Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 65: Resident Evil

Episode Date: May 9, 2016

Sorry to make you feel old, but Resident Evil turns 20 this year. And since we games journalists can't help but be obsessed with anniversaries that end in a 0 or a 5, it's only natural that we record a Retronauts retrospective on this rich subject. On this episode, listen in as Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, and guest Dave Rudden explore the first three Resident Evil games and their surprisingly convoluted histories. (And we at least make an effort to keep the regurgitation of tired memes to a minimum.) Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

This week on Retronauts. Resident Evil. Hello, everybody, and welcome. Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new episode of Retroids. I'm your host, Bob Mackie, and I've got a little bit of the G-Virus in me right now. And my green herb today is double-shot espresso, so yes, I'm a little sick. I see your handshaking. I know.

You're really loading up on it. Well, I need to just vibrate home. Who else is here today? Oh, are you pointing at me? Oh, hi. I'm Jeremy Parrish. Hello. Hello.

And Jeremy, we all know who you are. You're one of the retronauts partners in crime. But who is our special guest today? I'm a member of Stars, Dave Rudden. I thought you were a member of Lasert Time. Oh, that's true. I'm also a part of that. Okay.

You can do both things. The star of laser time. The stars. So, Dave, today's topic is Resident Evil, but before we start, Dave, are there any wrestling references we need to get out of the way first? If you know Dave Ruddn, he has his own wrestling podcast and he likes wrestling a lot. I want to make sure we get these out of the way just in case we miss them. I do host the Cheap Podcasts on the Lasertime Network, but I can't think of any Resident Evil.

Okay. This could be one of the few Capcom games without wrestling references, but, yeah. So, yeah, today's episode is all about Resident Evil. I think we did one of these in the past when I was at Retronauts with one up, but it was kind of like a scattershot thing, just a reaction to the Resident Evil 6 trailer, if you can imagine, you know, that period of history. But I decided, like, we're going to revisit the series today, talk about the first three games, their influences.

Try to do a deep dive on these very interesting and very important games that have maybe not aged as well as we would want them to. So to start off, I did want to talk about the influences for Resident Evil, and I'm curious if you guys know about any of this stuff. So, what really, Resident Evil is kind of a mix of two games that already existed. One of those is Sweet Home, a 1989 Capcom Famicom game based on a movie that had been released at the time, a horror movie. I don't know if I'd call Sweet Home Alabama. I kind of like, what's her face.

Have you been to Alabama? Oh, wait, Reese Witherspoon, right? Yes, Reese Witherspoon. Yes, different movie. Yeah, you're trapped in Rees Witherspoon's house. You have to escape. No, that's, okay, Indie Gamer. Some indie group needs to make that.

But no, Sweet Home was this ambitious action adventure slash RPG where you explore Mansion and you swap between five different characters, each with different abilities. And this really formed like one of the... So how is that different than Maniac Mansion? Maniac Mansion does not have turn-based battles. I should. Yes, I told that would be awesome. But actually, Jeremy, when I was doing research on Sweet Home, I did, I was thinking a lot about Maniac Mansion. I mean, I'm always thinking about Maniac Mansion.

But, yes, I mean, you go into a mansion, you're swathing between characters, you're solid, solving puzzles with items. It is very maniac mansiony, except that, well, I guess in maniac mansions, your characters can die, but in this game, they usually die through like battles, like RPG battles. It looks really interesting. It's kind of cumbersome with only a two-button controller. I've never played it. Have either of you guys ever heard of or played this game? It does sort of come up a lot when we talked about Resident Evil. Yeah, I've only heard it in Resident Evil conversations, but I've absolutely heard of it, but I have zero interest in Resident Evil type games. I see. So, Jeremy, I think I'm here.

Jeremy, I think it's important to have a, maybe somebody who is not as an about the game, just ask questions. So I'm happy to be the idiot in the room. Yeah, somebody's got to be the idiot in the room. So, barred for Resident Evil, we have some very, very essential things for Resident Evil that we see in Sweet Home. We have limited inventory space, which would be a mainstay, a very annoying mainstay in Resident Evil, up until the more recent ones. We also have the famous door opening animations where in Resident Evil, they were really more meant to mask loading times. But they also add to the atmosphere and just like giving you a little bit.

of a period of dread to like, oh, what's going to be around this next corner? So, yes, those were in this Famicom game that did not need loading times. And we also have different endings, depending on who survives, which would be something important in the first Resident Evil game. We have a narrative told by notes and diaries left behind, and we have safe rooms for storing items. So those are some very important, very Resident Evil-y, like just ideas that would surface again six years later with Resident Evil.

So you guys have never played this in any way, I guess. I've always wanted to, and I think I maybe play 10 minutes of it, but it is fully fan-translated. I believe I talk a bit about it on our fan-translation episode from, I believe, 2013. So go out and play it if you can find it. It's easy to find, by the way. So the other major influence on this game is obviously alone in the dark. Does this ring a bell for you guys, alone in the dark, outside of the bad Ova Bull movie? and the kind of

I heard it was like mediocre reboot they did in late aughts Alone in the Dark Late Otts Yeah apparently I played the original Alone in the Dark on Macintosh Before I ever heard of Resident Evil

So I played a little of it And said, eh It doesn't do much for me The horror just doesn't really appeal to me That much. I try playing Darkseed also And that game didn't do much for me Even though it was Oh Dark Seats.

H.R. Geiger's art The adventure games I mean I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings that I don't think the Darkseed games are very good And I agree Especially dark C2 Kind of funny

But alone in the dark Jeremy This is even Just as convoluted, just as cumbersome Just as like adventure gamey Asres and Evil But a huge step down in graphics Because it came out three years earlier Sorry four years earlier

It was a big step up in graphics at the time Because it had like You know 3D characters Polygonal models and everything like that That was really I mean it was pretty cool looking at the time Yeah and I mean It was a very ambitious game

and obviously very influential. It hasn't aged very well. I would watch a let's play, but it's very fascinating to watch these games because you would watch this and say, I'm glad I'm not doing this, but I can at least experience it. Yeah, I do remember seeing like previews for,

it was probably Alone in the Dark too, after I'd played Resident Evil, and these previews said, like, alone in the dark is like the, it's what started the, you know, the 3D survival horror idea, but when I went to play, it's like this is two conversations,

and I'm just not quite into the story. Yeah, if you want to go back to Lone the Dark thinking it's going to be like Resident Evil, it's really not. I mean, combat is even less of something you do in this game. You're really just running away from things and solving puzzles. And when you have to do combat, it's hilarious. You're just a middle-aged person like kicking at a zombie or firing one of the few weapons you have. But some important things that came from this game that ended up in Resident Evil. We have environments with static camera angles and polygonal characters.

I believe. Originally, alone in the dark was supposed to, the backgrounds were supposed to be real photographs of a real place, but they didn't look quite right when those papercraft characters were skating around on them. So they eventually went with a more video gamey appearance for the background levels. They look a little like sketchy or paintery or whatever. And we also have the use of camera angles to obscure enemies, which is another big thing. That is kind of like one of the hallmarks of horror in cinema, just hiding things from the audience and shocking them when that thing finally emerges. And we also have, from Alone in the Dark, we have a male and a female playable character, but in this case, the difference is purely cosmetic.

So, yeah, I mean, again, Sweet Home might have aged a little better than Alone in the Dark. They're both worth revisiting, at least, through a let's-play format, and it's really interesting to see just how much Resident Evil depends on these two games, but it still kind of does its own thing in a way.

So before I get into Resident Evil, I do want to talk about the people who made the game, at least the first three games. That's what we're focusing on for this episode of Retronauts. And we first have Shinji Makami. You probably heard his name. Born 1965, he directed Resident Evil One, the remake of Resident Evil One for the GameCube

and Resident Evil 4. And I think, based on playing his games, most of them by this point, I feel like pulling the rug out from under players is what he likes to do best. Do you guys have a lot of familiarity with Shinji Makami games? I mean, he's done more than just Resident Evil.

Only goof troop really. A Goop Troop, yes. The surprise was Goof Troop is actually a sequel to a Japanese game you've never heard of. Really? Wow. Sweet home? It's a secret to Pirateship Higamaru, that arcade game. I've heard of that.

Yeah, it's like the same idea, but with chubby pirates and stuff. Dave, how about you? What's your experience with the Shinji Makami? Well, based on your list, I did play a lot of the Super Nintendo Aladdin, and I'm one of those people that is steadfast in that it's the better game. And we actually did a side-by-side let's play on Laser Times YouTube. page and I don't know it's just like a more

straightforward game and it's not as like you can get lost in the Genesis version. Did people? But anyway like yeah I just I really I don't know I was really into the Super Nintendo Aladdin. It just felt like a really streamlined platformer that just worked really well. I was too and not just because I'm a

Nintendo fanboy. We can have a sidebar about this because we're only talking about three games today but I feel like the Genesis Aladdin is cut from the same template as like five other games that Virgin Interactive made. It's just, they're just putting in different assets, and they all, they all feel the same. They all have the same level of design, and some of them are better than others.

I like Cool Spot more than I do Aladdin, but I do feel that the S&ES Aladdin does hold up as a better experience. It doesn't look as good, but I feel like it's a better game. I don't know, Jeremy, do you have any controversial opinions while we're tackling this issue in the World War Res and Evil episode? I never played the Aladdin games, but I would love to get Jazz Rignal to be on here and talk about. I think he would have a European bias. Well, no, Jazz worked at Virgin Interactive. He worked on, I know he worked on Lion King. I think he did Jungle Book as well, or he was there for Jungle Book.

