The Besties - The Golden Age of Sega is Upon Us

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

This week, we're sorta discussing Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, but to be honest, it's more of a table setter for Chris' thesis that it's never been a better time to be a Sega fan. Which is, to put it lightly, a divisive position to take. Other games discussed include: Sonic Mania and Sonic Colors, Phantasy Star Online, Shenmue, Yakuza, Farm RPG, Box One, Jenny LeClue, Diablo 2 Resurrected, and The Exorcist. 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!

Russ and Chris, obviously you guys are doing the besties now. Sort of a side project. The besties resties. The besties resties. Yeah. And you've, you know, it's the gravy poured atop the main course, which we're recording right now. A delicious, succulent gravy.

It's the ice cream sundae. Right. It's the ice cream sundae with gravy on it. But anyway. It's like the equate brand yes but i was just i'm worried i guess that you guys are all you're all fucking used up all rung out all the like games talk because i saw how many games you guys talked about this is a lot and i'm worried you've been squeezed dry and put through the thresher and then what we're gonna

get is what they call in the podcast industry the snickle fritz is that we've got is that a term that you coined for your book well technically the big comfy couch coined it and then we kind of built on it yeah um when are you guys gonna start doing that write a book no no no When are you guys going to start doing the Rusties? It's happened already. Ah, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Love it. Love it. I loved the first one.

I wanted to say, I loved the first. I meant to say, when are you guys going to do a second one? Because I loved the first one. Two weeks after the second. Two weeks after the first one. Which was? So did you, but were you, was there a moment in the rest of these

where you guys were like, we gotta save some juice? Grimace asking if you did the peek and back off. That's a key. I'm worried. They hear Game Nut. I'm not being checked. We've got some primo Majesco games

to talk about this episode, so do not worry. No! My name is Justin McElroy, and I know a game that came out this week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best monkey ball that came out this week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and... SIGA! My name is Ross Rutsch, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment um this week we have a a long

storied franchise returning to its former uh uh glory it's well no one wrote the name of the game in this document but it's like super monkey something something something i wrote it super monkey ball banana monkey ball mania banana super monkey ball banana mania what now plant what could that be well we're not really going to talk a whole lot about it that's i'm sorry i gotta surprise y'all we're gonna talk a little bit about it but the game is you know it's super monkey ball it's fine we'll get into it a little bit i had a i had a question that i wanted to run past y'all for this episode is that cool okay yeah yeah absolutely so while playing this game i got bored and instead i watched my three-year-old son finally fall in love with sonic the hedgehog

games this has been a three-year project spanning the entirety of his life. And he now knows how to play a Sonic game. Is it one of the main ones? No. Is it the mobile one? Yeah. Anyway, it inspired a question in my brain that is, are we living in the true golden age of Sega? Which sounds controversial

because they don't have a console like they did when we were kiddos. Right. But I think we are. And i thought maybe for this episode we could talk about why there's never been a better time for sega well we've languished in this introduction long enough let's take a quick break and we'll get right it's what i do he languishes justin but first a brief discussion of super monkey ball may i begin uh no no you may not but no no you may not you may go later after we have after we have talked about super monkey ball the video game okay i want to talk about how this game starts because i don't think there's

been any game that i've played this year that starts stronger than super monkey ball banana mania and i will tell you why right now the game starts the menu screen comes up and you hear this hello hello hello hello banana amazing way to yeah yeah a lot of people talk about the um you know the mako reactor sequence in final fantasy 7 is like a strong introduction um world 1-1 in mario infiltrating outer heaven and metal gear solid like there's some really strong but i think we can all agree that hello hello hello hello banana is i mean great great i'm gonna say another thing i like about this game uh one if you like

super monkey ball hey guess what it's more super monkey ball and there's a like there's so much of it there's so much of it uh there are new characters added like uh you can get the dude from yakuza you can get sonic the hedgehog and i thought uh-oh it's gonna make me play a lot of super monkey ball to unlock those characters no it seemed to understand exactly the amount of time that I had for Super Monkey Ball and it made sure that I could unlock almost all of them with that amount of time so if you if that's what you're coming for great you you'll have it all in like the first hour or two there's a weird this is a good super monkey ball game my problem with it is i think that i just don't really enjoy super monkey ball anymore and i used to a lot i think i mostly enjoyed it as a i'll tell you the heartbreaking thing for me i used

to play this game i used to play the mini games in like local competitive multiplayer mode with my friends like for entire evenings, specifically Monkey Target, which is a really fun game where you roll down like a ski slope and launch off the end of it and then try to hover over to a target and land on it. It was fun. And you can do it for hours with your friends and it's a good time.

