It’s Time for Zelda to Say Goodbye to the Breath of the Wild Era - NVC 800

This week on Nintendo Voice Chat, it's the Legend of Zelda's 40th anniversary, so we're talking about where the series should go next. Plus, we've got Virtual Boy. NBC starts right now. You've switched to episode 800 of Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of February 20th, 2026. I'm your host, Logan Plant. joined this week by an awesome panel, Seth Macy. Oh, you're a little too far away. Let me use my opera glasses to see. I think three of the four of us can hold this beautiful piece of hardware up right now. Yeah, we've got the virtual boy. We're virtually here. 75% bad decisions on this podcast. It's in the other room. I can go get it. We can restart the podcast. Oh, 100% bad decisions. That's right, Valentine. No, I did not. This is not me. My partner did this. I look, that's too much extra plastic to be hauling around every time I want to play a video game. It's so great. We're so excited to talk about the Virtual Boy with Sam Claiborne, who's back on NBC. Hey, Sam. I also think that means that's 4% of all total Virtual Boy sales. I think so. Yeah, I will never get numbers for these. They don't share numbers for stuff like this. But I still want to know if this is going to outsell the original Virtual Boy because it has a real shot. sell. I think it did. I mean, it sold out originally. And it was not available. How much was Virtual Boy? I was like, well, we need to keep introducing you guys. No, we're done. We're in. We're in it now. It was $750,000. Okay. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So we do have a number. We have a number on the original. The original was about three quarters of a million. We might be able to get Serkana numbers for the U.S. at least. And then maybe we could... I don't know if we can get Japanese numbers, but it's possible that just those two alone will outpace it. Who knows? I don't know. I was absolutely an early adopter. I got it probably at launch, or at least the Christmas of launch. What games came out at launch on Virtual Boy? Okay, we were going to talk about Zelda first. We're switching and we're in it now. We're talking about Virtual Boy right now. We'll get to Zelda's 40th anniversary later. Virtual Boy's here, and it's awesome. And Sam, that's why you're here, because you have the entire physical lineup of the original Virtual Boy, is that right? Yeah, I don't have some of the... I found some new Japanese games. These are two of the launch games that I got at launch. This was actually from when I got it at launch. This is the Japanese version of Tennis. And then Mario Clash. Mario Clash is a kind of a super... a pre-Super Mario Bros. Mario Bros. remake, where you go into the background and go through pipes. There was golf, and there was a few other things. Intelliro Boxer. Those games were all kind of around at launch, and then there wasn't really another wave, right? there's like a few here are there things but like really those like 10 games tetris and stuff like that everybody's playing right now everybody on earth is playing right now we're we're kind of the launch lineup but they did put up clash or tennis which i've kind of surprised so far so there's some room to put out stuff my favorite game at the time and you will not believe this was this one this is water world oh my god yes water world uh it is a arcade like game where you're circled a bunch of like Mode 7 rotated boats and you just, it's completely silly. And a lot of the Virtual Boy games were arcade-likes. Like even the one that was ported for the first time to America, what's it called, the Hotel Innsbruck, or whatever, that one is kind of an arcade game that's like a Doom-like or a Shadowgate-like that they shortened because they wanted your face out of there. They didn't want you in that thing a whole lot. So, you know, Wario wario land is kind of the exception to that but a lot of the other games have short compact modes even golf play one hole at a time now even wario land has the 20 minute timer on all the levels and then it does the automatic pause in between all of them it's like get out of here that's what that's what would have been what that was for now so i also want to like put into context like and i can get into a lot more about how great this is and why it exists and why it shouldn't exist but at the time 3d was such a big deal like there were very few 3d games in existence there was there was games like starbox right and there was the playstation that was doing stuff and then vr was the cherry on top of that so this game didn't just do vr which was really limited to movies like lawnmower man and uh and mall experiences where you'd get in a a very framey virtual reality booth for like $10, you know, for five minutes. So people didn't have those experiences very often. So 3D in VR was, it's even rare in the Virtual Boy. I think, you know, Tetris does it pretty well and golf does it really well. Showing like a 3D space, it was very, very cool just to sit there and stare at that time. This is my one contribution to this conversation. I remember, you've just unlocked a memory for me. I remember being a child and being really into this TV show called VR Troopers. Does anybody remember that? And I don't I couldn't tell you a single fact about that show now. But I except for the fact that I remember the idea of VR was so cool. Like just the idea that you could put on this thing and be in this like virtual world or whatever. Like that was so sick, dude. The early 90s, like VR was sort of like I don't want to say a fad because the technology was. nowhere in here but it was such a like a pop like a pop culture thing like this was going to be the future you're going to put on a headset you're going to like walk around in these virtual worlds and then they would show like you know these 700 pound from the power rangers people like yeah oh my gosh this is so cool they just put vr on everything and it was there's a scene in hackers the great oscar-winning movie hackers where fisher stevens is like wearing a a personal virtual reality but yeah virtual reality was a sort of it's so weird because it never it still really hasn't hit what we it's still not as good as we were sold in the fantasies and stuff like in vr troopers as we just saw they just put on like these sort of like like visor kinds of things and then they really peaked with virtual boy it's been downhill and everything is is vr and and your whole world is just transformed. And, you know, still, you know, virtual boy, whatever that is aside, you know, you can, VR is still this sort of vaguely clunky thing where you have to put on a hat and sit in your living room with enough clearance not to knock over your furniture. And, I mean, you can argue that there are certain headsets that are doing better versions of that, but it does all ultimately boil down to the same kind of limited experience. It totally does. And we, the 90s was saturated in Star Trek, The Next Generation's Holodeck, and The Matrix, which is definitely a VR experience, which are going beyond the thing on your face. And I think Virtual Boy kind of set virtual reality back for things on your face. I think people were kind of looking a little bit further ahead that we haven't gotten there yet. But it was kind of a tough sell, I think, when Oculus was first around. And honestly, the sickening effects are different than the Virtual Boy because it's so static and you don't move around a lot. Nintendo probably thought about that a little bit, plus it couldn't handle it. You're doing those kind of scene shifts instead of actually moving around in 3D space, which was Oculus' early pukey problem. Is there a technical, official technical reason why it's red? Because I have a theory. Oh, dude, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. So, the Virtual Boy, I really recommend people watch the slow-mo guys, I think that's what they're called, but video on Virtual Boy. So what the Virtual Boy actually is, is it is not a pair of screens. It is a pair of two LED strips. And LED strips at the time could come in white and red. I mean, they weren't all over the place. This is a very, very tiny LED strip. I mean, it's from top to bottom, like 100 lights that flicker on and off. So how does that become a picture? Well, it becomes a picture the same way a CRT television becomes a picture. CRT television draws you a line like this. It's going back and forth like this. But your eye does not see that drawing happen. It puts together every single line that's drawn, and you see a static square. This is doing the same thing vertically. It's flashing basically a microsecond of a pattern. And there's two mirrors inside the Virtual Boy that are flickering back and forth like this. and stretching your eyeballs across that strip of LEDs. So why is it red? Because cheap LEDs, you know, came in that. And then there's a red filter on it to kind of get you to not see the flickering. There's like two red lenses to get you to not see the flickering mirrors. And it's just kind of getting you a contrast of those LEDs. So it's also really sharp on the Virtual Boy when you look into it because those LED lights are extremely tiny. They're surface mounted, you know, on a circuit board. There's no screen inside. Wow. So you're seeing that thing stretch with light across your eyeballs. So what does this do? It's doing – when you turn on your Switch 2 screen, it's very tiny on it because it's taking advantage of the size of the pixel on the Switch and Switch 2 to emulate a single – what it would look like when you stretch those single LEDs out to pixels. And I will say right here, it does an exceedingly good job of it. Like it beyond it. It's so good at making a bad system return to form that I question my whole, you know, existence of buying old arcade machines to get the real experience. Like it is so much like the virtual boy. And I, I mean, I can pop right back and forth between them. You know, the virtual boy is a little bit dimmer, but you can dim the switch too. It's a little bit, if you had to like analyze the line width, it's a little bit thinner, like almost like a vector arcade game when it's emulated it's not quite quite as thick but it is unreal how close it is that yeah i'm i've never played the original virtual boy that's really cool to hear your experience as a original virtual boy super fan but i am over the moon with this thing i think it is so ridiculously great and it showed up uh to my house three days before the games actually came to switch online i got mine a little early from nintendo and i played breath of the wild in red and black vr it'll look terrible it was so bad i'm like oh this thing's gonna be awful and then the actual virtual boy games roll in when the library launches and it's just it's so fun to play games that were actually built for this ridiculous exactly when you turns out when you play the games built for the hardware it's it can be a magical matchup and you really need the hardware for it that's why i don't think the cardboard thing is a very good idea so a couple other things about this piece of equipment