Retronauts - 618: The World Ends With You

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Jeremy Parish, Kat Bailey, and Stuart Gipp put on their trendiest threads and rub Hachiko's nose for good luck as they work their way through the Shibuya-shaped maze that is Square Enix's iconoclastic DS classic The World Ends With You. 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 Retronaut is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-purpose DIY website platform for pros and beginners alike. This week in Retronauts, take that Hiroshi Yamuuchi. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. If you'll think back a long time ago, more than 25 years ago, you'll remember that time when Squarespaceoft and Nintendo had a schism. They didn't like each other for a while. Squarespace started to hit it really big on PlayStation with some RPGs. And people asked Nintendo's president Hiroshi Yamuuchi about that. And he said, you know what? We don't care. Because people who enjoy RPGs are depressed losers who dye their hair brown and sit in their room by themselves playing video games alone. And that's not our people. Well, this week we're talking about the video game where Squarespaceoft said, you know what? That is our people and we're going to make a game about them. That game is the world ends with you about a depressed loser who learns that

actually you have to not be alone. You have to work with other people and that the world is what you make it. It is the world ends with you. And I am Jeremy Parrish. The world does not end with me because I have my companions here for this game. Two of them is breaking the rules. What are the Reapers going to say? I don't know. But calling in from the West Coast of America, we have returning to the podcast for the first time in a while, I think, or maybe it's just an episode that you've been on that I haven't lately. Hello, it's Kat Bailey. And I promise that this podcast will be so Zeta enjoyable. excellent and what about you Stuart oh my god I gave it away sorry please introduce yourself

anyway even though Jeremy well I forgot the spoiler warning how long have you been doing this days maybe hours okay well obviously I'm Stuart Jip and unfortunately the world does end with me so you know get your things together I suppose yeah once you're gone that's it for everyone I didn't say anything about myself, but as everyone knows, I am so superficial, dressed up all-official. And that's the great thing about the world ends with you is that it's a little bit of everything to everyone. It is one of the most complicated, not necessarily complex games on Nintendo DS. It is an action RPG that tries to do about eight or nine things at once with all these different systems. But when you stop and look at them, they all make sense and they all work together and they all

reinforce the theme of the game. It's one of those cases where this game should be a goddamn mess. And yet, it all just clicks. It all works. And it stands out as one of the strongest games from the Nintendo DS, an era where Square Inix was pretty much, you know, hitting it out of the park left and right. And even so, this is, this is, you know, top form for them. Just a really great video game. And, you know, it's been enduring enough that it's been remade a couple of times. There was a sequel a few years ago that no one knows about, talked about, or played, including me. But it was there. It did happen. I saw it on the internet. And, you know, you can believe everything you see on the internet these days, because everything online is very

truthful. So, figuratively AI confirmed, you know. Yes, yes. No. No, Google Chat told me that there were five or six sequels, and the first of them was actually created by President William McKinley in 1731. So, you know, if Google AI says it, it's got to be true. Yeah. Anyway, Kingdom Hearts. No, I mean, the world ends with you. It kind of looks like Kingdom Hearts, but it's not. Thank God.

I got excited then. Sorry about that, Stuart. No. This is like an honorary Kingdom Hearts game. away because it is really messy, overcomplicated, and it's made by almost all the same people who made the Kingdom Hearts games. But it does not have, so far as I know, any narrative or mechanical or real conceptual ties to Kingdom Hearts. It's just got that vibe. I think it's technically the same canon now at this point. There's been a lot of talk about that.

We saw in Kingdom Hearts 4 that the main character is now in sort of real world, Tokyo, and the world ends with you figured into the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 in places as well. Please fact-check me, fans, and tell me how wrong I am on social media. I love hearing about that. So when you say the Kingdom Hearts 4 shows the protagonist in the real world, Is it like, you know, video footage, like actual film camera footage? No, it's sort of... Not quite, but it is very reminiscent of that Simpson's Halloween special

where Homer falls from the sky into the real world, into the trash can, and discovers, what was it? Erotic cakes. Erotic cakes. Thank you, Stuart. I appreciate you for that. It's definitely more realistic. I know that the world ends with you showed up in Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop.

distance. Yeah, one of the world's is dedicated to it. One of the, one of the bad, kind of one of the badder ones. I know that Kingdom Hearts fans don't like that one. So, and then that was a big deal at the time because Nomura seems to have Kingdom, the world ends with you sort of close to his heart and was wanting to make a new game for a long time. That was his way of sneaking it in.

It was like, here we go. Now they're in Kingdom Hearts, I guess. Yeah, there were these kind of. of, we'll get to it, I assume, but there were these kind of drips and drabs like the iPhone port ends with like a really basically super, I don't know what the word is, superficial kind of teaser as if to say this might be more of this at some point, but nothing much more than that. And then it was another, what, 10 years until anything happened? Pretty much, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like, you know, they finally got to make their kingdom heart, or World Ends with You sequel, but Neo didn't really go anywhere or do anything. And I think that's really because the incubator that made for a perfect existence for the world ends with you no longer existed. It was very much a game about a time and a place and a platform. And when you take that away, whatever you have, is it really kingdom heart? God, I'm going to keep doing this all through the show. Okay, I need to scroll the words kingdom hearts off of my screen.

Okay, there we go. Is it really the world ends with you once you take away the time, the place, and the platform? I don't know. It's very much a game that was built for the Nintendo DS. It did a lot of interesting and revolutionary things with the hardware and with kind of game design. One of the things that I will keep going back to in this episode is that in some ways the world ends with you out persona's persona. That will probably make some people angry. But I'm sticking to my guns. I believe it from the bottom of my heart. It's absolutely true. I think it's a game that really, I mean, it says something that the subsequent versions of the game, the phone version and the switch version, I mean, there are acceptable ways to play it, but they just don't have, you just don't vibe with it the same without the stylus, without it in your hand. Even with the more confusing stuff, like the two screens being used for your co-op partner, being confused by that is part of the experience. Like, the fact that when I played it, I was basically just mashing the buttons and hoping something would happen on the top screen while frantically scribbling. It's so built for that platform, everything about it. So the thing that you eventually probably should learn about the world ends with you.

You needed it again. I almost did it again. I caught myself, though. The thing you really need to come to realize as you play that game is that you don't need to do anything with the person on the top screen. You can just leave them alone and they'll be fine. There's like maybe two or three battles in the game where you really have to pay attention to both screens. but the rest of the time, just let them do their thing and focus on the touch screen. It's one of those cases where they made it super complicated and it seems overwhelming,

but I think somewhere along the way, they realized this isn't realistic for people to control two different characters using two different forms of input against, you know, two different types of enemies, using two different sets of powers all at the same time. So let's just automate the top character. So that's a good use of AI. And I think one of the things that I really enjoyed about the top screen is that each character that you get on a week-to-week basis is a little bit different from another. And you steadily unlock more abilities for the Emmys to go. So it really gamifies this sense of when you get a new partner, you go, I don't know how to make you be able to do the most amount of damage that I can.

I feel a little out of sorts, what's going on, and it kind of puts you in the shoes of Neku as that happens. And then as the week progresses and your pairing becomes stronger, slowly, but surely also you become much more comfortable controlling the person on the top screen. And I think the later mobile ports really lose that. And that is why you should never play mobile games. Just DS. Something was lost when they took away the second screen. I really, I know it's not going to happen, but Switch 2 needs to be called Switch 2 because it has two screens. It should be called Switch 2DS.

That's not about what this episode is about. This episode is about The World Ends with you. And I have to ask, in the Retronaut's tradition, what was your first experience with this game? What was your first awareness and, you know, time playing it? Stuart, I'll start with you. Oh, thank you, Jeremy. Well, I mean, I first saw it in the UK official Nintendo magazine when it was being previewed. And immediately, just from seeing the screenshots, you're kind of like, what is that?

Like, it looked so different from anything else. so super stylized and contemporary, you know, unlike most RPGs, which are, like, you know, you've got like a little wizard's hat and a little stuff and you're waving it at like a bush, and that's boring. I don't like RPGs as a rule. I've got nothing against them. I just, they don't feel their own vibe with them. But this one, I, for some reason, I was compelled to buy it.

I think probably advanced buzz, you know, about how good it was. And I thought, yeah, it looks cool. I want to see those graphics. I have got student grant burning a hole in my pocket. I'm going to buy this game, which was a mere thing. 30 English pounds at the time, unthinkable now. So I throw it on and I play through the whole thing and I just, I don't do that with RPGs.

I never finished them. And this one I made it all the way through despite all these complex systems, but I never really fully understood. I don't think I fully understood the food system until quite late in the game. I don't think I took full advantage of the systems, but one of the good things about it is you don't have to, as has been mentioned with the co-op partner, you can sort of lead them to their own devices if you want to. when I was like finding with Sheiki

she's got those ESP cards they have a specific name but I can't what it is where you have to draw like a certain pattern by right right up right to do an attack so what I as I mentioned all I would end up doing is frantically scribbling with my pins on the button screen while mashing the D-pad and every so often something cool would happen

so it really works on that sort of level of almost sort of layman I don't know what I'm doing but I love how cool this is I love how interesting this story is and how great everything has been drawn but it also works on that complex I want to get my teeth fully into this I want to learn all of its idiosyncrasies

all of its secrets and I want to wring everything out of it I want to win 10 pin mode in the post game I want to be the best I want all 300 pins but that's not for me but if you want to do that it's there I think it's for all its complexity

I think it's extremely accessible which is rare even for someone who doesn't play the genre I found myself I found it quite easy to understand the way that the tutorials are sort of laced into the narrative as well. And it's just immediately compelling the story of being able to repelible's thoughts by tapping the screen and then just tapping through their thoughts.

And all of it's just kind of flavor. You don't need to do that all the time, really. But if you feel like it, you can just find out about all these weird things people are thinking about. So it appeals to me on that level as well. It's not like a huge world. It's quite compact. But they get so much mileage out of it, just ringing everything. out of every little space.

