Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 294: Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

It's time once again for another installment of our LucasArts adventure game series with what could be the only podcast episode ever created about the developer's least beloved (outside of Germany) game. Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders might be the LucasArts adventure that's aged the worst, but it's a fascinating case of a game trapped between the design styles of Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, and one that decided to take an evolutionary path that ended up being a dead end. On this episode, join Bob Mackey and Duckfeed.tv's Gary Butterfield as the two take apart Zak McKracken to see what makes it so different from the rest of the LucasArts catalog. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon.

Retronauts is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. For more information, please go to greenlitpodcast.com. This week on Retronauts, we take 300 international flights. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one. Bob Mackie and today's podcast is all about Zach McCracken and the Alien Mindbetters. No, you're not hearing things. I'm doing a podcast about Zach McCracken and the Alien Mindenters.

I'm doing in English, not in German. And this is part of our LucasArts miniseries. We've done so many of these games so far. Today we're going to be focusing on one of the least discussed and I think least liked of the LucasArts Adventure Game Library. And joining me on this podcast is Gary Butterfield of the DuckFeed.TV podcast network. Hello, Gary. Hello. Somebody had to do it.

Yes, and you actually signed up for this. And I was very worried about finding a guest for this game. You found one of the very few people. There are dozens of us who have some mild affection. Very few in this country. We're going to get into the weird German connection at some point that even like mystifies the creator of this game. But what is it about this Lucasarch Adventure game that made?

you want to be on this episode? I, you know, largely just a need, you know, because I'd never heard anyone talk about it. And I had it as a kid. So, so you know how anything you had at a certain age, large, you know, it's had a weird kid patience. And it was a mystery and I never beat it as a kid. But it was one of the early adventure games that I played. It was, you know, not the first or second, but, you know, probably in the first five or so.

I'm glad to hear that you played it in the context in which it was released, because I feel like that is the best way to play this game. This is a very hard game to play in 2020 or even like in the year 2000. It was a very hard game to play. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good. I was I was really hoping to go back to it. And, uh, you know, it's a great feeling when you go back to something you haven't visited in a long time and it stands up really well. Uh, and instead it has been an ongoing interrogation with my younger self being like, what were you thinking? Like, why, why'd you like this, man? We're going to put young you on trial in this episode. Uh, this game actually, I feel like even the company is not a huge fan of it because I was getting these games in re-releases on like CD-ROM and they

would never include this game as part of those packages. And I believe, you know, when I was catching up with adventure games when I first got a PC in the mid-2000s, I didn't actually play this game until I found it on, I believe it was the Home of the Underdogs, Abandonware site. Are you familiar with that site at all? I'm not sure it's still around. So familiar. Yeah. I love Home of the Underdogs. I was around you can you can read the write-ups and everything that's awesome yeah I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s on that site just trying to find like every adventure game I didn't play and this is the kids have to have to learn about the superhero league of Hoboken somehow yes they do it's very important and yeah this is one of the ones I mean just going online and reading about LucasArts adventure games I was like oh they made something called Zach McCracken what is that that's so weird and it was so just not discussed online I mean people would talk about Monkey Island and Sam and Max and Full Throat but never Zach McCracken. So one day I just decided to, you know, download it and play it.

And I don't think I got out of San Francisco. I was just like, what is even happening? I don't have the patience to even follow a walk through. And my mind hasn't really changed in the past 20 years since I first played it, like maybe in the summer of 2000. The, I think the thing that appealed to me as a kid and the thing that even as I was going back and looking, you know, doing the home of the underdogs, PC history dive that everyone got to have once we had the internet, was that I think that the premise of it, like, is still pretty appealing. You know, there's some charm in it. There's not a lot of charm to the character, but the setup of the game feels really cool.

And with LucasArts, it feels like a can't miss proposition. And it's wild to see them miss. Yeah. And do something quite, you know, this egregious of a miss, really, because I try to throw around the word unplayable that often, but like, it's really hostile. It's a very hostile game. And I think the sheer ambition of it often. it gets in the way of it being playable.

We'll talk all about that when we get into the design of the game. First, I do want to go over the history of the game and just like where it falls in the LucasArts timeline. So we are between 1987's Maniac Mansion and 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This game came out in 1988 and it was directed by David Fox. Are you familiar with David Fox at all, Gary? Only from looking into things about this game for the podcast. Previously, I did not know, even though I know that he,

was brought up when Thimbley We'd Park was a Kickstarter. I was like, hey, we're getting David Fox to work on it. He was one of the people in the first phase of Lucas Film Games. Before it was LucasArts, when it was the Lucas Film Games group. He was one of the founding members of that group.

So he was there from the beginning until I think the very early 90s when he left. He's a really interesting guy, a very nice, soft-spoken guy. I met him before and talked with him before. But he was one of those of the 70s, like the hippie types that also were way into computers in the exploding home computer market. So he really took

an interest in that and studied computers, co-authored books about computer graphics and programming. And he and his wife, Annie, and he's one of the characters in the game, by the way. They opened the world's first public access microcomputer center in Marine County in 1977. So he was a computer guy that was also into like philanthropy and technology and things like that. So he was like, he took the different route from the hippies at like Apple who are getting into computers. Yeah, yeah. And there is kind of a little bit of that personality does come through in the game. I think there's like a little bit of sweetness to this.

Yeah, yeah. There's a bit of like Bay Area touchy feeliness to this game that definitely is of the David Fox personality. Yeah, which I appreciate. Oh, me too. So yeah, he's associated more with the pre-Monkey Island era of the company. And they were really trying to figure out their direction and how style at this point. I mean, when Lucasart started, I know we've talked about it on this series in the past.

But their games were, you know, very technical showcases, approximating 3D graphics. Like a lot of their early games like Ballblazer and Rescue on Fructalis, they were all about trying to do, you know, 3D graphics on very, very primitive hardware. He directed Rescue on Fractalus. And his other works there, he helped design the Labyrinth Adventure game, which is technically the first Lucasfilm adventure game. And he also helped design Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade. So not a ton of credits at Lucasfilm Games. I saw when I was looking into this, I saw the, you know,

you got here in the notes that he did that, a retrospective, that career retrospective at the Classic Gaming Expo in 2012, which is really cool. Like I was watching that this morning to prep with that. And I really like this guy's stees. And one of the things I've liked about doing this series like this in the Lume episode with Brian Moriarty,

it was just being like, boy, these guys seem like nice fellas. Yeah, yeah. Like, what a sweet place to work that seems like. And maybe that's just, you know, modern times that has me pining for that kind of thing. But it's just, it just feels like, oh, what a good-hearted bunch of nerds doing their best. He's like an aging, gentle techno-hippie. Like, he's got a very, like, soft-spoken, like, pleasant vibe to him.

