Retronauts - 623: The Wario Land Ranking Hootenanny

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Jeremy Parish, Kevin Bunch, Stuart Gipp, and the Retronauts community gobble garlic, punch a wall for coins, and let rip a big ol'... hootenanny! This time, we rank the Wario Land games. Perhaps the most important conversation you'll hear all week. Art by Greg Melo. Edits by Greg Leahy. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, which Wario is going to win? Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. Hey, what number is it? I forgot to look. I'm Jeremy Parrish, continuing my legacy of forgetting to look up which episode of Retronauts this is. And with me here to bask in my absent-mindedness. As always, we have joining me for episode 623. Let's stick with the person here on the East Coast under the heat dome. Now, this is Kevin Bunch, trying desperately to stay cool.

Good luck. Without one of those cool Mario hats. I think you're really cool, Kevin. Thank you. That'll help you avoid heat stroke for sure. And also over there in the United Kingdom. Also in the United Kingdom, yeah. Hi, I'm Stuart Jeff, and I was going to suggest that it was episode number one.

See, that works. That works. Okay. So welcome to Retronauts, a brand new podcast beginning here with episode one. It'll be like comic books, how they just randomly reboot to number two. issue one so that you'll go and buy that issue. Love that. I think that's a great tactic. This is the Heroes Reboard of podcast. I just want to know real quick that

I threatened to do this whole episode in Wario's voice and I was rebuked slightly, like, gently. And Jeremy's now opened it in Mario's voice. I've never felt so betrayed in my life. I'm not doing the entire episode of Wario's voice. That's the essence of comedy, knowing when to make the joke and then

not making it again. Knowing when to do the Wario voice specifically. Exactly. It's the essence of comedy, all comedy. That's why Elon Musk sucks because he doesn't know. He doesn't know when to do the Mario voice. I've forgotten about that. Yeah.

That's the darkest mark on Wario's litany of sins. And really, considering that he is a criminal who steals and is also maybe the only Nintendo character to drink alcohol, you know, he's really kind of playing dark. He's really working dark here. But he is the only Mario or Nintendo character to have been depicted by Elon Musk on national television. So that's very unfortunate, but that's really not his fault. We don't hold it against him. And so what we're going to do is talk about the good stuff with Wario and the bad.

But we're going to enshrine the best of Wario. This is another ranking Hoot Nanny. This is kind of like an append to the Mario 2D ranking Hoot Nanny because those games, kind of spun off into Wario, but Wario's games don't really fit into the Marioverse. So they were just kind of left on their own. I don't know that Wario has enough Wario Land games to justify an entire ranking hoot nanny. But we're going to find out. And if he doesn't, then we're going to BS at the end of this episode to fill time.

That is our promise to you. You will have 90 minutes of content. It may not be good, it may not be worth creating, but it's going to exist, and you will say that was a podcast. So, moving on with our podcast, gentlemen, where did you first discover Wario? What was your first experience with the man, the legacy, legend, the drunkard, the thief? Kevin? Well, well, I guess it would just be Mario Land, too. Oh, so you were there from the ground floor.

I was there from the get-go, because I'm that old. So I remember, I can't remember what came first if it was actually playing the game or the Nintendo Power comic with Wario. Did you see the commercial where he was like, it's me, Mario, you must obey my hypnotism and beat Mario. Destroy Mario. I did see the commercial, but I feel like I might have played the game all. already by the time I actually saw the commercial. Interesting. Not a lot of people were playing Game Boy in 1993.

I mean, they were, but no one talked about it. No one really thought about it. It was just like a thing you did to kill time. And no one else was making portable games at that point. So it was like the Nintendo Game Boy won by default just because there was no other competition. So you were one of those people who was just like continuing to buy games and saying, oh, okay, sure, why not? Or at least getting them for Easter at my birthday. Ah, yes.

Always a classic. Stuart, what about you? I think it was actually that commercial that we talked about with the sort of, I don't know if it's like kind of like outer limits kind of, sort of spirals and you got the two, Ghost Wario. So I would, I mean, that was for a 92 game. I would have been about five, like maybe younger than five. I think from that I got the impression that Wario is actually quite an intimidating

and dangerous villain, you know, because I destroy Mario. Even Bowser wouldn't say something like that. He would say something silly. But then I played, I don't think I played Mario Land too. Or if I did, I couldn't get to Wario at the end of it because you have to do that really, really difficult castle level. I don't think I could even get to anyway. But I did play Wario Land, the first one on the Game Boy, quite a lot.

And I liked it. But how much I liked it, you're going to have to wait and find out later in the episode. Oh, I see how this is going to be. Yeah, Wario actually is kind of intimidating in Super Mario Land, too. Like, he's much bigger than Mario, even when Mario is powered up. And he's much uglier than he would be in the later adventures, like, once they turn Wario into a protagonist. Crazy eyes.

Yeah. Like snaggle teeth. And, yeah, he just looks kind of deranged and horrible. I love his sprite in that first game. It's so funny. Conceptually as well. They really toned him down. I just love the idea of how.

sort of evil Mario that you fight in stages of whichever power-up he happens to have at the time throughout the game. It's just a very cool idea conceptually. And so cool that they turned him into his own character, having his own games, and gave him a glow-up, you know, to a certain degree. I don't know that I would ever consider any Wario Sprite like, wow, he's good-looking. But he's certainly less horrible looking than he was in Super Mario Land, too. So, okay, I said no one was playing video, Game Boy in, uh, when Super Mario Land 2 came out, but that's not true. Like, that was still kind of the tail end. I guess up to, uh, Link's Awakening in 93. That was when

everyone kind of was like, cool. There's a great game. I'm out of here. So, uh, kind of after links awakening, you have Wario Land for Game Boy, which is called Super Mario Land 3, but Mario is nowhere to be seen until the very end when you beat the game. And that is a really count. So even though it wears Mario's name on the box, it's not a Mario game. It is a Mario game. Indubitably, you play as the villain from the previous game, which I'm trying to think, had that happened before in a video game? Can you think of any game where you, you know, beat the game? I guess you kind of did that in Donkey Kong Jr. where Mario became the villain, and then you played as the original villain's son.

But even this, this is a little different. Like, you know, I don't believe in original sin. So Donkey Kong Jr. was innocent and pure. Whereas Mario, he's still the same guy who, like, took over Mario's kingdom and castle and, you know, turned the statue of Mario into a death trap where you can be destroyed by Mario's own testicles. You know, he's just an evil guy. When was this release the first Wario, which year was it?

I believe 94? Same year, same year, Zero the Kamikaze squirrel, just saying. Wow. That's one. That's an example. Oh, okay, I see. Yes, that's right. Okay.

I wonder which one came first. Yeah, probably Wario. But if not, then that's another notch on the old hour of Air of the Acrobat there. All right. I'm going to look for that. He deserves all the kudos, doesn't he? This is what Retronauts is for is for clearing up these things, and nothing else. All right, so Zero the Kamakazi Squirrel is showing up as November 94.

I do believe Wario Land. That's pretty hard. I do believe Wario Land was before that. Damn. Oh, wow. January 94. Yeah. Yeah.

Zero the Kamikaze squirrel was just a Wario cum laude. Like, literally, Sunsoft looked at Wario Land and said, Oh, we could do that, too, with our beloved characters. Yeah, with our iconic characters. This is a real blow to the area heads. Sorry about that. But it is good, it is good for a Wario. It means he is a pioneer of doing vaguely notable things, which is really, you know, all the legacy you could hope for.

So the original Wario Land, let's talk briefly about what's cool in that game. Besides the fact that you play as the villain. Well, I mean, it's the most Mario-like, I think, of the Wario-land games, by virtue of having Mario in the title, maybe. But from the off, it's a lot more, well, it's obviously very different. I think there's a heavier focus on exploration, what with the sort of collection of the treasures, the sort of secondary goal throughout the game,

although, of course, the main goal is to get as much money as possible. best and easiest way to do that is to use sheets instantly but yeah what it is it seems a little bit set piecey compared to sort of Mario games and at each stage I can sort of think oh it's this level it's this level

it's this level with all these different I remember the level where you were being chased by the giant sort of thwamp throughout most of the stage that you end up using as a platform the first level which is on the beach that then lets you sort of go underground and it's inaccessible until later

when you've risen like the water level or something in another stage. So there is like an interesting changing of land and morphing of terrain sort of thing going on. It's not overused, but it is there. The secret exits are there from Mario World as well.

They're limited, but they're there. And there's even an entire hidden secret world, too, which is a very cool feature. I think it's a great game. It's one of my favorite, probably original Game Boy games. I like the fact that not to get ahead of myself, unlike the other, most of the other

warrior land games. It's not bogged down in mini games that aren't like mandatory. There are some mini games, but they're just for gambling your money and don't do them because gambling is for idiots, okay? Just do not gamble. Here's what you do. Press pause, press select, I think, 16 times, and then you can just change the amount of your money manually using a cheat. Just do that. Like, that's what I did. Get 9-99 coins on every level. Stand there at the end of each stage, watching all those coins tick down one by one, realizing you've made a mistake and there's now no way out of it. Yeah, great game. It's kind of like if you kill too many people in middle, your solid three and you have to wade through that river

full of corpses. Every single person you've killed. Yeah. So many regrets in video games. I loved it. I think it's absolutely, I think it's a wonderful game. It's still not my favorite of the series,

but it's a really, really good start, really illustrious sort of start. Should I give my number? Yes, please, rank it. For me, it's two. It's number two. Number two.

So that gives it out of seven games, six points. All right. Uh-huh. What about you? Where do you stand on this? I really, really liked Warrior Land one. I think it hit at the right age for me to just spend all of my time playing it for probably the entire summer that we had it.