The game has been remade, so there are some, I am not a big enough devotee to this franchise to have really noticed the differences, but the physics engine is a bit different, which is... Yeah, which is like... If you are somebody, if you're a speed runner who spent tens of thousands of hours playing any of the Super Monkey Ball games,

I bet it's definitely noticeable. It was, however, for me me extremely noticeable in monkey target which i would say is nigh on unplayable which is fucking weird like it's almost impossible to make anything happen in that game because of the differences to the physics i that that's the only weird thing that i noticed about that i would also say that the mini games, you know, you might think, oh, the main mode of Super Monkey Ball is the way to go. That is mistaken. The main mode of Super Monkey Ball is kind of bad. As Griffin said, the party games are where it's at. And the party games are quite good. And I actually was also playing Monkey Target and did notice it

felt a little bit different, but I still was able to really enjoy myself. So I think that's still really good in golf and bowling. There's like a lot of party games that are still really good. So if you like are into it for that, there's so much just of that stuff that you could ignore the main game and be perfectly fine. It is weird that you can't play a Sonic

in the party games or Yakuza guy or whomever. That's weird. But other than that, I actually think it's pretty good on the party game front. I am so glad I listened to the besties because I tried to just play through the campaign. No, big mistake. Let me tell you. Yeah, that was a very quickly became a test of my patience. It's not a fun game.

It's not at all. Here's the thing about Super Monkey Ball. I like to watch it. It's a great game to watch. I'm excited. I'm watching talented people. Yeah, talented people. Like skilled Monkey Ball players.

It's great. Yeah, or people who are really bad losing their gourds. That's also good. But, yeah. Justin, unleash. We've been waiting. You gonna let me out?

You gonna let me out? The Kraken. I didn't enjoy this very much. Oh, okay. All right. No, I just, that's maybe understanding it. I would rather,

if they made Madden as a 4X game, I would rather become a pro-level player of that than another hour of monkey ball. When the Skype call came to begin, this show is the sweetest sound I ever heard, knowing that I would have no more costs to play monkey ball. It's, I don't even know.

I can't judge if it's this game's fault. I don't, I mean, maybe it is. I'm hearing from some of you. It seems to have its failings. Just monkey balls. The game sucks.

Like as a single player. And I'll tell you why. I actually can, I was thinking about it. I was like, I was playing it like, why does it suck? It's the sort of thing where if you start having too much fun, you lose, right?

It wants you to do that. It's like how Sonic, sometimes the bad Sonic games wants you to slow down and find all the stuff and the good sonic games are like fucking rip it baby go this game is like if you start having fun making a ball go down a slide fast there's something primal about that that is pleasurable yeah you start like man i'm really whipping ass then it's like oh are you having you're having too much fun you're gonna go off go off the side and start over. Like, no, slow down. That's the fun of Monkey Ball is taking corners in a slow fashion so you can methodically make it to the end.

I think I finally packed it up the first time. There was like a platform at the end of the level that was like going up and down. And to finish the level, I had to like patiently wait for it to return elevator and then enjoy my way onto the elevator it's just like completely undelightful i i i yeah i wish i would have told you you're the sort of person that just plays single player like just i'm i'm not a multiplayer gamer hardly at all i mean like almost without exception um and this was most certainly like a unpleasurable full price experience for me a consumer uh the strength of the game is the multiplayer modes which they're they have incorporated like the the

mini games because they have incorporated like a lot of them uh i didn't i didn't see anything missing and there's like a pool game and a bowling game and they are they are maybe a golf game that's like better than most golf games they are more fun than the core game experience so if you you know bought this game and aren't enjoying it like justin and experiencing some buyer's remorse uh i'd encourage you to check those out because they are pretty great. But yes, it is fundamentally not my jam to go through these mazes. I'm going to wrap up this specific monkey ball section of the show right here by saying goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, banana.

All right. Okay. So Chris is about to try and uh after that convince us that it's not the sega genesis era or dreamcast era that was sega's golden era but this one where they got super monkey ball out the door are you talking about are you making a distinction between sega as publisher or sega as developer good question i would say both i i i would say sega as a force of gaming as a force for us for we the gamer yes because okay so here's my point one everything that you loved from the uh the sega genesis days you can pretty

much play it anywhere you want right now right like it's probably on ipad it's going to be on switch if it isn't already they're going to lethal enforcers what about anything you want to play okay you know like general chaos isn't there because of ea but i can't hold that against sega uh right sonic games are actually good now which i know is a controversial take i say this is somebody who loved sonic as a kid those games aren't great like they're not mario games are better sonic games for all the reasons that justin said uh back in the day they punished you for the fun after the first two levels anybody who says they love sonic one and two they love the first level or two of sonic one and yeah right right? Sonic Mania, Sonic Colors, those games rule.

Incredible, right? Are you talking, for your thesis here, are you talking about more of a, you're not putting such sort of clinical, like, calendar year date limits, like 2021. You're talking more in terms of, like more amorphous an era yeah a phase i would say this era started in like the last four years three to four years i will say this stuff they're not exact i can't like exactly get into it very deeply um it despite my many efforts but i do think that what they're doing with the yakuza franchise yeah is sort of one of the great success stories yeah sure of gaming right now where it's like it's weird it's huge it's well funded um and has developed like a really big audience which i think is

is extremely cool to to build on your um and that's a franchise that's also cool because that i feel like that's one that they just like really invested in yeah in a way that like people don't like a lot of publishers don't have that sort of patience like they just kept laying the groundwork and they just kept bringing them over and now i feel like they're they're starting to like reap the the benefits of that um in a major way i think they took the playbook from another company they they merged with or acquired which is atlas because persona and shin megami tensei same thing right like persona has just only gotten bigger here shin megami feels like it maybe is going to finally have that moment with the big new release

on switch this i think december right so it sounds right they have three of the biggest rpg franchises in act like active rpgs right now that's that's wild that's again so much better than any other point and my argument here is, one, Sega Genesis period, love it. But a lot of the stuff that's great there is like EA games. Sega Dreamcast, my personal favorite period, also love it. But they weren't like dominant. It was mostly like, oh, here are some quirky things. And if you want quirk, right now we have, one, Hatsune Miku,

which is the single greatest living pop star and 13 Sentinels but okay she's not alive she's not alive she's not living she's not alive she's not living I mean it's one of those things where it depends on what you mean by living right because I would say being a

Chris the robots are taking our jobs and it's something in the entertainment industry and the music industry, like myself. It's a robot and it's taking our jobs. And do you not think that the robot will take you- Like robots could write about video games pretty easily. They are them. Who better to write about video games than themselves?

