Retronauts - 525: Worlds of Power

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Nadia talks to special guest Gary Butterfield about the Worlds of Power books that were the jewels of '80s book fairs. These short game novelizations have their quirks, but they're still teaching us a lot about education versus marketing. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts, my spirit does not taste like cherry pop, Dracula. I'm your host, Noday Oxford. I also double as the co-host of the Acts of the Blog God podcast. In the 80s, it was kind of hard to convince your parents that NES games were anything but digital trash that rotted your brain the way that cotton floss kind of rots your teeth. The NES, I don't say in my house, it was like the first thing to go on the high shelf when you're on the high shelf of your parents' closet when your grades started to slip. Books, however, books were kind of slower to be banned.

Books were never out of reach in my house. It was even at the point where it was like, mom, can I read this? that's completely out of age Stephen King book. Oh, sure, sweetie, that's fine. Mom, can I watch this R-rated movie? No. So, you know the kind of household, and that was very much my household.

So, what if some enterprising publisher would who write and sell Nintendo-based adventures in book form? Oh, delightfully devilish, Seth Godin. I am referring to the World's Power series of books that narrated Nintendo games via text. They were written specifically to engage young non-readers, especially boys. But, you know, how do they fare? How effective was a video game adventure where a, you know, a gun-toting character like Solid Snake isn't allowed to fire a single bullet. So, you know,

let's talk about it. And in fact, here to help me talk about it is the deliciously named Gary Butterfield, the writer and podcaster and director from Duck Feed TV, and also the author of a couple of modern takes on World of Power. And we will certainly get to that. But first, please, Gary, thank you for joining me and say hi. Oh, hello. Hi, Najja. Thank you for having me. Oh, very, very welcome. it. Yeah. Yeah, I am a podcaster primarily, but also do music, and I've written a couple books with the Thurkfi.tv network. You know, live in Portland, Oregon, tall, big brown hair, big, you know, I look like a Portlander, beard glasses. That's a little bit of myself. Oh, there you

got the costume. What kind of music do you write? Oh, I like silly pop music. Kind of like Prague pop. Like that might be giants, kind of. Yeah, like time signatory pop stuff sometimes. No wonder you're friends of Jeremy Parish. I haven't got a chance to corner Jeremy about Prague. It's a different kind of Prague, but I love that about him. I love when that comes up. And I love it specifically when it sneaks into non-Prog things. Like you'll be watching NDS works and there'll just be an off-handed mention of like young marble giants or something.

Oh, yeah, he does. He's the king of Prague, the king crimson of Prague, if you will. Yeah, yeah. This we both know. So what is your history with world of power? Like, of course, these were books that were published in the 80s, so I'm guessing you're an old person like myself, unless maybe you discovered them later in life,

which I suppose is completely, completely, you know. Kids are getting into World of Power Books now. They're calling it power booking. Your kids are grinding them up and snorting it. Ooh, I feel like someone, Isockied into a new book. Yeah, I'm going to IsaacEy this snorty into my nose. It's going to go on a fun. an adventure in my lungs than my bloodstream.

You're going to find a mention in the hospital. Yeah, born in 1980, so I was like right in the pocket. Oh, yeah. And I imagine this is a really common story with these. It was the closest, you know, I love Nintendo, played Nintendo every second that I could. My mom used to say, made up Nintendo fever, like, oh, you're going to get Nintendo fever to stop me from playing for long periods of time.

And I had that child's lack of discernment. So I'd just be saying they're like, begging to play Trojan for, you know, an extra 20 minutes. I would say it was, it was, uh, I really wanted it. So when I was at school, I wanted to, uh, you know, still engage with that. And, uh, for me, uh, we had the bookmobile. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And just, uh, seeing the, you know, the, the thing that got me into these was seeing the Mega Man 2. Megamon 2. Megamon 2 was the first I got an NES a little bit late, so that was the first NES game I got.

And seeing that cover, you know, I was a little bit older in that. That's the, the junior series. But I saw the same cover. So I was like, oh, there's a Mega Man book. That's nuts. And then just spent every time there was a bookmobile that would come around, I would hunt for these. And yeah, it just felt like play Nintendo at school.

Yeah. It was the weird way when you're a kid, you didn't understand how, or at least for me, I couldn't understand how things. things came out. Like the idea of there being a publisher and like schedules. So it just felt like randomly, it felt like opening a treasure chest and there might be a new world of power book I could get. Yeah. When I went in the bookmobile came around. A magical bookmobile. Yeah, my first apartment growing up, we were really close to a library. So we had the bookmobile come around. But I did not get into worlds of power from the bookmobile. In fact, I actually

didn't get into it until my husband. We met and he came to Canada and he brought his World's Power books, I suppose, like a dowry of some kind. So I read them, a hell of a dowry, yeah, but I read them there once I had them. But before that, when I was a kid, I was really into the, you know, I can't remember the exact name, Super Mario, Choose Your Own Adventure, Nintendo System books, I think they were called. Yeah, those weren't too bad. Well, a couple of them weren't too bad. The other ones were kind of like, you know, the World of Power books, which we will get into here.

They are of very in quality, but you know what? They have, some of them have some lasting legacy. going on. And, you know, it was the best we could do at the time. As you said, we were kids, not to mention Japan and North America and the Western Mark in general were like miles and miles apart. You did not get much in the way of, you know, the supplementary story materials and whatnot that Japan got over there. So you had Western people doing their best of what they had. And in the case of worlds of power, that was basically invented or thought up of by, well, the pseudonym is FX9, but the person in charge of everything was Seth Godden, who is an author.com executive

founder of Revenue Sharing Blogging. Remember Squidoo? He founded that. 23 Skidoo. Did he ever be suckered in writing for Squatoo or any blog like it? No, no, I've never Squadoodoo. I've never been a squidoo. Never been to Lens. Yeah. Squadu was actually bought by Hub pages who suckered me into writing for them. And this was at the time, this was the very early days of writing for online. And the things that they tried to do for you back then was exactly what Seth Godin founded here, which is, hey, if you write a story and we put ads on the story and the ads are going to make zillions of dollars and you get some of that zillions of dollars.

