Get Played - People of Note with Jason Wishnov

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Heather and Matt are joined by indie developer Jason Wishnov of Iridium Studios to talk about his new game People of Note! People of Note is available Apil 7th! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1626170/People_of_Note/ Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For 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] on Get Played via Gumball.fmAll 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. Wow, it is crazy to be back in America after just doing that trip in Japan. It's so different. It is different here. It's different here. And worse. I don't know. It was a really good time.

I can't wait to record the episode with you guys where we sort of like, I don't know, break down everything we did. Yeah. No, I had a great time. There's so much to talk about. Yeah, can't wait to unpack it all. There's so much to talk about. Yeah. But today we've got a cool guest, a cool topic.

I guess I'm just, we're just waiting for Nick. Yeah, I thought, huh. Also, I'm still a tiny bit jet lag because that flight was pretty recent, and I know we didn't all sit next to each other. You had a screen. I didn't have a screen at my seat. Yeah, no, I had a screen. I watched Predator Badlands again.

I watched it on the way there, and I watched it on the way back. Sounds good. It's fucking great. Did you see what Nick was watching? Was he near you, or? No, I'm just trying to actually replace, because I remember where you were on the plane, but I thought I thought Nick was sitting with you.

I mean, it was such a rush to get to the airport and now that I'm thinking about it. I sort of don't, I mean, because we all got off We counted everybody. We counted three people. We can't. We counted one, two.

Oh my God, I counted the driver. Oh my God, I counted the driver. You counted the driver. I counted the driver too. Oh my God, we left Nick in Japan. We left Nick in Japan. Nick! Count it.

Not Kevin. Shut it, Kevin Like it was all below That was incredible I didn't attach it to a name I just thought that's a thing you say In a situation like this We left naked Japan

You shot it Kevin for real I think we can just abandon the bid That's it man I'm cooked You're cooked we're jet lagged You know we left naked Japan So it's just you and me this week, buddy. That's right.

We battle with time signatures and sing our way to success as we discuss brand new RPG people of note on this week's Get Play. 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, The Finisher, the franchise. Mr. Games himself, Matt. Papa Daka. Hello everyone. Hello everyone and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week, Nick Weiger is out on assignment with his fellow podcast.

That's right. Do Boys. That's right. This is, of course, our first episode since we returned from Japan and he had to be penitent to that show. Yes. And go do whatever they told him to do, which meant going to Florida. Yeah, it's a good, it's a good, my homeland.

Yeah, not a great place to be. I got out of there as soon as I could, but. We have a, we have a guest in Nick's absence. Matt Upadogga, why don't you intro, our good man, Jason Wishnacht. Okay, I will. Okay, so, spoiler alert. Oh, that's fucked up. Our guest today is a game designer, voice actor, and the lead designer at Eridium Studios,

whose new game, People of Note, releases tomorrow April 7th. It's Jason Wischnob. Jason welcomes the show. Thank you so much for having me, Matt, Heather. It's great to be here. One day I am freaking out. One day away. It's crazy.

It's nuts. You must be so excited. Well, anxiety and excitement are but two sides of the same giant coin that's dominating all of my thoughts and emotions. The coin is also very heavy. Very heavy. It's just, it's a lot. But I am so happy to be here and talk about it.

And yes, it has been a long time in development. So for it to finally be here does, in fact, feel great. Now, Jason, two questions for you. One, we've known each other for like, 16 plus years. I believe literally 16 years. To the day. Happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. What the fuck? Yeah. I believe it was a San Diego Comic-Con, if I recall correctly. Was that where, so how did we, I know that, like, I was a voice actor in one of your previous games.

Formerly known as Sequence, now named. Before the Echo. Yeah, before the Echo. Thanks, lawsuit. Yikes. Yeah. There's a board game called Sequence. Don't, don't play it. For whatever reason. But how did we meet? I can't remember. I actually, I do remember and it's like mildly weird, but I think, well, no. I believe you didn't know who I was and I like, you woke up and I was sleeping on the floor of your hotel room. I believe you were there with Leah Jackson covering something.

Maybe it was G4. Maybe it was some kind of freelance gig. But Leah was like, yes, you know, I desperately needed somewhere to crash. And she was like, let me just check with my. roommate for the for the night and it turned out was you you apparently said yeah whatever it's fine and then you woke up and you were like hey and i was like hi i'm like i'm like on the floor like really waking up i'm like hey i'm jason you're like okay cool that's funny yeah um so so we met back in the games journalism days um and uh you have now become a game developer and designer and i have become a

podcast. You've become many things, Heather NK. Well, every two years I see a cool thing that you're doing. I mean, I keep thinking back. Remind me, wasn't there this thing that you were like getting going? It was a technology thing where it was like replacing the GIF. It was like a way to quickly cut videos. So that was I was that was at Fox ADHD. Yes. Right. And that was not me personally. There was a technology that they had invented that they were they were trying to make it so that you could just drop in any file. and immediately make it into a gift. I desperately wanted that technology to work out. I don't think it really did.

Yeah, I don't know what happened to it. Obviously, when Fox pulled the funding for all that, all of those resources in IP were thrown to the wind. Yeah. If I had at my fingertips the ability to make gifts, I'd be the happiest man on Earth. Or GIFs. Depends.

Who could say. Who can say. But I remember. There is a consensus and they're always very quick to tell you what's right and what's wrong. Yeah. But I haven't, I haven't checked in it. Like, of all the things that you associate with Heather over her long and storied career, like, what do you go to?

Because I go to, like, corkscrew duck penises. Yeah. What's the rating of this podcast? Well, yeah, we say it all. Gosh, what was the very first context for Heather, for me was probably seeing the midnight show at UCB, of course. Thank you. Yeah. Probably better than corkscrew duck penises.

Same content. Similar line. Corkscrew duck penises, of course, is a reference to, one of the Fox ADHD cartoons I made, which was scientifically accurate duck tales, or did a ton of research into the biological morbidity of ducks.

It's not great. It's horrifying. It's really scary, actually. It's horrifying. I learned some things from that video. It was educational. It's the same. Ducks are, I think,

I think ducks are among some of our cutest animals. You think that. You at first glance. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't want to. We don't have to get to the deep anatomy of ducks.

Ducks are canceled. Yeah. Yeah, basically. Ducks are canceled. What's everyone's favorite duck color way? I have an answer. Please. You've now opened the door.

I've got an answer too. Oh? I like the ones that have sort of like a blue-green head and then brown-bondy. Yeah, right, exactly. Classic mallard. It's like an iridescent sheen. Yeah. It's really nice.

Yeah. Oh, it has to do with like the molecular makeup of how the feathers are arranged geometrically. I like the mallard. I also really like the mallard. The black duck with the red beak that looks like it's got a disease. Yeah, that one's tough. It's kind of like a weird, like, boldest kind of thing going on. Yeah, that's a good duck.

Yeah. Also, baby duck is also pretty good. They look completely different. They're so different. You don't even know they were the same thing. No, they're like a completely different guy. Adorable down creatures. Jason, do you have a favorite duck color way?

I do. I do love the mallard, but you already said that one. You could say too. I mean, it's probably, you know, the name, Arridium Studios, coming from the Latin root iridescent, I really do. love that sort of like multi-colored sheen. Jesus Christ. No, I smartest thing ever said on the

shop. I'm a fan of it. And they're like certain, they call it like reflex purple. There's like car paint jobs that mimic that sort of Oh sure. Yeah. Yeah. Create that like iridescent sheen as well. You got to check it with Ranch real quick too. Ranch favorite duck color way? Yeah, what's up? Yellow. Yellow. Yellow duck? Like a bath duck? Yeah. Like a rubber. That's pretty good. That's pretty good, Ranch. Ranch might be on to something.

So if you're, if you're tuning in here for the first episode after we've come back from Japan, you're probably like, why aren't they talking about Japan more? Yeah. And the truth is, we are going to talk about Japan when Nick comes back on the podcast. But I will say something about a duck. Oh, go off. From Japan. Which is that when we visited Hideo Kojima, he gave us this lovely gift bag. And in the gift bag was a bath bomb.

And the bath bomb was, yes. yellow. And of course they have beautiful, incredible bathtubs in the hotels in Japan. Yeah. So I'm like, well, I'm not going to have a nice bath when I return home. So I'm to use the bath bomb here. One, it made the color of the water into, like, visually identical piss. Which I was like, is this on purpose? Like, is this a death stranding bit? Because there's piss in the games. Yeah. But inside of the bath bomb, as it dissolved, was a toy.

And inside of the toy capsule was a duck. Wow. Yeah, a little tiny rubber duck. And it came in. Yeah. Yes. And it stunk like you. No, it's a really pleasant, almost banana smell.

Yeah, it was really good. You had the same. I did it too, yeah. And my duck was a little pink duck. And at first I was like, well, I don't, I'm, what am I going to keep this? Like, what am I going to do with a duck? It's like, like, the tip of your pinky size, very small. Yeah.

And I was like, what are what I going to do with this? And then I remembered that I had another Kojima Productions duck. So I brought him home and I put him next to his dad. Two Kojima Productions ducks. Yeah, one normal size duck and then a tiny duck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That tiny little duck made it all the way back. I made sure that little duck made it all the way home.

Does he have a thing for ducks? Well, it's one of his corporate logos is the rubber duck. unknown why I'm sure he's talked about in an interview I have not done the research We didn't ask Yeah Just nodded

No Thank you sir, thank you Yeah When did you First start Oridium Studios And what was Like everybody has sort of a When we started this podcast

It was sort of a lark But also it was like It'll be fun To do a show With our friends talking about video games was the starting of this project for you, was it a serious endeavor?

Or was it like, hey, I want to see if this will work out for me. Yeah, I mean, Arridium Studios goes back to, I was making that first game formerly sequenced now before the Echo. I was making it in 2009, 2010, but it was like very much a non-serious thing. And then I won a fourth prize finish in the Microsoft Dream Build Play competition, which got me like $5,000. And I was like, this is incredible, $5,000. I need to make this a career.

So I, like, legally formed the entity in 2011 of Auretium Studios, and I was very lucky to be able to release on Steam that year. Did you know the week my game came out on Steam in 2011, four other games came out. Wow. And, like, I was front banner, biggest size you could get, because what else was going on? It was incredible.

Truly a wonder time to get into gaming. Things have become slightly more difficult these days. Four games probably come out every 30 seconds. Yeah, like, yeah, like, since we've been. been talking. You know, this game, people of note, which we can get into, a musical, I, this is a trite answer, but it is true. I went to see Hamilton.

Everyone was talking about Hamilton. It was like 2016, 2017. I saw it and I came out and I said, I better hurry because every game developer that sees Hamilton is going to want to make a musical. That turns out that was actually not very true. But it felt true in the zeitgeist at the time. I was like, I got to do it. Wow.

Yeah. And there was, I don't know, this is a deep cut. There's a PlayStation 1 Japanese RPG. It was eventually ported to the U.S. called Rhapsody, which was a musical, but on the PS1, they couldn't even, like, the vocals weren't even possible. And it was just Sprites kind of dancing around. Wow. And, you know, that was like the gaming industry's only attempt at the time.

So I was like, we can do this justice. We can do this. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Eventually, I convinced a bunch of people to give me millions of dollars to pursue this psychotic idea. Wow.

