Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Jared Petty (Special Guest) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 79

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

Jared Petty joins us to discuss NX, Sonic, Monster Hunter, and more. (Released to Patreon Supporters 07.29.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the first ever episode 79 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. I didn't mean like the sound event. I just meant the movement of it. He's like a figure skater. Yeah. I've been known to skating some figures. We are all doing it, Kevin.

Guess what? We're going to have a fun show today. I saw a video of choreographed swimmers and they're like doing dances and they did let it go from Frozen. And there's some guy outside of the pool. They're Japanese, of course, because they're the most creative motherfuckers in the entire goddamn world. They're out there.

there's the one leader and he's just going like this and the people will jump out of the water like their ice. Oh, that's awesome. It was great. I'm like, how can we do that? And I realized we can't do that. As always, I'm joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller.

And joining us today for the first time ever on this show at this table, we got Jared Petty. Two things here. Thank you so much for welcoming. First, an absolute honor to be here. I love what you guys do on the show. But second, I didn't realize we. were actually recording.

I thought we're still doing sound checks until right now. So that's kind of funny. It's how we do. It starts being Kevin and we're like, let's go. Yeah, I was just staring blankly like, wait a minute, we're recording. Give you this. Give me this. Pull out the scary part.

All right. All right. What's you got? This is what Kevin's doing right now. He's just playing with this. I don't envy Kevin's job, but I also know that he could do it better. Whereas just like he sits over there producing the show, but he's always building something or opening a box.

Is that what it's called? Is that what it's called producing? Do you remember, Kevin, you're going to need some props from here in a second? Do you remember a few weeks ago when we were doing a show? We were having a great discussion and he all of a sudden, out of the blue, jumped up. Army crawled down there, went up into there, went back down, army crowd back, and he brought those two metal things, which he proceeded to do nothing with.

They are still sitting there. They are still just sitting there, not constructed, not anchored to a wall. But all of a sudden, he's just like, oh, I need those. How can I be as distracting and annoying as possible during the show? That's what I was going to do. He has kind of this like, like, Ross from Fraser Station over there. He's got like, like, his little producer, Mike, kind of hanging down. And just look over there and just feel like, hey, what do you think, Ross?

Just so you know, the whole reason I had to do that is, it was also, it was between, like, it was during a calling Greg Live. So during a show is what I said. Okay. A show. Like a not important show that sucks. Then you should just walk in front of the camera. Well, no, I didn't want to disrupt the flow. You're going to tell me Colin and Greg Live sucks in this, in this show doesn't suck.

I'm going to be, I'm going to be honest with you, everything we do sucks. Yeah. Kevin. It's fine the way it is. That's why everyone likes us. That's empirically un-truth. What I want you to do is get a bathrobe and that's just cross in front of the camera whenever you need to cross in front of the bus in a bathroom.

Oh my God, yes. Speaking of producing, shout out to Patreon producer, Stephen Insler. As always, he is a machine. The machine. Sometimes I worry that he died. He pledged one month to be the Patreon producer. Then he died and his credit card just rolls over.

That's a real producer. Stephen Insler is a real producer, Kevin. What was your second thing? Nick called me. He said, I need to know right now if we have those because I'm about to order more. What those little... And you were like, let me check,

then pulled them out of the closet, crawled back with them. I got him, I'm holding them. No, I took a picture of them and I said, are these it? Okay, well, first, are these it?

Those don't fit together, right? Don't even try, don't go down this path with them. And then after this... Good job, Kevin. I'm going to say his good job. There's another segue going back to the... Speaking of Patreon,

Jared Petty. Yeah. You have a Patreon now. I do. I have a Patreon now. Yes, it unveils this very... week. Oh my god. So as the time you're listening to this,

whether, wait, even if they're, even if they're early, even if they're already early, it's still there. Even if they're picturing, it's already live right now. It's a soft launch that's for, actually specifically for this audience. And then, uh, opening everything up on August the 1st. So patreon.com slash Jared Petty and what is it? It's called pockets full soup. It's a little show about the stories that we tell. Every week we're going to bring a different interesting person on, like some of the people at this table and others that you might know. And all silliness aside, we're going to sit down and ask them about other people.

This is a show where people talk about the human beings they're thankful for. The idea is to create a positive vibe. It's, so I've got a couple of these in the can. And I thought, well, you know, this could be a fun thing, kind of a passion project. A sort of Bob Ross of the Internet, hey, let's make this, you know, really, really nice, really heartfelt. Yeah, no, not for painting. He's always his happy little training. And I was worried it was going to come off a sack around.

But the episodes that I have in the can right now, which are Brian Antono and Max Scoville. Never heard of them. They're, they're really touching and funny and sweet. And I was like, this came out way better than I thought it would. So, yeah, we, this isn't bad. Yeah, this is, this is something I do. Of course, my day jobs at IGN.com. It's something I love doing. I make all kinds of neat things there. I'm privileged to work there. This is a passion project that's not entertainment related. This is about the stories we have about our lives and the people that have influenced us, made us who we are, the people that have changed us, the people we're most grateful for. and also some fun little tidbits there in the middle. I, you know, to make this happen, I really need people's help. So patreon.com slash Jared Petty, and I really do hope folks will come check up.

They can watch us on YouTube. They can find links to the site right there. They can, you know, we're going to have some neat little reward type stuff to give out. Boy, I'm selling this well. No, no, great. You are. I mean, people are familiar.

And if you're not familiar with Patreon, you can get all our content early, patreon.com. Like, kind of funny games. And if not, you can just go to YouTube. com slash kind of funny games and get the show, then. whenever you want.

Kevin, give me out of the bag. He's slowly trying to give it to me. Jesus Christ. The Superboy is out of the bag now. Everybody chill out. You have no games to play with it over there, Kevin, but the Superboy from Hypokin has been put out.

Don't I have any games? No, that's a flask. That's not a real game either. You're describing. Oh, my God. So there's a lot of segues going on now. Speaking of Nintendo. Yeah.

We're going to talk about the NX. This is it. This is the NX. That's the NX right there. Confirm. Before we get started, do we want to give a date, time of this recording.

Absolutely. Because last time we tried to talk about NX rumors, we got one of that. I was just going to do that. So here's the thing. Right now, it is July 26th. Okay. As of today, we are talking about the Eurogamer rumors of the NX, which seem more legit than any previous NX rumors we've ever had.

IGU.com did confirm with their secondary source. And so did Katakuk. So we're getting a lot of like, all right, this is starting to be a real thing. Starting to feel like what do we know? What do we know? Eurogamer reports. Nintendo's upcoming NX will be a portable. handheld console with detachable controllers, a number of sources are confirmed to Eurogamer.

On the move, NX will function as a high-powered handheld console with its own display. So far, so normal. But here's the twist. We've heard the screen is book-ended by two controller sections on either side, which can be attached or detached as required. Then, when you get home, the system can connect to your TV for gaming on the big screen. A base unit or dock station is used to connect the brain of the NX within the controller to display on your TV.

And X will use game cartridges as its choice of physical media, multiple sources. have also told us. Considering NX's basis as a handheld first and foremost, the choice may not come as too much of a surprise, although we have heard the suggestion

that Nintendo recommends a 32-gibite cartridge. So that's... Blu-ray, we're talking 2550 gigs normally. So that's right in the ballpark. Right, cartridge check has changed so much that optical media

doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to. It's so cheap now to make a cartridge that it's not a deterrent. Yeah. So inside the NX is stated above. The system will harness NVIDIA's powerful mobile processor

Tegra. Graphical comparisons with current consoles are difficult due to the vastly different nature of the device, but once again, we've heard Nintendo is not chasing graphical parity. Quite the opposite. It's sacrificing power to ensure it can squeeze all this technology into a handheld, something which also tallies earlier, tallies with earlier reports, so it will be less powerful than the PS4. Kentucky backs a lot of this up saying, unlike many

previous NX rumors, this year a game of rumor has weight. Although Kitaku has not been able to confirm all the details, we've heard similar rumors and have seen some secondhand corroboration on specifics, including the NX's portability and use of cartridges. Finally, we've heard from one source that the NX planning has recently moved up a gear within Nintendo ahead of the consoles unveiling, which is currently slated for September. After the confused PR fiasco, the Wii U launched the companies already selling on a simple marketing message for NX of being able to take your games with you on the go. Good news?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think this is, I think this is good news, absolutely. This sounds awesome. Yeah. 100%. Like, I mean, and I feel like I was talking about it today on ConnerGreg Live, if you go back and listen to old games cast where we've talked about this before, this is always what I'm saying I thought it was going to be.

I think I might have thought, I talk about beaming it to your TV all the time, and that's what it is. And that immediately is super exciting. You know, I love the Vita. I travel so much. The idea of sitting on a plane and playing, they full-fledged, Zelda, colon, the summer breeze of wind, Eve. I can't wait. I'm very excited for you. Well, they're breaking down that two-tier development wall.

I mean, part of the problem that Vita had early on was it was very expensive to develop, you know, quote-unquote AAA games for this handheld. And there was a lot of kind of an identity crisis when you also had a high-powered console. there's not going to be an competitor inside its own ecosystem. Right. They're just going to target one platform. They're going all in on something. I do think it's a fascinating reversal of fortune to take, you know, the Wii, which I like the Wii in a lot of ways,

but its software library never became what it needed to be. They fumbled the ball in many different ways. But the Wii is fundamentally something where you have a more powerful unit sending something to a dummy. Now it's the other way around. You're the powers in your hands and the dummies, what's connected to your TV. This is a recognition of a lot of different things.

I think they're hoping this will play well in Japan. where frankly people play most of the games on handheld. I think that they're recognizing the switch to mobile here. I think they've watched what's happened when they've started to kind of let some of their, some of their properties trickle out into the wild and some mobile experimentation with Mitoma. And now we'll see what they're doing with the Pokemon Company and Niantic in Pokemon Go. Why not? It's going to come out of the software.

Can they do, will they have the support, well, they're the games that we want at launch, and will they keep games coming for three years after that? I think that's the bigger question. And I think the solution is there in the fact that if they're not making 3DS and Wii U games, then they're just focusing on the NX games. Yeah, lots of games. Then all of a sudden, there is a lot of games. Like when you look at the 3DS output, the vast library over there,

it's like it has, you know, every couple months there'd be something you look at the Wii U. It was a little less than that, maybe like twice a year, there'd be something. But when you add those together and all those people working on games with one cause and even third parties, when you look at the third parties that are making 3DS games, no one's really making Wii games. but if they're suddenly making Nintendo console games, which is the NX, that's a solid lineup.

And especially if it is unique games that are, the Nintendo games. You know, the people want Nintendo games and Nintendo consoles. That's the only reason that way you even sell what it does sell, right? Right. So if there was one dedicated thing,

you always talk about Nintendo being a toy. Yeah. And this, I think, is total, total, total recognition that they're not competing with the PS4 and Xbox One in the console space. And this is a, it's an approach that I didn't even really think was possible because this sounds too logical for Nintendo.