Isn't that great? Isn't that a great payment system in all my years of writing for that? I didn't really do it for long, to be honest with you. But as long as I did write for them, I think one time I got like a hundred bucks. over the course of several months for an article I wrote about what to do if your dog gets skunked because at the time I was like also doubling as a dog groomer and it was popular enough to get me some money but that was the best I could do uh dog skunkings were going through the roof at the time too for listeners who don't know dog skunkings were on the rise they were worse worse than shooting

yeah actually uh that sounds awful that that sounds ridiculous and exploitive and bad yeah it was all uh it was all a thing that's for sure but uh Uh, the point is Godin went ahead and wrote these books because, uh, I believe he asked his nephew, what do you like to read? And if he said nothing. Reading is for stupid twerps or whatever. And so Seth Godd, I noticed that, okay, my nephew is playing a hell of a lot of Nintendo. So what if we combine the two? Which is pretty much how we got world to power. And we got, uh, basically narrations of, I think it's eight or nine books, maybe 10 counting. There's two junior books, isn't there? Yeah, I think it's 10 with the junior. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, It's an interesting origin story because it comes off both as weird marketing guys, like, I'll get you. You know, like the weird way old guys in the early 90s would kind of understand a child's property and then just get handed a posted note that said, you know, one thing about it. And like, we got to make some money off this. You know, like the same post note that had teen junior hurdles pizza skateboarding and like write a Christmas special. That's all you need to know.

And they're like, all right. But it also, it has this altruistic, like, getting kids to read because reading at the time was definitely, and even now, seen as like inherently more virtuous. Like, got to get kids reading. If they read this, they might read other stuff. And hey, that's half, you know, the battle. So it's an interesting. I think about stuff getting a lot. I was looking into him before this as a thing.

And most of the other stuff that he has is all just like, how do you stand out marketing? How, like all this nightmare venture capital stuff. It just looks skeeby to me. But this is something I have a lot of affection for, obviously. it is interesting to go over these books as an adult and kind of observe that mix of marketing and actual game lore because there are a couple like these books actually weren't all written by God and there were several authors involved and each one kind of had their own flair like I believe one of the better authors at least to me was A. L Singer who I wrote down his real name but I completely forgot it but that was the pseudonym he wrote in her dwell. He did Blastermaster and we'll get into that minute because Blastermaster that the book that he wrote actually became canon in the Blastermastermaster's series I'm still used to this day and it's really funny

and he also wrote Ninja Guidein which was one of the better ones and also I think he did Bases Loaded which that was probably the one that really alluded me because I didn't care about baseball. Did you read that one? I read all of them for preparation for my thing. Bases loaded is a pretty tough butt

it is my least favorite of his. I think he's also because they all use the pseudonym FX9 on the other kind of look and so he might have also read or written Beyond Shadow or the Shadowgate one, which is also real good, I think.

Oh, that's by Ellen Miles, actually, who is still active. Oh, Alan Miles. Yeah, yeah. That's a, sorry, my mistake, that one's real good. Yeah. Basis loaded is real weird

because there's not a narrative to a baseball game, and he doesn't talk about the mechanics or anything. So it's just kind of like a goofy kid comedy that has a baseball game as the central premise, but I love that it's bases loaded two. Yeah.

It's not. The harrowing sequel. Otto, no way there's a bases loaded, too. That's a bunch of new kids playing a baseball game for 70 pages of absolutely large print. You a mongo print. Yeah. That was one of the harder ones to get through for sure.

Yeah. No, I can see why. But going back to how Goddard was, sorry, Godin was a marketing genius as well as kind of a fun guy at heart, I suppose, is the name itself, FX9. Now, why did he choose it? Because it was simply a matter of how bookstores. display their books. And kids are going to look for Nintendo. N-I-N. Well, there's a last name nine. N-I-N. Pretty clever, I have to say. Yeah, yeah. And F-X as a kid, like, that sounded awesome. This was the age of American gladiators. So, like, if somebody was named Nitro,

the guy was on, like, this guy must, this guy knows what's going on. I want to know right from, yeah, you're rightro. He's, it rhymes. It must be fate. He's doing the, the novel off with a contestant or the challenger. But the, uh, everyone just Is this and writes? Yeah, FX was just the coolest name. So it just sounded exceedingly cool to me as a guy. It sounded like it was read by a robot.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was just inherently a cool name. It's like Rob the Robot suddenly became useful and started writing these books. There you go. Yeah. In this AI future, nightmare future. We talked about what I think is interesting with this.

And I learned this because previous says I just wanted to read them because I was just trying to get the style. I hadn't really done backdrop research. So kind of looking into it for the podcast, I always knew that there were no first-party Nintendo games in this list. Like, we keep throwing around names and they're big Nintendo names, but they're not Mario Zelda, Metroid. And that is because that fell through. He was going to originally do this.

They were going to be first-party Nintendo games and that said. It didn't happen. So, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. They tried. Yeah, and I'm surprised. Actually, it sounds like it got pretty far, but something fell through at the last minute

it didn't go through and that's too bad it would have been interesting I wonder if that's when Nintendo later on did the Mario books because that was around 90-91 and this was around 86 through 89 so it's actually also surprising how early they came out because 86 Nintendo still wasn't exactly on fire in the North America just yet

it was more like 87 and beyond yeah yeah it also makes I also wonder if Nintendo it not working out has anything to do with the Nintendo Power comics and narratives that would come over. I don't know if they were directly related, but in terms of just as a kid niche that was being filled,

that was my first exposure to that earlier time about we didn't really get the supplementary materials. So it made a Nintendo power when they would have you know, Ness, you know, talk to the Zelda, talk to Link. It was just incredible feeling. You know, it was like, oh, this is official. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, they were, they were actually, you're

talking about the Ness, sorry, like Nester Howard comics, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They were written really well. Actually, Nintendo's comics, the comics that were in the, the magazines, like, at the time, I thought, oh, these are kind of lame because they're taking up game room. But no, going back, a lot of them are really great. Like, the Star Fox comic is quite good. Well, they stand, they're more useful, I guess. They stand up more than walkthroughs of Star Fox. You know, a Star Fox comic is a more unique thing than a walkthrough of Star Fox now. Yeah. And actually, the World of Power Books kind of doubled as quote unquote tip books. I can't remember the books or you held them up to a mirror. And it's like, ooh, you solve the code. And it said something stupid.

Like, there's a secret passage at Yuba Lake in Castlevania 2. And it's like, that tells me nothing. That tells me absolutely nothing. Like, you have to kneel and find it. But they weren't super useful. It's somewhere between a Castlevania to a MPC and a pro tip. You know? Exactly.

The idea, I think the intended rhythm was you would read a chapter and then take that tip and play the game. but that also felt insane to me. Like the idea of keeping that book there and just flipping to the end of every chapter to read the hint or having it as a reference. It didn't make any sense to me. Yeah. Yeah, it was part of the general vibe of like, oh, I'm kind of playing a game. Yeah, that's actually interesting.

When he's put it like that, it kind of reminds me of the, what's it called, the fighting dungeon books where you'd roll. Oh, fighting fantasy. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Death Trapped Dungeons, I'm thinking of. Yeah.

