Retronauts - 632: BitSummit '24

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Blatherin’ BitSummit! Diamond Feit reports on the latest retro-esque games from Kyoto’s annual indie event and raps with Chris Kohler, Shane Bettenhausen, and Tina Carter. 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

Today's episode is brought to you by Turtle Beach, the number one brand in gaming headsets and accessories. This week in Retronauts, forget it, Jake. It's Cicada Town. Welcome to a very special episode of the podcast, folks. I'm gay. No, I'm sorry. It's not that kind of special episode. My name is Diamond Fight, and I'm the host slash narrator this week. Last year at Bit Summit, Kyoto's annual Indie Game Expo,

Jeremy Parrish and I sat down in a cafe and recorded a casual conversation about the retro and retro-equivalent games we saw at the show. This year, Jeremy couldn't make the trip. and it turns out when you don't have podcasts permanently on the brain, as I do, it's hard to find willing guests to give up a full hour of their time at a busy event for a rap session. Faced with this scheduling dilemma, here is my solution. Instead of one long discussion of this year's Bit Summit, I present you with three different guests in smaller but no less potent doses.

Two of these voices will be intimately familiar to longtime retronauts listeners. The third may not immediately spark recognition, but fear not. She's an experienced podcaster, so of course we segue from talking about our BitSummit experiences to anecdotes about playing decades-old video games. That's what you tune into retronauts to hear, isn't it? In between these segments, I'm also including my own thoughts about games I played at the show, which I think listeners should know about. Let's all give our thanks to our regular editor Greg in advance for taking all these

separate recordings and turning them into podcast gold, or at least copper, a conductive and useful metal that may not be precious, but it works. Damn it. In this first segment, I'd like to highlight some games that I feel are retro in spirit and, you know, spiritual sequels, spiritual follow-ups, if you will, although not legally. Well, in one case, actually legally. First up, and the most obvious, I would say the bunch, is Spy Drops. Spy Drops very much looks and plays like a Metal Gear Solid game. You've got your protagonist, you're running around a 3D environment, you can click a button to go between first person and third person, you've got binoculars, you can zoom in, you've got gadgets, there's guards, you want to sneak past the guards.

If you don't want to sneak past them, you can get behind them and, you know, hit him with the old one, two, and knock them out. There's a couple of things that jump out of me that make this not Metal Gear solid, though. First of all, the protagonist is a profoundly anime girl. Like, there's no realism there. The enemies look like people, but this is an anime girl. She's our hero. Also, what struck me surprising is that when you do stuff, when you fight people, when you knock them out, when you pick up bodies and drag them around, you get, like, XP bonuses. And I spoke to an exhibitor and who he explained that, yeah, in the main game, there will be an experience point system that rewards players for getting things done and doing things right.

and that, like, unlocks new skills. But, of course, that wasn't present in demo, just little pop-ups. Also, not present in demo, was something called a dream catcher, where you can go to unconscious guards and you can extract intel using this special process. This was not the demo. I don't know how it works. But the staff was telling me that the idea is it only works with people who are unconscious, not dead. So it's an incentive to get you to not kill everybody.

and just knock them out instead. Which makes sense. Again, Metal Gear Solid, you're supposed to be stealthy. You're not supposed to leave bodies behind unless you really, really have to. As far as I was playing, I mean, obviously, I'm not great at Metal Gear Solid, otherwise I would have finished Metal Gear Solid by now. But I enjoyed it. I had a good time with it.

I definitely got the hang of wading your corners and having enemies come by, and a special meter appears, letting you know how close they are and how well you can, you know, you know, basically take them out. Also, I thought was interesting, instead of a radar that shows you the cones, you can't see what the enemies see exactly, not like, you know, like the Red Middle Gersaw games. Instead, you get audio cues, you can hear footsteps, and little arrows indicate, almost like Fortnite style when you turn on the audio assist, little arrows indicate where enemies are, so it's easier to find out where they are, but you can't as easily tell

what they can see. So, an interesting, you know, some things are easier, some things are harder. All around, I thought was pretty cool. I also think it's interesting that the developer was telling me that the mission layouts are going to be randomly generated. So when different people play the game, they're going to have different experiences. If you play the game again, things will be shuffled around. So not quite a roguelike, but certainly shuffled, we'll say. You know, each game session is going to be a little different than the last one.

so you can enjoy it in different ways, which to me reminds me of, say, chasm a couple of years back, which was a Metroidvania that also used randomly assortments to sort of move things around, so that way, you know, when I played the game, it wasn't the same as when Jeremy played the game. Anyway, look for spy drops. I think you can already wishlisted on Steam.

Changeable Guardian Estique is not coming to Steam, at least not yet. The idea is, and I believe this is solo project, or at least one guy is doing most of the work, and they might have someone else doing music. This is an old-school Famicom-N-E-S horizontal shooter. And when I say Famicom-N-E-S, I mean Famicom-N-E-S. This guy is getting cartridges. He wants to have Famicom cartridges, and he wants to have N-E-S cartridges. He wants both.

He wants the best of both worlds. How does the game play? Well, it plays like a lot of games with that era. He specifically mentioned two to me. He mentioned Thexter, which, like, of course, I know Thexter. and sidearms is a game I think I played at least a couple times, but certainly it was a Capcom arcade game, and then the NES port sort of retooled it to make it more long play session,

which is Capcom's, you know, want at the time. As far as changeable gardenistique, as the name suggests, you can change, you can transform from a ship to a robot, back and forth. You know, the different forms are different offensive capabilities, different flight capabilities, so, you know, they have their ups and downs. You can pick up power-ups. pick up protections. One thing I thought was interesting, if you hold the fire button, you automatically shoot guns, of course. But you can also mash the button rapidly, and that produces

a stronger blast, but one that's much shorter in range. And I think I had limited ammo for this blast, so I couldn't just do that all the time. But again, a kind of interesting thing, like, well, do you want to just shoot everything, or do you want to really, you know, work your thumb there and, you know, let loose a big blast, you know, take out that big thing that's in your face. I don't know what the feature for this game is. I'm sure if it's good, they'll look into getting it onto other platforms or maybe just release the ROMs, but for now, the planned release is on cartridge for Famicom and NES. One more time, changeable Guardian Estique. Obviously, the Japanese title is different, but I don't have it written down in front of me. Just Google it. I'm,

you'll find it. You know, you'll find it. I trust you. Forty-five Parabellum is one game that's certainly screamed out its influences. It's very much like Parasite Eve, although not in story mode. There's no New York City. There's no reproductive, you know, mitochondria. I'm looking to steal the best sperm in the city to bring about a super baby. There's none of that, as far as I can tell. No, 45 Powerbellum is a much more cyberpunk kind of game. It's like you've got people, they're in a city this kind of run down, but you can tell that they've got some high-tech equipment, you know, there's like laser shields and they've got guns. And like Paraside Eve, you run around, and then when you're in combat, you're also running around. And if you pause to attack, you get this sort of

wireframe that appears, and it shows you how close you are to the enemy. And, you know, the closer you are, the more likely are to hit them, the more likely they are, they won't run away or they won't like leave your, leave your range as soon as you pull the trigger. Obviously, a game like this is going to have a lot of options, a lot of combat, a lot of weapons. So for the demo, I didn't have access to all of that. I just had a regular handgun. But I was able to upgrade the handgun. I was able to fight a variety of enemies.

I didn't quite make it to the boss. There was a timer, but I saw other people play the boss, and it seemed pretty challenging. The guy took a lot of hits, and it was very much about dodging the attacks and waiting. for the window to get in the right moment to unload your gun, you know, direct like the head. I thought the environments were pretty cool. It definitely seemed, you know, the city seemed to have character to itself. The people he spoke to had a lot of interesting personalities. There was some kind of supernatural vibe, because whenever I died, and I did die, I, like, woke up in a different room and had to sort of leave this room and talk to people before I could

go back to catch up where I was. And these people often offered me, like, you know, items to purchase or upgrades to unlock. So was I really dead? Was it just sort of, you know, automatic like respawn area? I don't know how that works, but it struck me as very interesting. It struck me as pretty polished considering it's just a demo right now. So I would say probably already a wish list on Steam if you want it. Forty-five parableum. Now this next one, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce. I'm going to take a guess. It's Pipestrello and the cursed yo-yo. Pipestrello, It sounds Italian. This one is definitely on Steam.

It's already a demo on Steam. It might be the same demo. So you can check this out right now and try it for yourself. It very much wants you to think of Game Boy Advance. Indeed, when it was just sort of sitting idle at the event, the screen sort of rotated and it showed a mock, like, not a Game Boy Advance, but not a Game Boy Advance, and the game was sort of playing on this 3D model of a handheld that didn't actually exist. So the developers clearly want you to think of Game Boy Advance when you look at this game.

It's a kind of overhead action game. You know, I wouldn't compare it to Zelda as far as momentum goes, but it sort of has that appearance. You know, like you're looking down on things. You're moving all directions. You're moving from room to room. It's definitely action. You've got a yo-yo, and, you know, your yo's on a string, so you can whip it out. It comes right back to you.

You can use it to hit enemies. You can use it to pick up items. You can charge it up and shoot a little farther. you can throw it, and then you have to go pick it up, otherwise you can't use it anymore. There are places where you can ricochet the yo-yo, which then it'll go bounce around the screen, and it'll deal lots of damage or collect lots of items. I fought at least one boss. I met some people who were upset with me, and one of them ended up fusing with my yo-yo,

and then I had, like, a person in my yo-yo, or at least a voice in my yo-yo. I'm shrugging, listeners. I don't know how to explain this. All I can say is, as action games go, it felt good, it looked really good, definitely had a strong sense of, you know, what they wanted, collecting money, fighting enemies, some, you know, mild platforming, you know, jumping over gaps, that kind of, again, like a Zelda, like not intense, oh, you ran out of lives, just kind of like, oh, did you fall in this hole? Well, you lost a heart, and until you get next heart, you might have to respawn.

But again, all-round, intriguing, looked good, felt good, look for it, Pippistrello, and the cursed yo-yo. Last one in this block is a game called Rushing Beat X Return of Brawl Brothers And if that sounds familiar to you Good job, you know your video game history Because in 1992 There was a Super Famicomcom game called

Rushing Beat So this is an official An official sequel to a 1992 Super Famicum game Now this game was released Russian Beat, that is Russian Beat was released abroad In English for Super Nintendo

It was called RivalTurf Maybe you played that, maybe you didn't I did not. But this new game, it is very much a side-scrolling beat them up. You know, it doesn't quite look like a Super Nintendo Famcom game. It's definitely got more sprites, more resolution than that. But it's spiritually in that sort of scheme. You know, you're walking left to right, you're fighting people, you're doing combos, you've got some attack buttons. I would say the combos really impressed me in that you had a lot of options. You had some weak hits, you got some heavy hits, you had some sort of juggling hits. And if you get people up in the air, you can jump

and do more hits into the air before they come back down. There was a lot of jumping mid-air moves that could lead to more combos. There was tons of things to pick up and throw at enemies and swing at enemies. I found projectile weapons. I found bombs. There's a lot of stuff to pick up

and roll around and play with. So my main takeaway was this might have a lot of interesting combat potential that I only scratched surface because it was a demo, and there was music blasting in my ear and people were waiting and I was sweating. So, you know, I messed around with it, but I was like, oh, okay, okay, I can juggle, I can, I can get, I can round people up and hit them all together, you know, some dashing moves.

