Retronauts - 602: Evercade

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

New hardware is always nice, especially when it’s focused on physical media. Stuart Gipp speaks to Blaze Entertainment about Evercade’s remarkable (and exclusive) Duke Nukem Remastered, their upcoming carts, and about The Fidgetts being impossible. Head to https://www.squarespace.com/RETRO to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code RETRO. Art by Leeann Hamilton. Edits by Greg Leahy. 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 episode of Retronauts is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-purpose DIY website platform for pros and beginners alike. This week in Retronauts, I ain't got time to play with myself. Just one of the many ways in which Jit Newcomb and I have nothing in common. Hello, Nauties, welcome once again to Retronauts, the podcast called Retronauts, featuring the Retronauts, of which I am one of them. Also, it's about retro games, but you knew that already, I'm sure. Being Stuart Gibb, that's me, hello, I have decided to do an episode about one of my things, what I like, what I don't. think people are talking about enough of, and that is the Evercade, which is a sort of bespoke handheld and console system, which plays also bespoke cartridges with sort of curated selections

of games, many of which are interesting, in fact, almost all of which are interesting. And I'm sort of a super fan, so hopefully that won't bleed too much into the discussion I've had, where I spoke to several evocators on the evercading team about the console and it's sort of past, present and future, and specifically in places about their June Ucan collections they brought out, which are especially interesting for reasons that I will let you discover by yourself. I won't go into a sort of long preamble about what the evocator is because that's covered in the episode itself,

and I think it was an interesting chat. I think some interesting things came out of it, and I think it's nice and breezing of fun, And I think you will enjoy it If you don't know things about the other cage You certainly will do after this And hopefully if you don't know anything about the other cage You are interested enough to give it a go

And if you're not, then Well, I'm sorry It really is the very best I can do But cheers, thanks for listening And you'll hear from me again at the end When I explain all the Patreon stuff Of course, if you're already on the Patreon Thank you very much

If you're not on the Patreon A begrudging thanks to you also for listening But it really is begrudging So let's all listen to a terribly exciting interview with the Evercade Lats. Cheers. to start, as ever, is if I ask if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves on what your roles are, Advocate at Blaise? Yeah, I mean, I could go first. I'm Ryan. I'm the CTO at Blaze. I'm Sean, and I'm the head of marketing at Blaze.

I'm Nico. I was the lead developer on the Duke Nukem 1 and 2 remaster. Excellent, excellent. Thanks very much for joining me. It was taking a while to get it together, but we're here now, which I'm glad of. I've been wanting to do an Evercade-based episode for absolutely ages, so hopefully the first of a few. But the Duke Newcomb collections seem like a great opportunity to make that happen because they're quite unique among what's already quite a unique library. But before I get to them, I just want to, for the people who are sort of unversed, if you wouldn't mind giving sort of a basic, what exactly is Evercade?

What is it like that you're doing? I'm happy to take that one, yeah. So Evercade is a retro gaming. system that focuses on physical cartridges in an age of digital. The idea is to take everybody back to the nostalgia of what they loved, being able to give people physical manuals, give people the actual physical cart, the smell and the experience of unboxing something new for the first time, but also providing that in a way that gives you a good modern hit of how we consume gains now. So we do that via our two products, the ever KVS, which is a TV-based concept.

console and the EXP, which is a handheld, which allows you to do things like safe state, customize some of your screen options, and gives you a quick and easy way to play retro games. The other benefit, of course, is that we do it officially licensed from all of the game publishers, owners and rights holders and developers. So you're basically contributing into the industry by being a part of it as well. Yeah, I mean, I can't pretend I'm not a fan. Not a pretty big fan. I mean, I have a old switch case, which literally has, I think, every single Evercade cartridge in it at the moment. And I've been sort of pretty excited since, I think it was fun, stuck with doing that pack with, like, the first 10 cartridges.

And it was pretty, like, on board. I was like, yeah, I really think I need to get on the ground floor of this. And that sort of was validated by the Oliver Twins collection, because I was immediately just kind of like, yeah, this is for me. This is definitely for me, because getting games like that back. out is and like the bitmap brothers you know they're not getting re-released outside of this so it's a fantastic project in my opinion

just frivolously do you have any sort of favorite cartridges in the library thus far personally new yeah well yeah yeah that goes without saying I think yeah I was going to go for a very diplomatic cart's one to thirty nine

on Evercade and the one to ten arcade and the one to six blutes you know I think my favourites of that. Yeah, I mean, I can't deny they're all great. I mean, what I do like is the, as well as your kind of, beginner name stuff, as well as your, sort of built-in sort of Capcoms and your end of data Easts and your, etc., etc., you have got stuff like

Sydney Hunter, like sort of a homebrew kind of stuff, and just the choices of the games on the cartridges aren't always what you'd expect in an interesting, kind of rewarding way. The Sunsoft 2 collection that's coming out, like the fact that it's got primitive princess pre-pre on there is just mind-blowing to me because I never see anyone talk

about that game and it's really enormous fun so I'm looking forward to playing that again when that drops. Yeah, it's definitely one of those key things about Evercade is that when you say retro games that can mean so much to so many people and it only takes like two seconds to go through a forum and realize that what you think is your favorite

game is not somebody else's and what their favorite game is, is something you've never heard of. So there's such a wide scope of tastes and things available that when it comes to modern licensing and getting all of these games out there, we're in a position that we can bring back some of those really rare, really hard for find, and in some cases not even available games. I know we're about to go into that specifically with Duke, but one of my favorite carts was the Gail Co. Arcade Cards.

Yeah, I was going to mention that. Biomechanical Toy is a classic that you just cannot get anywhere else. Yeah, I mean, World Rally is my particular favorite and there's one that I actually played in arcades when I used to holiday in Spain as a child and that was very, very close to coming out on PlayStation and just never made it. So there's loads of these kind of games and things

in our catalogue that we're able to breathe new life into find an affordable way for people to get them and also have a way to get them in the world where there is no longer any real way to actually pick up any of these games. Yeah, as I mentioned before, Bitmap Brothers, I mean, the renovation collection is pretty wild to me as well, but there's all sorts of, they're all great, I mean, there's all sorts of classics in there, but I do want to talk about Duke Newcomb simply because it's the boy, he's my boy, love Duke Newcomb, and now being diplomatic, I don't feel like he gets enough of respect. So it's nice when his sort of history gets brought back like this. Just for those not aware, the two Duke Newcomb collections on Evercade is compiling. Junuton 1 and 2, the original DOS games, but completely rebuilt, which I'll get into in the moment, as well as JunoCum 3D Total Meltdown, which is the PlayStation version with his exclusive plug-and-prey episode, which has never been re-released until now. Other than that, you've got the second collection, which is the PlayStation games, Juniukum Time to Kill, and Land of the Babes, both great.

