Get Played - Beat-Em-Ups

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Heather, Nick and Matt discuss Is This Seat Taken?, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Matt's trip to the San Francisco Nintendo Store and then dive into the genre of Beat-Em-Ups starting with old favorites like X-Men and The Simpsons and working up to modern titles such as Marvel Cosmic Invasion and more. 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 Serial Experiments Lain 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.fm All of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee 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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up games. Yeah, yeah, yeah, moving back and forth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, finding, like, little health items within, you know, trash cans or whatever. I like the sound of punching a trash can in a beatem up. I can't wait to talk about that. Yeah, that's good stuff.

It's like clang clang. Yeah. It's interesting that you think of these as retro games because I like I spend a lot of time with my contemporary gaming time with with beatemoffs. What I like about beatemoffs is like they're really engaging. But here's the thing. Always a red flag for beat them off. I have just download a separate uncensored patch.

Just like, just let that be, that content be included. Don't have me jump through some hoops here. Also, I think with beatemoffs, you got to, you got to have be playable with one hand. I don't have to explain why, but I want to be able to just use my mouse. TIG? Yeah. I hate to, I hate to blow up your spot or embarrass you or something. Yeah, what's going on?

I think you've read the calendar invite just barely a little bit wrong. Yeah. We're talking about beatomoffs, right? actually that's sort of the big mistake that we're not talking about that we're talking about beat them ups beating and kicking and fighting and and such

uh oh uh oh now everyone knows I jack off see this is kind of the you can sort of expect something like that to happen because uh oh As you can hear, he's kind of dumb.

He's a little bit dumb and he jacks off. He thought we were talking about jacking off. Because he's so dumb, he made a big mistake. Why did he become like Huck Finn? I don't know. What happened there? He like put on a dunce cap. I got my hand in a pickle jar.

Oh God, let go with a pickle day. Let go with a pickle. We punch foot soldiers and eat food to restore our health as we discuss all things beat them up. This week on Get Play. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr. Games himself, Matt Upadaka. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we are talking about beat-em-ups, right?

That's right. Oh, thank God. Ow, ow, ow, fuck. Body blow, body blow. I had the same impulse to do it. Yeah. a half second before Nick started and I was like

I'm not going to do that everyone was going to be annoyed with me and then Nick started doing it it seemed really cool I was like I got to do it I almost threw in a high ya and I was like that's boring I should avoid that

maybe don't do that anymore you can do it Rates gave us a pass off to a rocky start I do like Like, this is a thing. Like, games are so much about violence. And aren't they?

They really are. All the puzzle games, not games. Games are about violence. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's interesting that you say that. I had never really made the connection between video games and violence before. Somebody has to do something about this.

Somebody really should. But no one's going to do anything. Turn it up. So, if anything, people are doing less than ever now. nobody's doing enough violence these days. It should be an industry mandate that everybody in every game

where there's violence also has to beg. No, fuck! No! Please, no. Have mercy. It is I redone. I beg you. I do think

we're talking about this topic. I feel like this is like a big topic. There's like a big genre topic. It's broad. It's broad. But I kind of have this take and we'll get into this. Yeah. I think beat them ups are back.

Well, there's certainly been a contemporary resurgence of beat them ups like, you know, an attempt to do some sort of retro refreshes. In fact, one of the reasons we're talking about this is that Marvel Cosmic Invasion just came out. Yes. To mostly positive reception. It got the exact score where I said out loud, nice. And bought it. like very like average good sort of like great that's perfect we've seen we've seen the

the return of this and I think a you know there's some some retro appreciation for this genre that was once a staple of arcades back when those existed well yeah the design of a beat them up is perfect for an arcade like you have forward progression you have forward map movement but also there's sort of this built-in clock of your health that forces you to put in more quarters. Yeah, quarter munchers, they called them. Two Minutes a Token is basically the formula for financial success back in the day. But here's what we should do before we get into that.

We're a video game podcast. That's right. But it's not the only medium we appreciate. Here we go. Sometimes the Trifor's friendship plus Rochelle, who's also our friend. Who's also, yeah, a third additional piece. Yeah. An incomplete try, an incomplete second try for.

Right, yes. The Quad force of friendship. Quad force of friendship. Yeah. Likes to see a feature film. We all saw some movies. We all saw some movies. We did.

I watched, I saw Wicked for Good. Was that the only thing I saw in theaters? I think so. We did watch, we had to have watched, oh, I mean, I feel like it's in the rear view at this point. We watched Frankenstein loved. But Wicked for Good. And I will say, they should have called it, Wicked for Fine. Yeah, it's weird to build an entire film out of the second act of a musical,

which always, by design, you want to leave the audience with a real banger right before intermission. Yeah. So all your big moments in these big showy musicals are almost always at the midpoint. Yeah, I would have taken a three and a half hour one movie. That would have been just fine for me. Two, two and a half hour movies was a lot, especially when there's no arc to be seen in the the second one. The art's done in the first one. Also, it's weird because it's musical structure.

You know, spoilers for Wicked for Good ahead. So cover your ears. If you still haven't seen Wicked for Good on stage or in theater, in a movie, a sequel to a movie, you would never follow up defying gravity with, you know what, let's go talk to the Wizard one more time just in case. Yeah, let's actually just go back real quick. Let's hear them out a little bit. Like, to be so determined to like make a change and then go backwards a little bit.

bit like that works in a stage show but doesn't work in a movie i will say i'm level i'm i'm leveling complaints currently i i i must inform you all i loved every second of being in the movie theater and i cried several times i loved it that's great it's just what you know what the movie theater i will say i thought the volume not loud enough this is at a uh a movie theater in the bay area called old person cinema old person cinema It's too loud Well, here's the thing A lot of people

Would have the opposite complaint Yeah, they thought it was too loud And I was like, we have to This is actually not good We have to come to an agreement of some kind It was one of those theaters where there's food You know, there are people running back and forth In the aisles

So I think they have to have it a little quieter So you can hear the server The server can hear you and stuff So I think that whole experience has to go We have to be done with that No! No! No, I We have to be done with it. You like the service in the theater.

Yes, but I like it when it's app-based. So there's no communication with the server. You just, you just, you click the thing. It's app-based before the movie begins. Yeah. And then cannot work during the movie so you don't have the option of using your phone during the film. Because this was a problem I actually ran into. I asked my wife, you want anything?

You got to ask your wife that question. Do you want anything? We're all wife guys here on the podcast. I'm ordering, do you want anything? Yeah. I'm good. I'm good. Oh.

And I'm like, okay. I'm going to press it. Are you sure? A second follow-up has been asked. Okay. Whispering that to George Bush while he reads my pet goat. A second follow-up has been asked. No, I'm okay.

I have my, she came in with a coffee. I'm like, okay. The movie's long. Yeah. I'm pressing, you know, submit. Place my order. Maybe two minutes go by. Oh, you know what?

I'd love a water. Maybe we could get a water. And just as she's saying this, the lights come down, can't scan a QR code to save my fucking life. QR code needs to be a different color in the dark. Yeah. I think you shouldn't be able to use the QR code in the dark. I just want to be on my phone.

No. No. I think, so the way the Alamo does it, another dine-in theater, is there's a little button on your table. Yeah. And you have to write in pencil. like what it is that you want and you press the little button and they just come and scoop it up they don't say anything to you I like that system I like that too great system great system

you are code before the movie I don't want to fucking pen and pencil uh or paper and pencil during the film uh I have I have an opposite wife my wife knows she wants something doesn't know what it is uh-huh yeah so she's always like at the at the preamble to the film well there's so many fun options she's like what should I get what do I want she asked me what I want and I'm like I don't know you want you can have anything and she's like what will help me what do I want I'm like the chicken tenders no I don't want the chicken tender yeah yeah and then we got a third wife kind which is the non-existent wife my wife is real it's a year when I look at myself in the mirror

wearing a wig just like Norman Batesing yourself to no end I saw a Utopia 2. Yes. Tutopia. Yeah, I saw Tutopia.

Let me, Tutopia, that's a real hoot. You liked it? I thought, I was like, I went and I was like, like, hey, I'll see Stotopia 2. And then I'm seeing those like, I'm having a great time. I got to watch it. I loved the first one. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's like, it's another good detective story.

It's just, it's like, it's really straightforward. It's meant to be family accessible, but it's a sort, but it's like, it's well structured. And then it's got a lot of, it's just jam packed with good jokes and the animation looks great. I love to hear it. Completely, completely satisfying cinema. experience. And let me tell you, Judy Hopps still looking good in those pants.

Oh, my God. This is why he wanted to talk about the movie so he could tell on himself. Yeah. So he could just get excited. Setting himself up to get horny. Judy Hopps. My one true love, Judy Hopps. I saw a rental family. Oh, yes. Loved it. Loved it, loved it. We saw with my wife. She ended up with the chicken tenders. Did you like them? She liked the chicken tenders. What sauce is married? going with for a chicken tender. I'm going to guess ranch and barbecue sauce. She chooses ranch. She's

ranch. She likes ranch. Wow. But yeah, loved rental family. Nice little emotional, sweet film. Good times. Recommend. What sauce do you go with some tendies? You know what? I'm going to go honey mustard, actually.

I was going to say honey mustard. Honey mustard. This is why we're boys. Honey mustard boys. Honey mustard is situational, but I think tendees is a place where it shines. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not putting a honey mustard on any old damn thing. Yeah, sure. I'm not some fucking idiot, some psycho, just, I have to tell you guys about something I thought that actually is sauce related. It was recently my birthday, happy birthday, Matt.

Happy birthday, Matt. It's fine. It was fine. It was great. It was wonderful. Went to Disneyland, went to the, this was such an emergency. see I almost texted the podcast The Ride Boys. I was like, I need to tell

you guys about this. I still haven't told them about this. I have to tell them. Yeah. Eating at storytellers, which is the restaurant at the Grand Californian Hotel over there in downtown Disney. Like a buffet sort of thing. I'm on plate too. Made some great choices with the first plate. Got a little

slice of primary. I've got a lot of veggies. Which is going nuts. Try it all a little different meats. Round two, I was thinking, you know what? Maybe I'll get like a butter. not squash ravioli. Maybe I'll get another little salad. Maybe like a piece of turkey or something. Okay.

Yeah. I see this lady. I know this. I see this lady. I know this. Looking confused and kind of scared. At a salad dressing. She then.

Ladles. A full ladle of salad dressing, it's like either ranch or blue cheese or some sort of white cream-based dressing. She doesn't know what it is. For all she knows, it could be clam chowder. Right. It's not labeled. It's not clam chowder because there's no soup. Yeah.

I heard a whole thing about the soup. The soup recipes are out right now. The guy who was doing charge of the soups retired, took the recipes with them. They don't have a solution. How is that possible? We asked. we asked nothing we can do

our hands are tied he took the good recipes they haven't they said they haven't been able to figure out how to get one to scale we asked we're like there was a really good corn chowder

here before what happened the guy retired took the recipe with him we haven't found a sustainable repeatable recipe they should do battleship curry they should do it honestly

because that's designed specifically for scale yes they couldn't They couldn't do it. It seems like they could figure it. It feels like they could toss the guy a payday and be like, hey, man, let's toss his gross recipe. Yeah, yeah, he was, like, tattooed on his back.

