The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 23, Best Game of the Best Games

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

Seanbaby and Brockway meet Dan Hsu down at the arcade, where they drink Big Gulps and argue about the best game according to insane secret brainhack categories Seanbaby made in order to destroy them.

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred hot dog. Out of podcast slams with maximum hype. Say hot dog podcast word. Yeah. When you taste that nitrate power, you're in the dog zone for an hour. Come on.

You know the number. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero zero.

Yeah. Nine thousand. Welcome to the dog zone. Nine thousand. The official podcast of the one nine hundred hot dog. Dot com comedy hilarity website. I'm TV Sean baby from the internet. And with me is my partner in hilarity,

Robert Brockway. Here is another Brockway fact. A seven foot tall Native American man once told me he would kill anyone I wanted. I just had to pick. No follow up questions. No. And no follow up questions.

No follow up questions. Okay. That's the rule. Have you cashed us in yet? Yeah. That was a very, very important one. No follow up questions. That's the voice.

That's the voice of our very special guest. Dan Xu from EGM. And now at Blizzard. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. Very honored. Thank you guys. And, uh,

Daniel and I've been, uh, close friends for many, many years. You gave me one of my favorite jobs. I've had in the industry was in the early 2000s. Uh, you had me take over a column, an electronic gaming monthly called the rest of the crap where I played terrible games and made fun of them.

Oh, you're responsible for that. Yeah. He's the one who did this. Well, everybody loves those. One of our editors, Crispin, our mutual friend, Crispin discovered you had you do a feature article, like 20 worst games ever.

And then I was dying as I was reading this and editing it. I'm like, Oh my God, we need to have this guy in the magazine every month. So I was like, Crispin, make that happen. And we did. And it's, it's been awesome. And,

but to your detriment, maybe like you're so good at it. You at one point, I don't know if you remember the shot, but you want it to become a regular reviewer. That's true. Yeah. You're good at this talking about shitty games thing. Do you really want to talk about real games?

I was trying to discourage you, but not try to sound like I'm discouraging you. Yeah. No, no, I got it. I understood completely that I had an area of good games. And to this day, I've probably done maybe a 10 ish gigs where I'm not making fun of bad video games.

Like all of my journalistic endeavors in the video game industry have been like making fun of bad games. And that's fine. It's something I prefer because, you know, it's a good game. What's funny about that? It's chosen you.

You didn't choose the life. The life chose you. It chose me. And we are talking about video games today. We're going to get right into our main topic. And then this is going to sound stupid and impossible. But together, we're going to find the greatest video game of all time.

And I know people have tried to do this before, but as an amateur brain scientist, I have created a series of five criteria that I think have hacked the human brain to create the ultimate objective, slightly subjective criticism. I think we're going to solve it. So I'm sorry to hack your guys' brain, but...

Yeah, that really sucks. Yeah, I was specifically doing that. I was using that on occasion. I will explain the theories behind my brain hacking as we get into the questions. But for now, I want to just give you the five prompts to let you play along at home.

Now, the first prompt that I gave to Brock Wainshoe is the greatest game of all time. So this would be taking a game that you would expect to find as the number one spot in some IGN list. I think they're the only video game media left. Whoever's left standing today. They would pick the number one and you'd say, yep, that's an appropriate choice.

You pick your favorite among those. The second prompt is the game you'd be most excited to explain to your childhood self. The third prompt, the best game you're sure no one else brought. And of course, that's whatever meta context you want to create. This day, it was the three of us, but other days, whatever. Prompt four is using pure data analysis, the game you've played the most with a caveat

that you're allowed to disqualify any game that hijacked your addiction center. So you could throw out like Candy Crush, for example. If you decided that that game sort of sucks, it just somehow got into your mind. Yeah, they hacked your brain like you. Like I do. Exactly. I learned it from Candy Crush.

The fifth prompt is the best game of a wild card specific context. So you could just sort of say, hey, here's the qualifications. I made them up myself and here's the game. So this is a full wild card slot. And those are the five prompts. Think of those. You can pause the podcast, think of them yourself,

and follow along as we go. No, you're not allowed to pause the podcast. You have to think now. Fox ticking. Good point. Brockway makes the rules. You cannot ask about that. Indian who murders for him.

Never. The very first prompt, the greatest game of all time. I already know what shoe is going to pick, but I do want him to start. Did you know before you read it in email? Yes. In fact, my fiance knew too. She said, oh, you're doing that one.

I know what she's going to pick. And I was like, yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah. The other thing about shoe is he's very like open about stuff. So like most of shoe's close friends know his favorite songs, how he likes to wear his underpants, every detail of a sex life going back to high school. So you're really easy to hunt.

Like if we were going to do a dangerous game scenario, I would be able to just thoroughly vet you and hunt you in an island with relative ease. Yeah. Don't waste your free assassination on me because that's an easy one. Say that for a difficult target. Yeah.

I got to bank that one. That's good to know. My favorite video game. Greatest, greatest game of all time. Super Mario Brothers 3. And I think it's a really strong choice. But what made you, what made you pick that? Well, I think I love a lot of the Mario games.

They're always solid. They always feel really great. I just think in series as a whole, like everything just feels precise. Like the characters move exactly how you want them to move. It's a colorful, rich world. I still remember when I was a kid, opening it up for something like, oh my God,

you can fly in this and there are things in the sky to have to discover and you have to explore everything. And this is before YouTube was around, right? So you're not watching playthroughs and having all the secrets spoiled for you. So you might get a magazine like a Nintendo Power or something like that. But man, I just like loved how it controlled.

I loved how it looked. Even like subsequent games, I'm like, they look cute, but I never thought they had that same initial magic of Super Mario Brothers. You know what blew my mind about Super Mario Brothers? And this is going to probably age me, was that in Super Mario Brothers 1, you could adjust the momentum of Mario midair,

which was like crazy innovative at the time. Like, normally you jumped and you just landed whatever, whatever that game said your jump was, that's how far you jumped every single time. And so Mario, you could kind of cut your momentum and I was like, oh my God, this is the precision. It also sort of invented that state of permanent state change. Like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man had,

like you could turn into Super Pac-Man and eat the ghost, or you could get the hammer in Donkey Kong. But Mario is like, you get this mushroom and you're just big until you fuck it up. It's like a fire flower. And at the time, you got to think about how innovative that was. And Mario Brothers 3 just completely changed all that again. And also, if you're a hardcore video game design nerd,

you can go in and talk about how Mario 3 teaches you how to play really well and how just the level design sort of encourages you to do what this little raccoon tale is intended for. But anyway, it's a great choice. On and on about the controls, like how you could run and skip across narrow gaps or when you climb to the end

and you're trying to jump for the flagpole, like all those little things, like they're ingrained in you and how things move and how things control. I think that really what makes the game more than the character design or the level designs, like just how it feels when it's in your hands. Like when you're in that shoe and you just control the fucking world.

