Get Played - Catching Up + the Square Enix Cafe & Shop

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

Heather, Nick and Matt talk about the Playstation disc controversy, Xbox layoffs and catch up on what they’ve been playing and review their experience of attending the Los Angeles Square Enix Cafe & Shop. Check out our merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For our exclusive show Get Played DLC, ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? episodes 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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Nice little fun time. And if that sounds like something you'd like, you might want to check out Schedule 35. Get 15% off all orders with code get played at Schedule35.co. That's 15% off at Schedule 35.co and use code get played. All right, team, we've had a lot of success with the Square Inix pop-up cafe. You know, earlier we did that pop-up cafe, of course, about Star Wars, people were loving it. They were loving our canteena concept.

May the forks be with you. That was a lot of fun. We did the Moes Bar from the Simpson, Moes Tavern. People thought we executed that really well. So we're just looking for another video game theme specifically pop up that we can practice our craft on. Yeah, obviously, I mean, there are certain video games that lend themselves to something like this.

Like burger time would be an easy layup. It would just be like a burger restaurant. But we'd probably want to do something a little broader. Yeah, and maybe a little bit more contemporary. Yeah. Like, I'm just brainstorming here. But what about if you did like a Resident Evil Cafe? Oh, sure.

Green herb and red herb, you know, cocktails. Yeah. It could be a fun way in. That could be really fun. Maybe some puzzles you could play in an immersive space. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was walking by the room when I saw you guys were...

Get on in here. We're pitching on ideas. Yeah, we're just blue sky and in here. Hey, Dougette. Hi, my name is Dougette. I work downstairs. We say hi to you every day. We know you.

Hi, my name is Dougette. Hi, Dougette. Couldn't help over here that you guys are pitching on a video game pop-up restaurant. That's right. One of my favorite experiences in a video game is James Bine, GoldenEight, 007 for Nintendo 64. A great game. Oh, a 007 cafe would be awesome. And there's so much, there's so much a retro, you know, love for that game at this point.

I got an idea. Parents will be taking their kids. So what if, what if the restaurant was, you know how I like that game? starts and you're like at a you're in a fort yeah okay great great great level classic but i say we go right to the second level and we put that restaurant in the toilet i think you you misunderstood the game i think you you you leave a stall you're supposed to leave the back yeah you're you're kind of in i you're talking about the facility level and you're still in you start in a toilet well it's kind of your way in, but I don't think people, when they think of the facility, you know, an iconic

video game level, they think about the toilet specifically. Yeah, it's a nice way that people might say using the restroom, I got to go use the facilities. Yeah, and maybe you might have like, hey, we can have that stall just be a feature in one of the unisex bathroom. Yeah, but that could be like, okay, with the bend on top of it. That could be where you eat, though. Again, I'm just going to say the health department is not going to prove this. They're not going to allow people to be eating in a working bathroom. All right. Let's hear your ideas. Whoa, hang on. What is the attitude, Dougette? I don't know.

I feel like I was getting a lot of pushback. Well, no, it's just, I think we were just saying why that particular take may not be actionable. But I do think the Golden Night Cafe is a good idea in the abstract. Okay, Golden Night Cafe. What about Donkey Kong? You know that new game that came out? Oh, yeah, Donkey Kong Bonanza. Yeah.

Oh, banana. So what if you put a restaurant inside of a monkey cage at the zoo? You know what, Dougette? we're good. Yeah, you're doing, you're not bringing to the table what we need. I just, I'll just,

this might demonstrate for you. Okay, what, what, I want to be helpful. I want to be helpful. I'm not trying to be obstruction. Okay,

so like, this is kind of what I'm hearing from you. Do, what if we had, it is entirely not necessary. What if we had a, a, a,

a civilization restaurant? you know, based off of the civilization strategy game franchise, and all of your employees were serfs because you existed under feudalism, and none of the technology present was advanced past the Stone Age. Say you, Dad is it, you? I've been looking for you for so long. Don't get it's me, Dadette. Dadette? It's my dad.

I love you. I love you too, dear. I don't know why it took me so long to come clean. Did I die? Clear! Clear! Guys. Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt.

Matt, are you there? Heaven is real. We drink potions and eat slime as we talk about the Square Innix pop-up cafe. Plus, catch up and all we missed in gaming. Get Played. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for Good Games, Bad Games, and every game in between, it's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger.

Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr. Games, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week we hung out. We hung out. We hung out. Welcome back, indeed.

Because we have not recorded an episode. in person for what two three weeks almost almost an entire month almost a month wow so welcome back welcome back bucket as as we used to be said here welcome back boobes listening were any of the wiser we tricked you we tricked you we tricked you know they were they were pretty upset when we released a repeat episode from the from the patreon people are like why would i pay for this if you're just going to eventually it was obviously somebody singled out a wiger specifically yeah and said it was his whole fault. It is my fault, yeah. It's not.

No, I mean, like, I do, I was, I was my idea. It was like, we can just take a week off and re-release something. We all said, that's a great idea. Yeah. And it was. I felt like I had stopped sweating. My metrics all evened out. My stress levels, like, relapsed into regular.

You're going to spike big time. Oh, my God. It's brought to me by the aura ring, TM. Hey, speaking of which, and, you know, the gamification of our, of IRL. is, you know, a thing that I try to fight against. But the ORA ring has become a nice balance. This is not branded content. No, it's not.

I would 100% read an ad for a warring because I'm wearing this motherfucker right now. I think all of us, including ranch, are also wearing it. We all like it. Ethan, you've got to get on one. Hey, the other day, I did a thing. Again, this sounds like a commercial, but it's just gamification.

Yeah. I had never asked the AI of the app like anything. Yeah. Because I was like, in this fucking thing. But I was like super fucking depressed. Yeah. And I was walking to my car and I stopped and I opened up the app and I said, hey, is there any reason in my metrics why I might be depressed and exhausted? Yeah.

And it fully took a month of my metrics and was like, well, actually, your readiness today is the lowest it's been in two weeks. It looks like you got good sleep but no deep sleep last night. Your heart rate was up. All of these things could contribute to the fact that you feel depressed right now. And it made me feel so much better to have like solid evidence. Yes. Does that make sense? Yes, it does.

And then I was like, okay, what can I focus on? And it's like just try and get to bed by this time tonight, eat by this time, and you'll be okay. And sure enough, today I feel great. Wow. I love it. I don't know. You could do that. Yeah, you can.

I'm going to ask my app right now. What's the best time for me to jerk off? Seven minutes ago, apparently. I missed my window. Explains where I was walking around with a boner for 10 minutes. Everyone is here in studio, the Triforce of Friendship as well as our producer, Rochelle Chen Ranch.

How you doing, Ranch? I'm doing great. And as already alluded to, Ethan, our intern, has returned. Hi, Ethan. Hello, hello. Your presence has apparently been found. I don't look at the subreddit. I don't care what any maniac say.

But I do, but apparently your presence has been made with the get played subreddit wherever we, That's right. Our fans cluster. Yeah. Well, there you go. You've already made an impact on the podcast. I hope you feel good about yourself.

Nobody was weird or anything. Not at all. Not at all. I didn't see any of this. So, what happened? Well, look. They're mad? Ethan's a star.

They're mad? They love Ethan. They love you. Are they mad because, like, once we asked him, have you had Coca-Cola? And he's like, what's that? What's your favorite color? I guess none. We love having Ethan here.

A lot of fun. We're back. We're back. But today's episode is about the fact that we hung out in between podcasts. Yes. Which we never do unless we are in another country. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we were not in another country. Right. I mean, we were of sorts. We were in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, This lovely neighborhood near downtown. Yeah. And Nick was saying it was as good as being in the real thing. I kept trying to convince myself.

Little Akihabra is just as good as real Akihabra. I'm having a blast. No one's going to shoot me with a gun. It was, I did actually have a very fun afternoon with everyone. Unfortunately, Ranch was not able to make it. Yeah. We missed Ranch. I had a great time.

Not doing the show every week. I was kind of like, I miss my friend. I was kind of like, do I like video games? I guess I do. I love this shit. Yeah, this is actually wait. If you don't monetize your hobby, you can actually enjoy it, but too late for that. We're back.

We're back. People keep asking if I'm back and I've never really had an answer. But yeah, I'm thinking I'm back. John Wick Oh, I thought it was Duke Nukem He would say it in a new one Yeah, he would say yeah

In a new one I piss out of my back But yeah I piss out of my back So either he's tucking his dick And peeing backwards Or he like thinks like Diarrhea is piss

Whenever I went through a time machine I went through a weird machine And it made my dick hole On my back We should do a DLC that's oops all nuke. People would love that. We're back.

We're back. A lot's happened since we've been gone. A lot has happened, a lot of consequence, a lot of things, a lot of moving and shaking. The big, I think the big ticket item is, PlayStation announced that they are no longer going to manufacture discs. Yes. And that when pressed on this, I read an article. that when pressed on this, they were like our, first off, I didn't know that there were more PlayStation Plus subscribers than there are Game Pass subscribers. That's wild to me, fascinating. Which is wild and fascinating. Also, that if they lost 500,000 of those subscribers out of protest by the move, it would represent less than 1% of their digital value.

And so that is an acceptable loss to them to incur on being able to pipeline all of the profits of game making making directly into Sony. Yes. Which, by the way, I love Sony. The thing they've been chasing since they began is a locked system where you cannot escape their own like proprietary manufacturing index, whether it be very strange memory car. or, you know, batteries that only Sony makes that are in a strange format. Like, they've been chasing this forever. So the fact that they finally built up enough of a foundation that they can say, we've made a thing that you could only get if you get it out of our Sony machine.

Yeah. They're done. They did it. Congratulations, guys. I mean, it's pretty telling that this is the new story of all new stories. that has made me more upset about than anything recently. Because I was like, I used to get discs secondhand at like Hollywood video or GameStop when I was a kid. Because, you know, couldn't always afford a new release or something like that.

Or like the idea of I remember I remember opening Jack 2 on Christmas Day and being fucking pumped. Maybe not like Nintendo 64 kid pumped. Right. Jack 2. But I was like, this is awesome. This is really cool. Being excited about having a new game. And that experience is no longer going to exist.

Well, there's two answers that Sony would have for this. One, about getting secondhand games and cheap games from like bargain bin stuff that we did when I was a kid also. It was like, I don't know what this fucking game is, but it was in the clearance aisle is that Sony's response to protect the sort of like class strata of game playing is, well, PlayStation Plus is really cheap each month. Yes, of course. You get free games every month. You get free games every month if you subscribe. So they'll be like, so you can't, like, we can argue it. But Sony would say you can't argue it.

There's no tenable position there. Every answer they would have for any argument that I could or would make would be correct on their behalf. The second thing is they said that they are going to still provide boxes to brick and water retailers. Yeah. And the boxes will just be empty with a download code in it. So you could, in theory, open up a game on Christmas Day. And it's going to, and you'd be like, wow, you got me Jack 5. And then you open it and you put the code.

Man, if they put Jack 5 as a box, a code in box, guess I'm getting Jack 5. But like, I just am like, well then there's no, there's no need for a code in box. No, there's no. There's just none. It's insane. Because of all this dumb AI shit, memory is at, you know, an absolute premium.

Yep. And the only the only way we'll be able to have games is digitally. So space on a digital card. Right. They've fucking won. And they also announced it

the week that they announced that they were killing movies that you would already purchase, which also seems in terrible, like terrible timing. They should have let that sit for six months and then be like, oh, by the way, we're making all our shit digital.

Do you think it's possible that because Xbox, the other big things that they laid off basically every single person on planet Earth? Yeah. 4,800 people. Yeah, 3200 is the number I see in Wall Street Journal, but it's a lot. Do you think because they telegraphed that, they were like, hey, we're going to have some pretty significant structural changes. And when you hear about that from a business, that means they're going to lay off. awful lot of people. Do you think then Sony was like, we got to do this now?

So it doesn't seem as bad. Hoping for cover and unfortunately, it completely backfire. I'm both less apocalyptic and more apocalyptic than y'all because first off, PC gaming and I'm a PC thug. I've been PC gaming primarily. PC boy. I'm a PC boy. Rise up.

Rise up, yeah. I'm not going to say gaming master race. That's, even though that's a thing. set that's a thing they say. I don't care for it. They do say it. They do say it. I don't like it. Very good people. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's true. I haven't looked into it. But yeah, I guess now just sight unseen, I agree. But I, that's how PC gaming has been for 20 years. You know what I mean? It's just like, I think the last physical game I bought was, I don't, I mean, like, I think I bought Diablo 3 PC at long. And that was, I was, I might have even been a code in the box. I just bought it for the collector's edition.

You know what I mean? Like I just, it's how, it's an established thing. The issue there, though, is that you have at the beginning of, or at the center of the PC game distribution model, a fairly benign, somewhat benevolent, you know, market leader in Steam. Yes. And the Steam store, the fear is at some point, you know, Gabe Newell will, no longer be at the company and it'll get valve will get bought by Saudi Arabia or something and

then it will be just as shitty as these other services. And the other, of course, Steam in and of its team already has issues with like credit card companies or trying to get them to delist certain games to some success or, you know, crowdsourced outrage campaigns, astro-turfed, you know, rage campaigns or getting them to take certain games down. Yeah. So there is already some censorship, some mechanisms or censorship there. to placate various, you know, shitheads and or totalitarian governments and or bad corporations. But I like, it's still like it is a fine model. And the Steam Store games go on deep discount all the time.