Um, uh, this lady ladle's a big ladleful of the salad dressing. I'm thinking, that's a lot for the amount of salad she has. What's she going to do with all that? It's getting past her plate. Closer and closer, ever closer to her face She takes a sip of it from the ladle Grimmus is yucky Don't like this, don't like this dressing

Puts it back in the dressing. Truly unhinged. I'm sitting there, I'm like, buffets are great, I love this, this is awesome, this is like the most fun I've ever had And then I'm confronted with the exact horror of a buffet Yeah, I mean, I thought they might not come back at all after COVID, but they're back in a big way. But that sort of behavior is, I mean, criminal. Everyone forgot how to interact socially during COVID.

Like, people just run red lights now. Nobody cares about anything. Yeah, yeah. And then also COVID itself is causing brain damage with each successive infection. Yes. So people are also becoming less able to navigate social spaces. So the buffet is going to be the intersection of societal collapse. Yeah.

And to be fair, if I saw a bunch of salads and some white goo next to it, I'd be confused as to what that was, too. Sure. I'd have to taste it to see what it was. Of course. But I think you would have made a different choice with how to taste it. I would have, like, bobbed for it. Like, it put my whole head in it probably.

You could also do the ladle above. Waterfall it. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just, it was alarming to say the least. Did you narque? What do you do in that situation? Well, here's the thing.

I panicked. Yeah. Because Isabel and I, my wife and I were like, we have to say something before we could get to anybody. For some reason, the most people I've ever seen, I've got some of this, people were getting me. Oh, my God. There's nothing you could do at that point.

It's already happened. If she's patient zero, patient one, two, three, four, five are already compromised. Yeah. You should have taken the whole dressing. Smacked their plates out of their head. Stop! That lady tasted! Yeah.

And, you know, the other fun part about this was, it was not, you're probably, everyone hearing the story thinks he was a normal dinner. Everyone thinks it was just like some sort of normal, where nothing crazy was happening at the dinner. You're probably thinking that. Well, I'd say I've been a storyteller, so I know the girl. But keep going. There's a bunch of characters walking around.

Mickey came over to my table and pretended to steal my wife. What? That was the thing he did? He goes like this. He's like, has one arm around her, and he's looking back at me going, shh. He was being really funny. And it's obviously, look, it's for the little kids.

It's for like five and under. Right. My wife and I were going fucking nuts. It was so exciting. Minnie came over to a table. My wife couldn't stop telling her how beautiful she was. Then she's like doing curtsies. Claribel the Cow comes over, does a little fun little, like,

little skirt lift and everybody's scandalized by it. Goofy was dressed as Ghost for Christmas past. Grudge walking around as the man who kills Goofy in this particular, you know, works him to an early grave. It's funny when like a mascot performer and you know, hey, that's a, that's a, that's a tough job. Oh, yeah. Entertaining in one of those suits that's notoriously, you know, tough to move around in and inhospitable. Yeah.

But when they make, like, a big choice, like, I'm going to steal your wife, because Mickey's not horny. Like, that's not, like, a key attribute of Mickey. No. If you're, like, Pepe Lepew or something, it's like, okay, I get it. This is the horny French skunk. This is kind of his whole thing. But now you're, now this guy's just riffing. It was, it was, I was laughing so hard.

I couldn't get a photo of him doing it. I was, like, missing the button. I was, like, cracking up. He really, really got my ass. It was, uh, it was really great. That really saved the, and then you forget all about the dressing. I feel like you told the dressing story first, though, so. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing.

It haunts me. Because if I find out that there was like some sort of hepatitis C outbreak. Yeah, yeah, starting there, I could have stopped it. You also, and I love it when you go to Disneyland because you go pretty frequently. Yeah, yeah. I had a pass for a year and it actually just ended. And I really, I like Star Warsland, but it's not enough for me to justify getting the full pass again. yes um so you had a ronto wrap i had a ronto rap which was really good um it's like always

better than i remembered it was always always is ed did you have any other star wars foods uh i did have so i was going to go get a green milk because i'm a green milk over blue milk guy or but for they're doing a whole life day thing which is so crazy to me to think about because right they like tried to bury this right christmas special that life day even is ever spoken It's never spoken outside of it. It's for everybody knows what this is, right? I don't have to explain what it is. There was a Star Wars Christmas special that's notoriously unwatchable,

but became like kind of a cult classic. And a lot of people saw it in the, what, late 70s, early 80s when it aired on TV. Yes. And as part of it, there is a invented non-canonical wookie holiday called Life Day. That's what it's centered around. So there's a lot of Life Day merch and treats within the park right. now because it's holiday season over there which it has been since

I think the end of September and they had a special blue milk life day treat that had like strawberry puree and like leachy like popping candies and it was unbelievable it was so good

it was great I loved it I love all the food there is like pretty good now I would think I gotta make conceptual fences around certain locations on planet Earth where I can eat sugar. Yeah, I think you can probably do it there. One time a year is not going to kill you.

Disneyland's pretty great. And those caramel apples, my God. Yeah, well, I'll off air talk to you about something. Whoa. They have a pass that you can get. That's like three days. It's just food? No, that's like you can go.

You don't have to commit to a whole year of going. You can just get this one thing. You can go three times in a year. And like that's kind of like, that'll like scratch the edge for you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good value. Do you know when this horny Mickey's working? Nick wants to get rid of his wife

I was thinking about you actually I was thinking about you over the weekend because while I was there I learned of the albino crocodile or albino alligator in San Francisco Claude who passed away I was thinking about you because I know that you guys probably knew each other

and I had gone to see him many years ago and I loved him and I would tell people visiting San Francisco oh you got to go see Claude and so I'm at Disneyland I learn of his passing I'm in line for a ride and I start to cry

I love, and it caught me by surprise I think just because I've lost pets recently, you know, within the last couple of years and so I was you know, birthdays are already kind of emotional and then I was like, oh, this guy he was gunned down in his prime 30 years old, this alligator

they can live to 50. I didn't know that. Yeah, I looked it up to justify whether or not me crying was okay. Reptiles lengthy lifespan. Yeah. Reptiles also a key element, a key part of Zootopia 2. Oh. Yeah. Reptiles are introduced. They weren't really in the first one. No, it's all, it's, it's all mammals. I don't know if there's like a segment of furries that like specifically reptilian form factors. I don't even

they call themselves. They'd have to call them Scaly's probably. That's the thing. Would they even be, they even be furies? I think it's all under one umbrella. But I mean, like, there must be some people who are specifically into like, oh, yeah, I want to be a gecko or something. Yeah, or like an ostrich. Right. You'll see like a guy dressed as a dragon. You'll be like, oh, that's his thing. But they tend to still be fur suits.

So. You mean that the dragon is plush? Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can see that. I guess you could just make, yeah, you can just make anything plush. Yeah. We solved it.

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uh, Mada-Badaka, what are you playing? Residential before Merchant, thank you so much. You're welcome. December Eve, did you just mean like an evening in December? An evening in December. Okay, because I usually... The lights are dim. They're slowest.

falling. There's an Arctic polar chill vortex freezing the rivers in their tracks. Hot cocoa is hard to come by. You gotta trade your daughter for it. Who's got shoes? I hear Johnny's got shoes. Get the gun. Gotta go down to the farm and do a raid. December Eve.

It's the most wonderful time of the year. That's right. All that stuff's happening. There's lights everywhere. It's gorgeous. I'm playing a few things, of course. Still playing Pokemon Lazarus, enjoying that. Haven't made much progress,

but still just chipping away at it. Ghost of Yote. I am down to the last two, well, I guess three of the Yote six. One of them is a double. So you got a ghost of, Gotay. What do you mean?

I don't know. I was trying one of your things. And I guess in a way I was trying yours. I'm still doing that. I'm loving it. In a way, I have a bit of a ghost of Goethe. And so I'm trying to wrap that up because I also I got this on sale.

I realized I missed baseball. Yeah, sure. I miss it? I miss it. Okay. So I started playing MLB the show, and I scanned my face, and I put my face in the game. Hey. Let me tell you something. That process works for nobody.

You can never be happy with how it comes out. Right. It's horrible. But the game is fun. I'm enjoying that. Did you take up a spectacled pick? Because you're a glasses wearer. I feel like I don't wear glasses in the necessarily, like, not always.

Yeah, not always. These glasses I actually just got in their iterative on my last prescription, which they always should be, but I always forget to bring my glasses when I go to the appointment. And so now these are like sort of for everything, which is great. I don't hurt when I read now or look at computer or look at T. or look at switch or anything. When I drive a night. Computer.

Computer. But I should take a perspective. But they wear different glasses. What did he say? Inside's computer. What did he say? Who? Trump.

Everything's computer. Everything's computer. Everything's computer. Not wrong. He kind of is right, actually. Remote or TV computer now. Refrigerator computer now. Watching machine computer now.

Yep. Broken clock is right. is the day. That's right. Clock's a computer now. Yeah. Matt, to your point. Like, you're going to tell me that clock's a clock? No. That's a computer. That's a computer. We're pointing at the stopwatch that is off camera that lets us do our timekeeping. That thing don't got no gears in it. Sorry, sweetie. That's not a clock.

Anyway. Missed the days of big gears. Me too, actually. We should become steampunk guys. All right, done. Okay. See you next week in our top hats, my boy. don't forget your goggles but I'm playing MLB the show and I'm just like running through

regular length games in baseball and enjoying it it's a very normy game I feel like it's not really like there's not a lot to it it is like there are like that you can go through the campaign and start at like you know

trying to get recruited by a college and get a scholarship and things like that and that stuff's fine but I actually am very impressed by the announcers in the game because they're like calling things that are happening. I was like,

that had to have been so much work. Like, like, there's probably, like, they're going to repeat certain things or whatever, but,

like, to get so specific as to, like, what's actually happening is, like, it's, it first feels like a magic trick. It feels really cool.

Pop fly to center. Oh, no. Mike Johnson broke his leg. Like that. His pants fell completely down, showing his entire ass. Why is that in the game? The,

the it's interesting because obviously it was not for all of sports video games there was an era where this is not technically possible but basically once speech entered you know once we get to the era of CD-ROMs we started to have speech and commentary and games and that just became a fixture but it's like more generally as someone who played a lot of sports games when I was younger and I don't play them much anymore but but you still kind of track them like that the presentation of a sports video game is always mirroring your experience as a TV viewer. Because there's a way to do it where you could be like, hey, artistically, let's simulate what it's like to actually play the game. And so we're not going to have like these UX

elements that you'd see if you're watching a broadcast of a baseball game. We're not going to have the little mini diamond on screen. We're going to just like it. It's going to be a little bit more immersive, but no one seems to have taken that approach or maybe they've experimented with that approach and people just don't like it. God, can you imagine like a first person baseball game called Baseball the Experience whereas you walk

up to plate you're just it's it's it's it It is nuts like there's like

you can go first person when you're in the outfield like for when you're like catching and stuff but like

it doesn't help or hurt like it's just like a different way to look but the other stuff is still

it is more tailored toward the viewing experience So I'm doing that and... Are you playing as the Dodgers? Well... Oh!