I'm impressed. There was definitely multiple characters in the demo. I think there were four playable characters. I'm assuming most of them, if not all of them, are returning from the original game. But I never played that one. So you'll have to do your own homework here. But part of that homework is writing down the name, Rushing Beat X, Return of Ball Brothers, because you might want to wish list that. Folks,

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Although the man isn't bad. The old nickname people gave me back 20 years ago was actually man god. But if you want to call me the man, as it like an oppressor of the populace, I guess that's okay. So yeah, good to see you, Diamond. I'm happy to be back in the most humid place on earth, Kyoto, Japan during July. Now, I know you, you know, being an ex-game press and later Sony employee, I'm sure you've made your share of trips to Japan, but I also know that with the pandemic, this is your first trip to Japan in a while, right? Well, actually, I was back briefly in Tokyo last year for a little bit, but that was my first time in five years, and this is my first time in Kyoto in over a decade. So I'm actually really excited to be back here, even in summer, and to finally visit BitSummit, because I've always wanted to come.

I've never had. This is my first one. Well, I'm very happy to hear that, because for me, as a BitSummit lifer at this point, dare I say it, a BitSummit evangelist? You end to every single BitSummit? As far as I know, unless we count 2020, but I don't, because 2020, no one was here unless, like, you literally worked for them, you know? Because they had a live stream or whatever, but every time they've had an event where people show up, I have shown up. So, you know, I'm not going to brag. I'm not going to brag, but, you know, I'm here every year. So first, you've been here now for about a day and a half, what do you think? I'm incredibly impressed because, you know, I had heard that it was a small event, but in reality, it's pretty huge.

It almost reminds me of packs in this scope. And there are tons and tons and tons of games, which is awesome because that's really what you're here for. And then today on, like, the public days, it's super encouraging to see families. You'd love to see families of people having fun, playing games, moms, dads, kids, grandpa, grandma. Like, everybody is here having a great time. Yeah, because I wouldn't call this neighborhood necessarily part of, like, the busy part of Kyoto. You know, we're definitely, we're in part of the northeastern area, so we're a little bit farther from, like, you know, the major train stations or the major, you know, tourist destinations. But it is great to see that, you know, for those people who come out here, whether they live here, whether they're coming from nearby cities, you know, on these public days, you get a nice mix of people who are clearly here because they heard about some games.

I don't know. I feel like Nintendo does a pretty good job of promoting the fact that Bits Summit happens in the first place because the Nintendo's been promoting this, you know, sponsoring this event for several years now. I don't know when they first showed up, but, you know, I know my daughter recently showed me a clip of, you know, a video game on her switch. Like, oh, look, Daddy, this game was cool. And I looked at it's like, oh, yeah, that's, you know, skim. I played that at Bitsummit last year, you know, not the one of my daughter, I'm just saying. Like, she, you know, she shows me a game like, yes, yes, my daughter. I know that game. Well, it's right. You know, Nintendo being based in Kyoto, I think them approving of this and sponsoring it gives it kind of like the hometown feel of like, oh, yeah, this is a real event that Kyoto, you know, denizens should come to. But I think it's rad that all three of the major platforms are sponsors here, in addition to the Epic Game Store are all sponsors of this event.

So I think that's rad. And there are really cool games in both the Nintendo Indie World booth and the PlayStation Indie booth as well here. And, yeah, I think it's really cool, but it's also cool to see so many Japanese indies here, because that's something you don't see as much at the shows in America. And I think the organizers of Bitsummit do a great job to mix in lots of homegrown content on the show floor. Yeah, as the show has evolved over the years, I feel like there's been sort of an influx of overseas visitors, of course, because people make games around the world, so why shouldn't they be here?

But I do feel like Bitsummit has maintained, especially this year, I think it's quite strong. of here's a lot of Japanese developers and here's some indie developers from other countries and we're all here together and we're all you know we're all fitting for our own I guess also because Bitsamon has been around for 11 years now you also see a nice mix of people from other

indie territories you know there's a you know Korea has their own indie show those people show up and they have a booth of themselves as a Taipei game show booth now I don't know how many years that's been going on but like that's you sort of show up here now it's almost become like a miniature

pan Asian conglomer if you will. You know, I played games today, or this week, rather, from, you know, Korean developers and Chinese developers and, you know, French developers. And I think those, you know, some people from Britain, like, it's a, it's a melange, if you will. Actually, my favorite game of the show is from an Australian developer. So it's the, the name of the developer is Hipster Whale, and the game is Crossy Road Castle, which is, like, a sequel of sorts to the iOS game from, like, 10 years ago. And I think this game was on the Apple Arcade preview. but it's about to come out for all the main platforms, you know, PS5 and Switch and Xbox, and it's so much fun. It's like a wild four-player simultaneous

kind of platformer action madcap party game that has cross-play on the internet across all the platforms too, which is really ambitious for Indies. I was kind of telling them, like, the fact that your first console self-published game has that, that you can play with PS5 and Switch and Xbox people all at the same time is kind of

nuts. And it's so fun. And Like, I didn't even know it was coming out in a few months until I went to their booth and suddenly, like, had it in my hands. And I was like, oh, my, I'm so, I can't wait for this to come out. I think it's a kind of game that lots and lots of people of all ages are going to be really into. So it's cool that someone from that, you know, the other side of the world can come here and have their own booth and showcase a great game. You know, it's so funny to me that they called it Crossy Road Castle, because to me it invokes memories of Mr. Dew's Castle in that it's a sequel to a game that we all know. but the sequel is completely different than the original. Like, here, try to explain what a gameplay edition of Crossrow Castle is like.

I mean, you're basically, like, just trying to get to the end of each stage, and the stages are very short, and, like, as you're avoiding, you're jumping and trying to, you know, avoid just falling off the edge of the screen and kind of Smash Bros. style, it's just a race. But even if you do fall off the edge and don't finish, as soon as the rest of the players get to the next level, you're back, and that you're playing again. So it's, you know, you don't have to feel as if you failed.

It's infinitely fun. It's very fast-paced. Yeah, I just felt it was, you know, a very twitchy kind of game that anybody can just jump into. And I think it's a kind of game that you can play with kids as well. Yeah, infinitely is the key word there because the idea is that each one, each time you play, you're going to different towers and these towers, different themes, whatever. But according to the staff, when I spoke to, I played this morning, I spoke to them, and they said that no matter what tower you picked, it will go,

on forever until you screw up, basically. Like, if you lose, like, if everyone gets eliminated, you lose a heart. And if you lose three hearts, well, then your run is over. But again, like you said, everything just, you know, if you go to the next room, then everyone comes back. And if you run out of everything, well, then you, you know, you collect your coins. You get a big, you know, game over screen. Here's all your awards.

And, you know, it's only a few seconds to start a new game. So. Well, and the developer said there is a bit of procedural stuff happening to where, like, each playthrough is a little bit different. So the levels won't necessarily unfold in the exact same way they did previously. So yeah, infinitely replayable. It's the kind of game where you can just sit down with your friends

and play it for like 30 minutes and have a great time over and over again each day. So, yeah, I think it will have a really long shelf life on console. Yeah, one thing that really struck me today when I was playing it is a fact that probably if this was a mobile game, like a mobile only game, it would be like tightly competitive. Like I got the sense of like, oh, maybe there'd be a thing

where it's like every stage you have to collect, no, three bat wings or something, or you have to complete the stage inside of a time limit or something, and then they would rate you in the ideas. Oh, you keep playing the stage over and never again. No, no, no, this is not like that game. This game is just like, you play and you get as far as you can and you have fun. There's like boss battles against a big, the tower I was in was like a giant eagle or something, and we're like, you're flying up with an eagle and it's trying to hit with wings, and if you don't get hit by the wings, you bump the eagle in the butt, and you do damage to it, and then you just keep going.

But they told me that each other towers have other bosses. So, like, you know, you're platforming, but then you're fighting bosses. It's almost like, I want to compare it almost to like a bubble-bobble and, like, you're sort of progressing through, like, a tower. A little bit of that. And it's funny because one of the other games I played on the show floor was Snow Brothers, too, in like the Tatsuja and Tall Pine Booth. And, like, that's more of just like a kind of, you know, remake of the original Snow Brothers,

which is kind of bubble-bubble in its own way, too. And you're right, there is a little bit of bubble-bubble DNA in cross-year-road Castle, but the pace is much faster. Yeah. I felt like there was a little bit of Smash Brothers and a little bit of like New Super Mario Brothers, even in it too. It has platforming appeal.

Yeah, it really grabbed me more than I thought it would. And it immediately seemed like kind of game my sister would like too. So it just felt like, oh, it's a game that like you and your friends who are non-gameres might also be into because it's really pick up and play. You don't have to have a lot of mastery of gameplay. You know, you're not using a lot of buttons and stuff. So, yeah, it really grabbed me.

And I think this is the kind of, show where random passers by will pick up the four controllers and have fun and want to buy this game. Yeah, I did think that was one of the more impressive facts. They had, I think, each version on display, and each version had four controllers. Even though they tell you, yeah, you can actually do crossplay. But if you just show up, it's like, oh, well, I have a PS5. Well, here's five PS5, here's four PS5 controllers. You can all play this together. Or Switch, here's four switch controllers, which, you know, for me in my household, I think it would probably use your display on Switch, just because I have more.

I have more joycons on the house than I have Bs 5 controllers. But it definitely struck me something that, yeah, you know, like I play a lot of video games, my daughter plays a video games. My son plays them less often. My wife plays sometimes, but I do, I got the impression messing around with it, like, oh, we could probably

all four of us jump out on this and just have fun. And because it's like drop in, drop out, like, I started the demo playing by myself, and then one of the staff members came over, was like, oh, I'll join you. And he pushed a button, and he was playing with me in like five seconds. Like, he was just right in there. And then when I wanted

to stop, like, okay, we're just done. And just, you know, it's very much drop and drop out. What I thought was really impressive given, you know, given the scope of things and just how, you know, let's be honest, especially when it comes to online play, like lobbies and matchmaking and sometimes it can be like a real pain to the ass.

