Castle Super Beast - SBFC 115: Drop Everything And Play Crash Bandicoot DS (feat. Mike Z)

Episode Date: October 20, 2015

Mike Z of Lab Zero joins us to talk shop and get into crowdfunding and their new campaign for Indivisible (go back it on Indiegogo, srsly). We also review the Steam controller via various sound effects and bodily functions.

Alright, let's start it up. Well, we're rolling. Whatever. We're in there already. We're already doing it. We're just going to start from the, hey, okay, let's start the podcast. Our live studio audiences waiting for things to go. Our live studio audience is a cat. Oh man. Three cats. Oh yeah, no, there's a boss cat lurking somewhere. I'm sorry. Well, I have two. I've got one. But this is what you're getting. No, that's okay. I love it when I expect professionalism and don't find it because that's basically me. That's our speciality too. Also, everyone's going to come to the meeting in a suit and we're all going to be nice and no one's going to be drunk past out underneath the table, right? Oh man. You know, I actually showed up to my first interview in a suit at Pandemic Studios. How'd that go?

And they were like, no one wears suits in games. Yeah. Because me and William have a background in QA and after I'd been at the job a couple of years, my dad's like, why are you dressed like that? And I'm like, dude, my boss has a mohawk and piercings and usually doesn't wear pants. No one's there. And I'm like, no, that's not true. Yeah, so. We always had to go up an elevator with like lawyers who were on the floor below us.

Yeah. And I always felt really bad because they were dressed up and they were looking at themselves in the mirror in the elevator like making sure that they look okay for their clients and we're sitting there like in gym clothes or whatever. Right. Because they've got to do important work and you've got to make video games. Yeah, no, that's true. Hey, I've been there too, so. Yeah, yeah. Welcome to the Best Friendcast, Mike.

Pleasure to have you. Pleasure to have you. Thank you. It's an honor. You want to give yourself your own introduction or should we do that? Well, you can do that if you want. You're here for one reason and one reason only, sir. We have questions about Battlefront 2.

Oh, nice. I'll see what I can do. I wasn't sleep for most of it. I actually have no questions about the Star Wars Battlefront 2. I'm sorry. We should get Mike's name out there. We haven't actually said it. It's Mike Z, man. I know, but it could be Zero, dude.

There's a different Mike that people know. It might be him. I don't know. Alright. I imagine Willie might put on the title podcast featuring Mike Z. If you don't know, alright, it's the guy that made Skull Girls. What was that called? Skull Girls.

Wait, what was that called? Skull Girls. There you go. Yeah. He's running that gimmick into the ground. That's what we'll do over here. I am honored to be on your podcast, by the way. Thank you.

Thank you. How embarrassed were you when someone first showed you that dumb video that we made a couple years ago? You know the feeling when you were four and you really wanted a toy and your parents bought it for you? Yes. In the store and you were like, I really want this thing. Your parents were like, I'm just going to make you be quiet. Okay, fine. Here, have the thing.

Right. You were just giddily happy and sat down in the middle of the room and didn't care who was watching. It was kind of that. Okay. Alright. That's a good decision. You couldn't believe this worked? Yeah.

William Woolley also made kind of a similar video for Weapon Lord, which is a game that, you know. Wow, really? Yeah. DJ James Goddard saw it and then told us like a similar story. Like, what did you think when you saw that video? And he said, my wife was watching me watch the video over my shoulder and we're talking about James Goddard saying, oh my God, what a big dick, oh gee. Oh, shit.

He fucks all the girls. And then his wife goes, did you pay these boys to save these boys? And he's like, no, no, it's not, they just like my game. And she's like that awful, awful battle lords game. Take care of your kids. Aw. Take care of your kids, asshole. For complete context, Matt has a framed Weapon Lord post drawing.

Yeah. And is the only human on earth who has one. Wow. That's a game that was ahead of its time. Yes, I agree, actually. I still have my cart. It's been decades ahead of its time. X band, man.

X band on that thing. So tell us a bit about yourself, who you are, what you at? I'm the guy that made that game once, and then I made some other games, and then the company closed, and then I made another game after that. Yep. And then we're trying to raise money for another one. And this week I didn't get very much sleep, so if you expect more coherence than this, probably.

You're hitting the standard. Oh, nice. Like, a funny thing, I've met you before, Mike. That's hilarious. Well, he's been waiting all week for this. Well, he told this story every month. Every month now. Remember that time?

It touched my hands. No, it was hilarious because it was the exact interaction I wanted. So this was, I want to say, it was at East Coast Throw It Out, I think four. The only one I went to, so yeah. Yeah, you had a Skullgirls demo set up next to the main booth, and people were trying it out and stuff, and so I was down there with some of my friends because we were entering from the Montreal Street Fighter community and stuff, and so we were playing it out, and then there's one of the guys that came down with us, this really big headed Marvel

player type dude, and he saw us playing the game and he kind of came over and took a look as well, and we were in the elevator going back up to the room, and he was like, yeah, I don't know about that Skullgirls game, man, it looks kind of ass, and you were standing right in front of us, and you turned around and looked at him and said, if you had feedback like that, why didn't you give it to me to my face instead of talking behind my back in an elevator, and dude just turned blue, and all weekend we exposed him and reminded him of how embarrassed he was for talking shit about Mike's game behind him, not knowing that he was standing right there, like a clown, and it was a fucking great first impression.

Oh well, I'm glad. There was a lot of weird stuff that weekend. I remember it very specifically, I mean obviously because I was on the East Coast, but also because the way it was set up was on one side of the table was Skullgirls, and on the other side of the table was the demo for Cross Tekken, and it was me and Seth, and like I already knew Seth, and Seth was sitting there, and we were watching our respective games being played, because we'd been sitting there for like five or six hours or something, like watching the games talking to people, and I said to him, you look kind of bored, like

if you want to switch, I can watch Cross Tekken for a while, and you can watch Skullgirls, and he goes, you don't want to watch this game. I really like that difference between when there's two like FGC guys that are like kind of know what's going on, versus like when I first saw Cross Tekken, I went to a Captivate event with Seth Wazette, and that was an event where the press is there, so Cross Tekken, yeah, yeah, yeah, the hype is shit over, and then when you have two FGC guys that are at like a tournament, no press there, the actual things come out. I remember, he's one of the most professional people you can find though.

He really is, absolutely. I remember here in Montreal, Chairithi, the like amazing street fighter player, week one of Cross Tekken, wasn't playing Cross Tekken, and I was there at our local place, and someone was asking him, why you're not playing Cross Tekken? We're all playing Cross Tekken. He's like, man, that game's not going to last. And he saw it from like, he was wrong. He played it last week.

We played it last week. I had a great time. We all had a great time. The less you know, the better it is. Yeah, absolutely. But no, that's the first time I took a look at Skullgirls, and from the moment it was like, okay, wait, the main crack character is a grappler, I knew that was something special. I liked what was going on there.

How long did you have a lot of those ideas kind of floating around in your head to do things that would fix what fighting games needed, like holding the start button to pause or doing a command throw with the actual throw input and so on? Well, the holding the start button one actually came from the community. That was something that Mr. X posted like, I don't know, five months or six months after we started showing the game off. And I was like, I'm trying to fix a bunch of the problems that fighting games have. And he was like, well, here's one.

So try this. And he was right. I assume it's a he because his nickname was Mr. X, but you never really can assume on the internet, or I guess in real life. But yeah, that's exactly it. Like how many finals and grand finals tossed away because someone stick just or not even the state, but like someone accidentally hit something. Like the amount of quality of life improvements Skullgirls has stuff like just being able to

press. I like that quality of life. Just being able to hit it. That's the term for these things. Just being able to go punch, punch, punch, kick, kick, kick, your buttons are set, stuff like that. Like Skullgirls really moved it up in that regard. It's really impressive.

So here's the thing though. Oh man, I have to keep this short. So I'm going to keep this short. So here's the thing. If you haven't watched the talk that I gave at UFGTX. Which is an amazing tournament by the way. The quality of life improvements that Skullgirls brings, some of them are new and some of them are old.

I mean the tap on your buttons in a row to set them was in Street Fighter 2 World Warrior for the Super Nintendo. Seriously? Yes. For that talk I went back to look and was like okay, so there were games with tap to set because Killer Instinct had it on Super NES and I was like alright, where did this come from? It started to come, like the move left and right on the screen started to show up around

like Soul Calibur and Tekken. Yeah. Like you needed your combo buttons to do like Kings Bullshit and all that. Well also some of it was TRC's for consoles. Oh that makes sense. It turns out that because, so if you do the scroll to set button config then you don't have to make the buttons themselves have different functions specifically in that list. Yeah, that's true.

That means that you passed TCR's easier. I love that there are TCR's and TRC's and they're, they mean different things but they're the same thing. So anyway, so if you do that like it makes passing TRC's a lot easier and that's why sometimes companies choose to do it but it's at the expense of the player's experience. I mean the thing that really motivated me to want to have all of that stuff was I'll never forget this. I watched a Street Fighter 4 5 on 5 and PR Balrog came up to the stage and sat down

and opened his, I don't remember if it was a notebook or a phone to look up what to set the buttons to on the menu so that he made sure that he got them right the first time. God, wow. And it made me realize that if you have scroll to set not only does somebody have to know which attack they want to map to which button, they also have to know which button corresponds to which button on their state or input device. Whereas if you have tap to set, they don't have to know either part of that. You just have to know Jeb goes here and then everything else gets taken care of.

That's super interesting because like, yeah, Liam and I in doing QA we've done compliance and we know all through all the TRC issues and the differences between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and stuff. But I never considered things like that and button representation and so on as one of the reasons. I remember when Seth was actually talking about this with the earlier versions of 4 and he was saying that having tap to set as a change that all the players wanted was something that Japan just was very like, they're very reserve old school about it and they didn't want that

type of change because they wanted the ability to set macros to your buttons as well. And it was something where he's like, I can only afford to like champion a few causes when I get on the call with them. Would you prefer that or would you prefer something like a different type of character or something more gameplay? You gotta pick your battles. Pick your battles is what he said. Yeah.

Yeah. So I never really thought about it from that point of view as well. The interesting part about that being called old school is like, like I said, World Warrior for the Super Nintendo did it. It is the oldest school. Yeah. Well, the TRCs were a lot looser back then and then they super tightened up around like PS2 era and they've only just loosened a little bit again now.

Well, the TRCs on Super Nintendo were like, did your game crash? Was it a pretty crash? Yeah, exactly. That's fine. Did it start? Sent the game out? Yeah. Steel quality.

Some of the Game Boy ones are just like, does it cause a seizure? Yeah. No? All right. Go. It was one page. Does it cause a seizure? Yes.

Okay. Ship it. Yeah. It was one page for that stuff. It was amazing. Right. And the only thing that they read was like name of game. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, in regards to like quality of life stuff, there's Japanese games shipping where like you can't deselect your character. Yeah. You know, where it's like, shit, I didn't mean to pick that character. Well, I guess I have to go in and back out now. Because you've confirmed your color too bad. Bad fuck off.

Or there's still stuff where you can't quit out of a match. There was something we played not too long ago. Yeah. Pressure to pause. I'm not sure how old it was, but I remember we couldn't back out of a match. So we had to lose or win, whatever. Wow. So some of the stuff is like baffling.

And like the thing about Skullgirls is like, you're right. A lot of games do some of the stuff. Skullgirls was the only one that did all of the stuff immediately. Yeah. Well, and we did extra stuff. I mean, we did like tournament mode and that. Yeah. We unlocked the PlayStation button on PS3, which I think we're the only game ever to

do. That's real good. Also, there was one sacrifice, wasn't there? Or like switch to trading right out of versus and, you know, like stuff like that. No, that's not great. But they had to make one sacrifice in Skullgirls, didn't they? Move lists. Yeah.

Well, actually, so the reason we didn't have move lists when we shipped was A, because it would take more work. Before I see it. It's not just that it would take more work. That work was in Otter, which is our UI tool, and the less work we did in Otter, the better it was. Okay. Yeah.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Because a lot of people wrongly assumed that it was like, oh, why can't these like lazy guys just put a JPEG in? It's never that easy. No. It's never as easy as it looks. Yeah.

It's never that easy. I would actually really like the super ugly JPEG. Was it just like annoying middleware, basically? Actually, there are not a lot of problems that I had with Otter on the programming side, but on the tool side, it wasn't super fantastic. I mean, the problem with doing a JPEG is it wouldn't be localized. Of course. No, no.

I mean, I'm a really shitty JPEG. We have English text in the Japanese version, which is something you're not allowed to ship with. I mean, they will fail you for that. Absolutely, yeah. I remember when some people would defend the lack of a move list, they'd say, no, it's like a secret. People will defend anything.

People defended Killer Instinct coming out with six characters. Not even the dev team defended Killer Instinct coming out with six characters. They're like, this is our budget. We can't, it's what you're doing. People were like, oh man, it's so nice that they have a small roster because now you don't have to learn how to do breakers against a whole 20 characters of the cast. You don't have to learn what all their different moves look like. Well, I'm an idiot, so I did appreciate that, actually.

So the interesting thing about that is you don't actually have to look at the opponent's character at all. No, you can look at your character's reactions. Your characters' hit stuns are different for Light, Medium, and Hard. Yeah, I know. There's ones where they're really real back, and that's how you can do it, but I didn't know that's a way later. I figured that out after three months with that game.

It's funny kind of knowing some of the insider things, though, because Liam and I, I remember that time we're at work, we read about how it seems like Skullgirls had some budget freed up. Yeah, yeah. And we were immediately like, oh, we've seen that documentation. Yeah, we know why that budget freed up and what changes were made to the cost of submission. That was awesome seeing that work out, you know. All right, so yeah, I guess we'll just roll around and see how everyone's week went.

I love rolling around. Sounds good. It's all weird. Yeah, I guess, Mike, why don't you start us off? What have you been up to, man? The day's all run together at this point, so I actually don't remember where the cutoff was for a week ago. That's cool, man.

You weren't on the podcast last week. There's no overlap. That's very true. You could actually talk about all of your life before this week. Oh, man. Well, last week was great. I mean, first I was born, and then I remember learning to swim in a community pool, and I really enjoyed swimming.

I used to go to this arcade by where we lived called Our Place. Yeah, it was a long week, actually, now that I think about it. I went to college. You made that video with the Russian accent. Oh, yeah. It blew up. Yeah. I have the shirt.

Thank you, Meat Bun. I'm pretty sure they don't even still make that shirt, but it has actually outlasted almost every other video game-related shirt I own. It's strong. Yeah. It is Russian strong. Yeah, there we go. I'm salty about Meat Bun because I never got my Screaming for Vengeance Icaruga shirt

off of them because the Meat Bun shirts were like, oh, there it is. Nope, it's gone. Yeah. Like one of the first worst pieces of it. It's like Mondo shirts. Yeah. Yeah. Get up and check their Twitter to see when you can order it.

Are you allowed today? No? All right. Well. Thank you. Anyway, yeah. So yeah, I mean, my week has actually been mostly work because we are finishing up the Japanese Arc System Works version of Skullgirls.

Right, right, right. So I'm doing tons of code changes and implementation of Japanese voices and it's all of that stuff that I remembered that vaguely that you had to do when you were programming a game. Yeah. I saw the cast you guys got. It's a pretty incredible cast, honestly. Oh, it's so awesome, except for, I don't think they talked about who Beowulf was for some reason.

No, Beowulf was omitted, so I don't know what that is. Yeah. They left out the announcer and I'm actually kind of sad because those two are like, oh my God, I really want to talk about who they are, but Arc didn't, so I can't and I don't know why Arc didn't. Right. Can we throw out some names and you can say Warmer or Colder? You can try, but I'm not sure I would know many of them.

Akio Otsuka, no. Yes. See, like, I don't know who that is. Segata Senshiro. That's not that guy's thing. You know, it is. To me, it is. To me, it is.

Like, so I'll be perfectly honest with you. I watched some anime, but not a huge amount, and I had to look up every single voice actor that was in Skullgirls, even the ones that I knew from their roles, like Chiyochan is Peacock and Yomi from Azumanga is Parasol. I had to look those up because I don't know any of their names, so if you're telling people Japanese or if you're telling me Japanese voice actors, like, I have no idea. Except for Wakamoto, because the world talks about him all the time. No, he's the greatest of all time.

Yeah. Okay, did you get the guy with the deep voice that sounds like a badass? Yes. All right. Good. Ship it. Yeah, but I just, I wish I could talk about Beowulf and the announcer so much, but I can't.

Okay. Well, that means that it's, that's something to look, to look up, like, to keep an eye on that news when it drops. Wait, wait, wait for the patch on the English version, right? Yeah. Well, I actually am not sure we're allowed to do that. No, I don't think so either. Because licensing all of those separate voice actors for America is really difficult and

actually costs money. Yeah, no, definitely. It was a joke. Sorry. I'm sorry. No, literal, literal explanation to that. It's fine. Yeah, no, for sure.

For sure. I'm not known for that. What I'm interested to know is that if our system works and obviously you're partnering up with them to publish in Japan, so there must be like a, you know, sizable demand in Japan, like people have asked for it or there is interest to bring it over in Japan. Have you, do you like get any like whiff of like how well it will kind of do or do you have any expectations? Did you set up a booth at SBO?

You mean the thing that no longer exists? Yeah. Yeah, I was really sad because that was an amazing joke and then there is no more SBO. So now people are just like, oh, okay, it's just called squiggly battle opera for some reason. That'll do. Unless it's one of those things like the Guilty Gear event that they ran the other day or like something that's set up by, I guess, each other.

By Arch Revo? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like the only sense that I have of how well people think it will do in Japan is that Arch wants to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And it is getting an arcade release, right?

Oh, yes. That is happening extremely soon. And I've, that's actually the reason why I'm on this schedule is because I'm working with the person who's doing a large part of the arcade port to help them with optimizations because, so, I don't know if you know this, but Nessica is on the, Nessica, the Japanese arcade service is on the Taito X2, which is a range of boards that are computers from the early 2000s. Yeah.

We're familiar. Yep. Yep. And several of them are below the min-spec for Skullgirls. That's true, right? So we've been like, where are there things that we can make work better? I mean, like the arcade version is going to have to have 2D backgrounds for crying out loud.

Oh, so just convert those layers into one nice picture? Well, I mean, like we have 2D on PC as a choice for people with lower NPCs, but it's like, yes, we have to enable that in the arcade version. Skullgirls is heavier than Battle Fantasia, confirmed. Just cut like half of the animation out. Yeah. Yeah, just half the frames. Yeah, just drop half your frames.

Get Mugen running and throw that on a cab and put the Nesca card. You'll be fine. All right. No, just have actors dressed up as the Skullgirls cast and film them. Stop saying that. Film them. That's not the first time. Film them and digitize them every day.

That would be amazing. Yeah. And then maybe we could like add cartoony blood. We just lost it. Oh, no. Did you repeat that? It was probably hilarious, but it's gone. Oh, Mike just...

It was probably hilarious. Oh, he's back. There he is. There he is. Oh, hello. It's in my local recording. What the hell was that joke was? It's in my local recording.

You'll know later. All right. And it wasn't that funny to start with. Okay. Oh, great. Now that joke has a weird build up. Now it's a bit funnier. Oh, that's fantastic.

But I see what you're going for, Matt. Skullgirls, real battle on film. Real battle on film. Yep. I see you. I see you. Okay. So, in regards to all the work you guys are doing, I just want to shout outs again for

that amazing stick tech that you guys have going on. Oh, yeah. Thanks guys. The one that exposes every other company, basically, and basically says you have no reason to not use this so that everyone can not spend more money on another stick. We love you, Matt Katz. We love you, Hori. You guys are great, but really, you should still have this tech in your game.

Yeah. That amazing thing. It's amazing. I wish I would like to give a special shout out to Cowboy, who is the person who programmed the vast majority of the driver because he's a much better programmer than me, and was excited about doing it. As soon as I read that announcement from Sony that was like, we'll let developers decide whether or not they're going to support PS3 hardware, I was like, I think we're going

to try to do that because I don't know if, I think they sort of thought that no one would see that. Yeah. They didn't expect that to actually happen. They were just like, yeah, we'll leave this here just in case, but no one's actually going to care because they're all going to have stick marketing deals and stuff. Of course. Yeah.

And then we didn't have a stick marketing deal, and I don't really want to spend 250 bucks on another stick. So this is the right answer, yeah. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I still get told we should have licensed it. We should have charged companies for it, but then no one would have done it, and they would have had a perfectly valid excuse.

They would have been like, yeah, we would have supported PS3 sticks, but it cost us money and like, no. And because people don't know how much budgets are for companies. So they'd be like, oh, it would have cost that company $10,000. That's a lot of money for me, so I understand that they didn't do it. So no, it's free. Use the damn thing. Yeah.

