Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 354: Pandemic Mailbag

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

This week on Retronauts, we're easing off on the heavy-duty research for the sake of responding to your questions and comments from our recent round of episodes. And because a little thing called "the pandemic" drastically transformed the way we all live for nearly a year now, we'll also cover just how COVID-19 has affected Retronauts, and read some responses from listeners about how the new normal changed their retro gaming habits. Since we recorded this one on Election Day, it's delightfully dated instead of just being dated! 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, only Dr. Mario can save us now. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one. Bob Mackey, and today's topic is the pandemic mailbag. I try to do one of these, you know, pandemic mailbag episodes or just regular mailback episodes. We didn't always live in a pandemic, by the way.

But twice a year, I tried just like a little relaxed fit episode to talk about, you know, our great listeners and their comments and make it a little less research-intensive episode for me. And the last one we did was the Monkey Island Mailbag episode. That was number 306 back in June. So we're a little behind schedule on these. So as usual, I'll be responding to your questions and comments from the last eight months' worth of episodes I've been doing during this wonderful, wonderful pandemic. But who is here with me today? It's Henry Gilbert.

And I promise I don't just play Mario games despite what I'll be saying later in this podcast. Okay. I'm glad you tested it up front. Although I do wish Mario was just throwing big pills in my mouth right now. I could use those. Also, because we're recording this on Election Day. because it's the only way to not just be refreshing Twitter all day

and people in the future don't spoil it for us suckers living back in November 1st or sorry November 3rd of 2020 you're in the future you're in late January or early February depending on when you're listening to this so yes that's what's happening now

so for now I can tell you what's been going on through the pandemic for retronauts at least give you a little like show update in terms of retronauts as an entity things are extremely very very good like no complaints here we announced our new episode

initiative and our new Patreon initiative in November of 2020. It's been over a year and nothing but good stuff for us and it's all because of your support. That's been super great. We were doing very, very well and still able to do this and pump out six episodes a month with extra stuff by Diamond Fight once a week on top of that. So we are super prolific producing more than ever. I am so far ahead of schedule, obviously, because I'm back in the beginning of November and you guys are so in the future so yeah i've got at least like seven or eight episodes like ready to go at any time uh so all that stuff is super super good for us and we're happy that we can still do all this and give you guys some great podcasts uh multiple times a month uh so like some behind the scene stuff

i can talk to you about just in case you're curious uh how we used to record stuff was that uh jeremy would record with the retronauts eats crew at his house and then uh every i don't know a couple of months uh jeremy would fly out to the bay area we record at uh the studio in San Francisco, obviously both of those things can no longer happen and for the foreseeable future that has not changed. And I don't think by the time this goes live, it will change either. I don't really predict that happening again in 2021. Hopefully I'll see Jeremy in person at some point during that year. But I don't see recordings returning to their old schedule. It seems very strange now to ask people to be in one small and closed room breathing the same air. How do you feel

about that, Henry? No, I, you know, I miss being in that vault and also like the, the in-personness of it made it. So I was like, well, oh, hey, I'm passing by the person who just recorded it. I haven't seen Shane Bettenhausen since the last time. I also miss the sushi afterwards. Oh, that good sushi in the market, Sima area of San Francisco. So, yeah, I mean, I miss the routine of it for sure. I mean, fortunately, we have a fine studio to record in here that's worked out really well.

But, yeah, you know, in general, also with the other podcast, me and you record, I do certainly miss having another person in the room to talk to sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say that I guess the silver lining of the pandemic, even though we can't do things in person as much anymore at all, is that I've had access to, like, new and different guests because I can't just count on the same people to come in in person.

So we've had a lot of new voices on the show. And frankly, in terms of the production of the episodes, I've never had more time to work on research and replaying games. Like, in the past, it was kind of rare for me to replay an entire game unless it was very short for retronauts. But this whole year, I've been basically playing the entire game, the episode is based around, even things that are like 60 hours long, like Final Fantasy 9. So that I can believe that one.

That one is like, wow, that's commitment. That just shows where my life is now. And, you know, behind the scenes even further, I have not seen my fiance in eight months as of this recording. that explains a lot of my free time a lot of time to play video games so yes I'm returning to my loser dumb high school years because of the situation but I'm trying to

you know make the best of it even with the same video game with final fantasy nine yeah I'm actually just reliving those same sad lonely years but yeah behind the scenes like that is a silver lining is that I've never been further ahead on retronauts I've never been able to give more time to this podcast in our other podcasts I do with Henry

that's all good stuff the big bummer is alongside no longer recording in person is that we've missed so many live events. That's been ultra sad. So like the timeline of the pandemic was, I believe the last time that we met for Retronauts was like in late January. That was our last recording.

And we had another one coming up in March. So, or maybe it was late February. Whatever the case was, our next recording session in San Francisco, there was no pandemic happening, but the news stories were happening. And when it was like, oh, can you believe what's happening? Oh, the cases are popping up around the country. And that's when Jeremy told me

I don't want to go out to Midwest Gaming Classic because I am in touch with, you know, people that could be susceptible to this virus and I don't want to give it to them. And I was like, that's fine. I'll just go to the Midwest Gaming Classic myself in Wisconsin and I'll just do the panel on my own. I'll pull some people in, it'll be fine. And that's when that got canceled.

I was like, oh, okay. And then Jeremy was like, well, in that case, I can't come out to the Bay Area because of the same reason. I'm like, that's perfectly fine. I totally understand. We'll just do this remotely for the time being. And in the few weeks, then, it was like, well, there's a quarantine. And that has been ongoing since the early days of March.

So, yeah, there's no Midwest Gaming Classic. There is no Long Island Retro Gaming Expo that Jeremy would go to. There's no Portland Expo. All of these things that I love doing have been part of my just annual schedule for close to a decade. Totally wiped off the face of the planet. Hopefully they'll come back. But I miss going to those conventions so much. and doing live shows

for like Talking Simpsons as well I think in 18 months we did like eight or nine live shows Something like that We did so many We just I mean yeah two months before Everything shut down

We did our fourth year At the SF Sketch Fest I think it was third But third Yeah With Jordan Morris A great guest Yeah

And at Portland Retro Gaming Expo Was such a great excuse The last time I went To do a podcast with Bill Oakley, Portland resident and Simpsons Legend. And yeah, I definitely began this year with dreams of like, man,

when we go back in October, we can totally get Bill back for more another live podcast. Yeah, it would have been our eighth year in a row at PRGE. I miss going to Portland so much. I miss seeing everybody, I miss eating two kinds of ramen at the same restaurants. Yeah, that was a good

place. The chestnut broth, whatever it is. It's so good. But yeah, I totally miss it. And I mean, I know as well as you do how things will turn out in the future, even though we're in the past right now. And I'm hoping that there could be some kind of convention solution. But I don't foresee it happening for a while. And that is a huge bummer for me. So that is like one of the biggest bummers along with not getting to see my partner. In terms of retronauts, one of the biggest bummers is no longer getting to see my fans and getting to do panels because like in the

passing years, I've like, I think I've gotten better at this. Even though I'm a huge bundle of nerves before every live show. Once it's over, I'm like, oh my God, like I've done so many of these now. And I can actually do it. And now that we've been incorporating video into the panels, I've been having a lot of fun with that. And it's such a bummer that all of these cool ideas I have, I can't do. And technically, I could still do them remotely. But for me, it's not the same. For me, it's just, I want to be doing it in person, having the energy of a crowd and my anxiety feeding the energy of the panel.

Part of it is the anxiety. If I can still do it in pajamas, then it's not the same. Yes. But, yeah, I mean, again, we're in November of 2020. And I don't think suddenly in two months Everything will turn around Maybe it will Who knows what comes out of Election Day in general?

We'll let this podcast be a fun time capsule I won't change anything So everything we're saying now has not been altered But yeah November 3rd, 2020 And I really hope things turn around But even if they don't We're still going to keep putting out six episodes a month Maybe more on top of that if we hit more goals

Who knows what will happen in the future But yeah, so The positive part of this despite our own, you know, mental states and everything. It's just like we've been able to devote so much more time to retronauts and make so many episodes and stay ahead of schedule. So that part is good and we're happy everyone stuck with us in this hard time. Economically and mentally, you know, financially for everyone out there.

It's been rough, but thank you for sticking with us. So that is my pandemic update as a whole. But I do miss seeing everybody and hopefully we'll see you again sometime in the future. But now we are going to get to questions and comments. And we'll have a special guest coming up later. in the show to talk about the things that she was on. So, hmm, who could it be?

I want her. I don't. So we're going to start off with comments about Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children in one of our Patreon episodes about that's a fun and bad movie. Man, we recorded that at the start of the pandemic, right?

Wow. That was like, oh, this is fun. Let's do this. What a change of pace this is. It's time to watch movies again. So Aaron says, I swear, Advent Children is the whole reason I never got in the Final Fantasy 7. Well, okay, I didn't have a PS1 at the time.

