Get Played - Let's Get Physical

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Heather, Nick and Matt discuss their love of physical media and mourn its future loss! They talk about some of their favorite memories attached to physical media and share some of their favorite gaming items, and then they open some Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering cards! 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. I'm really excited. This is a very special episode we're doing today on physical media. And in honor of that, we're excited to announce that this week's episode of Get Played is releasing here and being played on vinyl. Kind of the original physical media, at least for something that's recorded. That crackle is so warm. It's so nice. The tactile nature of it, the grooves.

I feel that analog, like, kindness, that warmth. Oh, fuck, ah, fuck. I punched myself in the fucking balls. Fucking balls. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. I punched myself in the fucking balls. Punch myself in the fucking balls.

Punch myself in the fucking balls. Oh, fuck. Balls. Oh, fuck. We try to remember which disc is in which case and blow dust out of cartridges, damaging them with saliva in the process, as we discuss physical media 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, Nick Tiger Wyker. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger. I'm here with our third host. Madabodakia. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week we're talking about physical media.

We're getting physical. That's right. It's no more, what's this? Can't feel it. It's intangible. It's no longer an intangible good. It is a thing you could touch and feel. It has a physical presence in our world.

It is tangible AF. We're talking about cartridges, disks of all kinds, things that are shaped like squares. Things that are shaped like circles. Two of the big shapes, I would say. Yeah, two of our top shapes. Top shapes for sure.

I want to read a post on social media that came from Arc 8, which I told you about it is a store that had the really cool fucking video game shirts and sweaters and everything. Oh, yes. And, you know, apropos of nothing, they posted, digital gives us experiences, but physical gives us memories. Has gaming reached an impasse? A recent announcement has rippled through the gaming community. And while it is true, digital sales continue to outweigh those of physical media, the pushback isn't just about format. it's about ownership, preservation, and transparency. A digital forward future makes sense, but without careful consideration, consumer rights can be undermined.

A lower number of marketplaces comes with a lower number of marketplaces comes the higher risk of price fixing and or personalized pricing. It may seem far-fetched, but resistance is forming, hitting major distributors with claims of antitrust law violations and artificially high prices. Physical formats aren't dead. On the contrary, we're actively seeing more physical media. Vinyl sales in the U.S. grew for the 19th consecutive year, surpassing $1 billion, nearly 50% of the formats global total, and their cultural artifacts that anchor us to deep, tangible gaming memories. Do you remember the feeling of opening the case of a highly anticipated game,

reading the game booklet, unwrapping games during the winter holidays, passing down consoles, sharing your favorite games with friends or displaying them in your home? These moments create a ritual. that anchors us in these digital worlds. We love these digital worlds more because of their physical moments. I know that's right to borrow a phrase. Bars.

Bars. Gang, gang, to borrow another phrase. Yeah. I saw it and I was like, I should bring this in for the show. I liked it. That was good. I like having stuff. Now, the issue with stuff is that you can have too much of it.

But you know what? I think it's way easier to be a digital hoarder. You could become like the mascot, Tungis. Too much good stuff. You know that it's people don't realize necessarily that Tungus is a is a portmanteau of too much good stuff Are you aware of Tumgis? No He's I think maybe the most horrific creation known to man. Oh, I'm in what is it? He's fucking nasty Rangamination

Do you have penises for eyes? I mean basically Like just loose ones that hang down? He had two loose cocks as eyes Tumgis is an amalgamation of all these snacks that are available No, that's that's that's ranch Ranch? No, Ranch. What did you show? Tomb Toom Sohor. No, that's a different dude. That's an AI guy.

That's a brain rot guy. That's a brain rot Fortnite guy. And I like him, but that's not it. No, they're talking about a dude. Look up penises for eyes. I'll show you. I have Toongis right here. He's my lock screen. Take a look at this guy. Tombgis is a nasty motherfucker. He's all the snacks at what I believe was the AMPM. Yes, he's all the AMPM snacks.

He's a real guy? No, he's not a real guy. I mean, he's not a... No, I mean, like, was he part of a campaign or something? Yeah, he was an actual mascot, but he isn't like a U.S. citizen. So he's a real guy in terms of like capitalism. He was their official mascot. They chose to release that thing?

Yeah, yeah. They did. Let me talk through his anatomy because it is a nightmare. He has red vines for hair, Cheetos for beard. he has a cookie mustache and then a hot dog mouth. And two penises for eyes. His eyes are in fact just seem to be eyes. That's the one part where they're just like,

ah, fuck it, we're not going to figure this out. That's because of the FCC was like, you can't have those penises there. Yeah, you got to make a regular eyes. And then he has, the palms of his hands are, I would never have guessed, the cinnamon rolls. Yes. And then he's got little weaners for fingers.

Yeah. I would eat him so that he would, die. Yeah, he seems like he's in constant pain. Yeah. And I kind of don't, I kind of wonder what's inside of all that. Like slurpy. Jam.

Like, does he have a limbic system? I always wonder when you see guys like this is like, like, okay, you're breathing. You got lungs. Yeah. Do you think when he shits, it's just like raw ingredients? So he turns processed food back into raw ingredients? I think, I think he is processed food, therefore he shits people. Oh, he shoots like organic matter.

Yeah, he just shits like full human people dumps. So he's shitting out full people and then those people are going straight to the polls. And that's why we're in this mess we're in. Yeah, Tim Gis, I do not like him. Never far from my thoughts, though, because I think it's one of those Keep Your Enemy's close sort of situations.

I'm always just sort of keep him at an arm's length so I know what's going on with him. I've never heard of nor seen that thing. I can't believe he's a real man. Now you can think about him on your off the... Because he's sort of the opposite of Trubbish. Tombgous. Yes.

Tombgis. Whereas like Trubbish is trash contained in a bag and it's a sentient trash bag. He's trash on the outside. It's all out. Wait, that's... It's trash? It's not trash, but like, just kind of... Future trash.

He's future trash. I mean, he does have like chip bags for a torso. Yeah. He's got like tities made up... Chip bags? Essentially, yeah. He doesn't have, like, distinct... That was a gesture you made.

Well, he doesn't have, like, distinct, like, breasts that lactate. He's not fucking chip bags. They're fucking family size. Got some heavy hangers. Tungis is stacked. But... Chip milkers. Just, like, full-on, like a bag.

He's got a fucking sack of potatoes on those things. Okay, so here... The closest thing... I think the closest thing he has to breasts are two hot dogs. Are those macarones? Oh, yeah. Yeah, like, yeah, like, co-tace. Yeah, he walked around.

Yeah, he walked around. He's in commercials? The part of the campaign, because it's too much good stuff, Tombgis. They're saying that, like, when you're getting gas at an AMPM or a gas station with an AMPM, you can get snacks. Because there's a lot of good stuff inside of that. That guy's coming for you is what they're saying? This guy will feed your ass. I don't understand what's going on with this door.

Does that, does, were the people in these commercials running away? They liked, they loved him. They would, like, hug him and, like, take a little bite of one of those hot dogs from his, from his, like, fucking nipples. I have to ask, I think a friend of mine, Rose O'Shea was in a commercial with Toom, Gist, I'll have to ask her, uh, what the situation was. Was he nice on set? You know? I do want, because is he, I think he's CG, right? He has to be CG.

Or is there a, is it a, is it a, is it a, um, is it? man-in-suit situation. I think it's a man-in-suit suits. Wow. I think this is a NASA thing where they made the thing. Our disclosure day is that tomb-gis is real. Okay. I'm hearing, I'm hearing, I don't know if you guys can see this.

Tomb-gis is real. I don't know what I'm looking at. Kim Jong-un hugging Trump. They're like, it's over. Tombgis won't bite, but with a 7-foot-6-inch body made of snacks, you might. So this thing is like a hulking beast. He's like Victor Wembe Nyama. Seven foot six.

Yes. And you're encouraged to like go up and start eating him? Yeah, you can take a bite out of his big ass. Yeah. A flowing mane of licorish hair. Women love him. Guys want to eat him. Although his cheeseburger nose looks delicious, try not to stare.

Tumgis loves meaningful conversations and strong eye contact. Thirst oasis cups on the right, high voltage coffee cups on the left describing his arms. Good thing Tumgis is. He wants to make eye contact. Why is that part of it? Yeah, why is he ambidextrous? He's competent with both hands? I had an IT job in college and my boss or my supervisor was ambidextrous.

Yeah. And he loved telling people was ambidextrous. And I was like, I guess if you could do that, you'd just be that guy. You also had an IT job when you were that clown that lived in the sewers? I just love floating. Always been a passion of mine. Insane, Matt. Insane.

Dude, I'd be a fucking great it clown. You'd be such a good it. Yeah. Get the fuck out of some kids. Hey buddy, want this balloon, buddy? I'll fucking bite your arm off, buddy. He'd have like a mouse, like, you know, like a computer mouse, and he'd be using it

with his right hand and be like, I'm ambidextrous, so, you know, sometimes I use my left hand and then just switch it over. I would have said to him, that's such a bummer that you can never have the stranger. It doesn't rule out the stranger Isn't part of it? No, the basis of the stranger is just your hand.

It's like you smash your hand with a hammer first. Right. Then you jerk off. You cut off the tips of your fingertips. Yeah, you kill the nerve endings and the wrist. I see, I see, I see. Well, anyway. Yeah.

You can have too much good stuff. You can't have too much good stuff. I have a lot of stuff. We'll get into it. I've got a bag of stuff I brought. I brought two things in particular, but I think they're very emblematic. Okay. of who I am as a guy.

But I love stuff. People worship at the feet of Tungis. What? So they can get a bite of his chocolate bar toes. That's the worst thing to have his feet. Chocolate bars? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smushed as fuck and start melting on the hot sidewalk.

Well, I got a worse pitch. That could be his ass. Could you look up? It would be better for his ass. Could you look up Tombgis Rule 34 and see what the top, the top link is for what he's fucking or what is happening. I mean, his dick probably like a foot long sub. Right, but is it like, is it, I want to know if it's like another mascot character fucking him

or if it's a human person consuming his junk. Yeah, it's like it's gritty. Yeah. It's the guy from, what's it, the Philadelphia Flyers? Gritty. Gritty. Boy, I guess we'll just see. Tombgis Lounge.

No, this is, this is, this is. This is safe for work. No, an image. I know, I'm looking for it. The problem is the top image is not horny at all. Wow. I think people haven't considered him in this way. I don't know if that's impossible.

That's the whole point of the rule. I'm on my search engine. I use a somewhat bespoke search engine. Bespoke is the wrong word. To prevent you from looking up porn? No, I have one called. I use Kagi, which is like a paid search engine with no ads. So it gets a little bit different results than what you get in the Google ecosystem.

Let me just search in Google images. Wow. He uses Kagi. I'm on Kagi He pays to search I mean because it's just like Search is so fucking bad now Everywhere it's so horrible

And I'm just like and also Everything is just blanketed with ads And it's pushing you towards paid promotion And giving you force feeding AI summaries down your throat And I'm like I this play This doesn't do that So I'm like Timgi

What's that Force feeding those Those results So the issue that I've run into Googling Tumgis Rule 34 is that just different porno has come up? Yeah, the main thing I'm getting is a big tittyed anime lady. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've seen my share of these on the internet. Yeah. But I would not expect it in the context of Tumgis rule 34. Just markedly not what I was looking for. I think part of the problem here is that Tungis, yeah, here we go, our memes. How come there isn't any Rule 34 Tumgis? I've literally been looking at it for years. For it for years.

Why doesn't they want to draw the beloved AMPM mascot? Is he the exception that proves the rule? He might be, yeah. He's the one that they won't do it for. And you know what? That sort of makes me like him a little bit more. This is from five years ago. And appears nothing has changed since then.

Because if anything, Tombgis has fallen further out of the zeitgeist, where now he is just a memory. Yeah. Maybe the last thing I'll picture on my deathbed. it's like why am I think why am I seeing tomb gus it's it's it is now that I've been talking about him for for this long he's in the will yeah like he's I'm updating the will tonight tomb gus is in it and he's getting a hefty percentage our memes five years ago then how come there's in it this is I'll just read this whole thing verbatim but how come there isn't any rule 34 tombgis I've literally been looking at it

for it four years why doesn't anyone want to drive the beloved AMPM mascot so I got pretty much the full comment earlier yeah I don't know The answer, Heather, is there is no answer. Wow. Because I guess, you know what, Tumgis is such an abomination that no one wants to jack off to him. And that really says something. Because people will jack off to anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I won't name stuff. But like, yeah, yeah, people do do that. It's the thing people do. People do. Yeah. Guys, I have a bit of video game news up here at the top of our show. How exciting. Beid-T-D-D-D-D-D-D.

Get played. Breaking News. D-D-D-D-D-T. Sega of America announced. today seven hours ago as of record that Sonic Frontiers has sold more than five million copies. Wow. Why is this a big deal? It has been 34 years since a Sonic game, a mainline Sonic game, has sold 5 million copies.

The last time it happened was Sonic 2 34 years ago. Wow. Sonic 2 sold 7.5 million. The closest after that was Sonic 3 and Knuckles with 4 million. Sonic Heroes with 3.4 million and now Frontiers with 5 million. Sonic Frontier is a triumph. I'm happy for the game. I'm happy for our little blue friend.

Yeah, it seems like maybe we'll get a Frontier sequel. That'd be fun. Because Frontier's a flawed experience, but I found it very fun and very engaging. Yeah, I'd like them to, you know, I didn't love the game, but I'd love for them to have an opportunity to fix it and make it good. Yeah, make a good one. When you have that sometimes, you have the game that the first one feels like the prototype

and the second one feels like the product. And it was like, ah, they figured it out with a sequel. Yeah. It looked incredible. Yeah, it looked great. It looked really, really good. And I always want to like a 3D Sonic. It just has never happened.

