Get Played - Scott Pilgrim EX & Movie Tie In Games with Chris Plante

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Chris Plante (The Besties, Post Games) joins Heather, Nick and Matt to talk about Scott Pilgrim EX and movie tie in games!Check out Post Games and The Besties wherever you get your podcasts! And check out former Get Played engineer Devon Torrey Bryant's new album, Painkiller The Pigeon "Civil Temperatures" out now and you can order a physical disc at painkillerthepigeon.bandcamp.com! Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For our exclusive show Get Played DLC, ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? episodes go to patreon.com/getplayed Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fm All of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. You guys had to have watched the Oscars last night, right? Why? I can't believe the slap two happens. The slap two. There was a second slap. I was like, that's never going to happen again when I saw it the first time. Now it happens again.

Not too many years later. No, weirdly the same guy. It was the same guys. Will Smith gets back into the venue and slaps Chris Rock again. I didn't see it. I didn't see it. This happened? It happened for real.

The slap two. Oh my God. That's insane. Yeah, it was crazy. And what was crazy about it was that it was like a double slap. Like he did one and then a second one. It was a way to heighten the first slap. Yeah.

So I guess it was technically the second and third slaps, but they're just calling it the slap too. They're calling it the slap too. That's crazy that happened to the Oscars. Nick, when you said you had an idea for an opening. I guess I just thought it would be, I have more places to go than this. He said, follow me. I've got something huge. Yeah.

I just was kind of like, okay, we'll start here and then we'll kind of expand this world. I guess I didn't realize like kind of what a narrow cul-de-sac I was creating for us. I thought you're going to maybe do something like and then something even crazier happened after that. Something even crazier than the slap too. Oh, yeah. The suck. Okay, wait, wait, wait, I got one now. I got one do.

Okay. Okay. I wasn't thinking of the suck, but I think you got something. Okay. Okay. It's crazy how they announced the wrong best picture again. They're calling it. the wrong best picture too

no they no they're not Nick no they're not they're not first off we're a video game podcast yeah we're talking about movie games this week and I thought you were gonna tie that in somehow

with the Oscars your whole concept was just the slap happened again yeah I thought like if it was happened again it would be like that'd be crazy and then also I was like kind of thinking

like I made me fingers crossed It would actually happen, so we'd seem like we were like head of the curve when... But if it did happen, this... It would be less interesting in opening. Oh. Because, like, people would be like, they're just talking about the thing that happened. Guys, I fucked up. I just, I fucked up here.

Uh, I should, I just, you know, I really just didn't have anything. And I was overconfident and I ended up showing my whole ass. And I just looked like a fool, okay? So I guess in a way, like, the slap two did happen. happened on this show and I did it to myself. So I'm I'm sorry for making our show look bad. He's crying. I'm sorry. I'm not for crying. I'm sorry for making a show look bad.

I'm sorry for being unprepared. He's crying. I'm sorry for not doing my outline this week or playing the game or knowing who the guest is. I guess I'm just a big fuck up. And the Oscar goes to Nick Weicker for his podcast breakdown. Oh, wow. Hey. Hey, everybody kids are watching this. Go to bed.

That's good. We team up with the evil X's and expand the source material as we discuss Scott Pilgrim, EX, and video game adaptations this week on Get Played. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host. Tiger Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr. Games, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the premier video game podcast where this week, there's another person here. Here's the thing. When you have a guest who also hosts video game podcasts, it's a bit awkward to proclaim that we are the premier video game podcast in advance of introducing them. I'm sorry. I mean, I can't take the name off the building. I know.

It's just what we are. Actually, I recently found out that you can do that. You can't do that. You can just change the name of any building you want if you're the president. You can only add Trump. That's the one move you can make. Welcome back to the Trump and premiere video game podcast. I don't want it.

I hate it. Why are all the numbers dropping? Wait, now they're going all the way up. Our numbers are up. We'll revise them next month. That's right. Head gum is not the best financial shape. It's now head trump.

Just get used to it. It's fine. Nothing's going to change. I am being asked to stop talking. No, but, you know, I think it's fun to have a little bit, maybe a playful rivalry. with the other video game shows. Saskia and Naruto. The other rivals as well.

Those two hockey players? I'm terrified over guest beating us up. Have you looked at me? I am literally a hobbit. Our guest host the podcast, post games and co-hosts the besties. He's also a co-founder of Polygon. Chris Plano is here. Hi, Chris.

Hi, Chris. So awesome to have you. I've been reading your work for years, and it's really cool to finally meet you. Thank you. That's very kind. I think you are like the top game podcast. There's no way that's true. We've been around for like 15 years and I think you blew past just like three.

So I think you get it. But I think it's because of the jokes. I think it's like you're funny. And like we have the Macroy brothers who are like they're okay. They're funny. Wait, those are funny guys. When do they tell jokes on this show? That's a great question.

I've been waiting. I've been. Yeah. Some people think what we do is jokes. The promise of jokes. It keeps people coming back. There's going to be a joke at some point. I don't want to miss it.

Right. I like, you know, I mean, we've had, we've had all the people from triple click on here. Oh. But that's like, that's it. Other video game podcasters, you're on fucking notice, okay? We bring funny people. I've literally brought, I brought jokes. Are you really?

You did? Holy shit. He's got a piece of paper folded up in it. I had to go back to my car to make sure I had him. He's got really stressed. He's got a set. I don't know how to be funny. That's not my job.

My job is being the boring one on my show. You've done more work than certainly I've ever done by preaching something out. Yeah. The boring one on this show, that job's taken, my friend. It's all of us. Chris, I just have to address this real quick. I know it's a thing that you're probably not that crazy about, but you are no doubt aware you have a named doppelganger who also does audio

media. We want to clarify that you are not the host of the Newsmax show Chris Plant presents the right squad. What do you mean? I thought we're a head truck. He brought me here for a reason. Honestly, it might be good for SEO. I don't know.

Great. Our Patreon sky rockets. And then we had the angriest letters of cancellation. It's like, because I thankfully have a, by this thing, I always thought your name was like, pretty unique name. Yeah. And it's spelled the exact same way and the guy does a similar thing.

Yeah. I mean, no weird. Nobody, well, radio. Yeah, radio, radio, yeah. What I admire about, I'm not going to say admire. Can we? Let's pull that one back. Yeah, sure.

What he does is he gets a national job. He says something profoundly racist. Like, they even like that. Like, oh, no, no, no. Bad. Then he gets, like, moved to like a really small local market. Weirdly, in one case, my hometown

Wow gets billboards Wow Oh my god Then says the exact same racist things there The audience skyrockets Gets Gets elevated

cycle repeats Whoa It is a whole strategy That's insane Wow But the good news is People do send me emails And they're like

Hey Chris Plant I just want to know If you can give me some advice And I'm gonna be like Yes I think you should vote for Well not Kamalaurs anymore But like whoever

One time somebody asked me If I could put them in touch the beach boys, you know. We had about like a 30, 30 long email chain where I kept saying, you're not spelling it right. His name is Brian WillSong at gulfongs.net. And they kept trying. Yeah, it's, you know, the simple joys in life. Nick, do you think that if there is another Nick Wiger that you're the bad one?

No doubt. We do have a friend, Heather Nick Wagner, who is a very talented comedy ready. Yeah, Wagner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he is, I sometimes get his email. He works on American Dad. He's one of the EP's over there. Yeah.

Well, I've, lovely guy. I wondered, you know, since Wah Luigi and Wario start with the W. Is Weiger the evil Iger? Oh, oh, interesting. I'm the evil Bob Iger? What the fuck? Wow. sucks.

He's, come on, no, he's maybe, he's my favorite CEO. It's a video, Wiger. It's hard to rank the CEOs, but yeah, he's, up there. They're all good. They're all good. I'm going to make the Star Wars movies good. Chris, I'm curious about just like, and this is a very general question, but just to get a sense

of your taste as a gamer. Like what are some of your all-timers? Sure. Spalunky is my kind of go-to. I think it's like a perfectly designed little thing. Near Ottomata holds a very special place in my heart. Games that are kind of about games. Kentucky Route Zero kind of made me fall in love with story games.

Thought I hated adventure games and it opened my whole brain up to all those things. But yeah, back in the day when I was a kid it was always Earthbound. Earthbound was like easy thing because it was like, it was a real, oh, you're going to grow up to have to be a games journalist. I'm so sorry. But it was a game about normal people and that just felt like broke my mind, my mind. And then especially growing up in the Midwest and it's a game where you're, you're a game where you're end up praying at the end? I was like, well, sure. Seems great. Heather had been advocating for us to play Mother 3, a game that Matt and I had never played

and we visited it for the first time. Was it last year in the podcast two years ago? Maybe two years ago now. And I absolutely loved it. It was like such an incredible, the transcendent gaming experience. And it's the kind of thing like, man, I wish I had experienced that, you know, back when it was back 20 years ago when it was first fan translator or whatever. But like, what is your response to Mother 3? We love that it will never be released in the United States. Not that I don't think it's a great game. It's a fantastic game, as you already know.

But I think it's good that there's just something that's always withheld from us as gamers. Sure. I think we've become a little too entitled. And to know that one of the greatest games ever just won't be given to us. Yeah. And by Nintendo, our favorite daddy.

Right. That's, I think, nice. I sort of do, I don't think we deserve it, actually. No. It's not for us. Yeah. There's a bunch of games that have this sort of legendary, like, never translated status. Yeah.

Like, there's this one that's like, I think it's called Bokuno Natsu. Bokono Natsi Yafi. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like just you know that it exists. It's a cozy game that's out there that we don't have access to. I mean, we do through fan translation. But, like, you have to jump through hoops if you want to play this game.

Yeah. As an anime fan, there's a ton of, like, like, you know, Sega Saturn anime exclusive games. Like, even the huge Evangelian Sega game was never translated. And that feels like a no-brainer at some point. But all of this stuff is like still off in the distance, like kind of foggy. Do you know about Sega Gaga? Yes, I do.

See, that's my dream game. And it just got translated. And they're like, it was AI. And it was bad. I know. The cursed. Oh, man. It's so sad.

But AI is good. like one second to the ground. It's crazy to hear that something that did was bad. Yeah. Chris, I want to go back to your all-timers list because you cited two games that I have never played near Automata and Kentucky Route Zero. Both games I've been curious about but just have not budgeted time for. Like I, to hear that they are all-timers for you is really, that really has me like going like, oh, maybe I should I should revisit these games or maybe not visit them for the first time.

But what about Nir Automata specifically? Because I think that's a game that probably would appeal to everyone in this room. Yeah. Nears, weirdly, I'm kind of surprised this is as popular as it is. Because I actually think it is kind of the tougher sell in that it is a game that you, it's kind of a traditional sci-fi action game or they're like, you know that Western philosophers exist? And you're like, yeah, that's pretty interesting.

And then like the end of the world is already happening. There's robots. And then it ends. And you're like, great. And then people are like, yeah, but you have to play it. four times. You know, like, that sounds not fun. And then you do it another time,

and it actually isn't that fun, but you do it really fast. Yeah. And they're like, okay, now that you've played it twice, you have to play, play it one more. And then the next three are totally different games. Wow.

And that's the weirdest structural thing, is that it has that second run that is what you more or less think it will be with, like, slight variations. Yeah. That I think bumps a lot of people off the game. But when it's all said and done, it ends up being this like really, I don't know. The reason I love this game is like not good for a funny podcast.

I'll be really honest. My wife had a miscarriage while we were playing this game. And it ended up just being like this really bleak world that I was living in. And I was like, holy shit, I am miserable and it feels like my life is over. And here I am playing this game that is that thing reflected at me. But also, to bring it back to the funny, there were. robots that you could just like wreck the shit out of and turn into fist and then beat up more robots with it and then afterwards so like by the way those fist robots those were babies

who were actually were just hiding for protection and you're like no damn but i was trying that fun um so yeah it's a great game that's amazing that's quite an endorsement yeah um a game that at one point i think honestly i i don't know if anybody else is like this if you lend something, there's a good chance. One, I'm never going to get to you the new lent me, and two, keep it forever, and then feel an immense shame every time I see

this friend. I think like six years ago a friend and I traded games at one point to lend. I lent him Shadow of War, the second Lord of the Rings Mortor game, and he lent me near Atamata, and I've never

this was six years ago and I'd never even put it into my PlayStation. I have it I have it set up, downloaded or whatever. I started it and then I was like, oh, I'm going to really like this. So I should wait until I have time to play it. And that's like the trap that I, but, but I have started working through that log. Yeah. Recently, which is unfortunately putting games that are currently in the present, like Zygdice at the back of the list.

But it's one of those where I was like, oh, oh, I'm going to like this. I can't stop. I got to wait until I can focus on it. I get it. I have that a lot. Yeah. Sometimes you, like, and I found I've never regretted it when I've just jumped in on something because like Persona 5 Royal took me like an extra year to get to. And I was just like, you know what?

I'm just going to play it now because I want. And then I was just like, it got its hooks in me so fast and I love that game. So like it's, yeah, but I get exactly what you're talking about. I do that. I have that sort of overthinking how I'm going to use my, my gaming time. Like all the time. And I imagine as a journalist as someone who is like, You know, it's not just for us, like, a thing that we're doing and we're talking, we're podcasting about.

But like for you, it's like a job. It's like a full-time, like occupation. How do you balance gaming just for fun? Yeah, you don't. I've disappeared long. What's that cigarette come from? What is the worst game you've had to play for work? And if you can't say it, we can bleep it after we all laugh about it.

Definitely say it. That's the job. Developers not liking me is okay. The one that always comes from mind is this game Blood Drive, which was back when Activision released like 50 games a year. And it was like the very end of that run. And it was like you're in a car and it's kind of like twist of metal and you just like mindlessly kill zombies. The game is utterly forgettable, like all bad.

games, but the person who did the soundtrack, all that grunge-ass butt rock, when you hit the pause screen, was some of the most beautiful acoustic guitar I've ever heard. Wow. Like, actually stunning. Yeah. And that is like my perfect bad game because it's utterly utter garbage. You can only imagine what hell the people went through to make it at that time in Activision.