And there's only a few characters, but they're all quite interesting and fun. And the bosses are nice and over-the-top and eccentric. And I just liked everything about it. And I finished it, which I never do. So that's like a 10 out of 10 right there. Yeah, I feel like this is one of those games where you really have the option, the ability to invest as much of yourself into it as you want. And you can play through it and, you know, pretty much finish the game without necessarily.

going deep into the systems. But if you really get the systems, then you have the option to you know, dig into the storyline. You also have the option to challenge yourself by the way you initiate battles. So, you know, if you really do get the battle system and you really want to get the most out of it and just test to see how well you can handle both of the play styles simultaneously, you can chain together enemy encounters and they will become progressively more difficult. And, you know, that leads to greater rewards, but it's not something you have to do. The game does not force you to chain together, like, super difficult battles if that's not how you want to play. So it kind of lets you engage it on its own, on its own terms, or on your

own terms, really, and get as deep into the systems as you want. So, you know, that's, I feel like that's a sign of not just a good game, but also a confident, like a self-confident game. And really, of confidence is a key mechanic in this game. So it kind of works. Can I mention real quick, sorry. From what you said about the customizable difficulty, I want to say that, not to mention the forbidden words, I'm afraid I have to, but Kingdom Hearts recoded on the DS a few years later, adopted that sort of, to adopt, like, a minuscule difficulty, like setting,

sliders, all sorts of ways to change things up, get more rewards. And even, like, 358 days over two had a similar mechanic going on. So they did carry a lot forward from this game, but just not in exactly the same way, I suppose. Yeah, I think the sliding difficulty is actually one of the bigger contributions this game has made because there have been other modern games that have adopted it as well as just the ability to set the difficulty level and then you get really good rewards if it's really high up. But maybe it's just you don't want to deal with this at a given moment, and then you set it way down at the bottom.

Yeah, and also, you know, the way you collect trends, pins and shape trends through fashion and things like that affect the overall world. Two years later, Demon Souls would call this world tendency, but it was invented here, people. Dark Souls would not exist without the world ends with you. I like this narrative. This is a good narrative. Oh, yeah.

Where did you first experience an encounter and play this game? game, Kat. Were you living in Japan at the time? I was, in fact, living in Japan at the time. And I spent a lot of time in Shibuya, actually. I was hanging out there on the regular. This game came out in 2008. And I was definitely paying attention to it because I played the Nintendo DS kind of the most while I was living in Japan. I didn't really, I had a Wii, but I didn't really have the next-gen consoles. And I think you'll remember that this was a pretty bad time for Japanese games in general. This may have been the year that the Mega Man developer at Unifune said that the Japanese games industry was dead.

And we were a couple years into the H.T. Generation Square had had some, like, fairly notable failures on the PS3. And everybody's kind of going, so what the heck is going on? And the world ends with you is this intriguing game on the Nintendo DS. a lot of Japanese developers are moving over to the Nintendo DS at this time. I think Dragon Quest might have been announced for the Nintendo DS around this time. It was before this, yeah. Ninja Guidin was coming to the Nintendo DS. And so there was definitely a sea change happening.

And the Square is working on this sort of beautiful-looking game for the platform. And I picked it up right away, basically. and I was so impressed by it because it really packed in a lot of production value for at that time for that system. First of all, things like the opening cut scene where you see Neku running through Shibuya and it's playing the main theme,

which is vocalized, and it's kind of fully animated. it was really impressive for the time and just really stood out. So in that sense, it immediately grabbed me. And then because I spent so much time in Shibuya, I passed through it every day on the way to work when I was commuting and stuff. It gave me a really strong sense of place. I felt grounded and I knew the area immediately and the topography was roughly the same and it really leans into the setting really well.

Uh, things like, um, I have so, my memory is really bad right now. The dog statue that's very famous, Hachiko, thank you. Stuff like Hachiko being included right from the very start. The way that the shops, you interact with the shop owners, you were talking about the trends, the way that fashion is a huge deal at all of the recognizable, uh, locations, uh, from the scramble crossing to the 104 building, get it? It's a 104 because four means death. Yeah.

But if you move around the actual area, if you know Shibuya, you'll be able to navigate it really well. So I instantly recognized and identified and really enjoyed this particular space. And now when I look back at it, it really takes me back to that very specific point in time in Japan, late 2000s, the fashion. the music, Shibuya itself, and it gives me really big nostalgia. And it's kind of funny, Neo, the end world ends with you, actually leans into that pretty heavily, leans into the 2000s nostalgia and whatnot. But it hits much harder in the original world ends with you, not the least, because I like the character designs more, which are very exaggerated.

And I'm sure we'll be talking about that and just at some point. Due to the way to less to less to be honest There was a dream Bell's society In the immunity Cornett and speedy In town flows Float flowed to your home

Drapped by the palm of the dream The poor is yet unknown Mooney rays Years and Queens Due to the way to nest To rest honest Honest there was a dream There was society

In unity Cornette be spin a bit So flows Flood through the home Drop by the palm of the dream The par is yet unknown Everyone, Jeremy here with another old person's story. The internet has come a long way since I put together my first web page,

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That's Squarespace.com slash R.E. P-T-R-O. Don't tell the other retronauts I said this, but not everything was better in the past. Yeah, I think choosing Shibuya as their, like the setting of this game, was a really smart choice to make this game appealing on an international level. Because obviously, like, if you're a kid in Tokyo, you know, you know Shibuya. You go there because that's where the record shops are and they use clothes. shops and the clubs and arcades, maybe not so much anymore, but it's just, you know, like kind of one of the main hotspots for cool things to happen. But, you know, back with the movie Lost in Translation, that kind of introduced, I think, the international world to the scramble crossing and just that iconic image of so many people converging and crossing paths, you know,

kind of in time with each other and just this press of bodies and masses. And, you know, starting with that, I think there was just more awareness of, like, that as sort of one of the iconic images of Tokyo. So setting a game in that location, even though, you know, most people in the U.S. and Europe, playing this game had never been to Tokyo, didn't know the place personally, they could still identify with it and say, oh, yeah, I've seen that in the movie. And, you know, for people who had been to Tokyo, oh, go ahead, Stuart. No, I was just going to, sorry, I was just going to say, like, as well as the lost in translation. And I think it was introduced to me by a wee man getting into a giant traffic cone and blocking all of the scramble in Jackass the movie. I just wanted to bring the tone down slightly while also contributing. Yes.

Thank you for basically bringing the Stewart to this episode. No problem. Stuart, have you been to Japan? No, I really want to go, though. I think it would be cool. I don't know why I think it would be cool. I guess I've played a lot of video games that make it seem like it would be cool. I don't recommend putting a traffic cone or whatever in the middle of the scramble crossing that might not go over particularly well.

Yeah, I'll scratch that off my list then. Thank you. Okay. But yeah, I mean, for myself, you know, when this came out 2007 and Japan 2008 here, I had been traveling a couple of times a year to Japan for work. And when I was at OneUp.com, we always stayed at the Mark City Hotel XL right there. right, you know, like you take a glass elevator ride up to your room and you look down at the scramble crossing. So it's kind of like centrally located very much in the heart of things. So I knew that station fairly well, maybe better than anything else in Japan at that point, having been there half a dozen times. So when I picked up the game, I was like, oh, wow.

Like, oh, it's the, it's the Moai heads. Oh, yeah, I know this, this like shop. I know this intersection, this area on the backside of the station and so forth. And it was really fun to, um, actually the next time I went to Japan for a trip, I think it was the, maybe it was the event that Square Enix had whose name, I cannot remember. It was just a bunch of letters strung together. I think Sigma was in there someplace. That was summer 2008. And I just took a camera around and shot all the different places that you could see in the game and put a blog about it together for the site. And I've written hundreds, thousands of blogs in my life, and I don't remember most of them. But that was one I do remember because I was, was like, wow, this is, you know, a rare chance for me to kind of, like, navigate a video game in real life. So that was, that was a, you know, it worked on that level too. But even if you don't know the actual physical locations that the game is set in, it still resonates just because, you know, it's, it ties in with kind of that soft power pop culture image of itself that Japan likes to sell. And it is very much a, it's a snapshot of a time and place because the

Shibuya that existed at the time of this game is not the Shibuya that exists now. They totally rebuilt it in advance of the 2020 Olympics that didn't actually happen. And like there are still some familiar sites. Like the Moai heads are still there on the flip side of the building from Hachigo. But most other parts of Shibuya have been just like leveled and then built into new high-rise buildings. There's so much there. Every time I go there, I've been there maybe like four or five times since it was rebuilt. And every time I find something new and I get lost in a new and different way that I had never experienced before. So, like, this game, it's nostalgic in a few different ways, one of which is like not only does this platform, the DS no longer really exist, but like the place that it took place in, the setting, the environment doesn't actually exist anymore.

So it is very much like, hey, here's a moment in time from 15, 20 years ago, and that's been kind of preserved in this video game, which is something you don't really see a lot in video games. Honestly, you know, you might have fictionalized New York or L.A. or something in Grand Theft Auto, but you don't get a lot of like real recreations of a place, a popular, well-traveled place in video games. And so I think that kind of... of adds to the wistful sunrise, sunset, you know, life is passing on kind of the value of this game. Yeah, Jeremy.