Yes. Like, like you can get Steam Store games for cheaper than you can get something out of the discount bin at a Best Buy or a... Does they have physical games? They do not fucking have anything. Then GameStop, wherever you can still buy a physical game. in IRL. So like, from that standpoint, when I do talk about stuff like that though, I always then feel like

how much could a banana cost? Ten dollars? Yeah, right. I just don't know how shit fucking works anymore. But the other thing is the reason I feel more apocalyptic is, and I this, we can go to this Wall Street Journal report which is, you know,

this is polygon summation of it, but they wanted 77 million game pass subscribers by 2026. Xbox did. And as of now, they have less than half of that, which is actually a decline from where they had in February of 2024. So it's like they're not even, they don't only have, I think it's February 22, or I may have that date wrong, but the, they not only have missed their target by more, by, you know,

they were hoping for 77 million, they have 30 million. They're also declining in subscribers overall. I kind of feel like this subscription model is what they want to drive you towards. Yes. And the goal is what you're talking about with memory prices and the AI like all these data centers driving up the prices of memory, which affects both RAM and hard drives in the consumer space is. I think they ultimately want you just playing on the cloud. And so they want hardware to be like basically to go away and for ownership as a concept

to not even be a thing. But instead it's just like Netflix. You're subscribing to a cloud service to play video games through. And I think probably right now a surprising number of people actually do that. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. Probably probably a non-represented segment of the gaming population who doesn't tend to engage on on stories like this.

So I don't know. I kind of feel like things will be okay, but then also things will inevitably get worse. I personally feel attacked because I was like, you know, I've bought, I've purchased things digitally, this generation, here and there, but I have quite a large disk library of PS5 discs that one won't be backward compatible

with whatever the next thing is. Yeah. It's just, it sucks. Yeah, it really does. I bought coasters. But the, I, I had read a report that Xbox is, has this concept for a disc to digital transfer of license of some kind. And it would be, it would be, it would be cool if PlayStation also did that. Yeah, that would be, that would be amazing.

I can't imagine them being that generous. From Tech Insider, I have these numbers. PS plus subscribers in March of 2026 are 50 to 51.6 million. So they are significantly outpacing Xbox on that front. And they are pulling in an estimated $1.2 billion annually over Xbox. And Xbox's whole push, like when I think Sony, I barely think, plus. When I think Xbox game pass is like the forward facing brand. That's what they're trying to do. They don't, they don't like it seems like they don't even care about having first party exclusives all that much.

I mean, certainly the acquisition of Activision is, you know, Activision Blizzard is a counter to that. But then again, they've done things like Call of Duty is staying multi-platform. So they're just like, hey, where your warehouse for all things, cloud gaming for all like, like subscribe to gaming. pass and it's the best value in gaming. Of course, they keep ratcheting up the price on that. It is interesting. I wonder if something that has to do with like, because their brand has kind of lost its identity in terms of being associated with things like, I mean, like, Halo and and Forza and that kind of being at the forefront of like, oh, that's what I go to Xbox

for. As I wonder if that's kind of like diminished inadvertently indirectly, even though they were like, oh, yeah, we're going to put that at the back. it's like just just diminish brand equity in Xbox and it as a byproduct of that it's just kind of lower game pass subscriptions whereas PlayStation has always had this very strong first party lineup and this very strong you know the array of at least limited exclusives time limited exclusives the fact that astrobot is completely built on the backbone of nostalgia for Sony experiences and that that game was that rich with those things was I was like wow I've never thought of Sony as a Nintendo type but they really are a Nintendo type. By the way, sidebar, Nintendo abandoning the race for graphics and fidelity with the Wii, in hindsight, looks like the best long-term longevity decision

that any company in the tech sector has ever made. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like VHS beat Betamax, and Beta Max was a better quality standard. But, you know, it was just like consumers ultimately, want convenience and value. The thing I always cite, and it's a, you know, DVDs are now a relic, but DVDs became basically ubiquitous as physical media before streaming.

And one of the primary reasons consumers like DVDs, like it had very little to do with that they had, they had better quality and that they had the movies in the correct aspect ratio and additional features. What consumers liked about them over VHS was you didn't have to rewind them. For our younger listeners, you may not have a concept of. rewinding, but that was a cumbersome process that used to have to do with both audio and video cassettes back when those were the standard media distribution model. It was considered unkind to not do it.

It was unkind. Be kind rewind was the thing that was said. But yeah, you had to do it to watch something or to listen to something or to rewatch something. And then you had to do it again before you like return it to the video store. It was a fucking pain in the ass. And then also they liked that the cases were smaller because VHSs were big boxy boys. DVDs were a little skinny guys. So it's like,

it's the same sort of thing. You are correct, Heather, because consumers just don't value quality. They just don't care. It's not, it's why fast fashion took over. Everyone's buying like really shitty clothes that fall apart, but they're cheap and they're readily available.

So who cares? You're really funny if my shirt just like fell off. I think my father is an undiagnosed autistic person. and it tracks the long, the farther I go into my life, the more sense it makes that he was like, well, we're getting Betamax because it has more lines of resolution. Well, we are getting Laserdisc because it is in the correct aspect ratio.

Yeah, yeah. Like he was not a cinephile. No. Like he was just, he was like, well, this is, the metrics on this are the correct metrics. So yeah, we did not have an ability to rent VHS for most of my life. Yeah. I do think, and I don't, I mean, the, why can I not remember the name of the Steam console that's coming?

The Steam Machine. The Steam Machine, thank you. The Steam Machine, that's a good name. It doesn't have the sticking power that it could have, I guess. Yeah. I'm just saying, like, I couldn't pull it because I have an old decaying brain. I was trying to help you. But I like Steam Machine, I think it sounds pretty good.

Sonically, it sounds good. Yeah, it's orally pleasing. I think we should make a bet on the price point of the next. Next PlayStation, no matter what the form factor is. $1,000. $1,500. Yeah, it might be more than that. But I think the bidding starts at four digits.

I'm going to go $9,999. Okay, so you're saying $9,999. You're saying $900,000. I'm going to say $900,000. It's going to be, I'm going to price just right at you. Okay. It's going to be $999. $9.99. That's what I meant by $1,000. I got to price it at $1,000. Of course, they priced it in $9.99. Effectively a thousand. Okay, then I think it's going to have the baseline price point of $1,000.999. And then I think it's going to have a top tier build of $1,000. And I think that they are in their slide presentation going to compare it to an iPhone and the prices of iPhones. Why wouldn't they have a top tier build that's $2,000 or $3,000? You know what I mean? They're like people are willing to pay so much more for the luxury model. Why wouldn't they just go?

Because I think it's going to be a portable device. Yeah, I mean, it might be. The, the, the, the, eight terabyte PS6 will be like $1,500 or something. Well, I, like, it's really interesting because, because, again, there's a, there's also a version where they've got basically a firestick version of PlayStation that is all cloud-based and is all based around a PlayStation plus subscription. But that's, like, just one of the options that you can get. That's the, the equivalent of, like, what is the entry-level model of MacBook, the MacBook Neo? Yeah. It's basically a phone with a keyboard.

So I wouldn't be shocked if they did something like that too. And sometimes that's all just people need. So if they give people that option, I wouldn't see why people wouldn't get that. I'm hoping for a 2027 where I have a backpack and it is a Nintendo Switch. Please, I'm not actually going to walk around like this, so please don't rob me. But I have a Nintendo Switch, a PlayStation 6, the folding iPhone. Yeah. And a dedicated camera all in my backpack.

I like this. Just walking around. And like every, and no, no protective cases so you can hear them just clanging against each other. I'm just getting scratched and scuffed.

The, you know, I was kind of excited to, uh, I was interested in the steam machine. Because I liked the idea of playing these games that I play on Steam or like on my Steam deck or something on my television.

Get a doc. I know. The dock is like, I have the dock. What are you talking about that? The dock. Let me do. It's just,

It's complicated. It's just a little too much. My doc told me to lay off the snacks. We're back. And let me just tell you, buddy. Yeah. You patted nothing. That was humiliating.

Guy's thin now, acting like he's fat. You patted nothing. Yeah, it went whoosh. Yeah. Cracked a rib, this guy. Come on. I get those removed. No, you didn't.

You didn't need to. Okay. So, finish your point. Well, it's just crazy to me that costs $1,500. And it's like not better than the PS5 Pro. But it's more open. It's a PC. You could do more stuff with it.

So you can sort of maybe get there mentally with that in mind. I'm kind of more bummed out that I'm not going to be able to use that cool controller. I think the controller is cool. Yeah, I think the, I think the steam machine is a better value than it's being, I think it's just priced not at a loss. You know, because like, and so that's just kind of like how much this piece of hardware. Could you, because look, if that thing was $800, you guys, you guys, I'd be sitting here being like, guys, I can't wait for my steam machine to come out to come. It's going to be really exciting. But just I can't justify it.

And look, I know that this show has dog piled on this before. It is so funny that this shit is becoming so expensive for an option on my cell phone that couldn't tell me. I was telling Nick about this at work today. I didn't want to do the research of which Sith lords and which Sith acolytes were alive at the end of Empire. And so I just asked chat GPT or Claude or something. I was just like, who are the, you know, like whatever. And it put Luke Skywalker on the fucking list. And I was like, my food, everything is so.

fucking expensive for something that is like a grade schooler would know. Yeah. Yeah. It does not work. I think the steam machine, I'm optimistic about just because I like, I like there being more platforms out there. I like there being more ways for people to get into the PC ecosystem. And also I think that'll be the sort of thing of like, well, shit, if a steam machine is

$1,500, why don't I just buy this off the shelf gaming rig at Costco for $1,500, which I think people will end up doing. I mean, I just, I continue to be amazed by the resilience of PC gaming over the years that I just kind of think, like, I kind of just take it as a fate accompli now that it's just going to continue. But I do kind of wish that the steam machine had some sort of optical drive because I think, I'll get to this point in a circuitous way. Heather, like me, has been stockpiling Blu-Rays. And I think, Matt, you're also, you also are in a physical meeting. You also have a blue-ray guy. We're about to move, and let me just tell you, there's been quite a few conversations about it already.

Stockpiling is a heavy award to what I'm doing. I do have a curated collection of movies that I'm afraid I will not be able to access. This is based entirely on my experience with the criterion edition of Hard Boiled and the criterion edition of The Killer, which both went out of print, and then that was it. You couldn't get those movies for a long time. Now you can stream them anywhere, but there was a moment. moment in time where I was like, I can't watch the movie that I want to watch. So now when there's a film that's extremely important to me, I'll buy a hard copy of it. And it was inspired by you, Matt.

Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Because of, uh, I know you got recently bought perfect days. Yeah, I bought the, uh, fuck, I got to get perfect days. Get a 4K disc. And I was like, I have to have perfect days. What if I can't?

What if there is a time where, hey, this isn't available right now for streaming because it's an international rights issue or the movie's not, like, and I want to watch perfect days. I want to be able to watch perfect days. I'm less selective, just as an example, recently in the mail. Shrek 2 on DVD. Look, I'll get Shrek. I'll get to Shrek.

I love Shrek. In the mail came, Avatar Fire and Ash, Steelbook 4K, and Napa Boys on Blu-Rae. Hey, I got Napa Boys on Blu-Rae. I have to have this. I was like, this is not streaming in a regular way.

Is Avatar 3D on disc? I know that they I don't know if it is I know that they're a lot more selective with 3D discs these days they're not really doing it the same volume

I still have Titanic on 3D 3D Blu-ray Of course you do Hey What's that? I don't know It's exactly what it sounds like Why do you have that

What are you talking about? Do you have you watch Do you have to have the glasses For it at home too? Well let's say that you have a television that still has 3D stereoscopic output and you have the fancy digital glasses if you wanted to watch or you could watch it in your Vision Pro 3D is still an important part of my life.

Yes, I'm aware. The two people I know who are still bullish on home 3D are you and Griffin Newman of the Great Blancheck podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Past guest of Get Play. I just to me is a little cumbersome, but you know, whatever. Like I'm glad that it does exist for enthusiasts like you. The moment that they announced.

Vision Pro in the form factor of glasses, of like regular glasses. Yeah. 3D is going to be the only, like it is going to feel weird to watch two-dimensional content. The other computer glasses are doing so well. It's only a matter of time that Apple buzz it. Look, I'm telling you. I do think they will do it. They will do it in our lifetime. Yeah. In the next 20. Perverts win. In the year. Yeah. In the next 20 years. It's true. And ultimately perverts will be driving it. I think the Where was going with this? Show me your panties

Show me her panties Saying it I don't know how it works Show me Show me I just got these out of the box Show me Where was going with this is that

Blue Ray Blue Ray obviously I'm your mother That's why I'm interested Blue Ray as you know it's Sony's standard and I think they get a royalty on it but I don't think they don't approve what the content is that's on Blu-ray and it's not like it's a close ecosystem like PlayStation. I wish that like I think there may be a future for because I think I think there's a lot of nostalgia for physical media and there's also a lot of craving for physical media from younger generations that have never really experienced it because we see. see how, you know, tenuous our relationship is to the digital things that we own.

And also vinyl is outselling its peak in the 1970s is so diminished to the peak it has now. Like more people are buying records than they did at the height of records. It's the only way to hear the real song, the warmth. So if it is Linux, you know, if it is a Linux-based platform like Steam or it is, you know, like whatever. If there's some sort of more universal standard that has a like a physical media format that's not beholden to any one hardware company, then that could be the sort of thing that's kind of the equivalent of like a criterion Blu-ray where like, hey, I can just get my copy of this

game on this universal standard and then I just own it. And I don't and I like it's maybe not future proof. But I don't have to worry like as long as I have something that can play this disc, I'll be okay. And it's not something that I need to, you know, get authentic. authentication off a server for. Like, like, that would be, you know,

it would be nice if something that existed. Obviously, they would have to be a higher storage capacity than Blu-rays because of how fucking massive games are. But I don't know. Like, like, it would be, from a curation standpoint, from a media preservation standpoint, it would be great if some standard like that eventually is settled upon. But, you know, who fucking knows?

