When Is the Next 3D Mario Coming Out? - NVC 796

This week on Nintendo Voice Chat, we're talking about when we expect the next 3D Mario from Nintendo, plus we're celebrating 20 years of Nintendo Voice Chat, and VC starts right now. You swiss student Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of January 21st, 2026, I'm your host Logan Plant, joined by Seth Macy. What up? Rebecca Valentine. Howdy, howdy, howdy. And Brian Altano. I don't have either. What up, or howdy's, but hello, hi. Well, we've all returned in HD this week for a really fantastic show. We are going to talk about where is the next 3D Mario. We're going to talk about Final Fantasy VII Remake Integrate out now on Switch 2. Donkey Kong Country returns HD's brand new Switch 2 update, which is just hilarious to me. And finally, we're going to celebrate 20 years of this very podcast, Nintendo Voice Chat. It's our 20th anniversary this week, which is just bonkers. We have a really fun segment planned at the end of the show with fan emails. We're going to look back at where was Nintendo 20 years ago, and a lot more. So if you've been here all 20 years, or if this is like your second episode, because you're watching the new video version available now on Spotify, we're really excited to have you here. Let's talk about 3D Mario, though, because two weeks ago, we did our Nintendo and 2026 predictions episode. And not once did 3D Mario come up, and some of you let us know about that. I think this has been the biggest thing people are talking about wanting this year from Nintendo, because it's been so dang long since Super Mario Odyssey in 2017. So I think we should dedicate kind of a whole segment to when is the next 3D Mario coming out. And first, we're going to build the case for a reveal this year, then against a reveal this year, because I think there's pretty good evidence on both sides. And then we'll kind of pick a side on what we think. So the case for a 3D Mario getting revealed in 2026, who wants to jump in. I think the strongest evidence is less hard evidence and more just to vibe, but it's time for one, right? Like that's kind of the main argument everybody uses. That the last 3D Mario we had, the Super Mario Odyssey in 2017. No one stepping into stop me, so that must be right. Yep, because that was the year the switch launched, yep. And we have not had one since. There was not a second 3D Mario on the switch, which I didn't have to be, but there wasn't. I would say there was not like meaningful big DLC for Super Mario Odyssey. I mean, there were obviously some post game updates, but nothing like massive. And we haven't had a 3D Mario on Switch 2 yet. In fact, we have not had a dedicated Mario game on Switch 2 yet. Our last big Mario game was Super Mario Brothers Wonder, which was delightful, but it was a couple years ago now, right? Yeah, it was 24. 2023. 23? Yeah. Gosh, what is time? That doesn't make any sense at all. No. 23? Okay. Yeah, it's been a while. Wow, but yeah, so it's just about time, right? Nintendo tends to try to space things out. Like normal developers do, right? You don't want to release a bunch of things that are the same in a short window of time. You want to kind of sprinkle things in. And so it just makes sense, right? And that's the argument I think most people use and the argument that makes the most sense. I don't think that necessarily narrows it down to, it must be this year. But I do think we've been predicting it for a couple years running. A 3D Mario was going to be soon. We ended up getting Donkey Kong last year as our big sort of 3D curveball. Mash, curveball game. And Donkey Kong was fantastic, but you know, Mario is a different guy. And we love Mario. And so I think there's a little bit of wishful thinking, but I don't think it's a wrong wishful thinking necessarily. He used to be Donkey Kong's enemy. That's true. They go along. But that was cranky Kong, right? That's the case in your, sorry, these family views. Yeah. Yeah, before anyone comments, yeah, we got Bowser's Fury on Switch, but that is also not super meaningful. And that was made by NST up in Redmond, the Mario versus Donkey Kong team. So that was not really a proper 3D Mario from the 3D Mario team or anyone in Japan. That was kind of an externally handled thing. Well, to piggyback on that, is it for or against to say that like I think my expectation this year is that we do get a Bowser's Fury shape thing for Super Mario Odyssey as a holdover until the main one comes out, right? Oh. I know it's not the best prediction in the world if you want a brand new 3D Mario game this year, but like they've been doing, you know, everything from like small to meaningful updates to some of their biggest Switch 1 games to kind of get that Switch 2 logo back in the box and, you know, get people to revisit these classics or play them again for the first time, you know, go out and buy them for 70 bucks. They're doing with wonder, right? Which we just we just talked about. It's getting, you know, inventures and baby bell cheese or whatever it's called. I'm not even going to chime in. That's too good. That's too good. I know Logan's the only one that can name all of these expansions perfectly off the top of his head. To be up in Bellabell Park. I was so close to being Bellabell Park. That's what we got at college. You know the little the little cheeses with the wax on them yet. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're great. They're coming in a little fish and they're great. I don't remember anything else, but I will remember that. So yeah, maybe we'll get an inventures and baby bell cheese, but for Odyssey, right? And it'll hopefully, like I feel like the thing is with Odyssey, it always felt a little bit of a letdown that we didn't get anything like that. Because that was a game that was built by design, where you have this character who gets into this flying cap and can go anywhere. And you don't really need a narrative excuse for it, right? Like you can just build new worlds and sell me them. And I will go explore them and 100% them and tell everyone to do the same. And so I feel like, and maybe that's just me sort of like lowering the bar from my expectations. So when I inevitably am let down, it's not that much of a fall. Oh, right. Yeah. But I wouldn't be against that because I think that like Odyssey is one of the best platformers ever made. I love it so much. And I want to be back in that world with those mechanics, with Capi doing a bunch of crazy new stuff and exploring new areas. And like it's, I don't know if they need to totally reinvent the wheel for the sequel. I know for every new 3D Mario, it feels like that's something that is kind of a requirement for them, right? Like all of them, it feels like there's, aside from Galaxy, which is, I would say the only one that like truly just kind of like iterated and expanded on the previous installment, all of them feel like they need this new hook. And that hook, you know, whether it's, you know, flood in sunshine or, you know, a galaxy's whole, you know, orbital system gravity thing or Capi, like there's, there's something there. And while they dig that up and figure out what the next thing is, I will take more Odyssey. If it's meaningful and it's large enough and it's, you know, something in between a full-fledged game and Bowser's theory, something that you can beat in five, 10 hours. I hadn't considered that as a possibility, Brian, but I actually, I think that's not, and that's not a wild prediction like that. That is, is a future possibility I could see. I think I'd be a little bummed out if that happened. Sort of in the same way that I'm like, very excited. We talked last week about the Animal Crossing update. I like the Animal Crossing update. Also, I have the sinking feeling in my heart that it means we won't be getting a new Animal Crossing for another couple years. So I think I'd feel probably the same way about a big Mario Odyssey update, but also I'm sure it would be extremely fun. So. Yeah, it'd be interesting because it would be the first time they have on Switch 2, they've released DLC for a game they already gave a free Switch 2 update for it. We haven't seen them do that yet. It doesn't mean that they won't. It's still very early in the generation. I think more Odyssey would be really, really cool too. Oh, yeah. What better way to start that trend than with Mario Odyssey, one of the greatest games of all time that I was just realizing. I haven't played that since like it came out and I spent whatever like October through December just devouring every inch of that game and I'm probably, I'm probably gonna have to revisit it, especially with the free upgrade. But here's my theory. Of course, we're getting a 3D Mario. They're putting out their Mario movie. They were going to do a marketing blast and it's just going to be Mario all day every day and we're going to get a new Mario or equally likely we're going to get something that none of us asked for and we are very upset about this. It could go either way. We're going to get the next best game of all time or something that none of us wanted. Why do we have to be upset about it? Why can it be a good surprise? It's kind of like... Yeah, why it's... Okay, so like Mario Super Mario 3D All-Stars is just a repackage of three great Super Mario games and then they released the Mario Galaxy Collection, which they already released one of the games and then they charged $70 for it and not, not, not ideal, not great. And I think that there's, there's room and precedent for something like that to happen again. I don't know. They're going to do a collection that's just like Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, just the Bowser Spiri sections of Bowser Spiri and then like Super Mario Odyssey. They're going to say something like it's going to be in a direct and they're going to go a 3D Mario experience that's never been on a home console before and you were like, oh my God, what could it be? And it'll be Super Mario 64 DS. That was, that is my prediction. It will be coming to Switch 2 for $78. I thought you were at least going to say 3D Land, but then you said 64 DS. That's what it's doing. That's what it's doing. That's what it's doing. I wouldn't be against playing either of those on Switch 2, frankly. I think they're, I mean, 64 DS with a real control stick. Yes, I don't know. I'm for, I mean, like this, this is the the 3D Mario collection and the Galaxy double pack. I wouldn't say either of those like annoyed me. They were, I mean, I guess I was a little bewildered and you know, it stung a little having to buy Super Mario Galaxy twice, but ultimately like you didn't have to. They sold them separately. They bought 10. They forced them at 8. It's like they forced you to buy the virtual boy. Yep. Yeah, it was. They were some burly men in Nintendo Switch outside my house, like giving stern looks. There's actually a bottomless hole inside of me that will hopefully be filled one day with Super Mario products. Yeah, I'll fill it one day. It's like, yeah, I'm glad you brought up the movie, because I think that is a big reason that people out there are kind of pointing towards is they've got this movie. They're going to release it. And I guess I see that and I see the hope there. And I see people think it's going to be Galaxy 3. And maybe I don't know if we're ready to move on to the why we don't think that this could happen this year. I feel like Nintendo released the double pack last year of Galaxy 1 and 2 as the the crossover product with the movie. I don't think people think oh, they have the movie. They need to build to a new 3D Mario. That is the opposite way in my opinion of how Nintendo is thinking about this. The movie is a much larger deal than any game that comes out this year. We'll be millions more people will see the Mario movie than we'll play the next big 3D Mario game. It's nice if these things happen to line. What did you say, Rob? Sadly true. Yeah, that is sadly true. Like, yeah, for us for people that are deeply into this, I saw the Mario movie once and I've thought about it barely since because I'm not the audience. I like the movie much more as someone who follows Nintendo's strategy and business than I do as an