Get Played - Assassin's Creed Shadows First Impressions + Street Fighter II Documentary

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Heather, Nick and Matt talk through their first impressions of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows and discuss the Street Fighter II documentary "Here Comes A New Challenger". Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed. Follow us on social media @getplayedpod. Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com. Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com. For ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? and our Premium DLC episodes and our exclusive show Get Anime'd where we're currently watching Gurren Lagann go to patreon.com/getplayed. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Lost back for 24 hours, up to 1,000 in non-withdrawable casino credits that expire in 168 hours. Terms at casino.draftkings.com slash promos. -♪ BGM playing, music playing, and game sounds playing. Guys, guys, guys, did you hear? At 7-Eleven, they have one of those hacked Street Fighter arcade games.

Oh, no way! Yeah, yeah, yeah! I know we're 12 and 13 years old, and it is the height of the 1990s but Street Fighter 2 is the biggest game of all time and They've got a version of it where you can do stuff. You can't do on other Street Fighter machines. Is it cool if I come? I'm only 11. Yeah, of course it is Nick. You should come too. All right. I don't even have pubes. All right Let's go check it out. You better not have any if I find out you got a single pub, you can't come. I don't have any.

Why is it important to you? I don't want to be hanging out with some pubed 11-year-olds. But we're 12 and 13. I know. Wait, why were we fixated on this? Sometimes you gotta just draw your lines in the sand where they are, okay? Look, I hate to derail this because we clearly had a premise, but it sounds to me like you're overly fixated on his pew.

He just mentioned it, and I just was concerned that he was a liar, but that's all. Let's just go play Street Fighter, okay? Why would you consider him a liar? Like, what does that have to do with anything? I just, you know, we started reading Shakespeare in English class, and I thought maybe he doth protest too much.

Okay, okay, yeah. It's been a weird thing to mention. Wow, you did bring in the lesson from this week, and you know what? That's why you're the smartest kid in class. Are we going, are. It's not a weird thing to mention. Wow, you did bring in the lesson from this week, and you know what? That's why you're the smartest kid in class. Are we going or not? All right, fine. I wanna play Street Fighter.

I don't have any pubes, I swear. He just keeps saying. You keep saying. Matt's not gonna let me come if he thinks I have pubes. Look, it doesn't matter who has pubes and who doesn't have pubes. I just wanna go play this weird Street Fighter. No, hold on, now I'm worried about it

because he keeps bringing it up, and it seemed like we were gonna move past it and go to the premise But it's nothing he just keeps talking about how he doesn't have pubes Look You have to just we have we're kids. Okay. Yeah, we're kids Yeah, we're 12 13 and 11 It makes sense that we'd all know each other and be friends We can't at this point in our lives, be concerned with who has pubes and who doesn't have pubes.

All right, so let's stop talking about it. Let's go play some Street Fighter 2. I wanna play this modded cabinet. Because no matter what, if you have pubes or you don't, we're still just people. I don't wanna keep talking about it. I wanna get to the premise. They've got a modded Street Fighter machine.

They can do all kinds of crazy stuff Okay, come on. You don't have pubes. I only have three. Let's go play Street Fighter. Let's get on our bikes and go to 7-eleven Yeah! Alright! Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah Oh Who wants to be Blanca? I got dibs on Blanca guys. Oh Wait, I guess two guys can be blonde because it's mounted We don't have time for we don't have time for I just want to play I just want to I just wanna play it! I know the word again that's all I want you to do Okay, you remember, remember

We have to just remind everybody Before we start playing it We know that this Street Fighter Is modded It's modded so it's got a lot of things there It's got a bunch of different stuff it can do It has nothing to do with how sweaty you got All the way over here

Okay, wait, guys, I see something weird about it Before we even start. Whoa, what's that? This one doesn't take quarters. It says it takes pubes and I'm worried that we don't have enough. Guys, we got plenty, we can play all day. Oh I knew you were a liar, oh my gosh! Benny! He's tearing him out! Okay, great. Now let's play.

I don't want to play anymore. He needs bandages. I'm 11, it hurts. You need bandages! I'm 11 it hurts Play it just for a second. Oh my god Vega has a boner I don't want to know anything else about the machine. I don't want wanna be here anymore We undercut talking heads with game footage and remember things as we discuss Street Fighter 2 documentary, here comes a new challenger this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Anne Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger. That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premier video game podcast where this week we are talking about Street Fighter II, the documentary, which I think was called,

Here Comes a New Challenger. That's right, that's the doc we're going to get into. And I would take a second real quick because we ran an ad for this, but thank you to everyone who filled out the surveys we sent out. You got tricked! Yes, thank you for that sweet, sweet data and information.

This week, 300 more games on Metacritic. No, but we're like, we got a much bigger response rate than we asked for and that we expected and it really helps the show. So we really appreciate everyone who responded to that. And I think it's gonna guide the show moving forward because it was a lot of really cool information. We're really grateful for your sincerity.

As you wished, this is the final episode of the show. Out of 1,500 responses, 1,499 said, please stop. Yeah, they were like, please stop, stop, please, please stop, stop, stop, stop, please, et cetera. Yeah, there were some et cetera. So if there's a weird energy on the show today for our listeners, we are filming clips for the first time ever. And I am a troll that doesn't like to be looked at.

So this is, I'm trying to figure out my energy here, but I think it's going to be okay. I think we just got to do the show and not worry about the cameras that are pointed at us as we're generating these social media clips. But as I was telling Rachelle earlier, I am really just ready for the comment I used to get on Twitch, that's what you look like? Yeah, which is, no matter how you slice it,

bad, that sucks. That look like? Yeah, which is, no matter how you slice it, bad, that sucks. That's like bad information, cause it's like, what did you think? Was it worse? Who could say? Also with podcasting, it's different because you become so attached to a voice. You know, like there's plenty of ways

in which people can see us visually online, like doing improv or whatever. But like when you're listening to a podcast, it's just this disembodied parasocial presence in your life. And the moment you see that connected to a physical body in action, it sucks. No matter how much you like the person on the show. What I like about podcasting

and what I liked about it when I began doing it, is that it's an audio medium. But now the expectation is video, it sucks and I don't like it, but whatever, my other fucking podcast is video too, so what are you gonna fucking do? Did you ever, you remember Casey Kasem? From like the American Top 40?

Have you ever seen what that guy looks like in person? No, but I know that he's the voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Yes. So I just assume he looks like that. He looks like Splinter. He's a rat. He's like a human rat with a...

Were you looking at his corpse? Yeah, that's pretty mean about Casey Gason. He's probably a handsome guy. He's dead, right? Yeah, he's dead. I think long dead. Oh my God. He's a, yeah. Yeah, I have no idea what he looked like.

He had a, he just had a different look. I think it's the sort of thing of like, you look at him, he's like, oh, he looks like a TV presenter. Yeah, passed away in 2014. The... Almost 10 years. Almost?

What year is it? Uh-oh. Uh-oh, Matt. We're recording this in 2023. Almost? Almost? Almost? What year is it? Uh oh. Uh oh, man. We're recording this in 2023. We're banking so many episodes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He looks like a TV presenter. He looks like an old school sort of showbiz guy.

Honestly. But he's not necessarily what you would think of from hearing that voice in a vacuum and also such an old reference. I'm sure a lot of our listeners who were born in the 90s and 2000s have never heard of Kasey Kasem. Wait, no, wasn't on the radio he was like, hi, this is Kasey Kasem.

Wasn't it that guy? I feel like my dad and mom used to listen to that guy. Yeah. Oh, okay. He was on the radio for a long, long time. For like 100 years. I wonder what the last song he tossed to before he retired.

I bet you can look that up. Yeah, it's like. Now listen, listen this new track from Sir Mix-A-Lot, put him on the glass. Thanks for 50 years. I just wanted to say to defend myself real quick. Even though he took his own life on the radio. to defend myself quick even though 11 is almost 10 you're right Matt you are correct more yeah but it is almost I just want to say that For more and less.

And I guess I'm almost 39. Now that people can see that. Now we have a case that we can present to a court of law. We have a lot to talk about with the Street Fighter II documentary. But before we get into that, before we go into 30 years in the past, I think it's good to stay in the present for a second and talk about some video games we're currently playing by asking the question we always ask at the top of this episode, what are you playing?

What are you playing? Hi, it's me, the resident evil merchant and I'm here to ask my friends what they're playing. So, what are you playing? What up, merch? What's up? Good to see you. And good to see you too.

I, I've been drinking milk. Okay, sure. Does a body good? Hopefully not drinking milk. Okay, sure. Does the body good? Hopefully not raw milk. I went to the doctor and my bones are wrong. You do have a pretty distinct anatomy. So wrong just generally, it may not be there's anything wrong with you. It could just be that the-

No, no, no. The doctor looked at the X-ray and went, oh my God, this is wrong. So he was like in distress. He didn't like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, my pelvis and femurs look like I was run over by a truck.

Oh. Oh. I mean, I just honestly say like this doctor does not seem like they have the best bedside manner. I think there's a better way to communicate that to someone who's potentially in distress. Well, the nurse said the same thing. Oh, the nurse did as well.

Yeah, the nurse came in and she said, oh God. Oh no. Did you go to the Silent Hill Hospital? Is that what happened? Yeah, I don't fuck with that. Okay. Oh yes, different, no. Did you go to the Silent Hill Hospital? Is that what happened? Yeah, I don't fuck with that. Okay. Oh, yeah, different, different. He's fucking scary as shit.

Yeah, too scary. Yeah, you ever been in there? I, you know what? In my restless dream, I think of Silent Hill. Stop dreaming. Yeah, I don't fuck with that. Silent Hill, but yeah, I don't I don't fuck with that As I know but yeah, it's how new I'm drinking milk eating yogurt

eating cheese vacation beyond an all dairy diet Maxing it um I gotta get my bones right before before it's too late. Well, it sounds like I Would you in calcium? Too late. Well it sounds like I Would be taking calcium. I you know that I would just look for other sources of calcium I know like sardines have calcium a broccoli. I believe is a surprisingly good source. Yeah. Yeah I don't know if I'd go straight to sardines Yeah

Weird choice am I right? I don't you have like a fucking black bass in your trench coat And like this is a fair point as a shelf stable tinned fish actually Not that weird. Well, I just don't I don't like it. Why is this asshole targeting me? Yeah, I carry a black bass in my trench coat. You're thinking about conversations incorrectly the person the other person you're speaking to isn't targeting you That's just how conversations work Yeah, okay. Yeah Okay, okay, so we're all just That's just how conversations work. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So we're all just... How do you know... Wait, how do you know who to aim at? Okay, well, that... If you're talking to someone, if someone's talking to you, you aim at them by facing them and conversing with them in Congress.

Hello, Matt! Yeah, hello! Hello, Matt! There you go, like that? Yeah, exactly. All right, cool. Got it. Received. Got it.