I hear that the Vita version, if you play it on Vita TV, you can hook up two sticks and play it locally. That's absurd. Is that accurate? So the Vita TV is not a PS4? Yes, it is not. What? We can't modify any of the drivers that the Vita TV uses.

So if it works with Vita TV with other things, it'll work with this. If it doesn't, it will not. Okay, because some people were throwing that around, and I was like, that sounds crazy. That no, you can't, because on the Vita and the PS3, you can't take over the USB driver with your own code. Yeah, of course. They actually let you do it on the PS4. It wasn't like, yeah, we support this, you just flip a switch.

It was like, no, we'll allow you to write your own entire USB driver as opposed to not allowing you to do it, but you're going to have to do 100% of the work. So as far as I know, we do not have that capability on Vita or PSTV, and we definitely don't have it on PS3, although I was kind of weirded out by the PS4 because the PS3 supported basically everything, like out of the box. Yeah, you could put a printer into it. Yeah. Yeah.

And the PS4 just kind of doesn't do that. That was a little weird to me, but... But no, everyone's wallets are thankful. Yeah, definitely. That's what you get for 599 US dollars. You get printer support. Matt, what'd you do this week, man? Really quickly, a blast through this.

I had just, circumstances permitted that I saw three movies in theaters. One was a Fantasia Film Festival, Mike, if you're not familiar, it's like this genre of film festival that happens in Montreal, and lots of horror and stuff from Japan kind of get seen here, and distributors kind of check them out, and they see what the audience reaction is, and they kind of then shop it around to movie studios, and a movie played last the Fantasia Film Festival just passed that we missed because we're at a con, and it was called Tales of Halloween, which is simply like, here's a bunch of child on adult and adult on child violence during Halloween, ten separate mini-movies that take place

all in the same town on the same night, directed by the director of the original Saw, lots of guys like that, the director of Hatchet is in there, and it's basically like these pretty horrifying stories of like, but then sometimes, haha, child murder, and actually pulled it off sometimes, this gigantic pumpkin, like, just like in the first three seconds of this film, destroys a child, just rips its head off, destroys that child, just rips its head off or whatever, and then someone, a sketch artist is brought in because someone saw it, and they're like, well, what's the perp look like, and he shows this child-like crayon drawing of a scary pumpkin, and they're like, what am I supposed to do with that?

He's like, I don't know, it's what she told me, so it's like 12 little stories like that, some better than others, but they're all like good, leave your brain at the door, just good fun, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't like amazing, there's a very similar movie called Trick or Treat, which I enjoyed a bit more because it was three real interconnections, connecting stories, I had like Ana Pacwan, and you know, I'm familiar with people like that. I also saw... Did you just give Guillermo his money?

I'll get to that, I also saw Sicario, which if you're not familiar with, is like this really... Lucario's brother? Yeah, it's not Lucario, Sicario, which is Josh Brolin, Benicio del Toro, and Emily Blunt is being like FBI, like SOA sort of agents that are going into Mexico for drug purposes. That's always the purpose. To get drugs. To stop the drug trade, stop a drug lord, whatever, and this was like a really, really

good movie, really well made, but I always realized when I give them a shot, I'm not a fan of military thrillers, because it's never about so much, her locker is a little bit different, because that's an inter-platoon sort of unit, like I don't have a problem with that guy. Yeah, I wouldn't call it a thriller, but... I don't want to call it a thriller, but it's this type of thing where it's not about the characters, it's not really about the story, it's about the core, no, it's about the state of the world, so towards the end you always get a, oh man, yeah, and that's about it,

and everyone says the same three lines in a military thriller, that's the job, suck it up, and you want out, and these three lines are almost always said in Emily Blunt's character, which this is really interesting, I learned about this, and this is based on a book, the book has a woman in this lead role, when they were making the movie, everyone was like, yeah, we really want to do this story and whatever, and the movie company goes, we don't want a woman in the main, don't, take it out, put in a guy, and they go, it plays a part in the story, and we have Emily Blunt lined up, who is a great actress, who has lots of great roles, like Edge of Tomorrow, she's awesome in that, so they go, all right,

you can have a woman, you're getting this less amount of money, because it's a risk, what is this, BioShock Infinite? I was going to say these movie companies do have a point, because it's not like these types of movies where a woman is the front, they'll never catch fire, everyone will always be hungry at these games. Yeah, you wrote that a couple of days ago, didn't you? I did, I thought it up a while ago. He's reading it off his wrist right now, but it's super sad, because this is a totally viable thing, but no man, a bunch of dudes are in the room, and they go, look, we did

the numbers, we got this, you know, we asked people what they wanted, and no, you want to know? Yeah, nobody liked aliens, nobody. What a piece of shit. I'm glad it died. I want to sit on the conversation with all the old white guys in the boardroom, where the director's like, okay, we need a girl for this role, and they say, no girl, it's got to be a guy, and the director goes, well, we need a gay sex scene, and then they go,

well then get a girl in there, like, I want to see the back down, I'm sure like a bunch of shit started flowing out of Walt Disney's jar after Star Wars cast Black Guy and Girl as main characters. But it was still a really, and they said, fuck you, sure, we'll take the less money, we still want this character the way it is, and it was quite good, but when I get to the end of it, I go, Beniso del Toro, also amazing, because he's really inconsistent sometimes. You get your Sin City, then you get the Wolfman, which I did see, and that was awful, but he was really awesome, like, I think Willie would particularly kind of enjoy this one,

because there's certain scenes that I'm like, oh, Willie would love this, the way this is set up. Very Kill Bill-esque long conversations at a dinner table and result in explosive something. I also described it on Twitter as a charming Mexican slice of life film, and people got a good laugh at that, and yes, I gave del Toro his money, but I won't give him more money for a repeat viewing of Crimson Peak. I agree. I saw it all, yeah.

I was a little bit disappointed, I wouldn't say fully disappointed, I was a little bit disappointed because people were like, no, no, towards when the movie was coming out, interviews and such started, stop saying horror movie and start saying gothic romance, because the first couple of trailers, that's a horror movie, I'm watching that, there's a horror movie. It's not a horror movie though. It's barely a horror movie. It's more jump scares, and that's the entirety of it.

And that's the thing, is that they're actually cheap jump scares, that I was like, you didn't need to do this. I hate jump scares, so I don't mind the movie. It sucks because the monster designs are amazing. Do you know what would be amazing I was thinking, when you see these ghosts, monster designs, it'd be really cool if a publisher could get del Toro working on a game. A horror game. Yeah, really cool.

You think a creative mind like that would do really well in video games. There's ghosts that are missing. It's cute, it's insane, and there it went. That crossover tends not to work as well as people always want it to. You think monster design would be a strong thing in video games. There's ghosts that are missing cavities, and you don't quite see how they're put together. There's a skeleton ghost, right? And usually a picture of a skeleton, you know what it looks like, right?

I know what a skeleton looks like. So they decided to just smash out the front half, the face, and you get this really cool looking. Guess what? It looks really cool. It's very del Toro. It's very Hellboy-ish monster. It's very Penis Labyrinth monster.

So like, it was incredibly well made, gorgeous to look at, cinematography. The acting is great. You know they actually built the house. They built the house, and they built the ghosts were real. I didn't know that. That's pretty cool. You laugh, you laugh, but when you see that show on the trailer where a ghost comes out of the floor and just snacks its hand, they put an actor in there, put them in ghostly

costumes, and then CG'd over them. Get in the spooky suit. It's like we need a ghost. Alright, get the practical effects team. Guillermo, you said ghost, right? That's correct. No, Del Toro's ghost. Where's my ghost?

No, I know some ghosts from Spain, I'll bring them over. So, but the story is just, yeah, I thought it was like a textbook example of style over substance. Yes, it is kind of. Let's move it along. So, I know everything, Pat would have guessed the movie during the part where it said Crimson Peak. Like that, huh?

Yeah. The plot is hyper-predictable, and the bit where you kind of expect a twist, nothing happens, and it's a real bummer because I'm just going to say it because I don't give a shit because it's not an amazing movie. The supernatural stuff is a red herring, and that sucks. I described it as window dressings. Yeah. But you could have taken the supernatural stuff out, and it could have still unfolded.

At the same time, this is weird because I'm sure this is what he wanted to make. Doing the ghost scary, there's got to solve the ghost, kill the ghost, is a very Hollywood thing to do, which I think he would be pressured into doing, but it's not that. It's not at all, yeah. But the marketing was. Of course. So, they were kind of trying to make it seem like that. And it's like, when you look at the story at the end, you're like, it's interesting,

but it's just not that it just didn't play out that well. So it basically, then it sounds like it's a del Toro movie, but it's not the type that he usually makes. It's just a bad del Toro movie. It's kind of how we feel about Penn's Labyrinth, where Penn's Labyrinth looks amazing, it sounds amazing. Look at all the imagination going on. Oh, she got from point A to point B, kind of, and that's.

I really enjoy Penn's Labyrinth. I love that movie. Penn's Labyrinth is much better. I enjoy it, but I think it's another style over substance, way less so than this. Yeah, it's like a bad version of Penn's Labyrinth. How would you say it's bad? It's no, definitely. When I got home from the theater, I was like, I hope I'm not the only one feeling this way.

And I went on the internet. It's no worse than that. And I had like a Rotten Tomatoes score in the 60s, and I was like, that's about right. I saw it at IMAX too, which helped me too. It's a shame, because I feel like buying tickets to that movie is somehow funding Pacific Rim too. Yeah, yeah. You know?

Like, I feel like that's, but it's not. It's going into a money hole on fire called Pacific Rim too. You know me that I don't pay much attention to charts except for movies, and this opened up in fourth place and made like 12 million dollars. Yeah. It wasn't that expensive to make, but Goosebumps has a, has a hot much higher Rotten Tomatoes score than it was for a reason. I don't know.

Maybe it's good. It's probably secretly good. Maybe Matt, go see it. Maybe the Phantom of the Auditorium appears. What was your big laugh? Goosebumps buff. He's gone. No, I'm not gone.

I just like... What was your favorite Goosebumps book? You're on the spot. Go. Answer. I barely remember any of them, honestly. That's a small one too. I was an Encyclopedia Brown kid, so.

Do you want a scholastic kid? No. I was Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown and The Mouse and the Motorcycle. There you go. Fine literature. That's a good one too. Well, we are not the same generation. Are you like 45?

34. Thank you very much. All of my body parts are still intact and my hair is turning gray. He's a year older. Okay, that's weird. I'm like a baby. Well, I was also like a non-standard kid. I guess that's the best way to put that.

That's fine. Yeah, I think I was also a non-standard kid by that logic. But we all read Goosebumps. Yeah. Because it's the only time we got excited in school when the scholastic little... The flyer would come out. The flyer would come out. And everyone would stop doing work for a whole class.

Pick your Goosebumps, motherfucker. Which side are you on? Yeah. Mom, I need money for this toy. It's for school. Yeah. I don't remember any of this. I'm not sure this happened.

No, in America too. In America too? They had these little... It was a scholastic little leaflet. That would advertise books that you order through your school. Americans don't read, man. Hey. It would advertise all this shit.

And they would advertise toys in the back. And you just waste your parents' money buying all this garbage through your school. And that's... I don't know how to explain it. That's what it was. I remember getting... I remember getting a shitload of pogs through that. I never know how to do that.

That's crazy. I don't know how to do McDonald's. I got an unofficial kidney from that. The Goosebumps? I got a Crash Bandicoot game. You got Crash Bandicoot? Yeah. Goose scholastic.

One of the GBA games. Oh fuck yeah. Wow. It helps you learn. Oh I got these thrill kill pogs. Those got released. Did you guys drop everything and read periods? No, no, no.

Where it's like the bell would ring and no matter where you are in the school. You gotta read. Drop everything and read for that period of time. Here are the two times of elementary school I remember. Scholastic flyers come out and the TV is wheeled in. Yeah. Those are the only times. I feel like I should buy one of those TV cards just to make myself feel better.

Make you feel better. Your girlfriend would just wheel that into the room if you're feeling blue and you're like, yes. Yeah, but then you have to bring out your collection of VHS tapes, right? Donald and Mathemagic Land and like the Magic Toll Booth or the Phantom Toll Booth and all that. Yeah. Oh I still have my VHS and Ninja Scroll.

I can lend it to you. Great. I like the idea of leaving school. The tape is warm. Having to drop everything and play Crash Bandicoot section. Yeah. No matter where you are, play Crash Bandicoot right now. Right now.

Go. I've been playing games. I downloaded the Talos principle on PS4 because I've been interested about that for a while. What is that? That is the team behind Sirius Sam going, let's make a first person philosophical first person puzzle game and the main art is an android stroking a cat. Yeah, I see that art. Which I always love.

What is that? So I booted up for 10 minutes. I just went, whoa, I need an afternoon set for this because this is like the Sirius Sam team, the most mindless game ever. Good. Been mindless. Just going, how about a 180? Just because.

The game got incredibly good reviews and I was this close to buying it. If there weren't so many games that came out in the last two weeks, I would have bought it. Plus it was similar. From the makers of BMX triple X, Shadow of the Colossus. I just want to say as a developer that that statement, you just made his heart breaking. Which was that? If there weren't so many games that came out this week, I would have bought it.

No, it's frustrating. The people that made Wild Arms know exactly how that feels. It's late October and soon it's going to be November, man. It's the way it is. I just had the hard point where I went down my Amazon free order list and I canceled like 20 games because I can't, I literally can't and it sucks, I wish I could, but I totally feel you too. There's no time.

We've all been there. Like there was a moment a while ago when I was playing Baldur's Gate 2 that I decided to spend a month of my life playing a game from the 90s instead of anything that was currently released. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike, you know how on the nose that statement is? Like I was at THQ when we were all crossing our fingers that Darksiders 2 would sell. Wow.

Like, trust me, I know what you mean when people say like, oh, I can't buy this, there's too much shit. And it's weird because I can't win. And then the company folded, hey. Whenever you go to the kids' store and I see the definitive edition of Darksiders 2, I get super excited. Because for whatever reason I really, really want to play that version and every time it seems like it's been delayed a few extra days coming up there.

Next week. Because you know that like, you know, when they're getting ready to like submit shit to get it approved and ship it out there and it's like, you pull down the calendar, you take a look and go, all right, where can we put our game? You want to release some Call of Duty Day or is it a great day? Everyone just stares at the calendar and exhales really loudly. Well, and you end up going, how about Sleeping Dog Day and even then, like, doesn't work out.

And releasing on Assassin's Creed Day is not that bad of an idea anymore, especially when it's a Friday. Or like, fighting game February and you know, like, or March or whatever. And the last little thing, as I mentioned to Pat earlier, but I got Downwell, which is, I'm not sure if you saw it, but the little indie game where you're just a guy falling down a hole and you have jump jet gun boots and you shoot downward the entire way. That sounds like a video game. It's a black and white, like Atari looking.

It kind of brings up a little bile in the back of my throat because it reminds me of a specky game. Oh, the specky. Don't badmouth the specky. But it's still cool. I think, well, you'd probably enjoy a lot too, and it's a very simple level base, and it's just, you're falling down. Okay.

And that's super good. Is it Frog Fractions too? It's not. Are you sure? Every week. I've confirmed already that the beginner's guide is the closest thing we have to Frog Fractions to. No, there's no close.

It's the front runner. It's the front runner. It's the front runner. And you see the guy making it just post some kind of beer review? I haven't talked about it last week. What the fuck? We did, yeah. I got that on Steam, and I got it on my iPad just to check it out, and that controls fine

on the iPad. I was kind of surprised. Oh, yeah, that kind of game. Doesn't seem like it would happen. It's left and right and shoot. It's not too bad. But yeah, no, that was me this week. Okay.

Liam? How about you, Liam? What do you do? I saw Crimson Peak, which, yeah, no need to talk about that. That was that. Not a terrible film, but what are you going to do? I played a lot of video games, because a lot of video games have come out. When do I ever have a list?

Never. That's usually the list. That's usually the list, guys. So starting from the top, I played Chibi Robo Zip Lash. All I have to say reviews is fucking Rest in Peace Chibi Robo. Oh, no. Please, Nintendo, don't come back with another Chibi Robo until it's like the first one. Think about what you've done and go sit in the corner and leave.

Every game? The first one has been not like the first one in different ways, and we're at the point where it's like it's full-on spin-off territory, and it shouldn't be. This is a 2D platformer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When Chibi Robo should be a 3D abstract, go help around the house adventure-er. So, yeah. Do you really have a toy story on the Super Nintendo, because that was a platformer where

you had a little... I know the one. The lasso. What is lasso, I think, to just sort of suffer up. I don't even like... I think the first Chibi Robo game is not that great, but it's charming, and I like Chibi Robo as a character the same way I like Rob and Smash. I think Chibi Robo should be, hey, I'm over here now.

Chibi Robo is above Battalion Wars, below Pikmin. It's not a Bb. Does Chibi Robo live in that same weird space that Mr. Mosquito and Mr. Domino live? Yeah, yeah. Okay. And that's where he should stand. He's the S-ranker in this space. Yeah, okay.

So, the director said if this doesn't do well, this might be the last Chibi Robo game. So, fucking rest in peace, Chibi Robo. Pour 40 out for Chibi Robo, and then have him clean it up. So it's a 2D platformer? You know. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry. I was just listening to that whole discussion, and like, to me, what that sounds like is

a thing that I actually heard in a lot of meetings, which is, oh, you want to bring this thing back? Okay, we're cool with that. Make it different from the old one in at least three ways. Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course. That is just told to the people that want to make the games, because the people in charge

want to be able to say, this is different from the old one. Look at these new things that we did, regardless of whether or not that's a good idea. No, definitely. Because the last one didn't sell, so you can't use that formula anymore. Time to change it up, right? But we like this character. And we want to keep using this name and the recognition. So it's a 2D platformer, and basically you go through these worlds, and there's six levels

arranged in a circle and a boss level in the middle. So to get to the boss level, you have to finish each of the six levels, simple enough, right? The only little caveat to that is you have to roll a dice effectively, and it tells you how many tiles you can move, and then you play that level. Oh, no. So you land on the same level a bunch of times? You can land on the same level a bunch of times. So the fortunate thing is you can rig the dice really hard, and eventually, quickly,

you realize the best answer is to rig the dice all the way so you roll one every time, and then you fight the boss. That sounds like some video game MSG right there. There are a lot of people on forums defending this, just saying, just roll one every time. It shouldn't be there in the first place. It is one of the things that are different. That is really not fun to play the same level a second time, because the game's not that good even.

It doesn't feel like a Mario game where you just pick it up and you're like, yeah, this is fun to just play. It's just not that great in the first place. Yeah, it's a lot slower. The game's very pretty. I'm sure that sounded way more interesting in the GDD, but then just in execution, it's not fun. Yeah, just like that Devil May Cry 4 level.

Well, the worst thing about it is it doesn't need filler. There's six worlds with six levels per world. There's 36 levels plus six boss levels. There's actually a lot of content in there. Is it downloadable? Is it not a retail game? It's a cartridge game, exactly. I didn't know that.

And they bundled an Amiibo with it to try to make it sell better, I bet you. Every time somebody says that I hear Amiibo, and I'm like, yeah, they bundled an Amiibo with it, and then he got this and Terry. It wasn't that great. The best thing about the game was the Chibi Robo Amiibo that came with it, and not the title itself. I can't recommend this game to any Chibi Robo fans or anyone else. So, I mean, like, Chibi Robo fans, like, a message for you, like, that's all right.

I can't. What about Amiibo feeds? Yeah. That's someone who's looking at Chibi Robo on his shelf right now. There are Chibi Robo fans. There are Chibi Robo fans. Yeah. I know.

I just don't know the last time that they were addressed as a group. They weren't. I'm looking at it. Every time a game has come out and just been a disappointment because it's not Chibi Robo. I don't mind, like, Chibi Robo getting a second chance, but you need to get, like, I want a second chance for a summer in particular, not a sixth. Sixth?

There's zero. Oh, my God. There's the GameCube one. I missed three games. There's two. There's three DS ones, one of which only came out in 10. Oh, that explains it. Yeah.

Then there's the three DS download game that uses the camera, and then there's this one, which is the sixth game. Okay. So counting the PIR games. Yeah. The handhelds when they stopped supporting Game Boy Color and Game Boy games. You're right, Mike. A minute ago.

So if someone else deserves a sixth or seven chances, where's Doshin? Yeah, where's Doshin? Doshin's been trying. Where's Doshin? Where you at? Where you at? Where you been? Where's your dating sim, Doshin?

There are better platformers to play. There are better Chibi Robo games to play. Buy it for the amiibo. Don't play the game, and that's very telling. I don't like amiibo. Next on the list, I have Yoshi's Woolly World. You were playing that earlier today. Previously, I spoke about how I didn't really, I don't really like the Yoshi games.