Nobody can stop you. You can go mad with power the first time as a child. You went truly mad with power. Brockway, what did you pick for your greatest, greatest game of all time? I picked Breath of the Wild. I think Breath of the Wild for me is currently sitting and has been for a few years

as just the best game I've ever played. It delivered on every promise that it didn't actually make to me. Nobody made me those promises, but I would sit there like a grumpy man and like, well, I want to be able to do anything and I don't want to go where you want to go and I still want you to somehow know that

and to like lay out a good and meaningful adventure for me as I obstinately refuse to follow your directions. And Breath of the Wild was so, it really was. It felt like everywhere you went there was something that was designed for you to do exactly what you wanted to do no matter how many times you fucked with that and fucked that up.

Man, I just really liked being in that world. It's still like, it's like a place of peace for me when the pandemic broke. I started a replay of that just to like sit in the grassy field and be like, I live here. This is the place I live now. Don't tell me.

I was always really astonished in that game with like the electricity puzzles, how you could sort of build little chains of weapons and the game's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's total. We'll allow that. Right, like to this day, people are still just fucking with that because the game functions even with

you not listening to it at all, even with you just breaking every single part of it in every direction. It still works. Like you can still see people just like supercharging a block and backflipping out of, you know, those little ninja guys that drop the bananas and

it's just, it's completely broken and like time will zip forward and demolish the guy and like it functions in this way even though you are breaking the controls on three different levels and it still allows you to do that as you wander. I can just like, no, I'm going to go climb this mountain.

I'm like, okay, yeah, do that. And then in so many games, if you can do that, it's open, but there's nothing there or it's too difficult or it's just not as much fun. Like you feel like if I had followed the road I would be having a better time.

I know. I never felt like that in Breath of Wild. I felt like there was genuinely something to do everywhere, however I wanted to do it and that still amazes me to this day. Now, the reason I framed the question like that is because like we all work in media and we've seen hundreds of lists like this

and sort of, we sort of know the expected criteria and the difference between safe and bold choices and I feel like asking someone to come on to a podcast and say, hey, what's the best game of all time? They're going to pick a game that's like, here's how smart I am or here's how cool I am or here's my personality and I wanted to just sort of lock in one safe choice

and so for my safe choice, I chose Resident Evil 4 which I probably replayed ten times on like six different systems. My favorite one. Yeah, it's so good. I love the way it controls. I love the way it feels like and what I especially love about it is that

there's so much about it that shouldn't fucking work at all. Like so much of the game is fussing with your inventory and it's like a long escort quest and it's just like a criminal thing to put in a game but it's like kind of awesome. You could sort of use the little girl to distract guys and anyway, I love it. There's this feeling of like that Resident Evil sort of tension

both because there's like zombies jumping out but also like trying to save every little precious bullet and then there's like that feeling of safety that you can only get after you've cleared out the entire area and you're just kind of looking around for spare herbs. Like the game like makes me feel legitimate emotions whereas like no other game even comes close. Like I'm, I get comfortable and scared and excited

and as like a jaded old cranky dude that just never happens in any other, in either game like it does there. So anyway, that's my choice. Are there lots of ways to experiment and break that game? I've only played it once. Yeah, RE4. Not really, but like once you have it memorized

like you're so much smarter than the game that like you kind of feel like you're cheating. You know when the guy's going to pop out and you'll just be ready with a gun and things like that. I guess it's the same with every game but knowledge in Resident Evil is so much more valuable than say like in Dark Souls. Dark Souls are still to be very good

and still have to deal with little RNG but Resident Evil if you haven't memorized going in you're super god. I remember that escort mission specifically when I realized like it was one of the games my wife hates. Well, she's getting into horror movies but she's not a big horror fan and especially doesn't want to play a horror game

but she watches me play them because it takes some of the stakes out of it for her and she can have fun with it. And so she watched me play through that entire game and I remember like we got to the part where you're escorting the girl and I was just like, oh, you know what? No, I'm done.

I'm not even getting any chance. Like I'm having a lot of fun with it. I don't want to. And then she was upset at the time. She's like, what? No, you have to finish that. You have to keep playing this. Like a fine fucking escort mission.

And then I actually had fun. I actually enjoyed an escort mission. I don't know. Has that ever happened since? It is so funny when they're carrying the little girl away. Oh yeah, they always suck. But in that game, like you put her somewhere and you tell her to wait and the guy'll grab her

and like it takes them so long to carry them away you can like finish the gunfighter and then take out that dude's legs and he'll like get up and try to carry her away again. So it's like she keeps the dude off your back the whole time and I love it. And you get a little mission out of it. Like, oh god damn it.

It's not just that you fail. You have to go trudge your ass over and knock the guy out and be like, come on lady, just... Wasn't that the game too? Also it was like super cool at the time that the girl would duck when you put the gun her way. You know, like at the time that was like, oh, that's so awesome. It's so smart.

They thought to have the kid duck out of the gun. Nobody had thought of that before. So I think those are three great choices. We've got Super Mario Bros. 3, Breath of the Wild, the Resident Evil 4. Any one of those you expect to see, it's the number one spot. I'm glad we all pitched different ones. The second prompt I gave everyone was the game

you'd be most excited to explain to your childhood self. And I designed this question to sort of measure your enthusiasm for a game, but also to sort of properly credit inventiveness. Like what I'm trying to say is the idea that you're explaining like some kind of great concept or innovation. This question sort of steers you to credit the game most responsible for it. So if you were really excited about like a loot shooter

with Min-Max stuff, like when you played Borderlands, you'd probably credit that to Diablo. So if you went to like talk to your younger self, you might explain Diablo rather than Borderlands, thus giving it credit for the thing you actually love about Borderlands. If that makes sense. I don't know that my answer is as smart as that.

It's all subliminal. It all happened and you don't even know about it. You're fucking brain hacks. And we snow crashing. Sure, you're ethical to a fault. And I know you're at Blizzard and I don't, you don't act like a spokesman for the brand. But I do think we should allow people to pick Blizzard games

if they want to pick Blizzard games because I think Diablo and World of Warcraft are two contenders for people's greatest games of all time for a lot of things. Oh, for sure. You two are welcome to talk about Blizzard games all you want. I just not in a position to really comment on them. I don't want to get in trouble. We won't be able to trick you into commenting on them.

I was just telling a story the other day about, I don't know, we can cut this if you don't like it, but there was Ubisoft was trying to muscle Electronic Game Monthly to like run or to give a better score to Assassin's Creed. Do you want to tell this story or is that something we shouldn't, something we shouldn't burn? It wasn't that they were muscling for a better score.

It was that it felt like they were punishing us for a low score. Right. So this is the first Assassin's Creed. The very original and Crispin aforementioned Crispin Boyer did not like the game. Right. He found a lot of problems and there was a certain embargo

for when the release or when you could release your reviews. And then we noticed other outlets started releasing the reviews early and found out basically if you gave the game a really good score, like a 10 out of 10, then you could break the embargo. So they're rewarding people for positive scores, which kind of, you know, it breaks ethical boundaries and it sort of, it could influence reviewers. Right.