And somebody took that extra hour that night. It was like, I'm going to make this. And we're going to put it in. And it was so astonishingly beautiful that the director of the game was like, I can't deny it. It's going to be the pause music. And I think that's blood drive. Yeah, that's probably it. I have no memory of this game.

I did bring up the box art, which is such like a PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 era, like EdgeLore Time Capsule. Yeah, it's written an M. Yeah. Oh, shit. I got to play this thing. It unfortunately sounds like it would be a great. extremely my shit if it was good.

Oh, yeah. Everything about it. Because imagine it had all that same stuff in it, but it was good instead. You're kind of like, this kind of fucking rocks, actually. Yeah, that's how they got it made. Oh, yeah, this is going to be good, actually.

We're going to make it good. It's like the title, Burnout Revenge shouldn't be a great game. And unfortunately, it is incredible. Yeah. Which is, by the way, the reason I'm looking forward to Star Wars Racing Game is because it's burnout people.

Yeah, that one's going to be fucking, fucking awesome. Yeah. Where are you like if we're if we're talking even more generally in terms of what kinds of games you glom on to like you know I really love I die really have story based games. I really love turn base games. Those are just platforms. That's what I gravitate towards like any any genres in particular that you're always going to be tend to be fond of. Yeah.

I mean you asked earlier like how do I make it all work and the answer is partly like there are genres that just get cut entirely. Right. So like MMOs are. out. Strategy games are out. Most sports games and recurring games, they're out. And then from there, like, RPGs probably should be, but every now and then, like, you fall in love with one of those. And that's a genre that I've, like, really come to enjoy. Weirdly, my entire preference in video games, I'm curious if this happened for y'all has, like, changed a lot as I've gotten to, like, middle age. For sure. And when I came out of college, I was very much formless.

I went to like NYU for like film stuff so I was like oh well film is where story is and games are where like design mechanics are like it's art form and any story is a waste yada yada yada and more so I'm like oh it's a 10 hour Japanese visual novel like yeah that's my life that's all I want and then there's like design going on like no thank you I'd rather just keep clicking yes but yeah that's I feel like where I've shifted a lot is more 10-hour story games and then like some really grimy action games. I will definitely say like as I have aged and my testosterone levels have plummeted, I have gotten less into like combat games. Like I used to want like I want games to be violent. I want games to have, you know, be fighting and killing things or whatever. And now I'm just like, you know, I can be a cricket walking around a meadow. You know, it's just like I'm fine with stuff that's just.

kind of gentle and like you were saying, a visual novel. I love a good visual novel. Yeah, your testosterone plummeted is alarming to hear because I know that you tested on the highest possible end. So if it was higher than that. Okay. What the hell? I was trying to not talk about the fact of my max level testosterone test.

You know, your cheese scores. I was just going to talk more generally about being an aging man. I do, I think, you know, my taste has also changed quite a bit because like in even just with recently with games like Alan Wake 2, a game that like I wouldn't necessarily like have glommed on to when I was, because I liked Resident Evil 4. I would say I was a Resident Evil 4 fan, not like a horror like genre game fan, but then like something like Allen Wake 2 comes along. I get super into that. Now I'm playing this new Resident Evil, what you're talking about in a second. Like I'm super into this type of thing now.

And even like playing through Final Fantasy 7 in the last couple of years did that and Krona Trigger, I think in the same year and was just like, oh, this, that's a whole genre of game that like I didn't really pay much attention to when I was a kid outside of like Kingdom Hearts or something like that. And so like finding those types of games now has been very satisfying to me. Yeah. I think, and I don't know if it's this podcast, I don't know what happened. But I used to feel like I had a much wider interest in games.

I used to, you know, like, I'll often cite out of this world as like one of my favorite games of all time. But the truth is that if you put that game in front of me now, I'd be like, fuck this. My patience for any kind of gaminess has dwindled so much that now I really just want 30 seconds to combat and I don't want anything. else. And that wasn't the way that I was when I was younger. And now, like, I don't know if, if you could blame the internet and short attention spans. I don't know if you could blame that I have less time to game. Therefore, I want to maximum game. But, like, you know, we'll talk about probably, uh, when we talk about what we're playing, I'll talk about Resident Evil and how frustrating that's been for me and how much I loved, like how when everyone was like celebrating, celebrating

this new one. I was like, oh, here we fucking go. And then like, I don't know, two hours into it. I'm like, nope, I do not have the time for this. I can't wait until we get to this conversation because there's a thing. I was going to say very quickly, I was going to recommend games. I was like, I wanted to come as a good guest and like, and bring a game for each of you. And you, when I listen to the show, have some of my favorite, like, taste in video games because it's so broad and so historical. And I'm kind of surprised to hear this because the thing that I wanted to bring for you is perfect. Tides station to station.

All right. I'll write it down. Do you know about this game? No, I'll write it down. What if I told you? They took being a 20-something living in New York on no money in the middle of like the grungy early 2000s. Okay. And condensed it into like a seven-hour video game.

I mean, where you are trying to go to college for writing and you are dating absolutely atrocious people and you're seeing maybe Wilco at a crappy bar. All right. It's deeply unsettling to watch a game that's literally, in my experience, my life to a T. At one point in the game, they sneak up onto what would become the high line back when it was just like a drug den, which was the first thing I did when I got to New York. I'm like, why is it in the video game? Well, I did just get a steam deck again this week, so I'll throw it on there and give it a try. I won't turn down a wreck.

One thing I will ask on Heather's behalf, does this game have a gun and or a sword? It does not have a gun and or a sword, but it does have very complicated relationships between Jewish young woman, mother, and grandmother who absolutely beat the shit out of each other emotionally. I can see this. Because Heather, like, you know, Disco Elysium, one of your all-time favorite game, has zero confidence. Zero combat. But it's conversation as combat. Right.

But I'm just saying like you, like you are someone with an open mind as a gamer, despite you liking games where you get to kill a lot of things where if there's a chance you, there's a chance you completely bounce off of this. There's a chance you really connects with it. Well, I mean, as again, these are all things I want to talk about when we're talking about what we're playing. But like, I feel like I have become frustrated by what I see as the barricades to the game. and often, like in uncharted,

when you have to like solve the puzzle in order to access the next area, it's like, I don't find the puzzle part of a gaming experience. I feel like it's tedium. And Disco Elysium, there aren't puzzles that aren't incorporated into the actual gameplay itself.

Like solving the puzzle of the crime is the game. It's not the thing that you have to do in order to play the game. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. so much sense, and also I brought the wrong. I mixed up my recommendations, I'm realizing. Because the thing that I brought for you

is the best disco-elisium game since disco-alusium. Wow. Okay. And I would say, in my preference, I prefer it. Wow, what is it? Esoteric Ebb. Okay, wait. Do you know about this? Tell me about esoteric ab.

Okay, so esoteric Ebb is disco-alegium, but in a world where you don't want to commit Sepaku, it's like just like a nice, cozy space. It looks like D&D meets kind of cartoonish comic booky stuff. Yeah, I got the, I get some, the Steam page up right now. I do really like this art style. It's very appealing. Yeah, the way that the developer has framed it is like Disco Elysium is a really serious topic game that ends up being very funny.

And this is a very, like, funny presenting game that ends up being quite serious. And is that? Wow. And you definitely feel that. You wake up, you're a, no matter what you are a cleric, and you're a really shitty cleric, and you wake up seemingly having died in a mortuary and or a morgue, and the attendant is like, what's going on? You talk, you talk.

You do the thing where you're talking for like 45 minutes. And in a certain point, you realize you've been talking to them about milk for like five minutes. You're like, wait, no, what am I done? And then you also realize every time you say something, it takes a minute off the clock, and you've accidentally stepped into the game's trap of burning a considerable amount of time. Wow. Right from the top.

But like just Scholesium, you have effectively voices in your head that are represented by your stats. So you are constantly being validated by the decision that you made up front with whatever you picked. So if you picked really low strength, for example, you basically have this like bitter little fascist in your head.

But if you really invest in strength, it's kind of like a patriarchal, like, seemingly good advice person. And that's for each of the, like, five or six different stats. Wow. This came out in March of this year. So this is, like, a brand new game. Like, did you play it, like, right away? Yeah, I played it a little bit before.

I can't remember, like, how it all came together. But because of post games, I'm always looking for this story, like, especially a person who is really interesting. And in this case, this person graduated from college in Sweden has a master's in player agency. Very, very Swedish. And was like, oh, now what am I going to do with it? There's no jobs. It's like, I should turn tabletop d&D into a video game and then basically can't figure out how to do it.

And this is before dyscholeseum has even come out. Discolysm comes out and he's like, oh, this is it. Like, this is the key. I need to break this entire thing down and then rebuild it back up. And like, oh, that's my stuff. I need to, like, latch on to that and figure out that person's story.

Wow, that's awesome. I am 100% going to wishless this and play it. Yeah. Hey, buddy, let me tell you about NordVPN. Hey, I use NordVPN. VPNs are really handy. And you know where they're specifically handy? If there are TV shows, film, anime

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New customer offer for the first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. So you have two podcasts. You have the besties with the rest of those guys. And post games, which is just you, and that's more of a more of a journalistic, like, style podcast. And I guess, I guess as somebody, you have two podcasts. I'm trying to just think about, like, how do you do both?

And, like, what do you find challenging about doing the one that you do on your own? I realize, getting away from jokes. Oh, right. Yeah, please. Do a joke. Any joke. Yeah, do a joke. What did Mario say when he broke up with Peach?

Well, it's not you. it's a me Mario that's actually That's well crafted That's really good That one is from Dadlife.com

Dadlife.com I think it's actually DaddyLife They're doing good work over there I just wanted to be sure I'm credited I was familiar I would hate to steal a joke Yeah

I mean Besties have been doing it for 14, 15 years or whatever That's It's a bold idea four grown white men review a video game each week is revolutionary

I will say what is pretty incredible about it it's usually under an hour which does differentiate us in the space and then and then post games being it's basically like what you would get if you had an NPR show

or if the New York Times or any of these places actually cared to invest in video game and I understand very much why they don't that's not me like throwing a shade at them but it's great because having run a publication like Polygon

10 years ago even people would read a long feature and you could justify doing it people do not read much anymore like it's just a hard reality and I really wish that wasn't true but it is

people do listen to these things people love listening things because you can do it while you're driving or you are doing your chores or you can do whatever And that has allowed me to tell stories that I know people will love, but they just won't be able to make time for. So like even before all of the controversy going around with Steam censoring not safe for work games, I already done an hour long episode on the history of not safe for work games of Eroge in Japan, which is like early porn games. And like how those are made and why those are made and why they're.

an art form and weirdly you would think porn games like surely that'll do gangbusters no like it's still going to have a cat that you just don't see in audio and it's great yeah I hear the development time on the on Ara Gay is really long because it's so hard to stop jerking off while you're making it hard it's just so hard I try to finish this game but I can't stop doing it

All right, all right, all right. Okay, I'm going to turn it on again. I'll be able to make some progress. I need another keyboard. Your episode that you did with Keshe McDonald about her book, which I just got, and I can't remember the name of the title of the book.

Super Nintendo. It's called Super Nintendo. I thought there was a subtitle, maybe, but there's not. There is. But it's Super Nintendo. It's all about the various different Nintendo properties. I got the book because I heard the episode your show and was just very interested in reading the rest of the book. And I thought it was just a good, a good, it was a good selling point for the book. So it was like an excellent, an excellent interview.

Thank you. I appreciate that. You had, you had recommendations for Heather and myself. Did you have a recommendation for Matt? Kingdom Hearts 3. Yeah, so it's actually called Kaiju Princess 2. Okay. That's actually a game.

Don't Google. I was going to say, already in my steam line. The link is purple on this. No, it was, honestly, you were the tougher one. And one of the things that I wanted to bring up with you was the lack of recent evil in your life. I was so happy to hear last week or whenever this airs that you were getting into the new Resident Evil.

And I actually messaged you even before we did the show. I was like, I tell you about everything. And you were like, please don't. I haven't played it yet. I was like, oh, yeah, how this works. Yeah. But I really want you to go back and play, especially seven and eight. Okay.

And it's specifically eight. The idea, do you know the basic premise of the villains in eight? I know about Big Lady. And that I'm very, that came across my desk and I know a lot about that. Yeah. But that's about it. Big sexy lady was so important to all of us that it did make us overlook the fact that it's a whole bunch of Eastern European fairy tales. Interesting.

It's Pinocchio. It's Frankenstein. It's like the Little Mermaid. Yeah. Get adapted. into Resident Evil Monsters. And that is like the basis of Resident Evil 8. Why is this the first time I'm hearing about this?

Because people don't talk about it. Wow. You see Big Lady and you just kind of go like, hubba. Big Lobbubble, blibol be a little bit. Not sure we're experiencing up. And I know her name's lady can attractus. There we go. I'm moron.

No, no, no. I have an update about this, actually. We'll get into it when we get into the other. part of the show. The next segment of the show. Which normally follows like a light food conversation. So I just wanted to say, I'm not a McDonald's eater. And yet this week, I was traveling.

Yeah. And I had a plain cheeseburger, basic single cheeseburger from the Denver airport McDonald's. Ooh. And before you think, before, I'm just going to stop right there. Before anybody thinks otherwise, just because it was at the airport doesn't mean that the burger was shaped like a plane. It was plain in that it wasn't fancy or crazy. Different word.

Richel, can we edit that out? Put it in twice. That's just a rat. Over and over again. People are like, I'm uncomfortable. Alarmingly, on the, next to the giant, you know, digital screens that give you your options, I believe it's called a menu. Oh, yeah. Is it a plane menu?

There's a plane. It's a plane shaped. I'm on a plane. I am the plane. There's like a little sign that says this McDonald's location unfortunately does not offer fresh beef, but still has the same sourced beef as everywhere else. So I think that's because they have to freeze the beef to bring it in. And some McDonald's burgers are not frozen. Yeah.

Where's the beef? Like the quarter pounder or something? The quarter pounder is supposed to be fresh. Right. So they don't, they can't offer the quarter pounder because it's a fresh. Anyway, I had a plain cheeseburger from the McDonald's at the Denver airport. And guys, I've had McDonald's over the last 15 years just a few times. And this cheeseburger was the best McDonald's cheeseburger I have had in almost in more than a decade.