I played Topsy-Turvy to completion. The other ones I didn't even really give the time over. I told you, I don't like the Yoshi move set. And we agreed to agree that you were crazy. Yeah, no, and I agree with that too. Well, a lot of them are bad. Does this include Yoshi's Island? I know.

That's what I'm saying. This includes all Yoshi games. Seriously? Yeah, I know. Mike, we don't know how we deal with them. But I don't understand. I know I'm wrong. Okay, well then, we can move on.

And I know they're good games. I just don't, like, I play them and I don't feel it. But I did Yoshi Topsy-Turvy, so I am. They're a good game. I just don't like anything about how Yoshi controls, moves, looks, or sounds. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not... Wow, that's pretty dammit. Yoshi's Island is so good.

I can't. I can't. I'll say that I love Yoshi's Island, but all the rest of them, like, I hate Yoshi's Story. Yoshi's Story was not strong at all. But anyway, but anyway, Yoshi's Woolly World. I played through about... Where's my cut?

I played through the first world of Yoshi's Woolly World, a good-ass game. I'm enjoying it. I like it way more than Epic Yarn because it's faster and dumber. I was gonna say, like, it's obviously gonna get compared to Epic Yarn, this is a way better game. It feels like Epic Yarn's Woolly World. It feels, it's, it's the marvel of yarn fabric games. Yeah, exactly.

And you know what, they totally agree with you. I like Woolly World a lot more than any Yoshi game I've ever played. It feels good. We need to, we need to see some more of the boss fights to really get the rhythm. Yeah, we even get to the... It's the first boss of the first world, okay? It's not the first, but the last one. We did the mid-guide.

Oh, and you did the Monty Maul, right? Yeah, the last one. The last one. It's fun. Okay. I mean, like, you know, it won't blow your mind, but it's not like Bowser at the end of 3D World or anything. Okay.

Well, nothing can be. No, exactly. And the quality of the wool texture was satisfactory. It's almost as good as the substitute doll in Smash 4. Almost, but not quite, but it's really good. I really want that mega. Yeah, but the substitute doll in Smash 4 looks like it's photoshopped. It's photorealistic.

Like, it's bizarre. But, like, I like the idea of, like, metacritic scores getting affected by your wool texture quality. Your wool texture? Yeah, exactly. A second score for wool texture from the grandmas around us. Well, and you could write reviews that were, like, so realistic and left me itchy, you know?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, there you go. Exactly. That sounds like a game pro review. They're gonna patch in new woolen pants for Jago, and then, you know, we're going places. Oh. We, uh, it's, like, 53 minutes, so we gotta take quick word from our sponsors. Yeah, I'd break.

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Go ahead. I played Dragon Quest Heroes, the World Tree's Woes, and the Blight Below. How is that? That is a mouthful. It's a great name. I really like it. We need a rhyming title, guys. Yeah.

No, exactly. Otherwise you can't stop us. I like that shit. That Let Us Cling Together. What is it? Faithlessness? Faith and... Fuck.

Something in Faithlessness. Integrity and Faithlessness. Integrity and Faithlessness. That thing is as good as Let Us Cling Together. Let Us Cling Together. That's amazing. I think this would also have another subtitle called Dragon Quest Heroes. Most of you don't know what this franchise is.

Please play anyway. Dragon Quest Heroes. I know some of those guys. That's a sly guy. I understood some of those words. There's a girl I like that likes that. Hold on. I got one.

It's Dragon Quest Heroes. That guy looks like Vegeta. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I really, really liked Hyrule Warriors. Generally, I've been pretty cool on Musou games. This game's not a Musou game.

It's somewhere between Hyrule Warriors and Tokiden. Really? So, well, because it has a hunting game structure, more than a Musou structure, you don't go to a menu and then pick a mission, do the mission. You go to a hub, like a monster hunting game, and then you go to the world and you fight a large monster and a bunch of trash mobs, like it's a combination of trash mobs. When you run into a mob and they surround you, do they stand and just stare at you? Yeah.

It is the standard in a Warriors game. All right. They kind of mostly stand around. The big enemies are a lot more active. Sometimes they jostle. The big enemies are a lot more active. You get them. No you.

No you. Oh, we're getting comboed. Yeah. So I played a bunch. I played a bit over 10 hours, and it's weird. It's not as good as Hyrule Warriors. The initial impression is this game is just as polished and just as good feeling as Hyrule Warriors, which I think is the best feeling one.

But after you play it for a while, this very specific not Warriors, not hunting game formula they have doesn't keep holding up over time. Is it back to Fist of the North Star Musa level? No. No. Okay. It's still significantly better than that. I don't think that's possible.

But they didn't have Nintendo over their shoulder. Well, I think that was the same level of quality. It's just over time the formula doesn't hold up as well. I see. So I don't think there's no da-da-da-da-da-da. Of course. And I don't think it was Nintendo who reinforced the Warriors formula, because that's what makes Hyrule Warriors work, is the Warriors formula is good.

You go from base to base to base, as opposed to any Zelda trappings specifically, whereas this game doesn't have bases. You just kind of run around the map and kill all the monsters, and that's kind of it. And they didn't ship it with a scarf, so. And they didn't ship it with a scarf, so. Okay, dead in the water. It's good, and if you're a Dragon Quest fan, I'm sure you'll get a lot more out of it than I did, but definitely not as good as Hyrule Warriors or Samurai Warriors 4, which

is the other recent, really good one. But otherwise, really polished, solid game that I'd recommend if you're looking for that kind of thing. There's at least one person we know that's just playing it and hasn't left their house. Endlessly. Yeah, because he's a Dragon Quest fan who hasn't had a game in ten years. Exactly. I'm not going to talk about this one for long, because Lord knows I don't have to.

But I played through Uncharted 3, finally, the remastered HD version. Took your time. Took my time. Boy, they did a number on making those games look gorgeous, and run Super Super Good. Did you confuse it for Uncharted 4? No, I didn't. I don't know how you could possibly do that. Oh, god.

I didn't even think about that, because that always fools me. I'm like, Uncharted 4 is out, and I'm like, wait, no, that's the HD. Oh, you do guys not know what we're talking about. No. There was a hands-on impression from TGS for Uncharted 4 that went up, and then the journalist apologized because it was actually Uncharted 2 HD. Oh, wow. And fucking back.

That is insane. The best part about it is that that article starts with, as a long-running veteran of the Uncharted series. My instincts told me to play it. Yeah, exactly. One job. One job. Oh, man.

In a world where bad press makes a huge difference for literally jobs? That's like the EGM review. That's beautiful. That's the review that says, like, I love this online co-op. Yeah. Like, it's actually quick-looking Uncharted 4. Oops, wait. That was way of the war here.

Oops. All Uncharted 2. That was like crash-tag racing. My lady. How would you have felt if, like, if, like, for the demo for Indivisible goes out and there's a written, right, written preview of, and it comes back, it's like, I'm sorry, that was Skullgirls. I don't know.

I've probably gotten more press in some places. Like, I guess, like, the thing that I took away from that is that the team that did the HD remasters is sitting at their desks like, yeah, we got this, yeah, he mistook our game for the next one in the series, and then they go to their boss and they're like, you see that? Yeah. Keep me around. Oh, race is all around.

Yeah, well, now they're working on Gravity Rush, so for sure. Oh, yeah. Blue Planet. It's a reminder that they made Way of the Warrior. Never forget. Yeah, never forget. Yeah, yeah, never forget. That game's super solid, but more than the game, I just want to shout-outs to the Digital

Foundry interview with the Blue Point guys. In that interview, they talk about a lot of the improvements they did, and it's actually really impressive, especially for the first game. They increased the poly count on a lot of stuff. They almost completely redid the lighting. They actually, like, they redid the way the game feels to be more in line with 2 and 3, so it's actually a very different- So they took away how useful the controller is from you some more?

I mean, but they made it feel like you remember it, is what I should say. So snide, Mike. You know the sentiment, right, where you remember a game being good, and then you go back to it and you're like, oh, it's a lot rougher than I thought? They made it feel a lot more- Like the nostalgia? That's impressive. Well, they made it feel like you think it should.

So Uncharted 2 and 3 had, like, pretty significant changes to the aiming. Huge, yeah. To the point where there was that huge kerfuffle over Uncharted 3's aiming, and now there's like an alternate aiming mode, and one would feel like very rough in comparison. One, they were even saying some mechanics introduced in 3, like throwing grenades back, were too powerful to be reintroduced back into one, because it just fucked up the whole game. Yeah, and also, I think they made it, you could throw grenades back without you- Throw grenades-

Hanging off ledges. Hanging off ledges and twin snakes. Breaks the fucking game. Yeah. Not meant for that shit. You still need to set up that sting operation where you hide a camera inside Willy's place just to get his reaction as he plays Jet Force Gemini again. Yeah, that's true.

But like, yeah, even if you're not interested in the game, the interview with Digital Foundry is like super, super solid. And the last thing I played, I'm not going to take up too much time because I've been speaking about it for the past few weeks as the ever-continuing saga of Corpse Party. So I finished the second one. You finished the second one once at Peach Party? No. You said that last-

Every week you're going to say that. That one's never getting localized, but I appreciate your moxie. He's getting some ground smoke going back. You need the butter to get the sand out. Yeah, exactly. Don't do that again for like three weeks, then bring it back. Or you can talk about it. The strongest.

So the first game takes place in the horror school, you're running away from the horrible Asian children like you would expect, and then it ends in a certain way and it's really cool. The second game is weird because it gives you the impression that it's a sequel, but then after a while you realize you're playing like the fault, what would have happened after some of the bad endings and stuff, and you're like, this isn't quite a sequel. It's some kind of alternate. And then you get some chapters in the second game where it's like, okay, I'm playing as

entire other characters and it's explaining their arcs and their thing. You get to the end of it and you're like, there was no sequel in there. Where was the sequel? And then if you transfer your save data from the first game into it, you unlock an eighth chapter and the eighth chapter is like, is the sequel. It's one chapter and it's the best chapter in the game because it's really good, not just because it's better than the others. It's way scarier.

It's super good. And then you get there and you finish this chapter and it's a prologue to the third game that didn't come out for years and it literally says to be continued in Corpse Party Blood Drive, like putting the title up there and then it plays the theme for the game and it's like, fuck, that's like, what other games do that where they end it with the title of the next game? It's very rarely. Very rarely.

Oh, Metal Gear. Infinite Undiscovered. MGS5. MGS5? Yeah, I guess so. Infinite Undiscovered. Infinite Undiscovered? Shit, yeah.

I can think of older games that did it, but it was always whatever the heck it was, two. Yeah, of course, exactly. But like, no, we get a shotgun that name in trademark it tomorrow. But yeah, like the second one's a super solid entry and it is mandatory playing for the third one because you need that last chapter because it entirely sets up the third game. And the third game is like Dream Warriors, where... Yeah. Yeah.

The best Freddy Krueger movie. Where the people get back up and they're like, we need to go back to the school and you get back to the school and it's really unique. I can't think of any other games like this where you get there and this is the third game where you're in the same environment, right? This time it's recreated in 3D and it's got like gorgeous lighting and stuff, but it's the same environment. So you get there and you're on the same page as them where you're like, I know how this

shit works. I know exactly what I got to do and you get told, okay, I need to go here and you go, bam, bam, bam, and you're doing it and you're like, yeah, I'm not the school's bitch anymore. Like it's really, really cool. And they throw some twists and it gets more interesting. Yeah, the only game I can think of that has that similar feeling is Yakuza 3 and 4. Yeah, shares the same. Like if you played the first two and you go back to Camerocho, it's like, Kiryu's supposed

to know that neighborhood like the back of his hand. And you do. And now I do as well. Yeah, exactly. And they throw some twists where like you go down a hallway and you're like, that wasn't right. That wasn't right. Why is there a stone staircase there in this school?

That doesn't make sense. But it's really cool. I'm still pretty early in the game, really excited to get back to it. Like themes change drastically. It's no longer just a horror thing, even though it's still by the same writers who wrote the first game in like 96 or something. Like the first game is pretty old at this point, really, really interesting trilogy of games.

I really, really like them. Can't wait to finish them. Super cool stuff. Cool. The only issue is like there's some technical hurdles that they that they tripped over going to 3D where like if you get into a room that has actual mirrors of which I found one. Oh, yeah. And you turn on your flashlight.

Yeah. Like you kind of kill the frame rate a little bit. Yeah. That's that. I like that. Yeah. You know, that's that's the first thing to. That's a charm, right?

That's you. If there's a mirror in your game and it actually has a reflection, your testers are gonna fuck around with that. The game is gonna crash there and then you're gonna have Adam Jensen break the mirror and that's the answer. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But and there's some bits where like.

And then it becomes a really good commentary for how he dealt with his change. Yeah, exactly. So that's a lot of sound effects. The game stutters a lot when some sound effects stream in and stuff. So it's it's got some technical issues, but like the trade off is the lighting is really, really pretty and like it's fine because it's just a top-down walker. Like it's not an action game, so it's fine. Really good game.

I really, really like it. Can't wait to keep playing it. Anyway, that's that's every day for me. Sorry. It's three out here. Yes. Just came out last week, but you need to play the first two. Yeah.

Absolutely. Talk about something. All right, Pat. Go ahead. All right. Let's let's do it. So before I talk about what I played this week, I have this thing. Hey, Mike, have you gotten your hands on a Steam controller?

No. Great. If you have one with me, I would hand it to you for testing purposes. Unfortunately, you're in the internet. That's not going to work. Yeah. So you're locked in. You don't have hands in the internet.

Matt has already held this thing. Liam? I had to go to the doctor right after because he said you have a boiling arthritis in there. Okay. Hold on. Don't taint it. I will. Well, we tainted it on Twitter and I want you to get a feel for it and make maybe make

whatever sound effect you want, but hold off your judgment until I also give it to the world. So we can get that first. Let's go unbiased. Just, just, you know, yeah, I'm not going to not going to say anything until we get there. All right. And make sure to make sure to rub your, your use the deep.

Okay. For those who are listening out there, eyebrows are being raised and slight. Can I ask a question? Is someone from the internet? Ask please. Um, so I don't have one to touch obviously, but from looking at it, the thing that I was most reminded of, and you're all, well, some of you are old enough that you probably remember this because you talked about spectrum games.

Yeah. Um, do you remember the third party controller called the turbo touch 360? Yes, I do. I saw that in ads and comic books. Yeah. From everything that I've seen of the steam controller, it reminds me slightly of that for like the D pad. Yeah.

No, I totally agree. All right. So Liam's done with it. I'm going to hand it to Wally. Wally, feel free to annunciate your feelings. Now, now, Wally, remember, remember, Wally, a few minutes ago, you said, uh, not a minute ago, but an hour ago, you were holding another controller, you said, that's the worst D pad I've ever felt.

Now you're holding the steam controller D pad. Do a pretzel motion on that. Raging storm. Yeah. There you go. Oh, wow. So this thing, what's your, what's your first feel reaction? It feels like it has the same quality as an Ouya controller.

Yes. Except the Ouya controller comes, it costs $99 and comes with a console and a useful HDMI cable. Whereas this costs $60 and I assume only comes with a useful mini USB cable. It also comes with a little wireless dongle for, so you can plug it in. This is poor. The build quality is bad. This should have been a slab dunk.

And it doesn't have good weight to it. So it's going to be, it's going to be harder for the mic to pick up. Yeah. So, okay. I want, I want you to use the D pad while we're silent. It is without a doubt the loudest controller I have ever used. I, okay. GameCube controllers are loud, but only due to the, the shoulder bugs, everything else

is. And also when you're playing smash, well, when you're playing smash, you have to, you have to. This thing is bordering on arcade stick noise during general use. And hold on, give me that back. Yeah. So if you turn it on, that weird haptic thing, feel that stupid, control your mouse with that.

Oh yeah. It has a little rumble on it. Guess what? You can't tell because we're talking. That shit's super loud too. Is it? I can hear it just a little bit. Okay.

So the thing like with the stick controller, the big, the big advertising point was the two haptic pads. And those are just about as big as I thought they would be. Yeah. And they're just as in the way as I feared they would be as well. So, hand me that back. I'm going to need that to do something. A lot of games are going to need those four face buttons.

So why is it curved way the fuck out of that way? Just fuck you. Yeah. So here's the deal, right? So I have a tiny baby. Oh, sorry. After you, Mike. It's okay.

I was just going to, I was going to ask you a question before, but there wasn't an opportunity because yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. What's your question, man? That is the D-pad. Yeah. The thing about that.

Is that, well, because I don't know what to call it, right? No, I need to be worried. Is that actually a touchpad that will... It's just a haptic touchpad that has a cross on it. Okay. To make you feel better. Thank you for clearing that up. Then what clicks?

It's a like, imagine if you had a big, flat, like, anal, like, fucking, it's just one big button. Okay. You know the Madcats fight pad? Yeah. Like, imagine if the surface of the D-pad on that was shaved down by, like, half, right? So it's about, like, two millimeters high and it's also haptic. So you can press it to get directions out of it, but it's also sensitive towards your

touchpad. Imagine you took a Xbox 360's analog stick and widened it out to the size of a pizza and smashed it down and clicking on the left stick on the different sides is what your D-pad is. You feel the... Ah, okay. I could barely do a pretzel motion on pad when I still played on pad. That's why Skullgirls has those.

Yeah. There you go. But the serious question is, can you play FPS's on it? Because I mean, that's, like, what it's designed for. So let's go into my experience with this device. Well, just as an aside, yeah, grab it back, Liam. Real quick before your experience, did you mention this on the phone the other day, how the X-button is located really deep into the controller?

The X-button's depth to the middle of the controller, it overlaps with where the Steam button is. So if you at home have an Xbox One or a PS4 pad, imagine if the square or X-button was like overlapping... Where the PlayStation or Xbox One was. Yeah. The PlayStation or Xbox One. That's back to me.

I don't know why, but past that. That's ridiculous. The thing about me is when I first said, I said, these are the worst, everything on the shoulders, get it off. It's a complete page one rewrites the shoulder area, like you went to the doctor and he fucked up your shoulders. Like, I am giant ass hands that can actually hold the Duke X-button controller. You have hand hands?

Yes, he has hand hands. And the buttons, the face buttons feel like little M&Ms. Yeah. It makes it difficult to use a stick. So however, my thumb has to reach over for that. You can see my hands right now. Yeah. I have tiny baby hands.

I can't actually reach the X-button on this controller without completely repositioning. So I saw during this week, all I saw was your Steam account popping up with various games over and over and over again. So run us through it, man. All right. So I get the controller. Right? I plug it in and I sync it.

It syncs no problem. That's fine. And then you play your favorite game right away. I said, hey, I'm playing Transformers Devastation. That game uses a controller. That seems like a decent test. Let's give it a shot. Load up Transformers Devastation.

None of the buttons work except for Y and that's set to enter. The analog stick has weird haptics that I can't turn off. The triggers don't work. I can't even get into the gameplay of Transformers Devastation because the menu is totally unnavigatable. So it doesn't default to X-input layout? So I look and all of the prompts are keyboard prompts. So I go, that's weird. So I back out and check it.

No, it's set to gamepad mode, which should emulate an X-input device. Yeah. So I asked, there's a guy, Cray, what's his name? Cray something? Crayd. Oh, Crayd Juke. Crayd Juke or whatever. He's in the Steam topic on Gaff and he works for that.

He's a great poster. And I'm like, OK, so this shit's busted. He says, some games like DOS boss games, they just don't work with them. Like Tempo, the badass elephant, doesn't work with this at all. Right? Oh, no. Because it's just no support. And that's a bug and that'll get fixed.

But gamepad mode should work. So I try Transformers Devastation, Resident Evil HD Remake, Resident Evil 4, fucking Killing Floor 2, and like six other controller games, all of them, broken, completely busted, same problem, nothing. How was the FPS? So I tried one of the indie games, one of the shit storm games we did. And I tried that and that kind of worked. But the buttons were still ruinous, like just fucked up.

And I looked at it, well, there's no custom profile made for it. It's like, shouldn't there have a default? No. So, after multiple days of troubleshooting, I find out that Steam, like not only do you have to be in big picture mode, you have to have Steam overlay on. I turn Steam overlay off so that when my friends on Steam log on, I don't have to blur their names out when we're recording videos. But that breaks the Steam controller.

Oh. Wait, really? Yes. If you don't, you know who else is surprised? Everyone who was troubleshooting it with me who didn't think to tell me to turn Steam overlay back on. So Steam overlay gone, broken. It also means you have to use big picture mode.

Problem with big picture mode is when you want to leave big picture mode, you move your controller and you can go to exit. And then you go to turn your controller off, which is a long press on the Steam button. Unfortunately, the guide button is the input for turning big picture mode back on. So if Steam is still on and you turn this controller off, it will register that long press and then turning the controller off as one input and turn Steam big picture mode back on, which means you then have to get your mouse and keyboard and turn Steam big big picture mode back off.

