Game Scoop! 848: A Marathon and a Sprint

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That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it, and you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep selling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com slash gamescoup for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash gamescoup. Let's go. What's up everybody, welcome to IG and GameScoop. I'm your host Damon Hatfield, joining me here in studio this week is Nick Lamone. I'm back baby. We're also joined remotely by Sam Claiborne. Hey, it's great to be here on a sunny GDC day. And Mark Medina. I'm here Damon, it's early. What? I'm tired. We're recording early. Are the effects of the coffee still in action? Yeah. They haven't kicked in yet. We usually record in the afternoons. We're recording in the morning this week, just because of some GDC scheduling stuff. So anyway, we've got a great show for this week. Lots of interesting stories coming out of GDC. First details on the next Xbox project, Helix. And Sam actually attended a Nintendo panel where they sort of gave a look behind the curtain of development on Donkey Kong Bonanza, which is. You can destroy the curtain. You can destroy the curtain is destructible. But first, before we get to all that GDC stuff, we can talk about a couple of games that are out now. A tale of two video games. One made by a prestige developer, one of the biggest developers in the world, the developers of Destiny and Halo. And their new game is out. And apparently it's good. It's being well received, at least by Nick Lamone right here. And not terrible player count, but technically terrible player count. Dude, we should play together. I didn't know you were playing. Yeah, I've been in on it. I haven't asked the IGN folks yet if there's anyone around. But yeah, my squad is taking a little bit of a break because they got obligations. So looking for a team at any point. But yes, I'm having a blast. I was not interested in the game at all. I liked the marathon series as a whole. Marathon Durandal was a game that I played on Xbox 360 back then, just because I didn't have an Apple computer way back when that game originally came out. So that was how I experienced it. And I really loved the way that Bungie did its world building and kind of tied its overall narrative and story and theming to stuff that was happening during Bungie's era of Halo. And once I found out this game was an extraction multiplayer only game, I was like, I think I'm good. Of course, I got in FOMO. Some of my buddies worked on the trailer for it. So I was like, all right, I'll check it out. Nice. And yeah, I'm having a blast. I think that same Bungie style storytelling that's very subtle and there for people who want to experience it, you really have to dig for it. I really enjoy that type of storytelling. And again, the Bungie perfected gameplay loop of grenade, you know, handgun, melee, that perfect little gameplay loop is still there. The guns still all feel so good. And the one thing that really reminds me of, even though it's maybe not as fast-paced as Apex Legends, it reminds me a lot of the moment to moment of Apex Legends. And I just really appreciate something that rewards talent and skill in its like first person shooter stuff. I'm playing on PC. So there's no aim assist or anything like that. And I just really love the vibe of everything is on the line every single run. And I love that everyone is kind of out for themselves. Art direction is firing on all cylinders. I'm having a blast. I can't stop thinking about it. So you played the original marathon when it was brought to Xbox 360. That's correct. And the original marathon is a Doomlike, right? Yes. It plays very much like Doom. So what of that game's DNA is in here? I think it's overall it's art direction and its style and writing. I think that's basically it. There's some lore and stuff that's transplanted over. But I would argue you could probably just come into this fresh and be like, what? There's a previous game? But again, that's only for like the hardcore nerds who want to know, what's going on on Tau Setti 4 ever since the events of the original marathon? Where's the working canter at? Maybe it's in the cryo chamber that hasn't unlocked yet. But I just love, Bungie games always feel like they do such a good job of making events. And there's a fourth area that is being teased. Players are currently unlocking it via an ARPG website that is working in conjunction with terminals that are in each map that you have to activate in a certain order. And once that's done a certain number of times, players will unlock the final map where it's going to be like a true test of everyone's loadout and skill ceiling. But right now it's just so cool, man. It would have been really cool to release this with a single player campaign. Yeah, I can see it could be like a really speedy, mirror's edge one or it could be kind of a sandboxy situation. Yep, exactly. Yeah, I do wish there was a single player because I do love existing in this world. And it's the first time I played a game in a minute where I opened up my loadout on my first mission or first like, you know, infill. And I was like, I have no idea what any of these items in my inventory are. Guns barely look like guns. And it forces you to rethink what you think of as a loadout. I was like, is this a grenade or is this an extended ammo clip for my gun? Like I can't really tell. And it's been a minute since a game made me feel that way. And I really appreciate that learning curve. Well, Mark, we talked a little bit about this when you played the beta and you were kind of soft liking it. Yeah, I would say I'm still soft liking it. I'm telling you that the first company to make an extraction shooter like this that's just PvE is going to make a million billion jajillion dollars because like that. No one's done that. Man, it's just a co-op game. This game. Yeah, please do make that. This game is not like Arc Raiders when it comes to like working together with people. They will kill you the moment they see you. Yesterday, last night I was playing and Nick, you're not going to believe this. So I open up the extraction point and I go and I hide. And then, you know, so basically what happens is it takes a minute for it to like kind of cook. And then there's like a little circle in the last 10 seconds and you got to get in there. That's when you actually have to stand in it. So I go and I stand in it and I'm like, all right, we're out of here, baby. And someone runs up, shoots me. There's two seconds left on the clock and he goes because if he shoots me, I'm just down. I could still extract and keep all my stuff. He runs over and does the finishing move on me. No chance of him getting of my loot. He won't loot you. There's no chance. He just did it to be a jerk. Because there's a second left on the clock. He's just doing it for the love of the game, man. And I was so mad because I'm like, dude, you didn't get anything for that other than the satisfaction of just killing me for no reason. So if you play Arc Raiders. Yeah. If you play Arc Raiders and you think, oh yeah, me and the community, we're all just going to kind of work together. Not in this game. This game, they want you dead. I really appreciate that about this game though. Narratively, the games is very upfront by saying you need to shoot first and ask questions later. Like the overall oppressive corporate overlords, it's very cyberpunk in its tone and how it's like you are basically in debt for the rest of your life and you were given the privilege of paying it off to all these private corporations. But everyone else, they're out for themselves. So you should be too. And the game is basically saying you should kill everyone first. And I really appreciate that in Arc Raiders. It is very much a, maybe we can work together. In this game, I have had encounters where, you know, I activate the X fill and as Mark says, you have to wait for it to open up. And that obviously attracts a lot of attention. And off in the distance, I hear someone go, Hey, bro, let me extract with you. I promise I'm not going to shoot you. And I'm like, wait, and I'm like, all right, man. And I immediately go invisible. I throw my smoke out, sprint in and me and him just mutual respect. We do it. But hey, that's rare in this game. I've had it happen once or twice. If I had an objective to kill other players, when that happened, I would have done it in a heartbeat. And I wouldn't have felt an ounce of shame. This game does give you missions where it's like kill other runners or do damage to them. The best way to look at this game is, so like Arc Raiders is this like post-apocalyptic. Everybody's down in Speranza and you're going up and you're scavenging for the good of the nation type deal, right? Where this is exactly what Nick said, which is like you're paying off a debt. So the whole point is everything in this game is trying to kill you. The UESC, which are the bots, the UI, every item. The UI is trying to kill you. Yeah, the UI. Everything in this game is a threat. You open it up as like, how do I get a gun? Wait a second. Everything's Legos. What is happening? Yeah, yeah. But it is cool. I do like it. But I mean, I hate when people sheep shock kill me. So it seems like Marathon turned out well, but it is nowhere near as popular as the latest Roguelike card game from an indie developer, Negacrit. Yeah. Talking about Slay the Spire 2. No game is. Dude, so I've been playing a lot of Slay the Spire 2. It's in Early Access, which I don't normally go for Early Access games. But I love Slay the Spire so much. I want to get in. Nick, I know you also played it. Yep. This is not a Sam game, but Mark, have you jumped into Slay the Spire 2? No, I'm having that work guilt right now. I think it's no secret that everyone in the world has Crimson Desert. It's not having that work guilt right now where all of my free time is having to go towards that game. Well, anyway, Slay the Spire 2 is excellent. There's five classes in it right now, but three of them are from the first game. When you start the