Yeah, I want to echo just the set pieces and the level design was very inventive. It's almost like a proto-yoshi's island in like the amount of weird stuff in each stage. only it's not as exhausting to play as Yoshi's Island. Possibly because Wario is a lot of fun. And I like to have I handled his hats, like his power-ups in this one. Something really fun about the dragon hat and just setting everything on fire. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it. But this game, I feel this might have been sort of the moment at which Nintendo

shifted its platform design strategy toward more collection-based. exploratory action. I mean, you know, you had some of that in like Super Mario world, but not really to the degree that you did here where things are much more methodical. In 1994, you got this at the beginning of the year. And then at the end of the year, you got Donkey Kong country. And the next year, you got Yoshi's Island. And, you know, it was kind of off to the races from that point. So, yeah, like, this seems to have been kind of them planting a flag in that territory and saying this is ours now. Yeah, and the way that Wario moves, like, I just, I really enjoy it because he's got weight behind everything he does.

It's, it's not like Mario, who is shockingly athletic, Mario, like, when you're doing something with him, you're committing to doing that in a way that you don't really see a lot of the other Nintendo platformers of the time. So I put this as number one, because I think it's just, I think they just nailed it right out of the gate and everything after that's just kind of like a funky remix of it. New funky mode. Yes, they need to remake this with Funky Kong. No, actually. So that's interesting. One of the things we did for this episode, because it was so hard to find people who are willing to come onto a microphone and talk about how great Wario is, we opened up the rankings to the retronauts community through

Discord. And the Retronauts community voted on things. No one actually heeded my call for testimonials on each game because, again, no one wants their name associated with praising Wario. But the anonymous Retronauts community did rank Wario Land, Super Mario 3, as their number one Wario game. So it's going to be tough for any game to overcome this, this epical epic epicness. I don't know. It seems to be well loved. I will be the somewhat dissenting voice

in that I do really like this game, but there are several other Wario games that I like better. I feel like this is a really great transition away from the standard Mario style into something more unique and interesting, but I don't feel like it's quite there yet.

And, you know, I've talked about this before, but I feel like Nintendo R&D1, who is doing the design for most of the Game Boy games internally at Nintendo, kind of struggled with how to bring Mario to Game Boy and maintain both his, you know, kind of the look and the feel of Mario games and capture the mechanics. Like you have the original Mario land where everything is tiny, and because everything is so tiny, the physics don't feel quite as fluid as in, the NES games. It's just more like, I really think it's because Mario, relative to the pixel grid is so big that you kind of, it kind of pushes it back more toward that like early 80s graphical style where everything's a little rough just because there's so few pixels on screen. And with Mario Land 2, they pushed in the other direction and made everything big and

much more Mario-looking. The game takes a lot of cues from Mario World for Super NES, which is very impressive, but the Game Boy just doesn't have the resolution for that. And so it feels like they had to make a lot of compromises in terms of level design and in terms of the speed of the action, like it's a slower game. And you have to kind of throw yourself into blind leaps a lot of the time. And it just doesn't quite feel Mario-ish. Like, that's the kind of shenanigans you really only do for bonus worlds in Mario games.

It's not really a, like, here's a standard level design trait. So it just doesn't quite click. So Wariland is when they sat back and said, you know what? Maybe we can't do Mario justice on the Game Boy. Maybe that's just not going to work. So what if we lean into the limitations of the Game Boy and, you know, to kind of push that Mario Land to feel even first? further, make the action even slower, and really get away from the nimble exploratory or

the nimble athletic platforming style and move more towards something exploratory. And so you have Wario, who is a big bulky dude who doesn't move fast. He can charge, but even that's not super fast. Instead, that becomes kind of like his main act of aggression, his sort of main weapon. And it also helps you explore the world. It opens things up. It just feels like this is a great solution for R&D1's Mario Bugbear. Like, how do we make a great Mario game on Game Boy?

We take Mario out of it and turn it into something else. And, you know, that could have been a case of throwing the baby out with a bathwater, but in this case, maybe the baby needed to go, that little bastard. So you get this clean bathtub and there's Mario inside. This is a bad image. I'm sorry. Anyway, I'm putting this as my middle-of-the-road Wario game. I'm giving it a rank of four.

So with each of these games getting points based on their ranking, a ranking of one equaling seven points, I know that makes a lot of sense. You're welcome. Warrior Land, Super Mario Land, three has 24 points. Right out of the gates, it's going to be tough for anything to top that. But, you never know. Given that we need to reach 90 minutes, and a question was raised earlier that I would like to ask,

but it is slightly diversionary, and it does involve the Game Boy. Would it be okay to ask it now? You might as well. We've got lots of time to kill and content to create. Let's put some content out there into the world. We were talking about the sort of eras of the Game Boy's popularity, like taking aside Pokemon, obviously,

which was a whole thing unto itself. I know over here in the UK, the Game Boy had this sort of resurgence late in life, pre-Pocomone, but post everything else, more or less, when you could just get one for, I think, about 40 pounds with Mario Lamb 1 and 2 packed in. Was that a thing in the US as well, like a cheap Game Boy light? I think it's Pocket, Game Boy Pocket. I mean, Game Boy Pocket. Actually, there was the Play It Loud Game Boy. They released a bunch of colors, and that was like 93. ish. And I think those came in at less cost. Game Boy Pocket, I want to say that was 96. So it was actually a bit later. It was around the time that Pokemon launched in Japan. But, you know, it took another two years to come to the West. I remember that suddenly everyone seemed to have this specific Game Boy with those specific two games packed in. And I just wondered if that was ever a thing for you all, just for us, really.

I don't remember those games being packed in with a Game Boy Pocket. Okay. I wonder if it was just, some UK-specific net, like, retailer or something. It could be. I mean, it might have been just a UK-specific, like, standard pack-in from Nintendo. They did a lot of those. They had, like, I think there was like a Star Fox pack-in and a couple of other, like, if you look at, oh, sorry, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. What was I thinking?

StarGlider, too. Yeah, I feel like if you look at, you know, super NES boxes from, you think, it's throughout the 90s from the U.S. versus Europe, you do see a lot of interesting pack-ins over there that we did not get here, although we did get pack-ins here that no one got there. So it's kind of a trade-off. I guess they just decided what's going to do well in this region. So Game Boy, you know, it's entirely possible that that was the case also. But, you know, the Game Boy Play-It Loud series did cause a little bit of a resurgence in people buying consoles. And the pocket, of course, moved the needle to a degree. So they just kind of kept the platform alive until Pokemon came along and did so well that they said, hey, we don't even need to release a new system. But our next game comes to us from that really awkward period of time, the mid-90s, where Nintendo said we do need to release a new portable system, a successor to Game Boy, but what if it weren't portable? What if you couldn't play it anywhere you wanted? What if you had to sit it on a tabletop? And it gave you a headache after 15 minutes.

that, my friends, was the virtual boy, and the only thing of note, not true, that it gave us was virtual boy Wario land. The second adventure in Wario's adventures, unless you count Mario and Wario, in which case it was the third adventure in Wario's adventures, unless you count Wario's Woods, in which case it was the fourth. And I guess if you count Wario Blast featuring Bomberman, it was the fifth. But in any case, it was the second Wario Land game, and therefore the second game that is of no. and interest for this episode. And people do tend to look at this as the only good virtual boy game, which is not true. People also tend not to have played this because it is a virtual boy game, which is understandable. But having played through the entire virtual boy library a few years ago for a hilarious stunt,

I call creating content, I can say that this is a damn good Wario Land game. It is excellent. It is a shame that it has been trapped forever on Virtual Boy, because it needs to get out into the world. Nintendo did not put this on 3DS, and for that, they are foolish fools who deserve to be mocked and scorned, actually. So Virtual Boy, Wario Land,

have either of you played this game through? I didn't finish the whole game, but I have played a fair chunk of it. A fair chunk, and yet you didn't finish? Was it the headaches, or was it you just couldn't be arced? I kind of forgot that I was playing through it. I got distracted. Wow.

So I guess this is not going to rank high for you. All right, Kevin, let's put a number on it. What do you think of this game and why didn't you finish it? And because you didn't finish it, where do you rank it? I gave it four because I actually did really enjoy what I did play of it. I just didn't get around to finishing it. I see. I think it's an interesting, like, building upon what the first Wario Land game did,

which, you know, I love the first Warrior Land game. And it does a lot of the same thing. And, like, the jumping into the background gimmicks and whatnot, I think they actually, like, work pretty well. Like, they worked well enough that Nintendo reused them for Mario Wonder. And a toee ripped them off altogether for both Zeodrifter and Mutant Muds. That's true. And not even a rip-off. It was, like, an acknowledged homage, actually.

So, yeah, this is a game I do intend on finishing. I just, you know, I didn't come to it until the past few years. years when I simply don't have time to finish a lot of games, despite my best efforts. But, you know, it saves after each stage, which is great. It does. It is a very pleasant in that way. It's an imminently finishable game because there's not that many stages, like 15. And at the most, they take like 15 minutes to complete if you kind of get into it.

Maybe 20. I don't know. But actually, you're limited. You only have 20 minutes per stage. So that's kind of, you know, a timer on the action, but also like Nintendo saying, we should probably make them stop playing after 20 minutes so that they don't sue us. Yeah, it's a great, like, break built into the game to keep your eyes from being straight. Maybe that's why I stopped playing it because I kept having to take breaks and then I just fell off of it.

