The Ringer-Verse - Build the Best Video Game Remake Roster Draft | Button Mash

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Ben, Jessica Clemons, Justin Charity, and Rob Mahoney break down news about the release date of 'GTA VI,' Phoebe Waller-Bridge writing a 'Tomb Raider' show, and the next 'Assassin's Creed.' They then compare and contrast recent releases 'Animal Well' and 'Senua's Saga: Hellblade II' (24:00), and later competitively put together lineups (31:00) of the games they most want to see remade. Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Jessica Clemons, Justin Charity, and Rob Mahoney Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executive is on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again?

Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiatoradio.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today.

Hello and welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I'm Ben Lindberg, a senior editor at The Ringer and your button mash host, kicking off a four-player party chat edition of the show. You know the great governor of Nabu, Sio Bibble. once said, that a communications disruption can mean only one thing, invasion. On Buttonmash, a communications increase can mean only one thing. We're doing a draft, or at least a competition that's kind of draft adjacent with me in the matchmaking lobby is someone who may still be trying to understand why everyone at the ringer is constantly drafting stuff, the original co-host of ButtonMash, the new rock star herself, Jessica Clemens. Hey, Jess. You know, drafts make me

nervous. I know they do. They make me nervous. And this draft is very hard. But I think I chose very extravagant, like, dumb games. It's because we threw you into the deep end. Your first ringer draft was a Maori draft, and you just got exposed to draft Mal, and it sort of soured you on the whole experience. It absolutely has. This will be calmer. There's a good energy here today. Good vibes. Also, with us is a man whose draft strategy is not necessarily tailored toward winning the popular vote, as evidenced by his 6% polling in the 2004 video game's drafts. He didn't need your vote. He may not have wanted your vote. He's not out here knocking on doors and kissing babies. He got Def Jam fight for New York and Resident Evil outbreak, so he went home happy. And we're

always happy to have him. Senior staff writer Justin Charity. Hey Charity. Ben's been dragging Sio Bibble in the conversations with me since 2005. I want everyone to know. Let's Get it. He's the duly appointed ruler of Nabu as opposed to someone who just inherited the throne. We're not monarchists around here. Before we started recording, Charity asked, what does it mean to win a draft? Not to blow up your spot here. You kind of questioned the whole competitive endeavor. So that's the spirit that you bring to this and every draft. And we love it. Chaos agent. Finally, returning to Buttonmesh for the first time, since he arguably tanked his fortunes in the Final Fantasy Party draft

by selecting Squall as his protagonist. It's a basketball expert who makes time for dumb drafts about video games even during the NBA conference finals. Senior staff writer Rob Mahoney, hey Rob. See, Tank is really a matter of opinion on that. I think, like charity,

I won with the people who really matter. The real heads who know, the emo kids like me, we're all on the same side here, and they supported me. They showed up to the polls. It was a matter of opinion and the opinion that most people had is that you blew it. Sorry.

It's tough. It's a tough scenes out here. Have you all noticed that I'm kind of trash talking you while introducing you? Let the mind games begin. You're Drake. You might be treated like Drake for the rest of this episode. Let's go. That comp.

Today, in honor of Nintendo's new Switch remake of Paper Mario, the Thousand Year Door, and a number of other recent remakes and remasters, we'll be handing out free advice to the video game publishers of the world by telling them which great games to remake next. Yes, we will each be building a roster of remakes. We want to play as the video game remake craze continues. However, it's been a minute since our last mash here at the Ring Reverse. So let's start by giving our brief takes on three trending topics. First, Grand Theft Auto 6 was previously announced as a 2025 release.

But when in 2025, we wondered. Some signs pointed to early 2025 because a Kotaku report a few months ago said spring was the target, and Rockstar owner, Take 2 had forecasted a ton of revenue for their 2025 fiscal year, which ends that March. However, that Kotaku report also said development was behind schedule, and now we know that the release window is fall 2025. Ooh. Take 2 CEO said, we do feel highly confident that will deliver Grand Theft Auto 6 in fall of 2025. So my question for each of you is, how confident are you? Are you highly confident that they will deliver GTA6 in the fall of 2025? Charity, give me your GTA6 fall 2025 confidence level. I put no trust in release days in general. You know what I mean? That's like, that's the thing. Once you, here's the thing, here's the, here's the, the, the half.

for game or culture in general. Once you just abandon worrying about the future, worrying about pre-orders, pre-order bonuses, and you just, you know what I mean? Like, you got to consume games on a month-by-month basis. Make them earn it. Live in the now. Yeah.

Live in the now, brother. Disconnect from this temporal plane. I think that we all need to ascend to a different kind of existence where we're not waiting for fall 2025. Because look, who knows what we're going to be by then. We're playing. We might be cooked. The next GT.

That's what I'm saying. In our bunkers waiting for the next Grand Theft Auto? We will be in Fallout. We will be in a fallout type situation by the time. You don't know. You never know. Be thankful what you got. Oh, my goodness.

We're all going to be Drake by 2025. Oh, no. Definitely not. I don't want to be. I don't want to be. Yeah, I agree with charity. I don't think it's going to come out by 2025. But also take your time.

I need to upgrade my PC and I'm in the middle of doing it right now. It barely can run GTA5. So take your time on my behalf, please. I need this. We've all been waiting a decade. What's another month or year? I'm not highly confident. I'd say I'm semi-confident. I'm moderately confident. Kind of depends on whether we count this fall announcement as a delay. It's not really because an earlier release date was never officially announced, but if you believe the reporting, it's sort of a soft delay, a quiet delay. We're calling everything a quiet something these days. If we look at the track record, GTA 5 was publicly delayed one. and only by a few months from Q2 to mid-September 2013, GTA4 was publicly delayed only once and only by about six months from October 2007 to April 2008.

So if we look at this as a delay from early to late 2025, maybe it sticks. Plus, even with the leaks, they took their sweet time announcing this thing. It's been in the works for so long. I was being facetious, but it's like the games that have these scales, right, where like GTA scale games. I just worry about them. Like the past decade and basically ever since

cyberpunk right, I've worried about the games of this scope. That's really what I mean. I, you know what I mean? Jokes aside, like talking about like I put no faith of release dates. It's just like this, this is the kind of game that like,

the last thing you want to do is kind of like rush it out or like from a fan perspective or critic perspective. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know. These games just take forever to make at this point. Yeah, right. It's the old saying that's attributed to Shigeram Yamodo, although I don't think he actually ever said it. A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad. I don't think there's any way that GTA 6 can qualify as rushed because we've all grown old. We're all senior editors and senior staff writers now, and we were junior when GTA 5 came out. But, you know, make it count. Like, make it worth the wait because we've waited this long. and it's been in the works for so long,

you'd think they wouldn't have unveiled it until they were reasonably confident it could come out when they said. On the other hand, there's just so much money riding on it that they'll want to get it right. And it's not like it would sell any less if they push it to 2026.

What are we going to say? I won't play it now. I'm boycotting. No, we will lap it up and like it whenever they give it to us. I do think GTA2, it does have such a long tail as a release. Like, these games do not just go

away, that even if it does come out a little sloppy relative to a major release, there's a very forgiving fan base. There is a long time to experience this game and buy into it and get the hype once the ship writes a little bit, games that have that luxury can afford to set somewhat

firmer dates than others, even though everything else tends to get just massively delayed all the time. Yeah, it's true. GTA online didn't even launch with GTA5. And then when it did go live, it wasn't really what it became later. And then it becomes this cash cow for a decade, right? So you do have time to write the ship, especially with a game like this where people aren't

necessarily going to be like, I'll wait for reviews. We'll see if this thing is any good. It's GTA. People are going to get it regardless. So I don't know, a year and a half gives them much more time to work on the game and potentially finish it by fall 2025, but it also gives them much more time to delay it. Hence my moderate confidence at best. I can't wait for the debates over what constitutes fall.

It's going to be like December 15th. Sorry, winter hasn't officially started yet. I think we're still in clearance. Right. Yeah. In gaming, it's like fall and holiday season. Are they the same thing? Are we splitting hairs here?

But you could push that to almost the very end of the year, if you want to be technical about it, the best kind of correct. So remember when Vice City came out one year after GTA3? Games were so much simpler then. All right. Our second story, more than a year ago, the Hollywood reporter, Hollywood reported that Phoebe Wallerbridge was working on a live-action Tomb Raider show. Then there was radio silence until mid-May when Amazon confirmed that it had ordered a full season of the series.

If I could tell my teenage self this was happening, I think she'd explode, Wallerbridge said. Tomb Raider has been a huge part of my life, and I feel incredibly privileged to be bringing it to television with such passionate collaborators. Lara Croft means a lot to me, as she does to many, and I can't wait to go on this adventure, bats and all. So can we wait to go on this adventure charity as our resident Tomb Raider enthusiast. How high are your hopes for this latest in a long line of video game adaptations? You remember like a year or two ago when it was just suddenly Hollywood was going all in on Resident Evil and we got that we got the Resident Evil show and we got the CG movie. We got that weird CG Leon Kennedy Resident Evil movie. and it felt like all this stuff came out in like a two-month span

and it did not do well. I feel like, unfortunately, I'm getting that same. Like, I know we're post all the conversations about why, why are adaptations of video games inherently stupid or bad? Like, we're past that, right? We're in a, we're at the bright side of that discourse. The curses have been broken, blah, blah, blah. And yet the Tomb Raiders stuff,

I can't say I'm that jazzed about, even though Tomb Raider does have like an actually pretty decent history of adaptation. I just don't get great vibes from like the projects that are sort of on the horizon, like the animated thing. I don't know. I'm not. Jess, are you a Tomb Raider person? I'm not. I didn't play the game and I did not care for the movies. I was also very young when the movies came out.

So I was just like, oh, okay. But I do like Phoebe Waller Bridge a lot. And everything she touches, I love. So I think I'll probably like it. I have her tattooed on my body. So I think I also have to watch out for that itself. I can't be a Phoebe Waller Bridge fan and have her tattoo on my body and just be like, you know what, I'm not going to watch this.

