The Besties - How to Get Started in Handheld Gaming with Retro Game Corps

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Special guest Russ from Retro Game Corps teaches The Besties how to get into retro gaming handhelds. Here's you chance to become obsessed with the hobby! Plus, we finally catch up with Indiana Jones.For more Retro Gaming check out the channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RetroGameCorps Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I'm so glad that Russ from Retro Game Corps is joining us this week because I- Yeah, once he got to get here, he's late. And I, it's really, he's embarrassing his car. He's on island time, but the real, the problem I'm having with all my emus, and I don't know if it's a bug or a virus or a glitch, but all my Pokemon games,

all of the Pokemon sprites are nude. Like they're all nude and naked and anatomically like, really detailed and I don't know like whether I need to get a new device. You're making a face for us, fresh dick, and I do need to be clear. Well, I'm making a face just because traditionally speaking, Pokemon are always nude as far as I'm aware, except unless you're talking about like Thro,

or one of those, Hitmonchan kinda wears clothes, but largely speaking, they're always nude. That's true, do you think? So you're saying they've reached another layer to it. I'm saying that you see Pikachu's genitals, and I'm wondering if I get the Retroid Pocket 5, Yeah. Is that not gonna be a featured?

Or are you gonna see it maybe more enhanced? If I get the Odin 2 Mini Pro, are the genitals gonna be more, are they gonna be gone? Are they gonna be detailed? I don't know. Russ, if you can't stop drooling, I would ask that you turn off your camera. And that's both Russ's by the way, for the record, all russes.

You know, I could be Russ too, this episode. It's fine. No, listen, that was a great cold open. We did it. We did. My name is Russ McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frusik and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Crandall and I know the best handheld of the week.

Welcome to Russ City. A blasted land where Griffin and I are the only survivors in a world of Russes. This is the besties. It's a video game club. And just by listening, you have become a member. This week we are going to be speaking with Russ Crandall, Russ Frushtick, Chris Plants and I here. So you have to tell me with Russ Crandall. Russ Frushtick, Chris Plantz and I here, so you have to tell me about Russ Crandall. Yeah, so Russ Crandall, we've all, I think people know Russ as Russ from Retro Game Corps. And we've all used his very detailed analysis and setup guides on YouTube because he's done

such a good job in that space, such that I think he has become the Mr. Beast of retro gaming. I can't tell if that's fair to say. Wow. High praise. Huge for you, I bet. Without all the baggage, just the good stuff. Welcome aboard. We wanted to bring you in

because we've been talking about this stuff for a while, and we have so many questions, and the readers have so many questions. So I'm very excited. What should we be snacking on? What should we be drinking? Now, that was an incredibly long introduction, and now we're going to take a commercial break

after your absolute soliloquy. We'll be right back. Russ, before we get started, what should we be snacking on? And what should we be drinking? I have a better question for Russ. That'll tell us a lot more about him as a person. Russ, when you are setting up a new emulator, do you have a game or a game on each console

that you're like, gotta fire it, like, gotta do it. That's gotta be the first one I fire up. For me, whenever I set up a new emulator, the only one I have consistent is, if it's PlayStation, you know I'm playing Blasto. If it's NES. Blasto for the benchmarks, for sure. If it's NES, I'm playing Rescue, the embassy mission,

is what I'm firing up there. What about you? Do you have any standards? rescue the embassy mission is what I'm firing out there. What about you? Do you have any standards? Man, my stuff is so boring. So I basically, in the moment I get a handheld, I'm just testing it already. And so I just like, so for Super Nintendo,

it's Mega Man X because- Hell yeah. Oh, because of the bars. Yeah, exactly. It'll show pixel distortion like really quickly. And so super boring. Wait, really? Why?

So on the left side, if you think about Mega Man's life bar it'll be like perfect little pills all across the okay but only if your screen is balanced and so you need like a high resolution or something that's a good integer scale to it so it's like one of those patterns thing it's like almost like a test pattern that you can use to adjust oh cool yeah exactly and so I'll always fire that up and be like ah is this good screen or not? And then I can usually figure that out. Do you have trouble just playing video games?

Oh, man, I don't play anything. I just test games. You know what I mean? I never sit down and be like, hey, let's play Mario World for the 100th time. It's always like, what can I do to make the screen look better? Oh, the audio's off.

Let me see what I can do. Even when you're do, you know? Even when you're traveling, you're not whipping out the latest whatever and playing something? No. I'm usually sleeping or reading. Reading sports books. You've created a prison. Hunting animals with his bare hands.

I do two things, neither of them are play video games. Russ, we brought you on specifically because I think there are a lot of people, and you have been a great ambassador and an introduction to this space, I think there are a lot of people that are very intimidated by, you know, we're talking about a lot of Chinese handhelds from manufacturers that no one's ever heard of before, I mean, we have, but that's only thanks in part to you. I feel like a lot of people don't know how to get into it.

And I sort of wanted to like, at a baseline, if you're just slightly interested in this space, what is like step one? Yeah, you know, it's hard because I think Chris mentioned it really well in his written review earlier last week. It's basically all of these things are magical in their own way. It's just finding the right magical one for you. And it's really hard. You know, I've

got some roundups on my channel and stuff, but even then, within a month, the story changes all the time. That's the big thing I've noticed. And so my advice is really just like, look at your budget, like say it's going to be like the price of like a modern game. So 60, 70 bucks, and then see what's available at that price point. And it's probably going to be pretty magical on its own. And then just kind of go from there. Yeah, the first one you get, regardless of whether it's quote good or not, is always kind of magical.

I remember it was an RG 351 M. Oh, the RG 351 M. I still have a poster of it. We all remember our first. My advice for getting into this scene is always just go to the mall, look for a kiosk, where someone is selling an 801 NES box, definitely unlicensed. They're gonna have some art that's like glass, cut glass that you shine a laser light through. You can pick up one of those if you want.

