Castle Super Beast - CSB 162: Aerial Rave The Younglings To Reach New Heights

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

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MUSIC Um, okay. Let's, let's try this. Uh, if, if, if you are, uh, unfortunately, if you are, unfortunately, uh, a parent who's had to experience your child learning about, uh, vor and before they know about what sex is. I'm really sorry to hear that. That's very unfortunate. If you're starting at minus 12 on that conversation, I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. So apparently there are parents going through some struggles and, uh, if you're five year old, had to learn, uh, about vor and inflation type things before even knowing what anything is. Uh, I don't envy you or that conversation and I'm sorry.

Uh, so we're doing the part where we sync the audio, right? And we're getting the audacity stuff ready. And I look over to, uh, look, will I say, are you, are you looking at the chat and he goes, yeah, it's there. Why am I, I think, I think I may have just read the worst story I've ever heard in my entire life. And sure enough, a few seconds later, woolly responds with the deepest, most depressed. Oh God, I've ever heard him say in the entire time I've ever known him as somebody in our chat describes how one of their kids got super into four videos when they were a little and how they couldn't explain to them why they were bad. And the kid talks back and goes, what, they're just fat. I don't get the big

deal, which leads to the impetus of the sex talk as a result of four. And you can't bring shame into the equation at any point. You can't do any damage. These are fiberglass eggshells you're handling. So you have to approach the topic with so much delicacy and no shame. No. Oh, no. The internet. This is, this is a was not a bad time. The internet wasn't not a mistake. Let's let's start there. Anyways, this. Yeah. No, as as they say, emotional damage. Right. That's you got to be careful.

Yeah, but it's all it's all parent centered because kids don't know shame until they're taught shame. Yeah. And then how are you? What are you going to do? Make a 10 year old feel all fucked up because their funny videos were actually like creepy sex freak shit. Oh, Elsa gate was the worst, man. What a horrible thing. Spiderman always pregnant in those people because it has to be whatever they like looking at and the bright colors of Spiderman and Elsa, but also like just like gorillas of various primary colors. Like it doesn't matter. It just has to be a colorful figure, you know. And of course, Joker, I see people in our chat right now saying, where's the story?

Fucking scroll up. Listen, it's it's it's next to you. No, no. Don't even stop it. Stop it. Listen, hi, MP3 friends. Don't worry about it. You heard the whole story. We just told it to you. It's exactly that. The there's you. That's all you need to know. It's hopefully you're not the story. Yeah, that's it. Anyways, how's how's everybody doing? How are we doing? We're okay.

How we're all we're all good. OK, I'm out here. It's it's it's beautiful outside. I took the dog for a walk. He's he's he's taken a nap right behind me right now. As you can see it, if you can't see, he's fat. It's a fat brown dog. OK, fat. All right. Morbius wellness check in.

Have you seen Morbius? I have not seen Morbius. I, too, have not seen Morbius. Good. All right. Moving on. What I have what I have seen. What I have seen is the Doctor Who man who is in the Morbius does a weird sexy dance and then does a random vampire face in the Morbius. Oh, OK. And that's all that's all I got. OK.

Page was desperate last night to somehow acquire and watch Morbius. She like it whatever it is about that movie, just like hit the need to see the garbage switch in her mind. And like she's like scrolling through every streaming thing and eventually finds an article that's like Morbius will be on Netflix. And she's like, yeah, 18 months after theatrical release. And I'm like, oh, oh, I'm saying, well, here's the question. I mean, do you deserve to see it in a form

that isn't cam ripped with someone coughing and farting and walking past it? That's the only version I could have found theoretically. And I was not going to watch some dude's cell phone rip of Morbius. I feel like that's what is deserved, you know? Um, yeah, but no, that desire is the is the inverse tomato meter. As the as the tomato meter goes down, the desire to understand and to consume the cringe goes up. So what? So is it was at the moment that Jared Lido or Leto decided to start a cult

and become a pseudo Jesus? Was that the moment that he just became the actor that you could see the name on and be like, oh, this movie is going to be a piece of fucking goddamn shit. I don't think that was the moment. But that certainly was the jumping of the shark was the not a cult cult, you know, if any. Yeah. And that's like. And I think I remember so we had like these awesome moments

with Mads Mickelson making a statement about Morbius, but not really Morbius, where he's like character acting is such stupid bullshit method acting. What if you're in it? Yeah, sorry, method acting, my mistake. Method acting is so stupid. If what if you're in a bad movie? Am I supposed to be impressed that you didn't drop the role? You were you should have dropped it right away.

And it reminds me of a quote by Sir Alec Guinness a million years ago. I think it was on Lords of the on what was it called? It was on like Lords of Arabia or something in response to a method actor. And he's like, have you just tried acting? Yeah, no, Matt Mads is a guy. Yeah. And I mean, why don't you just try acting when the director says action? Because like people like Denzel come along and it's like, oh, shit, you know, sir, like like the man himself has made it so that this is the way.

And like, you know, you will hear all the stories about just like put people, everyone around the method actor that has to put up with it, you know. Yeah. And and if we also sorry, well, just know if they if they win an Academy Award at the end of it, then it can retroactively justify all the shit. Yeah. So people are pointing out that there's also Robert Patterson quote that seems to be extremely well timed, which is nobody ever talks about method acting when they're method acting a nice person. Sure, there are always method method acting complete assholes that everyone has

to put up with. Yeah. No one's that that acting the kindest, nicest person in the world. Anyway, to answer your question, though, I mean, I would say that it was it was pretty much preordained, but prior to the cult, the start of anything would have been being the 30 seconds to Mars guy, right? Like, oh, is that where he's from? Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's that's that's what's up. Still, um, I mean, at at his at his best, he is like

the worst part of an amazing movie like Blade Runner 2049. You know, right. So anyway. OK, well, we've we've done the the Morbius check in. Um, so yeah, I'm doing I'm doing great. My Morbius check in is negative. OK, how about you, man? How you doing? It's you're also negative on the more negative negative negative on that.

So here's a question. What the fuck do you know about Action Park? Zero. OK. So I want to attempt to rectify that very quickly. I want you to picture in your head the kid from the Simpsons with that works at every burger joint, right? The the the Crackley voice teenager. Oh, Mr. Poppendopoulos is going to kill me.

Now, picture like a thousand of them and picture that they run an amusement park and there is no such day. There's no such thing as rules or safety or anything. And this is now put them in their own amusement park in New Jersey. In the eighties. OK, hold on a second. Action Park's popularity went hand in hand with a reputation for poorly designed rides.

I'm not now. Hold on. Now, hold on. Now, take those pimply face teenage kids from that. I'm the kid like take them. They're running these parks. OK. Yeah. OK. Now, now feed them beer. Yeah, they're drunk. OK. Now, keep you feeding them beer. OK. Now, families and people and kids are all going up there.

New Jersey in the eighties going on rides. OK. Now, right across from the water park is a go cart park. Where you can speed through when go carts. Excellent. Now divide this entire facility by a real live highway. Right down the middle. Oh, oh, oh, action park, baby. OK, so I. OK, right. OK, so so I watched a film, a documentary called Class Action Park yesterday because one of the names for action park was class action park.

There was. Go ahead. The like even the tiniest browse on this wiki article, I'm seeing just all sorts of shit that I shouldn't be seeing on a fucking. It is. Park page. OK, now take another Simpsons character, your monorail man. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Now fuse him via Fusion Dance with Tony Soprano. Got it. And you get on that Tony in this in this analogy.

Sure. Fat Tony. That'll work. Yeah. Fat Tony. And now you get Uncle Gene, who's OK. Who's basically a character who him and his partner got kicked off of Wall Street for fraud. And and all kinds of cash crimes in the 80s. You got a fucking slivest motherfucker in the world to get kicked out of Wall Street in the 1980s for fraud in the 80s. He got kicked out. OK, so then what does he do?

He goes up state to he goes up to Jersey. He finds a nice ski resort and the ski resort is going to make him money. And so like it's doing it. But the problem is that Jersey winters are too short. So in order to. So then they start doing things like artificial snow and whatever. But that's not good enough. Yeah. So the summertime months are a waste of money.

What am I buying here? Why did I waste my money on this land? So it's time to create our own amusement park. It's time to create Action Park, right? But what the fuck is an engineer? What the fuck is any sort of safety regulation? What is that? Who cares? I don't care. Make whatever is fun.

And like he draws on a napkin, a Sonic the Hedgehog loop de loop, a diagonal line. And then a circle and then and then another spout. And then he says, make this and then they make that as a water slide. And this becomes the introduction of what is going to be a real place where they actually he has the money to build it. And they and they're like, OK, what about insurance? What what are we going to do about?

What about insurance? What about it? We are insured. Look, look at this insurance company that is insuring everything we do that is totally not my own fake company located in the Cayman Islands. Look that we are insured and is mine. Yeah. So this fucking movie, dude, is it's so Johnny Knoxville. Did I want to say an actual film about something called Action Point, which was like a narrative version of like what this whole thing was,

but literally just insane drunk teenagers running a fucking the most dangerous and deadly theme park of all time. I have to say there it's it's a good. This is just a class action park is the name of the documentary. Yeah. Because like I really got to read this wiki article because we're talking two paragraphs and it reads like a back of box quote for a fascinating film. It's popularity went hand in hand with a reputation for poorly designed rides, under trained underage staff, drunk guests and staff and a consequently poor

safety record. At least six people are known to have died as a result of mishaps and was given such nicknames as traction park, accident park, class action park and friction park. Little effort was made by regulators to address those issues despite the park's history of repeat violations. Like the management resorted to illegal financial schemes to keep itself solvent, which led to indictments, some of whom, like founder Jean, played guilty. Yeah, no, you have to understand this is an incredible story.

It is like the most American story. It is the tale of Jean, Uncle Jean, who believed in his own park. And like so the way that they describe it is like Walt Disney, like like amusement to the person who designs an amusement park. It like you can see their personality in the park. And Walt Disney is the kind of guy who wanted to, in particular, he wanted to relive and re-experience the frontier,

a little bit of the Wild West and a little bit of that futurism from, you know, the turn of the century about what the what what what the future of America could become. And that kind of determines what Disney is, right, or the early parks. Um, this is a guy, Uncle Jean is a guy who says, fuck the rules. I hate rules. I hate rules so much. I fucking hate them.

God, fuck you, fuck everything. And I'm going to do my own park with blackjacket hookers. And nobody's going to tell me what to do. No one's going to tell you what to do. If you come to Action Park, you control the action, right? That's the big thing. This reminds me of there's a guy who I follow on tech talk, who used to be a big shot lawyer at a massive firm,

and he describes that like every single year, the same thing happens. Some guy comes in and starts going, guys, there's this crazy hustle. And for some reason, nobody's doing it as all the lawyers in the room start putting their faces in their hands. So it's like, I don't know why nobody's doing it, but we could make tons of money like right now. So Class Action Park is particularly great because it walks you through like the escalating narrative of just

you're full on like Lord of the Flies style situation here and it can't be understated. How important it is that there's infinite footage of people getting hurt and fucked up. And they're all and it's part of the promotional material practically like how there's no one whistling to guide anyone anywhere. There's no crowd control. It's just fucking go, go, go.

And like it starts with like the idea of this loop, the loop on the napkin, right, which it was designed by these coked up designers that are pretty much rejected from other amusement parks that Uncle Gene got to make his brides. And they're like, OK, we've made the loop, the loop. Now, how are we going to test it? Let's put some crash test dummies through it. OK, they go through the loop de loop and they came out and they were just

pieces and parts, right? OK, now what do we do? OK, let's let's redesign it until they come through without being broken into pieces and parts. OK, now that they've come through intact, how do we get someone to go through this? All right, Uncle Gene stands at the end with a hundred dollars in his in his pocket and goes to his employees who are 16 year olds, who wants a hundred bucks, go through the loop de loop, get a hundred bucks.

But your kids line up, go through the thing and get fucking concussed on the round. Right. And then they realize that like sometimes the traction of the full loop de loop, even if you wet them all the way up and it's a water slide, is not enough to clear the full thing. So they have to create a trap door at the top after kids come out all fucking discombobulated and busted up, bleeding, dislocated shoulders, all kinds of shit. They open up the trap door at the top to get the stuck people out that they finally

after the after doing the human tests and they find teeth lodged into the top of the fucking loop de loop because people were going around and as they were clearing, like as they were clearing the full 360, if you don't have enough speed, you're going to drop down before you actually hit the back wall and your teeth will knock against the fucking tubing and just an embed and embed in the plastic. And then you come bleeding out the other side. And this is the introduction to what's going to be happening at this park. Well, are you are you, you know,

this is this is fun because I was just reading about engineering shenanigans just the other day and about the responsibility of an engineer and how seriously the that responsibility is taken. Have you ever heard of something called the ritual of the engineer? No, but I have heard of OSHA. So the ritual of the engineer is is is the Hippocratic Oath of the engineering world and it was invented by Rudyard Kipling. And the idea is is that you you clear your programs and you've graduated

and you're going to become an engineer and you go to a gigantic pile of non-descript iron rings and you are to take one of these iron rings and place it on your right hand pinky finger. If you're left handed, it goes on your left hand pinky finger. And then you swear an oath to seriously take into consideration your responsibilities because they may be if you screw something up or cut corners, you could kill somebody by not doing your due diligence. And the reason why that ring, that iron ring sits on your dominant hand is

so that every time you work on something, it bangs into that to remind you of your vow to do your job correctly so that you don't kill people. Yeah, well, fuck off with that. Uncle Jean is got a park to build. OK, and Uncle Jean operates differently. Here's how Uncle Jean operates. OK, people were cutting in line and with people were cutting up into line without tickets, getting on rides.