I don't know. I guess I could just play it on an emulator, but I've already got the hardware. Yeah, I mean, you could at least get a consoleizer. They're only like $1,000 now. Yeah, a piece of cake. What about you, Stuart? Where do you stand on Virtual Boy Island? I have never played it on the actual hardware,

and I don't think I ever will, because it seems like a bad decision. So it's Stuart, which laid a pressure hand into this cheese toasty maker. Oh, yes, please. That sounds fun. No, I played it on, weirdly enough, I think I played it on a Wii that I had homebrew because they had like a working virtual boy emulator on there,

and that was... So, again, the game, of course, was pretty much stark black black and white, but, you know, it's playable. I love the really crisp graphics that it has, at least as they're drawn. I don't love the color use of color, as such as it is. It doesn't really amount too much for me, and it makes it every single level feel a little bit kind of like you're in the same environment. I know the tiles are different, but the sort of all the blacks everywhere, it just makes it all feel a bit. Do you have that issue with virtual, or if the, the original Wario Land for Game Boy?

which is a black and white game. Yeah, but it's, the thing is I'm saying is I don't know if this is an emulation thing or not, but Wario land on the Game Boy, you do have your sort of stock. I don't know, it's interesting psychologically, isn't it? When the background is just white, you're like, oh, I'm outside somewhere, and I can piece that together. When the background is black, you're just like, oh, I'm in hell, I'm in the void, I don't like it, I want to leave. That is a good summary of the virtual boy experience. but yeah but uh yeah ven horizon but um i did like it i don't find the level design that interesting i think

it's quite flat like you just you kind of in rooms that just kind of go straight a lot of the time uh and i didn't love that i like everything is very big which means it doesn't feel like there's much intricacy to it but then again it's been a long time when i revisited it i kind of felt the same but i don't hate it or anything it's not down there with the real stinkers it's Just, I would pick up any of really the handheld ones over it, except for that one. So, I had to, unfortunately, I had to give it a five and risk losing everything. Wow. Maybe if I played it on the virtual boy and I'd been given brain damage, I might like it.

I don't know. That's the secret to virtual boy technology. I can vouch for this. The implication there was a bit more, sorry. 22 different instances of brain damage to create that virtual boy book. That's good, sorry. I did a sort of cough laugh and it came out as just like a noise. It was kind of a warrior-ish noise.

Yeah, it was a warrior noise. Very fitting. Okay, so by contrast, I'm giving, I rank this as the third of best Warioland game, which I guess is five points. It was not just like an oasis of calm amidst the turbulent hell virtual boy, although yes. But it's actually just a really good follow-up to Wario Land for Game Boy. It has fewer levels, but the levels are much more expansive. So it feels like there's a lot more contrary to what Stewart said, intricacy to the level design, where you're kind of moving

back and forth between different rooms, especially as you get further into the game, like into the mansion and to the final castle. Each of the individual levels tends to have, you know, the front back plane element, which they, I recently realized, stole from Maze Hunter 3D from for Saga Master System, those bastards. But, you know, that's a, that's a visual depth thing to kind of play up the virtual boys gimmick. But it also, it also just makes for kind of interesting level designs where you're trying to figure out, like, how do I get through this area?

Where do I find the object? And then you realize, oh, I can go into the background here. and there's a tiny little treasure chest hidden for tiny little Wario to find. And yeah, that's fun. But each of the levels, you know, there's only 15 levels, like I said, is 15-ish. But they're all distinct. Each of them has its own style and its own kind of feel to it. There's like a desert level with sinking sands.

There's a haunted house level where you have to kind of run around and find bosses. It's very sort of, you know, ghost house from Super Mario World, but a bit less about, booze and that's B-O-O-O-S, not B-O-O-Z, although the game does begin with Wario drinking wine by the side of a lake. Love that for him. I know, it's great. The bosses are, there's not a lot of bosses, but they're interesting, and each kind of plays with the idea of planes and depth a little bit.

Yeah, it's just, it's a really well-constructed game. It takes the, um, the hat-based power mechanic for. from the first Warrior Land and builds on it by allowing you to kind of create combinations so you can, you know, upgrade the hats to the ultimate Jet Dragon form. Yeah, I just, I think it's an extremely charming and well-made game. I like, when you strip away the red and black from Game Boy or from Virtual Boy and play it the way I did, which is largely through a consoleizer or through an RGB output for video capture, where you can change the colors from red to gray, you realize, like,

this is just a beefy ass gameboy. It's like a high-res game boy with super powerful, um, sprite pushing capabilities. It's like the dream game boy. If they had released it as like super hyper game boy, taking out the 3D, I think it would have kicked ass. But they didn't do that. And so it got its ass kicked, which is unfortunate because it meant that we did not get more games like Virtual Boy Warioland, which is really, really excellent, super well-crafted. I really enjoy the fact that it is sort of a continuous journey into the depths of this whatever you've fallen into underground space. So you have X amount of time to finish each level.

And once you complete a level, you go to an elevator and ride it to the next stage. But you can take that elevator back down to the previous stage or back up, however it works. and run back and forth. There's bonus stages in between the levels, but, you know, they're kind of more or less optional. You take the elevator to them. So it is like one world from start to finish. And if you want to backtrack, you can.

I guess, you know, it would be, this would be improved on with the map system of later Wario Land games, where you can just travel from level to level on the maps. But it does create the sense of, you know, like a world that you're really inside of. and Wario is on this journey through a space, which, you know, because you're sticking your face into a machine, like it just kind of builds that immersion. I don't know. I really like it. I think it's great. I really encourage everyone to play it. I just realized I have a modded 2DS Excel here that has video output, but because it's modded, that means I can stick the Virtual Boy emulator that just recently came out in here. And I can play Virtual Boy Warioland anytime I want. As soon as I

figure out how to get that emulator on there. So my life just increased in quality by like 3%. It's great. So this was a good episode for me. I'm happy to have done it. Thanks everyone for listening. I'm going to go play WarioLand now. Cool.

Yeah. By all means, like I gave it a four, but I think this game is great. There's just, there are games that are slightly better than it. I went back and forth on this a lot. So, I mean, that is, that is a problem for a ranking hoot-nanny like this, and that most of the games we're talking about. about are very, very good. And so it's just a matter of degrees.

And that is totally fair. The community, oh, sorry, go ahead. Same exact problem we're going to have with the Sonic ranking and it. All the games are just so good. I know, they're amazing. I can't wait to talk about how great Sonic forces is. So the community vote on this. Actually, it did not get that many votes, this game.

And ended up tied for fifth place with Master of Disguise. and shake it. Oh, Jesus. I'm going to use my executive authority here and say that this is better than those. Yeah. Yeah, of course it is. I'm giving it three points, ranking it fifth, and therefore that brings its tally, its total to 15 points, which puts it below Wario Land, Super Mario Land 3, but still ahead

of all the other games, which so far have no points. I feel bad that I've been negative on it, because I do like it. And I would play it if they were to do an official re-release of it in any capacity. I would be all over that. I would love to see them tackle it again. But the best you're going to get is like a micro game in a Wari Away game or something. I feel okay about playing it unofficially because I do own the game and therefore I can emulate it. And Nintendo's lawyers can do what they want and they probably will.

But once I go bankrupt defending myself in court, I will ultimately. come away poorer and more victorious. I'm paying a certain percentage of everything you learned Nintendo for the rest of your life. Yes. Yes. I will be working for $3 an hour in jail to pay down my $3 million debt. But I have the moral victory of knowing that I did in fact own that game, even if I downloaded the ROM from Zofar's domain back when it was alive instead of dumping it from the cart myself. Because how do you dump a virtual boy cart? I have no idea. I was going to say they can't prove you didn't dump it yourself, but I guess you just admitted it here.

I just I just Donald trumped it. I set it on an open mic and now they can use it in court. Is this that like Cockney rhyming slang for dump? I don't know what that means. Donald Trump, the old, never mind just leave it. Oh, Cochney rhyming sling. No, no, literally that's what Donald Trump does all the time. He keeps admitting to crimes and people record it.

Wasn't he compared to Toad in some way at some point? the only time I've ever relianced the guy it's the only time I've ever reliance the guy Anyway, topic. Is this the greatest game of all time? I put the question to you. Kevin says no because he's already said that WarioLand, Super Mario Land 3 is the greatest game of all time. Fy on you, Kevin. I say this is not the greatest game of all time, but I'm going to go right out ahead and say it now. This is my favorite Warioland game. I think it is a masterpiece. I think it's brilliant. Oh, wait,

wait about Warioland 4. Damn it. No, Warioland 2. I got to go with Warioland 2. This is where Wario became president. This is the moment where he really broke away from the Mario thing and took on his own life. And the trick there was that he doesn't have health or lives. He is immortal. He is the villain who can never be defeated. And they weaponize that into making him a main character who can never be defeated or die. He'll always keep bouncing back, sometimes literally, depending on the status ailment he gets.

But Wariland 2 is a massive puzzle-platformy world where you need to basically steal Wario's castle back from Captain Surrup and her pirates. Wario stole Mario's castle and then someone did a double whammy on him and stole his castle, not through shenanigans really, but just because he slept through his alarm. and they just came in and stole it while he was asleep because he's a very deep sleeper. Very, very, very deep. Very deep, yes. So, Wario, yeah, like I said, he doesn't have lives in this game. He can't die.

The worst that can happen is that you can be inconvenienced. And sometimes you can be inconvenienced enough that you think, I'm done playing this for a while. But you will always come back because it's so good and so inventive. and basically you're running around trying to collect as many coins as possible, as in the first Wario Land game, you can smash through the walls, tear things up, charge into them, find secrets, find hidden passages, just, you know, basically be a force of destruction. There are more stages than in the previous two Wario Land games combined.

