Get Played - Perfect Gaming Day

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Nick and Heather discuss the supernatural, Heather's trip to Japan, and what their perfect day of gaming would look like.Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayedFollow us on social media @getplayedpodMusic by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.comArt by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.comFor 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/getplayedJoin us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayedWanna 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. Tell me this episode idea again. Okay, so here's the thought. It's like your perfect gaming day. You know, from start to finish, we talk through like, you know, how you wake up, maybe the first game you play that morning, maybe a little bit like what kind of breakfast you eat to compliment it. You know, like a perfect gaming day from start to finish. Right.

I totally 100% got it. Okay, great. I got, I actually got mine. Oh. Yeah, I already got mine. Oh, okay, great. Great. Do I just do it?

Yeah, I mean, sure. You run by me, you can just do it. Yeah, I'll run it by you. Okay, I'll run it by you. Okay, so I wake up with a sun. Uh-huh. I brew myself a cup of coffee. Nice, nice.

I sit down in front of my PC. Okay. And I play Slay the Spire for 16 hours, and then I fall asleep in my desk chair. And then I fall asleep in my desk chair. Yeah, no, I mean, that's one way to... I'll probably smoke a little weed, too, let's be honest. Yeah. I think in the spirit of the thing, though,

that can't just be... That can't be... Because we wouldn't have a show. If that was your answer, that just, one, sounds like you're just a maniac. Uh-huh. And two, I mean, I want you to think creatively. Like, could be anything.

You could play... You can play more than one game. Maybe I didn't make that clear. You can play more than one game. You can play more than one game. Okay. It's not like your perfect gaming day is like, I'm going to play Street Fighter. I got, I kind of cold as sack myself there.

Okay, great, great, great, great, all right. So, wake up with the sun. Nice. Give myself a cup of coffee. Okay. Give my wife a kiss. Oh. Then I sit down in front of my PC and play Slay the Spire until lunch.

Okay. Which I have at my desk. Okay. As I boot up Slay the Spire 2 and play it the rest of the day until I fall asleep in my desk chair. I probably smoke a little weed too, let's be honest. Nick, I don't think, like I do think that this is an episode. Conceptually, I think there is an episode here.

And me, my, my, this like, I'm just, I progressed from the first one to the sequel. And, like, what's that like in a single day? But can you imagine if we did, if that was the episode of the show and then somebody's listening to it in their car, and the rest of the episode is just silence because you're not doing it. You're not doing it.

And sure, maybe that's your answer. Sure. You know, I can't tell because I can't read you at all. No, I mean, yeah, sure, I'll conjure up something else. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, so, wake up with a son. Okay. Give my wife a kiss. Okay. I go to brew some coffee and she's like, come back to bed. No, all right. I don't. I don't.

This. I don't, I don't, I don't want to hear. Don't tell me the rest. I don't want to hear this. All right, all right. I don't want to hear it. All right. I don't hear it at all.

We're going to get into a game. No, no. I don't. Not with your wife. All right. Okay, fine. My wife's not involved. I'll just imagine here.

Here's a, it's a, it's a way on a trip. All right. She's, she's a way on. business. She's at a conference. Okay. I'm home alone. Yeah. So, hey, it's a Bachelor weekend. I got to kind of relive my 20s. There we go. And you know what? I never, this is a blind spot of mine.

I love FromSoft games. Yes. I've never played Bloodbourne. Can you imagine that? Here we go. Here we go. This is the spirit of it. So I'm finally got Bloodborn. Yes. Loaded up on my PlayStation 5. There we go. Turn it on. Yep. Not booting. What? Why isn't it?

It's not booting. Why is that your perfect? No, this is an imaginary experience. I take my PlayStation 5 to GameStop. What are you? What? They're like, yeah, this thing's bricked. You're going to have to replace it.

I'm like, I don't want to replace this right now. Where are you going? You don't have to. But none of this has happened. Well, is it the expense? I'm like, yeah, kind of, I guess it kind of is just like a big chunk of change out of nowhere. He's like, well, there's another way to pay for it. Nick.

And then he's like, come to bed. They smoke a little wheat too. Nick. Yeah. And then we play Slay the Spire Anyway, how about you? Wake up, I kiss your wife We reminisce about playing games

Not for content and fantasize about having free time as adults As we discuss our perfect gaming days, past and possible future This week on Get Played Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, And every game in between. It's time to get, play, I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Tiger Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger.

And hey, our third host, Matt Abadaka, Mr. Games himself, is away. The franchise. The franchise. The finisher. The Xbox Kid, formerly known as the Xbox Kid. He's away. He's on vacation. He's away.

He is on the Hawaiian Isles. Yes. Enjoying some time with his lovely wife. God bless him. God bless him. I bet it's, he sent us a photo of barbecue. and I wanted to blow my brains out. Here's the thing about Matt.

When he goes on vacation, he's always have the time of his life. And then he's just saying, like, I'm having so much fun. It's such a great sort of attitude to have in general. He's like, I'm going to Tommy Bahama. It's like, great, Matt. Then it'll be, I'm at Tommy Bahama. It rules.

I'm happy. He's saying hello everyone to people over on whatever Hawaiian island. He's currently occupied. Aloha, everyone. Aloha, everyone, indeed. So Matt's not here. It's just, just me and Heather, the OG, how did this get played host, holding down the fort. Isn't that wild?

That's weird. Yeah. That's weird to think of. A different, different time. Truly. Pre-pandemic. We started the podcast pre-pandemic. It is so weird to me that this was ever a build of this show.

I know. Yeah. Ranch was in fourth grade. Different time. Yeah. Yeah. Our producer, Rochelle Chen, Ranch is here. Ranch, your podcast, The Defiles, which you do with your friend, Joanna.

So I listened to the episode this past week because I told you a ghost story. Originally on our get played group chat, which a reminder we maybe said this before, is just named Varong. So our Varong chat. And the icon is just Varan. The icon is Varong. And so we're in Varong, the group chat, and I woke up and I told you a story and a paranormal encounter I had. I listened to you, retell the story to Joanna and her disbelief adhering this, but also just the way you unpack some of the supernatural elements I thought was really interesting. But you were genuinely, I'll tell a story on the podcast, but you were genuinely a little spooked, it seems.

Extremely. Okay. I feel like I've not met a lot of people who have actually. And you'll tell the story, but I've not met a lot of people who have had such physical clear encounters. Interesting. Yeah, I wonder, because I know Heather had a similar thing, which we'll get to, but I'll just tell my story. Yeah. Which is that I had fallen asleep on the couch.

So it basically got home. I was exhausted from work. I was just sort of sitting on my couch for a bit. And, you know, you know, when you inadvertently just kind of fall asleep in the TV's on. I fell asleep and I woke up, you know, I fell asleep kind of sitting up and I woke up lying down. Like it kind of shifted to that position and it just like slept for a while. It was, I probably fell asleep around 10, 30, 11. And then I woke up in the very early morning, but the sun wasn't out yet.

So I think probably 4 a.m. Maybe 5 a.m. somewhere in that range. It was still dark outside. There was ambient light through the windows, which are behind me as I'm lying on the couch. My feet and are basically facing the direction of our front door. So I wake up. It's dark. I look in front of me.

There's a ghost. Now, I'm a skeptic, I will say. I've experienced sleep paralysis a number of times in the past. And I've had the feeling of apparitions kind of looming over me. Right. I've seen shadowy figures. Right. And I understand that that's kind of I'm in a hallucinatory dreamlike state.

But when I have sleep paralysis, things were different than this experience. When I have sleep paralysis, first off, I'm completely rigid, I can't move, and I don't feel like it can breathe, and time dilates in a way where it feels like it's interminable. Like I can have sleep paralysis for like a 20-minute period, and it feels like it's been four hours. Okay. And the other thing is, I'm in my space, but I'm also not actually in my space.

I'm in kind of like a dreamlike simulacrum of whatever my environment is. The back rooms. The back rooms, yes. But it still has recognizable characteristics of wherever I'd be sleeping. I've had an hotel rooms, for instance, and it's just like, this isn't exactly the hotel room, but this has kind of pieces of how it's assembled in my brain. Okay. I'm lying on the living room.

I'm not, like, paralyzed at all. I have full range of motion. I can tell even just, like, lying on my back. And also, it is fully, like, I'm just awake. It is, I'm fully in my space. So it's just my living room. and I can move around, which I'll get to in a second. I'm looking straight ahead.

In front of the front door is a ghost. She is some sort of a petite woman or girl. Her face is completely in shadow. She has like shoulder length hair and she's just kind of looking forward just staring at me. She has robes that are kind of red. Roads. Yeah, like like a red robe that's kind of going down with like white highouts. Kind of like the impuging.

Guards in Return to the Jedi, if I'm going to go point of reference. Can I say, are the robes bathrobe thick or silky and thin? They look more, good question. They look more like a, like a demon in like demon slayer. You know what I mean? Like kind of like almost like a kimono sort of quality, like that sort of fabric. But not maybe not quite so can. I don't know.

But it's also like far away and it's dark so I can't quite make out details. But I do see limbs. I do see, you know, a human like figure. I see a face fully in shadow and, you know, I see what looks like robes and there's there's some like white elements as well. It looks like they're sitting on a chair. Now, Ranch, you were saying, because this chair is not one that's in my apartment. This is like an apparition of a chair. And this, Ranch, you were saying this is very unusual.

And for me, that had me second guessing, okay, maybe this was a hallucination or maybe that's another data point that this was something that was like, in a dream state, or perhaps I was assembling, we're pattern recognition machines and I was seeing this figure and I was assembling it in the squatting position and sort of like seeing a chair behind her. But for me, it did absolutely like kind of look like an old wooden chair, like kind of an antique chair. Anyway, she's just sort of standing there staring at me. We're kind of in a stair down.

I don't feel threatened, but I definitely feel watched. And I also feel like this figure is telling me not to leave. or are telling me you can't leave, one of the two. Okay. And I'm just like, okay, I don't feel threatened, but I want to remove myself from this situation. So I just kind of without like looking away, just kind of swung my legs over the side of the couch and stood up and just started walking towards the bathroom, which is down the hall. As I do this, this figure almost mirrors my movement, stands up and walks in a kind of like, Silent Hill zombie nurse sort of like unnatural stepping way.

Almost like if you ever seen the horror movie thing they do where they'll film someone walking backwards and then play it in reverse. So like they're walking forwards, but they look in a way that's like very herky, jerky and the locomotion is not natural human movement. Walking like that very, very quickly goes to a corner and just stands there and stares at it while it kind of twitching. Like they're almost like kind of glitching in and out of collision. And I'm watching this happen as I walk out of there and I go into the bathroom and I stay in there for a little bit. I pee. I wash my hands. I absolutely wash my hands.