Again. But after you turn off the controller. Every time you turn off the controller. Okay. Unless you exit Steam directly. Well, going back to change. I mean, that seems like a thing they would fix almost immediately, though. Yeah.

I think. There's not a lot of time, though. Yeah, well, of the things that are surprising to you, it's one of the stories this week, that Mac owners got the biggest surprise, which is finding out that the controller doesn't work at all on Macs. There is. And like, great. I mean, that happens.

But at the same time, it's like, why wouldn't they have let you know that in advance? Transformers is put out by a small indie publisher, I believe. So I decided, okay, what's the game I'm going to use? What's the game that people are recommending? What's the perfect test for these sit on your couch and play a mouse game full with this thing? And it's Civ 5. Because Civ 5 has no action.

I can take as long as I want, and it's just replacing the mouse movement. And Pharaxes has an official controller layout up on Steam right now that gets selected that maps the buttons to like a civilization rev situation. That's when I ran into the problem of using the right haptic thing for mouse control is the worst. What it does is it's emulating a trackball. That's what it's trying to do. So you can play golden tea whenever you want.

Like on it. Wait, really? Yeah. It's not like you press and it goes that way? You can set it to like a standard like laptop mouse pad, but the proper quote unquote way that everyone says is the best and is the version written into like developer like profiles. Like Civ 5's thing is Pharaxes. It's emulating a trackball.

And you can go in and you can say, I want trackball friction to be low. So when you flick it, it goes quite far before stopping. Or I want to be high or it'll come to a dead stop. It's pretending to be a trackball. Now I don't like trackballs, and I certainly don't like fake trackballs maxed to pads. And I spent until 7 in the fucking morning last night messing with every sensitivity, friction, fucking setting. I could not find any version.

I spent like four hours just messing with mouse settings. I kept having two, like multiple problems. Either the sensitivity is too high, so high that I can't select smaller things. Like I can't choose the difference between research or like a civil policy. Or it's so low that my thumb just flies right off the side of the thing. And what you're supposed to be doing is, for big movements, you do a giant flick and then put your hand down on it to stop it. That's how Kid Icarus is.

And then use small motions after that. Dude, that is no mouse replacement by any means. Did you then turn it off and try it as like a laptop touchpad you said? That one doesn't work well either because it makes the distance problem even worse. Having mouse acceleration on mitigates the distance problem, but then it's less accurate. So I thought... Wait, so isn't there... Is there no way to map it to like, you touch this part of the pad and it goes to that part

of the screen? So you can... No, no. There's no way to map it to quadrants, to my knowledge. You can set it up so that it's mapped to buttons. You can set it up so that it's mapped to your mouse or your look or your digital joystick with some console games. And that's really ghetto.

Having this thing pretend to be an analog stick is the worst thing I've ever felt in my life. Playing Transformers when I got it working and like holding it to the... Just holding right on the deep, on the right side of the thing to move the fucking camera over. Oh God, the worst. The absolute worst. What was the most successful game?

Cib 5. Wow. And like I got to a point after four or five hours in which like I could play this. But why would you? But it's miserable. Like I was still after a couple hours missing prompts and I thought I was going nuts because I was bitching about this on Twitter and I was going in that Neogath topic and everyone was like, this is the best.

This is going to replace that. I'm playing everything. People even said, I'm playing Cib 5 on my couch. It's such a great time. Like am I crazy? Am I the only person that's fucking it? This thing is terrible. And then I looked like in a broader sense and like general reception is pretty poor.

This is no mouse and keyboard replacement. Not even supplement. And the build quality is baffling. You know, you want to know why the back triggers feel so bad? Because they pop off and it's just a single sheet of plastic pressing mechanical micro switches. Or macro, like terrible. Press it, press it.

Okay, there it is. Because yeah, like the build is bad on this, but like if the tech worked, it would have at least had that going for it. The one thing I see is that some people are able to get used to it and I've seen some videos, I forget the guy's name, there's a guy putting out a lot of videos where he's rolling through Doom 3 and he's doing it and he's doing it almost as good as like an FPS. Like they're an in-camera shot, like a picture, there is, there is, I wouldn't believe so

that I couldn't. And then he's using it like a trackball, which sucks. The real test. Trackballs are amazing if you're good with them. Yeah, but no one is. So you got to take a pillage from the days of Dreamcast Quake players versus PC Quake players. And it was really close.

And have people using this quite against people with mouse WASD and just see what that KD ratio is. If you spend enough time making a custom profile with custom mouse settings and messing this up, you do get higher precision if you spend the tens of hours to get used to it and you set it up. But the feel of the controller and the placement of the buttons and these triggers is so bad that I can't imagine why you would spend that time. Because the thing with the controller is you can get used to it, but pressing buttons

and just getting bad feedback, or I don't like pressing this button, I'm used to it, but every other major controller out just what I... There's cool gimmicks, like these triggers are actually two buttons, like there's the soft press and then the hard press and those are discrete inputs. These lower triggers are a decent idea, that's why the 360 pro thing has them as well. Yeah, sorry, the Xbox One Pro has them and they were placed like X, A, B, Y button inputs. Is that out yet? No, it's not.

No, it's not. That one I will also bring into view. You can't afford it yet. No, I can't. I saved up my allowance and got three jobs for it. And you people aren't the only people I put this in the hands of. Every single person that I put this into some of these hands, they immediately go, oh, oh. What did your dad have to say?

My dad would look at this and just put it down and go back to solitaire, man. It would be such a horrible. Or the shits and the giggles. Did you try a fighting game? I tried skull girls, actually. That worked. Oh. Oh.

Well, from my side, did the controller work? When I fixed the steam overlay problem, it did work as emulated as a game pad, right? Oh. But you have to use like that. You can use the deep pad or the analog stick. Also the analog stick, not that good either. Like it's the most normal part of the whole thing. It feels like that we use pro sticks.

It has a very tight radius, which I actually don't like, but. So dropped your bread and butters all over the place. Dude, like, no, I went in and I did a jab with Phillyia and said, I'm done. Wait, so were you playing with the right pad as the buttons or with the button buttons? No, with the regular buttons. Oh, wow. That's really uncomfortable. Dude, it's like, I can't reach the X button normally with my thumb length.

Yeah, you have to. And that's jab. You've got to work for your jab, son. You've got to work for that jab. What a mess. I'm not one to usually like complain about the price of something, but like the build quality relative to the $60 price is, I guess I figure the functionality is fucking offensive when you look at how good the build quality is on the Xbox one and PS4 controllers.

And this is right down there with the UIA controllers, but the UIA controller costs like 20, 30 bucks and the final argument on the UIA controller was always you could always plug it out and shove anything else in there. Yeah. And guess what? On a PC, you're probably better off doing that. And for the, and the thing is, is like, I get this replaces mouse movement in a lot of ways.

If you plug in your DualShock 4 and put in DS4 Windows for general purpose mouse use, it's not intensive. You can use that thing's touchpad and that you can also re-nap every single one of those buttons to keys like, like a Georgia key kind of thing. And it's a good controller also. So I could see this like a couple of driver updates later. I could see all those problems that you like, like the software problems you're talking about.

Yeah. All that can get fixed. Yeah. It can all get patched. But when everyone has to band together as a community to make something somewhat functional, there's a problem. But it happens, but it's just, it's just like, you can't patch the feel. So I got really angry about this when I saw.

Well, the battering wonders if you're actually right about that. Yeah. I got really upset when I saw people talking about it and even Valve employees going like, well, this is the early limited release. And some people even saying, I'm not sure if they were all employees, but like, this is the beta before they hit store shelves. I didn't sign up for a controller beta. I just ordered it off ebgames.com.

Okay. Okay. And the idea is that the community profiles will be done by the time it hit stores on November 10th. And that problem will just solve itself and people will just find out, but here's the other problem. There's currently no way to vote or upvote any of the community profiles. That's like alphabetical or time-based or some shit.

So you have Jimmy's profile above the official company profile. So on the, on the shield, right? They have a map, like a universal mapper system, right? That lets people map the buttons to different touches or like you can, you can say a stick, like you should set, you say like left stick will be a virtual stick here and you pop it on where the little stick should be on the game, right? It really, really robust mapping system that's actually really strong. And it has that and like cloud-based mapping.

So you, you boot up any Android title, you search and then they're ranked and they have likes and dislikes and people can write comments about the quality of the mapping. And you need that like dislike system because you always see the top one and you go for it and you're like, yep, played perfect. Thanks for that timely and video shield. Any, any, well, it's like, it's baffling that valve of all companies didn't get that. It's like, I get that this thing is a customizable piece of hardware and that's awesome. Do you want to make your weird crazy setup that you personally like for like torment

or something? Yeah. That's great. But the basic functionality on most of these games is so bad. I don't use X-Patter because I don't want to go through that process and I shouldn't have to to play like a regular video. It's crazy. It's so bad.

I guess it shows like valve does a lot of good things and very smart and this is just like, you know, a drop in the bucket while, while we sure fucked up that, at least in this stage, you know, like not infallible. I'd be interested in a revision. Yeah. Definitely. That would be cool. That's it.

Yeah. Like I want to see where this is at. This is the Duke. Yeah. We'll see where it's at in a couple of months when they get those, those updates going. But like, yeah, hardware wise, I don't know what to say man. So you've got a controller, you've got a mouse and keyboard. That's fine for now.

I guess it feels like they tried to make something to fix all problems and they've ended up causing more problems. And it fixes zero. And it fixes zero. Like, I don't, I can't think of any games off the top of my head that would work better with it. You know what I mean? The saying goes.

I'm like, again, having these extra triggers on the bottom is great. That's actually a fantastic thing and you could add those to an Xbox one or a PS4 pad and it would only be bad. So jack of all trades, master of none. Jack of no trades, master of none. You're nobody. Like, maybe it's really good for champ man, but I don't know. I'm sure it is.

Okay. So in good news, I, once I was done with that, I was like, okay, I'm going to play some real video games with real controllers. So I played and beat Transformers Devastation in one sitting and it was not a long sitting either. It was like four hours, wasn't it? Yes, it was. That game is the pinnacle of all of Platinum's classic problems.

That is the shortest, valueless game they have ever made by a gigantic margin. There are two levels. You didn't play Cora. Did you say good news? What's that? You didn't play Cora. Except for Cora. Except for Cora.

But Cora didn't cost me $77. You paid $77 where'd you buy it? No, Steam doesn't add tax. So a normal person buying it out of a store would pay $77. I only paid $64. It's a $50 disc in Canada. Well, I bought it off Steam at $64. Oh, shit.

So first things first, this is a Platinum character action game. That's correct. Transformers Devastation. It sits on top of most of what's in your Steam list already just on that. No. This game has serious problems. Okay, go on. Go on.

First of all, it has two levels. It has two final sets. No. Because later on in the end game, I noticed that I was going through the Proud Star backwards. Proud Star. Sure, but the levels are the enemies. It's like saying a beat em up has one level because the layouts are all identical. I suppose.

But like compared to Revengeance or Bayonetta, those are actual discrete levels. Yeah, sure. Also in beat em ups, the layouts aren't identical. The layout might be a long hallway, but there's like doors and up and down and all that stuff. But what Liam means is like left to right. I mean 90% of beat em ups are pretty strictly left to right though. In this game, there is the city level and it's large and you spend half of the game in that and then there's the Proud Star level, which you spend 40% of the game in that and

then there's that Cybertronian hallway near 70% at the end. I mean there's the bridge and island as well, but you can leave those out if you want. Yeah, I guess. Well, the island's not a level. You just find one or two boss fights there. No, the bridge and the island is a level. That chapter where you go across the gate and then you're crossing it like doing fights. Profoundly limited.

I don't like how the stat system where you level up your character implies that you should use one character mostly. I don't like the differences between many of the characters. I think Optimus is great. I think Grimlock is awesome and Mobile Beast's slide is cool. I think Cy... I think the slide is OP. I think the slide is the best.

I think Sideswipe and Wheeljack don't need to be there, period. Wheeljack's got really interesting sideswipers. I sense that the weapons are the same moveset between all the different characters. I like Bubblebee, Optimus and Grimlock definitely the best. They're the standouts, but that doesn't mean the options shouldn't be there. I don't find any significant difference. Because you're leveling up your character just by fighting, Optimus was getting stronger and stronger as I played the game.

I think the reason those characters are there is because Transformers has not so much for me or you or maybe all of us because we're not really deep into Transformers lore. I think those characters are there for people that like sideswipers. I'm just annoyed that both Sideswipe and Wheeljack's primary weapon is the same weapon. You switch them out a lot if you want, but it's mainly about the wheeljack's gun stuff too. The teleport dash, I think it should have tracked harder and should have been a longer dash to make up for how amazing the...

It should have been a free teleport to it. I think that every time the flying enemies that shoot you are in the fight and they're the only enemies there, that game turns to shit because the shooting in that game is average and you have to shoot them multiple times to knock them down so you can combo them. Ah, but not if you just shoot them once with a headshot. Then you get a free Transform attack and you just rush them into the air and you automatically get the rush up to the next one. Fair enough.

I think that the decision to go with Bandetta's dodge with Revengeance's enemy telegraph is a huge fucking mistake. Really? Why is that? Because you can just... Like in Revengeance you had the telegraph, but you didn't get slowed down on time unless you parried it. Did you play on anything above normal?

No, I played on normal. Okay, because it is really hard after that and the telegraphing... Because enemies don't do the platinum thing where they stop attacking when they're outside of camera range. In this game they totally attack you from completely out of sight. Yeah, but you still get the sound. And you get the audio problem. You get the sound every time.

Yeah. That little shine... I hate that there are upgradeable and stronger weapons in this game because in the first level I got a really good lightning hammer that made every other weapon I got in the entire rest of the game. That is wise trivia. That is true. That is shit.

And then I just blew through the entire game, no problem, and the final boss took me 15 seconds to beat. The hammer's possible. The hammer can be pushed to like... And I had a hammer that was like, I think it was at like 11,000 damage and 1100 damage rather. And it was rated like C, you know. I have a 23,000 damage SS hammer.

Fuck. You need them for prime difficulty. I felt like there are three types of bosses in this game. There's a small guy with telegraph attacks that maybe he'll fly around. There's a big guy who...the two big guys are more or less the same. And then there's Soundwave who has an AOE and small guys that attack you. And Shockwave is interesting. And Blitzwing is different.

This barely. He is a bit...well, okay. Then Motor Master is also different too with his electric sword. I mean, if you don't count the... Like, I didn't find any significant difference in their attack. It definitely doesn't have the variety that Bayo or Bayo 2 has with flying bosses or running dragon bosses and such. Like, it feels like a $15 downloadable game that I paid almost $74 and beat in four hours.

And like, every other Platinum game, like Vanquish, even Clover Stuff, except for O-Comics because that game is crazy long, I immediately want to beat that again on a harder difficulty. There is so little environment variation, enemy variation, boss variation, weapon variation in this game that I never want to...I deleted it. It would be to grab...it would be switching up characters is what it would be. But they're not that different. Grimlock's the most different. And I played with him and had the game.

So I beat it this week as well. I'm profoundly disappointed with that game. I beat it this week as well. I think it's a terrible value. I had a completely opposite experience from you in that. I found it was immensely fun to play. And like, after going through it and like leveling up my bubble bee and like having a great time with him, I switched to Optimus a couple of times.

I absolutely want to go back in with other characters and get the hang of their movements as well. Did you play as Grimlock yet? Because Grimlock's really quick. His grappling system is... I played as often...I played as all of them for at least one full level. And after I played a side swipe and Wheeljack, I went, ugh, never again. Wheeljack's the weakest one for sure.

Never again. I hate their default weapons. That Shockwave fight is the coolest thing. The Shockwave fights are amazing. Such a land, like a country one. You know what ruined me on the Shockwave fight? It was so hard. I couldn't beat it at all.

I had no chance because I was using an axe. I was using an axe for Optimus and I was like, man, this guy has a million health. I can barely hurt him at all. I was using a high level axe that was relatively rare. And I get hit now and then and the fight will last 10 minutes and it's like, oh wow, I can't beat him. Then I switch to the hammer and beat him in like 40 seconds and skipped multiple phases of his fight.

There was a point where I hit him and he chained into a different phase and then the second hit of my combo hit him and he chained into a different fucking phase. And as I was going to say, the Shockwave fight was definitely the highlight. For me, second was fighting all the Constructicons at the same time, like when you're all in a group. That's a really cool moment. That's a really fun fight. And you know, obviously you have your Platinum escalation, everything has to go to space

and it definitely does. Those space battles are terrible. They are absolutely awful. You can't see the floor and like the diagonal line. The one with the Starscream. I was going to say the Starscream one is a problem. You just couldn't keep track of them. That one's really hard.

I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to do the orbital cannon fight from Zone of the Enders 2. But it just ends up hard to orient yourself. What you have to do is you have to press the lock-on button to keep constantly looking at them and trying to keep track of them. But even then, that one doesn't work. So I definitely do agree that this feels more like a Korra-sized game than it does. Korra was 15, but it was also like two and a bit hours and there was only one character

whose moveset wasn't as big as... Yeah, okay. So this should be 25. So if Korra had multiple playable characters, like you would still kind of think, oh, but it's a smaller game. You're not that different, man. It's the weapons that make them different. And ultimately, I do feel that it's a Korra-sized experience.

No, no, but that's what I'm saying. The weapons are the movesets. And then the characters just let you get a different ability attached to each one. While the shortness of it is something, and the price tag for it is definitely something that is a negative, the experience you get within that short time I felt was fantastic. I don't know. When I beat it, I was like, yep. All right.

Like how Matt reacts to games he doesn't care about. I was like, yeah, can't believe I just beat it. I guess... I don't beat games. Like at the end with that hammer, I just read crackers. Hey. I beat the last few games I beat were like Shadow Warrior and Malphyrnstein. That escalation to space doesn't mean a lot when both boss fights combined aren't even

as long as they're cutscenes, and I couldn't hear all the dialogue because I beat them so fast. Mike, by any chance, are you a fan of PlatinumGames? Yes, I have not played Transformers. I mean, I don't have anything to contribute to this conversation. No, I really don't. No, I was kind of just... It's not that.

It's like we were just flying overhead with the character action stuff, or if you kind of know Devil May Cry a little bit. I mean, I know them to a large extent. I just like that the Transformers one is one of the ones that they do so that they can keep doing the other games. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. It's very obvious.

And Korra as well. The Korra as well. The stuff where it's like you take an IP and you... After those two games, I do hope they continue working with Activision because I think they're fun. I also like Korra. Guys, Korra is the weakest. Coming to this is...

Sorry, I have to do that. I was just going to say, personally, let's say they need to do one more. Let's say there is a three-game contract with Activision in general. Korra, Transformers, I would not mind a really nice... Spongebob. Spongebob. Why not? Another ass name, I wouldn't mind a little very concise four to five-hour Spider-Man

fossil combat game. That's it. I just want a little Spider-Man comic and I don't want dumb missions, and good web-swinging. Yeah, I was going to say, just bring back the web-swinging from two and you'll say it's bad. He knows what he's talking about. Get them old. I don't know new games.

That guy, the swinging Spider-Man 2 was done by one guy who didn't have the approval, so he had to sneak into the offices at like Surlin at night and do it himself. I fully believe it. There are actually a lot of features in games that people love that were done by one person. You know why? Passion, right? Well, I mean, passion is the reason why they were done by one person, but no. The reason is because a lot of times when something is designed by one person and executed

by one person, they know exactly what they want it to feel like, they know exactly what they want it to do, they know exactly how they want it to work, they don't have to explain it to anyone else. They just do it. That makes a huge difference. Of course, because then you just show it to them and it's like, oh, I see. Yes, and it's not like the thing that happens a lot, I know I'm hijacking the conversations on it.

I know, hijack away, man. I could talk about Transformers at all. I mean, the show, yes, I could talk about that forever. The game, I didn't play. When you have to show people something that's not quite done, then they play it a little bit and they're like, well, it's missing this thing, it's missing this other thing. This bitch should work like this and you're like, yeah, but it's not finished yet. Yeah, of course.

With something like those systems where one person just does the whole thing, they don't ever have that intermediate step. They never have to show it to anyone else until it's completely done and it satisfies them and it has all the parts that they think they need. That makes a huge difference because you actually get to finish it without other people in the middle being like, no, it should work like this and then you have to change that and then that changes the goal that you were going for. I'm not at all surprised that the web-swinging in Spider-Man 2 was done by one person because

it turned out fantastic and it feels like one mind was guiding the entire thing, you know what I mean? And again, he was told not to do it and he said, we don't have the time for this, don't bother doing it. I'll make the time. You know what that means and he's like, I don't care. But that also explains why the rest of Spider-Man 2 is not great. But everything else about it is not great.

But the main locomotion is. But I love how it's like when a new Spider-Man trailer comes out for a new game, the first thing everybody does. The last one was as close as it could have been. It's in Spider-Man 2 web-swinging and they go, no. And I go, OK, I'm out. Did you swing it off the sky? Yeah.