the stand and the ocular uh foam thing are are are identical they're masterful reproductions of these metal and foam pieces down to the smell the smell no way yeah no seriously when i put my face in that foam thing and play virtual boy uh it takes me back to 1996 it is the smell of your face in foam that was like you know when we I'll put on masks for the first time. You're like, whoa, that's weird. Just to smell your face all the time. Well, it's like that, you know, but with this specific type of phone, which I swear they got the original factory to make somehow. It is, it is remarkable. So that's one sense knocked out of the park too. And then the other sense knocked out of the park is sound. This game has this almost blaring tinny horn level of speaker and all the sounds like you, you hear Wario's tones. It's like, wah, wah, wah, wah. It's just this weird synthesized instrument set that the Virtual Boy uses. And everything, you just hear these almost like wah, wah horn sounds that must have sounded very futuristic at the time. Sam, can you show the two off side by side? Do you have both within reach of you? They're just identical. Yeah, I want people to see that. I want people to see how ridiculously good this is. I do have the Oh, CIB! So cool. yeah but no i left my my shells in the other room it really is it's indistinguishable that's why i didn't bring them in yeah yeah it even has like um plastic recreations of like the the controller outlet and the power plug and the um just the focus dial on top these things don't actually rotate if you cut away from me i'll go get it because i should show the controller it's really cool once oh right yeah sure yeah go grab it and i just think this is such an elegant solution for a problem that didn't need solving. We never thought they would bring back the Virtual Boy. And then they released a 3D handheld in the 3DS, and they still didn't put their stereoscopic 3D games from the 90s on that platform. And it just felt like this is never going to happen. And then I feel like somebody at Nintendo just thought, when they made Labo, and then they made Labo VR, somebody at Nintendo must have thought of this solution. Let's recreate a Virtual Boy shell and put it in. And it just works, and it's incredible. I have a little bit of a conspiracy theory about this, too. why it exists. So this is the original Virtual Boy, and here's the controller, which is really cool, and almost PlayStation-like, and different than anything else Nintendo's ever made. Two D-pads. You know, it's the two D-pads, because a lot of the games, you need to rotate and move at the same time. That's very confusing in House at Innesbrook, or whatever it's called. I forget the name of that game, because it never existed before this week. But that game, you need to move your aiming reticle, and it's very difficult to kind of figure that out. So here's the two. I'm going to... You can see them here. This is the remake here, and this is the original. The differences are like, you know, the things on top, which you adjust your ocular distance and stuff, are, you know, manipulatable on the original. And then, yes, as you said, the ports are very well reproduced on the bottoms, though. I don't have detail to show you that here. But, yeah, they're very, very similar. You can actually buy these parts to replace on your... Now, you'll notice there is one decal missing. or deckle as they say in canada this is the original that is the uh you know call mario for help yeah yeah so that's a 1-800-255-something-something-something i can't remember the last four numbers i bet the hold music was amazing yeah yeah so cool that's it so it took six batteries and man it ate them up oh man yeah that is that is really nice so we don't have to worry about that with this modern one and there's seven games here on the launch lineup they are virtual boy wario land teller o boxer red alarm golf 3d tetris galactic pinball and the mansion of innsmouth is the name of the japan exclusive one that's now here and there's i think nine more games coming in 2026 including a never before released f-zero game called zero racers which i can't wait to see what that game is going to be like some of these games were so rare like like this one nesters funky yeah that's the one that people would have not really played this at the time. This is a sealed copy of it. But yeah, this is using the mascot of Nintendo Power, Nestor. Yes. In a bowling game. So that one's really interesting. So it'd be really cool to get that. I don't think we're going to get the license. One. There's one. Waterworld. Just Waterworld? That's the only one? Yeah. But one other cool one to get, and I actually, I mean, I'll go on forever. Jack Brothers is, you know, set in the Persona universe, which is an interesting one. What? Yeah, there's a Bomberman. That'd be cool to see. Oh, hell yeah. To see the bomber man. Is that Japan only, or did that come here? It did not come out here, but Jack Brothers did inexplicably, because I don't think people knew. Oh, by the way, Red Alarm had a variation. It had the, it's for factory, or not for resale, tab up there, which is just for display cases. Oh, was it a pack-in? No, I'm just saying that, like, so there's two different, you can just see the white strip on here. Yeah. It just means, there was a stand at Toys R Us that you can play the virtual boy in, which I definitely did at the time. But so, yeah, there's baseball, tennis, a few others that aren't out. Yeah, tennis is actually really good. This is Jack Brothers. This is set in the, yeah, it's Jack, which is one of the Shin Megami Tensei characters in a little puzzle game, which is really strange. Pretty rare game. What a weird-ass video game system. 100%. Yeah, Seth, what's it been like for you setting this up and playing it this week? oh man i this is the dumbest thing i've ever bought it's like i know this this is the dumbest thing you've ever bought honestly yeah this is well this might this ranks up there pretty highly and it's one of those things that like i i know i couldn't have done without even though it hurt to play it because i have to lean down in the weirdest way what i ended up doing was i put it on my face and then i sat in my recliner and i just leaned way back and played like that but uh it hurt the bridge of my nose after a little while oh there he is nestor's yeah funky bowling um yeah it's oh nestor like yeah like nes oh that's how they named the earthbound guy too okay yep thank you ninten the first mother yeah all right whoa that is like rotoscope uh animation like that looks like a real person throwing look at that yeah i'm sure it is um yeah nestor that's the only game that he was ever in but he was in every issue of nintendo power until like issue 55 or something so like everyone in america knew every kid in america knew who nestor was i don't think he was in japan at all he was the trickster god of 90s america yeah he was that's right because howard lincoln was the other character the president played the straight man time yeah and he would you know they would go into nintendo worlds and he would say like oh you know make sure to to hit the brick with your hand instead of the your head because you'll hurt yourself at super mario 3 so i forgot where i was going with this oh yeah i love the virtual boy i love that it exists it's one of those things that i'm glad that i have i'm glad i can like check it out at any time but i can't see myself playing very much of it just because immediately i was reminded of seeing it in in walmart my local walmart and being so excited sticking my head in there playing it for five minutes and being like this is not for me it's this hurts too much oh really i was sold i was i was not i was i wanted to be i very much wanted like i was and still am a complete nintendo fanboy and a nintendo apologist back then i would i would never have dreamed of criticizing nintendo yeah so i quietly accept yeah i know so i just a quick correction howard phillips was nintendo's legal counsel and the head of uh legal at the time howard lincoln sorry howard lincoln was that you mentioned howard phillips was the uh game master yes uh yeah i i am unlike you guys i was not i was not around when the virtual boy first came out never really thought i'd have a chance to play these so for me getting a chance to it feels like discovering my favorite band of all time released this experimental ep 30 years ago that's never been like digitally reissued and and now it is and most of the songs are kind of crap but then there's like a couple amazing ones in there that i'm like i'll listen to this forever and that's wario land which i've been playing all week and i just think wario land is an incredible platformer and not just for being on the virtual boy like it's an incredible platformer that's on the virtual boy and it uses the hardware in really cool ways like the the way it uses 3d there's this one part you're swimming through the water and there's these eels that are hiding in these caves and you use this flamethrower to like keep them at bay or they pop out at you if you get too close to them and they damage wario and it just has great exploration like what the whole wario land series does there's optional treasure rooms there's different endings you can get for earning enough treasure or beating it fast enough like a metroid game like this is just a phenomenal wario land game i played wario land 4 last year on nso loved it we talked about it on this show and this game is right up there with it it is phenomenal and i just can't believe how how good it is at showing you the different worlds that you're in with just the one color with just red but it's clear you're in a desert you're in a lake you're swimming under the ocean you're climbing up this waterfall and you see wario's big butt screwed up the waterfall it's just it's a fantastic game that like if you don want to spend 100 bucks for the virtual boy spend 25 bucks to get the cardboard so you can play wario land like i think this game is that good if you a hardcore Nintendo platformer fan I totally in love with it It the only 32 Super Mario Bros related game that Nintendo ever made besides Mario Clash and Tennis on the same system. It's worth playing. You know, it does a lot of foreground-background stuff. It's reason to exist on the Virtual Boy, which is really cute. You play this really tiny, distant Wario. And Mario Clash is like that too, but in a more arcade-y fashion. My big conspiracy theory about this is that this exists because it was designed by Gunpei Yokoi, who designed the Game Boy, and he died in a horrible way shortly after this was released, and it was kind of a failure. And I think this is a great and interesting way to honor his legacy. Yeah. And this is exactly 30 years on. It's very interesting. He created the Ultra Hand as well. he's a yeah one of the original toy creators at nintendo and miyamoto is just starting to work on arcade machines they were like the two in the r&d department so like one of the people responsible for non-derogatory like nintendo being really weird yeah yeah absolutely like one of the things that