I was so worried that when we, the hybrid I've said this before on the gamescast that I don't like the idea of the hybrid. Like that it bothers me because I was thought of it the other way around. I thought of it as, oh, it's going to be, it's a console, but then you can take it on the go, but that would be a dumb down experience. It being the other way around, I am so sold on this and this is, this is what I want. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's smart.

I'm not going to go as far as Greg to say. This is awesome wherever that. I don't think we know that. I think that this is that. I think the only thing we know is that this is, again, the most logical conclusion of what they can possibly do with their hardware, as opposed to just getting out entirely, which is still think it's the smartest move for them. And I still, I don't care what the NX looks like. It's not going to do well enough for them to justify. I don't think them not getting out.

But the NX to me sounds expensive, which is going to be a problem for them. Battery life is going to be a problem probably. Yeah, that would be a huge problem. But I do agree with Jared in terms of the optical media argument. the fact of the matter is the last time Nintendo used cartridges the way we think about them was N64 but really in reality they've been using cartridges

actually on their handhelds for a long time and I think that's more like what you're going to see something in between what a 3DS uses and what a Vita uses that stuff's cheap even at 32 gigabyte level that is way cheaper so there's not going to be this everyone's like these games are going to be expensive and no they're not

they're not going to be any more expensive than the games you play now that's just not logic that's just not sound at all Nintendo's not going to come out and charge to $80 for a game it's just not going to happen So I think it's smart. I'm excited about it. I'm interested in it. I think what's going to be important to Jared's point is the games that are going to be ready.

Clearly, Zelda is going to be a launch game. But what else are they going to have? I still think a Metroid game is obvious. Retro has been quiet for a while. So I think that they're going to have some interesting guns blazing and managing their portfolio. I think it's going to be really important for this. I do think this alienates third parties again. Without having parity with PS4 and Xbox 1,

people are going to have to make their experiences exclusive to this. I am sure that a lot of publishers are going to do something and they're not going to see returns on it probably and so they're going to stop. I mean, this is what happens. Vita. This is what happened with Vita. This is what happened with Wii.

This is what happened with, yeah, PSP is what happened to a degree with GameCube. And the only reason that they kept getting GameCube games is because they were paying for them, which is what they did with Wii U too to agree with second party relationships, which is what I think is going to really be the possible saving grace of this thing.

That said, Nintendo's handhelds are what dominates. And so I think that this is a really exciting thing. I'm just really interested to see what is the infrastructure online infrastructure. How does that work? Is there a trophy and achievement system? How does the store work? How does it function with Wii U and 3DS?

Remember, this is supposed to be kind of a pillar, similar to the GBA, GameCube DS kind of thing back in the day. And I'm super interested as well to see how people react to it because everything I've been, or not everything, but a lot of what I've been seeing is largely negative. So Nintendo is certainly working against that negative wave, although I don't really see what's there to be negative about because we don't, it sounds fun, it sounds nice, and we don't know enough to really be negative about it yet. So I think that that would be foolhardy to jump down that way. The negativity right now on day one, right,

because we're coming at this right as this news comes, I think is the fact that a lot of people either didn't agree with me or argued against them being a toy company and Martian that beat of their own drum and da-da-da-da. I think a lot of people wanted them to come back. They wanted this to be the, NX to be the system where Nintendo comes back and like, all right, no, we are games and we're competing with PlayStation,

we're competing with Xbox, and we're going head-to-head, and we're going to do this. And this right now is a clear definition that they aren't. And again, that's what's exciting about it for me. If it was just another, all right, cool. I mean, eventually I'd pick it up for cart or for Mario or for Zelda, all that. But the idea of, I mean, I love Vita.

You know I love my Vita. I love playing games on the go. But I do when I take the Vita with me, I'm like, man, it'd be awesome if there was a fallout on this. It would be awesome if there was this kind of game on this. And there's things that are close to it, but not. The Zelda I played at E3, if I can play that on a plane sitting there like that, fuck yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think.

That is the most mind-blowing thing is that that we know that is going to happen. We don't know if this is correct. But going off of it, if this is correct, that means that that Zelda game is playable wherever you want portably. Then you can take it to your house or to anyone at a hotel or whatever connected and play it. That's crazy. So many people, you know, with the Wii U, like this came up on a Collinger Live today, of some guys like, well, what's the difference between this, the Wii U game pad?

You could play games on that. It was like, yeah, and I made a joke about it being 14 inches from it or whatever, like being tethered to it. But it was true that people really enjoyed that feature. When people first got their Wii U, they moved into the bedroom so they could sit there and watch TV with their wives or whatever and play games. Or, you know, you always saw like the super obsessed people playing on a plane where they had it plugged in on the Virgin America thing and then just playing the pad

and they're like to eliminate having to have that thing, having it plugged in, having to carry that Wii U console with you, just having the tablet. Even if the tablet is as shitty as the Wii U tablet is, which I pray it isn't, that would still be cool. There's no way it can be. And that's the big thing that's, that's, here's the real talk about about about WiiU and why they have to learn a lot from 3DS, whatever. 3DS and Wii are really shitty pieces of hardware. I mean, just from a build perspective, like 3DS is just a bad

piece of hardware. Like, we might like the games on it and it might have sold exceptionally well, but compared to something that is a real electronic, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but something like the Vita is like really like shames it in terms of hardware build. Yeah, but you know, what's your issue with like the new 3DS? What would be the new 3DS? I'm not so taught, but what the, all the clamshell models are flimsy. They're just pieces of, they're just, they're not, they need to do better than that. The Wii is a bridge too far from even from there.

Like the Wii is, the Wii use game pad is fucking trash. And they need to, they need to make something that, and I do think that they're going to have something that is sturdy and feels like an electronic device. It needs to feel like an Apple device or a Sony device or a Microsoft device, something that's like that you feel like you're not going to break it in half or like something that like isn't this flimsy little piece of toy plastic, whatever. That's why I'm concerned with, with, with, with, with, with, And how much this thing is going to cost because Nintendo has just hit that sweet spot. You would think the sweet spot is 299, but this thing sounds if everything's, you know, it's going to have a nice battery in it. It's going to have to have a nice screen. It's going to have all sorts of, you know, uh, gyro in it and all sorts of Wi-Fi and all sorts of things.

It's probably going to be like $400. So the, you know, if that's crazy though, I think for, I think for their target audience, it probably is. Yeah. And I, and that's, and that's a major concern for me. But they have to see, this is the catch-22 that they're in now. They have to. Yeah. You can't have something.

that I don't care about the internal power of the machine so much as the build of the build of the machine. And again, you can learn a lot from just pretty much all of the major electronics that are out there in the wild about how to make a proper electronic. I mean, put the Wii U game pad or the 3DS next to an Apple phone or an iPad. You know, like, and I'm not comparing the two things, but like in terms of what their functionality, but in terms of like their build in terms of the fact that you feel like you're getting something that's valuable, that you're getting something that's not going to break, that you get something that like an adult would use. I don't know. I feel like that. I feel like that is relevant to the audience.

And clearly the Wii was injured at least partially by the fact that the game pad sucked. And the, I think that, I think we're confusing maybe build quality and industrial design. I mean, I feel like you could run over my, my 3DS with a tank. And a 2DS,

I think you could fell a tree with if you attached it to it to a stick, even though it's ugly and horrible. The industrial design, that it's not aesthetically beautiful. It is more toy-like. Greg talked about being a toy company. I take it a little farther. I think they want to be the Walt Disney company.

I think they want to be a character licensing theme park, cartoon making, and oh yeah, we also do video games company. I think increasingly they'd like to be an entertainment conglomerate, and that's the direction of their headed. Toys are a huge part of that, but I think that's only the beginning of what they'd like to do. But I think the quality of the

products is fine. I don't think they're chintzy. I just think that they're designed to be kiddish. And I think this will look less kiddish. I think they learn the lesson on that. But I mean, you talk about an Apple product. It feels hefty in your hand, but if you drop one face down on the ground, it will break instantly.

I think I could throw my 3DS on the concrete and I'm not sure it would shatter. And so I don't think it's a, it's that factor so much as is it designed to appeal to a broad, large number of people. And I absolutely agree with you in the cost problem because there are a lot of parts that are going to this thing that are going to cost a fortune. That battery scares the heck out of me. The battery is a big part of it. And that's, we know Vita. We love Vita here. Everybody here loves Vita.

Vita is the best. Vita is wonderful. Correct. Call Wall. Right. Yeah. Go to the Vita Island. But Vita, you know, the balance between power and cost for the Vita has been a problem since day one and remains one.

Nintendo's original Wii debuted at a price point of $250. I think we forget how important that was to its early success. Beyond the novelty, beyond the fact that it was doing neat little technical things you've never seen before, it was significantly cheaper than its competitors when it was brand new. And that really helped that first push. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the case I'm making, like to get mom and dad comfortable buying you this machine, or for you as a gamer, an adult, being comfortable going out and buying that machine, you feel

like you have to get your cost. Now, $400 is not going to be, you know, I'm going to buy one probably, depending on what they show, because I want to come back into the fold and start playing these games. But I actually think, again, like the network features and ubiquity of the machine is going to be way more interesting to me than almost anything else about it. How much has Nintendo finally learned from a lot of mistakes that they made that the other two manufacturers that they apparently don't want to compete with, have learned

and have embarrassed them with in terms of online infrastructure and all those kinds of things. And they have to learn from those things. There has to be an achievement system, right? Yeah, so that's one of the major things. I know that seems to be weird to a lot of people, but it's exciting because I was talking to Greg about it, I think, on Connor Gregg, about if they went through their virtual console library

and made that all available, obviously, on the X, and I'm sure they're going to, and then just attach achievements to all of them, I'd probably spend $2,000 in that thing. Yeah. They probably called it NX remix, but it sold it as a product. But like, but like imagine just like, imagine just a way, a reason to go, you know, Jim Sterling did a really interesting piece, you know, Jim Quosition about emulation, which I thought was really interesting. And one of the things he was talking, I didn't agree with a lot of his assertions, but one of the things he said that I think is interesting nonetheless is that Nintendo just asks you to buy these things over and over and over again. But there's no real reason to buy them over and over and over again, other than the fact that you want to play them on the new machine. So like to take the time to like put new accoutrements into these different games, these old games. to give you a reason to buy them. For some of us like a fifth time.

I mean, I own some, I bought Mario Brothers, the original Mario Brothers, like literally on N.S, SNES and all these things, probably seven times. On Game Boy, advance and on all the, like, you know, so having some sort of ubiquity finally, like putting that all together. This is what I'm really excited about. The machine I think is probably gonna be fine, but like the price is gonna be concerning,

but I'm interested to see like how everything runs on it and what the system is in terms of how it interacts with Wii U and 3DS, but also how it interacts with the internet itself. I think is gonna be, really exciting. And something in me tells me that they actually probably

figured this out finally. So yeah, I would be shocked if there's any type of trophy or achievement system. I want that really. Oh my God. It would be so toned-deaf.

But what you're talking about going back at the virtual console all no. That sounds. I don't necessarily imagine them ever doing that. I don't necessarily think they're doing that. But it's possible.