game, you only want classes unlocked and you have to play to unlock the other classes, but the first two classes are from the first game. And you start out with, I think, just most of the same. I hear there's a lot of overlap there, so it's almost like you're playing the first game for a little while. Yeah. So I guess that was like, I kind of wish they would have maybe started out with a new class. What did you think? I know you said you also, you beat it on your first run. Yeah, so I was going to abstain from this game because of the early access, but honestly, the thing that drew me in apart from Damon talking about it and everyone in the world talking about it is I really like the placeholder art that currently exists in the game. So there's like card art or like story art where it just very clearly is placeholder art of MS Paint. Someone just drew what they want to make good art of. You don't run into it that often, but yeah. But I think it's so charming and part of me is a little bit sad that it'll be gone when the game hits 1.0, but apart from that, yeah, I was like, okay, maybe I'll poke my head in for just a run just to see what it feels like. And then I immediately made it to the end boss and I beat it on my first run as an iron clad. I was like, well, now I got to play some more. And now I've been waking up early every day, like three hours before work and just like getting as many runs in as I can. And I'm having a blast. To the point though, about having a different class, I kind of felt that way originally like, oh, I wish we started with someone a little bit different. But I think starting with the iron clad is going to be always like, it's like magic, the gathering. When you start someone with a red decks, very straightforward, it's all about trying to just increase your strength and make number go up. I think that's a thing that a lot of people can understand. But I think the game is very good about showing you how you can break it with the iron clad. And I think as you unlock more complicated classes, you know, silent after that, and then you get the other fun ones, you start to realize you can break the game in some interesting ways. You just need to rethink how you go about breaking it with each particular class. So I think starting off with the iron clad into silent pipeline is probably the smartest move from just a game development and game like design intention perspective. Here's what I like about it. Visually, it's much improved. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love Slay the Spire, but I've said on the show, I'm not a big fan of its art style. And in that game, there's not much animation at all. The enemies just kind of go, they just sound like bump into each other. Now, they've sort of, it's the same art style, but I don't know how to describe it. It just looks more visually appealing to me now. Everything is a little bit more rounded, I think it looks a little bit more cartoonish in a good way. And now there's lots of a lot more animation idle animations with enemies and they have attack and death animations. They don't just disappear when you kill them. There's a lot more character with each character to it, a lot more polish. And the item and stuff looks just looks a lot better to play. Then these there's two new classes in there right now. They're both really fun. The third class you open up is the Necro something. The Necro binder. Necro binders out there called, she is a really, really fun class. She has this like spirit hand creature. And the way that works is your creature will take damage before you do. That's cool. And dies. If they died, it'll be resummoned next turn with one hit point. So you're, as you're trying to deal damage to the enemy, you also have to buff your sort of spirit animal because they're going to take the damage for you first. So that's really fun. And then the Regent is another new class where he has a separate there's the energy that you spend to play cards. He has a separate currency that you also have to build up to play certain cards. That's cool. So there's just other things you have to think about. From another. He's an alien like a royal alien from another planet who's carried around. A royal alien. Yeah. Who's carried around on a throne by little creatures. That's very cool. Okay. That's a good, that's a good flug talk bike. Yeah. That's true. That would be anyway. Yeah. So Slavis Bar 2 is out and just compare. I just think it's interesting. It's such a success story. Marathon has tapped out so far since release. It's topped out at 88,000 concurrence on steam. Hasn't even made it into six figures. Slavis Bar 2 over the past week has topped out at 575,000. Oh my God. That's incredible. 575,000 concurrence on steam. It's silk song numbers. Right. That's the only thing that's available. It's been the fourth most played game on steam behind, you know, PUBG and Counter Strike 2 and Dota 2. Right. Just the those are the the the Venerable. They're always there in the top three. It's at number four and it's in the top 20 most played games of all time on steam. And it's not it's not often that the greatest game ever made gets a sequel and it's just as good. Boom. There it said it. Quote me on that. Are you are you sure? Because we we did just get silk song. So it's like it just. I thought the biota command was pretty underwhelming. It's true. Yeah, I know. I love to see it, especially in early access. I'm just lamenting. I can't play it on my phone when I'm like walking to work. Well, yeah, it's a I'm hurting, but it's it's better this way. Lay it on your steam deck while you're walking to work. I mean, that doesn't that is worth mentioning not to pour cold water on it. But like if it's locked to steam, that's why the steam numbers are insane. Right. Yeah. I mean, we're not seeing the number of numbers for consoles. Well, they're not going to be higher than 88,000. No, they did quote. They said that most people are playing marathon on PC. So you would have to assume that the split is probably like maybe 40 or 50 on PlayStation and like maybe, you know, 20 or 30. And imagine silk song, though, because that was a console game. Yeah. Well, the thing that's actually yeah, the thing that's going to be exciting for mega crit specifically is once this game does hit 1.0 and Nintendo Switch, like, bro, we're going to see these numbers again on every platform, I would assume. Yeah, I think this is going to be the big thing. And one thing that I haven't got a chance to play myself, but I've seen a lot of people play it just, you know, streaming the game or whatever is the multiplayer aspect. It's cooperative. And what, you know, earlier this past year, I played through the Slay the Spire board game with a group of three friends. And it is basically just an adaptation of the board game back into the video game. So it's an example of video game, adaption to board game, adapting back to video game. And I think it's really clever and it's a very fun way of playing the game. It just maybe will take a little bit longer than a standard run. Yeah. Sam, what is this? What do you say when you see a card game like this be so phenomenally popular? You usually aren't a fan of card games, although you did end up enjoying Bellattro. I liked Bellattro. Yeah, this looks really boring to me. And I don't, I don't understand it, but I also know it's very easy because I can see them out of people that are not using strategy guides or videos that we're making and them out of people playing this game. So I think there's some appeal to the kind of toyness of it, right? Like it's like, it's fun and natural and easy to get into. I think Bellattro is like that too. Although I liked looking up stuff once I got into Bellattro to be like, what, what are some like crazy things that people do in this? And I don't know if this game has that. Oh, it a hundred percent does. Yeah. It's not, it's not easy, but it's not. Mark, better figure out what those video headlines are then. These four bills will break down your time. I'm just going to start putting trust me, it's not easy at the end of every headline. You'll never believe the four ways you can break Slay this by. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So you want to learn a new language, but you're struggling to get beyond the basics. Stuck on free apps, aimed at cheap dopamine highs? Well, then it's time to try Babbel, the language app that makes grammar fun and is really worth your time. Learning a language with Babbel is all about small steps, big wins, and progress you can actually track and feel. Their bite-sized lessons fit easily into your daily routine and are also easy to remember. Just 10 minutes a day is enough to start seeing real results. Their courses are designed by over 200 language experts, real human beings, to teach you relevant words and phrases you'll actually use. So you can start speaking with confidence in as little as three weeks. Babbel lets you practice real-life conversation step by step without the stress. 