Get Played - The Year of Yoshi
Episode Date: May 18, 2026Nick and Matt discuss Yoshi's big year and go through the history of the character and his games, from his debut in Super Mario World to his new solo game Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. 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 getplayedpod@gmail.com 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.
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This is a headgum podcast.
Hey, it's me, Yoti.
Hey, you stole my fucking pencils.
I need my pencils.
I'll take a, I want to draw a picture of my dad.
Hang on.
Just stop real quick.
Sorry, I kind of broke there.
That was a little unprofessional.
I can do a better read.
No, yeah, no, it's, um, I just don't know what the pencils thing is.
Because he doesn't really, he doesn't read or write.
Usually.
Yeah, I mean.
I mean, you know, I'm just riffing here.
I'm just kind of going, like, I kind of go.
I mean, that's the nature of improv sometimes.
Yeah, no, I just, I mean, I know we said to improv, but I guess what I meant was, like,
maybe improvised, like, different intonations, you know, like, different ways you might say
Yoshi, because that's kind of all that we have in the script.
Got it.
Usually, what we do is we'll have the, you know, like, we, uh, I worked in casting
Groot and, like, BBA and stuff, too.
We'll have, like, placeholder lines for what the,
are, but we want those lines to come through the noise.
You're kind of embodying it through the noises through those vocalizations.
I'll try another one.
Okay, another one.
I'm taking a sewer water here.
Yeah, go ahead.
Have you worked here long?
You know, it's been, it's my first summer.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
That's big.
I mean, this is a bad summer is your big season.
Well, hey, you don't got to tell me.
I hope we get people back at the movies.
Okay, here we go.
Take two.
Hey, it's me, Yoshi.
who took my fucking markers
what he took my markers
I was gonna draw a picture of my dad
fuck you
stop stop stop stop stop yeah
so you kind of
you kind of went A to A
yeah kind of avoided pencils there so I think that
was like I took the no I chose I take notes
and you still laughed
you can't
you can't laugh at your own shit like that
because one we can't use that in the movie
That's true.
And two, we're not really establishing that Yoshi has a dad.
Got it.
Got it.
So it's kind of crazy that you keep improvising this thing, which, by the way, because now
you've done it twice, it's not really improvising it.
You're kind of now wedging this thing in about Yoshi's dad.
Wanted to draw a picture of Yoshi's dad.
Look, you didn't look too carefully at both sides of my hands.
I got my lines written down right here.
Oh, God.
I kind of pre-improved it.
It's okay.
Because look, I like what you're doing with the boy.
I like it.
I just kind of need you to, let's kind of we just do one that's not about drawings or anything like that.
Or, you know, whether or not they're about your dad or, you know, maybe your implement for doing the drawings has been taken.
Yeah, sure, sure.
I got it.
I don't just vocalize, you know, Yoshi, because I know that's what you want.
Yeah, I just want to hear Yoshi a couple times.
Okay, here we go.
Take three.
Yoshi.
Yoki
Yoshi
Internal monologue
Hey it's me Yoshi
Who took my fucking
Crayons
I was gonna draw a picture of my dad
With those fucking crayons
Fuck you
Um
Hey I'm sorry
Yeah
That was great
Yoshi
You did a really good job
With that
I don't know if you're supposed to
vocalize internal monologue
Well that's more of like a state
direction but just sort of like painting a picture I have no way to I have no
great way to tell you this uh-huh I'm gonna go beg Donald Glover to do this
you're a good man that's a fair thing to say thank you thank you and I'm sorry
I know it's like I don't want to upset you it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay
it's a business firing anybody I just started here you didn't you're
need fire me this is an audition they call it show business not show friends but
yeah this is it's hard okay dude it's okay I don't even know if he'll do it'll do
it. I just kind of threw a name out.
It's totally okay. Hey, why don't we shake hands, all right?
Okay.
Wait a minute. You got a handful of my pencils. You stole my fucking pencils.
Yoink.
We grab fruit with our tongues and yushi!
As we discussed the year of Mario's other green ally this week on Get Played.
Wow, it's Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.
It's time to get played.
I'm Tiger Wiger alongside Mr. Games, Matt Apodaca.
Hello everyone.
Hello everyone.
And welcome back to get played.
Heather is out this week, as you might have inferred.
She is traveling.
So we're here with the two fellas.
And let me tell you, it's a boys night because our producer, Ranch, Rochelle Chen,
is at the mandatory headgum corporate retreat in Miami.
That's right.
She's been taken.
She's been taken.
And so they took her to the corporate retreat where,
The headgum staff who doesn't work here,
is enjoying a wonderful week off.
Yeah, to the headgum staff,
let me just say, for taking Rochelle,
just so you know,
I have a very specific set of skills,
and I will find you.
Matt's not kidding about these skills.
You don't want to see them to play these skills.
You don't want to see what they are?
I won't say what they are.
But I have them,
and just so you know,
just bring her back.
Yeah. Bring her back.
Yeah, bring her back.
Bring her back.
Not that we don't like having Sam.
We love, hey, our guest engineer, Sam Rogenes, we always love having in the building.
How are you doing, Sam?
Pretty good, fellas. Thanks for having me.
Sam, you ever had Jolly Bee? We had Jollybee last week.
I have had it. Pasta with ketchup in it?
Yeah, they've got a, it's with a banana ketchup, so it's a little bit sweeter.
It's a sweet spaghetti.
Donkey Kong's favorite ketchup.
It is Donkey Kong's favorite ketchup, I think canonically.
but it's a Filipino chain in origin
but it's not just their sweet spaghetti
their fried chicken is dynamite
and last week we taste tested
was that last week or two weeks ago?
It was two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago we taste tested the Final Fantasy 14
they have a meal right now
and it comes with a bucket of fried chicken
and Matt and I are still thinking about that chicken.
I've had Jolly Bee before
but that was a particularly
well executed batch of fried chicken
from our buddy the bee.
Oh man, first of all, not very familiar with the bee as a mascot in general.
He's fucking awesome.
One of our best little guys.
One of our best little guys, I think maybe one of the best bees.
Sorry Cheerios.
Sorry Benson.
Who are our top bees?
Barry B Benson?
Barry Benson from B movie.
Who else?
Who else?
I'm trying to think of the famous bees.
Yeah, honey bee guy, the honey, uh, what does the Cheerios B just named the Cheerios B?
The Cheerios B.
Except you know what, Honey Nut Cheerios, I will say.
Buzz the Bee.
His name's Buzz?
They don't ever really make a big deal about that, do they?
No, they don't.
We had to look it up to learn it.
You know Tukan Sam's name.
You know Captain Crunch's name.
We had to Google Buzz.
What are we doing?
Who the fuck is Maya the Bee?
Maya the Bee?
Oh, there's Charmy Bee, of course.
Charmy Bee, of course.
Charmy Bee is good.
A bee man from The Simpsons.
How could we forget?
B'amble B man.
B'am's a fun character.
Have I said this on the show before?
I think I have.
Charmy B should be played by Cardi B.
That's pretty good.
Save it for a Segment Dreamcast.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cardi B probably on the list.
Okay, so Spike the B was a bee
who tormented Donald Duck in several cartoons
from 1940 to the early 1950s.
I'm not familiar with Spike the B, but he is cute.
I wish he would torment a different Donald.
Matt, don't get me started.
Rumsfeld.
He's dead.
That ghoul is fucking nice.
dead.
Yeah, but so I mentioned before record that I hadn't stopped thinking about the fried chicken.
It has not got me to play Final Fantasy 14 at all, but I've been talking about in particular,
the spicy Jolly V fried chicken to anybody who will listen.
I think that is some of the best fried chicken I've ever had in my life.
Yeah, you know, again, they said this on the episode.
I'm a Popeye's advocate.
Popeyes is on my Mount Chain Moore.
I love Popeye's fried chicken.
I think they do a great job there.
and say, you know, Popeye's Louisiana kitchen.
They do more than just chicken, but that chicken they do right.
The Jolly Bee at its current, like, level of consistency might be a little bit better than Popeyes.
It might be edging it out at this point.
We'll see.
I've got to get a few more batches from each, but fried chicken is my favorite food, so I don't say that lightly.
We said this maybe on the show.
Heather and I, we were both like, I don't think we've seen you this happy ever.
Yeah, no.
You were so happy eating the chicken.
It was great.
It cured my depression.
But like the spicy one, too, it wasn't like, no offense, boys.
It wasn't for white people.
No, it absolutely was not.
It was not for white palettes.
And offense taken, but I'm a bit of a heat seeker myself.
Yeah, yeah.
And I was just like, okay, this has some real burn to it.
Because very often usually, and I know what you're talking about,
because you'll get like the Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich.
It's like, this has no real spice to it,
especially the current Nerf version,
which don't get me started on that.
But the like, you know,
even when they'll be like, like, oh, Burger King has its new,
its new ghost pepper sauce.
And then you have it and just like, all right,
this is, I guess, kind of spicy.
It's like Tabasco spicy.
You just want to market it with ghost pepper,
but you don't want to make it something that's genuinely spicy
because you'll alienate, like you were saying,
so many sensitive pallets.
Jolly Bee doesn't give a fuck.
There's spicy chicken, got some real heat to it.
That bee's got some sting.
Bees got some sting.
Jolly Bee might be our top B.
He might be. He's great.
I love him.
Definitely destroys Barry B. Benson.
Oh, man.
He fucking takes him into the back alley and shoots him.
Cold blood.
He was in a puddle of his own mess.
Barry Benson is complaining about college protests.
I guess he doesn't have to shoot him.
He could just pull his stinger out.
He just pull his stinger out.
You just pull a stinger out, yeah.
Which is even worse.
It's kind of, it's like he's doing the thing that could also kill him to somebody else.
He's doing the Varang move.
Oh, yes.
Severing their connection to Iowa.
Yeah, yeah.
Which, you know, like the Nateri looks on with horror as this is happening.
Yeah.
Hold on.
I just actually, I wanted to say this earlier.
Yeah.
You and I are here.
We're here with Sam.
Yeah.
Did you guys hear the news?
What's the news?
The boys.
They're back in town.
The boys are back in town.
Maybe one of the best songs about boys being back.
Is there another?
It's the definitive boys are back song.
If there is another, it's not as good as this one.
No, no, no, no.
This is the go-to.
In a sense, all songs are about the boys being back.
Yeah.
But this one, kind of the best one.
I've, what's, what's, I think if you look at the lyrics of, because I did this once, a back in town is a thin lizzie song.
Yeah.
I think if you look at the lyrics, it is like so much about just like boys being back in town.
Yeah, it is, it is.
Guess who just got back today, them wild-eyed boys that had been away.
Of course, of course, the boys are back in town.