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I can't find my money! What are you playing? Matt, what are you playing? Well I do have something to talk about, but we all have something to talk about. Do you want to do that for me? I think we should lead with a game that we've all been playing. That's what are you all playing? Okay. Yeah, okay, that works. What are you all playing? Okay. Yeah, okay, that works.

What are we all playing? Resident Evil Merchant, we have all been playing a little bit of Assassin's Creed Shadows. That's right. We're recording this episode the day the game released, but we all got a few hours to put into this game. Now, I want to hear each of your thoughts. I would just, I'll just say for myself,

I have not played an Assassin's Creed game in at least 10 years. I looked it up, I think the black flag was the last one I messed around with. That was 2013. So I am very out on this franchise and I'm also generally out on the Ubisoft open world design which is one reason I skipped Star Wars Outlaw completely. Outlaw or Outlaws? Outlaws.

I skipped Outlaw completely. Outlaw or Outlaws? Outlaws. I skipped Outlaws completely. But as I've talked about, I love Sekiro. I finished Sekiro, an absolutely incredible game, one of my favorite games ever. I also absolutely adored Ghost of Tsushima, which was one of my favorite games of the previous console generation. And I can't avoid the comparisons to these two games,

even just from an aesthetic and story standpoint. So like, if anything, what got me playing Assassin's Creed Shadows, the Assassin's Creed and Ubisoft of it was a bit of a liability, but the comparisons to those two games is why I'm in. But I wanna hear what your relationships with the Assassin's Creed franchise is,

and also like where you are in this game right now. I'll say for me, I've played very few Assassin's Creed games and I've not ever finished one. I always sort of try one when it seems interesting to me. So I played a little bit of the first one because that was sort of like the only game for the PS3 because that was sort of like the only game for the PS3 generation that seemed like a Prince of Persia. It was in many ways a

successor to the Prince of Persia and Sands of Time franchise but I wanted something to scratch that itch. I wanted to run on walls. I wanted to climb. I wanted to use daggers and stuff. Played that, hopped off that, never finished it and then I didn't check in again until gosh probably yeah I didn't check in again until, gosh, probably, yeah, I didn't check in again until Black Flag, that same generation, which is later on, of course. And I got into that one a little bit and liked it, but then was just like, eh, pirates,

not really my favorite thing. I like Henry Rollins, but. Yeah, I like Henry Rollins. but yeah, I like I like Henry Rollins No, this is what I was saying. I it's so crazy that you were saying that because I was sort of like When are we gonna get to the Henry Rollins part of the game? Yeah, when is he gonna? I didn't finish it. So I guess I don't know if he ever gives like a Stand-up show that's just like a lecture or some right yeah sort of a spoken word period yeah I don't know if he does that

But I hope that he's there's other historical figures in the game you would imagine that hopefully he's in there Maybe in the DLC or something. I think Rollins is in there. Rollins is probably in there. He's in fortnight, right? Maybe Jack Henry Rollins running around with a sub machine gun. Fucking rule. Give me back in. Put them in, put them fucking in. Put them in a bunch of video games actually.

Be kind of funny. I saw an old politically incorrect clip today actually of Henry Rollins, Bill Marge being a fucking idiot and saying like the dumbest shit and Henry Rollins just very matter of factly saying like, well, I think you're wrong for these extremely right reasons. Just explaining what an idiot he was. It's so satisfying.

It's very funny to watch somebody just own Bill Maher because it doesn't take much. You just have to be like a little bit smart because he's- One of the most owned men in America Consistently yeah He's a glutton for punishment. He does he won't stop doing this fucking show that everybody hates Dolphins we should just get rid of all of them. Yeah, fuck you talking about

We don't like you new rule rule, if you can't speak, other than, you don't get to exist, okay? He's doing a dolphin. He's doing a dolphin thing there, right. Some of the impression was actually kind of good, and then that, you know, it was confusing, certainly. But.

I don't, his billboards always look like he pooped in his pants and he is asking if you're gonna have a problem with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I just shit myself. Is that all right with you? Yeah, like it's like always like- That's kinda gross, dude.

I hate it. It's always like the eyebrows of that. So I played Black Flag, no Henry Rollins to be seen. And then I got into, then my next one was Valhalla. Yes. And I playedhalla and I played I thought I played more of that game and I was looking at our like you know when your friends on PlayStation you can see how much you've played a game versus how much your friends played a game I was checking in on this literally

yesterday uh-huh I thought I had put like at least 30 hours into Valhalla. I put in like 11. Oh. Yeah, not nothing. That's respectable. It's a good amount. And I liked what I played of it. And I kind of wasn't really sure why I fell off of it.

But I think you played by a factor of a hundred times what I played. But with this one, I was excited to check it out, because same thing, I love Ghost of Tsushima, and I was just like, maybe this is the one. Maybe, and then just the fact that it has been delayed, it was delayed and delayed, kind of, that sort of weirdly made it interesting, kind of too,

because I know that that's typically never good. But I thought, why not give this one a try? And I will say, for me, I'm enjoying myself so far. So my experience of the Assassin's Creed franchise is, played the first one, did not finish it, was kind of weirded out by the soupy combat. There was a lot of, it was kind of liquidy, and I didn't really like it, no crunch in it.

Yeah, my memory of it is like hazy, but I have a similar recollection. And then the next one I played was the French Revolution one, and all I did in that one was purchase the game, climb to the top of the Notre Dame, never turn on the game again. I was so impressed with the crowd

in front of the Notre Dame and this like being able front of the Notre Dame and this like being able to scale the Notre Dame. And also Ubisoft's scans of Notre Dame were helpful in reconstructing Notre Dame because they took such intricate scans. And I really love that even though they're not, you know, exactly historically accurate, I love that there is somebody there who's like, I really wanna do a good job. And the best way I can do that is to make sure

that this building looks as close as the real building does. I didn't pick up the series again until Valhalla. And then I think platinum to that game, which was one of the most addictive experiences I've ever had in games. The dopamine loop was so perfect for me and I really liked all the history. I also really liked the mode in that

where you just walk around learning. And I think that was the first time that mode had ever been introduced to an Assassin's Creed game. So when I loaded up this one, I was like, I haven't, wasn't there another one in between Valhalla and this? Yes, there was, not Odyssey.

Odyssey predated Valhalla. Yes, gosh. Was there another one? Mirage? Mirage. Oh, I forgot about Mirage. Mirage came out after that and I didn't pick it up. And then this one, I was like,

you know, it's been a minute for an Assassin's Creed. I love learning history through the games. And so I'd love to learn more about Japanese history. And again, so far, I'm impressed with, like there's already a button that you can press that's like learn about Japan. And there's like a huge codex of like all of the stuff that you're like encountering or passing through. And that's, I don't know,

I'm a junkie for that sort of thing. I also really liked that the boot up screen, and I didn't go into it because I only had limited amount of time today, but the boot up screen, and I didn't go into it because I only had limited amount of time today, but the boot up screen, you can go through the timeline of all the Assassin's Creed games. Yes, I think that's a new thing that they're trying to do this launcher where if you own or have the other games installed, you can open and start them from any of them. That's really cool.

I did not, so yeah, I hovered over Valhalla and I was like, wow, I wonder if this is like a truncated version of Valhalla or something, but if it's just a launcher, then that's not great. I also had forgotten, because I didn't do this in Valhalla, that there's like a store where you can buy like asinine things immediately to ruin the history of the game.

Like one of the bonuses I got for purchasing the game was a wolf to ride on. And I'm like, man, I've just like spent all this like neat time like going through the mud and like sneaking through the grass. The idea that I would whistle and a giant wolf would come out of the woods. Domesticated wolf, maybe used as a mount. Completely a historical. Yeah come out of the woods. Domesticated wolf, you could use as a mount.

Completely ahistorical. Yeah, kinda was like, I feel like that stuff is fun in Endgame. But like right up at the beginning when you're like trying to get like the context for the history of where you are, feels like you shouldn't be able to ride a glow in the dark wolf.

It's a little goofy, I agree. I didn't get into any of that, but speed of launchers, but with Street of Launcher, so I'm playing on Steam, which led me to install or reinstall Ubisoft Connect, which I had on at some point on my old PC. Ubisoft Connect, I couldn't tell if it was mandatory. It's sort of, the prompts made me feel

like I had to install it to play it, but I couldn't quite tell, but I was like, I don't wanna fuck it, I'll just get this game up and running. I'll put this a login and I'll install this dumb ass launcher. The thing is, it's like there is an overlay with Ubisoft Connect, even if I'm playing on Steam, and it has notifications and achievements that are even more intrusive than the epic notifications, which I already found super

annoying. And Ranch, I know you experienced some of those with Alan Wake, it's just like, why do I need something that takes up a fucking quarter of my screen saying that I got an achievement for completing a certain chapter? It's like, get this fuck out of the way. Thankfully, I turned everything off,

but it was just like one of those minor annoyances where it was just like, I wish all these companies would stop doing that. Like, just let Steam be the platform and stop trying to, but I guess they're whatever, all these companies are just trying to establish their own platform. The speed with which those achievements

started coming also, I played on PS5 Pro. Me too. And the, like within the first few hours, it's just like ding, in the corner, ding, sight unseen, ding, ruthless kill. And I was like, these aren't achievements. I'm not achieving anything. It feels like they, some sort of focus testing

or analytics or market research they did or some combination of them said that like, people want a bunch of achievements in the early hours and that makes them more likely to keep playing a game. But but it but it's I agree it's it's too much and it's annoying. And if you're getting the steam ones are fine. I do have the steam notifications on those achievements. Those don't bother me. But the Ubisoft ones were just so intrusive.

But talking about the game itself, I think we all kind of talked about this offline. I do kind of wish I could play the game that I bought a little bit more in the early going. Like I'm just over three hours in, and I feel like the game is really front loaded with cut scenes and the gameplay sections are, for a game that's going to be primarily an open world experience, are pretty much on rails.

Like just like go from A to B, here's a really clear objective, maybe not even with combat, this is just like sort of a walking stretch. This is almost like, hey, here's a little bit of interactivity just so you don't feel like you're watching a Kojima level of cut scenes before you play the game.

And for me, like even though I like the story and I find the story kind of interesting, I still just like, I wish there was a little bit more, I don't know, maybe that the cold open that they had or something, it could just be like a little bit more extended. Well, what I found weird about the structure of these first few hours is that they launch you in,

they give you an introduction to the two main characters. Yasuke and Naoe. Yeah, and they give you a tutorial in those levels of like how to do blocks, how to do sneaking, like how to do an assassination. Like they load all that into you pretty rapidly. And then after that, you go backwards to earlier in her life where she doesn't know

any of this stuff and they tutorial you it again. And I was like, this sucks. I have literally already learned this in combat in the opening. Why am I now having to do it four times to her father in order to like progress further? Pacing wise that I found very strange when you're,

yeah, so you started as Yasuke, and then I have not gotten back to Yasuke. I've kept playing him. Me neither. And just all Naoi from that point on for a while, I guess. But I like playing as Naoi, who's more of like, Yasuke is more of a brute, more of a bruiser, more of a samurai Naoi, more of a ninja, a traditional assassin, more stealth stealth focused very nimble very agile

I think it's a very fun character to play love the grappling hook great grappling hook. Yeah, the hook is good feels good Although we do like the second row hook better, but but I was I was going to say like Yeah, it's so strange that you have the fight The the the here's how to fight with your dad before, even if that makes sense from a story standpoint, from a gameplay standpoint, it's just like, why am I relearning the same thing or an adjacent skill? Also, oh sorry.