He's just a very nice guy to talk to. And not the aging, gentle, techno-hippy that is the enemy that was cut from earthbound. Exactly, exactly. Too difficult to defeat in that part of the game. But so a bit more about his career. So he left LucasArts to be a senior game. designer at Rocket Science Games until 96. I think the game, the Space Bar, is their most memorable title. I don't know if you know about that adventure game. Did you do that for Watch Out for

Fireballs, actually? The Space Bar? We did Callaghan's Cross Time Saloon. Okay. The other like really obscure adventure game that gets commented on that. But the space bar is really neat. More cool to read about than play. But you know, look up some stuff about the Space Bar if you haven't, both you Bob and listeners, because it's neat. So yeah, after Rocket Science games, he spent a lot of time in edutainment. And, like, weirdly enough, he was a big part of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. He was part of the media campaign to get them, you know, online. I believe they helped create a blog that was based on Howard Dean's book at the time, because if you're running for president, you have to release a book. And obviously, that didn't pan out. So what he does now is he makes

apps for the iOS store. And when I saw him live in 2012, he was announcing he made the first, like, official Rube Goldberg game. Yeah, it's neat. looked at that as well, like the kind of stuff that's online about that. It's cool looking. And then Thimbleweed Park, right, which we mentioned. And that is the first time I had really seen the name because, you know, when I'd first played this as a kid, it was before I was really thinking about any kind of outdoor or any kind of creator behind video games I had played. But I remember Ron Gilbert announcing, you know, when he was getting the band back together that, you know, this fellow was a big part. David Vox was a big part of that, like a key member. Yeah, yeah. It's

interesting in Thimbleweed Park. Like, you see credits in there for the super old school Lucas Arts guys, not like the post, not like the Schaefer guys in onwards, it's everyone, everyone that's like pre-Gilbert is on that game. Like Mark Ferrari, David Fox, even like some old scum programmers, I think, are working on that game.

Yeah. And it turned out great. It's an amazing game. I think that will be part of this series eventually, probably like in a year or two, but I want to get through all the classic games first. Yeah, yeah. It's so great. If you haven't played it, definitely play it. But yeah. So obviously, David, we talked a bit about his personality. He's a super Bay Area type of guy. So he wanted to make a game about new age topics like spirituality and

psychic phenomenon. And the general manager of LucasArts knew about this guy named David Spankler, who is one of the founders of the modern New Age movement still alive. And I pulled a little bit of his bio from Wikipedia, I'd let you know what he is, what his personality is like. So this is a quote. While in Morocco at age seven, David said he had a classical mystical experience of merging with a timeless presence of oneness within the cosmos and then remembering his existence prior to this life, as well as the process by which he chose to become David Spangler and entered into his present incarnation. And that should tell you all you need to know about David Spangler. That's the kind of guy he is.

As you do, if you're looking to choose to become David Spangler, get in line. Well, apparently, he's got the slot for the next, like, at least 20 years. Yeah, it's all spanged up. You're going to be waiting for a while. so David went to Seattle to hang out with this new age guru by the way the new age movement like died in the 90s if you're curious about that it was like it was you know taking off in the 60s the 70s and the 80s were the biggest decades for that in the 90s it was just fading away so it was probably hitting in the hot spot of that that time that fed so yeah David fox spent a few days with spangler

and essentially they just generated a list of like here are things this game should cover here are details about them and the game was going to be like a very you know reverent take on these subjects, but Ron Gilbert was part of the project and he was like, you know, humor works so well for us in Maniac Mansion, we should make this a funny game. And I think that is the saving grace of this game that it at least is lighthearted and the most memorable stuff from the game are the jokes. It'd be incredible if they hadn't done that. Like if this was a serious examination of the, imagine how well this would have aged. Yes, I think it might be more unplayable if it was just a very serious take on the New Age movement. You're like a spiritual Captain Novalin.

Geez. It's just like very niche. It would feel like propaganda almost if it was just a very reverent take on the new age philosophy, I think. Thank goodness for Ron Gilbert. Yes. He salvaged this game, although I have some thoughts about Ron Gilbert's walk on this game. We'll talk about soon. So there's not a lot to the development of this game because no one has written much about it.

David's given some fun anecdotes, but nothing crazy, nothing dramatic. It just was a game that they made and they liked making. So development took nine months compared to Maniac Mansions one year in development. And it's a super ambitious game. So in interviews, I was listening to it, David, they're like, yeah, we didn't catch all of the dead ends. And we tried as hard as we could to make sure, you know, all the puzzles worked, but we just didn't have enough time to fix everything we wanted to. Yeah. And the biggest thing, and I know you've got this as a bullet point later, but the biggest thing that I think is a casualty of the shortened development time is they talk about the preponderance of mazes as a way to get more.

game out of fewer assets, which to me speaks of, you know, privation on time in a way. And they're, you know, one of the most odious things about the game. Oh, yeah. And there are so many of them. And I like up front in interviews, he's like, yes, we put them in there to pat out the game. That was the point of mazes. It was the style at the time to do that. Yeah. And it's very old school, you know, and there's one of the things I think is interesting about Zach McCracken is that you do, you know, with Ron Gilbert's kind of involvement and the addition of kind of forefronting humor does make this kind of a game that straddles old adventure games and newer adventure games and kind of more forward-looking ones like LucasArts would do. Like it feels

the most like a Sierra game of any LucasArts games, but with some LucasArts humor sprinkled through. And those mazes feel like a very old school thing. Like that is something, you know, from text adventures primarily. And, you know, in the community, in the adventure game community, there are debates about mazes. Like, is this good or bad design? Even as recently, I remember there's a text adventure documentary called Get Lamp and on that they talk about there's like a segment called like mazes and you just see these

these you know cool 70s dudes with the 70s haircuts talking about whether mazes are good or bad in games Oh a maze debates Yeah it's absolutely I still need to watch that movie It's good it's really fascinating But it made me think of Zach McCracken

Or Zach McCracken made me think of it with its reliance on the old school stuff It's interesting that you pointed that out Gary because I was listening to interviews of David Fox and it seemed like Ron Gilbert's role on this game was like research assistant because they were too busy

making the game to play other adventure games for research and so they essentially had Ron Gilbert go out and play Sierra games and kind of report back to them saying well here's how they do things here's a potential puzzle that we could also use so I think that's where that's why this game

feels a lot more like a Sierra game than a LucasArts game that's fascinating I had When we had Ron Gilbert on the show on Watch Out for Fireballs a couple times, and one of the times we were looking for a game to cover, and we had seen, you know, before we had done research, we were like, hey, here's a list of things that we know you've worked on. What would you be most interested in talking about? And we brought them.