The Metro or the Mario games you're talking about those ones. There's a bunch of them that are, I don't know which ones you had. straight-up Cheatjorn Adventure ones or the game books. There were one where you had to solve little puzzles. Yes, those were the ones I had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which were more like a different kind of game book. Like you didn't have stats.

Like a lot of game books are trying basically to be single-player D&D. Yeah, this is somewhere on that spectrum where there's a little bit of interactivity with these hints, but it's at the far, far, far end of the spectrum, like a little bit of a gimmick. Yeah, yeah. And of course, it's a Tuesday own adventure book. So I'm going to be flipping to, oh, no, Luigi died. Okay, I'm going back. Yeah. Actually, that's just canon.

It's very fun to play Choose Your Own Adventure games with Permadeth or Iron Man mode, where when you die, that's just the story. Like, your kid found a briefcase of a million dollars, then fell off a cliff. The end. Ernest Hemingway, each a heart out, yeah. Were you into like regular Chooseer Adventure as a kid? Yeah, still. I have a pretty big collection of Cheeser & Adventures and Weird also Rands. I used to do, for a little while, I did a series. of Permadeth, Choose Our Adventure

Readings called Choose Your Illusion 2. Oh, I love that. I love that. Thank you. Yeah. Where I do that. And I found all kinds of weird ones. I had lots of game books, you know, like Death Trap Engine,

Finding Fantasy, and the lone Wolf. And then weird ones. They made one. I can't remember the name because I don't have it right in front of me, but where you would get to the chapter and where you'd make your choice. And it gave you code to put into QBASIC.

Oh, really? To see where you're supposed to go. Like, you had to write a little program at the end, which is real neat. Like, there's a whole world of weird also ran, Cheatern Adventures. That is so cool. Yeah, I knew about the Elsa Rans, but I mostly stuck to Tuesdayorn Adventures. I was actually rereading one that was particularly brilliant, I have to say. And that was, shoot, was it inside UFO 5440 or something like that?

And that was the one. The thing that made that unique is that you were kidnapped and you were put on a UFO that was going to some planet where you're going to be in a zoo. but the ship was also trying to make a detour to a place called Elysium or some paradise. Utopia, that was it. And there's no legit way to find Utopia. You have to basically cheat and flip to the book until you find the real ending. And to this day, people talk about that. Like, oh, that's not fair.

Yes, it is. It's teaching how to think aside the box. But it's actually not just a great book because it has that unique ending, but also because it's just written extremely well for a kid's book. You can always tell when a kid's book is written really well. It doesn't talk down to them, but it's still like, hey, kids, this is cool science. And some of the deaths were, like, really grisly, which I always like, I always like that you choose your own adventures with grisly death.

It's phenomenal. I love things that break that format. There's a really, this is as tangential as it gets, but in, there's a goosebumps series of Tuesdays your own adventure books. And in one of them, you get trapped in a time loop that each page just refers back to the other page. That's terrifying. Like one of the endings and just like turn to page four.

And then when you read that, it says turn to page 56, which isn't says turn to page four. And you're just doomed. Like, and that's the story of your character going through, like, being stuck. It's real neat. Sorry, Katie. There's a lot of cool things you do that format. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

A book that soft locks you is a beautiful creepy pasta or a black mirror episode. Oh, that would be amazing. There you go, kids. It's a free idea. But going to the books themselves, we have, again, about 10 of them. Just going down the list, we have Blastermaster by A.L. Singer, Metal Gear by Alexander Frost. Nidigiegaden by A.L. Singer, Castlevania, 2 by Christopher Howell. Witches and Warriors by Ellen Miles, Wynton Commander by Judith Bell Stamper,

Infiltrater by A.L. Singer, before Shadowgate by Ellen Miles, Megan Miles, that's one of the junior books, and Bass is Loaded, which we talked about, which is also another junior book. Did you, you read all of these? Do anything really stand out as your favorite? Before Shadowgate's my favorite of them,

and it's for Weasley reasons, which is that it's not, it's a prequel, you know, obviously with the before. so it kind of just reads as a YA fantasy book like early you know 90s YA not current YA

yeah like young reader fantasy book that has some references to things I loved from Shadowgate but not not towns and it was real it was neat because Shadowgate is a game where like there's not a whole lot of story on display

you know you don't get a lot of that background you get a cut scene in the beginning in the end and that's all of the text everything else is just puzzles and atmosphere so it was giving me background I did not have another way to get you know, regardless of how non-canonical it was.

Right. I didn't have a way to get this background. Like, I didn't have the internet. I couldn't go to my local library and, like, read about Shadowgate. This is a way to get more Shadowgate. And then when I read them as an adult, I didn't have them all as children, but it's one of the ones I had as children. Or I read as a rerun as an adult, who knows how much of this was nostalgia, but it held up better than the rest of them. It's a real breezy, fun, like children's book.

Yeah, that's cool. I like, they actually went to prequel route with that instead of trying to make a game out of baseball for some of the shadow gate and just like constantly worrying about how many torches you have as you walk you around like, yeah. Because I kind of described, I think, solid snake as a walking arsenal. And you just picture I'm like with handfuls of these guns dripping out of his arms as he goes down the hallway. But he wasn't allowed to use any of them, of course. He wasn't allowed to shoot anything. It was so funny because that was a big part of. of the Metal Gear appeal as a kid.

Like my favorite video game advertisement of all time is the Metal Gear NES advertisement with just that's my husband's favorite too. Yeah. Yeah. That was so enticing to me and just fired my imagination so much. And then I got the book and he kind of makes it more McGiabry. So it's kind of, it's kind of fun. He solves problems in other ways other than shooting, but it doesn't end up becoming ridiculous,

you know, his commitment to non-lethal run of, you know. And there's an anti-smoking PSA in there. remember as well. Yeah. Yeah, which is good because, you know, kitchen smoke. Kitchen smoke, no, but in the 80s, it was kind of different. There's kind of, so like when you read all these together, there's kind of three types I found. There's adaptations, you know, where it tells the story of it, maybe expand it, but tells the story. There's ones that have nothing to do with it. So either like prequels or basis loaded, which has no story. And then there's like Isakais. There's one for a little kid. Yeah, like

A kid comes in and bounces off of the character. Those have some charm as an adult, too. The Castlevania 2-1 has that, and it's pretty fun. Like, just thinking about this, you know, big beefcomb, walking around, you know, mega hymbo, and then just like a kid just feeling like, I don't know, Simon. Like, it's kind of cute. It is now, but like going back to when I was a kid or even when I was even, like, God, in my 20s was like, I don't like this. I don't like this stupid get back then.

There was no term for Isakai. So we had no term. I was just like, oh, God, a Saturday morning cartoon. It's like, remember the darkest talkers cartoon, and you couldn't have the cool monsters. You had to have some bratty-ass kid in there ruining everything. So I hated, I hated it when shows and books and whatnot put kids. It's like, I don't want to read about you.