Yeah, I felt like you said, zero intimidation factor, like very little explanation you had to give people to play it. It was one of those rare pick up and play, have fun, instantly into it, more game. So, yeah, I was immediately just like, oh, I'm glad I picked this up. I didn't know this was coming out until today. So it's kind of like what you want to happen at a show like this

is to discover a game that you're going to want to play, you know. Yeah. Also, that's another factor for me is that, you know, especially when you come to these events, you know, I'm usually here by myself because I'm working. And so I tend to focus on single player games. So it is fun to see this game in the situation where it very clearly, okay, this is a game you can play by yourself, but it's really a lot of fun with people. And the fact that you're in a big, environment means you can have people to show up and come in and drop and drop out so it's kind of like the ideal you know like even at my house i don't know if i'd have this many players around because you know i only have i only have three of the people in my family i mean the shows like this are cool for

showcasing different genres of games that might you might not think about normally and like i think the the lower expo floor there's a group of kind of weird quirky experiential games with unique controllers that are aimed maybe at a slightly younger audience that might not be easy to replicate at home, but at a venue like this, those games showcase really well. I think you and I both seen several of these. One of my favorite ones, I don't know what the name of the game is, but you're holding a giant hula hoop, like an actual physical hula hoop, and you're using it to like physically slice a pizza that is being shown on the screen. I don't even really know how it's working, but I was watching people play it, and it was delightful. And I was like, oh, only at a

venue like this can, like, someone have this idea to make this kind of wild idea for a game and actually showcase it. I don't know if you can play this at home unless you have the Hulu I don't know, but that's one of like four or five really quirky, weird, fun games that are being showcased here at Mid Summit. For me, that's like the annual treat, because I feel like every year when I come here, there's always going to be at least two or three people out there who made something by themselves, and they're showing it here, and it's pretty much going to only exist, like, here in the show

and maybe in, you know, like, their basement or whatever. Well, whatever. Most Japanese people don't have basements. It's just a fun fact. But, like, these are hobbyists or their students, and they came up with crazy ideas. I mean, I've, over the years, I've used so many things. I've seen one it was like, I was playing with a giant scissor. I was playing with a lotion

bottle. Like, you're pushing down the lotion bottle and make your, like, bottle fly higher. Yeah, the Hulu hoop this year was definitely an eye-catching one. There's one where, it's like, you know, eight little holes in the ground where you are playing like a gopher who like pokes your head up out of the hole. And it's mostly children today who are having the time of their life doing this. I'm like, how could you possibly replicate this? I don't know if you could. But at a show like this, it's super fun. And yeah, they were smart to kind of put all of these in the same area. So it is almost like

an amusement park of these really creative avant-garde controller unique experiences. So I give a lot of credit to Bits Summit for curating that as well. I do think one of the stronger aspects of the show this year is the fact that because they have more space than ever, as far as I can tell, they do have, okay, here's a dedicated space, here's all sort of the unusual stuff, and here's a whole space dedicated to, like, physical card games that I don't think they've ever had at the show before, you know, like, I don't know what the scale of these games are, but I was watching people, like, they have tables set up, it's like, oh, you can buy these games, but also, here's a big

table where you can just sit down and play this game or the staff or the people who make this game will show you how to play the game and then maybe you'll want to buy it like i thought that was incredible that's true you know i didn't stop and play any of those but it's right there are like there is kind of an unplugged section with tabletop games which i have never really seen that a japanese game show ever and it kind of reminds me of packs because yeah that's always been a part at panera kate expo so that's encouraging to see also i have to say like in terms of merch and types of goods this this show you know if you're an otaki who loves nerdy cool old stuff you I mean, it's very easy to do a one-stop run of, you know, King of Games,

who has amazing Nintendo, like, T-shirts and merchandise. Super Deluxe has their amazing games, Brave Wave music, fan gamer. Like, you know, there's a lot of cool stuff to spend your yen on here at the show as well. I definitely bought a lot of awesome stuff. Yeah, full confession. I went over to the Intecreates booth, because they usually show up here with a new game. You know, they're always working on something. And I noticed today, this, they had a merch table this time,

and they were selling the Bloodstained Circle of the Moon soundtrack, like a complete soundtrack for one and two. And, you know, it was a lot of yen, considering its four discs, and Japanese CDs tend to run a lot of money, but also, like, that soundtrack's kind of a top-to-bottom perfection, so I feel like it's a bargain for me. I had to buy it. I bought it.

It's here. I will show it to you. You know, you're making me wish I had bought some soundtracks at the Braywave table. I, maybe I should... Oh, that is... That is nice. And these are the Curse of the Moon's side. Right, these are the IndiCreates, the D-Makes of the 8-bit ones, which I love.

And it actually, just seeing this reminds me, I need go back and finish part two, because I love both those games, actually. And, yeah, thank you for reminding me how much I like the Intercreates bloodstained demakes. So besides Crossy Road Castle, what other games stood out to you at the show today, or that you've seen so far, at least? Well, I was happy to see a really cool game that I think is just, It's about to come out. It might be out by the time this comes out. It's made by two friends of mine, Nick Suttoner and David Hellman, who, you know, Nick used to be a one-up with me, used to work at PlayStation with us. He's been at Panic. This is his side hustle. He and David formed a company called Furniture and Mattress, which obviously is what you name your gaming company. But their first game called Arranger, which is a really cool puzzle action game, very addictive, very easy to get into, but tough to master. It's launching on all platforms.

And I think it will just have launched by the time this comes out. So it was really cool to see that in the Nintendo booth here at BitSummit. Okay, so with the name of their studio, I'm picturing a game where you are moving into a new apartment and you are setting up all your furniture and your mattress. That's what I would have thought that it was like unpacking. But no, it's actually more of kind of a traditional kind of puzzle tile, you know, action game, not using furniture or mattresses. But, yeah, it's fun. It's simple. It's cool.

it's definitely recommended. You know, that reminds me, I did see a game here from Q games who, you know, they've, obviously they're here in Kyoto, so they've always been a big part of Bitsummit. They're showing game this year called, I think all you need is help. And it's some sort of, I don't want to say it like Tetris, but like you've got spaces and you're moving different blocks together to fill in like a space. But it also has co-op and like all the blocks have faces on them. And the trailer has like a song, like a vocal song with lyrics.

and it's kind of impossibly adorable. That sounds insane. Now I'm like, why didn't I see this game? It's not what I expect from Q games. Yeah, I've got to go back and look at that. That is wild. So while you're in town, do you have any more plans here in Kyoto or Osaka

before you head back to the States? Well, actually, already today, I did abscond for a little bit from the show because right next to the venue is the Kiosak. Museum of Art, which is a beautiful, beautiful art museum here in Kyoto, and I enjoyed there's a Takashi Murakami exhibit there. And it's an awesome museum. I definitely recommend if you come to a place like Kyoto, you should definitely visit the shrines and temples, the UNESCO heritage sites. But I've been on a real kick of whenever I go to any new city in any place

trying to experience a museum, either an art museum, a history museum, some sort of cultural museum. It's always worthwhile. I always walk away, being really enriched and feeling like I saw things and felt things and experienced things that I had not previously done. I never have regretted going to a museum. So, yeah, for the last few years, I've really been on that kick, and I can't recommend doing that enough. So, yeah, I wholeheartedly say, hit a museum. Well, you said the magic word kiosara, so I have to ask you, have you ever been to the Kiosara Dome in Osaka? No, I've been to Osaka a few times. Is that just like a venue for music or sports? It does both. Generally speaking, it's mostly about baseball, but they do concerts there.

And for me, as an Osaka resident, I do love it because the entire, you know, forgive me. But when I see domes, you know, I've been to a couple domes in my day. And, you know, I've been to Tokyo Dome. I've been to a Tropicana field down in Tampa. And, you know, a lot of domes kind of have just a look like, oh, that's your sports dome. It looks like the Sports Dome. Kiosarado in Osaka looks like a flying saucer landed in the city and it just sort of stopped

Wow, okay now I do want to go I love when Japan will make a venue that just is like architecturally kind of like over the top and ridiculous and yeah you make you want to go I'm a fan of like Tokyo Big Site because that also similarly

similarly is kind of like an insane building so yeah next time I'm in Osaka I'll have to go see a game there All right well I guess that's going to be it for our little mini segment here. Do you want to quickly tell people around the internet if they don't know you already where they can find you or what you're doing

or anything you want to tell the internet in general? Well, I mean, I'm technically just kind of here on vacation, which is wild and fun, but I guess you can still find me on that unfortunate ex-Twitter thing under the name of Shane Watch for now. Other than that, you know, please

support PlayStation products. We make great consoles and games. And I do occasionally appear on the Retronauts podcast I recently did an episode on Metal Gear Solid, and I think there's another one coming up pretty soon. Excellent. Well, we always glad to have you back on Retronauts,

even though we normally talk about old video games, and today we're talking about new video games in a new-ish building. We're here in the Rome Theater, and I don't know, what do you say? Is this brutalist? Is this modern? It's got a lot of concrete. What do you think? It feels kind of 1960s to me, but I like that.

So, yeah, give me a brutalist story. structure. I feel at home. Yeah, I got a nice Brady Bunch staircase over here with the blows. All right. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you, Diamond. Welcome back to Red Trots, everybody. Welcome back to the basement level of the Miyaku Messe Convention Center in Kyoto, Japan. Beneath the Action of Bit Summit, we're here in the kimono wing of the building.

It's very lovely, very tasteful, very isolated. And I'm here with a man who needs no introduction to Retronous listeners, Chris Kroner. Hello, Chris Kohler. Hello, Hello, Diamond Fight. It's so exciting to be here in the basement level of the Miyako Messe in the, as you say, in the kimono room. So, funny story, listeners,

if you know Retronauts, you've know Chris Kohler has been part of this Retronaut for a very long time, and I've been part of Retronauts for a much less amount of time. But since I came to Retronauts, this is our first episode actually recording together. So this is a momentous occasion. Are you serious? Yes. We've never, like, recorded, like, in person

and Retronauts together? Never. Have we ever remotely recorded a retronauts together? I don't think so. Oh, my God. We worked together. We did. For a long time. Yes.

You are one of the big reasons I'm here at all, as far as a writer and a podcast. I'm so sorry. I've set you down a terrible path. I'm like your dealer. Yeah, no, it's true. I wanted to hire somebody to, as a contractor at Wired. to cover Japanese games

from Japan to the Japan coverage to be the Brian Ashcraft of hired and you were there and he's gone he's moved back to America he had moved back to America

so he's not even the Japan guy anymore yeah I don't know I don't know who my equivalent is anymore I think I'm unique like when you're the Japan guy and you move to Texas it's like what is that like

I don't know I wouldn't mind I don't know Hey, Brian. So, yeah, so here we are. We're at BitSummit. We're retronautting. So I am, so I'm here at BitSummit. Yes.

We, because a major digital eclipse video game is here. It's in the DRECOM booth. And if you're like, who is DRECOM? DRECOM is the Japanese company that owns, the, owns the Wizardry IP. It's the wizardry franchise worldwide. And so we created wizardry proving grounds of the mad, Overlord, which is a all-new, you know, 3D remake of the original

1981, you know, wizardry for the Apple II. And, I mean, something I love to say about this, in case people don't know, is that the project started with our engineers actually porting the original Apple II source code, which was in Pascal, and ported it to

Unreal Engine. And so when you're playing, like, our new version of wizardry with all new graphics sounds, etc., modern, you know, production, you're playing the original. Like, you are, you are, you are, You are essentially, you are playing the original code, where nobody's going in there looking at it, you know, saying how did they do this and trying to recreate it. It is just running the original game logic underneath. So, in a very real sense, you know, it is wizardry.

You are still connected, you know, to the original, even though you're playing this sort of modern thing on your switch. And we, you know, and we just think that's super cool. That's what we like to do is show clips. You know, Retrust listeners, why don't you tell me how many times has the word Pascal been settled out on this program? I think it's going to be very low number. Not since the Tangled episode. The Tangled the Video Game for Dependo Weave, which is now retro.