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I was looking forward to playing it, but he didn't do any of those things. What is he listening? He ate a bad dinner. He took two hours to eat dinner, so I was like, okay, we're not getting it. So I didn't get to play Pokemon. You got stuck a lot by the kid rules you said. Eat your carrots. I want to build something. It's such a good game to play with him and for you because it will introduce you to the fun part of Pokemon, which is just like, what the hell is this little monster I unlocked and what can it do for me? That's what this whole game is for Pokemon. And the Pokemon games, I think I'm straight from that a little bit just because there's so many and it's so diluted and playing through them is just this endless sequence of talking to NPCs about the same topic about Pokemon and why they're good for you. I just like, I sure love Pokemon. Yeah, this game is not that. It is like immediately like solve problems, like explore and the exploration is fantastic. Build whatever you want, drop your crap anywhere you want, infinite inventory anywhere, and it just like gives you free reign. And the more you play the missions, which are really fun, the more skills you get to mess with the world. And it's just fantastic. And like my world is just a big mess, just a big, just a big sloppy mess of just like, this Pokemon is like, my home would be a lot better if I got this and then you have to kind of figure out how to solve that. And when you do that, you just drop it, you could build them a house and like make it all badass and have them move in. But you're like, listen, there's 300 Pokemon to get to eventually. You're just gonna, you're gonna have a stool on the ground and a bird perch and then I'm moving on. And then you just have this like trash scape and it's so fun and stupid and great. And I just like, I just finished the second area, which is huge. And like, there's whole parts of it that I don't understand what I'm like, what I'm supposed to do with them, like this whole lava area that I didn't get any Pokemon out of, but I don't know how to do anything with. There's all these mysteries. There's like things that the central mystery is that humans have disappeared. And it's funny and crazy how the Pokemon think about that and handle it. They're just like, they're like, some Pokemon don't like humans. Some of them really want to find them. And like, that's your ultimate mission. But then there's like little like apocalyptic messages left. It's smart and interesting and cool. And like, it's just such a good implementation of Pokemon. And I think it's perfect for you and Kingo. So make sure that he has an easier set of ground rules. Okay. This game is also big hit. Eat food today. Yeah. This game is also big hit. Two, what, two million copies sold at launch? Like, yeah, this is like another system seller, probably the first real system seller since Mario Kart World. Yeah. And it has to be because it's locked to switch to. Just if you didn't know, like you can't, you can play this on switch one by streaming it to your switch one from a switch two, which I don't even know that means or how that matters. It's like a co-op thing who cares. But you need a switch to buy a copy and play this game. And this would have been a huge Christmas seller of the system, but they didn't need that. This is like a momentum game for Nintendo, right? Like as soon as people stop talking about the switch sales, then a thing like this happens. So I think it's really interesting. Oh, and by the way, the game looks really good. Like it's polished as hell. And like it's just, it's drawn these frames from, like, as I said, I like Leo's garbage everywhere that you walk on top of a cliff. You're looking down like all the Pokemon are just walking around where you left them playing with your garbage. It's, it's amazing. Like it's, it is a switch to, you know, showcase. They got my 69 and 99. I like this game because I don't, uh, I like Pokemon, but I don't like the Pokemon games. So then it's nice to be able to play a game. That's what Pokemon Go was, right? Yeah, exact. 100%. And so I like to be able to play a game where I see all the Pokemon that I like, but I'm not bogged down by the, because I have tried, I tried every year Pokemon, ZA Pokemon, Scarlet, and I'm just like, never shut up. I can't ever shut up these games. They never shut up. And it's turned based until recently and turn bases a little bit of a slog. Yeah, I did. I did like the combat in ZA, but I would just wish they would let you do it. Yeah. Instead of talking to you constantly. Yeah. So this game is fun. And it's really cute, like how the loop works. It's like you get a clue that it's like, if you have, you have items that you can make grass with or water things or, or move things around or manipulate things or break them. Like that's the tool set you get. Just very, it's very breath the wild in that sense. And then you use those to make a little habitat. So just like a four or eight square environment that might attract a Pokemon and a clue. So it's like, you need, you know, a tree that's high up in the shade with grass under it or like flowers or something like that. You build that, you build a couple of them and like a Pokemon appears and all the Pokemon are like, Hey, they're that they'll point out to you. They're like, the grass is shaking up there and something pops out. You don't ever evolve those Pokemon or get more of the same one or anything. It's always a new one that you've, you've brought out and they all personality. They're all funny. They talk to you in different ways. There's like a DJ boom box Pokemon. It's like really funny that comes out and like, there's a whole quest line for it. It's great. I just have no notes for this game. It is such a good builder's game. The game's existence is strange because it's made by Game Freak and Omega Force, Omega Force being a division of Koei Tecmo. Game Freak has all its other regularly scheduled Pokemon stuff it's working on and has beasts of reincarnation coming out later this year. And then Omega Force mostly does dynasty warriors, not this. So it's just weird that this, I even did Dragon Quest builders and I think, it's strange, not dynasty warriors. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I think, I think it was one of those things where it was like that Dragon Quest builders game looks really cool, but nobody cares about any of those characters because it's, you know, you have to be a dragon quest fan. So I think it just like Pokemon go, right? Because they made their original, they made that original game. I forget what it was called. Niantic. They, they had another game and then they just Ingress. Remade it with a, Ingress. Yeah. And then they just remade it with a Pokemon thing. So it's like, it's funny that that has now worked twice where it's like, hey, take this game and make it into, so hopefully Red Dead 2 will eventually see like Red Dead Pokemon. No, Red Dead. Red Dead. Ultra Realistic. Red Dead Timbal, dude. Or Ping Pong. Not Ping Pong. Not Ping Pong. Yeah, it's totally. Oh, that'd be so good. That's such a dumb, stupid, great idea. A Marty Supreme era Ping Pong game. Okay. I also continue to play Resident Evil Requiem. And I've made it through. I've made it through that open area with Leon. Oh, what did you think? Yeah. So I'll comment on that. I don't consider this a spoiler. We're going to talk about some mid game gameplay stuff. No story stuff. So I don't think it's a spoiler, but just a heads up. I thought that part was fun. I don't think it's quite as good as the hospital section, but people in the Facebook group are talking about how this, it's boring. It's terrible. But no, I don't think so. It's got a cool. I never thought it was terrible. I like how you can snipe zombies in the distance to get more CP. And the more you kill, you stop running from things. You start just expending as much ammo as possible and killing them so you can unlock stuff. Like it's really smart. I think it's great. The Resident Evil Requiem revenge tour. You get to just go through and kill everything. And you haven't got. I don't know what the sequence of things are. And people keep on thinking I'm talking about the end game, which is like another area that you get to. But there is a sequence of events in Raccoon City where people are like, oh, the second half of the game is the part that Resident Evil fans don't like. That is such nonsense. Yes, this part's in that. There's a, there is fan service for like three hours before this and around this where it's all it's doing is saying, remember this from Resident Evil? Here it is. And look how awesome it is that Leon knows about that and reacts to it. What are you talking about that that's the bad part of the game? That is the best part and it's in the second half. Yep. So sorry. Reacting to the B-roll, the part where he just shoots those like T-virus, trank darts at people just casually, is the coolest thing in a Resident Evil game ever. It's so good. Yeah. But I do like the stacks of buildings where you're like, okay, the zombies crawl up from the bottom. They fall down from the top. They carry explosives. They're just doing like really high damage things, but you are a high damage character suddenly. Yeah. The militarized zombie area, it's reminiscent of Day of the Dead, the third of Romero's zombie films. And there's really cool set pieces like these buildings have like fallen over so you're walking over windows. So you can shoot the glass. The glass part is so good. Yeah, yeah, the glass. Did you do the part in the gas station that's optional? I don't know. What's the, I don't know. There's just a gas station you have to go in and get out, like a generator going in. You would know. I didn't do that. I don't know if it's optional. That's where you get the gas can. But it's between the objectives. So you have to do that to get the gas can. But then the gas can stuff is optional. You can do a bunch of gas can stuff to open up some areas to return to like that locked box. But in that, there's all these Leon quips in this part. And the best chainsaw part is in this part too. Because the guy comes with the chainsaw, he's like, you must be the town lumberjack. He's such a callback, right? That's funny. And then that happens. And then there's a long sequence where you can, pun intended, chain the chainsaw kills together. But you have to, I died a lot just to get that right. Because you have to plan out. Because you he'll plant the chainsaw in a zombie. That'll come back to try to hug you and do a one, one hit kill. And if you wait that out or handle it, then you can pick up the chainsaw again. You can pick it up again and again. Well, just sweeping around on the ground, you know, you have to time it right. So dooling chainsaw is one of my favorite sequences. Oh, yeah. Bzz. It's so good. And a little fun, like Easter egg, is technically that gas station is the gas station from the original Resident Evil 3. A hundred percent. But not in the remakes. You never go there in the remake version of RE3. So it's just like a very fun, like, what if scenario? It's where Jill blows up the gas station. The whole part is that. And I feel like that if people are like, this