When you're doing your show, like when you're doing the show campaign, you don't start out there. I did pick them as my favorite team, of course. But I did... You can just kind of pick up a team and play against another team. And yeah, I did run back the World Series this year

and I get thrown on his fucking ass. Sorry, I had to do it. It was a lot of fun. But I also went to the Nintendo. store in San Francisco is in the San Francisco for the recent holiday and I'll say it's a great store I loved it I think the New York store is a little more interesting because there's more like sort of museum type pieces like the old playing cards yeah old systems and things like that this doesn't have any of that it's more um just like a store yeah which is fine yeah um I got this

sweatshirt there with uh with cat Mario on it yeah uh I'm wearing you You're wearing, it's a, it's a yellow sweatshirt with a yellow cat Mario, but the cat Mario itself is thick. Yeah, it's like, it's tangible. It's like, it's like embroidered patched on. It's really crazy. It's really nice. There's a little embroidered bell right there. Very nice.

It seems like a high quality sweatshirt. And also just like, it's kind of a, what is that? Like a canary sort of golden, like it's like a different sort of tone. It's two-tone yellow with the sweatshirt itself versus the cat Mario. It's like a cream color, would you say? Cream color, yeah, sure. I mean, if that was the cream they served you, send you back, he'd be like, oh no.

I'd be like, what the fuck? He didn't mix the egg in. Kind of a honey mustard color. It is honestly kind of honey mustard, actually. I would say it's more honey in the mix. Yeah, they went heavy with the honey. I would have liked a little bit more mustard, I think. I don't know.

I'm looking at that thing going, yum, yum, give me some. Yeah, he's fucking, well, that explains why you shoved a chicken tender in my back earlier. But I also got these Pikachu socks that I'm wearing. here. And while I was there, I was like, I got to get some gifts from my friends. What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? I got everybody some, some different socks here. I got you these Kirby socks. Oh, my God. I love it. I got you this Christmas, like, sort of soft question block with little snow. Question block socks. And Ranch, I got you these Team Rocket socks that simply have an R on them.

Wow. Wow. Those are badass. There you go. Wow, what excellent gift. He didn't go there without getting a little something for my friends. My wife is going to steal these so fast. They are so soft.

Really, really thoughtful. Also, I like on these Kirby socks. Kirby's like pissed off. He's like, what the fuck do you say to me? I have to be a fucking sock. Yeah. I have to suck up this guy's feet. You fucking kidding me?

I will say they got, I was saying this earlier, they had a lot of, Splatoon and a lot of Pickman stuff. And it really did make me think I'm like, I'm missing out on something. I have to get to the bottom of it. It's weird to have the pizza of Nintendo IP and have two slices that are just essentially blank in my mind. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Because they're huge. Yeah. They're absolutely like, the sections were basically general Nintendo, which encompassed like Mario, Yoshi, Luigi, Donkey Kong. that's like the first level. The other sections of the store are

Pokemon, Splatoon, Pickman, and then a small section that's like everything else. Metroid, Zelda. Zelda, not even its own huge section of the store. There's a Zelda statue.

But like, it was kind of like, I was surprised that the Zelda footprint was pretty small in the store. I can't believe that there is a time within viewing distance of where we are today

where there will, be a virtual boy section at the Nintendo store again. Oh, yes. Because they had, I mean, they had all the switch to, like, accessories out, including, like, the, you know, the GameCube controller, and they're, like, getting ready for the... They're getting ready for it. The virtual boy. For the virtual boy.

Absolutely. Wow. That's what I've been playing, and that's what I did. Heather, what are you playing? Well, I continue on the journey of Cloud and his friends. I will say I slowed down my pace because when I got I 100%ed that first section

got to the second section and was a little bit disappointed to find out that the quest structure is the same. Yes. So it's like unlock the towers. The towers look the same. Go talk to these people. Go fight these few

creatures on the map. Like it's the same. I thought, oh, I've done all of these quests in this first section. The next section it'll be like oh now there's cooking or because final fantasy games are kind of known for like a variety of mini games like chocobo racing squats like all this weird shit so for it to just be like cut and pasted from the first area kind of dulled my enthusiasm so um so yeah i'm playing that uh i'm of course uh um excited that uh the new fortnight season has started so this is going to

probably be my Fortnite recap of both the, for the month because I try and ease off the gas on Fortnite stuff on the podcast, so it's not the only thing I ever talk about. The Simpsons season ended. What a success. Universally praised. I'm not even a huge Simpsons fan. Had a great time. Scratchy has become my main skin. Wow. And I even got the companion of Itchy, who runs around and is the only voiced character because none of these characters speak. So the companion going, ha ha, yeah. Like the whole time is the only time you'll hear speech

outside of like your personal squad. I've decided that itchy and scratchy are the sort of core concept of what Fortnite is, which is mindless mute chaos. So I feel empowered by the skin. Whereas like I feel like there's a subconscious experience when you are taking on the avatar role of a skin in the game, that you feel a little bit like, oh, I'm playing an alien game. I'm playing as the xenomorph. Yeah. I'm going to be a

little sneaky. Yeah. I'm playing as, you know, Naruto, I want to move fast. Scratchy is mindless violence as like a concept. Like, I know scratchy. So charging in and blowing stuff up and shooting a gun all of it works canonically with Scratchy as a character which makes the game a little bit more chaotic from my squad because I am like charging in blowing up gas stations playing a lot

less conservatively than I normally do I was able to play the season ending event for the first time since I've been playing Fortnite and in the season ending event they took all the IP from the last chapter or season

or whatever yeah chapter chapter six, and they sent all of it at this main new enemy who was trying to do something to the Fortnite Island. So you had Godzilla and King Kong teamed up with Hatsunemiku, teamed up with the girls from K-pop demon hunters who were singing their song. Golden? Well, they were singing done. That's how it's done. And they're singing it, which is, As the X-Wing fighters fly in and everybody, yourself included, is shooting at this main boss, it was a real feat of brand management. Wow. Like, it felt like if you were going to tell people what Fortnite was, seeing all of these things grouped together, fighting a main bad guy, felt very ready player one, felt very like, oh, this is what the thing is. And then they also introduced next season's IP collaborations.

So the DeLorean from Back to the Future flies in. The bride from Kill Bill flies in. Scratchy gets on her motorcycle. She's voiced by Uma Thurman. And is like, come on, let's go. And Scratch is just like, it's so joyful and gleeful. this season of Fortnite is California conceptually. It is akin to a, you know, Vice City where there are micro maps inside of a larger island

that are all kind of representative of California areas. For example, there is a studio that looks kind of like Warner Brothers. There's an area that looks like Sunset Strip. There's Vegas out in the desert. There's San Francisco up north. In between is like a Big Bear-style giant Redwoods. So the whole map right now is California, which is super fun. I have no complaints about that game.

It's so fantastic. The final thing I just want to review is that I'm an early adopter on tech. I went to meta to try the new screen in glasses. Yeah. They suck. Oh. Nick, you're up. Um, bummed to hear about a meta with a whiff, a rare mistrat from the Meta corpore.

I'm currently wearing the last generation meta glasses. I like them because you can listen to music without covering up your ears. That's fantastic. Yeah. I don't use any of the other features, which are pointless to me. The cameras, why would I ever take a picture without using my phone to, like, line it up? Yeah. I don't want to ask the AI to do anything because, like, I don't want meta AI.

doing anything for me. Yeah. I just like having the music on, on the, uh, the sunglasses. That's great. Um, assumed that this, the next ones would be a step up from that. But boy, oh boy, the, um, the gestures are absolutely broken. It is an impossible device to use. Wow. You, you, uh, lay off pod, you mentioned a little bit like how the gestures work. And they seemed really unintuitive. Super unintuitive. Matt, I'll share with you. Here's how it works. Um, Applevision, which I want to bring to the pod so that we can do an episode. Anyway, Applevision, you look at something, you click it.

Finger to thumb, that's it. Yeah, that makes sense. You click, you want to make a window bigger. You look at the corner of the window and you just pull it and it makes it bigger. Drink it down, but this is your gesture. It's in like a locked position. You're sort of like, okay, yeah, yeah.

Or if you want to grab the window, you pinch the middle of it and you put it over there. All of it is just pinch, pinch, pitch, pitch, pitch. The meta glasses with the screen in them, I don't know what they're officially called. are heavy, thick, and the interface is that you have to imagine the top of your finger

as a track pad and your thumb rubbing on the top of your finger. That doesn't even feel good. It feels gross. But then in order to click on an item to open it, like click on an app, you would think you would just tap the top of your thing. Yeah,

I'm going like this. It kind of makes sense that I'll tap there. Instead, you select going like this, then you open up your hand and you tap your first finger and thumb together. I got to remember how to, like, move your hand. Do all these little movements?

Wait, it gets worse. So then if you want to go back from an app, then you touch your middle finger to your thumb. So already you're, this is too much action. That's too, that's too many things. Worst part, worst part. When you take a photo and you want to zoom in on it because you've got this like postage stamp screen in your field of vision,

you know, we've all been taught that this is your Zoom, like to zoom in to something. Yeah, like on your phone. Yeah, yeah. Children, when they look at a magazine, they will try and zoom in on a magazine. Well, it's sort of a bad example because kids are so stupid. Right. They don't know anything.

Right. With the meta glasses, you pinch all three fingers together. Three. Your thumb and your first two fingers, you pinch that together, and then you twist in the air like you're squeezing an invisible nipple. Oh. You unzoomed by twisting the other way. Now I'm back. First you had my curiosity,

now you have my attention. But yeah, it was a gross experience and made me kind of seasick because also when you're sliding your hand back and forth, it's reversed. So like you click and drag with Applevision, you drag to the right, it moves it to the right, you drag to the left, it moves to the left.

Unless you swipe to the right and the thing goes to the left, you swipe to the left and it goes to the right. Right. Well, what's good about that is They always take feedback into consideration And we'll improve upon this They're not going to just double down

And make it worse going forward Yeah, that's the one thing we know about meta as a company Yeah, they're iterative I cannot wait for the Apple Glasses next year I'm so excited about it That'll be cool Yeah, that'll be great Thank you to Aura Frames for sponsoring this show.

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Support the show you're listening to right now by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions obviously apply. Thank you, Aura Frames. Thank you, listener. Nick, what are you playing? Heather, thank you so much for asking. You're welcome. I rolled credits on two video games since our last record.