Hatsune Miku. Right, exactly. I am great. That's Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. Ooh, super monkey ball banana mania i'm a good one i am not political i'm a non-political experience does sega we can all agree on this as hatsune miku so i hatsune miku is uh it's difficult can anyone truly own itatsune Miku? It's true because intellectual property rights work differently in Japan. So it is like more open source than like Mickey Mouse.

But yeah, Sega owns the rights to make Hatsune Miku. So the prime minister is Hatsune Miku is what you're saying. What? That's the Japanese prime minister. I don't think that's how that works either. Okay. All right. How much is left of your thesis i mean i could go into like the assembly creative assembly two points but i

don't think like anybody wants us to do that so maybe you should you should uh save me i'm just saying fucking 1999 launch of the dreamcast sonic adventure shinmu fucking lots of jammers now this would just have radio i think i would be hard-pressed to believe that there would there is currently or ever will be a better sega era than than that one right there i think the argument would be that you can now play that i don't know this for sure because i don't play sega games because generally they're not great but the ones that i do enjoy wrong you can play more or less anywhere i think that is the the change that's true that unites we the gamers you don't need to invest and divides us you don't

need to invest in like a doomed console like the dreamcast to experience these enjoyable games now sega looked at the console wars and said let there there be peace. Yeah. You know, they were going to make a Dreamcast 2, and actually there was like a million pre-orders for it, but they were like, let there be peace. The only winning game is not to play. Yes, exactly. And after that, Seaman 2, which they did release also. You got to credit them for that.

I mean, I would make the argument that that was a very exciting time to be a Sega fan. The most exciting, because they were throwing their hat over the fence as their death rattle cried out. As we all remember, I was working at Babbage's at the time. Right. And that was a thrilling time to be at Babbage's. That was like a GameStop for people who don't know about Babbage's. Yeah, right.

It got rolled. We used to have a lot of things that weren't GameStop, and now they're just GameStop. That's hard for, yeah, we used to have like EB Games and Funkaland. Yeah. That was one, right? New Egg. Yeah, right?

New Egg. New Egg, Babbage's, Elbow. That's what we called it. No, I would say, though, that was like an exciting time as a brand, but those games that like that crop of Dreamcast games I in terms of like would you want to play them today versus the games that Sega is releasing today I think you may not hold up quite as well I mean I'd still fuck around with the original Phantasy Star Online with like actual servers

and shit you can literally play Phantasy Star online too right now it exists yeah but it's not that's yeah okay that's not the same game it's wildly different okay you can't i will say this against plant's argument which i think is fundamentally sound you can't just say that because a game from the late 90s is playable today it is part of the landscape currently that is not a fair argument to make okay i think i think justin i think your point is if you could only keep the games that were on the dreamcast or keep yakuza persona shimekami tensei 13 sentinels and the modern Sonic games, which would you choose? I think it's a little busted to weave Persona in there. Yeah, that's not a Sega game.

Yes, it is. It is. They're wholly owned. Oh, Atlus? I didn't know that, actually. Wow. Read a book. Yeah, read a book there, Mr. Gaming Expert. Yeah.

Empire of Sin, anyone? Did you miss the Hot Season Meekoo song where they explain all of this? I think that there's a lack of cohesion, I will say, as a publisher right now. And I think the persona thing sort of emphasizes this. I think there's a slight lack of cohesion because Sega does so much on so many different fronts.

They're mobile. They're in arcades still where a lot of companies have have moved on from that like uh i think if you compare um like i feel like capcom yes has done a better job of saying like okay these this is what we do these are our franchises these are our games got it um and sega's too good to that they do too much right too deluded i would say maybe would you say sega does what nintendo don't well i think in a real sense yes in the sense of like making things that a lot of people like and then getting super rich i would also say like i think sega is more in tune to making games that feel very true uh not necessarily true but very at their

core japanese culture centric which is interesting nintendo doesn't necessarily do that and that seems like an identifying characteristic of all these games uh i think that's fair i think we did it i think we proved that i am right and i don't know who disagreed with me griffin is wrong i will say i will grant you this sega was dog shit for a while after the after the dreamcast failed sega lost this way i think we can all agree yeah and i as somebody who uh does enjoy quite a few sega games am am happy and excited that they are making cool shit. I think Yakuza absolutely rips ass, and it makes me very happy that they got that going on.