It's not necessary for the emulation, but you can't go wrong with a kiosk, a mall kiosk, a retro box. Uh, you mentioned the price point, uh, Russ at that, like a console game price point, where are you currently at in your like this is the thing to buy because I feel like at that price point or maybe a little lower for a long time it was the Miu mini plus I guess. I feel like it's not there anymore. Right. Is that fair to say? A very recent replacement but for me it's now one called the trim UI brick and so this one looks a lot like the Miu mini

but smaller, but a really high resolution screen. I think it's like 760 AP. All these are using recycled phone parts and stuff. So all the resolutions and stuff are always crazy. But this one's super crisp and clear, about 50, 60 bucks and can play a lot more. So you can play up to a good amount of like Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast, which the Mii Mini Plus could not do. And so that's been my one. It's like a really solid, small handheld just kind of throw in your pocket. And that's running Linux as well. Yeah, it's just running Linux.

And there's a bunch of, you know, custom firmwares and all that stuff, which is a whole nother world, you know. But that's like my big one. And then the other one, it would be like the Amernik three RG three, five, X, X, S, P. Terrible. It just rolls right off the top. Wait, wait, wait, which one? RG35XXSP.

Did you say SP? So it looks like a Game Boy man's, yeah, so it looks like a Game Boy man's SP. Wait, yeah, you're a professional and you're recommending the 300XSP, cause all of us real ones know that the 4000X3P is gonna be the one to wait for. I'm sorry. There is actually a 4001,

as I'm sure Russ is running through his head. Yeah, it's all about screen size. It is this weird gray area though. Tell me if my read on this is wrong, Russ. It's like, it feels like they never wanna be so strongly branded as to be easily sewable. So it's like kind of a moving target, like, I don't know, it's kind of like jumbling names

and numbers, it's impossible to know what this thing does. I mean, for Ambernik, I have to assume it's just that they are releasing so many of these that they could not possibly create like a marketing team large enough and productive enough to come up with like original, like memorable names for every device they release. Yeah part of it too is that they they just created their own nomenclature because there are so many so the numbers mean something so 3 5 means 3.5 inch screen the XX is a specific reference to

a specific chipset and then they have other things P means like plastic M means metal and so they just can't come up with that many names. There's just not enough names in the English language. And so they have to come up with nomenclature. What's the race still? Like, what is being chased the most actively in this space, in this sort of portable arms race? In terms of what system?

Yeah, size, price, power, cost. Like, what is everybody chasing? Yeah, there's like two main tiers. There's the cheap under one hundred dollar one, and then there's like the two hundred ish dollar one, like the Retroid Pocket five. And so the cheaper ones are just really trying to get to that impulse buy category where they're looking at just something that reminds you of the old days and that you're just going to pick it up on a whim. pick it up on a whim. And then the more expensive ones are really targeting basically GameCube and PS2 performance and like an OLED display, all those kinds of things, like really trying to bring in that generation. Do you have insight into how big Ambernik would need to get before they were like, maybe we shouldn't ship ROMs on these SD cards when we sell them?

Yeah, I don't have any insight. But they it's weird because they you know, their domestic market is much bigger than their overseas market. They're really making this as an afterthought for the rest of us. And yeah, I don't know how much bigger they need to be. I know that they've been dropping listings on Amazon, like pulling them, because they're going to get in trouble and stuff. Me, same thing.

How do you, for yourself, Russ, I feel like everybody has to kind of answer these questions on your own, but obviously the conversation like emulation is always kind of like, in tandem with the piracy conversation. I always find myself kind of torn and I did when I was setting up, I'm always find myself when I set up one of these like surprised at how far caught up you know, the technology is and like, I really struggle because I cannot find a rational argument why you should not download a ROM of an Atari game that is absolutely unpurchasable for you in any planet. But on the flip side, there's a game released this week that you know, is that you could

also find the same way. How do you how do you and that feels like I definitely have like a yuckiness line that is a pretty moving target. Like, how do you how do you sort of like navigate that that those waters for yourself? Yeah, so for me I try to make everything available So I have like guides on how to like rip ROMs You know from an original cartridge and stuff like that for those who really want to kind of keep it very clean And then for everyone else I basically just start at the moment where I assume you already have those games

And so I don't don't kind of get into that thing and, you know, try to jump on one end or the other, but for current games, like, so there's a, there's a tool called port master, which is available on most of these Linux handhelds that allows you to basically run certain steam games directly on your device by pulling your steam files and putting them in a certain folder and whatnot. All totally legit and legal. It's just basically porting it over. Right.

And some of these companies will actually ship with those on there, with the commercial things like Celeste or Bellatro. And for me, that's like totally crossing the line. So I always call that out if I ever see that in a review and then also make guides and links to that other port master thing where you can just do that yourself. Buy the game on Steam, grab those files, throw it on there. And so there's kind of a middle ground there. But with emulation, yeah, it's one of those where I show people the tools. And to be honest, there's not a lot of interest in that. Not a lot of people really care about that. Those are like my worst performing videos.

In terms of what the tools to rip from your physical carpet cartridge. Yeah, those things bomb. But I mean, I don't need to I don't need to rip it myself, right? I know I have a copy of Rescue the Embassy Mission somewhere. I own it. My dad got it for me for my birthday. I know I own it. I didn't sell it.

I guess that brings me to the other point, and I don't know how comfortable you are talking about it, but obviously there was the issue with YouTube Strikes and Nintendo, and you had to alter the way you do stuff. Where where does that sort of sit at the moment? Yeah, that was rough. So I got two strikes on my channel and the first strike was literally me showing how to do that thing, to legitimately dump your game onto a file and then play it somewhere else. But it was a switch game.

And I think they were pretty sensitive about that. So I got a YouTube strike and then they were just kind of targeting my channel. And the next time I showed a Nintendo game, which was for the Wii U, totally different system, got another strike. And so that was rough. Those strikes are now expired. So I'm good. And just since then, I haven't really shown any Nintendo at all on my channel.

So it's been about three months. I've been slowly testing the waters by showing a little bit in a couple of days. I was going to say, I think I saw a little bit in a recent video. Yeah, and that's me just really kind of, yeah, I'm just testing the waters to see what is the threshold. It's not like they ever talked to me. They just threw those strikes at me.