is not traditional Resident Evil are really upset with these areas and what they're doing. It's like, can you appreciate that? That it's like a constant deep cut. It's really smart. Yeah. There's so many. I also question that, like, this isn't Resident Evil. What is Resident Evil? Every game is so dramatically different. Yeah. Since two thousand. I know they think that it's like, you know, it's, yeah, it's very like, Conserve Your Ammo and stuff like that. But also there are several mainline Resident Evil games. The most popular being Resident Evil 4, where that is not a thing. So like, it is Resident Evil. It's Resident Evil 4. So anyway, I'm looping this game right now. And the way that you want to do that is this. And Mark made a very popular video about this, by the way. It's my idea. But it was. It was Sam's idea. It was. Nick is actually the one that made a lot of it. And Nick wrote, I was going to call this. Yeah, Nick kind of wrote the bones of it, which I was like, once you beat the game, there's just like every other game, not spelling this, there's just a bunch of challenges you can do, right? Mm-hmm. And you replay it like an arcade game. And I'm replaying it that way. But the funny thing about this one is that the second replay is best to do it easy. And then you do a run where you don't use healing items or a few other things that I won't talk about. But if you do it that way, then you unlock the hardest thing to unlock, because you have enough CP to unlock it, which is infinite ammo. And then you can play in insane mode for the first time with infinite ammo. So those are two really fun arcadey loops for the game. It becomes this weird roguelike, where every time you're like, you're playing the game and every time you're unlocking like bigger and cooler stuff. So smart. Well, I was telling Nick, like you've been in less than three hours? Yeah. Well, I did it in three hours and five. He did the speedrun in the thing I'm doing, which I might get by accident. I've been playing it for weeks. I know. How can he do it in three hours? It's insane. I did it that way too, but it's because of the easy mode is that that makes that possible. Also skipping cutscenes and running past some of these. Skipping cutscenes actually doesn't, they pause the timer during cutscenes. But if you play it back to back after having just played it for your weeks long playthrough, everything in the Grace mansion is like really fast and fun. And you can decide like whether you, you, you'll do some of the extra stuff or not. Or not. It's fun. And you can not kill anything because it's easy mode. You can just run through it. You know, you regenerate your life. I think there are a few things it's doing as like first. First of all, I don't, I can't think of another Resident Evil game that has this many callbacks and references to earlier games in the franchise. And also after you leave the open area with Leon, there's a really dumb on rails sequence. I think it's dumb. Nick liked it, but I thought it was cool. The first time after that, I'm like, all right, let's speed this up. It's really stupid. He's got a really good one liner at the end of that one. Yeah. He always has a good one liner. He went to the John Wick Keanu Reeves School of Acting, I think. Then you go through the segment at the Raccoon City Police Department, not a spoiler. It's in the trailers. That segment is really cool. So many callbacks. And then you go through the orphanage, go underground. Finally, you're in like the umbrella. Spoilers, you end up in an umbrella laboratory. Yeah. Yeah. And lights, they're a lab. And then you have to battle human opponents. Resonate. I can't remember fighting human opponents in a Resident Evil game. Also the boss of that. You're a famous one. I let out a cheer when that boss fight happened. I thought that was one of the coolest things I'd seen in a Resident Evil game ever. The mini boss. Yeah. The mini boss. Yeah. That was very cool. So I didn't get that that was a reference until I watched some of our videos. And then I was like, hell yeah, because I remember that so much. And I couldn't relate to it so much. I didn't realize that at the time it was great. Well, so you got. RPD is so cool because it's like the safes are all still open. And it also canonizes Leon as the character you play as because he's like. I guess you're talking about it. That puzzle was weird. I'll mention it to you. It was in the trailers. I don't care. I love that puzzle is weird part. That is weird. Yeah. I kind of look. I let out a look at it as a puzzle from like 20 years ago. 30s. There's one moment where you go to investigate the desks that are there where Leon had his welcome sign in R2 and there's a nice call back to Martin. And I was like, oh god. Yeah. Got a little. Yeah. We made a comparison and like all of that stuff. We made it with remake and all of that stuff is there. It's great. I like it a lot. There is a locker though that says it needs a key and I didn't find that. Oh man. Don't get me started. It's part of Barry's scavenger hunt. You need Barry scavenger hunt. You should try to solve that before. Well, I guess I'm. Well, now I'm past that part. So yeah. Another run me. And it's known. There was a couple of things I'm like, do I need to beat the game before I can unlock these and that it wasn't the case. And unfortunately that's what I did figure that one out. But that there was one I didn't the briefcase in that area. I didn't figure out. But I figured out that one, which I decided to walk around so much to get it to work. But it's basically you have to find a picture that shows you where our location is. We have it covered. Anyway, I'll leave this topic by letting you know where I am. The first room where the guards come in, the human guards, clear that out. And then you go around the corner and then you're in a room where there's like a gap and the soldiers are on the far side of the room. Yeah. Having a little trouble. I stopped there one night. I was like, okay, that's enough for today. You can cheese that by going up in the balcony and then walking back to the place before. But they can shoot from under you. Yeah, you go back to where you started. Oh, and then you go back? After that. Yeah, that's what I did. Just because I wanted to use my rifle ammo and I was like, you know, this will be fun. Okay. There is also a destructible piece of the environment that you can unleash something on the room. Okay. That's good to know. Whoa. That's great. I forgot about that. I didn't know that. Well, I didn't know that until after I played that section because you don't see it. But yeah, you have to go to the other side of that bridge to do that. You should be able to shoot it from the when you first ended. Then do that because that's really fun. All right. All right. Chaos. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And we should have an episode where we talk about the ending because there is a really cool sequence of a handset future resident evils and stuff. Yeah, we'll do when I'm finally done with it, we'll do a sport cast. The all new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here building on everything drivers know and love about Toyota with a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. The new RAV4 comes standard as a hybrid providing smooth efficient performance for both city streets and longer journeys. Enjoy the legendary reliability Toyota is known for in the all new 2026 RAV4. Learn and shop more at Toyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. Refreshing wild cherry cola meets smooth cream. The treat you deserve. Pepsi, wild cherry and cream treat yourself. Okay. Project Helix, the next Xbox first details coming out of GDC, reiterating once again that it will play PC games. And then a bunch of specs that don't mean a lot to me. I'm not as big of a tech guy, but it's next gen stuff. Yeah. They're going to be leaning. They've got a custom AMD chip and they're leaning into AI for their own like upscaling. FSR, right? FSR or FSR next. Yeah. I think they're calling it. Yeah. I don't know. Is anybody getting excited for the next Xbox? Is it meeting anything? Is it doing anything to turn the tide? I think the thing today was a really exciting thing too where they... They're dropping this is the next box. Yeah. I don't know if this is an indication of where they're going, but they removed the this is an Xbox campaign from visibility in some location. So, IJN reported on that. That in conjunction with announcing a new console and being like, hey, we're making a box that can do console games is like, that's all getting away from that. Who is it? Shameless? Luckily, that's going to be like wound down or whatever. They also said, they're celebrating 25 years of Xbox this year. I said, this is we're setting this up for the next 25 years. To your point, yeah, I think they're trying to say. All good news, I think. And then also the couple of the PlayStation news of kind of getting out of the PC because where they're publishing their games, there could be an era of exclusivity that feels different than before where it's like, you can play a bunch of PC games and you're supposed to blah, blah, blah, blah. They're going to have all that. But they might be more reluctant to put stuff on Switch 2, which is not as much as common. But they might not put stuff on the PlayStation and like, what's that going to look like for Call of Duty and Elder Scrolls and stuff? Like it's all all that stuff I know is annoying for consumers to think about. And it all sounds expensive. But as a journalist, I'm like, that's so exciting to cover all that. As a consumer, I have a lot of worries. Everything just sounds like the future sounds expensive, but they might solve that in some way. And I don't know what that is. They have to. Yeah. AI can bring the keep the cost down. I'm not talking about AI like content generation. I'm talking about using it like upscaling. Upscaling, yeah. Like faking their way to higher fidelity graphics using AI. That sort of thing. I mean, honestly, and this is in the middle of the controversial statements to say about AI, but