i i i love a lot about them and i think this panel generally loves a lot about them as well he was lead on kid icarus and metroid too so those are the kind of game game legacies i never knew that yeah yeah no i think that that's a really good theory and i would love like an ask the developer or something about about making this come to be because it is it is just fantastic anything else on this before i move on well the only thing more obscure than a virtual boy made by nintendo would probably be a pinball machine so let's talk about those later yes we will get to that that's a nice tease for the pokemon pinball machine we're going to talk about later in the show but right now i want to tell you that if you want to be the very best like no one ever was this is also pokemon you can streamline your journey to becoming a master trainer with planet pokemon choose your pokemon filtering by type ability or pokedex then use the full team builder to assemble an unbeatable lineup plan out the optimal set of moves items and abilities play to your strengths by analyzing your team's resistances and vulnerabilities or really maximize your poke potential by digging into the stats of your evs and ivs and save multiple team builds for different strategies in different games you can plan your dream team today at planet pokemon.com okay let's get to the topic that was gonna lead our show but we got so excited about the virtual boy we shuffle things around and that is the legend of zelda turns 40 years old this week the original legend of zelda launched in japan on the famicom disk system on february 21st 1986 and it came to the west more than a year later in august of 1987 here in the states and i thought today this this is the longest we've ever gone since a 3d zelda release without knowing what the next 3d zelda is it has been almost three years since tears of the kingdom nintendo always announces a 3D Zelda within three years of that usually. So I thought today we should discuss kind of our hopes and dreams for the next mainline 3D Zelda that's going to follow Tears of the Kingdom. Rev, I'll start with you kind of just generally. What do you want to see? I've kind of alluded to like a lot of the things that I want to see on past episodes when we've talked about predictions because the things that I want are in line inadvertently are not in line with the things that I think they might do mostly. I think the main one is I think it's time to remake Ocarina, and I'm not just saying that because I finally played Ocarina for the first time. But that's something people have been asking for for a long time, like a really full remake, right? I mean, they did the 3DS thing, and that was extremely faithful to the original, but I'd love to see something like either a very much like revamped, modernized remake of it or something more like link between worlds, which was not a remake of link to the past, but it was this sort of tribute kind of remake. Like they started making a remake almost and then got diverted halfway through. Cause they came up with like some new stuff. I think doing something along those lines for Ocarina to, to honor, I don't know, probably the most, if not one of the most beloved Zeldas of all time would be really great. That's one thing I would like to see. The other version of this is the thing I've talked about before, is I would like to see a thing in the Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom style using those assets, but small and self-contained, like the way the Great Plateau was, but in full game form. something that is like a Majora's mask was to Ocarina of Time, something that is like that Two Breath of the Wild, something that uses the features of that world, like the way you can burn grass and the way objects interact with one another to do something really mechanically interesting in a very small space that you get to know intimately instead of this thing that you have to travel across for like 200 hours. Those are like the two kinds of things that I hope they will do, which means they will inevitably do something totally different. yeah yeah i like the idea of a smaller scale thing with with breath of the wild style mechanics because i think they lend themselves to very cool linear dungeons and puzzles but they're just not really interested in doing that in the big open air ones but there's so many opportunities you can do we see little bites of it with specific puzzles like i remember that puzzle from tears of the kingdom that went totally viral of the one where you are supposed to create like this rotating beam that like climbs itself up the stairs and nobody did it that way because it was like really obtuse but there's some really cool stuff they could do with that yeah and all their i well i say this as if breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom are not like just absolutely phenomenal from start to finish they're some of my favorite games of all time but i think those games are both at their absolute best when they are operating in smaller self-contained spaces because that's when the designers can really like do the cool stuff that they used to do with zelda dungeons where they make like these intricate things that work well together or they they do this amazing job of anticipating, okay, the player's going to walk in from here, and this is where their eye's going to be drawn to, and they're going to see this, this, and this in that order, and then because they're going to see those things in that order, they're going to have this emotional response, and then this is how they're likely going to try to tackle this puzzle, and how can we divert them? Like, there's so much wonderful anticipation of where the player's going to go, and how they're going to react to the world, that you kind of lose a little bit the longer you play Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, because the world's so big, you could be coming at anything from any direction and with any context, and I would just love something that was more, I don't want to say directed and linear, but more predict a situation where the developers can predict what I'm going to do better and thus mess with me a little bit more. Yeah, I firmly think the best 20 hours of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were the first 20 when everything is still very mysterious and dangerous and you're figuring it out and the first area you go to is the one you'll remember the best because you didn't have anything. You didn't have 30 hearts. You didn't have all the weapons you wanted. So I think if they can find some way to recreate that kind of loop, maybe there's multiple areas you go to that are completely open air, like these Zelda games are, but they kind of do reset their pacing a little bit from nothing and ramp back up. Sam, I know you love both of these games. What do you think they should do in the next one? Yeah, so I would like to see a return to one feature that is not heavily emphasized in these games, and it's not really in it at all except for flashbacks, but I'd like to see two switch between worlds. So whether that's a dark world or a past or a future, I think future would be really cool. I think we're at the point where we need a new map, and if it's going to be a Breath of the Wild-style game, it was great to reuse the map. I love the added depths in the sky and the remake of the map, but we need to abandon that, go a different timeline entirely, probably to do that, new Hyrule, and then have a Hyrule that can be changed by your actions in a way that no game's ever done before. So you have this meaningful switch between worlds that is really interesting. Now, I think that would be a way to expand this and make it next-gen and make it big and special. The other thing I think that these games could use is a new type of traversal. I think grappling hooks are really fun, for example. Adding flight to this game was really great. I think there's some stuff to expand there. um but yeah i definitely want to see the um you know the kind of next-gen version of link to the past or ocarina of time yeah that that's the exact pitch i've written down here too sam actually is i think i've thought about you know nintendo always likes to use their hardware to make new new sequels what's the what's the gimmick of the hardware skyward sword has motion controls cool we'll do that switch 2 doesn't really have a gimmick like that but the the big thing they've talked about in their dev interviews is let's use this processing power to make something new dk bonanza's destruction couldn't be done on switch one right this mario kart world open world didn't work on switch one and i think about a dark world and with the exception of like a link to the past mirror which you could kind of use to insta swap there's always very big limitations to how you access the dark world like you have to dive into the depths at specific points you have to go to the temple of time to draw the master sword or put it back in the pedestal it's like what if there's a dark world where you can just snap to and instantly it all changes around you and you can change things in it that manipulates things in the other world there are those blocks in donkey kong bonanza logan those the switcheroo goo yeah the switcheroo goo thank you and i thought that was so cool when i ran into that in in bonanza where if you so you'll have like this big blob of blue goo and then there's sort of this blank space outlined in pink above you or around the corner or wherever and when you punch a big hole in the blue switcheroo goo that hole appears in the blue and then pink goo and the exact shape that you have punched out appears in the pink section. And there's, there's several puzzles that involve like manipulating with which side the goo is on, uh, in order to create paths for things or yourself. And I thought that was so cool. And I wish that Bonanza had done more with that. And I know that's not quite what you're getting at, but also that technology makes me feel like that something like that could happen where you have two sides of something, two worlds, two layers, whatever. And when you impact something on one side, it immediately creates some sort of opposite or equivalent effect on the other side. And yeah, I think that would be awesome. To Reb's point about a smaller Zelda, I really like Echoes of Wisdom and the remake of Link's Awakening. I think there's going to be more of that type of stuff. And I really welcome that sort of thing because, and then I just wanted to add the big spin-off of that that I think would be interesting, is that I think Nintendo could absolutely destroy a roguelike with Zelda. And they've been edging at it for so long with like, oh, you can make these dungeons, kind of. And like, you know, there's this, like, options to design around. Like, I don't... Or even the Master Trials in Breath of the Wild were that a little bit. I don't want that in lieu of another Zelda game or anything like that, but it's one of those games where you're like the Necrodancer spinoff. If a developer could get the license and make a really cool infinite dungeon crawler or infinite world explorer or something that takes an element of Zelda and shuffles it over and over, I think that could be a smash hit. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think there's a very good chance that somebody is working on a smaller Zelda, like Red Pitch. I don't think that's the main team. I think that Aonuma is specifically very interested in this open-air format they developed with Breath of the Wild, and I think they're going to be full steam ahead on a third one of that. Unfortunately, I think they maybe all stopped working on Zelda like they did with Mario games and just worked on the movie. That's all they're doing now. Forever. Just movies. Yeah, just movies forever. We're getting a Zelda movie next year. I think we could easily see the reveal of this next game before that Zelda movie comes out. Seth, I want to hear from you. What do you want from Zelda next? it is so hard for me because the more i think about it the more i like i either contradict myself or i come up with something like new and exciting to me specifically because like my first obvious answer is like oh i want i want to see the return of toon link like i love wind waker so much i even like phantom hourglass um i didn't play spirit tracks it's great i never so i would yeah i would just like i would love to see a return to toon link but i don't know what that means exactly like i don't know where i want to go from that i'm very very uh superficial in just wanting a return of this art style like could we have an open world or a bigger open world style with this i think it would be yeah i think it would be amazing but what what would it just be it would be breath of the wild with with to link instead so i and then i think well yeah you know i do maybe want to a little bit of return to a more linear zelda where yeah you have to get the grappling hook to and you have to get you know the the iron boots and you have to get the red then i'm like but do i because i think four of my five favorite games of all time are are open world games and it's just my favorite style of game to play because i love i love when a developer says here's the world that we've created now go do whatever you want or for the most part do whatever you want and i love like when you get surprised by things that you did in the world that you didn't quite think were possible to happen so it's so hard i think that i think the next zelda i i mean tears of the kingdom breath of wild they sold so many copies and everybody kind of agrees that they're the best zeldas ever and you know they were the top two on our list of uh top 10 zelda by the way look real quick i'm everyone out there be like they left the they put the original nes zelda on there what a bunch of old grandpas like shut your friggin holes dude like that is obviously one of the most important games that of all time and it still holds up you can still sit down and play the original legend of zelda so i guess it works really well with save states too because it gives you a more modern way to play it and play through and i highly recommend doing that you will be surprised how much like breath of the wild it is yeah that's and yeah that's i've said it before like Breath of the Wild to me felt like the realization of what I, what playing this game, the original Legend of Zelda felt like for me as a kid in the 1980s. Like Breath of the Wild was like what was in my imagination, where I was filling in the gaps was what they did with Breath of the Wild. And so basically, look, I'm a simple man. I like things like, you know, open worlds with Zelda. this is just another open world i'd like sam said a different version of hyrule and some you know and just more fun weird experimental systems like i think like you like rev like you were saying like what donkey kong bonanza is doing i mean that would be amazing in a zelda game it might even be amazing if a zelda game you're just hey instead of you're in hyrule for a minute but then you're going down a little lower and down a little lower down a little lower just steal donkey kong bonanza and, you know, put some Octoroks in there. Boom, there you go. I also want GTA to be set in space. I just want that. Sure, why not? I do want to say about Zelda that I think no matter what it is, it's impossible to predict. No one could have predicted like Ascend and Ultra Hand from Tears of the Kingdom. That is just unfathomable to guess. But whatever hook they wrap all this around in, and if there's a dark world or not, I desperately want a new Link, a new Zelda, and a new art style. I really think it is time for Zelda to say goodbye to this Breath of the Wild era. Not because I don't love it. I absolutely do. Well, they can keep on making the Musou games with that art style. Yeah, sure. Or a spinoff, like we were saying, like a smaller 3D game in this art style, sure. But for the next big tentpole, this is the follow-up to Tears of the Kingdom. I just think we need to do something different. I think that the beauty of Zelda to me is that it's this bedtime story that changes over time. And sometimes when we tell it, Hyrule is flooded. And sometimes Link puts on a hat and becomes microscopic. and i think the the more that you paint kind of what zelda is into a corner and say no this is link and zelda link is this soldier and and he's zelda's aid and they live in this hyrule and this is them i think it becomes a lot less special and it becomes more like kratos is kratos and master chief is master chief and link is link i'm like i don't feel that way about zelda and i'm starting to because of how long we've had this same link and i just think that i love this chapter but i want the next one i want to not know what a choo-choo is going to look like or what uh an Octorok is going to look like. I've known since 2017 they look like this. And I just really think that that's something special and makes Zelda constantly reinvent itself and feel new. And its visual identity is a big part of that. People hated Toon Link, and now Seth just sat here and asked for it back. It's a super special thing that Zelda does. Logan, how would you feel if they kept this art style, but did take it to a different version of Hyrule and a different link and a different story and different characters? Like, what if they did a totally different, like, no remnants of anything, no references, Hyrule Castle's in a different spot, whatever. But it's the same art style. I think I'd feel better about that, really. I do. I am tired, I think, of this Link also. Specific guy. Just don't like this guy. Because it's just like Age of Imprisonment, I liked that game a lot, but it really started to show me, like, man, this has gotten a little samey. It's the four champions from the same four tribes in the same four corners of the same map. And we do the same thing to get them and unite against the same threat. And it's just it is getting tired. Yeah, Zelda is a cycle. But you've got to tell that cycle in different ways. So, yeah, as long as it's a different link, like make him a farm boy again or make him just this little kid from this village again. Make him a nobody. Like, I think that, yeah, I'd be OK with that. But I also want the new look. But if I have to pick between one of them, yeah, I definitely want to take it to a completely different space. I like Zelda as a protagonist in Echoes, too. I thought that was a really interesting way to solve things without a sword. I thought that was really cool. I think that a Shadow of the Colossus level of boss would be really great in Zelda. Give us a challenge that includes platforming and killing. To this day, there's still no Shadow of the Colossus spiritual successor. There's a few in production, always. But there's nothing like that. And if you imagine giant beasts from the past that are still around in the future, but you go back in the past and you kill them and then in the future you loot their bones and stuff all that stuff would be really, really a good match for Zelda. Yeah. Zelda, just an opportunity like we're talking about to do something bigger with time travel than they've done in the past. They have a huge opportunity to do that. Go big with time travel, go big with bosses, go big. There's things you can do with a system that's more advanced. I think that's what Nintendo would want to do. I think it would be cool to play as a child Link in the style of breath of the wild or something like that like a very young i don't know just small grizzled leon kennedy link no i don't need that i don't need that at all bring back a modern version of the space world demo that everyone so desperately wanted look at link he's fighting a spider holy cow it looks so real and gritty it's 2002 and i want grittiness it's a joke i don't want them to bring no i even if they change art style i still think like cell shaded cartoony ghibli anime style look is still what zelda is like they don't need to go go and look super gritty and and realistic although twilight princess people i think dunk on that art style for how it's aged that game still looks weird as hell like that is not a super gritty realistic look at some of the faces of the people in that game and tell me they look like humans they don't they look really bizarre and weird there is dna in that because like you know ever since ocarina like the the gerudo and stuff kind of look the same they have like these these distinguished features and they're drawn out. So you can see there is a through line in the art, even through Tune and everything. Just Link looks really different a lot. But a lot of other characters don't. Goron's always look the same. I like what Echoes did when they... I just have a lot of tattoos sometimes. I like what Echoes did when they brought the two different kinds of Zora together and they just didn't even bother trying to pick one or the other. They're like, well, we just got both of them. That was so funny. Yeah, and they were at war with each other and had all these disagreements. That was fantastic. And differentiating, oh, these are river Zora and these are ocean Zora. So cool. Yeah. that was a decos a while ago too they're like well there's some that talk to you and that are fine and they have villages and then there's others that try to sell you stuff yeah they're all just living together in this village yeah yeah anything else any other ideas or thoughts you know what i think would be cool and it would be it would have to be in this in a sort of echoes of wisdom style but like make a game where you play as ganon where you're just doing evil stuff but like make it cute and cartoony in that sort of in that uh echoes of wisdom um the most underrepresented part of the trap forces again that true let let do it it time i don think i want like a gritty nasty evil um game where you play as the you know the demon who wants but you could you could be doing like a demon management game where you're like sending out you know bokoblins and stuff to do to build up your your evil you know demon manager 26 they would literally never do this but there would maybe be some sort of interesting exploration of like like playing as ganon this this fellow who's born