And then I believe one of your responses to what you've just experienced is to take your dick out in any contest. It doesn't matter if you were like, I'm scared and I have to, I'm going to piss my pants from how scared I am. I would have, if I had a penis, I would have left it in my trousers and pissed my pants. I did a sit down, Pee. It wasn't a whole thing. But it didn't take my dick out. Anyway, I like a, and then when I, when I re-entered the living room, it was gone. And then I just went to bed.

And I have not seen in this sense. But it was a really strange situation. Like I said, I am a skeptic. I still lean towards this was something that my brain, some trick my brain was doing. Some, you know, a natural light pattern because of me waking up at a weird time that I was just sort of like piecing together as a figure. But it did feel very human. And it felt, again, very distinct from any of the previous encounters experiences I've had with sleep paralysis. So yeah, it was weird.

And I tell people about this when I've talked. told people who are paranormal, either, you know, like enthusiasts or just believers, I've noticed they've universally been pretty scared by this. So I don't know. Heather, you had a similar experience I know many years ago. Yes, I had a similar experience and like you, I'm a complete skeptic. I have used the word ghost to describe it in shorthand, but I don't think it was a ghost. That's kind of where I'm at, too. Like, I'm using ghosts because like this looks. looks like a ghost. This looks like what someone might identify as a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. I, but I think I for what I, it's easier for me to believe that there's like multiverses and I was like on a thin

wall in between two multiverses or that there's time travel or quantum, you know, unrealities or that the universe has cycled so many times like big bang, like shrinkage, big bang, shrinkage, Big Bang, et cetera, that I was like seeing some kind of scientific thing other, rather than a person who had died and then had gone to hell or something and was in my room. But yeah, I was with, I was with, many years ago, I was with an ex-girlfriend and I've told a story on the podcast before. We, this, I lived in a studio at the time and it was a single room, no one entry. And there was like a bathroom.

And in the corner of the room was a IKEA wardrobe with the door open. And I didn't have a bed. I had a fold-out couch that became a bed that I would turn into a couch during the day and sleep on the fold-out at night. And there. Yeah. And my ex-girlfriend was talking about something. And I looked over in the corner of my room and where the door to the IKEA cabinet was open. standing sort of behind it in shadow was a person.

And I stared at this person for a while and I was like, okay, what happened? Was my apartment being robbed when we walked in? And because there's no exits, this person just stepped behind the open wardrobe door to hide so that there wasn't a confrontation and they're waiting for us to go back to, to go to sleep. And they could leave or kill us or something. Like there's definitely a person there. What is happening? And after a while of sort of interrogating this, I turned to the girl and I said, I'm so sorry. I haven't been listening to anything you've been saying because I've been looking at, do you see a person in the corner of the room by the wardrobe?

And she looked over. And the moment she looked over, it pointed at us and walked straight at us across the room. And you both saw this. We both saw it. We both saw it. And she screamed and like leapt backwards over the sort of like this would be the corner of the couch. She sort of tumbled backwards over this, knocking over the lamp and like got to the lamp to turn it on. While I just went, whoa.

And then she turned on the light and it disappeared. And she started sobbing and screaming. And I just started laughing and scared. And I was like, I'm so happy you saw that. I'm so happy you saw that because I would never believe that I saw it if you didn't see it too. Like, holy shit, we both saw that. It's great. She's like, that's fucking crazy.

I was like, that's fucking crazy. We both saw it. Wow. And so, yeah, that was, she's a priest now. Hey, how about that? Yeah, she fully became a pastor. And such a high-level pastor that she's actually prayed before Congress. Like she's like an arch prayer person now.

And this person used to do improv, correct? Yeah, this person used to do improv. You knew her. I know, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She used to do improv and now she's like a full-on pastor. But yeah, that was my ghost experience. It's interesting that you and I both had the same sort of kind of,

I don't say it was partly detached because I was like half like I was like a like in a like just woke up state where I almost couldn't process things emotionally but we were both kind of like trying to make sense of what we were looking at for a bit because that's kind of where I was I was like looking and I did have the thought which I didn't say I did have the thought like is that a person yeah briefly because it did look so humanoid yeah I was I was like there's three dimensional shape to this shadow thing in the corner I was like, is it a coat?

Is it like, by the time I got to, was my place being robbed when we walked in? It was at, that was so far beyond, okay, I am looking at a person. Right. You know, like, then my question was, how did they get in? Because there's only one door. And why are they over there? Not, is it a ghost? Right.

You know? It's interesting that you mentioned like the multiverse idea because I believe you and Joanna talked about that on your podcast as one theory for that that kind of maybe would explain the chair element as well if this is in fact some sort of supernatural occurrence or I guess actual scientific occurrence that we just don't have the science scientific knowledge to process right now but like it's that it was that was perhaps an alternate reality that was shifting between and that maybe it was like trying to go to the kitchen or something when it was like walking in that direction that that was that's kind of a characterization of what you were saying right yeah I think

because of there was something other than a human form there. I feel like maybe that is possible. And going to a corner just so strange. My bump is like, it seems like she acknowledged your presence. Yeah. Which makes me think that maybe it was more supernatural than a reality shifting. But a reality shifting could also be that she's seeing and I'm seeing her. And like maybe it's a two-way thing.

I don't know. Maybe we just don't understand it. She's also slowly getting up. Yeah. You get away from you. It's a very funny thing of the reality where she's on her own shitty podcast telling this story. She was scared of this weird guy who was lying down on a couch that's not in her apartment.

Yeah. So I'm sitting on my chair and I look up and there's a guy and he gets up. And I'm like, oh, shit, I got to get out of this room. So I went over to where my door is and it's not fucking there. I'm trying to find my doorknob. Meanwhile, he's taking his dick out. Yeah, it was a really, it was definitely the strangest of that kind of, you know, experience I've ever had. The most supernatural occurrence, I feel like I've personally experienced.

When I asked Gemini to make the drawing you made of this thing realistic. Yeah. Okay. Because, yeah, because I did. So I was at Headgum Studio. I told this story on the Do Boys podcast, an episode that's coming out later. Rochelle actually popped in on that podcast to kind of give some immediate diagnosis because this was right after it had happened. And I was like, should I draw a picture of it?

Everyone was telling me not to. And then afterwards, I was like, I'm going to draw a picture. I do one anyway. This is what it converted your ghost. Yeah, that looks very much. much like what it was. Yeah. That's really, except for the tie.

I don't know what the tie is doing. Would you like to see this ranch or would you not like to look at it? I actually don't think I want to see it. But yeah, that's taking your drawing and running it through AI and making it photo realistic. The background obviously is kind of like not like the background I had. It's more just a generic rustic living room or rustic, you know, dent of some kind. But there was a clear door behind. Yeah.

This is the only good use of AI is take a drawing of a ghost and make it real. Yeah. That definitely the head position too. Yeah. Not bad. Ranch, what is your ultimate diagnosis? Where do you land here? And are you any less spooked than you were initially?

Like, have you processed it at all? Because this hasn't happened before and hasn't happened since. It has not, yes. Makes me feel like it's less of a ghost or a spirit and more of a, the veil. somehow overlapped with something. And if I do encounter it again, that's definitely, like, we'll just take it from there, I guess. Yeah.

And then I think that there's a ghost. I was curious if there's any, like, history of your building at all that you know of. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't looked at. I guess I should investigate that. But I just haven't really been curious enough to dig in. Offer it a cookie. If I say it again, I will offer it a cookie.

You should offer it food. You want a golden Oreo? I have a food podcast. I would recommend not talking. I didn't think about vocalizing to it and I didn't. But it was, I saw you the day after it happened. And, Rochelle, you were very nice to me and kind of gave me some, you know, some analysis of what it could have been.

But then also you were, you were, I learned later afraid of me because you thought I brought the ghost with me and it was going to follow you. Like I was going to pass on the it follows curse. I know, because a lot of times if it is like a malevolent spirit, people say that those types of things feed off the fear of it. So I knew that I was would be prime mean. And then we learned that you, I felt horrible about this, you slept with your light on that night. I did sleep with my light on that night.

And also during that time, Mark was sick. Oh, oh boy. So I end up having to sleep on the couch alone. Oh, no, that's the same place. Several days. Oh, no. My wife has seen not a ghost, but what she calls a demon. She relayed this to me, and I wasn't sure if it was something I should share on the podcast.

I think she'd be comfortable telling the story when we have her on again. But she also has advice for how to deal with paranormal situations. She thinks what I saw was a ghost. I still think it was like multiverse of time traveler. Mary is so sweet as you know and like basically anytime I voice any sort of problem whether on the podcast or in person she's trying to find a solution. She has the same instinct as you. Yeah. And so like she's like immediately is like texting me like I got rid of my demon.

Let me know if you need any tips. Yeah, right. Let's bust this ghost. We've all had those nights. the ones where you laugh until the sun comes up, where conversations go places they've never gone before, and you walk away feeling closer to the people around you than you have in years. That's psilocybin.

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Wild. 150 total biking miles. I have never ever in my life taken an active vacation. I've always taken like a hotel and shopping vacation. This was a very unique experience for me. But it was for Mary's birthday. I plan this big trip. And we biked from Onamichi to Ikuchi Island to Matsuyama to Yuzuhara to Kochi to finally to Kompira.

I'm listing a bunch of places I have never heard of. Yeah, I had never heard of either. The first section of our biking trip was on the, fuck, what is the name of that bike route? There's an official bike route in Japan, the national bike route, which is called the something Kaido the fuck

I mean I was on it every day and I've totally forgotten the Shima Shima Nami Qaeda Yeah Shima Nami Kaido That's it, Shima Nami Kido So that's the national bike route And what it is is a blue line

On the side of the road That is just beautiful fucking biking And we biked from island To island over the course of days, staying in a different hotel every night and hand washing our biking clothes and then setting off the next day. It was so gorgeous. And then we went into the mountains. And I have never seen anything as beautiful as I saw on this trip. It, it, it, it, it seems.

trite to say it was like being in a studio jibbley movie. But I have no other frame of reference. For the density of the forest, for the beauty of the countryside, there was a day where we saw, I counted 18 waterfalls. Wow. And all of these, we were not.

All of these bike paths in the mountains were in, like full, like cradled on all side by wood. Like above us is woods, beside us is woods. I saw a wild monkey. A wild monkey. Which set off in my head like a neolithic alarm. Like I've never seen a monkey that isn't in a zoo. And this monkey was the size of, you know, it's like the size of a dog.