I was gonna say, you could have achieved the same thing by having that flashback, you know, this flashback portion start at the end of the training sequence, and be like, you're actually getting pretty good at this now, or whatever, and just move on. Or you could have had and be like, you're actually getting pretty good at this now. Or move on. Or you could have had her be like, you could have had her about to do her first combat

and she's running towards it and there's some kind of smoky memory and you hear your father's voice and then you fade in on that training sequence and then you come back, fine. Here's what bummed me out. As Yasuke, I was so happy and I was cheering. The dude is lopping people's heads off.

Those animations are really satisfying. All of his finishes and execution, he is just a powerhouse and you can run through doors, which is super fun. You also get preloaded with like two of your rechargeable special moves that are dedicated to like the R2 button or whatever. One of them is a kick that kicks people

through like landscape and through furniture and stuff. And I felt so awesome being this guy immediately. And then to backpedal to the stealth stuff, I was like, okay, some people are gonna be like, oh, I hope the whole game's not like this when you're Yasuke. I have difficulty believing that that kind of person exists, but I'm sure that they do. And so when you get to her portion of the game,

they're probably like, oh cool, I'm like sneaking through and I'm like stabbing people with my little knife and maybe that's fun. But none of the brutality of those kills matched the insanity of what we had just experienced. Like I expected her to like leap off a building and jam her knife through somebody's eye hole. Like something akin to what we'd seen.

And she doesn't do any of that shit. Yeah, I mean, the assassinations, I think they do look good. I think they're cool. The game looks good. From an animation standpoint in particular, there's a lot of really distinct attack finisher and assassination animations.

Hers are still quite violent, but you start with like a different level of brutality. That is, yeah, and then it's really front loaded with all this action, and then it just kind of goes to a little bit more patient cadence for a little bit. And then from that patient cadence goes back another step to a tutorial with a wooden sword, and from that tutorial with a wooden sword

goes even farther back to you can't walk properly. Like it's crazy to introduce all of the freedom of a game and then strip it away from you step by step. Yeah. I will say though, like so there were certainly some frustrations with like how the game onboards you and just like kind of its slow pace and then me just wanting to like, you know, I'm installing the game that is like, okay, my game is ready to like, you know, I'm installing the game, that is like, okay, my game's ready to play, time to play and it still kind of feels

like you're still installing the game because you're still trying to get to the point where you get to actually play it. I went, whatever that, what is the count that tracks that time to game play, what is it? Time to game, I don't know. Is it just time to game? I said it, I wasn't sure if that's a good that's no there's an account the tracks that says how long

How much cinematic you have to play? It's not how long to play how that's total play time It's it's like how long until your first moment of control you do to get it get to control yasuke pretty early but the first time you're controlling him is Literally just a follow thing You're just you're just walking behind somebody in a crowd and then you have a little bit of an action sequence. But I do think the combat is fairly kinetic and fun.

It does kind of have a feel of like a dumbed down Sekiro of just like there's really clear tells for parries and very large windows. Same thing for dodges. You know, like a flashing red to indicate when something is unblockable. So you know, to dodge instead. So it is like very spoon fed to you. But I do think it's it's pretty fun. And the other thing I like is there is a there's a mode I think it's called immersive mode, which I turned on and it which which makes it so that the characters are all speaking the language they would be speaking by default and everything Portuguese or Japanese Portuguese or Japanese primarily and so like that does make it feel like oh I am in a different world like like

I really like I mean it's called immersive mode and it is more immersive I don't think that immersive mode was in Valhalla and it immediately made me bummed out. Like, looking back on it, I was like, oh, man, I know we don't know what Vikings sounded like. So there's no way for us, like, unless they were all speaking effectively Icelandic, which is the closest to Viking language that still exists, I was like, but man, it would be awesome if these guys were all speaking in Icelandic, and then you went to Paris and they were all speaking French

and you went to the UK and they were speaking old English would be so fucking cool. Yeah, I'd like this game like five to 10% less if everyone was just speaking English, we hadn't turned that on. There's also a Canon mode, which I did not turn on and I kind of regret not turning it on because it's like that just makes those decisions for you.

Like when it's like, you know, and decisions are all things like, I'm not sure or I'll look into that. You know what I mean? They don't feel like big, pivotal RPG decisions and dialogue. Yeah, but it'll be like the little kid will be like, you wanna do something with me?

And your options will be like, absolutely, or are you an enemy? Yeah. I'm picking. I do like that little kid. Going back to the look of it, so I'm playing on PC, I've got an RTX 4070 Ti Super and it does look awesome and performance is great. Like I was just like, I feel like I got 120 FPS. I didn't, you know, it's just like,

it's so silky smooth. I was weirdly getting hitching and stuttering only in cut scenes, which I was baffled by because some of these were like pre-rendered. And it seemed to go away when I turned off Ubisoft Connect, which was another thing is like, was that the issue? But that's also a thing of like, I do love PC gaming, but it always kinda sucks

when it's just like, I gotta fucking debug something. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I just said yeah. Some of the stuttering is intentional. Okay. Like there is, there are, there are. No, no, I don't mean that.

I mean, there was some other stuff that was like, clearly not an artistic choice. It felt like a technical issue. Okay, because there was like parts where like a bird would be flying and it would just like jump across the sky. And I was like, oh yeah, it's that bullshit. Yes.

Yeah, that's the part about Assassin's Creed that I just really don't care about any of that lore. Like I've never been at all interested in any of the sci-fi stuff. I'm always like, I always forget that's part of it. And I was like, why do they keep fucking doing this? This can't be anybody's favorite part.

Well, I mean, in Valhalla, there were modern day sequences. Yes. And I assume that there's going to be a part of this game where you suddenly hop forward to the, what's it, the Animus, whatever the fuck it's called, and like a fucking archeological dig. I like that stuff. I like it because like, and like a fucking archeological dig. I like that stuff. I like it because like, I don't know,

there's a million, like Kingdom Come 2 is another fucking essentially Assassin's Creed simulator. So I like that there is one additional flavor to these games that makes it like, what if going back in time was something you could do by scanning your DNA? I'm on board for that. It's not like an uninteresting premise.

I'm just like, I guess a little tired of, here's this thing that's going on and some evil company's behind it. I'm like, okay, great, cool. Yeah, it's called the Assassin's Creed franchise. Yeah, yeah. But the other thing I like, I do think that the gameplay,

the limited amount you get to play in the opening hours is pretty fun. And I do think the aesthetics are really on point and I like the immersive mode a lot. I also like, I think there was some people who were complaining about the game's protagonists for whatever reason. I never really.

Racism and sexism. Okay, got it, I never really talked to any of that. But like in context, I was like, this feels like a really interesting narrative choice. That it's like a black character who's enslaved by the Portuguese, who is essentially like given his tribute to Nobunaga, but then becomes like this, you know,

like is empowered to become this samurai warrior in his own right. Like, and the same thing Naoi, like this low status woman who has to like, you know, kind of like deal with this insular, patriarchal society. It's like, I just think it's like, it seems like it's set up to be dramatically interesting.

And at some point these characters, I guess, are gonna cross paths and we'll see what happens. Yeah, but I like it. Well, aren't they on opposite sides? Are they on opposite sides of the conflict? Yeah, because he's with Nobunaga and she's with people being raided by Nobunaga. Right, sure, yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so seeing how that, like, I'm sure that it's not gonna like, you know, at some point they are going to end up being allies. I'm just interested to see how that's gonna happen. Right? That's my expectation. I was hoping it was like a pivotal decision where you're like, are you going to choose

to side with Nobunaga? Are you gonna choose to side with the farm village? Well, maybe you do, I don't know. Interesting, look, I'm... I guess there's probably no reason to speculate because people have already finished this game and you can just see what the ending is. I don't fucking know. I guess that's true. Do you think people have have already finished this game and you can just see what the

Do you think people have finished it already not by the time this episode is out? Yeah Yeah for sure I can't wait to see what else is going on I just like I Really really love the immersive mode. I was wondering about that. I thought it was I think that was awesome I really like that really really cool touch, and I just like I just like kind of One of my favorite things to do is climb on walls. The climbing is great. I love climbing. The climbing's great. Good climbing.

The parkour is great. I like throwing stuff, and I love stealth. Can I say something? I do love stealth, too, I know the other doesn't like stealth. Grumpy about it. Good running around, bad horse running around. I don't like the horse. The horse?

I don't know, I don't, I haven't spent that much time on the horse. But I do- I'm not crazy about the horse. When I did have to get on the horse, cause it was like, call your horse. And I did it, I was sort of like, I don't care about this enough. But I do like-

I think it's trying to make it a little bit more like actual horseback riding. But as far as just controlling a video game, it just feels a little bit unwieldy in a bad way. I wonder, speaking to the narrative choice to make it two separate protagonists with different play styles, one of the things that was an interesting friction in Valhalla is the Assassin's Creed people come up to Ivor and they're like, so we want to indoctrinate you into this lineage

of assassins and she was like, fuck you, I am not going to go like kill somebody by secret. Like that is not how our culture works. That is extremely disrespectful. And they were like, oh, well, we're gonna give you the little knife and you can choose to use it if you want. But I liked that there was like an interesting conflict

between what the series is and where they wanted to set it. And with this, it feels like I hope that in the same way, I hope that Yasuke does not have assassin abilities. Right, because from what I learned in Ghost of Tsushima, you have to face an enemy face to face as a samurai because it's dishonorable to fight somebody from behind her sneakily. That's the two realities,

the two identities in one character sort of choice, and here they're split into two different characters. I really hope that that's how they got around that ludonarrative dissonance, which I think is what that is, where it's like, oh, you're a samurai, but unlike all samurais in the history of the culture, you are an assassin.

Like that would suck. No, in Gosa Tsushima, it's like a moral choice and you kind of become the, you know, like if you embrace the shadow, it's like, you know, it's your character, like, it's a thing that happens by necessity in the course of the game, but it's like, but you can lean into that and it's like the dark side of the game, but it's like, but you can lean into that and it's like, it's like the dark side of the force basically.

