Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Saving Games Before They're Lost Forever - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 183

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

Fank Cifaldi and Mike Mika of the Video Game History Foundation visit Gamescast to talk about their work preserving the raresr and most precious relics of gaming's golden age. Find out how you can do your party and become a part of history! (Released first to http://www.Patreon.com/KindaFunnyGames Supporters on 08.17.18) Get a trial month of Hims for $5 at http://forhims.com/gamescast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the first ever, episode 183, of The Kind of Funny Gamescast. I'm your host, Jared Petty. That's right. Tim Getty's supplanted. You're never seeing him again, or at least not, until next week. Tim Getty's, Greg Miller, added undisclosed locations. So, folks, I'm hosting. And today, two very special guests, folks, I wanted to have here on Gamescast for some time.

Cross from me here, Mr. Mike, Micah. Yes, hello. Hey, everybody. That's not for me. Where are you from? So where do I hail from? No, let's start with that. For folks who don't know yet, why are you sitting here?

Why are you at this table, good sir? I'm studio out for a company called Digital Eclipse and also for the sister company, Other Ocean. And I work with Frank Sefaldi on our Digital Clips Classic Collection titles, as well as a whole bunch of other weird things that Other Ocean does. Excellent. And between us here, Mr. Franksafaldi. Hello.

Frank, you're here representing what, who, where? Well, I kind of live two lives. Jared. So I'm the founder of a nonprofit called the Video Game History Foundation, which seeks to make sure that historians have the tools they actually need to tell the story of video games because a lot of this stuff is very rapidly disappearing from the world, and it's tragic and horrible. And then my sort of commercial life is at a company called Digital Eclipse, where we

restore classic games to their original pristine condition and publish them with a whole bunch of bonus materials that help contextualize their history and teach you about them. Kind of the same work. One's nonprofit, one's for profit. But you're doing a little of both. I can't help being me. Just cross-pollination of the economics. There is some cross-pollination.

And you all are here today primarily to talk about the incredible and broad, pervasive topic of video game preservation of making sure that our history isn't lost. And that's going to be a lot of what we get to later on today in the work of the video game. History Foundation. But first, as Gamescast, we always like to talk about the games that we're playing. So I'm going to start across the table with Mike. What am I playing? You know, I've actually been, I have two young kids, and I introduced my daughter, who's the youngest at eight. She's just discovered DigDug. Oh. And so we've been just constantly slamming DigDug to see how far we can get. So she's getting up to like around stage 10, which is

amazing. Stage 10 is difficult for me to get to. And I love DigDug. So now, like, I sit there and play with her, but then when she goes to bed, I keep playing. So I'm trying, I've got that old high score thing coming back to me right now. But that's putting my time on that in Tempest 4,000. You can tell I'm in the old stuff. Well, if you're, okay, so that hot new game dig duck, obviously. Where are you playing it? Actually, I'm playing it on this little portable game she got for her birthday,

which is a little dig dug, that's called, like some little arcade thing, but it's actually the NES version of dig dug in it. Oh, really? Okay. So I hear that thing power up, and then we just get around it and play that. Was there an NES DigDug 1? There was a Famicom. Yeah, in Japan.

They released it here in the U.S. on this little dedicated... Weird, I didn't know that. I kind of want to have that now. So she's playing DigDug. What's the appeal of DigDug? What would somebody that's never played this game want to go back and play this old video game now?

You know what? Like a lot of these older games, there's a lot of charm and character to them. And DigDug in particular has this really cool mechanic for, since pretty much everybody's younger to me that's probably watching this. It's a game where you're digging through the ground and there's these enemies.

You've got a FIGAR and a puka, and you have to pump and pop them with an air pump. So you have a hose that latches onto them, and you pump them up to the point that they pop, and you have to do that for every enemy and just get to the next stage. It's the origin of a lot of weird fetishes, basically. Pretty much. You heard it here first, folks. Fetishes and Digduck. I love Digduck.

I like the digging mechanic. I like the use of the gravity to drop the blocks on top of enemies, and that a lot of your score multipliers are built on trapping several enemies under a block at once. I love the art, the color. Power pell just kind of pops. It's great. Every game at the time used to be just like in space pretty much. And so it was always a black screen with colorful things on top of it.

But this is a very colorful, earthy kind of game. And we used that as a basis for a game we were building in, I think it was 2003 around then for as a spin-off from Spyro for Activision or at the time as Universal. And so we're going to make an Agent 9 game where it was a 3D action platform, but you had a pump gun. You're pumping anything with that. So that was one that didn't quite make it out there, but I'll dig it up because of all that. Do you have it? I do have it.

Of course. Of course I have that. What about, you mentioned Tempest, 4,000? Yeah, so that's Jeff Minter's latest Tempest, which has been doing Tempest for years. Yeah. And not much... He's not always called Tempest, but it's been... TXK. Yeah. But it's a visceral shooter. It's really fun to play. If you don't take drugs, it's like being on drugs. And you pretty much, you just let go and... And if you do take drugs, it sobers you right up. It sovers you right up. So it's kind of inverses whatever state you're in.

So Jeff Minter, Lama Soft back in the day. And again, folks may not be familiar. These are, the kind of games creates tend to be frenetic, instantly comprehensible, but very deep and very psychedelic. And while they're twitchy shooters, there's a lot of strategy going on, but you have tenths of a second to choose those strategies. And this is the thing is, like, I really like action games are really hard to come by right now, like things that I have required like instant reaction times. And so I've been kind of diving into those kind of games again lately. And of course, I hate to say it about Fortnite because whole family's a Fortnite family right now.

Why do you hate to say it? It just feels dirty to say you're playing Fortnite when everybody else is playing for it. I don't know. I like playing something nobody else is playing. It's like going to like a high school baseball field and playing baseball. It's like, you're not supposed to be here. I watch Friends. Again, actually, that's more of a dig-dug answer.

You're likewise jumping back about 20 years. So yeah, that works. What's a show now? I don't even watch TV. Yeah, do you watch streaming now? Oh, yes, of course. Okay. What are you watching right now?

You know, I just got done with a series called Safe. I think that's what's called. where it's a BBC drama. I keep saying Anthony Michael Hall, but it's Michael Hall, I think, is the guy's name. And he's the lead, and it's about his daughter goes missing, he's trying to find her. And it's just this crazy nuttoe thing, but I just got done with that one. Okay, but you are playing Fortnite, and you're a Fortnite family, you say. We are a Fortnite family.

Every morning I watch my kids doing the dances and everything like that. I may join in sometimes. Do you join in? Can you do a Fortnite dance first? No, I'm terrible. No, I could try. All right, let's see it. Fortnite dance.

What's that thing called, the floss? Let's see it. Let's see your best. I can't do it. It's so close. So close to having that breakout mode. Do you play Fortnite, friend? I don't.

Okay. So you play with your entire family. How many of them are you? How many of you are in? Actually, my wife doesn't really play. She just watches. So three of us play. Okay.

And you squat up with just a... Friends. We'll get online. Because we have the switch and the Xbox, so we can kind of team up with those, but then, you know, one person's always out or whatever and trading in. You love that crossplay. Crossplay.

Yeah. Look at that. That's the future. I hear. I hear about that crossplay. Your developer is a difficult to implement? You guys make games. We implemented the first crossplay Microsoft game. What? With PC and Xbox. Expound. It's a game called IDARP. And it was an acronym for Idraza Red Box.

And it was a game that we kind of developed with the Internet at large. And it came out on, it was like three years ago now, three and a half, four years maybe. Who knows? But you could, it's a game you can stream and everybody who's watching the stream could interact with. And so in many ways, you go back to that, it was the first crossplay game. before Mixer existed in Microsoft Family, we're doing something like that. It's before Twitch actually had developer

integration stuff where you can interact with the game. We made it up and we just did it. And we didn't think to patent it. So like, yeah, we'd really be rich. But it's just like it did a lot of cool things. Like if you're watching the game on Twitch, you could type in like hashtag bomb. And it would just drop a bomb into the game you're watching.

It would like screw it. It would happen right there. Well, it would happen, you know, because there's a 30 second delay. But you had an effect on what you were watching. I loved Idaar, but I was never really good at it. Thank you. But I loved it. And I think you guys,

so y'all that came in to show it off or, that's where I met you, Mike. Yeah, yeah, we came into show it off. And, you know, that game, we still get fan mail for, like, almost every day, which I guess we should follow it up at some point. That's an exaggeration. Is there still an active community? Almost.

Almost. I'm seriously. When I say almost, it's like once a month. Is there still an active community around that? There is actually somewhat, for what it is, being four years old, I still get a lot of requests for features. Yeah. Well, and people, I mean, there's so much stuff in that game for no reason, like recipes and music editors and stuff like that. So, like, I think there's still active communities of people who, like, draw pixel art and make songs and things. Yeah, somebody just made, what song did they just?

There was somebody who made like almost a full-length Adele song in it and posted it and it got like picked up and rose up Reddit for a little while. And that was like three weeks ago. Yeah. And people would drop real personalities in like you could play as your avatars. I wonder, was it? Cool, Greg, do you know kind of funny? Was ever in IDARP? I don't know.

Oh, I think so. Yeah? Kind of funny. I'd arb? I wonder. I think they are. Cool, Greg. Can you do that research project for us?

It's IDARB. And while you're looking that up, we're going to talk to Frank. Frank, I'm going to ask you what you're playing, but first, we're already talking about you guys making an IDARB, which is exciting. But I really think that, you know, you worked on Mega Man Legacy Collection. You worked on, you're working on the new S&K 40th anniversary. Street Fighter 30th. But I really think all that. Afternoon collection, which no one talks about.