But if they don't have, if they don't have an achievement system on their new games, they are fucking tone-deaf. No, you're missing the point on the virtual console team is it'll be double dipping. Hey,

it'll be Super Mario World, now, whatever they call an expert game. I understand that that makes sense. I just, I don't think, I can't see them doing that. I think Nintendo, at least so far, what, they've done nothing to prove to me that they're not just about each game

being its own specific world. Nintendo games have had achievements for years. They're just within the game. Right, but that's not the way the world works anymore, and it certainly didn't work for them very well. Exactly. But they do things differently, which is why I just like,

I would love that. I just like, if they were to come out and be like, I think it's 50-50, but I would not say, I'd say 80-20. I'd say 80-20. We've seen them. We have, we have. which is why I give them 20 instead of zero.

Seriously, though. I know. All of that, that still sounds a step beyond what I think Nintendo is capable of, in terms of, you know, giving the people what they want. Beyond that, though. Telling us what we want as opposed to giving us what we want. Exactly.

And then that's what they do. The other side of it, though, I'm more interested in, less the system features and stuff like that, but more the physical, the hardware of it of, all right, so if this is all true, what does that look like for multiplayer games then? Oh, you break the controllers off the side. But like, what does that look like?

They're talking about the hub thing. Is there a way to, do we each bring our own an X and play with that? Or is there like, is the pro controller still going to be compatible with it, which I assume it is? And then from there, it's just like, that is what I'm most concerned about. But I also think that they are going to nail. I hope that they make it so that it's easy and fun to play Smash Bros or Mario Kart with multiple people. If only one person needs this system, if you have the system of controller, because right now the worst thing is having to

every time we play a U-game for a let's-play depending on the game it is sinking and figuring out which controllers we need and all this if they figure out a way to just it's there it's set up and you just need to bring it and play it I think that's going to go such a long I mean can you imagine like all the trips we just took and all the trips we were about to take if we would

start booking seats next to each other every time and putting it up there and then breaking the controls off and we're playing smash the entire play and so that is the Wi-Fi interferes the plane we crash the plane I'm most interested in being able to be on a plane and put the thing screen up and not use its controller, but to use a real controller on that screen. Another possibility is that they could go legacy.

They know that they sold a lot more Wii than they sold with use. I mean, the fact is it could be Wii remote compatible. It could also, I think, significantly, especially for Japan, be 3DS compatible for controller. I mean, you know, yeah, you may not be able to play the games on the 3DS, but he got a 3DS, bam, it's a Smash Brother style dummy controller and can play along with your friends. They've got such a huge install base compared to the WiiU on 3DS that I think. That's another thing that might make sense for them.

Yeah, just grab your 3DS. It works with that. Kids can play. And then you go over to your friend's house. They have this awesome new NX. Like, I want it to, too. You know, there's Christmas. I mean, why don't do it that way?

Yeah, and I think that with the NES classic having the same Wii moat proprietary connector thing, I think that the new NES controller also using that. It shows that that's what they're going. They understand the protocols. And I'm remembered correctly like that you can control Smash Brothers on Wii U with that. With the 3DIS, right? So, you know, why not just extend that to the whole platform and make that another solution? You've got 10 times the, or five times the 3DS controllers out there that you have

Wii U. so why not make that compatible. Yeah, it's interesting. One thing that concerns me for it is when it's coming out. It doesn't make it a lot of sense. But it seems like they want, yeah, it's a bad time. I would try to get the console out in the fall. And we talked about this on the last show, I think, too.

Like, it just feel like they're missing a lot of, like, easy holiday sales and all those kinds of things. But I guess the matter, it's just not going to be ready. And you don't want to hold it for another eight months or whatever. This can be the dying light of consoles. It could be the dying light. It could be the dying way. Come out and like capture a whole bunch of stuff, not compete with.

with Xbox Slim. And I think, you know, and things have changed in the industry where now, like, March is no longer just empty. But still, I think that if Nintendo were to come out with Zelda and potentially a Mario or a Metroid or this or that, like, that's, that's exciting. You know, I think that that is enough for them to do stuff.

Whether or whereas if it was in November, I do think that they would sell more, but I think then it would just kind of fall off a cliff right after that. Yeah, I mean, it's a nice, like, it could send them up for a two-wave software rollout too. I mean, obviously they're spending a lot of time launch titles. Hopefully there's going to be just a rush of amazing things that you want to play.

And then, you know, you time it so that your second wave comes around November and you get that big Christmas boost. I mean, I don't necessarily think that's a bad strategy at all. Yeah, we'll see how it all works out. The one thing, so I'm optimistic about it, you know, vaguely optimistic about it. And I'm excited. I'm interested to see what they have to say. They're going to announce it it looks like in September, which is what I said last

week. Because I think that that makes a lot of sense. That gives them six months in between the launch of the console and when they announce, which I think is a nice idea. The one thing that I will never believe is that anyone's going to be interested in it. until it's selling. Like literally until it's, I don't care what it looks like.

I don't care how promising it seems. I still stand by the fact that Nintendo has lost an significant amount of, of clout with core gamers that buy consoles. And I'd be interested to see if I'm wrong, you know, because all the evidence says I'm right. And Pokemon Go and some 3DS flash in the pan titles

was not going to change my opinion that like Nintendo has lost a lot of steam with people that are going to sustain them in this particular market. So regardless of how I want to see, I need to see. In the words of Whitney Houston, show me the receipts. Yeah, this news makes me so happy because it, with the Nintendo forever, and this is with a lot of the things that I like, it's more about, right, when's the bad news coming?

And so far, it hasn't happened yet. So I'm really excited. September is months away, pretty much a month in a couple weeks. So I'm really excited that we're finally going to actually see it so soon. Talking about launch titles, like I'm surprised you think Metro's getting. going to be there just because like I feel like Mario would make more sense. We know there's Zelda. I don't, I don't, that's why I don't think, I think because of Zelda, I don't think

Mario makes any sense to go alongside it. I don't think you want to get too crazy with it. Metroid's not as popular as we think, because we talked about many times. So I think putting something like a B tier title, which is a Metro would be next to Zelda. I think would be way smarter than having more. I think Mario, to Jared's point, would be a fall game, that holiday push game or whatever, because again, we haven't had a 3D Mario in a long time, like, or truly 3D Mario.

So, since Galaxy 2, I guess. You know, Wii was conspicuously missing its Mario game because I'm sure it was moved a long time ago to NX. So yeah. So I think that I really do think Metroid is going to be a launch game. I think that that would be a smart, savvy move. I think that's why they're taking it on the chin with this Federation Force game in a way and kind of just rolling it out and not really dealing too much with the criticisms of which I think are mostly stupid criticisms of anyone. And like you can't have like another game in the Metroid universe that doesn't have anything to do with Metro itself. By the way, what about 3D land?

You didn't like the 3D land? No, that's not a real, like that's a proper 3D adventure games. What is a 3D Mario game? Oh, it's not, don't get started with Colin. I agree. No,

it's not. It's called Super Mario 3D world. It's not a 3D game. It's not a 3D Mario game. It's the third pillar of Mario games. There's the 2D platformers, the 3D obstacle-based platformers like 3D land and world. And then there's the Galaxy's,

the collectathon. And we remember the best selling handheld of all time was also a third pillar. So therefore must be good, right? There we go. Yeah. So I'm, I really do think a lot of the pessimism around this is unfounded. Will the bad news

come? I'm sure. There will there will be, I think, further leaks. I think the thing leaks completely before it's announced. 100%. They'll use the Vita strategy of putting the bad news out like right in mid-February. Just really a take out of it. Pliatory memory cards. God fucking damn. That's the other thing is obviously

it's going to have its own hard drive or whatever, which would be nice too. So if this thing just upping the cost a little bit more. It has those freaking baby buttons that the Vita or 3DS has, I'm going to be so pissed. Maybe you should just get on board with the buttons that everybody uses now, too. What buttons aren't that much bigger than mine? I want normal.

Let me see your thumb. Normal people. No, what's normal people at buttons? The way you game bad as normal people buttons. The PSP has normal people buttons. All right. You want like this big red of 20s and 600 buttons. Give me a console button.

Give me like a PS4, dual shock four buttons. I like a big button. I do enjoy it. If this is a real console, this should be a fucking real console and I know bullshit. Well, Nintendo games do rely traditionally more on face buttons. So I think that they're going to obviously be more. Can we also give a shout out to the fact that it's not just some touchscreen thing? I mean, maybe it will be on that screen.

I'm sure the screen will be touching. That's fine, but I'm saying there's tactile buttons on this. My concern was we were going to get fucking an oval. Remember, like, all the things we saw where they had like the GameCube, like dropped down on hooks or whatever, but then it was like, there's real buttons on the rumored, thank God. Yeah, that's real buttons. It wouldn't be great if we're all just completely wrong about the whole thing and they're like,

we're competing with steam. And it's all just completely different. Like, out of way more, a million terraflops. This strange alien box that you control with your brain. Like it's just, my dream is still that the NX is. digital platform that goes on PS4 and Xbox 1, but that's never going to happen. That'd be amazing. All right, guys, topic two of the day, Sonic the hedgehog.

So here's the thing. Last week, Greg, you and I, we celebrated Sonic's 25th birthday with the hedgehog himself. We did. We said what up? We did. He came out with Hello Kitty. Yes. That was weird.

Very awkward. He was blind and the guy had to lead him and he didn't know what was going on. They were like, let's take a selfie and Sonic just stood there out of the hot frame. And the Hello Kitty is all posing and Sonic was just there. So that was fun. So you guys were at the party. We went to the party. So I want to say this real quick that that might have been the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.

At San Diego Comic Con there was a 25th Sonic anniversary party. And Jim Sterling put up a sizzle reel of it, which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. It is so good. It is so fitting of Sega and Sonic that that was the way that that thing was streamed. I heard it was way better in person. So that's the deal. So here's the whole thing with this. And today actually.

the guy that the producer of the stream that like the plan the whole thing went on this whole Twitter rant and he was like super upset he's like man I worked so hard on all this we came in and they fucked me technically they changed all these plans there's all these audio problems and whatever we're trying to best we during the stream we had to make

calls of do we show it at all with the buzz or totally just not do it yeah it's like I'd rather at least get the trailers there that existed at this yet again at this nexus of brilliance and ineptitude like where those two things meet and not to have a balance between

just to be two simultaneous diametrically opposed realities the living embodiment of paradox nothing is more Sega yeah no oh my god that is so accurate though I mean that's what this was because from the stream because I was while we were waiting in line for it

I was looking at the stream and this stream was atrocious Twitter was on fire with criticism but what the stream didn't show was the audience and the people in that room and that's the funny thing about Sonic in general Sonic has such a ravenous fan base

of people that for some reason absolutely love certain parts of the legacy, right? Yeah. There's the adventure fans. There's the OG fans. There's the comic fans. There's the old animated, animated show fans. I don't think there's any. Oh, no, no, no.

People like Sonic Boom. The show. Okay. All right. People hate the games. I was talking about the old Sonic show. There aren't any fans of that, are there? Well, there was like three Sonic animated series back in the day.

Yeah, right. Back in the day. Underground, which people kind of liked. Right. There was the quirky animated one that was kind of Looney Tunes-esque. Yeah. That was whatever. No.