I'm going to watch it. Is this a particular character tattoo? Sorry if I'm evading your privacy here. It's right. Oh, okay. Not everyone can see this, but we can. Season two of Fleabag We cover her for it

But no, she's on my body So I have to watch anything she does This is kind of the iconic just facts I know Absolutely That is the catch with it though She created one of For my money

The best seasons of modern television Fleabag season two Is this what I want for Phoebe Waller Bridge To be making a Tomb Raider show Not particularly Do I want Greta Gerwig To be making a Narnia thing I guess

Like if that's what we're going to be doing but often, and I think this is the case here. You know, we're in a post-fallout world where these kinds of projects can get off the ground a little more quickly. And also, if you want to make a globe-trotting adventure story in 2024, you got to smuggle it. And you got to smuggle it within some IP.

And if this is what it takes to get a decent Phoebe Waller-Bridge-penned globe-trodding adventure story, that I can be sold on, more so than the Tomb Raider piece of it. Mm-hmm. I'm just going to roll up my sleeve here and show everyone my L337 tattoo from Sol.

The cinematic masterpiece. First off, Ben, I know damn well, you don't have a tattoo. I don't, but now that... You should get it. Now that it's come up, sounds pretty appealing, actually. Wait, Ben is afraid to play Soma. I don't know that Ben has enough in him to get a tattoo. I played Soma when they added the mode that made it less scary because the monsters

couldn't kill you. So that made it safe for cowards like me. Oh, Ben. My feelings are similar because there hasn't really been a shortage of too much. Raider. And as you said, Charity, like, there have been at least some half-decent Tomb Raider adaptations, which makes me want this less, paradoxically. Like, you might think, oh, the track record's better. This will be good, too. But that actually makes me want it less than if they'd all been awful. And we were like, finally, the good Tomb Raider adaptation. So we've gotten three Tomb Raider

movies. We have an animated Netflix Tomb Raider series starring Haley Atwell coming later this year. Amazon is also publishing a new Tomb Raider game. And there have been some. reports that they're trying to put together an interconnected Tomb Raider universe, the TRU, I don't know, with a game and the show and maybe a movie that would all tie together. You know what? Too many napkins. It's a ton of Tomb Raider. Too many napkins.

They got the money to do it. Go ahead. They certainly do. Throw it at the wall, do whatever hell you want with that money. Am I going to consume it? Absolutely not. Right. They have the buddy, but do we have the time?

I will say better Tomb Raider than unchecked because I do like Tomb Raider. Sure. Sure. I like the overall sort of vibe and worldview of Tomb Raider, frankly, to put it in pretentious terms, more than uncharted. So I would rather them do it with Tomb Raider. After years of uncharted being the annoying, overrated younger cousin of Tomb Raider, I do, I appreciate Tomb Raiders stealing back the limelight a bit. I will say that. I do have some similar sentiments to you, Rob, just very mixed feelings about the, for lack of a better term, IP pilling of Phoebe Wallerbridge. Yeah.

I cherish also, but here you have this great writer and actor who does crashing and fleabag and the first and best season of killing Eve, etc. And look, she's in Solo, a great movie. I don't care what anyone says. She's in Dial of Destiny, a great movie. I don't care what anyone says. Get your checks. Okay. you know, delight me while I'm at the theaters, having a good time at the movies. She's in

his dark materials. She co-writes a Bond movie. She works for a while on Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Now she's taken on Tomb Raiders. So I'm torn like I often am when some incredibly creative person gets sucked into Star Wars or the MCU. Like these are properties I care about. On the one hand, it's great when brilliant people put their spin on popular properties and appeal to everyone. On the other hand, it's also great when they create stuff from scratch, right? Like, Charity, you'd appreciate this. I saw George Miller recently said that he would support another Mad Max game if Hadeo Kojima made it.

But he also said, yeah. Let's go. Let's do it. I'm not holding my breath. Your expense report is a fruit. But he also said he'd never ask Kojima to make a Mad Max game because Kojima already has, quote, so much fantastic stuff in his own head, right? So, like, George Miller's got his weird sci-fi dystopian Mad Max universe and Kojima's got his, right? So I'm excited to see Phoebe's take on Tomb Raider, but I might be more excited to see her introduce me to something I've never seen before.

That sounds a lot like he wants Hideokejima to ask him to have permission to make a Mad Max game. He's just putting it out there. Hopefully he'll see the quote. Yeah. Hopefully so. Have your people reach out to my people. Okay. Third and final news story.

Ubisoft released a trailer for the next Assassin's Creed, formerly known as Assassin's Creed Red, but actually we now know called Assassin's Creed Shadows. It's coming out in November. It's set in 16th century Japan, and it features multiple protagonists, a female Shinobi and Yaske, an African samurai based on a real historical figure.

Rob, I will toss this to you, because you just finished recapping Shogun on prestige TV. Has the entertainment industry reached peak? feudal slash shogunate eras Japan because we've got shogun we've got blue eyes samurai we've got Ghost of Sashima we've got rise of the roninian is there room in your heart and your schedule for the assassin's creed version I'm glad you came to me because I am the shogunate and I'm happy to dispatch some wisdom in these matters look personally I'm here for it I think this is a pretty rich landscape to mine a lot of interesting stories from you just ran through them I enjoyed the

vast majority of those. And I do think even though releases like Ghost of Tsushima and even Sekiro are kind of fresh in our minds, we're not like four and five years removed from those games. And so the idea of revisiting those sorts of worlds and those sorts of it, like that sort of story, I think is fair game.

And, you know, credit to Ubisoft and finding ways to innovate in the stabbing space, you know, as samurai or Shinobi, it feels like we were always kind of inevitably headed here one way or the other, so I salute them for getting to the end point. You're an Ubisoft. guy, huh? We got to hash this off

off air. The great debate of our times. Ubisoft, UBSoft, even UB slash Ubisoft employees disagree on this one. Damn, I didn't even realize it was such a controversy. There was a very viral tweet a few months ago that said, to be a white guy is a constant struggle where

you think a lot of things about Japan are interesting, but you don't want to be all weird about it. So it's time for us to be tested again, I guess, is what you're saying. Jess, how about you? Because you weren't exactly in love with last year's Assassin's Creed Mirage, as I recall. But that was a throwback.

And this is more of a modern Assassin's Creed game with a map about as big as origins. Will you give the franchise another try? Or is it dead to you? Just like, Rob, I'm not tired of this world. I don't tire of worlds that easily. Because I remember you were also like, aren't you tired? You're doing like The Witcher and all these other things? I'm like, nope.

Yeah, a lot of medieval style fantasy stuff in the row. And then I went to the Red Fair three weekends in a row. This month. So I am addicted to that world. And I'm addicted to this one. I loved Rise of Rode and you know this. And so I'm going to play this and I'm going to fulfill this dream of me

being like Rob, a shogunate. Charity, you're an Assassin's Creed guy? No, well, I have two points here. One, never played in Sous Creed. None of them. Not about to start now. Don't make him missing out.

None of this stuff from this looks like it's going to hook me into this particular entry in the Zazonskreed. I will say now to the point about feudal Japan. Look, people, I know people on that Sekiro's subreddit. It's been five years begging for SekiroDLC from Frontsoft. And I feel like Ubi showed up who was like, we have SekiroDLC at home with this game.

It's kind of, it's just, I hate that this is happening, you know, that's all I'm saying. To be fair, I guess going from Gosa Sushiba to Rise the Ronen, we're talking like 600 years or so. So, you know, we're painting with a pretty broad brush. For sure. It's different. shogunates, different feudal eras. So there's at least some distinction here. But yeah, story-wise, gameplay-wise, it's going to have a tough time topping some of those recent releases, which sort of set the standard in their respective media. But aside from the fatigue factor, I do think the

setting is a pretty good fit for the series. And I like that they've taken their time with this one. It's been in development for four years, which is an eternity by AC standards. So hopefully, again, that time in the oven paid off. Okay. Lest we seem like we're stuck in the past before we talk about old games for the rest of this episode, let's very briefly tip our caps

to some new ones, perhaps. A lot of good games coming out lately, a lot of indies coming through to make up for a lackluster year for AAA releases. It's been a big puzzle game month, which I know is not music to your ears necessarily, Jess,

but you played a good game, too, that I have also dabbled in. So, look, There's been Hades 2, early access. I have not dabbled in that yet. I think I'm going to wait. I'm hedging. I'm fluctuating, but I have decided to wait for now.

There's Animal Well, there's Lorelei on the Laser Eyes, there's paper trail, there's mini-shoot adventures, there's Duck Detective, the Salami Bandit. That's a real game, apparently a pretty good game. Crow Country. There's also Senewas Saga Helplade, too. So you've been playing some of that, Jess. That game is so beautiful. It's so cinematic.

Holy crap. I was, I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. And it was so fun. It is a lot more scarier than I was expecting. It is.

When I was playing it, I was like, how was Ben playing this? It was scary as hell. I was like, oh, great, I have to go crawl through this hole and look at a bunch

of like cannibal means. But it was really fun. I think it's also a fast game too, depending on who you are and when you're playing it. I didn't finish it, but I was genuinely, it was just so beautiful

and fun to play. And the fighting was kind of easy for me because it was just like a lot of paris. So I was like dodging. So I was just like, oh, this is fine for me. And I like stories. So most of it that was just like cinematic, I was like, oh, this is great for me. I'm just sitting back and I'm looking at this. I think that's why it worked for me. Maybe it's like lightly interactive. It's very light. It's so cinematic that you're watching it almost as much as you're playing it. And I could tolerate that a little bit better than maybe I could tolerate something more immersive. not that it's not immersive, but more interactive maybe. I've been playing some of that too. Sometimes I like to play two games at the same time.

I mean, not literally, but like play one, take a break, play the other. That give me completely contrasting experiences. And I don't know if two good games can come in more disparate packages than the two I'm playing now. One is Senawa Saga, I'll play two. Action Adventure game developed by Ninja Theory for Windows and Xbox. It's on Game Pass. and Animal Well, which I've also been playing and enjoying. This is a Metroidvania developed by shared memory for most platforms.

It's on PS Plus. So I'll just do a little compare-contrast here. Hellblade has gotten good reviews. Animal Well has gotten rave reviews. The Metacritic rating is second only to Final Fantasy 7 rebirth this year. Hellblade is published by Xbox. Animal Well is available on everything except Xbox. So you're out of luck.

