. 18 hours. Heather says 18 hours. I was going to go a little higher and say 25 hours. Nick's going to take this one. 35 hours for the main story. Not nothing. That's not nothing. That's a pretty meaty campaign. That's pretty big. I think I finished somewhere around like 80 or 90 hours or something. If I can forever to finish that game. Quite a lot. OK. So Nick's on the board with one point. Next game. Donkey Kong Bonanza. How long does it take to beat Donkey Kong Bonanza? Also a chunky game. It was a chunky game. Although Chunky Kong is not present. Not present in it. I will say 11 hours. Nick says 11 hours. 31 hours. Heather says 31 hours. I'm going to have to give this one again to Nick. 18 and a half hours. God damn it. I think for me it was something like 30. It was a long game. Yeah, it's pretty substantial. Too big. Yeah. For Donkey Kong. That's too much. Overseas is welcome perhaps. The food area. What the fuck. That you I should love that. You want that to be a home run. I should love the food area. Sucks. I get lost there. It's a scary area. I don't like it. Next one. Claire of Scare Expedition 33. A game we all finished and loved on the show. We talked about it nonstop on the show. Couldn't stop talking about it. How long does it take to beat Claire of Scare Expedition 33? Again, we're talking main story only. Main story only. I'll say 28 hours. It's just 28 hours. 33 hours. Wow. That's a fun answer, Heather. Unfortunately, Nick is correct. God damn it. Except it's 29 hours. You were really within one hour. All right. Glad I didn't overshoot it. Didn't overshoot it. Do we get a bonus point if you get the exact number of hours? Sure. That should be a rule. That's fun. Yeah, why not? I didn't fart. That was me. I don't know that I picked up the microphone. I just like that was me. He used to fart while looking us dead in the face. I'm holding his legs straight up in the air just fucking blasting. No, I rub my hand against the arm rest. And I can't do it again. The only way I could describe it is he's gone full warrior. I'm a why guy. I'm gonna win. It's funny that his thing is farting, but if that was a guy we all knew, we'd be like, we fucking hate this guy. He eats garlicky farts. No, no. You'd vote for him in a president. This guy's awesome. He shits his pants. Hades 2. How long does it take to beat Hades 2? And that's interesting because what does beat mean for this game, right? You could, I think, probably roll credits in the same way. First one. Yeah, that's what I assume it's saying. It's not finishing one run, but how long to roll credits on it? It is a little bit more substantial than Hades 1. Especially because of that thing we bleeped. Especially because of the thing we bleeped. I'm gonna say 19 hours. Nick says 19 hours. That's what you say. 15. I feel bad because Nick has to get this one too. It is 30 hours. Jesus Christ. Yeah, almost one in the 20s on this one. And for some reason, I was just like, I bet it's low 20s. You don't have to feel bad because Nick knows the times to take to beat video games. It's okay. I mean, times, the times it takes. Sometimes we do a segment and you run away with it. Yeah, I'm shut out on this one. I don't know shit. I'm a stupid bitch. Well, I wasn't gonna say. I wasn't gonna say. There's still, I feel like a chance to get on the board, right? There's still a chance to get on the board. You get silk song left. Simply know what you could win, but you could get on the board. All right, great. Next one. Hollow Knight silk song. Hollow Knight silk song. I always think to beat Hollow Knight silk song. 18 hours. 18 hours. I was gonna get just to give you... I don't care. I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna hear it. Just let me just say what I'm about to say. Yeah, go for it. If you keep talking, I'm gonna make it worse. One hour. I've not finished the game. 30 minutes. I have 54 hours in the game. I'm gonna still say 18 hours, because that was my original educated guess. Yes, 18 hours. 31 hours. Nick takes it again. Well, here's the thing. Are we doing prizes right? I think we have to. That's what we've generally done, right? Yeah. Which is, for those of you that don't know, closest without going over. Without going over, yeah. I think it's fun. Heather gets a point. I got a point. 28 hours? Wow. Yeah. But I don't see how. I don't see... I think I was in area one, 28 hours in still. Again, I think a lot of these self-reporters are almost amateur speed renders. And they're like... And they're like chug through a game. Just like really good at games. Yeah. And finally, Kingdom come deliverance two. How long does it take to beat? Kingdom come deliverance two. I feel like this is gonna be the longest of these. But it still might be shorter than we expect. I will say 38 hours. 35. Well, Nick is our winner. Wow. The answer, 54 and a half hours. That thing's huge. It's a big boy. And boy, over the holiday break, when it was on sale for like half off, I was really tempted, but I was like, I just can't do it. I had the same... I was like, this fucking thing's on sale. It's just gonna ruin my life. I know. I was like, I can't win. Nick, do you love it? I'm sure I would love it. You would love it. I know I would love it. That's why I can't touch it. Yeah, I can't do it. Yeah. Why? Why would you deny yourself that? Is that like a belt around the neck kind of thing? That's same principle. No, I feel like I'm just gonna get too addicted to it. Maybe I wouldn't have a little bit more time. There you go. Yeah, I'll settle into it. Hey, that's the Swiss Get Play at our producers for Shell's Hand Ranch yard underscore, underscore, Sard Ranch. You streaming anything? Guess what I'm streaming. Oh. Is it Silk Song? No. It's Silent Hill F. It's still Silent Hill F. I love it. I liked being given the opportunity to guess. That's really fun. That was fun. It's pretty nice. And thanks to Ryan for stopping by our head gum intern. That's right. Our music is Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com, our artist by Duck Brigade Design, Duck Brigade.com, Get Played Merchant KinshipGoods.com, and over on our Patreon, we have Get Played DLC, a bonus episode every Wednesday. Matt, what's up this week? This week, I think last week I said we were doing a Super Question Block Turbo Deluxe Edition, but we ended up putting out Avatar, Fire and Ash. This week, I can promise you, what if I would just like kept pushing it? Yeah. And just like never actually released it in time. This week for sure will be Super Question Block Turbo Deluxe Edition. And we answer all your questions about RPGs. And it's a great time. We had a blast answering these questions. But we simply had to create room in the calendar for Verrong. We, I mean, look, when Verrong comes knocking, yeah, we got to do some talking. We have wrong waits for no man. No. Your question block has no dominion here. Patreon.com slash Get Played. And Switch 2, you got played. You're welcome. Yeah, probably missed the touch of a fucking hand, you fucking creep. What? Nobody's touched you in a long time, huh? What are you talking about? You lonely bitch, you Switch 2. What? I love you. I'm sorry. That was a Head Gum podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast That Was Us Now on Head Gum. Each episode, we're going to go into a deep dive. From our show, This Is Us. That's right. We're going to go episode by episode. We're also going to pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. Are we going to cry? Yes. A little bit. Are we going to laugh? A lot. A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to That Was Us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify, new episodes every Tuesday.