By that point, our family switched over gaming almost exclusively on PC. And hey, they put Sonic CD on PC, so at that point it's what I needed at the time. And so I missed that on FF7. So by the time I was in a place to revisit FF7, stuff like this was what was getting the attention and it turned me off from the original. Everything I know about FF7, Don Corneo, Aeryath's Fate, the cat piloting a robot, piling another robot, comes from a tip section in some gaming mag I had at the time, which I think is Next Generation

or Sonic R or cover issue and I will say to Aaron don't let Advent children throw you off FF7 because when you left this comment the remake was not out and I feel like if you feel that FF7 the original

is too rough to go back to I say that I will you should definitely try the remake despite what it is at the end which I don't like the spirit is the same it is not this mopey jury spirit of Advent children it is keeping the same

kind of fun, goofy spirits of the original game. It's not like self, as self-serious as Advent Children. Yeah, Advent Children will make you think that Ayrith is just this like gloomy ghost or whatever. Seeing a living Ayrith in

remake and her being like this goofball who does a bunch of puns or act silly. Like that's where I was like, oh, this is why people fell in love with Arette. I mean, the remake makes a lot of assumptions just like Advent Children, which is like if you're playing this or watching this

you probably know everything about Final Fantasy like that quick cut to Kate Sith in the remake I was like no one knows who this is like no or Kate She I'm sorry if I mispronounced Catchy I'm sorry I go back to my childhood pronunciation of these things and my childhood I mean teenagers That's what the word said on the screen

so that's just how I read them But yeah I didn't like the retconning of all of these characters and the more like kingdom heartsy style characters like seven or eight years after the games came out. I wasn't a big fan of that. So I did not let that get to me. Advent children kingdom hearts them up too much.

Remake turns it now doesn't remove the kingdom heartsiness, but it turns it down a little bit. It's time to have fun again. That's what remake says. And Jeff also commented on that saying, I love this movie with my rose-colored glasses back when I torrented it. many moons ago. I was 23 years old at the time it came out. I had the Kingdom Hearts itch and was

fully engrossed in everything Tetsu Yenamora was throwing at us. I was passionate about wanting to know more about the world of Final Fantasy 7, so I was very excited to see more by getting this movie as soon as possible. I eventually purchased the film on DVD and the Complete version on the Blu-ray. I hadn't seen the movie since Complete Version's release. Over the years, I realized that FF7 wasn't as good as FF6 Yes, yes, yes. I'm a sicko in the window going yes, yes, yes. Sorry. He continues.

I realize that FF7 wasn't as good as FF6. The movie was not as great as it could have been and the other games in the compilation weren't as satisfying. Crisis Core story about Zach was enjoyable, the rest, not as much. I agreed with a lot of the arguments stated in this podcast about the movie, and I probably

won't play FF7R. I'm too engrossed in FF14 since I recently started playing that. But I'll continue to enjoy my nostalgic memories of the adventures of cloud, Tifa, and the rest of the gang, rather than Z reimagining. I hope the positive reviews for it may be changed your mind, Jeff, because I do think for as ridiculous as the ending may be, I think it's a really good remake up to that point. And even then, it's like, well, yeah, this is Kingdom Hearts, man. And you signed up for the no, you bought the ticket to Nomoraland, you take the ride. Yeah, I mean, that's a different podcast, but I did really enjoy that game.

I only bought it for pure F of 7 nostalgia. Also, we were like a month into a pandemic and I was like, well, I got to do something with my life. So we were like barely a few weeks in the pandemic time. That came out like alongside Animal Crossing. It was when we got the first messages of like, this could be delayed a week or you might not get yours in the week of release because of shipping problems. Like, seems like that's all smoothed out now. I guess we'll know if I'm playing an Xbox one next week or not. Xbox Series X. God, stupidest name.

Stupidest name. On two separate podcasts, I couldn't know. I couldn't think of the new Xbox name. Yeah. It's that confusing. And I worked in this damn industry for like 15 years. let's move on to questions and comments for back to the future part one and part two those are such fun podcasts look forward to part three coming at you in 2021 hell yeah so part one ryan says great episode when i worked at half brick studios i pitch and design a jetpack ride back to the future event for the 2015 future date.

One of the highlights of my career, we added to DeLorean in a hoverboard in a 2015 background, some of the coolest stuff we worked on. As mentioned, yes, Bob Gale is absolutely the gatekeeper of everything back to the future. We spoke to him several times over the phone during the development. In the mode, you collect flux capacitors to increase your time. Bob called out that this is not how time travel or flux capacitors work, so we made it more of a flux token rather than an actual flux capacitor. Yes, even in silly runner games on mobile,

we had to keep the back to the future time travel rules thank you ryan i'm glad that bob gale even on like d lc for a mobile game he still has to go through him like he is the dude i love that i mean we joke that like oh and but what did bob gale say about this bob like how bob gale is part of anything related to the back to the future but i do care that he cares so much you know and that it's if you created something as beloved and is celebrated as back to the future like you want to keep you'd want to maintain it your vision as much as possible i mean our our friends on that podcast the ride show often talk about like you know the only reason back to the future hasn't been remade or gotten a new sequels because zemeckis and gale are just like no we don't want that

and they by resisting it it never has happened like it sucks that i'm going to live to see a reboots like when when they're when both the bobs are dead and i'm like 60 We wish them to live long, long lives for many reasons, in part to prevent more back to the future from not happening. But I will say that Jetpack Joyride was like one of the only free-to-play, like, phone games I ever really played and got into. It was something I played a lot when I first moved out to the Bay Area. Lots of like half-drunken rides on the train home playing Jetpack Joy Ride. That takes me back, man, to those days. Now it's, I finally kick the habit.

I hate to admit this. I was a Clash of Clans player. Oh, you're off the wagon? Oh, on the wagon. I don't know how it works. You know what did it? Animal Crossing this year. Oh, okay.

I finally, when Animal Crossing became my daily check-in thing, I stopped going to Clash of Clans. And then once I stopped playing Animal Crossing, I looked at my Clash of Clans app. I was like, no, I beat this. I'm done with this. Animal Crossing was like the methadone treatments to get out your addiction. Yeah. That's great. Also on the back of the future episode, Eric says,

My favorite movies of all time by far. I'm about a year younger than Bob and Henry, so my first time seeing the original was as a five or six-year-old was when it aired on ABC in 1988 or 89. Saw part two in theaters waited on VHS for part three. Right after seeing part two in theaters, I got the VHS of part one, and I was temporarily fooled into thinking

that the VHS had one and two on it as one long movie since each film ended and began in the same way. I was quickly disappointed when the credits rolled and they didn't immediately go into 2015. That could be like a cool edit of the movie. Actually like they could through clever editing they could just edit all the movies together. Absolutely.

Into one like mega feature. In fact for the 40th anniversary Blu-rays, let's do that. The six-hour version. I guess then the only question is do you keep the original ending of part one or do you keep, do you sub in the re-shot ending of part two as the bridge? I would sub in the reshot ending. Yeah, I guess too, because it's been so long since you've seen Marty's girlfriend, Jennifer,

that her being a different actress is less shocking than if you were to say, see her as one actress, and then they go into the future, and it's a different actress the very next scene. At that point, 80 minutes have passed. Yeah. So you forget what Claudia Wells looks like. But I appreciate more people. around our age going like, yeah, I couldn't see the first one in theaters.

I was a VHS kid and started with Part 2. And yeah, like not knowing like the rules of movies, it was fun to see them broken like that and then realize like, oh, no other movie is doing this. It ruined other movies. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, I thought, I thought other movies cared this much about having a, like, having a to be continued that actually went straight into the next one.

That's something that only guys, like, hyper obsessive dudes who write. group growing reading comic books like the Bob's did so we're on the questions and comments for part two back to the future these are fresh off the patreon presses so jp says haven't listened to this one yet but i hope bob mentioned seeing the trilogy plus use cars which i don't think they stayed for at the castor theater a few years back uh this is bob speaking henry did i misremember you being there or were you there i actually was not there okay for that i mean you almost got to watch a screening of it that christopher lloyd would introduce at the castor theater, but Christopher Lloyd's plane was delayed by bad weather.

It was that terrible weather during SF Sketch Fest. So Christopher Lloyd couldn't be there. And they're like, everybody gets a refund. And you can just watch the movie if you want, but he's not there. And I think your opinion was the correct one. Like, let's just go out for drinks because we've all seen back to the future. We don't need to see it without Christopher Lloyd. I know there was like a birthday I had where we saw back to the future, just one of them.