Yeah, so he might have some insights into, you know, kind of the thinking and philosophy behind those games. Yeah, so in case you're getting lost here, Shinchmi did direct Aladdin for the SNES. He directed a Goof Troop for the SNES. He started a Capcom in 1990 with a Game Boy quiz game called Hattena no Dyboken. I don't know what that means. I'm sure it means something important, but it's weird. I think it means Hatenna's big adventure. Okay.

For some reason, it's a quiz game for the Game Boy. I think it's a quiz game about Capcom games. And we talked about Hideki Kami, who started on a ghouls and ghost spin-off of an incredible machine spin-off. In this case, Shinji Makami worked on another lesser thing for Capcom, a quiz game. But he soon rose to the ranks. His next game would be Who Frame Roger Rabbit for the Game Boy, which, based on the video I watch, it looks like the only good or tolerable Roger Rabbit game. It's like an overhead Zelda-style thing.

Have you ever ever seen this game? It looks kind of interesting. I've never touched it before. The Roger Rabbit game, no. Jeremy will probably cover it at some point. I just know it can't possibly be worse than the N.E.S. Oh, no, no. Nothing can be worse than that horrible war crime known as rarewheres who firm Roger Rabbit.

So, yeah, and then it's weird that Mikami rolled right from all this Disney stuff right into Resident Evil. He was essentially given a premise to work with, like, we want to make a haunted house game. And obviously, Night of the Living Dead was an inspiration for McCami, but he later cites the idea came from wanting to make a better zombie movie than the movie Zombie, which we know as Don of the Dead. Now, there's some weird controversy here that I've generated in my own mind, but there are all these conflicting interviews I've read where it's like, see, McCami cites Don of the Dead as an inspiration, but in Italy, Don of the Dead is an inspiration. There was this trend in Italy where it's like, we'll bring your movie over and then make unlicensed sequels. based on it. So I think McCormy didn't like Zombie 2, the movie in

which a zombie fights a shark. I think that's the one who did that disappointed him. Yeah, what's not to like about that? I know, but it's like, I think he did like Donna the Dead. That is a rich premise. I'm going off a GamePro Interfroom from 1996. I don't know if they were

doing all their fact-checking back then, if anyone expected them to. There was no real internet. So let's just say he was inspired by Romero, and this game takes a lot of cues from that. We're going to go over all the games. I did want to talk about who else is involved in these games. If you want to learn about Hadeki-combe, We did talk about him on the Devil May Cry episode.

Please listen to that. An update, he has still blocked me on Twitter. That has not changed. And I will never get to read his tweets again unless I log in with him to their account. So I'm still putting the message out there, Platinum guys. Please unblock me. I'm a nice guy and I like your games. I think if someone actually tweets Kamia to say, hey, could you unblock this other person?

He usually does. I actually messaged someone at Platinum Games, and they laughed at me. And it was one of their expat employees. So I think he's pretty firm on the blocking policy at Kamiya. So listen, guys. You got them blocked. My policy on Kamiya, not even once. Don't tweet at him, not even once.

Yeah, I did get Kamiad. So we have another guy. Kazuhero Oyama, I just included him because he directed Resident Evil 3 nemesis, which has an interesting story, and we'll get to that soon. He has not been credited on a game since 2003 is Dino Crisis 3, which no one remembers. And I'm guessing he ascended to management heaven, which is usually what happens. I feel like if someone is still making. games, and they've been making games for 20 years, they really care, at least in Japan. I don't

know. Do you agree with me, Jeremy? I think so, yeah. I mean, not just in Japan, but really anyone... Do we have management heaven here? We do. Okay. I wasn't sure. I just interviewed Dave Breivik, who created Diablo, and he left, I want to say, Turbine, because he was, like, the CEO, and he just wanted to make video games. So now he has a company that is him. making a video game by himself. That's always nice to see. In any company, in any pastime, I think, job, vocation, that's the word I'm looking for, if you are good at it and you keep rising through the ranks, eventually you will rise so far

that you stop being able to do what you were good at. Yeah, that's true. It's sad, too. I say this as an editor-in-chief. Making video games is really hard, and I don't blame anyone from all, and he'd be like, no, I want to push papers around all day. I'm kind of done with this. So, yeah, that's Kazohiro Ayama.

We'll talk about his game soon. Before we move on to the actual games, I do want to talk about scrapped ideas because Resident Evil One went through a lot of strange transformations. Not as many as four would go through, but they initially toyed with making RE1 a Doom-like game from the first-person perspective. And I can't imagine how much that would make you throw up on a PlayStation, just like polygonal zombies and 1996-level knowledge of the hardware. Eventually, there would be a first-person shooter already game on the PlayStation. That's Gun Survivor. did not ship with the gun here because of Columbine. But I don't think they could have pulled this off in 96.

What do you guys think? It just seems like a crazy idea to me. I don't think it's that crazy. Before Halo and before Marathon, which came before Halo, Bungy created a game called Pathways Into Darkness, which was half first-person shooter, half-adventure game. And it was, you know, it was an FPS, and you were descending into a pyramid,

and it was very, like, limited inventory, limited resources, limited time. It was a very stressful and dark and eerie game. And, you know, it was kind of chunky in the way that 1993, 1994 era first-person shooters were. But it's an interesting idea, and I'd love to see them revisit it. But I agree that an FPS Resident Evil in 1996 would have been such a terrible idea. I think they could have pulled it off, but it would not be as well remembered.

It would not have the same effect, I think, as what happened with Resident Evil. and evil and I don't know that I've ever played or wanted to play a first person

shooter on PS1 I played some N64 FPSs but Saturn and PS1 just like

ah no I no those systems just weren't right it can't even display like a floor

or wall that it looks like a water bed you know so yeah that year on the PS1 I was super

into disruptor I was thinking of that game yeah that was an original game I think for the PS1

yeah insomniaks first game I believe oh you're right yeah Okay, awesome pool day. So if you're listening to this, you should know who the Resident Evil One characters are,

but there are two characters who were scrapped from this. The game originally had more of a sci-fi futuristic bent until they brought in a scenario writer who actually knew what a story was and wanted to change it to match with the tone of the horror that they wanted to bring about. The two scrapped characters were Dewey, a wisecracking black character based on Eddie Murphy. I'm kind of glad they got rid of him because he probably would have died because that's what happens to black guys in horror movies. Yeah, he probably wouldn't have been handled very much.

And we have Geyser, a cyborg, with a cybernetic eye. And so I believe they turned into Barry and Rebecca, the characters. But which one's which? I don't know. I don't know. I guess probably the cyborg. Yeah, they melted him down into Barry. So, and some other things they dropped for Resident Evil, I believe these were on display at E3 at some point.

There was a real-time weapon system where you can change in real-time to different weapons without going to your menu. That would have been handy. Oh, for sure, yeah. And in a co-op mode. So, geez, this is a much different idea at first. And we have the unfortunate name Resident Evil, which didn't really make sense after the first game happened, right? I mean, it is like one of those things that's a little too clever for its own good. I think it fits the first game so perfectly.

But now when you go on to Steam, it will say Resident Evil slash Biohazard. Like, they understand Resident Evil is only for Americans and everyone else knows the game as Biohazard. I don't even know why they change the name from Biohazard. Not that that necessarily makes more sense. I mean, it's about, I guess you'd have the viruses and stuff, but it never really struck me as being like, you know, health scare. It was always much more zombies. I mean, it is about a virus. It's still a better name.

I wonder why they changed that. There's never been an official reason. I don't think there were other things with the name Biohazard in America, like the punk band, I believe, Biohazard. Oh, you know what? There was a genesis game called Biohazard Battle. Byer's bad. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you can trademark a term that's so generic. And can you?

No, but I think. I think they probably would have had leverage to say, no, you're causing confusion. Like, if you have two things that are unrelated, then a trademark doesn't really overlap. So, like, Apple Computer

got into trouble initially with Apple Records, who published the Beatles. And they said, well, we don't do music, so it's fine. And the court said, yeah, it's cool. You can't do any music stuff, but you can use the name Apple. So then when Apple got into doing iTunes and iPod,

Apple Records was like, uh, guys. So I think they had to settle out of court for a lot of money. Wow. But no one was buying biohazard and putting in their PlayStation. Like, this is a awful punk album.

This is not Biohazard battle. This is a PlayStation disc. How avant-garde. Okay, so, I mean, it's weird to see this criticism of the game at the time because I feel like these criticisms developed after release. But before release,

Capcom's Yoshiki Okamoto had some harsh words from Akami. and Yoshiki Okamoto, I believe, is a creator of ghouls and ghosts. That's Tokoro Fujiwara. Oh, who is... Okamoto created 1942, 1943. You're right. He's a Capcom old-timer, and his words, I don't like the curse that much on the show, but he told Makami, don't you dare put Capcom's name on shit like this?

Right before the game released, I guess this guy was kept in the dark or working on something else. Is this around the time the Fox Hunt came out from Capcom? I mean, like, can you talk? Can you... I thought the Fox Hunt was Konami. I'm almost positive it's Capcom. Maybe Dave can look that up on the wiki. It is kind of.

Wow, yeah. Maybe that was just like the western side of the company doing their own thing. Oh, no, I was thinking Project Horned Owl, never mind. Oh, Jesus. Why do I must I remember these things? So, yeah, I mean, it was said in an interview that McCommie gave, that Okamoto had reservations about all the stuff that we remember about this game that maybe we don't like. The limited saves, the bad controls, et cetera. All of these things that make up survival horror, Okamoto was like, what is this?

This is unplayable. I hope this does not ruin our concept. because what have you done? Good Lord. What have you done? So, yeah, let's move on and actually talk about these games. Alpha Team is flying around the forest zone situated in northwest Raccoon City, where we're searching for the helicopter of our compatriots Bravo team, who disappeared during the middle of our mission. Chris, you haven't found it? No, I haven't found it yet.