And Uncle Jean was like, how do we stop these shit kids from coming up and sneaking rides in without a ticket? We got to scare him somehow. So then one of the employees walks in to the office one day and sees Uncle Jean holding a cattle prod and OK. And the kid goes, what what the fuck's going on? An uncle Jean turns it on and zaps himself in the chest and falls over and the kid goes, oh, my God, what is happening?

And then Uncle Jean gets up and goes, no, no, no, it's OK. It's fake. But here's what we're going to do. We got to get someone to come up and try to pretend to steal to steal a ride without without a ticket. And you're going to take this cattle prod and you're going to zap them and then everyone's going to see that kid fall over. And then they're going to tell the stories of how someone got killed for trying to steal a ride at Action Park and then no one's going to do it anymore.

I mean, I mean, hard cut to the front office where they're getting calls from hundreds of parents who are complaining that their children saw a park employee murder someone live at Action Park. Of course, with the cattle prod, because they went down and never got up and were carried away on a stretcher. That's the oath that Jean takes. You have to understand different energy.

Fuck your your ring. OK. Did defunct land do a fucking episode on this? Because they they do a fucking episode on God damn everything. Who? I bet you if I type in defunct land. Oh, you're not familiar there. Oh, yeah, I know. It's just the sound cut out. Yeah. Oh, my mistake. Yeah. Defunct land here is for Action Park.

Like, honestly, like I'm going to tell you right now. Class Action Park like is it's everything you need to know. Fucking amazing. Watch both because you get you get more injury footage, I bet. And it's and they're promoting it, you know. So, I mean, we're talking everything from like, OK, like Tarzan swings and cliff dives, right, where you're swinging. And then you just and you do a clear and then you drop. But you're Tarzan swinging into insanely cold,

fresh river water with salmon in it, where people are. Wait, what? Why? Because it's because it's because it's a it's a unclear live body of water. And you're dropping in and then your body is going into shock because of all the water and people who can't swim are freezing up and practically almost drowning. And because like lifeguards are not a fucking thing like there are there, but they don't give a shit, you have people that will go underneath

and then no one clears when someone has dropped. So other people just drop on top of them in some cases. And people are basically just like all yelling and chanting at you. Like if you can't fucking swim, they just go swim, pussy, do it. You fucking loser as they all get drunk and watch. And people who basically get dragged out of the river. All the lifeguard does is drag them out. What? And these are get teenagers, people, six years, six to fucking,

you know, 18 year olds, you get dragged out under. They write CFS on your bracelet that and it just means can't fucking swim. And then they send you on your way so that anyone else can see you're just all you go up to the next ride and OK, you can do it. But everyone knows you can't fucking swim. Ha ha. And that's it. I mean, man, I want to go to action park, man, legendary. OK. So the other and then not to mention the other

the other drop that they had was that, like, again, like Cliff's side, no checking who's beneath you. You just you see footage of like 20 people all lined up partying on a cliff and just every couple seconds, someone just does a flip off of it. And then people at the bottom are just just bodies just raining on whoever's below. And it's like, yeah, whatever, we're doing our shit. Who cares? And of course, because again, live body of water,

there are large black snakes in the water because, you know, why would we clear that out? You control the action at Action Park. OK, all right. I don't want to go to Action Park anymore. OK, that's the line for me. You've got Uncle Jean, who's like, you know, what's fucking fun? Like White River rafting.

So why don't we? Why don't we recreate that on our own thing with a tube that you sit in and then you tube down this insanely? And basically, whatever the rides were designed to be, Jean would come in and add his own little twists at the last second to make it more actiony. And some of them included like I want to say like literally just like sonic bonus level style like sideways walls where you go up with the tube

and a death drop on the other side and good people watching to see who's going to go over. And as you get close to that death drop, people are like, oh, and then as you survive, they go, oh, now you probably go flying off of one of the tubes at some point because they also have, again, reminder, no lifeguard really caring about what's going on and no concept of wait, stop, go, wait, stop, just go, go, go. So you fall off your tube.

You're now standing in the water. You're trying to get back on your tube and right behind you comes the next group on their own tube, so you're just getting clipped off. Of traffic jams but piles up, people, of course, are, again, drunk, getting up, starting fistfights in the water, angry teenagers. And as the fist fight causes a bigger traffic jam, more people behind them are coming with their extra with the tubes from the top. I like this. It's it's it's it's choice.

It's fucking choice. Is the the the fucking like this is the unregulated fucking Jersey wet dream of a theme park. And and like it's a very the footage is it's quite incredible because being being 80s Jersey as you do. I mean, yo, bored white kids is all I can say. Just bored white kids in the 80s as far as the I can see.

I mean, at one point, like a young Lane Staley is literally being interviewed like, yeah, man, Action Park is great. Fucking, you know, like. Go ahead. The 80s, like there's there's a certain because there's people we're talking to right now that don't remember the 80s because they weren't there. And I mean, I barely remember them, right? But I existed in them for a small period.

And the 80s was like a different time in ways that is difficult to appreciate. But the easiest way to the easiest way to understand how the 80s were different is to go watch Back to the Future, because when you watch Back to the Future, Biff isn't going to ruin your car and he's not going to like fuck up your essay or cost you the good summer job. He's like, I'm going to kill you. Your girlfriend.

And this is like a PG movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And like so now you have a place where kids are going coming up from New York or wherever nearby, because it's literally like inventing the concept of a water park, practically, and they're making the rules. So anyone who wants to do insane dares any like anyone that wants to just like all the bored shit that kids would do, like sneaking into abandoned places,

climbing dangerous things, it's like, no, we've given you the place to do that. You know? And it's supervised in big air quotes. They have like like one of the they have like a wave pool where it's like this it's this slow. It's in closed place where people are shoulder to shoulder, getting fucking launched into the air and then under the water. And there are so many injuries just at that pool alone that like anyone who is

a new lifeguard for the day is brought in to like what they call the death zone, which comes after the grave zone. And you sit and you watch over the death zone and basically within the first five minutes of opening or within the first 20 minutes of opening, you will have to rescue no fewer than three people from drowning instantly. And that's your that if you can do that on your as your first day as lifeguard, then OK, you can probably handle this gig. Oh, good. Yeah, that's excellent.

I mean, like it just goes on and on and like every step of the way. It's like, yeah. So meanwhile, across the street at the go kart place, which also the adults were came for the go karts as well, because go karting is fun. Keep in mind, keep in mind that the go karts are, A, right next to an active highway. B, the go karts can go 50 to 60 miles per hour. Once you like tweak some shit on them and C, they're 20 feet away from the beer

tent and D, I did you. Did you actually mean to say 50, 60 MPH? I said MPH, not kilometers, American. That's like 75 to 100 KPA and some of the people that's highway speed. And some of the employees are like, yeah, so we took them on the highway sometimes and there's footage of them on the highway going, so now they're 20 feet from the beer tent. OK, so people would, of course, have a good time and then go and continue to have

that good time. Oh, it's a great time out here. Uncle Jean says, you know what would be awesome? If we set a prize for anyone who can make it around the track in under 55 seconds, you will be greeted by a bunch of bikini babes and they'll give you like a bottle of champagne or they'll spray you down with a bottle or whatever. It'll be like a big old celebration like that. Let's encourage the drunken go carters next to the highway to go even faster.

Dude, I mean, I don't know what to tell you, you know? Yeah, so sounds. Yeah. This sounds like a amusement park built by and for that suspicious generation that just happened to have its risk inhibitions fucked up due to decades of lead poisoning. I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot going on.

But the perfect, the perfect combination of of like that, right? Disaffected youth, boredom, Jersey, the 80s and a character like Uncle Jean with infinite bankroll, because of course he was mafia affiliated. And of course he had all the locals in all the local politicians on his payroll so that he never had to deal with any lawsuits. I know. I know, man. The implication that you're making that 1985 New Jersey might have had a few

corrupt politicians is outlandish to me. And and so you just put that all together into the perfect storm. And and and the employees, again, are the same age as the attendees. And it's just like bored, high, drunk kids trying to fucking pass the day up. A ton of which are not even really. So like there's security supervising posts, but really the kids are just going up to the bank shack because there's a bank shack up the hill. Yeah, like it really is just it's a perfect storm.

It is the it is a it is a absolutely complete picture of that era. And you're watching it. And I remember I heard about Action Park and I heard about it as like that legendary place that was so insane, they shut down because kids died on the fucking rides. And it's like and then you're watching the full story of it. And it's like, OK, this is this is escalating like there's only so many teeth and fractures and bones broken and people being carried out on stretchers. Oh, by the way, to which they have

their accident procedure was pretty much like, OK, if you're skidded, if you have like, let's say you're going downhill on the Alpine slide, which is by the way, just a it's a bobsled track. It's just it's just a bobsled track where you're sitting on a fucking you're sitting on nothing and you're flying down a bobsled track. You and you you go flying off of it, which many people tell the stories of how they do and then they get massive burns

and broken everything's and they bring you up to the repair cabin, basically to the to the medic cabin. They spray you down with alcohol and iodine and just like you burn on the spot. And like there's a circle and it's like and if you can stay in the circle, then you'll get like a prize or whatever as they spray you down with the fucking with the weird orange solution and then sends you on your way. I love it. All of this can only go so far before you're like, OK, but when.

Like, but there's bodies, right? And it's like, oh, there's absolutely bodies and they get to them and it's fucked. It's insanely fucked. And it's just one of those things where you're like, what do you think someone who starts this kind of journey does when confronted with the ultimate? Like, oh, shit, just got real. And the only answer is your uncle, Jean, you triple down, cover it up. You quadruple down, you got to cover it up.

You make it go away. Everything you can do. You know, yeah. So you have people what you have people doing their their their rafting and to keep the water nice and turbulent, you keep you put fans under the water. Of course, these are ungrounded fans because you just literally just put fans in the water and one of them breaks and then someone falls out of their raft and touches the open fucking electric broken fan circuit and just gets fucking fried.

And it's like, yeah, this is this is what we do. You know, and they just end and like, what do you shut the ride down? No, not really. You just kind of keep it going. You know, I mean, absolute madness, you know, and and and further examples, like it just it goes and it fucking goes and you're and you're kind of like, OK, so at some point does like, does anyone step in? And it's like, yeah, it went until the mid 90s.

And then it shut down, essentially, you know. But like it just it is a fucking ride, man. Like, you know, a pun unintended going through every single aspect of this park. And you're like, literally nothing. There's not a single thing in this park that was safe. It's like the food that you bought and ate was expired. You know, like they and of course it was. You know, like and there's all the tricks to keep it tasting fresh,

like literally everything, you know, there's a there's a minor detail that somebody in the live chat mentioned that puts out slightly more context, which apparently in the early 80s, the legal drinking age in New Jersey was lower than that of much of the country. It was like 18 or 19. Dude, there is. Definitely adds to the problem. There is footage of the legendary

staff parties that would happen, like after hours of just like there is what looks to be a 12 year old shotgunning a beer. Like the can is he's holding the can with two hands. Shotgunning a beer and you're just like, what? Why are you filming? And it's like, no, this is how we do it. This is how we do it. You know, yeah.

I mean, like there's every it's so chock full of just madness, like every aspect of it, everything I just described. It doesn't matter. Go fucking see it for yourself. You know. I like, yeah, I just there's so I'm trying to like there is a nothing, nothing. What was the other ride? Anyway, whatever, go fucking watch Class Action Park.

The child's a capitator. Was that what it was called? So no, but yes, because what it essentially was, what it was was they had a it's like a waterslide and it does the 90 degree angle dip and then it goes 45 again. And then, you know, so it's like it's like the staircase down. And what you're supposed and what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to get launched in the air, land and get relaunched and then land again.

Right. And so they built and so they build all the rides with the specification of, hey, if you're the average kid that works here, you're, you know, again, 16, 17, you're about high, you're about tall and you weigh about this much. It'll be fine for you. And anything bigger or smaller than that, who gives a fuck? It's not my problem. You control the action. You might not make it far enough.

You might overshoot the fucking thing horribly. So so everyone does their thing on it and people are getting, you know, they're having fun and it generally works the way it's supposed to for the most part, until one kid comes along and just somehow finds a way to run and slide in in such a manner that he picks up more speed off the first bump than any other kid did and instead of re-landing on the slide, he just launches all the way off and never retouches the slide, which is again, like, like feet in the air, like stories high and just launches all the way and just

each shit because what's at the bottom is not a pool. It's just grass and just each shit on the fucking grass and again gets gurneyed out on a stretcher, you know, at least it was soft, right? Well, the kid was OK after that, but, you know, unconscious on landing, certainly. And then they were like, OK, that was one ride. Maybe we got to dial that one back, you know? I'm God, dude, like it's and it's so incredible to watch as like this thing comes and continues to exist and basically advertise the fact that like,

like the way the way that they interview former guests and the way that they put it is like, yeah, no, like we tried to kill ourselves for fun. That's basically what the 80s was. It was a blur of us trying to kill ourselves for fun. And this gave us the means to do it. And, you know, and it was cool. And yeah. And like when there's money covering up at just about every aspect of it,

you can keep that shit going for a solid 15, 20 years before like you get rated and like actually like police are kicking doors down to which we're thinking about we're thinking about driving our cars at each other, you know, playing a game of chicken with no seatbelts because that's for pussies. But we thought, you know, we'd really want to kick it up a notch and go down to Action Park. So every time one of the thousands of people that fucking busted themselves up took Uncle Gene to court, he would never settle. He would always take the lawsuit all the way.

