Get Played - Remasterpiece Theater

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Heather, Nick and Matt discuss their favorite video game remasters, which ones they'd love to see, demakes, and more! This month's We Play, You Play: GoldenEye 007! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd On patreon.com/getplayed or on Stitcher Premium. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I haven't seen you both in so long. I know. It's been infrequently over the last three years. Yeah. It's wild how that time has passed and how we just adapted to doing everything remotely. But being in person is so great. And look, I thought I'd surprise you with it, but you notice anything different about me? It's hard to see because we're just so used to seeing you on Zoom.

I don't really have... Did you get a haircut or something? Look a little closer. New shirt? Well, there's something new about me. I got remastered. What? This is Wyger Remastered.

What does that mean? Everything's better. I'm higher resolution. I'm more precise with my word choice. Who who remastered you? I have so many questions. Like, I feel like I have a book of questions. Who remastered you? Well, there's all sorts of places that do remastering. Oh, is that so? Yeah. OK. There's a lot of studios that have just kind of started focusing on remastering exclusively. And you went, did they approach you or did you go to them? So I went to them.

It's actually more like I went to him. It was one guy. Uh-huh. And he specializes in remastering, you know, men. So I was like, okay, yeah, hey, I'm a dude. Go ahead and remaster me. Okay. You look like remaster me. Okay. You look like shit, man.

I didn't want to say it. But this is a... We got ourselves a Grand Theft Auto with a trilogy on our hands here. This is bad. Look, my budget wasn't super high. I put a lot of it on my credit cards. What physical, what was the process by which you were remastered? So I was unconscious for a lot of it, but his office had like a belt sander and some varnish.

This is like a craftsman. Yeah, it was. I'm in a craftsman. Yeah. It was real. I'm in a lot of pain still. I, Nick, I don't want to be this person, but I have to be this person and say, I think you got ripped off and you're, you need to go to a hospital. You guys, you think I got bad Chrome? Chrome? Did that ripper doc give me bad Chrome? i gonna turn into a cyber psycho maybe i don't know we gotta we gotta get you to a hospital now

yeah yeah if he was using a belt sander on you and lacquer thinner then you gotta you you have you gotta go to a doctor immediately and I paid a surcharge for penis too. What? Oh, God. Has something happened to your penis? I can't believe I'm asking this on the show. Are you okay? Let me just say there's some extra chrome down there too.

Yuck. What's old is new again. But is it still old again? Well, we discuss all things remake in Remasterpiece Theater this week on Get Played. Thank you. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played! I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. Wow, that's me, Nick Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone!

Hello! Everyone, we're in the studio! We're in studio. We're in person. We're IRL. Wow. I have to look at their faces. I had to put pants on. Wait, you're in the studio all the time. Uh, yeah.

This is awkward for me because it's so infrequently that I'm in person for anything now. Interesting. I work on Zoom. I am alone all day long. So, like, this is, I'm a little tense, a little anxious. And if that comes through in my voice, then then I think you, the listener, get a sense of what I'm personally going through. Right. That's the energy you want if you're listening to a podcast. I sense that the host is having a bad time.

I like it. It's wonderful to see you both in person. This isn't the only time we've seen each other in person in recent years, but it's become infrequent. What was once a regular weekly occurrence. I know. We used to eat the Earwolf snacks. Not reading. The same snacks.

But in a different building. With a nice view of the cement mixer. Oh boy. It nice view of the cement mixer. Oh, boy. Yeah, it's a good-looking cement mixer. If you're in LA proper, you can probably figure out the intersection. You know what I'm talking about. I'm used to the sound of somebody speaking

and their mouth flap being slightly desynced. I could do that. Just a little bit. So if you guys could, I don't know, generate that effect for me in person, it would be great. Okay. Perfect. Apodaca just demoed it.

It was great. I felt comfortable immediately. You probably heard my lips going. And these very sensitive mics. Very sensitive. Very sensitive. They were telling me their feelings earlier. Yeah, this is the thing.

These mics are zoomers. Yeah. They're fucking sensitive. Yeah, I know. thing. These mics are zoomers. Yeah. They're fucking sensitive. Yeah, I know. They never, they have soft hands. Yeah. They never worked a hard day's work in their life. No, look.

And they just want stuff. They don't want to work anymore. Yeah. Oh, I got to be in the podcast studio? Yeah. My generation would kill to have this be what I do for a living, be a microphone. I just want to eat ass all day. Shut up.

Go get a job. I saw a great critique of why millennials and Gen Zers aren't drifting towards the conservative side of the political spectrum. They read. Well, no, it was also that conservatism is an attempt to conserve the money and property and everything that you've already achieved. So you're like, oh, I don't want to get taxed. I don't want this to be taken away from me. Like you have that sense. But millennials and Gen Zers don't have anything.

Yeah. So there's nothing to conserve. Yeah. They're like, tax my little ass if I care. Go ahead. I have nothing. What are you going to take from me? Nothing?

I was like, huh. Okay. You're renting everything, including your content. It's like there's very little content that people own anymore. It used to be like, hey, I got my library. I got my record collection. I got my DVD shelf. Now it's like I get subscription services to all these different platforms,

and they might arbitrarily take something down at some point. Yeah, I think you, the listeners, should demand the return of Jordan Peele's The Twilight Zone. Yes. To Paramount Plus. They delisted The Twilight Zone? Yeah, they did. A huge property. Wow.

They're taking, Netflix is taking the rest of development off. It's like they spent all that money. Yeah, it's baffling. I mean, I understand. Westworld, you can't watch it anywhere. Why they're doing It's like they spent all that money. Yeah. It's baffling. I mean, I understand. Westworld, you can't watch it anywhere. Why they're doing it, which is that they want money. Yes.

But as a person who also wants money, it was a bummer to be like, oh, I guess I'll never get a check for that ever again. Yeah. And by check for that, I mean like a hundred dollars. Yeah. Hey, a hundred dollars is nothing to sneeze at.

No, if you handed me a hundred dollars right now, I'd be like, this is this is fucking you. No, I'd fucking sneeze at it. Yeah, it's it's an interesting. I mean, it's it's look, we're coming up on a key negotiating period for and podcasting is not a part of this. But, you know, just just we've all kind of worked in hollywood in various capacities the entertainment industry we're coming up on a contract deadline for the three major unions well i mean that excluding iatsy uh you know three of the four major unions in hollywood uh dga the director's guild wga the writers guild and sag

after and that they all kind of converge at the same point. There's some coordination between the unions, but, you know, they also all have their own agendas. But it is it does feel like kind of an inflection point is is is coming up soon. I'm going to talk very generally. Yeah, I think it's there's been a lot of shift in the industry. And this isn't an industry podcast like well i'm not i'm not here to tell you how it goes yeah we're not haze and sean over here okay over the hollywood handbook but i will say that there's been a big shift in the industry which i

think is also reflected in the games industry it's like a broad spectrum shift that has happened over the last decade where as you said nick we're renting our content, we're subscribing to content, and there aren't a lot of protections for the workers in those content delivery services. Right. So everybody's about to go on strike on all sides and be like, I want more money. I want more rights. And we'll see what happens. I'm looking forward to having the summer off when I want more money. I want more rights. And we'll see what happens. I'm looking forward to having the summer off when I can

stream Fortnite. And you know, if you would like to be somebody who I think if you subscribe to the Patreon you own that. Like I think you can download an mp3. Yeah, you can download it. That's yours. You can do that at patreon.com slash getplayedbaby. But then it's also like

it feels like every you know you have to have the foresight to anticipate something being taken away from you yeah to be like i am going to go to the trouble of storing this locally because at some point in the future this platform could be sold off to this other platform and then the new owner could decide well all this other content i want to license the rights of to something else. So it's like, it's just, it requires you to be proactive, which is fucking annoying. Our library of content here on Get Played will someday go away. Yeah. Just prep yourself for it.

Take the entire library, every episode we've ever released except one, and put it up on Torrent. Yeah, or burn it to a CD. Yeah, there you go. And listen to it on a nice long road trip. That's the right approach. You can put like two episodes on a CD probably. How big is one of these? How big is a final?

I don't know. Usually, I feel like they leave a lot of room left on a CD in general. A CD, what, nine tracks, ten tracks, about 30 minutes? Yeah. Sometimes we're going an hour and a half, almost two hours on these fuckers. That's true. But I'm just trying to think of compression and such, because it's like a little, well, I don't know. I don't know if this is more compressed than an audio track on a CD.