Bizarre murder cases have recently occurred in Raccoon City. There are outlandish reports of families being attacked by a group of about 10 people. Victims were apparently eaten. Bravo team went to the hideout of the group and disappeared. So the first game, known as President Evil, that released on March 22nd, 1996 in Japan, and just a week later in the United States. And yeah, we were coming up on, I mean, I think we passed. the 20th anniversary by the time this episode comes out. That's why I'm doing it. But it's interesting

to see at this time, we're starting to see the Japanese and American releases get much closer to each other. And they would be almost day and day with each other for a bit with the series. So again, this is a very unique Resident Evil game. I think the other games would change greatly after this, especially in terms of just presentation. So this game opens with a bang. It is a live action cutscene that really establishes the tone. I mean, I realize they're not working with any money, but I was always, like, blown away by this intro. I don't know about you, Dave. I'm not sure

if you've seen it, Jeremy. It's this great live-action intro. It is incredibly cheesy when they're introducing the characters. Oh, yeah. I think you're straining at the definition of the word great there. It's great. I mean, I can appreciate what they did with the money they had and the talent they had. It just, it really does a good job of setting up that Romero

movie, you know, Night of Living Dead style atmosphere. Dave, what do you think about these live action? Live action actors, Maybe actor could be putting it a little too Very generous I mean compared to the voice acting that's in the game That intro sequence is like Oscar worthy

That's true And Jeremy I could be just comparing this to what you hear afterwards Why this is like Godfather 2 And I mean if you want to compare it to something like Night Trap or Phantasmagoria sure That's because they don't have the actors say much And I think they knew that So yeah and we have

For the first and only time in this series live action actors. I mean, they would do the voices forever in the series, but we don't only see real people in this game. And I kind of missed that. I kind of missed that in these games. But, I mean, they were just playing with full motion videos. Everyone was.

It really was a great introduction. Like, you see a bunch of people in the intro, and then you get like this kind of, it's almost like a sitcom thing. But it's like, Barry Burton, Jill Valentine. And you see, like, a quick little, like a freeze frame. Kind of. It's like they're just standing in a room.

And like, Rebecca just gives, like, a little smile. And it's like, I've gotten there to the camera. Exactly. I've gotten their personality in like three seconds. That's good because in the game they really don't have personalities. But, yeah, everyone has like a cool little move. Chris is smoking, but they censor that out of the American version.

Even then the director's cut, because smoking is bad kids. Oh, yeah, the director's cut where they were going to uncensor everything and then actually didn't. And it never happened. We'll get to that soon. But, yeah. So, again, like in alone of the dark, we have a two-character system. It lets you play as either Chris, I'm forgetting his name. Redfield?

Redfield. Thank you. God. Jeremy knows it. I know all about Resident Evil Canada. I just don't want the game, okay? Or Jill Valentine. By the way, I am sick, so my brain is not functioning as it should.

So Chris's route is the more difficult route, and Jill's is the easier routes. Chris can take more hits, but he has less inventory space, and he starts with a lighter. And actually, that's established by the opening that's censored where he's lighting a cigarette. Which is cool. It's like just part of the world. Jill can take fewer hits, but she has more room to carry items, and she has the all-important lock pick. She is the master of unlocking. Yes.

So not only does Chris not have that. that lock pick he has to pick up these tiny little keys throughout the mansion to open little drawers that might have like F8 spray and one tiny key

takes up as much space as a bazooka right? It makes no sense that. I mean I think maybe by part three you would just get a keychain I think in part three there's like literally a key chain

to solve that problem because it didn't make any sense but yeah so and also the character you choose determines who your partner character is so with Chris you have Rebecca who goes on to Star of Resident Evil Zero

and with Jill you have Barry who went on to star in Resident Evil Revelations 2. Which is super long gap. Yeah. Kind of weird. And the story plays out. There is a twist in it. It totally got me.

I feel kind of stupid for it getting me because it's like, hmm, the smirking blonde character with sunglasses. Actually, did he have sunglasses this early? I don't remember. Yeah, he did. Okay, yeah. Of course he's the evil character.

But you play as... Was he wearing his sunglasses at night? I think he was wearing them inside the mansion. Yeah. At night. Yeah. At night. It's damn.

Indoor's at night. That's the coolest way to wear sunglasses. No, he has a darker secret than itigaki. Whoa, that's pretty dark. So you play a special squad sent in to find out what happened to the Stars Bravo team. You are the Alpha team. The big twist is Albert Wesker. He's secretly an agent of the nefarious umbrella organization and intentionally is leading you to the mansion to get you killed.

And I believe, I couldn't find it. I literally was searching the script of the game. Is there something in this, Dave, about like he wants to get battle data for the creatures, like how they fight actual humans or something like that? I mean, he is, I don't know, but, like, at the end, he, well, he makes you go fight the tyrant. That's right. So, like, I guess that, yeah, it probably is. Oh, man, X Machina totally ripped off that entire thing.

Yes, and I guess Wesker would eventually become more British and hence more evil over time. Like, he just became British when he came back. Okay, that works. I can't remember if it works out the same way at the end of Chris's storyline. But with Jill, you also, there's, like, the double. whammy that also Barry is working with Wesker because he's being blackmailed or he's... Yeah, I think Wesker is holding his family hostage or can hurt his family or something happened.

Yeah, I remember being, like, floored when it happened. Barry's a family man. You turn that corner, like, it's literally the last place you're going in the entire game. You turn the corner, and boom, there's Wesker, like, sorry, I'm betraying you now. That was a sixth sense style twist for the, for 1996. Let's talk about the localization. Of course, we're going to bring up all of the iconic lines. I'm sorry.

I mean, it's played out. I think these were, like, the first internet jokes about video games. But these were things my friends. My friends and I love this game, but we would make fun of the voice acting. And the worst I can say about it is, like, they did try, but these are Japanese people directing actors. Yeah. And not in their own language. And these actors are probably saying things without knowing the context.

So we get some hilarious lines. The thing I will say about the localization, though, is that it's incredibly literal. That is where we get lines like you, the master. of unlocking, and I think even survival horror is a clumsy literal translation of an expression that does not really exist in English. I feel like that is just them trying to move a Japanese expression into English clumsily. Japanese game creators love to create their own genres for their games, or things like you know, how every tales of game has its own distinct battle system.

Active time, linear motion battle, surplus, charge, yeah. Alpha two. yeah so localization very very um very literal acting uh not great uh actually probably some of the worst in a game of this quality i think that we would hear and uh there was this weird i don't know if capcon ever said this but uh i've heard people make the excuse like no no it's it's supposed to be bad because it's like a goofy horror game but it's like i think they want they didn't want you to be laughing at these lines i'm pretty sure that they when they were hearing these lines in english they're like oh that's convincing you know i i don't think that they

knew these were going to be funny lines. I mean... Yeah, I mean, I can listen to a Japanese script and be like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. The tone's very convincing, but I have no idea if it was in the sense. For all, I know, all the voice acting in anime is bad, and it probably is. So, again, we have the controls, which I did hear a similar argument, too, that they're supposed to be bad.

I feel like you could not have made this game control any better in 1996 with a digital game pad. I can't imagine another way to do this that would make sense with switching camera angles. So just sorry to peddle back to the localization thing. You mentioned that was one of the first internet memes. Are you familiar with a video or I guess audio file called Resident Gigolo? Yes. So that was, I remember when that made the rounds that showed up on IGN and it's just like they took a bunch of voice clips from the game and put them together in ways that makes it kind of sound like two of the characters.

are having sex. Oh, right. Yeah. It's like, here, use this. Apparently, I found out after the fact that that was created by the dudes who worked at the Babbage's that I always went to. Oh, wow. In Abilene, Texas. Wow.

They were like, oh, yeah, that was us. When I was thinking of it being the first meme, not really, but, you know, one of the earlier ones, I never, I totally forgot about. No, it was. I mean, that was like 1996, 97. That was really early, like, there was barely an internet at that point. I will not embed it in this audio file just because we try. to be... It's just voice acting from the game.

Come on. But it's all right there. It does give new meaning to like phrases like Chris is our old partner. Yeah. And you'll see. Yeah. And here take this. Okay, let's move on.

So again, the controls, I don't think, I mean, the criticism I will give this series is that they held onto them for too long. They were not necessary. And I go back and I play the remakes with better controls. And I feel like, oh, this is fine. Like, this does not ruin the experience for me. But again, I feel like they could not have done a better job. in 96 with the camera angles because you need to have a consistent forward button.

I mean, it is like controlling a radio control car, but I can't imagine it being better. What do you guys think about that? I recently played a couple hours of the Residential remake on Xbox 1 PS4, and they do have that option of you can just literally go in the direction that you're pushing, but the problem is that it gets discombobulating sometimes when you switch camera angles. I agree with that, yeah. The tank controls, you would know, like, I'm still holding forward. I'm going to keep going forward.

I don't know. I don't buy that. I've played games where, you know, camera angles shift, and as long as you're holding in a set direction, you keep moving in the same direction within, like, absolute direction, within the game that you were. It's only when you let go of the controls, then you reorient. And I think that works fine. I'm not a big fan of the way you control.

Like, I would be okay with, you know, the camera angles. and the fixed controls, but the slow way in which you swivel and turn, to me that really kind of breaks. That's one of my big problems with the game is I feel like, you know, it's great to try to create tension and to create like a sense of,

wow, I'm overwhelmed, but don't do it by like making completely ridiculous controls and have no basis in real life. Like if a zombie were creeping up behind me, I would not kind of wheel around slowly. Doof-Bases. But what if you're really scared? Yeah.