He would make it as long as excruciating and as painful as possible. And through a bunch of bullshit and having everyone in the pocket, they won 93 percent of their cases, right? But even for the few who they lost to where they were then forced to pay out, he just wouldn't pay it because fuck off. What are you going to? Because then they have to come then they have to come after me again. What are you going to do? Right?

And I could win that one. So and eventually, like they're like the first time the bailiffs just came down and the police police rolled up and kicked doors down and they like they like rushed like the cash register and had guns pointed and everything and went like, yeah, we got to go like you must pay now. And then like after that first one, it became such a common occurrence that they literally just like they just roll up, politely knock on the door and just be like, yeah, just give us what you got.

Like give us some cash. Essentially, essentially turning the state into a protection racket. Like because he just refused to like to pay anything. Yeah, no, it is it is. Yeah, it is a it is a fucking masterclass in no rules since, you know, self-regulation and in like what happens in a world without engineers in a world where not a single engineer can be found, you don't need them. You don't need that shit.

Engineers are shot on site at Action Park. Just just weld this part. Yeah, to it. And then it'll that'll be stable. Class Action Park, go watch it. I just told you a whole bunch of it, but there's still a ton more. It's absolutely worth it. I mean, I heard the legend, but I couldn't believe it upon seeing.

I couldn't believe it. What the fuck, Jersey? What the fuck, man? Of course, it's Jersey. Of course. This is a Jersey. This is a Jersey story. Yeah.

You know, there's all kinds of legacies. That's that's great. Yeah, it's it's the best. It's the it's the fucking best. And again, like make no mistake, it's goddamn morbid and horrifying. When you get especially to like the people that died and they're like, let's go talk to the families about what happened. Let's go see like how fucking insane this goes.

Like it's all in it's all included. It's not just the the the madness. It's like this is the consequences of it as well. People lost their fucking kids and Uncle Gene doesn't give a shit. Um, those children knew what they were signing up for when they came to Action Park, literally, literally. Action Park is not responsible for our downhill dry bobsled run killing your son because the ride was located here

and your son was launched so far away that he rolled down the hill and landed on rocks that are like far enough away that it's the rocks that are responsible. Yeah, the rocks aren't part of the theme park. No, he got launched so far away that the rocks are responsible, not the ride. This is our legal defense. Take it or leave it. Yeah, you know, so, um,

anyway, that's a that's a fucking that's a doozy right there. Yeah, out of bounds, exactly. Can't can't sue me for out of the ring, you know. Man, theme parks are fucked up. Like in general, I like a good theme park. But every time I see a video of like a ride rocking backwards and then like volunteer people have to run up and hold it down with their body weight so that it doesn't fall over and just murder a crowd is it's kind of horrifying.

And as someone who has gotten pretty big, generally above the weight and size of like a lot of these rides on comfort levels, I'm kind of just like, yeah, I'm not going to push my luck on that zipline. You know what I mean? Like I'm just not going to push it. I I made a decision in my life that I didn't, you know, when you make a decision, but you didn't realize you had because it wasn't a conscious decision. It just turned out that you just were unwilling.

And that decision was any theme park that moves, I would not put one foot on a ride. Wow, OK, OK. Any any theme park that goes from location to location, meaning this ferris wheel or some shit has to be complete. Oh, oh, oh, oh, the reassembly. OK, OK, OK, moves us in like the the carnival itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm not no reassembly. Yeah, because the reassembled right as I go down to La Ronde or Six Flags or

something, I can at least assume that the ride as is has been functioning as is for a little while. The monster has been there since the fucking like eighties or seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, even without human maintenance. But if I go to the traveling carnival show, ferris wheel, a ferris wheel, the most common ride of all, I have to trust not only that it was disassembled in the last location properly, but that it was recently assembled in this location properly, which I don't because it's being assembled by fucking carnies.

No, and when I'm going to do it and when their ring knocks against the bolt, they go, get this fucking thing on. They they flip it off into the into the nearest water bank, you know, what what engineering, what testing, what weight, what calculations, what math, you know? Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. I was a fan of roller coasters quite a bit growing up.

I love roller coasters. And I still do. It's been it's been forever, you know, but absolutely anything traveling can go fuck itself. That's that's that's that's a pretty good plan. I remember when I was in Japan, I was at Universal Studios and like the Harry Potter ride that I was on like got stuck or something. And I was like, you know, OK, I'm not too worried about it.

Everybody around here seems really professional and they all seem to be taking their jobs seriously. I would not have felt that way had I gotten stuck on anything at even my old local fucking place, La Ronde, where I vividly remember every time somebody running the ride looked at me, it was with disdain, annoyance that they had to manage the ride that they were in charge of. I mean, it's shit. I mean, I remember when I was younger and I learned the lesson of the nearby one

that's set up inside the mall across from my place back as a kid. And I went to whatever it was. It was some crazy ride that turns you upside down. And like, yeah, of course, all my money falls out of my pocket because I don't know what the fuck I don't know. I'm you know, and I'm like, hey, my shit dropped out of my pocket. Can I do just laughs? Just like you as you're walking out like, hey,

can I get my thing that just get the fuck out of here? Get the fuck out. That's our tip. You know what happened? That's our tip. You know what happened the last time somebody did that? Couple of about 10 years ago, that fucking kid hopped a fence to get his hat back at the Six Flags and somebody riding the ride kicked their head off.

Yeah, it's gone. If it fell out of your pocket or off your body, it's gone. Yeah, give up. It's gone. Jesus Christ, man. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, anyway. So that's a good one.

Um, and I guess other things of note this week. Moving on. Yeah, I played a little bit, popped in some some strive, played a little bit of Testament, got a feel for what was going on. Um, I'll tell you one thing. They're definitely more sane. The nightmare that used to be Old Testament to anyone who's unfamiliar.

Is a character who was in Older Guilty Gear that was basically designed around putting invisible traps on the screen. And you had to memorize where those traps were. And then as soon as you came into contact with them, they would activate. And if you weren't blocking, then they would they hit you. Biting Old Testament felt like you or the you are a tier two protagonist in a Yu-Gi-Oh battle because you would try and do something and they would yell out that you would

activated their fucking trap card and your fucking whole game plan would just blow up in your fucking face. And if you if you were not paying attention for one second where those traps were and then you landed on one, they also had the ability to do teleports, move projectiles with the with the bird that would track right towards you. That giant dash attack. Yeah, no. So Gravedigger would just cut is like a big scythe spin that would basically the

moment you got hit by a trap, they could just spin into you and just that you're dead, you're dead, not to mention a bunch of other amazing things. Testament was the start of what I would like to call the the arc system works almost specific genre of fighting game character, which is I am going to fill the screen with bullshit and you are not going to play a fighting game. I mean, the the the character type that led to Aracune and new and fucking Teddy. So so you could theoretically say the Orochi was like a progenitor to that idea and go nits as well, but they didn't hide it in a constant.

It was a it was it was bullshit and you were still playing a schmup when you fought go nits or when you fought the Orochi. But I just saw a great term for this as the screen pollution. Yeah, that's that's the term. It's a that's the term. Oh, that's a great term. It's a screen pollution character. Absolutely. Yeah.

There's a unique that there's but there's a uniqueness to the way Arxist does it, especially especially with yeah, someone like Aracune, someone like Naoto in Persona. Fuck, I hated fighting Aracune, you know, fucking random projectiles coming from oblique angles. You could go to hell with that shit. Um, it's it's a it's a unique experience of like it's a game of memorization. It is a it is not about what you can do. It's not about your combos.

It's not about how fucking, you know, good your footsies are. It's about can you memorize where I put this bullshit and can you catch me? Because usually these characters have ways to like back themselves up into a corner with a bunch of bullshit and then like teleport out or like YOLO their way across the screen. It's just after somebody didn't give a beat down and they just throw 100 mousetraps on the floor and then turn the lights on. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And like furthermore, just in the nitty gritty as well, like most characters have a forward punch button that is like made for just being for being like knocking characters out of the air like an air and vulnerable button. Whereas Testament, they got all of that, but it was also an instant overhead that could be combed into whatever they wanted. So anyway, it was it was nightmarish. So going into the new version and trying out Testament now,

yeah, completely, completely just from the ground up rebuilt as drastically changed as Baikin was, certainly. And they created something that I got to say is like, it's pretty fun. I don't mind the ideas being different. I mean, everyone was terrified of what Testament would be. And like now it's back in a fairly like it's still oppressive and it's still it's still really, really like you're it's not your turn until I say it is style

character, but that's also like if you look at a jacko, if you look at fucking gunman, happy chaos, that's a bit of the theme of this game is like there and like not to mention when when Zato gets started or when Ramlethal gets started, it's like you're just going to block here for a while until you either see the opening and take it or you don't. And then you're going to just keep blocking. Like it's not your turn.

Yeah, I mean, you thought we were playing fighting games. Instead, what we're playing is tennis and I'm just going to get to serve and you'll have to deal with it. That's it. And then once I'm done, you can serve back. If you know when, if you know when to serve, that is right. And so the thing is, unless I blow you out in the first volley. And so playing a couple of sessions, like a couple hours of it and realizing like, OK, so

when it is your turn, you better hope your character has something that's just like, get the fuck off me, leave me alone. You know, you need something like that, right? Characters like Sol and Kai can do their dragon punch. But a lot of characters don't have that. A lot of guilty care doesn't give out dragon punches for free like Street Fighter. They don't. They don't necessarily. Reversals are like if like some characters have like super reversals,

like spend your meter if you want it, you know? But but it's very it's uncommon that people can just do what Sol and Kai can do, you know, and so when you're dealing with that, when you have no like, ah, leave me alone and you don't want to use your burst or or use your meter for like a YRC, which is kind of like ends up being some of your only answers in some cases, you just have to know exactly when that split second occurs, like I said, and so playing Testament and being on the receiving end of that oppression and not having that like ability to just be like,

leave me the fuck alone for a second. God damn it was pretty it was rough. And it kind of made me just think about how I'm like, yeah, if I'm going to play a character that has like that doesn't have a clear way around that, that's like, let's say, a meterless version, I should say, that I want it to at least be like a Nagoriyuki where it's like, and when I do touch you, you'll you'll explode. You know, I need something to compensate for that, because as somebody who like.

In some games, the exchanges are not that bad where you'll be on defense for a bit and then you take your turn. But like I feel as if a game like Samurai Showdown, for example, is a good one where like when you fuck up, it's usually because you made the wrong decision and someone's capitalizing on that, right? I still remember playing Tiger versus New 13 in original Blaze Blue. And the my turn was. Felt like one correct guess through their bullshit.

And it would be 70 seconds of blocking the full screen mix up only to hope I get this guess right. Oh, I did. Exactly. Done. The anime experience. That's exactly it. The anime experience, you know, and and I'm like in a game like this, I fucking I can't play a testament. I can't do it. I need, you know, like they've like testament has a big reversal DP, but when you don't have meter and you're just sitting there holding it and

you're like when the turn comes and I don't have enough meter, I have nothing. And if they bait out that DP, then I'm dead anyway. Like I'm like, yeah, I can't commit to a character like this. I need a snowball. I need to leave me alone. Button, you know, I need to get you know, or something, something. So there are a lot of fun. The it feels really good when you mix up

your opponent with the the the teleports and the the curse, the the stain system. All of that, all of that stuff is pretty fun. And when you want to be it's interesting too, because like. No, I'll be you keep talking. OK, in your ear, I just got to open a door. When some characters in there's another thing too is like some characters will do what you described where it's like they'll keep a continuous pressure on you

for like, you know, eight seconds or so. And then you're like, OK, now you now you have your window. When you play characters like Jacko or a testament, it's not necessarily continuous pressure. There will be gaps and holes that you think you can do things in, but they're not really opportunities. And if you try anything, you get blown the fuck up. And that type of thing makes it way harder than, let's say,

if you're fighting like a character like Chip, for example, Chip has a lot of pressure. But there are moments where you're like, OK, it's coming to the end. He can't he can't extend this any further. This has to be the end here of the sequence. But if you're playing like testament or Jacko, you can kind of like choose how to put a gap earlier in so you can cover one later. And it makes it rough, you know? So that that's pretty fun on offense.

But yeah, it's just not the kind of character I feel like I could I could commit to based on those those based on that oppression feel of this game. You know, you plan on PC. Yeah, the lag needs to be as crisp as possible. And then that means you have obviously downloaded the day zero literally out for one second mod where you take testament's cloak off. I did not get a better look at those legs. But I saw that was literally the first hour of the character's release.

I saw the screenshots of it. I saw those panties. I saw the bolts or the gear. Yep. Yep. That was there in there. The modders are in there. That shit is scandalous. Unbelievable.