The boys are back in town.
Repeated endlessly.
Spread the word around.
Guess who's back in town?
spread the word on it.
Why?
Because you got a little
microphone fuzz on your beard.
Let me get that.
That's embarrassing.
I tried to wipe them down for you, but...
It's okay.
Who was in here recently?
Santa.
I think Santa was probably in here
doing Santa cast.
I'd listen.
I would too.
Get me on the good list.
He recaps
Baby reindeer.
I thought it was
something else.
I still liked it.
Friday night they'll be dressed to kill
Down at Dino's Bar and Grill
The drink will flow and the blood will spill
And if the boys want to fight you better let them
Not won't be long till summer comes
Now that the boys are here again
They're coming and going in the song
It says the boys are back in town again
Been hanging down at Dinos
The boys are back
So their boys are specifically going to their old haunt
They're going straight to Dinos
And the town
The town knows about them
And is excited about it
It's good shit
Songs are good
Is jailbreak a prequel to these lyrics?
They got out of jail and that's why they're back.
It might be what's going on.
It looks like they're like, oh, they're looking for a specific woman perhaps.
Maybe that's an element of it.
That's kind of a subplot.
Mostly their agenda is just to be back in town.
But there is a chick that used to dance a lot that slap Johnny once,
that it looks like they're looking for her.
I don't I don't hopefully not for anything to ferries
probably just for a well-worded apology
for the slap
That's my guess and if you do that
All is forgiven as we saw with
Will Smith and Chris Rock
And on NBC's The Slap
It's true you just turn the page
God that Jollyby was so fucking good
It really was like transcendent
I texted my brother
After we recorded it
Like we did that segment
And then we had like a break for a second
Before we came back from the break
I had texted my brother, dude, because we had talked about wanting to try this chicken specifically.
We had both never had it before.
And I was like, you got to get in there.
And he was like, this is groundbreaking information.
Speaking of texting, I just texted Ranch that Jollyby was so good.
We'll see if we hear back.
Oh, I think Rancher probably definitely has something to say about it.
Yeah.
She's busy clubbing at Miami with the rest of the head comes down.
While the boys are back in town.
The boys are back in town.
The boys are back in town and yet no one's here to greet them.
So, yeah, Heather's not here.
Ranch isn't here.
Sam is here.
Jollybee is not here.
We're getting burgers instead.
The Jollybee is welcome anytime.
The Jollybee is welcome anytime.
We'd love to have them on the podcast.
I love to chop it up with him.
I wonder, do we know what the Jollybee's name is?
Is it just Jollybee?
I thought he was the Jollybee, but let me get some more context on the Jollybee.
His name is Buzz also.
It's just like a common bee name.
You know, it is kind of a, I get it, but I think he's just a guy.
Yeah, it is the kind of thing that just is reused.
endlessly.
But I'm not sure if he actually has a canonical name beyond the Jolly Bee.
There's different ones.
Lady Moo in 1983 to the mid-90s.
Miko in between there from 83 to 84.
Champ from 84 to 2004.
Mr. Yum Yum is the present one, I believe, where there's even more.
Wow.
Yeah, I'm looking up right now.
So the Jolly Bee is the mascot.
Jollybee is just his name.
Jolly lose the, it's cleaner.
And, but he's got buddies like Teamy the Productivity Bee and Buzzbee who have different, different color ways.
Okay, so here, here's friends, Hetty, Popo, Yum, and Twirlie, each representing a different dish.
They had their own show Jollytown, which aired on Filipino TV.
This is a team to rival the McDonald's characters.
These guys are great.
Jollybee is a cheerleader who likes surprising.
and cheering others up.
Hedy represents jolly spaghetti.
Not what I would have guessed at all
based on the name Torley.
Torley seems more like the spaghetti
the spaghetti avatar.
I wonder who a Popo Yum,
I guess I'd probably be the fried chicken,
but I don't know.
I would hope the Yom is just all the food.
Wait, they have Yum burgers.
I bet Yum is for the Yum burgers.
Yeah.
So maybe Popo is, I wonder if Popo
is like as like Tagalog for bird
or something like that.
I'm going to be such a hero for my next friend gathering
when I pull up with a bucket of Jollybee chicken
and everyone's going to be,
everyone's going to lift me on their fucking shoulders.
I was trying to find what Popo meant in Tagalog,
and instead it's telling me...
Please.
No, it's giving me the trans...
Dumbass Google AI giving me the Tagalog translation for poop.
No, that's not what we want.
It's not what we want.
It's helpful information, maybe.
But not what we're, not what we're searching for.
Coconut, perhaps?
Coconut.
I could be wrong.
I don't know.
I'm sure we have.
Popo the Coco?
If we have any AAPI listeners out there who have any knowledge of that, let us know.
Honestly, any context on Jollybee and Jollybee's buddies, the Jolly friends, we'd love any of it.
Please put it in our Discord.
Discord.org.
G.G.
slash get played.
Come to us with any information you have, even if it's as little as I also like it.
That's totally valid.
We love to hear that.
Let's keep the brand going.
Yeah.
I think what you're saying, though, is that obviously smaller footprint than Popeyes or any of these other national chains.
That was sending the global rankings.
There's 1,700 locations.
1700.
Yeah.
But, I mean, like, it's a lot of them are in, you know, Southeast Asia.
Yeah.
But it's still, they're growing.
They're scaling the right way, though, where I feel like the, the course.
quality.
I feel like I've heard it's this good my entire life and just had never had it before.
And now I'm just caught up and now I'm thinking about the years spent wasted,
not eating it.
Not wasted.
Now you have a new experience which your future years you can enjoy Jolly Bee with a new
appreciation.
It's like how I'm trying to approach everything because I'm like, hey, you know, I'm in my 40s.
I'm just getting tattoos now.
And it's like, hey, there may be a different identity for me if I realize that this is a thing
I like doing when I'm much younger.
But then I feel like I'm a different guy.
And I feel like the guy I am now has like kind of a confidence in his like look and in like
being himself to a degree where I'm less self-conscious about it.
And I can kind of like enjoy getting, you know, like a new, a new forearm piece of a tiger.
I'm tiger now.
He's tiger now.
This, I mean, all of them are great.
This one, this one is so, because it's so visible.
Yeah.
This one is kind of like tigers here.
Tigers here.
Tigers here.
Everybody back the fuck off.
Reminded every time I'm holding my hog at the urinal.
Hey, tigers here.
You scream because you think it's going to bite it off.
Get away.
Get away.
Hey, buddy.
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Yeah, the boys are back in town.
Jollybee is good.
Jollybee is good.
What else?
Sam is here.
Sam is here.
We've been playing some video games lately.
It's time for a question we ask every week.
That question is, what are you playing?
Looks like the Resident Evil merchant either missed their cue or is not here entirely.
Well, I got a text.
from the merch the other day
asking me what's the best way
to fit inside a suitcase
and I know Heather is traveling
so I don't know if
I'm a little worried that Resident Evil merchant
is a stowaway
on Heather's flight
so she can be dealing with that
I guess we'll deal with not having
the merchant to set up this segment
but Matt I can ask you
directly what are you playing
and I'll tell you directly
holy shit
the boys are back in town
I'm going to tell you what I'm playing.
I'm playing a little game called Soros.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, man, I'm so interested in Soros.
Okay.
Well, it's the new, it's the new House Mark game.
It released on April 30th this year, exclusively for PlayStation 5.
Yes.
One of 10.
Numbers are growing.
Yeah, it's great.
But it's, you know, it's sort of, I mean, it's basically,
it's not exactly like Returnal,
but the gameplay is very similar to Returnal.
And it's the same developers.
It's the same developer.
And you liked Returnal.
I liked it a lot.
I never finished it.
But when this new one came out,
I was like, I have to be here on the ground floor, on Soros.
It's a third-person action game that combines bullet hell,
third-person shooter, and Rogue Light Elements.
And you play as this guy, Arjun DeVraj,
who's portrayed by the actor Rahoo Koli,
who's in a lot of the Mike Flanagan horror.
things.
Oh, okay, yeah.
It seems like a generally, like, cool guy.
I kind of feel like he's cool enough that, like, he would do the show.
He seems awesome.
Wow.
And funny.
I'm going to play the game.
And he, I see him on, like, other video game things.
He's a big-time gamer.
He's a, and he's a right, proper lad, this guy.
He's awesome.
But in the game, Arjun is investigating a lost off-world colony on the planet Carcosa.
And that's sort of your, you start the game sort of not knowing what.
What the hell is going on?
You're like, what the fuck is all this shit?
And, you know, you're seeing these creatures.
There's like alien type things.
These like sort of flying squid type things.
And then there are ones that kind of look like robots, not robots, but like they look
more mechanical on the ground too.
And there's different ways to dispense of these enemies.
You have a gun that you can just hold and fire.
But there's things just coming at you constantly.
And because of that, Arjuna's fucking fast as fast.
fuck he's so goddamn fast like he's almost too fast we're like you don't have to hold something down
to run you're just running all the time and it's kind of like if heather was here i'd be like
heather you have to play this he's maybe one of the faster characters in a game in a long time
he's fucking fast as shit wow yeah because like he's just like constantly moving and there
are things just coming at him all the time and all you're doing is shooting at shit all the time it
rocks. I find the game to be actually very challenging. It's like the close, it's not quite like a
soul's like thing, but it has that level of difficulty kind. Right. Where there's not like a,
there's no difficulty toggle, certainly. So the game's as hard as the game is. Did you kind of just
have to grate your teeth and bear it and get your get through it however you can? It took me for like
maybe eight or nine runs to beat the first area boss and then got past that a little bit,
got to keep going. And I'm still on my way to my main mission so far.
which is to find the source of a signal somewhere.
And so far I haven't been able to do it
because I keep dying in the second area
or to the first area boss again.
But then you have a skill tree that you're bringing back
currency to unlock things in the skill tree.
And it's just cool as hell.
But I will say the vibes are bad.
It is a really cool and fun game.
but like it is like the world is like brown orange everywhere like red sort of that color palette
and it's just kind of like not so far anyway that's the first biome that i've seen so it could
maybe becomes more colorful at some point but it is it's tough stuff and it's just the world is
aggressive too because you're just like being uh you know uh you're under attack at all times
basically but it's it's really really cool and then along the way you're meeting these guys too
that like, or you know, you've met a couple of characters who have, like, gone insane.
Right.
You're finding, um, uh, audio logs of them, like, having these, like, delusions of grandeur and
stuff and, like, talking about how they think they're king shit or whatever.
And it's, um, it's great.
It's, I'm really interested to see what the story, what the story is, you know, but, uh, I'm
really enjoying my time with it so far and, uh, give it a hearty, hearty recommend.