And, you know, he ended up choosing Monkey Island too. But he had said basically in there, he's like, yeah, I didn't have a whole lot to do with Zach McCracken. Like, I had brought that up because I had some affection for it. I was like, I'd never hear anyone talk about this. Would you want to talk about that game? He's like, yeah, I don't think I really did enough to talk about it meaningfully. Like, I wasn't the lead on it, you know.

So that kind of backs that up to me. Yeah, and none of his design sense you see even as early as Maniac Mansion is really present in this game. It's interesting, though, because it seems like Ron Gilbert, creator of Maniac Mansion and David Fox created this game, they were both approaching adventure games as outsiders, but Ron was approaching them from the perspective of a player, and David was being influenced by, you know, what other games were doing with like no real context you know with the context of him actually playing them which might explain a lot about why this game is designed the way it is yeah a curiosity let's talk about the people who made it a very small team the other co-designer so it's really

david fox and one other guy matthew allen cane so matthew allen cane also wrote the music to the game and despite being a musician this is his one sole composing credit on a video game and before lucas arts he worked on music composition software so that's where he started And for what it's worth, I think that the main theme is actually pretty good and catchy. Yeah, it's a jam. It's sort of like the Maniac Mansion main theme. Yeah, that's what it reminded me of. So, yeah, Zach McCracken is the only LucasArts game he's credited on.

And one of two games he's credited on, according to Moby game. So the other game he is on is this 1996 mislike called SPQR, the Empire's Finest Hour, which I've never played or seen on a shelf or write a review of. Yeah, I've never heard of that. Not Spoor. Not Spoor. I don't have to say that. it just sounds bad um so yeah only at luke starts from 85 to 88 uh the other thing he worked

on while he was there apparently was this interactive educational multimedia system called gtv or geography television meant to like teach kids geography i guess that's what he was the most involved with while at lucas because they were also working on a lot of edutainment products in that era looking at his career like i went to his lincoln he lives in berkeley so i can track him down and ask him about puzzles and yell at him for the bad ones but uh i won't do that uh he has a fascinating careers. So, like, after LucasArts, he went to UC Berkeley to work on their superconducting supercollider project, something that was canceled in the early 90s, this like particle accelerator project that was shut down by the government for being too expensive. But

he went from working on Zach McCracken to working on a particle accelerator program, which yeah, very, very eclectic career. It's like Mark McGrath. It's just, you know, a little bit more ambitious in terms of eclecticism. What else has Mark McGrath done? Well, he was the Sugar Ray guy, and then he became the Access Hollywood guy. Really? Or whatever that show is. Like, what is he on? It's something like that. You're breaking this news to me, Gary.

Yeah, I could be so wrong. So I think news is doing a lot of work in that sentence. I've lost the respect for him as a musician now. I can't. Yeah, he's on something. It might be Access Hollywood. Okay. The other, I also like the idea of him kind of disappearing from the spotlight

because he went to do something that is so obviously there to accidentally create superheroes. That's true. I think he's conducting Super Collider just really seems like it's going to make freedom forces. You know, maybe that's where he's. went. Or he wanted to get away from the company as the bad reviews for Zach McCracken were coming in. I'd rather go and become Dr. Manhattan. People were saying, who

made this? Just the bar re-dissolves. I'm surprised he didn't change his name. But yeah, so Leslie, one of the female characters in the game, is based on his girlfriend at the time. She was a play tester at LucasArts, and apparently she frequently dyed her hair different colors, which is why in the original version of the

game, every time you take off her space, helmet her hair is a different color. A little background detail there. You know, I wasn't familiar with Matthew Allen came, but I was familiar with Mark Ferrari, who is this amazing pixel artist who uses technique called pixel dithering, which makes it look like the screen is displaying more colors than is actually possible. And he is one of the people responsible for why Thimbleweed Park looks so good. Yeah, and I believe we talked a lot about him on the Lume podcast as well, because Lume was really where he's shown as an artist, a pixel artist. Yeah, his stuff is amazing

in Thimbleweed Park, and he was one of the earlier graphical innovators at Loo. because it's when they when sear games are starting to look really good uh they wanted to you know uh you know increase their efforts as well in the graphics department so now let's talk about the actual game uh first of all it's available on steam and when you buy it you get both the original version and the enhanced version for 599 important to note that it only first became available in 2015 which i think it was the first time that was commercially available in like over 20 years so for a long long time you had a pirate this game to play but now you can actually just buy it on Steam. It runs in Scum VM just like Sam and Max and other games do, and it runs perfectly.

Yeah. Easy to get a hold of. Easy to play. If you're an adventure game aficionado, like I think that we both are kind of negative on this, but it is a curiosity and it's kind of worth seeing what they do with the premise and seeing it straddle those timelines. The premise was the thing. So when I first got this, I got a series of like hand me down computers from one of my good friends. And I was just hungry for any kind of adventure game. And he gave me, you know, the computer had a couple of them on there. And I remember looking through them. And this was the one that had the most appeal to me because I think that the premise is really good, as I mentioned. The idea you're playing as the Zach McCracken character, who is a

tabloid writer who's trying to get his last big score, write his last big story so he can quit and work on his novel, which just, you know, 2020 brain, like his boss is giving him permission to quit and work on his novel. And just like, Zach, do it. Do it, Zach. Get out of there. It's just killing you. But then ends up in this conspiracy with aliens known as the Caponians or like Al Capone Gangster aliens led by Elvis, who are taking the Earth's intelligence. It's a very 80s goofy plot. I wonder if David Spangler played this game was like, are you making fun of me? Yes.

I helped you. Yeah. We hung out. Like, I bought you a soft serve. His name is in the credits as one of the designers, actually. So he got a big credit on this game. That's all it takes to make fun of Spangler. Yeah, yeah. So, Gary, you pointed out most of the plot.

Like, so you're given some mission. by like a dream via a dream. So this ancient race from Mars, they see the Caponians coming. And so they're sending, you know, messages into the dreams of people on Earth to get them to go to Mars and activate this, this device or to find all the pieces of a device.

I think it's actually on Earth. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, it's on Earth and you get clues on Mars. Right, right. But part of the pieces are on Mars and part are on Earth. And essentially, the game is a very, very open-ended scavenger hunt for essentially three crystals. you have to put together. Yeah, yeah, which is a fine premise for a globe-trotting adventure game.