And overall, too, like when I did that diskay interview, I remember one of the questions I asked was like, like your older the older games had a lot of like visceral kind of things. And gore and the backgrounds were like very violent in some ways and very album recovery. And I was kind of asking about like the change and how a lot of that stuff was missing from Exord and, you know, his answer was like, oh, yeah, like when you have a team of artists as opposed to like just me on working on stuff,

you're going to start to see more of a, you know, a community vision of things, which is why things got a little more anime. But a lot of that question was mainly thinking about Old Testament's animations and how they were a lot of like just, yeah, like blood and horror. And thankfully that shit is right on point in the intro, which is like, you see the little fairy like flying around and then the the skull on the scythe just crunches into them. The blood explodes and the exploding blood freezes in midair and becomes the

blade of the scythe, like that is fucking metal. That is absolutely old, guilty gear, you know, so that shit is in check. Testament's awesome. Yeah, you know, and that's that's that's pretty much it of notes. I mean, Over on Woolly versus Elden Ring continues. Shoutouts to Bayonetta. Boy,

the Bayonetta fight. Oh, right. You know, we're flying into the moon starts playing. Yeah. It feels really over as like as a homage. Her limbs are so like long and like just the colors are the same. And it's like you're missing the glasses. But God damn, we see what's going on here.

So that's great. And and shoutouts to getting to what I'm going to call disc two of FF six. That's some shit. Like you're not wrong, but at the same time it like predates that terminology. I know exactly, exactly. That's why that's what's so wild. And it's interesting because it's like. I had heard non-con I heard without context reference to

like the event in ways where I didn't really know it was being described. So that's so by by not having that all these years, it was a fresh experience. I didn't know what the fuck was coming. Holy shit. Yeah, holy shit. That is is wild. I assume you did the stuff on the beach. No, no, no, I haven't left the house.

I woke up. I haven't left the house. I woke up and we're in the new setting. That's it. So the world of ruin is an absolutely like crazy. Like keep it as big as possible, if you don't mind. No, I'm not going to talk about it at all. OK, but what's the craziest thing about it is its development history

is that it only exists because work on FF six was way ahead of schedule. It was not in the original idea and they were they were so far ahead that they were like, what if we just kept the game going? Wow. OK. So the all of the world of ruin is basically it is the equivalent of like an RPG getting DLC expansion. Yeah, yeah, we had time.

So we made brood wars. Wow, OK. Damn, well, that's that's also it's wild to hear that like, wow, 30 percent of this Super Nintendo game was created because they were so far ahead on their 18 month devs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Although at the same time, right? When you've been working with tools that you know inside out like the back of your

hand and shit, I mean, it's going to, you know, it's going to show towards the latest part of the end of the generation, right? But yeah, all that is great. That continues. So yeah, come come check out FF six and Elden Ring over on Wally versus and I forget, but we're going to have something some fun fighting games coming up. So yeah, Saturday as well.

Come come come check out what we got going on. Yeah, that was that was that was me. How's how's it going? So for for Pat's week, I don't really I mean, the week has been shortened because of last week's later podcast, BC seems very nice. Everyone here is very nice, like very, very nice. I ran into a lady on the street walking the Zangief and she said, well, you know why?

I said, oh, wow, everybody around here is really, really kind and very polite. She's like, you know why we're all so nice out here, right? And I go, why is like because we're stoned. I'm stoned right now. Says to me, this woman who appears to be in her eighties. Hell yeah. And I'm like, I fucking knew it. I fucking knew it.

I've been saying that my whole fucking life. And I had a goddamn BC old lady native. Just tell it to my fucking face for 20 young man thrilled. Thrilled, absolutely thrilled. Great. Yeah, yeah, just pulling up side. Pulling up on the fucking scooter with the haze of a hot box smoke behind her. Da, da, da, da, da.

Just great. Aside from that, aside from general new living things, I'm waking up at seven o'clock every day. OK, taking the boy out. OK, I'm doing I'm doing my household chores and I'm done those household chores by about 10 p.m. Sorry, 10 a.m. And then I chill for a while before I either do this or go to my stream. And Paige is looking at me and getting

pissed because, like, I'm losing weight, like visibly, like, day to day. And it's easy by just waking up with a farmer clock by just doing all that normie shit that people do. But like, Pucci's dead ass exhausted because I walked him for a half hour in hilly mountainous forested terrain. So he's he's fucking done till later, later in the week. But in terms of this podcast of content to bring to you, I only have two things.

One. Separated from my normal television and use of media consumption, me and Paige tried to watch the X files last night, to which I say, wow, it's never been more clear why piracy is an option to many. I just wanted to watch the fucking X files. And the the the fucking pinging around of where the fuck is the X files and being told, oh, it's on Netflix. No, it got taken off Netflix.

Oh, it's on this. No, you have to buy it at three dollars an episode. Oh, it's on that. It's not available in Canada. And it's like, you know, I paid for a Netflix subscription at the time. All of the X files was on there, which to me says I should be able to watch it, regardless of whatever stupid

fuck deals they made with all that bullshit. When you click the I agree button, it says, fuck you each shit. We do what we want. A bunch of garbage. But in terms of video, James, there's only one real thing to talk about. And it's the fact that for those of you watching at home, the visual version of the podcast, you can see I'm a lot closer.

And that's because I'm on a desk and monitor set up for everything. I got I even got my PlayStation five hooked up into this monitor. And I'm going to stay using a monitor. Like I may have a couch set up for special occasions or whatever. I'm I'm not going back to not using a monitor for pretty much anything. This experience has been extremely positive. Number one of which is over the weekend, I decided to hit level cap on Dark Knight and FF 14 because they have changes

coming out tomorrow and I'm looking at it and I'm like, you know, I didn't even realize there was a picture of a man in this icon. I thought it was just a I thought interject was just a swirl of green and orange and ellipses, but it's actually a man pointing at another man. And going, shut up. And I threw to I loaded up. I loaded up some games that in the past had given me some troubles with reading and text size and I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh, this shit's a joke here.

It's a fucking it's it's not it's a tiny little baby problem, not even. Who cares? It's like I'm wearing big glasses. No, for real, I'm I'm definite like if you have the ability to play video games at a desk, anyone, I highly suggest you figure out how to play video games at a desk. I booted up disco like yesterday and I was just messing around and continuing on my new game plus and all the text options that updated that made it a completely different experience. So oh yeah, crazy, huge difference.

I fucking, you know, I wish that were standard, but it's not. So, you know, until then it's like, look, there's some things that are made for couch and some things that are made for PC and these days there's more and more PC and less and less couch. So that is felt, that is felt every time I boot something up. Even playing the PlayStation on this thing, I'm like, oh, this is a this is a generally positive experience. The only thing, the only thing that's a downside is that if you're playing

certain things that don't have good anti aliasing, the aliasing hurts more when you're closer because the blurriness of regular vision does not cover up some of those edges. The innate Vaseline filter that is your meat eyes is not applicable. I feel like the couch, though, is and at a certain point to it, besides like the logistics of the way I record, I also feel that it's like it has a lot to do with how I grew up playing games as well.

You know, how we all grew up playing games. Like if you're one generation forward, you didn't have that you you just played at your PC games at your desk, you know. But for us, at least it was one where every major formative gaming experience was at the TV with on the couch, you know, that felt that felt like the way to do it. So I do still have like a personal affinity for that. Yeah, for me, it was it flip flopped. It was depending on the house that we lived in and depending on the age that I was,

it was playing it on a TV or playing it on the PC, the PC of which has some dank, awful memories associated with it, because as a dedicated single player space caused like just no end of fights between my brother and I as to who got to use the PC. But like. Like I'm like, I really obviously miss having a second monitor right here, because fuck, I mean, I need it. But just the absolute fucking total clarity.

I feel despite having 20 20 vision, I feel like I just put on a pair of super glasses. Right. I mean, I feel like the genres to make a huge difference. Like shit like an MMO that has like though, how does the most insane thing ever? I feel like that's going to be the biggest difference. Whereas, you know, if you're playing and if you're playing like anything, it'll probably make a difference. But like a devil may cry is not going to matter as much, right?

No, you're not paying attention to the HUD as anywhere near as much when you're when you're doing that. So that being said, what I have noticed is that for the first time in a long time, I've actually felt the thing of, oh, this FOV is weird. This this FOV is made for being eight feet away. I feel weirdly in bad feeling. How big is the monitor in front of you? The monitor in front of me is

I want to say 21 inches. OK, did you boot up games that you were playing on the couch and like your default setting for for the couch was like, yeah, you had to immediately switch it. Yeah, OK, OK, yeah. 100 percent, hmm. I think my FOV in like. Dead by daylight is like too low. All right, for example.

But yeah, no, man, playing on playing on a monitor is fucking, oh, man, I know. This is the most boomer shit in the world. PC game. Yeah, no, no. It's like, no, but it's like, you know, it's it's been a long goddamn while. And being this close means that I can comfortably put it down to 1440p because that's the native rest of this monitor, which means now everything is just going

like 140 plus FPS on absolutely everything. And it feels nice, man. I'm trying to get a list of games that I either talked about on this podcast or in general, where I went, fuck, I wish I could have played this, but the text has no scaling option. It's too small. Were there games that you completely shut down because of that? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

One that I can think of is called Legend of Grimrock and Legend of Grimrock, too, which are these really fantastic old school style, like like I have the holder style grid based dungeon crawlers that have no UI scaling at all of any kind. And when I was playing it on my TV, like the the the buttons to click on were like literally like less than an inch wide and invisible from my fucking couch. Civ games, Civ, let's fucking say it's a really good example.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, where I'm like hacking the fucking internal like interface shit to get it higher than it should be. Like I'm just it's just nice. It's just it's just nice. Wow. Though I still don't healthy desk gaming at 7 a.m. Yeah. Oh, dude, I woke up yesterday morning

and got five and a half levels in fucking dark night before noon. Well, you know, your body is going to probably start to trend back towards the adjustment, though, right? You're going to have to fight that process. I have been fighting that process. OK. Step there are two steps of fighting that process. One is getting enough energy expenditure so that

you're tired by the time the sun goes down at 10 p.m. The second is having your wife at 10 30 p.m. Go, Patrick, you're coming to bed. I swear to God. And I go, OK, OK, OK, so we could do Wordle and do our do our bullshit and hang out. And then the other the most important one is not having blackout curtains, which everywhere else I've ever lived, I've obsessed with blackout curtains.

Here is a temporary abode. I'm not going to buy blackout curtains to put on somebody else's fucking shit. So at seven o'clock, that fucking sunbeam just blasts you right in the fucking eyes. And then the dog. So here's the fun part. The dog never adjusted from eastern time. So the dog wants to get up at seven, eight o'clock to shit. And I'm going to get up to take that dog out to shit.

So that don't shit in here. I definitely know that. So the battle is ongoing to keeping this this sleep schedule. I mean, I will say this, like, I know that like when that morning grog sets in for me, which it always does, like, you know, I can crack my you can have a coffee or an energy drink or do whatever your morning rituals are. But one that like I was not doing enough and then like, holy shit,

notice the difference was like there is a nice like sunbeam skylight spot like right behind me where I can just sit and let the fucking the Kotel con raise vitamin D just just blast and just and like that. Like the thing that the way the god lights the broadcasting from heaven thing, letting that shit just hit you in the morning as you sit there, groggy. Like you can feel the numbers going up. You can feel the green numbers popping up above your head. You know, super important.

I'm I'm only having one of these a day anymore. And it's only directly before a work related task, which would be right now, and have otherwise switched entirely off of all of that to tea. OK. That probably has a lot to do with your like improvement and loss of weight and all that stuff as well. This is the first one I've had.

OK, this monster. Yeah, there you go. There you go. The whole time I'm here. Don't care for green tea. I just like regular black tea or orange pico or what have you. And then the next step is yeah, man. Tons and tons of H2O get hydro. I've been drinking a lot more water since I've been here.

I mean, it's water. I mean, what are you? And what are you two idiots doing? Stop, stop it. Whatever you two are doing, stop it. Cool. So what's going on this week? What's going on this week? Let's see. If you go down to twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at 4 p.m.

West Coast, 7 p.m. East Coast, that'd be PST and EST. No, E.P.D.T. You're going to need to figure this out. E.D.T. You're going to need to figure this out. No, are we on fucking Daylight or Standard right now? You know that, don't you?

It's 4 27 p.m. S. Yeah, is it an S or a D? I don't ever put the D. I always I always ever I always write EST. And that's that. OK, whatever. At that time, I'm going to be streaming two things this way. No, three things this week.

Tomorrow, the day after F of 14, 6.1 patch is going to keep going. So they have reworked my class. They've added new story stuff and they've completely from the ground up, completely redone the game's PVP. So be checking those out on those days. And then on Thursday, I'm just say fuck it and play some of my PS4. Save the Elden Ring and then on Friday

in I don't know if this is a series or not, but whatever, in recognition of my new monitor status and lack of issue with PC games, the demand of PC setup, I will be playing the defense, the offense of the ancients to on Friday. Good, good, good, good, good. Because I said, hey, what games did I not play? And somebody said fucking Dota. I'm like, you know what? I did say that.

Mm hmm. So we're going to play some Dota on Friday. We'll compare and contrast to the League of Legends. I loaded the game up to, you know, get the capture things right. And the fucking valve like boned, you know, sound played. And it, it, it, I felt like uncomfortable. Mm hmm. I felt, I felt like I was being tricked.

