The Besties - Sony Kills Discs, Nintendo Revives Star Fox

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Griffin needed to take this week off, but our guest was more than prepared to talk about the week’s huge gaming news. Stephen Totilo, the founder of Game File and former EIC of Kotaku, explains the cause and fallout of Sony’s decision to cease physical game production in 2028. In more joyful news, Nintendo remade Starfox for the second time! And Frushtick and Plante have impressions to share! 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! 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!

Y'all, I saw my life flash before my eyes this weekend. Whoa. Literally saw my life flash before my eyes this weekend. Was it a happy thing? How much of that time was just you sitting in a chair staring at a screen? That's the problem is it wasn't that, but you're not so far off. I desperately needed to organize our garage because, you know, like, you got to organize the garage if you want to organize everything else. That's going to be the place that you're moving all the storage, right?

So I'm going through it. And what do I find most of the garage is old video game collections? A lot of it destroyed from when the car drove through the house, but I decided to keep it. I don't know. I'm sentimental. And I'm stacking it and I'm stacking it and it's getting higher and higher and heavier and heavier. Okay. So this is now the intro to a six feet under episode is what you're speaking about.

And I get to the point where I am now the fifth box up. And I'm like, I can do it. I am, people could probably guess, very short. I'm like, you know, like five foot six on a good day. I am lifting up this box full extension above my head. It weighs, I don't know, 50 pounds. Oh, my God. And as I'm doing it, I can feel every muscle in my body giving way.

And it's that point where it's, I am not tall enough to get it all the way up, but I am not strong enough to now lower it. And it starts to tilt. And I see inside the box, I see an Xbox one and a PlayStation Slim about to be the end of my life. And my life is flashing before my eyes literally in that like, oh, my God. This is what I've amounted to is these pieces of plastic. Look, the Blue Sky Post would be so sad for like two hours. I promise you.

They'd be so sad. The Slim wouldn't kill you. The Slim wouldn't kill you. The one might not. The Xbox one definitely would. And then people would be like, oh, I'm sorry. You don't like to keep physical copies of video games? And I'd be like, ah, damn.

My funeral is canceled. My name is Christopher Thomas Planton. I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Freshick. I know the best game of the week. I'm Stephen Totillo, and I know the best game of the week. Well, I'm going to do this part. Fuck you, plant.

Welcome to the latest and greatest of home entertainment. It's the besties. It's a video game club that goes all year round and just by listening you're a member. Welcome. We have a very, very special guest today. Griffin was not able to make it today, but we have a special.

In exchange for Griffin, we have none other than Mr. Stephen Totillo joining us. Reporter extraordinaire. Welcome, Stephen. Thank you. I'm an honorary McElroyd today. That's right. People are always,

comparing and mixing y'all up very, very similar is what I like to say. Now, Stephen has a long-storied reporting history, but most recently, I guess not that recently, because you've been doing it for many years at this point. He has been running a fantastic newsletter on, it's gamefile.News, right, is the shorthand URL. But fantastic daily newsletter that people should check out and subscribe to it because it's excellent. And in fact, he had a late-breaking story that is going to be the big focus of this episode, which we will, I guess, tease after the break.

You told me, you were like, hey, I hear the topic, Stephen, if you can be on the show. And I'm like, I have a feeling there's going to be something else. And indeed there was. We were also going to be talking about Star Fox. Chris Point, what is Star Fox? Star Fox. They did it again. They remade Star Fox one more time just for kicks.

And I know what? I'm not going to lie. I was skeptical. before I saw how the game looks. Then I saw those sexy animals, everybody else. They suddenly are those skeptical ones. I'm the one who's like, yeah, I'm very into that. And I think we all kind of equalized in the end.

So I'm excited to talk about this game. Chris Plan is a big Andrew fan. That all sounds great. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. And we're going to jump right in after this break. Okay, Stephen, as you said, the timing couldn't have been better because we have one of the biggest gaming news story. is no exaggeration of certainly the last year, if not several years, drop the news.

What has happened? Sony PlayStation may have just ended physical media for video games, as we know it. They have announced today, July 1st, that in exactly one and a half years, as of January 2028, they will no longer be producing discs, physical discs, for any new PlayStation games. It doesn't just mean their own games. it also means any third-party games. So we can imagine come 2028, whether you're playing on a PS5,

if the PS6 is launching that year, which now seems fairly likely, you're not going to be buying those games digitally, downloading them, disks will be no more. And really, unless Xbox sticks with disks for its consoles. Yeah. Then disks are done.