May I recommend mini disc as a solution yeah there you go mini disc there's a mini disc club that I'm trying to get into because one of their first releases is going to be the soundtrack to Sonic Mania wow and I'm like

fuck that is I mean that is a bullseye on a Venn diagram of my overlapping interests. Wow. Sonic on Minidisc, let's fucking go. I love that. I heard that when Minidisc, because if you think back of the time when Minidisc was, like, on the scene, and when Sony was pushing the platform, Austin Powers was very big.

I fucking knew it and i heard they were trying to get dr evil to do to be the spokesperson um i'm so mad that i didn't say it and they shot they actually shot an ad you can find it you know like it's not it's not on youtube but you can find it on like daily motion or whatever yeah and it's an ad where Dr. Evil says, I shall call you mini-disc. What can it hold? A million files? Scott's like, no, you fucking idiot. It's a billion files.

Yeah, so look that up. And hey, burn that to a disc so you have it. And he's talking about the files that you could zip. That you can compress onto a mini disk just talking through the assets of the format I'm realizing what's happening is that you guys like I was like why does my dad still talk

about Forrest Gump and it's basically the same thing happening here you guys are talking about Austin Powers like it's a reference like it's a thing that somebody should say it happened the hi Like it's a reference. Like it's a thing that somebody should say. It happened. The.

Hi. We're waived that by Cody Fisher. There are windows in the studio and we and our friend Cody Fisher just walked by. That was pretty neat. What happened? That was pretty neat. That doesn't happen on Zoom. No, I mean, if it did.

I mean, she doesn't live far from any of us. She could easily walk by any of our windows at any time. You just never know. On the fucking top floor. Maybe she's in one of those Chinese spy balloons. It's like a Junji Ito moment. She just walks right by. Oh! hey everyone you know you want to eat healthy you want to eat well but you don't want it to

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and that's why I'm excited to welcome them as a new partner. If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five AG1 travel packs with your first purchase exclusively at drinkag1.com slash getplayed. That's drinkag1.com slash getplayed. Check it out. Hey, and quick reminder before we get into the episode, this month's We Play, You Play is GoldenEye 007 coming next Monday, February 27th. So check that out. Guys, I'm excited to talk about today's topic but before we do we always sort of chat about what we've been playing right we do do that that's right so so why don't we

it is my turn oh wow wow am i here am i peaking i think you know what i'll sort it out i'll sort it out okay great hey everybody is me that resident evil merchants i'm glad you were conscious of peaking oh i'm not conscious okay i was just gonna say that's one of those things that's easier to fix during the record than in post in post it's always gonna you know clip a little bit i've got a favorite post i urinate on it so you you mean like a street lamp or a telephone pole? Got it. Hi, everybody. If this is your first

exposure to the podcast, then I'd like to introduce myself. I am the Resident Evil merchant, known for saying in the game, what are you buying? But here on the show, I say, what are you playing? And also my catchphrase

is co-opted by IGN, those sons of bitches. Not a single drop of residuals. I'm going on strike. Oh, you're going on strike. That's right. I'm only going to appear on this show.

Okay, well. If you're going to go on strike, I think to honor the picket line, you probably shouldn't appear on this show. Okay, well. If you're going to go on strike, I think to honor the picket line, you probably shouldn't appear on this show as, you know, just in the spirit of your protest. I'm going to scab myself. Just don't, you know, don't go ahead and do that. I think just go ahead, take some time off.

You know, focus on trying to advocate for your fellow workers. What I'm saying is like, it's fine for you not to come to advocate for your fellow workers. I don't think you don't need to. What I'm saying is like, it's fine for you to not to come in here for a few months. You know, I tried to get a new job. I was I was teaching yoga classes, as we know, from last week. That's right.

Was told to never come back. It seemed like you did not actually get like you were not appointed to that position. You just kind of took that position. You just kind of took that position. You just kind of took a class over. They were upset that I made everybody drink Orange Crush. Yeah, that's pretty at odds with wellness. They're not drinking soda. I would have been stoked.

I love soda. Well, you should have come to class. I guess I should have. Where were you, Madhav Madhaka? I simply wasn't there. And what are you playing? Oh, okay. Well, I'm playing a lot of things right now.

You know, I do this. This is exactly what I do, right? Where I'll start playing a game, and then I'll think about something and be like, I kind of want to play that a little bit. So that's just been happening. I've been bouncing between many a title. I've been bouncing between many a title. Last week, Nick, you said that you impulse bought the Switch OLED.

Yes. Oof. And then not two days later, what am I doing? I'm taking my little ass over to GameStop. I'm a two-Switch household. Yeah. You know, I have the analog pocket. I have the Steam Deck. I have the Steam Deck.

I have all the other consoles. I'm thinking to myself, do I need two switches? Do I need two switches or do I just want one really nice one? Right. So I took them to GameStop and I traded them in and I got myself to switch OLED. Only had to pay the difference and boy this thing's fucking nice. It's so

It's really nice. It's really nice. I hate how nice it is. It's not better. No. It's like not a more powerful system. It should be but it's not. It's nice.

It does have it does feel sturdier somehow. It's a lot sturdier. I think part of it is just like it weighs more. Yes. It actually feels more substantial. And I think over time the joy cons felt like they're getting a little loose maybe on mine because i've just had it since like launch basically on your on your

your your switch light on my switch on my switch uh you're such heavy yeah on the switch heavy and i i i took it over game stop got the full amount for both, which I was kind of surprised by. I gave them a nice little wipe down, you know, got them nice and ready for the show floor. Sure. And they didn't check the Joy-Cons. Those guys drift. Those guys drift like crazy. So sorry to whoever buys that.

But my man Jesse over at GameStop was a saint, this guy. He was unreal. He was so helpful because I needed to transfer some files over. My four Pokemon games and Animal Crossing. Because they don't use the cloud for their saves. Right. For a reason that I don't really understand. Why would they do that? Why would they make things convenient for their biggest problem? for a reason that i don't really understand why would they do that

yeah why would they make things convenient for their biggest problem nintendo loves inconsistency yes like even if you could like somehow only like update or you know if they only let you do it like once a month or something like i'd be happy with that um but they don't let you use the cloud, so I had to sort of like not beg. I was prepared to beg. Can I just like transfer this stuff over to the new Switch? So I had to set up the new Switch immediately right out of the box. It needs a system update. Of course.

Yeah. They don't let you use their Wi-Fi there. Oh, boy. So I'm doing it on a hotspot on my phone, and it it's gonna take like 70 minutes that's a long time i was like i can't fucking stay here like i was like i don't i don't want to be in the way and the guy was and jesse was like well how far do you live and truth is i don't live that far away but i don't live close enough to come back yeah but he was like go home download it'll be faster on your home internet and then just come back so i was like okay i did that and he was right i was at home for like three minutes

if that incredible turned back around went over there did the transfer which did take some doing because did i forget to download the animal crossing tool on the new switch yes did i take the sd card out of the one that had it on the switch light yes so i had to download it on both which took about 10 minutes total and then transferring all of them took some doing too because the hot spot was going in and out but i got all my saves my island is safe dom is still there wow he still there. My ride or die, my day one. That was cool. When I got my OLED switch, I left my island behind.

Because I was like, what is the point of this? I haven't opened this island since January 1st, 2021. So I was like, which also was my that was my like resolution was I have to stop playing this game. Wow. A resolution that I imagine I will be executing again this December 31st. Yeah. But yeah, I left my island behind. And there's a little bit, I feel a little like I left the teddy bear in the trash.

Yeah. I sort of felt like it was going to be like I was God and I was just going to wipe out Earth. This is done. I'm done with this. Because I haven't played Animal Crossing in months. Yeah. And even in those Pokemon games, I'm i'm like i'm not gonna replay this anytime soon but my guys are there yeah your guy i needed to save my guys your your your men my men yeah and i only have a you can have a gendered team and i only have a male team wow why i I mean, okay. Just because. No, that's not true.

No, my men. But yeah, that's what I, so I've been playing, I've been playing on my Switch. I'm still on the last level of Metroid Dread. And the remaster of Metroid Prime came out, so I've been trying to

knock out Dread just as a, so I could say I did it. But I also picked up Kirby and the Forgotten Land again. Yeah. And I hadn't played that in a while. It's perfect.