The one with Urkel was the Sonic Saturday morning cartoon morning. It was called Sonic Sat-An-Am. That was awesome. Fucking awesome. I put that up there with the greats of the Saturday morning cartoons. I didn't know you were a Sonic cartoon fan. Oh, absolutely. You're a lot of shit.

Saddam one. He was super offended. It was you right. That was super offended when I was like, why? Does Sonic like chili dogs? Yes. And you're like, what the fuck? I don't remember that at all.

That show, that show was the Chili Dog show. Because they were serving chili dogs. Yeah. That's a little of delicious chili dog. So that's the thing, as a love letter to those fans, the people, not the internet haters,

not the people that talk shit about Sonic all the time or whatever, not the people with taste. But those fans, it was the best love letter ever. They were flipping out at every announcement. That place was insane. They're like, do you know this thing? And I'm like, what? And they're like, yeah, like our character's name.

And like, random people are coming out in the cosplay costumes and they're losing their mind. I'm like, I don't know what the... He collects rings? I was really impressed why they had Q&A sessions and they were asking the questions that the audience actually wanted to hear. They didn't shy away from stuff.

They asked, is there going to be a Sonic Adventure 3? The answer was no, but they asked. They asked, which usually they'll shy away from that shit. And I was like, that's cool, you know? They brought out all the bands that have done the music for the games, which was so awkward because it was like an hour long of like all the theme songs from like, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 and heroes. And then it just progressively got more and more.

Like, oh my God. Like, like, uh, dreams gone by like, like, uh, dreams gone by like, like, uh, by my school days guys and all that. Oh my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And like, they, and they had the, the, the modern sonic people playing, like, classic Sonic stuff. It was just like, as a, a love letter to them, it was great.

And being in the room, like, you can feel the energy of the people loving it. But even then, it was really fucking weird. It was weird to see people singing along to like all the, the, the escape from the city song from Sonic Adventure 2. And I'm like, oh my God. It's kind of, this is real life right now. God bless you. It kind of, like, a bizarre world definition of, like a, or version of a firefly convention.

Like, it's, uh, I've been at, it's, you know, early screenings for films like that. And you're surrounded by super fans. And when you're in it, it's the best. When you're there, it's the best in anybody else looking in for the outside. Maybe that's, maybe that's wisdom for us. Well, like, yeah. For me, it was like, everybody's losing their mind on Twitter. Like, holy shit, this Sonic Mania game looks awesome.

I'm like, I'm like, oh, great. We got in there. Like, do you want to play it? I was like, yeah. And I went and played it. I was like, it felt like Green Hill Zone again. Like, I don't, I don't, it was longer. And like, uh, there was a different boss in the end.

It seemed like there's some other places to go, but. All right. So maybe that's the thing. Maybe for you, it's like, it felt like green hills zone again. And for them was like, it felt like green hills zone. Like I like, I like, I was saying a kid. I like Sonic one. I like son too.

And it's just like I don't, I don't see what's so crazy about this. All right. So here's the thing, Greg. Thank you. Lay it on me. Sonic. I love the original trilogy. Absolutely.

Sonic CD as well. Those games, awesome. They range in quality. I think one is, it's the same thing as we see in modern day games where it's just like, the first one, figuring it out.

Sure. Two and three, though, great games. Seeing this, this is my Mega Man 9 or 10. Like, I can't believe they actually are doing this the way they are. They're going back to the Genesis style.

They fucked up with Sonic Episode 4, Sonic the Hedgehog for episode 1 and 2, where that was them trying to do the retro thing. But then they just made it play, like, yeah, the stupid ass homing moves and shit that he has in the modern Sonic game, so they've ruined that. But this is like, no, this is just classic Sonic, more of it.

And it's being made by, what's the dude's name? Christian Whitehead, which is awesome because this is a dude that back in the day was working on the Sonic 2 HD fan remix thing that was super legit. Then got hired by Sega to do the all the ports, all the recent like HD games and those iOS ports of Sonic 1, 2, and 3. and the Xbox and PS3 versions where they went up and they're like superior games. He's the one that did them. He did the physics. He did everything. And he made Sonic feel more Sonic than he used to feel.

Well, that's the key right there. Feeling more Sonic than he used to feel. You mentioned Mega Man 9 or 10. Mega Man 9 or 10 work not just because they have the adornments of an old Mega Man game, but because, I think it's Jeremy Parrish that originally said this, they take what made Mega Man work and then inform that design with 25 years of game development that's happened. since and infused that learning in without losing the spirit of what was originally there.

They create something that feels like the original yet is also absolutely new and tremendously inventive. But it's so well orchestrated. You don't even really realize that until you're done. You're just having tons and tons of fun. And you get to the end, you realize there was way more there than syrupy nostalgia. There was beautiful game design and excellent weapon balance. The question for these products is the question of what's happening here is, are they going

to give us, what Greg said earlier, this just feels like more Green Hill Zone, or are they going to give us something that's so well designed that it's doing new things without those new things feeling invasive of the space and the aesthetic? And that's going to be what this lives or dies on, I really think.

So I think that for me, when it comes to Sonic, there is I am a Sonic fan, I would say, overall, even though more games, there's more games I dislike than games I like. The original trilogy, love those. As we I don't like the adventure games at all. And I know that they're beloved by many, but I think that they're pretty trash.

No, that's wisdom on your part. Then going forward from there, Sonic Colors was a great step of the right direction of this is fun, this is good, and then Generations nailed it. Generations was a game, nailed it in terms of, it's a solid 7.8 to 8.5 range game of like, this is fun. I enjoyed playing this. For more numbers, go to IGN.com. Yeah, exactly.

I love that. And then they kind of like totally fucked it up with Sonic Lost World and really badly with Sonic Boom. But what I've always wanted is just more of the original trilogy. And this game seems to be speaking directly to the Mies out there where it's like, all right, not only is it going to be more of what you love in terms of like the Green Hill Zone. Yeah, it's Green Hill Zone again because that's all we want is we just want the same fucking thing again, you know?

And that's the problem is no one's ever going to be happy because then when they get that, though, I go, it's just the same thing. But this game, to me, seems like it's solving that in that. half of it is going to be, we don't know the exact percentage breakdown, but I'd assume half of it is going to be remixed versions of levels from Sonic 1, 2, 3, and CD and Knuckles, and the other half is going to be all new stuff. In the trailer and in the gameplay that we got to check out, one was Green Hill Zone and one is this new zone called like Hollywood Zone or something like that. And that to me is the, oh my God, they're nailing the aesthetic of it. They are nailing the tone and feel of what Sonic is supposed to be and also giving me the remix

of the things that I remember, the reasons to be nostalgic. So I think that it's that nice kind of blend of the past and what we'd want a Sonic game to be in 2016. See, I think Sonic is a story of radically inventive, but unfulfilled potential. I think Sonic 1 and 2 are very interesting video games. They were especially interesting at the time because they were technological marvels.

They were show pieces for the kinds of things you could accomplish on the Genesis with the programming. So much speed. So beautiful. Yeah, exactly. The sound was interesting. The Z80 never sounded. It sounded better to sound processor than it sounded in Sonic the Hedgehog. It was beautiful.

It was fast. It was lovely. It was exploratory. But there were a lot of flaws. You had all this area to explore and no real incentive to do it. It's not like. Well, that's where Sonic 3 came in. Yeah, Sonic 3 was better at that.

But at the same time, then it lost some of the, it was not so good at pathing. So you had exploratory areas, but then you didn't have great pathing and you lost some of that sense of momentum that made the first two games work better. I feel like they were always dancing around creating a really great game and never quite got there. I think CD's the closest day ever came. That's going to be controversial. Yeah, definitely. But I feel like CD, they actually got, because they tried so many of it things. But there's a, that's a series of good, interesting games with a lot of flaws that you feel like you're right on the edge of doing something really special. That's how I feel about them.

I realize a lot of our fan base is going to feel differently here. But I think that this gives them an opportunity. They've got a lot of time. They've got the right people on it from what you're telling me. This gives them an opportunity to look at it, step back away and say, let's just take everything that worked, get rid of everything that didn't, and fill it with new ideas that don't feel like gimmicks. And I think that's all Sonic needs to become a wonderful, like, unique platforming experience. I don't know. Maybe that maybe not. What do you guys think? I don't know.

I think the Mega Man 9 and 10 thing is kind of apt in a way, but also dangerous because Mega Man 9 and 10 are, and I'm not saying this is a Mega Man fan. to go out of retro game fans agree. These are truly special games. Like these are especially nine is an extraordinary game. Now I just agree with Jeremy about what he says about Mega Man 9 and 10 in the sense that I really do believe that and I've said this before. If you remove one and put two, three, four, five, six, nine and ten in a bag and told someone I never played these games, find the two that were made in the 21st century. They wouldn't be able to find it. And probably they'd pick five and six. So, you know, I think that they would definitely pick six because I don't even know how that runs it in NES, but, you

know, smoke comes out. Now there are, now there are subtle design things I'm not going to talk about in those games that do out them as being more modern games, but no one cares at this table except for Jared, and I'm not going to go and I'm not going to go in all of that, but. Wiley's like, I can't believe Obama's present. Well, like, the shop function.

There's like a lot of like, there's a lot of things at the end of the end of wouldn't even be able to do in those games. But the, but the thing is, is that those games were really actually, those games set the bar along with very few other games that went back and really used the design set, showed a lot of restraint in the way that they were made.

They used the Mega Man 2 design set, which is something that I actually fundamentally disagreed with. But I wish that they went to Mega Man 3 specifically because that's when they introduced a slide and they introduced Rush. Rush is obviously in Mega Man 9 and 10. So there's a little bit of a hybrid there. But these games are expertly made. Those games are really just as good and in some ways better than the original six Mega Man games. This Sonic thing sounds like a half of a step because they're using some old stuff and milking people's nostalgia. but to Jared's point,

and I know I belabored this point to begin with, so I'm not trying to be mean, like, Sonic isn't Mega Man. Like, like, and like, like,

like, like, from a gameplay perspective, like, it's just not. And so, like, the things that made Sega or made Sonic special,

like, it's speed, it's blast processing, and all that kind of stuff, whatever. That was like the hallmark of the series, and it had less to do with gameplay

and more to do with technical dynamics, which is why I don't think that, no matter what they do, they're going to scratch someone's nostalgic itch or whatever, but it's not Mario, it's not Mario, It's not Mega Man. It's not like these hallmarks of gameplay.

And so I don't know that the comparison to Aft in that way, because what any creates did with Mega Man 9 and 10 was actually phenomenally fucking indistinguishable from the original because it felt like Mega Man and Mega Man always felt so good. And I agree with what Jared says is that when I played Sonic as a kid, I didn't have the fucking outrageous hatred I ever for it now. And I would play those games with my friends. And I'm like, this game's, like, my honest opinion is an eight, nine, 10-year-olds. Like, these games are clunky.

and they don't feel that good, and I don't get it. And I think that there's a lot more of us out there than the people that really truly loves Sonic. And so I disagree with that one, if you're talking about specifically two, and especially three plus knuckles. When you put that together, that game, you're going to find more people that love that game than dislike that game.