I also think controllers should be standardized. But I'm just, you know, fucking on a, I'm on an island for that take for whatever reason. But look, I mean, they do stuff like this, it gets harder and harder to personally discourage piracy. I, hey, man, all aboard. The thing I keep reading is, I've never actually done that. I don't even know how to do it. If purchasing isn't ownership, then piracy isn't theft.

No, it's not. It's just not. Wow, I love that. Yeah. That's great. Can that, here are a new t-shirt? That's our new t-shirt. Which is bad because that's what we do.

The t-shirt's free. Speaking of T-shirts, a new t-shirts, Matt, you're rocking a Los Angeles chocobo shirt. Yes, that I got at the restaurant that we'll talk about a little bit later. But there was a concern that the printed image was going to be, feel weird on my thumb. On the other side of the shirt, and I'm pleased to report that it is perfectly fine. That's why they had a, they had a Dragon Quest varietal that had a slime. And I was like, fuck, I kind of want that slime. And I was probably on a skateboard or whatever the fuck.

And then I was just like, I just don't think I'm going to wear this thing. It's just too much printing. But here I am wearing this Chrono Trigger shirt that I got in Japan. That's also got a media amount of printing, something again square and ex-appropriate for today's episode. And I'm wearing this sum bitch, and I'm pretty happy. That's nice. It's comfortable. And Heather's shirt is Gundam.

Yeah, I'm wearing a Neo-Zion UC-96 work shirt, which is supposed to be one of the shirts that they would wear in universe because I love an in universe shirt. Wow. We're halfway through the year and this year I've been really focusing on upgrading my health. Buying new tracking tech, eating better, fitness equipment, but we society as a whole, always forget about the single most important thing for your health. And that's sleep. Have you heard that soccer player talk about it? Holland? He says sleep is the number one most important thing. So I upgraded my mattress to the Sapira hybrid mattress, and that's been a huge difference in my day to day. Guys, I fucking love sleep. I fucking love it. Bleep me all you want.

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I guess we have been talking about video games this whole time. Yeah, but should talk about some video games we're playing? Considering how often we spend the first half hour of the show talking about like, hey, I had a milkshake. Like, this has been really on topic for us. I will say, I did have a milkshake pre-review. It was actually really quite good. What kind of shake?

Vanilla. Fuck, I love vanilla. And it was a flavor. You know, it was in one of those milkshake spinning machines. Yeah. And you're probably thinking, I just got the, we just got the one cup. Yeah, you probably just got the one cup. You're a fucking fool.

What? We got the second metal cup, too, with the balance. Well done. Metal cup? That one got me. We're back. Metal cup. Metal cup.

Metal cup. Metal Cup was a protocol that began in 1964. During the height of the Vietnam War. You think you're going to own that cup in the future? I have to get to the Shakeohad. Where did you get that milkshake from? Fred 62, the affirmation. We talked about pre-recording.

Fuck, I want a milkshake. Milkshakes are really good. It's going to give me such a tummy-old, but I love it. Who's this guy, freaking Daniel DeLois, and there will be blood? My, I'm not saying to drink your milkshake, though I wish I did. My friend and listener, Miguel, got one of the ones. of those milkshake maker machines, like not a ninja. Is it a ninja from Costco? Uh-huh.

Uh, which apparently you can make sugar-free protein ice cream milkshakes in, and they're apparently very good. My nutritionist and I today were talking about, there's those viral trend of making ice cream out of watermelon. And we're kind of just like, we're a little suspect on it. There's a little, there's no way that it's good for you. I make a nearly nightly single ingredient banana ice cream. Oh. I love, you take a frozen banana, you throw it into the food processor, it turns into actual

soft serve ice cream. Yeah. And then you put a little cinnamon on there. Maybe a little honey. Jazz it up. What, it jazz it up just a tiny bit. Yeah. It's fucking great.

I'll report back when I learned more about this watermelon thing we got going. Get in there. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I don't have enough research in front of me to speak on it appropriately. You want to talk about video games? Yeah, I mean, we have been talking about video games. Let's talk about video games.

But there is a thing that we do on this podcast, which is we ask. the room, a question about video games we've been playing lately. And I figure we all have probably had some time to hunker down and play a little bit of video games over this break from recording. That question is this one. What are you playing? You can't leave me alone for that long. Hello, Resident Evil Merchant. It's good to see you again. I've been at a loss. This is a regular. This show is regulates my life without it. Or a constant in your life.

I'm fucking all over the place. Yeah, for every, you know, not that work should necessarily be the purpose of one's life, but it does give you some sort of focus and direction and regularity. I don't know what date is without the show. You don't know what day it is without the show. The show lets me know what day it is. Oh, boy. What day do you think it is?

Now I know it's Thursday. Okay. Do you want to record? Yeah, we often record. I had four Sundays in a row. last week? Ice cream or days? What?

Ice cream? Yeah, ice. Or days? It's a valid question. Ice cream or days? Ice cream or days? Okay. Am I dead?

Am I dying? No, you're alive, Resident Evil Merchant and you're with us in the studio. Speaking of an ice cream Sunday. You said you had four Sundays in a row. What does that make? No, no. I don't mean to scare you. I hate a bird.

Okay. That's very different than an ice cream Sunday. I ate a bird. I was in a bad place, guys, you can't take that kind of a break again. Crossing my fingers, it was chicken? Nope. Oh, no. It is, but you could say, I ate a bird, and what you had was a rotisserie chicken.

Yeah, you know, you could do a lot worse. You could do a lot worse. I don't know if I could take a full rotissory chicken to the dome. Not anymore, yeah, but there was definitely time when my metabolism wouldn't able me to take a whole. If I was, like, 17 years old and you put, like a rotissory chicken in front of me, easy work. I'd skeletonize that bastard, like a fucking piranha. I'd put the whole thing in my mouth and pull out just the skeleton. Heathcliff ass.

So not just like a bird? Like what? Like a finch? I punched a coyote in the throat and ate a pigeon. Oh, Jesus Christ. You punched the coyote in the throat and ate a pigeon. This is like the start of like a country song. I don't know that song.

So a pigeon, the coyote regurgitated? The coyote was getting, was getting about to eat a meal. And I hadn't eaten in days. And I punched a coyote and I took his pigeon. Okay. Well, probably with that pigeon for one fleeting moment was like, I'm free. It was dead. It was dead.

I didn't kill it. All right. I don't, I don't believe in violence. I kind of don't know if you're supposed to. You sell weapons. Look, guns don't kill people. Okay. This is tough.

We don't know. We want to regurgitate this kind of rhetoric on the show. You don't blame a William Sonoma for selling a knife, do you? Okay, all right, let's just... You know what? Let's just move on. I hadn't thought about it. I got to ask you guys a question, and what are you playing?

And I hope it's... I hope you talked to me for a long time about what you've been playing. Well, we'll definitely do that. We'll definitely get into it. I think, because I just know, I do know what Matt's been playing, because we text it a little bit. I think you should maybe start with Matt. I'm just... Matt over that.

What are you playing? I go by many names. He goes by many names. The franchise. That's right. The Xbox kid. The Xbox kid. Mr. Games.

Mr. Games. Mr. Games. My birth name, Matt Apodaca. Matt Apodaca. My grandparents call me Matthew. Matthew. But you also might call me the finisher. Yes, you are the finisher.

The finisher. Because I, over our break, it is kind of crazy how much time you have when you just have one night of your week back. I have one night every week back have maybe like a little bit of a things slowing down for the summer at work and stuff. I finished five games over our break. Fucking maniac. Insane.

I finished five games. I started four games. Wow. I started one game the week that we were recording. You finished five games. I started four games that I finished. So one game. Oh, okay.

I was going to say so one game finished itself? No, I had I had started one of the games prior to our break. You finished that game and then went into four more and finished all this. Amazing. I'll start with

007 first flight. 007 first flight talked about it in the show. I got back in there and I finished it. It's incredible. Wow. It's so great. It's so fun. I'm getting back in there.

I'm doing the taxim missions. Those are like the like VR missions in like Metal Gear or Death Stranding or something where they you know put you through different like training scenarios and things like that. Those are a lot of fun. I think the story is incredible. I think the actor that plays James Bond is fantastic and that he should be James Bond. Okay. Soft launch.

Soft launch. Let him just be the guy. And it would be cool. If we go see a movie and then people who don't play video games, you can tell him, hey, he's from the game. It would be crazy. Nothing like that's ever happened before. It'd be really nuts.

I absolutely loved it. I think the story, like, the story becomes so much better than how it starts. Funny enough, it has happened. It has? The Last of Us has. I guess so, yeah. Actors from the game who reprised their roles in the show. Yeah, yes.

Yes, it has happened. Which is weird. Yeah, yeah. All right, you were saying? I really loved it. I think it was very respectful of my time. Okay. You know, I think it's like 15 hours or something like that.

Five of those are in a Jeep. Having a fucking conversation about where you're going to move. You're doing a lot of stuff. There's some of the, I will say, the early game does no favors to people who want to get in there. But like the, you kind of have to be down to be like, get in the immersive simness of the game because you're doing a lot of like, there's the stealth missions come on. I honestly think that this is a complaint that I've seen quite a bit of the game. people didn't like the shootout

missions. They thought there were too many of those. And I was like, yeah, I kind of... I liked the more clever stuff of like or having to bluff your way out of situations and things like that. Because they just recorded so... It was like interesting to hear his lies. They were like all really funny.

But like all that stuff was great. All the gadgets are cool. I just took a dump in my hand. Oh, sorry. No, and Bats and I, if Duke Newcomb says that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this hot guy says it. Everyone's upset.

But I loved it and, you know, it's on the short list. It's not going to be my game of the year, but it's in the running. Heather's losing it. I just had a concept for a movie I want to make. Gross, hot guy. Which is like a played for serious. Almost like a McGruber. A played for serious, James Bond.

Not a Austin Powers, James Bond. But the main character is just like doesn't know what's appropriate. That's really funny. Hey, what are you doing back there? Sorry, I was jacking off. No, no, no, no, don't shoot. I was trying to suck my own. I'll leave, I swear.

But it's like Daniel Craig, like serious. Like a guy who is not joking in delivery, he's just absolutely selling it. Like, like, please, please don't shoot. You ever looked in a mirror? I've never looked in a mirror before. What? Last time I counted I had 13 toes. So I rolled Craig.

on that. We talked a little bit about me playing a translated ROM of Pokemon Green. Yeah. I finished that. Wonderful. And that was just like, you know, I've played red and blue and yellow a million times. It was like just revisiting an old friend that, it was like revisiting an old friend from a different parallel universe. That's so cool. That doesn't have all your memories, basically. It's exactly the same game

functionally, but some of the art is different. And there, I don't know if this was, I can't remember if this is the regular game, but in Veridian City in the beginning, there's like a guy that's sort of like gating your path so you don't go too far, and he's like laying down. In my memory is that he's like sick. He says that he's sick. When you talk to him after

that interaction in this, he goes, oh, I was drunk. Yeah, of course. Like that's so crazy that's in this game for children. Right. It was really funny. They're a little less precious about that. Yes, and the gambling center is in,

in the game, they removed, I think, the word gambling out of the... I think it's called an arcade or something in the other one, but it's a casino in Pokemon Green. Incredible. That was just really, really fun. And then I was jonesing for more Pokemon still. So from in there, I played... I think I'm missing a game.

Hold on. I talked about First Light, Pokemon Green. Was it only four? I said five, I think. Oh, no. See, and this is my brain. starting to go. There's one I know you finished.

You didn't finish her. But I think you want to keep that as your closing. Oh, okay. I'll say Star Fox came out while we were out. I really liked Star Fox. I don't know if I could say that I beat the game because I haven't unlocked all of the routes. But I did roll credits on it twice and was like, I had a great time with this.

I will be chipping at this game throughout the rest of the year, basically, because it's like a fun enough game to pick up. I think you could finish the entire run in like an hour. or something. If I had a spare hour, I could just pick it up and see what I can do. It's really, really good.

I never played Star Fox 64 before or any, I had no experience with Star Fox other than seeing him in the movie, in the Super Mario Galaxy movie. And I'm happy to report, I love all those guys, those are my guys. Those are my little guys, and I love them more than anything.

You got a favorite guy? Well, it's Slippy, of course. I love Slippy, but the bad guys are really funny too because there's a pig guy, his name is Pigma. There's a lizard guy whose name is Leon. And then there's the nephew of the evil monkey guy, Andros, and his name is Andrew. Pretty good.

It's pretty good. I love that. And then, so to continue my Pokemon journey, I played a Pokemon game that I'd never played before. Whoa. Called Pokemon Black. I love it. Wow. I played that on my Ein Thor.

And I love it. I played all the way through it. Oh, my God. I love it. I play it was it's fucking incredible Pokemon Black is incredible

Pokemon Black is so good it did sort of feel like I was playing a Pokemon game from an alternate universe because I was not I was familiar with some of the guys but not all these guys Which guys were you familiar with

Oh you know your troubishes And your things like that And as soon as I had a trubish I made him It part of my party Went to the elite four With a Garbador And was so pumped by it

But the story is very adult also And the unique Why, could you fuck Trubbish? Yeah, you fuck. Jesus. In Pokemon Black, there's only new Pokemon. There's no, there's no original Pokemon from other games before. What a swing.