That's why Shattered Dimensions is fine because it's not open-world, it's level-based so I don't expect, like, I shouldn't expect that. Just really quickly, because I want to chime in a bit on Transformers, I agree with Pat on a few things like Wheeljack and Side Swipe are nothing. You know Wheeljack's main thing is his guns, right? Yeah, I don't want to use guns after him. No, I'm just making sure. Because if you go through with the wrenches, you'll be like, yeah, this isn't great.

I gave him that, I gave him the fucking swords, and then I realized, oh, he's got good guns. Fuck that. Yeah. I didn't finish the game, obviously, but I said last week I was playing a bit and I got up to like a few levels into the proud star or whatever. And like, I just think the game is a fun, colorful brawler that should be dumbed down a bit for Generation 1. I'm not familiar with character action games, and I think maybe some of your complaints are

kind of that. Maybe Platinum was like, well, could we do this? I mean, I was like, I don't know. I don't really like the drop system that much. I would rather have just a couple weapons for each guy, not a million, because I'm actually overloaded with choice. Do I want a blaster that shoots lightning fists that's a little tricky? I don't know.

I like Prime's Axe. Can I just stick with Prime's Axe? And I can, but I'm getting weapon drops so frequently I don't know if I'm, if I should. I'm almost overloaded with choice. Yeah, I hear you. And that's not... There's a variety of things, depending. There's fire, it lets you burn enemies, and they take damage over time and stuff like that.

You won't know how to optimize right away as a new player, that much is clear. Yeah. And that's not really a bad thing. It's just like, eh, but I still think it's just like where I last played it. I'm like, this is just a fun thing, and I love all the, I love like the lore of like all the voice acting is completely on point and the story's stupid, just like it should be. Oh, it's really dumb, yeah.

And like, I think that's a long point. Lots of tech, Dargon. And I also agree it's too expensive. It's expensive. For what? I, I, I like, I like bitched about Ground Zeroes. Like Ground Zeroes is way better value than this. Because...

So of all the things we're talking about and like changes and things like extending the length or the story and such, the one thing I would want more than anything is making the Decepticons playable. Absolutely. That would be, to me, that would be the one major change. And I wouldn't want the game to be longer because I feel that every time they try and switch it up, like the turret sequence or the top-down sequence or the platform, I think all those are just absolutely fucking terrible.

Oh, the turret sequences were good. Oh, no. They were good. They were super tight. They were fine. Yeah. The top-down one is the absolute worst. The top-down one is the worst.

And the chasing stuff is terrifying. Some of those, like, Alpine missions were pretty, really ridiculously hard. Do you mean the challenge missions? Yeah. Oh, duh. Crazy hard. Like, the chasing stuff. I, I, I, I'm, I wish...

Fight like the Autobots at the same time. Yeah. And there's a super cool track that only plays in that fight. Crazy. But you go into this thing realizing they had a budget, they had time constraints, and they can't make, like, you know, proper triple-A console, platinum big thing, then, or Nintendo would just go, hey, here's a chip, we don't fucking care, make whatever you want. We don't even care if this sells, you know, and then they were just given carte blanche.

They obviously had to put in some things that I don't think Platinum's were ideas. Like, drops. I don't think a Platinum employee said, yeah, drops. And that being said, though, if this is the, if this is the, if this is the quote, unquote, B team effort, quote, unquote, I will take this while we wait for scale-bound and the other, like, like, mainline games, whatever Star Fox is, you know, I'll take it. If I'm going to be fair to Transformers, it could not, and I could not have played it a worse time because the day before I beat Witcher 3 finally, and my hour count on that

clocks to 120, beat every quest in that game except for the DLC, didn't get all the points on the map because that's absurd. And I had a wonderful moment where I beat that game, and, you know, there's multiple endings and there's 100 permutations for everybody's different thing. And I beat it and got my ending, and it was very bittersweet, and it was like, oh, no notions and all that shit. And I went and looked it up, and I chose the right answer in every single story scenario in the entire game.

So you got the cure ending? I got what is, so I got every, every, because there's the ending, which is a cutscene and a, you know, gameplay, and then there's vignettes of, like, such and such, become a lawyer and such and such, you know, what you do. The stuff that's related to your choices. Right. Yeah. I got the most positive version of every single vignette, and I got the best ending

for the characters involved. And the most interesting thing is that I thought that was the best, most perfect, most appropriate ending to that series. Not just the game, only to find out and get into arguments with people, because there are three endings, like, main ones. One's really bad, and the other two are good. And people can't agree as to which one is the actual good ending, because they're one's bittersweet and the other's not, which I found really, really interesting.

I watched both the other ones, but they all feel totally appropriate to end the series. Expect the Witcher 4 to follow the new series. There will not be... Wait, you watched the extra endings that you didn't get? Yeah, I watched them on YouTube. Huh. I guess this must be a new thing. What do you mean?

I don't know. If there were more endings that I didn't get, I usually go back and play it again if I want to see it. The game's 120 hours long. Yeah, you played through. Yeah. So. Yeah.

Very good. Come on, man. I got all the endings for Valkyrie Profile. I got all the endings for Chrono Trigger. But also, I still want to play this game's DLC and all that, but I'm not going to do that again. Oh, God. I told it.

So, yeah, they all feel appropriate to the ending of the series, not even necessarily the game. So, originally when I started... You are right, Mike, that is a new thing, that jumping online on YouTube is now something that you can do with the video, to find out all the endings that you didn't choose. I'm old. It's 10 minutes long. I'm not going to play 120 hours to get it 10 minutes long.

No, it's okay. You cheated on me. You cheated on me. Well, I guess it just reminds me of, like, oh, yeah, this new game came out, like Portal 2 came out. I'm going to go watch a Let's Play on YouTube instead of actually playing it. Well, portally. I don't get watching Let's Plays.

I don't get those two. It's something that is... I get watching spooky Let's Plays, though. It's something that, I guess, is like, you always want to have something where the commentary is adding to the experience and fun for people that are watching. I hope we can achieve that one day. Yeah, but you don't want it to be a replacement for going out and getting the game, you know? I feel like...

Well, there's no replacement for playing it. Yeah, I feel like in many instances, in most instances, whenever we do like a video for something, it's like, yo, look at this game, you want to go get it. Go play it. Go get it. Or not. Or not. Yeah, really don't stay with the fuck away from this.

You'll see fans that give every permeation of, well, I will get it. I can't get it right now because of funds or time or whatever. Oh, yeah. And then you'll see. Well, I'm glad to see what it is because now I hate it and I won't buy it. Or like, I will buy it. I watched the first part of their OP. I'm not going to watch the rest because I'm just going to go straight out and buy it.

But don't replace a sale with views, you know? Like that's... Unless it's Bear Grylls. Unless it's drinking your own piss. Yeah. So, probably... So, when I started playing this game a couple months ago, I remember talking on the podcast like, it helps if you played the earlier games because you'll have background of who

characters are, what their relationships are in the state of the world, but it's not necessary. I want to take that back now because this game builds up to a final boss and then the game goes for like 20 hours after that. And when that happens, like, let's say you have, within your main big world altering side quests and your main quest, you have 20 characters. Like 15 of those just show up and the last time you saw them was in the other games and they barely tell you who they are and they're like, oh, you remember this and Geralt knows who they are and like, oh yeah, I remember you, let's go do the thing.

And then the thing ends up being something from one of the earlier games that is literally never brought up in Witcher 3 once, unless you read books or like notes. And there are people that, I was talking about on Twitter, that are go, I don't know what happened at the end. I have no idea what happened. That jumped into the series for the first time in 3. I fought the boss and someone jumped through a portal and what the hell. But for somebody who played Witcher 1 and Witcher 2, it's like, oh, they brought that back!

That's so crazy! That's the best! Dude, that's the tragedy of like games that get so huge that like the end of the trilogy is the big one that sells millions and a whole bunch of people jump in at that point. It's like that entire massive thing. And then go, buuut, what happened? Well, but the alternative to that is like, you have the books where the third book in the trilogy starts with like, I am this person.

I live here and like they give background anyway and for the people that already read it, you're like, ugh. So, this is really interesting because this game has books that preceded and other games. And it's interesting because everyone that you didn't, everybody that you, the girl would only know from the books and is showing up in this game for the first time. There's a character called Deekstra. He used to be an intelligence guy, he's a dick, right? You run into him and eventually a person who read the books would go, oh, that's Deekstra.

What an asshole. But he gets his own long-term multi-quest introduction as a character and you get to know him through various events. So even if you didn't read those books, I still know who that guy is. People from the earlier games literally just walk, get off a boat and say, hey, I'm here. You remember me from like two weeks ago in the universe or whatever. And Geralt goes, yeah, I remember you, you're an asshole and you go, wait, what, who is that?

I don't know who that is. Well, not me, but people who didn't play Witcher 1 or Witcher 2. Like, it's really, really weird and like they go crazy with that stuff in amazing ways where you, at the end of Witcher 1, you have a boss fight in a crazy location that you'll never, ever get to go again. In Witcher 3, you get to go there again and have a little campfire and the guy goes, oh, yeah, that's where you fought the final boss of Witcher 1. Wasn't that nuts?

And you go, oh, really, that's, oh, cool. Just makes s'mores in the field of lilies where you killed the boss. Oh, no. But you didn't know you were going there. You just happened to, and you just walked in. Yeah. Making s'mores, I know. And characters that I was sure were dead.

There's snakes crawling through the grass. Characters that I was 100% on, there's no way that character, oh, wow. Not only are you not dead, you're going to be a main factor in the end game. Boy, I hope you played Witcher 2. It's really, it's really weird. So if you're, I would highly recommend playing those earlier games. Otherwise, you're shit out a lot. Because that last 10 hours gets real confusing.

The other thing that I want to say is that I love how they, so the ending is determined by like 10 choices or something like that. When the end game starts, you get like one of those choices every hour until the end of, and then they stop for like several hours and then you fight the entire final boss sequence and go through a whole epilogue before it happens. So if you're the kind of person who would want to do the old thing of, so instead of looking it up on YouTube, you'd save Scummit and go back to before the final boss and change your mind.

It's actually really hard. You have to go back a long time and a bunch of boss fights in order to change that, which I actually really like. Super fantastic game. 120 hours well spent. That game cost me $44 and that is like probably my game of the year right now. It's unbelievable. That game's amazing.

The DLC is apparently super amazing, I haven't played it yet. That's my week. Well, we're in the time. We ran really long on this, but it's okay. I'll keep mine brief. This controller is worth talking about. It is worth talking about. I'll keep my shit short.

Do you also play Transformers? I'd be Transformers. I loved it. I thought it was really fun. It's game of the year. I liked it a lot. I wish I agreed with you. No, I know.

It sucks to be the dog. I'm really bummed out and I feel no malice or argumentativeness. Exactly. It sucks. I came away with... I mentioned last week or maybe the one before that I was like, oh, maybe I should play some poker because I always want to learn to get better at that. Yeah, you're playing poker night.

I've been playing a bunch of poker night at The Inventory. So you're putting the channel and... Yeah, well, that's it. You're becoming a pro poker player. Well, now I'm able to beat the poker night characters in poker night one and two, so I asked on Twitter, am I ready for the big time? Absolutely. Can I be like Tomo and quit FGC games and just go make money?

I just go make money. All in black. Oh, God. What? What? Anyway. That's what he said. Um, and yeah, the answer is no, I'm just about ready to get bodied.

Oh, yeah? It's like, you know, it's like, oh, you play a new fighting game? Great. Did you learn every character's moves and how they all work and what they do in every character's normals? All right, now you're ready to start competing. It's getting extreme fun and going, dude, I can beat Seth on normal. Yeah.

Can I win even now? I got my ending. I can do a 720. That's cool. Yeah. Exactly. I did his ultra one time. Yeah.

Right. So no, that's it. I'm like, I can, you know, I can not get completely blown away by AI that has tells on it. Oh boy. The heaviest tells, right? So yeah. Aren't the heaviest tells something?

All the tells are pretty funny, but no, I actually, I would like to like join in on like some of the, so some of the, the Montreal Street Fighter guys like play poker from time to time. And I want to see if I can get in there and use some, use some card footsies, you know, to, to mess with them and whatnot. That's fun. What you're as technique is to call your move ahead of time. Exactly.

Two turns ahead of time. I have a flush. No point to the back of the club. So Tycho from Penny Arcade in Poker Night One, I have moments where he goes, I'll be completely honest with you. You want to make a call on me right now and that's the ultimate mind game. You're like, you're a computer. Exactly.

How do I read that? So all boxing is going pretty damn good. I'm having a lot of fun with those, with the classes and Yo, heavy D is really cool. Heavy D is really cool from King of Fighters 98. Liam just learned about heavy D. You should probably cosplay him at some point. Everybody knows Dudley.

Everybody knows, like Balrog, every, you know, some people know Steve Fox, not everyone knows heavy D. It actually makes me slightly sad when you say that people don't know about King of Fighters 98 characters. Nobody knows. It's, oh man. It's tragic. Like this isn't a Spanish language podcast.

Yeah. It's... Hey, I played that game and I don't speak Spanish at all. Yeah, no. I should have taken Spanish instead of French because it was more useful. But that's where it's biggest fan base is. Whenever people think of boxing characters and fighting games, he gets overlooked so hard.

Yeah. No one ever talks about Steve either. Steve Fox. We'll only talk to him. I don't shut up about Steve Fox. He's so big. He's got a gross arm. Could we get a campaign together to get heavy D and skull girls?

I mean like seriously, front and center on the retail box. First you got to contact that SNK company owner in China, the new owners and talk to them about that. Yeah, convince them that they should bring back any of their old IPs for anything that isn't in 3D and can't be made in two months. Oh. Okay. Okay.

There is value to Doki Doki Majo Shin-Pan. No, there isn't. I'm trying to think back amongst the potential skull girls' characters list and I'm trying to think of any boxers. I guess Andy was the one. Andy was the boxer. Yep, Andy was totally going to be the one. We really like Andy.

I was pushing hard, man. But Minette. Minette was where it was really at. And what's her face with the phone Mac? I can't remember her name. Dude, Panzerfaust. Molly? Yeah, Molly.

Thank you. Yeah. You know them really well. Molly's one of the top picks. Yeah, I know. I don't know why that is. May I ask, who was your top pick who didn't make it? I never actually chose one person.

Oh, okay. Because I didn't want to be like, yeah, this is the person I'm really sad about. And then everybody goes, yeah, see? Yeah. Oh, that's fair. Mike, the correct answer is the characters that I wanted to get in were Eliza and Beowulf and Robo Fortune, et cetera. Well, Robo Fortune was actually one I wanted.

I'll be perfectly honest. Eliza was not at all a character I wanted. Oh, yeah. She turned out pretty alright, but I was not a fan when we started. No, she wasn't on my radar either, really, so. So the answer is Panzerfaust, right? Right. Okay.

Hubert, Molly, Beatrix, Panzerfaust, and Feng. And I've never gone further than that. Okay. Okay, and Feng would have been sick. Feng was really good. Yeah. But can we get the KOF 98 heavy D-spot yet? How can we do this?

Do a morrigan? Yeah, exactly. Do a morrigan. Wow. I've never heard someone outside of us say that. Oh, man. You talked about poker night. So how about like the cause of poker night?

You have boxing night and you have all the boxers in the game. You have your heavy D. You have your C-Fox. You have your T.J. Combo. You have your Ballerog. You have your King Hippo. Yeah.

You have your Mr. Dream or whatever they called him. Yeah. So Mike, one of these stories that I told the guys a long time ago about the morrigan sprite, there was a dude that I knew that he did, he does like mocap for video games. He's like a capo arista and he was doing some mocap work for Capcom way back in the day. And he was over in Japan and he actually by chance got to meet one of the artists that, you know, in their casual conversation said, oh yeah, I was the guy that actually did that morrigan sprite.

Oh, wow. Back in the day. Yeah. And he's just kind of jokingly said, he's like, oh, how does it feel that, you know, a decade later your work is still like active in games and the guy just got really quiet and nervous and went, oh, so yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah. Just kind of slugged away, you know, and it was like, oh no.

Poor guy. I mean, like, I actually think they should go like full on with it. And like, I thought in Marvel 3, they should have just used the same sprite. Yeah. Like go and just make her textures. She should be made out of voxels. She should have been a like 10 polygon wide flat 3D sprite. Yeah.

Like a 3D.games hero. Yeah. She should have been a literal cardboard cut out. Or she should have just been a JPEG with a hitbox. Yeah. And she, it's just her idol. She doesn't have regular moves. And she just moves around like the Daytona USA car.

Shut up. I totally agree that they should keep bringing back Morgan Sprite. Like it's too good a gag. You imagine you're playing Poker Night at the Inventory and you look over and Morgan Sprite is just standing there. You're floating cards. And it's like Danganronpa. Like it's always facing you no matter where you go with the camera.

Exactly. Well, I mean, this is the difference between a bigger company and a smaller company, right? A smaller company, everybody would be like, man, that's hilarious. We should totally do that. And then they would totally do that. And the company like Capcom, it's like, hmm, that's going to look bad now. We can't do that thing. Yeah.

And then when they try to make a gag like Bad Box Art Mega Man, it just happens to be at the worst possible timing. Where it just, you're rubbing salt in the view. And people take it as personal death threats. Exactly. Exactly. And also that character happens to be the one that breaks the game the harder. Yeah.

Well, that's a whole other issue for sure. 30-60-90 for life. 30-60-90. Get that tattoo. Do you know how to make a fighting game? 30-60-90 now, you know. It's really that easy, Mike. I wish someone had told me that 10 years ago.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, no. So anyway, the moment that I'd been waiting for at Boxing Class was to see dudes in the ring doing the cool shit. Exactly. And I'm happy to say that, no, this past week I finally saw someone do the closest thing to a Dempsey role. Oh, yeah.

And I had to try really hard to not mark out and expose myself for being an anime weed while watching the spar go on. Have you ever seen the super old, there's only one piece of footage from the old days of Dempsey doing the Dempsey role? No, Jeff Jack Dempsey doing it. No, I haven't. It's super fast. It lasts like four seconds.

Yes. And there's no jet engine. It's a shoulder roll that's very slight and then the side and then the guy is just dead. Yeah, he punched him 12 times in four seconds. That's right. Well, what I saw in real life in the ring was he did like, he bobbed and weaved and dodged two jabs and then came up with a hook. That's cool.

And it was awesome. Yeah, of course. That's hard. But in my head, I'm just going, rolling thunder. No, for some reason, in your mind, you saw gigantic words above him that said, stop posting. Yeah. Yeah. No, man.

I want to see Woolly get in the ring and just sweep with his two hands. Yeah. Like Dudley. Dudley. Dudley. That you sweep. Yeah. Exactly.

It's like, Woolly, why are you gathering roses before you step in the ring? Stop doing that. It's cool. It's cool. It's true. Woolly, who is that? Oh, that's my friend, Mr. Gotch. Yeah.

So why are you taking your gloves off after you stop boxing? Right? Yeah, exactly. Why aren't you eating with your gloves on? Why aren't you, like, using Photoshop on that camera footage with your gloves on? Yeah. Woolly, how did you do that tracking thunderbolt attack where you jumped above the opponent and drilled downwards?

You pay for the roof. You pay for the roof. You have to remove that. I continued watching the Sopranos. Again, late to the party. It shows me. You're going to watch Italian nonsense now. Yeah, because now it's right in the middle of it.

It's in the middle of it. You don't know who's going to get whacked at any moment. All of them. It's great. It's great. And in continuing my Italian culture adventures, our buddy... You finally played Mario 1? Yeah.

Exactly. It's got to get around to that. It's still on the list. It's on the back. I hear a lot about this 1-1. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, our buddy, Fred Wood, he's part of his group.

The Lone Stars. They've got a podcast, the Lone Star podcast. Yeah, yeah. And I checked it out where they do...they go back and they read fucked up Italian folk tales. Wow, nice. Like the type of shit that you're... That's a gimmick.

Yeah, and it's like the type of shit that your grandfather would tell you or whatever, and like just weird ass versions of things where it's like, what is the moral of this story? And it's like, oh, okay, this like child got beheaded and this family went through all this trouble, and this old woman's skin was worn just to prove that salt tastes good on food. Hey, bus pizza. So be sure to always have a box of salt when you're cooking.

Like fucked up things. And you're just like, why would you tell your kids this? That's why you always leave a note. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, you know. Yeah. Sorry.

I'm going to hijack the conversation again. Yeah, no problem. Kids didn't used to be coddled. No, they didn't. I mean, that's a 19th century, sorry, 20th century. That's how centuries work. Yes. Right?

1900s is 20th century. 21st century, man. That's a 20th century thing. For most of human history, kids were little adults. They saw death. They saw people getting hurt. They saw arguments. There wasn't any of this.