Nintendo fan in my 20s personally. But it's going to be huge. The Galaxy movie is the biggest thing Nintendo will have this year. And so I think I look at it and I look at the first Mario movie a few years ago. They had wonder that year, but wonder wasn't even announced when the movie came out. They just kind of happened to line up that way. Nintendo released Galaxy 1 and 2. They're releasing a Mibo like the day before the movie comes out. They're going to release the Mario Wonder plus meetup at Baby Villageies and they're adding Rosalina to that game also. So it's like you like Rosalina. Play Galaxy 1 and 2. Play Mario Wonder. Switch to addition with Rosalina. She's playable in 3D world. It's like Nintendo views a sale for its game as the same. Whether that game is 7 years old or 7 days old, 60 bucks or 70 bucks is 70 bucks. So I don't think they need to have one this year because they have a movie. It's like no, they have a movie. So they're releasing some nicely timed ports around it is the way I'm looking at this. No, it's spot on. You're spot on. It actually kind of frustrates me when and no offense to Seth who I otherwise love. I love you too. When people think that especially in the way game development works now that like a movie or a TV show tie in is going to align perfectly with the video game launch. Those days are so so over. When those days were prominent, it led to some of the worst shovel where we've ever gotten in our lives. It actually made it. No, some of the worst license games you've ever played in your life. You never played Street Fighter the movie the game? Perfect example. Perfect example. Thank you. Look it up. No, if you look at the eShop charts after Super Mario movie came out. All of the games that like the big Mario games were some of the best selling games there. Why? Because that movie was subtly a commercial for Super Smash Brothers. It was subtly a commercial for Super Mario Kart. There's a kart racing scene in the movie. There's a scene where Mario fights Donkey Kong. There's a scene where there's a bunch of platforming nonsense and then all of his games just floated back up to the top because all of us are going to see that movie and did see that movie. And all of us are going to buy all of those Mario games and play them no matter what. But this movie is for people who are like, oh, they still make these games or, oh, that was fun. Or my kid wants to, you know, my kid wants to play the games now. Like this is for people outside of this, right? Like outside of this conversation, outside of the show. And not just casuals, but people who are like, I'm going to go take like if there had been like a Zootopia 2 open-world game that came out last year, like people, you know, it would have made billions of dollars because people would have been like, oh, you can do that. Cool. Like for all of us, it would be ideal, right? Like brand synergy and all that, you know, like you get the movie comes out, you come home and there's a brand new game based on the movie. Wow, how fun. But the reality is is like for most people, they're going to go like, oh, there's there's two Mario Galaxy games. I didn't know that. And they're going to play them because these games are, you know, they're 30 years old. So I think that this is why they keep updating their games to Switch 2. They want to keep bumping those things back up to the top of the list, right? So when people buy a Switch or a Switch 2 for the first time in 2026, they look in there, they look at best sellers, they look at first party games, they look, they type in Mario, right? And they get all these games and they buy them all. They're all 60, 70 bucks and Nintendo makes a bunch of money. And I think that will happen with or without a brand new game. So if it can happen without, there's no real impetus to do it. As much as it sucks for us who want a new Mario game immediately, right? Yeah. I think the other additional argument against this perhaps is that the studio, the team that typically has worked on, that worked on Odyssey just really sticking. Yes. And we would, I mean, I'm sure if we went through the list and into those studios, we could probably throw a pin point a couple that might let us know in the comments below who's developing the next Mario game. Yeah, I'm sure there's a couple who would be very viable for making a 3D Mario, but you know, it's, you know, everybody's really busy working on things. And it's sort of hard to play guesswork it who would potentially be tapped to do this in the first place. And if they do, in fact, want to bring the Mario Odyssey team back, they probably still have a couple more years of work left because they would have had to put a lot of people on Donkey Kong to get it. Yeah. Finished up. So, yeah. I mean, this is, this is an A team series for them, right? Like not, not to say that this, you know, like they've worked, Nintendo has worked with like indie devs before, like they, you know, cadence of high rule and stuff like that. Like there's, it's not without the remap possibility that they wouldn't, you know, be above collaborating with a smaller team. But I feel like for 3D Mario, and for 3D Zelda, they're like, this is our big eight, like this is our big 18 moment, right? So yeah, I don't know. They went to jail for a crime that didn't commit. Well, we were watching, like sort of be role here. I had, I had a stunning realization, like a, a Jaws dolly zoom moment of what they're going to pull this year. It is Mario's 40th anniversary. We are excited about that. So they are just going to re-release that Wii collection that was just super NES ROMs with a book in them. And that's, that's what we're going to get this year. I would actually, I would say it being the 40th anniversary, I mean, we know Nintendo is very hit or miss on whether they actually do anniversary celebration stuff or not. But I would say that being the 40th anniversary is kind of a point in favor of 3D Mario. Yeah, I agree with that. But then it gets confusing because they did their 40th anniversary direct segment last September to line up with the 40th. And they said, here's the games were celebrating, releasing to celebrate Mario's 40th. It was Galaxy. It was Yoshi in the mysterious book. It was Mario Tennis fever. It was the talking flower toy. It was meetup in Bellemail Park. It was all that. And then Miyamoto himself has said, the Galaxy movies, the main event from Mario's 40th, like I kind of feel like they're screaming at us. It's not going to happen. But they lie to us all the time. So they don't deserve all the trust because they do lie all the time. So that's why it's, it's such a difficult situation. Like, yeah, it's the 40th that makes sense. They're hiding it. Maybe DK, they want to give Benanza holiday season before they announce the next 3D Mario and people to say, I'll wait for that. But yeah, I just think they've already told us their 40th celebrations. I think people weren't that happy with them, which is why we're still crossing our fingers that it's not over yet. There's something to be said for not announcing a game. GTA 6, whenever it is delayed, Rockstar Games loses $100 trillion in stock value every time they announce that that game is delayed. It's true. And they make that back because a teenager buys a gold helicopter in GTA online. Yeah. And because for some reason, 5 million people still buy GTA 5 every single quarter. Crazy. Every quarter of this happens. Yeah, 5 million people turn 13 every quarter. I think that I'm glad you brought up Benanza because this is the one that I won't say it makes me angry, but it slightly annoys me is I feel like, are we not past the point where Nintendo needed to title that like Super Mario Odyssey 2 DK Bananza? Like they did with Yoshi's Island to tell you, hey, this is made by our A team. This is a legit triple A 3D platformer made by the best team on the planet. Hey, it started life as a gumbau with two floating fists. We were going to maybe put Mario into it, but it fits Donkey Kong way better. Like DK Bananza is a 3D Mario game. I feel like I just feel crazy when we talk about this because I'm like, I feel like that. I just got that last year. No, it wasn't Mario, but it was the same like design and creativity and joy as a 3D Mario. It was the same like evolution of that design. I you are correct. You are absolutely right. I also think and I think Nintendo recognizes this too that Donkey Kong is not their main mascot character. Mario is so at whatever point in development, somebody said, hey, actually Donkey Kong is a better fit for this game than Mario. Somebody else at Nintendo, I'm sure went, okay, that's fine. That's a Donkey Kong game now, but we're going to need to spin up something else with Mario so that we continue to have Mario front and center because he is Nintendo. I think both of those things can be true at the same time. Yeah, it's like, does it have to be 3D Mario? We got Mario Kart World. We got these ports. There's so many Mario games that come out every year. And Donkey Kong is like, people say they want new things and then Donkey Kong comes out and I feel like three weeks later, everyone's like, where's 3D Mario? And I'm like, it was right there. It just confuses me. I get what you're saying though. People want Mario. People are Mario fans. When I'm a fan of Nintendo 3D platformers, I don't care who's in it. I don't care at all who is in them if they're as good as they as a 3D Mario is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you guys are too young to remember in 1989 when everyone in America stood and made a Mario face you could see from space for the release of the Mario 3D. That's an old Super Mario 3 commercial. That's real? That's really I want to see that. It's cool. They're like, they're more excited for Mario. Yeah. And then they zoom back and everyone is has made the face of Mario on the North American continent. We all get together. The planet blows up and everyone is screaming. It's horrific. No, that part sounds very real. Yeah, that part sounds very real. No, Logan, I think you're spot on. I mean, there's this, I guess nothing's ever enough, right? We're insatiable. We want more. And it's knowing that it's been this long since a new 3D Mario, I think, is what people are stuck on. And you nailed it. We got a 3D Donkey Kong made by the Super Mario team. So that's that filled that for me, at least for a while. I know it'll be ready when it's ready and when it's here, it'll be awesome. And until then, I'll play the old ones again. Are we picking a side? Is that what we're doing? Sure. Yeah. Let's pick a side. Does it get revealed this year? Not necessarily long. It's just a good field, but does Nintendo reveal a 3D Mario in 2026? 