I know I'm lame. I know I'm a stupid kid. I want to get the cool Simon Belmont and Kuros from Wizards of Warriors. I think Wizard of Warriors was another Aesikai one, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. That's one where a kid comes in. Well, it was also, for me, the one of the contrast was, when the books were unexpectedly a comedy book,

I was very surprised because the games are really serious, which in retrospect seems really quaint, right? To play wizards and warriors and be like, this is like the death. You know, this is the coolest thing, but that's the power of kid imagination. So the idea of having,

there'd be like jokes in it and have it be kind of slapsticky, felt really strange. Like all the jokes in Castlevania 2, even though they make it kind of charming now, at the time, I was like, this isn't Castlevania 2. Castlevania 2 is terrifying. it might could happen at any time.

You're in so much danger. And in the book, it's just jokes. Yeah, I remember Simon being kind of bumbling and the kid being stupid. And it was, as you say, Castlevania 2 was kind of a terrifying game. Castlevania was probably my first major Castlevania game that I really, really, really got into. And I have written articles about this, and so has Paris. I probably crib them off him, actually, where the closer you get to Dracula, the more dead and more disturbing things. come like right before dracula you have that town full of people they're just gone all the life

is i love that empty town so much graveyards yeah god and the one town has that one person who's like let's live here together nope i'm come on i'm out of here together forever or whatever yeah yeah i you're you're in good company of castlvania two likers i'm i'm with you i actually got to interview um koji ygarashi a couple a few years back before the plague and i talked to him about Castlevania 2 and its ties into Symfinda Knight. This was actually my husband's question. It was a good question. I asked him, like, did Castlevania 2 inspire Symphony Night at all? And he said, yes.

Actually, it was Castlevania 2 that convinced Konami, okay, you can go ahead and do another adventure game. Obviously, that works for Castlevania, so do what you can. And he did, and that's how we got Symphony the Night, which is one of my favorite games of all the time. Yeah, phenomenal. Yeah, no, for sure. That was a cool answer. You're talking about that kind of censorship. It's most obvious in the metal gear but it's in the other ones as well like in a

plausibly deniable way you know like we don't actually know what happens to a bat when Simon Belmont whips it it kind of disappears and turns into currency that's a whole abstract process and then here there are no ethical bat slaughters but this just

it has to give a text you know and it works other than Metal Gear where it's like that was an explicitly more adult and military-themed game for the time. I wouldn't have even minded if, like, he just stopped collecting guns for five seconds. I understand Metal Gear is a more stealthy game. They easily could have written a book about him, like, knocking out people, but no,

he's got to carry all these guns around that he can't use. Yeah. But that actually, I think I liked Metal Gear more than some of the others. I like Bionic Commando. I really like Ninja Guiden. I think that Ninja Guardian was pretty good, actually, for a book. Yeah, Ninja Guiden's good and Bionicamando are both pretty good. Yeah, but those as definitely.

top half once. But speaking of censorship, Ninja Guidon, they did bring back Ryu's father. He's alive, guys. Everyone. Yeah, he's, he's fine. Very funny. But that was also the author of writing that one the best. He was like, I can't just get into his head. And it's interesting, if you look at the research process that Seth Godin did for these, where they played the games, they didn't have, you know, the same way I didn't have access to background on Shadowgate, they didn't have YouTube walkthroughs they could watch and take notes or anything like that. They just had to play the games. So they would play the games and he made, I think it's a 40-page Bible for the writers.

Yes. They would describe the game, the levels, the plot for them to go off of. And that's, again, really admirable thinking of Seth Godin, sitting in a room, you know, trying to get through Metal Gear. So, you know, which is a non-intuitive game, I think. No, sure. Uh, you know, just making his way through it to write up this guide, you know, uh, it comes through. And I think that was the reason I brought it up is Ninja Guiden, you know, being this narrative focus game with cutscenes and kind of, uh, a character voice.

I can, I can see what that what a L singer means by being able to get in the head of him. Uh, Ryu has, uh, personality in a way that like, I don't know, you know, uh, Mega Man doesn't display in Mega Man too. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which is why they kind of made him a human. for that one I do not get. I would actually love to contact Ellen Miles.

Maybe I will and maybe do a follow-up sometime. Because right now she's writing something called The Puppy Place, which is one of those book series where animals get into shenanigans as a group like the warrior cats and whatnot, like that kind of genre. So apparently it's a hit, which I completely imagine. It's like babysitter club with dogs. Okay, I'm in. Even though it's more of a sweet valley kid.

But yeah. So I suppose Mega Men 2, she made him a human. I think the plot goes like, oh, no, there's an accident. And it turns Mega Man human for some reason. I don't get it. And maybe because it was easier, right, someone with emotions by saying, oh, they're human now and deal with it. I don't know. I don't get it.

Yeah, it was kind of, and it was also before Captain N and before the Mega Man cartoon. So, like, the idea of Mega Man being, having any of his I want a real, real boy stuff. It wasn't really an angle for it. My favorite thing about the Mega Man book is they, The, it's really dutiful to the, the structure of the game. When they does the rematches in Wiley's world, it's just a paragraph with one sentence for each robot. So it's just like, he crushed Quickman. He, you know, smet, like a little alliteration things.

He flushed, Flashman down the toilet. He did eight sentences, one for each robot, like, and that's it, which is, you know, that whole thing is just a victory lap. You know, you know, the weaknesses kill these things in three minutes. which is like, or it should just say Megaman took out his metal blade and that was the end of everything. Yeah, yeah. Mega man took care of it,

John Wick style and then that's it. Mega Wick. Yeah, Mega Wick. Yeah, Megam. It just felt it was very funny going back and reading him. Well, we're done with that. He took care of business pretty quickly.

Oh, yeah, so the Megamand 2.1 also want to mention how the cover, it's another instance of censorship. Basically, anytime there's a gun or a knife is off the cover, FX9 was basically these books just took the box cover and said, here's your cover for the book, which is pretty brilliant, like, obviously, for obvious reasons. but even Mega Man too which has like a really lame-ass box art I mean it's cool in retrospect you're like oh man I love this style because I'm old and I think that's just really original but back then it looked really lame

Megaman had a lame ass gun and he's shooting it at Quickman so of course the gun's gone so it looks like Megamans trying to punch Quickman which is like good luck We're playing rock paper scissors with him yeah he's just holding out a fist it'd be like if you're playing rock paper scissors and the way you did it was holding out your fist

and just taking on all comers Yeah, if he's rockman. Yeah, just take me on. Yeah, and then just a fleet of papermen come and take your hour. Oh, that makes him feel special, though. That'd be nice. Yeah. But that was one of the funnier instances of censorship.

