Get Played - Genre Played: Choose Your Fighter

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Heather, Nick and Matt talk each pick a fighting game to see if it will become their main! We discuss 2XKO, Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1 and Nickelodeon All Star Brawl 2. 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.

This is a HeadGum podcast. Hey, buddy. It's Weiger here. You know what I love? Content. The problem is, I love the content I consume. It's not domestically available. It's not something that I can just hop on a stream and watch.

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Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Wow. This is so crazy. Somebody made a beta of a game. Get played fighting game. No way, that's awesome.

Yeah, yeah. Our fan community is pretty creative and talented out there. It's funny. I've been messing around with this thing. Do you want to, you should actually give this a go. Let me, let's boot it up. Let's see what we got here.

Okay, wow. Get played, the video game. Wow. Choose your fighter. Okay, I'm gonna pick Matt. Yeah, of course. Okay, I'll do the tutorial. Let's see you here.

Okay, okay. Okay, well, first of all, I don't like the jiggle physics. I don't like what they did with that. They kind of made me, they made me busty. Again, it's a beta. It's a beta. It's a beta.

It might be worked out. Yeah, I mean, look. It might be worried. Like, I really like, like, come on. I'm really excited. Like, I've got really cool moves because I was playing it all weekend. Yeah. They gave me kind of a raging demon of my own.

It's pretty neat. I have a show Ryukin, like, knockoff that's show Matt I can. Oh, that's cool. It's pretty good. That's good. And then there's like, I've got a flurry, a litany of like, just kind of Viking-esque moves, including raging acts and complete catastrophe. Ragnarok is my level three super.

It's pretty neat. Okay, okay. Let me try one of my super's, like one of my supers. Uh, just pulled my pants down and farted? It's a pretty powerful move, it seems like. Yeah, but I think I saw the hole. This game's nasty. Well, I mean, I think that's part of the fun, though.

I think the show can be a little nasty. I guess the show can be a little nasty, but I guess I wasn't expecting to see my whole. Well, I think maybe it's like, you know, we do a comedy podcast. Maybe it's like kind of a kind of a joke character. It's like a goofy thing. Yeah, it's like a yeah, no, it's funny. Like I have, I have this cool move called God Slayer, uh, where I take out a knife and I cut through reality itself and pull the person apart. And then I've also got this awesome fatality called kneecap in your mouth where I just like take the kneecap off of a knee and I put it in the guy's mouth. Yeah, I will say that that is sick

because if I messed around with your character a little bit it is fucking depred Yeah no that's that's really cool I see that See what else you can do man Okay I put in the button combo

And a prompt came up that said You're a little dick can't even get hard What the hell? Why would it say that? Maybe that's like an error message No I put it in exactly right I don't know why I'm showing my asshole farting

and now it's claiming that one by little ding-dong's little and it can't get hard this sucks I mean you know it's it is kind of weird that that just kind of came up as text on screen

without an accompanying animation it didn't even do anything yeah it just does seem I mean I would get it's a taunt it's a taunt maybe it's about the other person it's a tonne your little dick can't get hard okay that's cool I'd like that more as a taunt

yeah sure it's a ton. Now the game is starting to be actually pretty good to me and I like. Think about a lot of these moves could be taunts. Showing your asshole to somebody, that's a taunt for sure.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, oh, you know what? But he's, what do you call it? Super Punch. Looks good. I got a little, like, I got a skateboard move. I do like a little sort of

like a little Bart Simpson like sort of like sliding on a skateboard. That's nice. That's pretty cool. That's fucking sick. Oh, wow. Oh, God. I just did another button combo

and I pissed my pants. My real pants. Wait, you pissed your... I just pissed right now. So is that something that the game made you do, or did you just do that in response to... I mean, I had to pee really bad before we started. Yeah, so I think that's a skill issue. I don't think that's something you can blame on the game.

Unless it's like a Kojima level thing that the game does to match. I mean, that would really be a mind fuck. Can I ask you guys something? Yeah. Yeah. Is that me? On the... Do you mean?

I think it, yeah. I know it's supposed to be me, but if I control it, does that happen to me? am I like controlling myself? I mean look did you fart when he farted? Yeah Can your little dick get hard? Not right now I don't know

I mean maybe you could be some circumstantial evidence that that's what's what's happening here It's really metaphysical Can I miss around the guy a little bit? Yeah okay okay here we go All right here we go Why don't just go straight to my super

Because this is actually fucking awesome Okay cool Awesome I can't really want to see the super All right All right It's the comma's a little tricky. I've miffed it. All right, there we go.

9-11-2. 2026. It's back. Oh, my God. That was awesome. Nick, Nick, 9-112 is it super. Yeah.

It was my pitch. You helped. I get a special thanks. We choose your character and finish him. As we spend time with Street Fighter 6, 2XCO, Moral Combat 1, and discuss the state of fighting games in 2026 this week on 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 Wiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Wigar. and I hear with our third host. Mr. Games, Mattapodaka. Hello everyone. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the premier video game podcast, where this week we are returning to the ring.

Ding, ding, ding. Haidt! Oh, fun. Perfect. Is it in your mind, is it a ring in a fighting game stage? Because I never conceptualize it as a, even though I guess that's probably what it is. Well, it depends on the game.

Yeah. Like, in Virtual Fighter, they literally say ring out. They have a ring in Virtue of Fighter. Yeah. I guess what I'm thinking about is like the conventional, you know, 2D or 2 and a half D fighting game, 3D models on a 2D plane where you're like there's less like lateral movement.

There's less Z axis movement however you want to do it. I mean, they're in this street in street fighter. Yeah. So is that a ring? No. That's not a ring. That's like a fighting arena. But it's a metaphorical ring.

Right, right, right. Yeah. And then in Mortal Kombat, it's just. like they're in like some cave or some shit Right We're gonna get into that We all

A laboratory This is a new format We haven't tried We're all We're just taking a genre And we're all tried A different game From that genre or games

We all spent some time with it This past week Since we last recorded And are just sort of gonna give a Give some input on our experiences Give some input Like present A

Matt we'll get into it because some buttons were pressed, I will say. Let me just tell you. That's part of my journey. That's what this show is all about is you guys pressing my buttons. Do you have a favorite button? Yeah. Right trigger.

For sure. Nice. Answer. Right trigger. Not the top one, bottom one. R2. I bet few people's answer is R3. You'd be, I don't like R3.

Analog stick push in. Get locked up if you're R3 lover. Sick, fuck. If there's like a key mechanic map to that like crouch or something, it's like, Jesus fucking Christ, man. L3 is somewhat better for some reason. I'll take L3 over R3. R3 is sick. I feel like I have fewer accidental L3s for whatever reason. I don't know why that is. Yeah. Because I'm certainly, I'm right-handed. I'd be more dexterous with my right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't know. My favorite button on a controller, probably X. Just that hard X. More than that. More than that. in like the A or B or whoever.

Like, I like X. I think I have, when you're saying X, you mean like where it's placed on the PlayStation Yeah. The down part of it. And the name of it being the X. Yeah. Some people call it cross. It's cross.

It's cross. Sure. X. X. X. I think I have a new answer. What? On. On's good.

That's a good button. On button. You mean on the console itself. I'm turning it on. Not on the controller. No. On. On.

I used to belong to a, uh, I guess I still do. I tell you. A video game forum that has their own podcast called a select button. Actually, maybe select button doesn't have a

but insert credit has the podcast. But select button is part of the same community. And what I like about this name of a forum is because select is a strange button. Yes. To have. Often doesn't do, in the old days,

it wouldn't really do anything. Now it's kind of like, you can open it maybe a different menu or something. But it's also vestigial at this point. Yeah. There's not really a lot of select buttons left, but why have a dedicated button for selection when you could go up or down? Well, that's the thing. And you go back and you play like early.

Boy, I can't remember if there was a, I think there was a select and a run button on the master system controller if memory serves. Because they didn't have start. They had run, I think. Run. Yeah. But it didn't mean run as in motion. It meant run as and run the program. Anyway, but like I do remember on.

master system games and early NES games, I believe there were menus where you had to, where select was the only thing that would toggle your cursor and you couldn't actually use the Dpad. My friend, they did not have a start nor a select, nor a run button. What the fuck they have on that thing? They only had two buttons. One was button one. One was button two and button one was also the start button.

That's what I was thinking of. It was a multipurpose button that had one end start. Okay. God, this control. I love Sega, but this controller sucks so much. That was a dog shit controller. It's fucking horrible. One of the reasons I think this show has legs and we'll be doing it a long time,

but over 350 episodes in, we're just getting to, what's everyone's favorite button? I guess I have, I pose a question and I didn't answer it, and I probably should. What's your favorite button, Nick? I think I just kind of like A. A is pretty good. A slash circle. Like the placement of that button is kind of like just,

I feel like it's satisfying because it's also like usually has some specialized function. I like games where that is like the confirm. I don't like how things have been mapped onto cross now where like that's the default. Yeah, I don't like that either. I like the circle slash a confirm. Even as a cross-officinado, I don't like that cross is confirmed. No, pisses me off. No.

And in my day, I believe triangle was cancel. Cancel was often mapped to Triangle. Right. What happened? Triangle had some bad tweets. Oh, no. I hate it when... Triangle got canceled?

I hate it when menu isn't triangle in an RPG. That pisses me off. Yeah, you're right. It should be the default, no matter what, triangle is menu, in an RPG. This could be a whole episode, by the way.

We could do... Let's just pivot. We should put a pin in it. We could talk about buttons all day. Because I've had this... I've had this. This is the dead horse I've been beating. What is happening over there

with your collar? My head, these collar buttons were unbuttoned. I realized they've been unbuttoned all day, and they drive me crazy. And now this button talks got him remembering that he has you got a button. He's got to get the button. And it's just kind of like difficult because it's underneath the part. Like there's these collar stays and it's underneath the collar stays. It's not a part of the collar itself.

Y'all remember that little motherfucker corduroy? I love corduroy. Yeah. He lost his little button. Oh, wait. What? You don't mean the material. No, the bear.

Oh, I don't know this. You don't know about the bear? There's a bear named Corderoi. There's a bear named Corderoi. There's a bear named Corderoi, and his whole thing is that he has these little green overalls. First of all, he's as cute as a button. I'm going eyes on corduroy. The story is sad because he's like looking for his button all over the damn place.

It's cute. Can't find it. Can't find the damn button. Okay. Now, is it quarter roy or is it, it's not that? No. I think it's just corduroy. Kendall Roy.

It's Kendall Roy. Oh, this guy looks familiar. He looks familiar. He's cute as far. I don't know that guy. He's really cute. It was just like a story from when I was a little kid. Yeah.

Nick also has a metal tray for his laptop, which when he turns the laptop on top of makes the worst noise I've ever heard. He did it right away. Hang on. First, I just had to say two things. What? Heather's right. That was unsettling. Two, we have to give it up for why you're saying metal tray.

I will try not to move too much motion on the metal. It's one of the few things that he and I both do to each other at work too. That's really good. Anytime anybody says metal anything, we repeat it. What was it earlier? I'm trying to remember there was something like. Metal beard? Metal beard because there was the World Cup player who had the jawed a brace.

Yeah. And it looked like a metal beard. And I went, metal beard. Hell yeah. I love it. It's a fun thing. It's wonderful. It's popular.

Positive. Also, because if you get it, there's no way that you hear that. Yeah. And then immediately, like, not love it. Right. It's like, because if you already know it, you're having, you're in, you're having fun. And if you don't know it, you're just like, it's just highlighting, highlighting a weird set of words usually. Metal beard is a strange thing to hear.

Yeah. Metal tray, too, to some, some degree. Ranch, of course, is here. Also, our intern, Ethan is back. Hi, Ethan. Hello, hello. Good to see you both. Ethan, you actually, we're going to keep people in suspense, but you actually do have a video game you're going to talk about today.

I do, I do. I'm very excited. Because to me, I was like, I was like, Ethan doesn't play video games. All that Ethan has said today. Hello, hello, and I do, I do. Makes me laugh. I like Ethan. He's fun.

But you hope to hear it a polychule wedding. Jesus Christ. Imagine one of them didn't say I do? It'd be interesting for the people there. It'd be interesting. I think it would be actually pretty upsetting to be at a wedding that went wrong. I know. Can you imagine?

It would be a big bummer for all involved. It would be rad as fuck. It happens in movies always, and has anyone ever experienced that? No. No. No. I've been at weddings where things have gone a little bit wrong in terms of like food service and bars and stuff.

That stuff happens all the time. I was a best man at a wedding, and his case. didn't show. That's fucked. And not only did his cake not show, but they discovered that the wedding planner, the wedding planner didn't order or ever order the cake. And they'd had a lot of problems with her. And then afterwards, he was like, I just can't bring myself to give her a bad review.

And I was like, do you want this to happen other people's weddings? And he's like, but it's her livelihood. If I leave a bad review, she might like lose her job. And like, then what? That's on me. I can relate to that. I do have this similar feeling. Go on.

My friend's wedding planners were like strange on the day and we really couldn't put her finger on like what their problem was. Like they were great, I guess, leading up to it. But then on the day they were just kind of like, they were just a little off. And then in the intervening like year and a half after their wedding, they started posting all this like RIP Charlie Kirk stuff. We're like, oh, this is what it was.

We found out later that they went. were weird. I was at, so I, did he get shot on their wedding day? No, no, no, it just happened.

Like, I mean, it was sort of like, the flavor of weird they were. Got it, got it, got it. So it wasn't like

that was like affecting their mood that day. No, no, no, no. I had a one first-hand experience and a second-end experience that,

that I will share, a friend's story. The first-hand experience was, we were at a wedding, and it was the, they were both the same thing where like the groom had a favorite food

and the menu was based around that. So this was a wedding where it was... Corn. Uncooked lasagna noodles. So the first one was hot dogs, which I'm all in favor of. I'm like, hot dogs are wedding? Rips. That's great.