100% yes, fourth quarter, when all their big games have been, you know, they're last a direct of the year. One more thing we've got, you know, a new 3D Mario coming out next year and we're all going to freak out. And yeah, it's going to be amazing. Or no, excuse me, they will announce it. I don't think they'll tell us when it's coming out. And I don't know if it will be next year. Okay. See, I feel the opposite way. I have two feelings. I think that if it is announced this year, it's out this year. I don't think they announced one for next year or future years. I think it's either one or the other. However, I'm going to I'm going to weirdly and annoyingly not take a side because I think ultimately we don't have enough information to fall one way or the other on this. When does that stop anyone from reality? Is it the decisions that go into like what games they're going to develop and what their portfolio is going to be like? Like Nintendo especially, I think even more so than any other AAA development publisher or whatever. Like really quite inscrutable. I mean, some things they do make a lot of sense. Some things they do make absolutely no sense. We have no idea what their teams are working on behind the scenes. We don't know like how long it's taking. They could be working on a 3D Mario that's been delayed all to heck. They could be just starting working on one now. They could have decided that 3D Mario isn't worth their time anymore. Like we genuinely do not know. And there are so many like little miniscule factors that go into these decisions that are not oh the vibes are right or oh our our Mario team is making Donkey Kong. Therefore they can't do this. Like like those things are part of it, but they're not ultimately the main factors that they use to make these kinds of decisions. I think ultimately Nintendo is the sort of company that they're not going to make a new 3D Mario if somebody doesn't have a really really dang good idea for one. And we can't predict if anybody in there has a really really dang good idea for one. I think they're always trying to find good ideas and the odds of them getting one are probably better than not. But we just don't know. And so I feel like I just can't come down one way or the other. Every time I hear someone make an argument I'm like oh that's a good point. That's a good point. That's a good point. I just I don't know. I hope we get one. I hope but I just hope we just get more good games. I don't know. That's a really boring take. I'm sorry. No I think it's but I was actually going to say I completely agree with what you just said about if they were to announce it this year it would release this year. Right. Like I feel like they they've you know tears of the kingdom aside. In the last few years have kind of backed away from announcing stuff too early or at least I will say like they've gotten better about revealing games when they're closer to their release dates. We didn't know about Donkey Kong, but Anza until the Switch to reveal day. Logan and I went from not knowing what that game was to playing it to being in love with it to a couple months later putting you know 70 80 or if you're Logan 400 hours. And so I feel like with Mario it would it would follow a similar pattern. So I totally agree with you there. I'm going to I'll go a little bit more on the no side than Reb. Although I would love to be proven wrong but I do not think we will be getting new 3D Mario this year. And I don't think though reveal when either I have a feeling that we're going to get some new content for a previous game and we're going to get the baby bell cheese for Wonder and that'll hold us over. I think there'll be new Mario Kart World stuff for sure. I think that like. Yeah you'll get that. You might even get you know a Switch to a port for Smash Brothers that has a couple new bells and whistles right maybe. I think they'll be baby bells. Yeah baby bells. They'll be like meaningful or not so meaningful updates to some of their like big bigger hit Switch One games that involve Mario. But I don't think we'll get a brand new full-fledged 3D Mario game this year. And you can if you're a YouTuber you can end the clip right there. And then you can play it right before the clip of Nintendo saying and this year will be a revealing a brand new 3D Mario game. So feel free to use all of that against me. I will happily be in your video for clicks and views because that means that all of the ridicule I get will be worth it because I'll have a new 3D Mario game to play. You got to do one of these for the thumbnail. There it is. I agree with Red that you can never guess what they're going to do but I love to try. Like if you follow me. I made a PowerPoint presentation of what I think their entire release calendar is this year. I had included things like Dr. Mario 99 and other wild guesses. So go check that out. But Dr. Mario 99. Yes. Dr. Mario 99. Shadow dropping September 17th. How sick is this. There's 99. 99. 99. 99. 99. 99. Because all chasing down one guy. I so get ready for that this September Nintendo direct the shadow drop it. But I think no, I think no, they're not going to reveal one this year. Mostly because I think Benanza was it that that being said, I don't think 3D Mario is six years away. I look at Nintendo's Tokyo team output and they work on multiple games at once. Frequently Captain Toad 3D World 3D Land like all this stuff came out within four years of each other. So I think 2028 is the year for 3D Mario. I think it's a long wait between Odyssey and that but there's so many little games in between the other weird thing we didn't bring up yet is that Koizumi, Yoshiaki Koizumi who has been credited on every 3D Mario pretty much was not credited on Benanza. It's like, well, is he working on something or he did get promoted recently into some more director role who might not be hands on with game development anymore. But I just wanted to throw that out there as a note. Maybe he is like general producer on the next 3D Mario. But even if that's the case, I think it's two years away. I think that give Benanza some time to breathe. You've got a ton of Mario products on the shelf. So I'll say no. And what I will confidently say, I'll bet the house on this, the next 3D Mario is not Galaxy 3. I will be forward to the Galaxy 3. People say they're making the Galaxy movie make Galaxy 3. They just put out Galaxy 1 and 2. Nintendo never returns to old ideas with 3D Mario. It's not time to. Let's go. It's not time to. It would be wild. No. Yeah. So I will. But that is where is the next 3D Mario? That was a lot of fun. We're going to move on though. 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That's why the Wich recommended Mobile Provider 3 years running. Switch today at La Barra.co.uk Out now on Switch 2, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Integrate, and I am playing it. I'm doing a little review update on IGN, which should be up by the end of the week. This is a really fantastic game. I'll talk specifically about the Switch 2 port in a little bit. But this is coming to an Nintendo platform for the first time. It came out in 2020 originally to PS5 later. Seth and Rob, I know you've both played it. So why is this a game that Nintendo fans should care about? Pause. One second. Pause. Nice pause. Yeah. Rob just disappeared. For those of you who are just listening to us, it was incredible. A poof of smoke, and Rob was gone. And now Rob has returned to the podcast. Wait, give me one second. I unplugged the ethernet during a previous call because I was having issues with it. And I forgot to turn it back on. So I've been doing this podcast on WiFi so far. Whoa. Literally age. I think the ethernet needs to come back. So I apologize if that's an issue. Okay. I, if there's no blips, I'm ready. Yeah, I think we're good. One of you can just pick it up from my question. Okay. Who wants to? I will start. Why should people play Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Integrate? That's all the names that are on it. Because it is something that does, I think, no. It is an excellent job of bringing back the original Final Fantasy 7 as maybe you remembered it because you played it as a kid, but also moving it forward in a way that's initially I pushed back on and I did not want to play after I found out sort of where the story goes, but I gave it a chance and it is, it is, it's beautiful. It hits all of the notes that you remember from Final Fantasy 7 when you played it back on PlayStation 1, but it's just like beautiful and the battle system is funner than I expected. I was also upset that it wasn't turn-based. I generally don't like this kind of battle system, but it works for me. And handheld is the way to play. I would say I played the majority of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, colon, Integrate on the PlayStation Portal, PlayStation Portal rather. It feels so good to play as a portable game. So if you remember Final Fantasy 7 fondly, what you do, because everyone does, except for some people who just want to be different, then you're going to want to play this game. And the fact that it's coming to Switch 2, and the fact that it even played it well on Switch 2, I played the demo at PAX West back in September and was like really pleased with how it ran and how it played. And it was a lot of fun. So yeah, if you remember this game, you'll remember the new version too. That's on the box, actually. I turned it into you. Yep. Cool. Yeah, I agree with Seth. I thought FF7 Remake was really fantastic when I played it. And I look, again, I know I'm so popular on this podcast whenever I say things like this, but I have a really hard time going back and playing older games from a very specific era of 3D games, because I find that 3D games of that certain era, they haven't always aged well. They're very kind of clunky and awkward and weird to play. And Final Fantasy 7 was one of those games that I tried to go back and play as an adult, having not played it when I was younger. And I really, really struggled with it and didn't enjoy the good things about it, because a lot of the clunkier, older, now outdated things were holding me back. I played Remake. Fantastic. I get what people love about Final Fantasy 7. I really, really enjoyed this. And also, if you're a total weirdo like me and love when people do weirdo things with games, I love the weird, crispy, metatextual nonsense they're doing with FF7, where they're questioning the very idea of what it means to remake. What is arguably one of the greatest games of all time, most famous games of all time, what it means to actually try to revisit one of the probably arguably the biggest twist in video games and questioning whether or not things should play out the exact same way every single time. What should be changed? What should not be changed? Like it's actively engaging with those themes in the text of this game. They start doing it in remake. They continue doing it in rebirth, which is the sequel that I don't, we don't have any knowledge that that's coming to swing. It is going to come. That's where Inix is softly committed to putting the entire remake trilogy on Switch. Right, there it is. That's what I was going to assume they were going to do, because if they're going to put remake on here, they're not going to just skip the rest of it. So you're probably going to be in very good hands if you want to play the whole thing. They started messing with that weird bettetxtual stuff in remake. They did even more of it in sort of like weird different ways, especially at the end of rebirth that I thought was just crazy cool. Some people don't like it. I love it. I'm so stoked to see where this trilogy ends up landing. And I didn't play it on Switch because I played it on something else earlier, but had I had the option to play it on Switch first. I absolutely would have. So let's go Final Fantasy. This was originally a PlayStation 4 game. Yeah. It's been out for a while. And we're not getting the PlayStation 4 version on Switch too. We're getting sort of middle ground. It's a 4K, but I believe 30 FPS. It's 1080p. Oh, it's 1080p. Wow. But this is, yeah, I play this Doctant handheld a little mix of both. And I'm like four or five hours in right now. And I started it Doct and the open and cut scene is a few minutes long, so I'd set my controller on the coffee table. And at the end of the cut scene, I just instinctually reached for the PS5 controller because the game looks that pretty good. I was just like, oh, wait, I'm this is on Switch. This is insane. Like this, and that's not to say it looks as good as it does on PS5 because it doesn't PS5. It is a higher resolution and it's 60 FPS if you want it to be. But this is 1080p locked 30 FPS, even in crazy combat scenarios. This is maybe the most impressed I've been with a Switch 2 port so far. I think like Cyberpunk is crazier because that game has more going on and didn't work on PS4 or Xbox One at all at launch. And so that's a bigger next gen game to scale down to Switch 2. But just in terms of visually and playing it, like you're making almost no concessions if you choose to play it here. This is better than the PS4 version on launch from 2020 and slightly worse than the PS5 version that came out a few years later. And as all of the content that ever came to the PS5 version, including the intermission episode, which is a DLC with UFEE, which is also great. Oh, that's... And it does this really cool thing where I don't remember what versions have all had this. But you know how old RPG ports will have? You can speed up to double time and you can turn on infinite health and limit breaks. Now this game just does that. See you if you've already played this and just want to replay it. You can crank everything to like double speed and always have max health and max magic and everything and just steamroll through to see all the cutscenes again. Which is cool. That's a really cool addition too. Highly recommend and if you're coming to this for the first time, what's tough is the stuff Redpintedad is the kind of the meta stuff. It so helps to know what happened in Final Fantasy VII before you play this game. Like I think it makes it so much richer. So even if you just watch like a YouTube video, I think it's worth it. You can read Awikapedia summary and I think you'll be fine. Or I think you could just exist and know what happens in Final Fantasy VII because I think it's so famous. It's like the most famous part of a video. The Lady dies. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, here's the problem. Everyone knows that. But as soon as you say it, people like, well, what about the kid who never played it before? It's going to have it ruined for him now. It's like, well, maybe he shouldn't say which lady dies. There's lots of ladies. But okay, but okay. The other box, they all love clown. Very strange. I'm not a lady, is it? Actively engaging with the fact that literally everyone in society knows she dies and that is the way things are supposed to go and that is the plot and this game making you doubt even for a moment as to whether or not that's actually going to happen is crazy good. That's such good. Oh my God. I love that. I think it's so, so bold to think. One of the greatest RPGs of all time, if not like arguably the greatest depending on who you're talking to. It's not my personal favorite, but it's up there to take that. Right, the most iconic. It's probably the best known. It's probably the best known to take that and not super duper faithfully remake it and then challenge people as to whether or not they want a faithful remake or not. Like that is so bold. Like what a controversial wonderful thing to do. I'm obsessed with it. I think it's so cool. Most of the internet was devoted back when this game came out the very early days of the internet with 97, I think is when the first came out. Most of the internet was just pages on how to bring the lady back that were all just made up things that were impossible. You know, like kill 300 whatever in a row. And you can play as Luigi also. The music attracts. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's always been one of those things that everybody just wanted so badly to believe could happen. And then I haven't beaten this game. I've been playing it like in six to eight hours spurts over the course of however long it's been since it came out on on PlayStation 5. I mean, the people who made this game haven't beaten this game. There's still a third of it left. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, remake is, I mean, it only is remaking the first like five hours of seven, but it turns it into like a 25 hour game. And it's all in the big city of Midgar. And I love that you just like exist in this city and learn more about how it works and the people. It really, really works for me. I've revisited the original of the PlayStation 1 and it definitely doesn't work as well because all those textures were made, all those environments were made for CRT, like, you know, 480 scanlines. And so you have these super crisp polygonal little guys walking around these kind of blurry, muddy little, little dioramas. And then you get in here and you're walking around the town and it's like, oh my, like this is what it felt like when you were playing it the first time. And it, yeah, super, super, I do wonder though, like how many people who would buy this game on Switch 2 haven't already played this game? Like I'm curious. I think a lot. I think this is what, yeah. Yeah. When the Switch 2, before it was even announced on this show, I said like this is the number one third party game I want them to announce for Switch 2. I think it is a huge crossover audience. And then they did. And I think it's going to be really, really successful. My very, very first exposure to anything Final Fantasy VII was the movie Advent Children. Oh, no. My very nerdy Final Fantasy obsessed friend showed it to me on a burned disc. Oh, yeah. And I loved Advent Children despite it being completely incomprehensible to me. So to me, this is just wow, they finally made a video game out of Advent Children. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I totally know what you mean. The cut seems like it looked like that too. Obviously way better. They look better than Advent Children. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, which was like the best looking thing ever when it came out. Well, look at these CG cutscenes. And now, not so hot. So, if anyone. James Woods as a character. As a full member. I only have seen that movie once. Less there from Casino. I don't remember. I do want to quickly highlight the combat system, Seth. You mentioned it. This is such a cool way to turn a turn based RPG into real time because it's like a hack and slash where you're swapping between characters. But as you're doing that, their active time battle gauges are failing. When that gauge fills, you then go into a slow down time turn based menu where you pick your spell or you pick your special ability. And then you pick it time resumes and you watch it get executed. And it's just super satisfying. Like, oh, I see that Tifa's gauge filled. You can hit a trigger to open Tifa's menu without swapping to her fully. And then you go back to being clout. It's like a perfect battle system. I love it. They built upon it and rebirth. It's just this, I love this remake so much and cannot recommend it enough. Yeah, it's really good. Well, that is the big third party release of the week. But let's talk about the big first party release of the week, which, you know, every week we wonder, is there going to be a big story that breaks? And often it doesn't. But this week we got one of the biggest stories of the year. And that is Donkey Kong Country returns as returned again with an update on Nintendo Switch 2. I was just cackling through this entire trailer. I can't, why did they do this? So this is Donkey Kong Country Returns HD. It came out last year on Switch before. It came out the day they announced the Switch 2, which was also funny. And this was the third time they released this game on Wii 3DS port in like 2014 and then this version last year. And now it's 4K on Switch 2. I laughed at it first. But this update's actually really good and fixes every issue people had with returns HD. It fixed this issue with multiplayer where if your return is a very hard game and there's lots of sections where you need to combo across enemies to cross gaps. And in two player, those enemies would die instantly. So the second player couldn't bounce on them as well. And they fixed it to what it used to be in the Wii version. Where now they stay alive for a split second giving that second player a chance to hop across to. They fixed some graphical effects that were missing like this sunset. Everybody complained about missing from a certain level in returns HD that was in the Wii version. That sunset is there now. They added a turbo attack mode where if you like to listen to your podcasts on 1.5 speed, you can now play this game on 1.5 speed. All you do that, which is really funny. And they added DixieCon as well. So this is just a really random Switch 2 update load times or way faster on Switch 2 compared to Switch 1. But it still was just really funny to see this pop out of the blue yesterday. Yeah. Wouldn't it be fun if we found out that this is where the 3D Mario team was? Well, the funny story about that because this did actually get funnier this morning. Oh, really? Right? Logan? Wait, how so? What happened this one? A little bit of, did he being raptured? Oh, yeah, yeah. Nick, this is in the NVC Slack channel. I don't know if you can grab this. But yeah, they do this really funny thing with cutscenes. Rev, you want to explain what happens? Yeah. So there's this, I have not actually played this specific Donkey Kong recently enough to remember exactly how the cutscene stuff works. But apparently they didn't put Dixie into the cutscenes, which I guess is fine. That's a lot of work. So Ditty is still in the various cutscenes before boss battles and stuff like that. But they handled it in a weird way where at the end of the cutscene, you get a brief glimpse of Donkey and Ditty Kong together. And then Ditty just like zooms off into the sky because they had to get rid of him somehow. And it's just really funny. It's really funny. It's just totally patchwork put together to add Dixie Kong into this game a year after launch. It's such a random update for them to do. Yeah. And if you haven't, but it's interesting though, because if you haven't heard of this game, one, I don't know how you've had not heard of it because it's come out four times. But like this game is still awesome. Like this is still a one of the best Nintendo 2D platformers ever made. And officially now the Switch 2 version is the definitive way to play it. I already thought it was on Switch, but now with just the little minor fixes, like this is fantastic. They made DKs for a little fuzzier, which I didn't really like. I looked in the Switch version. Now he looks like slightly better. Like it's just, yeah, somebody in Nintendo loves this game. And it's just like, yeah, I'll take that again, get it out there. Somebody wants everyone to play this game. And you should because it's awesome. I mean, this game's sold incredibly well, right? Yeah. And on Wii, it sold like almost 10 million. Yeah. So there's your answer. I'm happy for everybody who hasn't played this before for some reason or who wants to go back to it. But I was saying, I played this so long ago, like I don't, I just don't have like this strong urge to continue playing it over and over and over again. I don't know. Yeah. That's fine. I'm happy for everybody. It's just, it's like you said, Logan, it's just kind of weird and out of nowhere. Like, sure. Why not? I had gotten that this game was actually out on Switch. So thank you Nintendo for the nice little reminder. Yeah, I remember the NBC episode we did live the day that the Switch 2 was announced. The first hour of it was that. And then I tossed to a conversation about this game, like 15 year old Wii game with me and Perry because it happened the same day. And it's like the difference and importance of what happened today could not be larger in an Nintendo scale. But yeah, this game's made by retro, the Metroid Prime team. And there's a lot of similarities actually between some of the strengths of kind of the environmental storytelling of those two series. It's a very, very cool platformer where every platform has a purpose beyond just being for the main character to jump across. It's extremely cool world design. Like my top recommendation, especially now that it's a little better is with this game. By do want to say it's still a little frustrating how this is working. It's like this game now looks great on your Switch 2. Tropical freeze, it's Seek, it's superior sequel is still it's Switch 1 resolution in handheld mode. And it's like, I just, there's, it's good that this update exists, but there's so many games I would rather see updated over this one that will it ever happen? We don't know. It's a frustrating roll out to me. There's seemingly no rhyme or reason or predictability here, which is fun and also not. Right? Like at any given moment, they could be like, guess what guys? Look what we did. And you're like, oh, yeah, sure, but what about X, Y and Z? You know, like I just, it's cool that this is happening. It's, you know, it is odd that there's nothing you can really count on. It's not like it's happening every month or something like that. Like it's, yeah, there's, it's just completely unpredictable. So it's like, if you have a kid and they're like, I got to show you something I did. I'm really, I'm really excited in my room. You're like thinking that they cleaned their room and you go in there and they've alphabetized their socks. Yeah, exactly. They definitely didn't clean the room that you can count on. Yeah. Yeah. I was