We'll get there. I'm saving that. But all of that pales in comparison to the fact that you were the, I believe, producer on Shark Nato, the game? Okay. I remember the credit I gave myself for Shark Nato, the video game, which I named, by the way. Which was, I wanted the film auteur credit for fun, so it was producer, director, and writer. Oh, there we go. Wow.

So you are the Hideo, Kojima. Yes. Of Sharnado. I love that. Oh, look here. Do we have them? Oh, yeah, there they are. Look at that.

There we go. It's kind of funny. I remember these. Right there. Oh, love that. You got the QR codes. You can bring them right into the game. So you want to play,

you go back and play Aradrop, which, by the way, is the kind of game that never stops being fun. Oh, there's some kind of funny folks in the logo. Yeah, I forgot about the whole QR code thing. So you just like scan QR codes. This game was amazing. Like, when we demoed it, we had ourselves, right?

Like QR codes of ourselves on our shirt, I think, and you could just like... You would literally just run from the connect camera, which nobody has anymore. You'd stand there, and it would zap the character out of your shirt. Yeah, basically. Freaking red. So let's talk about Shark Nato for a second. Sure. Because I...

That was a must download. The moment that came out, I had that on my iPad. That was... I know that you spent many years laboring to get the perfect Sharnate... Two and a half month development cycle. Okay. Wow. That's short.

That's more than usual for those kind of games. Is it? I don't know. Is 10 weeks? It's 10 weeks? No. I mean, that's like Todd Frye Pac-Man time.

That's how you knew it was going to be good when you had two and a half months. Yeah, we just got it out in two and a half months on no money. But it's like, you know, you look at that development schedule and you look at the money and you're like, we can't make anything good with that. But it's like, well, it's Sharknato. Like it's not make a bad game. You don't walk away from Sharknato. Well, there's that.

But it's also like the plan wasn't, the plan wasn't, let's make a bad game. It's like, well, let's make a game. that's on the same, let's make the Shark Nado of video games. You know what I mean? Like something that is unashamed of its budget, right? Okay. And so we made an intentionally sort of low-budget Shark Nado action game that I'm actually very proud of. Yeah, it's actually a lot of fun.

Yeah, thank you. It switches between two modes. You've got a three modes. There are three modes. Wait, what's the third mode? It's a three-act play because I like Donkey Kong. Okay. And it's, so the first mode, you are, what was his name?

Finn. Finn, thank you. Of course, Finn, sharks, yeah. You are Finn, the lead character from the movies. This was meant to be a tie-in to Shark Nato 2, colon the second one. Okay. Which was the second one. It's a great title.

And so you're in New York, and it's one of them infinite runners, if you remember those. Back in the day. Three-lane runner. And you are running toward a Shark Nato that is off in the distance in New York. city with sharks swirling around, everyone's screaming. And so you're running toward it because you're Finn and you take down Shark Nato. Exactly. That's what you do. You'll figure it out when you

get there, right? It's sort of the plot. And you do. I don't really know how I'm going to make this tornado go away. But you do it. You figure it out. You figure it out. So it starts on the streets of New York and you're running toward the Shark Nato. There are cars that are crashed on the side of the road and there are sharks everywhere,

right? Including just like falling from the sky and like doing the little bounce when you're like. A nice elegant flop and bounce. going on there. And I decided that you look at a shark, they're obviously bouncy. Like, you can bounce off sharks. Yeah. Like, I mean, look at them.

They're very rubbery. They're very rubbery. So they are also platforms. So if there's a shark on the road and like a crash bus behind it, you could bounce off the shark. It makes a stupid boeing sound. And then you can get coins off the bus. Yeah.

Which you use to buy upgrades to your weapons because there's a bunch of weapons in there. Anyway, that's phase one. You get far enough. And then all of a sudden, everything floods because there's a shark native. Right. Yeah. That's what's going to happen. And then.

And then you're suddenly Finn still, but you're on his pink surfboard. I insisted pink. I don't know why. He needed a pink surfboard. And at that point, it becomes one of those old, like, LCD racing games where there's just stuff coming at you. That's the stage I forgot. That's right. You got to dodge.

And as you're doing it, the Shark Nato theme, the Ballad of Shark Nato. Is that the name of it? Yeah, we licensed it from the person. I remember you spending so much time and effort trying to license that song. Yeah, and then I just... The game doesn't work unless I have that song. We need the ballad of Shark Nato. How much do you have to spend to license the Ballad of Shark Nato?

Well, okay. I don't know what normal music licensing is, but this was emailing the guy and saying, is $1,000 okay, and I'm saying, sure. Okay, that's beautiful. Wow. And it's this dumb surf song with lyrics. Like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

I remember that. I remember that. I played a lot of this game. And as the sharks are coming at you, we animated their mouths kind of going back and forth like that. Yeah. In time with the singing. So it kind of looks like the sharks are singing their theme song. Okay.

As they're coming at you and you're avoiding them. Not a lot of singing sharks in gaming. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Yeah, if IJ's top 10 shark singing in video games, y'all are definitely going to be near the time. I have making a video somewhere for this game where I was telling my animators in the Philippines how to animate the Philippines how to animate the Philippines. Can you imagine being this group of the Philippines who is getting the work order for this going like, we need seeing sharks.

In animates like that were just as head bends back and forth. So you get through the surfing part and all of a sudden you get to the Sharknado and you're whisked into it. That was a technical challenge. I think I'll wait if it's just like flash a screen wide to come back. It was a technical challenge because you know what? I remember for three days we've come with ideas of how to do. make it actually be feasible.

Oh, the actual on the shark part? Yeah, because you're riding on the back. Yeah, because you were talking about like octagonal, like, yeah. Everybody was overthinking it. It was just like make the camera angle weird and it works. But in this scene, you are fin and you are on a great white holding its fin and you got a chainsaw in one hand. Yep. Which was in the script they sent me, but not in the movie.

Okay, there we go. We just learned an undisclosed shark native. Sharknator deleted scene confirmed. Put this on, kind of funny morning show tomorrow. And now in a very Pac-Man twist, you're the predator. You're no longer running from the sharks. You are running into as many sharks who are flying at you. And you're in a tornado at this point.

Yes. You're in a tornado, flying on a shark with sharks coming at you. You don't want to get hit, right? You don't want to get hit by New York garbage. My favorite touch in the whole thing. So there's just, I don't know, like taxi cabs and garbage and stuff. And my favorite touch is that one of the New York props is the statue of Liberty's head. But there can be.

multiple of them. Oh, okay, there we go. Because it's a video game. Yeah, it sounds lovely. And you made this in 10 weeks. And hang on the ending then. Oh, wait, yeah. And you defeat, like, there's a, there's a, I don't know why.

There's a boss, like, life meter for the shark-nato at the top of the screen. And as you kill sharks, the life meter goes down. I don't know why. You kill enough sharks, and then it blows up. And it says Sharknato destroyed. You're back on the street for round one again. Rad. Shark NATO, the video game.

Absolutely rad. That makes me so. very happy. I'm glad someone played. By the way, before we go on, we need to a shout up for a second to our Patreon producers. Warren Moore, Eric Heights, and Tom Bach.

It's Warren Moore, Eric Heights, Tom Bach, these good people, make this show possible. I want to thank y'all so very much for doing this for yet another month. It just, it warms our hearts, keeps us going. We owe you so much. Cool, Greg, can you make a note of that one, please?

That doesn't need timebook. What's that? That doesn't need a time code, Greg says. All right, we're good there. Moving forward. I'm learning. Off we go. Beyond Shark Nato, I have to ask.

You mentioned you made this game for not very much money. And you made it in 10 weeks. How do you make video games for not very much money in 10 weeks? Philippines. We have a sister studio in the Philippines. And you partner with them? Yeah, yeah. Is that about exchange rates?

There's a little bit of that. We've got studios all over the world, really. We've got two studios in Canada, one in Manila, one in Madrid, and one here. So we push things out wherever we can to try to meet budget to come in. And we'll get ludicrous requests. Even some most recent games we're working on

are like they want this whole thing and it normally take a year. How can you do it in four months? Yeah. Okay. Oh, you mean like the one we just shipped? Just like the one we just shipped. So we always look tired.

This is kind of the other part too. So I mean the, I mean, that's the, you know, the short answer is that, you know, we only had one sort of in California cost, which was me. and then we had the rest was my team in the Philippines which just their cost of living isn't nearly as much as it is for us here so we were able to offset the cost by working with them

and it was just a lot of long nights with me on Skype with my Philippine bros and gals. Fascinating, okay, so a lot of that's done through that kind of like overseas outsourcing and... Yeah, I mean, not always and I think that's the only one I've ever done like that. Okay. You know, it happens like that sometimes, but, you know, for the most part, we do most of us. We're a smaller developer, so we work on smaller games.

Smaller games are a little bit more palatable that way. Yeah. But also larger games outsource way more than we do, even. Yeah. Including to our sister studio. Yep, exactly. Time code here, cool, Greg. Frank, what are we, what are you playing?

What am I playing? It's been a few days since I left off, but the last game I was playing, I was replaying Batman Arkham Knight. Oh, no kidding. I like that game. Okay. I don't feel like anyone talked about that game. I feel like it came out. People went, yeah, it's good.