So it's interesting that this game has come out at a time where, you know, there's another, a very different game, but another game that is like getting a lot of commendation pragmata, an action game that I also have now purchased but have not played.
But I am, it's like, I wonder which one will kind of become the game of the moment, which one will be like, hey, I guess pragmata by virtue of being multi-plast.
You know, you can also play it on PC, which I imagine there's not a PC skew out yet of Soros.
And no, PlayStation stopped doing it too.
No plans for it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, I mean, like for that reason, I kind of feel like Pragmato will have the, you know, the momentum coming out of this.
But I don't know.
It's just kind of like, it's an interesting comparison point.
And you haven't gotten much time in Pragato yourself.
I haven't gotten yet because I have not been able to hunt down a disc.
I want to.
You're a physical media guy.
I'm a physical media guy when I can be.
And for this, I'm like, I want that really bad.
And it seems cool.
I was not previously interested in Pragmatta at all.
I was always interested in Saras since, you know, the announcement trailer of it.
I was like, I'm going to play this.
But Pragmatta never really hooked me, but the raves and the people I know that are playing it are like, it's incredible.
No, people I know with very good taste are loving Pragata.
I'll get into it at some point.
I'm sure I will too if I can never find a goddamn disc.
Let it go, Matt.
No, I'm going to get the disc.
Except this digital future.
No one owns anything.
Here's the thing I should just get it digitally.
But the thing that is interesting to me, though, is that because it's a, it's Capcom's second game this year a month after Resident Evil Requio.
Yeah, and a new IP.
It's kind of crazy.
And that, speaking of which, of games that have just been critically very well received.
Just like bang, bang, bang, these kind of like, I'm not sure if you call Soros a AAA game,
but it certainly has the feel of it.
Yeah.
So.
And I think to your point, Pragmata probably will have the longer tail because it seems like they're setting it up to be a franchise.
Right.
And it seems like it's probably shorter.
Like it seems like it's like 15 hours.
Like I think you can do it in 15 hours or something.
I've heard like Requiemit is a manageable length.
I mean, we could, you know, we're a video game podcast.
If we were journalists and we were full time, we'd have.
already played these fucking extremely relevant games.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you finish Requiem.
I did finish Requiem.
But I have not gotten to brag matter myself, and I'm excited to try it.
I'm glad you're having fun with Soros.
That's another one on my radar.
Already my backlog of 2026 games alone is unmanageable.
It's possible.
It's early to say this.
Yeah.
Right now, I think Requiem might be my game to beat for Game of the Year.
Hachy-Machi.
It's so fucking good.
And, you know, maybe there's other.
stuff coming out. Maybe there's stuff I'm forgetting as well that I've played this year.
Yeah. But for new games this year, Requiem is is, is top dog for me. But Nick, what are you playing?
Matt, thank you so much for asking. You know, if anything is going to dislodge it from your top spot this early in the year, something that you might get around to that I have finally gotten around to playing.
A recommendation of our buddy Chris Plant, personalized for me,
when he guessed it on the show, the game esoteric ebb.
Oh.
Now, here's the thing.
I was supposed to give an update a mouse detective PI this week, but I got distracted by other
games because that's what, I don't know, that's what I do.
I don't know.
That's what happens to all of us.
They just go like, oh, you know, I can play this other thing.
Yeah.
I can spend more money on something else.
Oh, yeah.
That is the gamer's curse.
It is the phrase, ooh, something new to buy.
I picked up both esoteric ebb and pragmata in the same steam cart, and I was like,
what am I doing?
I'm like not barely even home these days.
But at the time I've had, I've gotten, I've gotten to familiarize myself with Ebb.
And Matt, this is very for you.
And also, I wish Heather was here.
I mean, for first off, it makes the show better and it's more fun to do.
But Heather and her wife, Mary, both love disco elysium.
Yeah.
And this is the most disco elysium game since disco Elysium.
Oh, God damn.
I'm going to buy it right now.
I'll keep playing it.
Yeah, buy it immediately.
I'll keep playing it, but I'm sure.
And so I'm sure when she's back will be able to chop it up about it a little bit.
It's developed by Christopher Brodegarde, I guess based on a homebrew D&D module and of their own creation and published by Raffiori.
It's a fantasy world where you're a cleric who's a government employee.
So you're kind of like this stooge of the government.
It's just before the first ever election in this city of Norville.
and a T-shop explodes.
So that's kind of the inciting incident
and you're just investigating
what the fuck happened with this T-shop.
So as such is just basically a way in,
like the murder in, you know,
the murder in Disco Elysio.
Right.
That you can't quite call that a shaggy dog story
because it does ultimately have a satisfying resolution.
But that game is not.
And Tim Allen's not in it.
And Tim Allen's not in it.
But that game is, isn't it a while
he turns into a dog and to Santa?
Did he turn to anything else?
A right-wing piece of shit.
Got him.
I don't think so, Tim.
To be fair, he probably always was that.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
Anyway, the developer self-describes it as a disco-like.
It's like a soul-like.
This is a disco-like.
And it's exactly there.
It's not shy about showing its influence, which I love.
Because I feel like if I was trying to do like an indie version of Disco Elysium, a game I really love, a game that's in my top five games ever made, I would be self-conscious about like, well, I can't just do it the way they did, even though that worked excellently.
You know, I can't just do that.
It have to make all these arbitrary changes.
They didn't overthink it.
And so the U.X is basically the same.
You get the right justified endless scroll of dialogue, also that the conflicting internal discussions, it's like, hey, it's kind of in a sense.
it's also kind of like a homebrew disco elysium.
Yeah.
It's also got this dense, complex world with political intrigue that's very disco-elisium-like,
although it's like high fantasy.
So, you know, playing this game and then there's like a dwarven workers party.
I'm like, let's go.
This is shit's for me.
It's basically like theocrats and liberals and socialist competing for control.
Okay, very, very, very disco.
And similarly, failure is often the most interesting outcome.
Yeah.
So, but one thing that is a distinct difference is this art direction,
It looks like a colored in fantasy color book,
if that makes sense.
Oh.
Let me just show you some of this.
Like,
look at this rich,
vibrant palette.
Yeah.
And it's really cool looking there.
You can see some of the character design.
Oh, this guy's my fucking guy.
Yeah,
that guy's great.
It's like a,
like a Gator who's a cooking over a little open fire.
Yeah.
But yeah,
and you see the die rolls there.
It's another commonality.
Yeah.
And yeah,
again,
just like kind of look at this.
The perspective.
Yeah.
It's asymmetric.
But it's,
but it's distinct visually from
Disco Elysium as more of this oil-painted sort of character to it.
It's really, really cool.
I don't really want to talk much about the story because I just like, I feel like it's
one of those ones where it's cool to discover everything.
But if you know the setup, you kind of know where you're headed.
And there is, because it's a fantasy world, there's magic, which you can use to affect
interactions.
Yeah.
Which is cool because it's like, hey, that's an element that's not in disco.
And also, there's combat.
But the thing is, they don't have a distinct combat engine.
It's through the dialogue system.
So it'll be the same thing of like, you know, you encounter some skeletons and then you're rolling dexterity, your strength or whatever to try to get different outcomes from them.
You can take damage and, you know, you can fail.
But ultimately, it's not a combat-driven game.
It's just like because it's this world that becomes an element.
I wonder if I can get it to run in my Ayn Thor because I got disco running just fine, but the fan was going.
I wonder if we'll run on either.
I think it will definitely run on a Steam deck.
Yeah, which I also have.
I mean, it might be Steam Deck certified.
I'm not sure I haven't checked.
But, you know, it's not like the most resource intensive game.
Yeah.
It's a good looking game, but it's, it's really cool, cool, dark tone, you know?
It's kind of like the, the, the esoteric ebb of the title is kind of like these reality warping phenomena that populate the city.
And so you kind of discover them and interact with objects in the subject.
same way that you kind of interact with people.
Planescape Torment, another influence of this game.
And again, one of my favorite games of all time,
these isometric games that are just so driven by dialogue and character interactions
and just the world building and choices that matter.
So I don't know.
I think you'll love it, Matt.
I think our audience, I mean, I know a lot of our audience who's playing this already
loves it, but I think that anyone else who responded to disco,
Elysium, Heather and Mary included.
In fact, maybe I'll text Mary about her right now.
That'd be really, really funny.
I texted her earlier.
Yeah.
And Heather just said, stop texting my wife.
I'm just wishing her safe travels.
That's so funny.
That's really, really good.
But it's really, really cool, Matt.
And I think it's just like,
what a year for video games already?
It is.
It's May.
I guess it's halfway through the year.
But still...
Fuck, it's halfway through the year.
God, I'm going to die.
No, no, we can't do this.
We can't.
You're right.
We're going to live for...
Well, I was going to say, we're going to live forever,
and that's not good either.
Not me.
See what Jollybee I take down?
I felt like not to get back on it.
Yeah.
The sink, like the single...
Well, I had two pieces.
But the piece of Jollybee chicken
that I had the first piece that I took down,
made my life better.
Like it was so cool.
Yeah.
That's what it's all about.
I had three pieces.
I took them down and they were fucking good.
Yeah.
And Heather didn't have any.
No.
And she missed out.
And she did.
Ranch loved it.
Ranch loved it.
Ever heard back from her?
She didn't say it.
She didn't say it yet.
She hasn't gotten back to us.
Sam, you got to try it.
I was wondering, is it sauce or is it spiced in the sauce or is it?
It's a great question.
I'm glad you asked it.
It's...
Dry rub.
Spiced into the fry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the Popeye's spicy.
Yeah, it's not a spicy sauce.
Yeah, but they have gravy that you can dip.
Yeah, the gravy's good.
I don't like a sauce, you know, I've talked about it.
I don't like a sauce nug or a sauce fried thing that comes, like a buffalo chicken sandwich.
It's got the sauce already on it.
It's just like, that's going to be a dry guy.
I don't mean, an opposite of the dry guy.
It's going to be so wet that it removes the crunchy character, which is, you know, so essential to get fried chicken.
Best version of that, though, is orange chicken, right?
Oh, my God.
Now you're talking.
I found it.
Yeah.
That is like, that's the one that works.
Yeah, because like you can get, you can get it crispy.
You can't, you, they somehow, you can do it.
But it's also like a, like a, like a syrupy sauce.
Yeah, it's not quite like, so, yeah.
It just, it's like almost like it hears to it.
Yeah.
Like the stack of, like, like, like an egg of waffle.
Yeah.
It's, it's, yeah, I, yeah, I don't know what it is about it.
orange chicken is great.
Orange chicken is really good.
Panda Express also seems like a good company.
Family owns still,
high wages relative to the sector.