Right. And he's on all fours. gray and he's got a red face and he's crossing the road and we bike around a corner and it looks over and I went oh my god a monkey because I don't like there was nothing else to do and you know like it stop immediately and it just like clip clopping into the woods and disappeared and then the next day Mary saw a monkey which was brown because we were so far in from like reality like normal places. Civilization.

We were, we rode through multiple abandoned towns. Wow. Like where we would stop and just, it was abandoned buildings overgrown. Mary at one point was like, you could shoot like a parallel story to the last of us here and you wouldn't have to do any set dress. You could just have the town and shoot like a zombie movie or something post-apocalyptic. It was, it was staggering. There were days where we would be. riding in between rice fields or rice paddies on both sides all the way out to like mountain

like the edges of the mountains and we'd be in these big valleys. We only had one day of bad weather. So we got to do almost the entire bike trip. There was one day where there was lightning and it was like, okay, we had to call it off. But it was, it was, I texted you guys this. It was the most incredible thing I've ever done in my life. Wow. And I am somebody who deeply loves the city, deeply,

loves, you know, Tokyo and Kyoto. Like, like, I, I just couldn't believe what I was experiencing and how peaceful it was. There were times where we were so far away from civilization that even the little SOS satellite logo in the corner of your phone that's like, hey, if you're in true danger, you can use this, that would go gray. Like, that was like off. And I was like, man, if I fall off a mountain here or break my leg. I'm cooked until Mary can bike to a city.

Like, it was, it was crazy. That's wild. And until that time, the longest I'd ever biked was Amsterdam to Utrecht, which I think is like 27 miles. So like in a day. And our first day on the trip was 37 miles. So you were consistently, you weren't just doing long distances. You were stringing them together. Yeah, yeah.

So I can't even describe it. I feel, you know, the moment in contact when Jody Foster's like they should have sent a poet. Like I feel incapable of articulating the stuff that I saw. I will say one part of the trip, we ran a corner and there was a museum and just in the middle of fucking island. And it was for the, it was for the, it was for the. Kaizoku, which is the pirates. And it was the Murakami Kaizu, which was a group of guys and probably some women who had sort of in the Samurai times presided over these three islands where there was a straight in between. And they would charge money to ships that were like, you know, traveling in this straight and protect those ships.

from barbarians or from looters or whatever. So it was like paid escorts and the museum made a big deal of like they're not pirates. Right. It wasn't a protection racket. Yeah. They were basically bodyguards. Right. And they had in the museum, they had like their actual armor and their actual robes and their actual weapons.

And it was I was just like, I can't, I can't fucking believe like this robe was on this island. And now I'm on this island. I can't. I feel stupid. It was great. That's awesome. But yeah, we were there for a little less than 10 days. You did spend one day in Tokyo.

Yeah. At the end of the trip, we did spend one day in Tokyo. We did like an overnight because our flight was out of Tokyo and went, you know, stationary shopping. because that's when my wife truly loves the stationary and pens and fountain pens. And there was there's a time when she got a stack of stickers at the store called Loft. And we stood in the tax-free checkout line and discovered that the tax-free checkout system cannot tolerate more than 100 items. and she had like 300 individual stickers. Like, not like, you know, it wasn't like an insanely expensive purchase,

but they had to ring up each individual sticker. And when they would get to 100, finish the transaction, make a whole thing, fill out all the tax forms again, and then start again with another set of stickers. Wow. Which was, felt sort of comedic, like a seemingly impossible, simple task sort of thing. Yeah.

Needless bureaucracy. Yeah, yeah. It was, but yeah, no, it was incredible. I also had the best curry of my life at outside of Yuzahara, which is a small town in the mountains that probably only has a thousand people living there, but has a great school. And the whole town was sort of redesigned by this architect. So all of the big primary buildings like the library are like works of incredible art, but you're also in a town in the mountains, not near anything.

Like, I don't even think it had one convenience store and nothing else. Wow. It was amazing. That's so cool. We were definitely envious the picks you were sending to the Verong chat. It just looked so incredible. And we should say because this was a long plan trip. Yeah.

This wasn't like we went to the Japan trip we had for Get Played for the Mario premiere was basically we had 10 days notice. Right. That came together really, really quickly. Right, right. And this was something you've been planning for. Yes. A while.

And so it just so happened that you had two Japan trips of very different kinds. Yes. Within like a three month span. Yep, yep. Yep. I've spent in, I mean, when we got back, I had spent like 25% of my time in the last two months in Japan, which felt crazy. But also made me really sad. It's, it's, especially now to be in a functional country.

Yeah, yeah. It's really just kind of surreal. Yeah. And makes you treasure what you have when you visit there. And also, and that includes, I had the best mince of my life that I just bought at a Japanese convenience store. Frisk, clean breath. My understanding, these are actually European mint, but this is just a Japanese packaging of them. I could have not been able to find them in the States.

You brought home three of them for me. It was very, very kind of you. Yeah. And I got ranch like a hash brown. I think is the cutest spot. I texted market photo this and he said, all cap. Who is that? Well, so in what town was it?

I think it was, let's see, it was in Kobate or Kobite, there is a shrine that is 13. 100 concrete or stone steps up a mountain. And you can walk all the way up to this shrine and it can take you hours. Mary and I were like, oh, let's check it out. And we got 400 steps up and we're like, we are fucking done. Like we've biked 150. We don't need to do this. But along the way, there's all these like little stores and shops and like vendors with like

bells or handworked wood and one of them was just an old man with a bucket and he was selling a hash brown plushies. That's so cool. And I was like, this guy's got it. This guy's fucking awesome. That rules. Wow. So I got a hash brown plushy. My understanding, because I know where you stayed

in Tokyo, is that you could take coffee to your room. Yes. I went back to the hotel where I could take coffee to my room. Mary had never been there before. she was like, this is my favorite hotel on earth. And then she was like, have we lived our lives? Like it gave her a full existential crisis where she's like, have we lived our lives wrong.

Should we have decorated our house this way? Like she's just like, she's just like, this is the most comfortable I've ever been. There's a happiest I've ever been. And yeah, so it was a great success. And I did not take coffee to my room. Wow. But you could. I could take coffee to my room. Hello, buddy.

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There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. If you ever spent way too many hours obsessing over game mechanics, storylines, or the perfect build, Reddit is full of people just as deep in the weeds as you are. The breakdowns, the wild theories, the speed run tech, it's endless. New trailer, new expansion, new season, I watch it once, then immediately open Reddit to see what the people really think. Reddit is where gamers go first when something happens, before the patch notes, before the headlines, before the streaming breakdowns. With more than 47 million members on R-slash gaming, Reddit is the front page for gaming news, updates, rumors, and leaks, all discussed in real time

by people who actually play. Whether you're stuck on a boss, perfecting a loadout, or just want to geek out with people who get it, Reddit has a community for you. There are subs for every game, genre and niche, MMOs, shooters, RPGs, speed runs, modding, lore, everything. It's real players sharing real tips, fixes, and discoveries. When I need answers or inspiration, Reddit's the ultimate player hub where every gamer finds their people. My go-to sub-reddit. I'm in this sub-reddit a lot.

Sometimes I'm not even playing the game. I'm a subscriber to R-slash Eldon Ring because I love seeing what people are up to with that thing. I love it. I love watching people take down bosses. I'm following all sorts of gaming subredits for individual games, but also things like R-slash-gaming, R-slash-games, all sorts of stuff like that. And, you know, there's a subreddit for Get Play, too.

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What are you playing? How is me to Resident Evil, Wersick? I'm here with my friend Nick. I'm my best friend, Rance. Wow. And Heather. You may have noticed Resident Evil Merchant that they're usually four people in here. Matt is absent.

So I hope that's not throwing you off too much. I knew you were going to ask. And yes, I will take his place as a host of Get Boyd. I wasn't quite extending that. offer. I don't, you know, Matt is... Hello, everyone. A good read. Thank you. But also that's kind of Matt's thing.

Yeah, yeah, no. I'll do it. I'll don't. I'll don't the crown of the king. No, no. I was saying you probably should stay away from that because that's kind of his catchphrase. I've got a catchphrase. I can just use mine. Yeah, sure. Where do you buy it? There you go. There you go. In the one. Yeah. People love that. Everybody loves it. I love hearing it. Everybody love to hear it. I was excited.

Every time I heard your voice in Resident Evil 4, and, you know, I got to admit, the merchant in Resident Evil 4 remake, I enjoyed hearing. Why do you got to be a son of a bitch? I know you got recast. I'm sorry. I got recast. I don't know why you got to stick that fork in my eye. I wasn't trying to. I was just sort of saying it was like a lead head of nostalgia because it reminded me of my friend, the Resident Evil merchant.

Heather took a vacation. Matt took a vacation. I took a vacation. Okay. What were you going with that? What do you mean? You took a vacation? I took a vacation.

Where did you go? Oh, there you go. That's a follow-up question. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Now, that's like, you know, because people think of Michigan, it's like the Mitz, but then there's that little point sticking out. I was like, what's going on up there?

Yeah, it's non-contiguous. It seems like someplace that you'd sit a horse. movie and I was like maybe there's a job. Yeah, what is going on up there? Absolutely nothing. Really? I mean, it's like there's farms, some beautiful towns, no monsters. Wow.

Well, I mean, it's probably good that there's no monsters for the sake of the residents of that area. Shockingly cold. I mean, I wouldn't say shockingly. It seems like it would naturally be cold that part of the world. They've got fresh milk. Okay, there you go. Good cheese. Yeah.

not a lot of goods. Well, that maybe is an opportunity for you as a business person, as a merchant, to offer your own goods. No, I don't think I'm going to move there. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, you don't have to move there. But I'm just saying, like, you know, you always could have done a little business on vacation. Real America up there. Yeah, let's not get into that because we don't want to say what classifies as real and not real America.

that tends to go down a dark gap. What do you think it means? I think it means that you're kind of saying, like, hey, this part of the country can claim authenticity, and as such should have more say over what defines the American character, what direction of- I think if they're going to redesign the Senate, Upper Peninsula, Michigan should get 50 seats.

Okay, no, I don't, I disagree with that. I don't think that would be very-per-versive. I know that the country gets won. Yeah, I think that's going to make the problem of the Senate's, unequal representation, even worse. All right. It's just entirely centered under one small geographical area. Potato, potato.