And Erica Ishi is one of the voices. She's a former guest of the show. Yes. A friend of the pod now. And she's one of the voice actresses in your game. And she's incredible. Yeah. Yeah.

She was incredible when we had her here. Let's get Erica back. Yeah. And come on in. Erica plays Cynthia spelled with an S. She's an EDMDJ in the city of Lumina, the EDM city of Lumina. Wow. She, I mean, she does, because you hear her perform as Cynthia, a very, like, non-confident person with, like, imposter syndrome.

That's kind of her whole arc. And then you listen to her as, I mean, she does. Atsu and you're like, well, that's, like, you don't even know it's the same person. Yeah. That's the thing about actors, man. They really can't do that. They can do that. Yeah.

Well, my tone is basically always this or yelling. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I did a, uh, a cartoon, uh, that came out a couple months ago. And people were like, we knew which one was you immediately. You were just using this voice. I just talked like this. Yeah. I can't really modulate it much beyond the volume as, as Heather.

Yeah. And I have a trouble with the volume. You're always. Jason, I guess in general, well, I guess I have a question for you about Hamilton, actually. Oh, hit me. Do you want me to wrap it? Do you want me to start? Because I never saw the, I never saw it live. I saw the one they put on Disney Plus, and I had heard the soundtrack before. I saw the L.A. cast first, and then I've actually, I never got to see the original New York cast, except for Disney Plus, of course. What's your favorite,

what's your favorite song from Hamilton? I love right-hand man. I go hard on right-hand man. I can do any of the parts. Yeah. Wow. Are you in general? Are you, a musical theater person? Yes, I believe that I am. And it's weird because as a kid, I was really put into a box, the math and science box. But a small part of me yearned to join the theater. But I couldn't. It would have jeopardized my GPA.

Wow. I need to stay on the straight and arrow for being a professional mathematician or whatever. Somebody with a low GPA, let me just tell you, being in theater did impact it pretty significant. Yeah, no, it's a significant thing. What? What? So prior to Hamilton, what was some of your other?

favorite musicals. I mean, it's, it's, God, I mean, I love Little Shop of Horrors. That was the one that, like, in my head as a kid, like, oh, Broadway, it's, oh, it's too fancy. I don't like that. And then I saw the movie, Little Shop of Horrors, and I absolutely fell in love and Steve Martin. The movie rock. The puppetry is insane. Yeah. Have you guys seen the original ending? Yes, I have seen it. Yes, I have seen it. Okay. So there's an original ending that you can watch on YouTube that they filmed. Oh, yeah. I have not seen this. It might be on subsequent Blu-ray releases now as well. Dude, it's fucking crazy. The plant wins.

Sure. And kills everyone on earth. And becomes Godzilla-sized and is marching through a city. And they filmed it. They filmed the whole thing. With the effects or whatever? Yeah, with the effects. Yeah.

And there's like a song that I don't believe is in the actual one. But it's how the stage play ends. Like the stage play is very different than the movie. I didn't know that. I saw the, I saw the, my high school put it on the, uh, the year. after I graduated. I was absolutely furious. And then I saw it a couple years ago

off Broadway, actually. And it's also my favorite. I think the songs are really good. The script is really funny. It's incredible. But yeah, it ends with the plant's winning. It's awesome. It's really, really well done.

But the filmed version of it looks really, really cool. Yeah. And good, but it didn't, I had read that it didn't like test. People didn't like it. It upset people. People were like, yeah. Well, sure. It would have set me now.

It's really great. My favorite Hamilton song, I like when King George comes in. So it's singing, you'll be back. It's fun. Like before. He's good. Yeah, he's great. He's funny.

That's great. He's such a little bastard in the show. He's such a little bastard. He's like a crowd favorite. Everyone loves it when he comes on. I've only seen Hamilton once. And it was, I think, the L.A. tour.

And the only, the only song I remember is the part where he was yelling, why do you write like you're running out of time? And I thought, look, I'm sure I've done it myself. But when writers write about writing, I'm always like, pee you, buddy.

That is not my favorite song. It does kind of annoy me too. Especially when it's like, writing is the best. Like, it's like, oh, come. Everyone who's a writer should fucking get mad chips, dog. Yeah, for sure. My favorite quote, I did write people of note, and I don't really consider myself a writer,

but my favorite quote, I forget who said it, a reporter asked him, oh, do you, do you really love writing? And he goes, no, I despise writing. I like having written. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's what I love. Yeah. The actual process is torture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Matt, if you don't have any other questions. Well, I was going to ask before we get into what we're playing, just like, just generally, what's, what are your gaming, like, habits, like, what are your like, what, maybe give us a rundown some of your favorite games as a jumping off point. Yeah, so I mean, some of my favorite. So I'm a huge RPG guy.

Okay, great. I mean, that's what this game really comes from. We can get to that later. But, you know, Final Fantasy 6, 7, 9 and tactics are probably my top four. Those rankings. Ouch. Where do you stand on? Ouch what?

You hate on tactics? You skipped eight. Yeah, yeah. The bad one. Yeah. Of course I skipped it. Where are you at with tactics advanced? Did you ever mess with tactics advanced?

Yeah, the snowball fight, the classics. Unfucking real. Yeah, I finished it, I'll be honest, I don't have, like, great memories of the second half of the game. But I remember them bringing in, like, the Vieira. I remember them bringing in, like, some of those Matsuno, like, races that they had developed in kind of 12 and stuff like that. Matt, why would you do that, Matt, it's Heather's great shame that Heather is not finished. Tactics advanced. I don't think that's a great shame.

I think it's a, it's my great shame. I think it's fine. I have started it infinity times. I still have my original first save. Yeah. That has 80-some-odd hours put into it. I have not finished tactics advance. And when we were in Japan at the Nintendo Museum,

in the Game Boy section, it has like a place of honor at eye level. Wow. And you're like, why is it this game? I think you said out loud, why are you here? It's a Square Inix game that was just published on a Nintendo platform. There's no special reason. It's not like also a popular,

it's not like everybody's like, oh, taxing, That was one of my favorite Game Boy Advance games. So for it to be like in a shining white box, eye level in the section of Game Boy games, as opposed to like, I mean, Mother 3 was there, but it was like in the corner. No, that should have a more revered place.

So fucking weird. That's what should be there. But I'd say beyond the RPGs, I'm a big fan of like of puzzle slash narrative games. And I'm talking specifically about like Phoenix Wright, Ghost Trick. The 999, 9, 9,000 persons, indoors. That whole trilogy, Virtues, Less Reward.

And then we kind of get into the cute name is Metroid Brainias, of which Outer Wilds would be a seminal example. And then you have, you know, the Return of the Obridin and other games like that. Recently, Blueprints one in my game of the year last year. Yeah. Ours too. Yeah. Weirdly. Yeah.

We didn't love it as much as anybody. I got obsessed. But we did give it our game of the year because there was nothing else like it. It's like it's incredible design. Incredibly unique, incredible design. Yeah. Tanda's a great dude too. Yeah, hell yeah.

He's a friend. It's a shame that Nick isn't here because the categories you're listing are all of Nick's favorite games. Yeah. And I feel like it could be the entire show. Yeah. Just viving with Nick. Yeah. He loves Oberden.

He loves, you know, puzzle platformer, puzzle puzzles, puzzle, he's a puzzle boy. He's a puzzle boy. Yeah, I'm a puzzle boy, too. Yeah, I totally get that. Yeah. Did you mess with you? I mean, incredible. Oh, I've heard Baba is you is great.

Incredible game will destroy your mind. Yeah. Did you, did you play animal well at all? Yes. absolutely 100% that well besides the parts at the end that required the entire internet to collectively decipher a mural of a thousand characters

yeah I jumped off there too no that's fair but yeah I had a great time with that game have they finished have they figured out the resident evil puzzle that nobody could solve oh they solved it in like probably after you last checked in on it which was probably a couple of days after it came out yeah they got to that pretty quickly okay is that a nine is that a

yeah there's a puzzle in nine about a third of the way through spoilers on what we're playing. No, sure. But it is like an ARG puzzle where you're sort of like trying to then figure this out. But they made short work of that. Yeah, I know that a lot of the press who got early access to the game were trying to sort of group solve it across different

outlets and they couldn't do it on their own until the larger internet got a hold of it. I'm not press, but I snuck my way into the Blueprints Press Discord before public release. Oh, cool. So it was like me, Jason Schreier, Kate Gray, and a few others all going so hard on the absolute deepest levels of blueprints. We were losing our minds and we couldn't go anywhere else because it was just us. Wow.

Which made it a little bit more special for me. I'm sure. You can't ask the internet. It was just us. Wow. That's great. That's crazy. Did they find out that you weren't pressed?

Eventually I came clean to Tonda. I was like, hey, listen, I kind of weaseled my way into this code. But I did find a bug. Let me make it up to you. Here's a bug report. It's very detailed. You should be able to reproduce it. And he was like, thank you, I appreciate it.

That was like, great. And that's why I became friends with Tonda. That's great. Literally didn't know before that. And now we're buds. Snuck into his discord. That's very similar to the way that I ended up writing briefly for Edge Magazine. It was I snuck my way in and just like bullshitted.

I don't know if I've told this story on the pod before. At the time that I was a journalist, the head editor of Edge Magazine, was Colin Campbell. Yeah. And so I went into, I was at E3 for our zine that we were writing at the time. And I went to the Edge office on site. And I just was like, hey, is Colin around? And they were like, oh, no, he's out.

And do you have an appointment? And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no. Well, can you tell him I stop by? Or I can come back when he's here. And they were like, yeah, who are you? And I'm like, Heather? Campbell. And I said it like, I got to him.

Perfect. I'd be like, oh, yeah, let me go get him. So then I came back when he was there, and I was like, hey, and they were like, oh, he's in the back. So I just walked straight up to him. And he's like, hi. And I was like, hi. And he's like, wait, who are you? And I'm like, oh, I'm applying for a job.

And he went, what? How do you get back here? And I gave him printed copies of articles. And I was like, yeah, I wanted to throw my ring in a hat here, or my. had the ring and see if you need a freelancer for America. Please let me know. Just read my stuff. All my contact info is there.

And he's like, yeah, yeah, we're not taking, we're not hiring anybody right now. And I was like, okay. And then I left. And he was aghast. Yeah. And then two months later, he called and was like, hey, I read your stuff. Would you like to freelance for us? Wow.

And, but it was entirely because I told whoever. was at the front desk. I just said Campbell like as if it meant something. Come on, man. And I only called him Colin. I was like, hey, Colin here. Yeah, yeah. Must have talked before. Absolutely nailed it. They must be sister brother or something. Who knows? Much lower stakes at E3. One time at the Capcom booth, they were giving out a special limited edition t-shirt for someone who could stay. They brought in a professional street fighter four player at the time. I'm not that good at street fighter. There was no way I could do it. But I decided to just try lying. And I went up separately from the machine where people were lining up.

And I was like, hey, I just won a couple matches. They said, I should come over here and get a t-shirt. And she was like, you beat him? And I was like, yeah. And she's like, are you? And she like, flags him down. And I just kind of like wave to him and smile. And he just waves back because he thinks I'm being friendly.

And she's like, oh, okay, sure. And gives me his t-shirt. I think I sold it online for like $300. It was like, it was going for a lot of money at the time. Oh, man. That's great. I was like, yeah, hi. And she's like, okay, I guess.