In Pokemon, it is, it is insane. It is this Street Fighter 3 original release. Yeah. Where you've got Ryu and then the rest of the roster is new dudes. Yes, they like mention Pokemon. Yeah. But like you don't see any ones that you're familiar with. I mean, I know that Street Fighter 3 third strike is over time.

Everyone was like, oh, that's like the greatest TD fighter. But looking back, following up Street Fighter 2 with Street Fighter 3 was unhinged. Street Fighter 2 was so huge. And then they were just like, let's just make a sequel to like all new characters. Fucking bat shit. It's so stupid. But this, it was cool to mess around some new guys in this. and I think in my, I hadn't played it before.

I skipped this generation just because I was just like, I might be Pokemoned out, then immediately get back in for 3DS. This one, I think it might be like my second favorite Pokemon game. It's so good. It's really, really awesome. Pokemon Black was the one that brought me back into Pokemon. It's so good that I wanted to immediately go into Pokemon Black 2.

where they do then add the ones that you're aware of and stuff and the story is a little bit different. It's two years later. So things have, I'm excited to see if they built this resort. I'm kind of guessing they built the resort. You go to this resort, it's like a desert,

and it's like not all the way built. And Pokemon Black, too, that resort better be built. So I've said improperly on the show before that Trubbish is introduced in Paris. Yeah. He's introduced in New York. And that's Pokemon Black.

And I was living in New York for the only time that I've lived in New York when Pokemon Black came. out and it was the way through which I processed the trauma of New York is that every time I would go home I would go play Pokemon Black and be like this is where I am it's this version of New York these are my guys this is what I'm doing and then Paris is the 3DES one right yes yeah yeah trauma of New York I wonder you've got a stressful job or something hmm you probably would have maybe you maybe you can relive this memory of taking a single bite of a slice of pizza and throwing it in in the trash and walking straight into the comedy store comedy seller yeah Yeah. But, and I'm bo-gardeing a lot of this time, and I do apologize. No, please. This is what it's for.

I played a game that is my game of the year, and I'm hard-pressed. Good luck to anything else coming out this year, honestly, even though there's some games coming out that I'm excited about. Like, I'm pretty sure, like, I'm going to love Control Resonant. Like, I'm going to, that's going to be my shit. Yeah. Yeah. Right up your alley. I've started and finished.

Mina the hollower Mina the hollower That was in studio too That wasn't like an added sound effect Yeah Meena the hall We might choose it in post a little bit It's up to you ranch

Yeah Make it go really long I look I look I just fucking loved it I love the art design I love the characters I love the music

I like that the game is fucking hard because it does become a little bit easier but I've seen a lot of I'm in the I've lurked in the Mean of the Hallwer subreddit people getting tripped up by a lot of the things that just didn't bother me at all It's very interesting because like the game doesn't

There's no tutorials in the game So it doesn't tell you explicitly how you're supposed to do things But there's like environmental mental sort of hints. So like, for example, there are gaps that are filled with water that

you can't, you can jump two tiles basically, but some of these gaps are three tiles in length. And you can't make that jump. But the game doesn't necessarily tell you that you can use Mina's central mechanic which is hollowing, which is

burrowing to the ground, to burrow in the water, which doesn't make a of sense. Right. But you can do it, burrow, and then jump and make, and you can make those gaps. The game doesn't tell you that, but there are parts where there are bones, which the bones are their money. Yeah. Sticking out of the water. So you could kind of like be like, I guess I can maybe go down there if I do it in this particular way. I didn't have, there was not a single roadblock in this game to me that's what people are talking about. Because like also, like I was not the only times I looked at a guide was to make sure I was going the right way because I wanted

to make sure I was following um you know I didn't want to just like be going in a way I didn't have to go or like sometimes the map you don't have a map until late in the game when you unlock stuff for your thing but you're not like carrying a map with you so I was like sometimes a little confused if I was going in the correct direction or not um but it's it's fucking awesome it's just like it in it you get these like trinkets and stuff you just be become more powerful in the game, which is, you know, of course, every game, but like you get things that then make the challenges. Like, a lot of these bosses that, like, have, like, really long health bars, I was just, like, taking down in one try, basically, that one hit, but, like, I was

clearing, I was clearing late game bosses, uh, in one go. The hardest parts where the, you have, there's these things called, I can't even what they're called now. It was like, uh, a little while ago that I did it, but you have to restore these towers in the game and they're like platforming levels where you can't take damage, but you, if you get hit, you fall all the way back down. Those were the hardest part of the game to me because they were like, there's all these obstacles and electricity going up the thing that'll just knock you all the way back down. But it's, I absolutely loved it. I highly recommend, I think everybody in this room, maybe perhaps including Ethan, with like like the game. It has a little something for

everybody. It's, I think, I think, Heather, you would absolutely love it. I think it's really, really, like, and then Nick, of course, you would love it, but and it's so good. I love it. I love it. I've been playing it. I haven't finished it. But I was, I intend

to, I actually intend to over the break, and then I just got distracted with those shit. But I will say that you and I talked about the power of our direction, because obviously it's so trying to ape a game Boy Color aesthetic. Yeah.

But it is just like one of the best looking games of the year because it's just got such a singular vision and so much consistency and, you know, such a gorgeous palette, such a well-realized artistic vision for this game. Yeah. And I just love seeing shit like that. Honestly, like even though it's a different thing, but it kind of reminds me in one of my favorite games, Celeste, just in terms of like, this game just looks gorgeous. It's going for a, you know, like, a.

like this this pixel art sprite based aesthetic, but it just pulls it off so well. And I'd rather look at this than, you know, so many AAA games that are trying to recreate reality. Yeah. And like this, like the, it's, you know, people have made this comparison, but it's like, um,

uh, not links awakening, a link to the past and like souls games. And the soul stuff I think works so well. It's so fun. Uh, but then there was also like some like, I felt like,

and maybe it's just me because I'm a baby. some genuine scares in the game. There was stuff that I was like, oh, which was a unique experience for a game with that art style. Well, I think that's also the soul's DNA creeping in, but like I think the, yeah,

what you should have to the difficulty, I'm repeating myself from a previous episode, but it's just, it's so front-loaded. Yes. But I think that's where people are bouncing off of it. And it's an interesting approach. I'll have a, I'll have more cohesive thoughts

when I've finally finished this game. But I'm so, I think it's, I love that you played it. I love that you finished it. And I'm excited to join you so we can talk about it in depth. I do want to, I do want to say, I did want to ask you as a Hollow Knight enthusiast. It's drawn some comparisons, even though that's a Metroidvania. This is more of a, you know, Zelda like slash Soulslike. But like, where does it stand versus something like a Hollow Night Silk song for you?

Similarly, punishingly hard games, my reputation. And I actually very recently started a new save on Silicon because I never finished it. I finished Hollow Night and people will disagree by my percentage of it being finished because I think I'm 50% away from 112, which is, I think, the finishing percentage. I think you know when you finished a game. If you've kind of rolled credits, you got to the end of a story,

you finished a game even if you haven't. There's a difference between that. It's just the difference between main story and completionist on how long to be. And I also finished it the night before Silk Song came out. So I didn't have to wait for as long as everybody else. But I want to get back into Silk Song because I, the, I think 50 something hours into Silk Song and didn't finish it. It was like this is just an all-time video game. But I would like to get, I wanted, I started it over so I can relearn how to play so that I can go back to.

my save and continue wrecking house. Fucking love to start a game over. It's fun. It's fun. I also might just keep playing that save because it's a good game and I know it's been patched since so maybe I'll lose the cred that I got for beating some of the buses I did pre-patches. But I think it's in that realm.

Like I, because it's recency bias, but I just like, I'm so in love with Mina the The Hollower that I just like, I want a new game plus. it. Like, I want to play it again immediately. But then there's also, like, all these things. People talk about how hard it is. You can turn things on to make the game easy. Oh. You don't get some of the feats or, like, the achievements or whatever, but you can make the game easy. People can do it.

Yeah. Those options are built into the game. I think there's just an aspect of people don't, there's a psychological thing of like, well, but I want the game to be tuned to my difficulty level by default because I don't want to feel like I'm choosing it to, choosing to make it easier. Yeah. Which I think that's just a, that's just a thing. But I don't know. I mean, I play all my games on easy, but I didn't do it. I didn't do it on this one. I played it default. But, you know, if a baby like me can do it, you can do it too. Psychonauts too, if memory serves. It may, may not be that game, but the, I think it was psychonauts too, where you could basically just turn off damage. You basically could just make your, you just walk through that game if you want.

I was like, yeah, have those, those features in there ostensibly as accessibility. you want. People can do it. People can opt out of the gameplay part of a game if they, if they really want. Um, because I, I don't know. I mean, I, I, I think that's fine, but I also am totally fine with the approach of, of Souls games. And it's just like, hey, this is what this is. This is, you know, take it or leave it. Ranch, did you ever end up any, uh, playing me to the hollower? No, not yet. Where did you land on Silk Song? Because I know you're playing that as well. I'm really enjoying it. Um, I just checked my time. I have put in 45 hours in it. Wow.

And I stopped for whatever reason. In the last like month or so, I went back to try to start it again. And I was like, I forgot how to play. Yeah. Wow. So maybe I'll start again too. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, look, look, we can do it.

You can do that. They let you do it. Yeah. I'm planning us starting again in life in general. Just going to pack up, move to Alaska to see what happens. You can. Yeah, I actually could. It's so strange.

If Nick were to do it, though, he wouldn't tell anybody. Yeah. No, I wouldn't. Hey, when I'm to Wiger, I don't know, he disappeared. I'd be really bummed. He'd hire a guy that, like, kind of looked like him. Which is like every guy. Hey, buddy, picture this is the end of a long day.

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the uh played the uh, played the, uh, Gerachi event. And I was like, you know what? I think I'm, it's time to take a rest here. I'm, I'm, I could keep hunting down. I don't know. I'm at 270 something in terms of the polka decks. Um, but I was like there is content coming. And wouldn't it be nice to not max out everything in the game so that when the new content comes, I can also be conjuring new Pokemon that I hadn't yet conjured, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so I took a break. Um, played a lot Fortnite, loving the spright season. And I feel like I uncapped myself in some way, because I've had a lot more success in

solos in terms of like getting crowns as a solo. It's been really nice. But the game that I decided to go back to is Dragon Quest 7 reimagined. Wow. I love it. Which I have been playing daily, but not for very long. I've put it in like a half hour every day of Dragon Quest 7. And it inspired me to go back and play the original Dragon Quest on NES.

Oh. Because I was like how, because so much of what Dragon Quest is is this like mesh of new and old, this nostalgic like sound cues and monster design married to a pristine modern visual fidelity. Like you have these really gorgeous monsters who look like perfect incarnations of like fanciful drawings, right? And I was like, how much of this is a relic from Dragon Quest 1? So I went on to the switch to like NES library thing. And I was like, let's play a little Dragon Quest or Dragon Warrior, whichever one is labeled in. It's not there.

So I went into the Nintendo store and it's available on its own for $2.99. sense. And I was like, that's a perfect price point for what is entirely a checkout line magazine purchase that I'm doing right here. Yeah. I purchased the game. It downloads in, you know, a minute. I started up. And it is one of those fucking garbage pixel remaster. Like, it's not actually the NES version of Dragon Quest. It doesn't even have an option for the original chip tune score. And I was like, but I want to hear the original, like, that's the original, like, that's the That's why I'm doing this is to see the museum aspect of Dragon Quest. So being that I still have my original copy, I am going to set up my NES and play it again to see, like, what it is retained.

But I am so fully loving it. It is so pleasurable to play. I don't think that I have a deep fandom for Dragon Quest games, but I do have a long-term fandom for them. Like it's like I love Final Fantasy games. Like if you were like, oh, at any point in your life, if you were to like time travel to any point in your life and you ask me what my favorite games are, chances are, you know, 10 years ago I would have said, Street Fighter and Final Fantasy.

But the truth is I've been playing Dragon Quest my whole life. Like since I've had access to Nintendo systems, I've been playing Dragon Quest. So I have like a love for these environments and these monsters and these sound effects. and every time you go up and down the stairs, it feels kind. I'm really enjoying it. I'm sort of dedicated to beating it. I don't know how long it's going to take me because I don't know how long the game is

and I don't want to look it up and I'm only playing a half hour a day. But really, really, really pleasurable experience. And if this was a Get Animate episode, I'd also say that I played and beat smoking behind the grocery store, which is one of last season's big hits. And I watched the entire series over our break. And it was also very nice.

Funny that, you know, working in animation, you aren't allowed to reference nor show a cigarette. And two of the major shows from last season and this season in anime are hung on the concept of smoking. It's back. Yeah. You have one where it's like two people smoking behind a grocery store and that's the entire where all the drama takes place. And then this season is chain smoker cat, which is about a fully degenerate human cat person who smokes cigarettes and cigarette butts that they find in like dog shit. Nick, what are you playing? You totally sold me on chain smoker here, cat, by the way, when you described it for me earlier. I was like, I'm watching this. You're going to love it. Sounds right up my alley. So I've been bouncing between esoteric ab. The disco-elisium-like and Mina the Hollower and have not committed to either.

I've not finished either. And I also was just keep looking at, you know, Adventures of Elliott, which is the, you know, the new JRP, that from Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default team that everyone says is a surprise like gem from this year. And I just like, well, now I'm just looking at a game that I could be playing in some of these other two games that I like. and I'm just like, I'm fucking, you just feel stupid. I was like, why can't I just commit to something? But whatever, that's the nature of this hobby that's so demanding of your time. But I thought instead, since I knew Matt was going to be comprehensive about Mena,

I thought I'd talk about Evo because we actually haven't recorded since Evo 2026 Vegas took place on June 26 through 28th. And I love eSports so much. I love in particular Evo. It's like one of my favorite things. I keep meaning to go. I said, when I talked about Evo a couple years ago, I was like, I'm going next year. And then I just didn't go.