Xbox only players for now. Hellblade 2, obviously, a sequel to the first Hellblade, a 2017 game. Animal Well is an original that entered development in 2017. So again, it's been a long time coming. And yeah, you're right, Jess. Hellblade is one of the best looking

and sounding games I think I've ever played. Like, this is a game if your nerves can take it, turn off the lights, like lower the shades, sit in front of a big TV with a good sound system if you can and just blast this thing. because it's an experience. I felt like I was going crazy.

The game wants you to feel that way because you have a million voices in your head. As long as that's the desired effect. Very much so. I was getting frustrated. Then I was like, no, this is the game. And I'm getting so involved, which makes it even better.

But I was literally becoming a lunatic. To be fair, I was playing at like midnight to like five in the morning one night. And I was like, what am I doing to myself? I was like, I'm going crazy. I'm going through psychosis. It was fun. Whereas Animal Wells is like a 2D,

pixel art game with a eye-catching kind of distinctive look, but far from a high fidelity one. Halblade was made by about 80 people by an almost 25-year-old first-party studio. Animal Well was made by a first-time solo developer and put out by a first-time publisher. So Charity, last time we talked about the best games ever made by one creator solely or primarily. We may have to add Animal Well to that list now. Howblade is like a 70-gig game, whereas Animal Well, as 100 megabytes max. So you could download it in seconds, which is shocking.

Hellblade is pretty short, as you were saying, Jess. But Animal Well, also pretty short if you rush through it, but it can also be long if you want to try to solve all the secrets. It could take the rest of your life potentially to solve some of them. So Hellblade, M-rated, very M-rated. It earns the rating. So you play as this tortured warrior who's seeking vengeance and suffering from psychosis. and the after effects of extreme violence and traumatic abuse and animal well, which is e-rated.

You play as a cute little blob, and you explore a labyrinth filled with animals. I sound like I'm doing the George Carlin bit about football versus baseball, basically, with these two games. So as I said, like Hellblades sort of like an interactive movie, almost, like the puzzles and the combat can be satisfying, but they tend to be pretty simple. And it's mostly linear. you're almost just proceeding along a set path, not a lot of exploration, whereas Animal Well has some challenging platforming and fiendishly difficult puzzles and well-hidden secrets to search for. So I guess my point is that video games contain multitudes.

So both worth checking out, probably prioritize Animal Well, which also costs half as much. And I think Steve will have more praise to heap on that game on next week's Ring Reverse recommends. So I recommend that to everyone, especially if you have limited hard drive space. And you're like, what can I squeeze on here? Animal Well, I'm just glad we're still getting quality blob-based games. You're right. That was something as we were thinking about games to remake. I'm like, not enough blobs anymore.

Yeah, we got to bring back blobs, and we've got to bring them back in HD. This is a big blob month because World of Goo II is coming out. So we got goo, we got blobs, all of the amorphous masses. We're thriving in gunk. All right. Well, IT is next week's Ringaverse recommends, and I guess that's a good segue to our programming reminders. On Wednesday, the Midnight Boys, Poo-Pew, we'll be doing a draft of their own, highlighting the most exciting content coming out in June, a month that has us all screaming, crying, throwing up. As I said, we like to do drafts here at the ringer.

So back-to-back draft-ish episodes. But before we flip the calendar later this week, we will give a little love to the month of May. as Ringervverse and House of our host team up once more for the second edition of Ringerverse Recommends, our monthly podcast compilation of short-form shout-outs to things we liked but overlooked in the last month, we might just add a listener selection this time. So if you want to recommend a movie or show or book or comic

or video game that came out this month and didn't get in-depth coverage on one of our pods, please email your nomination and a brief description to Ringerverse Recommends at Gmail. com. Also, over on House of Art, Mal and Joe will be recording a Furiosa pod later today. And then later this week, it'll be time for some podcast prep for the Acolyte, which comes out next Tuesday. I don't know about you folks, but I'm deep in a high republic rabbit hole right now. I cannot wait for the force foo to be unleashed very soon. And of course, just because we have

Hot D and the Acolyte and the Boys and the Bear and more on tap for this month, doesn't mean we won't be butt-mashing. We will be back in less than two weeks to react to all the news from gaming summer showcases. Plus, hot D, not the only George R. Martin associated property with a new release this month. We'll also be bringing you some coverage of Eldon Ring D.L.C. Shadow of the Erd Tree. And looking back at the best games from the first half of the year. Jess, Charity, Rob, anyone, will you be taking the tarnished

back to the winds between? I got my ass kicked enough, thanks. I think I'm good. I'm going back. I'm going back. I'm mad too, because I feel like I lost some of my elderly skills after playing Sekaro, and it's just but I'm going, of course I'm planning.

Yeah. Okay. I'll probably watch my roommate play. It's more fun to watch someone play that. I'm not good at those fights. It's tough stuff. Let someone else. lose their minds and experience it secondhand. I endorse this strategy.

I get really upset. I'm very passionate. That's what my roommate calls it when I scream and curse really loud at my scream. It's a euphemism for rage quitting, I guess, but. Well, charity is in. He'll be back in Shadow of the Nerdtree. Nerdtree? I said Nerdtree.

I guess it is. More like Nerdtree. That's pretty fitting, I guess. More like Nerdtree. More like Nerdtree. That's a compliment on these parts. Remember, in addition to emailing ringerverse recommends at gmail.com, you can also email ButMash at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com.

This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum. business. So visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply.

Services not available in all areas. This episode is brought to by Viori. When it comes to close that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers, oh yeah. They have the perfect. I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the metapant, that's my number one. I need to look like I tried option.

Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com slash Simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply, visit the website for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Two Good and Company coffee creamers. He did you take your coffee, piping hot, ice, strong, frothy. But if you love rich, creamy goodness

and delicious flavor in every sip, try Two Good and Company creamers. They're made with farm-fresh cream and real milk. Each serving has just three grams of sugar, 40% less than the leading coffee creamers. Two good creamers are available in sweet cream, roast of vanilla, lavender. So which one are you trying first? Find two good creamers at your local retailer in the

creamer aisle. Okay. Friends, as noted, there have been a bunch of great originals released lately. There have also been a bunch of great remakes and remasters. So we mentioned Paper Mario, the Thousand Year Door for Switch. We've also gotten P-Oed definitive edition, Braid Anniversary Edition. Jess, I know you can't wait to solve all those puzzles from braid again. You're probably hopping back in already. Absolutely not. One of these categories, I had a really hard time doing, and I assume you know which category it was. Hard for different reasons than Shadow of the Nerdtree, which is what I'm going to be calling it from now on. This whole year really has been kind of a murderer's row of

remake. So we also have Ghost of Sushima directors cut, come into PC recently. We have the System Shock remake, came to consoles. And earlier this year, we had Last of Us Part 2. Persona 3, other Tomb Raider games, Alone in the Dark, Mario versus Donkey Kong, Brothers at Tale of Two Suns, Final Fantasy 7, Star Wars, Dark Forces, and Battlefront, we could go on. This will go on because there are many more remakes to come, and it's a good thing that there are so many good originals coming out, or we might suspect that the gaming industry had run out of inspiration, but maybe there's room enough for both. However, many possible remakes have not yet been announced, as many as there have been, and that is where we

in. So we are trying to build the best roster of remakes. Here are some of the ground rules that we can lay down here and we can discuss these as necessary. First, we're choosing games that we want, modern, next gen, can we just start saying current gen now remakes of? So not just ports or higher res remasters of fairly recent releases. I know these definitions can get sort of squishy, what's a remake, what's a remaster. Sometimes it's just branding, but older games that would need significant reworking or rebuilding. So could be an old favorite of yours that you want to revisit with a fresh coat of paint. Could be something you've always wanted to play, but you haven't done it. You haven't taken the leap because it's so dated or

it's hard to play. Most of our picks presumably won't have been remade already, but some of them could be re-remakes or remakes of remakes because some remakes are so old that they're ripe. for remakes themselves. We're seeing some remakes of remakes. Maybe this would go without saying, but just in case, we can't select remakes that have already been announced.

So we can't take our cue from anyone else, even if they haven't been released yet. So, for instance, the MGS3 remake coming out later this year, Metal Gear Solid, Delta Snake Eater, doesn't count, already announced and confirmed, not eligible for the draft. No Cotor remake either, because that's definitely totally,

totally coming out one day. Wait a minute. Wait a damn minute. I think that one's fair game. I think that one's fair game. I think that one's fair game. I don't think that. Just because it seems to be vaporware at this point of four. I'm sorry. Dude, they're still making news things, articles about it in 2024 being like, it's coming soon. Hopefully. No one knows. It's been transferred to a different studio. Like it is assigned to a studio. Like it still exists. But when will we be able to play it? I don't know. If you want to argue for Kotor based on the fact that like it might just be a hoax, I guess you can. But if there are only unsubstantiated rumors about something, though, that is fair game. There's rumors about every possible remake at this point. So that would disqualify

everything if we didn't count some of those. Now, here's another rule. Games must be from at least two console generations ago. So nothing that came out. out for PS4 and you're saying remake for PS5. Again, we want like full ground up sort of rebuilt. So no naughty dog. No. I mean, maybe like the first Last of Us remake, but not like the last of us part two, you know, kind of next gen upgrade sort of thing, even though there was like lots of special features and stuff. Yeah, it's got to be like full remake, I guess. You know, again, we can quibble about some of these things. Neil Druckman just turned his episode off. He is like, no. We'll do it live. We'll settle it. So ground rule, I guess rule of thumb, no more recent than the PS3 Xbox 360 Wii era or the equivalent period for PC or handheld or whatever you want to go with. And we're drafting by genre. A number of ways we could have gone here, but we did platform for our last draft. So let's go by genre. Each of us has to select six games and they have to be one per category. And here are the categories.

categories we have. They're kind of broad and a bit vague. That's sort of by design. Shooter. Okay, that's fairly self-explanatory. RPG, generally, we know it when we see it. Action, adventure, platformer. That's a big category that encompasses a lot of things. Puzzle slash strategy game, which may be the one Jess was just alluding to about being tough to pick a candidate for. The game I chose, I know damn well no one else chose. Perfect. A vehicle game, I will explain what that means in a second, and a wild card, which can be anything that can be pulled from any category. Some games can qualify in multiple categories. So you could pick strategically and you can say I want it in this category, not that category. And these labels can be pretty loose. We can be pretty inclusive here. So puzzle strategy, that could be RTS games, that could be turn-based strategy games, that could be point-and-click games, or even anything that really revolves around solving puzzles very heavily. You know, puzzles are a part of almost every genre,

but if it's very puzzle-centric, I think it counts whatever other genre it might qualify as. As for vehicle, vehicle, I think, can encompass racing, driving, flying, mech combat, tank combat, skateboarding, snowboarding, again, like I'm being pretty liberal here. Anything where you're on or in, kind of mechanical conveyance.