This is the wedding I was at. However, for whatever reason, the hot dog truck was just so fucking inept that it was just like, the bar had been open for hours before the hot dog started coming out. It was like way delayed. It was like so delayed. We're just like, we're just going to get on with the reception and hot dogs will come out when they come out. Yeah. And that's just like a bad scene when people are drinking and the food hasn't been served yet.

The second one was, this was a friend who went to a wedding in North Carolina in midsummer. So it is hot and humid as fuck. Yeah. They were throwing old guys off cliffs onto rock. And the, and the, and the groom's favorite food was. clam chowder. So they had a clam chowder bar. Like a hundred degree day.

I like clam chowder. I think any time of year, any temperature, I don't want that. Yeah. That sounds like just the idea of it, just seeing so much of it kind of, it wasn't served like this, I'm sure, but I'm picturing a trough of clam chowder and I don't like it. I think it was like a basically like a big like, like, urns of a big kilns of clam chowder. And I think it was, so I think it was basically that with the big ladles.

They were communities like service. And then I like to me, look how much clam chowder I want is like one bowl of clam chowder max. A cup. Yeah, a cup. What am I'm going to get different kinds of clam chowder. I'm going to go back for seconds. Worst diarrhea of your life later.

At our wedding we had tacos and I thought there was like, there was great. Those were really great tacos. And there was like a line. I didn't think that was like a placement issue. But I thought for the most part, one, they got three, you're getting three tacos pretty quickly when you're up there. They're just doling them out. They were such good tacos.

And then they were so good that you kind of didn't mind waiting. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't mind waiting at all. Get back in that line for a second. I was just chopping it up with everyone else in line. How do you know Matt? Oh, yeah? I'm his friend.

The taco guys also at one point, they were like. Just kind of taking into space. I was like, go and get a drinks. And they went in, they all grabbed bottles of tequila. I was crazy. That was awesome. That was great. They're having a lot of fun.

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And that's what we're here to talk about. As always, the question for the room. What are you playing? What are you playing? Hi, it's me to Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm going to ask my friend what they're playing on video game consoles or PCs of their choice. Uh, Resident Evil Merchant, we were just talking about how we like food. Do you like food? Love of food. Okay. Love it. Yeah. Don't love it when it's not wrapped in a plastic or on a plate. Right. Yeah, just like loose food is always a little suss.

I don't like a loose food. Wow, so you even have a lot of. I have a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess like a banana or something is fine. Like, I can just have that just sitting now. Banana's about as loose as you want to get. It's about as loose as I want to get. I was in my where I'm staying. And I couldn't find a plate.

And so I used a little bit of toilet paper for underneath a pizza. Unused toilet papers. I don't think I'm disgusting. I have an assumption. But also, like, it's not the paper I would go to. but I also understand that it's clean and not, it's like not the function I would use it for. I'd maybe be a little put off by it.

I would absolutely be association. Yeah. I put it in a microwave because I want to keep the rotating plate clean. Yeah. But the oils made the toilet paper kind of soak into their brief. Yeah, that's disgusting. It's awful. I couldn't get it out and I was like, well, I can't just throw this away some of my plates.

So I was eating a handful of toilet paper. paper and pizza at the same time. That would make me not want to eat pizza afterwards. I just feel like I'd forever have that sense memory. Ruin my night. I don't want to do this. Resident Evil merchant? You're a freak.

I would just like cut, like, I'd just be like, you know what? I'm just going to cut off the layer of crust of this pizza to try to salvage it. Or I'm just throwing that in the fucking trash. No, no, it wasn't my pizza. Oh, wait. It wasn't your pizza? Wait, hold on. This was at your place.

It wasn't your pizza? It wasn't mine. Like, we don't understand? I'm sick of this shit. You can't come in here and act like we're strange. All right, but fine. I don't need to tell the rest of the story. Okay, so you were worried that they would see pizza in the trash and be like,

they ate my pizza? Yeah, they'd be like, well, that's ungrateful. Is this your roommate? Is this like who it, like? It's a place I'm saying. Okay. Are you doing a sort of like parasite situation? No.

No, what is that? We're in the wall? I guess right now it's tough to mention parasites because that could be in anything right now. It could be anything right now. That's me the diarrhea from Taco Bell. Yeah. I'm just going to ask because you never like with what we slowly learn and trickle about Resident Evil merchant's life, anything is possible. Do you have a family?

Like when you say where I'm staying, do you mean like you're a family home? Well, I'm not staying with my family. Okay. I was not I did not self-generate If that's what you're asking I had a mom and a dance Sure as we all do

Nobody thought that Yes if I know family Well I mean you know what I mean If not you self-generated I don't mean you're born of A If your answer is no People live alone I don't mean to be this

A hostile towards you But I'm getting a little pissed off All right I'll do my job and leave. I'm not having me to hurt anybody. I'm always thinking of it. That's why I was doing with the pizza. And that's why you want to throw away the pizza because you didn't want to seem ungrateful.

I didn't want them to be like, take a pizza out of the fridge and then throw it in the trash. You would rather hope that they saw the pizza in the refrigerator missing a slice and then go back in their mind to be like, I guess I must have ate one. No, no, I think they'd be like, oh, merch must have a pizza. The church was here. But if they were thrown away... Then they'd be like, why did he take it out of the fridge and put it in the trash? Why would he wrap it in toilet paper and throw it away? Exactly.

Why did he make my pizza mummy? Exactly. I kind of understand now. You have a roommate? What, like, what is happening? I think he's... I'm staying at a place. Are you doing...

I'm crashing on a couch. I'm in between places. Got it, got it. You're doing like Pete Holmes is crashing. What is that? Check it out. Oh, is that that fuck movie? Yeah, put on it on HBO Max.

It's not that fuck movie. There might be some sex in it. There's some. But I think the, no, I think you're thinking of the David Cronenberg crash. Yeah, it's not the same movie. Yeah, no, that's the erotic thriller slash, you know, surreal movie where there's, they're recreating car crashes for sexual pleasure. Do you think when the crash movie, the other car crashes, the other car crashes, you think, when the

other crash movie, one best picture that the people that watched, that people that voted for it watched the other one and thought it was that? It's totally possible. I definitely think now people will see, oh, crash one best picture and think it's the Kronenberg one, not the Phil Huggis one. Yeah, people associate the win with what I believe people consider the good one. The good one that also has wound fucking and be like, okay, that some of the academy just went wild. The coolest a man has ever looked on planet Earth is James Spader at the showing of crash and con.

He does look cool as fuck. I think maybe an underrated and underthought of cool guy. He looks really cool a lot. Yeah, I think just just, you know, he got a little heavier as he aged as, as don't we all. But I just like, I think for that reason, people kind of forget that he had that period where he's like, oh, this is a, this was a sleek fucking. Elliot Gould, too. Elliot Gould was a fucking stud. Yeah.

Elliot Gould. Elliot Gould. No, that's a different guy that you know Oh, I know that guy Matt Opadagga, would you like to tell everybody what you've been playing? I'll tell you. What are you, what?

I was just saying, that's so polite. All right. I love to. I'm into consent now. Okay. Now. I guess, I'm just going to say, that's good. That's good.

That's positive. Yeah, however we get there is fine, I guess. Matt up or don't go, would you like to talk about, what are you playing? Just real quick. I would. Thank you. I got to say, you might notice, I'm wearing a Los Angeles Sparks hat.

The Sparks! I went to my very first live professional basketball game last week. Wow. It was in support of the W, of course. And look, I had the time of my fucking life. Of course. It was so fun. I also had not been to, I think I've only been to,

what I will call the Staples Center. Nice. Very few times, less than a hand. handful of times in my entire life. I went to the outside of it. They had the X games there one year. Right. They had some of it inside too.

And then I saw Kendrick Lamar there a few years ago. So this was maybe like my third time there. And I was like, it's going to be a fucking madhouse. It's going to be crazy. We got to get there. I'm nervous because we're pulling up 20 minutes before the game starts and I was like we're not

going to get in. We just walked right in. Not to say it wasn't full. They packed the place. It was Sparks versus Chicago Sky. You might be familiar for it even when you lived there and you looked up. That's right. And look, the vibes were immaculate.

It was great. I got myself a Micholada. How fun is that? I was in a box, not to brag. Wow. How did you set that up? It was a friend of my wife's birthday. Oh, how fun is that?

So we all were in a box, and there were two people who weren't in the group, and I can tell they were not happy with us because we were all having a really fun time. That's like a thing that they should just not permit. And I understand they're just trying to maximize sales. But it's just like they'll have like, there's a group of 18 in this box. And then there's just two loose seats.

So they'll just sell those seats. And those people don't know what they're getting into. No. And I think maybe they sell off the other ones at like maybe a discounted rate maybe. But we were like, we are so sorry. And then of course we asked them to take a group photo of us. Yeah. Which they also did not like.

They were so mad. You got to just join the party at that point. Yeah, we're all having fun. Yeah. These kids are having fun. I can make merry with them. Kamala Harris was there. Doug was there.

Wow. It was a real party. Wow. Not in our group. They were just there. They were court side. But look, now I'm a supporter of the W. Hell yeah.

Great. Because now this is the decision I've made. We talked about this. If you're under the Los Angeles sports bracket, you have my support. Wow. the Rams I have to make choices

where I have to make choices though Yeah because there are multiple teams In certain sports The Rams I support you The Kings I support you The Lakers I support you Is that it? Sparks?

I support you Godgers of course Yeah Dodgers of course I mean Dodgers are top of your list The soccer team LAFC Yeah you're gonna make another choice

LFC versus a Los Angeles Galaxy For MLS Let me just tell you Galaxy too fucking far away It might as well be in a different state. Might as well be in a galaxy far, far away, as far as I'm concerned. It's a Carson, California? Yeah, I don't have-L-A-Los Angeles.

My warp drive's not stable enough to get my ass all the way over there. Sorry, I do like Cosmo the mascot, though. That is cool. I like LASC. I like their color way. I like their stadium. It's right off of the metro line. Yes.

You can just step off the train, steps away, walk right into the stadium. And it's also right the same rail. stop as the upcoming George Lucas Museum for Narrative Art, which I cannot fucking wait for. I've already got my tickets for members previews. You know all sorts of tickets. I can't. Well, I became a member,

sight unseen, the Lucas Narrative Art Museum. Wow. You know what I'm going to do it too. I cannot wait. I know what I'll do it too. I can't wait to see a Star Destroyer next to a famous painting. The audacity and honestly, good. Good. Good. Fucking do it, man.

fucking put like a clay pot from Mesopotamia next to the prop of Luke Skywalker's severed hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Jar's extended tongue. Let's do it. Why not? But yeah, I got my, I got my member preview tickets going on opening night to the opening of the Lucas Museum. Look at this. This is just on, I'm just looking at the membership levels available. Please lift your laptop.

I will lift it. I will not spin it. Look at this. This is O.G. Ralph McCory art of R2 and C3PO concept art. Unbelievable. Just how cool is that? Really cool. That's rad, isn't it?

The Sparks won 102 to 87. My wife goes, the scores are really high. I was like, yeah. I was like, there's this constant. She also had a harder time following which team was which. Because she was having a lot of fun. But we had a blast. wait to go back. It seems like a fun

like get a group to go sort of like have a hang. Like everybody was also they have to like make some noise like they have some like people on screen that at Dodder Stadium it's like Brian Cranston like Ice Cube is a at the Clipper game You said Clipper you mean Sparks game? It's freaking

called Jacob from the Called Jacob billboards. Yeah they've called Jacob at the Laker one too. I love that. That's pretty good. He's a local guy. What is called? So call Jacob and I'm sure whatever you live you have your local attorney who just plasters their ads everywhere. We got two of them, actually. And they're allied with different franchises.

Yes. We've got Sweet James, who's with the L.A. Clippers. Yeah. And then we've got Called Jacob, who's with the Lakers and the Sparks, which are basically, you know, not exactly the same organizations, but basically, you know, brother and sister organizations. Yes. The call Jacob, it's one of those things like, what are your finances? If you're an injury lawyer, do you just have billions of dollars?

because his advertising budget seems like it's like 90% of his revenue. I maybe, I don't have any information to back this up. I feel like there are more court cases for like petty injuries and things like that. Like, you know, like slip and falls, like that type of stuff that lawyers clean up on. So I think if that's a good chunk of your business, you could be okay for a while. Right. I don't know how it works. I'm just talking to my ass.

That's a theory I have. But then you've recalled Jacob, you can also be like, hey, and I want to be famous, so I'm just going to put my ass up on the Jumbotron at NBA games, WNBA games. I like seeing him. Yeah, why not? I like him, too. I don't know if he's doing anything wrong. I have no idea.

Probably is. It's all right. It's fun to have a guy who's like, hey, it's that guy. Did you see the scary movie billboard they did out here, which is they made a fake called Jacob thing that said called Jackoff? That's fucking good. Pretty funny. But it's like in Breaking Bad,

the one time Walt Jr. sees Saul Goodman when he's at the car wash. He's fucking starstruck and it's so funny. He's like, it's like, it's so, so funny. But to talk about a game real quick that I've been playing, I've been playing Doom the Dark Ages. And let me tell you guys something.

I'm not a Doom guy. I never really played Doom. I think we did it one time on the shit, like the maybe talked about the original at one point, and we watched the bad movie. That's sort of like my experience with Doom. Yeah, we did. I think for DLC episode, we watched the bad movie.

Yes. And then I think we also, the, the, the, the rock, the movie where the rock is a bad guy. Yes. It's very strange. Yes. Yeah, I think we talked about, boy, it must have been an anniversary, right? Because there was also, I think Masters of Doom, the book had come out. I remember that was maybe our way in.