I know what you mean. Like, it should be hard to dodge zombies. It should not be hard to, like, run down a hallway, you know? Like, I do see that, but... You shouldn't have to stop in place to shoot a gun or swipe a knife every time. That would not change for a while. We wouldn't get the quick turn until three.

But, yeah, it's funny that the Dual Shock versions of these games fixed nothing. It's like, you can have tank controls with analog sticks. It's like, oh, thanks a lot, guys. Thanks for selling me on that feature. It was a total lie. So, yeah, again, more conventions borrowed from other games that came before. We have door animations, which, again, were two mask loading times, but they were very effective in getting you to brace yourself for whatever you would see next.

We have item boxes, which were friendly, and they let you drop off items, and they had like a magical tube system between them, and you could pick up items you dropped up somewhere else, and we have the ever-present herbs and herb combining, which have been like a staple of Resident Evil, that's how you gain health. And again, Resident Evil at this point established the elaborate networks of locks and emblems and cranks. And they try to justify them within the fiction. And it sometimes works.

Makes sense in Resident Evil One, because you are in a mansion presumably owned by a crazy corporation and in person and whatever. But then you go to two where there's, I mean, it's starting to jump ahead, but like, why is there a tiger with gems in his eyes in a police station? I will tell you, Dave. They thought about this. and apparently that police station used to be a museum

and also Chief Irons is crazy so he'd set all that up it doesn't really work that well but they at least tried to justify it in some way so I appreciate that I mean it is ridiculous and these things would eventually get out of the series

when you could just kick open doors and stuff and it became an action game so what else? There's no UI which I find a very interesting choice in a game from 1996 I think it helps sell the hoard and I have like meters on the screen

or like items or inventory things I mean there's a hell meter on the menu screen, but you really look at your health by judging your character's body language. I think there were like two states, maybe three states, not damage, a little damage and like about to die. Yeah. So yeah, that was a really interesting way, a very minimalist way to communicate information to the player, but maybe not enough just to keep them in the dark. Like you don't know how much ammo you have in your gun, for instance. And you can always like, the funny thing about Eras and Evil is you can cheese it and be like, I'm out of bullets.

I'm going to go to the menu, load my gun in the menu, and jump back. It's like you can freeze time to load your gun, but not to do anything else in the case. game, which I'm not complaining about that. One thing I will complain about, though, is on an episode we just recorded today, we were talking about how oftentimes Japanese developers would make games harder for Americans because of the now defunct rental market. They did not want people to rent the games and return them, rent the games and play through it, and then be done with it.

And I feel like finding out what they changed about this game makes me mad, because I would have had a much better time with it if they had not removed these. things. So what do they remove from the Japanese version? AutoAim. They removed auto aim. Are you kidding me? I'm not kidding you. That seems so important because if you can't see an enemy in the later game, you can just pull out your gun and your character will move the gun towards the enemy. So you know, okay, there's something coming towards me. In the American version, the English language version, that does not happen. What else had they changed? Well, they also eliminated some save ribbons. So there are a fewer saves in the game. They made this game a real

bastard. I'll tell you what. And you can also take more hits in the Japanese version. Enemies have less health. You do more damage to them overall. And they were going to do this. Thank God they didn't. But they were going to make it so item boxes weren't interconnected. They really wanted to make this

game intolerable for American players. But I'm glad they at least held back a little bit. I do want to play the Japanese version because I find even when I play as Joe in the American version these days, it's too hard for me. I'm a baby. I'm spoiled. I don't know. Dave, what do you feel about the difficulty of Resident Evil? I played a bit of it recently, and I'm like, wow, this is way harder than I remember.

I'm so spoiled. Yeah, I mean, just playing the remake for Xbox One, I expected they, like, would have made certain things easier, and they probably have, but it's still not that easy. I mean, you still have to be very, you know, judicious and think through almost every enemy you're facing. That's true, and it is really... What items you're picking up, it's just, like, there's a lot of, like, weird strategy you have to think of, like, do I need this thing right now? Do I know where it goes? Right. Otherwise, one of my inventory slots is used by it.

It's really just keeping track of a bunch of different economies. Like your health, your bullets, items, things like that. It's like, do I want to kill this enemy in this hallway? Or can I run by him every time? Because even just getting hit once can be a total pain. That could just be one herb that you would need later. So it's always about measuring these economies in the game. And as I said before, Makami always likes to put a big surprise in his game.

And this one, I think it was when you return to the mansion, you're going to be like, oh, this will be easy. I killed most of the zombies. No, sorry, there are these things, these giant swamp thing creatures called hunters that can decapitate you in one hit. So that is like, I feel like one big surprise is always part of McCommi's bag

of tricks, and that was it. You would be confident leaving the mansion, like I know where I'm going. I've killed these zombies in the important pathways, but no, you come back. And the first thing you see is this full motion video of the character's point of view, like stalking down the hallway coming right towards you.

So that is his big surprise. I mean, there's also the iconic surprise of the dogs jumping through the windows. That's right, yes. The fenestration is another one of us. Sorry, if something is being thrown into, that could be re-fenestration, right? If something's going through a window into a place instead of out of a place,

maybe there's being fenestrated. I don't know, but listen, I can't, I can't figure these things out. The liquors are also weird in that, like, I think they're the first things you run into in Resident Evil that you can't explain as being like something infected with a virus. Like, there's humans infected with the T-virus.

They're the zombies. There's dogs. Those are the cerebrus or whatever they're called. Then even like the big plants, you'd be like, whatever. Maybe they had a big plant. Everybody's getting this virus. Yeah. But like what?

Now there's these giant lizard creatures. Yeah. And I think, like, there has to be some explanation. They always try to justify something with, I'm sure your Resident Evil lore masters can let us know. But there's always some enemies that don't really make a lot of sense just for the sake of variety. And this game has the most endings of any Resident Evil. I feel it's a very Japanese way of rewarding players. where there are these different hierarchies of endings.

So your ending depends on A, which character you choose. B, if you save their partner, C, if you save the character you didn't choose, who's being up who is being held in the basement or something like that. And the final one is if you blow up the mansion. So there are all these variations on these different endings that you can get, and I believe there are different rewards for getting the best ones, am I right? Yeah, I can't remember if this was, if RE1 or RE2 started it. But before this, I had not played a game that gave me a rating at the end.

That's right, yeah, like an S rank or an A rank or whatever, yeah. So, like, my first time I used ink ribbons all the time. I used F-Aid sprays all the time and just got the worst ranking. And, all right, well, I'm going to play it again anyway to save this new person, so let me try it. And Resident Evil One is the most like an adventure game this series would ever get. I find the puzzles can be as awful as your classic adventure game puzzles, including some where it's like, where do I find this emblem? Oh, I have to go into the inventory, rotate the book, and then, click the button and the book will open. You never have to do that. The game never tells you

you can do that, but you actually have to go into your inventory and, like, tear through things and look at them from different angles in order to get items to solve puzzles. This game really takes the spirit of those mean adventure games and applies into a more like action context. Not quite the action we'd see in the next game, but still a little bit of action. And I guess we can talk about remake, that's capital R.E. and then make. The great, great, Great remake that came out for GameCube in 2002, and last year was released for everything. Definitely, I think, the best way to play this game, would you agree, Dave? I don't know if you have any experience with this, Jeremy, remake, the Resident Evil remake.

I don't really. Yeah, I've never finished the remake. I mean, it's harder in a way that, like, the zombies at a certain point, they get stronger, and you have to douse them with fire before you can get rid of them. You do have the infamous crimson heads. So any enemy, any zombie that you don't burn. after killing them they come back

stronger and meaner and that is one of the big surprises in the game like that is not revealed I mean everybody knows it now but that would not be revealed until like maybe a fourth of the way

through the game with a cutscene and then you're like oh shit what happens next but apparently this remake did not sell well they were going to do more and they are currently working

on a remake of part two which I don't think is going to look anything or play anything like part two but I feel like this remake is made for people who experience the first game

because it is made to screw you over if you remember the first game like oh I'll just go here and there'll be something completely different like it stands up on its own definitely I think it is like the most definitive expression of Resident Evil in its tough as nails adventure gamey format and they add a lot of new content like this new character Lisa Trevor who's like this elephant man kind of creature

who kind of stalks you and has her own sad story I will recommend it it's still too hard for me but I do feel like it is like the definitive Resident Evil experience and we also have the non-definitive Resident Evil experience which is the game Boy Color version, which actually exists and you can play it and it was re-released, sorry, it was leaked

a few years ago. Dear God, the best thing I can say is that it's functional, have you guys seen this in action? Okay, yeah. David, you see this? But I've seen video. I didn't, I know of, didn't it come out on game.com, like that little black and white? That was something else. That was Resident Evil 2 and I have not

seen that yet. But this Game Boy Color version was a complete port, I guess you can call it, of Reson and for the Game Boy Color. I mean, they did some magic things on Game Boy Color. Dragons Layers on Game Boy Color, which is bizarre to me. But, yeah, like, if you look at it, it looks like it plays exactly like Reson Evil should,

but through, like, a weird Game Boy Colorie filter, obviously nothing's in 3D. And Capcom kind of was like, this is embarrassing. Let's not release this. And they were going to release it around 2000. So instead of that, we got Resident Evil Guide, which we won't talk about. That's Resident Evil on a boat. And I do want to talk about the director's cut. which kind of was released to give RE2 some more development time, which it needed.