Damn it, though. I mean, okay, okay, okay. I know we're not limiting it to years, but if we're just 1999. I know, that's what I'm saying. Anno Domini, 1999, Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Seaman choo-choo rocket samba de amigo toy commander slave zero like power uh power stone power show is capcom i'm not gonna give that to them

but like it's pretty good that's a lot that's really good that's really good i mean it's really tough it's pretty good to fuck with okay well it's been worse is what i'm saying much worse they brought it back oh wait i didn't even i didn't even both the 2k game i mean nba 2k nfl 2k like those used to be for people who don't know that yeah i mean like i'm an elderly man if that's what you're trying to get at, I agree with that, too. That's fair. So I guess, I'm sorry, Plant. I love that you had the thesis. I'm glad you brought it to us, but like.

I like that you put it in a binder, and you did some clip art. Yeah, the binders that you mailed to all of us are a bit much. Clip art of Sonic kissing Hatsune Miku, which looks self-drawn. It distracted me from thinking about Super Monkey Ball Banana Baby, which I love.

All right. We mentioned it last week, but we were doing a survey to get a sense of our listenership. We know sexy, sexual, handsome, beautiful, gorgeous. Smart, brain. Smart, funny, athletic, immortal. But we would like to get a bit more detail.

If you would be so kind for advertising purposes so we can target your interests directly. That's right. Give us your personal information. right. Give us your personal information. Go to bit.ly forward slash survey besties and let us give you the relevant advertising content that you crave, but also help support the show in a real sense because it helps us to make the besties. So it's a easy way to do that. So if you could go to that link, bit.ly forward slash survey besties. It's anonymous. Justin didn't make that super clear. It sounds like you were entering your social security number. We would say that, of course.

You know, we would say that, of course. But our listeners are nothing if not savvy, you know? Survey, survey, survey, survey. Answer the questions. Yeah. Hey, I want to hear about the frickin' Switch that's got new digital pixels that are i guess brighter yeah walmart reached out to me and they're like hey dog do you remember you're

you were doing this and i was like yeah i guess i guess i did uh it's a weird time it's also the special thing about oled the the pixels are actually darker. Oh. And it makes the bright ones contrast better. Yeah, so I've been using the OLED model of the Nintendo Switch, which comes out the day that this episode drops. So you could walk into your local Babbage's and pick one up. The very day you're hearing this episode, the question is, should you i'd answer that that's a yes or no question chris or russ wow we're all the same uh should you it is actually a tough question to answer i will answer it at the top and then i'll kind of delve

into details you guys can ask me questions if you want i think if you have never purchased a switch before and you're deciding between a normal 300 switch and spending 50 more for an oled switch you should definitely spend the 50 more it is definitely better than the normal uh switch is the screen set if i am misremembering i apologize but did they shrink the best the the bezel down a little bit yeah so the bezel real estate a bit bigger yeah the bezel is smaller the like black rim around the screen is smaller and the screen is about 13 bigger which seems like a weird number and not very significant but it actually when it's in your hands, the screen like takes up far more of like your field of vision than the normal launch switch. I think some of that is like,

because there's not this giant black rim around it, it like kind of fills your vision more, but also, I don't know. I, it made a pretty big impact. It's the difference of like going from like a 62 inch television to a 70 inch television,

which sort of contextualize it and makes you realize oh it's a little more noteworthy than that so i definitely like that is one of the big selling points for me is the bigger screen and just the fact that like it goes almost edge to edge makes it look like a higher end product than the original switch did the original switch someone recently posted a photo of like the original ipad which has these giant black bezels and comparing that to like how the ipads look now it's kind of night and day all the uh all the like modification stuff i've been doing with with switch hardware taught taught me like that that bezel is it's the biggest thing in the universe yeah it is so it's so outrageously big and every time i would like try and come up with like a color palette for like switch and joy

cons that i would like try and put together look good you know we'll put it together and then there would be this enormous black border like it was a letterbox film that has been modified to fit your tv uh so that is like the big selling point for me yeah people the other big note noteworthy thing is like an oled screen in general is designed to be more contrasty more colorful brighter more of a pop and and as listeners of the besties might know i am colorblind at least a little bit colorblind so i was skeptical that i would actually be able to tell the difference uh between like a high-end lcd monitor or not really high-end but an lcd monitor and an oled monitor and i can tell you i actually can it is

pretty significant how much brighter and contrastier the oled screen is um the examples that i checked out were like you know mario games in particular are like very uh bright and colorful and so like just looking at his like red hat for example really pops in ways that an lcd screen it doesn't quite go to that length it also works really well for contrast so like um blacks for example the uh like if you're in a dark room uh black colors will show up much much darker than they would an lcd screen where they might be like a little bit kind of dark gray can i can i explain why yeah so on a ola on a normal screen right all the pixels are lit up. So there's like these lights behind your TV. Think about it like this. This is not literal, but like a few lights behind your TV

and they're lighting up all the pixels. So even when there's like, you're looking at pure black darkness, right? There's still light coming through. And that's why it kind of looks like that kind of murky gray on LCD TVs. On OLED, basically the individual like black pixels are effectively not lighting up or very low light. So it creates these very, very, very dark darks, which makes everything else really pop next to it rather than looking like, you know, if you put a white painting, I don't know,

you put a light colored painting on a black frame, it's going to make it pop versus putting it on a similarly colored frame. That's what you're doing on like a pixel by pixel level. So that's why it looks great. That's why the PlayStation Vita original, which had a OLEDled screen looked way ahead of its time um because it makes anything that has uh dark images so weirdly like horror games would

look great on this um a lot of 2d art like spelunky one should look really good on this i don't know if you tested that yeah i actually did and yeah it really looks very terrific it was sharp and like bright and poppy um both of those games funky one and two both look really good yeah weirdly if you like 2d games uh i think that'll look they would they should look in theory great on this yeah before this did you predominantly play on a light or a regular? I played on a regular almost exclusively. The light's screen,

I want to say, was slightly smaller than the regular, but it was an LCD screen. So the difference would be comparable in terms of jumping to an OLED switch. You would probably see the difference. Now, before people get all worked up.