Each of them has its own unique vibe. Like, there's one stage where you go to Wario's henhouse, basically, and, you You're just, like, running around interacting with the chickens who are, like, they love Wario. They're his friends. And you're using them to help solve puzzles. And when I say puzzles, I don't mean like, you know, riddle me this Batman. It's just more like, how do I break this level apart in as many ways as possible to take as

many coins as I can possibly find? It's about greed and cupidity. It's, yeah, puzzles. for wealth. And, you know, the game is pretty expansive. There's a lot of stages. But by the time you finish the game, you realize, oh, I've only completed half the stages. And there's an entire, there are actually multiple branching paths through the game to encourage replay in a better sense than, say, Alex Kid the Lost Stars, which we were talking about before this podcast, where you just play the same levels again with no changes. Here you actually,

exploring like half the stages after completing the game, you unlock them through various alternate means by doing certain things on certain stages. Famously, there is the one stage branch that you open up by sleeping through the entire first stage. You just don't ever wake up. And if you choose not to wake up, eventually you will open up a new branch of the game. It's ridiculous and so good. And there is just creativity oozing out of this.

game from every pixel on the screen. Even the sub-pixels ooze. That's how oozy it is. It's the oozyest game I can possibly imagine. So much ooze, aside from Secret of the Ouse. So anyway, I'm giving this max points, seven points. Damn. Take that.

Lucky number seven. Stuart, you seem to have opinions. Where do you stand on this one? I don't know if I have opinions. I don't know I don't have opinions. I mean, yeah. It's a testament to the quality of this series that I'm giving this three

because it's a masterpiece. I love it. It's joyous. Like, the problem is, I don't, I have issues with some of it, aspects of it that are introduced in this game or at least extrapolated in this game that get really overboard later,

which is, I really hate the minigames in this game, and they're kind of mandatory because spotting something in, like, looking at a picture and then trying to identify the picture that you've just looked at is boring, and trying to guess what number is slowly appearing on the screen is also boring, and there's nothing to do with Wario. And I could really do without that stuff,

but it's such a good game that it's like whatever. You usually have so much money anyway that they're kind of trivial mini games to do regardless. It's just I'd really rather not have to do them. That's the entirety of my complaints about the game. That's it. Everything else is flawless. When I first played this, I didn't know that you could press, like, select

to look at the sort of the branches, the map. So when I went through the game, after the game ends, you look at, you get shown the map, you're forced to show the map, and it was the first time I'd seen it. So it was even more of it, like, oh, shit, when I saw that. It was very, very cool. The thing that brings me the most joy in this game,

as you've mentioned, Jeremy, is, as someone who is obsessed with, like, hidden secrets in games, especially platform games, they bring my joy, they make my chest hairs wobble. There are, yeah, Wobble, yeah, that's the look you should be getting. You haven't even seen it yet, trust me. I will pay money not to see it. It's very Wario.

How much money, Jeremy? Because I'll turn the camera. At least $3. Okay. But no, what I love is the destructability of the stage is not just because of like, oh, I'm solving a puzzle here. You get into this little cranny. There's a wall that you can break. You're out in essentially a void with some bricks.

You're in the walls. It's like Wario is in the walls. You know, he's coming from inside the walls. But you'll just be in like a little area that's just got like, you know, nine coins. And they'll be like, okay, well, that's done. But then no, at the back of that secret, you can also break the wall there and go a bit further. And there'll be like another six coins. And you're like, well, I guess that's finished.

But no, it's not finished because they can break through that secret. And there'll be even more coins because there's almost no space in this game. It hasn't been backed with something fun to find. And every level is like that. Every single one of them of the, what? Seven million levels. the scale or something roughly and they're all as perfectly

crafted as the first one like it's just a great great game the fact it's not number one I'm starting to doubt myself now but no I'm very confident I'm very confident it's a three from me but it is a slightly reluctant three because it deserves you know it deserves to have a highest scot

Kevin, can you follow that up? No, he took all my thunder, but... Sorry. It's fine. I agree pretty much wholeheartedly. You can have your thunder back, Kevin? I'm not using it. I also gave this a three. I do really enjoy this game.

I do enjoy how, like, cohesive the world is, the way you, like, progress from each level to the next. And I really enjoyed the very cartoon-esque things that can happen to Wario in it and how you use that to solve puzzles, like having to get flattened just to, like, squeeze under a little space, just so you can get to, like, some treasure. But, like, you can't just do that. You have to, like, destroy some stuff out at first without getting crushed,

because then you can't do anything but sort of float there. Or, like, getting fed cake and then Mario has, like, a, I don't know, a coma. It's very big. There's also being fed soda, which in the Japanese version was booze. Like, they would throw you booze and get drunk. But, of course, that had to be changed for, America because we can't have big, rough, evil guys drinking alcohol, that would be unacceptable. Yeah.

So this is a game that they clearly had a lot of fun doing just the sprite work for it. And, yeah, I'm not a big fan of, like, where they took the Invincible Wario gameplay in the future. But I did really like it here. I think they really nailed it and did everything they needed to with it. So I'm not sad that it eventually went away. We're going to add two rules. Was this like a hybrid cartridge or were there two versions of it? I can't remember.

There were two versions of it. There was a black and white version that came out at the beginning of 1998. And then once the Game Boy Color launched, they released a hybrid cartridge that had colorization. And it's a strange hybrid cart because basically the black and white and the color ROMs are distinct within the game. And if you have a save file for one, you can't play the other mode. Like, you know, if you start playing on color, if you start playing on color, you can't play on a black and white Game Boy without deleting your color save file.

It's a weird limitation. That's really weird. So there are some weird, some weird quirks to those hybrid black cartridges for Game Boy color. You know, we've looked at doing hybrid carts at limited run. And I don't understand all the text. issues, but we kind of decided, hey, let's not do that. Let's just stick to Game Boy Color or Game Boy, because the hybrid carts are really complicated to create in unexpected

ways. So I don't like quote me on this and say, you know, I don't know, create your smear campaigns against limited run. I'm just saying like I've kind of heard secondhand that, you know, from people who have dug into this heck, that it's, it's really weird. So yeah, That hybrid card is kind of bizarre, but the black and white one is actually much less common. It was kind of at the end of the Game Boy original systems life. And if you look at the box, it has a little holographic seal on it that says, new, just in case you didn't realize that they were still making new Game Boy games in 1998. Because who would have expected that?

I actually forgot that this had a hybrid card because I got the black and white one as a kid, and that's just been the one that I've had forever. I didn't even know it was harder to find. I think it's special, Kevin. I mean, it's still a Nintendo first-party game, so it's not like, you know, vanishingly rare. It's just a much less common. Yeah, exactly. That fish dude's not real. Shut up.

No, I owned one for a while, and then I saw someone because I needed the money. I was convinced that was like a homebrew. game or something or else on that. It might be. There's no way. Anyway, a strange little game, very much a transitional era of the Game Boy's life,

but a really great take on the idea of playing as a villain. And, you know, in the post-game hidden stuff, takes all the right lessons from Castledania Symphony in the Night from the year before. Because this came out like a year after, Symphony of the Night. So, clearly, they looked at that and were like, upside down Castle, we can do better than that. We can just give you 25 levels that are unique.

Take that. And I did. I did take that. It's like an evolution of what happens in the first game where you beat it, and then suddenly it lights up all the stages that still have missing treasures. You know, it's a really satisfying thing to finish a game and then be told, hey, there's tons more game. Forty best it's perfected in Super Mario 3D land when you finish the game. And then it's like, here's another whole game. That's pretty dope. I do feel like this is the game that solidified Wario's, like, weird personality and characterization, because, you know, he's just kind of a weirdo in the first couple games. And here, he's, like, a lazy, grumpy weirdo.

Yep. Getting injured a lot. Yeah, he's just annoyed that he keeps getting inconvenienced as opposed to, like, angry and wanting to take over the world. Yeah. I mean, yeah, like, Virtual Boy, Wario Land, his entire motivation is that he's that he's just annoyed that he's not. he is just sipping wine by a lake and he sees people carrying treasure into a building. And he's like, you know what? I'm going to go steal that.

In this case, there's more of a personal element because they steal his castle literally out from underneath him. Anyway, the Retronauts community ranked this as their second favorite Warioland game. That gives us a total of 23 points, which puts it one point below WarioLand Super Mario Land 3. Very unfortunate. I think it's a better game. But I'm not going to begrudge, the original Wario Land, because all three of the games we've talked about so far, damn good. You know what? I think I want to change my vote.

It's too late. It would be one point either way, and it would change it. No. Is it too late? That's not how voting works. I hate this ranking hootny. Okay. Yeah, it sucks.

I hate voting. I'll never vote again, ever. Warial Land is first past the post. I like the idea that democracy could die because, because you got annoyed at Wario Land and, you know, allowed labor to lose or something by a single vote. It's because I listen to use guys used to talking about it and thinking, you know what? Yeah, that game is dope as hell. But no, I do love the first one, and I will stick by it for nostalgia purposes.

But I think in my heart of hearts, I think that too is just like, oh, it's there. It's in there. There's a copy of it lodged in one of my heart series. it's going to kill me one day, but, you know, at least I'll die knowing I had a copy of where I'm too in my body for some reason. I don't know where I'm going with this. What's moving on? Is it a hybrid card?

God, we can only hope. You can use the battery inside as a, you know, to power your pacemaker when you're older. Yeah, for sure. It's exciting. That's going to keep me in a good stead for many years. Mario will save your life someday once they hook your pacemaker into the cartridge. And behave exactly like him in all ways. So, moving on to the year,

thousand, thousand. We get to Warioland 3, not to be mistaken for Warioland, Super Mario Land 3. It's very confusing, I know. Rainbow Island's time. But this is a Game Boy Color only game. No hybrid carts here. If you own a monochromatic Game Boy only, tough shit. Yeah, go to hell.