And I think it really ties into Nintendo DS nostalgia. I think that when I think Nintendo DS, the world ends with you, is very much one of the first games that comes to mind. And it's not just because it uses so many of the sort of interesting. interesting little quirky touch screen and microphone and dual screens and everything. It's that it had a time and a place where the Nintendo DS was sort of ubiquitous in Japan. It was pre-smartphone. And if you went on the trains, every other person would have a Nintendo DS with them would be playing or PSP

because they were starting to really play a lot of Monster Hunter at that time. But, and you just don't see that as much anymore. If you go on the train in Japan, you're probably, you might see somebody with a switch, but probably you're going to see a lot of people playing on smartphones because it's the year 2024. And I just have really fond memories of sitting on the train and playing this game with my headphones on. If I could get a seat or going to a do tours and ordering a tuna and cheese

andando and playing some of the world ends with you on my lunch break. and that kind of thing. So really, really is a big connection point for me personally. Yeah, actually, I remember just, I just remembered when I wrote that blog. I went on vacation to Japan, Tokyo and Kyoto and some of the surrounding cities like NARA in March 2008. So it was before the game came out in the U.S., but after it had been out for a while in Japan. And I remember, now that you mention it, on that trip, I would be playing DS games on the train. And anytime I was playing something, like, if there was someone sitting next to me, I could feel them sort of surreptitiously craning to see what I was playing. Like, so what's this tourist playing on here? Huh, Bon Gaya. That's interesting. Yeah. So it was really a ubiquitous part of the culture there. And one thing that I think is kind of overlooked about this game. game, at least that I don't hear anyone talking about, because who talks about this game, really, is the fact that in some ways it kind of pioneered technologies and concepts that would become

integral to the 3DS platform when it shipped. This was maybe the first game I can think of besides Nintendo Dogs, which had, you know, bark mode to encourage you to put your game system to sleep with the game still running and allow, you know, passive communication to have. happen, but also just to keep it going in the background, because the most efficient way to level up your character through the pins that they equipped was just to put the game system into sleep and let it sleep overnight. And the time that passed would translate into PP, I believe, pinpoints that would upgrade the pins that you use for your attacks and your buffs and things like that. So that was really kind of pushing you to make this game your constant

companion to take your 3DS with you everywhere you went and just to never take the game out of the system, never to turn off the system. And, you know, Square Nix would build on that even more with Dragon Quest 9. Like that was a genuine phenomenon, three or four, two or three years before 3DS came out, two years, I guess. When did 3DX? came out. Was it 2011 or 2013? 2011, I want to say this year that it came out. It's all fuzzy now in my old brain. Okay, so

three years, four years before 3DS came out, then two years later it was Dragon Quest. So yeah, Dragon Quest 9 kind of did like street pass and did it right before that was a formal thing that existed built into the hardware. So

this was a, you know, a pretty critical step along that path to the greatest, coolest, most important feature of the 3DS and one that has been sadly lost by all video game systems of the modern era and we can never go back as a society and we should probably just, you know, give it up now. It's over.

You're the people, hear the voices, they are reaching out to catch you. Feel the rhythms, hear the noises, you are meeting all the dishes. So is it anew? Is it anew? Whispery and my ears? Is it an illusion?

Is it an illusion? I need to be with you. So, No, not Kingdom Hearts. Let's try this again. So, the world is... Oh, my gosh. So leave this in.

No. No, no. So I wanted to say, like, let's talk about the creative staff who worked on the World Ends with you, the sort of lead staff, almost all of whom came from Kingdom Hearts. So Kingdom Hearts is relevant again here. I mean, kind of the obvious person that we associate with this game and Kingdom Hearts, Katz already mentioned him, was Tetsu Yonomura, who, is he actually a Square Inix employee or is he freelance? The way I kind of understand it is that he sort of exists. independently from square Inix yet also he is like their their linchpin It's really weird I don't get it

I mean Yuji Hori is the same way But that's that arrangement was You know kind of built that way from the start With Inix back in the 80s Nomura you know he was like Hey I'm going to draw a cool ninja And a gambler with scars for Final Fantasy 6 Okay now I'm a superstar

Everyone must wear zippers Anyway He was the producer on this game. I don't know what that means. That can mean so many things. But he was also the character designer for like the three or four main characters. So obviously you've got the Nomura. But the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty, the people who really, you know, had to spend time working in the salt mines and not sleeping for months on end. They also all came from the kingdom hearts world. So the people I want to call out are Tatsio Kondo, who, worked as an animator and animation director on all three PlayStation 1 Final Fantasy games and Paris I'd Eve. And then basically from that, he parlayed that success into becoming the animation lead on pretty much anything that has ever shipped under the name Kingdom Hearts. Like, if you love or hate the way animation looks in Kingdom Hearts, Tatsuia Kondo is your man.

You can blame or praise him as is your want. Makes a lot of sense that animation directors ended up running this game because the art style and the animation very centered in this game. So I'm not surprised to see that they have that much history and that they personally chose to, in many ways, push the Nintendo DS as far as they really could from a 2D standpoint. Yeah, and I feel like this game, the concept, the narrative, the setting, the characters, they all feel more like manga than

they do video game. Like, this is a role-playing game in a lot of senses, but it doesn't feel like it draws like its narrative and character inspiration from that genre. It feels like it comes from the kind of manga that would have been popular around this time, something like Death Note, or it's even almost a sort of Proto Isakai in that you die and you awaken, you the main character awakens in a new world. It's just that the new world is the same world he lived in, but he's like a ghost in it, and he's kind of shifted a little bit, but he still has to, like, you know, team up with people and fight his way through battles and find plots and things like that.

So it kind of touches on the sort of style and trends that would become very popular in manga a few years later, but we're still just kind of budding into existence around this time. So, yeah, yeah, like the connection there to, animation makes sense. The co-director, Tomohiro Jose Gawa, was also the lead animator on Chain of Memories and various other Kingdom Hearts that came after that. That also makes sense coming from the portable tradition. He didn't work on Kingdom Hearts 1, but he did get involved with the Game Boy Advance game and kind of jumped into the series from there. And of course, you know, it makes sense to have the portable Kingdom Hearts animator guy working on this

portable, Kingdom Hearts adjacent game that draws so heavily on animation. It makes sense. I mean, Chain of Memories, the GBA version, the combat in that game visually and the combat in the World Ends with View are very, very similar fields. Obviously, the execution is different, but I can see that there is kind of a direct line between those two games, which is good because Chain of Memories kicked us, and so does this. Let's see, the planning director was Takeshi Aracawa, who developed the

UI for mini Kingdom Hearts games. I actually consider this man my mortal enemy because I really hate the user interface of Kingdom Hearts. It is my number one bugbear with that series and why I do not like playing those games. You know something against comic sense, Jeremy? I'm not just talking about like the visuals. I'm talking about the way the interface actually works, the way you control stuff. Like that stupid, you know, you're navigating menus in real time while also controlling your

dudes. Like, that has to go away. Like, they did that in a Castlevania game, too, limit of innocence. Like, no, that's not okay. You're, you're making my brain do different things and I am, I need to regiment things. I need to partition things. This does not work for me. Please stop. So yeah, he's, uh, he's my nemesis. The one person who did not come from kingdom hearts before working on the world ends with you, but instead went from the world with you to working on Kingdom Hearts, was Gen Kobayashi, who basically designed all the characters that Tetsuya Nomura did not. So I guess when the budget ran out to pay Nomura his freelance stipend or whatever, I don't know how it works, but he stepped in and took care

of all the rest of the characters. And then finally, the true hero of this game was Takeharu Ishimoto, the lead composer, who had already worked on Kingdom Hearts games, basically doing the stuff that Yoko Shimomura did not and basically said what if I created one of the greatest soundtracks ever made for a video game and stuck it on a DS cartridge? The madman pulled it off. My God, I don't know what he

what like crazy drugs he was taking or magic spells he was wielding, but he pulled it off. The soundtrack in this game is phenomenal. It's so good. And it's on a DS card. Yeah. It's pretty, yeah, it's wild. Yeah, I really elevated this game. And I think maybe it's the main reason that anybody remembers it is just how great it was to put on headphones and really enjoy it.

And I can't believe how much music they packed into this game. It wasn't just a handful of tracks that played over and over again. The soundtrack evolves as you go. There are more songs that appear as you get into the next week and the week after that. and the remixes of the battle themes in there, a stunning number of really strong kind of high-resolution tracks for a Nintendo DS game. It's quite impressive how much they were able to get on this cartridge.

I mean, what amazes me is there's not even one of the largest DS cartridges. It's like half the size of some of the bigger Pokemon games and things like that. And, I mean, I know there's a lot crammed into them, but the music in the, sorry, go on. it doesn't even sound compressed either no well I would say I would say where it does it almost works as in the kind of fadey

kind of dreamy kind of feel you know these vocals that are just kind of behind all the sound effects when you were raising the noise and stuff I think it works so well and everything just sort of I hate using this word but everything just synergizes perfectly it's such a

it's such a like bowl of lightning this game just this one little cartridge, all this stuff on it that we never saw the likes of again, ever, even on the PS4 a few years ago, we never saw the likes of it again. Destiny, you are on my side. Just once one to the prestige event was more. Yeah, this is, there's something about older game systems where the technology wasn't quite there to do everything they wanted to do.

It creates a sort of liminal feel, almost, like the visuals in Metal Gear Solid, where no one actually has a face. Or, you know, you think back to PlayStation games that have this sort of empty soundtrack, like there's this kind of sparseness to the audio. I'm thinking like Mega Man Legends where there's like a little bit of ambient hum or something and then you hear like the Reaver bots activating and stomping around in the darkness. But that's really all the sound there is. And it's just like there's this sort of sparseness to it.

And this, you know, I think the DS was really the last platform that could really capture that, that had, you know, the limitations necessary. maybe capture it's the wrong way. Maybe it's just, you know, it unavoidably suffered from that. But I would argue that the word suffer is not correct because it just, it adds something to it, something evocative to the experience that you can't capture with higher fidelity. Yeah. I don't know. Like, I don't know if everyone who is, you know, kind of cut their teeth on higher definition, higher fidelity experiences can necessarily.

appreciate that. But I feel like if you were there, and this was kind of the cutting edge of what you could experience in a certain space at the time, like, it kind of imprints on you. And it still feels sophisticated and advanced, even though it's obviously, you know, barely holding together at the seams and could be done so much more easily and so much more effectively now, but I feel like that perfection and effectiveness takes something away. So, yeah, I'm right there with you, Stuart. I think that, like, there's a reason that indie developers are creating games like Frogun or Lunestess or Crow Country that consciously emulate those low-poly games.