I'm not talking about screen quality. I'm more concerned about just the experience of holding it and playing it, which is why I switched. I was getting some hand numbness and stuff like that, mainly because I got some carpal tunnel. Sure. But I switched to, I found the light a lot more comfortable to use.

But I guess carriage-wise, the form factor is pretty much- like uh i switched to i found the light a lot more comfortable to use but i guess like carriage was the form factor is the form factor is more or less identical there are slight slight changes but it you won't notice the difference um and i actually mentioned that in the review the normal switch is not a very ergonomic console to hold it just isn't right um and it's a bummer because a lot of that ties into the joy cons which are were designed for versatility they were designed to work in multiplayer sideways and also in handheld and it just results in like a jack of all trades master of none situation so yeah that hasn't changed i would you know we've maybe brought it up a few times but like if you play a lot of

handheld switch games and you have a normal switch buy a split pad pro it is much better for your hands it's kind of ugly and goofy looking but it will not cause as much strain for your hands but yeah the fact that a they haven't changed the ergonomics which is a bummer because i agree with you i think the light is easier to hold and b the fact that they haven't changed the internals of the joy cons is like really bad because clearly everyone is aware at this point of joy con drift and how joy cons can break very easily after using it for let's say six months they just like start drifting all over the place and those haven't changed at all they've openly said they're the exact same internals of the Joy-Cons previously. And Nintendo, come on, y'all.

At this point, your reputation is a little bit on the line because you have a reputation of making these consoles that can sustain bomb blasts. There's a Game Boy in the Nintendo World Store that was blown up in the Iraq War and still turns on. And now you've got these joy cons that like are failing left and right and you're still putting them in your brand new hardware box so if if a little bit of dorito dust gets in them that's all it takes they don't make mario go

anymore there's nothing cool ranch about the joy cons nothing at all i would uh just to uh offer another uh sort of choice for ergonomic switch play is uh not the i have some of this split pad pro actually from a couple different companies i think hori makes one and um i can't remember the brand that i have because there's a lot of them uh but for me the better option is a like case. They make protective cases or soft-touch silicone cases that add handles to the back. I have been hesitant to get a new one of those because I don't know if the form factor of the Switch

will be at all different. It's slightly different, so it might not fit those. Yeah. So maybe wait and see if you know there are new models that that specifically match that but that's the option i go with when playing the original switch um handheld and it's it's for me it's much better than a third-party controller that just doesn't feel great i i do want to mention the kickstand which seems like a very dumb thing to mention but they changed the probably the most dramatic change outside of the screen is the fact that they changed the kickstand it is now like a full length of the of the console in

the back and it uh when the original switch launched it launched with this like very puny kickstand that only worked at one angle you could stand it up but if you weren't looking directly at it like it was worthless and it snapped off all the time it was more or less garbage the new kickstand uh is much wider obviously so it has more of a basis to stand and also works at any angle it just like stays so if you bring it to like 63 degrees it'll stay at 63 degrees which is great if you're like playing your games at like a desk or a table and you can sit you don't have to like i would previously like lower my desk chair down to the ground to get a viable angle when playing switch games and now you don't have to so that that is a good feature i do want to make it very clear though that there is a

elephant in the room regarding this new model and whether you should go out and invest money in a new switch if you already have one and that elephant is called 4k and or the switch pro yeah so if you haven't been following it for the last several years there have been rumors that nintendo has been working on a 4k compatible switch with improved hardware that will basically run games at a higher resolution when docked and just have like more horsepower in general the rumors for that started really spiking around e3 when everyone was almost certain that they were going to announce a switch pro and what they ended up announcing was the switch oled which had all the features that were rumored in the switch pro except for the expanded uh internals except for the better internals

except for being except for being like other than an improvement to it i mean other than a meaningful improvement it had everything you could now to add even more spice to the situation bloomberg has reported that they've spoken to nine different developers who have said that they have worked on games that were designed with the 4K Switch specs in mind. That seems pretty lock solid in terms of something that existed at one time and probably will exist again. in terms of something that existed at one time and probably will exist again. My speculation in all this is that Nintendo had the plans to do this Switch Pro, had the whole design of it.