into the gerudo tribe and has like these expectations put upon him by this ancient tradition oh my god both expectations that he become the leader of these people um in the society that is all women uh in which he is the only man and and also the expectations that oh yeah there's like this curse every time one of you is born and uh you you're just going to be evil one day like that's just what's going to happen and he's just like don't play that ocarina around you and having him be just like a guy and try to like like live in that in that world but i they're not that they're not going to do anything it's like a god it's like a god of war turnabout right where you have the kratos as a you know yeah as a sympathetic character i thought i even i think when i was a freelancer wrote a multi-thousand word fan theory on this on ign about i thought that's what Tears of the Kingdom was doing. And there was all this evidence pointing to the ancient hero from 10,000 years ago on that tapestry was actually a Ganondorf. He was actually a Gerudo reincarnate, not Link. Oh, I remember this conversation. That was what this was going to be. And you're going to break this cycle. And the logo is like the Ouroboros with the dragon eating its own tail. And there were links to Skyward Sword with it being in the sky going back to the beginning. And they did none of that. They didn't even touch that. So I'm not ever going to get my hopes up again. I don't think Nintendo is interested at all. in telling an interesting story about Ganondorf. I think this is very much the framework of the hero's journey and the boy saves the princess and beats the evil pig. I don't think they're ever going to get more ambitious than that. As amazing as it would be, I'm totally with you. I think Zelda also is really a good match for pixel remaster style stuff where you take the cuteness of the Game Boy or Super Nintendo era and you do a pixel remaster that just looks incredible. so then you avoid the kind of the toy link look that they've been using for Echoes and stuff like that. I just think that would be a great option and that would be a good way to explore and I don't recommend you go play Zelda 2, anybody. It's really interesting. Not even with Rewind or Save States. I don't like that. That's the only way to play through it and I do like it for those reasons and I do appreciate the game. But you know, a 2D Metroid style Zelda would work and it's been done. It'd be interesting. Yeah. When I played The Lost Crown, Prince of Persia, all I thought is, this is basically a Zelda game, and I wish that they would make a Zelda game like this. It even had time powers and stuff in its combat that worked really well. And when I saw Castlevania, I was like, oh, the cel shading and stuff. All those are good matches for Zelda, but also Zelda needs to be Zelda. And so those games are already all represented out there right now. And I'm really happy that Castlevania is back, for example. It's great to have that back. And the Pixlr Masters are really great for all the things that they're already mastering. and Octopath is as good as the new series. Reb, you were talking about these expectations placed on Ganondorf. I've had this exact same thought about why is the Triforce of Power always corrupt? That's how the only way we've ever told this story is that whoever holds the Triforce of Power is evil. I don't know. The Star Wars sequel trilogy tried to explore some of this. The dark side isn't necessarily always bad and it didn't get to finish that story and lots of people hated it. I liked where it was going until they ruined it all. But I think Zelda has an opportunity to say like, hey, the Triforce of Power, Link has it this time. He's actually the hero and he has the Triforce of Power. Something like that, just switching it up a little bit would be really cool. I just don't think they're ever going to do it. It would definitely be. I think it would be very interesting as some sort of twist as you go in with your expectations of whatever you think The Legend of Zelda usually is and what it's always been. And then they do some sort of reveal in the middle of this game that the formula that you have come to know is not always the case. but I'm with you. Nintendo will do extraordinarily interesting things with mechanics. They will come out with some sort of gameplay thing for the next 3D Zelda that none of us can possibly imagine on this podcast. It will be incredible. We will have a magnificent time. It will still be a story about Link, a little guy, a fella with a sword going to rescue a lady in probably pink or something adjacent to it, who has magical powers from Big Demon Man. like that's it'll be something along those lines yeah i mean hot take but uh that's all i really need i don't care very much about stories and games i think stories should only exist to justify the gameplay i do not want much more than that i'm a man like i said i'm a simple man of simple pleasures so i am fine with just a scaffolding of a story upon which they can build a world that envelops me and makes me feel like i'm living there and even you know now i'm kind of thinking about like maybe i'll start up again oh no i'm gonna do another playthrough of breath of the wild so the times they've deviated from that formula though have been bangers majora's mask stories and really mediocre games yeah really good stories though hey logan you want to go out back and fight no no i don't i and you you also aren't a twilight princess fan which is like my favorite i do to be My least favorite Zelda game is still a great game. Just by any standards. I like Twilight Princess. It's just on the low end of Zelda games for me. It turns 20 this year. I think we should all fight it. I've learned not to engage in these fights. Yeah, cool. We'll move on there. I'm very excited to see where Zelda goes next. And also, I guess a hot take of mine is people are really upset at Nintendo. They're not celebrating the 40th anniversary. They don't need to. I don't know. That's just my hot take. There's no obligation. when they celebrate it and you know it might be like well we we are celebrating it as a year and then they're going to celebrate it by showing us a trailer yeah yeah yeah exactly which is fine i don't think like you don't need to time your dev cycles to hit an anniversary every time we all live through the year of luigi like we're going to survive we'll get through this together yeah great year worst year in nintendo's financial history was the year of luigi in 130 years it's it's never been worse i'll never do it again yeah well it's zelda's 40th anniversary it's also humble bundle's 15th birthday and everyone's invited celebrate 15 years of connecting fans and gamers with good causes with the humble 15 time capsule bundle featuring games from the very first humble indie bundles right now you can score odd sparks in automation adventure kill night inkbound bionic bay mark of the deep lugaro hd samaras 2 osmos and and yet it moves this all supports child's play an organization that donates toys and games to children's hospitals worldwide at the humblebundle.com through march 11th to start playing today well we've been playing are up to a lot of different things sam teased this earlier uh sam and seth you went to illinois to see the new pokemon pinball machine tell us all about it dream yeah so first of all nintendo this this is largely executed through the pokemon company i wrote a piece about how the stern pinball was just the manufacturer of these machines and the biggest pinball manufacturer to date they used to be data east and sega and stern those are all the same company now um but there's other pinball companies but they're the big one and so they uh picked up this this pokemon license but this is not the first nintendo deemed uh pinball machine got leave this one super mario brothers behind me um in the early 90s and they made a littler version of the of a super mario machine called the mushroom world both both pretty good games but not made by the you know the top flipping companies at the time gottly was not a competitor compared to like williams for example so this is a big deal people really like stern and how the games play now this game uh for people that don't play pinball a lot um pinball is a complicated uh a rule set that requires skill to get through mini games and levels and all these things that video games you play have but you're using flippers and a tiny cannonball that ruins everything in the game to play it. So what they did with Pokemon here is they incorporated the collection aspects of Pokemon in a really cool way by you scanning your phone in and filling out a Pokedex as you play along. So that's the foundation of this, is that it's almost like a meta game where you have your phone, your phone app that you're playing along with it. And every time you go to a new arcade or bar and play the game, you continue your progress. And they've already done this. They've made a D&D game in the past couple of years in which you can continue your character every time you log into any D&D game and play your character and move through levels and maps and stuff like that. So this is an established thing that Stern's been doing. But this Pokemon machine, to speak to pinball people real quick, which I know is a lot fewer of you, it's largely based on the central Bash toy and fan pattern layout of something like Attack from Mars or Medieval Madness, which are the most highly regarded pinball machines of all time. It's coming from the designer of Monster Bash, similar to that with some exceptions. There's no central Bash toy, really. There's kind of Frankenstein in it. But then also he designed Lord of the Rings, to two just absolutely spectacular games about putting together a set of characters by shooting shots. So now go back to Pokemon. What this game has going for it is very easy, good feeling shots. It's got something you can walk up to and play, but it's actually pretty difficult to do stuff in it. So like, let me give you an example. And please stop me and ask me questions because I'll just talk about this and it won't make any sense. But what so say you want to catch a Pokemon. What you do in this, remember, it's a pinball machine. So you're going to put your coins in there, scan your phone in. You don't have to, but if you're going to continue your game. And then you're going to, if you just say, I want to catch a new Pokemon today, you're going to ignore everything and hit just any shots in the game, but really try to get it to the pop bumpers, the thing to bump your ball around. That's called the tall grass in this game. In the tall grass, you're going to raise this meter on the back glass, which has a screen in it that's showing it. And then a random Pokemon is going to appear once you encourage them to come out of the tall grass. That might be Caterpie, you start in a forested area. Or it could be Metapod or something. Do you know, is this just like the original 151? No, it's 183 to begin with, and they're from all generations, and they're adding them as they go. There's DLC that will be issued to arcades by push in the