Like, why would you show kids these things? Throw them out the window. Yeah. Yeah. Why would you show kids this? It wasn't a thing. Go play outside was go get XP. Yeah, absolutely.

Go outside, child, and take damage. Yeah. And when I say you've taken enough, you can come back. Come back home when you need to heal. Yeah. Yeah. If you need to sleep at the inn. Yeah.

I'll never forget like that show Titus, where like, it's like time for you kids to learn how to swim. Grab his kid, throws him in the water. He can't swim. He's drowning. Titus, go save your brother. Grab the kid by the collar, throws him in the water. I can't swim either.

Or like, or George Carlin talking about the bit where Swimming in the fucking huts. Swimming, grab, yeah, they go to the sewage edge of the Hudson River where you saw the floating turds. They grab a rock, throw it as far as they could to pierce through the dirt water. Yeah, yeah. And then try to jump and dive through the water and hold their breath long enough to get out into the open clear water and then swim back around.

That was how they played and with that level of testing of their immune systems, they never got sick. Yeah, no. They're invincible basically. That's grimy. You put your immune system on the magic pixel every day of your life, you're going to be strong. That's not even grimy.

That's way worse. Here's the thing. Like, fuck. I don't get it. Like armor. Go play in shit. Play. I was coddled as a kid and I didn't turn out to be a huge baby coward.

No, not at all. No. No. No. It goes back to what do kids, what do kids get told nowadays? Get your diapers off of me, Pat. Go outside and play with your iPhone. You asked for me to put them on you.

No, come back inside and play with your iPhone. Then like 15 years before that, go outside and play with your super soakers. Then before that, go outside and play with your GI Joes and Barbies. And after that, it was go play with glass and syringes outside. I was outside. Get that scope. Go play in the hole. Go play in the road if you like.

So when my childhood ended was when that fucking super soaker that my friend Eric had got taken off the market. You've told me this story like three times. Because it means something. It means something. Because that super soaker got taken off the market because you could fucking shoot your eye out so the water pressure was so stupid. Like me and my cousins go outside with a can of WD-40 and try to make a flamethrower.

Yeah. So you can eat the most. Go. Yesterday. Uh, yeah. So no. So all that to say. So each episode, they tell a different story and then just break it down with how fucked

up it is and insane it is. And it's a pretty fun podcast. I like it. Logestar's podcast. Logestar? Yeah. Because they're in Dallas. That's correct.

Oh, I get it. It's bigger there. That's like a money idea right there. Even Japan's bigger in Texas. Dallas is bigger in Texas. Yeah. Yeah. If you took it out of Texas, it'd be like.

Smaller. Yeah. Yeah. I saw it out of context quote from you guys and I don't know what video it was. It's like Australia is bigger in Texas. Yeah. That's right. What was that?

I don't know. Okay. Okay. We're scared when we record those videos. A lot of nonsense comes out. A lot of scary nonsense. All right. So two hours of bullshit later.

Mike. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's appropriate response. Can we confirm once and for all that it's Ajna and not Anya?

Yes. It's Ajna. Thank you. Because they say it in the game. Wally, I told you I read it wrong and then I told me. No, not you. Not you. Sorry.

Okay. People in the comments. Because I said it wrong once and then I was like, oh, whoops. My mistake. No. I thought you were directing that at me. No. People in the comments were like, what the fuck with the pronunciation?

I'm like, listen to Zay, they say it. Yeah. So Mike Z who is working on Indivisible people in the comments has said the correct pronunciation. I think we've covered this subject now. Thanks for being on the podcast. I don't know who that guy on the podcast was, but he can't pronounce names for shit. Yeah. Exactly.

Fuck off. Yeah. Math and Wally, right? Yeah. Basic. Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Lime up being. All right. So it's actually got a silent jamal at the end. I came prepared, Matt, because I'm not Matt. Sorry, Mike. I saw that pretty good video of, I think I guess it was the last salty recording that you guys did, the salty weeklies, where you broke down the common misconceptions about Indivisible.

And the ones that I wish weren't common, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, I'm going to link to that actually. Yeah. I haven't heard of these things. It's pretty good. And like the most solid point that comes up is the breakdown of, okay, how do you get

to the figure of 1.5 million? Again with this? And it's like. Every time. So. Every time. How come it's only you guys that have to do it? Because most people don't run businesses and apparently can't multiply.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like Pillars of Eternity with their goal, nobody asked them where it was going. Yeah. And like nobody asked Wasteland or Dormant. Yeah. Japanese developer movies. I think 2D animation.

Well because they wouldn't answer it either. I think has the stigma. Yeah. You have fun. You have fun. It's the way it always is where everybody who's never worked in games assumes games are 1% as hard as they are to make. Right.

Like making a game is so much harder than you think it is to make. Like, I mean, I don't want to, like, I don't want to put words. Yeah. No, of course not. But it's like. Put them in. Put the words in. The Super Metroid comparison, yeah.

It's solid. It's solid. I didn't hear it. Oh, I can do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Okay, so the comparison is if you look at the credits of Super Metroid and you remove everybody who was obviously like at Nintendo headquarters and not actually working on the

game. Yeah, like marketing. Because there's always like the marketing guys and the lawyers and stuff. Yeah. I mean, right? You get 23 people, okay, that were actually working on the game for some significant length of time. Right.

Possibly the whole time. We don't know because there haven't been much written about that. Not a lot of documentation, really. Yeah. At that point in games there wasn't, it was like, yeah, you worked on this game? Yeah, yeah, I did. Okay, we're going to make you use the pseudonym so no one can poach you. And that's if they weren't just burning those documents on purpose.

Right. Well, so anyway, so you get 23 people. Yeah. And if you look at Wikipedia, Super Metroid was in pre-production slash approval for one year and then was in development for two years. Yeah. Right. So I, and I love this comparison because it starts with the federal poverty rate in

the U.S. Perfect. Right. So the federal poverty rate is defined by the government as the level below which you need government assistance in order to continue to survive. So the federal poverty rate for a family of three, because we assume that these people have lives, right, is $20,000 a year. $20,000 U.S.

$20,000 Dominican dollars. Correct. It's funny. That's like, that's defining a rich person in Canada, $20,000 U.S. dollars a year. $20,000, yeah. $20,000 reduced. No. Well, it's also funny because in LA, yeah, well, there's that too, but like in LA, like

you can't survive on $20,000 a year. You can't survive on $35,000 a year. Yeah. Like that one, I mean, my rent, if you compound it for the whole year is 20, over $25,000. Fuck off. Okay. I have a four and a half apartment. I pay 650 Canadian a month.

Right. Yeah. I had an apartment in college in Minnesota that was like $800 a month for something like four people. Come move to Montreal. LA is insane. There's video game money out here. But really?

Monopoly money? No. That too. It can't be destroyed, man. Zenny? Yeah. Oh, I wish it was Zenny. I wish it was Zenny.

Sorry. But 20K is the red line. Yeah. 20K is defined by the government as you will get welfare if you go below this. Right. You don't have to pay any taxes because we know you're poor. Yeah. Right?

So $20,000 is defined as the federal poverty rate. So if you take $20,000 and you multiply it by 23 people, someone on your end can do math, right? Yeah. How much is that? Yeah. He's doing it right now. 460K.

On his calculator on his phone? 460K. And then you add like the skeleton crew of the pre-production. Yeah. I'm not even doing that. No? Just to employ your team for one year and then you employ them for three years, how much is that?

Oh, $1,380K. Yeah. So $1,380K is a very high number. It is. Yeah. It's like a trillion something. Yeah. It's almost $1,380,000.

Yes. $1,38,000. Yeah. $1,380,000 to employ the team, just the development team, at the poverty level of the US federal government on food stamps for the entire development of super Metroid is $1,3 million. So then if you increase that to like a real salary, which is, okay, so a real salary in games is way higher, but if you even double that, right, to $40,000 a year so that they're not at the federal poverty level, how much is that?

2.76 million. Yep. And that's just to employ the team, right, at a non-reasonable salary level to make the game that you want to make. That doesn't include look, that doesn't include testing, it doesn't include marketing, it doesn't include office space or internet or anything that you would like to do for the team to make sure that they're not miserable. Any benefits for anyone?

Just the staff. Yep. It doesn't include errors, right? It doesn't include mastering. It doesn't include. Submission, etc. Yeah. Like none of that.

I mean, and that's considered extremely cheap because the next step up from that, well, not the next step, the other end from that is Destiny, which recently came out, cost $140 million to make. Final Fantasy, I think 7 cost, I should have, no, it was higher than that. There's a really nice Wikipedia page that's the most expensive video game. Really? Somewhere above 40? Really?

Are we starting at 75? That's crazy. A lot of money. I don't know if it was with inflation though. There we go. List of most expensive video games to develop. I'm sitting on my computer. There we go.

Final Fantasy 7. Development cost in current millions when they made it in 97 was $45 million. Okay. In 97. Not adjusted. In 97. Yeah. Yeah.

Not adjusted. So inflation is like a billion dollars. It's a billion dollars. It lists inflation, well, so the marketing cost was $100 million. So inflated to $2015, it's 213 total. Yeah. Which is insane. But that's how you sell that many units.

But so people look at that and they're like, Final Fantasy 8 costs more than $65 million to make. I mean, those are numbers that are so large that you just kind of gloss over. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's $100. You can imagine $100. You know how long it would take you to work for $100.

Once you get a high enough number, your primate brain just stops actually registering what that is. Yeah. It's really big. Yeah. And you're like, it's $45 million. It's a lot of money. You can't really calculate that on a personal level.

So I don't know. It's like saying I spent $10 on lunch versus I spent $2,000 on lunch. Right. Yeah. I feel like imaginable. You know what? You're right. You're right.

And I guess the other thing too is that unlike the Skullgirls campaign that you guys were coming into with, it was adding on to an existing thing that you had here, this is a full RPG from the ground up. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I mean, there are a number of different ways to approach it too. If you paid attention to the Skullgirls campaign when we explained all about the budget and

where everything was going. Absolutely. That was $250,000 a character, right? And a character took about three months, which means if you add that four of those characters fits in a year, which is a million dollars, like you can, when you employ multiple people, you reach larger numbers than it takes to employ a single person very quickly. Wait, how could that be possible? That's crazy.

What are you talking about? People like can't do that math. No, exactly. It blows my mind because part of it is like, I saved. I said this in the, in the rant that you are referencing, but I saved my favorite comments from the Skullgirls campaign and my favorite one, the top one that is at the top of the list. And I kept on thinking that other comments would replace it, but they never really did

was some person who said, one of these characters costs more than my house. Yeah. And I was just like, yes, because your house employed a number of construction people and an architect and other things for less than a month, your house represents a physical thing that was constructed in a small period of time and employed a fixed number of people and it was over. It didn't take two years. It didn't take, you know, we had, we had eight core people and like 70 art contractors.

Like yes, when you're comparing a thing that involves multiple people or a lot of people or a large amount of time to a thing that involves a smaller number of people and a smaller amount of time and was one of many houses that was constructed probably that you know, was on a budget, like it's not, the comparison doesn't make any sense. Basically what you're saying is that's a large amount of money to me. Yes. That's a large amount of money to you. That's why we need all of them.

But I live in my house. Yes. Yes. I can do all these things with my house. I can't live in your game. I can't live in squiggly. Yeah. But Mike, you guys are just lining your pockets with the money and you're an indie dev so you

should be doing it for free anyway. Yeah. Oh dude, I'm so broke. I can't even like. No, like exactly, exactly. Like it's, it's bananas how people imagine that like people who do the same work should be paid less because of the perception of their title, whether it ships on a disc or not.

I think so too is when an indie go-go or a Kickstarter pops up and asks for whatever amount of money, anyone that's familiar with Kickstarter, like, you know, crowdfunded projects, they'll be like, well, I saw a game that looks better, like whatever visually aesthetic and that they were only asking for $15,000. So what's, I don't know, what's going on here and they just look at the number. We've talked about a lot of Kickstarter. I saw a bag of oranges that was way different from this apple you're giving me. And it costs slightly more.

What's up with that? The numbers thing bothers me so much because first of all, that hypothetical game that looks better and they were only asking for $15,000 hasn't come out yet. So you don't know whether they're actually going to be able to make it for $15,000. But you also don't know whether that hypothetical game, yeah, I'm not going to name any names. You also don't know whether that hypothetical game was only asking for $15,000 because they'd already been given $200 million by a company somewhere and just weren't talking about it, which has happened several times recently.

Or in some cases they have it so that like, it was Kingdom come deliverance and said, we need this money and we'll get a deal with a publisher. What? Yeah. They said, we want, what was it, like 600,000 pounds or something like that? Like we're raising this money so that we can get a deal with a publisher. We're raising the money and once we hit this thing, it will be a proof of interest and then it was a private backer.

Like a one rich guy paid the whole rest of their project and he wanted to see if people would actually care and then pay for it. Yeah. I hate, I'm just going to say this, I don't even care, you've been talking crap about stuff this whole time. Go ahead. We talk crap about stuff. I hate the fact that larger companies or people with actual money realized that you

could use crowdfunding as an interest gauge without needing to do marketing. I mean, basically what they realized is crowdfunding is free marketing and it's also marketing that pays you money somewhat. I don't think you at all, man. It somewhat does, except like then it eats out of the sales at the end, but I get you, the marketing's there for sure. But it doesn't really eat out of the sales at the end because most of the people... Oh no, no, no, I agree with you, I mean if you have 30,000 people who back it and you

sell like a million copies, you didn't lose. Yeah, no, no, to be clear, I do agree with you. I'm just... No, I don't blame you at all. If I was an indie developer doing this stuff and seeing that shit, I'd be fucking pissed. I was really mad about several, sorry, I know you were talking. Go ahead, go ahead, man. I was really mad about several recent campaigns because they did it as an interest gauge and

like basically what that means is with this one, I have to explain to everybody that this is not an interest gauge, this is actually a crowdfunding campaign. We are raising something like 46% of the cost of this game from people and it's not that the publisher is fine with publishing it and that if we don't raise this money, they're totally gonna fill in the gaps. The publisher, we talked to them for a long time and we convinced them that they would very much like to participate in this deal because they have things like to learn from us about crowdfunding and all that.

They are participating as a very nice backer, but it's still a crowdfunding campaign. This is not a guarantee anyway. This is not a, oh, we really want to see if people want this thing that we're probably going to make anyway. This is, you know, we gotta do it. If we don't do it, that's it. The dishonest way of going about some of this stuff is by having things like flexible funding on or by having a detailed readout like you guys do and then by going like, so

that's why we need like 37K or something ridiculous like that and then it's just like that. And like though, when you see how big this game is aiming for, there's no way you're gonna be asking for meager money that you know you can get just so that you can get it in your hands. The video, I mean, Woolly did, I mean, maybe it's because like, you know, unlike some people that could view a Kickstarter campaign or a video or whatever, will look like since we both have kind of an artist, you know, background, we studied fine art and illustration design in college, we're looking like, you know, you look at two fighting game characters

and it's two fighting game characters and you can kind of go whatever, like that cost that. But when we're looking at an RPG where there's six, seven sprites in one thing and that's in one temple, in one dungeon, I was gonna say the demo alone has like, if it were to be... I'm gonna interrupt, sorry, I have to interrupt. Sure. It's not a demo, it's a prototype, there is actually a classification difference.

Sorry, no, you're correct, you're absolutely correct. I'm gonna be a stickler for this because we're a stickler for this. A demo is a short section of a finished game. A prototype is just like, look, we can do the things that we say we're gonna do. No, sorry, yeah, I'm aware, I was actually gonna say beta, but I couldn't remember the term you put at the end, so I just reached for that and no, I do realize this is different. It's not quite a vertical slice, I suppose. No, I mean it's not, like we wouldn't give you characters this fast, there was no plot.

This is just like, we wanna do a battle system that occurs in the world and we think we can pull it off, check it out, we pull it off. Yeah, regardless, what I was gonna say is if you would have told a team who was paid to make this, like you would probably spend well over $100,000 easy just on this. Oh yeah. Anyone assuming this beta was just whipped out in a week, sorry, I said beta again. That's fine, beta's fine. There's a difference though, Mike, there is a difference.

But anyone, like there's people saying, oh, they just whipped this prototype out in an instant. It's like, no, like the amount of work you guys put in is so incredibly tangible. But the Z engine already existed, all they had to do was throw in the assets. All they had to do was check the box that changed it from an RPG to a fighting game. There's that toggle. Yeah, exactly. Oh god, yeah.

But did you just check the box, Mike? Is that the secret? Yeah, I totally just checked the box. I left it unchecked for most of Skullgirls, I don't know. Yeah, well you learn, right? That was your first go at it, now you know. So, and like, not to stay on the cynical side of things. Yeah, sorry.

But it's just like, no, the game obviously looks fucking amazing, man, like, you know. Play is pretty good. It does play pretty good. Like where we hope that it can get a push because it would be such a shame for something that takes from Valkyrie Profile and Metroid and all the things that are awesome to not come into existence. It's not even like, because it takes from those things, like I've played it, it's great. You know, like, I don't play it and say, oh, it's a shame that this thing that's inspired

by this won't succeed. I play it and it's a shame because it won't succeed. Yes, absolutely. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Like it's absolutely not a dry clone of anything, like it's its own thing and it's fucking awesome. We use inspired by, or at least I use inspired by as the actual meaning of inspired by, right? Like I'm inspired by this thing, that doesn't mean I'm going to make something that's like

this thing. It means that some of the ways in which this thing is might find their themselves into the final product. And it gets the message across like a thousand percent perfectly instantly. Another small point is that me and Willie talked about in our video and like, you know, if it makes its crowdfunding or if it doesn't, it's still a shame and it's a thing that we've talked about in the podcast before where we had a fan talk about, I'm from this region of the world and there's no one is representing like the cool mythos or lore that might come

from the country has. And the main thing we looked at or we noticed about Indivisible is like, look at how unique and fun and not frequently you see this type of character or the influences are from this type of religion or this type of place in the world. I mean, you always see like, you know, stuff from Japan and stuff from like Europe. And that's basically, I mean, we use some stuff from America too. There was a phrase you said in the video specifically, like hidden or what was it? Sleeper culture.

Sleeper culture. Oh yeah. We need to expose the sleeper cultures and get them more exposed. Yeah, exactly. That made me chuckle. That was a good one. Yeah, I know. And you get like stuff like, well, just last night I was talking to Zone and he's proud

of he's proud of the most divine, fine, gaping, vaginal monster, which actually is a real monster that are some, some commenters found the source of where that came from. And I think, God, I forget exactly which country it was. It might have been like. What, the op? Yeah, the op. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And it was. Oh, that's totally a real thing. And I was creeped out by all the stories. Yeah, which country was it again? That's from? That is totally an Alex question. Oh, okay. I can tell you in a second.

It was, it was. Thank you, Skype. Yeah. From a Southeast Asian country. And I was just like, I'd never heard of this monster. It's a floating head with organs. Right. What the fuck?

You know? No, it's pretty nice. Yeah, that's your goomba. Yeah. Here we go. Look up. K-R-A-S-U-E. K-R-A-S-U-E.

That's the. That's the. Thai name. Or what? Yeah. Yeah. So it's. Thai.

Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. Cambodia. Okay. Cripes. Yeah, man. Yeah, there it is. So I got to ask, when are we going to see the Canadian character? That's an unbets of superculture.

Why are we getting the Acadian fighter? Yeah, of course. It's like, I'll be a Canadian. With the hat and the hunting rifle. Chugging syrup. Speaking French. Yeah. Well, not chugging syrup, sticking a spigot into a tree.

Yeah. Directly. The lifeblood. Drink it raw. Yeah. Exactly. No, the. He fights with bagged milk.

No, he doesn't fight at all. He's just very nice. Yeah. He's a piece. Like, get out of this temple. Oh, okay. Sorry. Please.

So one of the other things that did come up and that you explained as well in that video was the reason why that pie chart is not as divided as much as the Skullgirls one is. Yeah. Into like all the details of where exactly each dollar is going. Yep. And that is, there are actually two reasons for it. One is that we've never made a game like this, whereas on Skullgirls, it was like, all right,

we've already made eight characters. A bunch of characters, right? So we know like what the, all the breakdown for everything is. Yeah. We don't know as, as hard, I guess. You could probably the wrong word to choose. Now it's fine. I like that.

Like you can tabulate stuff all night, but you're never really going to know. Yeah. I mean, we know where stuff went for the prototype, but we don't know that that will hold true for the real game. And also like we didn't make cinematics or any of the other stuff that we really need to do. But the main reason that the product or that the pie chart is not as divided up this time is because there is, there aren't as many divisions that aren't the game, right on,

on this game. And this is one of the reasons that we wanted to work with 505. Like I can't express to you how amazing the deal is that we got because yeah, I love that phrase. A big back end. Oh man. I got such a big back end on this game. You don't even know.