It was called Retrograde, Doom. When we looked back at Doom, we should do that again for something else. Yeah, that's a good format. Also, what a clever name, retrograde. That was you. Oh, okay. Guess it was. here's all the funny stuff you said

I'm but a friend of ours Cody Ziegler had been posting that he was excited about getting into the DLC and I was like I bounced off of this game like when it at launch is it is it really this good

and he was like dude just play it so I like started it back over got in it about eight chapters in and I'm just like blown away by it it is Heather I think you would fucking love it because it's fast and you can increase

the speed. One of the things about Doom that I have always loved is that it respects your time. Yes. You go fast. You can run. Your movement is already pretty fast, but then you can sprint. And then also there is like a, the combat is really fun because they, I don't know if they've always had this, but now he has like a shield that then you can like throw and you can use it to like pull you toward people and stuff like that. And you can ram people with the shield. It's, it rules. All the guns are really fun and great. And it looks. And it looks. nasty and the music fucking rules and I said every doom game has good music and it's just like fucking like like metal it's like new not new metal the genre just new metal music and it's really really good and I said this in our our Varang chat that the thing that's crazy to me about it is that in terms of excitement every single level feels like it's the last level of the game like even the first one, you're just kind of like, this is crazy. That's great. The stakes of this are so nuts every time. And then it somehow keeps heightening, which I don't know how they're going to be able to sustain. For 22 chapters? For 22 chapters. I'm in about chapter eight. I've already

piloted a giant mech and flown around on a dragon shooting guns and stuff. Wow. And it's insane. And then you're taking down big ships while you're flying the dragon to. It's crazy. It's just like an unbelievable experience and I can't wait to eventually get to the DLC that everybody also says it's really good and it's a fucking bummer

that Xbox laid off like 80% of the ID software staff because they made an incredible incredible video game. It feels like the... I'm gonna just pedantically note something that our listeners will pedantically note

id software. Excuse me. Pardon me. Yeah. Id. It feels like in a sketch version of this video game. Yeah. Being that you've already piloted a mech.

Yeah. And you've flown on a dragon shooting guns that the third stage would be, now you're going to suck the dragons dead. It's like, how crazy can it get? Yeah, you're going to fly toward this light and then you'll have been birthed. Yeah. Wait, what? The meck and the dragon had a baby.

You're just in like, and you're in the real world and you're the president? It's, Heather, I really think, Nick, you would also like it. Your FPS, not really your thing, but like the, it's just rock solid. Like, it's just like a really, really great video game. Is it, is it only an Xbox game? No, it's on everything. Okay, great. You can play it on PlayStation.

Okay. I'm playing it on Game Pass, but you can play it on anything. Wow. Yeah, that's me. All right. I love it. Heather, what are you playing? Well, first I want to complain about a tech issue, which is that Sony makes

my TV, the Bravia, and Sony makes the PlayStation Pro. Yeah. Right? Those are the ways in which I game. Now, generally speaking, I play in headphones because I don't like disturbing neighbors, roommates, whatever. Like, I don't like disturbing people when I'm playing. Yeah. Like, historically. How many roommates you got? No, I mean, like back in time. Like I've always, I've always gamed in headphones. Also, like I said, I think we all similarly just like cohabitating with a, with a partner who's less of a gamer. You're just conscious I don't want to just blast video games with my headphones on.

I'm just rude. The other day, we had a day off at work, and so I was gaming in the middle of the day, and I was like, I'm going to play with through my TV speakers, which aren't, you know, high-end, it's TV speakers, but I was like, I don't want to wear my headphones in the middle of the day. And what I discovered is that playing the PlayStation Pro on the Bravia, there is a, like a perception, perceivable delay on sound in all the video games and even in the menu screens, right? It's like you click down and it'll be like down, boop, down, boop. And like the sound is off.

So I was like, that's a strange, there must be some setting. I went online and this is a known and unfixable problem with the PlayStation Pro and the Bravia 9 or whatever the fuck the TV is that I have. That's bad. And I was like, Sony made both of these. fucking things. Yeah. And the sound is off sync in a PlayStation to Bravia.

A TV that has its own special logo for the PlayStation? Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that maybe Sony is gearing up to sell a specific wire, like an anti-delay wire? I was so furious because, again, I've had this TV for years, so I literally didn't know this was a thing. Yeah.

For it to be so off-sync. that I looked it up and it was like, yeah, there's no an issue. Because there's no other, like, if you're watching, like, Apple TV or something like that. No, not anything. Yeah, no other. No other issues. Only with the PlayStation Pro connected to the Bravia. Interesting.

Heather should just get a soundbar. Why is she listening to the TV speaker? She should get a sound bar. I have a sound bar. I haven't hooked it up. Wait, what? Now I'm with the listeners. Well, I moved.

Oh, right, right, right. And so I haven't, like, a year ago. I moved into a true fixer-upper. Sure, of course. Issues beyond issues. Yeah, yeah. So, like, I remember that one day you told us that you close a door. All the walls fell down.

Honestly. So fucking close. Anyway, so I just want to complain about that before I launched into what I've been playing. You also live in the sideways house from the state's sketch. Yeah, yeah. I live in the sideways house in the wall. Okay, so I've been playing Fortnite Remains a great season

I'm not even gonna say what the feature of the season is I'm not gonna prompt you guys You can say it if you want to Because I'm sure you remember What the feature of the season is I know that it's sprites And now that I'm saying it I only like it when Heather says it

It's like trying to tickle yourself I'm trying to finish God of War Ragnarok Oh I jump back onto that I'm just trying to plow forward. I do a lot of the side quests. And honestly, I'm like, you know what? I just want to beat this fucking game.

I might ditch a few of these guys who are like, can you help me find my son? And he's a ghost. And I'm like, I don't know you. I don't want to help find your fucking son so you can give me like eight hacksilver. Like, I don't need to do it. Say that again when you're short on hacksilver. I reach that point.

I feel like there's a lot of games where I reach that point. I remember distinctly with cyberpunk. I was like, I was like, I'm just fucking done with a side quest. I'm just going to, I'm just giving it up on Delamane. I'm just going to. And then the second time I played through it, the Phantom Lover, I was like, I'm going to do all these side quests. You know what? They're good.

They are. They calls to me constantly. Like, I think about it a lot. It's a great game. Yeah. It's a great game. They really managed to fix it. So I'm playing God of War.

I'm playing Fortnite. On mobile, I'm playing Pokemon card game pocket. I did play a little bit of Pokemon Go for the anniversary. and then I was like, there's a reason I deleted this. And honestly, it's battery life. It eats the battery on your phone. Oh, yeah. And then my cozy game at night remains Dragon Quest, seven reimagined.

So I'm really in a gaming era. I'm trying to get through all this stuff. I'm trying to beat God of War so that I can start near. Because I said it last week on the show and I want to play near and be the near rep on the show. I love that. We could use someone on the near beat. That's one of our blind spots.

Yeah. So I'm going to get on NIR as soon as I can finish God of War, and that would be my action solo player game. And then my multiplayer is Fortnite. My mobile game is Pokemon card game pocket. I have a deck that is so overpowered that I'm almost at Masterball, and it's only been two days into the season. It's a real bummer.

Wow. Whoa. Yeah, I really cracked the code. She's goaded. I'm goaded. So that's why I've been playing. It's been a real week of games for me. I've had a lot of fun.

I've put in a lot of hours. Nick, what are you playing? Heather, thank you so much for asking. You know, our lives are stupid. I think more generally being an adult is stupid because I love video games so much. But I've been very busy. But I also was like, I have to have something to talk about for what are you playing. And so as a result, I'm, you know, I got home at like 9 p.m. last night.

And I was up until 2 a.m. Holy shit. And knowing I had to get up at seven today. Why, girl. And work a full day before I came in and did this record. But I was like, you know what? I'm going to play this game I've heard about called Dench Attack. This is a, let me describe this in two words.

Chew, chew. This game was released on July 15th. It's on Game Pass and is developed by undercoters. Polygon headline by Giovanni Colantino on this, I think, sums it up. Dench attack is the best 3D Sonic game of all time. This is the rare, I feel like, four quadrant game, meaning that this game applies to all of our tastes in here, all three of us and ranch.

And you know what I'll say Ethan as well, based on what I know Ethan's going to talk about in a bit. This game is basically Sonic Adventure X. I'm vocalizing the X, but I know you don't actually vocalize it. It's Sonic Adventure, jet set radio, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and Mary Kate and Ashley Sweet 16 license to drive with a train. And so you're a train that's basically an out-of-control locomotives. This game has an incredible sense of speed. And this, like, really gorgeous, you know, cell-shaded aesthetic that very, very clearly is evoking jet set radio.

And it does feel like Heather, a beloved Dreamcast game that everyone was like, everyone who played it, loved it, but that was like 40,000 people. And also this was the game that Sega launched against like Grand Theft Auto 3 on PlayStation. It's just like this is, of course, like this is, of course, this was just another. Their huge, huge errors they would have made back in the late 90s, early 2000s that killed their last four-A at consoles. But it is so fun and is so engaging. It has the same mechanic of Tony Oxprop Skater where you're doing tricks and you are getting more points and you're, if you're doing tricks that are not repeated, tricks that are more creative, bolder, you know, like harder to land. And it's also just cool to see like basically a skateboard doing a kickflip, but it's a fucking train. Yeah, no, I'm fucking sold.

It's so cool. It's really beautiful and it's really fun and it's really goofy, which is a big part of it. And a big reason it feels so dreamcasty. You sent us an article about the game and I pulled it up just now to look at the art style. And one of the images is of a very beautiful, cute train, little yellow train, racing on a cell shaded track away from, I believe, a giant baseball that is chasing it. So it's just got like moments of absurdity. that, you know, and it's, it's just like, but I love that sort of world. I love that, I love living in this like, I don't know, just this, this is imaginative sort of, um,

another game that it evokes is a, uh, uh, Katamari Damasi, the same sort of thing. It's just like, oh, this is just goofy for goofiness's sake. This is weird and knows that it's weird. Yeah, the sense of speed I mentioned, but it's just like, it cannot really be conveyed through through words, I think just playing this thing. It'll be like, oh, okay, this motherfucker is going fast as fuck. And it also has these quick restarts because, you know, the consequence for failure is your time is getting docked. And that's what you're trying to do is you're trying to get through these levels as quickly

as possible as high as score as possible. But, you know, you're not spending a bunch of time where like I died and it's this big long reset before I have to go back to this previous checkpoint. It's just sort of like, okay, here we go. We're going to redo a little bit of this level and we're going to get going right away. Yeah. You know, like precision platformer style. So it's just, it just ticks a lot of boxes for me.

It's, it's super duper fun. Um, I, I really love how it looks and sounds. And again, it's, it's on game pass. So, you know, if you have game pass, it just, just give this a go. Why not? I'm remote installing it right now. I just did the same thing for you. I just, uh, remote purchased for my PlayStation and I am starting the download now.

I love it. This, I mean, look, we could do an episode on it. in the future. We absolutely could talk about this game at length because it's just a really, really interesting design. Cool. It's just really compelling. I love this.

Yeah, definitely, definitely having a real hoot with this. But, yeah, Ranch, you've also been playing something. Yeah, I've been playing High Fire Rush. Nice. Wow. A game that's kind of like, I feel like aesthetically similar. Yeah, similar style, for sure. I've been having a good time with it.

It's like a rhythm. like combat game which was kind of like mother three in a way nice but mother three was harder I think but yeah I was very surprised because I think the first boss the soundtrack to it was a nine inch nail song oh yeah and I'm like this is really sick yeah there's like licensed music in the game I had played it a little bit when it came out but bounced off of it but do you think you're going to see it through to the end like you're like enjoying it a lot yeah I think so I think it's It's been feeling a little repetitive so far. And I think a lot of the joy from this game is probably remembering, like, your move sets.

But I kind of just button mash to the beat. Sure. So I, like, sometimes most of the time don't know exactly what I'm trying to pull out. Sometimes I'm, like, surprise that I did a cool move. But most of the time, I'm doing very basic moves. Yeah. But yeah, it's fun. And you're playing another rhythm game as well.

Yes, guitar room, man. Wow. Wow. Mark but got it for the PlayStation. This is a guitar man is what, 20 years old? When did that game come most? Jesus Christ.

Oh my God. What was the impetus for getting into Guitar Ruman? Mark had played it back in the day. And it was like one of his favorite games. And I guess he just like remembered it. I did see him post on his Instagram story. He was introducing Ranch 2 what he called his favorite game of all time. Wow.

Yeah. More than Kingdom Hearts, this guy. Wow. It's actually crazy. Guitaru man? Guitar man. Okay. And he remembered, like,

playing the piano. He could, like, kind of remember the exact buttons. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.

It's fun. It's, like, a rhythm game I've never tried before. Like, had that had, like, really interesting, like, movement. This came out in the era of, you know, guitar hero, rock band. But this was more like, like, you're, it does not have its own peripheral. controller if memory serves. This is like Omjam or Lammy was the

Parap of the rapper follow up where you play guitar and you're just using a controller. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you like follow the line with the joystick. And the animations in that and the storyline is so incredible. It's beautiful and I wish they would do some sort of like anime with it.

I wonder if you would like Rhythm Heaven, the new the new Rhythm Heaven game. Yeah, I'm interested. Do you like Rhythm Games? in general, ranch? Yeah, I do. What's your favorite one of all time? I guess guitar hero.

Okay, great, great. Did you have a guitar hero song that you just were like, either that you really, really loved and were like, oh, I'm playing this shit out of bark at the moon, or you were like, this one is my white whale. I just can't quite get past this. This one is just pissing me off. It's taking me so many attempts. I don't remember the name of the song.

If he was like, by the cars or something. I don't, it was one of those bands. that I really disliked the song prior to it, but then end up really loving the song. Wow. I like that. I don't remember what song you did so. Can I imagine disliking a single car's song?

They're all perfect. Matt, sit down. I'm fucking pissed. They, of course, went on to inspire my favorite band of all time, Weezer. Wow. So it's like, by association, they're goaded to me. Did you get into the cars by way of Weezer? Yeah, absolutely.

I love that. Yeah, Rick Kasich. It might have been the police. Oh, okay. And you know what? As far as I'm concerned, ACAB. No thank you. Sorry.

Was that sting? Yeah. Was it message in a bottle maybe? I feel like that one was it yet. Message in a pass. She wrote my note. That was pretty good. I'll send an a soul to the world.

It's kind of a good song. Yeah. It's a banger. It's just terrifying that your eyes rolled back in your head when you did that. I got activated. So many of those guitar heroes songs are just like in my head.