It's another Arkham game. Never heard about it again other than, oh, the PC port's bad. And that was that? That was all anyone ever heard about that game. I think that game is brilliant. Now is your opportunity to tell us why that game is well. Yeah, I'm actually going to. There's so much content in this game.

It blows my mind. There's so much history that they're drawing on because it is, it is the rare actual conclusion to an actual trilogy in a video game like straight up this is the final one

they did two more and this is you know they did two before this this was the end it calls back to the other two which I really like a lot and I don't know like you've played

have you played any of the Arkham games sure I continue to think that combat is brilliant in all those games I think you know the notion that like no he's Batman You just point him at the guy and he knows how to do a cool move and take him down like that that's how you do a Batman game

Right is it's not not trying to make it too granular just just being like okay look I have Several options quickly mapped here and it just happens Yeah, it's just like it's abundant. It's just cool looking Right and like Batman you know if it's Batman he's like kind of running on instincts and it's all this timing right? It's just like like like balancing the playing field and being able to zip between guys and knowing when to throw the battering and stuff like that The combat feels great but what I did this time, which I didn't do the first time I played it,

which is right when it came out a year ago, I think. I went after all the Riddler trophies. It got all. And it made me realize, it made me come to terms with why the new Zelda didn't work for me. Oh. Uh-oh.

Oh, da-da. Get off my set, sir. The game's great. It's beautiful. That world is empty nothing. There's just nothing in that world. Like there's no reward. There's,

I never feel like the world has a puzzle for me to solve and then a reward at the end. It's just like, oh, you climb that thing. Now you can get more of the blue gems, I guess. You know, like you're just adding numbers to the spreadsheet. If I were Harrison Ford, you would be off Air Force One right now. But no, no, I, this is, this is interesting here. So you saw it all this a very empty world, but when you were in Arkham, you didn't feel that way?

No, it's a small contained, like, I want a game that, I want the Warren Specter game that takes place on a street, you know what I mean? Like, that to me is the ideal game world because actually populating a large world is impossible and you just get open, empty fields that, I don't know. I understand why people, I'm not, I like the Zelda game. Like, it just didn't really work for me. I didn't stick with it more than like 40 hours. You know what I mean?

Like, I played it more than I play most video games. But when you compare it to this open world, you thought this is a much better implement. Yeah, because like it's a smaller space and like everything that is there has a purpose. You know what I mean? Like the building placement is there for fun. You know what I mean? Like being able to grapple up from that one to that one. Like everything is it's a video game level as opposed to a world that has video game stuff in it.

Interesting. It's just a large level. And every one of these Ridler trophies, not everyone. Like some of them are just like, oh, you climb over here and there's a trophy. But the ones that were actually like puzzles, like every one of them. felt great. I felt really smart. You know,

it did that classic adventure game thing where it just tricks you into thinking you're really smart, but you're actually an idiot, just don't think about it too much. And I find the Batman character and his villains compelling. I always have.

And the, man, the way they brought Joker into this game was so cool. Yeah, that was pretty darn incredible. I really like that. And the way they ended the Joker in this game, game was even cooler.

The fact that they let them play with the mythology to that degree was extraordinary. It's hard for me to imagine contemporary era DC being as willing to bend around that because it was a in a lot of ways it was a kind of boldness the movies like to pretend they're being bold.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this was a much more understated boldness that actually made a huge impact. And I like that about it. I agree. And it's real quick, the writing. No, no, that's okay. You're you take all the time you want. We're not in any hurry. Writing and this game's phenomenal.

Yeah. I love Paul Dini. I know he wasn't on this one. Writing was better in this one. And they nailed the Joker that's in my head. And which is like he'll say something really screwed up and gross and awful. And you laugh and then you feel guilty. And that's perfect Joker writing.

That's hard to do. That's very hard to do. It's hard to tell any kind of uncomfortable joke. Yeah. And it's especially hard to tell 20 of them in sequence. once and weave them into a dramatic narrative. I agree. That is really impressive.

Yeah. And so, yeah, I just, I like that game. You've just had the opportunity to make your case for Batman Arkansas. I think the game was well received, but I agree. It did sort of kind of come and go. Yeah. And that was sort of there. The first time I actually noticed it was when it was already on sale. Yeah, interesting.

It was kind of weird. I wish that. Did you play it, Mike? I played a little bit of it, but not as far as he did. Did you get to the part with the Joker? Yes, that was awesome. Okay. It was awesome.

Like, he's there the rest of the game. Yeah. Just like hanging out on rooftops and stuff. That's just, yeah. talk about the conceit? We normally talk about, let's leave this one to go. But I think we've tantalized people enough. I do think we avoid spoilers a lot of the time, but today

we'll stay away from that one. I do think it's interesting what you said about the world design looking for the regular trophies that force you should explore everything. I used to work in guides, so I hunting collectibles, you know, particularly for unreleased games. You know, there's just nowhere else to look. You're going to find them or they're not

going to get found. And that forced me to look at games in a different way and I saw different ways of engaging with with collectibles and from that level design. It taught me a lot about how levels are laid out. I disagree with you on Breath of the Wild, but I also see your point. Okay. I actually think Breath of the Wild's level design is incredible, but it's incredible in being built around what we sometimes here in theme park talk called weenies. Are you familiar with that term?

Yes, yeah, absolutely. The Disney weenie, like the castle is the weenie. Yeah, it's the thing that pulls you in a direction. Yeah. I think. Zelda's great at weenies. And Zelda is, and Zelda is thousands of weenies.

Like that's the part of, everywhere you're standing is a blip on a node with three other blips to walk toward that are all 100 yards away. And then you get there and it's like, here's one of 500 of these stupid seeds. Well, it's not always a seed sometimes. It's just never rewarding to me.

Why don't you love majesty? No, I think you raise a valid criticism. You're wrong, but it's a good valid case. It's like the same cutscene every time you get like the 500. I don't know if it's 500, but it felt like it. And it's just the same thing every time.

And it's just like you use the climb mechanic to go on top of that hill. Here's the same cutscene again. What are you playing this? Why are you what's the sorry? No, no, I like this game. It's good. It's really good. Zelda, I mean.

Oh, okay. I like Zelda. But I just, I feel like I have to get defensive because whenever I bring up why it doesn't work. for me. I feel like people are just religious about this game and it's like the game was great. Again, we've been talking about old TV shows it's Seinfeld. You're Elaine and

we're all talking about the English patient. That's really where you're out. That's where you're trapped. I don't get that reference but I'm laughing anyway to pretend like I do. That's a beautiful. That's why he doesn't like Zelda. It's a woman walking around in a world where every human being is absolutely captivated by the English

patient and she just doesn't give it. Get it. I do get it though. She's losing her job over it. It's just, yeah, it's finally. You're playing Fortnite, Mike. You playing anything new, Frank,

recently? Newer than that now. Yeah, just kind of, well, still poking at SNK games because we're doing some research on adding some new titles.

So doing a lot of SNK research for that project. That's been really fun. We're finding, like I haven't played half of these games and there's so many cool things in these. Yeah. That was a weird,

weird developer. What? S&K. Yeah. Old S&K. So people who aren't familiar with S&K 40th anniversary collection at S&K, what's the elevator pitch on that? Sure.

SNK 40th anniversary collection is a celebration and compendium of what SNK was before they found their footing with the NeoGeo. So it's like the Wild West days of SNK. And the way that I pitch it in my head and I'm not the publisher,

I'm not marketing it, but in my head, the way we designed it, was that this is for the SNK fan who knows, you know, King of Fighters and all those franchises, like all the NeoGeo stuff. It's like, well, let's explore what came before that. Like, S&K didn't come fully formed from nowhere. Like, they had a history before that. How did they get there?

And I feel like, I feel like no one talks about the pre-Neo Geo games because they're so hard to play on MAME. Like, I really think that. Exbound. The controls. The S&K, most of their notable games from the 80s, used what's called their loop lever joystick. You know what I'm talking about?

I do. I do. Yes. Oh, yeah. I, S&K fandom for me goes all the way back to the 1980s. Cool. So loop lever joystick in the arcade, you're playing Akari Warriors, a guerrilla war, not Iron Take, TNK3. You have a joystick in two buttons, but the joystick rotates in place. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to get that

idea across if you've never seen one. It's a joystick. You move it, eight directions just like normal, but it also twists. Right. So if you're playing Akari Warriors, you know, he's got his gun out. It's not a handgun. It's more like that. But he's got his gun out. And as you're twisting the joystick, that's how you aim.

You know, it's kind of like a twin stick shooter. Before there were twin stick shooters, I'm using one stick. Yes, you're moving forward by pressing forward. But to turn him to aim, you rotate the thing you're holding. It's amazing. It's a really cool system. And so if you play that any other time that game's been rewritten. released, like when S&K's done it on

PSP and maybe even PS3 or whatever, the way they've mapped that is that shoulder buttons are rotate clockwise and rotate counterclockwise. And that works technically, but the issue is that if you have that loop lever and you have

eight clicky directions, you can muscle memory pointing exactly where you need to point. And get good and fast. Yes. If you are timing, you know, if you're like waiting, you have to like watch him, you know what I mean? Rotate to get where you want.

And as you're watching him rotate, you're getting shot. And you cannot muscle memory the timing of the shoulder button, the clock always counter and so the games just don't feel right. They don't feel right. They're not fun. So if you're playing those games now in that way, you think they're terrible. Right. Like people just don't understand.