I don't know. I mean, I don't know that I agree. Like, I just, I don't think that's why Sonic's, that's why Sonic's lack of Renaissance has been just kind of subtly just, been taken on the chin for so on

because there's just, there's not this massive, like, rabid, crazy fan base that really cares about those games as much as they care about the characters. Now, people obviously care about those games, and they buy them, but what I'm saying is that the, the, the zeitgeist of Sonic has more to do with the characters, and less to do with the way the games felt, the way the games felt like Sonic 1, 2, and 3,

then why? Like, as opposed to having games that kind of chart their own course, which is why I think this might be a mistake for them, which is why I'm way more interested in Sonic Team's game that's coming out in the fall of 2017. So that looks like a sequel to generation. So this is why the announcement's made, again, as a Sonic fan, these are the two games that I want.

I want the OG trilogy, not even so much sequel as much as it's just like more. It is the Mega Man 9-10. Here's more of what you want, what you think you want. This is that. And then Generations is, that is the best Sonic game in generations. In generations. And that was awesome. And to see that this might be the sequel to that, which is going to be interesting based on,

what that game was because what that game was was just a remix of old levels and stuff but in different play styles. That was the modern style and classic style but even classic wasn't actually classic. Yeah, both of these run into a meta textual problem and I think we have to talk about this here while we're to, and the problem with Sonic games

is we're very rarely allowed to talk about them just as games. Sonic games are so intrinsically tied to that Sega history of breaking people's hearts and occasionally doing wonderful things that the Sonic cycle. Yeah, the Sonic cycle. Honestly, yes. I mean, there have been, no matter how big a fan of Sonic you are, I think there's a good chance

you'd admit that there have been far more mediocre to bad Sonic games than there has. Good. Close. And that it's a series of getting excited about something, getting ready for it, getting disappointed, and then trying to decide whether to come back again, which, by the way, is kind of the Sega arc story through their hardware, their software development, everything. That's what Sega does. Sega does when Nintendo. Yeah, which sure does. It hurts you an entirely different way. Exactly. Salt the Earths, you'll never come back. And I want to be clear, Seguest, on so many wonderful things.

And sometimes, like, they are so good at turning crap into gold. I mean, you think about the Saturn, which was just an abomination. That's what drove me away. That's what broke my heart and drove me away. But there's so many good games on it. And despite that. And just like, why? Why did you do this to me?

It's overpriced. It's not well supported. But there's a dozen things on here that I just can't play anywhere else. They're all so good. And, you know, on and on without getting on a long rant, I think that this discussion becomes problematic for people because the people listening, the people talking about this in the web right now, us here. This is never just about Sonic, the game identity.

This is about, you know, at this point, 25 years of history in corporate politics and advertising and marketing and broken dreams and flashes of brilliance. at this point Sonic can barely live up to that legacy even if it's a splendid game. And I think that that keeps the deck stacked against it. So I hope we can encourage people when these games come out just to look and say, hey, let me look at this at two levels. Does it make me happy?

Like, am I enjoying what's going on here? And is this a well put together game that's worth buying? If you can answer those two questions honestly with yes, then Sega's done a really good thing. And if you can't, then try to extricate yourself from the history and just look at it that way and be like, well, That didn't work out. Yeah, it did.

I don't know. Was that too preachy? No, I think it makes sense because I agree with what you're saying in the sense that. And we've belabored this point again so much. But like, people did get their old Sonic with Sonic Hedgehog 4. No, no, no, no. No, no, they didn't. No, no.

That's the problem. They didn't. I mean, I played it. I mean, there was like some new thing. I mean, I didn't play the whole thing. But I remember messing around with it. I'm like this. I don't really feel like how this is that much different than the old Sonic game.

That's like you, that's like getting a Mega Man game. That's like saying Mighty Number 9 is giving you another Mega Man, where it's like, to me, I don't know too much of the difference. I don't know how Mega Man's supposed to feel to know when it feels wrong. Sonic 4, that did not feel like Sonic should feel. That felt like Sonic felt in an adventure if it was brought into a 2D world. Way more floating not in a controlled way and just like this game is going to feel like the other ones didn't. I think that's the biggest issue with this is that the trailers and everything for Sonic 4, I was so excited for that. They're going back and it's number four.

But we got Tony Hawk Pro Skater fived with that one where that was, it was bad. The level design sucked. They didn't tell, the levels didn't tell a story. That's the best thing about Sonic 3 that I think is so overlooked is that every single level segues into the next level. The story that that game tells is so impressive that there's no voice acting. There's no talking. There's no text boxes even. It's just animation.

They tell so much through animation. And every level, whether it's the Ice Zone or the Sanctuary, or the floating islands and stuff, every single thing tells a story. He jumps off of this onto a plane, which brings him down to the thing. He snowboards down the mountain, goes through into the caves and all that stuff.

And we didn't see that with other platform games. Mario World, every level is just a separate level. This told a story through animation that I thought was really unique and interesting. Sonic 4 was just, here's a level, here's a level. I mean, I respect that, but, you know, Mario was good, like really, really fun.

You know, like, and I just, Three is. I just don't. I just, oh, because I remember sitting, and this is where, like,

a lot of people are, you and I, but I mean, a lot of people are, they're going to disagree with me. I remember sitting, playing these games, sitting Indian style,

and my friend Mike's, Mike's room because he had, that's where his Genesis was. They had, they actually had a master system. And this is how I got exposure out of the stuff, early on.

We were playing after burner on master's shit like that. Yeah, and this is like where I was like, I don't care about your NSNS and I have that. I want to play, I want to play fantasy star. I want to play Golden Axe. I want to play like Shinobi and all this shit.

And I remember sitting there playing Sonic and I'm like, what the fuck? You know, like, why does everyone love this? All of these other games on this console are better that you have. I'm actually glad you mentioned a fan or a pretty golden axe and Shinobi because that's a part of this that I don't here talked about very much. Sega at that point in their history was a transitioning arcade company. I mean, they had done consoles in Japan unsuccessfully for, you know, almost a decade at this at the point that Sonic came along. But they'd never really had all that much. They didn't do that well in the Japanese market against their competitors, but they were a king of the arcade company on the bleeding edge of technology.

Sonic is a first extremely well visually and auditorly polished attempt to convert arcade design philosophy to console and platforming type games where you have to be able to go back and play it again and again and again and not get tired of it. And they made some neat strides in that. I think that's why the levels are so big and there's why there's so many paths through them, but still where it's a one-button interface with a very simple, easy-to-nail-down thing and a very linear progression. It's an experiment at trying to create, trying to transition from one legacy to another. And because it's so artfully technical and because it's so aspirational, I think that's captivating for a group of people.

It did not grab me in the day, like it did a lot of folks. but I was impressed by what they were pulling off technically, and I was impressed by, wow, they are trying something kind of different that doesn't feel like anything else. I don't know if I like it, but it sure is neat. What I don't know if they've ever done. Sonic 3, I have a different take on you. I agree with the points you made,

but I never really enjoyed it. I feel like that's what they have to do is get that sense of aspiration to all click together. And if they do that, they'll have a fine game here. And that's what you were talking about Mega Man and the difference. I think that's the difference is that Mega Man was built from the ground it could be a console game. Sonic is kind of a kind of a transformation from one design philosophy to another. And because of that, it has these beautiful, distinctive feelings, but not all of them

are good. Well, I think to the point, too, I think Sega's just not done Sonic any favors. You know, like, it just, it just won't go away. And that's, and that's, that's a big problem. Since we're talking about Mega Man and Rockman, like, I don't know what the fuck Capcom has done to this guy. Like, I don't know, like, what they've done. They canceled all of his games and, like, got rid of him. But in the back of my mind, at least, I'm like, you're doing something, aren't you? You're fucking up to something over there with him. I know you are. I don't know what it is.

We haven't had a Mega Man game in years, you know? And I, but I know you're up to something. And it's probably not going to be very good. Right? But we have all of this evidence that it can be good. And that's where the scales are different. We're like, actually the overwhelming Mega Man games are actually great. There's like, there's actually, like, even if you like legends or X or even, you know,

battle network and like Star Force. Like, actually all of those series have good. games in them. They were all done too much. And so that was the problem. And so they disappeared. I feel like Sega actually stacked the deck against Sonic in a way, no matter how good the game is to Jared's point, because they just won't go away. They just won't stop.

It's like there's a new Sonic game all the fucking time. And like, to me, it's like just, and so yeah, it seems like they're going to get it here, but I have no faith that they're going to get it because again to Jared's point, like an overwhelming number of Sonic games are no better than mediocre. And a lot of them are really bad. And so it's like

why are you doing this to him? Like, No matter how I feel about Sega or Sonic, and it's pretty well known how I feel about Sonic, the fact is that as an icon, he's very important, and he deserves better than this. And I would rather Sega just disappear with this character for fucking a decade, and just like let other things speak,

like the other things spoke to a lot of people on Genesis. And that's kind of the sad thing about it, is that like, and that's why I always think about the Genesis era, specifically like the contemporary, the Sonic that joke. I'm like, these games are all better. Like, I just, I don't, I don't, Have you ever played Seagagaga before?

No. You familiar with this? Yes. I'm familiar with the background. Okay. So Seagagagga is this game that was made at the end of the Dreamcast era in Japan, never came to the States. It's an RPG, traditional, you know, wander-round, random encounters type RPG that's set in a fictional future where an evil Nintendo-like video game corporation has taken over almost the entire

game space and Sega is fighting for its life. And in a last act of desperation, hires two Japanese children to run their company and reverse their fortunes. The game is a absolutely brilliant, hilarious, and completely self-parodying look at Sega at the end of the Dreamcasteer when they're in terrible trouble, just going, oh man, we screwed up, we know it, we're sorry, we're going to try to make this better. It's also the celebration of everything they ever did right, along with this very candid, ridiculously candid, self-examination of a lot of the things they've done wrong. And it works so well. You're wondering, around like the corporation beating up random programmers and encounters to like motivate them

and get them to do their stuff and you run into all these like washed up Sega characters hanging around the headquarters that are all a part of this history. Sega Gaga reminds me of the fact that this is a company that has struggled for an identity like six different times. I mean right now what is Sega? It's a Samione Pichenko company that also happens to have Atlas under its belt. Which makes you really scared for Atlas. Yeah I know. So, and before that, it was, it was this transitional. Hey, we're going to just make software. Oops, wow, we screwed that up.

We met a lot of crap. Oh, we're making some kind of good stuff now, but have we lost to, you know, we made colors, we made generations, but we made a biower RPG, but, but have we lost our idea? And before that, it was we make hardware. And before that it was the Klinzky era. We make American hardware. And they've just been so many different things in such a short period of time. That does not lead to good stewardship of a character.

Nintendo, for all they drive us crazy, have been pretty. pretty consistent with the way they treat Mario or Link or Kirby or Samus or their valuable characters. Oh, Hoshi No Kabi. I love Kirby. Um, because of what's happened outside, they have not been good stewards of Sonic. Um, maybe this is a signal they're going to try again, but I have a feeling that until we're going to have to get two good Sonic games in a row.

No, that's not going to help. It's over. The discussion is never going to stop. Really? We got two good ones in a row. Good ones, colors and generations. We got those, and then they went right back to other stuff. Sonic Colors.