I love both those games, especially Time to Kill, grew up playing that on multiplayer. and then you've got Duke UConvance, which is a really kind of an underrated, a really good first-person shooter for the GBA. But the real main event for me is those one and two remakes. I mean, I don't know whether they call them remakes. I mean, they are remakes, right?

I mean, I don't know if they're interpreting, like, the existing sort of the original code, if even exists. It's kind of like both a remaster and a remake at the same time. Yeah. Like the code is a remake because the original code doesn't exist. anymore, but we are using the original art assets for the most part. Obviously, we made some changes and stuff, but like, it's the original level files, the original art assets and so on.

So how did that sort of journey start getting Duke on the Evercade in the first place? What's like the germ that sort of got that going? Well, it was, um, for first, firstly, I think like the whole kind of, the whole Duke story or other guess is it was one of my first, uh, games, PC games on my original 386. And I love Duke 1. So Duke 1 was definitely my jam. I know Nico yours was Duke 2. But so I always had this game close to my heart.

And Andrew, the CEO, when he told me he has got the license, spoken to Gearbox and we're going to work with him on Duke Nukem. I just turned around instantly and said we have to remaster one and two because they were criminally like underrated in the sense that like no one really managed to play them, right? There was not an easy way to play these games for a long time. And funnily enough, I think it was about a year or two before I actually watched Clint's video, LGR and he did a video on the Riegel engine and

he was showing it and I thought it was amazing and so it all kind of like fell into place from there really like you know had this huge love for I had this huge love for Duke one and two and you know I saw LGR's video and then Andrew came along

and said oh we've got the license and then I sit at that point I just said we need to remaster this and then I think like that week I literally reached out to Nicco and said, hey, you want to collaborate. And then that's how it all really started, I guess. So the intent was to do sort of a Duke.

You can cartridge, even before the idea was there to do one and two. It would have been like the PlayStation games maybe or? Yeah, yeah. So the intent from everybody was to do the cartridges as they were. But I certainly wanted to go the extra mile. with one and two because just on the basis that I personally love them

and I think they're great like platformer games yeah yeah totally again just seeing I remember watching LGR's video and seeing the Duke 2

effectively like remastered right you know with like the the widescreen support and the smooth scrolling and I was thinking like that would be so amazing with Duke 1 you know bringing it to like a more modern having that more modern experience right with the quality

of life improvements and yeah as soon as i talked to nico we were just like it was like christmas for both of us yeah very much yeah with the idea and the prospect um but yeah i mean i'll pass it over to nico and kind of he could he could have his side uh right yeah um yeah so basically um ryan mentioned the ragel engine which is like the hobby project of mine that sort of formed the basis of this whole remaster project and I started that a long time ago

actually in 2016 summer, late summer when I had discovered various community projects to reverse engineer the source code of games where the source code was not available

and so primarily at that time I discovered some those games like there are some projects that do it for Commander Keen and but other games too and like there's a whole community out there basically that's really dedicated to this game reverse engineering and making the genius i think that one yeah that's one of them the one i followed was zizi t which got reverse engineer had a few years ago right yeah yeah totally and yeah and so i i i love duke nukem too and i felt like maybe

giving this a shot myself doing this kind of reverse engineering. And so, yeah, I basically sat down, started learning all about assembly programming and reverse engineering tools and stuff like that. And started building my own kind of engine with the idea was to make a modern 2D engine and then reverse engineer all the game logic, basically, like all the enemy behaviors and player control and all that. So that I would be able to then later add all these enhancements like smooth scrolling and white screen and all that stuff. Yeah, I wanted to ask about sort of the enhancement specifically because it's one of those games where you can press a button and switch between, I'm going to air quotes, the original and the remaster. But the original is also a recreation, right? it's, I mean, not that it's running DOS code on

Evocated. I'm not, I'm not, like, I don't know this stuff, so I apologize from coming off as extremely ignorant of this. No worries. But so, because I think it's kind of mind-blowing that you can run this thing which will go to like, I don't know, the choppier kind of, I don't know, even if it's like 20, 15 frames per second, whatever the original

game was. 15, yeah. Then you'll press a button and you'll suddenly be in 60 and everything will be widescreen and smooth and it's just, it's kind of fantastic. that come. I do love it, the industry standard, you know, 15 frames per second on DOS games and things like that. But, I mean, that's what it was at the time. Yeah, there's so much publicised things about how difficult it was to get scrolling animation on PC stuff.

And, you know, you've probably talked about it before on the podcast, but there's all these stories when it comes to how Carmack and everybody managed to get over it, things working on their systems before they were told they should not be doing things on their systems. and everybody really struggled with the kind of smooth motion that was seemingly the norm on much more underpowered hardware. So even with the frame rate at the time, you know, Duke Nukin was absolutely revelatory in the detail that it had in there and everything else that had going on.

What it has for me is that sort of PCDoS platformers have a vibe, like a feel that is not really captured by anything else. They're not like Japanese platforms, but they're not like European platformers usually. and June Newcombe is kind of a game that's all about well I had it when I was a kid on my sort of 4863-86 and it was the shareware

you know episode one and what I took away from it really is just like considering this is free that first episode the amount of hidden detail and secrets and things to do which are kind of brought to the four obviously in this version because at the end of each stage you're getting proper sort of graded like you've missed this

this and this which really highlights everything that's available to do. See, I'm not actually going anywhere with that. I just wanted to make that out now because it's really something I'm enthusiastic about is that kind of DOS era. Friends and listeners, I come bearing unhappy tidings.

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R, capital, R, capital E, capital T, capital R, capital R, capital O. Let's save the internet together. So the original Dukeon 1 and 2, did they run on the same sort of code base originally or where they completely different engines? Because they seem very different games to me. It's an evolution kind of like there is the same programmer. He actually made another game in between, Cosmos, Cosmic Adventures. I don't know if you know that one.

Maybe that's coming to advocate sometime. Maybe. I think that the Amber Heart guy is working. working on a remaster of that. It's actually not him. It's actually a person. Yeah, but AppleG is working on a HD version. Yeah.