So much of those early years of, like, like being at E3 is so much like... Damning. It's like near lying. Yeah. I mean, that's a lie. That's a lie. That's not a near lie.

But often it would just be like, yeah, I'm some, you have to walk in with the energy of I'm supposed to be here. Yeah. And also, um, I'm not, I'm not here to hurt anybody. Like, I'm not here to intrude on space. Yeah. But I am supposed to be here. Like, is the way that you would do anything.

Like, if you were trying to see a demo, you just had to go up with full confidence and be like, hey, I think 3 p.m. or whatever. And then they would just be like, oh, okay, sure. And you'd walk in. But you, if you walked up and you were like, hey, do you have any more slots for the demo? Like, you'd be done. Sorry. Yeah, we were full up. Yeah. No, that's like, I've like somehow never learned this lesson. Like, and I just always just like, oh, I guess you're right. Yeah, I kind of did that with the Bioshock Infinite, the legendary Bioshock infinite E3 press conference, which showed one of the most

amazing theoretical games of all time, but that version of the game never came out. It was completely reworked. But yeah, I didn't really have an appointment there at all. I was just like, hey, here to see Bioshock Infinite, I think four o'clock.

Yeah. Yeah, same exact thing. I think everybody's happy with the version of Bioshock Infinite that came out. You know, I've heard no complaints ever in the history of gaming journalists. And now that I think about it,

I can't recall any other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It totally hit the mark and didn't end the series. And Ken Levine is doing great right now and hasn't had any production problems at all with anything. Hi Ken, if you're watching. He's a listener. Yeah, he's a, yeah, absolutely. Sleep is so important to me,

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Up front payment of $45 for three-month five-gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see MinMobile for details. Flip the switch. Jason, we do have a question that we ask every single week on this show. And it's the question, just so you know what the question is, or what the content of the question is. Isn't that just asking the question? Yeah, but so you're not surprised when I asked it.

I'm just like letting you know what the answer. Generally, Matt will ask the question, but the host of the segment then is the official asker of the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, the question is about the types of games that we're playing, what we're playing currently in a segment we like to call, What are you playing? What are you playing? Hi, it's me the resident I'm rich. And I miss my friends when they were in Japan.

I see what you meant. I understand that. Nobody told me that they were gone and I showed up here and ranch and I had a sleepover. That's alarming in several ways. Resident Evil 4 Merchant, thank you so much for being here. We missed you too. We talked about you a lot when we were gone.

You did? Yeah. You did? Yeah. I heard you played my phone call for Miyamoto. Yeah, we didn't. Well, we didn't play it for Miyamoto, but he did walk by when you were on the phone with us. And I did recognize my voice from the GameCube. He didn't recognize your voice from the GameCube, but...

Did he look scared? He did look, he did, he... It's really accurate. He didn't, he didn't look like he approved of what was going on exactly. But there was a secondary thing that happened was that I got to see, Heather see me,

seeing him look in. Oh, because she was, you know what I mean? Because she was holding the phone up. Yeah, Heather was holding the phone up, and I got to see, yeah, it was just, uh, It was just a very, it felt very special. I wish, no, I think it would be. I wish you to handed him the phone.

Yeah, I wish we could have handed him the phone too. Because he would, you know, he could give you your first gig. He was my first gig. Yeah. It was, from there, they put me in our station too. Yeah. It's launched your career. Well, yeah.

Career, in quotes. You know. You were a merchant before. Well, loved. Well, loved. And a merchant to this day. Yeah, that's it. No, I'm not a co-host of comedy bang,

Yeah, that's right. You're Scott Ackerman's best friend and co-host. That's right. It's not, I guess they have not recorded any other episodes since I was on. No, they've been recording weekly since then. Weird. Not to plug another podcast. Weird. That also releases on Mondays. Is that true?

Yeah, they record every single week. You have Scott a phone call. And maybe he's at the wrong email. What email do you have for him? What? What email do you have for him? Huh? Did you send him and you said you have to?

No, I think he's got my wrong email. Oh, he's got your email. wrong email. I see you. I gotta make sure the paper I wrote it on was wet so maybe it blurred. That's going to be an issue. The ink's gonna, and you don't ever, you don't use like a pen, you use like a marker. Yeah. Sharpie! Yeah.

They can run. They can run if they get wet. They bleed. Yeah, yeah. Well, if you, if they if they bleed, you know you can kill it. Is that true? That's what they say. If it bleeds, you can kill it. That's true. So you, yeah, like if a if a t-shirt

is in the wash, And it bleeds, then you gotta kill it. You can kill it. Yeah, you can kill it. That's the rule. That's what it says. And if you have emotional, you know, after effects from like a live action role playing experience, you can kill that too. Yeah, you can kill it. Well, I'm going to be hunting.

Jason. Yes. Welcome to the podcast. I got one question for you on it. What are you playing? Thank you for asking. Thank you, resident evil merchant. Yes.

Well done. Yeah, thank you. There are three titles that I am currently playing. Wow. Though I admit, you know, one day from launch, I have had limited free time. So I'm about a third of the way through Resident Evil 9 thoroughly enjoying it. Having a great time. I just, you know, got a lot going on.

But the one that's been really sucking me in, and I have actually completed is, of course, Pocopia. Well, you've completed Pocopia. It's possible. It is possible. And I really should not have done that when I did it, but I did it. Wow. I'm so excited about this because this is also the game that I'm playing, though I have not finished it. Yeah.

Where are you at? Which number? What area? We play differently. Okay. You're just out here to build up and make the Pokemon happy. My, well, no, it's very hard for me to go to a different area until the first area is perfect. So, okay, not only minimum level 10 environment level, but you need every. I want it to be nice. Yeah, like, perfect. Because otherwise I'm worried that the, that I'll get distracted and go into the new area.

And the Pokemon I've left behind, I'll be, there'll be like last year's Christmas. Yeah. And they don't react that way, but I can see why emotionally it would be difficult to do that. Last year's Christmas is tough. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah. So, but you finished.

I'm finished. I like having goals presented to me concretely by the game. And I do those. And a lot of my friends are like building palaces out of jade and they climb into the sky. Yeah. I'm like, well, it told me to go get that thing. So I'm going to go do and get that thing. Right.

Friend of the show, Craigley Thomas, sent me. a video of somebody who built the police station from Resident Evil 2 in Popopia. I have also seen that video. What the fuck is wrong with people? Have you seen the shopping mall? No. So somebody built some Japanese player

built an entire Japanese shopping mall. Full mall inside of Popopia. The one that blew me away was the KFC sign. Have you seen that? No. There's a way. Okay. So you think like how do you get a KFC sign

in Pokemon Pocopia. There's no way to do that. They took the entire Palatown area, completely blank area, and they built out of the bricks, as big as the game will allow you to go, as tall as the limit, out of the blocks,

a KFC logo, and it took forever. And then they just stand incredibly far back and took a picture of it, and then put a wall monitor up on a store, and then just said, oh, display this picture. And it was so far away

and so high resolution that it basically looks like a normal... Wow. And that's how people are making custom logos and images by building a massive array of blocks out of different colors to make it look like that. I was not a Minecraft person.

Neither was I. In part because I didn't like the aesthetic. It was too, it was too like I appreciate that it has a look and that like I wouldn't ever begrudge the Minecraft aesthetic but it's not for me. Yeah, it's a little lo-fi. Pocopia.

I also dabbled in Lego Fortnite, which was a Minecraft-like. Pocopia's shininess It's got a little Beveled edge It's so sweet

Little beveled edge That I'm like I'm okay with it being blocks Because the blocks Look good Yeah I agree The blocks look really good

They look good Man those blocks The Pokemon look good too I mean they have a certain aesthetic to them That But I just think it works And Ditto's adorable

With the face all the time Fucking Ditto is a hero Ditto is a hero Saving the post apocalyptic landscape of Kanto I am glad that they didn't make an aesthetic choice that affected the Pokemon in any sort of way. Right. They look how you would want them to look.

They just look exactly how they look. It kills me that Pocopia isn't the aesthetic of the actual mainline games. I have negative things to say about modern mainline Pokemon games. I'm sure that you'll have a good friend in Matt Apodaca. Go off, King. Listen. I just, they're not, God, they're with the resources that you have available to one of the largest media franchises in the world, if not maybe the leading.

It is the most successful IP on planet Earth. And I am seeing environments and landscapes in Scarlet and Violet that if I looked at as an indie dev on my team, I would be like, this isn't even close to acceptable. And that should not be how it is. No. I'm not trying to brag about people of no. It's just they look bad. A lot of the times they feel bad.

They're eliminating tons of Pokemon from the Pokedex, which they say is an issue of budget. But I don't know, man, you have all the money in the world. they are not innovating in the ways that I think would be advantageous to the series. Most of the good innovations have come from the offshoot game. Yes. Like from RCS or from Z to A or whatever. Yeah, exactly. And it's like don't be afraid, you know, do, put those

in the real thing. Why, like, if I was the, like, if I was Nintendo, I would just be like, oh, the Pocopia guys get it. Yeah. Let's just give them the fucking game. Game Freak would probably lose their minds. Sure. But like, at what point are you, as Nintendo, the company that

famously wouldn't let another Mario movie happen for like 30 fucking years waiting, so do we. Waiting for the right company to take the reins and like make the shiny, glossy childlike wonder

of a fucking Mario thing, you know, an animated movie. At what point do you need to start protecting the IP from the developers? Because I hit a wall hard with playing Pokemon games and it was because it felt bad to play it. Feels bad.

And I want to like give if you put, you can convince me with Pokemon characters to play Minecraft. Certainly if you make it a regular RPG I'll play the shit out of it. But the cycle will continue once again because when winds and waves comes out there's not going to be

anybody more excited about it than me. I'm going to be there and like with my little empty bowl. Please sir, can I have another? Yeah. I don't want you to be disappointed. I want you be happy. I would love to be happy, but it's just not in the cards for me. The first night we were it's not going to happen. The first night we were in Tokyo, Matt and I went to a Pokemon store. Yeah. Like, looking for his guys. And yeah, we did get overwhelmed and leave pretty quickly. It was too crowded in there. And the one that we went to at the other mall that was bigger was so crowded

that we left immediately. I mean, it's as popular as it's ever been. Yeah. You know, on the west side in L.A., there's a new, like a CCG card store, a real world trading. Yeah. And, you know, it's as it's as it's And it's like I went up there literally two nights ago and I yeah, I couldn't move. I do have a fix for the issue of excluding Pokemon. Tell me. We're done. We don't make any more new ones. Whoa.

We're not introducing new guys. Maybe you introduce three new guys. What about forms? What about forms? I'll accept forms. I think forms is more interesting than new types. I like seeing a gray meowth, right? Yeah.

I like seeing green grimer or whatever the hell. That's interesting. you know, brown Pikachu or whatever, sure. They're not all just colored base. They're all like different. Some of them have genuinely different stuff. But like I don't know if we need three more. I don't know if we need more Pokemon beyond the new three starters.

There are over a thousand Pokemon now. Yeah. I have a different solution. Yeah. My pitch is that new Pokemon are generationally introduced in a true fashion, which is to say that it used to take 20 years in between Star Wars movies. Right? And it was you see it as a kid and then you bring your nephews or whatever to the next one when the new ones come out, right? Like when Phantom Menace comes out, the dads who saw it as teenagers bring their kids.