Panda Express is one of the few
fast food meals
we get in my home.
Yeah.
Because you can get like...
I want it now. What's that?
I want it now.
It is so fucking good.
But you can get like a decently
healthy meal there.
Like you don't have to get like
you don't have to get
two sides of orange chicken.
You can.
Yeah.
You don't have to.
You can get like the, I get like a boring thing when I go, I get like the grilled chicken
terriaki but with no sauce.
You know, sometimes you got to make a, you got to make a choice for your health.
Yeah, I get that.
And I'll get half super greens, half chalmy.
No, I do like getting half greens, half rice.
That is nice.
Yeah.
And then the, if I'm getting the plate, I'm getting orange chicken.
Here's a complaint I have about Panetta Express
No drive-through
Wasn't thinking that
But yeah
But no also like
Like I just feel like
They should have better vegetarian options
Yeah, I agree
Yeah
Because it's usually like
They have like they had that tofu thing
Or not tofu eggplant thing for a while
But that kind of looks like shit
Every time we look at it
And one of their options is like
Oh I want to get a vegetarian main
You can just get super greens
I was like but that's like a base
Yeah
I don't want that as a protein
No food
Tofu seems simple and obvious to me
But yeah
She had more tofu, and they used to have a beyond orange chicken, which was fucking good.
They were awesome, right?
And they got rid of it, yeah.
It's a bummer.
Anyway.
Anyway, different, that's for a different show.
I like how, like, the boys are back in town.
And, like, we're going to talk about boy stuff and then just our fat asses just talking about fried chicken.
All right.
All right, let's get to real boys stuff.
Tits, am I right?
I know you worked at Albertsons.
I did, yeah.
That Alberson's fried chicken's good as hell.
It's so fucking good.
And I mean, I told you, we can't get into this.
Yeah.
I told you about how the older ladies that worked behind the deli counter fucking loved me.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And they would like just do whatever I asked them to do.
And so they had like, what do you call it?
They had those.
Tendies?
They had Tendies and King's Hawaiian rolls over there.
And I was like, can you put some, can you make me a little sandwich in the King's Hawaiian rolls?
And they would be like, anything for you?
We love you.
Was this like a quid pro quo?
Like were you like helping them lift things, et cetera?
No.
They just liked having you around.
I was like,
I was like a 19 year old little like cutie pie.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
But I was also good at my job and like I would just like,
I mean, I guess I would go and mop up their greasy floor every day.
Yeah.
I'm sure they love that.
I would do a great job.
Yeah, they were great.
That sounds really good right now, a 10D on a Hawaiian roll.
And yeah, they would put like a hundred.
Honey mustard and lettuce and tomato on it for me.
Oh, they'd be a proper sando.
Like bright proper sandwich.
Yeah, it was really, really good.
Anyway, we can't talk about, we can't do this all day.
No, no, no, no, no.
We could.
We could.
No.
But, so, Tericab, I think you'll, I think you'll really like it.
I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna try it out tonight.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of like, I mean, it kind of has, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
30 hours in some of that range.
So it's not a short game.
And obviously there's all sorts of flexibility in terms of how you build your character
and how you role play it, which seems to invite multiple playthroughs, the same way Disco
Elysium does.
Yeah.
So, you know, I mean, it's, it's a, it's, again, it's a beefy boy.
So know what you're getting into.
Yeah.
And it could just like take over from Soros, which is just, I know, I know that's not exactly
what you want, but maybe maybe just have it on your wish list or have it.
have it ready to check out at some point.
The thing about Soros is that, like, that's only on PlayStation 5.
Okay.
So if I turned my PlayStation 5 on, I know that that's what I'm playing.
Got it.
So, like, that feels like a good game to, like, have something else going to.
You have a designated Soros box.
I got the disc in the damn in the damn three.
So it's, uh, it's in there.
But like, uh, esotericab, I can pick that up on my Steam deck.
No problemo.
Ola, buddy.
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If you've ever spent way too many hours obsessing over game mechanics,
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the Reddit app and dive into R-slash Eldon Ring or R-slash get played or anything for the latest
gaming updates. Download the Reddit app today. Let's talk about the year of Yoshi. So, Yoshi,
it's the year of Yoshi. It's the year of Yoshi. It's the year of Yoshi. It's not,
it's not been declared the year of Luigi. It hasn't been declared. But it kind of feels like it's the
year of Yoshi in terms of, you know, Yoshi's getting a new game. Yoshi's so prominent as
voiced by Donald Glover in the Super Mario Galaxy movie.
So this happened to me.
Yeah.
We go do the Mario stuff.
We see the movie.
Yoshi's in the movie.
You say we go do the Mario stuff.
Just for people who don't have full context.
We went to Japan.
We went to Japan.
Universal sent us out there.
We interviewed the cast of Mario.
That's an episode that came out earlier this year.
And we also saw the Mario Galaxy movie and the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto.
So this is why I've been thinking about Yoshi a lot, because they gave us all this Yoshi stuff.
Yoshi's sort of like the big new toy of the franchise, where like they got a lot of new Yoshi stuff out.
They have the hatching Yoshi, which I hatched immediately when I got home.
It was a very strange experience.
You can only hatch it once.
You can only hatch it once.
And they also gave us Yoshi popcorn buckets, which I fought tooth and nail to try to bring back and simply could not bring back, which I was really bummed out by.
I need to straight up empty bag
With all the shit I got in Japan
I need to like bring home like a like a wooden crate
Yeah like of stuff
I wonder I feel like next time I'm going to like just put you know
underwear and socks in my carry on yeah and then
I'm already talking about next time
Hey look at that underwear and socks in my carry on and then just bring like a full on like empty
Like suitcase and then just like like should I buy there can just go inside of it
Because I'll buy clothes yeah I know they'll buy clothes
It's a great clothes shopping.
It is great.
Country.
Country.
Yeah.
It's a great time.
We were in two cities, so I can't speak at large, but.
Yeah.
Great shopping in Kyoto and Tokyo.
If the, yeah, the smaller towns, what the clothing shopping is like.
Yeah.
Can't speak to it.
But we did the interviews, the clips of, there was a clip that we had that went sort of
semi-viral with Donald talking about Yoshi's.
eye. People were writing about this. Donald's fun again. I'm like, Donald's always been cool.
I come home two days after we get back from Japan. I'm at a Dodger game. Yes. It's Yoshi
Bobblehead Night. Let's go. And the players will get their own bobblehead and you know they have
number 17 Yoshinovi Yamamoto who's a fucking killer. Yeah. But it's not him on the damn
bobblehead. It's Yoshi wearing his damn jersey.
He's wearing the number 17.
He's wearing the number 17.
It says Yoshi on the bat.
They call him Yoshi on the team.
But who's throwing out the fucking first pitch?
It's Donald.
Wow.
And I was like, if I had known, I would have given him some damn tips.
Here's how you throw heat, my man.
But it was all this to say, get that home.
My wife is like, there's too much Yoshi stuff here now.
And I was like, it's kind of the year of Yoshi.
I just been thinking about him a lot
He's been coming up a lot in my life
And I am sort of big
I am excited for this new game
Because it seems different
Than some of the other Yoshi games
Because for my money
There's like two types of Yoshi games
Or there's two eras of Yoshi games
There's Yoshi's Island
And then all the games
Sort of after that
Are sort of trying to be like that
And then there's these other ones
that are where he looks like yarn
Yoshi's
Woolie World
and then Yoshi's Crafted World
and those play
kind of similarly
but are different enough
aesthetically
where now this one
I'm kind of like
it seems like they're trying
a new thing
and I also love the name
of the new game
Yoshi and the mysterious book
yeah so what's going on
with that book
I just think it's funny
it's mysterious
well the book's mysterious
and we don't know
what it's up to at all
but the word book is such a hard word to end on for some reason.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.
I kind of, what about the book of mysteries?
That's pretty good.
The hard consonant at the end of strange.
It's tough, right?
Something about it, not right.
Yoshi in the mysterious book.
So you help a mysterious talking book named Mr. E.
Good name.
That is.
Here's the thing.
Remember the creature's living in his pages.
Day one by.
Yeah.
Go, go, go.
I'm getting that.
So here's the thing.
Like Yoshi's Island was not,
I mean,
I can't say it wasn't an easy game.
Relative to Super Nintendo platforms,
it was,
you could get through it without much challenge.
But Yoshi's Island was not like a,
how I think people live unfairly,
but perhaps accurately characterize
some of the Yoshi's story
and its follow-ups,
which is just kind of like more of a baby game.
You know,
the difficulty is pretty much non-existent.
And then you also see
Yoshi appear in like Super Mario Wonder and it's like, oh, it's kind of like the funky mode.
It's kind of like the easy mode of that game, you know?
Right, right.
So, I mean, it's interesting how that's kind of become that association.
It makes sense because it's got so much appeal to kids, but.
I kind of wish funky mode took over as the word for easy mode.
Yeah, every easy mode should be funky mode.
It should be funky mode for sure.
And then you know what?
He should be in all the games too.
Don't have to convince me.
You're too young to have experienced this, but I'm old as dirt, and I...
You start talking about the Big Bang?
Yeah.
First, there was nothing.
I got Super Mario World, like, like, like, but there was a gift for my birthday,
was Super Mario World with a Super Nintendo as a pack-in game at launch.
And I remember getting home from camp and being so, so excited by this gift.
It was a lovely surprise by my dad
who was very good at gift giving.
He was like, he was like, oh, I left something on your bed.
Can you go pick it up for me?
And it was a super Nintendo.
It was like, oh, that's nice.
Play the shit out of it.
Other times you'd do that, it'd be a belt so he could spank you.
It was a coin flip.
You could get a thoughtful gift or a whoopin.
But you always had to go back to your room to see what it was.
Always had to go back.
Oh, no, another whoopin.
come on my father how dare you you did it shame on all of you the boys are back the boys are back
in town but i like the yoshi is such a big part of super mario world and you get yoshi very very
early on in the game and then there's different there's not just a yoshi there's all sorts of
different yoshe's like there's a blue yoshe's that can fly there's the red yoshe's that that can
fire. There's the yellow Yoshis that when you land of the ground, they, they stomp.
Really, the blue one was the most useful, but they were all fun. Yeah. And then,
and then the other element is it was this cool thing where the same music is playing throughout,
the same, like basically they're all remixes of the exact same melody, but Yoshi's presence
would just add a drum track to each one, just add some percussive elements. So I just like
remember like how like cool it would be like you just hop on yours and they'd be like do
do do do do do do do do do and this beat is just undergird undergirding this existing melody
and then if you get hit and yoshi runs away the the beat goes away it is it's just really really cool
bit of detail and again just such an appealing character design so fun mechanically to be able to eat
a bunch of fruit and then like uh you know you get you either get another yoshi or you get a
a one-up. If you have a Yoshi, get another one-up, but if you just have the egg, you can, or
you have the baby Yoshi, you can grow into a big Yoshi. I'd say also, one of the great
sounds in gaming is Yoshi grabbing a little apple or something with his tongue out. I thought
you were going to say the mount, which is like a, oh, that is good too. That mount is really satisfying.
