Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 256: Link's Awakening Remake

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

Over two years ago, we sat down to gush about The Legend of Zelda's underappreciated Game Boy installment, Link's Awakening. And once again, time has made fools of us all, as the Switch remake of this classic game stands as one of Nintendo's biggest fall titles—so it's safe to say Link's Awakening is FULLY appreciated at this point. But does Grezzo's very literal remake improve on the original experience? On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Kat Bailey, and Henry Gilbert as the crew explores this refurbished take on Link's strangest adventure.

This week on Retronauts, we make a collect call to the Bucket Mouse. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one. And today we're talking all about the Link's Awakening remake before I continue who was here in this room with me. Who's across the table here? Frantically dialing the phone, Henry Gilbert. And who else do we have? Lost in his dream, Cat Bailey.

And in case you didn't hear it, so more than two years ago, way back in June of 2017, we did a retronauts all about the original Link's Awakening. And Henry was here, and Kat was here, and Jeremy was here. And you were there? It's like the end of the Wizard of Oz, which is like this game, actually. This game is very much It's very Oz-like But unfortunately Jeremy is on assignment

That's what I call living in North Carolina So we've only assembled two of the people From this podcast to talk about the game itself But we didn't know it was coming back in June of 2017 We couldn't have possibly known And now we played through all the game All of us together assembled here And we could talk about

How we feel about this new version Before we continue though I want to ask you guys to refresh our listeners' memory If you don't have time to go back And listen to a two-hour podcast from two years ago What was your experience with the first game, just very briefly, Henry. Well, first off, I want to tell listeners that they are lazy if they don't want to listen to our podcast.

But, yeah, the short version is that I really loved it back then. I think it was, I could be wrong, but I think it was the first Zelda I completed because I was too young to beat the original Legend of Zelda. It made no sense to me. and I didn't get Link to the past until after I played Link's Awakening. And so I think it was the first one I beat. Me and my brother worked together on the same save file to beat it back in the early 90s on some vacation. So it was also fun playing it on a vacation because it's almost, it's, you know, it's an island game. It's got the island rhythms, man.

But I really loved it then and it felt so novel. the time this idea of like a dream and memories and all this stuff and you know now looking back on it it um i love it even more because of what they were able to tell story wise with such a limited set of uh resources in that game and that still comes through in this new one so it it was a ton of fun to go back to and now i also know more about like twin peaks and the things that they were referencing in the first game i i i love it all the more. How about you, Kat? It was the first Zelda that I truly played. So I played the original Zelda on the NES, but it didn't really mean anything to me. Things like finding the

first dungeon did not compute. Because it wasn't linear, I didn't really understand how to proceed with the game. That was not a smart child. But Link's Awakening, that was the first one that I really played seriously on my Game Boy. And that was the game that taught me the vocabulary of Zelda. For example, kill all of the monsters in the room and you get a key. push all the blocks together, move the one block and you'll do a thing, right? Mm-hmm. And being able to continue from there, I called the Nintendo hotline many times asking for help because I was baffled.

But I ended up really enjoying it ultimately, and I beat that game many times, actually. And to this day, I still have really fond feelings for it because it's definitely one-of-a-kind. It has a certain emotional resonance to it that I think also a link between worlds has. I think it has a lot of really clever set pieces, particularly the seventh dungeon, the peak, with the bird. And it really pushed the Game Boy to the limits. A lot of people say that, like, Donkey Kong 94 is the best game boy game. I'm pretty convinced that it's Link's Awakening.

If not, it's a very close tie. Yeah, Donkey Kong 94 is the best. I'm going to say that. I don't know. I think I like this one more. But as for me, I played this game a lot. It felt like a full-blown console game is the thing. it did yeah and we'll talk about some of the context that people who aren't new to this game might be missing but as for me like i love this game we all loved it back we recorded that original episode we brought the right people to the table but as for me like i remember um i think link the link to the past was the first Zelda game i really got into and can actually finish on my own and we talked about in our episode about the legend of Zelda a long time ago like that was a dad game for dads it was the game that the game that's played only dads could understand the legend of Zelda that in just my world it was the game all the dads were playing and the kids

were just like, what is this? How does this work? What? All the dads were playing Zelda? All the dads were playing Legend of Zelda. It was like the dad, they were fixing a car and then playing Zelda. What? And maybe fishing after that. The original Dad game. Yes. I mean, the first Legend of Zelda, I remember the first person I saw playing it the right way was an older brother. Yeah, a dad or an older brother.

It was for that level of aptitude. Yeah. I engaged with it. It was always my problem with the first Legend of Zelda was that my brain just thought game games work like Super Mario Brothers and all its imitators, which is you start at one end and you get to the other end. The openness made no sense to me as a kid. Yeah, it's just if the game starts and it's like, okay, there's a cave over there. Good luck. You know, like a queer, I got a sword, now what? And it was a very intense thing when you're used to, as Henry was saying, just running from one end of the level to the other.

That's why I found it so captivating, even though I didn't make any real progress in the original until I was undul. But with this game, I was totally ready for Legend of Zel. and just the idea that they could actually do it on a Game Boy was astounding and it still as if you go back to that original game but I just remember where I bought it I remember reading the instruction book in the car at the McDonald's we stopped at

on the way back from Christmas shopping that year just like I have very vivid memories of just the experience with even like the box and everything and I like Kat I did beat this game a ton like I probably beat it over a dozen times as a kid. Yeah yeah and like going into this remake

I was super familiar with just where everything was I didn't need to look up anything in the entire game just like it was all in my brain I broke the eighth dungeon because I knew a bug that if you pressed it entered the menu in just the right time

as you were going through a wall you would teleport above an item and then you could jump down and get the main item for the dungeon You see that a lot in speed runs but the original game was so pushing up against the limits of what the Game Boy could do

was also very buggy and technically barely holding together. But it was beautiful for a Game Boy game. It had gigantic sprites. I remember in the old commercial, they would show the graveyard scene and they had the giant ghost. Giant transparent ghosts too. Yes. It looked really awesome for its time. And I think even today, it holds up really well. I kind of was tweeting that this game really makes me want to go back to Zelda DX, which you can get on the 3DS. Because I think out of all of the game boy games probably maybe it's the most modern and holds up the best you know i have that sitting on my 3d s i haven't played it in forever the uh the dx version of awakening but now uh i don't