We're looking at the design. The external design of it is probably what the OLED looks like. But in terms of the actual internals, they were not able to source them due to the ongoing chip shortages that the world has faced right now. So they decided instead to go ahead them due to the ongoing chip shortages that the world has faced right now so they decided instead to go ahead and just do the oled what does that mean for the future i would not be shocked if next year we saw a 4k switch pro with all of the features of the

oled plus the upgraded internals legal legal check-in uh nintendo has said basically refuted the entire bloomberg report and said that they have no plans of releasing any other nintendo switch again uh uh addendum to that they kind of have to say this because they need to sell this thing um to i guess protect their the board i don't know uh no because it's good when they sell the stuff. Yeah, yeah. And when they release the thing and it doesn't sell, that's bad. That's bad for their business. I think, like, the earliest that we've heard

that it could come, the new new version would be, like, very late next year. Early 2023. Probably alongside Breath of the Wild, too, if I had to guess. Yeah, that sounds right yeah i mean i think that we're making it i mean i think that we're definitely entering a landscape where people will buck less at like it's just hard because i feel like you're using an argument that could

be applied to a lot of consumer electronics you're right but i would say you know it's i don't disagree with i mean there's obviously like like the only sane thing is to not and just wait until you can get everything for 20 but like you know realistically like you there will be a market for those you know if you have this oled switch i'm i am certain there will be a market for it a secondhand market yeah i would if you wish to i would say i think it's a little bit honestly can i say one more thing right yeah sure if you wish to upgrade. I would say I think it's a little different. But honestly, can I say one more thing, Russ? Yeah, sure. If you care enough to pay the money

to get this OLED up, this, let's be honest, non-meaningful upgrade to your Switch, you are probably willing to pay the money to get the meaningful upgrade to your Switch, which is what they are banking on, right?

Like, just skip this one. I mean, if you care that much, like, you know. When I was younger, I bought the iPod Photo, which I don't know if you remember this, but it was an old-fashioned iPod with the wheel on it, but it had a color screen and you could store photos in it and i was assured hey this is the top of the line ipod what could be better than this and then the ipod touch came out like the same year where it was a full screen ipod, basically the iPhone. I was not pleased about that at all.

So I can imagine, you know, a young person like, hey, switch OLED. I guess this is as good as it gets. And then, you know, like within the same, like by next year, this time, there's a way better version out there that would stink. Sure. I just, I guess i'm not disagreeing with that i'm just saying like this is not oh it's not new you know it's not local to nintendo at all yeah yeah right this is the way things are going like don't don't get one if it's not a if it's not like i'm looking right now at the iphone 13 right is that where we're at yes i've been iPhone 13 is feeling, eh, I don't know. I'll probably wait to see what they get next time.

Like, that is the attitude that you should have, I think, because I cannot imagine. I would counter that slightly by saying I think Nintendo's a little bit different insofar as, A, they don't do hardware revisions all that often. Consoles in general don't do it all that often. It's certainly not an annual thing for... It's becoming closer. Not annual, but, like, Nintendo does a lot of versions of these things. Yeah, but I... don't do it all it's certainly not an annual thing for it's not an annual but like nintendo

does a lot of versions of these things like yeah but i i don't want you don't want to discount the number of like 3ds's and you're right like iterations i'm specifically talking not so much talking about like a form factor redesign but like an actual like upgraded hardware redesign happens maybe once every four years so when you say hardware are you talking you're talking about like a ps4 pro versus a ps4 like that sort of change happens pretty rarely so if you are investing in something and you want to you feel like you want to like really get the most out of it you probably want the one that has the upgraded internals rather than just you know the improved screen.

You know, we're going to talk more about Metroid next week when everyone's played it. There are moments in Metroid that hitch, like definitely have frame drops almost to the point where I was like, was this maybe made with the possibility of running on a 4K switch and then they pulled the plug and just had it? Like, I don't know. of running on a 4k switch and then they pulled the plug and just had it like i don't know like that's the sort of thing that kind of runs through my head when i'm seeing performance issues in first party nintendo games probably for the next year like was this design with maybe more powerful hardware in mind it is totally 100 playable and an awesome game we'll again talk about it next week but it's a very weird situation to have this like thing kind of hovering

in the background it hasn't happened very often my take on it i don't know that we have sort of like gone back and forth on this but like my take on it is this if you don't know there's a global uh chip shortage that is impacting um nearly every industry and having ripple effects into others i to me it is abundantly clear that nintendo planned to release an upgraded internals version of the switch this holiday season and those plans were thwarted by the reality chip shortage and they already had the components for the oled so they went ahead with this like sort of half step measure if they're being cagey about next year's plans it's because nobody fucking knows like nobody knows elon musk was in an interview this week who's like i think it's

getting better this may be during the when they were doing the the um you know the financials like i think it's getting better i don't know like he doesn't know nintendo's not going to be like yep coming in 2022 you know this new this new joint. They have no idea. Nobody knows. So that's what you're also buying into is that unpredictability of like, there may be another one next year. There also may not be. Also, if they did know, they would not say

they know. Like Elon Musk is not going to go out there and be like, actually, I feel very confident. He's going to play it close to the chest. It's very interesting. You know, i don't know what more you need i have a full review on polygon.com if you want to read the review of the oled um but it is a very interesting situation i'm happy to be using it it's definitely an upgrade over the last one but i think whether it's for you is is kind of a buyer buyer to buyer that's

the trickiest thing on earth about these like hardware half step like doing reviews when we used to do when i used to do these at polygon and we would all collaborate on them what it essentially comes down to is this what does three hundred dollars mean to you yeah sure good because it isn't it is a it is an upgrade right but like for you three hundred dollars may be weeks of working you know in case, probably not worth it. I can remember the first time I was working at Best Buy and I saw a professional athlete who lived in the area. Call him out. Call him out, Justin.