Like, when a PS1 game, like Mega Man Legends, for example, would lean into its limitations and create sort of an atmosphere from them, that was something else. And the DS, having its rudimentary 3D capability, gives it a look of, an odd look, an angular look, that the 3DS, by sort of upping the fidelity and trying to be more like the Wii you or the Wii, kind of lost. I mean, looking at like the original News of Mary Brothers versus News of Mary Brothers 2, where the original was kind of heavily leaning on sprites still to create this odd in between kind of atmosphere. I'm just going to, I'm just repeating what you're saying, so I'll end it now with no real through light. But, yes, I mean, I think this game overcomes that by being so stylized in every respect and having so much thematic synergies, there's that word again, that you don't really notice the limitations.

And it's why when you play it on a more modern system like the Switch, it don't quite feel right because they've up-resced everything, like even the fonts and everything. And it just doesn't look right when it's not pixelated. Yeah. And it's the same with Neo, the world ends with you, which tries to recapture a lot of the style and the look with, them with cell shading and such.

But at the same time, it's fully 3D. And maybe it doesn't hit in the same way, I think. But that's also because I like 2D games. That's why I'm here on Retronauts talking about them. I mean, there is something to be said for the 2D

in this game. Like the sprite work and the graphics are so nicely designed. And there's so much happening on screen at a single time. There's all kinds of effects and things. flying around. So it's like very active, almost hyperactive, but it never feels busy or

confusing because everything is drawn so clearly and so cleanly. It really hits that sweet spot of like, we're not tied by the limitations of how many sprites we can push, but we are tied, you know, hands are tied by the resolution of the sprites. So let's just make a lot of great-looking sprites and just throw everything onto the screen. Also, the story moments are very active. It's not a basic text box. It does a lot of kind of manga with lots of like panels sliding in and sliding over and up and down. So there's so much movement happening in any given time. Characters are moving across the screen. So you feel like you're watching an actual cutscene instead of having a little head in a box or something to that effect. And I think it's

very effective. And then when you're actually in the battles, the sprites are quite large and detailed, especially when you get into some of the end boss battles, like when you get to the end of a week and you're fighting someone particularly big. I remember the first boss is quite large and I think takes up both screens. So it really, it really stands out on the Nintendo DS for sure. This makes me going to go play a bunch of DS games. You know, I really, we kind of touched on this, but I really think it's admirable that this game, basically does everything that the DS can do, except maybe, you know, put out a lot of 3D graphics. But it was designed around dual screens. It was around both physical controls

and touch controls. It makes use of multiplayer. It makes use of the microphone inputs. It makes use of a, you know, proto street pass wireless feature. Like, if the DS could do it, the world ends with you does it. And it still doesn't feel overstuffed, you know, like the mini-game. You don't have to play those, but you know, you can and it will give you benefits that translate into the actual single player experience, which, you know, the multiplayer also does that, which kind of puts it ahead of all the little mini games and like the Mario 64 DS and that sort of thing, where it's just like, here's some stuff you can do multiplayer that's not part of the game, but go ahead and do it because it's just a thing that we could do. like it actually feels like this stuff is integrated into the game loop and it's not compulsory but there are advantages to making use of it which is nice i think for a game that's got a overhanging time pressure in the storyline which actually isn't a real time pressure and it's only sorry for the spoiler um there's something quite meditative about it sometimes

you know just walking around listening to what people are thinking if you want to to you know grind some levels you have to manually go into um that i don't remember it's called but when Necku's listening to everyone, you'll see the noise appear. If you want to fight one, you'll tap one. If you want to fight three, you'll tap three.

But if you don't want to do that, if you just want to go and buy some records or look at some clothes, but some food, it's just kind of chill, you know, for a game that's meant to be so intense. It's just kind of chill and meditative,

and I like that about it. I also love the overall music, specifically calling. Oh, it's amazing. First of all, it's not, it has a chance to be repetitive, but it's not. It's just the kind of music that you want to listen to.

It has a really nice bridge to it, and it's vocalized, but it also feels like it's in the background. And when we start talking about the world ends with you, that's one of the first songs that just kind of materializes in my mind. And it feels so perfectly Shibuya. Yeah, I agree. I was going to say it's the kind of music that you hear a play. playing on those big jumbotrons over the scramble crossing, but actually it's much better than those because those are usually like annoying, overproduced, you know, supergroup music by like 20 or 30 girls all singing in unison. Don't love that so much. But the soundtrack

of the world ends with you. Yeah, there's like calling especially. That's the first song that pops into my head too. And it's got such a great hook. So you hear it constantly. But, But just that riff with like the bass guitar and the drums, it's just, it's perfect. Like, it's really, really great. And you could just hear that over and over again. And it has, you know, kind of different layers and different arrangements. Sometimes it's a vocal track. Sometimes it's not.

Sometimes you just hear like the vocalist singing the chorus, but sometimes you get like the full song with the verses. And yeah, it's used in lots of different ways. And it becomes kind of part of the texture. of the game, but it really doesn't get tiring. It's just, it's so, it's so catchy and so hooky that you never stop enjoying it. I think this was one of Square Inix's first cult soundtracks. You know, like, obviously with the Final Fantasy games, Dragon Quest Chrono Trigger, like these big games, they put out soundtracks and arrangements and orchestrations and they're like,

hey, Mitsudo, why don't you do like acid jazz versions of Chrono Trigger? You know, like, you you get some of the kind of weird stuff like that. But this one, like the soundtrack kind of seemed to take on a life of its own. And there was a CD that they put out that they randomly sent to me in like 2011 or 12 called the Death March 5th anniversary. So I guess it was 2012 where it was like a live performance recorded at a club of some of this music. And apparently they did like another performance a few years later. And yeah, it's just like kind of this. small soundtrack, but it's just sort of lived on. And, you know, they kind of give the same love to the near soundtrack these days, where it's arrangements and live performances and stuff, even though it's not like the biggest hit ever. It's just the music is such a part of that game experience that, you know, it just sort of lived on and took on its own. Wake up a show appreciation Where's got to sound?

Do we alive. Thinking about smile With a lot of A lot of Thinking about how How old individual this game actually is, It sort of occurred to me I wonder if there was some jet set radio influence here

You know with Shibuya Cho and the same kind of graffiti sort of aesthetic. I just wonder if there was any, you know, if they looked at that and they went, let's do that, except RPG. I mean, I could definitely see it just because at this point, when this game was being made,

it would have been only a few years removed from Jet Set Radio. And it was also sort of a similar vibe, right? Yeah. But that Jet Set, I don't know Jet Set Radio all that well, but that's sort of the similar urban Tokyo kind of feel to it, I think. it makes sense that you would be like drawing those kinds of connections there.

Yeah, I think Jetset Radio is more about like the sort of kids who would go dance at Gas Panic. And the world into view is more about, I feel like it's the kids who kind of hang out but don't necessarily have a place to go and are sort of trying to figure out where they fit into the world. There's definitely more of a sense of self-determination and purpose in Jetset Radio. Like, you are out there, you are, you know, it's counterculture, you are taking a stand against the man. And the whole point of Neku and his friends is that they're all a little bit lost and they're trying to find themselves. And they're questioning, like, how do I fit into normal society? And, you know, the game is really like their story arcs, not to spoil too much, but it's really about them finding that place. And again, it kind of just comes down to self-confidence.

And that is a, like I said before, self-confidence is a game mechanic. Like, I've never seen that in any other game, but, like, just... And if you're really self-confident, you can wear a dress. Exactly. No, let's talk about that now. Like, there is a stat called Brave. And your characters don't have level-ups in the traditional sense. Like, you gain cash and you gain experience for your pins and that sort of thing.

You do, like, have some stat gains based on what you eat. But a lot of your combat ability is just your, you know, your stats and, you know, and hit points and things like that, your defense attack power are based on your clothing. And, you know, it's, you go into shops to buy clothing and it's your typical Shibuya streetwear. It's like shirts and shorts and jackets and things like that. And there's boys' clothing and girls' clothing. And at the beginning of the game, it's a really great mechanic because Shiki, the girl who teams up with Neku, the main character, in the first week of the game, she can wear pretty much anything because she has a lot of a high brave stat. So that means something that requires a high brave, like a bikini top or

you know, like a skirt or something, she can put that on no problem. But Neku can't equip those, which gives him a disadvantage in combat. But as you play the game and you build up his brave, he can start to branch out and wear things that are a little, you know, different than you would associate with your typical kid, your typical boy. And so you're kind of breaking these boundaries. And it totally fits with, you know, if you've seen like Harajuku or Shibuya street blogs of photography and style, like it totally is in tune in keeping with the sort of fashion culture of that kind of social circle. Like boys wearing girls' clothing, girls wearing boys' clothing, people just saying, you know, this looks cool and it looks good on me, so I'm going to

wear it. And you have to work up to that point for Neku to get there. And I think that's such a great way to turn real-world social and culture mores and trends into an RPG mechanic in a way that benefits gameplay and also speaks to the character's growth as a person and his self-confidence. It's, yeah, like, to me, that is the standout feature of this game. It's so thoughtful and so brilliant. And I just, it's one of the things that really makes. me love this game. If they had really wanted to go for it, they would have actually had the clothes reflect on the characters.

But sadly, the characters remain the same despite, you know, putting on a dress or bikini top or whatever. And if I'm not mistaken, it's been a while since I've played, but the character you team up with on week two, Joshua, is a boy, but he comes with a really high brave stat from the start. So he can pretty much wear whatever. while Neku is still kind of limited in what he's able to equip by that point. So, you know, it almost, I kind of feel like there's a lot of Neon Genesis Evangelian influence in this era of Squarespace games, starting with like Final Fantasy 7.