And yeah, so basically there are some aspects in common, but it's more like it's two completely separate code basis. And I think it's pretty clear that the programmer learned a lot about programming after making Duke 1 because the Duke 1 code is kind of, it's a bit peculiar. you can see. Yeah, yeah. I mean, YouTube is just generally bigger and brashier

and more of a shooter and now much larger levels and stuff. Now, something I shouldn't bypass is the soundtrack in the first game which is all new, right? Well, at least new to the game. I don't know where the music actually is taken from or if it's new composed.

We had some license issues with the music. Right. But we knew straight away. way, but we wanted Jimmy, who's been doing some amazing stuff, especially like Secret Agent. He did some of the stuff with that. And we actually, we're in touch with Lee Jackson, super nice guy. He's a great guy.

And he's just, and Jimmy's actually worked with Lee Jackson in the past. So we kind of knew that we wanted to obviously put up more iconic music, junk music in the game. but we also want to put some new like a slight spin on certain things and put a new track in there but also just kind of record it with the original kind of Duke 2 style adlib in short. Yeah yeah I was going to say

to recapture that kind of sort of sound blasted sort of sound yeah so it's a little bit before Duke 3D it's kind of like that Duke 2 adlib style thing but yeah I think with Duke 1 and Duke 1 and 2

it was a case of Duke 1 never had any music and we had to we obviously had to recreate some music for Duke 2 but it was very difficult to try and keep it as original as possible

but bring Tiver of both of those titles in so for example like Duke 1 you had you had like the corridor so every time you finish a level you go into the corridor and to be honest that was quite nostalgic for me i remember like completing the level going in the corridor yeah and your secret bonuses will fly up the screen that you've got yeah

yeah yeah and obviously you didn't have that in duke two and stuff like that so um you had like the traditional kind of like intermission screen um so we kind of tried to do like this like doom style uh intermission and we try to carry it both between the games and it's kind of the same thing with the music, we kind of try in both of the games, keep them, like, consistent and keep the flow going, and not make it like a jarring experience going from one game to the other. Yeah. I think it works. The consistency is definitely there, but I don't think that it compromises the sort of different

sort of game feel. Even though it's been upgraded at six, it's, you know, it's smooth, it's wide screen. I still think that they retain the feel of the sort of respective games. Yeah, and I think, you know, again, like, Nicco did some amazing stuff. And I just remember looking back at the thing back to the process. And, you know, every day was kind of like, hey, look, I've done this. And it's like, oh, that's so cool. And, you know, we was like, we was really enjoying it.

And I remember, like, originally we just had like the classic mode and modern mode. And then I was thinking about one day about the Halo Master Chief Collection. you know, where you could, like, press select and it would switch back to, like, the original Xbox style. Yeah, hello anniversary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, we should totally do that. Let's make a button.

And then, like, Nico just put, like, this really cool kind of, like, transition effects, and it just worked. Yeah, that seems like something that would be really difficult to implement. Like, knowing nothing about coding as I do, that can't be easy. It's actually pretty simple.

Oh, right. It was, but it was such a powerful feature. And I think the best way that I love just to do it was that you load up Duke 1 and you fall through the sky in classic mode, right? So you fall down into the level and there's like no music, everything's all blocky and like clunky and then you press select and then the new soundtrack kicks in. Everything's all smooth, wide screen. It kind of blows it up. with the new parallax scrolling it blew my mind

anyway it's satisfying to see these games not only get like a re-release with that sort of care and attention paid to it but also to be remastered in that respect it's just very refreshing I mean previously it was that you could

buy them and they would run on DOSBox like if they ran you know but not anymore so that's nice and those are on just Everkavis and Super Pocket at the moment, right? Yeah, so they're just on Evercade right now.

Are they native or are they on top of... Oh yeah, they're 100% native. Right, right. Obviously, so it's like its own game engine and your own custom menu system. And I also think like not just a game, but like the extra stuff

that got added in like the collectible stats, you know? Yeah. I really added, like, play, we wanted to add as much replay value as possible. And I love the stats. Yeah, you know, and it was quite funny because Nico, obviously, making the game, had to obviously test, could you actually beat a level without taking damage? And a particular level wasn't there, Nico, where you literally had to record it to prove that it was actually possible.

Yeah. it's one of those things isn't it though that like you were saying at the start you know is this a remake is this a remaster and ego's saying well it's kind of both because yeah well you know the art and everything else has been helped and expanded and the gameplay

has been worked on to make it more modern we have put in new features that don't not only not the track from the game don't change the game but actually give you new breath into it and new ways to play it and new ways to enjoy it yeah were there any edits made to like the level layouts because I swear that the original episode one it was possible to kind of soft lock yourself if you missed like the grappling claw or something but I did was that was there anything like changed that made that possible or was it retained for sort of yeah we definitely made some changes I mean um there's it's not a lot like we overall it's very accurate to the original but um

Yeah, there's actually a soft log in Duke 2 that we fixed where you can jump over a column and then you fall down into kind of like a place where you can't get out of anymore. Yeah. And also there is one level in Duke 1 where you were forced to take damage. Like you had to jump onto a one block sized little platform with a spike on it. And so you couldn't go past it without taking damage. So things like this, we fixed. Yeah, yeah. See, when I played it, it felt authentic to me.

It's just a kind of a sort of childhood memory of getting to a level where I needed to use the grappling core of and realizing I didn't have it. But that's good to know that that's not sort of there anymore. We also, there was, sorry to interrupt, there was also another interesting thing. It was, because obviously waking things widescreen, right? So you can see a lot more of the playview. so we had a bunch of testers where and obviously we built a level editor and obviously the difficulty is

you know you got to try and follow the storyline of where Duke is apparently in you know like where is he right now so he's supposed to be in a spaceship right but then it doesn't look good if you start the level and you could see like the parallax background for example so we had to fill in tiles and stuff to make the whole kind of environment feel correct. Yeah, they basically had only designed the levels within what you could see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if you show more by making it widescreen, then suddenly you see all these holes basically where they didn't fully design a level.

Yeah, so we definitely had to fill in some gaps, especially for that stuff. And it was also interesting, Nicco, you did a lot of work, which was kind of a pain with the secret rooms especially in Duke 2. Yeah. Yeah, so basically, like, obviously on widescreen

you can kind of see the secret rooms. Yeah, yeah. So you had to hide them behind black screens, didn't we? Yeah, so I added a whole new overlay system where you can have,

like, a part of the level that disappears when you get to a certain place. Like a sort of false wall, like Sonic the Hedgedy style, kind of thing, right, right? Now I know to look for those because I didn't know that they were in June.