And then this year I was like, I should go. And then I was like, but I might go to Vegas Summer League, which is like the weekend after we record this for the NBA. And I was like, I'm probably not going to go that either. So I should just kind of evil. And then I'm just like this indecision, just that the analysis paralysis of what I should be doing prevents you from doing anything. And that's sort of like that's the stasis I find myself in.

But I did watch a lot of Evo. And, you know, I don't actively play fighting games, but I love watching fighting game tournaments. I love that level of mastery and precision in the same way that I don't play soccer, but I love watching or proper football. But I've been loving watching the World Cup this because like these people are so fucking good at this. And just any display of mastery is just like, like, you know, I want to be like the whale and be like, people are amazing. Real quick on the World Cup. Yeah. People got mad at us that we didn't know Mexico was in the World Cup.

because he was one of the host teams. We don't know everything. We don't know everything. We front-loaded that episode by saying, like, we don't know. None of us follow soccer. We don't know anything about it. I will say,

I am a convert from this World Cup. I'm fully cup-pilled now. So, like, you know, if you're maybe less of a gatekeeper, maybe you can welcome some new people into your community. Yeah, maybe instead of saying, I can't believe

they don't know that Mexico's in the thing. How about this? Hey, actually, not even actually. Since you guys didn't know this, Mexico is actually in the thing. Yeah, because they are a host country in a host country to buy, which is a thing I've now learned.

Yeah, and you know what? I did watch the games, and when I was watching, I'm half Mexican. I started crying, watching Mexico play the World Cup. I don't even give a shit. I was crying.

I was so swept up. I also cried during my team's absolute loss. We watched the final Holland game, Holland Morocco at my house, and oh boy, that was rough. And then also my, I ordered, you know,

World Cup hoodie, like the official Nike Holland World Cup hoodie for to watch the games. And it was delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed. And it finally arrived a week and a half after they were out of the fucking tournament. I was like, ugh. But I want to defend Nick. Please. Every time I look over at Nick, even in the writer's room, he is watching World Cup on a minimized screen. Like the dude, like he's always, like you have watched an enormous amount of games.

it seems like almost agnosticly. You're right. Popper geiser. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I guess the absolute lad. You're an absolute lad. I was a, yes, I've gotten really into it. It's like two weeks ago, I didn't know Cabo Verde was a sovereign nation. And then like now I'm at a bar by myself.

And like I'm cheering when Cabo Verde scores a goal against Argentina and going like, fuck Argentina. It's just like, I'm just like, I'm just. such a, I can be such a bandwagoner. You can hide Nazis and get away with it. Let me just say there's a lot of Mexico fans, a lot of Columbia fans in Los Angeles, which I love. I love seeing

all those jerseys everywhere. I loved one of those teams were winning. I'm bummed there out of the tournament now. But Mexico fans, Colombia fans do not care for Argentina. In fact, it seems like no one likes Argentina. Kind of an enemy of the world. But, like,

Yeah, I've really enjoyed watching the World Cup. But back to Evo. I try to watch the top eights of the, you know, the eight finalists for the bigger, the games. I'm curious because sometimes like a, like, you know, a few years ago, Grand Blue Fantasy Rising, which in a game I don't really, you know, know, know anything about, but just like the competition was particularly compelling in that bracket that year. So I just got really into that.

So I'm curious if anyone wants to weigh in on the, you know, on the subreddit or the, I'm not going to look and so we're in it, but on the Discord, and point me towards any, like, great matches or great, like, you know, games that were there maybe a little bit more niche, because there was a lot of things in there, like the League of Legends Fighter, which I, the name of, I can't even recall right now, was in, was a part of Evo. There's, there's just a whole bunch of smaller games or lower profile games. I think that game's actually huge, but lower profile games that are, that also, you know, like the Street Fighter 3 Third Strike every year runs. And last year, the third strike matches were fucking incredible.

But the big game, Street Fighter 6, Guilty Gear Strive and TechNate, I'm definitely, I was definitely tuning in for all those. And then the Marvel Tokon exhibitions, which I've been sharing on our exhibition matches, which I've been sharing in our group text. Like that game, I just is, I'm excited for it. I'm like, oh, maybe I'll actually play this thing if it reviews well, because it looks fantastic. It looks really good. Nick, you have to watch young ladies don't play fighting games.

I think it will. Because also it features an enormous amount of technical analysis of Street Fighter. I'm in. Yeah, you should do it. I'm fucking in. I also discovered that. I also discovered that. Sort of subverting his usual thing.

There was a live action young ladies don't play fighting games. Wow. Where they used because the environments were in Unreal Engine for Street Fighter 6. They put the girls in the environments and the fights are held. happening in front of them. Whoa. Which is really cool. When they play an older game like Street Fighter 3 Third Strike, are they playing it on

original hardware? Are they playing it on like a PC or like a modern hardware or something? With something like Evo, they usually have a standardized hardware set. I forget what it is for third strike. I thought it was Dreamcast. I think it might be Dreamcast. That's awesome. That rule.

Yeah, they tend. And they're playing it on proper monitors. So it's like everything they're trying to get. because, you know, these are the absolute top level players. They need things to be framed precise. They need things to not be delayed. And so not to have input delays. So like all that stuff is really closely manicured at a tournament this high profile.

Street Fighter 6, Minard, who I believe is Dominican, plays Blanca and M. Bison. I think it was this fourth Evo win. And it was just like an incredible guy to watch playing. Just a really, what seemed like a dominant run to me, like a, like a, you know, and an amateur viewer. Guilty Gear Strive, which is one of my favorite games to look at, aesthetically so satisfying.

But in particular, the final, Red Ditto, who is American and Verix, who I think is from Senegal. Like, Red Ditto had a fairly convincing win here, but just the characters, Ram Lethal, who's like this female character who wields dual swords,

but they're kind of hovering, like, phantom blades. And then Nagoria, who's like this huge like fucking heavy guy. I think that's the character's name who has a coffin on his back. And it's just like, it was just such a great match between like a brute and a, you know, kind of the equivalent of like a Zenghi versus Chun Li sort of match. It was that sort of thing.

It's just like this. It's just really, really awesome to look at. And I love when you sort of see these clashing characters against each other. And then, and then Tekken 8, which is a game I like, the Tekken series never really appeals to me. And I don't know anything about Tekken, but I do like watching high level Tekken play. And by the way, there, there are, there are. our buddy Garrick, who was on a past episode, recent episode,

was pointing out that there's a character in Tech and 8 who uses the same fighting technique as the heavy, the bald guy in The Furious. And if anyone hasn't seen The Furious, just Hong Kong cinema at its best. It's my favorite film of the year. I haven't seen it yet, but you know who did go see it?

My mom. And she fucking loved it. I got to get on a text start with your mom. I absolutely will not allow that. The Furious is fucking awesome. But like watching that guy's move, that character's move set and mapping it on to the game. I was like, oh, yeah, this is really cool. Anyway, Arslin Ash was the champion Tegan 8 and that was all really, really cool.

So I just, again, any, any, I just encourage anyone who, you know, just seek out some of the matches from Evo if you, if you haven't watched it. If you haven't, a way to, you haven't checked it out because I just always, I feel like the euphoria you get from the champions and also the crowds are so great. The fighting game community is, is so supportive. and so welcoming. Yeah. And I just love every element of it. And I really do want to go one of these years. World Cup we talked about, like, you know, like I am totally World Cup pill.

I was looking at a football manager 26. This is another thing I want to, I'm a crowdsource because I love spreadsheets. And this game, like I thought it was going to be more of a spreadsheet. And I don't want to buy the EA football game, what the fuck it is. But I guess fans are kind of sour on this year's FM entry. So I'm curious to any FM fans out there have any hot takes on. because football manager is is less of a gameplay sim, like moment to moment, like the in-match action.

It's more of just like managing the overall football club. Yeah. And I do like that conceptually. I always love like career mode in or franchise mode in like Madden or NBA 2K or whatever where I can just sort of like oversee the administrative part of a team because that's the sort of thing. I'd be a GM. I'd be a team president. I'm not going to be a player, you know. You could be a player.

Yeah, you know what? It could be a player. I'll play professional. soccer fine. Why not? Why not? See some of these, I will say some of the guys out there, well, first of all, a lot of these people out there, hot as hell. Some very good looking players. But then some of these guys too, I was like, they're old for athletes. Like some of these, like there's a guy on Mexico, Ochoa, everyone's going crazy Ochoa. Yeah, that's who they bring in. They bring in Ochoa. And I don't know anything about the sport. I'm like Googling. Why is everybody

so excited? He's retiring at the end of the the at the end of the World Cup, I start crying. They're all so happy to see him. This is his last one. It was, it was, it's great. But yeah, some of these guys, and I was, like, looking up how old he is,

he's like 41. Yeah. He's not that old. Yeah, but by pro-athlete standards, you know, it's kind of, these careers are going longer and longer. I would get really hurt playing professional soccer, I think.

I think I absolutely would. I just get winded. It's just so much running. Well, you get hit in the head with the ball, and they just take it, like, in stride. That would kill me, I think. That'd be it for me, yeah. One hatter, I'm done.

Can I interrupt with a self-correction? Please. So at Evo, the Street Fighter 3 Third Strike is played on the original Capcom CPS3 system and a CRT. That rocks. Yeah. I would like to go see it. I think it would be just interesting to. It seems so fun.

But I was seeing we had, we didn't do this, but in the text, I don't know how serious you were floating the idea of going to Atom A Expo, not even maybe just for content, but for fun. Yeah. The videos that I saw from that looked like an absolute nightmare and I think we all would have died. I think we would have, my Japanese teacher was working

at Anime Expo doing doing translation for panels and seemed like, it seems like it's an overwhelming event. I just like the mass of humanity. I went last year. I went last year on Sunday just Sunday.

And it was so fucking miserable I think I've said this on the show before My very first anime Expo was Anime Expo 97 And my parents drove me And it was in the basement of a fucking hotel By the airport And then in the early 2000s I went to a few

And they were still in Long Beach And again, walking like space to breathe Like if there was a good cosplayer There'd be a small semicircle around them with photos I went last year and I felt like I was in hell Like it was you couldn't physically move most spaces. The LA Convention Center is somehow not big enough for it. Yeah.

It's really crazy. I had a panel at New York Comic-Con, was on a panel at New York Comic-Con earlier this year, maybe late last year. I don't remember exactly the timeline. But it was like, it was the same sort of thing. It's like, there's so many fucking people here. I cannot, I simply cannot stand it. But walking to your panel was probably pretty easy. Oh, plenty of seats.

Since the last time One of the things we talked about the last time we recorded It was the NBA Finals And I want to touch on that Because I was talking about Victor Wemba Nama And how he was like kind of he was OPE And he'd kind of changed the way that the game was playing As a singular entity

He was in the NBA finals as part of San Antonio Spurs versus the New York Knicks led by Jalen Brunson And Jalen Brunson, which I may have mentioned when I was doing this rundown, could not be more of a contrast in terms of Victor Wenban Yama, this, this, you know, freak athlete.

He was also like seven foot eight. He's so huge. He looks like General Grievous. And he's an incredible defensive player. And he's just like, he's, he's this, this physical marvel, who people are just like, I can't, there's, I don't know what to do against this guy because of just like how he is like, like his physical form. Jalen Brunson is, I believe, shorter than me.

I mean, he's listed at like 6-2, 6-3, but NBA players who are diminutive tend to exaggerate their height. And he's also not known particularly as an athlete, but he was envy he at the finals. And he led the Knicks to win in five, which was something no one predicted. And it was so fucking awesome. And again, just like, why I love sports is that just seeing the city of New York, seeing that fandom celebrate, they had not won a title in, I believe 53 years, something like that. It may be slightly off on the number of years. Just witnessing that. seeing the triumph of this guy who's just like, you know, this, this late David versus Goliath story

and just watching that happen in real time and seeing this guy completely overtake a game just by sheer will and then also just competitiveness and just an extraordinarily high skill level. It was just fucking awesome. It was a really, really satisfying finals. Anyway, that was me just sort of rambling about sports in general, but I didn't want to go back to the NBA finals because they left that hanging thread. And I didn't want to talk about the World Cup because I have become a convert. even though everyone is yelling us about being soccer idiots, which we admitted.

We led that off by saying we were soccer idiots. And I also want to say that just Evo is like one of my favorite things in the world. I love it. They all sort of coalesce under the umbrella of being sports, don't they? They're all sports. They're all sports. And they're all games. So actually, you're kind of welcome for actually the show.

I'm going to crownsler. I would be interested if there were any Evo controversies or huge e-sports controversies. I do remember one from Heartstone. There were there were like some cheating controversies or someone is playing, you know, for this player. There's, there's a face, but there's someone who is pulling the strings, like those sorts of things exist. I think I heard that Ryu was juicing. Wow. I've heard that on ESPN now, they use AI-aided imagery to deduce whether or not people in the poker games are bluffing. That's interesting. They do like a full analysis of like how long it takes them to count bets, how much they touch their face.

Like all of this stuff is like, like run through one run through what looks like the TSA fucking NSA profiling system. Yeah. And it's like, well, it's a 97% chance that this is a bluff. It's like, wah. We like also could get into how gambling is ruining sports. And I don't know if the gambling ecosystem is there in e-sports as well, but I have to imagine there's something of it.

But on that, kind of on that note, just, it is really funny how corrupt the World Cup is and how much of it is just, like, rigged. Yeah, Trump got a guy's red card pull. It's so funny. He just called like Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA. Get rid of the card. And then this guy is just like, execute Article 27, just like invented a rule that had not been used since, like, 1963. And we're like, what does this rule say? Oh, the rule says that I can do whatever I want.