It's 15 years old. Anyway, go on. Sorry. So, anyway, in your career, both as press and now not press, you've obviously come to Japan many, many times. But this is your first pit summit. This is my first pit summit. Yes.

Yes. So basically, I mean, look, I had a travel budget at Wired, and I also had a diamond fight. So I didn't make any sense for me. I would use up my travel budget on, like, Tokyo Game Show, because that was where, you know, we were going to generate a ton of traffic from, you know, sort of big Japanese news. And I knew that BitSummit was coming on, and I was like, oh, my gosh, like,

seems really cool, like Jeremy Parrish goes all the time. That'd be fun to go to. He seems like it's someone fun. He's talking with the guy from Onion Games, you know, and they're meeting all these people there. But it just didn't make sense, like, financially to, like, take a whole big trip to Japan to go to that because, you know, Fundamentally, sort of the fundamentals of the media business are you write an article about a cool indie game that you saw on a Japanese show floor, and that thing is going to get like 500 page views. You know, it just doesn't make sense. Like you need that anchor, those the big AAA sort of anchor stories to kind of justify the whole thing. And then, of course, I had you and be like, hey, guess what? Like, get on the old, get on the good old Kehan Dencha and take it up to Kyoto. And you can just go to Bit Summit and do the coverage. And it's going to cost $640.m.

that train ticket round trip round trip it's the 12 double that yeah oh yeah sorry sorry sorry 1280 1280 It's all right. It all worked out. It all worked out. Yeah. So what do you think? But it's my first time. Yeah.

Well, it's, I love it. I absolutely love it. And, I mean, it's wonderful because you've got the sort of Penny Arcade Expo vibe. I mean, first of all, it's like a small, intimate show, right? I mean, the Miyako Messe is not the LA Convention Center. It is a pretty small convention center here in Kyoto. BitSummit takes up a good, you know, fairly substantial portion of it this year, which is great. But, like, the show floors are small, and there's just, they're just packed with really interesting games.

I really love how kid-friendly this show is. Because, A, kids are allowed. They're also free, which I think is important, because as a parent, you look at it and you're like, well, I mean, do I want to pay, like, all this money for my kids to come in, and maybe they'll like it, maybe they won't. So kids are free. and not only are kids free but it's like there's a lot of kids here and there's like little tiny little kids running around here playing games and stuff like that

I'm like oh my god this is this is really great it's very kid friendly I've got my kids here and so it's that's really fun and what I love that it's actually new this year is the and I want to talk about some of the games here is the it believe it's called it's not Alt Control GBC it's make control Japan and it's essentially like if you know Alt Control GDC

which is the exhibit at Game Developers Conference where there's unique games using one-off unique control schemes. And maybe I'm biased. I always loved to see the Japanese creators at Alt-Control GDC because I really liked what they would come up with as far as unique control schemes. And so to see this whole grouping of Japanese creators and what's so important is for Alt-Control GDC-type events

or Make Control Japan as it's called here for these Alt-Controller things is you have to transport, You have to make the controller and transport it to the venue, so it's very difficult if you're like a Japanese creator and you've made this wacky, crazy, big controller to like get it to America in one piece. It could be very cost. It could be cost prohibitive.

You might not be able to do it. And so to have a space for alternative controller games here in Japan is really important because then, again, you put it on the train, you take it down, it's all set. And so we saw some really great things that we can talk about if you want. Sure.

Yeah, I mean, so I should jump right in. into it. My kid loves, there's a, it's called Hoo Pizza. Yes. H-O-O-O-O-O-Pisa. And it is a pizza-making game, like Wario-Ware-style pizza-making minigames, all played with a hula hoop. And so you hula hoop, you put it around your hips, and you do the hula hoop and spin it to roll out the pizza dough, to stretch out the pizza dough. And so then, of course, your skill at hula-hooping will let you make a bigger pizza dough, you know, within a shorter amount of time. Then you take the hula hoop and you hold it in your hands and you shake it to put the

toppings on the pizza and you want to do that with, you know, efficient timing, et cetera. And then after that, you take the hula hoop and you put it vertically on the ground and you roll it like a wheel to cut the pizza. And so you want to cut the pizza and to even slice it. And the game sort of gives you guidelines as to how to do that. And I think my kid played it like three times and he ended up setting the high score because he was like he was very motivated to do this and he found out that he is pretty good at hula hooping which i don't think he's tried before so he did a really good job at that um what else there's um there was a whack a mole game yes and you are the mole where you're the mole i was talking with um i was talking with uh our your your friend in mine uh tony um and he was

like i couldn't somebody said there was whack a mole what he didn't see the moles and i said Tony, if you look around and you can't find the mole, you are the mole. And yes, it's whack-a-mole, but you're the mole. And so it's a camera, and it's looking at people, and they took a bunch of astro-turf, and they cut holes in the astro-turf and affixed it to a sort of a scaffold, or a skeleton, rather, and then set that up, and then you just get underneath the hole, and you play the game, but poking your head up out of the hole, if your head is up out of the hole, you get points, and the hammer is randomly smashing moles

so the risk reward is you want to try to stay up as long as you can but if you get smashed you lose all your points and again kids loved it thought it was super fun I could totally see that being an installation you know somewhere right and it's brilliant Jet Cola which I've actually seen at GBC

is a funny thing where you hold a controller shape like a bottle of soda and you shake it up and then you and then the soda on screen blasts off to the moon based on the power of your bubbles that you've shaken up in the soda. You invert the thing. And that's just fun because you're just, you know, shaking a bottle of soda. And it's like you're doing all the shaking. And then after you're done shaking,

then you're sort of seeing the results of all of it and seeing it play out. Yeah, I actually have a video of Jeremy Parrish playing the game last year. Yeah. And just wiping the floor with me. Oh, my gosh. He got way more point. He's way better shaking than I am.

Interesting. Interesting. And then the other one is, I do not know the name of it, but it was a game that is played with. with, and you saw this too. The controller is a banana holder, which, again, I don't think we have banana holders as such an American. Maybe we do. But say, it's a literal, it's a plastic shaped like a banana. Yeah. So it's like, if you're going to take a banana, say, like with you to work for lunch or something. Right. You can put the banana inside this plastic case where it's safe.

Yes. And then you open it up and then you peel it and your banana hasn't been smashed or anything like having it to work. It's like a Nintendo Switch case for a banana. And they, and the guy took yellow arcade buttons, and he put those in the banana holder. And so you play the game by holding this banana, and it's a, it's a, not massively multiplayer game, but it is absolutely a multiplayer. It's like a six-player multiplayer game. A lot of it is. Where everybody is a monkey, and rocks roll at you and just press the button on the banana holder to jump. But I mean, it's a fun, it's a fun little, you know, party game. But what's important about it is, it's not, it's not necessarily just like the weird banana-shaped controller. It's just like it's designed really

well where every time the rocks come at you you have to make the decision of like do I jump do I double jump or do I stay where I am you know and it's all kind of happening quickly enough but then if you get you rack up points but it's the same as whack a mole the first when you get hit you lose all your points and so it's about who can kind of set the high score you know during that window you know and so and there's and there's more there I didn't even play this one did you play the what is it called boss boss blinds boss blind brand Brandy. It's one that, yeah, like, the Bits Summit every year, I think you're right, the branding

is new, but every year there's always going to be a collection of games that people show up with that absolutely cannot be sold because they're just too weird. Exactly. You know, a lot of these stories, if you go back on wired, you'll see them like, you know, the lotion bottle and the dice you roll, like a big roll of dice or the cardboard box you have to wear to pretend like you're naked, you have to hold a cardboard box up. But yeah, this is one where it's like you've got two opposing pair of blinds, like Venetian blinds, and you've got like a glass, like a brandy glass controller,

and you're supposed to twirl the glass, like you're scheming something, and you open the blinds to see your opponent, and you can attack your opponent, but if the blinds are open, it blocks it. So it's like, you know, it's like never say never again, but instead nuclear weapons, it's blind. Incredible. Oh, my God. And it's just, oh, God.

And it's really, it's like, you know, these all can, you know, these games, the best of them, you know, they really have this wonderful, um, pairing of the controller and like what you're doing and like what's going on on screen and you're right you like i i can't think of i'm sure there have been games that have been featured like alt control gbc where like they've done a standardized controller version of it and sold it but it really is it just it just gets your creative juices flowing when you see stuff like this and you realize like just like how much possibility there is in the in the interactive space and that we that we only touch a very small percentage of that

with our standard array of joysticks and buttons and, you know, display devices and things like that. But speaking of consoles and controllers, I think one of the most unique ones is ones that you pointed out to me that I immediately had to play, which is called Bear Runner. Oh, yeah. And at that game, you literally play it with a Famicom,

not on a Famicom. Yes. With the Famicom in that it is a Famicom with a cartridge in it and the game is sort of playing automatically on the screen and you have to hit the Famicom like it's been a bad child

you can't hit children of course but you can hit a Famicom because it's a piece of plastic and in this software world if you hit the Famicom suddenly the character will sort of glitch forward a few centimeters so you can use that to sort of bypass obstacles or get past

enemies and the whole thing this is the thing that was really amazing which I think is sort of so modern and so brilliant. The whole thing presented like you're watching a speed run. Yes. Because there's a timer on the screen, you can see there's like checkpoints and as the character's moving along, it's telling you how fast you are and how slow you or whether you're making

your, you know, whether you're behind or you're ahead. And it keeps track of the total score. So I got up there and you know, I did it in like, I don't know, 30, 35, 36 seconds. But I can see the leaderboard was like 25 seconds. So like you can go back there and keep playing, keep playing and try to get a lower lower time. this beating the crap out of this Famicom.

Yeah. And if you hit too much, it's like a tilt, like a binball. Exactly, exactly. And that's the thing. So it's like in the, if you were a Japanese cake growing up with Famicom, like this is something that you see it and you really understand where the inspiration comes from because this was like, there were certain tricks that kids learned to do with Famicom games where if you took a cartridge and you sort of pull, it's like, oh, we don't have this

in the U.S. with the NES. Right. difference the way, because of the zero-force insertion kind of thing, you put the NES game into the NES and it stays in there. But the FAMICOM, especially because it's like, because I think a lot of it is sort of because of the way the FAMICOM worked, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like, oh, well, take the game

and then you pull up on the left side of it so the left pins don't make, you know, entire contact, and you can get the game to glitch into, like, a different level or something like that, you know? And so there's all those, like, tricks, you know, with certain games that people would do with that. And then, of course, people always knew that if you, you know, because of the way the Famicom game sits in the cartridge or sits in the system, it's in there and it kind of

wiggles a little bit. And if you tap, if somebody, if your, you know, brother comes up and hits the Famicom cartridge as you're playing the game, it will cause it to glitch out, right? And so this is based on that. And so this is really, like, this could only have come, you know, from Japanese gaming culture because of the nature of what this is. But then the game itself is about, you know, the bear cannot avoid anything. So you're just trying to glitch him through the things by tapping the cartridge at that point.