Now I need to wonder why I wasn't getting credit for secrets. It's a great new little system. And if we want to add in extra secret rooms in the future, then it's a great system to have, a great future. You want to add extra secret rooms in the future, do you? Interesting. Okay. I want to talk about 3D a little bit

because I think it's important because one thing I feel like the remakes did is they brought them the game the game's more in line with 3D because a huge part of 3D is obviously secret hunting like it's pretty much essential that you find at least some of the secrets and the use of the PS1 version is interesting

as I mentioned earlier because there is the extra exclusive episode based on sort of PS1 sort of franchises like Tomb Raider and stuff but I think some people would argue And, you know, again, this is not me complaining about it, but some people would argue it's not like the best version of the game, which I think is true, but was there ever an option of using another version,

or was it that you wanted to preserve that version specifically? There was multiple reasons, and I think the choice changed a couple of times, at least, in the process. And there were some technical challenges, you know, whether it be a license or a technical limitation. But then ultimately, what we realized was, is that there's already a definitive version of Duke, right? Yeah, the World Tour edition.

Yeah, gearbox did World Tour. And I think if you look at what Evercade is and what Everkate tries to do, it's every car we try to put like a classic on there, you know, like the go-to classics. But we also try and put like the weird and wonderful on there. Like there's stuff that you never play. or never heard of

or the hidden gem and stuff like that and I don't think we wanted to compete or we were never wanted to compete with like the World Core Edition but Total Meltdown as you said it's got its own unique level set

Yeah, the New World Order, yeah. And it hasn't been re-released and it's kind of like well if you're a Duke fan which I am personally I know I've got Duke 3D in about 10, 12 different ways. Yeah, precisely. Yeah, I've got...

The World Tour, I mean, if the World Tour on the Switch, you could just pick up the Switch and play on that. Exactly. And you can't play Total Meltdown on anything else, like, at all. So it's like I've even got like Megaton. I've got the Sega Saturn version of 3D. You know, I've got all of the different versions of 3D. And if you're a Duke fan, I think it's more of a case of, oh, well, I could play Total Meltdown.

It's like the definitive way to play Total Meltdown with this new unique act. I think that's what was really kind of drive that decision was if you want to play 3D, you've got World Tour, right? And I think if you want to play 3D and have like a new unique experience, that's why Total Meltdown was a great choice. Yeah, I completely agree with that.

I mean, one of the things that I found interesting with EverK, sort of a much earlier on and I can't remember I was speaking to it. So if it was you, I apologize for not, you know, but it was when the Worms cartridge came out, or was coming out, and I was confused that it was the Mega Drive version of Worms rather than the PS1.

And it was the sort of relation of like, why use like, because in my head I'm thinking, well, surely the PS1 version is full of featured and you know, better music, better everything. And it's like, no, it's not, it plays like, it does not play as well as the Mega Drive version. And that's why that was chosen. And

I remember thinking at the time, yeah, okay, I'm on board with this. They're not just going for sort of whatever's flashy. It's more fun. So I appreciated that at the time. Now, from Collection 1 or Collection 2, probably Collection 2 is the more niche collection in the total, excuse me, Time to Kill and Land of the Babes. Not that well known in the Duke series, I would say.

I mean, I love Time to Kill. I played that a lot when I was a kid, especially on multiplayer, which I'll be doing again on the VS at some point. I mean, it's just like Ryan was just saying as well about, you know, as much of, you know, total meltdown is this is a definitive version that we have on it. And, you know, it's not been represented anywhere else, neither of any of these titles. You know, this entire pre-millenium Duke Nukem era is very much one that's not been explored.

And there are various different reasons for that. over time, which have now made them available for us to be able to publish them as well. But it is a great highlight of, you know, not just that time in Duke, but that time in gaming as well. Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I'll jump in the gun slightly, but I'll come back round in that, you know, Duke Nukem advance. We're only really looking now at how good and how impressive a lot of these 3D first-person

shooter style games were on that 32 bit handheld power. You know, we looked at them at the time next to the release of the PlayStation 2 and the fast-pacedness of things like time-splitters. And we were like, well, yeah, no, of course, it's not that good of quality. But you look back on it now and you look at the work that went into them and the playability of those games, and they're great. No, I absolutely agree with that, yeah. Sorry to interrupt you. I'm just very enthusiastic about it all. It's, I mean, Time to Kill is just like, I think this unsung great for the PlayStation.

Like, that is a damn solid, fun game. and it's hard. So being able to save is a real boon for that one. To me, the best way to play that game. Yeah, and it's that time of games where, you know, there was a lot of the kind of, I mean, we call them tank control on that, which is a bit negative and not that description of it.

You know, it's very much more early 3D movement. I've just been able to work out how you use relatively analog controls around a totally 3D space. it's the things that games haven't thought of really fully through yet and you know that as gaming involved those kind of things involved but time to kill is very much a nice zenith of everything that people have learned from the puzzle platformer games at the time that were there so you know your team raiders of this world and getting on to things like your splinter cells and your siphon filters and all of these kind of things where that kind of third person genre came out of its shell a bit more But also being able to sort of look at it with that kind of satirical humorous Duke Nukami in that it doesn't need to be, you know, super serious gaming plots. It doesn't need to be long, big CGI cutscenes with voice actors and everything else is that you can do a lot of the stuff and the storytelling and the humor in the way you're presenting the game. And, you know, I'd assume like yourself, we were of a fine vintage at that age. And, you know, having that kind of fun.

Playability of the human that sort of came out of that in the start of the weapons, in the environments that they were there and the kind of progression of where you go in those environments. And then as you have already set the multiplayer element of it, the fun that we, the fun found in that, like there's one, there's one map in that which has two adjacent parallel bridges across the top of it. And what we used to do is get the freeze through and then you'd have to kind of skip across the bridge and try not to get frozen. because if you got hit in mid-air, you would shatter. Just ridiculous ways of kind of making your own fun, which I loved in that game. And that is something that you mentioned, of Jude Newcomb, is this sort of touchstone of just, like, having fun.