I think you introduce new Pokemon every 15 years so that when you're a kid, you play it, you play it as a kid. You play it because you're like eight or whatever. then you play the next one because there haven't been new Pokemon and you're probably not old enough to have kids of your own yet. You know, you don't have a family but you play the next one because it's been that long.

Then at 30 years, you have the family and you introduce your family to those Pokemon and there have only been two generations of new Pokemon in that time. That's my pitch. You pass the treasured heirloom down. I think there should be games

that come out constantly. Yes. But I think that it should be an event when the new 150 Pokemon are brought out each time. Yeah. And it's been, there's just,

the reason they have to call Pokemon appearances is because they're, they fucked up. Yeah, there's like a thousand Pokemon. I don't care about 800 of them. No. Like, you know.

Yeah, there's a majority of them I could give two shits about. I don't care. And they can use a popularity list. Sorry, Clefkech. Yeah, no one likes. I like, I fucking love Cleft. I do kind of like.

Clefkeke's also... This is the one I could think of. Clefkeke is also my... The Trubbish generation. Yeah. Trubbish generation is... Trubbish is my boy. Yeah.

So... Oh, you haven't met because you haven't gone to... No, I went to one... Here, hold on. I did look up how to get Trebush. Trubbish is like maybe the best character. So I... So I did this morning...

Go to the beach. Unlock the second area for me. Okay. And went straight for... Because I was like... I was like... I didn't understand the rules of how the Pokemon are like limited because I was like, at what fucking point am I going to unlock Trubbish's habitat?

I've unlocked all these habitats where the fuck is Trubbish. And then I finally looked it up, which is cheating, but I had to. No, it's okay. And it was like, oh, no, it's one area over. And I was like, I got a fucking, I got to go. Did you like tell all of your Pokemon like, I'll be right back? I'm just going to get milk from the corner source. The thing is I went to the next area, set up his habitat, and then I went back to the first area.

Yeah. So he's going to be the only guy there. He's totally alone. That's horrible. There's no one left. So how many, do I want to know this? I don't want to know this. What is your largest homemade, like, building that you made in Pocopia?

Do you want to know that? Yeah, I do. So there is a limit to a space. that the game will consider a proper homes. There's actually two kinds of homes. There's the prefabs, which you use with the building kits. But then you can actually just make your own.

Right. The maximum, I believe, footprint for that is 10 by 10 height doesn't matter, including the walls. So I have achieved that limit. But if you go beyond that, it's just a space. Like the Pokemon aren't like, oh, I want to move into this home now. Oh. So I've made some pretty nice 10 by 10 homes.

I call mansions. I think they're pretty nice. Oh, the Pokemon. First couple of my favorite Pokemon, who I don't know if, you know, you haven't gotten to the areas yet. that might allow those to appear. Which Pokemon? The Pokemon that you love.

The Pokemon that I love. You can spoil where those, you can spoil. Gartervoir. I mean, it's just my. That's your, that's one. Yeah, that's my. All right, great. So, but, you know, the one, I love Machoke is great.

Machoke's good. Machoke is good because you're just like a big strong guy. Well, if you look closely and I really started to, because you always, he always had those like red kind of zig. I'm like, are his muscles so intense that they're bursting out of the skin of his? I think that's actually what's happening. Yeah. And it's actually in 3D, seeing him walk around.

I'm like, wait a minute, this is actually really disturbing. He's like a hot dog he put in the microwave. I'm like, oh, it's kind of messed up, actually. This is pretty dark. And he's obsessed with strength and training in the game. I got to get back in there because, like, I'm loving it. I'm like, I'd say of the three of us on the show usually. I'm like the Pokemon guy that I'm always talking about these guys and stuff.

But I get sad. Not sad, but like, I get nervous when I'm in the middle of doing something and like Charmander or something. She'll be like, hey, I actually need you real quick. I'm like, dude, like, I'm already doing something. You're like, drop everything. I'm so sorry, I'm busy. When they want to play a game, when they come up to and you want to play a little game,

I'm just like, Pidgey, I can't pick, I can't do this find it thing that you're doing or whatever. I set a time limit every day. I wake up and currently instead of watching anime, I do an hour. and 15 minutes of Pocopia with my coffee. That's a nice chunk. That's good. Like I'll just, I'll just sit down. I'll do all the stuff that has come up from the previous day. Probably finished a building.

Yeah. Like get my building. Handheld or TV? TV mode. TV mode. Though I play with the pro controller and it's, I wish you could zoom out a little bit on the TV. So in the settings, there are a couple, you can pull the camera out a little bit. What the fuck?

It's in the setting? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was the first thing I did actually. Yeah, literally straight up. Because I was like, this camera is too close. I don't know if I can fuck with this. I didn't know this. This didn't change my excitement level.

Wait to you. It's going to change everything. Wait till you see the second distance for the camera. It is so much better than the default distance. It's so much better. Well, I've been liking, like, walking around with the guys. Well, you get a little more intimate with the actual Pokemon. I think, I think that camera angle does lend itself to, like, connecting with them.

But as far as building goes, no. It's hard. When you're pro controller and that front. on a TV in that first perspective, I'm like, it's as if I am literally inside of a house putting a block above me. It's so hard. Yeah. It's tough.

But you said that there was a third title that you're also playing. That is correct. And this one's a deep cut. It was recommended on resetera. Dot com forum. It's an indie visual novel called Of the Devil. And I heard about this. A lot of people are talking about it.

The first episode is free. And I'm halfway through it. apparently there's a crazy twist. Everyone was talking about the crazy twist of the first episode of of the devil. Here's the thing about of the devil. I'm just going to tell you right now. I'm loving so many things about it. I love the vibe. The writing. It's got like hard-boiled, grizzled, but cyberpunk-ish characters. The music is great. Sound design, UI. All of it's great. The character art is, it's tough. It's tough. It's tough art. I think I'm okay getting past it. I think I'm handling it. Everything else is really, really great. I'm kind of struggling to get past

that character are. But I love a great visual novel. I love a great, like I said, Ghost Trick is one of my favorite games of all time. So I'm giving it a shot so far. It's, it's very promising. Did you play the House of Fatta Morgana? Okay. Okay. That game got some notability because for a little while, technically, it was the highest rated game ever because it had four reviews, the minimum that Metacritic requires, and all of them were 100%. Yes. And I said, I got to play it. Right. I got to pull this down. Right. And I kept playing. And I kept playing and I kept waiting for anything to happen. Oh, thank God.

And I, two hours, even three hours in, I was like, I just can't do this anymore. And I think I made a post about it. So I was like, well, you really got to get in like half the game. And I'm like, well, how long is the game? And they're like 20 hours. And I'm not going 10 hours into this game. And I did not like it. That makes me so, so I fell into the trap where we had an episode, which was about.

We don't have to say what the episode was about. Yeah, we won't say what the episode's about. Look it up, audience. they do but part of the premise of the episode was what are some other games for the Switch

that we haven't played yet and so I played Fatta Morgan because it was so highly rated and I got in first off I got in like many hours into the fucking game waiting for something because I was like

anything it has to be awesome at some point because the fucking reviews are so glowing I totally agree with you and then accidentally erased my save

because of the way the quicksave system would work and I was like I'm never I'm literally never going to know did you look at home? No I didn't look it up either I have no idea what happens I have no idea why that game was so highly rated it'd be funny to read what happens and then be like actually this kind of sounds good yeah and then we fall in love with the dollar one about it

Matt what are you playing all right so I'm playing I just I'm a recent resident Evil convert fan. Yes, I was always a Resident Evil 4 fan played through 2,

finished 9, absolutely loved it. I just started Resident Evil 3 remake on my PS5 and I don't think people like Resident Evil 3

as much as some of the other ones. And I'm trying not to have that color my experience of this because I've heard that they do a nice job with the remake. I kind of don't like it as much as any of the ones that I've played so far,

two, four, and nine, right? It's a little bit different. You get these sort of like, it's almost a Metroidvania. Really? Where, like, so far, my experience, where I'm playing as Jill, and there's sort of like a, not like a completely open area,

but like there's, like, areas that you're having to walk, weave your way through and then back to another area, and then go back to another place that you missed before and stuff like that. And it's like, this is okay. I'm surprised you went to three remake instead of, say, eight or seven. I would have said eight. Yeah.

Well, I'm playing these in the worst way possible because I don't, like, I've never played all the way through the first one. Right. So I was like, oh, like, because I keep hearing rumors that they're going to remake that one the same way they're remaking these other ones. But there is a remake of it already that is like, that plays well enough. Yeah. I'm like, I guess I could just play that. And I probably should just play that. but like I went with,

I just went with three, because I've also heard it's short. I heard it's like five hours. Oh, wow. It's not very long. There's just another thing people don't like about it. But for me, I'm sort of like,

hey, that's good news. Yeah. That's nice. I do want to get into seven, but I know that it's first person and it's going to be really scary to me. So I'm sort of putting that one off, but I do want to get to that.

And I do have eight as well. I'm looking forward to playing them. I'm trying to get into the ones that are available on people. PS5 at the very least. But while I was in Japan, I talked about this last week when we were there. I had a holy grail item of something I wanted to buy when I was there. It was truly the only gaming thing that I intended to buy when I was there.

Yeah. And on the last day, Heather and I walked around, Heather helped me make this happen. Another gaming thing that I bought was a Japanese copy of Kingdom Hearts 2. Yeah Because I love Kingdom Hearts And I love Kingdom Hearts too specifically And it was just like I have no way to play this

Right I have no region specific Yeah I'm like but I will buy this And I will have this on my shelf And it's the final mixed edition The cover art really nice But that wasn't the one Holy Grailite The Grail item is right here

You have it? I have it here with me The Game Boy Micro Oh my God I remember those The Famicom edition GameWan Micro Yeah God, you just activated neurons that have not been activated in like 12 years. And I've threatened to buy one in the past.

And I say threatened because I feel like there's a lot of, you know, this is an imperfect product. Yeah, you can hold it. It's small. The screen is very little. Oh, it's so small. You used imperfect. Which I take a little bit of a fence at. It's adorable.

Because it is perfect. It is perfect. Like you cannot improve this item. No. For what it is. No, it's almost entirely cartridge. Yeah. Yeah, the entire footprint of this device is the cartridge.

Yes, this is now an everyday carry. It feels so solid. It feels like jewelry. Yes. It's very nice. Also, the color way is really great. Pass it down to your kids. Yes, but it's, you know.

It's tiny. It's tiny. So it's, you know, for somebody that already has some vision issues, tough. But this is just an everyday carry now. Because this is like, this takes up no real estate in my pocket whatsoever. Have you all jumped on the, crazy retro handheld trains Don't even get me started. This man has like

18 fucking... I have a retroid pocket for I've got what's the vertical, the mini Me Too or whatever it's all? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have the mine Thor. I have the way that thing's expensive I got in there before they raised the price but I haven't, it also has not arrived yet and I thought about canceling

it's getting rough out there. It has not ever got to send. It has not changed in shipping status at all. What other ones have you? I have the Amberneck. I have several Ambernex. I have the SP one. He's deep. Yeah, he's deep down the rabbit hole. The Game Boy advanced one as well. And I have a Retroid Pocket 2. And then I stopped getting retroids because I was just

like, I like, I like, well, there were devices of more power. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, I once I was into that and then I realized I could just put all that stuff on my Steam deck. So I had a huge set up. And now my Steam deck is like, I'm not kidding, 70% of my gaming is on a Steam deck. Steam deck is really, really great. And now, like, you can't. even buy one at this point. I just re-got a steam deck. Like about a month ago, maybe a month and a half ago.

