Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 91: Listener Comments Revue

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

For this Retronauts Micro, we're going for a community-focused approach as we respond to YOUR comments about Bob's latest round of episodes! This week, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Matthew Jay as the crew fields responses to previous Retronauts installments about video game ads, the Nintendo GameCube, Doom, television games, and Spider-Man games. All this, and a close examination of a video where Stan Lee excoriates Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld! Could you ask for anything more?

Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts Micro. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie, and who's here with me today. I'm Henry Gilbert and I Nintendu. Oh, wow. Thank you. And who else? I'm at Jay and I Genesis does. Wow. So many different verbs happening here. This episode of Retronauts Micro is about your comments on some of my recent episodes. We do mailbags from time to time, but I never have mailbags as part of my normal episodes. And I never actually go back and I privately read the comments, but I never respond to them in a podcast form. And I decided to do that today because on our Talking Simpsons network, that I do with Henry and Matthew Jay is part of it as well in terms of contributing. We do a show called Talk to the Audience, and that's when we talk about, we respond to questions and comments. It's a lot of fun. I figure, why not do it with you guys without your permission? I'm going to say your name on the air, and you're going to get fired.

If you get fired, I owe you a Coke. That always confuses me whenever I hear, I mean, you might have your reasons, but whenever I hear a podcast, someone writes in anonymously to talk about, like, oh, I hate Earners Scared stupid. Like, is your job going to fire you? Because you wrote into a bad movie podcast. Or like last name withheld. Yeah, yeah.

It's just like, are people, I mean, if you're a woman, I understand, you always must keep your identity private on the internet. But I don't really get it. The internet is forever. Maybe they're worried about running for Congress someday. I mean, to rub back up. Now, it says here that you had a master system as a child. Now, do your parents not love you? How could you run our country?

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Like, imagine in, I don't know, 15 years, whoever's running for president, hopefully not Baron Trump, it'll be like, Now, I've been looking at your message board post, and it says here you think Vagita's a gay lord. Now, as you can clearly see from the footage, he failed to flip this bottle upside down. Oh, God. You know what kind of man can lead a country and not put a bottle upside, perfectly. Look at that dab.

He barely commits to that dab. With the combination of the surveillance state and our need to be famous on the internet at all times, no one can do anything in the future. Any child born after 1998, their life is ruined, right? Or we all just shrug and say like, ah, we're all monsters, I guess. Who cares? Well, that's what it is. It's now everything's our real names and everything's tied to you forever. So you need to double down on everything always.

I saw a very funny tweet about this. It was somebody saying like, hey, isn't that? It was people at a party and it was then word balloons were put in. And somebody says like, hey, isn't that guy like a known harasser? And they're like, yeah, but he deleted his Facebook and moved two towns over. So what are you going to do? It's like crossing state lines in an old movie. You just restart your little like a grifter in an old movie.

You just restart your life, new identity, new grift. That's how it works. Make them a new name. Yeah. Works for some people. So that being said, we're going to slander some of you and ruin your potential for future jobs. Starting with actually a Talking Simpsons friend, a friend, Zachary Adams, a president of the United States. And he says, so these are all comments about our history of video game ads part one and two.

And I believe Henry and Matthew were. both on this episode. Yeah. I loved it. Actually, we're going to do more of these in the future. There's still like 15 years

more of ads to cover, but... I think you stopped before I was born. I did. We stopped with the... It was right after I was born. Like in the 16-bit console wars is where we stopped.

So we still have like Sony to cover and the Xbox and things like that. So I don't know if I'm Red E for that. Red E and Polygon Man, all that stuff. But let's get to Zachary Adams' comment. And he says, this was pretty great.

It missed my childhood favorite, 5200 Hello Judy ad. Probably because it was terrible. But when I was six, a pause button for a video game seem revolutionary. And I looked up a few of these ads. We're going to play them on the show. And here is the Hello Judy ad for the Atari 5200. This is an arcade game.

This is the new Atari Super System. Arcade Atari Super System. You may like the Super System better. It has some of the best arcade in sports games and plays every Atari cartridge. It doesn't have something no arcade game. You can. Hello, It's Judy.

It lets you freeze the action. Hello, Judy. The new 5200 super system. I needed to go back to, I want to hear that reading of Hello, Judy again. It was bad. You guys talked over that brilliant piece of dialogue. Hello, Judy.

Man. The new 52nd. Open the door for your mystery date. Who wants to talk to that guy? Hello, Junie. I'm going to hurt her. You remind me of Miss Pac-Man. Rudy, can you only get this mattress in the back of my car?

Oh, boy. So that is the revolutionary pause feature. So who wants to take another Zachary? That is pretty amazing, the idea that it would be novel that you could pause a game. You can't do that in the arcade. Yeah, no more tactical gaming diapers for you. You can just pause and pee and poop of your own free will. Zachary Walton says, I wonder if he's related to the Walmart Walton's.

Or the famous Walton families. You should be giving you more money. Yeah, I agree. Let's step it up here. You guys have a castle. He says to the gender question, I think one anecdote is that video games were placed in the electronic section pre-crash and that section of the store is non-gendered. Post-crash, Nintendo marketed the NES as a toy, and stores had to place the system in the toy section, which is very gendered. The stores chose to place it in the boy section, and the marketing followed. Video games eventually found their way back to the electronic section, but the damage

had already been done. Yeah, I am thought of that aspect of it, the very gendered toy selling as we all remember from the now dead Toys R Us, it was like there's the pink aisle and then there's all the other aisles that are boys and the video games and all the Toys Ruses I went to as a kid were like almost the opposite side of the store Same here. It was like board games and then video games.

I feel that I agree with like 80% of this, but I feel like perhaps even today electronics and games and stuff they were always sort of implicitly gendered even before the distinction from the pink eye to the video game aisle, I feel like, oh, no, these are for boys. Boys, we'll play with these things. And, like, the electronic section of a Target, or even, like, the entirety of a Best Buy is, like, the Man Cave store.

Yeah, yeah. It looks like the sad store. Even there's, like, giant leather. There's a whole section of Best Buy still that's like, well, you could use this space for anything, and it's just, like, 10 Barker loungers in front of the biggest TV in the world. I know. But, no, I totally agree with the one point where it's, like, they're explicitly gendered. There was a game section in which the N.A.S. was sold with a gun, like a toy gun.

And a Rob, not a Roberta. Yeah, and a robot. A gun and a robot, both boy toys. It's Adam and Rob. Not Mario and Wallyl Stevie. Who knows? I fuck that up. Let's move on to Henry?