think i will go about i i feel ashamed i only beat it once and didn't play it again but uh i did i did beat donkey kong 94 about 18 times so that is my favorite i can see where your bias lies i have no beef with donkey kong 94 i think it's just links awakening I have very strong feelings. I think it's a top five Zelda, actually. I mean, it gave Zelda permission to be weird. Well, it's so influential on the series in general because, I mean, stuff like the ocarina and the owl,

that stuff would show up an ocarina of time. And just a general flavor of it. Like, you got the beginnings of it in Link to the Past, but it really went to town in Link's Awakening, and a lot of that stuff would carry. over into future games that flavor yeah i think henry was kind of kidding with the permission to be weird thing but there was some truth to that i i was only kidding in the hacky state yeah i mean that'd be a good animal village it's like it's a good bad headline to write but uh i would say

that's true in some ways because i feel like um late to the past was kind of weird in that like pink-haired link and you know talking trees and just the weird colors turning into a rabbit turning into a rabbit this game i think doubled down on that and the games that would follow would get even weirder, just filling the entire towns with weirdos, making all the enemies very strange, just like a lot of dark humor too. So I feel like it kind of started here for Legend of Zelda. Yeah, Nintendo really went all out with this one. They could have just done basically the original Zelda or like a stripped down version of it. And instead, it really, the production values are very high. Just, yeah, a ton of amazing ideas by people who are now like

the Kings of Nintendo. And the most ambitious story to that point, far more ambitious than a link to the past which was pretty much a save the princess story and a link's awakening or linked Zelda one and Zelda two didn't really have stories links awakening was messing with your mind it had that pathos of everything that was having with marin and it was kind of dark it was really interesting it had such on the game boy these like cinematic uh reach it was going for of like let's pose this scene in interesting ways Let's have this dialogue that doesn't exist just to tell you where to go next. Yeah, and opening anime cutscene, even in the original Game Boy version.

I mean, it really set the tone with that extremely awesome cutscene, which you don't get cutscenes like that really in any other Zelda. I mean, certainly they had a cutscene at the beginning of a link to the past, which tells the story, but not in the same kind of cinematic way. You don't see a glorious close-up of Link and what he looks like within the game. Well, and you know, now that we know technically what was possible on the Game Boy, like to make a cut scene like that is a ton of dedicated work that takes up real memory space. You have to give up just to show those images.

For like five seconds. Yeah, just for five seconds. It's an impressive intro. But yeah, we have to move on to talk about the remake. I just wanted to ground that this discussion and our thoughts about the original because we all love the original. So we're coming into this remake with love for the original. I want to talk a brief bit about like who made the. remake who's behind it so unsurprisingly developed by uh it's either grezo or grezzo i don't know what to do

with those double z is it like pizza or is it like uh some other thing that's double z that i always guessed at grezo but i mean you never can't tell with japanese pronunciations yeah so let's just say uh gretzo who knows but uh so the studio was founded in 2006 by the secret of mana creator koishi ishii unsurprisingly they developed a lot of zelda remakes so they developed the ocarina of time remake and the Majors Mask remake and this last year they helped put Luigi's Mansion to the 3DS and also they co-developed some games for

Fu Ryu so Legend of Legacy and the Alliance Alive there were a lot of 3DS RPGs that no one remembers those were a few of them Grezzo seems to me to follow the similar stance of Alpha Dream of just or Brownie Brown

Square dudes who leave Square to start their own thing and end up like almost second party developers for Nintendo or they work with them so much to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. But Nintendo won't save you. Alpha Dream learned that. Alpha Dream's in some

trouble. Yeah. But I mean, maybe they need to make something that isn't Amaria and Luigi. Let it lay fallow for a bit. I say this as their biggest fan, too. I love Eminel. Looking at Alpha Dream, I think one of the problems is that they stayed with the 3DS for

too long because they were still making they were remaking like Bowser's inside story for the 3DS well into the Switch's lifestyle. Yeah, like last year. Yeah. Yeah, it was one of early this year. It was one of the worst selling games they've ever have. Well, I think this

is a whole tangent. But I do think Alpha Dream when they put out the first 3DS Mario Luigi, I remember in interviews the developers were candid about like this was very expensive to make new assets for the 3DS. We really underestimated it. And so I think just to

try and earn that back they're like, well, we already made all the sprites for these characters. Let's just only make Mario Luigi games. And when we run out of original Mario Luigi games, we'll remake the two people liked and pretend partners in time didn't happen. I like to pretend that too. When you mentioned Ever Oasis, a little new type flash went off of my head. And I was like, oh, yes, of course.

Because I reviewed that game for U.S. Gamer, and I ended up going back and reading it. And that game was all charm and not a lot of, like, depth or anything like that. Yeah, I wasn't really sure what they were trying to do, and I don't think much many people cared about it. No, it sold horribly. I mean, it was announced very poorly, too. I remember being the E3 and Nintendo streams are my favorite things.

Like, I don't watch pretty much anything else out of E3 now as a civilian. Yeah, you're lucky. You can just watch whatever the heck you want. They do that Treehouse live just straight through, which I really do love. Because when I worked E3s, there were Nintendo appointments and then every other appointment, where I was like, I wish it was a Nintendo. So watching the, I'm a fanboy, I'm in it, but, but so I remember they're like, oh, on Thursday we're going to have a special end of E3 announcement and that's what you revealed Ever Oasis, which I thought was cool at first, but then it was really, it just seemed like that was them flushing it away like there. We said we reveal it.

We announced it. So yeah, Grezzo developed that and they'll also unfortunately develop the one bad Zelda game no one likes to talk about, which is Triforce Heroes. I reviewed that, at least I think I did. It fundamentally just doesn't work. It's a terrible game that fundamentally is broken, and we all like to forget that it ever happened. I think we should. I think it is the worst one that is not one of the CDI games.

I think that's where it was on our big Zelda game list. God, like it wouldn't even work locally. It's crazy how broken that game was. I, again, sorry to bring up bad memories for all of us. It makes me sad to think about it. I forgive you. But it's, I mean, it is good. to show that Grezo worked on that before then coming to this.

I wonder if this is Nintendo's punishment of like, you know what? You can't make a new Zelda. Like just stick to the remake. We let you try. Nintendo's punishment. I mean, they did a great job on the 3D remakes of Ocarina Majora. They did a really good job. I think also there, I forget which ones, but I know they did several of the 3DS Me Plaza games.