No, these games felt great in the arcade. I used to own an Accari Warriors machine. Did you realize? I did. Yeah. So we, the best way to... We're all about

at digital eclipse preserving intent. That's always what it comes down to, right? So, you know, I think we've had discussions in the past about like the video filters on Mega Man, right? Like, we put in a filter where it looks like crappy composite video. We put one where it looks like my amazing RGB monitor at

home. You know, we put one where it's just the pixels as sharp as possible. Because we don't have a definitive answer for what the artists meant for the game to look at. So it's just like always try to find that artistic intent. I believe the artistic intent of the loop lever games was that you could muscle memory pointing and shooting wherever you want. And so the way that we implemented that was on a higher

level before I guess to the game. We force twin stick on the game. So, you know, if he's pointing forward and you hit down on the R stick, he'll suddenly be pointing behind him, which is faster than you could actually do in the arcade. It makes it a little easier. So as interested as you are in bringing these games to people, you're just as interested in bringing them to them in a form that they maybe have an experience since they were originally available in arcades decades ago? It's close as possible. Right, but it's also, it's less about bringing back the user experience. To me, it's more about restoring the artistic intent.

Why did they want to use the loop cover? Exactly. And so, yeah, like, I want people to start. Like, my goal with this project in particular was to make SNK fans, really every. but my target was S&K fans, really think about what these games were and how they led to the things that they love and learn to appreciate these things

that they probably never looked at before. I'm excited because a lot of these games have not been collected to death. I mean, people constantly hear, you know, I ramble about old games a lot because I enjoy playing them. But the S&K games in the NeoGeo, you can be walking down the street

of San Francisco and you will find an emulated copy of Last Blade 2 you know, under a trash can if you look. Now it shouldn't be because it's a great game. But the 80s games aren't, and a lot of them are fantastic. I mean, Crystallis alone justifies the collection. It's probably the crown jewel of the collection. That's what everyone gravitates for it.

But there's great things. I mean, Venture is a fascinating arcade game, and I haven't been able to play that anywhere for ages. You mean Vanguard? Did I say Venture? Vanguard. Why don't you sing Venture? Venture is the thing we were running at the Dodge. Vanguard is the Space Shooter in the tunnels.

That was TwinStick. Well, no, no, no. It was buttons, right. Joystaking four buttons. That's right. There's one over at Highscores Arcade that they have in the back sometimes. Oh, I never saw that one. Yep, that's one there sometimes.

Oh, yeah, that's one there sometimes. It was a meme. It was a meme one. Oh, okay. But it feels really great in that form. All right, so that's what you've been up to there. And as for me, so I've let fans a kind of funny gamescast here already know that I'm working on the Dragon Quest 11 review right now for IGN

and can't talk any more about the game yet because it's not the appropriate. time for me to be discussing the details. But that's eaten up most of my gaming time. However, I have had fun with a little mobile game because I can't play Dragon Quest when I'm traveling. Every now and then I'll just grab a premium mobile game, I pay one price and keep playing a game. And I stumbled upon a little thing that Touch Arcade reviewed

called Task Attack. You all play this? I have not played that one. It's a 99-cent Android game. It is cute and it is just kind of the quintessential 99-cent game. It's what I want at the dollar price point. It starts as a clever little Gallagher-esque space shooter.

And it's fine. You're auto-firing. It's pretty well put together. And it's paced right. It feels right for using touch controls. But then you start, while you're playing it, you start getting alert messages from the outside world for your task list. You get a note from like, like, you're supposed to go pick up your kids at school.

And then you get a note that, oh, by the way, it's, time to, you know, hey, don't forget to check your news notifications. And the shooter starts morphing so that the context of your real life is working into the game. That's really cool. Yeah, and they do it in a very simple sense. You can play through the whole thing in a relatively short period of time, but then it unlocks higher and higher difficulty levels and more stuff. So it's the first, it feels almost like an old compile shooter where bizarre things are going to, you go to the grocery and now I'm being attacked by carrots. I'm at work.

And it's the first time I've ever fought a giant pie chart as a boss where I'm blowing off different parts of the pie chart. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Or I've got to pick up my kids at school so their diapers are hurling feces at me in space and then suddenly I've got to destroy their carpool. And of course, giant bouncing Donald Trump heads as you deal with the news and capital buildings that are throwing Democrats and Republicans at you. It's a dollar well spent, I say.

Hearing about this makes me sad. Yeah? It makes me sad because there's one of, there's so many. much stuff coming out these days that that game that sounds beautiful, like is going to be forgotten. Not just quickly right now, but

also because I don't trust that we'll be able to play all these mobile games in like five or ten years and rediscover these weird hidden jokes. Right, we can't play Chartinito. I can, but you can't. You can't.

And it's just, I don't know. As OS changes happen and the platforms change these games vanish. Right, and I just, I don't know, this whole thing's been on my mind a lot because I've been interviewed like four different times now about the ROM site situation going on right now. And it's like, it's just, I don't know, it's really unfortunate to me that a lot of these smaller mobile, you know, and digital only games are probably going to actually disappear from the world forever. And it's going to be really difficult to find those sort of hidden gems in the rubble like we're able to do now with, you know, the Famicom or whatever. Yeah, we can find physical versions of those things. Right, but now it's digital.

We weren't ready for that. Yeah, they're walled off. You know what? We'll save this for the second half here because I think we just reached the end of this part of the discussion. I just needed to express my sorrow. No, I think that's a sorrow. It makes that kind of a perfect segue. But before we do that, I do think it's important we take a word from our sponsor.

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Now back to you, Jared. And we're back to talk about the video game history foundation. And when I think of that, I immediately think of a large marble museum, maybe something like the Field Museum in Chicago.

You've got Doric columns and big glass doors. You've got a giant dinosaur in the lobby. There's a Mario Gallery off to one side. So y'all are big giant museum. Right?

Absolutely. No. No, the Video Game History Foundation is sort of intentionally not a museum. So museums, the primary goal of a museum is to educate the public, right? The Video Game History Foundation, you know, we believe in that, of course. But the whole we're trying to fill right now is that we don't feel that the historians, the potential museum curators of the future. just even people who make

you know cool history videos on YouTube or edit Wikipedia or whatever we don't feel that researchers have the tools they need to properly tell the story of video games because well several reasons I mean we're such a secret of industry that like all the development material

and stories and things like that just gone forever you know we don't keep our source code because I don't know there's no standards for keeping source code so like we like so many games are no re-released again because no one held onto that source material.

You know, it'd be like if, well, it's the analogy that we often use. It's the same damn thing. It's like the early days of cinema in the United States where in the silent film days, you would make a movie. You'd sell it to theaters. They'd screen it. You'd move on to the next one. You'd destroy the film because there's not even a television.

Television doesn't exist yet, let alone like home video. Yeah. So there's no reason to ever think we're going to resell these movies. So why are we paying money to store them, to destroy them? So most of them are gone forever. I mean, I'm going to fudge the number, but a film foundation statistic is something like 90% of American film before 1930 just does not exist in the world anymore.

It's gone forever. What percentage would you say of video games developed between 1970 and 1990, do you think, fall into that same kind of category? Well, if we're counting absolutely everything, then we're counting, you know, like hobbyist projects, things like that. But like are we talking like commercial releases? Let's say commercial releases. I think there's still a lot of unexplored microcomputer territory, right? Especially if we're talking about, you know, the early days of microcomputers where it's like, you know, Richard Gariat making discs at his house and going with Ziploc.

Like I think we're a lot, we lost a lot of that stuff. Yeah. I don't think if we're calling it a percentage, it's, it's, it's. big. And so I'm actually not terribly worried about commercial games from that time period. What are you worried about? I'm much more worried about current games, actually. I mean, I'm worried about like anything that was on a cell phone, right? Like, I think we already lost most of the Java phone days. Yeah. I think those are gone. Those next are just just, just somebody deleted the last file. There's no way to run them even if you have them. And it was like, you know,

it was like the silent film days. Again, it's like no one. It's like, well, we should archive this because we're going to republish this crappy cell phone game someday. So when you look at the old decks at some of these really innovative things that were tried and done there, those dev kits are just gone forever and the ROMs with them, you think? Dev kits are gone. And there's also, in those days, no way to get those games off of a phone, even if you wanted to back it up yourself. Yeah. I mean, there must have been because there was a piracy scene, but I'm just not that familiar with it. Yeah, but it's not like a film where you can just like.

Yeah, here's the actual film. So for the two of you here, obviously I care or I wouldn't have you here. But why should we care? Why should I care about crappy old cell phone games and and and Making sure because it's part of the story. I mean it's part of the story of how we got here. It's part of the story of what the old days led to even you know It's like this chunk of the story of video games that is this culture that we all partake in every day I mean all of us in this room anyway nothing title world but like I think we all Understand inherently the video games matter right they they affect lives there they they they they I mean

I mean, you know, all three of us at this table, it's like, this is our lives. Our lives revolve around games. Yeah. And it's not, you know, I think it goes well beyond just sort of like a nerdy fandom or whatever. It's like, no, the video games are how I sort of, I don't know, like it's my cause. It's what I, it's how I interact within this world. You know, it's like how I choose to live, you know, my life is around these things. It's my favorite artistic medium.

Yeah, absolutely. And if we're missing chunks of that, then it gets scary. And it's like, that's an easy one to point to, right? Where it's like we're missing the cell phone games of this era. That's a big part of our story. Very few of those are actually worth playing, to be honest with you. But like, that's an era that's lost already. Yeah.