I mean, I do wonder if there's a chance that there'll be third parties, it'll be able to commission somehow the manufacturer and approval of discs for special collector's items and boutique options, but there's certainly been no indication that that'll be possible. We do see in other forms of entertainment,

there's actually been a resurgence of interest in physical media. And so even though the entertainment conglomerates had gotten away from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and what have you, we now see that coming back in vogue and people finding ways to make those. Maybe we're going to get there eventually. But the big news is that something I think a lot of people thought was coming, many people feared was coming,

is coming, which is at least on PlayStation, the biggest console that was using discs. There won't be new discs pretty soon. I want to get really deep into the video game of it all really quick, but I do want to give us some context for what's happening, especially like the film, physical media thing, because it is relevant here, Sony, part of the lead of the consortium responsible for the Blu-ray. I think there are people already concerned about what this means for those discs in general. And Stephen's right that like physical media is is coming back in a big way

as those large companies are breaking away from it. So companies like Sony and Disney are saying we actually don't intend to make our movies into physical media and they're allowing these boutique labels to do it. There's a new criterion collection that's coming out that is all of the Kubrick films. And that would have been unimaginable 10 years ago. because you would have had to get all these people to agree to collaborate to make this. Now the studios are like, I don't really give a shit. I'm not in the physical media business. So I do wonder about what Steven says is there room for boutique labels, but if you're also the company that's making the players,

and there's literally no thing to play the disc on, where do the boutiques fit in? Right, because realistically, if indeed the PlayStation 6 comes out, What are we saying? We think it's going to be 2028 that year, you think, Stephen? Well, Sony can't be announcing this for 2028, or it seems unlikely they'd be announcing this for 2028 if they plan to launch the PS6 in 27. This feels like the kind of announcement

that you make ahead of whatever your strategy is for your next console. So we're thinking 2008 at the soonest. I talked to Pierce Harding roles about this. He's analyst at Ampeer. And he said this makes it, you know, obvious that PS6 is 2028. He expects late 2028 at the soonest.

And he also believes this pretty much indicates no disc drive. I've seen some people speculate that Sony strategy for PS6 may involve a handheld version and that you would get rid of discs if you were going to handheld. I mean, obviously, Nintendo with the switch has used cartridges. So there would be another physical media option. So I don't think that fully explains it. But it does track that you would potentially. not want to have discs if you were if you were doing that so yeah we're what would sony do they weren't talking i mean i i was pre-briefed on the the the announcement which is why i was able to have a

big story on game file this morning looking at it from as many angles as possible and some of the stuff i'd ask sony about um they just you know they didn't have answers for they may actually not even fully know um i imagine they do know whether or not they're going to offer a disc drive with the PS6, but they weren't saying anything about that. They certainly weren't saying whether there would be, as it has been in the case with PS5, a console, a version of the PS6, that has a disk drive in it that you pay, you know, a premium for. Sure. Or if the disk drive would be a standalone thing, which I feel like was it the Xbox 360 that was sold? Yeah. With the HD DVDs. Just drive. Yeah. So we've seen like little, you know, we've seen that kind of

phenomenon in sort of half-baked ways in the past, but would there be a standalone drive? In the story I wrote in GameFile today, I cited an interview I did with Phil Spencer, remember him, the former head of Xbox in 2024. And this was right around the time that there had been a bunch of leaks about potential Xbox plans that had come out of the FTC hearings over Microsoft, you know, I wanted to buy Activision Blizzard. And one of the leaks showed this cylindrical Xbox Series X that had no disk drive that was planned and Spencer had gone public saying these don't represent all of our necessarily all of our plans and that that device never came out. But this had prompted me to talk to him about, hey, you know, how much our disk drives even in your plans for future consoles given the fact that you clearly at least one point had the plan for this. And he makes a point, and this is what I was, what wound up being worth resurfacing in the coverage today. He said, game makers and game console makers are some of the last makers of home electronics.

that even used disk drives. And he said, because of that, the cost to manufacture disk drives was increasing, and that put financial pressure on the companies. So I've got to think that a Sony and certainly a Microsoft would be delighted to spare themselves the cost of making a disk drive if they could. And then maybe they are starting from that point

for the next generation and then thinking, okay, well, then what's the minimum we need to do in order to satisfy any hopes anybody has, even playing like backwards compatible games. Yeah, well, I mean, at that point, obviously they free themselves from having to worry about manufacturing, shipping, working with a brick-and-mortar retailer,

over-ordering physical media. Yes. Obviously, from a consumer standpoint, I don't think it's a good thing, but from a their-end business standpoint, like they're making the whole kit and caboodle. They don't have to worry about cutting that in any way. Yeah, I mean, I think the challenge

that they have, is they're atrocious at messaging this timing wise. And this is not me defending the decision in general, but I do think there is a reality that I think it's like eight or nine out of ten purchases are digital at this point. 80 percent on PlayStation. Yeah. Yeah. It's where a lot of people trend towards that seems to be a number that is going up.

But at the same time, to do this the same week that they announced that they were removing hundreds of films from their server. I'm not even sure you'll be able to download them anymore, even if you had acquired them. Right. Announcing it the same day that they say they're closing the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita download services. Right. In the next year. I don't know why you would announce that.

