Scott Pilgrim EX & Movie Tie In Games with Chris Plante

This is a Head Gump podcast. Hacks is back for its fifth and final season and so is the Hacks podcast. Join the Hacks creators and showrunners Lucia and Yellow, Paul W Downs and Jen Statsky as they unpack the Emmy-winning comedy series. On each episode, hear stories from the set, what goes on in the writer's room and how these beloved characters close out their final season. Watch Hacks streaming exclusively on HBO Max and listen to the Hacks podcast on HBO Max or wherever you get your podcasts. You guys had to have watched the Oscars last night, right? Why? I can't believe the slap 2 happens. The slap 2! There was a second slap. I was like, that's never gonna happen again when I saw it the first time. Now it happens again. Again? Too many years later. No, it's weirdly the same guy. It was the same guys. Will Smith gets back into the venue and slaps Chris Rock again. I didn't see it. I didn't see it. This happened? It happened for real. The slap 2. Oh my God. That's insane. Yeah, it was crazy and what was crazy about it was that it was like a double slap. Like he did one and then a second one. It was a way to heighten the first slap. Yeah. So I guess it was technically the second and third slaps but they're just calling it the slap 2. They're calling it the slap 2. Wow. Anyway, the slap happened again. That's crazy that happened to the Oscars. Nick, when you said you had an idea for an opening. I guess I just thought it would be I have more places to go than this. You said, follow me. I've got something here. Yeah. I mean, I just was like kind of like, okay, we'll start here and then we'll kind of expand this world. I guess I didn't realize like kind of what a narrow cul-de-sac I was creating for it. I thought you were gonna maybe do something like and then something even crazier happened after that. Something even crazier than the slap 2. Oh yeah. The suck. Okay, wait, wait, wait, I got one now. I got one 2. Okay. Well, I wasn't thinking the suck but I think it gets up there. Okay. It's crazy how they announced the wrong best picture again. They're calling it the wrong best picture 2. No, they, no, they're not. Nick. No, they're not. They're not. First off, we're a video game podcast. Yeah. We're talking about movie games this week and I thought you were gonna tie that in somehow with the Oscars. Your whole concept was just the slap happened again. Yeah, I thought like if it was happened again, it'd be like that'd be crazy. And then also I was like kind of thinking like I made my fingers crossed that would actually happen so it seemed like we were like head of the curve when. But if it did happen this, it would be less interesting in opening. Because like people would be like they're just talking about the thing that happened. Guys, I fucked up. I just, I fucked up here. I just, you know, I really just didn't have anything and I was overconfident and ended up showing my whole ass and I just looked like a fool. Okay. So I guess in a way like the slap to did happen. It happened on the show and I did it to myself. So I'm, I'm, I'm sorry for making our show look bad. He's crying. I'm sorry. I'm not crying. I'm sorry for making our show look bad. I'm sorry for being unprepared. He's crying. I'm sorry for not doing my outline this week or playing the game or knowing who the guest is. I guess I'm just a big fuck up. And the Oscar goes to Nick Weicker for his podcast breakdown. Oh, wow. Hey, hey, my kids are watching this. Go to bed. That's good. We team up with the evil X's and expand the source material as we discuss Scott pilgrim EX and video game adaptations this week on Get Played. Welcome to Get Played. You're 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 Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger along with our third host, Mr. Games Maddapadaka. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the premiere of video game podcast where this week there's another person here. Here's the thing. When you have a guest who also hosts video game podcasts, it's a bit awkward to proclaim that we are the premiere of video game podcast in advance of introducing them. Well, sorry. What? I mean, I can't take the name off the building. I know. We can't like it's just what we are. But I'm just saying it's a lot. That you can do that. You can do that. You can just change the name of any building you want. If you're you can only add Trump. That's the one movie you can make. Yeah. Welcome back to the Trump. And premiere video game podcast. Why are all the numbers dropping? Wait, now they're going all the way up. Our numbers are up. We'll revise them next month. That's right. Head gum is not the best financial shape. It's now head Trump. Just get used to it. It's fine. Nothing's going to change. I am being asked to stop talking. No, but, you know, I think it's I think it's fun to have a little maybe a playful rivalry with the other video game shows. Sasuke and Naruto. The other rivals as well. Those two hockey players. I'm terrified of her guest beating us up. Have you looked at me? I'm literally a hobbit. Our guest host, the podcast post games and co-host, the besties. He's also a co-founder of Polygon. Chris Plant is here. Hi, Chris. Hi, Chris. So awesome to have you. I've been reading your work for years and it's really cool to finally meet you. Thank you. That's very kind. I think you are like the top game podcast. There's no way that's true. We've been around for like 15 years and I think you like Blue Pass just like three. So I think you did it. Yeah, I don't think so. But I think it's because of the jokes. I think it's like you're funny and like we have the Macaroy brothers. So like they're OK. That's funny. Wait, let's go. It's funny, guys. When does when do they tell jokes on this show? It's a great question. I've been waiting. I've been. Yeah. So people think what we do is jokes. The promise of jokes keeps people coming back. There's going to be a joke at some point. Yeah, I don't want to miss it. Right. I like you know, I mean, we've had we've had all the people from Triple Click on here. But that's like that's it. Other video game podcasters, you're on fucking notice. OK, we bring funny people. I've literally brought I brought jokes. Are you really? You did? Holy shit. He's got a piece of paper folded up. And I had to go back to my car to make sure I had him. He's got really stressed. He's got a set. I don't know how to be funny. That's not my job. My job is being the boring one on my show. You've done more work than certainly I've ever done by printing something out. Yeah, the boring one on this show. That job's taken away from me. It's all of us. I just have to address this real quick. And I know it's a thing that you're probably not that crazy about. But you were you were no doubt aware you have a name doppelganger who also does audio media shit. Yeah, we want to clarify that you are not the host of the Newsmax show. Chris Plant presents the right squad. What do you mean? I thought we're a head trauma. Brought me here for a reason. Honestly, it might be good for SEO. I don't know. Great. I'm a star of a Patreon skyrocket. And then we have the angriest letters of cancellation. It's like because I I thankfully have a by this thing. I thought your name was like a pretty unique name. Yeah, and it's spelled the exact same way. And the guy does a similar thing. Yeah, I mean, no weird. Nobody will rate radio. Yeah, radio, radio. Yeah, what I admire about. I'm not going to say admire. Let's pull that one back. Sure. What he does is he he gets a national job. He says something profoundly racist, like they even like that. Like, oh, no, no, no, bad. Then he gets like moved to like a really small local market. Weirdly, in one case, my hometown. Wow. Gets billboards. Wow. Oh, my God. Then it says the exact same racist things there. The audience skyrockets, gets elevated, psychorapies. Whoa. It is a whole strategy. That's insane. Wow. So the good news is people do send me emails and they're like, hey, Chris Plant, I just want to know if you can give me some advice. And I'm going to be like, yes, I think you should vote for it will not come later anymore. But like, whoever. One time, somebody asked me if I could put them in touch with the Beach Boys, you know, we had about like a 30, 30 long email chain where I kept saying you're not spelling it right. His name is Brian Will Song. You could have sung his .net and they kept trying. Yeah, it's, you know, the simple joys and knives. Nick, do you think that if there is another Nick Weigher that you're the bad one? No doubt. Yeah. We do have a friend, Heather Nick Wagner, who is a very talented comedy writer. Yeah, Wagner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he is, I sometimes get his email. He works on American Dad. He's one of the EPs over there. Yeah. Well, I've wondered, you know, since Waluigi and Wario start with the W, I think it's Wiger the Evil Eiger. Oh, oh, he interested. I'm the Evil Bob Eiger. What the fuck? Wow. It sucks. He's, come on, no, he's maybe, he's my favorite CEO. He's the Evil Wiger. It's hard to rank the CEOs, but yeah, he's up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all good. They're all good. I'm going to make the Star Wars movies good. I'm curious about just like, and this is, this is a very general question, but just to get a sense of your taste as a gamer, like what are some of your all timers? Sure. Spelunky is my kind of go-to. I'm just, I think it's like a perfectly designed little thing. Near Automata holds a very special place in my heart. I like games that are kind of about games. Kentucky Route Zero kind of made me fall in love with story games. I just thought I hated adventure games and it opened my whole brain up to all those things. But yeah, back in the day when I was a kid, it was always Earthbound. Earthbound was like an easy thing because it was like, I think it was a real, oh, you're going to grow up to have to be a games journalist. I'm so sorry. But it was a game about normal people and that just felt like broke my brain, my mind. And then especially growing up in the Midwest and it's a game we end up praying at the end, I was like, well, sure. Seems great. Heather had been advocating for us to play Mother 3, a game that Matt and I had never played and we visited it for the first time. Was it last year in the podcast two years ago? Maybe two years ago now. And I absolutely loved it. It was like such an incredible, a transcendent gaming experience and it's the kind of thing like, man, I wish I had experienced that back when it was, back 20 years ago when it was first fan translator or whatever. But what is your response to Mother 3? I love that it will never be released in the United States. Not that I don't think it's a great game. It's a fantastic game, as you already know. But I think it's good that there's just something that's always withheld from us as gamers. I think we've become a little too entitled. And to know that one of the greatest games ever just won't be given to us. And by Nintendo, our favorite daddy, that's, I think, nice. I sort of do, I don't think we deserve it actually. No. It's not for us. No. There's a bunch of games that have this sort of legendary, like, never translated status. Yeah. Like there's this one that's like, I think it's called, Boku no Natsu. Boku no Natsu yatsume? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, just you know that it exists. It's a cozy game that's out there that we don't have access to. I mean, we do through fan translation, but like you have to jump through hoops if you want to play this game. As an anime fan, there's a ton of like, you know, Sega Saturn anime exclusive games. Like even the huge Evangelion Sega game was never translated. And that feels like a no brainer at some point. But all of this stuff is like, still off in the distance, like kind of foggy. Do you know about Sega Ga Ga? Yes, I do. See, that's my dream game. And it just got translated. Oh yeah. And they're like, it was AI. And it was bad. I know the cursed. Oh man. It's so sad. I want a game right like one second to the ground. It's crazy to hear that something I did was bad. Yeah. Chris, I want to go back to your, your Alzheimer's list because you cited two games that I have never played near Automata and Kentucky Route Zero. Both games I've been curious about, but just have not budgeted time for. Like, like, like I to hear that they are all timers for you is really, that really has me like going like, oh, maybe I should, I should revisit these games or maybe not visit for them for the first time. But what about near Automata specifically? Because I think that that's a game that probably would appeal to everyone in this room. Yeah. Near is weirdly, I'm kind of surprised it's as popular as it is. Because I actually think it is kind of the tougher sell in that it is a game that you, it's kind of a traditional sci-fi action game. Or they're like, you know that Western philosophers exist. And you're like, yeah, that's pretty interesting. And then like the end of the world has already happened and there's robots. And then it ends. And you're like, great. And then people are like, yeah, but you have to play it five or four times. You know, like that sounds not fun. And then you do it another time and it actually isn't that fun, but you do it really fast. Yeah. And they're like, okay, now that you've played it twice, you have to play it one more. And then the next three are totally different games. Wow. And that's the weirdest structural thing is that it has that second run that is what you more or less think it will be with like slight variations that I think bumps a lot of people off the game. But then when it's all said and done, it ends up being this like really, I don't know. The reason I love this game is like not good for a funny podcast. I'll be really honest. My wife and I had a miscarriage while we were playing this game. And it ended up just being like this really bleak world that I was living in. And I was like, holy shit. I am miserable and it feels like my life is over. And here I am playing this game that is that thing reflected at me. But also to bring it back to the funny, there were robots that you could just like wreck the shit out of and turn into fists and then beat up more robots with it. And then afterwards, so like, by the way, those fist robots, those were babies who were actually were just hiding for protection. And you're like, no, damn, I was trying to have fun. So yeah, it's a great game. That's amazing. That's quite an endorsement. Yeah. A game that I at one point, I think honestly, I don't know if anybody else is like this. If you lend me something, there's a good chance. One, I'm never going to get to you that you lent me and to keep it forever and then feel an immense shame every time I see this friend. I think like six years ago, a friend and I traded games at one point to lend. I lent him Shadow of War, the second Lord of the Rings Mordor game, and he lent me near Atamata and I've never, I just was six years ago and I've never even put it into my PlayStation. I have it set up, downloaded or whatever. I started it and then I was like, oh, I'm going to really like this. So I should wait until I have time to play it. And that's like the trap that I, but I have started working through that log recently, which is unfortunately putting games that are currently in the present like zeitgeist at the back of the list. But it's one of those where I was like, oh, I'm going to like this. I just stop. I got to wait until I can focus on it. I get it. I have done a lot. Yeah. Sometimes you, and I found I've never regretted it when I've just jumped in on something because like Persona 5 Royal took me like an extra year to get to and I was just fine. Like, you know what? I'm just going to play it now because I want, and then I was just like, I was, it got its hooks in me so fast and I love that game. So like, it's, yeah, by exactly what you're talking about, I do that. I have that sort of overthinking how I'm going to use my gaming time all the time. And I imagine as a journalist, as someone who is like, you know, it's not just for us like a thing that we're doing and we're podcasting about, but like for you, it's like a job. It's like a full time occupation. How do you balance gaming just for fun? Yeah, you don't. I'm fun. It disappeared long. With a cigarette. What is the worst game you've had to play for work? And if you can't say it, we can bleep it after we all laugh about it. Definitely say it. That's the job. Okay, great. No. Developers not liking me is okay. The one that always comes to mind is this game Blood Drive, which was back when Activision released like 50 games a year. And it was like the very end of that run and they had, it was like you're in a car and it's kind of like twisted metal and you just like mindlessly kill zombies. The game is utterly forgettable, like all bad games, but the person who did the soundtrack, all the grunge ass butt rock, when you hit the pause screen was some of the most beautiful acoustic guitar I've ever heard. Like actually stunning. And that is like my perfect bad game because it's truly utter garbage. You can only imagine what hell the people went through to make it at that time in Activision. And somebody took that extra hour that night and was like, I'm going to make this and we're going to put it in. And it was so astonishingly beautiful that the director of the game was like, I can't deny it. It's going to be the pause music. And I think that's Blood Drive. Yeah, that's probably it. I have no memory of this game. I did bring up the box art, which is such like a PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 