Because I think what it gets misrepresented as, as a result of some sort of maybe less fortunate games in the series towards the end, or the former end, I should say, it's gathered this reputation as being I guess the difference between sleazy and trashy and I think trashy is good and there's nothing wrong with B-movie

like action sort of dogged VHS tape kind of action which is what I associate Duke Newcomb with it's that silliness, you know, it's a self-aware silliness of absolutely knowing what it is and what it's doing. And that's exactly what Dukeham is and the start of it all the way down to his most famous as catchlines. It's very much a slightly

satirical pastiche on a lot of the action genres and tropes that we grew up with in the 80s and the early 90s for rents with video and be movies and video nasties and trying to find a way to make that a comical experience that doesn't dictate the experience.

The rise of popularity of like what they've termed boomers and YouTubers like Civis 11 who highlight these games. In fact, fact, they just did a video about June you come zero hour just the other day. I must ask, was there ever any hope of that getting on a cartridge zero hour? Was it considered or was it like an option at all?

I can cut it if you can't talk about it, I can cut it. It's all good. You know, I think I'll take a quick snippet from Sean, which is never say never. but again with a as of this podcast what goes live a recent edition where we now have Glover 64 out on the available on the console you know technically it is feasible so you know yeah I mean this is the thing of you know when you do any of these kind of deals and these licensing deals it's all about what's available at the time you know whenever Kateford started in 2018, 2019, and released in 2020,

we had Cade in the name, but there was no arcade games. A lot of them were the console ports, because the arcade games weren't available at the time, and they weren't able to be effectively run on the console without a serious amount of work. Fast forward to where we are now, we've got 10 arcade cartridges,

some of those, including the arcade games that we weren't able to do before. So there's an evolution of what we're able to offer, depending what's available at the time that we, signed the docted line of a lot of these things and as ryan says you know we're we're now branching out into 64 bit emulation on ever k which means you know we're going to be one of the first people to do it certainly commercially on a on a product as these games included and and emulated on there and you know it just opens doors more than yeah i mean n64 or emulation even on like a good pc is still pretty much a crap shoot so that's something else for me like uh so we're just

confirming right now he said jokingly collect junior conlection with a zero-hour Manhattan Project and the Game by Color game, and then we're done. Like, that's all we need. Could not possibly speculate on such things. It's absolutely not happening. Like, don't begin to think that. I mean, it's a good point to sort of also mention as well, like you're saying.

One of the benefits of going back to Duke New Conflations 1 and 2 is what we're able to bring to the table in making sure that these games run well in the first place. You know, time has not been kind to a lot of games from that 3D era. and certainly even more so the technology of today doesn't represent those games pretty well either but there are multiple emulators on there are multiple ways that you can emulate titles of 64 bit and 32 bit

but they're never going to be exactly the same as what you remember them because the technology is different the horsepower isn't there on some of the devices and more importantly the optimization isn't there for the specific things and we're in a good position where because we curate what we do and because we take such care into making sure we got the right games

and making sure that they work properly, like we've done with arcade and also as well, all of our other stuff where we can, we've been able to make sure that, well, what we're giving you is this game, it may be one game, but it's the game that runs them the best of what that game can do. Yeah.

Well, you had a full void recently, which was, that was that native to ever here? That was native, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My backlog is ridiculous at this point. I was about to say I need to stop buying them, but I'm not going to... Set yourself a schedule, get Retronauts streaming. Every Saturday, you know, there's polish off a cart, get it done.

Yeah, I mean, I've been meaning to start streaming, so maybe that's the excuse a car a week, yeah, exactly. I just get on Oliver Twins and piss everyone off by playing Dizzy over and over again forever. Now, okay, so moving from... Now, the Duke Nucon collection, I think we've covered that reasonably well. I mean, Land of the Babes is... follow up Time to Kill.

I want to say more of the same, but that's not a bad thing when the same is good. So I'm happy that that's now being re-released along with Time to Kill. Now, let's talk about some upcoming stuff because we've got time, I think. I mean, I will say about Land of the Base quickly because you're saying about multiplayer. I mean, both of those games, local multiplayer is available. So if you've got an Evocate VS, you'll be able to play multiplayer on those things. We actually did that the other day, and there's footage coming out on the Evocate channel. Land of the Babes actually implemented a first-person mode in its own to play, I think.

So when you're playing death match, you can run around in first person. But what it didn't do is actually make any kind of sense when it came to, like, the weapons that you have, because they're designed for third person. So you have this hilarious moment that you can pick up an RPG, and it literally takes up your entire field of you. Can't see anything, but you've also got the most explosive gun in the game just going around. That's a risk of a word right there. you're literally blind

but if anything comes near you're dead I love it. But that's the thing, there's so much fun value in a lot of these games that not just in the single player experiences but what you can do afterwards as well and play around with. They're meaty games as well like I mean time to kill not only is it nails hard

again mitigated somewhat by the fact that you can save it now without having to complete the 40 minute long levels you know but they're also just packed with hidden stuff which is the main thing for Gene Nukem for me is looking for hidden weapons and guns and secrets and like I always think about Junukum 3D

having the secret where you use the steroids to leap across the entire stage, climb up palm tree, jump into an apartment and find out every weapon in episode one. It's just so obtuse, but I love that they do it, you know, and that's carried over into all the games, even the ones

like Manhattan Project, which aren't on the evercade yet. But speaking of yet, um, it's being by the time the episode of it. But speaking of yet, um, it's not, now, not everything has been announced at this point, but it will have been by the time the episode comes out, so I think it's okay to talk about it. But, The most sort of imminent upcoming collections is the Commonwealth 64 third collection and Indy Heroes 3. Now, Indy Heroes 3, obviously there are three of those, but for second and the third one, they're made up of your games of the month, is that right, that you put out on the online service for the... Yeah, that's right. So we have a service that basically runs nine months of the year.

It's between April and December, and it's effectively a little bit of a bonus to people that have the content. on it's a nice nod to the kind of demo scene that, you know, has been kind of lost over time because of, you know, lack of no CD playing disc devices and stuff like that. Yeah, so we deliver an indie game every month for free with console update, and you have that game for the entire month. So you can play it, complete it, do what you want. And then we swap that out with another update at the next month. And that continues on for that nine months period.

so those games themselves make up part of the indie heroes cartridge that we release in the following year so it's normally about two or three months after the conclusion of the Game of the Month program from the year previous and we also throw another couple of games on there that weren't in that monthly bit so you get something familiar games that you know that you liked

because you played them when they were out and also something new as well that you've got before yeah stuff like that I love because not sort of university of the case but most of these games, it's either, you know, PC pot or Hovercade. You can only play them on a handheld that way. And, I mean, this is how I discovered Flea and Tapeworm. And I love those games.