like in that too. It's like a stall tactic. You have this one thing you really don't want to do. It's like, I'll just, I'll just quickly add Dixie Kong to talk you gone country returns to the first and they did and it's here. And it just is, I don't know how big of an issue this is, but it's just like, man, is it going to be free? Is it going to be five bucks? Is it going to be 10? Is it going to be 20? Is it switched to addition? Is it a plus meetup in Bellevue Park? I guess it's just all over the map. And meanwhile, there's games like Smash Ultimate that haven't been touched. I think that's because there's a switch to addition coming, but still it's, it's just very bizarre. But that is returns HD. Also this is completely broken speedrunning forever because Dixie has a higher jump than Diddy Kong does. So there are now entire segments you can skip. So every record in the 16 year history of this game and it's four different versions is about to get smashed because of Dixie Kong being at it. Plus the turbo mode thing too, right? Turbo mode. That's just like a different time trial thing. Got it. Yeah, which is so weird. I played turbo mode and it seriously is like listening to a podcast on double speed. Like it is the game just, it is the same game, but it is just faster. And it's like, okay, sure. Is the audio faster? Oh, I don't, I don't think so. I just think, oh, it is. His death sound effects are faster. Yeah, but just a really funny update from Nintendo this week. Well 20 years ago this game hadn't come out four times yet. It had come out zero times. And 20 years ago this week Nintendo Voice Chat began on January 25th, 2006, the first episode of IGN's Revolution Week in Review podcast was posted. That was the original name of this show. If you don't know or remember Revolution was the code name of what would go on to become Nintendo Wii. And so IGN started its first ever podcast, which was this one. We out date all of them. We've got to be one of the longest running video game podcast out there. I don't know the exact stats on that. A Game Scoop started like six months after this one did. So it was pretty close, but this podcast dates back a little bit further. And this was the description. And Nintendo Team Editor's chat about the state of Nintendo's next generation console Revolution was hosted by Matt Casamacina and Mark Boson. It was retitled Week in Review instead of Week in Review. I have to spell that because it sounds the same. WII-K in Review after the Wii's name was revealed on April 28th, 2006. And pair confirmed to me. They didn't know the name Wii ahead of time. So it was just random luck that they got this terrible pun out of the console name Wii for Week in Review. That ran from January 2006 to March 2008. It was then renamed Nintendo Voice Chat on March 18th, 2008. And the description is very snarky. Nintendo Voice Chat podcast is the only place you'll find reliable voice support and Nintendo in the same area. So be sure to do it immediately and listen. Because of course Nintendo didn't have Voice Chat. And it took 20 years for Nintendo to have fully built in dedicated game chat on Nintendo Switch. Long after people don't use game chat anymore, so congratulations. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how many people are using that. It finally evolved to become its own dedicated button that I only pressed by accident. Yeah, more annoying than not being there at all. Nintendo Game Chat. It says underneath, nope, not the home button. Try again. So that is just kind of that's, I mean, obviously it's extremely brief history of the show. We're going to get into kind of some introspective stuff on the show. A little bit later, but I thought it'd be fun to start this by just talking about the reason the show started. And where was Nintendo 20 years ago in this lead up to the revolution, the Wii, which would change the company and gaming forever with motion controls and bringing in the casual audience. It was a huge shift. And the GameCube was struggling that DS was doing well, but we're only talking about their home console market today. They cut the price to 99 bucks for GameCube the prior year. They stopped production entirely at one point until stock ran out of the GameCube. Because they just were not moving off the shelves. But then when GameCube started to pick up in popularity, they ran out of stock and no one could get one anyway. So that bit them later. So it just was not the best generation for Nintendo. We love the GameCube. One of the most iconic libraries and has aged extremely well, but it was a failure. It did. It sold a hundred million fewer, over a hundred million fewer than the leader, which was PlayStation 2, that generation selling 21.74 million units worldwide. And this is to the point where GameReviews, for games coming out to GameCube in late 2005, were discussing how nothing was coming to this thing. This is from, I read this. This is from the Fire Emblem Path of Radiance review written by Parrish Niter, who leads off his review in 2005 saying, embrace game droughts. And he basically talks about how when Nintendo has no games to release, they'll localize everywhere Japanese thing they have, because they've got to put games out in the West. And that's why we have Fire Emblem. And it's true. That's basically what he talks about. So he had no idea what was coming. Because I did every see for years with him during the Wii U era, and we embraced the game droughts. Yes, you did. Yeah. And what was more immediately coming was the revolution, which was Nintendo's compact console that will turn the world of gaming on its side. We have a teaser trailer or an article from 2005. Nintendo showed the box and the console and the controller before they announced the name. And so Brian, take me back. Where were you in 2005 when Nintendo was revealing the revolution? I was fully on board. I wasn't working yet in the industry. I was basically just a fan watching from the outside, reading IGN every single day. And this was something that blew my mind. I mean, I remember being on message boards, hearing about the revolution and stuff like that. And it was really hard to explain just how much hype there was for this thing. Because we knew that Nintendo was about to drop this huge megaton, like nothing we'd ever experienced before. And it was actually insane the mockups for people doing at the time. People assumed this thing before. Like people got headsets around you. Yeah, people thought it was this thing you had to wear on your head. And you could see the future and all this stuff like that. And my minority report, I don't even know when that movie came out, but it was all just like, yeah, you'll be able to touch your games with your hands floating in. And it's all in your imagination. And there's a pill you take. It was insane, right? It was totally insane. And the more and more it became realistic and grounded, it was still incredibly exciting. Like when we first saw shots of like Legend of Zelda and Red Steel. Red Steel, which we thought was going to be like, like, oh my god, you can hold your gun sideways. And you can slice people with a sword. Like we thought we were like, oh, this is going to get the best Star Wars games ever. We're going to get all this cool stuff. And you know, some of that didn't really come into fruition, but a lot of that kind of blew our minds in completely different ways. Like I remember pre-ordering an Nintendo Wii, like camping out just to pre-order it. And then going the morning of to pick it up. And it was huge. It was like this, you know, I love that like they said, you know, turn gaming on its side. And it's like, oh yeah, is that because you could turn the Wii on its side? That is why they use that. That is why. Okay, that's that's so silly. But yeah, I remember the whole marketing of like, you know, we would like to play with you where these guys would come to your house and invited. And be like, let us in. And you're like, I don't know, man, my parents are in home. But I loved this thing. I thought it was, I thought it was so fascinating. And it just seems so creative. And it felt like, you know, like the thing was as a GameCube fan, a huge GameCube fan, I knew the whole time that we weren't getting the same games that the PlayStation fans were getting. And I knew it was selling significantly less, but it was so charming and it had such a like incredible library. And you know, some of my favorite games of all time, some of the best looking games, some of those creative games ever made. So I was all in on whatever they were going to do next. And at the same time, they had the Nintendo DS, right? So concurrently, there was already another successful system that was doing really cool stuff. And so all bets were kind of off, right? Because no one really predicted them to do a dual screen, touch screen handheld gaming system that, you know, let you pick the chat with people, right? And pet dogs. We didn't expect any of that. So it was the deal with Nintendo at the time was just, it is going to be a surprise. It's going to, you know, expect the unexpected. And so I loved it. Like it, and right out the gate, I think it was like, you know, we knew day one when we sat down to play Twilight Princess and Wii Sports and make your own me and, you know, and spend hours being like, no, that's not how my eyebrows look. To this, this is going to be a really fun system. We had no idea that this was going to resonate with over a hundred million people in like nursing homes, right? And like, we didn't know the same thing. Nintendo did. Yeah, Nintendo did. Nintendo did. And it's like, frankly, we should have seen it coming because like at the time I remember I had relatives that like they were playing, you know, brain agents. They were playing games on the DS that I'm like, you have a DS, like, okay, cool. You know, and so they had that whole blue ocean strategy of like reaching people, you know, I think they realized with the GameCube, there's a finite amount of people you can reach in this space or at least that's what they thought at the time. And they reached out and it worked, you know, and it was awesome. Like we knew the graphical fidelity of the system left a lot to be desired. I remember getting component cables like two weeks after the thing launched and plugging them in, expecting this big, wow moment. And didn't really get that. But ultimately I didn't care, right? Like there was so many cool games. Even when it got like pointer control resident evil four and you know, I could talk forever about how great the Wii was, how fun it was at the time. And I started at IGN in 2009. So a couple of years after NBC, you know, kicked off, I forget what was, if it was even called that by then. But yeah, it was, it was just an awesome time. I remember the first game I ever saw anyone playing in the office at IGN was a punch out on the Nintendo Wii. And I was walking in, they had a preview build of punch out. And or maybe they had gotten the review build like a week or two early. And I remember like calling my parents after that and just being like, hey, remember a punch out that game that we had like for NES that you helped me set up when I was a little kid. I went to work at my first day at the new job and my coworker was playing the new one. He's like, you know, using motion controls to punch people or whatever. And I'm like broken bar go on your first day. I did. I broke my first day. My parents were immediately put in jail by Nintendo. I used my first four PHA checks for the album. So that's really cool. Because I know you love punch outs. That's just, it must have been amazing, like, welcomed IGN moment to see that on your first day. Yeah, that and the other thing on my first day was parish-nighter teaching Jessica Chobot how to introduce the daily fix in German because they were going to games comp for the first time. And I was like, that's the reaction guy. I know. Cool. Yeah. Well, Seth, how about you, kind of from the Revolution reveal up to the launch of the Wii. What do you remember from that time? I mean, I think 2006 to 2008 might have been peak, like, video games, just like, not just for me. I think that might have been, because everything was so exciting and