In part because I had no other way to play PC games. So the way I'm going to be playing your game is on the steam deck. And I'm happy to let you know that I have tested extensively on the steam deck. It runs great. Use medium settings, but it runs great. I love that. It runs great. There's an expanded UI option as well. Make sure that is on. Awesome. The thing that I love about this in particular is that I already had a EverDrive Game Boy advanced cartridge for it. For everything.

It fits perfectly. So now I just like have this. Remove it. Yeah. It's perfect. And I bought a, Heather helped me source a charger because this is a proprietary. Oh, wow.

That looks like a weird HDM on lockoff. Yes. And we went to a second store that, and Heather asked the clerk behind the counter in Japanese if there was a, you know, a charger for the Game Boy Micro. And he handed me a, a charger, a USB charger that then had like six different heads for it, basically. Once for Game Boy SP, once for, or in original DS, I believe they used the same one. One's for like the 3DS, the Game Boy Micro, and a couple other ones.

Glad we've all moved to USBC as a standard. And in case you're wondering which stores those were. We went to Mandarake. We went to Nakano Broadway. We went to Trader in Akihabra. We went to Hardoff, which is where you got the Game Boy Micro. And we also went to the Mandarake in Akihabra. Yes.

A lot of the places had Game Boy Microes. Yes. One of them at Trader was in box. Yes. But the only one that had multiple Famicom versions was hard off. And this was the special family coveted. Yeah.

It's gorgeous. I love it. And it had a, this of the two that they had available, the screen was perfect. You must know a good amount of Japanese if you're asking for niche chargers for Game Boy micros. I mean, that's impressive. Or I know very specific Japanese.

You did say toward the end of the trip that it was like just starting to like come back. I'm recognizing words that I thought I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is by the time I've warmed up, this is easier when I used to drink. Because when you drink, your inhibitions go down and you start experimenting and the language comes out faster. But I don't drink anymore.

So I have to struggle through the layers of insecurity about the language. And those only start to peel away after I've been there for about a week. And this time, that was when it was time to go back. Yes. but I'm going to hop back into actual lessons. Heather, have you been playing? Just Polcopia. 24-7, and by that I mean an hour and 15 minutes every day.

75-7. Fortnite has a new season, and I'm dabbling in that. There have been many articles recently about Fortnite's demise. They fired a thousand people But also They're saying it's chopped It's hunk The player base

Is starting to dwindle And I can't figure out why Because the current season Is so much better Than the last season Like all of the complaints I had About the last season are gone There is so much fun to be had

In the current season The rival system All I want in Fortnite Is to hunt a man Yeah And they have made it so that you go up to a board and a random person on the island

is chosen and that person has to stay away from you and you have to hunt them and it's the only person you can see on the mini map in like sort of a large radius of like they're in this area. This is all you like if you're in a battle royale game you can wander around

willy-nilly like doing dumb tasks but what you want is an assignment and that is assignment is to kill someone for a bonus like a specific bonus. And the more you hunt men, the more you stack bonuses for successive games. It's perfect. It is my Fortnite. And there's nothing funnier to me than when you get assigned a person or when somebody is assigned to hunt you, their name and your name pop up at the top of the screen with whoever your player skin is. And I'm still playing as scratchy. And it is so funny to see like the rock or some shit

and then Scratchy is hunting them. That's the spirit of it. But yeah. You're having a great time. I'm having a great time. Yeah. Is there like a, I mean, is there another game like that out right now that it's like like,

switching over to? I mean, Marvel rivals, art readers, like all that stuff. People like art graders a lot. Yeah, people are, are switching over. But I would say that the atmosphere of Fortnite being so fucking stupid on purpose isn't captured by those games. They're all serious.

They're serious. Marathon is serious. Arctrators is, you know. Marathon just came out. I forgot. Yeah. Like, where else can I be daffy duck? Fighting Goku.

Shoot Shohei Otani in the head. Sorry, Shohei. And then like hop up and down with the emote, the daffy duck emote. Yeah. Like, it's stupid. It's so stupid. But, yeah, and also I love Shohei Otani. Shout out.

Yeah, we all. Two-time. We love the guy. Two-time champion. It was just the, it. he was in the store, so I've seen a lot of it like a lot. The season just started. Yeah,

so Fortnite's been tough because people are playing it last, but I'm still totally entrenched. Also playing Pokemon the card game pocket. And I'd like to say, we always talk about like a gaming adjacent stuff. You and I go into the Pokemon stores,

made me hungry for Pokemon. Ooh. Chum in the water. But Trubbish wasn't at the stores. No. So I did purchase the Trubbish Sitting Cutie online and he's coming to my house. I really like the sitting cuties.

There's a little guy. Yeah. A little tiny guy. So I'm excited about that. Would you say Trubbis is your number one favorite Pokemon? Oh yeah, for sure. Oh wow. Yeah.

He's up there for me. Don't get me wrong. He's cute. He's adorable. He's got personality. He's got ears. What was crazy about the Pokemon stores because like here in the States,

the Nintendo stores that I've been to have a Pokemon section that they don't have them at the Nintendo stores there really. Like they have, because they have dedicated Pokemon stores. Yeah. More plushes than you could think of for the most specific like Flygon had a plush.

Sure. It's like it's so crazy. Well, they rotate them. Yeah. They'll become like limited edition. They'll do these and then maybe you'll get a Porrigan 2 out there at some point. Porrigon 2.

Z, come on. Pori G's better. Yeah. I've heard I yell too much in the ads. I've heard that people get upset because when it's advertisement time, they have to turn down the volume in their car or they get upset. And I just want you to know that I don't always have to yell to sell you something. Like, for example, it's officially springtime.

You know what that means? It's time to spring clean. It's getting warmer and it's time to rethink. what's in my closet. I like my style. And I'm trying to keep fewer things, but I still want an upgrade on the pieces I have now. That's why I keep coming back to Quince! The fits are thoughtful. The price actually makes sense. Quince makes high quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen and their insanely soft, flow-knit activeware fabric. Their linen pants and shirts are lightweight, breathable and comfortable, basically

the perfect layer for spring. The pants strike the right balance between laid back and refined. So you look put together without trying too hard. And their flow-knit active wear? Moisture wicking. Empty odor. And soft enough that you'll actually want to wear it all day. The best part is that their prices are 50 to 60% less than similar brands. How? Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen so you're paying for quality. Not a brand markup, everything is designed to last and make getting dressed easy. You know what? When we do these ads, they'll send us stuff. And when my wife saw that we were getting quints, she said, give it to me. And I went, can I maybe? And she said, no, give it to me. And I went,

really? And she's like, I love quince. This is true. I'm not bullshitting here. She took all my quints. And she loves it. Me? I'm going to wear a bag. your wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.com slash get played for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash get played for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash get played. Boy, I wish I knew what he was saying.

But I don't speak. Animal Crossing. Why do most of us want to learn a new language? It's probably not about memorizing grammar tables or topping a leaderboard. It's because we want to speak it out in the real world with real owls, a real little sheep, and the real little ducks that come to our town. Babel gets you there fast. Learning a language with Babel is all about small steps, big wins, and progress you can actually track and feel. Their bite-sized lessons fit easily into your daily routine.

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Hey, buddy, let me tell you about NordVPN. Hey, I use NordVPN. VPNs are really handy. And you know where they're specifically handy? If there are TV shows, film, anime that aren't available in your region, you can switch your virtual location to a country that's showing it. And if you're traveling abroad, you can access all your streaming services back home. Especially important if there's like a big sporting event you want to catch,

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It's super fast, no buffering whilst streaming, and it stops your ISP bandwidth throttling, and you can use one account on up to 10 devices. Premium cybersecurity for the price of a cup of coffee per month. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com slash get play. our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nords 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Jason, why don't you talk to us about people of know? Okay.

Why don't you talk to us first off about how long have you been working on this game? You told us the inspiration was Hamilton. Yeah. And it's been 10 years since you saw Hamilton. Have you been working on the game for that whole decade? Full-time development has been about six years. Holy shit. Yeah, that's, yep.

Didn't think it would take that long. Wow. It did. But I mean, even before that, I was prototyping ideas. You generally, you know, not to get too into the pitching process, but, you know, you kind of need to be able to demonstrate unless you're a huge, huge name, you know. So I was making, you know, prototype experimenting with different, like, you know, musical styles and how I was going to make the battle system reflect all that stuff. So, like, in amongst other things, I have been working on the game since 2017. Wow.

Approximately. And then I got funded in late, like December 2019. We were time to get funded. because then I signed a two-year office lease on February 27th, 2020. Not a good time to sign a two-year office lease. I believe that was almost the exact same week that I got my season pass to Disneyland. They must have refunded those. They refunded half of it.

Okay. Well, I did get a passport around that same time thinking I was going to get out. You're like, I'm a job. Let's get out of here. Yeah, yeah. So did you have to pay the lease out? Luckily, the company, Breeder went bankrupt. And I did get out of the lease about 13 months into the two-year lease.

Wow. So I had to pay it until that time. And I did go there because I was like, I have it. And it was just an empty. I just had to get out of my house. It was almost sadder being there. I was like in the space where I had imagined all this wonderful collaboration between developers. And I'm just like alone and sad.

Wow. It was okay. But, you know, six years. And I got to tell you, this is a little cheesy. But, you know, there have been ups and downs and twists and turns. No plan survives. contact with the enemy, but if I could go back in time and show Jason of six years ago this game, he would say you did it, dude.

Oh, man. That's great. I can't believe it, but you did it. Oh, man, that made me emotional. That's nice. Oh, it's making me emotional every day. Wow. I, because you hear so many stories, and they're all true about how difficult and chaotic

game development can be of things reset or derailed. There's so many things that can and invariably do go wrong. And I don't know how it happened, man, but I made the game I, I, I made the game I, always wanted to make. So, so it is a JRP, but also a musical effectively. Yes. And I'm not allowed to say JRP unless it means Jason RPG in which case I can't. It is a JRP. It's a JCPG. It's a don't fight me on it. I mean, I've covered my bases. Yeah. It is, you know, listen, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, there's that game, I figure what it's called Threads of Time or something that's like just directly a Corona Trigger knockoff. Oh, sure. And I'm going to

play it obviously because it looks great but like I just I wanted to take the best of my favorite games and I would say even though I do love sex and tactics so much I'm sorry I not eight so much there's a lot of seven to nine and if you play it you'll be like oh I can clearly see that influence it also has some coronal cross in there even has a little bit of the world ends with you mixed in for good flavor hey oh hey I love it Heather really was trying to give me to play it I'm trying to play it yeah if you been to Japan to you went to the neighborhood and I was like you Guys, I'm gonna do it. Let's fight him.

Stop to yell again, me. These were just my favorite games growing up. And like, I don't know, did you ever, like, download RPG maker, like, mess around with that? I did not. So, I was told by a teacher that I'm bad at math. Oh, no. And it permanently ruined my ability to engage with technical properties. Even though I think I've demonstrated on the hardware side a technical proficiency.

I think you'd be great at it. I can't do it because I'm like, oh, it might be math and I know I'm dumb. It's like it is. I got this. Heather, you're dumb. You're dumb. You're dumb. So no, I never messed with RPG maker.