And the relationship between Neku and Joshua is very much like Shinji and Kawaru from Avangalian. So there's kind of like, I kind of feel like Joshua, at least initially, before you learn what his deal is, is a very sort of aspirational character for Neku, like someone he looks up to and says, like, this guy has it together. I want to be more like him. It's funny that you mentioned Evangelion, because this was actually the year that the first rebuild movie came out. So we were in peak Evangelian nostalgia by this time because it had been in like 12 years or something like that. And as we all know, once 10 years have passed, something's officially retro. So Evangelion was officially retro by that point. Damn. We're so old.

Anyway, the one kind of creative lead or creative entity that we haven't talked about with the creation of this game is Jupiter, the co-developer on it. I mean, this is a square inx game, but a lot of the sort of boots on the groundwork and programming and coding was, handled by Jupiter, who are the people who invented Picross? And they also created most of the games on the Pokemon Mini. They developed games like Pokemon Pinball. And, you know, I think they also worked on some of the Kingdom Arts portable games. But they basically knew their stuff when it came to portable games. And they're cool. And I like them. And eventually they went on to work on Ghosts of Tsushima, which is not a portable game or a Pokemon game. It's very, you know, like, How'd that happen?

But just one of those interesting sidebars. So we should talk about the actual premise and plot of the world ends with you. We've kind of touched on it a bit in that there is a game. It takes place over weeks. And also there's an Isakai element where you wake up after dying. But what's all that about? Kat, do you want to walk us through this? I feel like of all of us, you can probably describe what's happening best here.

Maybe I'm wrong. Well, when the game first starts, it's sort of a mystery. to you and Neku, you really don't know what's going on. All you really know is that you've been put into a game and you're having to have challenges and you have a partner. The main hero, Neku, is sort of squally in heart. He is a jerk. He hates everybody.

He has his headphones on all the time. He's really extremely abusive to Shki, who is his nominal partner. early on, and pretty quickly it's revealed that in the world ends with you, you are dead and you're playing a game to survive with your partner, and everybody except maybe like one or two people get erased. And so being erased is you're gone, you're dead forever. And you're running around with some other characters who are also playing the game, such as beat and Rhyme, who are kind of, I don't know, like punk. Rhyme is fun.

She's a little non-binary energy going on in there. So you're initially going through the week in trying to survive, beating the games, and then over time, the game is increasingly rigged against you and you're getting different partners and you're slowly but surely, unraveling the nature of the game and the different forces behind it, of which there are many. And actually, the game does not overtly tell you a lot of what's going on. You sort of have to discover it. And the way you do that is by discovering these secret documents and everything

and learning that especially Joshua is a really significant part of what is actually happening behind the scenes. So we were talking about Kingdom Hearts. There's a big, a big Kingdom Hearts energy in discovering, unraveling all the secrets of actually a pretty complicated plot.

But it was really, the mystery was really compelling to me at the time and the tension was really compelling because the game keeps turning the screws on Neku specifically as a character. And you're often going, well, geez, how is he going to get out of this one? I don't know, but.

Yeah, the reaper, or reapers, is it reapers? Yes. The reapers who are the ones who control the game. The reported villains, yeah. Of this game, the ones controlling. It's kind of like Organization 13, if Organization 13 just like to toy with and abuse dead children. So it's kind of dark. They have cool little wings.

Yeah, there's that. And there's a game master. And the game masters at the end of each week are, sort of your bosses. One of the more memorable ones is Minami Moto, who loves math. He just loves math so much.

And so that's why he's always saying things like... He cannot stop talking about it. He just, he wants to quote, pie to the nth degree, so. So, yeah, the, the game is supposed to take place over the course of a week. And each week is, like,

the gameplay is divided into seven days. So there's not a real-time element to this. It's not like Valkyri profile, sorry, Kat. It is much more sorry, it's much more plot advances based on your actions

and time advances based on the plot. So you don't actually have to rush around and finish things in a set amount of time. It's just that there is, you know, kind of this structure to it. I wonder, I don't know, was this before or after lost? It was after lost.

I know Final Fantasy 13. was like the structure of that with the flashbacks was very inspired by Lost. But I feel like this was kind of... We were not only watching Lost. This was Peak Lost. Okay. This was when everybody was watching Lost.

People thought it was going to go someplace. Yeah. Yeah. So that structure in 24, like, that was very much kind of zeitgeisty. So this definitely pulls in from that tradition as well as from manga. But really, it's just kind of a convenient story structure. to sort of divide things out. And you have different kind of challenges

that you face each day. You talk to different Reapers and completing their tasks and they're rising up to their challenges unlocks more of Shibuya. When if the game first starts, you can pretty much just go to the Scramble Crossing and like two or three adjacent

little sections of the area. But, you know, as the game unfolds, you open up more and more of Shibuya and eventually like find the hidden secret river that I don't know if it's actually a thing in Shibuya. There are lots of rivers in Shibuya, and all of them have been turned into concrete that the water just kind of runs through because there's only like 2% of rivers in Japan that are still their original beds.

It's a weird little stat that just stuck in my head. So, yeah, like all of these things kind of matter. But the idea behind the game is that it's supposed to take place over the course of a week. But the game actually, like the world ends with you, the game. actually takes place over the course of three weeks because there are various plot shenanigans that mean once that Neku reaches the end of the week and the end of the game, something happens and draws him back in just when he thought he was out. And, you know, things change up and he has to deal with some other new crisis.

There's shenanigans afoot, and he has to figure all that out. There's a real optimism to this story. I think you were talking a little bit earlier about how Jetset radio, you're a rebel. Whereas in this one, you're sort of a jerk-ass teenager trying to find their way in one way or another. They're all lost. All of the characters have something revealed about them.

At a certain point, for example, there's a little bit of a twist with Shiki. But there's a little bit of a carpidium kind of aspect to it. It sees the day, go out and live. which maybe is a little bit on the nose in some ways, but I personally found fairly wholesome and I enjoy it when a game has something to say and it's sort of pushing back against the enwee that maybe people just hang out in Shibuya might feel sometimes

cutting through the superficiality of fashion and trends and everything and maybe going to the very heart of it all of this culture and such. So I think I really like the underlying messaging ultimately of the world ends with you. And it pops up again and again throughout the story and the relationships that are being developed, even as Neku himself is wildly unlikable. It's a sort of more subtle, more well-told version of. kind of kingdom hearts essential themes. You know, my friends are my power, that whole thing.

But in microcosm and vastly superior as storytelling, you don't have to play like 15 disparate games to get this one, thankfully. I think to really understand the kind of the story vibe that was happening here, you kind of have to understand sort of how things were happening in Japanese society around this time. So like 15 years before this game came out, the economic miracle, the bubble economy ended, and Japan ended its kind of like marched toward being the world's number one economy and started to backslide. Economy is basically stagnated since then.

Jobs were lost. So the kids who were really kind of being targeted by this and who were, you know, the main characters of this game, 15 years old, were basically the first generation to grow up in a Japan that was in this sort of post-boom. I don't want to call it decline, but stagnation. It's kind of like, well, really, if you wanted to create a game about American kids who were 15, kids who grew up in the shadow of 2008 and the economy collapsing and so forth that was happening right around the time this game originally came out, just, you know, wait half a generation and you've got the same problems happening in America as in Japan. So there was a lot of media happening around this time that was basically kind of examining the social ailments and difficulties that people were experiencing, especially youngsters who hadn't really established themselves yet, who were expected to make a life for themselves, but in conditions that were much less favorable than their older siblings or their parents had experienced in the 80s and 90s. So you had things like spirited away, which is, you know, about the meleys of a young girl who kind of finds this fantastical world and kind of discovers, you know, the importance of whatever she discovers in that weird fantasy land with a little bathhouse and everything.

You had something like Welcome to the NHK, which was about the social ails of, you know, perpetually underemployed people, the Hikikomori. I feel like if you look at all the different forms of media, the different works that sort of came out of this period and addressed this topic, the world ends with you is the most optimistic. I feel like it's also the most in touch with actual youth perspectives. Like Spirited Away is very much an old man saying, damn kids, get off my lawn and stop eating your avocado toast. And welcome to the NHK is, it's kind of optimistic, but it's also. very, very cynical throughout most of it. The main character has no redeeming qualities, if we want to be honest. Whereas the world ends with you, you know, Neku starts in the same place as the protagonists of these other works, you know, sullen, listless, detached, kind of

questioning what's even the point. But the, you know, obviously he experiences fantastical, strange things, but he does it by sort of interacting with society as much as he's able to as a ghost who floats around Shibuya fighting pigs. And yeah, like by the end of it, it really feels like everyone's in a better place. Even the villains, like it's not really about murdering the bad guy. It's about everyone finding their personal resolution and their reason to go on. and something that is, you know, like emotionally and spiritually satisfying to them. And, you know, in that sense, it's very much a work of its time and society.

But of all of those things, I really feel like it has the best and brightest message. Have you ever seen such a birthday What's in your mind? Let's do it one by one Have you ever thought such a day would come Time is up your death at your dream Start up the brand new story Straight up and furthest show me This is the way my life goes

Someone said I am such a foolish ground who bears It's better than without a light Anyway, I've had my two rants for the episode So I'm out You guys have to carry this on by without me No, we should talk a little bit about the characters And just kind of what's unique about them

I mean, obviously Neku Sakaraba The main character, we've talked about him He becomes a ghost A ghost that can somehow still eat bento I don't know It's not a bad way to be you know, when you're dead. But no, the game really revolves around the mystery of why is he a ghost? How did he die? Because the idea behind the game is that you enter the game voluntarily. You trade something for it. And in this case, he did not really volunteer for the game. He was just kind of brought into it. Spoilers. Someone shot him. Where do you even find a gun in Japan? That's just crazy. Wow, wild. It's out of control. In terms of the actual characters, Joshua is one who, it's the most mysterious.