Yeah. I, you know, I think I'm going to keep playing this game. Me too. Me too. I have the thing, you know, the other game I'm playing right now, the other big honker I'm playing right now is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. And so it's a kind of thing of like,

do I just budget 40 hours for Assassin's Creed Shadows and then come back to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth? Or do I just mess around with this a little bit more till I get bored of it and then go back to Rebirth? I don't know what I'm gonna do exactly but I'm having more fun with it than I expected and I do like the setting quite a bit and that's a big part of why I decided

to play it in the first place. I love, love, love Assassin's Creed High Vistas looking out at the landscape and being like, I can go to literally anything I can see. Like what, it's, you know, last week when we were doing these, I had two thoughts about this while playing. Well, we were doing the like top 300 games

on Metacritic, right? And it was so front-loaded by these games that came out in the late 90s, early 2000s. And I was thinking about how Soul Calibur 2 is the number two game on that list, right? I think for Dreamcast. And I was like, if you put this game, if you dropped this game into the year 1999 as is,

and you showed it to everyone, everyone on planet earth at every game magazine would give it a hundred. Like everybody everywhere would be like, there's so much to do. The graphics are insane. It has this like sci-fi history story that I've never even encountered before.

They would like fall over themselves. But, Soul Calibur 2 you can play immediately. Right. And in perpetuity forever until today, Soul Calibur 2 you can play immediately. Right. And in perpetuity forever until today, you could still be having new rounds of Soul Calibur 2. Yes.

And while I was in those first three hours, I was like, or would the game be like demoted because there's so much fucking shit you can't play at the top of this game? Would people be like, wow, it really looks pretty, but I don't have any ability to play this game because I'm just being told this stuff. I think that it would be too much too fast

for a 1999 video game audiences as someone who's playing video games in 1999 and had a Sega Dreamcast with Soul Calibur. I think it would be just like kind of like You know What I think you're speaking to is just like it's a still evolving medium and that that that has made such enormous leaps in technology, but I yeah, I don't know I think this game would be like considered like a like a I don't know, I think this game would be considered like a technical, like just a miracle in that time

if you somehow got this running on like a PlayStation 2 or whatever the fuck. But from a gameplay standpoint, if we're talking, this is coming out before Grand Theft Auto 3, before people had really even wrapped their heads around the idea of an open world or a sandbox game, I think people would not really know what to do with it. And I don't know.

It's like Shenmue was kind of an open world game. Yeah, 100%. And people were like, what is this? Why do I go up and talk to anybody I want to? What the fuck can we do with this forklift? And why does he sound like this when he's talking? I guess I'll play this game that's inside the game. It's a

Was gonna say one other thing is oh the other thing I was gonna say is like I think people will be playing Soul caliber for long further in the future than they're gonna be playing Assassin's Creed shadows, too So that's the other thing a ranch you ever messed around with the Assassin's Creed franchise no never and I don't know what it is You ever messed around with the Assassin's Creed franchise? No never and I don't know what it is Perfect hey, but does someone else have something to talk about I do have one quick thing I wanted to talk about I went to I went to it. We could get the Resident Evil Merchant ask. What are you playing? Oh, yeah? We did get the resident evil what you're back in the merch do you think the mercy do much milk? Oh Did you get the Resident Evil merch? The merch?

Do you think the merch? I drank too much milk. Aw, yuck. Never mind, just go lay down. I feel good. Go lay down. Go lay down on your side. This free milk had come and I thought I would take advantage.

Yeah, I mean people usually use that drink. I drank too much milk. People use that for like their coffee or whatever. They don't usually just drink like a whole glass of milk. Wait, wait, I got creamer. What is creamer different? Creamer is different. Where you, did you drink creamer?

Okay, yeah, you should lie down. Yeah, go lay down. Lay down on your side and just kind of like, just relax. Where you been? Where you been? Okay, I went to, I went to the, I. Who are you playing? Who are you playing?

Who are you playing? Making my bones feel worse. Yeah, no, they're probably too dense. You're drinking too much dairy, it's adding too much to your bones. You have to cough, you have to cool it with calcium for a little while, I think. I'm gonna lay down. Go lay down, it's okay. Kick ass, one more Assassin's Creed thing.

In Valhalla, did it also have the shoulder buttons or the FromSoft style combat? Yes. I really like the feel of that. I do like it too. Yeah. I like holding it down, making it- Charge up.

Make it charge up. Yeah, that's great, very satisfying. Oh, this was something I didn't say about it was, I was surprised how different, even though it's the exact same button combos, it feels different from Balhalla because the slicing is faster. So like the combos feel faster, whereas with the axes and the heavy axe, it was like a wind up swing every time. Instead of these like big snappy movements. And I was like, ooh, I like that.

Yeah, there's something a little more with the axes. It's a little more animalistic. It's more violent because you have to sort of throw your entire body behind it. But with these blades, having wielded a katana previously in my life, I've done this. Wait, in real life? Yeah, I did it for a dropout thing.

Oh, we talked about this, yes. I used a katana and sliced a watermelon in half. The blade does all the work. You don't have to swing that thing hard at all. It's sharp as fuck. Right. Like, the harder you swing it, the more likely you are gonna hurt yourself, probably.

Yeah. Just kinda let it go like a hot knife through butter, basically. Okay. So, you know, little quick movement. That's all that's all I need with that, but I went to it So I went to an art gallery this this gallery in Alhambra, California called called nucleus And they were putting on they were having a collaboration with Sony Santa Monica and the God of War franchise for the 20th anniversary of God of War. I went... Jesus Christ.

I know, very wild. That's wild. A wild thing. Oh my God. Because that's one of my games. I was also, I just say like, I was an adult when God of War came out. So that's like a big... Oh yeah, when you remember...

There's one thing when you can remember 20 when you remember there's one thing when you can like remember 20 years ago There's nothing would you remember 20 years ago and like you could like drive a car and buy a beer And you're on the phone with your bank Could you just put some money in there, please Give me some But yeah, they were celebrating the 20th anniversary and I went down just to go check it out and it was it was great It was a small little gallery So they had but they had in one of the rooms they had

Like displays of all of the Individual games so like a timeline of the game So they had like the box and the box are and like the disk Oh cool in like a frame basically and it was just interesting to be at like essentially a museum where there's a PSP game in a glass case I was like that's so crazy Yeah

I love that Of all the games though Yeah The PSP one is the one with the strangest form factor Yes It's the kind of thing you would expect like seeing a CD in a glass case. Not very novel.

Yeah, but. A Blu-ray, sure, yeah, who cares? But you're looking at like a triangular circle and you're like, what is that? Yeah, and then. A UMD is like what the media of the future would be like in like a 1980s like future Zambi movie. Yes, yes. It's so fucking weird.

It's awesome. It rocks. It's awesome. It rocks. It's it's Bring them back. I want to watch Oppenheimer on a UMD I wonder what the final UMD film released was I know that I had kick-ass on UMD because it came with my PSP. Cool. And that was from 2010. I had Rain of Fire.

Wow. Oh yeah. I don't know, I can't wait to find out how late in the game they were still releasing UMD films. Yeah, they did like the Liam Neeson, Rihanna Battleship movie on UMD. Um, anyone want to, it is a sequel, I'll give you that much.

Anyone want to guess what it was? It kind of sounds like it's a funny one for it to be. It's very funny that this is the final UMD. Is it like the Hangover 2 or something? It is Hangover Part 2. That fucking sucks. One, it sucks that that's what it is, and two, it sucks that that's, I is and two it sucks that that's I guessed correctly in one guess Yeah hangover part two was the last one in the in

US and EU But over in Asia they were making a porno UMDs until 2016 You know what? We were doing that still 2016 when it had gone that way I think There was physical porno being released and on UMD I think it would have solved everything But what a strange? like what

there I can't wrap my head around the use case of Porno on a UMD being... You put it on so you could watch it and jack off? No, no, I know what the use case is. I mean, like, why would you want a physical disc of pornography? Yeah. Seven... No. No, no, no. Nine years after the iPhone comes out. Yeah.

Like what is the use case of having it for a PSP? You're just like a connoisseur or a collector. I think there is some stuff you could, like any sort of enthusiast, if there's stuff that you could only get on as a physical release, like whatever my particular predilections are.

It's not like I'm just talking about myself. Yeah, whatever my thing is. Whatever weird shit I'm into, you can only get it on a UMD order from Taiwan. Mommy, stomp me, only available on. Yeah. So no, there's like- That's where they treat you like a trash can.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A drum. I think there's that, but I think there's also, it's like the old guys who still go to the adult bookstore or the porno theater. It's just like, you can just get locked in a consumption habit and maybe I don't have a smartphone but I still have my old PSP

and that's just how I'm used to watching porno. I always assumed that the guys at the porno theaters were exhibitionists. There's some of that. There's definitely some of that. Like they wanted to see, or they wanted other people to see them jerking off or getting horny. There is that. There's all sorts of things going on in a porno theater. Like what, Nick? Look. Certainly they're screening pornono everyone has different agendas there

But there are there are guys who just go there just to jack off by themselves Yeah, they're just like that's what they're used to consuming pornography on the big screen Yeah, the guy in facing the corner and looking over his shoulder at the film But there was another there was another part of the gallery that had like I don't want anybody looking at him. But I do want to make sure I'm following the story. But there was another part of the gallery that had actual art in it, not just from the games, but art that people made. And it was just interesting to see. It was just really interesting to see so many people.

There was a lot of people there, by the way. And it was wild to see just the different styles of art and the different like What was resonant to people like from the games? I there was like a I mean this was like certainly Sony Santa Monica like Gear they had they had like Mimir's head in a case. I was like that's really cool but there was like a pointillism painting of Kratos doing it. It was like, there was a big sort of like thrown Kratos like in a painting that was like a massive, it was huge. And I was, they, these had prices. People were like bidding on these, on these works of art, which was really, really cool. I bought

a print of something that I can't hang up in my home because I don't have room to display it. What was that from the sex scene? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's the thing, it's panned away and all you see is a candle rocking and a triangle like above it. But I was inspired and I booted up God of War, Chains of Olympus on my PlayStation Vita running the PSP

It's beautiful The PSP emulator adrenaline on there and it's it's great. I love it. I own the game anyway, and that's that's it for me I do I know we have a big topic to get on to to ranch I have to I have to blow up ranch a spot for one second ranch That and played portal on stream and completed it in one sitting Wow Final time was five hours and 45 minutes. Hey nice. Did you have like how was the chat helping you with any of the puzzles? How did you get through it? I needed a lot of help. Okay, yeah. Especially towards the end, there were parts where I just kind of was like,

I was getting grumpy, I was angry. But it was so fun, I've never played a game like that before. It's rad, it's one of my favorite games of all time. Yeah, it does get a little bit obtuse, but I think it like heightens in a way where, you know, if you're just playing it with, I think it earns it by the time it gets to those later

more abstract puzzles. Yeah. Did you like the sensibility? Did you like, like, glad-os? Did you respond to all that? The companion cube? Yes. I fell in love with the cube.

Aw. Aw. And then instead of incinerating it, I jumped into the incinerator. Ha you gonna play Portal 2, you think? I think so. Oh, I love it. They're saying that it's like even better. I like Portal 1 more.