New York Times had a piece today about how Silicon Valley is using AI. And, you know, there's still a bunch of coders coding things, but they're just doing it with prompts. And they know what they're doing. They know how to check it and like how to make sure that that worked. But they're saving eight hours, you know, by making a half an hour of prompts to have things right code. That's going to come to games. Right. So that just the programming side of things. You still need someone that knows how the game works and to test it and do all that stuff. But like some of the conservation of actually programming. I'm not talking about artists being replaced and stuff like that. That's all. Unfortunately, that's happening too. Like I'm not. I'm just pointing out this other thing is happening where like the conservation of resources and just sheer coding is going to come is the next thing. And maybe that's going to make games cheaper. Is it going to make jobs go away? Like that's the unclear thing stone, right? You could actually make a lot more games. That's probably good. Right. Like what if you could make, you know, the cap, common amount of games? That'd be nice. Yeah. Yeah. I was watching a game dev video where the guy said like a very popular method that game devs use. I think it was probably more earlier games, but probably still use now, which is the bear claw method, right? Which is where they they figure out, okay, there's some sort of like bug in our code. And so we have to keep like shrinking until we find out where that bug is. And so, you know, they'll change things or whatever. And they're like, nope. Okay. So this is good. So now we can like kind of he's like, now we just type in, you know, they a lot of them use Claude. And they just exactly look at my code. Do you see any irregularities? And it'll be like, yep, this is going to cause an issue. And so they're able to just go straight there now instead of having to manually find it, which is, yeah. And again, there's two discussions about AI here. One is that it's going to ruin everything and come for jobs and squash creativity. This is a different thing. This is a productivity use of it where we all agree that games are too expensive and we'd like to make more, we'd like to play more video games. So like this is like when Photoshop came to Lucasfilm, it changed Lucasfilm's ability to make special effects. Like not, it didn't replace a bunch of people at Lucasfilm. There wasn't a bunch of people editing photos. It was a tool from outside that made it so they could make more special effects. This is a tool from outside that makes it so you couldn't make more game code or make games with fewer bugs. That is a possibility here. That is an outcome that is not evil. We are already seeing companies pre-lay off people to be evil. So I don't know where this is going, but it's worth thinking about. Yeah. Yeah, the whole mega crit thing that Nick was talking about earlier with Slay the Spire, that I can't remember if they've commented on it or if people are just saying it, but their whole Emma's paint thing feels like a direct like comparison to Baldur's Gate 3, where they were like, yeah, we used a bunch of Gen AI art to like do placeholders. And they're like, we didn't do that. We literally made placeholders in MS Paint. So you get to just see those now, right? It's for the culture to feel out what do we accept as art versus what do we accept as a tool. And that's a word figure right now. And by the way, GDC is about that this year. Like the events that are sold out are about these, you know, not sold out, but the ones that are filling up are about crazy tools being in this. Yeah, there was that panel about the Google's like AI game generator. Yeah. You couldn't, it was completely for you. The Nintendo IP destroyer. Yeah. As far as the next Xbox goes, I agree with all the tech jargon. It's breaking. The next generation console will have next gen features. That's not exciting. What I want to know is like, for one, how much is this thing going to cost compared to the, you know, competition? What they even consider competition anymore because there's the Sony thing where they're, you know, they're pulling their games off PC because of the Steam Deck, not the Project Helix. Allegedly. But also like, yeah, allegedly, but also just like, I know there's a lot of chat about exclusives and stuff like that. And if they'll end up walking that back, but at the end of the day, this thing has to sell and their games have to continue to sell, which is why they're in the position they're in now. So I don't get super hyped from, you know, Xbox CEO telling me that the next console is going to be great. I need a little bit more than that before I think, oh, yep, they've turned this around. This is going to be great. I already have a next generation Xbox. It's called my bad ass PC. Yeah. I use it every day. Oh, but there was the Xbox mode for Windows 11. That does look kind of cool for Xbox. That's applicable for handhelds too, right? You could make a hand. Yeah, it's their Xbox full screen. They're just calling it now Xbox mode where you turn on your PC and you're in the Xbox UI, which is cool for Xbox people. But if you're on your PC, what can you do then? You just play the Xbox games you've bought on PC? It's very much in your face like, big picture. If you're familiar with that at all. It's just an elegant user. Well, I would somewhat argue it's not elegant, but I think in theory, it's something that you can navigate a digital storefront and interface on a PC using just a controller. That's kind of how it's optimized. The big drawback for PC gaming is I haven't hooked up to my TV just like a console, my gaming thing. But for one, it needs a pen because it's an IGN-owned machine and I can't turn that off. So I still have to, I have a wireless keyboard. So I type in the pen and then the thing just opens and steam big picture mode. That way the moment the pen is typed in, I set the keyboard down, I pick up the controller and I never have to touch the keyboard again. And so that's what people want. People want to be able to go and use this thing like a console. They want to be able to pick up a controller and play it. And that's what the Xbox mode is trying to do for people. Well, okay. So speaking of Steam Machine, you mentioned Sony walking away, walking back its exclusives that it's putting on PC. We had talked a little bit last week that maybe the idea of this next Xbox playing PC games and then also being able to play PlayStation games that came to PC. That was the reason why. But here we have another theory today. This is Peter Dalton who was the head of technology at Blue Point, which was recently just shut down by Sony. He wrote on Twitter, I read an interesting take on why Sony may be pulling back from pushing PC releases and instead focusing more heavily on exclusives. Some people frame this as a response to Xbox, but I'm not convinced that's the real driver. A more interesting possibility is the rise of a steam based console ecosystem. Consoles largely exist because they provide a cheaper, simpler alternative to gaming PCs. For most households, a dedicated gaming console is easier to justify than building or maintaining a high end PC. However, if Valve releases a new Steam console that provides a console like experience while still giving players access to the entire PC game library, that could become a very compelling option. In that scenario, if Sony were releasing all of its games day in day on PC, the Steam console could effectively offer the best of both worlds, simplicity with the full breadth of PC gaming. It would be quite ironic after decades of traditional console competition, Valve ultimately ended up winning the console war. So that's his take. Yeah, I don't think PlayStation saw Valve. I think they saw them as another revenue stream, but that's why they put their games on Steam, but they didn't see them as competition because PC gaming will always have a few drawbacks compared to console games. Yes, console games have drawbacks too. I don't want to hear it. Anyways, with the existence of this device, it does make them a direct competitor now, and PlayStation is not playing nice with the other competitors as we know. So this definitely seems like it is in response to that. A very fair perspective as well. And I think it's not only competition for PlayStation, but I would argue also Microsoft and their Project Helix. I think its biggest competitor is going to be the Steam machine. And I would be very surprised if Helix was priced all that much differently from a Steam machine. I think it's going to be a very similar parallel to what we see with the ROG XBox Ally X versus the ROG Ally X. Just the Xbox code of paint that's on it. So I think that Microsoft cannot afford to be more expensive than a Steam machine, whatever price it ends up being. And I don't know if it can physically be cheaper than the Steam machine. So very curious to see how this all shakes out. I think it'll be more expensive. The Steam machine has already kind of said that it's kind of a mid-tier. It's kind of, it should be about ready to go. They're just waiting on current world economic situations to settle somewhere. The biggest question I have with all of this, the reason I feel like Xbox is still, there are much smarter people trying to figure this stuff out. When you buy a PlayStation 5, PlayStation gets a cut of every game sold. Doesn't matter if it's first party or third party. You buy it on their console, they get a cut. Steam, same way. You buy this, unless you're jailbreaking it, you're only getting access to Steam. So then Steam is getting a cut of everything. But if you buy a Project Helix, and then you say, I'm never going to buy an Xbox game. I'm only going to buy from the Epic Games Store or Steam, they're selling you a device that they're not getting any future revenue streams from. Which is like, it's so weird to me. Maybe, we don't know if a Steam app might live on it under a consideration that, you know, they get a cut of things. I don't see why Steam would do that when they have their own console. Why