It's so fun. He's so cute. You forgot about the Forgotten Land. I forgot about the Forgotten Land. Now you've remembered, and God bless you for it, because that game's great. It's a fucking banger. It's so fun. That was almost on my year-end best of list.

Wow. And it was one of those ones that came out pretty early i think in 2022 i think so and so by the time you know but i think by year's end if you're thinking back on the games of the years like oh it's fucking great i just got to the midpoint where my little guy got taken oh boy yeah so now i'm i'm on a mad dash to finish this thing so i'll probably finish that before before I get the physical copy of Metroid Prime Remastered. But anyway, who wants to go next? I'll go ahead a little bit.

Great. I'll talk on my... Nick, what are you playing? Thank you, Resident Evil. By the way, we're talking remasters today. Again, you know, I know it's a sensitive subject. You ever remasturbated? It was not where I was going.

I was saying there was a Resident Evil 4 remastered. It's coming out very soon. Obviously, that's the game that gave you your career. It's just you do the exact same motions in reverse. Okay. Never mind. Just trying to include you in the conversation. We'll just move on.

I have two updates two updates it feels like you're falling christ a good friend of mine who i used to work with in game development i won't say his name because he does not like being doxxed on the podcast but the he is a he he finally got around to beating elden ring and we were talking about it. And he was just like, what was your build? What ending did you get? All that stuff.

And he was like, you know what? I don't like the Dung Eater. I hate that guy. Wow. And I was kind of like, yeah, man, you're not... Fuck the Dung Eater.

That guy's disgusting. He's loathsome. That's what I was going to say. And it should kind of like, yeah, maybe you're not. Fuck the dung eater. That guy's disgusting. He's loathsome. That's what I was going to say. And it should have been a clue when the opening cinematic is like, the loathsome dung eater. It's like so declarative. I finished that game in that man's armor. Yeah. The game goes out of its way to be like, this guy fucking sucks.

Full dung armor, the two giant swords. Yeah. That's how I finish. The ending cinematic is the dung eater in my build. Anyway, I just hadn't thought about the dung eater in a while. And there you go.

Good man, also out of a job. Oh, you like the dung eater. Love him. You get along famously with the dung eater love him get along famously with the dung you love him remember he's an actor do you consider him loathsome i mean it's his title it's like mister yeah it's kind of baked into his whole essence it's like you know you'd call

you'd call him uh i mean it's it's akin to doctor oh it's like a title know, you'd call it, I mean, it's akin to doctor. Oh, it's like a title. Yes. It's like an honorific. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other game I've been playing, Dorf. Dung Eater PhD. Like that.

Got it. Except loathsome. I've been playing Dorf Romantic. This is a game that came out last year that is from a German developer called Tocana Interactive. And this is just impeccable vibes. This game is all just to borrow from Triple Click, the great podcast, as we often do here, Soothe Core, the term coined by Kirk Hamilton. It is such a soothing game. So basically what the gameplay is, I streamed a little bit of this on our Twitch channel.

It's a bunch of, you know, think of a hexagonal map, like, you know, like we see on a board game or something, or, you know, like a turn-based strategy game. And Heather's cracking up. I have a related story. Okay, great. Do you want to go now? No. I was playing Fortnite with a listener.

I believe his name is Zach. And Zach, shout out to Zach, who we crowned. It's great. Very excited. And he said, man, Weiger was playing this game on Twitch that is the opposite of this. I think that's a great call. I mean, because I pulled a Steam review, and this is recommended. This is by someone who's played it by 11 hours wind guardian leviosa uh and their review says my fitbit thought i was taking a nap while i was

playing this game and out of 10 it is so relaxing it is so like just calming the sound design and and the you know the the the the graphical presentation uh everything is just so light and airy and just like, you know, meditative. And basically what the gameplay is, is that you have a stack of hexagonal tiles that you're using to build like a map. And so you start off with a few of them, it's got some gaps. And then as you expand it, you have a stack of tiles that come up, and they're all just different terrain features. So like, you know, grasslands, uh, fields, um, uh, you know, rivers, train tracks, you know, I love a choo choo. So that's great.

And then, so there are rules in terms of you get more points for, it basically rewards things that are aesthetically pleasing, which is part of its charm. So, you know, you'll get to like, Hey, here's a grassland. That's got like a few houses. If you can border up a tile that's got grassland and houses on it, like right next to it into the appropriate edges,

then it will, you'll get more points and you'll get more tiles and you can continue. I do kind of wish there was a mode other than endless. And maybe there is, maybe I just haven't unlocked it yet,

but it is one where I just kind of like, I would like something that was a little bit more of a guided campaign or just like had more discrete objectives so i could feel like i was making progress through something but then again maybe that's contrary to the vibes they want to let out but anyway i i've been just like kind of playing it when i'm just like i got a half hour just to play something that's gonna like relax and put me into a flow state. And I don't know. I really, really enjoy it.

Got it on Steam sale. I imagine it could be something that comes to a Game Pass or another service at some point. But if you like a tile-based game, just great tile feel. And if you like just something that's just kind of puzzly and calming, I can't recommend it enough. There's a board game version of this. Oh, that's cool. I wonder if it predates this or if there's an adaptation to the board game. I mean, I'm looking. The interviews and it doesn't look like it's in English.

But I might just be looking at a non-English website. No, it is from a German developer. So I don't know the genesis of the... If it comes from a German board game or something. There's also a Dorf real-time strategic conflict game, which is not related to this game. Interesting. And that's kind of funny because if you flip through the screenshots

to get a sense... And it's a beautiful game. It's gorgeous. Very funny. You'll get like these pastoral landscapes and these little almost Dutch looking villages. And then you'll also get warfare if you're just clicking through. It's pretty funny. You were saying that it helps you get into a flow state. When I do that, I just watch a bunch of progressive commercials.

Heather, what are you playing? It sucks that we're all here because you can hear Heather not laughing. It's deeper than silence. Yeah, yeah. You know, my New Year's resolution is to cut back on sugar and add more protein to my diet and stay on track with my fitness goals. And Magic Spoon makes that easier and more delicious than ever. Growing up, cereal is one of the best parts of being a kid. But as I got older, I had to watch out for sugar and empty carbs. And boy, let me tell you, I love cereal.

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asked remember start the new year off right with a delicious bowl of high protein cereal at magicspoon.com slash getplayed and use code getplayed to save five dollars off thank you for sponsoring this episode. So this week, I saw a few complaints on the Discord and on Reddit about my ongoing play of Fortnite. So I got out God of War for the PS5. Oh! And then I put it back down and played Fortnite.

You tricked me. So I fully intended, fully intended, fully intended to play God of War. I love Viking shit. I can't wait to play it. Yeah. But I dipped into Fortnite just to see what was on the store that day and the

whole fucking game has changed again yeah and that's why fortnite is great it's not just i'm squatting up with listeners or squatting up with my regular squad like i'm the fucking game has new weapons and new mechanics this week so it's not the same game I was playing last week. It's just me talking about the same game arena, right? This week, there's a ton of heist quests. And there's all these new NPCs on the map and all these new bosses and all these new weapons. sees on the map and all these new bosses and all these new weapons and there's in included in all those new weapons are new mechanics that those weapons unlock and there's new augments which affect the way your player character interacts with the map and with the weapons and everything

else um so i i was like oh shit well i'll a try. Ended up fucking like three, my three days of getting to play video games this week. It's hard for me to say, I'm going to stop playing the new version of Fortnite and play God of War because I feel like I'm missing out on the fun that I could be having with listeners or with my squad. And that's, I know it's tiring and I hear myself and I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but it is so much fun. I went through and said yes to every friend request that I had because I have to assume that it is people who listen to the show. Because why the fuck else would people be adding me on Fortnite?

Nobody knows who the fuck I am. Right. Because why the fuck else would people be adding me on Fortnite? Nobody knows who the fuck I am. So I said yes to everybody. And I was squatting up with two listeners and a third unmiked player joined in. And we were like, hey, who are you? You want to say hi?

And they were like a big chipmunk and they couldn't say anything. And they were just dancing to show that they were actively playing. I think the name on the account was Marissa. And we went in and fucking squatted up with this random stranger. And it's great. What's better than that? Nothing. It's really hard to walk away from real people and also the real possibility of excellent synergistic play with these real people. I'm going to try.

I'm going to try. I really I love I fucking love Viking shit, man. So I'll do my best. But this week, again. To the great disappointment of a few people on Discord and Reddit. Fucking playing Fortnite. I was hoping when you said that there was heists that Danny Ocean was going to be in the game. Put Danny Ocean in Fortnite.