Potato, potato, indeed. Well, Resident Evil merchant. What's my job here? Your job is to ask a question that you used to prompt the segment. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're doing great, by the way. That question is, what are you playing? Resident Evil Merchant, thank you so much.

for asking. I want to mention one thing, touch on one thing that I discussed last week more thoroughly but for Heather's sake I want to revisit it. Esoteric Ebb. I believe this game might be on your radar. This was developed by Christopher Bodegard and published by Raw Fury. It's a fantasy world version of disco elicium basically. It is self-describes as a disco-like and it is a disco-like. And I will say you and Mary are both going to want to play this because we both love of Disco Elysium. It's the most like Disco Elysium a game has been since Disco. Okay.

It's just fully like down to, it almost feels like it could be a mod. It's like that level of honoring the source that inspired it. Who is the main character in it? Your main character is a cleric who is a employed by the government and there's going to be an election like for the first time. It's kind of metaphor refontasio. It's like this kind of like arch fantasy world where there's a lot. electoral politics as part of it, and political intrigue.

And there's an explosion. A T-Shop blows up. And it's, and your job as a cleric is like to also be a detective. So you're kind of investigating. Okay. So a big part of it is just like, you know, interrogating NPCs, finding allies. And there's some light combat, but the combat is still handled the way disco-elisium handles its combat sequence.

Okay. The gunfight shootout, the shootout that happens, which we don't need to get into the specifics because it's a spoiler for a major section of the game. But like it's all handled through dialogue and dice checks. Is the main character? So so much of what I love about disco a leasing is the dysfunctional main character, the fight against substances and the sort of shame and pride and erosion of that character is the main. is the main character of this game similarly broken? I would not say that this is based the premise of this game insofar as the premise of Disco Elysium is so much around a main character who's barely functional.

Yeah. Like who's barely hanging on and who you can roleplay to kill themselves pretty easily. I mean like it's and I don't mean in just in terms of like, oops, I stepped in it in this this this this dialogue and uh yeah but now i'm at the gallows just like literally will will either die of shame or like fucking hang themselves you know like like like it's not quite to that degree and and but it's definitely an element where the thing that it shares with with disco is failure is as interesting or it's more interesting than success a lot of times so it's like i i don't know i recommend it i'm not sure if it'll get its hooks in you the way disco does because

it's also it's aesthetically so different than, I think it's a gorgeous game, but it's aesthetically so different than the kind of diesel punk, dial punk. I don't know exactly how you characterize Disco Elysium's world, but it's, it's much more just kind of, kind of fantasy. Okay. But anyway, I definitely, definitely think you should, you should, you should mess around with it a little bit at minimum. But instead, instead of talking more about esoteric ab, I'm going to talk about a game I'd been waiting for a price drop for. And hey, a price drop happened

in this past week, so I just picked it up on Steam Sale. Terminator no fate. This is basically an alternate reality in 1991 where they had a big budget for a licensed quarter muncher Terminator 2 game. And I don't mean like the gun game. I mean like just like a straight up like Contra-esque

combat platformer. It's a license game that basically retells the story of the movie, which used to be a thing with license games. They used to, now I feel like they're, they've a lot more leeway. But back in the day, when it was basically like the video game equivalent to the rap song that summarizes the movie over the end credits, it's kind of one of those.

The pixel art is awesome, including both the side-scrolling action and the cut scenes. It's like the best-looking 2D arcade game of 1991. There's a hogout Arnold T-800 Sprite, which is fun. Because, you know, he has that stretch where he's nude at the start of the movie. And the music is awesome, too. The 2D Sprite animation is really gorgeous and fluid. Here's the issue. So it's normally $30.

And it was on sale for $20. And I bought it and I don't know if I'd recommend it even at $20, even though it's really cool because it's basically 90 minutes of gameplay. Wow. You know like those arcade games that you play on emulator, you get on maim or whatever. Yeah. And like, oh, I remember playing much hours as a kid. And then you play it without having to be beholden to using credits to keep it to continuing you on.

And then you're just like, wait, I just beat this whole game in like 45 minutes. You know what I mean? It's like it's like got that kind of feel. It's not exactly like an arcade game, but it has that same sort of pace to it. And that's understandable. But it's just, I think the economics of it because of the license and because of the development costs. Because again, it's just got such high production values. They had to price it a little bit more, but unfortunately, the issue is then it's just hard to justify at that price point.

It's even hard to justify it like a 30% discount. I wish I'd waited for it on Game Pass, but I'm still glad I got it. And I think it's just like, it's just such a cool accomplishment. I should have had the developer in front of me. But it's, I'll look it up in one second, but that they're a, they're a, They're a developer who does these kind of games, and it's just like a really, really good version of it. But anyway, that's what I've been playing. Heather, what about you? Well, I returned to the States and played Fortnite, and I'm really happy to report that they have added so much movement to Fortnite that it is a real pleasure to play again.

I got to play a couple of rounds with my squadmate. and it's also currently doing Overwatch is the collab. That's wild. What a world. So there's Overwatch missions and characters and gameplay mechanics in Fortnite. So like Mercy's wand that she uses to like heal another character while they're fighting

is a wand that you can use in Fortnite for the same effect of like healing somebody while they're fighting somebody else. very disorienting to have that stuff in Fortnite. But, you know, congratulations, guys. But the game I brought with me to Japan and played on a flight there. And then I haven't had a ton of time to play since I got back, but I do get in my 30 minutes, 20 minutes right before sleep because I'll bring my switch to bed is Pocopia,

which still has its claws so deeply, in me that I think about it 24 hours a day. Wow. I have now gotten all but one zone to level 10, which is the maximum like development of a zone that you can do. I think I'm 200 deep in the in the Pocodex. They have, I think they have officially announced DLC for next year. I can't wait for that.

It is reformatted my relationship with Pokemon, the brand in general. I am now fully Pokemon Pilled. The one store that I went to in Tokyo, Mary went to, you know, like five stationary stores. I went to the fucking Pokemon store. Wow. And boy, was I bummed out that the month earlier when we were all there, or when Matt and I were there, really,

that I hadn't picked up the Pocopia stuff because it was all sold out by the time I returned. That was the day I skipped the Pokemon store because I was just like so fatigued. Yes. I still did get ditto as a trainer to hang on my bag, which is going to be my companion forever. It's a sick plush.

It's really, really cool. I love, I love him. They used that. They also had a her, the her was sold out. I can't, I love it so much. The music makes me happy. The title screen makes me happy. It makes me laugh.

It's a funny game. I really am grateful that, because like, Lego Fortnite didn't really like click for me. I played it a bit, but, and I was like, wow, this is cool. But then I fell off. Minecraft never clicked for me, mostly because I didn't like the aesthetic. And the aesthetic of Pocopia is so soothing that I just want to be there. I just want to look at it. Like I wish I could just look at it all the time.

Yeah, it's good. It's, Pocopi is good, guys. It's really good. I got to invest some time in Pocopi. I've just been overwhelmed by the volume of games, but I, I, in 2026, but then I just have to like make peace with like, that's just going to be forever. Yeah. That's just how it is.

Yeah. There's just not enough time for all these games. That's how it is. Is a bitmap bureau. That's who made Terminator 2D no fate. I just brought this up so you can see a little bit of footage here, Heather. This is just for your reference. We can kind of see the thing.

He's not showing me the game. He's not showing me the game. He's not showing me the game. I shouldn't be looking at this. This is really good stuff. I'm not allowed to see this. I think this is bringing a law. No, actually, this looks really cool.

Yeah. I mean, you get what I'm saying, right? It's just like this is exactly the sort of, like that helicopter shootout is just like exactly the kind of thing that you would see in one of these games if it came out in the 90s. Yeah, it looks like metal slug. Very metal slug. Actually, that's a great point of comparison, for sure.

Yeah, cool. Our producer, Rochelle Chen, Ranch, you've been playing some MTG, but I want to hear about that, but I also just want to generally ask, what are you playing? I've been playing Tomodachi life still. Wow. Former host or guest of the pod, Gene Park, gave it four out of four in the Washington Post and called it his game of the year and if not one of his favorite games of all time.

Wow. Yeah. Such an endorsement. Yeah. Gene has impeccable taste. Yeah. He does not give full. scores to hardly any games at all.

Man, remember we had Gene Park on the podcast? That was so cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. What was he doing? Why did he come on her podcast? He's got better things to do. He's, because he's a good guy. Why doesn't even come on this show?

What are we doing this show? Ranch, who's romancing who on your island right now? Oh, great question. Oh, it's a whole mess. It's still all my friends, plus Gerard Way. Okay. Everyone is yearning for each other. People are getting rejected.

People are getting divorced. I finally got Gerardway to love me. Nice. And then he divorced me. Oh, my God. But it's just a very incestuous, weird, a little island that I have now that I send daily updates to my friends.

That's pretty good. How are your friends reacting to being characterized in this game? Oh, they love it. They love it. Yeah. I think the best part about this game is you can really customize everyone's outfits. And I feel like I have gotten everyone really looking exactly like themselves.

Have you heard from any of your friends like, oh, I want to romance this person? Or have they been like kind of surprised by any developments? Or is everyone just kind of taking it in stride? I think they like just having things happen as they will because since it is just our friend group, I've tried to have some of our married friends marry each other. Yeah. And that also just hasn't really happened. Right.

And also like in a video game, we don't have to marry each other, right? Have some fun. The opening paragraph to Jean Park's article in the Washington Post on Tomodachi Life reads this. You won't believe this. Barack Obama just fell in love with Kamala Harris, even though he's already dating Princess Pete. Meanwhile, my friend and former colleague, Taylor Lorenz and hit rapper Drake are fighting on the other side of the town. and nobody, not even Will Smith or Socrates, can stop it. That rocks.

Yeah. Do you, and now, so you're going to continue playing this to sort of see where things go? I think so. Let's talk about Magic the Gathering because you've gotten fully into this. You have a regular group you play with now. I do have a regular group I play with now, and I've spent a lot of money on this game, thanks to you buying us that Final Fantasy booster pack. It all stems from that.

Oh man, I'm sorry. It's okay. I'm having fun. What are you playing? You're playing Commander? I'm playing Commander. Okay. I have four Commander decks now.

Wow. Wow. Yeah, and we play pretty regularly. I've been trying to teach some friends how to play too. So the match at the gathering gang is growing. That's awesome. That's great. But yeah, mostly play with friend with the show, Alexis, who really taught me how to play the game.