The one instance of censorship, I think, is my favorite, is taking away Ryu's dagger and the ninja guidance. So it looks like he's knocking on a door. I think solid sharky ones call it knock-knock ninja pizza delivery, and I never forgot that. the solid snake one is very funny too where he just doesn't have anything in his hand oh he looks like he's jerking off yeah that's pretty great like hold it like yeah or holding some kind of weird ghost baby oh yeah it's a boss fighting yeah it's like the line it's complete there's a there's a boss fight in dark souls three where a character carries an invisible baby and it always reminds me of that they end up patching out that's right at some point he like

talks it down and steps on it and they didn't want to show that of course the cower of course that sounds like that's pretty great even down to real penny ante stuff like the shadowgate one has the horns off of the gargoyle as if kids would read that and grow horns yeah and the tail of the demon that's breaking out of the cement that's like rounded so it's more of a spade than a point this one's cool i don't know what difference i think it's still glowing its eyes are still glowing it yeah it doesn't not look scary uh it's just it's less of a sharp object if you had a toy of it like if you stepped down this cover. It would hurt you less. I think it was basically, uh, you know, satanic panic. So, oh, no, can't let the kids see a demon. Uh, mom's not going to buy this, which is, uh, I mean, I'm not wrong. And I think they took all references to demons out of the shadow gate prequel, but you would know better than I would. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty gentle. Again, it's him, the interest, there's not as many demons because it's, uh, the character in like civilization for portions of it. The things you see at the beginning and where he talked

to the king, like, there are parts where you're in, you know, there are people. You know, the populated world as opposed to a big lonely dungeon full of monsters and trolls and stuff. That's cool. It was always cool to see how the writers used their imagination for these games, because even though they weren't always the best, you could tell they cared. Going back to the writing, the writing is solid. These are

obviously professional writers who already know what they're doing, and even though they're kind of filling in the blanks and you can tell where they don't really know what else to do, like, I think that's how we ended up with the Issa Kai stuff in the first place, they're still fun to look back on it. It's not like, ew, this is gross. I can't stand this. No, it's cool, like looking back at like any

young adult book from the time, I suppose. Yeah, yeah. They're competent. You know, it's reading them now, you know, I'm a 42-year-old man. Great. Yeah, it feels a little weird. I'm just kind of like, oh, this is a little bit more hard and slow-paced and toothless. Oh, wait, I'm old, and this isn't for me.

Like, that's why. Yeah. You know, but in terms of children's books, like, not only are they not embarrassing to read now, even at the time, like, I remember them feeling pretty good. Like, I had read worse books as a kid. Yeah. There were entries in the box card children that I thought were like... Oh, that's such a boring-ass series.

Yeah. But if someone housed children, the series, they were not great. And these were better, written, more exciting, you know, by virtue of the subject matter, right? Like, it was about cool actiony stuff. It's the same way when I got into, you know, middle school and read The Hobbit because I had swords in it. You know, there was kind of a subject matter kind of thing that elevated something and made it feel a little bit more exciting at the time. So in that way, you know,

when you talk about him taking the NES covers as a marketing thing, if the goal was to get people who are not as interested in reading, getting into reading, it did everything right. Like that cover thing worked for me, the pacing and just there is a Mega Man here. You know, what are the advantages of this over Maniac McGee? Well, Mega Man's in it.

Yeah. Mega Man doesn't show up until the post-credit scene of Maniac McGee and blast the sandwich out of that kid's heightened. You know, stay, stay golden, boy, you man. Stay golden, Mega Man. Yeah. Yeah, it was just, it absolutely worked. They're pretty well written.

They are. And to their credit, there's not anything really super insidious here. It's not like, oh, we wrote these so you will buy the game. So I'm sure that still had some, you know, Nintendo or whoever, sorry, the third parties, didn't object to that. But it was golden write it to get his kids. nephew to read. And as he said, it did everything right. Very easy reads. They go down easy. Again, the subject matter could be a little bit silly. But then again, there's 10 books. And as I said, they're written in like several styles. So I think a kid would be able to find a style that suits them.

Maybe they do want something funnier. Maybe they do want something more serious. I mean, either way, you're not getting a gun. So deal with that. But yeah, there are definitely, definitely tones here. And maybe even Shadowgate would be a little bit more suited for a little bit of an older reader, whereas we already have these junior books. So they really did run the gamut here. And I really wish they actually would have done more, to be honest with you. Yeah, it's imagining a world where this was a whole ecosystem is real fun, you know, and imagining, which is part of like why I was, I did the project that I did with them was the idea of thinking of these for other games.

And then they kind of became general comedy books, you know, aside from that. Because it's hard to write a children's book that's just a straight pot that would be like a children's book, you know, without our. I actually tried to, there was a challenge I took way back on the parish's message boards, talking time, where someone said, hey, write just a paragraph or a chapter in the style of one of those books from that era. And so I chose something, I think it was Mario 64 and just writing about how Mario hoped the princess would make lots of spaghetti and he's licking his lips and rubbing his stomach. It's like, I feel so stupid writing this. I can't stand this. I'm going to go and write some more We'rewolf porn. Move.

It reminds me a little bit of when Mario Maker comes out and everyone tries to make a one-one. Like everyone tried to make a beginning level. And the difficulty of doing something that is a simple introduction. It's the same thing with music. Like a really, really good pop

song is also hard to write. Like there's, doing the basics can be very difficult. No, for sure. And actually, before we move on, I want to shout out to, first of all, I want to shout out the article that I sourced for most of this, which was called 8-bit lit. And that was all about basically, I think that was by Sean Strach, who's a dude I know, and he's cool. And he put a lot of research into this.

I think Scott Sharfke helped as well. He talked to Godin about why he wrote this and what he wrote and what he did and how it went through all. This is basically the source you have for this series of books and how it happened. But, of course, this is the Internet, and the article is long gone. thankfully, he's been preserved on archive.org. But there's one quote I want to read here about Bionic Commando. While Bionic Commando does not follow the N.S. Games climax with the enemy leader fatally doubled crossed by a clone of Hitler, the hero's complete lack of sympathy

for an evil man being eliminated by an even evil more man is clearly noted. So, Hitler had exploded. Yeah, it's actually very in the times with current things where he doesn't have sympathy because he's a bad man and he declares it. So it doesn't confuse any readers. Oh, of course. I can't believe this is endorsing a serial killer. It has one.

You know, it's very modern discourse for that. Don't worry, kids. He got blown out real good. Yeah, he's gone. You mentioned this earlier. interesting thing about this, which I ended up finding out about when I was reading these, is the bit of how Blastermaster Master shows up in the real Blastermaster games. Like, if you're a Blastermasterhead, the book has, characters that are used to the book are in the games now. They are. And they started, I think, what happened was in 2000 Blastermaster Recharge or whatever was called Blastermaster Blasting Again. That's it for the PlayStation. The funniest title. It's so tired.