Like, Flea, too, is on the next one. And we're right. About that. I cannot confirm nor deny, but I can say that Indie Heroes 3 has ChooMimic, which was done by Alistolo of three in TateWo and John Riggs, which I can now actually say the award-winning. Another one, Chichimit, because it won a game at the Debug Award.

a couple of weeks ago, which is lovely to see. Oh, good, yeah, that's nice to hear. That's nice to hear. Now, as well as indie heroes, the most recently announced ones would be Sunsoft Collection 2, and, oh God, what was the leaked one? I've actually forgotten.

P.C.C.C.C. Collection 4. Thanks for that game. Thanks for leaking that. Of course, by the time this goes out, it will have been officially announced, but it's all good. But Sunsoft Collection 2, obviously following up on the, well, Sunsoft Collection,

with Era the Acrobat and etc. Now, I think Sunsoft Collection, too, might be the thing that is the most geared towards me personally as an individual that I've ever seen in my entire life. Yeah, well, we got your emails. The amount of quality games on there, for me, it's like, I mean, I love,

I think Zero, the Kamikaze's Squirrel, absurd name, but it plays like a dream. It's a crazy classic, that one. Like, no one talks about it, but I love that game. And Euphoria is a little gem as well. euphoria saga. Euphoria is, I mean, it's one of those things like we say about rare games, you know, things that are difficult to get hold of, you know.

Euphoria is a prime example of that. Yeah. And there's like a Euphoria 2 coming out, I think, at the same sort of time. So it's going to kind of be a nice, like, companion piece for that as well. So how do you go about compiling, like, say, the Sunsoft collection, do you get given access to a certain, or do you request access to certain games, or do you get given access, and then you pick you pick from them or how does that work i'm kind of curious with sunsoft we actually talk directly with them yeah again this is more of like this is more what andrew does she handles the

licenses but again it's more of about a curation process and that's like making sure we tick certain boxes for every release you know the hidden gem the really fun game which you never heard of the classics and we just basically want to add value money value for your money basically and it's a kind of it's a delicate balance right where you want to have like good gameplay you want to you want to have as much time as possible potentially you know and there's a lot there and it also we also take in consideration like multiplayer you know because not everybody wants to play games by themselves. Yeah. Well, Galaxy Fight on the...

Yeah, I mean, like, Galaxy Fight, I think... I was actually... To be brutally honest, I never played Galaxy Fight back in the day. And I played it. I was like, wow, this is just like a really super solid fighter. And I think that's the kind of cool thing about Evercave, right? Is that, I mean, again, like me, I never played that game originally, but then picked it up.

wow, this is really good kind of thing, you know? Yeah, I'm looking forward to having that one because I've only played Waku Waku Waku 7, which it was cycle precursor 2, but not this. So I'm excited to give this one a go. I was the only one that I couldn't identify it from the cover. I was like, what is that? Yeah. And then a tiny bit of research later, I was like, ooh,

because that's got to be one of the biggest spreads of different systems across one cartridge that you guys have ever done. Probably until the next cart after that, yeah. I mean, we've done some stuff before where we've been able to go everywhere from 8-bit to 32-bit, which is awesome and it's fun. Yeah. You know, it's always good to have such a wide,

not only a wide variety of gaming technology, but genres that that technology allows as well. Yeah. And the next cart, you're referring to Pico Collection 4. Yeah, I mean, that's got 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and now... And 64. Yeah, okay, that's the new champion then. Okay.

So what's on this one? What's on, is that, no, will that all look at in the hospital now? So obviously the main, the main headline on that is going to be the 64 bit version of Glover, which, you know, as right by and would be able to sort of tell you a little bit more about, and we'll be talking about quite a length, already have talked about quite a length I imagine in the news and such,

but, you know, being able to recreate that game from the ground up, we're using the original source code that was done by, but yeah so we uh we collaborated uh very much like nico um we always love to work with the best right so you know we i again like just jumping back two seconds um you know i i was a big fan of nico and his work and oh thanks you're welcome and uh so we knew we wanted to work with him and so uh you know when we was working with glover it was a similar kind of deal where there's a small studio it's just started up recently called Biteswop Labs

and they're actually finishing off a game which was completely unfinished and unreleased and unreleased called Dragon Sword. Right, right. It was by interactive studios and I think it got cancelled by MGM Interactive way back in the day. But yeah, they're working on finishing that game like an actual full-on Nintendo 64 game.

And yeah, they've worked with Pico on that. So likewise, they were like the go-to guys because I obviously read about them and seen what they were doing. And yeah, so in the end, they ultimately took the original source code for Glover and rebuilt it, which, you know, some of the tools were missing.

You know, it didn't quite compile, didn't quite build. So, you know, those guys, they did amazing work. They just built up new tools, did a brand new compilation of the game. So it was all optimized and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And actually, there's a bunch of bug in the original game, production game, which they actually ended up fixing all these years later. So, no, no, I mean, like the whole glove of thing was, the game personally as well

sorry, I love the game I had Glover back in the day loved it I had the PC version as well I think but yeah no we we work with those guys

we rebuilt the game all modern optimisation so compiler time optimizations and stuff like that and yeah we because it's kind of like an Evercade release we thought it was as a joke

It started off as a joke. We replaced Mr. Tips with Kady, which is like, yeah, a mascot. And that started off as like a bit of an in-house joke. And then when actually, you know what, this is really cool, we should just do it. So now when you're playing throughout the game, it's like you got Katie, who's like that really annoying like paperclip out of office. And it's like, hey, do you want help?

Don't be disparaging my boy, Clippy. right me and him go way back yeah he's just trying he's not all right he's a lad I always change him to the little zip drive look like Wally though

yeah yeah yeah Thank you. So I've got to ask about PICO 4 because there's some interesting stuff on there, from my perspective anyway. I was fascinated to see Skull Jagger on the Super Nintendo game, Skull Jagger, because I've got to ask, are you going to be a right? recreating any of the secrets from the manual for that game because that's a game that's full of

I remember that coming with quite a big thick manual having a PDF available or something. I mean, there's only so much we can fit into the box when it comes to an advocate manual. But no, that has been taken into consideration with the way that we've written the manual and rewrite this stuff. I mean, it's one of those things that

because the internet is such a great and big place now, it's quite easy to find that original manual as a scan or something like that. It was like a novel, I think it was less of a manual and more of like a little short novel. Yeah, yeah. It was like a comic or something, wasn't it? It was just, yeah. It's like 50-odd pages.