But yeah, that was an amazing time at the Castro Theater. let me continue. I know Dave Rudin was there. So Dave was correctly there. Guest of the show Dave Redden was in that audience with us. So on to what JP is saying next. He says, I recognize his voice and other retronauts people. Don't know if Henry was there and approached them in the lobby. A slightly off topic, but the original Back to the Future novelization has a bit with Marty escaping detention in the beginning that would be perfect for a Willie Beamish-esque adventure game puzzle. So yes, JP, I'm sorry. I don't remember saying hi to you, but that was probably after three movies and several beers. So, yeah, it was, this is making me sad that we don't be in public anymore, but it was fun when we'd go to things around a convention and just by talking, like, it packs. If I was talking, eventually somebody could just hear my distinct voice and be like, hey, are you Henry, hey, I'm a big fan. Like, I always appreciated that. And, yeah, JP is right. They played the entire trilogy back to back and also used cars. three movies. I was all

movieed out, so I did not see the Zemeca scale use cars screening after that. I mean, how can it compare to Back to the Future anyway? Like use cars being like just like what it's like a sexy comedy of the 80s, right? Is that kind of its deal? I think so. With some jokes that aren't super

nice and cool in the 21st century. But next one's for you, I mean. Oh yes. Paul says the beautiful thing about the Almanac from Biff's perspective is if the things he did change the results of those sports games or races it would be reflected in the almanac pretty much immediately so he could always make the right bet like the doc brown committed changing to doc brown commended i had not we

parceled out so much of the science of this time travel thing but that's totally right when we were trying to say every event could change because he gambled on it then his future thing has to change when he changes the future so no matter what that almanac would say the new results in it. Yeah, because the almanac has the recording of like everything that he changed, right? Yeah. It's just by betting. It follows the exact same thing as the newspaper headlines. If a newspaper headline

changes when you change the past by the same rules, then an almanac full of sports results would have changed the same way. That's a, Paul, that is a very good inference of the rules of the completely made up time travel

science of the back to the future movies. I think it checks out. Thank you, Paul, for pointing that out. We're going to take a brief break and come back with a very special guest. So we're back from our little break, and we have a special guest on the line. Who is on the podcast right now? It's me, Nina Matsumoto. Do you remember me, Bob? Vaguely.

You're about, yay high. Big dent in your forehead. No, no, no, like I'm engaged to you. Oh. that's okay yes you hello hi how's it going uh as good as it can be we're we're currently recording on election day and things are much more peaceful where you are correct uh yep there's no uh mayhem there's no people boarding up uh their businesses yeah but i couldn't go to the bank today because it was just covered in boards but our listeners have had the pleasure of hearing

a lot of nina uh recently on on this uh on the podcast this year just because uh nina uh i just want to talk to her all the time and uh you're basically paying to hear our Skype calls so thank you Bob is so desperately lonely. I am. He needs any excuse to talk to me. But, Nina, I will say you've been a great new addition to the podcast over the past year. Thank you. And making your debut on what the, was it the Princess Tomato episode or the Disney Afternoon episode?

One of those episodes we recorded at Magfest in 2019. I believe Disney Afternoon was the first one. Yeah. But Nina, how are you been doing? I've been all right. I'm also desperately lonely. But that means I've been very good during this whole lockdown. I am very isolated.

Trust me. That's true. So now we're going to get into questions and comments that for episodes that Nina was on. And actually, Nina, would you do the honors of taking the first question? So this is for Dragon Quest, Your Story. And James says, quote, saw this movie very early on in quarantine. Like Jeremy, I also did not make my significant others sit through it. Having only played Dragon Quest 1 to 3, the storytelling shorthand had a very negative impact on character development for me.

and that ending made me feel really weird. But truthfully, the thing I keep thinking about months later is how big everyone's hands were. They just seemed slightly out of proportion with their bodies. And once I noticed it, it was a constant distraction. Why were their hands so big? Is that traditional in the DQ franchise? I played 11 a bit, and I don't recall their hands being of an unusual size, end quote. I am tiredly choked about their giant hands.

First, I recorded in 1950. You had some hand answers, right? Yes, I can answer questions about hands as an artist. So I actually don't think the hands look that big and that they are pretty proportionate to the character's bodies. I think I know why they might seem off to some people, though. And here are three things I thought of. So one, our hands from the bottom of the palm of the tip, the bottom of the palm to the tip of our middle finger is generally the length of our face from the chin to the hair line. and the characters in Dragon Quest your story have proportionately large heads

so they're almost childish proportions and kids have proportionately small hands usually from the chin to the middle of the forehead so the main characters in your story have somewhat childish proportions but with adult-sized hands and that's what might seem off about them wow man that's very scientific we had just as of this recording we just recorded the wals and grommet curse of the wear rabbit movie for what a cartoon

our podcast about that and it's hard to not notice the giant hands everyone has but in that case it's the medium they're using and like big hands are just easier to animate when the thing is like a thing in front of you

you have to bend and move around yeah also Wallace keeps waving them at you yeah I like that it's like a giant oven mitt compared to his head it's cute it's good for acting

uh too I didn't notice this until this comment but if you look up what the characters in Doraemon stand by me look like you'll notice that the style they used for your story is closer to Duraemon, the normal manga, than Toriyama Dragon Quest style, especially in the character proportions. And I have a feeling that, so they're made by the same studio. They made Stand By Me, and they used, I think what they did was they used what they already modeled and rigged and animated as a basis for how the characters in your story look.

I'm not saying they recycled the models, just so they kind of wanted to go for a similar look as Doraemon Stand By Me, because that was such a huge hit. And especially considering Stand By Me style is definitely based on a Doraima manga, yet Dragon Quest, your story, doesn't look anything like Dragon Quest. Yeah, the, well,

and you do, you know, the asset, just the amount of time it takes to build all those assets, like the, I could, I'd understand them using some short end, especially if they're probably using the same general, know, engine, I guess, in a video game sense for both movies, you know. And all the main characters in Doraemon stand by me are children. So maybe that's where some of the proportions come from. And I'm glad they didn't go with the like, you know, 1992 Toriyama style just trying

to make that work in in CG. I preferred how they softened everybody. Yeah, I love how the movie looks. And no, in the games, their hands aren't like strangely large either. But also, so when we were doing this podcast, it was the summer. And since then, the remake of the Dino-Dibokin anime came out, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm hearing very good things about it. Like, it's a good Shonen show and it's on Crunchyroll, and I presume it's still running as of this release date of this podcast. So, yeah, maybe we'll talk about that in the future.

I do want to see it. And the third and final factor is, I think this stylization wouldn't feel is drawing if the characters didn't have such realistic-looking hands. Like, they have these realistic details in the knuckles and the fingers. nails so i think we kind of enter uncanny hands valley territory when you see the freckles look so real then you you are measuring the size of hands more i suppose we're in the unhandy valley i'll take the next one uh so paul says about dragon quest your story the discussion about how they assumed a lot of your knowledge of having played dq5 already was interesting because i watch as having only ever played 11 when the scenes happened with those characters i was just thinking quote oh clearly they

already know each other. This is just very economical storytelling, just letting the viewer insert it themselves. I certainly wasn't confused. I was actually intrigued to want to find out more later. So I can see that. Yeah, I definitely in the first commenter though, like he was like, oh, he sounded like he was a, or they

sounded like they were a little confused on it. I still think like who, I know Dragon Quest 5 really well, but I think it is because I, it's not because I played it a million times it's because I played it once as an adult and it's fresher in my memory than if I had played it once 30 years ago. I think kind of like skirting over the plot development of the first part of the game with that let's play in the beginning doesn't do those plot points a good enough service. I mean, it's fun nostalgia, but it doesn't give them the impact that they should

have in terms of like a story being told to a new viewer, I think. Even as someone who's played the game, I think they should have spent a bit more time establishing the hero's connections to the love interest and it would have been nice to see that develop more but when i got to the end of the film i was left apathetic anyway so whatever yeah the ending is a big shrug uh it's it's i mean the the big shrug of an ending also just assumes that you know exactly the you've known for your whole life the idea of like felicia versus bianca and who you would pick and what which is your wife you know uh that since they just use that a shorthand they don't need to introduce you to Bianca. It's just like,

here's a flash of a blonde-haired girl in the past. That's it. You know they're going to end up together anyway, right? But the assumption of knowing everybody has played Dragon Quest 5 does make it even weirder as a thing to experience is just the Dragon Quest movie that's on Netflix. If you're

just introduced to it, that way conceptually, I think you'll be much more confused. Let's move on to Cowboy Games Parts 1 and 2. Tons of comments on both of these, so thank you so much. I think each one had over 30 comments. But Henry, please take this first one because I know you did research about this subject. Oh, yes, yeah.

So, silver-haired middle-aged tuxedo mask says. A great Western movie that everybody seems to hate on is Paint Your Wagon. Yes, it's a musical Western, but the plot is actually really good. Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin are two cowboys who both fall in love with Gene Seaburg. And she can't choose between either of them. So what do they all agree on? They both marry her, and all three have a happy polygamous marriage in the Old West. and the main plot deals with them having to hide the fact from those pesky locals

and the religious folks who obviously don't understand it. It's definitely a weird movie, but also really charming. Yeah, if your idea of Paint Your Wagon is just the joke on The Simpsons. Going to use oil-based paint. That is not a song in the movie. And the characters, they fit more with the look of the world. I mean, it's also just fun to watch Paint Your Wagon to see how expensive something can look like what is what's the most expensive western that could be made the year it comes out well it's paint your wagon uh but yeah the the polyamory uh plot comes in of like they both realized they married her in different towns and they're like wait she let lee marvin married jean seaburg and then she moved this other town and married clean eastwood and she's like you know what those mormons they got a bunch of wives why can't a woman have two husbands and they're just like well okay then

It's just great to hear Lee Marvin sing, right? Yeah, God, no, he... We all wanted that. He knows, like, two notes, and they make a song out of those two notes. And I recommend the Lindsay Ellis video on YouTube, The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical, which tells you a lot about, like, why that movie was made and what era was a part of,

and why these things were a much bigger deal in the 60s, following the sound of music. Okay, but why is it called Paint Your Wagon? Oh, that's a sexual metaphor. She's the wagon. Of course, I'm kidding. I don't know. I think it's just about paint your wagon and go into town or whatever.

