Castle Super Beast - CSB372: Clean Meth Will Pave The Roads

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Download MP3 | Watch Video Episode Full Timestamps: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTIE3Fuk--12TnJ72BlO7tDNeGST6ocJSGV9Fnp4EDBcysSOiOGNf9f4mlw__FyQrELdnmY0-fVNQTi/pub Watch full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@CastleSuperBeastArchive The Pothole Vigilante Overwhelming Mental Stack > RNG The Many Reboots of Ghost In The Shell Stranger Than Heaven (It's More Yakuza) The Star Fox Smash or Pass Reboot Reggie In The Lab Limited-time Plushie only available this month! https://www.makeship.com/products/reggie-in-the-lab-plushie - Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at http://RocketMoney.com/SUPERBEAST - Sign up for your 1$-per-month trial today at http://shopify.com/superbeast    - Invincible VS is out now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. - Upgrade your wallet today! Get up to 40% off @Ridge during their Father's Day Sale when you go to https://www.Ridge.com/SUPERBEAST #Ridgepod Docket: Starfox Trailer TV Animation "THE GHOST IN THE SHELL" 3rd Promotion Video｜ July 7,2026 Devil Dinosaur (Moon Girl) Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls - Fighting Avengers Trailer Harada, VS Studio SNK 2XKO Teamfight Update STRANGER THAN HEAVEN | First Official Trailer Sega announced it has canceled 'Super Game: Super Game' was planned to be an online AAA global hit of multiple games that stand head and shoulders above normal games. eBay has rejected GameStop's proposed $56 billion takeover bid, calling it ​"neither credible nor attractive" Devil May Cry: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix

Yo, yo. Hey, good afternoon, Willie. How are you doing today? All right. We got a beefy boy today. A lot of things. Oh, there's stuff going on. There's stuff going on.

Hey, Caboos, how are you doing today? A lot of things popped off the second we went offline last week. Yeah. But before that, have you, by any chance, heard about, I don't imagine you would, but there's been some things happening in Montreal. culturally. Oh, yeah? Yes. Someone has a risen that's being called Monsieur Nizepul.

And that is your French firm, Mr. Pothole. Yeah. A pothole vigilante has taken it upon himself to do what needs doing out in these streets. If that's the case, I would expect you to see some heavy set Italian or Russian guys back out in the streets, redestroying his potholes. So I'm looking out for Tony Soprano to see what he's up to. You know,

because that's their job, man. Yeah, yeah. That's their contracts. I strongly believe that a couple of, a couple of fucking Jersey Sopranos are going to be rolling up. But right now, what he's doing wisely is making himself highly publicized. And, you know,

there's a very, clear, well, there's cameras on me, so whatever's going on here is going to be documented. But basically my understanding is what happened is like this... That only goes so far. It does. It does.

But basically the dude drove over a pothole and like destroyed the bottom of his car because it was one of those insane like super deep ones that like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That actually scrapes the undercarriage. Like fuck your suspension. The car itself is just busted and your tires a shot and a couple other people in the area were like, yep, that one's a bad one. And he went, fuck

this. I'm a construction worker. I know how to solve this and rolled up with his friend and then just put the shit in and heated it and fixed it. Right. And then a couple other people in the neighborhood were like, yo, I got one right in front of my house. Can you come take care of it? He's like, yeah, fuck it. Sure. And he just started rolling up and doing it to a couple other places. And this has led to a very interesting dialogue, you know, because people here have been, we've just been dealing with it. It's a insane pothole nightmare, the roads out here. And there's a punchline that is when you enter the city as you drive by the Welcome to Montreal sign. You literally hear it and feel it on the road as it switches over from smooth roads to bz, right? I remember when we drove, um,

so, you know, Paige just from the States, right? And she came. to the Canada. And she was like, didn't mention anything about the roads. Right. Then she, she, you know, went back home and drove around.

He was like, oh, man, the roads in the States are so fucking bad. But then she came back to Montreal. And she's like, well, not, not very good here either.

But then we drove the trans Canada all the way west. And like 80% of that trip across like the longest unbroken highway in the country. She's like, wow, these roads are so nice. Yeah. That's crazy. It's insane. It's just, you know, and the dumb part two is like,

after years of all of this, like, there's been, I want to say, like, there's been, you know, reporting on the corruption and all that stuff we talk about all the time. There's stuff that has come out where it's like, New York also has a comparable, amount of mafia-esque bullshit in its construction as well, as you would imagine. You would imagine? But it seems like their financial incentives have been placed in such a way where it's more lucrative for them to do the job to fix it than it is to keep the problem going.

So there's a corruption problem fucking everywhere in a lot of places. But the way the financial structure is set up here is that it's, the most that they get paid is by keeping the problem going. You know what you are describing? You are describing yet another cultural difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada. And of course, Quebec and the U.S. in this case, you are talking about deep down the Catholic versus the Protestant work ethic going back to fucking Martin Luther about doing good work. It's its own reward because it'll help you get into heaven versus. told my priest, my fucking bullshit, I'm good to go.

I could die tomorrow. Why would I bust my ass? Oh, you say we're going back to indulgences on this one? We're going back to the... No, no, not like... The original... Post-indulgence? No, the original...

Well, when Martin Luther was like... I'm talking about Protestant German serfdom ideology. Yeah, when he was like, yo, why can't I read this fucking book? What does it say? Yo, fuck you. I want to know what's going on in here. And also, why are you paying for sins? and also a million other problems with what was wrong with the Catholic Church. And they're like, how about we fucking kill you?

Now somebody in the chat says, but Italians are Catholic. And it's like, of course they are. But Catholic Italians in the United States are still within a WASP infrastructure. So you believe, okay. So because of the work ethic, the way to emphasize corruption here is to do nothing. to do nothing. Just give me the money and I won't do it. Right. Whereas elsewhere.

And in fact, I will stop other people from doing it. Mm-hmm. And whereas elsewhere, we're going to do some shady deals, but there's going to be working. But then I'm going to do the, I'm going to do it. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, I threw the guy and I beat this guy up to get the contract, but then we're going to do the contract. Right. Right, right.

I mean, to be fair, to be fair, if we're, if we're representing Sheprinos properly, there's a lot of no-show jobs. There's a lot of sit around and do nothing jobs that are a part. of that, right? They're literally called no show jobs. But for whatever the case is, I just remember when, I remember an Uber driver kind of telling me about what it was like in New York and how they had like bounties on potholes being fixed quickly and how the contractors that would go in and do it would make a lot more for doing it within 45 minutes. Well, it's easier to keep, if the corruption isn't like so endemic that it's every single person in the entire organization's in on it. It's easier to keep the grift running if the fucking job gets done.

Yes. Right? Hey, why do you keep giving the contract to these guys? Because they do it. But evidently here you can also keep the grift going by not doing the job. So we are also an anomaly. What am I going to do? Give it to these other guys who also won't do the job.

Yeah. Anyway, so this is, this is all sidebar, but this then turned into a thing where after walking around fixing it, it led to a big discussion because, you know, people were going, yo, this dude just doing it and getting it done and we appreciate the fact. What takes so long? Right. Exactly, right? And then we all know. And so then this escalates and then some folks are going, well, the problem is he's using a thing to replace it that's not going to survive the winter. It's a temporary fix.

and it's not the real like solid fix. So actually that's not great. And, you know, if you're going to do it, he's not doing it properly. He's doing it for attention, et cetera. Some people also did some stuff where they're like, yeah, this guy, he also like had a previous like influencing background or account or something was about it. It was like there's a promotional aspect to whatever's going on there.

And when a go fund me was set up where people were like, okay, yo, yeah, keep it going because you're actually solving the problem versus not. You know, there's a whole debate about whether the vigilante road is one that the city should be taking for solving its problems. And ultimately... I don't think that's vigilanteism. Well, that's not outside the bounds of the law. Well, ultimately, the consensus I saw most people coming to was one where they're like, okay, so yeah, there's this, there's this influencer background or whatever. Yeah, whatever the attention version of this is, and he's setting up and filming it and so on and so forth.

It's like, okay, but the whole being filled means your car's not getting fucked means... He's providing free materials and free labor for the civic society for no direct payment. How is there any downside to this at all for the citizen? And like at one point, there was like, because there's the habs are, you know, in the middle of their playoff run and stuff. And there is like a big game going on. And so he set up in front of the bell center and people were going by going, hey, what's up and it's like, oh yeah, it's like, okay, it looks like he's kind of doing a promotional bit.

And it's like, actually, there was a giant pothole right in front of the bell center that needed fixing. So he just picked that one on the day where the game was being played. So it just turns out there's that you can just strategically pick them because there's that many, right? And then all this leads to the mayor replying to his Instagram posts directly going, hey, Soraya is the mayor currently. And she's like, hey, so it's nice to see some Montrealers with initiative, but things need to be done in the right way. So could you, could you stop? How about you stop? And everyone's like, fuck you.

Eat shit. What are you doing? You're doing nothing. Eat fuck off, right? And then that leads to another round of like, so wait, hold on. Is the official response going to be because we don't know, because you're not doing a. properly slash because this is not being done officially, the insurance of if anything goes wrong might fall on you or if something goes bad. And so to fix that, we have to send workers

to dig up your things and return them to pothole status instead of going out to fill out more. Is it going to be a like remove progress from the situation? I would actually, I made the joke at the very beginning, but what I would actually expect to happen is that since these were not done with permits and they were done by a private individual without supervision, they cannot be regulated to be safe for drivers within the city. So they will have to be all redone at cost. And actually, him filling these in has increased the cost to the taxpayer because you need extra people to dig it up and then redo the whole process. And see, that's why you shouldn't do anything.

Just do nothing. That's why you should leave it to the professionals. Just do it. Don't do anything and just leave it. Because of liability. Yep. it was kind of surreal because yeah

there are legit people that are out here doing the leave the corporation alone like fucking knife pose you know being like no undo these potholes

and leave them as holes the city will take care of it and everything is going to be okay and it's just like like he's filming bits where like you see a pothole and then you see his head stick out of it and then he crawls out and like dusts himself off and you're like oh yeah no this is a

fucking tunnel to narnia actually um anyway so that i want to say the update eventually looking at the dude's instagram led to then uh a DM directly from the mayor being like hey we'd love to meet up and just chat about what's going on yeah because again all the goodwill is on his side and, you know, she's coming in as the official being like, well, you, but everyone knows that, like, you're doing nothing. You know, it's really funny. Because you're like, you're like, is this recent? Is this like this month? Happening right now.

No, no, but how long has it been going on? Yeah, this, this last couple weeks, last two, three weeks. Because like, there's, there's, like, the only thing I would compare that to is there's a BC culture, uh, curfuffle that's ongoing. And it's a complete opposite. you're describing is civic engagement slash civic good essentially being stopped and or frowned upon by abject outright corruption. Right? Out in BC, we have the opposite problem because everyone here is gentle hands, gentle hands, which is extremely well-intentioned, dumbass bullshit, that causes disaster.

So out in BC, because of the temperate climate, there's a longstanding homelessness and drug abuse issue, right? Because it's just easier to not die on the fucking street out here than it is back in Ontario or Montreal, right? And so, you know, Fent and heroin, all these things, they have like a real issue. And you see it a lot when you go through the city. And this leads to a lot of overdose deaths.

it leads to a lot of unsafe practices, etc. Right? So the BC government was like, okay, what are we going to do about this? We should help people. And the idea they came up with was called Safe Supply. Have you heard of Safe Supply? No, what is that? Safe supply is, hey, you're addicted to Fent.

You're a full-on fenty leaner. What we're going to do is we don't want you dying of a dirty Fent overdose. So you come in to the treatment center. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we will give you clean fent. Yeah, harm reduction. From the government.

Harm reduction. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. There's another term I've heard for that, yes. Right. Now, this is, I would say, clean injections and such. Yeah.

Until it came out that a significant amount of those people are taking their clean drugs and selling them. so they can get more dirty drugs. Oh, methadone specifically. No, no. They're taking their, like, cleanly available non-cut fent. Right. Okay.

Selling it to their drug dealer. Okay. To get more dirty cut fent. In volume. And so the process is actually created a third tier of person, which is people that are able to get, like double the amount of bad drugs into their system as a result of safe supply. Okay.

That feels like a failure of the system to ensure the usage on site. Which is the new rules as of January 1st of this. Yeah, because... So before that, they would just hand it to you and let you leave. That's completely insane. What are you doing? That's completely insane, especially if you're like trying to ensure the safety. part of this.

They can sell it to people in the line outside the treatment center. That's bad shit. That's a complete failure of the structure of the system. Yeah. No. Harm reduction does work and there's a million Scandinavian studies that show this stuff working, but you have to not be a moron and have you properly set it up. That's crazy.

Good intentions aren't enough. You also have to have a brain in your head. Wow. Yeah. Well, in in terms of like how this shit proceeds though, it is interesting because like the The the the the the the the the the the the pressure was then on the mayor to like well what are you going to do right clearly while you're talking and posting and making these these like dodges and while again you're posting with Tony soprano right knocking on your door everyone is trying to figure out like, and how do we deal with the problem of day-to-day life?

And are you going to propose then that we fucking stop and roll backwards and just deal with the potholes while you do nothing? And in the end, after these posts and like things like, oh, yeah, hey, let's talk or whatever, I think they then disinvited him from the meeting because it went like, no, never mind, they canceled that or something.

and she came out and proposed and I think where she went okay well how about we run a big contest and it'll be an event where we can create these pothole filling machines and repair the ones that are not working and the design will be something that everyone in the city What are you trying to fucking automate people out of jobs?

And everyone in the city can invest in one of these designs and we can have two teams and one team can be run by this guy who's the pothole vigilante and the other team can be another company and we can have this big thing and we can film it and it can be like a documentary about how we're gonna

and it's just like you're just hearing the words as I'm saying like oh yes yes of course the way we're going to fix the pothole problem is instead of fixing the pothole we're going to create a documentary that we can then sell to Netflix that gets also and also asks the city to invest more money into designing

new machines to solve this problem and to fuck, you know, and hey, maybe even AI can be involved in generating some new machine tech. Anything you can do to actually not. Hey, you know what we need to do, Willie? You know what we should do? Before we actually build this or fix any of these, we need to do an impact study over a cross-section of the population over the next five years to see if fixing the potholes would actually help. it's like it's a joke in that you're like you're actually doing the bit where you're like your 15 steps in to this big reality TV documentary fucking contest Netflix plan

instead of just pouring the mixture into the hole and then pressing it dry it's crazy you know um and then yeah we've already discussed this in the past but like you know people have grown their flowers out of the potholes to show you how long it's taken. And then a dude who came up with a previous mixture that was like self-drying and doable by like, you know, amateur people, um, basically had his experiments destroyed and his life threatened when he came up with something that was too good at fixing them. So he got the fuck out of dodge and left, you know? But the idea that, um, that's why I'm like with this guy. It's like, I'm not, I don't, I believe that like people are brazen. enough to threaten when the money is getting fucked with. But right now, it's like high profile enough that, yeah, you know, I don't know that they would get away with it without being some repercussions, right? So here's the thing. It's high profile enough right now. Right now. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's currently the case. Anyway, I just, I think, you know, people kind of looked at it. And also, accidents happen, man. I mean, it's like,

you know, I think... Tragic accidents occur. Yeah. I, I, um, I, it's, it's fucked, but I believe that like, in terms of just what you end up with in reality, uh, a situation where there is a fucking corrupt mafia that you can barely do anything about, but they're incentivized to do the fucking work is objectively a better one than one where they don't.

Yeah, it's much better. Like, hey, you know how there's mob fronts that are restaurants? Yeah. A good mob front restaurant has good fucking food at reasonable prices. Hopefully so. Hopefully. Because you have to portray a successful restaurant that has lots of income. Yeah.

And that just works out for everybody. And so, you know, I was watching, like, because in New York, the whole, like, Zoron thing where he's going around doing potholes, like, constantly and everything. It's like, yeah, there's a level of this where you're cutting past the rest. tape and bullshit. And this, this pothole vigilante is, um,

he's doing about three a day, I think he's been saying or so. That's pretty good for a guy who's also working a full-time profession. Not bad. Yeah. And I think he even inspired like a second construction team to start going around doing pot holes in their area too. So,

you know, uh, not all heroes wear capes. Um, and, and whatever the incentive or whatever the, the, the,

the bit. And even if this was, for some sort of influencer purposes. Who cares? The holes are filled. People are driving over them. Fuck off. I think that, yeah, a pothole Robin has appeared.

Exactly. Pot hole Robin. I think one of the most reasonable things I saw from this too was like, you know, essentially just the take of going like the mayor is obviously in a situation where you can, you can't like you can't look the other way completely because people are going, this should be your job. What the fuck are you doing? Right? So you're clearly on blast. And you've also got, as I mentioned, Tony at your door, maybe even hand on your shoulder as you're typing out your tweets. So like at that, the best thing you could probably do in that situation is go, hey, we appreciate that citizens are, you know, that taken upon themselves to clean up the city or whatever.

That's nice. And just maybe just give a reminder that any damage. that occur to other people's vehicles or anything that happens would fall on you or, you know, if you are, um, if there's anything that like that happens as a result of this, you are responsible, right? That's a reasonable thing to say while ultimately going, eh. I have an idea. I have an idea. I have an idea.