Yeah, yeah. If the world, if the leader of the country calls and complains, you can just say, sure. Fucking rules. Insane. Everything's so bad. Anyway, shall we talk about the Square Annex Cafe and Shop? Let's do it. Yes.

I'll read this copy. Since 2024, Square Enix has been collaborating with Little Akihabra to find a multitude of ways for fans, both new and longstanding, to gather, connect, and enjoy new experiences. Now, in 26, the shared vision between Square Enix and Little Akihabra has material. We have ventured together to open an officially licensed Square Annex Cafe and shop right in the heart of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, California. With themed meals, drinks, and desserts from popular and notable Square Annex titles, fans can expect to see all their favorites and more. So we went a couple of weeks ago, and you're queued up in the shop. However, they don't want you, I think, to shop until after you're done in the cafe.

That's what it kind of felt like with the order of operation. I believe there are two different entries. You can go into the shop if you want to just shop. And then there's a different queue for the restaurant. But they also, like they definitely say, hey, make a reservation because this place sells out. And when we made a reservation, it was two or three weeks out. And when on the day of when I checked the reservation, the restaurant was sold out. You could not make a reservation for that day.

That being said, we walked in and we were one of two tables. Yes, it was all a very strange experience When I walked in, because I walked up, you guys were already in the lobby area, the lobby slash store area. Right, right. They were having a hard time with the door. There was something wrong with the door.

Two people were sort of fudson with the door. And I was just kind of standing there while they sorted that out. And then they were like, oh, they just like let me in. Yeah. And they were like, yeah, the door's broken. There were two roped off lines outside to hold customers in line.

Yeah. Both of those lines were empty. And I want you to say, here's what I want to say is I've gone to themed cafes in Japan. Okay, yes. So I had been sort of emotionally and mentally prepared for what I was going to experience at the Square Inix Cafe. Yeah. I once went to the Cowboy Bebop Cafe in Akihabra a few years ago when they were doing like a cowboy Boy, Bubop 25th anniversary or something.

It was a cafe in, felt like an office building, roped off by fabric curtains on standing poles, like sea stands with fabric curtains. Yeah. To divide up a restaurant space on an otherwise office building floor. Plastic table cloths on the tables, which were fold out tables, fold out chairs. cardboard standies of the main characters of the cast and a themed menu. And then I believe they were showing episodes on a couple flat monitors. That's pretty cool. The menu was, you know, the Spike Spiegel of curry or whatever.

Very lightly themed, not a lot of like decorative elements. The Cowboy Bebop chicken. I think there's a hot take. I think America does theme restaurants harder and more thoroughly than any other country. Well, this is what I wanted to ask because, like, I, you know, I've been to a fair amount of themed restaurants. You know, your rainforest cafes or whatever. You guys, I know recently went to Casa Bonita. Yeah.

That's a fucking blast. Yeah, I've heard it's incredible. Although there's a labor dispute there. There's a labor dispute. Oh, that's a bummer. But, and then you have theme parks, too. theme parks that then have, you know, area exclusive or themed restaurants. And those do a pretty good job as well.

The Star Wars restaurant at Star Wars Land and Disneyland? It's awesome. It's fucking rules. It's really great. Any of them do. Yeah, the Uga's Cantina over in Galaxy's Edge, really fun. I've never been. Oh, man.

Ranch, you ever been? Yeah. You went to Star Wars Land and Disneyland? Yeah. You like that cantina? That's cool. I got the Ronto wrap. Hey, there you go.

I heard a lot of good things about that Ronto wrap. I think the Ronto wrap is the premier treat. It's good. It's fucking awesome. Ethan, you had the Ronto

wrap? You've been to that Star Wars Disneyland? I've been to the Rantau Rapp. Wow. One for two. I've not been on myself. So I think...

I think we found something he's had. Yeah. I have one thing now. So I think that the expectations that are set by and that's,

And those, all the things you've mentioned are chains, right? Yeah, those are chains. You also have one-offs. You have things like Ed DeBevix in Chicago. Sure. You have things that are like the rock and roll McDonald's or, you know, you'll have like, there's here in L.A., you have a couple of unofficial Star Wars bars. Yeah, there's the scum and villainy bar.

You have. So Austin Powers one too, right? The Austin Powers one in Burbank, I think, but I think it closed, but it might even reopen. They should bring it back. They should make, you know what? And he has like the mojo in like the tube. I wonder what that tastes like. That's a fun idea.

On Fairfax in Los Angeles, there used to be a UFO themed coffee shop that had sculpted walls that looked like like 1950s like set design. You get into these environments and they are as immersive as money can buy. And if there's like a medieval cafe, I think there's a medieval cafe in Burbank where I used to go and get mead. And, like, the tables are, like, oak tables. And, you know, like, there's, like, a fiddler who would play music, like a live fiddler or whatever. So, you see, what do you... Tapra goes in there. Shut it down.

Everyone put on a suit and tie. The most generic gastro pub. It closes in six months. Put out white t-shirts and jeans. This is the Hank Hill restaurant. There's, there's Cafe 50s in L.A. That's a themed restaurant. You also have Mel's Drive-in, which isn't themed, but is an immersive 50s diner experience.

Yes. So in America, when you're coming from these cultures of like what a themed restaurant is, you go into a square Enix cafe with like a pretty, like you already can imagine what you think is going to be there. And none of that stuff is there. I will say it felt like when we walked in there that they forgot to do it. it. Yeah. They were like, oh, fuck, people are coming. We got to put the stuff out.

Shit. It is a series of featureless tables and chairs. Yes. Many, many monitors on the walls, like, like maybe 20 flat screens that surround the entire room, playing trailers on either extremely low volume or total mute. Yes. In the center of the restaurant is a single rolling table. with two statues on it of like that are available for purchase, one of like Cloud, one of, uh, near like, uh, like,

they were cool statues. They're cool statues. Sure. In the way, I would say. They were in the way. But the idea that like, when you can go to movie theaters in Los Angeles that have the costumes and props from the movie you're seeing, if you go to the Chinese theater and you might see Avatar,

you might see like, here are the handmade designs for the thing, that you would walk into the, only official square inyx cafe and restaurant in in in north america and there wouldn't even be a full-size replica buster sword on the wall yeah is kind of surprising yeah there it you know i i mean by contrast think of our experience at the nintendo museum in kioto where they have a bunch of like original design documents from like you know like metro and it's just like oh wow this is this is graph paper of like like versions of levels I've played. Like like it'd be cool if they had some doesn't even have it doesn't even have to be

original stuff. But if they had like, hey, here's some, you know, here's some sort of stuff that would be on a behind the scenes feature, you know, like like like I don't know. Any any additional flare to enhance the experience. I went to another square enix themed bar and restaurant when I was in Japan once. It was the Dragon Quest is funny because I again, don't think of myself as a Dragon Quest fan. But I was like, oh shit, there's a Dragon Quest bar. key your favorite thing.

So I went to the Dragon Quest bar and they, the most horrifying thing about it was they were just playing the tavern music on Loop. Concerning. But it was still more of an experience of the thing. Yeah. Than this experience was, which felt, again, a lot like you were in an empty cell phone store. Right. with tables set up. Even like the hard rock cafe has,

the walls are lined with bullshit you don't care about. Right. Like, uh, or I don't think Bucca, I sort of go with me on this. I think Bucca de Beppo is an Italian restaurant themed restaurant. Yeah, yeah,

you're right. The theme is Italian. Yes, because it's not, it's not good, but it's like, it's themed like an Italian restaurant. Cheesecake Factory is themed like something.

The cheesecake factory is themed like something. The cheesecake factory is. The, the theme is. The theme is perfect restroom. Yeah. The theme is heaven on earth. But here at the Square Unix Cafe, and again, we're all fans of Square Enix. We don't want to dog the fucking, like, we love the brand.

We love the games. Very peculiar experience. Now, did the menu deliver? The menu is an enormous number of themed items, which are, I think, better than, like, if you get the Minions meal, you're getting like, maybe a decorative box around what is regular chicken nuggets or something, right? I know. I haven't even gotten the damn thing yet. At the Square Enix Cafe, we got Square Enix food and it was deeply themed Square Enix food. If fully delivered on like, I got, what? Well, no, I totally agree with you there. We should say that this was, that we technically

were part of the soft opening, so they did not have the full menu available. So some of the things like, if you look at the menu, which is fully online, something's like the Midgar Fondue, which I was looking forward to. It was like, oh, what a cool. They got like that, you know, the, the, like, the, the, like, the pizza from, you know, from, from, from, from, from, from, from, from, from, from, that's good place that, that, that, that, uh, that everyone lives under. Yeah.

The subjugated population. Like, that's such a cool idea to make that into a weird thing that's a, you know, got four different pizza slices with a bunch of cocktail weaners around it for some reason. Yeah. But it's just like, I like, that's, that's good theming. But unfortunately, there was only a limited selection of it. And we should say, too, that the only way to get. you had three different sets to pick from basically.

I think, and like, so like you can, which it came, like ours came with like a drink, a main course, a dessert. And then two things that they included as, this is cool, you'll like this, that were effectively trash. One was a paper placemat. And then every, everything, your drink, your entree, and your dessert came with. a coaster, a cardboard coaster, and they were like making it like

it was like an exciting thing. A foil wrapped. A foil wrapped. Randomized coaster. So we get to rip some packs in there. I will say our server was great. Yeah. And our server also was like if we if we opened a coaster and we had a dupe, he'd let like I don't want to get him in trouble, but he was letting us swap it out for a different one. Which had happened to Heather prior to opening one of hers it seemed because it had a fingerprint on it.

I also spilled on to my place, Matt, and ruined it. Yeah, and also he pointed at your tiger tattoo and he said that he liked it and you said, I'm Tiger and he didn't care. He was awesome. He was great. So I want to say that even though the restaurant itself was not very well themed, the food itself was, like, look, I got the metal slime curry. Should we start with drinks? Should we kind of go in order? Sure.

Because I do think we like like I end up with an all slime course. But we got you get some cocktails that are not actually. They're mocktails. The the millennials love slime, don't they? I can't enough of the stuff. So they have a squishy slime like macktail, which you got, which is I'll just read the copy here. It's a fizzy and refreshing with notes of coconut blue curacao and served with clear jelly. And I got the squishy she slime.

Fizzy and refreshing with notes of mango, strawberry, and served with a clear jelly. So they're basically like a blue and a red version of the same thing. Yes. They come, though, in these little, like, stemless wine glasses that unfortunately had rounded bottoms, so they were very prone to being spilled. Very spillable. And they, but they have little slime faces on the glasses, and that was a lot of fun. This should have been, because also the set that we got, we have to say,

was $50 for all of this. including the paper products, which they're advertising as a big deal. We should have walked home with those cups. Those cups should have been ours. I know. They should have given them to us. I can't believe we didn't get the cups. I had a zodiac, which was a sparkling mineral water with notes of grape lavender

and topped with blueberries and gold stardust. My drink had an ice cube in it with a light bulb inside of the ice cube that was lit. Yes. And I believe your first words after your first sip were yuck. Yeah, I don't recommend that particular drink. Don't drink sugar. You also don't drink sugar. So you were like, well, this tastes insane.

Yeah, yeah, it did taste insane. We did taste insane. We liked ours. Well, I like there's also just like, theming-wise. It was like, oh, it's in a form factor of a slime. I like that. I like that. I like that.

It looks like a slime. I like that kind of character designs and gaming. I don't remember if the Cloud and Sephiroth cocktails were available. I don't believe they were. Yeah, because those have little like, you know, buster swords. and Sephiroth's sword, you know, are kind of put in there. And then they also have these white and black mage drinks, which are also not available.

But we got the ones that we, of the options that we were. We should also say that, that theming wise, did I already say this? The only themes were Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Near. Yes. So it was like, it was not fully spanning, comprehensive tour of, you know, Square Inix's vast catalog. It was focused on these three franchises. And they were advertising the Adventures of Elliot quite a bit.

it. Yeah, they were. Not featuring it. And then they did have like some Final Fantasy like coasters, but that was kind of, I mean, that was kind of it. So to the main course, which we had two options there, you could either get the liquid metal slime curry, which was chicken curry over rice with a side of spring mix, cherry tomato, and a crispy chicken bite. What makes it metal slime? We'll get into it. And then the other option was the Yorha type 9, number nine, type S, rather, black tortilla roll, which is near themed and was grilled chickens, beans, onions, and leaf vegetables wrapped in a black flour tortilla served with a side of chips and salsa. That's what you got, Matt.

Yeah. Heather and I both got the liquid metal slime curry. I'm going to show this to Ethan because I don't know, this is the sort of thing of it may not legally qualify as food. No. Yes. Yeah, not at all. not at all. It is, so it has like a silver sort of sheen to it that's more gray in practice, but there is

a shimmering element of like, I guess edible, I hope it's edible glitter. It was edible glitter. That's within it. So when you looked at this gray curry and you looked at it on an angle, it would look a little bit like magic and a little bit like an oil slick over the top of your gray curry. I want to say there were three items that we couldn't have. It wasn't just the Midgar Fondu pizza. It was also the Dalamoon.

prosciutto risotto and the Mughal stamped cheese hamburg steak. Both of which I think are a little more lightly themed than the liquid metal slime curry, which I would say is the most aggressively themed item on the menu. Yes. What I got was basically the theming was that the tortilla was black. Yeah, you got the Yorha number nine type S black tortilla roll. Yes. So the liquid.