And it was only a few years ago. Yeah. It was only a few years ago. and like how many Android games are gone, how many iPhone games are gone, you know? And I don't just mean gone from the store because that's a whole other conversation, but like gone from being accessible

if someone were writing a book right now. Yeah, I don't know how to play pack and jump if I want to. I have no idea. How do you do that? And I want to play pack and jump. Well, even if we wanted to put pack and jump on something more modern

that you could play it on, how do we get it there if it doesn't exist or if there's no source code anywhere, anything like that. That's the biggest problem we're really running into is how do you feel, future proof these things so that even if you do save it, like how do you get it to move forward so that people can experience it because the technology changes constantly. Film, it's changed a bit over time, but not like technology for video games.

It changes like overnight. Right. And it's like, you know, games are, I was just thinking about this this morning. It's weird. But like games are such a weird space where it's like the equivalent of where games are in terms of availability is like if movies were never re-released after they were on VHS. Yeah. You know, it's like that that's really what it's like for a game. There had never been DVD.

There had never been Blu-ray. They'd never been streaming. So the only way to watch Uncle Buck or whatever is to like maintain a VHS player that no one's produced in years and like hope that your tape doesn't get eaten. That's the only way to watch Uncle Buck legally. I like, I love that of all the films you could have landed on. The John Candy Classic Uncle Buck. Yeah, that came from somewhere. That's to bring more weight to the conversation.

That really does add to the gravity. You know what? That was one big pancake. All right. in that movie. That was one big pancake he made in that movie. It's funny, I was tapping

so I gave a GDC talk about this in 2016 and Uncle Buck was the analogy I made. I was trying to explain just how the, how different it is, the situation between games and film. And so I was looking at the top games of 1990. I was looking at the top films of 1990.

And I was just kind of comparing them. I was like, what's the closest comparison? The closest one I came up with was Duck Tales and Uncle Buck. And so at the time it was like, okay, duck tales, out of Princess 89, that's it. We've since solved that problem. Yes. And it's like Uncle Buck.

You look at Uncle Buck. You can stream it on Amazon. You can stream it on Netflix. You can stream it on like all these different knockoff streaming things. Yeah. You can buy it on DVD. You could buy it on VHS. You can buy it on Laserdisc.

You can buy it like eight different Blu-Rays with combo packs with different movies. is like Uncle Buck is there for you. You can rent it digitally. You can buy it forever digitally. Your Uncle Buck needs are fulfilled. Uncle Buck's here to stay. Ringtones. Or upon Disney's Duck Tales,

your only option was to hope you could find a ROM somewhere or dig up in ancient deteriorating cartridge. Well, your only legal option was to go on eBay and spend like a million dollars to get all this ancient antique hardware. And yet. Get up to your TV somehow. Thanks to the efforts of Frank Sefaldi, and there was no way we're getting through this show

without talking about this. So sometimes impossible things. has happened in the world. Every now and then. One of the most impossible occurrences in video games in the last 10 years in my mind was facilitated by folks at this table. And I really do want to know about this. How in the world did you get the eye of Soron that is Disney?

Oh, I see. To focus in and be like, you know what we should pay some attention to and sign off on? Re-issuing Disney-Ly-Ly-Ly-Ly-Suching Disney, licensed NES games. It never happened on virtual console. It never happened on any other collection. But somehow, you, Capcom, and Disney came together and made this happen.

How in the world did that occur? I thought you had an answer to it. Oh, you can jump with it, but I think it had a lot to do with what came before it. Yeah. So Mega Man Legacy Collection came before that. It was a very, very successful product for Capcom. Just recently found out that something I directed,

sold a million copies, which I don't, I haven't processed that. I don't know what that means. Please tell me you're getting a percentage. What's that? Please tell me you're getting a percentage. A percentage? Oh, no.

No, no, we're not. The company doesn't. No. That was all pure work for it. And so, you know, there was a success of that. So, like, Capcom, of course, wanted to do a follow-up with us. Disney Afternoon Collection, by that name, even, was something we had pitched to them. like before Mega Man maybe

it was actually right before Mega Man because we knew people at Disney and we just wanted to bring these these games back and like yeah I still have my old pitch for a Disney Afternoon collection which is I think exactly the same package that we shipped all those years later I'm pretty sure there's footage in me

somewhere on some podcast just going you will never ever ever ever ever see duck tails again ha ha ha ha but yeah we you know it was it was just right moment right time sort of thing Like Capcom and Disney had been talking about doing something, and they're like, hey, we have these guys who do this sort of thing for us. Wow, that's really cool.

I don't know how much we inspired it or how much it was just. It was just the right time, like you said. And we jumped quickly, too. It wasn't one of those things where we didn't think about it very long. We said, yeah, we'll do it. Yeah. And let's make it happen. So that was a fun collection.

Yeah, you all got called that recently for influencing the decision to go to Greenlight Megaman 11, too, right? Yes, we did. Apparently, Legacy Collection selling a million coffee. is what Greenlit Mega Man 11. So if it's good, you're welcome. If it's bad, it's not my fault. Have you played any of it yet? No.

It's the stuff they're showing is good. Is it? Yeah, the stuff that's just showing that I've played is good. I was like, wow, this is really good. But that's a good example of like, we know we've done our job well enough when the Greenlight sequel, an official sequel after we put a collection out there. We did this long time ago as Back on Digital Clips for the Super Street Fighter Turbo HD remix, if I get that right? We put that out there and that led directly to Street Fighter 4 again Greenlight.

So it's like if we do the right job, we get people excited, and what we do excites people enough to want to spend money on that franchise, that's awesome. Much like this situation, it wasn't the Street Fighter 4 that you guys pitch. Yeah, yeah, which we ended up pitching Street Fighter 4 in a different direction. Oh, really? What can you tell us about this? I'd love to know. Well, after we did Super Street Fighter Turbo HD Remix,

I think you got it that time. Yeah, I got it the time. We actually, we were in a good position, and Capcom asked us for a pitch, And so we actually put together a really comprehensive pitch to make the next street fighter. And visually, surprisingly, visually, it's very similar what they ended up doing. Okay. Like the painterly style was.

Yeah, the painterly style was already established in the pitch that we had put together and everything like that. But they ultimately ended up doing it internal because at that point, it makes sense that's coming from from Japan or something like that. And like in hindsight, when I think about it, I'm like, that was so risky if we did do it. It would have been a huge risk. But we really wanted to. What would your street fighter have done differently? If I remember correctly, we had some. weird. This is where I think the risk was.

We're hell-bent on having some sort of like rewind time, kind of limited capacity thing in a fighting game. And we had mocked up some stuff, and it was really fun, but I don't know how well that would have worked with classic. It's really, Street Fighter fans... It's screwing with the formula too much. You don't fuck with the formula too much. If you stray

a little bit, you're gonna be... I don't know. I mean, I love the idea of a braid-esque fighting game. That kind of sounds amazing. Yeah, which I think you do that is not Street Fighter. You're not Street Fighter numbered sequel. Okay, that's it. Because that would be too much of a departure. Wasn't there, was it your pitch that had a sort of like you're playing moments in the story of Street Fighter?

Like you're going back in history. You are. So we went back to a lot of major moments in like reuse history and all stuff. And like you're able to have that kind of part of the time continuum in this whole thing and elaborate on those stories. Kind of funny is Nick Scarpino stepped into the room. Hi. You're off camera. Oh, no, Nick Scarpina.

Are you loitering and lingering to take a talk on the shock mic here? No, not at all. I'm just taking a break and listening to the discussion. bit. I was rendering out some graphics back there and then I remember that I took this amazing picture of myself and I'm not sure when this episode of Gamescast is going live

but I'm going to come on here and pimp it. All right, you're going to show this picture off. This picture, I believe similar autograph pictures will be available to patrons at certain tiers. Or it's the fan mill tier or above or actually no, just the fan mills tier on either of our patrons, that's patreon.com.com slash kind of funny

or Patreon.com slash kind of funny games. You get a signed picture of the champ. I don't know him personally, but he seems like a rad guy. Yeah. You think you can provide one of those for our guests today? I cannot, but eventually I can. This is a prototype of the pictures.

Well, we need to archive that. It's worth noting that the signed, the signature on the new pictures will be either in silver or gold. Not black. We've decided black. Does not adequately add to the glamour of the picture? Got it. Did you guys need refills on LaCroes, money chance? I would love one.

Yes. Yeah, I'll take one too, actually. That sounds great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Nick. Gentlemen, I headed back in. So you talked some about the need and you talked about the challenges.

So how are you meeting them? How are you saving pieces of video game history? Yeah, I mean, we only talked about games as in like playable games, right? And that's a part of what we do. But what we tend to focus more on are, I said moron. We focus a lot more on raw material. old than we do playable games. Because, like, there's only so much time in a day.

There's only so many people in the foundation. And it's like, we kind of have to figure out where that highest impact is to actually make a difference and sort of bandage the bleeding in terms of video game history disappearing. So you're triaging. We're triaging, yes, thank you. Thank you for finding that word

that was, like, circling in my brain, but not escaping my mouth. Yeah, we're triaging video game history. And where I think we have the most impact doing that is not so much the games themselves because the majority of games were sold commercially to people and there are multiple copies around in the world. They're not already on pirate websites, right? So what we're more worried about, what we're more focused on are the parts of that game.