I have an idea. I have an idea. I have an idea. Mm-hmm. Safe supply for fixing potholes. Go on. fix a pothole so do a class

fix a pothole get a hit get a hit oh fuck and you have to do it on the site you fix the pot oh they jab you right there right there you

you get a hit right on the those streets will be fixed tomorrow Man, yeah, yeah, okay. Unless motherfuckers start like jackhammering in the middle of the night to create more potholes to then... Oh no, they would totally do that. There would be a...

There would be... The streets will be fixed overnight. Okay. And then by Friday... Got it. Swiss cheese. Hit for watching the streets to make sure no new potholes. Right?

And no, but it has to be something upy. So it has to be like crack or Coke. You've got to be awake. Because if you take your hit to be on watch, you're going to be fading out and doing the fucking lean. You need something. You need, okay. So crack for watchers, right? Get a bunch of fiends out there just like, you know, don't fuck with the streets.

And then during the day, it's downers for work. Downers for the workers. Yeah. Only afterwards. Okay. Yeah. Crack watch. Crack over watch.

Yeah. I see. Clean, though. The cleanest. Clean hits. Yeah. Well, it's the best stuff you can get in town for doing work for the government. Did I just recreate brave new world?

I think you solved all of society's problems via proper incentive structure. I just accidentally recreated. The second most famous dystopian novel of all time. That's pretty good. Hey, those roads will be smooth drives. Trains will run on time, too. Yep. The only bumps you'll feel are rolling over the occasional junkie that fucking

Patsy. You know, the cost of labor. When you go, bo bo, bo, bo, bo, bo. It's called spillage. No, it's called churn. That's churn. Oh, my God. All right.

Well, anyway. You know who else is on a bunch of drugs right now? Someone in my household is high as a fucking kite right now. Great, great. That's Elmo the cat. Solid transit. Elmo the cat's high as fuck. It's going down.

So first of all, I'm going to start the story with Elmo the cat, who is 17 and a half now, is completely fine. 100% completely fine. Okay. But the other day, Paige was playing with the cat and she was, you know, booping him, right? And she touched one of his, you know, cats have those big canines, right? And she touched it and it went like, bleh. And we were like, oh, that's not. No, man.

That's, no, that's not supposed to do that. Okay. Right. So, phone call. Elmo is going to fix the roads. Yeah, Elmo's going to fix the roads. He's old, but he can do it because he's high. Thank you, Fage.

So, you know, phone call, emergency vet. Minor surgery. Turns out, Elmo, being the old-ass bitch that he is, had a big ass rotted tooth that was just about ready to fall out. And here it is. Oh. Oh, you get to keep it. Yeah, they let us keep it.

That's fun. You can even see the hole in it where it just rotted the fuck out. How's it smell? I don't know. We've never opened this. His breath smells better now, though. Okay. Okay.

So, like, you get to, that was some of it that was gross. Because rot a tooth smell is like that. Yeah, that's not good. Right. So we're going to, we're going to give him some updates. And he might have to get more teeth taken out because he's an old-ass fucking cat. But he's doing well. Okay.

And, uh, I'm having the wonderful experience of giving a cat, uh, a topical painkiller. with a pipette and two three times a day and two two big ass pills of antibiotics a day after the fucking cat just had mouth surgery. So I'm having a minor battle about every eight hours. Is the first one the one that gets him high, though? Because the others are probably easy. It's topical. Right?

So it gums his mouth a little bit. It doesn't really stop him for. fighting me from jamming pills down his throat. Okay, okay. So a normal cat, you could hide it in a treat, not this weirdo. Well, silver lining. The one fang look is cute. You look like one of them.

Yeah, he's now lost three of the four big cat fangs. He's down to one. He's like the little sister in the anime. Yeah, exactly. But he's actually an old-ass man. Um Okay So he's fine

Cat remains alive again Again Someone One just asked why My camera was out of focus And that was because I was doing a focus shift On the lens

To film a jar That was blurry Oh yeah The jar bit Yeah Coming into focus So hey, speaking of pet superstars, hope Boost got his fill there.

Oh, he did. He did. I was very, he did a great job. He really just like slorped on your legs. Good job, buddy. You're so sweet. Yeah, I was actually, I was hoping for a proper like, but he's not going to do that.

He's not going to do that. He's too sweet. He's too sweet a guy. Um, hey everybody. Go get Reggie's. It's out on the site. You can go to the makeship link and click on that and get one. And it's, uh, comes with the little, the little T.E.

on arcade stick. And then when you do, you can come on it. You can put it wherever you want to, um, as Min threatened to do. Uh, if you haven't seen the, the, the ad that's out. But, uh, just a reminder that that's going on for literally, uh, one month. It is, it is, it is available. Um, and if I'm gonna, I did this yesterday, but I'll just do it again today. I'll pull back the curtain a bit.

The way these things are set up is they kind of are like, you, it's going to say you have like 20 days or three weeks or whatever. It's not. There's going to be another week at the end. It's just, it's a stupid automated, like, whatever thing to be like to, to, our artificial fomo. But you got to get it in 30 days. That's the deal. So, um, is the, is the Reggie plush battle pass going to come back in a litter day? If it sells enough, then yes.

If it actually does well enough, there is a chance that the battle pass comes back. So that is real. Yeah. Anyway, this week, a couple other things going on. I took a second to pop in. There's a game I've been keeping an eye on. And I thought we played it, but it turns out we actually didn't. Do you remember back in the day for Fistakuffs, we played a game called One

strike. It was a samurai shampoo style one hit fighting game that was you know

kind of like hip hop new jabest sounding kind of music and yeah you could no okay

I'm looking at footage of it and I'm like nothing so there's a couple of these uh get my pleasure

I quit all right wrenchy yeah oh here's the video of us playing how about this reggie sell the pleasure you're fired oh my god i'm in this video and i don't and i don't remember it at all that's crazy that's so nuts yeah you are there it is a it is a one button fighting game um has anyone ever said hey man remember when you played this and you're like i never played that and then they sent you a video of yourself and you're like oh this i fucking guess this has

happened a couple times and other times people have like hallucinated episodes. I saw somebody was asking about me playing some a full game LP and I'm like I've never even heard of that game. I saw a thumbnail that I didn't make for a fisticuffs episode that didn't happen and I'm like oh good yeah yeah yeah so now we're in this weird realm of like somebody made one for a game and like assumed or like put it out there as like a wish that we played it or something? I don't know. I want to say it was for variable geo. I think I saw a Friday night fisticums for that.

And I was like, I didn't make this thumbnail. We didn't. What? What the fuck? You know? Anyway, the gas lighting is weird and wild. But all this to say that there's a couple of different games out there that are these one button, one hit, Bushito Blade, 2D style games.

there was another one called Kiai Resonance, which was pretty dope. It was kind of like a Hokosai painting the whole time. And this one is now called Two Strikes. It's the sequel to One Strike. Oh. Cool music, cool vibes, you know, fun animation. You have a heavy slash that kills in one hit,

or you land two lights, or you parry, or your dash, et cetera. You know, very basic, so it's set up for the way it's played. But it was always fun. And what's kind of nuts about it is it got guest characters out of nowhere, including fucking Backy as in like Hanma Bakke. Really? Yeah. And also Miyamoto Musashi are just guest characters in this thing.

Okay. It's a weird like, it's, I'm like for a random indie game, I feel it feels like somebody's cousin knew somebody that worked at the publisher. That's a big poll. Yeah, I think somebody sent an email to somebody, you know, that was in. Oh, I remember watching Diaphani play this a while back. Okay. Yeah, Musashi is not historical figure Musashi.

It is Musashi also from Backy because there is a Netflix Backy series where Musashi comes to, gets resurrected or whatever, and then all the muscle dudes have to fight him. And shit's weird. Um Do I Do I Do we just You don't have to tell people That Baki's weird dude

Um You know No it's it's I'm assuming that At some point in the In the In the That anime he stops a sword

With his muscles Just you know Fucking catching Yeah he does Breaking it No no no Like Yujiro like literally Flexes his neck muscles

When the sword hits him And just doesn't let it cut him Because he's him Um So that's the deal, you know, they made it into this game. Yeah, it's cool. It's fun. It's a, it's a random left field thing,

but overall, as far as a basic, you know, simple one button, or not one button, but one hit fighting game goes, shit's hype, you know? You can, you can get some tense matches out of doing some fakes and some parries and everything like that, as you would imagine. Um, and like all that fun of the Bishito Blade style

game, you know? It never really like, Bishito Blade never really like, it had a couple, it has some spiritual successors over the years. You know, we get your, your, um, uh, deadliest warrior style games and, um, uh, that other fucking one, the name I forget right now, you know, some of those 3D ones came along. And Samurai Showdown, of course, has always been dope as hell with that too. But, uh, yeah, I feel like there's a couple of these indies are just fun pickup and swing, uh, game. So yeah,

check out two strike is pretty dope. Uh, I was talking about that game last time, Forbidden Solitaire, the metanarrative puzzle game, indie puzzle game. And I kept playing it and I beat it. And congratulations. It is a, yeah, it is basically like a, imagine like a missed style 3D world that you're moving through. And as you're playing this old setup where you're logging into someone's old Windows 98 or maybe Windows 2000 machine booting up a game that runs in a DOS prompt window. And then as you're playing it, you're getting instant messages from people and occasionally, you know, cursed things are happening and stuff. Stop playing. It's too late. Literally.

Literally that. That. And that is like, you know, so I talked about the inscription version of this and all the different things here. It's like, there's like a weird, I should have said this last time. There's a weird, like, hipster-ish anti-formula occurring where the desire to. to be different, manifests itself in the same way multiple times in a row? Like me going, no, stop playing, it's too late. Like, I've never played Forbidden Solitaire, but I know that's in there.

Of course. 100%. The whole bit, yeah. And look, and if you put up a game that looks like Undertale right now, hey, guess what? You should probably find out if there's a pacifist in genocide endings. Yeah. Or some other, some other. Like, is this game about depression or gay?

One or the two. Which is it? Sometimes both. I feel like... It's both. It's both. I feel like with this one, it was, you know, you have to stop playing is kind of the bit. The game itself, the mechanics of it as you're playing are like, it's a fun version of solitaire and there's like powers and things that get added to it.

So it's interesting enough to kind of like stay going through it. But ultimately, I guess, there doesn't, there is, there is, like, the twists, quote, unquote, are what you think they are. And there's, there's nothing else to it. It's like you just go through it and it's, it's haunted and that's the, you know what I mean? Like, it's just a very, like, layer one version of that. And it doesn't have to be subverting expectations or anything like that either. I mean, it's fine to be simple about it, I suppose. have an issue with you saying it doesn't have to be about subverting expectations because this is a genre about subverting expectations unless what you are saying is that it doesn't have to subvert expectations in the way that it subverts expectations.

That is what I'm saying. The second one. It doesn't have to do it. It doesn't have to do it in the way that it does it, right? It can subvert expectations in the normal way. It can. also, if the game itself is just fun to play cards with, then you don't even need to do any of that. Like, you can balotro yourself from one level to the next, you know? In this case, there's other things happening narratively that, you know, there's like solitaire fights and then there's like progression battles and you get powers and there's little, there's interesting,

creepy things going on where as you, um, you get power-ups that are like these gems. But every time you get a gem, um, you have, you, you see like your left hand. and you jam the gem violently into your hand. And it has to like, imagine a infinity gauntlet, but there's no gauntlet. But you still have to put the stone. It's just you. Yeah. You're right.

And eventually you start running out of space on your hand. So you have to, like, start replacing digits and get it into your fucking fingers and nails. And, you know, um, so it's, it's proper, like, you know, creepy with that. But overall, like, you know, you just have a... Yeah, it's pretty much what it says on the box And your expectations are where they land exactly where you would. A couple of good computer gags happen. How do you feel about when you see live action get introduced?

Live action bits get introduced to... I love it. Yeah? I love it. I am a big command and conquer fan from way back in the thing. Yeah, Command and Red Alert. Like, no, that's... Like, I fucking love a good ass fucking live action

FMV. Okay. So, shittier it is, the better, by the way. This is what I was going to say is that there is... What it does to me is it categorizes what you're playing in a like, okay, this is bad good, deliberately, like, going to be silly. It stops you from... Like Resident Evil One, man.

Like, look at that awesome shit. And I think to it kind of like, you're not going to engage with it that seriously. as or afterwards, right? There's a level of seeing the live action that kind of puts it in a silly space. The closest exception I can think of is like, Senoa's sacrifice had some live action in it and still managed to be a pretty good game.

And like the live action... Oh, I want camp, man. I want camp. So, so if the live action's not being played for camp, right? Then get out. Yeah, I just, I don't, I think, I think you can't introduce it, like a real person acting in a thing and have it be taken seriously.

It's difficult. It's not impossible, but it's very hard to do. You're using like that you're using a fundamentally different medium. And so like some Inviso guy and Simse Farr point out, Alan Wake has live action. Right. Right. Right. And guess what?

Alan Wake is kind of goofy, even when it's being very serious. Because Alan's not a very good writer. So it works. Okay. It's filtered to shit too with the smoking. Oh, yeah. Or rather, I'm thinking of the control live action bit. But when you see, like, for example, like some of the live action that starts up in inscription,

there's a moment where you kind of even, you see the actor at the door with the shades. Yeah, I remember what you're saying. And you're like, okay, we're just, this is a film. This is a high school film project. Like this is a YouTube movie. You know, you immediately see the quality of what's being filmed. You immediately see the quality of the acting. And you start judging a million things that you were not judging about the game before this.

Right? Where I'm at is that there is a, I've been struggling as we've been talking about, like, what's my adequate range of camp slash production that I want in my live action inclusion of a video game? The upper limit of quality and production. want is Red Alert 3 level of live action, right? Yeah, Rick Flair and all those people in decent sets, but it's still obviously like a fucking soundstage built up a bunch of shit. And at my bottom level, I want marble hornets.

Okay. Right? Okay. So my range of like adequate in-game live action FMV is Marble Hornets and Red Alert 3. It has to live inside here. If it's worse than Marble Hornets, then it's just like you and me and Matt running around doing fucking Colonial Marines nonsense on a YouTube channel.

If it's above Red Alert 3, it's like, oh, you're wasting your time making a video game. You should probably, like, this is actually good. You should go make a fucking TV show or a movie. Right. Like Kojima, the live action stuff in MGS4, right in that middle. Right in that middle. Fucking dumb and kind of weirdly acted. Yeah.

But like with some high production, but not too good high production. It is, it was HD, right? Like, but just because it was doesn't mean shit wasn't dumb. It was very dumb. And yeah, and I'm also thinking of like Explosion Man had some live action bits. Anytime somebody at the studio gets a camera out and starts. running around the dev office, filming the people working on the game for bits, essentially.

You know, and then there's the games where, the live action is part of the gameplay, or like integrated in a way like, what was it, the Quiet Man? Oh, man. And or the things like a night trap or... Well, now we're just going in full-on, full-motion. There's FMB games, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But now we're going to... into pages fucking forte where she could wax poetic about all this old CG bullshit her story was another one you know yeah I just it is but it just it does something the moment you see it

where it like you lift the category of the game out of wherever it is and put it into goofy shit folder and that folder can still be entertaining her story is so fucking funny to me it's so fucking funny because it's like hey gamers can you

figure out if a woman can lie? I enjoyed it. I had fun with that. I know, but at its core concept is like, okay, gamers, we're going to have you look at a woman. And can you tell? That's the game. We think some of you might not be able to.

Do a fucking replicate test. But yeah, that's as long as you know what you're signing up for. So that's a bit of what this is. And, you know, the, it's not the unexpected straight punch. It's the unexpected, it's the expected fake out and hook. It's the expected faint into a hook. You know, exactly. That's it.

You know, you see the hook. You see the fate. And there it is. And it completes it. So, and then here's a thing. Credits. You and I, and most of the people who listen to this, have played a lot of games. Like a lot.

So it's it's a bit much for us to be like oh it's expected. Oh, it's obvious because we've got, man, we've played a lot of goddamn fucking video games, right? But it does mean that there's something like every now and then, like I think of mouth washing as something for like, I'd say about 80, 90% of mouthwashing. I was like, I couldn't, you could hold a gun in my head and I wouldn't be able to guess where this is going next. Right. Right. Like just absolutely fucking, I don't know. know. I don't know. But I think you buy into the world and the art style

and then accept the narrative on its own terms in a lot of these cases. Yeah. And in this one, it's doing a pretty convincing, cool job of, like, making it feel like you're using someone's desktop and running Windows and running DOS and so on. But again,

you just, then you enter that sort of, like, that territory of, like, here come the skits. But, um, And then of course, now I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, which is the new genre of Chinese FMV choose your own adventure featuring stuff like Road to Empress and Death to Gold Diggers. Wait, those are FMG games? Are you serious?

Aren't those the ones where the ads are those crazy AI things? No, no, no, because there's a lot of those. but Road to Empress and Revenge on Gold Diggers are FMV choose your own adventure games. Oh, the live. No, no, no. Okay, no, no. Sorry. Okay.

I do remember the live action bit now. Yeah, I forgot about that one. Right. Road to Empress. Me and Paige played Road to Emperse on Backlog. Okay, okay. It's fucking, it's, it's something. It's something.