I think they might have only done one. Okay. Yeah, yeah. They're mainly, like, they also did something called like a line attack heroes or something, just like weird one-offs for Nintendo downloadable stuff. I miss the me plaza. Me too. I miss that whole, that whole environment.

That was fun for a long time. Me too with two eyes and the me there. I can't street past with nobody. Can't make no friends. But so, yes, this game was directed. The remake was directed by Miki Haru, O'Iwa, who directed Majores Mass 3D. And he's a big part of Gretzo, so it makes sense that he would direct this game. And the original, we could talk about who developed.

developed it just really quick, directed by Takashi Tesuka, basically, in my eyes, on par with Shigeru Miyamoto, doesn't get any of the critic, but he's awesome. He rules. He actually, I think he, I think he directed a link to the past as well. He did. That was his game. And then also they put the A team on this game. Yeah, like the people that who normally didn't work on Game Boy games were working on this game. It's like a special side project, too. And, and Tesika directed Yoshi's Island, one of my all-time favorite games, too. I'm wearing the shirt right now. and yeah i think tezica he just he i think he himself doesn't want the spotlight like he doesn't want to he doesn't normally do the interviews like he's kind of step back i i feel like almost all his

like video appearances and for things nintendo puts out he's usually there assisting miamoto he's never alone yeah yeah i uh i hate to sound like a wee but he is totally the co-high to Sempai there. I mean, in my, I have to mention I interviewed him every time. Is he the East South Takahada to the cruel taskmaster of Shigura Miyamoto's Hayao Miyazaki? Yes, we've lost all of our listeners. Well, actually, in that situation, Takahada started as the Sempai and then Miyamato Miyazaki overtook him. He got Sempied. He sempied him, but, no, Tezikam, my interview with him, he literally said our relationship is Sempai and Co-Hic and the translator for it

saw me like have a weeb nodded I Sempai, I recognize that man out of here I will say for dropping names all over the place The one good thing that came out of TriForce Heroes It was the one time I interviewed IG Onuma The head of the Zelda games now On the record like for something When the Wii you, when Nintendo was desperate for coverage

Back in the Wii days and they're like Yeah, yeah, interview AG or Ionuma It's cool, interview Tezica We don't care Hang out with Miyamoto Now they're like... No, Nintendo's like, oh, no, no, we only... We're a prestige brand.

We don't talk to... They're like the WWE does with wrestling blogs. Yeah. Yeah, now it's... If you're not Time Magazine or Washington Post, they don't cut the time of day for you. I'm glad Nintendo's successful, but I do miss desperate Nintendo for just...

We would never have like Earthbound available for one example without desperate Nintendo. It's fun though that they're like... They're not desperate anymore. The Switch is successful, but I do like that it's... successful in a non-mainstream way, so they have to make every weird Japanese game available in America. The Switch is extremely successful in a mainstream way. Yeah, yeah, but when the Wii was successful in a mainstream way,

I mean, not like my parents don't own a switch. Yeah. Mine do, but only because I bought it for him. But Reggie Feizumay on the Wii, he could go like, we don't need Zeno Blade Chronicles, like get that shit out of here. Operation Rainfall. Yeah, he needed that. but in this time

they're remaking Tokyo Mirage sessions on this thing which I, that game sold like eight copies in America on the Wii I'm shocked it's coming to the switch. Well, there was a groundswell for it. Sure. Among the webs, like me.

On the wee? Hey, look, I'm the only person who played that game that I know. Wrong. I played it. I bought it but didn't play it. So where's that put me? I don't know anybody who played it that it wasn't their job to play it. I'll say that about T.M. mess. So let's move on to talk about the 2019 remake. Finally, our end-up thoughts about this game. So up front, I want to ask you guys, what are your just brief, like, one-minute thoughts about this game? I'll go first. I love it. I feel like a very faithful adaptation is the perfect way to treat this game. In fact, the few ways they weren't faithful that aren't making the game easier to play kind of bother me, but there aren't many of those changes. I do like it a lot, and I feel like it is a good thing that's available in a format that people will find it more.

playable and more attractive, and I'm glad it has a new audience, and I have no real complaints about it outside of a few minor ones that we can talk about later. But Kat, how about you? What are your upfront thoughts? I know you're a little more negative about this game than Henry and I, and that's cool because I want to have a cool discussion about this. I'm happy that it exists because I think Link's Awakening is great, and I want it to be there for a new audience. personally the new aesthetic does not speak to me I actually find the toy-like appearance pretty jarring actually the opening cutscene is this glorious

kind of illustrated anime look to it and I'm like oh man if they could find a way to make a Zelda look like that that would be pretty amazing I do have thoughts on that the toy the toy like aesthetic is it's cute but it's so stylized that it is actually a little overbearer airing in my mind. And actually another thing that kind of bugs me is the camera is really close and it has some frame rate issues. And so there are things, so like I'm still enjoying the game to some extent, but there's a lot of niggling production issues that is taking me out of my

enjoyment of this remake. You're working with British people too much saying the word niggling to explain. You're working with people too much full stop. It's true. That's a bit marmite that statement there. I mean, you would know, Henry. Like we've, we're in the same boat. We're in the same boat. we've been there but my thoughts on it i really enjoyed it i think um i really like that grezo like with ocarina majora didn't try too much they didn't get over ambitious in additions because the length of the game neat i wouldn't want it to be 10 hours longer or to add like it would it would be sacrilege honestly to add like a real dungeon like oh here's the ninth dungeon or a tamped dungeon.

You think so? I agree because the dungeon that they added in DX is, it sucks. And going back to it, it still is not very good. Like, it's clearly made by people who are not like Tezica. Yeah, I feel. So you're saying they just

can never be as good. I don't think so. I don't think Grezo could be as good. But I also don't, I feel that every dungeon is built in a certain pace and with an increase in, you know, detail or challenge or balance

and if you were to add another one in there somewhere it would throw off that balance and it would mess up everyone after it because it's like well you learned this technique before you would have learned it and it's just the overall pace of the game might just feel off and meanwhile it's like well you woke up the windfish do you want to go to windfish island the extra island see for me the gold standard of remakes for my Nintendo's

Metroid Zero mission, a game that took the original very kind of simplistic. And I'm not saying that Metroid and Link's Awakening are necessarily comparable, but it took the original, the foundation of the original Metroid and turned into something really special. And to me, like, the high watermark is the end, you know, after you beat Mother Brain and everything. And then suddenly you're in this kind of stealth mode. This is the first time you see Zero Suit Samus. And that, it was a brilliant addition to the original Metroid. I will say that in my estimation, it will hurt Jeremy for me to

say this, but they were making an unplayable game playable. Metroid 1 is kind of unplayable. So I think there was some necessary work they had to do. But they took an unplayable game and turned it into what to me is the second best Metroid ever had. Well, yeah, but in that regard, then

Link's Awakening didn't need that. It was already a great game. But I'm just saying that you can elevate a game. You can elevate I just don't think it was in Grezo's wheelhouse to elevate an already... Well, the Nintendo should have done it themselves. They shouldn't have farmed it out to a third-party studio who couldn't handle it. Well, those guys are working on Breath of the Wild, too, and so they're not doing that.