We'll talk about that soon. Unfortunately, the director's cut did not restore the censorship, the cut scenes, rather. It did add an arrange a mode that I feel was very much like a Master Quest version of Resident Evil with new costumes, new item placement, stuff like that. I love seeing that in games, but unfortunately, you couldn't see the rad footage of Chris smoking a cigarette. You couldn't see, in the beginning, they find one of their companions. They lift up a hand that's still attached to a gun. I believe it cuts just as soon as you get to the fingers in the American version. That first scene where you see a zombie chewing on one of your partners.

The head rolls away, right? Yeah. But, I mean, the big draw for me for the director's cut was that that came with a demo disc for Resident Evil 2. Oh, yeah, and I played that a whole lot. I got so much life out of that. It's not even funny. But that's kind of what you did with demo discs back then. You just would play the living crap out of it.

Because what else would you do? And then I think the director's cut also had a sort of directors cut because then there was a dual shock version. Yeah, I should say there are so many versions of this game. There is like, no, no, actually, I don't think they release this for GameCube because there's like a weird, like they release RE2 and 3 for GameCube, and then they release those versions for the Wii. And they're not remakes. They're just like, here's the PlayStation game, it runs on your thing for some reason. So yeah. I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. Hey, Hey, everybody, and thanks again for listening to this episode of Retronauts. It's a bit of a weird one for me because I was incredibly sick during this entire recording weekend and one of our guests dropped out at the last minute. But I think I made the best of a bad situation.

And if I'm more mumbly and stumbling than I usually am, you know the reason why. There's a good one this time. So these midway point commercial breaks are going to become a regular part of the episodes I produce at least because I find they work incredibly well. We were just at the Midwest Gaming Classic not too long ago, and a few people came up to me and they told me that they wouldn't have known about our master system panel if not for the commercial I threw into the Pokemon. episode. And if you made it all the way out to

Milwaukee to see us, thanks so much for coming. It was a great panel, and it was great to just hang out with so many Retronauts fans at the end of the night. It's been a while since I've been around so many fans of our podcast. There's a 99% chance we'll be heading to Portland again in the fall, but we'll be sure to let you know when we know. And as always, I'd like

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This May, I'm kicking off an ongoing weekly live stream of the Super Famicom game Marvelous Another Treasure Island. And if you're thinking, I have no idea what the hell that. is, well let me tell you, Marvelous, another Treasure Island, is IGO Numa's first game as director. How Numa has been The Legend of Zelda's head honcho for basically the past 17 or 18 years, and Marvelous is a fun little Zelda-style super-fama-com game that really shows off his talents outside of the Zelda series. Anyhow, I'll be streaming Marvelous weekly on Twitch, and I'll be archiving those streams on our YouTube channel, so please make sure you're subscribed to both our Twitch and our YouTube channels to watch these videos as they come out. And if you'd like to know when to watch the streams live, well, I'll be letting you.

you know via our Facebook and our Twitter pages, so please follow those. It's not hard. Just click a thing and you're there. Anyhow, thanks so much for sitting through this commercial break. I'll let you get back to our Resident Evil episode. Please enjoy, everybody. So we're back. So we're back, and I want to talk about a resident-eval game That was never officially released. It's unofficially called Resident Evil 1.5, but it was supposed to be Resident Evil 2. And there's a very interesting story behind this in that the game got a second chance.

We're not talking about Resident Evil 4 today, but Resident Evil 4, I believe, got four chances. And like every iteration of that became a different game. The first iteration of Resident Evil 1.5, sorry, Resident Evil 2, again called 1.5, was planned for release in March of 97, just one year after RE1. And it was led by Hideki Kami, who we all know as the creator of Devil May Cry, And, you know, he does his own thing at Platinum now. But the developers weren't happy with the results and were somehow allowed to start over from scratch. Like, I believe the game was 70% complete.

And the programmers, the team just went to the executives and said, we cannot release this game. We don't like it. Shinji Makami hates it and it will make the series look bad. And the funny thing is, and Dave was just talking about this before we started recording, press moves so slowly at the time that this version of the game was previewed everywhere. And I don't know if the news ever came that this version was canceled, but I don't remember being surprised by Resident Evil 2 having none of this. Do you remember this at all, Dave?

Yeah, this also just, it reminds me of something with Resident Evil 1. Like, this series, they would show you early versions and then completely change things. Like, I remember strategy guides being printed in, like, GamePlayer's Magazine for Resident Evil 1, that when the game came out, the solutions were totally different. Oh, man. Were they based on the import version? No, I guess they came out around the same time. Yeah, I don't know what it was exactly, but, yeah, like I remember the hall with the paintings and the Ravens had a completely different solution, so I ended up dying in that room.

Yeah, it's possible they were just working with an older build. Yeah. And the major differences in this version, it looks very different than Resident Evil 2 that we know. The police station is much more modern with a very bluish tinge to all the lighting. There's no umbrella. Apparently they were supposed to have been shut down after the first game, and the motorcyclist named Elza Walker. was meant to be one of the main characters who was turned into Claire Redfield,

who we know is the true female character in Resident Evil 2. In this game, the two characters' paths don't cross, as they do in Resident Evil 2. The game was meant to have lower polygon zombies in order to have more enemies on the screen. And one of the things I remember most from previews, which I was excited about was the character's clothing was supposed to reflect actual damage.

So if you shot a zombie and got blood on you, your character would have blood on their clothing, or if they were attacked, their clothing could rip. I assume they're not going to be down to their underwear. That would be weird. But we finally got that dream realized with a third birthday. Okay.

I was going to say, wasn't that Akiba's strip game similar? Yeah, like you're taking clothes off. No, I mean, you were literally just like stripping people. Yeah, so, but in Parasite Eap 3, your clothes fall off. Elbleed also. There was a way that you could make your character gradually lose clothes. Which game? Illbleed.

Oh, ill bleed, yeah. I think you just would have to get like a better ending or something like that. I think so. It was a very convoluted way, but you could make it happen. I had no, the more you hear about the third birthday, the more it sounds like a Benny Hill sketch to me. I don't know if that's what they are going for. Oh, yeah. And so each character in this Residentable 1.5 had their own partner, as with the first game. So Leon had Marvin, the cop who dies, who appears to be based on Will Smith, if you look at him in the game.

He was not supposed to die originally. And Ada had John, who became the Kendo Gun Shop owner you meet in the beginning, who also dies. So the two partner characters were turned into two characters who were not long for this world. And the fun, awesome thing is This game was leaked in 2013. I have no idea how this version was leaked. I'm guessing that some journalists had a build that was sent to them. I mean, that's how they previewed these games,

outside of stealing them from Fimitsu. I'm guessing somebody had a build of it, and they just held on to it, and they found it. But the funny thing is, and I have not read an update on this in a year, they've been trying to hack the game into a playable state. They've been adding content to it based on, like, extremely fuzzy photos from magazines 20 years ago. And it looks interesting.

it looks like they've done a really good job. I don't know how playable it is, but you can play a lot of this version of the game that did not come out. And at the very least, it's worth checking on on YouTube. You can see this game in action that was never meant to be seen. And I find it amazing that both this

and the Game Boy Color port of one made it out to the public. Just because there are these strange artifacts never meant for us to see, but they exist in some form. And again, Resident Evil 2 in this form was around 70% complete. And I imagine that means

is there's a whole lot of the game you can potentially play. So if you want to check this game out, I'm sure there are ways to find it. I'm not being coy. I actually don't know how to find this version of the game, but it's called Google people. That's why it exists. So let's move on to Resident Evil 2, the big daddy of the series, at least in this traditional form, released in January of 98th in U.S. and Japan. I believe Japan again, one week later than us.

Wow. And Kami moved on from being a system plan or whatever that means to a director. So he directed this. And the funny thing about Kamiya is he does not like horror. he likes action movies. And this is not my comparison, I believe. Maybe Mark McDonald said it or somebody like that. But Resident Evil 1 is Alien and Resident Evil 2 is aliens.

Like there is still an element of horror, but it's really about like more about action, much faster pace, less dread, less suspense, just like kind of more action-based. And yeah, I mean, do you guys go with that kind of comparison? Is that a little too simple? Even from the opening cut scene, like, instead of, you know, running into a mansion, it's like all those crazy stuff happening out. Outside in Raccoon City, like the car crash and explosions and stuff like that? There are a lot more explosions in this game from the get-go. I think, like, in Resident Evil, one, the only explosion is if you explode the mansion. But this game starts with explosions.

And it also starts with two new playable characters. We have Leon Kennedy very much modeled after Leo DiCaprio. I mean, this was the era of DiCaprio's reign over cinema with the Romeo and Juliet's remake, if you want to call it that. And the, of course. Romeo plus, Julia plus. That one's actually called the romek. The romek. Okay.

Wow. I almost believe me for a second. And what else? Oh, yeah, Titanic. Duh. I mean, like, I do want to write an article about this, but Titanic had the biggest effect on Japanese games. For a long time, it was the highest grossing movie of all time in Japan until spirited away. And now I'm sure it's some Dragon Ball Z crap.

I mean, but they really honed in on Leo with, was it, Steve. Yeah, Steve. Yeah. Steve. Yeah. Code Veronica. Yeah, yeah, he is even more DeCaprio-esque. And we also have Claire Redfield, who we mentioned before,

who's basically looking for her brother Chris. I find it's an interesting, with Leon, it's an interesting reversal of the stereotype where it's like usually a cop's last day on the job is when they almost could kill. This is his first day on the job. Like, what a first day he's having. It's the I'm not even supposed to be here today kind of thing.

But, and again... I'm too young for this shit. Yeah, I'm too young for this shit. That's a good excuse. What's funny is that they had to... Okay, this game sucks. Let's re let's start from scratch. Let's do the most ambitious thing ever across two discs.