Wow. Probably more than almost 20 years. Wow. I can't understand what happened. I talked to my wife about it and I was like, it must be because they have to go through so many. because it's so much foot traffic. It's constantly turning them out. So they have an enormous, like,

resource for, like, you have to make fresh burgers constantly. But not fresh. So fresh. I mean, frozen. Sure. But every part of it was like, this is the first time they've ever made the burger. And it was incredible.

When you're saying plain, you do like no condiments, no pickles. No, no. I'm saying like how it comes. It's a long, the unmodified basic McDonald's cheeseburger. So you got the ketchup. the mustard on there, you got the pickles, you got the raw. Yeah, the standard, standard boy.

Just not shaped like a plane. Not shaped like a plane. Oh. Well, I did crash in on my mouth twice. Two bites? I had, I had McDonald's three times of the past week. But one of those experiences was, so my life is very different than Heather's. One of my experiences was getting the big art.

which I don't know if anyone's tried the big arch yet. Controversial. Yeah, I mean, I think it's got too much going on. So it's got like three slices of white cheddar cheese, right? It's got onions two ways. It's got a crispy onion and it's got a raw onion. It's got sesame seeds and poppy seeds on top of it on the bun. Why are we doing the show?

We should be eating McDonald's. Heather, Matt and I have pushed for ordering McDonald's for dinners multiple times and you always veto it. What? For some reason, always want a fucking deep dish pizza. It's worse. I'm fine with ordering McDonald's if it's from the Denver Airport. Okay, fine. We got to go to Burmé.

Anyway, my only issue with the big arch is I think it's well-made. The patties are too substantial. So, like, that's the issue. You can taste the low-quality beef when you're getting such a mouthful of it. And there's just like too many components. It's just because it's just uncapachka. They should have simplified it a little bit. But I overall liked it.

I just would never order it over one of the regular items. But I was going to say, my main point here is, airport McDonald's is one of those ones where a lot of the airport versions of chains are inferior. Airport McDonald's is always like basically on par with regular McDonald's. I feel like the same way about chilies.

I feel the same way about Duncan. A lot of other chains, like you go to like a CBK, it's like this is a pale limitation of a California pizza kitchen. Right, right, right, agreed. Airport P.F. Chang, same thing, did not have a great experience.

Do you know why I went to McDonald's is because my estimate was it was the least dangerous food. And I was like, what I want is a salad, but I'm not going to risk a fucking airport salad. You know, what I want is, like a deli sandwich, I'm not going to risk mayonnaise that

may have been sitting out in a container all day long. Wet bread. So I went with McDonald's because I was like, I know at the minimum that this is so processed, it's probably safe. You also think they have the most to lose. McDonald's? Sure. Yeah, I can buy that.

Like the airport, you go after them and they're like, good luck. You want to sue the government? Get in line. Right, right, right. Right. Okay. There's like an E. coli or Listeria outbreak at a McDonald's. Yeah. It would be disastrous for the brand.

Yeah. Jack of the box. Still think about it every time I drive past one. Almost killed him. Yep. Anyway, that's my food. My light, because we always have light food conversation up top. A little bit of light food conversation.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Matt, you didn't have the big arch yet. I haven't had the big arch yet. I got to get over there. I haven't had McDonald's probably in like two months. It's worth trying. Are you a fast food guy at all, Chris? I am the CEO video.

It put me off. Really? It did. For real? It legitimately put me off. Oh, man. I have come full 180 on the CEO video. It's, well, to be clear, I don't think that he looked like he didn't enjoy it.

It just made me think that I will look like that when I eat it. And therefore, I don't want to eat it. Well, as the burger bite thing kept going, I was like, what's making, what's how this is reframing the initial McDonald's video is it is the only genuine. video. All of the rest of them were like, I'm going to have a huge fucking bite or oh man, I'm at Arby's and we got our own burger. And you kept like the farther they pushed, the more it felt like I was looking at the MySpace of the burger videos compared to like...

The Frinsster. Yeah, the Frenchster of the burger videos. Instead of like all of the bells and whistles of all the like machismo of how big a fucking bite them. Like you go back. You know, like this guy saying we love this product. Like he's not a natural like salesman. Yeah.

But he was being genuine about what he was experiencing with his burger. It was fine. It was fine. Yeah. What are some of your fast food favorites? The truth is it probably came closest to selling me on McDonald's. Really? Which is part of why when I looked at the food court at Denver, I was like, well, there was

that video of that guy. Yeah. Yeah. And as your catchphrase, in pursuit of fine. Yeah. Right. Especially at an airport. Yeah, it's true.

What are you some of fast food favorites? Chains, menu items? Fast food favorites. I really love P. Terry's. Okay. In Austin. Yeah. A lot of people tell you that what a burger is good, which is not.

It's just, it's absolutely atrocious. My wife would fight you on this one. It is, I don't understand it because, like, you actually, many people order things from Amazon, right? So you have that cardboard and you could just eat it. Wow. It's right there. And you can put bad ketchup on it too. There's so many options. I got to defend my wife's honor here. I'd never had Waterburger. Yeah. We went to Texas. First time she's like, we landed on the plane, got in our rental car, went straight to Waterburger. She's like, you have to have it. That's, you drove past three P. Terry's. And they were like, we have great food. And you're like, no, no, no. I'm

in pursuit of fine. And they were like, we can't do that for you. In Mary's defense, too, I will say it wouldn't shock me if you guys walked into Waterburger, Mary orders the burgers, and they're like, we have to do the best we've ever done. It's Mary. Fair. I have had, I'm from SoCal, but I have had Waterburger in Texas. And I liked it.

But it did not knock my socks off. But I'm also coming to it from the perspective of, I did not grow up with this. I did not have nostalgia for this in the same way. that I understand when someone comes out here and has an out burger and is underwhelmed. It's like, well, yeah, this thing's been hyped to hell and you have no connection to it. I just want to make sure that nobody wants to ever listen to my podcast

after they listen to this one. P. Terry's is basically, what if you made it in and out good? Wow. Whoa! I like this. I love this. I don't agree. I completely disagree.

In fact, I'm furious, but I think it's a great take. Have you had P. Terry's? I've never had P. Terry's, no. See, that's the problem. Yeah. See, you've been living in this kind of like nothingness. Well, I will say that, we'll see, because next time I'm in Texas, I do want to try P. Terry's.

I will go in with an open mind, but also you have just jacked up my expectations where now I will be comparing this to every burger I got for a good report card over my entire childhood. And so that's like, you know, it gets a little tricky. Yeah, it's hard to compare with that nostalgia right there. But what I'm going to suggest is that when you do. you go, make sure you get the root beer milkshake. That sounds good.

I'm on board. And then that's going to immediately jack. I just heard that that had never occurred to me. This is a menu item I never could have ever considered. I think in and out fucking sucks now. I almost just grabbed my phone and texted a former head gun producer Casey Donahue because they know he loves root beer so much. Like, hey man, you had this root beer shit during the episode.

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Right now, get up to 60% off at babble.com forward slash played. Spelled BABB-B-B-E-L.com forward slash played. Rules and restrictions may apply. I'll have one more question for you, Chris, and for the panel. That question that we ask every week is about video games you've been spending some time with. That question is, what are you playing? What are you playing?

How it's me the resident you have a rich. And I'm here to ask my friends and our guest, Chris, what we've been playing. What? You all right? I'm just listening. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm celebrating a new, I don't know if you guys heard.

They fired the other merchant from Resident Evil. What do you mean? There's no merchant in the new one. No, they're actually, this is a good point. There isn't. It's computer now. It's just how fucking computer. Oh, wow.

They realized that nobody. he could stop the original. That's right. And so they fired that guy. Yeah. And I'm, I hope he makes it under this show, except I'm not going to let him in the door. You think, oh, well, wouldn't it be so funny?

Or, I... If there was another merchant who showed up? Well, there was another version that showed up, and then it replaced you. Would you do that to me? I wouldn't do it to you in a million years, but it's kind of funny to consider. We would never do that to you.

No, we would never do that to you, Merchant. I don't know what to do with me. No, I'm just kidding. I wouldn't. I would only have one podcast. I'd only have comedy, bang, bang. You need to have multiple companies. I got to have more than one switch of income. Yeah, yeah.

I will say it's kind of a microcosm of the modern economy, right? The labor force, it's the new mechanization of industry that the labor force is being replaced by computers. Yeah. Everything's computer. Everything's computer. Everything's computer. Matt's at the best. Coco robots being a...

Cocoa robot. You've seen them. Those little guys? Those little robots? Those little delivery robots? I saw you writing one. Yeah. Oh, those little guys.

Yeah, you sort of had like a sort of like... Wait, that's a robot. I thought that was a car. You thought there was a car and you just hop down to talk. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a small car, but I thought, you know, you're the same space in that big city. I did see a kid. I saw some kids.

some rough kids in my neighborhood, these little boys that like ride their bikes in the street when they shit and stuff. And they scare me because they seem really cool. I saw one of them jump and do like, not a flip, but like a little like like 360 turn midair while they jumped off of it and like tried to impress their friend.

I locked eyes with him when I was in my car and I gave him the horn. And then his buddy were like, yeah. He jumped off of a cocoa. He jumped off of cocoa. That's pretty good. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. Nice little active civil disobedience. That's right. Yeah, it's fun. You got to think that a, you know, a cool older person thought he was cool. Okay. Everybody wins. I guess I'll do my job.

Nick Weaker, what are you playing? Well, Merchant, thank you so much for asking and for teeing me up. I've been playing in early access, Slay the Spire 2. What a fucking video game. It immediately broke my Muggenics addiction. I've been playing so much Mugetics, but then I was just, like this is a different rogue light that I find aesthetically so much less abrasive. It doesn't have the early aughts new grounds comedy, which is fine, but just not for me.

And it's a direct sequel to a game, Slay the Spire, one that I poured many, many hours into so many hours that I had to remove it for my devices because it was just too addictive. Absolutely love it. If you're not familiar to Slay the Spire, the gameplay progression is it's a deck builder. You start with a very simple deck that you add cards to as you dispatch enemies and a bunch of turns. turn-based combats. You also have like a branching map where you choose where you're going to go in terms of like you're going to fight monsters, you're going to fight elites, you're going to go to random events.

And I will say, speaking of merchants, there is a random event that tricked me the first time there's a fake merchant who sometimes you'll get to and he's like selling a bunch of fake shit. And I was like, I was like, oh, here we go. And I spent a bunch of money at it. And then it's just like I had no gold. And I was had like all these useless relics. I was like, that's really fun that that exists.

awesome. Yeah, one nice bit of joy in this game, even though it fucked this run. There's a couple new classes. There is the regent who sits in a walking chair, which I love. I just, it's one of those things where it's like this,

there's both like medieval flair, but then also like this, this weird, like kind of futurism to it. It's like these, these disparate elements coexisting. It reminds me of, of the old might and magic franchise, how they'd have like science fiction,

science fiction and fantasy kind of like just coexist. And he has a separate additional manapool to enable class abilities. Have not figured out how to play the regent really at all, but it's cool. And then the necrobinder is a litch with a skeletal hand familiar, and she has a tank companion named Nasty. That's right. Skeletons can be girls too. I actually did have a moment.

I was like, man, I didn't think about that. I didn't even assume this was going to be a female character, but yes, skeletons can be girls. You know, I'm going to take this in and really do some thought, have some, have some work to do because I just never would have thought that and that's my bad. This bias is actually at the heart of one of the greatest

archaeological overthrows in Viking history. Wait, explain. Well, there was a warrior skeleton that was unearthed, I think, maybe 30, 50 years ago. I think it was at Burka, but I'm not sure. Please don't, I'm not, this isn't my job, so I don't know exactly where it was dug up. But for many years, it was cited as, like, the quintessential Viking warrior grave. It was buried with multiple weapons, like swords, bows and arrows,

a dead horse, the saddle for the horse, et cetera. And it wasn't until the last decade that they did DNA sequencing on it and realized it was a woman. Wow. And at no point in all of the, like, putting forth this burial as like the quintessential Viking warrior grave had it ever been considered that it might be a woman. And the moment that they found out it was a woman,

they were like, oh, it must have been ceremonial. It has to have been ceremonial. She did all the stuff. She must have been buried with her husband's swords or something. But all of the textbooks up until the last decade have been about this guy who's buried with all his weapons.

And now it is, why was this woman buried with all these weapons? They wrote books about a guy. They didn't even know who the fuck it was. Shut up. Anyway. That's fascinating. That is crazy.

Wow. The Viking was a woman. Skeletons can be girls. Skeletons can be girls. So, Oste is like a, is like kind of a skeletal hand, a giant skeletal hand that's like a tank

and that you can, some of your cards can buff. If it gets killed, it responds. And it kind of functions as a meat I guess more of a bone shield for your character. But it's a fun element. And then also you've got a doom, which is as opposed to poison, which some of the other

classes have, it's doom is like is a thing that affects not at the start of the turn as poison does, but it procks at the end of a turn. So it's like, you know, if a character is poisoned and they're going to deal like eight damage, you can ignore them because you know they're going to die before they're able to do that, but if they have that much doom, it's like a thing you have to count for what they're going to do in that turn. I will say that the definitely feels like enemies hit harder and so do your own attacks. It feels like everything's just been buffed a little bit.

And I've seen the difficulty spike in the community from one to two, Slate the Spire to One to Two compared to Hollow Night to Silk Song, which I can't speak on, but it does make sense where I think if you were a completely new player, you'd be kind of baffled by everything that was in here. And if you're someone who are as experienced as I am, you're still like sort of like, oh, wow, I'm kind of getting my ass kicked at times. times. Where you really feel that is some of the elites are just unrelenting in terms of dealing damage, some of these encounters that are a little bit higher stakes. And then healing is at such a

premium for every class, except for the Ironclad, who's like the knight guy, who is the first character you unlock and or the character you start with, rather. And there's things like this, there's an act two boss that you can come up who's a sandworm, is a really cool mechanic where he'll, he's sucking you into a sand pit and he'll instant kill you if you get sucked into it so we have to play special cards to buy more time, but they cost you ever increasing amounts of mana and so let you do less and less on your own turn. All these sort of things to make some of these encounters feel a little distinct and unique. I am just having a blast with it. And honestly, it's ruining my life. I need to get this game off of my computer. You just got

you're like, I have to get this thing out of here. I can't do it. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's, it's like, it's heard about belacho. And I, we've just, I've said this a number of times of the podcast, but I group texted everyone like, hey, you heard a balatro, I'm installing it. And then my next text of the group was, I played seven hours of balochro, same day. It's the same sort of thing. Like, just so much of my weekend was spent playing Slay the Spire 2. When you say it's ruining your life, though, Nick, didn't you enjoy those hours? Yeah.