I mean, we can go over the changes. We can go over the changes. I do think the changes they made did elevate this game in a huge way, just in terms of making it a lot more user-friendly. So, like, to go over the pros and cons, so the pros are, in my estimation, is that Links Awakens, is a very great Zelda game and Kat you said it's in your top five right and it's still like a very good Zelda game all these years later you can still

buy the original version and play it and enjoy it. Yeah some really ambitious and interesting dungeons I already mentioned the Eagles Tower which does I really enjoy the way that you have to collapse the floors together and

everything you have to think in a really three-dimensional way and then the actual boss battle I like that it's side to side rather than top down. They have a lot of fun with that, actually. Yeah, they have fun changing their perspective, and it's fun to see all kinds of all these different ideas in this game.

The bad about doing a literal remake is that I've seen on Twitter, people approaching this as a new Zelda game have been kind of underwhelmed and confused. But I think you shouldn't need context to enjoy a game, but if it is a remake that's being a very literal remake, I think you do

need the context of this should never have happened on the Gameboy. It did, and if there's an idea in this game that seems underdeveloped because they just barely made it work like in this game there are some bosses that are just kind of bad

but they had to make like 30 bosses with like a tiny Game Boy cartridge and not a lot of time and technology but now they're on the switch it's true well but yeah again I you can expand the boss battles I do think changing boss battles

would be different from my opposition to changing dungeons because I think the dungeon design that can be scaled up But boss battles, I suppose, could be deepened or added more just gameplay to it, sure. I will say that Gretzo changed the boss battles, Majors Mask, and they're terrible. They ruined the boss battles. And they also made changes like, what if the swimming controls were backwards this time?

No, don't do that. Maybe don't give it to Gretzo then. They handle it okay. They're competent. Yeah, well, that's, again, well, this, I think you can see with the release window to, like, Nintendo saw this is their September game, not their November. game like that so i think that scales you know expectations too i i i think the good like everything that was good about the original shines through other than it you know that you should really i guess if you want the true quaintness of it then play play the game boy version or the

the dx version that got put out if you if you want to feel the true warm nostalgia but i think the look of it and the design for a wide screen HD game. I love the toy edict design because it makes me feel nostalgic. It looks like how, you know, a Rankin' Bass Christmas special looked. So it's old school in that way that still makes you nostalgic. I do like that. I also think, in my opinion, they don't take it far enough. Like, I wish it was very devoted to the toy metaphor and that they were just toys. That'd be fun to see. Yeah. And I also think, like, as much as I would like to see the art style from the anime intro displayed in the actual game, I feel like it's going to be hard to read that from

an overhead's perspective. It's easy to read the big-headed toy people on your overhead perspective, but not so much a realistic character. Unless you made it like a 3D remake, which you could also do that. Well, I mean, unless you're going to heavily, heavily redesign the top-down perspective and even the, you know, grid-based design, you can't make a link that has those proportions in a game that works that way like that is that's beyond functionally what they were making on this which i mean i yeah the the promise of that anime opening is a very different game than you get visually in this for sure or the ending which picks back up the those images see i get the idea the idea is this is link stream therefore it's this kind

of unique style right but i think it's a little bit at odds with the original game, which was surprisingly dark and had, and was actually a fairly emotional game. And so it's hard for me to square this extremely charming look with the kind of emotions that I felt with the original game. Hmm. I don't know. I mean, I agree with you, but I also feel like the game was all over the place in terms of tone, even the original game, where it's just like, uh, the frog teaches you out a mombo and you have a magic, a magic chicken friend in there. or maybe like three moments of like poignant sadness in the game.

But surrounding that is all like it's like goofy town. You're like living in goofy town. I just think of the first time that you discover the secret of the windfish when you go into. One thing that I think is interesting about Link's Awakening that I was kind of reminded of is there are the eight main dungeons, but there's also a lot of little ones. Yeah, that's very cool. Which I actually think like there's the Moblin dungeon and then there's the dungeon where you're helping the French guy. Oh, Richard. Yeah.

He's from for the first. the bell tolls, but we all know that, right? Oh, yes, yeah, classic. But then there's also the area where you discover the secret of the windfish, and I still remember how atmospheric and amazing was. And the fact that they pulled that off on the Game Boy was really remarkable. And I think they do okay with it on the Nintendo Switch. But again, like I said, I think the aesthetic was a little overbearing.

Well, I do, I agree with you that in the past version, the way it looked on the Game Boy was just this is how Zelda looks so you're not thinking it's a choice or anything it's as real as any other regular Zelda looks so in this one you get an aesthetic choice I can see that more grinding up against the style that they're the story that they're trying to tell

I get that I will say though even if you don't like the cute aesthetic I will say the one thing that makes this game much better to play in this format is that the aesthetic that they use makes dungeons way easier to navigate because more areas within the dungeons are distinct. Each dungeon stands out from each other more

because they can use actual colors. Like, I feel like that does help the monotony of the dungeons because as much as I love the dungeons in this game, I think they're like some of the best in the series. They're all mainly one-floor dungeons that are all like kind of the same color because you're playing on a Game Boy. Yes, and that's maybe, I get it.

We don't necessarily want Grezzo expanding on it, but that having more elaborate dungeons is a key point of improvement, I think, that you can do rather than largely copy pasting. I'm fine with copy pasting. To me, this is a game made for kids who don't want to play

a Game Boy or emulate a game boy. So you're saying this is a entry level Zelda? In that they didn't change it up too much. Yeah. Well, I also think, you know, maybe a lot of people, they bought the Switch and Breath of the Wild was their first Zelda. They never touched

Zelda before, which those people do exist. And so if they're going to go back to an old school Zelda, One with the depth of a Game Boy game as opposed to, say, ages of seasons of ages. Oracle of Ages. Oracle of Ages. One with the density of Oracle of Ages might not be the right starting place for them. So I'm cool with that as the starting one in it.