Holy shit. Neat's a go. He's on fire. Look, neither of these are big honkers. These are, you know, constrained experiences, but they're two games I really enjoyed. The first game was a game I mentioned last time we had an episode, Dispatch. what a fucking video game I absolutely loved it

I found the story immensely satisfying it's just such a great piece of writing I did end up turning off QTs quick time events because I just found them kind of honestly immersion breaking I was just enjoying the story so much and I just kind of felt like

this isn't adding much to the experience and there's also like enough interactivity outside of this because there's the management sim aspect there is the hacking mini games which come up even if you've turned off quick time events that's still a thing that will happen amidst one of these cinematic sequences and there's still a bunch of decision points you have to make and a lot of these are on a clock so I was like I feel like I'm I'm satisfied

with these elements and I can just take in the canonical story in this more cinematic presentation as opposed to oh shit I got to click my mouse right now you know so I like I like the game more once I did that I do really like a lot of the NPCs in this game it's it's just like the you know the the core love triangle I found you know

really with the with your your character the player character Robert Robertson the Aaron Paul character and then the invisigal who's one option it feels like that that's who the game is trying to direct you towards and then

the blonde blazer who's the other option we're kind of a interesting power dynamic thing there because you've got it's like a workplace thing so you've got like the blonde blazer is kind of the your boss and then invisigal is kind of someone your mentee like like like i don't know there is there's there's kind of a layer there but uh here's here's one i think a big part of why this game works so well is the main character is great and so often especially in genre fiction main characters tend to be bland like you think of like

Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker or even like Superman. You know, it's like, like, like, like, like, a lot of times these, the central character is not the most interesting part of the IP. It's the, it's the peripheral characters, the ancillary characters that fill out this world because that, that main character is just driving story. And, and here, especially in a game where, you know, your, the, the, the, the players, the player character is, is informed by your choices.

Like, there is a world in which that, the game is still satisfied. but that character feels kind of generic doesn't feel like it has a lot to it but it's like like this like he's really like snarky he but in a way that it's not like in an overplayed sort of Marvel superhero snark way in a way that's like

commenting on things but not undermining the stakes of things he also really cares and that's a huge part of it of the appeal of this character to me is that he's like you get brought into this role you have this alter ego who who's like a

you know, a, of a Gundam, basically, Gundam Iron Man. And you get brought into this kind of advisor role as the sort of man at the CIA, man in the chair, overseeing this, basically the suicide squad. But he really, like, genuinely cares about, like, doing a good job and also, like, about all of these individual relationships with the people that he's, you know, coaching for lack of a better term. And I don't know. I mean, just like someone who's actually invested in it makes you as a player more invested in the stakes of it. I also, the management sim aspect of it, I found really fun. I wish there was a little bit more gameplay consequence to it.

There's like, you're kind of playing through it as like, hmm, I don't know if whether or not I succeed or fail these effects much in terms of where the story is going. And it kind of feels like that would be that could have a little bit more, I don't know, just just potency to it. But I still, like, had a lot of fun while I was playing it. And there's also just so much banter that's going on. Like, because they're very often in those sequences, like the story is also advancing. So it's just like a different sort of way of moving things forward. But has an incredible pace to it. Like, it never gets boring.

There was never a chapter. I was like, all right, that one was kind of a dud. It was kind of like, you know, you ever watched like a limited series? And it's just like, oh, wow, every episode of this was a fucking banger. And that's kind of how it felt this, the chapter wise, when this is. well uh great matt mercer villain i watched this cast interview because the cast is universally excellent and it was one of those things where it was first of i was really well moderated for a group interview that just like everyone was involved um and and basically all the a lot of

the major characters were there who were who were the npc's uh erin paul was not there but just hearing how this like like it's like everyone had really good chemistry like in the interview yeah which is which I think, you know, as a testament to the casting and how they were able to, like, figure out this, this team that had this sort of, uh, dynamic. Um, but also like, like just the way it was cast, there were some, some veteran voice actors, you know, that there were like a, like some really well-known, uh, people who are a part of the core cast, uh, like Laura Bailey, but, but there's also like, there were, there were, there's some people who are like new to me, who I think maybe also were, it would seem new to voice acting in general or, or to, or to

to video game acting. And they were all really awesome and also seemed really invested in it. Like one of the writers for the game is voices one of the characters or performs one of the characters and you know a coupé and then

you know there's also just like some musicians and some content creators who are brought on as part of the cast and I don't know It's just like I liked that they look to like Yeah we'll get some star power like Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright And we'll get some like you know We'll get the Laura Bailey's and the Matthew Mercer's to come in

Just people who are absolutely Just gonna nail whatever role we give them But then we'll also bring in someone like Oh this is the performance I really like This is someone who is not on my radar Is all at all as an individual But like a Thought Squad is the performer who plays Prism and it's just like it's a really cool performance and then you watch their interview and it's like it's like oh they really really really want like cared about this video game and we're really invested in it and so i don't know it just seemed like a really collaborative process and then that benefited uh yeah the the feeling of a game that's all about teamwork um but yeah i thought the ending was was great ending kind of has a few too many beats to it if i'm if i'm looking for something to criticize but also there's got so many plot threads it's trying to wrap up and also like you know accounting for all these different decision points that the player might

be making. So I understand why it kind of has that feel to it. The other game I finished was, oh, Dispatch, absolutely loved it. The other game I finished is, is this seat taken? I got 100% achievements in this game in about six hours. It's pretty, it's pretty brief. But this is just like a great vibes cozy puzzle game where it's basically you've got a bunch of different social situations and then you've got a bunch of different shapes, the sentient shapes, anthropomorphic shapes that have seating arrangements on like a bus or at a picnic or at a rock concert or something like that. But they've all got individual demands. So like for instance, like one like like there's a hexagon who hasn't showered or something like that. And then there's a triangle who doesn't like

strong odors. So it's like, okay, so I can't sit these people next to each other. And then it's just basically a bunch of a logic puzzle of figuring out what the specific arrangement can be through all these different contingencies that people have. Someone's blasting music. someone else is reading a book someone else is taking a nap uh someone else needs sunscreen um someone else has sunscreen they're going to share you know what whatever these things are like like just figuring out how to the cascade effect of how you place everybody and it's really satisfying when you solve one of these and it's also just like a really cute game with a fun aesthetic um rochelle you also played through is the steat taken yeah i loved it really fun it was too short yeah wanted more

yeah i mean i i hope there'll be a i imagine there'll be some sort of follow up But, yeah, it's a really, just really gentle sort of experience. But Rochelle, you also played another game, and I believe finished another game that's quite a bit more substantial. I rolled credits on Claire of Scare Expedition 33. Wow. I think I last left off with it back when it came out. And then I was canceling a bunch of subscriptions, and I realized I still had game. pass and I was like oh my god

I'm gonna finish this in like five days and I did wow amazing did you love it I loved it beautiful game awesome story and yeah by the end of it I was like way too overpowered like because I wasn't getting really in the weeds of like

the Picto building but yeah so it was kind of flying by towards the end there but it was still super fun loved it cool what was your approximate total play time if you can recall. I think it was 60 hours. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you really binge this bad boy. Yeah. Wow.

Congrats. Thank you. I want to circle back to dispatch for just one second. Yeah, please. I am, I got it. I want to play it. I think it's going to be sort of like my winter, like sort of like winter break sort of things. I love those games like games like that. Yeah. The other telltale games and stuff.

Yeah, the developer ad hoc is a lot of telltale vets. I did mention this previously. And I felt like there was some other point that I was wanting to circle back to about it and I don't remember now what it was so I'm done talking okay perhaps you're wondering if there's nudity

and the answer is yes yeah no I knew that my Google search history will rat my ass out but there had to have been it had to have been something about it it was something about

oh I remember not what it was yeah it was that the developers have noticed that people are only making the good choices because you're sort of like, you know, you get these choices and you can, there's a lot of things that the game accounts for or whatever, but they're like encouraging people to like be bad.

They're like, like, do, like we want to see people, these percentages go up. Mostly people are making like the choice that seems like the ones that you would make. I remember that being also a problem with the game fable, which was that they had like good paths and bad paths and people were only picking the good paths. and so like part of the game had just been unexplored.

Yeah. Well, we've kind of been conditioned though as players that you are oftentimes punish for pursuing the dark path. Even in the game where it's pretty fleshed out like Balders Gate 3, there's just a lot less content if you like murder all the teethlings

as Heather did immediately. Oh, come on. Before the dark urge path was even patched into the game. There's like a, like like like so I think that there's, There's partly just like a gamer instinct of like, well, I want to see what the, what the canonical story is. And that's probably going to be the good path. But what I will say here is that like, and I think I read the article you're referencing. And a lot of what they were talking about, if you dig into it was like people making boring choices or safer choices or people pleaser choices, which I think is another gamer instinct of like you're trying to be on your best behavior.

So you can get the best outcome. The game does. I'm glad you brought this up Matt In the way that LucasArts adventures back in the day Would allow you to like make like choose like a funny line of dialogue and the secret of monkey island That's maybe you know like like the sort of thing that you're not gonna you could get punished for in a different game But this will just let you see what happens. It's the same sort of thing in the in in dispatch where like you can make like sometimes the like what you think is the more interesting choice or the funnier choice or the weirder choice just to see what even if that's like glassing a bartender or something like that or or telling someone to fuck you like it's like you can make those choices and it's not going to like punish you for it um and also you can still play like the virtuous path and get the good ending uh and romance who you want to romance while still choosing time moments when you want to be uh you know like like a snarky asshole or what have you got and and so yeah that that is i think a satisfying element of the game that yeah maybe some people are under exploring because they're they're cautious about what might happen i'm really

Looking forward to having some time to play it. But there's just like there's an embarrassment of riches this time of year. Lots of fun games to play. Always too many games. Yeah. Yeah. Some of these games, I kind of wish I could. Wush, wish, wish, wish, whish, whish.

What an interesting transition to our main topic. Punch, punch, kick. Beat them ups the genre I probably most, one of the genres I most strongly associate with arcades, as we mentioned earlier. Even before fighting games, I feel like beat-em-ups were like, you know, like, before the fighting game Renaissance beat-em-ups, I feel like we're a staple of arcades. Double Dragon. Yeah, I think the big three for arcades. Okay.

Beat-em-ups? Not necessarily in any order. Okay. Beat-em-ups? Fighting games, pinball. Interesting. Yeah. I think also, I think, you know, certainly I feel like schmups, shooters are in there.

Also gun games and racing game. Gun where you're a cop. Yeah, you're right. Well, I said big three. Those are the big five, certainly. See how I'm kind of not wrong? Kind of not wrong. My experience or my strongest memory of beat him ups is that, you know, after the initial wave of double dragon, final fight, etc., where you had these very stiff sort of side-scrolling characters who were kind of walking like they were robots.

There was, like, this era of Capcom fighters where, like, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Simpsons, et cetera, suddenly looked like cartoons. Konami as well. Like, it was another principal developer. And you would have, like, these Konami games. Was Konami X-Men also? I believe. No, that was Capcom.

I believe Konami made Ninja Turtles and Simpsons. And I think X-Men was Cap-Cong, but I can look this up. I certainly know that there's a moment in time in the arcade when suddenly everything looked like a cartoon that you could play. And it was so wild. I mean, we'd seen cartoons that you could literally play in things like Dragon Slayer. But those weren't video games in a traditional sense. It was that suddenly in the 16-bit era, games and 32-bit era, games were capable of processing enough sprites that there were enough frames of animation that games started to look like television. Well, yeah, and I think there's also, there's a, there's a pretty simple thing here, which is that you saw, like, big sprites.