So what else is there, man? I don't know. I'm shouldn't be doing something. But are your, but like happiness and pleasure are so. frequent that if you find something that gives you happiness and pleasure, why would that be wasting your life? Yeah, I guess productivity is an illusion, so you know, might as well enjoy the hours that we have. I do love the game. I think it's such a cool design. And I love that the one thing they've added to, they've added this one beyond just like kind of amplifying everything is they've

added more like fun and crazy experimentation and ways to like break the game. I'm not sure how much of this will be retained after early access. But for instance, there's a way to clone cards and so that you can have happen. And that can lead to instead of having like a normal like 25 to 35 card deck, you have like a thousand card deck, which is just like, oh, this feels like kind of meamy, but it's like cool that you can do something like this in this game and the same sort of way that Mugenics has those sort of elements.

So I'm going to keep playing in early access. I'm really excited to play it in its final state, but I don't know if I can get myself away from this game right now. I just really, really adore it. Well, to your point about like having fun, Yeah. Have you all heard about the score? Do you know about this book?

Oh, yeah. No, I know the score. I have the score. It was my, what are you playing a few weeks ago? So you read it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you know. You don't need more metrics.

You don't need more like, you don't need the grind. Just enjoy the feel of the game. I also think that if you were at a museum in Florence, right? You said to somebody, oh, man, I spent seven hours at this museum in Florence this weekend. It was so amazing. I went to Italy that everyone would be like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh. But the moment, but it's because we created a hierarchy of art and of what acceptable entertainment is.

And video games is still at the bottom of that fucking list. And I say, let's elevate it. Play a video game all weekend long. You know what I have in my head sometimes is still that there's some sort of hierarchy of things that you should be doing. Like it's like some things are virtuous and other things are sinful. And I still like, I guess probably from childhood, have baked into me that playing video games is slothful. I think it's also the thing of like, some. Sometimes a game can start to play you.

Right. Like, and that's like the problem is I get it with the Latra. There comes a point where like, wait a minute. Like, am I even playing, like, what's going on here? But it doesn't sound like that's what's happening. No, I mean, I'm loving, I'm loving experimenting. I'm loving watching, you know, high-level streamers and seeing how they're like, like, messing around with the new elements in the game and trying things.

I think it's all really fun. The games at a really fun phase right now where a ton of people are playing it. And I haven't trained a multiplayer, but that's a new thing they've added as well. I will say that book, which I believe the author is C. The Wynn, I think, is the... Did you know any idea.

Yeah, yeah. And it got me to get rid of my Apple Watch. I've become an analog watch guy because I was just like, I don't need all these fucking metrics, you know? Can I have your extra Apple Watch? Yeah, I mean, it's like... Just weigh like five of them around.

Their time is it in Paris? But, yeah, as far as, as far as, as far as video games. I mean, I still find myself chasing achievements and stuff. So it's, you know, it's, we'll see. Anyway, that's what I've been playing. Chris, what are you been playing? What have I been playing? I'll tell you about titanium court because it just won the IGF last night. And it is an absolutely fantastic game by AP Thompson, along with other people who helped contribute to it. But AP is the first developer to win the IGF grand prize two years in a row. Oh, co-won it last year for Consume Me, which did any of you play Consume Me?

No, but I remember hearing about this. Great game. The funniest, silliest warrior-ware-ass video game you will ever play about eating disorders. Great. But great. But this game, Titania McCoy, you can actually play a demo of it right now. And imagine if somebody took the kind of like a match three game. And they're like, what if I could make this into high art?

And that's not to say like a match three game isn't like art in itself, but like... Yeah, I'm immediately thinking of the Honeypop franchise. Sorry, continue to go on. By the way, Kyju Princess 2 does remain on a recommendation for you. It's this game where you are transported into a kind of fairy tale world that is inspired by lots of kind of Disney early 50s. 60s type of stuff. And every night you have to go to war.

And when you go to war, you are doing a match three where there is water and there are mountains and there are different enemy faces. And you set the playing field by playing a match three. And once you've used up all of your turns, suddenly it's kind of like a

strategy game where you have to decide with the resources you've collected during that phase, what type of units do you want to build to now guard your castle and what comes next. So you might create a whole bunch of barriers or you might get a whole bunch of archers or you'll just counter like whatever is on the map

and then you make your way from station to station and then you get looped back to the castle and you further solve another mystery. What's like really special about it though is like it's hard to capture the magic because on a moment to moment level I would compare it to like David Byrne or they might be giants,

these types of artists in other fields who are really, really, really intelligent, but very silly and are very interested in finding a profound beauty in the mundane. I was just playing it this morning, and at a certain point I could fight a boss, and I elected simply not to. I abandoned all my progress to watch a very distorted video

of the developer of the game playing guitar to me, singing about two very bitter ballerinas who are going to become friends. And that just like, the game just literally stops. And then that's it. All of that progress from what I can tell is just gone. Like, that was my choice. I elected just not to fight the boss

and now I'm going to have to do it all over again. Wow. It's unbelievable. That sounds awesome. I will definitely keep my eye on that. You were just, and this is a different type of game, but what you're talking about like the playfulness and kind of breaking the form of it

was reminding me of not sure of, get a chance to play last year's strange jigsaws. I really, really enjoyed that game, really respond to that game. Yeah, yeah. Anything like that where it's, I don't know, playing with forms that are often, I think wrongly assumed as casual or like feminine,

is weirdly, I think going to be the future of where video games can go. Because we've so milked the first-person shooter and all these other genres for all their worth that now that I think, think more developers are looking elsewhere and saying, hey, there's these amazing things that everybody can play. Anybody can play Match 3. And there's so much that we can do with them. We can tell so many interesting stories. I don't know. It makes me very excited when I think

about that future of the games. That's awesome. Hell yeah. Matt, what are you playing? I'm playing a couple things. Didn't get to talk about last week because we recorded a little earlier. Yep. Then we typically do. Yep. So I hadn't had a chance to start it yet, but I'm playing Polkopia. I know you're playing it as well, Heather. I'm also playing Polkopia. It's unbelievable. I texted the group chain

low-key masterpiece. It's because also, because I don't like games like this really. Me neither. I don't, like I liked Animal Crossing out of necessity because we were all playing it because there was a global pandemic. I had not played one before and that's the only one I've ever

played. Um, I've bounced off of like Stardue and things like that. Like couldn't ever really get into Minecraft. I've never played a Dragon Quest Builders before. So the one thing that was getting me in here is that I love Pokemon. And it just does all those other things perfectly also. So like it's like it's very palatable. And it's extremely cute and also like very funny because like they're all just like,

they all talk and they all talk to each other. Like you'll find you'll make different little habitats and you'll spawn new Pokemon. and they'll talk to each other, and they'll be like, yo, it's mad humid out here. I'm like, that's great. This rocks. This is so funny and so great. And then you can take pictures of them doing cute things. But it's also, you're in this world that has fallen to some sort of cataclysmic event.

Not just any world. You're in the canto region. Yes. Which has an inverted pole. So if you look at the map from far away, it's the canto map upside down. Yeah. So there's also deep Pokemon. lore being dished in this game.

Yes. Yeah. And it's extremely satisfying. I'm already stressed out by the way people are playing the game and making it beautiful. And I'm just like, I'm not, I don't play like this. Don't look at that stuff. I can't do it. Some asshole made a functioning computer inside of Pocopia.

Yeah. I just like, I thank you, but no, I can't do that. I'm just going to like, I, I've taken to cleaning up as best as I can, you know, and like still sort of keeping structures that are there, but, you know, just trying to make it, try to make it livable, but nothing too fancy. And I've gotten to two additional other areas, which I can't believe how massive the fucking game is, actually.

It's like you have, like, a bunch of Animal Crossing Islands, actually, not just one. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's lovely. The music is great. It also, it looks really, really good. It looks beautiful. And I want to go back one second. Yeah. The music is great. Yes. And the first thing I thought when I heard this music was, when is this coming to Alamo? Oh. Because I want that fucking music as my go to sleep and my wake-up music.

Yeah, it's really nice. Yeah. I really satisfy the one strong user base of Alarmo. Miamode himself. Somebody there. hears me. Yeah. They brought the fucking virtual boy back. Every time. I think about getting an alarmo so much

because they think it would be funny to get. But I just haven't had, I'm not going to do it. I can't do it. Matt, my wife, every night. Yeah. Can you put the sleepy sounds back on again? Every night. We used to listen to like classical music, piano music,

something. All she wants is alarmo. I just really know that there's just no way it would be allowed in our room. whatsoever. My wife, maybe she doesn't want me saying this. She has like an eye pillow that she puts on to go to sleep. Me too.

She puts this on. She says good night. I'm still up. My little lamps on. I'll be up for me another 15 minutes. She'll be like, can you turn your light off? I'm like, you got something on your eyes. What's the issue here?

And I just like sit there in the dark until I fall asleep. Because I'm like, I should be asleep. This is the thing. I'm staying up too late. Um, but so, uh, an alarm clock that makes noise before bed, I don't think so. That's a non-starter. Yeah. Yeah. No. Um, but the other thing that I'm playing is Resident Evil Requiem. And I came in here last

couple weeks. I've been saying, I think this is like a generational game. I think it's like, because I haven't played, I've only played two and four. I would say that I was, primarily a four fan played two in anticipation of this one. I've been infected with the T virus, I think. I was going to ask about this. I've been infected with the T virus because... I want to make sure you're okay. I now own all on disc because they were on sale recently.

Wow. Two remake, three remake. I had four already remake. Yeah. This new one, Requiem, 7 and 8 gold edition. I'm going to do it. I'm going to play all these games because this. This fucking Resident Evil 9 is so unbelievably good.

I was saying to Ranch before we started today, because Ranch is also playing it. I think I'm probably the furthest of the three of us that are playing it so far. I think I'm about halfway through. You finished it, Chris? Are we at the point where we're all okay talking about? I don't want to spoil anything,

but I'm going to say something that I think you'll understand. Sure. I got to a section about halfway through that was so stupid. that I absolutely loved it. It was the most perfect Resident Evil thing. It was insane. It was a complete action movie nonsense

and it fucking rocked. It was so great and so dumb, but it's in such contrast to the beginning hours of the game because you play primarily the first part of the game you're playing as Grace and she's fucking scared.

She's me. She's just like me for real. She's terrified. She's really scared. It's very claustrophobic. It's in first person. And then, you know, you get to be Leon, you get your shit kickers on, you're just fucking busting skulls and stuff, and it rocks. But then you get to this sort of like more, I would call open area.

Yeah. Where then you're Leon, you're Leon for a while. And you get to do cool Leon stuff. And then you have what I would say was one of the, I'm saying stupid, by the way, as affectionately as I can. It's just Resident Evil four to five and six. Like, it's all of it at once, kind of. But there's like a there's a sequence where I was like

just cheering, yes, while it was happening. I was so excited. It rocked. It was so dumb and just so silly. I loved it. I love Leon so much. And I just think it's great.

But I now am curious about where the friction lies with you. Because I'm having a fucking time of my life with this thing. Well, for me, the friction is I, so I'm playing is great. Right? Yeah.

And Grace is a low inventory, right? Yeah. She's got to solve a bunch of puzzles in some kind of fucking mansion hospital. Like that's our third sequence in the game, right? And because you don't have anything with which to harm zombies, you are sort of forced into treating them as moving obstacles. You just navigate the space that they're in. And the more you do it, the less dangerous they feel, which to me, is disempowering the danger and the violence

and the fear in a horror game. Like when I start seeing zombies as tables, and I'm just like, how do I move through this space without bumping into tables, then it's no longer a horror game. Like the first part where the fucking big lady comes, I was like, I was like, this is great. Yeah. I get the pressure,

the relationship between darkness and light and how I have to navigate this in order to solve the problems of this space and also dealing with the sound... You know, you're playing in the PlayStation elites and they really do a great job of creating spaces above you in audio. Yeah. So like when she's physically above you,

you're like hearing her physically above you and it's great. But in the next sequence, I'm two gems in, and I'm just annoyed with it. Like I'm not like, I'm not empowered like Leon where I just get to blast a bunch of dudes in what should have been the opening of Last of Us part three. Like I, I, I, but I'm also like, I'm not, it's not even like, because the zombies aren't killing me. Yeah. Like you can, you, you do, you have to just get past them. And because you can get past them, they are no.

longer scary. I see. And so I'm like, oh, now I'm just waiting for these things to move in a way that I can get around them. And that is preventing me, that's the friction. It's preventing me from playing the game. I guess we're sort of playing it differently because I'm choosing sort of not to treat them as tables. And I'm like, I have like very low, you know, resources and stuff like that. but I'm using everything that I can and I got really into the crafting as I was like making a bunch of stuff making those like injector things

and things like that what I was going to say too isn't interesting Resident Evil 8 village Big Lady good we like that Resident Evil 9 big lady I don't know

get to get her out of here actually we hate her she's scary Yeah she looks like she smells bad She looks ah yeah she's all gray But the big lady even eight also gray but she's this one's nasty

and we don't like her. There was a funny tweet that I saw or I don't know if who knows what it was. It wasn't, it was a post online that was basically how overpowered

Leon would be in the Last of Us universe and past guest Gene Park had a funny comment on it that said the virus never would have left Austin. It's like yeah there's no way if Leon's around

this just doesn't happen. How awesome would it be if there is a last of us three and they're just like, they pull Leon, they're like, Joel's back. He's got a fucking gap. Yeah. And I'm hot still.