I mean, also now with my personal time that I like to put into a game, if it's not Fire Emplem, this year. I don't want to play anything for more than 20 hours and so it's quite easy breezy. That's why Zelda went in a snap which still was like I think I probably played it for like 16, 17 hours though. I think I was kind of worried

because I beat half of it in one plane ride I was like oh no, like one two hour of playing ride but the game actually expands as you keep going like the dungeons get a lot bigger and you gotta do the entire quest yeah and the trading quest and everything Go ahead. We're going to be able to be.

Yeah. Thank you. I. I THANETTEN. KERRY, KERRY, FRIZE, POMBOR,

BOR, BOR. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. We can argue more We can argue more about if this is a good remake or not, but I do want to talk about what they change in this game

because I want to see how Cat feels about these changes. Because these are the things I feel like were added that they did elevate the game without necessarily tampering or tampering rather with the original product. So number one, the most important edition, is more buttons. The original game only had two buttons,

meaning you spent a lot of time in that game in the menu. I would say you probably spend like 10% of your total playtime in a menu in Links Awakening 1. And it's funny that I think the game starts off with you not having a sword because the game is teaching you like, you won't always have a sword a question. like this is your life now you'll be in a menu if you want your sword deal with it so now you have

different buttons where things are permanently assigned to them so you're not in the menu as often I think they could have taken this even further because there are two buttons that are kind of redundant I want maps on those buttons maps to items on those buttons I was still in the menu a little too often rock's feathers should have just always been a button yeah I agree you should just have a jump button once you get that yeah it should have been the bottom button yeah but and so they didn't do that but I the use of more buttons like that that was just smoothing things out after after breath of the wild it felt weird to go back to pausing and switching out items I was like oh yeah that's what you do in Zelda games yeah yeah that's uh that was the one see the Wii you I love desperate

Nintendo because the Wii you with that winemaker remake having the menu on your bottom screen is the coolest thing ever no game system will ever do that again nope RIP the second screen I love the Wii you. I love the Wii so much. It's my favorite console ever. No one make fun to the Wii. It's not my favorite, but I do like it a lot. How do you feel about this? Like this fundamentally changes the game, but in a good way where

you are in the menu like maybe 10% of the time you were in the original game. I agree that it is a good quality of life improvement. This is maybe just a personal preference. When I play a classic game on a four button

system, the way I always do it, is I always have the jump button on the bottom one and then the attack button or the holding down to sprint kind of button. Think Mario on the left side, if you're thinking of it as a diamond, right? Well, on here, you can only put the rocks feather at the top or to the left. And that has messed with me so freaking much. It is actually legitimately painful. And so those are the only two options. and so I was going a little bonkers

Wow Well a Nintendo game will not let your remap your controls You're crazy That is just An important man thought those are the best controls I had to I felt like I was rewiring my brain To be like yes

The jump button is the Is the one on the left The X, it's an X button on the switch I can never remember Yeah it's the one X is the one on the It's on the bottom right Top is the Y

Yeah I don't know I just feel like after after the NES Like every Japanese game It's like maybe this will be the jump button this time. How about this one? Let's try L1. Well, to them, it's still, to a lot of Japanese developers, it seems crazy that they would think

Americans expect the jump button to be the bottom button, you know? That's just normal in our brains. For most American players. We'll do a podcast about this, but I want confirmed to be circle universally. It's crazy. Well, that's just because you're a weebop. It's true, but I was trained that way. I was brought up that way.

But I like the addition of buttons I wish you could even remap it more Especially because it's a remake So all bets should be off on like Well, make the buttons whatever you want This is take two anyway Yeah, yeah The original game was like

Yeah, it could be this B could be this, whatever you want to do Just do it like I don't know why that freedom is not available But I do agree that I don't need to equip something to pick up a pot It's awesome, yay, let's do that all the time So the next thing they add is map annotate which to me, it's hard for me to understand why anyone would want this because I have this game memorized, but it actually came in handy for me in later dungeons because a staircase won't take you to a different floor most of the time.

It takes you to another part on the same floor. So that can get very confusing. So I mostly use these icons that you can put down in order to tell me, okay, this staircase here will send you this one up in the corner. Well, I have to make a dark reveal here. Oh, no. A dark reveal. When it got to dungeon seven and eight And I wanted to beat it before we recorded this

I was I just said fuck it and went to a fact You monster I forgot how to finish seven and eight It had been a while seven is the trickiest dungeon in the game So so had before seven and eight I didn't use the legend because or the markers Because I I kind of felt like I would be giving up if I did that or I wanted to challenge myself to do it without it and then when I got to the parts where I probably would have used it, then instead I totally chickened out and just used a guide.

Oh, you cheated yourself, Henry. I did. I merely cheated myself. What is that stupid name? I forget it. That meme is too old. I shouldn't have said it. It's okay to use a guide. It's four months old instead.

It's fine. Yeah. But that's a good edition. I think that should be just a standard edition. Yeah, sure. Throw down icons. It's great. Why not?

Third edition is actually the new content in the game, which is a chamber dungeon. So this replaces the camera shop in Link's Awakening DX. it is basically Nintendo in my opinion prototyping a Zelda maker but it's more limited than you would really want it's like here are established Zelda dungeon pieces that you've seen before in the game now

go through this campaign where you arrange them in the ways I tell you to and in order to do that you have to pick up different items you can find that are added to this game like the pieces the stones or whatever I got to tell you I didn't touch it I barely touched it nobody touched it

there's no Neri a tweet has been made about this mode because the only way to share your levels is by putting them on an amoebo and then giving that amoebo to your friend it's like this this could have been like this is my one complaint like this could have been a cool online like leaderboardsy kind of thing you're paying 60 bucks for this put it online in some way I mean I just feel like yeah it's a very we you kind of thing to be like no no it's sharing with your friends on an amoebo the we you had a web browser yeah yeah I didn't touch it I do hope if they make his Zelda maker the Donpe host that one too because I love that weirdo.

He's another like classic weirdo. I forgot that he was first introduced in this game and that. Oh, wait, no. No, Aquino of Time. This is him coming backwards. He was cool to see Dampi. Yeah, I like, he's such a fun little Igor type guy.