I think you compared him earlier to Quoru. So in week one, in its own way, it's its own arc. And I like the structure of this game because each week is its own sort of self-contained story or self-contained chapter. And then when you get into... So the complexion of the game changes greatly when you get into chapter two

because you do reach a climax, like a mini climax, when you reach the end of week one. You go through an entire arc with shiki and everything, and you learn a lot about her. And it feels like you're getting to the end of something. And then all of a sudden,

the reset button is hit, and now you're traveling along with Joshua, and you have no idea what his motives are, and also, he's also kind of a jerk. And so now you have equally, you had Schi, who was really nice and kind of hurt and kind of sad. And now you have Neku, who's already starting to come a long way, being paired up with, frankly, kind of a jerk

in this game. And the way that they ping off one another is, I want to say, memorable. And initially you're just kind of like, oh, my God, why am I stuck with this guy? And then, of course, as he is really

sort of core to the mystery of this game, you can almost call this a mystery box game in a lot of ways because you're slowly but surely unraveling a lot of what's going on with this and so um but at the same time he he's a little bit of a divisive character because he uh is such a jerk so it's also mechanically mirrored by the fact that his control is totally different to shikis as well so you've got to start from scratch more or less it was discussed earlier in the episode but yeah i love joshua i think he's the standout character, but I think they're all likable.

Well, he's not, maybe not likable for him, but there are a lot of interesting twist for the characters, a lot of turns that it takes that make for a really memorable finale as well. I think it's generally an interesting story. Then you also have

Beat, who at various points is an ally, and then an enemy, and then an ally again. And he's sort of the skateboarder character and maybe my least favorite of them because he's got that bit of a tough guy thing going on. Out of all of them, I think I like Shiki the most, just because I

identify a lot with her sort of lack of self-confidence and maybe desire to be somebody else, be prettier, be whatever. And so I think that particular arc resonate with me, whereas I think that Beat has more of the big brother, little sister dynamic going on. He's very much trying to look after rhyme and everything.

And then the actual individual reapers are sort of fun because they're almost a commentate, they're almost commentating on the plot itself. They're just kind of, they're instigators, but also observers throughout. So as the story unravels, it's obvious that they have their own motivations for what they want to do, but it's not always clear what they're trying to pull off. And then every so often, someone like, beat will do something that completely surprises

them. They all have rivalries with one another. And, yeah, it's a lot of fun. And you can't forget the best thing about Sheiky is that she has a stuffed cat named Mr. Mu that fights alongside her. So cute. Very 2008, Japan. The actual character designs, I should add, I think we're fairly divisive at the time,

maybe because they had the super big heads and sort of little bodies. and they almost look like the characters from Final Fantasy 9, right? Except drawn by Nomura, or like in his style, where it's very angular, lots of spikiness, lots of accessories and details on the clothing. Neku has sort of the scarf or the collar that's covering his mouth, and he is sort of glowering all the time with the big headphones. and everything. Shiki, it stands out the most because she has just an absolutely enormous head and itty-bitty-body.

Yeah, I mean, Neku, I admit, like, when I first saw this game, I didn't really talk about when I first experienced this game, but I was kind of put off because I thought it was, you know, a Kingdom Hearts tie-in based on the art style. And the character seemed kind of unappealing to me from a visual perspective. But because I was the one of the one of the ones. up.com handheld guy and import guy. I imported it to play it on handheld. It was like, huh, this is actually pretty interesting and I dig it. So I might not have given this game a chance if it hadn't been my job, but because it was, I did give it a chance and found

that I really enjoyed it. But the character designs did not, did not help. But I think over time, they've grown on me a fair amount. And again, very much of a time. And I definitely find them more memorable now than I did. The main characters in Neo, the world ends with you. And obviously, the art style is a big part of it. We already cited like Jet Set Radio and whatnot in terms of like the actual aesthetic of this game. So it really really, really fits in very well with the whole Shibuya feel, which when I was living there was the, it was kind of the height of cool, right? And everything was really exaggerated there. And so it's not surprising to me to see not just the fashion and the overall looks and

everything of the characters, but just like their actual proportions extremely exaggerated as well. Everything is heightened in this game and in this setting. Yeah, that is something I miss about traveling a lot to Japan is that when you're there, you can just wear whatever the hell you want. It can be, you know, something that would get you weird looks here in the U.S. And no one cares. It's great. This is it. So those are the gameplay mechanics. We've touched on them a little bit, in the sense that there are two screens and a lot happening.

But we haven't really gone into great detail. And I think this is so central to the game. game and a big part of its appeal is just the variety happening here and how it all integrates into the gameplay systems and the mechanics and the things that you're doing kind of on the side. So I mentioned that the world ends with you, takes advantage of the DS's dual screen setup. And that really comes into play during combat because as you are fighting, you are fighting as both Neku and his companion for the week. And the companion for the week is controlled by the player independently from Neku. So Neku is always on the bottom screen. You control his actions

with the stylus, but the character on the top screen, you control with buttons. And it's a lot to wrap your head around. Like I mentioned earlier, unless you crank up the difficulty slider, you can just kind of let the game play itself on the top screen and focus on the bottom screen. But as Stewart mentioned, if you do take the time to kind of figure out the combos for the top player, the top character screen, then you can, you know, get lots of bonuses and advantages for yourself in combat. So again, it's kind of a question of how deep into this do I want to go, but really the gameplay is focused around Neku because his abilities and his loadouts, they're so customizable. Like, you can change what he can do really easily as you collect pins.

and gain different combat abilities. And, you know, kind of going into different scenarios equipped with different specializations and skills is pretty crucial and, you know, involves a lot of kind of strategic thinking. It's like a more involved version of the materia system or the element system from Chrono Cross, but with much more flexibility and much more integration into. the overall gameplay beyond combat. Yeah, the variety is just outstanding, I think. Like, I mean, you'll get given

or find or purchase these pins, like little pin badges, you know. Depending on how many pinpoints you have, I think. It depends what you can equip at one time, but they'll be on the bottom screen as icons sort of like a Diablo, I guess. And if you use, for example,

the more powerful ones, they're all going to be on like a cool-down, so you won't be able to just spam your most powerful pins. I mean, a lot of the time, you're either swiping enemies with like a sword pin or you're drawing like a ball of a ring of fire for enemies to sit on and just do gradual damage or maybe burn damage and changing it up between encounters is more or less essential because there are a certain monster of noise that's not what the monsters called in this game that will resist certain pins so you really do have to switch it

up and sort of figure it out and sometimes you'll get into a situation where it's like well this is their weakness but the pin hasn't been leveled up so I guess I'll not play the game for a bit and do something else. And when I come back, the absence, I don't always call absence XP, it's something like that, will level your pins up quite significantly, rewarding you for taking a break. It's interesting how everything feeds into everything else. Promoting a healthy lifestyle. Yeah, exactly. It's like Buktai. Don't always play video games. Without the risk of, you know, baking yourself, I guess. Yeah, I really, I've said this before, I'm going to keep saying it, this game Out Personas persona, in the sense that, you know,

the abilities you equip are essential to taking on different enemies and having passive abilities, you know, pins aren't just active attacks. They are also things like stat buffs and, you know, progressive healing and debuffs for enemies and things like that. Like knowing when to use those and where to,

you know, how to hit enemy weaknesses is crucial. Otherwise, the battles can really drag out and be difficult. I mean, something we haven't mentioned that adds even more kind of complexity is the light ball that goes between the two characters that you pass back and forth with successful combos. And I think the more you do it, the more powerful you get or something like that, it's been a while, so I can't exactly remember. But there's so much that you've got to play efficiently, to absolute efficiency, you've got to be so alert and what's going on on both screens. I mean, this is like real time. this isn't term-based. You're getting attacked. You're getting, you could dodge attacks as well by dragging NECO out of the way so he'll dive. It's just kind of crazy and it couldn't be done

on any other system and wasn't. They just dropped it for the Soviet remixes. Yeah. And another thing to mention about the pin, like which pins you equip, in addition to what does this pin do and what are its elemental affiliations and how leveled up is it? You also have to consider how do I activate this pin because all of your pins that you have equipped, and you can only equip a few at a time, but all of them are active at once. And different pins have different methods to activate them. So you want to equip a set of pins that all use different activation techniques. So you want one that you can maybe activate by slashing vertically on the screen or diagonally, one that you use by pressing the stylus against the screen

and dragging something around, one that you tap once or tap multiple times. And I guess if you want to, one that you blow into the microphone for, God, I hate that. It's one of the most powerful pins, so get it leveled up and get screaming. I think you can just tap the mic.

Yeah. It's fine. You don't need to actually blow into it. Get a little sound drop. Just start screaming. That's the best way. Kind of a problem. problem with, though, if you're riding a bus.

Yeah, it's true. I went into that problem with Phoenix right once, because at the end, you actually do have to yell objection or hold it. You can't just blow into the mic, and I was on a bus at the time. I was like, great, I can't finish the game now. It was the same with the pan pipes and spirit tracks. Oh, wow. Where I was on a bus, and the pan pipes weren't working properly.

And you need that to be able to beat the final boss. So I was like, well, this isn't working. So that was one of the fun, many fun quirks of the Nintendo DS. Would this be an appropriate time to mention the absolute most death-inducing use of the microphone on the DS? Or should I save it? Well, okay, this is very sure I apologize, but my frog are toy trials on the DS. One of the levels is a boat race. Like, you know, you build a boat, you put the frog on the boat, and then it's like, you've got to blow into the mic,

so that the wind carries the boat. I don't know if I like where this is going. You've got to blow into the mic for about two solid unbroken minutes, which you can't do. Seriously, it's impossible. It will cause you to die. Don't do it. Okay, I won't.