If you knew this, maybe you think you have integrity, but if in the back of your mind like, I could get a lot more traffic if I'd inched it up from a 9 to a 9.5 or 9.5 to a 10. And that's what happened to the Internet. What I love about that. So we caused a fuss about it and then they weren't happy and then they pulled some advertising. Right.

But that was a huge advertising deal, if I remember. Yeah. I was back in a day and then people told me since that, like one of the sales guys was so pissed at me because I cost him a lot of money because I was, I'm like, well, we want to tell people about why are reviews late and what's going on, you know, because we're journalists in the entertainment business.

But right. This is a long time ago though. What I do love about it is that it, you can actually put a price on the integrity of the other outlets. Like, like say you, your article goes up three days ahead of someone else's article, that's probably in those days, like four to $500 worth of like ad revenue. So you could actually say like, here's what it costs for me to

throw away my integrity as a video game reviewer, whatever that's worth. But you now know it's worth four or 500 bucks. So that's a dark thing to know about yourself. It's not even that black and white because you're right. You could quantify it like that. But the thing is no one could legitimately say, like, yes, of course, you, while he didn't honest, you meant to

give it a 10, right? It's just the whole idea about this. Like bias and journalism and ethics is just, you need to keep it out so that there's zero influence. Right. You know what I like best about that story is that the weakness, the hidden weak point that nobody thought they would ever find was you guys just telling people what's going

on. Never occurred to anybody. You come out and be like, Hey, here's what's happening. What? He blew up everything. Oh, dear. That's the real. We didn't account for this.

So that's the story. I think it was even telling that a couple of weeks ago just because I describe you as a person with a lot of ethics. And I hate it how like Gamergate turned ethics and journalism into this like, I can't even hear it language for sexism. But so anyway, that's, that's the criteria explained. And so what did you pick for the game?

You'd be most excited to explain to your child itself. So this, even as I wrote this, I'm like, yeah, this is a really dumb pick. So I picked Clash Royale because what would fascinate me as a kid? I think if you explain to me, it's like we're playing a real time strategy game, right? You don't credit this game to as a inventor or the, you know,

of real time strategy, but you're playing this on a smartphone. So I think I was more excited about the platform on which is played and trying to explain that to a kid like I'm what there's portable phones and it's just a screen and I'm playing a game in real time with somebody all live. And I love the game. I'm like super addicted.

I've been playing it for, I'm a little bit late to it, but playing maybe about a year and a half or so, but it's a daily thing for me. And it's just, there's so much intricate strategy to it. And, but I just think it's just awesome that you could play on a handheld device remotely like that in real time, whatever you want. Like anytime I pick it up, I have someone to play with around

the world. And again, like no one would ever put Clash Royale on a best games list, but with that criteria as like an example of, you know, how connected the world is through video games and how like simple it is to have a gigantic video game experience just like instantly and anytime. I think it's a good example of that. Yeah.

Craig, I mean more than a PC game or a console game, like in if I'm like right now, I feel like playing Clash Royale, like in less than a minute, I'll be in the game playing real time with somebody. So it's insane. Yeah. You forget how far we've come until like the concept of explaining a phone to your younger self, a smartphone to

your younger self would just, I wouldn't even know where to start believing you. Like it doesn't feel like that much has changed, but man, that you just wouldn't even, I wouldn't even have. I wouldn't even know. I'm so country. We had an actual phone hooked up in my house. I might even mention this in the podcast with like the old

timey crank. So if you had a call like 4068, you would crank it four times, pause, crank it zero times, pause. And that was a real fucking thing that existed in my house and I could call people on it. You don't mean that little rotary dial. Yes. Yes.

It's a little crank. And that's how you made calls with those things. Back in the day, you did have this was old when I was a kid. I'm whatever. We used to roll our windows down manually. Like with your hand. With your hand. Was there an operator on the other side?

Like just plugging wires in and out of this dashboard, connecting you to just for you. You're the last one that has it. Right. Every time he comes in, what's up, Sean? We had a wizard also and he would send messages telepathically to the Native American who would send smoke signals to a coyote Wrangler in the city who spoke the smoke signals.

Anyway, that's how we communicated where I work from. Brockway, what did you pick for the game you'd be most excited to explain to your childhood self? I picked something with a caveat. I picked No Man's Sky, but I don't like No Man's Sky. It's got to take a little explaining. I never liked No Man's Sky. I don't like the crafting thing at all.

Like in any game especially. I don't like the survival. So like the core mechanics of it. It doesn't do anything for me. I think it looks neat. I like the concept of it and what it's trying to do. But I think part of why I'm not into that stuff is like, as a kid, I would have been so into that stuff.

Like everything is just complicated Legos. Yes, please. So you'd be explaining to your childhood self, basically you will lose this magic inside you that allows you to find joy in this type of thing? Well, I think I would save that for the end. I would explain to him like, you know how nuts you go for star control

and escape velocity and how you just sit there looking at an image of a planet and wishing you could go down there and see it and it's like sparking everything in your imagination. And you're like, I want to live in this world. God, someday what if other people could be there too? And that would be your fever dream. It will never happen.

And I could come in and say, it will happen. And it'll look even better than you could possibly imagine. It'll be a nearly infinite universe and everybody's exploring it and you can see what they explore and you can name things. And like little Brockway would be would be weeping with the beauty of it. And then I would be like, and you hate it.

Everyone hates it. It sucks. I do have friends who play it now that say that it's much, much better than it was at launch, which was like class action lawsuit bad. Like people were really upset at how much it sucked. Right. I would also have to explain that to him then to like,

yeah, they can just put it out and like lie about it and it can be terrible. And then you'll have to, you'll write it off and like years later you'll try to get back into it. But like the magic isn't there for you. I'd have to explain on we to myself. But I would be so excited to do that to see like the light go up in his eyes and then,

I mean, I'd snuff it because I'm sick in a lot of ways. But, but that, yeah, that's my choice. A strange choice. I picked, I was allowed, I allowed everyone to pick two games. And this is the one where I picked two. I picked Metal Gear Solid 5, which I played through completely twice.

I love that game. That game you could fucking do anything. And also I'd love to explain to my childhood self how the person who made it is also a complete deranged maniac and nothing about the story ever made sense ever. But the game plays sweet and you can do whatever you want. With your childhood self, I have played Metal Gear at that point. I did play a little Metal Gear and I don't think I liked it.

I've never liked stealth games. Right. So you would have to start from that and be like, here's where Metal Gear goes. Right. Stay with me. He gets weird, kid. And my second choice is Lord of the Rings Shadow of Mordor.

I think that's a game that you can do so much in the combat in that game that I like forget 40% of it. You can mind control like hundreds of works. There's very famously that thing where you can piss off and work and then he'll like hate you forever. I love the Nemesis system. The Nemesis is so great. Yeah, the Nemesis system rules.