Yeah. It's still blasting. Blasting again. Blastin all, after all these years. Electric Boole. It was Blast and Master. But that book had Eve, who, I don't, I know I read the Blaster Master book, but I couldn't find it when I was trying to reread this stuff. She was basically just an underground alien or something, or she was kind of fake.

And they wrote her into blasting again, where she had two kids with Jason, Elfie and Roddy. Why would you name your kid, Roddy? Don't do that. Incredible. Yeah. it's a pretty uh it's it's a name space that's been taken up yeah strong associations yeah she she's like a fake alien like she's she's basically human and fooled him if i recall uh and then the reveal was she was an alien and then they fell in love like the i i love thinking about that

in the canon and thinking about the story of that and imagining the person who's like i really love blastermaster but like did he ever find love you know did that kid ever like procreate i got to know, you know, based on, like, based on playing Blaster. Did you ever know the joys of fatherhood? Yeah, these are the questions. These are the questions. Keep us up at night, you know? But the idea of that rolling in, that's the story I want to know is like, did the devs behind that read this?

And then, you know, like, as they were fans, right? I think they were. Yeah. That's interesting. That's fascinating. Was the Plastermaster one of the ones by, let me see here, that was by A.L. Singer, I believe. Yeah.

And apparently, as far as I know, as far as he knows, from what I read, this was an instance of Japan looking at something America had done saying, hey, cool, let's make this game out of this, let's pay tribute to this source from the West. And Al Singer said he was very, like, just touched that that actually happened.

And InjCreates, who makes the Megman Zero series and Gunwolt Chronicles and a whole bunch of pretty great platformers. Also does Blast for Master Zero. There's three games there. It gets really weird with the whole reproduction thing and Elfie and Roddy and what they are and who they are.

I couldn't even follow it, to be honest with you. But Integrates, when they see a robot girl, they never met a robot girl they didn't like. So, you know, there's something weird going on there. And I think actually she is part now part of the larger Intergrade universe, which is sprawling at this point, I suppose. I haven't really kept up since zero. So I'm a little bit out of the loop, but yeah, I think that's pretty cool.

I think that is really cool, that little bit, that tiny sliver of lore has survived. through the 80s, 90s, and beyond. That's pretty cool. It's the biggest piece of legacy that they have of. And it's also, it makes, I don't, you know, again, I don't know the story of the Japanese developers coming upon that. But these were successful, you know, as books,

but they weren't, like, it's hard to describe the scale exactly. Like they weren't, like a sensation. So it makes me wonder if, you know, even at the time, they were a little bit niche. There were tons of young reader books. at the time it makes me wonder if the Japanese developers

who found this and read it and became fans of it what they thought its reputation was in America like whether they thought adding need to this

would be a selling or if they just thought no that's a cool plot idea like we should have added an extra character for Jason to interact with other than you know the frog

other than the frog yeah and of course Plash Master itself is kind of a localization of a little bit of a different Japanese game

by Sunsoft that just has more of an adult tone to it. Whereas in Blastermaster for us, it was a little more kid friendly, like Jason was chasing his lost frog down the hole, whereas Japan it was a whole like, I don't know, it's his 401k. Yeah.

It's his life insurance for policy. And he's only got 10 days to live, so he's got to get that before it falls in a pit. Yeah. Who will provide him my family? Who will provide him my alien family? Oh, that got dark, but hilarious at the same time.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about your own personal foray into making worlds of power books and how, as you have already kind of stated, that must have been a challenge in many, many interesting ways. Yeah. So in the early 2010s to mid-2010s, I wrote two books in a series called Power Worlds. And the idea was, behind these, was to write a World to Power book based on more modern games that are very important to me now. you know, as opposed to things are important to me as a kid. So, you know, I love Mega Man 2, one of my all-time favorite games.

I loved it as a kid, but I've grown and involved and changed my taste. And at the time, one of the podcasts we do our network is called Bonfire Side Chat. It was about the Dark Souls. Yeah, that's us.

That's me. The Dark Souls, hello. Yeah, me and Cole. Not a, no Coal erasure intended. Those games are very important to me. So I was like, what if Dark Souls existed? at that time, you know, and it had this kind of cross-media stuff. And that kind of spiraled out in my head, and I couldn't get out of my head.

I was like, what would Dark Souls look like for an yes? If the answer isn't just Legend of Zelda One, right? Yes. I was trying to imagine, like, what would the mechanics be? What would be? So I wrote a book that is a short comedy book. It's not really a children's book. It has all of the same markers, so it looks like a World's Power book, has the trading card,

has the tips at the end all of that stuff but it is written as if it is based on a fictional dark souls that came out on the NES which is real silly and convoluted and then that was really cool I'm really proud of that book it was part of the ARG to reveal frog fractions too right that's right which was a big thing my friend Jim involved me in that which is really cool and yeah it's mostly it is like a kid's book and then also just has a bunch of meta and absurd, you know, jokes that I would make ordinarily. But when I was doing that, when I kickstared that, I bought all of these books and read them

all. And my goal was always to do a few of them. I've only done two. I may do another one at some point. But that one was the Issaquai one. So in Souls of Darkness, a character gets sucked into the world of Souls of Darkness and meets a group of companions. It's really a labyrinth inspired.

That was my favorite children's movie. Oh, that's great. the idea of her having a coterie of weirdos who guided her through this world. So, you know, I had my character do that. And then a couple of years later, I did one called Atomic, which is for Fallout. And that is not an Iskai that's in the world and kind of takes the story of it. The most fun part of it was trying to imagine what the NES versions of these would be like. And I did Kickstarter.

So I had a bunch of extra things. So I made like a little N. Yes manual for them or a little comic you would get in a box of cereal that explained like side story stuff. I made a bunch of world building things because the initial idea was, again, what if this idea had continued? What if there weren't 10 of these? What if this continued? There's always a place in the world for these little, a little, you know, like dime store paperbacks about video games, you know? I also love the art that you have like a Konami style art. box arts going on for the Dark Souls one,

don't you? Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a very specifically. So Nick Daniels, uh, who does some covers for restaurants, uh, is the artist on those books. Um, and I gave him, uh, references for covers for NES covers.

And he just took it and ran with it. I did wonderful work. Yeah, that, that cover is incredible. And Castlevania was the closest thing in tone for that. So we, we based that one on Castlevania. Uh,

the one for Atomic is based on a more obscure game than I'm I'm having a hard time remembering right the second. Coffee hasn't made of the book. Because you're on the spot. Yeah, he did great work. Oh, he's just great. Yeah, he's done a few covers for my own episodes and they're pretty great. But for Dark Souls, like, that's a very kind of a lonely game, a lonely dark game.