Yeah. Get your wagon ready. I will admit, I only watch like 20 minutes of it in clips. I've not seen the full film. All four hours of paint your wagon. If I didn't know any better, I totally would have assumed like, oh, paint your wagon with blood, as I point out in The Simpsons. You'd be just as fooled as Barton Homer. Yeah, but they make it sound like that, though.

like why what else would you assume especially like i would never assume lee marvin would sing in something never like he's uh have you seen uh the manning shot liberty valence you know oh that's such a good one that's that is uh maybe my favorite john wayne movie like it's and is jimby stuart in that movie it's jimmy stuart jane i got to see it and lee marvin just for jimmy stewart i love him i love him and lee marvin's the heavy in it and he's great he is the liberty Valance and you will learn who shopped that man. So, Nina, you're up next with the game that you have a lot of familiarity with this comment. All right. Mr. Neal says, quote,

Oh, man, Law of the West was one of those classics I loved on the C64. Every game we had in those days with a bootleg copy from family friends with access to dial-up BBSs. Sadly, this meant when I got halfway through the game and it asked us to flip the disc over, it would start to glitch. We only had a copy of Side A, so it would keep going through the rest of the dialogue trees, but with whichever character sprite loaded last, leading to such events as the school marm gruffly threatening us or abandoned greeting the sheriff warmly.

Still, I played this nonstop to the end of time after time. Just remember to not insult the drunken doctor or he might not be there when you're shot in the most fatal part of the flesh of your arm, end quote. It sounds like a great bitch. Yeah, you got to be nice to the sawbones in town or else he's not going to help you out. He's the only doctor for Miles.

I was watching gameplay of this game again, and one cool thing I forgot to mention was how every character you encounter has her own unique theme song that plays when they approach. It really adds that Western feel. I like also hearing about

the old school pains of bootleg copies of something. I'm sad that we never got this because it came out for Famicom. It was never brought to America. If it was brought to America, I would have played this game. I had no computer back in this day,

so I just was not aware of this game at the time. But it sounds really cool. Yeah, a game that's like entirely dialogue trees. It was pretty ahead of its time, I think. So we're on to part two for cowboy games. I will say also a lot of people told us what we missed in these two episodes. And so we could easily build a third Cowboy Games episode. And maybe I will.

Maybe it'll come to that. Just the scraps. It took us so long to go through just one list. The scraps of all the vittles. But I'll move on to Mike's comment. And Mike says, I'm glad you guys brought up Time Traveler because that game blew my mind as a little kid. I'll never forget the day my dad added that one to our arcade.

Even then, as a kid whose father owned an arcade on the boardwalk and had an unlimited time and quarters to play these games, I could never beat it because it was so damn hard. And thank you, Mike, for that you were there at the time, that account of your experience because this game is so hard. But that's my favorite part of that episode, the discussion of Time Traveler and shooting people directly in the neck. It's so violent.

It's, oh, yeah, that credit sequence too on time. time traveler was something else. I, boy. The dance party. Yeah. Though this Mike guy sounds like he'd be everybody's, you know, everybody wants to be his friend. His dad literally owns an arcade.

That's way better than an uncle at Nintendo. I bet that time traveler machine really sunk them. Just like I can see the dad at the adity machine, just like sweating and pouring himself a drink. Like, we should never buy time traveler. No vacation this year, boys. If you had a chance, would you own the time traveler arcade cabinet? Like, let's say you see the third store for like 25 bucks.

Oh, God, like... 25, sure. That thing is big. Yeah. The thing's like the size of like a dorm room refrigerator. I'd have to get rid of my coffee table and it would just be it from that hot. Yeah, just use that as your coffee table. I've dreamed of a day of having a Donkey Kong or Miss Pac-Man table to a cocktail version as a coffee table.

Yeah, I really want one of those things. Those are really cool. But aren't they like super expensive? I think even the recreations of them are still like in the hundreds, if not thousands. Yeah, but whoever keeps remaking those, you know, the, the new releases of like the turtles and the Street Fighter arcade cabinets. Oh, the one-up, they're called like one-up arcade cabinets or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Somebody needs to make one of those for the cocktail versions, too.

We need a Simpsons one, ASAP. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Disney, Konami, work it out. So up next, we have a question from Seth or a comment. Nina, can you, sorry, Henry, please take this one. Sure.

Seth says, you cowpokes missed one of my childhood favorites. Dust, a tale of the Wired West. It's a 1995 PC adventure game about a stranger who flees, survey says, a small western town where a bad guy cowboy and his gang are chasing him and will arrive in three days' time. But of course, the townspeople have their own baggage and weirdness that must be dealt with and maneuvered. The characters are all FMV, including a doctor literally named Hillary Rodham.

that uses her likeness, but not her actual voice from what I can tell. How they didn't get sued for this, I have no clue. Anyways, there are definitely long plays of this on YouTube that are worth a watch. And then Casey followed up with a comment that points out that you lose certain likeness rights when you become a public figure, and if challenge, the devs could have gotten away with it by calling it satire. That's how, like, Al Gore and Bill Clinton are an NBA jam. Right. Are that Sox the Cat video game?

I think anyone can use socks. Pets are in the public domain. People could rip off Louis if they want to. But this game... I already have. Oh, you have. It's true. But yeah, this... Check this out on YouTube. This game is absolutely insane.

I couldn't believe it. It's so crazy looking. And it's definitely from... It could only be made in this era. And Seth says FMB that's a little misleading. I will say it is like a photo reference of a person's face, but only like the lips and the eyes move. So it's like really creepy, almost like a Tim and Eric style animation.

And the animation style reminded me of Angela Anaconda. That's a better example, yeah. If we could reference Angela Anaconda in 2021. Because I'm Canadian. That's what it reminded me of. This is actually the third podcast me and Bob have recorded in the last week that references Angela Anaconda. You guys got to do an episode about it. It's true.

And the doctor named Hillary Rodham is just a picture of Hillary Clinton's circle like 1993, her face in that classic Hillary haircut from that era. And just it's weird. It's not even like a parody of her. It's just like, oh, she's famous. But maybe this is the reason that she turned on video games in 2005. Maybe she's like, I found out about dust and it's time to take them down, the entire medium. If a video game could do this to me, what else could they do? It's just a weird choice because, as you pointed out, it's not even a satire on her.

Yeah, it's not a joke about her. Yeah. I don't know. Baking cookies or something. I mean, if it was 95, the joke would be like, oh, she's actually in charge. That was like all the Hillary jokes were, and like, Bill Clinton was a matter. asculated by his wife. This is like pre-Lewinsky Hillary jokes.

And, of course, secret lesbian jokes. So, yeah. And going back to Time Traveler, I will say, like, I was thinking about it while this other comment was happening. And, like, no, I wouldn't own the cabinet ever because the ideal way of experiencing is just to watch the full video of it. It's like, the perfect play is just like watching a bad movie. I will say I've had friends who bought arcade cabinets thinking they'd all use them and

they either, they collect dust. the month after you buy you'll never touch it again and especially in the one friend i knew in his tiny san francisco apartment he just couldn't use much of his kitchen because that's where he kept his neo geo machine well that's a source of heat in an sf kitchen right that's true yeah it's uh he saved he saved he saved money on a space heater that year my my dream still is to own my own dance dance revolution extreme machine but only if i had a garage and it's very soundproof otherwise it's gonna drive my neighbors crazy. Oh, man. If you were on the second floor with that thing, like, is it, it would it be the two, uh, it would be the two, uh, sets of it, right? So you two people

could dance together. Oh, yeah, for sure. Then Bob could dance with me. Aw. Only when we're married. Uh, so, no dance has a relation before marriage. No, no, I'm very religious. Take a time machine back to be for the time machine back to before the world went to hell around the year 2000. The 80s and 90s were so rad The movies, the music, the TV, the games That's what I want to talk about If you're cool enough Join us and listen to less than 2000

Because that's all we talk about Adam and Chad live less than 2000 On Apocry Pals We talk about the parts of the Bible That a lot of people skip over Like the wizard battles The angel jacuzzis 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. Hi, I'm Ray, and this is my friend Alex. Hi. And we do a show called Norman Woppers. Between us, we're as old as four RPG protagonists.

And now Alex will give us a funny anagram for the name of the show. Big old knockers. Join us every month or so on the Greenlit Podcast Network. I put out a prompt saying, like, basically, how has the pandemic affected your gaming lifestyle and retro gaming lifestyle? And there were so, so, so many comments from you guys. I couldn't actually get to all of them. They were like almost 50 as of this recording. So thank you.

Some of them are very heartfelt and heartbreaking. Lots of emotional stories. but I did read them all. So even if I can't include it on this podcast, I did read every single one of them and I appreciate every single one of them. But I will ask everybody here, all the hosts here, what has the pandemic done to your gaming lifestyle and or retro gaming lifestyle? And Nina, how about you?