I've never tried designing any kind of game and any kind of gaming system previously. There is a certain type of person and that type of person is me that was just, you know, they would, We would play these games and we would we would daydream of, you know, we write our lore, our world building and our journals and we would mess with RBG Maker. And we would dream of making these games. And like somehow I convinced Anapurna Interactive to take a chance on me and let me do that. And not only that, but to combine it with my innate theater kid energy with my immense love of theater. And I, and something that I actually have been like really trying to drill this hard, you know, with my marketing team is like, I think that when you like, I think that when you like, I think that when you like, Oh, it's a musical.

You think, like, the RPG elements are going to be like light. There's going to be like, okay, you have HP. Great. You attack them. It does five damage. No, this is a very serious RPG system I have developed. You know, there's all these, like, really cool, like synergies. I basically said to myself, I like materia.

I think they're cool. But you know what sucks about material? You can only attach one blue support material to one green magic material. And I think that could be way cooler. So instead of having a linear. kind of bar like that, I decided to expand it and we have these songstones are basically material. But now it's a linked graph. And now you can put two, even three support songstones that can like combine or synergize in interesting ways on the same ability. You can have one support,

go to two different abilities and like really trying to create these interesting builds and loadouts. What's really fun is seeing playtesters get absolutely demolished by a boss to the point where they're like, they get depressed. And then they go into the menu, decide to change a few things based on what they just saw. And then they steamroll it. Like it's a, it just makes me feel great. Yeah. Oh, God, it's the best. It's like a rush for game designer.

So when, for somebody who's listening and they're like, what does it mean to be an RPG and a musical? Does it mean like, for example, in a Conquer's Bad Fur Day when the boss would sing a song at you or in Astrobot when the tree would sing? Sure. Is it like that or is the song mechanic part of the. fighting system? Like, what does it mean? Yeah, it means two different things. Okay. Every so often in the game, probably once every 90 to 120 minutes, you're going to put your controller down and you're going to

watch a fully animated musical number that helps tell the story. Sit back and relax because you ain't doing anything for that two to two and a half minutes. That rock. Yeah, no, it's like we, we became briefly an animation production studio. Wow. We were a game development studio and then we were like, no, it's incredibly difficult to make animated musical sequences. So we devoted like all of our resources for well over a year, probably closer to two, just to put these out. Okay. But everything in this world is music. It's like a little bit like, this came out actually after I, you know, made the World Building

Bible, but trolls world tour where like every genre has its own nation state and fashion and culture. Oh, awesome. And artificially, they have never really interacted. In the real world, of course, these influences are all over the place, but the pop nation of Cordia. They know about the Rock Kingdom of Durandas, but they don't mess with it. Yeah, EDM, luminas out there, rap pie or whatever.

And initially, we, we focus up on our hero, our hero. and she basically is trying to win Noteworthy, which is basically Eurovision in this city. And she runs into this like corrupt judge, you know, and she eventually gets it in her mind that in order to win this contest, she has to bring something that no one's ever seen before. So she begins her journey out into the wider world to form a band of different genres. Cool. But how that manifests in battle is that every battle track that we have, every combat track, of which we have 13, it's dependent on the area you're in, like let's say you're in the Celtic forest

of the Lilton Green, you have the base Celtic battle track. But then, depending on which members are in your band, we had to create 11 different remixes of that track to account for the dynamic switching for every single character's genres. Wow. So we have pop Celtic, rock Celtic, EDM Celtic, rap Celtic. But then you have basically your limit breaks, but they're called mashups where not one person has to have their meter filled now, but two or more have to have their meters filled. And then when you use those, you switch the battle track to now a combination

of those. So now it's like rock EDM Celtic. And we had to have, we had to compose every one of these battle tracks an unbelievable number of times. The amount of music that our composer, Jimmy Hinson, Big John Circles made, is unreasonable. And I feel really bad about it. And then the way that turns work, at the bottom of the screen, there's a musical staff. And then the time signature, let's say it's four four, what that means in the game's context is that you have four actions, the enemy gets four actions. And unlike in a lot of RPGs where your turn order is decided by a speed stat, You just decide what order you want your characters to go in. But there's a lot of abilities that have situational effects depending on when you go.

If you attach the swan song remix stone to another songstone, that means that that ability is going to do more damage as the last action of your stanza. Because it's a swan song. Because it's a swan song. There's also an opening act, the opposite of that. And then like, uh, fret or rocker has an ability called 11, which boosts the effectiveness of the next action taken. So I start layering in all these different things that make it so that a certain order

becomes really strategically advantageous, and it creates a really, really interesting dynamic with how you're choosing to allocate your character's turns. There's the crescendo system where bosses get more powerful over time, and that's to prevent turtling strategies. Everything in the game, story, world, battle, musical numbers, it's all coming back to music. I know that you like musicals, but would you consider yourself music forward? Like, Nick plays instruments, and it's strange to us.

Yeah, we don't understand. It's like, what are you doing? Like, it takes a certain kind of person to see Hamilton and then be like, I want to make a musical. There has to be like a door that's already opened in your head, I think. What is the genre or what is the musical experience that was sort of like the turning point for you? Do you mean like a musical or do you mean just with music in general? With music in general. Yeah.

I mean, what's weird is that like, you know, I love, you know, I'm personally more like I love Porter Robinson. I love Madion. I love pendulum, RIP pendulum. They're not dead. They just broke up. Yeah. You know, so I'm like, I'm personally more of an EDM fan than, but, you know, I don't know if I listen to music necessarily more or more intensely than the average person, but I think it's just understanding that music taps in to just for me a very like primal emotional place that like, you know, my therapist couldn't get me too, but that song could. Yeah.

You know what I mean? And I just like, I, and it's, that's coming for musical theater too. Like that feeling I get when like those instruments swell and they just hit you just the right way. I was just like, I have to find a way to bring this to the games that I always loved so much, those Final Fantasy, you know, Square Soft titles. And the thing about the game is that, like,

you're not gonna like some of these areas in terms of their musicality. Like, you might not like rap. You might not like country. You might not like rock, whatever. But I wanted to include, I mean, obviously I couldn't include every, what does that even mean, every genre?

Right. I actually wanted to do a Bollywood area. The Bollywoods, we couldn't do it. Yeah. But I hoped that by hitting a lot of the major ones and a lot of the ones that resonate, you're going to find your place in that game. You're going to love that one area,

that city, that dungeon so much because that resonates with you specifically. And if I can just tap into that feeling for everyone at least once in the game, I'll consider that a mission well served. So having never made a game, what is... Impossible.

And I never will. What does success look like for you? Like, what is your hope for this? What door does it open next? Or is it just that you're like, if I sell enough copies to make enough money to make the next game, that's all I want. You're hitting the deep questions. I've been asking myself very quite a bit over the last week or two. I am a person who I have known what I've wanted to do with my life, my whole life.

That is a blessing. I know a lot of people really struggle with that. I want to make video games. And even the idea of retirement is weird to me. I'm like, I'm still going to want to make video games. What are you talking about? Right. The industry is not amazing at the moment.

Not as many games are being funded, the ones that are maybe for lesser amounts. I don't need to make a $50 million game. I don't even need to make a $5 million game, but I want to keep doing it. And I want to make it my primary vocation. For people of note, I can't, you know, so many things determine market factors and what you're going to sell and if you get viral visibility. I want the game to resonate with an audience. I want that audience to love it and to show that they love it.

I just want to see one cosplayer somewhere, one cosplay at a convention doing people of note. And for me, yeah, like if the game bombed, if the game comes out and it's at a Metacritic, 52, I will still be proud of it, no matter what, I will always be so proud of the game. It might curtail and hurt my ability to make future games, if that's true. So I am nervous about that. I'm nervous about how many Steam reviews it gets and what percent that's at. I'm nervous about a lot of things, but like I think that's just part of being an artist and part of making something. like this.

Like, I think when you play the game and you know me, like, the only thing you're going to be thinking the whole time is that's the most Jason shit I've ever seen. Like, it's such a direct reflection of me and my goofiness that like it is, no matter what you say, it's such a personal thing. Right. Like I wrote it. I designed it. It's my dream game.

When someone says they don't like it, I should ignore them because they're dumb. But I can't. It still hits me. And I maybe want to get better about that. But, you know, at the end of the day, I, I'm. I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity. And I just hope it finds its people. That's all I can say.

Yeah. So in the conception of this game, it was always, it was always a musical, like, or was there ever, was there ever a moment where that was like off the table? Musical first. Game second. I mean. Concordantly-ish, but currently. Yeah, it was like coming out of Hamilton. I was like, I got to do this.

Oh my God. I got to do this. It's just so cool because, like, I don't know, like, I feel like people see stuff all the time that, like, just hits them in such a specific way that like you know any art can affect you like in a multitude of ways but it's very special when that happens to you and pushes you toward

toward anything yeah and so I just think it's cool that you like you've pulled this off and it seems like a really fun it seems like a really fun game I guess because it's like you're also doing something that I think hasn't really been done right like it's like it's like you've mentioned earlier there's another game and like it is kind of like musical-ish. There are music games.

There are like... Stray gods recently, you know, a couple years ago was a music. It was more of like a visual novel musical. And you could kind of choose your way through it. But yeah, like there hasn't really been a game. I guess the closest would be Eternal Sonata. I was going to say it, but I was like, is that right? Yeah.

I brought up Eternal Sonata on the show before. It's the Chopin. Yes. Like, on his deathbed, you like go into his mind, which is like a crazy... It's a great concept for a game. Yeah. That game has a lot of, like, DNA in common, but, like, it itself was not a musical. Like, there was no musical, there were no musical numbers.

Yeah. Of course, there's, like, the musical sequence in Allen Lake, too, and then the one from control as well. But, like, I don't know, it's like verified air. So I think on that alone, what if, how exciting is that? Like, that's, like such a, I don't know, it's so cool. Yeah, it's not like. To be in such a unique space. It's not like you're launching a first-person shooter.

Right. You know, it's like, it's like, oh, there's like. Yeah, or a game with, like, a basketball. There's like an Xbox 360 game that nobody's played that's kind of like it or this is kind of like it. And you know, when I pitched the game, the pitch, you know, when I was trying to come up with like, oh, they'll understand this was like, oh, it's, I didn't even go with Hamilton. I went like, Frozen meets Final Fantasy. I was like, we got some alliteration there to work. Yeah, that's great.

And then last year, coincidentally, and the game's like done at this point. We're in polish mode. We're in fixing a little game called Claire Obscure Expedition 33 comes out. Oh, sure. Reinvigorates turn-based RPGs in a lot of ways. And then a little movie called K-pop Demon Hunters comes out, which itself was a massive cultural phenomenon. And I'm like, yo, I'm riding these ways. Like, let's go.

Like, I'm about this. There's never been a moment more suited for a game. Right. Like, I'm like, wow, this really worked out for me in a lot of cultural ways. Yeah. So, yeah, like, I think people, if they just give it a shot, they're going to love it. And, you know, pretty low price point, 25 bucks. Oh, that's great.