Okay. Yeah, I remember seeing that and I forgot. But I remember I was initially thinking. You want to see women lie. You got to play Road to Empress. they'll hit you with that soup the what was I say

yeah so no that was it that was forbidden solitaire got a little bit further into Pragmata and that game continues to be excellent two things that are interesting that have happened are one

the introduction of the crystal lizard into this game. Really? Is... Really? I hate it.

There are crystal lizards effectively. There's a thing that can... There's a little drone that can appear that has a lot of rewards if you can hack it and it moves around the environment very quickly and it runs away. And if you can't track it down

or hack it or like handle it while the threats are all around you or whatever, it eventually goes away and disappears, you know, like an RPG when you run into like a gold slime. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But reloading the area does not guarantee you will see it again. In fact, nothing does because it might not even ever appear for you. It appears to be entirely R&G based. Oh, that's awesome, actually.

I hate that. I really don't like that. Well, you just want your rewards for free, Willie? I don't like the fact that it's just complete dice roll on it. So here's the thing, right? And I know where you're coming from on this, but my heart was hardened years ago to a much, much, much worse version of this.

Which you technically interacted with, but not really. The original crystal lizard. In the demon souls crystal lizard. Yeah. When we did that stream a long time ago, some people dropped weapons, but we also knew where we wanted to aim you for, right? The crystal lizards and demon souls run off cliff.

and kill themselves and only spawn a certain number of times. Yes. Herenous. Which is by far the worst version of that mechanic I've ever seen. Yeah, that is horrendous. Right. That shit sucks. You have to know.

So everything after that just feels like, oh, that's nice. You have to know because it's basically, yeah, it's New Game Plus only, right? You have to come in with the prior knowledge. There are things where if you play either, I forget if it was Persona 5 or metaphor, but like in those games, I want to say, like once per dungeon, you'll come across these big reward things, you know? And if you don't get it, like, you can come back in, but it's essentially going to, you know, it's once per day outing. So that, that's going to cost you on your calendar or so. I feel like, you know, if it's something like that where it's hard enough, and in this

case, like, I didn't get either of them. Like, I saw, I encountered it twice while I was playing and the second one was while in the middle of some insane environmental bullshit on the map and I missed it reloaded in and it was gone and it's just like you don't know if it's ever going to come back and even after you get it and you still don't know when or how you're going to see it and I'm like I it led to me kind of having a little bit of a discussion where I'm like I don't want to go we don't have to go into the full of it but I'm like I think there's a part of me that fundamentally hates the concept of RNG. Oh yeah, no. By a part of you, do you mean from the top hair on your head to the

end of the bottom of your toes? Yeah, because there are examples of it when I enjoyed and it's fun. And like, if it's, again, a deck of cards where I'm like, I know something's coming eventually, but probability is what I'm fucking with. Yeah, no, that's not R&G. No, no. You are, you are a, you are a probabilistic determiner. You, you play games and have to discussions based on eliminating risk and variation so that you can get to the right answer. And you are like the perfect information games that you love are like the antithesis of real RNG. Because I don't want what I was kind of describing to Reggie at the time was like I don't want the universe. I don't want to control the universe and let the chaos of that be the, um, that's not one of what we're

what is going to, I'm going to find fun. What I find fun is my mental stack and my own limitations being overwhelmed. When you put too much shit for me to handle and I can't deal with it yet and I have to get better at overcoming my own ability to manage the amount of shit that's going on or be quick enough or be, whatever the case is, that to me is like the core of where my enjoyment is coming from. So it's not about the fact that, you know, I took a shot at this and, you know, and, you know, I took a shot at this and there was a 7%

chance it was always going to miss no matter what because of the dice run on it, right? But that doesn't, what I'm describing, that is fun to me, it doesn't work when a game is very, very turn-based and it's not about timing at all or anything like that. Yeah. When you have to sit and, when you have to wait for, well, no, you have forever, but when you play this, you don't know what's going to happen next.

So I understand the concept, but I just, it's a fundamental thing with me where I'm just like, I don't like a hard, random percentage on this that it's just locked in no matter what, you know? So you, are a victim of your own mindset. I guess.

So I would assume that when the pragmata people put that in, they're like, oh, here's a little bonus. You get out of the trash can. There's a little bonus you can get sometimes if you're really quick, but we've designed the game around you maybe never getting them, right? Have I told you the mental process of how rested experience works in World Warcraft? Yeah, yeah. when you rest, that was a huge backlash because when you rest, you would get less.

Yeah, you would start at 100%, you'd go to 50%. So they changed it to 200% and 50% on the dash. They changed it from a penalty to a bonus. And I assume Pragmata presents these things as a bonus, but you have too much of information on how games actually work, and you correctly recognize it as actually a penalty for missing it. And the things, and like the rewards of, you know, what you're not going to get access to there are potential,

are better weapons, better skills, better things to improve your build faster and get the things you, you want to enjoy doing more with your character. And I'm, yeah, and again, it's like, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, hardly a huge deal. It's just, I know my reward structures and what I find fun are like, I have all the tools in front of me. I just can't fucking use them fast enough because my brain is like,

uh, right? It's like you're, you're, that feeling of trying to overcome that re and like coming back in to assess is enough of a challenge that like, um, something just happening to be red or green underneath when I flip it over.

Oh, is the ball under the cup? I'm like that, I don't, I don't need that, you know. So it's interesting because when I run into crystal lizard type situations, um,

My process is fundamentally different from the way you're describing it. My process is the lizard is mandatory. Surviving the encounter is not. So I will see the lizard or whatever equivalent and go, Oh, I got to get that. And that becomes the number one priority. So I get it every time. And then actually surviving the encounter is, that's now's problem.

Yes, yes. Because also if you died before the lizard died, you were fine. Right? Yes. If you died before the lizard dropped off and killed itself. It didn't count as a death for the lizard. Yes. So exactly.

So there is a, no, and that makes perfect sense because now your death is the disposable thing. Because the priority is the thing that will never be received again. Yeah. I never want that to be the case. I never want there to be a permanent like fucking one-shoty shit, you know. but this this is a unhealthy medium I think we've landed on

with the the crystal yeah probably and like I said there already are illusory walls that popped up in one session and I went I saw that in my sponsored section

and I was like oh boy oh boy fucking illusory walls here we go yeah um anyway I'm not opposed to the idea

but like if you can scan them or get a little bit of something going, then fine. Let it be observation based. And then the second thing is, and you know, you know what? And I will say too that like there will always be a part of me that is, um, let's playing has definitely warped this a bit more. So this is not like the normal average person's experience. I would say.

Well, no, the idea that like I like to be able to do as much as I can in my first run. Yes. But I do, I like doing this even when I'm not on camera, right? And this is part of me being not much of a replayer. This is me being like, I want to get a really good experience out of playing this game. And then kind of lock that into place.

Yeah. And this is, this is what that game was, exactly. And like, as we play a lot of them, there's a lot of games I'm never going to play again for sure. You're right?

Like, it's not even me not being a replayer. There's a lot of games where I'm like, yeah, I'm just, I enjoyed it, but it was fine. I'm not going to go back to it.

So getting that full, experience out of it, getting the full meal and tasting all the things that had it had going. So you can like talk about like, oh yeah, well, there was this cool little side bit over here or this extra bit over there, this boss that was fun that, you know, all of that gives you a really good understanding of what the experience was when you walk away from it, you know, instead of like the trimmed fat version or, or, yeah, no, there's, there's a, there's one game I can think of that I did this with and pretty much only the one, which is when I went through Silent Hill F. and I got everything.

I did everything. I did it all. And I have the title screen on the post-game title screen for getting the final ending. And I'm like, man, I am never going to touch that fucking game again. After going through it four and a half times in a row to see everything. Never. Even in Eldon Rings case, it's like, except for the places where the game forces you to pick its choices. I'm like, I definitely tried to get a nice bloated, not scraping, but

bloated single shot run out of this, you know, one and done. But the other thing that was, you know, interesting, is a gun that gets introduced called the code launcher. And it is simply a gun that shoots a wave out and that adds more hacking nodes to the grid. Oh, weird. It replaces your other, like, you know, power-ups or whatever, and it just puts more damage nodes on the grade. Huh.

So you can imagine, just let your brain take you where that goes as a potential way to play the game. As a possibility. And I'm like, okay, that's an option. Interesting. And it goes on your right-side item slot so it doesn't get in the way of your damage. damage dealing weapons. Good. Sick.

Super duper interesting mechanical introduction. You've got a tool to shrink the hacking grid and you've got a tool to fill it with more damage nodes. Pick which one you want. Yeah, so that's pretty much it. We are going to be continuing.

So tomorrow, more Phoenix Wright, unless something goes horse, horribly wrong, which it might. I might be busy. But I believe if I'm not, then we're going to continue with Turnabout Big Top.

Oh, that's the one right there. We are there. We're doing it. That's the one. And you're at the fucking peak of Phoenix, right? So everyone says. And we're starting to see. We're starting to see. And there's a level of this, there's a level of it where I'm like, okay, I can't even linger.

on the point here, you just go, yep, this game is from this year, moving on. Because it's just, it's, what are you supposed to say? You know, like, I don't know. We'll see where this goes and how much it matters, but we've already hit, um, fucking, uh, uh, uh, Mia popping up where she shouldn't be popping up. So, don't know what else to say there. Um, is it going to be uncomfortable probably but i don't know how far this case is going to go so there's a this case is going to i i'm there's a couple bits of this case that i'm very much looking forward to checking out myself okay yeah but this energy around it is very very palpable and i don't know man i got to say like it feels feels nervous every time like meet a new character

or just proceed it further into it there's a there's yeah i didn't i don't I'm just, I'm sweating. A lot of other people are sweating watching it happens. So we'll see where it goes. So it's one of those things that all I can say is that you know me extremely, you know me for 20 plus years and I have the wrong smile on my face. Uh-huh. Okay.

Yep. Yep. Like I just looked at myself in the fucking preview window. I'm like, oh, that's the wrong smile for what you're looking for. Well, what I am, look, I haven't fun with the voice acting at the very least. New, new, new goofy characters to play as. So that'll continue. And how?

And then on Saturday, we're going to do some slop. So come hang out for... Oh, you're slopping? We're slopping it up. We'll live versus whatever. Slop streaming. We've got more to get to. And the 2025 list has been fully compiled.

So we're going to pick up where we left off. Come hang out. It'll be fun. Now, if you'll excuse me, we'll... I am being... summoned to the food mines by a pathetic sad dog over here. Is that what that means? He is wasting away, dude.

Do you see him? He is wasting away. He's like me? Yeah, you're... Damn, he knew you're talking shit. You hungry? Are you hungry? Do you want some food?

You hungry? Oh, oh. All right. Well, I got to go. All right. Let's take a quick word from our sponsors, whom we love very much. This week, the podcast is sponsored by... Where is your...

Well, that's strange. Sorry, just a moment. Hmm. Hmm. Weird. Okay, sorry. Something's missing from where it's supposed to be. Give me a second to go get it.

and while I do that when you said you're hungry earlier it unlocked a a grenadian memory it did or whenever people used to say you're hungry they'd answer it with ita congory

and what a congory is a West Indian way of saying a millipede and they're really gross and they're everywhere and for some reason I have a visual of like being told to go eat one many a times when I was younger.

Anyway. It's weird memory unlocked. That is weird. From Grenada. I am stalling for time. There we go. Well, if you need to, you can just go back to the Be Right Back screen. No, nope.

Nope. I confused everybody with a tidbit, and it was just long enough. to let them know that the podcast is sponsored by Rocket Money. Oh, hey, Rocket Money. How are you doing? That is your modern solution to modern problems. Perhaps you are like me and have subscribed to too many things that you no longer can keep track of. It's possible.

If you have a weird, like, sign up site that is a service that you need for an app that's just a one-time use. but they know that if you can forget about it, then they can get you to pay a little bit more. And, you know, sometimes they even change the price on you from month to month. Sometimes the name of the company changes so you don't even know what you're subscribed to. And worst of all, I find is when they make the unsubscription process really convoluted. And you have to jump through hoops. Need a PhD to get through it.

You know, getting an email that opens a temporary link in a thing that, in a website that you have minutes to go and click on and you have to do that from an app and it's back and forth and nonsense because they just want you to give up. So, yeah, Rocket Money makes it really easy to just unsubscribe from any things that you, any subscriptions you've forgotten about. It is really useful for canceling unwanted subscriptions and for doing it easily. They can help you with the complicated unsubscription process as well. And you can keep track of things you've signed up for. It'll give you an update if things change price on you that you've signed up for or if there's other details like that that you want to keep an eye on. And it also helps with saving money overall.

Yeah, it's within the app with a couple of taps. They've saved users over $880 million in canceled subscriptions. So that is super useful. It's also helpful for setting your budgets and goals, getting personalized insights and getting real-time alerts for, you. Yeah, things going on with your account. People who upgrade, or rather users who create a financial goal with rocket money, save over $70 on average within the first 30 days. Pretty useful stuff. So in particular, I am pretty, yeah, I feel like I've had one recently where there was an app where I lost. I had like a fitbit and I had to find it.

And like the way, when you lose your Fitbit, it's like a really annoying process for tracking it down. And there's an app that lets you find it. But that app was like, hey, there's a weekly charge for using this app. And it was just like, man, can you just not? Can you just not? You know? So you do the thing once. And then afterwards, it's like, hey, I hope you forget about me.

And exactly that type of like annoying, annoying to deal with a process on the back end of it. So, yeah. Yeah, get that stuff out of your life and handle it in a really simple way. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. Monitorers your spending and help you lower your bill so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you with reach your financial goals faster. Join at RocketMoney.com slash Superbeast. That's rocketmoney.com slash super beast.

R-O-C-K-E-M-O-N-E-Y.com slash Superbeast. Thank you, Rocket Money. Thanks, Rockin' Money. This podcast is also sponsored by Shopify. If you are... Hey, Shopify. Getting in the game of starting up your business, or if you have a business that's currently going

and you want to take it to the next level, Shopify can help you with that. They're the number one checkout on the planet. Tons of sites and services you see use their shop pay button, that little purple button that shows up everywhere. And yeah, it just, it helps you kind of simplify and automate a lot of the PRPAPE. process that can get complicated. Because even if you get your business off the ground and figure

out how to ship a couple things to people, you might not be ready for dealing with international shipping or returns or, you know, tracking, you know, where people are shopping and how to get things to people all around the world and how to grow your business out to that. It's hard. It's hard to do. Very hard to do. And you might need to get advice or you might need to get support. Shopify has 24-7 award-winning customer support. for you. Um, and, you know, they've got, uh, templates set up for you to also create a shop that, uh, best suits your brand and it can help you out on the back end with just a lot of the, the simple things that, that, you know, make a difference like reaching out on social

media campaigns, for example. Um, so check them out. Get your business off the ground. Turn your what ifs into cash with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash super beast. That's Shopify.com slash super beast. S-H-O-P-I-F-Y.com slash super beast. Thanks, Shopify. Thanks, Shopify. The following is a hashtag paid advertisement. The podcast is sponsored by Invincible versus. Invincible versus, how you doing? Invincible versus is available now. It is the Invincible 3B-3. a brutal fighting game available on Xbox, series X and S, PlayStation 5, and PC. And yeah, the, I think I've said before,

but the legacy of this game was, you know, the folks that worked on Killer Instinct then are a part of the team that led to this. And it is a cool 3V3 fighting game. I'm a fan of when the tagging, gameplay can get nice and complex and dirty. And when it's fast-paced and, you know, I'm really enjoying the fact that you've got a bunch of the cast

from the first three seasons of Invincible that I watched showing up on that roster. There is, yeah, like this is being developed by quarter-up. That's definitely made up of some folks that are big fans of the FGC and are, you know, aware of how to get competitive fighting games off the ground and running. So be sure to check it out. I can say that one of the things I wanted from the jump when I was looking at this game was Battle Beast is a character that is a background running bit that's just an insane, violent lion man

that shows up and everyone freaks the fuck out and goes, oh my God, it's Battle Beast, get away from him. And to turn that into an actual playable character that's super sick, a big fan of that. And, you know, I talked about this, you know, a week or two ago, but like some of the voice acting they got here is incredible. A really good job from a number of the cast. Just getting the vibe perfect with some of these characters. So, yeah, there's, I see that there's, you know, fun stuff going on with, like, characters like Cecil and Rexplo. and an original character, Elemental as well,

who's kind of bending, you know, the elements and such. Cool stuff. Big fan of that, that K.I. Depth Gameplay. So be sure to check it out. And yes, it is available now on the aforementioned platforms. Thank you, Invincible Versus. Thanks, Invincible Versus. Last but not least, the podcast is sponsored by Ridge Wallet.

Oh, I don't have it on. Okay. But I got my Ridge wallet. Yeah. Just last week. Yeah. I love it. You know what it also taught me?

Mm-hmm. How much nonsense I'm carrying around in my old wallet that I'm like, I pulled out like a card. Somebody gave me like two years ago. I'm like, I don't even know what this is. There's a lot of junk you keep on your person that you don't need to. And it's a lot. The Ridge wallet is, it's sleek. Yeah, yeah, I got mine over here.

You know, it's, it is a good excuse to go through. your stuff and realize why am I carrying this around? What is the point of this? How do I trim it down to the things I need? I need cards and a little bit of cash and that's it. That's it. You know, any of your keys, a little form fitting thing.