Is that vague enough? I think so. I think I have a question. You're steering something, you're driving something, you're flying something, you know? For shooter. Yeah. This is a stretch.

What if you're shooting hoops? I like her your head's at. I'm getting a tattoo of Jess after. Oh my God. Oh my goodness. I'm going to put my arm up for the next thing. They're like, I got a Jess tattoo. She's talking about shooting hoops.

I just need to make sure. I'm so mad because when I was going through this list with my roommate, we were like, we kept saying sports games, and then we were like, there's not a sports category. And Wild Card didn't be anything. So I was like, I don't want to waste Wild Card on a sports game. I was like, maybe he'll let me get away with like,

it's a stretch. It's on fire. I didn't specify. I was like, shooter, that's pretty self-explanatory. Clearly not. vehicle. He's driving to the hoop. I'm just going to keep trying to make

the golfs. We already lost this draft. I feel comfortable saying we already lost. What an upset that Rob would not be the guy who's trying to shoehorn basketball games until the draft. When the voting happens, I'm going to have 3% of the votes.

We snubbed sports here because I kind of felt like there's constantly sports game remakes. I mean, not of everything, obviously, but, you know, there's often a new edition every year. And there are some additions that are beloved, but every year is almost a remake for better or worse. So it felt like, you know, we could sort of squeeze that in and wildcard. You guys aren't thinking outside the box.

Think about the games you got in a Cheerios box. Like, think about those games. Oh, man. Yeah. Serial packing games should have been a category here. Yeah, a literal paddle ball. What category does that go into a thing? All right. Last little rule here. Any given game can be selected only once. So someone takes it. It's then off the board. And we're picking from a pool of every not yet remade game ever. So I don't think we'll run out, especially since Jess is drafting basketball games in shooter and vehicle games. So it should be okay. Should be enough games for everyone to play in the sandbox. But we'll see. And as usual, Jomey will whip up a graphic of our

our choices and let listeners vote and comment, and they can either endorse or condemn your dubious strategies. So we'll see what the wisdom of the crowd says. Now, producer Devon has come up with a random draft order for us. Can you let us know who will be picking for second, third, fourth? In completely random order, here's what was generated. Rob, you will be starting off, followed by Ben, who's. Jess, and I hate to say it, Justin, you will be going on.

But you get the snake, right? We're doing the snake? Yeah. But you get the snake format. Okay. Wow. Well, Rob, a lot of pressure on you here. And I don't know if we will have to appeal to any judges or anything to decide whether

something has been done already because we kind of compared notes. And we have done a lot of Googling, as we all agreed to see, like, was this already remade because it's a decent bet that it has been. And, you know, now with the Google AI summaries, you can't even trust the Google results. So you have to do a deeper dive into the results to see if something has been remade. So we will all collectively ascertain those answers. Rob, you're leading off. What do you think? I'm going to take one of the most dream remade and almost remade and cease and desisted nearly remade titles in video game history. I'm going to take Chrono Trigger in RPG.

Yeah. Feels like this is going to go off the board really quickly if I don't. And frankly, having played Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, I'm even more eager to see, you know, that game borrows a lot in terms of like the cross-character skills and obviously the completely revitalized combat system. Man, I would love to see a story like Chrono Trigger and these kinds of characters revamped in that sort of way. That seems like exactly the sort of remake I would be on board for.

That's a great pick. it was definitely a talking point after rebirth came out. Okay, now, Chrono Trigger. So, yeah, I mean, I would not be surprised to see that announced sometime soon. I figured that would go off the board. How do you feel about, like, would you want this to be a certain kind of remake? You know, do you want it to, like, be true to the art style of the... Because it depends, like, how well it holds up, right?

If it's sort of a 16-bit era, it might still look really nice, right? Whereas if we're talking early 3D generations, then it might look kind of crappy and then you might want a new version. So what's your vision for the Chrono Trigger remake? Well, especially when it is that kind of pixelized art style, and on top of that, more of our cartoonish look. You know, giving it the full glossy, life-like treatment doesn't really seem true to what that game is.

I would almost prefer, you know, are the kind of modern cell shading technology look on this? You brought a Blue Eye Samurai earlier. I think that's a great kind of touch point in terms of what the look of the game could be and what can be accomplished with that sort of medium. And so if there's room to be kind of cartoonish, but obviously modernized, that's the sweet spot.

And I think what makes remaking a title like Chrono Trigger so difficult in a lot of ways. Okay, very strong pick. For my first pick, I will be taking a shooter. Girl. And I'm just going to go ahead and start. Select NBA Jam. No, I will let just take that.

Thank you. God bless. Good bless. Thank you. I'm going to take DeiSX for my shooter here. Thank you. There have been rumors about a DeiSX remake, but I don't believe, you know, there's just smoke, no fire, like there is an NBA jam when someone is on fire. DiasX, the original is what I'm talking about here.

I played subsequent Deus X's, if that's how. how you would pluralize that. And some of them have been good, but they've never quite matched the feeling that the original gave me that emergent gameplay that was so ahead of its time, the sense that you could play however you want to play, if you want to play stealth,

if you want to be a slicer and a hacker, if you want to be a run-and-gun guy, which I always do because I suck at stealth. And so by default, I'm a running-good guy. You could play that game however you want to play it. And it was way ahead of time. and yeah, I guess it was sort of prescient in certain ways, and maybe Elon Musk likes it a lot,

but you know what? He likes Eldon Ring a lot. We can't not play good games because Elon Musk likes them. So I would be happy to see a Deus X remake. And, you know, I felt like Shooter was kind of a thin category for me. I don't know how you all felt. I stretched the truth on it. So it actually became a very long...

Deep category for you because anything qualifies. Shut up. Ben. What's with this attitude? Very spicy today. Draft Ben. I know. You're acting up in a mall, Ben.

I'm going to while out and chew something very out of pocket now. No, I'm joking. I would choose NBA Jams if I could. You were going to anyway. Yeah. I love NBA Jams. NBA Jams. It's actually very fun.

Of course. Who doesn't? Okay. Arguably, could I take this? For my shooter, I want to take the first Resident Evil. game. Ooh.

I know it's a survival horror game, but we are shooting, and I'm bad at shooting in that game. I remember playing it when I was very young and I was very bad at it. I know it's been remade to like the 2002 one, and I didn't play that one. I played the old, old one, the 1990. Yeah, OG, OG, I played that one too. Okay. I would love to see that for today. And let me just to re-experience that, even if they just kind of remastered it.

Yeah, remake of a remake. I love it. First one off the board. Yeah. When you said Reson Evil, I love it. was like, wait, where's she going with this? Because every Resident Evil game has been remnant. Not the very first one.

Not all of them. But so many of those remakes are dope, too. Like the most recent Resident Evil II remake was such a blast. I mean, it'd be amazing if the original could get the same treatment. All right. Back to Back Picks from Charity here. Waiting with bated breath on the edge of my seat to see where he goes with this draft. Will he be going for votes?

Will he be following his muse, as always? First, I want to just chime. in agreement with Jess. Because, like, I've made that joke before of, like, remaking the Resident Evil remake. Like, but I actually support it. Wholeheartedly, they should do another remake of R.U.1. I'm with you.

Yay, do it. Okay. So for, I'm going to, I'm going to start with RPG. This came up on another draft pod. Paraside Eve. Absolutely. First Parasite Eve. Dope game.

Parasite Eve, one, two, and then there's the third birthday. The third birthday. Let's not talk about that game. But the first Paraside Eve. is like a perfect game to remake, I think, because I think a lot of people who remember Parasid even know that game has such a specific vibe and has just like a really iconic, impressive setting. But it's also kind of that, that early 3D RPG thing where the systems are a little cluttered. It's a little bit, I don't know, go back and look at either cutscenes or just gameplay footage from the first Parasite even. You'll kind of see what I mean.

And it's like, it's the ultimate kind of game that could stand to be polished up and just done in a modern style and then have some of its systems refined a bit and have its movement certainly refined a bit and put into a modern package. There's no game I want remained more than I want the first Parasite Eve. I think the keyword there is refined because especially as we go through RPGs, I imagine there's going to be a fair amount of like turn-based type combat. And Parasite Eve is sort of that, but it's dynamic enough. it is, that you are just refining it. And you could see how it would translate pretty easily in terms of like a modern update. Yeah. Yeah.

There are a lot of reasons to make these picks. It could just because, wow, that game's kind of ugly, right? We remember games looking great because they looked great at the time. And in your mind's eye, you see it as if it were in a modern graphics engine. And then you see a video of it. And you're like, oh, no, it definitely does not look like that. So it could be that or it could be quality of life improvements. Like, it'd be great to have a save point at some point in this game.

So it could be that. It could be controls. It could just be accessibility. Like, I literally cannot access this game anymore. I can't play this game. It's not available for purchase. Like, I have to emulate it. I have to find some sketchy ROMs or something.

And shout out to all the modders, by the way, who fill in and pick up the slack for the publishers who don't put out these remakes. Often, there is. already essentially a remake made by people who just really love the game and it's out there, but that doesn't preclude us picking an official remake. Charity, you are back on.

Damn. Yes, I have a shooter. Okay. So I got to thinking about Doom 2016, which is a game I like, and I also like Doom Eternal. However, Doom Eternal, and I'm sure a lot of people have this complaint about how platformy Doom Eternal gets, and it's kind of weird.

It doesn't really feel consistent with Doom. However, there is a thing that the platforming in Doom Eternal feels consistent with. Totally, actually. And it's Turok. And Turok has gotten remastered. Turok Dinosaur Hunter. They've had remasters, but they need to just do like, you know, tear it up from the foundation,

just remake Turok in a totally modern context. And I think in a way that kind of competes with Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, but kind of plays up the things that are distinctly Turok. You know what I mean about Turok? That running and gutting style. Yeah. Turok. Wow.