background. So when you show up, there might be new stuff, and you might get a notification that there's new Pokemon to catch. What app are you doing this on? Is it a specific app for this machine? Stern Insider Connected app, yeah. You save a QR code in your Apple wallet, and you log in. It has achievements too, by the way. So there's a Caterpillar appearing there in the tall grass. So then what you do is you hit this one shot. That's the Pokedex shot. It's a little captive ball, the target next to it. And then you have to do, I think, just after that, you have to shoot one other shot. But then you shoot the Pokeball. The Pokeball will show a little capture. So you have to do a couple different things just to catch that Pokemon. Then there's also battles in the game where you have to – I won't go into the whole thing with battles, but when you battle a Pokemon, it's a higher level Pokemon, like a Pinsir or something like that, that you're battling. And you have your starters to begin with. You have Pikachu, Charizard, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle. And when you fight, say, a Pinsir, you immediately throw out Bulbasaur, and you can shoot shots. The whole game just turns into a battle mode where purple shots in the game are your Venom shots, and green shots in the game are grass attacks. but neither of those are very effective on an insect type Pokemon. So you want to switch out to Charizard. You do a couple shots, you hit it in the scoop, and then you have Charizard out, and you shoot orange shots now for fire attacks, and you completely fry that insect, right? Which I always thought was the meanest pairing besides rock and flying, which is like, don't throw rocks at birds. Both those are just really mean, the firebug one too. So yeah, just to give you a sense of what you're going to do when you walk up to this machine instead of just keeping the ball in play, There's things to do, and there's things to do that are fun and meaningful and will keep you coming back. And that's, I think, what's important to spread the pinball gospel. Cool. How many of these are there? There's only, what, like 1,200, 1,300? No, no. So what's happening here is that there's a pro and premium model. So the pro is a simplified game with simplified mechanics that goes to arcades, so you can maintain it easier as an arcade operator. Just sit in the middle of a shopping mall, and you can walk up and play an X-WF. but a premium is generally can also be in public play. And those are a few more mechs to it. It's a couple thousand dollars more because the base model is 7,000 for this. And then you also would rather have those at home. Then there's the LE. The LE is 750. For this one, sometimes LEs are really different from one another. This one is just this Eevee Pikachu art package on the outside. and then it has really nice lighting and armor set, which is the purple you see there. So it's just kind of a unique limited version. Of course, everything limited for Pokemon is desirable. Sam, isn't it? I feel like I recall that also the Pikachu in the LE moves, whereas on the other ones it doesn't. Both the Pokeball and the Pikachu are mechanically active in the premium version. Now, the Meowth Balloon is actually mechanically interesting, and that's in both. so there is interesting cool high tech stuff in every model of the game you get the master ball for the plunger as well on the the limited edition is for like sultans to put on their yachts it's really expensive it's like 12 pairs I think it's like $13,000 $12,000 a change yeah something like that and those are MSRP so your distributors are always going to cut you deals and save you on shipping and stuff like that but they really are meant for you know people that are into pinball and people that are going to put these in arcades to make money off of them yeah that's the thing that's why online super prices are crazy yeah when they got posted people like oh my god seven thousand dollars it's like this is this isn't you know like a little this isn't like an arcade one-up pinball machine yeah it's generally not fused consumer hardware but they do sell to home home use right that's what the le is generally do for again sultans but uh but when But Seth and I got to see where this was being made. That's so cool. And when you see that, you really understand. It is the level of a car factory, right? It's this massive, massive facility that looks like an airplane hangar. And what was it, 200, 300 employees at any given time are assembling these machines? This is real American manufacturing that costs money, and you get a quality product out of it, right? So it's like that explains it. you know it's so cool it was i i was i loved going to stern pinball i not just because like i get to hang out with sam and see the pokemon machine but like everyone who was there is just so fired up on pinball it's like infectious like the vibe is just like all these people who are just so in love with the hobby of pinball and so in love with you know manufacturing and design it just was so like fun just to be there around these people who just are so absolutely enamored of all of the things you know i'm i'm not uh a pinball guy like sam by any means but i do love just like electro mechanical things i love the way things work i love we saw a factory piece of equipment that they had been using since 1930s yeah to press play fields and um and it you know they They were like, every machine you've ever played from any of the companies we've owned has a piece of wood that went through this machine. Yeah. Like, how cool is that? Yeah. And then they have, like, the machine just in case that one breaks down. But they're pretty sure that one will never break down because it's just, you know. A hundred years old. It's unbelievable. And it was just, yeah. I would like to just maybe fall asleep in there and then wake up at night when the elves come out to assemble the magic of the pinball machines. Because it was so. You all will get to play this game. It's going to sell like crazy, and there will be an arcade near you, and they will have this one because, you know, you get to opt into what you're investing in for the year for your arcade. This is such a basic walk-up game that appeals to kids and adults, so I think everybody's going to be able to play. There's some great places to play pinball in Portland and Kansas City. Oh. I'm going to be hitting you up about that later. In Seattle. I forget where you are, Logan. You're in Seattle. Yeah. We have several people in Portland. Seattle is great. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, that looks really cool. I've only been to a couple Kansas City arcades, and I haven't found one that I'm really, really in love with, so I need to pick your brain later. Is one called Some Number Street or something like that? I don't know. We'll talk later. I'll look it up. Yeah, and go check out Sam's piece on IGN for more about this Pokemon pinball machine. That's awesome. And, Rev, you haven't been on the show in several weeks, but you had a bunch of stuff go up on IGN about Stardew Valley. Yeah, so Stardew Valley is, I think it's about to celebrate its 10th anniversary. It's this month. I can't remember the exact date off the top of my head. But in celebration, 10 years old, which is mind-blowing to me that Stardew Valley is that old. But in celebration of that anniversary, I reached out to the creator, Eric Barone, Concerned Ape, and interviewed him. We had a very, very long, in-depth interview, and we published that earlier this month. the full interview, like the full Q&A, very long, lots of stuff in it for all the people who are just super into Stardew Valley. That's up on IGN. And then also, if you like Stardew Valley, but maybe don't want to read something that's going to take you like 10, 15 minutes to read, there are a bunch of smaller kind of news stories that we broke out of it that are just like the big highlights for people who are really into the game. And I think the big one that came out of that, that was exciting to a lot of people, including myself when he said it, is that, So there's an upcoming update for Stardew Valley that Concerned Dave has confirmed previously. It'll be patch 1.7. We don't really know what's in it. People have been speculating, but he confirmed for us that there's going to be two new marriage candidates, like people you can get married to in Stardew Valley, which there have not been since one of the earliest updates to the game. There was a bunch of them at launch, and then they added Shane and Emily, I believe, in one of the earlier updates. and there have been no new people you can marry ever since then. And so he told us that he is adding two more. We can make some assumptions. We don't know if it's going to be brand new characters. I would say probably not if I had to guess. It's probably going to be people who already exist. Obviously, the fan community has all sorts of theories as to who it might be. A lot of hopes. I personally would love to marry the wizard. Let's go. Maybe the hat mouse. Probably not the hat mouse. But yeah, so that's out there. And then we also, alongside that, we did some interviews with some members of the Stardew Valley community. So I spoke to a very, very talented speedrunner. I spoke to a content creator who does music farms, basically builds these, like, really intricate farms that when you walk through them on certain paths, they play, like, a whole song out of, like, the flute blocks and stuff. It's really cool. and then I also spoke to one of the creator of one of the most popular Stardew Valley mods who ended up through creating this mod for Stardew Valley ended up actually working for Concerned Ape and now is working on the next update for Stardew Valley which is funny because I didn't actually know that when I reached out to him I reached out to him as a modder and then in the research leading up to the interview I was like wait he works for Concerned Ape now am I doing something weird here by going around everybody was so lovely and sweet to talk to everybody was like just really wholesome and like positive about the community it was just like a really nice group of people um i also for that community piece uh reached out to the stardew valley subreddit and asked for fans to just share stories of what the game has meant to them over the years and i got some really really lovely anecdotes that i included in the piece so if you like stardew valley and you haven't checked out that spread like please just i don't know you can probably google stardew valley ign and find it all it's in it's like all of our most recent stardew Valley stuff. That's most of it. I'm really proud of it. It was a really, really cool interview with Concerned Ape, and there's a lot of good stuff there. I love Starter Valley. It's a good game Still playing it So Reb is an incredible journalist and this is a dream interview to get So she just got a completely disarmed take on the past and the future of Sardew Valley by just nature of her skills as a journalist. And the interview really shows that because every paragraph is interesting. And what she draws