Me too. But I, cause I think, just think it's like a perfectly contained package, but I think the consensus is that Portal 2, which is like two to three times as long And is a very funny very well written game with some really awesome puzzle designs like I

Think the consensus is is that people like portal to more but they're both great games both all-timers. Oh, yeah. Congrats. I love it That's really cool. Yeah. Oh, yeah felt like I write a passage to play portal. Oh, yeah There you go. Yeah, there you go. There's really cool. Hell yeah. Felt like I write a passage to play Portal. Hell yeah. There you go. Yeah, there you go. There you go. There you go. Hey, there you go. There you go.

Are we stuck? I don't know, there you go. Here comes a new challenger. The UK documentary about Street Fighter II made in 2023, Here Comes a New Challenger is now free to stream on Tubi in the US. Tubi? Tubi? Tubi?

Tubi? Tubi's my streaming service. I did say stream it, Tubi. I guess the place to start here is what was everyone's first encounter with Street Fighter in general and Street Fighter II specifically? I think for me, I got to Street Fighter II. I probably had interacted with it at some point or like an arcade or something but my very first Street Fighter that I absolutely loved was Street Fighter 4 and it's still And then maybe because it was my first Street Fighter is still like the gold standard to me like the one that I like the most

Do you like do you have a memory of the first time you played? Street Fighter or came across a Street Fighter or is that? Not something that sticks in your brain. I I don't really remember the first iterate I had known about what it was certainly so when four came around and my friends were super into it I was like oh, yeah Street Fighter. I know what Street Fighter is yes, but it must have been at like a Gosh, maybe like a nickel nickel or something or like a which is like a nickel arcade I don't know if they had that in Chicago. Okay, um and Something or like a which is like a nickel arcade. I don't know if they had that they did okay and

I I just know that like by the time I got to Street Fighter 2 You had to I probably played Street Fighter 2 the most for this show honestly like if we had talked about it in the I Know we did an episode on three, but I got it first. I also had it on switch That was like one of the first switch games. I got which was ultra Street Fighter 2 The final champions, and I would play that a lot and I played that on like an airplane There was somebody I was playing with my girlfriend or you know my wife My girlfriend at the time That's that's that's fine. That's okay. She was my girlfriend then now. She's my wife

We were playing on an airplane and the person sitting next to us was like, can I play? And we just like made a friend on the plane And we just started playing with the street like passing it back and forth with this person on the plane. We had a great time It was great. That's awesome. And then but yeah, I think that's probably the most I've played in the more recent year Street Fighter 2 That's cool. Yeah, um, I would say Nick to answer your question Street Fighter has cast such an enormous shadow over my entire life that not only can I remember the exact first moment that I encountered it, which was I was at Pizza Hut with my grandma and it was in the lobby, the sort of foyer

area, and it was the biggest characters I have ever seen moving on the screen was like my introduction to it and I got she gave us quarters it was me and my cousin and we played around and he picked Blanca and I picked Chun Li and I can remember the very first round of Street Fighter I sort of ever present in my entire gaming life. I was playing at tournaments in Chicago in the very late 90s, and there is raw footage of one of those tournaments that has been uploaded to YouTube where you can see me in the background With my mom and my dad at that and I think I've talked about this on this podcast at that same Tournament is a future friend of mine Seth Killian who goes on to so he's playing at a machine and the camera goes past

Because he also grew up in Chicago and then years later, when I'm a video game journalist, Seth is the community manager and the sort of like play tester for Street Fighter IV. And I meet him professionally and then we discover, holy shit, we were in the same room when we were young. Seth is also one of the first people to go play internationally in the first international street fighter tournament in the late 90s as a member of Team USA. Team USA is covered in a documentary

called Bang the Machine, which is destroyed, all of the raw footages destroyed in 9-11. Yes. So the only copies that exist are ones with unlicensed music. And once in a while, you'll find somebody screening it at like a film festival or South by Southwest.

Seth showed it to me from his copy and it's like an incredible moment in time. Like it's an awesome street fighter documentary that's also like this was the apex of the Street Fighter II era. Is the moment where like the Team USA people are like, let's go to Japan and enter the tournament as like the official Team USA people are like, let's go to Japan and enter the tournament as like the official Team USA.

Street Fighter III was an enormous part of my life. Obviously I did a game and tell about it. And then Street Fighter IV I was addicted to. And I agree with you, Matt. It is a really, really, really, really great game. Fucking awesome. And it is as good as, in my opinion, two, three, two, three and four are all perfect.

It was five's sort of lackluster intro that made me fall off of the series and the same reason why I bounced off of six was because five blopped so hard in my experience that an entire legacy of Street Fighter came to an end for me. Yeah. I'm not the fighting game enthusiast

or knowledgeable about fighting games as you are, but I was very impressed by Street Fighter VI. I thought it was really a cool game. And for me, I was like, oh, this feels like the franchise has found its footing again. Yeah, no, I'm sure it's a good game. I just, I lost the momentum.

Totally get that, yeah, totally get that. But I know that Street Fighter's been like, one of the most important video game franchises to you. I mean, and to me, it's certainly, it was an important one to me at a certain point in my life. My first encounter with Street Fighter as the old man of the podcast was Street Fighter 1, which was at an arcade called Aladdin's Castle in my hometown of Lakewood, California at the Lakewood Ball.

And I remember looking at this game and like you were saying with Street Fighter 2, just being like, wow, these characters are big. Had played other games like Karate Champ. Some of the games that get touched on in here, like I'd played either as cabinets or like on a friend's console. But there was the first time I was like, oh, this is an actual, this feels like something new. These are these big characters, these big sprites, and there's six buttons, like what

the hell is going on with this game? What I didn't realize is that Street Fighter 1 and I was too young at the time to really, like I was just like, this game game is hard This game is weird. I do it wasn't like this game sucks and isn't well done But I do remember how hyped everyone was for Street Fighter 2 which Street Fighter 1 is just kind of like almost like a you know An artifact or a prototype or whatever, you know, it's not really a playable game But but Street Fighter 2 was a game I was reading about in like GamePro and EGM, you know, before it came out, Game Freak, which was maybe around at the time, I don't remember, but I remember just like reading

these magazines, I remember we were on a road trip because my parents were like the only family vacations we would take is we would drive everywhere. And so I had like an EGM on a road trip and I was just reading obsessively about Street Fighter Fighter 2 this game that I hadn't yet played we went to Vegas As part of this road trip and there was an arcade in Vegas that had a Street Fighter 2 cabinet as the first time I got to play it and I was so fun I was like the most excited I'd ever been to like play an arcade game. It's like holy shit this game

I've been reading about for months I can I can put a token in token in and just absolutely get fucking my ass kicked by someone who knows how to play Guile. I was still just like, this is so, so cool. And then from that point, it became like a game that we would go to the arcades to play, play Street Fighter II. Everyone wanted to be Guile, like that was a big thing that's touched on in the documentary. So I, you know, like, you'd learn how to play other characters because Guile was like the, you know, was,

at least in a pre-internet age, was considered like the S tier character. I'm not sure if that's still the case in competitive Street Fighter, but like, you know, in vanilla Street Fighter 2, vanilla's a flavor, but like, it is, in default Street Fighter 2, I feel like it was like Guile and Dalsum, right? Am I wrong? Were those like kind of the top tier characters? I mean, I I thought it was Ryu

Maybe it was Ryu but but but Guile was easier to drive Yeah, because because of his you know, his charge moves are a lot simpler than Than Ryu's but like I just remember the time everyone wanting to play that character. And I remember thinking it was like the coolest fucking game. I remember it looked so cool. And I was so, so hyped for the Super Nintendo port, which was also absolutely delivered. One of the best arcade ports at the time.

It was a really, really impressive port. So like there was a lot of memory laying for me on a documentary focused, not just on the Street Fighter franchise at large, but Street Fighter two specifically. Rochelle, you ever spending time with a Street Fighter? I remember my brother's playing it when I was a kid. Yeah. Street Fighter two. Do you remember which one? I don't remember. Chen Li was in it. Is she in all of them?

Mostly. She's pretty much in all of them? Mostly, yeah. Yeah, she's pretty much in all of them. The 7-Eleven near my house had Street Fighter II. Wow. And they had an egg crate that they kept in the little game room for when I would come to play it, because I was too short. And so they would pull out the egg crate and I would stand on the egg crate.

And usually it would be like, maybe there was like one other girl there, but like generally speaking, she was much older than me. And the rest was like a group of like the local guys from Chicago and we would all just take turns playing the game. And I became so obsessed with it that I would start cleaning the house ravenously.

Like cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, because I was like, there are quarters in the house. And if I clean the house enough, I will find the quarters. So I would do all of the laundry and rehang all of my dad's shirts and pants and check all of the pockets. I would like put my mom's purse away shirts and pants and check all of the pockets. I would like put my mom's purse away,

like the purses that she didn't use. And I would check the like zipper pouches that like are on the sides that you know, you forget are even in a purse. Until I had cleaned our house. And like, if I would find pennies, I'd collect the pennies so that I would bring them to 7-Eleven and exchange them for a quarter

so that I could play Street Fighter II. So all that context from us, I don't wanna be too critical about this documentary because I can tell it is a labor of love and there are some great interviews. Yes. I do feel, my issue with the doc is there's a lot of assumed knowledge

of what Street Fighter is. A lot of assumed knowledge of what Street Fighter is, a lot of assumed knowledge about Street Fighter 2 specifically is, what game development workflow is, and also just knowing anything about how the arcade industry worked in the 90s and how arcade hardware worked in general. And I do feel like, Rentsh, did you watch this dock? I feel like if I showed this to,

I feel like if you watched this or, I feel like if you watched this or showed this to like my parents or my young nieces and nephews who are gamers, but like grew up with Minecraft and Fortnite, I think they'd just be lost because I think there's a lot of missing context that doesn't really explain this game's actual cultural import.

I think this is more of a, this is more functional as a nostalgia play for people who actually live through it as opposed to here's a documentary telling you about what a sensation this is more functional as a nostalgia play for people who actually live through it as opposed to here's a documentary telling you about what a sensation this is yeah it's got to be really hard to make a documentary about us about something you love which is again I'm not trying to be critical but I think when you when you love something this much and it really feels like the filmmaker does then I think you sometimes can be a little bit too close

to it and not recognize what you need to convey this to an outsider. I say this affectionately. Yeah, this belongs on a game disc or cartridge. And not like that. This was supplementary material for the Street Fighter anniversary collection is like the perfect place for that would have been great. That's a great place for it. Because you're already an enthusiast bought this already, so it's just bonus content for them to sit back and really sit down for a long time and watch this. I do think there are some things in the documentary

that don't need to be there for as long as they are. Namely, I know that they touch on the movie, the live action movie, to get to the broader point that the the anime movie is a more successful adaptation of Street Fighter 2 I don't know if we need to spend that much time on the debacle of the production of the movie There's there's like, you know again mentioned as a 2 hour 21 minute runtime Yeah, you do feel it it feels long and I And I think that, you know, this is the challenge of making a documentary is that you get,

you talk to a bunch of interesting people, you get a bunch of great footage. I'm sure they have hundreds more hours that aren't in this movie. But at a certain point it's just like, well, some of these people who are talking about the movie are compelling. But because we're spending so much time

on the live action movie, the Stephen D. D'Souza directed movie, it like feels like that becomes just a second half of the documentary on us. And the same thing, like they spend just as much time on the anime, which is like, I like the anime, we watch the anime on the podcast, it's good.