I'm having nightmarish flashbacks to controlling Turok with the C buttons on the 64. That's not how a shooter is meant to be played. That's what I was talking about with modernizing controls. Great call. Tarak. But with joysticks now. What about that? What an innovation?

That one wounds me. But especially like, you know, as I was thinking, about what kinds of games need to be remade. There's so many bad dinosaur games. How is it taking us so long to get dinosaur games right? Yeah. And Charity, you're just the man to do it. You as creative director of Tarok Dinosaur Hunter, revamped.

I'm into it. All right. We back to Jess? I think I'm going to take my RPG. Ben, let me take Codor. All right. I think it's legit. I think it's legit.

I agree. I mean, does it explicitly violate one of our conditions? That is never going to happen? I don't know. Even when I played it for the first time, you were the one that was like, we were going to play Knights of the Old Republic during the anniversary, and I was like, oh, this game's really fun.

I was like, this is a very fun game. And I really like it. And then you were like, yeah, they're getting a remake. And we've all been waiting. Well, we're waiting, and they're never going to do it. So I'm going to put this on my list. We can just strike Jesse's win from the record, a Heisman trophy.

We're just going to come take it back. No, or just let me slot in my second option. I'm sure someone will take eventually. Counterpoint, quote by Sabre Interactive CEO from April 2nd, 2024. The Cotor remake is, quote, alive and well. Seeing is believing.

It's clearly not well. Clearly not well. No. Selling us a bill of goods with well. That's, he's protesting too much. But alive, alive, arguably, maybe. It's clear and it's obvious, he continued that we're working on this.

This is what I told my editor. He's really upset. He's really upset. Wait, that was the statement. It's clear and obvious. That's like me talking to my editor. It's clear and obvious that I'm right. He wants you guys to stop tweeting at him.

He's tired. He's done. Your deadline was several hours ago. It's obvious that we're working. If you guys were in such idiots and just waited, it would come out by now. Instead, you're harassing. me. Oh, man.

Clear and obvious. When you have to insist that it's clear and obvious that your game exists, that's not a great place to be. Clear and obvious. He said, it's been in the press numerous times. What I will say is that the game is alive and well, and we're dedicated to making sure we exceed consumer expectations,

which at this point should be easy, because the expectations is that it will never come out. So if it ever does, if it's alive and even close to well. 10, 10. game of the year. Well, I think Sabre Interactive CEO would clearly veto this pick on the grounds that the game is alive and well, and it's clear and obvious that they're working on this. But you know what?

I'll allow it. Thank you. In the spirit of, look, we all love Cotor and we want to play remake of that game. All right. Does that mean it's my turn already? You're back. Okay. Well, in that case, I'm going to be taking my...

puzzle slash strategy game here. And, you know, I thought of trying to like squeeze a Zelda game in here. And if someone wants to try to do that, you can do that. It's a pretty puzzle-centric, but I wasn't sure if that fit the spirit of the category. So I am instead going to draft PS2 classic Eco. Eco, yeah, is my puzzle game. And I think it qualifies as a puzzle game. It's not the most puzzling game, but it's a game that is.

almost entirely it revolves around puzzles, around escorting someone and making sure that they're not captured and plucked away by ghosts. And this is a game that kind of has that look of the era, but maybe has aged better than some games of that era, just because it was always supposed to look kind of like obscured and mysterious and having fogg around was kind of additive, if anything. But I'd like to see a new version of,

Eco. And we've had some other remakes like we got the Shadow of the Colossus remake, right, from BluePoint. So not out of the realm of possibility that we might see in Eco remake at some point. Not sure if it would sell. Not sure if it would justify the development costs, but I would certainly buy it. I might even pre-order it because Eco is an absolute classic. And I would like to have a modernized version of it. Anyone else played Eco? Have not. Well, you'll have your chance when my It comes out of your vision. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Rob, back to you for multiple picks. So, you know, I've already taken Krono Trigger. So I've shown my apparent strategy of I'm taking all-time classics and trying to update them a little bit. I'm going to keep with that energy. In shooter, and I believe this is a shooter, we can debate it. I'm going to take the original Red Dead Redemption. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a shooter. this is in the category for me where so I came to Red Dead 2 first, that game again, masterpiece of a game. But for people like me who started with

two, the prospect of going back even with the recent remaster, I'd have a hard time working backwards in that way. And some of it's just the production value, it's the voice acting is on a totally different level and 2. All I ask, I'm a very simple man, I ask for the same level of diligence and commitment that went into

two. Let's bring it back for one. Let's just run it back. Show me a version of the story that fans like me have not seen an experience before. And I think we can get caught up in style. I think that's something we can all accomplish together. If Taylor Swift did it, they can do it. I have to retract my wholehearted immediate endorsement of that pick because when you said Red Dead Redemption, my brain heard Red Faction. And I was like, yeah, Red Faction.

Sure, sure. That was a shooter. Red Dead Redemption, clearly not a shooter. It's a shooter. Third person. shooter. I mean, yes, there is shooting in it. So I had it at the top of my board for action adventure. You can fit for sure. Yeah. But you know, you want to smuggle it into shooter. All right, we'll allow it. I'm not going to not going to be the clubhouse lawyer here. I've already allowed

Cotor. Okay. That one makes sense. Anything goes. Keep fighting me about it and it makes sense. Apparently we all get one to sneak past here. Yeah. Whatever category, it's in. It's a great Coder makes more sense than NBA jams, which I would have done just as a bit and to be petty to you, Ben. I would have put it on there. All right. What else you got, Rob?

Look, again, I'm going to stick to the theme. We're going to go banger after, bangor after banger for Team Rob in Action Adventure Platform, which is suddenly open for me having smuggled Red Dead Red Dead Redemption elsewhere. I'm going to take Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Oh, okay.

My thought on this, and we talked about a little up front in terms of there's so many modern Metroidvania games that have come out that are clearly inspired by classics like Symphony of the Night, but also there's so much innovation in that genre still.

And if you think about even just the feel of something like Hollow Night and just like the sophistication of the control and everything that they're able to layer into a game like that, you can see how you could take the canvas of Symphony of the Night, which is already great,

and just keep elevating and keep elevating and keep elevating. I think there's so much room to build on what's already basically a perfect game. Excellent pick. And in an appropriate category, no less. Okay. All right.

Then I have to pick again already. Gosh, okay. I have been pursuing a more personal passions approach to this draft. I think there could have been bigger names on the board that I could have gone with. And, you know, often I will pursue that approach. I'm never going to go against my true feelings. I'm not going to draft something I don't actually like. But if it's close, if it's a toss-up, I might go with the game that I think will get me more votes, but not necessarily this time.

I don't know if that was the case with DeiSX or Eco, though my DeiSX heads and Eco heads out there, they'll support me and see me. However, you've really left me no choice at this point, I think, because Ocaryne of Time is still on the board. And I think I've got to go with it. I mean, Ocreen of Time may be the most requested. Like, we've had kind of a remake of Ocarina, but again, it was so long ago, and it's not easily accessible now. And everyone wants, like, Wind Waker on Switch, and I do too. I absolutely want that. But I don't necessarily need a remake of Wind Waker because it just looks so good, especially, like, the remastered HD version.

You could just give me a port of that thing, and I will play it. Ocarina of Time, though, even the spruced up version of that, I think, could stand for a more modern update. So I will go with Ocarina, and I guess I will select it in action adventure. You just left me no choice. You left me no choice. Are there any particular things, obviously, you know, the visual you can update, but are there any of those quality of life things with Ocarina of Time? Are there any gameplay things that you're like, honestly, that could come or go? Just cut the water temple.

entirely. Just bypass the water temple. The challenge is what makes it so satisfying. I don't know. Partly I would be almost apprehensive to play some of these games in remade form because in my mind, Ocarina was so expansive. And then you look back and it's like, wow, Hyrule Field was just a tiny little place, wasn't it?

Now that we've played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, maybe it would seem super small by comparison. I don't know. It's as close to a perfect game of that kind. as you can make. So I don't have that many notes, maybe some like inventory management sort of stuff, ease of use.

But beyond that, no, give me more or less the same game with modern graphics. I mean, if you wanted to like make it even more open world or add elements to it, that's always kind of a controversial aspect with remix, right?

Like, do you want to perfectly preserve the original game? Or do you want to add stuff to it, like the Final Fantasy remakes? have. And either approach, I guess, is fair game here. But I'd be happy if you just gave me the old Akrona of time that I loved and let me play it easily. Plus with Zelda in particular, we may be in an era where you kind of can't make a not open world Zelda game, right? Where the freedom and the flexibility of the modern releases is so much of that franchise now. I wonder if there's ways to

incorporate that into Ocarina that preserves the integrity of the original, but you're getting all the joy of playing, you know, the modern Zelda's. Yeah. Yeah. I consider it. I started selecting like Oracle of Ages and Seasons, which are a couple of my favorite Zelda games, and it could be more of like a Link's Awakening type modern update, like a 2D to 3D sort of transition. Ocarina. It's not quite as obvious how you would really overhaul it, but I don't necessarily need it to be overhauled. I don't know. Nintendo's kind of like thrown cold water on the prospect of more Zelda remakes, but everyone wants it.

It would mint money, not that Nintendo needs more money right now, but they can. have more of mine if they let me purchase that for Switch or Switch 2 or whatever. All right, back to Jess. Oh, I chose a game. Good. Okay.

I was confirming. I think I'm going to take my action adventure. Can I take the first Donkey Kong country? Yeah. Oh, all right. Yeah, I'm sold, but what makes you choose Donkey Kong Country for the people who haven't played it?

Oh, I love Donkey Kong Country. It's so fun. The song is amazing. And to have that song even updated, what if it was updated by today's rappers? That would be kind of sick. That would be kind of sick. Oh, my God, they could make an entire soundtrack, an album of like 90s, goofy movie style music. And I would eat that. Inspired by the motion picture of Donkey Kong Country. And I would go crazy for it as long as illumination or whatever doesn't touch it. But no, it's a great game. It's very fun. It's easy to play. You can play it with your family.

It left such a nostalgic mark on me that I would love to play it again. Even if it's updated to the newest console, I will probably play it. I'll play it like I do every Smash Bros. Something I was wondering as we were putting together our draft boards, could you draft Donkey Kong country in vehicle game? That's a good fit. That's like a philosophy course we could teach it. Is a rhino a vehicle?