would they tell Xbox? Yeah, and any games sold on your device, I don't see why they would do that. Yeah, that is a big question mark. Xbox makes a couple hundred bucks on each console too, though. So there is that calculation. I have a, the problem I have with this theory, just real quick, is that I don't think PlayStation even thinks about Valve. I don't think about you at all. Yeah, I don't think about you at all situation. I don't think Japanese top-down, like old school electronics companies really care about even Microsoft at some points. Like they care about Nintendo, and they want to go after Nintendo, and they want to think about that. But I think the way they think about software is very, very different. And the way they think about hardware is very old school, and, you know, they'll continue to innovate and do their thing. But I don't know. I don't, I think they might look at like, what they, why they pulled off of the Steam ecosystem already is because like the sales are bad. What can Steam do for us is how a, I think Sony of Japan looks at Steam. What can they do for us? Can they make it? They're not like, they're spending enough money. I don't care. You're taking it as purely, it didn't make us, it's not worth devaluing our brand, putting exclusive on other consoles. We would prefer Yote and Soros and Wolverine to just stay, because we're not making enough money there anyways. And that it's not about competition. Yeah, the thing, the thing, the thing, devaluing their own brand. The thing that's hurting Sony in the long run is that they don't have as much, and I hate this term, IP as Nintendo, still, you would think when they, when they became the most popular Sony's ever become, right before Last of Us kind of came out, and there was like PlayStation All-Stars, you know, like the, that by now we'd be like, look at all these PlayStation franchises, everybody cares about, they were doing local roko and pada-pom, like all this stuff was just coming out all the time. It really narrowed to, and they had Yote, that's new, right? But like it's really narrowed to, oh, it's not narrowed, but it just, it hasn't blown up, but I think as much as I would have expected them to. And I don't think of them as, you know, besides Astro Bot and stuff being cute, like having as many competitive things they own, they can't like easily make a theme park or a racer or a, or All-Stars, like Nintendo can. The, the big difference between the two is that like Nintendo doesn't forget about it. It's IPs, right? It's still always going to make Zelda more of a setup. Oh, sorry. And I forgot the second half of my point. Microsoft solved that by buying everybody. Yeah. Yeah, they did. And Sony, you know, spent a little bit of time doing that with Bud G, and fortunately, Blue Point. And so, yeah, I just think that puts them in a little bit of a weird spot if they're going for, like we're going to be a console maker that makes AAA games, you can only play on Playstations. Like I hope that they have some kind of, you know, ability to become a, uh, you know, we saw the last Sony conference, it was all, it was all Capcom and it was all Konami. Like that's their, that's the key for some of those partnerships. Yeah. They, they just abandoned their, like, why isn't somebody working on Uncharted or infamous? Like it's so weird that they just Uncharted's over and they moved on to Last of Us and that's it. Somebody other than Naughty Dog can make an Uncharted game. Like it's very, very silly. Where's Carwappa? Kind of. Bring him back. You gotta believe. Where's my boy? I think another good point, uh, when you're considering PlayStation being worried about the Steam Machine is that the Steam Machine is not going to be sold at retail or on Amazon. So you, you know, you would, you have to really know about the Steam Machine and really go seek it out yourself. There's like many more hurdles, much more friction involved in getting a Steam Machine than getting a PlayStation. Well, you can't buy a Steam Deck from GameStop, or at least you could when they were shortages. So I'm curious to see, because I believe they were a licensed retailer, but that came after launch. Yeah. I think as of right now, the Steam Machine will only be sold from Valve right now. This episode is brought to you by Beneful. Dogs of the world. Let me your ears, snoots, and little toe beans. We've been sitting and staying for boring food for too long. It's time to demand high quality ingredients, fresh from the pantry. Together with Beneful freshly prepared meals, we can start a Mealtime Revolution. Can I get a Wafoof? Kick boring in the bowl with Beneful freshly prepared meals. Visit purina.com slash benifold to shop now. Okay, Sam, tell us about the panel you went to that was on Donkey Kong, Bonanza. Sure thing. Let's bring it up and still store it, Joe Burke. So I went to a panel at GDC, and I wanted to talk just briefly about what these are like and why they're fun to go to and what you see at them. And Nintendo does one every year. And this one was on, it was called Constructive Destruction, Fusing Voxel Tech and 3D Action Platforming in Donkey Kong, Bonanza with Kintaro Mojikura, the producer of Donkey Kong and director of Odyssey, I believe. And then Tatsuya Kuriihara who has programmed it, and the programming matters here. Because what this was about is a presentation to game developers about how they came about with this game. So what they started with was there was one rock in Mario Odyssey, which was deformable. And then they, and I guess we can just move through the slides, I'll just say next slide. So let's do the next slide. I don't either. Yeah. So next slide is this one. So this is the, they had a cheese that they made and in a level where you can destroy this cheese. So this is a hammer brother for people listening destroying cheese. And when you think about it, that's what voxels are. And voxels are basically 3D pixels that can be destroyed in certain ways. By hammer brothers. Yes, in this case. Specifically by hammer brothers. So they get this idea in Odyssey. Next slide. And they think, well, maybe we can build a game around this. And then they talk about Donkey Kong and they talk about, you know, where we're going to go from here. So then they make this prototype still in the Odyssey engine, which has a Goomba with two hands that destroys in voxel environment. And that's, you know, the next step. So next slide. And again, so Nintendo would never show these prototypes. This is another slide of the Goomba beating stuff up. And the assets are from the game. It's a Goomba from the game. And then the hands are from this like Olmec enemy in the game. Next slide. So that's what I was just talking about. There's the hands and then where everything comes from. So again, this is Nintendo showing us how they built a little playground and then decided on what they were doing next. Was this talk being given in Japanese? A great intro in English, giving a great, they can clearly speak English very well. And then they switched over to Japanese. So then, and I have a picture of what the panel looked like in a second. Next slide. So then there's stuff like this that they show where this is a clearly a tool in game that's being shown to say, okay, Donkey Kong standing on mud, how much of this mud is wet? How does that affect its destruction? How much of this mud is dense? How does it affect its destruction? Not really readable, but you can see they had to make these tools. So then Donkey Kong walks around, smashes it. Next slide. Another thing here, this is the material properties I was just talking about. It's kind of showing, see, there's the obsidian panel. And what is that? That's probably harder than the other panels. And there's also a thing on here, which is not destructible. A lot of the game is not the middle. Next panel or next slide. Wetness value. Yeah. So as mentioned, there's the wetness value. That's the mud and it gets a little drippy and weird. Next slide. This is cool. So this is showing, they also had a tool that overlays like in any point, what is actually destructible. And again, the boxes aren't destructible or they're destructible in a very specific just two polygon way, and they might go in and destruct other stuff. But you know, this is again, just showing Nintendo, showing their tools, showing their dev tools, right? That they had to make for this game. Next slide. And I'm a problem. I'm a problem. Some of us at the end. This is showing how many voxels are in this level. So they backed out 347 million. Yeah. 347 million 3D pixels are destructible and adjustable in this level. Running on a game that's running on a phone. And the point here was that it's on switch too, right? Like they tried to do this on switch one, and they just really couldn't work it out. And when they pull out, they're very proud that things scale this way. So there's still a texture when you pull out this far that looks like zebra, or draft pattern on the level, even though what we're looking at is a level that's backed out so far away that it's just a tiny speck of this. All right, let's see what we got next. And this is going great, Jibber. I really appreciate this. This is showing what's destructible and what's not. And just kind of again, another dev tool next up. Okay. So this is showing basically you can make a testable level before you make your game. And this testable levels, they put a bunch of their materials together, made a little obstacle course, and you can see these stuff would have would not have made it into the game itself. But they just kind of build these almost like Mario 64 levels, right? These little playgrounds. I just like seeing Nintendo build this. This is the special stuff for me. It's like seeing this game that never existed that came out. So if you're now watching this on on YouTube, maybe skip to this section and you can check it out. There's just a couple more. Next up. Again, like those rocks are not there's rocks that are destructible and rocks that are, but you can't tell the difference what you're playing. That's what they're saying in this slide, which is really cool. Next