I'm not someone who suddenly has a lot of free time since the pandemic started. I've been drawing a graphic novel since April. And that's on top of all the stuff I do for fan gamers. So it's actually been the perfect time to shut myself in and be anti-sostom. social for several months and my comic is due in February actually so maybe things will be better by then I mean we're recording this on election day as you said this episode is coming out in February so you might all be laughing at me now oh poor need me if I'm being very naive I would love to I would love to have the time to like go through my huge backlog of games like

red their redemption too but maybe after my book is done I've been playing some games though Like I was going ham on Animal Crossing when that first came out like everyone else. But I haven't touched it in a few months. I play pound fantasy 14 with Bob a few times a week. But more consistently, I've been playing RingFit and Just Dance 2020 almost daily because I want to keep active, especially since I don't feel safe going to Muay Thai classes anymore, which is a huge bummer for me. So my exercise routine every weekday is go in a walk, play RingFit for strength training,

and just dance for cardio aerobics. and I'm actually doing a really good job with these games and especially I'm having a lot of fun with Just Dance. I can do Billy Elish's bad guy on extreme difficulty and maybe I can show Bob one day. Wow, I've been ring fitting it up with you and it's been you being able to check in every morning and see like, oh, Nina did hers.

Okay, like the everybody's profile thing has been really fun. And yeah, I've worked up to meet Nina, level of ringfittedness too and I do I do walk every morning and 10 to 15 minutes of ring fit and I've just been slowly bringing up my difficulty though I'm still like I think 9 10 or 9 levels behind Nina's difficulty level

at ring fit. Yeah you finished story mode after 24 hours of gameplay Yes yeah and I'm like well over 30 hours I'm still not done yet. Oh man. I think it is because I'm at a higher difficulty than you and because of that the exercises take longer for me to do. Yeah, I can do like two levels in a thing at level 21, but yeah, you'd have to do so many more reps every time you move up. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And those were in short supply when the pandemic started. Is it like ring fit widely available now? I think it's more available now. Yeah. It was just really hard to find. Actually, a friend of mine ordered one from Amazon recently. And then the next day, a second one came. Oh, he didn't be requested. It just so how nice. Yeah. Free extra ring fit, I guess.

Thank you, Uncle Bezos. As for me, like, this reminds me of being unemployed, except instead of being unemployed from my job, I'm unemployed for my relationship, because I can't see Nina. So I have all this extra time. And it's been a great time, like I said, up front to replay a lot of things for Retronauts in full,

like things like, you know, Arkham Asylum and Deadly Premonition and Final Fantasy 9, like big games, but also, like, bucket list stuff. Like, Moon, RPG, Adventure came out for Switch. I finished that. A game that's bad that I always wanted to finish was Escape from Monkey Island, and I tortured Nina. Yeah, I played that too. You made to play it.

I'm pretty sure that is classified as abuse, but thanks for not pressing charges. But you played through Escape for Monkey Island with me, and I appreciate that. So, yeah, that wasn't the bad bucket. There are good buckets and bad buckets, but that was the bad bucket list. But, yeah, just like so much time to replay all this stuff. And, frankly, they'd rather be traveling and, you know, doing panels. But it's been a good time to catch up with games. And, you know, obviously continue the LucasArts Adventure series and replaying all those again.

So, yeah, it's been, as of this recording, I've finished 29 games in 2020. So one of my biggest gaming years and loneliest to date, but it's been a good time for games. Actually, now that I think about it, the only games I've been playing this year are to be social and to be active. So, Ringsford and Justin's to be active. And Animal Crossing was to be social. at 514 is to hang out with you Bob And I've also I forgot to mention

I've been playing jackpox Like party pack Every week with my friends And we've also been playing Among Us Oh that's just to fill that void Of not being able to see people And not being able to Exercise like I used to

And I for me on on top of RingFit I It's not about number of games for me It's how many hours I sunk into them I pretty much When I look back on the last eight months it was like I got Animal Crossing right when it happened like everybody did and I played that for a month straight like three hours a day if not I mean I had that Homer joke of saying like but somehow I found a way to play it for eight hours a day but but that was Animal Crossing then after that I played a bit of the Paper Mario Origami King but like the last few Paper Mario games I like I get 10 hours in and I and I'm just not, I don't feel like

snicking around. Like, yeah. But the here, the craziest thing I played too much of was Assassin's Creed Odyssey. And my reasoning for that was is I bought a new nice TV and I looked up like, what games are actually in like

upscale for PS4 Pro. And one of them was Assassin's Creed. I played Assassin's Creed one through Revelations obsessively and then I stopped playing Ask Creed. So in this strange time, it was comforting for me to just go back to the high budget Ubisoft Open World Factory that is Assassin's Creed Odyssey. And I, for real, played 100 hours of that game.

It's been a while for me, like maybe like 20 more iterations I'll play the latest one when they finally go to like Flint, Michigan or whatever. Well, I will say after playing the Odyssey game and enjoying like, oh, ancient Greece is fun. And there's also like, another reason I liked it was as a male in the game I could finally have gay relationships like there's surprise me yeah yeah and women can also have same sex relationships in the game too

but also like Greece was more interesting to me than Vikings like this Viking thing even though I played Odyssey obsessively I'm not that into Valhalla and then in addition to that there were all those revelations about Ubisoft this year that made Ubisoft games in general less enticing to me

and then as for like oldie time games retro stuff this is where I'm going to sound like the Mario fanboy I am but I can't help it but I played a giant amount of Mario 3D all stars but really only Galaxy

like I barely touch the other two Galaxy still rules I'm glad again time has proven us right in that Mario Sunshine is bad everyone on Twitter was like posting videos of like clipping through the floor right before they grab a shine and like flying off a squid and losing a life and all these

unfair deaths, and I was vindicated, finally. At long last. I never liked it either, so I also feel vindicated. I actually played a lot of Mario 64 on that collection. I'm playing through them in order, so I'm having fun with that. Although that collection could be better, and it should be better. It should be better in so many ways, but... If also ran series, like Crash Bandicoot and Spiro,

get these glorious, like, 4K, completely retouched collections, why does Mario get this? Unfair, unfair, all around. This isn't a retro game, but it's about retro times. I binged through Hypnospace Outlaw in one night because it was so good. And that's one of the best games I've played in a long time. Yeah, that comes highly recommended to Retronauts people because it is like a late 90s internet simulator with a great story running throughout. And it's just a fun internet detective game.

I can't play that. Oh, and another retro thing I played was Mario's Super Pickross, which had never been officially released in America by Nintendo until it was put on the Super NES page for the online service and you know it's just it's more pit cross but also uh you know it's been a refresher for me of the hiragana i had forgotten just like oh that's how you spell sailboat or whatever um and uh and also paneled upon they put that on there too like classic panels depot there's been some cool like little bonuses on there along with uh just you know your yoshi's island finally i mean i can't imagine how crazy it is that nintendo of america would release

untranslated content on their thing like they've well it was just 10 years ago that they're like oh this is uh jrpg's too niche to put out on the we in america we're not bothering and now they're like here's paneled upon untranslated just to have fun you're brave enough to look at japanese now it's fine uh let's get into the questions and comments actually more like comments for this uh pandemic specific mailbag section and i'll go first with alex who says the biggest change for me of quarantine is that I actually to sell the majority of my retro gaming collection

hundreds of games from the Wii backwards almost all of which were acquired around the original release dates. It was a lot of personal history to let go of but in the end I'm glad I cleared out the space

and the money has been helpful. Fortunately, I still have other ways to enjoy those pieces of history but I do miss the artifacts sometimes on the positive side of things I just learned to solder and have been preparing and upgrading some of my old hardware.

I just fixed my Saturn's power supply and it is humming along right now. Combine that with learning the ins and outs of the mister, I'm able to enjoy retrogaming in a lot of new and fun ways. And I will say, yes, Alex, I did a lot of spring cleaning in the first few months of quarantine. And living in my apartment and never leaving for the past eight months has made me acutely aware of everything I own. And also it makes me despise everything I own.

So when it is safe to drop off books and stuff again, I have a lot of dumping to do, a lot of legal dumping to do. Because I hate every possession. Get it out of here. Burn it. Anyone else want to comment on this? Yeah, I used to own too much stuff and letting go things is hard, but sometimes I think, especially nerds like us, we hang on to things because it's a pride thing. Like, oh, as a fan of X, of course I need to own all the games and toys, even if you rarely touch them or even think about them, they just kind of collect dust. So I think once you can tell yourself, I can be a fan of X and I don't have to prove being a fan of it by owning all these things, then it becomes much easier to let go those things.

Yeah, I am probably the worst collector among the three of us here. And this was after, I did do a big purge when I moved three years ago, but I've slowly but surely been building it back up. And yeah, I think if I ever move, it's a lot of things I'm going to have to move. But yeah, especially all my Mario, I had this huge collection, have this huge collection of Mario figures that when I worked at a desk job, I prided myself on showing off to the co-workers

and ever since I moved they've just been sitting in like this giant rubber made bin and not entertaining anybody I guess for me it's like I don't want to throw them away but unlike the commenter Alex I also haven't put the time into reselling them to try

to get them a good home on eBay but I just it feels wrong so I bought them because they were like oh wow a vintage and still in very good condition in Mario 3 toy made in 1990, you know? Like, that was what was so cool about it to me. And to just dump it feels like I am just destroying history.