Why you would say, we're moving to digital only and look how precarious that is. It's a strange, strange choice. My guess. No, go ahead. They're giving an 18-month notice period. So this is exactly 18 months. It's a year and a half. They're giving exactly one-year notice

for most countries for the shutdowns with the PS3 in Vita stores. They're doing an 18-month notice for the transition out of new games coming out there. I mean, I don't know that there's a good time to announce news that's going to really upset

a sizable portion of gamers. If 80% of purchases on PlayStation 4 and 5 in the past Sony fiscal year and that's what the percentage is were digital and not on disk that means that 20% that means that one of it

out of every five games purchased on PS4 and PS5 in the last year were purchased on disc and I've gotten some feedback that those numbers that proportion of disc purchasers is higher in you know I guess developing markets

where there's going to be less downloading and sort of bandwidth options and what have you so okay maybe that means that Americans and you know people in Japan or whatever are more likely to have already been comfortable with downloading, but there's still a sizable number of people that

buying the disk meant something to them. And Sony doesn't have an answer ready for them right now about what options they'll have. Certainly, a lot of people have gotten used to not owning physical copies of movies and music, but for some people, they cherish that. And there's a lot of reason when you see how games disappear or when you see how, of course, only the top games are remastered, and you may have some niche favorite that you're worried may go extinct, that to not know that there can be a disc version of that in the future is understandably alarming to a lot of people. And I don't really know how Sony could promise their way out of that regardless.

I mean, what ends up happening is the fan base ends up filling those blanks in. As these games become literally unpurchable anywhere, right. Piracy basically shows up and says, hey, you can still play this game that you love from 30 years ago, even though it's not available for free. Yeah. The other part of this that just terrible timing is hard drives are only getting more expensive. Storage is getting more expensive. So I personally have been thinking of like, I tend to buy digital, but I should be buying

more stuff on disk. Even if you're having to load it from the disk under the hard drive, yes, not having to worry about the bandwidth, having it there, having it storage. a place on your shelf versus, oh, if I play, let's say, the new Call of Duty in two other big AAA games, most of my storage space is taken up. It's just all bad timing all around. Some of the feedback I heard today from readers, especially in reaction to that rising percentage, where in 2016, it was little more than 26 or 27 percent of people downloading game, buying the download version versus disk, and then in 2025, going up to 80%.

And some of the feedback I heard from gamers was saying, basically, there's a thumb on the scale for Sony when it's reporting those numbers, that it has become more inconvenient to buy games physically, that there are smaller print runs of physical games, that it's more of a hassle. Now, I think that in some regards, some of that may fall on Sony. Some of it may fall on, you know, the unpleasantness, relative unpleasantness of buying games physically in certain places that you could go to buy games physically. They do not clean those game stop carpets, I'm just saying.

That's sort of what I was getting at, and that there are reasons. But also, the value of the disk and what it actually is has been diminished over the years. So there's a great site community service called Does It Play? And they have an index of over 3,000 games. You can search online for Does It Play, and you can check their database. And you could punch in a game that has ostensibly a disc version. And then you can find out what's actually on. on the disc.

And so in the case of, say, 007 First Light, you know, wonderfully critically acclaimed game from IEO interactive earlier this year, a James Bond game. And only the game's first level is on the disc. So, you know, Chris, what you're saying about, oh, I'm going to buy physical media. I'm going to sort of shore myself up

and be able to have these things that protect me from some of the vicissitudes of people removing games that I thought I purchased access to. Well, buy the disc version of 007 First Light and Nissan PlayStation. All you got is the first level. level to play, so I hope you really like that level. It is a good level, but

not that good. That is fucking grim, yeah. And obviously, the digital downloads percentage is only going to skyrocket come this fall with GTA coming out and not having physical media associated with it. Yeah, I mean, take two, basically, if you look at the sequencing of this,

I don't know who's aware of, who's aware of what, but you have take two in Rockstar, basically putting this news out there about having a no disc launch of GTA 6 in a way that really like, yes, it kicked up some backlash, but people are so excited for that game and so interested in putting money down for that game. And they do that one week prior. And then Sony is able to say, hey, look, by the way, no new, no new discs or any of any games.

Yeah. One of the things I'll be interesting to see is also this transition, right? So you can imagine there'll be big PlayStation games coming out from first and third parties in November of 2027, for example. And I'll be curious what the print run is on those disks. and how well supplied they are going into 2028. One of the big unknowns we have is what this is even going to physically look like at retail locations. Once Sony makes this transition, they had nothing to share with me about, are they committing to still selling game boxes? We know GTA6 is going to be in a box, just with a code inside. Will they still sell game boxes?

Will they switch to just cards that you buy that have a scratch-off code? And so then try to envision what does it look like at Best Buy, Target, at GameStop, wherever else. When you go to the PlayStation section, how do games get noticed? There's decades of history of box art designs and the shapes and the sizes of box art, of viewing in boxes that were all about trying to grab people's attention. And so that'll change in terms of even if they switch to cards. you know, we've all been to stores where you see like the kiosk that has like all of the gift cards and everything, you know, that you can spin around. Is that the PlayStation section of the future? You just spin it around and hopefully the game that some company wants to sell has a catchy enough little like, you know, credit card size.

Or they just stop caring and they just use their own marketing means. I mean, speaking of retail, we got to talk about the person I'm sure everyone's concerned about, which is the GameStop. How is GameStop responding to this? Are they just eBay now? Is that the plan? They just need to get the hell out of this business? They should buy a console for every copy of a game they're going to sell. And so when you buy the game, you're actually buying it installed onto the console.