I also like when you get hit and he runs off and it's like, phew. Yeah, that's fun. A lot of good sounds
A lot of good sounds association with Yoshi.
Also, apparently, I did not know this.
His voice, which is, again, Donald Glover in the recent film, was originally Nintendo
composer Kazumi Totaka.
Oh.
So that was a lot of that was just coming from a person who was working on Sound of the
game.
That's great.
I mean, my very first experience with Yoshi probably was Super Mario World also, but
for the Game Boy Advance.
Yeah, sure.
Which is crazy to think, well, you know what?
That's not true.
I had probably played Mario Kart at a friend's house and Super Smash Brother.
Yes, because once Super Mario World comes out,
Yoshi is just a fixture of all the party games and sports games from that point forward.
I mean, well, I was about to say something that then became immediately not true.
Yeah.
But maybe you'll go with me on this.
Yoshi, the most recent, important Mario character?
Because yeah, you have Waluigi, but he's not really featured in that much stuff.
Does Yoshi, does Wario predate Yoshi?
I think Wario predates Yoshi.
Mario, so it's Super Mario Land 3 is where Wario makes his first appearance.
Let me check the chronology here.
I think Wario might be coming later, but you could very well be right.
I hope I'm right.
I hope I'm right.
1992.
Oh, dang, just a couple years after.
And it's Super Mario Land 3, or Super Mario Land 2, rather, six golden coins where he's the bad guy.
So, yeah, it's that one, he does, Wario does come a little little.
later, and I think you have to consider Wario's, no,
Mario's, of course.
And, you know, I was just saying the other day,
oh, I maybe said this to you and Heather separately,
I think WarioWare touched,
as perfect of a video game to me as Tetris.
I think we maybe talked about this on the podcast,
but yes, I, you know, I love the WarioWare games.
I mean, for me, I have a soft spot for War II
Twisted, which is the one with the, you know,
motion detector mechanism where you'd like to be spinning
your Game Boy advance and shit.
It was really fun.
Yeah.
But I enjoy all of them.
Even the weird kind of platformer one for Switch that was not exactly a warrior wear, but it's still, I still was just having fun with it.
I loved that as well.
I thought I would be playing it a lot longer than I ended up playing it after I beat it.
Me too.
I thought I'd keep doing the challenges.
And then I was like, okay, all right.
I'm kind of done with this.
Because yeah, for a while, I was just like, I'm just competing against mono.
because Mano was playing it a lot too.
About Omanogapia.
Yeah, that's right.
But the Yoshi, so you said
Yoshi has a sort of reputation
these days as being like
the baby franchise.
And I played a,
I got Yoshi's crafted world
at launch for the Nintendo Switch
and I've never beat it.
And I thought it was a little,
that wasn't like hard.
It was definitely not as hard
as Super Bowl.
Mario Wonder or anything like, or even Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze.
But some of those, some of those levels had some decent challenge to it.
Sure.
That I was kind of like, this is the, damn, this one's for babies.
Well, they may have been, I haven't played Crafted World.
So I can't speak to that directly.
But they may, they may have like been responding a little bit to like, yeah, we can,
up the challenge a little bit later in the game.
I will say Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island, it is whatever about it.
It's challenge level.
it is a fucking incredible video game.
It's so good.
The art direction is outstanding
this sort of like color book.
I said coloring book earlier.
It's not that for this.
This is more like a crayon sort of drawing.
It's not the precise line work
that you'll see in like an esoteric ebb.
And so it's got these messy lines
that are just look really great.
It's got a little bit,
it's got like this morphation thing,
which was taking advantage of the Super Nintendo's
like some new chips for its hardware.
Introduction of Baby,
Mario, and this is one thing.
I would have liked to see the Super Mario Galaxy.
Why aren't we seeing Baby Mario and Yoshi's back, but why aren't we seeing baby Mario
Mario like doing the, weh, weh, and then Yoshi retrieving him, which is such a thing
from Yoshi's Island.
Anyway, that was, and this may be apocryphal, but I remember reading this, that, because
people would always complain about Mario's baby Mario being annoying.
And Miyamoto was like, well,
we needed it to be annoying
because when we made it less annoying
players would not prioritize
because mechanically what's happening
for people haven't played the game
Baby Mario's on your back
when you take damage
it's an it's an inversion
of what happens in
in Super Mario world
which is you retain control of Yoshi
and baby Mario is on his own
and vulnerable and you have a timer
to rescue him or else he is
basically taken away by shy guys
or whatever the fuck
Yeah they skin him alive
It's brutal
Yeah it's crazy
It's like a Game of Thrones-esque cutaway.
Yeah.
Anyway, just get, just this beloved character gets flayed.
Who wants baby skin?
One line of EO.
Yeah, and they fucking talk.
It's nasty.
Anyway, I like the shy guys, too.
I love the shy guys.
Great character design.
I think maybe I'm a bit of a shy guy.
Matt, no.
Please, you're the life of the party.
Who, me?
Shy guys are from a Super Mario World or Super Mario 2, but they get kind of like canonized as like,
they're not just the dream enemy, they're a real sort of enemy in this one.
Yoshi's Island.
Well, let me finish this thought.
We land the plane in this.
So they had, they made baby Mario's sound effect very annoying when he is crying because if it wasn't
annoying, they'd found that players would ignore baby Mario and just like keep progressing.
And so they need the beep.
Basically, it was functioning the same way a baby.
crying is. It's just like, oh, someone shut that baby up so everyone gets attention to it and you pick up Baby Mario. It's like it's just a lovely piece of design. Much like and then you could you could follow that straight line all the way to
uh, uh, 2018's death stranding where Lou starts crying. Uh, and you got to cradle the controller to to soothe the baby to suit the baby. Yeah. Cute stuff. Um, man, but I love a, I think a baby in a game seems to always work for some reason. It's great. We're like, what's that baby doing there?
playing the game, I was like, I don't like the baby. I like the baby. Apparently there's a big
baby in Resident Evil 8 that I was not aware of. I got to play the new Resident Evil's. I'm
so behind in that franchise. Apparently there's a big baby. Yeah. And the big baby's scary
apparently. Yeah. Do you want to see a big baby? See me playing those games? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Turn the camera.
Look at my ass. And yeah, I'm wearing a diaper when I'm
playing too.
You gotta wear a dip.
And I got a passie.
But Yoshi's Island
was another game that I had for
we had one Game Boy Advance.
We had two Game Boy Advance. We had two Game Boy
Colors, one Game Boy Advance, and I
didn't start playing Mario stuff
until the Game Boy Advance.
This is my first dalliance with Mario
is really on the Game Boy Advance
apart from playing Smash
and Mario Kart at Friends Houses and stuff.
We had one cartridge
for, well, for all these
games, but we had Super
Mario World for our one Game Boy Advance.
And then when I got my own Game Boy Advance, I started,
that's when the branch really started,
like, Matt's the one that plays games.
Yeah. Because I started getting stuff like,
I bought Yoshi's Island
because I was like, oh, this is just a new,
to me, this is a brand new Nintendo game.
I have to see what's going on with this.
No, I definitely had that era.
And was like, this is like one of my favorite
games. I think Yoshi's Island, maybe not
in my top 10, but
it could be, and it should be.
Looking great.
If I was making a list of top five to top 10 platformers, it would be in there.
I mean, games of all time is, it's just tough to make that cut there for anyone.
It's in my top 25, probably.
It's an excellent platform.
It's such a game.
And it's the sort of thing of like it kind of, you know, I think people forget it was Super
Mario World 2 originally.
Yeah.
And it's so not a direct sequel.
And it came out of kind of a weird time in the Super Nintendo life cycle that it more became
the cult hit than the blockbuster that it deserved to be but it's a it's a really a tremendous
tremendous piece of design it's it's so fun i mean shooting eggs is fun i love shooting the eggs
a cool mechanic yes and i like but i also just like the the aesthetic of it so much it looks like
it has like this like like like like you're saying like this sort of like hand drawn looking kind of thing
uh like some of the like backgrounds are kind of like shaded in kind of instead of like fully i i i
I really love that so much.
And I like that everything is smiling there.
It's very fun.
It's very, very cute.
Man, I don't want to play it.
I don't go play it.
I can play it.
You want to play it?
You want to eat Popeyes or Jollybee?
I mean, we do want to eat Popeyes always, but Jollybee is what's got in my mind right now.
On Mario, I will say, more often than not, if I'm not maining Mario, I'm maintaining Yoshi.
Wow.
You're a Yoshi stand.
I'm a Yoshi guy.
I love them.
But I'm going green all the way.
Yoshi's like a high acceleration, low top speed sort of character.
Yeah.
Easy to handle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I never really got with those.
Damn, he is kind of baby mode.
He's kind of baby mode.
But I never really got with those, with that type as much.
I tend for a heavier character.
Yeah.
But I'm also, I'll do D.K.
too.
Mario Kart.
You're bad at it?
I wouldn't say I'm like, I just feel like there's so many people who are good at Mario
Cart.
And I'm just like a guy who.
Yeah.
You know, like like the new Mario cart that just came out,
Super Mario O'Cart World
Oh yeah
It was
I'm just like
All right
You know I like
And I know a lot of people
Like kind of receive that game
With Shrug
But for me I'm just like
I don't really need to
Spend much of my life
Playing Mario Kart anymore
Yeah
It's kind of the same relationship
I had with Smash Brothers
Although I always like
Smash Brothers more than Mario
But like I love Mario Kart
But as a franchise
As I've kind of gotten
The older and had less time
For games I'm just like
I don't know
So compared to a lot of people
Yes I don't think I'm
at Mario. I'm cart over smash
for sure. Yeah, I know
your car over smash. This is the only two games
I play. Who's your main? In both.
I was going to say, Yoshi's like top three in
Smash, actually for me weird. Wow.
Which I don't think that's common, but
I like Down B. I love Yoshi's
Down B. Yeah. So he's got a Down B stump. He's got an
Down B one of the top Bs. It is,
it is one of the top B's. He's got like an
egg roll and he's got
like you can swallow guys
and egg them, which is fun.
Yeah.
He's also got an egg toss,
but this is part of the challenge of, of Yoshi,
is that he's got that very long second jump,
like that, that long sort of striding,
you know, floaty, leg fluttering second jump in Smash Brothers,
but he does not have an upby recover.