The series would never be this ambitious again. We have, again, a funny name system, the zapping system. Why is it called the zapping system? I don't know. But it's very interesting in that you choose which character you play, and then when you finish the game, you play through it again from the other character's perspective, different puzzles, different enemy encounters, and so on.

And apparently, this idea was taken from the movie Back to the Future Part 2. That's what inspired Kami to come up with this idea. Makami hated it, and I believe Makami eventually had a Disney himself in the project to become less angry about it. But this was all Kamiya's stuff. What did you think about it? So Resident Evil pissed off Okamoto. Resident Evil 2 pissed off Mikami.

Yes. I don't know if... Resident Evil 3, how does Kamiya feel about that? He was probably too busy being a badass, to be honest. He just blocked Resident Evil 3. He's just like blocked. Yeah, he blocked it from whatever was Twitter at the time. His GeoCity's account, I don't know.

But what's interesting is there are potentially four different variants on the same experience. So if you start the game with Leon, you play as Claire on the second round through. But if you start the game as Claire, that version of the game is different than starting as Leon, if that makes sense.

So essentially we have four scenarios, Leon A&B, and Claire A&B. And the B scenario is sort of like a Masters Questy kind of thing in which there is a new danger, which is this guy named Mr. X, who kind of inspire the nemesis from the next game. And Mr. X will just appear in a room, and he's very hard to kill.

I believe he drops items when you kill him, but basically he just kind of shows up and you run from him. So it's kind of like playing through the game with something more difficult happening and like higher stakes, I think. Do you remember playing through the B scenario at all, Dave? I don't think I ever made it through any of the B scenarios

because Mr. X just trashed me. Yeah, I did. And I also thought it was neat. I believe that the zapping system also had effects where if you took an item in one scenario wouldn't be there in the other. You could make things easier sometimes by moving things around. It was, it's kind of tough to remember because you are essentially playing the same game four times,

but with tweaks like a new character here, new enemy here, like slightly different items here and there, which I guess they probably also, you know, that was probably slight influence from the director's cut. Yeah, but yeah, because it would change endings and it was the way to unlock the additional characters, I kept playing. And, I mean, for that reason, it's still my favorite in the series. It's mine, too, at least in this older version of Resident Evil. And it's not a completely perfect contiguous world. I mean, enemies you kill with one character will still be there for the other.

I mean, it's not perfect, but it is interesting to see this story from two different points of view. And with this added challenge at the end, I do want to eventually go back and do that B scenario. I have the game on PSN. I need to do it. But there are some differences. This one, differences from one to two. an RE2 it's not so much about one central location

the police station acts as a hub but they kind of like the shuttle you around a different environment to keep the variety up I think like little kind of mini dungeons

in this game and I find the puzzles in this game are extremely simple like you got the manhole opener, use it in the manhole or you found the red key you open the red door with it

it's not it's not the same like going to the menu turn the book around open the book and do all this other stuff it's like they really just dial back on the puzzles, way, way back on the puzzles, which I appreciate. They weren't great in RE1. They were interesting and probably okay for the time. And in general, I think this game is a lot

easier. I don't know if you guys agree with me. In terms of enemies and in terms of what they gave you, it's still hard for me today to play, but I found it much more approachable, and I actually finished this game. I don't think I ever finished one at the time. Did you guys find this to be easier than RE1? I mean, it feels like they were, even in interviews at the time, they were worried about this series being intimidating for people. And so they wanted to make it more welcoming, but while still retaining that atmosphere. I just found RE2 to be a lot more easy,

but still have that kind of friction that's necessary. Yeah. I mean, I didn't really think of it being easier, but now that I'm thinking back, like, it is. Because I remember there is also this secret where if you make it all the way to, from like the explosion at the beginning to the police station. That's right, yeah.

If you make it all the way there, then you get to fight a zombie version of Brad, who was the helicopter guy in the first one. And I think you get like a new outfit when you get there. So it was just like, I remember eventually playing the game so much that I was like, all right, now this time I'm going to go on the, like you take no items and I think take no damage in that first run. So you have to like be really judicious with like the few bullets you have.

And that zombie takes like 20 bullets, I think, to kill like. Yeah, yeah, it's tough. But yeah, there's neat stuff like that in the game. And this time around there is a professional voice acting. This is a time period for Capcom where everything was very Canadian. So some of the first spoken dialogue you hear is, sorry about that. So if you weren't sure this was a game in Canada, I don't think they said a gain yet in that first scene, but they kind of worked in all the Canadianisms right in the beginning,

at least with the Canadian accent, in case you weren't aware of that. And Claire, who would debut in this, I think she was an actress on like a PBS show, a big comfy couch. Yeah, she also played Lydia on the Beetlejuice cartoon. Wow. Yeah, so I did recognize her voice from that. And yeah, she wasn't a lot of kids shows at the time. So she knew how to voice act.

See, I would have known that if Leonette called her babes. That's true. Man, that should be a cheat code. So the plot in this and in three actually are just really about escape. Like, get out, get out of the city. I mean, this game does flesh out the roots of the virus where it came from, like in any good action movie, how the cops are in legal with evil corporation. You know, like we own the police kid, that kind of thing.

But it's a very simple plot. I find the atmosphere is more important. important than the story they're trying to tell because, again, the Rest Evil timeline is worse than the Zelda timeline, I think. Like, nothing lines up, and they meant to have things lined up, but nothing really lines up. You shouldn't think too hard about it. And with this game, we also have the introduction of characters like Tofu and Hunk, which

would appear again and again throughout the series. Tofu, I believe, was, I think he was a special character you unlocked after beating the Hunk mode. Is that true? I think you had to get like an S-rank on Hunk mode. Something like that. You had to get like an S-rank in the game itself first, then you unlocked one of them, and then you unlocked the other.

But honk is the, or no, tofu is the most difficult one. Yeah. Which is just, he's just a big hunk of... Tofu. That's why I keep mixing them up. Yeah, yeah, me too, yeah. He's a big, like, block of tofu with just a knife. Yeah.

You've got to escape the mansion with just a knife. I like that. I've never been good enough to play, but I like watching the tofu run. It's just a hopping block of tofu, like, knifing zombies. And he starts out white, and, like, when he gets damage, he just becomes, like, more red. So it's like, you know, still showing off with, like, you don't have to go in the menu to figure out whether a giant piece of tofu is hurt. Now you know if your tofu's in pain.

Yeah. I feel like it's not really tofu and vegetarian if it's bleeding. Yeah, there's something in that. I don't want to know. And it's currently being remade. There was this recent announcement. It had to happen like late last year, late, late 2015. They just said we're remaking it.

I don't know what that means, but I don't think it's going to look or play anything like this game. I think it's going to be in the mold of RE6. Again, I hope I'm proven wrong But I feel like Capcom is not interested So badass Maybe just bad I think Capcom is not interested In making this kind of a game

Even though they were re-releasing some of the older remakes I don't know if you guys have any opinion on this But I really wish they would do a proper remake This is a very ambitious game I think they could have gotten more out of the zapping system If they did not have such a rush development schedule To get this game out in time Because again remember they made a game

It was scrapped and then Comey is like let's do something even crazier. And I just feel like there could be a lot more gotten out of that zapping system if they did it again. Any thoughts on the remake of this game? Do you have any secret wishes for how this will turn out? I mean, honestly, if they put the same level of detail they did into the RE make for GameCube, I would be happy because it's still my favorite of the series. And I thought the zeping, well, I mean, for 1998, Dave,

The zapping system was enough for me to replay it and see the little tweaks in the story Because I am a huge back to the future fan So like these little things Little ripple effects happening in the various stories It worked for me Yeah I think they can make a lot more out of it And one of the things that annoyed me about six was

It was kind of a bait and switch Like these characters will cross paths And you'll see different sides of the story But it was really just like Oh we want to reuse boss fights How do we do this? Oh these characters will fight the boss And then when you show up to fight it again

They'll be there So it's just like well thanks a lot guys Thank you. It all began as an ordinary day in September, an ordinary day in Raccoon City, a city controlled by umbrella. No one dared to oppose them, and that lack of strength would ultimately lead to their destruction. I suppose they had to suffer the consequences of their actions. But there would be no forgiveness. If only they had had the courage to fight.

It's true that once the wheels of justice begin to turn, nothing can stop them. Nothing. It was Raccoon City's last chance and my last chance. My last escape. So our final game we'll be talking about is I feel like an underrated Resident Evil game, and I feel that's because we were sort of fatigued with this survival horror by 1999, and that's Resident Evil Nemesis.

It was released in Japan, in December, sorry, September of 99, and U.S. in November. So maybe that delay is there to let us know that Ari was not as hot as it was just a year before. So this game has an interesting story as, like Ari 2 does. The original premise was set on a luxury cruise liner. This is the first I've ever heard of this, by the way, just doing research on this. And Hunk was the main character attempting to steal a sample of the G-Virus. That was going to be Resident Evil 3.

And later revelations, the DS and later everything else game would take place on a ship. But apparently, Sony announcing the PS2 disrupted their plans. And they had a game in the works called Resident Evil Guidon, which was going to be taking place between 1 and 2. They just smashed teams together and they made that Resident Evil 3. So this is so confusing because there is a Resident Evil guide-in, but that's the Game Boy Color one on a boat. Resident Evil 3 was supposed to be on a boat, but they never made that game. And Resident Evil 1.5, it's all so confusing. But just please leave a comment if you don't understand this.