era, like Edge Lore time capsule. Yeah, it's really M. Yeah. Oh shit. I gotta play this thing. It unfortunately sounds like it would be extremely my shit if it was good. Oh yeah. Everything about it. Because imagine it had all that same stuff in it, but it was good instead. You're kind of like, this kind of fucking rocks actually. Yeah, that's how they got it made. Oh yeah, this is going to be good actually. We're going to make it good. It's like the title Burnout Revenge shouldn't be a great game. And unfortunately it is incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, by the way, the reason I'm looking forward to Star Wars Racing Game is because it's burnout people. Yeah, that looks like it's going to be fucking awesome. Yeah. So where do you, like if we're talking even more generally in terms of what kinds of games you glom onto, like I really love, I'd really have story based games. I really love like, you know, turn based games. Those are just platformers. That's what I gravitate towards. Like are there any genres in particular that you're always going to be, tend to be fond of? Yeah. I mean you asked earlier, like how do I make it all work? And the answer is partly like there are genres that just get cut entirely. Right. So like MMOs are out. RPG games are out. Most sports games and recurring games, they're out. And then from there, like RPGs probably should be, but every now and then like you fall in love with one of those. And that's a genre that I've like really come to enjoy. Weirdly my entire preference in video games, I'm curious if this happened for y'all, has like changed a lot as I've gotten to like middle age. For sure. When I came out of college, I was very much a formless. I was like, I went to like NYU for like film stuff. So I was like, oh, well film is where the story is and games are where like design mechanics are like it's art form and any story is a waste. Yada, yada, yada. And more recently I'm like, oh, it's a 10 hour Japanese visual novel. Like, yeah, that's my life. That's all I want. And then there's like design going on. Like no, thank you. I'd rather just keep clicking yes. But yeah, that's where I've shifted a lot is more 10 hour story games and then like some really grimy action games. I will definitely say like as I have aged and my testosterone levels have plummeted, I have gotten less into like combat games. Like I used to want like I want games to be violent. I want games to have, you know, be fighting and killing things or whatever. And now I'm just like, you know, I can be a cricket walking around a meadow. You know, it's just like I'm fine with stuff that's just kind of gentle. And like you were saying, a visual novel, I love a good visual novel. Yeah, your testosterone plummeted is alarming to hear because I know that you tested on the highest possible end. So it was higher than that. Okay. What the hell? I was trying to not talk about the fact of my max level testosterone test. I was just going to talk more generally about being an aging man. I do. I think, you know, I, my taste has also changed quite a bit because like even just with recently with games like Alan Wake 2, a game that like I wouldn't necessarily like have glommed on to when I was a kid. Cause I liked Resident Evil 4. I would say I was a Resident Evil 4 fan, not like a horror like genre game fan, but then like something like Alan Wake 2 comes along. I get super into that. And now I'm playing this new Resident Evil, which I'll talk about in a second. Like I'm super into this type of like thing now. Even like playing through Final Fantasy 7 in the last couple of years, did that and Chrono Trigger I think in the same year and was just like, oh, this, that's a whole genre of game that like I didn't really pay much attention to when I was a kid outside of like Kingdom Hearts or something like that. So like finding those types of games now has been very satisfying to me. Yeah. I think, and I don't know if it's this podcast. I don't know what happened. But I used to feel like I had a much wider interest in games. I used to, you know, like I'll often cite out of this world as like one of my favorite games of all time. But the truth is that if you put that game in front of me now, I'd be like, fuck this. My patience for any kind of gaminess has dwindled so much that now I really just want 30 seconds to combat and I don't want anything else. And that wasn't the way that I was when I was younger. And now like, I don't know if you could blame the internet and short attention spans. I don't know if you could blame that I have less time to game. Therefore I want to maximum game. But like, you know, we'll talk about probably when we talk about what we're playing, I'll talk about Resident Evil and how frustrating that's been for me and how much I loved like how when everyone was like celebrating this new one, I was like, oh, here we fucking go. And then like, I don't know, two hours into it, I'm like, nope, I do not have the time for this. I can't wait to really get to this conversation because there's a thing. I was going to say very quickly, I was going to recommend games. I was like, I want to kind of a good guess and like and bring a game for each of you. And you when I listen to show have some of my favorite like taste in video games because it's so broad and so historical. And I'm kind of surprised to hear this because the thing that I wanted to bring for you is perfect tide station to station. All right, I'll write it down. Do you know about this game? No, I'll write it down. What if I told you they took being a 20 something living in New York on no money in the middle of like the grungy early 2000s and condensed it into like a seven hour video game. I mean, where you are trying to go to college for writing and you are dating absolutely atrocious people and you're seeing maybe Wilco at a crappy bar. It's it's deeply unsettling to watch a game that's literally in my experience, my life to a T. At one point in the game, they sneak up onto what would become the high line back when it was just like a drug den, which was the first thing I did when I got to New York. I'm like, why is it in the video game? Well, I did just get a steam deck again this week. So I'll throw it on there and give it a give it a try. I won't turn down a wreck. One thing I will ask on Heather's behalf, does this game have a gun and or a sword? It does not have a gun and or a sword, but it does have very complicated relationships between Jewish young woman, mother and grandmother, who absolutely beat the shit out of each other emotionally. So I could do this because because Heather, like, you know, Disco Elysium, one of your all time favorite games, zero combat, zero combat. And so I come conversation as combat. Right. But I could. But I'm just saying, like you, like you are someone with an open mind as a gamer, despite you liking games where you get to kill a lot of things, where if there's a chance you there's a chance this completely you completely bounce off of this. There's a chance you this really connects with. Well, I mean, as again, these are all things I want to talk about when we're talking about what we're playing. But like, I feel like I have become frustrated by what I see as the barricades to the game. And often like in uncharted, when you have to like solve the puzzle in order to access the next area, it's like, I don't find the puzzle part of a gaming experience. I feel like it's tedium and Disco Elysium, there aren't puzzles that aren't incorporated into the actual gameplay itself. Like solving the puzzle of the crime is the game. It's not the thing that you have to do in order to play the game. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes so much sense. And also I brought the wrong I mix up my recommendations. I'm realizing because the thing I brought for you is the best Disco Elysium game since Disco Elysium. Wow. I would say in my preference, I prefer it. Wow. What is it? Esoteric ebb. OK, wait. Do you know about this? Tell me about Esoteric ebb. OK, so Esoteric ebb is Disco Elysium, but in a world where you don't want to commit suffocou, it's like just like a nice, cozy space. It looks like D&D meets kind of cartoonish comic book stuff. Yeah, I got I got the I get some the steam page up right now. I do really like this art style. It's very appealing. Yeah, the way that the developers framed it is like Disco Elysium is a really serious topic game that ends up being very funny. And this is a very like funny presenting game that ends up being quite serious. And is that the topics and you definitely feel that like you wake up, you're a no matter what you are a cleric and you're a really shitty cleric and you wake up seemingly having died and in a mortuary and or a morgue and the attendant is like, what's going on? You talk, you talk, you do the thing where you're talking for like 45 minutes. And at a certain point, you realize you've been talking to them about milk for like five minutes. You're like, wait, no, what have I done? And then you also realize every time you say something, it takes a minute off the clock and you've accidentally stepped into the game's trap of burning a considerable amount of time. Wow. In the top. But like Disco Elysium, you have effectively voices in your head that are represented by your stats. So you are constantly being validated by the decision that you made up front with whatever you picked. So if you picked really low strength, for example, you basically have this like bitter little fascist in your head. But if you really invest in strength, it's kind of like a patriarchal, like seemingly good advice person. And that's for each of the like five or six different stats. Wow. This came out in March of this year. So this is like a brand new game. Like, did you play it like right away? And yeah, I played it a little bit before. I can't remember like how it all came together. But because of post games, I'm always looking for this door, like especially a person who is really interesting. And in this case, this person graduated from college in Sweden, has a master's in player agency. Very, very sweet. Wow. And was like, oh, now what am I going to do with it? There's no jobs. Is like, I should make I should turn tabletop D&D into a video game. And then basically can't figure out how to do it. And this is before Disco Elysium has even come out. Disco Elysium comes out and he's like, oh, this is it. Like this is the key. I need to break this entire thing down and then rebuild it back up. And like, oh, that's that's my stuff. I need to like latch on to that and figure out that person's story. Wow. That's awesome. I am 100 percent going to going to wish this and play it. Yeah. I've heard I yell too much in the ads. I've heard that people get upset because when it's advertisement time, they have to turn down the volume in their car or they get upset. And I just want you to know that I don't always have to yell to sell you something. Like, for example, it's officially springtime. You know what that means? It's time to spring clean. It's getting warmer and it's time to rethink what's in my closet. I like my style and I'm trying to keep fewer things, but I still want an upgrade on the pieces I have now. That's why I keep coming back to quits. The fits are thoughtful. The price actually makes sense. Quints makes high quality, everyday essentials using premium materials like 100 percent European linen and their insanely soft flow knit active wear fabric. 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See website for more details. That's factormeals.com slash get played 50 off. Get shredded while you're at it. So you have two podcasts. You have the besties with the rest of those guys and post games, which is just you. And that's more of like a more of a journalistic like style podcast. And I guess I guess as you as somebody you have two podcasts, I'm trying to just think about like how do you how do you do both? And like, what do you find challenging about doing the one that you do on your own? I realize we're getting away from jokes. So please do a joke. Um, what did Mario say when he broke up with Peach? Well, it's it's not you. It's a me Mario. That's actually it's well crafted. Really good. That one is from dadlife.com. Dadlife.com. I think it's actually Daddy Life. They're doing the work over there. I just wanted to be sure that I credit it. I was familiar with that. I hate to steal a Joe Life. Yeah, yeah. I mean, besties have been doing it for 14, 15 years or whatever. That's it's a bold idea for grown white man review a video game each week. It's revolutionary. I will say what is pretty, pretty incredible about it. It's usually under an hour, which which does differentiate us in this space. And then and then post games being it's basically like what you would get if you had an MPR show or if the New York Times or any of these places actually cared to invest in video game. And I understand very much why they don't. That's not me like throwing a shade at them. But it's great because having run a publication like Polygon. I have 10 years ago, even people would read a long feature and you could justify doing it. People do not read much anymore. It's just a hard reality. And I really wish that wasn't true. But it is people do listen to these things. People love listening to things. You can do it while you're driving or you are doing your chores or you can do whatever. And that has allowed me to tell stories that I know people will love, but they just won't be able to make time for. So like even before all of the controversy going around with Steam censoring not safe work games, I already done an hour long episode on the history of not safe for not safe for work games of Eroge in Japan, which is like early porn games and like how those are made and why those are made and why they're an art form. And weirdly, you would think porn games like surely that'll do gangbusters. No, like it's still going to have a cap that you just don't see in audio. And it's great. Yeah. I hear the development time on the on Eroge is really long because it's so hard to stop jerking off while you. Make it hard. I'm trying to finish this game, but I can't stop doing it. All right, all right, all right. OK, I'm going to turn it on again. I'll be able to make some progress. I need another keyboard. Your episode that you did with Kesha McDonald about her book, which I am. I just got and I can't remember the name of the title of the book. Super Nintendo. It's called Super Nintendo. I thought there was a subtitle, maybe, but there is. There is. But it's Super Nintendo. It's all about the various different Nintendo properties. I got the book because I heard the episode of your show and was very interested in reading the rest of the book. And I thought it was just a good good. It was a good selling point for the book. So it was like an excellent, excellent interview. Thank you. I appreciate that. Chris, you had you had recommendations for Heather and myself. Did you have a recommendation for Matt? Hearts three. Yeah. So it's actually called Kaidu Princess 2. That's actually a game. Don't Google. I was going to say already in my steam lighter. The link is purple on this. No, it was honestly you were the tougher one. And one of the things that I wanted to bring up with you was the lack of recent evil in your life. I was so happy to hear last week or whenever this airs that you were getting into the new resident evil. And I actually messaged you even before we did the show. I was like, I told you about everything. And you're like, please don't. I haven't played it. I was like, oh, yeah, how this works. Yeah. But I really want you to go back and play, especially seven and eight. OK. And specifically eight. The idea, I do know the basic premise of the villains and eight. I know about Big Lady and that came across my desk and I know a lot about that. Yeah. But that's that's about it. Big Sexy Lady was so important to all of us that it did make us overlook the fact that it's a whole bunch of Eastern European fairy tales. Interesting. Pinocchio, it's Frankenstein. It's like the little mermaid. Yeah. Get adapted into resident evil monsters. And that is like the basis of Resident Evil 8. Why is this the first time I'm hearing about this? Because people don't talk about. Wow. You see Big Lady and you just kind of go like, hubba. They go, hubba. That's your experience. And I know. Yeah, she's Dracula. Yeah. There we go. I'm more on. No, no, no, no. But I have an update about this, actually. We'll get and we'll get into it when we get into the other part of the show. The next segment of the next segment. Which normally follows like a light food conversation. So I just wanted to say I'm not a McDonald's eater. And yet this week I was traveling and I had a plain cheeseburger, basic single cheeseburger from the Denver Airport McDonald's. And before you think before I'm just going to start right there, before anybody thinks otherwise, just because it was at the airport doesn't mean that the burger was shaped like a plane. It was plain in that it wasn't fancy or crazy. Different word. Rachelle, can we edit that out? Put it in twice. Put it in twice. It's just a wrap. Over and over again. People are like, I'm uncomfortable. Alarmingly on the next to the giant, you know, digital screens that give you your options, I believe it's called a menu. Oh, yeah. A plain menu. There's a plane. It's plain shaped. I'm on a plane. I am the plane. There's like a little sign that says this McDonald's location, unfortunately, does not offer fresh beef, but still has the same same sourced beef as everywhere else. So I think that's because they have to freeze the beef to bring it