Well, I'll say the way I ordered it, I was like, I'll have. the wrap. I'm not doing all that. The liquid metal slime curry came with a handful of a bagged mesclan green spring mix. And as a garnish, as well as a

single tomato and I guess one lone chicken nugget, which was very confusing. Yes. This was bad. No, hold on. I did not like this at all. Wait a minute.

I thought this had like a pasty texture to it. I went into my first bite being like, this is going to be the worst thing I've ever eaten in my life. And I thought it was absolutely airport food middle. Like it was just like, okay, this is recognizably Japanese curry. You know what?

I'll agree with you. Airport food, which to me is bad. Like that's kind of, that's maybe where we're maybe saying the same thing in different ways. It's bad, but you're like, well, I have to eat something. I was like, because I like, you know, I go to the. I go to all eat the theme park foods gotten really good actually this was like sub like aquarium food to me wow it felt like I mean I my rap was like completely fine but it wasn't like I've it was just like not good like because like it was like obviously like grilled chicken from like a bag or

something something you know what I mean it wasn't anything and you know how like sometimes you get beans from a place you're not familiar with and they're like kind of like sweet for some reason. Yeah. I was kind of like, it kind of tastes, has a sweet taste to it for some reason. It was low quality product, which was the main issue at the center of it. You know, I'm sure everything was just like the lowest grade cheapest Cisco off a truck, you know, frozen product.

They could use as basis for these things to maximize profit. The issue I should say about the liquid metal slime curry, beyond its bizarre hue, is there were eyes and a mouth on the little like mound of rice. that was meant to signify the metal slime. Yeah. Not edible. Wait. They were just paper.

They were? Yeah. Did you eat them? I thought it was that like marscapone stuff. Oh man. I thought it was just straight up paper. Yeah, I had a cut out of, I guess her name is 2B or something from near. We apologize.

We don't, we have, none of us to play near. I'm going to play near. Heather's going to play near. I started to be great. I started it just to see if I wanted to. to keep going with it. But I took one bite of that and I was like, this doesn't seem like food.

But Heather seems to love hers. One of my favorite things about the menu. Heather brought her own paper to eat. Is that it also would tell you what the theme was. So like if you're having a Sephiroth drink, it would say parentheses, Final Fantasy themed. In case you got the metal liquid, the liquid metal slime curry and you were like,

where the fuck is this from? Sort of implying that there is a scenario in which someone might stumble into this restaurant that's unfamiliar with any of the IP. When I worked at the, I used to work at the Hollywood Improv, the Comedy Club over here on Melrose, and one time these ladies came in, and they were very dissatisfied with their meal. And I was like, oh gosh, I'm sorry, are you guys seeing the show?

Can maybe get you guys some free drinks or something? And they were like, what show? And I was like, oh, you guys came to eat at the restaurant at the comedy club? And they were like, we didn't know it was that. I was like, it's called the improv. And they were just like so confused. And I just like comped their meal because I was, I guess, a little rude to them. It was, it happens.

I wanted to shout out another themed restaurant. I was just like when I was in Chicago this last winter. Yeah. I was wandering around downtown and I had to kill time because I believe Mary was getting a pedicure. and the only restaurant I could find that had a seat was the Ralph Lauren restaurant. So I sat at the bar and had shrimp cocktail. Fuck yeah. And that restaurant was so well themed.

Oh, sure. It was like I was in one of those, it was like a magazine spread. Yeah, your spoon was a croquet mallet. It was like there's so many paintings and so many books all over the fucking walls. And it's like, that's a clothing stores themed restaurant. Well, hold on. Then you know what I fucking love? The Tommy Bahama restaurant.

There you go. The Tommy Bahama restaurant is my happy place. I love it there. There's two different ones. There's the Tommy Bahama. It's usually attached to a store so you can go, you can have my tithes at dinner and then be like, you know what?

I'm going to go downstairs, buy a shirt real quick. Go do that. Go do that. Then they have Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar. And that's like a bar area. It's like a bar restaurant Or they have like You know

A bar And then like Sort of like bar food Your burgers and like Tacos and stuff like that But like Why you're stepped out for a second I'm talking about

Heather brought up the Ralph Lauren restaurant That she went to Chicago It's a well themed restaurant I just brought up Tommy Bahama Tommy Bahama That's good stuff The food there also is like Nice

It's like a nice restaurant You sort of wouldn't expect Yeah. I mean, I guess they're like expensive, like fancy shirts or whatever. So you would want the food to be good too. But that food is like, that's like my favorite restaurant. I think we've been thoroughly spoiled in the U.S. on themed restaurants. To the dessert course.

So I will actually say the desserts may have been a highlight. I think the desserts cleared everything else. Kind of salvaged the meal. So we actually got three distinct ones. We got all three of the options that were. available. They unfortunately did not have the bite-sized cactore churros. Yeah, that would have been really good. I really like cactore. Served in a martini class. They also had a minion dessert plate, which is not the banana minions. We're not talking about Kevin and Stuart and Bob, not to mention

James, the newcomer. They, this is more just like some, like assorted characters from Final Fantasy. But we did get the Yorha number two, type of B, glass parfait. layered dessert featuring marscapone, whipped cream, cookie crumbs, and coffee jelly. So this one had like a black top to it that you kind of could penetrate through, and then it was just like a, you know, like a layered kind of cookie and coffee dessert. We got the Warrior of Light, No Bake Cheesecake Moose, which was sponge cake topped with cheesecake. Nabbage, does that you say that? And accompanied by...

I believe it was pronounced Nah, bitch. And accompanied by diced strawberries. And then also these slime pancakes, which were, of course, Dragon Quest themed, three pancakes served with a side of bananas, berries, whipped cream, and vanilla ice cream. And when we say slime pancake, it was normal pancake in the shape of the iconic slime design. With his little face printed on the pancake, I guess. Whereas when we say slime liquid metal slime curry, this was a curry where the rice ball was in the shape of a metal slime. and then the rest of the curry had dripped off of him over the rest of the bread. It was like gray diarrhea.

It was nasty. Like if that came out of you, you'd be like, I guess I'm fucking dying. My robot's sick. My eyeball to the shop. So the Warrior of Light no-bake cheesecake moose had an interesting. interesting plating, which it came on a yellow sheet of paper that looked like a craft American cheese single. And of course, I was like interested in that because I know that there's, you know, you could

have cheese with dessert. Why not? Right. Why not? But it was actually just a napkin with a thin piece of plastic over it, which made taking bites out of it almost impossible because it was slipping around all over the plate. Was the warrior of like wearing yellow? Like, what was the design concept?

I got to be honest, I have no fucking idea what this is supposed to look like. Yeah, I mean, I was, I don't really remember either. Yeah. It was like a mound of sponge cake with kind of a blue, you know, layer on top of it. Well, the blue layer on top is his helmet. So it had, it is the blue helmet with the horns sticking out of it was evoked by the blue-topped cheesecake with the two pieces sticking up. I think I would have gone with a different theme. only because the blue looks too similar to the slime blue.

It's supposed to be his cape. That's what the yellow is. So I'm pulling up a design of the Warrior of Light. And there is a yellow cape that is around his neck. And that is what the yellow napkin is supposed to be. It's a bit of a stretch, I think. The whole thing is, it just doesn't, it doesn't look quite right. I think the horns and I think it evokes the helmet.

The helmet, I'll give them the helmet. I just don't know if it's as iconic as they think it might be. No, no, no, no. You know what I mean? I'm surprised it was not like if I was to do a cheesecake with a pointy feature, I'd have put a bunch of points on it and have it be cloud. I would have had it be, what's the white Kate Sith? Oh, fuck, yeah, Kate Sith.

Yeah. The Mughal that he writes up. Yeah, the Mughal. I'd have it just be a regular Mughal even. Great, great idea. Yeah. Matt, Mughal cheesecake. I'm telling you.

It's already got the base color. Nick joked about getting John. Tafer in there? You let us in there? You'll be printing money. I'm shutting this slice down. Mike. I'm pressing restart. So, okay, so this is a little bit of context for me. So Warrior of Light specifically, because when I hear Warrior of Light, I think about the Final Fantasy One character. I think of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Yeah, that too. I mean, of course, like chiefly. I mean, you know, probably first. But I guess Warrior of Light, this specific design is a boss from the seat of sacrifice expansion

for Final Fantasy 14. So that's what this is meant to resemble physically. Okay. That's why it was maybe a little bit of lost on me. I got to say for a no-bake cheesecake, I thought it was absolutely delightful. It tasted so good. It also had little blue chunks of jello.

Yeah, that was weird. Surrounding the plate. The whole thing was strict. Nothing here was normal, but it was, I liked, I liked that. Also, I love jello. I really liked, so I only had a couple bites because, again, it was more sugar than my body had had in years. I really enjoyed the layered whipped cream cookie, crumb coffee jelly dessert that I, that was my near dessert. That was fun.

I was like, first off, because I never eat sugar, this is the most delicious thing I've ever had. Second, I had a headache instantaneous thing. No, yeah, yeah. I liked yours quite a bit as well. Really good. Really good. Really good. A delight.

But I think, yeah, I really like the Warrior of Light one dessert except for the posted it was served upon. But I think we all agreed that the big winner here was the slime pancake. The pancake was hidden. It was really, really good. And it sort of made me rethink about pancakes in general because I love pancakes. We've gone over this a million times. Pancakes are good. Pancakes my number one in the waffle, French toast, pancake conversation.

Oh, I'm a waffle project. I love pancakes. I go French toast. This is why the podcast works. When you really do boil it down, it is that. And I know, I think ranches is, if I had to guess. Hot egg. Well, yeah, you want the egg to be hot.

But you're a waffle person? I'm a waffle person. There we go. I just got a new waffle maker. Oh. Guys, I got a new waffle maker. Yeah. And I now make such incredible, I'm going to have you guys over for waffles.

I love it. I'm twist my arm. But like, it made me rethink about pancakes in a way because I like, I, for, they're sweet. They're almost dessert. Yeah, they're cake. You eat them at breakfast. We shouldn't be eating them for breakfast. We should be eating them with a side of ice cream at nighttime.

Yes. Side of ice cream and whipped cream, but also like I did have, this is not mentioned the menu, but it was served with maple syrup and butter as well. So it was really like and the presentation of it like there's a little like menu screen, you know, kind of like a UX element vintage that's kind of like on a, you know, a little card that's under. A Mascapone card. Which is kind of fun. I like that. I like that presentation.

I like that plating. I like the slime. I like that you could eat his face. And I just thought it was, I thought this was all of these were pretty on point thematically and all of them were yummy. It was actually pretty good that the. pancake wasn't blue. I kind of think we would maybe lose a little something if they made the pancake blue. They should have made it blue.

You think they should have made it blue? They should have made it blue. I couldn't take more unnaturally hued foods at this point. Well, blue. Your shits were going to be bad out of way. Blue is achievable with butterfly tea. Yes, I know this from the Star Wars cookbook. Yeah, yeah.

I've made blue noodles before. They are harrowing to eat, but they are completely natural. Yeah. I think more food should be blue. Yeah, you can make blue food and it's natural. So afterwards we went into You exit through the gift shop We you know

Matt got the T-shirt I got the T-shirt and it's it's a It's a chokobo A sort of how would you describe him A young lad A young lad wearing a little swim trunks And sunglasses on a surfboard He's got the meme sunglasses

He's got yeah trunks He's on a surf in a storm I got stuff all over my shirt from dinner Oh no boy I got I don't know what that is Anyway I'm sorry And it says Los Angeles

at the bottom underneath a wave that is cresting. I'm sure it's ruined. It's not ruined. It's not ruined. It actually just came straight off because this is the thickest plastic. But it's not uncomfortable to wear. That's great. But it does say Los Angeles.

And I do think, though, they played it smart because the other one had the slime on it. But the logo within the store had them both on one. And I think they sort of knew that they wouldn't sell as many shirts if it was just, if it was both. Yeah. You could sell twice as many shirts if you separate the guys. Right. No, I mean, I think that was a good arrangement there. I will say that is an official shirt that looks like a bootleg shirt.

Yes. No, this feels like I want it. You know what I wish? I wish that there was one representative item from all of the major iconic. Like, I'm surprised there wasn't a, I guess there was the Chrono Trigger soundtrack. but generally it felt like there was an opportunity in that store to have one item front like the way that you might go in a Pokemon store and there's like a Pokemon like a Pokemon good with your guy on it right make me a seesalt ice cream bar like there was there was nothing kingdom hearts related in the store at all or on the menu yeah and given the size and the scope of the property and like the and the fact that we are in los Angeles near Disneyland like you could imagine tourists coming to both of those locations. Yeah.

And it's crazy that of the two, you would get your fucking Kingdom Art shit at Disneyland and not at the Square Enix store. I wonder, though, if that's why it's not available is because of their licensing arrangement with Disney that kind of maybe is a little bit more restrictive than we realize. You can get Kingdom Hearts shit at Hot Topic. Yeah, but I mean, at official square store, maybe they're a little bit more. I don't know. I'm just, I'm just speculating, but it does, it did suck that it was, it was notable for its

absence. Yeah. Also because I was basically near tier. But yeah, I mean, I think the best part was going with you too. A lot of fun. We walked around a little Tokyo and the L'Aki Haber afterwards. I looked at a shocking number of used hentai figurines for sale. Yes.

Yeah, that was. You can buy just a little, an action figure of a naked lady and a lot of them were pre-owned. It's almost like It has the same sadness to children's shoes never worn But you know, it has like this sort of like My life change Penta figure, never jerked It's like I had to put this away

I had to like get this out of my life I'm different now It's just the old me Yeah yeah We went to a gotcha bone store And we I gifted ranch her her items Oh hell yeah

This, before we recorded, one of them is a, a yaku soba. Yeah. Yaku Soba. And then this looks like some sort of like sauce? Yes. In a shampoo bottle? Yeah. You don't want to get those mixed up.