If you want to have, you know, something else that goes on, it's got a little cash clip for it. It's got the ability to get, um, um, uh, what you might call it? Um, uh, the, the, uh, I forgot the little Apple, um, tracker thing for if you lose it.

I forgot what they're called. Oh, the air tag. Air tag. It's got one of those. He's got a clip on for that if you want one of those if you happen to misplace it or so. But overall, it is just a sleek, simple design. And you've got your RFID blocking tack on it as well. And yeah, you want to hold up to 12 cards in there plus cash and keep it so that it doesn't hurt your pants when you tuck it in.

Or you don't want to tuck it into your back pocket and mess up your spine. you know, all kinds of people that sat on their wallet for years just like having horrible Spineers. I don't understand wallet sitters. I got to be honest. It's crazy. I never understood those people. It's terrible. Don't do that. You know, get the crusty leather brick out of your life. And yeah, it's also the kind of perfect thing for like a Father's Day gift or so. If you want to give someone the opportunity to reflect on how much junk they're carrying and slim it down. Not to mention with all the different designs as well, over 50 plus colors and such. The Pick-Werex. from, I picked my big

Wiyibu Kinsugi one that shows you the golden cracks that are coming back together because, you know, I may have fallen and I may be flawed, but when I highlight those mistakes, whatever. Oh, it's funny, because I pick the burnt titanium

one because it looks like metal, and I think metal is cool. Metal is cool. Metal is cool. But, uh, you know, the the cracked, the cracked golden thing on the thing looks it looks cool too. I like marble looking patterns

and basically Kinsugi looks like marble except what if the the highlight was in gold, you know? Yeah. But the philosophy though, and you're Ike guy.

You know they pay people to go on speaking tours at companies and get into all that stuff? I do. Yeah, like you take a trip to fucking Akihow once and you come back and start getting paid by business firms to just spout Wikipedia articles at them.

Anyways, that's not the point of this. The point of this is you want to get yourself a Ridgewallet. And they have a tracker card as well if you want to make sure you don't lose anything. So yeah, you got a 99-day risk-free trial lifetime warranty on all their products to plus free shipping. So for a limited time, Ridge is running a huge Father's Day sale where you can get up to 40% off their best year. Just head to ridge.com slash Superbeast and don't miss out on one of the biggest discounts all year. That's Ridge.com slash Superbeast for up to 40% off after you purchased. They'll ask what you heard about them. Support the show.

Tell them we sent you. Thank you very much, Rich. Thanks, Ridge. All right. Shall we get into the many things? Yes. So Elmo is great and live. That's number one.

Good job, Elmo. Once again. Okay. Speaking of animals that are great and alive, seems like Fox McLeod is doing good too. Oh, can I talk about my week? I'm sorry. I'm so used to jumping into the news after the break that that was automatic.

No, no, no, it's okay. We don't have to. It's fine. No, no, we may not. It's okay. that was pure reference. What happened? In all honesty,

this is not all that much. I've been playing more Kingdom Hearts. Hey, guess what? That game's universally excellent. It's incredible. Yeah, I guess two is that much longer than the first one, because I noticed it's still going.

I'm not banging out like 12.5 hour sessions like I did for one and chain of memories. Okay, that would explain it. Because Kingdom Hearts 2 is, is significantly bigger, but also I don't feel that, like, I want to take as long as I possibly can to play it and just do everything

I can because it's the best one. Because it's never going to be this good again. It's never going to be this good. It'll be pretty good, but it'll never be this good. Right? Like, Kingdom Hearts 2 has like a long extended sequence that doesn't

take place in, in fucking Lion King Cannon, where you have to go like pep up Simba because Because Scars fucking ghost is haunting him. And his ghost just shows up and says, you're a bitch, Simba. You're a shit king. And Simba just goes, oh, fuck, and runs away. Okay, before I call that out, is that happening on the straight-to-d-d-d-d-d-movies as well?

No. No, it's not. Because I know that there's a bunch of crazy shit that happens in Lion King 2 and 3. Yeah, no. Like, the second straight-to-d-d-d-movie for Lion King has, like, Scars kids. Scarce. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

But no, no, this is like straight up. Scars Ghost is like, you suck, Simba. And then Simba just goes, eh, I suck. Bacquette, Mufasa's ghost, fuck him up. Confidence. But isn't Mufasa's ghost also right there to fuck up Scarce ghost? No, Mufus' ghost is out of here. They ran out of voice clips to substitute from the movies.

God damn it. Because like when you meet Mufus in Kingdom Hearts, you're like, wow, you really are saying the same things from the movie just cut up in a novel way, almost like. like all your dialogue was spliced together from like the wines and the movies. Well, that's a silly thing to do. James Earl Jones is clearly okay with AI using his voice. Yeah, but this was 2005.

It was. It was. Long ago. Playing these retro ass PS2 games. But yeah, no, Kingdom Hearts is fucking incredible. I've also got back to streaming 14 regularly, which has been a blast. I played the FF11. So they have a raid series, which is FF11 based,

which is like basically, hey guys, do you remember FF11? And it ends with the funniest ad I've ever seen for anything. So the near raids don't end with, hey, you should play near automata, right? The Garrow crossover didn't end with you should watch Garo. but the FF11 crossover ends with a fairly long conversation

with all the characters you met during this sequence of events going are we ever going to meet again after you go back to Vanadil I don't know maybe you'll figure out some way to meet us in Vanadil and then we can go on adventures there

somehow and then it ends with like this this like hand drawn beautiful piece of art of a bunch of FF11 adventurers on like a light background that goes we'll leave the light on for you. Oh wow. And that light is still on, isn't it? It is still on. That's crazy. As as many of my friends have told me, FF11 is still available and it's free if you pay for it.

Look, man, the old guy in the mail room is doing a good job. And, you know, we are making money, so why not? I've also been informed that the characters you run into in the 14 Raid series do, in fact, make brief mention of incongruent memories if you meet them in 11. What does that mean? So they have done the bare minimum of integration of like, hey, that's weird. I remember. if you happen to decide to jump back to 11, like a crazy person. Not me, though.

Fuck that. All I know is some people are big on it and stayed big on it, you know? I think Max was big on FF11. Max was super big on it. Yeah, yeah. Like crazy big on it. I remember watching him describe how he was like, because this was a pre-Discord pre-Wiki like internet.

Like he was basically the only guy who knew what the timers were for all the mob spawns on his server. So he would get up at the crack of dawn or some bullshit time of night to snipe all the good spons to get all the good items and just be the plague of his server.

I thought that FF11 when it was coming out was going to be the revolution that a Realm Reborn was. It seems it took them three tries before they liked dominated. But like,

I remember, 11 always did well. It was always like, yeah, FF11's doing good. But I was never like, but I thought it would be like, oh my God, the next Final Fantasy game

is an online one where you play like an FF game, but it's all together. This is going to be the old, the ever game, you know? Yeah. And well, I mean,

yes, lengthwise it is. That was 25 fucking years ago. It certainly is. We're still talking about FF11. So, all right. Got to,

You got halfway there. Yeah. I guess popularity-wise, but that shit's crazy. Well, no, because World Warcraft came out. Yes. Yeah. Like, it's just, World Warcraft just ate everybody's fucking lunch. And to 11's credit, it survived.

Unlike everything else, Wow killed damn near everybody else, except for FF11. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So good for them. Well, again, but again, it, the, third strike is what counts and FF online third strike is what dominated you know both popularity

and the the well just it dethroned wow and did end is the is the yeah so like the Omni game now so 11 has has has has 11 also stands as like a very

like good proof of concept of like I don't know should I be worried about 14 going down not for fucking 15 more years because because like they'll push this shit to hell

and I bet you the second they announced that like a bunch of fan servers that are sitting there ready to go or just going to turn on I mean there are FF11 private servers but they're not what they were for Wow Classic

because like FF11 just still continues to exist and there's there are I think there are technically FF14 1.0 private servers for freaks. Okay. For freaks. Okay. Yeah, I mean, look, with enough determination,

you cannot end of service a game, you know, like. I remember when somebody asked Yoshi P about, how do you feel about doing a FF14 classic at one of the media tours? He just yelled out the word nightmare. It's like, no. No. I'm also thrilled to announce from my perspective that we are in the upward climb of the We Are So Back chart. Okay. You know, there's the there's the wiggle, then the jump, then the big ass dip.

Mm-hmm. And then there's the plateau before the peak. We are currently in the middle of the plateau before the big peak of We Are So Back. But you're not back yet because that doesn't happen yet, right? Right, it's not back yet. People are just anticipating what's going on. I'm streaming Kingdom Hearts and I look over at this monitor and I see people chit-chatting about their fucking MSQ progress in the other window. Like, this ain't about Kingdom Hearts, but they're like, no, I want to talk about 14.

This guy in here talking about their MSQ progress through 2.55. Congratulations, by the way. That's a good bet. We're so fucking back. Man, the world of video games is. large. It feels so good to be so back. You are back

on a continent that I have never set foot on way the fuck over there. Well, I used to be there a lot. I left. I was like, yeah. You're in, you're surrounded. You did? I played fighting games. I were tired for

M. 14 to play fighting games. You're surrounded by by peak square. Yeah. So that's been going on. And also, oh yeah. I did a sponsor stream for Dead as Disco. Yes.

Dead as Dicco. No, that's wrong. Dead as Disco is bluntly, Arkham Asylum and High Fi Rush. Kiss. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's got Batman Combat through like basically music videos.

Did you... It's fucking awesome. Yeah. So story mode, how is that? Because I just played the tutorial. It doesn't really have story mode. has a stage selector. Okay, okay.

So there was no... It's early access. It is quite early. Okay, the story's not out yet. So yeah, they have... It looks like they'll have nine Mega Man-style robot bosses, but they currently only have four. Did you play the list of safe stages and... I did, and they're great.

Okay. They're fantastic. And I also put in some of my music, that is some of the music that I play on. my streamer, my B. Right Back stuff. And it works extremely well if the music is between 120 and 200 BPM. And if you go in and set it

and tweak it to the right. Yeah, you have to, you find out what the BPM of your song is and you set it to that. If your song is too slow, it doesn't really work that well. Because everybody's just in super slow motion. So I popped in some guilty gear music when I ran it. And that's just fucking kicks ass. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That'll do. But yeah, super cool. Both soundtracks are great.

Very much, very much looking forward to that being pieced together over time. And last but not least, of things that I played this week, I played a Capcom shadow dropped a new RE9 mode. Yeah. Called Leon Must Die Forever. Yeah. Is that what it sounds like? Is that Dante must die for? for RE9. No, no, no, no. It's a

roguelight in which you're, the stages are split up in a little pieces and each stage has like a magic door that will bring you to another stage and so like it's a disconnected way to play through the game very, very quickly. Like I'm talking

like 15 minute run. So like you'll go from the very first level, Leon level and then you'll go to part of the care center and then you'll go right to the end or you'll go to the care center right away and then you'll go to the Requiem City Streets and then you'll go to an alternate boss and then you'll go to the end. And it always ends with the final boss.

Okay. And you, every time you kill enough enemies, you level up and get a perk and the perk can be like more damage with shotguns or you lose your ability to use melee, but you do 60% more. A lot of different goofy things. Like what they did with Dead Rising 3 arcade mode. Yeah. It's nice that. it's free.

It's really great that they put a free amount of content out. I see. For RE9. That's good that they did that. What happened? It's just, it's, the perks aren't super interesting, most of them.

The timer is trivially easy. to scam. It's actually very, very short. The RNG is impossible to manipulate. But probably the most annoying one is that they realize that Leon's hatchet Perry is the strongest thing in the entire game by far. Because you could just auto kill every single enemy in the game if you have a really, really, really good parry timing,

which I do. And that's how I beat insanity. so they don't let you sharpen the axe. Axe durability is now a power-up. What does that mean? And it... So in the base game, Leon has an axe that you can parry with, and you can reload the axe like Monster Hunter

by going and sharpening it, right? Okay. In this new mode, you can't regend durability that way. You have to actually get a power-up to get more durability on your... Oh, so they just take it away from you. Okay.

So, like, this entire combat system that was, like, built around Leon being able to parry, more or less treats parrying as, like, a very stringent resource. And I feel like that alone makes it, like, just way less fun than it could have been. It's still really hard to do, but you also cannot do it more now. Yeah. Yeah, okay, okay. So, like, I got good enough at the parry timing that any of the stronger enemies, I could just auto-pery them on, like, frame-perfect timing and just kill them.

outright with just the knife, so just the hatchet. And they know that people can do that. So they don't want you to do that. But as a result, you know? Yeah, that's a hard thing because you got to make it a nice little bonus mode. I played it for a couple hours. You got to make it rewarding to pull that off, but you just have to balance around it not being a perhaps threat eliminator, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, in a single player game, that's no problem. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Because once you get really, really good at it, insanity gives you enough threats that, man,

you really want to be perfect parrying everything. Like insanity difficulty gives you a lot of very extreme threats. But I mean, we can turn to a recent example, like Expedition 33, for like, oh, you got perfect parries? Okay, here, hold this, right? There's ways to make it challenging regardless around that idea. So I feel That's unfortunate, but

Okay, it's free. It's free. It's free. How can you complain? How can you complain about game that is free? Well, if it's... You can't. If it's not fun, then it's not fun.

Yeah, no, I'm never going to play it again. Well, but it was a cool little diversion. That's pretty much it for me this week. Or sorry, last week. as of what's coming up on my bullshit. Let me get a schedule out here. So first of all, today, when Peach Saliva is going to be playing Chrono Trigger

at 6 p.m. Pacific. Yeah. She's in Zeal right now. Yeah. Just the absolute peak of that game. And the peak of the next game, too. Yes. Shh.

Shhh. Um, on Sunday, I'm going to be playing more Kingdom Hearts. Friday is Caboosa's fourth birthday. Hey. Happy birthday, Stinky. So, in honor of Caboosa's fourth birthday, we're going to have a 24-hour Caboosa's birthday stream on Friday. Is Kaboos gonna be up for 24 hours? No.

Okay. He's barely awake right now. Okay. Okay. Are you? How's that going to work? All right. Gotcha.

Gotcha. How is it going to work? We'll have him present. So the current plan with that, I thought long and hard about what kind of theming we can do for this. By the way, to people who are asking, am I okay? I've wanted to do 24-hour streams for years and years. I was about to say, I was about to say, wow, those, those marathon streams are doing pretty good.

Oh, they are doing pretty good. But more importantly than that, more importantly than that, I have wanted to do this kind of gimmick for years and years and years. And Paige was like, fucking don't do it, bitch, you're stupid. And then we had a baby, right? So the infant period is not an appropriate time to do this nonsense. But now we have a cool little guy toddler, right, who hangs out. out and is a smart little man who's a lot easier to take care of. So, the way that this is going to start is that I've learned from my, I learned my lesson from last time. I will not be waking up at 7.30 to shower, eat a nice breakfast, and then hop in the stream at 10 p. at 10 a.m. So I can be dying at 9.30 a.m. the next day. No, we're going to be starting at 8 a.m. on Friday Pacific time. So I'm going to wake up, immediately clean my ass, and run over here and just eat over here. Okay. The current schedule, because it's in honor of Deformed Dog Caboose, will be starting with Reanimal, the game about Deformed Animals. It will be,

Paige will be joining me, and we're going to do a full LP of the new Dark Pictures game. directive 8020 which came out today oh yeah those are still coming out they are still coming out because that game is about escaping an animal or sorry an alien that thinks it's people okay okay and then after that during the evening I'm going to run through the entirety of Ace Combat 5 which features the War Dog Squadron

okay so people can stop hats with me at Ace Combat 5 we're going to play Ace Combat 5 on Friday that last one's a stretch but Yeah. Oh, you know what? The original, I didn't even know it had the War Dogg Squadron.

The original stretch was that JPEG Dog was in Ace Combat that one time. Sure, sure, yes. So that makes Ace Combat a dog game. But you're not playing the one with JPEG Dog. No, I'm playing the one with the War Dog Squadron. Okay. So you're running a 24-hour stream. The one that I got for free on PlayStation for buying Ace Combat 7.

So you're running a 24-hour stream. Yeah, I got. Yeah, I got. So that'll be fun. Come on down on Friday. It'll be the whole goddamn day. And some of the next. next day as well. Yeah, in the meantime, I'm like, you know, preparing for like ever shrinking

even less availability and schedule changes on the way. There's always more. Yeah. I mean, hell, like, I'm sure folks might have noticed, but like my long winding outro bits are now, like, occasional as a treat if possible, because most of the time it's like, got to go, you know, so. I got to tell you the toddler phase is a lot, like, you know, as much people complain. The toddler phase is a lot easier to take care of because you have a little person that you can talk to and, you know, like, hey, bud, put on your shoes. And I'm like, can you help me with my shoes? I'm like, yes, I'll help you with your shoes. And then, you know, instead of the, you know, just the, the, the, the human, the tiny human dummy that must be transported.

Yeah. So like big milestone, I'm walking around in town for hours and hours with my got, just holding hands. No stroller. No need for no child leash. None of that. Just a good little guy holding his dad's hand, being a good guy because he's so sweet. I look forward to the some of the time reclamation. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a ways away. Cool. Okay. Oh, and so I said to chat that I was going to be doing. FF14 weekly, but I can't do it this week because I'm going to a 24-hour thing. But as a present to everybody, next Tuesday after the podcast, that'd be the 19th, I'm going to be co-streaming with Hino-Bobina on her FF14 stream, and we're going to be doing

some old stuff there. How many letters is that? Four, six, ten, ten letters. Cool. Okay. Can I spell that? H-I-N-A B-O-B-I-N-A?