You know, the design material, the concept art. Thank you very much, by the way. Okay, so the stuff that went on in studio then. Sure, a lot of that, but even things like we have a very large library of printed material related to video games because it's not really a thing. Like if you're studying, like if you want to know what were reviews like for Earthbound when it came out. You know, it's like you can find a couple of those reviews if you go on like the websites of scan magazines, but they haven't scanned all of them. you know and so if you're researching that thing you can't I mean you know I challenge you to go to worldcat dot org right now and find electronic gaming monthly in a library you're not going to

you will at the strong museum of play which is in Rochester New York when they're you partner with I don't know about partner but I help them and donate things but you know you can't go research video game history at a place other than Rochester and so you know that's a big focus of ours is a library and we have a good majority of video game magazines, especially from the 90s. Like, we're super well covered in the 90s. Yeah. And again, it's one of those like high impact things where it's like, well, yeah,

magazines kept going after 2000, but also like IGN name spot existed. You know what I mean? So like the news is covered and we have some sense of what did people think about this game in its time? You know what I mean? Just researching the internet. But anything before that is just kind of this black hole of information. So we're collecting a lot of that stuff. We're collecting a lot of, you know, just like going to developers and being like,

do you have any of your old notepads? You know, like something that, something of the Strong has that I love is they have the, the notepad that Roberta Williams used when she was just brain dumping, I think, Kingsquest Six. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it's just like eight pages of Roberta's handwritten. and just like, yeah, and like some of these ideas don't even get into the games until like two sequels later,

but she's just like brain dumping and it's just like such a rare thing to see someone's creative process on paper like that. And we just don't have that for games. Like you can't, you know, for a lot of authors of books, for a lot of filmmakers, there are like archives that you can go and look and sort of get the details into what, what, what, how they made the thing, right? were thinking, how are you going to research what Miyamoto was thinking when he made Donkey Kong? And you mentioned secrecy earlier. Sure. And an industry where video games were born in the era of corporate patent, copyright protection and control.

Yeah. And so when Mr. Miyamoto stands up to speak, he's speaking for Nintendo. Yes. And therefore, we don't get certain portions of. his mind or experience and people that leave companies sign NDAs or they never leave the companies or when they leave they feel a sense of loyalty to the creative process and a lot of them never talk. How do you get those parts of the story? So in this scenario they're not responding well to questions. Yeah. Then we probably don't. I mean like you can't force

the stuff out of people. All you can really do is make them feel comfortable with the idea that, you know, no, we're not like collectors, you know, who are just putting stuff in a closet. Like the idea, the idea here is that we are a proper 501c3. I did all the paperwork. Like, we're a nonprofit corporation recognized by the federal government. We're an educational company. And, you know, if that material exists, it should be somewhere for educational purposes unless you just, you know, I wouldn't put my teenage writing anywhere. But, you know, like, within, reason.

Yeah. And Mike, you're part of the foundation and work in this effort too. What's your contribution, large of this effort? Well, I'm on the board, and I come in and I help wherever I can. And especially in this sort of situation where we're talking about, what do you do with, say, like, a game source code and how do you archive that? Yeah. Because we have this weird situation where video games were part of a, that came out of the technology industry, which was very secretive. Technology in general.

Like, everybody's worried, like you said, about patents or having any sort of technology stolen as somebody laughed. all this stuff. So it was ingrained in people's minds before the creative aspect came into it, and the entertainment aspect came into it, that you just have to be very secure about all that stuff. And so once video games started to take off, I think we had the worst of both kind of there. Like you have the creative mindset and you have all the stuff and everything like that, which is really cool or anything like that, but then you've got the evil kind of like corporate thing that butts heads with that and the concept that whatever you're working on now always owned by the corporation. And whatever you do, if you leave, you have no rights to any of this stuff.

And then even it went so far suppressing designers' names from games because they were worried that they would get poached by their company. So it was like a dictatorship you worked for. And so that went on until about the 90s, just as the 90s came around. And so when people were working for these companies as they left, what we find, if we find any of this stuff, is that the people who went up against that tyranny of the corporation, they would steal the information anyway.

They're more punk about it. and they would walk away with that because they didn't want to lose their work. A lot of these people were working day and night on stuff. And the thought that all that work would be owned by somebody else didn't sit well with some of these designers. And that's not new to the video game. It's not new. No, I'm trying to think about it. It's just how archives happen as people steal from work.

Right, that's how the archive. I forget the name of the... Yeah, Jason Scott says, steal from work. I was a GDC and he just said, steal from work. He's saying to a room full of developers. Oh, I'm going to get that on a T-shirt and wear it to GDC. Exactly. Because like, right now...

That's a good idea. I'm going to do that. He sat in a room of several hundred developers. Still from work. White text on black, big screen, steal from work. That'd be a great shirt from the foundation. Yeah, it's awesome. But now, I mean, now we have to kind of go out there

and try to get everybody in the mindset that you should be able to share this stuff. People should be able to archive this stuff in a certain way that's amenable to everybody. And, you know, and try to get that process off the ground. And so I'm really keenly interested in figuring out what is that process that we can take to an electronic arts. Right. Activision that's unified, that makes sure this stuff's preserved in a way. Because as soon as a game's done, people tend to want to just, like, Like go home, leave the company, go somewhere else or do whatever.

It kind of rotates like that. But in the film industry, when a game is being developed or movies being developed, there's a lot more openness about it. People, like directors are talking about what they're trying to do with the movie. Well, studios announce a movie before they've begun production. Right. And it's the opposite. It's an ounce of game when it's nearly done.

Yeah. So there's a lot of games. So how many games could we theoretically conceive of now that we're near complete of it? We're never announcing. Well, how many do you and I just happen to know about? Exactly. Exactly. the industry that it's like, man, there's so many games that were just on the cusp of coming out that could have been incredible games.

Well, let's talk about that. What were some of the, I mean, you guys are in a lot of ways kind of kind of digital detectives. You are your sleuths. What are some of this discoveries you can talk about that you've made? Things are just like, holy crap, I found that. Holy crap, that existed. Tell some of those stories. Cool, Greg. Make a note of this one, please. So unreleased games has always been Not always since 2003 Which is practically always

Been a big focus in my life is recovering these games that never shipped That got far enough along to at least be You know representative of something And I started a website back then called Lost Levels It was the first website about unreleased games Is that before after the FUFUA thing? F-E-F-E-E-A? F-E-A, pardon me.

Wow, you're really going back, man. Sorry, but that was... So the F-E-F-E-A was... It was basically like our little piracy group that was tracking down ROMs and dumping them. And that stood for... That stood for fuck them, fuck them all. Okay.

And that was because we were... I was very young. A lot of us were. And it was anger directed at the... at the boogeyman collector. who was hoarding one-of-a-kind video games for his like goblin treasure tile and not sharing them and holding them for ransom.

And so it was, it was, fuck-em-fuck-em-all was a reaction to that because the way we started was, no, we're going to outbid them for this stuff because there's 10 of us and one of them. And that's actually how we started. We started by outbidding collectors for prototypes and being like, no, they're ours, they're on the internet.

And you give them away? Yeah. Okay. And then you went to lost levels and the focus became. Still angry because I had anger issues in retrospect, probably. Oh, I feel like I just had a breakthrough here. And yeah, it was sort of the same deal, but it was less anger and it was more like, well, how do we actually accomplish this?

How do we ensure that one-of-a-kind video games, things that didn't ship that might only exist because the programmer kept one or like it was sent out for review to a magazine but then canceled before it was shipped you know like and like the journalist kept it or whatever how do we get as many of these as we can archived put on the internet so people can reference them and play them and that's where loss levels came from

but it was also the other place lost levels came from was every time we do this is just a ROM that goes in a ROM set and no context or anything right so it's like people load up this game be like oh like this stupid a game. I can't believe someone made this. It's like, no, it wasn't done. You know what I mean? Like, it's losing that context. You don't understand why they made.

So, Lost Levels was also my crash course into journalism. Like, I had no desire to be a journalist or anything, but it's like, no, these stories have to live. I care about this for some reason. Or just how you ended up at one up and plays just like that. Yeah, like the way later on, yeah, but like my video game journalism career started on my own website and I started writing for magazines. My first magazine gig was with Nintendo official magazine UK.

I didn't know that. I was on the, as most people start, I was on the Game Boy beat. There we go. Well, that was back when mobile games had a kind of a stigma about them, or portable games, maybe the same stigma mobile games have now on phones, that those weren't real games. Even publishers wouldn't pay attention. They knew they had to have one. Exactly.

Because so many of them were great. Yeah, there's some wonderful mobile. But are portable games back then. So what did you discover? What did you find? I think, I mean, we knew it existed. but the one that was really proud of when we made it happen in like 2004, 2005 or something, was Penn & Teller Smoke and Mirrors for the Sega CD,

which was the only Penn and Teller video game, but it was a game by Accolade that was co-designed by Penn and Teller. I mean, they weren't really in the studio like writing design docs or anything, but they were sort of overseeing it creatively. Yeah, they were involved. Yeah, they were very involved. Yeah. And it's just like usually when you involve someone from Hollywood or whatever in games

Like it usually comes out really poorly But at least my whole career But they at least have interesting ideas that you and I are never going to have Yeah right because we're video game people they're not And this is a collection of strange games that or or magic tricks even on your television that like no game designer would have come up with. Including, of course, the immortal desert bus. Desert Bus, of course,

is the one that everyone knows and loves. And it's, for those who don't know Desert Bus, it is a simulator where you drive a school bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. It's an eight-hour trip on a straight road. It's literally eight hours in real-time that you drive straight on a road.

There is a score counter, I believe, six zeros on the top of the screen. When you get to Vegas, the last one flips up and you have one point, which is just brilliant. And then they ask if you want to make the return trip. And of course, people took that and

Desert Bus for Hope is now an annual charity. Yeah, just endure this eight-hour driving. And I think there's no other traffic and the bus veers. You can't just lay the controller down. You can't just stick the controller one direction or like that. You have to pay attention.