One of my favorite hard ones carry me home by the Living Inn, Australian three-piece punk band. Really good. Really good song. Tough song. Now Ethan, you've been playing a game that I am aware of

but I've never touched. Track Mania. Yes, I have been playing Track Mania. Which, like, is there's just the one entry or is there a, like, a new track mania? Where are we in the franchise? There was the first one. Okay.

I believe was Trackmania Nations Forever. But I've been playing the one that came out in 2020, which is just called Trackmania. Got it. What inspired, like, have you been playing this already? Or are we just like, oh, give Trackmania go? I honestly, I mean, I've been on for like four episodes for Get Played. And I was like, I should maybe try a video game. I've been hearing a lot about it.

I've been hearing a lot about them. That's perfect. That's so fun. What do you think of TrackMania? I honestly love it. I'd seen a lot of videos about it is one of those things that when you look up on YouTube

there's a lot of things about like the history of it, like cheating scandals, like crazy world records and stuff like that. So I've already had that knowledge before and I was like maybe I should actually try to play it. It's really cool because a lot of the maps

are user generated, but it's not difficult to create the maps. I feel like in a lot of video games it's not inherently like simple to like make the map but it's super, easy. Like you can be on for 15 minutes

and just create a map of yourself. It's not going to be good, but still it's fun. No, but you're right, like you want the tool set to be accessible and then you want the challenge to come from creative implementation of something that's going to be fun to play.

That's rad. Are you playing, is this like a solo game or are you playing online with people at all? Yeah, you play online with people, but in most modes, you actually don't play at the same time as them. It's like a Time attack. Okay, cool.

Variety, yeah. In some games, they call it ghost mode. I remember being a little kid and being kind of scared by that. You're past that. Yeah. I do like Time Attack. What a cool phrase.

Time attack. Yeah. I feel like that's what I'm doing when I get a lot of stuff done in a day. Like, nice try. Thought you could get the best of me today. Did you day? Guess what?

I did a lot of stuff. Went to Home Depot. Went to Home Depot. Cry. Got lunch? Cried more. Beans. Yeah, beans.

Went back to Home Depot because they bought the wrong thing. Yeah. Had my wife talked to the guy. Thank you, Ethan. I'm glad you're playing something. Yeah, of course. Congratulations. You don't have to play video game just because you're here for the podcast.

I was a little scared, but I guess that's reassuring now, you know. But also, if you get the itch and you're sort of. like, hey, I think I like this type of thing. Give me a recommendation. We'd be happy to point you towards stuff. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you.

Like, for example, if you ever wanted to ride a bicycle through the sky. We know a game that would be perfect for you. Yeah. Or be a gun that shoots underwear. Is that what that was? What the hell was that was the fucking bike game, like the flying bike game? It was room to the night sky, right? Room to the night sky.

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maybe seeing what else we're going to do, which is that we're doing kind of a choose-your-fighting game. I don't know if we have a name for this format, but like a fighter's mega mix, we each picked a different game in this genre, and we each played it on our own and are going to sort of report back our findings. Yes.

I will say, and I think we should refresh everyone's memories on our relationship with fighting games. I love Evo. I really do like watching high-level fighting game play. I think it's really compelling. I'm absolute shit at fighting games myself, and I don't really play them, but I did enjoy them when I was younger. And I have for years on the podcast talked about getting into fighting games.

I will say the fighting game community has been, that listens to the podcast has been very, you know, welcoming as is their reputation. And I've gotten personal like outreach of like, hey, I will teach you how to play this game. I will give you some tips if you want, if you really want to get into it, because we'd love to have more people in the community, which I think is great. but I have always wanted to get into a fighting game and I just have never quite, I don't know, I guess found my footing or found the right fit for me. Matt, what is your relationship with fighters? You know, I'm thinking about this,

and I don't know if this is something we've talked about on the show, but I think a lot of people's first video games are possibly fighting games because they're the ones that you're going to be playing with somebody else at an arcade. So like, oh, let's play this. So I feel like one of my earliest memories is probably, like, of playing a game is probably playing something like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat

in an arcade or something. But I am, like, I've played a few throughout my life. My favorite, my favorite of all time, is Street Fighter 4 any version of it. Ultra. It's a great game. It's like, that was in, in high school,

Street Fighter 4 came out when I was in high school. And my friends and I got all really into it. And we had like a, There was like this day at the school where the different clubs were putting on different, like, events all over the school. And my friends and I who are on our high school's short form improv comedy team. Alpha is hell. Everybody absolutely thought we were the most annoying people on planet Earth.

But decided that we were going to do, this is also the same group of friends that came up with. The movie Dodgeball was also popular around this time, and we entered the school's dodgeball tournament, and my pitch was that we should all be dressed as Abraham Lincoln and nobody wanted to do it. But I thought it would be funny. We were all Abraham Lincoln's. But we did dress up as street fighter characters.

Oh. And that was a lot of fun. Who were you? I was M. Bison, because he's my favorite. Excellent. That's awesome. I know he's bad. But he's my favorite.

I love his move set. He's my favorite. I love Psycho Crusher. I think it's, arguable that none of the men and women in street fighter games are good people. I don't know. How dare you. Tammy's got something going on.

Yeah. Ken just wants to see his family again. But we convinced our drama teacher to allow our thing to be a street fighter four tournament. And then we also had t-shirts made with the Street Fighter 4 logo on them that to this day, I don't know who paid for. And it's very possible it was our teacher, which is a bummer. But, because they're you have to pay for so many things anyway. So you convinced your drama teacher at high school to help you host a street fighter

four tournament. How many years were you prom king? Was it all four years? I'll tell you something. Yeah. I did go to prom when I was a sophomore at high school. That is cool. And I was the Winter Formal King my senior year high school.

Wow. The teachers voted. It was not a vote held by the student body. It was teachers. But he was also into it. Yeah, sure. I stopped and thinking about this. He was like 26.

Like he was like not much older than us if you think about it. Yeah. He was also playing Street Fighter 4 a lot when we would bring our consoles to school and he would play with us. But that was our big contribution to that was Street Fighter 4 tournament. And I've just always loved that one. But that's kind of the only, then I played five when it came out. And then, you know, I've played the other ones in the intervening years of doing the show.

and I like six a lot, but I still think four is the best. I have four installed on my Xbox and my Steam deck at all times, in my mind, just in case. Don't know what four? I love it. But just in case.

I love it. That's me. My history with fighting games is that I like them. Yeah. I have always liked them. I am pretty partial to certain franchises. With Street Fighter being my main title, and then I would say Virtual Fighter is my second.

I've been playing streetfighter since I was standing on an egg crate, playing it at 7-Eleven with the neighborhood kids. And everyone was like, oh, damn, that little girl beat you, which was super fun. At one point, by virtue of being the only woman that showed up or only girl that showed up, I was the North American female street fighter tournament champion. Let's go. Because they made a girl's bracket, and I was the only one who came. So by default, I became. for one year, the girl's North American street fighter champion. Congratulations.

You dropped this. Yeah. Do you still have any sort of commendation? Do you have like a medal or a plaque or a certificate? No, no. I was in a magazine. I was in tips and tricks, I think. Whoa, that's awesome.

Maybe that was unrelated. I can't remember. That might have just been, here's a girl who plays street fighter. It's newsworthy. We talked to the one girl who does this. Yeah. The way that I play Fortnite now is dwarfed by the way I played Street Fighter for. Like, I played Street Fighter for.

on loop constantly. Like you, it was like an incredible experience, a really positive game. Yeah. And I also played three constantly. My dream home video game system is an

Astro City or the like home sit down full CRT console with Street Fighter 3 installed would be a dream come true. And my wife knows it and she's like someday you'll get it. Someday we'll find a space for this thing. Yeah.

But then Street Fighter 5 came out and I dropped it because I was like, this game sucks. Like 4 was so good and so important. And then 5 came out and I was like, this is no good. And so when 6 came out and we played it a little bit for the show, it was really hard for me to get that rhythm back because I had taken a full generation off and felt a little betrayed by Street Fighter. But there's an anime that's out right now, which has changed. in two weeks my relationship to Street Fighter 6.

That anime is called Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games. It is about an all girls, high-end all-girls private school in Japan, where it's like all about, you know, class and like respect and family and heritage and like what you do, do and what you don't do and like words you're not allowed to say dress codes, etc. You know, like one of the scenes that happens in the lunch is like one of the girls is like, oh, I miss consummate. And then other girl's like, what's consomme?

And they're like, excuse me? What's consomme? And I'm at home being like, what is consummate? What is that? Is that a, I mean, I know it's a food because they're talking about a lunch. Yeah. I don't know what that is. So there's a transfer student, a young girl transfers to the school, and she's known as the white lily because she's like unapproachably beautiful and like goes down the hallway and all the girls part ways or part path for her.

And our main character discovers one day that she is alone in a clubroom playing Street Fighter 6 on a laptop with a joystick. And when I say playing Street Fighter 6, I don't mean that she is playing like an animated like knockoff. She's literally playing Street Fighter 6. And when you see the TV that she's playing on, it's Street Fighter 6. It's footage from Street Fighter 6. Hell yeah. And the main character talks about her memories of how she played fighting games when she was young and was friends with all the boys. But then she was like, you know, I want to become a proper girl.

And so I'm giving this up so that I can dedicate myself to becoming a proper girl. But she sees this girl playing street fighter and she's like, I'm going to beat her so that she knows that I'm better so that she'll give up and we can both go on with our lives without fighting games. And I think they're going to fall in love also. I've never seen an anime more directed directly, specifically, exclusively at me. I can't believe it exists. There was also a live action version where they also played Street Fighter 6. And because the game is made in Unreal, the scenes would take place in the locations of Street Fighter. So when the two girls would be like making Cammy and Ryu fight against each other, they would be in that street with their joysticks.

And the camera would be able to, like, change angles on them and rotate and move because they were in the unreal environment. It was awesome from the clips I've seen. I watched two weeks of that and then told you guys, I think I'm going to start playing Street Fighter Six again. Broke out my Vectrix joystick. And lo and behold, I am playing Street Fighter Six again. Whoa. Which character you're focusing on right now? Well, here's the thing, guys.

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing in this game. I don't know who anybody is. And so much of fighting games is knowing what your opponent is capable of. And I'm so far behind, like, the train has left the station. The caboose is long gone. I am hand-cranking one of those, like, cartoony roadrunner things, trying to catch up with everybody else. I don't know what these other characters do.

So I'm playing as Akuma because he's in the game, finally. Because when the game launched, Akuma wasn't in the game. And I was like, well, that's my guy. And Bison wasn't in the at launch either. It's weird that playing Street Fighter 6 now, there is part, because I haven't, you know, I didn't buy the mega mix ultimate collection. So I don't have several seasons worth of characters who are just represented on my character select screen with little lock symbols.

So I can play against them, but I don't, I can't play as them. That's foreign to me. Yeah. In a fighting game that there's like, oh, dude. that I have to buy. That being said, Tifa has been announced, and she's on the splash screen when you start the game. Splash screen is right.

Yuck. So I'm playing as a Kuma. I'm getting, I'm just getting my ass kicked because I don't, I also had to like go back into tutorials, learn all the systems again, learn how the Perry system works, the whatever the, I also don't know the names of the things. yet. Like I can say focus attack dash cancel for Street Fighter 4, but I don't know the words for

the thing that I'm doing in Street Fighter 6 yet. The splashy ink looking thing. Oh, yes. That's actually like, I will say, not that I'm cheering on your, you know, you losing, but it is actually encouraging to hear someone who is as good at video games as I know you are and in particular, like, like, very good at fighting games, that you're just like having the same, the same sort of like noob like struggles with like, ah, fuck, I got to learn everyone's move set. I get to like, like this is just, it's, and that's part of what's so intimidating to me about getting into any fighting

game, especially one that's been, you know, live for a while is there's just so much knowledge you have to communicate. It's, it's learning a language. And you're, you're always going to meet. When you start learning a language, you're always going to be introduced to people who are fluent in it. And they will always be able to outspeak you, outright you, etc. but what you want to become is functionally literate in this fighting game and then you can hold your own.

And once you know what your character is capable of and the general field of what everybody else is capable of, an anti-air move is always going to be an anti-air move. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Like the subject of a sentence is always going to be subject, right? So as long as you can learn your stuff and focus in on your character, then eventually you have like a broad idea. Oh, Cammy's got this dive thing she does. So I know that when she goes up, I can pull off my anti-air and it'll probably connect. It's just, I mean, there's like 30 some odd dudes or more in this game.

And it's a lot to learn. And there's very few repeats from other games. I'm super excited to be playing it again. Yeah, I remember really liking it, and I liked the weird, overworld stuff that you got to do. Yeah, I skipped the overworld stuff and went straight into versus mode and entered into ranked to get my ranking to start working up on my points. I just remember making, like, a horrific-looking person.

Yeah. Because there was a lot more customization than I had considered. It's great. I don't know if it's... exclusive, but the few times that like somebody would interrupt and because you set, it's not like old matchmaking where you like have to like stare at a specific screen. Like you set it up and then you're going through other modes or whatever and somebody will just interrupt with, you know, a new challenger appears. Except when I don't know if this is just the way it is across the board

in Street Fighter 6. Yeah. But it was the Street Fighter 3 interruption. It was now fight a new rival. And I was like, yeah. Let's go. They were saying like welcome back to you. I was looking up because I remember we did that Street Fighter 6 episode with our with our buddy Stephen Fu was the voice of Jamie. And I was like, I was like, oh yeah, we did that pretty recently. 2022. Jesus fucking Christ.

This happened to me a lot when I was doing my research for the two games that I picked for this exercise because I could have sworn these were last year's girls. They were just, they were not. No. No, these were, this was, this was an episode we recorded when, I guess, Ethan was starting ninth grade. Tell you the math here. It's fucking crazy. My favorite Street Fighter Six character was Lily.