And Shue, if you don't mind, I do. I didn't pick this just because you're here, but I do have a story of a time I roasted Shue using Shadows of Mordor. Yeah. So this was back when the game first came out and I don't think anyone else in my friends list was playing it. And you might know that if someone gets killed in their game,

it'll send like a revenge quest over to their friends list. So I got a thing that said, avenge the death of EGM Shue by killing Horza Brain Damaged. And I was like, oh, this is the name. And so I was like, this is so cool. Because immediately I'm like, this is an amazing like feature. So I did this quest to avenge Shue's death. And then I got another one.

And then I got another one that says, avenge the death of EGM Shue by killing Luga the Bleeder. And I did. And then I got Nakra the Stinger. I'm like, OK, Shue, what the fuck? He was the only one on my friends list to die. All I'm doing is avenge with you. Come on, man.

Then we'll dash the Hunter. You made like a comic. I made a 10 panel comic. Yeah. But I think it was a lot of the same something the week or something. Yes. Yes.

I wrote down all the names. Because there is like a story that got told by the names. So all these are just normal orc names. And so I'm like exhausted. The only thing I'm doing all day is just avenging Shue's many, many deaths. And then the next one was Ukram, the pain lover. And I'm like, oh, this guy is disappointed because he just

ran over Shue. And the next one, you got to go punish him. Right. The next one was Mosfil, the man-eater. And I'm like, oh, no, he ate him. The next guy, Zathra the Devourer. I'm like, god damn it. The second guy ate him.

And then I swear to God, Zathra the Raven. Like the guy ate Shue so much that he changed his name from the Devourer to the Raven. He was just full. He ate so much Shue. He had to change his whole reason for living. I'm not even into Vore anymore. I was a weird time in my life.

But I'm off of it. And so by this point, I am like taking screenshots of my phone. I'm having the best time. I already know I'm going to put together this comic and send it to everyone we know. I sent this to like 35 people and everyone was agreed. Like, this is the most effort I've ever seen go into roasting anyone.

And while I'm making it, I find the last one. His name was Gom the Week. I was just like, oh, oh, Shue. That's such a good system. Because it enables, that's my favorite thing when they enable stories like that for you to tell about the game and your time in the game. I had the same thing with the Nemesis system.

I had one guy that I kept killing him and then there would be a guy with some part of his name. It would either be the first name with a different title or the first name with a different first name with the same title. And he kept coming back in different ways and I could not fucking kill him in a way that he would stay dead. And the name slowly started getting more, like you said, getting more insulting until it was like, Blaznor the huge pussy

and like, God damn it, he's fucking murdering me. I can't, this can't happen. Yeah. What a perfect game. The story is actually pretty good. And I guess it's just Assassin's Creed, but set in Lord of the Rings. But way more shit you can do.

I love it. I don't know, I don't want to get off on tangents. Have you ever played Burnout Paradise? Yeah. Because that had that awesome system where every street had, in the whole city, it's open world racing game, right? But every street had its own sort of mini record for whoever can race down corner to corner.

And then you would see your friends list. So then it's always like, you would drive down New Street and like, I think it did something like, oh, Sean Baby has the record here. And you're like, well, okay, I'm going to stop whatever I'm doing. Not for long motherfucker. You're trying to beat this record. And you go, oh, you're doing it.

It's just like racing down one street as fast as you can. And every street had this. And that wasn't even the main part of the game. But that was awesome. Super compelling. There was another game that did this, Fable 3, which wasn't a very good game. And you can tell because I had so many people on my friends

list that played that game. And I was constantly breaking the records. It's like, I farted a second time. It's like, you just beat 11 records. I'm like, oh my God, everyone quit this game before they even farted a second time. I kept playing them though. I kept playing them because I don't know why I believe that guy.

I don't know why everybody, why did we believe that guy? Why did that dude have such credibility that we were like, yeah, this sounds legit. Peter Mullin. Yeah. I don't know. We just kept believing him. Like as a culture, as a nation, we were just like, yeah,

okay. Yeah. We'll be good. And I mean, we don't anymore. And that's the joke. But for like 10 years, we were like, yeah, totally. Yeah. I believe if you do anything, you'll grow up from little baby,

you'll plant the acorn and come back to see it. And like none of it was there. Well, he must be saving it for the next game. That guy. Right. He wouldn't do this. See, I empathize with him because I write a lot of design docs. That's basically what I did for a few years was I would start a video

game with crazy ambitions. And then we sort of agree like, we're not going to finish this one. Let's start a simpler one. And then that would grow into this just crazy ambitious game. And then we like, now this is too complicated. So I appreciate that he just puts it all out there in public. Whereas me, it was just a very small team where we just made fun of my ambitious failings rather than the whole world making fun of my ambitious

failings. He wasn't afraid to fail publicly hard and often. Yes. Yes. So our third prompt is the best game you're sure no one else has in their list. And this was designed to force a bold choice and hopefully get all of your bold choices dumped into this one answer.

So this would take as much subjective personal preference and concentrated here. Man, I think I fucked up this one too. I can't hack your brain, Brockway. Yeah, these brain hacks. I wish I was getting all the implication in these brain hacks. So, Shue, did I hack your brain? Did you put all of your bold subjective personal preference choices into this one?

As we're talking, I'm like, I should have put Splinter Cell somewhere on this list. Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, the multiplayer stuff specifically. Yeah, I remember you really liking that. That was the good like nonlinear stuff where like the spy was totally different from the commandos or the operatives. Fuck it. I'm going to change it. Can I do that?

Fuck yeah. I'm changing it to Splinter Cell. Because I get... So originally I said Uncharted 4 because I'm like no one else would have this on the list because normal people would pick Uncharted 2 as their favorite. But that's not as fun to talk about. Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, and the sequel Chaos Theory. And there's been Splinter Cell since, but I think those two are the best.

The multiplayer is someone of the most innovative, awesome shit I've ever seen. And it was kind of too hardcore and no one's really done it since. But it was amazing because it's like two mercenaries that are playing in like first person shooter mode. They have guns. They have flashlights. They're looking, wandering around these levels. They're trying to protect these areas from the spies hacking in.

And two other players are playing as spies. They're super stealthy. They're underpowered, but they have all these other devices like smoke bombs and things like that. And it was just so cool. It was just like intense. Like if you're a mercenary, you feel really powerful. I got grenade launchers.

I got this machine gun, but you have a limited view and you're just like, you're not sure where everyone's hiding on these dark levels. When you're a spy, you're scared because I don't have a lethal weapon, but I could jump on someone from behind. I could hide in the darkness. But this other guy has night vision and things like that that he has to flip on to catch me. But I have other things that it's like everything has a counter on the other side. Right.

And you're just like constantly in real time, trying to figure out like, all right, how do I, what do I do to escape or what do I do to kind of choke the scout from behind? But the coolest thing ever was like how they use the Xbox live or like audio. Right. So if I like planted a bug, let's say I'm a spy and I shot a little bug device onto you as a mercenary player. I could actually listen into your Xbox live conversation with your teammate and you don't know it.