Yeah. I know we've got a talented editorial team. Pete did that one. And yeah, I think he throughout the manual scattered like secrets and hints and stuff. So it kind of carries over the same kind of concept. that they were trying to get to with the original. But yeah, no, Skull Jagger is, again, if you put Skull Jagger and play Skull Jagger on an emulator

or you've got the cartridge without the game manual, you wouldn't know how to play it. Not really, no. You could play it, but you would miss most of the secrets that are hinted out that way. But that's good to know it's accounted for. I'm also interested in the presence of Zero Tolerance Underground, which is the formally unreleased sequel to Zero Tolerone.

right and that's an interesting one to get on there and I love zero tolerance and that was on one of the previous cards I believe yeah that was on the pico collection free makes sense I mean that that in its own right zero tolerance was a great it was a big technical achievement

back in the day you know with like this first person on the Mega Drive yes you could talk about the Duke Nukem Mega Drive Brazilian port I think Tech Toy did that originally but no it's a it's a great game and it plays well

even for today's standards right yeah I love zero tolerance like nothing is like shotgun and enemy and they just go flying back and it's hit the wall blood everywhere and it's like satisfying beyond like you don't need anything more than that really they nailed the fundamentals so everything else about it just kind of works

something I'm going to ask about sorry I was going to say I mean that's one of the great things about working with a company like Pico Interactive is that you know a lot of these games would be completely lost to time, either into legal minefields or just completely non-existence. Because, you know, PECA have been able to collate all these IPs and licenses and forgotten and drop projects, you know, we're able to then finish them.

Yeah. We're able to publish them and bring them back to a hole, you know. That's interesting, because I have seen criticism of it along the lines of, like, hoovering up all these licenses, but then I do find myself thinking, like, well, who else is going to put these games out? Like, where else are you going to get to play Tenhead and Radical Rack? and these gems, what I think are gems, you know? Yeah, I think Eli is the main guy at Pico Interactive,

and I think what he's trying to do of everything is great, you know. And we love working with Eli because I think we're able to bring out such great collections. And I think if you talk to a lot of the community at Evercade, they would all say, like, one of their favorite carts is going to be a Pico Interactive cart. I think 90 to 95% that pretty much all Evergate fans will say that Pico Interactive Correction 1 is top three cut I mean if that's the one that had Radical Rex on it then yeah

I mean that's a game I grew up playing so I was really happy to have that on there and that's how I discovered Power Pigs of the Dark Age which is shockingly good See I do remember Power Pigs I assumed it would be not good and then I played it and it reminded me if this old GBA game called Lady Seeer

and it was so similar that I went looking to see if there's any connection. I couldn't find one, but I maintain that they're probably in somewhere. I'm obsessive about these things. I apologize. Now, speaking of obsessive, you know what? Feel free, editor. This might have to be off the record, actually,

because I've got to ask, I have to. On a personal level, nothing to do with Retronauts, really, but I have to know. The game to fidgets, the Game Boy game, did you tweak that at all to make the timer slower or less unreasonable? Because that game's hard.

It would be so much less apart if the timer was just a tiny bit slower. Yeah, that game is actually really weird. Yeah, because I'm a big fan of that game. I would be a bigger fan if it was slightly tweaked. I'm just curious if you've done that. That's it. That's the comment. This game is really weird.

Yeah, there you go. That's what your editors could do. It's like, oh, what about the game? It's really weird. Next question. No, it's actually a really weird game in a sense of how it was programmed. So, like, timing and the stuff is really weird and funky because of it.

And it's also, like, the intro of the game was really difficult and weird. To the point where, you know, when you turn on the original Game Boy, you see Nintendo. Yeah. The game has to have that part of the DRM screen baked into the game intro. Right. It's super weird, but we replaced it with Blaze. oh nice well done so yeah there was some slight

adjustments to that game I think it does personally run a bit slower than what it did before but yeah good game but really weirdly made I mean yeah I like it and I think it's a lot of fun and I feel like it's to me it falls

in the same bracket as I don't know if you played Alien 3 on the Mega Drive really really fun but the time limit is such a bitch It makes it almost not worth playing Because it's just so hard So I got a friend of mine

To make it a mod of the game That has a slower timer So I have a proper version But yeah If you're doing that with the fidgets I'll be eternally grateful to you Because that game will be good Without that time limit

It's another those unfortunate Feels like they imposed it decisions You know From those ocean kind of ocean games But anyway yeah Editor feel free to cut all of that Because I don't want to be negative In any respect about this

really um well i think that's one of the things actually um whether this makes it i don't know but you know we do champion you know everybody does have an opinion on retro games they always do because it's such a subjective personal thing for everybody that's involved so you know people can be negative about some things on the collection and people can be overly positive about some yeah well i think it would be like it's the connection that these things bring yeah i mean i mean it would be you know it's probably to suggest like everyone's going to love every game when every car like that's like that's not going to happen you know um what the point is like for me is being the sort of

kind of person that I am and the kind of retrogaming sort of upbringing that I have had, I'm just fascinated when we get stuff like the Codemasters cartridge, all these games that nobody really gives love, finally getting love. The Oliver Twins one, the Bitmap Brothers, that's what I like the most about Evergate, that's what it brings for me.

I think... Even the fidgets, even the fidgets with the problems that it has. And the fact you can save state now is going to mitigate a lot of that, you know? I think that this whole thing, again, coming back to duke one and two as well yeah everybody will say oh i could play all of these and all of that but when you get like this uh this paralysis when you when you're shown like uh like a big

5 000 10 000 games uh you just don't know what to play in like a lot of the time you end up just going and play oh i'm go play mario or sonic uh i flashed a retro pie a few years ago and i just never touch it because it's like 3,000 like yeah you end up saying nothing yeah but the thing is like that's what we sell I think yeah with the cartridges is it's not games it's not about the games it's about the experience it's about the curation it's about not giving you that paralysis right and I think we're now at like 500 plus games and it is about giving these games which are really great games but unless someone put it in front of you, you would never think,

oh, I'm going to play that game. Like Power Pigs, right? Yeah. But that's what we try to do. And I think with Duke 1 and 2, another big reason why we want it to remaster it and work with Nico on it, because they are amazing games.