Okay. I loved playing as Lily. She has these like two wooden things that she uses too. She's really cool. Yeah, she's got sticks. She got sticks. It was nice, like, pulling off Akuma's raging demon move. Yeah.

I didn't connect, but just being like, oh, okay. So that muscle memory is still there. It's still the same move. I played with classic controls. Modern, like, the idea of, I know that modern controls are the way that a lot of people now play Street Fighter. But it was so intimidating to me to, like, unlearn muscle memory. Yeah. That I was like, I'm just, I'm committed to classic.

I'm not going to be able to learn an entirely new way of playing Akuma. Well, isn't there also, like, I think there's a gatekeeping, like, because I think this happened. There's a lot of fighting games that do this. The one I have has like a simplified input method you can opt into where like there's, there is like a little bit of like, oh, you're using modern controls. You're not really playing streetfighter, at least from old heads, right? Or am I wrong about that? I would assume there's some.

I read somewhere that the Japanese fighting game community, at least the era we're currently in, largely uses modern controls on Street Fighter. Can you use them in competitive tournaments? I don't know. I have no idea. I think they leave you at slight disadvantages in terms of specificity. Oh, got it. Interesting.

I'm remembering to a version of Street Fighter 4 that I played a lot was the one for the Nintendo 3DS. And I still have that cartridge. And I was like, this is, I like that I have this. Yeah. Because then you also like to do, you know, the special moves, you can just touch the screen. Yeah. And that felt strange.

But it's, I was all in on Street Fighter 4. I went to, I maybe have told the story on the show before. I'm just remembering this now, though. My friends, these same friends, and I drove to an arcade in West Covina because it was the one place that nearby that had a Street Fighter 4 cabinet

and we went and we just got our fucking asses kick by people that were playing there. It was so fun because we were just like, oh, we thought we were good at this game and we just got fucking hows. Well, so I know I've told these stories on the show before, so I'm sorry to belabor telling them again.

But Street Fighter 4 was responsible for me reconnecting with slash reigniting friendship from when I was a kid. So Seth Killian, who is the namesake of Seth, the boss of Street Fighter 4,

is one of the programmers and then, not programmers, but community manager, program adjacent. Like he was on the very first Team USA Street Fighter Tournament team that went to Japan for their version of Evo back in the 90s. Subject of the movie Bang the Machine, which is a documentary about Street Fighterer that was

destroyed in the World Trade Center when it, so no copies are now exist. But what happened? To the copy, they were watching it on that. I can't say that. But anyway, so back when I was a games journalist, Street Fighter 4 comes out. I'm flown out by Capcom to play the game and reconnect with Seth, who is from Chicago. We had not spoken in Chicago, I don't think. But in tournament footage from the 90s in Chicago, when I'm a child, he and I are there at the same time. Whoa. And then he works for Capcom. I'm a

journalist and we become close friends. And so like it's also responsible for friendships in my life. Yeah. You know, like there's like a narrative arc to street fighter and its representation and how it's affected my relationships to people. Yeah. You lived with Blanca for a while. I lived with Blanca. Green penis. I would assume. I would hope. Be weird if it wasn't. Seth Kellian's, I just looked it up as at Capcom community manager was his title and also was the lead game designer at a Sony Santa Monica studio. Yeah, yeah.

Kind of worked in a few different, worn a few different hats in the industry. I know the movie's coming out. And we'll talk about the games in a second. The new one's coming out and Mamoa is Blanca. He's also Lobo and Supergirl. I'm like, he's just playing this, that's the same guy. I thought Mamoa was, oh no, he's not. No, he's a different guy being a different guy. But he's Blanca and street.

I'm going to see this thing. I'm probably going to have a great time. I'll play that movie. I'll play the movie. I'll bring a controller to the movie. Act like you're doing it. At the end, I win. Should we talk about our experiences?

It's Roman Rains. Roman Rains is a coma. Talk about our experiences. Whose name is Joe. I'm sorry, I started talking about my experience. Was I? No, keep going. Several segments?

Yeah, keep going. That's it. I mean, I've been playing as a Kuma for two weeks. It's been fucking awesome. Are you getting online in playing people? Yeah. How is what's the success rate? I guess that's more what I meant.

Like it's like it's it's, you know, beyond, you know, the games we've kind of gotten into. Like, is there anything specific that we've really like clicked it locked on to as we've been going with it? I'm surprised. I mean, I know that the fighting game community is robust. But I expected there to be significant downtime in between rounds. I was playing at lunch often and would constantly. be dropped into games and I was like, wow, this, like, it's a living. This is thriving.

Yeah, it's a living, thriving community. And just getting like, fucking curb stumped by person after person after person. When I would win, too, I would be like, was I a scrub in that round? Like, did I suck and just win by like sheer force of will? Or did I was, am I eking out strategy that is dormant in my brain? Interesting. I was, I'm a little bit embarrassed. because I would walk into Street Fighter games

with a little bit of like an ego about it. Yeah. Like I'm like, oh, I'm the girl who's been playing since Street Fighter 2. And who's your main usually? Akuma. It's Akuma right now. I mean, back in Street Fighter two days,

it was Chunli or Ryu. Right. And then in four, it was Ryu until Akuma dropped in. And then Goki when Goki dropped because he's so funny. He was so bad. I loved it.

He has a dragon punch where he'll dragon punch you and then grab your head when you're in the air and punch it down into the ground. Love it. Good move. That's fun. I just remembered M. Bison's other one. Nightmare booster.

It's good. I guess if I'm thinking about my fighting game history because I didn't cite any specific game. Street Fighter 2 certainly I was so hype for and played the shit out of as a kid. Same with Mortal Kombat, the original. And I think probably the last fighting game I played with any sort of seriousness

beyond just periodic attempts just like dip my my toe back in the water with a with a game in the genre like we did with Street Fighter 6 was probably Tekken 3 that long ago. I would say beyond like if we extend it to to platform fighters, then I've certainly put more hours into Smash Brothers that franchise than any other fighting game. Certainly smash melee, OG, Super Smash Brothers, Brawl. Like, you know, I played the shit out of those games. Those just hit me at a point in my life where that, you know, I was around a lot of people

to play IRL with and just really just connected like I'm such a Nintendo fanboy at least or at least was that it just like all those IPs kind of being mashed together before that was what every IP was what every you know everything had a fucking multiverse slash extended universe. It was just had such novelty for me. But what I played for this week's exercise is 2XCO which is Riot's F2P 2B2 fighting game released in January of this year. Whoa.

Bad title. Just a bad title. Two X-K-O. I've already forgot. Two-X-K-O. So the fighters are League of Legends champions from the Roontera universe. Is that how you say it? Roon-Tera?

That's a whole thing. I don't know shit about League of Legends. I don't find. I've never played League. I've played other mobas. I've never played League. I don't know anything about Riot Games. I haven't watched the show there.

Everybody says it's a little good. Arcane. Arcane. Whatever the fuck. It's a, it's a, what's a Rami's. What the fuck it's called? Everyone says it's fucking awesome. It's like one of the better shows.

Yeah, I haven't watched it. I know its budget is insane. And it looks incredible. My interest was Pete because watching it this year's Evo, I just found it really appealing. And I was just like, man, this has a real kinetic energy to it. I really like the character designs. I really like the art direction. It's kind of kind of the cell shaded treatment.

It does kind of evoke like a guilty gear. You know, it's not quite that. Guilty gear? Nice. Nice. he done. But I was just like, let me mess around with this thing, especially because it's F2P, I just, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll download this, uh, this umbitch and, for listeners, that's free to play. Free to play. I'll just, I'll just, listeners, like my mom,

really. Gail, it's free to play. But it is, but it isn't because it, like Heather was saying, with all the lock characters, you get this thing and 80% of the roster is, you know, not playable, unless you purchase the characters like you would, like, you know, Fortnite characters or whatever. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's that model. that's fine. And there's a whole bunch of skins and a lot of them are horny, which I think is just a thing

that I think is baked into skins these days. I even saw that the Fortnite has some horny skins now. Yeah, Fortnite came out with their first truly horny skins this week in the hot bat summer, which is DC's like hot, sexy swimsuit era.

Matt immediately going to his phone. Matt, Matt, look up the poison ivy skin, it's her underboobs. And they have jiggle physics for the first fucking time. That's wild. In Fortnite. Is it just like they're like, well,

our fandom has aged with the game. They want to jack off now. Yeah, they're all jacking age. Well, I think it's in part because Marvel rivals are so unabashedly horny skins. And those are maybe like very successful. Like the new Jubilee skin for Marvel

rivals is like, and I, use this word in a way that will offend our listeners and I use it on purpose. They've made Jubilee look like a whore. Googling this as well.

But I think that there's just like pressure on Fortnite. This is more chaste than the Poison I View one. No way. No way. Well.

Anyway, there's a lot of this horny shi-horniness. No, no, mind. You're right. You're right. You see the one that I'm talking about? Yeah. Where it's like she's wearing a belt instead of pants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can see a female's cum gutters?

It's like obligatory at this point, right? It's like how an anime is having a beach episode. It's just like people are going to, we got to, we got to, we get just some fan service at some point. I do think more TV shows should have beach episodes. It's an interesting place to put characters. I like going to the beach. Why not? I like going to the beach and persona.

That was fun. It's fun. You can do that. Splash around a little bit. Yeah, hell yeah. Eat a hot dog. Or in our case, or Nick and I shared experience. Go to the jack-in-the-box at Bolsa-Chica.

It's a good jack-in-the-box. Eat a hot dog at the beach? Yeah. Sandy dog? Oh, don't drop it in the sand. What are you doing? Dunking it in the sand? How do you keep the sand off your dog?

I hold onto it and then I take my bites without sand on it. Okay. I just feel like sand's everywhere. I don't like the beach because I don't like sand. Okay, and this is what you and Anakin have. One of the things you and Anakin have in common. That and helmets. We both love helmets.

Anyway, my experience playing 2XCO. It's a cool fighter that apparently is not performed up to riots, probably unreasonable expectations, given the size of their other games. I'll read from this February 9th game developer piece, so this came out a couple weeks after the game was released in January. January. Riot Games lays off roughly 80 employees from 2XCO team. I'll just read a little excerpt from this. 2XCO executive producer Tom Cannon appeared to blame the layoffs on sluggish player engagement with a freshly released fighting game.

As we expanded from PC to console, we saw consistent trends in how players were engaging with 2XCO, he wrote. The game has resonated with a passionate core audience, but overall momentum hasn't reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term. 2XCO spent an exceptionally long time in development. In 2016, Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, a fighting game studio founded by Tom and Tony Cannon. The team would spend a decade iterated on the game that would eventually become 2XCO. So 10 years of development to result in this.

God. And I guess it's just like they wanted it to be this instant smash hit. When I feel like any fighting game is going to take, especially a new IP is going to take some time to develop an audience. I'm not the first person with this take. and I don't have enough information. I'm not smart enough for this. Somebody has to investigate what has happened

with development cycles because it's gotten so crazy. Well, I think there's all, yeah, I mean, games are just so huge in scope. I also kind of feel like that Riot would have the luxury of just sort of like, we're not in a new rush for this. We're making so much money off of league

that we don't fucking need to even do anything else. It's kind of like the steam issue. You know when we did that hot takes? Yeah. I have a hot take. Oh. The reason development cycles are so long now, and the reason there is so much expectation placed on games

is exclusively the fault of Final Fantasy 7 on the PlayStation 1. Interesting. That's the game where everybody was like, wait a minute. Look, like you can see all the CG cinemas and the backgrounds are fully pre-rendered. And like the jump from Final Fantasy 6 to Final Fantasy 7, placed insane burden on the rest of the industry to follow suit and became a Cold War of armament. It may very well be patient seven, just, or patient seven, patient zero. I meant patient seven, though, maybe perhaps a little more fitting.

Not the first couple guys, but definitely the seventh one. It's patient zero of this sort of, you know, the expectation of these pristine production values for, for AAA games. But yeah, but yeah, it's interesting because, I wonder. I wonder what point game budgets became so completely out of whack. Wasn't it also at the time the most expensive video game ever made? That I don't know.

It sounds right. It sounds true. I don't know. I like the sound of it. It came on three discs. Like everything about it was so huge. It came on three discs and now they don't come on none. Yeah, they come on zero.

Zero discs. Okay, we're back. Here's the thing, though. I had fun with this game. Yeah, okay. I mean, I definitely don't like team fighters all that much overall. Just I don't like the assist swap. And, you know, I've had fun with these in the past, like, like Marvel, you know, Marvel Capcom, certainly, you know.

But I'm just like I'm not super interested in figuring out where I'm going to use my assists, where I'm going to swap fighters, managing two different health bars and, you know, all that sort of shit. I just, and I also, to be, what's interesting about combat sports is that they are one-on-one. You know what I mean? Like, I like a wrestling tag team match, but that's its own thing. That's sports entertainment versus like- What if they just put four boxers in a ring though? It'd be interesting. Oh, like, oh, this is a free-for-all?

They're not, it's not two visas to. It's four, four boxers in a ring. That's interesting. My strategy would be to team up with somebody on one guy. Of course. You definitely would. Like, some guy would be, somebody would throw a punch and depending on his ability to throw that punch, he's either going to,

leave himself wide open to the other two and then all three of them gang up on him. Yeah, but I wouldn't want to team up with somebody. All of us go against the biggest guy first, the strongest guy first. Yeah. Maybe they're all of equal weight and skill. You would think all of these strategies would be valid, but I can tell you from experience in Fortnite, none of them actually happen. Yeah, I guess I'll just bring a gun.

You go, you get down to the last four and one guy's like super powered up and his great weapons. and you're like, well, clearly we're all going to start shooting this dude together. Yeah. And the moment you reveal your location, somebody else immediately starts shooting you. And you're like, what are we doing, man? What are we doing? We do this together. Or when you're in like squads and it's like you've got three duos and a solo, you don't all team up on the solo.

Yeah. I'm picturing a very specific animation cycle of my mind from. a then WWF, now WWE fighting game from when I was a kid. When I would play with my uncle, I'd always want us to be the Hardy boys

because that's like fun. Yeah. I'd always be want to be Matt Hardy because Matt's my name. My uncle's name is not Jeff, but I'd be like, you have to be Jeff. Yeah. And we're going to be the Hardy brothers.