everything was so new and you never knew what was going to happen. And the internet coverage was like starting to be more legitimized. The magazines were starting to fade away. I was a member of the OneUp.com community shout out. And I was just kind of like, Brian, I was checking the rumors constantly, like, reading the news every day. Like, what is this thing that's coming out? Oh my God, the Revolution. It is going to be the greatest thing. The GameCube had reignited my love for Nintendo, even though I was very late to the GameCube. Because I could, like I said, I'd fallen out of love with Nintendo, but mostly Windwicker brought me back. So, yeah, I was obviously, I was not in the industry either. I was working at like a Plummer or a electrician or something, whatever it doesn't matter. And I was obsessed and I needed this thing in my life. I already had my Xbox 360, played it constantly, but I needed Nintendo's Revolution, especially when they announced like it's motion control. And like you're saying, Brian, like Red Steel, we're like, oh my God, like this is going to change everything. And there was a pretty common like talking point on podcasts of the time that we are going to get all these great hack and slash sword games. And we never really did. I can't think of a single one that came, that did like sword fighting justice, but regardless. I mean, it was a revolution because the, it was so successful that PlayStation brought out the, whatever, the little move, the move, with the little balls on the end. And then Microsoft went and made a connect at which arguably destroyed them as a console company, but still, like good for, for we, but like the, the we is just, it's so charming. I have one and I'm sad that I did a system transfer because I miss having all of the sort of things that were on there when you had been playing for a long time. I miss the WeVote's channel. I used to WeVote every day. I used to check my weather on the, on the We, like weather channel. We used to like upload our horribly low resolution photos of our children, like to an SD card and then put it in and then watch them on our, you know, quote unquote, big screen TV. It was just, it was such a cool thing. And like everybody I knew, had it including the old nursing home people. I think I've told the story before, but there's a guy who was electrician, he was, oh, he was like in his 60s. And he's like, I know you like video games. He's like, I got an Nintendo Wii and I was like, really? I was like, what games do you have? I got all the games. Tennis, all of them. There was a lot of them. No, no, no. He said, I have all the games. Tennis, bowling, boxing, he thought those were like all the games. That's what was like Wii Sports. So yeah, that's good. And like I, they played that. He and his wife, they might still be playing Wii Sports on there. We, because it was just such an iconic thing. But man, yeah, what a great system that had so many great games that I loved and that I also found myself kind of outgrowing the Wii kind of fast, if that makes sense. Especially with like, you know, I was playing Zelda and it was just like, oh my God, it's got motion controls, but then I sort of, the magic sort of faded. And then I was like, I can't, why can't I just play this with a normal control? I think that's a very common feeling among hardcore Nintendo fans in the Wii is. It was eventually, it was time to move on. Kind of quick from that. And but the bummer is like, but the games that used it were like boom blocks. Like one of my games was played. Games of the Wii era, you can't play that now. Maybe with the Joy-Con? I don't know, but man, yeah, those ones that did it well did it really well. And we'll never get back to that again. Video games will never be as exciting as they were in the period from let's say 2005 to like 2010. And that's a fact. Is that a fact? That's a fact we're never objective, a terrible fact. Brad, I think we're a little bit in the same boat from the start of the Wii as I was very young when we was coming out. My family had a purple game cube and I loved it so much and it had the first ever Mario baseball and that was like a dream come true for my family to have a Mario baseball game. I was as happy as I could be with the game cube so I was completely oblivious to any of it. All I read was Nintendo Power and I was pretty much PR so they were never gonna tell me that the game cube was struggling ever. So I loved the game cube and this is from IGN. I did a lot of reading really old IGN articles this week and after the revolution was revealed, IGN said Nintendo has taken a step in the right direction aesthetically. The revolution's simple industrial design looks more grown up and just plain cooler than its purple lunch box predecessor. Hard to disagree IGN from 2005, the game cube looks way cooler than the Wii. I love cube. Yeah. Yeah, I, and I don't know, I don't wanna be like, oh, I was older than you but I do think we were like in slightly different phases of life at this point. So I was 14 when this is going on and I have, I have like a lot of jealousy, I think Seth and Brian for your experiences because the Wii is the one Nintendo console that has just been collectively a massive blind spot for me over the years. And I know I have a slightly unusual gaming history, whenever we do these nostalgia discussions, I'm like, oh, I didn't play that in play that. I did have experiences with basically everything in Nintendo's library at different points in my life. Like I had, I played the Nintendo Entertainment System at my Latchkey program. I went back and played tons of remakes of like a bunch of the old Super Nintendo classics. My next neighbor had an N64 that I went over and played on all the time. I was like Logan, a massive lover of the game cube and played like most of the really good stuff on there. But the Wii, I was 14. My parents didn't have like tons of money to throw at video games and they weren't like anti-video game but they were just kind of like, this is not a good use of your time. So they had gotten me a Game Boy, so I had a Game Boy color and a Game Boy Advance and then I like smashed my piggy bank to buy my own Game Cube. But by the time the Wii came around, like I was 14, I didn't have a job yet, so I couldn't earn my own money. And my parents were kind of like, we're not gonna buy you a new console. What are you talking about? And I didn't really get any new systems until I was like my first year of college, I finally got a DS. So like the Wii just totally passed me by. Like it's just completely over my head. I was at the time like online and aware of what was going on because I was very cool and awesome of me moderating a golden sun fan forum at this time. Oh, that's go. I was so cool guys. So I was like aware that this was going on but my online community was mostly into handheld stuff. We were talking about golden sun. We were obsessed every time E3 came around because there were always, there was some sort of terribly compiled image rumor of a new golden sun that was not actually happening. And that was kind of where my understanding stopped. And I remember, I'm vaguely aware of this. I remember there was a thread on this forum about the revolution that I think I read. But I didn't really connect with the Wii until like a little bit in college when various people in the dorms had Wii Sports or whatever. But I never quite went back to it. And I think it's a combination of the aesthetics of this era, not super appealing to me. And so I've never seen anything that's caught my eye and been like, oh, I have to play that. But then also like I think collectively fewer classics from the Wii era have been remade or otherwise brought forward. It's harder to. It's harder to. And I think a lot of the stuff that I would have really enjoyed at the time, I think I would have gotten really into like Wii Sports and all this other, like this very movement heavy stuff. I think I would have really, really dug that. But it passed me by. It's harder than a lot of other things to go back to. And I always get a little sad when we talk about like the Wii era and this stuff. Because it's like, oh, man, I feel like I missed something really fun that I, that personally would have been very formative for me if it had hit. But you know, we play the games that we're able to play and that we're gonna play. And that's just kind of how it goes. I love the Wii U. I love the Wii U. I love her. And we all love the Wii. Yeah, show me the Venn diagram of people that had a game cube and a Wii U, but no Wii. That is a very fun, subsection of Nintendo fan. Yeah, I love it. I know that's what the problem Nintendo solved with the switch eventually is there were people who couldn't get the home console and just had the handheld or vice versa. It hasn't been a thing for a long time, but it totally was. It totally was a thing. Oh, shoot. I can't play Link Between Worlds. I don't have a 3DS. Like that was absolutely. I think back in that era. Yeah, it's why when Nintendo and Wii games are harder to bring forward, they've done it with like Skyward Sword and a few others. It's why when you get one like returns, Donkey Kong Country returns, oh, there's no motion in this. Just make it four times. Keep bringing it back. Yeah. But I think that we, what is special to me about it is just, I just love when Nintendo sets the gaming world on fire. They did it again with the switch a few decades later and are not decades a few years later. They just always do it when they're down. And when they're down and out of it, they just reinvent everything and like a lot of saying, they show the box before the controller and Mr. a lot of saying, I think you'll be surprised by the Revolution's controller. And then that's it. And then people for months are just like frothing on these message boards for more. It's very reminiscent of the Switch 2 situation. Like people are begging for answers and Nintendo talks on their own time. They've always operated this way. Eventually they reveal the controller and people are like, well, how is this gonna work? I listened to the first episode of Week in Review for the show and the guys called, whoever has, they said this, whoever is first to market with an arcade bad in cage or an arcade boxing game will win the day. And then Nintendo was first to market with that with Weeks boards. So props to you guys for calling that 20 years ago. Very cool. And then the name, which people were so angry about, the name. We keep people. So many bad jokes, bad p-puns. Yeah, it was all that. It was, yeah. I think that like once somebody explained, I think someone was like, well, you know, like Yahoo and Google, those are silly names too. And we were like, we were like, I pulled that quote. I pulled that quote. Oh, really? Yeah, this is from Aaron Kaplan, who was very prominent in the Nintendo of America back in the president of marketing. She did the show once. Yeah, and she was talking to Pear and Casamacena and they did this interview about the Wii on the day of the name reveal. And all their questions were just like, are you considering changing the name? People really don't like the name. Why don't people like the name? How did you come up? It was just people were so angry. And the answer was, I think people have to look back and let it settle in. I'm sure people felt the same way when Google was named or the iPod, Napster, Yahoo. There's a whole host of unusual names that have become a part of everyday conversation. And I think their view now is unique, which I would say is true for the Wii at this point. Yeah. I'd say too, like that was maybe one of the reason, another reason that this passed me by is because I was in high school. And maybe it was, I don't know, maybe other people had different high school experiences in my age group where the Wii was very cool, but the Wii was not cool in my high school. Nintendo was not cool at my high school. Yeah. People were playing like Xbox if they were playing anything, maybe PlayStation as well, but they were absolutely not playing Nintendo. It was just like Halo times. It was like Halo, yeah. Yes, yes, yeah. This was very much considered like a thing. Nintendo was for babies. Like, and that sucks. Like I