Is that the one that came out on PS2? That was We. We. We. Yeah. Colors says, colors is neat. Colors is neat. So, yeah, it's doomed completely. But, like, here's our two good ones.

Like, I guarantee these are going to be good. I guarantee that at least. The project Sonic 2017 one is that I want the caveat on that. If it is the Generations 2 that I think it is, it's going to be at least good. I'm a little bit worried. They're going to add the Sonic boom Sonic into it as well. So it'll be classic modern and boom in which case Does anybody want that?

No, they don't. No one does. Yeah. But who wants that? I think that what I'm interested, this is the thing is that there are a few There are very few companies in the industry that I don't trust with anything and they're one of them. So that's why when, and that's it goes to your point. And people should read a great thing.

There's so much interesting shit about Sega out there that people read. Console Wars is paramount amongst those things. You should absolutely read Blake Harris's console wars because it's a fucking fan. book about Genesis and Nintendo basically S&S and Genesis and how You know I've recommended this book many times But it's one of them it is up there with Masters of Doom and all these other books I talk about all time You must read it

It's a neat book I agree But uh and uh Blake Harris personal friend of mine so you know that should be out there as well but I'm not chilling his book for him I actually really love that book that's how I met him actually um so uh but when to your point like to end it all it's like when Sega got Atlas I was like no no Don't fuck this uh I would have rather I would have rather Atlas, there's part of me that would rather Atlas

go out of fucking business than have Sega publish those games because I know inevitably they're going to fuck that up and when I saw Persona 5's Boxard have a Sega logo on it? Yeah. I was like, oh, dear God, no. The concern is that you never know how long Sega's going to be around. Sega could close tomorrow and you wouldn't be surprised.

When you hear about Sega, it's always they're laying all these people off, they're launching a new Sonic game. It's like, that's the terrifying fact of them taking something awesome like Atlas is my concern is, yeah, it was going to be a story tomorrow that Sega's filed for bankruptcy and what the fuck happens there? They're closing this.

But then there's weird shit to this point. Like creative assemblies making Halo Wars too, which is probably going to be fantastic. And creative assemblies owned by Sega. So there's all this, there's all this weird shit going on with them, man, but I don't trust them at all.

I don't trust them at all. And I, and I, so like, I don't have any faith in anything they do because where's the proof? They just fuck so much shit up. Every once in a while,

broken clocks right twice a day. As I said, last week. Yeah. And I believe you, You coined that turn to frame. I did. I believe you did.

I did. If I win the lottery, I'm going to go into perpetuity. I'm going to purchase Atlas and treasure and just protect them forever. Just put them into a public trust. And get Quintets. Get Quintets library, too. Oh, that's good. All right.

That works. You're looking at your watch. I was, oh, my, we're probably probably going on. We should probably move on to the third topic of the day. Third time of the day. Which is Monster Hunter. So here's the deal, Jared. I don't know much about Monster Hunter.

I know it's a big deal. I know in Japan. It's gigantic. I know everyone plays it. I have absolutely no idea about this game. I did one time I had to help someone at IGN review it, so I like captured the video for them, so I saw a bit of the gameplay.

It's never grabbed my attention too much. Pitch it to me, explain it to me. What? What are you what in me, Greg? Well, it never grabbed your attention? Fun co-op play? Cooking your own meat. Got all these cats that cook for you?

Yeah, you get more cats. Yeah, yeah, your cats. Do you play? Greg? I used to. Like, back in a day, IGN reviewed everything. Okay.

Which meant that games were dumped on your desk, and they said review. this. It didn't matter if you knew nothing about it. So yeah, I did what, two or three PSP Monster Hunters back in the day? Oh, no, a bunch of PSP. Did you ever do the original PS2 one? No, no, no, I just did the portable ones. Try to get into four when it came to Wii with Charles and it didn't work.

Did you know the claw? Did you get the claw down? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the claw and how to play my P&A, of course I did. That was like the first thing. I remember when Alicia from Capcom came over and she sat down with her imported Monster Hunter to run me through a demo and she had like a million things and that was how, yeah, here's how you play and this is how you run it and this is what you do and you drop your paintball in him and do this and run out of it. I enjoyed it, but it was one of those things that once it wasn't my job,

I didn't want to play anymore. Yeah, Monster Hunter, first off, is a wonderful game. Second is a hand deformation simulator up until now. Yeah, because to play it on PSP, you had to hold, to get the camera controls right, you had to hold your hand in this kind of, this absurd position where you were trying to reach the face buttons and at the same time reach over here on the shoulder.

And it was just the PSP button layout did not fit Monster Hunter well, but they put it on there anyway. I was living in Japan when Monster Hunter was reaching its zenith. When Monster Hunter Mania sees Japan, let's talk about this first. Okay. I am not a Monster Hunter expert. I am a Monster Hunter player. I enjoy the game.

There are people out there. This is a game with depths of deepness beyond the depths of deepness. There's just layers and layers and layers and layers of Monster Hunter. This is like if you've met people who only play Wow, that only play Destiny, whatever, this is that, where you just have these people who have invested hundreds of thousands of hours. There's the kind of mechanical depth that you find in the best fighting games exponentially cubed. Like that's what's going on in a monster hunter game. But it doesn't look like it when you're watching. You figure that as you're playing.

But in Japan, this was as big as any video game has ever gotten anywhere. This was, you know, dare I say, at the level of Super Mario Brothers mania in 85 big in Japan. This is dragon quests in Japan big. And this monster hunter is universally recognized by the podcast. I would get on a train and you always knew the monster hunter players people carried PSPs there all the time when I lived there But you would always know the monster players. It'd be in little clusters of four sitting on the train side by side all of them doing this Holding their PSPs you go to McDonald's four person tables four people playing and the whole restaurant would just be groups of four people All sitting down on PSP playing four hundred monster hunter hunts together

I'm like ad hoc Wi-Fi Yeah, it was amazing so what's the appeal of this game? Well one is the depth and the fact that and the fact that you that it's kind of an obtuse game, not quite to the degree that Dark Souls is, but it takes a while to learn your way around, and there's a lot going on. Like you said, yeah, let's talk about the things going on.

You mentioned cooking meat, yeah. You can't just go out and you're going to starve to death, but you can't just cook the meat. You're also going to keep the stamina up, but you're not just controlling the stamina. You're also controlling the length of the stamina bar. So, one, you can't run out of stamina in combat

or running around, but also you have to keep eating to keep the bar refreshing or even potential, like sort of like refilling the number of heart containers you have all the time, while managing your hair. health while managing your weapons, which constantly get more dull. So you have to sharpen them. So there's this incredible number of things you're watching. Oh yeah, by the way, things are

trying to kill you and you're gathering assets all the time. It looks when you watch it like the most boring thing you can fathom, but it's the, it's so involved. There's something to it. I mean, if you're trying to explain to somebody who's never played a monster hunter, why it works, it's that it has, even if it's obtuse, even if you can't understand at a glance, it has all the hooks you want in a video game. It does. Where you are feeling more powerful. You are leveling up. You're getting your ass kicked in one fight, but then you've learned

something about that monster. So the next time you go, there's that, you know, God, the satisfaction of going back to the job board, turning it in, getting another one, rolling back out. Yep. Upgrading the equipment, getting that slightly better. Because this is a game of inches. The victory and defeat line for you against most monsters, especially the first time you beat them is usually a hair.

It is tension. Some of these hunts can go on for 30, 40 minutes. Yep. You're chasing this immense piece. The monsters are, there's jillions of them, and they're all unique. And when I see unique, they don't look unique or have a unique roar. They are nuanced and have tells. It's not like there's going to be a flash when the monster's going to do something.

It's sort of like Mike Tyson's punchout, multiplied by 20. Every tell is extremely subtle and reveals the monster might do one or two. And you're watching for just the perfect, perfect moment to try this. But then it's going to be a different tell immediately. And every monster has different patterns and different characteristics. And they're not stupid. If they're getting beat up, they'll just run away and find their layer and go rest. Or they'll call their friends and other things.

And it's just, it treats you with, it's, again, much like Dark Souls, it treats you with so much intelligence. It's like, oh, you're a smart guy. You're going to figure this out. And when you figure it out, I'm going to reward you with something compelling. I'm going to give you something else really neat. Monster Hunter players will play the same Monster Hunter for hundreds and hundreds of hours. And that, yeah. And like, that was the thing for me.

my example with Monster Hunter right in like when I got it when I reviewed it in terms of it I didn't fall in love with it but like the hooks were the mechanics were there and then what worked for me when I really appreciated it I think in retrospect was when I got Peace Walker and it was like you talked to Kajima

about it and how much he took from that I mean not to mention there are Monster Hunter levels in Peace Walker but I mean the fact of yep go and replay these missions over and over and over and over again fight the same monsters and don't be wrong I think Peace Walker is a dumbed down Monster Hunter in terms of what you're doing, enemy level and stuff like that.

That makes sense. But it's there in terms of like, oh, right, this is what I was doing in Monster Hunter, that I was getting friends together going on in these missions. We were taking these things out. We were starting to feel more and more badass and getting better and better and then coming back and kicking this thing to shit.

You know what I mean? And they're getting drunk at the bar. Yeah, I love that you brought up Peace Walker because Peace Walker is, you know, an example of one of about six trillion Japanese games in that period of time that decided they need four-player simultaneous multiplayer. Yeah. Because Monster Hunter did it and everyone

Aped it. I mean, there were accusations floating around that Dragon Quest 9 had four player parties because of Monster Hunter. I think that's a bit of a stretch, honestly. I would have been very upset if they did that. Yeah, but yeah, but Monster Hunter is, we tell, let's talk about

that multiplayer element. I don't play a tremendous number of non-couch multiplayer games. I really prefer to play with people in the room. It's because I'm old and senile. And, but Monster Hunter is a delightful online

experience because it is purely beautifully cooperative in a way that that very few games are everyone's doing their role and yet doing their own thing at the same time. There's not one way for each person to play the fight. It's not like tank guys always going to do the same thing. I'm not the Healer class. I'm not this. No, I'm doing, I have a lot of options and at any second in the fight I'm going to do something completely different and useful. And my teammates, even if we've worked together a lot, and are not necessarily going to be able to predict the best thing I can do.

And likewise, they're going to surprise me at moments when I think all is lost. This guy's going to come through and save us. At moments when everybody else is on the ground, I've got a chance to leap on the monsters back and be a hero. And generations, which is the new one, I think is the most accessible monster hunter there is.

It's, first, the controls work wonderfully, especially with a new 3DS, because you don't have to worry about, using the touchscreen anymore. You've got to, or you use it, but because Monster Hunter has, Lord, does Monster Hunter have buttons?

Monster Hunter has, it's not just one panel we're using fake buttons. You actually program, you, you customize multiple lower screen panels. Oh my God. That you switch between while you're playing. So what are all the buttons do? Oh my gosh. There's buttons for everything. There's buttons for map controls and locking on and slower maps and outer maps and items

and special moves and finding things and accessing it. And it's designed in such, like, there's little subtle, they're like, they do things that just seem so frustrating. Like, okay, first off, the pacing thing where you're committed to a move, you know, much like Dark Souls, once you're in the move, you're semi-committed. There are ways to combo out, but you have to learn all those. It's very nuanced and subtle. But then you'll have stuff like, you know, if my sword's out, my long sword, I can't use items because my hands aren't free. I've got to sheathe, get to the item, use the item, redraw, which in the middle of a fight is terrifying. and you have to time everything.