up. And they call that the trappings. This is what the panel looked like at the front. There's also, I don't know, 1000 people behind this area. Like I was up front here, and it was really fun to watch them go through this stuff. And they had jokes and they had the audience all give thumbs up like Donkey Kong at one point, something like that. And I think the final slide is next, which is another. Well, let's skip through these. Well, this one, this one's just showing that in Donkey Kong when they designed anything, it had to be filled with stuff. And Mario Odyssey, you could just build a polygon and walk across it. But Donkey Kong, you had to fill it with something all the time that could be destructible. I think that was cute. Next up. Let's skip past this. We're almost there. These are just cool slides. And this is the final one. You never get to see what it looks like when the team gets together and takes a group photo at Nintendo, right? And you can just see a couple of things about the youngness of this crew and how into it they are. And again, like this window behind the scenes at Nintendo is totally unique. And what makes GDC special. So I just wanted to share that, like, you know, sometimes you hear about this conference and it's not as exciting as CES or E3 or whatever. But this is why it's fun to go to it. You could just see this game and I have been to these about like old games like Doom or NBA Jam or whatever, which I think it's cool because like there are so many games like, you know, you play Bethesda game or you, you know, and you kind of see behind the curtain all the time, right? Like you you glitch through the floor, you can just turn the camera and see through a wall and stuff like that. And you don't get that in Nintendo games just because of how polished they are. So it's weird to be like somebody made this game. Like they did use dev tools and something that. They talked about that exact example. They were like, Oh yeah, we're okay with some clipping in this game because we think it's fun. They were talking and they showed what they meant, which was like an enemy was kind of destructive and going around stuff. But if like the edge of its shoulder went through a wall, like it doesn't matter. It's like spinning and doing crazy stuff. Yeah, like acceptable levels of, of, you know, buggyness is fine. It was cool. Cool. Kind of makes me want to play Don Kong Bonanza again. Yeah. Also, I'm starting to get really excited for the Mario Galaxy movie. Yeah, it's gonna be a good time. I think I'll watch it in Japan. Oh, there you go. After the first movie, like I have no fears about the movie. Like we were all like kind of worried. We're like, are they gonna be able to pull it off? Is it gonna suck? Blah, blah, blah. And it's like now that I've seen it, it's like, okay, yeah, I'll just take more of this. It's fun. I can't wait for the dark empire strikes back ending. They pull out of the galaxy. Mario has the first- Dude, if they make it where Bowser is Mario's father, I'd be so into that. Charles Martinette is Mario's father. Okay, that brings us to video game 20 questions. Our suggestion this week comes from Zach from Washington State, who says, I sit here digesting a meal from Taco Bell, listening to the latest episode of the only video game podcast questioning my life choices and staring at a pile of sauces. This got me thinking about the varying levels of hotness and the progressively more difficult games that could match. So here's what I've come up with. He's got five possibilities you three will choose. You will choose your level of hotness that you want for video game 20 questions this week. There's a mild option. Diablo. We got to go. Diablo option, a fire option, a Diablo option and a Verde option. No, that's interesting. Maybe it's not hot. You have to pay extra for Verde is something a little different. Yeah. If you choose Verde, you're getting an option that's a little lag. That's cool. I mean, if this is Taco Bell, I'd be all in and Diablo. But let's try the Verde because Nick's here and he's going to help. Zach says, love the show. I've listened to every episode since around 2015. Recently, my daughter was in the car with me and asked if I had met you all. I told her no and her response was, well, you should. You listen to them so much. Well, I do have to meet you. Where does he live? Washington State. We could do a game scoop tour up there. Yeah. We can do that. Pax West. Okay. So you guys want the Verde option? Yeah. Let's do that today. Sure. Okay. Jobert, the Verde option is what has been chosen. Let me just help myself out and make sure I've got some info here. Wait, does Jobert have an asset? He has a sauce a couple of times. He always has an asset to play when the game is revealed. Oh, yeah, that's right. I always go Diablo, man. I don't know. I like the taste of the Diablo sauce at Taco Bell. No, because we're coming off two losses, I think. Okay. I need that. Just as a sauce. Diablo's very good. It has a good. Wait, I might have lost it. Is the sauce, is the heat of the sauce relevant to how difficult the game is or how difficult our challenge is? How difficult? He thinks the challenge would be. Got it. Got it. Okay. So, okay. That's why we're not going. Because we're like, you know, we're not going to get some. I don't know. I can't think of it. I think we're on a bit of a, we're on a bit of a. My opinion is that the fire sauce would be the hardest one to get to. Oh, okay. But you could get to all of these. Maybe we should have gone Diablo. We got a. No, we got, we can get better there. Yeah, let's do it. There's not a higher reward. So it's just, no, there's money on the line. Maybe think about talking about. We're on poly market. We got to get, I got a lot of calls on this one. Oh God, can you imagine? Okay. So with the Verde option chosen, let the questioning begin. Okay. Is this, I mean, is this game from the 70s, 80s or 90s? Yes. Well, yes. Okay. Well, oh, yes, it is, it is. That means it's like 99 or 2000 or something. 99. Or it's like just still existing in some form that like, hmm. Is this game from the 1995 and later period? Yes. Okay. Oh, wow. Okay. Was this game developed in Japan? Yes. Was this game featured on the Nintendo 64? No. Was this a PS PS one exclusive? Yes, it is. Okay. That's fine. Japan PlayStation exclusive. Dang. We're in my zone. Okay. So now it's something a little bit different. So I'm thinking, you know, it's going to be, yeah, it's not going to be Final Fantasy 7. Yeah. It's going to be something like your jumping flashes. Your, your, your, your, your legend of the Gabbo. Is this in any of the, the PlayStation? Well, is this on the PlayStation mini collection? No. Maybe like a Vibri-bin. Yeah. I, I, man, I kind of want to, I guess nothing from Square Enix would be like out of the box. I don't think. Do you think this game might have not gotten a port to the United States? Like it could be a, I wouldn't pick a game that was not really in America. Okay. Okay. Nice guy. Would you call this game having an artsy or quirky art style? No, I don't know. I don't think so. Okay. That's great. That helps us eliminate a bunch. Is this an RPG? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Oh, no, maybe it is. I know that. I know that's, I know that's not really going to like narrow it down a ton because that's like, is that like, what's it called? The monster? What's it called? The monster? Monster Rancher? Monster Rancher. Is that a thing? Is that Dreamcast? No, that was on PlayStation where you put a music CD and you get a monster based on the CD you put in. But I don't know. And then there's like, and then Xenogirrs. Yeah. That would say that's, I think tradition. Great. Great. Great. Yeah. To your point, Mark, I think the PlayStation era, RPGs were, I would argue just regular RPGs. It wasn't like a PlayStation Last of Us where it kind of has RPG elements in it. So let's see. It's a RPG. No, when I think of PS1, I think of Legend of Dragon, Final Fantasy. Very traditional. Well, he laughed though. So maybe it's based on a license. The Verde option. The Verde. Yeah. A little bit different. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I know it's not like Final Fantasy 7. Is this based on a license? No. Is this game from Square, Squaresoft? Nope. Okay. That's 10. Just got to eliminate that. It's good to get that out of the way. It's not Brave, Fencer, Musashi guys. You can Atlas game or something? Is this developer still around? I don't know. So like, okay, I don't know. We're not going to get this one. So you're okay. Is this the first of its name in a series? Yes. So it is a series and it's first of its name. Maybe it's like a Mega Man Legends or something because that's kind of weird. It's not a Mega Man traditional game. Yeah, that was before the support. And it says exclusive to PlayStation. Okay. Do you play as a human? Yes. Yes. Okay. RPG where you play as a human. There's a little bit of a pause there though. He had to think about that. I'm also trying to, I'm also thinking about the, you got to med it. Why, why did I pause? Because Mega Man is part human. He's humanoid. He's a boy. Mega Man's a boy. He's a robot. He's a man. He's literally a robot. He's a cyborg. I don't think so. That would imply that he has grown skin and stuff. He's all metal, isn't he? All right. So someone get Dr. Light on the road. I've never gotten that close to him. What type of humans are not humans? There's like mischief. No, that's not a, that's not exclusive. Okay. You play as a human. It's an RPG, PlayStation 95 and later. A little bit weird. Not a usual game. That makes me think it could be a spin-off or just an unusual game period. Let's see what. Nick, you got us in this mess. Is this a, well, how did I do this? You guys wanted to go fast. I wanted to go yop-lo. No, you said for, if this was Final Fantasy 8, I'd have it by now. I think, I think I forced the thing. Is this a, is this an RPG set in like a traditional fantasy setting, you know, swords and magic? Yes. Okay. See, I'm helping. Legend of Dragon could be of, I don't think that's, was that square? Could it be a super