I didn't even know that. That was so awesome. So I would like, like you're, you're wandering on a spy's and I'm like, I bug you and I could hear you and Brockway talking and planning about, all right, I'm going to move to this part of the map and then I'll communicate that back to my teammate and use that information about your actual Xbox live communications. But such a, such a great game. I could talk about it forever.

I mean, in theory, really what you do is pick up a lot of racism. Well, the thing is, cause you're playing, it's the first one was 2v2. So you're usually playing with friends, right? It's like very seldom you can play like easily to find easy for you to find three other people to play with. So. But not easy and not hard to find two racists that are friends. Right.

Then you discover which of your friends are racist. I was such a good game. You know, like that Chinese shoe motherfucking glad you could hear this. Can you imagine that idiot could hear this? Rockway, what did you pick for yours? Man, you know what? I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to, I'm going to switch my answer.

Crazy auto. The last minute. I'm inspired. I'm inspired by shoe. I picked Saiken Densetsu 3, the third trials of that. Trials of mana. Yeah. Which back in the day was amazing to me.

I'm going to switch it. And I'm going to pick something more in line with your brain hacks, which is return fire for the 3DO. Whoa. Yeah. I did not have that on my list. You're right. Fucking deep cut.

We were talking about it in the discord because it got, we got onto the subject of just what a ridiculous system the 3DO was. I'm like, nobody had that. I had that. I mean, my dad, he, we got some sort of inheritance from a great aunt and he just kind of burned through it. Like, I guess it was, wasn't enough money to like set up a savings, but it was enough money to burn through any 3DO money.

Yeah. And he came back with a 3DO for me and I was like, oh, cool. Like really into video games, really excited about having a new video games, but like it never even occurred to me to get a 3DO. Like, no. Right. This isn't a thing. It's like, here, I got you a Neo Geo.

I wasn't even on my radar, but I mean, thank you. I'll get into it. And God, that thing had such goofy games, but return fire was, was the just, did anybody play that on anything? Does anybody have any idea what I'm talking about? I'm not even familiar with it. Yeah. You had this multiplayer war game with like pre-made base building.

And so you'd enter onto these vast maps with these, you know, pre-made military bases with walls and roads and turrets and like full defense systems already laid out for you. And you had a hangar full of vehicles. So you had like a helicopter and armored personnel carrier that could lay mines and you had a Jeep that was really fast and like, but couldn't really shoot anything else. And you had a limited number of each to like deploy against each other. And the thing was the Jeep, which would die in one hit from anything and had no way to defend itself was the only thing that could grab the flag from the enemy base.

And you had to get it all the way back to your bunker. So it, it led to these mashups where it's an RTS. No, it's like, you were, it's like a vehicle combat game. You were in control of the vehicles and, and you did get to, I think there was some way to like pick where the turrets are and stuff, but mostly you're hunting the guy through these maps in, you know, in a tank and he's, he's got a helicopter. And so it's, you know, rock, paper, scissors, who's going to, who's going to win there. And so it always came down to somebody like saving like their helicopter and you trying

to hunt this, this little Jeep through the ruins of these military bases that you have mostly blown up with each other's tanks at this point. And it was such a like exciting and spiteful time. It was the first time I saw like that. It was inspired by, she was a pick of the, what did they call it? Asynchronous multiplayer. Is that the term? No, asymmetrical.

Asymmetrical multi. That was the first time I had ever seen that. And it would just, it blew me out. It worked so well. We had so much fun and like destroyed and made so many friendships with that. Where you're just zooming along in your little Jeep and you want everything to work out so hard and you've spent, it took so long was the thing. It would be like an hour and a half just dismantling this guy's base so you could get in there

with your Jeep. And then you're almost there and he destroys you with your helicopter and you throw the controller at the wall and it, and it costs like $250 and nobody even knows what you're talking about when you try to buy that. Right. That was great. That's how they get you. I'm going to keep my answer the same.

I actually had Terraria as my answer, but I decided to change it to Dragon Quest Builders, which is sort of the same thing. And I'm sort of a systems design nerd. And so some, I do actually really like crafting, but something like Dragon Quest Builders that added like this, this narrative and it added a, like an axe structure to sort of break it up. So you build a bunch of stuff and then like says, okay, now go to a different thing and like you have to start over and build new stuff.

But in a way that is interesting. There's also pretty good arcade action, whereas Terraria is sort of a sort of a wreck when it comes to actual like, you know, video game gameplay. Anyway, it's also kind of underrated. Like, I think it got good scores, but I don't think anyone played it, but Dragon Quest Builders too. It's just kind of all of the culmination of Minecraft and crafting technology and do it legitimate good RPG video game.

Anyway, I recommend it to everybody. If you haven't played it. I don't have anything funny to say. It's just really good and I like it. And I don't think anyone else would have put that on a list. So it's like, it's like Minecraft building, but also with an actual RPG game in it. Yes. And it's, it's, yeah, it sort of plays like, it feels a lot like the Super Nintendo Zelda

or your sweeping sword strikes. It's got a real nice arcade feel. That first sentence is how you sell me on anything. Yeah. You try, it feels good to play, but also you can just kind of build anything. And, and so it's a really unfair game. It's weighted heavily in your favor because, you know, you could dig a pit and drop monsters in there or, you know, it, the point is it's, it's good, I guess.

But Dragon Quest Builders too, it's also very epic. Like there's one level where it takes place in a prison and they really play with the conventions of the game itself to fuck with you. Like they'll say, oh, hey, you know how to garden. Why don't you garden for me prisoner? And so you do it. Cool. I must be building something inside this prison and then they kill all your crops and then

they send you back to prison and they do like a Groundhog Day thing where you have to keep doing the same day over and over. And I should hate it, but I'm also like, this is so good the way they're like telling the story, using the gameplay. And then at the end you build a spaceship to like kill God. Like that's the fucking scale they ramp up to. What, we go, we go full anime? Yes.

It goes, it goes full anime. Oh shit. All right. Well, if it goes full anime, that's my favorite thing is building a spaceship to kill God. No joke. Should I play one or skip go straight to two? You can skip straight to two. There's no reason to play one.

It just has all basically all the same mechanics and then a few extra little things. Yeah. If they told me at the start of like any of those survival games, if they told me at the start of like no man's sky, the point is to get enough resources to build a spaceship to go kill God. I would still be playing that game. It would not be my kind of half Joe cancer here. What is the game you played most now?

We all let a life before the internet. So we know the value of information and what it's like to live in a world without it. And so as the internet ages and our knowledge grows, we're starting to learn how important raw numbers are. Like if you have a huge amount of data, it lets us prove extremely subjective things that people are motivated to lie about, like do diets work or are Republicans racist? We can prove yes or no based on just how often they do. If 1% of diets work, we can say, nope, diets don't work.