I agree, like I agree with what you're saying, but a lot of it is just guys who look like me sitting in front of a wall of Funko pops going like, man, when Ken was in there, it was awesome. It's just like, all right, cool. Yeah, there's a moment where there's like enough time spent that you learn that in the Street Fighter Alpha game,

which is not what the documentary is about, they reference the scene from the Street Fighter 2 movie where Ken has a ribbon in his hair and gives it to Ryu. And they're like, and that's in Street Fighter Alpha. And so is the scene where you're fighting against Sagaat in the dark thunderstorm on that grassy plain. And it's like, yeah, yeah, no, I know all of this. But I don't know that it needs to take up,

even like a spoken footprint in a documentary about Street Fighter 2 specifically. Yeah, I think if you're a person who knows Street Fighter II well, it's information you already know, and if you're someone who's just like, what is Street Fighter II, what was that all about? I know that was a big game, right?

You're like, wait, what's Street Fighter Alpha? Because some of the stuff isn't spelled out for you. They'll just casually talk about, oh, the hit boxes didn't work as well on Super Street Fighter or whatever And it's just like man if you're not a pretty you know avid gamer You've not heard of the term hitbox or understand what it refers. Yeah I do think it's it's kind of funny to think about Somebody who has no idea what any of it is sitting down

And again, I mean maybe that's an unfair criticism because it clearly doesn't feel like that's who the audience for this is, but I'm also just watching this as a documentary, as a movie. It kind of, in a very different way, but it was like the Kojima doc I had a similar sort of reaction to. It's like, I don't know if this helps you understand who this is much unless you already

have a baseline reference for it. When you contrast this to The King of Kong, which is a pretty robust explainer of what Donkey Kong is, how the game works, what a board is, what it would mean to hack a board. Yes, what competitive gaming is even, which a lot of people didn't know existed when that documentary came out.

All of that is loaded into a shorter documentary with more emotionally narrative, narratively emotionally successful storytelling than this much longer documentary did. I front loaded how much Street Fighter means to me because it does. I was a little bored in this documentary. And like, if anybody is the target audience, it's me. because it does. I was a little bored in this documentary.

And like, if anybody is the target audience, it's me. And there wasn't enough crazy niche shit. Like when I sent you guys the article about Bang the Machine being destroyed in 9-11, I was like, I wonder if they're going to bring that up. And as this documentary started, I was like, oh, this feels like a documentary for enthusiasts. So clearly, they are going to talk about things

like that documentary being destroyed, or EVO moment number 37, and like the transformation, because they do touch on Street Fighter III also. Or even just like, you know, the Vega M. Bison Balrog renaming. Yeah. Because there's a guy in it, one of the talking heads the Vega M. Bison Balrog renaming. Because there's a guy in it, one of the talking heads just calls Balrog slash M. Bison

boxer. But that's like, okay, well yes. So you're that level of like, you're someone who plays competitive street fighters so you understand the generic term that is used for these characters to make sense across culture. But none of this is being conveyed to the audience. And also, I don't know,

like I know that those names are changed. I've never actually gotten the full story of what happened there. And that would have kind of been an interesting like bit of information. Well, I can tell you what happened there. It's that M. Bison was boxer. And they did not want to get sued

by the Mike Tyson like estate. And so they had to shift M. Bison to dictator and then all of the names of the bosses had to be shifted around to accommodate that. And that much I've heard, but I would be interested to hear a Capcom representative talking about that. And that's the kind of thing that even though

there are interviews with Capcom figures here, there's nothing on topic like that. They have a little interview with Mike Tyson. He's like, I wouldn't have sued them. There are interviews with Yoshika Okamoto, which I really like. That's some of my favorite stuff in the documentary, is talking with the producer.

And although Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda, who are the chief designers behind this game, lead designers behind this game are not present. But the other interview is with Yoko Shimomura, who's the composer who rocks. And I think her interviews are really good. I wish there's more time with her. I wish there's more time with each of them,

because those are the two actual developers from Street Fighter II that we hear from. Yeah, also I wanna point out, I know that this is a UK documentary. And when I'm going on about things like Team USA or whatever, I'm not saying that it like, antagonizing the rest of the world as Americans like preeminent spot.

But it is remarkable that the first international tournament was a USA team and a Japanese team. And I felt like that was worth remark. I'm not saying like, oh, you know, USA guys should be in a documentary. You're drinking an American flag right now, but yeah. I guess I can't say stuff like that now that there's video.

Well, we want to put the whole thing up. I guess, that's true. There's also like plenty of American presence in it already. Like there's a lot of interviews with Americans, there's a lot of talking about, it's not like a documentary that's micro-targeted on the UK street fighter scene, although that sounds really interesting.

I'd be interested in what that is about. Oh, bro, I wanna play street fighter, innit? Nick on down to cheeky nandoes after some street fighter. You know, God damn, that sounds like a perfect day. It sounds great. That sounds awesome. The other thing is, Yoko Shimomura I Believe is the only woman who's interviewed. Yes, and there's you know like whatever I but I bet it's like there's like two dozen

talking heads in here and there is a point later on in the documentary when a Someone one of the talking heads says I transcribed the quote roughly Street Fighter 2 brought in more female players than any game before. And it's like, okay, yeah, maybe that's an important point to make in the documentary, but like, it does kind of underline how there aren't any female gamers speaking for themselves in the documentary.

And I'd be kind of interested in that. I don't know, put Heather Ann Campbell in that documentary. Put Heather in the doc. Heather in the crutch in the doc. I, you know, I've spoken about this sort of lightly in this podcast because I don't like thinking of myself and my relationship to games in terms of gender. But when I was watching it, I did text you guys

because at the 30 minute mark, a guy is like, women don't care about Street Fighter. And I was so fucking bummed. I was like, I really hope that that's not the only time we talk about women who aren't Chun-Li in this entire fucking documentary, who aren't the composer or Chun-Li. And again, at the end of the documentary,

they do make the point of like, oh, there's a lot of women who play Street Fighter too. But boy, oh boy, did a lot of women who play Street Fighter II, but boy oh boy, did it suck for the other two hours of this documentary where that was the footprint of women in the Street Fighter scene. Like, shitty as shit. Yeah, needed more room for guys who look like Weigars

saying, man, Guile, he was the guy. It's just so interesting because I don't really think about, as like, I mean, this is gonna sound insane probably. I don't think about Guile as like one of the main guys to me. Yeah, me neither. Like he's obviously the star of the movie, which they highlight. What I will say is again, I'm thinking back to,

I'm 12 years old, I'm playing Street Fighter 2 I'm talking about it at middle school Kyle was because he was like like the flash kick and the the sonic boom that you could turtle up with that and those moves Were both very easy to pull off. He became kind of the default like character Everyone wanted to play and so it was like I think there was a lot of the scene that was centered on that character. In Chicago, I never ever saw people playing Guile. It was always Ken versus Ryu. And if one of those fucking dudes

got knocked off the machine, then somebody would try with fucking Zangief or something, they'd get immediately eviscerated, and it would be back to Ken versus Ryu all the fucking time. I heard that there was a board mod too that in Chicago, you could play as Mike Ditka. Is there like words that you knew about Chicago? Duh bears.

And then he like, he hits you. With a freaking Italian beef. We got a clip. Yeah, that's our first successful clip. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the clip. The, the, that is a thing

that the documentary touches on that I do think is interesting, is that like, this was all happening in a, people weren't getting on forums, I'm sure there was news groups that existed for people who were on the early, early internet. Prodigy.com. Yeah, they were on a 2,800 baud modem

in the dark days of the internet, but there was not a lot of cross talk between territories. And so I think maybe what was happening in the Southern California Street Fighter scene was vastly different from what was happening in the Chicago Street Fighter scene, or maybe just what was happening at the arcades I was going to was different than what was happening

in the country at large. But like, basically like micro communities ended up developing their own metas. And it was just kind of like, that's just not a thing that exists anymore. Everything is min-maxed immediately and completely global. And it was just kind of like that's just not a thing that exists anymore. Everything is min-maxed immediately and completely global. But it was an interesting time when just like people would develop different play styles

based on what arcade they were gaming in. I do like that the documentary highlighted the because the people were sort of making bootleg versions of Street Fighter with mods and stuff and and to compete with that, they had to sort of make other iterations of the same game. And to me, that was absolutely fascinating. That's the most successful historical part of the, when it was explaining the, you know, how the Ratchet effect that led to, you know,

they had Street Fighter 2, then people started having their hacked versions of Street Fighter 2, their own boards. I remember there was a donut shop in my town that had a hacked Street Fighter 2 that I did not think was particularly fun to play, but a lot of it drew a lot of action because of the novelty of it, that you could go and that you could, you know, throw fireballs as Chun-Li, and you could like just hit the player one button to switch to a different character in the middle of a fight.

You know, it was like a completely broken game, but there were all these sort of different versions of quote unquote rainbow Street Fighter, and that led to them making Street Fighter 2 Turbo, which did, I mean, I don't know if that's influenced the pace of play. Does Street Fighter 3 play more like Turbo, or is it a little bit of a...

Oh no, no, no, no. So what was the, just like, cool contextually, right? The tournament amount was a Street Fighter II Turbo tournament. It was also the North American premiere of Super Street Fighter II. It was the first time that machine was in the United States, was it at the Chicago tournament.

And everybody was like, holy shit, it plays slow. Yeah, I remember when Super Street Fighter II came out, how slow it felt versus like Street Fighter II Turbo hyper fighting. And as you've mentioned, the most successful historical document in this documentary is that they make Turbo, they make Super Turbo, or no, they make Turbo as a response

to Rainbow Street Fighter hacked machines, which then derails the Japanese development of Super Street Fighter, which was supposed to be the next iteration of the game. So when it comes out, it is a iteration of Championship Edition and should have been like paced similarly, but because it was paced, because it came out after Turbo, it felt lethargic.

The craziest thing about Street Fighter III is, the original vanilla, vanilla's a flavor, the original vanilla version of Street Fighter III was slower than vanilla Street Fighter II. It was so fucking slow. One of the weirdest things I remember, the weirdest sights I remember was a new Street Fighter III cabinet in the arcade.

I think it was the boardwalk in Lakewood right next to Cow Bowl, and that was just sitting there unoccupied. Like it was just like, like Street Fighter III is out and people just have no interest in playing it. They're playing other fighting games. And it was not until Second Impact and Third Strike that Street Fighter III

becomes its own private scale, smaller scale than Street Fighter II, but still a scaled phenomenon. And that's because the first one, in order to make those blows as meaty as possible, they slowed down that game so fucking much. And as this documentary points out, they stripped out the roster and the only returning characters are Ken and Ryu. So you've raised an entire generation of players

on this roster of familiar faces. And then you boot them all out for like Dudley the boxer and it's like, what the fuck is happening here? It's interesting because it's the kind of thing if you look at it as like, that's kind of an awesome creative choice that they did that. And I understand part of why they did that

is because the thing that is only barely touched on is they were making all the Street Fighter EX, the 3D or two and a half D version. They were making all the Street Fighter Alpha slash Street Fighter Reacts, the 3D or 2.5D version. They were making all the Street Fighter Alpha slash Street Fighter Zero games. Like there was a point where these rosters had just like kind of gotten a little stale, which is maybe why they did the reset.