David says Sega Master System ads were awesome. One of them starts Stephen Dorf. And we'll play the first one out of this reel. I don't know if Stephen Dorf is in it. I can't really tell. But we didn't actually play any Master System ads on any of these podcasts. we did. So let's hear one of them. Sega challenges you with the ultimate

video game. The Sega Master System with twice as much memory as any other video game. It adds video technology like scrolling backgrounds, graphics in 64 colors, digital sounds, and light facers. And you can add

to the excitement with sports pads, controls, sticks, and the first video games ever in 3D. Sega's the one. The Sega Master System. The challenge will always be there. So, yes, we didn't actually play any master system ads on these podcasts, but that's pretty like high budget for a failure. As a child, I don't remember ever seeing a master system ad. They weren't advertising in a way I saw it.

The only time I, when I realized a master system existed, it was before Sonic came out, which was, but I saw it at a, like, Sears, just walking around the Sears and seeing like, hey, that's a Nintendo. Oh, is this a different Nintendo? It's from Canada, I think. As a 7-year-old, that's all I knew to understand. Nintendo is the game machine. That's how it was to be. I mean, they had that Tonka money to throw around in terms of advertising because it was distributed by Tonka.

So I feel like maybe that's why they actually had some sort of footprint that I never saw. The CG logo at the end is impressive. I'm not familiar with that tagline at all. The Zika is the one. It will always be fun. What do they say? The challenge will always be there. That's dumb.

Allen. Yeah, that's a bad tagline. No one who fails. So I'm up next here. I'm going to say it's either Nick Fugate or Nick Fugate says... I think it's Fugit. Fuget? Like Temple Fugat, the Clock King? You let us know Nick how we mangled your name, but he says,

surprise, we didn't get William Shatner in the Commodore Vic 20 commercials. And he's here. He beams in, and he's all pudgy in his T.J. Hooker kind of get up. He's even got his T.J. Hooker wig on it looks like. Yeah. it is. And actually, he's appearing in a commercial in which they're doing a parody of the Intellivision commercials, so there's a parody of George

Plimpton. It's a very good impression, and it's a parody of that little weiner kid he's with. So, let's hear it. When it comes to video games, nobody compares to Atari. I find Intellivision more sophisticated and lifelike. Gentlemen, move over for my friend Vic.

The Commodore, Vic 20. Move over. A Commodore Vic 20 does more than your machines. It's a great computer that also plays great games. This, and this, and this. A computer that plays great games. What? $300.

Exactly. We didn't know. Get the Cardinal of VIC-20 computer for under- So there you have it. That was William Shatner for the VIC-20. You even have them non-trademark breaking beam in. Yeah, yeah. With a bad video effect.

God, that was hilarious just because it reminded me of, do you recall when Windows was launching Windows 10, I think it was, and they hired. a John Hodgman look alike to be there like, I'm a PC and I also do this. It was so weird, but it's the same style as this commercial here. Man, those PC and Mac commercials,

I hated them because they were smug and irritating, but also because it's like, you're trying to get me to hate John Hodgman? Like, you want me to think Justin Long is a better person and cooler? I am a Justin Long defender. I feel like he got screwed over by a lot of stuff, but like, yeah, he's no John Hodgman.

Yeah, come on. Those ads did a long, They did a lot to ruin Apple's reputation for like a decade, which sucks. I thought it helped them because they were wildly, wildly popular. Yeah, but I still feel like Windows defender. Yeah, maybe those people held no real sway, but like they were a big like, like, well, Apple's got those shitty ads, you know, in the Apples versus PC debate. It's a real smugness to them. I don't like, in retrospect, I don't like them.

I do like that John Hodgman got to make lots of money and get more famous. I like when they, they, was it before the iPod commercials with the people dancing? No, that was first. Yeah, I like that more. That was cool, the rotoscoping effect on those. Those were cool, yeah. I'm going to throw this Mac in the garbage now, so much. So up next, I guess, Matthew.

This is from the Nintendo GameCube episode. Yeah, you were on that one. Henry was not. I think he refused to be on it. I wasn't on this episode. Oh, that's right. I was on the PS2 episode. It was Cat Bailey and I think Dave Rudd.

Yes, I am very bummed. I wasn't on this match. I am a huge GameCube fan. I want to apologize to Bob here live on this thing. You know what? podcast host, what I like to hear from everybody is, oh, we did an episode about this. You didn't invite me?

You, every episode of RetroD have on 40 guests so all your friends can not be for that. This is why I don't have friends. Now, I actually, I unironically did that to Bob. I didn't know I was doing it. And I just said, you know, I don't want to be that guy who says you did a run my podcast without me.

If you wanted to fly to the wintry hell of Wisconsin where I was stuck for three days. You could have been my guest. All I'm saying is, I was a child when the GameCube was out, and it was made for children. Yeah, you and your tiny hands. But I do. I'm a big, big fan of the game.

I'm still a fan of the GameC controller. Not as much, but... We'll talk about it. There's some differences of opinion about the controller. Garamo Jimenez says, I remember hearing back in 2001 that Nintendo didn't want the GameC to be abbreviated NGC because they didn't want it confused with NeoGeo Pocket Color. That makes more sense than the National Chief Graphic. traffic channel thing, but the weird thing is that

they still went with NGC in Japan. Yeah, it's GCN here, right? Yeah, GameCube Nintendo. One of the biggest Nintendo fan magazines in Mexico changed its name from N64 to NGC in 2001, and then actually changed it to GCN in early 2002. Coincidentally, after a reader pointed out

in a rival magazine, Nintendo had changed the abbreviation. Ah, that's funny. Yeah, we pointed out on the show that it kind of baffled me that the abbreviation was GCN. Me too. I always thought it was weird, and I was not aware of the NeoGeo Pocket Color until much later. Although now I am a massive fan of that console. I sold mine right before the price skyrocketed.

I sold it to move, and I was super bummed that I was like, I'll sell it, and then a few months later I'll buy another one. They're dirt cheap. I sold it in box with the Sonic pack-in, which is a great secret best 2D Sonic game is Sonic Pocket Adventure, and now they're like hundreds of dollars. That's crazy. Whenever I go to a lot of retro gaming cons, because we do that for Retronauts, and the cheapest thing you can buy there outside of PSP movies,

are just like bucketfuls of NeoGeo Pocket Color games. The games are super cheap. I don't know if they, are they still that cheap? They're like just steal them, no one cares. Certain ones are like hundreds of dollars, but most of them are very cheap because they made a ton of them and they also would only print one of them a lot of the time,

and they would just have it in it. Both languages would be in it, and you change your console settings to switch it. So detect what your console setting was. My favorite thing with NeoGeo Pocket Color is the sound of the D-Pad, Well, not deep pad. Just click, click, click, click.