We like to hear it. $25. You said that's festival. you're like an EDM guy, just generally. So is that your favorite area? Lumina is my favorite area. I won't give away where it is in the story. We have,

I won't tell you exactly what they are, but we have five major cities. A lot of those cities have districts. We have a J-pop and a K-pop district, which it's not Korea and Japan don't exist in this world, so that's Joy Pop and Kick Pop. Awesome. And then like different dungeons,

like I mentioned there was a Celtic, you know, forest. We have a huge 80s area, a big fan of that area, actually. 80s might be my favorite The puzzles I never mind I won't spoil that But the 80s area ripsed

But yeah That one It's gonna be like a wide variety Like I said of music people Are gonna find and resonate with And so I mean you also do Voice acting yourself So like when you're

As the designer of this game Getting voice actors come do this Like how do you how did you like Explain this to like Erica And like the other people like Okay so this is like what we're going for It was like was there like a specific direction Like you were giving or was it like

Like, you kind of trusted the cast to kind of... I absolutely trusted them. I mean, I did tell them like, hey, this game is bold, bright. We're not... I mean, I want, like, realistic reads, but it's an elevated game at the end of the day. I really kind of wanted to narcissistically cast myself in a major role. But I... My singing's okay.

My singing is not at that level. And I knew I wanted some great talent there. We actually did end up split casting a few of the roles. Eric is actually one of them. Right. For me personally, like, I don't do much voice acting. anymore. But I did direct them all. And for me, something that always bothered me in voice acting and maybe it bothered you too was just the utter and absolute lack of context given in most of these

scenes, at least in the video game space. So I was like active, I was just their scene partner the entire time. We would just go through the scene and, you know, they'd always have the context because I literally would read them in and read the entire scene through with them. And like, yeah, largely just I got an incredible cast. Shout out right now. I'm just going to shout out. Hell yeah. Heather Gonzalez. Amazing, Kate. It's unbelievable. Jason Charles Miller as fret our rocker, as noted Erica Ishii, Cynthia, our EDMDJ, a Grammy-nominated rapper who had never voice acted before in his life, came in, was not good for one hour and then was incredible for every other line for the rest of the time. We just reround and did the first couple lines again. Manza Wakili, aka Chief Wakil, shout out, that man is incredible.

And it sounds so authentic. We got Joe Zija as Councilman Sharp. We got for Martel, we got Deborah Wilson, who was incredible to work with. like the most method person I've ever met that was a wild session I remember that for the rest of my life sure like our voice cast is incredible I am so

it was also like during the SAG strikes so there was a lot of chaos around making sure that the interim contract was signed there was all kinds of stuff shout out to Sarah Almala at SAG After for helping me navigate all that it was all very chaotic at the time but now all I do is I listen to the lines

I'm like these are great it all fades into the mist of memory you know at the end of the day I'm like oh who cares about all that nonsense The lines are great now. Like you sleeping on the hotel room floor then. I don't remember. It all fades into the midst of memory.

Yeah, you know, it's like, where are you at now? Okay, cool. It's great. And I have, you know, a lot of, I have a weird talent. And sometimes it's bad because you need to remember, like, bad things for, you know, so that you don't repeat them. But I tend to just really block out a lot of the negative experiences I've had, which is good. Because there were some, like, we, there's just some game development's chaos.

Right. It's absolute chaos. Right. And there were some, like at one point I had to let go one of my best friends in the world. Like I was working with her. She was incredible. And due to circumstances beyond either of our controls, I literally had to fire her. And it was one of the worst feelings of my life.

And let me give another shout out to Coriol because she's my, she was my best friend. And I was, I called her at 6 p.m. She lives 90 minutes away. She lives in south of Irvine. And I burst into tears. I'm letting her go. I'm crying. She just sits there and she listens.

And after I'm done, giving my spiel about why I had to do it. it. I paused, or she paused for like five seconds, and she said, you want me to come up? I'll pick up some Taco Bell. And she knows I love Taco Bell and Baja Blast. What's up? Baja Blast. Yeah. Sponsor me. And she came up. Baja Blast is a listener. Yeah, but thank you. She came up. She just hung out with me all night. I'm still best friends of there to this day. So what's up, Coriol? You're the best. Wow. But it can be tough. It can be really tough. And to be here at the finish line, it's easy. I want to remember the bad times because I

think that gives it more weight. Like that makes it matter more. It wasn't all sunshine. It wasn't all rainbows. Yeah. And then it makes the good times stand out too. You know what I mean? Like if it's all sort of gray, you don't know how to feel about the experience.

Yeah. Yeah. I lost all of Toy Story 2 during filming. Thank you. I don't remember her name, but I believe she was on pregnancy leave or maternity leave. Yeah. Yeah. And she had the drive saved on at her home computer or something.

I got a couple movies I wish they would have lost. Say more Toy Story 4 I guess Michael Key was on that And Toy Story 4 is good The worst

Toy Story is still one of the better movies Yeah It's still a good movie Yeah Coco's great too People I mean Pixar's got it

They got the juice And they don't need the plug Yeah They're doing just fine Hoppers was good. Hoppers was really good. Everyone's doing great. People of Note

comes out tomorrow. Tomorrow, April 7th. You can wish list it right now if you're listening, but... You just pick it up tomorrow. Just pick it up tomorrow. And let me give you, it's going to be out on Steam,

Epic Game Store, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, all of them. Oh, well then I'm going to play it on PlayStation 5. Great. Play on on PS5. Don't play on your Steam Deck then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sounds like it's available on basically all platform. Yeah. We tried for Switch one, but that thing is a potato with electricity. I don't know how any game ever ran on the switch. I tried to turn on my Switch 1 pretty recently actually. Let me tell you something. It was having a hard time.

It's like it's got a cane. It's like ambling along. It was like just take me up back and shoot me. Because like it's a huge install base. Like Switch 2 is doing well but like it's still relatively early in its life cycle. Such one is like 140 million units sold. Yeah, we couldn't make that one out. Yeah.

You know, it's at one point. I mean, we wanted the game to look great so we had to make that decision. Yeah. course. Coming out tomorrow. It's everywhere that's not a potato. Yeah. How about we do a quick segment before we get out of here? Oh, okay, let's do a segment. It's time for the question block.

These are just questions that are asked by our listeners, our Discord, discord.g.g. slash get played. Sure. And they're just kind of general, kind of general gaming questions. For all of us? They're all. They're for all of us. Yeah, for all of us. This first one is from Robot Surgeon 23. Hi, Robot Surgeon.

Dear Get Played and Ranch. What? You're in this one. Look at that. If you had to pick a video game to put your worst enemy in that isn't just an immediate death sentence, what game are you condemning them for eternity in? I think Tetris would be a hard time.

Are you like dodging the blocks above you? Blocks are just falling. Yeah. You got to get out of the way. Crazy taxi would also be actually pretty unpleasant. That'd be terrifying. Just cars just going everywhere. Crazy taxi?

Maybe like, I think I can't. the draft somebody in Grand Theft Auto 5 with the instant acceleration mod on. The 9,99 miles per hour. The cars are just flying like crazy. You're just inside your house. Yeah. That's terrified.

How about Densha attack? But they're in the train. They're in the train that's like multi-track drifting at 9,000 miles per hour. That would be wild. Ranch, is there a game you think would be a tough time for your enemies? I would put them in dead by daylight. Oh my God, terrifying. Christ.

The cycle of that is like basically the survivors have to keep doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not, you don't die immediately, but you can die. Yeah, you die multiple, multiple times forever. I've never played that game before. It's fun. I'm kind of scared. It's like hide and seek, basically.

Uh-oh. It's a good time. Of course, Ranch would like that. What's your answer, Jason? Mine was, I thought of Dench attack real quick inside the train. Yep. I think that like me, you know, dead space is going to be rough. Oh, God.

Dead space is going to be real rough for anyone. I mean, yeah, if you just like put somebody in The Last of Us, it's just like, I mean, fucking depressed. Yeah. Looking for funny answers. I kind of do think, though, Doom Eternal would be an easier time than the Last of Us, right? Like, there's something about, because, like, the guns in Doom are so crazy. You have more ability to survive. Yeah.

You don't have to be stealthy or like a good of shooting. Like a bottle and desperately use that. Exactly. You could just be like, oh, yeah, use the BFG. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This next one is from Silent Martyr. High Silent Martyr. They write, if you could be roommates with any Pokemon like in Pocopia, which would you choose?

Oh, wow. I'm immediately, I mean, it's basic. I'm kind of just thinking Pikachu because then I might not have to pay for electricity. I might be able to live fully off the grid with a generator powered by a Pikachu. That's your goal. I'm like, you're living with Pokemon and your goal is a free electric bill? Are you like Wait, are you like hooking the Pikachu up?

How does it like how are you harnessing it? It just kind of gives it a little zap every now and then. Just a little zap. What does? Pikachu. But how does the refrigerator work? Yeah, like you need constant electricity. You're going to like chain him to the wall.

I have a meter. That tells me how much I have before I need to. Okay. So I always have a battery system. And he knows it. He recognizes the symbology on the meter to know that I better fill that up before. So you got a wall battery. A wall battery.

A wall battery. Yeah. And it's like a big battery that has a meter on it. Okay, okay. And he's absent for me. He's also my best friend. He's your best friend. For me, it has to be a Pokemon, and hopefully they're chill with it that I can ride

and Lapris comes to mind. Oh, okay. Chilling out, taking a nice beach day with Lappris. We're out there, like not a jet ski, but a chill friend that I can just hang out with. Lazy river style. Right, yeah. Oh, on a river. That'd be great.

Lappers fan here. Is Trubbish stinky? I kind of don't think so. I kind of don't think Pokemon smell. We're going to pull up the Pokedex entry on shrub. Does this guy fucking stink or what? Well, because it's important to know. Because if he's not stinky, it's troubish.

Yeah. If he's stinky, I can't do it. I'm going to have to say yes. He's made of garbage. He's made of garbage, so I can't. He's going to smell bad. Man, that poor little guy. You love Trubbish so much.

It's very wholesome. I love him. He's so good. His little teeth sticking out. I guess it's a shame that Miaoth doesn't talk. Because if all meyouths talked, I'd want meowth. Because I like the way that guy sounds. Yeah.

That's right. But if it's just, if it's just him saying meowth all the time, I don't want that. Seiduck. Seiduck would be good. Seidug is so cute. Sightuck is a great answer. Yeah. Ranch, do you got an answer? I would just love to have Tocapee.

Oh, yeah. He's really cute. That's pretty good. I saw a video of Togepee. The video, the context of the video is Togepie's crying and somebody gives Togapie and Apple, Togapi stop crying. Yeah. And the caption on the video was like basically like my girlfriend before I cup it and fix whatever's bothering her. And I said to my wife and she was like, I am just like that.

I love apples. Yeah, apples all it takes. This next one's from Funky Spore. I'm Funky Spore. And Funky Spore writes, what video game characters would you invite to do escape room with. I hate to be biased, a recency bias. I'd like to see an escape room go up against the wit of a Leon S. Kennedy. I thought you were going to say that. There's no fucking way he's not making short work of that within minutes. He's going to kick through a wall. He's not

going to like solve any of the puzzles. He's just going to like he'll like look at a box and like turn it around, examine it, press X and be like, oh there's like a shape I could, there's like something I can put in here. He's good at recognizing shapes. Yeah, sure is. Looks like it needs a diamond. Hmm. Who's a smart person in a video game? I've got a rare answer. Okay. One of the most resourceful video game characters that I can remember is Jade from Beyond Good and Evil. Oh, Jade

is great. She's a photographer. She gets into places she's not supposed to be. She avoids guard. She can do anything. I'm in with Jade. I mean, ditto from Pocopia can become anything. Yeah. Can it become a thing or just like a key? Yeah. Well, I mean, it can become mush so it could get under a door. Yeah.