But yeah, once I met Dompay, he was like, uh, he said, come back here and they even give you the warp point there. I was just like, no, I'm just good. I will use this warp point, but I will never talk to you. Correct me if I'm wrong. I didn't spend a lot of time with this mode, but it seems like it's fairly simple, and a fully fleshed-out Zelda maker

would, for example, have different kinds of aesthetics, like a Mario Maker, a much greater tool set. They'd let you make your own rooms. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that then it would be interesting because you would have truly devious dungeons that would be like tons of floors, and actually solving it and beating it

would be a real feat, right? Right? Yeah. But this one is just too simple and you can't really share it. Yeah, it's kind of pointless. To go back to Bad Mouth and Grezo, I think it's like Nintendo. Not Trusting Grezo to fully make a dungeon maker. Have fun with your little Zelda Maker.

We'll see you in five years for the Switch, too. I want Zelda Maker. I want it too. I just think they don't care about Mario Maker 2 anymore either. It'd have to be how Numa making it. Mario Maker only happened because the A-Team on Mario felt like making it. Like they wouldn't let anybody else make that. And so the Zelda team, specifically Aonuma, but maybe, yeah, maybe if Tizuca felt like doing it,

since he is the old school Mario and Zelda guy, maybe he can move on to it. But I think, you know, you can be very cynical about other companies that just go like, well, obviously because this one game was popular, we're going to make a sequel to it based on a similar game. But I think Nintendo doesn't do that as much. They don't go the obvious route on that kind of stuff. I think we might see it eventually, but this is just them kind of testing it out or seeing what people would care about the idea or if they would care about the idea. But it's not very good in this form.

And I don't think anyone cares that I'm slandering it because no one really touched it. Literally no one is talking about it. So other stuff they added, which I think is good. The seashell sensor, so there's a subquest in this game. You have to collect a certain number of these hidden seashells in order to get the seashell sword, which has a different name in this game. they added a sensor that lets you know if one's on the certain screen that you're on

unfortunately they up the amount of seashells in the game so now you need to find more to get the sword and I thought that was not good yeah that's the one that's one of the two few changes I didn't like that's an extra that is them elongating the game needlessly like yeah yeah well there's only so much real estate in the game too

so when you're finding these seashells you're just like Jesus another one is here like at least they gave you that like now she senses sea shells by the seashore but oh yeah i like context i never do collectathon quests i hate them and i think they're pretty pointless but

i did collect all of the seashells in the original links oh me too and i felt like proud of myself because i'm like how like so in the original game there are 26 and you need 20 of them to get the sea shell the sea shell sword and when i collected enough i was like wow i can't believe i found all these that's awesome but i didn't know that there were like six more

buried somewhere i uh nah i i collected enough to get like i think to the third level of them but then i was just like i i i'm not your monkey game i you had all those spider-man toys around the corner waiting uh but but i i'm not your monkey game well once i i think the trading quest for the boomerang is like the best it's the perfect link that lasts just long enough that it doesn't overstay it's welcome i do want to get people a special tip about that where in the previous game the uh the guy you give an item to to get the boomerang he keeps your item

because there's not enough slots in your inventory to have the boomerang and something else. In this game, you can buy that item back and have the boomerang and your other thing. I had to leave a dungeon because I traded my bow for the boomerang and didn't know you could just buy it back for 300 rupees. So, pro tip. You want to talk about how influential Link's Awakening was?

There was totally a similar sort of quest in Ocran of Time to get the big Goron sword. Yes, and man, I did that once. It almost feels like they were prototyping a lot of stuff with links of waiting in preparation for Ocarina of Time. Yeah, no, I mean, the Ocarina team was primarily made up of people who are working under Kozumi on the side of it.

And he was the writer for this game along with Tanabe, who was the director of Mario 2. Dokey, dokey Panic, whatever. Good old Tanabe. I love that guy. So a few things I wanted to mention, one thing that surprised me that I did like is that they kept the original localization.

I'm sure they tweaked it here and there, but I played this game so many times I remember every weird-ass thing. Everything said to me in this game. And that's why I said bucket mouse up front because they kept in the damn bucket mouse line when you used the old man's phone in his own house. So, yeah, they kept in all of the goofy, fun localization

by, I believe, Dan Aousin is the guy who localized this game way back in the day. Yeah, the localization captured, I think, what the original script was going for to feel like a weird dream. Like, they... Kozumi talked about how they were watching Twin Peas. Twin Peaks was huge in Japan at the time.

And so they wanted to have that kind of like waking dream feel to it, which comes through in the English text as well, which also they don't need to like overwrite it. Like I was a little worried when I started this up of like, are they going to turn two lines of dialogue into six? Are they going to overdo it with text just because they're not held back by memory anymore? We mentioned those Alpha Dream games and that's why I didn't play the remakes because they're getting like, like so tedious with just how funny they thought they were and they used to be funny but i was like i don't want to read 30 more paragraphs but yeah i do agree like more text would not have helped this game in any way like the brevity it was it was it was pointed enough with just how

you know simple it was yeah i totally agree with you if if for example if marin talked more about her you know existential dread it would have it would have taken away from it you know yeah it's like well okay there are like six things she says so everything she says in the game is like meaningful it's like oh, she's worried about something. In five more hours, you'll have one more thing to say before it turns to a seagull again. I mean, it did enough to convey

the point of the story. Yeah. Minimalism is good in this case. I do like that. And whenever Zelda gets too talky, it's like you turn into Skyward Sword. We don't want that. Yeah.

Well, yeah, the talkier it gets, the more you notice Link doesn't talk. And that really kind of, that hurts the storytelling as well, for sure. The worst bits and Breath of the Wild were the talking bits as well. I totally agree, yeah. So the music, so this is the, in my estimation, I think it's a pretty good remake of a soundtrack that wasn't very ambitious.

And, like, there are a few good songs, but most of the music in this game is, like, just 10-second dungeon loops that they really don't do a lot with. I don't know if they can't or they don't want to or if they're not allowed, but I was happy with it. And, of course, the vocal version of the Winfish theme. So I'm going to say something a little sacrilegious. Oh, no. God is dead? Yes. Sacrileicious.

I think Link's Awakening's OST is better than that of Link to the Past. Oh, really? Wow. So Link to the Past. Even like the 8 Second Animal Village song? I think, so Link to the Past has some good songs. And it has this epic feel to it, but it's very in your face. But I think it's a little too repetitive and it's actually simpler than it sounds. Whereas Link's Awakening is understated.

And I really like that, especially when you go into some of the dungeons where there's a kind of air of menace in them. and it's not like a link to the past where it's, you know, crashing drums and like the winds and the strings instruments and it's like... They had a show outside S&S sound show. Yeah, they're really pushing it to the point where it's a little overbearing,

whereas I think... And then Link's Awakening has some genuinely amazing songs and especially Marin's songs. So, and stuff like the song that is playing when you wake up for the first time, I really like. where, again, understated, but really pleasant to listen to and really sets the tone of the game. And what do you think of the remade soundtrack?

I think it's a little bit too in the kind of the minor key. And some of the newer songs, especially, for example, when bow wow. It's bow wow. Yeah, it gets kidnapped. That kind of music, like, it was weird. Somebody pointed out that they thought that it went way too heavy on woodwinds or something. of that effect. Yeah, it is very woodwindy.

That's right. Maybe it's because of the island thing. It makes me think of Wind Waker. There are lots of woodwinds in that soundtrack, too. I, by the way, I love how doofy all of the Mario characters in this still look. Yes, I'm glad they didn't make the Gumbas on model, the weird Kirby enemies on model. Like, they kept the original off designs. I agree.

That's the best part of it. The only weird part was when it's the catfishing of the pen pal guy. It is just like a picture of Princess Peach. like the 3D model and all that that's odd Well in the original game it was an oddly realistic depiction of Princess Peach too So they were keeping it legit

But yeah also Dr. Dr. Wright Sorry Mr. Wright Whatever his name is It's Dr. Wright right Like well right okay He's got his doctorate in something Also Wart is in it Yeah Wart is playing

Mamo Mamu I love that Tanabe pulled out his old Wart character Yeah And to get to see Wart as a 3D modeled character That was a treat.

So kids, that was our Captain Cruel. K.R. Sorry. King K.R. King K.Rool. God damn it, man. I was like 12 when that game came out. I don't have much else to add to the music thing.

Other than I really do like in the credits where the old music comes up during the credits and gets back. I really like that kind of callback. That was fun. See, I really, in the original game, one of my favorite. Zelda tunes ever was the music that plays as it pans up the mountain to the top until it then cuts into the classic Zelda like remix of the classic Zelda theme and it's really heroic works really well and it's just okay on the switch version so one final thing I wanted to talk about before we get to the wrap-up segment is I don't I'm trying to like battle this out

in my mind my mind is a waging war with itself where when link between I so I love a link between worlds I think it's awesome. I think it's like super, super great. I want to replay it again after playing this game. It's so good. It's so very good. And when that game was being previewed before anyone knew what it was, I was like, oh, great, it's just the link's awake.

Sorry, it's just a link to the past remake that looks a lot uglier. I don't care. Why did you do this? Then I found out it wasn't that. I found out it was just like sort of them walking towards what would become Breath of the Wild. Like, can we give you freedom? Can we trust you? And then they found out we didn't get confused and throw our games in the fire.

We liked it. It wasn't just not bad. It was amazing. Yeah, it was a real tourney. especially after Skyward Sword a game that I don't like and a lot of viewers are sorry listeners bristle whenever I talk about it I'm sorry but it was a very it was like a 180 from Skyward Sword

like from the linear adventure to just like just do whatever you want and it's a perfect example of stylization in the right points like when you go into the 2D mode and scoot along the wall it was a remake quote unquote of link to the past but it tells a new story it has a new and interesting mechanic it really plays around with the formula a lot and I think just like if you're going to revisit a classic game then that's what I want right so it's interesting so I was happy with a link between worlds but I was also happy with remaking links awakening and I don't know why I was happy it was not

being turned into a new thing so I don't understand why I feel that way it's very strange well it's interesting the link between worlds and it came from thinking about doing a remake same with ages and seasons started as a remake of the original Zelda for the Game Boy as well. And then I'm like, nah, it's making a new thing. In this case, it was Nintendo saying, let's just make a remake. Maybe it is because Ocarina, Majora, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess all sold so well. Nintendo learned like they were putting too much effort into it for these kind of sales. They can sell a lot without having to make it.

entirely new game. And the other thing is, I think when people were kind of looking at a link to the past, again, that was widely available on a lot of services and was a console game and held up extremely well, you would be like, the original game was perfect. Why would you ever remake it? Whereas Link's Awakening was like, well, it's on the Game Boy,

it's a little harder to access, and I want a new generation of people to see it that's in color. So I think people were warmer to that for that reason. Yeah, I guess for me, it's a game I finished like 20 times, so seeing it a new format is just like enough to get me to enjoy it

and if I go back to play it again I probably will play this version again like this version I feel like there are a lot of issues like I last play Links Awakening all the way through five years ago I checked my Twitter and it's like oh I was replaying this five years ago

and I got to the end so I don't know if I'd want to go back just because it's like I've had that experience so much and this is just a different version of that that I feel is a little more playable and the original game still exists like Nintendo if you've got a 3DS that store isn't closed yet

so you can still buy it I would still I would tell somebody born to this millennium to play this version of it on their switch also because I think playing a game on the switch is the best way to play a game right now and

I wouldn't turn on a 3DS when I have a switch like it's been a long time so I turn on my 3DS. Keep mine plugged in and alive. I love that little thing. Heavy sigh I would recommend Link's Awakening for the switch but personally speaking I would probably go back to the

DX version because there's just a lot of little niggling things that bugged me about this game. I mean, yeah, the witch button you jump with with the rocks feather, not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it broke my brain

a little bit. The fact that the camera zoomed in too much, the weird toyetic aesthetic, there was just a lot that was kind of driving me insane. And ultimately, I don't know, I didn't care for it.

Cat was driven to madness by this remake. You wanted that dream to end as soon as possible. Kill all these people. Wake them up. You know, one last compliment I want to give to it actually that I really like about the aesthetic.

I didn't think the camera is too zoomed in because I do think they have to deal with, they're turning a square into a rectangle, but they can't change how you navigate especially like the rooms in a dungeon have to be what they are, even though they're going from square to a rectangle.

But I really thought a great idea was putting the haze around the corners of screen because that also I think adds to like the dreamlike aesthetic or it feels almost like a kinescope or something that you're like looking through it and it's got smudges on the edge. I kind of wish they would have stuck with the one screen metaphor for the overworld too where it's like eight by eight tiles because they didn't break that metaphor for the dungeons but in the overworld it's a little fuzzy like sometimes you'll have one screen sometimes you won't.

Yeah, yeah. There are a couple times where they fudge that to a mistake. but man I I just really loved playing through this again and it made me appreciate these things I guess even more when they get gussied up but functionally they're the same when I was leading the ghost to his old home to settle that soul

I was like it gave me a whole new appreciation of that sequence that I totally forgotten about because I remember how similar how it was the same on the Game Boy just thinking man what an ambitious thing to do in this children's game made on a basically a calculator. Take him to visit his home before you send him back to his grave. Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, that kind of moment is just incredible.

Yeah, it is. And the last complaint I'll make is that I did glitch in the game in a bad way, which is, and this was an old glitch in the Game Boy one. Oh, so it carried over. But it didn't work exactly the same. But it really screwed me up in the seventh dungeon, which was that big, ball i threw it on top of some blue uh raised tiles i couldn't go back to get it but it wouldn't go back to it wouldn't reset to the room it was in so i was just going through rooms and rooms like i just

can't break these last two uh pillars because it's lost that ball was pretty wacky in the original version too it was even wackier before yeah yeah so i had to fully leave the place and come back in and had to retrace a lot of steps. And I lost like 30 minutes trying to find a way to get that ball back without leaving the place. That sounds pretty frustrating. That drove me crazy. So I do want to complain about that ball. Watch where you put your balls, everybody.

Yeah, be careful with your balls. So to wrap up, I just want to ask you guys, so this game sold really well. Not as good as Untitled Goose game, but what can? Is there room for remakes of Oracle of Seasons and Ages? I think so. Those games are extremely good. You might have overlooked them because they're not like, well they are official Zelda games but they were co-developed by flagship

but I will say the guy who directed Breath of the Wild these were his first Zelda games he directed Ocarina I keep saying Ocarina Oracle of Ages and Seasons I just played them again like about a decade ago they're very very good yes actually yeah I think you know if they did it they'd hand it to Grezo and probably have it on this engine or a slightly modified one but I mean the ages and seasons were running on a modified engine

of the DX version of it of Link's Awakens. Yeah, and they had the Game Boy Color Power to do a lot more, too. So those games are like, I think that they feel like they're each twice as big as Link's Awakening. I think they're big games. Yeah. Ages was honestly too complex for me when it was new. I didn't beat that.

Like, my brother was the one who beat both and played the, well, what I'm really saying on here is my three years younger brother is better itself. He better hear this. I would hope they hire the ex-Capcom guy who started up that company to close down. And to come back and direct it, too, he was really, I would like to see him come back to as well. But it probably, it'd just be handing the original games to Grezo, I think it would be. I'd be fine with that. I don't know if I'm the cat would, but those games are still available too on the 3DS e-shop. Here's a thing.

Figure out, optimize it so there isn't so much freaking slowdown. That's a thing. That still has not been patched out. I'm still confused as to why it exists because the game doesn't seem to be that much of a graphical powerhouse. Yeah, yeah. That does make slowdown feel even weirder. Yeah, as of this recording, we're still on version 1.0 over the game, so no patches yet. But I was going to say, I'm going to say one really nice thing about Oracle of Ages and Seasons and one mean thing.

Uh-oh. The nice thing is that I think that actually they are really excellent games, and I like that they add the time slash seasons element to really vary it up. And it felt very much in keeping with the Ocureen of Time thing that they were going for at the time. The mean thing I'm going to say is that they feel like ROM hacks. And that's why I think that they have passed out of memory. because they weren't made my Nintendo back in the day. They had the same look as Link's Awakening, and it felt like the kind of thing that fans would come up with.

We're like, well, now we're going to put in a time aesthetic, and it's going to be, like, way bigger. And we got these, like, crazy, like, dungeons and everything. It didn't quite feel, there was something off about it. I will say they do feel like really good ROMHacks. I understand what you're coming from, because by the time those games came out, Link's Awakening was like eight years old,

and you were still playing with the same Link Sprite. It's true. it'll come out in like 2000 right 2001 I think I was driving at the time so yeah it felt like Minish Cap was out within a year of them yeah like was really quick

so apparently there was one month between them but for some reason I played them on the Game Boy Advance but it was again very weird that it was a Game Boy Color game released a month before the new system came out people saw like oh red and blue versions like fucking Pokemon what am I doing here trying to rip me off yeah I played it on the

I played those on the GBA same with Dragon Warrior 3 Me too. I played that on the GBA, not the GBC. I played on my GBC because I didn't like the original Game Boy Advance. If you got... You don't like squinting? Or the Sun.

If you played it on your Game Boy Advance, you got the advanceering, which I believe did nothing. Oh, neat. It just let you know you had a Game Boy Advance, which was fun. But, yeah, so we do want to see remakes of these other games. And I will say if you slept on Oracle of Ages and Seasons and you just play Link's Awakening, definitely pick those up. Like, even I have a craving to play them again. I just play through them not too long.

Oh, like a decade ago. So I guess it was a long time ago, but they're out there. They're available and they're like this, but even more ambitious and I think you really like them. So yes, this has been another episode of Retronauts, folks. Thanks for listening if you want to support the show and get every episode one week in advance and ad free. Please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and you'll get just that. We also have higher tiers with even greater rewards, but anything you can give to support the show would be appreciated. And I'm sure you want this episode a week ahead of time and ad free.

everybody else cat where can we find you your special guest for today you can find me on us gamer i'm the editor-in-chief there also i have a podcast called axe the blood god you can follow me on twitter at the underscore catbot i don't know when this episode's coming out but tomorrow okay so on november 2nd we're doing an extra life marathon um go check out our twitch stream twitch dot tv slash us gamer net it's going to be a 24 hour live stream with lots of fun guests and everything i'm going to be on it so yeah go check that out and also give to charity Just in general, I agree. And what charity is greater than Patreon?

Yes. Employing all the podcast creators you love, who might get sick one day. I especially want to endorse the Patreon that me and Bob have, which is the Talking Simpsons Network where we talk about a different episode of the Simpsons and chronological order once a week. And we also have our sister podcast, What a Cartoon, where we talk about different animated series once a week. You guys will want to hear very soon.

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where me and Bob are doing Talkin Futurama season two part one. That's out. That's already out today. Check out the first episode, yeah. Thanks for listening to Retron's folks. We'll see you next week for a note. another great new episode. Goodbye. I'm gonna'n't know. I don't know.

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