Put my hands around that bad again. Yeah. Just lay my head against it. So part of the reason that we're really excited about this and about this deal is because most of the stuff that we had in this girl girls pie chart is covered by 505. So the backer rewards, which are like 20% of your, your raised money are covered. The localization is covered. The testing is covered.

The QA is covered. The marketing is covered. It's all covered. And some of those things are huge. Yeah. And those things are like a large, partial, a partial. And you get coverage and you get coverage and you get coverage. Exactly.

Coverage for everybody. Like that's, that's why we were, we were excited about this is because all of that money that we raised from Indiegogo minus Indiegogo's cut obviously because we can't get rid of that goes to the development of the game. And all of the extra 2 million that 505 is willing to put in if we get funded goes to the development of the game. One of it is divided into the other stuff that is not the development of the game. That's that's like mind boggling as far as deals go because there's, it's always arguing

about like, well, are you going to pay for testing? Are you going to pay for a low? Who's going to pay for the dev kits? And it was, it's, it's immense. Like the, the example you just threw out about super Metroid before, like that example holds up perfectly when you need a testing team as well. And like, I think a lot of people assume because testers don't do as much important. Testers are free and have no value.

Testers are free and have no value. I disagree with your, yes. A lot of people assume it. I just, I disagree with that statement that I guess you were saying people assume because you, let me just ask. You said a lot of people assume that because testers don't do as important work as programmers. So are you saying people assume that the work is not as important or people assume something else based on that?

Let me finish that thought. Like, yeah, people, people assume that the, the development team and everything like are the only valuable parties and the QA guys are just expendable nothings. And it's like, no, not only are they not expendable nothings, you need them, but they're not cheap either cause they don't work, like they work for regular salary as well. And they will say that they work for overtime and double time and they love it and I did that on battle for one and loved it and they will save you money by getting you through submission first pass.

Yeah. Like, like often games, they're not aiming for that by the way. No. Well, again, that is our, that is our background. We, we, we, yeah, exactly. Like we, we had some games or some, well, whatever. I mean, to not get, to not get into specific, but it's just like the pressure was on sometimes where there'd be like, look guys, just, I don't want to breathe down your necks too hard,

but, but allow me to breathe. Yeah. First pass submissions. All right. This is what we're looking for. And then it happened and then t-shirts were made. Yeah. But like there's, like there's so many things that people just write off and they're like,

where does the money go? Yeah. And when you break it down, it's like, we just need more, like guess what? That's where it is. Everything is expensive. And, and even, even the most bare bones marketing campaign still costs thousands of dollars. Yeah. Like.

So, you know, so like, go ahead, go ahead, all right. Over. Oh. Oh, embarrassing. Yeah. I know. I guess so, you know, I mean, like the truth is that like the, the campaign came out and it didn't have that first 48 hours spike, you know, that you usually hope for, like

the momentum of shooting up to like the 40% marker. So within the first days and then just kind of writing out, writing it out, you know, it's a, it's a slower start on this one. And we're, you know, trying to, we're hoping that it can make it to that finish and eventually build up that momentum. But, but. Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing.

I mean, like that part of the other thing that we really like didn't want to do for this is we didn't want to do the thing that we see a lot of campaigns do where it's like, I know exactly what you're going to say and I love you for it. Then I would like you to say it for me. You're not doing all the like a backer achievements and stuff like that, right? That was totally part of it. Oh, so you're not like you're not passing it off onto the backers to like, you know, like advertise your game via like social media share.

Yes. We're not, we, we looked at all the things where it's like, if you get 40,000 shares and we'll do this, like, no, I hate that stuff. Yeah. But the main, like, notice, notice our videos, don't do like, comment, subscribe. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, I love you for that, by the way.

And when we do do that, it's like as a jest, like the one or one or two times, please, please dislike and subscribe and subscribe, watching this video. And go delete a comment from another video. Yeah. Exactly. And the annotation leads to horseporn.com. That's how we roll. Also, tell your friends not to watch.

But sorry. Go. No, no. Tell your friends you hated it. Don't do that. No, do that's fine. No, but yeah, like the thing that we're explicitly not doing is the thing that I've seen a lot of other crowdfunding drives do, which is like, if we raise $350,000, then we'll make

the first level, you know, just to be like, as a, as a, yeah, episode one or like part a, like as a, we can reach this goal and then we're going to do the thing. No, like we don't want to do that. We don't want to reach the goal and then be able to make like the first 10th of the game in the day. Our goal is the whole thing. And it's not even, it's not even like most campaigns where like our goal is the whole thing, except for we have all these stretch goals, like other characters or whatever, right?

Like our goal is the whole thing. If we reach the 1.5 million, that's the entire game. It's not the entire game minus some things that we thought would be nice stretch goals. It's the entire game. I, I, you know, I hadn't even thought of that aspect because it's true, a lot of games do break it down like that. And like you guys totally could have, but it's way more admirable that you went for the whole thing for sure.

Yeah. I mean, we don't want to make half of it. We don't want to make a fourth of it. We don't want to get to the end and then be like, oh, we don't actually get to do the bonus dungeon that we really want to do. We want to ship a full ass video game. Yeah. No DLC endings.

Yeah. No. No, exactly. Uh, is, is Prince Berger or Cerys Wrath or Cerys Wrath? Cerys Wrath's way. Cerys Wrath and Prince. Yeah. Um, I have a few, uh, creative questions actually, um, I'm curious, well, how long ago or I guess

during what point when you were working on Skulllers, did you and Alex first start thinking about this? Um, so the initial idea for this actually didn't come from me or Alex. Um, we, as a result of talking to another company, so during the, the end of Skullgirls, we still had to be thinking about like, what are we going to do after this? Right? So we were talking to a couple of other companies about, yeah, sorry. Yes.

The end of second encore, like the end of what is ended, uh, except for it's not ending because I'm still doing all the JP voice stuff and then anyway, um, yeah, during the end of that, I mean, you have to be as, as owners of the company, you have to be looking forward to the next thing that's going to keep your company alive. Um, so we were talking to other companies about things that they might want to see and like trying to figure out as a team, what are the genres we'd really like to do? Cause a lot of the people, I mean, I'll be serious for a second. A lot of the people on the team don't play fighting games.

Like they definitely don't play them to the level that I play them or the level that, uh, Earl plays them. So like we wanted to also do something that would keep the rest of the team interested that they could get behind and some type of RPG was like the front runner by far. Okay. So, uh, Peter, Ravadrath, I don't, yeah, yeah, whatever actually suggested the initial story for this, but it was, it was a story that he'd had for like a bunch of years and it was originally like he thought it would be for a much more traditional RPG, but he

suggested like the bare bones background of the story. And we sort of took that and ran with it and turned it into what it became like the Southeast Asian thing. And I, I actually don't know how much we've said about the plot. I know that we should say more about the plot, but I also don't know whether I'm the person that should say more about the plot because I'll say things and other people get mad at me. You weren't supposed to tell them who the final boss was, Mike.

Yeah. Oh, no, it's not like that. It's more like you weren't supposed to say this because it's not right. That's way worse. Yeah. You don't want to be, um, Chris, I forgot her name, Veronica Mars, getting interviewed about Assassin's Creed one going, yeah, it's kind of like the matrix meets. Kristen Bell.

Yeah. Kristen Bell. Wow. It's kind of like the matrix meets like old time past things and everyone's like, what? No one knew about the whole virtual aspect. Yeah, don't do it. Oh yeah. No, it's not like we're going to give it away.

I mean, she can absorb people and stuff. Like, I know all of that. It's just that the, the actual story details are not my department. Yeah. Anyway, so the story was from someone that didn't have anything to do with us or that wasn't the people that were not normal or that were normally in charge. And then like the team took it and ran with it and it turned into what you see with the inner realm and the combat like it is.

I mean, it was, I think the original, like first document or anything that got written about this was like March. Okay. Okay. Something like March. So that's really, that's a really, that's a really quick turn. Yeah. That's interesting because I was totally ready to hear like, oh yeah, I know.

Like four years ago we had this idea because like the things with the inner realm and the characters and whatnot, like there's a lot like, there's a lot going on there. Exactly. And it feels like it was thought about for a while. Well, clearly the story was. Yeah. Exactly. Well, it was thought about pretty hard, but like also, I'll be honest, a lot of this

stuff with this, just kind of, how do I put this? Like sells itself or writes itself. Yeah. Like the initial story was proposed and then it was like, well, of course this bit would be this way. And of course this bit would be this way. And then if she's going to be what she is, then the inner realm makes a lot of sense. And like it was, it all just kind of fell into place a bit.

Yeah. We didn't have to struggle with any of it. You know, you got a good thing going that just goes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.

Um, one, and something else that I was like, it's the extreme bottom of the priority list slash not at all. Yeah. Let's hear your useless shitty question. I'm, I'm, I want to know. I'm just did the idea of a like two player mode ever come in there. We're across your lines. Uh, yes.

So, uh, first of all, I'm going to say versus in anything that's not designed to be versus generally sucks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yes. The reason for that is very simple, which is the AI doesn't care if the game is unfair.

Yeah. Right. What you do in a single player game is even for the things that are supposed to be hard, like it is still much less fair for the AI than it is for the player. Like in the indivisible prototype, the player gets up to three attacks that they can wait and choose to use whenever they want. The AI gets one that is as long as the player's three. Yes.

So like it's already stacked against the AI. Uh, there are things like the player can block in the AI camp, but that's cause I didn't get to get to that for the AI, for the prototype, but like you build systems like this that are super unfair in favor of the player. And the AI doesn't care because you didn't program it to complain because when you do that, then you have to program at unions and all this other stuff and it's just become a huge thing. Right.

So when you take that system and you put a player on both sides. It's not fun. They remind you that generally is not fun to his multiplayer. Yeah. Or like, or like even a better game, uh, for versus like, uh, shall in monks. Did any of you guys play Mortal Kombat? That is an amazingly well done beat them up. Um, I remember, uh, Mike, you ever played Bayonetta?

Yeah. I remember, uh, watching, uh, Camilla's like, let's play when he's going through it. Do you remember the enemy, the joy, which is basically that Bayonetta clone? Mm-hmm. He discusses how originally when that, uh, that character was created, it kind of had the opposite problem. What you're talking about in which they gave it band at his moveset and it operated underneath the same rules that the player did.

Oh yeah. And it just stomps it. There's no fun at all. A God like being the couldn't be touched. Yeah. I mean, you can't, you can't do that. Like you, for a single player stuff, you never do that. It's, it won't work because people won't enjoy it.

Even though people say they want the AI to play like a person pretty much, that's only true in like fighting games and racing games and everything else. You want them to play like a handicapped version of an AI that would play like a person that probably came off as a terrible comment against handicapped people, which is not how I did. Sorry. It's fine, but yes. No, but yeah, like, so, so as far as two player stuff, uh, the things that we

considered, um, that one or more of maybe, maybe stretch goals, but since we may not get to stretch goals, we may try to include them in the game anyway. Uh, one of them is online co-op, like the four player Castlevania, right? Except that you're, you're each on a separate screen. So you can go anywhere in the entire level and you're doing all that kind of thing. And I really want to try is, uh, Kirby superstar style helpers. Oh my God.

Right. So one of you plays as Agena and one of you plays as one of the incarnations that has a smaller move set. The camera doesn't focus on them and they can teleport back to us. No, whatever they want. Right. I want to try to do that kind of thing. Kirby superstars is my, my, my good word.

You said a good word. All right. Well, yeah. Cause I mean, I, that, that multiplayer was really fun. Yeah, well, yes, it was. So doing that kind of thing. I mean, I would skip two player contributions. If it was only like Mario galaxy level.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Right. So I want to make sure that if we say anything about involving a second player, that the second player is actually involved. It's got to be meaningful. Yeah. Anything that can result in like two, two people, like, um, using each other to

like extend their combos and having, yeah. Well, I mean, that's the other thing is there was, uh, there's secret of mana that obviously lets you play multiplayer in combat, but there was a final fantasy that also let the second controller control like the back row characters that have sex. You could split up your party, uh, to different controls. Yeah. Thank you.

I never remember when it was four or five or six. But yeah, I like doing that kind of thing also. Okay. Uh, but yeah, doing that kind of thing for battles in addition to like when you're not in battle, then you're the Kirby helper would be pretty cool. Okay. Okay. So yes, it was considered in some, uh, it is considered, like I said, uh, some

of this might be stretch goals, but given that we probably won't get to most of the stretch goals, uh, some of it may also find its way into the game anyway, because it's a thing I really want. Okay. Uh, like there's a lot of that here. Yeah. And, and, and you know, this is one of those, uh, projects where I'm looking at it, like, you know, let's say the worst comes to worse and it doesn't make it.

Like, can I, can I get an art book? Is there some way I can just, you know, can I just send like a check and I can get an art book at it, you know, or something? Oh, I mean, yeah. I part of it is like, this is, this is the thing, right? Like a lot of companies do this as a test. Like I said, like if bloodstained hadn't gotten any money, I mean, they had $4.5 million from their backers anyway.

They probably would have gotten the last 500,000 and just made it, uh, red ash, you know, already had a publisher before they started, like that you could tell that right away. Um, no, for us, this is it. If it doesn't make it, that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Like we believe in crowdfunding. We also really like, I mean, for, for people that haven't worked in games, it's

hard to explain, but like, I don't want to go back to working for a large company anymore because the, the amount of freedom that we had on Skullgirls was like unheard of to me. I mean, we want to add a character for April Fools. Sure, no one can stop you from doing that. And then my sleep schedule says, what are you doing? And then I say, shut up, but like, we can do that. We can change things.

We can do development streams where we show things that are not yet released. Like those are not things that you get to do. You can do this without talking the market. We can, we can make decisions about the game without focus testing it. Like a bunch of, I mean, on Skullgirls, a bunch of times when we went to pitch it to companies before we found Autumn, they would ask questions like, who is your target demographic? And like my only answer for that is like, I don't know.

People that like fighting games. And they're like, that's not a demographic. Yeah. It's a, it's a drop in the ocean criminals. Sure. Yes. Criminals and delinquents and, yes. Nair duels, snake oil salesmen.

We've got, we've got a ton going. Well, but yeah, like that's not how we approach decisions about the game. Right. There is nothing where it's like, no, this character should totally be female because it will appear or it will appeal to this demographic or whatever. Like, no, it's, this character should be female because that makes sense. You should do what's right or feels right. Or we should do what we would like to do for the game or what feels like it

would make sense in the universe. Right. There's no, and then there's a cyberpunk aspect because people like cyberpunk or whatever. Yeah. And with indivisible, you get all the benefits of the publisher, but you still get the full creative freedom pretty much. We do get, I mean, we talked to them about that.

That was one of the first things we said is like, if we do this with you, it will still be the way that Skullgirls was. We will be able to have dev streams. We will be able to make all of the creative decisions. Like there isn't that level of oversight that you get at large companies that is very hard to describe unless you've been through it. Where, or like, uh, like the, there was a thing among the, the concept artists that pandemic band is true of concept artists and other people that need to

present at a lot of places, which is, uh, the, was it battle chest where the queen had a duck? Does anybody remember that story? Yeah, I know. I'm not sure the queen does have a, so, so, uh, I don't think she actually ended up with the duck, but the story for battle chest is that they had a producer. I'm, I'm probably wrong. And it wasn't battle chest and people are going to eviscerate me for this.

But they haven't stopped all the time. Don't worry about it. You got lots of guts, right? All right. Yeah. The story is, yes, I have lots of guts. I can spare like, you know, 10 stomachs and five rib cages. And I borrowed from a boon and Tobias.

Um, anyway, the story is that the, the higher up on the team always needed to make input or cut something so that he felt like he was being useful. So they animated the queen for battle chest. Again, probably the wrong game, whatever. And they did everything that they were going to do, but they also gave her a duck that was in every animation and walked alongside her and all this stuff. And when they presented it to the producer, he said, everything about this is awesome.

Get rid of the duck. Cut the duck. Yeah. So they got to keep whatever they actually wanted to do because they did extra work to get rid of it. Uh, I have been at lots of companies where that thing happens a lot where you will intentionally make a thing that is so hideous that I know that they're going to get rid of, but then you have the other, uh, half of that, which is,

you make three things that you think are awesome. And one thing that you think is hideous and you present it to the people that are making the decision and they go for the hideous one. Yeah. And you're like, well, okay. People working on the art and any, any pro any projects, our team knows exactly how that works when you're pitching or like a hundred percent, man. Yeah.

So we don't have to do any of that. If we want to make something some way, that's how it'll be. Or like, if you want to like add stages that we didn't originally have in the plan, we can do that because we thought they would look cool. If you want to have a badly animated cat as a super secret boss, she was well animated. Come on. After it depends on the standards.

Yeah, exactly. How can, oh no, you've met all our standards already. Mike, how consistently can you make those jumps? Which ones at the end to get back up? Oh, uh, let me find you the stream that I did for Pulsar. Pulsar asked Pulsar asked the same thing. So I did it on the second try. Yeah, it's not that hard.

Someone's been reading guys. God damn. All right. I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, it, it's Nintendo hard. You get the timing down and then it's not hard. Yeah, but it takes a while to get the timing down. So seriously, I'm going to link you this archive. Okay.

Cause, uh, no, cause like, I'm just thinking of that as like, this is the standard for the secrets. That is so I'll actually explain this. That is not the standard for the secrets. Uh, that is, I mean, the reason that that is after the bosses, cause it's post-boss content, right? So, uh, we actually, we had to do two, uh, really difficult things with this prototype.

Uh, I think that this is the right video. Sorry. I'm, I'm also looking for the video. It's no problem. So like five seconds of me looking on things and watching my internet, try to deal with Skype and streaming. No, don't, don't do that. Oh yeah.

This is totally the right video here. I'll just paste this to you guys. Um, there's a question that I don't know the answer to. How do I get back to the text in Skype? Uh, click on, hold on. There'll be, if you move the mouse, I got it down. I got it. It's bubbly.

Yeah, there you go. I see it. Okay. Now you have the link for that. Anyway, uh, I can usually do it on the first or second try. Um, so the things that we had to accomplish with this prototype are we needed, or at least for me, like to satisfy me as a designer, I needed to show that we could make secrets that required platforming skill and secrets that required

like the normal RPG noticing that something is weird in this room skill. And to be able to design things in a way that is, uh, both friendly for speed running. So like there are a lot of parts of the prototype where if you know the layout of the room, you can severely optimize your movement and skip a bunch of parts that you normally wouldn't be able to. Um, and we also had to be able to show, cause like one of the questions that we get all the time is, will there be sequence breaks? Right.

I imagine there will be. So the, I'm going to say right out, out loud that I hated the things that they did in fusion and zero mission. Oh, okay. Where they put in intentional, yeah, I mean, like the shine spark stuff is pretty cool, but the things where it was like, no, if you shoot a missile into this one specific block, then you can go in between, you know, sector two and sector four is like, I hated that because that was not a, yeah, it

wasn't an exploit, right? Like I, I chiefly use sequence breaks. Yeah. I chiefly view sequence breaks as the player needs to have like complete mastery over some game system. And then you can do something else. Right. The missile block is just like, no, the player needs to search all of everywhere

and then they can find this thing. Like the, the mock ball, which, uh, the, the original sequence break in super Metroid, right? You know, mock ball, you get early super missiles. Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, do you know, I discovered the technique God, I didn't pioneered it.

Yeah. I didn't know I discovered that you could do that. Uh, well, I did, but that's talking about this, is this, is this stated on your Wikipedia page or put that on your CV? No, but it's in all the super Metroid facts. And it's okay. I think I wrote in 96 or whatever the hell that was. Anyway, none of us were born then.

So we went, well, yeah, sorry, I'm older than all of you combined. But so I, one of the things that I really wanted to show was that if we were going to design secrets, like super secret secrets or things that we're supposed to feel like sequence breaks, then we would do that by requiring you to abuse the game engine in some way. So like to get to the secret boss that we are trying to not yet spoil. Cause at some point this week, I'm going to do a hundred percent stream so that we can actually show it off.

Okay. Um, you need to do one of two things, both of which feel like exploits. Okay. I see what you're going for. I'm really glad. Cause I know me and woolly in the past at work have talked about this where you find a bug and you don't want to bug it. Oh, because it's such a great exploit.