We're like, oh, cool. All the worst guys are like, yeah. To be clear it is Leon. He says a little more like kind of beer and makeup. Yeah. Yeah. Like, call me Joel. You're like, okay?

They work on the licensing for this. But I'm really enjoying it. I would say try to push forward because like I don't I mean I'm not done with it so I don't know how it's going to wrap up but like the section that I was just in was like I think a section that you would really enjoy okay okay good to know um I'm playing well I'm playing resident evil slowly I'm playing popopia primarily when I'm traveling uh I am playing disco elysium through again uh I'm trying to find out my my goal with this play through is can I be ultra capitalist without being

racist and if that's possible, is that a flaw in the design of the game? So I'm negotiating that sort of trying to, I'm trying to see if I can break it conceptually by having two inherently incongruent ideas simultaneously. You're trying to be the modern Democratic Party. Yeah, yeah. I did play an ultra-capitalist thing, and I think I feel like it's, to me it felt inherent to it that you're going to be, this is going to be a prejudiced character.

Okay. But I don't know. I don't know. It'd be interesting to figure out how to play. Let's see if I can, if I can, uh, crack the case. Uh, uh, to that end, I'm also reading a textbook right now that I really, really love. Um, it is called the world politics of disco elysium. It's by Vic Castro and Nicholas Kiercy.

Uh, I, um, it is just as if you were taking a class at college. I don't think. I've talked about it on the show before. No, I bought it. I had to buy it through like textbook, like to buy a textbook. It was 200 fucking dollars. Oh my God. It's a fucking book.

Which is funny for disco a lesium. Yeah, yeah. It is funny. I could have pirated it. But it's really fantastic set of just, you know, academic essays on the politics and implementation in Disco Elysium. I'm really liking that. but primarily I'm playing God of War Ragnarok,

which has been on my back order list, my, oh, I'm going to really enjoy this, therefore I need to wait till I have time to play it. So now that Resident Evil and Poco Beer are out, that must be the time to play God of War Ragnarok. Matt, I'd complained to you that there's too many puzzles in the game. I stand by that. That's fine.

I'd also complained that there's not enough combat in a game called God of War. Frustrating. I fixed the problem. Do you want to know what I did? Did you increase your difficulty? I increased the difficulty to Max, and I put on the weakest armor.

So now, anybody can kill me in one or two hits. And I was like, oh, it's the game. This is the fun. I have, there are, there's, I'm not very far in. I'm in the jungles of Vanaheim with, with, with, what's her name who's my ally, Freya, who's my ally again?

Yeah. Anybody in that area, low-level cats. Like anybody can two hit me. And it is so pleasurable as a result that I don't mind that there's not a ton of enemies on screen. Because I have to, in every encounter, not let anything hit me at all. Yeah. And the parry in that game is pretty good. It's a great parry.

Great parry. And so is the double-tap shield block. Oh, yeah. Right. Like, it made the combat feel concussive. It made me feel like there's pressure when I'm in these engagements. It is, it is, it is the game that I wanted to be. And now I'm, now I'm like, oh, the puzzles are to build friction so that I can get to combat. Okay.

Like they are, they are, they are dams that I have to figure out how to break so that I can get into the combat. And then immediately always, always have to restart from. the nearest checkpoint. Yeah. Because the thing starts combat. I don't know what it's going. Like, I thought like some librarian.

Yeah. Who just immediately killed me. I was like. Hit you with one of these. I was like, I don't even know what your attack patterns are yet. Yeah. A door opened.

There's a lady standing there. She did an attack that hit me on the other side of the room. And I was like, oh, here we. This is going to be great. Restarted that combat like, I don't know, 15 times before I beat that. lady, it made the whole game feel like the Valky fights of the of the last game. So I'm really

enjoying it again. It's great that like most modern video games sort of worth their salt have enough granularity in the like accessibility option so you can make your own bespoke sickomode.

It's really, it's pleasurable. I thought like what was like a rhinoceros or something. And I was like I can't even tell what your AOE is. I don't know where the, like any, like, the way I had to fight it was Russian, strike once, back all the way across the thing until I watch the pattern repeat enough to like run over and hit it one more time. It's great.

Matt, I want to turn to something you said earlier. You said you're going through all the Resident Evil's now. You play two and four you've played. You're playing Requiem now. You bought everything else and you're planning to be a completionist. Yeah. You're already missed your games. You are the Xbox kid.

You're the finisher. You tend to do this because you did this with the Final Fantasy as well. You went through the whole series. I have a new nickname for you. What's that? The franchise. Ooh, that's good.

That's pretty good. The franchise. Mr. Games, the franchise. I like it. That's nice. Yeah, because I do like to dig in. You're a completionist in that regard. This is one of those things where, you know,

I didn't do all the Final Fantasy. but I played a lot of them. And in chronological order. Yes. Yeah. And it's one of those ones that I'm like, I gotta get back to, now that you're reminding me, I got to get back to that. But I'll happily be the franchise.

Because yeah, once there's like a game that's like good like that, I'm not just going to play one, going to play one? You'll play one Resident Evil game? What the hell's matter with me? Like one? Yeah, exactly. Hey, I'll just have one chip. Fucking idiot.

I didn't bring some Xbox jokes. Oh, please. I just wanted to. Sorry, I just want to. Xbox says their release. releasing a new console. Why does no one own an Xbox in Pennsylvania? Oh.

I'm not sure what's no one. I don't know why. Because it's not selling well. Because it's always Sony in Philadelphia. That's really good. That's excellent. That's excellent. That's incredibly clever.

Not daddy life. That's just from the dad. That's great. That's great. And also, what game is in Schrodinger's Xbox? What game is in Schrodinger's Xbox? Dead or alive?

That's a lot of fun. Very good, very good. I have an entire page of Pokemon jokes because I knew we were going to talk about Pocopia. But I don't want to. Just one. Just one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What would you call a green Pikachu? A pickle chew. Oh, that's really fun. I'm going to put it away. I think it's starting to lose its lust. These jokes are the first time jokes have been told on this show. I'm Picklechew, kind of a Rick and Morty crossover. Here's the thing, I do like it.

I think it's good. Pinkychew is a heartthrob. The new one? The new, the new, like, weak, weak Pokemon. A little ghost. You say heartthrob. Heart throb, yeah. Okay.

The little, the little guy that everybody's, the heart's, beating. Yeah, because I think a heart throw I think of a fucking stud. Jesus Christ. He's sort of like the Jacob Allortio. No.

No. You mean like he's like adorable. Yeah, he's like a little cutie pie. Yeah, the cutie pie. There you go. I was with some people recently that wouldn't agree that Jacob Allorty is hot. Who is that?

Which freaks were you hanging out with? Some freaks. Who is this person? You don't know Jacob Allorty? No, of course I don't. He's the Frankenstein. He's hot Frankenstein. He plays Elvis and the

Priscilla movie. He's a very good actor. Weathering Heights. Yeah. He's a great, great young actor. I would guess if you saw a picture of him, you'd be like, yeah, absolutely.

He's a hunky guy? Good looking guy. He's like 8 foot 9. He's like, he's tall as hell. Maybe he could knock him down a couple points. He's too tall.

I disagree. As a fairly tall man, I love that he towers over me. And as a very short man? I really love that he having him over me. Should we talk about this week's game? Okay. Yeah, Chris, you came to us with this topic in mind.

Didn't have to say that part. We said before the show that I'm already very sensitive about how I think. I think it's a juicy topic. Sure. And this is a game that I was going to get to anyway as a fan of this franchise, as the franchise himself. Yes. Yeah. We're talking Scott Pilgrim EX, but we're also talking just like movie tie-in games,

like tie-in games in general. Scott Pilgrim E.X released earlier this month, March the 3rd, 2026, developed by Tribute Games. and it's based off of the comic book series and is a follow-up to the recent anime Scott Pilgrim takes off, which I also really enjoyed. And it's a side-scrolling beat-em-up in the style of the similar, the 2010 Ubisoft game, Scott Pilgrim versus the World,

which was released not as a direct tie-in, but it released to coincide with the movie. And in this new one, you get to play as seven different characters, Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Roxy Richter, and Lucas Lee. Some of the ones you can play as. And the basic premise of the game is that in the year 20X,

you don't know what it is. Who knows what this is? A nice little Mega Man 2 reference. Yeah. I was thinking about Mega Man recently. Yeah. Go on. I think maybe one of the best blue guys.

The problem is the roster of blue guys is pretty stacked. You, of course, have the Navi. Yeah. You have Smurfs. Yeah, you have Sonic. I mean, one of the best blue guys. He's the blue bomb. and he is cool.

He outrank Smurfs to me. No, he's way above Smurts. I'm just making a list. No, yeah, Sonic and Navi are obviously above. Boy, who's better, Sonic or Navi? I'm really sorry. I don't want to go like three layers deep. Can you just cover your ears for a second?

Yeah. So I had to drive up here from Orange County, which everybody, it's okay. I know I'm quite brave. The whole time I was thinking, I'm going to get to see this tattoo. Right. And then he is wearing a sweater.

Yeah. And I have been the entire, if it seems like I'm distracted, it's because I've been thinking, how am I going to get that thing off him? Oh, we'll get it off. Oh, we'll get it off. You can take it off. Okay, great. I think Nabi is number one.

Okay. I'd say Mega Man, safe, is a safe three, maybe. Squirtle. Yeah, we got to look. We just got, I feel like there's blue car off. This is an episode. This is an episode. Dr. Manhattan.

Oh, God. Mega Man might not make the top five. Anyway, I just like him. Yeah, I like him too. The tick, the tick's blue. The tick, I like, I think more than I like Mega-Man. Hey, Nick, are you warm? I've actually pretty, I mean, it's decent temperature in here.

Do we want to turn the ACA? What? No, I just, I was wondering if you were warm. So the game takes place in year 20XX, a Mega Man, to reference, in Toronto. It has been affected by a gang war between the vegans, demons and robots. And the members of Scott Pilgrim's band Sexpa Bomb are all kidnapped by a mysterious robot

metal Scott. Scott Pilgrim as a robot, really good. Very nice. And it's up to, so then at that point, Ramona finds Scott and calls up for, calls backup for Roxy Lucas, Matthew Gideon, and Robot One to help them search the city to rescue the other bandmates. And it's a side-scrolling beat him up. We did a beam up episodes recently. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say,

because the developer you mentioned tribute is based in Montreal, and they did a couple of games we discussed on that episode, which was Shredder's Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion. And this is very much not in, like, this is much more like this cheeby art style. It's a totally different, not a totally different aesthetic, but it's just like a different look. But what it shares is like this kinetic gameplay and this really good animation. Can I say when I play this game,

all I want is to dig because I don't have my office set up right but what I want is an HDMI out to skirt so that I can play it on a CRT because the art style I love that everybody loves this pixel aesthetic right but the pixel aesthetic is best serviced by a CRT with scan lines

and all I think is when I'm playing it how gorgeous it would look on on a CRT and I wish that there was a CRT filter in the game, unless there is, and I didn't find it. Why have you not put a CRT in the house? I have one. Then why are you not, you're not playing on it? Because I don't have a hooked up right the second.

I had to rebuild my office. And so I have the CRT next to my flat screen, but I don't, it's not hooked up. Okay, okay. And you have a, like an arcade stick situation. You're all set. You're basically almost there. I got a, this week.

I think I got this analogizer, analogizer. Oh, yes, you were saying that. Which is a thing that you snap into the top of your analog pocket that outputs it to a CRT. Because I really like the look of Game Boy Advance games on a CRT. Yeah, you're right. And I just wish, if you're making a pixel game,

I feel like CRT filter should be a switch that you can flip. And they've come so far. Like there's really good CRT. Oh, they're so good. Yeah, yeah. This game, I started playing it last night, was really enjoying it. I really enjoyed the 2010 one. And for some reason, when this game was coming out,

it sort of just went over my head a little bit that it was different in some way, which I think is maybe a failure of the marketing, perhaps. Everybody thinks that EX means this is like just a remake of that one from 2011. Yeah. That was my assumption too, too, before this was pitch as a topic. I think they got too clever because I think they're thinking, Scott Pilgrim X. Yes. Like it's your ex.

Not worth it. Just should have been Scott Pilgrim too. Like you pick the one that is going to sell copies. Scott Pilgrim, more. Yeah. Oh, I like that. More and new. This also has a story unless it's mistaken by series creator Brian Leo Mal.

Yes. And you know, I'm like I'm aware of Scott Pilgrim. I have never read the source. I did not play the 2010 game. But you know, I know the movie and I'm just kind of generally familiar with its fandom. It feels like if you're someone who's really into Scott Pilgrim, then this is kind of catnip for you, right?

And is that where you are, like, as a fan? Yeah. Well, so why I kind of regret recommending it is it is a game for perverts. Sure. When I say pervert, allow me to explain, thank you. A video game pervert in the truth sense, which is a pervert doesn't have to be like,

you're just out here for being horny on Maine. It's like you like something at its most like base. And this is a effectively a recreation of River City Ransom, River City Rampage, these NES games that precede what would become kind of Grand Theft Auto, open world action RPG systems where you like have to actually go eat to refill your health. We have to buy items to stack your traits or whatever. To play a game like that in 2026 is unhinged. Like you were saying earlier of like,

oh, I can't imagine going back to play that. One of your family games, I was out of this world. Yeah, yeah. With this, it is absolutely unforgiving. You will go into a kind of like boss gauntlet and you will have to beat like 20 or 30 enemies and then you'll fight the boss and you will die.

And then you'll just start back at the beginning of that. And what the game is hoping that you will eventually learn is you need to go grind some cash. You need to go buy some more like items or various paraphernalia, I guess, and then go back and try again and grind it over and over. Which is great if you like games from the NES era. It is horrible if you are a grown man whose job is to play 50 other video games. So it just like, I'm going to. very, very impressed with it. And the studio's name is tribute is both, like, praise and a warning.

And truly, they do make tributes to these games. Yeah. And the way that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, I think, was more of a tribute to a type of thing that all, everyone played those arcade games. Right. Very few people, I assume listening, have actually played River City Rampage. Yeah, I mean, that was a really, like, River City Ransom. I remember on NES, just like, like a cult. game in an era before that was like kind of really a thing.