It's just so confusing. I mean, Resident Evil development is just a crazy story of many false starts. But the main interesting thing about this game is the nemesis character, who, like Mr. X, is there to kind of break the rules of Resident Evil, follow you between rooms, and stuff like that and just be this presence that you can try to attack it's a bad idea

like don't do it just run from him and apparently this idea came from a stalking epidemic in Japan I guess the news was paying attention

to stalking and it gave Kamiha and Makami and Capcom ideas about like we can gamify this yeah gamify stocking and apparently I was reading

in a review Kami had a stalker apparently he had a stalker and the interview asked McCami like oh that must have been scary for him

and he said Yes, and the interviewer said, well, at least it was a woman, and McCombie's like she wasn't very attractive. So, yes, old-fashioned sexism. I might cut that part of this episode. But so we have Jill Valentine making another return, and she is inescapably a Tomb Raider reference, I think. Yeah, she's not dressed for the occasion. No, this is the worst Resident Evil outfit to wear a tube top and a miniskirts. And if you squint, she is Lara Croft.

Yeah, I mean, she's not the same. Her tube top is the same color as Lara's. kind of teal. I guess it's slightly more blue than Lara's, but come on. We are looking at a huge... Oh, you know what? You've done, you've invoked Tomb Raider, and now people are going to bitch at us

about how we said Laura. Lara. Laura. Even though that's how they say it in the games. Yeah, it's inconsistent in the games as well. I don't get it. Get some better direction there. But, yeah, like, again, they just wanted her to look sexy. That's their reason. Like, why is she wearing

this for a zombie opera? Oh, we want her to look cool and sexy. So that's why she looks like the way she does. It was a different time, people. And this game, I think, it really satisfied our desire to explore that ruined Raccoon City where we only got a taste of it in RE2. At RE3, you're spending a lot of time inside of locations, of course, but you do get to explore the ruined streets, which I think is something that we really wanted to do, but we never really got the chance because we were really just stuck in sewers in a police station and labs and things like that. So not to go on too long about RE3, it is a really interesting game, but some of the more important choices they made in this game, there is a quick turn finally. So this would persist throughout all Resident Evil's where I want to turn around. Instead of just slowly rotating my body like I'm in a microwave, I just hit like X and down and I spin instantly.

So you have that. And you also have a dodge button. If you hit R2 at the right time, you will dodge out of an attack, which is sort of like a weird kind of like shades of Devil May Cry Bayoneta kind of thing creeping into Resident Evil, where it's like, we want to give you a way to evade attacks because there is really no way to evade attacks before this outside of just being far from the enemy. So it's a little more of an actiony game. And one of the other features they added, not a huge feature, but there is a branching pathway system. Nothing is ambitious as the zapping system, of course.

But in certain scenarios, you have a limited time to choose between one of two choices. Like something will happen in the game and it'll, like time will freeze and a menu will pop up and you have a certain amount of time to choose between one of those two options. Like stay here or go there or attack Nemesis or run from Nemesis. I don't know if it really changes that much in the game, but it just feels like something that telltale would do later in a much better way. I think that's kind of reminiscent of the bit in Sweenitin 2, which did that come before or after. I guess it was about the same time.

Same year, yeah. Yeah, there's a bit toward the end of the game where you're like invading the enemy castle and something happens and they've like shoot an arrow or something at you. And you have like a split second, this dialogue. menu pops up and you can tell your sister to get out of the way. And if you don't choose that in time, and it's a really short window of time. Oh, I didn't realize I was in speaking, too. Yeah, then she'll die.

She'll get hit by the arrow, and it changes the outcome of the game. So it's like this just kind of unexpected thing, and it's really far into this mission you've had. You haven't had a save point in a long time, so if you mess it up, you really don't want to reset it. This sounds really similar to that, where it's like, surprise, here's a choice to make, You better make it fast. Luckily, I don't think there's anything in the game like that that dams you so hard to, like, losing a character forever. But I'm not entirely sure about that. When I was playing through this, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago for the second time, I feel like the choices weren't that important.

Maybe they just give you new areas to explore, different areas to explore. I feel like there's one or two times where, like, picking, there is a wrong one to pick and you'll die. But, yeah, I mean, most of the time it is. Do you want to stay and fight the nemesis or run away? And usually you want to run away. Though when I first got this game, the reason I didn't finish it until like two or three years ago is that I would always just be like,

I got to fight the nemesis right away because I'm going to get cool stuff for killing him and high rankings and all that, but it was just a terrible idea. Yeah, I mean, like he's really just there. I mean, I think the fact that you can knock him down or knock him out is just there to screw with your head because it's like he's just going to soak up so many bullets

you could be using for anything else. But then you'll get like a, in addition to your gun or something you'll get something cool or will be. Okay, I forgot you did get special items from that. Dave, so you played through this semi-recently if you go to YouTube.com slash Retronaut to 1, I think,

or just search for Retronauts in YouTube. I played through last Halloween a little bit of it. What did you think of it playing it again? I'm just curious. In terms of how it stacks up to the rest of the series, again, I feel this game has a bad reputation just because of when it came out. It's literally treading water

until they can get to a new generation of hardware. That's what this game is for. Get it out, get it out before the PS2, gets out, basically. I mean, because I love the first two so much, like being stuck with one character is a little bit, and you don't really interact with people on the same level that you do in the first two Resident Evil games where it's like, oh, you'll meet, there's like this Russian force.

I forget who they are and what they're about exactly, but, like, none of them really return and have this, like, lasting impact. So in that way, it kind of feels like a weird outlier where you never really, I don't, I mean, someone in the comments will probably. tell me otherwise. But like, you don't really meet anybody that you have a long-term relationship outside of Resident Evil 3. And I do remember some of the puzzles being really tough. Like, there's a music box one at the end of the game that just, like, you have to, like, you have to play this song backwards, and I just couldn't do it. I had to, like, it was really annoying because

I was, like, on public transportation, trying to look it up on my phone. And it's just like, this is. Not a good place to play Resident Evil 3. I will say you're right, Dave. I don't remember, I don't any real character from this game and it takes place between one and two so there's not a lot they can do

and like the plot of this game is like I forget what Jill is doing there but basically get out of the city before it's bombed

you find out it's going to be bombed and it's all about getting out of the city I forget who the villain is I know one of your friends is like a traitor or whatever

because that's expected at this point I think it takes place both before and after there's like a part where she is poisoned or something and she's out and it's like

oh there is the entirety of resident any will two. Don't worry. You won't run into anybody you know. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was a kind of a cop out, you're right? Like, I really wish there was more bleed over with R2. Again, though, this game, this is not excusing it, but this game was there to tread water,

there to just be something to play on the PlayStation before you forgot about that system entirely. So, I think they made the most of it, and I would recommend it, I feel of your, sorry, reviewers were kind of harsh about this because at the time, I think we were fatigued by the PS1, we were kind of tired of survival

horror, and maybe we were were upset that RE3 did not do enough to change things. But I don't know. I just feel like it is game that does hold up. It's a little simple. It's not as ambitious, but I do feel that it is still very fun to play. And things like the quick turn, things like the Dodge Button do make it a lot more playable than even RE2, which I feel like it's still a very playable game, even if it is a little hard these days. But... ...being...

...you know. ...now... ...and... ...their... ...and... ...the... So I have some final questions for you guys. We talked about all of these games.

And I want to know, from your perspective, and I'll answer last. How well do you think they've aged? And is it possible to recommend them to people who have never played them? Or are they just a terrible product of the era that we had fun with because we didn't know better? That's a loaded question. I'm just curious, do you think they're dated? Do you think people can still approach these as new players? I mean, the 10 controls make them kind of inaccessible to a lot of people, I would say.

I only was able to go back into three and play through it because I had this old knowledge of how it worked and knowing that like, all right, I better be, you know, I better be economic with all of the items in this game. I, you know, I knew these things ahead of time, whereas the game, like even the remakes don't really tutorialize that kind of stuff to say like, look, you got to, you have to be, you know, judicious and you have to, you have to take, like, be thinking about how many bullets you have, how many herbs you have, how many items you have. And to that extent, like, I would say, you know, play through the remake. If you really want to, like, get into these initial games, play the remake, maybe wait for two, even though I bet that won't come out for a long time.

2018. And then only if those two, like, make you so hungry for more, more lore than play 3. I mean, I will say that you have to play these games in a way you don't play games today in which, like, oh, that was a bad run. I have to reload my save because I took too many hits. I did a stupid thing. I wasted this item. Like, we are not used to that. We are used to games being like, oh, you died, here's all your stuff back. But this game is like, you have to keep track of your own progress. It's possible to screw yourself into a fail state unless you want to go through the rest of the game with a knife, you know? Yeah, I think, like, Brett Elston, who worked for Capcom at a long, for a while, he's talked about it on, like, on some of the Lasertime podcasts about how with the original Resident Evil, he had just saved himself into such a bad spot where he's, like, right before the tyrant has used basically every bullet in the nearby vicinity, could not find a way to come back and kill it. And I feel like that owes a lot to its adventure game roots, and which Inventure games were things you would start over to be like, I'm going to do these parts I know very well

and then I'm going to run up, run to that limit or run into that wall, and then maybe this time I'll get over that wall, but maybe not. Maybe I'll have to start over again. Yeah. I mean, all these games have a lot of backtracking. A lot of like you will run all the way across the math and realize, oh, I forgot to put this ink ribbon in the,

like I don't have room to get this critical item because I forgot to put the ink ribbon back in the item chest. And it's just like. And you could not actually drop an item on the floor. until RE0, which is not a good game. It's not very good. Yeah. So, Jeremy, does this just sound like hell to you, like torture?

I'm just curious. No, you know, the thing is, the idea of Resident Evil, I find really intriguing the amount of attention and care that have been invested in the games. I just don't find them enjoyable to play. Did you try? I forgot to ask you guys about our relationships with these games. I mean, did you try it at the time? Yeah, I bought both Resident Evil and two.