Danny Ocean would be a great addition. Put the whole crew in there. I did get LeBron's wings. Yeah. So LeBron had this big basketball moment in the real world, and so they celebrated that by unlocking a LeBron skin in Fortnite this week. And his wingspan, for those of you who know sports with about as much depth as I do, a wingspan is a reference to like his like ability to guard or length and width of his arms.

Yes, exactly. Right. or length and width of his arms. Yes, exactly. Right? So he has a back, a glider that is just giant angel wings. And the more people you kill

with those angel wings, the more gold they become. And I was like, that's a fuck, that's awesome. So I've been playing as the Terminator with LeBron's angel wings. Did I tell y'all that I attended with my friend David Phillips the game where LeBron James broke the all-time scoring record?

Yeah, you did. You texted us, I think, days after the fact. You kept it under wraps. It was weird. You did say you were going to try and stop him. Yeah. security is pretty tight like extra tight that game so uh but no it was it was one of those things where we had gotten tickets like months ago and you know and it was at the time just a random game against the oklahoma

city thunder who are not like a prestige franchise at the moment. They're a fun young team. And then I'm being, oh, wait, wait, if we look, if we pace out where this is going to go, you see like a week out, like he could break the scoring record this game. Well, let's fucking go. And just, you know, it was, it was, it was unbelievable. Wow. Just like when you experience one of those moments in person, it's just like, oh, wow, this is, this is truly wild. I observed that.

Did your wings unfurl? Um, see, here's the thing. I have broken wings. Oh no. I tried to fly, but it just doesn't really.

Yeah. So they, they were just kind of stayed, stayed in that state. I was like, take these broken wings and learn to fly again. No one was listening. Just like, what these broken wings and learn to fly again. No one was listening. Just like me.

What are you talking about? I have one wing. You're a one winged angel? Yeah, that is a cool thing about you. Yeah, I have one. I hope that they add final fantasy skins to fortnite now that the final fantasy battle royale has collapsed be fucking sick because i would i would play a severoth with like the alien back bling like think just the

combinations that you get to be i'm the terminator with lebron's wings. Yeah. It's nonsense. It's the sort of like more is more. Just pile all these IP on top of each other. It's great. It is cool. I think it's great that you're just like, you know what? This is what I want to play. This is what I'm going to keep playing.

This is what I'm going to talk about. Whatever. You have a limited time to play games. Play what you want. If you're choosing to play something, you're choosing not to play something else. That's the reality of it. I will say that I have to unplug my PlayStation in order to get work done. Having it in the room, it's like the sound of the desire is so loud that it makes it hard for me to work.

So we have a friend who got really, like, he just gets super addicted to video games and he got one of those timed safes that he would put his controller in that would just like, OK, I'm just going to put this in the safe. And I can't. Whoa. I just like so I can't. I'm not able to play this game for when I need to get work done. That's a brilliant idea. Well, it was. And then he got a power drill to disassemble it.

Holy shit. Shout out Chris Van Artsdale. And I don't know if you want to be on the show but just lock the controller for like a few hours you don't have to like jesus christ no i think it was like that i think that was it i think it was just like well it's locked for a few hours but fuck i want to play mass effect right now wow this thing's getting that's intense yeah i thought it was going to be tim the Toolman Taylor. With the game? No, when I heard the power drill, I was like, oh, it's him.

Oh, I see. Playing his own game, though. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about remasters. This is a little thing we're going to call Remasterpiece Theater because... Oh, nice little remaster of the theme. Here's what I was thinking about remasters, because, you know, the Dead Space remaster just came out. Metroid Prime remaster surprise dropped.

Resident Evil 4 remaster is on the horizon. The remasters are just like all the rage. And I think there's something to just, just you know so many of these games are so playable like like like they're kind of reached a point in in platformers yeah uh you know in in 2d gaming in the in the super nintendo genesis pc engine slash turbo graphics era neo geo where like they kind of reached their end state and a lot of the modern games that are like platformers, you could see them being on those platforms. You could see them being even something as sophisticated as a Hollow Knight.

That could have been a Super Nintendo game. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so not that we're at the end point of 3D development, but we're at a point where just like a game like Metroid Prime, you can update its control schemes and update its graphics. And it feels like a contemporary game. And I think we're going to go through something similar with Resident Evil 4. People have said this about Dead Space, the remake, which I have not played, but I've heard great things about.

Last of Us obviously got remastered twice. Yeah. great things about last of us obviously got remastered twice yeah so i i guess i i guess my thought it my first thought is going through this is like when did the idea of a remaster enter the lexicon because like some of the i know it's a term that's bigger than video games but some of the games that were remakes even that they that had graph updated graphics and gameplay in years past, I don't think were necessarily referred to as remasters. That feels like that was a term that started to come into common usage in like... Audio, right? Like records and stuff.

I know that it comes from audio, but I mean in video games. Like when did that enter the gaming vocabulary? This is maybe not correct. Uh-huh. Because there was like the the first mario the first mario game right on nes then comes out in mario all-stars again yeah i was gonna i was gonna talk about mario all-stars but that was one thing i was thinking of yeah that's like one or like i feel like there's like multiple versions of like asteroids too like even like they're like

oh here's uh asteroids uh like an updated version of it or whatever, on a more modern, for the time, arcade cabinet board. But yeah, that's interesting. What could even have been the first one? Well, yeah, that's just, I was looking up and I was trying to do some research just peripherally and could not get clarity on when we started talking about these games as remaster remastered but definitely feels like it's like by the 2010s that was the kind of the conventional thing yeah for sure you do it you do an extensive remake extensive update and it's going to be released as a remaster i i was going through this and i was trying to think of like some of the best ones i was like there's so many good ones i haven't played including games where i love the original version like everyone raves about the Resident Evil 2 remake.

I don't know if any of you played that. No, but I've been very interested in it, even as a coward. I want to play it. Everyone says it's really good. Yeah, I've heard people say it's the best Resident Evil game. And I played Resident Evil 2 on PlayStation 1. It's a cool-ass game. So I'm just like, boy, I kind of want to visit this game.

But I also like, I don't know, again, like, you know, when, when are we going to, when are we going to have time for this? I wish that, here's what I wish, because my, my relationship with remasters is, is complicated. Like I was notoriously against the Silent Hill remaster and kind of bummed out that it existed and then was like, ah, the Last of Us remaster is fine. and kind of bummed out that it existed and then was like, ah, The Last of Us Remaster is fine. I wish that there was just a way to play the original games as designed side by side with the ones that are remastered. Like, I wish that every one of these releases

also included the original version of the game and any unremastered sound effects, any unremastered controls., any unremastered controls, like it would just be, it would be my problem with, with remasters is to me, it signifies inaccessibility of the older version of the title. Like it's,

it's like, well, we, we put this out. So we never, ever have to address that. Like you can't play silent Hill two on ps2 without spending an insane amount of money or like it's not accessible to you on modern consoles and maybe it is on the playstation

plus i don't know i haven't done any research for this episode but like that's that for me is the bummer it's it's just like i wish you could play the old ones. I can. But like, I wish a gamer could play the old ones and get to experience that. I wanted to say that the Atari collection that we played for this podcast was an excellent way of contextualizing those old games. those old games. And it would be really cool if there was like a greatest hits collection that was like 1997

on the PlayStation. And then you got to play those games in context. Like if there were almost like there's Blue Note CDs that are like specific to certain years.

Right. I wish that that was a thing that you could get in video games. I think that's a great observation. And I'll address the bulk of what you said in one second. But yes, archival, curation,

like these are things that are just like really missing in the video game space. There's a lot of like fan run communities that are, that are, you know, keeping,

keeping platforms alive. They're keeping old games alive, but a lot of this stuff is just like requires so many hoops to come jump through on a technical level. And if you want to get something like scum VM up and running to play some old point and click adventures, like that's like as accessible as they made that. And as amazing as that community is and how that that's also been incorporated now into you know retail games it's still like above the pay grade of a lot of people on a technical level like getting something up and running and it would be nice if

there was the equivalent of like the criterion channel there was like hey this is a service that exists or this is a subscription that exists yeah where you can just play old games specifically it's for that it's not the it's not like nintendo's weird fucking online thing it's it's like this is something that that is a little bit more platform neutral and is is more emphasizing like hey we just want to make sure we keep these things alive so people could experience what they were like in that proper context that said some of the best like i think best versions of remasters have been point and click adventure games by LucasArts. LucasArts has remastered, for instance, the Monkey Island remasters. Exactly to your point, Heather, they essentially have a hotkey where you can toggle between the old graphics and the old UI and the updated one.

and so like you can like in real time you can contrast between okay this is what it felt like back to actually play this thing and this is the updated version to kind of like give that you know yeah essence of the old of the old game the uh and that's diablo 2 uh resurrected does that too and also has that it's really cool um halo master chief collection yeah and it's not always possible to do that obviously if you're doing something more more extensive like the final fantasy 7 remake it's like that's there's there's not really a one-to-one way to do that. Yeah, some of it wouldn't be in there. Yeah, some of it would just not track at all. But I do really like that approach, and I do think, yes at the chapter break ask if you would like to experience that same level in the original. And then you just immediately drop in on the original game and see how they compare would be kind of neat.