And you have, not only isn't Isaacai, you have, as you said, the kind of the labyrinth crew around you, like, what was the name of a little dog, fizz, fizzwit or something like that? Oh, yeah. Well, there's a, there's a bone that follows her around called, called femur. And so the dog that I know. Yeah. It is a bone. Yeah, a single bone.

Yeah, free floating. I like that. That hangs out. The, and lounging Carl, the zombie stuff. And, but yeah,

it had to be not lonely, you know, because that'd be weird. Dark Souls is a very hard thing to adapt and nobody's done it. Well, like we talked about in our podcast, there's a whole bunch of comics and stuff, and there are varying degrees of not very good,

you know? Yeah. Yeah. So it's, I was kind of trying to do that in the flavor of like, not really adapting just kind of like inspired by you know it's actually funny that you made that choice because and what you said about dark souls being dappid because i think there is an official elder ring comic that just takes the piss out of the whole thing it's a comedy yeah which

that's a great approach yeah that uh we get asked a lot you know on the podcast like how would you adapt this or like what do you want to see and we talk about it and that's an angle i never considered but is brilliant like i really want to read that because not taking it seriously is probably the best thing you could do. You're never going to translate the feeling in the hands of playing, you know, in a passive media. And this actual, like so much of the Dark Souls feeling is from interactivity. It really is.

Yeah. You know, you eliminate that interactivity. It's not, you know, so taking that and just be like, oh, we're just going to come up with a different angle. Brilliant. I haven't read that yet. But I'm sure there's a translation out there. Oh, there is.

I write myself. I think it came out the day of the comic. But you're right. From Soft for my money is like the king of world building. And I've said this many times on Acts of the Blood God, where I don't play all the Frum Slav games. I absolutely adored Eldon Ring and I liked Bloodbourne a lot. But I kind of bounced a little bit off Dark Souls, it's just not my jam. But even that big case, I do read lore about the world, but also particularly in a game like Bloodborn,

it's all about how the game leaves the atmosphere by, as you say, interacting with it. And that would be something that would be so hard, as you said, to put on paper. So you just kind of made the right choice, I think, by cutting loose and having fun with it. Because the very concept of, like, Dark Souls being kind of a more of a labyrinth-type adventure is, it's fun. It sounds fun. It sounds hilarious. And frankly, probably a little more interesting than reading what would, I mean, if you want something like Dark Souls in book or comic form, go read Berserk. There's your Dark Souls.

It exists. Yeah. And then like Gene Wolf novels and stuff. Like, there are a lot of, you know, there are a lot of fantasy things that kind of get the same tone, but it's not exactly the same. You know, I just wanted to make a bunch of jokes about the different areas of Dark Souls, basically. Another point. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, you know, you go down to the, the skunge pit or whatever I call it in that.

And just, like, silly, you know, one of the early, like, in Dark Souls, the way they tell their story is through items having descriptions. That's right. You pick up a shield, it tells you. And in Souls of Darkness in the book, everything has a posted note on. it. So when you pick up a shield, it has a posted note that explains that and then you take off the post-it note. Like little things like that that are just, it wouldn't be what they would do in an actual world's of power. It was just me being goofy. Yeah. And like, was this, once you started, was it kind of easy for you to find your voice and just, you know, go along or do you find

yourself hitting roadblocks a lot? Souls of Darkness, super easy to write. Atomic was very hard to write. It was in 2014. I was real angry because of, gamer culture shit. You know, like it was, you know, peak gamer gate years and I was a, in, you know, a stage of political awakening. So I was very cranky. You know, it's an angry book, which was not necessarily my intent. And I think that's kind of why I haven't done one sentence as it was, it came out sideways,

you know, it was, it was difficult. The character also, like, because I wanted to write about, you know, kind of a shitty white guy who figures out, you know, they all wanted to talk about, like, privilege. and stuff because I was in the air in a way that was still through this without being preachy. So the character's head was not as fun to be in because he was not, he gets okay,

but he starts off as kind of a shit. Sorry, it hurts quite so much. I know that's okay on here, but the other one is a lot significantly easier. Maya Hunter is a lot more fun of a character to be in the head of. So yeah, so kind of both. If you did the opportunity to do another, any idea what you do, any dreams, any sketches?

is the uh in the beginning of it i said i have a fake like you may also like these other books in the series and they're just all the games that are in my like huge you know my canon like my all time favorite games uh beauty um i would love to do bloodborne that'd be great yes and the the the only thing i have in the idea for it right now is that in bloodborne everyone wants to get more eyes like you get eyes on the inside and stuff and i just think that if you do that and everyone just got bigger eyes until the the actual the the deacons of the church or whatever are walking around with a wheelbarrow with their two like distended eyes in it and that guy's smart like you look at that that's the wisest person i've ever seen and it's just somebody trundling

both their eyeballs in a but that's the that's literally the only thing i have prepared for it so yeah that would definitely not be one of the ones for the kids no no that's uh that's and it just uh the same thing happened like when you do passion projects like that like I'm very lucky like the you know we I do podcast for my full time job now so uh you know it takes it takes up most of my time yeah no I get that uh because I'm itself and working on a couple of books and I'm also podcasting full time pretty much and yeah it can be difficult to juggle it all but that is why I stay up until three of the morning because that is my power hour I suppose but I would love to try my hand just something like this but as I said it is harder to write than you would think it would be and I don't know what I would do

you know what? I actually co-wrote the Mega Man X Maverick Country Field Guide by Udon with my husband, David Oxford. And that was a lot of fun because we presented it kind of in the style of narrative versus a actual guidebook. Like, this is what you would be handed if you were, you know, starting out at Mavercounter Country

headquarters. These are the characters. Oh, in the world. These are the arms. Yes, I bet the world. That's the best. I love that stuff. Yeah, exactly. So I had, like, I used to write a lot of Mega Man fan fiction when I was younger. This more or less how I got my start with writing. And so I had to,

a great time just going back and writing about all these characters I used to write about when I was young and so I think I would love to draw my hand to something like this but of course it's just like well put it on the pile of projects I have going I suppose because maybe when I'm 70 I'll get it around to it hugely time consuming like writing books and with that guide thing you have to do layout and stuff as well I'm always very impressed by I feel like we've we've been talking sugar about Jeremy constantly on this podcast I'm always very impressed by how how many boats he puts out because that layout stuff does not come natural to me no you know doing yeah so it's a and he's just very prolific and then very time consuming i don't think he sleeps