So I wanna kind of figure out, if I can show Mario 64, I wanna show it. That makes sense. That explains why the retro-it starter guide I was just watching didn't explain to me how to set up Nesicle for the 30th time and I Still need the guide to find it Is there part of you that just wants to be like just get nesicle like, you know What it it's you know how to just get retro arc and then you fucking know how to do this

Come on me It is hard to go over the basics every time like for example last year The retro pocket 4 came out and then the Odin came out and they came out very quickly And so what I did is I did the Odin guide first and then I used the same footage in my retro pocket guide because it's The same thing. It's an Android device people got mad about that. They're like, I can't believe you're so lazy Ross I'm like, come on the same thing So yeah I'm from now on I'm just doing a single guide every time and it takes several days just to make one guide.

Was that the Odin 2 that came out? And then there was also the Pro and also the Portal. It seems like last year was kind of crazy for like- Yeah, so they had the Odin 2, the Odin 2 Mini, and then the Odin 2 Portals now coming out. And then Retroid released the Pocket 4 and the Pocket 5. It feels like those two are sort of in direct competition. And I remember when the Odin first came out,

I got the Odin Pro and I really enjoyed that. I played PlayStation 2 games and it was like the first emulator that I was able to like really play PS2 games on like a handheld. But it seems like Retroid sort of, the pendulum has swung back in the other direction a bit, now Retroid Pocket 5 is able to do a lot more than the sort of previous generation was.

Is that sort of your read on things or, cause those two sort of occupy that higher end space. Right, I would say that the Retroid is always focused on kind of that middle tier, you know, like getting up to potentially PS2. And then the Odin 2 is kind of overkill. Like basically anything you can play on Android was going to play on that. It's basically like a high powered phone. And so it's interesting because these two companies, it's speculated that they both have the same parent company. And so they're just kind of trying to hit two different targets,

but also undercutting one another. But yeah, I would say the retro is like $200 space, whereas the Odin's at $300 space. Oh, is it? Okay. I didn't realize it. It's wild to me that we don't know that they have the same, whether they have the same parent company or not. That is I mean, to me. Yeah, but like, I can see why they're probably.

No, I get it. Hey, Russ, can you tilt your camera to show us the huge pile of discarded But like I can see why they're probably no I get it hey Russ Can you tilt your camera to show us the huge pile of discarded handhelds? I figure there's a quarter somewhere We're gonna show up at your house and say this is this is a site that needs to be cleaned up There's so much way field. Oh Man, I have I I limit myself to 200 devices at any given time. Like, that's what I keep on hand for comparisons

of everything else. I can't tell if you're joking or not, because that number is so high it feels like a joke. That is not a joke. That's true. So everything else I give away to other YouTubers, or all that kind of stuff. So I try to get those out of the house.

But I keep 200 on hand. Do you have a spreadsheet? How are you tracking that number? It's just in my head. Like, I'll count All right, let's go and see what needs to go and so yeah around 200 are your neighbors Appreciating the benefit as well They get in some of these

Yeah, like Christmas like hey, here's a bunch of Rushes up your door to a clock in the morning pout pout, pow. Hey listen, good news for you, bad news for me. I'm up to 201, I got a fully crunk. It's like smoking, it's so full of nasty, nasty roms. I had a question about flip devices. You mentioned the 35XX SP earlier, and we have a new one, the Miu Flip, which just came out. Oh.

I don't, you haven't put out the review yet. You'd put out an impressions video as of today. I don't know when the review is going to go up. Do you think there's anyone that could ever come up with a flip device that would sustain like long-term use without essentially falling apart? No, I don't think so. I mean, these guys, they don't have that same engineering team as Nintendo and even Nintendo stuff bricks You know like the DS gets cracked and all that stuff

So yeah, I don't I don't see that happening and it's just a matter of when with each of these and it's always been that way I will say that they're getting smart and not doing as many Translucent or transparent colors because those are brittle the plastic is brittle on those and they'll crack more easily Yeah, there's just there's nothing you can fix about that. I think it's just time. The worst I haven't I've been out of the scene for a while. It was very much a like covid hobby sort of situation. But I was like doing, you know, shell swaps for like a Gameboy color or, you know, building a metal switching a GBA SP into like a single metal case. So it had sort of like that DMG form factor.

And doing that with the Game Boy Advance SP was the biggest pain in the ass of any, because they tuck little ribbon cables up in that little, like, I don't know what they make the little bolts that they secure the hinge of the SP with, but it's like, it's unobtainable. It is like such a pain in the ass to crack one of those apart

and not shatter it into a million pieces. Is there a device in particular that's like a real pain in the ass to work with, Russ? Those SP ones are really bad, like the clamshell ones because of that ribbon cable, like Griff was just saying, like it's bad. It's weird because it's a trade-off because those are so fun to take around

because a clamshell protects itself. It protects the screen and the buttons. You can just throw it in a bag. But that's but that's the one that's going to break the fastest. So it's, it's just a catch 22. Russ for yourself, when you're looking at these, the, the different systems, like, do you have a sense in your head of an audience that is just focused on. Tinkering like you're talking about someone who is just like a tinker who is not necessarily interested in playing the games do you sense like a

bifurcation in the audience where there are people who just want to like fool around with these things and get to understand the works and then there's a segment that just wants to set up their thing so they can play the games do you sense that like sort of split yeah totally like so my videos are always geared towards the newcomer because I'm just like you know if you're you're just stumbling on this, let's start from scratch every time. But there are those guys who are just there. They're in the scene. You know, they're just they're heavy into Reddit and discord and whatnot.

So I make videos for them on the side as well. Like, hey, here's the setup I'm using right now. And it'll be like a 20 minute video and just kind of talking through the details of that kind of stuff. And I also think that sometimes those newcomers will graduate into those other guys too. And so I kind of try to bridge that gap as well. Is it kind of a bummer that because of the speed of the releases, like, are you still seeing traffic from older videos or does that stuff kind of just

fade away? Yeah, there's still, especially in like the, uh, outside of the Western world, you know, especially down like South America and whatnot. A lot of these devices will get really cheap and then people pick up on them, you know, a year or two later. And so they're still getting some good traction. My my big kind of regret is that they come out so fast that I don't get enough time to really live with each one.