Oh, wow. Back when they were pretty new. You know, I got a PlayStation. and RE1 was one of the first games I bought and I went into it with high hopes because everyone said how awesome it was and I played maybe an hour of it and it was just like,

what alien needed you? I'm just curious. You know, I find like zombie horror to be incredibly uninteresting. There's a few genres in concepts that just are utter turnoffs for me and I can invest myself.

I feel like it was not as a popular, it was not as saturated. That and wrestling and... Uh-oh. Them's fighting words. Cowboys. There's just these memes and genres that I'm...

I can't get into. What if I told you they weren't zombies? They were infected with a virus. I know. Yeah. So, yeah, that just doesn't... I don't know. It doesn't do anything for me.

And the concept, you know, the setting or whatever, the premise, combined with the controls and the just unforgiving design I was just like this isn't worth it to me so fortunately I found the game used so I didn't lose a ton of money on it but you know I heard Resident Evil 2 was much better

so I picked that up right away and got like three screens into it and said yeah this is the same thing I hate this so in other words I want to like the series I want to and every game that comes out

I'm like this is going to be the one that turns my opinion around RE6 I tried so hard to get it like to be positive about that but then everything I saw and heard about it once it came out made me say yeah, maybe I won't do that.

You were right to dislike RE6. I didn't dislike it. Like, okay, so I saw like a really early version of the game and wrote a really positive preview because it seemed like it was much more thoughtful and dynamic with the environments. Like Chris had all these animations where he seemed to be like kind of, you know,

bracing himself against walls and stuff and just interacting with the environment. And it seemed really promising, but that was a hands-off demo. And then when I actually played it, I was like, oh, those are just like canned animations and the way they were playing it made it look a lot better than it actually is.

Yeah, I mean, we can address this now. My last question is, how do we feel about RE since it's changed from part four onwards? I'd like to do a whole episode about Part 4. It's one of my favorite games. I feel like it is like one of the best games ever. But I feel like Mikami left. Basically everyone left Capcom who was working on this series.

If you look at the credits for RE4, all the main guys are basically they're all platinum now and McCommi's doing his own thing and I feel like they kind of lost the magic with part four and five I'm sorry part five and six

but four was a huge change still very controversial we still have people saying that's not Resident Evil how do you feel about the games as I said four I feel like it's like just a perfect just experience

they took that idea of scarcity and made it more of an illusion like you always feel like you're on the verge of running out but they always just give you just enough to scrape by And I feel like there's just a healthy amount of friction, exploration, building your character in certain ways, building weapons in certain ways. RE4 is just perfect 5 and 6 were just kind of adulterations of that.

And I don't feel like it's offensive. I feel like Resident Evil needed to move on. I feel like Code Veronica and Zero were bad ideas. I feel like they didn't do anything new. In fact, they probably kind of tainted the brand for a bit. Dave, what do you think about the newer Resident Evil? Well, I've never actually really played much of 5 and 6. Four I loved.

Four is great. I play probably every two years. Yeah. And I think, I mean, this is a little bit hypocritical, you know, since I've said how much I love two, and I think that's my favorite in the series. But one in four were both, like, I think, the biggest, the most influential ones in the series

just because of how they influence games afterwards. Like, there were so many survival horror games on PS1 afterwards, like Overblood, and that's a weird one to start out with, Silent Hill, and, like, all of these franchises that spawned from that. And then just the over-the-show. older style of Resident Evil 4, that started to influence a bunch of shooters at the time. Yeah, it was incredibly influential. It still is. Yeah. Yeah. Jeremy, do you have any opinions about, like, the new Resident Evil and how it appeals to you, or how you feel like we're losing

like a form of expression that is no longer as popular, the whole survival horror idea? Nah, I feel like Resident Evil 4 needed to happen. I feel like it was chopping away a lot of dead weight. So that's fine by me. You know, I feel like Resident Evil 4. If I ever really sat down and really played it, I would really like it. You should play, Jeremy. But the thing is, I know my personality, and I know that I will want to, like, experience the whole series if I do that in. And I feel like nothing else is going to be that good.

So it's just going to be, like, this one game that I play and enjoy. And then I try to play the others, and I'm just like, what's happening to me? What if I gave you a hacked version where the title screen said Leon Quest? Part one of one. I know too much. I only actually played through three, Code Veronica, and Four, before six came out because I was like, I'm going to catch up in time for this game. And then when I started seeing reviews, I'm like, you know what, I'm done. After four, I'm like, I don't need to play five.

I don't need to play zero. So you didn't play six? Yeah. Okay. I didn't play. I stopped that, you know, Code Veronica and four, like those two were the last that I played. Yeah, sorry. No, four is a good place to stop, and we're going to stop our.

episode now. Thanks so much for listening to us. And I really hope R.E.2 is a, if it doesn't go back to the old style, I really want it to be a more thoughtful version of 4 instead of like, how can we make this stupider? You know, how can we make this less I don't know, less well-designed? How can we put a boulder in there for someone

to punch? Yeah, that boss fight sucks, by the way. I hate that boss fight. So I don't know a lot about 5 and 6, but I liked enough, like, Ford does keep enough of the spirit of the series where you still have to, like, think about your inventory system in terms of that suitcase.

Yeah, yeah. And things like that. And still had to be somewhat, you know, judicious about what you're using and what you're picking up and things like that. Did five and six, do they still have like inventory systems like that? No. They got rid of all that stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. Anytime I saw demos, it's just like, shoot everything. Yeah. And it's like, that's not what Resident Evil is about. It's about, like, even four, it's like, shoot the knee, do a kick. Like, think about, think about how you kill, take on these zombies. You can't just blow everybody away. Yeah, they did dial back on the complexity.

The complexity of the game, the exploration, like, even things like upgrading your weapons is not as fun anymore. Like, I really want them to go back to that. Maybe McCommie was the missing piece of the puzzle. Maybe it was one of the many guys who lost the platinum. But here's hoping for the best Resident Evil. I like you. I think Jeremy at least likes you in spirit. Sort of, yeah.

It's complicated. Yeah, it's very complicated. That's your Facebook status with Resident Evil. And it seems like Dave is a fan as well. So, yeah, thanks for listening to us Celebrate Resident Evil. Hopefully we weren't too mean to it. I still think the games are fun and interesting. and even if they aren't as playable today, they're interesting to watch

and just a window into the world of the 90s and what we were into. So, yeah, to wrap up, you can find us Retronauts on Twitter, Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitch.TV, and YouTube as Retronauts. I mean, that's as easy as that. And be sure to go to our blog, Retronauts.com, for all kinds of great extra stuff. And we're part of U.S. Gamer. So make sure you go to U.S. Gamer every Monday, and you'll see a whole post with this, the new episode, and it'll tell you what songs we use.

They'll tell you more information about the episode. it'll tell you, like, why we chose it and some other stuff. Neat links to things we talked about, videos. I always get questions like, what song did you use and where is this thing I can read? Just go to the U.S. Gamer blog post, people. It's that simple. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.

And also, please keep the reviews coming on the iTunes Music Store. Very few of you actually do it. It does not take a whole lot of effort, and it really helps our show Sorpass, like, Minecraft podcasts and the division podcast. Why is there, there's a division podcast? Well, it's more important than us, apparently. So, yes, please, please, please review the show. I'm kind of sounding bitter there.

I am bitter. I want to be number one, Jeremy. It's okay. I'm also very intense, and I'm sick, so I'm losing my mind. So, yes, Patreon. We are supported by Patreon. So please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. You can get these episodes early.

You can support the show. Our show is completely paid for by Patreon. We make very little money off of it, and we rely on you. So just for as little as two bucks a month, you can help support our show. I'm out of breath. Dave. Who are you, and where can we find you? I'm at Dave Rudin on Twitter, and I write and do streams and do podcasts for Lasertime.

Lasertime Podcast.com. There's a ton of different podcasts. A game music podcast, a video game weekly podcast, pop culture podcast, Lasertime. I host the pro wrestling podcast, Cheap Podcast, and there's a comic podcast, Cape Crisis. I am still thinking about what wrestling crossover there is. I'm going to say that, like, Leon has a suplex in Resident Evil for... That's true. Okay, you found it, you found it. There we go.

I was waiting for that. Jeremy, where can we find you? Man, I don't nearly have as much of a spiel as Dave does. Dave is part of a network. I know, right? I used to be part of the one-up network, but not anymore. They killed that off. It's the Dumont network of websites.

Okay. So, let's see. My job is at usgamer.comnet, and I have a Twitter account at Gamesbyte. I write about Game Boy games at Gameboy. World. The end. And you can find me as Bob Serbo on Twitter. I also like to thank everybody. I've been sick and stammering throughout this whole thing,

so hopefully it sounds better than I think it does. And you can also find my writing on usgamer.net, something awful.com, and I also do the podcast Talking Simpsons with Dave. And that comes out every week on Lasertime Podcast.com. It is a chronological exploration of the Simpsons. We should be in the middle of season three by the time you hear this. It's so much fun.

Why did you not call it Cron Simpsons? I think Cron Tendo Guy would have our kneecap smashed in. So, yes, I'm afraid of him. You could take him. Maybe. That could be a Patreon goal. We could fight Cronendo guy. Don't give us any ideas, people.

Speaking of Patreon, Laser Time has a Patreon, and there's a season and review for season two episode that's exclusive to that. Oh, yeah, we did a whole hour-long wrap-up of season two, Talking Simpsons, all kinds of crazy stuff you never heard, including the secret short that never aired. It's mysterious. It'll cost you five bucks to hear it, though. That's it, everybody. I'm sick and loopy. We'll see you next week with a mini episode hosted by me. Take it easy.