And so physical media switches from the disc to those things that were falling on plant's head in his garage. Oh, that is great. I just got bonk with the eight-pound copy of GTA-7. Oh, well, I think it would probably be a copy of bonk, you know. Yeah, I live for the irony. Man, crazy story. So glad to have Stephen here giving us some proper context to it. I think we should take a break.

And after the break, we will dive into a little bit of Star Fox. But before that, we are going to share some big, big news that is coming in the world of besties. So stay tuned. Okay, welcome back. We are going to talk about Star Fox in a second, but before we do that, I wanted to share some news. Wait, what? News? Yeah, it's actual news. What?

So I mentioned this several weeks ago. Actually, it was on Justin's last, formerly last episode where he was appearing on the show on a weekly basis. We've been working on trying to put together a live show for the besties featuring Christopher Thomas Plant, Ross Farshick, Griffin McRoy, and executive producer Justin McRoy, And in fact, it is happening. We have a date for it. It's happening on October 9th at the town hall in New York City. It is actually the same exact weekend as New York Comic-Con. So if you want to make it a whole nerd weekend, you can do that.

That is an option. We're going to be doing an artist pre-sell, which means like only our fans will be able to like buy tickets first. That starts on Tuesday, July 7th. And as a way to head off the ticket buying bots, we're going to put the link up on our Patreon. You don't have to be a paying member, but you do have to be a member. So you can be a free member or a paying member. We like paying members too. It doesn't matter. Either way, you're going to get the link and to buy tickets on July 7th. It'll be around noon on July 7th. So please keep an eye out for that. If you haven't become a member of the Patreon yet, good excuse to become a

Patreon member. It's patreon.com slash the besties. You can be a free member and still get access of tickets. Paying members, of course, also get access. That's the news. Very exciting. We'll have more coming in terms of details as we get a little bit closer, but wanted to share that. Obviously, Griffin wanted to be here to share that news as well, but he was doing with some stuff, but wanted to tell you all as soon as we could, again, that pre-sell is going to go up July 7th, which is this coming Tuesday. We haven't booked him officially yet, but we did think maybe like a tight five from

Stephen, you know, just a real good intro comedy set, a warm-up routine. Yeah, you can do it. I'm known for my jokes. Feeling it. You can start working. It's you and Shrier and just doing a good cop, bad cop routine. It's going to be great. I don't know who's who.

Okay, with that news out of the way, we're going to talk about the Star Fox remake, which I believe, correct me from wrong, is a third time they've made Star Fox 64. I think there's some fuzzy math. Everybody's like, oh, they're made the game. I mean, plant, come on. they haven't really made it as many times as people said have they they made it the first time

super Nintendo to Nintendo 64 to Nintendo DS well we're not counting Super Nintendo see this is the original game this propaganda people want to say it's been remade it hasn't been remade that many times okay so they made the original game

which was Star Fox well in SNES I'm not counting that because this game theoretically is not based on that original game it's based on Star Fox 64 which came out on the Nintendo 64 then they made a, which was the first, the 3DS version or the

Wii U version. Do you remember? Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, I got it, I got. Star Fox 64, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. Yeah, the Super Nintendo version is separate from this, the 64 version. So Star Fox 64, 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, to Star Fox Zero a decade ago.

Different game. For the Wii, maybe? Different. dramatically different. Is it? It's got, I don't know. You know,

they redid, but like the structure and the story of the game is the same, right? The story? I don't think so. That's the Wii U one

where you're using the game pad to look around and everything. Yeah, the good news is no one played it because it was on the Wii U. So basically, they've only had, what, two versions of this game,

and this would be the third. So welcome to the new era of Star Fox. Also, new era for Nintendo selling $50 remakes of classic games. Kind of an interesting approach. A quick recap of what this game is.

Is $50 good or bad? I don't know where we're at anymore. We haven't gotten there yet. Okay, okay, okay. For people that aren't aware what Star Fox is, seems unlikely, but I'm going to say it anyway. It's a third person flying on-rails shooter where you're controlling this spaceship and you shoot guys.

And occasionally you go in a tank or a submarine and et cetera. You plays a fox. Okay. Hey, can I just add one quick correction really quick? Yeah, sure. StarFox Zero was a reboot. So I believe it was the same story generally, but it was like new levels.

It was basically a new game. Yeah. So Stephen's right. All of you Star Fox nerds can just shield a fuck out. This is the third time they've remade Starfax 64. No, it's the second time. time they've remade it. They made it.

Well, okay. Second time they've remade it. You're right. Third time they've made it. Now we can talk about the game, which is why we're on here. What did you think about Star Fox, this re-release of Star Fox on Switch 2? It's one of those where I played the original so obsessively that I didn't feel the need to, like, I wasn't that eager to be like, oh, I got to play this.