Like, I think that the fall down in this is all in the execution. Yeah, the way it articulates is a total bummer. Like, I did Sam and Max with Cole, and we all said, you know, the end of that, the end of that game is a scavenger hunt. It just feels like a big shrug. This game is a scavenger hunt from the beginning, which makes it more interesting. But the way it articulates is just very, very painful. well and it's funny too because the choices that it makes like it feels like they're it wouldn't be too difficult to remove a lot of that friction right so like they're where this game decides to have nods to verisimilitude are really baffling yeah like the money the economy in this game like i was like what is this game trying to say something um with that with everyone being tied to their debit card and it being like because it's in the not too distant future um you know so everyone's kind of defined by their debit card you can't use somebody else's debit card you had to worry about your finances and such and

it was like on one hand yes this puts me in the hand or in the the shoes of a struggling tabloid reporter on the other hand boy is it a pain in the ass to keep keep track of and manage that's true yeah I think it takes a few things too literally it's like well of course if you buy something you need a bank account and you have to have money in that bank account and you're right so there there are four characters that you can play as and there are four different bank accounts with four different totals of money they can't use each other's bank accounts. You can buy and sell items. There's a lot going on in this game in terms of just like the economy.

There's like these real world systems built in that you don't normally see in an adventure game. And they suck in the game. Like it's a neat idea. It is a neat idea. But adventure games where they have shops are always kind of frustrating to me because the answer is always to buy everything. You know, because it's an adventure game. Yeah, it's like why not buy everything? And I really think my theory is, I'll just say it up front.

It's later in my notes. But I feel like, you know, Ron Gilbert would write his Why Adventure. Game Suck Manifesto, which I believe I've mentioned in all of these podcasts up at this point. So if you haven't read it yet, please read it. He wrote that manifesto a year after this game came out. I have to feel like it was informed by this game because this game breaks every one of those rules. And I feel like Monkey Island is fixing puzzles in this game. Like, Monkey Island, one, they give Guy Brush money, but you get so much money, you never run out of money.

Yeah. You have enough money for everything. There's no fear of running out of money. there are bad mazes in this game in the two Monkey Island games the two first games were on Gilbert worked on there were two like three interesting mazes

with all with a gimmick all with a hook and these are just like flat out boring straightforward find your way to the thing mazes or there's a hook but the hook is abstract so like in the jungle in this

like you can't get lost if you only go forward but the the hook is always go forward never go back there's nothing in the game to suggest that there's no I couldn't find

any verbiage or hints about that It's just kind of like, yes, it almost feels like a cheat, you know, to get through it. It doesn't feel like I'm using knowledge or exploration to support, you know, solving the puzzle, which means you never get that eureka moment. Like, you know, it's a perfect, and by perfect, I mean, it's a good example, but it's not great. Of like a game where you use walk, or in 2020, use walkthroughs or at the time, I imagine, like, hint lines in order just to reduce friction. Like, I just want to get through this maze and you call the hint line and the hint line says,

yeah, just go forward, never turn back, you get through it. And you say, thanks. but there's nothing in the game that really supports that. Yeah, part of the context, the Steam release is missing that I wish they would include, although they're online, is that this game comes with a, like you would at the time, it comes with a hint book, which is very handy. That's been transcribed online and it's written from Zach's perspective. It's very fun to read.

But it also comes with a real-life version of the National Inquisitor, the paper that Zach works for, and with Art by Steve Purcell, and it has a bunch of fake articles. And within those articles are like, they kind of hint at, possible item interactions within the game. So it's not just, they're not explicitly talking about puzzles, but the stories in the paper kind of give hints as to how items can be used in the game. And without that context before going into the game, you are kind of going in with not

the information you need. It's a more direct and a version that's doing more work than the community message board poster from Meenak Mansion. Oh, definitely. And I think because this game is an older scum game, it's a second scum game, Manich is the first, and it's operating on a lot of the same terms. So the what is function is not automatic. Your cursor, when it's over something, you don't know what it is unless what is is highlighted, a thing I've always hated, and I'm glad they eventually, you know, made

what is a default function of the cursor. And you have additional verbs like buy, put on, and take off. The problem with this game is that they would fix in future games, there's no look at command, and there's no talk to command. And those are both very important functions in an adventure game to give you more context and also to remind you of what you have to be doing. Like, once a character gives you information once, it's very hard for you to talk to them again and get a reminder of what they told you,

which is a big problem. Like in Monkey Island, one, the three pirates you talk to, they'll constantly remind you when you go to, even when you get rid of all their dialogue, you go back to them. They're like, okay, here's three things you need to do,

go do them. Yeah, yeah. And here, there's a part in this game where there's a dance that is shown to you. And then after it's shown to you, the character says you better have remembered that. Yeah, yeah.

After the fact, it's crazy. The other kind of bad sign of not having talked to or not having, you know, look at is we're not getting very much Zach. You know, if we're not getting his dialogue, you know, if you think about Guy Brach Streetwood, that's such a wonderful, developed character and, you know, and such a fun, you know, character. And the reason why is because you're constantly getting his perspective and you're constantly getting his dialogue. And, you know, it's real storytelling 101. Like, that's how you reveal character. In here, like, you get every once in a while, Zach will comment on what's going on. And those moments are kind of fun, but you don't get very much of it.

I don't know who this guy is. He's kind of personified by like a DreamWork smirk he's always giving at the screen. I mean, that's basically all I know about him. And it's like, I don't really know what his personality is. I don't get a sense of who he is outside of that intro scene. I mean, the ending is nothing. You don't get more of him in the ending at all. But, yeah, like with that dialogue in this game, and because it's not operating on broad

stereotypes like Maniac Mansion, there's not a lot of personality to the characters. Well, and I feel like Maniac Mansion, I also don't think there's lots of personality of those individual characters, but they all kind of work as a gestalt to give like a tone for the world. Yeah, yeah. More than anything. Like, it's like, oh, Menaic Mansion feels like the whole thing is one quirk. Like one really quirky, appealing, funny, you know, kind of set up. This, it's a little bit more grounded. It's a little confused when it's going to be grounded when it's not going to be.

And the tabloid reporter is a fine archetype, like a Maniac Mansion level archetype. the other characters are pretty bland though and they don't talk to each other so there's really nothing to fill in that space yeah I wanted to talk more about the different characters so in this game so in Maniac Mansion you control three different characters I can see this game taking you know cues for Maniac Mansion and trying to overcomplicate them and make them more ambitious

instead of you know scaling them down or refining them so in this game you could eventually control four characters at once but because it's not operating with those same broad stereotypes as I mentioned, like, you know, you have the stoner, the nerd, the punk rock girl, the square lead, like those, those, you know, tropes. It's very hard to tell, like, what their innate abilities are, because in this game, only certain characters can do certain things, but it's not immediately obvious, and it's very strange that they chose that kind of design.

Like, one character is more brave. One character owns a boombox and won't let the other person have it. It's just very, very specific things that aren't apparent from, like, the design of the character or the story. Yeah, it's very arbitrary. I think so. On Apocrypals, we talk about the parts of the Bible that a lot of people skip over. Like the wizard battles. The angel jacuzis. A goat full of sins.