Yeah. I love it. Lexus is the best. I love it. Alexis also, we've talked about in the past, but just had the most amazing Animal Crossing Island. Like I visited her island once and I felt like a failure. How are you able to do? We're playing the same game. What is going on? That's how I feel when I see my entire like social media timeline is just Pocopia builds now. Like it's just everybody else's Pocopia builds. And it'll just be like, wow, this person made like a,

30 story tall like island that floats in the sky of like all of these different environments and I'm like I can't I'm happy when I've got a road and a farm and I'm like look at my farm and my road fucking snorlax is like good job

buddy and I'm like thank you yeah I mean I that's kind of one thing I was a I was a little right away I looked up I looked like like me just getting way too into that side of it and then also just like judging myself based on how I, how my island was, or I'm sorry, how my, my Pocopia just sort of environment was. I looked up, yeah, I looked up because I'd asked Alexis about Pocopia, but she said I took a break to let Tomodachi life consume me. So I wonder what's going on with her Tomodachi life right now. Yeah, I feel like Tomodachi Life, Nintendo has been doing a really, really good drift.

of releases over the last few months with Popopia, Tamadachi Life. The one that came out, I think yesterday, was Yoshi's Story 2. Right. Like they've been like very gently placing these games and been like, here you go, here's your next one. Here you go, here's your next one.

And I think they're doing it too quickly. I think I wish that everybody, because I felt a little alone because I was like, oh, Pocopia's everything. And then everybody moved to Tamadachi life online and in my personal life. Right. And I'm still like, no, guys, there's so many good guys on Pocopia.

There's all these guys. Yeah, it's almost like too stacked. They're almost like two after. And we got Star Fox coming soon. Yeah, the Yoshi game is Yoshi in the Mysterious book. Oh, I've found another Pokemon thing. So what I learned in Japan, because we were out in the middle of fucking nowhere, is that each prefecture has its own Pokemon, like official Pokemon.

Wow. And we were in one area that the official Pokemon was like, Whooper. And you'd see Whooper around. And he'd be doing his stuff. And like you'd go in a family mart or whatever. And there'd be a ton of Whooper things. It'd be like, Whooper's the guy for this prefecture.

But we went to one store. And it's like the reason he's the mascot of that prefecture is because he's like having an adventure there. He's like, he's supposed to be out and about. just like, oh, whooper's actually there. Does that make sense? Yeah. And we went to one store and there was a whooper there.

And it said, this whooper is not for sale. He is here on his adventure. And I was like, holy shit, this is like the whooper? Like the gnome in Amelie that gets like sent around. And I felt like I was in the presence of a religious icon. Wow. And then later went to a different prefecture where Slow Pull was the was the Pokemon of the prefecture.

Love that. Because there he's called Yadon. And this prefecture was known for its Udon. So he's like at all of the Udon shops. Like just hanging out. Fucking Pokemon is so good. That's awesome. Yeah.

It's cool that it's like just the whole culture is kind of bought in. There's now a Pokemon airport in Japan. And there's a Pokemon footbath. Wait, how do we get to this Pokemon airport? You'd fly there. What? Look at the fuck. Look it up, dude.

Pokemon Airport. There's a fucking airport that's all Pokemon now. And you could go there and live with them where they're real. This is Noto Satoyama Pokemon Airport. Wait, where the hell is it? Ishikawa Prefecture. Wow. And then right now at the Field Museum.

in Chicago. This is so, this is gorgeous. At the Field Museum in Chicago right now, it's Pokemon Fossil Adventure. And there's a whole wing of the Field Museum

that's Pokemon fossils and full skeletons of the ancient Pokemon. And I gotta go. Something happened to me. I love it. I don't need combat. I need Pokemon.

This is like when the Last Jedi got you fully Star Wars pill. I feel so Pocopia-pilled. Yeah. And when I got my Pokemon stuff at the Pokemon store in Ginza, I'm checking out. And he's like, you like, Pocopia, you know. And I was like, yes. And he's like, no battles.

And I went, yes. And he's like, it's okay. And I was like, I think this cashier just shamed me for not battling with Pokemon. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's injure. Because I think some people like, like, they like the combat of it. That's the appeal. And then this one just, it's completely absent.

Yeah, but it felt like he saw through to my soul. Yeah, yeah. Like, me specifically, that should be an aspect of shame. Because he was like, no fighting. No combat. And I was like, no. But you're normally someone who doesn't like games that don't have comedy. I know.

So it's, it's interesting that he'd like, I don't know. It does feel judgy. It does. Wow. Yeah. I don't know. I feel about that. They were playing the music in the store.

Oh, my God. It's so good. What a country. There's a Pocopia Lofi album. It's great. Okay. Anyway, I got to stop. We got to talk about something else.

I have no reason to fly to this airport, but I do want to fly to this airport. Yeah. Look up the Field Museum. Look up the Field Museum, Pokemon Fossil exhibit. All right? I'll take a gander at this. It's fantastic. So, you know, they have Pokemon that are based on dinosaurs, right?

So they have the actual dinosaur skeletons like T-Rex and then the fully realistic, full-sized Pokemon fossil skeletons and be like, you know, this Pokemon skeletons actually based on Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's so fucking cool. They have a little like avatar for Akiko Shinya, who is a real, I guess the actual chief fossil preparator. at the at the museum. Yeah. Wow, how about that? You're not looking at any of the exhibits, though. You're just looking at some article that's just showing you pictures of people.

Well, yeah, but it was on the Field Museum website. I didn't know if they had any actual any photographs of the exhibitions. Well, the exhibition is astounding. And I'm going to Chicago to go to it because I have to see it. We've been talking for an hour. Should we get to our topic? This week we're talking about our best gaming day. Yeah.

Now, here's the thing. Some of these days are things that actually happened to us. Yes. But we're also going to talk about what would our ideal gaming day be? Yes. Like at this point in our lives, we have a totally free day. We have no obligations. We just get to game to our heart's content.

Yep. What would that consist of? I want to tell you about a phase of my life where every time I would wake up, I would play Settlers of Catan on the Xbox 360. I'd get up, I'd make my coffee, I'd play a round of Catan, and that was my opening game. Now, you can't do that anymore because all that shit's shut down. But I like a morning game. I like when you were doing Animal Crossing back in COVID times, you'd get up and you'd do the stuff that you had to take care of on your island and then move on to another game.

So my first volley in this conversation is, do you have a morning game? It's a great question. I do like the routinization of it. I do like that you can just, like, you have a game that's going where you just kind of do your dailies and then you move on. Yeah. I don't have one currently. What that usually is for me is a game like Marvel Snap, Harthstone, you know, like, I guess Wordle kind of occupies that same slot, although I've fallen off of Wordle again. I still play Pokemon the Card Game Pocket.

totally different relationship post-Pocopia. Now I'm like, oh, these are my guys. But yeah, you do, it's like, oh, I've got to like cash out my points or do my wonder picks or whatever. But so often, I mean, like, it depressingly often is just a mobile game because I, like, I boot up a console or turn on my gaming PC before I have to go to work, the day is just over. Or before I go to the gym is that's it. the days I got I like I have to do my other shit first is how my my brain kind of functions is there a um would you say that would you say that there's a genre of game other than mobile just as like a descriptor that you are more likely to play in a morning well no I think the the the more general thing there is is card games okay because I think like anything card based is kind of like you know it it it it's it It feels, even though some of these games have pretty heady strategic decisions, it's like it feels a little bit more casual. It feels like less of a commitment.

I think anything with a story, I just have a little hard. I just need some more time to settle in. Although I guess when I was really like into Stardue Valley or Animal Crossing, it's the same sort of thing. Just kind of getting a little bit of time in first thing in the morning. How about you, Ranch? Do you have like, is any of your gaming sort of based on the time of day? Like, are you more likely to play a certain kind of game? in the morning than at night?

Yeah, I think if I'm playing like a spookier game, I definitely want it to be nighttime or else it just doesn't have the same effect. Right, right. Morning time, I like to do crosswords. That's fun.

That's kind of what I do when I wake up. And then when I was playing Slay the Spire on my phone, I would do that in the morning too. Did you remove that from your phone, I imagine? I did. Yeah, I had to do it at a certain point. It's not on my phone anymore, but it's on my iPad. I think the card games occupy

the same sort of slot for me where it's kind of almost like waking up my brain. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But for you, you can play something. You can like get up and play something like Pocopia. Or I remember there's a time you're playing a ghost of Yote for like in like 30 minute chunks first thing in the morning. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean right now and because I'm so close to Pocopia right now, I will say that in my perfect gaming day, there is a section of Pocopia in my perfect gaming day. Wow. Here's what I would pitch is that I'd get up. I'd make myself a bowl of cereal. I'd make myself a perfect cup of coffee. I'd eat my cereal, have my cup of coffee, and I don't like playing video games while I'm eating.

So I'd probably watch an anime. I'd watch 20 minutes of an anime. And the first thing I'd do after that is play a morning game, which right now is Pocopia. And I would do that probably until 10.30 in the morning. because that's the cutoff for the morning game for me. Wow. Because usually if I'm going to start writing or something, that's my, I have to start.

Like, I get stressed out if I haven't started by 10 a.m. So on a perfect gaming day, I still have this sort of like cyclical circadian rhythm feeling to my life. So I'd play Pocopia until 10.30 in the morning. My perfect gaming day these days would be a Sunday because that's my day I'm off. That's my day I don't my my my no phone day, which I've been doing for maybe five years now. I mean, I've kept it up a while and it's usually it's generally the best richest day of my, my week, except for not being in touch with some people. But the, but I can I can plan around that too, you know, but it's just like it can be completely focused on just like reading a book or watching a movie. you know like even just watching a basketball game i really want to watch and and also just going on a

really present mindful walk like things like that i really love and i really treasure uh but as far as video game timing yeah i can just lock in and just play a game like just like this is this is my thing uh that that i'm going to do this is my task this ideal gaming obviously does not include any sort of work obligation because like i'm like you you know it's like it's a was the mark twain quote it's something like if your job is to eat a frog, do it first thing in the morning. If your job is to eat two frogs, eat the bigger one first. It's just like kind of like the days where I get my work done immediately are my most productive days and my most satisfying days.

So I generally, whether that's going to the gym or whether that's some sort of actual task I have to do either from home or in the office, I want to knock that out early. Okay. Yeah. So for me, it's 10.30 in the morning. I finished my Pocopia. My favorite game to play in the noon time, like the 1030 to 1 o'clock,

is a big Japanese role-playing game because they're often sunny. Like if you're playing like Xenoblate or you're playing Final Fantasy 13 or like they're sunny games. They're bright blue skies. They tend to take place during the day more often than like a Western RPG, I feel takes place more often in dungeons or at night. So I love playing.