You know, I'm just moving on to the next one. And so I miss the old days of 2020 when I only had like one handheld and I made 20 videos about it, you know, and it's just impossible at this point to keep up. Instead, I've got a stack of things to review. Yeah, it does seem exhausting. Quite honestly, I'm kind of baffled that you're able to keep up the pace. You don't feel like you're hitting a wall anytime soon, like this is still bringing you joy or is it getting a little old? For me, it's a service to others, you know, so I just think about, you know, anytime I make a video, like who's this going to benefit and how can I make that easy for them? And so I don't even think about it along the lines of like, oh, I'm not having fun with this device. It's more about how

can I make sure that I unlock the fun for everybody else? So I write, but I guess I'm going to ask that again. Are you having fun in the production of these videos? Not so much the playing them Yeah, but it does seem like a grind as useful as they are to people. I don't mind that I so I am you know, I'm retired military So I'm used to doing crappy things for a living, you know So I don't really mind that at all like it and how does that how does this compare? To military would you say you know, it's It's actually very similar because attention to detail is super important.

And I was a linguist in the military, so not like a grunt or anything. And I was a master chief for most of my career as well. And so I was in the higher ranks working on policies and stuff like that. And so that attention to detail just completely carries over to my videos too. So it's a really important thing for me.

You mentioned the brick as the like lower tier recommendation currently would you say it's the Retroid Pocket 5 for the higher tier? Yeah that's the mid tier for me so it's like kind of three tiers where I would say you know brick is like the good one and the Mew Flip is really getting there too like I'm really yeah I'm very excited about that one particularly and then uh yeah the Retroid Pocket 5 and kind of that $200 tier PS2 tier, you know And then for the Beyond if you're just going nuts, then that would be like the Odin 2 or at that point I just say not get a Steam Deck because the price point is kind of bridging that and so it's like Well, you might as well also play PC games at the same time Are you anticipating like Steam OS the release of Steam OS really just blowing this whole

this whole sort of niche wide open again, because it seems to me like everything's going to kind of change when you can legally and somewhat effortlessly put Steam on one of these things. It really depends on the architecture. So something like a Retroid or whatever, that's not going to be able to run SteamOS unless they make an ARM version, right?

Because there's ARM versus x86. I do see SteamOS being still kind of niche, because you're going to have to flash it yourself onto the ROG ally or whatever. You're still going to have to do that extra effort to actually install it onto your device. So I don't see it really breaking the mainstream, except for that new Lenovo device that's coming out that's

actually going to have it already on it. And if they put that in Best Buy, that's going to be a big thing. That's one thing about the Steam Deck is you have to actually order it yourself. There's a bit effort there, but if you can walk by and be like, holy crap, that's a Steam OS device,

then that's really compelling to me. Yeah. That area in particular, the Linux to Android divide is really where I get hung up. Because in my experience, it has seemed that once you set up a Linux device with a custom firmware and it's all done it kind of does its own thing and Android I feel is like constant tweaking and adjusting power perimeters and shit like that and my patience goes out the

window. Yeah yeah totally every time I end up in an Android menu I feel like I want to get out of it as quickly as possible just take me to some other UI, please. You're basically putting lipstick on a pig, right? Like you're just taking this like house of cards and stacking a bunch of emulators on top and throwing a front end to hide all of it and then hoping that all these updates and whatnot are not going to break what you have set up right then and there. Whereas Linux, you can just take that thing offline and you'll never have to worry about it again. Yeah.

Does anyone is anyone getting close to like solving the Android problem? Like is retroids front end coming close or not really? No, no one's there. I mean, we now have emulation station desktop edition, which is a nice, really robust front end. We now have that on Android. But even then, that's an effort barrier because you got to join their because they won't list it on the Play Store because it asks for too many permissions. And so they have to join their Patreon for one month only. you get the code to be able to download it and that's again you just putting layers of effort into the setup process so. None of it's easy none of it simple i prefer the linux stuff you like the new many where you just buy that thing and it already works pretty well and you can update later if you want to.

later if you want to. Is there any sense that these like the people that are making the platforms will ever come up with tools that make like easier migration stuff like that so where like it's not always a huge pain to switch from one to the other? No I don't see that happening. I mean so you guys might be familiar with MU deck which is like the emulation setup guide for steam deck that developer made something for Android where you basically plug it into a Windows computer and then it will download all this stuff

and then transfer it over for you. But even then he's taking all these disparate parts, like all these different emulating apps that are made by different people, putting it all together with all their set of rules, plus all of the layers of security that Android keeps popping on everything. I don't ever see this being an easy task

on Android in particular. Last question for me, who do you think is currently winning the custom firmware race on Linux? There's a number of options, you got, what is it, Nulli and Moos and a few different ones. What do you think is doing it best? Yeah, I really like what Nulli is doing, which is basically BadaSara,

a very emulation station focused operating system. It's been working for a while. It's a Linux based one. But then I also am a huge champion of one called MinUI, which is a minimized like text based operating system. I really love that one because that's the one I actually put on for friends. You know, like I'm going to give them a device. I'm going to put MinUI on it because you cannot break it. And that's the biggest thing for me. And it is limited. It basically only caps out at basically PlayStation one. But for those, you know, if I'm giving it to a casual friend,

they just want to play Dr. Mario. And so it's like a perfect setup for them. If you're just as like a friend gift, what do you think the A30 is like a good like? I don't care. It's 30 bucks or whatever it is. Is that like a good starting point? I honestly think the clamshell is like this meal flip in particular. It's probably going to be the best one because that clamshell thing is like, Hey, when you're done with the game, just close it.

That's all you have to do. You know? And that's just such an easy thing to just convey to anybody. Yeah. The last time I gave someone a gift, I put like sticky labels on the back, like hold start and select to exit the game and shit like that. It's fucking insane. So that's a good point.

But if they ever become easy to use, then we won't need Russ. So we need them to stay complicated and a pain. You don't want to make yourself a obsolete self obsolescence. Russ, any closing thoughts before we get over to Indiana Jones? No, that's it. I think that, you know, the biggest thing is just check out my channel or other channels. And if you see a form factor that really jives with you,

keep going. Investigate a little bit more. And under $100 is really the place to go. Maybe not jump right into a Retroid Pocket 5. Maybe get your feet wet with something else instead. Especially because it's an Android device, and it's kind of a pain in the. I would definitely, definitely recommend price

not being like the first concern. I would say get a device that is famously easier to set up because that is, the worst thing is buying one of these and then getting it and feeling like, oh shit, I don't know, I don't know how to get this thing up around. Here's a quick question. We were talking about the Odin 2

and I noticed I was looking at your, the video that you had on it is over a year old now, October of 2023. Do you have a sense of like a pace of these devices? Like if I'm thinking about making the jump into one, like is there a pace at which these are getting released? Do I maybe wanna hold out for Odin 3 at this point? Yeah, so it really comes down to the chip set.