I don't know. That'd be awesome. I'd pay $400 for that. I don't know. That'd be awesome. I'd pay $400 for that. Any other general thoughts before we just talk about some of our favorite remasters we've experienced? Yeah, I guess it is interesting, right? Because something with The Last of Us, bringing that on modern hardware probably was a decision they made to tie it in with the show.

Yeah. Like, or have it released close to when the show comes out. 100%. But you could argue they didn't need to do that. They didn't need to, like, you know. Because it's also, oh, because that's also an interesting point, too. Like, is it a remake? Right?

Because it's, they built it from the ground up. That's not necessarily a remaster. They, like, did the whole thing over that i guess if there are still original elements like the voice acting for example and like the performance capture um i i honestly have no idea if they rebuilt it from the ground up or if they're just they've they upscale they use the existing engine and upscale all the assets i didn't i didn't research into how that came about but but you know that was one they they they remastered i complained about the last of us part one we covered on the podcast because like why are we dedicating resources to this yeah obviously to your point uh they were correct to do that because that game started selling like fucking hot cakes when the hbo show came out

actually i posted this in our discord i saw this on on a reddit on a subreddit but like a big box retailer had was selling it with a sign that said uh based on the hit tv show it's just very funny to think about but like yeah no you go oh i was gonna i was gonna change topics so if you want to say more about the last of us go ahead uh i don't even i don't even know what i was really gonna say i think it was it was more just like there's like there's that difference that you can make There's like a remaster versus remake sort of thing. But then it's also like, if we're just remastering old games, to your point, why aren't we just putting them out? Why aren't they just available?

Why isn't everything backward compatible? And why aren't we just making new games instead? I think that there's a really interesting sort of shadow remaster of Sonic CD. And that's that Sonic CD came out and was only playable on the Sega CD, which was a very, very limited user-based platform. And it then was re-released as part of Sonic Collection. And when they re-released it, it had like an animated cell animated introduction in the game yeah and the limitations of the sega cd were such that that the frame rate on that animation was garbage just like 10 frames per second like really really choppy and when it was re-released for, say, GameCube, they re-rendered that cell animation.

So the game started with like a fully gorgeous 24 frames per second animated intro. Nice. And then additionally to that, there was the original Japanese soundtrack was rewritten in the West because it didn't really demo the CD capabilities of the Sega CD. So when that game was re-released on GameCube, etc., it included both soundtracks. And nobody ever said, oh, Sonic CD was remastered. It was just re-released with the intended animation and intended soundtracks intact. That, to me, is like the ideal remaster. Yeah.

When you said Shadow remaster, I thought that they gave him a gun. I'd be fucking sick as hell. What's cooler than Sonic? Sonic with a gun. Do you think in the third movie that Shadow is... I think we're going to watch a bullet go through Jamesames marston's fucking skull and it's from uh shadow well i mean like because gun violence like the the language around gun violence and the exposure to gun violence in the united states has changed so much since shadow came out. I cannot imagine Shadow the Hedgehog picking up a gun in a family movie.

Eat lead, bitch. That's what he's going to say. He's Freddy Krueger. Yeah. Heather, you mentioned Sega CD. And one of the games I want to talk about was one that I assume you played. Maybe you even played it on Sega CD. But there was a, and this goes back to, you know, the idea of curation and, you know, making things available that that word that would otherwise like be hard to play. And basically they were entirely focused on bringing more obscure Japanese RPGs to the Western markets.

And one of the games they did, which I really liked and have never returned to and fucking sold it back to GameStop. Oh, my God. Lunar Silver Star Story Complete, which was an awesome package. Awesome. And it was for PlayStation and for Saturn. And it was a remake of a Sega CD, you know, JRPG that most people just like never fucking even had access to the hardware to play. I'm pretty sure I have it on Sega CD and on Saturn.

Of course you do. Lunar is an incredible game. Yes. And I mean, it may not be incredible now, but if it was released as like an indie game, you'd be like, holy shit, have you played Lunar? 100%. It's fully voice acted in the re-release,

but had limited voice acting in the Sega CD version and had like a fully animated audio-like song that started the game. And as a child, you're like, wow, my television is singing. Yeah, that was a really cool package. And just in terms of like both expanding the platforms it's available for,

and this is like, hey hey this is the game but this is just like a better looking more functional version of this game that you know i think they also updated a lot of the animations but yeah i don't know i don't know if there's a space i don't know if there's similar companies to working designs that are out there now that like focus on this sort of thing that focus on just like kind of like elevating things or contextualizing things that are a little bit more obscure but but that was a they had a run there where they were making a lot of of really cool shit and that was one that would that stood out in like the pre remasters era although that basically was a pretty extensive remaster also in that era the you know super mario all-stars matt already mentioned but that one is just like such a fucking awesome package and it plays just like the you know they it's the same gameplay as the original you know super mario brothers one two uh and three and what the fuck else is mario

brothers on that package i think so i think it is I can't believe, as long as we're talking Nintendo titles, I can't fucking believe that Wind Waker is not on Switch. It's wild. It's on Wii U. The HD remake of Wind Waker.

Yes, which is gorgeous. Oh, all-timer. Great soundtrack. Excellent. Like, you like Flow State and, like, Smoothcore? Was that what you called it? Soothcore is for Camelton's term.

Soothe core. We'll call it smooth core. Yeah, smooth core. Get Play's got a different vibe here. But sailing in that game was so nice, so relaxing. And I'm shocked that the only way that I can play it is to pull out my Wii U. Yeah, it's ridiculous. What the fuck?

I've never played it. So yeah, I would love it to be... I know what it is. It is, yeah... Like the way nintendo does things not to you know be bashing nintendo again but uh and it's not even i'm not even bashing them it's more that if they want to really separate themselves and be the they don't necessarily want to be keeping up with the joneses in terms of hardware they could at least be like making all of their software available. It would be so interesting if they were the ones that did it.

I think they are on the DL doing the Star Wars model. Because I think that the problem that like the reason that everybody on Earth went to see the Phantom Menace was that it had been so long since you had seen Star Wars. was that it had been so long since you had seen Star Wars that even though Phantom Menace sucked, you were like, I'm going to see it again because it's Star Wars. And I feel like... Let's not say anything we can't take back. The way that Nintendo releases these games is the Lucasfilm or old Disney model

where it's like these movies would disappear for like 10, 11 years. Yeah. And people would build up this nostalgia well for them. And then when they drop again, it's like, fuck, I'm going to buy Super Mario 64 for the fourth fucking time.

I can't believe how many times I've re-bought that game. It might just be three times. But still, it's ridiculous. That's a lot of times. Well, a lot of times. And then like Nintendo puts out this Metroid Prime remaster, right? After announcing Metroid Prime 4 several years ago,

and then a couple years ago still, starting over completely. So they're like, here's some Metroid Prime news. Here's the first one. It looks nice. And that's also the kind of thing of just, you know, knowing Nintendo, they might just not ever release the remasters of 2 and 3. No. They might just be

like, yeah, Metroid Prime 1 is remastered. That's it. The other two, yeah, find a fucking GameCube. Yeah. Insane. I don't have to go very far to find a GameCube. Yeah, I guess I don't either. I just walk across the room. Yeah, but it's just a pain in the ass. And again, it's inaccessible for a lot of consumers.

That's true. Does someone else someone else go someone else a remaster you like? OK, you want to go? You go. Go. You go. OK. I mean, we talked about it on this very show.