Come on. No, no, no, no. It was a long time ago. Michael Jordan. It was Troy Brown. Huntington's own Troy Brown. So he was in Best Buy. And it may not have been Troy Brown.

It was a long time ago. But he was throwing a bunch of CDs and DVDs in the basket, not even really paying attention. And I remember thinking like, holy shit, this guy's going to bankrupt himself buying all this media. How can this guy do this? And then I realized, like, this is nothing to this man. This is nothing. Like, you know, he's just filling up a basket and buying to check stuff out. That may be your case with this OLED Switch, in which case, you know.

It also depends on how big of a. Fill a basket. It also depends on how big of a, like, gear pervert you are. Like, I love Nintendo hardware, like, a lot. If there was a thing that I, like, I, you know, I mod them and shit. Like, if there's a thing that i cut like i you know i mod them and shit like if there's a thing that i collect in this world it would be that and so i don't know for me that's a thing that i really enjoy it's just it's just nintendo hardware i will say that this is less exciting in that sense because there's not like a huge aesthetic difference like the 50 different

nintendo 3ds's that i have but yeah i would also i mean i the other argument that i always come back to is like if you're talking about visual enhancements whether it be a screen or even if it's like textures or whatever you will notice that stuff at first and then you will not notice it 10 minutes in i mean like it just you you you ignore it that set ergonomics and other functionality like that you notice that every day like that that is the kind of thing that like I think is absolutely worth it if they were to release a comfortable Switch, a Switch that was comfortable to hold for extended periods of time. That's a dream, man. Yeah, we have some reader mail. Yeah.

This is an interesting question from ThatDangPhil. It's about Super Monkey Ball. Do the monkeys enjoy being inside the monkey balls? Is this pleasurable to them 100 absolutely not oh next question wait you say you're saying unequivocally they enjoy it unquestionably yes what are you basically that's ridiculous actually okay so first of all they put a baby in there a baby monkey and he seems to be having a blast. Like, no question about it.

Secondly, I think they have full control over whether they're in the ball or not, as evidenced by Monkey Target, where they can open and close the ball at will. Incorrect. Just because... Incorrect. Can I tell you why it's incorrect? Fucking, they put a Dreamcast in there. The Dreamcast isn't opening the ball though dreamcast isn't steering that monkey is on a fucking uncontrollable ride versus the infinite

right where he is not steering he is running along with some maniacally controlled sphere hoping against hope that he is not plunged into death and instantly resuscitated for another course on this hellish ride. No way is he enjoying himself. The ground moves, not the monkey. Wait, are you saying that it's the same monkey? Because I just figured that they don't die. They just fall into like an endless

pit and then we get another one. No, this is purgatory. How is that better? I didn't say it was better. How is that better? Give me spikes at the bottom. Don't make me fall forever. I didn't say it was clearly bad. is that better? Give me spikes at the bottom. Don't make me fall forever. I didn't say it was clearly bad. Are you saying, Plant, that if the camera continued down below the course, there would be a massive, almost unthinkably large ravine full of monkey skeletons and plastic balls?

Well, not like at the bottom of anything. It would be like, uh, imagine space, like all of a space and then just picture like dead monkeys. Fucking. I, you cannot tell people you're going to talk about video games and deliver Lovecraftian horror. You can't do it.

Just saying what the game is. He's just describing the mechanics of the game, the different levels of graphics. You get to open the ball and monkey target to use as a parachute. And i imagine that that's the best few seconds of that monkey's life oh that makes sense too because then when they're in space they open the ball and they just instantly freeze to death which is probably much better than just floating sweet the sweet release yeah um next questions from brett what if sega channel had succeeded does anybody want to explain what Sega Channel was? No.

No. No? What is it? No, I just can't. So, Plant, you... Sega Channel was... Okay, if you can imagine a game... I do want to establish,

I know you guys are worried about your bona fides. Do you know what it is? Sort of. I know you hook up to the internet and download games or something. Yeah, it was like a cartridge that plugged a modem shaped like a cartridge that would plug into the slot and then hook up to your um cable connection and you would like download games through it wild absolutely wild i mean i guess that did succeed in a way the concept succeeded right i think the idea is

that sega would effectually it would like rule the internet it would be like steam if sega was i mean sega channel and sega like all of sega's online ideas from the dreamcast period too it's really just xbox like xbox live is just a continuation of what Sega was doing. So I think if you want to know what that would look like, I think we could just say, like, hey, Xbox Live, it continues to this day. It's just owned by a different company. Did you realize they had, at the beginning, 50? And then eventually, a year after release 70 different games updated bi-weekly oh my god on the sega channel on sega channel yeah it's ridiculous good for that uh

that's all the questions i have what else are y'all enjoying before we wrap up um i've been playing the diablo 2 remake on switch i i booted up because i wanted to test whether the larger screen on the oled made games like that more playable because i tried playing that game on the original um switch and it was the text was very small and kind of hard to make out and even though the resolution doesn't change in the larger screen i actually found it to be a lot more playable on the larger oled screen so that was kind of interesting. I'm also kind of just, I mean,