Well, look, what I'm wondering is, is are you going to now have like all the the league heads coming in and just shitting on every aspect of Dota while the Dota heads are like, look how fucking great it is, and then you get, you get the battle waging for your attention. You would think, you would think that that happened, but. It's actually been like, it's been very chill. It hasn't been like, I can't believe you're playing that. This other one is so much better because they're both free.

So the reason that I played League first was bluntly, well, like two of my friends already played League back in the day. So if I go play League and go, hey, does anyone want to play League with me? I have two people that I hang out with in my discord that I go, yeah, fuck it, I'll play a thing. And like, that's that, right? But because, because Dota is free, if I was like, hey, guys, I'm getting really into Dota, do you guys want to try it?

Like they'll try it. I will say, what are you doing? What are you doing? Stop that. I will say that my experience with people talking shit about the games is that the people who actually talk the most shit by far about Dota or League and specific to those two are people who incessantly play both and hate both. That's the only real solution, isn't it?

They're playing the first one to take the stink out of their mouth from the second one until they can't handle the stink of the first one anymore and then go to the second one and just get mad at that. So there are there are no lines drawn. It's just one big crowd and they're and everyone together is collectively like, ah, fuck these. Yeah. The only thing, could you stop that?

Sir, could you, sir? The only thing that I will say about them is that I think League's art style is a lot stronger, but Dota actually gives you every hero to start for free. So I think it's been really obvious that Dota is the obviously better deal, like regardless of quality, because the whole game part is completely free. Well, it's a better it's a better taste of whether or not you're going to like it because you can you can try to your heart's content.

Yeah, but I mean, like any anything that comes out for that game in terms of gameplay is free, but like the League of Stuff, like I think the characters look a lot cooler in League, whereas in Dota, it's like, yo, that is literally, literally just a night elf unit that you changed just enough that you wouldn't get sued. Like 100 percent, which has more characters. Oh, I'm I'm going to look that up right now.

How many characters? You know what, someone will just say it in the chat. League, League keeps adding some. League has over 140. And Dota 2 has 123. Comparable. Have they ever I'm going to just put this out there so that a ghost tells me. But I know that at some point,

Dota 2 was in this process of the only thing that Dota 2 was doing was translating older heroes from original mod Dota into Dota 2. And the last I had heard of it, they weren't making new ones. I assume that period is over. They finished that process years ago while I'm up to date. OK. They're making new heroes now. I was.

I was also worried because I think I mentioned when I played League, there was a program called Blitz that you could install on your PC that would monitor your game and just pick your load out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it would give you stats on like, hey, you're going to you're going to be laning against so and so you have a 41 percent win rate. Make sure to blah, blah, blah.

And apparently Dota 2 has that, but it's community based and within the engine itself. It's not a separate program. So I'll be I'll be interested to someone screaming at me to hit the button that I should have hit. I'll be honest, I never encountered the toxicity in League that people talked about, but I never played ranked. So

didn't you talk about the fucking shit kids that were with the mid or feed and the like, didn't you have some wasted experience? Yeah, I guess it just didn't hurt my feelings because I thought it was OK. But that definitely was a was a thing, you know. What did the era of toxic Halo lobbies immunize me to League of Legends? It's possible.

Or the or or God, what the fuck is it Pokemon Unite toxicity? I think the best thing these games do is not let you talk to people. I think that I think that's the smart play. I think that's the smart play. Like an FF 14 PVP like four years ago, I think it was. They just disabled the ability to talk to your teammates or talk to the opposing team, nothing at all.

Yeah, just nothing. You get you get to hit a button that says grab the objective or come back. Ping system and have the ping have a cool down because even you can still be toxic on on on your pings, you know? Yeah, people are pointing out the Dota has voice chats. Not going to have voice chat on my fucking game. Let's turn that shit all the way down to zero. Is the plan to queue only with your group?

No, I'll queue. I'll queue in a bullshit. Fuck it. I don't give a fuck. But that that that audio tab, the tab where it says player voice volume, just dragged that right across to zero. People definitely are going to love that. I do. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. You're going to get the chat box of like yelling, turn your fucking mic on, you know, whatever. Yeah, OK, or not. Who knows?

Cool. So, yes, if you want to check out that shit show, go down to twitch.tv. Slash Pat Stairs at this week. I would rather lose 10 games in a row than hear someone talk to me in a video game anymore. Like when I see folks saying like, but you really need it to win. And it's like, oh, man, don't do I not give a single fuck anymore? I remember playing Apex and I was like, hey, man, this is a teamwork game. I'm going to turn on the ball.

We're going to turn that right the fuck back up. I think I had voice chat on for some 10 seconds. And I heard a 10 year old with the shittiest mic in the world. Yeah, yeah, turn that right down. I mean, I would say I would say that like, yeah, you must turn that off to have a superior experience. But superior to no mic is mics on with people, you know, that are fucking safe.

That's the that's the so if I if I play Dota on Friday and I really like Dota, I will convince at least one or two of my friends that played League. Oh, would you like to come play Dota with me because it's free? There's no blah, blah, blah. And then we'll blow an hour or two, three hours a week on some fucking Wednesday. And we'll have a nice pleasant experience. I remember a million years ago when I listened to the giant bomb cast. I forget who was, but it was a guest on their podcast who was

describing playing either Dota or League, and it doesn't really matter which. But they described. How there are basically two games. There's did you and four other friends. Decide to all start playing together. Legitimately could be the best game of all time every year. Is it anything other than that experience specifically? Don't even boot it.

That's now personally, I think there is some leeway in between. But it's wild that that is just the reality. It wasn't until Overwatch that I learned the difference, you know. Oh, yeah, because you're fighting games are solo affairs. I never knew anything about that world. It was Overwatch that opened my fucking eyes to it. I'm like, oh, there's no going back like I don't do this often. But what I do, it's going to have to be like this, you know.

Yeah. And then you get into the situation that I got into Overwatch. I'm sure you got into Overwatch, which is you play with a group of four other people or five other people with over. I don't remember the team size. Six be sexy. You're like, yeah, yeah, this is great. We're having a great time. We're going to blow a Saturday afternoon doing this, blah, blah, blah.

And then one of us gets tired of it. And so now you're playing a slightly smaller stack and not the full group didn't have that. We had we had we had multiple people. We had more than enough and we would just rotate, you know. OK, so the Black Gift days. It's had a more than more than full. And in my experience, it's one person gets tired of it.

And then you're doing the the the group at a non maximum amount. And then that's not quite as good of an experience. And then somebody else gets tired of it. And now you're only fielding half the team. And now it's way worse. Hmm. And so on and so forth. Hmm.

I didn't have that. But the people playing with me did. Man, that's definitely possible. Yeah, if you didn't have that, that means you were the guy to bail first. But but there were definitely there were more than six people around. And we were just, you know, whoever was there, we would jump in and yeah. Right on. OK, a quick break.

And then we'll jump into section two. OK. Sponsors. Whom we love. This week, podcast is sponsored by Stitch Fix. Who. Have you covered for your clothing needs? Now, Pat, if you continue on this trajectory of health and and

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HelloFresh. Thank you. HelloFresh. Thanks, HelloFresh. All right. What is happening in the news this week? All right, let's jump right into it. The only news that matters this week. Dark Knight action, blood weapon adjustment. Now grants five stacks of blood weapon.

Effect duration has been increased from 10 to 15 seconds. Five stacks, 10 to 15 seconds. Now acquired at level 40, previously level 72. Action, living dead, adjustment, quote. The additional effect restores HP with each weapon skill successfully delivered. Her spell cast has been added with a cure potency of 1500. Yeah. If an amount HP totaling your maximum HP is restored before the walking dead timer runs out, the effect will now change to undead rebirth with a duration

carried over for the time remaining for walking dead. While under the effect of undead rebirth, most attacks will not lower your HP below one. Yeah, I got one. The following items can now be equipped regardless of gender. Giant list of Monster Hunter. That is a that is a great actually, like some of those items look way better than the other gendered versions.

So people are really happy. That's and so like correct me if I'm wrong. But like, does this not mean that like you can use because Monster Hunter still locks them over, but in FF with the crossover. Yes, it's the only way you can put you can see them on the right for Monster Hunter stuff. Right. So you could actually see how cool it would be if Monster Hunter didn't restrict you by using a different game. The the the Monster Hunter stuff in 14 is what if the people in 14 made shit out

of Rathlos? Oh, not the same gear. It's their own styling. It's not just a transplanted gear. OK, it's a lot sleeker. It has more of a coat. I saw that shit pop up and I was like, wait, is Monster Hunter getting their shit together? And it's like, no, no, no, this is the 14 crosses like no, fuck no, fuck.

No, never. Damn. Yeah. Well. There you go. I saw that one. That one is actually really nice. The Yoshi P a while ago said that they were making taking steps to there were a lot of gendered pieces of gear in the game and it really sucked because some of them looked way better than the others and some of them were gendered.

And you were like, I want to wear the tuxedo on my female character, for example. I want I want the cool armor. Or more accurately, I want to play a male bunny and dress him up like a tart. Sure. Sure. Which is going to be an explosion in about 13 hours. Like it. You're like, I want the Gurren Lagann armor.

As opposed to the the the fucking whatever the frilly thing. There are also like boots and hats and shit like this shit like that. That wasn't even like. Like it wasn't even like traditionally visibly gendered. Like there was like a pair of high boots that would look good on any character. But you're just not allowed. And it goes, nope. Yeah. Nope, you're a boy.

You can't wear these boots. So they made a large effort to remove as much of that shit as possible. And the start of that is when they let everybody equip the to be high thighs. Sorry, thigh highs. Way back. So, yeah, good on that. OK, I have a question and ask your question. I feel as if I need to throw this out into the ether.

And if anyone can explain to me. What does the following sentence mean? Oh, the wording on some of this shit is so bad. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not the 14 shit. Not the 14 shit. OK. Just generalize otherwise.

Topic change. Let's go. Let's see what you got. The heart resides within the soul, which is in turn guided by fate to its rightful place. Yeah, what the fuck. Does that mean what I'll tell you what in what version of English does this actually mean anything? It means Kingdom Hearts is light.

But more specifically, it means that Sora has a new, more human being look to go along with the fact that he lives in Aoyama, Tokyo now. So it seems because he's going to be hanging out with Star Wars and Marvel characters. Done. Nailed it. You got it all in. So the KH4 trailer dropped and it looks visually very impressive. But more interestingly is that there is a shot of a forest landscape in which you can literally see the foot of an AT-AT. AT-ST, I think. Anyway, whatever.

It's one of those fucking robots. Yep. And. And now he looks like not an anime character, but like a square anime character, which looks a lot more like a Japanese person. Not only do we not have his stupid clown shoes, but we're able to get a look at his fucking disgusting grippers as he lounges shoe and socksless on a couch. And I guess the move is to just kind of like. Put Tokyo as the.

Well, no, I feel like I got very noctis walking around the trailer world of 15 kind of vibes. Yeah, I wonder why that is. So yeah, Star Wars is going to be there and all the other things are going to be there. As someone on the outside of this, it is kind of interesting because I noticed that when Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced, it was explosive and this too was explosive. But it was it was cautious explosion. Everyone was like, yeah. Was kind of the sound.

Out. And it's very much like a, I don't want to call it like a theming trailer. Like what we probably saw is probably not the real game, actually. It's probably like a more concept thing. And no release date announced. So I think everyone's being kind of cautious. And I think they also announced like two other like mobile things before that or whatever. But sure, they did.

So yeah, when I clicked on the trailer, they made I watched the trailer. It showed me two other mobile things before it got to that one. And I was like, OK, I bet. Yeah, OK. Is that is that going to happen like this decade or I bet it will. OK. Now that Square has moved over to the Unreal Engine.

I have a strong suspicion that development will be a little snappier. If I can clip it for 2030. Yeah, cool, cool. Was three. Did people. Are people nervous about four because of the way three went? I think the most depressing thing about Kingdom Hearts to me by far was that I played one and then two and then I was like one's three coming out.

And that was like a 10, 15 year period. And then three came out and everyone went nuts. And I asked my chat, hey, I really loved Kingdom Hearts to a lot. Is Kingdom Hearts three better than two and was met with a resounding overwhelming consensus of no Kingdom Hearts to for the PS2 that released in the arts is still the best one. And they went, oh, cool, great. Glad to have followed this series.

Three was a game is what I'm is what I'm seeing here. People like three and three apparently was very good. But two is the best one to date. Three sure did happen. It sure was a video game. OK, OK. Well. Realist two is really fun to play.

Two has really good combat. Realistic, realistic Sora means realistic everybody, right? That's right. They had already prepped with that art style stuff and they had like Jack Sparrow and shit like that. Oh, did they? Yeah. OK, OK, yeah. Jack Sparrow and Tron and other like human beings. Which is just going to make the Disney

characters weirder and weirder as time goes on. Yeah, 100 percent. And their clothing is going to be now real clothing, but the characters themselves can't can't go any further. Goofy and Donald appear in that trailer as is. I mean, I'm thinking of like when the smash, when the brawl trailer shows off like Mario now has like real gene stitching, you know, but Kirby's Kirby and Kirby's the same.