Think about, you're thinking 20 seconds ahead all the time. That bottom panel helps a lot with arranging those complex sequences and what you do. Yet the attacks, the base attacks are only two buttons. But hitting those two buttons in various combinations, depending on the weapon you're using and the style you're in, gives you ridiculously wide movesets that are all tailored for situations. You can play Monster Hunter for 100 hours with one of the mini weapon sets. switch off and you're starting at square one on learning how to use those things again.

And I love that about it. Wow, I talked a long time. It's the everlasting gobstopper. Yeah. I don't know. Colin, I mean, does this ever held the appeal for you? No. I played one Monster Hunter game a long time ago.

It's just not for me. What's funny is that there's certain games that are informed in some way by Monster Hunter that I actually enjoyed quite a bit. But Monster Hunter to me was always so unnecessarily deep that for, I don't mind, games. I love civilization, for instance. The game is fucking incredibly deep. But it's because I can just sit there and think about it.

It's not, it's not active. It's very, civilization is, I think one of the deepest games there is, but it's a passive game. Yeah. So I can like literally be like, I don't know what I want to do. Like I have to think about this for a fucking half an hour now. You know, like look around the map and like, like all this kind of stuff. And Monster Hunter didn't give me that

that the game, the two Monster Hunter type games, and I say type and quotes because one of them really isn't very much like Monster one of them is very much like Monster Hunter, his sole sacrifice. Really liked that game. And that game was informed. The combat is somewhat informed by that,

but it's a much more lonely game. Freedom Wars is the big Monster Hunter game on Vita that I thought was excellent. And that was because there was a meta story to it that Monster Hunter doesn't have. And I love the idea of like whittling down your years and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, Freedom Wars was just a very good game.

And probably the last great Vita AAA game. But again, it wasn't nearly as deep. as Monster Hunter. It was deep. Freedom Wars is deep, but it's not as deep and it's not as hard. I just, I don't want people to get scared off of generations because they've done a better job easing you into it. Again, I'm not a Monster Hunter expert by a long shot. I'm just a guy who likes playing it. But I sat down with Altono at IGN and who's never played one. And in the course that we did this little video series about teaching him to play, and he picked it up quick. They've made it so much easier to learn the basics than it used to be.

And by the end of it, he was holding his own against things. He had no, no business being that good at after that short of time because they're much, much better at some of the tutorializing. And if you're actually willing to go at night, I realize tutorials are irritating. But they found a good balance between obnoxiousness in the tutorials and getting you in and doing something cool and fun right away. This is the best time to jump in there's ever been. I don't think once there's ever going to be huge here. I think that's more of a Japanese phenomenon that's just really kind of like the way, you know, I don't know, the way soccer hasn't been big here for a long time.

But that doesn't mean there's not a lot of value to be found there if it's something you enjoy. It's an extremely important game. That's what I always said back when Vita came out for the first 18 months or so, there were a lot of rumors that Capcom was going to put Monster Hunter on Vita. And I'm like, this is a very important moment for this handheld and never happened. And I honestly think that's, I honestly think that's half of the reason why Vita never took off more in Japan. Oh, yeah. Japan is still sustaining Vita almost single-handedly.

But the fact that Monster Hunter never made an appearance on the handheld was. a major injurious thing to it, especially because it was on 3DS. So 3DS getting Monster Hunter was a coup. Yeah, it was a huge thing. It was a huge deal. And I think that Sony didn't never really recovered from that. I think that there was assumptions that they were going to get it. The PSP was not particularly successful in Japan, the first half of its life, until

Monster Hunter came out. And that changed everything. People, it was the, you know, there are not many legitimate killer apps in all the history of video games. In Japan, Monster Hunter was the killer app for the. that handheld generation period it was the reason people bought the handheld there were people that was all they played all the time and they just waited for the next one to come so is so generations is the the latest game yeah okay cool and so you're saying that that is is it the best jumping in

point or is there another one no jump in generations that that's yeah so yes I think generations is where you start you get your 3DS um if you don't have a frankenstick buy one if you have a new 3dS you don't need one um but uh you can play it with that one but i don't recommend it um Then you're back to the claw. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you're, well,

they use the bottom touchscreen for it, but it's, oh, no, that's even worse than the claw. Yeah, that's, you could adjust the claw, but don't do that.

Any final words on Monster Hunter? Yeah, play and have fun. There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, this topic brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog,

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No phone calls. This is 2016. Nobody needs phones. Nobody needs phones. It's over landlines. Get out of here. It's don't exist. Yeah.

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Leave us some questions. Just like Antonio Lara did. Antonio Lara. He says, why can a game be huge in Japan but nowhere else? Oh, that's a great question. I think because things were a lot differently. It's the same reason of the game could be huge in America. and be huge nowhere else because things were a lot differently and cultural presuppositions are

sometimes tailored toward certain things. I mean, the fact is, is that in Japan, the history of the way RPGs rolled out on console kind of created a myth that RPGs were more popular in Japan than the United States. No, we were just all playing ours on computer for a very long time. And RPGs were literally invented in the United States on pen and paper, became successful on computers, were the earliest examples of video games created the home gaming market. Then in Japan, people started playing computers, but consoles blew up at a time that our console industry was in a slump. So it became popular in console there, and it took a while for us to catch up.

That was simply a historical, cultural nuance based on the fact that there was a video game market crash in 1983 and 84 here in the console space, but not the PC. Did I explain that at all, or was that really confusing? I love you. Nailed it. Okay. I'm a little worried about that. I was afraid that I was ranting.

So what I'm saying there is something. Sometimes factors of history within a country. Countries exist for, you know, things happen in one country that don't happen in another economically and historically. That changes things tremendously. In 84, in the American console industry was collapsing Japan's prospered. Therefore, RPGs prospered on console at a time that they would have otherwise here, but never got the chance to. It took years for us to catch up. Because of that, we missed out on the beginnings of popular franchises like, let's say, Dragon Quest.

We almost missed out on Final Fantasy. So there's one. I mean, cultural differences too, right? Especially talking about Japan, especially talking about Monster Hunter, which just didn't like. last topic, right? I noticed something, you know, obviously I love Vita now and I loved PSP back in the day and that was like my beat at IGN PlayStation. And I remember when somebody pointed out to me that all my reviews mentioned being on the train because I took the train into work and like that's not what most of America does and that's why handhelds have such a

hard time getting going here. Meanwhile in Japan, they've been, they were always ahead of us on handhelds and then they were way tip of the sword on phone games because everybody, like you're all packed in together in Tokyo. You're So on top of each other, you're all taking trains. There are 30 million people in the Tokyo metropolitan area. A quarter of the population of Japan lives in one city and the surrounding suburbs. Imagine that. It'd be in the United States to take our population.

A quarter of our population would be about 75 million. So it'd be like having a city of 75 million people, all of whom we're commuting to work on public transit. We do not have that. Therefore, these things didn't work. Yeah, that's a great point. That's crazy. Like when you were talking about Monster Hunter and people in McDonald's and all that stuff, I remember how mind-boggling it was, like the first time I said to Mike P

when I was doing a Metal Gear Solid, a Peacewalk. And I was like, do you want to, you want to have like a date and go out and play this? And he was like, yeah. And then Caleb came and we went to a bar and we were sitting at a bar, drinking beers, playing PSP. And I'm like, this is awesome. And no one else in that fucking bar in this fucking city was doing that. Because that's not who we are. And that's not how we communicate through games.

And then you go to Europe. You think about what happened in the European game industry. They started on microcomputers. And a lot of those were domestically designed microcomputers. There was a period of history for about 10 years when people were figuring out what home computers were going to be. Most of them were built on two common architectures. There were a few others. They were used to build on the 6502 or the Z80, two different chips because those were cheap and easy to program for an assembly language.

And people tried all kinds of variants around those ships. In Britain, they invented several really brilliant economical designs at a time that Great Britain was in a major economic slump. And so these cheap home computers became kind of a way for video games to infiltrate the home. Usually on cassette tape, they cloned a cassette tape longer than we did over there. And their games were, they cost much less than they did here in that format. A cassette tape there might cost half what a video game cost here at the time. So it created a market for this kind of, okay, well, what are our considerations? And as to run on these processors has to use this very limited graphical palette, has to fit on a cassette and needs to be able to load in something less than 10 minutes.

So how do we make that, you know, because those cassette loaders were, oh, they were terribly slow. that created a certain kind of game and the games that they first fostered in that technical innovation. Then those were iterated on to create new, you know, you think about the things that rare did. They made their name making games on toasters. You know, I mean, the British microcomputers were not inferior to ours, but they weren't particularly powerful. And these guys were finding ways to just squeeze last drop and performs out and create these cool, isometric exploratory games like night lore, for example, that, you know, things that never came over here really, never became popular, but are genres there that dominated for half a decade

or longer just because they were homegrown, readily available, and worked on what was out there. And I think that's where a lot of these changes come from. That was an excellent answer. Papa P says, what's the importance of Miss Pac-Men? Miss Pac-Man is arguably the best arcade game there is. I'd vote for Robotron 2084, but Miss Pac-Man's right up there, along with with Gallagher. It's one of the few arcade sequels that's decidedly better than its predecessor. That's very unusual because arcade games are all about a cool hook, or at least most arcade games are.

But Ms. Pac-Man takes the cool hook and improves on it in every way. It is the randomizer makes the game unpredictable. It makes it so that you can't just pattern Miss Pac-Man out. The fact that the mazes change up makes you responsible for four times the information management that you were in the original Pac-Man, the variable fruit randomization, particularly when you get to higher levels, adds this wonderful spice because you just have to go after fruit. The ghost behaviors are very smartly covered.

It's good industrial design. I mean, the cabinet looks great, the beautiful, the pink and blue aesthetic there together. The fact that that project began life as a kind of hack, it was sort of an add-on daughter card board for Pac-Man that wasn't exactly officially licensed to start. and then later was. It's a very cool story.

I got a chance to talk to one of the guys that did this once. And, oh, fascinating. Just a wonderful, cool process, long story. Anyway, all those factors feature in, but at the same time, it's instantly understandable what you're trying to do. It doesn't screw up what worked in Pac-Man. It just improves on it. Also, it can easily, with a simple one-bit mod switch, be made much faster than even Miss Pac-Man. And I believe that Turbo Miss Pac-Man is the definitive way to play.

And, man, when you got up to those higher levels, there's just a much faster. There is nothing more riveting or terrifying in all of the video game world than when you get to the part of Miss Pac-Man where the stages just keep going. The power pellets never work again. And you're just trying to stay alive long enough for that random banana to show up so you can improve your score. I'm not a particularly good Miss Pac-Man player, 2,19, 640s, my top score. And that's, like, not all that great. But even at that low level, like the later levels are just devastating and wonderful. So I was picking the questions for this show.