remember being, I mean, I got, it was for babies and men. Not to get bullied, but I, or not to get real here, but I got bullied for being into Pokemon and like talking about that in the hallways. And I remember going to college and feeling like so free that there were somebody wearing a Pokemon shirt on orientation day and I'm like, oh, I can finally be into that again. Thank goodness. But yeah, I think that might have been part of it. So I'm curious, like if other people, maybe who were in high school when this came out, had a similar experience of it just not being cool. And I do remember people making fun of the name. Yeah. I mean, when I went to pick up my pre-order with my friends who were in their 20s, like we were like some of the older people there, right? Everybody else, well, I mean, there were moms older than us, but they were buying them for kids who were way younger than us. And yeah, I was, that was definitely a lot of like the conversation in the comment sections, in the forums, message boards and all that, was like, you know, this is kind of for babies, but then they, you know, launching with Twilight Princess, I think helped a lot to kind of offset that. And then, you know, stuff like Red Steel and once it got RE4, like there are a couple games in there where you're like, well, it does grown up stuff too, loser. Like, yeah, there was, you know, you could get them off the scent a little bit, but for the most part, like, yeah, this was, this was immensely popular with like casual players and families and stuff like that. But there was a lot of like really cool, like hardcore games to play on the Wii as well. Like it had a, it had a very surprising library, all things considered, because what happened was a lot of the third parties looked at this thing early on. And except for Ubisoft, I think they, they had a history of just being there no matter what, right? Yeah, with the Rabbids on Wii, we had the Rabbids. They, I think, and they published Red Steel, which again, I've mentioned that game a lot of times were a game that is not good. But I think a lot of people, a lot of publishers got caught off guard. And it took them a while to be like, oh, man, we should, this thing is printing money. We should make, we should make games for it. And then they either found out the hard way that, you know, their games wouldn't resonate or they'd get lucky and they would, because, you know, those, those grandmas who said they had every game, but they were just describing the five games in Wii Sports. It was hard to convince them was there was another game unless it was Wii Play, which was a carnival games, carnival games guy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we fit. Yeah. But also like Zumba on the Wii, but just games on the Wii, because I knew. Just dance. I knew. Yeah, in the Wii U era and beyond, I knew just sort of like at parents, the people I knew in college, like a lot of moms owned Wii's and had like the various fitness games on them. And that's what they played. Like that was a really big deal. No, my first E3 in 2009, there was a booth where these business guys were just selling a heap of just cheap trash peripherals that you shoved your Wii remote into. Oh, my God. Yeah, and you could tell none of them, it was just like, we got fishing rods. We got tennis rackets. We got bowling balls, you know, like it's a hat. It's gloves. And none of these guys played video games. They were just like trying to cash in. So like, there was, it was so weird watching all that, because this was this tremendously successful thing that was bringing in all this outside attention. And then at the same time hardcore gamers are like, it's not for me. I'm playing Halo. So yeah, it was fascinating. I remember going to a friend's house in college to play, I don't know, probably Wii Sports or something like that. I don't even know. And I remember he just brought out this massive like crate of peripherals to ask if any of us wanted to use any of them. And it's like steering wheels and all these weird shaped sticks. Multiple balance boards like sticking out. And we were all just like, no, I don't know. Yeah, nobody needs to that. I also remember using a couple of balance boards that we just had lying around the house as little steps to help a litter of kittens we were fostering, get into the living room when there were two small, the climate. That's super cute. Up until very recently, every time I would go into a thrift store, there would be at least one guitar hero controller and one we fit balance totally. And we've kind of moved past that. But I believe the last just dance for Wii was just dance 2017. Like that's just so crazy. That's wrong. Yeah, that's just how like much staying power this machine head. And we talked about how it appealed to babies and man babies, but it had no console since or before has come as close to honoring like the history of video games as the Wii and the virtual console, which had like the deepest cuts. It had games for TurboGraphics 16. It had games from Commodore 64. And they were just, I mean, it was kind of a pain because they were $800 and Nintendo bucks. So you never knew how much you were spending on their own currency for a while. Yeah. Brian, do you remember, did you get the survey before it came out like would you want to pay $5.99 a month to have access to retro games or would you rather buy them one at a time? And yeah, I said I want to buy them one at a time and they said noted. No, no, you're all that for Nintendo Switch. No, I loved buying them one at a time. Honestly, like I spent hunt, like there's that whole, there's that like that running joke, there's that video that went viral for a while. It's Nirvana, Nirvana, Nirvana. And they made up a song about like the Wii Shop Wednesdays or something. And it was like all because every week it would update with new games. And it was this really fun thing where you'd go in and you'd be like, oh, I've never played this like obscure pinball game on turbo graphics. Like Seth, you nailed it. Like that was my exposure to a lot of games that I missed growing up and also a reason to replay a lot of classics that I absolutely adored as a kid and had probably traded in the carts years ago. So I could buy stuff like the GameCube and the Nintendo Wii, right? Yeah, it was the first way that I played Super Nintendo games. I didn't have a Super Nintendo into like high school. And so on Wii, I played Super Mario RPG on virtual console and thought that was so cool. Like, oh, there's this game like Paper Mario that came out before Paper Mario. That's what it was to me at the time. It's really cool. Sorry to cut us short, but we are almost out of time. Sorry, Rob, is it free for? The last just dance for Wii was just dance 2020. 2020? That's so wild. The last game released for the Wii Retro City Rampage DX Plus and Shake Down Hawaii were released on July 9th, 2020, exclusively in Europe. Yeah, wow. Yeah. And there were like, I mean, obviously, but there were just dances coming to Wii that didn't come to Wii U. It's like you had them on Switch, you had them on Wii. And then, when it came out on Wii, it's not on Wii U. Yeah, hilarious. Yeah. And I want to move on and get some of our listener mail that people sent in to celebrate 20 years. But really quick, I just, I mentioned that my favorite thing about this is just how inspired the direction was, just from Nintendo's point of view. And how much they nailed the marketing for this as much as people doubted at the beginning. But like, there was a press release the day they announced the name that said, while the code name revolution expressed our direction, we represents the answer. We will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else. We will put more people in touch with our games and each other. But you're probably asking what does the name mean. Wii sounds like Wii, which emphasizes the console is for everyone can easily be remembered by people around the world no matter what language they speak. No confusion, just Wii. It has a distinctive eye-eye spelling that symbolizes both the controllers and the image of two people playing it together. Yeah, it's just like, they nailed it. How did they get it so wrong? Like six years later, with this success. Yeah, no confusion until we name a successor of Wii U. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's brilliant and then just awful. But incredible. Yeah, really, really cool stuff. Let's move on though to fan letters and fan art. So you emailed NBC at us to help celebrate 20 years of NBC. Some of this I pulled from last year that people sent in, sorry we haven't gotten it until now, we were covering a console launch and we didn't have time to get everything we wanted into the show. They were already too long last year. You can see this fan art on the video version, like I mentioned earlier now on Spotify. This first one comes from James and I am so obsessed with this one. James drew NBC Metroids and they're just brilliant. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, the Metroid aliens with their little brain cells spelling out NBC. I thought I'm sure. I was gonna say, I would love that on a teacher. I would love that. I love it. Me too, of teachers. Yeah. And James wrote, listening to the podcast really helped me figure out what games I needed to play as well as giving me a much deeper appreciation for the series that they come from. Thanks to your more history oriented episodes. I graduated the summer and preordered a switch to as a graduation present to myself. And I'm now patiently awaiting the release date of Prime 4. Well, James, next week we're doing a Prime 4 spoiler cast with me, Brian and Paris. So hopefully you've finished it. You can come on back for that. Awesome, Mark. This next one comes from Dylan who says, big fan of the show for the past six years or so, make my work days go by quicker. I put this design together in honor of DK's new design showing off in those short clips of Mario Kart World footage. I'm also a big fan of 90s Honda's. And so I thought it'd be fun to make him drive a late 90s Civic, the EK show. That's so cool. That's another show. I love it. Yeah, it's great. I want this on a short tube. Yes, you guys are awesome. This is giving me like old school Nintendo power or totally vibes. Yeah, envelope art. And then our last art for today comes from Tim in Melbourne, Australia, who has been listening since the very beginning of NBC. And Tim's kid has just recently started drawing video games nonstop. He's eight years old and has a switch light. As a retro fan, Tim is proud to say he spends a lot of time on the NSO apps and Tim writes as much as we all play the big Nintendo franchises together. Our house is very Sega-coded. So it wasn't long before he dove into the Mega Drive app and became obsessed with Sonic 2. I bought him Sonic Origins and he's playing every game as Amy, which is another thing that would have made my 90s brain explode. Never mind that it's on an Nintendo console. He made me this artwork of a zone he'd come up with for Sonic. So he can see it. He's got an act doom. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I love this. It's cute. So this is genuinely making me tear up a little bit. That's really, really cool. This is so special. I encourage this behavior forever because this rules. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you so much for emailing all the art. Sorry, we couldn't get to all of it. There's more in the inbox. I'd like to show it on future shows. And if you have some fan art that you or your kid or anyone drew, well, not anyone don't steal from someone on mine. You can even find us at ign.com. And we'll show it off on the podcast. And now I want to get into some fan letters that people emailed to nbcadign.com in celebration of 20 years since the first episode of We Can Review. I edited some of these down a bit. But I did read every word you all emailed in. And again, I'm sorry we can't read all of them. It was a ton that came in. So thank you so much. We really appreciate all of them. Now, this first one comes from Charlie Gadson, who says, I was in high school when the show started. And I remember downloading it every week to burn to CDs since I didn't have an empty free player. I thought it was so cool that I could actually hear the editor's voices who wrote so many articles, previews, and reviews I enjoyed. Charlie also writes IGN live 2024 was really fun. I was able to meet Seth Macy, who was so kind. We chatted about flight simulator. Oh, yeah, I remember that dude. Yeah. And I also passed Logan Plant in the hallway, but I chickened out and ultimately didn't say hi. No, it's not the next time. Say hi next time, Charlie. Here's to 20 more years. Next one is from Jeff Paul, who says, been a fan of IGN since n64.com. I've listened to NBC since the beginning. And Jeff highlighted Brian struggling through Jose's ghost mansion on Super Mario Maker. Brian, I'm sure you remember that. I do. Yeah, so Jose and I did a let's play of Mario Maker, where we took turns creating just increasingly psychotic levels for each other. He made one that just drove me completely out of my mind. And it's so much fun. Yeah, people brought that one up for years, because it's just that it was one of those things where I was just completely genuinely surprised. Like I was totally caught off guard. He absolutely kicked my butt. I love doing NBC with Jose through the Wii U era. And Mario Maker was one of the highlights. So yeah, thank you for remembering that. That was so great. And I mean, I was watching at the time. And I still remember the death trap level you made in retaliation. It was similarly evil and hilarious. Yeah. And Jeff says, NBC reminds us that games are the most fun when you have people to share it with. Thank you, Jeff. That's very true. Another Jeff wrote in from Jeff Shinsky, I think. Sorry if I pronounced that wrong. My favorite moment of NBC is hands down episode 663 when Seth Macy taped a blowtorch to a broom as an example of real life fusion for tears of the kingdom. Seth, do you remember this? I did not remember this at all until we started talking about it. And I'm about 80% certain that that broom and blowtorch are still taped together in the corner. That's all of the basement somewhere. Because yeah, yeah, I completely forgot about, which is weird. Something you don't generally forget combining two things. Like that. Interesting. And then Richard Sherman writes in and says, I started listening at the end of 2014. I have fun memories of listening to Brian Jose and Parr talk about their crazy amoebo obsession during dark Wii U times while I drove back in fourth from college. A lot has changed since then. I've gotten married, got a job and had kids all along. NBC has been there and has been a great comfort and joy to listen to. Congratulations on 20 years and years to 20 more. I'll never forget having like a mental health crisis at 6.30 in the morning and a target parking lot, waiting to go in the season later. Rosalina for me, Bo. And just being like, what am I doing with my life? I'm like, can you go get out of here? Like go do literally anything else. The mebo stuff genuinely made us crazy for a while. It was very fun. And luckily I stopped buying them and unfortunately, Parr kept buying them. So check in on him. Check in. I did too. And I've said it before I'll say it again. It's your fault that I have. Absolutely. OK, the next one comes from last one we're going to read comes from LaFloick, who says, your voices are always a breath of fresh air while I walk colette. My eight year old corgi, we have a picture. Yes. A bullet. No. Beautiful. Yeah. I changed stock of the year. Perfect picture. Stock of the year. Yeah, the doodody. Or a warming presence when I walk a negative 30 degrees Celsius. No. Oh my gosh. Awful. That we can help during that. And LaFloick says cheers to you, the ones that went on to other things, and the ones that will become part of this great show, which I think is beautiful. I think that sums up exactly what I think is very cool about this show. Yeah. So that is all the emails we're going to read. Thank you so much to everyone who wrote into NBC at IGN.com. We have about five or six minutes left here. And I wanted to talk about our first memories with NBC, whether it's a listener or a host, whatever comes to your mind over 20 years, Seth, I'll start with you. I came to this podcast when oneup.com shut down. I only listened to oneup.com podcasts. I did not know that there were other video game podcasts. So I found this one. I found the game spider briefings, which is how I found Brian Altano, because I had a man crush on Anthony Geigos, and I just followed him wherever he would go on his podcasts. But I would say that my favorite NBC moment ever, and somebody liked it so much, they animated it, is Brian, you're talking about your skeleton horse in Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. There's a really amazing YouTube animated short that somebody made of that story. And it's just so funny, and the animation is so good. And Jose is just being Jose. He's laughing along and just having a good time. And you're just Brian Altano. If you can find that, I thought you could bring a skeleton horse back to the staple. And if you do, everyone gets freaked out. But then the sun comes up in the morning, and it explodes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, go dig that video up. It's very fun. Rob, how about you? I came here. I'm actually coming up on my five-year anniversary with my gene. Great. I'll jump. And prior to being here, I was doing business reporting. And coming in here, the expectation was I was going to be doing pretty serious reporting as well, which still mostly do. And when I was doing, when I was before, in my previous job, I was on a regular podcast for work, but I also had the ability to be on a lot of other little small podcasts just for fun and goofs and talk about video games. And I needed to stop doing that, just to stop spreading myself so thin when I came to IGN. So I was feeling a little down because I spent, I love my job. But I was spending eight hours a day just writing about very serious, often quite sad things, because this industry can be a bummer. And I was really missing podcasting. And I can't remember who I voiced that to. I voiced that to someone. And so they started inviting me on NBC every so often, because Nintendo is primarily my system and my love, my video game, Love of Choice. And I remember really, really loving it and having a wonderful time and quietly wanting to be on more and not knowing how to voice that. And I just have a deep love and loyalty in my heart for both Seth and Brian, because both of you guys sort of sort of sussed out that I really wanted to do this. And it meant a lot to me. And you guys really advocated for me to start coming on more often, especially when my schedule is really tricky and not always conducive to recording. So I'm always going to be grateful to you guys for that, because now I'm on basically every week. And this is honestly that highlight of my week. I love this show. I love the audience. And I love when Red Riegos brought Shigeru Miyamoto on for our Christmas episode. So that's a very special one. It's one of my favorite ones. So yeah, I think this place is pretty great. We will always fight for your rule. Yeah. How about you, Brian? I mean, it's I've been on so many eras that this feels like a cop out. But I'm truly grateful to be part of all of them. Nintendo has been so, and my love for Nintendo is so deeply ingrained as into who I am as a person. And getting to talk about it every week or every other week or whenever I can make the time or beyond, it is regularly the highlight. And getting to watch Nintendo and their games, kind of ebb and flow in the zeitgeist and take big creative swings and talk about those things with like-minded people is one of the greatest experiences in the world. It's one of those things that if it ever goes away, I will be fighting to find some version of it somehow. But I will say that I think the most sort of, and I've mentioned this before, I can't believe this is happening moment, was Logan and I covering this switch to launch and it being like 130 in the morning and us being just completely delirious and being like we've got these like six AM and bargos and we're interviewing, you know, the- You'll turn it around like nine AM? Yeah, I'll turn it around and the hardware devs at nine o'clock in the morning and we're just delirious and it was cold and it was, you know, it was- Can I chime in on that real quick? Yes, it was a story. I don't know if you remember this moment that I've never shared from that, which was, we were finally leaving our headquarters and we hadn't eaten and we hadn't written our previews yet and it's like midnight and we're just, it's one of the worst I've ever felt physically in my life. It was just horrible. And Ryan, you're like, I can't even think right now. I don't know how we're gonna write this. And I said, hey, when you're delirious, that's when you do your best work. And we're in the elevator and as I'm saying that, I am mashing a button and I'm like, why isn't it closing and I look and I'm mashing the open elevator button and then we just collapse on the floor, laughing because we're just so toast. I don't know how the hell we got the previous dawn, but I'll never forget that moment. That was the best, that was the best. So here's to many, many more. Yeah, elevators that don't need to be open. That's great. Yeah, I really like what our last email said because I remember years ago, Brian, likened NBC to a baseball team and I think that remains the perfect analogy that players and coaches come and go but kind of the mission and the legacy remains the same. And I as host, I take that super seriously. Like this is the your show and I'm talking to the listeners. Like you've all been listening to this way longer than we've been on it. And I think that's really, really cool. And that is that's a responsibility that I really like taking on is to kind of usher in this era of the show. And obviously I've been there too. Like I started listening in 2013. Jose's first episode hosting was the first episode I ever listened to and NBC has been a part of my week every week for 13 years. And it's incredibly important to me. I went to college for journalism because I wanted to do this show. And I can't believe that I'm here and I'm super grateful to everyone along the way. Like Brian, you mentioned seeing pair on your first day at IGN of being Star Strike. Man, that was me with you when I was at the IGN office and I saw you in Max walk in and I don't know if you were gonna recognize me and you're like, oh Logan and you gave me a hug. I'm like, oh my God, like that's crazy. And then yeah, that was, and now you're like one of my best friends here and it's just been amazing. And I'm super grateful for all of them. And we love you Logan. We love you Logan. Love you too. And I love our community and I really love putting the show together every week because I do think about walking the dog or big life changes in this show being a moment of comfort in all of that because I've been there and I know that and I get that things like this can provide that sensibility and I think that's really cool. And we love doing it every week and we're gonna do it for 20 more years. But that is 20 years of Nintendo Voice Chat in the books we're here every Friday with audio on your favorite podcast app and a video on the IGN Games channel on YouTube. If you like the show, please tell a friend or leave us a review rating or nice comments or every year listening. Let's keep this going for 20 more next week. We're following up our Metroid Prime Trilogy Retrospective with a Metroid Prime 4 beyond spoiler cast. Brian will be back, Parallel be here and we will talk about everything in Prime 4 and discuss where the Metroid series should go from here. Thank you so much Seth, Rob Brian, anyone who's been on NBC over the years, they could nick for work in behind the scenes this week and thank you so much for listening. But for now that is all the time I've got, I got it back to reading Revolution Rumors on IGN. Have a great week, we'll be back next time with more Nintendo Voice Chat. The only place you'll find reliable voice support and Nintendo in the same area and of course the only place you can. Get the thing. 20 years of things.