You cannot play this game. Fuck you. Wow. Saltier. I don't know if I'd go that far. Okay. Well, sorry kids who can't afford a Game Boy Color Stuart says you might as well be dead

You're going to be Bonestorm or go to hell Now imagine a game that you put in a non-color game point It just comes up and it's the same exact Nintendo phone But it's just fuck off That would be amazing I think that's more of an S&K kind of thing to do It's very hot, I'm a little bit sick And this is what's happening and I'm really sorry

All right. Moving on to Wario Land 3, Wario Land 3 was basically Wario Land 2, but more of it, more or less, I would say. In my opinion, that's not actually a great thing. But I would be curious to hear what you have to say before I weigh in. I talked first last time. So, Kevin, what do you think about Wario Land 3? It's aggressively fine, but I don't really enjoy playing it. the same extent of the previous three games. Like, I don't know, the levels, they just kind of drag and they're, they're puzzle levels because they do the same thing as Warieland 2, where you can't die and you just sort of explore around and find stuff.

But they're, I feel like they're just over-designed. They're a little too confusing, and you have all the really awful mini-games. Like, this is the one that has the basketball against the rabbit, isn't it? Yeah. That's not just a mini-game. That's a boss fight. Yeah, and that's awful. That's a follow-up to the soccer from two, right?

Or am I misremembering that? Same, yeah. It was like, I thought that was annoying. Here we go. Yeah, I seem to recall getting really frustrated against that boss fight the first time I played this game and put it down. It didn't come back to it for quite a while. That was my stopping point also. It's just terrible.

And like, on top of that, you've got the, yeah, I'm just not a huge fan of this one. I ranked it as number six. Because if you'll believe it, there are games I like more than this that we haven't gotten into yet. But, like, it's not awful. Like, it's fun enough. But you have to really, really like the Wario Land 2 stuff to want something that's more of that, but not as good. It's the frozen yogurt of Warioland games. TCBW, the country's best Mario.

Hmm. No, okay. That's my piece. Oh, okay. Should I say things or should I let Jeremy say things? No, go ahead, Stuart. I'll say some things. As long as they're not cousins.

I won't you say any more swearing. Goodness me. I didn't know that there was a rule against it, honestly. You said the F word twice. That means we can't have a PG-13 rating. I'm sorry about that. You knock us into R. We'll have to bleep one of them.

Yeah, that's fair. Okay, I won't do my other joke with the other word in it then. Okay. Worryland 3, we talked about this on a podcast. I want to say it was one of Bob's quite a while ago. and I may have a different opinion now that I did then. I can't remember what I said then, so I apologize if I'm just going completely back on my word now.

But I used to kind of hate this, and now I kind of dig it, but I think you have to be in a different kind of vibe because it's really nothing like Warrior Land 2. You have to be kind of chill, because Wario Land 3, for me, its main problem, and this is getting into the weeds a bit. Psychologically, I find it less annoying

to just die in a game and have a reset than to get knocked off a platform and fall to the bottom of something or roll to the bottom of something. I have to watch myself get spiraled away, all the way that I've came already. That's psychologically way more annoying to me than just losing a life

because I like having that mental like, oh, okay, reset, I screwed up. I got to do this again as opposed to oh, God damn, I got hit by that stupid zombie and now I've just fallen through 600 platforms, which is what this game does constantly. It's not just that you fall to the bottom and you've got to walk into a shaft of light to turn back into

normal Mario and then go back and climb again, I need to get hit again because you're rubbish like me. But the problem is if they can't kill you, they can only really irritate you. I don't remember who coined that. It wasn't me, but it was a very salient point, so I've stolen it. And despite that,

I do like this game. I think structurally, it's very impressive. It really fits together well, I think. There's so much to do if you get into it. Rather than just the four keys and four strangers chest in each stage, there's the ten music coins, but I don't think any human on earth has ever actually bothered to get those. But my understanding is if you do,

an expanded version of the minigolf game which, hand on how yeah, I know, I've got to be honest with you, I don't mind the mini golf game compared to all the other stupid minigames, but that's just me. I think there's an artifice to this game that is not in the second game

with stuff like huge blocks that are block your way that just say mini game clear. I mean, I know it's a game, but come on, some coherence, some cohesiveness would be nice. Don't hate it. Like the map, it looks great, like the way the map gets altered by the treasures you collect, and the crayons coloring things in and stuff like that.

I think it's a nice accessibility thing that you can return to the temple at any time and the guy will just directly say, go to this stage. Though the problem is because it's me, I just went back there after every single stage. And I was just like, where do I go? I don't know. So while there's a lot to like here, I think that the floors bring it down, for me it's four, which is still pretty high. I do still rate it when you're in the mood for it. It can be quite almost sort of meditative,

the way you're constantly unlocking things, getting new stuff, moving forward. And there's a ton of content there. But it's just, it's no Warioland 2. It's not fit to lick the gravy off of Warioland 2's galoshes. I don't know what that means. Why was Warioland 2 walking through gravy in the first place? Because it's fucking awesome. Oh, shit, I said it again.

You did it, Stuart. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. So salty. I just love Warioling so much. All right. So you're saying that if you're in the right frame of mind, the annoyances of Warioland 3 are not annoying. I forgot the other annoyance, which is the night and day cycle. It's just total

time wasting the other. Okay, sorry, carry it. So, so where do you rank this game amongst the Mario Pantheon? It's four for me. I still liked it more than the virtual boy one, which I think is quite a hot take. And I'm really sorry about that. That's okay. It is what it is. If you weren't, if you weren't offering hot takes, we'd have to ask why is Stuart even here? It's a boiling take of that one. To swear, to say swear words, obviously. Oh, that's right, to cuss and to offer hot mics, hot takes. That's the Stuart Jip promise.

No, actually, I think I think that's a very interesting perspective. I don't know if I agree, but I can see where like if you just kind of get into that frame of mind that Warioland 3 could be fun. And I do like a lot of the game

but yeah, kind of like what Kevin said, I feel like this took an element of Warioland 2, which is mostly kind of relegated to the later boss fights and some of the final stages, where because you can't die and it wants to be difficult, it just sets you back with inconveniences and status ailments. That's pretty contained to the later game and the more advanced stages in Wariland 2. But here, I feel like it's all throughout the game. Like, you're just constantly being set back. It's very, very frustrating to play. And, you know, maybe it's just because

I'm really bad at playing this game, but I seem like, I feel like I'm pretty good at Waryland too. So I think it could just be that they went a little too far with the annoyances and the difficulty and the like, how do we make this game hard without killing anyone? Let's just piss them off at all times repeatedly over and over again. And it worked. Like, I'm always pissed off when I play this game. So, you know, mission accomplished. But it doesn't make me want to go back to it. You know, they went away from the Invincible Wario style of game after this one, and I think it's just because they realized with this one, like, we've taken this about as far as we can, and maybe we need to go back to a more, you know, standard style of gameplay. There's not anything we can do

that's going to make the game better by continuing to hoe this row, as it were. So, yeah, I think it's good, but I just feel like I don't love it. So, for me, it is six out of seven. Is that, is that right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm giving it two points. That brings the total of this game with the community score. They ranked it third. Retronauts community. I don't know about you. That's five points for them. So a total of 13 points for Rorya and three, which places it fourth so far, fourth out of four. But, you know, there are much worse things to come along. So it won't be down at the bottom forever.

But next, we come to a masterpiece. I struggled between this and Warioland 2 is my favorite. I ultimately gave Waryland 2 top marks because I just feel like it's more creative and really, you know, took a wildly different and unexpected approach to game design. But Waryland 4 is awesome. I don't know who agrees with me on this one, but, okay, Stuart. You love your hot takes. So tell me why I'm wrong.

No, it's my favorite as well. It's number one for my absolutely peak series. And that's not to dismiss Worryland 2, obviously. It's very different game. But Waryland 4 for me is just kind of the creative apex and the design apex and visual apex, audio apex. There's almost nothing wrong with it. The only thing I could point out is I'm not thrilled with the, you know, the items that

you buy to fight the bosses. but even that's completely optional anyway, so whatever. You have to play those boring mini-games, but even if without these boring mini-games, we never would have got Wario-Worse, so there you go. But no, Warioland 4 is, like, what it is for me is, I was saying earlier about how every level in the original Warioland

feels quite distinct, like has a sense of place to it. And in Warioland 4, they're just like, try and name two levels that even look similar in that game. Like, you can't... I mean, maybe you could late a couple, but... Like, every single world you go to, you're like, what the hell is this going to do? be like can you end up with like the monsoon stage with this gorgeous jungle like some of the

best graphics on the game boy advanced by some distance um the level made out of like children's bricks and toys and things uh there's a freaking pinball stage in there as well uh the big board game i could just reel them off the volcano stage is incredible uh the junkyard stage where you're just constantly smashing everything apart trying to find the way to the exit the stage where being followed by the ghost, the big weird ghost the whole time, that reminds me a little bit of Donald Duck's quack shot for some reason. Hey, it's me.