This is the one. Like every good Sonic, it seems to take itself a little too seriously, which is also fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tonally a little asynchronous. I think I would watch a, like a cutscene compilation of it or something. I would like to know what happens in the whole game. Yeah, different than the kind of compilations I normally watch, but I check it out. That's great.

That's exciting video game news. It is exciting video game news. Because this is the thing. They have never really figured out 3D Sonic and Frontiers is the concept. closest they've ever come. Yeah. Like it's, it's, it's a game that, that to me, totally works as is, but I'm excited to watch them iterate on it.

Yeah. I think they got to go 2.5D with Sonic. Well, they have. They got to stay there. They got, once they get that additional D, it gets a little too crazy. Sonic has been announced for next season of Fortnite with a trailer that includes the famous loop-de-loops except on the Fortnite island. I'd love to run through those loop to loops.

I'm increasingly bothered by how disproportionate all the character models are in Fortnite. I just find it so disorienting. And it just, I'm saying this as someone who doesn't play the game. So my opinion matters the least. I'm not going to spend money on V bucks or whatever the fuck either way, unless they put another basketball player like in it. And they'll complain about how short they are. So you don't like that Bugs Bunny is taller than the T8.

No, I don't care for that. Shack should be in the game, right? Is Shack not in it? I don't think Shack's in it. Yonis is in it. Isn't LeBron in it too? Well, Bron is in it, for sure, but Shack should be in there. Yeah, I don't know if Shaq is in it.

Shaq Diesel should be in Fortnite. But like, what, we're going to have Shack be the same height as fucking Levi from Attack on Titan? I mean, what are we doing here? And Daffy Duck? Yeah. I just think Shaq would be a welcome presence in, in Fortnite. And get Chuck in there.

too, why not? I'd accept Shaq in there. I'd accept the inside of the NBA. I mean, if they got the whole inside the NBA would be very funny. You run around. Is Ernie Johnson? Why the fuck not?

I just like to do, because I feel like this is an area that they haven't really done yet. Right. Just sort of like older guys. Yeah, let's get some older men in there. It got funny. Right.

Let's get some late Gen X. They have a lot of fucking late Gen X. I guess it's true. The like Stone Cold Steve Austin. Oh, sure, sure. You know, they've got some old kings. Is Saul Goodman in there? We got Bob Oenkerk in there?

He's not in there. They should get Bob in there. That'd be good. If they put Walter White and Saul Goodman in that game, they'd be the highest selling of all time. Yeah. Or at least put in there. I put in nobody. Get nobody in there.

Get nobody too in there. They have a lot of John Wicks. Here's the thing. I'll take all the nobodies you got. I'm all in on nobody. They have a Simpsons John Wick now. A Simpsons John Wick? Yeah.

That might be too many John Wicks Too many You got regular John Wick Cartoon Shatings John Wick Simpsons John Wick Man John Wick 4 so fucking good You see that John Wick 4?

He's falling down the stairs a bunch Oh yeah I did see that part Fucking A that's good shit He's good I'm trying to find a list of who's in Fortnite I guess it's It might just be LeBron and Janus

And possibly Trey Yonis And possibly Trey Yon I don't know Showhays in it If you're talking to sports guys I have show hey This could be I think And maybe not

Maybe I'm wrong We might have landed on a DLC We could guess who's in Fortnite and see if they are And then whoever has the most At the end of the thing wins I'd have a really unnatural advantage in that though You have yeah

But you could be the one that isn't Chargers the game Ugh that sounds like no fun I don't want to be charged at a game I don't win a game article from 2018, it took over my life inside NBA players' Fortnite addiction. The funny part about it is I really suck, says Andre Drummond, a 2018 NBA All-Star. I'm just not that good.

At the time, he was the NBA's leading rebounder in an All-Star, and then his career did kind of fall off in the aftermath. I wonder if his Fortnite addiction had something to do with it. He's still in the league. You think he was, instead of thinking about the round, orange ball he was thinking about the either mouse and keyboard or the console controller could be boy man I try to give you a long leash here but sometimes you lose even me I kind of don't even really know what I said I have too many things going on my ankle hurts everything sucks yeah sometimes your ankle hurts and sometimes your ankle just hurts and you're just a little uh you know

You're just a little not there when you're podcasting. It reminds me of the interview that was published about Jeremy Strong today. And they asked him, you know, would he ever return to Kendall Roy? And he said, to be honest, I don't remember filming most of succession. I was in a bit of a blackout. Yeah, that's how I do most of these shows. Just in a full fugue state. You're doing great.

Yeah. I fell. That's why I hurt my ankle. Matt fell. He hurt his ankle. I fell at my baseball game Not playing Yeah he was chasing a pretzelie drop

I was actually like I was chasing a Like a foul ball that went into the parking lot Oh And I wasn't it was not I was on the bench so I was like I'll just go get it So that can you know the ump can have a Another ball Just ate shit on the curb on the way up

Fully fell That's such a bummer And then I played a full game of baseball Jesus Christ You ever like have like a half like fall like that and then you're just like oh I know how I'm going to die when I'm like in my 70s

I'm just gonna fucking like that I get why this kills older people the report from my team which was basically everybody who saw me fall was like they were all like are you okay like is because like they are like you fucking fell hard

and I didn't I was wearing a helmet because I was like next at bat when we were up and then it just was fucking my wife wasn't there and I told my wife that I fell and she almost started crying it's really when you're

you know you've hurt yourself when you when you do something that would otherwise be laughable and no one is roasting you for it they're just like are you okay yes yeah yeah they will also like they just know we're all in our mid 30s early 40s we can't be

falling like that yeah I know yeah tough stuff but I'm hanging in there I'm doing okay White cheddar truffle and leek burger, home style chicken and gravy, truffle butter filet mignon, spinach and sun-dried tomato shrimp fusili. Why am I eating one loose piece of cheese out of a bag that I found in the back of my fridge when options like these are available to me? What did I do this week? Why did I make these choices?

White cheddar truffle and leak burger. It's out there. This isn't even Velvita. It's a slice of plastic I've been gnawing on for a half hour. Homestyle chicken and gravy. Truffle butter filet mignon. Ketchup and cheese. What did I do?

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And video games at large, I'd say you're thriving. They're thriving. Here in the year of our Lord, 2026, which brings me to the question that we ask in the first part of our podcast each and every week, sometimes with a guest present, sometimes without, as today. just the Triforce of Friendship and Ranch. And Ranch, you're included in this question if you want to weigh in. So this is allowed.

The question is, the query of the moment. What are you playing? What are you playing? Oh, what's wrong? Oh, you're okay Resident Evil Merchant? Oh, yeah, what's wrong? No, nothing. Everything's fine.

Oh, let me guess you hurt your ankle. No. Oh. Did the... You're crossing your arms. You're making me sad. What? Is it your birthday?

No, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Is it, I mean, do we exclude you from a recent episode or something without a knowing? No. Stupid. I lost my sandwich. Oh, that is a bummer.

I would be pretty upset if I had a sandwich I was excited about eating and I lost it. That would honestly, that would be in a sour mood and you all would know about it. I lost my fucking salad. I'm sorry. You know, we oftentimes order dinner. after we record a couple episodes in a row and order dinner in between. Do you want in on that dinner order? Absolutely, I do.

Okay, well, what kind of sandwich where you're working with? Grilled cheese. That's not going to travel well, but we can still order it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know where I put it. It was on the bus. So you probably maybe just left it behind on the bus? Could be, but I called the company, no sandwich was turning.

Were you, let me just try to figure out the order of operations here. You made a grilled cheese sandwich? Yeah. You took it with you on the bus to go? Yeah. Why did you not eat the grilled cheese sandwich when it was hot and ready? I was late for record. Oh, it was to come here.

Yeah. That's a little frustrated. Can I ask you maybe a rude question? Rude in that it's going to maybe make an assumption about you and your faculties? Sure. Is it possible you ate the sandwich and forgot? That's not what happened. You sure?

Are you sure you didn't lose it in your mouth and then your stomach? I've seen the bus footage You've seen So the bus They said there was no sandwich left on the bus But they're able to get you the footage We do live in a police state So it makes sense that there would be a camera

I requested I used a FOIA request And I got the footage Freedom of Information Act Yeah They were able to process They fast track that Yeah

I think the government's so stripped down now So maybe one laid off It was surprising at the infrastructure to get you that footage right away. I put the sandwich down outside of camera range and I don't know what happened to it. Well, I'm really sorry. This mystery may just go unsolved and we may need to make peace with the fact that you'll just never know for sure. 1-800, where it?

1-800, where it. W-H-E-I-T. Where-It? That is how we're going to find the sandwich. So dial into 1-800, where-it. if you have any tips on the location of the Resident Evil merchants a strange grilled cheese sandwich

A normal sandwich I said it's strange Not strange I don't think it's like that I mean Knowing you it might be a little bit of a strange sandwich It's totally normal Wonderbrand Butter cheese That's nice

I make a fucking mean grilled cheese Like I got it fucking down Okay I want to hear your grilled cheese protocol And I got thoughts of my own And Ranch if I don't know if you're a grilled cheeser but please weigh in as well. I'm just good at writing the temp. So I'm putting butter in the pan.

I'm putting, well, I assemble a sandwich on the side. Untoasted. You eat it untoasted? No. You're not going to pre-toast it, though. I'm not going to pre-toast. Oh, okay. Two pieces of bread, two pieces of cheese.

That's that. In that order? Well, no. I'm going cold piece of bread, piece of cheese, piece of cheese, filling the gaps because the pieces of cheese don't necessarily line up with the shape of the bread, right? So like I'm sort of doing like an even spread of the cheese across the two pieces of bread. Put it flat. I'll put them butter on the top of that thing too. Because sometimes the butter is straight from the fridge, right? So the butter is a little bit

hard. It's going to get a little soft on top of that bread. I'm going to just kind of let that ride for like a little while. Once I start to get a little melty, just a little bit on the inside, but maybe it's still hard. The cheese is still like, it's still cold cheese. Gonna flip that fucker over? Flipping that bad boy.

Yeah, you gotta flip it. I gotta flip it. And then I'm just watching. I'm kind of just like watching. I got a little cheese sticking out and I'm just making sure it's not getting too crazy. Bread's a little bit brown.

Depends on kind of bread you use. It might be brown when you start. Right. Always true. I don't know how many minutes or nothing but I just kind of like, I just kind of, I just have a feeling. I get in a flow state when I'm doing it.

Every single grilled cheese I've made is perfect. I don't know how to explain it. That was like taking two full minutes to describe putting on a t-shirt. Nick's coming for me today. I got lost. We got stuff to do on the show. I'm feeling time. I don't want to be talking about it.

No, no, I'll just, here's what I'll say. My grilled cheese sandwich, I'm keeping my, I keep my butter room temp in a dish on the counter. So yeah. Must be nice. I don't take the butt. Must be nice. Having a butter dish is great. I strongly recommend for anyone who uses butter with regularity.

He loves a butter dish. Get a butter dish. And also it can be like a cute little accent for your kitchen. So that's fun too. You do a lot of different cute little accents. Yeah, they can't do them anymore, I guess. Omidy is ended, so. Anyway, we, uh, is there stuff I'm not supposed to say?

You do you. You don't worry about it. I do me. Just be unfiltered. That's what you want. on the counter. Butter's on the counter. I spread the butter on the bread.

Like, I don't put it in the pan. Okay. So, like, I'm buttering the outsides of my bread. And I try to use a good loaf. You know, that's the whole thing. It's the thing with the grilled cheese sandwich is just you want to use a good product. All of it's the bread. Yeah.

The whole thing's the bread. But I get, like, a good farmer's market loaf. I get this good, like, farmers market multi-grain right now. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you know, and I fucking, I do do two slices of cheese, though. And I go with, like, sharp cheddar for a homemade. Oh.

I do, oh shoot, what is that one called that's like white and orange cheese? Jack. Colby Jack. I do Colby Jack for my grilled cheese. Can I get a little, it's kind of fun. I also think that Colby Jack sounds like a guy. Hi, I'm Colby. Jack. I'm going, I'm going fire pan. Yeah. Butter, bread, two cheese, bread. Yeah. Iron without any water in it. Okay. Yeah. And then you press. Yeah. And you heat both sides of the bread at the same time.

And then it's done. I will say the thing you mentioned, I should have noted, is I do use a lid for the first. I put the first side down and I'm using a lid. So like I'm trying, I'm getting it good and crispy, but it's also helping the cheese melt. And then I remove the lid when I do a flip and finish it on the inside. I go lidless, but I could toss a lid on there. Try a lid on there. Ranch you ever make a grilled cheese at home?

I do. I usually do sourdough. Oh, sourdough is a good bread. Butter. And then I will do mozzarella. And then a pesto spread inside. Wow. Wow.

That's almost not a grill. It's more like a pizza. It's closer to pizza. Yeah, you're getting pizza, Jason. I like it, though. I like it. But I like it. It's a jason.

Anyway, you. We've all, okay, just so we're clear. We all described doing the exact same thing, basically the same way. I'll sometimes use a little mayo into the butter. And also, some, something is fun. Sometimes if I got some nice, like a good Parmesan, I'll do like a Parmesan crust on the outside. Are you usually eating it just a sandwich or you also got soup too? Because I kind of feel like I'm never having a grilled cheese without soup.

I'm so fucking hungry. I'm often having them without soup, especially if it's a warmer day. I will have a little side salad or something. A little side salad. No matter of the weather, if I'm eating grilled cheese, I'm eating hot soup. Yeah. I just go, I'm dipping. It's a good combo.

Hot soup is good. Hot soup is good. I don't like that gazpacho. stuff. I'll fuck with a gazpacho. It's a fishy's will is supposed to be cold. Like that?

Yeah, it's like that. 1-800 wear it. 1-800-where-it. 1-800-where-It? A sandwich has been lost. Help us return it to its owner. But you know what hasn't been lost? My enthusiasm for asking the question.