Japanese RPGs at lunchtime, and I would play that until about 1 o'clock when I make my lunch. How about you? Do you have a lunchtime game? Do I have a lunchtime game? Again, so much of it depends on whether it's a work day or not. But on a weekend, I think it's just like if I have a meteor game, yes, the middle of the day is when I'll probably try to tackle it. That day is free. So I know that some people will take like their cinematic or meteor games and they'll push them towards the end of the day so that you're like, it's as if you're watching a movie, but you're playing that meaty game.

You like to play it earlier in the day. Yeah, I think so. Do you think dinosaurs don't like the word meteor? Because even though they like meat, that makes it remind some of the meteor. Matt's not here, so I have no idea. You can answer that question. A T-Rex. This stegosaurus is meteor than the triceratops.

It's like, dude. Why are you saying that? What? No, like you just said meteor. Yeah. It's like, oh, he said meteor, not meteor. Yeah, there's your four-panel comic. You nailed it. It's like, it sounds like it, and it just bums everyone out to hear it.

So just like watch what you say. Wow, I turn the page and this comic's still going. It's a two-parter. It's running a whole week long. I really like video game themed food. So on my perfect gaming day for lunch, first off, for breakfast, hold up. I didn't say what kind of cereal.

I said it in the thread. I'm going to have video game cereal and it's going to be Pac-Man cereal. Wow. Pac-Man cereal, which I don't even know if I ever ate or if I just imagined it, is like kicks. It's spheres with ghosts that are marshmallows. It's like I think maybe the first. I wonder if it was the first video game cereal.

It must have been. Because what would have come before Pac-Man cereal? Yeah, I doubt there was a licensed Pong cereal. I mean, there weren't too many games of notes that were like outside of the gamer niche that like be penetrated pop culture at the point where like there was a hit song called Pac-Man fever before Pac-Man. I mean, for sure I ate Ninja Turtle cereal because I remember those are like checks with marshmallows. I don't know that I ever actually ate Pac-Man. I mean cereal. But I've seen the box.

I own the box. And I stare at the box and I'm like, man, I would love to have a bowl of this. So I'd have Pac-Man cereal. I would make my food all day is going to be video game themed. And for lunch, I'm going to make a meal from one of my video game cookbooks. Wow. I love that. I was just thinking when you're saying that because I was not thinking about food from a video game standpoint at all.

but for me a natural lunch would be go to a hurry curry of Tokyo or I guess Coco Ichibanya and have a little coffee and curry. Oh, yeah. And you know what? This is a very furry persona. But like even if we can't get a coffee there, I get like a coffee from next door, bring it over. And that's my beverage I'm having with my curry. Yep. Yep.

Yep. That's pretty fun. But I think that that's so much of my here's the thing. Like in terms of curating it, beat for beat. I do want to have an element of going outside first. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I've had the days where, hey, I got nothing else to do.

I'm going to get up and I'm, as recently as Baldersgate 3, a game that, you know, completely occupied my life, just spending the entire day doing it. And as much as that's like the, it's like just eating cake for three meals a day. You know, like you kind of need to give your brain and body some breaks to be able. to process everything. And so, like, I do want to still have a cup of coffee, go for a nice little 20-minute walk around the neighborhood, first thing, get some sun on the skin. And so I wanted to go through my normal wake-up routine.

You know what I mean? I want to be, I want to, like, just kind of like, like, like, a way, welcome the day in the way I normally would. Well, since this is an absolute fantasy. Yeah. And doesn't actually isn't a thing that I, that I'm going to get to do ever in my life. I'm also going to get, so after I have my video game themed cookbook meal, like probably a chicken from the fallout cookbook because it's so fucking good, I'm going to hop on a on the Yamonote line and I'm going to take it to a retro video game arcade and I'm going to play after lunch in person at a retro video game arcade, like one of the ones that is in Tokyo where they actually. still have the Astro City machines or whatever, and I'll play some old video games from

post lunch till about 3 p.m. This reminds me of one of my actual best gaming days from childhood. I've maybe talked about on the podcast before, but my dad gave me the choice for my birthday of either getting a new video game, getting a new Nintendo game, or having the money for that to go to the arcade. And I chose Arcade Day and just having $50 at the arcade. Wow. And just being able to like, holy shit, I can play anything.

And I can really just like, I can just fucking put quarters into the, you know, this Konami beat him up or whatever the fuck and just kind of keep going with it. Yeah. Or this, this schmop. But also I just get to try games I otherwise wouldn't try. Or like, hey, this one costs a dollar. This can cost four tokens. I normally wouldn't splurge for this, but whatever.

I like, here we go. Let me try this sit down game I've never played before. Do you have any memory of how long you got to be at the arcade on 50 bucks? Shockingly short. No, I remember I went with, it was me and my friend, and we did, we did have an absolute blast, but I was like, we're going to be like 12 hours. And I think we were cooked within like a few hours, like, like, like, you. I want to stay between two to four hours.

I can't remember specifically. Wow. Yeah. The arcade I visited the most in Chicago was a nickel arcade. So you had like a $10 entry and then everything was on nickels. And so if you went with 20 bucks, like the amount of like the amount of time you could spend in a nickel arcade, which had all modern games. Yeah. But they were just guaranteeing that you went in and spent 10.

$10 minimum, which is a great business model. Like, they clearly made a ton of money. Maybe they're still there. I don't know. But yeah, you'd go in and then you'd be like, this one's four nickels? Holy shit. It's like a full race driving game, you know? Like it would be like the equivalent of four tokens, but would be nickels.

It was great. The other arcade day of note for me that I remember from childhood is the first. day I played Street Fighter 2. Yeah. Which was I was aware of Street Fighter 2. I had like, you know, EGM, game pro magazines, whatever print video game magazines of the era that had like Street Fighter 2 info that I was like combing through and obsessed with it. I was like, I got to play this fucking game. I can't like.

I was even like trying to pick like which character I'm going to play when I get there. And we were on a family road trip and we got to a stop. Boy, it might have even been in Vegas. I can't remember. but we got to we got someplace with an arcade and it was with my my older brother and there was a street fighter two cabinet and just getting to play that for the first time and you know just like oh my god i get to pick guile let me just see what it's like to play guile let me try to figure out how to do a flash kick you know what i mean like like shit like that was just like so fucking it was just so cool

to have this build up to this this game um that was going to you know occupy a large chunk of my life for the next year and change. Yeah. Yeah. That's another one that comes to mind. So in terms of a best gaming day now, boy, I'm just trying to think of how much, how to portion everything out. Because like I think I want to have, if I'm going to take my kind of cool down,

my like, my, like, my, like, Bellatro slot, you know, my, my chill game slot. I'll just kind of say, I'll, like, whatever card game I'm playing at the moment, we can just say, Balacho, but like that'll be the end of the day. So that's reserved for that. That'll be my kind of like, maybe I smoked a little weed. Maybe you had a glass of wine. You know what I mean?

I'm just sort of like, whatever. I'm just fucking chilling. I'm just playing this game that I'm just seeing how far I can get in this run. It could be a different roguelike too if I was like really into that at the moment. I mean, I've had times when it was like kind of like a, an FTL was kind of occupying that same sort of like chill game. Like whatever like like run based. slot.

Yeah. So that's, and maybe I'm working, I shouldn't be working my way backwards, but that one's, that's one that's easy to slot in a place for me. And that would be like my post-dinner, you know, post-a-whatever game, you know, by just like, this is like my pre-bedtime game. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

But the middle of the day, I would want to reserve for, yeah, again, and dinosaurs out there, I cover your ears, whatever the meteor game is that I happen to be playing at the moment. So like, it was like a Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, which I was playing for a time. It's like, like, hey, you know what? This is my, this is my chunk for Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. Probably on both sides of lunch to some degree. Like maybe like, like, like a couple hours before lunch and then, you know, from lunch after lunch until dinner. And like you, I'm not somebody who likes to eat while I'm gaming. Right. Like I, if I do, I'll like, you know, chopstick some, some, uh, fucking Cheetos or whatever the fuck. Like, I'll just chopstick a little.

snack or have stop by a stop down and have a piece of fruit but I'm not like eating a meal while I'm playing a game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't. Too messy. Yeah, your hands are occupied. Yeah. That being said, I am having pizza for dinner on this, on this perfect gaming day night.

I'm also having pizza for dinner. It's, you can't. When you're gaming, you got to have pizza. Such a perfect good. No, I was like, I was like, I was like, I'll have the coffee and curry. I'll have like a more healthful breakfast. I wonder if I can come up with something that's kind of video game themed for that. I'll think on that, see if anything comes to mind.

But yeah, I definitely want to want a trashy like pizza dinner. Yeah, you got a pizza dinner. Maybe some rude dogs. I'm finishing up at the arcade around 3.30 probably. And then I'm heading home. And I'm going to start the game that I play on both sides of dinner. And it's going to be whatever the darker game is. So if I'm playing like God of War Ragnarok, if I'm playing something violent or scary,

I'm going to start before dinner. take a dinner break, eat some pizza, and then continue after dinner up until the bedtime game slot, which is a different, totally different game. So being that I haven't finished Ragnarok, but I'm somewhere in it, right now on my perfect gaming day, that's the slot that I'll take up with my before and after dinner game. But in a world where I'm in the middle of Ghost of Yote, perfect time to play Ghost of Yote. Right. If Grand Theft Auto 6 is out, that'll probably be the time I play Grand Theft Auto 6. I don't like playing a Grand Theft Auto game during the day. Yeah, I get what you're saying.

I mean, as you're talking about this, I'm realizing like, maybe I should incorporate some sort of social thing. Like, for me, gaming is so much, like, kind of like it. And I know I'm not fully like you in this, but you like more social experiences. But for me, it's more like reading. It's more like a single user sort of thing. But I do have fun when I'm playing some sort of social game or some sort of game. Like so maybe there's a chunk of the day whether I'm either even just watching a Twitch stream I like. But also like I'm like I'm just watching some speed runs I like.

And that's just sort of like a little bit of a hey, I feel like I'm part of a community or something like this. Or I've got like some sort of online game that's a little bit more casual, not something that's not that's super competitive. and just playing with some, this is mostly to chop it up on chat with some friends. Yeah. If I'm, if I'm, if my Fortnite friends are around, they're typically around from 3.30 until about 6 or 7. So if they're around, that would be the time when I would play Fortnite. Then I'd have pizza. Then I would play God of War slash Grand Theft Auto slash whatever. And I do that until I go to bed early.

So I do that until 9.30 at night. And that would be close to the. the end of my perfect gaming day. Yeah. But like you, I do have nighttime games. I got to have a nighttime game. Let's hear about your nighttime games. Well, right now it's Polkopia.