500 drunk elephants. And a man named Porky Party. And yes, that's all really in there. All this and more on Apocrypal's every other week on the Greenlit Podcast Network. Hey there, this is Jeremy Parrish, and if you're a fan of classic video game soundtracks, or if you just love 20-minute rock epics about war-ready armadillos that battle Catholicism, you should listen to Alexander's ragtime band. Join the power trio of myself, Elliot Long, and James Eldred, each month,

as we talk about the most pretentious music of all progressive rock, right here on the Greenlit Podcast Network. Welcome to Casual Magic, the show where we explore the fun side of Magic the Othering. I'm your host, Shiva-Put, and each week we delve into everything from casual format to explorations of creatures and card types, to interviews with designers of the game. At casual magic, we believe that it just isn't magic without the gathering. Come along and play! Have we talked about the plane travel yet?

I think we alluded to it early on. Yeah. We should probably spend some time on. We talked about the economy a little bit, and you're spending money in general, but that is what you're going to be spending almost all of your money on. And adventure games, like in a general, so every time in this game you need to go to another location,

you get on a plane and you go there. And the adventure games, I think, are based on, or my experience playing adventure games, oftentimes ends up being walking around and kind of pushing the edges of possibility. So I'll go to an area, I'll futz around there, I'll try to pick up everything I can, I'll see if anything connects in my brain,

and sometimes I'll go to another area after that because it's really hard to know, especially in an adventure game that is not designed to avert this, whether I am the mistake, like whether I don't know what to do, or whether I'm not supposed to do this yet. And Zach McCracken takes that kind of walking back and forth, bouncing between, you know, I don't know what to do yet

or I'm not supposed to do this yet, and makes you pay for it. Like, gives you a limiter on that. And that's really frustrating. You spend a lot of time on playing, just walking back and forth. And not only is it costly and can result in like running out of money and making the game, I believe, an unwinnable state if you do that before a certain kind of thing happens, but also just watching the cut scenes,

catching the bus getting on the plane buying the ticket all that stuff the original version you had copy protection you put in every single time

Oh my God I'm glad that's over Yeah it's so much friction just for something that you have to do to play adventure games like adventure games you wander around

the space that's available to you and figure out what to do I think it was their solution My theory is because in Sierra games they would often punish you by putting you in a fail state if you forget to pick up

an object or do something out of order I think their solution for making backtracking possible was to punish you for backtracking, but still make it possible. So, like, if you've forgotten I'm in San Francisco, you can go back there,

but it'll cost you money. In a Sierra game, they might not let you go back there and you'd have to restart your game. So that was their solution to be like, well, it'd be unfair if we made you restart your game, but we're going to charge you fake money to go back in this game.

The neoliberal compromise. That is this game, the means-tested punishment for this. Like, yeah, make sure you don't, you're not off the hook. You can't just let you do it. You still need to be punished in some way.

I feel like if you're a fan of this game, you're probably listening to this because this is like the only podcast published about Zach McCracken, I think, ever. But I will say like if we're being harsh, I feel like I'm trying to be as fair as possible because, you know, judging Zach McCracken is like judging a pre-Super Mario Brothers platformer,

they didn't know the rules. They were trying to make the rules up as they went along. And these didn't end up being the rules that we follow. So Monkey Island would write the rules that like everything follows from this from that point onwards but zach was still like well that's what maniac mentioned it let's just do a little bit differently and see if that will be the new house style and obviously they did a complete 180 from this yeah yeah well and the game i mean i think it's worth saying to you the game is genuinely funny um at several points which you know doesn't

doesn't happen that often and it's not like an absolute knee-slapper you know rolling on the floor kind of funny but there are jokes that made me smile out loud like many times um you know even pretty early on, like I like the stewardess, the flight attendant, uh, giving you the like very dark, uh, you know, version of the, the pre, pre-flight thing, you know, is the very likely event of a water landing. This is a pre-9-11 game. Lots of, uh, plain humor. Yeah, you just, you just go and buy a ticket from a terminal and get on the plane. Yeah. Very, but, uh, you know, that's funny. The, uh, Bernuda, um, a good pilot humor. The, the Bermuda, uh, triangle, uh, character is

funny, like the pilot there who is just like, oh, yeah, this happens, you know, and you're, you're, you're going down. I did enjoy the broom, alien for how weird it was. Yeah, yeah. Like, some of that stuff is pretty good. You know, very famously, there's a gas can in this that when you look at it, it's like, oh, that's for another game. And, you know, when you look at the chainsaw, I mean, like, it needs gas.

You know, that little connection. I remember even as a kid putting that together and being like, that's really clever. It's really weird for this game to reach out of itself and make that kind of reference. It also continues an early trend from LucasArts games where a maniac mansion you can kill the hamster. In this game, you can kill the pet fish. I'm glad they stopped doing that but I can see like

oh that's our trademark you can always kill a pet in one of our games it's a weird trademark we decided to be known for something different after that and you can also kill the two-headed squirrel for no reason once you find it it's just like wow this is incredibly cruel

and once you meet the guru he'll comment on it like if your karma is bad if you kill your fish like it doesn't lock you out of the game weirdly enough but he like chastises you for being carmically unaligned and I think it just makes

you wait and then come back later yeah which is like it's cute like that's a clever touch like they're um one of the most clever touches i think in this is that if you get caught um and you end up in the the mind bending machine uh which the aliens are using to make uh earthlings more stupid through the phone um as you spend time there your verbs disappear on the bottom of the screen uh so your inner face is actually getting less powerful and then they slowly come back after you get out i i did like that as a fun novel touch, but I also'm like, oh, I got to wait how long for this verb to come back I need? Come on. Yeah, it's just waiting. Like, time is never a really good punishment for for mistakes. I agree. In the game, I think, but like, it's really clever. Like, the fact that

a mess is your inventory. Like, there are things that are really good about this that I understand why Germany loves it. You know, it's like, it is, it is, I kind of get it. And I get why I liked it as a kid. It's just really hard to play. Yeah. And like I said, Gary, I was going through Ron Gilbert's manifesto again because it's always running through my head whenever I play. an adventure game. And I think that what bothers me the most about Zach McCracken is that it violates the backwards puzzle rule. And I think I mentioned this in the same episode, but I'll mention it here. So according to Ron Gilbert, this is his quote from the manifesto, quote, the backwards puzzle occurs when the solution is found before the problem. Ideally, the crevice should be found

before the rope that allows the player to descend. What this does in the player's mind is set up a challenge. He knows he needs to get down the crevets, but there is no route. Now the player has a task in mind as he continues to search. So much throughout this game, you're not sure what the task is. You're just collecting things for no real purpose yet. Like one of my favorite instances of this, I guess favorite is a weird term. One of my most infamous in my mind instances of this is the airplane section where it's fun, like pranking the stewardess is fun, but like the sequence won't be ended successfully