I've seen on Twitter lately because, like, we live in the Bay Area and our peers at GameSpot and IGN are in the Bay Area. Over time, like, people at those offices had to come back and, like, take everything off their desks, basically, because it's like, we don't know when you're coming back. So, like, people I know at IGN had to take all of their, like, insanely decorated. decorated desks, all the stuff home, and I've had to find new homes for that stuff. And I've had, like, all of my desk stuff in a bin in my closet for, like, four years now. Just like, I don't have a desk to put this on anymore. And I loved having a space at work just like, here's where all my

crap can go to keep it away from my house or my apartment. So that's been interesting. But, uh, yeah, uh, we've all had to like, re-home our nerd shit lately. Just, just remember that you don't have to prove yourself as a fan. Uh, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. And you could be a fan without having the stuff. And if not, just get a tattoo and you're the best fan, right? Right. I'm related. Go to fangamer.com and buy all the cool video. I design. You know what? Shirts are necessities. They're not collectibles.

Sure. Yeah. Henry, please take this next one. Matt says, I discovered retronauts right before the pandemic happened. So my interest in retro gaming has actually doubled over the course of this year. I've always wanted to go back and play a lot of older games I missed. But thanks to this podcast, for better or worse, I have a much larger backlog.

As an introverted essential worker, life hasn't changed much for me. But Retronauts is unfortunately forever linked in my head with that early panic as I restocked toilet paper overnight and listen to you guys, wipe your proverbial asses with Fester's Quest. I'm glad that you, isn't it so much fun to discover a podcast and realize you have like eight years of a podcast to listen to? I know Nina recently, within the past like 18 months, you've started listening to both We Hate Movies. podcast the ride and you've basically caught up with both of them wow oh yeah there was so much to listen to and I've seen actually a lot of people

saying online like oh I don't have time to listen to podcasts anymore because I no longer have to commute to my job but since I work at home like I need these podcasts I have them on all the time when I'm doing just anything I don't need a commute or anything else when I go on walks I listen to them too

yeah I recommend people find ways to work podcasts into everything you do I have a speaker in my shower for instance that I turn on and listen to podcasts. I'm not as sick as you. I'm a sick man, but I also subscribe to lots of podcasts and give to lots of Patreon.

So I recommend that you become as sick as me. I am a shower podcast listener to. I think Bob years ago convinced me like, you're right. You know, well, even before I got a dedicated speaker for it, I would just turn up the volume on my phone all the way.

Because, well, what am I supposed to do as I'm showering? I think I just can't. I can't. I recommend the people like, Think of all the times you're not listening to a podcast and ask yourself, could I be listening to a podcast now?

Usually the answer is yes. Well, another thing, like I love finding a game that I feel I can definitely podcast listen to while playing it. And Odyssey was that for me as long as it wasn't like a speaking scene and always pause the podcast. But Hades, I should have said,

I've put so much time into Hades this year and that was a huge podcasting game for me. Like game rules? Actually, RingFit is a great. good game to play podcast too or podcast too because because I play at such a high level like I play at levels 30 and that means lots and lots of reps and it gets very boring and I'm not going to sit there listening to whatever background music they have in that game and the ring fit talking to me or whatever I just turn off all the the music and the sound effects and have podcast

on instead I recommend that to anyone else who finds ring fit boring wow you know I should totally do that. I don't know why I never thought of that. At a game for a year and you know of that and what I wanted to say thank you to Matt for being an essential worker too like that and I know that feeling too I listened, if I ever listened to a podcast

I listened to in 2008 when I worked at a video store I listened back to it and I'm like I can feel myself putting things on shelves when I worked at the video rental store. There are certain podcasts that I can look at the episode and be like I know where I was when I was listening to that because I'm

I'm a freak. I'm a mutant. I'm sick, as Nina said. Speaking of me and Nina, Nina, read the next comment, please. Jason says, quote, pretty much affected my plans to do my usual visits to my local retro gaming shows like California Extreme and SoCal Retro Gaming Expo, as well as scrap my plans to attend Portland Retro Gaming Expo, which I've always wanted to go to. What I miss most about retrogaming during this pandemic is being in an arcade playing retro arcade games, socializing with random strangers, enjoying classic arcade games. Last July, I was at California Extreme playing a three-player rampart machine with a buddy and a complete stranger having a great time. Can't do that at home. I hope we get back to a point to where we can do that again, end quote. Man, Jason, I am with you on the Cal. Only one of those I've been to is California Extreme.

And that one really, reading this comment really made me miss it. Like that I took it for granted. I could have, I've lived here and could have gone to it for over a decade. And I only went to three. And I think it was after the third one, I was like, I've seen all the games. It's pretty much. I've never heard of a California extreme, actually. What is that?

Oh, it's great. It's an event in which a lot of collectors basically fill a room with their machines and you can play them all. And it's like a great exhibition of like classic stuff and things you've never heard of. And like prototypes and rarities and all kinds of great stuff. I have never been to it because you need a car to go and no one I knew was really going since I've been here. so I was like you need a car to go it's not uh it's very far away you can't just take the train there or whatever it's uh yeah it's it's very south bay yeah like i i looked it up it's like how do i get there with the train and buses it's like a three hour route uh you can you can

take a train about an hour of the way and then if you get a lift it'll take you another like 45 minutes if you do that but yeah it's uh it's just so cool this feeling of all of these collectors who have lived in the Bay Area for years and so decades and they have these vintage machines like I've you know you've seen donkey Kong or or Pac-Man these machines in person but you've never seen the Journey Arcade machine in person or like the Pac-Man Jr. Or what, yeah, Pac-Man Jr. arcade slash pinball mashup one that they have there like. Oh, baby Pac-Man. Baby Pac-Man.

I just know that because I play it because it sucks. it looks cool but it sucks well that's part of the fun too is that those games you would never even put a quarter into but if you're playing for five minutes you're like I know what Poo Yon is now I get it and and you can appreciate it like a grown man you can appreciate

the graphics I've had enough of your Puyon back you mister but yeah and it's also the other thing I loved about California Extreme was the type of nerd that came there they would bring like say a full rock of fire explosion setup of the

the showbiz pizza characters and then they would be programmed to perform Lopty Neck, the song that Snye Snoodle sings in the original version of Star Wars Return of the Jedi. Only at California Extreme. And when you walk around California Extreme

you hear every game happening at once, it is a cacophony that drives you insane but you're also like, this was I miss this in arcades. And you can just feel the static electricity from all the CRTs just smashing you in the face with their radiation. It's great.

I would like in a non-funny funny thing I'm going to say here, I feel that even if it's safe, we all are going to have to undo a lot of trauma to be in a big event space again with people because now eight months into the pandemic, if someone gets too close to me on the sidewalk, like seconds after that, I'm like, oh, God, oh God, what do I have now? Yeah. Am I dying? So, like, I feel like we're all going to have to, like, get lots of therapy to just do these

things again with each other after this is all over. It's going to be hard. Even looking at old pictures of packs is weird. Oh, yes. When people pack together like shoulder to shoulder and I'm like, man, no wonder Conflue is a thing. No wonder people always get sick at conventions. You're so right. Yeah.

Man, wasn't there? There was a Pax right before it. Like right before the shutdown was Pax East. I couldn't. I remember when it was happening, I was like, is this really going on? Yeah, I couldn't believe that they still had Pax East. And they took so long to cancel Pax Prime this year too. But yeah, like I do when I watch a movie now or when I look at old.

footage of cons and panels we've done like did we really just all sit together in a room with strangers like people are sneezing people are coughing who knows what's going on look the particles we're not seeing is it's incredible we're all grabbing jelly beans from the same bowl yeah i'm shaking hands of hugging people frankly it's disgusting but yeah that's what i'm hoping that like wearing masks become becomes a norm even after the pandemic i i think in the very least in america it will be a i think it'll be a norm for some people and uh the the new cultural battle for others in a normal time. But yes, if you

meet me again in public, don't touch me. Get your filthy hands off of me. Let's go on to the next comment by Colby, who says, quarantine has created more free time in my life, but has also inspired me to be more intentional about how I choose to spend my time. I decided to start a

spreadsheet to track my gaming with the idea that I wouldn't allow myself to capriciously start and stop games as I have in the past. I would either finish the game that I'm currently playing or make a conscious decision that I wasn't enjoying it enough to justify finishing it. This has allowed me to finally finish a slew of classics that I had started but never finished in the past, including Super Metroid, Metal Gear Solid, Links Awakening Rondo, Blood, FF7, and FF9. I'm currently playing FF8 and have my eye on squeezing in Mario

64 before the end of the year. I've really enjoyed playing games this way and I plan to continue tracking my play this way as a result. And I will say to you, Colby, I am similar. I don't have a spreadsheet, but I do keep track of the games I finish. And I'm, I've become very disciplined about not starting new games until I finish the ones I've started. I try to have no more than three games going at once and I think Nina has helped me a lot in stopping

games I'm not having fun with because... Have I? Yes, yes. I feel like there's so many times where I'm like, why are you still playing this game? You're suffering through this. Why are you doing this to yourself? I think you still keep going. I think with the messenger you gently lecturing

me enough about, you know, stop torturing yourself with this game. I think that was when I learned a lesson finally because I enjoyed the first part of the Messenger. It was well made. But the Metroidvania section of that game, I thought, was just very poorly designed and just very tedious. But I tortured myself and I made myself finish it because I made enough progress in it where I was like, I can't turn back now. So uncost fallacy is real. So, yeah, that I totally understand.