It's my, the only fucking time I have to play Popopia right now is the 20 minutes after I get in bed before my melatonin kicks in. I'm like, oh, my guys. I can check out my guys. Did they finish that house? Oh, they finished the house. I'm so proud of them. Good job, guys.

They're so proud of me. I haven't seen the daytime. Because Pocopia is also locked to the time of day you have. I haven't seen daytime in Pocopia for a while. Wow. Which also is neat because I've caught some new Pokemon that are only nighttime Pokemon's. Yeah, that's really cool.

I mean, like, that was like, you know, the games that are on the day night cycle and then you have a job, like a real 24-hour day-night cycle. Like for me, that was the OG was a world of Warcraft. And I was working the game industry at the time and then coming home. being like, well, I never get to experience what it's like the day, like what daytime is like in Azaroth. I just always like in, you know, it's always nighttime, but, you know, whatever. I'll actually have something I pulled for a morning meal that is video game themed.

And honestly, it's one of my favorite donuts. And it's a Star Doe Valley recipe that I'm reminded of from the wiki a maple bar. Ooh. Treat myself to a little maple bar. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, right? That's good. Why not?

A maple ranch, do you have a video game themed breakfast that you would partake in? Ranch is like, what the fuck are you talking about? I eat normal food like a normal person. I can't remember a video game specific meal in a game I played recently. For some reason, I just keep thinking of the rotten carrots and Walterski. Okay, great. Yeah, some rotten carrots is probably a good way to start your day. Jesus Christ.

Okay. Okay, so you're having pizza. First you play your social game, then you're having pizza, then you're playing a nighttime game. Or maybe I'm playing, maybe having the pizza. Maybe I'm having like an earlier dinner. I'm smoking a little weed. I got myself a glass of wine and that's when I'm playing that social game for a bit. Okay.

I say bye to my friends. Everyone's logging off. And then it's like, you know, I'm going to bed in a minute. I have this thing. I put on the blue light blocking glasses, which I believe you do as well. So I put those on and then I boot up a little blotro and I just chill with belotro. Wow. So your morning game and your bedtime game are the same game.

It could very well. I could very well bookend the day with the out, whatever my chill game is at the moment. That's one way to go. I also could just be like, depending on my mood, I also could just jump right into, again, the meteor game that I'm playing. And again, I'm, if you're a velociraptor, please don't unsubscribe with Patreon. Why are you so entertained by this? I know it's a vogue's tragedy. in your community, but please, I just mean in a different context.

You saying that your morning game and your evening game might be the same game, I'm realizing that often is the case for me too. Yeah. During the time that I was doing Catan, I would play, I'd probably play one more round of Catan before I went to bed. And now if I'm playing Pocopia first thing in the morning, I'll probably play it right before bed too, because it is an extremely cozy game. Yeah, and that's what you, you kind of want that curtain open and that curtain closed for your day. Coffee talk or whatever it was called.

Oh, coffee talk was so great. It was a perfect nighttime bedtime game. Yeah, game is good to hug. If there is a dragon quest out, that is such a good nighttime. Yeah, sure. Like 30 minutes of dragon quest before you go to bed, you feel like a million dollars. And look, I'm just going to say it if there's an H game I'm playing. I play some a little horny maybe close to bed.

There you go. You know. There you go. Glad you answered then and not like first thing, logging on H game. Christ. Make a little coffee, have a donut, back to age game. Yeah, I mean, it's, my ideal is that there, like, if there was like a standalone version of the Yakuza hostess game, like, that's like the kind of thing. Like, that to me is like my ideal kind of chill game.

Yeah. But anything that's kind of like that. that also has that element of like, you know, it's got a little character to it as well. I think if I was to modify anything about the gaming industry, it would be that any mini game could also be sold separately or was functional as a separate part of the, like if you have, if the hostess game is part of Yakuza, that you could just from the menu scream press hostess game once you've unlocked that part of the game and just play that part of the. minigame. Yeah, it'd be cool if that had an infinite mode. It's kind of what I wanted with dispatch, too. I just wanted the mini game to have an infinite mode.

Or like Queensblood in Final Fantasy. Sure. You just like press the button on the menu screen and you just like Queensblood would be fantastic. Do you have any other days that were like an actual, those actual great gaming day for you? Because I do, I did think of one area that for me did evoke a few great gaming days. And that was during the pandemic. we were all locked down obviously and for me both

day I got Ghosted Tsushima and Day Last of Us 2 came out And obviously I got absorbed with Animal Crossing a little bit But I did not quite have like the Launch Day sort of like immersive immersive experience they did when I was like Holy shit I love The Last of Us so much I've played through that game

You know like three or four times Their two is coming out And I just have dedicated time Just play the shit out of this game And I'm playing it and I'm just like kind of like don't really know. I know the initial twist, but beyond that, I don't know where it's going. I don't know anything about Abby.

Like that completely blindsides me. And just having like a dedicated day to just like really play the shit out of that. I was just so hyped for it and it was so delivering. Yeah. That was definitely a gaming highlight day for me too. I played it with Mary who was in lockdown with me in our tiny apartment. and we just trade off the controller back and forth, and it was incredible. We beat, you know, we beat Last of Us Part 2 there in those initial lockdown weeks,

and she just happened to have the controller for the final fight, and we were both just yelling at the television. Like, it was, it was wonderful. That's awesome. Another really special gaming day in my memory was with my parents, and it was for the game out of the same. world for the Super Nintendo, also known as another world. And I was, you know, a child.

And they had, I think, gotten it for me for Christmas or, like, I don't, I remember. Like, it's not, because I got, I had a Genesis first, but at some point along, like, the timeline of life, I either rented or had a Super Nintendo and rented or had a Super Nintendo. and rented or had out of this world and played it for a week with my parents. So maybe it was a rental game. I'm not sure. But we would sit down in front of this television and we didn't watch TV for that week every night when they'd get home from work or whatever. We'd all play out of this world.

And I would be the one controlling, but they'd be the one trying to tell. Like, they'd be like, can you try this? Can you try that? And I'd be like, I can't fit. I'm not coordinated enough to do it. And then when we'd get past a screen or a puzzle, we'd all cheer. And I beat the game with my parents. That's so cool.

Like sitting on the couch behind me and I'm sitting on the floor. And that's like, like a core memory forever. It's so weird. Another one that comes to mind for me regarding launches is the GameCube launch line. because I remember lining up outside of a, you know what it might have been an EB. I can't remember if it was an EB or a GameStopper. I think this was pre the merger.

But it was one of those that was at the mall. And I was in college at that point. And the line I remember was like me, one other guy I made it and befriended within the line who was like around my age, you know, late teens, early 20s. And then like 30 moms. and I got to be like the mayor of the line

because like the all these there was a prescribed bundle where like like you know like you have to buy the GameCube plus you know that you're forced to buy a third party controller plus you have to buy three games and all these like parents who are just there getting something for their child were just like I don't what I'm supposed to do like I don't want games to get and so like me just kind of going around like like like okay you want Luigi's Mansion Super Monkey Ball and Wave Race

Like just like telling just like coaching parents on what they want to how old your kid like you know just kind of like trying to give them all advice what games do they play And like I was just like oh I felt genuinely useful Yeah but then also like just like the satisfaction of like hey this this fucking because I'd ordered a game cube controller from Japan just to hold Wow and so I just had a game game controller for like since the Japanese launch that I was just like I messing around with and getting used to the tactility of it And then when I had the actual system I could take home and I could play and I could boot it up and that moment of the do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ccccccc. It's just like one of my favorite startups screens ever, and then just getting to play some, honestly, kind of mid-launch titles, but still it was a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah. Another really, really great gaming day was,

I've talked about it before, playing Resident Evil 4 while I lived in Holland and eating double-decker pizza, which the discord has been like it wasn't called double-decker. Here's the thing, guys. In the UK, it wasn't. In Amsterdam, it was. Like, it was the same pizza. It had different names in different regions. It was called the double-decker.

Yeah, so if you're from the UK, drawing up on your memory, stop asking what's all this then. So playing Resident Evil on a Sunday, which was. It was typically our day off when we lived in Amsterdam with this guy, Jim, and we'd play it all day long, order a pizza, and then we were writing a show together. And it was like really core memories of video games. And then I'll also say the day that I felt the most alone, but also like I was seeing something secret was the day that Sonic CD came out for the Sega CD. Wow. Because when you put in Sonic CD, like all the Sonic games start with, you know, like he's like, he wags his finger or whatever and it's like that locked like menu screen and then you start the game.

And Sonic CD you put in and there was a cartoon that started playing. And nobody I knew in the whole fucking world had Sega CD. And I was like, this is something that I am experiencing and I can't talk. talk about with anybody and it is so special and so awesome and I'm going to go to school tomorrow and I'm going to be like no Sonic was a cartoon and he was running and it's not like the game. He was like a full cartoon and then they started singing in English over the cartoon and I was like nobody. I don't know anybody. I got nobody can see this and it felt it felt like like finding a door to Narnia.

Wow. It was like, this is so incredible and nobody, I can't fucking talk to anybody about it. Yeah. And that was a really remarkable, like, singular experience day. That's one thing that people who are young enough to have grown up entirely with the internet will never quite understand is just the idea of being isolated with something. Yeah. Like if just like, I don't know anyone else who's experienced this. There's no one else to talk to about this.

Yeah. You can't, you just can't find a community. You can't find a subreddit. You can't find other people who are doing this online. You can't find anybody. You're just totally alone. If your video store near your house had a movie that other video stores didn't, or if you were renting something that wasn't from a blockbuster,

you couldn't talk to anybody about it. You couldn't be like, oh, man, I saw this crazy movie with, Tom Cruise and unicorns, and they'd be like, what are you talking about? I remember talking about Day of the Tenicle to some friends, the Tim Schaefer game, which we covered in the podcast previously, and them just thinking I was a liar because it was a game they hadn't heard of. Yeah. It's just like, like, because the other thing you run into as a kid all the time, too, is just like, if someone else hadn't encountered that they'd just be skeptical about it.

Right, right. But now, they're just full of shit. Now there's no, there's no, like, even if I found, like, I've, I named that run of Japanese cities. And I'm sure there's a listener who's like, oh, yeah, I've biked a lot of those, you know? Right. Like, or if I were to go on social media and post about it, which I probably will at some point soon, people will comment, oh shit, I've been to Yuzahara. I love that place. That library is so crazy, you know?

Yeah. But if it was, if this was the time before the internet, one, I couldn't have possibly planned this fucking trip. But two, I would say I went to a library in Yuzuhara that was so gorgeous and people would be like, good. And that would be it. Right. You know, and I might show you a photograph and be like, wow, look at this library. And you'd be like, wow, that looks crazy. But nobody would comment, like comment on the photo.