in. And some McDonald's burgers are not frozen. Yeah, where's beef? Like the quarter pounders is supposed to be fresh. Right. So so they don't they can't offer the quarter pounder because it's a fresh burger anyway. I had a plain cheeseburger from the McDonald's at the Denver Airport. And guys, I've had McDonald's over the last 15 years, just a few times. And this cheeseburger was the best McDonald's cheeseburger I have had in almost in more than a decade, probably more than almost 20 years. Wow. I can't understand what happened. I talked to my wife about it and I was like, if must be because they have to go through so many because it's so much foot traffic, it's constantly turning them out. So they have an enormous like like resource for like, you have to make fresh burgers constantly. But not fresh. So fresh. I mean, frozen. Sure. But the every part of it was like, this is the first time they've ever made the burger. And it was incredible. When you're saying plain, you do like no condiments. No, I'm saying like how it comes. It's OK. Unmodified, unmodified, basic McDonald's cheeseburger. So you got the ketchup and the mustard on there. You got the pickles. You got the raw. The standard standard boy. Just not shaped like a plane. Not shaped like a plane. Well, I did crash it on my mouth twice. Two bites. The burger was so good, it took me two bites. I had, I would add McDonald's three times the past week. But one of those experiences was so my life is very different than Heather's. One of my experiences was getting the big arch, which I don't know if anyone's tried the big arch yet. Controversial. Yeah, I mean, I think it's got too much going on. So it's got like three slices of white cheddar cheese, right? It's got onions two ways. It's got a crispy onion and it's got a raw onion. It's got sesame seeds and poppy seeds on top of it on the on the bun. Why are we doing the show? We should be eating McDonald's. Heather, Matt and I have pushed for ordering McDonald's for dinners multiple times and you always veto it. Well, someone's always got to follow us. A fucking deep dish pizza. What? I'm fine with ordering McDonald's if it's from the Denver Amur. OK, fine. We got we got to go to perfect. Anyway, my my my my issue with the big arch is I think it's well made. The patties are too substantial. So like like that's the issue. You can taste the low quality beef when there's just you're getting such a mouthful of it. And it's just like too many commas. It's just unka pachka. They should have simplified it a little bit. But I overall liked it. I just would never order it over one of the regular items. But what I was going to say, my main point here is Airport McDonald's is one of those ones where a lot of the airport versions of chains are inferior. Airport McDonald's is always like basically on par with regular McDonald's. I feel like the same way about chilies. I feel the same way about Duncan. A lot of other chains like you go to like a C.B.K. It's like this is a pale limitation of a California pizza kitchen. Right, right, right. Agreed. Airport P.F. Chang same thing did not have a great experience. Do you know why I went to McDonald's? This because I was I my estimate was it was the least dangerous food. And I was like what I want is a salad, but I'm not going to risk a fucking airport salad. You know what I want is like a deli sandwich. I'm not going to risk mayonnaise that may have been sitting out in a container all day long. Bread. So I went with McDonald's because I was like, I know at the minimum that this is so processed, it's probably safe. Did you also think they have the most to lose? You know, I'm sure. Yeah, like that. Like the airport, you go after them and they're like, good luck. You want to sue the government? Get in line. Right, right, right. There's like an E.C.O.L.A. or Listeria outbreak at a McDonald's. Yeah, disastrous for the brand. Yeah, yeah. Jack of the box still think about it every time I grab the past one. Almost killed him. Yeah. Anyway, that's my food. My light because we always have light food conversation up top. A little bit of light food conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Matt, you didn't have the big art yet. I haven't had the big arts yet. I got to get over there. I've been really I haven't had McDonald's probably in like two months. It's worth trying. Are you are you fast food guy at all, Chris? I am. But the CEO video, it put me off. Really? It did. It put me off. Oh, man, I have come full 180 on the CEO video. It's to be clear, I don't think that he looked like he didn't enjoy it. It just made me think that I will look like that when I eat it. And therefore, I don't want to eat it. Well, as the as the burger bite thing kept going, I was like, what's make it what's how this is reframing the initial McDonald's video is it is the only genuine video. All of the rest of them were like, I'm going to have a huge fucking bite. Or, oh, man, I'm at Arby's and we got our own burger. And you kept like the farther they pushed, the more it felt like I was looking at the my space of the burger videos. Compared to like the French, sir. Yeah, the French, sir. The video, instead of instead of like all of the bells and whistles of all the like machismo of how how big a fucking bite them. Like you go back and go like this guy saying we love this product. Like he's not a natural like salesman. Yeah. But he was being genuine about what he was experiencing with his burger. It was fine. It was fine. Yeah. What are some of your fast food favorites? The truth is it probably came closest to selling me on McDonald's. Really? Which is part of why when I looked at the food court at Denver, I was like, well, there was that video of that guy. Yeah. Yeah. And as your catchphrase in pursuit of fine. Yeah. Right. Especially at an airport. Yeah, that is true. What are some of your fast food favorites? Chains, menu items. Fast food favorites. Um, I really love P. Terries. OK. In Austin. Yeah. A lot of people tell you that what a burger is good, which is not. It's just it's absolutely atrocious. My wife would fight you on this one. It is. I don't understand it because like you actually many people order things from Amazon, right? So you have that cardboard and you could just eat it. Wow. It's right there. And you can put bad ketchup on it too. There is so many options. I got to defend my wife's honor here. I'd never had what a burger. Yeah. We went to Texas. First time she's like we landed on the plane, got in our rental car, went straight to what a burger. She's like, you have to have it. That's you drove past three P. Terries and they were like, we have great food. And you're like, no, no, I'm in pursuit of fine. And they were like, we can't do that for you. Mary's defense too. I will say it wouldn't shock me if you guys walked into Water Burger. Mary orders the burgers and they're like, we have to do the best we've ever done. It's Mary. Fair. I have had I'm from SoCal, but I have had Water Burger in Texas and I liked it. But it did not knock my socks off. But I'm also coming to it from the perspective of I did not grow up with this. I did not have nostalgia for this in the same way that I understand when someone comes out here and has in out burger and is underwhelmed. It's like, well, yeah, this thing's been hyped to hell and you have no connection to it. I just want to make sure that nobody wants to ever listen to my podcast after they listen to this one. P. Terries is basically what if you made it in and out good? Wow. Whoa. I like this. I love this. I like look. I don't agree. I completely disagree. In fact, I'm furious, but I think it's a great take. Have you had P. Terries? I've been with P. Terries, no. See, that's the problem. Yeah. See, you've been living in this kind of like nothingness. Well, I will say that I will see because next time I'm in Texas, I do want to try P. Terries. I will go in with an open mind, but you also you have just jacked up my expectations, where now I will be comparing this to every burger I got for a good report card over my entire childhood. And so that's like, you know, it gets a little tricky. Yeah, that it's hard to compare with that Nistel. Right. But what I'm going to suggest is that when you do go, make sure you get the root beer milkshake. Yeah, that sounds good. 100%. I'm on board. That sounds awesome. And then that's going to that's going to immediately jack. I already I just I just heard that that's a that had never occurred to me. This is a menu item I never could have ever considered. I think in and out fucking sucks now. I almost just grabbed my phone and texted former head gun producer, Casey Donahue, because I know he loves root beer so much. Like, hey, man, you had this root beer during the episode. I'll tell him that I see him at work. Boy, I wish I knew what he was saying, but I don't speak animal crossing. Why do most of us want to learn a new language? It's probably not about memorizing grammar tables or topping a leaderboard. It's because we want to speak it out in the real world with real owls, a real little sheep and the real little ducks that come to our town. Babel gets you there fast. 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I'm happy with only being able to watch content in my own territory. Uh, let me just tell you something real quick. It does more than that. It's doing more than that actually. And you're making a big mistake by not having one. Because guess what? Did you know you could use it to get a better deal on a flight? Maybe if you change the location, these things, these things we're paying for. They work algorithmically and you can get around that algorithm by using a VPN to your advantage. So why not use Nord VPN? If there are TV shows, films, anime that aren't available in your region, you could switch your virtual location to a country where it is available. And that's your right when you use a VPN and it should be the law of the land. You should have need one, but here we are. Thanks. Thanks a lot. You know who? And if you're traveling abroad, you can access your streaming services back home. And we all get a little homesick when we're out of the country. 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Now that's a value. Premium cybersecurity for the price of a cup of coffee per month. To get the best discount off your Nord VPN plan, go to NordVPN.com slash get played. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description. Go save yourself some money. I will have one more question for you, Chris, and for the panel. That question that we ask every week is about video games you've been spending some time with. That question is, what are you playing? What are you playing? Hates me the resident you have mentioned. And I'm here to ask my friends and our guests. Chris, what have you been playing? What? You all right? I'm just I'm just listening. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm celebrating a new. I don't know if you guys heard they fired the other merchant from Resident Evil. What do you mean? There's no merchant in the new one. No, they're actually this is a good point. There isn't. It's computer. It's just a fucking computer. They realized that nobody could stop the original. That's right. And so they fired that guy. Yeah. And I'm I hope he makes it under the show, because I'm not going to let him in the door. I think oh, oh, well, wouldn't it be so funny? Or another merchant who showed up? Well, there was another person that showed up and then it replaced you. What if it happened again? Would you do that to me? I wouldn't do it to you in a million years. But we would be funny to consider. We would never do that to you. No, we would never do that to you, merchant. I I know what to do. It's getting it. It's on site. I would only have one podcast. I don't need a comedy. Bang Bang. You need to have multiple. I got to have more than one switch of income. Yeah. Yeah. I will say it's kind of a microcosm of the modern economy, right? The labor force. It's the new mechanization of industry. Yes. The labor force is being replaced by by computers. Yeah. Yeah. Everything's computer. Everything's computer. You got to be fucking cocoa robots. Being a cocoa robot. You've seen them. Those little guys, those little robots, those little delivery robots. I saw you writing one. Yeah. Oh, the little guys. Yeah, you sort of had like a sort of like. Wait, that's a robot. I thought that was a car. You thought it was a car? You just hopped on top. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a small car, but I thought, you know, you see, see space in that big city. I did see a kid. I saw some kids. There's some rough kids in my neighborhood. These little these little boys that like ride their bikes in the street when they shouldn't stuff. And they scare me because they seem really cool. Yeah. I saw one of them jump and do like not a flip, but like a little like like 360 turn midair while they jumped off of it and like tried to impress their friend. I locked eyes with him when I was in my car and I gave him the horn. And his buddy was like, yeah. He jumped off a cocoa. He jumped out. He jumped off a cocoa. That's pretty good. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Nice little act of sibil. This is immediate. That's right. Yeah. It's fun. You got to think that, you know, a cool older person thought he was cool. OK, everybody wins. I guess I do my job. Nick Weicker, what are you playing? Well, merchant, thank you so much for asking and for teaming me up. I've been playing in early access, Slay the Spire 2. What a fucking video game. It immediately broke my mugenics addiction. We're playing so much mugenics, but then it was just like, this is a different rogue light that I find aesthetically so much less abrasive. It doesn't have the early odds, new grounds, comedy, which is fine, but just not for me. And it's a direct sequel to a game, Slay the Spire 1, that I poured many, many hours into, so many hours that I had to remove it for my devices because it was just too addictive. Absolutely love it. If you're not familiar with Slay the Spire, the game playing progression is it's a deck builder. You start with a very simple deck that you add cards to as you dispatch enemies in a bunch of turn based combats. You also have like a branching map where you choose where you're going to go in terms of like what like you're going to fight monsters, you're going to fight elites, you are going to go to shops, you're going to go to random events. And I will say, speaking of merchants, there is a random event that tricked me the first time there's a fake merchant who sometimes you'll get to it. And he's like selling a bunch of fake shit. And I was like, oh, here we go. And I spent a bunch of money on it. And then it's just like I had no gold. And I was like, all these useless relics. That's that's really fun that that exists. That's awesome. Yeah. One nice bit of joy in this game, even though it fucked this run. There's a couple of new classes. There is the Regent who sits in a walking chair, which I love. I just I like it. It's one of those things where it's like this. There's there's both like medieval flair, but then also like this this weird like kind of futurism to it. It's like these these these disparate elements coexisting. It reminds me of of the old Might and Magic franchise, how they'd have like science fiction science fiction and fantasy kind of like just coexist. And he has a separate additional manapool to enable the possibilities have not figured out how to play the Regent really at all, but it's cool. And then the Necro binder is a lich with a skeletal hand familiar. And she has a tank companion named Nosti. That's right. Skeletons can be girls, too. I actually did have a moment. I was like, man, I didn't think about that. I didn't even assume this was going to be a female character. But yeah, skeletons can be girls. You know, I'm going to take this in. Yeah. And really do some some thought have some have some work to do because I just I just never would have thought that. And that's my bad. Yeah, this bias is actually at the heart of one of the greatest archaeological overthrows in Viking history. Wait, explain. Well, there was a warrior skeleton that was unearthed, I think, maybe 30, 50 years ago. I think it was at Berka, but I'm not sure. I please don't. I'm not. This isn't my job, so I don't know exactly where it was dug up. But for many years, it was cited as like the quintessential Viking warrior grave. It was buried with multiple weapons, like swords, bows and arrows, a dead horse, the right the saddle for the horse, etc. And it wasn't until the last decade that they did DNA sequencing on it and realized it was a woman. Wow. And at no point in all of the like putting forth this this burial as like the quintessential Viking warrior grave had it ever been considered that it might be a woman. And the moment that they found out it was a woman, they were like, Oh, it must have been ceremonial. It has to have been ceremonial. Like she must have been buried with her husband's swords or something. But all of the textbooks up until the last decade have been about this guy who's buried with all his weapons. And now it is. Why was this woman buried with all these weapons? They wrote books about a guy they didn't even know who the fuck it was. Shut up. Anyway, that's fascinating. Yeah, wow. The Viking was a woman. Skeletons can be girls. Skeletons can be girls. So Ostie is like a is like kind of a skeletal hand, a giant skeletal hand that's like a tank and that you can some of your cards can buff. If it gets killed, it responds and it kind of functions as a meat shield. I guess more of a bone shield for your character. But it's a fun