Like, it's made me just be more mindful about how I'm spending every hour because I can't think of anything else. So I want to use my time wisely while I have all this free time. You did play all Escape from Monkey Island. That's because you had to for your podcast. And you were like in a bad mood for a week after that. Oh, yeah. And as I lay dying, I will think of the time I wasted on Escape from Monkey Island. And I will curse God.

I will curse God. I think I have the opposite problem of I just stop things to and don't even feel bad about it. Or I occasionally look like, I should finish that. But I never do. Like I, the paper Mario Origami King, I referenced earlier. like which again i beat the first two worlds of it and and i liked it but i and i still would say it's the best paper mario game in like a decade but even then it's uh i i lost attention with it i that's why i was impressed with a sense of great odyssey i i went to the real real ending on

that one like yeah i which was involved doing a lot of uh nothing until you can finally get one cutscene that's like actually the secret is this. Most of my gaming discipline stuff has been also annoying Nina to play Dongan Rampa series more and you did finish I did play the second one

during the pandemic it was just hard for me to get through because I hate the minigames so much I like the characters in this story but those minigames oh my god I play at the easy difficulty too because I just want to get through them but even then it's such a slog

The mini games are better than ever in the third one, so we can move on to the next. I'm sorry I haven't played the third one yet. It's just that game is, the game series is all about like despair upon despair and that's not what I want to play right now. Well, we got an authentic Canadian story on this podcast. It's all I ever wanted. Nina, please read the next comment. Patrick says, quote, like many others, I had no expectation that the pandemic would cause such a dramatic price increase across the retrogaming market as it did. Not that I considered it much, but I would have.

initially guessed that if anything, their market might stagnate or even bottom out a bit, as many people might try to sell off their collection during this terrible, uncertain year. I guess this is not a total negative, however. It seems like since many people have been forced to spend more time inside, and some of which still maybe have the means, they are at the very least enjoying older comfort games when so many need a positive escape. Thanks all for continuing on with a show in this hellhole of a year, end quote. Yeah, I guess I would have figured it would have bottomed out too, but I

I guess, you know, nobody's, if you had the means to afford it still, if you're not taking your, you know, vacations or you're not, you know, what, going to buy a new car or a jet ski or whatever, like, why not just buy all the video games of your youth and teleport there? Yeah, I know, I know Jeremy likes to play stuff on original hardware. He could speak more to this, but I know as someone who makes videos about this old stuff using the authentic cartridges and taking pictures of the stuff, he has spoken like, oh, God, why didn't I buy that? earlier. Everything is so expensive now. But you're right. It's like, well, I live in hell and I can't leave my house. Why not recreate my childhood? And I look at toys on eBay that I could buy, but I'm holding off on buying like the Eek the Cat toys from Hardee's. Like, why shouldn't I have those looking at me every day? But I didn't buy them. This is coming up. Oh, yes. I've been, I've been looking at some animation cells and going like, well, actually, Bob, you just saw I made a very

silly purchase of an original millhouse art from gallery 1988 i mean with this podcast and with uh you know talking simpsons and what a cartoon our other podcast we basically live in our childhoods all the time so uh it is very healthy i'm a very uh healthy adult man so uh yes thank you patrick and uh we are happy to keep doing this through the hell year it's keeping us going i'll never own cowboy kid at this rate. No, no, yeah. It's only market. Probably you made it more famous by doing a podcast.

Oh, damn it. Oh, yeah, everyone heard that one. What would you guys What would you guys consider your comfort game? Oh, boy. Oh, God. Or the too many for you. Well, definitely, uh, any.

Tactical strategy games, the, like, say, advance wars or fire emblem in that genre, just the repetition of moving the pieces and the turn-basedness of it. Like, I just play it and play it and play it and it makes time disappear, and it just also reminds me of childhood of playing those same games too. So even if it's the newest fire emblem, like three houses or whatever, or a game like War Groove that is just, hey, we may. an advance wars because Nintendo isn't making it. In those cases

I'm able to just dive back into them while listening to a podcast and it really is comforting. I guess it is retro now but there was a Left for Dead 2 update in like September and I reinstalled it. I played like 20 more hours of it. I could just play it anytime I want

it's great. Who is next? I lost track. Tanner says quarantine has given a horrible realization even with all the time in the world I will never complete my backlog. I have knocked out so many games that I've been meaning to play forever, like FF9,

Resident Evil remake, Castlevania Rondo of Blood, and a bunch more. And yet, when I think about how many games are still on my list, my life feels like a combination of Sisyphus, Roll in the Boulder, and Burgess Meredith at the end of

the Twilight Zone Classic, time enough at last. And despite loving those games I mentioned, I still would have preferred to not lose my job in insurance, Oh, Tanner, I'm sorry. I was still preferred to not lose my job in insurance and be able to see all my friends safely again. Don't feel too sorry for me, though.

My cost of living is relatively low, and my unemployment benefits worked out. I know many others are way less fortunate than me. And, man, Tanner, good on you sticking it out through that. That sounds really rough, and I know a lot of other people are in that similar situation. I hope things have improved for you by now. Yeah. But I definitely know that feeling of like after I lost a job one time thinking, well, finally I look at that pile of games that I all bought on sale and I'll definitely play them. Now I finally will. And I just felt this like rush of guilt after the end of the first month of, did I beat even one of them? Am I even a gamer?

I mean, this has just made me realize there are too many games, period. It's cool if we just, let's just stop making games for five years and figure stuff out. Because just looking at my Steam. library. I passed the 400 game amount a long time ago. So like just looking through that like I have not finished like 40% of these games. So I could play like if I wanted to I could play like a hundred new games if I sat down and thought about it.

So too many new games. Nina, how do you think about this? Well first of all Henry, don't worry. You're a gamer. You don't have to prove anything to anyone by playing all the games. We're going to vote and revoke Henry's gamer license at the end of this podcast. I played so much

Chades this year. Yeah, I also feel tanner on this about how I have such a big backlog and I'm never going to have time to play it all. I think I would just have to be bedridden and have the ability to like not draw or anything like that in order to go through my my huge stack of games that I haven't played yet because there's such long games too. Like I mentioned Redidavention 2. There's all these yakuza games I want to play as well. New York Automata. I have I have far cry forward that I bought when it came out and I still haven't touched it. Yeah, no, the weight of it was also hitting me

with the idea of I, at the time of this recording, I do not own an Xbox Series X, but when I have one, I intend to get the game pass and when I, because I see all those games, that feels like I'm just subscribing to a new backlog that I'm like, here's every Yakk is a game right here. Why aren't I playing? Here's more chores.

I guess like, even though I have more time, 2020 has maybe appreciate the shorter game more and looking at the games I finish games like a short hike and later alligator very short games like games that are just basically an hour or too long I'm playing through the game carrying right now it's like five hours long it's just so tidy and it feels like you're always

making progress and accomplishing things like again when I was younger I thought it was sacrilege when games journals would be like let's make game shorter but now I'm with them like yes let's make every game five hours it's all I need yes give us all the quick bites no no no quick bites are bad maybe quick bites are better in gaming form then I guess

that's pretty gaming that's what they should have gone for but I do agree with Tanner like I've never been in better shape I've never finished more games but I'd rather have finished eight games this year and be 15 pounds heavier and been able to travel and see Nina like we have to find

That's the most romantic thing you've ever said Thank you and it's been captured on the air But yeah I mean like gaming is fun But I mean I frankly it's been I've been doing too much gaming this year, but there's really nothing else to do, and I think it does help with stress and stuff, but yes. Gaming is part of your job.

It's true, it's true. You talk about games for a living, so, hey, it's fine. I still have my gaming license. Has not been taken away. Doing a lot of recording today. Is it my turn? I think so, yeah. So, Parr says he's got like some warnings for all of us.

Parr says, let's not forget that our much beloved retro consoles are an epidemic of their own, the capacitor plague. I've taken time from the dry husk of what was once an attempt at a social life to des solder, measure, and replace my capacitors in my machines. I got my Xbox in the nick of time as the infamous clock capacitor has spewed its corrosive insides all over the delicate traces of the motherboard. Remember, capacitor failure is a function of time,

not how mint the shell of your towbar expresses. Fellow gamers, I encourage you to act now before it's too late. Save your friends and family by staying away and save your systems by spending tedious hours of the soldering iron. They will certainly reward the end. effort so yes par with an ominous warning of the future of capacitors i didn't know about this the danger of these capacitors like i i figured if i bought a Sega Saturn now if it just looked nice on the outside it'd be fine i just know that if you bring a PSP on a plane you could kill hundreds

of people in the resulting crash well fortunately the the the the PSP would have killed another person that day yes uh those bulging batteries get to get away from them god uh yeah i man it sounds hard enough Beyond that, I've thought of like, oh, what if I ever had the Simpsons arcade machine, you know, if I could have one. But then I think, like, no, I'd have to, I got a CRT, I got a fix or what, just full on replace with a monitor in the same size. Like, it's more trouble than it's worth it. Think of the people that have pinball machines. Yeah. Every little part, every little moving part that needs to be repaired and fixed.