What are you playing? Mad Upiducka. Resident Evil 4 Merchant, thank you so much. Long segment. Long segment. We're having fun. 32 minutes in 15 of it

Girl show is not This is fine They don't even really talk about The main thing that long Shut up Is that thing people are complaining about? That's the thing Yeah, don't worry about it

I'm trying not to worry about it I'm playing a game that I don't know How many I don't know if it's on anybody's radar It's like a very new game An indie game Called How Many Dudes And How Many Dudes

Is How Many Dudes is How Many? I have heard of this game. Yes. How many dudes is a casual rogue-like auto-battler strategy game? Yes, and it's developed by Butterscotch shenanigans, and it's based on the premise of the meme,

how many humans would it take to beat things like a gorilla or like a god and things like that? So it's at its heart, very internet-y and gets a little edge-lordy, like sometimes, your first thing that you do in the game is you're one guy, one dude, and you take on like 10 toddlers. And they become like piles of meat, like when you fight them. All right.

So it gets, it's a little like that. So that's not, if you're not into it, I get it. But the gameplay loop is, is really fun. And it gets crazier, you know, like other like sort of like meme stuff, like a bunch of guys versus, I keep saying guys, it's dudes. Dudes versus 90 duck-sized horses or like a honey badger or like a gorilla, things like that. And you start off, yeah, we have one normal dude and then you can start drafting different types of dudes. So there's like, you know, you start off with normal dude.

You could have like, I'll tell you, because I've had one successful run. Like I've gone all the way through and a successful run consists of a hundred individual. battles. And you end up getting, you end up drafting different dude types and you have multiples of the different dude types that you have on your roster. So at one point I had like, you know,

like 20 or so of each different type of guy basically. And so my winning team for this very successful run was cowboy dudes, agent dudes, like spy dudes,

alien dudes, necro dudes that would summon little skella dudes on the field as well. Quantum dudes that would they would summon echo dudes and they're sort of like Dr. Manhattan kind of like dudes. Okay. And we just fucking wrecked

house of like everything. And you get different like boons and like just like different power ups and things like that. You can get, you can synergize your team with like there are some dudes that are in similar families so like they'll have different classes of

like a night dude is fantasy and then there will be like a barred dude and things like that so you can sort of build a team like that or you can kind of like have a mix and match sort of situation and it's just it's really really fun it is like it's scratching that same it's

that like something like a vampire survivors or even like Bellatro is you know scratching it's a little less granular than even those two but I think it's really

really fun and worth checking out and also there's something in the game for when your dudes get downed and you want to revive them you have to use something called dude juice oh yeah dude juice

we love it it's what comes out of tombgis's pores I leak I excrete dude juice I'm unfuckable I have no holes But I'm really really enjoying it It's a great Steam deck game

It's kind of got me back in Playing my Steam deck a little bit Because it's just like a fun thing to play on the couch While my wife and I are watching Like 90-day fiance or something But that's what I'm playing right now How many dudes I'm looking through this

And I'm intrigued by Your description of it Yeah I think this would be a, this would be like a meogenic situation for me, where I would get really, really addicted to it for a short stretch. But what would push me away is the edge lord of it all, the cosmetics. Because I just, I don't find this art direction particularly appealing. And then also it's just like, like, like, a pile of corpses. You know, it's just like, like, I, you know, like kind of presented as a, in a comedic sort of way.

It's kind of like, all right. Yes. Like, we're doing, we're doing like early aughts, like, internet comedy. Yes. I will say, I don't know how much. There's other modes, too. There's three tiers of difficulty. So I've beaten the first tier of difficulty,

one basically once. I want to see what the other tiers have to offer. I don't know how deep it actually gets. But then there's like a, there's a mode where you can draft your dudes at the start, and that's like how you can like, you could like sort of min-max it if you want. Like you can like, I know these dudes are really good,

but like you might not necessarily work out with. like who's like what enemies are coming down the pipeline so that could be like an interesting way to play but I don't I don't know how much like I'm going to get into this thing right I just like was playing it all weekend like I couldn't I couldn't stop playing it well uh it's really fun yeah you're kind of your use case of it being like a good second screen game seems like oh yeah I can I can definitely see the appeal there I think it's on iPads two or something so it's like it's not a particularly like uh I think I got it on sale for like nine bucks or So I think it's I think it's worth checking out the long the long tail of new grounds

Influence it's still with us today. Yes just like it's it's it's been that that just That just feels like such a byproduct of those aesthetics that tone I think about that stuff like all the time and like honestly like that could be I don't know how many of those games are even still like playable or if they're like online at all But like that could be like an interesting sort of like look back episode because like in my high school like computer lab or my middle school computer lab, we were just playing just the most, I mean, like, vile games that were on there, like these, like, stick figure, like shooter games and things like that that we thought were so funny and fun. If this game came out when I was in high school, I would have loved it, for sure. Oh, 100%. No, there's absolutely a time in my life. I would have thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Yeah. But that's, that's what I'm playing. Because you know what? I will say,

it's about this close to, like, using the phrase, like, amaze balls, and that's when I would be like, I don't know. Yeah, sure. I'm done. I'm done. Right. But, you know, you guys made a fun game. So good, good job.

Heather, what are you playing? Well, it's the end of the Fortnite season. And so this week I've been shoring up the last unfinished business in Fortnite. Now, as I've said, it's sprite season. Interesting. This is interesting. Yeah, fun fact. Kind of a marriage of lemon and lime, if you will.

He couldn't even. Which would you might call? a potent mix. Man, they really snapped when they fucking got lemon and lime together. They went crazy on that. Nick's expression was that of Roger Rabbit when it's shaving a haircut.

I laid it out and I waited and he became bright red and started trembling and like kind of crushed himself into the corner of his sofa before finally being like I'd watch a re-edit of Who Frame Roger Rabbit with Weiger in it instead. So next Wednesday, this Wednesday, as of premiere of this episode, is the end of this season. And one of the things you do with these sprites is you master the sprites by leveling them all the way up and then extracting them from the game.

Nobody knows whether or not that's going to be fundamental to the next season of the game. They've announced a sprite garden where all of your sprites will be. Do you need to master the sprites for them to appear in your garden? We know that you need to master the sprites for them to be a back bling in perpetuity. But nobody knows what will and will not be necessary for you to have done in the past. Right. And so there's a big push here at the end of the season to not only collect, but master all of these Pokemon adjacent sprites. Wow.

It has been unfun Oh like grinding to like get these sprites I am don't play I play Fortnite to Hunt men Right The most dangerous game That's right

I don't play it to Collect little guys I'm happy I'm happy with the guys But there is this You know it's a mentality That is sort of induced In us as players Yeah

When there is a mechanic available to us and we don't know what the punishment will be for having not done something in the past that encourages this kind of behavior. So every day I'm logging in, I'm mastering three sprites and logging out. I'm not even caring about the game. And frankly, a lot of other players are also just like running at the extraction sites, extracting, not even bothering to open fire at one another and like running off to get more sprites. That's what I would hope would happen when I was playing, if I was playing,

but I would always, you know, for sure, just end up getting shot at by the one guy that's like, doing that. Yeah. Yeah, like sit and just grief people. Yeah. So that's why I've been playing. It hasn't been enjoyable. There are a lot of other video games out there for me to play, but I haven't been playing them, except for the Pocopia

DLC, which is progressing much more slowly because I am not a fan of underwater biomes. Hmm. We haven't really, have we, we must have talked about underwater biomes here. That must have been an episode topic. I know we talked about subnotica and water.

games. Yeah, that probably was under the umbrella of water games. I think the music is super soothing. Well, not

under water. Then it's not going to do you any good. Oh, shit, I'm wet. I don't need this thing. What the heck?

It's making things harder. I got to get rid of this thing. You guys okay? I just don't think I'm funny anymore. You're doing great.

Like, just like in general. Not just now. I like the aesthetic. I like the typical music. Always good music when you're in underwater biome. Underwater music always fuck. But I'm just not enjoying like, I don't like swimming around when I'm playing Pocopia.

What about Echo the Dolphin? I like, I like Echo the Dolphin. I like Echo, but it's not my favorite game. Yeah, no, I just, I wasn't sure. Because as a Sega kid, I wasn't sure your opinion of Echo the Dolphin, which is the game I've only messed around with us. Yeah, I'm happy. I'm happy. Unbelievable.

No need to take a shot every fucking episode of this goddamn show. Sega's on the come-up. They're doing great. No, they're not. Yeah, their main guys in fucking prison. They're a horse that keeps being shot. One of your horses in the game? God damn it.

Xbox just came in to kill them and then exit the gaming. Yeah. I can't even. I don't even want to. Nick, what are you playing? Heather, thank you so much for asking. You're welcome. So I first want to give a quick update just because I mentioned Marvel Tocon Fighting Souls last week and my reluctance to get it on PC.

Well, Arc System Works produced a substantial patch that greatly improved performance versus its launch. Apparently, a whole new experience. So, you know, I'm back in on Fighting Souls. I'm going to give that a go. talk about Marvel Tokone next week. But what I want to talk about this week is a game that just came out today as of this record, August 13th. It is a game that was not on my radar, but I saw some glowing praise for it and picked it up. It's called Dusk Fade. Now, Matt, you're familiar with the Kingdom Arts franchise. I would say that I am. I know Kingdom Hearts 2 is your favorite game of

all time, a game that's been immensely meaningful to you. And opinion that's never garnered any controversy whatsoever. So far that you have a Key Blade tattoo. That's right. I'm going to show you this I don't know if you've seen anything about dusk fade, but I'm going to show you an image so you can get a sense of this from an aesthetic standpoint. My man's basically got a key blade. Yeah, I'm fucking buying this now. Hell yeah. This is a, I'm not sure where weird beluga, the developer, came from, but a, you know,

a lot of the names seem to be of Spanish origin. I don't know if it's in Spain or someplace in Latin America. But I, like, they did it really nice. nice job with this game. It is basically just like a royalty-free kingdom heart simulacrum X, ratchet and clank.

And you got a little guy. The little guy's a cuckoo, a mechanical cuckoo. You run around. You look like Sora. And you have basically keyblade except it's a sword, but it's also like a clock hand. And it works, like it opens treasuredust stuff. This thing is

so fucking clock-coded. It basically is like, it's like a clock punk game. game. It's all it's all clock shit. What platform are you playing? I picked it up on Switch 2 and that's what I was playing. I was putting some more some more time into it because it just came out today at the head gum office just before we started recording. And I don't know, it's just like a really playable, just classic 3D action platformer just totally just like a nostalgia hit from that

PS2 era when these games were like really thriving. But with modern art direction. The score is I find just like so lovely and so soothing and alternately soothing and soaring, you know, where it needed. The story seems to be whatever, but also it's like so, like the story in like Spiro was like fucking whatever. I can tell you a single thing that happened in a cinematic in a fucking like Jack and Daxter game. If I'm really like thinking back on it, I never really track the stories of these games. Well, I know that a human woman kissed Sonic.

A human woman did kiss Sonic. Yes. Can I talk about something from an internet curation standpoint? I hate it when something becomes so memeified that you can't find the original. Because like trying to find just like a clean clip of Sonic getting kissed by a human woman, it's impossible. You can't do it. Every single YouTube thing is a reaction or has like some sort of cut in at the very end. Hey, Matt.

Has some sort of like like this like, oh, here we go. Hey, we're going to cut the tail saying what the fuck. Just give me the clip. I just want to see the original clip. Hey, Matt. Yeah. Why is Nick looking for this so much? I just feel like we owe it as a duty to ourselves.

He wants to practice kissing. We owe it as a duty to the community, to the legacy of the culture of the moment to preserve in its original form these sort of flashpoint moments of pop cultural awareness. He's angry enough that it feels like you search for it more than once. I have. It's hard to find. They don't have it on kugi or whatever. It's cocky. If someone has a clean clip that is uploaded and is unaltered, and it's like, this is just the thing that happens. This isn't a guy going like, oh shit at the end of it or something like that. Like this is just the actual thing. Or someone doing like a sonic impression and being like, oh great, now I have a boner. Yeah, exactly. I don't want an overdub. Now I've got a boner.

He's mad about it? Thanks a lot, lady. I have a boner now. It's hard to run with a boner. This is the kind of thing of like a video game museum should make as like part of their hey, you know, this is boring things we're going to do

is we're just going to preserve like clips in their original form. This is what I want. George Lucas has this museum coming out. The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Yes, I am an alliance founding member. Me too.

Hell yeah. Are you going before they open? I'm, I'm like, I want to have the best experience. Sometimes a preview experience is not like the best experience. You know what I mean? Interesting. I don't know. Don't you feel that way? Well, I'm having a preview experience in part because I was like, I'm not going to be able to get in this fucking museum for a year if I

don't go early. Basically, I want that same thing but the Hideo Kojima Museum of Video Games. That's pretty good. Pretty good take. Yeah, everyone reacts to the least kissing Sonic scene. This is just how Sonic 06 kiss should have been. Hey, Matt. Sonic 06 kiss reactions. Matt, he's looking it up right now on the show. All the links are purple.

Sonic reacts to Elise kissing Sonic. Sonic 06 kiss scene now with Amy. Natsu's reaction to Sonic 06 kissing. Just Sonic O6 kiss scene, but it's less terrible. Type in Sonic 06 kissing regular. Regular. Here we go. Let's see.

Probably the most iconic. This one has some fucking bullshit at the end of it. I can't fucking believe it. Heather, I know. this seems insane. I'm on his side. Right? That is unbelievable.