But no, everything about it is just firing on all cylinders. It's so confident. It's made by this team that's just not afraid to get weird, like, at all. And secrets just out the, I can't say in what's right, a secret's out the wazoo. And, like, you'll find your vinyl records. I think they're supposed to be vinyl records because they're in like vinyl boxes

and they're very satisfying oh they're CDs well why are they in vinyl boxes then not having it they're vials Mario's a hipster Fair enough he keeps his giant CDs Oh very nice Very nice yeah Okay well how about the laser discs compromise

That explains what there's a visual aspect to The size of Wario himself But yeah you know you click those CDs And you get to watch like a bizarre unfiltered sort of what back in the day the UK press would have lamentedly probably been racist about kind of content

but nowadays everyone just agrees it's cool as hell I remember there was some sort of like what are these in the game they're just weird and they're like yes they're weird and pointless that's why they're good they're better than like a concept art or something but no

God it's brilliant I don't even want to get into the scoring the way that you can manipulate the enemies to get more coins from them. Oh, Jesus, the fact that on the, every time you beat the game and you choose to the next difficulty level, it moves all the freaking collectibles around, so you basically get another game twice. The sheer level of challenge on super hardware

that you fight the first boss and you have like five seconds to kill it. You're just like, wait what? Oh, God. It's, I guess, other than the mini-game thing I don't love, but again, it's totally ignorable. I wish maybe there was one more world. It feels a bit short. But when every level is delivering to that standard,

it's hard to be childish about it. Yeah, it's my number one easily. It's a masterpiece. Yeah, I have such good feelings about this game. It was, you know, just when Nintendo launched the Game Boy Advance, it came with a Castlevania game that was very ambitious, but also kind of not that fun. It felt really, like, it just kind of missed what made Symphony the Night good, and even though tried to be in that style.

And another remake of Super Mario Brothers, too, which, you know, was fine, but really shoddy. And I already played that game. It just kind of felt like, well, we've got, you know, this much more powerful new handheld system. But what's it all for? Like, nothing quite lands. And then this game came out. And it was amazing. Like, it just feels like, you know, it's the perfect expression of everything that Wario is and really everything that R&D1 is.

Like, this was, I feel like this was the damn bursting for R&D1. They had been working on Game Boy hardware for a decade, longer than a decade, and kind of working within those limitations and kind of suffering through it, trying to give you a full Metroid experience on Game Boy, trying to figure out how to make Mario work on Game Boy. And then all of a sudden, you know, the shackles were released and they were given unfettered power, basically, you know, a 32-bit handheld system. That's amazing. There's so much they could do. And they just went for it. And they brought in everything. Like you mentioned the very surreal CD clips that you unlock by collecting CDs.

Those are basically just like, here's, you know, cutting room floor fragments from Game Boy camera. Like the weird little animations and stuff that you got on Game Boy camera. But now, you know, in full color with sampled sound, just, you know, really putting the limitations of the Game Boy advance to their limit, you know, to just kind of see what they could get away with. You know, they played around with audio design, altering pitch and speed of things based on your status ailments. They have vocal themes as the background, the background music, which, like, who even does that? It's like psycho soldier, but, you know, weirder. Yeah, like gameplay-wise, I was a little disappointed at first when I played Warioland 4 because it takes away the invincible Wario thing and it limits him to lives and to health points. But, you know, once I played through a couple of levels, I realized, oh, you know what, that's fine.

Like this game plays much more snappily than other the most more recent Warioland games because it doesn't give you those status ailments to the same degree. it doesn't rely on those to impede you and inconvenience you. Like, if it wants to kill you, it just kills you. And it doesn't feel like it has to be super annoying and force you to go through the same sequences over and over again. And, you know, there's no guarantee you won't have to replay levels to complete them because there is the escape sequence at the end. And every time you complete a stage, you don't really finish it, you just make it to the end. and then it becomes a Metroid, you know, escape routine. You know, you blew up mother brain, but now you've got to get out before the level explodes.

And every time it's shorter than it was on the previous levels. And also, there are more things you need to collect. There are some stages where there's, you know, a stage late in the game where you basically start by detonating the stage. And the entire thing is you're just escaping. But, you know, the route back through the exit from the detonator to the entrance slash exit is different in every stage. And so you're going through often different pathways to reach the entrance where you started from and collecting different things. So you may see stuff that you can't initially reach and then you blow up the stage and you're like, oh, now I can get that stuff and I've got to hurry.

It just really challenges you to manage time to kind of map out paths and kind of keep track of where locations are. There's so much stuff to collect and find, but not in a, you know, Donkey Kong 64 kind of way where it just becomes tedious. It's just more like, how can I maximize my wealth and, you know, get the best possible score on this stage while also, you know, getting out of here before everything explodes because I jumped on a frog. And, yeah, I love it. It's such a good game.

It really, it moves away from the Wireoland 2-3 style to something that's much more like Virtual Boy Warioland. It's not quite as inventive as Warioland, too, but it's, It's very, very close. So I give it a rank of two, which is six points. But yeah, just like I was saying, you know, it really builds on the virtual boy Wario Land concept by having fewer levels that are much bigger and more convoluted and each distinct from the others. Instead of having 50 stages like Wariland 2, it has 16 or whatever. But all of them are really distinct and unique and memorable and give you different gizmos and toys to play. play with throughout, you know, like little moving cars. There's always an old man you can abuse for money. It's great. Just a, yeah, a real masterpiece.

And I kind of feel like it sort of peaked for platform or action games on Game Boy Advance really early. There was nothing else on the system that quite measured up to this. And it's a shame. I would have liked to have seen more developers say, that's awesome. Let's live up to that standard. But instead, they were like, let's republish a 16-bit super Nies. game, but make it worse.

Oh, well. But now it's portable and worse. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Portable and worse. Kevin, I apologize for sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Your turn. Oh, boy, I don't know

what's left to say about Wario Land 4 that you all didn't. I adore this game. Yeah, the stages aren't really cohesive to the space, but it doesn't matter because you're just being warped around anyway, so Mario can do what he wants. And I guess that's

kind of the theme of the game. It's just Wario is going to Wario. I forgot entirely that you could just, like, beat up on that archaeologist and, like, use him as a tool to, like, get treasures and whatnot. That was always really funny. And yeah, you're talking about the CDs so much. My favorite part is that they bill them as soundtrack CDs, and they're all songs that are just, like, nowhere else in the game. And they're just like the most... They're like a five-second clip, too.

And they're all just completely bizarre. And I remember the first time I experienced that. I'm like, what the heck? This is not the song that I was just like bopping out to. What is this? You want the background music, but it's just a dog barking. But you know what? I loved it anyway.

I'm like, okay, this is really funny. I'll accept what they're throwing at me. And yet the escape sequences are just, they're not stressful. And that's what I find really interesting. Because so many escape sequences, you're like, oh, crap, I don't have that much time. I got to get out of here. And that's, like, kind of true in some of the stages here, but, like, it never feels like it's crushing down on you. It's not stressful.

You're still just, like, warioing your way through in a way that makes him happy, makes me happy, makes him rich. Also, his car in the opening is cool. Let's be real. Oh, yeah. The Wario Mobile or whatever it is. You know, and it's got that great song in the background. Yeah. It's like kind of a bluesy sort of rock song with vocal.

again. Wario's outrun moment. It's just like, there hasn't been another Nintendo game even like it since it came out. Like, we couldn't get, as we discussed, we couldn't get a Mario with that level of flare. And I mean, Mario Wonder isn't, I mean, it's just not there for me. It's, I can see it's closer, but it's just not it, you know? Yeah, the weirdness in that feels a little forced to me. And it's just kind of like every level has.

mandatory weirdness, which kind of takes away the wonder of it. You know, ironically, whereas Wario, it does feel much more organic. It's just like some kind of weird people made this game, and no one was, you know, looking over their shoulder and just let them do whatever they wanted, and so you end up with this. And I do feel like something essential was lost at Nintendo when they had their internal reorg, and the R&D one team was dissolved and kind of spread around and rebranded. And, you know, it doesn't help that a lot of the people who were involved in this and had been kind of with R&D1 for the longest time, retired or, you know, just moved away from game development. But this and the Wario Ware games, the early ones, really feel like just this kind of bubbling weirdness and desire for self-expression lurking beneath the surface at Nintendo that finally had a chance to escape.

you know, this one team that had always done the kind of quirky games, the weird games that aren't, you know, like the standard Mario and Zelda type games, really finally had a chance to truly express themselves. And then I kind of leaked through a little bit and stuff like, you know, virtual boy, some of the virtual boy games and Game Boy camera and so forth. But this is where they finally were just given freedom to just do whatever. And they did. And it's awesome. And I really miss. that era of Nintendo. It's whatever I would always refer to as weird Nintendo. And I find myself thinking, like, I think this is similar to what you were saying, so I apologize. But I love my Switch, but is there anything on the Switch of that caliber? Like, I mean, there were a couple of Warrior Way games, but, you know. And like the 3DS with Warrior Wear Gold and Rhythm Heaven Paradise, I think it was called,

they felt almost like the last sort of hurrah for that whole thing and now what is there left? I just don't know what there is other than playing these games again on the Nintendo Switch Online service. So, well, you know, when we had this last direct at the time of recording about a week ago now, I found myself thinking, well, here we go. And sort of switch, end of life, air quotes,

give us the weird shit like you always do, let's go, you know. And then, no, it was just loads of really normal games about crops. Yeah, and not even an end-of-life Kirby game. Like, when do you publish a Nintendo console or bring a Nintendo console to Sunset without publishing a Kirby game as the last hurrah? Come on. I'm trying. I'm trying not the curse. So please do not remind me that there is not a Kirby game coming, please.

I'm not having it. So anyway, I give WarioLand to number two on my rank. All right. So that's six points that brings the total to 23, tying it with WarioLand 2, which that seems fitting. I agree. The community ranked at number four because the community sometimes is wrong. They ranked at Underwireline 3. They did.