There was like an animation of like them entering the ring, not necessarily them, but just like other wrestlers where like, you know, they kind of like slide on their bellies under the bottom rope. I just think that's kind of,

like a funny, I know they do it in real life too, but it's like, it's funny. A cool ring entrance, and it is very funny. I was more of a Dudley Boys guy. Dudley Boys is guy. Yeah, well, that was the other thing, too. We would also play the Dudley Boy. Anybody that was like a known duo, it was like, we got to do those guys. Because the Dudley Boys, they were just some big boys.

Devon, get the tables. Man, so good. And then on a rare occasion, I'd be like, I'm going to be the undertaker. You could be whoever the hell you want. Because the Undertaker was fucking awesome. Yeah. I liked wrestling when I was a kid because I just thought it was like

I mean it is I was a little more invested in the character Yeah you know Bubba Ray Dudley When he uh he puts the uh Yeah I think I can't I can't remember her name right now

The older woman wrestler Through a table And then just has that thousand yard stare It's like one of my favorite like bits of wrestling footage I remember being a kid I mean obviously he's now proven May young is that who it was May Young? I think so yeah

Sounds right Um he's been proven to be a known monster now, but I remember like being a kid and being so scandalized by Vince McMahon's behavior. He's the boss, he shouldn't be fighting. This is not okay.

God, it's just like Stone Cold Steve Austin disguised as a doctor beating the shit out of Vince McMahon in a hospital is like, this is entertainment. I think Stone Cold Steve Austin is better than any character ever written by any of the great American writers.

I think he is, he's singular. There is no other man. I, uh, I went through a, like a several year wrestling phase where I was into wrestling and watched all the like old matches as well as like what was happening at, uh, I think it was, uh, T&A wrestling, um, with Paul Heyman. The coolest thing I've ever seen. I liked Rick Flair. I liked, I liked all these dudes.

But the coolest thing I ever saw was the promo that CM Punk cut when he was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Okay. And like the very first one where he was like, this is all bullshit. I was like. The pipe bomb promo they call it. Yeah, it was such a good. I was like, this is iconic. I will remember this moment forever, even when I don't like wrestling anymore.

I think I would cut a bad promo. I would not do a good job. Oh, you could do a great promo. I would love to, maybe I'll watch a couple and then I'll cut up promo. We should just cut promos. It'd be kind of funny. Call out another video game podcast. Listen up, you're sons up bitches over at triple click.

I love to, I typed Bubba Ray into, um, I typed Bubba Ray into YouTube and it auto-completed power bomb May Young. They know what you're looking for. Ranch, you ever seen this clip? This is Bubba Ray Dudley. This is May Young, who is a legendary female professional wrestler who is, you know, in her 70s, I think, at this point. And this is her wheelchair. And then this is what happens.

Just jumps off a platform and puts her through a table while she's wearing a neck brace. When the commentators are yelling, no. Just a way, she's just staring. Oh my gosh, she's dead! Bring out the stretcher. Oh, my God. There are some things in... Just so pure entertainment.

Some things in wrestling like that that I think are better than any actual TV show. No, it's like, it's like, that's just storytelling. That's just like, whatever. That's just just primal. It's also very shonen anime. It's like the booking and the storytelling of wrestling is the same. like, well, we know this guy's got this power and this guy's got that power, but what is this guy doing, teaming up with that guy?

It's that, but it's also the simplicity of a good jackass gag. Yep. It's like the idea of, because there also is, I think, complexity within the simplicity of like the idea of Bam drawing Preston and Weeman on a bridge but tethered with a bungee. Yeah. And sending that to Knoxville in a fax machine. That's like, that is actual genius. Yeah.

Like, that's really, really funny. But the idea of it is so simple and so good. But back to the fighting. Yeah, 2XCO. So the button layout is definitely designed with game pads in mind, as you would expect. I definitely got my ass kicked by a number of real players. Although I had a little bit more success that I expected. I'm not sure if I was up against any bots.

I didn't feel like it. It felt like when I was in that casual lobby, that unranked lobby, it felt like they were all real people. But who fucking knows, you know, the way these games are set up. very often trying to give you early wins to get you hooked. There's a juggernaut style which you can use. They have a bunch of different styles and all that stuff is just always feels so. It's another reason why like getting into fighting games is so like, like Jesus Christ, I'm doing A type?

Am I doing, you know, like E type? What the fuck do any of these things mean? But it basically, the styles here just affect your any special, features you can do any sort of like special qualities that could be had between you and your tag partner. I just went with Juggernaut because it's basically a solo build. I was like I just don't have to worry about the team mechanic. It just sort of like my character gets extra health and all the assist stuff I can kind of opt out of. But I don't know. I don't know if I'll play more of this. I again do really like the character designs. The tutorial was really, you know, as I think

fighting games have gotten at this point, but it was really comprehensive in terms of teaching all the mechanics. I'm just like, if I'm going to commit myself to a game, I have to be really, really into it. Because to Heather's point, it's like learning a new language. And I'm just like, I had fun with this, but I'd rather play the field a little bit before, instead of just like committing with this guy. Yeah. With this bad boy. That said, I was curious as I was look at this, because this, okay, these character designs are very horny. They have some horny. What is everyone the horniest for? And it seems like it's Ari who is like the character who is a like a fox girl.

That question was directed at the people playing the game, not me. No, Ari, who's like a fox girl. And you look at her at her design and it's just like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah, I can see. That's kind of like we're in a furry culture these days. So someone who's got a little bit of those attributes might have the most connection with an internet. furry culture.

That's just kind of fun to play. The character designs are really cool. Yeah, I sort of, it is crazy that for how big League of Legends is as a franchise that I just have not ever engaged with it once. I have no idea what's going on there. I've watched Arcane.

It's really good. Okay. But mostly you're watching it and just kind of marveling at the animation, the raw, like, artistry. and you're like, how, how does somebody even make this? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I, I, I, it's, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I did, like, this very large woman, uh, it's, very muscular woman, who could kill me with a single punch. Yeah.

Definitely. What's her character design? What's your character name? I'llowie. And again, you know, I'm probably mispronouncing that because I don't know any of this stuff. But I also like,

Vye, who is like just seems to be very mean. Yeah. And then also, and kind of has that, that, you know, the undercut. And then also Jinks,

who seems very Harley Quinn quoted and is just like fucking insane. Yeah. So I just say like, like, you know, probably one of them is what I would do if I was going to keep playing these. games.

Jinks is one of the Fortnite crossover skins. Whoa. Hey, there you go. Yep. Yeah, long blue braids and some sort of markings. I don't know if those are tattoos or legions. And then just a whole bunch of weapons, a whole bunch of guns. I was impressed by it, actually.

I was like, I don't know what the fighting game community really thinks of this. There certainly was the, the evo matches I found quite compelling. I really, I do enjoy it just cosmetically. It's just like a lot to immerse yourself into. you're not, if like me, the core mechanic of it being 2V2 doesn't quite grab you. Also, Jinks and Fire are the stars of Arcane. Okay, I'm in. I gotta watch this.

You think the big lady's in it? I'd love for that big lady to be in it. Get her in there. I played Mortal Kombat 1, which came out in 2023, September, 2023, which if you would have asked me, gun to my head when I thought it came out, would have told you, sometime last year. Yeah. just slipped through the cracks

had played it a little bit at my buddy Connor's house when he had like a fighting game night the thing I'll say about this game it is fun it looks great it is just kind of more mortal combat like it's like not more till combat it's more

till combat wow where it's like I didn't you know I haven't engaged with that much of it it's just like you know it plays exactly how you think it does you know you have a lot of your familiar characters you got Johnny Cage

Kung Lao, Lukang, Raiden, Scorpion. It's weird that you're saying these names this way because I'm pretty sure it's pronounced scorpion. Sub-zero. Yeah, it's like that. You can't just say Johnny Cage. You have to be Johnny Cage. I installed a

normal guy mod. Round one, fight. Round one, fight. We'll fight if you want. Honestly, that's what... Fatality. They did a... In Street Fighter 2, when they brought out Super Street Fighter 2, they redid all of the round one, fight. Like, they changed it to round one, fight.

And it sucked so much life out of the game. Yeah. All those guys are there. There's other guys, two. Tanya's there. You got. There's wrong with that. No.

Natara. Sonia. Is she in it? Sonia. No, Sonia's not it. Is she dead? I think she's probably dead. I think Sony is dead.

Yeah, she played Sonia. But then that's the crazy thing about this game, though, in particular, is that did you know that this is a reboot of the Mortal Kombat universe? Oh, so why isn't Tonya alive then? I don't know. Hmm, Sonia. But she might be in a, is she in a DLC pack? No, she's not even in a DLC pack. They have all these other funny characters that, you know, that you can get in there, like Homelander and Omni Man and Peacemaker, Conan the Barbarian, Ghostface, Noob Zibot, Terminator 1,000.

Ghostface being in there is funny. I do like that it's Ghostface. Ghostface is cool. Is Robocop in this one? Robocop is not in this one. I think he was in the last one, yeah. But like, so the conceited this one is after defeating Chronica. It also, hold on, I do think that it's funny that these games have like dense lore.

Dense. Extremely dense lore that I'm just like not aware of really at all. And the story mode for this is basically like, this is a full-ass movie. Yeah. Like, there's like, it's not just like, you have the tower mode that they had in the earlier games too, but there's like just full on cutscenes in this thing that are just like, here's what's going on in the world of Mortal Kombat. And that the reboot of it is part of it. Scorpion. It's not just like, yeah, we're started over.

It's like, that was my patent to file. So you think it's like a newspaper movie? Yeah. If you would have invented moral combat, you would have invented moral combat. After defeating Chronica... You know what's cooler than a million punches? A billion punches. Baraka comes in.

He's wearing a suit. After defeating Chronica and Shang-sung, Fire God Luke Kang uses Chronica's hourglass to recreate the universe before relinquishing. control of it to Garris to become Earth realms protector. Over time, he forms a tenuous alliance with Outworld under the auspices of continuing the Mortal Kombat tournaments. In the present, Shang now a powerless outworlder struggles to make a living selling quack medicine until he is approached by...

So I wasn't that far off. No, it's crazy. By a mysterious individual named Damashi, who reveals to him that he has the potential to become a sorcerer. and that unseen forces have been working against him. So it's like this thing where he's like he reset it. Now he's just like a normal guy. They're like actually,

it's like what the premise of the movie would be. And it might have been what the premise of the last movie was actually. I didn't see the most recent one that had just come out. I have not seen the most recent Mortal Kombat. I didn't love the first one of the new ones. But I didn't hate it either. It's not good. But I had a fun time watching it.

The only movie that I will see, and date of drop is Sonic. Whatever the next Sonic movie is, I'm there opening night. Oh yeah. Yeah, I might be there Thursday. You know? I might get in there early

before those damn kids get in the theater. I just prefer Street Fighter more to Mortal Kombat. It's not that I think it's like, I think it's fun that it's like nasty. Like there's like, because, so get a load of this. I'm playing the tutorial because I'm like,

I got to learn how to play this damn thing. Right. I'm doing the tutorial. I'm acing the tutorial. Okay. I'm like just crushing it. I'm like, Okay, this is all stuff, you know, it's going to be a lot to remember, but I'll just, you know, try my best in these fights.

The main difference between playing the main game and the tutorial is that in the tutorial, they do not fight back. Okay. You just are able to sort of implement the moves. I'm getting housed on normal difficulty on this thing in the game. I have to take it down to easy. Okay. And it's still hard. Yep.

I'm having a hard time because you can't just really get by pushing buttons. You got to know, you have to familiarize yourself. There was an era when you could mash your way through like a killer instinct or something like that. Just get through single player mode and not have to worry about it. But yes, yes to what Ranch was saying earlier about a high-fire rush. It's just like, like, no, it demands like knowing what your move sets are. You have to have some level of like proficiency to like to really get through this thing and like and to really start winning matches. I didn't play online because I just don't, I don't like doing that.

and I didn't want to but I think it's fun in a setting where all of us are like hey let's put on Mortal Kombat we'd have a fucking blast playing it because it's just really well made and it's really really good did you pull off any fatalities

I did pull off a fatality fuck I can't remember the character's name but there's a fatality that you can do where you open a portal and it's like a mirror world of what's happening and you can bash the skull in of the person

that you're fighting but you can bash their skull into their skull through this portal. Wow. So you kill them in the portal, like both versions of that man die. Yeah. It's awesome. Because either guy's like, what do I do?

Just hanging out. Hey, what the fuck? But it's you on the other, you're sort of, it's, it's, you're doing. Got it, got it, got it, got, yeah. But it was really, really, I loved that. That was really fun. Pretty good. But I don't know, I don't think I'm going to stick with it.

Because I just do prefer the how Street Fighter feels compared to, Mortal Kombat, like, just like the, if I was going to go back to a fighting game, it probably would be Street Fighter 6. I did play something else. Can you get asked real quick before we move off of Mortal Kombat? And, and Rochelle, I'm curious your take it as well. If you could be bay balladied, would you do it? Like become a baby?

Yeah. Yeah. No. No. Because here's the thing. You get a lot more life. You get to enjoy having a young body for a time. And especially if you're like me and you're in your 40s, it's like, man, I just, I had so

much more energy when I was like a teenager and in my. 20s. Yeah, but you gotta wait then like 15, 20 years to get to that. You gotta live through, yeah, you gotta go through childhood and then there'll be things like, like, oh, I've got a, I'm imagining a version where you have babaladyed and you have your adult brain. Yeah. So that's its own kind of psychic horror. Yeah, you have the, you're a curse, you're a baby cursed with knowledge. You can't do anything. Right. It's like having, it's like that title of that game. I have a mouth. I have no mouth but on my screen. Yes. Um. Tomlin Allison's short story. Turned into a point and click adventure. I would, it's, I do think I made me just came up with

the premise of a movie. What if, it's, but it's, but it's, but it's, also sort of like downsizing kind of where you go to you go with your wife and you're like let's go be, let's get babality, let's go be babies together, we'll grow up together and we'll get to continue this love longer than we did before. Yeah, that's the only way I do it.