So for example, Ambernic releases a new device every three to four weeks, like it is all the time, but they use the same chips for the most part. So it's really a form factor thing at that point. But when you're looking for a generational leap of the chip, then it's usually every year and a half or so you'll see a big jump. So the Odin 2 portal, which is coming out basically this or next month, has the same chip as that original Odin 2, it's just a different form factor.

It's really about what really appeals to you in terms of the power and then the form factor. All right. We'll take a quick break and we're gonna talk a little bit about Indiana Jones, which we didn't get to talk about in December because of timing. And then, so we'll be right back.

Let's take a break. Indiana Jones, let's do it. OK. Indiana Jones is a new game from from Bethesda, from a lot of the people who worked on Wolfenstein games. And they've got this this new Indiana Jones game, which if this is a comparison that was immediate to me and a lot of other people, but maybe has missed a generation, and it's not unlike Chronicles of Riddick.

It is a first person, I guess you'd say like, a first person exploration and brawling game. I wouldn't say it's a first person shooter. I wouldn't say, but that is about where I'd put it. And that's similar to Chronicles of Riddick, which we never played. It was about basically a big prison break. And you are like sneaking around through a prison

with whatever sort of like hand to hand weapons you can scrounge up. It's really good. It was like really surprisingly, kind of shocked everybody how enjoyable it was. And this is kind of similar to that for me. I feel like where I'm really kind of surprised by how closely they've sort of like captured

what a really good version of an Indiana Jones game might be. Yeah. I really- Yeah, I mean, starting with Troy Baker's performance as Harrison Ford, as Indiana Jones, is genuinely one of the most impressive, I think, like, video performances.

I've ever seen a video game or animated feature or anything, it is, you really, he really gets lost in it and just constantly you will forget, like, oh, that's not actually, that's not Harrison Ford, because he sounds like, but he also brings his own thing to it, it's not like an impressionist that you hired for a birthday party. No.

Like, he sells it in a way that is, I think, if you had asked me before the game came out, I would have probably assumed it was like an impossible needle to thread. He fucking, there's a moment where you're like climbing up a rope or whatever, and the grunt that he makes is a Harrison Ford grunt, and I have no fucking clue how you do that.

It's what really impresses me, honestly, and this is a credit to the technology too, I think, and not just Troy Baker, but like, there are tiny, like micro expressions that he does that carry over. Like for example, there is an upgrade you can get where if you get beat up, you can, and you get knocked out, you can grab your hat and put your hat back on, and then you're back in the fight,

you get another chance to do it. But when you put your hat back on, every time there's like this tiny one second cinematic where he kind of looks at the guys he's fighting gives him a little like smirk like and it it's it's every time it's so small and specific, but it feels like exactly right. Yeah, Ross, I know you got into it a bit. What was your initial reaction? initial reaction. You know, I played the Riddick game back in the day, but then also the darkness is the same Starbreeze studios from back in the day. Sure.

I found that that one is a really close analogy because you know, you have like those snake whips in that one. Yeah. While you're playing like Melee, and that's very similar to holding the whip as Indiana Jones. So very similar.

And even the vignetting that happens when you go into stealth mode, like super close. And so it took me a couple days to really figure that out, but yeah, I really enjoy it. Apparently a lot of the developers actually were from Starbreeze and they came over and joined this studio. So I think the DNA is very clear. It's machine games, right?

Right, machine games is, they made Wolfenstein most recently. And yeah, I mean it's- It is truly, it is wild to me how often I feel like this game bucks like modern Sort of game design and world design convention in order to present an authentic sort of like

globe trotting Indiana Jones-esque experience. It doesn't feel, I feel like this game would have been tarnished greatly if it had felt more like a video game at times instead of feeling like a quest to raid tombs. The first thing you do really as Indiana Jones is you go through the scene of a break-in at a museum and you have to go and pick up relics off the ground and identify their nation of origin

and put them back in their display cases. And it's so boring, but it's also like cool that like you are, you know, history, archeology professor, Indiana Jones, like cleaning up a mess. And that's the first thing you do as you're sort of like, well, I guess the introduction to the game

is the introduction to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but. Yeah, and it's also a lot of good performances in it. There's a priest, Enrico Colantoni plays from Veronica Mars in Just Shoot Me. Oh, I didn't know that's who that was. It's wild, right? It's like really. Wow, I had no idea.

I know, right? It's really impressive. I had to look it up because I was like, who is this? And it's him, he does great. He's killer. He's really good on English teacher too, if you guys haven't, anyway. We'll save it for honorable mentions.

It's not like, I guess the point I'm trying to make is like, it's not like Dishonored where you have superpowers and you can zoom around. It's like,, I guess the point I'm trying to make is like, it's not like Dishonored where you have superpowers and you can zoom around. It's like, if you see a building and you know there's a thing up in there, getting to it is going to be kind of slow by most game standards and sort of unspectacular. It's, but he's like a, he's a human being man

who likes history, and you really feel like the game is going to great pains to not make it feel like he is an action hero, which is like the thing with Indiana Jones is that he gets his ass kicked sometimes, and he gets hurt, and he's not invincible. Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like, I feel like you are absolutely right,

and I feel like it was so such a really like smart and Like way of envisioning Indiana Jones and here's here's and the I played it I started playing it the first day it came out and I'm still playing it I'll check back in on it and I'll play for like another hour or so and it's like I so respected and this is probably just a comment on me maybe but like I Because the power curve has to has to be tamped down in such a way We're like you it almost has to be flat like practically. Yeah, I mean like I'm trying to be generous like yeah a hundred percent man

There is no point what she's gonna be like yeah with two whips I can really get some stuff done right now. I can double jump right yeah It's not gonna happen and and I will admit there's a part of me that's like as cool as the things are sometimes the like the feeling that I'm like progressing or it really like everything you do has to be like or it really like, everything you do has to be like, really, really fun and nothing can feel like grunt work because the rewards for doing it aren't good enough, right? So it like, it has to be really engaging.