I'm going to give them up 4. I still like them. Thank you for supporting us Retronauts community, but sometimes you're wrong. Speaking of wrong, now we move along to Wario Master of Disguise, and I think we can all agree. This one is shit. Oops, sorry, I'm not supposed to say any more bad words. This one is poop. This is what happens when you lose our needs.

and you outsource Wario to another developer. Wario Master of Disguise was developed by Suzak, which I believe was, oh crap, I can't remember what else they've done, but it wasn't anything good. They're bad. I don't know. This game vexes me because I had to review it.

I was like, hot damn, a DS game starring Wario, I love that. This is going to be so good. And I played it and was like, this isn't good yet. And the longer I played it, the more I said, wow, this is actually really bad. And, you know, it ended up being a huge disappointment. And it's just in subtle ways.

Like, yes, functionally, it looks like a Warioland game, but they did not call it Wario Land. And I realize that's not accidental. You know, it's one of those things like unlimited saga is not saga with a capital S, a capital GA, it's just capital S-A-G-A, because it was just a little too weird to be even a saga game. So, yeah, so Suzak just, they didn't quite, quite hit it. Okay, let's see. They've developed F-0-G-P-Legg Legend. I like Climax.

I don't play Climax. Oh, didn't they develop that Boeing? It's a lot of games that did not get localized. What's that? Didn't they develop Boing Dokomodakie? That was great. The little, stupid little mushroom game, idiots, like me. Oh, yeah, yeah, Boing Docomo docomodake DS.

Did they release that here? Wow, how did I not? Yeah, they even released it over here. God knows why. Okay, so I guess that was their redemptive arc after Wario Master of Disguise. But Mario Master of Disguise is bad and they should be ashamed of it. So, you know, it's just all the things that it does that are not Wario-ish. Like, it constantly interrupts the gameplay for mini-games.

Like, they're not just kind of. there. They're mandatory. It forces you to play them. All of them use the touchscreen. Same sound. The core mechanic of changing Wario's disguise, which should be fun. That's also touchscreen-based. You have to, like, draw a little disguise marks over him to change his outfit. A lot of his powers are based on the touchscreen. It just feels like they really went too far with the touchscreen stuff in ways that didn't help the game. Also, it constantly tutorializes you. You have a little guy who follows you around and is like, oh, Wario, here's how you should do this.

There's no sense of discovery or weirdness. The game doesn't leave anything to chance. It does that really annoying Nintendo handholdy thing that they were doing with all their games, including Zelda at this point, because they didn't trust casual audiences to have enough brains to figure out how to do basic things. So they explain everything you have to do at all points throughout the game and leave nothing to chance, nothing to discovery, nothing for the player to learn on their own. And it just, you know, after how weird and alienating and like, you know, you're Wario, you're ugly and horrible and evil, just do whatever and figure it out.

Like, it just feels like a huge step back and it's just massively disappointing. So that's my stand on Warrior Master of Disguise, the game that I give a rank of seven. That's one point. One point. That's generous. Kevin, where do you stand? Where do you stand? Wow, so you give Wario Master of Disguise zero points, is that correct?

If I could, I would. You'd rate it eight out of seven? No, I gave it a seven. I haven't played a huge amount of this game because it's not very good. I like the idea of the disguise things, but like, like you said, this is like all the worst traits of a mid-2000s DS game from Nintendo. You know, you have the touchscreen being used for all sorts of things. need to be used for. You've got all of the

like explanatory stuff. It's they don't let you be weird for the sake of weird. They don't let you be weird for anything. You're not weird. You're just like warrior the normal platform hero. That's missing the point. Why would you

even do that? Yeah. And like I've seen some people online go to bat for this game recently which you know it takes all kinds. I bet they like the phantom menace. But they probably do like Phantom Menace and Sonic

Unleashed and all the other weird things that are having redemption arcs. Just correct. I'm not jumping on that because Sonic Unleased is shit. Thank you. I respect it. But yeah, this game

just, yeah, it's not good. And I think it's for the best they did not slap land on the title. It's not even interestingly bad. No, it's... He should have called it Wario Blan.

Yeah, it's like, it's fair. It's not in a good way. It's the dwarf bread. It's the dwarf bread of Wario games. Like, oh, I wish I could play a new Wario game. Like, oh, there's Master of Disguise. Like, yes, there is Master of Disguise. This is your Discworld reference for the day.

Nice. So, Kevin, one point from you. Stewart, where do you stand on this? Okay. It's my six. but my reasoning is essentially I feel like there's a decent game under there, buried under a ton of crap.

Also, I like the fact you press up to junks. It reminds me of my beloved spectrum. It's insane in a Nintendo game that you're pressing up to jump ever. I just want to throw it out there. Never expected that, but yeah. I've forgotten all about that. Wow. Yeah, everyone's repressed it.

The concept of a Wario sort of air quotes sort of metrovenous-ish thing with the map and everything is not a bad one. Oh, that should be awesome. Yeah. The idea of a large space that you can use the transformations to explore in that way is very appealing. And when later in the game, you do get moments of some insight like that, which are quite enjoyable.

The problem is to get late in the game, you have played 80 rounds of squash those roaches or, like, draw a picture of a knob or something. without getting zapped by a laser, while the same music plays for every single minigame, every single time, and it goes dun-d-d-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, and that's it. So, yeah, it's like being hit in there with a hammer quite hard, but I can't hate it because I've got to be honest with you,

it didn't really bore me as much as the one I like the least. I would say in terms of reasonable objectivity, it's the worst Wario game ever made, but we're talking about my ranking here. We're not talking about anything sane or normal. So for me, it's a six based solely on the fact that, yeah, I like the look of it, kind of. I think if with a few tweaks, it could maybe be all right. Like, maybe have the gameplay on the top screen and just let you change by tapping buttons on the bottom screen and using the controls like normal, you know?

You might have half of a game there. Instead of having to do a stupid mini game for every chess, just let you open the goddamn chest and give me this stuff inside. Okay. Then, you know, that's a game. Rom hackers, I know you've got better things to do, but cancel those things. We don't need another JRP. We've got too many of those. Come on now. Make a good version of this. Let's go. Didn't they put this out on the Wii U? Why? Like, honestly.

I don't know. I stopped paying attention to it. You're not a movie Master of Disguise. Yeah, I was going to say, where do we rank this versus the Dana Carvey movie Master of Disguise? I laughed more at the game. Okay, there you go. So it is something better than something. Turtle. All right.

Good time. So the Retronauts community, this also tied for last place, I guess fifth place, with Wario Land Virtual Boy and Shake It. I'm going to go with the majority here and give it a seven ranking, which is one point. So with Stewart is the outlier, that gives Master of Disguise five points. And we actually have our definitive ranking here, but we should still talk about the last game in the Wario Land legacy. which is Wireland, Shake It, which is... The Shake Dimension. We've already kind of determined where this is going to land in our rankings. Stuart, it's your least favorite game, so I think you need to talk about that. Yeah, it is. And I do feel a bit bad about that because, like, I know that Master of this guy is crappier as an experience. I know it is.

But, Jesus, the shake dimension is just so boring. All the levels are so boring and flatten. The puzzles are all, like, stat... They're all so dull. You're always standing around trying to angle your stupid remote to try and throw things in 2D. Why don't they just make it, like, I don't know why they did it this way. You don't want to sit in there shaking to shake things. I've wanted to shake things.

I would play mischief making, because I don't want to stand around shaking a bag of gold, so all the gold goes flying over everywhere. It's rubbish. I don't know. It's just boring. I don't have a better argument. That's what upsets me the most. Whenever I think about the game, I just go, oh, Jesus.

Because they copied WarioLand4. They tried to do the escape sequence stuff again. They did it worse. And it was just, I would just play WarioLand 4 again. You know, it's not for me. I get people like it, but I don't know. I honestly think I would rather do a little bit of master's disguise than I would do a little bit of shape, dimension.

And I realize that's crazy, but I can't help but be myself. That's fair. That's totally fair. You're absolutely right that they just said, hey, let's redo WarioLand 4, but in a more anodyne boring way. I will say the game looks awesome. They hire production IG to create the animation for it, and it looks so good. I mean, this is maybe the best-looking 2D Wii game.

You know, you're up against stuff like New Super Mario Brothers Wii, which that's super Anna-a-a-a-a-a-demand-blade. But, yeah, like this game, I think they could scale it up into HD really effectively. Should they bother? No. Has it shown up on Switch yet? No. There's a reason for that.

But it's not a bad game. It's just an echo of so many better games. It's an echo, a disappointing echo of Warioland 4. It's a disappointing echo of mischief makers. Like, just give us the real thing, you know? I'd rather play these older games. that kind of pushed new ideas instead of a sort of bland game that looked really nice while just sort of going through the motions.

Literally, the motions. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's not what you want from Wario, is it, to have just like an echo of a previous game? Even Master of the Sky is totally different to where I'm four. Sorry, not my turn. I mean, that's, I think that's why Wario Land 3 doesn't really land for me also, because it just feels like, hey, we did Wario Land 2, but it's more annoying this time.

And this is, you know, we did WarioLand 4, but it's less anarchic and interesting. But the anarchic interestingness is what I wanted from Warioland 4. That was what made it so good. This was sometime after Wario Ware was already its own multi-entry series, wasn't it? Yeah, okay, sorry. Yeah, this game was what? 2009, 2010, somewhere around there. Yeah, it was pretty late in the Wii era.

This was a good feel, right? Yep, that sounds right. So again, another farmed-out Wario game. Maybe that's the thing. They got rid of Nintendo R&D1. Oh, actually 2008 was when this came out. Oh, wow. But they got rid of Nintendo R&D1.