And you even, it's even so far as it starts out with an overly lengthy story sequence of like slow scrolling text. And the guy is like, oh, if you want to, if you want to skip the story sequence, just, you know, tap the cartridge. And you start hitting the cartridge and it glitches the story sequence out more and more and more and then it skips through it. it's so well considered like I love stuff like that that just so deeply fought through in that way yeah I also love that the whole thing looks kind of like a Super Mario Brothers game totally and the fact that it ends with you know a ramp up and a big flagpole so of course once you jump you can easily just hit the Famicom and skip past the flagpole like we always want to do

when we're kids you couldn't actually do without like serious you know skills but now it's like I did that with the um oh you so you could in Mario in Super Mario there's two, there was a skip past, you could, you could just get over the flagpole at one point. I remember doing it with a game genie and turning, and it turns out there's just nothing. Yeah. There's just infinite nothing and it's like, oh, okay. Um, yeah, so that was all control, or sorry, that was, uh, make control Japan, not of control GDC, uh, we're at Bits on it. Um, and let me see. What else did I play? Um, and, sorry, that was, uh, make control Japan, not of control GDC. Uh, we're a bit summit. Um, and let me see, what else did I play? that, I mean, the big one that I've been telling people about is, oh, you've got to go check out.

It's the remake of Okhotsk-Nikiyu, the disappearance in Okhotsk. And basically it's about, so it was Yuji Hori's, I want to say third game. Yeah. Because he did Love Match Chennis, and then I think after that was Portopia, the Portopia serial murder case. And then Okhots-Nikyu, which was not done for Enix. It was done for, actually it was for Login soft. Logging. login as in the magazine login

I think was connected so he did that for them and by pure coincidence I actually I needed I wanted to buy a copy of it just to have a copy of that and had bought it in Osaka a couple of days ago and then came here and they're doing a full on you know remake of

it with like you know like slightly upgraded HD graphics basically but it starts yeah and it's about it's another murder mystery it's a Japanese adventure game you know sort of thing like you know like Famicom Detective Club where it's like you know you're going from scene to scene big menu full of things that are like look around talk to somebody investigate somebody you know all that kind of stuff and but it's it's start this game starts

off with like I mean it's it's about a guy who gets murdered like and it's connected to a sex club in like in in in Tokyo but then it turns out he was from Hokkaido and like you know the mafia might be involved and and it starts out with a screen that's just like you know like this game contains, you know, violent themes and depictions of the sex industry. And in, you know, with respect to the original 1987 work, you know, we are leaving these themes, you know, intact. And I'm just reading this going, this game is going to be good. This game is going to be good.

This is one of the games that had, I was reading a, there was a feature in Famitsu, because, of course, Gaming Alexandria has been doing, you know, God's work and, like, scanning issues of Famitsu. So I've read a lot of, like, old issues of Famitsu. They did, they actually did, like, a feature one month of, like, nudity in Famicom games. Because there were Famicam games that had nudity. And this is

one of them where, like, you know, one of the characters is, like, you know, all, you know, 100 pixels of this character are, like, naked in a bath house. And so, um, it's, uh, it's, it is absolutely a game that like, you know, like you,

within the first, like, five minutes, like, you're inside of a sex club in Tokyo but it's great that they're doing and it's going to be localized into many languages and it's just I love it just because like this was a big game like the adventure games that

Yuji Hori did before Dragon Quest were very popular and a lot of people played it on the computers and the Famicom and it's just like you know other people just don't get the chance to play these things so it's really cool that they're doing this like faithful redo of it and so that's here on the show

floor as well. That's also fun to me because I feel like that's a part of Japan that gets very little attention in general. Hokkaido is kind of like Japan's Alaska. Oh, sure. And Oh, Hotsku is like the northern, northern tip of the north. So, like, it's practically Russia, depending on who you believe

where the maps end. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So there is a certain it's a liminal space. You know what I mean? It's the perfect place for a murder mystery, right? Because it's because it is neither here nor there. Yeah, it's cool. It's a great, it sounds like a really intriguing concept.

And after playing the demo, because I didn't really play the Famicom, you know, version, but, you know, after playing the demo, I'm like, oh, man, this is, this is great. That's so intriguing. I'm going to try more of that. Yeah. Now, I know one of the games you were very excited by, and I played also as well, was about chickens. Chickens who are police. Oh, chicken police.

Yeah, ACAB. All chickens are police. Police. It can. Oh, chickens are bullies. Yes. So it's called chicken. It's called chicken police something.

Into the hive. Into the hive. So I saw this and I'm like, oh, I'm very intrigued because this is a, it's an adventure game. You know, it's a talk to people, collect items, use items, solve puzzles, adventure game. But all of the people have human bodies and realistic poultry heads. And it's very funny. It was very, very fun. Like the, the demo that I sat here and played was really legitimate.

laugh out loud funny and I love that um and then it turns out that this is actually the sequel to a game that I slept on from 2020 which was just called chicken police something else so now I have a mission which is to go back and play you know chicken police whatever the original title was yeah one thing that really struck me about this is not only the yeah the graphics that you have are sort of these you know almost photorealistic bodies and very realistic heads that are you know the main characters are chickens but they also like the police force has like this they were like dogs and other animals amongst them, like, Bernangelo. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah.

And all this is, it's all completely voice acting. Yes. And the actors are very much, especially the lead one, is very much doing that sort of, you know, hard-boiled, you know, Sam Spade, if you will, just kind of like, oh, she came into my life. And I knew she was troubled. Yep, yep, yep. And they're doing a lot, they're using a cluck a lot to substitute for the F word, you know?

What the cluck are you talking about, you know? Even though they do curse because they talk about chicken shit. so it's like they're clearly willing to say chicken shit because we all know about chicken shit right for the f word they'll use clock yeah yeah it's like out there they're delineering whether they will and will not say and you know what i mean honestly it was going to get a mature rating anyway like i don't see this getting anything other than that so yeah um yeah so i mean that was cool let me see what else i'm sort of like mentally like re-walking around the show what did i see i love uh nintendo's approach you know to this whole thing which is it's a lot of indie games

that are already available, I believe, but really just more like, you know, hey, like, you know, we're supporting indies, you know, check out some of the, what we think are some of the coolest indie games on Switch. Exit 8 was up there, Sveka game was up there, and they're passing out, you know, Nintendo swag and stuff like that. So it's really, it is very nice to see, you know,

Nintendo PlayStation, you know, putting in, uh, putting in that, that effort to support, you know, Bits Summit as well, not just with, like, sponsorship money, but really having a cool booth that they clearly put some thought into. Yeah, I think that's one of the strong features of the fact that they have, we have two floors this year, which I think is a first. I've come here every year, so you think I would be the one to know. But I'm pretty sure this is the first year with both floors.

And so that gives you a space where, okay, you've got one floor which is kind of packed a little tight, and you've got those big sponsor booths. And you've another floor, which is a little more wide open, and that's where you have the all control stuff. That's where you have people selling burgers, some good burgers. Had the burger. Yeah. You've got merch tables. It was a long time for that burger. Yeah, it was a lot shorter weight on the business day.

Yeah. But, and just having this much space means no one feels too, no one feels like they're squeezed out, I feel like. There's room for everybody. There's room for the kids. There's room for adults. I don't feel like I'm being crushed. Yeah, and I was worried because, you know, I came into the business day and it's like, okay, fine, but this is business day.

It's like, I, you know, my wife wanted to come, the kids wanted to come. It's like, okay, like, we're all going to go in. And honestly, walking into the convention center today, I was prepared for anything you know i didn't i didn't know what to be prepared for but what i did not expect was that was what happened which is that we walked in the door and then walked onto the show floor and it was not packed shoulder to shoulder it was actually i mean it's there's a lot of people on the show floor and you do have to you know you know squeeze your way in and through and stuff like that but generally it hasn't been that bad like there's there's space to stand there's not a long wait to

play the games so if this you know if this works for bit summit you know this is this sort of this level of attendance. I mean, it's not, it's very well attended. And I hear they sold a lot more tickets, you know, like this year than, uh, than they had, you know, at by that point previously, I guess last year. But it's, I think the, I think the having the two, if they, if, if all those people were crammed into one floor, that would be, that would be bad. But two floors, that's very manageable at this point. So it's nice. Well, as you mentioned, your, your kids here today, and I'm sure they're very eager to get you back with them so you can help corral them. Yes.

Like, before we go... I just didn't... You always think your kids... It's like, you always think your kids are going to think you're so cool. It's like, oh, I just did an interview with Australian TV, and, like, my son was just sitting there. It's like, oh, my God, when is this going to be over? It's like, Dad's on TV talking about video games.

Nope. Do not care. So, yeah, I got to get back to them because they're just like, oh, Dad, podcasting again. You know, hopefully you could, years from now, you can tell them the story about how, I think it was NHK tried to talk to us at TGS and you just stonewalled them with like jibberish English. One of the coolest things they were seen. You decided you didn't want to be their B-roll, so you just. No.

Well, they just, you know, honestly, I mean, look, you know, coming from a, you know, being a journalist, it's like you, you walk up to somebody and say, hey, like, I'm so-and-so from this media outlet, you know, would you like to talk to us? but they just, we were just standing in line, like, trying to get our passes, and they just come up and just, like, stick the camera in my face and stick a microphone in my face and start asking me questions, and they're like, what games you're hoping to see at the show? I'm like, the good ones or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, whatever it was, I'm like, I'm not giving you anything usable. This is super rude. Yeah. Maybe Little Chris Cole will appreciate that moment when he's older and more cynical. Maybe, maybe. Well, anyway, I do want you to get you back with your family, so I'm sure the listeners know, but maybe in case they don't know, can they find you on the Internet? Do you want them to find you on the Internet somewhere? No, well, I do not want you to find me. No, if you're going to find me anywhere, please find me on the Internet, not in real life.

I'm still on X.com as Coboon Heat. I will always be Cobunheat on X.com until the bitter end, I guess. And, you know, DigitalEclipse.com, if you want to see what we're doing. We're doing some cool stuff, Power Rangers. Rita's Rewind coming later this year. People are excited about that. Team is cranking really hard on that. Back at home while I'm here sitting in the lovely kimono and bamboo partition screen room here at the Miaco Messe,

where we're not allowed to eat, drink, or smoke, but the sign doesn't say no podcasting. So we are good to go. Yes. No one ever puts up a no-pad custom sign. It's the one loophole we have. Yeah. Of course, now we're going to come back next year. There's going to be one. Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you, Diamond. Drop, dot! Time!

Now, these next games I want to highlight, I consider them retro-adjacent. When you play them, you think about old games, even if they don't actually feel like old games necessarily. And the first one I want to highlight is something called foul damage. That's F-O-W-L foul damage, which is kind of a pun. I'll explain. This is a demo already available on Steam, by the way, so you can go ahead and play this right now. try it for yourself. This is very much a solo project, and it's a puzzle platformer, but you're an egg. Not like an egg with feet. You are literally an egg rolling on the ground. Now, this egg somehow can jump.