So yeah, Kingdom Hearts 4. The heart resides within the soul, which in turn is guided by fate to its rightful place. Man, sure, sure, man. Wow. Anyways, speaking of. Visual upgrades. Uh huh.

Well, Chrono Cross came out and Digital Foundry did their thing. And it seems that the remaster on PS5 runs worse than the original PS1 game. Of course it does. And the Radical Dreamers Edition that features a new version that upgrades some of the arts has redrawn stuff and has some upscaled stuff as well actually will run worse in some cases, whereas the original

will struggle to. Keep a solid 30 frames per second at some points, dropping down to 15 and even 10. Yeah, yeah, so it's not it's not that Chrono Cross's remastered edition runs worse. A lot of these older games have like some foibles and you're like, oh, it's not technically perfect. It runs way, way worse.

And Chrono Cross was one of those games back in the day where even then it had a lower frame rate than some of its contemporaries, which isn't something a lot of people thought about during the PS1 era. Like it would it would hover between 20 and 30 for pretty much the whole game. Chrono Cross remaster like runs like shit. It runs like garbage at the start and end of every battle. You can see it struggling the most. And it it's just like

if at bare minimum, you're not going to hit what the original thing was doing. Like what what's. What is it? You can run it at 60. No problem. So all I can see, the only possible explanation for this is that they were unhappy with the game's original release. And for this remaster, they wanted to try and hit their original target

a little more closely so that when you were playing Chrono Cross and trying to enjoy the music and trying to enjoy the story that in the back of your mind, you kept going, fuck, fuck, why does it feel like this? Why does it look like this? Why is this fucking game got to be like this? God damn it. And that like a really faithful adaptation wouldn't have brought that across.

So they wanted to really up it so they could get to the true heart of the Chrono Cross experience, which is why does this game have to be shit? Of course, of course, of course. The other alternative is despite this being an ostensible classic, they just threw it out there with fucking no effort at all because they don't give a goddamn fuck about it. So the problem seems to be that it's just it's it's a shitty emulator. They're just, you know, they have a really bad emulator play that you're forced

to use here, that that theory also being more cemented by the fact that you can see virtual PS1 memory cards in the save menus. So it's it's straight up just badly emulated and it doesn't matter if you're playing it, even on even if you're on PC with a fucking, you know, incredible machine. It's just it's the emulator that is struggling to handle everything. So whenever Square re-releases any of their old platforms,

it is a legitimate on ironic coin flip as to whether or not it's going to be a piece of shit or not. And it just genuinely seems to depend on the the studio they gave it to, do they care about the source material at all? Yeah, which like Legend of Mana came out and Legend of Mana's port or re-releases ACEs. Well, that's every that's every classic that we get ported these days, right? It's like, is the is the studio porting it

responsible and do they give a shit about making sure that it's clean? Because like it seems as if, you know, not just them, but obviously Konami. Obviously, we've seen it with SNK. We've seen a bunch of games where like porting old shit, the company is not going to stop the release because it's running worse. They'll put it out anyway. You know? Then they'll put out a noncommittal statement and depending on how angry

people are, maybe they'll assign two guys to work on a patch over the next six months. OK, seems like with some manual fixes applied, you can get the PC version working is what someone in the chat is saying. So, OK, that that's nice. You got radical dreamers. You can you can you can read the text on that, I suppose. But that's that fucking sucks, man. God damn it.

Like you your job is to come in at bare minimum the way it was when you released it and then build on top of that. You know, it's obvious, but fuck. What's terrifying to me is that you look at Legend of Mana, which came out thumbs up, like really, you look at Saga Frontier, a game which I really strongly dislike, but I'm willing to admit that its re-release was done with absolute care. And people who do like that game were extremely happy with the Saga Frontier

one re-release and then this Chrono Cross thing. And then the fact that I think it just got rated. There's a Tactics Ogre re-rating. Yeah, that's a that's a docket a docket point. Tactics Ogre has been and the and the final trademark tactics remaster or whatever you want to call it was in that leak list from NVIDIA, which every single goddamn thing on that has come true. And it's like.

I don't give a shit about Legend of Mana. I don't care about Saga Frontier and I do care about Chrono Cross in the way that this is hilarious to me. But the idea that they would finally recognize the existence of Final Fancy Tactics for the first time in like 15 years and botch that is like holding a fucking like sort of Damocles over my fucking head. The what I the hearing about like whatever they do shit like, you know, porting mobile Chrono Trigger to Steam,

excuse me, or like some of their terribly like legendarily terrible like FF7 shit that they did back then and whatever. Like, of course, the Screenix PC port, you know, again, there's there's that back and forth of like, it'll be shit or it'll be good. Who knows? It's up to who's doing the job. The fact that like it's still a constant thing. And like even in the case of the FF6 remaster, which is excellent, I'm enjoying it a lot, but it still does have like that the weird text issue where

it's like it's just they just picked an awful default font that I had to go in and mod. And they just didn't change it for any of the releases for some reason. Like, it just doesn't make any sense. Like out the gate, why don't you stop just immediately just not do that? It's such a simple thing. And there's also it's very minor, but like every time you load a save, the game has to the game loads and then you can't move for like at least five seconds or so, there's like just a weird like it's still loading,

even though you see everything kind of thing. But yeah, it's just like it's still a problem. No matter how many times this happens. I don't know if you can if you can PC fix that, that's nice. But at this point, it just seems like just play the fucking original. So just play the originals, what you're being told. For tactics, the one that it hurts me so bad is that I talk with a couple of people on Twitter who really like strategy RPGs and like every time a strategy RPG comes

out, it's it's still compared to tactics, which I think came out in 99, right? And that's unfair to judge everything by the standards of tactics. It's tiring, in fact, like a triangle strategy was being basically reviewed along. Oh, was it 98 or whatever? But triangle strategy is basically being reviewed by a lot of outlets as is triangle strategy as good as Final Fantasy tactics. And the answer is like probably not, but it's still really good.

And now that's kind of weirdly unfair. But it's still the best one in its genre. Like. Still. That game came out over 20 years ago. And it never got a fucking real sequel to itself. It got like a spin off a couple of sequels. And they like nobody has ever made one that was better than it.

And it's so fucked up. Why? Even the people who made it didn't make one that was better than it. They even try. Here's what you do. Here's what you do. If you're unhappy with the poor running version of Chrono Cross, boot up your PS3 or your Vita

and grab your PS1 classic copy of Chrono Cross and experience that version of it since that's the original getting directly ported. Go ahead and boot that up. Well, don't do that right now. Well, no, but because your your your your your license on it somehow expired back in 1969 as of this week, so you probably can't actually. You're not you're not allowed to not not right now. But but that's probably how you'd fix that problem once they decide to fix

the fact that your game has updated itself to have a license to 1969, preventing you from playing your copies purchased on your Vita or your PS3. Yeah, it'll be fair. They came out and said this is like a bug. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not it's not a you. It's not a fuck you. You can't buy what you can't play what you bought thing. The timing of Chrono Cross made it look incredibly malicious.

It did, which is why we everything why we heard about it, certainly. But someone posted a story. Basically, they booted up there. Their Vita copy of Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger. And they were other games were dated as expiring in 1969, not allowing them to boot them. But every other old PS1 classic they had did work. It was specifically those ones.

There's also a incredibly like frustrating slash hilarious story of them calling up the Sony helpline and seeing if they can fix the problem. Because clearly, this is an issue on their end only to be told to format the console, do re wipe everything, re download and shit. They obviously don't know while they on the line and the person like everyone involved knows this is not solving the problem because it is a thing that is happening on the PSN server, but we're still going to go through this clown shoes song and dance so they go through the process.

And of course, it doesn't fucking fix it. And then multiple people also report that they're seeing it happen to their copies of FF six as well, which again, weird timing, you know. But yes, it was apparently a bug. Hey, I want to use this as an example. So I've called Sony and I've called Nintendo for technical support for things in the past in the relatively recent past. The Sony one was as you described.

Was a gentleman that was like, well, have you tried that? No, I had that's not the game. I preordered a game and it just didn't unlock, dude. It has nothing to do with the and eventually I had to be transferred to someone who spoke like a human and was able to just refund me the purchase. When I called Nintendo, it was for

a really stupid problem where I had bought Monster Hunter Rise on the switch and then Capcom sent me a code two weeks early and then I put in the code and it ate my fucking code and then went each shit it's still knocking in two weeks. Damn, yeah, that's a weird one. Which is why I never buy Capcom games until the absolute dead last Oh fuck tends to send me codes if it's already on your flagged on your account. And I I spoke to I spoke to I think it was Yuri and I'm like, dude,

what do I do? And he's like, I have no idea. Yeah, that's like he's like, I could give you another code, but I'm pretty sure it's just going to eat it again. Yeah, that's that's a hardware problem. So I called Nintendo and I explained the problem and I am immediately met with, oh, man, I don't know how to fix that. Something I've never heard from anyone in tech support my whole life. The Nintendo person actually had the decency to just tell me, oh,

yeah, that's a weird problem. Like give me a second. And then I got transferred to their boss and then they went, OK, here's what we're going to do. We're just going to delete all these off exactly refund it. I'm just going to put a new I'm just going to put a code in. You have a new code from OK, great. Get the new one and then you'll put it in and we'll just I'll just wipe the whole

thing out and it worked in like I spent maybe 20 minutes on the phone. So just it's weird, despite Nintendo being the most asked backwards by far on all of this online shit, when I actually had to talk to a human being, it was a totally pointless, sorry, a totally painless process. That's good. Whereas if I I've I've never been able to get to a human for Microsoft ever in my life, even even when I got the red ring, I go through a robot and Sony's people are useless.

I mean, I will say. And then Nintendo's will are humans. So when it comes to this type of issue with like a licensing update to a specific title, that is usually handled by pre-mastering. And there is a there is a form that you fill out and then send to them. So the process of registering these games on, you know, the new versions of these games led to them updating the old one. Certainly this kind of thing being like it's very suspicious with the timing

and like it seems like the borderline looked nefarious to you know, the situation that you described actually took place where people went, fuck this remaster. I'm going to play my old one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that sequence of events is very, very fucking like shitty. But like from the way that the way that goes, I feel like that is very likely someone did send in the wrong paperwork for the older ones alongside newer ones because the person filing the newer shit

probably didn't have to file old paperwork versions when they were doing for when the classic went through, you know, it's it's I don't know. This is pure out of my speculation. But like that is a square submitting the paper thing, not a Sony updating it for no reason thing, you know. Anyway, fucking weird, but I guess fixed now. But of course, this is all like just another horror story in the era of digital ownership where somebody asks, hey, why does it have an expiration date in the

first place on the answers? Really simple because any of these places that sell anything that's ever going to be times like a movie or TV show or anything time limited means they're going to build their system, assuming an expiration date on anything. And then they go, well, it'll just renew every year or the dates will be 50 years off and we'll deal with that later. It's the word is planned obsolescence, right? Like, you know, it is what it is.

You buy it and then like if you're not connected, you're going to have to fucking verify that you are in whatever bullshit it puts you through. Well, can allow can force them to make you buy it again later. It's as simple as it is. Yeah. Yeah, I it's part of the horrors of the you know, digital ownership. It sucks, especially when Sony has you to force you to connect and verify that type

of shit. But anyway, I feel like the shut down horrors usually are you'll never be able to buy these games again, not I can't boot the fucking thing I bought. You know, yeah. And luckily, there are some dedicated individuals out there that will make sure that if you're dedicated enough, you'll somehow be able to. Use your old software. There's a lot of heroes.

There's a lot of boats out there on on the on the open seas. And they're trying to find their way to Monkey Island. Because pirating is what you do. In Monkey Island, it's just what you do. Monkey Island return to Monkey Island has been announced, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's nice. They're pitching it as like the sequel to the second game.

But like this is part six. So I don't know. But well, you see, well, Street Fighter Five is a prequel to Street Fighter three place between two and three. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it so much. I didn't play. I didn't play the the later Monkey Island games like the 3D ones.

I think from what I remember, because like there was they were in the office being tested, I remember at some point, the telltale ones at the very least. But I wasn't on them. But like, I remember hearing that it was like the first of the 3D ones was like not great, and then the telltale ones were kind of all right. And then and then that's just kind of where it left off. My my experience with Monkey Island is they put out that remaster of the first one with all the nice sprites and I'm like, man, Monkey Island's a classic.

I should really get in on this. And so I started playing it. I played it for two, three afternoons. And then I had this moment where I was like, oh, wait, I fucking hate adventure games. What the fuck am I doing? I'm miserable. Old Indie style. Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, wow, I hate these.

What am I doing? This game is great. I hate it. They live in my memories, man. I don't need to go back. They live in my memories. Um, the the there's a lot of just mashing an object into the right verb

onto the right pixel on the screen is hard progress that you need to just get passed and fuck you. Just stand there and do it. Yeah, um. Still, though, there's a little bit of little bit of nostalgia and soft spot in my heart for Guybrush three point. Oh, they're clearly great and they're well put together. I just hate every single thing about them other than their presentation,

which is cool. Um. Anyway, so that's that's been dropped. Also, you mentioned Tactics Ogre has been reborn, has been trademarked. And hopefully that's a real remaster and not just a re-release because Tactics Ogre owns. So I remember when FF Tactics, when my friend first told me about it and I remember he told me is like, yeah, like this is a crossover between Final Fantasy

and Tactics Ogre and I was like, oh, shit. OK, that's that's that. And then after Tactics FFT, I never heard about Tactics Ogre again. I was like, oh, I guess that. Yeah, I guess. Let us clean together is pretty cool. Um. Seems seems seems dope.