Even though someone in 1985 might have said, no, my friend did this diet and it worked. You're like, oh, well, that's all the data I have. Anyway, that's my point. Sean, baby, you're living in a fantasy world. Facts don't mean shit to anybody. I 100% agree that to half the people alive, and again, we can get the numbers on this. And you can show them those numbers and they won't care about them. To smart, like non QAnon people, like you can look at numbers and choose to lie to yourself

or not, but you know in your heart that this is what the truth is. So that was the basis of it was just to say, like, just take all subjectiveness out of it. What's the game you played the most with the caveat, of course, that you can't disqualify it for making you play it. So what was your choice of game you played the most? This was tough because I'm like, do I look at it from a single player perspective? And I think that would be Skyrim.

But then I'm like, no, it's got to be some multiplayer game. And I originally was going to say call the duty, but then that's like a probably more in aggregate of this series as a whole. So if I had to pick a single game, I think it was probably a fantasy star online. Because I remember playing like to an insane level on Dreamcast, starting with another character doing it again. So when it came out for Xbox, I started over and played again. And then Gamecube, I started over and played again.

It was just addicted each time. And looking back, I'm like, I don't know why because there wasn't that much variety. It's like the same worlds that you do over and over and just grinding. But I put a lot of hours into that. But you don't mind it, the grinding? Like you didn't consider that? Yeah, same as like, well, maybe. I just don't realize it.

Yeah, I mean, it always does before. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But yeah, I remember like when I was, I used to work at a website called gamers.com. And then the company went under and we're all jobless for a few months. And before I went back to EGM, I was like three months. Without a job. And I was just like almost every day of that was just spent playing fantasy star online,

like in my underwear, like unwashed. Just enjoy. I do love just when I'm super addicted to a game and I wake up and I'm like, oh, fuck. Yeah, World of Warcraft Day. Like that's I really appreciate that. So I get it. So fantasy star online. Brockway, what did you pick for your game you played the most?

Well, this this was tricky. I think like over time, over like the amount of years that I've stuck with something, it's got to be destiny slash destiny too. I mean, again, that's like a franchise. That's sure. That's something I've been with almost from the start and I'm still playing it, even if it's only once or twice a week with my dad. We're in an adorable fire team and we are very bad at it.

I'm stuck with it for definitely the longest, especially of these kinds of games, which tend to be kind of flash in the pan for me. Like I get really into them and I get all about them and I'm like, I hit the wall where it's like you can see the evil shining through. Like you can see where a behavioral psychologist has started to to engineer this. Like I felt that way with Genshin Impact. I had so much fun until I saw the first time where they're like, oh, this is what you want me to do.

No, thank you. Destiny, my fiance and I were fully addicted to that game for a very long time. And I knew we were addicted because as much as we love the game, the gameplay is so smooth. We also hated so much of it. And there's no line to say, like, how do I get more emblems for this thing? And it was very clear from the online discourse that everyone hated it. It was one of the most reviled games ever from people that played it the most.

They're like, how do I, you know, emblem system? I spent 36 hours yesterday farming this cave. And you're like, wait, what did you just say? And you've got, and you got nothing from it? Yeah, basically. Yeah, there's like, because there was a wall and many people might remember this. In Destiny, there was this cave that if everyone was at a good distance, the monsters basically spawned constantly.

And so people would just get together in groups and throw fire into this cave and just murder the shit of unlimited enemies. And then every five or six minutes, run in, grab all the goods, come back and reset it. And people spent hours there just doing this 100% mundane task. And that is a fucking hijacked brain. That is not people doing something for the love of the... Yeah, there is absolutely that wall where you see through to the evil.

And luckily, I've been fortunate to not, like, fall into that too much. There's certainly been points where, like, it got me for a while and it took me, like, a week to be like, wait a minute, I hate what I'm doing. Especially when a quest, like, to get a cool gun is like, go play, fucking gambit. And I'm like, oh, I hate gambit, but I really want this gun. And so I'd be there for like, I'd be trying it, like, get up and get on my exercise bike and be like, oh, I guess I got to put my time in. And then, wait, wait, wait, I've been tricked, I've been duped,

I got the brain slug, I got to get out of this. And so I would give it up and come back to it when I'm not having fun. And that's probably even discounting the hours I've put in for, like, addictive treachery. I definitely stuck with that most. But pure hours, pure hours, I probably put the most into a game called Arctic Mud, which was... I've never even heard of that. Which was... Is that a game you invented in your yard?

Yeah, it's a game. We all go out in the mud and you just fight. You just fight until you're the last one left standing. It sounds awesome. No, this is... God, this is way back in the day. This was, like, early, early internet. It was like, you know, Fantasy Star Online or whatever. It was like World of Warcraft or any of those games.

But it was all text-based. It was called Mud was a multi-user dungeon. And so it was in the early days where I thought that was fucking amazing that I would roll up a character and I'd name him and I'd pick their skills and I'd level them up and you'd get an epic fight and get your new weapons and equip yourself. And that game fucking had everything. It had PvP too, and it had, like, a justice system

where cops would hunt you down, like AI cops would hunt you down. And this was, like, like 93 at the time. The only problem was that it was all just text. I mean, it was all online. It was all connected to real people that were all... Was there, like, ASCII maps and stuff? Yeah, I mean, there was... There was all... They did all of that stuff.

It was really well put together for what it was, but it was just... It was like Zork. It was like a text adventure game, but everybody was online and playing it. In 1993, that blew my mind and I probably put hundreds of hours into it. I think I could probably match those numbers with World of Warcraft. Like, I definitely... That's without question the game I played the most,

but I also want to disqualify it because so much of it was super obnoxious. Like, they would have... There's this achievement called The Insane, and I was like, Oh, it's an achievement. I got to get it. And it required, like, pickpocketing, like, thousands upon thousands of dudes, like, through this, like, really low-level dungeon. And I remember, like, doing a quick run and, like, doing the math and saying, Oh, no, that's, like, 140 hours of that.

What the fuck? And then I was thinking, like, Wait a second, I haven't watched The Wire. I could just pull up The Wire on my second monitor and just fucking... So that's what I did. I, like, any time I had a show to watch, I'm like, Oh, sweet, I can start working on that World of Warcraft achievement. You have seen through the veil.

Yeah. Somewhere like a behavioral psychologist is like, Damn it! We need to ease them into it too slow. We lost one. You can feel you slipping away. I did really like that game. I think I knew I was playing too much when I swear to God it's a real story, where I was at a party and someone asked me if I played World of Warcraft,

and I said yes, and they asked, like, my character name and all that, and they knew my character's name. Like, they didn't know me, Sean Baby, as the writer, but they knew Thunder Mixer the Rogue from the legends of his murders. And I was like, OK, that's fucking way too much Warcraft. Now, wait, wait, did they know because they had, like, played with you or seen you around because of, like, region matching or because people were telling stories about you

where you were, like, the server legend? I switched servers to play with my friends Guild and played with them for a few months, and I guess they were telling everybody else about this dude that they got, and that's how he knew me. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, it was a bit much. I mean, I was in a way proud of it, but it's also so embarrassing,

like, some panty-drying shit there, and so that happened. But I think if I'm going to talk about games, speaking of panty-drying, that I played just for the joy of video gaming without any kind of grinding mechanics, it was XCOM Enemy Unknown from 1994. When I was in college, I played that game fucking every chance I got. I'd call my friends up and talk about shit that I did in XCOM, while they talked about shit they did in XCOM.