And there's the bug that splatters on the windshield halfway through. I think that's the only other thing. I think I actually are probably stealing that from you. because I don't think I've ever, I don't think I've ever finished an eight hour run. Oh, I haven't either. But eventually a bug splatters on the windshield just out of nowhere, which I think is a brilliant touch. It's like hours in.

They let you know it's working. Yeah. And then there's a day night cycle also. Yeah. I don't know what the record is. But back then they were actually holding a contest for like the high score for Desert Bus. And you found that. You got that into the world.

It's, okay, I'm not going to claim credit for finding it. But by starting loss levels, by being proficient, about it by going out there and doing it and showing how things should be done, uh, that inspired its owner to donate it to us and say, please get this out into the world. So suddenly it became part of this story. Yeah.

Um, I mean, there's that one. There's, I mean, what other unreleased games? Sunman is one that I bring up a lot because it's, uh,

one of Kenji Eno's first games. He's no longer with us. And of course, that guy was a frigging genius. That's a guy from Warp, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, God, what else? There's been so many biofers. Force Ape? Aene Force Ape is more of my favorites. Tell us about BioForce Ate. Yeah, please.

Yeah. It's by Seta, right? Yeah. Seta, S-E-T-A. Yeah, not to be confused with Sega. And you are a bionic ape as far as I can tell. He's not bionic. Okay.

The story is on the title screen. This is why. Stories on the title screen, you're a little baby monkey in a diaper. Yep. Mad scientist drives up in a man, kidnaps your human family, and then kicks you and gets in the van and drives away and then Baby Monkey in a diaper

picks up a vial that was dropped on the ground or something drinks it grows into an eight-foot-tall wrestle or gorilla still wearing a diaper. Yeah. There we go. And the game is, for NES, what blew me away when I first played it was that it's so fast. It just moves so quick.

It looks like it's a Sega Genesis game, but it's an NES game on steroids. And that was kind of what the best, and the animation is incredible. It's one of those things where it's like It doesn't make sense that it exists. Because every aspect of it just is ludicrous and weird. Well, the enemies are so bizarre.

Like most of them are bioforce other things, right? So, like, one of them is like a half kangaroo, half person where, oh, what is it? It's like the heads coming out of the pouch and the arms or the legs or something. One of them is like a half crocodile, half person where like the crocodile's mouth, looking at myself on camera like those are the legs walking around like that. You have shark puppets and crocodiles

what is that? You get a flashlight and lower the legs. And so it's like this head sticking out of an human head like sticking out of an alligator's ass and like the mouth walking around. And this is why preserving video games.

Absolutely. It's important. It's also just fun. Yeah. But it's like yeah I mean that's a game that people think you're making up. Right.

And if you've heard about it you'd say there's no way that was even. No, it was real. Your uncle didn't work at SETA and there's no such game as a bioporcing. But you're going back in time for later. And to this day, as studios close as projects don't work out, I assume you guys are like I was taking modern games and trying to get hold of those as well.

Well, we'll get calls. We'll get calls. If you don't show up by the end of today, this is all going into the dumpster. And stuff like that. And we have to scramble. We'll either call people who might be closer to it or whatever. We try to do our best to just go do the dumpster dive to get everything that. Paperwork, things like that.

Well, often they won't let us take that stuff, but I mean, I got a storage full of IDOS stuff. Yeah, a lot of IDOS stuff. But it's nothing like super interesting. It's just, I mean, that's, you never know. That's why you have to answer the call. You never know, right. But like, well, I mean, and here's the situation. So like, IDOS was sold Square Ednax years ago, right?

Idos, US used to operate here as a publisher. When the acquisition happened, all publishing operations moved to Europe. But Crystal Dynamics was still in the building that they had. had rented. Okay. And ironically, there was a tomb under Crystal Dynamics of IDOS stuff because that's where IDOS was operating. And they were just basically like playing out their lease.

You know, they were just still in the space until the lease ran out. Lease ran out. We got a call because we know someone over there. They're like, hey, we got a bunch of stuff. We're about to throw away. If you can come in and get it by 5 p.m. You can take it. Wow.

So off you go. What a little rescue? Whatever game we're working on is just on hold today. So where does all this stuff end up? So you're talking about, you know, you're not just collecting, you're preserving the history. Are you sending it to museums? Are you scanning it? Are you digitizing it?

It's a little bit of everything. Like right now, the foundation is so early and sort of fluid in its approach right now that we don't have like a thing we do. We just are just trying to do as much as we can until we find our footing and figure out how we best fit in the world. But what we're really in the phase of right now is the sort of identifying volatile things that might disappear and acquiring them and just putting them somewhere and figuring it out later. It's basically where we are right now. So you're at acquisition and then you're going to work on distribution. Right. And I mean, that's said.

Yeah, sometimes we scan things. Sometimes we write articles about artifacts that we have. We do a lot of things. We have a writers fund where we give grants to people to what we call interpret video game history. So it's like if you want to do some deep dive research into something that a video game site is never going to pay you for, right? But we can help with that. Like we can sort of kickstart that article for you with a little bit of money. Can you give me an example of something you're working on with that right now?

Yeah. So I have a graphics designer named Kate who's doing this wonderful series where she is just chronologically going through the history of video game advertising. Oh, wow. And so she's just at the very beginning. so we just got past the Magnobox Odyssey and that was a really interesting thing to look back on because there's videos that we have of like you've seen this on What's My Line?

The game show What's My Line? So the rules of What's My Line is, this is What's My Line? That's the name of the show, right? I think. Where they bring someone on who has a weird job and the panelists have to ask yes or no questions until they figure out what his job is.

Is or her job is? and this guy was a representative of MagnaVox he was a salesman for the Odyssey Oh wow And no one had ever seen a video game before Oh wow So they figure out what it is So they wheel in this television

And people, the contestants are only seeing The back of a television And they're seeing two people on stage Talking to each other with a controller like under the table And they've never seen a game controller And they're not seeing the game controller either They're not seeing anything So it's like this amazing artifact where you're watching in real time

people wrap their heads around the concept of a video game. Where they're like, are you manipulating the television? Yes. Wow. Like are you, is it a, are you competing? Yes. It's like someone. Freaking amazing.

And it's like they turn the game around and show them how it works. And they're just like they don't understand how they're making things on the television. Well, television served one purpose. They were there to show you TV shows. Right. Yeah, and they couldn't be used for anything else. So we dug that out and we dug out, like, I ordered back issues of Raiders Digest on eBay to, like, scan the... Couldn't just ask my mom.

Yeah, that's true. To scan, like, the advertising for, like, the Frank Sinatra special that introduced the Magnavox Odyssey. And, like, we get into, like, it's... You did not know that. Yeah, no one knows about this stuff. So we did that, and then we... She did her second part where she's going into, like, the first arcade advertising was computers. space and you know the flyer

yeah right the lady in the dress she's basically explaining where that came from like that's the car industry back then it's like if you're advertising this giant cabinet it's been out of fiberglass right like where are you looking for inspiration you're looking at ladies exactly and then the same thing

and she's showing even like the type face and how that was used and stuff like that is did you see the Shane Black flick the nice guys yes all got that the gunfight at the car show it's a 70s tastic like car show and they're having a shootout and the car is on this stereotypical rotating thing and he takes cover

behind the car that's getting shot in the car just rotating it's one of my favorite shots in a movie I love it so much oh goodness guys there's a really good rotating set piece bit in Arkham night also oh that we come a little circle

now what I do want to hit you up with here less though okay so you guys you're a small foundation that's had a big impact because I think you're selling yourself short on how much you've already preserved. I've never seen you more gleeful than I'm literally watching with a shoulder bag full of discs grinning and like running down a hallway. What was that? That was a GDC.

Yeah, you're just like, I just got history in a bag. Like, that's how I was. You were so happy. But you do do a lot and you've preserved a lot and just getting started. The foundation's a little over a year old now. Yeah, about a year and a half, yeah. I mean, as an idea, it's much older than that, but as reality, it's a year enough. Yeah.

So how can the people watching and the people listening to this help save game history? Oh, sure. What can they do? What are all the different ways they can help out? I mean, the easy ways to donate money. I mean, that's, you know, we're organized and we have a pretty good grasp on what the needs are, and we're actually very tight with our budgets, so we're not throwing your money away. And that is, if you go to our website, gamehistory.org, there's a big donate,

button. You can go straight to game history.org forward slash donate if that's easier. What we'd like to encourage people to do if they really want to help is to become a part of our Patreon community. Because, uh... Like me. Yeah, you're, you're never in our Discord, though. What's that?

You're never in the Discord. I, I, I, I, I'm discordant. But yeah, I am in the... We have a Discord. We have a little, like, backer-only blog that, you know, I'll occasionally push exclusive things to. but the thing is like, yeah, we're the quote unquote experts, but we can't know everything, we can't be everywhere.

And the way that I really, like, I really like people getting involved and talking in the Discord and like sort of solving mysteries together and sort of helping me, helping all of us sort of steer this foundation towards what it needs to be. You want people to be extensions of us. Yeah, like I don't want to just work in this void and like, you know, take your money.

Like, do you just trust me to do what I need to do with it? It's like, like, I want, I want that to be a public conversation. Yeah. But also, you know, not, like, it's, when I say public, I mean, toward the people really want to get involved because I can't talk to the entire world all the time. You know what I mean? So, like, I really like this discord through Patreon model. If you guys want to get involved and talk about it with us.