Is a swordfish of vehicle? That's the truth. You tell me. A barrel. A barrel. Honestly, the mine card? There's so many vehicles. Those mine carts pissed me off.

There's one part in the mine cart where I couldn't jump right and I would die every time. And I rage quit. But as a child, my rage quit was like, actually throwing a controller until it broke. It's the purest rage being in a mind card in Donkey Kong country, particularly the first one. I'm going to throw myself out a window. Sorry. Ben, what were we saying?

I was saying, Jerry, your turn. And you get it twice. Okay. And I get to go twice. Action Adventure. This one's easy. This one's very easy. I'm surprised Ben didn't pick it to spite me.

Godhand, obviously. Oh, Godham. remake God Hand. Come on. And you know what it is, too? I think Seifu, I think the success of Seifu, Seafood is still a very different game. I think when you get into the actual weeds of how Seifu works and how Seifu wants you to play.

And also the tone of Sefu is different. Godhand is the most, like, Shinji Makami. Come on, it's the most Shinji Mikami. It's the most ridiculous game of its kind. Build a combos. Like, God Hand. Remake God Hand. I mean, at the same time,

get us, like Godhand on modern consoles or on PC without having to break the law or also break your PC. But God Hand remake in a post-C-foo era where, yeah, I don't know, man, God-Han.

It's at the top of, it's up there with Parasitee for me in terms of like games that people didn't really, tons of people didn't play the first time around when that game was out. And also it's just like, Yeah, that game over the years has aged like a fine wine. And I think gamer culture is ready to embrace Godhand on 2024 or later times.

I like it. Some of these I'd settle for a port. You know, we can aim high. We can request a remake. I want a port of Godhand. But also go ahead and do the remake. Throw, you know, $50 million at this. Come on, let's do it.

What else you got? Okay. So this is this is kind of on Jess's wave of remaking a game that's been remade and I don't care. But they really need to take, they really need to go all out because there's been so much like half step attempts to revive this franchise. And of course I'm talking about, and this is the vehicle segment. Okay. Star Fox 64. Come on. Oh, yeah. Instead of this like, I know they did it for the 3DFs, what they need to do.

Here's what you need to do with Star Fox 64. Oh, hell yeah. Again, $100 million budget. You need to just like make that shit look like Star Wars Squatters. Like just go all out. That's a good one. You're never going to make Star Fox 60. You're never going to make it work in the modern era unless you just really like allow yourself in your mind's eye to totally throw out everything you think you know about Star Fox.

and just make it the most exquisite Starfighter first person combat with the most gorgeous map design, both terrestrial sort of fighting and intergalactic fighting. Like, they got to make it work, man. Star Fox 64, there's potential there. Yeah. So it'd be like free roaming, no limits on where Star Fox can fly. Maybe not.

You probably have to abandon. rails, right? Yeah, you're completely off the rails at that point. You got to abandon rails, but you got to, again, Star Fox meets squadrons. It could work. It could work. Let's bring the gritty realism to the game with the talking frog, you know? Yeah, slip you get back here.

Come on. I remember when Star Fox Adventures came out for GameCube and the fur was like state-of-the-art fur. You could see like every individual strand of Star Fox's fur. So this would be like this, similarly mind-blowing, but bringing it back to the roots of Starbucks space combat. You've been trapped in melee, in melee, YouTube videos about melee for far too long. Come on.

Yeah. Great pick. All right. Jess. I'm going to take, oh my God, I'm going to take my wild card, which isn't like insane. It's just that my puzzle game is stupid. You're not worried about it. It's dumb.

And I need to think about it. Because I kind of thought out loud to myself while you guys were talking. And I was like, the puzzle games I did choose. Yes, they are child games. And it makes me look like I have the brain of a child. Or maybe just the anger of a child. But I think I'm going to take my wild card, which can be anything, and I want them to remake the very first guitar hero.

Ooh. Wow. You want to buy another big plastic guitar and put it in your home? Or do you still have them? I have my rock band. And I don't like rock band. I hate rock band. But I would love to have my guitar hero back.

I also put as a backup to this, my dance dance revolution. Because I also had that giant plastic thing in my house. Hell yeah. Guitar heroes is very fun. I think culturally, we all loved it. It was very fun time. Bring it back. When they got rid of it, I remember being like, I was like, that's insanity.

And my brother being like, they do that. to a lot of games, Jessica. Thread the needle for me, though. What is the pro-gatar hero anti-rock band distinction? What do you mean? Oh, like, why? Yeah, how do you thread that needle between them? It's very annoying.

To me, it's down to the animation that they used for guitar hero that's different from rock band. Because in rock band, they started using actual live concerts. And it was like the same people just like rocking out. And I was like, no, I want to create my character. that was like I did in Guitar Hero. They changed it now to rock bands you can make an actual character,

but they don't have that many skin tones, don't have that many hairstyles. Guitar Hero really, like, solidified that. And also the music was better, in my opinion. They had a lot of Weezer and Guitar Hero. They didn't have that in rock band. They also had, like,

really, they had, like, Molly Crew, but also very old, weird 80s, like, hair band music. And rock band doesn't. Rock band was all about, like, fallout. boy. Damn shots fired.

No, I love fallout boy. If he's listening, I love your music. If the fallout boy is listening. Oh, no. Mr. Boy, I'm sorry. Jess, you're a Fortnite person. Have you gotten into Fortnite festival at all? No. No, it's not

fun. Okay. Oh, wow. Okay. It's not fun. Sorry. It's not fun. It's not fun. I drive I'm not, but it's just not fun, but maybe that's just me. Maybe it's just me. I'm also old to a lot of people that play Fortnite now. So I was playing with my nephew and he was like, you don't know how to dance right.

He's like, look here. I know how to dance. That's the meanest thing you can say to somebody. I know how to dance. Shut up. Who bought you that game? Who bought you that switch before you talk about me? I still got my rock band instruments gathering dust in the closet, hoping that they will be deployed again someday.

They just ended Rock Band 4 DLC support this year. Wow. Like, it's been going for a while. That's why I feel like maybe you don't need a remake because you just kind of need to like DLC. Yeah, you need to keep updating it and fixing it. But it's going to eventually crash out and it's going to be a sad day. Yeah. Okay.

Great game. Great pick. That means I must make one. And I will go with my RPG, probably culturally. it for my last pick. Not sure anyone's going to alter this from me here, but I have to be true to myself, and I have to pursue my passions.

These are the games that I truly love and want to be remade. I'm taking Skies of Arcadia with my, maybe the most predictable pick of the draft, if you've ever heard me talk about video games before, I probably mentioned Skies of Arcadia quickly, but it's my favorite RPG of all time,

and it is tough to play these days. I mean, you can emulate, if you have your Dreamcast or your GameCube lying around if you have a lot of cash to burn on Skies of Arcadia, the remaster or high HD version for GameCube or the original for Dreamcast. I dug into a big pile of plastic that I left at my mom's house when I wanted my wife to play Skies of Arcadia and we experienced Skies of Arcadia together. And it was wonderful on my Dreamcast, which still works. But I wanted to work on modern consoles. And I wouldn't mind if they maybe dialed

down the random encounters just a little bit, just a lot of random encounters in that game. Yeah. Which I think they did dial down a bit in the GameCube version, but the GameCube version has like compressed audio so you don't get the full majestic score that you get on Dreamcast, one of my favorite video game soundtracks of all time. And man, would that game look great with modern consoles like the pirates and the ships and the aerial combat and the draw distances would be a hundred times farther than. than they were 20 plus years ago. That's my dream. Skies of Arcadia remake. It probably won't happen, but I can hold that hope. Yeah,

you're literally like a flying pirate in that game, right? You sure are. Let's get it. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. All right. Two picks from Rob.

Okay. Look, I've gotten some chalk off the board, gotten some classic, so I think can curry me some boats. So now it's me a time. I'm going to clear out for some self-pampering. Okay.

In vehicle, I'm going to take, to be honest, I was very bored with the idea of picking a racing game in this category. They are updated all the time. There's so many new releases. Anything in a car is not interesting to me. I want Wave Race 64. That was our way! You did it! Let me ride a jet ski in 4K.

Let me ride a jet ski in 4K. We did it, Joe. I love Wave Race. We did it, Joe. I'm so glad you picked it. Thank you. The vibes are immaculate. The vibes are incredible.

Not enough jet ski games. You know what made me missing? What happened to jet ski games? With the weird water, I'm trying to remember which mini game in Final Fantasy 7 rebirth made me think. Oh, yeah, the dolphin. The dolphins, especially with the music, I was just like, man, wave race. Why don't we get wave race in here?

Yes, thank you. That was even like a secret in wave race. You could unlock racing on a dolphin, you know? Let's bring it back. Let's do it. Wow, what a pick. That's another example. when in my mind's eye wave race, like the water physics were like mind blowing.

Oh my gosh. It looks like I feel wet just playing this game. Like I have to change my clothes. Like I need to dry off after I've been immersed in the ocean. It was just you sweating. You're sweating. Yeah. It's just my sweating.

I don't think it looks that great these days probably. But at the time, I'm 164. When I was playing wave race, it was when I was at an age where I was like an insomniac child. I could not go to sleep. And I remember just like always plugging it into my... I would plug it into my little TV and I would sit there in like third grade until like 6 a.m. when I had to get ready for school

and I'd be so tired because I'd be playing wave race. It was so funny. Junkie Jess mainlining wave races. Really quite a vivid vigil. I'm not sharing this. Get your own wave race. I love that. That brings back a good nostalgia. Maybe in a child. And what is this for?

You know, we're all harnessing our nostalgia here. Please, someone bring back waivers for me. With my second pick, I'm going to tap into a different kind of nostalgia. I'm going to take in puzzle game Kirby's Dream Course on Super Nintendo. Dope game. It's essentially mini golf with Kirby, again, another little blob guy as a cute little ball. And in particular, what I want, first of all, it's a perfect format for a Switch game. Perfect format for the Switch as a console.

But what I want more than anything is Kirby. Kirby's dream course with the Mario Maker treatment. Let us design our own dream courses. Let us share them amongst ourselves to impossible levels of difficulty. I want to push the boundaries of what Kirby mini golf can accomplish. And I think we can do that together. Wow. Well, even the picks that you're making for you, you know, it's one for, one for them, one for me.

But these were for me, too. Certainly wave race was. I just put Kirby in one of my categories. I don't know which Kirby game I chose. This is how sloppy I am with my nose. It just says Kirby. It just is Kirby. That's why I freaked out.

You can't just draft the character, Kirby. Are we sure? I will not let you get away with. Let me. I'll fight for it when the time comes. We need to remake Kirby, just the character. We need to give him human feet and let him walk around like a weird out. Let him walk around. Yeah, he's a little businessman with his feet out.

Okay. It's back to me, and I will also take my vehicle game. And gosh, I thought of so many different kinds of vehicles here. And driving games are not boring for me because I don't have a driver's license, so I don't get to drive in real life as a lifelong New Yorker. I don't need to drive. I'd probably be a danger behind the wheel. So video games are the only chance I actually get to get behind the wheel,

and it usually doesn't go great when I do. I don't know whether real-life driving ability correlates the video game driving ability, but if it does, then I should never get a driver's license because I would be a menace to everyone else on the roads. However, I do enjoy it,

and thus I will be taking a little game called The Simpsons Hit and Run. No, you didn't. Oh, yes, I did. That was my number one. And I was like, no one's going to take Simpsons and run.

No one cares about that game. I care. I care. I care. I care. I care. I care. I care deeply.

If video game driving translates to real driving and the touch point you have the Simpsons hit and run. Will that translate to the real road? It's like, you know, your realistic driving sim. And that's a good game because they can just update all the new characters and places and the Simpsons. I thought about this.

That's why it was my number one. It is a truly, truly great game. Of all of the GTA ripoffs that borrowed the open world formula, I think the Simpsons hit and run might be the best of them. You know, sorry to Saints Row and all the others. Simpsons hit and run was incredible. I do think of it mainly as a driving game, though there are certainly lots of on-foot sequences and fully explorable Springfield

and use the license really well, which often isn't the case with Simpsons games and other branded games. That game was just the greatest. And someone recently did like a proof of concept, Simpsons Hit and Run remake, like what it would look like, just a fan-made remake,

and it looked so great. Like, they created it. Like, it's finished, but it'll never be released because legally it can't be. But it's like Simpson's hit and run in Unreal Engine 5. And it's just sitting on someone's computer. Like, can I come to your house and play it? I won't tell anyone, I promise. You have a podcast on video games.

You're going to tell everybody. I would definitely brag about that. All right. Back to Jess again. Okay, I am going to take my vehicle game, and I'm going to take the original twisted metal. Because someone took my Simpsons hit and run. It's okay. I shouldn't have sat on it.

And that's what you learn from doing these games, the drafts. Sometimes you're like, no one cares. And then you're like, Ben. And then I take Luigi's Haunted Mansion from you by accident again. Oh, yeah. Still mad about that. That was a great grab. I'm just saying.

It was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you learned the cutthroat drafting skills. I did. I didn't even care about. When you join the ringer, you're like, well, what's a draft? Like, what are we doing here?

What's the purpose of this? Now you're like, I will take whatever you're going to take next to spite you. But turn about as fair play. I just did it to you. All right. Twisted metal, it's the revitalization of the twisted metal brand with the adaptation, which was surprisingly good. Yeah.

It's high time for a twisted metal remake. Okay. Back to Charity. Is this your final pick? This is my final. I have two in the end. I have puzzle strategy. And Wildcard?

In Wildcard. So puzzle strategy, what a category. I don't, you know, this is, what is this category? Puzzle strategy. Clock Tower. You'll see today that they were remasters or like a physical, like, release for the old Clock Tower games announced. But I want a remake. I want to mind, like, and this is one where I leave it up to the creators and whatever studio

and so doing this hypothetical clock tower remake to figure out what form modern let's let's think back to like OG clock towers a 2D clock tower um what form they would take I just know that with survival horror stuff in the kind of non-violent like not the shooty resident evil stuff but the more walking simulator stuff I've I've never really been totally satisfied by that by the modern classics in that vein and so Clock Tower to me is like a good blueprint

to remake in hopes of of doing the kind of survival for puzzle solving thing where it's like all puzzles no guns or it's like all environmental like Clock Tower is all mystery, all intrigue.

Yeah, that's my puzzle strategy. category There was a clock tower remaster announced last year yes yeah that was supposed to come out early this year

clearly didn't happen but it's just a remaster it's not working very hard yeah my wild card yeah let's let's talk about this

because this one you know you talked at the beginning of this bit about my political ineptitude and my oh I don't know of good votes. Oh, I'm at 6%. Oh, I'm the pee bootage of this thing. Well, let me tell you something. I know how to pander to gamers. And I also build myself as a kind of chaos agent. Yeah. And I kept thinking, like, what is a good wild card pick? What's something that'll get the people

going that'll get people on my side? And surely, surely, surely, dead or alive, extreme beach falling back. No way. Wow. Like, no. And then like, he's like, he's. me out about this because it sounds at first like a psychopaths idea of remit. But it is. Right? Like it's it's you, who doesn't love like intensely radicalized gamer discourse about jiggle physics? Like I love it.

So what I just had stellar blades. Do we need that? That's the thing. I actually had this idea after doing like a second play through of stellar blade. And I was like extreme beach volleyball. Right. Like that's the kind of game where, the one hand, it would suck because that game would be coming out now in the era of micro-transactions.

And that game, even the most recent Dead or Alive is just like a nightmare of like purchases. But if you re-made Dead or Alive Extreme Beach volleyball with like on a PS5 with micro-transactions with those mini-games, like it would be the peak of modern gamer discourse. It would be a lot of people, you know, it's like you think you want this. And so it's like, I want this remake to get made so that the kind of person who thinks that they want, you know, gamer culture to return to whatever year this came out. I don't remember it's like late 2000s. It's like, no, you don't. You actually don't want the volleyball titty game with, that's inevitably going to have you spending like $200 in three months.

in microchins. You think you want it. And we'll give it to you just to bankrupt you and show you the error of your ways. Dead or Alive, Extreme Beach Volleyball. That's my wildcard remake. Wow. Who are these people that wanted

that you're railing against? Oh, the gamers. The gamers, the gameer culture. There's a current. There's like a subcurrent within the gamer culture. It's the people who got really defensive about the Stellar Blade reviews is basically who I feel like I'm talking about.

You know what I mean? It's like, and I'd play it too. Like I said, I played the most recent Dead or Alive like Mainline game and it had a lot of problems and I kind of bounced off of it. But like, Dead or Alive needs something because that series is like, in terms of all the sort of fighting games that people know of, Dead or Alive is definitely the one that's like on life support while these other games like Tekken and Street Fighter and everything else are having like a pretty great moment ever since I'd say like guilty good strive and now Street Fighter 6. What's going on with Virtual Fighter? Are we still churning out virtual fighters?

Virtual Fighter? I think that's another one where like, no. Wait, what's the last I heard about Virtual Fighter? I don't know. I guess stick a pin in that one. Sick is bringing back all the old hits these days. So maybe, wow, this is quite a, quite a selection. You're either going to be canceled for this selection or you'll become a fortune icon.

Yeah. You're on a list. A rich list remains to be seen. What is that? I just don't know who. What is that? The quote is like you live long enough to become the villain. Right.

Well, Charity's been the villain for a lot. I've been the villainy. He's rounded back into hero for villains so many times. Damn it. My arc is crazy, dog. I'm a beautiful. All right. Jess.

I just thought. What do you have left on your board here? What categories have you been filled? I filled my shooter, my RPG, my action adventure, my vehicle, and my wildcard. Is it surprising that? What was your RPG? My RPG is. Cotor.

Right. I didn't record that because I just objected to it on an instinctual level. The famously non-remade Cotor. It will never be. No surprise that puzzle strategy game

is the last one. And I started thinking outside the box. And when I say outside the box, not really that outside from where I once was. Originally, I was going to do Brain Academy.

Nintendo DS. Why not? Because when I was younger, I really liked that game. And then I went, Jessica, there was another puzzle game that you really liked. And if they would have remade it to today, you would still play it, and it'd be very fun for you and your friends. And I'm going to do a remake for 2024 of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego.

Wow. I feel that. Great pick. I feel that hard. Where in the world is Carmen San Diego? Played it when I was but a wee child, loved her, love every part of her, would love to see her come back again. real opportunity to teach the kids about Visa law you know where can you go where's your passport stand

where are you approved to visit Carmen we need to teach our children through Carmen San Diego and through backyard baseball if back if a sports category was on this list you know damn well I would have had backyard baseball on it I would and I would have won the entire thing you could have selected it in wild car I want a guitar hero more than I want backyard baseball

well that's between you and your guitar gods my third pick for Wildcar was NeoPed I was fighting with my wild cards because I was like, these are all the three things that I want back in the world and I can never have.

Zach Graham is going to kill me for not choosing backyard baseball in his draft. That's his favorite. That's his life's dream. Oh, man. All right. Well, we're down to my final pick, and all I have left is wild cards.

So the world is my oyster here. I can choose any game in any genre, and I'm just paralyzed with indecision here, just so many options available to me, so many classics still on the board. But do I want to stick with my stated goal of not just chasing votes and going with what moves me personally? Or can I find some middle ground here that actually is a personal favorite that would appeal to the masses? Can I thread that needle? Gosh, where am I going to go? All right. Here's what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to go off brand, you would certainly not expect me to choose a horror game of all jobs when I can

choose anything. That's the last thing you would expect to me. But there is one horror game that I loved and respected and feared, but that's the goal. And that is Eternal Darkness, Sanity's Requiem, which is a classic for GameCube. You wouldn't expect this to be on a Nintendo system, but it was terrifying. It's kind of a cult favorite, and I just have to be true to myself here. I love that game. It was so good and so scary

that I didn't really play another survival horror game for the next couple decades. I was good because I played Eternal Darkness and Sandy's Requiem, and it was scary, sort of in a similar way as Senoa, Hellblade 2, where you're questioning everything, you're hallucinating,

but it was so well done. and it was on a console where you wouldn't expect it, and thus it's going to be on a draft board where you wouldn't expect it either. Silicon Knights, classic Eternal Darkness, Cindy's Requiem. I love this for your personal journey. The idea of you championing this remake

to revisit what scared you shitless in the first place is genuinely a beautiful sentiment. Thank you. Thank you. I was wondering with this era, like, I mean, PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, GameCube kind of era, survival horror games, So much of what made those games scary was that they were kind of janky, whether it was the controls or the graphics being like kind of inhuman.

Like I was wondering this about the original Silent Hill to like if you update Silent Hill, does it make it less scary in a weird way? Just because there's not that kind of otherworld equality to it. I agree. I think it would. I think it would. It would take that away from it. That we're not used to seeing that stuff anymore. And I feel that way with the, when I played first Resident Evil, I was like a baby.

I was like in kindergarten. and I was like, this is the scariest thing I've ever played in my life. And then as an adult, if they redid it, I'd be like, I've seen Resident Evil games. That's terrifying. This is like, okay. To that point, you know, the thing about movement, like, it's so effective in creating fear and tension that, like,

that first Resident Evil game is scary, despite objectively being the funniest video game every day. It is actually, like, a comedy game. it just feels like a horror game because you can't shoot and walk at the same time while people are trying to like bite your neck. Yeah.

If they remake it, just do that again. Give me the hardships that I had on it back of the day. Bring tank controls back. Oh, God. That's why I didn't choose a lot of the 64 games because I was like, oh, no, I don't want them to bring it back because it pissed me off so much at the time

because I just got so mad. Like I've tried to replay like South Park 64 game and I was like, This doesn't work. This doesn't work. I don't want to ever see this again. I don't want to touch it. I don't want to look at it.

That's also me being angry. Well, we've come full circle, right? We're back to Rob with his wild card to close us out. One last pick. One thing I haven't really tapped into yet that I think is great for this draft is kind of underused IP. We've talked a little Star Wars with Cotor, but I want to go Star Wars Shadows of the Empire for my wild card. Wow. As a chance to, I want to recap.

canonize a beloved Star Wars story that has been decanonized. And I want to give it like the Jedi survivor treatment, right? We've already have like a paradigm for how a Star Wars adventure game should work. Let's take one that people have a strong attachment to, a story that can be told even better,

ditch the parts that don't work, enhance the ones that do. Let's make Shadows of the Empire. Oh, yeah. I love it. I consider it. Dash Rendar, my man. Yeah.

So many iconic sequences. in that game. Great soundtrack. Just a whole multimedia experience, the whole rollout of Shadows of the Empire. That was as big as it got back then. Yeah, I had a few Star Wars games on my board. Cotor wasn't one of them because ineligible. But other than that, I had Rogue Squadron. Keep coming back to me. I don't know what I did when I chose a game that is never going to be remade. I don't know what. It's not a reality television show when someone betrays someone. And then it's just like, oh man, you've marked her for death. How dare.

The alliance is broken. What do they say? We're clearly working on it. Clear and obvious. Clear and obvious. Yeah. All right. Well, I will recap everyone's picks if I've recorded them correctly.

Anyone want to name some games that they considered just to mollify anyone who is going to be mad at us for not picking certain stuff? No one's going to get mad. But my first, for a shooter for backup, I didn't. a golden eye. And I was like, I don't know. Yeah, I was actually, he was interesting, none of us

pitching gold. They kind of tried to go. And it didn't really work, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's, I mean, I guess was the golden eye from last year, at least some versions, is that a remaster?

Is that a remake? I guess it's, yeah. Well, it's good, good pick. Okay. Yeah, in my shooter, I considered time splitters and no one lives forever, which is another great game.

Yeah, wait. That would have been good. I love that game that's like stuck in IP hell where no one knows who owns the rights or whatever, but it's, yeah, that was totally great. Like Austin Powers-esque 60s spy shooter, a bunch of gadgets, great game. There were a bunch two that I've just never played

that I would love to play an updated version of Mist, The Secret of Monkey Island. Like these kind of like very important, especially puzzle type. old PC games that realistically I'm just never going to play. But if you completely remade it and reimagined it, I might.

Other than that, Mega Man Soccer. Shout out to Mega Man Soccer. Okay. Wasn't on my boards? Maybe it should have been. It should have been. I was thinking about,

I mean, there's a bunch of Final Fantasy games in light of rebirth that you could go to. 10 with tactics. You know, better voice acting. Tactics is a great one. as my backup to Codor. If Ben wouldn't let me take it. Tactics.

Tactics is a great thing. I also put Banjo Cazui on my list. Yeah. That's a good idea of that. Yep. Yeah, I had Pandra Jagoons saga, some of like long-lost RPGs. I actually emulated that one and played it recently,

but Saturn Great. Supposedly maybe the source code was lost, but it was a really great game. It lived up to the kind of cult favorite billing, So I'd love for more people to be able to play that. And of course, like Earthbound games, Mother 3, you know, remade, localized version would be great. Golden Sun, I thought would be fun. I know we got Sea of Stars, which was sort of golden sunny, but the OG would be good, too.

I mean, look, I considered just going with the mass appeal picks and saying Super Mario 64 remake of a remake or Super Metroid, right? Like probably would have gotten me more votes than Eternal Darkness, Sandy's Requiem, but had to be true to myself. But I'm sure people will be mad or wondering where those games are, certainly Super Mario 64. This is why we name them. You get to bear your soul in the draft, but we requisitely acknowledge them at the end of the podcast. Yeah. And some of these games, like I considered the original Super Smash Brothers,

which is and will always be my favorite Super Smash Brothers, but I don't need a remake because my Nintendo 64 is, attached to me and will accompany me in every move and dwelling that I make for the rest of my life. So as long as my 64 works, I don't actually need a remake of Super Smash Brothers. Like, it's charming and endearing that it's all blocky and polygonal, right? And I've gotten like the souped up software-only version of it that was like ridiculously expensive, but has like more fan-created characters and stages and stuff. And that's enough for me.

I thought about SSX, you know, like some good, like, trick-based exploration-based snowboarding game. We just, we've had some attempts at that lately, but not enough successes. And like F-0 GX, you know, Nintendo's neglected F-0 lately with modern graphics. That'd look great. Seems like Sega's maybe back in the JetSet radio business. JetSat Radio being remained. It is being remade. Someone needs to be.

Thank God. Yeah, right. You know, I would have put that on my list. It seems like maybe our needs are being catered to there. More obscurely, there's a game called Reckless the Yakuza missions. Okay, what is that? It wasn't going to get me many votes, but I remember it fondly. It was like a driving game, not a racing game.

I love a driving game that's not a racing game. It's like mission-based driving objectives, and it looked incredible on Xbox in 2002. but the one that I was really weighing with my last pick is an absolute underappreciative classic called Enslaved Odyssey to the West. And I almost picked that just to give it the exposure, just to give it the plug. Maybe being on the graphic that Jomi,

the Explaner Odenoron, puts on our social channels, maybe that would be what it takes to get a remake of enslaved Odyssey to the West, but it's also just like really great in its original form. But that's a ninja theory game, the studio that made, Hellblade 2, but from 2010, and it's like based on the novel Journey to the West, but it's

post-apocalyptic future, and it's like puzzle and platforming and combat, and it's written by Alex Garland, of all people. Oh, that's so weird. Yeah, Alex Garland wrote the game's story and was involved in the design, and Andy Circus did motion capture for this game. This is wild. It's an incredible game. Everyone go play enslaved out of it.

to see the West. It's PS3, Xbox 360, and there was supposed to be a sequel, but it didn't do well enough, and it probably wouldn't do well enough for a remake, but I just had to tip my cap to that game. It's incredible. This is turning into a great episode of Bringer Reverse recommends.

I appreciate where we're going here. Yeah. One deep cut, I do want to acknowledge, are you all up on Tecmo's Deception? Did you all play this game for PS1? No. So it's like inverted survival horror, where instead of being the hero who goes into the haunted mansion and has to solve all the puzzles,

you are the one laying the puzzles trying to murder people who come into your mansion. Honestly, I think it would play very well in this sort of like championing the villain, inverting the story kind of narrative structure we do a lot these days. Yeah. All right, let's recap our rosters here.

Correct me if I get anyone's picks wrong. Rob selected Red Dead Redemption as a shooter. We'll allow it. Extremely valid. pick. Chrono Trigger, RPG, Castlevania Symphony of the Night Action Adventure. For his puzzle strategy game, he took Kirby's dream course,

not just Kirby. Stop coming for me. You, why? What did I do? I'm not going to let the Cotor thing go. I just can't. You know, I just can't. Vehicle, Wave Race 64. I think he got all our votes with that pick right there.

Wild card, Star Wars, Shadow of the Empire. Okay. I took, for my shooter, DeusX, RPG, skies of Arcadia, action adventure, Legend of Zelda, Occurine of Time, puzzle strategy, eco, vehicle, Simpsons hit and run, and wildcard, eternal darkness, sanity, Requiem. Jess took as her shooter, resonant evil, as her RPG, as you may have heard once or twice on this episode, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, which is alive and well, in our imaginations

at least. Action Adventure, Donkey Kong Country, puzzle strategy, where in the world is Carmen, San Diego, vehicle, twisted metal, wildcard, guitar hero. And last, but not least, or I guess we'll let the voters decide if he was least. Shooter, Turok dinosaur hunter, RPG, parasite Eve, action adventure, godhand, puzzle strategy, clock tower, vehicle, Star Fox 64, and wildcard. I just forgot that charity made this pick and remembered it all over. My God. Dead or alive. Extreme beach volleyball.

What photo is Jomey going to choose for that? Oh, my goodness. That's a great question. Just a volleyball in the sand. Just the volleyball. Yeah. Or some sands. That'd be fine.

Won't get us in trouble. Jess, Charity, Rob. Thank you for joining me. I hope that all of your and our most wanted games get remade, even the ones and especially the ones that may already be in the process of being remade. I'm ignoring. I'm ignoring. I'm choosing to ignore you right.

now. She's clearly and obviously ignoring. Charity. Rob, enjoy the rest of the NBA playoffs. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks also to Devin Ronaldo for producing and to Arjuna Ramcapal for his senior podcast management.

Thanks to our listeners for playing along. Remember to vote and comment when Jomi puts our selections up on Twitter and Instagram and send us your choices at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. We'll file them away. Maybe we'll remake our. Remakes episodes someday. I think we left enough on the boards that we could do this again. There are a lot of good games out there that are ripe for remakes.

Stay tuned for Midnight Boys, House of Our and Ringervorverse Recommends. Universe Recommends at gmail.com. Buttonmash will be back in a very busy June.