I mean, I like to play a lot of games, and I like to try different things all the time. And this was one where if the main draw is. is that it looks better. I'm like, okay, but I played it a bit of the Nintendo preview event in New York City. They'll invite media to go to rent a hotel space or something, and they'll have a game there. And so I played it, and like the muscle memory kicked in right away. Like, the enemy patterns are the same, or at least the ones in the first level, the two levels I played were the same. You know, I knew exactly when to, you know, bank left or do the barrel roll and when to shoot the three enemies that were going to come in from the top right of the screen.

And so I thought, oh, this is so similar that I, life's short, I got other stuff to play. So I appreciate that it exists that people can play it if they want, but I got other stuff going on. It definitely seems like they are splitting the studios in a way where they're going to do a relatively unambitious remake or something like that to balance the like Donkey Kong bananas of the world. This feels like we're going to catch a check a little bit. And then we're going to get more risky with more ambitious titles. It's tough because they're clearly doing an ongoing trend of have a studio remake a game, prove that one, there's interest, and two, they know how to make it. And three, they know how to make it in a way that looks modern.

And then you let them make an actual sequel, right? Because if you put out a new Starbox. Talk that out of it. I would say, like, this is the, you know, The Halo, I think, was like the original thing. I'll give you a Nintendo example, actually. Mercury's theme is probably the closest to a Nintendo example, where Mercury's dream came in, remade Metroid 2 into Samus Returns, made drastic changes to the structure

of that game. But then they gave them like a full-on Metroid dread release. Right. And I believe another example would be Grezo. I think I'm saying, if I'm saying the name right, they remade, they did some of the 3DS remakes of Okina and Majors Mask. the Zelda games. And then they, I believe they also then did the Link's Awakening Switch remake and all that finally

allowed them to work on an original Zelda game, which was Echoes of Wisdom, which was the one you actually play Zelda. So I think, Chris, you're a right of the money with that being a strategy. So this game is developed by Vellon Studios. Vellon Studios is staffed by a lot of people that used to be known as a vicarious visions. They have an extremely long history with Nintendo and making games for Nintendo platforms. They were one of the big GBA prestige GBA developers, not that there were many prestige GBA developers.

In the West, they were making really good Tony Hawk games and what have you on the Game Boy Vats back in the day. They were quite literally making magic. They were translating things or porting things to the GBA that didn't make sense. I mean, they made a rock band or a guitar hero game for Game Boy. Yeah, with the thing you plugged into the DS. It was like the grip.

The DS, yeah. They also ended up being very involved in the Skylanders franchise Guys with toys with Bob or for Bob or whatever. So as Valen Studios, they've done, they've had one previous, I think, you know, I don't know, I don't agree with a less well-received project, which is they made Mario Kart. I always forget the suffix on this one. Is it Drive, Tor, something like that. The Mario Kart that involved the actual radio-controlled Mario Kart that you could buy.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And then you drove it around your living room and you had a webcam aspect to a yes. And so that was sort of in keeping. with them making that studio and the heads of the studio making prior experimental gadget-driven things like that guitar hero they made for the DS or the

I think it was the DS. And so they made that game and this seems to be quite creatively a pretty successful as far as what I've seen from the reviews and very faithful execution of this and does this then lead

to them being able to make a bona fide original Star Fox game? We'll see. I mean the other thing, the other unusual aspect of this particular game is that it is the closest we've seen from Nintendo in terms of movie synergy. They have a Mario movie that comes out,

Mario Galaxy movie comes out earlier in the spring, and surprise, surprise, it features Star Fox, although not really a surprise because they include it in the marketing, even though it was a surprise. So they clearly wanted to put the inclusion of Star Fox out there. I don't think we've ever seen, I mean, you guys correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think we've ever seen an explanation as to how or why they even decided to include StarFox

who's never previously been in a Mario-centric work before. I mean, yeah, I hate to say, but money seems like a good reason. They're clearly building the equivalent of an MCU with these Nintendo movies. Right. But like what's your of what? Like, did they know they had a Star Fox remake coming?

They were like, let's make a Star Fox scene in this movie, or did they have creative ideas around other Nintendo characters to put in the movie? and know far enough in advance that they could then commission of a remake that maybe is faster to create. I don't know what comes first, but we're seeing this.

And so I assume we're going to see in future, you know, what will be the surprise cameo on the live action Zelda movie next year that also signals that we're getting a remake of whatever that is. So if, like, Link gets on a jet ski, at least we know like Wave Race 64 remake.

That's right. It's happening. Finally. I will say for the game itself, the game's good. And it did do its job of proving out like, is there room for modern Star Fox? A lot of things I don't like about the original game on the Nintendo 64 or even the 3DS

is the open combat fights where you're out in the big 3D world and you're spiraling around. It feels like it takes away from the kind of more curated experience. I didn't enjoy the ground battles or the underwater battles. There were like two or three, you know, levels in the game that really blew me away. when I was a kid and everything else I could, you know, live without. The total opposite this time around. That stuff really does it for me, which is weird because the gameplay itself is effectively the same. But the visual fidelity adds a lot because who even knows what the hell you are looking at in a big open 3D world on the Nintendo 64?