Very, very niche, but like very cool design. It fucking ruled. It does. It's exactly the kind of getting it how they would like. It ruled and also I like that those dudes, because this is very, this is very small memory, very small, like a pinpoint memory that glows very brightly. But those dudes were also in a volleyball game, weren't they? Oh, yeah.

And like hundreds of them. They still make them. Yeah. The same sort of character designs. Those fucking little guys. Yeah. And so you, so when you saw. them in the volleyball game, you're like, what are these guys

doing over here? Shouldn't they be fighting? I want to call out or shout out the soundtrack. The shades of dead or alive, which was just mentioned. Yeah, there you go. I want to shout out the soundtrack to both this and the previous game by Anamonaguchi. One of my favorite

bands of all time. And there's a 71 track, a new Anamonaguchi soundtrack, which is Chip Tooney and Garage Bandi. And as soon as it started, I was like, oh, did they get them again? Because I was like, there's no way they got them again.

Yeah. They're on tour. Or they just had a new album come out that was like really good. Yeah. And instead they're out here cranking out tunes for this game. And I was like, oh, man, that's pleasurable. That's pleasure. It kind of feels like the type of thing you couldn't do without them.

Like, you sort of like need them for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good soundtrack. Maybe they waited. Maybe they had it. The game finished and they're just waiting. Can you please do it?

Did you guys get free time? Can you please? You make it on the one of the country soundtrack for us? We don't want to put it out with no music. Can you imagine? This game's got no music. It's just. Silence.

You just hear like, psh, push, push, pish, pish. Ugh. I looked it up because Heather mentioned it, and I do remember this game, although I never played it myself, the volleyball game, U.S. Championship V ball. The developer was Technos Japan, who also developed River City Ransom as well as some double dragon sequels. I love the design and the feeling of those games. And you're right, this game evokes that feeling. And I was like, what is this reminding me of? Because it's reminding me of something.

And it's like there's stuns on punch that are very specifically timed to the River City games. And this feels kinetically similar where you're like, punch and the guy stun locks. And then you can like pull off a like combo, but you also have to manage the space because there's so many other people on screens. so it might break your combo or you might have to break off of your own combo so you don't take damage. The physics rock in this game. Yeah, physics are fucking awesome. Like when you have like 20 volleyball

going around, ironically volleyball and it's knocking over like a dozen people on the screen, it just feels really good. I realized the game I was actually remembering was a different ball game. It was the Dodgeball game that they made. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. These character designs

are so cool. Those games the best. Those are rental games. For those of us who didn't have an N. Super Dodgeball was the name of the game. One of the things I like about this game is that it's just like a continuation of a story that is being continued by the original creator. I think that's interesting.

That it's not like a... Because like, you know, putting out a comic, the people that are reading these things anyway, they're going to find that. But like I feel like maybe the people that are going to be interested in the comic are also going to be interested in the video game. But it sort of feels like you're sort of segmenting the fan base a little bit.

You're like, oh, if you want more story, you have to play this video game. I think that's, I don't know, it's kind of interesting. Was Brian Lee O'Malley also involved in the anime series, which he did not watch? He was, yeah, it was his idea. And that one, what is like, kind of like an alternate reality, right?

Or is it have Scott Poghom takes off? It's like a sequel, like, requal kind of where it's kind of like a, like, it's, I think what I was reading is that like Brian, and I will call him by his first name only for some reason, did, like, did some. did some, like, had some introspection

and had some things about the story he wanted to fix and change. And stuff like that. Grew up and became a different man. Yeah, sure. And used the anime as a vessel to take that story and fix some things that he thought were,

that didn't age great about it. And is now continuing that story with this game, which I think is really cool. Where are you as far as, because, you know, you talked about this games for perverts? Like, would you, like, are you into, like, beat them on? Are you into like these kind of games where there's like just like like a huge volume of combat generally or?

Yeah, I can get into this. Last year, Absalom came out. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absalom, Great. Like it's doing the roguelight thing. It has great combat.

It's surprising. I can follow it run to run. I never feel like I'm wasting time. When I say a pervert game, wasting time is like, I'm just the name in the game. Sure. Right? Like that's, and again, And wasting, I'm using a word that, like, is already complicated.

But I, the repetition of it, the lack of surprise, the sense of I am doing this just to get to the thing that I want to do, that I really, really, really struggle with. But I know that there are some people who only play retro games because they provide that kind of meditative flow state because it is so familiar because you are doing the thing over and over again. But yeah, I just, that genre has come so far. in the last four years, it's bizarre. It's kind of amazing that the genre that was like, okay, well, this is kind of in its final form. And then now we're seeing like all these interesting riffs on it. It's like, oh, okay, well, maybe there's new

takes on this. I kind of guess kind of what we were saying about the match three games earlier. It's just like people are kind of experimenting a little bit. I really was enjoying my time with this game. And then I also kind of reached a point, I'm playing on Switch 2. I kind of reached a point where I was like, I don't know if we'll play this after we do this episode. You know what I mean?

Like I can reach a point. really appreciate its design. I certainly can appreciate it from an aesthetic standpoint. Looks and sounds great. And like, again, this feels like it's coming from a place of passion from the developers and then also, like, a place of genuinely wanting to expand his, this thing that he created from the, from the series creator. And, but I, but there's also an element of, like, maybe what you're saying of just, like,

the grinding, the, the feeling like I've going to have a, a fairly cumbersome amount of time into this. And then there's just, like, other things. things I'd rather play right now, but I really do appreciate it. One of the things I appreciate it about it is somebody who likes to have just an easy time. Yeah. There's a super easy difficulty setting, and I was like, I'm just going to rock it through it with this.

This is making my life very pleasurable. I love this. We had, like, we didn't talk about this when they had the eye on life two developers on discuss that game, but that one basically has a way to toggle difficulty off. Oh, yeah. And you can just sort of like go through the game and not one shot. everything, but you don't have to worry about taking damage or being killed or whatever

like that. I don't know. I like those I guess you would call them accessibility options which they are, but also they're for some people just like, you know what, I'm interested in this game for not the central mechanic. I want to there's something else about it I like. I don't need every game to be

Heather Cover here so quick. I don't need every game to be like Eldon Ring or something like that where it's like really hard and like the fights are really hard and difficult and stuff. I kind of sometimes in playing the game just to like play the game, you know what I mean? Yeah, and also what, Heather's ears are covered? Sega Saturn, what are we doing?

Yeah, we should bring it back, you're right? Also, while Heather's ears are covered, I heard she has a vrain tattoo. We should find out. It's wrong and it's me. Oh, he's doing it. Oh, I'll get it. I'm like in a fate. Oh, you should take it.

Oh, yeah, you can take it off. You can take it off. They're taking a sweater off for some reason. This is great. Chris said you could take your, he'd permit you to uncover your ears if I showed him my Varong tattoo. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Equid pro quo. There it is. There's power from chainsaw, man. There's Verong on top of it. It's good stuff. Yeah, I feel great about it. And every time I look at it, I'm impressed. It's good.

So incredible. How long does that take? This one, this one took a while. I mean, because the guy gave me an estimate and he was like, I think it would probably take like two or three hours and then I was there for probably about six hours because there's just so much detail. Yeah.

But he really, he couldn't stop drinking it. That was a huge problem. But I think he like got really into doing like, oh, I really want to do all these braids and he wanted to expand it a little bit as he wants. So it's like, hey, whatever, I'll let the guy work. It was fun. That's great.

I've seen like portraits done of like real people that look horrible. And like, it's like just, it's incredible that you have like, like, a one to one vera. Yeah, it's incredible. I feel good about it. God. Thank you. You're welcome.

Is it the best tattoo I've ever seen? It might be. Almost certainly. That movie needs to come out on video. I need the disc. Where's the fucking disc? Yeah, it needs to. What are we doing?

I will say Disney Plus just reactivated Dolby and 3D on the platform. And it has to be because Cameron was like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. If you have a Vision Pro, you should be able to watch Avatar in 3 fucking D. Yeah. So, yeah.

That's huge. He rocks. Yeah, he's the fucking he rocks. Yeah. Well, so like, obviously, like, Scott Pilgrim is like the jumping off point here. I love Scott Pilgrim. I'm excited to play more of this game. But.

Yeah, where did you, did the movie get you into it? Were you reading the comics back in the day? It was, you know, it was the movie first. Because, like, I, well, I think maybe I had heard about the movie and I wanted to be like a good student and like read the comic before the movie came out so I could see like what was different about

and it was like oh it's just like interesting good it's a I love the movie I did watch the movie one time uh oh okay I watched the movie one time on mushrooms and then had a bad time because they were all being so mean to each other right and it was kind of like why are they also all these characters are fucking mean what's wrong with everybody in here and then I've watched it again since I've since since then it was like it's just a good fun movie question for you what about Scott Pilgrim do you

most relate to and be very honest. Probably the way he treats women. No, no, no, no, I mean, look, I just think that he's, like, a hero. He's certainly like my favorite white guy. Hey. So, so second favorite, second favorite. You're kind of a Canadian at heart, too. You know, I do like that.

I like his T-shirt. You know, his T-shirts. Can I say that? Because this was an element, and I don't know why I had forgotten about this about Scott Pell, but it's like oh yeah this is such a Toronto thing yeah and as someone who like Matt recently watched and really enjoyed Nirvana the band the show the movie yeah which is so ensconced in Toronto I was like that was part of what the fun of it I was having with it it's like oh yeah yeah I've been I've been here yeah you're trying to find the the little

Toronto thing in there I heard I heard some little Canada might be in trouble a little Canada might be in trouble yeah I'm worried you think they're gonna make it big man the way things are going Chris do you know what Little Canada is no have you been to Toronto yes but only if like video game style where you land and you go to a studio and then you leave right if you ever find yourself back there and are looking for a way

to spend a half day and have the time of your life I highly recommend Little Canada it is a at railroads like model scale recreation of all of Canada province by province. It is a like this beautiful art installation you can walk through and is the pet project of this bizarre Dutch billionaire

who just is like like I want to use my money to I moved to Canada this is my adopted country. I want to build this thing that's in tribute to it. So it's like this total like love letter to his adopted homeland and then I go in there's like all right I'll go ahead and look at little Canada and go in there. I'm just enchanted

like a little girl meeting Bell This is fucking incredible. It's like where we are but little. Yeah. It's so well done. I wanted to make a pilgrimage to it. There's a bunch of crafts people there who are all just like really into models and really like care about what they do and like they don't talk to you and you can see them working and stuff and readjust. It's like it's so fucking cool.

I loved it. When you're there, do they make a little you that then they put in the little Canada with them a little Canada? Yeah. No, I get littleized. Yeah, they, you broke the machine. Yeah, so Scott Pilgrim was a jumping off point, but I think something we've kind of talked about here and there on the show are movie tie-in games in general,

which is a lost art. I do think that, like, I understand why they don't really work anymore at necessity because these things would come out sort of on a perpetually, like, crunched timeline and often suffer as a result. Unlike normal video games. Unless normal video games, but even more so, like, to meet a deadline for, like, a film coming out or sometimes before. Like, the Revenge of the Sith, the Star Wars Revenge of the Sith video game came out before the movie was released and, you know, spoiled it. Like, I can't really spoil it, but it, like, said what happens, like, beat for beat in the game, which is really fun.

We used to be, like, I think a culture when there was maybe largely pre-social media where we were a lot less spoiler conscious. I've maybe cited this before but I've got the CD soundtrack for the Phantom Menace before the movie came out because I was the John Williams score and the back of it has a track listing and the track listing is just beat for beat

everything that happens in the movie including a track that's called Quigon's Noble End so like if you just look at what the and thankfully my friend had already looked at he's like don't look at it, it spoils everything but it is kind of amazing how casually that stuff used to be dispensed

I mean I have some PTSD when we're talking movie tie-in games because my time in development at a developer called Seven Studios working in level design was a few a few projects were movie tie-in games I worked on one Pirates of the Caribbean game and two fantastic for the movie games and I will say that that that yes to your point about crunching because your release date is so tethered to when the movie comes out and because you're getting notes not just from the publisher but from the licensor the license holder. It's like, it's just so many,

so many layers of bureaucracy that you have to navigate on an ultra-compressed timeline. And also part of what they're doing is like, well, we spend our money on this license and we also spent our budget on getting the cast to do the voices. So this development team is going to be

a little bit bare bones. So there's a lot of things working against you. I think, I don't know if this has come up then. I think, it must have at some point, though. But I'm pretty sure I've played almost every game you worked on that except Sopranos road to respect. Yeah.

Because, like, I would have been, like, the prime age to play both Fantastic Four games. Right. After seeing those movies and being, like, movies are awesome. And, of course, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was massive. Yeah. It was huge. But there are some other notable ones that I feel like I do bring up all the time. My favorite of them being, Peter Jackson's King Kong, the official game of the movie.

Yeah. Good game. It's... It's just good, actually. There's like... It is just legitimately a good video game. And it is baffling. An all-time title.

And it's a great... Well, the title. The title's perfect. The title's perfect. But, like, the game is just actually very, very good. And I feel like I've described it before. But it's a first-person adventure, like, survival adventure game where you're playing Adrian Brody's character.

you're playing as him and you're on Skull Island you're just trying to get the hell out of there right? It's like oh shit, King Kong's walking around ain't messing with this. Then you see him of course and then you get the moments where you get to be King Kong and then you get to fight dinosaur and that's perfect. It has crunchy

it's like crunchy like Arkham style like combat where you're King Kong punching the dinosaurs and it rocks. It is so, so good. It is cited as one of like the top five movie time games of all time. Along with legends like

Golden Eye. Yeah. Like it'll be like Golden Eye, obviously, number one of all time, best movie tying game of all time.