And I have found myself for whatever reasons, just like pretty easily distracted while playing Indiana Jones. That's what I would say. What was your, what do you think Russ? Have you noticed any of that? Yeah, for me it's, I found myself stumbling into the progression of the game where I'm not really sure what I'm doing I'm just kind of poking around pushing on things and then all of a sudden it works and then I'm moving on the next part

Yeah, that's very much Indiana Jones, right? Because he's like that too. He just stumbles into success. And so that that has actually been something I've really noticed like I'm in Egypt right now I'm just got dropped into the map and I have no idea where I'm going. And that's exactly what he would be doing if he was there too. I enjoyed that realism.

That's very cool. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It really can give you a lot of freedom too, just to pile on that. When they give you a new environment, they'll kind of let you like walk around, which does add to that immersion. And it's like, I think they incentivize exploration

in a way that is like really quite smart. Mostly like, I think it is fun when you find like a little puzzle and you're like, oh, okay, I'm gonna do a little, I'm gonna do this little puzzle. And the reward is like, you know, whatever, adventure points that you could spend to unlock little perks that you find in these books scattered all around.

But those perks are not like huge. It's like when you hit in these books scattered all around, but those perks are not huge. It's like when you hit somebody with a candlestick, it breaks after three hits instead of two. It's very, very, very small stuff. It is great that when you find those ones, they're like, just wait till I find a candlestick. Then you guys are in big trouble. But I don't know, I just like exploring.

One of the first like big areas you get dropped into is Vatican City. And it's like humongous. And there is so much stuff to like poke around and find. And it goes against sort of my nature as like what I like from games, which is like heavy progression hooks and like carrots and sticks.

And this game doesn't really do a lot of that. I just like going around as Indiana Jones. Like it feels pretty cool. And sometimes you'll find something that helps, but for the most part, it's just exploring for exploring sake. It also has, I think, I can't think of a game that has done melee combat

better than this game. It's fun. Yeah, the counters are cool. Like it feels, it's very well animated. It looks very natural. And just the like, oh, I got spotted. I'm holding a vase. I'm gonna throw the vase in his general direction

and hope for the best and then just charge him. That is like such an encapsulation of what Indiana Jones is about. I will say, and this sound bite, I hope doesn't get pulled out of the context of this show. I wish that they just hadn't put dogs in the game. Yes. Because clearly they were trying to be sensitive

to the fact that there's fascists all over the Vatican and some of them have dogs that will attack you if you get too close. To kind of like mix up the sort of like stealth stuff. But if a dog gets too close to you, it'll jump and bite you and you have to like push him off. But you can't harm the dog. You can only crack your bullwhip to like scare it

and cow it sort of to the ground where it will just kind of sit for an idle animation of about 10 seconds before it gets back up and tries to bite you again. And it's such an insane like contrivance where like if a Nazi rolls up on you, you can punch him 10 times in the face, and then that's, he's done, you don't have to worry about him anymore,

but if you see a dog, it's like this infinitely regenerating, like, danger. It is, and it is also a wild, the implication is also insane. Like, the implication is like, well yeah, you can snuff that out, it's just a human life, but that's a pupper's, like, you don't wanna kill the puppers. Which like, I understand why they did a human life, but that's a puppers like you don't want to Why they did that

It's like the whole thing's wild man, but yeah, it is it is The fact that they come back they're like well fuck you there I'm not like hungering for dog violence. Just don't put the dog in the game if you're gonna make it an invincible dog violence, just don't put the dog in the game if you're gonna make it an invincible, unkillable sort of monster. It is funny though, or kind of bumping up against, is like part of this game I do feel like is, you can meet it, I think you meet it a little bit

of the way with role playing. There's just like, you know you have a pistol. And every once in a while I will get frustrated enough to like walk up to some Nazis like, hey, I'm not actually a priest. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And I'll walk in and the Vatican does have a very thorough response plan for for any college professors that walk into the Vatican to do that.

But it is like I didn't even fire a shot. I mean, I really until several hours in, I didn't even use the gun. Like I forget I had that. I I I will press a button trying to pull out a biscotti to eat it and it'll draw a revolver. Be like, what the fuck? It made it actually kind of, I'm at a point now where there's a lot more like,

well armed Nazis. And it makes it, it's a little less like, I don't really want it to turn into that. Like I really don't want to get into a bunch of gunfights, but it's, I'm feeling like more pressed that way, the more guys I run into with automatic weapons. Well, that was what was so great about Riddick, right? Is like in Riddick, if you find a sharp toothbrush,

it's like, fuck you, it's like pulling the master sword because what you have available to you is so limited. And yeah, I think it gets a little bit less special. But it's also like, I think that also accurately reflects the Indiana Jones movies where he is not a gun toting guy. He will use a gun sometimes, but most of the time it's punching and whipping with some gun mixed in for seasoning.

He often uses his whip when he could probably reach with his hand. There's like switches where he's like, whoosh, all right, all right. Just settle down in it. Just take your tiptoes. Where do you fall, Russ? Are you like fully in?

You're going to actually finish it or you think this is more or less what you've played? Yeah, I'm going to finish it. I'm I'm yeah, I don't know where I'm in terms of progression, probably 30% through the game, and I'm enjoying it. I wish it wasn't so stealthy, you know? I feel like Indiana Jones wouldn't stealth this much. He would spend more time bonking people on the head like you can do, right?

But I usually devolve into fisticuffs anyway. Like I just, I'm not good enough at sneaking around that I get caught and then I just beat everyone up and then move on to the next thing. Which again, feels very Indiana Jones. It's a surprisingly effective strategy to just like get a wrench and go start hitting people and just pick a other ring.

It just feels wrong. It feels like you're doing it wrong. Not to me. I, I, I. My, I feel like games that dabble in stealth are usually do so pretty wrong-headedly in that if you're gonna have stealth in your game, have a lot of stealth stuff.