But it's like, it's kind of an awesome creative choice to be like, we're gonna come up with a whole new roster for Street Fighter 3, but disastrous commercially, obviously. Well, none of them were, and this is another thing that's touched on in the documentary, is that like all of the characters in Street Fighter II are like stereotypes.

Right, yes. They're like really broad. They're almost so broad that they're barely racist. Yes, yeah. Because it's like puppets. They're like super fucking broad. And then in Street Fighter III, none of those guys are from an identifiable country. It's just like, who is the electric guy

and why does he look like a goth? Yeah, is this man named Yuren? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's the, the roster, I mean, the character designs in Street Fighter II are just so incredible and they're so distinct. And, you know, I mean, that's a big part of its appeal.

It's just so easy to wrap your head around and just, like, at a glance. A thing I liked about, like, a couple things I liked about this, Doc, or another thing I liked about it was there's an artist who's talking about how he did the North American box art. And he's like, this is an era before anime was ubiquitous. And so he's like, well, I gotta do this

with a Western aesthetic. And so he's just applying his own art style. I think there's some people who've criticized the North American box art of Street Fighter II. I think it looks cool. I like it. I always thought it was a, and it was just like, oh, it's just kind of, that's an interesting source

I'd want to hear from for some context. I liked that he was kind of like, not quite defensive. He was a little defensive, yeah, but understandably so. He was kind of like, I just kind of did it like how I would do it. Yeah. Like, yeah, that's completely fair. I will say that, you know, having stared

at the Street Fighter II art, like, all the way up until Super NES comes out, like, I'm like, oh man, I can't wait until I see this game, or the Genesis version. And then when I see the box, I was like, why do they look like this? Yeah. Yeah. I also liked hearing that Winter Stays was not a part of Japanese arcade culture, and that came from the US, that came from Crossbow. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that was interesting. Have I told you guys about the time,

like the first time I go to Tokyo is in 2005, and I'm still, it's only six years after Street Fighter III comes out, there's still like enough of a, I don't know, arcade scene for the game that I've been going to arcades, playing in arcades, holding my own for Street Fighter III. I go to Tokyo, I go to Akihabara, and I'm like, I'm gonna fucking play Street Fighter III.

I can't wait to walk in and like fucking play Street Fighter III. And you'd sit on the opposite side of whoever you're playing against. And I sit down at the machine and I put in my money and I immediately get like double perfected against me. Like could not even get in a hit. And I was like, oh my God, oh fuck, okay.

Wow, totally different, totally different level of play here. I gotta be a little bit more careful. I came in cocky. I played $20 worth of fights totally different level of play here. I gotta be a little bit more careful. I came in cocky. I played 20 dollars worth of fights at 100 yen per round. So one dollar per round. So 20 rounds.

Didn't win, so 40 rounds total. Didn't win a single fucking round. Wow. You're playing against the same opponent the whole time? Playing against the same opponent the entire time. And then when I walked around the console to see who it was and say good game, it was like a man in his 40s smoking a cigarette

while playing and he was so visibly annoyed that I had been playing the game. That's so great, that's amazing. That's so great, that's amazing. And like mirror matches being a hardware limitation, like they couldn't do Ryu versus Ryu until Champion Edition because they just like didn't have enough RAM. It's like, oh, I didn't know that.

And honestly, it doesn't even make intuitive sense to me, but all right. Yeah, yeah. I was confused by that part too. It was like, why couldn't they just fucking do it? Who cares? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's the sort of thing where maybe

just like a little bit more explanation, technical side, but it was just interesting to learn that that was the reason that was not in there. I thought it was because of the size of the characters. Is that what it was? Yeah, I thought it was that they couldn't have two of the largest characters on screen at the same time. Obviously, they couldn't have Zangief versus Zangief.

Yeah, you couldn't have Zangief versus Zangief, so that was what prevented them from doing Championship Edition. And I did like when, you know, and this comes from the Okamoto stuff, when he's talking about his thought process behind Street Fighter, it's because I do a thing that caught your eye,

caught my eye as a kid, Heather. He's talking about Street Fighter and he's just like, I wanted the characters to be big. Yeah. Other games, the characters were small, and I was like, what if they were big? I was like, that rocks. That is such a, it makes a lot of sense. But it's great though.

It's great to have something that basic, that simple. And he's also, another thing he says, and I love this, because this is a thing about Miyamoto and Hidetaka Miyazaki, as well as they're notoriously bad at games, and he's just like, yeah, I'm bad at games and he's just like He's just like yeah, I'm bad at games and I lack skill I liked when they asked him about what he thought about the movie and he was like for me personally

I don't think it's very good. Yeah, he was the most polite about it was just so funny. He was great There's also another because there's like there's like cocky Americans who are looking back and the issue with documenters There's always gonna be self doc self mythologize. Yes, like a person's a part of something They're always gonna like exaggerate their own role and like the documentary needs to kind of like figure out How do I convey what what maybe what is true and maybe is when someone exaggerating but like There's there's like Americans just flat-out saying like yeah champion edition was my idea I went over to Capcom Japan, told them to do it, and I had to talk them into it, but they did it.

And then, just saying stuff like that, I was like, I'm sure that's not what happened. I'm sure an arcade operator did not go to Capcom Japan and tell them to do Champion Edition. They're like, oh, thank you. Thank you, guy from America. Wait, he was an arcade operator? I thought he was like...

There was a Capcom USA guy, but then there was also another guy who owned an arcade distribution company. So there were a couple of those guys, and it may be conflating a couple of characters, but there were a lot of guys saying things like that. But then Okamoto later on, just talking about impoliteness, he says something that's just like, yeah, even the Americans sometimes chimed in. It's just clearly minimizing their roles, and probably that's closer to the truth Can I tell you my guy wasn't the guy who like?

it's from the movie section, which I don't think should be in there, but the guy who like Trained the people guys. Yeah, Marsha coordinator. He's my favorite I would have watched him for another two and a half hours because he was just like That person was so nice, this person was so, I was like, I wanna hear who he thinks is nice, I love it. He's like, Kylie Minogue is such a professional, she's a beautiful soul, and she would just do anything, she could do anything.

And I was like, I love this guy. He was amazing to me. Cut to a guy who looks like me. When I saw Cami was Kylie Minogue, I was like, wow. Wow, yeah. It's a, that guy, so that's the kind of thing, It looks like me when I saw cami was Kylie Minogue. I was like wow It's a That guy so that's the kind of thing I think that I think that's that guy who is very compelling is part of the reason that stretch of the movie is so long Yeah, because it's like okay. This guy's fascinating

I want to hear him talk But I can't do a section of the of my documentary about Street Fighter 2 focusing on the movie That's just the stunt coordinator talking about it. So I've got to get like, you know, the director's gotta be in here, the producer's gotta be in here, and now all of a sudden it's this big media thing

that kind of overtakes, you know, the overall work. For a documentary that is about Street Fighter II, I would say upwards of 15 to maybe 20% of the documentary is not about Street Fighter II. It's about the movie, it's about making the game of the movie, it's about the anime, it's about Street Fighter Alpha, it's about Street Fighter III.

And it also starts talking about other franchises, which I actually would have liked more context about that, because this is my big thing I'm gonna say. And I overall did enjoy this doc. And if you're like, you're old like me and you remember what Street Fighter II was like when it came out 30 years ago, it is a fun nostalgia watch.

Yes. But the thing that I find interesting about Street Fighter II is it comes out in 1991, right? Or 1993, what year is it? I think it's 91. And Doom comes out around the same time. I think maybe Street Fighter II is 91, Doom comes out in 1993.

These are both games that effectively invented a genre. I know there were other fighting games before Street Fighter II, they were talked about in the documentary. I know there were other FPS before Doom, there were games like Ultima Underworld, there were games like Wolfenstein, yeah, which was another id game,

but they were not what Street Fighter II was to fighting games, they were not what Doom was to FPS, they were not like the ur-text that led to this becoming a genre. They were not the Grand Theft Auto 3. Exactly, yes. Then these two genres, which became probably the biggest genres of the 90s, two of the

biggest, at least FPS, at least on PC and fighting games, you know, like in arcades when arcades were a thing, were like, only shit, these two genres are now everywhere. There's so many imitators, there's so many Doom clones, there's so many fighting games that are akin to Street Fighter II, either ones that are like direct ripoffs or ones that are trying something new and taking the genre in a new direction. But then after the turn of the century, FPS explodes in popularity because multiplayer gaming goes from in-person to online and gaming in general goes from the arcades to the home. Whereas fighting game ends up becoming this niche sort of genre that has a huge enthusiast, you know, like like a

Huge group of enthusiasts behind it and from what I can tell a very welcoming, you know, like like community but it's like it's it's it's also just kind of like a like a It's not on the same level and like I just kind of wanted to hear more about like what Street Fighter II meant for gaming and what it meant for fighting gaming specifically. And I feel like that kind of gets buried in terms of where it lands. I wonder how much of that was twofold, that FPS gaming is something that you can do.

Like they talk about like all of these street fighter ports to computers, to PCs suck. Yeah, they have this Amiga port like didn't work out. And Doom, you can play on your PC and you can land that PC. And so you get this like build this community is building and building and building because you can go someplace, bring your PC and play Doom in a tournament where the only way, and this is still the case, we were talking about

this earlier today, the way to play Street Fighter perfectly and have the frame drops not or the lag not matter to the actual tournament play, is to use the fucking cabinets. And that is not something that can expand and build a larger audience, when that's the only way that you can have those tournaments. You're limited by the number of machines that can physically be carried into the arena. Yeah, I think it's a good point.

I think there's also just that, rollback net code is a relatively recent thing for a long time. Fighting games didn't have online modes or their online modes were really bad, really bad matchmaking, really bad lag, which is for a game when frames are so, so important, that just can make these games unplayable. Also, it was a genre that was more arcades and more consoles and those didn't have an online infrastructure until you know for like a decade after PCs had already had these robust online multiplayer communities.

But I also just feel like FPS just plays better on like as an online experience than a fighting game does right? Isn't it's just it's just I don know, it almost feels like more like a singular experience. And just in general, like the dominant multiplayer games have, genres have become like what? Like FPS, RTS, MOBAs, and I guess now Battle Royale games. You wanna think of those separately? I don't know.

I do think this is one, at one point someone says this is like a top five game in, of all time. And I think it's probably true. I think if you're making a top 10 list of like the most important games in history, I think Street Fighter II is probably somewhere in the top five. It's just, it was such an incredibly impactful game,

such a cultural moment. And I think this documentary gets like halfway there in terms of landing that point. At like arcades today, at like barcades and stuff where they have a Street Fighter II cabinet, there's a healthy line of people still waiting to get on and play. Yep.