You saw large characters. Big boys. I mean, and yeah, there was like the characters were certainly scaled up in something like Final Fighter Golden Axe as well. But, yeah, once you start saying TMNT and Simpsons arcade games, these license games, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, another one that comes a little bit later, it's like, oh, this is a, this is like a, the visual payoff is. is there in a way that it maybe wasn't with an earlier game like, you know, like a renegade or a double dragon. I also like the, it's, it's the, I feel like so much of a beat-em-up is it's a, it's a side-scrolling game, but also you've got, you can, you have another axis you can move along, you know? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not just forward and back. No, yeah. And then if you want to go back, good fucking luck. Actually, you can't do it. You got to keep moving forward. You got to keep going. which is I think my only complaint about any of these games

sometimes I want to go back a little bit I want to go back one step maybe and then I can't but yeah I mean I I one time sat like with some friends hunkered down at a Simpsons arcade cabinet and played the whole thing

and that was like so fun for us because it was just like I had the experience of playing it on and off and never actually seeing the end of it and in getting to the end with my friends was just like a real triumph, I felt. Who's the final boss? Burns? I mean, it's Burns, right? I think so.

I don't know. I think it's Mr. Burns in some sort of mech suit. Yeah. Memory serves. It was a long time ago. Yeah. Hmm, I don't know. You have to get more familiar with the characters. I like that you like itching and scratchy.

I love itching scratchy. That's fun. Why don't they have a show? Well, in the show they do. No, I know, but like they should have their own show. That's interesting. Are they doing like it, like itchy and scratchy shorts? for a Disney Plus or anything like that.

I don't know if they are. They should, at the very least, there should be, I'm not going to do this. I'm not trying to get in trouble. There should be a TikTok account that just has itchy and scratchy shorts. I'm sure there is, and I'm sure there's also YouTube compilations,

which is like every itchy and scratchy short. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to watch tonight and laugh my fucking ass off. They're great. Are itchy and scratchy now more known than Tom and Jerry,

who they're a riff on? Hmm. I don't think so. You don't think so? No, because you have to know The Simpsons to know itchy and scratchy. Sure. Tom and Jerry stand on their own two feet. Got it.

And there was a Tom and Jerry movie not that long ago, right? That is true. Yeah. No cultural footprint. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That has the cultural footprint that people claim Avatar has. None. I've read the Wikipedia about beat them up games.

because I was like, what exactly are we talking about? And there's an interesting paragraph that discusses the mid-2000s to early 2010s character action games as beat-em-ups. For example, the original God of War, the original Bayonetta, the original Devil May Cry, Dynasty Warriors, they call those beat-em-ups. Now, do you boys agree with this assessment, or do you think that that's an entirely different genre? I think it's as close as you could get to being able to. beat him up in a 3D space but like to me those are that's what's the difference between beat them up and like hack and slash like that to me is like hack and slash I think one of the things is that most of those games listed have character growth whereas a sort of hallmark of beat

them ups is you've got you're the guy and that's it you just got to fucking fight through it yeah I mean you might have some progression in a contemporary one but one these classic ones there's there's usually not much to, like, you know, there's not much to it. And I would say, like, of anything, like, like, these, those games have a little bit more gameplay depth and they tend to have things like puzzles, which you don't usually see or environmental, you know, like a navigation that is a little bit more sophisticated than what you see in a beatem up where that's all pretty elementary. Yeah.

But also, I think such a big part of beatem ups is just this, that, what, what Heather referenced earlier of just like that constant cycle of death and rebirth, like these games are designed for you, like you get your ass kicked at a certain. point and then you have to respawn um and and i like i do kind of feel like that's or or in one of the a multi-player version maybe you're you're you know one of your uh one of your your your fellow players your co-op players has to res you but like i i do feel like like part of these games those games too is just like you're beating guys up but you're also like they're designed to to to make sure that you fail at a certain point yeah i do think though that like i think more than any type of game

beatem-ups are, like, in the same way that Tetris is, like, very, like, user-friendly. Beatem-ups are probably the most user-friendly game because, like, anybody could just play it and understand what to do and how to do it. Yeah, I mean, if you got, like, the Ninja Turtles license there, you want it to be a game where, like, an eight-year-old can go up and figure out how to play it right away and have some degree of success and be able to do some cool-looking stuff, you know? A lot of times, like, a special attack or a super attack will just be, like, mapped to one button it's not like a fighting game where you have to do a sure you can and uh they're weirdly like

because they're not competitive like i feel like you can get into some bad vibes at like a mortal combat two cabinet or like a street fighter cabinet where somebody's like obviously so good and like you're just trying to play and then they just you know maybe people are getting upset i think beat them up cabinets are community building because people might, you know, you might have two friends, but there's four spots. Somebody might walk up. Hey, can I play?

Get on in there. There's another, now we got Gambit on the squad. This is great. Okay, great. Oh, now somebody coming in, now night crawlers here. We got the whole squad now. This is great. Now all four of us are friends.

All of us are working together. And I think that's pretty nice. Never had that experience that you've just described. You're doing all four at the same time. Running. Where that can get tricky in co-op games, is like if it feels like someone's not pulling their weight and people get frustrated with someone

for, you know, slowing progress. But yeah, I totally, I totally get what you're saying. I mean, like, it's, I have a lot of affection for Cadillacs and dinosaurs because that was a, like, I don't know anything about this IP other than the video game. It might just be a video game. I don't know.

Is that a comics adaptation or anything? I thought it was a cartoon? Cartoon. That was a cartoon, okay. Like a Saturday morning cartoon. Got it. Catalax and dinosaurs. Not familiar with a cartoon, really,

but I remember, like, the cabinet being at a, at a neighborhood pizza place, um, at round table pizza and, uh, which, like, you know, the, the, the pizza parlor in Lakewood California and that go there. One by the Lakewood Mall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is a multimedia franchise that began as a comic book and expanded into popular arcade game and animated TV series. Yeah.

And so. The dinosaurs would drive the Cadillacs? No, it's like there's guys. Like, it's like, it's like, it's like, I'm out. But, but. But there's dinosaurs, too. Nick, I'm out. If the dinosaurs aren't driving the Cadillacs,

I'm not fucking watching, okay? I mean, it's, yeah, it's more that these two things coexist, that you can have a Cadillac and a dinosaur in the same space. I cannot stress it enough. I'm out. I also really enjoyed the, and this is one. one that got that got a re-release

on on modern you know like this is got to remaster at a certain point but the Dungeons and Dragons games particularly Shadow of Mistara I think was the one that I put to spend the most time with but those games did have some character progression

but they also were just like in the same way they like golden acts because it's like I'm not just running out of punching things now I got a weapon now I got spells you know what I mean like it's like kind of different sort of, not just a beat-em-up, but like a kind of like a hack and slash aspect to it. Yeah.

That's fun as well. I have to report that I've Googled Cadillacs and dinosaurs. Yeah. And I'm in. I'm actually, I'm in, actually. Do you like the shot of the guy punching a T-Rex? I like the hot lady in the Cadillac with a shotgun or a rifle and dinosaurs chasing the car. Yeah.

Matt is currently looking at the Sega C. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, which was an entirely entirely different Cadillacs and Dinosaurs experience, which was like a driving game that was also a full motion video game. That's pretty cool. I mean, yeah, it's an IP. Can I be honest, guys?

I'm going to come in with kind of a surprising take given my penchant for loving violence, which is beat them ups are not my favorite genre. Wow. I find them and find them frustrating and repetitive and often it feels like there is only so much skill basis for your progression and a lot of it is sort of like kind of hardlocked behind these impossible to beat moments. I'm sure that there are people online who will put in 50 cents into a fucking Simpsons game

and get all the way to the end of it. But generally it felt like you didn't have enough control over your character to really have meaningful um dopamine hits like you would just keep pumping money in and that's how you would get farther yeah at some point you'll go up against a mini boss who's got like super armor or something like that and is interrupting all your attacks and it's just going to like like it feels almost like regardless of

what you do uh you're going to this this thing is just designed to kill you because enough time is lapsed since you last put in a a a credit so so yeah i agree with you I mean, I think like the, again, yes, their mastery exists with everything. There is going, there are going to be people who can get through all these games on a single credit or with the, you know, hitless run or whatever. But I like, like in general, yeah, it does feel like the, how do you articulate this? The skill ceiling is pretty low for these games. I don't know if that's exactly what I'm trying to say.

But rather it's like, like the amount of control you have over it as a user. is is fairly limited and yeah I agree it's also like like what what Matt was saying earlier was like these games are tend to be pretty simple yeah like it's like there's there's just like not a ton to them um but i'm curious Heather as a as a Sega kid the streets of rage franchise is something that a lot of people have a lot of affection for in particular the soundtrack for streets of rage is unbelievable uh but also like just like like aesthetically they're they're very vibrant like like cool looking games. And I feel like there was a little bit more sophistication to the fighting engine

with the with the times I spent with the Streets of Rage franchise. But like, like, did you ever get into those games? I mean, I played both Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage too. Again, attracted by the music.

I think there's also a Sega CD Streets of Rage that I had. I'm not entirely certain if that's the case. I probably should look it up. But I swear I had Streets of Rage on Sega CD. But again, it was, it was, I felt like there's just so much interactivity in the game. So it didn't feel like I was, it felt, it felt like limited, limited experience. And that felt like a barricade to my enjoyment. When I think of Streets of Rage, I always think of the line, only trust your fists, police will never help you.

That's fucking hard as hell. actually that fucking rocks flashing on screen hell yes I mean Streets of Rage 4 I feel like well maybe not

I think Streets of Rage 4 which is a recent entry in the franchise sort of marks this time period where I'm saying that this type of game is back because that came out to sort of I think like rapturous praise

people were like this is so good the soundtrack's great gameplay is a lot of fun a couple of years before that there's the Scott Pilgrim one which I think is a lot of fun yeah sure uh and then there's there's there's the ninja turtle shredders revenge shredders revenge i think done by the streets of rage team um and then this new one car marvel's cosmic invasion uh is just a classic sort of like and there's others too like there's a power rangers one that came out uh pretty recently that people

are like it's like fine if you i think part of this genre is if there's an IP you like and they made one of these games you'll probably just play it because it's like it's fun to see characters you already know and like and it's fun to just this game is like popcorn it's like these games are popcorn it's not really like there's not a lot of meat on the bone there it's kind of it's like i want to play a video game for a couple minutes want to play a level of something and just kind of get into one of these and have have a little fun and it's engaging from audio video standpoint i mean i played through shredders or revenge i had i had fun with shudder's revenge the soundtrack is incredible it's it like like it's it's awesome and so yeah it's just like a i don't know it's it's a pleasing sort of

experience that you don't have to invest too much um you know like uh of your brain power into you know i was playing uh cosmic invasion the other night and as i was turning it off i got a uh a game chat notification on my switch two from zigg uh inviting me to play with him and i was like i'm turning it off but that would have been that would have been so fun to like play online with him i didn't want to get housed by my friend. So I was like, I actually turned my switch off and I went to bed. It was like, I guess we can't do this. One of an adult move.