It was the best, I think. And panties everywhere were wet. They were so wet. I feel like every single video game developer has kind of tried to recreate XCOM, and no one has ever been able to do it. Like, something about it was purely magic. Even when they made the XCOM sequel, they just threw it under water, and there's like, okay, did we do a sequel, and everyone hated it?

Every time they tried to improve on XCOM, they fucking blew it. The only reason the new iteration of it is popular is because they changed so much of it. It's a totally different game, but anyway, that's my choice. Except for XCOM, I feel like we all did pick games that had addictive treachery in it. That's the treachery. That's how deep the treachery was. I don't hate Destiny or World of Warcraft for hijacking my brain, but I don't think they deserve the credit for creating such pure video game bliss like XCOM does.

Yeah, that's fair. Our final question, the final prompt, was the best game of a wildcard-specific context. And this was the relief valve for bold subjective choices. Basically, to find a game you wanted to talk about that maybe wasn't good enough to have associated best game of all time. But with a little context, you could theoretically make a case. So, shoot, what is the game and the context that you picked for this one? My favorite game, so I could put this under two different categories.

One is my favorite Commodore 64 game. Racing Destruction set. Nope. Oh, that was awesome. Or the game I'd most, my favorite game that I desperately want somebody to remake or modernize is Autodual. Oh, that's not too far off from the guess. Yeah, yeah. So, this is, I don't know, people remember back in the day, this still exists,

but there's a game called Car Wars, a tabletop game. It's kind of like a Mad Max sort of world where you're building cars. You're putting weapons on them and armor and spikes. It's pretty sweet. You're just trying to kill each other or destroy the other cars. And there's a video game, but it's an RPG. And so, it wasn't just like a twisted metal or something like that. It's an actual RPG.

So, you're a character, you start in a city, maybe enter these local tournaments to try to make some money. And then when you're in a tournament, you're actually driving a car and shooting other things. And then you get out, you salvage some stuff from their car. You could then save up to start buying your own car. And you're like, do I want armored tires? Do I want a van? Yeah, I want that. So, you really load it up.

Or do I want a small car that's really nimble and fast? Or I want lasers and fire, flamethrowers. And then you can start to go to other cities. Like you actually either take a bus to like Atlantic City or you can actually drive. But driving is really dangerous because it's complete wild lands out there. And there's no leveling. Like, oh, you're only an early level guy. We're not going to put tough enemies.

You can counter someone. It's like way out of your league. And you get destroyed and you have to start over. But not on a bus. The bus, there's like, everyone's a gentleman's rule member to blow up a bus. The bus is fully equipped. It's the battle bus. It's the boss of the game.

You know, go back and try to take down the bus. That is so awesome. You go to other cities and you enter other tournaments where you could go to like Atlantic City. You can make a gamble and you can take on these other quests, like to deliver stuff. And then slowly you just throughout the game, you're making more and more money. But it was brutal because if you died, you died. The only way to back yourself up is if you cloned yourself in the game, like an in-game thing. And that was really expensive.

But the game was smart enough to, I didn't know how to do this as a kid. Like you couldn't go back to your last save or make a copy of your floppy disk to save. Like you knew how to do all the work around. If you died in the game, you legit died. You died in real life. You're never playing that game again. Damn. That sounds awesome.

I wanted someone to make a real one. Yeah, it was so cool. Yeah, just because they put it in an RPG setting. And that was all in the Commodore 64. That's what I played it on. I don't know if it's... And the game I mentioned, Racing Destruction Set, was sort of played like Ivan Iron Man's, like, whatever the game is, or RC Pro M, that kind of a game.

And you could build your own racetracks. You could plant landmines on them. You could change the gravity. It was super customizable. And it's kind of a weirdly criminally unremade game. Like we should have a new version of that every couple years. And it's just like never been seen again. Yeah, I remember that one.

But Brockway, what is your specific context and the game you chose? I chose Skyrim. And my specific context is the best game that tricked my dad into playing video games. And that he didn't play games before that? No. In fact, he just... I wouldn't say he hated them because he would buy me consoles and games for my birthday and stuff, even though we did not historically have a lot of money.

So he was great and he understood that I liked him and he would get them for me. But he would just constantly disrespect them. He just did not understand it at all. And my favorite things, I remember him... I was obsessed with Fallout 2 for a long time. And I remember him walking by me on a nice day as I hunched over the computer and he'd be like, I will never get what you see in these things. It's just little shapes on a screen.

And I was like, ah, dad. Dad. You'll never understand me, dad. You'll get it, dad. But anyway, like... And he's like, hey, what's with this noisy fella's nose dragons? Right. But like a couple of years later, he bought on his own.

Like I didn't push him into it. He bought PlayStation 3 because he wanted to play Forza, I think was the racing game. So he only played racing games. He made a little setup of like the pedal and the wheel and it was adorable. That is really cute. But he would only play racing games and he just didn't have time for anything else. And then I wrote that column about Skyrim for Cracked. And he read it and was like, that sounds amazing.

And he went and played Skyrim and it completely hooked him. Like this is much later. Fast forwarding past the PS3. That was just for racing games. So it completely hooks him. He gets desperately into it. And then I told him, well, if you like that, check out Fallout. And he did and he got totally lost in Fallout.

He's played Fallout more than me at this point just by hours. Now I get to be like, you remember? Do you remember when you said the thing? You son of a bitch, it's been 30 years that I've held onto this. But yeah, now my dad is like, plays Destiny with me, which is objectively maybe the dorkiest game. Like if I went back to my younger self and was like, there are space knights and you've got the magic pet mind and so be like, God,

you're never going to get a girlfriend like that. Yeah, there's just no story to Destiny other than there's like nerd tropes. No, there is so much story. There is so much story. Just a mirror of vague nerdy nerdiness. No, no. There's so much story that it's a problem is the thing. Like I guess if you count like the words, they say, sure.

No, no, like not in Destiny. There's no story in the game. It's all in like offline lore that they I see what you're saying that they are putting like it's all officially part of the game, but it's not in the game because they're bad at designing video games. I was reading you probably know this story where it's getting ready to launch and they just sort of showed a super cut of all the cinematics in the game. And I guess the higher ups were like, dude, this sucks.

Yeah, and then they did. And that's why just nothing means anything and nobody does anything of interest. Right. At the last minute, they rewrote the whole thing, but without trying to with only the assets that they already had because they didn't have the assets to make the new thing, which is why Destiny is such a wreck. But there's this hyper dorky, which I frankly, I love story like hidden in the

lore that's all on these cards in the original Destiny. It was all in these cards that you would do something in the game and achievement or whatever. And it would unlock the cards so that you could go to a website and read the story on the website. But it wasn't in the game because the story of the game is just bullshit. And I was so obsessed with this is like a storytelling method. Like, look, you have accidentally made this, this like real life video game,

ARPG, Twin Peaks fucking thing. Like, you accidentally made something that's kind of art by just, by just fucking up so hard. I love that story. I loved that Peter Dinklage was in the, he's very famously did like the dot creature, not wizard combs from the moon. Like his voiceover was so bad, they actually replaced him, which is kind of unprecedented in like modern art.