brick by brick yeah yeah yeah just uh loves loves doing projects it's awesome it's cool as a fan too no for sure like he does definitely a big inspiration that's why i'm working on my own books as well and uh this is this whole worlds of power thing is very much a big part of fandom and fan fiction culture which is something i'm i am swel or writing about something i've always been interested in because I said I am a fanfic writer and I was a fanfic writer. So I'm always interested in topics like this where, yes, here is a series of books that was explicitly meant to get kids to read. And even then, when I was a kid and we had the book fairs and, you know,

good old scholastic book fairs and whatnot, you'd still had teachers, and I'm not talking shit about teachers, they got enough problems, but you did have the teachers who would try gatekeep. Like I had a teacher who was like, oh, you can't buy Ninja Turtle books because, you know, ninja turtles are bad. And stuff like that was never fair or fun to me. me. So I did get kind of a little bit of pushback for buying like the Nintendo books when I was a kid because, oh, it's not real, real books. Which it is. It's real writing. It's good writing, actually, for a kid, like I said. All reading is reading is reading. All reading is reading. Like, I hate keeping around that stuff. I remember, like, first of all, like, one, in the grand scheme of time, how quaint and silly is it that teacher tried to stop you from reading that book? Because what would Ninja Turtles have done to you? Like, you're fine, you know? And it's, talk about fighting. the fighting the tide right like it's not like you you can limit a child's exposure to ninja turtles

uh and then it's like they were everywhere but the other thing is just like reading is reading like if it if it's a kid and they're interested like i one thing i think about a lot of uh my childhood and people um of our generation is that like i really wish that more space was allowed for following interest because as a kid i had so many interests that actually like did pay off to my career eventually. Same. I just wasn't encouraged in any of them. It was always, you know, I remember trying to submit, we were doing a book report and I wanted to do one of the lone wolf like game books, which like that's not a traditional book report.

But I feel like a better teacher would have been like, hey, that's really cool. What's neat about this? Like this is a vocation. This is a skill. You're obviously showing an interest in this instead of just being shot down. You know, similar to that an intertural thing. And yeah, that stuff drives me nuts, it's infuriating. Yeah, I mean, even growing up, luckily, my parents weren't like that.

They were always very big readers. We had a lot of comic books around. And that's how I learned to read because the association of words and pictures, the only problem may be being is that, okay, I read Archie, which was great. But I also read Mad magazine, which when you're three years old, it'll probably warp your mind. And it did. Three is young for Matt. But it was pretty great.

I remember looking at these books as young as four and being like, wow, that's funny. So that was a problem. And you turned out great. I turned out A-Way. Yeah, what it would be the, it just, you turn out how you turned out, you know. Exactly. It is a real, real silly thing to fight a kid's interest like that. One other kind of interesting quirk is that I grew up with a lot of Beano comics because I have like a lot of Irish relatives who sent over stuff from overseas.

So I kind of also grew up with this weird Britishness to my writing from like, I mean, I don't even talk about like classic person. I'm talking about the real gutter, gutter British, like, you know, the kids wearing hockey jerseys. sorry the hockey jersey Jesus Christ kids wearing like rugby jerseys and football jersees and beating each other up Dennis the Menace UK oh man that kid will kill you before you can

kill you in your sleep so watch yourself I love how there's an American Dennis the Menace who like every once in a while will take a pie off a windowsill yeah like a British Dennis the Menace is teaching Nash or how to do dog fighting

that's what he is just like there's a peeky blinders Dennis the Menace who will cut your your Achilles tendon, so you can't run. Sorry, Britain, except not. So I guess we should wrap this up because our hour is pretty much up. I think we had a really, really great time with us, and I hope you enjoyed your time talking

about these books. Did you want to wrap up with any final thoughts? No, just, you know, if I were a better salesman, this is where I would say you can buy my books. Souls of Darkness is sold out. I haven't had enough demand to do a reprint because I just printed an amount. So I have like 10 of them in my apartment and I've, you know, I want to keep one or two. And then the rest of them, I've like, I've donated a couple to like charity auction things.

Oh, that's nice. But I'm just, you know, keeping them. I have several copies of Atomic. It turns out that Dark Souls is a more popular game and setting, I think. You know, more than the zeitgeist. But yeah, if you want to check those out, you can go to duckfeed.tv, the website, and you can get them from there. You can also check out us. We're a whole podcast network, listeners of retronauts.

Probably most interested in our show, watch out for fireballs. Me and Cole have both been on several episodes and vice versa. You know, several retronauts have been on our episodes. It is a games club podcast. It is a games club podcast. Now we've kind of broadened the remit, but we do talk about plenty of old games. That's really cool. I'm actually really hoping you do that, you do that blood-borne idea someday.

That would be a lot of fun. It'd be really fun. I've been trying to re-access that part of me that, like, you know, has a big project like that. But it's one of those things when you, when you, when you, get a job that is largely maintenance, you know, like we put out stuff all the time, but it doesn't feel like we are. You know, it doesn't feel like, oh,

hey, you know, I don't have that like birth moment that you get. So it's on the eventual task mask. We will see, we just, we hired somebody for the first time. So we might, some time will slowly start opening up. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, as

I too, as I said in full time podcasting, I know that feeling. You think you're not working. It's like, oh, how hard talking in a microphone be? It's a little harder than you think. It wears you a little faster than you think. You don't have off work and you're like, I can't. I don't want to do anything. My executive function is completely taxed.

Like I just spent four hours today trying to make up jokes and observations on the spot. What more can I do? You know, it is. You did okay today. Don't worry about that. Thank you. Yeah. They appreciate it.

It's, I'm not, I'm incredibly privileged. It's a great job, you know, and absolutely lucky, but it is still a job, you know. No, absolutely. That's the thing. People don't realize, like, I mean, I've scrub toilets for jobs. And I actually think I was probably a little more important then than I am now, but still, a job is a job. It's hard to do. You're on someone's time. That is not your own. And also I edit as well. And I still do a lot of stuff in the background for gaming. And it's a charmed life, but it is a busy one. And like you, I hope to get to those big projects done. Because dear God, like you, also, I am in my 40s. And there's only so much time I have left on this wretched but beautiful earth. So I'm going to continue to do my best. And I hope you. continue to do your best as well thank you yeah i'll do my best everyone all right yeah there you go

that's a pact as for me i'm with the acts of blood god podcast as well as retronauts we cover rpg's old and new eastern and western we have all kinds of specials and tears that you can support on over at patreon.com for slash blood god pod and of course need to get booty down to retronauts at patreon.com for us slash retronauts and throw some out there too that way you can get more content like this which i'm sure you want because why would you not and that includes ad-free episodes a week early, as well as several exclusive specials. But, until next time, thank you for listening, and

happy Nintendo adventuring. You know, I'm going to be.