Yeah, actually, I'm going to bed. It was actually, it was too late to be playing. I was like, I have to go to bed. But this other game came out pretty recently that is a beat-em-up with, with Rogue Light elements that I really, really enjoy, that I haven't spent too much time on. But it's called Absalum. It's so cool and so fun. It is that exact thing.

There's, like, different types of characters where you can pick, like, a guy with, like, a sword or, like, a little dwarf guy or whatever. And then you can, you complete the, you know, these stages or whatever. And then you can pick a thing to help you, you know, go forward in the next stage. And when you die, you just kind of go back

and start the run over. And I'm like, that's such a cool, you know, these roglights are every other, kind of game now at this point, but it's cool that they're like, oh, let's put it on a beat-em-up game. And the aesthetic is gorgeous. I really, really love it. It's a game I hope to have a little more time to play soon. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because there's, it's such a, in a lot of ways, such a limited genre. Yeah. It's so like kind of specific what criteria, what you have, although the boxes you have to check to, to qualify as a beat-em-up. And so, yeah, I remember it's

always like I you know when it getting into emulators back in the day and getting maim and just like getting a bunch of these beat them ups and then you go through and you like whatever you play 10 minutes of aliens versus predator and you're just like oh yeah these are all these games are like the same they're all just basically re-skinned versions of of golden axe yeah it's one of these it's because of this and all like the retro fighting games that come out It's like the thing that really makes me want to get a, like a stick to, like play with as a controller, because I'm like, I don't have one of those. And like, I have so many of these types of games, actually, that it would be, I think, very fun to play it on, you know, a fight stick with the, you know, the flat buttons and, you know, a little ball on the stick. That's, like, such a fun way to play those, I think.

We should reference, because I think if we, just from a completionist standpoint, we should reference Castle Crashers, the Xbox Live Arcade game, which was a, I think one of those, those XPLA hits of that era. And yeah, this is, this had more of a cutesy sort of aesthetic, but that was one of, like, that came out at a time when we weren't having these sort of like retro-feeling beat-em-ups when the genre had kind of got gone away for a little bit in the late aughts. and I didn't get as into it as I as I kind of expected to but I do remember having fun with Castle Crashers I sort of remember that being a thing but I never I never played it yeah um sounds cool castles are cool yeah and I mean you take castles and then you can kind of crash into them yeah

Dave Matthews loves it I fucking over the moon dropping deuses off the Chicago Bridge filling up the moat Yeah. I really enjoyed River City Girls. Oh, yeah. There's a big, there's a big cap-ass from.

Oh, I do like that. That's really good. Yeah, River City Girls, I didn't play. But, I mean, like, I remember River City Ransom. Tell me when it's River City Boys and I'm in. It was River City Boys, and then they brought in the River City Girls later. The River City Ransom is like, yeah, it's more of a boy game. Delete, cut that.

Cut it. the I remember well it's interesting because you know these games can be kind of slight there's not that much to do in them right you kind of just are doing the same things to uh you know slightly harder degrees as as you as you go on oh you think we must we must we must like if we have anyone and who's who's a listener who's like really into beat him up so we're probably pissing them the fuck off because by just by talking about how like superficial and limit they are because I bet there's a lot more gameplay depth to some of these or there's some that just have a lot a lot of layers to them there are a bunch of different subtypes that we're just not familiar with but but I don't know just they feel superficial to me here's the thing if we stopped and thought about how upset everybody was every anytime we talk we would never do this job but like because going back for me if you had asked me when I was a little kid what what my favorite video game was,

I would be like, oh, the Simpsons arcade game because I love the Simpsons and it's like a fun game to go play at the arcade. I think it kind of like sucks now. Like, it's not very fun or good. It's just kind of like, it is interesting to see the Simpsons. But like I don't think it's like a good game necessarily.

I wouldn't emulate it and play it and feel like this feels like a fun thing to do. Right. I'd rather do something. I'd rather do anything else, I think. Right. I think that the genre, successes are in the time that they take up in a child's life when a parent wants a break.

Yes. So it's like, oh, here, just take $5 and go, go play, go play over there. And so you go over and you drop quarters into this machine and you're occupied. Now all of that happens at the dinner table with an iPad. So part of it is the times in which the genre has come back. and has been successful is when it is elevated beyond its roots. When you have growth, when you have character progression, when you have options, new moves you can unlock, et cetera, et cetera, when you have to make choices.

But the classic foundations of the genre are extremely limited. And I don't think that that's irritating to say. I think that the early games, like you could make that argument about a ton of genres, right? Like you could say, I think with a pretty good position that Wolfenstein 3D is a fairly limited first-person shooter. Like, that doesn't mean that you're denigrating its existence. It just means that objectively, it doesn't have a ton of options. There aren't a ton of weapons. There isn't a huge amount of pathway variability or enemy variety.

Like, similarly, the Simpsons beat them up. It's like, you got like six of the same guy on the screen. yeah yeah it's like an arcade staple we mentioned earlier schmops like shoot emups it's like like yeah yeah some are some are vertically scrolling some are side scrolling there are some that that try something a little bit different like in like an ecoruga but but a lot of them are just kind of the same sort of bullet hell formula yeah did you're shooting a bunch of of minions and then going after a big boss and and yeah like you have your standard like a the a bunch of different weapon upgrades and super attacks like like they tend to be

pretty formulaic, but that's a really, like, I really like Schmops. I think that's a really cool genre, and it's really fun, and there's a lot of different variants within that set, that sort of like, you know, fairly limited, fairly restricted, fairly, you know, somewhat superficial sort of type of gameplay. But it's interesting because, like, something like Ikaruga or something like Metal Slug or something like Contra, all four of those games are technically like the same genre of game but all four of them are all three of them are so different and they play so differently um whereas like a beat-em-up game if you play one you can sort of do any of them is the the issue

you can do more with a gun than you can do with your fists i well i kind of think so because there's only so many ways you can punch but like gun can do so many different types like gun can do like flame thrower yeah sure big ball or bigger ball you know spread ball curly ball yeah yeah yeah yeah There's like a lightning thing Or God forbid a beam Yeah yeah Oh my God Rocket

Yeah you could rocket there Suck Could do suck Kirby games are kind of Reverse shoot them up Actually Suck them ups I think the real success

Of something like Marvel Cosmic Invasion Or TMNT Shreders Revenge Is that they made This kind of classic game but they made it good. Yeah.

Like they're kind of like, oh, like Shredder's Revenge is just like these other TMNT beat emups, but this one is like modern and good. Yeah. It looks awesome.

The soundtrack's great and like the story is fun and the gameplay is really cool and you get to be the Ninja Turtles. Yeah, I remember playing the shit out of Turtles and Time on the Super Nintendo with my friends.

And that was like, that also felt like it had a little bit more heft to it than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game but like the cabinet but then again that could just be my kid brain

applying more to it than it actually has but like like yeah I think someone explains it he's got a kid brain now I understand him it's loose inside the head rattling around in there

every time Wiger turns he just goes Ow! Oh, fuck! Ah, fuck! The Sprite work in, have you messed around with Cosmic Invasion at all? Are you going to, like, dip into it? Like, it's $30.

Right now on Switch, it's 27. Okay, all right. Because I was like, I was like, kind of good. Yeah, I was like, hmm, I feel, am I going to, I feel like I should wait for this to go on Game Pass or go on sale or something like that. It'll wind up there. I did watch some footage and I was like, I was like, oh, this looks cool. I, I've found the sprite work to be pretty impressive, actually. And, like, because with some of these, these older ones, they kind of can only do so much.

But, like, since now these are, like, modern games, I feel like the movesets are more, like, intentional. And, like, the design, the animations are a little more bespoke rather than, you know, Wolverine is punching the same way that, like, Cyclops is punching or something like that. or in this case like Wolverine has a completely different moveset than Cosmic Ghost Rider who's I who I just learned of

in playing this game I thought he was only from hell or earth I didn't know he got all the way up there And there's a space one He can be from space I didn't know that they could get up there Is he riding a bike? Is he riding a bike? What's he riding? He's sort of, yeah he's still riding a bike

But it's like a space bike? He's kind of like a space helmet I guess they get a space circle Ford. I guess if you can go to hell, you can go to space. I guess it's fine. We just be fine with it? I mean, that's kind of the doom thing, you know?

Yeah, it's true. You get a Marine that ends up in hell. It is true. He gets all, man, that guy gets everywhere. Yeah. I do, I am happy that this genre persists.

I just really, that's like, that's a scary thought. The idea that you go to like Mars, but like hell can still get you? because it's like another dimension. It's not like, oh, I'm off of Earth. Well, I'm safe from hell now. Because hell's not like underground.

It's just like, yeah, but like you would think as somebody, if you're somebody who believes in hell. Yeah. And you're from Earth. You think hell is under Earth or like in some sort of plane that exists under Earth, underground, because you're going down. Heaven is above. Hell is down. Yeah. You go to another planet.

You're sort of like, well, at least hell's not here. Right. Hell is like somewhere else actually Thank God I'm somewhere else Heaven's not even part of it here So I'm kind of just like in this neutral zone Another planet Mars Uh oh

Hell's here too actually It's funny to think of any of the characters In interstellar like halfway across the galaxy Dying and going to hell But like not earth hell Hell of over there So they're just like in hell of like this ocean planet They got event horizon

Yeah I got to see that it's pretty good pretty good it's been on my cue for I think 15 years I think event horizon is it's worth a watch watch it's fine no

I'm not going to say don't watch it I think sunshine is the better of the two Sunshine is great yeah sunshine like Event Horizon is an interesting but flawed movie sunshine is awesome such as a masterpiece to see sometimes you guys are like an angel and a devil on my shoulder

and sometimes you switch shoulders and then you're on the other side so then sometimes you're on one shoulder and then there's nobody over here and it kind of depends on which shoulders which. I think Sunshine is up there with interstellar. They're doing the same sort of thing. I think they're both really compelling.

I'll watch them both. Space movies, yeah. You like space. My wife recently. She said something, I thought this was very funny in our household. She goes, Matt, I have a confession to make. I go, oh, God, what?

Uh-oh. She's like, I like, I like sci-fi. And I was like, okay, interesting. That's good information. Yeah. Because now I'll ask you if you want to watch this type of thing instead of the thing that I normally think you like, which is crime. She likes a crime or a heist. Oh, sure.

That's good stuff. Now she's, we're sort of broadening the scope. We're into the sci-fi territory. Ask her if you want to see Avatar. Not interesting. Oh. Because it's too fantasy. Sci-fi fantasy is not too interested in.

Wow. Interesting. There's very, I think, very little fantasy in Avatar. Well, I mean, of course, it's because it's real. No, because there's no magic. Magic to me is the hallmark of fantasy. Sure. I think there is a, there is maybe a fantasy feel to it, though.

Like it's like kind of like, you know, the culture of the Navi. You're basically writing on the back of dragons. You know what I mean? Like it kind of has a sort of fantasy sort of aesthetic to it. And we haven't seen FireDash. We actually don't know that there's not magic in this one. That's true. We don't know.