If I was doing it by myself, I'd be like this sucks. I miss my wife. No, I wouldn't wipe my ass. No, I don't think I'd want to do it like without my partner and or without somebody. I don't think I'm doing a solo because it's just like, oh wait, my whole friend group's going to go away. Well, it might be interesting.

if we all did it together and then we could all be babies together and then we all grew up to be the same age. That'd be kind of funny. That sounds like hell. I think we'd love it. We'd have a fucking blast, dude. We'd have a man.

We'd be chopping it up as babies. We might do things a little bit different. I also want to say in terms of what I do for work, where the industry is, where the environment is, that maybe starting to be a baby now would be very bad.

Like I'm not sure that I would, would be able to do what I do in 30 years because I don't know that my job will still exist. Yeah, I mean, I'd have to learn a trade, which is a thing because I don't have any skills and it's kind of nice to coast through life, not knowing how to do anything. I do think if I could go back and learn a trade, I would just become a mechanic. That's fucking cool. It just kind of feels like it's like you'll have a job for whenever you need a job. Yeah, yeah.

You know. Ranch, if you could be bae balleted, would you do it? No. You're just out on being bad balady. You're good with being an adult. Yeah, it'd be the thing where it's like I wouldn't want to relive life without my family or friends. Yeah. I guess that's a very human sort of take. What if everybody in the world got babelated in its baby world?

That feels like that's it. Where's the food going to come from? Who's going to run the power plants? Who's tit? Yeah, I think it would be an instant. I was fighting over the one tit. Extinction. Yeah, it'd be tough.

It'd be a tough hang. If the three of us got bay ballad. Start getting mauled by dogs. I mean, it'd be so fucking helpless. Oh, I mean, it would be a big bird would take us up. It wouldn't be nothing. But, Ranch, if the three of us decided to get Bay balladied, would you take care of us? Yeah.

Okay, good. That's fine. I'm not going to, you don't have to. Heather might do it. Triplit. Drop me on my fucking face on Sunset Boulevard. In the damn single? I would dress you all the same.

Oh, no. That's really cute. We should maybe do that anyway. Oh, what if we all went shopping for one outfit, We always wore it one time. It would be kind of fun. We already've done this. It's a Verong T-shirt.

It's true. The wrong t-shirt is great. Rich, I think you should pick out an outfit for all three of us. I think that's a fun idea. I don't want this. I have a pitch. I think we all like it. What is it?

Adidas track suit, of course. Pretty good. That's fine. Okay, I'll wear that. Yeah. Like the Beastie Boys? Tracksuits are good. It'd be awesome.

I was always wanted one and I've never had the gumption to pull it off. I have multiple tracksuits. We should do it. It'd be fun. I've got my oasis tracksuit. So good. Have you seen the trailer for the new movie? Yeah, it looks great.

Oh, I can't wait. I did hire a personal stylist recently, not the wardrobe I'm wearing now, but just to get some like other pieces. My body shape has changed a little bit. And I was like, I need some new clothes. And I was just sort of like, and a person I recommend Jane Clare if you're in the LA area, although I think they also do remotes for people all over the wherever you are. But Jane was just like, like, just like picking out pieces for me.

just like stuff that like even and it's just like it was like man this is such a a a less expensive than I thought um certainly working with with with with Jane but also like I think there it might it might specifically be a a dude thing or it might be everyone and I'm but I'm just I'm just making that I'm just projecting that but like I really like getting dressed up like someone like like oh you picked out clothes and I'm gonna try on these clothes like okay yes it like it does kind of put me back in and in a in a childhood mode of of like mommy getting me a nice suit or something. I, you know, whatever neuroses I have of, like, putting clothes on.

Yeah. Like, somebody handing me a shirt and putting it on, I like that so much better than, like if my wife does it or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Me putting on a shirt and then not liking how it looked and then being like, what the fuck's wrong with me? What did I think I like that shirt? I'm a loser.

And then my wife hands me a shirt. Like, oh, you know what? Just the shirt didn't work out. But thanks for trying. Or just just picking something out for you, I think it's part of it, too. Yeah, totally. Natalie is like, like, oh, I like this color on you or something like this or I like this print or so I like like like like I was like, okay, yeah, give that a go. It's funny to think that rich people just don't like like their experience like the succession style rich people.

Yeah. Their relationship to clothing is totally bonkers compared to what they don't even fucking. They don't know anything. They don't think about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You think like fucking. I'm not making the name somebody. Like just like they're that they're even like, oh, God, I look bad. Like they're just like they don't care. Yeah. They don't even know. I do know somebody who worked for a very famous actor. And that famous actor who is not appreciably older than any of us did not know what a credit card was.

Because just like their whole, they had never paid for anything on their own. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. Good Lord. I'd love to be that rich. I know. I would have no problem. It would be awesome.

Other people just do things for me. Yeah. So the other game that I played. Because I just was like, you know what? Let me just get in there with another thing real quick, just to see what's going on. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2. I saw it on Game Pass, and I was like, I got to just see what this is. This also released November 7, 2023.

So it's not a new game by any means. But it's basically a smash-like with characters from the Nickelodeon roster. So, you know, The Angry Beaver's Daggett and Norbert. Danny Fatten. Danny Phantom. You got Garfields in there. Kind of feels like I don't associate with him. Nickelode necessarily.

You got the wild Thornberry's in there? You have Nigel Thornberry in there. Smashing. You got Invader Zim. Love that. You got Gerald from Hey Arnold. You got Renan Stimpy. You got Rocco.

Oh, that's fun. Squidward, Spungebob, Patrick. There's some good guys in this. And they're fighting? Well, this is the thing. I hate to see it. I really do. I don't want them doing any of this.

I kind of feel like Wren is the only person on that entire list who would actually fight any of these other guys. Also, like two of the Ninja Turtles are there, two. Oh, well. Which feels insane. I guess Ninja Turtles would fight. Would you like to guess which two? Donatello and Leonardo.

Michelangelo. And I will also guess Donatello. Donatello. Rafael is an interesting choice. I just think if you're going to put two, put four. What are we doing? Yeah, only two is weird. And then, because also April O'Neill's in it.

It's like, you got April in here, but. Don't the other two? But can you imagine if they'd put three turtles in? It would have been far, you've been like, what did he die? Like, why is a one? Three is crazy, yeah. But you can put, I mean, you might as well just put two. It's the same looking guy, just a different fucking.

Don't put April in. So weird. Like, put Casey in over April. I also forgot Jimmy Neutron is in it. That's funny. And I do. That's funny. I like Jimmy Neuton.

I was like a kid when Jimi Neutron. like a kid when Jimmy Neutron was new and I was like wait this is I like Jimmy Neutron Jimmy Neutron's good but here's the thing I think this game kind of sucks like of course it's I it has like sort of like mid to like fine reception I just don't need this I don't one I hate to see them fighting like this it's SpongeBob he's good doing his little bubble wand he's doing a little friendship rainbow hands he's doing uh you know he does a little slap no SpongeBob, you don't do that. One, I think you're just a kid.

I think you're a young kid. Two, you shouldn't be fighting. Your first guy I fought was Patrick. They're fighting? Have you seen the footage from the SpongeBob musical where a human being is SpongeBob? Yes. I find that uncanny.

I don't like that. I did watch the most recent SpongeBob movie on an airplane with my wife not that long ago. And let me tell you something. We had a fucking blast. That's great. It is, at a certain point, we both, leaned over and we're like, this movie's for babies.

But we were like, it was kind of gross. They had like, there was a lot of butt cheek humor in the movie. And we were really cracking up. This game, it plays worse than smash to me. And I, like, I'm just not a smash guy. I don't really like it. I don't, to me, it's not intuitive to have. Because like, you're moving around with the, you know,

the directional stick, the left stick to move your character. in my mind if going down if pushing down on it means that I'm like kind of like ducking or going down to the next level pushing up should be the jump function it is not it is assigned to a button and I'm just like so what is up look what does up do I think up is look

what the fuck is that yeah I don't know we don't need to look in a fighting game no well in a platform fighter like is like like like a tilt up in smash brothers can be is a way that you can you know direct and attack upward, like a stationary tack upward, a neutral. But it also is like, yeah, it can be the float-up button, you know.

It could be both. Because you have the C buttons to jump. Yeah. I'm going back to melee. I shouldn't be fixated on melee. I like the roster. I think it's fun, but I also don't want them to fight. I kind of wish they were doing something else.

I wish they were racing or something or doing anything, playing sports. All of these companies doing something. that are trying to make all of their IP together a thing. Yeah. Is a mystery to me. Like there was a Warner Brothers fighting game. Yeah, that's now gone multiverses. Yeah.

That's what I was going to bring up because I did play multiverses some when it came out. And yeah, but go on. But it's, it's, it, all of it is, um, a misunderstanding of why Nintendo gets to do it, which is that they have over many years shown affection for and caretaking for all of these different characters. I think, you know, I know that the Sony one didn't do well, but I do think post-astrobot, like there's a path for a Sony fighting game. What the fuck was that called?

Does I don't remember? It was called like PlayStation All-Stars or something. Yeah, All-Brawl? All-Brawl. All-Brawls. All-Brawls. I think it's called All-Brawl. You know what it is?

That sounds like a beer that comes to the shot of whiskey in it. What are you some kind of pussy? Drink all-brawl. I think. I think that's a good point, Heather, about Smash Brothers, and I think it also... You don't need to drive. Or do it. Who cares?

Drink, all bro. I think there's also, there's a factor of... Light your fight on fire. All brawl. Even if these characters, we haven't seen in the context of a fighting game, we know what, like, Link's move set is. You know, we know what Mario's move set is. We know what Kirby's move set is. And then if you start playing a game like multiverses, and I'm looking at the roster here, but it's, it's just like, you know, I don't inherently know what the Iron Giant is going to do in a fighting game, let alone LeBron James.

You know what I mean? It's just like, it's so, it feels incoherent. And so it's just like pure fan service. I think that's why like, you know, like the like the, like the, like the DC universe fighting game is like works best. because it's like, oh, at least have a sense of everyone's on the same page. Yeah. And there's like a reason that they're fighting. Right.

They went crazy. They got all corrupted by Brainiac or some shit. Whereas like, why is Rick Sanchez trying to kill LeBron James in multiverses? I can see that being a character. Yeah. Yeah, guys, maybe you might want to cut that one out. Yeah. I mean, it's, I like, I kind of, it's cool that it's like a multi-platform, this type of thing,

because I do think that there are kids that, like, don't have Nintendo so they don't have access to smash or like something like this. So, like, they're like, oh, this one, this one has SpongeBob. And, like, that was enough for me to download it. I was like, I kind of want to see what SpongeBob is doing. And then the harsh reality of SpongeBob fighting set in. Yeah. And it was like, I actually don't want to see him doing that. He's a little too sweet to be, it's not present.

in like a they're not doing fatalities or anything but it's literally the same thing too where like you get pushed off screen and then big big lightning burst right it's like it's the exact same mechanic as as smash and then you're just kind of moving through portals to the next fight I don't think I've ever liked a platform fighter that wasn't smash brothers yeah like I just don't I just I think they're the only one that where that that formula kind of works they really like and it's for me not even really liking smash that much much the, it's floater in a good way where like I felt

like the weight of SpongeBob was too dense. Like he was like, I was like, I was like, this is tough. Yeah. This is like, it's a little muddy. This feels like I don't really like it. But I thought it'd be interesting to just try it out because I've never played another game that was like Smash before. It's, what you're saying there about the Nicola, because like you hear that roster and it's like, oh, that's a kid's game and then you're like, no, actually that's a roster for like millennials.

Like this is a nostalgia play. This is these are like the cartoons that that kids grew up with if they're like, you know, if you're like 30. Yeah. And so I think there maybe speaks to something there of I don't know. I don't have kids. I do have nieces and nephews. I have four nieces and nephews.

And I, they all play video games. And I don't know if any of them ever really played fighting games. I just don't think of that as a thing with, I think we're maybe with fighting. games and it's weird to say as someone who's as old as me and like watch street fighter two basically birth what we now know as a as the modern fighting game um and then also just saw the same thing happen with virtue of fighter and and tackin uh on the 3d side yeah seeing these genres grow that they're that now it's kind of like a a genre that's reached maturity that's reached something of a final form and as such i it's almost like it's almost like something like like jazz

music or this is a weird comparison but it's just like or like or like tennis you know it's just like an established thing that I think the the there will be always be a younger audience but it will be a smaller niche audience and then a lot of the audience is going to be people who are like just grew up with it and are going to age with the genre so like I think that's why I don't know it's maybe maybe as such like I feel like there's there's just less innovation in this genre because it's just so clearly the parameters have been figured out could have been solved in terms of what works and what doesn't work, you know? And stepping too far aside of those bounds, it stops peeling like a fighting game entirely. I do like that they had the angry beavers in it. They

have reason to fight. They're angry. Yeah. It makes that make sense. Yeah, 100%. Um, you know, Invader Zim, he wants to take over the world. Like, yeah, sure. I could get there with SpongeBob, but he has to, I don't know, there's something. I don't want to get Spongob getting hurt. I don't want to see him get hurt. It's all presented and like they're having a little bit fun. Like, he is kind of like smiling the whole time. He's not like doing efforts where he's like, ah, fuck. Fuck, you hit me.

Ah, you hit me my balls. My fucking nut sack. On the other hand, though, he's being stabbed with a sigh by Raphael. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Squidward put one right between his fucking eye. But all that to say, look, these fighting games, I think they're here to stay.

Here's what, Matt, that's a great, great take. No, they are here to stay. I mean, it's just like, it's just, again, I think that's what I kind of mean with mature genre. They're just sort of established. It's like, like, fighting games are going to exist forever. I would like to see the inclusion of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 in Evo. I want to see people get really good at, you know, being Danny Phantom or some shit.