Shouldn't we be able, shouldn't the original one be available somewhere? I should be able to watch any cutscene I want online. I agree. Sonic, I'm gonna look it up

with what I think you should search. Okay, great. Heather, if you can find it, I owe you a debt of gratitude. And if anyone else there has a clean one, like I may have said earlier, but please set it all right. Yeah,

if you have it on a complex server, or something. I searched simply Sonic Kissing original unedited cutscene and the top one is just a 12 years ago clip of Sonic

the Hedgehog kissing scene. Message it to me. Matt, I feel like this is an HR moment. No, send it to me. Send it to him. You could have said please, but send it to him. Please send it to me.

and also I want to watch this thing in its entirety because I have a feeling someone did some bullshit Yeah Like added a fart Exactly yes yeah All right I'm sending the link To our group chat Okay

Our group chat still called wrong I wore my Yeah and here's where I show Heather I know what the fuck I'm talking about There's tails at the end of it Tails doesn't belong there Tails doesn't belong That's even the right aesthetic ton of tail

No. That's a 2D version for the cartoon. And I don't think tails would even react like that. I think he'd be like giving like a thumbs up. Wait, so you're mad that there's like three frames of tails at the end of this and it's otherwise absolutely unedited? Because the viewing experience is tainted and because it's not what I'm looking for. I'm not wrong.

This is, this sort of overlaps with the conversation we're here to have today actually. Matt. Because if we had this, if we pulled up the disc right now for Sonico 6, we could play through that shitty, shitty game and get to that scene and see it in its entirety. That's true. That's true.

Back to Deskade. So you're this guy, Xerian, this, you know, this Sora-looking MF, sisters gone. There's like the, and then like this, your town,

it's just kind of like, it's called Tick Town. Everything's clock in there. It's all clock. Tick Town. And so you're just basically going around, going on big chains. There's a great double jump.

Feels awesome. Great running around. There's also a dive. And so it's just, I would say the one clunky part is the combat feels a little bit wonky, but whatever. That's only part of the experience. And it's also like, it's pretty simple. It's pretty straightforward. Maybe as you progress through the game, it adds layers of complexity.

But it's pretty much going around collecting shards, upgrading your guy, upgrading your little guy. and then also, you know, using your fucking clock blade in myriad ways. So you don't have, you don't have like a Donald and Goofy? Like, no, you don't have like a bottomless animal companion who's going to die at some point. He's not going to die. He can never die because he understands the power of friendship and life. You can also just ignore. the most of the like dialogue as far as I can tell them it's it's just like kind of like whatever there's

NBC's sitting there and you can go up to these old ghosties and talk to them or you're also be like I don't give a shit about this guy is it fully voiced or is it it's it's good the the cinematics are voiced and then a lot of the other dialogue is just like you know text boxes okay great I'm looking forward to checking it out I've had a lot of fun with it so far and I plan to continue playing it it's just it's one of those games it feels like a hug you know oh yeah so I think this is their first game um if I didn't say already and they did a really nice job with it. I love to hear it.

Yeah. Ranch, you got any updates on your end? What are you playing? I mean, my friends have been playing Big Walk. Wow. That's right. We did an episode about this recently with our buddy Alexis. But talk us about your experience because I think you've gotten further in the game than I have at this point. Yeah, we've made it pretty far.

I think we're almost done with it. But there's about ranging from 8 to 10 of us at any given time. Wow. And it is so chaotic. Fights have broken out. It's caused a little bit of drama. Do you have any particularly, I guess, without getting to spoiler country, any particularly notable interactions, experiences, breakthroughs?

It just, I think a lot of the puzzles you do need to like really think about how you're going to solve them. Yeah. And progressively kind of gets a little bit more complicated. and it feels really good to like figure it out through talking with people. I feel like that doesn't happen very often. It's like really problem solving with everyone's ideas. Right.

So I feel like that's been really cool. Like I don't do that with my friends ever. It really like is the game, the play part of gameplay. You know what I mean? It's just kind of there's a purity to it. It's almost like a reverse escape room too. Like you're already escaped. And you're solving.

puzzles in a group. A get in room. Sure. He's fucking good. He is? That's good shit. That was? Get in room. Sure. I'm not locked out with here with you. You're locked out here with me.

He's good. We're good. You're going to see through the end, you think, with this group? Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. That's lovely. And I feel like I learned a lot about myself during this journey. Oh. Are you causing drama? Because it seems, this seems to happen with the gameplay session.

I made a big oopsie that caused the group to not solve a puzzle for a very long time. Okay. And I feel like I learned how to take that accountability. Make repairs. And yeah, just like learn to fucking listen. Wow. Oh, wow. I saw a really good clip, which was.

was some puzzle being solved on the top of a very tall mountain. And they had one of the little nubs. And the guy did the thing Weiger did where he accidentally kicked it as hard as he could. And it sails into the distance and then just is lost in like a valley the size of like the hidden valley ranch logo. And the guy looks back at the other guy and his friend just doesn't speak. I really do think about a lot Since doing it When Nick was like, I dropped the camera

I threw the camera Yeah Like that was also a mistake, all right? What I also loved about us playing Yeah Is I liked how everyone would kind of If they were leading They would be checking up on everyone

And I thought it was very sweet Like always looking back to see if everyone was there You got to keep the crew in arms reach. That's right. Yep. Yep. And yet, you'd always be lost. We needed a rope.

Everybody needed to be connected by a rope. That'd be fun, some leashes. Yeah. You know that end of summer stretch where life speeds back up before you've actually caught up, before you've gotten your true R&R, that's rest and relaxation? Where a calendar suddenly has more side quests, all the annoying meaning. tasks, and you want to concentrate on the main game enjoying the last of your summer? That's why a lot of people are looking for small ways to make the summer season feel easier

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That's Babel, B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L-L-L-slash-Plaid for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions may apply. Let's talk about physical media. Let's get physical. Physical, physical. I don't know the rest of that song. Me neither, but that song's a bang. It's like I've heard it in a laundry mat and the thing.

That's about it. That's a good song. That is a good song. Olivia Newton-John? Yeah, you kind of, if that's a song that comes on, you're kind of like, I'll listen to that. Yeah. Okay. It's like, I feel like that one and then send me a hero.

Or like to like, ooh-o-oh. Of that same sort of era. It's just like, I need a hero. I think the song is called send me a hero, but I can be wrong. Send me a hero. No, I mean, the lyrics are I need a hero, but I think, oh, it's holding out for a hero. Holding out for a hero. For a hero.

But send me a hero does happen in the lyrics. Where have all the good men gone and where all the gun? I've brought a bunch of physical media with me to the show today. A bunch. I'm excited to talk through it. I mean, how do you want to do you want to give us a tour or should we just talk through things in general? I think we just talk about stuff and I might take out a thing once in a while and be like, this is the sort of thing we're missing out on. But the truth is, I'm not just worried about the end of physical media because there's been an erosion over the last 10 years of booklets, maps, like all of the stuff that used to come with a game.

Like computer games especially would come with these massive manuals in part for copy protection, like because you'd have to get different parts of the manual in order to get past copy protection. but also like all of the instructions couldn't be put in the game without without front-loading it with a massive tutorial. So as those things have slowly gone away and games have just become a plastic case with a single cart inside, sometimes mostly not even a single paper insert. That's already been one step of the insidification of the video game medium. Yes. Man, I read this New York Times article.

My mom sent that we were both pissed off about about the decline of Talente yogurt. It's a, or not Talenti gelato, rather, since it's acquisition by Unilever. And it's just kind of crazy because it tracks year by year how the ingredients list on the Madagascar vanilla bean gelato changes and goes from just like, you know, like milk sugar, you know, vanilla bean. It goes from like like to like a list of a whole bunch of different gums and like additives. And then eventually it's not even using like milk anymore. It's just like it, it, we see this happen in every sector. And it certainly sucks in terms of physical media. Because yeah, you're right, Heather.

One thing I used to love about PC games when as a kid is like, oh, this thing, this mother friend comes with a cloth map and like a little comic book or something. You know, like this, I'm getting a little spinner in here for the copy production. It's just like I feel like I'm getting a big box of stuff. It felt like every game was what a $120 collector's edition of a game is now. And there was something about the, and of course I should say I feel like this was a topic for the episode because, you know, PlayStation's not going to be making discs in the next year and a half or so. And everything's, everything's digital now. Predominant sales of games are digital.

But for me, when I was a kid, it was part of it was the chase, too, of going to, like, a store and being like, I hope they have it. Oh, yeah. I hope they have it. Then being excited that they have it. And I remember being a kid and having to place a physical pre-order for, like, Pokemon Ruby or something. You had to put down, like, five bucks or something at Target. So then they gave me, like, a sheet of paper. So then I could then put that five bucks toward the game because they weren't just selling it, willy-neal.

you had to have this thing first to then buy the game because they were like this is going to sell out and that was like even getting that little piece of paper was like so important and so exciting

I used to like I mean I still any chance I get I'm still buying physical discs and stuff probably won't now but up until that announcement I was like gung ho

and buying physical cartridges and physical discs whenever. My perspective is I kind of went digital pretty early on because that's been the predominant PC, or really not just predominant, the only PC game format for a long time. It's a fully digital ecosystem and has been for, you know, I don't know, since the early 2000s, it feels like when Steam took over

and game size just got so honking. and I don't know why he's honking there it was fitting right yeah yeah you know what I meant by honkin yeah fucking so honkin honkin yeah it's just fucking honkin anyway so like but then the PS5 era I was like I kind of want to buy

physical games again I was buying physical discs and then of course where did that get me because that like a lot of these are most of them are completely unplayable with just the disc alone they need some they need a substantial internet update because they're not a playable copy is not actually in the in the box.

But and then like you were saying, that shit's going away anyway. So I don't know. I feel like you just kind of have to accept our digital future and then just be happy. At least you can own a download of a game and not have to stream everything. But you can't own a download of a game. You're right. You can't own that. I guess what I mean is you can play a game locally.

You know, you at least have a way to play this on your own physical hardware. One of the things is I was sort of like prepping. for this episode and thinking about stuff. I thought about this 4chan post from 2013 that I have saved in like my favorites folder that I'd love to read to you guys. And then also I was thinking about how the first thing to go is going to be the media

and the second thing to go is going to be the consoles because eventually all you're going to have is a streaming terminal and that terminal is going to be embedded in whatever your, your, your front end UIS. It's going to be Netflix. Yeah. And so the consoles themselves,

which can be collector's editions, which can be special in some way, those two are going to go away. And then it will just be what's your controller that you use? And maybe you'll get special controllers. But like the actual console

that's not going to exist in 15 years. No, yeah, 100%. It's going to be this. We're being pushed in a direction where we're going to be streaming everything. I held up my first. phone for those of us listening at home. I like there's just so many

opportunity like there's so many parts of because I have I just moved so I have I'm very aware of how many like Blu-rays and like DVDs and games and stuff that I have that I'm just like now looking in the space that I have and being like why do I

have all this shit but like I like I like that I have it I like seeing the fucking little case for the Super Street Fighter for 3DS game. I like that I have that. And I was then digging through

just my stuff and seeing stuff that I hadn't seen for a long time since I was a kid. But there's also this thing that used to happen where Contra to now, the whole game used to be on the thing. Yeah.

And like there wouldn't even, there might be like a patch on a future edition of it that was like maybe like a small tweak or something or patching out a minor bug that was that got missed or whatever or you'll get like if if you were playing final fantasy 12 it would be final fantasy 12 then final fantasy 12 international edition or final fantasy 12 zodiac age or whatever the fuck those options were we can linger in our dismayingly digital present or we can go back and have some fun looking at her physical past.

And I think maybe we should do that for a bit. Before we do, let me read this 4chan post from 2013. Okay, great. There will be no collapse the way some of these people think of it. It's not going to be like the movie Dawn of the Dead or wherever, when suddenly shit hits the fan and prices skyrocket and everyone begins to riot and the SS comes marching down the street to kill everyone. There will be no happening.

Instead, you'll just notice that everyday simple things will become a little bit more expensive. Everyone's homes and apartments will start to get smaller. Your work hours will get longer. Your pay will decrease. You'll see family and friends less, and in that time, you'll care less about them. Every day, you'll find yourself lowering your standards for everything. Work, food, relationships, job security will no longer exist as a concept. You'll notice your houses and apartments shrinking.

People will hang on to their clothing longer and longer. Less people will get married. Less will have children. People will engross themselves in technological distractions and fantasy while never experiencing the true real world. And I think about that all the time because it's from 2013 and like it is so crystal clear that that is our experience. And I think it seems stupid to care about physical media disappearing, but it is couched

in a thousand paper cuts of all of the different ways in which we are losing less access to this sort of soulful, tangible reality of being a human being. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I feel like you can even go to earlier. I mean, that's a really well-written post on the, I guess, now Nazi website. But I think that's most websites now. They used SS as a pejorative. And now they'd be like, wait, those guys coming? How do I join?

I better change. I mean, they can go back to earlier text like, you know, Neil Stevenson's snow crash or like even Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, kind of like the same sort of like foretelling was happening there. So like it's it's yes. And it's a bummer that that is in fact kind of where we landed. Yeah. And it was just like a slow regression. The post continues and I just truncated it for the sake of listening. But it mentions the Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot as like a sort of metaphor.

link. Let's talk about stuff we loved. So my first experience with with physical media was through my dad's Commodore 64. Wow. My father was a retired, is a retired chemistry professor at a public university and a community college. And he was just someone who was always like on the, the cutting edge of tech, an early adopter, if you will. I'm not buying. the nicest stuff, but buying new stuff when it was available. There was that time too where he like shaved his head and started hanging

out with an old student and started entered the world of crime. You're driving at my dad being Walter White. And I mean, I will just say that he had experiences in, I don't know how to articulate this. If you were someone who works

in the field of chemistry, people approach you about getting into crystal meth. I'm 100% sure that that's true. He never did anything criminal as to my knowledge, but he certainly had colleagues who went down that path. He never said the thing of, we're done when I say we're done. Oh, no, he said that.

My dad. That was every dinner. He's just wanting more food on this plate? He is your dad. My dad opened up, we were fixing up a car in high school and opened up, it was a used car and opened up the side door and a full brick of cocaine or heroin. Yeah. Unknown fell out of the car. And we looked at it and my dad was like, oh my God. And he didn't want to call the cops because the car would be impounded or whatever. So he threw the entire thing in the incinerator and the construction site. Oh my God. That's wild.