There could be magic. It would be interesting. I wouldn't bat an eye if there was magic. You wouldn't, you didn't think twice about it. Nope. Well, I don't mean, like, is what's going on with Iowa all that different than what's going on with, say, like, the materia in Final Fantasy seven? You know what I mean?

It's like there is kind of like some sort of, like, it seems like some sort of a sort of mystical, you know, or like the Force and Star Wars. Right. The tree that keeps their memories is not different than Igrazil or whatever it's called. Right. Right. If your hair is your penis, is the hell. magic.

I kind of think everybody's got to get over that. Why? It's just part of it. I know, but why. Why get over it? I just,

like, it's the one, I feel like it's the first thing that people that don't like Avatar go to and I'm like, find something else. I love Avatar, but the hair is a penis.

I love it. I saw, I saw each of them more than once in the theater. I like it when they jack into things. You would. Okay. I like when they.

Can you? masturbate by doing your hair in Avatar Yeah, giving yourself grades is kind of like jacking on. What? Is there an IP you guys think should have a beat-em-up?

How about Avatar? I mean, yeah, kind of. It'd be kind of good. Running around, like, in a meck, or you're running around as an avi? And then you're like, you're fighting. He's so horrible if you were in a meck gunning down the V.

What if you were? What if it was, like, that, like, altered beast style? Oh, sure. Rise from your grave. Where you start as a person and you power up into avatar size. Yeah, that's fun. And then, like, if you get hit as the avatar, you downgrade in a person's size. That'd be cool.

There should be a no country for old men, beat him up. Great. I'd play it. Why not? They could just do it with them. I mean, I know that there's that Terminator game coming out. I don't think that's a beat him up, right? I don't think so either

Yeah I think it's like a sort of action Platformer type thing I think all of Fox Animation domination is up for grabs Like yeah Simpson's there Like give me a family guy Give me an American dad Give me a Bob's Burgers

Those would all be fun beat him ups What's the one with There's a show on right now I can't remember what it's called And I'm not trying No disrespect to anybody that works on the show I think it's been on for like five seasons and like every time I see a commercial for it, I'm like, what the fuck is this?

It's the, is it the John Hamm show? It's like, they're like two guys or some shit. Oh, the Universal Basic guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, I'm sure it's, maybe it's funny. I just haven't seen it, but every time I see a commercial for it, I'm like, that's not true. They're really pushing Universal Basic. And yeah, I've never seen an episode, but, you know.

I'm sure it's great. Yeah. Get American Dad in there. Man, I watched an American Dad over the weekend when I was at a hotel, and I was laughing my fucking ass. off. Yeah. Due staged a home invasion and it was a prank.

But it was like the home invasion was like really, like, was played very scary. And the family was really freaked out. And then he takes off his ski mask. It's fucking Stu. His name's Stu, right? The dad? I don't know. I think his name is Stu.

Um, that sounds right. Yeah. That sounds, that sounds approximate. King of the Hill and the beam up. Crapopolis? Crapopolis, sure. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I like King of the Hills is a fun one.

Hey, toss Rick and or Morty in one. Oh, they're not a Fox property, but sure. Sure. I mean, it's all going to be one thing soon. Yeah, for sure. Get them in there. When we can finally go back to just saying, I'm going to watch television. Yes.

And you literally mean all of it. Yeah, yeah, all of it at once. Sort of like in the Matrix. An enormous pipe. The John Ham show, I should think of it, which is another Fox anime. animation domination show is Grimsburg. Grimsberg. Grimsburg. Get Axe cop in there. Get, uh. Again, I don't think that's, I mean, it is old animation domination.

I think it was on Fox. Oh, no, it definitely was. Yeah. Not on, it hasn't been on TV for over 10 years, I think. Yeah. That was the company I worked at, ADHD. Yeah. Which was animation domination high deaf. What else is on there? Uh, the Jonah Hill one. Um, you know it could be like it's i i feel like it's a thing you see you see less of where you're taking like like like it like you know the way they'll like legophie a game or they'll they'll just like like they'll be like they'll be like lego star wars the game you know i mean like it's like whatever there's there's a whole there's a whole bunch of those like like like like like i feel like taking other uh in the same way that you got like like like you know mario party mario

cart mario tennis taking another video game and then turning it into a beat him up like Hyrule Warriors or something like that. Oh, yeah, interesting. Like, Fortnite as a beat-em-up would be phenomenal because you'd have, like, such an incredible roster of people to choose from. What about this? Street Fighter as a beat-em-up,

but the Street Fighter characters have... All their moves? Have all their moves. I feel like they tried that. It sounds good. I could be... Maybe it sucks, but it kind of sounds good. I feel like they tried that at some point.

Maybe it was like... There was, like, a Chun-Lee game. I don't remember. Oh. doesn't matter it doesn't matter we can't make video games what are we doing we can't make them all we're doing is dreaming all we have to all we can do is dream and play them fucking sucks to dream because then you wake up you don't have to you stay in the dream I wish I wish when I worked in the video game development I mentioned uh when I talked

through the Fantastic Four games uh the Fantastic Four game I worked on started as a beat him up and that was the whole like original pitch four is like oh yeah this will be just like a classic sort of like like superhero beatem up game and then once they they were like we're going to make this movie then it got like rejiggered on the fly to be turned into from a from a beat him out to more of a character action game with platforming and puzzles and all that sort of shit and that was part of why it was such a a an arduous process to pull that game together um i just want to say ranch thought she could sneak a snack in here and eat it very quietly and she she's managed to eat it quietly but i don't want to

her to think she got away with sneaking. What's the snack? A little popcorn, little smart pop it looks like. Okay. She's over there across the studio, eating a snack, and she's trying to do it like it was a secret. I'm not letting her keep that secret.

I'm not going to say she was unsuccessful in the sneaking because she did do a good job. Right. Thought she can get under our nose. Guess what? I heard the fucking back, dude. I heard the bag, too. I'm not sure if I got picked up on the microphone. What I will say is that it's a power producer move to leave the studio during a recording

and grab a snack and then return. But here's the thing. I go a step further. Never come back, actually. It's like, this is not worth it. This is with... You had the opportunity to fix your life. Instead, you said,

please, sir, can I have another? Guinea pop one of the great pops. Any final thoughts on beat-em-ups? I like screen clears. I like when you get like some sort of super move that gets to kill like a bunch of

I'm thinking of like in particular like golden axe you can you have like the resource of like you can accumulate you know enough manna where you can get like a super attack that like a whole fucking dragon

will come in and blast everyone that's always really satisfying I like that I like that for some reason I mean we talked about this a little bit but like the soundtracks for a lot of these games

just go so hard for no reason kind of like I mean the Shreder's Revenge one is great Ahnamanaguchi does the Scott Pilgrim video game one and it's fucking phenomenal. It's really, really good. I also like when like a boss comes in and has some sort of like bespoke

animation, like some sort of pose or taunt that they're doing as the thing as the match starts or as the combat sequence starts up. That's a lot of fun. What about this? This is such a... Okay. Because the common enemies that you'll get won't necessarily have like a health bar.

You just kind of know that like a couple hits is going to take him out, that's that. Boss comes around. Big old health bar on the screen. You know that you're chipping away at it really slowly. Also, two tones usually. Yeah, yellow bar that goes then to the red bar. Yellow bar is like, okay, you did it first. Then red starts

depleting and then it starts to look empty. And he'll get angry and it'll get faster. Oh, yeah. Unlock another set of moves. I also like, and this is a particular Ninja Turtles thing, but like when you can like throw an enemy at the screen, that's fun. That's really fun. I like throwing

guys just in general. I think it's really funny. in Shredder's Revenge and probably in the other Ninja Turtles ones there's like these like airboard like levels where you're like on a sort of like hoverboard type thing Yeah continuous scrolling That's really fun And then of course all the food We haven't even talked about like finding food

The food like finding a you know A chicken in a barrel of oil or something like that That restores your health Finding a pizza in a mailbox or something shit Doesn't make sense but it's fun I love it And yeah I think these games are great and I'm glad that they seem to be here to stay.

Should we do a segment? I would love to do a segment. Let's take it up. All right. It's time for the question block. These are, of course, from our Discord. Discord.org. Get played.

And here we go. This first one from Lieb. What's up, Leeb? Lebe writes. What video game creator or team would you give a blank check of money and time to create whatever crazy passion project they want. Would that check clear or would it bounce, baby?

Of course, reference to the blank check podcast, but I have an immediate answer to this. Go for it. Sam Lake. Sam Lake from Remedy. I just think that the output is good, the output is strong, gets better pretty much every time.

Like, people liked, people, I feel like, had really fun memories of Max Payne. people were really into Alan Wake control comes out people are like oh okay control this is really this is really something Alan Wake too comes out this guy's at the fucking height of his powers here I like to just see what he could go

how crazy he could go with unlimited time and money okay yeah I don't have it I mean this is a the thing is a lot of the you know the developers are I really like are people who already are kind of like unrestrained because they're independent or have had massive financial success. Like Larian is going to be able to do whatever they want.

Concerned ape who can do whatever, whatever they want. Hittata Miyazaki does not have any real, does not have the constraints that a lot of people have on them. So my answer will be recency bias a hoy, but I honestly feel like the the ad hoc team who had a, it was a, you know, they got thankfully got critical role to come in and and finance. development, but, but, you know, that game almost didn't happen. And, and I'd love to just see ad hoc not have to, you know, be as limited in what they do with a, with, with an upcoming project, whether that's a sequel to dispatch something else in the world or something new entirely. Okay. My answer, you know, similarly, you know, I'm not going to give an infinite budget to Kojima because the guy's already doing what, what he wants to do. Yeah. The person

that I want to give an infinite budget and infinite time to is Tetsua Nomura. And here's why. Sometimes I daydream about Final Fantasy 13 verses, which was ultimately scrapped and repurposed as Final Fantasy 15. But there was an entirely different game being made. And it was in development for so long. And then, you know, like vultures picked the meat off the bone and made it into a different animal. I want to give that guy infinite budget in 20 years and see what kind of clothing he designs. What clothing he invents.

Yeah. In a city, because he's always trying to get his boys to be like running around in a city. But I think he wants the city to be fully realized where you can go in any building and every office is filled. And I just want him to have all of the time there is, I want to free him from the shackles of the Kingdom Hearts IP

and just let him go ham. And that is my answer. I'll also shout out subset games who made FTL and Into the Breach. You know, again, a very successful indie developer. But, you know, I'd like to see what they could do with an absolutely unlimited budget. Yeah. And you know what?

I don't have his name in front of me, but the guy that did Animal Well, too. Yeah. That was such an impressive game to me. I like to see what he does next. And I want it to be so good. This next one, from Triple Aces EZ. Hey, Triple.