It's just random shapes. And actually having an idea. Like it was not running great. Yes. The world that you are moving around having a purpose and a function, you know what you're shooting at, it adds a lot. There's a ground level where you're chasing a train and you're basically trying to keep up with it and destroy parts of it while there's also like an air attack coming at you while you're on the ground. And that having some visual fidelity to it feels really spectacular. It feels like a cool action set piece.

Is it still Star Fox? Does it still have the problem of this game is three hours long? And it is ultimately built for people who like to score chase and who want to get higher and higher rankings, which was not me then and is not me now. Yeah. Like, it's still that game. And that game is, that style of game is not maybe as popular as it was even back then. So I think the game will evolve from here. But I found myself bought in.

Like you, Stephen, I went into this pretty skeptical of the game itself really curious about the art direction. That was what pulled me in. And it ended up being actually what kind of sealed the deal for me. Yeah, I personally thought it was fun. I love the original. I have very fond memories and, like, very impactful memories because the original was the first time we used the Rumble Pack, if I recall. So it was like a huge moment from a video game historical standpoint.

To me, the gameplay feels like pretty dated and aged to the point where I needed, I felt like I needed more modernization beyond just the visuals to make me feel like this was a really new experience. And I think I would again point to that Mercury Steam, uh, Metroid 2 remake where they like really, they hit the major beats of like, you're going around hunting. Metroids, but really took the reins a little bit and redesigned it, and I think a more modern way, which I thought helped a lot. So I could have used more. I like, after you finish like a run, you unlock this challenge mode, you can replay individual levels and like go after a specific

little mini challenges. So that gave a little more hook to it. But like the stuff you were unlocking was essentially pointless and things like that. They also spent like some time on multiplayer modes, which are like pretty creatively designed. They almost have like a best. battlefield element to them, but I'm not realistically going to play a lot of multiplayer Star Fox. So, you know, the length and breadth of the value of that seems kind of limited to me. I just wanted them to be a little more ambitious is really my takeaway. You know, when we were talking earlier about PlayStation moving away from disks and some of the questions people have about preservation, one of the things when I went to them about that, and I said,

what do you have to say to people who are worried that they're going to lose access to games they care about. And they came back to me with a statement where they said, and it didn't really address the copy of the game you get, stop working, but they said, we love games here at PlayStation, and one of the ways we've continued to keep games available is by

through emulation and through remasters. And so arguably a release like Star Fox is a method for Nintendo to make the classic design of Star Fox 64 available. Certainly Nintendo can still, and still does, make the emulated N-64

original available. But looking at something like this, do you guys actually feel like this is a valuable extra kind of offshoot of game preservation that you would like to see kind of the classics kind of modernized just to keep around? I wouldn't even look at it like a value just for game preservation.

Like I think there's a value in reevaluating games that were old and dated in different ways. I think Capcom's done this amazingly well with the Resident Evil remakes. Sure. They're modernizing those games in a way that makes them more playable, but the core of them remains sound. And I think so I think there's value in that. The big question it brings up is with the re-release or remake, I should say, of Okreena of Time, like, is that all we're getting?

It's like basically the Star Fox treatment, which is the original game just with prettier graphics and not a whole lot else. And that to me feels like a big missed opportunity and a letdown. But they're also facing the tides of like people love this game. they're obsessed with this game, it needs to be exactly the same. We'll talk about games that they've already remade. They already made a pretty faithful remake, not easily accessible anymore because it's on the 3DS, but of Ovalcarina of time. And the history of the Zelda remakes, be it Winwaker HD, Majora's Mask on 3DS, Links

Awakening on the Switch, have at best been graphical upgrades. You know, Links Awakening is, I guess, on par, or equivalent to what's just been done with Star Fox in Star Fox 64. But in none of those cases, was there anything beyond player convenience additions in terms of additional content and design, right? So you can more easily toggle the water boots on and off in the 3DS version of O'Korena of Time, for example. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see if this Switch remake of Ocarina is more like one of these Resident Evil rethinks of it. There's also a thing that they've dabbled with in, I can't remember if it was Pickman 3 or 4, I think it was 3, that they reissued on the Switch. And it was faithful in terms of what had been released originally on Wii U.

I think we're. Yeah, it was a Wii. But they added prequel missions and then epilogue missions to it. So the conceit was we're expanding the story, how Olomar, whoever got here, and then we're going to show you a little bit of kind of the aftermath of what occurred. And that allowed, I remember really enjoying those missions when I played that. And I felt like this was also a way for a development team. team that had put their hands around

the original and faithfully recreated that to then demonstrate their ability to do something more in these margins of the game that then wound up being almost like the bonus content of it. And so with Star Fox 64, for example, being remade in Star Fox, yeah, that would have been cool if they added

like a few other planets, that you like an alternate branch, right? The game is designed where you always start on the first planet corneria, right? And that you branch out in three possible directions. And so what if there was a fourth branch. And that would have been fun to have seen them allow Vellon to design that.