Yeah. So are you guys, or is that where you guys are at? Yeah. Well, I mean, we do, it's not that we don't want to bug it. It's that we, like on skull girls, I mean, I can give an example that's in a game we already shipped, right? Uh, alpha bursts. So if you burst in skull girls and you have a meter, you can actually do an alpha

counter or whatever we called it in skull girls stunt, stunt double off of your own burst to get another character in. So that was originally a bug. And the reason it was a bug is because the checking to be able to do an alpha counter on the assist character side was, is the point character blocking? And did they have some hits done left? Oh, that's interesting. Um, and the way that I did bursts, because I wanted to make burst a special

state was I made you invincible with hits done, or I made you invincible and blocking at the same time, which never occurs otherwise. So as a result, during the burst, you were blocking and because you just got hit, you had hits done left. The other character was like, Oh, this is acceptable and lets you alpha counter in, right? So people reported that. And rather than removing it, I looked at it and I said, this actually adds quite

a bit to the game when people get good at it. So I turned it into a real feature because the original implementation was like, if you burst off a jab, then you only had like 10 frames of hits done. So it was really difficult to do an alpha counter off of that. But if you burst off of something that was like a, a fierce or a knockdown, you had like 200 frames of hits done. So it worked better. So I standardized the amount of hits done that you get as soon as you enter the

burst animation, it gives you, I think it's 50 frames of hits done for you to be able to do this thing. Yeah. So the timing is always consistent. Um, and I added some damage scaling from the actual burst hit itself so that you couldn't do this into our full damage combo because that was kind of busted. But like, I kept it as a feature because it was fun and it added a lot to the game. Right.

So two of the, so there are two ways, like I said, to get to the final secret in the prototype, uh, one of those ways is, uh, is let's see, intentionally implementing something in a way that I would not normally implemented so that it has a bug. Like you could see the structural problem in that bridge, but I need it that way. So I can move across the bottom of it. Right. Like something like that. Well, in this case, it was, I could very easily implement, uh, the startup of this

thing in a way where there aren't any bugs. But if I implemented this way, so that there is this very specific bug that requires a moderate amount of manual dexterity, then we can use that to do something cool. Okay. Right. And the other way, sorry, the other way to get to the secret was actually discovered by accident.

And I was like, oh, that's really cool. I'm just going to leave that there. Okay. So that by you guys or by the public, uh, it was discovered before we put the prototype out for testing by me and left there. And then it was discovered. So both ways to get to the secret were discovered by exactly one tester during the testing period, but it was a different person for each.

Okay. Okay. So one person found the manual dexterity way and one person found the non manual dexterity way. And I was happy with that. Okay. Okay. I'm excited to see what they are for sure.

Well, uh, I mean, I, I know that he's kind of dancing, but I'm pretty sure in our, in our video tour that's out there towards the end, when I do hit the, the second location for the cat, it's off of the dash into Herika run. Um, and it's like, and it's like, it's like dashing on the spot until it activates immediately. Yeah. With that's the manual dexterity. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, there's totally another way to do it. That does not require manual dexterity at all. That's, okay. I got to think about that cause I actually tried it from, you know, backing up,

getting enough distance and I wasn't able to figure something out. So yeah, I kept saying, I kept saying, this is, this is inconsistent. The way it's, it's, it's happening. And I was like, what is it? You were like, I'm not sure. I think it's, let me try this. So it's funny because basically what, what you're saying, Mike, is like, you, you want to design this game in a way where you're leaving pieces that could

possibly be exploitable, but you don't want to purposely design exploits. You're just hoping someone does it, can it behind your back that you don't know about so that you can be surprised by it. But yeah, but you're, but you're leaving out the milk and cookies for them to go to the table and eat up. Yeah. Like, I mean, the thing that you're talking about, like the manual dexterity way is the one that I implemented intentionally so that there would be a bug.

Uh, it is also a hundred percent consistent, by the way. Okay. It's just hard. You just have to do it right. It's so like, it's super metroid, well, so it's super metroid to do a short charge. The way it works is the game only checks the, uh, where you holding the dash button down every time Samus's animation loops, or I think it's the middle of her

animation, but it only checks it on one frame, right? So if you run and you are only pressing the dash button on those frames, she will not speed up, but it increments the counter toward you getting super speed or speed booster. So checking on those frames, yeah, because it's checking on, it's true on those frames. So what you end up being able to do is charge speed booster in something like a third of the distance that you normally can, because your character is not getting

faster, but it's still incrementing the charge. Um, but it requires pretty close to frame perfect timing to get the shortest possible charge. So in indivisible, I actually implemented that in a similar way where it increments the timer every time her animation starts, but it doesn't, it doesn't clear the timer until she completely exits the running state. So because there is recovery after you let go of the direction, as long as you re-input the dash during that recovery, it won't clear the timer.

So you just have to do it a bunch of times. So then therefore you cancel into the startup, startup, startup, startup, and that makes, okay, that's why it goes up. Yep. So if you do it too fast and you actually don't get through the startup to the first frame of the loop, right? If you match too fast, then you won't get it. So there's a consistent rhythm that will allow you to do it a hundred percent of

the time, like bomb jumping and Metroid. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's, it's this, that one is as close as I've ever come to an intentionally implemented exploit. I see. Okay.

Right. So that, I mean, there are, so also like there are like the first secret is really obvious. Yeah. So that's to show that we're willing to do standard RPG secrets as you're playing through the game. You will find this thing or you'll get this power and you'll go back and be like, wow, there was a rock there that I totally could get through and then you go

through it and there'll be a secret. Yeah. So with the prototype, I intentionally wanted to try to show that we're willing to do both types of things. We're willing to do the normal secrets that people expect, but we're also willing to try to experiment with the game engine and do crazy things and do secrets and hidden routes based on that. All right.

Okay. That's, that's really great to hear. Yeah. So I see that as different from adding the missile blocks in fusion because you actually have to be good at the game first. Yeah. And you're still, I mean, you're still hoping to be surprised by, by, by what people do with it.

Yeah. Okay. And one, one kind of like, I was like, I'm wondering, is the, is the, uh, as an Aherica figure on your desk right now, are you the one that gets to stare at it? Uh, no, actually it's a mockup and I actually don't know the art team was involved with all the, like I was doing the programming for the prototype for the whole time.

Okay. No, no, you were making the figure, right? I was under the impression you were making it at your desk. Oh yeah. No, that's me. I did that on the side. Oh, okay. Great.

Perfect. Okay. Well, I know. I'm just wondering, cause I'm looking at the photo. I'm like, that looks dope. It's awesome. And I, I need that, but all right, you put that much money on figures before. Yeah.

No, I mean, there, there'll be like Matt and I still have to talk about, about, uh, what, what's possibilities lie, uh, as far as NPCs go, but, uh, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to have some discussions, right? All right. I mean, we're willing to work with you on whatever you want. Like the one for Skullgirls turned out awesome. Yeah. And we, we, the thing is, of course, we just don't want it to be like the most

jarring, stupid thing that doesn't match the world at all. Like a green cake. Wait, we never discussed that. Yeah. Like, yeah, I would have actually thought the opposite. Yeah. I actually also think the opposite. All right.

So just get us again in our hip hop uniform. Yes. And throw us right into this world. Yeah. Perfect. What's the local currency? Those you just pop out and go indivisible. Exactly.

Exactly. That's it. No, but, um, I mean, one of the other things that we're trying to do with this game, because Skullgirls was like, you can put background characters and fighting games and they could be whatever you want. So let people do a lot more like things that would not necessarily make it in the world, like the Gile and Chunli dogs. There was some flexibility there for sure.

There was some flexibility there. So for indivisible, we're going to make sure that your stuff fits more into the world of the game and like, we'll work with you a lot more closely on that stuff. Cool. Cool. So, because yeah, I'm like the, the casino, you know, had quite a few NPCs in it and like meshing wasn't exactly anybody can hang out a kissy anybody's welcome at the casino, even dirt bags like us, but the indivisible is a bit more

of a controlled world. So, yeah, it makes sense for the game for sure. Well, it was always like the seedy underbelly of somewhere, right? Yeah, I guess so. Well, we'll be down with the filth. Anyway, yeah, that's where horse mask guy lives. All right. We're, uh, yeah, we're running pretty long on this one, but I think, I think we got

it good, man. So any, any closing, please look forward to indivisible. Yeah, for sure. What is it that they say in Japan? Like any messages for any messages, any messages for the fans, right, producer son? Um, yes, sure. I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to do that. That qualifies as racist. Sorry. Yeah, but it was funny. Well, um, yeah, actually I have two things after this. Right. Well, so the two things are number one, thank you to everybody who has backed the project so far.

We are exceedingly happy to be able to get as far as we have gotten. I mean, obviously we hope that we can make the full thing, but if we don't, we still are incredibly, uh, grateful to everybody who has decided that this was worth your harder and money. And the second thing is please try the prototype. It is free for everybody. It is everywhere. You do not have to contribute to the campaign to play it.

And if you enjoy it, contribute afterwards. I mean, I'm a pictures worth a thousand words person and I'm a prototype is worth a thousand pictures, right? If I can put something in your hands that you can play and I don't have to describe to you that it was cool, that, that is much, uh, easier for me to do and much more concise. So that's why we have the prototype, right? I mean, you don't have to take it on faith that we're going to make something

where it's an RPG, but the battles aren't strictly turn based because we've had a lot of people be like, Oh, turn based battle. I don't like that stuff, but we can, we can make a thing where the battles are real time and the defense is real time and we can make the enemies super hard as a result and we can put the battles in the world. And all of this stuff actually works. When I click on a crowdfunding game, the, one of the first things I want to do on when I click that video is see gameplay.

So that's, that's exactly it. Yeah. I mean, we've actually gotten a fair amount of criticism about the video, not having enough things that are not gameplay. What? That's because, yeah, because like people were like, yeah, people were like, you know, it, it doesn't show you guys as personalities that we can engage with or whatever the marketing language is for all that.

It's easy for people to latch on the face. Show me the video game. Yeah, you can, you know, whatever. All right. That's, that's, well, I mean, 15th footage really killed it. 14. Oh, why do you keep saying 15? Because he subconsciously wants to skip a year.

Well, yeah, I mean, Windows eight to Windows 10. So King of Fighters 13 to King of Fighters 15, right? That makes sense. Yeah, exactly. I mean, also the other reason is, I know why he wants to say 15 because I want to say 15 because it was originally based on the year. There you go. That's why I want to say 15 because it makes more sense because it's 2015.

They switched it up at 11, man. Yep. But yeah, it was, I mean, King of Fighters 98, like there weren't 97 games before that heavy D was actually in 96 of them. No, but I want to ask you guys before I go, since you played it, what did you think? Um, like I, I kind of talked about a little bit is that I think the, the really cool original looking character types that you barely ever see ever see really in video games is like one of those things where I just latched up on them on the

like how will he said, even if it doesn't pass, you know, funding an art book at the very least, because I appreciate that type of art style and like, you know, culling from cultures that don't get a lot of representation is a big thing. And I'm a, I'm a huge fan of the battle system because, you know, you, you've talked about your inspirations before. And if it played a part in it or not, I, you know, I'm kind of a tales, tales of fan and the battle system also reminds me a little bit of how that works, specifically Symphonia and then this one or that one in there.

Um, and that I realized you can't see me nodding. That's why I started nodding, nodding wistfully. Uh, and that's a part that I really enjoyed from, from the, uh, the, uh, the prototype and like, uh, I think it is a shame also just in general that we talked about all the, uh, the money stuff and that, you know, me having like a background in QA a bit and all of us just knowing how these things work, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of a, uh, all the more impressive, all the more impressive. They were able to get all of that out there and, and, and fun and kind of, uh,

create the world and the lore and it'll be a real shame if it doesn't kind of pass it in some way, because I really want to see more of the world. And I remember when I looked up the, um, the bin, the kick, sorry about you go to the village in your inner mind, yeah, I was describing that, that, you know, my mind is like, that's so cool. I dropped that on you in the video. Yeah. I never heard of anything like that before.

So I, I, I pretty much like liked everything in, in the demo or in the, in the prototype prototype, um, I had to train myself really hard for that too. So yeah, there you go. Um, but in particular, what struck me was how tight the platforming was for like, I came into it expecting a bit more, um, weight on the, the combat. And I certainly do think there is more weight on the combat, but the platforming played a much bigger role than I expected. And it was really satisfying, uh, particularly like the axe was like super

satisfying to use. And just having your base actions that you're going to repeat 10,000 times in the game, be satisfying is, is like already, I think you can tell there's something special there. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, that's the thing that comes from fighting games, right? Like you have to, it has to be fun to press fierce. Yeah.

Right. Right. Right. Um, so yeah, no, I think for me, like I took a look at the, uh, you know, it initially and like ran through it and it was kind of like, okay, I kind of feel what's going on here, but, um, was just kind of going through it loosely and quickly. Uh, and then actually like the truth is like Matt and I recorded a run at it

that I just kind of wasn't too happy with, you know, um, and, uh, went back, revisited it and kind of like just spent a bit more time with the combat system and the juggling and paying attention to the flashes, getting the timing right and so on. And like, I could definitely feel that like, okay, when this is firing on all cylinders and you're against a super tough boss, a really tough boss that's blocking you as well. And, and that's doing other states besides like waiting and attacking.

It has that tension of fighting games. You're exactly like, it requires so much of your attention and you're so engaged with a fight where you're paying attention to like how you're spending your meter. And, and whatnot that I'm like, okay, no, this is absolutely like fighting games, level of like presence of mind when I'm getting into fights here. And that feels awesome. I really like feeling that way when I get into combat in anything.

So yeah, that, that, that system, I feel stands out the most. Thank you. Yeah. I, uh, like I wanted very much to make a combat system where you didn't, I mean, okay, so I like turn based RPGs, but I don't like the fact that you get forever to think. Yeah. Right.

Like calculator in FF tactics is cool. And it's the exact opposite of how I want to play a game, right? Where you take 15 minutes and you write a formula that will hit everybody on the other team and not your team. And then that's awesome. But I wanted something that felt much more like a fighting game, right? Like the only thing that makes any part of this turn based is the fact that you win the enemy can't attack at the same time.

Right. Other than that, it is, it is as based on fighting games as I can, like the manual defense, that was actually kind of an amazing moment during the development of the prototype was like, cause originally we didn't have blocking, right? And everybody was playing through it and like the enemy hits you in cause at that point when you couldn't block, um, getting hit, built meter. And it was like, yeah, this is all right. You know, whatever we can, we can't really give the enemies hits to do too much

damage because they're just going to kill you. And there isn't really anything you can do unless you're taking everything. Yeah. And then when we, when I finally got to add blocking, it was like an overnight transformation, right? Because blocking being up to the player rather than up to the game makes all the difference in the world. I mean, if you have high defense or you have a high evade stat or whatever, and

the game chooses that you're not going to dodge, you still die if the hits going to kill you, right? Whereas when we made blocking manual, then there was immediately the tension between like, do I use meter to try to block? Do I save my meter for healing? Do I super like if I super, then I don't have any meter left to block. And also it made all of the fights that at, at that point were pretty nicely tuned to you not being able to block.

It made every single fight in the entire prototype ridiculously easy because you can choose not to take full damage from anything whenever you want. If you want to play super cautiously, right? You can block whenever you want. And like we went back and it was like, okay, well, so now we can give the enemies hits that hit everybody and we can give them hits that do like a third damage to everybody. And we can give the boss hits that do over half damage to everybody because

you can block it if you want to. And I mean, we can give the, the secret that we've been mentioning throughout this entire podcast, like when I started with that, it was like, okay. So I'm not going to give it a tax that kill you because that's not fair, right? And then I went and I played it and I beat it. And I was like, all right, I'll bump up some of the damage on these things. And eventually it became like, instead of designing the game around how much base damage does this thing do because the player at some point is just going

to have to take that, it came, it became designing the game around how much damage does this stuff do on block? Chip damage, exactly. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's off the play. Yeah. Because the on hit damage becomes way less relevant.

And if you like, and now it has a tax that will kill you. If you screw up later on in the fight, it will one shot one of your characters. So you have to not screw up. Like that was just such a, go ahead. Sorry. I just, I just, I like using terms like chip damage, launchers, and meter management for an RPG. Oh yeah.

That's such a cool thing. But yeah, go. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the other, like I wanted this to come away. Like engaging the fighting game part of my brain. Right.

I wanted it to be fast and not forgiving at, at hard spots. And like, I wanted you to have to pay attention to the same things. And I actually, I've seen, I know this is supposed to be like the end of the podcast, but I've seen, it's actually supposed to be the beginning of our segway into our two other segments, which we're not going to do. I get it. Sorry. Yeah.

It's fine. Uh, I have gotten a lot of comments from people that look like the comments of people learning to play fighting games for the first time. Like somebody said, I never look at my characters or what's going on in battle. I just look at the meters, which is when you first start playing fighting games, you're looking at your life all the time. Yeah. You're looking at your super all the time.

And if you play something with extra gauges, like barrier or whatever, you're trying to track barrier and burst, like you're looking at all that stuff that has nothing to do with what's going on in the fight. And it's only after you've played the game for a significant amount of time that kind of knowing those resources becomes second nature. And you only really look at your super bar, like two or three times a match. And you only really look at the opponent's health. Like when you land a good hit to figure out whether you should go for

damage or knockdown or whatever, like you start paying a lot less attention to the visual representation of the resources and it becomes like second nature. And I saw comments from people on this that like echoed that whole process of like the first couple of times I played this, all I ever looked at was the meters and like, I never looked at any of the beautiful animations or anything. And then they come back like a couple of days later and they're like, man, I just went through the whole thing and including the secret. And like, I only looked at my meters every once in a while and it felt great.

So, yeah, yeah, like I'm aiming for the same. Yeah. So I'm aiming for like the same thing where you need to like internalize how the game is and you need to actually improve at playing the game instead of going out and grinding and then you can take whatever battle you had a problem with. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. That's cool for sure.

So I'm sure, I mean, I'm glad that you guys find it fun. That's the game. That's the goal. Go ahead. No, I just, I'm sure like the, uh, whatever the equivalent of your ultimate weapon type enemy will be, will require like two frame reactions. Yo, it's going to be if, if, if two frames, the ultimate weapons, they're going to be all over the map and each one's going to be one of the skull

girl's characters. Go fight. It'll be like Valkyrie profile where it gives you a cave of oblivion as the first thing in the entire game and then you quit and don't play it for five years. Rolling star. Yeah, exactly. Oh God.

First fight, fight. Sarah Bella go. She has her full move set. I can see big. Dude, I want to do grappling like you wouldn't even believe. Oh good. Like I want to do that so much to, to do things like, you know, if the enemy is blocking, then you can grab them instead with characters that have grabs.

Like this is all stuff that I really want to do in the full game. It's just, we had four characters and we had to do like the, you, you have to do the melee character. You have to do a ranged character. We had to do a mage. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

So no, it makes sense. I want to do like all of that, like resets and all and juggles and everything are when you get to the fucking my tie fighter, who can put a chair down and then your characters are jumping on the chair like and someone's hanging like tapestries on the wall. What's that for? I don't know. They're doing it.

Like these are, these ideas are, these ideas are, these ideas are, these ideas are pretty, like, what if, what if, what if a character puts a plant and another character has a water attack and they grow, what, what, what, best friends consulting right there. Now it's free. That was free. But that was the free sample. Right.

The next one is $50,000 an hour. Yeah. Oh, shit. That's that wall and you shit right there. I like it. Your house is built of bullets, but you have to defend your children. And we'll give you a dog. Yeah, exactly.

Bullets. Oh, Mike. This was great, man. Yeah, definitely. We, uh, we absolutely, like we ran over, but like this was fun. I'm glad I, we got that info and, um, and, uh, details out of you about how this came together. So yeah, I mean, again, it's, it's indivisible.

We have links to it everywhere, uh, right now you guys are at 23% and you got 26 days left. That's most of the month. You know, everything sounds good. Let's, uh, let's see, 75%, yeah, let's do it. I would really like to have a job after this campaign is over. Yeah, we do it, we do it, do it. That's, that's, that's the Capcom RE, RE shirt guy.

Thanks a bunch for, thanks a bunch for making the time to be here. Yeah, man, fun, fun, hanging out, fun, hanging out. Thank you so much for having me. I, I said it at the beginning and I want to say it again. It was actually an honor because you guys did so much to help skull girls. I really just, I really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you. Okay.

It was a dishonor. That's way better. No, you're honestly, you're very, very welcome. And it's, it's totally our pleasure to help cool games like you, wherever we can, if the game wasn't fucking sick. Thank you. That actually helps. I'm, I'm glad to hear that.

Like if you were saying, if we hated it, we wouldn't have done this. Like I'm glad. It's fucking sick. We best friends didn't hate it. Which games did we back that good? Skull girls, shovel night, shovel night. Like what, what, what, yeah, exactly. That's good company.

Yeah. All right, man. It's been, it's been awesome. Thank you very much. We're just going to, I guess, like wrap up on our side, slide out with a Skype call. That's fine. As we just lower the volume to zero. Yeah.

It's got to be like the newscasters where like they turn the lights off and they start talking to each other. They let their hair down and all that. Everyone who's emails that we were going to read this week, we're throwing them right into the trash. Don't start everybody. We check the all the cameras zooming out and now we're laying over talking to Letterman off.

Mike, you can't hear what we're saying. We've already taken your shoes off. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. And here comes the music now.