EZ. And they write, all caps, by the way. Why have none of you talked about Arc Raiders yet? I feel like Heather would enjoy. The reason for that, I think, we can all say, none of us have played it. Is it probably the big reason we haven't talked about it? The new shooter game that everyone,

everybody says is good. Arc Raiders. I won't pretend that I haven't heard of it because I have heard of it and I've seen the hype about it. I just haven't yeah, I just haven't given it a shot. Extraction game, I mean like, you know,

this is just not the kind of game, this sort of multiplayer experience with, it's just usually not the sort of thing that I would tend to gravitate towards. I'm usually someone who plays single player games if I am going to play something online it's usually something that's a little bit less twitchy

like a card game or something like that but yeah I mean so I think it's maybe just not for me or my take on it would not add much beyond like I can appreciate it for what it is but it's not sort of a game that I would play regularly seems cool I just don't really I don't really play games like that but happy for people

to have it people love art graders Yeah, I've heard, I've gotten very enthusiastic endorsements from some, some gamer friends who are spending time with it. Kind of feels like it's like, you know, when Hell Divers too, and people still play in However's too, but like Hell Divers had such like a set of the, you know, a mind share for a time. Yeah. Do you think in the game, Arc Raiders are like, oh, great, two of every animal? They're like breaking into these, these arcs and they're like, oh, great, two of every animal. yeah probably also tossing out like this belongs in a museum um on occasion uh this arc's not so lost anymore

yes yeah yeah yeah put that in a heather would you like to do one put that in a crate no thanks warehouse we'll never find it um what else what else what else what else what else a nazi's melting um probably a hat there's hat um snakes i want to stay i want to stay yeah i want to stay yeah Let it go. Friends with Archimedes. I don't know. Billy Basso, by the way, is the animal developer. Solo dev.

Billy Basso. I loved Animal Well. This next one, Jenny Drag. Hi, Jenny. Hi, Jenny. I hope the rest of your last name isn't Ula. Because I'll be really scared if so. My name, yes, my name is Dracula.

I'm not a Dracula. It's just a family name. Are you sure about that? Jenny? Name happens to be Jenny Dracula. You can't, like, whatever. Like, I can't hold that against me. I think I can.

I'll change it, all right? All I'm saying is, if my last name was associated with the bad guy, that would not be my last name no more. I'd change it. Your last name basically is Dracula. No. Apod Dracula. Well, yeah, of course.

when you say the full name of it, it's almost exactly the same. But my version's different. Jenny right. You say that, meanwhile, I think in, like, Italy, there's, like, politicians are just, like,

have the last name Mussolini. Of course, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, like, my grandfather, who I like. Yeah. I feel like that rule is, like, only true for one very, very specific person. nobody's got either name anymore um jenny writes

with the xbox future looking uncertain do you think it's worth investing into steam parentheses box deck or whatever i think yes uh and not necessarily because well i think steam decks i love the steam deck i'm actually really excited about the steam box actually uh it seems like

it's going to be priced as like a pc but like the PC, like the cost of building a PC is probably higher than most people want, but I feel like a lot of stuff that's on Steam, like, is not necessarily like that intense. Like if you want like a sort of AAA sort of like rig that stuff's on there too, but like the little games that are on Steam that I, the little games I buy on Steam are not too, not going to be too taxing on even the lowest hard ones. I mean, it's also like, you know, if you want to play in 4K with settings maxed out, you know, you're probably going to have to invest into substantial gaming rig. But like even if you're playing a game like a, you know, like a cyberpunk 2077 that can push your hardware, you don't have to like turn everything to the max. You can you can have a what will still be a satisfactory factory experience, you know, even even visually.

And that will be closer to what you might get on. on a similarly priced console. I imagine this question is coming from from Jenny that it's like it's, I imagine it's someone who isn't like already a PC gamer. And maybe Xbox is their primary platform. So yeah, if I was in that situation and I maybe had like a like a series S or something like that

and I was weighing my next move, yeah, I mean, I think some piece of Steam hardware is as valid of a purchase as a as a as a as a as a switch two or a PlayStation 5 it's just as always it's just like where are the exclusives that you want to play like what are what what do you do you tend towards like hey what actually what I really like about Xbox is that all of the indie games that are available on Game Pass if that's the sort of thing that you're like that that you really like right now then yeah but maybe the um the steam ecosystem experience might be for you I you know we used to say I think that the that

GamePass was the best value in gaming, which is no longer true. Now it's like $80 a month or whatever the fuck. I think the best value in gaming is like any Steam sale really. Yeah, sure. Steam sales, you can get like great games sometimes for like $2, depending on like what the sale is. Yeah.

And then you'd buy it and you just never play it. Yeah, exactly. You just have it. Add to your digital horror. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. Yeah. Get into Steam.

Do we answer that? I think so, getting to Steam. Steam's great. I think Steam's making a big play. Yeah, sure. And I think we're going to be hearing a lot more about that box in the new year. And finally, Gary Stakespice writes, what are your White Whale backlog games?

A game that you know you would love but have put off trying for X reason, work too many games, being the finisher, et cetera. Why haven't you started it yet? For some reason, the first answer that comes to my mind, well it's not a white whale because I have I have started it and I just never finished it but I would really love to have rolled credits on on persona 5 at some point in my life would like to do that but for a game that I haven't started that is sort of a white whale for me

is the first thing that comes to mind for some reason is Octopath Traveler game oh those games seemed so lovely and fun and I know I would love it I just have not investigated and I would like to I would like to play it I'd be like I would have like a cozy time with that. I wish I had my Steam library in front of me because I'm sure I'd look at something like, oh yeah, I always meant to play that. But, yeah.

I mean, wishlisted, not out yet. Taking their sweet time. The, but it does make me think of a game that I've also like, like spent limited time with and I'm like, I know I would love this full experience. I don't know why this never really. got its hooks in me and I don't know why I've never

dedicated a time to it because the CD Project Red, the same developer made cyberpunk, which we all love but the Witcher 3 is just like a game I've played and attempted and bounced off of and you know, I'm sure if I actually got into that it would be

one of my favorite games. I'll also shout out, recently referenced the thing that I keep saying, Hollow Night is a, you know, like I've always meant to finish Hollow Night and then especially the Silk Song out, but I think the big one in terms of like I've never put any time in this

in fact I don't even own this game is Bloodbourne and you know every I already mentioned Miyazaki but every from soft game that I've got around to playing I've absolutely loved and when I went back to Sekiro I was like this is the fucking triumph and this is so much fun and I'm sure I'd have the same experience with Bloodbourne I wish I could play it on PC

I wish there was a version beyond the PS4 version but you know I I should get around to that at some point. My answers are God of War Ragnarok, which I need to finish. It's got to be one of my favorite games that I haven't played. Persona 5, which I continue to chip away at so slowly. It's almost as if I'm not playing the game. I leapt on the backlog of Final Fantasy Rebirth and have been making progress there.

Star Wars Outlaws is on that list for me because I love Star Wars and it has been patched now to a place of great playability I don't know man Ragnarok is probably the top of the list though for me Wow You know I like I'm just trying to think a little bit more historically and a franchise that I never really got into

in a game that I always heard was awesome was the Sega Saturn game Panzer Dragoon saga. Oh, yeah. I've never touched it. Like, I know what I know it's, it's reputation. And I, you know, I do love JRP's. And I'm sure that one would feel a little bit of its time. It kept coming out, having been released in the 90s.

But 90s JRPGs are some of my favorite games. So, but yeah, that's a, it's a good question. I still have a sealed copy of a Dreamcast RPG that I have just not gotten around to playing. Wow. Which I can't think of the name of right now, but it's like the Dreamcast RPG. Skies of Arcadia, I mean?

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, Skies of Arcadia is great. And you mentioned Persona 5. I have finished Persona 5 Royal, and I fucking loved it. Great game. I'm thinking, thinking historically, I'm thinking of, like, old Zelda games,

because I really only checked in with Zelda on Switch. So Breath of the Wild and Tears, I, of course, did. But I have not ever finished Ocarina time or Majora's Mass. Or Wind Waker. Yeah, or Winwaker, yeah. I wonder how you'd respond to like, yeah, I did, wait, you said Link to the Past. I did, oh, no, I did Link's Awakening, but I haven't played Link to the Past here. Yeah, you said, you just had an Occurion of Time and Major's Mask, yeah, Link to the Past,

is I'd be interested in your response to that. Or link between worlds. I played some of Between World. That's the flat one. Yeah. Or you can become flat? Yeah. Was that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yes, yes, yes, yes. And you can become flat. I was thinking of the minish cap, but the minish cap has a different game. I haven't done that either. There's too many of them. I'm not going to do all of them.

But like all the really good ones, I'm going to probably do. Heather took my pillow away. You know what? It was worth it. It was good. Heather put a pillow on her head. Heather took my pillow and put it on our head.

To do a bit. What the hell's going on here? Richel, you got anything outstanding in your backlog? Any games that you've always wanted to get around to that you've ever had time for? I really want to play... Soma. Okay.

Oh. I also want to play persona 5. Yeah. But I'm scared. Okay, you want to play Soma, but you're afraid of persona 5. Great game. It is daunting. I mean, like I spent over 100 hours flying through that.

And then I'll say finally, a game that is and has been my white whale for finishing my whole life is Taxix Advance, which I had packed for my, thanks. Thanksgiving trip. Yeah. And then our Thanksgiving trip got canceled because our dog got sick. Yeah.

But I was forcing myself. I was like, I'm going to have six hours on this fucking airplane. Yeah. So I'm just going to

bring tactics advance and I'll force myself into the corner of playing and maybe even beating this game. And then the trip got canceled. It's not going to happen.

I'm sorry. Like that game has like a sort of like reverse final destination. It follows to you or something. It's some sort of cursed sort of thing. I don't know what the rules are exactly.

Curse game. Yeah. I think it's you being punished for playing a tactics game. Punish? Outside of your typical genre. Oh yeah, that's true. That's fair. Yeah.

That's fair. But that's it for the question block, guys. That can be, those can, oh my God. You okay? You're doing great. As I mentioned earlier, those are all sourced from our Discord. Discord.org.org. slash get played get in there why don't you it's a lot of fun yeah get in there chop it up tosses

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animate our sister show on Patreon. Matt, what are we doing this week? We're finishing up. I think. We're finishing up serial experiments lane. Wow. And let me tell you something. That's a fucking doozy. Classic late 90s anime.

Here are thoughts on the final episodes over at patreon.com slash get played. And you know who got played? You, you, you did. Punch, punch. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That was a hate gum podcast.

Hi, I'm Nicole Bayer. Hi, I'm Sashir Zameda. And this is the podcast, Best Friends. And we're here at, Edgum. So this is just a podcast where we just talk. Yeah. We're best friends.

Yeah. We talk. And then we have a segment where we answer questions and queries. So audience members can ask questions about friendships and we can answer them to the best of our abilities. Yes. We are professional friends. We are professional friends. Subscribe to Best Friends on Spotify, Apple Podcast, PocketCast, or wherever you get your podcast.

And watch videos on YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. That's the middle of a work week I was deeply unhelpful to you during that whole thing I'm really sorry I felt the support I was so okay I was trying to be supportive but I was like I don't know reading seems pretty hard right now

It's a lot I think you did good Thank you so much You're welcome