Thank you. That's good. I was going to play that game next, but now that you've told me that, yeah, it's everyone taking off your lists. Damn. I, the thing that I remember the most about the world ends with you, battle system,

is enjoyable, a little overstuffed, I think. There's a lot going on with it. And I remember it was one of the key points of criticism when this game first came out was there was a little bit of the rub your tummy, pat your head going on with the top screen and the bottom screen. Yeah, for sure, yeah. But also, I was playing on a DS light and the little swirling scratches from playing this thing between that and Oss Tatakae Oendon

meant that my touchscreen was just a permanent scratched up mess from all of the swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe drag drag drag drag drag drag drag drag drag tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap with this game

also it was kind of annoying if you were in a room with someone trying to play it and you were just going as much as humanly possible with this one. Of course, it only got worse with the actual mobile games when you were swiping frantic with your finger, but at least you weren't doing it with a stylus, I guess. I think it's a fat, sorry. Oh, I was just going to say those DS-Light bottom screens were a little delicate.

I played through the entirety of Etri and Odyssey 1 and 2 on a limited edition Zelda DS-Light, And that thing, by the time I was done with those two games, like the bottom screen, you could see the grid that I had carved into the bottom screen by drawing maps for Entry and Odyssey. It was just like, it was like a piece of graph paper that, you know, you could use to play video games. It was rough. I think it's a reasonable criticism to say, you know, the rob your head pat your, rob your headpad. Which one is it? I don't even know.

Those two things in some configuration. I think it's a reasonable criticism, and I also think that, again, as we've talked about, thematically, there is something there as you learn to kind of work in sync with each other. But honestly, if this game had a simpler battle system, I don't think it would hurt the game. The way they did it in solo remix, the other changes they made, I don't like. Like, I don't like the high-res look. I don't think it works. So if we could somehow get the DS versions visuals with maybe an option to play with a solo. battle, maybe they'd change the stats somehow. I'd be into that, and I wonder why it hasn't been

done by hackers yet. Just get on with it, hackers. What are you doing? So we have also talked about pins to a certain degree, but not really in direct detail, but these are the sort of the main element of your battle system. I mentioned, you know, the chronocross element system before. And pins are basically sort of the same thing. They are abilities that you acquire and collect and then attach to your character to activate combat abilities. You can buy these, you can earn them in combat, you can earn them through playing mini-games, et cetera. And on top of that, most, if not all of them, level up to different degrees. So you can enhance them kind of like you do materia in Final Fantasy 7 by engaging in battles or by putting your system to sleep for a day, whichever you prefer, and gain new powers and, you know, more powerful capabilities with your pins. But again, this is one of those

things that is very much integrate, like a way that the narrative and premise and environment setting and gameplay mechanics all tie together in this game, because, you know, basically the pin badges are like the little accessories that you would wear on your outfit or on your backpack or whatever, keychain, cell phone strap, et cetera. And they all represent different things. And I mentioned world tendency earlier. And there's some truth to that because wearing and equipping different pins will cause those to those elements, those styles and brands to exert influence on the crowds around you in Shibuya. And so, you know, you're like this ghost fighting in the background, but the things you do are sort of like sending out psychic

waves that ripple throughout the ward and affect different people and, like, kind of change their minds. And so the more you use something, the more powerful it becomes through becoming popular. And it's just a really fascinating way to integrate the concept of fashion and trends and, you know, kind of what's popular among teens as a video game mechanic. It's very interesting and unusual, but it works really well. I didn't engage with that very much. The trends would be happening.

I also don't engage with world tendency very much in the Souls games, maybe for my detriment. So there would be the trends happening, but most of the time I would just go with the pins and the clothes that sort of worked best for me and keep on going, I suppose, and especially because certain of the pins I just felt way more comfortable with and felt like I was doing way more damage to individual enemies. And in the actual battles, the drops that you get, I think, are often dependent on how fast you can take out the individual noise. So kind of the faster, the more efficiently you can deal damage in any given time, the, the better the rewards in this one.

So I felt really incentivized to stick with particular pins that I felt the most comfortable with, rather than swapping them around and trying on different things. I think it's, yeah, the main game, the main story, I think they want, they want you to finish it. So they're very friendly in that regard with not necessarily needing to go beyond a few core, very powerful pins. but when you get to the post game that sort of the harder parts of the post game that becomes

a bit less feasible as is sort of tradition in I'm going to say again, Kingdom Hearts where suddenly your tactics that you've been relying on for the past 40 hours become completely null and void. Yeah, there's an ultimate difficulty. It's interesting.

This game, there is a lot of strategy to it as you were kind of suggesting Stuart. And it really starts to come out at the very highest difficulty levels, you will get rolled by certain bosses, especially like

Manami Moto and such. If you're not being pretty mindful, I suppose, of how everything comes together, it's not an easy game, for sure, at the top tier difficulties. But

fortunately, you can eat snacks. The one, exactly, The one last element we haven't talked about in addition to clothing and pins is the food system. And Stuart said basically he didn't really get that until the end of the game. But I think the easiest way to think about it is it's kind of like buying food in River City Ransom, where you buy food, you eat it, and it confers permanent stat boosts to you. But this game prevents you from abusing that by sort of limiting what you can eat. eat. So you have like a certain amount of appetite. And once you surpass that, like you're,

sated, you don't want to go any further than that. And once you've eaten food, you gain some immediate benefits like, you know, battle perks. Like, wow, I ate a hot dog and I really like hot dogs. So now I've got like plus 20 to my attack or something like that. But over time, as you battle, you digest your food. And once it's gone, once you've fully digested it, then it becomes a permanent stat buff, and that's going to be different than the temporary effect it has. But basically, it's a system that allows you to build your stats, but you can't just, like, you know, go overboard and eat all the most powerful food all at once and suddenly have an out-of-depth super stat monster. You have to kind of work through it in time. And, you know,

that fits because time is a core concept of this game. Not only the time, that sort of dictates the game, game capital G, but also the time that you know you put your system to sleep and let your pins soak up experience and that sort of thing. So it all just kind of seems of a piece. And you have favorite foods and least favorite foods kind of like in snake eater. So you're going to gain different perks. Each character is going to gain different perks from different kinds of food depending on how they feel about it. So yeah, There's, again, it's a lot of complexity that you don't have to engage with. But if you do, there's, you know, there's benefits to it.

Something I'd like to shout out, I don't think we have yet is the clothing and, you know, the vinyl records and the... I forgot to mention the records. Yeah, the records from Tawa Records, which is not Tawa Records. It's different. Does Tawa Records still exist in Shibuya at this point? Because it did as of last summer. In fact, it's expanding, I think. I think a friend of mine was there a few weeks ago.

Okay. Because I was a, go ahead. I was just going to say they had this amazing display on the outside, like at the street level. They have this entire video wall. And it's playing music and showing video. And when I was there last summer, they were playing some sort of new city pop recording or like reissue that was coming out. And they had created a custom video for it that was basically outrun. And it was just like, this is the most retro Japan thing I can possibly imagine.

It's like futuristic, but also it's the 80s, and I love this. So, yes, Tower Records, still there, still pretty awesome. But basically, those records, those clothes and this food, they're all displayed to you in the most gorgeous pixel art for these things. Like, everything has been just meticulously drawn. It's just fantastic. I do wish they appeared on the characters, like Katz said, that would really push over the edge, but, you know, there are limits.

It's still the DS. and I just love looking at those shop screens They're just as triumphs of aesthetic I absolutely adore them This all the whole game. This whole game's a triumphs of aesthetic Hell yeah. Tower Records was one of my, I went there a lot when I was living in Japan because you could get a lot of English language materials and books and things that you otherwise would have to import.

So in a way, it's, and I remember it was a key part of the skyline as well. You would see the huge sign that would say Tower Records on one of the streets. So in a way, it's sort of comforting to know that even as Shibuya has changed, that this sort of artifact from the 90s and 2000s is still there going strong after all these years. It doesn't exist in America anymore, like Toys R Us, but it's still going strong in Japan. Actually, I remember meeting up with you once at Tower in Shibuya, Kat.

Did we? That's so funny. Yeah, a long time ago. Probably like 12 or 13 years ago. But yeah, yeah. So it's a good central location, easy to spot. As for the food, first of all, I like any RPG that has a food mechanic that confers buffs and everything. See also so many square games, including Final Fantasy 15.

I was going to say, how does the food graphics in this compare to Final Fantasy 15s? Well, I mean, in Final Fantasy 15, they literally went out and cooked the food and came out with individualized recipes so that they could put them into the game. and it did look quite delicious. The food in this game are maybe a little more pixelated and a little more simple, but still

recognizable as something that you would probably want to eat. All of the characters have their own preferences. Apparently, Josh was the least picky and Beat is the most picky in this game,

which I think is interesting. But also, though, this game is such a kitchen sink game in terms of actual systems and mechanics. And we've already talked about the way that the individual pins interact with one another, the way that they evolve, the world tendency stuff with the trends, the clothes, and the food adds yet another layer of complexity. and there is really a danger of this game almost spinning out of control a little bit but somehow it manages to all hold together

and I'm sort of curious why y'all think that that is the case like how does it manage to not become an abject mess I think it's probably because it's relatively grounded it's you know we all eat food we all wear clothes on all of us and, you know, we'll buy vinyl records. Well, you don't know all of us. But it's, you know, the tactile thing of just, like, dragging the clothes onto the character,

dragging the food onto the character, and then it's like the character, it's the food, it's the food. But that makes a lot more sense to me than just, like, any given other RPG system for leveling up. You know, you've put your sphere on the grid, you're more powerful now,

you're junctioned this, you're more powerful now. It makes so much more sense to just say, you've had some fries, and now you want to beat up a titan, you know? I think by making it, that level of grounded, it helps you to digest, no pun intended, the different systems.