I don't know how. Didn't ask how, but the egg jumps. Now, if the egg falls too far, it breaks. So you have to plan your jumps very carefully. You have to plan your landings very carefully. You have to roll off certain edges and be careful not to fall too far. Again, foul damage, fall damage, you see what's happening? You see, you get it, right? You get it. You get it. So, I was rolling around, making my way, you know, trying to die too many times. Obviously, this kind of thing, if you break the egg, then you reset the room and you start the room again. So that's the, that's the penalty, you know, to start the room again.

But things got challenging. Definitely at one point I was being pursued by an enemy, so I had to both watch my jumps and my falls from, you know, the environment and also this thing that was chasing me was also getting my way. So I had to be very careful on that stage. But I got past it. Dare I say, I cleared the demo in about 10 minutes, which I took as a good sign and the developer told me that I did a pretty good job. So you can congratulate me. Go ahead, leave me a comment telling me how good I am at foul damage, a game that few people have played. I also thought that it was nice. Little rooms had little extra challenges along the way, like a feather in a corner somewhere, where, you know, you could get past the room without getting the feather, but if you get the feather and

don't crack the egg, you get like an extra bonus. What do you get? I don't know. Ask the developer. They're still working on it. Although it should be coming out before the end of the year, hopefully, maybe next year. The developer told me that she's working on this game for six years, and I asked, oh, six years, um, is that one's? Celeste came out and she said yes. So, yes, obviously there's a lot of Celeste sort of energy here. But not Celeste. It is not a game. It's not a Celeste game. It's not this sort of hardcore jumping, air-dashing, bouncing. You're like, you're an egg. You can only do so much with an egg. So it's about careful planning. And if you have to rush, it's because you're in danger. You can't just, you know, think of a way to, you know, weave dash or something. I'm sorry. Celeste was good, but Celeste was also

way too hard for me to even mess with for more than, I don't know, an hour or two. That was just, that was all I could give it. Much more my speed was motion wreck. That's one word M-O-T-I-O-N-R-E-C, motion wreck. This is also a puzzle platformer. You're a little robot, I think.

Very minimal color scheme. I want to say almost monochromatic in that you've got like black and white or maybe black and red or black and green. Now, the gimmick here is you can record your movement, and then you can replay your movement. So it's not like a time travel thing. It's almost like you hold down, record, a tape deck.

And whatever you do for the next 15 seconds, the game remembers that. So if you see a bunch of platforms that are going straight up, you can hit record, jump up these platforms, and then when you stop, the game sort of saves this sort of, you know, image of your motion above you. So you can then press play

and you'll automatically just elevate. You'll go straight up. So if you come to a ledge, you can't reach. Use your playback footage and suddenly you can go up much higher. You can do this to defy gravity. You can do this, you know, move around corners. You can't go through walls. You can't do that.

And if there are any doors or gates, you can't just go through them. You'll have to carefully plan where you're going. Maybe you want to, maybe when you're time stopped, not time stopped, when you recording yourself. If you move left and then right again, maybe that'll get you to touch a switch and then you can continue on your way. Very interesting mechanic. I thought it worked very well. I cleared the demo. I had a good time with that. I don't think they had any specific release date

or sort of release vision yet, but I was playing out on a PC, so I'm assuming they'll have a PC version and probably a switch version eventually. But take a look at for that one. Motion I really liked the feel of that one. Another monochromatic game was Moonbase Lambda. Moonbase Lambda. There's already a demo on Steam. You can try this for yourself. Now, this one is not a pixel game.

This is a first person, you know, I would say a walking sim because there's no combat, but it's not just walking around because you're on a space station. You have to escape the space station, but you're not alone in the space station. Something else is there, and it wants to hurt you. So you're running around the space station, running down corridors, you're looking for items, you're flipping switches, opening gates. You cannot hurt the thing, but you can pick up items that distract it. You can run away from it.

If you lose it, it takes time to retract you. But you still have to figure out how to get from A to B and find a way to leave the station the way you want to. The developer told me it's all procedurally generated. So again, much like SpyDrops, you know, different people who got different experiences, you can play it more than once, you get, you know, you know what's going to happen. You don't know where the monster's going to be. You don't know where you're going to find the exit. He also highlighted games that he knew games called Monstrum, Shadow Corridor, and Soma.

And if you look up those games, those games are all already. I think you'll see a lot of things are in common. I think you also mentioned Return of Oberdeen as far as the look of the game, because, again, it's a very simple-looking game, even though it's fully 3D. There's just no, you know, it's basically black and white or black and green. When I played it was black and green, but he said he might have more palettes when the finished game is ready. But when I played it, it kind of looks almost like a 3D Game Boy game, even though those were very few and far between. It's certainly not at the high frame rate that he was playing. So horror fans, look for that.

Moonbase Lambda. Intercreates. Intercreates always should have bit summit. They usually have something brand new. And in this case, they had a game called Divine Dibyne. Dynamo flame frit. In English, that's F-L-A-M-E-F-R-I-T, flame-frit. This one is really hard to explain, because on the one hand, you've got overhead action, which very much looks and feels like their Blaster Master Zero games, you know, like the, you know, the on-foot segments. You're, you know,

running around, firing guns, breaking little things, shooting enemies, collecting power-ups. You know what, you know how that works. You know that old song of the sea. What's different here is that when I encountered what seemed to be a boss or some kind of important enemy the enemy grew in size and then I summoned a giant mech and I jumped in my mech

and then you had giant boss battles where you were sitting in the meck and you have to do first person style battles with the enemies so you're moving back and forth you have a button for each hand you've got a block button you've got an attack button this stuff was very interesting

it was also very hard of my finger I don't know if it's because I was doing it wrong or not, but for me, in order to get down their health, I was mashing the button with my life, and my life depended on this thing, just to deal enough damage to eventually win the battle. was I doing it wrong? Was I supposed to use the sword more often? I couldn't tell you. But my point is, it was challenging. It was not just, oh, just push the button and you win the battle. You really had to think about it.

You had to be careful. You had to find your windows. You had to make opportunities. There might have been a parry system because you had a sword. So, like, if you blocked an attack at the same time, maybe you could, like, get one up on the enemy. I don't know. A lot was happening there.

Obviously, very story-heavy. I could tell from the, you know, the anime and the sort of music. They really want you to think of, like, old cartoons from maybe like the 70s or 80s. So, real good-looking, uh, Indycreates tends to make good stuff. So keep an eye for that one. I think they're hoping to get it out by the end of the year. Divine Dynamo Flame Frit. And the last game I wanted to highlight here is one that I can describe the least, because it made

no sense to me. The title, again, this is all in Japanese. I'll do my best. Saturi Yugi Oh, Hendro, 88. Hachi-ju-hachi, or yeah, if you want to be Japanese. So what is this game? What is this game exactly? Well, it's like a cross between science fiction and Buddhism in that I was controlling

a character walking around to space, and it was very much a 2D, you know, scrolling, walking around, very simple, talked to some creatures, talked to some passerbyes, and all of a sudden I'm fighting. I'm fighting something that's very big, and it's kind of like a sumo battle, because as the enemy comes towards me, if it touches me, it bounces me, and if I bounce out of the arena, I lose. But if I push a button, I can briefly enlarge myself, and that's an attack, and if I time it right, I can knock the enemy out of the ring. But the key move here is, as you go back and forth, the longer you last, you flip a meter, and when the meter is full, you suddenly transform, and you can transform into different kinds of things, beings, that all have different abilities, different attacks, different magic powers.

The developer is trying to explain to me that there are 88 different forms, hence the title, and 88, if you know your Japanese religious history, there's a very famous pilgrimage in Shikoku where you visit 88 temples all around Shokoku. I have not done that.

That's a lot of temples. But 88, clearly the magic number here. I almost want to say it's more art project than video game, because during the transformations and during some of these segments, the entire aesthetic changes from 2D to 3D. I saw some live action footage mixed in.

Like, it's really impressive, really surprising. A visual extravaganza, I would say. I don't know the state of it so far. They told me that they don't be working on it for a few months. So they don't think it'll be ready for years. Like two to three years maybe. This might not be ready. Will they even translate it?

I don't know. They might. I mean, people who don't speak Japanese enjoy Buddhism and science fiction, so why not? But for now, it's just an amazing curiosity. I would say, based on sheer demo experience, that was my favorite demo of the show, even though other games had a lot more polish and a lot more, you know, comprehensibility. You know, like the yo-yo game, I understood the yo-yo game. If you told me the yo-game was on sale, I'd say, oh, I might buy this.

This game in his current state, I don't know what the hell it's supposed to be or what's going to become like, but it looked amazing. So that's rad. It's rad in my book. Welcome back to Retroids. I don't know how I'm going to cut this all together, but I'm here sitting with, and I'm sorry, I forgot to pray your last name, Tina, though. Tina Carter.

Yes. That's a hard one to remember. You know, it was a president's name. I'm sorry. I mean, you know, Tina butts with two T's and a Z is how everyone actually remembers me, so. See, that's the one you use on social media, so of course. All right. So I'm in the clear.

Don't you stop sending your letters. I forgot about Tina's last name. So Tina, we've known each other for a while now, would you say? Several years, I would say, at this point, because before I lived in Tokyo, I lived in Osaka for five years. And I think at that time, even then, you know, we would bump into each other at Space Station and that kind of place. And we know a bunch of the same people. So this is not a first-time meeting. That's metaphorically, right?

I'm not a fraudorist. I don't know what that means. Sorry, someone who bumps into someone on people. Purpose? Oph, like Frotet, like in French. Like, oh, I mean, I don't know. Space Station's small, intentional or not. You never know.

I wouldn't have been mad either way. All right, now you're trying to flatter me. But, anyway, the reason I wanted to have you on the show, obviously you're a wise and intelligent person who knows a lot of video games, and you work 484, so you're in the circle of knowledge. But also the fact that because you've lived here, for a while. You've been to Bitsummit over

the years, and yeah, there's be some screaming, folks. It's a, that's kind of show it is. And you know, I wanted to get someone who, like me, has been to the show more than once and to get their take on what the show is like, because

yeah, I mean, do you remember when you first came to Bitsumet? I was trying to think what year it would have been. It would have been at least, I think, six years ago at this point. The thing that stands out that I remember the most. You might remember what I'm talking about. There was a game that was set up and it was this huge thing pinned up on the wall and there were like LED light threads coming down from

the wall and the controller would like control the light moving along the lines. And it was just confusing enough that I never quite knew if I was playing it properly enough. But it looked so cool that it didn't really matter because there was always a crowd around it going, ooh. And that's a good showstopper. Right. It's that beautiful intersection between game and art where it's like, I don't know what's happening here, but I'm amazed, so it works. I won. Yeah, I'm not mad at it. It's the flashing lights. It's a good time. But, like, we just had a scream in the background. There's another one. I don't know if people can hear it, but they're impressive screams, folks. So our booth is set up right in the weird stuff area, which is something that I love about BitSummit is there is always a weird stuff area. There's a booth with a game. has controllers shaped like bananas. Yeah, yeah.