And so, yeah, it would be, I would enjoy that. I feel like since you can already play Saurfx64 on the retro console Nintendo Switch Online, and you can play Ocarina of Time on that, I'd be up for something that's more creatively ambitious in terms of reinterpreting Crossbow training in the Okina remake? That'd be fun. I want to go back real quick before we wrap to that question that you had

of how does this work as game preservation, if at all. And I think it's important to say it. I don't think it has anything to do with preservation. And I think the reason it doesn't is because these companies are deciding game by game what it looks like. The fact that we just had this entire conversation, right, of like what type of thing is it? Is it one for one? Is it totally different? Are they adding?

Are they subtracting all of this? And I worry when I hear Sony saying like this is one way. were thinking about it, the trouble is that the choice, in my opinion, shouldn't belong to them. The games just should be available, right? Like, that's what preservation is. Preservation is the things that the studio likes and the things that they don't like. I will say also to go back to the Zelda point, the challenge with Nintendo is we usually don't know who's making their games until they are literally out.

and knowing who is making that game would tell us a lot. If it was another partner studio like this, I would bet that it's probably pretty similar. If it is the Zelda team, I would think that this is them getting their hands back into the dungeon model of Zelda. If you wanted to go back after Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and go back to a different type of Zelda game, going back and remaking O'Carrano time and changing it in interesting ways, that would be once again a great way to learn safely and a way that you can still make some money

and then you can go and make a new game after that. So, yeah, I'm very curious. There is roughly a million question marks around a game that we've seen effectively a single image from. Guys, I have an idea. Yeah? A million dollar idea.

Might be a $10 million idea. Whoa. Are you sure you want to share? it remove the the of no I'm not going to add a word to the beginning I'm going to add something to the end the legend of Zelda the okarina of timeline timeline link no longer just moves between age 7 and 14 he moves through the Zelda timeline the unified Zelda timeline well established that all Zelda games are connected this is not controversial at all He moves to Zelda 1, he goes to a link to the past, he is going, he's playing that Okerina, and he's in games of every generation. I mean, it sounds like you're pitching an illumination movie. Yeah, it does sound like a pretty good illumination movie. I'll be honest, I can see that.

That sounds great. I'll see that right after Secret Life of Pets 3. Hey, how about we wrap up this section, and then we can hop into our honorable mentions before we head out. That sounds great. Actually, we have some reader mail before we do that. I want to read some reader mail. This one comes from Corey. We were talking about friend slop games.

Stephen, are you familiar with the genre friend slop? Oh, very familiar, yeah. Okay. Corey writes, hey, I think that everyone likes games known as friend slop. Most of these games are made with love for people to share, and that's not slop. I would humbly suggest a different name for the genre, co-uppies? Like co-op with upies, please? I don't know about that.

But they're generally about traversal and helping your friends. I don't know. How do you feel? Co-opies sounds like a drug. It does. I feel like I'm on co-opies. Friends swap does sound like a pejorative, though. And I do think it's different from like, me personally, I define friend swap is it needs to be a little bit shitty, right?

It can't just be like a co-op game. Right? Yeah, I've come to, I've come around to liking Friendswop. I totally get why people, some people do not. like it. But I think the slop represents the not wasting guillions of dollars on your project. Like, I think there's something to the idea of making something that is rough around the edges. That said, it's tough because slop is used in so many negative ways like AI slop. So I get it, but I do have developed kind of a warmth for the phrase. In December, I interviewed Nick Kamen. He's one of the lead

developers of Peake, one of the most successful friend Slop games, and I asked him about the term. And he said he liked it. He was fine with it, but he recognized it can be used in a derogatory fashion, but he was pretty comfortable with it. So, I mean, if people making

it don't fully mind, then, I mean, who else should we worry about? It kind of reminds you of walking simulators. I remember people didn't like that term, but, like, I like walking simulator. I find that a really enjoyable term. I love having a nice walk. Anybody have any honorable mentions to talk about?

Anything they're playing, anything they're watching, reading, you name it. Stephen, you can go first. I've got two nine-year-old twins, and I'm always looking for things that will excite them to read. My daughter is really into reading lots of graphic novels, Babysburgs, and other kind of graphic novels targeted to her. And as my son can be a little trickier, but we just rediscovered, I rediscovered, I guess, the All-Star Superman, issue series written by Grant Morrison, drawn by Frank Quietly, released over a decade ago, maybe even two decades ago. And a little bit complex for him. A lot of stuff is happening kind of between the panels and with implications innuendo or inference. And yet he was fascinated

by. I barely ever read any comics before. And it was just kind of a really fun parent and kid opportunity to sit down and sort of follow this story of a Superman who is told in the first issue that he is going to die soon. And it is kind of from there on kind of an exploration of how good this guy is and how amazing he is and how none of that amazement really has to do with his powers, more about how he treats people. And yeah, my son and I had a great time. All-Star Superman by Morrison and Quietly. That sounds so nice. Mine is kind of for you, Frush, though I really for both of you, because you both like puzzle games. I lost track of a video game a decade ago, maybe more, couldn't find it, forgot its name, gone forever.