until Zach gets the lighter and the oxygen mask from the plane. And as the player, you're like, well, why do I need these things? there's nothing on the plane you need them for. They're used for future puzzles, but it's a very strange design choice. And I feel like that informs almost every puzzle in the game because it's so nonlinear, the designers can't, you know,

predict where you'll go first. So often, in my case, I found all the solutions first and then encounter the puzzles. Absolutely. And it works, it's kind of lousy from two different directions because not only do you not know why you would need a lighter,

you also don't know where it's at, right? So like the fact that it's under a seat cushion, So you just have to be, there's no narrative reason for Zach McCracken to start digging around in people's seat cushions, but you could have like, you know, signal this, like as you're getting on the plane, someone's getting off the plane and looking for their lighter or something like, oh, I must have left on the plane or something. You could have like hinted where some of this stuff was. So not only do you not know that you'll need the things, you also don't know where to start looking for them. Yeah, it's true. The plane sequence is really illustrative because it has some really kind of standard adventure game stuff that works just fine. Like I need to get to where the stewardess is. That means I need to be a jerk and make this, you know, person's life hell because that's what you do in adventure games. I'm going to go into the bathroom and flood the sink. That makes sense. Like, that's real standard adventure game stuff.

That will distract the stuardess. Fine. But then the reason I'm doing that and what I have to do afterwards is an entire, is just a mystery. It's just clicking on stuff. Yeah, like, yeah, it's fatiguing. I think a smarter puzzle design would be if you needed those items to get off the plane

or to do something on the plane and then they would be in use for later puzzles. But as the player and as Zach, you're like, well, for some reason, I need these two arbitrary things, and then the plane won't land until I get them. It's like speed five. Like, this plane won't land until somebody has a lighter. It's the first 9-11. He's got to build some McGiver device or something for this puzzle to work in my brain. But yeah, so that puzzle also has a timing element, and that's another big no-no in Ron Schaefer's manifesto.

And I feel like there's quite a few puzzles in this game that have a timing element. Like, you need to do this before you're caught or you need to do this within a certain period of time before you have to restart the sequence. And I feel like making a timing element in an adventure game is a problem because the interface is always so clumsy. Like you could never really do things too efficiently in a point and click game and a timing sequence demands efficiency from you. Well, it speaks of punishment, right? Again, it's a thing where like we need to jazz this up, it feels like because and if the player fails, like they have to be able to fail. And the thing that I think later adventure games and good adventure games understand is the fail state is not making progress. and the success state is completing the game

you don't need a fail state you don't need a reload state you don't need something that sets you back you don't need something that punishes the player just not making progress is enough that is the punishment I think the problem is and you're really hitting on it the problem is that like their mindset was well of course we need to punish you if you make a mistake where

I think future games would really rethink that philosophy entirely and saying what will how does the player feel when they're punished is this a fun game to play you know like again I think Ron Gilbert was approaching these games from a player perspective. And I don't think David Fox and his associate were really thinking about it. And it seemed like they didn't play a lot of adventure games. Yeah, yeah. You know, or played a lot of older adventure games

and we're really stuck and kind of this is what games are. Exactly. Yeah. Just, oh yeah, they should be frustrating and adversarial. That's what our competitor does and they make way more money than us. When I played Zork, it was really frustrating because I didn't know what to do. So like, and that had a maze. So I have to have a maze. You know, that kind of thing. I remember playing through it again, I got past the point that I couldn't get past as a kid, which is always a weird feeling when you know, you come back. And it was based on these timing things, because as a kid, I did not understand that the, uh, the ladies who are on Mars have limited oxygen. Um, and didn't know what to do about that, really. Um, and I just kind of couldn't figure it out. So I would go and do some of these

Martian puzzles, but kept like running out of air, which was really dark, you know, for, for me at like 10 or whatever, 10 or 11 and just be like, oh, these two ladies affixated, huh? That's another element of this game I completely forgot about is that for the ladies on Mars, you have a limited amount of oxygen, but you're not really told how much you have. There's just the idea that you do. You have to go back to your van to fill your oxygen up periodically if you're not doing the puzzles efficiently enough. That's another like lingering punishment in the air in this game. It's just very, it's very frustrating. And when the puzzles are not, you know, I can imagine the idea of we've given you all the information for a puzzle. And the challenge is how fast can you

process that information and put it together. But all of these kind of errors lean up against each other to make the worst of all possible worlds. Because, you know, that challenge of like how quickly can you make these intuitive leaps only works if there are intuitive leaps to make. And a lot of times in Zach McCrack on their art. Yeah, it's one of those games where I'm playing it more as an intellectual exercise and that's how I recommend you go into this. Like, don't play it as if, you know, you're sitting down to say, I'm going to finish this game. Like, you can sit down and play this and think, here is like one possible

route adventure games could have taken and I'm glad they didn't. That's how I would try to play this game because even when following a walkthrough, I was getting annoyed and that's a problem. Like, even the walkthrough was annoying like, I got to do this now. Great. Like it was that sentiment constantly, especially towards the end of the game when you're doing these very awkward puzzles where I think David was thinking, well, you know, Maniac Mansion had you make characters act in tandem. Let's do that a few times. And it's just very awkward and doesn't really articulate very well, like a lot of things in the game. Yeah, I agree. But I will say that I admire just the pure ambition even though it often gets in the way well it always gets in the way of the

enjoyability but just thinking about maniac mansion was just like okay one house uh like four floors a basement a couple characters you're done there's an adventure game this is like you're you're going all around the world you're going to mars there's airports there's currency there's uh more dialogue there's a greater plot like i appreciate just how much ambition this game has compared to the simple, like, B-movie story about one creepy mansion that was out just one year ago. Like, even your verbs are pretty ambitious in this. Like, you get a crystal that allows you to control animals. That, to me, felt like, oh, that's an adventure game right there.

Exactly. I was thinking the exact same thing. Like, it's a crystal that you get that lets you control any animals you see with different verbs, and you use it for two puzzles. And I'm like, this could be the basis for an adventure game that nobody made yet. Yeah, the Lucas Ars Beats and Beastmaster game. Exactly. I would play.