out of a developer is unique because usually we have these layers of PR and we have these layers of, you know, I'm worried to talk about this thing that might spoil something. that's not the interview she got the interview that she got is one where he's just not afraid to talk about anything and say i might do this or i might not and it's just a really interesting you know way to look into somebody's brain that really enjoys the thing they're working on and is taking their time at it there's also taking some active steps to be like but i know things need to shift and get out the door you know it's not being locked up so i just think it's you know i've worked with journalists for a long time this is one of my favorite things i've ever read because we just normally have that filter and Rev got through it. And I know this is a unique situation where it's easier to get through it, but really congrats on this one. It's a great read and a great moment for you, I think. Thanks, Sam. That means a lot. Yeah, it is fantastic. And Stardew Valley also just got a big update on Switch 2, so if you're listening and you haven't somehow played this in the last 10 years it's been out, it's got four-player split screen and mouse controls and game share and all that good stuff. Don't you just get mad if people have like that some people haven't played this game and they get to now like just if you haven't played stardew valley and you were on the this is one of those games like you know like breath of wild or whatever i'm like i'm just mad that like i can't experience this for the first time again well what's really fun is i i played it at launch like i played hundreds of hours of it at launch like just just tons and tons of it and then you know i i tapered off and stopped playing it and went about my life and then in the last like year or so uh my sister actually has wanted like we've been trying to connect a little bit more now that we're both adults and have like a little more free time and so we've been playing stardew valley together and we made like a new farm and we're playing multiplayer and i hadn't played it in years and all the updates that have happened since launch i wouldn't say it's a totally new game but it feels so worth it to come back to because there's just so many new things that were not there when i originally played it i'm constantly being surprised there's like whole other locations there's like a whole other dungeon there's new crops there's there's all these events and like stories that i've never seen like it's just it's really really cool and so if you play it a lot back in 10 years do you it sounds like it's almost like a sequel now i i should go back and play it then yeah i think we re-reviewed it and gave it a 10 this time yeah everything has changed we did yeah i wouldn't say it's like a sequel but i i would say it's worth going back to just because whatever you remember of it it's going to feel familiar enough that you're going to start going through it but just fairly frequently you will just stumble over something that is new. It's like if you just continued playing, but there was just a bunch more new content on top of that. I don't really know how to explain it. It's a very strange feeling, because it's all very well interwoven into the fabric of what that game is. And yeah, I don't know. I think Stardew Valley is so cool. I romance the kind of complicated photographer blonde lady. Hayley! Yeah. It was almost hard mode. yeah i think yeah i don't think i ever got married i don't think i played long enough to ever do it yeah it's i remember that one being difficult it's funny because now it's 10 years old and so like my my my i've changed over time and i remember when i first played it 10 years ago i was really into abigail uh the purple haired girl who eats rocks and now you know i'm 10 years older and now i'm like really interested in leah who's like this artist who lives out in the forest and makes these cool sculptures and really likes salad. I don't know. It's funny. The eat rocks thing, I remember you referred to that in the piece. That's because you could give a gift and then she's like that was delicious. It was just a mistake in the game. Yeah, it was an error. That's so funny. It's like a meme at this point. Abigail is this character who one of her loved gifts is Amethyst. And a couple other rocks as well, like Quartz and things like that. She's just like sparkly rocks from the mines, whatever. But in the very early version of the game, when you gave her one of those gifts, she would say something like, thanks, this looks delicious. And everybody thought that was so funny that they kind of headcan it. Oh, she eats rocks. She's like, she's magical. She eats rocks. And it just became such a popular meme that Concerned Ape is like, yeah, I'm not changing it. Yeah, that came out in your interview a lot where he's like, I have to balance what the community finds charming and what they find essential with like, also like, Grandpa was too mean originally. and I had to change it. That wasn't my vision. I think finding that path between being beholden to a community that's taken your thing and made it their own and then also being like, but I created this and I want to make it my own thing, is something that this creator has handled probably better than anybody I've ever read about. Or at least surfacely is seeming that way. Maybe he has trouble sleeping in it. Yeah, I really liked reading about, because I asked him about mods. Have you ever looked at the modding community and, you know, seen what people are doing or like looked at fan requests for features. And he says that he pretty, pretty aggressively tries not to do that. I mean, I'm sure it's inevitable that he sees some things, but he tries to stay out of that because he doesn't want to be influenced. And I thought it was really cute. Like at one point he said that, yeah, I just one day was working on it and felt like adding a family raccoons because a family raccoons because I thought that would be cool. And then he just did it. Like he just, you know, it's just sitting there having ideas. He's not he's not necessarily I don't know. I've interviewed people before who when you ask them about their relationship with the community they say oh yeah we're always listening to feedback and trying to implement and trying to make this game whatever the community was this game this game belongs to the community or whatever and i i don't know i mean i guess maybe there's probably situations where that's you i mean you obviously want to listen to feedback like if something's not working or something's like like a problem for people you want to listen to that but i i i like things so much more when when they have a creative vision behind them like like just a very strong one and he he talks about that too We talk about David Lynch, actually, because he's a noted fan of David Lynch, and he talks about really loving Twin Peaks and saying how he doesn't think he ever wants to give up Stardew Valley to be made into a TV show or movie. But if David Lynch were still alive and he offered to do a Stardew Valley thing in the style of Twin Peaks, he'd say yes and just relinquish creative control because he trusts that vision so much. Lynch was the big influence on Link's Awakening as well, right? A small village. A lot of games, turns out. Actually, I'm watching Twin Peaks for the first time right now because I did that interview with Concerned Ape, and he talked so lovingly about Twin Peaks and David Lester. Are you in season one? I just finished season two, and I am going— You stopped there. Sam, you will love this. I'm going this coming weekend to Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas to watch the movie in a theater. Oh, that's a fun way to do it. Yeah, the movie is worth it. The other season's kind of rough. I just got to go to the diner this summer between Yakima and Seattle or whatever. It's great. It's a little shrine to Twin Peaks as well. They have photos and stuff like that outside. It's inspired so many games. I was going to say, I was actually just going to say, I grew up 20 minutes away from where they shot the establishing shots for Twin Peaks. Oh, my gosh. It's inspired Final Fantasy. Oh, my gosh. It's inspired so many things. There's scenes in Kentucky Route Zero. like I'm watching this show and I'm like, oh, Kentucky Zero just lifted this. I mean, literally everything that Remedy makes, obviously, it's just, it's really incredible how much influence this show has had. Rashida Jones' mom is in it. Oh, really? Yeah, she's the diner waitress, Quincy Jones' wife that she passed away recently, but she's, yeah, the blonde diner lead waitress. That's Rashida Jones' mom. Well, go check out Rob's awesome Shardew Valley stuff off on IGN. we have about 10 or 15 minutes left and i hear that seth has a fever that he wants to talk about oh a little mario tennis fever that's right i got a fever the only cure is what cowbell hey look it's jesse gomez what up i love jesse gomez yeah i've been playing a lot of mario tennis fever probably more than i saw myself playing even though i have played a lot i still don't know how i feel about this game yeah okay it's been there yeah i'm having so much fun and then uh a fever the titular fever will happen and i'm like i hate this inky blotch crap yeah but also i don't at the same time it does not i when i get into like a a rally like that you know when there is a fever i love it so much but um yeah the i'm playing through the tournament mode right now which is much harder than i thought it was going to be maybe i'm just getting old and i'm not here but it is i just started it yeah the the gold cup or whatever the the cup the highest cup is that when you start i can't do very well in it and now talking flower just mocks you the entire time can we talk about talking flower like the new star of all nintendo i know he's way too present yeah the thing about talking flower is he doesn't have a it's just a guy talking he's not doing a voice he's not doing anyway is that still his name we haven't given him an actual flower yeah and they refer to it in the game as talking flower in this one which is very cool you know if for $34.99 you can pre-order the talking flower that will come to your house and say did you get all your homework done this is gonna be like when we called that thing baby yoda for the longest time and then after like a year there was something like oh his name is grogu they're gonna name the talking flower so they're never gonna name the talking flower talking flower has youth pastor energy there's the most like you know it'll be like a this is miyamoto message and it'll be like his name is claude yeah i like that's good it's very fun when i'm playing in like a match but then i i completely do not have any interest in going to the quote-unquote story mode and playing those horrible mini oh it's so it's awful awful awful it's i was kind of shocked by how little i liked it because i was ready i was like yeah i'm gonna make you know baby waluigi grow up and be a man again and now walk to this thing and hit the button a few times yeah i