Yeah, just the clickity click, so satisfying. That was my first fidget cube. I would have it in my pocket and just click it around. I forget which came first, but my friends got a Neo Geo Pocket color, and I was just like, oh, this looks cool. And then, like, the GameCube Advance came out like a week later and like, well, this is what you want. It stomped it stick in the dirt. Because first it was the Neo Geo Pocket, which was, then the Game Boy Color

destroyed it. It might have been, might have been the Game Boy Color first, I forget. But then the Neo Geo Pocket color, so they're catching up to that. And then, yeah, the GBA is like, It's the Super Nintendo in your pocket. It's like, oh, crap. Yeah, that's what I wanted. But the games on the Pock, so a lot of times when that happens, you're like, oh, well, this

concert was just obsolete, but the games of the NeoJu Pocket Color are so specifically made for it and are such specific games that I still feel like nothing is touched. Like, portable fighting games have almost never been as good, especially because of the stick. That stick made it so satisfying to play. Like, GALS Fighter should be on everyone's top 10 fighting games of all time. That's how good that game is. Yeah, but I mean, everyone eventually, every company has to learn.

you can't make a portable system, you will be destroyed. Like, Sony tried twice. And with the Vita, they were even less successful than the PSB. The PSB had like 18 hot months in America. Yeah. As we learned on that podcast. And Monster Hunter made it real popular. Oh, yeah.

Well, this NeoGeo Pocket Color thing reminded me of the upcoming Switch game. I'm really looking forward to Pocket Rumble. Comes out the day of this recording. What? What is that again? Whoa. It is a NeoGeo Pocket Color style fighting game that is a two-button command, very intentionally simple.

I've just never seen I've seen any games that ape a lot of retro styles but not Neo Geo Pocket It's such a specific style It's never yeah It's never been done that well And that it's it's they ever

They had to rethink the way they drew sprites And design games to fit this specific console GBA it was just like we made game smaller Yeah Which is great that's a great way to make games The PSB we made game smaller The DS we made game smaller with a touchscreen That's that's always what their goal is

But the Neo Geopocket color they were like No this is its own jam check it it's it's i'm downloading this on switch today but that's not this has nothing to do with game yeah what the hell are you guys doing uh no competitor another big game for the neo geo pocket color is the uh card fighters clash game which uh everyone wants a sequel to that and they got one for the ds it was horrible for whatever reason it came with a game breaking bug if you buy it yeah printing so like remake that in some way i think everyone wants that but i will say one thing it is very tied to the game cube because they beat the game cube to something uh which is

a very underrated part of the game cube which is its connectivity to the gba yeah that's as we mentioned in the Winwaker episode I felt like before I found it you guys did because you're also weirdos I felt like I was the only person to ever play the multiplayer in Winwaker but the GV or the NeoJo Apocca color connected to the Dreamcast which I'm

also a weirdo that's my favorite that's my favorite console that's like unholy Yeah like and it's also like S&K and Sega like they're so unrelated in so many ways I own a oh do I still own it I have a link cable for the NeoGeo Pocket

color so it's like I have this thing made for no one. That works with what, like one game? I might have sold it, I forget. But I got it for like five bucks and sold it for like 50.

But we have a burning pony question here. Penelopee the Wonder Pony says, I still maintain that the GameCube had the best button layout of any controller. The big chunky A button was just so satisfying to mash on. Games like Rogue Leader just

wouldn't feel so good without it. And the distinctive shape of each button made it very easy to introduce new people to the console. You could easily tell from on-screen icons which button you need without having to stare down at the controller and

remind yourself which one was A and which one was B. I could see that. I super agree with this. I love the GameCube controller so much. I I'll play Smash Bros. other ways, but it only feels right to me in a GameCube controller. Especially that's the C

stick, like the C stick for smash is. So that's the thing. I think this, I think the C stick is the real what what hampered it to being a competitor to the other controllers. It's not good as a second analog stick. That's exactly. It's missing a, it's just like the Dreamcast.

It's missing a second analog stick, which would make it hold up to time much better. No. But the whole like, yeah, like the idea that it's just a different button layout is because every, every game console is just four buttons now. And the switch,

like we've been constantly regressing since this, where the switch doesn't even have a D-pad. An Nintendo console with a shitty D-pad. What crazy future are we living in? On the episode, we complained about the GameCube controller and that it was like it was too complex for

like if you showed it to someone who hadn't played games for a while but like what the hell do I do with this I feel like it I don't know if I said this on the show itself but I feel like it is good for games design for that controller but things that were ported to the GameCube had a real problem making that feel elegance in any way. Yeah and it's

candy colored buttons is a turn off to grown up games men who want to play games for men I almost feel like Nintendo reacted in the opposite direction not with so they made the Wii remote which couldn't be

more different from the game controller but then on every generation the Wii Wii you and Switch where they make the regular controller it is the most boring looking nothing it almost looks like third party they're like oh you want a boring ass controller here's the most boring one fucking play

play Skyrim on it when we went to New York before the switch came out to see the unveiling of it and we played it for the first time I was incredibly wrong about the switch I thought it would be a horrible failure because the gimmick to me was just like yeah you've made portable consoles before who cares

like people have played Game Boy and 3DS as they know what it's like to take a game on the road with them but the main something block for me in terms of like will this catch on or not was the switch controllers have like 40,000 buttons there are like hidden buttons you can discover on there

buttons I forget exist there's a camera in it yeah it's like who like what are people going to do with this? But I guess they got over that because it's a huge success. So I was wrong, everybody. But that's the thing. And then when you complain about it, someone's like, why don't you just get the classic controller, whatever it's called? And it's like, hey,

I don't put this on my TV, you gross weirdo. I never play this. I only undocked when I went to Japan, I'm still ashamed of it. Listen, you start playing video games to never leave your couch. That's what it's for. I never leave my bed. I want to play it. Yeah. No, I have my TV, I want to have the office reruns

on while I'm playing my game in my lap. So I think, am I up next? Okay, so Gus, sorry, Guts, Sant says, Gutsman Sant. I take issue with some comments about the GameCube controller because I personally love it and I like it more than the PS2 and PS3 Dual Shocks, particularly because my original GameCube controllers are still working perfectly, while the Sony ones have had to be replaced or scrapped, repaired or scrapped.

I, in particular, dislike the analog of most, almost all other consoles when compared to the GameCube ones, which feel just perfect and they still work great to play despite heavy smash usage the D-pad has ever been an issue for me well you know what Gus Sants this is the largest game controller I can afford

people a lot of people wrote in like you retronauts have freakishly huge hands it's like yes like I don't play basketball or anything but that controller is so like so I will say in terms of the quality of the build it is a solid ass controller

like it feels so like perfect and just like really just well built, but I say the D-pad is like, I need to get in there with like a child thumb to hit those buttons because not the best D-Pet. It's like your, my thumb covers the entire D-pad. It just like consumes it.

Did you own a wavebird? Yes, and that's actually the one Nintendo controller that I've owned that stopped working. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I had to buy another one. Mine never broke. Though I, actually GameCube was very the GameCube controller, mine were pretty durable, except

I did, uh, maybe, from playing too much smash on it, but I wore out the thumbstick. Like the plastic part started falling off and I had to buy you. My friends, one of my friends did that and I would get the two player, the second player controller, which would just didn't have the pad

on it. It was just like a spiky plastic thing. And I'm like, well, I'm just going to destroy my thumb here. Although nothing, it's yeah, it's not a great D-pad, but to again bring up the Dreamcast, have you ever like played a fighting game on the Dreamcast with the D-Pad? The Dreamcast has a terrible controller. It's like a cheese grater. I can hear the comments,

coming in, but that thing is all kinds of fucked up. The cord's coming out of the wrong end. The, yeah, the D-pad just cuts you up. I love the controller except missing another stick and the D-pad, but I love the look of it. I love a little spaceship, everything about it. The weight of it always felt wrong to me when there wasn't a VMU in it, so it also just felt too flimmed.

And you have to hold your hands, like, at a perfect, like, parallel angle to each other, like in the most unnatural way. Like, who, like, what monster tested this? But I remember my friend and I, when I lived in Connecticut, my roommate and I were playing through rival schools and we were like, we'd get to the final boss and just have to keep switching off

every round because we're like, I'm like, dude, my thumb is killing me. Like, it's red, look at it. Yeah, yeah, gross. So we have, so we're moving on to the Doom episode, which neither of you were on. Jeff Green was on it and Michael Rupares, but Kyle Overby is talking about the BFG

and we'll get a bit more into that after the comment is over. I have a blog post to tell you about. Kyle Overby says, I only read up on how the BFG works after I actually played John Romero in a Tomb 2 tournament back in the early 2000s at a Dallas Area Gaming Tournament

which he attended as a guest. Whoa, dude. I advanced through a few... No, it's not, that's the lead. I advanced through a few rounds with a primary strategy of using double-barreled shotgun at close range, but when I played John,

he pretty much exclusively used the BFG and outscored me by a factor of four or five. His strategy was to get the BFG, then find a corner where two hallways intersected. He would then look down a hallway to see where I was coming towards him, shoot the corner near him, BFG and then I would die with the projectile having hit nowhere close to me.

Turns out, as outlined in the steam post, the BFG calculates most of the damage done via hit scan at the moment when the projectile hits, but emanates from the player in the direction the projectile was fired. I'm not following that at all. So he shot at the corner with just enough of a lead time that he could strafe into a hall and then get me in the cone when the projectile exploded next to him on the corner. I don't know if how the BFG worked was as widely understood then, though this was after the release of the Doom Source Code,

but John certainly knew how it worked, Winky Face. He was very nice in person, taking the time to talk with me and shake hands afterwards. Oh, John Ramirez, so sweet. Holy crap. So, Kyle is referencing a, like, 5,000-word Steam message board post that goes into, like, extremely granular detail about how the BFG functions as a weapon within the rules of the game. And I'll link to that on the blog post.

for this episode, but it's too kind of boring to get into here. I mean, it's super interesting, but if we talked about it, you would not be super interested. Is that true in all Doom games or just Doom 2? I believe in, I'm sure, in Doom 1 and 2, they are very similar, or perhaps identical, yeah.

But I think I believe it is just in this context, just Doom 2. Yeah. So a man after my own name, hardcore Henry. That's my nickname for Henry, by the way. But not because of the movie. If I were forced to choose just one video game franchise, Doom is probably my favorite of all time, although almost certainly

not, quote, the best, but every vast contribution slash influence made to the FPS genre has long since been completely subsumed into the pop culture ether, and arguably had already been by the time the disappointing third entry was finally released. That errant signal guy wax is poetic about what a personality revealing labor of love the first two games, games 64, master levels, brutal, and all the other countless mods, etc. were, and I definitely agree. But I think he glosses over what an incredible role luck and timing played in all of this. Released three to four years earlier and the pixels couldn't contain enough detail to do the hell theme justice. Wolfenstein had a far less ambitious aesthetic only a couple years earlier

and the graphics barely passed muster. Released three or four years later and is there any doubt that it wouldn't be an early polygon title with the horror, the horror. The same goes for the rise of PC gaming. No way would this series have had the same impact without the expansions, beating the ESRB to the punch, being a part

of the last generation of A-games to be built without a huge impersonal team, etc. Better to be lucky than good. Yeah, to use a cliche, it was really lightning in a bottle for Doom, and we talked about it on the show that it somehow avoided, at the time it was released,

it somehow avoided the whole violence outrage issue because it was released for computers and presumably a child could not just go out and buy a computer because they were thousands of dollars. You had to be an adult with an adult paycheck and then you were the gatekeeper to whoever played those games. Lieberman wasn't worried about Little Johnny or Sally playing that. He was worried about a neon blue-covered gun

ruining a child's life and lethal enforcers. My dad was telling me that in the early 90s he bought his first computer. It was like 1990. It was like 2,500 bucks in that time's money. I remember like on an old, so we talk a lot about mystery science theater on this network and all of our networks, but I used to have like

a ton of old VHS tapes like from the sci-fi channel era from the Comedy Central era but like even in the mid-90s you'd see an ad for like a, I don't know, like a Dell PC, just like just $2,800. It's like, holy Christ, this was 20 years ago. Nowadays, that would be like the hottest gaming PC you could possibly be

like flames coming out of Yeah, be all green and glow. But I think someone on one of the comments, someone pointed out that, so when Columbine happened, they're like, the government was like, well, who can we blame? It's not our fault. Video games. And there's a great picture. You can find it online. It's like a Getty images of Senator Orrin Hatch, the Honorable Orrin Hatch from Utah, holding a copy of Doom 2, like, with the very ends of his fingers and thumbs, as if the demons on the box could hurt him in some way.

Or like, it's dirty. Yeah, it's like, ooh, get this away from me. Thank you. Move over YouTube. The Collider Network is now on Podcast 1. Get your fix for all your pop culture needs with shows like Jedi Council, movie talk, Collider Heroes, one-on-one with Christian Harloff, and movie trivia Shmodown. Check out the Collider Network podcast at Podcasts one and Apple Podcasts. Also remember to rate and review. Dixter has a playlist for every moment, mood, and minute of your life. Digster is soundtracking your world, one playlist at a time. Check out digster.fm to see for yourself.

There are thousands of great playlists for you to enjoy. That includes the weird stuff I like. Bob and I have both worked with Digster to create our own playlist with a mix of our own favorite tunes. Go to digster.fm. slash Bob and digster.fm. slash Jeremy to see our playlists, which you can follow, share, and listen to. They're updated regularly, too. This week, my playlist has a few new entries that include Rush's classic instrumental

workout La Villa Strangato and Steve Hackett's 2005 remaster of Ace of Wands from his tarot-themed voyage of the Acolyte album, a 1975 record that basically sounds like the soundtrack to a Japanese RPG and is probably a big reason I fall in love with a genre to begin with. Of course, there's also more down-to-earth stuff like Bob's playlist, which emphasizes jangly indie rock, and the classic rockers-than-now playlist, which showcases the best current tunes of rock legends side by side with the hits that made them big. Be sure to follow our playlist, so you can listen over and over. Again, go to dixter.fm.fm. slash Bob and Dixer.fm.fm. Jeremy and listen to our

playlists. Be sure to check out Dixir.fm. in general for the best mix of music for every moment, mood, and minute of your life. College football, NFL football, the greatest time of the year. No more waiting. The time has arrived for you to get in all the action. Don't wait any longer to make your online wages and head over to bedonline.ag to take advantage of the best bonuses in the business. Use promo code Podcast 1 to receive a 50% sign-up bonus today. That's Podcast 1 to receive a 50% sign-up bonus.

Whether you love college or NFL football, BetOnline.A.G has it all for you to get in the action today. And they're our exclusive partner of Podcast 1 Sportsnet. Sign up today at betonline.org and use promo code podcast 1 to receive a 50% bonus when you sign up. Take advantage of this incredible offer now at betonline.org. That's betonline.ag, your online sportsbook expert. our television games episode was great it was about video games based on TV shows that weren't cartoons we got a lot of fun mileage out of that and most of these responses actually all of them are based on alf we talked to an alf writer recently on talking symptoms we'll tell you more about that with the second response so muteki says alf for the master system really gets you thinking about what a master class in game design the infamous tekeshi challenge really is in comparison especially because of how similar the starting area music is yes and i want to say muteki It is a stunning coincidence that that game bears any resemblance to at the game that was intentionally trolling people. This was just people making a 20-minute game.

They needed to make it more than a 20-minute experience, so they found ways to screw you over at every turn, which is what so many games were of this era. But I do appreciate, on some level, how Alf just will fuck you over. Like, we talk about in this episode where you earn money in the game, I believe there's a finite amount of money in the game, and you just go to a store in one of the items is a book. you buy the book and it ends the game and then the game ended at the end or whatever

there are traps designed in this to just screw you over at every turn Does Alf do karaoke? Alf does not do karaoke through the controller and you should

there are not enough Alf like I mean you have a cat as an item at one point Al's not very funny it kind of misses the whole unlike now I mean in the game

Alph is very funny Alph is hilarious I had I'm sure Bob you have the Alf hand puppets Oh, yeah, yeah. With, I think it was Hardee's, wasn't it? Burger King, I believe.

Burger King, yeah. You got to act out all your fun Alf things with you. You got to have your own elf puppet. Though really, it wasn't a full-sized puppet. It was just one that fit over just your hand. Now you can say what we're all thinking, just like Alf. So we have another comment. Before I read, before Matthew reads us, I want to say that we did talk to Mike Reese.

So Mike Reese was a writer from the Simpsons, a writer on the Simpsons from the first season until the current season. he took about two years off to just, you know, hang out. But before The Simpsons, he wrote for Alf. He joined in the second season. And we talked to him about that on our Patreon exclusive interview with him at Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. It's a great interview. I listened to it.

Oh, thank you. He's a hilarious, nice guy. And he said, like, Alf was the nicest, most pleasant show he's ever written for because they just would leave and go home at 6 o'clock instead of staying up until 2 to write a sign gag, like on The Simpsons. Well, because he said that every, a ton of writers, The first season, so when they hired the second season writers, they're like, everybody goes home at six. This is going to be a happy work-life balance.

Yeah, and despite all of the negative things I've heard about Paul Fusco or Fusco, the voice of Alf and also the creator of the show, he did not say anything negative about him. I believe Al-Gene, Mike Race's former writing partner is the guy who is not an Alf fan. Isn't Elgin also the one who, in his years of, after return to The Simpsons, he instated the same rule of, you know what, we're not here until 2-Ammy where it's 9 to 5 and you go home. People often, or is it the other guy? I think it was Mike Scully, yeah. Okay, people often consider that to be the decision that killed the Simpsons. Well, I mean, I don't know. Mike Scully was in his 40s when he took over the show,

and the previous showrunners were in their late 20s and had no children and no lives outside of running a TV show. So they had different priorities. I also want to mention this ruined your momentum there, but you talked about how, like, the puppets you would get based on Alfa, like, not the same puppet. That's also true of the Muppets. They're also like very simple puppets.

I wonder if there's like a rule that like we can't just sell a Kermit puppet because then they just make internet memes with it. Well, I would bet at least when Jim Henson was alive, he probably wanted to sell kids like, no, you, that would be like you own Kermit. You can't own Kermit. We control Kermit. But also Alf is a huge ass puppet. It's like sort of like a Telly the Monster style puppet where it's like two people's arms are in it and one person's working the mouth. One hands in a mouth, one hands in an arm.

And you never want to see Alf's lower path. It's disgusting. It's bad. It's wrong. He's nude, always. Joe Blow is writing in. I believe this is a peek into the darker first season of Alv. Okay, so Joe Blow,

bra, bra, bra, bra, blah, says, so there was at least two people who were smoking crack and or doing heroin who worked on health at its time. Yes, I know where this is going. One of the writers of the show was Jerry Stahl, who did that autobiography permanent midnight, which was made into a movie with fucking Ben Stiller, which was about him being really addicted to sorts of, to sorts of hard drugs while writing for TV shows in Hollywood while making a good living doing it.

It's gotten comparisons to Requiem for a dream, but it's more like basketball diaries, except it's really bad. I wouldn't say really bad. You've seen it? Yeah, I did watch it because I was on a real Stiller kick then. It was before he, it's pre-Meet the Parents Stiller, so it's less famous.

It's got Liz Hurley in it as well. She plays his wife. And though the funniest bit in it, the trailers did lie to me, because I thought it was a comedic film, which it really isn't. It's him trying to get an Oscar, and he failed. But at the start of the movie, or one scene in the movie, he's on a talk show. And on the fake talk show, it's another person who's dealt with drugs.

And it is played by Andy Dick. Oh, boy. Very silly. And I was like, oh, this is so funny. Ben Stiller, Andy Dick, together again, making fun of drugs. Wow. Siller also comes from TV writing stock. Oh, yeah.

That's a world he was familiar. with from his upbringing because of his parents. But in the movie, if you want to see a film where Jerry Stahl writes an episode of Alf based on his mother's irreconcilable grief at his father's passing, you'll see that in the movie. Is he literally playing him? Do they write Alf in the show, or is it like a fake show? He is a green elf, not called Alf, but even I didn't know what Jerry Stahl's background

was. And when I saw the movie, I was like, oh, he wrote for Alf. And also in the movie, if you want to see Ben Stiller pretend to shoot Harry, went into his neck while a baby sits in the car with him. You'll also see that. That's your Oscar moment right there. Yeah, that sounds like a movie. He thought it was.

So up next we have Spider-Man Games. So this is the episode that Henry was on. And Henry helped, like, build this episode because I know nothing of Spider-Man or his universe. Bill Spider-Man. Please check this first comment out. Yes. Or another, Zach says, the crazy thing is, Paragon didn't just get lucky. They had a rep do it for, they had a rep for doing licensed games, mostly off-table-tap RPGs, like

mega traveler in space 1889. And they were distributed by micropros, which gave them a more, which gave them more oomph. Most of their work holds up poorly, CRPG addict that has replayed several and it ain't pretty. But within the weird niche of pre-Windows 95 gaming, they were perceived at the time as a reasonable second tier studio. I just bought both X-Men Madness and Murder World and Dr. Doom's Revenge, well after their release, the thing that struck me about most of them was the one-on-one fighting mode both games shared and it's like someone was trying to figure out how to make children of the atom in a world where karate champ was the only frame of reference map the controls to a keyboard with no mouse or joystick and then grafted into a very different game that sounds

balker which ones which ones were the paragon ones actually i'm looking at it now it's the one where spider man turns into spider skeleton when he gets hurt yes it wasn't the um yeah yeah it was it was the one with Captain America in it as well. It wasn't the, you know, Spider-Man Climb Command ones. It was a little after that. It's sort of a platformer. It really wants to be. But that's, those are the ones we were talking about of that.

Okay. And so you have character sprites that, I guess technically you could, I didn't know those had a fighting game part to it, but I guess if you have sprites, you can make them move in a fighting game style, even if you don't know how to make a fighting game. I like the Subtitle madness and murder world.

That's Arcades. That is where Arcade, the villain Arcade, not an arcade. Not an arcade. An Arcade. I want to ask, speaking of X-Men fighting, because you mentioned Children of the Adam, and also the GameCube, did you guys play X-Men Mutant Academy one or two? No, never. Those looked like dog shit.

I did not buy them. They were all right. They were kind of in the vein. It was them trying to make Tekken, right? Yes. It was like Tekin, but it moved around a bit more. It made me think of Bloody Roar at the time, because I was, That was another popular GameCube fighting game.

But they had a lot of silly things in them that I miss in comic book fighting games where, or comic book games in general, like the what-if mode and Spider-Man games. But they had like Spider-Man's in X-Men Mutant Academy too. So Spider-Man's unlockable character, that's cool. And you could fight at the pool. You could unlock the pool as a thing. And when you fought there, everyone had a secret bathing suit costume. Including Spider-Man who just had short sleeves and shorts.

Which was cool. And you could also play as Professor X. My favorite X-Men game is the one that made Dennis Dyck lose all of his credibility. Yeah, that was good. Finally. I made fun of him on YouTube for that one. Awesome. On his video where he called you out.

I miss the pre-millennial Marvel games and DC games too because you had people making decisions who weren't afraid of billionaires. They were just like, sure, Punisher. Put him in there. You license something. Just put, oh, you made a funny thing. Put Spider-Man in that. Yeah, they were all just Marvel characters. Now, to get, just imagine, even some company as big as Activision, just telling Marvel, hey, we made that Spider-Man game.

Can we just put them in our skating game too? Marvel would just go like, no, that's not part of this 800-page licensing agreement. We did not hire 800 brand managers for you to do that, sir. Yeah, exactly. Did you ever in the, I don't know if you cover this in the episode, but in the first Spider-Man PS-1 game, if you did it just right, you could swing to the Fantastic Four Tower. See, that is not in the, we stop. We stopped at 1996 Web of Fire just to save the 3D ones for it. Yeah, there are so many, so many Spider-Man games.

Well, if you do it right. That episode was already too long. Yeah, it's like two hours. If you do it right, you can swing to the Fantastic Four building. The Baxter building. And the human torch is hanging on top. And you saw it was a little cutscene. That's awesome.

But also, last thing I'll say about Ex and Mutant Academy is you can play as Professor X who also has a bathing suit. And when you hit up to jump, he just does a wheelie. Oh. He doesn't leave the ground. I don't know if that's offensive or not. I don't know. Let's move on to Blarg, who is correcting Henry, notorious liar on podcast.

So Blark says, slight correction. Henry says Vennam first appeared in Marvel v. Capcom, too. He actually was in the first Marvel versus Capcom. Even though Marvel went through a bankruptcy in 1996, Marvel characters still appeared in Marvel v. Street Fighter, 97, and Marvel versus Capcom in 1998. Maybe Capcom had a pre-existing deal with them or something. Well, I mean, just because the company has a bankruptcy,

doesn't mean they go away or their licenses go away. They could have made that deal before bankruptcy and maybe they just let the Spider-Man one go fallow, the solo Spider-Man one as opposed to the overall deal they had with Capcom. Also, perhaps they made a deal with Marvel's Japan branch that then was like accidentally universal and so they could make a deal with people who weren't going through bankruptcy.

Sometimes you can go bankrupt multiple times and then be president. It happens, yeah. It's possible. So we talked on this episode, the Spider-Man episode, I believe, about Stan Lee. There's an infamous clip online, the one that's uploaded that I watched us from the great YouTuber H-bomber guy. But it's basically Stan Lee in the early 90s. He got up on the wrong side of the bed, and he's very angry at Rob Leifeld. And who else is in this clip?

Todd McFarland, really, okay. So I want to play a bit of this clip. And in this clip, they are drawing overt kill. Is it overt kill? He's overkill. So Stanley tells them, I have a character name, Overkill. which he's making fun of them by telling them to do a thing called overkill. Okay.

But then later in Spawn, when Todd McFarlane just wants to use the character again, he legally calls him overt kill to make him so different. So I put this clip up in a really good point where he starts ripping into the drawing of this character. We'll play a lot of it. I just love how, I mean, so I want to say that this is a dumb character, and these guys are kind of in over their heads but I feel like he's being too mean but I do think it's also hilarious

Let me give another bit of context At this point Stanley is not doing well He's getting a little bit of money from Marvel because it's when it still says Stanley presents on all the comic books And Tyler and Rob Lefeld are millionaires Yeah they're taking off he's I'll give, I also have thoughts on this

But I want to play the class It's great, it's great We can pause at any moment to add in our thoughts too he's got the biggest shoulder pads ever existed it's like i figured he would okay i'm going to give him i'm going to give him some big knee pads here because a guy like him that's got some armor and got some guns and stuff like that he's going to well he looks grim doesn't he kids you know i mean the kids the kids like the dark moody stuff i mean they seem you know but i have a question i've been wanting to ask you guys

how long does it take these people to get dressed these kind of character who says they I mean, there's something they have to get out quickly to save the world but it takes them an hour and a half to get into all of this stuff if they work fast. That's right. Getting into the costume is like going to the bathroom and comic book. You never show it, but you assume that Superman and Batman

and Spider-Man actually do go and urinate every now and then, right? But you never do show it, do you? But you do show very often you show people getting dressed, especially women, I seem to recall that now. I just love I fucking love that. One, that Todd McFarlane thinks he's got a

got you on Stan. I'm like, well, look, you don't show it all the time. Yeah, that's right, Todd. Superman has never been showed getting into costume. That's never happened in a Superman comic. In a phone booth. And then also, Stan just like really sticking it to him like, oh, you show women dressing quite a lot. Man, he's done his research. Oh, let's hear more of this. I love it. Sorry. You're being woke. You went to hands, really? Oh, yeah, I'm the best. You do hands? Why don't we give them here? Wires coming out here coming down. They love that stuff. The kids love wire.

The wires that he'll trip over in running. Oh, yeah, yeah. You draw good wires. Oh. Does he have a double identity? Is he really a meek accountant in real life? Who else could he be besides overkill? Well, I mean, when he takes off all these clothes, is he a 97-pound weekly?

Do you see him take him rough fist? Okay. Okay. His thumb, he would have three different cannons. Diff that are facing you for the large capoey. So right here, they can be like missile launchers or whatever, but he's going to have those right over here. What makes you make those value judgments?

Why only three? He's got four knuckles. Because the reader's crazy. Why does he have more on that side than that side? No, no. For the sake of our unseen viewers, is this really the type of thought process that you guys go through when you create characters?

Except for we have more than 20 minutes? We use it probably longer than you usually take. Pause this for a second. So I love Rob Leifelt's comments. Like, you know those cannons that are like triple cadets? It is like a child's, When I was a kid and had the long paper that you could draw, I remember drawing a battleship once. I'm like, no, 18 cannons.

And then a cannon on top of that one. It's a very, like, childish and then kind of character structure. Like, and then he's got cannons, and then he's got wires, and then he's got shoulder pads. And then he can't see his feet. Which isn't easy for me to do. But I think it's very impressive that in a matter of 20 minutes you guys could come up with something like this. I mean, bad as it is. It's still impressive when you were able to do it this quickly.

Yeah, that's a cool logo. Rob, didn't you promise that you would draw it and we would do the talking? And when you grow up a little more, you know, we'll let you in there with the grown-ups. When you were creating characters, Stan, what was the process back then? I mean, because Rob and I right now, we do our own writing and our own drawing. We don't collaborate with anybody anymore. That's the problem, and I've been meaning to talk to you guys about that. Boy, he is one grim-looking guy.

He's one step ahead. There's no way this man can move. He's got to have a power to defy gravity, I would say, just looking at it. He's a tank. I mean, what are you thinking? Now, the funniest thing would be, if you say that these are jets and he's the fastest man alive. That, and the way you haven't learned,

we've got to justify all of this paraphernalia somehow. Okay. I don't know that you're really doing my character right. That's all right, I guess. A bunch of beginners. I just want you to, we have a minute in the effort. I want to tighten those feet. Okay.

All right, class. Give him an ankle bone here, a ankle bone here. I think it takes you longer to sign your name. Heck, yeah. Oh, man. I'm going to step out, okay? Incidentally, you guys have ruined us. We've decided to give up comics, and we're going into showbiz.

Oh, my God. So, like, okay, history. When is Mark Maring going to play Stan Lee? We're so, he looks exactly like him on Glow. Especially in Glow. So, Henry, so Rob Leifeld, what did he do before Image Comics? Todd played ball better and clearly was a better. He's also a better businessman.

Rob Leifeld was a coked up child. Sorry, interrupt, but, yeah. He made his bones on, like, Hulk. and stuff and then he went into it then he became like the preeminent spider man artist in the world well and Todd was the leader and at this point he'd proven himself to be a bit of a businessman and more handleable so he's the guy that put it all together he's the guy it's like we'll fucking walk across the street but so Todd at this point uh he had either just run spider man but he they didn't give him amazing he did spider man while meanwhile

just called Spider-Man Rob Leifeld did Youngblood and they uh sorry before that X-Force and they were the biggest thing they sold a million copies of comics, which in the 60s was nothing to Stan. He sold a million every week, but in the 90s quite a big deal. These days impossible. It never would happen. You don't sell like, they sell in the if you get into like the tens of

thousands, you made your book. You're 100,000 you're the number one comic and a strong number one. So while meanwhile Stan is having to host this comic book TV show that's not doing particularly well. And here he has on these hot shot new guys and what I love about this is that we always see Grandpa Stan

who's real nice, but When Stan Lee was editor-in-chief of Marvel for 20 years, he was not a nice guy. He was a bitter man. He was a bitter man who gave harsh notes and said to Jack fucking Kirby, draw this better, redo this. It's a chilling moment in this video. It's like, you know what, Rob, shut the fuck up. Yeah. A lot of people.

No, Rob did need to shut the fuck up. Yeah, yeah. He's a child. I think a lot of people, particularly younger people who only know Stan Lee is like the, yeah, the old grandpa who shows up in Marvel movies and is now getting elder abused. When Fantastic 4 number 1 came out He was in his 40s And I'd been in comic books For his entire professional career

And fucking hated it Like he wasn't He didn't show up and make Marvel As a fresh-faced young guy He was fucking writing the pros Backup stories to Captain America And then went on to write shitty romance comics For 20 years

Yeah, that's right And what I also like there Stan is doing what he did Even in a good way But he's being very harsh about it I'm just saying like Think about who this person is How do you tell these stories about this person?

You're just drawing a cool drawing. Who is he? I mean, a lot of his comments are trolling, I feel, but they're leading these people in the right direction, like, think more about it. Don't think, this is a cool thing I'm doing. Think about who this character is, why they would use these things, what the reality of this person. And, like, I feel like he's trying to, he's kind of being a tough love in a way.

Yeah, where he's like, these are the guys who are going to replace me. They need to fucking get their act together. And I think Stan was being harsh, too, because these guys, weren't hearing this from their editors. I think he was saying to himself, either these guys are just not being edited at all or their editors are scared of them because they're superstars. These guys have to hear this stuff. And I don't know what Rob's relationship is with the Stan, but I do know that Todd, when people a few months ago started saying like, is Stanley okay? Todd was one of the first people to chime in of like, well, I hung out with him two weeks ago. He seemed okay. We're still buddies. Did Tom, for I don't say that or Rob? That was Todd. Todd McFarling, yeah. Because Rob Blythel was like, move into my house. And Kevin Smith was like, move into my house.

Everyone was like, hey, Stan Lee. We all want to live in Stan Lee. Yeah, but that's, that clip is the perfect example of, so for like, for a long time, particularly when I was a kid, the narrative about Stanley became, oh, he's a sheister. He only stole things. He was only mean to people. Now we're not allowed to say anything bad about Stanley or Marvel or Star Wars or Disney. But he, for a long time, people were like not cool with Stan Lee.

Yeah, yeah. And this is the perfect example. of like no like he's an asshole and he did horrible things but like he there's a reason he had his job and why the comics he produced were so popular like he knew what the fuck he was talking about this shows you Stan skills as an editor

and a shaper of ideas to make his type of comics there's many ways to make comic books but Stan knew how to efficiently and smartly make his type of comics he's a real idea man who it is character first for him and so

when he sees guys who are just good at drawing pinups and can't even tell a story. Rob Leifeld especially is a horrendous comic storyteller. They both are. I'm reading the... Yeah, actually Todd sucks, too.

I'm reading the Peter David Hulk right now, which is one of the first major books Todd McFarlane worked on, and the art is just plain, right out bad. The inking is terrible, and the panel of panel storytelling, sometimes I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Like, I can only get it because Peter David's words

makes sense. That thing, one of them said, kids love lines. That's all I think of when I think of this era of comic art. And my brain was like that, too. Like, oh, more lines means more good. Like, this is better art because someone drew more things on this page. One of the rules of cartooning is lines on face age.

Yeah. That's what the more lines of character as in their face, the more age they have. And all their characters look like they're a thousand years old. Oh, God. Yeah. So it's note to him of just like, you know, Stan, we write our own stuff. And I've been meaning to talk to you. Yeah.

That's also Stan is like an old vaudeville comic who's been doing this. same routine for a million years, so he's just so fast on his feet. It feels like they're going to get in trouble after the show. Like, oh, no, they're in for it. But yes, there's nothing to do with... He had no power at the time. Yeah, I mean, this has nothing to do with video games, but I felt like we talked about that clip on that episode, and I feel like everyone should hear it, just to hear a different side

of Stan Lee, and hopefully Stan is doing better these days. Who knows what his fate will be with his horrible family members who are abusing him and his keeper? He was held at gunpoint in his front yard, what, two months ago? That's, uh, yeah, I think that it was what happened. Yeah.

It's hard to keep track of all of them. And stuff has happened since then. That's the most recent thing. So, yeah, the video is called Stanley owns by A.comber Guy. But it's also a supplement to his very good review of the very terrible killing joke movie that H. Bomber guy did. I saw that in the theater. That movie is dog shit. It's so fucking bad and so.

Brian Hazzrello, it made me lose all faith in Brian Hazzrello. Oh, you suck. It's not even good looking. Those movies, all of those movies, all of those. movies they make, those direct-to-video DC movies, are fucking hideous. Yeah, they're on a poor budget faking the good animation

they had 25 years ago. But you can hear more about cartoons on our cartoon podcast, what a cartoon! Which is free, by the way. But thanks for listening, folks. This is a Patreon-supported podcast in case you didn't know. So if you go to patreon.com slash retronauts, you can check out what we have to offer you there.

Basically, I'll tell you if you give three bucks a month, what you get is every episode of the show a week ahead of time, ad free. And that's a great deal. If you don't want to hear me talk about underwear, or let's see, basically, I do a lot of underwear ads these days. Those are fun, but people don't want to associate my voice with their underwear, and I understand that. So if that's you, then, you know, you know what to do. So three bucks a month. I think it comes out to like less than 50 cents per podcast, and I feel like that's a good deal. You get, you get conversations like these trapped in time

forever. I'm a subscriber. Why aren't you? Exactly. Exactly. So yes, that's all for my plugs. I'll tell you about where I'm located later, where you can find me. But Matthew, how about you? You're a special guest. Hey. People have heard you before. I can't believe your mom lets you have two podcasts. I've only got the one. I've got like five podcasts. I meant patrons. I've only got the one Patreon at patreon.com slash cartoons 101, which supports my YouTube show, YouTube.com slash cartoons 101. If you give to that Patreon, you also get a bonus podcast, which recently went through every episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Many of those episodes featured you

guys. But I also featured guests like Dawn from the anime nostalgia podcast, Tristan Cooper from Dorkley, JDB from Struggle Sesh, a lot of cool guests. And now we moved on to Satoshi Conversations, the work of Satoshi Cohn, including an episode for every episode of Paranoia Agent. So we're going through all of those. And that features guests like another struggle session guy, Jack Allison. You guys came back. Kat Bailey was on the last two episodes of the Ava podcast. I also recently interviewed Bill Oakley. I interviewed Evan Dorkin. I interviewed Scott Gairdner, I've interviewed a bunch of cool people. It's been very exciting to run the show.

So please go to patreon.com slash cartoons 101 and help me make that stuff. And check me on on Twitter at Mr. Matt Jay and at Disney 80s 90s. Awesome. Great stuff. Henry. Well, Bob and me work together on Talking Simpsons, our weekly podcast, where we go through all Simpsons in chronological order. We're starting up season 8 now.

I can't believe we made it this far already. And that is supported at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. where if you get $5 a month, you not only get access to that, add free in a week early, I'll say it the opposite. Spice things up. You also get ad free in a week early. What a cartoon, where we go through a different cartoon each week, including, say, Batman the Animated Series, as we just mentioned.

And, you know, you should also go there because we do tons of cool interviews like that interview with Mike Reese, where we ask him what it was like to work on Alf. Before we get into our Simpsons question, we're like, well, first, Alf, let's talk about it. All the Elf dirt. And tons of other cool stuff, including at the $10 level, you get access to our monthly premium video. We just put up the deleted scenes for Season 7 with me and Bob commenting upon it. And you can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. As for me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo.

And thanks a lot for listening, folks. We'll see you on Monday with a regular length episode. Goodbye. College football, NFL football, the greatest time of the year. No more waiting. The time has arrived for you to get in all the action. Don't wait any longer to make your online wages and head over to bedonline.orgie to take advantage of the best bonuses in the business.

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The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded son. supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral.

It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donoghue.