And most characters have an upby recover instead,
because his is taken by the egg toss,
he's just like, I got a little bit more challenging.
What he does have,
that I think is undervalued,
when you're actually playing human beings
is a good taunt.
He just goes,
Yoshi!
And people get so fucking annoyed by that.
It's not quite the same level as like,
jiggly puff,
but it's the same sort of thing.
Like, shut the fuck up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If jiggly puff said jiggly puff
at me, I'd be so fucking mad.
And did a little twirl?
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Start spanking its little butt at you?
I imagine I just downbeat your ass.
You just got ejected,
and I wake up and I hit you with a jiggly puff.
I'd be so upset.
Yeah, you'd be pissed off.
God damn it, I'm mad now.
Let's talk about some of these other Yoshi games real quick,
because I do think that there is like a,
I think we could call it a drop off.
Sure.
Because like, let's say the height is Yoshi's island.
To me, it's all downhill from here, kind of.
Wow.
Right, like Yoshi's story for N64,
I messed around with a little bit.
I don't love it.
That was definitely more of a baby game.
They definitely nerfed it big time versus the previous one.
Then you have Yoshi's Topsy Turvy, which also utilized the twisting around your Game Boy Advance.
I forgot about Yoshi's Topsy Turvy.
It had a gyroscope in it.
It has a different name everywhere else, though.
In the U.S., it's Topsy Turvy, but everywhere else it's called Yoshi's Universal Gravitation.
Wow.
When we think about that.
I think they thought Americans were stupid and they were correct.
They were right.
We've got to call it Topsy Turvy.
Directional Gravitation.
What?
hell and then then we start getting into the
DS Yoshi's Touch and Go
which is the first DS game which I remember being interested in
but not getting because I think it's not particularly good
if I remember correctly and then the next year in 2006 you have
Yoshi's Island DS which is a sequel to Yoshi's Island
yes and this is what I mean though is that like
Topsy Turv, Yoshi's story,
Topsy Turvy, Touch and Go and Yoshi's Island DS
are all aping the style of
Yoshi's Island. They're all sort of doing the same thing.
No, that aesthetic has stuck around.
Even if the gameplay conventions have not.
They're all sort of doing various versions of it,
even if there is a thing, like you were saying,
that it's got like this wool texture to it now.
It's still ultimately achieving the same thing
in a different way that Yoshi's Island,
to assume our world too achieves so well in the 16-bit era.
Yeah, and then between 2006 and 2014, there's not a Yoshi game.
It's eight long years.
Wow.
Until there's a new Yoshi's game, and it's Yoshi's new island for the Nintendo 3DS.
So they're still just like, hey, we got to stick with this.
This works.
We like this.
And then we break off into this new era, the little yarn and crafts era.
Yes.
We have Yoshi's Woolly World for the Wii U, which I never played.
But it also, I think, came out on the 3DS as well.
And then we have Yoshi's Crafted World, which I've mentioned already,
which I absolutely loved when I was playing it.
Because it has an arts and crafts aesthetic.
It has like cut paper and like cardboard tubes as part of like the level design and stuff.
And it's just really, really clever and cute.
I just really love the aesthetic.
But it has that same Yoshi's Island gameplay, just no baby.
Right.
So you have the ability to throw eggs and, you know, devour enemies.
He is eating them.
Right.
They disappear and they become eggs.
Yeah, he's eating them.
He's eating them.
He's kind of a really ferocious character when he stopped and think about it.
I'm just interested in the digestion process here.
How quickly it happens.
Well, also, like, no animal works that way.
You don't eat something and turn it into an egg.
No.
You eat it and you turn into fuel and then you shit it out.
You shit it out.
Here the egg is taking the place of feces.
Yeah, which maybe they don't do?
Maybe they just don't shit in the Mario Universe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe these eggs stink.
Yeah, I mean, they could be smelly eggs that function both as bowel movements and also, you know, methods of reproduction.
Maybe that's the sort of dice roll of like you lay an A, you don't know there's going to be a baby inside or a turd.
I feel like we've been in a similar area before.
I was about to make a joke.
I was like, yeah, then you pick up what you think is the baby and you swaddle it and it's just like a big poop in a blanket.
Aw, this again.
Yeah, but I want to talk about Berto for a second.
Yes.
Because Berto is not a Yoshi.
No.
But I think we can agree.
Pretty close.
Berto shoots eggs.
Burdo shoots eggs.
And I think, look, we know that Miyamoto, he said this, that he was, he'd been trying to get
Yoshi into, or maybe not Yoshi specifically, but a mount for Mario.
Yes.
As early as the NES era.
Right.
So, and just technical limitations kept it from happening.
So it could be that Berto, like, you know, shooting eggs and kind of its form facts.
could have been almost like a rough draft of like, well, this could have been an idea for Yoshi
at some point or a Yoshi-like character that we just turned into a boss. I have no idea where
Berto actually came from. Certainly, though, like, yes, the commonality of eggs are so central,
projectile eggs. They have, well, I guess, well, similar body types. Similar body types, not quite as
dinosaur-like. Right. Yoshi doesn't have a cool bow. No, and that's his greatest flaw, I think.
But this mysterious book that's coming out.
Now look, to me all books for mysterious.
Yeah.
When I think about mysterious book, I think about the Dan Brown trilogy, beginning with the Da Vinci Code.
It's the Da Vinci Code.
Angels and Demons.
And then it's like Inferno or something.
Yeah.
Everyone forgot about Inferno.
Yeah.
He did all three movies, right?
Yeah, they did.
With his stupid little hair?
I guess so.
I never saw the last one.
The only one I've seen is the second one,
and my in-laws invited us over,
my wife and I, to their home,
so we could watch it because my wife and I were going to Italy.
They're like, hey, we should maybe watch this movie
because a lot of it's set in Italy.
And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
We put it on, I'm bored within the first, like,
five minutes in the movie.
I look it up.
It has a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.
And I was like, this movie's like two and a half hours long.
What the fuck?
Why did we say yes?
And it's bad.
It's a bad movie.
Yeah.
I love committing to garbage.
I'm going to watch all of this
I'm going to watch all of this, in for a penny, in for a pound.
I was the only one that stayed awake.
I watched all of it.
It sucks.
It's not your idea.
No.
You get the most punished.
But gosh, why did I bring it up?
Mystery book.
I kind of, I think I have heard
that this game
is maybe a little leaning more baby.
Look at that.
Because like, here's the thing.
I was saying this before.
I don't need every game to be difficult.
I could use a bit.
baby game right now. I'm sorry I was just kicking my fucking
ass. There's so many and especially
with the prominence of Souls likes
there there's so many
tough as nails video games
and not enough hours in a day to play them
all that it is kind of sometimes nice
like not that Astrobat is pretty fucking easy throughout
but you can play these you can do these challenge runs
you can do these more difficult
go for these more difficult
trophies but if you just play
through the main progression that game's kind of a
breeze. It's kind of like a hug of a
video game and it is kind of nice to experience that sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I definitely am looking forward to it. I guess I have a couple
questions for you about Yoshi. Yeah. When you have the option to pick a Yoshi color,
are you staying with default or are you picking maybe something that's close to your favorite color?
One thing I like about Yoshi because of his distinct color ways is he has the most alt
alt costumes in Super Smash Brothers. So like especially as the franchise continues,
there's a point where other characters have like, you know, a few different outs, but he's got like so
many different
looks.
I feel like
I'm often
opting for green,
but I do like
pink and I do
like yellow.
Rarely red,
blue sometimes
because it makes me
think of Bosci
from Super Mario RPG.
Oh yeah.
But yeah,
I don't know.
I think a lot of times
I just end up
going yellow and pink
and I love pink so much,
you know,
so if I have that option.
Yeah, you don't get,
I guess it's a different
shade of pink than burdo.
Yeah.
Burdo's more of like a magenta.
I mean,
it's birdie.
But it's not exactly burdo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is kind of crazy.
How many mounts have become
standalone characters?
I'd say very few.
This is the triumph of Nintendo.
I'm kind of like Yoshi in this way.
I wasn't a mount, but I was an ancillary
part of the show before
I became one of the hosts.
Yoshi, ancillary part of the games,
he's got his own games now.
Matt, you're not host anymore.
What the fuck was that?
What the hell?
I'm just saying
Comparing yourself to a mount?
What are you talking about?
Not a mount, no, I was saying that like
I meant in the way that he wasn't the main thing.
Yeah, sure.
You're a producer.
You guys are always riding my ass, though.
All right, you're back.
You're a producer where we're like,
oh, we love Matt, we love talking about.
Matt's a funny guy.
And you became our third host
and to the betterment of the podcast.
Yeah, I get what you're saying.
I mean, like, this is like,
this is what Nintendo's magic is,
especially with a marketing.
franchise that they were able to take Mario and then now, you know, Peach can sustain her own
games.
Luigi can sustain his own games.
Well, Yoshi has his own franchise.
Wario is his own franchises, you know?
It's like, it's kind of amazing.
I mean, Mario and of himself is a spinoff character of Donkey Kong and the fact that he's able to, like, become
this icon.
It's just like it speaks to both their game design, like how effective they are at coming up
with video games and especially ones with distinct mechanics like the Wario Ware series
that are just like, oh, people want to play these, but also just their ability to design
characters so effectively and make them so appealing that people want to see them in different
context.
That's a good point because, yes, like you were saying earlier, it's like Yoshi is one of
the main guys?
Yes.
Like it's like, is it Mario Luigi Yoshi or is it Mario Yoshi Luigi?
I mean, in some order, I feel like those are the top three.
I love peach.
I'm saying this is a peach stand.
Yes.
But I feel like in terms of the popularity of Mario characters,
I think Peach is on the outside looking in from the top three.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Yoshi's so popular.
And people, because people love those Luigi's Mansion game, though.
They do love those.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they love Luigi.
One of our best beta males.
There's certainly one Luigi that is alpha as hell.
Love that.
You know what, you're right.
There's one Luigi who elevates them all.
You know the one.
I looked at the Smash Brothers tier list.
Did you have more to say on that?
No, I just love him.
And I think something that, well, I do remember this from the Dodger game.
People were wearing Yoshi hats.
People were wearing, kind of like, they were dressing up.
They were dressing up.
So, you know, on the camera, they were like panning over to people dressed up as Yoshi.
It was also crazy because it was Otani's first game.
It was Otani's first game this season.
Wow.
So it was fucking crowded as it.
hell everybody also want the bobblehead I get to the stadium a full two and a half hours before
the game starts because I'm like look I like being here and just having a I like viving I like
getting my hot dogs in it's part of going to a baseball game it rocks get to chill it's so fun I'm
get my seat get my hot dog get my mitchelotta I'm just chilling get my bobblehead secure the bag
come on now come on now they're panning over the people they panning over this guy who's
wearing like a like a Yoshi sort of like hat that then has like Yoshi's like face fun
and then he sees that he's on camera
and it's his jacket
and he's wearing a shirt that says
abolish ice
and the camera
did the fastest sweep away
I've ever seen in my life
but everybody went nuts for this guy
they're like fuck yeah
because like he sort of like baited them
into showing him
because he like had like a stupid little hat
and it was it was great
it was so fucking good
they could have just lingered on him
and just been like well you know
it's just like we like the Yoshi costume
And I think based on who they allowed to use their parking lot, I think they were like,
let's get this guy out of here.
Contract's not up yet.
This is completely different, but there is a New Orleans Pelicans game.
And I think it was last season, not this current season, where a fan got up on the Jambotron.
And he goes, and they're like, oh, the Jumbo Tron, and he's up there.
He's like, yeah, yeah, he puts his arms up.
He's cheering.
and then he immediately starts going,
like doing a grapefruit,
two-handed with a twist blowjow.
And they also panned away from him so quickly.
But it's great because he seemed like a, yeah,
and then the people behind him just collapse in laughter.
It's like the funniest shit.
I watch it like 20 times.
And it's funny because like that guy
probably works at like a target or some shit.
And he's funnier than we'll ever be.
And they definitely got thrown out of his game.
He spent like four hours wages on for one ticket.
He's like, yeah, fuck it.
He writes in, actually, I'm the CEO of a Fortune 500.
Like, what, you are?
You should be, you should be sitting courtside.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
I would love to sit courtside.
Yeah.
I'd be too stressed.
It's also like not.
I'd be afraid that the ball's going to hit me.
I'd be ready for that.
Well, you're a big guy.
They might pass it to you.
I'll take a jump.
We hoist up a three.
LeBron falls, hurts his ankle,
looks out to see if there's anybody tall,
points directly at you, you're just like,
me, grab the ball so hard you pop it somehow.
So I looked at the Smash Brothers tier list.
Yoshi's an A tier in Super Smash Brothers,
the one for N64.
Wow, okay.
For melee, he's down to B-plus tier.
Still in good company with ice climbers.
Pikachu and Samas.
These are, these are all very viable characters.
In Brawl, he is down in D tier.
So he is declined quite a bit at this point.
In Smash Brothers 4, he's also in D tier.
Wow.
In Smash Brothers Ultimate, he's back up to S minus tier.
He got all the way up.
He got buffed.
So they got him up there.
He's up there with Peach and Daisy.
Wow.
Fox McLeod, a staple of the,
tops of tier lists of these
games. The S plus tier list is still just like, man, I'm
so out on Smash Brothers that
Minecraft Steve is like the top, the best character
in Smash Brothers now. It kind of feels like they shouldn't let the
guest characters be that good. There's a lot of third parties in the
S plus tier rankings. I mean, you got Minecraft
Steve, you got Sonic there, you got a Solid Snake, and
you've also got
Yeah, Kazuya from, is that from, is you from Tekken?
I think so.
Yeah, from Tekken.
So it's a, it's kind of like a big run of, of third party characters.
I wonder if there's an element that this can't be the case.
This can't be the sort of thing of like, like, hey, we're going to put, we're going to put your Minecraft Steve in the game and also he's going to be OP.
That can't be part of the pitch.
Hey, we'll put him in.
Preliminarily, this is where we're going to place them.
I don't know if maybe you want to give us a little bit more money.
Maybe we bump him up a little bit.
I guess he's a little bit more tournament play, perhaps.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I feel like they just don't anticipate that.
I don't feel like there's any of it's calculated because I always feel like the,
how could they possibly figure out what a player base of millions is going to gravitate towards
and ultimately mid-max is like the best possible, you know,
character in most scenarios.
You brought the ice climbers.
Now they're sort of like,
they're not even
a factor
in Nintendo's
roster these days at all.
It was such a shock when they showed up
in melee, I believe.
I think that was their debut.
I could be wrong.
It could be the next century.
But it's like, it's,
it was just so unexpected.
And they,
were hard to, kind of hard to play.
Yeah.
I remember playing ice climbers the original on NES, which I revisited on emulator and
been like, man, why did it play this game?
It kind of sucks.
I was going to say, like, that kind of feels like they'd be like ripe for like a mobile
game or something.
Right.
Or like, maybe even like a Nintendo Switch online exclusive, you know, new ice climbers
or something.
Just bring it, just get them back in the conversation.
If they, if they, yeah, making like a sort of like really limited.
ice climbers like sort of puzzle platformer
I think could be fun
they'd have to reinvent the mechanics
because that one you're just
it's just you're just jumping
it's just a vertical scroller
where you're destroying ice blocks
and ascending
there's not a lot to it
but the characters
Nana and Popo are good
oh I love them
and Yoshi
I think one of the great characters
of all time
yeah I mean I'm trying to think
of any final thoughts I have
on him. He's just good. And I like seeing him. He makes me happy. I think he doesn't, there's not
got a lot to him. I mean, he says his own name and he eats things. But you know what? Sometimes
that's all you need. I was just about to say, actually, I think it was the smartest thing they could
have done to not have him speak actual words in the movie. Well, when he cast, when they cast Donald
Glover, I think a lot of people were like, oh man, is he going to be like, is he going to be, you know,
like a fully voiced character with dialogue.
Yeah.
That feels like such a misfire.
And then I had received assurances from people who are in the know is like, no, the only
thing that Yoshi says in the Mario movie is Yoshi.
And then I actually see that some bitch.
I was like, yeah, they got Donald Glover to just say Yoshi.
Yeah.
And he does a good job.
He does a great job.
Well, even like because he was in the trailer, he says Yoshi in the trailer before they
announce him.
And there was like a whole part of the press.
run where Donald was like it's the biggest compliment to me that they thought like he's like I saw
comments of people being like oh cool they didn't get somebody famous to do Yoshi yeah uh because they hadn't
announced him yet and like they couldn't tell it was him and you can't tell it's in no no no just
saying Yoshi but he does he he doesn't he does a great job and uh you know hats off but yoshi
we love you baby we love you Yoshi out all said uh should we do a segment yeah let's do a segment
It's time for a Seigma Dreamcast.
Segment.
And now this will be about a week and a half old maybe, but they just announced a brand new Star Fox game.
And it's so brand new.
It's a remake of a Star Fox game.
It's a surprise Star Fox direct, which as of this recording came out recently.
The new game Star Fox is an extensive Star Fox 64 remaster.
It releases June 25th as a Switch to Exclusive.
visually, I was quite impressed.
I was really impressed, but there seems to be a lot of discourse
about the redesigns of the characters
because they went away from a more stylized thing
to a more, what would you say?
I don't know what you're trying to say.
Accurate depiction of what the animals look like.
Animal anatomy?
More realistic.
Sure.
And I'm just like, who cares?
I mean, they're anthropomorphic.
They're not going to be,
but I get what you're saying.
There's maybe just an additional level of detail,
which necessitates the character designs being a little less cartoonish.
But, and of course, Fox McLeod appears in the Super Mario Galaxy movie.
So the exercise today is, look, they're going to make,
they're going to make a Star Fox property at some point.
They're going to make a Star Fox movie, yeah.
You don't bring him in to see him just one time only.
It's funny how they spend so much time, like,
justifying, like, Rosalina and, like, how she's connected.
and everything, and then Fox just like,
he's just there.
He's just kind of hanging out for all this other stuff.
He's not even an Nintendo character.
He just shows up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But so we got Fox McLeod.
He's played by Glenn Powell in the movie,
and that got me thinking,
who else could we be getting
for the rest of his furry and otherwise friends?
Is this AI him with the,
Glenn Powell with the Star Fox jacket?
No, this was something he posted.
He posted him with a Star Fox vest.
Yeah, after they announced him.
him because apparently he campaigned, he went straight to Illumination and I was like, I have to be Fox
McLeod in this movie.
Wow.
Which is cool.
Good casting.
And he does a great job of the movie.
He's great in it.
But I thought we could have a little fun casting his other friends.
Okay, great.
So we assume Glenn Powell is going to be fixed in place.
They're not going to replace the star.
We're not replacing Glenn.
And here's the thing, couldn't do it if I tried.
I thought it was too good.
Well, what's interesting is that you bring up, the first character we got here is Falco,
who's kind of this,
this cocksure,
a bird character.
Yeah.
Kind of akin to a Rita,
Rito in terms of character design.
Yeah.
It's kind of like,
this is almost a Glenn Powell sort of character.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like this sort of brash and like,
I'm overconfident.
He's just,
he kind of has that same sort of affectation.
But if he's not that,
I think we go,
I think we go full Italian and lean into the Lombardi.
I think we cast a,
we cast a super Italian actor.
Oh, really?
Yeah,
I think Roberto Bonini.
Roberto Bonini, we have to catch somebody who's alive and contemporary.
Roberto Bonini's dead?
Oh, I don't know, but he's probably like 100 years old, right?
So I don't know much about Falco or many of these characters, honestly.
But Falco seems like he's really cool and maybe cooler than even Star Fox himself, who is cool.
I kind of think, what if we got Michael B. Jordan in here?
I mean, Michael B. Jordan is really cool.
It just feels like it's one of those things where it's like he's, I think he should be up there as an option.
I think, and I think if you want to make him your option, I think that's great.
I think the thing is it's like, just in terms of star power, he's more famous than Glenn Powell, I feel like.
Yeah, you're right, you're right.
But, you know, if this sort of thing of just like, hey, he really wants to do it, then, yeah, throw his ass in there.
He loves video games.
He likes anime.
Well, you know, I kind of feel like we could maybe use this opportunity to re-team him
with somebody he's been near planes before.
What have we got Miles Teller as Falco Lombardi?
Wow, so kind of an inversion.
Yeah.
Here he's not the lead.
He's the second in command.
Yeah.
I like that.
That seems like it can be good.
Yeah, and I think that's good buzz for the franchise.
Miles Teller is Falco Lombardi.
Who else do we got here?
I'm going to pick my, I'm going to pick for my pick for,
Falco Lombardi is, I just looked up
new Italian actors.
This guy's name is very Italian,
so I think I'll go with him.
Libero de Renzio.
Okay, we'll go with Libero de Rensio.
Let me see.
Can I get a look at this guy?
You know, actually, there's an issue.
He died on 15th of July 2021.
Oh my God.
Let's not go with Libero, rest in power.
Rest in, yeah.
We'll instead go with an actor who is in World War Z.
Pierre Francisco Faviano.
Wow.
All right.
We'll go with him.
Next on the list we have Pepe Hair.
Now Pepe seems like a bit of a dweeb kind of to me.
He's got his finger raised up.
He kind of looks like he's sort of like a buy-the-books kind of like
maybe he's getting after Falco and Fox for being too crazy.
Well, one thing I think that you should know about Pepey Hair.
One important bit of context is that he's the most senior guy on here.
He is kind of like he rolled with Star Fox's father.
and then he kind of got out of the game
and now he's there.
So he's kind of like, again,
we're going back at the top gun comparison.
He's kind of like where Top Gun Maverick,
where Tom Cruise's status-wise.
He's kind of this guy who was like,
you know, back in the day was the thing.
But now is just kind of there in a support role.
He's also a widower, which is a bit of sadness.
Oh, he is a dead wife?
Yeah, much like Cranky Kong,
whose wife is a ghost.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
explained.
The peppy hair is
unfortunately,
you know,
flying solo.
It is one of the
funnier things that
she,
that Rinkly Kong
also extremely rude.
Yeah.
Dyes off screen.
Dyes off screen
between games.
It's just a ghost.
Yeah.
I mean,
we know why he's so cranky.
Yeah.
No one had told him
why his wife died.
Yeah.
I can't fuck a ghost.
You're like,
oh,
that's why you're mad?
He kind of,
I mean,
he kind of to me
you know who crushed this actually
who's that
past guest Sam Richardson
Sam Richardson's good I mean I love Sam
he thinks he's great we can put him on the board
I think just the thing is he like reads as
he seems like maybe he's so much
yeah he reads as so much younger
and I just feel like it's kind of tough
you know if Gene Hackman was still with us
that'd be the kind of type but I think I'm to go a different direction
I'm going to pick Alfred Molina
Alfred Molina
Always good really good actor
That's fucking great.
And I feel like he's a guy who likes comedy
and likes to corner it up sometimes,
so I think he could play it pretty big here.
I got another pitch.
In a similar age range,
maybe a little older than Alfred.
Alfred's probably what in his early 60s?
Maybe in his 60s maybe.
I'm going, this guy's a little older, 70s maybe.
What about William H. Macy?
Love William H. Macy.
He can be funny too.
Yeah, he could.
Well, he is a funny guy.
He's very funny.
He's very funny in Fargo.
Yeah, he's great.
All right, great.
We got some good options.
We got, next we have Slippy Toad. Now look, I have to be Slippy Toad.
Okay, we'll just lock in Matt Apodaca for Slippy Toe.
I have to do it. I just became aware of this guy. One, he's just like me for real. He's a little guy. He's wearing, he's got a hat on. I think I could be him. Wow.
I've done one cartoon. Let me be Slippy Toad. Here's something he says. Look, okay.
I prepared this.
Let me just close your eyes.
Now, picture me as a frog.
I'm just a frog.
Ribbit, rivet, rivet.
Incredible.
Do you realize how rare it is to experience a stable warp channel?
Did you see the distortions?
You can hear coming out of a frog.
Pretty good, yeah.
That's just a cold read.
I think at minimum you get a callback and you're a finalist.
I think the approach for Slippy and just another way you could go
if maybe your availability doesn't quite line up.
Yeah, in the same way they cast Colleen O'Shaughnessy in the voice of Miles Tales
Prower in the Sonic the Hedgehog movies because was the beloved voice from the cartoons.
I think you get Lisa Brown who was the voice actor in English for Slippy Toad and just bring her back and just be like, because her work is so well known.
And it's kind of a fun thing of like, hey, we got this ensemble piece, but you know what?
We brought to be taught back one of the originals.
Yeah.
It'll probably be like John Mullaney or Kevin.
heart or some shit.
Well, he's got, he's got kind of a, he's got kind of as, hey, voice, you know, I can't do it,
but it's like, he's like, he's a, I think that he would be, like, it's kind of a buffoonish
character too, so.
I like that his shoe is flat in the front.
I do like that too.
I think he'll be, I think, you know, I think they probably will cast a comedian.
That makes a lot of sense.
So maybe Apodaca's in pole position.
Look, hashtag Apodaca for Slippy.
Not really good.
Wow.
All right, let's keep going.
Here we go.
General Pepper.
You can get Macy in here.
Yeah, I mean, like, I feel like Macy's well served in the other role.
This feels like a natural sort of fit for like a Bocheme Woodbine or a who's so effective
at playing like military guys or like a Coleman Domingo.
Coleman Domingo.
I was also going to pitch out a J.K. Simmons, it feels like the kind of General Pepper.
It feels like he just coming in and crushed that.
I also am just like this was my first time.
I'm kind of looking at all these characters.
General Pepper is a dog for people who aren't familiar.
He's a dog wearing an admiral uniform, a general uniform, but it looks like an admiral uniform.
He looks fucking awesome.
He looks great.
All the characters in these games look good.
He looks like a fascist furry.
Yeah, he looks like M. Bison, but a dog.
Those are great options to me.
We can move on to the next one.
Now, Cat.
Cat Monroe, I mean, look, these, these, the cast
is dude heavy. And I think we gotta get somebody in here who can hang with the boys. And I'm
talking, Scarjo, baby. You know, Scarjo feels like a pretty straightforward casting here.
I think just to have another option on there, I think you look at the success of Wicked and
you get like a, you know, either Cynthia Erivo or Ariana Grande. You know, I think you get one of them
in here, one of these young, you know, sort of a, you know, sort of a, uh, uh, uh, uh,
women with a lot of like momentum behind them right now.
I think that's that's maybe one way to go.
I heard that there was a, well, there was a live,
this was now a year ago,
but there was a live Jesus Christ superstar
at the Hollywood Bowl where Cynthia Arrivo
was Jesus Christ in the musical.
Yeah.
And people were like,
it was like the greatest performance
they've ever seen of anything in their lives.
Didn't she also have a, like a one person.
show where she played like every character in Dracula or something like that. I don't know.
She seems fucking awesome. She's she's great. Yeah, let's get Cynthia Arrivo as cat Monroe. I also love
that they all have first and last name. The character design is is very very horny. Oh yeah.
Just say they're gonna pick Sydney Sweeney, you know. Oh, Sydney Sweeney is cat Monroe. They could. Yeah, I mean like
it depends on how much they want to emphasize that, but you know, she's a good actor. Yeah.
All right, let's keep going. Now we got James the dad. Yeah, the dad. Who kind of looks
like Joe Biden to me? I mean, who's Glenn Powell's dad? You know, maybe we get Biden in there.
He kind of gives Joe Biden here. I say Joe Biden is James McLeod. Or even my real pick is actually,
because look, James, I believe is dead in the games, right? Yes. I mean, it's like kind of like a yes.
So, it depends on the timeline, but yes. We don't need him for very long. We maybe need him for some
flashbacks and maybe for some, maybe some dream sequences where he's imagining things his dad has said,
I think we call up his old pal T.C., get Tom Cruise in for a day, get him to be James McLeod.
Tom Cruise has never done animation or video games.
Yeah.
So if you did that, that would be huge.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a great call.
I think it's just like how plausible could it be?
But, hey, we're dreamcast in.
Let's make it happen.
I kind of think Glenn and him have the relationship where Glenn calls him up is like, hey, you probably won't do this.
Yeah.
And then Tom's like, I'll do anything for you, Glenn. You're my best friend.
All right. So we've got Joe Biden and Tom Cruise are two options.
And then I believe this is the last one. Wolf O'Donnell, who is one of the antagonists of this group.
Star Wolf is an interesting character. He is also very horny. I think I'm going to pitch something to you.
He's kind of like a yin-yang of Star Fox. And we know that Glenn Powell, like,
playing dress up. I think you have him play Wolf O'Donnell as well. Star Fox and Star Wolf and he just
has a different voice. He said this is another yet another Glenn Powell disguise movie. Glenn Powell loves
wearing disguises. He's putting disguises on and everything. This is this is a way he can do a he can do it in
animation form. I got I have I have a pitch but I think it's just because I love him and everything.
Yeah. We got to get Benicio del Toro. Actually that's great. Benicio's
in he would have a lot of fun with it. He's great. All right, Gary, we can we
got this movie cast.
Look, now just put, let me be sleepy.
Let me do it.
I won't do it for that much money.
I'll do it for like a little bit.
What?
Half of what Glenn Powell's getting.
Sounds like a bargain as far as I'm concerned.
And you get to explain to everybody who I am.
That was Segment Dreamcast and that's this week's get played.
Our producer is Richel Chan Ranch, Twitch.combe,
slash yard underscore underscore sard.
Let me check my text real quick and did not receive a reply on that Jollybee yet.
Give her back her phone, head gum, staff.
She's doing a trust fall right now.
She doesn't have time for this.
Our music is by Ben Pronti.
Ben Pronti Music.com.
Our artist by Duck Brigade Design, Duck Brigade.com.
And thanks to our guest engineer this week, Sam,
Rogen, Sam, anything you'd like to plug.
Guck spent a couple shows this summer.
Check out for that.
But other than that, thanks for having me, boys.
How can people follow Guck?
At Guck Band on Instagram.
Awesome. Check that out. Get played merch at kinshipgoods.com.
And a bonus episode every Wednesday on our Patreon, get played DLC.
Matt, what are we doing this week?
Oh, this week?
We're back to our old bullshit.
We're at, uh, how did this get played?
And we're doing, uh, the bad Star Wars fighting game, Star Wars, Masters of Terascasi.
This game's really bad.
It's really, really bad.
And we didn't like it.
No.
So if you want to hear us in pain, subscribe over at patreon.
Subscribe over at patreon.com slash.
get played.
That's right.
And you know what?
This week, Matt,
Yosh got played.
Yosh got played?
Yeah, because it's like you got played
but with Yoshi for Yosh.
Yosh got Yosha.
I have an alt.
Let me do the alt.
I can't believe Yosh got Yosied.
How about that?
Yoshi.
That was a big piece of merch
that they fucked up on this time.
Last Mario's movie cycle,
they had the You Just Got Luigi thing.
Yeah.
They needed to have you just got Yose.
They needed that you just got Yosied.
But you know what?
You, the listener,
just got Yoshi.
That was a HeadGum podcast.
Hi, I am Mandy Moore.
Sterling K. Brown.
And I'm Chris Sullivan.
And we host the podcast,
That was us now on HeadGum.
Each episode, we're going to go into a deep dive
from our show, This Is Us.
That's right.
We're going to go episode by episode.
We're also going to pepper in episodes
with different guest stars
and writers and casting directors.
Are we going to cry?
Yes.
A little bit.
Are we going to laugh?
A lot.
A whole lot.
That's what I'm hoping, man.
Listen to That Was Us on your favorite podcast app
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