We did a whole episode about it. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater one and two. I would count that as a remaster because it's like the same. They use the same engine as uh the original so it plays it has exactly what the newer entries in that series had been missing which is it it feels like how it's supposed to feel when you're playing it it retains a lot of soundtrack i guess it has some new elements to the soundtrack as well uh new skaters of course and uh skaters that look uh their their age um but it's that to me it was like this is exactly what you want because it it feels like you're playing the old game yeah it

just looks better but it looks how you thought it looked too like you know what i mean like it is sort of like oh i don't know like back in the day i wasn't ever like this doesn't look anything like tony hawk i was like wow it's tony hawk and he was like a fucking uh like gray polygon um but that that's a that's a great package to me um pokemon does this as well um pokemon will go a couple of new generations and then be like here's pokemon fire red which is like, it'll be like a remaster of the game for the current hardware. So it'll be for the Game Boy Advance. They did a great version of this for Pokemon Gold and Silver on the DS, Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. And those, by a lot of Pokemon fans' account, are two of the best Pokemon games, period.

Because it has the spirit of those, and we played those on the show, and those are all- best Pokemon games, period. Because it has the spirit of those. And we played those on the show. And those are all-time Pokemon games. That's the gold standard. Excellent. And silver standard. But it has new elements to it, too, where you have a guy walking around with you.

You can pick who you want walking around with you and stuff. And it feels really, really great. That's an all-timer for me as well. When they re-released or when they released um the crash insane trilogy and crash team racing oh yeah um that i would count that as a like a graphical remaster because that sort of has the tony hawk effect where it feels like those original games um but i was more into the crash team racing one for some reason i I never finished, like I got the Insane Trilogy and played through

some of them, but Crash Team Racing was my Mario Kart, because I didn't have Mario Kart when I was a kid. So that game was, I loved that game. There's an episode of Friends, here's a timestamp, where Chandler is playing Crash Team Racing. That's right, I remember this. It's fucking cool. I was like, wow, I'm just like Chandler.

He's just like me for real. It's kind of like the game I'm about to talk about. Ooh. Where Adam Sandler played the game in the movie. In the movie Rain Over Me. Oh, yes. The 9-11 movie? Yeah.

He played Shadow of the Colossus. Oh, wow. In Rain Over Me. And it was like basically a plot point because it was about this taking down these giant things. Yeah. And them collapsing and the melancholy that it leaves you with. So it was like sort of braided into the plot. And that's wild because if you were just a regular person watching that movie, you wouldn't understand what he was doing on the screen or why it mattered.

Right. But Shadow of the Colossus, which came out in 2005, was remastered in 2018. I, again, like my relationship with all remasters, a little bit torn on whether or not I love it. Because part of the charm of Shadow of the Colossus is the time and place and console that it came out on and the limitations of that console and watching the PlayStation 2 struggle with frame rate.

It felt to me like these things are so big and this battle is so intense that it is making it hard for the PlayStation 2 to do its job. And all of that was sort of eliminated in the re-release and was sort of like,

oh, here's the intention of the game. Great, okay. It's not dissimilar to the fact that anytime you time travel in Sonic CD, you had to wait for the CD to start. game great okay it's it's not dissimilar to the fact that anytime you time travel in sonic cd you had to wait for the cd to start so you when you when you time travel the screen would freeze and you'd hear and then the next part would load and then it would keep and then the next part of

the level would load uh and in the same way, there's, you know, that wasn't the intention of Sonic CD. Right. Sure. And the frame rate drops weren't the intention of Shadow of the Colossus. It was just what they were capable of achieving on the PlayStation 2 at that moment in time. So I wish, again,

I think the remaster came with the original version. I'm almost sure, but I don't remember. It's been a few years. 2018 feels like the other end of time now. It's interesting. First off, its presence in Reign Over Me now is the comment it's making paralleling the protagonist of shadow of the colossus with like muhammad atta is that what it's like no no no no it was it was about grief

it was about how adam sandler could not overcome his grief because his wife is dead and reign over me and the wife wife of the character in shadow of the colossus is also dead yeah and no matter what he tries to achieve in the game he cannot overcome the death of his wife right and it's destroying him and so wasn't it and then additionally there's the visual of these giant things collapsing over and over and over again sort of traumatizing the player character. So, no, it was not that... They weren't saying what you were just saying. I can't imagine Adam Sandler playing a video game,

like a new video game. He must, right? I don't know. If I was just chilling like him all the time, I guess I'd be playing some games. Yeah, I'm sure he plays games. Sandler, come on the pod. We're huge fans of you here. We love him. I love him. It's not Al anymore!

It's Dunk! If he found out that we fucking... He must know people love that. I love him so much. It's not the loathsome dung eater anymore! It's Dunk! I really... i did so kind of in a meta meta sense i get what you're saying because it is like when you when you get those late in their lifespan releases of console games i'm sure this is a thing that will happen less and less as these things all

you know became be all the hardware becomes similar in the life cycles to keep growing and updates become incremental but like there was that period of like oh this is like this is like the kind of last gasp of this hardware generation this thing is pushing this pushing this thing to the limits it almost made it feel grander in scope that it's just like this you're you're fucking little your your playstation 2 slim is just like working its fucking ass off just to make this even achievable you know to to have this thing be playable like 22 frames per second or whatever it was um so i do kind of get that and that and that also makes me think of like ps1

games you know a lot of times and this even also makes me think of like PS1 games, you know, a lot of times. And this even happened when you would play PS1 games on PS2 and you could like turn like texture smoothing on. The kind of like, you know, spotty, blocky textures and, you know, the absence of anti-aliasing that existed on PlayStation 1 games. Like that is kind of its visual charm. And I think that's, you know, that's something that is kind of its visual charm. And I think that's, you know, that's something that people kind of have nostalgia for. And so when these games start,

you look at a game like that that's kind of been upscaled, it starts to feel too clean and it feels less like what you remember. A few, I'll feel a hit real quick. We talked about the Metroid Prime remaster, a game I know you played, Matt, as a metroid zero

mission that's right which i remember being maybe i'm remembering this wrong i remember being like kind of unevenly received at the time but i i loved it i always thought it was it was such a cool way of like oh this just this is metroid one but this is you know has the gloss uh and the feel of of like a you know, a 16 bit, you know, Game Boy Advance game. Yeah. And they,

they also did, they remastered Metroid two as Metroid Samus returns for the 3ds, which I also, I think that was the first Metroid game I played. I didn't know it was not the first. I thought it was just like a new game and I was like, oh, I'll just get this. Cause it's new. I didn't know it was like a remake or a remaster.

But I also never finished that one. And I would like because I don't think you need the two screens for that game. Just port that over, please. This is a remastered episode. There's also a call for ports. We want ports, please. Please give us the Wind Waker. Yes. Well, knowing Nintendo, and this is another game on my list, they'll instead do something like what they did with Donkey Kong Country Returns, which was released on Wii, and then they remastered it for the 3DS. Yes.

Which was cool, though. I like that version of it, but it was just like, what are we doing here? God, it's hard to remember that the 3DS even existed. Yeah. Like, the Wii U, you remember because it was such a catastrophe. Like, oh, no, how did they fuck this up, following up the Wii? And then the Switch followed that up, and you're like, oh, okay. So what they were trying to do was do the Switch, but they couldn't do it yet.

I get it. But the 3DS is just like, it's a little secret side system. Such a weird sort of outlier that had some really cool games on it, some really cool features. I still don't fully understand how it works.

Like, I don't really get it. The 3D effect. Yeah. It's baffling. I love it. It's very cool. Every time I see it, I'm like, wow, that's...

I don't understand. I'm surprised that shit didn't come out for televisions yeah i don't know is there are yeah i don't know if there's no glasses 3d on fucking tvs i have no idea i don't know uh another another one that i will i will shout out just that came out last year is is live alive yeah this is similar to you know that it again makes me think of working designs of just like oh this is a this was a game that you just could not even play unless you had a a fan translated version of the you know the super famicom um rom you just you could not play this game and they they released it and it's it it it you know it feels like a modern game it looks like a modern game or at least like you know like a

modern throwback game um and uh that was a really really cool version of this concept so yeah i i i don't know i i love stuff being accessible accessible in the sense of like people are able to play it um wasn't there like a giant kingdom hearts remastering collection i'm glad you brought this up i was gonna bring i was just pulling up the names of these in front of me uh because obviously like you have your titles kingdom hearts kingdom hearts 2 but then they they would put them out in uh kingdom hearts 1.5 remix and 2.5 remix then there's also um re chain of memories which is uh like a ps2 version of the gameboy advanced chain of memories game then there's um re coded which is um like a mobile game and then for the other remasters of some of the ds games they have 2.8 final chapter prologue and then you can get them all in one there's also there's a call there's a package that has

ps4 yeah yeah yeah that's i i remember that compilation coming out and being like this this has to be confusing on purpose oh yeah like Like, it must be fun to be like, what are we going to call it? How about 2.8? Just taking it deadly seriously, too. I'm glad that Final Fantasy XII was re-released on everything. I'd also like to shout out the Final Fantasy VIII remaster, thing uh i'd also like to shout out the final fantasy 8 remaster uh because i think that um the gameplay is intact everything is almost exactly the same as the original playstation one game but it was clear that they wanted the playstation one game to look like the remaster does with like human faces as opposed to just a small pot of pixels on somebody's shoulders.