Like, you get a cost, you get a disguise to appear as a priest while you're at the Vatican. Let me beat up a Nazi and take his clothes so I can go in like the restricted areas. Like give me some other tools. Well, you do get a fascist outfit also in the Vatican. So there's that. That is true, I guess. It's not a Nazi outfit.

I know you want to, you personally want a Nazi outfit. That's cool, Russ, that's cool. That's really terrible. I do like for one thing on the stealth thing, like we've talked a little bit about Dishonored, which is a game I absolutely love, but if you get spotted in Dishonored, you're reloading that save.

I certainly have like save scum my way through those games. And if you get spotted in this by like a crowd with weapons, you can legit run away. And the way the AI is programmed, like it's possible to get like escape without having to reload a save, and that is awesome. I wish more games would do that. Yeah, unless they have a dog with them

who will pursue you till you are dead, and there's nothing you can do about it. Cool. Why do you think Microsoft buried it? I don't know that they... It's an insane time of year. I don't think you have to be particularly well-versed in the industry to know that releasing a game, you know, a couple weeks before Christmas is sort of a death note. I will say, this is my best guess, and Russ, you're smarter about like industry stuff than I am.

My best guess would be Microsoft wanted to release it so they could say they released it in 2024. That was my thinking as well. I think it's a fiscal financial thing, because you're right. Yeah. Right after the Game Awards, everyone's on vacation. I mean, I think they also view this as a Game Pass game more than anything else, even though it is on Steam.

If they could have gotten it out earlier, I mean, they probably could have, but I feel like, I bet it was coming in really hot and they didn't wanna wait another delay, another game pushed out of this year. I think they wanna be able to say, this came out this year, we released. Yeah, I will say it doesn't feel like it came in hot.

It feels pretty fucking smooth. Like, not buggy, runs well, gorgeous on PC, looks pretty good on Xbox. They released it in a way that a company would usually release a game that they were trying to put at the, you know, Friday at 4.55 p.m., like skip the news cycle, sort of, really, taking out the trash, as they call it,

and that is not this game. This game's fucking good, man. Yeah, I thought it was really great. And it does give me hope for the other stuff they have in development. We have a lot of Xbox games that that should in theory come out this year. Yeah. Uh, avowed and, um, maybe fable who knows.

Uh, so maybe this, this is an upswing. Uh, do we want to do honorable mentions? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Um, I'll start. I've been playing a game called Bellatro. It's a card game.

I want to called Bellatro. It's a card game. Come on. I wanna mention Bellatro. I mentioned this on the Resties, which is a Patreon only thing, but I wanted to share it with a wider audience because I think it's important. I came up with a rule for playing Bellatro on my phone, and I couldn't recommend it more highly to everyone else out there.

I cannot start a new run of Bellatro when I'm in my house. So if I'm on the subway, or I'm in a new run of Bellatro when I'm in my house. So if I'm on the subway, or I'm in a waiting room or anything, I can start a new run. I can start as many runs as I want. Second, in my house, I can continue and finish the run that I'm currently on.

I can't start a new one. Two things it does. One, time management, great for not like sinking an entire night on just playing Bellatro. And two, it makes me play the game in a really interesting way, where I know that I can't start a new run, so I'm gonna make the fucking best that I can out of this run,

which I think is very true to the Roguelike genre. Is there a daily challenge mode of Bellatro? Because it seems like that would be hot. It does seem like there would be. I know they're working on a content update this year, and it wouldn't surprise me if... I mean, they already have seating as an option, that's the hardest part of that.

So it seems like they would add it, but currently I think they just have the set challenges. So that was my Bellatro pro tip for everyone. Wow, excellent. I wanna recommend The Circle France, season one. We were jonesing to watch the Circle. There's a bunch of international seasons on Netflix. I looked up what's the good one.

Circle Season One of Circle France was highly recommended. Watched it, good shit. If you enjoy that show, it hits hard. Everybody plays hard and strategic from day one and it's a very, very entertaining watch. I wanna know if Russ is a reality guy, reality TV guy. Not at all. That does not surprise me.

Yeah, I can't say on the veil. Yeah, I like it. I also have been messing around and taking a beginner course in Godot, which is a game development platform. That's cool. I did sort of a similar thing back when I was still

at Polygon with Game Maker Studio 2, which had a sort of visual programming, you know, dragging blocks sort of programming method, which was very accessible to me at the time, and I really enjoyed. And I don't know, I've been kind of, I really enjoyed doing that, and, but I wanted to sort of check out this other thing

and Godot is totally open source, free to like download and lots of games are made in Godot. I can't think of any off the top of my head. Yeah, so Halls of Torment. Yes, that is the one that I was just playing. I really enjoyed. The Golden Idol games made in Godot. There are a lot of titles.

It's very interesting. I'm not gonna get like super deep into it, but like it is very logically designed and a lot of it really makes sense. And the programming language that it works in is sort of designed to be very readable and very user friendly. And all of like anything I know from coding

is from like doing code academy courses on Python or whatever and I am following I'm finding it's like sort of fairly easy to follow So I don't have any designs on like making a big game or anything like that But I I don't know it's very satisfying to like have a challenge of like make it so that when you click this treasure chest, it opens up. And then like figuring out the like nine things you have to do in order to actually make that happen. I find that very puzzly and satisfying in a way.

And it's free. So the course is not free, but the Godot software is. What's the course program that you're doing? It's GD Quest, which I think is associated with like some of the dev team on Godot. They have a few different ones. There's like a free one that like teaches you the basics of the sort of coding language, the programming language.

But the one I take you now is something, I forget how much it cost, it wasn't crazy. But it just walks you through making basically like a 2D very, very simple game. So it's very cool. Cool. I wanted to recommend a comedy called Y2K. It is made by Kyle Mooney

and it is a sort of horror, not really a horror, sort of like a horror comedy, heavier on the comedy, that is sort of like, imagine Can't Hardly Wait or one of those like teen coming of age comedies, but set against the backdrop of Y2K in a world where Y2K was as bad as it could possibly be, and all of our computers and phones and all of our technology at the time rose up to try to kill us. And that is like the premise of the movie is like you have four, five kids that are being like trying to escape this like robot apocalypse.