Okay. Clown V-Tuber. Ah. A fellow clown, as it were. Let's go. Yeah, no, we were chit-chatting on Discord the other day just about like how fucking stoked we are forever cold. Oh, yeah, that's a clown.

Yeah, that's a clown. You see? Yeah. The cool thing too is... You're in clown world now, but I'm going to be talking about clowns next week, and you're going to be talking about clowns next week. I am going to be... Oh, yeah. Oh, no, make no mistake.

There will be a Clussy segment. But at the very least, uh, whatever is... Let me see here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. The fun thing about V-tubing is you can get all these different looks going on and like their costume changes and stuff is dope. Like, I do find that, like, a cool thing. And not to mention. the tech where we're seeing those replays where you got FGC people getting the button mashing

you know little animations in the corner and ears perk it up and stuff um I want to say I saw somebody playing what game was it it was like it might be like ace combat or something but like there was a whole cool like pilot gear outfit thing going on the VTuber tech has gotten really impressive so there's fun stuff out there anyway Um, shall we news? Uh, yes, let's news. Okay. Well, speaking of piloting and animals in cockpits, I can still segue into it.

You can still do it, buddy. You got this. Fucking Star Fox. As soon as we wrapped, God announced last week. Uh, the remake. There has been a re-release. There has been a re-imagining. and now we are on a full-on remake of Star Fox 64

in the form of the new game. And I didn't see the Mario Galaxy movie, but they pretty much just hard went like, hey, so yeah, that was a thing. There was a cameo in the Nintendo thing. And like, if you saw it there, that's probably... I should probably watch the Star Fox trailer, huh? Yeah.

Haven't seen it. Haven't seen it. So it's really funny when Star Fox comes around. It's so interesting because this to me represents the peak of like how important character designs are even when they're not at all a part of the gameplay. They're just a little portraits that pop up for dialogue, but you're not staring at the models or anything except for like, you know, in between missions and stuff. But it's such a background thing. but it's a plain shooting game but like the idea of the characters

is so strong with the identity of the franchise you know I think it looks dope as shit I love I love what's going on with it I like the new designs they really remind me of the original box art and the Jim Henson looking puppets

I feel like that was always a promise of like oh okay these characters could eventually look like and then all right it kind of diverted a bit towards more like the the Star the Smash Brothers look

and those original models and characters were kind of weird because of the whole like hey their feet are cut off to put on robot feet which is such a wild piece of lore to have considering like

the bit in the in the movie is all about checking out these cool boots or whatever you know there's a whole part of that but um so I should I should mention by the way that this is I'm literally looking at these designs for the first time right this second

Everyone is screaming, that's not real. So I'm going to take that to be. That's not real. This is the first time I've seen these. And I have seen people. So here's what I got from like perspective before I got here, right? The first thing I saw was people talking about how shit they looked. Right?

But I didn't see them. The second thing I saw was a text message from my wife going, Oh my God, there's a new fucking Star Fox. Holy shit. Break. New designs look extremely fuckable. Page. So I'm looking at it.

I'm looking at it right now. Never disappoint. And I'm like, yeah, I see it because they look like puppets. They look like Muppets. Which. Like James McLeod looks like a sexy Muppet. That's what I'm saying, right?

And this, the promise of that original box art is being realized with this art style. I think they're doing a great job of it. I think the lighting in the trailer is not as flattering as it is in the renders because you're seeing the lighting of like, I guess the ship and it's more dark and it's not, you know, it's more of the running around in a not perfectly lit environment. But I think when you see the full renders and everything there, like they look especially great. Furthermore, you want to fucking follow that path down to its logical conclusion. Go look at the renders of Star Wolf.

Have you seen Star Wolf? It's crazy. Hold on, let me look at it. Star Wolf, the whole team is nuts. Pygma looks like a fucking drug addict. Pigma looks like just fucked up our. Lange almost. Like, it's crazy. And Andrew has that perfect just...

Oh, wow, Star Wolf To... Okay, come on. Andrew is... He looks great. Better than you. He is better than you because his uncle is the emperor. Wolf is the peak of just... That's... Yeah, get your fucking... I feel like non-furries or non-furry-adjacent people shouldn't even be in this

conversation. Because it's for them. It's their culture. And when you look at Falco, I feel like I can see the attitude in the redesign there. The first thing I got to was people coming through when that got announced while we were live and saying that like talking about how bad the designs were or how much they hated them. And I looked and I was like, I think this is awesome. I love it.

I love what I'm seeing here. And that was before even the renders. Because again, I'm sorry you're not enough of a degenerate pervert to appreciate this good look. I think the animal legs on them are a cool stylistic choice. like the way they look. You know, they could have done the full humanoid leg anthropomorphic thing, but I think it's more interesting. The proportions and the way it looks, yeah, it's stylish.

It's kind of cool. And again, I'm just happy for something that is reminiscent of those Jim Henson puppets, you know? I kind of always wanted that direction. I would have loved, it's not reasonable, but I would have loved if they even committed to it like the fucking punch-out Muppet. game, you know, if they went fully in that direction. Oh, yeah. Punchout look cool as Muppets. Well, no, there's the Muppet Punchout game that's happening. Oh, right. That's right. What's it called?

I forget, but, like, I would have been down for that, too. Um, it does feel like... Felt that boxing. Nice. Yeah, yeah, felt that. It feels a bit like the Nintendo probably looks at Star Fox and has gone, like, it's not innovative enough. to just bring it back straightforward with gameplay. We have to keep messing with game. So let's innovate nothing at all. Yeah, and it's kind of like, people are like, can you stop?

We love the original game. It was fine. You can keep it simple. It doesn't have to be, you know, on a command board. It doesn't have to be in between adventures. I am a little weirded out that it's not, like it's the same type of game,

but it's also the same exact story with the same levels. That's actually strange. Why couldn't it just be a new adventure? So ultimately, like, harkening back to the peak of the series. and going back to that. Yeah, I don't know why they didn't go forward in time with this.

I hope that this is a step that can then lead to it. I don't know if they need to do like a confidence check first. You know, like, hey, we're rebooting the franchise and now we're going to go forward. But either way, like, it is, I do understand that like we're doing this for the third time exhaustion. But it's a great fucking game. So it's like, eh! Isn't it more than that? Isn't this like the fifth time?

Um, no. So by strictly speaking, it is like there's Star Fox 64 and then there's Star Fox 64 3DS. There's, um, the zero, which is the,

again, the reimagining and then there's this, right? But, though, that's four minimum. Um, but,

uh, if you, if you're counting, because some people are saying 64 is technically like a remake of Star Fox original. So you can technically say that. I would kind of say that. Yeah.

So if you, if you, if you want to stretch it to the, the maximum for the bit that you can say that yeah, they've remade the same game every single time. But I think it's more like there's three remakes of Star Fox 64.

That, okay, you know what? That's too much. Just put different levels in a different adventure. Yeah, you can go forward to time. There's no reason not to. Like, it's, like, we're talking about, like, literally 18 minutes of story in the entire game. Like, you could just make it different a little bit.

I would also say that the, like, there enough, like, wacky fodder between all the Star Fox command endings, the goofy insane G-Zero stuff, and, you know, the Slippie A Island ending and all that crazy stuff, you can go off to make a brand new entry with a bunch of cool, you know, wacky future lore bits, or everything from, because time went forward in Star Fox Adventures and in Star Fox Armada as well,

and not Armada, assault, God damn it. it was supposed to be called Armada, right? And then it was, and then assault came out afterwards. I think that's why it's in my brain is the two titles are there. Anyway, there are games that took place after 64, right? But yeah, for whatever it was, they just kind of committed to doing this. I hope that from here you go forward into the future. Or maybe that even this game has an extra, like future campaign that is like, hey, you did the old part.

Now here's the new part, right? That would be cool. I mean, I'm thinking about this. And one of the reasons why it's like, it's a little disappointing with a straight-up remake is that like, there's elements of Star Fox 64 that were of the time that we've seen like four or five times now that I would like to see the new things that are of the time. Like there's an Independence Day level in that fucking game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And nobody knows what the fuck that movie is anymore.

But now you're seeing top gun ass James McLeod, you know, so you could lean in that direction. I think that the fact that they're redoing it is also pretty much a tacit admission that Zero was a failed attempt, right? Like, I think that pretty much is agreed based on the fact that they're moving past it. But either way, it looks cool. Dope as hell, I'm happy that Star Fox is back and alive. and maybe there'll be some cool new shit they add or maybe it'll just be you know, that would be nice.

But I already know that... Because like, give me, give me a, like a, what Punch Out had for title defense. Yeah, yeah, that'd be a great way to go with it. And you playing as... Also, can you put Punch Out on the Switch, man? That game fucking kicks tons of ass. Save it. That would be worth saving.

And yeah, Star Fox versus Star Wolf in the versus modes they, uh, and stuff like that. I also feel like what they know what the fuck they're doing when they're like, by the way, here is your V-tuber rig. Here's your, here's your fucking map face-mapped to Fox. Desperate to get anybody to use this shit-ass feature. Desperate. You can use it to connect to your friends on the switch and have a Fox McCloud avatar in their chat. Or you can use it for other reasons. We don't know.

You could use it for other reasons. I don't know what you'd use it for, but, you know, it's there. Hmm. Interesting. There's a VR chat button here. Huh. Why would that be there? Huh, strange.

And it automatically goes to certain servers. Why would that be there? That's peculiar. What a trade, what an odd choice, Nintendo. And I came with a towel. I got one of these fashionable little tails I can put on. That's cool. I don't know how to hook it in, though.

Doesn't hook onto the belt in the way I thought. It's got a weird, huh? Nintendo branded, though. That's interesting. You know, it's quality. Yay for Star Fox. And I guess I should go watch that movie then. Yeah.

I kind of want to know, though. So what is with the misinformation of the story about their legs getting cut off? Oh, a ton of art of the era displayed them with robot legs. Showed the legs. No, no, I remember that. It was not boots. It was like explicitly robot legs. I do.

And I remember seeing that. And I remember that's why I thought the story was real. So like was this just like a- So here's the thing. Was it like a neo-gaff lie that then got spread? No, no, no. They had robot legs. while you were talking

I was sent pictures of them having robot legs with like ball joint fucking like feet okay I have an article here um Shigura Miyamoto has heard of the

amputation theory and he thinks it's nuts uh have you heard of the amputation theory this one has been running around for decades and that ties the legs of Star Fox uh long story short uh yeah the rumor is that Fox McLeod didn't have any feet and they had metal prosthetics and the same

style was seen on the rest of the crew believe it or not the theory made it all the way back to Miyamoto and he's when asked about it the look on his face was a combination fuck fuck that nonsense look at this picture of Fox's legs on the fucking box art I remember I know the art I know he's got fucking ankle ball and joint like it's I know a boot I know the art and it is a there is a design choice to make it look like that but uh yeah apparently they they asked miyamoto about it and he made a weird face that was like what the fuck are you talking about yeah and miyamoto also says the rosalina and peach are sisters like what shut up get out of here old man oh yeah yeah okay well in any case um i guess um i guess

that's that's I didn't I didn't hear that that got disproved until everyone just yelled about it so I guess that that is that is a old lore. I mean it didn't have to be disproved because like the primary source, which is the game that you have in your hand, just clearly shows that they got robot legs. But the idea of this is a part of the backstory, every member of Star Fox has their feet cut off was like, I remember hearing that and being like, what? And then like, yeah, that

persisted in brain for a while. Let me get the back of the box for you. I might have discovered this through best friend, literally from you guys back in the day. I don't know if it came from y'all back in the day or not. Yeah, so like it's not lore that they all have their feet cut off. It's literally depicted

in high quality CG renders on the fucking box. All of their ankles are fucking tubes that attach with ball joints into a big flat fucking metal feet. And if they're saying

that it's just an art style choice, then I guess that's what it is. You know? Like, yeah. It's fucking Johnny Bravo rules. It's, you know, their heads look like Muppets and then their feet are fucking, whatever the artist did.

Anyway, speaking of original art styles being adapted faithfully. Huh? The Ghost in the Shell? Oh yeah. Yeah, I got Ghost in the Shell.

I think that's my most anticipated thing coming out. It looks so fucking cool. Like, after all this time going back, because I know that Ghost in the Shell is a franchise that is like, it has to keep coming out. They do want to keep it relevant. There's always a reboot every few years to, you know, keep that thing making.

some money and there's there's cool stories to tell so fair enough right but you don't go too long without seeing a ghost in the shell of some kind but I've never seen it any of it no not even the original movie do you know how I you know how much

ghost in the shell I've watched I went over to a friend's house he's like check this out and showed me a naked woman fighting a big spider and went yo isn't that cool and then turned it off interesting I only found out later that that was ghost in the shell.

I think you would like the movie and I think you might really enjoy... The anime movie. Oh, oh. The cartoon movie. The cartoon movie, yes. The memory of Osi. And I think

you might really like innocence as well. The show, possibly, but like, hard to say. But I think you might dig innocence because the stuff that deal that goes heavy into philosophy and like the, you know, cyberpunk, you know, what you might call it?

Dysopia? No. The word is escaping me. Techno, whatever, my brain is off right now. It's some stuff that I feel like we had interesting conversations about, like, fucking 10, 15 years ago that you would enjoy. And humanism. It does some interesting stuff with the subject matter. It goes good places with it.

This new movie, the trailer they're showing off, is notable because for the first time ever, like the original series, the original comic, like, was hitting on all these notes, but it was really goofy and had a bunch of, like, silly moments and much more slapstick things that Massimunei Shiro put into it. And the original major was a, like, way more of this kind of like lesbian gremlin disaster. Okay. And because the anime, because the show, the movie was so good, it kind of got re-identi, reintroduced as this dead serious military, heavy philosophy thing, which it is. heavily philosophical, but

there was a lighthearted element to it that got lost in that adaptation. And you see the standalone complex series and some of that future stuff kind of going off of the more movie timeline and adapting that more serious tone of things and it's great. It is

fucking peak of what it's trying to do. But I do miss and kind of always, there's a part of me that likes that original goofy kind of lighthearted aspect to the original Massimunei Shiro books and this is the first time they're like fully embracing that

and you're seeing the art style go back to the way it originally looked as well so this looks fucking sick I'm super super happy that they're going in this direction yeah the there's two cannons here that are well there's more than two but like

how many canons we got I mean I'm gonna say comic So there's manga, there's Oshi, there's standalone complex, and then is

the newer series that came out after a standalone complex, its own world? I think it might be. I think there's four. That's too many. Yeah, I think the new one where she has a younger body is a fourth canon,

arise, right? So that's its own thing. How many of those are different canons but are essentially the same story? well they're all essentially the same story you know really a lot of them deal with like you got you okay anytime the puppeteer gets in the puppet master gets introduced anytime it deals with um her like they're they're they're pretty much yeah there's a lot of them that are either retelling the same cases retelling the same story or like different takes on it um laughing man and puppet masters being the

focus of the case tent so it's like star fox yeah sure sure why not I'll take that you know um but uh that that being said I haven't seen all of it I've seen you know I'd say about half uh but yeah this is a fucking cool-ass like decision to go with the full adaptation of this art style this is almost like the other day when we saw the animated little dragon ball short that was like real Toriyama artwork style you know and you're like yeah there's the Dragon Ball anime that we've known, and overall there's the style that has come to be accepted as like,

this is Goku as a franchise character, but that little touch of Tehrama's specific style is particular, and you know, you kind of can identify to be like, oh shit, that's his version of Friza, staring at at Goku, leaning his head up, like, mm, you know, I like that little touch. So I want you to, I'm going to, I'm going to pull a card here. I would like you to function as my crazy check.

You've done this in the past. You've been very helpful. Dragon Ball, One Piece, Ghost in the Shell, etc. It has been this ongoing thing with just a bunch of other things. Like, hey, look, guys, we're going to make a new version of this thing. And this time, we're going to be really accurate. to the source material. My initial gut reaction is annoyance

that you should have done that in the first place. Like this version of Ghost in the Shell is like a lot more accurate to the manga. It's a lot more like bring back the goofiness. This has now made me like annoyed that the original was not a adaptation that was more accurate. So that doesn't apply here.

And if most folks, I would say that our fans of Ghost in the Shell are okay with how things went. Because what Mamori, what Mamoru Oshy did with the original Ghost in the Shell movie is so fucking good that you're okay with it being different. The adaptation, the adaptation is a phenomenal adaptation being its own thing. It's so, it crushes it for completely different reasons. Because my original encounter with this type of thing was full metal alchemist. Okay. Okay. And then the anime and then Brotherhood later.

I was current with the manga when I started reading, sorry, when I started watching the anime version of full metal alchemist. And I got about halfway through and started to go, wait, what the fuck is this bullshit? Yeah. Yeah. That's wrong. So, so. You're doing it wrong. What is this fucking?