One time I was walking down the street and like a thing fell out of a guy's pocket in front of me. And I was like, oh, so you dropped this and he started laughing. I was like, oh, thanks. And I saw that I was holding a vial of cocaine. Humans rock. Yeah. Anyway, what that brings me to is that the Commodore 64 had, you know, it had 5 and a quarter inch floppy disc, which are the discs that gave us the term floppy because they were actually physically fucking floppy.

You could shake the song bitch, and it would, you know, it would wave. Like a, you know, I try to think of... Like a floppy disk. Yeah, like a file, like a manila envelope or something like that. I had a little bit of heft, a little bit of weight to. It wasn't like a sheet of paper. Yeah. These things were honking.

They were honking. And it also had audio cassettes that games would come on, which was another thing of just like, oh, my first introduction of cassettes was not through music. It was through, that was what, like, radon bungling bay would be on. I may not be right about that specific game, but that's like, that's the kind of thing I remember being on. I guess I never, I never interfaced with the game in that format before I go. I think I've heard of, I've heard of that probably from you guys, like, talking about that

games have been on cassettes, but every time I hear it, it's baffling to me. I didn't know that games came on cassettes, but I've learned it since then, you know? Like, and it's, it's very strange to me. I know that, like, I have a 1980s robot that you can program via cassette. Yeah. Like, you can, you can record instructions. onto the cassette, and I'm assuming that's very similar to how these games work. But yeah, I was not a cassette gamer.

Yeah. I mean, this is when I was very, very young, and this was not anything I was doing, like, fully on my own. It was just one of the options available. One of the options available, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The oldest game that I brought with is a game and watch Donkey Kong. Wow. Is that vintage?

That's not a reissue? No, this is the original... Hachimachi, Machi. Game Watch Donkey Kong, which we have most recently seen at the Nintendo Museum. Yeah, last time I saw that, it was in Japan. Here you go, guys. Wow, I'm touching it. Remember we went to Japan?

Yeah. I think about it every day. That is both game and format. Like, it's both, it's console and game. And I know it's like a fucking toy now, but like you look at it and it's like, this is part of what will be going away. No, that's like, that's an important thing to address, Heather. I'm glad you brought that because, yeah, I think the very first physical media were just consoles that just had games built into them. Or sometimes just a single game.

You would just buy like a Pong machine in the 70s, you know. Oh, this thing is so cool. I had to touch the D-pad because that's the reason we have D-Pads. And I can't believe it even feels that good. Yeah, wow. They like did it one time or like, we've invented it. Yeah. Yeah.

We don't need to change this. And then they did change it on the switch and it's bad. Yeah, it's bad on the switch. But this feels exactly like how you wanted to. The fucking D-pad on a Nintendo. Yeah. That's amazing. Maybe one of the great inventions of the 20th century, the D-Pad.

The D-Pad for sure. A hundred percent. Just in case we use it as a clip. There it is. It's very nice. Just in case we use this as a clip, too. I just have a bag of time. You have a bag of stuff.

There's like so many things I've been thinking about the physical experience. I just want to run through these as ideas. Looking at the box. I did like looking at the boxes, yeah. That's good. Like, do I want this? Let me look at the box and figure it out. Right.

Reading the manual we talked about. Having the full game we talked about. Buying second hand is a huge one. Huge. Buying, lending, borrowing, brows. housing, huge. And that's one of the things I wanted to show that I brought today, which is my copy of Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater from Hollywood Video. Wow, look at that. I bought this in the bargain bin. And so this is not the official case for the, or, you know, for the actual release. It has the real game in it. It has a fucking barcode and sticker from the Hollywood video in Downey, California. I think I got this for 15 bucks. And, this is mine. This is

my copy of it and I love it more than anything because it tells you the basic controls and there's like a little summary of the game. Rival governments are racing to secretly develop weapons, weapons, technologies that threaten the future existence of life. You kind of get what's going on.

Yeah, you get an idea. And I just think it's like I mean, I don't know how many people have exactly this version of it, but I just think it's funny that I have this one that I look at and like, yeah, it seems about right, and they turn around It's just like not it at all. But I was able to get this with my own money secondhand.

I think that's an extremely important point about the used game market. The rarest game I have in this bag, I purchased used. It still has the Blockbuster previously, it says previously viewed. Yeah. Because it was the kind of sticker that they would put on a VHS or a DVD. But when they were liquidating, their virtual boy stock

they would sell them for previously viewed this I bought for 999 yeah still a rip off for the soundtrack I'm paying for the soundtrack my friend I think that this fucking game is worth like

a thousand dollars or some shit no yeah I'm sure and speaking of liquidating water world made by ocean A little on the nose We talked about this pretty recently I think We're due for another stab at Waterworld

There's enough meat on the bone there Where I think they can make a good one Of course they could I would love for them to make another water world A limited water world series Yeah What are we doing? Yeah Get Costner on the horn

Yeah they could film it at Universal Studios Where they still have the Where they still have the stunt show Going Unless it's one piece now Oh I saw that the long term Deacon had his last show. It's some reason that made me sad.

Wow. The back of that box says the Deacon awaits. No, the back box copy here is great. The Deacon awaits. The Deacon will stop at nothing to control the world's most precious resource. And he's turned his bloodthirsty smokers loose on the atoller civilization in a frantic search for Enola. God, just the world building is so dumb.

It's so dumb, but at least it's something. At least it's interesting. The tattooed girl who holds the secret. capitalized dry land. Only you can smoke the smokers and deck the deacon. Again, honestly gets me amped. It is really good because like, I don't know. I just like the ideas, even though they're a little silly.

Wait, what the fuck? One to nine players? That would assume that you would imagine knowing eight other people with virtual boys. Wait, did this game have link? How the fuck do you have nine players play this game? That's really insane. I've never seen that it says one to nine. Here's the one thing I will say.

And look, I am on everyone's side here. I'm not playing for a different team. No, but just talking in terms of, yes, you could get games at a discount used secondhand, buying from a you know like a you know a third party what have you but the thing about the steam store in particular games are to go on such deep discount oh yes such frequency like right now the quarry a well regarded game from 2022 that i never played is on my wish list is on sale for 90% off it's a 60 dollar game that's on sale for six dollars yeah i got it for steinsgate is on sale for six dollars like a dragon infinite wealth is on sale for 16 it's just like the the the the the

that does still exist. If you're willing to linger behind the zeitgeist just a little bit to lag out of the discourse, then you can game at a deep discount. Fair point. And I think that is true. And I will say the secondhand market for games has gone crazy.

Like the prices for some of these things are way worse than they were when I got something like that. or like this, you couldn't get that for $9 anywhere, even though it sucks. No, you couldn't even, I don't think even at a flea market you could get the Waterworld for Virtual Boy for $9.99.

No, and it's like the, the Steam store is the more hopeful version of it. I don't think Nintendo or PlayStation ever do 90% on their own stuff. Right, no. But like, and who knows what Xbox does, but. Well, again, again, what Xbox is trying,

is trying to do is just to get you in the game pass. Yes. And then just like, then you're basically renting there, a library. And oh, gosh, we're not selling enough games. We're going to have to close the studio that just made a hit for us. So, so, you know, the main format that that is dominant in console gaming in the 80s is ROM cartridges. ROM as opposed to RAM, random access memory is read-only memory. And so it would be these, you know, these, the, this read-only formats, like the, the, the,

the NES cartridges or Famicom cartridges or, you know, like, say, a master system later on, like, you know, the 16 bit and the handhelds. We know all of them. I love cartridges, even though my experience with being old as dirt and having an NES as a kid, the thing never fucking worked. But that was more of an issue with a console design, it being a front loader instead of a top loader versus, like, the, of a fault of cartridges themselves. But it was great to have, you know, like, we talk about.

about no load times on, you know, modern hard drives. But, man, there was the solid state hard drives. Man, you're talking about no load times. It put in a fucking cartridge. Oh, yeah. That thing's... Some bitch boots right away. That thing's starting.

Yeah. For sure. Less now, because the Switch 2 cartridges are crazy. Like, they're just like, there's going to be some load on stuff like that. But, like, starting... Yeah, I mean, I was not sure what game I wanted to bring in as, like, cartridge game I found a lot of my cartridges. I have all, not all my DS stuff

because I think traded a lot of that stuff in at one point, probably to buy a 3DS. I have more 3DS games than I have DS games, which is actually crazy. That is crazy. But I have quite a few Game Boy and Game Boy advanced cartridges, but the one that I brought

is my original Pokemon, this is mine. I didn't buy this again. That is the one that I've had forever. Heather stole it. They're just confiscated it for a box of goodies. It's not mine anymore. Heather stole it. See that like that little like faded part in the middle?

Yeah. That's my fucking thumb pulling it out of the game boy. It's really good. This is just like and the battery still works in this thing. Wow. I have other cartridges. I have other Pokemon cartridges where the battery won't let me save anymore. But for some reason this one still worked.

I had to re-sodder a battery. battery on something. Maybe it was when we played Boktai or something. I don't remember what it was. But I had to open up a thing. It was so fucking scary. I'd never soldered anything. And I did it with my dad.

How about that? That's really fun. It was really nice. Yeah. I had a, just because we were talking about, you know, trading games and lending games. I had a copy of Gradius for the Nintendo Entertainment System, a Konami side-scrolling shooter.

Actually, one of the games that had the Konami Code, up, down, down, left-right, left-right, BA Start. Wow. So I was, I, I'd let my, I traded my copy of, of Gradius to my friend Craig. Temporarily, we just did a swap. I was like, I'll give you this. And then I got the game Karnov, which I ended up really enjoying. So it was a weird fucking game where you were like a strong man side scroll.

Like, like you basically were like a proto Zengief, um, who breathed fire. And then you had a ladder or something. It was fucking, it's just fucking weird. I remember it hazily, but I, but I love. This sounds good. It was good. In my kid memory, it was good. You had me a big buff guy.

Played through this game, went back, and then swap games with Craig again. My copy of Gradius came back with a name written on the back of it in marker Jason Ramirez. She like relented it to another kid. That's so weird. I would be so hesitant to lend stuff because like my parents, we didn't have. a lot so they would be like I worked really hard for this you actually can't like lend this to you like friends but so like I would be like you have to have to have to promise me that you're gonna give this back to me or else I'm gonna get fucking killed like and it's like I would only

trade with like a really really close friend but like to that point too like a couple I think I mentioned this on a show before a few years ago I traded a friend I a friend and I swapped games I lent him Lord of the Rings Shadow of War the second in the shadow of Mordor series and he let me

near Automata a game that I'd never put in my PlayStation whatsoever and I still have we've never traded them back it's one of those things we're just never going to address it

but it's cut you know what helps when you're trading games and you want to make sure nobody takes your games have something nobody wants it's just have a system that nobody else has

It's my copy of nights for the Sega Saturn Still says not for resale Is that because nobody would ever try to buy it? One of my very good friends In middle school and into high school Christmas nights on the inside too That's fucking cool He had he went from a

He had a Sega Saturn They were a Sega Saturn family His previous console was a turbographic 16 Wow This kid was just on an island For all of his childhood I will say the packaging for the Sega Saturn, I don't think I'd actually seen in person before.

It's very slick. Yeah, it's a very large, I think long box is what they used to be called, made out of plastic, extremely fucking fragile. But not that fragile. Not that fragile. I worry that, you know, at some point these things are going to start experiencing disc rock. That is something that I hadn't really thought about too in this physical conversation. Yeah, this is cool.

And I don't know when it's going to happen. Yeah, yeah. All things on discs have a shelf life to a certain degree, you know. Christmas nights. Knights. Knights is a cool. Knights is cool. Cool enough to put that guy in prison.

That's not why they did it. He committed white-collar crimes. So after the, go back to the PC side, back to the computer. side, home computers, I guess we can just say generally. After five and a quarter inch disks, there were three and a half inch discs, which were hard plastic and which were decidedly not floppy, but the term floppy disk persisted. And this kind of became, I think what most people know of is a floppy disk is something that, why is it called that? It's not, it's hard. That should be called a hard disk, but a hard disk was already taken, hard drive. So I will say, as someone who is

who was gaming on this on this platform as a kid as game size grew the number of and before CD-ROMs took over three and a half inch disks that actually didn't store very much would games grow to absurd

disc counts so for instance doom 2 came on five floppy disks um... Ultima 7 the Black Gate was six floppy disks and had expansions beyond that that I believe bladed it to nine a game I owned Gabriel Knight's Sins of the Fathers which was a point and click adventure,

horror adventure. That's a pretty cool game. The puzzles are kind of obtuse, but the art direction is cool. The music is cool. The script is very cool. And it starred Tim Curry, who just gives like a fucking 11 out of 10 commitment

as a Cajun guy performance. That game shipped on 11 floppy disks. Wow. At that point, dude 12. What are we doing with 11? You've got like a, I mean,

it's it's it this thinking thinking on this episode today did trigger my childhood memory is like how much time I spent installing games because one thing is like oh yeah I got to download this huge fucking game and then I've got a download a you know an update or whatever like I like I'm just I'm just kind of waiting for a while for this thing to install but when you had to do the physical act of putting in one disc waiting for that whole thing to unpack um ejecting that that and then swapping in the next disc and then having to do that 11 times in a row yeah just to play a game that probably also like you need to create a boot disc to make what to work as well. It was like such a cumbersome process and there was always but but then again I think back on that with fondness because it was kind of like oh I'm getting ready to play this new game and while I'm doing this I'm reading the manual that Heather was talking about. Yeah but it also like to be like a kid and having to know how to do that is such a barrier of entry. Yes. I would never have been able to I would never I would be a different guy. Heather what are you doing? What do you? What do you? you talking about? It looks like you are opening a copy. Oh, okay, okay. I think this was a shrink-wrap copy of

Final Fantasy 3. You were opening on the show. I was like, why would you do that? I do have some sealed things in here, but no, because we're talking about manuals, I thought I would get out the manual. God, that is in such good condition. Well, I'll tell you the truth. The manual is not in great condition. I had a flood. And so some of my stuff that was like on display or out got hit with hit with water and destroyed or damaged. That's why you don't mess with that backpack. What?