I like I like the fact that the the camera can rotate so that you can see a top view or isometric. That's pretty dope. I. I still don't understand why it's so uncommon for strategy RPGs to let you move your character around like you couldn't shining force like it was a regular RPG. And then you would get somewhere and have to do a strategy battle.

Hmm. Those shiny force games are god damn incredible for that reason alone. I always wanted to rent Ogre Battle 64, but I never did. It was always one of the things I was like, no, I should rent this. And then I just always grab something else instead. Yeah. Hmm. I also should have played Ogre Battle 64.

But none of my friends that had N64s had it. And yet they would play FFT constantly when I lent them my PS1. So I don't know what the fuck was going on with that. Yeah, but I think people just don't like Ogre's. I think that's it. Well, here's the question is what are the odds that this this refile trademark is going to be some mobile shit versus like an actual game, you know? I assume it'll be an actual game.

Hopefully. And it'll get the Valkyrie profile treatment. Muckypaw. Anyways, so that ain't the only like it's at the point where when a collaboration for FF 14 is announced, it's way more exciting than these properties getting new games. Hmm. Because at least the collaboration in 14 will be like respectful. Yeah.

Look, it's I'm not I'm not putting that evil out into the world. I'm just I'm just telling you what's what what the fucking likelihoods are. You did put that evil. It's your fault. I kind of did, but that's OK. Not the only remake, of course, we got a couple of things. So Max Payne one and two has been announced as well. By Rockstar, those games are fucking incredible.

So. Remake implication being like complete from scratch, modern. Yeah. Redoing of the whole thing. I really, I really genuinely hope they just use higher quality assets for all the paneling because if they take Sam Lake's stupid fucking face off Max one, like that's going to be a goddamn travesty. Pretty cool that it's one and two together, actually,

because I feel like that's what everyone would want as well. I love how one and two like was like, here's how you do bullet time in a video game. And then it's here's how you do the other bullet time in a video game. And they've pretty much not been topped since. I remember just trying to think of like how to do that in a multiplayer context, though, and like without slowing down the entire match for everybody as soon as they popped it and it I remember like me and my friends were talking about like, OK, what if there was like a time bubble where the bullet time occurred in just this area?

You know, but anyway, this works obviously best in a PvE context. And then Max Payne three did what did Max Payne three do with it? Did they do a bubble or was it just like I was everybody experiences it? Now, it's regular slow down, but. Wait, was it? I can't remember. So wait, if I was not in the room with a while and you use bullet time, would my game suddenly just slow down? People are so people are talking in Max Payne three multiplayer.

The way it worked was line of line of sight. OK, so you would shoot a cone of slowed time. OK, OK, OK. Interesting. Huh. That makes sense, actually. Yeah, because the point I always thought of was like it would be shitty to be suddenly constantly slowed down just walking around while someone across the map was doing something on the other end of the map.

Yeah, just doing it. If it's used on you like a weapon, then at least you're you're being targeted specifically. So then other people walking by that see you see you slowed down in that moment. I guess so. So if if if A is using line of sight, slowed out on B and C is around the corner and C cannot see A, but they can see B. Do they see B slowly moving and then they can just, I don't know, you know.

Huh. I know killing floor decided to just be like at sometimes the server is going to slow down and then everyone gets to hit shots. But it wasn't versus it was cooperative, so it was always a benefit. I still think Max Payne two has the best implementation of bullet time ever, which is it starts as regular bullet time. But every time you kill somebody, you get a little faster until you're moving at normal speed and everyone is slowed down.

Yeah, yeah, flash time. Yeah, exactly, exactly. If someone else saw someone being slow, they got slowed down as well. Oh, wow. OK, so it was a chain reaction where you can you don't run around. You only get slowed down when you're involved in the in the car in the battle. And if you're on your own not looking at anybody, then you're not getting slowed down. OK, so you don't have to feel like a shitty,

constant stuttering of the game going into bullet time and not unless you're participating in the action, huh? I really, really hope those games feel like themselves and don't feel like Max Payne three dropped into Max Payne three. Use it, use that rock star engine and everything was like heavy and physics based. And I did not like it, dude. Like it's how it would it would be it would be way more affordable to just rebuild Max Payne inside of the existing engines they have than to actually.

Oh, I bet. I just wanted to feel the same because those games feel great. Yeah, so that just got dropped. Just throw a single pamphlet on the ground where Max learns about the Bureau of Control. And then then it's all and there it is. Yeah, well, actually, Max Payne is like a Max Payne is I think the fucking like a written creation of Alan Wake. Hold on, Remedy.

OK, hold on, Rock Star published. Remedy. Don't worry about it. Oh, who owns. I don't. Don't worry about it. OK. Don't worry about it. Just think about Mark Wahlberg busting out of that room screaming. He's gone everywhere to a completely empty room. Baby.

Legitimately, legitimately like the funniest watching that movie. Just the best, the best seeded the entire fucking thing easily. Yeah. Oh, easy. No question. Um. Yeah, that was that was fucking great. So. Um. I think like this next story is like it's my favorite thing in the world.

It just wraps in all the things I love because, you know, I like. I like action, character action. I like combos. It's true. I like bugs. That's true. I'm a huge fan of QA. And you know what?

OK, I was wondering what I was wondering what story this was, and then I just clicked into my head and you know what? What? Fuck them kids. Fuck them kids. Beat up the kids. Fuck them kids. Yeah, best story of the fucking week. Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker saga has come out and it's a Lego Star Wars game. Now, having if you played any of the Star Wars games,

when you shoot anything or attack anything, they usually just crumble into pieces of Lego and that's that's what happens. It's Lego. But the children, the younglings are not to be harmed. So they're invulnerable. They cannot be killed. And because they're invulnerable, that means you can continue to combo them as if you were in the void, as you can push the limits of the air chain lightsaber

system to the maximum, allowing for literally like Sun High Legend videos of amazing combos into force powers that not only are fucking smoking sick style, but allow you to cross gaps and make it further into the level by sequence breaking jumps you couldn't make otherwise because air comboing children allows you to go further. It's the fucking best thing in the world. I saw somebody refer to it as child walking. Like I like it's great and it's functional. It has a purpose.

If you were just interested in speed running or getting through a level faster, you still have to air combo the children. Aerial rave, the younglings for maximum style and maximum speed completion. Any percent. It's it's it's the best shit ever. So you can go now, look up on Twitter, like as as the character action fans are fucking coming out of the woodwork and doing full on combo videos in Lego Star Wars, because it's it's it's real.

It's legit. And the game lets you go from force powers directly into different lightsaber attacks directly into dive kicks in some cases creating resets where the the youngling gets 180, allowing you to set up backwards combos as well. And side switches, it's the best. Yeah. It's just it's just one of those great little moments that you get from the unintentional realities of making children invincible.

There's all sorts of stuff in the fallout games and Skyrim games where due to the invincible state that children have, you can do all sorts of stupid goofy bullshit with them. I mean, it's just it's that it's your shot of the lightsaber turning on and the kid twitches and then a D style meter just appears in the top right corner. And then you hear an angry man asking you if you want to learn how to do a fucking infinite. Oh, man.

Yeah. Literally, my favorite thing, my favorite kind of story. That's to me, that's price of a fucking entrance right there. Also, apparently, though, that this one is like substantially better playing than all the other ones, judging by the fact that it has air combos that would allow for this in the first. Well, there you go. The combat system has to be robust enough to allow this exactly to occur to

it with if I remember correctly. This got found out because people were enjoying the combat and wanted to find a training dummy in the game only to find out that the best training dummy were the children and like you can use Qui-Gon Jinn to air combo the shit out of young Anakin and then went fuck. Yeah, I should have done that in the first place and then when Annie grows up, he can continue to his to use the young links for his air combos. So there's multiple instances as well.

You don't just have one child. There are multiple children you can choose to to style on in particular. So there's options, which is always nice. This is just great. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, it's the fucking best. Whenever I hope that Lego Star Wars catches on and patches the game to include more younglings in particular areas where they were like, why is that youngling

standing on the on the edge of that building platform right there? What do you why would you be there? What's the point of that? I don't know. Why would they says Lego strange, strange position for a kid to be standing in? Yeah. Oh, look, you see something in the distance over there. Is that a collectible?

Way across on the other side of that building and out there. Weird. Excellent. Most excellent. And I've got one more here. That's a bit of a quirky one, but it's it's it's history. So.

Apparently, in the latest Pac-Man related releases, Mrs. Pac-Man is no longer present. Pac-Mom has replaced her. That's interesting. And that's all that's does a new character named Pac-Mom for Pac-Land. Of course, everyone goes, what, what, why, what's the deal? And it turns out, if you go back to the history of it,

Mrs. Pac-Man, and I remember hearing about this early on. And I guess it would like it rang, it rings a bell. Mrs. Pac-Man was not actually made by Namco. No, it wasn't. Midway basically got another group called Crazy Auto to modify an existing game that they were working on and turn that into Miss Pac-Man so that it could be released as essentially like a sequel, but it's not.

But there was no actual official Pac-Man, too, from the original people. So sounds like somebody needs to go and finish watching the Tim Rogers review of Pac-Man, I guess, if they didn't know that. OK, well, what has happened is yeah, ever since 1982, when this secondary company was used to create Miss Pac-Man, they then go forward and everyone's like, well, whatever, it's all Pac-Family. But then when it comes to Miss Pac-Man getting licensed out in 2019 by a company called At Games, they acquired the royalty rights to Miss

Pac-Man specifically from those original creators, but not from Bandai Namco. And basically Midway at the time, licensing these people out means that they were the Miss Pac-Man creators that never theoretically lost those rights. So now everything about old video game rights is the most fucking zany shit in the world because nobody knew what the fuck they were doing. And bootlegs were becoming real games. It's fucking weird.

Well, and again, like they you could reach out to someone who was like basically making a bootleg and just bless it, you know, to be like, no, make it real now. And that was that. And then no one ever clarified what was legally happening until now when they've started releasing these because they wanted to get the royalty rights to release these collectible cabinets, but the collectible cabinets of Miss Pac-Man don't actually have to pay a cut to Bandai. So to court we go.

And in the meantime, and that's how you end up with Mrs. Mom, no, Pac-Mom, Pac-Mom, Pac-Mom, Pac-Milth. There you go. No words on Baby Pac. No words on what the situation is there. But damn. Quite frankly, I think I think Pac-Mom is a better pun than the Miss Pac-Man. Yeah, it is.

Yeah. But really, who cares about that shit? They just play fucking Pac-Man championship edition. It's literally the best version. It's fucking like, just play that one. I think I just like people are trying to find ways to go from Pac-Man to trying to find ways to go from Pac-Milth to to Pac-Ocea. And then you just work your way back to the word pussy like it.

Just there's just nothing to fucking you can't. There's no spice to that. It's it's already done. Anyway, all right. Wonderful. It's great. I hate it. I hate this trend.

Yeah, but you didn't. Yeah, but you loved it like a month ago. So shut up. No, no, no, no. I really loved it like a month ago. And then and then I made a joke or two about it on my street. And then like then I can't get them to stop. Yeah, like they won't they won't stop.

I forget what like one of the one of the fucking subreddit mods who's one of my mods, who's like a pretty cool guy, just decided to fucking take the piss on it. And now every time I have to talk to him, I have to look at the fucking word Lombussy. Yeah. So that's the you brought Lombussy into the lexicon. And then in I did not bring that on it. That was not me on it.

And then that was them. And then and strive during the beta, I got to floor 10 and I had to fight little bussing man, which was imagine Obama. And then I was like, OK, all right, it's it's set. This is a thing. This is a thing. It's now here.

And he was guarding the 10th floor, you know. So if you can't defeat little bussing man, you don't you don't deserve celestial. It's what it is. Oh, all right. Let's take some letters. Hey, do you want to send a letter and ask us some questions, fucking tell us a cool story, whatever, send it to Castle Superbeast Mail at gmail.com. That's Castle Superbeast Mail at gmail.com.

I got to say, I'm way more partial these days to cool stories than to questions. Yeah, 100 percent. Easy. So keep that in mind. All right, we got one coming in from Cyrus, who says, hey, I recall on Willie's Thousand Year Door Thousand Year Door playthrough that it would be cool to find out more about the heroes who came before. I'd like to point out that in Lunar Silver Star Harmony for the PSP, not only do you get to see the heroes who came before, but you get to play as them

in their final battle as the very first thing that happens in the game. Oh, that's cool. I love that. Like that, I severely like Willie. I think this is a severely underutilized storytelling method in video games. I would like to see it in more games. What other cool and exciting things are not done enough? I was I mentioned I know as mentioned before that fighting the previous protagonist in the sequel is not done enough.