Oh, my God. Let me start. Your hair might become fire or something. I also got, there was a Doritos one, and I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was so ready. I was so wanted the nach cheese or the cool ranch. and I ended up with fucking there was some exclusive flavor. The avocado. Avocado was like, this is fine, but this isn't the drink.

I'm sure they're good. My dumb-ass self forgot to take you guys to the book off, which has a pretty significant video game section, and I wish I'd done it. And you know what? You'd take us to a few different places. Yeah. We had a lovely time.

It is unfortunate, though, that I'm simply never going back over there. Okay. No, I do. You know what? I have a lot of. Walls with downtown. I get a little anxious, like trying to,

and this just comes from, I figured out basically being younger and not wanting to pay to park. And now I'm like, parking's just like $20. So I'll just like park. It's like not a huge deal. You eat the price. I paid at the thing and was completely fine to do it.

Take the fucking choochoochoo. I got to take the two. That is like, there's a train stop right there in a little Tokyo. I walked there. It was a two minute walk after we went to the, the Japanese grocer. So you would recommend Ubering to a train station and then taking, because I'm not walking distance from a fucking train.

Yeah, that's the issue. You do have a last mile problem for some people in the city. That's a general problem with L.A. transit. And I don't know what the bus routes are from your place, but it may be a little bit. Take a waymo. By that point, just take the waymo the whole way. Just go all the way there. So that is supposed to me.

I do live close to a rail stop. And also, I was headed to Union Station because I got on. I just, I had a planned trip to Santa Barbara, so I did this lovely lunch with my friends. And then I got on the light rail to the Union Station, and then I hopped on the Amtrak straight to Santa Barbara. And I had a great day on the rails. I learned something about Santa Barbara recently is that it's named after a woman named Barbara who looked like Santa. That's a fun fact. It was...

Oh, how, ha! Hey, boys! I'm Santa. Barbara. Want to kiss under my mistletoe? I'll suck your dick. Okay, so just making subtext text. Wow.

You like macaroni and cheese? Spells hers with a leaf. I treat a D after I suck your dick. Okay, so Barbara's a one-trick pony. Put it in my butt. Okay, she's learned a couple tricks. I was just kidding. I know.

I don't want you to think that was true No, I didn't think it was true But I thought we were all just kind of playing along I was just kidding Yeah, I got that you were kidding And you know what, I liked it I approved of it Nice bit of tomfoolery

A gentle jib Are you boys, virgins? I think after hearing you, I am again I can stop it How How Santa Barbara. Somebody get Lauren on the phone.

Shall we do a segment? Let's do a segment. I have a segment and guys it's a bit new. A new segment. I don't know about you guys. But it's summertime right now. And it's got me feeling like Rob Thomas and Santana saying stuff like, man, it's a hot one.

Okay. So. Where is this going? I have a list of the top 10 most searched video game characters on Pornhub and it adds of 2025. And it's up to Nick and Heather to tell me who they think is on the list. So this is going to be tricky. This is this is 2025 list.

So this is very current. The stats for 2026 have not come out yet. They will be in Pornhub's year in review at the end of 2020. I'm going to go. I'm starting out. I know immediately out of the gate. I'm just going to go. Okay.

Tifa. Tifa is number one. It's a very good guess. What I was going to say is sometimes with these lists, they're skewed in a way that's surprised. Like I noticed that you got a rule 34. and like American Dad is really high up there. A lot of people are jacking off to American Dad.

And I'm just like, I'm just surprised because I don't know this franchise as well. But I'm also like, I guess it probably has a large teenage fandom. And those are the people who are jacking off the most. Roger with Big Natural. Right. And it's good art. It's well realized. It's good art.

It's not AI. No. So you're just saying you're going to say some things they might not be on the list and you'll be surprised by that. No. Yes. And I'm also going to say like, I'm going to. to try to orient my thinking towards things that I think might be on the list, even though they're things that I might not immediately think are the most jackoffable.

Anyway, that's not going to be my first guess. My first guess is going to be one that I believe is a staple of porno. Mercy from over overwatch. Mercy is not in the top 10. I'm fucking crushed. But you'd be, but there are other Overwatch characters. I don't know other Overwatch characters. I'm going to guess, and this is just because I've seen her featured a lot on Reddit,

Near. To be from Near Automata is number seven, yes. Number seven on the board here. I would say there are some glaringly obvious ones. Are they all from Japanese developed games? No, not necessarily. Okay, so there are some from some Western developed games. Are there any that are from games that have come out since 2020?

I would say yes Okay All right I'm gonna go for three for three here Here we go Yeah I've got TFA I've got type B Cammy

Cammy is not on the list Wow But you're in the ballpark Street Fighter character is on there Is it Chun Lee? Is Chun Lee is number three on the list There we go That makes sense

That's three And I'm on the board Is I'll just get you know obvious Is Princess Peach on the list Princess Peach not on the list But a list that I was looking at before was

And you know who was on the list? Mario. That makes sense, though, because I could see people just searching Mario on Pornhub because they're looking as a catch-all for like Rosalina, you know, Peach. Mario fuck Sonic. Yeah. Mario fuck Donkey Kong.

Yeah, they also might just want to see Mario fucking. That makes sense. It's just such a big character. He goes down pipes. Let's watch them lay it. Are these all, like, female-coded characters? I would see. Yes, they are.

Okay. Is are any of them like animalistic? And are any of them like like furry characters or you know? I would say there are two that I'm not 100% sure of. Okay, that makes things a little bit trickier. Yeah. I'm going to guess. But I'm going to, I think no.

I don't know if this even qualifies as video games because this is from the anime, but I'm going to guess Misty from Pokemon. Misty from Pokemon, not on the list. Fuck. Ranch, you can chime in if you have any guesses on what people are jacking off to. The Hot Girls of Video Games on Porn Hub. I have a guess. Yes.

The Big Lady from Resident Evil. Lady Demetresk is number six on the list. Ranges on the Blame. The Big Lady. Big Ladies. Yes. That is a great guess. Okay.

Speaking of Big Ladies is Carlack from Balders Gate on there. Carlack not on the list. Are there any Baldersgate characters on the list? No Balders Gate characters. Are there any characters from Western? RPGs? No. Okay.

Okay. All right. Hmm. They're too woke. They're too woke. Can't jerk off the woke ladies. Yeah, they made them look like real women. I don't know.

All the Skyrim and Witcher mods I've seen. People are jacking off to these games. I'm just never going to play Skyrim, I guess. Are there, I mean, at this point, you don't have to. There have been so many games that have been built on, like, Skyrim's, you know, design principles that you get it. So we have. four now? Yeah.

Can we start getting some hints? You've named a franchise. Two franchise have been named. Overwatch. Yeah, I just don't know other Overwatch characters. Anyone else?

You got a point, or you tossed out one that was not on the list but you named a franchise, you named a character from a franchise that you didn't succeed. I don't remember what Heather got wrong. Is it Sakara?

Oh, no, we got Chunli. She, I was like, Jesus Christ. No. There's another, I will say, there's another there's another resident evil character. Hmm. Is it, uh, uh, Jill Valentine.

It is not Jill. Oh, it's, uh, it's, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Ava Wong. Eta Wong, that's right. Yeah. Um, number five on the list. And then, I don't know if you guys will get, hmm, the rest of them are kind of tough. There's one, there's one that I'm surprised hasn't come up yet.

Are there characters? Can you give us, give us the developer. Ellie, parentheses, young. No. Can you give us the developer? We can just kind of go like maybe what entry? Because where are we? We got one. We've got which ones are open.

I don't know what which one makes for games. Number two is, number two is open. Okay. Is that, can you give us a publisher? Can you give us the genre of game? Action Adventure. Okay, it's an action adventure game. Is it Japanese developed?

No. Okay. It's a Western. It's a, well, not necessarily Western, but is it Western developed? I would say so. high. Action adventure game. Laura Croft.

That's right. Yes. Yeah. Laura Croft's number two on the list. Of course. That's a classic. We went jacking off to Lara Crofts and said the first Tomb Raider. I remember them calling a womb raider.

I love polygonal breasts. If you back her into a corner, you can see your tits. Are there any league characters on there? There is a League of Legends character, ranch. I don't know. Legends roster. Do you know anyone? Jinks. It is Jinks number eight on the list.

Well done. Well played. There are still, there are two more. I can't believe I'm losing in the masturbation competition. We don't know if they're jacking off. They could just be watching. They could just be watching. It's probably what's happening.

There's three more on the board here. Two of them and I don't think you're going to get in one might be a stretch. Wait, so like there's there's one overwatch character remaining? There's two overwatch. Fuck, I'm just, I just don't know the Overwatch character. D-D-D-Va, D-V-A from Overwatch Number 4 and Widowmaker is number 9. Let me get a look at these.

I'll wait till we're finished. Yeah, wait till you're home. I'm not going to look for NSFW versions. Not under the watch of your wife. There's one left. There's one left. Can you give us any context? Is it what kind of

game is it? This is from another online shooting game? This is from a Oh, Cortana? No. Fuck.

Online shooting game, is it an FPS game? Not an FPS. Okay. From Fortnite. Oh my God. Is it a four, is it a licensed character? No. It's, is it?

Not the banana. Hope? No. Is it default Fortnite female? I'm not sure who this is. Ruby. Her name is Ruby.

Ruby from Fort. I fucking play Fortnite every day of my life. I know who Ruby is. The Terminator. Okay, there's a skin Redway Ruby. All right. Who looks like it's a... He's obviously Latina.

Of course. He's fine as hell. Redway is just one of the color ways. So here's Ruby right here. So this looks like just one of the... Yeah, no, she's gorgeous, of course. Yeah. Number 10? Too low, I say.

I'm going to look at it. I'm going to look up diva and what was the other one? Widowmaker. Diva and Widowmaker. Okay, Diva and Overwatch. Which is interesting. I wish I had more stats. I'm sure I could look into this further, but like just the idea of like, where is this happening?

What's going on here is, uh, is interesting. But of course, Tifa would be number one on the list. It's Tifa, Laura Croft, Chunle, Diva, Ada Wong, Lady Dimitresk, 2B, Jinks, Widowmaker, and Ruby. Here is, here is diva. So you kind of get that. It's kind of a, you know, it's somewhat of an anime aesthetic. Yeah.

Certainly, not too young looking, but certainly young looking. And kind of like a cool girl aesthetic with the ball cap and the headphones and whatever the fuck. And then what's the other one? Widowmaker? Yes. Okay. I'm still not saying va-va-voom. This might be a va-va-voom.

Here's Widow-Maker. And she's a little bit more sultry. But they are certainly both underdressed for physical combat. If you would like to kill me and leave my wife a widow, that's fine by the girl. She also has like the kind of blue Navi skin slash Cortana skin, which I think goes a long way. How validating was it to see that clip of Billy Elish saying that she loves Varan? Oh, my God. For the listeners, Billy Alish said that she would fuck Varang.

She said, I would like that. And she also went, mm. She understands. That was in heavy rotation in our Varang thread. We just kept sending the exact same clip over and over it again. It's just screaming, oh my God, oh, my God. That was the segment. Oh, I don't think I said the name of the segment.

It was called Hot or Not. I like it. All right. Hot or not. We'll bring it back. I don't know what other porno metrics you can find, but I'm eager to... Oh, figure something out. Don't you worry?

Yeah, you'll get in the lab and we'll have more content. Hey, that's this week's get played. Our producers, Rochelle Chan, Ranch, Twitch. dot TV slash yard underscore underscore sard anything you've been streaming lately ranch or anything you plan to stream oh i finished resident evil requiemann i liked it it was great yeah but so far in my ranking of them i think it's the last one whoa do you finish it on stream i finished it on stream wow uh there you go how was the chat reacting they were having fun yeah they were very helpful which ones have you played you've played two and four two four and seven okay okay okay so

So I think my ranking is 4-27 Requiem. Okay, great. Wow. I got to get back into seven. I was playing that a little bit. I got to be honest, that's how I'd rank Star Wars. Look, we can't get into it. I don't want to re-mitigate this.

Star Wars A New Hope. Relitigate. Attack of the clones. Force Awakens, Rise of Skywalker last. So. Yeah, I guess if those were the only ones you'd seen, that's how you'd rank them. I mean, I don't know. That's pretty good.

that's, they would be in that order regardless. I guess I got to play seven so I could rank it really high. Our music is by Ben Prunty, Ben Pruntymuse.com, our art by Duck Brigade Design, Duck Brigade.com. We got merch at kinshipgoods.com. And hey, there's a bonus episode every Wednesday over on our Patreon, get played DLC. Matt, you know what we're doing this week? Yeah, we're answering your questions. And we're doing a super question block Turbo Deluxe Edition, but they're not just your questions. They're your gaming hot tanks. It takes, and you're going to have to answer for them. Wow. We're going to dig into your gaming hot takes this Wednesday.

Subscribe at patreon.com slash get played. And hey, Square Index Cafe. We got played. I was going to say got plate. Oh, they got plate. Nice. Got plate. Garp. That was a headgum podcast. Welcome to a magical place where dice are rolled and stories are told. Welcome to the Fantastic Castle. Hi there, I'm Caldwell. You might know me from Nadpod, but now I am teaming up with my friends Kiana, Raj, and Bree. Hi, everybody. Hello, everyone. For an all-new take on Dungeons and Dragons Cooperative Storytelling shows, and this one is for the whole family. Fantastic Castle has all the excitement of D&D without the cussing and filthy jokes that make most other D&D shows,

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