Flood. He said that's why you don't mess with that backpack. F-L-U-D-D. So yeah, here's a copy of Final Fantasy 3. Mario, shoots water everywhere. In that shitty Mario? For the Super N-E-S. But I knew that I still had all of my manuals and maps.

Wow, look at that. And remind me what the release was for Final Fantasy 3. Final Fantasy 3 is Final Fantasy 6. Okay. It's the last one before Cloud. And again, yeah, not in the best condition, but the map. Not too bad, though.

Not too bad. You would expect it to be in basically exactly this condition. Thinking back on it, I'll pass on the manual because I'm worried I'm going to rip it, but I do want to look at these maps. What? Why would you rip it? It just looks in such fragile condition. Oh, like, I thought you were saying an intrusive thought.

No, no, no. Like, I'm worried about it. I didn't. You knocked that piece of chocolate out of my hand. This was my memory of this. And it is true. I am vindicated. Final Fantasy 3, this map that it came with, has the world of balance on one side.

And then, spoiler alert, the world of ruin on the other side. Yeah. It is so, what a fucking cool thing that exists. Yeah. And also, I still think just like perhaps one of the most jaw-dropping moments in any video game. And it's kind of crazy that Final Fantasy 6th, a world of ruin. went into Final Fantasy 7, Severoth killing Arith.

And those are just back to back, and those are two seminal moments at the same franchise. Consecutive entries of just like, they just like blew people's minds that they happen. I got to play six. You absolutely should play six.

Seems really good. The best one in the series. This map is, this is the type of shit I love in a pack-in, right? But this is, I also, I just want to point this out. There are highlighted parts of this map as if you went, these are like things you crossed out.

And something about that is sweet. That's fun. I like to see that you were like highlighting these. Or at one point you were like crossing them out or something. Like I've been here, I've been here. I don't know. Like seeing a diary entry or something. Pack in poster.

Yeah. It's really cool you have that. I actually have a do Final Fantasy. Whoa, it's a Mughal with huge tin. I have a Final Fantasy 3, US 6, Japan, and by the way, while I mentioned in this, thank fucking God they did not continue the U.S. numerous number system with Final Fantasy 7. Can you imagine if we were talking about Final Fantasy 4 and that actually was Final Fantasy

7? Imagine what that would have done to us, like all the entries being off forever. My OCD would have just been just peaking the whole time. Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy 9? What are you talking about? It's like the ongoing issue with the with the street fighter franchise how they renamed three characters. They swapped names around in the U.S. versus or in North America and other territories versus Japan. And so now it's like who's Vega?

You know, depending on where you grew up, he's either M. Bison or he's R Vega, who's actually Ballrog. Yes. And Ballrog is. Ballrog is M. Bison. And ballrog is M. Bison. It's too much renaming. It's like biohazard should just be biohazard instead of Resident Evil. Yeah.

That was cool, though, that they did Resident Evil biohazard. That is cool. I like the name Resident Evil, though. I will say that that's like a lot of times when they localize something, they'd fuck it up. The verbiage Resident Evil is very satisfying. Yeah. Biohazard is less exciting to me. Biohazard Requiem, I'm kind of like, what are we talking about?

What are we doing? So, I mean, my Final Fantasy 3 story, my friend Ryan rented Final Fantasy 3. I don't think he'd played a Final Fantasy game before. Maybe not even an RPG, but Rented Final Fantasy 3 from Blockbuster was just like, holy fucking shit. This is like the best game I've ever played. But it's a honking game. It's a big boy.

And so he spent like an, he spent like a weekend playing the shit out of it and had to return it. and then he convinced his parents to rent it again because his save was on that cartridge and he kept re-renting the same game so he'd have the same save until he'd spent like $90 on Final Fantasy 6. But it just sunk Conchre, or Final Fantasy 3, it's sunk cost fallacy to a certain point.

Oh yeah, I mean, that's the thing, I mean, I fell into that same very trap, that very same trap. Me and my brothers, we were like 11, trying to fucking beat the Futurama game. He should have bought it Because one, it was unfortunately not very good

And two, we just couldn't figure out How to get past this one Bender level You could play as Frye, I think Bender and Zoidberg Oh, that's fun The whole gang is there Yeah, I like the guys They're also in Fortnite Bite my shiny mental ass

Good news, everyone Oh man Shows got some bangers Good catchphrases I feel like it doesn't get its flowers. Every single character on that show is fucking funny. Every single one of them, all bangers. Really, really good.

Hermes? And Amy I'm in love with. Oh, don't get me started on Lila. So, that's something about it. Maybe this is some, I feel like the, the Cyclops thing always kind of throws me. I feel like when you just have one eye in the middle of your head. I wonder how she perceives me. Yeah, right. Do you

see me with the full depth of two eyes? Or do you see me in a slightly obscured way with one big eye? Right. Who could say, well, I'll never know. At least I know how to defeat you if you trapped me in a cave.

Give me some of a hot stick. You're fucked. A hot stick. Yuck. So we have ROM cartridges that are around for a while All the way through the Nintendo 64, I think is the last major system that used them. Here's some more ROM cartridges. Yeah, we have chrono trigger and Earthbound, just two absolutely seminal JRPOs.

I don't want to take it out. I kind of look at the Chrono Trigger box? Yeah, get in there. Here, hold them both. I don't care. Matt is holding both games. I don't. Honestly, I'm not like I'm happy that I still have all this stuff, but I'm not precious

with it. Sure. If I was, I'd be one, I would have killed myself when that flood happened. Yeah. Like, I would have just been like, this is it. I'm done. Especially since it was a flood. It was a flood in the inside center of the house.

So I was renting an apartment and the inside center was a closet. Yeah. Like in the center of the apartment. Yeah. And there was a flood when the ceiling above the closet broke. Yeah. And so it only flooded in the closet and there was no way to see it from anywhere else. Like, you didn't even know.

Was this back when you were living in Delphino Plaza? Yes, that's it. I want to read two things from the back of this chronic trigger box real quick. Just two all-time flexes back to back right here. Okay. From the creators of the acclaimed Final Fantasy series, these are two separate bullets. Character designs by Akira Toriyama. Yeah.

You would stand to reason at this time. when this is released that this is possibly the greatest, coolest thing you ever made, and still is. Before Square and Enix were one entity, this was like the closest to a Square Enix co-lab.

Yeah. I mean, it's just like, and you see the, just the absolutely wonderful and singular aesthetic of Akira Toriyama character designs. Unbelievable.

Of a Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest fame. I have a manual in here that is one of my favorite physical media items. Okay. This bag, by the way, too, I gotta say, is really cool. Cool bag. For the Nintendo DS version

of Nino Kuni, which was the Studio Ghibli role-playing game. Right. You had to use your spells from an actual magic book. And so this was the collector's version of the manual

because that was the only way for you to be able to draw the sigils, which were not in the game. They were in the manual. That's really cool. Isn't that awesome? That's really fun design. I didn't know that. We could have had stuff like that still.

Yeah. We could have had stuff like that still. It gets me mad. I mean, it would cost like $400 now or whatever for like a collector's edition to have something like that in it. But like... That's sick. This is so cool.

It's a brown hardcover book with kind of, pages that appear to be aged and yes you're seeing these squares with little symbols in them that denote how to use your stylus to draw the spell on the touchscreen I think we should go back to the

DS. I think we should just go back in general I think we should go back to the DS. I think we should go back. Do we settle on a year? Is it just 1999? Is that too obvious of like this is where we should just go and live? Yeah, what I mean It kind of, the Matrix kind of nailed it, right? Matrix kind of nailed it.

I think that's the only movie we need at that point. 9-11 hasn't happened yet, so it hasn't gotten crazier. So maybe we could figure out how to calm everything else down. Yeah. From 1999 on. Give us two years to hang out. Wait, are you going to get on one of those planes? No, let's go.

I think, you know, maybe 9-10 we make a phone call. We don't got it. So games are changed, you know, inexorably, when we move from cartridges as the dominant home format to disks, meaning originally compact discs, later DVDs. Yes. Because there is just so much storage and you start to have things like fully orchestrated soundtracks, fully voice acted games, things that were just not possible on the, with the meager capacity of ROMCARP. But the cartridge lives in handhelds. It lives in handhelds. It endures.

And but, you know, we're talking about home consoles and talking about PC gaming. I will say the first, in its infancy, CD-ROM gaming was maddening because a single-speed CD drive or like the PlayStation 1's double speed, 2x speed CD drive were just so fucking slow. Yeah. And, you know, very quickly, home computing got up to like 4x and 8x speed CD-ROM drives. I forget what the PS2 was at, but it substantially sped up loading on PS1 games because it could just spin the disc physically much faster. Which is also one of those things was just like,

that's what it is. It just makes it go, like, turn around faster? That's the technology? There's like, let's just spin that fucker faster. Is that really what it means? Yes. I mean, you're asking the wrong. I don't know how anything fucking works.

I just put it in and just like, please, God, please. But that is what it meant. Yeah. It meant that 2x, 4x, 8x, it's how fast it takes it to spin. One of my favorite subdivisions of the CD form factor is the UMD. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is the proprietary format for Sony's PSP handheld.

And I brought a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics, The War of the Lions. Wow. So that I could show off for listeners who are watching a clip if this ends up being a clip. How precious. How precious these little things were. Was really where were you going to drop it? It wouldn't matter if I dropped it.

It's in a protective case. Yeah. Really cool, a unique form factor. Let's go back to it. They had movies on that thing. Yeah, they had movies. And it got fucking poleaxed by the Nintendo DS with several generations behind.

Own the film Rain of Fire for the PSP. Wow. I own a disc, yeah, a UMD of Kickass. You came with my God of War PSP, where I have two games for it, both God of War games. It was a great system. I look back on it fondly, and I wish I was more into it at the time. But I love the sound. I mean, I've been a huge mini-disc supporter, so this comes as a surprise to no one.

But listen to that. Yeah. It's good. That is good. It's got like a little guy in there, and it's good, and it's protected. The disc is not the main thing. shell is the main thing and then there's the disc inside of it. Yeah, the shell is the main thing. It's it's a perfect portable CD form factor. Much like with a turtle, the shell is the main thing.

Though there is a guy in there. Also, the art. Most identifiable part is the shell. I think so. Look at that art on there. The art on the disc. Great art on that disc. It's great art. We also had in this era, we had, you know, the proprietary dreamcast GD ROM, which was pre-d-d-D-D-D, and then we also had the Nintendo's bespoke format. Yes, Heather is holding up, Skies of Arcadia, a great J-R-PG that I had.

The G-D-ROM. God-D-ROM. Yeah, that's what they said when they realized how easy it was to hack it. They were like, God damn it! And then the, you know, the DVD, we've talked about this before, but that the PS2

was a DVD player was such a gigantic competitive advantage over the the Dreamcast format. Is that another world on a Dreamcast? Yeah, this is another world. It was a late issue game. Wow.

That's why it's still sealed because it was not released during the original run of the Dreamcast, but was released much later. I would say maybe five years ago. Wow. Yeah. I wonder how Skies of Arcadia holds up because my memory of it was even for its era, there were a lot of random combats. And I found, I got, it did start to feel tedious. I imagine it would be very tedious day.

In this manual, there is an ad for coming January 2001, fantasy star online. I also have vagrant story here for the PlayStation. That's an all-timer for me. And one of my favorite parts about this, this box is that the second disc is the square. software for PlayStation 2,000 collector CD volume 3. Wow. Which I feel like wasn't Vagrant Story 2 discs? Am I missing the second disc?

Oh, you're missing the second disc. I don't know I would come in that case without it. Does the first disc say disc one? It could be that I, this is Vagrant's story. It does not say disc one. Okay. Maybe I'm wrong. So Vagrant Story maybe was a single disc and it came with a demo disc?

Wow. Cool. Yeah. Kind of seems like a... A waste. I mean, I guess they probably... They just had the... Square games were almost all

were, like, at least double CDs. They probably... Maybe just had a lot of those jewel boxes, right? Maybe there was, like, a sort of taxable benefit of having a demo disc in there that they could then spread the wealth a little bit. Fuck, throw that demo disc in there. So what is... What is this another world?

Is this... Wait, was this like an indie, like, public... Or was this an official release? It was a... I mean, I... What do you mean by official? It works on a Dreamcast. apparently.

But it was a late issue release. Like what era do you know? Like five years ago. Oh, okay. So this wasn't something that went through like Sega's official approval channels. I don't believe so. Dreamcast games because how that wouldn't exist. Right.

That's really cool though. Yeah. That's a thing that you lose with physical media going away is that you can't, I don't think you can release and publish a PS3 game now. No. I don't think so. People are like putting out games. For Game Boy.

For Game Boy. I think that's extremely cool. And they're making physical carts for it, which is great. Looking through my collection, I'm sort of bummed that I don't have more. Like I got rid of so many things. You know, I didn't need it at the time. I frankly don't need it now. Right.

But it'd be nice to have a lot of the old stuff. Yeah. We wouldn't need any of it. Should I just show off what all the rest of this shit? Yeah. I'll see going One favorite thing in there. Well, I've already shown that.

I've shown that. I've shown that. It's Waterworld. I've got Chrono Trigger and Pokemon Black on DS. A great game. Too great game. Great version of Chrono Trigger.

Very, very, very tangible, very physical media. I brought this from Matt. This is a Kingdom Hearts chain of memories. A gorgeous box. For the Game Boy Advance. I was saying earlier, too, I think maybe my favorite looking

Game Boy Advance game. Wow. Look at the sprites on that. Yeah. I'm getting strong sense of lemon meeting lime here. Sprites are very appealing. Extremely lemon meeting lime coated. This is one of my favorite packages.