Oh, I've been there because the net's not wide enough. Yeah, I mean, like I can draw some Judy Hop's erotic fan art on my own, but then what I'm going to do is just put it in a drawer? No, you're going to jerk off to it. Okay, well, yeah, after that. She was in Fortnite. I heard. I'm surprised they didn't make you come back.

I don't know how they'd scale her appropriately. That's the whole thing with Fortnite. No, they made them big. Yeah, I know. That's what I'm saying. Like, that's what's weird. I feel like the proportions are always off. No, the proportions, they made bugs in her.

The proportions were right, and people are like, this sucks because they're a larger target. Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. But the proportions were right. Okay. All right.

I'll investigate. Oh, right, because she's a large. So you're like, I'm leaning in. Carlack energy here. All right. So to review. I'm waking up. I'm having Pac-Man cereal and a cup of coffee and I'm playing a little Pocopia.

Then I'm playing a Japanese role-playing game. I'm having my lunch, which is going to be something from. my video game cookbook, I make myself. I'm heading out on the Yamonote line, going to a retro arcade. I'm playing some Astro City-based CRT, retro 90s, early 2000s video games at an arcade, taking the train home, playing some Fortnite if my friends are around, and if not, I'm starting my night game, which is probably more violent, cutting that in half with pizza for dinner, finishing up my violent game, getting tucked into bed, and finishing my day.

with the morning game that I started it all with, which was probably Pocopia, and that is my perfect gaming day. That sounds idyllic. It's perfect. Wow. Ranch, do you have any days that you remember that are video game associated

where it's like, I just had this great, this great video game related day or alternately, if you could concoct your ideal video game day? Like, what kinds of things might you do? I haven't had a lot of full video game days. I guess my favorite video game memories were going to my cousin's house and being babysat by them,

which really meant that I got to play their Nintendo 64. There you go. Booting up Mario Party, begging my cousins to play with me, them saying no, and then playing every single character on Mario Party by myself. So I guess my dream day would be able to play multiplayer games with some friends on the couch together

and make a whole day of it. Yeah, you know what, that's pretty good. That's, that is great. Because when I think back of like, man, I just, I can't remember the last time I had like a like a sort of land party vibe. You know what I mean? Like just the idea of like, hey, let's get some PCs all in the same room and then fucking play some multiplayer game or or like just couch like, hey, we're going to play. We're going to play. We're going to play fucking a melee.

And we're just going to, you know. The last memory I have of having people over to play video games is you and Matt. virtual boy. And not liking it. And not liking it. Yeah, that's sort of sort of in IRL gaming days are treasured experience with your friends.

Yeah, they really are. Shall we do a segment? I love segments. I've got a dudes and we're going to find out if Ranch knows who they are. It's the return of our segment, Dude Ranch. Dude Ranch. So Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is out next week on

Switch 2 and Xbox. It's been out on PC and a PlayStation for some time. So this is Dude Ranch Final Fantasy Edition. Heather, since you know the Final Fantasy franchise so well, I'm going to give you a name of a dude from Final Fantasy, and you're going to tell me whether or not our producer, Ranch can identify them. Okay.

Ranch covering her faces she always does. Okay, great. First up, Cloud. Yes. Ranch knows who Cloud is. Ranch, do you know who Cloud is? Yes, I know Cloud is. Yay.

And Final Fantasy 7. Yes. Spiky hair. There you go. Big sword. All right. Continuing on. Iconic beyond iconography.

Yes. Barrett. No. Ranch doesn't know. Ranch doesn't know who Barrett is. Ranch, you know who Barrett is. I do know who Barrett is. Yay.

Big guy with the gun. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay. Two for two so far. Wow. Sid.

No. No. Ranch does not know who Sid is. I don't think Ranch knows who Sid. Have you heard of Sid? Do you know Sid? Is Sid the guy with the bandana? Wow.

So there is, Sid is a recurring character in the Final Fantasy franchise. But yes, there is an iteration of him that has a bandana. I'm blown away. I'm shocked. You're doing great so far. How does Ranch know who Sid is?

This is a banner run for, for ranch and dude ranch. Yeah, this is the best dude ranch that she's ever had. All right, continuing on. Remember when she didn't know what big the cat was? She was like, that's not real. Clive. No.

Ranch does not know who Clive is. No, Ranch does not know who Clive is. Ranch, do you know Clive? Is Clive a big cat? Clive is not a big cat. Clive is from Final Fantasy 16, which we did discuss on the podcast, but I don't think you've played yourself. Yeah. And the truth is, I knew Ranch didn't know what Clive was because I didn't know who Clive was.

I was like, fuck, which one is fucking Clive? It's kind of a, it's a very strange name for a Final Fantasy friend man. Yeah. Titus or Titus. Does Ranch know who Titus is? I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes, Ranch knows who Titus is.

Ranch, do you know Titus? Is he friends with the guy with the bandana? No, I wouldn't say so. He's the protagonist of Final Fantasy 10. Another Netsu Yenomura design. Kind of actually has a look kind of like a cloud hair to some degree, but sort of like a beachy or sort of vibe

because that's kind of sitting in Okinawa and Byron. He's a beechy guy and he looks like, but does not actually play volleyball. But he's got like a ball with him a lot of the time. Okay, nothing. Nothing. She's no, wow. Next up, does Ranch know Noctus?

Oh, man. No, she doesn't know Noctus. Rochelle? Noctus is the bad guy. Heather is shaking her head, sadly, because Final Fantasy 15 is one of your favorite Final Fantasies. Oh, he's one of the favorite. The guy's on the road trip.

Yeah, he's one of the guys on the road trip. He's the pouty frontman. You were disappointed that she didn't know that. Well, no, I just got sat because I was like, everybody knows Cloud. Yeah. And in a better world, everybody knows Noctus, but I'm not, I know that people. We don't live in that world. Yeah, no, people don't know Noctus and nobody's watching Kingsclave.

I've still never played Final Fantasy 15. What the fuck? I know. This is a big blind. spot for me. I played 16 and I was like, and I just didn't go back to fifth. I never, I just never made time for it. What was the bet that we had for whether or not Grand Thft Auto releases this year? I don't know. Was it that it would or wouldn't? No, because we did like the thing that got us to play Mother 3. Yeah. We did that for Grand Theft Auto. We had some

bet. Oh yeah. That was Switch related. That was Switch 2 really. Yeah. That was Switch to Release date. The switch two release date one wager was whoever came closest and ended up being you gets to pick a game for all of us to play. And then we covered it on the podcast. Right, right. So you're saying if we did another iteration of that, you would pick Final Fantasy 50. I think I might. I mean, I should just play it. It's so, look.

Especially our buddy Ray Chase past guest who is a listener of the podcast. It's flawed. It's a performance. But it's also so good. Yeah. All right. continuing on with Dude Ranch Final Fantasy edition. Squall.

Man. Does Ranch know Squall? I don't think Ranch knows squall. Ranch? Squall's from Final Fantasy 7. No. You have the Final Fantasy wrong. Squall is the protagonist of Final Fantasy 8.

Kind of the cloud of Final Fantasy 8. I have no idea who is then. Do you know who? Well, do you know, know who Leonhardt is. No. Okay. Because I thought maybe

through the Kingdom Hearts connection. Squall Leonhardt, yeah. Because he's called Leonhardt in the Kingdom Hearts games. Yeah, I wonder if you've seen him in Kingdom Hearts.

You can maybe look him up later, but like he's got his big thing is the gun blade. Yeah, he's got a sword that's a gun. It's got a trigger on it. It's part gun, but a sword.

Yeah. It looks like a revolver, but it's a sword instead of a pistol part. You and I are both Final Fantasy 8 defenders. Yeah. I love that game. Yeah.

All right, a few more. Locke. Nope. Quick no. Ranch, who's Locke? No. No idea. We're going back to the Super Famicom era.

Locke is from Final Fantasy 6. Yep. How about Cecil? Nope. Another quick no. Ranch? No. Cecil from Final Fantasy 4, the Dark Night.

turned a paladin and finally Craig. Nope. Ranch, you know Craig? No. I don't think anyone would know Craig because Craig is the character my friend

renamed Cecil to in Final Fantasy 4 through naming way, which made conversation impossible. Because he'd be talking about Craig and I'd be like, wait, no, who's that? Oh, you're Cecil. He's like, who's Cecil? I was like, we could never get on the same age.

He renamed all of his characters. Wow. So it was just like it, I was like the one, again, the one kid I could talk to about Final Fantasy 2, it was released in the U.S. as Final Fantasy 4, canonically, is that he'd, he'd completely fucked with his, like, his game enough where I just like, we couldn't get on the same page. I want to know if Ranch knows who Lightning is. Do you know who Lightning is? I don't know who Lightning is. That's a shame.

I should have put Lightning in here. Yeah. That's a good call. Lightning is the lady protagonist of Final Fantasy. 13 and also a former spokesmodel for Louis Vuitton. Wow. Yeah. The character was a specific?

Yeah. They put, they put her up on billboards holding the purses and shit like she was a real person. I really, I mean, I specifically went all dudes for this one to kind of stick with the dude ranch thing. But I could have, you know,

I could have thrown someone else in there. They could have thrown in an Aki Ross perhaps. Yeah. If you don't remember the finalization of the spirits within movie at all. No. Who does? I've seen that movie multiple times and barely remember it. That was Dude Ranch and that's this week's get played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen Ranch, Twitch.TV slash yard underscore underscore Sard. Anything you want to plug, Rochelle? Yeah, sometimes I switch streams, sometimes I podcast. There you go. Nice. Hey, the Defiles. We were talking paranormal stuff earlier. If that's your bag, check out her and Joanna's podcast.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, Benpruntymusic.com. Our artist by Duck Brigade Design, DuckBrigade.com, get played merch at kinshipgoods.com and a bonus episode every Wednesday on our Patreon. Subscribe at patreon.com slash get played. And hey, our perfect gaming days got played. Perfect days. Wow, what perfect days we've had. Perfect days. I'm cleaning a toilet and I love it.

I'm also cleaning the toilet, listening to some tapes. It's the best. nieces visiting. Wow. Taking care of some plants. I've got a book that I'm reading. Yeah, perfect days. Perfect days.

Perfect days. That was a Hidgum podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast. That was us now on HeadGum. Each episode, we're going to go into a deep dive from our show.

This Is Us. That's right. We're going to go episode by episode. We're also going to pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. Are we going to cry? Yes. A little bit. Are we going to laugh? A lot. A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man.

Listen to that was us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify. New episodes every Tuesday.