I command somebody out there to make this because I'm like, oh, that'd be an amazing game, like a game where you can control any animal, uh, and then use their abilities like in an adventure game context. But for this, it's just like, it feels like a wasted idea that could have been developed on a little bit more. Any final thoughts on Zach McCrack and Gary, before we move on to the legacy of the game? I, you know, no, I'm glad I got a chance to replay it. I'm glad that, um, I got a chance to do this podcast just to kind of put it to bed for me because it was always a lingering, you know, kind of a thread in my life as this game I didn't beat. I had this kind of vague affection for it, but never quite went back to you. And

to me that, you know, the lesson was that, you know, a lot of this stuff can be quarantined in the past and can be an intellectual curiosity, but it doesn't, not necessarily going to be very fun. And it does, I think that you're right in that the kind of most valuable thing this does is stand in contrast to what came later and kind of really show how deft, like really Monkey Island One is specifically. Like I like that Indiana Jones game that came after this, but Monkey Island One is, you know, when I feel like that company like truly, truly, truly became what it was, you know, even

though I love Maniac Mansion so much. Definitely. But I think this really, like taking this and putting next to Monkey Island is so illustrative of best practices. I wouldn't even say like I wouldn't just leave it to it's a product of its time, which is not what you're saying, but you can easily say that about Zach McCrackett, but I feel like the game before it makes much smarter decisions than even Zach McCracken did. Like Maniac Mansion is one year earlier and much less ambitious,

but the decisions within that game are often, and for the most part, much smarter than what's happening in Zach McCracken. I'm like, imagine Maniac Mansion if you had to pay to go to a new floor every time. Yeah. And in that game, you're given access to more and more of the mansion, like, gradually for the most part. Like, you're kind of cordoned off to, like, the first two floors for a while if you don't know what you're doing.

With Zach McCracken, you can almost, like, immediately fly all over the world with no real clue as to where you should be going or what puzzles you need to solve. Yeah. And I think the premise is also just a little bit more direct and contained to the game's benefit, you know, I mean? Maniac Mansion. Like, I'm rescuing my girlfriend from a haunted mansion. Bada Bing. You know, we're there. Exactly. In this, we don't really know, even know what's going on. You get a dream, which is kind of a narrative cheat. And we don't really, you know, they do something that's kind of cinematic where the plot unfolds.

Like, we find out about the Caponians and they're led by Elvis and things like that, like kind of pretty late in the game. And early, you just are your direction list. Like, you're going everywhere with no direction versus going to a limited number of places with lots of direction is a night and day difference. yeah like in you're right maniac mansion like they have their little conversation before they storm the mansion like okay it's time to rescue sandy so it's like immediately blam our goal is right there it's a big rung gilber thing like let the player know what they're doing with zach mccracken it's just like okay off to write my story which is not the point of the game and i believe uh the player sees the villains before zack mccracken even knows before zack mccrackin even knows before zack mccrackin even knows about who they are before the player does yeah it's really strange like you go into the the phone company and that, you know, he's wearing the Mark, Marco Grouch or, uh, you know, Grouch or, uh, you know, Grouch. That's a little, hello, a lesser known Muppets. Yeah. Please, my father was Mr. Grouch. Call me Oscar. The, um, but, uh, you go in there and he's got the glasses and the hat on and it's just strange. And then you do the cut scene and you see what the aliens look like and you can put it together. I don't think Zach learns about it for like an

hour or, you know, into the game or like half hour, 40 minutes into the game. Like, it's really strange. It's a really, really weird disconnect. You could easily get stuck in the game before you know what the purpose of the game is or the purpose of your mission is or even what your mission is going to be. Yeah. And it's actually, it's also a thing to you where I noticed as the game, it actually gets a little bit worse about its signaling. Early on, there are more barks from Zach that will give you direction. So like when you wake up, Zach will say, oh, I should write down that dream. You know, so it's like, okay, I have a little bit of a mission, like find something to write with and something to write on. What you do that with is like a yellow crayon and a piece of wallpaper because you're a reporter without paper, which is nuts. But at the very least you're told kind of what to do. And that actually drops off as the game goes on. Like, Zach stops commenting on his immediate situation nearly as much. Yeah, the apartment section in the beginning, it feels almost like a tutorial and that it's much easier than the rest of the game. But I was also misled thinking like, oh, the game will be this well designed for the rest of the experience. And it really isn't. Missed opportunity. Definitely. Some neat ideas, but I'm just glad it's available because like for a long time it wasn't.

And like, I would have never finished this game if not for this podcast, but I'm lot i can now say i did because it was the one miss it was the one gap in my knowledge about lucas arts and now i can say like i've been through it and i'm now a zach mccracken veteran and i want a patch or something in the mail let's talk about the legacy of zach mccracken so uh obviously zack did not inspire a lot even within the company because uh there was no jack mccrackin too the other venture games would be much different i'm going a much different direction but germany loves zach mccrackin uh in a crazy way that even mystifies the creator his his theory is that because sierra didn't you know market to germany or sell their games in germany

LucasArts did so for germans LucasArts games or Lucasfilm games were the only adventure games in town and that's why they had a huge market there and from what I've heard the German translations of Lucas arts games are very good and they were some of the best foreign translations on the market there so that's also why the games are popular but there are an insane amount of fan games there are five and I think three are complete games and two of them are like quote unquote modern 2D games with voice acting yeah full cutscenes yeah we just is really a lot even though like I don't know if it's all of them but most of them you cannot uh play unless you speak german like there aren't translations for them I think that some of these are available in English if I recall

but not all of them um and you know they they seem like neat ideas I was reading about them in the Hardcore Gaming 101 Adventure Game book, which everyone should own because that's great. And they were talking about how one of them ends with like a pretty, kind of regrettable kind of skeevy sex scene. Yeah, yeah. Really weird to me. I don't know, I don't know which one that is. It might be the between time and space one. Yeah, like I think the, even the creator commented on it, which is why I think they changed it eventually. But yeah, the original Zach is a very sexless game. Zach is not a horn dog

like Leisure Suit Larry and in fact like it's implied that he and Annie will be a couple or have some like kind of sparks between them but at the end of the game they just smile at each other

there's no kiss or anything like that. This early chase smile. Yes. Yeah. You can't read between that that smile. Not enough pixels for me. I think I think that if they had enough memory to draw like a hug they would

but they were really scraping the limits with all those. The scum engine had a hard time watching having people walk away from the camera. That's true. What I'd be in your animation? So a hug would be really difficult.

I think that's why no one walks upstairs in this game because that Maniac Mansion animation is rough. It's crazy. But let's go over all of them just super quick for the sake of being thorough. So we have the new adventures of Zach McCracken in 2002, which uses graphics from the VGA version of the game and also backgrounds stolen from fighting games and some new characters. So there's that. There's also Zach McCracken goes looking for hot coffee.

A super ambitious project. all new modern 2D graphics and the final release just happened I believe in December of 2019 so this is a fairly new game like they're still making fan games of Zach McCracken cottage industry carries on with the the new adventures of Zach McCracken I remember reading about that and having the background stolen from fighting games yeah which I think is amazing I really want I need to look some of this up because I really want like Zach McCracken to be walking through you know one of those street fighter you know street scenes where people are just doing a robotic animation giving me a thumbs up over and over. It makes sense. It really makes sense because the fighting games that you play from that era, the 90s or whatever, they're always super international, like you go all around the globe. So it makes sense that, like, they could just be Zach McCracken backdrops.