There is a real-life, oh, God, what's it called, whack-a-mole? Right, where you're the mole. You are the mole. You have to physically move around to dodge the hammer. It's funny how so far, you know, I've recorded multiple, you know, chats like this already, and I think every single person has brought up this area, and every single person has brought up those same games because we're all, they all work, and I think every year, Bits Summit has, you know, one or two or more of those games

where it's like, you can only play it here and it catches your eye and then you're talking about it for weeks on end afterwards, you know? That's what I think, it's just a consistent threat for Bits 7, I feel. Yeah, there's always going to be, you know, PCs set up down the block with all kinds of great games to play and things that are, you know, the demo is on Steam,

you can play it now, but there are going to be things that are just, you have to play it here or you're not going to get to. And those kinds of things, they're great to see in videos on, you know, social media later. but getting to play it yourself really makes a big difference. And it's funny you mentioned Steam because BitSummit is now 11 years old. And I happen to be, you know, I'm one of the people who's there for the first BitSummit,

which wasn't for the public. And they actually had people from Valve show up to tell the crowd of, you know, largely developers, right? Like, hello, we're from Valve and we have Steam and we want to tell you how good Steam is. And like, that's the change. Like, that's the era of BitSum. Like, when BitSem had started, Steam was kind of like a what? And now it's like, yes, everything you see, if it's not on Steam already, they're going to have a QR code like, here, please wish it's on Steam. And that's wild to think that's as recent as you say, because Steam is such a given, right?

Like, it's, you know, is your game on Steam? Right. Of course it is. That's the first place it's going to be. And the idea that there was a time that Steam needed promoting is funny to think about now. It's just, it's also part of the whole trends. You know, I think, you know, Steam has been around for, I want to say, 20 years now, give or take. And in that time, you've seen the Japanese, you know, the console landscape change and the development landscape change.

And it's like, for, I would say, a good 10, 15 years, like, you really didn't see many big Japanese games on Steam either. And now it's like everything launches on Steam and console, like maybe consoles later. Like, Steam is just the default now. And that's, like, from indie to AAA now, like TechN8 is on Steam, and Street Fighter 6 is on Steam, like Capcom, like all these companies that for years you thought of, you know, console, console, it's like, no, no, it's, we know what Steam is now, we understand, we realize there's people out there who want to play our games. Yeah, and I've been, you know, a console person since forever. I didn't really play a lot of games on PC.

And even now, I generally use Steam as my weird indie games that I can't get anywhere else, machine. And it still fulfills that need perfectly. You know, it's still exactly doing that. But the idea that, especially with, you know, Steam Deck, people use Steam as their, like, main gaming platform now is, I mean, I'm trying to think of an intelligent way to wrap up that thought, but it's pretty cool. I do like that in the last couple of years, the Steam Deck has also grown in stature here at Bits Summit. I feel like a couple years ago I saw like a steam deck and it was like oh I can see a steam deck I can touch a steam deck and now it's like a lot of tables just have one you know like it's not like standard yet it's not like a Nintendo switch but it's quickly grown out of it's grown from niche

to like oh yeah of course it runs on a steam deck here play it on a steam deck and it's so much easier than having to set up you know a whole tower PC with all of the all of the loop de looping cables that you need to have in your monitor and your keyboard and all these things with the steam deck you can just drop it into the dock and go right ideal for those of us in japan who probably don't have a lot of space in our living rooms or you know one ldks or whatever i don't know what what's what's your home address what's where do you where do i live what is who is my daddy and what does he do yeah you're in an apartment dwe all over i think i sure am yeah and you know we live in a larger apartment than we did at the start of the pandemic, because I now work out of that apartment, too, but I still have,

you know, my one computer that is my work computer that when I am not working, I do not wish to be at. So it's, you know, gaming space and working space. I try to keep them as separate as possible. So I'm still predominantly console. Like video games for me happen on the couch in the living room in front of the TV. So that's you and another person and two cats? two adorable baby kitties who are not babies, they're four years old, but, you know. Well, I also wanted to, you know, besides this little Bitsumet history lesson, which of course is important, because we're here at Bitsummit, that's why we're talking about it, I'm just curious, I know you, you're obviously very busy here at the 84 slash Super Deluxe slash Brave Wave

slash Black Screen Records, like slash fan gamer Japan, yeah, like, it's a sort of, you know, conglomerate Voltron of brands over here. I know you're very busy in this booth, but did you get around the show? Can you talk about some games that maybe you played and enjoyed? Yeah, I had some time. The first day, the business day, is always a little bit more chill just because, you know, there are fewer people, and everyone's kind of a bit more focused on they know what they're here to be doing rather than milling around having a good time. So I made sure to check out some stuff the first day.

I got to play Odin Kat's new game, which was called Mousebusters. Must Buster, Busbusters. Well, in Japanese, there's Nesumi Busters, which was on the poster. Yeah, and so when I saw them, you know, from across the hall, I made an immediate B-line because their last game, Meg's Monster. Meg's Monster. Meg's Monster. I played that in, you know, a single sitting.

I sat down and, you know, several hours start to finish and just, like, sobbed, bawled my eyes out, dehydrated levels of crying, and it was wonderful. So I knew, like, whatever they're putting out, I want to check it out. Um, it's in the same kind of, uh, like, retro design style. You, it opens with an apartment building, like a kind of scary looking run down two-story, six apartment building with a realtor saying to you, well, here's the place. Are you sure? Okay.

Well, sign here. Here's your key. Goodbye. Good luck. And you let yourself into your apartment. You start unpacking some boxes. You get tired. You see a little mouse, a mouse comes out of a mouse hole in the wall, and you're like, oh, living in luxury.

And you get a prompt to give the mouse a cookie. So naturally, you know, I immediately give the mouse the cookie, because why would I not? Right. I mean, you know, obviously in real life, it's not a good idea to feed pests, but, you know, in a video game, it's adorable, of course. In a video game, a little animal is there. I wish to interact. I will go up to it and hammer that interact button and hope something happens. So getting to give it to a cookie, wonderful

Then, you know, my guy says, oh, I'm tired, I'm going to have a nap, I'm going to go to bed And you wake up in your bed and you are now a mouse You have become the mouse And so of course then you are in the same room But very small and running around in little circles like Oh my God, what do I do? I can't, oh no And a little mouse comes out and is like, hey man, nice to see you Thanks for the cookie yesterday

and you follow him into the little mouse hole and he becomes your boss. The building is haunted. They are mice fighting the ghosts. That is why they are called Mousebusters. Your main character says, doesn't that kind of sound like we're defeating mice? And your boss is like, hey man, don't worry about the details.

Chill out. It's fine. I'm sorry. I had a conversation with people with this last night. There was a party last night here at BitSummit called Wiz Summit. And outside of the party, there was a man dressed as a wizard. And he called himself a wizard. bouncer, and I said, no, no, no, you are a bouncer wizard, because a wizard bouncer would only bounce wizards. You are a bouncer who is a wizard. So, yeah, this is, these semantics

matter, you know, I'm glad the game addresses this. Oh, it's immediately addressed, so you do not have to spend too much time worrying about it. You get told to chill out and you're like, okay, I guess I will chill out. And I had just been given my first assignment, which was, you know, go check out apartment A, B, or whatever it was. And, uh, I had to be. just gone in when I then got a text getting summoned for work things. So I had to leave in the middle of the demo. I didn't get to finish it. But on my way out, I saw one of the developers of it and I said, you know, hey, nice to see ya. Is this game going to make me cry? And he just gives me like a, oh, you know it, kind of a look. And I thought, wonderful, that's all I need to know.

I will be there day one whenever it is available to me. Awesome. Yeah. I must admit, I didn't really know Odin Kat before the show. day, but I was looking, I played another game of theirs called Dream Channel Zero, where I guess there's a publisher. I met the developer who was not a dream, he didn't work for Odin Cat. He ended up in front himself as a fuming, like fuming, but not pronounced that way, but spelled fuming like the verb. And Dream Channel Zero is sort of this, you know, 2D, you know, I don't want to be reductive and call it an undertale-like, but like, it's very undertone its presentation, you know, and that you've got some 2D artwork and a lot of, you know,

some walking around, but it's also got like some world map stuff. And like there's like a first person weird combat phase where like something tries to get you and you got to like look at this thing and find a weak spot. And the developer, you know, this whole thing looks familiar to me. And I was like, boy, where have I seen this before? And the guy told me, oh yeah, I made a game before called Zell. And Zell is also apparently published by, or at least repped here, by Oden K. Odin Katt?

Okay. And Zell is a game I only heard about like a few days ago because I watched SGF play it. Restaurant of Sisters, yes, I said it again. I'm such a basic SGF simp. I'm always talking with SGF on the show, but yeah, SGF streamed it recently and I was like, oh, this is a weird game, it's

kind of cool, and here I am a few days later playing the newest game by the maker of Zell. And it's tied together in this Odin' cat cinematic universe. I don't know. This is, we're learning a lot here, folks. It's that, I can't think of the name of it now, but it's that phenomenon of when you become aware of something,

you suddenly see it everywhere. But in a nice indie game family kind of a way. Well, speaking of everywhere, I know you've recently played Castlevasive the Night for the first time. And just, can you go ahead and share a little? Because definitely Retronauts fans as particular, we know that game rules, but you is a person who is maybe only slightly older than symphony night, like, tell us why it rules. So I completely missed the Castlevania boat. Like, I somehow was completely unaware of it. And in the last couple of years, I started playing Metroidvania's for the first time. I think my

first Metroidvania was probably Hollow Night. Okay. Which I enjoyed very much. And then when Animal Well came out recently, I fell in super deep on that and, like, rolled credits on it in a single day. Like, I just didn't sleep. I just stayed up all night playing it. You fell in the well, which is what Wells do. I sure did. I got trapped. And so then I was like, okay, I've played, I need to explore more of this type of game, because obviously it's something that I enjoy. And it's extremely popular with good reason. Keyword, explore. See, she's hitting all the buttons here. All the, I've got a chalkboard in front of me. I'm, you know, checking as I go.

So I started with Super Metroid, which I had never played a Metro. game at all before. A little bit punishing. I had a great time doing it. I had to look up help a couple times. The first thing that I cracked and looked up is apparently called the Noob Tunnel or Noob hallway, where it's just, it's what gets everybody. It's where the game is telling you you have to learn how to dash or you're not going to be able to proceed in this game. Because there's a floor that collapses as you run across it. Yes. And you have to be able to dash across to make it in time. Right. And it's one of those like hard stops where the device, developer is saying, have you learned this yet? Because you're going to need to. But looking

stuff up in that game is kind of its own challenge because you have to describe the room and describe the pickle you're in. And then all the answers say, well, if you're in this room, I assume you've got this, this, this, this, and this item, which, like, I do not. So, you know, that's, that, that was its own thing. So then after that, I said, all right, I did a Metroid. Now I need to do a Vania. And resounding across the board when I said, what, what Vania should I play? It It was everybody said Symphony at the night. So, you know, who am I to argue? I said, sure thing.

It was very easy to get on PlayStation. I got it on the PlayStation store in a bundle with Rondo of Blood. Yeah. They call it Castellvania Requiem. Yeah. And it happened to be on sale at the time, which, you know, I'm not going to argue with. And I had a great time playing that game. I didn't know what to expect.