The joy of the thing is really like it is so evocative of the time period. If you are of a certain age where like you are getting the references and hearing the references, I think that you will really get a lot out of it and enjoy it and get it's silly. It's not super scary. It's not like, doesn't have a lot of like huge points to make. But for people who, you know, were teens at that time,

it is, it feels like kind of a love letter. And we, Sid and I both really, really enjoyed it. It felt very, it was just very pleasant to see and it felt very nostalgic. So we liked it a lot. I know it has gotten some negative reviews. I think that if you are not someone who's going to enjoy the sort of references this is doing, and not just references, because it's not like referential humor, but it is very much of a time and of a place. If you, if you are not someone who's gonna enjoy the sort of references this is doing, and not just references, because it's not like referential humor, but it is very much of a time and of a place. If you don't click with that, I could see how you wouldn't love the rest of it, but I really enjoyed it. It's interesting, because the other movie of his that I saw,

which was Brigsby Bear, is like so referential to the 80s and like 80s TV. And it's interesting to see him tackling a different genre. I didn't know this was his movie. Yeah, it's really, really, it's very well done. It's very funny and it's really smart, I think, and well worth watching. Ross, you got anything? Yeah, this one might seem kind of predictable, but I've been playing a game and it's a Final Fantasy 16,

which I think, you know, it's kind of last year's news, right? But what I've really learned about it, I just recently picked it up because it finally is on PC and it's finally at a good price of like 40 bucks or something. And it is a perfect casual dad game, I think, when it comes to just playing an RPG because there's a couple factors to it. But one is that you can use like these runes or trinkets, whatever they call them, to basically just spam one button to do all the cool special moves. So you don't have to memorize all the button configurations

and stuff. So you really just mash on X and you can just do these amazing feats. And if you don't care about the mechanics of it, it actually is really satisfying. And the other part is they have like these pause context menus. So you can pause any scene and it'll show all the characters and the references and you can go and read up a little bit more about it. I do like that a lot. Yeah, it's been really good for me and just kind of like, because I only have, you know, 20-30 minutes a day and not every day consistently to really play games and relax and whatnot. And that's the one I keep going to because it's just so casually minded, which you wouldn't expect from Final Fantasy. You would think you have to get immersed and kind of

like live in it. And this is one of those where you can just jump back in whenever and you can just smash that X button and you're right back at it. And what's cool is by 2030, you should be done with it. And then, you know, Final Fantasy game should be coming out right around. Russ, you were telling me that you streamed that on your coffee maker, right? You set up the the buttons to the grind is jump and. Yeah, was that running on Android 13, the coffee maker? Now, let's get serious, though, for a second. Are you taking care of your hands?

Is that something you're thinking about a lot? Oh, my gosh. It is something I do think about a lot. Like, the way that I hold my hands, in particular, for filming is not a very natural position, but it looks good on screen, and it hurts after time. So I got to take breaks and stuff. This is kind of back of the scene knowledge stuff.

But yeah, I've ever seen a first person shooter that zoomed out to show from third person. You'll often see the hands like that because they want it to look normal on the screen, but it's really just hands chopping through the air that that's right. What we do in Manny's. What are we doing? Keeping my nails clean. I take breaks and give my hands rest, you know, and I'll kind of space all that stuff out. Lotion. Make sure, because it starts to hurt my nose.

Polish. Moisturizing, at least, moisturize. Gotta be no moisturizer. I don't have to do any of that stuff. I live in Hawaii. It's like, you know, it's humid here all the time, so I don't have to deal with any of that crap. You think that now, you're still a young man,

you better be sleeping in gloves, lotion-filled gloves. You still, you want to still be doing this in 2080, right? You still want to be. Russ, thank you so much. Again, where is the best place for people to find your work? So my YouTube channel, Retro Game Core, C-O-R-P-S, like Marine Corps, that's the place to start. All right.

I guess I'll recap the stuff we talked about. We talked about quite a bit. A few recommendations on the low-end entry point. Russ mentioned the TrimUI Brick, which is a new handheld in the $70-ish range. There's also the Retroid Pocket 5, which is in the $200-ish range. And then on the high end, we have the Odin 2,

which is around $300. And probably is going to change by the time we publish this episode on Friday. We also talked about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is on Game Pass and Steam and everything else. Fun fact, if you're playing on Xbox and then you switch for some reason over to Steam, the save file carries over. You can actually connect the save file, which is awesome. I've only seen that with Microsoft to Microsoft stuff.

So that was cool to see. We also talked about my very handy Bellatro pro tip for not ruining your life. We talked about Final Fantasy 16. We talked about the Circle France edition, season one, and a Godot game-making course that Griffin has taken called GD Quest. And Justin talked about the movie Y2K from Kyle Mooney. Thanks, Chris.

You're welcome. For walking us through that. We also have some patrons I wanted to thank. Thank you to the following patrons. Thank you to all the patrons. But specifically today, we're gonna thank Jason, Christiane Dovahkiin, birth name, to the following patrons. Thank you to all the patrons, but specifically today we're gonna thank Jason, Christian, Dovahkiin, birth name, and Harrison.

Oh, Harrison, who knows? Could be him. Could be him. Could be George Harrison. Or it could be Troy again trying to fricking trick us. Thank you to all the patrons for backing us. We have more exclusive content behind the wall. We have the Rest Each episodes, Bracket episodes every month.

All sorts of great stuff there. So please check us out. There being patreon.com slash the besties. Correct, correct. What are we doing next week? How would I have any way of knowing that? Next week we're gonna be doing, I'm so glad you asked for us,

it's gonna be Donkey Kong Country Returns. And it's the second time it has returned, which is just confusing. Donkey Kong Country returns. And it's the second time it has returned, which is just confusing. So it's, but it's coming out on Switch, and it's a very good platforming game, so I'm excited to check that out. Gotta be going ape.

That's good, Jesus. Yeah. That's good, man. You did it. You did it. Ross, thank you so much for joining us. Go over to the Retro Game Corp YouTube channel. Good stuff coming out every week.

Thanks for having me. This is really awesome. I'm honored to be on here. Just an hour of happiness. That's going to do it for us this week. Until next time, for all the besties, be sure to join us again next week with the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!