This is for BIT generations, which was Japan-only Game Boy Advance Games. Wow. And this is for the game Orbital, which was one of the first games that I then emulated on my Ein Thor. Wow. Not to be confused with the soon-to-be-released orbitals. Right, very different. Very different. Very different.

Not the same thing at all. And then finally, one of the things that I'm worried about is the loss of physical machines after physical media goes away. Yeah. And this, I guess, is the rarest console I have, which is the Pokemon Center New York version Game Boy Advance. Oh my God, let me see. There you go, Matt. Wow. Look at that.

I can't believe he's doing that to the towers. That's why they closed. Yeah. This is so awesome. And then Pokemon teaches typing. Of course. That's some physical media.

Wow. Look at that. Did we play that in the show or you brought it in? I brought it in. As a Heather's hole. We played typing of the dead. Yeah.

Not learn with Pokemon typing adventure. Not enough typing games, I think. Typing's fun. Typing games should come back. Catch Pokemon by typing fast. Got to type fast. And then my last thing in the bag. This is really cool.

is a game and a watch. But not a game and watch. Not a game and watch. It is an official Nintendo Star Fox game. Wow. That came on a watch. Wow. That's really cool.

That is awesome. What are we going to do without physical media? I mean, I have so many, like, DVDs, and, like, DVD is not even the main format anymore. I'm buying 4K discs still. Right. I love a steel book. I love a steel book. what did I just order?

I wrote the Barbarian Steel Book because they finally released it on on disc. They didn't release it on disc when it came out. That's wild. I guess it's not wild. That's normal. There's like seasons of television

you can't watch. You can't watch Westworld. You can't watch Willow in TV series. It's insane. He can't watch a show I worked on. Yeah, Earth's the Ned. Can't watch it.

It's insane. You should be able to watch that stuff. As nice we can watch the shows. I'm hoping that even if consoles don't have physical disks that disc drives are still a thing

or that like or I guess I'm going to have to then buy whatever the proprietary format player is. I don't even know what a 4K Blu-ray player costs. I imagine they're not cheap, you know? I imagine they're probably... Isn't the PS5's disc drive a 4K Blu-ray player?

It is, but for the next iteration of whatever comes, you know, whatever comes next. I'm going to be holding on to the PS5 Pro for, to play Blu-rays, which is, uh, in, in some ways just a humiliation. Yep. Uh, a couple of, I mean, we, we didn't touch on, on the game, the GameCube optical disc, uh, like a snug guy that was kind of like the size of a caseless, um, um, um, d, basically. Yes. And then also, like the Dreamcast had less, less storage than, uh, DVDs. I worked on a multi-platform. forum game, a few that were PS2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube.

And the GameCube was such a pain in the ass because instead of the 6.4 gigs of storage, it had 1.5 gigs of storage and you had to figure out how to compress things and, you know, strip assets out just to make sure that some bitch could fit on that disc. This fantastic four game doesn't have the thing in it. It's three guys. But I also want to shout out the, from, from an earlier era at two opposite ends of the side spectrum, size spectrum.

First off, there was the snug little credit card sized Hugh card, which was the PC engine slash turbographic 16 form factor. Extremely similar to the game cards for master system in terms of just like the size and and strangeness of it. Those were, those I always thought were really cool. And the other one I always coveted.

And in fact, maybe I guess I could get into collecting these and probably, I'd be spending a fuck a lot of money, but, you know, I've always been fascinated by the NeoGeo cartridges because they were basically like the size of like VHS cassettes. I have a size of a, here where you see it's the size of a, it's bigger than the size of a super Famicom and a Mega Drive cart put a car, a cartridge is put together. They're reissuing the Neo Geo and reissuing physical cartridges. Like the big motherfuckers though? Nick, they are. Wow.

Nick, you can get a Neo Geo that's coming out that's new. I can get an art of fighting cartridge that's four times the size of a Diddy Kong racing cartridge. Nick, you can do it. Wow. You can do that. I might have to do that. I do want to point out something about the Nintendo Switch cartridges that I think is very different than every cartridge or piece of physical media ever released. Yeah.

One, they're really small. They're very similar to like a, you know, an SD card or something. They got a fucking weird taste They taste bad They made them taste bad on purpose Because people They were like These are small enough

People are gonna put these in their mouth Yeah And of course I've tasted it Because I wanted to see what it tastes like And it don't taste too good Okay It's no tide pod It's a

Oh man It's fucking no tie pod I'll tell you that They're I'm using tied flats Now Tide Flats I don't know The actual name

But that's what I call them in my house They're tied flats Uh huh Because the tide pod's covered In plastic Yes and comes in a big plastic jug. And we're wondering where all these microplastics in our bodies are coming out.

When I found that out of it, in that day, I was like, oh, I'm not using fucking pods anymore. I had no idea it was plastic that just melt off. That's the whole thing I was doing those fucking dishwasher ones too. Yeah. So I'm just getting melted plastic all over my dishes that I fucking eat off. It's crazy. It shouldn't be allowed. It should be criminal.

We got rid of the pods in our house. But now they come. There are like dissolvable flats. Yeah. They almost look like cartridges. And you put the whole flat in. It's called Tide Evo. This isn't an ad.

No. But take a picture I want and show it to me. And it comes in a cardboard box instead of a plastic bucket. Okay. Wow. So the whole thing. Better just in general. I'm theoretically better.

I still use the juice. Oh yeah. Use the juice. I use the soap. The big fucking... Drink that fucking juice. Hunker of detergent from Costco. I'm a dry guy.

I switch back to powder. I just using tied powder I got from Costco. Wow. That's pretty clutch. It's in a fucking box the size of a child's coffin. Why do you? How do you? Just give a sense of scale.

Why would you? There are other sizes. We get like an unscented one. Yeah. That is like the just the liquid. Which is interesting information to share. That is interesting information to share. on the show.

I misquoted the size of a of a DVD. It was going off of memories. It was in fact 4.7 gigs for single layer and over eight gigs for a dual layer. And then, you know, obviously the game size keeps bloating. Blue Rays, we got these fucking 25 to 50 gig, depending on how many layers you got. They said there started being these proprietary formats that are being used to make these things even denser. And then just eventually, eventually people are, eventually. just becomes the discs aren't even the games.

The disc aren't even the games. The disc aren't even the games. They're not the games. The games are the games. Games are the games. The disc is just blank junk. The disc is the license to play it until they decide that you don't have that anymore.

There's more video game in a tied flat than there is on a blank disc. Do you have a, like, if you're just going to isolate one, do you have like a favorite, like kind of, Heather, you already said UMD, so maybe this is more a question for Matt and me. For me, the Game Boy Advance cartridge was like such the sweet spot. Because it was like, it was not quite as much of a bulky boy as a Game Boy or Game Boy Color ones. And it just like fit in there so snugly.

And it was like, like the DS ones, the cards were not, did not feel as tangible. They were easier to lose. There's a click on the Game Boy Advance card. Yeah. Wonderful feeling click. The final Kachunk of gaming. You want a kachunk. Yes.

That's so key. Because you know it's, you know it's. in. Yeah, you know it's in. With the click of a DS one, you kind of like, you might not even get it. It might not take. You might have to get in there again. I think Game Boy Advance for sure.

I think that's my top guy. And then the idea of... It felt secure in a way that the top loader Super NES did not feel. You felt a little nervous. There's a little bit of action. Yeah. Certainly not the front load or NES. No.

No. Like there's too much, but the Game Boy Advance cartridge, once it was in, is not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere. No. And that era gaming, that transition era from the Game Boy Advance to the DS, DS has a Game Boy advanced. Yeah, it does. Has a slot for it. You have games for it. Just go.

You're playing it on the bottom screen. You're having a great time. That's, to me, maybe that's my favorite generational leap right there actually. Really good. Like I said earlier, if there's any cause for optimism, physical media died on PC a long time ago. and PC gaming is thriving. And the advantages of digital media is like indie development distribution is so much more expansive now, so much more common. And you end up with small self-published games that become ubiquitous.

And those are the games, though, that end up being the ones that you can still play for some reason. Right, you can still play those ones. Where then there are like massive games that are just like, that one's gone. Yeah. Can't play Marvel Ultimate Alliance one and two at all. But Stardue Valley, one guy, like basically a lifetime's worth of free updates. Yes. Just an unlimited amount of content, and you can play it on anything.

And you can play it probably forever. Yeah. I think the most, oh, I meant to say this earlier because we're talking multi-disc games. The feeling of getting to the end of a disc, because my first multi-disc console game was Final Fantasy 7. Yeah. And when you get to the end of a disc, it's just like, holy fucking shit. Yeah. I can't, I have more like in store, like, but I just finish something.

It's like, it's like, it's like feels like the end of an act. Like like like the intermission at the fucking theater. The concept of getting to the end of something that is perpetually spinning though. Yeah. And that is round is strange. A little bit of a mind fuck. It's like finishing your rings on an Apple watch. Yeah.

Yeah. I have a, actually have a pitch. I think it would be a fun nostalgia thing. Maybe some developers are already done this. But if I was playing like a game that was a purely like digital game, but I reached the end of a point like a chapter and it said end of first disc or end of disc one. Yeah. And then there was a disc two that was like another set like section of the game with like a different tone to it.

I'd be like, I love this. That'd be really cool. This makes me happy. Yeah. For sure when Final Fantasy 7 reunion or whatever the third final chapter is, they're going to release the whole thing on a three disc set. Oh, for sure. They've done it with the two. Yeah.

Yeah. Fantasmagoria for PC, which is a game I've, a very horny horror, FMV horror game, that probably we should kind of cover it some point. Yeah, we should do that for sure. It's kind of like the, but Roberta Williams, was the developer behind it, famous for Kings, famed for Kingsquest, a very non-horny series. I think that was the most CDs for retail games, seven CDs, seven discs. Jesus Christ.

Wow. That's crazy. Really, really went nuts. with that one. Anyway, we'll, I kind of had fun with this discussion,

I think. Overall, like I got pessimistic. I know, I know we get a little bit like nihilistic, everything's shitty. I think it's a great ode

to something we love. What, something we love, yeah. You know, we're celebrating a life of collecting, a life of physical things,

and of course, Waterworld for Virtual Boy. I will say, looking at Waterworld for Virtual Boy does make me happy. I'm glad it's a thing that exists. I'd rather see it than not. then not see it.

Yes, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, I like that. It's like we're touching something. Yeah. That's great. It's like the opposite of Candy Man. Yeah, it's kind of like the opposite of Candy Man.

Wait a minute. Is Waterworld available on the Switch 2 Virtual Boy? It's not. I think it must be a licensing thing. Yeah. So you're like the only person that can live. That is a huge argument in favor of physical media. Yes.

Yeah. Because even with re-releasing the entire virtual boy library, including brand new games, which are actually pretty good. I can't stress it enough. Dragon Hopper is pretty good. I was called it kangaroo dinosaur. Kangaroo dinosaur.

You still can't play this. Yeah. Yeah. And probably never will be able to, unless you like download the ROM on a, I don't know, 3DS. Yeah, you could probably just do it. I mean, yeah, you probably get it.

I think you can probably do that. Yeah. Cartridges are good. Dists were good. even though cartridges would get dust and discs would scratch, at least we had something. At least we had something.

We did have something. I've seen people in the PC gaming world put like small games that they like on like low memory SD cards. So like they could fit all of like Celeste on like a four gigabyte SD card and just be like I have a physical copy of this. I think that's really fun. That's very charming.

Yeah, that's really great. Shall we do a segment? Let's do a segment. Speaking of physical media, I've got something very tangible for a new segment here on Get Played. We're going to rip some packs on the debut of Pack the Ripper. That's right. I'm Pac-Man. And this week for Pack the Ripper, I brought some Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy packs.

I have one for each of us. Wow. So here we go. We can distribute these. I'm not going to toss them because I am going to possibly. damaged product, I'll walk these over to ranch. And this is great. I feel like the number of cards that come in a pack

of Magic the Gathering cards is generous. 14 feels like a lot of cards. That is a lot of cards? So I think we should just, is the move just for all of us to open them at once, and then we can just show our, or should we do it one at a time? I guess I should know this, I'm Pac-Man, but I'm just listening to... Yeah, you're Pac-the-Ripper. But this is

PAC-C-K-K. This is Pac-the-Ripper with, of course, with Matt Pac-A-D-Daka. And then of course our producers Rip shell, like you said. Riple, yes. And then I said, what did I say in the text? Heath tear and camp pull. Uh-huh.

Heather, you didn't react to that. All right, it's fine. That doesn't mean, it's bad. I'm not open mine. Fine is good. Fine is good. All right, I'm opening mine up. Okay.

Nick's opening his pack. And this is sort of why I would argue that we should all open them at once. Nick's opening his pack, and he's sort of gesturing them in a way so that we can all see what he's about to pull. Okay.

That looked cool whatever it was. Here's the art card. Nice. Oh, cool. And then we have, okay, we got a land. We got Gungaga, Reactor Town. Wow. We got SideQuest, play Blitzball.

We've got a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, oh, wait, this is a two-sided card. That's cool. Legendary artifact equipment, world champion, celestial weapon. Um, we've got a Mughals Valor. Mugles Valor. Wow. Eden's seat of the sanctum. A summon for anima.

A Phoenix Down. Always helpful to have a Phoenix Down. Okay. Sorcereroses schemes. Lunatic Pandora. Oh, man, that's cool. Sacrifice Lunatic Pandora. Destroy target non-land permanent.

That's what Miles Corch thinks of the planet that he's on. When he's a lunatic. Slash of Light. This is one I always botched saying, but a key curing merchant, white or a site. This is a lot of cards. I just dropped one. This segment might take a minute. Grand Pulse Ochu

Kutroube forer Jesus fucking Christ Oh here's one We got suplex Hell yeah Suplex from Final Fantasy Six And what I love about this card art

Is that it is evoking a thing That you can do in the game Which is suplex a train So I gotta play this thing You gotta play Final Fantasy 6 dude Do you want to go next Heather Or do you want me to go

Go next Okay I'm gonna open my pack the boys are packing town I was sort of stunned by the number of ways you were able to fit pack into other words but I shouldn't have been stunned because I'm like that's your bag baby yeah here we go

I like my pack I got a double-sided card more like your pack hero and night there you go which I'll have to do some research to discern the difference you could be a knight without being a hero that's true Windhurst Federation Center Oh, cool. Let's take a look at that, there you go. Winders is from Final Fantasy 11.

Okay. Oh, man. Cain, traitorous Dragoon. Oh, that's awesome from Final Fantasy 4. He looks really cool. That was where he learned what a dragoon was. Wow. It's not just a dragon with an extra O.

No. Well, then going on. I got a Yuna. Nice. That's a nice looking card. Wow, sure is. Very nice. Put that in a frame by my bed.

Side quest, raise a chokabot. Was that border? Was that border with full art? It's borderless, yeah. Is this a good card? It might be $100. That's a nice goal. It has a little gold, little piece of foil down here.

What's the number in the bottom left corner? Bottom left, 0404. Ranch is doing some digging. It's a $22. It's so $20. Hey. Nice. That's lunch in Los Angeles.

Barely. Yeah, barely. Where I'm going, that's lunch. Go to Del Taco. You're going to hand them a card at McDonald's? Here. Chocobo racetrack Nice

That's cute I spent way too much time Breeding chokobos and racing them The first time I played Final Fantasy 7 I don't think I did it at all Yeah Maybe I did it the one time they show you How to do it or whatever

But ether No I got in the weeds with it I went all the way to get the fucking gold chokobos This is reminding me This pack is reminding me That I have an abandoned Playthrough of Final Fantasy 10 That I have to get back to

Oren's inspiration Oh, yeah. Oh, nice. Oron's a good guy. Oh, I like looking at that guy. I like looking at him because I also, I know him from Kingdom Hearts. Instant ramen. Hey, that's from 15.

It's right, looks good. Arri-Man, a little enemy. Okay. I got a Dragoons Wyvern. Okay. There you go. A card that says, you are not alone. Oh.

Has two characters on it. There's a quote from Dagger on the card. Final Fantasy 9. Nice to know you're not alone. It is nice to know. The card told me. Yeah. Bards bow.

Cool. Looks really cool. Red's mage. Red mage is rapier. Okay. Busted chicks are cool. They are cool. Cool concept.

Yeah, you got like, yeah, you're both white magic and black magic, and then you also, like, can handle a weapon. Yeah. And according to this card, it's also hot as hell. And then finally, Vane's treachery. Wow. Very nice. Vane's treachery. All right.

I'm going to open my pack. Pack opening. Pack. opening. The gorgeous card. Yeah. I love that Ranch is bad and clean up here because Ranch is going to use these. Ranch is going to use these

and also has the MTG knowledge that the rest of us do not. My art card is I believe Sin from Final Fantasy 10. I didn't even get a card like that in mind. I think you got a token instead which is the night soldier. The planes.

The lunar whale with a little bit of of a shimmer to it. Brendan Fraser going to space. Wild Rose Rebellion Counter spell. Floating to the moon. It's an full art, borderless instance spell.

I don't know, that looks pretty. That is cool. That's neat. That's really nice. That's nice. That's probably $22. Wow. Yeah, that's gorgeous.

Wild Rose Rebellion. U.0004. Like $5. $5. It's a very beautiful card. It is a gorgeous card. darkness crystal. Wow.

Ex-death void warlock. I've got Prompto. Hey, it's one of my boys. Hey, you like that guy. Oh, it's one of my boys! You love pulling one of your boys.

I love one of my boys. Eject. Clash of the icons. Preci's wanderings. White or a site. Lots of like stuff. Ice magic. Ballam T. Rexor.

That's another. item from one of my favorites, Final Fantasy 8. Okay. Call the Mountain Chocobo, and finally, Undercity Dyer Rat. Just a bunch of stuff. Not a lot of heroes in mine. I see. But I did get that pretty hard card.

Where does ice magic rank among the magics? I think it's pretty cool magic. I think it's cool magic, but I think lightning is my favorite because it's kind of beam adjacent. Yeah, you do like beams. I'm the thing. You can have an ice beam. Yeah. I feel like fire you have a chance of hurting yourself.

Might burn your tips of your fingers. Yeah, but I don't know, it kind of feels like usually the way these things are balanced. I guess if you could kind of have like, I guess ice, that also includes water magic. Yeah. Or is water magic in a sink thing. Ranch, let me ask you something before you open your pack. So if I were to take these cards, do I have to get other Final Fantasy cards to build a deck out of? Or can I mix different elements?

You can mix any type of card. If you're playing commander, which most people play, your colors would need to stay with it. that commander's call us. Got it. Okay, cool. But if you had any legendary creatures, one of those could be your commander potentially. Got it.

Okay, cool. So, like, I could have Yuna be my commander? Yeah. My sweet Yuna. R.C. You're up. Rip away. Rip shell.

It's Pack the Ripper. I'm Pac-Man. Pack the Ripper on Get Packed. It is more like Get Packed. It's kind of more like Get Packed. Where, among complaints that you hear as a podcast producer, from listeners, is crinkling number one or is chewing worse? Chewing.

People hate chewing. Crinkling is more tolerable. Yeah, I don't think people care. I've never gotten crinkling. There have been chip bag noises. I work for someone, Matt is doing some crinkling. So if you have misophony, you complain at him specifically. Don't at me.

I worked for someone who had misophonia and they were like crinkling drives me nuts. Really? I can't stand. Like, like, like, don't crinkle things around them. Yeah. Yes. Not in the, like, like, tyrannical way. Just sort of like, it's a fucking, it's going to bother me.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Sorry, go ahead, Rochelle. All right. I got a bird token, bird wizard token. Wow. Cool.

Cool forest. That is a cool forest. Very pretty. Malboro. Plant. Ooh. We love that guy. Oh, we love Marlboro.

With his bad breath. Named after a cigarette brand. And he has stinky breath? And he has stinky breath? That's really good. He's a big scary gross monster. Which one is he in? He's been in a number of them, yeah.

Fire Ryan, Wild Rose Warrior. Very cool. Poo-Poo, UFO. Wow. I like that. Capital City. Nice. Bean Braun.

Okay. She's from Final Fantasy 9, I think. Overkill. That's from all of them. Or is that an image of cloud with ERIS? He's like, no. Cross-Rour. Village.

Okay. Retrieve the Esper. Nice. Air the rescue mission. I like that. Rescue mission. Magic damper. I don't know who that is.

I don't know what that is either. Gisal Green. Okay. Geishol Green. Yeah. That's something you feed at Chocobos. Yeah. Item shopkeep.

Okay. And Sephiroth intervention. Oh. You needed one. Somebody. I did some bad stuff. Somebody needed to have a Sephiroth walk in. We all brought you here.

because we love you. The way you're behaving is unreasonable. Just don't carry the sword around. Just don't carry the sword. Maybe get a haircut. Maybe just stop trying to commune with Mother Earth. I'll give you regret. We have one more pack that I was saving.

I'm not sure how we're going to do this as a collective. This is a collector booster for Final Fantasy. So this might have some real pulls. I'm going to designate Ranch the steward of the collector booster. Yeah, you're a ranch. Nick, where did you get this from? I got a box. I bought a box set with a bunch of packs in it.

Like, there's a bunch of these? No, it's a bunch of, it's a bunch of boosters and it had one collector booster in it. You know, these are going for like $160 now? Wow, there you go. Wow. You're sure you want to open it? That is, so that is like a, we've flashed a lot of dollar value on the podcast today because we're going through Heather's archives and now we're going through this collector's booster. but I say let's rip the song.

I have a game. Yeah, what's the game? I don't know what kind of guys are in this, right? Yeah. But what if we each call one guy and if the card's in there, you get that guy? That's pretty good. What kind of guys are in this? So don't look it up.

Well, but then I, okay. You know what? I will abide by your rules. So for example, if Noctus is in there, I want Noctus. Okay. Yeah. We each call a guy. Okay, yeah.

Well, Sora wouldn't be in it. I've never opened a car. Collector boost. Wow. If Kate Sith is in it, I'll take Kate Sith. There we go. There we go. If Lulu from Final Fantasy 10 is in it, I am definitely going to take that one.

You got, Ranch, do you know these guys enough to be able to claim a guy? I know Cloud. There we go. You have dibs on Cloud. All right, so we got a Cloud and Naktis. Okay. Actually, maybe I'll do Chokeauvo. Lower tier, you can definitely have the chokobo.

Cloud, Noctus, Lulu, or Kate Sick. Yes. All right. Ranch is opening the pack. I don't think you were here, Nick, when I came to the show after learning about Lulu and was mad that nobody told me about Lulu? Yeah. I had no idea.

She's got big jugs and a lot of belts. And a lot of belts. Yeah, and just a real scale. Why are you scared? Just open it. What's the worst that could be in there? Like a $20,000 card? Ranch is hesitating, but.

Ranch just open it. You got it. Ranch, why'd you do it? The deed is done. Is this good audio-com? I'm trying to make it interesting by saying stuff. Yeah, we're trying to say stuff. Yeah, I'm trying to say stuff.

She said Lulu had big knockers. If you don't know who Lulu is, listener, she's a big, tall lady with slender shoulders, but wide breasts. And she's mean. She's mean. She carries a stuffed animal and her dress is made out of belts. Ranch. If she was in the real world, I would definitely let her fin dom me.

Absolutely. All right, we have a hero, robot warrior token. Wow. Very nice. Balum Garden Seed Academy. Oh, wow. From Final Fantasy 8. That's one of my favorite, like, kind of town themes.

It's so tranquil. Double-sided foil. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Next card looks crazy.

These are all so beautiful. Yeah. Barron rivalry. Very cool. Rivalry. Okay. This next one's really pretty. Oh, Yuna Grant Summoner, I think, similar to that part.

Wow. Oh, very pretty. I think this is a surge foil, which I think this is probably very extensive. Wow. Very nice. Someone wants to look up the price of that. I think that was a hit. Unah surge foil.

M0216. M0216. M0216. There's somebody listening who's like, who drops the weight. They're squatting. M0216. I'm typing it in.

Grand Summoner. Borderless surge foil M-0216. On July 12th, this auction ended for 220 and 48 British pounds. Wow. Pounds. GbPD, U.S.D. USDA. Let me do the conversion real quick. $297.

Exchange rate isn't quite that generous. That's what that's say. That's a pretty penny. It has paid for the pack. Reapers, Guy. Very nice. Ereth. Einsboro.

Nice. Wow. That's a popular lady. This is also borderless. If we want to look up R0423. I think that code, the code just activated me. I'm going to go 3D printing gun. This can't be it because this brought up the Dell R0423.

Yeah, I think maybe Google more than just the number. Yeah. How can you be an adult and not know to put in a couple of modifiers in your search? Do you run any Final Fantasy cards in your deck? I do have one K-Sith. Wow. Yeah. He's a good guy.

He's a good guy. Well, he's a bit bad. He's a bit bad, but he's a good guy. But it's kind of funny that he's bad because he's a little. Yeah, he's a little bad, good guy. The Ayrrith is, the art is really appealing. I think it's got this sort of like more anime aesthetic to it. But the price is $14.24.

Well, that's nothing to laugh at. Gidor aristocratic chapel Okay Wow Swamp Swamp Whoa Summon Shiva

Whoa That's nice It's pretty They're all shiny Shiva is pretty Yeah they're all Siva Collector pack

Titus Oh Titus is a good guy That's a good guy That's a good guy Everybody loves Titus Everybody's looking at something closely

I think because either this from the same like set Like artists Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Was that it? No, there's more.

Oh, there's more. We're all still in the running. Rufus Shinra. Wow. Wow. That's a bad dude. That's a bad dude. That's not a nice man.

He's not a rude dude because the rude guy is actually rude. Yes. Followed by Leviathan. Okay. Rufus Shinra looks like a Kushner. A hundred percent. That's a pretty card. What's that?

Restoration Magic. Wow. Nice. Very pretty. cornered by black mages Nice Cloudbound Mugul Cloudbound Mugle

Cute I thought it was cloud And then Red Mages Rappier Wow That's yeah I got that one too That was a nice card Wow Very nice, very fun

So great packs Hey that was fun That was fun What a fun thing to do That was fun for us at least I think ripping packs is fun Yeah it is If we had a video podcast

It would be more fun I think For sure. To just hear cards being named. Look at that. Maybe not the best audio content. That's a pretty lady. And we have to remember we are an award-nominated, an award-losing podcast. That's right.

So we got to keep up that. Wow, that is really cool. We got to keep up the audio content. Yeah. Please put that down your $200 card. Nick, just put it down. Thank you very much. He did set it down.

I'm not touching my card again. It's going to be there forever with the grapes. Hey, that was Pack the Ripper. That's this week's getting played. And you're the Pac-Man. I know the Pac-Man. And that's this week's get packed. Our producers, Rochelle Chen Ranch, Twitch.com,

slash yard underscore underscore Sard. Does the bio-shock stream continue? It does continue. Wow. Our music is by Ben-Prenti. Ben-Prenti Music.com. Our artist by Dec Brigade Design, Duck Brigade.com. Get-played.

MertjeetKoods.com. And a bonus episode every Wednesday over on our Patreon, get-played DLC. Matt, what are we doing this week? This week we're doing something new. We're going to talk about some. some of our top guys. Yeah, we mentioned some top guys as we were talking through the episode, maybe because we got top guys on the brain.

But we're going to talk about some of our top guys, top guys in the sense of playable protagonists in video games. That's right. So you can subscribe to that over at patreon.com slash get played. And this week, I think physical media got played. It did for our whole lives. Yes, until very recently. Yeah, when it stopped getting played.

And now never again. That was a HeadGum podcast.