So Ghost in the Shell is weird because it's not this thing where you're like, here's the original. And every time we deviate from this, we're fucking it up. The first time most people heard of Ghost in the Shell was this movie that was already insanely different from the source material and also peak. Like, that's what it is. So right off the bat, you had the source material and the original that were super different and both were amazing. So this discrepancy meant people were comfortable with the fact that, sometimes it's going to be different. Furthermore, the material actually leans into the idea of the art style world and setting

changing because part of the idea with Ghost in the Shell and such is the transhumanist aspect is whatever form you see the major in is up for like debate in the plot because that's because her being in that body is part of the discussion about the world. So it's like seeing a new series where she looks different, it has a different art style and everything is like, oh, cool, we're doing a different take on this because the idea is the shell can change, but she is her identity. What are the limitations of that, you know? And then you go into like where the body ends and begins and where the internet starts and so on and so forth and yad, yada. But The Ghost in the Shell is a unique series in that it was never about being faithful to the original. It was immediately like a different thing, but that thing was so good that nobody had an issue with that.

Because like where I'm coming from on this, and I'll use a very specific full metal alchemist example, was that I was up to date on full metal alchemist on the manga, right? At the time that I started watching the show, they had just met father for the first time. Like in the underground? and my brain went, man, I really can't wait to see this animated and especially can't wait to see that double page spread of Ed just rocking a scar shit around a blind corner where he finally catches up and you turn the page and it's just this, and I'm like, oh, that would look so good animated. And then I got about halfway through Full Metal Alchemist non-brotherhood. And I'm like, oh, that shit isn't going to happen.

Yeah. So. I'm out. That, and you, that's a series that is like, you were reading that the way, you know, like a shonen getting adapted that was already popular that where you're like, your, your main goal is stick to the source material. And that's it, right? I just want the pictures to move.

Mm-hmm. And I would say that applies to Jojo. That applies to berserk. That applies to Jojo, yeah. That applies to a bunch of stuff where you're just like, yeah, yeah, this is amazing. Don't fuck with this. Just leave it alone, please. But it's just, Ghost in the Shell was early and, like, one of the first of this kind that were just like, it deviated immediately.

I would also say that Akira is another case of that. By the way, it was in this conversation that I found out Ghost in the Shell had a manga. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I thought it was just a movie that came out. And I was a little confused why it kept coming out. Okay.

No, it had a manga at Massimunishiri, big, shiny fucking everyone's oiled up and greased. You have never seen more greased up characters than a shiro painting. But that being said, it's a bit like Akira as well, right? Where, you know, the world's introduction to Akira was not the original, like, you know, story was not the original telling of it. It was through the movie that adapted. everything and didn't focus at all on the stuff that the original manga focused on. You know, like it told the story of Tetsuo and Kaneda and all this stuff, but like the actual titular character Akira was barely a part of that.

He's in there for like, what, 10 seconds? It's nothing, right? Whereas obviously the manga goes into depth on that and that's a whole big thing. So it feels weird than when the fan base that evolves. from this first adaptation is evolving from the thing that was already a deviation from the original, you know?

So you don't feel that need for it to go back and be as accurate versus when you, if you were someone who was hanging on to the pages from day one, you know? But I'd also say too that if we were in a world where if we were, I,

it's hard to say, but if we were in a world where the original manga was already adapted and popular and then the first time it ever got translated, it became the Oshie movie. I think some people would be, like, upset that it dropped certain things and that the tone shifted and such, but it would end up being one of these things

or you'd be like, yeah, but it's doing other things that are good and you kind of accept it. Like, it's just really good. I don't know how else to break that down. You know, there's must be examples of things that you've seen adapted where it's not faithful 100%, but you still thought it was pretty, pretty good. One piece on Netflix

as a live action show. I have an example. Me and Paige were just at the grocery store and we were talking about how like incredible those Lord of the Rings movies were. Should have had Tom Bombadil in it. Okay. Should I have them there. Would have been better.

Tom Bobadil is fucking awesome. The Shining is a pretty stellar example of... So the Shining interesting because Stephen King also made more accurate versions of his movies that sucked shit. And that's like the most interesting version of this conversation possible. Kubrick's changes made a better product than the source material.

It's hilarious. It's kind of insane. But that's the reality is that a better filmmaker came along and told a better story. And it was way, way better. You know? So like at the end of the day, the whole point of a movie or a manga, anime adaptation is so that I don't have to go and read the original. No, no, that's not true. That's not true. That's the point. That's not true at all. That's the point. No, it's not.

That's crazy. That it can function as a direct replacement. Different mediums have different strengths and things that you can and cannot do. And I could disagree with stronger. it's like there's there's certain works there's certain books there's certain you know in particular with manga where you're like I mean vagabond it's like you are looking at a page here that it's like no no no no no there's the point of adapt is there a vagabond anime no there is it what if it was really good then it would be a really good adaptation and I hope that it would it would find a way to

do things that the books can't do but there's things the books do that it will never be able to do like stare at this fucking ins like i don't know there's just there's i'd say that the the book has met very contemplative moments where you kind of are like spending a lot of time looking at detail of like stuff that um in a way decided to heavily focus on that so you can animate that and you can time it but there is something to you to choosing when to turn the page and how that feels versus the pace being set for you. So like this is where like even I recognize that like my actual, like the underneath take of this is the crazy part, which is I want only the best version of any given thing to exist.

The problem with that is that different creators will sometimes make different versions that are both valid and good for different reasons. Yeah, no, they shouldn't have done that. One of them should just have been much better than the other. Like Evangelion. The whole thing is one thing and it's perfect. Okay. The medium only has room.

There's no other good version of Evangelion you need to care about. There's just Evangelian. There is one story to be told across all mediums no matter what and that is all we can do with it. Yeah. Yeah, that's bad shit. That's completely insane. But hey, that's where we are. That's fine. So someone just said, Pat says no remixes. No, no, no. I'm not saying no remixes. I'm saying if the remix is so good, you should destroy the original because the remix is the new good thing. Because then you exist in a world of only the best. And there's no room or reason. So like Romeo must die came out? You don't need Romeo and Juliet anymore. Right. You remember Romeo must die?

Of course. Yeah. But then Baz Luhrmann's Romeo plus Juliet actually replaces that. You're right. That one is actually fucking us. What are we talking about? Yeah, no, they should show that in schools. The, yeah. Someone in the chat said that Pat's child is a Pat remix, so that means we don't need Pat anymore. Absolutely. That's why I'll die one day.

Every song that Johnny Cash covered, time to go delete the originals. Yeah. Tric Ressner agrees with that. Wipe the masters off the face of the earth, never listen to them again. That was like the best example you could have picked because Resner was like, yeah, no, it's his. My version sucks now. She's not your girl anymore. Yeah, and your version sucks now, therefore it should be killed, mercilessly slaughtered.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, you picked a particular topic that is, like, actually one of the best ones for this, where Ghost in the Shell truly is, like, not just a story that was, like, immediately different from its source material, and both were great. But it's also one that is, again, because of the plot, it lends itself to being remade. And it's okay with it because that's part of what the discussion is, again, the, the discussion of the plot. of everything is, you know? And listen, and here's what I'm going to field one more comment here. Someone in the chat says, I guess we have to kill original RE2 then because the remake is out. But original RE2 is better than the remake. So you would actually have to destroy RE2 remake because it's not a slam dunk overall improvement. I'm going to give you one more pitch. Yeah, hit me.

Ghost in the Shell 2, Innocence That shade ain't even about the major Like 60 to 70% of that movie Is just Bato hanging out with his dog That sounds good What kind of dog? Basset hound Nice

Basset hounds are ridiculous The best animated Basset hound you've ever seen That's it They got big floppy ears They got big floppy Oh they flopped They flop real good That's it

Anyway, ghost in the shell Fucking rules Fucking rules Fucking rules It's so good I can't wait for this one Um All right

Moving on We got some more trailers Um How about that stranger than heaven Bro So I had a very strange experience with the Stranger Than Heaven trailer Because I didn't see it

I didn't cover the event That had it And I got a strangely high amount of people asking if I had seen it. Yeah. Did you get the email for the event? I did not. Okay. There was a thing that was like...

You know, and maybe I did. I don't know. There was a thing that was like, hey, do you want to come... There was a watch the trailer event. I'm like, I'm like, I'm fucking do I watch the trailer event. But a lot of people came over and were like, did you watch the thing? And I was like, well, I don't know the world of Yakuza that well. I know one game.

Well, it's not Yakuza, right? It's stranger than heaven. It's a completely new thing. Oh! So I had a weird high amount of people asking me if I had seen it. So I'm like, okay, so during the Leon must die forever stream, I'm like, all right, fuck it. Let's watch it. And I got like 30 seconds in and some bitch motherfucker is talking about creating the Tojo clan.

And I swear to God, if I could vomit on command, I would have done it. Like I wouldn't have been more like fuck you people like absolutely fuck your shit you pieces of garbage. How dare you tease me with the idea that this could have been a different thing. Okay. Okay. We are, it's, hey look, there's a new manga starting. It's called Steel Ball Run. All right.

Now it's about a horse race. I don't know. I mean, some of these characters, you know, are rolling up and some of their names look kind of similar to names I've seen before. But I don't know, man. We wrapped up Jojo's Bizarre adventure. This thing is just called Steel Ball Run. We're going to publish it because we have respect for Araki and his works. But, uh, some new shit.

You know, this is, who knows where it's going to go? This could be... The fucking first line in the trailer is just the Tojo clan. Fuck off. So as soon as I saw that This is where I kind of go All right Like this is where I'm

I'm at the limits of like I know that I'm I'm embedded in a In the Yakusa fan base prime right This is the origins This is the origins of it And I'm embedded in

And I have a limit to how much I know about this But I'm like I'm gonna guess You're not gonna need to know shit for this one I'm gonna guess That the Tojo clan origins are addressed somewhere in one of those numbered games with an old man somewhere. No?

Nope. Never comes up at all. It existed forever. It just happens to be the biggest clan. Okay. Never gone into once at all in any way. And the same thing for the Omi or? The only thing that of note is that in 1995, you're dealing with, I think, the second or third.

chairman. So the first chairman might be around, I don't know, 1965, which is the final time period in Stranger Than Heaven. So they never flash back till... Never. Anything. Okay. They flash back to the 80s in Yakuza Zero, but not before that. I think you're dealing with the second chairman in that game. And some of the old dudes you see, like that old guy that's the main leader in Zero is like, not someone who's going to be like a kid at the end of this game or so you know whatever no there there will be a younger man in the final time period of this that you that will be an old guy in yakuza zero for sure okay and he will he will be on he he he's in the trailer oh man i didn't even catch it

um yeah uh so this is yakuza five again and if they had been more honest about this, I would have been way more excited, but I thought they were trying something like genuinely super different. But instead, no, this is the steel ball run of the, of the, of the like a dragon series. Now, that being said, right, if it is just like, this is the origins of this clan, that's obviously a big deal, but everything else happening here is its own story regardless, and it doesn't actually like keep going, ah, then, you know, what's there looks dope as hell. That song is fire and looks like a great, like at least

as far as the... That song is great. Yeah, song's great. There's Snoop Dogg. There's Snoop Dogg's kid. Snoop Dogg is there. Snoop Dogg helped found the Tojo clan. Sure did. And again, we'll see what his son does too.

But the, you know, and then gameplay wise, hey, we're not talking about Kiru not murdering people because there are at least six or seven people getting their guts like slashed open. That doesn't matter, Wully.

Kieryu did those. In Yakuza 6, Kieryu shoots down a bunch of helicopters with a fucking rocket launcher, dude, and they just pop. They just blow up. And in the following conversation,

Akiama says, you know, you've always been a hero for how you solve things without killing anyone. Like, it's, it doesn't matter. those guys are fine. Yeah. Like explosions can somehow follow like

animaniac's logic because it's... I will show you a picture of this exploding. Oh no. Do like listen, I pulled out the gun and I shot people in zero. Like, you know... There's moments in zero where you shoot guys in the head and they fall out of the car and the car behind them runs them over on the highway. And your brain just has to go, they were fine.

Yeah, totally. You just hit us with the end of chapter Jojo style. Like, they spent the next five months in the hospital. And that's it. And like, let's ignore that waiter in Chinatown that, like, kill you absolutely kills, like 100%. But I think this is also then a, I guess a hard confirmation that, well, I imagine it was always there. Like, RPG franchise stuff is like locked into those Ichabon games and everything happening in that franchise. and then we're returning to action combat, right?

Absolutely. This just looks like their next attempt at the Dragon Combat Engine kind of thing. It's a fun period of time to go back to in a game with... I mean, I think by far the most interesting thing is that we're going to all these different weird parts of Japanese modern history. But definitely that 20s like Flappers kind of, you know, noir kind of vibe is always a fun thing.

And they're also doing, they're not just doing time periods, they're also doing like the five cities, like in Yonkas of five. Okay. Okay. So there's five key locations. Each time period will take place in a different city. Okay. Okay. Right. That's cool. That's really cool. I wonder if there's going to be any silliness to it and its side quests or if it's going to just be like dead serious. Oh, no. It'll be goofy as fuck. Because judgment was that serious the whole way through, right? No. Really? Oh. No. I thought it was. No. no fucking way

they are all just as goofy hmm let me find something like judge judge eyes has you running through a fucking vr board game for doc brown to get money

like and and and judgment has you just beat the piss out of a bunch of high schoolers and get attacked by UFOs I imagine if they made a game that was dead serious the whole way through, they'd probably get bored. I would get bored.

Yeah, yeah. It's too much melodrama. Okay. I know you haven't played like too much of seven and eight, right? But like the theme of sadness, like, SideQuest theme got so ridiculous and so funny. They made a second theme of sadness for when you're not supposed to laugh. As opposed to the original church harpsichord one. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I wonder if Gang of Dragon would have been goofy. Oh, well, it's dead. So it doesn't matter. Yeah, of course. I wonder if there was plans for it to be lighthearted at all.

Probably. But by the way, there's news on that. They have pulled Negoshi Studios signs off the building. And the website is now down. Does it count as news to just say they are further erasing its existence? Yeah, no, a little bit. Because people were like, maybe there's a seat. No, it's dead.

That shit is canceled. You know, deleting the website and unlisting it from everything is pretty aggressive. But I suppose. Yeah, but then there's like, hey, no, people have gone and seen the building and the building has the fucking signs taken. You know what? You know what? It wasn't real until we saw the Midway logo in the trash bin. Oh, man.

In that one photo. I remember that. Yeah, that was the photo that that sealed the deal, so fine. Anyway, we'll see what else is happening. But, yes, Snoop just being like, you want to get me in your game, you've got to get my kid in, too. He's an up-and-comer. All right, that's fair. We'll see what he does.

I don't begrudge him. We got a trailer for the... devil dinosaur showing up in Marvel Rivals. And Cyclops is also being featured. Is he? He doesn't have a trailer, but he is on the art for the season. He's coming. Okay.

Yeah. Which I know a lot of people have been asking for Cyclops. That's a devil, devil dinosaur is a, that's all of a pull. I mean, I mean, the name is no stranger to pulls. No, no. And that, that name is exactly. what you're getting. And while you're running around, chomping and blasting, you're hearing Moongirl in the background talking shit.

But yeah, I guess we're going to have to wait on Scott because... I recently played a sponsored Marvel rival segment. That game is like a violent explosion of content every time you turn it on. So the second time I've done a sponsored segment in about a year. And both times, I'm like just, Oh, fuck. Like, splash screen upon invite upon bonus upon

Hey, welcome back. Crazy. They understood the assignment. You can definitely just play Marvel rivals if you really like it. Like, there's plenty there. Also, apparently Scott has a trailer. Not gameplay, right?

Just a CG trailer. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that is how you keep a game like this alive. That is all that matters. That's the number. for one thing, and the longer you go without there being something new and shiny to discuss, or some new or shiny costume, you know, I, every time, like, when I open up, uh, fucking YouTube,

and I see their, their shorts popping up. This is a cool cyclops trailer, man. Let's see what's going on. When they, when they pop up the new shorts and it's like, yeah, here's a new costume, here's this, here's that, like, just flooding, flooding the zone with, with content is the only way you keep a game like this popping. So, yeah, they get it. Don't know much about Moon Girl and Dragon Dinosaur, but...

I know that their card was really good. In Snap. Okay. Yeah. Whoa. Whoops. Excuse me. I believe, I want to say Dragon Dinosaur is a character from, like, the 70s that got

brought back and then kind of turned into that. Um, uh... Yeah, I don't know nothing about Devil Dinosaur. Did they? And well, yeah, and now there's a show. So I'm curious to see if Cyclops game plays like, I guess you just go with like. I mean, he's going to shoot a fucking gun. Well, yeah, yeah.

Clearly gunman needs to be the alt. But how do you, how do you turn that kit into something with variety, right? They show in the CG trailer, his beams bouncing off different targets. Okay, okay. Different types of optic blasts. And then the fat, rip the biser off. Yeah, no, the, the, the, the, the alt should be takes the glasses off. Behold.

And it's just the widest optic beam, like, like, you know, like 10 feet by 10 feet. Yep. Just a big ass fucking, uh, behold. Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's it. For sure. Cool. Um, and then in other, uh, Marvel news,

Tocon had a trailer for the fighting Avengers. and they showed off Black Panther and Hulk. Did you get to see that? I did see that. So these are, these are like, some of these are very obvious picks, but even then they've got like,

oh, they got like the dinosaur Hulk in there. I didn't, so, so Hulk is cool because that's, it's not, it's not, uh,

uh, World War Hulk, not World War Hulk, um, what you would call it, a, uh, Planet Hulk.