I, you know, from the artwork, I'm like, okay, kind of glamorous, gothic, vampires, I'm already into it. Let's see how this is. And immediately, the first thing that kind of slaps you in the face is how good the music is, like from the first screen that you are on. When you're pressing all your buttons to figure out what they do, you're already getting like electric guitar straight into the face and it's amazing. Having the, you know, you walk down, the long hallway where all the zombies pop up, which I now know are OG Castlevania guys that've been there in, you know, previous games and everything. But they were all new to me. But those windows in the background of that hall are like rattling in the storm. Very, very dynamic

backgrounds. Having death steal all your stuff and suddenly humble you and you have to gradually get your stuff back. I don't know. Just it, I had so much fun with it. I did everything there was to do in I looked up on the internet what the maximum percentage was. I somehow didn't spoil for myself the big surprise in the middle. Wow! Which I'm assuming listeners are going to know

what I mean by that? I hope so. I hope so we talked about it on this podcast many times. Okay, so am I allowed to speak explicitly? Yeah, okay. Spoiler warning, if you have not placed it tonight, okay, please Tina, tell us. Okay, so when you get through the castle and you get to, you know, the end boss,

after you defeat the end boss, if you defeat it in the correct way, there is an entire second castle, which is just a flipped mirror upside down version of the original castle, you have an entire second game to play, basically. I had no idea that was going to happen, and it absolutely blew my mind. And when I first found it, I beat the game the bad way first, just by defeating Richter outright, and was like, oh, that's unfortunate. But I wasn't ready to be done with the game yet, so I wanted to try and get 100% completion.

And in doing so, found the secret stuff you had to do to be able to defeat Richter the proper Lee way. Yes. You know? And then after doing that, I thought maybe there would be an extra boss or something. And the way they send you into that castle is wonderful, because you just hit a dead end, don't know what to do, interact with it. And then suddenly you're in a very strangely shaped room. you jump up, see a statue upside down, and say, oh, no, they did not. And having that first room you walk into upside down be that main boss area,

which I now know was also in Rondo of Blood, like a very, very familiar area. Upside down chandeliers? So cool. So cool. And seeing how, you know, layouts that didn't quite make sense in the issue, you know, oh, this is kind of an annoying jump. Upside down, suddenly I'm like, oh, they were making this room work two different ways. There was so much more going on here than I knew. Yeah, one of my favorite little things in that game is how when you're in the second castle

and you go to the warp points, because the warp points are upside down, they give you a little elevator to put you on the... It's a cute thing. They didn't really need to do that, but they made it. Just like, oh yeah, of course. Just go up. Just a little alley-oop to get you up there. But, like, it's little details in that game are part of the thing that make it so...

You know, there are a lot of things in there that they didn't have to give us that, but they did. In particular, I think I said this on our podcast too, when you start to run, if you start running to the right, he will look to the left for a couple of frames before then flipping around. And it is so like hair flip, elegant, gorgeous movements. It just looks so good. Now I'm going to out you on the air, Tina, because I saw your phone. And I've seen you've already got AutoCard as your lock screen. Alicard has been my lock screen since I started tweeting about this game. game. Can you blame me? I mean, look at him. What a, what a Butte. What a babe. Yeah, no, this is going to be like this for a while. And before him, it was Astarion from Balders Gate 3.

Okay. So I've accidentally entered like a vampire pipeline. Unintentional, but. I have a feeling it's all going to, it's going to get us all eventually. I think we just have to acknowledge this. Like, you're either, you're either into vampires right now or you will be someday. I had a little bit of a time skip because in high school, I definitely had an interview with the vampire phase, with the movie in particular. It was on TV one night, and I was channel surfing, saw Tom Cruise with the hair, and was like, excuse me, hello, what is this? And then, you know, I dropped out for a couple years, but we're back. We're back in the vampire

universe, I guess. I also wanted to hype. We're right on the same floor in the corner there. There's a whole, like, card game section, which I think is new for Bit Summit. And there's a card game over there, and it looks like, kind of like Magic the Gathering, but I guess it's all like vampires. It's called like Blood Recall, I want to say. And I keep going over there and looking at it, because everything about it is so cool. But of course, it's a game that's made in Japan. All the cards are in Japanese. All the instructions are in Japanese.

So it's like either I cave this weekend and I sit down and they tell me how it works, or I just bring it home and never play it but own it and feel smug knowing that I bought the vampire card game. I mean, even if you just buy the vampire card game, that's supporting the makers of the vampire card game. And is that not the most important thing with independent productions? You know what? I think you've speaking my language here. You're right. You're very right, Tina. This is why you're doing the show, because you're right. Before we wrap up here, Tina, can you tell people on the internet if they want to, where they can maybe find you and see your other stuff for eight.

I know they probably know about 84 play, but what else maybe about you? I mean, that's basically my entire internet presence is the 84 play podcast. I'm on Twitter and Blue Sky at Tina Butts with two T's. to Z. Twitter, I am not active anymore at all. I retweeted something yesterday as like if you retweet our thing, we'll give you a sticker. You know, so sometimes active. Blue Sky is where I actually post thoughts on the occasional time that I have one. Wonderful. And going back to the top of the segment, I was thinking about how we met, because I feel like one of the early meeting points was here at Bits Summit. And as I was saying, before I started working,

recording, like a doof. I'm pretty sure there was a case where we were in this very building, and it was you, and it was me, and it was Lucas Pope, the Papers Please guy? This is devastating news to me, because so I have a long reputation of meeting people and being very friendly, and being like, hey, what's going on? And having no clue who they are other than just like what they have told me in that conversation. So if what you are saying is true, and I did hang out.

with Lucas Pope, I would not have at the time made any connection. And now, of course, I'm going to kick myself across the room because Oberdeen is spectacular. And, you know, if I met him now, I would tell him so. Well, we're all out to tell people things when they like that. I know a few years ago, again, in this very building, I met Toby Fox. And like, okay, hello Toby Fox. I just have to tell you how much I enjoyed Arndale. And then we moved on to more important topics like Jojo's for our adventure. But I led with the good news, and then we talked about, you know, You know, the fun stuff. The fun stuff.

And it's difficult, too, because, you know, when you're a human, meeting another human, you don't like to treat it like a job interview or something, you know, and give your entire personal history and say, hi, here's who I am, here is context for it. These are all of my accomplishments. Like, no one does that, you know. So finding out later is fun because then you're like, oh, cool, that's who that was. But then you're like, crud.

I could have said so many things. to them. Oh, well, next time. Yeah, I feel like I've probably walked past Hidiki Kamiya so many times, and, like, I've never known what to say. And at this point, like, he's literally unemployed. His business card literally says unemployed on it. I guess it's hilarious. So, like, he has no power over me anymore, but I still don't know what to say to him. I'm like, oh, Jesus, it's Hedikikami. I don't know, but, well, anyway, thank you listeners. Thank you, Tina. Hopefully we can have you on the show again soon for more extended

conversation about whatever. You know what? Snap question before we wrap up here. You've got your Metroid. You've got your Vania. What do you think is next for you in this genre? Well, I'm being kind of sneaky here. I already played Rondo of Blood next. Okay.

Which I rolled credits on. I didn't get 100% yet, so that is still waiting for me. I am told that Aria of Sorrow is where I should go next. Aria of Sorrow is very good. Although I must say, If you want another Bishonan, I would say that, not Jules. Julius?

Oh, my God. I forgot. We can Dorito it. Who are we looking for? It's the Simon Belmont son or grandson. And he's very much, it's very much Alucard, but he's in a red coat, and he's not as a vampire. But he's a Belmont, and he's very good-looking. Not Trevor.

Oh, my God. I forgot his name. I love him. him. Is it Jewel? It's not Jewel. Jewel, like a shiny rock, Jewel? Oh my God. Listeners, I'm keeping this in because I need to expose my ignorance. I need to, I need you to know that one, is it Julius? No, that's the old, that's old, that's an older man. Oh, man. Juiced. It is juiced. J-U-S-T-E, Juest Belmont. Yeah, go ahead. Look him up and get the art, get the art, so you know what you, you

notice what you're expecting. Hang on. We're looking. Oh, see, that's a babe. That is a babe. I like the mismatched boots, one up, one down. He's not like other girls. You love it. Yeah, no, this, like, the art in these is so stylish. The character designs are so cool. John keeps telling me that I need to watch the Netflix show,

but he's like, maybe play a couple games first so that when you see the show, you know, everyone is and you have some like context for what's going on. I adore the anime. I think it's really great. Both the original, if you will, that was a lot of like Alucard and Trevor stuff. And then they made another one, which is basically more like Rondo, because it's got like a young, a young Richter. So, yeah, I would say the more game you play, the better that stuff is. But yes, I adored all that stuff. Really, every season, I feel like it only got stronger as it went along.

Like the first season was very brief, and they got more and more into it. And then, you know, obviously they killed Dracula because you're going to kill Dracula. They're like, okay, but this show's over, right? No, the show is not over, because there's plenty more characters to show up, and it was just, it's great. So, you know, listeners, if you haven't watched that yet, please watch that. Yeah, and I've played only two games, so obviously, you know, not an expert. But I get the impression that Dracula is just going to keep coming back because people keep, you know, calling him and being like, hey, man, we need you to get revived, please. and apparently he has no say in the matter.

It's our fault, not his. Man just wants to have a nap. It was not by his will that was someone to know. Someone here by humans who wished to pay him tribute. That is my one kind of sad thing. I was super happy that Symphony of the Night was so easy to get because there are so many games that even if you want to play them and you're willing to pay for them, you just can't.

You can't find it. They're not available. They're just out of your budget. it, you don't have the hardware to play it on anymore, so being able to get it so easily was awesome, but the version that I played had the newer voices. Yeah, yeah, Requiem is the, it's based on the PSP ports or does not have the PlayStation original dialogue. Which, when I was told, you need to play Sympathy the night, my first question was,

is that the one with the line about a miserable pile of secrets? Because that line is spectacular. I knew about that before even looking into the game, you know, what is a man, a miserable pile of secrets? But enough talk. How about you? Throwing his wine glass on the ground? What a way to start a fight.

I think just bring it back to Bitsimit here, because somehow this conversation turned into a different conversation altogether, but I'm pretty sure that Jeremy Bloustin, the localizer, who basically wrote all that stuff into Symptonite, because as you saw, when you play the other version, the English is much more in line with the Japanese, so it's a lot less flamboyant.

So Jeremy Blasstein, the man who basically put all that stuff in there, I think is in the building. somewhere, or he was yesterday, so if we can find him to know. Always thank a localizer today for all the fun stuff you've had over the years. All right, this is kind of rambling now, but I think it's good rambling because it's funny,

and I'll leave it all in here. So thank you again, Tina. If there's anything that I will do, it is derail a conversation in a fun way. Thank you. Well, before this episode draws to a close, I want to thank everyone for listening. I want to give a special thanks to my guests, Chris Kohler, Shane Bettenhausen and Tina Carter. Please go back, look at them in social media, listen to their podcasts, buy their video games, support their ideas, subscribe to the newsletters.

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So on that note, thank you. And good night from Japan. Thank you. Thank you.