deformed, like crazy, like super cute RPG thing? Was there anything like that exist? Cute? I don't, I don't. Poplochroil. Chrono Cross is square. That's kind of weird. Yeah. That is square. Was Legend of Dragon square? I didn't really like that game, so I always forget. I can't remember. I don't think that's, I think it might be square. Um, see what. He said the developer's not around anymore. No, I said I don't know. He said he didn't know. So that's gotta be, y'all would know if it was Enix or square. Yeah. I know. We don't know if Legend of, we don't know if Legend of Dragon is a square Enix game. Is the issue. Yeah, I always forget because I just don't care about that game. Oh, what else? Fantasy setting. Yeah, maybe it is something like an arc the lad or like a grand. Is this a turn based game? Yes. Turn based. How many questions are we at? 14. That's 14. All right. Could be a Sweeked in. Yeah, that's a Konami. We do know it's a Japanese developer. Yeah, y'all would know. He would know. We would know. We would know if Konami is still around. I think they are. Yeah, this is just something super weird. I'm surprised it's not based on a license. I was hoping for some weird license scheme. I'm trying to think of like it's like an RPG in a medieval or like an RPG fantasy setting, but it's weird. Is it? Is it? Is the game? Oh, maybe it's .hack? No. That was PS2. I think that's PS2. Is the game. That's like an MMO, but it's not. Is the series still around today? Yes. Okay. It's still relevant. That's 15. I will say you guys are not thinking Verde enough. We got to get weird. The series is still around today. Japanese developer started on PlayStation. First of its name. We don't know if the devs around. Nine of the Seven Kingdoms. Yeah. Protector of the PlayStation. He actually nine kingdoms. What? Human. He plays a human. Kind of. Yes, with hesitation. Does this game have cartoony or anime graphics? I mean, that's a little bit hard to... I don't want to answer it. Is this game... I refuse. Is this game primarily like polygon, polygonal? No. Okay. So maybe sprite. Oh. What? What? So maybe it's like a sprite-based, turn-based RPG. What if it's just a collection? Maybe it's the Final Fantasy collection. No, it's not Square. But what if it's a collection of older games? Because that would be like ported. I mean, that is weird. Ask me if it's a collection. Is it a collection? It could be. Like what? What? If you were to use it in a certain way, it could be. What is happening, Nick? This is so verry. It's a turn-based RPG that could be a part of a collection. Okay. It sounds like it's a card RPG or something. There's something like that that uses the PlayStation I or something like Skylanders. This is PS1. There's no PlayStation I on the PS1. Yeah. This is before all the weird stuff. Well, it's not an IP though. So it's not like a Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories. Like Beyblade. Remember that? Yeah. Oh, I love Beyblade. But what are we at? You got two questions and a guess. Do we want to figure out like pixel art? Sprites? Pixels like sprites? That collection thing is so weird. I can't even begin to understand what that means. Maybe it's like a show on a disc or something or some collection like that. It's a demo disc. Demo disc. There you go. There you go. Yeah. Wait, what? No, that's too insane. That's too bad. It could be a demo disc. It could be that. Is this a PlayStation demo disc volume two 1998 edition? Can I play Tony? Does this game feature other games? Okay. Am I allowed to ask a medical, like, are demo discs on the table? I think you have to. I think you have to. I only pick games that were released in North America. Okay. So it can't be an entertainment thing. I mean, is a demo disc a game that's released? Why would that be a collection only if you wanted to? It is a collection. Yeah, that part just... Because maybe the game is featured in a demo disc. I've never been more excited to find out what the answer is. I'm excited to. I'm only careful. I'm excited to. I'm only careful to get to. One more question and a guess. Two questions and a guess. Two questions and a guess. Okay. Okay. There's like a Land Grisser. There's Arc the Lad. There's Alundra. It's not relevant, though, to this day. So that eliminates those. Never mind. Did this game exist as just a playable PlayStation disc sold in stores? Well, but... I don't think you want to burn a question on that. I only pick those kinds. Yeah. I don't want... It's still relevant to this day. Well, but there's no downloadable stuff on PlayStation. So anything you would buy, you would have to... What should we ask about the accessory thing? Could it be accessory based? Or was that... I can't think of a single PS1 accessory. I mean, there's just weird controllers, but that's about it. Like... It's a collection if you... Also, what's tripping me up is that it's a series that's still going today. Like I can't even... Turn-based fantasy RPG. Okay. What if it had retro games inside of it? Yeah. I mean, that's certainly possible. I'm trying to think of a PlayStation 1 game that has that. Maybe PlayStation Animal Girl. What if it's like an early... Is there any LAN games are connected to the internet things where you could download stuff? Like it'd be called the PlayStation Channel or whatever. Not PS1. No, he wouldn't pick that. Not that I can think of. PS2 was the only network adapter for that. I mean, like, a iron hand... I can't think Verdi enough for this. I just can't... I can't pull this off. My brain doesn't go Verdi enough for this. All right. Let's get two questions and a guess. We can just give up. Dude, do you just give up? Does this game ascribe to the live moss motto of Taco Bell? Did the most recent entry in this game come out in the last three years? Well, hold please. Oh, so there is a possibility. It's pretty relevant. Turn-based fantasy RPG, turn-based... I mean, I could be like a Shin Megami Tensei, a Persona. Here we go. This is how long I have to scroll on this series. There's a lot of them. What? Okay. The question was, is the most recent from the last three years? Yes. Is there a... Was there a yeast game on the PlayStation? But like super, super long running if you have to scroll that much. Maybe it's like Atelier or with those on PS1? I don't even know. I think I was PS2. One question. Also, what is the first one even called? I don't even know. What did you ask, Damon? One question and a guess. Yeah. I think I'm out. I don't... I... Bomberman. This is Bomberman. I don't know. Oh, I know. Have we said the name of the game? No. No, no. No, all right. Gosh. Gosh. Is it... What's the last... Is it a Disgaea game? First appeared on PlayStation 2. Your Verde option, something a little different is RPG Maker. No. Oh, gosh. It's just RPG Maker. If you use it to make more than one game, it's a collection. Yeah, you're right. This is the worst bridge troll riddle I've ever had in my entire life. That was the Verde option, though. I'll accept that. I would argue this is a part... This is ascribed to the live Moss motto of Taco Bell. Okay. Well... Yeah, yeah. It's not a game. I'm going to live less. That's what we should have thought about that. Not Moss. It is a game because you do make the game and then you can play it. No, I understand. But I mean, like... Now the comment, you're not thinking Verde enough makes sense because it's like, this isn't a game. It is a game, but it's not. It's a game where you make games. You play as a human. I consider you, it's yourself making the game. Yeah, that's fair. Also, the characters are just humans. I guess. The developer is Kusuo Kagaku. Like a dude. I have no idea. I wanted this game so bad. Kagaku-san is still around. When I was a kid. So they're still making RPG? The most recent one was 2024. I'm pretty sure they've been featured on Humble Bundle. Like you can buy like 40 of them. I think this is always a new RPG maker coming out. I'm glad. Really? And Sam, your question, does it have cute anime graphics? Well, it's just pixel art. But then what's confusing is that I'm reading from the Wikipedia entry. In order to allow players to create their own graphics and animations for RPG maker, a second program on the same disk called Anime Maker is included, which creators could use to design graphics and import them into their role-playing games. That's impressive. That's why I didn't want to, I didn't know how to answer that question. Okay. Cool. That was a fun one. That was good. Even though we lost, I still had fun. Yeah, that was a tough one. That was certainly better there. Here are your other options. Your mild option was Little Nemo the Dream Master. Oh, wow. Hot was Bakhtai, the sun is in your hands. Oh, love it. I would have never got any of these. Fire, the one I think is the hardest is Godzilla 2 on NES. Okay, that would have been tough. Wow. And then Diablo, which I think we could have gotten because of Sam is Panic Bomber on Virtual Boy. I wouldn't have got that, but that's great. That's cool. I would have got Bakhtai. Those were all kind of hard though. Bakhtai. Why is it mild like Mario 64? This footage is driving me crazy. We've got to get this down. This is literally making me awful. He's making a game. All right, I got a vert mind. No, Joe, we're playing. You're playing RPG Maker Man. He's got the fire. Just set the sound already. I know he's cycling. Can I just see an overworld real quick? Just scrub through. Let me find, let me see some exploration. This is World of Longplay. He's playing RPG Maker Man. There it is. It's a video game. Just select the sound. Well, nicely attempt. Thank you for the suggestion. Zach from Washington State, viewers, listeners, if you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address gamescoupedidgin.com. All right, that's all the scoops we have for you this week. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jobert, working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. This is I Jin Gamescoup. Ever out. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful evil. Robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Super powerful robot evil. Fuck you.