That would be a really interesting. It's possible. There's a lot of Evo. An interesting thing for one of these big tournaments to do is announce, a year out, no, not even, announced two weeks out. Yeah. That they are going to also have a $15,000 tournament

for like some insane fucking shitty fighting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It'd be interesting masters of Teres Kasi. Yeah. Like we're doing this in Evo. There's a, yeah, there's a top prize, get good. Yeah. There must be some, there must be some, some, some, some, some, some,

fighting game tournaments that do this. What I'd be interested in from our community is like if anyone has the wrecks of like, like, hey, knowing your tastes or knowing what you, hearing what you liked or didn't like about these games, I think this fighting game would connect with you. Obviously, Heather's playing Street Fighter 6. So I guess this is more for me and Matt and ranch as well of ranch is ever ever interested in messing around with one of these. I've always been intrigued by Guilty Gear Strive. And so there's something, I remember watching this YouTube. years ago who was just talking about getting into fighting games and we're basically like, look, play a fighting game that's interesting to you and pick the character that's interesting

to you. Don't worry about tier lists. Don't worry about the size of the player base because what you're going to want to play is what's going to drive you to keep playing. It's like exercising. You know what I mean? So I was always like, I probably should just dig into that game because I love how it looks and I like the character designs.

And I just like, I know that's a game that I would. would actually, I feel like I would dedicate myself to if I just wanted to go full bore and to learning a fighter. But like, I am curious if anyone's got any recommendations of like, you know, if you were like, like, oh, Grand Blue Fantasy, like Rising is like, like, that's actually a really, that games really gotten good. And I, I think, you know, that that would be one that's, that's very inviting to new players or whatever. But, you know, we're sort of like, we're a couple weeks out. But Marvel Tocon Fighting Souls looks like that could be the one that gets us in. That one looks good. It does look cool.

It also was like it does have the tag mechanic, but I guess I'm okay. I guess I'm okay with that in spurts. I don't know. Yeah, we'll have to see. I also forgot to mention I really like, I was maybe one of the, I don't know if people really liked this game.

I liked Marvel versus Capcom three quite a bit actually. Okay. I liked the roster. I liked the Capcom roster. Yeah. I liked having beautiful Joe on my team. I liked, yeah. I mean, I liked one.

I loved two. I could, I never really get hooked by three, but I could also say, that maybe just hit me to a different time of my life. I don't know. Should we do a segment?

Let's do a segment. Let's do a segment. All right. Look, this one is a little, it's not dissimilar to a Weiger segment, but I put a different spin on it. Okay. I'm going to read two titles,

and you're going to tell me if it's a real shovelware game or a fake game. It's time for Shovelware Showdown. Oh. Shovelware Showdown. Okay. So you understand for you're going to say two titles. you're going to tell me which one is real.

Real. Okay. So one you made up. Yes. Got it. And the other one is something you actually found in the Steam store. Where to the fuck? Yes.

Got it. Copy. Round one. Fight. Tommy the magician, flying carpet derby. Billy the Wizard, rocket broomstick racing. I think we can both guess, right? Yeah, you can both guess and I can just say who's right.

I'm going to say, I think Billy the Wizard is real. Can you say those names again? Tommy the magician flying carpet derby. Billy the Wizard, Rocket Broomsick Racing? I'll go to the other one, Tommy. I'll go Tommy, whatever it was. Tommy the Magician Flying Carbid Derby is incorrect. The answer is Billy the Wizard Rocket Broomsick Racing.

Nick is on the board with one. My logic there is like that sounds like a rip-off of quidditch, and that's the kind of thing that someone who was making just a really shitty shovelware game would do. The game, well, it came out in 2006, and it is a racing and platform game by data design interactive and the game was originally announced

under the title Barry Hatter the Sorcerer's Broomstick but was later changed to Billy the Wizard Barry Hatter to actionable legally I guess

Yes Here we go, round two Hamster Heroes Gerbil gladiators Hamster Heroes Gerbil gladiars I'm gonna do Hamster Heroes I also think

Hamster Heroes is real Hamster Heroes is real Hamster Heroes is a video game developed and published by Data Design Interactive. They're making all these games. It was released in 2008, and it is similar to that of a marble madness or a super monkey ball type of game. Okay.

Where you can play one of four playable hamsters, Sergeant Fluff, Catana, Super Hamster, and Hamster X. So you're in a hamster ball then, probably? Okay. Yeah. Which makes a little more sense than a monkey being in a ball. Yeah. What's that monkey do? Okay.

Let's, that, Super Monkey Ball doesn't mean catching a strays here. What the fuck's he doing in there? Who put him in that? Okay, next up. Swigers got two, Heather's got one. Chicken shoot. Chicken shoot. Turkey blast.

Turkey blast. Heather. Chicken shoot. Chicken shoot is a video game developed by TuneTracks. It was released first online in 2000 and then has been released for the Nintendo DS, Wii and Game Boy Advance. Who shoots a fucking chicken?

Yeah, are you shooting chickens or are you like firing, are the chickens like... You can hunt turkeys. I wonder if it's like an angry birds thing where you're like, like, because again, so many of these games are just fucking rip-offs. So maybe you're shooting chickens like projectiles. Well, this predates angry birds for sure. Oh, interesting. But in the

image that I saw was a chicken looking fucking scared with like a target on its face. Oh my gosh. So you're just blasting chickens? Yeah. The fucking handgun? I don't know what's like a gun, but it's like a gun, but it's you're shooting chickens for sure. Okay. Next one. That's not a thing that people

do. Yeah, why would you bother? I'd shoot a chicken. Jesus Christ, Matt. Okay, fine, I choke it out with my bare hands. I'd kill a chicken. I'd shoot a chicken. I'd shoot a chicken if I needed two for Cessonids. But it was a point where it's just like, you know what? I'm going to fucking die unless I shoot a chicken. I kind of think they're too weak to take a bullet, though. You know what I mean? Like, I kind of feel like they would just explode. That's a good point. You need the right caliber where you didn't like destroy your meat. Yeah. Because there's only so much yield. Yeah.

I guess you could try to blast its head off But then I think it's still going to be running around Shooting a chicken with a fucking shotgun Jesus It's not funny Anyway Eminem's cart racing Skittles Speedway

I'm going to say Eminem cart racing is real Eminem's It is Eminem's It is Eminem's a cart racing game from 2007 and it is the sixth entry in the M&M's video game series. Until you said Skittles, I was like, well, that's fake because Eminem didn't have a racing game. That'd be good. He might have, yeah.

Driving a big plate of spaghetti around. Like Def Jam Fight for New York? Yeah. I could see that working. What is the... He's in two video games right now. He's in Fortnite. Yep.

And he's also in Hitman. You can kill him. You can kill Eminem and Newtman? He's... He's two separate guys. He's Eminem and he's Slim Shady. And you get an assignment to kill Slim Shady. That's fun.

It's pretty fun. This is also he's two guys in Fortnite. Wow. He's Eminem and, well, he's Marshall and he's Slim. Maybe he's three guys. Wake me up when he's five guys. Because it's dinner time. We high five.

I know. Something I don't think we've ever done. Okay, here we go. Just a couple more. Just real quick. quick because I worked on a Skittles cover. A couple of Skittles ads years ago. I've shared this before, but maybe not on a podcast.

And I found out that their internal, a lot, like, jargon for Skittles. Yeah. And there's, because they don't say Skittles. The brand is Skittles, plural. So an individual Skittles candy is a Skittles lentil. Isn't that disgusting? Nasty. Like a bean?

Like a little bean. Like a little bean? Yeah, like a Skittles lentil. I guess it looks like a lentil, like a colored lentil. Let me tell you. something too. When the, when they I guess announced that they can't technically be considered food,

that was a really tough day for me. I love Skittles. I think they're so good and freaky. They can't be what? They're not considered food? There was like a thing that came out. They're like, they're not food. Like, they're almost like inedible. Like you shouldn't eat them. I think this was in a better country though, in all fairness.

In America, you eat with whatever the fuck. Yeah. Also, I talk. Don't want to be parading something RFK said or something. But I had this, yeah, this is tough. Because I do love them. I like that they're food colored and taste crazy. Yes. They're fun.

Yeah, we like that. Let me live. Let me fucking live. Santa's Snowballs. I miss olive-flavored Skittles. I'm not an olive guy. I know this about you. Yeah.

My wife loves olives. I do love olives. So she can have all mine. Olives are good. Santa's what? Santa's Snowball Smackdown. elf bowling one and two this is

it's elf bowling elf bowling I didn't have it to answer but it is elf yeah yes I got the point here we go just two more do you have any context on elf bowling because I remember I actually that was

that was one of the only ones that I think that's maybe the only one I remember so far I do so it was released in 1998 and it's a bowling video game of course in the game the player as Santa Claus attempts to knock down elves who are arranged like bowling vins I think that's funny.

It is funny. It's just also sadistic. Why is he doing that? But it's like something you would see at a bowling alley in one of the little animations that they have. Yeah, sure, right. For a strike and you'd be like, what the fuck? And he's rolling a snowball down instead of a bowling ball. During the game, the elves say phrases such as, is that all the balls you got Santa when the player

misses their first spare opportunity or gutter ball in a silly sounding voice when the ball is rolled into the gutter? Oh, so they're little assholes? They're little assholes too. So maybe they deserve to get a line up. They pull their asses down. Yeah. Fuck them.

Yeah. Get back to work. Get back to fucking work. Pick up the little wooden mallet and make some goddamn toys. Make my, what, what yours is in 1998? This is 1998, yeah. Yeah, make my Tickle me Elmo. What would have better, I think?

Tickle me Elmo or something. It sounds about right. Make my tomagachi. Yeah, fuck you. And you know what? I'm not paying your little ass. Santa owns slaves. Jesus Christ.

You work for me. You're kind of my children. Confiscated your passports. It's like you're building a soccer stadium in Dubai. And by the way, here's this new chocolate we found. What? This is everywhere now? God, don't get me starting to Dubai chocolate.

Diva girls, divas on ice. Or pop princesses ice dreams? Pop princesses? Diva girls, divas on ice, pop princess's ice dreams. Hmm. I'm going to go with Diva Girls Divas on Ice in part because of using the word Divas twice feels like an executive choice. Oh, fuck. That is smart, but I'm not going to change my aunts.

I think you're probably right, but I'm going to stick with Pop Princess because that's what I was thinking. It is Diva Girls Divas on Ice. Wow. There was not a lot of information about. this game, but this is just some copy I have from the back of the game. In the first in a brand new series of games designed

for young girls, Divas on Ice introduces you to Kelly, Gabrielle, Alyssa, and Madison for young girls skating for glory in the Miracle Ice Festival. Madison is my, if I have to write a cool girl's name in a script, I always choose Madison.

It's a good name. It's a good name. She does sound very cool. It sounds terrifying to me. And finally, I usually write Kamala. What? Hashtag still with her. I write Ruth Konda. Finally.

Pizza Paradise? Burger Island. Fuck. Pizza Paradise. Burger Island. Hey, take me to either of those places. First of all, can I say? I called it Burger Island when I was visiting a little St. James.

No. No. Did you say I was? Yeah. They changed the name. Burger boys here. Might as well call it Burger Island. One of Leon Panetta's leaked emails,

that's what he goes code for it. This guy's here. Might as well call it Burger Island. Hillary will be bringing CP to Burger Island. Oh, my God. I'm going to go with Burger Island Pizza Paradise Burger Island is a puzzle game

developed by Sandlock Games originally released on May 8th, 2007 and released again on June 19th, 2007 to Real Arcade. I believe that's a tie. That is a tie. Wow. We tied.

We tied. We both know garbage. We both know garbage. It's going to PKK. It says, Help Our Heroin Patty Turn Around a rundown burger stand located on deserted Mount Tiki Cola Beach.

Juggle orders from demanding customers purchased over 30 exotic mouth watering recipes unlock more than 40 delicious ingredients combining up to nine per order. Kind of seems like you should be able to make as many combinations as you want. Nine? You can make them all pretty different.

It's still a lot of variation. I get to say that game sounds good. It kind of sounds good. I'm kind of shocked that this is shovelware. I mean, but you know what? What is the burger assembling? video game of our time. Is it still Burger Time? It's probably the one.

Boy, I mean, Burger Time is so overcoat. You have to make burgers. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, that's Shovelware Showdown. Wow, thanks, Matt. Shovelware Showdown! And that's this week's get played. Our producers, Rochelle Chen, Ranch,

Twitch.tv slash Yard underscore underscore Sard. Rancho, what are you streaming these days? I will be starting Bioshock soon. Wow. You started with the first one? Yeah. Have you played it before?

No, I don't know anything about it. Oh, awesome. I love it. What a delight. I love it. I can't wait for updates. When are you streaming generally? Do you have a schedule?

Is it irregular? It's random. Okay, okay. I'm gonna try to check out one of your Bioshockstreams streams. Random. I'm using to Ben Prenti, Ben Prentie, Ben Prentie Music.com, our artist by Duck Brigade. Design, Duck Brigade.com. Merch at Kinshipgoods.

com. And a bonus episode every Wednesday on our Patreon. Get played DLC. Matt, what are we doing this week? Well, look, we've shared in the past our top 10 favorite video games of all time. but I thought it'd be an interesting exercise and opportunity for us to even just learn a little bit more about each other share our other top favorite things.

So this week we're sharing our top favorite, our top 10 favorite TV shows with each other. So check that out. Wow. Patreon.com slash get played. The DLC can be anything. Look, the DLC can be anything. That's what we've been saying.

We talk about video games a lot, but sometimes we talk about other stuff. And look, it can be anything. It can be anything. and fighting games got played this week. I don't know fucking know. They did. No, you're right.

They did. You lose. That was a HeadGum podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast, That Was Us, now on HeadGum. Each episode, we're going to go into a deep dive from our show This Is Us.

That's right. We're going to go episode by episode. We're also going to pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. Are we going to cry? Yes. A little bit. Are we going to laugh? A lot.

A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to that was us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify. New episodes every Tuesday.