And, you know, if someone talks about, if you talk to anybody, he doesn't play games about Duke Nukem, there's a good chance they play Duke Nukem 3D. But we never experienced the original two games, which are amazing. Yes. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, and I think our mission statement, I guess, is Blaze, is we try to consider ourselves as like experts in retro, but we also try and put games and experiences in the limelight. And there's certainly some games which people don't like. I get that. But, you know, like, as you said, you're not going to love everything. but what we try and do is curate this experience for everybody

and that's what we try and sell with I mean I have a friend who doesn't like the chaos engine and I'm prepared to end my friendship over that like fuck off sorry imagine not liking their chaos engine I lost my time with her I apologise I love it I love it something like 10 years ago he told me that

and I'm still mad about it but then you always put it on the cartridge so thank you for that And, you know, I think that the last thing I want to ask you really is something you probably can't answer, but I'm going to give it a go anyway, because I always do. Is there anything that you can tell us that it's not known about yet, or even like something obliquely you can hint at? I can say that, you know, we've, I said we've big up this year, you know, we've said to our community, you know, there are big things coming this year. You know, our aim is obviously to always bring the best of what we are able to offer at any one time. to our fans, whether it be on cartridge

or on hardware. Evercade took a break from hardware last year. Blaise as a company, we produced a super pocket and, you know, we've opened the doors of Evercade thanks to the cartridge slot on that device. Yeah, yeah. That was a good move. I thought, Titan and Capcom, right? They're like

super pockets. Yeah, those are cool. So that, you know, we've got a much bigger family of people now to be able to bring our wares to it in that shape. You know, we're going to be doing more of a Cade Hardwood this year. We've been open about that.

So there is going to be some things that you'll see. Watch this space. There'll also be some new, bigger partners coming soon as well for a game. So again, you know, for everybody that says, you know, we've got all of these cool hidden gems and all these things that come up. But we also bring, you know, some of the biggest quality names like Duke Nukem. I mean, the XP with Mega Man X and X. and it's a super streetfighter, you know.

Yeah. So all I'm going to say is what's this space. You will know more soon. And yeah, and I think the main thing as well is, you know, we're trying to grow and we're trying to build like any kind of business and company should do. But, you know, we're blessed that we're in the gaming industry, but not exactly in the gaming industry. So while 20, 23, 24 is looking like a slightly.

despondent year for gaming if I put it that way because of the things that are going on within the industry itself. Evercade is much more about releasing a physical product. We release games on there, but it is much more about the physical products and people going back to those

kind of things, which is oddly a bit of an antithesis to where gaming appears to be heading now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a part of the appeal of the course of the whole enterprise. You know, to find the ownership of the product, you know. Exactly. And, you know, we're not the only answer to that and we're not trying to be.

You know, we very much believe that we operate in a space that everybody else can operate and we all exist with each other. It's complimentary and not competitive. And, you know, the more we can grow, the more other companies that are providing retro entertainment can grow, then the bigger this space will become and the more people will come and join our family and not only just enjoy the products that we make, but, you know, the content we provide, the way we produce the ease of the use of all of these things, and also the community that we've built across Discord, Facebook and the social media platforms of

very much like-minded people who like a good discussion, who like a good retro game, and have every bit of knowledge from very knowledgeable to not as knowledgeable and all come together and discuss regularly about what they like and dislike and want to see. So it's a very nice place to be in a world of gaming where sometimes it isn't as nice. It can be quite unpleasant. Agreed. And thank you very much for all of you for coming on. I really appreciate it. I hope to do more of a case stuff in the future.

I'm looking forward to what's coming. So yes, all the best. Thanks again. I'm sure we'll speak again at some point. And yeah, good luck with all of it. And to all of our listeners, I implore you, give it a go. It's very good. You can get dizzy on there, lads.

Come on. Hello, it's me again, Stuart Jep. You may have heard my voice quite a lot through that, but I'm afraid I'm very sorry to say that there's going to be a tiny bit more of it now because I need to explain to those. listeners who aren't on the Patreon why they should join it. I need to make it very clear to them that it's very much in their best interests to do so. See, for a mere $5 a month, which is honestly, when you think about it, it's nothing. It's next to nothing. It's next to

nothing. It's so little money. Like, seriously, message me. I'll borrow you the $5. I won't, don't message me. I'm not giving you $5. But listen, you should do it because you get some really good stuff and you know that the other patrons will surely agree with you because not only you do you get each of the weekly episodes a full week early allowing you to be clued in and all the latest retro gaming talking by us you also get has it is it clear yet that i'm not very good at doing this does that come across i fear that whenever i come to do this part of the episode i really blow it i make a huge hash of it and so far this isn't this i mean i could stop and re-record this at any point but i'm choosing not to so i want you to know

how badly I've been positioned in reading this stuff out. But it's that personal touch that I think brings people to Retronauts and therefore brings people to the Patreon, which, again, for a mere $5, you'll get the weekly episodes, a whole week early, you're going to get Diamond Fights this month in Retronauts columns, sorry, this week in Retronauts columns, not even this month in Retronauts. That's the podcast that we do, which you also get,

but you get this week in Retronauts columns, and you get them recorded as podcast as well, really well, I might add. but so you can sit there and you can think you know what weekly episodes and a whole new monthly podcast a community podcast that's great um and those columns why they're just the icing on the cake but surely stuart surely there's nothing more oh but there is because you're also getting too exclusive brand new only on the patreon feed new episodes brand new episodes about exciting subjects that otherwise wouldn't be covered and you know the free people don't don't even get to listen to those and they're the best episodes they're the best episodes of the lot. So you want to listen to that. You want to get hold of those. You want to get all that stuff for a mere $5 $5? You know, you want to spend that $5 on what? Like a second-hand

funco pop of like a dog from some TV show that you like? Well, don't do that. Just get on the Retronauts Patreon and, you know, lap up all the goodness that we're dribbling into your bowl. Oh, that sounds disgusting. I think it sounds really bad now. Feast on the goodness that we're delivering

to your very well-placed table in a beautiful restaurant that is Retronauts. That is the world of podcasting. So that's tons of new episodes, tons of early episodes, tons of columns, and the community podcast. What more could you ask for? Nothing. And if you do ask for more, then quite frankly, I think that you've got eyes bigger than your stomach and you're going to spoil your tea. Thanks very much, once again for listening. I've been Stuart Jep, and there will be other people on future episodes who aren't me. So, you know, be brave.

Thank you. Thank you.