know it's like they made it so they could show you a trailer that looks like an RPG, and then it's just not. It looks so awesome. Yeah, you said that in your review. They're kind of masters of cutscenes. Yeah, the cutscenes look crazy good. It's kind of a funny premise too. They all turn into babies. It's a shame because Kimmelot knows how to make a good single-player mode in a sports game. They've done it multiple times before. Why? I, for the most part, think that the tennis is like super fun and feels good right it's just that sometimes i hate the fevers and sometimes it kind of depends like if i'm on you know uh the like sixth match uh like the fifth time i'm on deuce and i've been playing the same you know game opponent for a half an hour and they throw whatever the ink blotches or like the the um spinies then i'm like come on i just want to move on with this but uh my wife and i played against each other and it's it's very fun to play competitively i think we still had more fun playing you know mario kart together obviously it's like mario kart is kind of the bar for playing competitively but this one is a fun game to play against one another but yeah i logan seven is like the perfect uh i would agree it's a good game um so i was hoping for like a great game i was hoping to just lose myself in some fun what if they added motion controls no they did that's it's a swing mode you can swing mode where there's only like four of the fever rackets to pick from instead of the full 30 which is yeah a little bit limiting i made a mistake of playing without a fever racket for not i just was like oh i don't want to do this but not knowing that so you're that doesn't matter your opponent will still have fever rabbits and then you're screwed that's so mean it sucks so bad yeah you can turn them off entirely if you want but i i don't think that the actual tennis is that good if you turn them off yeah this one i i think i'm pretty much wrapping up my time with mario tennis fever which is a shame because i played aces on switch for like 75 or 100 hours across that generation i'm i'm a tennis player in real life like i've played tennis since middle school and i still do me too oh yeah elementary school yeah oh cool yeah i played on my team in high school yeah i played a lot of tennis yeah nice me too i didn't know that sometimes like in these games too when you know tennis and you're just doing your basic like keep your opponent on the other side to approach the net you're it's kind of op in in this game i feel like which way i was gonna say that as somebody who knows like real tennis strategy i don't think this game is a very good representation of what it's actually like to play tennis which made me never miss they don't spray ink all over the the tennis plant in real tennis take that away take that away entirely if you just play the normal tennis like piranha plants in real tennis in mario tennis aces you can slow down time and leap into the air and like aim your shot in first person with like this gyroscope controls that's not real tennis but the the feeling of the momentum of a point and when you have your opponent on the back foot and when you are playing mind games with them and you you hit it to the back right corner and then they're going back to the middle because they think you're going to go left and then you slam it right back to the back right corner like these things are so satisfying in aces and like the the meter management and the racket health of aces enhances that feeling of like the essentials of competitive tennis and playing online in this game i've seen people loving it online which is you know that's that's great for them but for me i play online and it doesn't feel like tennis it feels like how annoying can i be with the racket that i choose and the character that i choose i'm gonna pick rosalina and i'm gonna pick the racket that has the curviest shot and i'm just gonna lob it 15 times in a row and that's the meta and it's just a pain and sure you can try and counter it and figure it out but it's just not personally clicking with me at all online which which is a bummer because i love tennis i love mario tennis i i'm not into this one that much sorry i forgot to ask about this we were talking about the story mode what what is this that i was seeing that the story mode of this game is that mario and his friends have been turned into babies because they were bad at tennis no it's because they want to go steal things with wario and waluigi from a mine yeah yeah okay because daisy caught the mario tennis fever daisy is literally sick in bed she has a little tennis fever she is for some reason they listen to waluigi and wario who just say like they're like clearly plotting and then they're like oh you need to help us they're like we don't have any other ideas so they just follow wario i see and then they steal something they shouldn't, which is very, you know, is a golden apple, which, of course, evokes biblical metaphors. The forbidden fruit of tennis, yes. This is actually an Assassin's Creed game. I mean, I had a wild explanation for this story, and I don't know that you gave me something that was any less ridiculous, so, okay. Well, Waluigi's a Templar, but the Templars are good. You should always listen. This is what I've learned from video games. You should always listen to the two guys in the corner going hehehe. That is what they do. That's exactly what happens. And then they do it as babies for the entire story mode. Why did I play that? What am I doing? It was a big miss to not Wario and Waluigi's baby versions should have kept their mustaches. It just would have been so much funnier. It would be cute if they were drawn on or like they keep their enormous teeth. That's true. They have their toothiest smiles as babies their blue eyeshadow that they have they keep that as well i was gonna say one thing i noticed that is mechanically kind of bothers me is if when you get into a rally when somebody has you know because you if somebody uh activates their fever shot and you rally it without it bouncing and back and forth back and forth you can you know ostensibly you could give them back a little taste of their own medicine i noticed that after a certain amount of times the opponent who i'm play will just clearly just the ai will just brick it it'll just immediately like let me get the point and i think that that interesting is dumb and it's a little bit too obvious like i appreciate they're giving me a little extra little extra chance there but it also feels pretty they also do that with service right that you always serve first which is just yeah and here's a little thing i've noticed that is again this is just from a tennis player it doesn't matter at all but when you're playing with fever rackets you never change court like you never change sides of the court because it's like they don't want it to be oh now you have to have all the bananas on your court when it wasn't fair but if you play tennis without fever rackets you do change court so it's yeah that's kind of cute yeah it's yeah it's interesting but it's this is still totally fun i had three friends over the other night and we played this um for i don't know about 30 minutes before switching i should try that that sounds like a good time yeah that's still the best way to play this game like that is super fun but even then these friends were like i kind of like aces more than this one yeah we're just a big aces household which i think is a kind of a weird take like that game's not super well liked but i just super clicked with that game last generation let's see we have i just want to quickly mention so xenoblade fans feel represented on this show xenoblade chronicles x definitive edition nintendo switch 2 edition is out now great name addition is twice in that title which is just phenomenal uh yeah shadow drop from nintendo this morning 4k resolution and 60 fps no new content just a visual and performance upgrade 4.99 for the upgrade pack and $64.99 for the physical, which comes out on April 16th. But this is great because this was already a gorgeous game on Switch 1 and it needed this and this is fantastic. Oh yeah, I'm very excited to get back into this. I'm going to say right now, it might be too late by the time you hear this, don't pre-order the Nintendo Switch 2 version if you don't already have this game. If you don't have this game, it's for sale right now on Amazon for $39.99. You can spend $5 and upgrade it. So don't spend $65 just to get the Nintendo Switch version spend $44.99 and you could start playing it digitally right now that's great yeah deal we put this we play this for a little bit last year when it came out in march before all the switch 2 stuff took over and this is a really really awesome remaster of a wii u game that i really like it's it's very mechanical focused less story focused there's no like two hour cut scenes crazy jrpg plot to follow but it's really like a precursor breath of the wild in a lot of ways. Just this enormous world map where you can go where you want and you're plotting it out with your own markers on the world map. They used to be on the Wii U gamepad. Now it's not because we're playing on Switch or Switch 2. Yeah, this is probably my favorite Xenoblade ones of all the ones I've dipped into. Interesting. I'm hoping this means we'll see the other Nintendo Switch maybe get an upgrade because part three is actually the one that really clicked for me. Yeah, I like that one too. I love three a lot as well. Yeah, we need them all. It's just this weird drip feed of them for five bucks here and there we need them we need them all uh but that is another episode of nintendo voice chat in the books that's 800 episodes of nvc in the books we're even older than game scoop the only video game podcast can you believe that sam we're here every friday audio on your favorite podcast absolutely not true what that we're older yeah well we are i've looked at this i looked at this this year well it was called week in review for many years yes it was those count those totally count it's like the lakers when they were in Wisconsin. We're still the Lakers. The Oklahoma City Thunder have the Sonics Trophy in their game. This has a different name. Yeah. It counts. We're the oldest one here at IGN. I'm going to stick with that. Season 2 starts in episode 1000, right? That's when NBC Season 2 starts? Sure. Yeah. In four years. Season 2. Yeah, if you like the show, tell a friend, leave us a review rating or nice comment. Wherever you're listening, it's the best way to support us. Next week is Pokemon's 30th anniversary. I don't know anything, but I'll just guess right now we'll be live with you at 6am for Pokemon Presents probably with NBC next week, so look forward to that thank you so much Seth, Rev, and Sam for joining us thank you to Tayo for working behind the scenes and thank you so much for listening, but for now that's all the time I've got, I've got to get back to playing Animal Crossing New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS, have a great week we'll be back next time with more Nintendo Voice Chat the only place you can get the thing