They got rid of the wild, unpredictable, surreal anarchy that made those games and that developer so good. I would say Kirby's epic yarn was Goodfield's redemptive arc. You know, everyone has one. Susak had their redemptive arc. Goodfield had their redemptive arc. But I don't know why they had to fall a foul and, you know, stray so far from the light with Wario. He deserves better. I mean, he's evil and bad and horrible. So maybe he doesn't deserve better, but in my heart, he deserves better. I'm curious how much of that, like, came from Nintendo's, like, instructions for developing this game because, like, Master of Disguise had the same problem. Nintendo games in general at this time

we're not particularly weird and we're playing things very, very safe. And I feel like Shake, it may have just been another victim of that. No, I think so. You know, I invoked the name Unlimited Saga earlier. And I do feel like there is some spiritual similarity between Wario and Saga, which might sound kind of weird. But, you know, the Saga games keep happening. And Unlimited Saga happened because the guy who is really passionate. about the series, Akitoshi Kawazu, is basically the longest tenured guy at Square

Hinnix. He, like, you know, his work was the foundation upon which the company was established and made money. So he can kind of do whatever he wants. Like, he's, he's just got that kind of blank check for when he wants to make a game. He can put together a low-budget saga game that 10 people are going to buy. And, like, who's going to say no? because it's such a seniority.

The corporate culture in Japan is very, you know, respectful of seniority and kind of established tenure. So he has that power. At the same time, R&D won. You know, that was the division that was the cornerstone of Nintendo. Like, it's R&D1 because it was the first division within Nintendo. And then other divisions broke off from that. So I kind of feel like the people there could just do whatever they want. And whenever they took that away and shook up their internal organization, you lost that sort of, we're just going to do it our way, opportunity for the designers.

And you still get things like Rusty, whatever is names, baseball deal game where you're like gambling for how much, yes, how much you actually want to pay in real money for mini games. You still would find interesting stuff on Nintendo systems like that. but it was always kind of like in the corner swept away, like, yeah, here's a little thing that, you know, we're not going to promote in any real way. It's not going to be available at retail. There's still a little bit of weirdness and invention, but yeah, with, I feel like Wario Land is emblematic of Nintendo's move toward antiseptic design. And I'm not necessarily criticizing Nintendo because even they're antiseptic stuff and they're kind of safe stuff. You still get moments of brilliance. You know, there have been games like Mario, whatever it's called, the first one for Switch. Why am I blinking on it? Odyssey, Mario Odyssey.

Yes. That was great. You know, the Zelda games have been great. I'm excited about this new Zelda game that they just announced the Echoes of Wisdom. It's got that really boring kind of plasticine, Link's Awakening remake visual style. But the actual game itself looks really fun and cool. It's like they took the cane of Someria. and said, what if we did Dragon Quest Builders with that cane?

And that's how you solve everything in the world. That seems like it's going to be fun. But, yeah, at the same time, you know, Wario had to die so that Zelda could have an adventure. And that's very sad. Yeah. Kevin, did you want to add anything about shaking? Announce a new one. Announce a new one.

I'll ask me to quote this. But will it be good? I was just going to say, shake it, like, for all its faults. I will say it's just. It's so pretty that for me it kind of makes up for them. Because I just like playing it and looking at it, even if I have to do stupid Wii moat motions and whatnot for it. Yeah, and I don't want to misrepresent myself here. Warrior Land Shake It is a really good game.

It's a good platformer. It's just, it's in the shadow of genuine masterpieces that totally broke the mold for the genre. and it just kind of is a little faint echo of that. And that's disappointing. Like, it's not a great way to end the Wario Land legacy. There needs to be something, you know, anarchic and weird for Wario again. And even the Wario Ware games aren't anarchic and weird anymore. So, Nintendo, please, like, hire some developers to, like, indie developers to get weird for you again.

Like, the guys who made Pizza Tower or Anton Blast, like, they get. the Wario thing? And they're like, how can we make games that kind of play like Wario, but also are off-putting and weird in the way that Wario used to be? That's great. We need more of that. Please, Nandino, be off-putting and weird. And Tom Blast. It's so good. Sorry, I just wanted, I was going to shout out if you didn't. That's a brilliant game. Anton Blast. Give me the Untitled Goose game of Wario. I just walking around being a dick to people, yeah. And taking their stuff. Taking their garlic. Or just farting at them. I don't know.

Yeah. Come on, it's the perfect game. Again, a very relatable game. Yes. the final rankings, let me organize this data. Sort range. Column F. Okay. In last place, we have Wario Master disguise. A game that we all agree is poop. Nope. In next to last place, sixth place, we have Wireland Shake It, a game that we mostly agree is pretty good, but it's not there. Except they said mostly agree. Stuart is the outlier who says it's poop. It is.

In fifth place, we have Warioland 3 with 13 points. Warioland Virtual Boy is dead center right there in the middle. It would be higher if anyone had ever played it, but what can you do? Surprisingly, third place. Oh, no, Tide for second place. That's right. Wireland 2 and Warrior Land 4, I think that is true justice in the world. Those games are both brilliant, but in completely different ways.

And finally, the game that probably has the most. nostalgia attached and was kind of the the inception point for all this Wario weirdness was Warioland Super Mario Land 3 with 24 points, just barely edging out the second place games of Wariland 2 and 4. So basically

Warrior Land, Wario Land 2, Wario Land 4, all essential games, masterpieces. You can play, I think, all of them on Nintendo Switch Online. Is that right? Or maybe I'm wrong? I think you can. I'm not 100% on that. You should be able to.

If you can't buy the games or punch a child and steal their copy, it's okay. I'm giving you permission because it's Wario. You're allowed to be a dick because that's the Wario spirit. Anyway, thanks everyone who took part in the Discord poll. We'll probably do that again in the future for these hoot nannies. And, you know, next time we'll probably have a hoot nanny where people aren't ashamed to admit that they like these games because it's not a disgusting foul criminal. But thank you both Stuart and Kevin for taking the time to rep Nintendo's most unsavory protagonist. Thank you for tolerating me, as ever.

Yeah, no, no, always. You're very tolerable. Thank you. I find you imminently tolerable. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. It's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. It makes me feel kind of bad, actually. I only dunk on you as a joke, usually.

So, yes, if you gentlemen could please explain where the world can find you on the internet, once I give the official Retronauts promo pitch, which is that Retronauts is a community-supported podcast, primarily supported through Patreon subscriptions. We do sometimes have ads. And not often enough, in my opinion, but that's because we're always turning away like the crypto ads and the hey, go buy a gun ads. And wouldn't it be great to have some boner pills ads? We get solicitations that we just turned down. And that's why we need your support, because we have dignity in class. And we can keep it that way through your Patreon subscriptions. Patreon.com slash retronauts. Keep Retronauts classy. You know, as classy as it's going to be when we're talking about Wario farting. At patreon.com slash retronauts, three bucks a month, get you cool

stuff such as ad-free early access to episodes at higher bit rate quality. Five bucks a month gets you even more stuff, such as exclusive episodes and weekly columns by Diamond Fight and Discord access where you can vote in future hootnannies. So thanks for supporting us. If you don't support us, please consider it. And if you won't consider it, that's okay. We'll continue to release these episodes for free on the public feed because, you know, that's what we do. We're just cool that way. We're not like Wario. We're not that greedy. All right. So that's Retronauts. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. Stuart, where can we find your imminently tolerable work? Hello. You can find me on Retronauts as well doing this right now.

I also will be doing columns slash podcasts about the history of, we're not really so much the history and we're on A to Z that will form a sort of vaguely coherent history of a British developed games and I'm not sure if they'll be out by the time this drops but I'm going to be doing them in my hopefully usually a brilliant

and pleasant style so look forward to that I've also got a book called All Games Are Good which is about how every game ever made in the history of the entire medium has been amazing and you can get that through press for unlimited run games and you should because it's a tremendous book

I've received such reviews as great. I can't really have said that, but it doesn't really matter. And also, I'm on Twitter at Supercarbara, but yeah, I don't know. I'm not good on there, really. So leave it. My review of All Games Are Good is that all games are good are good. Thank you.

Kevin, where can we find you? You can also buy my book on a limited run and through press run on Amazon. That's Atari Archive, Volume 1. It's a historical overview of the first few years of the Atari 2600's life and development and retail environment, so take a look if that sounds interesting. I also have an Atari Archive YouTube channel and Patreon, Patreon.com slash Atari Archive. And you can find me on social media, mostly on blue sky under Ubersaurus, and occasionally I check in on Twitter under the same name. So look for me there. And finally, you can find me Jeremy Parrish here on Returnuts, but also at Limited Run Games, publishing books, please buy Kevin and Stewart's books not only for their sakes, but also so that people at the company will say, oh, Jeremy is a valuable contributor to this corporation, and we should not fire him because people buy the books that he helps publish.

This is a symbiotic thing going on. Yeah, absolutely. So please help me stay employed. I would be very grateful. You can also find me on Blue Sky as Jay Parrish, bluesky dot social or whatever it's called, bluesky.com. I don't know. It's a mess. It's not a great job rolling out. I know, right? And finally, you can find me on YouTube, making videos every week about old video games

because that's really all I talk or think about anymore. And it's admittedly limited, but, you know, as the little bird in the Flintstone says, It's a living. So, thanks again for your time, gentlemen, and for everyone who voted in the Ranking Hoot Nanny poll on Discord. Thanks, everyone who's listened to this for listening all the way through. You're so cool.

We love you. And please join us next week for the Alex Kid Ranking Hoot Nanny. Jesus Christ. Thank you. ALEEN.