Like it's not like, you go to a lot of arcades and stuff, some of the games, untouched. Maybe they'll be touched for like a second out of curiosity. Like, oh, nobody's playing this one, let's see what this one is. But there's not like, I don't know, nobody's playing this one let's see what this one is but there's not like I don't know no Walker yeah moonwalker or what's the what's the drink one I like that I like Tapper but like there's never a line for Tapper right yeah but there will always

be a line of people wanting to play Street Fighter 2 and then there will always be spectators of people wanting to just watch people play Street Fighter 2 very well. I think that's incredible. One of my first barcade experiences, they had a projector going over the bar so that you could sit at the bar and watch the Street Fighter II game

that was being played on a box behind you. Is this at 82? Yeah. In downtown? Yeah. That's a great, I love to see it, can you just walk in, it's the first thing you see yeah projected on the wall Above everything else that's going on. It's just people just m Bison doing a fucking psycho crusher at Ryu it rules

Do you think a bar rescue host John Taffer has ever come across it gone to a barcade and seen Tapper? been like This bar doesn't need Tapper, it needs Tapper. Do you think that's the second clip? Yeah, you know what he says when he sees the Tapper machine? He's famous for saying shut it down, like wants to shut the bar down. But when he sees the Tapper he says turn it on It's like my name kinda

I have no idea what you guys are talking about You've never been in a hotel and forced to watch whatever was on the television and watched Bar Rescue? Forced to watch? This is a TV show? Bar Rescue, oh my god, you gotta watch Bar Rescue. That's a hotel room show for me. It's a great hotel show, yeah. I'll watch that, I'll watch Guy Fieri, and I'll watch Family Guy until I'm laughing so hard I have to watch something else.

Yeah, I'm watching Bar Rescue, and then I'm watching Hangover Part II on UMD. Just to go back to UMDs for once. Yeah. I know this comes up every time we talk about them probably. They're the single loudest disc possible. Because they're encased in plastic. So the disc is spinning, but it's also like rattling the plastic a little bit.

So it's just like... They're working so hard. Unbelievable. Richelle, you ever watch Bar Rescue? I love Bar Rescue. Hell yeah. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Clearly just want to LARP as pirates and so they have you seen this episode And so the owners want to LARP as pirates They have a guy there who has like he you know, he wears an eye patch in real life But he like as a pirate he gets to be like, you know, like he it seems like he comes to life in that role He likes to be a salty dog He likes to be a salty dog And so the whole thing is you go there there everyone's in character and they're serving rum drinks or whatever, but they're not doing good business.

They're like losing money. Jon Taffer goes in there and is like, shut it down. And then he, like he's talking to people and then they're talking to me like, well, this is really the reason we have the bar is so we can like LARP as pirates, basically saying that. But he's like, this bar is in a corporate area. You need to lean into the people coming for a happy hour

after their jobs. And so he takes the pirate bar, he takes out all of the pirate theming, like completely rips it out, makes it the most generic looking bar you've ever seen. It feels like out of spite and renames it corporate. And so all these people who are like dressed up, like, you know, dressed up like you know dressed

up as like whatever yeah I'm wearing suits and ties and just like shave their dreadlocks like then there's just like rescues, they all like close within six months. It's the funniest show. The camera goes in there and ruins someone's business. It's a show where a loud guy just gets to be wrong. It's something like, the thing about it, it's so great. Because he's just like a fucking dunce. There's things that he's correct about, like when it's like a dirty place

or like they're serving shitty food or they don't know how to make the drinks right. That's obviously correctable. But when it comes to like aesthetic in general, he's just wrong. It's so great. A corporate bar, that fucking sucks. Good show. Any other thoughts and here comes a new challenger?

No, but I did bring a champion edition Street Fighter 2 machine for you guys to play. Is this functional? This is like a tiny scale guy. I feel like this is clippable, right? Look, so you turn it on, and while it is heating up, while it's warming up, I'll also pull out this. It has to get hot?

Oh no, you gotta have a cord for this maybe? So it's a one player experience maybe. Yeah, it just looks like it has one set of sticks. Well no, there is an additional stick. Oh you can okay? But it's it requires a very specific. No, maybe I have oh boy hold on oh I have one of these for Oh, I have one of these for The hamburger game what's it called burger time I bought it for my wife as a Valentine's gift because she liked

Burger time when she opened it she cried because she loved it Oh my god, it's got super? Yeah, let's play super turbo. If I could just pull off a dragon punch, it would be kind of amazing. It's so hard to use this fucking controller. It's ridiculous. This green is pretty nice, actually. There was a whole section about the challenge of porting this to the Super Nintendo. And here's an arcade-perfect version

in a tiny, tiny fucking cabinet. Oh, I did a combo. I like this also. It lights up. Yeah. It's a really nice machine. That's a fun novelty. Tiny Street Fighter II.

["Street Fighter II Theme. Should we do a segment? Yeah, let's do a segment. All right, it's the return of our video game chart segment, Pixel Chart. Wow. Metacritic. I've got the top 300 fighting games. No, what I have today is the top 10

biggest selling fighting game franchises. So these are franchises in total. Also, I should note, this is software sales, not arcade revenue. So this is for, you know, this is for, basically for ports or for games that are made for consoles or PC.

As a side note, I did like the section about Mortal Kombat. I agree, the Mortal Kombat section was interesting. I'm glad they acknowledged that. And that was the kind of stuff I wanted more of, of just like how did Street Fighter II inform the larger fighting game genre. All right, and the first thing I will say is, the first one I will just give you for Pixelchart,

Street Fighter is only number five as a franchise So we're looking for the ten other ones first one Is probably the other franchise you think about when you think about fighting game franchises? I mean then Mortal Kombat it is my little combat is number with 85 million Wow next up is This is a this is a first party fighting game. Pack-in. No, this is one that some people would maybe

not consider a fighting game, maybe someone who's in this room. It's Smash Brothers. Super Smash Brothers, the next one with 75 million. Next one. I can't believe Mortal Kombat's outsold Smash Brothers. Isn't that kind of wild? And Street Fighter. But the thing is, Mortal Kombat's outsold Smash Brothers. Isn't that kind of wild? And Street Fighter.

But the thing is, Mortal Kombat has been made continuously since like what, 1994? Yeah. And then they come out, those are almost annual releases, it feels like. Those just come out constantly. That's something that I actually appreciated about something that they mentioned in the documentary.

They were like talking about how there's so many versions of Street Fighter II, but they were like, but now that's like just buying the next year's FIFA. Like we're just doing it. It's like not, we were like kind of like the first thing to do that, which I thought was an interesting point. Number three is a licensed game. This is a very large franchise, like outside of games.

It's not the video game adaptation of Celebrity Deathmatch, is it? It's not Celebrity Deathmatch. A game that I completed 100% in one hour. Does it consider wrestling as a fighting game? No, wrestling is not on here, good question. A licensed fighting game. But it's licensed.

A licensed fighting game. Yeah, this is an IP fighting game. But it's licensed. A licensed fighting game. Yeah, this is an IP fighting game. Above Street Fighter? Is it Marvel versus Capcom 2? Marvel versus Capcom is on the list as number eight. Okay. But this one is not that. This is a, Matt, I think you have some familiarity

with this franchise. Interesting. Sonic the Fighters. It's not Sonic the Fighters. Is it PlayStation All-Stars? No, no, no, no, no. This is an anime. Give another minute.

Oh, Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball, the Dragon Ball fighting game, 65 million combined. Wow. Dragon Ball's outpaced Street Fighter? That's just like a, I mean, it's a global, like, I mean, so is Street Fighter. But Street Fighter's been around for 30 years.

I know, but Dragon Ball has Goku. That's true. Was Street Fighter Street Fighter's been around for 30 years. I know but Dragon Ball has Goku. That's true. What Street Fighter 3 only on Dreamcast or did that get other other ports? It's on all sorts of stuff. You got it was but I mean no I mean, but when it came out Oh when it came out um because I feel like they they I don't feel it Maybe I maybe there was a ps2 port like but I feel like Street Fighter III was not a big sales success on the home front. Yeah, no, I don't think it was either, but that's because they couldn't pull it off on home consoles until the Dreamcast came out.

And then there are only six fighting game, there are only six in the series, so I feel like some of these other ones are just releasing so many different iterations. That's true, isn't there like 12 Mortal Kombat games? Yeah, I think there's 20 Mortal Kombat games. Holy shit! They just keep coming out with them.

Well, there's 11, right? There's certainly 11, and then they just did Mortal Kombat 1, which is sort of like a reboot of sorts. There was too much canon. They were like, I can't fucking track what happened to Baraka. That's something I guess we didn't really touch on. One of my favorite things about these games is that they have unnecessary lore.

Yes, it's great. And it's all, it's interesting. But it's like, it's not, you don't really need it if you're just going to an arcade and just, oh, there's two people fighting. I understand what the plight is here. All right, Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Brothers, Dragon Ball. Number four has already been mentioned.

It's a 3D fighting game franchise. Tekken. It is Tekken. Street Fighter is number five. Number six, another anime, another franchise. Naruto. Yep, you are correct. Wow.

Those fighting games fucking rule. Oh, interesting. Number seven, another game that was mentioned earlier today. Assassin's Creed. This is, I will say, this is another 3D fighting game. This is- Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur is correct. That franchise is number seven. Holy shit.

Number eight, another one that was mentioned earlier, Marvel versus Capcom. Number nine, this is another 3D fighting franchise. This was something that was big in that- Virtua Fighter? Virtua Fighter is number 10. Number nine is like Virtua Fighter. Dead or Alive.

You are correct. Yes, Dead or Alive is number 10. Clay Fighter. Wow. I wonder what Clay Fighter is, but I cut it off at 10. Dead or Alive with a 10 million and Virtua Fighter with five and a half million, which I expected there to be more of.

Yeah. Hey, that's this week's Get Played. Our producer is Rachelle Chen. Ranch yard underscore underscore sard. You streaming anything else lately? I'm going to be playing Resident Evil 7 next. Awesome. People check that out over on Twitch.

Our music is by Ben Prunty. BenPruntyMusic.com. Our art is by Duck Brigade Design. DuckBrigade.com. And hey, you can find our merch including apparel, hats, and stickers at KinshipGoods.com. Link in the show description. Also, check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash Get Played where you can find our entire pre-Headgum back catalog plus

ad free main feed episodes and our Patreon exclusive show Get Animated. Matt, what are we watching this week? We're watching Gurren Lagann, baby and boy oh boy, we love it. We're loving it so far. We're having a great time. It's a fun time. I'm having a good time. It's a good time. It's just good stuff. It's a good time over at patreon.com slash get played. Well, there you go. Well, there you go. I guess we got clipped. Maybe, unless there was nothing clippable from the episode. That was a HateGum Podcast.

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