But, It looks very similar, right? They're taking the Planet Hulk design cues, and they've basically had him say, like, oh, it's like, he kind of has a similar thing where it's like, you shipped him away, you know, but it's not the 100% direct one. Yeah, I just think, hey, man,

we're gonna have a cool version of the Hulk. Yeah, throw the fucking dinosaur bones on them. Looks cool. Yeah, Hulk with the savage armor on it, looks great every time. His hair looks cool, too. And he's doing the shoulder, he's doing the gamma crush,

and he's doing the class. and all the things you want to see there. So, Polk looks dope. I was not expecting Shuri. That's an interesting pick for Black Panther. I like that she's got a spear and a cape. Yeah, yeah. By default, more interesting than standard Black Panther to me,

just because of that. So I think it's, it stands up because you had Black Panther in Marvel Infinite as a pick, and here you can go with her, which involves being a little less claw-swipy and a little more like tech-oriented with gadgets and well. weapons and stuff because that's her style. So, yeah, it's a, I think it's a, um, a way to make her more unique, uh, you know, especially in a game where you, like, you, like, you have like Wolverine and you, you've got,

like, you know, if you went with, like, Tachala would have been definitely a more popular pick as a character, but I think like the fact that she's got weapons and tech and the extra little trimmings and stuff, make it more original for sure. Um, yeah, looks cool. Looks dope. Hints that carnage is coming. And we'll see whatever the other team reveals out. I would love if Carnage finally got a fighting game appearance.

And it was this fighting game. Because Carnage has so much, like, cool body morph shit going on. It's just, they just always, like, went for Venom because Venom was, like, always next up in line, you know? Yeah. Skipping Venom to get to Carnage is a, like, like, that is a wild move. for Spider-Man fans, but considering we've seen it many times, I feel like Carnage deserves a spot. I hunt you, bro.

So this is interesting. Somebody in the chat says, I'm so sick of carnage. I don't know of another fucking game. Carnage has been in for, like, decades. Ultimate Alliance, maybe. Like,

they're probably talking about comics. Probably. Which you shouldn't read, nerd. we're talking about video games here. Or yeah, or we could just get, you know, you could get M.J. Venom. Or better yet. Paul.

Yeah, fuck, you. Get Paul in here. Get Paul playable. Oh, shit. Peter instantly loses the matchup. As soon as Paul shows up, K-O. Um, yeah. Anyway, that was, that was, that was interesting. Uh, we got at the same time, it's like, these are fair. These are, again, a normal picks. I think the weirdest picks so far have been like danger and, and magic. Magic not as weird so. Not as weird, but still like a little fringe. Yeah. Now, well, in a world with like, you know, rivals out now, especially, it's like, yeah, magic, magic's in there. But danger is an insane. same pick and wild one. As is the

fucking, the promoter or whatever that they got going on, you know, and everything. It's like, they're going for some weird picks, which I always thought that, you know, the story about Marvel going through, or rather Capcom going through the Capes, Capes, capes, capes, capes, schumagoreath. You know, was interesting.

So, yeah. It's a great story. I'm down for the picks. What about this guy? This guy, who cares? Oh, fine, whatever. Mm-hmm. And the champion is on his way.

And then in other fighting game news, they just announced the new fuse and updates with 2XCO. So... Very interested. Team fight. Shame I'm not going to play it anymore. But very interesting. Team fight. That team fight as a fuse.

Yeah, I'm like... When I was trying to think of what the fuse is what the new fuse would be, I didn't consider that one. Because I guess it always felt like the gimmick. mode in Street Fighter Cross Tech. Yeah, let's just jump him. Let's just a dramatic battle for seven seconds. Or the fucking insane stone in Marvel Infinite as well. But like now it's you're baking a whole thing around it.

And it's smart because you're emphasizing the four-player gameplay. You're emphasizing two people playing together and all that stuff. You know, it's a cool thought. I worry a little bit whether or not the Team Fight Fuse is either going to be super good or not nearly good enough. Yes. That's been my question because I've been, like me and Regge

have been going back and forth on it a little bit because he's like, this looks like it's going to be busted. And I'm like, I don't know. There seemed to be enough downsides. And in that first intro, like, to it, so you got a clockwork and combo fiend kind of breaking down, you know, the new fuse where for seven seconds,

if you and your partner both spend a meter, they jump in and you control both characters on the screen at the same time attacking your opponent. And that's, already, that is nuts, right? By any stretch of the imagination, it becomes a fucking crew battle for a second. But all the downsides of it are very clear, because in order to balance this and make it not completely insane, they do a lot. Like for one, both characters jumping on screen costs one meter each, right? Sure. And that means that you are not going to be saving up for your level three as much because you want to spend on this. Furthermore, while you're both on screen, neither of you can do a level three.

Any hits you take, shorten the seven second timer to go down faster. But I think more than any of that, it's the fact that the partner that jumps in can only hit mid. Yes. So you can't just do unblockable nonsense left, right, up, down mixups. It's the point character that has to mix you up. The others can just filler, which can be really good for like block string stuff. you know, if you're putting the pressure on, but you can just,

you're going to have to just focus on the, the point character and the others used for like, yeah, keeping the pressure on. They can do supers, like I said, but not level threes. If you do a level three to them,

their seven second timer ends immediately. And there's a couple other details with it. Like you cannot activate it in mid-air. You have to both, you have to be on the ground to do it. You know, but I think like all the stuff that they're putting in are just like,

these are ways to make it little more tame, a little more sane. You know, a fast character can still do like a crazy left, right mix up or so. But bringing in another person to just kind of control two characters on screen, you're going to have to also realize, too, that like, when you think about all the different fuses, that one costs you a meter to do and your partner a meter to do, and you're not going to get to do it that often versus somebody who's doing freestyle or doing double down or doing two times assist, those are happening every six seconds.

Right. I feel like a lot, a lot of duos are going to get blown up by level threes because it's worth it to spend it. They're going to reverse mix themselves up doing crazy block strings on somebody who's just mashing out a level three. In the preview video, the level three didn't go into a big animation though. it just hits and kills the timer. You know, so that might be another, I mean, it does some damage, but yeah, that might be another trade-off. It is, it is a personal, unfortunate reality for me that this has, this season is dropping onto X-KO after the Ever Cold presentation.

Because, like, I don't have time to practice 2XCO. I got to get every class to 100. How am I supposed to, how am I supposed to make evolved? controlled guides in January if I don't have every single class to cap.

And that's also when the Ava shit drops right? No. Isn't that the first? No, the Ava shit won't drop in January.

The first one you should expect in summer of 27. Oh, they're going to long tail that shit that. No, Wully. The 24

So the 24-man raids always come out on a staggered release schedule. Yeah, I know. I remember with the near one, there were like multiple, right? Yeah, there's always three, and they come out at 0.1, 0.3.5. So the FF11 one came out like three weeks ago after three years of Dantrail. Okay. Like, you know, the Evangelion shit is going to be... The next couple years.

Every... Two, three years. ...nine to 15 months. 2028 is going to be the finale Maybe Maybe 2029 Okay Well

The other thing that was announced Was the DuoFinder And voice chat And I Can't give them Golf claps for this Should have been in the game day one Absolutely

Abunks other things Can't even give them props I kind of need to know though There's a part of me that is like Okay So I know how toxic

Invincible versus feels and I know how toxic it was back in the day with that connect on and every time you see someone rage quitting in any fighting game you're playing you know you get you get a an overall vibe for the state of affairs right not that many rage quits playing guilty

gear strive compared to some other fighting games a ton of them in Street Fighter 6 what is getting on comms with somebody in a duo gonna be like and how is the toxicity

going to look will you are you gonna pick I wanted to play Darius I'm Ari I'm Ari you can you play Darius

yeah get off Ari the and then here's the other question if you duo find with somebody and they rage quit no yeah no

no absolutely you suffer the penalty it should count against you yeah that's So unfair. That's so unfair. No, it's not. You should have picked a better team. You didn't pick anything. The game put that team in on your...

Then you should have come in with a friend. Nope. It's definitely your fault. I hate RNG. I hate... That's not R&G. That's people. Also, finding game people shouldn't be allowed to talk to each other on the internet. I'll just say. That can't be trusted. Now that I can be on board with. Can't be trusted. I will say that there's some fun...

No, no. Chat? Text log chat? is hilarious. Yes, it is. Getting on the comms is wild shit. Also, voice to text is now a thing too as well. Or text to voice, rather. Text to speech. No, what should happen if one of your friends drops?

Is it just turns you into a solo player taking control of both characters? Oh, you draw, or it turns you into Juggernaut fuse immediately? No, that's insane. You keep the views you had, because they're all playable. Even team fights playable with one person. It becomes a one per, it becomes. a one-person game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the most elegant way to go about it, actually. It just drops them out. You resume where you were, and it is now a solo fight.

I would love to see. I want to know how they're going to handle that. Like, the match completes, because right now, it's really annoying. Because when you get Rage Quit on, they take a loss on their record and they get a warning. But the person who got Rage Quit on, you're the fight didn't happen. Oh, I mean, I think that's fine. The important thing is that they lose. Not that you win. Oh, let's look at Leffin's take on Team Fight.

Well, what do you got, Leffin? I will probably not compete in 2XCO if Team Fight is allowed. Horribly tested, extremely insanely broken, extremely toxic, makes Solo's unviable at top level. there's no way to balance this fuse in time for evo or combo breaker you can't even change to duo for combo breaker insanely bad balance on this views what the hell are they thinking generally hope i'm just overreacting i don't see when it's already by far the best views with zero labbing zero counterplay well since leffin says it that means it's balanced and it's good to go team fight is a success i'm tired boss I love leffin posting because I just start to believe the opposite of whatever he's saying. And it's worked out really well. I'm so exhausted.

It's super easy. Well, I appreciate your come around on the story. I think overall, long story short, smart move for emphasizing the unique aspects of the game. And like, good on them for figuring out. a way to do four people in a match that's not just the bat-shit goofy Mario Party modes that were happening in Infinite and in Street Fighter Cross Tekken. Speaking of Street Fighter Cross Tekken. Hey man.

I have an idea. You ready? I'm going to fuck this podcast up. Just absolutely tank it. and leave it in the shittiest place it's ever been. And then I'm going to go start my new podcasts over at S&K so that I don't have as much competition with myself. To be fair, before you did that,

you did help build up the podcast to be what it is. I did. I did help. I was helpful, yeah. You are a part of the legacy. But, you know, now that I have a new one on the horizon, Time to burn this shit down and really fuck it up. That's just my speculation. I had a sweet Saudi gig lined up that was going to compete with my old place of business. I would fuck it up on purpose.

That is an extreme, extreme take. And you know what I would do? To offset how people think I'm fucking it up on purpose? I'm going to say I'm retiring. That'll fool him. I'm retiring to more money. I think, so, so the, the, that is, to take a slightly more charitable, a view of his retiring idea. I think when he talked about like Idaqaki passing away and he talked about other people he knew getting out of the industry, there was a thought where he's like, oh, I want to think more about my time.

I'm left as a creator and I want to do you know a certain I will he probably I have things I want to do before I'm out of here right it's that was the impression he got from the long speech he did and everything yeah um and he did he fucking may tech and what it was and it was there was a great legacy there before the recent you know backlash with everything

going in with eight and it felt like they truly believed that like embracing the the the heat and the whole new system and all of this stuff was what um the fan base wanted or at the very least was the direction the franchise needed to go from on even though they're rejecting it. The problem is just, okay, so they've just announced a new studio called

versus, versus studio, versus studio S&K, and Harada is going to be in charge of it. And we've been discussing this, I want to say a couple weeks in a row now, but we're in the process of watching Saudi money dry up across multiple investment fronts because, hey, guess what fucked up geopolitical situations mean that hey golf and wrestling and video games

probably not going to be the priority going forward so we'll see a couple more things at home that it seemed to be of a much larger importance right now than your fucking video games guys so like the idea

that Harada stepped out to start doing something else. Not that surprising. I mean, this is almost a, uh, uh, we've seen multiple, you know, people recently do that. And I mean, we've seen like, yeah, Negoshi did it. You saw, uh, Kamea, dude, we have seen a lot of Japanese, a lot of creators in Japan left. We have seen a bunch of Japanese creators say, hey, you know what? I'm going to go start my own money with China or the Saudis. And you know what? It's worked out so good for all of them. Give all those bangers we got out of these.

There are a lot of Japanese devs that left and started doing their own thing either way. It's Suno left and is doing his own thing now. You know, like there's a whole lot list. Is he not? Have you seen it? Like he said he was doing it. But have you seen it? Or is it canceled?

Is it canceled? I don't know. Have you seen it? No, but wasn't it announced like two seconds ago? Yeah. So? It's... So what?

So it might take a minute before we get an update? I don't know. Um, I want to say he announced in like the middle of last year that he was leaving. Um, what? That's not the point, though. I've seen gang a dragon. Okay. The point to the point...

I've seen that. I only bring his name up to say that there are many, Harada is following what many other recent Japanese devs have been doing, and they then go on to either found their own studios or work on new things or whatever the project is. In this case, it's just, unfortunately, this is in the middle of a trend that I don't know how long this is going to go for. Oh, this game's not going to come out. This game's not going to come out.

There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a wrinkle in the works, though, in the sense that, like, I do believe there's a level of. malicious spite that's involved where like the more you say things like this the more they're heard and potentially even like oh yeah well fuck you I'm going to triple down on making what you don't want happen happen you know so there's a there's a part of this where I'm like

it might power through out of spite who knows but it certainly does look like the well is drying up on a lot of these extracurricular endeavors and I find it weird timing for him to pick this route to announce a new studio. This is

this is like remarkably poor timing. So like I presented a highly uncharitable sequence of events in my facsimile of a story. But like let's be honest, I don't think he fucked up

Tekin on purpose. But he was steering the ship when they took a good fighting game and turned it into a bad fighting game, which does not give me a lot of excitement for his new fighting game with dubious potential to exist in a couple of years. I think so. Fair enough. I'm going to say at best case scenario, I mean, worst case scenario, you have this thing that, like, they'd throw the ball out, they take their ball and go home,

and you get dumped out the way the last S&K CEO did, who resigned not long ago, by the way. Who the fuck is Michael Murray? Who's the guy in charge of Techend now? Then why are people saying that Michael Murray was the director on 7 and 8? Because-Hara was, what, a producer? Yeah, because Michael Murray was part of the new team that was taking over. He was always there, like, next to Herada and a lot of the interviews and stuff.

And Michael Rurie has been the person who has been, talking about it and people have been directing the messages to him and he's been there's been a lot of the drama has been cycled around him because he was more involved with the direction of the series than than than herada directly then i'll have to change my perspective on this because if that's the case then herada should actually come out and be like this is the game i wanted to make for teck and eight and throw him under the bus stopped me they're not yeah so no there he was his translator for many years and obviously they became tight and uh he went from being translator to being the the dude running it you know um i regardless be be like do like fake contrition and be like i'm very sorry with what

happened to tec and it was my responsibility to stop him but i wasn't strong enough or something like that oh my god uh anyway so all i was saying is uh worst case scenario he got you know he gets done like the last S&K CEO and tossed out like yesterday's fucking trash when it's, you know, most convenient for them because it's, you know, we're playing with the toys and then we don't want to play with them anymore. Yeah, no, you're, you're, it's, these aren't business decisions. These are, are, are whims. Wims. They're Wims. They're 100% right. And I feel, I would feel very nervous basing my future on a whim. A hundred percent. Um, and yeah, best case scenario, you make a good game that people feel weird about supporting.

Like, that's it. It sucks. How many rapists are going to be in this game? Oh, boy. Well, we've got a... The fact that I have to ask that question is not good. We've got a bar to clear. The bar is...

The bar is zero. The bar is not zero. The bar is not zero. It's not. No, you've got to clear that bar. You got to get undersized. Zero. You know, some tech and enthusiasts would say that there's certain Marduk endings that would put the bar at not zero.

Okay, let me try this. How many real life rapists are going to be in the game? There we go. Now that's important. Uh, yeah. This got announced pretty much right before we started and I was like, God damn it. Also, fuck, it's called Versa Studio.

Yeah, you should sue. What the shit, man. Damn it. Boo. Anyway. Um, well, other things are, you know, you want to talk about cancellations.

I mean, shit's getting canceled left and right. And, uh, Sega, Sega has announced that it's canceling. Never mind. Okay. Super game. Now, you're good. I'm good

you're good for now you get cancelled when you're due to when you're declared yeah yeah um

Super game was the big odd line triple A Sega game that was being planned yeah and it was

uh there were talking up that it was going to be the the massive heads and shoulders above normal games major project um

that Sega was I guess going to try to like jump back into the spotlight with. You know what? I kind of never believe this thing was going to come out. It, when they announced it alongside new jet set radio, new crazy taxi, new, absolutely. All these other things.

And you get the glimpses of them. Then I'm like, okay, seems like stuff's happening. And also, um, whispers behind the scenes confirm that people have seen hands or or eyeballs on some of these projects existing. Yes. And that's why I thought it was going to be canceled. Because I couldn't get a single detail out of nothing on this super game. This one.