Of course, that's there. There you go. That's what I was going to say. Reminder to that from Devil May Cry to Dark Souls. It's the best fight in the game. The intro to Indivisible was also like fighting as the parents in the final battle before, you know, flash forward, flashing forward in time. And that's a pretty fucking sick one. I think the, you know, like in in in manga form, you're like, OK,

when do we get the kakashi years? When do we get to see, you know, what they were like on there as when the fourth was around and shit and, you know, in video game form, getting to play as the older generation is always the fucking sickest. If not that, then just the other thing I'm going to say is like the old, the old warrior picking the sword back up who who's been around for most of the game, not doing anything, you know, or in some cases, it's literally the beginning

where it's like at the beginning of Escaflonay is like fucking Vargas fighting with a giant Zwei hender against Mechs. And he's like, yeah, I just I do I do it on foot. We don't I don't need my own guy in the left. It's fine. That's its rad. And Chrono Cross as well has that with one of the older paladins who you learn from in the beginning of the game,

who's like, actually, it's a retired badass that just is in this beachside village. So there's only once it's kind of similar to fighting the prior protagonist. But it's not quite exactly that. There's something that you and I I remember we had a long conversation about how sick it was when we were playing vanquish, because we were really bummed out by it.

And it was in vanquish, you have the super speed and you have time stop and all that. And that game has comparatively few cut scenes of your character doing anything. And we were talking about like what does was it Sam in vanquish? What does Sam fucking look like to the person outside of player control? Like what what the like what is the main character canonically actually see fucking look like when they are doing this shit? And the only game I can think of that actually does it is fucking.

God, what's it called? Dragon dragon dragon before near drinking guard, drinking guard in drinking guard, too. You see what fucking Kym looks like when he's fighting his fucking fights. And it's fucking terrifying. Hmm. Right. It's like he is just walking through dudes like their water. Like I want to see more of like what what do I actually look like when I'm playing

the game from the outside observing point of view? You get a little bit of it in Metal Gear actually come to think of it. Yeah, a little bit. I've given this example numerous times, but Satoshi Kahn's Stardust Crusaders, right? Night. Right. 1993 Jojo is like it does Dio using the world in not the stopped time in the real time and you get to see.

Yeah, because what does it look like to a regular person to fight? Things just happen. Reality stops making sense. They just happen. He just he can things just move and appear around him. You get nothing makes any it's terrifying. It's the scariest shit in the world. And I'm like, I know that that was like a stylistic choice he made back then that

is not panel for panel. But God damn does it recontextualize those powers in a more terrifying way. You know, it turns the cool show. It's a cool shounen power. But when you use it that way, it becomes horror. You know, yeah. Stop signs exploding, fucking buildings shooting up. And just everything around Dio as he walks towards Jotaro, like just

not making sense, you know, it's so fucking sick. And then and then you then you read the panel version or you watch the modern version and you're like, wow, Dio is a fucking like pompous theatrical fucking piece of shit because he's stopping time and sprinting over to smash a sign and then sprinting back to get in the same pose. I would. So what I would imagine is he's no he's sprinting down to move Paul Nareff down the stairs, right?

Oh, yeah, that's that's the one. That's the one the height of absurd in that walking down the scenes case. I think he's just walking and having and the world is having a temper tantrum behind him. Oh, you know, yeah, that I think the world is just freaking out and attacking everything and he and Dio himself is not moving. But the staircase is the staircase is the staircase. You can't escape that one.

Pick them up. I'm going to put it down. I got the same pose. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, great. All right.

We got one coming in from Jordan from Paris, Canada says, hey, dear Lorgar Woolley, Rianne and Angron Pat. Jordan from Paris, Canada here. Got nothing on that. Nothing. I have no through line on that shit.

Not sure. I have no idea what the fuck I'm not sure. Also, why don't you say Paris, Ontario as opposed to Paris, Canada? Anyway, because they're embarrassed. They live in Ontario enough. A couple of years ago, I had a friend who was constantly trying to get a D&D like game rolling based on FF 14. It's a 40 K reference.

Well, there you go. We lost the 40 K reference. Darn. My friend was trying to get a D&D game like a D&D game like game rolling based on FF 14 setting. He was a massive control freak who wanted all character info months in advance. And at one point demanded a 14 page character background questionnaire be filled out. They the attitude hit a boiling point when I told him

I was going through finals at school and I'd only be able to make a character after that they were fit after they were finished a month before the game was set to begin every day after that, he would message me asking if I had done this. Every day, he would repeat it. I needed to study and he would I knew he wanted to know if there'd be enough time afterwards. It continued until the day that I had to drive my mother to the emergency room. She's completely fine now.

Don't worry, but found her on the floor and I had told him I'm hardly in a state to work on RPG stuff while waiting at the hospital. And he said that if I didn't, he was afraid he was going to have to kick me out of the group. What are some examples, you know, of people that just can't stop taking it too seriously? So before we go into that, I want to talk about this person. First of all, this is a real this is like a fucking personality. That's a sociopath you're dealing with. You know, not that part of it, not the part where they they lose their human

decent, right? Not that I'm talking about the control freak. And which is amoral, it has no standing, right? And like you can be I'm a bit of a control freak. But if somebody told me their fucking mom was sick, I'm like, OK, fuck me, whatever, you do whatever the hell you need to do. Because like I have a human beings level of morality, at least some of it. But that is the type of person who really, really desperately, desperately wants to play this D&D campaign and the fact that other human beings must be part of it

is an inconvenience. Yeah. Ideally, just ideally, they would want to play all six slots themselves. Just sit there with your AI, bro. Like at that point. So one of my dearest friends, I genuinely mean this. He is one of my best friends. I love you, buddy.

And I'm not busting your balls to bust your balls, but it's a pretty good example is a much weaker version of this, but for board games. And board games is where you see this times a million. So dude would find a new cool board game like something like House of Haunted Hill, something involved, something like, you know, cooperative, right? And he would learn how to play it and he would set the whole thing up in a table simulator, right? And we would play it and he would give

genuinely well intentioned advice to us as we were learning the game. And his genuine, well intentioned advice would usually be the correct move to take. And as you played a five to six hour long game with this guy, you would eventually discover that he was playing the game by himself through you because the issue. And that's an issue with those types of games. And it's an issue with DND by telling you what to do win. Yeah, by suggesting correctly what the best option for every situation was.

Like completely complete. And like, oh, are you having trouble with the math on this? Hold on. I'll do the math for your character for you. And then do you want to move here? OK, I'll pick up. I'll move the mouse and I'll pick up your character, right? That kind of thing.

And the issue with that is an optimization issue where if you want to play this game and you want to win, all co-op board games are way easier to win if one person is behind the wheel of every character. They become a million times easier to win. But that's not actually the most fun. And so we're like, dude, come on, let us and like he stopped doing that. And OK, all things were fine. But it's it's just like that is a personality type.

It wouldn't be easier if I just I helped you and I did that. Well, now this person, this story, well, that's the thing is like is is is just using you guys as fuel for their entertainment because at a certain point, the person in this story, I feel like the only ending of this path is them sitting at the table DMing six upright corpses that have been preserved in chairs as he moves the pieces on the board around in the extensive map he's made and refers to the 14 page character sheets. Like that's the only place this goes.

Man, I just saw, you know, somebody in the chat just said something really funny. This person in the story has a bright future as a rock star story creative. And that is a genuinely genius reading of this because that's how it feels when you play a modern rock star game where you as human pilot is an inconvenience to the wonderful Hollywood narrative they want to fucking spin. That is that's that's a great breakdown of that. Jajanan, I would when it comes to taking the game too seriously,

I mean, what you just brought up with that with with you are the the the flesh that is in the way is that's pretty solid. I was going to go a completely different direction and just say like the only things I can think of when it comes to taking the thing to taking the game too seriously is extreme sports fans, altars. Oh, well, yeah, chavs, hockey fans, sports games to murder. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. If you know, if you places where you've got like again,

like the the the sports, sports gangs that just attack the opposite teams after the game literally fight them in some cases, like players being executed, you know, like, yeah, all of that, all of that is is just where my brain goes. When it's like, yeah, you can't you can't possibly fucking you you turn that sport game into literally religious culture, lifestyle. And it just it never comes on to on it. You know, the thing the thing that pops into my mind associated with this is obviously there's a very famous Wow, a 50 D K P minus.

But like I might my gang of friends, they'll they play a lot of MMOs. And as such, I have a lot of MMO like second hand stories on this. And there are two that jump to mind. One is and if anybody who has any experience with classic Wow, that like the modern classic Wow that just came out, they would hop from guild to guild desperate to find a group of people that did not create some labyrinthine system

for assholes that at the end of the day just ended with the guild leader giving every one of their friends all the good drops from every single fight day the group ever did just over and over and over. Just like the fucking guild leader says that because I missed yesterday that the points rolled over and the fucking thing and that's why well, they need the best in slot because they're going to be running it on Tuesday. And like over and over. I think.

And the other one is from actual classic Wow, in which a good friend of mine describes that the raid leader of the group that she and her boyfriend were in would not refer to people by their names, only by their job number in the rain. Oh my god. Take four. Shut the fuck up. Yes. God damn.

100 percent. Damn. Like like she she ended up quitting that group because she was getting real sick of some route calling her. I think it was like priest or healer or whatever. She like you are all chess pieces. You are all annoyances that you're actually humans. Oh, wow.

Um, no, I was just going to say that like as someone who has lost more hours than I can I can I can blah, I've lost hours and hours. If not days of my life to championship manager, I realized that despite the burning hatred in my soul for that game and that entire series, it serves a purpose for every group of sane FIFA fans that just want to play soccer, you need to have championship manager exist to filter out that guy, that one who would otherwise just be a dictator to the group to just be like, OK, when you can't put your crazy away, go play champ, man.

Just go drill all the way in to the fantasy football thing and contain it there. It's solo by yourself and you can do all of that. And everyone else can have just the fun game and you can filter those people out. You know, my favorite part about what you're saying right now is is you described how much time you spent with Sega championship manager. And I had this flash of of of idea in my head. I'm like, that's weird. I didn't think you were into champion.

Oh, no, wait, you're not into champ, man. Not into champ, man was into you. Yeah, my soul. I remember that are my soul is in you being on champ, man. It is fucking man. Just brandished with that goddamn fucking thing. And you know what? We did a great job because they came back and they they stuck around.

They were around for a while. Yeah, that's so bad for you. No, at anyone you can like anyone that was. I mean, you want to see a QA team just lose the will to live. You just you just walk into the office and tell them they're on champ, man, that day and just like anime, the reflection in your eyes goes flat. You know. But yeah, that's what it does.

That's the purpose it serves. You know, it creates a field between the people that just want to play some fucking football, some soccer and the ones who who who are inconvenienced by their flesh friends who are in the way when they want to just. Do do do the numbers. Um, there's the fact that there's even a way to watch the little dots kick a fake dot ball around in real time, which you can, of course, fast forward and turn off.

But no, because I want to watch the real thing and they're just the little dots kicking the fake dot ball. Yeah. There you go. Um, by the way, Jordan, lose that friend. Fucking please. Yeah, no. Get get tell them to go fuck off in a ditch.

Um. You know, like that's not that's not limited. That is not limited to games. That's just pure sociopathy, because I remember a very similar story that led to a breakup of a girl I knew. Well, I guess I can see it or not, but a friend of mine who broke up with a boyfriend of like six years and they were like probably going

to get married like it was a sure thing kind of one of those relationships. And she's like, hey, I'm sorry, I can't go to this event with you. I got to cancel our date because I got to help my family with something. And the words leave his lips of, oh, your family, this your family, that it's always your family, you're always canceling on me because of your family. Like, when's it going to be time for us? To which she responds with my mom just died. I have to take care of my sister and my dad.

And that was the end of that as you do. That was the. That was the end of that right? Wow. Like, like, like one day that guy was hanging out with me and my friends. And the next day he might as well have. Wow. Gigi, no re.

Like, no hint that he was that that was the kind of person that he was. No, dude, red flag. Otherwise, seemed like a pretty normal guy. Well, and look, man, you know, sometimes some some boyfriends need their diapers changed, you know, and who's going to do it? Them? That's crazy. What the fuck are you talking about? Um.

Yeah, there's there's. Oh, to to clarify, to clarify, somebody asks what he didn't know. No, he knew. He, of course, he knew that that's why she was spending a lot more time with her family. It's just it was annoying to. Yeah, no, there's red flags and then there's nuclear suns that just that bathe you in crimson that you you you you need to look out for.

All right. That's. Whatever, that. Yeah, let's close on that. You don't. Also, I'm not a big D&D nerd. I don't think you need a 14 fucking pages of backstory. You probably get by with four sentences.

Like, I bet you if we I bet you this was like I'm running my own campaign FF 14 based and we're using first edition. You know, like, I bet you there's some. No, actually, FF 14 has a built up existing pen tabletop thing. Yeah, I don't think I'm not sure if it's official, but it's been an active thing for a couple of years now. OK, well.

Fine. Yeah, no, every once in a while, your gaming group will introduce you to someone who's possibly got literally corpses in their house. You need to fucking yeah, you need to run. Yeah, that's fine. That's good. There you go. All right. Good podcast.

Excellent podcast. I'm going to play video games this week, so I'll have more to talk about next week. Hey, go fucking look forward to that. And I'm serious, people. Class action park, like just take take an hour or half. I'm going to fucking take it in. So next uncle, Gene preview of next week's podcast, where I go, oh, man, that uncle, Gene, Uncle Gene, do it.

All right. You'll have a good week. Stay safe out there, buddy.