I played so much of that game as a kid growing up. So it is kind of a throwback. Obviously a little bit tainted by the whole situation going on right now and monstrousness. But again, there were a lot of people that worked on that game that did nothing wrong and don't deserve to be, you know, have their work

rocketed into space because there were some disgusting monsters right but as a game you know i think it is very much like a throwback like it is not as playable or easy to get into as like diablo 3 but i'm enjoying it it just kind of scratches a retro itch for me i played the beta of diablo 2 resurrected and i did not play that game growing up but i got really into diablo 3 yeah on switch like really really into it and i just diablo 2 just i realized this is going to be heretical to a lot of people but like just felt like a kind of boring and slow version of diablo 3 which is like that's how the march of video game development progress goes on but um yeah i don't think i would be able to get into it as much as i have without that nostalgia factor tied into it

right that's what's driving me if you didn't play it originally find somebody who did and play with them and live vicariously through their excitement i that's what i've been doing um with maddie uh myers apollyon and it it's it's much better having somebody like no no you don't understand it was fun that you didn't get any of the good stuff for the first three hours um yeah uh i've been playing an ios game everybody alert alert i've been playing an ios game called and you're gonna think this is a joke but it's not it's called farm rpg it's called farm rpg and it is if you put stardew valley in a spreadsheet uh that's an oversimplification do you guys remember a dark room the yeah yes uh and then

what was the follow-up to a dark room called do you remember they made like another one that was oh dang that's gonna irritate me oh god it was some sort of uh it was like a military uh a darker officer position shit that's gonna kill we need a noble circle huh no that's not it uh any the ensign the ensign yes that's right uh okay anyway it's kind of like that where like you have a farm and you you buy seeds and you plant them in the farm but it all takes place in these very it all takes place in ui it's just a big ui where you press buttons to plant things and then you you know sell them to get money and then maybe you unlock a coop or uh or a you know a barn or a sawmill and you can go exploring and you can go fishing but it all

takes place in these sort of like timed out spreadsheets and i have been completely absorbed by it um so if if that sounds like your jam if you liked those games if you like sort of that that farm vibe uh farm rpg it's also an mmo essentially like there's a constant online chat room and people are like trading shit and yeah it's it's fantastic or why not why not why shouldn't it be i uh i have two quick ones one uh is an Apple arcade game that I know is on a switch and PS4 and probably some other stuff. It's called Jenny LeCleu. Yeah.

Which is a, it's a, an, an adventure, you know, investigation game looks great. Very well performed. It's a cool,

like she's sort of like in an encyclopedia Brown type. It is so much so that like the narrator of the game is the author of her book series. And he's like sort of narrating what you're doing while you're doing it, which presents like a cool. There's like a meta story about the author of this this story. It's really neat. The puzzles are cute. It's a great game to play with a kid. If you if you this is one that Charlie and I play, you know, before she heads to

bed. The other one I played this week is called box one, which is a board game. If I could bring that to your attention. Um, it is, uh, like created by a company called theory 11 in conjunction with Neil Patrick Harris. And it is a, a narrative board game designed to be played by yourself. And it leads you through a sort of like twisting story. The box itself changes and evolves as you're playing when it's full of like

different secrets and, and hidden riddles and stuff like that. There's a digital like online component to the game that, you know, is part of it and is part of this building narrative and building story. Very, very neat. Very, very cool. It's called Box One. I don't want to say pretty much anything else about it.

You can play it with another person if you want. It might lessen the effect a little bit but like it's just a cool idea to have a um a board game just designed for one person to play that is like narrative less than like um you know more mechanical uh my recommendation for the week uh it's spoopy season the exorcist y'all you gotta go watch the exorcist it The what-sorcist? William Friedkin turns out one of the best directors. Sorcerer, one of my favorite movies of all time. I hadn't actually watched The Exorcist since high school. That movie holds up.

It is absolutely fantastic. But I'm going to give you a little bit more. After you watch it, watch the documentary Leap of Faith, which is about how it was made. It's basically just a one-on-one interview with the director and listen to the podcast unspooled because they have a new season that the first episode is about the movie. I want you to not have to spend a lot of money, dear listener. So if you go to either Apple TV or Amazon, you can get a seven-day free trial of AMC+. Just set a little reminder for yourself to cancel that

right after you watch both that movie and the documentary, which are both on the service. And hey, you've got a free evening of spoopy fun. Cool. I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties uh arcanine pup 96 it's wayne b who i assume is wayne brady cylon kegler and ham rick is here thank you everyone for writing reviews thank you to everyone else who wrote reviews we greatly appreciate it uh you can drop your reviews into apple podcasts if you haven't

yet uh or you can just share the show on twitter tell people about it we talked about super monkey ball mania and then we talked about basically every sega game i i don't i don't think we talked about any of them long enough or seriously enough that it's worthy of a full recap so persona yakuza shinmu seaman go play them all you said that last one not seaman bad not seaman oh see man there you go seaman's the sequel no we talked about both one and two okay that's fair and it's actually sees man uh what about the honorable mentions real quick box one jenny leclue diablo 2 resurrected farm rpg i think that was it and the exorcist next week we're going to be talking about metroid dread holy cow i've played the whole thing and beat it we'll see how these fellas

think about the game it is is not easy. All right. Oh, you got, it's about your skills. I mean, about your skills specifically. More. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties. Because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!