element. And then also you've got a doom, which is as opposed to poison, which the, you know, some of the other classes have. It's doom is like is a is a thing that affects not at the start of the turn as poison does, but it procs at the end of a turn. So it's like, you know, if a character is poisoned and they're going to deal like like eight damage, you can ignore them because you know they're going to die before they're able to do that. But if they have that much doom, it's like a thing you have to count for what they're going to do in that that turn. I will say that the definitely feels like enemies hit harder and so do your own attacks. It feels like everything's just been buffed a little bit. And I've seen the difficulty spike in the community from one to two. So the Spire wanted to compare to Hollow Knight, the silk song, which I can't speak on, but it does make sense where I think if you were completely new player, you'd be kind of baffled by everything that was in here. And if you're someone who are as experienced as I am, you're still like, sort of like, oh, wow, I'm kind of getting my ass kicked at times. Like where you really feel that as some of the elites are just unrelenting in terms of dealing damage, some of these encounters that are a little bit higher stakes and then healing is at such a premium for every class, except for the ironclad who's like the night guy who is the the the first character you unlock and or the character you start with rather. And this things like this, this there's this, the there's an act to boss that you can come up who's a sandworm is a really cool mechanic where he'll he's sucking you into a sandpit and he'll instant kill you if you get sucked into it. So if to play special cards to buy more time, but they cost you every increasing amounts of mana and so let you do less and less on your own turn. All these these sort of things to make some of these encounters feel a little distinct and unique. I am just having a blast with it. And I it honestly, it's ruining my life. I need to get this game off of my computer. You just got it. You're like, I have to get this thing out of here. I can't do it. It's it's it's like when Bellacho like I was like, I'd heard about Bellacho. And I said this a number of times in the podcast, but I group texted everyone like, Hey, you heard a Bellacho. I'm installing it. And then my next text of the group was I played seven hours of Bellacho. Same day. It's the same sort of thing. I like just so much of my weekend was spent playing Slay the Spire too. When you say it's ruining your life, though, Nick, didn't you enjoy those hours? Yeah. So what else is there, man? I don't know. I'm certainly doing something. But you're but like happiness and pleasure are so infrequent that if you find something that gives you happiness and pleasure, why would that be wasting your life? Yeah, I guess productivity is an illusion. So, you know, might as well enjoy the hours that we have. I do I do love the game. I think it's it's it's such a cool design. And I love that the one thing they've added to they've added this one beyond just like kind of amplifying everything is they've added more like fun and crazy experimentation and ways to like break the game. I'm not sure how much of this will be retained after early access. But for instance, there's a way to clone cards. And so that you can they can have happened. And that can lead to instead of having like a normal like 25 to 35 card deck, you have like a thousand card deck, which is just like, oh, this this feels like kind of me, but it's like cool that you can do something like this in this game. And the same sort of way that me, Genix has those sort of sort of elements. So I'm going to keep playing in early access. I'm really excited to play it in its final state. But I don't know if I can get get myself away from this game right now. I just I just really, really adore it. Well, to your point about like having fun. Yeah. Have you all heard about the score? Do you know about this book? Oh, yeah. No, I know this. I have the score. It was my what are you playing a few weeks ago? So you've read it. Yeah. Yeah. Then you know, you don't need more metrics. You don't need more like, it's true. You don't need the grind. Just enjoy the feel of the game. I also think that if you were at a museum in Florence, right, you said to somebody, oh, man, I spent seven hours at this museum in Florence this weekend. It was so amazing. I went to Italy that everyone would be like, oh, they touch a chin. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. But the moment. But but it's because we created a hierarchy of art and of what acceptable entertainment is. And video games is still at the bottom of that fucking list. And I say, let's elevate it. Play a video game all weekend long. You know what I have in my head sometimes is is still that there's some sort of hierarchy of things that you should be doing. Like it's like some things are virtuous and other things are sinful. And I still like, I guess probably from childhood, have baked into me that playing video games is slothful. I think it's also the thing of like sometimes a game can start to play you. Right. Like and that's like the problem is I get it with the lot. There comes a point where like, wait a minute, like am I even playing? Like what's what's going on here? But it doesn't sound like that's what's happening. No, I mean, I'm loving I'm loving experimenting. I'm loving watching, you know, high level streamers and seeing how they're like, like, like messing around with the new elements in the game and trying things. I think it's all really fun. The games that are really fun phase right now, we're a ton of people are playing it. And and I haven't trained a multiplayer, but that's a new thing they've added as well. I will say that book, which I believe the other is C.T. Wynn, I think is the tune. Yeah. Yeah. And it got me to get rid of my Apple Watch. I've become an analog watch guy because I was just like, I don't need all these fucking metrics, you know. Can I have your extra Apple Watch? Yeah, I mean, it's like five of them. I don't know. The time is in Paris. But yeah, as far as as far as video games, I mean, I still find myself chasing achievements and stuff. So it's, you know, it's we'll see. Anyway, that's what I've been playing. Chris, what are you been playing? What have I been playing? I'll tell you about Titanium Court because it just won the IGF last night. And it is an absolutely fantastic game by AP Thompson, along with other people who helped contribute to it. But AP is the first developer to win the IGF grand prize two years in a row. Co won it last year for Consume Me, which did any of you play Consume Me? No, but I remember hearing about this. Great game. The funniest, silliest, Wario Ware asked video game you will ever play about eating disorders. Great. But great. But this game, Titanium Court, you can actually play a demo of it right now. And imagine if somebody took the kind of like a match three game and they're like, what if I could make this into high art? And that's not to say like a match three game isn't like art in itself. But like, yeah, I'm immediately thinking of the Honey Pop franchise. Sorry. Go on. By the way, Kaiju Princess 2 does remain on recommendation. It's it's this game where you are transported into a kind of fairy tale world that is inspired by lots of kind of Disney, early 50s, 60s type of stuff. And every night you have to go to war. And when you go to war, you are doing a match three where there is water and there are mountains and there are different enemy faces. And you set the playing field by playing a match three. And once you've used up all of your turns, suddenly it's kind of like a strategy game where you have to decide with the resources you collected during that phase, what type of units do you want to build to now guard your castle and what comes next? So you might create a whole bunch of barriers or you might get a whole bunch of archers or you'll just counter like whatever is on the map. And then you make your way from station to station and then you get looped back to the castle and you further solve another mystery. What's like really special about it, though, is like it's hard to capture the magic because on a moment to moment level, I would compare it to like David Byrne or they might be giants. These types of artists in other fields who are really, really, really intelligent, but very silly and are very interested in finding a profound beauty in the mundane. I was just playing it this morning and at a certain point I could fight a boss and I elected simply not to. I've been in all my progress to watch a very distorted video of the developer of the game playing guitar to me, singing about two very bitter ballerinas who are going to become friends. And I just like the game just literally stops. And then that's it. All of that progress from what I can tell is gone. Like that was my choice. I elected just not to fight the boss and now I'm going to have to do it all over again. Wow. It's unbelievable. That sounds awesome. I will definitely keep my eye on that. You were just and this is a different type of game, but what you're talking about like the playfulness and kind of breaking the form of it was reminding me of not sure we got a chance to play last year Strange Jigsaws. I really, really enjoyed that game, really respond to that game. Yeah, yeah. That's anything like that where it's I don't know, playing with forms that are often, I think, wrongly assumed as casual or like feminine is weirdly, I think, going to be the future of where video games can go because we've so milked the first person shooter and all these other genres for all their worth that now that I think more developers are looking elsewhere and saying, hey, there's these amazing things that everybody can play. Anybody can play match three and there's so much that we can do with them. We can tell so many interesting stories. I don't know. It makes me very excited when I think about that like future of games. That's awesome. Hell, yeah. Matt, what are you playing? I'm playing a couple of things. Didn't get to talk about last week because we recorded a little earlier. Yep. Then we typically do. Yep. So I hadn't had a chance to start yet, but I'm playing Pokopia. I know you're playing it as well, Heather. Also playing Pokopia. It's unbelievable. I texted the group chain low key masterpiece. It's because also because I don't like games like this really. Me neither. Like I don't like I liked Animal Crossing out of necessity because we were all playing it because there was a global pandemic. I like had not played one before and that's the only one I've ever played. I've bounced off of like Stardew and things like that. I could never really get into Minecraft. Never played a Dragon Quest Builders before. So the one thing that was getting me in here is that I love Pokemon. And it just does all those other things perfectly also. So like it's like it's very palatable and it's extremely cute and also like very funny because like they're all just like they all talk and they all talk to each other like you'll find you'll make different little habitats and you'll spawn new Pokemon and they'll talk to each other and they'll be like, yo. It's mad human out here. I'm like, that's great. This is this rocks. This is so funny and so great. And then you can take pictures of them doing cute things. But it's also you're in this world that has. Has fallen to some sort of cataclysmic event. Not just any world. You're in the Kanto region. Yes. Which has an inverted pole. So if you look at the map from far away, it's the Kanto map upside down. Yeah. So there's also deep Pokemon lore being dished in this game. Yes. Yeah. And it's it's extremely satisfying. I'm already stressed out by the way people are playing the game and making it beautiful and and I just like I'm not I don't play like this. Don't look at that stuff. I can't do it. It's so hard. Some asshole made a functioning computer inside of Pocopia. Yeah. I just like I thank you, but no, I can't do that. I'm just going to like I I've taken to cleaning up as best as I can. You know, and like still sort of keeping structures that are there. But you know, just trying to make it try to make it livable, but not nothing nothing too fancy. And I've gotten to two additional other areas, which I can't. Believe how massive the fucking game is. Yeah, it's like you have like a bunch of Animal Crossing islands, actually, not just one. And it's it's it's lovely. It's the music is great. It also it looks really, really good. It looks beautiful. And I want to go back one second. Yeah. The music is great. Yes. And the first thing I thought when I heard this music was when is this coming to alarm? Oh, because I want that fucking music as my go to sleep on my wake up music. It's really nice. Yeah, really satisfy the one strong user base of alarm. Miyamoto himself. Somebody there hears me. Yeah. They brought the fucking virtual boy back. Every time I think about getting an alarm so much because I think it would be funny to get. But I just haven't I haven't had. I can't I can't do it. Matt, my wife, every night. Yeah. Can you put the sleepy sounds back on again? Every night. We used to listen to like classical music, piano music, something. All she wants is alarm. I just really know that there's just no way it would be allowed in our room whatsoever. Why? Why? She doesn't want me. She doesn't want me saying this. She. Has like an eye pillow that she puts on to go to sleep. Me too. She puts this on. She says good night. I'm still up. My little lamp's on. I'll be up for me another 15 minutes. She'll be like, can you turn your light off? I'm like, you got something on your your eyes. What's the issue here? And I just like sit there in the dark until I fall asleep. Because I'm like, I should be asleep. This is the thing. I'm staying up too late. But so an alarm clock that makes noise before bed. I don't think so. That's a non starter. Sleepy sounds. No, but the other thing that I'm playing is Resident Evil Requiem. And I came in here last couple of weeks. I've been saying I think this is. Like a generational game. I think it's like. Because I haven't played. I've only played two and four. I would say that I was primarily a four fan played to. In anticipation of this one. I've been infected with the T virus, I think I was going to ask about. I've been infected with the T virus because I want to make sure you're OK. I now own all on disk because they were on sale recently. Wow. To remake, three remake. I had four already remake. Yeah. This new one, Requiem. Seven and eight gold edition. I'm going to do it. I'm going to play all these games because this fucking Resident Evil 9 is so unbelievably good. I was saying to ranch before we started today, because ranch is also playing it. I I'm I think I'm probably the furthest of the three of us are playing it so far. I think I'm about halfway through. I would you finished it, Chris. And we at the point where we're all OK talking about. I don't I don't want to spoil anything. But I'm going to say something that I think you'll understand. Sure. I got to a section about halfway through that was so stupid that I absolutely loved it. It was the most perfect Resident Evil thing. It was insane. It was a complete action movie nonsense. And it fucking rocked. It was so great and so dumb. But it's in such contrast to the beginning hours of the game because you play primarily the first part of the game. You're playing as Grace and she's fucking scared. She's me. She's just like me for real. She's terrified. She's really scared. It's very claustrophobic. It's in first person. And then, you know, you get to be Leon, you get your shit kickers on. You're just fucking busting skulls and stuff and it rocks. But then you get to this sort of like more I would call open area. Yeah. Where then you're Leon, you're Leon for a while. And you get to do cool Leon stuff. And then you have what I would say was one of the I'm saying stupid, by the way, as affectionately as I can. It's just Resident Evil four to five and six. Like it's all of it at once. Yes. But there's like a. There's a sequence where I was like just cheering. Yes. What was happening? I was so excited. It rocked. It was so dumb and just so silly. I loved it. I love Leon so much. And I just think it's it's great. But I now I'm curious about where the friction lies with you because I'm having a fucking the time of my life with this thing. Well, for me, the friction is I so I'm playing as Grace, right? Yeah. And Grace is a low inventory, right? Yeah. She's got to solve a bunch of puzzles in some kind of fucking mansion hospital. Like that's our third sequence in the game, right? And because you don't have anything with which to harm zombies, you are sort of forced into treating them as moving obstacles. You just navigate the space that they're in. And the more you do it, the less dangerous they feel, which to me is disempowering the danger and the violence and the fear in a horror game. Like when I start seeing zombies as tables and I'm just like, how do I move through this space without bumping into tables? Then it's no longer a horror game. Like the first part where the fucking big lady comes, I was like, I was like, this this is great. Yeah, I get the pressure, the the the relationship between darkness and light and how I have to navigate this in order to solve the problems of this space and also dealing with the the sound. You know, you're playing in the in the in the PlayStation elites. Yeah. And they really do a great job of creating spaces above you in audio. Yeah. So like when she's physically above you, you're like hearing her physically above you and it's great. But in the next sequence, I'm I'm two gems in and I'm just annoyed with it. Like I'm not I'm not like I'm not empowered like Leon, where I just get to blast a bunch of dudes in what should have been the opening of Last of Us Part Three. Yeah. But I'm also like I'm not it's not even like because the zombies aren't killing me. Yeah. Like you get you do you have to just get past them. And because you can get past them, they are no longer scary. I see. And so I'm like, oh, ah, now I'm just waiting for these things to move in a way that I can get around them. And that is preventing me. That's the friction is preventing me from playing the game. I guess we're sort of playing it differently because I'm choosing sort of not to treat them as tables. And I'm like, I have like very low. You know, resources and stuff like that. But I'm using everything that I can and I got really into the crafting. And so I was like making a bunch of stuff, making those like injector things and things like that. But I was going to say, too, is an interesting Resident Evil eight village big lady good. We like that. Resident Evil nine big lady. I don't know. Get her out of here, actually. We hate her. She's scary. Yeah, she looks like she smells bad. She looks. Yeah, she's all gray. Yeah, she's like. But the big lady also gray, but she's this one's nasty. We don't like her. There was a funny tweet that I saw. Or I don't know who knows what it was. It wasn't. It was a post online. That was basically how overpowered Leon would be in the last of us universe. And past guests, Jean Park had a funny comment on it that said the virus never would have left Austin. It's like, yeah, just no way if Leon's around, this just doesn't happen. Yeah. How awesome would it be if if there is a last of us three and they're just like they pull Leon, they're like, Joel's back. He's got a fucking galley. And I'm hot still. Cool. All the worst guys are like, yeah. Three clear. It is Leon. He has a little more like kind of beard makeup. Yeah. We are. Tommy Joel. OK. They work on the licensing. Yeah. But I'm really enjoying it. I would say try to push forward because like. I mean, I'm not done with it, so I don't know how it's going to wrap up. But like the section that I was just in was like, I think a section that you would really enjoy. OK, OK. Good to know. I'm playing while I'm playing Resident Evil slowly. I'm playing Pokopia primarily when I'm traveling. I am playing Disco Elysium through again. I'm trying to find out my goal with this play through is can I be ultra capitalist without being racist? And if that's possible, yeah, is that a flaw in the design of the game? Mm. So I'm negotiating that sort of trying to I'm trying to see if I can break it conceptually by having two inherently incongruent incongruent ideas simultaneously. You're trying to be the modern Democratic Party. I did play an ultra capitalist thing. And I think I feel like it's to me, it felt inherent to it that you're going to be this is going to be a prejudice character. OK, but I don't know. I don't know. They'd be interesting to figure out how to play. If I can if I can crack the case. To that end, I'm also reading a textbook right now that I really, really love. It is called The World Politics of Disco Elysium. It's by Vic Castro and Nicholas Kiersey. I it is just as if you were taking a class at college. I don't think I've talked about it on the show. No, no, I don't think so. It I bought it. I had to buy it through like textbook, like to buy a textbook. It was two hundred fucking dollars. It's a fucking book, which is funny for disco. Elysium. Yes, it is funny. I could have pired it. It but it's really fantastic set of just, you know, academic essays on the politics and implementation and disco. Elysium really liking that. But primarily I'm playing God of War Ragnarok, which has been on my my back order list. My oh, I'm going to really enjoy this. Therefore, I need to wait till I have time to play it. So now that Resident Evil and Pokobir are out, that must be the time to play God of War Ragnarok. Matt, I'd complained to you that there's too many puzzles in the game. I stand by that. That's fine. I'd also complained that there's not enough combat in a game called God of War. Frustrating. I fixed the problem. Do you want to know what I did? Did you increase your difficulty? I increased the difficulty to max and I put on the weakest armor. So now. Anybody can kill me in one or two hits. Jesus, yeah. And I was like, oh, it's the game. This is the fun. I have there are there's I'm not very far. And I'm in the jungles of Vanaheim with with what's her name? Who's my ally? Freya, my ally again. Yeah. Anybody in that area, low level cats. Like anybody can two hit me. And it is so pleasurable as a result that I don't mind that there's not a ton of enemies on screen, because I have to in every encounter, not let anything hit me at all. Yeah. And the parry in that game is pretty good. It's a great parry. Yeah, great parry. And so is the double tap shield block. Oh, yeah. Right. Like it made the combat feel concussive. It made me feel like there's pressure when I'm in these engagements. It is it is it is the game that I wanted to be. And now I'm now I'm like, oh, the puzzles are to build friction so that I can get to combat. OK. Like they are they are they are dams that I have to figure out how to break so that I can get into the combat and then immediately always always have to restart from the nearest checkpoint. Yeah, because the thing starts combat. I don't know what it's like. I thought like some librarian. Yeah, who just immediately killed me. I was like, can you do one of these? I don't even know what your attack patterns are yet. Yeah. A door opened. There's a lady standing there. She did an attack that hit me on the other side of the room and I was like, oh, here we this is going to be great. Restarted that combat like, I don't know, 15 times before I beat that lady, it made the whole game feel like the Valkyrie fights of the of the of the last game. And so I'm really enjoying it again. It's great that like most modern video games sort of worth their salt have enough granularity in the like accessibility option so you can make your own bespoke sicko mode. It's it's really it's pleasurable. I thought I thought like what was like a rhinoceros or something. And I was like, I can't even tell what your AOE is. I don't know where the like any like the way I had to fight it was Russian strike once back all the way across the thing until I watched the pattern would be enough to like run over and hit it one more time. It's great. Matt, I want to change something you said earlier. You said you're going through all the resident evils now. You played for two and four you played. You're playing a requiem now. You bought everything else and you're planning to be a completionist. Yeah. You're already Mr. Games, you are the Xbox kid. You're the finisher. You tend to do this because you did this with Final Fantasy as well. You went through the whole the whole series. I have a new nickname for you. What's that? The franchise. Oh, that's good. Pretty good. The franchise. Mr. Games, the franchise. I like it. That's nice. Because I do like to I like to dig in, you know, but you're a completionist in that regard. This is one of those things where, you know, I didn't do all the the Final Fantasies, but I I played a lot of them and in chronological order. Yes. Yeah. And it's one of those ones that I'm like, I got to get back to now that you're reminding me, I got to get back to that. But I'll happily be the franchise. Because once there's like a game that's like good like that, I'm not just going to play one going to play one. You play one resident evil game. But that was a matter with me. Right. One pretend to chip. Yeah, exactly. I'll have one chip. It's like a. And you bring some Xbox jokes. Oh, please. I just want to. Sorry, I just want to Xbox says they're releasing a new console. Why does no one own an Xbox in Pennsylvania? Oh, I'm not sure. Why? I don't know. Because it's not selling well. Because it's it's always Sony in Philadelphia. That's really good. That's excellent. No one from the dad, not daddy life. That's from the dad. That's great. That's great. And also what game is in Schrodinger's Xbox? What game is in Schrodinger's Xbox? Dead or alive? That's a lot of. Very good. The entire page of Pokemon jokes, because I knew we were going to talk about Pocopia, but I don't want to. I just just want this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What would you call a green Pikachu? A pickle chew? Oh, that's really fun. I'm going to put it away. I think it's starting to lose its last year. These jokes are the first time jokes have been told on the show. I'm Pickle Chu, kind of a Rick and Morty cross over. Yeah, here's the thing. I do like it. I think it's good. Pikachu is a heartthrob. The new one. The new the new the new like I haven't encountered yet. Weak Pokemon. Little ghost. You say heartthrob. Heartthrob. Yeah. OK. The little little little guy there. Everybody's hearts are beating. Yeah, because I think a heartthrob. I think of a fucking stud. Jesus Christ. Sort of like the the chicken ballortio. No, no, no. You mean like like he's kind of he's like adorable. He's the cuteie pie. Yeah, the cutie pie. There you go. I was with some people recently that wouldn't agree that Jacob Elordi is hot. Who is that? Which freaks were you hanging out with? Some freaks. Who is this? Like a dragon. You know Jacob Elordi? No, of course I don't. He's the Frankenstein. He's hot Frankenstein. He's also he plays. He plays Elvis in the Priscilla movie. He's a very good actor. Weathering Heights. Yeah. He's a great, great young actor. I would guess if you saw a picture of him, you'd be like, yeah, absolutely. He's a hunky guy. Good looking guy. He's like 8 foot 9. He's old yet. I would say the story was against him. Maybe he could knock him down to two points. A couple points. He's too tall. I disagree. As a fairly tall man, I love that he towers over me. And as a very short man, I really love that he's tall. Should we talk about this week's game? OK, yeah. Chris, you came to us with this topic in mind. You didn't have to say that part. We said before the show that I'm already very sensitive about. No, no, no. This is I think it's a juicy topic. This is a game that I was going to get to anyway as a fan of this franchise, as Mr. As the franchise. Yes. Yeah. We're talking we're talking Scott Pilgrim EX, but we're also talking just like movie tie in games, like tie in games in general. Scott Pilgrim EX released earlier this month, March the third, twenty twenty six, developed by Tribute Games. And it's based off of the comic book series and is a follow up to the recent anime Scott Pilgrim takes off, which I also really enjoyed. And it's a side scrolling beat him up in the style of the similar of the 2010 Ubisoft game, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which was released as a not as a direct tie in, but it released to coincide with the with the movie. And in this in this new one, you get to play as seven different characters. Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Roxy Richter and Lucas Lee, some of the ones you can play as. And the basic premise of the game is that in the year twenty XX, you don't know what it is. Who knows when this is this little Mega Man 2 reference. Yeah, I was thinking about Mega Man recently. Yeah, go on. I think maybe one of the best blue guys. The problem is the roster of blue guys is pretty stacked. You, of course, have the Navi. Yeah, you have Smurfs. You have Sonic. I mean, one of the best blue guys. Here's the blue bomber and he is cool. He outranks Smurfs to me. I know he's way above Smurfs. I'm just I'm just making I'm making a list. No, yeah, Sonic and Navi are obviously above. Boy, who's better, Sonic or Navi? I'm really sorry. Now I want to go like three layers deep. Can you just cover your ears for a second? Yeah. So I had to drive up here. Orange County, which everybody, it's OK. I know I'm quite brave. The whole time I was thinking, I'm going to get to see this tattoo. Right. And then he is wearing a sweater. Yeah. And I have been the entire if it seems like I'm distracted, it's because I've been thinking how am I going to get that thing off him? Oh, we'll get it off. Oh, we'll get it off. You can take it off. OK, great. I think Navi is number one. I'd say Mega Man, safe is a safe three, maybe a squirtle. Yeah, we got to look. I feel like this is a whole episode. This is an episode. Dr. Manhattan. Oh, my God. Might not make the top five. Anyway, I just I just like him. Yeah, I like him, too. The tick, the ticks blue. Oh, the tick. I like more than I like Mega Man. I'm tickly. Hey, Nick, are you warm? I have actually pretty I mean, it's decent temperature in here. Is there anyone they see it? No, I just I was wondering if you were warm. So the game takes place in the year 20 XX Mega Man, two reference in Toronto. And it's been affected by a gang war between the vegans, demons and robots. And the members of Scott Pilgrim's band, Sex Ba Baum, are all kidnapped by a mysterious robot, Metal Scott. He's got those as a robot. Really good. Very nice. And it's up to so then at that point, Ramona finds Scott and calls up for calls back up for Roxy Lucas, Matthew Gideon and Robot One and to help them search the city to rescue the other bandmates. And it's a side school and beat him up. We did a beat him up episode recently. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say, because the developer you mentioned, Tribute is based in Montreal. And they did a couple of games we discussed on that episode, which was Shredder's Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion. And this is very much not in like this is this is much more like this chibi art style. It's a totally different, not a totally different aesthetic, but it's but it's just like a different look. But what it shares is like this kinetic gameplay and this really good animation. Can I say when I play this game? Yeah. All I want is to. Dig because I don't have my office set up right. But what I want is an HDMI out to SCART so that I can play it on a CRT because the the art style, I love that everybody loves this pixel aesthetic, right? But the pixel aesthetic is best serviced by a CRT with scan lines. And all I think is when I'm playing it, how gorgeous it would look on on a CRT. And I wish that there was a CRT filter in the game, unless there is. And I didn't find it. Why have you not put a CRT in the house? I have one. You know, why are you not? Or you're not? You know, why not play it on? Because I don't I don't have it hooked up right this second. I had to rebuild my office. And so I have the CRT next to my flat screen. That's what I don't. It's not hooked up. OK. OK. You have you have like an arcade stick. Yeah. Situation because I you're all set. You're basically almost there. I got a this this week. I got this analog Geyser analog Geyser. Oh, yes, you were saying which is a thing that you snap into the top of your analog pocket that outputs it to a CRT, because I really like the look of Gameboy advanced games on a CRT. Yeah, you're right. And I just I just wish if you're making a pixel game, I feel like CRT filter should just be a switch that you can come so far. Like there's really good CRT. Yeah, they really are. Yeah. This game, I started playing it last night, was really enjoying it. I really enjoyed the 2010 one. And for some reason, when this game was coming out, it sort of just went over my head a little bit that it was different in some way, which I think is maybe a failure of the marketing, perhaps. Everybody thinks that E.X. means this is like just a remake of that one from 2011. Yeah, yeah. Those might assumption, too, before this was a topic. I think they got too clever, because I think they're thinking Scott Pilgrim X. Yes. Right. It's your ex. It is not worth it. Just should have been Scott Pilgrim, too. Like you pick the one that is going to sell copies. Scott Pilgrim, more. Yeah. Oh, I like that. More and new. Because this also has a story, unless it was taken by series creator, Brian Leo Mal. Now, and, you know, I'm like, I'm aware of Scott Pilgrim. I have never read the source. I did not play the 2010 game. But, you know, I know the movie and I'm just kind of generally familiar with it with its fandom. It feels like like if you're someone who's really into to Scott Pilgrim, then this is kind of catnip for you, right? And is that where you are? Like as a fan? Yeah. Well, so why I kind of regret recommending it is it is a game for perverts. Sure. When I say pervert, allow me to explain. Thank you. A video game pervert in the true sense, which is a pervert doesn't have to be like, oh, you're just out here for being horny on main. It's like you like something at its most like base. And this is a effectively a recreation of River City Ransom. Yes. River City Rampage, these NES games that precede what would become kind of Grand Theft Auto open world action RPG systems where you like have to actually go eat to refill your health. We have to buy items to to to stack your traits or whatever. To play a game like that in twenty twenty six is unhinged. Like you were saying earlier of like, oh, I can't imagine going back to play that. One of your favorite games I was out of this world. Yeah. Yeah. With with this, it is absolutely unforgiving. You will go into a kind of like boss gauntlet. And you will have to beat like twenty or thirty enemies. And then you'll fight the boss and you will die. And then you'll just start back at the beginning of that. And what the game is hoping that you will eventually learn is you need to go grind some cash, you need to go buy some more like items or various penar finale, I guess, and then go back and try again and grind it over and over. Which is great if you like games from the NES era. It is horrible if you are a grown man whose job is to play fifty other video games. So it just like I'm very, very impressed with it in that the studio's name is tribute is both like praise and a warning. And it truly they do make tributes to these games. Yeah. And the way that the teenage mutant Ninja Turtles game, I think, was more of a tribute to a type of thing that all everyone played those arcade games. Very few people, I assume, listening have actually played River City Rampage. Yeah. I mean, that was a really like River City Rancid. I remember on on NES just like like a like a cult game in an era before that was like kind of really a thing, a very, very niche, but like very cool design. It fucking ruled. It does. It's exactly the kind of game that how they were like ruled. And also I like that those dudes because this is a very, this is very small memory, very small, like a pinpoint memory that glows very brightly. But those dudes were also in a volleyball game, weren't they? Oh, yeah. Yes. Like hundreds of them. They still make them. Yeah. The same the same sort of character designs. Those fucking little guys. Yeah. And so you see when you saw them in the volleyball game, you're like, what are these guys doing over here? Shouldn't they be fighting? I want to call out or shout out the sound track of Dead or Alive, which was just mentioned. Yeah, there you go. I want to shout out the soundtrack to both this and the previous game by Anamanaguchi. One of my favorite bands of all time. And there's a 71 track, a new Anamanaguchi soundtrack, which is chip tuning and garage bandy. And as soon as it started, I was like, oh, did they get them again? Because I was like, there's no there's no way they got them again. Yeah. They're on tour or they just had a new album come out that was like really good. And instead they're they're they're out here cranking out tunes for this game. And I was I was like, oh, man, that's pleasurable. That's a pleasure. Kind of feels like the type of thing you couldn't do without them. Like you sort of like need them for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's a really good soundtrack. Maybe they had it the game finished and they're just waiting. Can you please do it? Did you guys get you guys got free time? Can you please get on the one? Could she soundtrack for us? You don't want to put it out with no music. Can you imagine? This game's got no music. It's just. It's got game play. Silence. You just hear like. Buzh. I looked it up because Heather mentioned it. And I do remember this game, although I never played it myself, the volleyball game, US Championship V-ball, the developers, Technos Japan, who also developed River City Ransom as well as some Double Dragon sequels. The I love the design and the feeling of those games. And you're right, this game evokes that feeling. And I was like, what is this reminding me of? Because it's reminding me of something. And it's like there's stuns on punch that are very specifically timed to the River City games. And this feels kinetically similar where you're like punch and the guy stun locks. And then you can like pull off a like a combo, but you also have to manage the space because there's so many other people on screen. So it might break your combo or you might have to break off of your own combo so you don't take damage. The physics rock. Yeah, physics are awesome. Like when you have like 20 volleyball is going around. Ironically, volleyball is not going over like a dozen people on screen. It just feels really good. I realized the game I was actually remembering was a different ball game. It was the dodgeball game that they made. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. These characters designs are so cool. Those games, the best. Those are rental games. One of the one of the things of us who didn't have an any super dodgeball was the name of the game. One of the things I like about this game is that it's just like a continuation of a story that that is being continued by the original creator. I think that's interesting that it's not like a because like, you know, putting out a comic like the people that are reading these things anyway, they're going to find that. But like, I feel like maybe maybe the people that are going to like be interested in the comic are also going to be interested in the video game. But it sort of feels like you're sort of segmenting the the fan base a little bit. You're like, oh, if you want more story, you have to play this video game. I think that's out of that's kind of interesting. Was Brian Leo Malley also involved in the anime series, which it is. Yeah, it was his idea. And that and that one what is like kind of like an alternate reality, right? Or is it have it's like a Scott Pogum takes off. It's like a sequel, like requel kind of. It's kind of like a like it's I think what I was reading was that like Brian and I will call him by his first name only for some reason. Did you guys are boys did some like had some introspection and had some things about the story he wanted to fix and change. It's like that grew up and became a different man. Yeah, sure. And used the the anime as a vessel to take that story and and and fix some things that he thought were that didn't age great about it. And is now continuing that story with this game, which I think is really cool. Where are you as far as because, you know, you talked about this games for for perverts, like it like would you like are you into like beat them up? So are you into like these kind of games where there's like just like like a huge volume of combat generally or yeah, I can get into this. Last year, Absalom came out. Yeah, yeah, Absalom Absalom. Great. Like it's doing the roguelite thing. It has great combat. It's surprising. I can follow it run to run. I never feel like I'm wasting time when I say a pervert game. Wasting time is like just the name of the game. Sure. Right. Like that. And again, wasting. I'm using the word that like is already complicated. But I the repetition of it, the lack of surprise, the sense of I am doing this just to get to the thing that I want to do that I really, really, really struggle with. But I know that there are some people who only play retro games because they provide that kind of meditative flow state because it is so familiar because you are doing the thing over and over again. But yeah, I just that genre has come so far in the last four years. It's bizarre. It's kind of amazing that the genre that was like, OK, well, this is kind of in its final form. And then we're seeing like all these interesting riffs on it. It's like, OK, well, maybe there's new there's new takes on this. I kind of guess kind of what we were saying about the match three games earlier. Yeah. People are kind of experimenting a little bit. I really was enjoying my time with this game. And then I also kind of reached a point. I'm playing on Switch 2. I kind of reached a point where I was like, I don't know if I'll play this after we do this episode. Yeah, I mean, like I can really appreciate its design. I certainly can appreciate it from a static standpoint. Looks and sounds great. And like again, this feels like it's coming from a place of passion from the developers and then also like a place of genuinely wanting to expand his this thing that he created from the from the series creator. And but but there's also an element of like maybe what you're saying of just like the grinding, the feeling like I've got to have a a fairly cumbersome amount of time into this and then there's just like other things I'd rather play right now, but I really do appreciate it. I one of the things I appreciate about it is somebody who likes to have just an easy time. Yeah, there's a super easy difficulty setting. And I was like, I'm just going to rock it through with this. This is making my life very pleasurable. I love that we had like we didn't talk about this when the when they had the eye on life to developers on. Yeah, discuss that game. But that one basically has a way to toggle difficulty off. Oh, yeah. And you can just sort of like go through the game and not one shot everything, but you don't have to worry about taking damage or being killed or whatever like that. I don't know. I like those. I guess you would call them accessibility options, but which they are. But also there for some people just like, you know what? I'm interested in this game for not this not the central mechanic. I want to say there's something else about it. I like I don't need every game to be Heather cover ears. OK. I don't need every game to be like Elden Ring or something like that, where it's like really hard and like the fights are really hard and difficult and stuff. I kind of sometimes I'm playing the game just to like play the game. You know what I mean? Yeah. And also what what Heather's ears are covered? Sanket Saturn, what are we doing? Yeah, we should bring it back. You're right. Also, wow, Heather's ears are covered. I heard she has a ring tattoo. And we should find out. It's it's it's wrong and it's me. Oh, he's doing it. Oh, I'll get let's take a look at it. Oh, you can you should take it. Oh, yeah, you can take it off. You can take it off. They're taking a sweater off for some reason. This is great. Chris said you could take your he'd let permit you to uncover your ears if I showed him my wrong tattoo. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The head of quid pro quo. There it is. Power from chainsaw man. There's the wrong on top of it. Beautiful. It's good stuff. Yeah, I feel great about it. And every time I look at it, I'm impressed. Yeah. It's good. So incredible. How long does that take? This one took a while. I mean, because the guy gave me an estimate. He's like, I think it'll probably take like two or three hours. And then I was there for probably about six hours because there's just so much detail. But he couldn't stop tricking it. That was a huge problem. But I think he like got really into doing like, oh, I really want to do all these braids and he wanted to expand it a little bit as he wants. So it's like, hey, whatever, let the guy work. It was fun. That's great. Like, Port Critt's done of like real people that look horrible. And it's like, it's incredible that you have like a one to one for all. Yeah, it's incredible. I feel good about it. God. Thank you. What? Is it the best tattoo I've ever seen? It might be. Almost certainly. That movie needs to come out on on on video. I need the disc. Where's the fucking disc? Yeah, it needs to. What are we doing? I would say Disney Plus just reactivated Dolby and 3D on the platform. And it has to be because Cameron was like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. If you have a Vision Pro, you should be able to watch Avatar in 3 fucking D. Yeah. So yeah, that's huge. He rocks. Yeah, he's the fucking he rocks. Yeah. Well, so like obviously like the Scott Pilgrim is like the jumping off point here. I love I love Scott Pilgrim. I'm excited to play more of this game. But yeah, where did you did the movie get you into it? Were you reading the comics back in the day? It was, you know, it was the movie first because like I think maybe I had heard about the movie and I wanted to be like a good student and like read the the comic before the movie came out so I could see like what was different about it was like, oh, it's just like interesting. Good. I love the movie. I did watch the movie one time. Also, okay. I watched the movie one time on mushrooms and then had a bad time because they were all being so mean to each other. Right. And also all these characters are fucking mean. What's wrong with everybody in here? And then I've watched it again since I since since then it was like it's just a good fun movie. Hey, question for you. What about Scott Pilgrim? Do you most relate to and be very honest? Probably the way he treats women. I mean, look, I just think that he's like a hero. He's certainly like my favorite white guy. Second favorite, second favorite. You're kind of a Canadian heart. You know, I do like that. I like his t-shirt. His t-shirt. Can I say that because this was an element and I don't know why I had forgotten about this about Scott Pilgrim, but it's like, oh, yeah, this is such a Toronto thing. And as someone who like Matt recently watched and really enjoyed Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, which is so ensconced in Toronto, I was like, that was part of what the fun was having with it. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I've been I've been here. Yeah. You're trying to find the little Toronto thing in there. I heard I heard some little Canada might be in trouble. A little Canada might be in trouble. Yeah, I'm worried. You think they're gonna make it big? Man, the way things are going. Chris, do you know what little Canada is? No. Have you ever been to Toronto? Yes, but only if I fight video game style. You land and you go to a studio and then you leave. Right. If you ever find yourself back there and are looking for a way to spend a half day and have the time of your life, I highly recommend Little Canada. It is a at railroads like model scale recreation of all of Canada province by province. It is a like this beautiful art installation you walk through and is the pet project of this bizarre Dutch billionaire who just is like, like, I want to use my money to. I moved to Canada. This is my adopted country. I want to build this thing that's in tribute to it. So it's like this totally love letter to his adopted homeland. And then you go in there is like, I go, I couldn't look a little Canada and I go in there and I'm just enchanted like a little girl meeting Bell. This is fucking incredible. It's like where we are but little. Yeah. It's so well done. I want to make a pilgrimage to it. There's a bunch of craftspeople there who are all just like really into models and really like care about what they do and like they don't talk to you and you can see them working and stuff and read. It's like it's so fucking cool. I loved it when you're there. Did they make a little you that then they put in the little Canada? Oh, they certainly do. Yeah. No, I got little eyes. Yeah, they broke the machine. Yeah. So Scott Bilger was a jumping off point, but I think something we've kind of talked about here and there on the show are movie tie-in games in general, which is a lost art. I do think that like I understand why they don't really work anymore at this set because these things would come out sort of on a perpetually like crunched timeline and often suffer as a result. Unlike normal video games. I'm like normal video games, but even more so like to meet a deadline for like a film coming out or sometimes before like the the Revenge of the Sith, the Star Wars Revenge of the Sith video game came out before the movie was released and spoiled it. Like I can't really spoil it, but it like said what happens like a beat for beat in the in the game, which is really fun. We used to be like I think a culture when there was maybe largely pre-social media where we were a lot less spoiler conscious. I've maybe cited this before, but I got the CD soundtrack for The Phantom Menace before the movie came out. This is John Williams score and the back of it has a track listing and the track listing is just beat for beat everything that happens in the movie, including a track that's called Qui-Gon's Noble End. So like if you just look at what the and thankfully my friend had already looked at it, he's like don't look at it, it spoils everything. Yeah. But it is kind of amazing how casually that stuff used to be dispensed. Yeah, I mean I have some PTSD when we're talking movie tie-in games because my time in development at a developer called Seven Studios working in level design was a few projects were movie tie-in games. I worked on two, one Pirates of the Caribbean game and two Fantastic Four, the movie games. And I will say that yes to your point about crunching, because your release date is so tethered to when the movie comes out and because you're getting notes not just from the publisher, but from the licensor, the license holder. It's like it's just so many layers of bureaucracy that you have to navigate on an ultra compressed timeline. And also part of what they're doing is like, well, we spent our money on this license and we also spent our budget on getting the cast to do the voices. So this development team is going to be a little bit bare bones. So there's a lot of things working against you. I think, I don't know if this has come up then. I think, I mean it must have at some point though, but I'm pretty sure I've played almost every game you worked on that accept Sopranos Road to Respect. Because I would have been like the prime age to play both Fantastic Four games. After seeing those movies and being like, movies are awesome. And of course the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was massive. It was huge. But there are some other notable ones that I feel like I do bring up all the time. My favorite of them being Peter Jackson's King Kong the official game of the movie. Yeah. Good game. It's just good actually. There's like, it is just legitimately a good video game and it is baffling. An all time title. Well the title, the title's perfect. The title's perfect, but like the game is just actually very, very good. I feel like I've described it before, but it's a first person adventure, like survival adventure game where you're playing Adrian Brody's character. You're playing as him and you're on Skull Island and you're just trying to get the hell out of there, right? It's like, oh shit, King Kong's walking around and messing with this. Then you see him of course. And then you get the moments where you get to be King Kong and then you get to fight dinosaur and that's perfect. It has crunchy, it's like crunchy like Arkham style like combat where you're King Kong punching the dinosaurs and it rocks. It is so, so good. It is cited as one of like the top five movie tie-in games of all time along with legends like GoldenEye. Like it'll be like GoldenEye obviously, number one of all time, best movie tie-in game of all time. Peter Jackson's King Kong the movie the game or whatever the fuck it's called. It'll be like number two or three. It's Peter Jackson King Kong the official game of the movie. But the thing that is interesting about that though is that something like GoldenEye, GoldenEye makes sense for it to exist as a video game. Right, right. King Kong is a story about kidnapping a gorilla from its home and being mad when it goes crazy in a city. There are action sequences in the Peter Jackson version obviously but it does not seem like it lends itself naturally to a video game adaptation. But I want to just like just get to a definition we're discussing here. Because one of the games you cited, Spranners Road to Respect which I have an additional design credit on, it worked on for a few months. I can't really claim any credit for that game. But that game is not like a, that's a side story. That's not like an adaptation. But like the fantastic four games I worked on were direct adaptations like the stories were beat for beat what's in the movies. So like are you thinking, because like my mind goes the Chronicles of Riddick, Escape or Butcher Bay which is an all-timer like in terms of these licensed games but it's again not a direct story from an existing movie. Right. Is Frontiers of Pandora, is that a movie tie-in game or is that, hey, like Star Wars Episode 1 Racer is a Star Wars racing game but it is not a movie tie-in game, is it expanded world IP game? That's what it has to be now, right? Like that's the evolution of it. I think so. If you want to make it, you have to know that there's a chance that it's not going to time out and I think they learned that from the Avatar game that they made for the first Avatar which was like a mess to make. And also old Jimmy Cameron was so secretive that like people in Ubisoft couldn't even go on to the same floor that that game was made which is now hilarious because like who needs to see that game? But yeah, I feel like that has to be it, right? And then like Suicide Squad is like another example of we know we want Suicide Squad but we don't want to risk trying to pin it to a release date. Right, but then you have something like the DLC that just came out for Frontiers of Pandora that was sort of timed to the release of Fire and Ash so it's kind of both. In some ways it's kind of both. Right, because Fire and Ash and Frontiers of Pandora introduced characters. Characters that are technically in the background. But that's also like the way that the compass from Battlefield 2 ends up in The Last Jedi. Like it's like there are, it's world-building, it's not movie tie-in. It's like the Matrix games did that stuff two years back when. I feel like you mentioned DLC, Fortnite ate all of the lunch for this because Fortnite can come in and say, you want a tie-in? Great. Work with you, we're going to put your character into the biggest game in the world. You really need to make a game. You're going to put K-Pop Demon Hunters in your game right now and then you don't need to make a K-Pop Demon Hunters game. Just appear in Fortnite or maybe you do it in Roblox or something like that. You're totally right that there's no reason to commit the resources to make a full-fledged game unless it's when you can just do a version like that. And it's also like you can do similar things like Warzone or whatever. You know what I mean? Like these licensed characters pop up wherever. I won't lie. Whoever I'm skinned as in Fortnite affects my play style. I can't help it. Like if I'm playing as Scratchy who was my main for a long time, I am the heart of chaos. I am not trying to win. I am trying to be funny. Like if I'm rolling up on people and they're in a gas station, I know it's going to injure my player character to crash my car into the gas station. But I also know it's the funniest possible thing I can do on rolling up on these guys. Whereas if I play as the K-Pop Demon Hunters, I'm strictly strategic. I'm trying to be cool. I'm trying to be like measured. This weekend I played as Rick Prime who was finally brought to the game and I was the trolliest I've ever been while playing Fortnite. It affects the way I play the game. How do you play as Hank Hill? I don't have that skin. But I think I do a lot of sitting. There's an emote where you sit on a cooler and you eat. And it would be pretty great to just find a place and just camp out and eat. People think that you're just an NPC there. Does he have a damnit Bobby emote? He has to, right? He has the opening sequence as an emote. Oh, that's fun. You have the whole opening credits where you're drinking in time-lapse? That's boring. That's so funny to think about how long it is. You can get in front of somebody and it's waiting to kill you. It's a joinable emote. So if you join the emote, you stand next to him on the fence. Ash from the Evil Dead can do it? Yeah, anybody can do it. I'm going to say just a few games real quick that are like direct adaptations of movie trilogies. One is, and I think this one gets forgotten in the Cascade of Star Wars adaptations that existed throughout the years, but the Super Nintendo series, Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back and Super Return of the Jedi, those were pretty fun action platformers with a lot of combat. The other one I'm thinking of- But they also don't follow the plot of those movies at all. You do find Spider Darth Vader. You run. First off, Luke doesn't use the lightsaber except to train in Star Wars. And in the game, you're running around killing people constantly with the lightsaber. It does not follow the movie's beat for beat, but it is also not as much of a deviation as the home improvement game. How crazy is it that in Star Wars, the hero doesn't use the lightsaber? That's nonsense structurally. He trains with- I mean, unless you knew with absolute confidence there was going to be another Star Wars, the idea that he trains with it and doesn't use it is nuts. I think where you can perhaps justify it is if you think of it as more generally training with the Force as he is doing with Obi-Wan, he learns to do it with a blast shield down. Same thing later on in the third act. He learns to, in essence, blind himself inside of his vehicle by turning off his targeting computer. Absolutely. True. 100% true. But it is wild that he doesn't use a lightsaber. Yeah. It's nuts. It'd be like if Edward Scissorhands never used his Scissorhands. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Friday the 13th is our answer to this, right? Friday the 13th video game? No, Friday the 13th movie. And that, like, what if I told you they made a Friday the 13th movie where it doesn't wear a hockey mask and it's not even Jason? Yeah, there's no Jason. It's mom. Yeah. That's a good point. What's going on there? Or, as they say, in Home Improvement. And conversely, I don't think so, too. As you're fighting a mech. Wait, does he fight a mech in the game? Did we cover it on here? I don't remember. We did do it. I think we did. If we did it, I blocked it. That game is unhand. Because it's just like a reskinned, like, essentially a Gundam game, you know? But you've got Home Improvement in it. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's incoherent. One of my favorites, which I've talked about quite a bit, is the Spider-Man 2 video game for the Tobii McGuire Spider-Man 2. Oh, yeah. It's just actually very good. But what's interesting about it is that it does adapt the exact story of the movie, but there's also extra stuff in it because they had to, like, make it a video game because like, if it was just like the plot of the movie, you'd do three things. And so there's like extra, there's extra characters, extra villains and stuff to make it a little more interesting for your playthrough. And you're sort of like playing this thinking, wow, I wish the movie was like this. I wish all these characters were in the movies. This would be the craziest movie ever. That's pretty good. All these characters were. It's good stuff. I'm talking about this makes me nostalgic. I wish there was a last Jedi video game where you traded perspectives, Allah, the last of us part two. Like you could be Kylo or you could be Ray, the last Jedi of us. We might still get it. Have you played the Terminator 2 pixel game that just came out? No, but I heard that's great. It is great. Yeah. And especially good because there is a Terminator 2 Super Nintendo game. And let me tell you, it sucks. It's horrible. It is for perverts. And then you go and play this game and they were like, oh, you know how in your mind these games were actually only like an hour and a half and it was only the good pits. Yeah. It's only in the good parts. And they asked for like, I don't know, maybe like four minutes. It's that. So like four minutes, you're going to a bar and just murdering people as a naked Arnold Chorznaker. And you actually don't even have a health bar. You just lose time because there's no way to kill Arnold. No. Wow. And then in like five minutes later, you are on a motorcycle being chased by a semi. Five minutes after that, you're in the future leading the resistance. Five minutes after that, you're you're doing like one of those, oh, there's an unstoppable villain chasing you and you're trying to escape the mental health hospital and just shiv in people. It's great. I'm going for it to go on sale, but I have a wish list. It's real good. Yeah, it looks awesome. I just I just heard it's kind of like a short length. Very short. The only last Jedi adaptation we have is within LEGO Star Wars, the Skywalker saga, the most recent revamp of the LEGO Star Wars games. And I will say it's very well done. It's very that that that package is really, really good. I was trying to because I mentioned my time in games before I worked in development, I worked at Activision and customer support and QA, QA QA development. But the I was trying to remember the name of the game and I could be wrong here. I remember when we were training for customer support, which involved, you know, answering phones and responding to emails. One of the things the guy, the senior guy who told us about was they had a controversy involving a Toy Story game. I looked it up. I think it's Toy Story 2 Buzz Lightyear to the rescue. Yeah. But they were saying that it could be misremembering this or it could be misremembering which game it was. But the issue was there was like, just be prepared. There could be some brigading. There could be some like, like, you know, like, like sort of like calls to action where a bunch of organized people are coming after you because I guess that happened with this game or whichever one I'm mistaking it for, where in the Toy Story game, the course of it, one of the bosses is just a human guy who you kill. Yeah. Have we talked about this before? We have. But he's like a like a stereotypical like Mexican. Right. Right. That's the other. Yeah. That's the other element. So you've got a stereotypical Mexican character who gets killed. Yeah. And then they were like, they just kind of bunch of people who were like calling protesting it and they would just start talking through how to handle it as an example. Yeah. Would he kill the guy? But I could I could have those details wrong. I'm just remembering what was relayed to me. I should look. I should try to look up a playthrough of that because I've never actually seen it with myself. I feel like I have like either a memory of it because that's like the type of game I would have played when I was a kid or like a false memory that's been implanted from watching a YouTube video, you know, 100 years ago at this point. But it is real. I'm kind of more like I'm just I'm obviously if you expand it to the things like the you know, the Rocksteady Batman's, it's like there's these things are more general like, like, yeah, there's there's a lot more interesting games like that, but I am kind of like intrigued by the ones like the Terminator 2 game. You're just discussing the games that do try to like actually hue to the convention of like, hey, here's the game version of this movie in the same way that like you'd get to the end credits and there'd be like a rap song summarizing the events of the movie. Yeah, I like that trope. Yeah, it is something that I wish would come back. But like, I, you know, I understand why. Like also what movies are they going to do it for? It all the only movies that are for this are Marvel movies. And we just have a million of those every single year. I think these like smaller studios doing this like Terminator is is the way that you do it, right? Like you could still do like a fried green tomato, this visual knob. Nobody stops you. And you can just like have a small team take a year to do it. Is that that killer clowns from outer space game come out or is it still coming out? I think that that came out and then Toxic Commando, which I don't think is based off a movie. No, yeah, I think it is like a John Carpenter inspired game. Like they're making this stuff. But yeah, I think smaller scale games is the way to do it. There's a great Gatsby platformer. Oh, yes. I remember playing this. Yeah, the light and just doing small, relatively novel experiences. I think that's the true avoid the green light. I mean, eventually I read a book before. I saw the movie. I would love the Testament of An Lee, the video game. But I want it to be given the Super Star Wars treatment where it's a side scroller that is light that it has the movie beats. Yeah. But you also have like she has a pouch full of daggers. And so you're like running through like London, like like throwing like daggers at people in order to get to the end beat, which gives you a three frame cinematic. And then you go to the next level. Can you only play it with a DDR dance pad? Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. I was just. I was thinking about recent franchises. And I do think, you know, because I'm thinking of the how much I enjoyed the case of the Golden Idol and its and similar games, a knives out game where it's like a Benoit Blanc like point and click adventure or that has the detective element of the case of the Golden Idol. You have like a tableau where you have to solve exactly what's going on. That would be a real hoot. And maybe just get a few samples of Daniel Craig, just a sample. That's an intriguing mystery. Scooby-Doo-Bee-Doo. Just it feels basic to have enjoyed that moment in that movie as much as I did. It made my year. I was like, I love that. There's but at a recent state of play, they announced a John Wick game with Keanu doing the, you know, the face and, you know, or giving his likeness to it and the voice. And that that to me is like, we should have, we should have had this. We should have had this already. Well, because basically just like, like John Wick is kind of like Max Payne, the movie, you know, and to begin with it, such a it's such a pastiche of like this of like Hong Kong action films. But like in a modern, it seems to lend itself to a video game. So so clearly there is a John Wick video game. There is the John Wick Hacks. John Wick Hacks. But it's like unfortunate because it's a really good game. Yeah. But if there's ever a game where you're like, I know exactly what power fantasy I want. Yes, this should be Hotline Miami. I don't want to puzzle. Yeah. Yeah. John Wick is in Fortnite. And I will say that when I come across anybody wearing the skin, they are typically pretty good. Yeah. And I'm always a little like, fuck, it's a fucking John Wick. Like, I bet you I bet it's self selecting. Like if you pick the John Wick skin and you keep losing, you probably feel a little bit of like, I can do that. Ludo narrative dissonance. Like you're like a little like, I'm really not good at John Wicking this. Yeah. And then the guys who do like continue today to wear the John Wick skin, which has not been in the shop for a while. Right. These guys are like serious about playing well. I talked to my cool teen nephew, plays Fortnite about this. And he's like the son of my cool older brother. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a he I've mentioned this is a podcast before, but I was like, what skin do you use? And he was like, he's like default. And I guess that's like a thing like the cool kids now are just like, like, I'm just going to act like I don't give a fuck. I'm just going to use whatever the default is. Yeah. That's for some reason, frightening. It's terrifying. It's so aware. Yeah. It's it's it's it's I love it. Well, there's there's also tears of try hard because there's like there's a skin that people call the condom skin, which is just a skin tight latex body suit in gray that blends extremely well into the background and disappears. And also supposedly has a slightly smaller hitbox. And so when you see them, you're like, oh, my God, like you could be anything that has ever existed. You could effectively be Ronald McDonald in this game. And you're choosing to be a faceless skin. They got to put Ronald McDonald in. Yes, he's not in there. No, he's not in there. I have to. Man, imagine Grimaces hitbox. He's just slim that guy down. Ranch, are you playing? Playing Fortnite at all lately? Yeah. Is your skin still Eminem? It actually is Johay on Otani right now. Oh, yeah, that's awesome. And I do have the John Wick skin too. Pro gamer. Any other thoughts on on video game movie adaptations? I want them to come back. It seems like the only way that they're coming back is this this sort of retro aesthetic or in a sort of side story John Wick type thing where like this is like not adapting the movies in particular, but it's adapting the franchise type of way. And I think that that's the best we got. So be it. But I do miss this type of game. The fried green tomatoes pitch is a home run. Yeah, I think we're going to get these games. I think it's on the way. I think we talked about tribute with that Ninja Turtles game. I think we have a Castlevania game coming out from the whichever studio that was. But these large companies are realizing, oh, there's all these talented people out there and they want to work on our stuff. Why not just like let them. I love it. Speaking of Ninja Turtles real quick, just a quick question for you. Got checked on the Ninja Turtles. What do you think about this guy? I already know the answer to this question. You're supposed to say that you like him because everybody likes Ninja Turtles. You have to post this post. You just say what's in your heart. I didn't prepare to be here. So but is that what's in your heart? Oh, of course, I dressed up as a Ninja Turtles. I was like, yeah, I'm not a loser. I dressed up as Ninja Turtles until I decided that Spider-Man was better. Yeah. And then I dressed up as Spider-Man and my parents had like a banister area and I tried to jump off that and they said you can never wear that again. And then dressed up as Ninja Turtles the rest of my childhood. There you go. Wow. I brought this up to my wife who has not is not initiated, is not familiar, knows enough about them. And I said, what do you think about the Ninja Turtles? Just what do you think? And she goes, well, I know that they're green. She wearing your sleep mask. Yeah, I'm like shaking her. Wake up, wake up, wake up. She said, I know they're green. Yeah, Donatello. Yeah, yeah. I like that. I was like, yeah, everybody loves you. You want. That's all you want. Can I share a picture really quick? Yeah, please. This is a picture of when I was 16. Oh, my God. It's Rachelle with Michael Cira, the star of Scott Pilgrim versus the World. I was on a tour of the I Heart Media offices in San Francisco one summer and then ran into Michael Cera and didn't know who this guy was before. Oh, Edgar Wright. It just in the frame behind you, like photobombing. That's so funny. But they were there to promote Scott Pilgrim because it hadn't come out yet. Wow. And he was telling us about the comic books. Wow. Wow. What a sweet picture. What a great picture. Usually when we show something on our phone, it's got to be censored from the show. There's this girl and this tub. No. What if some meat were to spin? All right, let's open up the question block. All right, this first one is from Stingray DM. Hi, Stingray. Sort of come up a little bit, but I think it's like Robotus and DM. It's nighttime. Stingray nighttime. What IP would you like to receive the Shredders Revenge Cosmic Invasion treatment and turn into an old school beat them up? Yeah, this did kind of come up organically. I'm going to say Frazier. Let's get Frazier, Niles, Roz, and I guess Bulldog in there. You probably want Martin. You probably want the dad and then Martin maybe with an assist from Eddie the dog. You get that in there. Then maybe you get some DLC, some bonus levels. You get Ted Danson in there. I can't remember his character's name. From Cheers? Sam from Cheers? Yeah. Yeah, you got some Cheers guys in there. I mean, a Cheers beat them up might be a more natural fit, but there's something about Frazier that I feel like feels like the Simpsons game. I think I think it's kind of as a natural sort of silliness to it. Well, this is what I was going to say. I want to give me another Simpsons one. They're sort of not really doing as much as they could with the Simpsons license. I know that they were just in Fortnite and stuff. There's a whole season. But like they're not they used to be kind of everywhere. The Simpsons used to be all over the place. Now they're kind of just on television. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how much it was an entire season. I know, but just that. The game was. No, it wasn't a joke. It was. It was a specific Grand Theft Auto got made. Yeah. For the Simpsons. What's what is disorienting here? Yeah. Is that they then just throw it away. It's gone. Is it's gone? Is the greatest waste? I'm saying there used to be there used to be Simpsons video games. Right. And they don't really do that. No, they don't. Well, yeah, now they have the they have Simpsons tapped out, which I think is just like such a cash. It's gone offline. It's gone now. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm not doubted. Checked out. I'm going to pitch Amadeus. You play as Salieri, the boss of every level is Mozart. You cannot beat him. Like you it is it is you you finish the level and he kills you. And then you have to start another level and then slowly but surely Mozart gets sick and you are able to beat him as a boss at the end, but only because he's extremely sick. And then you end up in asylum. Anyone? Yeah, yeah. This next one is from Sil. What's this? And Sil writes, who's the best hat character in gaming? Who's got the best hat? Kung Lao, moral combat throws his hat, fucking kills guys. One of the examples they gave. Is it Mario or is it Mario beaten by say Kung Lao? I think that was a good answer. Kung Lao is so hot for now. You can say Mario, he loses his hat, he loses his powers. And is that is that Mario? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So I mean, like, is it? Wait, is that Odyssey Odyssey? The Odyssey, yeah. So I mean, it could be there because of because of Cappy. Cappy is good. I don't know. I think I have to say Kung Lao. Kung Lao is good. I'm going to say. I'm going to say Ghost of Yote has some pretty good fucking hats. The hats are really, really good in Ghost of Yote. Those are excellent fucking hats. Any of those games where you get to choose your armor and hat is an option. Yeah, that's that's an excellent hat game. Is it cheating to say Project Steam, where you can play as a steampunk Abraham Lincoln? I don't think it's cheating at all. Is that also Project Steam? I realize that my mind might have got those names mixed up. But I'm going to allow Nintendo did make a game where you can play as. I think you're thinking of Project Hail Mary and Abraham Lincoln is not in that. That's about a big mistake, actually. That's about well, it's about a guy who's not an astronaut. He goes to space. OK, oh, he's not. And it's about a science teacher that goes to astronaut. He wasn't made for this. Abraham Lincoln's not in it. OK, OK, OK. So if you're going to see the movie, you can be really confused. It's really good movie. I like to see it. Fucking love that. I'm really excited. So good. Now, that's a hook. That's a good hook. A hunk of rock. Yeah, I thought about it. I thought about it. I can imagine. This next one is is a Heather question. Oh, a Heather question. It's from Gunn. Why? Next question. Questions from why Satou 13 and the Heather question is I'm living in the Netherlands for the next three years. Hey, what do I definitely need to see eat while I'm here? All right, I got the one recommendation. What's the was the peanut butter mayonnaise? Is that what it's called? Yep, yep, yep, peanut butter mayonnaise. That's or log sauce. That's you got to get that on your frites. It also comes with onions. It's peanut butter, mayonnaise and onions. I forgot about the onion. Fantastic snack. You got to go to FABO. You got to get a croquette from FABO, but also their KIP sandwich. That's their chicken sandwich. Excellent sandwich. The McCroquet at McDonald's is the croquette sandwich at McDonald's. Fantastic. You got to get some bitter ballin from your local bar. It doesn't really matter which one. Just go fucking have some bitter ballin at the local bar. Go to the video game museum. They said they're going. Go to. Oh, boy. Where else can you go? Remind us what bitter ballin is again. Oh, bitter ballin is they're very small gravy circles. What is wrong there? What is why is everything like that? Why is it all fucking thick sauce? And you take the gravy circle, which is breaded and you deep fry it and then you serve it with mustard. Oh, that sounds good. That sounds good. It's fucking amazing. That sounds good. That does sound good. It's so good. You've been here many times in the Netherlands. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're most of my time. No, I've never been. You're always there. I've never been. It seems really nice. I was just trying to think if there were any Dutch developers. Like a lot. Who can you think of? Ways and Gorilla games. Oh, OK. OK. Yeah, sure. Then a lot of Indies. They're very good about this bold idea. The government supports the arts. Right. It's heaven on earth. It's bullshit. It's fucking paradise. It's wild. That game that was on many. Why am I here? I was a Terrac Ab. Yeah. I was researching the guy for the interview that I'm doing. He's like, oh, you know, like I just, you know, figured out finally after three years what the game was. So then I moved into the incubator, the local incubator. It's like what incubator? I never, I'm familiar with this term. What is that like to have support? Right. I mean, just think your Dutch reference of the day was that a guy just made the most amazing model that you've ever seen. Yeah. It's paradise there. Sounds so nice. I guess conversely, I don't want my tax dollars paying for some guy to take ballet. And by the way, nobody even watches that shit. The good news is, is that it does go both ways. Like if you make it as an artist there, your tax dollars go to some guy who's developing fucking computer software. That's great. I'm just kidding. Hey, a Ted Trump, you know. Yeah, I forgot. I'm not kidding. Take a bicycle and bike from the town that you're living into, the next town, I don't know which town you're living in. Visit Maastricht. That's incredible. I don't know, man. It's paradise there. If you're on our Discord, maybe throw it up on it and I'll try and make a list. What about seeing a Boom Chicago show? You're an alum. Yeah, of course. Go to Boom Chicago. I know, I imagine it's like a very different place than when you were there, but it's like, yeah. It is, you're less likely to get like tetanus. But it's a fantastic theater with an incredible current cast that I've seen multiple times. Oh, wow. Great, great kids. I don't know, man. It's like there's too much. There's too much to recommend. It's awesome there. Wow. Try it all. And finally, this last one is from Flag Captured. And they write, hey guys, it's definitely not as relevant now. But I read a suggestion that Donkey Kong Bonanza should have been a Wario game. He smashes things. He's obsessed with gold. Surely he just isn't as popular as DK. What's your take? There's a strong case for that. Yeah. In history. Yeah, true. Yeah. I think it doesn't work because you need climbing. Yeah, you need to climb. And Wario is not known for climbing. He's not known for climbing. He's known for being a gold-loving Steve guy. I think the Mario game about collecting coins on the DS, that should have been a Wario game. Oh yeah, that's good. That makes sense. What are we doing without him? What's up in stuff? There's a game that most people hadn't gotten the chance to play that just came out on the Virtual Boy for the Switch. Super Wario Land, it fucking rules. Yeah, it is good. The Wario GameCube game is on Switch now too, which is very similar to Donkey Kong Bonanza. Yeah. Oh, interesting. You can play it right now. It's the Wario Land series because it got supplanted by WarioWare obviously. And hey, I love WarioWare, but I remember just loving Wario Land 4 for Game Boy Advance. It's a great platformer. I want to make a bet about the next Mario movie. Which is that the teaser for what happens next is Wario. Wow. That is so true home run. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's going to be like the, is the shadow at the end of Sonic or Metal Sonic at the end of Sonic moment. I think the end of the Mario Galaxy movie is Wario. That's what I think. Wow. A piece of garlic rolls into frame. And Waluigi maybe? Maybe. I think because now they're all kind of doubling up. Even the most recent Sonic ended where it was like not just Metal Sonic. It was also like Amy's. Amy Rose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they have to. Sure. We see their silhouettes or we see them walk directly into screen. And you're like, oh, fuck, I can't wait for a Wario. I like it. This is good. This is a good take. Yeah. I mean, who else would it be? I mean, there's a thing though. There's so many options in the Mario game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be the Brutals. That would be an interesting choice if it's the Brutals. We'll, we'll find out soon enough. But that's this week's Get Played. Our producer is Rachelle Chen. Ranch, twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore. Sard Ranch. I know you're playing Resident Evil Requiem as well. Is that what you're streaming? Yeah, that's what I'm streaming. Awesome. Everyone check that. Check out that channel. Our music was by Ben Prunty. Ben Prunty, music at the com. Our artist by Duc Brigade is IonDucBrigade.com. We get merch at kinshipgoods.com. And there's a bonus episode every Wednesday on our Patreon. Get Played DLC. Matt, do you know what we're doing this week? This one is our very first retro rewind where we watched a, what would you describe that tape as, Nick? A VHS about Donkey Kong. And we had a lot of fun watching it. It was an interesting relic of the time. It was a fascinating 90s time capsule. Just like both the Super Nintendo being the cutting edge of video game hardware and then also just the MTV, you know, like that sort of MTV 90s, like Skater Dude, Surfer Dude, sort of vibe is so prominent. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. How do you do a Donkey Kong making all those insensitive jokes? He, you know what? It was just a different time. Yeah. It was just, it was a different time. I don't know. I personally enjoyed it because the back when comedy was legal. Yeah. Subscribe at patreon.com slash get played. Chris Plant, what an absolute throw. Thank you for giving us so much of your time and thank you for coming out here to the studio so we could do this in person. Just just so great to meet you and had an absolute blast talking to you and hearing all your knowledge about games. This is this was so nice. I didn't even get to ask you about the monster fuck, which was the only thing I wanted to talk about. It was really nice to have me anyway. Of course. I had a blast. Thank you for doing this. I'm glad this I'm glad this made it out of the DMs. We did it. Yeah. Do you have anything you would like to plug? Thank you so much. First, I'd like to plug daddylife.com and the dad. But beyond that, post games is my weekly interview in PR style show. So if you want a show and you're like, man, I would love a video game show for grown ups besides this one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say if you want to listen to a good video game. Definitely check out post games. And if you want to listen to a bad one, check out the best. It's great. And also if you for whatever reason live in Southern California, you should come on down to the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana because I help just help make it happen. I guess is what you could say. And it's a great, great place for independent cinema. So cool. Be careful of those wins though. If you're coming if you're not from here, you got to be really careful of those wins. Those wins will get you. Real narrow cast joke. Thank you. Real the daddy dot com. Matt, you got point. Hello, everyone. I'm back here with a plug from our former engineer and good buddy, Devon Torrey Bryant. You may know he makes music under the name Painkiller the pigeon and he has a new album out called Civil Temperatures. It's streaming everywhere, but you can check it out at painkillerthepidgen.bandcamp.com and by a goddamn physical disc, physical media, baby. We love it. And here we go. I'm going to play a quick song called Catriota from the album, Civil Temperatures from Painkiller the pigeon. Take it away. Did you perform the test you just described upon this suit? I did. The traces of anything still remain in those washed portions? Yes. Traces of what? Yeah, cause tell me it would never be the same. And so it was, so so it remained. This was the couple that had taken a sign. The spirit of love had drifted to the opposite side of one. In that time, one. Catch me and I'll know why. And once we were alone, there was a no on the field. In your mind is blind, the books feel afraid. And so it was, so so it remained. Cause it passed in your mind, but you made me try. I crossed into the circles on the other side of the line. Catch me and I'll know why. In your mind is blind, the books feel afraid. Coffee, sugar, cream and blood. Thank you. That was a hate 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Are we going to cry? Yes. A little bit. A lot. A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man. That was us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify. New episodes every Tuesday.