That's just my opinion. Yeah, and I think another big part of it is kind of what we talked about earlier with the customizable flexibility of the difficulty. This game, if it required you to engage all systems at max capacity, would be a nightmare. It would be no fun. But it really says, you know, kind of come to this game. approach it on your own terms. You pick the parts that you want to experience and enjoy

and work your way through the story, through the combat. And if you really get into it, there's an entire new game plus where you can go back and replay individual days one at a time and see different thoughts from characters, find secret reports that reveal more of the backstory and the plot. You can really go super deep into this and just commit yourself to it, but you don't have to. And as a result, it seems overwhelming at first, but you quickly realize, like,

I can make this much simpler and much more approachable, and I can just enjoy the story. Or I can just, you know, fart around and use my pins in combat and see what kind of cool tricks I can do. It really is kind of a DIY game. And I think that that willingness to let the player engage with it at the last, level they want to that they feel comfortable with really does a lot to make this an essential game and keeps it from spiraling out of control and becoming just an overbearing mess. I mean, it's got to be one of the best DS games, sure, I would say. I mean, that's a system.

We didn't know how good we had it, honestly. That system, what, 10 million games and maybe 9 million of them are amazing. And it's just an absolute odyssey of riches. And when I think about the DS, as you said, Cat, when I think what's an essential DS game, what's peak DS? I think the world ends with you because it uses everything in a way that feels correct, in a way that works with the themes of the game. It's memorable, it's exciting, like, it's just, it's got everything. It's not attached to some other long-running franchise. It's not confusing.

You can jump in anywhere and just play it. And I don't know anyone who's played this game and gone, yeah, I didn't like this. It sucked. It's really hard to conceive of anyone not appreciating at least something about it. Yeah, and the Nintendo DS was my sort of primary platform at that time because there are so many good games coming out. The import scene in Japan was so rich. I had so many games. I was not only playing rhythm games like O and Don and whatnot.

I was playing, I was able to study kanji with it. because there were these wonderful little kanji games where that taught me how to draw the different strokes and practice them and everything. So it had a really useful utility and hit at a very specific mindset that Nintendo had at that time, which was that it's not just a game device.

It's a lifestyle device. We're trying to strike out into the blue ocean and things like that. And then 2008, we were really in the heart of the DS era. This was the time where the DS as a platform was fully realized and fully developed. And unlike the we where developers were never really seemed to quite grasp the motion controls, never really evolved beyond, for example, what people were doing. with Wii Sports.

I mean, we did get some really cool motion control games, sort of. But so many games went for lowest common denominator, and we ended up with carnival games or something like that. Whereas the Nintendo DS, this was, as I mentioned, the same year that Ninja Guide and Dragon Sword came out, which was a game that you played in a portrait mode, and almost like you were holding a book, and it was fully touchscreen.

driven. And it was so weird. And it felt like every other day you were getting some really interesting sort of experimental approach to games that made the platform feel really quite rich. And it definitely helped that this being pre-DSI, it was fully region free. And so I was able to just pick up so many wonderful games on it. And so the world ends with you, I think, really exemplifies that period of time. And it's one that I look back on quite fondly, I think. I think we need a general, if it's not being done, we need general DS appreciation episode at some point of retroverts. I'd be well for that.

I mean, we've had some DS like retrospective episodes, but, you know, 20th anniversary comes up in a few months. Oh, my gosh. Nintendo DS, every game ever ranking. who at nanny. Buckle up. All right, you have fun with that, start. You can start recording now and we'll come collect you in a few years as the

gibbering blob of meat alone in a room just talking about DS games to himself. Don't forget to hit record. Now, open your eyes, the pieces are all over. Now you should accept their skin is

over you keep your eyes on this corruption come on yes you should watch this transformation but yeah I'm totally down for a 20th anniversary

because this episode really has reminded me just how freaking great the best of the games on that system were. Now, what a great time that was for me personally, you know, as a person in the press who basically kind of shoved everyone else aside and said, hey, this is going to be my, my beat, because at first no one else wanted it. And by the time it got good, I'd already sort of put down my little flagpole there. It was a good beat.

And the DS Light really pushed that system to another level. as an upgrade. It was just such a beautiful little system at the time and really, really, really stunned me. Also, Jeremy, you were mentioning that story that you did comparing real-life locations for the world ends with you with the ones in the games. And I remember that blog quite well

because I think I was reading GameSpite by that time. And I was like, damn, and I wanted to do that for my own blog. Oh, I did that on the oneup.com. blogs. But actually, now that you mentioned it, I do, I think that was one of the first, no, it wasn't one of the first interactions I had with you. Surely not. But I do remember us having a conversation about that now that you mention it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now that would just be like the second this game came out, someone would blog about it for. It would be on, it would be a Twitter thread or something. Yes. That's it. Social media for sure. But back, you know, back in 20 years ago, it was like people hadn't quite connected. that, hey, if I talk about a thing that's fake in relationship to a thing that's real, people are going to dig it. So I have to say- I pioneered that.

We were so cool back in the day. I will say that at that time specifically, first of all, a game that was unapologetically Japanese, and that's what this game was. It was very set in a Japanese setting, Japanese characters and such, Japanese culture, still felt quite fresh at that time, I think. We were maybe five, ten years removed from a time where everything was sort of localized as much as humanly possible to be able to appeal to American audiences. So to have this game that was so Japanese felt really good, I think.

And then the fact that it was grounded in a sort of real world, I really enjoy a, Stewart was talking earlier about how the game doesn't feel like a mess because you can understand it on a fundamental level of like wearing clothes and eating food and we haven't talked about tin pin slammer but basically playing pogs. I love the real world setting and I love RPGs that have that real world setting and a lot of them are set in, I don't know, New York or things like that. So having a place, having the game being grounded in a place that I could immediately recognize and kind of a location in a setting in a world, as opposed to sort of a fantasy world, really, I think, in many ways, elevated this game. I agree, yes.

Great game. There was a lot of, not a lot, but there have been quite a few spinoffs of the World Ends with You, including the solo remix for mobile phones, the final remix for Nintendo Switch. There was a manga adaptation by the same guy who did the Kingdom Hearts anime, or manga adaptation, I believe. There was an anime. And then there was a sequel called Neo, and we don't have time to talk about any. of these now because our time is up, but they all existed. So the dream is not died. I think this is still a little pilot light in Nomura's heart. Maybe we'll see more Kingdom Heart. The world ends with you one of these days someday, even if it disguises itself as Kingdom

Hearts. As Stuart mentioned in the notes, Kingdom Hearts 3D has one level where you play as Sora. No. Neku, yes. Verum Rex is coming back. there we go anyway final thoughts on the world ends with you actually it kind of sounds like that last little bit was our final thoughts so yes I have been more thoughts I'm out of thoughts

yes my thoughts have all been used up I've expected no it's a I love this game and kind of want to go back and replay it again because it was cool and it still is cool so anyway thank you both Stuart and Kat for taking the time to join me for this conversation about the world ends with you.

This is an episode for the general public. So we need to do our bona fides. But first, I need to tell you, the listener, that's right, the person hearing this podcast now, whether you are listening at normal speed or 200%. You need to know that Retronauts is a podcast that comes to you weekly and then some depending on how you choose to support us. We are supported primarily through Patreon. We do have some ads, but mostly it's through Patreon subscriptions.

You can find us at patreon.com slash retro knots. That's like Astro-Not, not like Retro-Zero. Retronauts on Patreon, three bucks a month. You get every episode a week in advance at a higher bit rate quality with no pesky advertisement intrusions, which is nice. For five bucks a month, you get bonus. episodes every other Friday, plus every weekend little mini episodes from Diamond Fight, plus Stuart here is going to be doing something cool for bonus stuff, extra content on the

Patreon. Look forward to that. It is a mystery. It is a mystery because we haven't had a chance to talk about it yet. But we're going to. And finally, there's Discord access. So that's our spiel, our self-promotion. Patreon.com slash Retronauts.

That's how we exist and continue to make this podcast. Anyway, Kat, where can we find you on the internet these days? Hey, everybody. So my day job is over at IGN.com. And then I also have a podcast called Acts of the Blood God. You probably have heard of it. We have a lot of crossover from Retronauts fans. And we also have a Patreon.

And we record every Saturday on Twitch at TwitchTot TV slash Blood God Pod. And we release our episodes on Monday. and lots of bonus episodes. And surprisingly, we haven't done a world ends with you, Pantheon episode yet. But maybe we'll do that at some point because, gosh, what a great game. I agree.

Stuart, where can we find you on the internet? You can find me on Retronauts reasonably frequently. You can find me on Twitter at Blue Sky. Twitter is at Chippicabra. Blue Sky is just my name, Stuart Jip. And also I did a book called All Games Are Good, which is out through a limited run, and it's really an excellent book, and you should definitely buy at least one copy of it, if not more.

Thank you. I would describe it as smashing. And finally, smashing. I mean, it's really heavy. Like, if you dropped it on your foot, you would smash your foot. So I am not exaggerating here. Finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, on the internet, as Jeremy Parrish, except on Blue Sky, where I am just J. Parrish.

J. Parrish.boskey. dot social. You can find me on YouTube as Jeremy Parrish. You can find me here at Retronauts as Jeremy Parrish. And you can find me doing stuff at limited run games, such as publishing books as Jeremy Parrish. So that's my name. Don't forget it. Write it down. One R and Parrish. Thank you. Anyway, that's it for this episode of Retronauts. Thanks, everyone. And I can hear a bathroom break calling nice calling

you hear the calling little calling you hear the calling let me go gravity little by little I feel a bit more little I feel a bit better

Let me know, send me if you feel a bit older. Just once more to the bridge, dear friend, once more. Wake up, leave your hesitation. Wake up, time for us to realize. Wake up, show appreciation. Wake up, time for us to realize. Thank you.