Peter Jackson's King Kong the movie of the game or whatever the fuck it's called. It'll be like number two or three. It's a official game of the movie. But the thing that is interesting about that though is that something like Golden Eye,

GoldenEye makes sense for it to exist as a video game. Sure. Right. King Kong is a story about kidnapping a gorilla from its home and being mad

when it goes crazy in a city. There are action sequences in the Peter Jackson version, obviously, but it does not seem like it lends itself naturally to a video game adaptation. But I want to just get to a definition of what we're discussing here. Because one of the games you cited Sprinters Road to Respect, which I have an additional design credit on,

it worked on for a few months. I can't really claim any credit for that game. But that game is not like a, that's a side story. That's not like an adaptation. And but like the fantastic four games I worked on were direct adaptations, like the stories were beat for beat what's in the movies. So like are you thinking because like my mind goes the Chronicles of Riddick, Escape for Butcher Bay, which is an all-timer like in terms of these licensed games. But it's again not a direct story from an existing movie. Right.

Is Frontiers of Pandora is that a movie tie-in game or is that, hey, like Star Wars Episode 1 Racer is a Star Wars racing game. it is not a movie tie-in game. Yeah. Is it expanded world IP game? That's what it has to be now, right? Like, that's the evolution of it. Yeah, I think so. It's like, if you want to make it, you have to know that there's a chance that it's not

going to time out. And I think they learned that from the Avatar game that they made for the first Avatar, which was like a mess to make. And also old Jimmy Cameron was so secretive that, like, people in Ubisoft couldn't even go on to the same floor that that game was made. which is now hilarious. Wow. Because, like, who needs to see that game?

But, yeah, I feel like that has to be it, right? And then, like, suicide squad is, like, another example of we know we want suicide squad. Yeah. But we don't want to risk trying to pin it to a release date. Right. But then you have something like the DLC for, that just came out for Frontiers of Pandora. That was sort of timed to the release of Fire and Ash. So it's kind of both.

Yeah. In some ways, it's kind of both. Right, because Fire and Ash and Frontiers of, like, the DLC for Frontiers of Pandora introduced characters that are technically in the background. Yeah. But that's also like the way that the compass from Battlefield 2 ends up in The Last Jedi. Like, it's like there are, it's world-building, it's not movie tie-in. It's like the Matrix Games did that stuff too way back when I feel like you mentioned DLC.

Fortnite ate all of the lunch for this, because Fortnite can come in and say, you want to tie in, great. We're going to work with you. We're going to put your character into the biggest game in the world. You're really need to make a game. You're going to put K-pop Demon Hunters

in your game right now, and then you don't need to make a K-pop demon hunters game. Just appear in Fortnite, or maybe you do it in Roblox or something like that. You're totally right. That there's no reason to commit the resources to make a full-fledged game unless it's when you can just do a version like that.

And it's also like you do similar things in like War Zone or whatever. You know what I mean? Like these licensed characters pop up wherever. I won't lie. Whoever I'm skinned as in Fortnite affects my play style. Yeah? I can't help it. Like if I'm playing a Scratchy who was my main for a long time, I am the heart of chaos.

I am not trying to win. I am trying to be funny. Like if I if I'm rolling up on people and they're in a gas station, I know it's going to injure my player character to crash my car into the gas station. But I also know it's the funniest possible thing I can do on rolling up on these guys. Whereas if I play as the K-pop demon hunters, I'm strictly strategic. I'm trying to be cool. I'm trying to be like measured.

This weekend I played as Rick Prime, who was finally brought to the game. And I was the trolleest I've ever been while playing. playing Fortnite. It affects the way I play the game. How do you play as Hank Hill? I don't have that skin. Okay. But I think I do a lot of sitting.

Yeah. Like there's an emote where you sit on a... He has no ass. Where you sit on a cooler and you eat. Oh, yeah. And it would be pretty great to just find a place and just like camp out and eat. Yeah, people think that you're just an NPC there. Does he have a damn it, Bobby, emote?

He has to, right? He has the opening sequence as an emote. Oh, that's fun. Like the whole opening. credits where you're drinking in like time lapse. That's so funny to think about how long it is. Like if you did it in front of somebody, it's waited to kill you. It's a joinable emote.

So if you join the emote, you stand next to them on the fence. Ash from the Evil Dead can do it? Yeah, anybody can do it. I'm going to cite just a few games real quick that are like direct adaptations of movies, of movie trilogies. One is, and I think this one gets forgotten in the cascade of Star Wars adaptations that existed throughout the years, but the Super Nintendo series,

Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back and Super Return of the Jedi, those were pretty fun action platformers with a lot of combat. The other one I'm thinking of... But they also don't follow

the plot of the movies at all. You do fight Spider-Darth Vader. Yeah, yeah. Like, first off, Luke doesn't use the lightsaber except to train in Star Wars. And in the game, you're running around

killing people constantly with the lightsaber. It does not follow the movies beat for beat, but it is also not as much of a deviation as the home improvement game. How crazy? How crazy is it that in Star Wars, the hero doesn't use the lightsaber? That's nonsense structurally.

Yeah. He trains with, I mean, like, unless you knew with absolute confidence, there was going to be another Star Wars. The idea that he trains with it and doesn't use it is nuts. I think where you can perhaps justify it is if you think of it as more generally training with the force as he is doing with Obi-Wan. He learns to do it with a blast shield down. Same time, same thing later on in the third act. He learns to in essence blind himself inside of his vehicle by turning off his targeting a

True. 100% true. But it is wild that he doesn't use a lightsaber. Yeah. It's nuts. It'd be like if Edward Scissorhands never used his scissorshand. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, though. Friday the 13th is our answer to this, right? Friday the 13th, video game?

No, Friday the 13th movie. And that, like, what if I told you they made a Friday the 13th movie where it doesn't wear a hockey mask and it's not even Jason. Yeah, there's no Jason. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Makes you think. What's going on there?

Or, as I say, in home improvement. And conversely, I don't think so, too. As you're fighting a meck. Wait, does he fight a mech in the game? Did we cover it on here? I don't remember. I think we did do it. If we did it, I blocked it.

That game is unhing. Because it's just like a reskinned, like, essentially a Gundam game, you know, but it's got home improvement in it. Wow. Yeah, it's incoherent. one of my favorites, which I've talked about quite a bit, is the Spider-Man 2 video game

for the Toby McGuire Spider-Man 2. Oh, yeah. It's just actually very good, but what's interesting about it is that it does adapt the exact story of the movie, but there's also extra stuff in it because they had to make it a video game, because if it was just like the plot of the movie,

you'd do three things. And so there's like extra, there's extra characters, extra villains and stuff to make it a little more interesting for your play through. and you're sort of like playing this thinking, wow, I wish the movie was like this.

Wow. I wish all these characters were in the movie. This would be the craziest movie ever. That's pretty good. All these characters were in. It's good stuff. Talking about this makes me nostalgic. I wish there was a last Jedi video game

where you traded perspectives, a la the Last of Us part two. Yeah. Like you could be Kylo or you could be Ray. The last Jedi of us. We might still get it. Have you played the Terminator 2 pixel game that just came out? No, but I heard that's great.

It is great. Yeah. And especially good because there is a Terminator 2 Super Nintendo game. And let me tell you, it sucks. It's horrible. It is for perverts. And then you go and play this game and they were like, oh, you know how in your mind these games were actually only like an hour and a half and it was only the good pits? Yeah.

It's only the good pirates. And they last for like, I don't know, maybe like four minutes. It's that. So like four minutes, you're going to a bar and just murdering people. as a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger, and you actually don't even have a health bar, you just lose time because there's no way to kill Arnold. No.

Wow. And then, like, five minutes later, you are on a motorcycle being chased by a semi. Five minutes after that, you're in the future leading the resistance. Five minutes after that, you're doing like one of those, oh, there's an unstoppable villain chasing you, and you're trying to escape the mental health hospital. Yeah.

And just shibbing people. It's great. I'm going for it to go on sale, I have a wish list. It's real good. Yeah. It looks awesome. I just,

I just heard it's kind of like a short length. Very short. The, the only last Jedi adaptation we have is within Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker saga, the most recent like revamp of the Lego Star Wars games. And I will say, very well done.

It's very, that package is really, really good. I was trying to, because I mentioned my time in games. Before I worked in development, I worked at Activision and Customer Support and QA. QA, QA's development.

but the I was trying to remember the name of the game and I could be wrong here I remember when we were training for customer support which involved you know answering phones and responding to emails one of the things the guy the senior guy who told us about was they had a controversy involving a toy story game I looked up I think it's

Toy Story 2 Buzz Lightly Year to the Rescue yeah but they were saying that I could be misremembering this or it could be misremembering which game it was but the issue was there was like Just be prepared. There could be some brigading.

There could be some like, like, you know, like sort of like calls to action where a bunch of organized people are coming after you. Because I guess that happened with this game or whichever one I'm mistaking it for where in the Toy Story game and the course of it, one of the bosses is just a human guy who you kill. Yeah. Have we talked about this before? We have been. He's like a like a stereotypical like Mexican guy too.

Right, right. Yeah. Yes, that's the other element. So you've got a stereotypical Mexican character who gets killed. Yeah. And then they were like, they just got a bunch of people who were like calling protesting it and they were just sort of talking through how to handle it as an example. Yeah. Would he killed a guy?

But I could have those details wrong. I'm just remembering what was relayed to me. I should, I should try to look up a playthrough of that because I've never actually seen it with myself. I feel like I have like either a memory of it because that's like the type of game I would have played when I was a kid. Right. Or like a false memory that's been implanted from watching a YouTube video. you know, a hundred years ago at this point. But it is real.

I'm kind of more, like, I'm just, I'm, obviously if you expand it to the things like the, you know, the Rocksteady Batman's, it's like there's, these things are more general, like, yeah, there's a lot more interesting games like that, but I am kind of like intrigued by the ones, like the Terminator 2 game, you're just discussing,

the games that do try to, like, actually hue to the convention of like, hey, here's the, game version of this movie in the same way that like you'd get to the end credits and there'd be like a rap song summarizing the events of the movie yeah i mean i just kind of like that trope that is they it is something that i wish would come back but like i'd you know i understand why like also what movies are they going to do it for it all the only movies that are for this are like marvel movies and we just have a million of those every single year i think these like smaller studios doing this like terminator is

is the way that you do it, right? You could still do like a fried green tomatoes, a visual novel. Nobody's stopping you. And you can just like have a small team take a year to do it. Did that killer clowns from outer space game come out or is it still coming out?

I think that that came out. And then Toxic Commando, which I don't think is based off a movie. No, yeah. But it's like a John Carpenter inspired game. Like they're making this stuff. But yeah, I think smaller scale games is the way to do it.

There's a great Gatsby platformer. Oh, yes. I remember playing this, yeah. A delight. And just doing small, relatively novel experiences, I think that's the trick. That level where you have to avoid the green light. I mean, eventually it just... I read a book before.

You were pretty impressed with that? You saw the movie. I would love the testament of Anne Lee, the video game. Wow. But I'd want it to be given the Super Star Wars treatment, where it's a side-scroller that is light, that it has the movie beats. Yeah. Yes. But you also have like, she has a pouch full of daggers.

And so you're like running through like London, like throwing like daggers at people in order to get to the end beat, which gives you a three frame cinematic. And then you go to the next level. Can you only play it with a DDR dance pad? Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. I was just, I was thinking about recent franchises. And I do think, you know, because I'm thinking of the, the. how much I've enjoyed the case of the Golden Idol and it's and similar games.

A knives out game where it's like a Benoit Blanc like point and click adventure or that has the detective element of the case of the Golden Idol where you have like a tablo where you have to solve exactly what's going on. That would be a real hoot. And maybe you just get a few samples of Daniel Craig just a sample. That's an intriguing mystery. Scooby-Duby-Doo. It feels basic to have enjoyed that moment in that movie as much as I did.

It made my year. I was like that. I love that. But at a recent state of play, they announced a John Wick game with Keanu doing the, you know, the face and, you know, or giving his likeness to it and the voice. And that to me is like, we should have, we should have had this. we should have had this already. Well, because it's basically just like, like, John Wick is kind of like Max Payne the movie.

You know, I'm beginning with. It's such a, it's such a pastiche of like this, of like Hong Kong action films, but like in a modern, it seems to lend itself to a video game so, so clearly. You know there is a John Wick video game.

There is the John Wick Hacks, right? John Wix, but it's like unfortunate because it's a really good game. Yeah. But if there's ever a game where you're like, I know exactly what power fantasy I want. Yes. This should be Hotline Miami.

I don't want a puzzle. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. John Wick is in Fortnite, and I will say that when I come across anybody wearing the skin, they are typically pretty good. Yeah. And I'm always a little like, ah, fuck, it's a fucking John Wick. Like, because I bet you, I bet it's self-selecting.

Like, if you pick the John Wick skin and you keep losing, you probably feel a little bit of, like, ludonarrative dissonance. Like, you're like a little like, oh, I'm really. not good at John Wicking this. Yeah. And then the guys who do like continue today to wear the John Wickskin, which has not been in the shop for a while,

these guys are like serious about playing well. I talked to my cool teen nephew plays Fortnite about this and he's like the son of my cool older brother. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a

he, I've mentioned this is the podcast before, but I was like what skin do you use? And he was like, he's like, he's like default. And I guess that's like a thing like the cool kids now are just like like, like, I'm just going to act like I don't even give a fuck. I'm just going to use whatever the default is. Yeah. That's for some reason, frightening to me.

It's terrifying. It's so aware. Yeah, yeah. It's, I love it. Well, there's also tears of try hard because there's like, there's a skin that people call the condom skin, which is just a skin tight latex body suit in gray that blends extremely. well into the background and disappears and also supposedly has a slightly smaller hitbox. And so when you see them, you're like, oh, my God.

Like, you could be anything that has ever existed. You could effectively be Ronald McDonald in this game and you're choosing to be a faceless skin. They got to put Ronald McDonald in. Yeah, is he not in there? No, he's not in there. Have to. Man, imagine Grimmis's hit box. He'd have to slim that guy down.

Ranch, are you playing Are we playing Fortnite at all lately? Yeah. Is your skin still Eminem? It actually is Joe Haylon Otani right now. Oh, yeah, that's awesome. And I do have the John Wick skin, too. Pro gamer.