And full transparency, I was like, I know Jared's gonna be fucking great. He's gonna kill this shit. I was like, I don't know what his role with like, what he thinks about Ms. Pac-Man. I'm just gonna throw it out and see. It's funny you say that too, because I think on the exclusive that we did, which Patreon exclusives subscribers for kind of funny games can listen. We talked about Ms. Pac-Man and Gallagher. Why those games are so important as well.

So you guys can go listen to that if you are a Patreon subscriber. I need to listen to that because my God, you are the most fascinated. I've been playing Miss Pac-Man a lot lately. It's so funny. Like we were talking about that. I've been playing Miss Pac-Man a lot lately because that game is so fucking good. It's so sublime. It is so perfect.

That game is fucking perfect. Are you really? Regular or sped? Oh, no, I'm playing regular. Yeah, I'm playing the, the, the, the, the, the NAMCO port on PS4, which I was like $3. And you can, like, mess with it in all sorts of ways, but, yeah, I play it pure. And that game is, that game is just, that game is really, really good. It's just really, really good.

Started with an MIT student business. Miss Pac-Man was just a bunch of people trying to find a way to make Pac-Man a little better. And I was a bunch of MIT students that decided to quit school and go into business. And it's funny how much better Ms. Pac-Man is than Pac-Man. Like, when you think about Pac-Man, you are talking about Miss Pac-Man. You are not talking about Pac-Man. Like, you are not talking about it. You know, like, everyone knows you're talking about Miss Pac-Man.

Yeah. Yeah. Even if you don't know what you're talking about. Yep. Oh, yeah. C-E-2 comes out in September. Yeah. Which is fucking awesome.

I love that game. That was a fun announcement. Pepsi is so good. It is. So good. Stephen Oslin says, what game is Jared looking forward to for the rest of the year? Oh, wow. That's great.

No Man's sky. Oh, it's so imminent. Yeah, No Man, that's like two weeks. Yeah, that's got me. That's got me worked up. I'm real excited to see how No Man Sky turns out. I think that's going to, I can't predict if that's going to fly into the stratosphere or crash and burn. I don't know if we're about to get Minecraft or Spore, but I'm hoping for that.

Minecraft. For me, it's... Have you played it yet? No, I haven't played it yet. See, the thing, Kevin and I was talking about it, we've played it. Yeah. And so our expectations are set based on that and we're in. Okay. But it's going to be interested to see the internet whose expectations are up here that we're going to have a galactic council. Sony did that to the game. I know, I know. But you're in? You're in? Oh, I'm in. Yeah. Okay. That's a game about... Kevin, big dog, kev, you in? What's up, Ross? Yeah. How about you just yell? Kevin saying he's in. Kevin's in. Are you in calling?

not I want to see like I think that I think that no I think Sony has has mucked this game up significantly in terms of expectations and I think that the expectations are not going to be met with this game I don't think it's possible I agree 100% so I think that it's going to injure the game in a major way but what but I still but I still think that it's going to do fine I just don't think it's going to set the world in fire at all yeah yeah I'm not in it all and I think that the hype thing that the weird the hype thing is definitely there but in total opposite way like with last guardian there's the hype there but I'm still I'm in that and I think that is going to be good this I keep forgetting the game exists This doesn't, like, grab my attention really. I think that it's very pretty and very cool, but like, I'm like, all right, I'd rather just listen to a synth soundtrack and just watch this happen than play it so far. I'm very interested to see maybe I change my mind once I get my hands on it, but I'm not excited for it at all. But I'm happy that it's so close. I'm finally going to know.

I want to wander the stars. I don't need a goal. I really, I just want to wonder. I just want to travel through the space. I could do that for it's a dream come true. Then I think you're going to be very happy because I imagine that is what this is going to be. I hope so.

I hope it's awesome. I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's game of the year. I just, I don't know. Robert White says, Jared, what are some of your favorite obscure games?

Oh my gosh. I don't know. I don't know if it's obscure, but it's obscure port. My all-time favorite video game is the NES port of Sid Meyers Pirates done by a program by Rare, released by Ultra,

which was Konami in the United States. And while Pirates is a superb computer game, that port particular port of pirates is so smooth. It strips out a couple of features that I didn't care about anyway, but the sword fighting and ship combat is way less choppy than it is on most computer platforms, yet it doesn't have like the over-adornment

that later things like Pirates Gold or the remake had, and I don't have to worry about the DDR dancing or any of that. The map is perfectly synced to it. I probably played that game for a thousand hours. I think that port is a wonderful thing. And I think a lot of people never even realized it was on EANS. It was a breakout hit on PC, but it consul ports.

We're not that big a deal for pirates. So that's one that comes to mind. Geez, obscure. I don't know. I guess Angband's probably obscure, and I really enjoy an ang band, which is a, there are two kinds of roguelikes.

There's the kind of puzzly-based roguelikes, like Nethack, where you're just trying to, you're trying to survive and you're trying to solve very specific, procedurally generated, but still always going to pop up in some way mysteries.

And then there's combat roguelikes, where you're just trying to get the bottom and kill the big monster that lives in the basement. Angband is the king of those. And as much as I enjoy experiences like Torchlight 2 or Diablo 2, Angband is probably my favorite of that kind of go to the bottom and kill the big bad. That's one that comes to mind. I don't know.

Wow. I don't really classify games in my head as obscure. And so it's harder to draw from the bin. I mean, I think you gave some great answers. Madden, 08. Julio says, Jared, do you have any

favorite video game soundtracks? Yeah. Whole soundtracks or just tracks? Let's do it as you will. The first video game track I ever remember just being stunned by,

I think is probably opening corridor in the Guardian legend when the wood flutes come in. That's a compile game and therefore superb because compile makes great games. Even Golvilius is good, which is weird.

But, Guardian Legends opening corridor music now probably doesn't sound all that impressive but I was like I didn't know those kinds of sounds could come out of an NES and as a child I remember like crashing my plane my jet because I just wanted to hear the music

and I couldn't pay attention to the game that one really knocked me on my butt to this day Matoya's Gate Metoy's Cave gets me which is from Final Fantasy 1 in just about any rendition Let's see.

There's a few other. Oh, Home Sweet Home from Earthbound is... So just lovely. Like that. Oh, goodness. There's too much good game music. I think Last Ninja 2 for C64 sounds like it's a...

You know, the Sidchip had three voices and this sounds like like a 16-piece orchestra. It's one of the most clever pieces of like Mod-teen sound program ever heard. heard also in the C-64, the Bionic Commando soundtrack. The Bionic Commando port for C-64, which is based on the arcade game, not the N-A-S game, is absolute crap, but the music is ungodly good. Just down to the point that they're doing all these weird Euro-Sense stuff and they like noodle around at the top

and suddenly like the piece of the Star Wars music comes in for one bar and you hear it in the middle of the Bionic commanding music and then they cut back in, but it fits perfectly. It's just like bong-down-down-down. And then it cuts into by a commando. You're like, what? This is so good. There's a lot of that.

Man, that is awesome. Final question is from Juan Cazares. He says, ask Jared if he ever sees any game company making a deeply religious game. Oh, wow. I mean, people have done things. They've never been commercially successful to my mind.

You know, you had the wisdom tree stuff and all that, of course. Yeah, Bible adventures. in the Bible adventures. Binding of Isaac. Yeah, Binding of Isaac is thematically. That's a really, really good point there, Colin. Binding of Isaac couldn't even come to Nintendo platforms because it was too religious.

Yeah, yeah, binding of Isaac comes to mind. There's a game called, I think it's called it's 10 second Jesus or 10 second gospel, something like that was a, I think a games jam game of some kind made in like a couple of days. But it's like doing everything in the life of Christ in 10 seconds. The controls are like run right and do Jesus things. and it's so cute and clever that it gets a couple little points across

in interesting ways religion is one of those things it's one of the great divides in video gaming I think some of that has to do in the United States with the fact that religion is you know it's that Nintendo legacy and people have been afraid to touch it ever since and people are afraid of alienating their audience

or they're trying to pander to it I mean a lot of video games that have gone down that road kind of do it like Cecil Bill D'Emill did with the Ten Commandments, that movie, which people forget is one of the greatest exploitation films ever made. That was a movie about getting Christians into theaters to watch sex and violence. I mean, that movie is all about like, I am Vincent Price and I am swarmy, and you will be my maid servant.

Ma'a! Coming to my home. Joshua! You know, and it's all murder and filth and disguised as a Bible movie so people would go see it, and they put Charlton Heston on it. and suddenly it was like, hello, I'm Moses, and God is good. No, games treat religion at best like that most of the time. I'm racking my brain right now looking for something better.

I'm waiting for us to get something like, you guys have ever played a mind forever voyaging? No. It's an old infocom game from the Texas Adventure Days. It's astounding. It lays aside most, years before adventure games were laying aside puzzles. It lays aside almost all the traditional puzzle mechanics. You play as an AI in a South Dakota laboratory.

You're a computer on a rack against a wall. There's a lab technician in the lab with you. You've been built to create simulations within yourself that you then travel into of what the future of America might be like if we make certain decisions politically. And so you're traveling through time within yourself, then coming back every now and then and talking to the professor about what the simulation taught you about what might happen if you do this. And you keep going farther and farther into this future. And as you come out, you realize outside the room that you're trapped in,

things are happening in the real world based on the data you're feeding them that are influencing the course of American history. And eventually you're having this kind of existential dilemma where which world, the world inside yourself or the world outside, which one is the real one or which one matters more? How is one affecting the other? It's brilliant. Something that does that with spiritualism, I think, is well overdue. I'd like to make a game.

I've talked to my wife about this. I don't have, you know, the venture capital, but I'd love to make a game about a kid from a youth group getting on a bus to go to a, to go to an anti-gay protest, some 15-year-old because everybody else in his youth group is doing it. getting up early in the morning, getting in the 15 passenger van to stand and hold a little sign across the street from and about the things he learns that day. And why he's there and what he thinks and what he believes and what he feels in the course of that process.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. You know, I don't think anyone would buy that though, and that becomes the problem. I don't want to make it to sell. I want to make it so people can play it. But a company has, in most of the time, has to try to make money. I think that's why they're afraid to touch this. Do I think it will happen? Yes.

because the one beautiful thing about our frustrating, annoying, greedy, goofy, cartoon industry is that it's also made up of artists who want to create beautiful things. And every now and then they break through and do. So, yeah, I think it's going to happen. Well, ladies and gentlemen,

if you want that to happen, go to patreon.com slash Jared Petty. Try to help some dreams come true. Baby steps. Yeah, baby steps. Yeah. I can use your help, guys. Please, this is the launch.

And if you're willing to help out with pockets full of soup, which is, well, trying to kind of accomplish something positive in a different way, yeah, we could really use your assistance. So please, patreon.com slash Jared Petty. Thank you so much. I'm very excited for it. I think it's going to be fantastic. I think you are an amazing human being that is very knowledgeable.

And somehow you're even nicer than you are smart. So thank you for all for joining us. This has been my favorite games cast episodes we've ever done. So thank you for that. Obviously, thank you guys. Kevin, thank you for being Kevin. And thank you for being you. I love you.

We'll see you next week.