To replace him while his star was exploding. Like while he's on cave of thrones. They were like, you're the hottest guy in the world. You're cut. You lazy asshole. There's like a, there's this line that used to crack me up so much. Obviously the wizard from the moon was great. They cut that from the game, but it was this like thing where it says,

those robots that can turn invisible and he's like, oh, and they can disappear. Great. It's like he, maybe the script said sarcastic and brackets, but he like, he said, no fucking interest in delivering it. Well, the story I heard about that was that there, it wasn't really from the script because they, they got him in their sort of post having to dissect the whole thing after that trailer. So they gave him a script with like no context.

It would just be that wizard came from the moon, like as a single line on a page and that's what he came in to do today. And he's like, I'll do one reading and then I'm fucking out of here. Okay. That wizard came from the moon. What do I, why do I deliver that? There was no wedding. Oh, it's such a hilarious game.

It's funny. It's funny you picked Skyrim as something that your dad was interested in because I remember when that game came out, I love Elder Scrolls and I marked off my calendar for three days. I'm like, I'm not working. I'm just playing Skyrim all fucking day. And so that was my plan. I executed perfectly. But my buddy had his mom in from out of town and she woke up about six hours before him.

And I don't think he had any plans for her during the day. So she woke up. She said, oh, hi, Sean sits next to me on the couch. Watch me play Skyrim for six hours. Her son gets up, does his morning thing. She watched me play Skyrim for four more hours. The fucking whole day goes by. She just sits there watching me play Skyrim, having the time for life, helping me out,

laughing when I do silly shit. I was like snuck into a town and took all the clothes off every single town's person. She's like, this is great. This is a great game. I love this game. You see what I mean? The best game to trick old people into playing video games is Skyrim. That's two stories, which is 100% evidence.

That's how numbers work. Yeah. We've decided. Pre-internet, that's how numbers worked. So for my game, I picked the best game no one will ever remake on the best system no one's ever heard of. 1999, Cardfighters clash on the Neo Geo pocket color. Love it.

Love it. It's the best game. Wait, wait. The Neo Geo pocket? Yeah. I'm sure people have heard of it. Well, these people haven't. Well, it's great.

It was a weird little rectangle. It had an interesting little click stick. So it was like a joystick, but it kind of had a satisfying little click. So it was a great like chunky Game Boy style system. So it was a portable Neo Geo. Did it cost like $7,000? It was not that type of Neo Geo. It was like 200 bucks, 300 bucks with normal cost cartridges.

It had a Street Fighter game that was Street Fighter versus SNK, which is not my favorite property, but some people like it. And it was sort of like an 8-bit robust RPG element 2D fighting game in 8-bit style graphics. I was like, this is fucking amazing. But the best game was Cardfighters Clash. And it was a real simple design with a lot of collectible elements, a whole RPG on top of it. So you're walking around this world playing people in this card game that you're playing.

It's so good and so fast and so simple, but like all good card games, you know, gets very complicated. And I think why it couldn't get remade, first of all, they tried. And not only was there a lot of bugs in the game, it was fucking joyless. It was a terrible game. But also the simplicity of the game system is something I don't think any game designer would ever do again. Like if you play recent Magic of the Gathering or we played Soul Forge for a while or Hearthstone,

like the game system expands exponentially with every single update. And Cardfighters Clash was like, eh, they can do like three or four things. But the randomness of the card drawing and all that, it's enough. My point is, it's such a moment in time thing that was fantastic that I love. I have a little story about that game. Oh, yeah? We were super addicted to it and we were playing all the time and you could do a physical cable link between two Neo Geo pockets that play multiplayer.

But the game, you're right. It wasn't super well designed. Like I don't think anyone would want to play it today. But it just wasn't bad. It was like terrible first player advantage. Like one player would be randomly chosen to go first and they had the upper hand always. So one time our friend Shane Bentonhausen, notorious tabletop games cheater. We sat down and play.

He's just like kind of guy who looks for any advantage he can get. We connected. We're about to play. I saw that I got first player draw and then we were at work and then someone asked me something and distracted me momentarily and then like, okay, back to the game. I looked down and there was a connection. And then I looked at him and I'm like, you fucking unplugged me. It's so safe to accuse Shane of some shit like that.

Anyone else would be like, dude, I hate to accuse you of something like this. But did you? Did you? Did you do this thing? Yeah. No, that's official, but that was the only way to get a couple of cards was to have a transfer cable and someone else with that game and a Neo Geo pocket color on an impossible task at the time.

Right. Like I've never even heard of that finding another another person with that and then licking up. Imagine explaining this to like the kids in five, 10 years, maybe even today. Like you used to have to just find another guy that had that like out in the world. You had to walk outside and be like, Hey, does anybody? Does anybody like the Neo Geo color? People will be like, shut the fuck up.

That's a thing about our like working at a game magazine. Right. You were the only people that ever played that multi kind of spoil there. Like Sean baby knows this. Like we used to play like 16 player LAN Xbox one Halo. And it's like, no one has that kind of, you need four TVs, four Xbox. Yeah. That mode was for you.

That mode was for like game journalists. Just game journalists only. I was dating a girl in Portland at the time and she worked at the local WB station and they had a wrestling ring in there because that's where they filmed Portland wrestling. And they also had a media room with four TVs. And so we would bring in four Xboxes and we would play 16 man Halo and also have little pro wrestling breaks. And I got to think that's probably the greatest setup anyone's ever had for any fucking video

games to this day. Have you ever beat that moment in your life? Never. That was it. That's the best moment of my life. I had a story about Cardfighter's Clash because I used to get so lost in that game that I was playing it. I was in Cancun, Mexico and you know, I was covered in sunscreen, of course, but I had

like washed it off in a sink on my hands. So I was just playing Cardfighter's Clash and I played, I just lost track of time, played in the sun, must have been an hour, hour and a half. And my hands got so sunburned, they were like fucking purple and swilled up. And that was, it was like that the whole rest of the trip. So we went and saw the beautiful Cheech and Eats of Ruins and I would have to like run between cover because if I was out in the sun, like my hands felt like they were going to fall off.

Anyway, that was what Cardfighter's Clash did to my hands and I still love it. Ruin, ruin the vacation for you and you still love it. Cost you thousands of dollars. Just lost the use of my hands. My dick still worked. Woo, Mexico! This Dogzone 9000 was brought to you by Benjamin Sirenin, Dr. Awkward, Yossarian, Josh S, Zachary Evans, Adrian Hissbrook, Aidan Moat, Breanne Whitney, Josh Fabian, Armando Nava,

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