But it can also be a person or a cleft key or whatever. So ditto could be a fun partner in an escape room. But I feel like ditto is not smart. It seems pretty dumb. But you're there too, right, in this question? But I'm also dumb. No, you're not. Yeah, no, I am.

I'm bad at math. Heather, don't. Don't talk about my friend like that. I'm bad at math. Who's a smart? I mean, is, is, is the blueprints. Simon? Yeah, is, is, is, are they smart?

I, if you're Simon, they're as smart as you are. Then they're dumb. Like, I think Simon is a character. doesn't, like he doesn't have a defined personality outside of what you do. I would say ditto also would be tough because in an escape room you typically need like a partner you can

communicate with in some way. Right. Oh, I have my answer. Laura Croft. Oh, Laura Croft. Oh, Laura Croft are great. Tumes are basically escape rooms from 2000 years ago. Laura Croix. Those are just ancient escape room. That's what they are. Ranch, you have an answer for this?

Glados. Oh! Even though she's bad? Yeah, I still like her. Good answer. All three of us made the exact same sound when you said that. This next one's from Foster. Hi, Foster.

Foster writes, I finally bought a PS5. Hey. What's the first game I should play on it? The first game on a new console decides the console's personality. Well, I agree with that. People of note, certainly. People of note, check it out. It's going to be a musical personality.

But as far as PS5's, titles go exclusives look I mean I know we just met the guy again I might say Death Stranding 2 mm hmm that Stranding 2 is a fucking

it's a banger and it's also a very PS5y game yeah it's available all on other things now I know but it's a great PS5 game it feels PS5y yeah yeah like the look of the game and the look of the console

are kind of in concert he played it we'll talk about this later but he designed it he designed the PS5 he just He showed us the, or you know, the, uh, Aki, uh, showed us the tour, uh, gave us a tour and he showed us the PC trailer of Death Strategy 2 to maybe want to play Death Strategy 2 again because the game's so

fucking good. It's really good. Um, um, Descrating 2 could be good. Hmm. I have my answer, but it's a prerequisite. There's a prerequisite. Please. Okay. I truly loved it. I don't care about the changes they made. I thought they were great. Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. Let's fucking go. Get in there. Hell yeah, dog. Have you played remorse? I hope so. If not, yes, it might make sense to play remake, but rebirth just... I've bounced off it twice now.

Where'd you get to? You got past Gungaga. That's pretty far. I think you did. I don't know where the hell I am. You got to boot that back up and let me know where you're at. I don't know where I am, but I have the wrong.

And you're right before gold saucer, which is the best part of the game. The problem with rebirth, just like the problem with Pocopia, is that I 100% each area first. That's brutal. That game is much better when you're just like picking and choosing. Like a little buffet.

Because I was playing like you when I started it. And I had to make a choice and be like, I can't. I'll never finish this if I do. Chadley's kind of annoying. That's true. I 100% every area until I move on. I got to do it. But like the cinematic moments in that game.

And you got to know it, you know, the end. What happens? I know. I know. I'm going to finish it. I'm like, I can't. There's no world in which I let cloud down. Yeah.

No. But. Okay, my answer, my answer, though, for PS5 game, what is a game, what's the game that dictates the flavor of the system? And we're saying it has to be exclusive. It's for the PS5, but like, you know. Because like Blueprints is on a bunch of stuff. Yeah, of course. Hades 2.

80s 2, right, yeah, sure. My answer is Cyberpunk 2077 on the PS5 Pro which is just added ray tracing so it looks better than it ever has and it's also the best time to play it because they've finally fixed everything

I played that at launch and it was a disaster It was so funny God it was such a funny game at launch I was flying through elevators Yeah and then we played it again after the DLC came out and they fixed everything we're like yeah this is just

this is just good now yeah it was great yeah it was great it was great when it was bad now it's good that it's good but driving down a street and a car exploding in the sky that just rendered it's so incredible

I'm in T-pos on the motorcycle like truly remember like really memorable experiences like a game can't live here and he's either live here or here. Yeah, yeah. Can't be in the middle.

Yeah. And then finally, from Olivia, Olivia, Olivia writes. Hi, Olivia. What's the best console mod? Shell swaps,

mod chips, custom firmware, all of the above? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I got an immediate answer for this. I knew you would.

So it's an RGB mod for a Super Nintendo so that you can output RBG-RG-RG mode to a Sony PVM. When you turn that system on, it's like you've never seen a 16-bit graphic.

It is, it's like porcelain. It is so beautiful that somehow it makes the sprites look handcrafted. Like somebody went in and touched each individual sprite. RBG modding, RGB modding, you're super NES. That's, that's the, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Wow. I've been to the Louvre. and if you were to put

I'm so what? Because the S&S was kind of built for like CRTs right and they had that kind of soft edge and now if you play it today that's gone Yeah

Are you saying that this? There is an in between softness and sharpness that you get with the the RV mom I'm writing this down y'all This is what I want It is so I don't know if you remember

That like there used to be at like GameStop or Toys or Us There'd be dedicated monitors for games when they come out, game systems when they come out. There's some fancy monitor when they were demoing the PlayStation at fucking KB Toys, right?

And it was better than a normal television because you'd look at it and you'd be like, oh my God, this looks incredible. And you go home, plug it into your TV and you'd be like, huh, what is not the same? So whatever the output was for the Super Nintendo at Toys R Us when I'm a child,

is gorgeous and it doesn't look like it does when you get it at home RGB modding the Super Nintendo and putting it on a PVM gives you that look which is again not not those hard-edged pixels

but something else it's so beautiful I'm in I'm sold 100% that sounds really good I'm thinking like USBC charging yes good answer

for like a hand Like imagine a micro. Let's see USBC charging. It might not be number one. It might be in the top three. Yeah. You're getting points on the board. Yeah, I'm getting points on the board.

I mean, USBC modded Vitas are great. Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to mod the? No, no, this is as is. I couldn't, I couldn't dare. It's a perfect machine. Yeah, it's perfect.

I don't need, now that I have the charger for this, I've seen, like, sold online, like, Game Boy advances with, you. you know, backlit screens and USBC, like, charging and stuff. Backlit screen? There's something that you, I don't think they do it anymore. You just spelled Afterburner. And before the Game Boy Advance SP came out, the game, they would like, you would send in your vanilla GBA.

And the guy would just like take it apart and add all kinds of weird shit and you'd get it back. And it was like, I brought it into school with me. And I was the coolest kid in school because I had a backlit GBA and it looked great. Wow. It was vibrant. It was exciting. You could play it in the dark, which you just couldn't do with an original GBA. I have an IPA.

I have an IPS screened 3DS and it makes the blacks like true black on the system. And the same thing. It's just like a good screen and a good image is so important. It's so shockingly important. The original Switch 1 just like had a horrible screen. It was it was. It coughs. Yeah.

It's the one you need to take out in the back one of the, yeah. This thing is fucking sick. I've never really, I actually personally dislike. swapping out the shell. I agree. I like the look of the original, always the original machines. They also don't ever feel 100% right.

Yeah, they're off brand usually. Yeah. Though, I mean, I wish there have been mods for more modern systems. I think the Switch one had it. You remember the translucent purple like GBA and GameCube? There are like companies that like they try to get that back.

Some of them do a pretty good job. I've seen it done for the steam deck And I'm like that's You see what? I'm getting two things When I get home It's too scary to me though Like it's too like

Too precious of a device I think To these days yeah For the house See RAM prices? That's this week's get played Our show is produced by Our show is produced

And engineered by Rochelle Channer Ranch Yard underscore underscore Sart On social media and Twitch Ranch What are you streaming? Resident Evil Nine Nice Oh yeah

Are you having fun on that still? It's really good to you. Yeah, it's very fun. I'm really scared of the spiders upcoming. I know that that's a big part of it. Yeah, there's some spiders in that. There's a apparently a Thomas Sotank Engine mod. Or the spiders where they become Thomas Sotank Engine.

I might do that. I've seen that and I've seen... It doesn't make it less scary. That's more scary. Yeah, yeah. I've also seen the chunky guy being replaced by Shrek. which is not less scary either. A big Shrek coming out.

I don't want that. I don't think so. Our show's music is by Ben Prunty, Ben Pruntymusic.com. Our show's art is by Duck Brigade, Duck Brigade Design.com. And check out our merch, hat, sweatshirts, and more at kinshipgoods.com.

And check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash get played for ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalog, including how did this get played and premium DLC episodes. And our exclusive show, get played DLC,

which this week we're doing something called game show review where we review a game show, if you can believe it, and that game show is Family Feud. Show me Family Feud! Number one on the board, good answer. Family Feud has the funniest

wrong sound. It's a good one, the X that comes up. It's so abrasive. I was hoping you'd say Price is Right because I was on that last year. I was on the prices right, I competed, won some money. Holy shit.

Is this in the Druid? Yeah. Wow. Got to hang out with Drew on stage. Just play a game. That's wild. That's amazing. And of course you can join our Discord. Discord.D.G.S. Get played. If you want to leave us voicemail, that number. 6162 played. That's 616-275-2933. Or you can write us an email at Get Played Pod at gmail.com. Jason, thank you so much. People of note again out tomorrow. Check it out. Looks awesome. Can't wait to play it myself. And I do have an unfortunate task of doing this. Sorry, but you got played. Good sir.

Yeah. Damn it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, maybe next time. Yeah, maybe next time. Now, I, real quick, maybe this won't make it in the episode, but I want to try. I want to give a quick shout out.

Oh, sure. My art director, Tim Doolan, he's the most taciturn, stoic guy in the world. And that makes him a great art director. Yeah. One day, out of the blue, he calls me. He never calls me, unless he has to. And he goes, do you know Heather Ann Campbell? Oh, boy.

He was, I've never heard this level of. emotion in his voice. He loves you. He is absolutely listening to this right now. I want to give a shout out right now to my incredible art director, Tim Doolin. Thanks for listening, Tim, and you did such an incredible job. Thank you so much. Hi, Tim. Shout out Tim. Shout out Heather. Heather's the coolest

appellers. Oh, boy. True. And she's great at math. I'm bad at math. So good at numbers. Like they sent me in the whole bad at math. Oh, no. God. We're not even going to try to teach you. That teacher demolished. Literally, she was like, I mean, like, my parents, we're, the episodes done, but we're still talking.

Yeah. And they're still listening. Like, they kick you out. You're like, she can't do shit. She was like, she literally put, my parents had to come in and talk to the teachers because I was in the hall for all of math class. Oh. And it was because I was disruptive because I was so bad at math. Like, they'd be like, they'd be like, what, seven times three?

And I'd be like, I don't know. And then they'd get mad and the other kids would laugh. And then I eventually was just in. the hallway for intro to math. So I was in, I was in like advanced like AP bio and AP English and all those AP. I was in remedial math because I didn't, they, I didn't even have access to like times tables. And later you played a math teacher and a key and peel sketch. Yeah.

Wild. Show them. Yeah, they're real confused. They're like, that's a miscast. I don't believe that at all. She must have learned a couple things. That was a hate gum podcast.