Any other thoughts on video game movie adaptations? I want them to come back. It seems like the only way that they're coming back is this sort of retro aesthetic or in a sort of side story John Wick type thing where this is not adapting the movies in particular

but it's adapting the franchise type of way and I think that that's the best we got so be it but I do miss this type of game The fried green tomatoes pitch is a home run Yeah someone's got to make that I think we're gonna get these games

I think it's on the way I think we talked about tribute with that Ninja Turtles game I think we have a Castlevania game coming out from the whichever studio that was but these large companies are realizing oh there's

all these talented people out there and they want to work on our stuff, why not just like let them? I love it. Speaking of Ninja Turtles just a quick question for you. Got check on the Ninja Turtles. What do you think about these guys? I already know the answer to this question. You're supposed to say that you like them because everybody likes Ninja Turtles. You're not supposed to say what's in your heart. You think I didn't

prepare to be here? Is that what's in your heart? Oh, of course. I dressed up as a ninja turtles. I was a kid. I'm not like a loser. I dressed up as Ninja Turtles until I decided that Spider-Man was better. Yeah. And then I dressed up as Spider-Man, and my parents had like a banister area.

And I tried to jump off that. And they said, you can never wear that again. And then dressed up as an intertals the rest of my childhood. There you go. Wow. I brought this up to my wife who has not, is not initiated, is not familiar, knows enough about them. And I said, what do you think about the Nint Turtle? Just what do you think?

And she goes, well, I know that they're green. Is she wearing her sleep mask at the time? Yeah, I'm like shaking her. Wake up, wake up. She's like, I know they're green. Yeah, Donatello, yeah, yeah. I like that. I was like, great.

Everybody loves it. That's all you want. Can I share a picture really quick? Yeah, please. This is a picture when I was 16. Oh my God. It's Rochelle with Michael Sierra, the star of Scott Pilgrim versus the world.

I was on a tour of the IHeart Media offices in San Francisco one summer and then ran into Michael Sarah and didn't know who this guy was before. Oh, to Edgar, right? It's just in the frame behind you, like, photo bombing. That's so funny. But they were there to promote Scott Pilgrim because it hadn't come out yet. Wow. And he was telling us about the comic books.

Wow. Wow. What a swing picture. What a great picture. Usually when we show something on our phone, it's got to be censored from the show. There's this girl and this tub. Oh, no. What if some meat were to spin?

All right, let's open up the question block. All right, this first one is from Stingray DM. Hi, Stingray. Sort of come up a little bit, but... It's like Robituss in DM? Yeah, it's nighttime. Yes, it's Stingray nighttime. What IP would you like to receive the Shredder's Revenge

Cosmic Invasion treatment and turned into an old-school beat-em-up? Yeah, this is. did kind of come up organically. I'm going to say Frazier. Let's get Frazier, Niles, Roz, and I guess Bulldog in there. You probably want, I mean, you probably want Martin. You probably want the dad. And then Martin, maybe with an

assist from Eddie the dog. You get that in there. Then maybe you get some DLC, some bonus levels. You get you get Ted Danson in there. I can't remember his character's name. From Cheers? Sam, from Cheers? Yeah. Yeah. He got some Cheers guys in there. I mean,

A cheers beat him up might be a more natural fit, but there's something about Frazier that I feel like. Feels like the Simpsons game. I think it's just kind of as a natural sort of silliness to it. Well, this is what I was going to say. I want, give me another Simpsons one. They're sort of not really doing as much as they could with the Simpsons license. I know that they were just in Fortnite and stuff.

There's a whole season. But like they're not, they used to be kind of everywhere. The Simpsons used to be all over the place. Now they're kind of just on television. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how much it was an entire season of Fortnite. I know, but just that? Like the game was. No, it wasn't a.

It was as if a Grand Theft Auto got made for the Simpsons. What is disorienting here is that they then just threw it away. It's gone. It's gone. It is the greatest waste. I'm just saying there used to be, there used to be Simpsons video games. Right. And they don't really do that anymore.

Well, yeah, now they have the, they have Simpsons tapped out, which I think is just like such a cash. It's gone offline. Oh, it's gone now. I never right. It was a cash cow. I know. A shame. It's out.

I'm going to pitch Amadeus. You play as Salieri. The boss of every level is Mozart. You cannot beat him. Like you finish the level and he kills you. And then you have to start another level. And then slowly but surely, Mozart gets sick. And you are able to beat him as a boss at the end,

but only because he's extremely sick. And then you end up in an asylum. anyway. This next one is from Sill. Hey Sill. And Sill writes, Who's the best hat character in gaming? Who's got the best hat?

Kung Low, moral combat. Throws his hat fucking kills guys. That's one of the examples they gave. Is it Mario or is it Mario beaten by, say, Kung Low? Kung Low is a good answer. Kung Low is so hat forward. Now you can say Mario, he loses his hat, he loses his powers. And is that Mario?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so I mean like, is that, Odyssey? Odyssey, yeah. So, I mean, it could be there because of Cappy. Cappy is good. I don't know. I think I have to say Cung Low.

Kung Low is good. I'm going to say, I'm going to say, Ghost of Yote has some pretty good fucking hats. Ooh, the hats are really, really good in Ghost of Yonet. Those are excellent fucking hats. Any of those games where you get to choose your armor and hat is an option? Yeah. That's an excellent hat game.

Is it cheating to say Project Steam, where you can play as a steampunk Aero? Abraham Lincoln. I don't think it's cheating at all. Is that also Project Seam? I realize that I might have gotten those games mixed up. But I'm going to allow it. Nintendo did make a game where you can play as. I think you're thinking of Project Hail Mary and Abraham Lincoln is not in that movie. That's about, a big mistake actually. That's about, well, it's about a guy who's not an astronaut.

Okay. Oh, he's not an astronaut. It's about a science teacher that goes to become an astronaut. He wasn't made for this. Abraham Lincoln's not in it at all. Okay, okay, okay. So if you're going to go see the movie, you can be really confused. Okay. It's a really good movie.

I like the lot. I can't wait to see it. I'm really excited. It's so good. Now, that's a hook. That's a good hunk. A hunk of rock. Yeah, I'm talking about the rock.

Nothing about its arms. This next one is a heather question. Oh, a heather question. It's from... Gun. Mouth. Next question. The question is from why Sato 13,

and the heather question is, I'm living in the Netherlands for the next three years. Hey! What do I deaf need to see? eat while I'm here. I got the one recommendation. What's the peanut butter mayonnaise? Is that what it's called?

Yep, yep, yep. Peanut butter mayonnaise. That's Orlock sauce. That's, you got to get that on your frets. It also comes with onions. It's peanut butter, mayonnaise, and onions. I forgot about the onions. Fantastic snack.

You got to go to Fabo. You've got to get a croquette from Fabo, but also their Kip sandwich. That's their chicken sandwich. Excellent sandwich. The Mick Croquet at McDonald's is the croquette sandwich at McDonald's. fantastic.

You got to get some bitter ballin from your local bar. Doesn't really matter which one. Just go fucking have some bitter ball in at the local bar. Go to the video game museum. They said they're going. Go to, oh boy, where else can you go? Remind us what bitter ballin is again. Oh, bitter ballin is.

They're very small gravy circles. What is wrong there? Why is everything like that? Why is it all fucking thick sauce? And you take the gravy circle, which is breaded, and you deep fry it, and then you serve it with mustard. Oh. That sounds good. It's fucking amazing.

That sounds good. That does sound good. It's so good. Because you spend any time in the Netherlands? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Most of my time. No, I've never been.

I've never been. It seems really nice. I was just trying to think if there were any Dutch developers. Like a lot. Yeah, right? Who can you think of? Is it in Gorilla Games? Oh, okay.

Okay. Yeah, but then a lot of indies. They're very good about, this bold idea, the government supports the arts. Right. It's heaven on earth? It's bullshit.

It's fucking paradise. It's wild. That game that was recommending. Esoteric abe. Yeah. Researching the guy for the interview that I'm doing. He's like, oh, you know, like I just, you know, figured out finally after three years what the game was.

So then I moved into the incubator, the local incubator. It's like, what incubator? I'm never, I'm familiar with this term. What is that lie? to have support. Right. I mean, just think your Dutch reference of the day was that a guy just made the most amazing model that you've ever seen. Yeah.

Like, it's paradise there. Oh, that sounds so nice. I guess conversely, I don't want my tax dollars paying for some guy to take ballet. And by the way, nobody even watches that shit. The good news is that it does go both ways. Like if you make it as an artist there, your tax dollars go to some guy who's developing fucking computer software. That's great. I'm just kidding.

Hey, it's head Trump, you know? Yeah, I forgot. I'm not kidding. Take a bicycle and bike from the town that you're living into the next town. I don't know which town you're living in. Visit Maastricht. That's incredible. I don't know, man.

It's paradise there. If you're on our Discord, maybe throw it up on it and I'll make a try. Try and make a list. What about seeing a boom Chicago show? You're an alum. Yeah, of course. Go to Boom Chicago. I imagine it's like a very different place than when you were there.

But it is. It is. It is. You're less likely to get like tetanus. But it's a fantastic theater with an incredible current cast that I've seen multiple times. Oh, wow. Great, great kids. I don't know.

Man, it's like there's too much. There's too much to recommend. It's awesome there. Try it all. And finally, this last one is from Flagg Captured. And they write, hey guys, it's definitely not as relevant now. But I read a suggestion that Donkey Kong Bonanza should have been a warrior game. He smashes things.

He's obsessed with gold. Surely he just isn't as popular as DK. What's your take? There's a strong case for that. Yeah. In history. Yeah, true. I think it doesn't work.

because you need climbing. Yeah, you need to climb. And Wario is not known for climbing. He's not known for climbing. He's known for being a gold-loving, steamy guy. I think the Mario game about collecting coins on the DS, that should have been a Mario game.

Oh, yeah. That's good. What are we doing without him? I don't know. There's a game that most people hadn't gotten the chance to play that just came out on the virtual boy for the Switch. Super Mario Land.

It fucking rules. Yeah, it is good. The Wario GameCube game is on Switch now, too, which is very similar to Donkey Kong Bonanza. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So I'm like, yeah, you can play it right now. It's the WarioLand series,

because everything, it got supplanted by Wario Ware, obviously. And hey, I love Wario Ware, but like, like, I remember just, like, loving WarioLand 4 for Game Boy Advance. That's a great platformer. I want to make a bet about the next Mario movie. Okay. Which is that the teaser for what happens now. Next is Wario.

Wow. That is so true home run. Yeah, that makes sense. That's what I think is going to be like the, is the shadow at the end of Sonic or Metal Sonic at the end of Sonic moment? I think the end of the Mario Galaxy movie is Wario. That's what I think. A piece of garlic rolls into frame.

And Walloichi maybe. Maybe. I think, because now they're all kind of doubling up. Even the most recent Sonic ended was like not just Metal Sonic. It was also like Amy. Amy Rose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, have to...

Sure. I think either we see their silhouettes or we see them walk directly into screen. Yeah. And you're like, oh, fuck, I can't wait for a while. Yeah. I like it. This is a good take.

Yeah. I mean, who else would it be? I mean, there's the thing, though. There's so many options in the Mario game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be the Brutles? That would be an interesting choice if it's the Brutels. We'll find out soon enough.

But that's the sweet skit played. Our producers of Rachel Chen, Ranch, Twitch.tv.tv slash yard underscore underscoressard. Ranch, I know you're playing, Reson Evil Requiem as well. Is that what you're streaming? Yeah, that's what I'm streaming. Awesome. Everyone check out that channel.

Our music was by Ben Prenti, Ben Pranty, Music.com. Artists by Duck Brigade.com. We get merch at kinshipgoods.com. And there's a bonus episode every Wednesday in our Patreon, get played DLC. Matt, do you know what we're doing this week? This one is our very first retro rewind where we watched a, what would you describe that tape as, Nick? a VHS about Donkey Kong country.

There's a VHS about Donkey Kong country. And we had a lot of fun watching it. It was an interesting relic of the time. It was a fascinating 90s time capsule. Just like both the Super Nintendo being the cutting edge of video game hardware and then also just the MTV, you know, like that's sort of MTV 90s like skater dude, surfer dude sort of vibe

is so prominent. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. How do you do with Donkey Kong making all those insensitive jokes? You know what? It was just a different time. Yeah.

It was just, it was a different time. I don't know. I personally enjoyed it because back when comedy was legal. Yeah. You subscribe at patreon.com slash get played. Chris Plant, what an absolute throw.

Thank you for giving us so much of your time. Thank you. Thank you for coming out here to the studio. so we could do this in person. Just so great to meet you and had an absolute blast talking to you and hearing all your knowledge about games. This was so nice.

I didn't even get to ask you about the monster fuck, which was the only thing I wanted to talk about. But it was really nice to me to have me anyway. Of course. I had a blast. Yeah, thank you for doing this. I'm glad this made it out of the DMs. We did it.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Do you have anything you would like to plug? Thank you so much. First, I'd like to plug daddylife.com and the dad. But beyond that, post games is my weekly interview NPR style show.

So if you want a show and you're like, man, I would love a video game show for grownups besides this one. Besides this one. I would say if you want to listen to a good video game podcast, you could definitely check out post games. And if you want to listen to a bad one, check out the best. It's great. And also, if you, for whatever reason, live in Southern California, you should come on down to the Frida Cinema and Santa Ana, because I help, just help make it happen, I guess is what you can say. And it's a great, great place for independent cinema. So cool.

Be careful of those wins, though, if you're coming. If you're not from here, you got to just be really careful of those wins. Those wins will get you. Real narrow cast joke. Thank you. Realthe daddy.com. Matt, you got playing. Hello, everyone.

I'm back here with a plug from our former engineer and good buddy Devon Tori Bryant. You may know he makes music under the name Painkiller the Pigeon, and he has a new album out called Civil Temperatures. It's streaming everywhere, but you can check it out at pincillorthepigeon.bancamp.com And buy a goddamn physical disc, physical media, baby. We love it. And here we go. I'm going to play a quick song called Catriota from the album.

Civil temperatures. From Painkiller, The Pigeon, take it away. Did you perform the test you've just described upon this suit? I did. The traces of anything still remain in those washed portions? Yes. Traces of what? That was a hate gum podcast.