In terms of, like, volunteer work, we're figuring that out. Like, there's a lot of stuff to do. our next big step actually and what we're going to start fundraising toward is we're going to open a research library here in the video in the video game area here in the in the San Francisco Bay area kind of the same honestly that's kind of the video game area because I really you know I have all this stuff and it's in my apartment and storage and stuff we don't really have an office yet and I want people to come use this stuff right so we're hoping to in the next maybe six months or so to open a research library. Neat. I think the first video game research library ever. Are you going to have a giant pair of scissors with a ribbon to cut on the day you open it?

No, I'm probably going to be very stressed out. I'm hoping for a novelty pair of scissors. I guess you get a ladder that rolls, though, in your library. Oh, man. Oh, you should do that. You got to help me build the shelving if we do that. But, like, to me, that's the first step toward getting the community, like, directly involved in a person where we don't just have a library of stuff. It's like here's our digitization lab. Right. It's like we can start

bringing volunteers in with book scanners set up already to just kind of do the labor and help, you know, OCR, all these documents and things so people can search of. Right. And there's so much expertise around that in the area with, again, the internet archive is based here. They know a lot about that. And it's and you guys have been, you've been doing that for a while, just a little bit. So, uh, all right. Thanks, friends. And also, if anybody has a copy of, uh, at the Hellraiser prototype, cartridge in their basement. Feel free to send that. That's probably gone for over that is.

You do? I'm working on it. I thought that was gone. Somebody saved it? It's at least the cartridge. We don't know what's on the ROMs. I can't believe. You're talking about the cartridge that has the Z80 built it?

Oh my gosh. The cartridge exists. We don't know what's on it. Holy crap. Well, I'm happy. Jared nerds out today on a games cast. Friends, it's not quite. time for the show to end because mobile game or bullshit returns.

That's right. Our guests are going to play here today with us. Today's topic, mobile game. Sorry, I'm just looking at this list. Is this a list of ranking the Marvel movies? Oh, all right? Oh, yes. This is a show that happens here.

There's the MCU in review and now the XCU in review. It's a little show produced here in the studio. Marvel Cinematic Universe in Review. Every week they argue and rank the movies. Mm. Every week they re-rank the movie. Yeah, every week. They just keep adding one to the list and just keep building up.

I'm just very happy to see Iron Man 3 in a respectable position. Yeah, I like Iron Man 3. Me too. Anyway, I'm sorry. No problem at all. So, unfortunately, with Kevin out of town, it's all pure chaos. We don't know how to play the mobile game or bullshit theme song without him here. So we're not getting that, but we're going to jump right into the game.

Today, mobile game or Star Trek episode to explain. It could either be the title of a mobile game or it could be the title of any series, Star Trek episode, the original series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, whatever. Okay. All right. Any of these, okay? Animated?

Animated? I didn't pick any from the animated, but it could be. Okay. But it actually couldn't be because you didn't pick any. All right, it couldn't be. So we normally do five, but I was worried some of these might be a little too easy, so I went with seven, so we'd have that tiebreaker. All right.

And Mike, you're going to go first. Normally, Greg, keep score on a sheet here. I'm going to keep score over on this end. Mike, your guess Drolf Drolf Is Drolf A mobile game

Or a Star Trek episode And by the way These all have descriptions Some of the descriptions are real Some are fake All right Here's this is a piece From the mobile game description

Get the ball in the hole Drulf Is that mobile game Or bullshit Bullshit Mike says bullshit Meaning that it's a Star Trek That it's a Star Trek episode

Okay. Frank? That's a mobile game. That's a mobile game. All right. So Frank says mobile game. That's the exact kind of title that someone who is purely an engineer would think would sell a video game. There is a game called droll.

Just add an F. But I don't know. All right. So I'm keeping score today as well as hosting, which is going to slow things down. Number two, Darmok. One Touch bullet hell. Darmok and the maybe. fake

game description is one touch, bullet hell. Are all of these fake descriptions or all these descriptions for mobile games? Right?

Not Star Trek episode. There are no Star Trek episode descriptions. Got it. Okay. And what is the name again? Darmok. Darmok.

I'm going to Star Trek. Star Trek. Star Trek. Yep. All right. Sounds like a Star Trek word. All right. It does.

You just add Ack on the end of any. Yeah. A little Ock there at the end. Borok. 100 rogues. A dungeon-calling Fantasy Adventure. Oh, that just

You're trying to trick us, I think. That's a good one. That's, because that's too obvious. Would I do that? Would I do that? It's what you want me to think is a mobile game, but in fact is not a mobile game. That does go on here a lot.

But I can't tell you that's what's happening right now. 100 rogues. It should be a mobile game. It should be a mobile game, but like... What's the call? God damn it. This is hard. Yeah, this shows, this shows mean.

Mobile game. Mobile game. Frank? I agree. I think you're trying to do the thing where you are like, no, that's too easy. Too obvious.

But I think you're turning that on its head and it's, yeah, it's a mobile game. Number four, war and order. Ork knights, elf sages, dragon riders, and other incredible warriors are waiting to fight for your empire. War and order? War and order.

It's like law and order? Yeah. See, that makes me go mobile game because that kind of like stupid pun is not Star Trek. There's some probably supermodel doing the ads. Yeah.

Come play my liege. Yeah. I think come play my liege was actually a real ad. Yeah. I think that actually did happen. Yeah. Say it one more time. All right.

War and order. Ork knights, elf sages, dragon riders, and other incredible warriors are waiting to fight for your empire. I'm going to go to Star Trek, but only because all of the years. sound like mobile games to me and it's like surely you did some Star Trek. All right.

Mike, what about you? I just don't, I don't understand or any sorts of things. So I'm going with Star Trek. All right. It sounds like that was made up. Okay. Number five. Balance of terror.

Description. Ork knights, elf sages, dragon riders, and other incredible warriors are waiting to fight for your empire. Star Trek. They're going to do Star Trek on that one. That actually sounds like Star Trek to me. Okay. Number six.

A Taste of Armageddon. Gather your friends and win World War III. I'd want to play every one of these as a mobile game. Yeah. They all sound amazing. I'm going to go Star Trek on that one. Because that doesn't sound like a, like, it doesn't scream product to me. It feels like they went back in time at a point.

where Earth was like went down this dystopian path. Yeah. And so it ends up just being a Western set. Yeah. So I'm gonna go with Star Trek. Okay. Actually the Western said that would be Shadow of the Gun. So you know more. Oh, but this is this is a this by the way this topic was suggested by a kind of funny best friend. I don't have the name here right now. Unfortunately I think it had already gotten eaten by my Twitter feed. Whoever you are this is great. This is really good. Last one, second skin. Can you do the surgery?

Ooh. Oh. I want to play that mobile game. Yeah. Second skin. It sounds like something that would be like some sort of alien species sort of thing that they discover in an episode of Star Trek. Possibly. I want Frank to win.

I'm going to say Star Trek. I don't care. I say Star Trek. All right. Frank? I'm also going to say Star Trek because the surgery genre is way over popular. and that title is too clever for someone who's just cashing in on the genre. All right, so this is not a good cash-in game.

All right, let's see what we got here. Number one, Drulf, get the ball in the hole? Mobile game. Damn it. Mobile game, and get the ball in the hole is part of the real description. So you keep it score for yourself here. Okay. So you get you on.

Okay, here we go. Number two, Darmok, one touch, bullet-held, Darmok, one of the very best episodes of Star Trek, the next generation. That's both of us? Yeah, that's both of you. That's right. You both got that one right. Darmac, that is a superb episode. Really, really good.

Stand-out TNG. 100 rogues. Both of you said mobile game, and both of you were correct. Mobile game. There we go. Three for three. War and order. Both of you said Star Trek.

War and order. Hello, my liege, is a mobile game. I didn't surprise me. It is a mobile game. Whereupon balance of terror, what you both said was Star Trek. Absolutely. There we go. Star Trek.

Damn. That's right. Frank of Gruthman, everything ever had? Yeah. Yeah. Then, let's see. A taste of Armageddon. Gather your friends and win World War III.

Taste of Armageddon is a Star Trek the original series episode. All right. About a future where people have learned not to fight real wars, so they fight simulated ones but still kill everybody that dies in the simulated battle through euthanasia. What if the simulated battle was on a mobile device? Oh, that'd be amazing. And finally, second skin, likewise, Star Trek episode. That's six out of seven.

That's pretty good. Yeah, very good. It's great. There we go. So Frank wins by one and you're a new champion. We can't play the theme song. Ladies and gentlemen, that has been the kind of funny games cast. If folks want to know more about the foundation and you guys, where do you look?

Where do you go? Gamehistory.org, please. And we have a real cool blog with a lot of community written content that interprets video game history in really interesting ways. Latest post, I believe, was, yes, it was about the first moral panic in video game history around a game called Death Race. Oh, that's right. You can go to the museum mechanic and you can play. death race right now. You can.

You can. Mike, what about you? You can just follow me at Mike J. Micah on Twitter. And I usually post about stupid stuff and also what we're doing. And once again, everybody, I want to thank our Patreon producers, most of all, Warren Moore, Eric Hites, Tom Bach, y'all make this happen. All of you who watch and support on Patreon, make this happen. Everybody listening, thank you.

Our jobs are a privilege. You make them possible. Greg and Tim will be back next week. Thanks for hanging out with this here, Sinking Ship. And see you next time. Bye. Thank you.