It's it's I own it. I've played it. I haven't rebeaten it. That's another thing with a lot of these remasters. I get it. And I'm like, wow. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. But I think that's OK. I think just being able to access it and appreciate it. And also just like that opens it up for I don't know, maybe someone maybe a fucking YouTuber goes through and plays a bunch just having it, having people having access to anything is so huge. I also just, you know, there were a bunch of computer RPGs from the early 2000s, late 90s that were released on the Infinity Engine, which was an isometric engine. Some of these were by BioWare. But, you know, these are like classic games like Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape Torment. And they did a great job of enhancing those and just making those available where you can just get those on the Steam store. And I like that they were proactive about doing that. So if you played those games back in the day or if you never played them and want to see

what all the fuss was about, you just have that ability. Same with Another World, which was a PC game released as uh out of this world for super nes and sega genesis that was remastered and uh and made available on modern consoles and it's gorgeous it's just beautiful yeah the the i'm sure our listeners will have a bunch of other remasters that we've missed and have not touched on. Anything else before we move on? Oh, what about that Link's Awakening game for the Switch? That was really great. That was very cool.

I didn't finish it. And I didn't have a Game Boy, so I didn't play the original Link's Awakening. But that was one of those ones I remember as a Zelda fan. Everyone was just like, oh, my God, this one is so good. And I don't know if this is a full remaster or if it's just a port with additional content but one of my favorite games I think ever Super Mario 3D World

because that was on the Wii U, right? Yes. And then they brought it over to Switch. Is that a port? Well it came out with Bowser's Fury which is like a DLC edition. It's good. I don't know if it counts, but I love that game. Man, I saw a TikTok the other day that, you know how you can put certain, first off, I always forget that this is possible.

You can put certain Xbox games into the Xbox Series X and they'll play. Because it's like secretly unadvertised, maybe a little advertised backwards compatible. Yes. But the DLC that is on those discs, which was unlocked via payment, is completely unlocked on the Series X. Oh, cool. So if you're playing Battlefront 2 on the Series X,

and this isn't a remaster, but it's tangentially related, you can play as all of the DLC characters because they were included on the fucking disc is that wild that's interesting i love that i love it too can we talk about d makes a little bit yeah slash d masters okay uh so moving on there you know this is a to bring a metroid again there is a metroid prime 2D, you know, D-Master. That was really cool.

Again, I talked about the PS1 aesthetic, and I really like all the PS1-style D-Masters, like the Bloodborne PS1. But one I want to talk about was Super Smash Land. And this is the original, I believe it was the original Smash Bros., not Melee, that got remade, and it's playable. You can play it in a browser, or at least download it, but it's an aesthetic of a Game Boy game. So, Matt, can we play a little bit of this? Yeah, here we go. So, yeah, this was originally for Nintendo 64, and we're just seeing the arcade mode here.

Game Boy graphics and sound. Kirby vs. Kirby. Look at this shit. This is so impressive. What is that? Obviously, you gotta do things like you know simplify some of it the stage isn't scrolling in the same way that it would on nintendo 64 uh you know there isn't a 3d camera but it still is pretty damn impressive this is the curvy stage obviously if you know the track so anyway the sort of

um Matt you can stop at the same time the new the new tradition of demaking to the original Game Boy yeah

like we've we touched on the Disco Elysium demake on this podcast yes and I was stunned

at how much work had gone into something that I don't know maybe thousands of people have played yeah it's purely a labor of love but like i fucking i like it's so but i love it i love it yeah it's awesome it's awesome that it exists what a cool fucking museum beast and then it also just is like it just makes me think of the thing of like people like work they hate jobs and because

that's a lot of work to fucking to make this or make the disco elysium d math uh d master like that's a lot of labor but it comes from someone just like wanting to do that thing yeah but it's not necessarily something you can easily monetize yeah if i had the skills isn't there even an elden ring d make there is i've played it yeah it's very hard like if i had the skills to do those things i wonder i like it would be really fun to d make a sonic port all the way back to like original atari or game boy like that sounds like fun yeah i don't have those skills they did someone actually got doom running on an atari 2600 i saw yeah which is staggering there's also a zelda d make running on an Atari 2600. I saw. Yeah, which is staggering.

There's also a Zelda demake for the Atari 2600. Oh, wow. Where he's, like, Zelda's just a green square. But the maps are all the same. It's kind of neat. It's, yeah, it's like the game Adventure. Yeah. Yeah, wow.

Also, you said Zelda. I know you meant Link, but gamers are fucking pedantic. Wait, what did I say? You said Zelda is just a green square. Oh, yeah, well. I know you meant Link. I meant Link. You know who Link is.

I know who Link is. I'm pissed off. Link is the sword. Zelda is the shield. And Ganon is the little guy. Right. And that's the Triforce, collectively. Any other DMasters, DMakes you want to shout out? I haven't really...

We talked about the two that I've played. I haven't really dug into any, but I'm sure there must be a whole community of people that just do them. Well, one of the treasures of the analog pocket that we finally got to give to Nick by placing it in his hands is that you can play these demakes on, like, if you have a ROM cart, you can play them on the original hardware, whether that's a Game Boy or, like, an updated Game Boy like the analog pocket. And that's pretty fucking cool. Yeah, that's sick. That's fun. It's gorgeous.

Yeah, I have the disco Elysium one on my on my EverDrive, but I haven't I haven't messed with it too much. Oh shit. I have the cave story cartridge for Genesis. Oh, yeah. Like that's a that's sort of a D make that's sort of like a downmake or a port. It's a port, but it had to be reduced in fidelity in order to arrive on the Genesis. Which is, speaking of just ports and demakes, I feel like Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the Super Nintendo is a demake of the arcade.

And it is a feat of engineering that is staggering to behold. It doesn't make any sense that that game is running on a Super Nintendo. That's the TMNT, the arcade game that they got running on an NES is similar. Like like this is this is unbelievable. They were able to get this working. I thought we'd touch on real quick. Just kind of dream remastered anything like hey this is this game that does not have you did you can't really play it in a new version it's not easy to access uh and the one i think of is a ps1 game late again another late in life

cycle game um that i think you could update and it would not quite be the original game is maybe not quite enough of a big enough IP to be justified. But Vagrant Story was so fucking cool. And I don't think there's ever been another version of it. I don't think they've ever really updated it. And if they just did a full-fledged, you know, I almost said big dick to remaster. Why was that in my brain? Well, we know why. But you know what I mean, like a full-throated remaster.

We're going to fucking just really make this look and feel like a modern game, but keep that core story, which is so fascinating. Try to replicate that aesthetic and that gameplay gameplay which is all very much its own thing yeah my dream remaster is bushido blade for the playstation one wow so uh this was a game that came out in 1997 1998 uh depending on your uh region and it was a 3d fighting game where there was a huge open um area that you fought one other person or one other CPU player and it had an injury system so if you many one-hit kills in the game because you were just fighting another person with a sword yeah so you would like kill a person with a single hit but if you only hit their arm then their arm wouldn't work anymore and then you have to run

around and be like trying to like strike at somebody with your like your weaker arm fucking it was i was like fuck this game is awesome but no it has never been remastered um and it's fucking great i had bushido blade a really fun game really like like it was kind of similar to you know kind of like a tom clancy like rainbow six in the sense of like you get shot once in one of those games and you're just dead because that's like that oh yeah that's how guns work you could shoot someone with one bullet it's not like you're gonna get shot with 30 rounds and then be able to take a med kit and and rehabilitate yourself as it is the case in most shooters, even though it makes it more fun.

You could get your legs taken out in Bushido Blade and have to crawl around and like swing on the ground. Yeah, the main thing I remember is just like you kill, you hit someone with a sword once and they're just dead.

And it's like, oh yeah, I guess if you fucking stab someone through the chest, they probably wouldn't keep fighting. And it's funny that they have that game coexist kind of at the same time as like, you know, Soul Blade and Soul Calibur, where people are just like chopping each other with medieval weapons, but just health bars are going down like a standard fighter. Yeah. Yeah, that was a cool game. That's a great choice, Heather. That would also look so if that fucking looked like ghost of tsushima yeah and what and then may be able to just like focus on

rendering just two characters on screen they could make that look absolutely gorgeous i really like the blood effect in bushido blade which was like a sparkler that went off inside somebody's head like it was just like red like glitter that came. It was really cool. I think I remember seeing this as a kid. Probably my uncle was playing it. Here, I'll hold up an image. It looked like this. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

I've seen this. Red glitter. I would love a remaster of the first four Metal Gear games just because you can't really play them on modern consoles. Great call. Especially Metal Gear 4, which is locked to the PS3 only. Which is, you know,

I just think games were developed in a very specific way for PlayStation 3. I don't know if people thought this is going to be the final console that was ever made. It's very specifically tied to how it would play on the PlayStation 3. It was such a, sorry to interject, it was such a uniquely weird piece of hardware.

Yeah. Like it really had no commonalities even with the PS2 or PS4. It was like its own thing. Yeah. And it was very hard to develop for, notoriously hard to develop for. And as such, yeah, a lot of those games are just kind of like locked off. Those are some, because like obviously Metal Gear Solid 3 is one of my favorite games. I would just love to play like a nice looking version of that, even though when we did it on the show, I played it on my 3DS.

I was like, this is the best. This is the fucking best. It's still fucking cool. That's an amazing port. It's really, really good. I can't believe what they did with with that one it's unreal um but i i really want um because they did such a great job with um pokemon let's go pikachu and eevee uh with the as a switch remake of the um or a remaster of the original uh like red blue and yellow i want the same thing but for gold and silver just give me a remaster of the original, like red, blue, and yellow. I want the same thing, but for gold and silver.

Just give me a Switch version of gold and silver, but make it look not like shit. Make it look good. Because I was just looking at... I looked at Pokemon Violet on my Switch OLED, and the screen only kind of makes it look worse, actually. It looks bad. That's a bummer yeah the the yeah the you're you're absolutely right about the metal gear

solid franchise it's just it's it's just a fucking konami kojima thing yeah they could just squash that beef and and also a weird thing with because it's delisted from stores right now because of uh the archival footage of actual military things in the games. Yes, it's a really weird rights thing. Yeah. All right, it's time for a segment. Wow. Can Nick and Heather guess how long it takes

to beat a game without going over? It's Game Overtime. Wow. Game Overtime. I. Game Overtime. I've compiled some games here, and we're just going main story, okay? These are all sourced from howlongtobeat.com.

So we're talking main story, we're not talking about DLC, we're not talking about getting 100%, getting a platinum. This is just to complete the main story of these games. So here we go. The first game on Game Overt Time here. Red Dead Redemption 2. Main story time. Main story.

And remind me, are these prices right rules? Prices right rules, yes. If you get it on the nose, that's fine too. Heather Campbell. Heather. 35 hours. I'm going to go a little higher. 48 hours. It goes to Nick. The the main story 50 hours to complete

that's a fucking chonker that's a big boy big game that's a big game i thought it might be mid-50s for a main story wow it's pretty substantial so nick's on the board with one okay moving on to the next you know what fuck you guys oh okay oh wow that's what that's what we're going that's what we're doing. Okay, we're back in person. We're fighting. Next game. Cyberpunk 2077. We all played this game. I'll go first. I think this is

going to be a little bit, even though this is also a meaty game, I'm guessing you could speed through this. You could mainline this a little quicker, so I'm going to say this is 26 hours heather ann campbell 25 hours okay and this is tough because it's closest without going over but technically heather's closest at 24 hours to complete wow well i don't get that point so you don't get the, but you missed it by that much. Yeah, a real Jack Bauer situation.

I think you also reverse prices righted me there. You did. Because I think if you really want to just do the under, you do one hour. That's what I did. No, but you did 25 hours, so you only win if it's 25 exactly. What? It's highest without going over. Right. said 26 so i say 26 so i have 26 and everything above that if you say 25 then you have if it's exactly 25 that's what i'm trying to win yeah all right so i'm trying to do it okay do we get an extra point for being exact uh yeah

yeah sure why not yeah all right so that's what heather was trying to do yeah that's what i was trying to do next game it's come up quite a bit today uh-huh we also played it on the show pokemon gold and silver how long to beat the main story i think i mean it was pretty substantial a lot going on in there. But I wonder what, how people will self-report this. Heather Ann Campbell. Heather. 17 hours. I am going to say, I'm going to go 23 hours. Nick gets another point.

30 hours. 30 hours. It's a fucking huge game. 30 hours. Yeah. That's wild. Fuck you guys. Okay. It's a big boy. It's huge hours it's a fucking huge 30 hours that's wild fuck you guys okay it's a big boy it's huge it's a big boy it's a i can't believe how much they fit on that cartridge yeah and how much how much slower time passes when you're a child to have that like i have this game boy game it takes 30 hours to pat yeah to beat it i started playing it and then I had fucking pukes by the time I was done.

Yeah, if you played it every day, if you got an hour to play your Game Boy every day, you'd be playing it for a month, which is an impossible amount of time for a kid. Yes. I remember getting in trouble, right?

You gotta go and time out for five minutes. I'd be like, I'm gonna fucking die in here five minutes yeah what the hell i wish i wish somebody would time out me in fortnight so that i could walk away um here's our next game so nick has two points this is fucked portal i'll go first three hours one hour nick gets two points it's three hours three hours wow so this nick's nick's our clear winner here because i only have one more unplug my fucking mic i mean we have to go under the table to do that yeah i actually don't know how to do it it's everything here is so crazy uh just for, let's get this one out there. Great.

Marvel's Spider-Man, Miles Morales. Heather. Heather. 12 hours. Nick, seven hours. I mean, Nick's really good at this game. Sucks. Seven and a half hours for Miles Morales.

I hate you guys. So Nick's our winner, and that was game overtime. You know, one thing I'll say is that I feel like anytime I've had, I've contrasted my own play times with people who report on how long to beat, mine has always been a little bit longer. Yeah. So I always feel like you just go a little bit aggressive. Because I think when I replayed Portal,

I can't remember when we did a Portal episode. Did we do a Portal episode? We did, right? I think like last year or something. Whenever we did that and I replayed Portal, I can't remember when we did a Portal episode. Did we do a Portal episode? We did, right? I think like last year or something. Whenever we did that and I replayed Portal, I was like, and I'd played it before, so I knew what to do. But it was like, that took me four and a half hours. Yeah. I could also see a game like that because it's all puzzles taking somebody like nine hours.

Like, you know, just taking a long time. For sure, yeah. I liked Portal because it's like combat but is puzzles. Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. It's pretty close. somebody like nine hours like you know just taking a long time for sure yeah I like I like portal because it's like combat but is puzzles yeah okay so that's interesting pretty close that's like the one puzzle game that

you probably really like I went there were a couple times when you actually you used the guns to to hurt things and I was like oh I like this part this is not yeah I don't blame

you hey that's this week's get Played. It links to our Discord, Twitch, social media in the episode description. Our engineering is by Jordan Duffy, Jordan K. Duffy on Instagram. And also check out our premium show, Get Animated. Heather, we're getting into Blue Lock. We're going to watch Blue Lock. It's an anime about soccer, but it's not really about soccer.

It's cool. I can't believe I'm watching a soccer anime and i'm fucking loving it it's really cool i like none of us are necessarily fans about soccer i follow basketball but i don't know anything about football but but this is a couple of ted lasso's in here this is soccer like naruto is about what a ninja actually is like they're just not they're not the thing or like how chainsaw man is not the things. Or like how Chainsaw Man is about how much it's like being a chainsaw, yeah.

I mean, it is a lot about that, though. Yeah, and it is pretty close from like the research I've done. That's available on Stitcher Premium or at patreon.com slash getplayed. And hey, guys, it was nice seeing you in person. Yeah.

And I feel like we all got played today. Wow. We sure did.