So other games really quick, we have Zach McCracken between time and space. It came out in 2008. There was a director's cut in 2015. This one is the one with voice acting, I believe. We also have Zach McCracken and the Lonely Sea Monster. This one is unfinished. It was announced in 2007. A demo came out.

in 2010, and this is the only one done in the style of the Commodore 64 version, which is the original version of Zach McCracken. And then finally, Zach McCracken and the Alien Rockstars, which is the first fan sequel project that was worked on in fits and starts from 1996 to 2008. Yes. This 12-year journey. I think the work ended a lot earlier than that, but 2008 was when they were like, okay, we're not doing this anymore, so please go away.

It's still just, you know, a lot of people were putting in a lot of man hours into this. And I wish, I mean, I know it's a German thing. I know it's a nostalgic thing, but of all the games to sequelize, like, why not any other LucasArts game? I mean, I know that there have probably been, like, Maniac Mansion fan sequels. They're not as, like, popular as these or, you know, done with as much production. But, yeah, like, I know, you like what you like. It's okay to like a game. But, man, the appeal of this game just eludes me, especially after having recently replayed it about, you know, a week ago.

My instinct was always, you know, when I learned about these fan games, that it was kind of nature abhorring a vacuum, right? Like, no one talks about these games. There isn't, there haven't been sequels. They're not stewarded very well, the Zach McCracken game, the first one. So it's up to the fans. But then you look at LucasArts catalog and like, you guys could have done that for Loom. Like you could have done that for full throttle. Like there are a lot of games, these kind of like one-offs.

You know, where are the dig fan games? You know, there are a lot of LucasArts games that are stronger in general. that didn't get this kind of fan love. So it is definitely confusing and it's not just the fact that it's so obscure, I think. So at the end of this podcast, we're pleading with Germany. Please, dig to. Keep on digging.

Keep doing what you're doing, but please just tell us why. Yes, we need answers, damn it. But yes, I never thought I do a podcast episode about Zach McCracken, but here we are at the end of it. And Gary, you help me make it happen. So I really appreciate your presence on this episode. Otherwise, it would have come last

in this series. And if I would have just been me just a monologue. No, you're happy to help. Oh, yeah. And I really appreciate you being part of this podcast, Gary. Please tell everybody out there about duckfeed.tv, about watch up for fireballs, about everything you're a part of. You guys do so many podcasts over there. I'm a huge fan of all of your work. And unfortunately, we couldn't meet up at Midwest Gaming Classic this year. I was really looking forward to that. Yeah, yeah. It's a, you know, we are actually recording this on the day that I was supposed to fly out. I would be in Milwaukee right now, unfortunately. It's a bummer. The, uh, Zach McCracken made me nostalgic for flying.

I remember those days, but yeah. Yeah, so you can find my podcast work at duckfeed.tv. We do a whole host of shows, primarily of interest to Retronauts listeners, a show called Watch Out for Fireballs, which is a games club, so kind of like a book club, but for games. I've been going on for like nine, coming up on nine years or so hundreds of games, primarily retro stuff, though, not entirely. And if you want to support our work, you can do so at patreon.com slash DuckVee TV and get a bunch

of cool bonus stuff. We try to, you know, we know that $5 means a lot to people now and means different things to different people. So we try to make it really worth your while. I have to personally recommend your super long Ocarina Time podcast. I really, really enjoyed that one. You guys were very tough, but also very fair. And it helped me rethink that game in some big ways. That's great. Yeah, we were definitely had some anxiety about because that's a really well-loved game. And we never wanted to like, you know, AVGM like, this is a big pile of diarrhea, you know, kind of crap on people's dreams. But something.

that, you know, one of the reasons why I like doing Zach McCracken and it had kind of energy is one of the things I'm interested in games is like, not just, you know, what they were in their context, you know, which is important and I love it. And it's one of the reasons why I've listened to Retronauts, like, you know, is the first podcast I ever listened to you. But the part of it is that part of it is also interesting, how these things stand up and contrasting kind of evolutionary design dead ends with how things work now. Like, how do things play now? It's also an important question. And that's kind of what we try to do with on that show. And I think you guys spend about four hours talking about it. So it's a beefy boy. It's entirely, we have a lot of long shows. So we know everybody's got a lot of free time right now. Yeah, all of our shows are getting longer too as things stretch on. So we want to keep everybody out there entertained. The Talking Simpson stuff has been, you know, or the What a Cartoon stuff has definitely been getting, getting quite a bit longer. So it's good.

You know, why not? Like listening to podcasts in multiple parts has been something that I've been enjoying and I didn't used to do. Every podcast should be three hours, except this one. Yeah, well, I got two more hours of material left on Zach or crack. Oh, I'm tapped. I'm tapped out, but thank you so much for joining us, Gary. I'm sure you'll be back to talk about more fun game stuff. Love to you.

So thanks again to Gary Butterfield for being on the show. Please check out all of his stuff at duckfeed.tv. But as for us here at Retronauts, if you want to support the show and get every episode one week ahead of time and ad free and possibly two extra exclusive Patreon episodes every month. Please head to patreon.com slash Retronauts. And if you sign up at the $3 level, you get access to those episodes in advance. But if you sign up at the $5 level, you'll get the advance access plus,

Like I said before, two exclusive episodes every month that will not be on the free feed. And so far, I have done episodes on things like Super Mario RPG, Yaksa, and Final Fantasy Advent Children, the other Final Fantasy movie. And again, those are only available in full on the Patreon. And we do two exclusive episodes every month at patreon.com slash retronauts. And there are other rewards on top of that. But if you want to get in and support the show on a basic level, either $3 or $5 will get you some very good reward. if you're a fan of podcasts. Again, that is patreon.com slash retronuts,

and we love any support you can give us. So as for me, I have been your host for this one, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo and my other podcasts are all over on the Talking Simpsons network at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Of course, we do the podcast Talking Simpsons, which is a chronological exploration of the Simpsons. And we also do What a Cartoon where we look at a different episode

of a different cartoon every week. Of course, those are always available wherever you can find podcasts. but if you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, you can get advanced access there and also access to our limited miniseries. Our newest one, of course, is Talking Mission Hill. We're going through the entire only season

of the Mission Hill TV series with the Talking Simpsons treatment. If you'd enjoyed our other mini-series, you will enjoy this one as well. Again, that is patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons for my other podcasts. That is all for us this week. We'll see you again real soon

for another episode of Retronauts. Thanks again. Thank you.