From nowhere. I can confirm eyeballs have been laid on jet set and on some of the other things. Yeah. But some reason, the super game, the one that's so important, like Titan, like nothing, like just nothing. Could have been a super security lockdown situation, but it also easily could have been a, like, this will bankrupt us again if we go for it.

So maybe not the worst cancellation in the world, all things consider. Maybe not. Climate considered, everything considered. This is going to be Yakuza online again. I think, yeah, the pitch was essentially that it was going to be a Sega super crossover game, right?

With like all of their major titles and everything coming together to one big thing. Which, you know, I think Smash Brothers is like the... Yeah, but it would have had a heavy online component. So I think they were gonna, they're trying to pitch a fucking MMO and then someone smart there was like, what are we, what are you fucking doing? Also, you already have two MMOs with Fantasy Star. Yeah, but this one would have Shadow the Hedgehog in it. Ah, making it popular with Latinos. Now that's an undertapped Sega market.

No, it's, wait, no, it's not. Okay, so to be, to steal men, right? Yeah, all right. You open up your Sega World MMO giant online experience, and in the character creator, one of the races you can pick is Hedgehog. I'm like it had real racist on it. I mean MMO. What do you said?

Hedgehog and threw my shit so bad, dude. I met MMO racist, okay? Oh, all right. Okay. Yeah, no. Absolutely. And you select Hedgehog. Are you telling me that this pitch would not have gotten greenlit immediately?

You're telling me that ain't cash money? No, that's not. Cash money millionaires, you're saying for real? a hedgehog online fucking thing, design your, what it is is, hedgehog is the default and then you pick their religious denomination.

Yeah, fine. But you create, create a hedgehog is fucking money, bro. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's break your company bank open money, but it's big.

It's something. Embracing the OCs, giving you an official means to do it. I would try to avoid gigantic possible company ending risks. They haven't had the best success for that for like 30, 40 years. Oh, did Sonic Forces have the creative character, create a headshot? Yeah, it did. It was like that game's biggest, like, the biggest exciting future. Well, you know. Okay.

Fair enough. How many choices did you have? Could you get in depth? Could you make him prego? I don't remember. Me and Paige played it once and it was Can I make prego Shino Kai? No, you cannot make prego Shino Kai.

And that's why they canceled it. Because people kept asking them can I make Prego Shino Kai in this new super game? And they're like, no. Well, I mean, what am I paying for? I'm paying my sub specifically for that purpose.

And to stare into the depth to make the cat. It's like the look on Yoshi P's face every time somebody asks him about a butt slider for character creation and you just see the light go out the anime light fades every every single interview or fan question

thing for like 10 years it's come up every single fucking time and just every time it's like oh fuck yeah I think I think it's quite straightforward in that you have a character select and then you have a you select your race and your different races are

you know, secret Korean, secret Chinese, secret yakas, hedgehog and Rudy, you know. Maybe even throw... The idea that on character creator you can select Japanese

and secret Chinese and secret Korean is diabolical. That is... That's what I said. That is... Oh, man. And then throw like Hugh cast into the mix.

Week to fire, weak to ice, weak to electricity. Yeah. I think they could come up with a pitch. I think they can make some money. The funniest thing, the funniest thing in Infinite Wealth is that like white Americans

in the turn-based battle are weak to gun. That's a statement, man. That's a fucking... It's fucking funny, dude. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Uh

Um Yeah So hey Stranger Than Heaven Yeah Also by the way Features the Secret American Yeah okay

So The second Secret American Oh way word To be in the In the Yaka's a timeline Yeah

The only American I can think of is Hey boy No he's not a secret He's out and out He's also a British. Oh, he is British. That guy. Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, no. There's a secret American that's been introduced. Interesting. And then beyond that, there are just a little update from last time, but eBay has rejected GameStop's proposed takeover. Yeah, where are you going to get the money? I don't know. Okay, well, fuck off then. The bid has been deemed neither credible nor attractive.

which is like that's that's hard you didn't have to go that hard that's exactly what I just thought like you didn't have to do that oh man you could have just rejected it but putting the statement out that says neither credible nor attractive is fucking wild um didn't have to cook him like that on the timeline bro that's really good I like that yeah I I'm reserving any thoughts about the new devil may cry trailer till when it's out. Oh, I'm not touching that shit with a bullet. No, not touching it. I got done to say. I'm out. I'm so out.

I saw. I saw a single screenshot. Okay. And I was like, fuck this, dude. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, okay. Was it Dante fighting Virgil in front of the Washington monument? No, it wasn't that. Because I saw that.

I'm like, ah! It hit me like a flashbag. No, dude. I saw, I saw the little tiny piece

of Virgil's incoming character assassination. So we saw a lady become like a psycho. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I saw Virgil

talking to his mom going, why can't I be as good at everything as Dante can? Oh, okay. Okay. I am. out. Okay, that's not the one I caught. I caught the... I can already see the whole arc and plot,

and I am not interested. Oh, boy. Okay, I didn't catch that part. I'm not interested. The bit I got was the, um, like, voluntarily, uh, uh, getting his, um, Nilo-Angelo D.T. From Mundus and, and, you know, but, uh, yeah. Okay. All right. Foo. Fee. That being said, both Dante and Fritzel are fighting

in the fucking pool and you see the thing at the White House. Ah, man. Yeah. All right. Well, that's, no, I'm out.

I can't even spite watch this. Can't even bother. Lady changed costumes. Sure, whatever. This version of a lady should change into a trash can. Apparently. season three confirmed.

Yeah, I don't care. Yeah, so, you know, just... All right, let's take a letter. Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to Castle Super Beastmail at Gmail.com. That's Castle Superbeastmail at Gmail.com. What if... All of this shankarification...

Yeah. ...were being done to Dino instead. It kind of is. But, but, like, it kind of is, dude. Dante in name only. But, like, what if the DMC Devil May Cry World were the one that this treatment would be happening to? I feel like the whole, like, political subplot. It barely be any different, honestly.

It's the same type of mental gymnastics and aesthetic choices. Because it feels like that setting is more receptive to the, the, the Bush-Cheney-era subplot you're introducing. with the Fox News like, you know, Barb, Barbus segment and all that stuff. What I think is happening here is you're actually getting denoification of existing Dante

because a lot of stuff, even in that first season, was like very clearly inspired by the DMC Devil May Cry reboot, like the crassness, the language, the late Dante acts. You're reading it as they took And now we're finding out that Virgil is like weaker than Dante and has an insecurity complex, which makes him just like Fedora bitch Virgil.

Yeah. Because I'm like, I'm basically just going like all the shit that doesn't work here doesn't work. But it's, when I think about that original game and what that was swinging for, it fits more into that world than it does the original. Oh, it absolutely does. I think he's adopting DMC Del May Cry into the original continuity with this stuff In a different way Yeah

Yeah Yeah there's a place where I almost would have been like Yeah I don't give a shit what the fuck happens to this version of the game or the franchise of the world or whatever so Cook do whatever you want who cares you know But um that that would never happen Anyway, All right, let's see. We got one coming in over here.

Dear Cassar Castle Super Illness from Muamwa. Hey, Ma'amaw, what's up, man? What is your most deeply, what is one of the most deeply ill things you've seen someone post on YouTube? I came across a video on YouTube titled, I deleted my perfect,

hover bike for this build tutorial. Long story short, it was a 21-minute video about how to manipulate minuscule quirks and interactions in game to achieve perfect pixel placement and build a four-piece hover bike. I'm convinced people who develop these texts are deeply ill to exist on YouTube gaming space and they desperately need whatever help they can get. Okay. I feel like this person has asked a question unaware of the scope of the wording of their question.

I think, like I've seen suicides on YouTube. Like, what do you, like, yeah. I think, I think, um, if you're going, I think if you're going with, um, the range of what you're discussing here, we talked about the cyber psychosis fell in love with your psychiatrist stuff. And I think that's a pretty, that's one of the worst examples I think I've seen recently. Um, but when you're describing anything like this, though, I always kind of question. it because if you're telling me there's a video of it, then it's like, well, the video is the

point, not the content, right? Anytime someone builds anything or makes anything and then destroys it for a video, it's like if the point was the video and then that got shared, then what was lost is almost inconsequential because the content was the final product, which is the video you watched. This is a bad email. So this email is from a person who is too young to remember that YouTube used to be completely unmoderated. YouTube was like...

YouTube used to be like a more chill version that was easier to upload than something like LiveLeak. Like... When there was a split back when it was Google video and YouTube. And shit was different. I've seen a lot on YouTube. I've seen a lot. A lot.

But I'll say for the spirit of the question, that guy shitting his pants playing Mafia 3. That's a bad one. that's a bad one yep not yet uh okay and let's take another one over here uh good evening secret korean woolly and m brabant pat was talking a while back about how death stranding two eventually gives you the tools to trivialize many parts of the gameplay loop whereas the difficulty friction is removed making it feel boring to engage with from that point forward uh i use this example to say, I appreciate what a game has

great counters for high-level play. My go-to example is playing as a psychic in the game Caves of Cud. A high-level psychic is able to create copies of themselves, teleport across the map at will, die and go back in time to not die, kill enemies without even seeing them.

So to counter this, the devs implemented a mechanic called psychic glimmer, a stat that increases along with the player's mental stats, which is essentially how detectable your psychic presence is. At high enough levels of glimmer, other powerful psychics will come and kill you and absorb your mind. To become more powerful in greater numbers as glimmer increases.

Side note, you can reduce your glimmer by mentally dominating your pursuer than using their body to kill yourself and continue the game with this new body. What are some other games that have great counters to high-level play? Kingdom Hearts 2. Kingdom Hearts 2 has a function called the drive mechanic, where you can get into a super powerful mode for a limited time. And every time you use it, you increase a hidden counter. And when that hidden counter trips,

the next time you hit drive, you turn into anti-form, which sucks. And you can't get out of it manually. You're just trapped in it. Interesting. So if you abuse drive form a lot and try to drive against the boss, you can end up getting into the suicide form. Interesting. Okay.

but you can still play. You can still play, but it's really bad. It can't block, you can't get out of it, your defensive options are highly limited. So, um, I just talked the other day about in Bridgebourne when you run out of mana and instead of stopping you from casting your spell, it just makes reapers appear.

And the more you cast, the more reapers appear. And so you can keep overcasting and, and you just decide if the spell cost is worth it to have more enemies on screen, I'm going to trigger more enemies to do this big spell. And it doesn't seem like there's an upper limit to it. You can, you know, as far as I could tell from that demo, you can just keep going until stronger, bigger, crazier amounts of enemies are popping up.

So I find that like super interesting as a design choice. And yeah, on a very basic level, you know I think that games that have like input reading and shit are really annoying I find that yeah always kind of a dog shit way to go but I was really

I really enjoyed when I started getting roll catch caught by roll catches in Souls games where it was like no the timing of this is specifically meant to fuck with you trying to avoid where you think it was going to be

you know that was a that was a pretty straightforward counterplay thing. I mean, I remember testing it out on market and being like, okay, in a neutral setting, if I hit square, what happens? And the answer is he throws a dagger at you. Like, it's like a one-to-one reaction. Hmm.

There's, there's, you can literally go and play some fucking arcade mode street fighter shit where you stand at a certain range, mass jab, and just watch the computer go into a break or go into a pre, like, a set. Every distance has a different action. And as soon as you jump, like frame one short walking forward short you kid or walking forward flash kicks type shit you know etc um but yeah i don't know much about caves of cud but this example sounds insane i know it's made out of text is okay okay because this sounds so in depth and awesome that i'm kind of like

let me get you a video i'm looking at i'm watching i pulled it up i'm looking at screenshots yeah it's it's it's yeah this makes more sense now that i'm looking at how basic its visual display is because that's such an in-depth thing that like it may like seeing how simplified it actually is in gameplay. Oh, it's not made out of text anymore. I'm seeing graphics. I'm seeing visuals, but they're very, very basic. Oh, wow. That's, they used to be made out of picture, out of letters. Like a dwarf fortress. Oh, like like rogue. Yeah. Okay, okay. Um, nah, man. That, that's a fucking super interesting scenario and set up for, what's possible. You know, Caves are cut and it makes me feel kind of bad about myself

because I look at it and I hear all these great things and I go, wow, that's incredible. I need my games to have graphics. You can't get past it. I really, I can't get past it at all. Okay, okay. I can get past it if like the, if the narrative that's happening is super compelling. You know, I can get past, I can play a text-only game if it's written really, really well and entertainingly. Oh, you know, we never covered something that came out last week. Have you heard of Zagrius's journey? No. It's a very simple mod that hit 1.0 for Hades 2 last week.

It just jams the entirety of Hades 1 into Hades 2. playing as Melanoi as Mel. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. It is officially

approved. It is officially endorsed slash approved. Holy shit. And the way that it works is you just go through a little portal and all of the Hades to Hades 1 upgrades and systems have been reintegrated into the way it works in Hades 2.

and a couple of story events have been removed and changed because it doesn't make any fucking sense for Mel to be talking to Persephone that way, yada yada. Wait, there's actual dialogue. It's not just like gameplay. The old dialogue is there. Just Mel doesn't speak back. Wow.

I believe she's unvoiced. Fuck, man. God damn Pokemon gold and silver. That's incredible. that's super cool yeah so it's like the Hades 1 dialogue is just Malinaway doesn't respond with Zag's voice right

are people calling you Zag as you as you walk around I'm not certain maybe that part's cut out I haven't used it yet but it's with Mel's weapons so you don't you're not using the Hades 1 kit that's amazing

fuck yeah okay and officially it has all sorts of integrations so that everything works together and incantations through the Hades 2 system to work on Oh, she's standing behind Zagrius as his stand? Are you serious?

Is that how that works? Wait, what? I don't know. I'll have to, I'll have to mess around with it. He's there and she's... Hmm. Okay.

I gotta take a look. Okay. But yeah, no, it's fucking cool. Yeah, I almost don't want to... It also kind of pisses me off because um like i play zagri i play hades two on the on the pc and on the switch and like well i'm not playing this fucking version on the fucking switch right yeah yeah with the mods um i want to ask follow-up questions but i probably shouldn't so we'll leave it at that but fuck that's an

amazing mod that's incredible yeah how many games really how many games uh i mean this is unofficial but do the the golden silver bit. You said... Very few. Yeah, I think you said Divinity did it? Not divinity. The fucking

peasant simulator you were playing. Wasn't that... KCD2? Yeah. Did that do the thing where the old game's location was just right there? No, absolutely not.

No? Okay. I feel like another game you were talking about... too long ago had the old game just sitting right there and you could walk over to it. Yeah. Anyway, that's fucking awesome. It's, it's, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to mess around with it at some point in the near future. It's just, it's so big.

Like, that's a lot. Also, it makes me wonder how Mel's kit would deal with, um, stuff like the shielded guys. So you'd have to, yeah, you'd have to make, you'd have to make concessions. and gameplay somehow. That's what I'm like, it can't just be one to one, you know? It'd have to be like approximations,

I'm sure, but yeah. We get a cut scene here. While you find a better email than that piece of shit, um, let me see if I can get like one. The case of cut email was fine. Oh,

I forgot about that one. We just talked, that's why we're talking about this. I forgot. I was just thinking of the shitty one. Okay, so I'm watching a cutscene with Magra here. She's talking to Zagrius.

right oh yeah here's a yeah the character portrait just has Zag like talking and Mel is standing behind him

huh yeah I'll get you a photo here no I get it I guess I'm just wondering if there's like a lore reason for that or not which again I don't want to know leave it alone

I'm fine no I seriously well it can't be a lore reason it's the mod okay so he's he does all the talking, but then the game...

He does all the talking, she does all the fighting. And then she just continues playing. I see. Okay. Yeah. Incredible. Okay. Um, yeah, if you want to go for one more, all right. Uh, Dull asks, salutations, Violent Pat, and Woolly 2 Dope. When playing a turn-based RPG, do you prefer to buff your party or debuff the opponent? That is all. A debuff the opponent?

No, I want to buff the party. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah, I want to, I want a hit for 200. not have them take, not them put them at 50%. But if you debuff their defense, you'll still hit them for 200. Yes. And if you buff yourself, you'll still hit them for 200. So here's my mentality on that.

It's a question of feeling. So my, so, okay, so for me, it's not a question of feeling. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a function of efficiency. So assuming that every action I do is 200% buffed. and it's not like only certain attacks or certain things. So for me, it's, I only have to debuff one boss, but I have to buff multiple party members.

Okay. For me, I guess I'm kind of conditioned into thinking, like, there's so many times where I'm like debuffs on bosses don't work. Like, well, I play SMT game.

Yeah, but, debuffs on bosses definitely fucking work. Right, but there's so, there's so many times where it doesn't, where it's almost like, nah,

fuck that. I can rely on hitting my, I can rely on buffing myself. In all, in all honesty, at the end of the day, the real thing is debuff the enemy's defense, buff

everything on your party. Because enemy defense down plus your attack up is the best combination, obviously, right? That's, yeah, assuming it takes one turn to debuff the whole party or to debuff the boss, whatever the case may be. If it's,

yeah, so we're both giving reasons that are based on fucking prior trauma, you know? Yeah. But if it's all the same thing and it's just a matter of feeling. I like buffing the team up more between the two. But yeah.

All right. All right. Do we finish? No, yeah. No, that's it. That's good. Time to fucking debuff this podcast. Have a good week, everybody. The fuck out of here.