What I say is we need more digital games that are tied to our Facebook accounts. Yes. Bring back Farmville. Actually, don't you have a VR headset now, Bob? I do. Can I play VR Farmville? I don't know. Maybe. What have you been playing on it lately? I just play Beat Sabre. Dina, please read the next one by Victor. Victor says, quote,

Every summer I like to find a sunny spot that I can visit to play Boktai. And pandemic times were great for that. Fewer people than usual in nearby parks meant I had free reign to grab a bite from the tackle truck and sit in the sun, end quote. I don't know what Boktai was I was like oh what is that some kind of physical sport game and I looked it up and like oh no it's a Game Boy Advance game

Boktai is such a cool idea and there were three of the games the third one never came out here but unfortunately weird timing on Boktai kind of like Mario Sunshine in that well Boktai it had a solar powered sensor on it

that fed into the game and what you could do in the game because it was a game all about vampire such a cool idea it was produced by Kojima The problem was this game came out in the fall. And especially if you lived in northeast Ohio, it's getting colder and you're getting less and less sun every day. So I bought Boktai, but I had like precious few days in which I could play it in its intended setting.

Yeah. So that's why he has to find a sunny spot to play it. I don't understand when I read this comment, but that's so cool. And it was very smart because it came out before the Game Boy Advance SP. So it was a game in which you had to play using the Sun. So you were playing an ideal Game Boy Advance Conditions to recognize. You could finally freaking see the thing. Yeah, I, the gameplay was, well, I had friends who had it.

I never played it, but it was like you store up power in to fight the vampires with. And it's also like an easier difficulty if it senses you're out in the sun and then if you're in the dark. Yeah, it plays with the sun in all kinds of different ways. There was a DS one called Solar Nights, but it did not involve the sensor at all. That was not part of it. But I think that was a better game. but it was such a cool idea and we don't see these kind of things anymore

because systems aren't built to handle these weird accessories. Didn't that also come out of Kojima becoming a dad and being like these kids are inside too much these days? Like that's when he finally turned on how kids are too indoors with video games. I feel like maybe that helped inform it, yeah. But yeah, Boktai is really

cool and I like that people are actually getting more use out of Boktai now. I'm looking it up now and I'm seeing this article saying Kojima wanted to add a sensor that measured how your breath smelled. If you ate some garlic and breathed on the mic They'd all die

That sounds very good humor That sounds awesome But you would have to probably eat a lot of garlic For that to pick it up on your breath That seems impossible But he's a dreamer He dreams up the things we could never imagine He wanted the game that would like shatter if you died

Or whatever It'd become unplayable Though I mean again We're living in his world now Death Stranding We all laughed God yes I shouldn't have put off playing that game

Now it'd just be too depressing Right No I mean I want to play that too I started playing Watchdogs Legion, and it's just like, what the f I couldn't, after two hours of it, I was like, this depresses the hell out of me. I can't. And then you really realize how many games are like the aftermath of a plague. And then you look around saying, I'm living in this like, this environmental storytelling world with the graffiti is telling me things I used to see in video games.

But on your mask, like, yeah, I see a tattered old sign that said, wash your hands. I'm like, boy, time has changed. Like, especially in Left for Dead, like, when you're in the safe rooms between levels, there's like graffiti and it says like, this is not a virus. The CDC is lying to us. But yes, final comment, Henry, please. Yes, once more from silver-haired middle-aged tuxedo mask. They say, hey, retronauts, I've been working for the United States Postal Service. And as you can expect, I've been working an ungodly amount of hours overtime between the panic, online buying at the start of the virus to the current deluge of police.

political mail. I haven't had much time to play home consoles, but found use of my Switch it breaks slash lunches to play Animal Crossing and all the free retro games on the Nintendo online service. I have the Sega Genesis collection on Switch and I have to say Sonic 1 doesn't hold up at all since every single stage after the first is a slow, boring maze. I'm with you there. But Sonic 2 and 3 still hold up nicely. Super Mario Brothers 3 is still the best game of all time and the bite size levels are excellent fodder for my 15 minute breaks yeah it's uh the the switch has become a favorite machine in mind though i don't play it on breaks but i also do love the comfort despite me bragging about my nice new tv that i liked playing assassin's creed on

i have played more just as much time in haiti's uh doing handheld mode in bed i'm i'm a handheld switch guy i will never undock you got undock sometimes see i will call henry and not a true gamer for undocking. Come on, it's handheld. You know, some would argue that handheld is the pure experience. I see, casual gamers, maybe. Of course, I'm being facetious. But I will say, hats off to you for being a postal service worker.

I want to become a Blue Lives Matter guy, but for the post office. I need a special flag because they are the true heroes for all of us during the pandemic. I guess khaki shorts matter. Yes, yes. It's especially helpful for my job because we've got to ship out all the merchandise to people. now that we can't do conventions anymore Yeah, you guys have like sent out And you have to send out stuff across the border even

Yeah, international shipping rates have gone like way the hell up though unfortunately We can't do anything about that unfortunately Oh, although I will say Even though the pandemic hasn't affected a fan gamer much Which has affected us in that We had a lot of garment shortages So we'll have to like buy all the blank apparent to print stuff on but there's like a huge shortage of that because I guess from factories

working at a limited capacity lately oh I hadn't considered that man no one yeah so if you can't find stuff in certain sizes uh that's because of the shortage well your chee a shirt was definitely worst the weight that I got this year oh yeah yeah we're we're doing persona four stuff now I enjoyed that one she's uh she was she was my girl in that game if uh a lot of people love her I do I don't know what she's like so okay well she she likes to eat white food apparently she likes to eat steak and she likes kung fu like that's uh that's her thing i i don't know i've seen folks who prefer uh reset i think i've i've seen a lot of reset or uh now uh yeah i've seen a few nato fans also i like chia's first voice that's all i'll say oh my first voice prefer i mean like if i could have dated kanji i would

have but you're you're strictly heterosexual in the world of persona and that's how i Atlas demands I be, unfortunately. There's no morality except it's all heteronormative in this game. Well, the real punk thing is obeying the rules as I learned. It's true. It's true. You don't prefer the Vancouver voice actor. Oh, I didn't know.

A nice Vancouver girl. Is that who the new voice of Chi is? Yep. I just listened to your guys, Ed, Ed and Eddie podcast. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Well, you know, she's... I know you guys record that like five months ago, so I understand if you don't remember.

She does a great job, but I just was too used to the first voice. actor the foist one the foist oil uh but yeah thanks so much for listening to this podcast everybody hopefully it wasn't too depressing and hopefully you're not laughing at all of us naive nellies on election day saying they had no idea what would come next but uh yes uh just a fun episode to catch up with all your questions and comments will be another one of these in the future but thanks again for all of your kind comments we are just so happy to do this uh for all of you and we're going to keep doing it in the future and it's been frankly it's been great to be able to devote my life playing video games and podcasting

because all I want is for time to go by faster and these things really help time go by faster but let's go around the room and we'll talk about what everybody's doing. Nina, what are you up to? Where can we find you and support you? I am on Twitter at Space Coyote. That's Space Coyote

with an L at the end instead of an E. You can go to spacecoyote.com to see my art and print shop and comics. More relevant to this podcast go to fangamer.com and click on collections, sort by artist, and click on Space Coyote. That's where you can see

all the official merch I've made for video games like Goem on, Conquer, Okami, Metal Gear Solid, Sound the Hill, Dark Souls, Undertale, and more. And remember, you've got to prove your worth as a gamer. If your shelves aren't overflowing with game plusches, you're casual. Nina's calling everyone out

there a coward. Prove her wrong by buying things from fangamer.com. And I've been really enjoying Nina's art streams too this year. I just wanted to say that they've been a nice fun distraction on Twitter and Twitch as well. We do an art stream,

artist art stream every Thursday and I'm usually the last Thursday of every month. And Henry, how about you? Where can we find you? And I know you do a podcast with me. Yes, Bob. You know, the retronauts listeners probably know this already, but if you don't, please check out the two podcasts, me and Bob do every single week.

Talking Simpsons and what a cartoon. Talking Simpsons is where we go through every episode of The Simpsons in chronological order. At the time you're listening to this, we just started our new programming style of doing season two and season 12 alternating so that's going to be a whole lot of fun for a 2021 and what a cartoon is where me and bob talk about a different animated series in the same way so if you'd like a retro remembrance of shows like eke the cat or batman beyond i think

you'll have a good time listening to our podcast so please check those out and those are supported on patreon at patreon.com slash talking simpsons where you get a ton of bonuses on top of those podcast a week early just for five bucks a month and even more ten bucks a month so please check all those out talking simpsons what a cartoon in patreon.com slash talking simpsons so as for us at retronauts you can find us on twitter at retronauts and by the way retronauts is fully fan supported if you want to check out more of the show and get some cool stuff on top of that please go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up at three bucks a month to get all these episodes one week ahead of time and add free and sign up for five bucks a month at patreon.com

slash Retronauts to get two bonus episodes every month. We've been doing this for over a year now. So if you have not been on that tier, you've missed out on quite a few bonus episodes, probably over 20 by this point. So there are 20 plus full-length episodes on the Patreon right now waiting for you if you have not been part of the $5 tier. And again, two every month only for people at the $5 level.

And you'll also get access to Diamond Fights Weekly column and podcast about this week in retro history. So please check that out at patreon.com slash Retronauts. me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, and that is it for this episode, Retronauts. We'll see you again for another podcast. Goodbye. Thank you.