And then while surfing through Steam this week, I finally found it. And that game is called Starseed Pilgrim. It is a very retro-looking, almost Atari-like, but with brighter colors, puzzle platforms. And it is a game where you truly have no idea how to play it. It gives you nothing. You just need to start moving items around in this 2D space to create the world around you. When you plant like seeds, it will grow blocks. Maybe it grows eight yellow blocks straight up.

Maybe it grows kind of like a weird tetronimo piece, like a zigzag out of green blocks. Maybe it has different effects when you line those seeds up next to each other. It is now, I think, might seem kind of quaint. And it is really not interested in you. It is a world that is waiting for you to discover it. And if you want to walk away, it is okay with that. But Fras, I know you love a game where it is just a mystery of how does this work, don't spoil it for me, yada, yada, yada.

And this is one that I remember playing. I could have sworn, I played it in college. It says it came out on Steam in 2013, but I remember playing this a long time ago and really, really appreciating it. Yeah, I remember it coming out, but I don't think I ever played it. And it's pretty actually kind of good timing. I guess it's like a year old at this point. But the developer, Droken, I believe is how you pronounce that, a release.

a game in 2025 called the end of gameplay, which I think also uses this spirit of like very, uh,

you know, confusing or at least opaque systems in what appears to be a platforming game that is, you know, currently very well reviewed by the 36 people that reviewed it on Steam. Uh,

so if you're looking for more games from the Stars the Pilgrim developer, uh, the end of gameplay is another one. Uh, I want to talk about my game, which is Blueprints, which I continue to play. I know I've given everyone updates basically for the last two months. We're on day like 51, I want to say, somewhere around there.

We are still missing the last Sanctum key. I will remain, I will keep this from being spoilery again, because I know if some people haven't played it yet, it's worth playing. But we are closing in on it. I'm getting a little bit antsy because we're at a point where there aren't a lot of leads to chase. And so the few leads that we have do require the stars, no pun intended, aligning to sort of progress. But I'm sure there's stuff that we're just missing and haven't seen. Jason is very bad at not giving me hints.

He likes hearing the updates. I talked to Jason Trier about the updates that I'm having within the game. And I ask him not to give me hints. And he is very bad at doing that. So I have to be mindful of just not sharing any information with Jason. But otherwise, it's been going great. It's a great game. Definitely a blueprints highlight for me was when, because he and I both had coded for the game well before I came out.

And he was just like, he'd rocketed ahead of me. He had his own blueprints friend group finding everything. And he's like, oh, you got to catch up to where I am, whatever. And then I send him this screenshot. And I'm like, hey, Jason, what is this thing I found? And he's like, congratulations. You found the one secret that we haven't found. Ripping his heart out.

I love it. That's great. So good. Little me stumbling across this little thing in the corner. Well done. But that sounds terrific. There's still like one, I think, significant thing in the game that I've never done that the aforementioned Jason Schreier swears to me is well worth doing. And I was like, I just don't want to finish the game.

I want to save her. You know, I want to have that for the future. but now I'm like, I have no memory of how to play this game at all. Did you keep a good notebook? Do you have a notebook line around? I kept a notebook, but it was a bunch of chicken scratch and like, you know, complicated diagrams that I'm sure would make even less sense to me than the game. If I open them back up, so I have no idea. I even had the thought pop it to my head. I just start over, but that also seems ludicrous. So I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it'll forever be unfinished my play session with that game.

But it's what a great game. Oh, my God. It's spectacular. is once again eligible for the 2026 Besties Game of the Year because we decided to nudge it into this year because I couldn't play it last year because of the colorblindness. So something to keep in mind. Okay, I think

we did it. Stephen, thank you again for joining us. Where can people join the fun at GameFile? You can check out GameFile at gamefile. News. It is a newsletter. It's a website. It's something you can sort of check out

at your leisure because every edition is either free or at least the top of it is free and then you've got to pay to read the rest. So there's a whole lot in there. I don't really believe in FOMO. I hate that I have to charge for anything. So I try to give people as much as they can without having to pay.

And I'm hopefully going to give you news that you haven't seen anywhere else. A lot of people are reporting about news in gaming and my goal, based on all the years I've been reporting, is to just to find things that nobody else is talking about or looking into in quite the way that I am. So check it out.

Let me know what you think. Gamefire. know if anyone's given you the ace title, but I will grant it to you. You're indeed an ace reporter. Hey, thanks. There it is. Okay, we did it. Thank you, everyone. Next week, we're going to be doing Rhythm Heaven Groove. Oh, Chris Plaint, can you recap the games we talked about? Oh, my gosh, we talked about all the games. We talked about Star Fox. Oh, and then we also talked about Blueprints, Star City Pilgrim, and we talked about All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison.

Uh, that's going to do it for us here at the besties. Uh, thank you so much for listen to the besties. What are we talking about next week? I said, Rhythm Heaven Groo is next week. Oh, sorry, sorry, I miss that part. My brain's foggy man. That thing almost fell on me and I just, I'm like in a time loop, you know? Maybe you are literally in a time loop.

You don't know. Oh, no. That's going to do it. Uh, listen again for the besties next week, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties